3XL

Featuring contributions from Nick León, More Eaze, and Ultrafog, Berlin-based producer ben bondy—a key figure in the post-“dubient” underground alongside peers like Exael and Ulla—unveils his latest work, XO Salt Llif3, now issued on vinyl via 3XL. A fragile sound-poem adrift in the fissures of emotion, the album layers microscopic textures, whispered vocals, and fragmentary lyrics. On “Bend,” the refrain etches the resonance of broken love and resignation, while hazy synths and grainy noise sketch out blurred contours. Tracks like “Ur Ghost Is My Shadow” and “Flood” summon waves of introspection and gloom that rise and recede like tides. Neither blessing nor refusal, XO Salt Llif3 stands as bondy’s latest statement—an inquiry poised at the edge of existence itself.

Cortex of Light, a notable Italian trio that includes the leftfield techno genius Piezo and the experimental ambient genius xàr num, has released their debut album from 3XL, the label headed by special guest DJ uon! A futuristic therapy sound where environmental sounds and electronic sounds intertwine. Drone sounds, deconstructed rhythms, and grids of drowsy reverberation are sewn together, and the sound seems to trace the membrane of the city. It is the afterimage of a club, the architecture of a sleepless night, and an optical abstract sound image. While resonating with mysterious labels such as bblissss, West Mineral, and Motion Ward, the unconscious underflow that is characteristic of 3XL runs throughout the entire album, making this a prayer for modern sounds.

Special Guest DJ & Pontiac Streator are crimeboys, here delivering a debut album volley of ambient jungle and trip hop dub paying homage to influences including Vangelis, Burial, Silent Hill and the putative effects of N ₂O. ‘Very Dark Past’ is the pair’s immersive debut, with eight cuts that firm up a flux of etheric inspirations into a translucent body of aerosolised ambient and writhing rhythms primed for the back rooms. Working within etheric parameters established over recent years by their respective solo efforts and a plethora of collaborative projects by peers such as Huerco S., Perila, Exael, and Ulla,‘Very Dark Past’ digs into a now familiar vein of lathered cultural ephemera and rave nostalgia full of gauzy signposts and warm sentimentality that works a treat on stressed minds and bodies. Titled tongue-in-cheek in key with their mode of prophylactic rave safety, the crimeboys step off from the gentlest ends of LTJ Bukem or PS1-style jungle into pulpiest/soft focus ambient dance. Bladerunner vibes prompt the opening lushness of ‘holodeck blue’, and ‘trippin’’ trades in filigree ambient jungle delicacy, beside the caress of ‘deja entendu (dub)’ and frayed echoes of Timeblind in ‘red shift’, while a sublime highlight of spongiform subbass and fractalised breaks in ‘sex and drugs’ gives way to Burial-esque 2-step of ‘haunted tattoo’ and a weightless lushness approximating DJ Crystal or Photek underwater in ‘days go by’. Some hidden cuts on the vinyl edition too.

Experiences Limited, now 3XL, with a sick new LP from Exael on a highly atmospheric ambient jungle tip, deploying 30 mins of percussive spasms seeping into smoked-out zoners - highly tipped if yr into anything from Lee Gamble to Malibu. Clearing their cache of stray bullets, Exael returns with a gyring plunge into percussive wormholes and low-lit mood enhancers .The tracks are broadly cleft along schisms of dark/light and demonic/angelic, switching from restive propellers to more sublime sensations in a fine testament to their practice - making for prob our favourite Exael release thus far. On the “darker” side, they commit the convulsive, fractious footwork pulses and warped tones of ‘Circle (Squishy Mix)’ in a sort of parallel to 33EMYBW’s insectoid rhythms and combustion systems, while ‘Ice That melts The Tips’ trades in rapid, ice-skating thizz and ‘Ghoul Search (Demonic Attachment Mix)’ fires up the junglist particle accelerator for a proper gauntlet of hyper techstep dynamics. The contrast is epitomised by ’Composure’, arranging flinty breaks on a luscious waterbed of floating pads, before ‘Eidolon’ renders a sort of airborne dembow pressure in the vicinity of Ben Bondy & special guest dj’s xphresh works. ‘L-theanine’ closes the session on a fine tread inside emo ambient styles and flurries on the same spectrum between DJ Lostboi and Teresa Winter, complete with a reverberating, half-buried vocal. All smoke & strobe doozies.

"Snapshots of the myriad moods that populate trajectories of one’s most intimate bonds with friends, lovers, the body, the self, and immediate surroundings. Glimpses of providing care for oneself, sparking romance, splintering, daily drama, and embarking through an inner desert. Intersections at a certain place in time, in softness and compassion. There is much pain in suspension, much anger in grief. Seek nourishment— Wide open space, endless horizon road.” — Naemi

Special Guest DJ — also known as Shy — has spent the better part of a decade quietly reshaping the experimental electronic underground. Operating from Berlin under aliases like Caveman LSD and uon, their work weaves between dubwise ambient, smeared club textures, and lo-fi dream states.

On Our Fantasy Complex, they channel that tangled web into a 40-minute suite of fogged-out mood music: sensual, angry, dreamlike. There are trace elements of shoegaze, dub techno and quasi-speed D&B, but it’s more hex than genre exercise — a lucid tangle of textures shaped by peers like Ben Bondy, mu tate, and Arad Acid add an extra dimension.

This isn’t ambient in the blissed-out sense, but a darker, dirtier kind of psychedelia — music that melts the line between introspection and club detritus. From the looming bass pressure of ‘How Long Can I Burn?’ to the dissociative haze of ‘Yoro (pt I & II)’, and finally the crystalline closer ‘Dream’, it’s a record that lingers like smoke.

A new avatar on 3XL, someone you may or may not have encountered before on the experiences / west mineral axis, tending to the inner life with a lush fantasy of sound-bathing beatdown and mossy atmospherics somewhere between Ulla x Malibu x Headz-era Mo Wax. ‘Earth FF’ yields a delicate bouquet of synaesthetic ambience designed to sooth yr frayed nerves. The album transposes a flickering vibe to inner sanctums, painting an organically detailed vista that hinges around late ‘90s/early ‘00s illbient/trip hop atmospherics referencing classic Mo Wax / Headz, and melting out into a sanguine bbblisss enhanced by a patina of field recordings. Distinguished by a tender grasp of tongue-tip thizz and lysergic nuance, the 10 tracks fan out in pruned designs between pads and whispered vox reminding us of Kenji Kawai or Nozomu Matsumoto on ‘Evil Day’, via the silvery contrails of ‘Beacon’, the eyrie illbient of ‘Root Loop’, to purest writhing-in-the-floatation tank kiss-off on ’Sunn’ replete with ASMR gynoid vocals on a Perila x Ulla x Malibu tip. With no sharp edges to snag your tumescent skin, it’s all low-lit neon, palm trees gently swaying in the breeze, eyes-rolling in the early-hours, blissed sorta gear.

Ulla returns with ‘Foam’, a surprise new album unlocking variants of ambient pop and looped jazz/dub styles coiled inside a glitched matrix that reminds us of Huerco S’ ‘Plonk’ as well as Ekkehard Ehlers fractal treatments and those incredible, smudged and disneyfied edits of Celine Dion released earlier this year by elusive outfit Romance. It’s an absorbing, quietly significant album for 3XL, on its most substantial release to date. Responsible for one of contemporary ambient’s finest breadcrumb trails in recent years, Ulla leads on from an acclaimed run of albums toward a more filigree style on ‘Foam’. Deploying fragmented morsels resembling glass-cast confectionary with a burbling vernacular, these ephemeral new works dissolve into a supine, shoe-gauzy and jazzed bliss that’s best compared with Jan Jelinek’s efforts in this dream-staged arena, the subs x piano minimalism of Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto’s revered collabs, as well as the memory-frothed echo of claire rousay and Co La’s fractal baubles. Aye, it’s a sound close to our hearts and one weft with a certain sort of magic that sparkles on the nerves and imagination with delicacy. Intending it to “feel like a keychain”, the album follows a logic that’s almost algorithmic with its haphazard mutations, but which ultimately displays a more human pulse on pieces like ‘foam angel’, weaving forlorn brass around jazz samples and Ulla’s disjointed voice murmuring unintelligibly like some cyborg liz frazer speaking into the sublime. Effusive solo keys and strings cascade like petals on ‘song’, where familiar leitmotifs become wind-dispersed like seeds. We’re snagged on the bittersweet tang of ‘popping out’, and the unexpected dance between marina’s jazz guitar lilt and the aerosoul thizz on ‘sad face’, while the tongue-tip sensitivities of ‘blush’, and ‘for your love’ sound like Rihanna produced by a Systemisch-era Oval. As tangled and complex as it is filled with improbable ohrwurms, ‘Foam’ is unlike anything we’ve heard from Ulla before, and it just might be the weirdest ambient/pop dislocation of the year so far.