Shortwave Spectrum
The new Sonologyst "sonic documentary" delves into the secretive realm of shortwave transmissions; a chronicle of clandestine shortwave transmissions culled from a span of nearly four decades (1982-2021). These mysterious transmissions - repetitive voices, signals, sound pulses, short pieces of music - were collated and edited to compose the tracks of the main album.
Immersed in an isolating fog of dark ambient, deep drone music and cinematic sound art, it provides an auditory exploration of the…
Chorologie I
*2023 stock* "More than 20 years have passed since the inaugural reference on Night On Earth and the first volume of the "Chorologie" series, an anthology imagined by the Fougère label to celebrate the creative experiences of a sound explorer determined to abolish borders. Two decades during which Tzii has never ceased to defy the established rules or to invent his own, and above all to do a lot with a little by pushing sounds and senses into limited states.
In 25 tracks spread over two discs ec…
Matt
Martina Berther and Philipp Schlotter are prolific in their respective ways, having been active in pop and jazz music, respectively, as well as playing in bands and exploring the outer fringes of sound art or composing music for film. Their first joint album »Matt« was recorded over the course of four days in a church in the Swiss village after which the album was named. Berther and Schlotter worked with the buildingʼs organ as well as synthesizers and electric bass to follow an experimental app…
For the Lives Once Lived
Several years ago Gary Mundy of Ramleh/Broken Flag (and far more besides) declared to me that he wished to do one new Kleistwahr album every year until he's no longer able to do them. Fourth Dimension Records has subsequently fulfilled a promise to honour this plan as much as possible and is managing to keep up so far. How Gary manages to keep pulling new ideas out of the proverbial hat at this rate is anybody's guess, but the latest album, 'For the Lives Once Lived', illustrates very clearly th…
Decon Sound - Deconceptualize 1
*2023 stock* "Stefan Römer performs quotations from cultural or musical theoreticians commenting on performances by two iconic musicians, Syd Barrett and Conrad Schnitzler. The quote functions as an instruction for the sound performance. Stefan Römer explicitly attempts to reach a similar psychedelic state of mind to that of the referenced artists, using an LSD substitute. The performative staging of textual citation, instrumentation comparable to the historical events, musical performance, and …
Ingrid Linnea
Swedish singer and composer Elin Piel returns to Mystery Circles after making a debut appearance on the Las Vegas-based ambient label back in 2020. Piel's sound deals in microscopic layers of textural detail slowly shifting around delicately embellished melodies - 'Tunnlar' is a perfect opening statement in this sense as glassy synth phrases pass through prismatic DSP and faint flickering interference skips around in the background.
Cold Reading
"Flora Yin Wong’s ravishing interiority finds lucid expression on an absorbing second album for Modern Love, manifesting her instrumental storytelling in a syncretic bind of supernatural themes with hyperrealist, concrète sound design. Through ten parts, Flora crystallises the ennui that followed an uncanny, disorienting trip to East and Southeast Asia. “On an unexpected stopover in Hong Kong after five years away, my friends took me to a Bazi reader one night - something I was curious about, bu…
Reworks
Whisky soaked, nocturnal, brooding. Aging’s album ‘Troubles? I Got A Bartender’ was a noteworthy, film-noir infused suite that quietly slipped out on cassette in 2015 by a then budding Manchester avant-jazz ensemble, led by David McLean. In 2020, amidst the pandemic’s tempest and winter's gloom, the idea manifested of showcasing McLean’s slow burning, wistful soirée in a new light via a curated effort by Berlin’s Vaagner label, which invited a series of hand-picked artist to rework selected comp…
Murder In Blue
Not that droney as often but circular, grainy, dreamy melodious doodles from Scotland's finest Fraser Burnett…. Might ring in your head just like a summer hit!
Stupor
Nairobi-born Berlin-based sound artist Joseph Kamaru, aka KMRU, shares his new work Stupor on the new Helsinki-based label Other Power. Commissioned by the Helsinki curatorial and commissioning agency Publics, Stupor is comprised of three original long form tracks. The tracks on the album are speculative notes to social architectures and environments the artist has traversed.“A musical alchemist, KMRU places his listeners’ ear into a sonic-spatial matrix in which he transmutes his trans-local ex…
Angel Tape
Islaja presents her new album ”Angel Tape”, the first release on the new Helsinki-based label Other Power. Drawing inspiration from childhood epiphanies while listening to an alleged recording of angels singing, Islaja has crafted an album that stands out as a major work in her expansive and celebrated catalogue, which includes previous releases on labels such as Ecstatic Peace!, Fonal and Svart. Islaja, aka Finnish artist Merja Kokkonen, describes her new album as a “counterwork” to her most re…
Mons Clepsydra
Scott Monteith comes out from behind his Deadbeat moniker for the first time in 20 years to inaugurate a new project with Italian singer Letizia Trussi under the name Ark Welders Guild. Their first salvo, Mons Clepsydra, is a 1 hour durational ambient piece in four parts. Peaceful and severe, contemplative and grave, the track takes its inspiration from the mountain element and reflects on the relativity of our time - rock and hourglass; it delves into the concept of the sublime, intended in its…
Feral Lands & Forbidden Cities
Recorded in Brussels in 2019, Feral Lands and Forbidden Cities is Timelash's second delivery of a 4 album projected series. In their debut, A Morphology of Wonders (Aguirre Records, 2021), the duet formed by Embassador Dulgoon (Nonlocal Society, Archimboldos) and Corum (Psychic Sounds) revealed a unique musical journey that unfolds and expands like a cluster of organic matters and mechanical dialogues lit by iridescent fluorescences. Timelash's musical proposal is firmly rooted in retrofuturism,…
Ngunmal
"The work of Amby Downs, aka Murri/European artist Tahlia Palmer, occupies an intensely personal and unique space in the Australian music landscape. It is a project that speaks as much to trauma, as it does to aspiration or hope. It is work that recognises the complexities of intergenerational exchange; emotionally, socially, politically and culturally. For the past half decade, Tahlia has been seeking to trace unspoken, and in some cases deeply fragmented histories, and thread a linage that is …
Nessun Legame con la Polvere
"This release borrows its title ‘Nessun Legame con la Polvere’ (No Attachment To Dust) from a Zen story as well as from a small wooden box, namely one of ten sculptures of my project ‘I Fiori Non Vedono Mai I Propri Semi’ (Flowers Don't Ever See Their Own Seeds). This artwork was exhibited in 2020 at Pollinaria’s forest, Italy as part of Aequusol Autumnus MMXX. The exhibition had no sound. It is now clear that life, the matter we are made of, and the objects we use every day cannot be considered…
Impossible Worlds
False Walls releases a solo album from Glasgow-born and London-based guitarist Kevin Daniel Cahill. Consisting of two long tracks, the album traces a steady progression as it moves through different environments — initially ambient and isolationist in tone, the work ultimately reaches a form of transcendence. Rooted in Kevin’s guitar-playing, though not immediately identifiable as such due to the deployment of tape loops and effects, the album foregrounds feeling and atmosphere, and its duration…
Tone Science Module No. 5 (Integers And Quotients)
*2023 stock* Tone Science sub-label, from DiN records, continues to explore the world of modular synth music. Following the success and critical acclaim of the first four Tone Science compilation albums, DiN label boss Ian Boddy has collated another nine tracks from musicians of varying backgrounds working in the realms of modular synthesis. One of the things that is so delightful about artists working with modular synthesisers is the sheer variety of styles on show. These instruments more than …
Tone Science Module No. 8 (Tone Science Live)
Tone Science sub-label, from DiN records, continues to explore the world of modular synth music.
The Necronomicon Pages
*200 copies limited edition* Does Abdul Alhazred’s cursed Necronomicon, the best known of the 'forbidden books', really exist? Is it really part of the so-called "pseudobiblia" (books that do not exist) or did Howard Phillips Lovecraft, (the "Loner of Providence") base the Mythos of Cthulhu and all the vast, incredible Pantheon that pervades his fascinating and disturbing literary adventures? In February 1937, in a letter written to his friend Harry O. Fisher, Lovecarft wrote, ‘The term Necronom…
II (feat. Yoshiko Ohara & Mick Barr)
Further explorations into the dark past by Tholos Gateway. After the their first Aegean trip documented in their debut album, the trio formed by Colin Marston, Àlex Reviriego and Vasco Trilla returns with the second volume of the Tholos Gateway saga. The dark and ominous atmosphere of the previous album is still here, soaking the ritualistic bells, savage bass drones and dreamy synths in a mysterious fog.This time they count with the collaboration of Yoshiko Ohara (Bloody Panda) and Mick Barr (K…