Electronic / All styles

Originally released in 2000, Iron grew out of Pavlov's teenage fascination with heavy metal and the underground record-exchanging community of the late Soviet era. At fourteen, inspired by Iron Maiden's “Running Free,” he picked up a six-string guitar brought to him by his grandmother and decided that he and his friends could also play that kind of music. Before long, they were rehearsing in a Soviet youth club with whatever equipment was available, looking for the sound they heard in early heav…

The rat is back in the building due to circumstances beyond our control! “rat” is an electronic project born from the gutters of Brussels in 2024 by long-standing collaborators “neither” and “Milius.” After 15 years of hidden experiments they have been assembling a sonic language where glitch, ritualised circuitry and spectral noise merge. Originally released as a cassette on Futura, "home" now returns repressed on vinyl. Their debut unfolds as a labyrinth of disjointed rhythms, haunted textures…

'Quiet Pieces' initiates Abul Mogard’s personal imprint Soft Echoes with a definitive self-portrait of calm, contemplative, and discreet inner landscapes made audible. It is the first solo album on vinyl in four years.

*300 copies limited edition* Salford Electronics abandon all art. Nine lo-fi electronic urban nightmares spiralling through Industrial decay, rain-drenched dark ambient, abrasive loops, brooding noise, and shards of scintillating electronics. The desire to communicate the disintegration of nocturnal sound. Evoking that moment in time when you have been up all night and the dawn ambience is about to break. A series of bad dreams. These works were created over the last decade and originally self-r…

Dark Entries is Elbow Deep in the Hoopla thanks to J.D. Slater. Legendary actor, director, and composer J.D. Slater is sometimes known as “the Lou Reed of gay porn.” Slater cut his teeth in the New York punk scene, even opening for the Talking Heads and Blondie at CBGB with his project Frenzy. A true polymath of the erotic, he co-founded Raging Stallion Studios with Chris Ward in 1999, which has remained a prolific outlet in the world of gay pornography. Elbow Deep collects the scores from three…

Dark Entries is Filling Your Silence with the help of J.D. Slater. Legendary actor, director, and composer J.D. Slater is sometimes known as “the Lou Reed of gay porn.” Slater cut his teeth in the New York punk scene, even opening for the Talking Heads and Blondie at CBGB with his project Frenzy. A true polymath of the erotic, he co-founded Raging Stallion Studios with Chris Ward in 1999, which has remained a prolific outlet in the world of gay pornography. Having spent years in front of and beh…

The third dig into Germany's synth-wave underground, 1981-86. Cold drum machines, cheap keyboards and DIY nerve from the NDW margins, a trove of minimal-wave obscurities rescued from the cassette age.

With Statica Memoria, zakè returns to Affin for his third solo album. Over the past years, his work with the label has developed into a distinct and continuing body of work, shaped by an ongoing exploration of duration, resonance and the spaces that emerge when sound is given enough time to unfold. zakè has developed a particular way of approaching long-form ambient music. His compositions create an open environment in which listening can move freely between close attention and complete absorpti…

*200 copies limited edition* Bitter Sea collects 25 pieces from the most prolific period of composer Sean McCann’s early catalog. Recorded across California between 2008 and 2011, this two-disc set draws from tapes, CDrs, live recordings, and previously unreleased material. McCann made roughly 40 developmental albums during these years, mostly while living in San Francisco’s Sunset District and studying audio for film. Working from a small studio apartment, he recorded this wave of albums with v…

Ahead of their final studio album 'Danceteria' coming out later this month, we have the one and only Soft Cell on the cover of the latest Electronic Sound. There's a 16-page Marc Almond interview inside the magazine and we're bundling the issue with an exclusive blue vinyl seven-inch by the synthpop superstars. Make sure you don't miss out on this!  As most of you will know, Marc Almond's Soft Cell partner Dave Ball died nearly 12 months ago, just two days after they'd finished recording a new a…

Tokyo-based producer aus debuts on Squama with his new album mere meer. Grounded in the question of how a specific environment can emerge through voice and memory, rather than through recording of an objective reality, the album stands in the tradition of modern Japanese Ambient and Kankyo Ongaku. aus is the solo project of Tokyo-born composer, producer, and curator Yasuhiko Fukuzono. His music is characterized by a precise combination of cinematic strings, acoustic instrumentation, and concrete…

After many requests to reissue the seldom heard cassette EPs and VHS releases, Akuphone compiled this archival release which illuminates the group’s early development from 2008 as enigmatic practitioners of post-apocalyptic folk and ritual psychedelia. These recordings capture Ak’chamel’s signature sound in its most primal form: thoroughly f*cked lo-fi production, warped tape hiss, detuned instruments, and melancholic hysteria captured on cassette.

*Much needed repress!!* Ak’chamel, The Givers of Illness plunged into truly deranged extremes to summon the decayed, otherworldly essence captured on Spiritually Unemployed, embracing unhinged and esoteric methods during the tracking process. Recorded in a makeshift adobe studio amid liminal border-zone ruins. Nocturnal treks along forgotten stretches near the U.S.-Mexico line, through derelict border outposts and sun-bleached vehicle husks, yielded unique recording opportunities: Ak’chamel drag…

Many of the field recordings on this album I recorded standing still with my phone or zoom capturing quiet moments. But like silence, true stillness doesn’t exist. Our perception of time creates the illusion of stillness. That perception is not rigid, it can fluctuate and bend. Everyone around us experiencing time differently. I built the foundation of the music around this idea. Nothing in sync, many different loops varying in length. Some fairly recent recordings, others from years ago. I've u…

Grisaille is shaped by reduction, intuition, and time. Woven from a deliberately restricted palette, the pieces emerge from musical systems set in motion and allowed to unfold according to their own internal logic. Rather than following a fixed compositional path, they drift, accumulate, and transform: forms revealing themselves gradually through interaction, repetition, and change. The work foregrounds the first gesture. Takes are retained as they arrive rather than rehearsed into place, preser…

Ex-Birth Control synthesist Zeus B. Held goes solo and electronic. 'Attack Time' pulses with early-'80s synth-pop drive and studio sheen: melodic, propulsive and slyly futuristic. A producer's-ear gem from the German new wave.

A map of the new German cosmic underground. 'Echo Neuklang' gathers neo-kraut, kosmische and motorik sounds across four decades: a generation carrying the Cluster and Neu! lineage forward, sequencers humming into the present.

'Dreamland': more sunlit Berlin-school reverie from Tyndall. Interlocking sequencer patterns and glowing melody drift in gentle motion, private-press cosmic music of great warmth and innocence.

'Sunlight': Berlin duo Tyndall bathe their sequencers in warmth. Bright arpeggios and melodic synth lines glide through classic cosmic terrain, homemade German electronics of real charm, a cult reissue.

Acid, but tender. Tin Man coaxes emotion from the 303, letting soft-focus melody and deep, humming pulse blur techno and ambience. 'Arles' is warm, hypnotic and unmistakably his: melancholy dancefloor minimalism.

Estonian electronic pioneer Sven Grünberg reaches for the cosmos. 'Hingus' fuses shimmering synthesis with Eastern spiritual leanings: meditative, melodic and quietly euphoric. A Soviet-era kosmische treasure surfaced at last.

Chemist by day, synth explorer by night. Rüdiger Lorenz's 'Southland' glides on sunlit sequencer patterns and melodic warmth, homemade Berlin-school music of great charm, a cult private-press favourite reborn.

Trostel's sequencers turn contemplative. 'Two Faces' balances driving arpeggios with slower, reflective passages: melodic, precise cosmic music in the classic German mould. Quietly compelling analogue craftsmanship.

'Island music': Trostel maps a private electronic paradise. Warm sequencer motifs and glowing synth melody drift in unhurried loops, solitary, serene Berlin-school reverie from a cult German synthesist.

German synth mystic Rolf Trostel at the sequencer. 'Der Prophet' unfurls stately, hypnotic electronic patterns: solemn, melodic and deeply Berlin-school. A private-press cosmic gem returned to the light.

'Wide country': Roedelius and Alexander Czjzek paint expansive, cinematic soundscapes. Synth, piano and open space combine in music of pastoral grandeur, meditative, melodic and gently widescreen.

'Water in the wind': Roedelius conjures flowing, weightless keyboard music of great delicacy. Melodies drift and eddy like the title, serene, warm and quietly transporting. Solo kosmische at its most graceful.

The sixth Selbstportrait, a musical diary. Roedelius revisits fragile keyboard improvisations, each a small remembered moment: intimate, melodic and deeply personal. The ongoing self-portrait of a kosmische master.

From the vaults: essential early tapes, 1973-78, from Cluster and Harmonia's melodic soul. Home experiments and sketches reveal Roedelius inventing his gentle electronic language in real time, a treasure for the devoted.

Roedelius at the keyboard, alone and unguarded. 'Piano Piano' offers spare, melodic sketches of great intimacy: neoclassical in feeling, ambient in spirit. The quiet, human centre of a pioneering body of work.

A stroll for pleasure. 'Lustwandel' gathers Roedelius's graceful piano-and-synth miniatures, tender, unhurried and quietly luminous, a proto-ambient forerunner of everything gentle in electronic music. Timeless kosmische calm.

'Fly bird fly': Roedelius at his most songful and light. Gentle keyboard melodies flutter and loop with folk-like innocence, the warm, melodic heart of the Cluster co-founder's solo work. Radiant miniature music.

'Through the desert': Roedelius sets out on solitary electronic wandering. Spare, hypnotic keyboard figures and dry, shimmering textures conjure vast imaginary landscapes, early solo kosmische of quiet, questing beauty.

France's electronic guitar visionary. The Heldon founder folds searing, delay-treated guitar into churning synthetic drift: heavy, hypnotic and cosmic, where krautrock momentum meets sci-fi menace. Pinhas at full intensity.

'Calling': more hushed, luminous keyboard music from the reborn Cluster lineage. Qluster let melodies surface slowly from analogue haze, patient, warm and quietly devotional. Ambient kosmische at its most human.

'Listening': Qluster distil their art to its essence. Soft analogue tones and slow, deliberate motion invite deep attention, chamber electronics of great tenderness from Roedelius and Onnen Bock.

'Questions', a companion in Qluster's quiet dialogue. Roedelius and Onnen Bock spin delicate, unhurried keyboard music, more felt than composed. Intimate, spacious and gently searching ambient kosmische.

Roedelius and Onnen Bock as Qluster: 'answers' in the form of hushed, exploratory electronics. Analogue keyboards drift through patient, chamber-like pieces, the Cluster spirit reborn, meditative and warm.

Kurt Dahlke's debut as Pyrolator. 'Inland' collides sequencers, tape and early synths in short, sharp electronic sketches: playful, political and DIY to the core. The inventive nerve-centre of Ata Tak and the NDW.

'Abroad': Pyrolator's imaginary world tour on synthesizer and tape. Kurt Dahlke maps invented territories in bright, restless electronics, witty, inventive and unmistakably Ata Tak. German new wave at its most curious.