Kindred spirits Passepartout Duo and Inoyama Land embody the essence of play – charting a new chapter and reinvigorating the environmental music and electronic landscape.Passepartout Duo is formed of Nicoletta Favari (IT) and Christopher Salvito (IT/US), who since 2015 have been on a continuous journey travelling the world’s corners, engaged in a creative process they term “slow music”. Having been guests of many notable artist residencies and with live performances in cultural spaces and institutions, their evocative music escapes categorisation. With no fixed abode their musical pilgrimage brought them to Japan first in 2019, which prompted a deep connection to Kankyō Ongaku ‘environmental music’, a genre in which Inoyama Land is often associated with, soundtracking the duo’s first immersive experience. In 2023 the duo revisited Japan and set out to reconnect in particular with the music of Inoyama Land, performed by Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita. The highly revered album ‘Danzindan-Pojidon’ (1983) produced by Haruomi Hosono amongst other well publicized and acclaimed reissues (Light in The Attic Records’ Grammy-nominated compilation ‘Kankyō Ongaku’), produced a global resurgence and admiration of the environmental music movement. Nicoletta took the lead to seek out Inoyama Land and in making contact successfully their intrigue and eagerness to meet was warmly reciprocated, and the group scheduled to meet in the form of a spontaneous improvisation session.“We’re deeply concerned with what it means to be a duo, and what it means for people to connect through music.”'Radio Yugawara' was recorded in 2023 in Makoto Inoue’s hometown of Yugawara where his family runs a kindergarten, whose space has doubled as a Sunday recording studio. Upon arriving a circle of four tables was set up in the school’s auditorium - the tables were carefully populated with children’s instruments: a full set of handbells, a glockenspiel, a xylophone, recorders, melodicas, and harmonicas. Surrounding the tables were racks hanging all sorts of bells and wind chimes and within this environment each performer set up their own electronic instruments. Dialling into each other, a simple set of playground ‘game rules’ was devised where time was divided into three separate sessions (1) ‘only electronic instruments’, ‘only acoustic’, and ‘a mix of both’, (2) ‘revolving duets’ each taking turns to play through a cycle of ‘four duos’ and (3) ‘anything permitted’, accumulating to more than three hours of material which was then carefully distilled into succinct tracks. The alluring album opener ‘Strange Clouds’ oscillates into view, setting a lush scenery built from a bed of synthesisers and the first glimpse of the chromaplane, the hand-built analogue instrument designed by Passepartout Duo, featuring a touchless interface and endless organic sounds that underpin the album’s 11-track inlets. Percussive pulses act as the heartbeat to ‘Abstract Pets’ before earthy sub-swells open the pathway to glistening glockenspiels and wind chimes. The atmosphere shapeshifts with ‘Simoom’ and ‘Tangerine Fields’ with swirling synth lines and subliminal beats resembling changes in weather patterns. At the centre points the idyllic ‘Observatory’ and ‘Mosaic’ could illuminate the deepest oceans before the hypnotic, arpeggiating synth lines in the otherworldly ‘Xiloteca’ propel the album towards ‘Solivago’, with its gentle lullaby of playful ambience. The reflective closer ‘Axolotl Dreams’ resolves their somewhat chance meeting with elegant pastoral chord strokes and uplifting synth swells, sending final signals upwards into the ether. 'Radio Yugawara' is a unique one-off transmission from a specific place and point in time, unlikely to ever occur again. The respective duo’s approach can really be described as “tuning in”, a tuning into each other, to themselves, and to the surrounding nature of Yugawara. Like waves that travel off-world, sounds travel through the universe and can be lost forever if we don’t seek them out. In finding a harmonic affinity within their instruments and a spiritual kinship in their interwoven performance, Radio Yugawara at its core is an interpretation of feeling, of close human interaction and the true essence of discovery. “The album is both a transmission from a location, but also a tuning into the surroundings and to each other. Music in this kind of ephemeral moment is much less about active creation and more about discovering something which is already there in the air.”  

Brilliant Experimental album by the Merzbow co-founder, recorded in 1989 - with sticker and insert

Originally named „Merz“, this album should have been Merzbow's first vinyl release, but never came out on vinyl. So actually "Yantra Material Action" is „Material Action 1“, recorded in 1981 - with sticker and insert

After two and a half years out of print, Corsano/Orcutt's most popular album, Made Out of Sound, returns in a limited edition pressing. Best of 2021 — The Guardian, Pitchfork, Wire, Aquarium Drunkard, Stereogum, Magnet & Raven Sings the Blues.Pitchfork : "It’s a joyful noise. This is one of the more uplifting records of experimental music in recent memory. There’s something about how Orcutt and Corsano push each other that leads to work that pulses with the life force—these pieces bring to mind sunlight hitting a maple leaf, cells dividing under a microscope, a deep thirst quenched. Mark Richardson"Wire : "When you listen to Made Out Of Sound, you feel encouraged to immerse yourself in every note, cherishing the beauty of this otherworldly space. Joshua Minsoo Kim"

Finally on CD!!!  In a trajectory full of about-faces, Music for Four Guitars splices the formal innovations of Bill Orcutt's software-based music into the lobe-frying, blown-out Fender hyperdrive of his most frenetic workouts with Corsano or Hoyos. And while the guitar tone here is resolutely treble-kicked — or, as Orcutt puts it, "a bridge pickup rather than a neck pickup record" — it still wades the same melodic streams as his previous LPs (yet, as Heraclitus taught us, that stream is utterly different the second time around). Although it's a true left-field listen, Music for Four Guitars is bizarrely meditative, a Bill Orcutt Buddha Machine, a glimpse of the world of icy beauty haunting the latitudes high above the Delta (down where the climate suits your clothes). I've written before of the immediate misapprehension that greeted Harry Pussy on their first tour with my band Charalambides — that this was a trio of crazed freaks spontaneously spewing sound from wherever their fingers or drumsticks happened to land — but I'll grant the casual listener a certain amount of confusion based on the early recorded evidence (and the fact that the band COULD be a trio of crazed freaks letting fly, as we learned from later tours). But to my ears, the precision and composition of their tracks were immediately apparent, as if the band was some sort of 5-D music box with its handle cranked into oblivion by a calculating organ grinder, running through musical maps as pre-ordained as the road to a Calvinist's grave. That organ grinder, it turns out, was Bill Orcutt, whose solo guitar output until 2022 has tilted decidedly towards improvisation, while his fetish for relentless, gridlike composition has animated his electronic music (c.f. Live in LA, A Mechanical Joey). Music for Four Guitars, apparently percolating since 2015 as a loosely-conceived score for an actual meatspace guitar quartet, is the culmination of years ruminating on classical music, Magic Band miniatures, and (perhaps) The League of Crafty Guitarists, although when the Reich-isms got tossed in the brew is anyone's guess. And Reichian (Steve, not Wilhelm) it is. The album's form is startlingly minimalist — four guitars, each consigned to a chattering melody in counterpoint, repeated in cells throughout the course of the track, selectively pulled in and out of the mix to build fugue-like drama over the course of 11 brief tracks. It's tempting to compare them to chamber music, but these pieces reflect little of the delicacy of Satie's Gymnopedies or Bach's Cantatas. Instead, they bulldoze their way through melodic content with a touch of the motorik romanticism of New Order or Bailter Space ("At a Distance"), but more often ("A Different View," "On the Horizon") with the gonad-crushing drive of Discipline-era Crimson, full of squared corners, coldly angled like Beefheart-via-Beat-Detective. Just to nail down the classical fetishism, the album features a download of an 80-page PDF score transcribed by guitarist Shane Parish. And while it'd be just as reproducible as a bit of code or a player piano roll, I can easily close my eyes and imagine folks with brows higher than mine squeezing into their difficult-listening-hour folding chairs at Issue Project Room to soak up these sounds being played by real people reading a printed score 50 years from now. And as much as I want to bomb anyone's academy, that feels like a warm fuzzy future to sink into.. — TOM CARTER 

Originally released and sold on their fall 2009 US tour, Flower-Corsano Duo’s “The Chocolate Cities” stands as one of the group's most spirited releases. Recorded live in Cambridge, England and Geneva, Switzerland these recordings capture the power and energy being harnessed by the duo at a time of frequent touring, just after the release of their monumental double-LP “The Four Aims.”Michael Flower is perhaps best known for his work in Vibracathedral Orchestra, along with a slew of other bands, collaborations, and solo work. Meanwhile, Chris Corsano is well known as one of the premier drummers of modern times, and a frequent collaborator of Joe McPhee, Bill Orcutt, Bill Nace, Paul Flaherty, and many more. As a duo Flower and Corsano present an endlessly shifting and transforming sound, meshing elements of free jazz, drone, and ecstatic psychedelia into something all its own. While Corsano guides with his nimble and dynamic drumming, Flower plays amplified Japan Banjo (also known as a Shahi Baaja) providing melody, lead, and drone, often simultaneously. Gripping even in its quietest passages, thoughtful even in its most unrestrained crescendos, “The Chocolate Cities” documents a duo at the height of their collective prowess.Saved from the obscurity of its original CDr format and presented for the first time on vinyl with stunning new artwork by Chris Corsano, “The Chocolate Cities” stands as testament to the power of two magnificent players even 15 years on.

'Solos for _ _ _ _ spaces' is the debut release from London-based percussionist and sound artist Regan Bowering. Her music is created by placing snare drum, amplifiers and microphones in configurations which trigger volatile yet malleable flows of sound. Across these four tracks, percussion and amplifier feedback are carved into crescendos and diminuendos where coarse textures move in intricate constellations. The album charts this process travelling through different contexts, moving from live improvisations in a large, reverberant hall to micro-edited versions on a laptop. Bowering’s interest in feedback is an extension of research into how, historically, technology (such as mics, amplification, instrumentation, and recording processes) have affected the ways improvisers approach rhythm. “I wanted to explore ways to use the drums that extended beyond typical rhythmic gestures or the need to hit the drums to generate sound,” Bowering explains. “To create a continuous texture which doesn’t need continuous input. The unpredictability of feedback is what draws me to it. It’s similar to playing with another musician. Things can happen unexpectedly, just like in a group improvisation.” To our ears, touchstones for Bowering’s use of space and feedback could be Alvin Lucier, or perhaps even Ryosuke Kiyasu’s radical approach to percussion, amplification and setting. However, there are fluctuations between frenzy and gentleness, a sensitivity to mood and affect on 'Solos for _ _ _ _ spaces' which are uniquely hers. This is far more intricate than a simple bridging of minimalism, free-improvisation and electro-acoustic techniques. This is perhaps explained by some of the musicians that Bowering mentions having a long-running impact on her practice, from percussionist Seijiro Murayama to saxophonist, composer and Art Ensemble of Chicago founder Roscoe Mitchell. While their influence may not be explicitly audible in these four tracks, their unique approaches to texture, space and improvisation are undoubtedly present. Bowering treats what might typically be cacophonous – drums and feedback – with subtlety and nuance. “I like exploring the possibilities in feedback beyond just harshness, and drums beyond being loud and rhythmically dense,” she reflects. “The detail that’s possible. The emotional intensity you can get from different sounds. The feelings that come when you move between extremes, such as from loud and abrasive to almost silent. The feedback gives me a different set of colours to work with, a different material to carve as part of my sonic and rhythmic pallet as a percussionist.” System, organism, ecosystem – there’s a litany of metaphors which could be used to describe how her music is produced. All make sense, and all feel slightly inadequate. Her music originates in processes, but its realisation comes through liveness and response. Bowering manipulates the sound by bending drum skins to change pitch, moving mics to alter intensity. Striking the snare to trigger dramatic upheavals in the circuit. But her music is a balancing act, a compromise between her own actions and the context they’re happening in. “It’s a system I improvise within, but it’s also always affected by the space I’m playing in. The acoustics, the number of people in a room and if they move. How I’m feeling at the time. These subtle dynamics all affect the sound.” This variation is highlighted throughout the album. The recordings here document performances in vastly different settings. A reverberant hall at Goldsmith’s University. An intimate gig at Avalon Café where the audience enclosed Bowering, and on track 3, an empty studio. For the final track, a DAW is used to rearrange components from the preceding three into a new composition. Here feedback and drums enter the possibilities of another space, a computer, and the different means of response it offers. More than a live album, this tape charts a consistent practice applied to inconsistent contexts, capturing in real time how the outcomes are determined by the player, the moment and the situation. credits -- Mastered by Billy SteigerAll sounds by Regan Bowering.

On Bespoke, Omphalopticon presents a raucous, wheezing, intricately detailed audio scrapbook. A sequence of gleefully off-kilter compositions where drills and creaking gates are instruments. Where cacophonous cut-ups tangle with volcanic sand and snippets of conversations into a head-spinning collage. Omphalopticon is the solo recording project of US-born, London, UK-based Andrew Ciccone. Bespoke marks his first physical release, following a series of digital only albums. His solo recordings conjure a curious space. Electro-acoustic strategies and a world view where everything is an instrument collide with a gleeful penchant for the peculiar. It’s heard immediately on Bespoke’s opener: ‘This is a Drill’. A stop-start cacophony of DIY tools and street chatter is punctuated with a comically loud crow’s call, before the machine returns in increasingly sideways fashion. On second track, ‘The Sniffle-Sneeze’, a sneeze which Ciccone self-induced while on holiday in Iceland is followed by a deluge. With a few exceptions, most of the sounds here were recorded in Ciccone’s neighbourhood in north-east London between 2022 and 2023. They’re assembled like a one-person game of exquisite corpse, bizarre associations and playful manipulations sending everyday sounds off their axis and into forms surreal yet captivating. For Bespoke, Ciccone faced outwards in his compositional approach. “My previous work has been more formalistic, more sequestered from day-to-day life. Here there was a reactive approach, absorbing any and all things/ people/places which happened to be around at the time,” he explains. “I wanted to impose my own day-to-day surroundings onto the process, and vice-versa. There’s very little hands-off field recording here - virtually all the source clips have wacky backstories.”These backstories include leaving a recorder running in his knapsack while attending one of London’s Skronk free-improv events (‘Skunktronic’), or running around his flat capturing the sound of leaky taps on ‘The Going From Room to Room’. That track, the longest here, points to the space-time bending-nature of Ciccone’s collages, the domestic adventure interspersed with street recordings taken from Flores, Guatemala. “One thing that sound collage entails - for me anyway - is curating clips from much longer source recordings. So, you develop an ear for what to select. I’m drawn to whatever moves me: whether something provokes laughter, fright, emotion, confusion, memory, imagination, whatever… Everything else gets discarded. The humour obviously sticks out but all those qualities are present,” he explains. Alongside the overheard conversations come more planned fragments of speech, including a disarmingly sombre spoken word intervention by improvising guitarist Bettina Schroeder, who Ciccone collaborated with on the title track, and Ciccone himself reading a lecture by physicist Richard Feynman. “I latched onto the Feynman voice at some point as it’s almost like an exaggerated version of my own voice, one which I’m more comfortable inhabiting. I’ve steadily incorporated it into performance, where appropriate.” While Bespoke resonates with the playful musique concrete of Graham Lambkin, the fixation on unconventional instrumentation that bridges the Bohman Brothers to Matmos, and the frantic tape collage energy of Aaron Dilloway, the world Omphalopticon creates is distinctly his own. -- Omphalopticon is Andrew Ciccone: Voice, movement, field recordings, piano, drill, Richard Feynman voice, volcanic sand, bass clarinet bell, self-induced sneezing, shower, faucets, doors, gates, objects, tape machines, curation, composition, arrangements, mixing. All sounds on Track 2 “The Sniffle-Sneeze” were recorded on Snaefellsnes peninsula, Iceland in October 2022. Track 6, 'Bespoke', is a collaboration with Bettina Schroeder All sounds between 5:11 and 8:08 of Track 7 “The Going From Room To Room” were recorded in Flores, Guatemala in January 2023. All sounds on Track 4 “Skunktronic” were recorded at Skronk 118, New River Studios, London in November 2022. All other sounds were recorded in other parts of northeast London in 2022 and 2023.

Perfectal Bum is a pop record, but one which gleefully messes with the form; zooming in, zooming out, deconstructing and reconstructing to engineer something uniquely surreal. It engages with conflict and resolution, experimental synthesis alongside deceptively catchy melodies. The tracks range from eccentric sound experimentation in the vain of The Residents or Snakefinger to italo disco, surreal spoken word to B-movie influenced synth pop. Alternate versions of songs from "Live On Your Yard" (Alter Records 2011) are included - original solo takes rather than full band interpretations. The tracks that make up Perfectal Bum were recorded in 2007. This isn't some thrown together compilation of old demos and rarities though, but a carefully crafted album. Both sides are intricately sequenced, each track flowing into the next, pushing the album format to the extreme. Tom Hirst, aka Design A Wave, explains: "Perfectal Bum was always intended to be an expression of something but what that was was always changing. Every song needed to some how mix into the other but also encapsulate it's own little world. The track order is also pretty much the chronological order that the songs were recorded in." "I've never really thought "I'm going to make playful music" but that does seem to be what happens. I think it comes down to valuing the way that musical forms and gestures play with your perception. I think this sensibility stems from really getting into music in the 90s when things like IDM and post-rock were happening - really enjoying the way a novel rhythm/harmony/melody can confuse your brain - I guess that's psychedelic?"

Derichan sees London based Lafidki, aka Saphy Vong, exploring the rituals and traditions of his Cambodian heritage while protesting the repression increasingly prevalent in the country. Vong was born to Cambodian parents in a Thai refugee camp. He has lived in cities across Europe and Asia, from Paris to Phnom Penh to Riga. These experiences have seeped into his music – a vivid, high energy collision of synths, samples and off-kilter polyrhythms. A key inspiration for Derichan is the more than 20 ethnic groups residing in Cambodia’s uplands and mountains whose unique cultures, languages and histories are at risk. “Historically, these peoples have been referred to as ethnic minorities, hill tribes, and other, more dehumanising terms associated with wildness, primitivity, savagery. ‘Derichan’ means bestial,” Vong explains. “I wanted to give a voice to ethnic minorities, indigenous people, environmental activists who’ve been killed or jailed in Cambodia. I used samples from field recordings of Cambodian tribes, made in 2015 with the help of ethnomusicologist Julien Hairon.” Alongside these field recordings, the record’s high energy electronics imagine a world where the stories passed down through Cambodia’s history collide with a dystopian present. “The song Poan Pasda is about the story of the banana tree ghost, but with deforestation, there is no more place for this ghost.” Ceremony of the Drowned covers similar ground, as Vong explains: “The souls of the drowned become water ghosts, causing shipwrecks and pulling swimmers under by their legs. The Ceremony of the Drowned coaxes the spirits out of the water so that they may find their way to the next life or proceed to the heavenly plane. But drought is touching Cambodia because of dam construction so these ghosts are also homeless now.” Ghosts from Cambodia’s more recent history are also addressed, The Death of Chut Wutty acting as a tribute to an environmental activist killed in 2015. Like previous Lafidki releases, Derichan is a record of bombastic, widescreen synthesis. But it weaves itself into a broader narrative of preserving identity in the face of oppression and homogenisation. “I want to allow myself to embody the past, present, and future all at once so I created this album that explores sound with traditions and technologies. Cambodia is growing fast but not everyone is ready, so a parallel world inspired me.” Vong concludes. Co-released by Bezirk and Chinabot

Gareth JS Thomas is a London based musician and composer, a guitarist in USA Nails and Mayors of Miyazaki, and drummer for Silent Front (and previously Sly & The Family Drone). Cruising Hits is his latest solo release, a churning, crushing slab of minimalism, unnerving ambience and cracked pop music. It's a record rooted in cold, hard reality; evoking the faded greys and sharp edges of post-industrial Britain. As much as anything, Cruising Hits was shaped by Gareth's interest in photography. "I take a lot of photographs, I have a bit of a thing for old cameras and crapped out underexposed images. The photowork on the cover is my work, I work in black and white a lot, and kind of thought of this project as being in black and white. I don't have synæsthesia though." Opening track ‘Sons, Love Your Mothers’ twists and contorts Gareth's voice over muffled percussive loops and metallic drones. An epic piece of minimal composition designed to viciously confront rather than serenely lull. It's the start of an album that twists, bends and evolves in unexpected ways. "All the vocals apart from those on ‘Pekeng Pagkain’ are me. That track is an edit of a set of found recordings that are (allegedly) from a factory in China, where counterfeit rice is manufactured from plastic. I got interested in the story after hearing one of my (Filipino) aunts talk about it, and found a bunch of rushes on the internet that were said to be recordings from said factory (‘Pekeng Pagkain’ is Filipino for ‘Fake Food’)." Cruising Hits is the culmination of a decade collecting field recordings and sonic detritus, composition and collage mixed with the "why not" attitude of DIY hardcore shows. "I've been collecting samples and field recordings for over a decade. A bunch of stuff was sourced when I lived in Cardiff, some from a factory in China, a bunch done in my living room. Some moments were carefully calculated, others were experiments that just came off."

On their debut album, 'once upon a time there was a mountain', Oishi use warped tape loops, field recordings and digital manipulation to explore how everyday sounds can carry unexpected paths of expression and meaning. Evoking fictional vocabularies and car radios via motorbike rides down imagined mountains. Zheng Hao and Ren Shang are two artists from China, currently-based in London, UK. Their music as Oishi is a playful, joyful, and at points absurdist exploration through musique concrete, diaristic field recordings and digitally augmented realities. once upon a time there was a mountain documents several facets of Oishi’s shifting interactions. For the a-side, Hao plays laptop, while Shang is on cassette player, the duo switching roles on the b-side. The raw material of the a-side is a field recording of Hao walking a friend’s dog in Urbana, Illinois. Effects both analogue (changing the speed of the tape) and digital are applied to shift a potentially familiar sound world into something concretely unfamiliar. The b-side poetically simulates the sound of a motorcycle engine, and is also inspired by the instability of car radio. Illuminating the collision between frenzied activity and apparent serenity involved in a vehicle’s movement, it also toys with the affect these sounds can carry, and how it can be captured or altered. The duo explain that the album is partly driven by a desire to explore what an ‘Oishi-style’ blues would be. Hao: “the idea is for us to be the neighbours that live in the mountain - or farmer - people that would use their own original language to express their feelings, less compositional concepts, more direct, romantic expressions. therefore, using the word blues could probably be the simplest way for the audience to understand the feeling, and oishi-style means we are trying to deliver the bluesy feeling for you in our own musical way.” Hinting at how the tape could be experienced, and the fact both sides are simply title ‘a side’, Hao explains: “If a mountain has two sides, then either side of the mountain can be the front, the back, or ‘one of the sides’ – a side. Therefore the mountain’s sound can be heard going up, but also going down.”

Kib Elektra is the solo project from London-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Abi Bailey. Her debut EP, 'Blemishes', is a glitch pop tour de force, soaring its way through a deluge of melodic vocal work, percussive grooves, and heavy synth bass. Bailey’s toured and worked with the likes of Emiliana Torrini, Brian Eno, M.I.A, , and Sylver Tongue - but Blemishes is her first completely solo body of work since the age of 16. Recorded between her own studio and engineer Sam Norland’s studio, Bailey built upon Ableton sketches, adding guitar, bass, drum programming, Moog voyager and Prophet synths, vocals, and soundscapes recorded on travels in West Africa and Brazil. “The title is taken from the most delicate of the five tracks. It just made sense to use this as the title. I don't use autotune for my vocals, so the EP is full of blemishes. I actually like adding glitches and warbles to roughen the vocals up. The texture can be really interesting.” Reviews:"A fascinating, hugely promising debut that tickles the ears pleasantly from start to finish." - Echoes and Dust "an excellent release, full of promise and of a well-tuned sensibility in need of more airtime in pop’s saturated world." - Foreign Accents

Schoolhouse is the solo electronica project of Manchester based composer Peter J. Taylor. "Fade" was recorded entirely 'within' a laptop, yet the almost modern classical approach to composition and the ambiguity around the source of the sounds make it unique. Computer processed tones have been painstakingly arranged into the ominous swarming of 'What Was Said...', and the wandering interwoven melodies of 'Gran (D)'. It is at times crushingly claustrophobic, and others surreally optimistic. "I don't want to make happy songs or sad songs. I want to make music that demands you to feel conflicted by its tone", Taylor explains.

"On "Le Fruit De Mes Songes" Delphine Dora delivers a different, perhaps darker, shade of the unknown. Sixties psyche folk, Christian hymns and nursery songs - styles regularly deployed in horror films to deepen the mystery - seem syncretically blended here. Such is the uniqueness of her possessed, child-like song, the brain immediately grasps for such reference points lending these eight new pieces a haunted air. Alternating between piano, harpsichord and what sounds like a church organ, the traditional accompaniment reinforces the eerieness. 'Harp-psi-chord' has Dora playing daintily on baroque keys to form a stately, old courtyard over which her wordless, tentative plainsong evokes a ghostly dance. On the following track, 'Oraculum', her calling voice becomes layered, the untranscribable lyrics translate as a channeling over which a church organ seeps in like ground fog. Elsewhere, small bells, a harp and whispers suitably gild the sung séance. The compositions remain remarkably in flux between harmony and atonality yet somehow retain a classical elegance throughout. This leads to suspicions that their intent was not to spook, but to transgressively experiment to forge new forms from ancient modes, forms so new they unwittingly inspire misdirected associations. But, come the end of the album, when dogs are howling into the wind and Dora accompanies them so effectively as to believe both woman and beast are singing the same language, the occult theories seem undeniable." – The Quietus -- Delphine Dora / music, recording, mixingGilles Deles / mastering -- Released October 3, 2016

Steps on the Turning Year marks the second release from Nottingham, UK based artist, composer and musician Bredbeddle, aka, Rebecca Lee. The four long form tracks here form a scrapbook built with snippets from Lee’s music collection from found sounds, amateur viol consorts and more. Drawing connections between different sounds creates odd narratives as loops mingle and glitch against each other. Although vinyl, CDs and turntables are part at the heart of the Bredbeddle process, Lee sees herself as a collagist, not a DJ or turntablist. “I’m interested in mixing pre-existing recordings, and their cultural worlds together to suggest new types of song or story,” says Lee. “I have a stack of records with post-it-notes on them, to remind me of the sounds I want to use.” The quirks of her set up: laptop, turntable, and CD player end up shaping the sound. “While it’s possible to play loops on a turntable, it’s harder on a CD. With my old CD player, all I can do is keep skipping back to the start of the track, but that limitation becomes an effect in itself.” The four pieces have been assembled with a delicate attention to detail. There are echoes of Christian Marclay or Joseph Hammer in the process, but the sheer breadth of materials Lee uses, from early music to BBC sound effects records and recycled recordings from her previous musical projects, makes Steps on the Turning Year a uniquely rich tapestry. “I find connections between textures or moments in different pieces of music. Sometimes it’ll be similar chords, or a quality to the voice, the beginning of a phrase, or even the broken down and looped vowels of a spoken-word record. It means that early music gets combined with something much more contemporary, found and noisy sounds with studio albums.” The result is an album of looping, meandering constructions, as sounds overlap before fluttering away from each other. “It’s not about deconstruction, but trying to assemble something new from these different recordings,” Lee explains. “I don’t think too much about whether a sound is particularly uncool, or fits a grid. It’s about letting them evolve and interact with each other.” The artwork for the tape comes from conversations between Lee and designer Anna Peaker. "I really liked Anna’s use of icons and images in her work - the way she brings a variety of materials together into one space - it connected to the way the tracks are formed," Lee explains. "So I tried to map out references for each piece drawing on sounds in the tracks, or the art work from the source music I used. Together we found and made materials that could be used and Anna worked with this collection to develop the design. The tape sleeves have become kind of weird landscapes and the O sleeve is (as you’d hope), a loop of its own." Released June 11, 2021

The Incredible Years is the new solo album from London based musician and composer Gareth JS Thomas (guitarist in USA Nails, and formerly of Silent Front and Sly and the Family Drone). Contrasting intimate recordings on an old family piano with pounding drums tracked on a digital recorder in a London practice room, the record exists between the comfort of home and a frustration at lost momentum. “Around Christmas 2017 I started tracking the piano parts at my mum's old house down on the south coast,” explains Gareth. “This is the same piano that I used to noodle on as a little kid, it's maybe the first instrument I ever touched.” “I'd intended to finish the tracks off at home in the following weeks but in January 2018 I was in a serious road accident while on tour with my old band (Silent Front), which meant I ended up housebound for a few months. I continued to work on them while I was stuck at home recovering, as I had little else to do, I added the drums in London the summer of 2018.” The grey metallic hues of Gareth’s previous Bezirk release, Cruising Hits, remain – yet the synthetic palette of that album has been switched for a mix of organic, acoustic instruments. The result is five tracks that switch between smothering claustrophobia and minimalist ecstasy. “I added big live drums partly to celebrate the freedom I felt when I was able to finally leave the house and use my body again post-accident” he reveals. “The making of this record spanned a very significant period in my life, where I was processing a lot of trauma but also learning to cherish a lot of the things I'd previously taken for granted. I guess it's only natural that that has been reflected in it.” The album is accompanied by a video for Hyphen British. Made by Gareth, its source material is CT scans and X-rays that were taken just after the road accident. “They show me at my most unglamorously vulnerable,” he explains. “You can see all the broken bones, it might be more than some people want to see, but it felt appropriate.” Released January 24, 2020