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Danieli presents his new ep on Alpenglühen. Berglüster is an emotional high-concept EP with 4 tracks that work well together or individually. The artist from Aachen, owner of whispering signals, transports us into his sonic realm and offers us probably his most mature and honest work to date. Berglüster is not typical club music, we actually found ourselves facing contemplative lab techno. The hazy atmospheres, the lowpassed kickdrums and the cinematic pads reminds of the golden years of intelligent dub techno but with a more sophisticated and modern approach. Those who love the music of Deepchord, GAS or Porter Ricks will find here a delight to be added to their collection. As usual, this is an only vinyl release. 200 copies pressed.

The Swedish quartet Goran Kajfeš Tropiques share their new music We Jazz Records on May 3rd. Tell Us, an album consisting of three long pieces composed by the group, is "slow music" to the bone, a deep body of work utilising the language of jazz as its core mode of communication but echoing way beyond. The quartet is expanded with strings, adding wings to the music and helping it lift off the ground in a personal, highly engaging manner. The Tropiques quartet consists of Goran Kajfeš (trumpet, synthesizer), Alexander Zethson (piano, organ, synthesizer), Johan Berthling (acoustic bass) and Johan Holmegard (drums) – each a key member in the Swedish creative music scene, with experience from groups such as Dungen, Ghosted, Fire!, Gard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra, Oddjob, plus many more, including Goran Kajfeš's own Suptropic Arkestra. Their music, groove based and connected to the tradition of "minimalism" has at times been called "hypno-jazz". Tropiques initially came together in 2011 when Kajfeš was commissioned to compose and perform music to a performance by the Swedish modern dance company Vindhäxor. Since then, the group has evolved in its own ways and independently from, yet informed by, their origins. That is, the experience of creating music together with a strong sense of movement. All three compositions on Tell Us expand on what the Tropiques have done before, building around their signature style and its spacey texture and rooting the musical narrative in strong melody, rolling groove and their collective limitless urge for sonic exploration. As the opener "Unity In Diversity" goes to show, Tropiques's compositions are like flowers opening slowly, each element and layer growing out of what has come before, in a constantly surprising manner. This music, then, becomes the perfect antidote for the quick-fix eye candy rolling down your smartphone screen. This music will take its time, but it'll also create new dimensions with each second as it unfolds. RIYL: Alice Coltrane, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Pharoah Sanders, Laraaji, "Crescent" era John Coltrane, Swedish psychedelic music, "Kosmische Musik"

Recorded on the edge of Berlin in a semi-deserted building complex formerly used by the East German Sociality party, André Uhl's debut on the label taps into the spectral frequencies of the space and the ritual practices of recording. Created in isolation amongst this decaying structure and surrounded by lakes, dense forestry and the sounds of boars and unknown wildlife outside, Every Step Causes a Crack is a title that reflects Andrés connection to the environment around him and the death or glory stance of the artist, with field recordings, electric doom synthesis and lurching drum tracks temporarily fracturing the darkness before being pulled back through the void. Limited vinyl release of 200 copies.

Yako Trio come from Thessaloniki, Greece and play jazz. “OdesSea” contains six original compositions that pay homage to the sea, the aimless wandering and the inescapable destiny of a traveller...nostos. Recorded in two stages, it includes collaborations with Nicolas Masson (ECM) and James Wylie on saxophone.

Another one from the original dirty south in the ATL. "Love Juices" LP features 9 unreleased tracks from Wilkie and the Wayy, also includes the recording from his sole 7 inch single released in 1983 on the infamous Cold Wave Records, "It Only Happened Once". Feels good to be able to finally tell the band, "It's Happened Again"! Special thanks to Angelo Angione for all your time making this happen and hunting down the DATs, tapes, and reels!

Leading dons of hybrid dembow club music, Nick León & DJ Python cap a mad couple of years with four metallic, reticulated electro-ton zingers on the latter’s Worldwide Unlimited label. Chasing up León’s summer rave anthem ‘Xstasis’ and production on Rosalía’s ‘Motomami’, and Python’s winding annum including ‘Club Sentimientos Vol. 2’ plus a Sangre Nueva followup with Florentino & Kelman Duran; the pair build on months of residency + hanging at club Suero in Miami with four mercurial fusions finessed with sick, divergent production palettes and techniques. Bridging their known styles into something altogether new, the ‘Split’ EP gives up two solo shots by both artists. Nick León cooks up the spiny ace ‘Nerves’ with its hackled metallic melody set to martial dembow swag and grimiest bass grind, whilst his ‘Love Potion’ pushes the tempo to near percolated broken beats zones, and opens out the vibe with breezy chords and fluid texturing. On the other hand, Python whisks jaunty reggaeton trills and aerosolised electronics in ‘I’m Tired’, and slants off into psychedelic-impressionist abstraction on ‘uwu’ with its un-stitched tresillo patterns and groggy pads coloured well out-of-the-lines. A+ madness.

When it first appeared in 1986, the Desert Equations: Azax Attra album was greeted with enthusiasm, awe and disbe- lief: nobody had done anything quite like that before, and this dizzying, inspired blend of Persian tradition, New York avant-garde and electronic music remains incomparable, powerful and mesmerising to this day. 

Combining the sublime voice of Iranian vocalist Deyhim and the electronic wizardry of US composer Horowitz, Desert Equations wonderfully blends the duo’s multiple sources, including their experiences at the epicentre of New York’s early ‘80s avantgarde music and theatre scene, Sussan Deyhim’s intimate knowledge of traditional Persian music and its reverberation in modern Iranian arts, and Richard Horowitz’s background in jazz (he spent time with Paris-based US freejazz expats in the ‘70s, and played with Braxton, Steve Lacy and Alan Silva), electronics and the folk music of Morocco (where he lived for a while). 

This haunting and futuristic album prompted writer Paul Bowles to wonder: “Was this composed under the influence of Majoun?”. It then convinced filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci to entrust the soundtrack music for film adaptation of Bowles’ cult novel The Sheltering Sky movie to Richard Horowitz (which earned him a Golden Globe), and also led to a series of music/theatre Azax Attra performances at New York’s iconic experimental La MaMa Theatre. 

This 2022 remastered reissue includes three previously-unreleased bonus tracks, and a rich booklet with photographs and extensive notes recounting the duo’s fascinating life stories 

Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz went on to record numerous albums, together and separately, including Majoun, Logic of the Birds, Madman of God and Shy Angels (Sussan’s albums devoted to Persian Sufi poetry), Possessed and Turbulent (Sussan’s albums in collaboration with renowned visual artist Shirin Neshat), and La Belle et la Bête. Sussan Deyhim also worked with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Jah Wobble, Bobby McFerrin, Adrian Sherwood, Bill Laswell, Ornette Coleman, and Alexandre Desplats (on the soundtrack for Argo). Richard Horowitz collaborated with Jaron Lanier, Hassan Hakmoun, David Byrne, was the original artistic director of the Gnaoua Festival in Essaouira, wrote and recorded film soundtracks for Oliver Stone, Bob Swaim, and several Mococcan filmmakers including Nour Eddine Lakhmari, Faouzi Bensaidi & Souheil Ben Barka. Prior to Desert Equations, Richard had recorded and released two albums, including cult record Eros in Arabia (1981, recently reissued on NY label FTS/RVNG) 

In April 2021, Deyhim and Horowitz have performed at the Nobel Prize Summit. Deyhim is currently collaborating on a new project by Philip Glass and filmmaker Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi). 

Eight distinguished artists wrote and recorded original pieces for this album which joins some dots between vintage, experimental & new ambient, and pays tribute to the relaunched Made To Measure composers’ series

Featuring, by order of appearance:

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, the American modular synth wizard (US)

Christina Vantzou, the Greek-American orchestral composer (US/GR)

Stubbleman aka maverick ambient composer Pascal Gabriel (UK/BE), with Norwegian trumpet player Nils Petter Molvær (NO)

Lucrecia Dalt (COL) + Camille Mandoki (MX) + Matias Aguayo (CL/DE), in a special collaboration

Mary Lattimore, the celestial experimental ambient harpist (US)

Inne Eysermans, the front person from Belgian indie band Amatorski (BE)

Félicia Atkinson, the French experimental musician & visual artist (FR)

Benjamin Lew & Steven Brown (BE/US), with their first collab in over three decades

All tracks were made to measure for this album, and revolve around the loose idea of wordless fiction.

Aside from being such a seductive, fascinating collection of tracks and moods, the album is also modestly aiming at joining dots between certain classic ambient composers (represented here by Benjamin Lew & Steven Brown and Stubbleman, whose work has previously appeared in the Made To Measure series), artists who approach experimental ambient from their pop or club background (Lucrecia Dalt, Inne Eysermans, Matias Aguayo), and eminent exponents of the great new generation of ambient music composers (Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Christina Vantzou, Mary Lattimore, Félicia Atkinson).

The cover of Fictions is a reproduction of a painting by renowned Belgian artist Angel Vergara Santiago (two of his paintings were already featured on covers of early Made To Measure volumes, back in the 1980s).

'Fictions' was curated by Marc Hollander.

El Nido: a welcoming embrace in uncertain times The world changed forever in the second quarter of 2020. The life we were used to ceased to be, as we were overcome by constant fear, distrust in all that surrounded us and a fatalist attitude towards the world we lived in. With the pandemic came lockdown, mandatory isolation for months, empty streets, face masks, hand sanitizer, the fear of going out, an absurd roll call of Covid fatalities, the daily tension of not knowing when it would all end and the urge to “get back to normal,” something that certainly never happened. Out of that pandemic saturation and that urge for “normality” came 'El Nido' (“The Nest”), the third album by Italy-based Colombian producer Montoya, who describes this record as “becoming virgins of destiny again, facing up to that fatalist world and creating that longing for tranquility. Savoring that moment prior to the pandemic, that instant when the most important thing wasn’t the immediate reality or the global situation.” Montoya sees 'El Nido' as that quiet place that you think of when you close your eyes; it is a beach or a mountain, a sunrise or a sunset, a wave in the sea refreshing your body, or an almost-whispering wind that immediately silences everything around you. On his previous records, 'Iwa' in 2015 and 'Otún' in 2019, his work as a producer prevailed, feeding the growing wave of Latin American electronica, fusing IDM and techno with indigenous root music, Andean folklore and rhythms from the tropical Caribbean coast and ancestral Pacific in terms of instrumentation. But on 'El Nido' Montoya splits the balance, offering us five merely instrumental tracks and six collaborations with Latin American artists, including Colombians Nidia Góngora on “Soñé,” Montañera on “Sierra” and Pedrina on “Nubecita.” It also features Mexican artist Pahua on “Flor del Mar,” the Peruvian Lara Nuh on “El Faro” and the Franco-Venezuelan La Chica on “Palosanto.” Starting from the name itself (“The Nest”), an evocation of home, 'El Nido' is also a Filipino municipality on the island of Palawan, a place that turned out to be Montoya’s last live experience before the pandemic. That place with crystal clear seas and white sand became the scene and starting point for this work, reflecting on the abstraction of a chaotic world and proposing blurred destinations with each song, like places that exist within memories when we close our eyes, letting us inhabit them, for a couple of minutes at least. On the other hand, it’s a record that approaches love; as a yearning and a refuge, as a guide and an anchor, but also as a rhetorical figure that makes us vibrate and elevates us, while at the same time keeping us grounded and letting us settle in the place that we can use as our shelter. 'El Nido' will be released on July 7th, 2023 on ZZK Records

The debut album from New York-based vocalist, composer, and producer Charlotte Jacobs plays out like a half-remembered Greek epic of avant-pop proportions, piecing together earthy woodwinds, old-school synths, and shifting rhythmic patterns that enhance her myth-inspired spoken word and bilingual vocals, delivered in Dutch and English. Arranged and co-produced by Jacobs, a t l a s, her debut solo full-length—and first for the Grammy-winning label New Amsterdam Records (Arooj Aftab, Bryce Dessner, Julia Holter et al)—preserves the fluidity and vocal centricity of her 2021 EP The Shape of Wandering, once again using text as a means of grounding her musical ideas to give her storyteller’s heart a home. Spanning both Dutch and English, the LP also incorporates spoken language for the first time, creating vocal dynamics that add depth and dimension. Jacobs played a large proportion of the instruments on a t l a s while also working with a talented cast of musicians, including harpist Rebecca El Saleh, drummer Raf Vertessen, flautist/saxophonist Charlotte Greve, and violinist Hannah Epperson, who lend the record a contemporary classical flair. Engineer and producer Zubin Hensler also helped to steer the production.

Reissue, originally released in 1957. A multi-instrumentalist who reconfigured jazz many times during his long career, Yusef Lateef came to prominence in the late 1950s, after having toured with Dizzy Gillespie. Jazz Mood dates from 1957, when his quintet had some of Detroit's finest, including Alice Coltrane's brother Ernest Farrow on bass and future Jazz Messenger Curtis Fuller on trombone. The use of an argol on "Metaphor" and a rabat and finger cymbals on "Morning" point to Lateef's Islamic grounding and his belief that music serves a higher purpose; this edition has bonus track "Passion," from the equally excellent Before Dawn (1957). Rich, deep, and varied, this is required listening for all serious jazz heads.

Love International and Test Pressing commemorate yet another cracking festival with the latest instalment in their collaborative compilation series for their LIXTP label. For The Sound Of Love International #006 they’ve chosen Jay Donaldson aka Palms Trax as their selector. The Berlin-based Brit launched his career in 2013 with releases on various labels which led to headline slots and globetrotting gigs from South America to Australia. He’s a regular at Love International, having spun at the first one in 2015, playing at Barbarella’s for an RA event. The scope of this new record reflects the eclecticism of Donaldson’s DJ sets and his long-running ‘Cooking With Palms Trax’ NTS radio show and parties. Comprising of cuts collected on his worldwide trips, it’s a magical mind-blowing selection. Jumping between generations and genres, yet all coming together as a wonderful whole. As document it definitely demonstrates the joys of real record shops and physical digging.

The album opens with Linda Waterfall’s Clarity. A fabulous flight of late 1970s spiritual jazz-influenced folk from the late Seattle-based singer / songwriter, who released her debut on Windham Hill, and studied transcendental mediation under the Indian guru, Baba Hari Dass. Sebastian’s Follow My Heart is a soulful soft rocker, a sax-y seduction theme. Its very European protagonist trying to entice you into a romantic liaison, and promising the time of your life. On Did It Have To Be Me, glorious gospel choir-like backing lifts Frank E. Jeffries Jr.’s cool croon, and the spirits of anyone lucky enough to be listening. Two tracks travel from `90s South Africa. El Pedro’s La Luna is a pumping piece of S.A. bubblegum, that’s strangely partly sung in Spanish and whose echoed snares mimic flamenco handclaps. Tropical, a little zouk-y and more mid-tempo kwaito, Novidade’s Masingita features great guitar picking and warm, welcoming group vocals. Dieta Berliner & Jean Baptiste’s Paula & Kaspar transports us back to Berlin and forwards to 2012. A B-side secret weapon from Dieta’s short-lived Pakalolo City Records, this is a cowbell-led hypnotic head nodding chug, with a swaying sing-along melody and highlife-like licks hidden way down deep in the mix. Culled from a cult Canadian 45 Angelo Mallia’s Hideaway is cute, catchy tumbling TR-808- driven synth-pop. A piece of plugged-in Belgian `80s prog-rock, Zardoz’s brilliant Brasilia Drums pits its titular percussion against big cosmic synths, and segues into a new age-y journey. Danish keyboard virtuoso Gert Thrue shows off his chops on I Play The Body Electronic. For nearly ten minutes switching between Hammond organ and Moog. Feeding everything through psychedelic phasing effects, and overdubbing some fab Fender Rhodes. A true emotional epic, the sonic auteur clearly got lost in its groove. In Trance 95 might be one of the better known acts here, since the Athens-based duo’s work has been collected on Veronica Vasicka’s Minimal Wave, and in the 2010s they also supported Depeche Mode. Their 1991 single, Warm Nights Driving On Wet Streets, is chunky chill out room gear. Downtempo techno, with moody minor chords, that’s actually a tender love song. Frenchman Alain Salvati is behind Flayer’s Wanna Get Back Your Love, which first appeared in 1983, oddly on an Italian 12. Rediscovered at the turn of the millennium it’s become a bona fide modern Balearic anthem. The closing cut, Jeancky’s Variations Sur Protestation, kind of brings the album, musically, full circle. Returning to the late `70s with campfire congas, bongos, and gentle acoustic strumming. Saxophone and vibes taking it in turns to serenade the soothing mantra-like vocal. The majority of the tracks included were self-released / privately pressed and in many cases the often mysterious artists’ only recorded outings. So, in putting this together Palms Trax has pulled a lot of talented people out of obscurity. No doubt exposing some holy grails and upsetting a few dealers, while making the dreams of folks who love good music come true. Full of excellent, eccentric finds, it’s a blissful collection that’ll fill floors and catch heads’ attention.

Hole Erth, Chaz Bear’s eighth full-length studio record as Toro y Moi, is the genre shapeshifter’s most unexpected and bold move to date, with Bear diving headlong into rap-rock, Soundcloud rap and Y2K emo. The album blitzes anthemic pop-punk next to autotuned, melancholic rap – two genres that inform one another now more than ever before — and packs in the most features ever on a Toro y Moi album. We get Don Toliver’s moody crooning on the anti-love song “Madonna.” We get Kevin Abstract and Lev’s breathy reflections on “Heaven.” We get emo king Benjamin Gibbard, the beating heart of millennial indie for crying out loud. Recorded in the span of a few months across late 2023 and early 2024, Hole Erth’s features built naturally over that short span, with Bear simply reaching out to long-time friends. The sum of Hole Erth’s parts is massive, and demonstrates Bear’s deft abilities as a producer, especially in hip-hop; his role in the culture has long been solidified from previous collaborations with some of rap's biggest trailblazers. It’s a daring left turn for Bear, but the feel is effortless, the make-it-look-easy of a master at work. All told, Bear pushes himself into new sonic ground for the TyM oeuvre while embracing the project’s celebrated, well-known electronic beginnings. Hole Erth is brand new, but somehow perfectly at home. The album’s title is an homage to Whole Earth, Stewart Brand’s DIY periodical from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the central purpose of which was to empower people to be holistically self-sufficient. From product reviews of carpentry tools, to how-to guides for growing your own food, to techno-optimistic analyses that’d go on to inspire Silicon Valley startup culture, parallels of the catalog’s DIY ethos can be found all throughout Hole Erth. Bear cites gorpcore, a new-age fashion trend of functional, outdoorsy outerwear worn as streetwear, as influencing the album’s aesthetic. This also ties back to Brand’s influential counterculture catalog. Bear notes: “Things have gone in a more gorp-y direction. Humans are tapping into this more tribal, earthier aesthetic. The Whole Earth catalog is this encyclopedic, self-sustaining guide. With the album title alone, that’s something I wanted to spark as a conversation. We can be off the grid, and also be on the internet, and try out all of these different lifestyles at the same time.” This sense of duality exists within Hole Erth: it’s seeped in the technological world while embracing real-world human connection. The sounds that make up Hole Erth might feel like new territory for Bear, but in reality it’s a return to form for Toro y Moi – a project that has always orbited electronic music. “Toro is not a rock band,” Bear assures. “To me, my folk records and psych rock records are the side quests. What I fell in love with with the Toro project were the electronic productions – the samples. There’s always more to be done in the electronic world.” His experimentation with electronic production is most obvious on tracks like album opener “Walking In The Rain,” an immediate immersion into the brooding pulse of Hole Erth. Given Bear’s work with some of modern rap’s most influential acts, it’s no surprise that his autotuned cadence and cheeky play-on-words calls to mind the moody braggadocio of today’s popular hip-hop. “Hollywood,” featuring Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service fame, places warped vocals and ephemeral sound bites of internet dial-up beneath watery ruminations on celebrity and the delusions prevalent in Tinseltown. The track’s nostalgic nods in combination with Bear’s genre fluidity is a Toro y Moi trademark that can be heard throughout his discography. From the twangy, laidback reflections that comprised his most recent Sandhills EP, to the retro-futuristic grooves of 2019’s Outer Peace, Bear is no stranger to flexing his muscles as a forward-thinking musical chameleon, while still managing to make music that feels eternally familiar yet compelling. A sense of nostalgia sneaks its way into almost every Toro y Moi release, but angst is an emotion that Bear has never intentionally explored the way he does here. Tracks like “Tuesday'' channel a specific, yet forever-relatable sense of adolescent unease. A distorted guitar riff leads into a repeating chorus that conjures misunderstood teenagers singing aloud, maybe too loud, while riding bikes through American suburbs. This foreboding can also be heard on “HOV,” though not without poking some fun with lines like “Romance is so cold / My advice? To bring a coat.” A sense of playful ambition and experimentation sits at the core of Hole Erth. Bear has the energy, but is acutely aware that his energy isn’t forever. At a time when the internet is blending multiple genres into one at an increasingly rapid pace, Bear accomplishes the rare feat of keeping up with the contemporary alternative listener. Constantly changing, evolving and experimenting is the heart

Antipodean Anomalies 2 is Left Ear Records most ambitious project to date, a compilation that took over 4 years to license and includes 17 artists across a double LP. AA2 picks up where the first iteration left off, with co-compilers Chris Bonato & Bridget Small continuing to dig through the music of the geographically isolating and maverick landscapes of Australia & New Zealand As with the first iteration, Left Ear continues to excavate the music from these vast micro-scenes that evolved out of a number of small community-focused domains creating their own unique reinterpretation of musical influences from near and far, spanning the years 1980 – 1992. The compilation scopes an overlooked epoch from Adelaide, presenting acts such as the DNA Lounge, TCH & Will Kuiper. A close-knit community of like-minded mates that made distinctive electronic music together throughout the 80’s, all of which remained unreleased until now. Buchanan Holbrook capture the ambiance of Perth’s heat prodded afternoon’s perfectly with their track Hunger, a breezy 9-minute minimal-jazz jam that includes kalimba, water samples & conga. Furthermore, artists like David Watson & Colin Offord use samplers and handmade instruments to offer a more abrasive and experimental aesthetic. To round out the compilation, artists such as Jane Stevenson, discovered a 7” at an op-shop and found the needle stuck on the word, ‘Aloha’. Using tape loops, she chose to highlight imperfections rather than hide them and in unison managed to cross boundaries of time; the 60s (album voice) and the 80s (my voice), of location; Hawaii and Australia, and of language; “Aloha and Hi”. This ethos echoes the compilation's vision, to champion artists that implement impromptu creativity, and who have a desire to create regardless of their surroundings and resources. AA2 signs off with the Back to Back Zithers, drawing inspiration from the haiku poems of Basho. To illustrate this, Kari set a Kacapi improvisation to the backdrop of the cicada chorus of summertime in outer Melbourne.

Baba Stiltz has written and produced the award-winning soundtrack for the Swedish movie Shame On Dry Land (Syndabocken). Awarded the Guldbagge prize for best feature film soundtrack in 2024, the music is dense, at times oppressive, than again light-mediterranean, all perfectly accompanying the stories vibe. The score is now available on vinyl for the first time.

Los Angeles duo crushed announce their signing to Ghostly International and the first vinyl pressing of their 2023 debut EP, extra life. A love letter to ‘90s radio, the first collaboration from musicians Bre Morell and Shaun Durkan finds them tuning a shared taste for maximalist dream pop. Open-hearted hooks and melodic riffs move through a haze of breakbeats, spliced sound design, and distortion. Faithful yet fluid in its channeling of golden age alt-rock, Britpop, trip-hop, and electronica, there’s a refreshing freedom to the sound, which quickly resonated with fans and critics upon initial release. Pitchfork called it “effortless, widescreen dream pop that’s serene without being sentimental,” and NPR cited its “deep sense of place and time.” The music also struck Ghostly, and the first measure for crushed and their new label home is to give extra life a wider physical release paired with remixes from band favorites Real Lies and DJ Python. The story of crushed is written across midnight transmissions. In the early 2010s, Morell, who fronts the band Temple of Angels (Run For Cover Records), hosted a graveyard shift college radio show and used to play music from Durkan’s former band Weekend (Slumberland Records). In 2020, Durkan, having focused on production work (Tamaryn, Young Prisms) following Weekend’s run as a formidable shoegaze act, hosted a late-night program on a community radio station in San Francisco. Driving one day, he heard Temple of Angels by chance and was immediately drawn to Morell’s voice. He added a song that night to his on-air tracklist. Morell saw it and reached out to thank him and point to that connection made a decade earlier. The exchange sparked a long-distance project. First, they filled an audible moodboard with ‘90s classics from the likes of Natalie Imbruglia, Sneaker Pimps, and The Sundays. Songs that transported them back to places of comfort and discovery; Morell’s memories of a metallic, lavender boombox that dispatched past sounds from a world beyond her Houston suburbia, and Durkan, in his mom’s car on the way to band practice. These touchpoints provided a palette for crushed to experiment without expectations, purely for the fun of it. A creative intimacy emerged; stepping outside the reverb walls of her full band, Morell embraced more clarity and a range of emotions in her vocals, while Durkan looked inward as a producer, collaging fragments from their everyday lives: voice memos, piano recordings, even the panting of Morell's late dog on “milksugar.” The wistful ballad embodies extra life’s feeling as a whole. “I am home again,” sings Morell; her refrain cycles above a drum machine beat as Durkan colors their universe with star-lit strums, synth swells, and the crackle of fireworks in the distance. Elsewhere, the duo’s uptempo mode is equally effective, like the super-charged duet “coil” or the propulsive opener “waterlily,” which sets a cinematic tone for the set. Bold, bright, and replayable, extra life presents crushed as a project of immense promise, two artists unlocking something special within themselves, a space to hold both melancholy and bliss. Durkan adds, “To me, [extra life] is true and pure - in a way I haven't felt about music in a really really long time.”

On "Decades On Divided Stars" Brock Van Wey, aka bvdub, presents his first album on Affin, each of its tracks spanning his trademark Odyssean length, with a sonic and emotional density second to none. You are lost... losing your sense of time... of self. Yet finding your inner existence in its inwardly-folding galaxies. Your thoughts and emotions revolve, as planets caught in gravitational pull, before you suddenly awake, as if from a dream, unaware of how much time has passed. Only the stars will tell...

This self-titled LP marks the fifth release of Scottish artist Murray Collier’s Dip Friso project, his longest running alias and the solitary vanguard of his own Real Landscape imprint. Across the six tracks he delivers another collection of warped percussive loops, heavily manipulated guitar work and psychedelic sound experiments that drift between popular music forms ('I’ll Get to Hiding') and whittled down takes on electric blues and shoegaze ('Another Country’). The former features the instantly recognisable croon of Still House Plants vocalist Jess HK embellishing a backdrop of tape loop alchemy, an inspired pairing given the shared history of Glasgow dwelling. ‘Thin Ayrshire’ (written with Hannan Jones) treads a similar path with Collier’s own beyond-unrecognisable voice featuring, broken suddenly by a brief flash of 12th Isle’s Loris S. Sarid & Innis Chonnel’s ‘Spalted Water Portal’ thanks to a recycled tape spool. ‘A Sorry Business’ takes on avant-jazz inspired puddle skronk, a stunted casio bleep propelling forward guitar dirge and cymbal crashes, whilst Australian minimal wave heroes The Systematics are paid homage via a farewell cover of their track ‘Midnight on Balancing Day’ (here ‘Midnight’). All in, the album sees the project incorporating more instrumentation and a full use of vocalists, leaning less heavily on gauzy sample collage styles and providing a more introspective look at the hazy, dubwise world Collier has been building for the past half a decade." Fergus Clark

Amsterdam-based collective Wanderwelle presents an electro-acoustic adaptation of one of their favourite stories, which has haunted them for many years. Wat gebeurde er met sergeant Massuro (What Happened to Sergeant Massuro) is a little-known tale written by master storyteller Harry Mulisch, in which he has thoughtfully succeeded in interweaving strong anti-colonial ideas with mythical elements. In letter form, the story recounts the fate of Sergeant Massuro, who, during a mission in the former Dutch colony of Netherlands New Guinea, slowly but surely turns to stone under mysterious circumstances. It appears that certain unspeakable actions of his past may have brought this fate upon him... Wat gebeurde er met Sergeant Massuro, published in 1957, is a rarity in Dutch literature, as there was little critical writing during the time when New Guinea was still under colonial authority of the Netherlands. The Dutch retained sovereignty over Western New Guinea until 1962. Drawing upon a vast array of electronic and acoustic instruments, alongside archival and field recordings, Wanderwelle expanded the story's horizons with a sonic dimension, making it accessible to a new generation of listeners and readers. The artists consulted the author's estate, his publisher, and literary scholars during the creation of the album to fully grasp the extent of the author's intricate writing and thoughts. Given the deeply personal significance of Harry Mulisch’s story to the artists, this record serves as the inaugural release for their label. Maalstroom is not your usual label. It is a public archive that will feature some of Wanderwelle’s most personal projects. Harry Mulisch (1927-2010) is considered one of the most prolific writers of Dutch post-war literature. He wrote more than eighty novels, plays, essays, poems, and philosophical reflections. A frequent theme in Mulisch’s work is the Second World War, and he often incorporated ancient legends or myths, drawing on Greek mythology, Jewish mysticism, urban legends, and politics. The artists would like to express their sincere gratitude to the Stichting Vrienden van het Harry Mulisch Huis and Cultuurfonds, without whom this project would not have been possible. In remembrance of Harry Mulisch (1927-2010)

Atmosphere and gravity lean into each other. They are simultaneously expansive, and anchoring. They hold us, and lend a sense of perspective. They provide a stability and a knowingness which is essential in the absolute, and yet we can't help but find ourselves gazing upward, outward and reaching towards that which sits outside those things and ways we know. Selene is a record about that this lingering desire for that which sits beyond. It is work that seeks new perspectives snatched from familiar vistas, and it meditates on that sense of anchor and perspective. The work is also a speculative hymn to the visions of the celestial zones that spill ever outward. These visions, once merely what we could perceive with the naked eye are now so much more. Our minds eye is fed in equal parts by radio telecopy, filmic dreams and fiction renders of a place most of us will never know first-hand. This recording ties into a linage that reaches back, while stretching forward. It is just one story of so many, told across places, across cultures, across generations. It sits in the in-between of before and after, and in that moment invites us to situate ourselves and lean into it.

"Anthony Linell's Lundin Oil project suggests a politic and an aesthetic in one swift movement. We may make certain deductions about each, but we must work backwards from where they meet. Through the brutalising industrial mechanisms to which titles cryptically allude, we are given an exponentially urgent image of devastation. This is projected, pitch-perfectly, into a rapacious and erosive aural demonstration that barely meet metrical demands. Exploit Divisions, the first Lundin Oil release since 2016, redoubles this threatening realisation. The album pivots between seismic static waves and jagged rhythmic noise, seeking a wider vantage with melodic drone ensembles. A ferocious departure from his primary work, Exploit Divisions is a purposeful reminder of the savagery of brevity." Words by Patrick Quick

2 x 12”, black vinyl, 4C gatefold My studio is my shelter, I feel comfortable there, surrounded by wonderful inspiring machines. A small cosy room where ideas emerge, mature, morph, and solidify into their final shape. 'Studio' is the result of spending time in that space. The album's intention is simple: Presenting a beautiful personal musical journey. The creative process in itself matters to me, the interaction with my instruments, the accidental discoveries, the successful execution of a vision and anything in between. Most of the tracks on this album got revised countless times, and then even more, once I knew in which context and order I wanted to arrange them. I have been living with my music for months now, listening, thinking, changing, diving deeper and deeper into each piece. I love albums, they are a beautiful long-form format where each part has its place, a journey from the start till the end. Each piece has its own story, its own flavour and history. Some of them have been with me since a while already. There is material which I created years ago for installations and music derived from previous audiovisual works, all completely ripped apart and rearranged multiple times. During their creation my pieces often turn into something completely different, they repeatedly shift from one state to another until they become solid. What I consider a core element at the beginning might be later discarded completely, and a little detail in the background might become the essence. Many explorations ended in the trash bin before the results had a chance to be part of 'Studio'. Things did not fall into place, did not feel right. Other compositions had to fill the void instead, some created quickly in a rush of inspiration, some slowly, shy, questioning their significance. This album did not come into existence in a hurry, it took as long as it needed. I used the time to walk around my creations, to listen to them from the distance, physically, mentally, with friends, in all kinds of different contexts. I tried to understand what I just did. I started to see patterns, hidden motifs, things that were buried in between too many layers of sound. What is essential? What is ornament? I reduced, rearranged, added again. The closer I got to the final state of 'Studio' the more clarity I found. The inherent doubts and the nagging voices from the inside got more quiet, and a sense of achievement started to manifest itself. More and more details just fell into place. And now it is done. After making electronic music since almost thirty years I don't care anymore about genres, about how to label things. It is music, my own personal music, and that's it. Call it electronica if you wish. Process Notes The music on this album has been constructed in Ableton Live. Most of the sounds have been created with my collection of beloved hardware synthesisers and effects, often further processed until something completely different did emerge. Sometimes I spend days in the studio just recording sounds or creating new presets, without already having a composition in mind. A few selected musical instruments contributed significantly to the palette of this album; a New England Digital Synclavier II, which also served as inspiration for the artwork, a Sequential Prophet VS, which is present on all Monolake albums since 1996, a Yamaha SY77, Linn Drum, and the Oberheim Xpander. And then there is Operator in Ableton Live, which I developed in 2004 and still love to use, and a lot of the other effects and instruments in the software. And of course my Granulator III instrument, and the PitchLoop89 audio effect. The final sonic world is often the result of radical processing of these elements, via filtering, pitch shifting, time stretching and other types of processing, both in Live and with my hardware. The good old Alesis Quadraverb deserves an honorary mention here, so does the AMS RMX 16. Artwork The cover combines a few complex elements. A composition of various lichen photographs, and a computational noise field that cuts rivers into the structure, where the inner artwork of the album shines through: The inside of the CD package and the gatefold vinyl cover shows a non-existing musical instrument, based on the user interface of the Synclavier II. I've always been fond of its futuristic button matrix with red LEDs, which conjures a sense of nostalgia for early computer systems. But I wanted more than just a photograph of it. Instead, I created a collage that not only consists of its existing controls but also integrated additional features it never possessed, though it might have in a subsequent iteration. In essence, I crafted a vision of a future that never materialized. Geeky detail: When a Synclavier II is turned on, and the connected mainframe computer did not boot yet, the LEDs in the buttons light up in random patterns. The imaginary version of it does the same.

In 1998, Carsten Nicolai, also known as Alva Noto, visited a sound installation created by Robert Lippok for a group exhibition in Weimar, Germany. Soon after, he invited Lippok to release music on his label raster-noton. »Open Close Open« was released in 2001 and marked the beginning of Lippok's solo career. Before, Lippok had already played in Ornament und Verbrechen (with his brother Ronald Lippok) and To Rococo Rot (with Ronald Lippok and Stefan Schneider). The title of the EP is a linguistic reference to the instructions found on everyday objects. In fact, the sound of birds or a closing door can be heard. Besides field recordings, cultural fragments were used – including the sample of the famous Adagietto from Gustav Mahler's Symphony. No. 5. – and integrated into three loop-based pieces, that have been praised by Fact Magazine as »a masterclass in collage, looping and tactile processing.« The source material for »Open Close Open« initially served as a soundtrack for a video by Takehito Koganezawa, a visual artist from Japan. For this remastered vinyl reissue, Lippok revisited the original sound material and produced a new track called »Licht.«

“Timeless minimalistic approach to composition braced by repetition and playfulness. Alberto’s music reflects calm, focus and intimacy. Ethereal and atmospheric, his pieces operate within the digital as well as the analogue realm in equal measures. Sampling, Midi sequencing and field recordings are the instrumentation used in these 15 songs recorded on a four track reel to reel tape. Highest possible recommendation for fans of Suso Saiz, Jon Hassel, Eno or Harold Budd” “Haizetxe” which stands for wind house, is the first ever record consisting of unreleased material recorded between mid 80’s and 90’s by musician Alberto Lizarralde in Zaldibia, Basque Country. One of the founders of the first school of Improvisational jazz and contemporary music (Jazzle) established in San Sebastián in the early 1990s,Alberto is a well-known figure among Basque musicians but not so much amongst the general public. In his professional curriculum we find the direction of the Plaza Festival, the Zirrara record company, his work as a producer, editor (editions 3e argitalpenak), the direction of the audiovisual installation JA Artzeren Unibertsoa, the arrangements and composition for the Iparraguirre 7 project, etc...And even so, he has managed to stay away from the spotlight. In all this time he was composing and recording music, but the right circumstances never arose for its release.Thus, it has remained stored in a drawer all these years. Finally the music of Alberto Lizarralde sees the light on Hegoa label in a limited run of 300 LPs.