Vaco
Atmospheres that evoke nocturnal wanderings without a precise destination, in search of sensations and unexpected events as if in a sort of psychic drift in which sounds, collected in random order in different places and times, fluctuate in compositions somewhere between soundscapes, ambient and electroacoustic music. The material on "Vaco" is deliberately fragmentary, a succession of incidental phenomena that the author projects outside specific space-time coordinates in a hypothetical and abst…
Impressioni Organizzate di Ansie Liquide
“Impressioni Organizzate di Ansie Liquide” is the third part of a work in progress whose first two chapters were already published in 2020, by taâlem on a 3" MiniCD and by St.An.Da. on CD. The origin of the project, however, dates back many years, when in 2011 Andrea Marutti was asked to compose the soundtrack for the multimedia work “Aquology - Oceano interiore” by Massimo Indelicati. Carlo Giordani's subsequent involvement in the project led to a first draft of the soundtrack that was used jus…
Xerrox Vol. 5
Alva Noto returns to his much awaited Xerrox project with Vol. 4, the fourth installment of the five-piece intended series based on the concept of digital replication of source material.
Forms of Paper
In a worthy tribute to the life and legacy of one of the great artists of our time, the always fantastic, Monterrey, Mexico, based imprint, Aurora Central, returns with a stunning, first ever vinyl pressing of Steve Roden's seminal 2001 full length “Forms of Paper”. A landmark in the history of Lowercase music - the idiom that Roden helped pioneer - unfurling like an alien, microscopic landscape, it's one of the true marvels of post-millennial sound practices that remains as effective and radica…
Liminal States
Peter Rehberg is known for his pioneering electronic work with computer software which over time evolved into a modular set up alongside running Mego and then Editions Mego labels.
Pop Ambient 2025
In recent years, the introductory texts for the Pop Ambient compilation series, which is released every year on Kompakt as the last release before the Christmas break, often began with the sentence "Every year again...". “Every year again”, a quiet, almost unnoticed maxim of self-evidentness. Because this is already the 25th issue to be published this year. 25 years in increasingly fast-moving times in the even faster-moving music business is an eternity that doesn't just feel like it. It is all…
Hardanger
*150 hand-numbered copies limited edition* Hardanger is a collaboration by Mariska Baars (aka Soccer Committee), Niki Jansen, and Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek). The title refers to the instrument played by Jansen, the Hardanger fiddle. It’s a fresh addition to the established musical chemistry from regular collaborators Baars and Zuydervelt. The music on Hardanger started with improvisations by Niki Jansen, guided by Mariska Baars, who responded with vocal and guitar recordings. Rutger …
Option Explore
Option Explore, Dylan Moon’s second full-length album, is a glassy-eyed survey of pop’s playing field both past and present, and a collection of clever, colorful songs filtered through frequencies, timbres, and dreams discovered and discarded while its maker shifts from one sub-genre to the next.
Option Explore signals a significant departure from Moon’s debut 2019 album Only the Blues, which at its heart is a folk record from the forlorn fringes of psychedelia: a little mysterious, but ultimate…
Chamomile
*200 copies limited edition* The sophomore solo release of Los Angeles-based artist and producer Marine Eyes (Cynthia Bernard), moving to the esteemed Past Inside The Present after her soothing debut record, idyll, on Stereoscenic Records in March 2021. Also one half of the ambient duo, Awakened Souls, she most recently curated the mental health benefit compilation for Past Inside The Present, Healing Together. Filled with the sounds of nature and visions of the clouds and heavens above, chamomi…
A Life In Setting Suns
** 180g opaque blue/pink vinyl record. Edition of 200. ** That liminal moment, when the phosphorescence behind the window shade first disrupts your eyelids, is a difficult one to pinpoint. Sometimes the earliest thought in your mind is a long-tail partial memory of those last few moments of a thousand-yard dream, sometimes it’s an irrepressible descending sigh as you anticipate what’s to follow, whether with apprehension or ardor. Centuries have passed in your unconscious absence; every frequenc…
La Gran Corriente
Colombian-born artist Juan Carlos Torres Alonso, aka OKRAA, presents his third sonic exploration on A Strangely Isolated Place titled, La Gran Corriente. This album marks a profound shift in Juan's creative journey, where themes of portals, the illusion of time, and the paradoxes of self-discovery converge into a powerful auditory experience. Following a transformative visit to Bogotá in May 2023, Juan underwent an introspective journey that inspired a new direction in his music. This experience…
Obscured Instinct and the pale Folklore
*200 copies limited edition* "Obscured Instinct and the Pale Folklore," is an evocative sonic journey crafted by the Hungarian musician, Kokum. This album traverses the shadowy corridors of dark folk music and the pulsating rhythms of new wave post-industrial soundscapes, creating an otherworldly and mesmerizing experience. Kokum, a visionary artist who utilizes only his voice, field recordings, and the sounds of everyday objects, manipulates these elements with a myriad of electronic effects, b…
In February
Big Tip! On in February, Isik Kural works like a photographer of sound, documenting the passing and returning of time as if material snapshots of life’s temporality. Across the album’s twelve songs, each composed from chance loops and cocooned within the soft container of Isik’s memorable voice and melody play, time is held on to hopefully, impossibly, eternally. Born in Istanbul, Isik studied music engineering at the University of Miami, alighted in New York City, and eventually settled in Glas…
Projections Of A Coral City
Coral Morphologic and Nick León’s Projections of a Coral City marks a series of collisions between distant worlds: the organic and the artificial, the Eocene and the Anthropocene, sea and cement—and even, perhaps, ambient music and activism. Coral Morphologic are the Miami duo of marine biologist Colin Foord and musician J.D. McKay; since 2007, they have used a variety of multimedia projects to generate environmental awareness of marine biodiversity—most notably Coral City Camera, an underwater …
Of Nature & Electricity
180g 'Cenote Green' vinyl. Limited to 300 copies. Includes stamped and numbered riso print Every time you do acid it’s different from the last, but it’s still got a unique signature to it,” says Michael J York. It’s roughly analogous to the way in which the music of Teleplasmiste – his duo with Mark O Pilkington – can be experienced. Their music is lush and layered like a rainforest floor, a complex lattice of sound that moves in several directions at once. Some of those movements are under the…
Two Neat Geometries
Hoch Ma Toch is a solo project from Scottish singer and producer Drew Wright. Previously a member of Macca-Talla Nan Creag, he played a central role in creating both their critically acclaimed and sold out albums. Devised in collaboration with Firecracker Records and Forestry Commission Scotland, their project brought to life the shamanic spirit of pre-historic sites through improvised vocals, electronics, ancient instruments and drones. Wright has also released music as Wounded Knee, collaborat…
Ambient Black Magic
*2024 stock* Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement is the ambient techno project of Dominick Fernow. Focusing on slow paced bass studies and synthetic dub textures, surrounded by collaged and looped field recording environments, RSE shrouds sound over image to target the sector of brain where fear supersedes rationality -- the imagination. As RSE appears live for the first time, it has transformed into an entity with rotating contributors on stage and on recording. Ambient Black Magic moves away from…
Nuts of Ay
»Nuts of Ay«, the thirteenth album by the Berlin-based electronic pop duo Tarwater (Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram), is their first in a decade, since 2014’s »Adrift«. Beautifully poised and smartly dressed, it's an album that draws Tarwater’s various pasts into a high-definition present, while bringing the duo, yet again, into productive dialogue with all kinds of fellow travellers.
Tarwater’s music has always been marked by a hypnotic pop-ness, but that’s particularly evident on »Nuts of Ay«,…
Terrace Of Memories
*250 copies limited edition* 1992’s Terrace Of Memories is an organic ambient album of longing and gentle melancholic minimalism. Sam Rosenthal (Black Tape For A Blue Girl’s founder/synthesist, then based in Los Angeles) and Dirk Serries (then recording under the moniker vidnaObmana in Belgium) blended their atmospheres and somber contemplative electronics on this timeless album filled with lush, dark and beautiful impressions. Energized by a passage of text written by Sam concerning a lost love…
Deus Ex Machina
"Paul Schütze’s debut album from 1989 sets his stall out from the start; with a cyber update on Jon Hassell’s notion of ‘Fourth World Music”. Schütze’s music always sounds like it could be an alternative soundtrack to ‘Blade Runner’ (be aware fellow purists, I did state “alternative”), and this album is probably the perfect candidate if in some other dimension the Vangelis OST was no longer deemed satisfactory (such a dimension surely cannot exist). The listener feels like they’re walking throug…