Gonna keep the preamble short here, as we managed to bang out quite a few reviews to finish off this long burning summer. This isn’t to say there isn’t some general Monk’s Hood news to share, however.

The first item is that we now have a youtube channel. If nothing else it’s just a second forum where you can access our releases. More than that, we eventually hope to be uploading peripherally affiliated Monk’s Hood material like, oh I don’t know, this video of Juho playin’ piano in the midnight sun a couple months ago…

Yes, with any luck we hope to be bringing you more such “content” as the months and years grind on. It should be easy enough to follow along.

Elsewheres, Juho will be putting on a gig in Helsinki on Friday night featuring Rob Noyes, Aava Alve, and Oy Manö Sound System. That’s all going down at Kalervo Kallion Ateljee on will be kicking off at 21:00 GMT+3. See the flyer below:

That’s it for now, but plenty of excitement in store for the coming months, so be sure to keep your wigs on. Some reviews until then…

******

Sterling sez…

Cop Tears – Rules of the Game (Trilogy Tapes)

This new LP from Trilogy Tapes has worked like a madeline for unlocking a whole series of my personal biases, bugaboos, and noodle-ticklers about lo-fi production aesthetics. I should start by saying I generally believe that, unless you have access to rarefied talent and cash, the surest way to make a memorable and singular recording is to figure out how to produce it on your own. I’ll also say that as an insecure lo-fi musician myself, I have a tendency to be extra critical of certain records when I’m actually just jealous about what the artists have pulled off. So if this review seems at all overcooked, it’s possible I just wish I’d thought of it.

Listening to Rules of the Game, I first wondered whether it might eventually enjoy a similarly outsized footprint to that of Salena + Topu’s Moon Set, Moon Rise. Both are ostensibly demure records that rely on a considered mixture of accomplished playing wrapped in a lo-fi fog that feels about as warming and intimate as it can get. The question for me, with either LP, is whether this combination of high brow performance and caveman-like production is actually a slick affectation deployed to cultivate feelings of depth that aren’t actually in the playing, compositions, and arrangements.

Put another way, I think there’s a specific challenge in evaluating a record which so prominently puts its vibe foot forward first. A challenge which can take time to consider and resolve (I’ve ended up thinking Moon Set is wildly overrated, for example). Or, to tug the thread even further still, I think there’s an interesting thought experiment you could run of imagining a hi-spec studio version of this recording and asking whether it would stand up on its own in an entirely different way.

This all becomes further intriguing when you consider that Rules of the Game is, first and foremost, a record of capital C “Classical Music”. The programme runs the gamut across the centuries from Dunstaple to Bach, Fauré, Satie, and Alma Mahler. Normally I find the overlapping spaces of experimental and classical music to be a precarious zone mostly trodden with self-serious missteps (usually by way of either cold and bloodless avant composition or records that sound embarrassingly like A24 soundtracks).

While I doubt this record could stand up without its lo-fi delivery system, I really appreciate what that delivery system does for the source material. Despite whatever contrivance I sense in its production, Rules of The Game recontextualises a rich programme featuring music from as early as the renaissance and makes it feel close, newly accessible, and (somehow) unpretentious. That’s quite an achievement. I’ve probably thought too hard about it by this point, but if it isn’t already clear I’ll conclude by simply saying; I liked this one.


Morgan Buckley and Ben Donahue – Sworx (Wah Wah Wino)

Wah Wah Wino has reached this enviable point as a label where they feel collectivised around a mystique that’s instantly recognisable to the ear but a little too slippery to easily write about. To me they continue a lineage of culture-mulching pranksterism spiritually descended from the likes of the KLF and Richard D. James. So much of what they release feels vital, vanguard-leading, and delivered with a smirking, knowing playfulness. It’s a difficult trick to pull off without sounding too smug; to be boundary pushing but aware of your own inventiveness enough to also carry it with an impish lightness. And that’s just it, a typical WWW record features plenty of dense and challenging music, but it’s also almost always fun.

Much like last year’s “Whose The Technician?”, this LP is a blast precisely because it captures the irreverent sound of artists willfully banging holes in the ground they’re breaking as they’re breaking it. A two-hander from label mainstays Ben Donahue and Morgan Buckley, Sworx is probably both the most conceptual LP Wah Wah Wino has thus far released and its best-produced . A lot of the expected hallmarks are still here; it’s primarily built on a now-familiar bedrock of mutant and dissociative hardware-based techno. What feels new is where Sworx swerves into digital collage and a critical sonic dialogue with the zeitgeist. Lots of it seems to dementedly refract the growing popular interest in Americana and country music, for example. There is also a lot of engagement with what I would normally derisively describe as “internet information music” (namely, the post-humanist drift of avant electronic music). The whole ragu is further stitched together with string-based motifs ranging from hammered zithers to big wipes of pedal steel, all buffeted with angelic vocals that hover over everything like cirrostratus clouds.

It’s an album full of brilliant ideas. Lots of it made me laugh or smile. I marveled at its surprising moments of beauty, too. Tracks like album standout $worx4k-Reaper-Cam took me straight to the shampoo drinking zone you know I love the best. For an album this kaleidoscopic, though, it’s remarkable how cohesively it hangs together. It’s a bit frustrating I always seem to have more to say about releases I find annoying or complicated. But, as noted at the top, I think much of the WWW catalog often eludes an easy writing-up. Suffice it to say, this is absolutely the front runner for my favourite album this year, so maybe I’ll have an easier time finding more of my tongue when we get to the giant round-up in December.


MPU101 – ITX045 (Ilian Tape)

I observe Ilian Tape’s annual release of a new MPU101 LP like a national holiday. They arrive like clockwork and they’re always welcomed. Especially with this new record coming hot on the heels of the disappointment of Boards Of Canada’s Inferno — see JT’s hilarious review last newsletter — it’s a comforting balm to be served a platter of synth mastery this flawless, warm, and familiar.

The evergreen appeal of 70s-style kosmiche synth music, to me, is about analog synthesis being the instrument most capable of reminding us that sound is fundamentally a science of waveforms and natural resonance. Made on the right machine, recorded the right way, and played on the right system, it’s amazing just how reliably big spectral sweeps and molten gurgles actually give me goosebumps.
Another part of the instant familiarity is how easily these records, and this one in particular, remind of major touchstones like classic era B.O.C., Cluster, or early Oneohtrix. That’s not because this music is derivative, it’s because ITX045, like all synth masterworks, is far more than the vintage equipment it was likely made on. These albums are full of carefully placed melodies every bit as hypnotic and subsuming as the atmospheric soundscapes they disparately populate. Some are quite cinematic, others are lonely meditative motifs pointing to the human inside the machines.

As with all favourite holidays, however, they’re defined by self referential traditions. Which can, of course, also mean there isn’t a whole lot differentiating one MPU release to the next. I personally feel like I really only need to own one of these on wax. If this type of sound is your favourite thing, however, you’ll never get tired of buying them.

fmvee – crungiDrone (Land of Chant)

A new cassette to launch a new imprint from chameleonic Baltimore-based producer Matt Rogers. Now on his fifth release, Rogers has used the fmvee moniker for everything from idm and drum and bass, to Harold Budd-inspired digi Jazz. As such, crungiDrone comes as a bit of a surprise; it’s a big somatic dose of stretchy ambient; heady and fluxus-loving.

Recorded entirely as live takes without overdubs, Rogers uses what’s described in the liners as a MalletKat-controlled “pile of synths” to conjure a symphonic-scaled palette rich in fat, stacked harmonic overtones. There’s a preference throughout for synth voices configured to evoke nearly all my favourite orchestral instruments; french horns, bass clarinets, woodwinds. Across the bookended title tracks, Rogers smears them slowly in a manner that reminds in equal measures of Yoshi Wada, Wolfgang Voigt, and (more recently) Tongue Depressor. The second track, “Burning Stone”, is stoically assembled on a bed of synthetic reeds and saxophones that evolve as winking signals to demented inversions of rock á la Chatham and Branca.

More than anything, it’s a record which showcases Rogers’ talent for patient composition. Each of these individual pieces feature moments of heightened drama and ecstasy drawn slowly enough you won’t necessarily notice your heart rate increasing. I spent my first listen watching a massive pink thunderhead gradually forming on the horizon at sunset and it turned the everyday view from my living room windows into a Terrance Mallick movie.


******

J.T.D Sez:

Paintings of Windows - Pororari River Mouth (Bunkland)

I started last time the holy sez a.k.a. JT’s “the spitting” on Novo Zeuhland artists, so I’ll do it again, as that Hobbit land, that far far away, has always carved sounds into miraculous sculptures that penetrate my eardrums and one of the great outcasts of those islands is one Antony Milton.

When it comes to good ol’ Tony, I confess that I am a biased man. When I started releasing underground suss years ago, one of the first maggots to crawl out of the underest underground and mold my ears was Milton, with his vast and ridiculous body of work. Was it under Sunken with Mr. Pumice - or under the chap’s own name? I didn’t mind. Milton was Milton.

And Milton I love.

Released in 2013 as a lathe via Pseudoarcana (Peter King’s lathe btw.) and now gracefully in wax too via Bunkland Recs (as an edition of 100 copies btw.), Pororari River Mouth is sir at his finest, a delicate mix of cheap equipment, zonked-up textures, tiny details and genuinely tasty innovative sound. There’s a handmade precision to it that - as one who also likes to fuck with the heads now and then - just can’t do anything else than appreciate. It’s abstract, it’s chilly and always on the move.

In a perfect world, Antony Milton would be greeted in the same breath as Parmegiani, Eno (or heck, even maestro Arthur Russell when Milton occasionally dips his toes into the pool of pop... if you haven’t checked the fantastic Off-White tape, do it!!). Unfortunately we don’t live in that world, apparently, so here we are, still digging through the mold infested weeds and passing the good ol’ stuff around ourselves.

This record is a damn playground slide. It sounds like an icy morning. It sounds like waking up, or looking out through a dirty window to see the pure first snow. Milton has always known how to make the shit feel intentional and poetic and Pororari River Mouth is a damn beautiful example of it.

V/A - Synthetic Water Music (Mappa)

Well. What the hell… sometimes you just gotta.

Double cassette named Synthetic Water Music with 51 songs vs. tired and grumpy father who hates stuff that one anonymous fella coined “internet information music”. What could go wrong?

Fuck me, firstly I must confess: the tape is a stunner. The peaceful drift is everywhere. Starting from the naivistic opener of Pauline Anna Strom to Shakali’s bouncy pillows of sound, this thing immediately makes you feel like you’ve fallen through some holé in the floor and landed somewhere muuuuch softer. And did I say that there is so much quality on this thing? It’s borderline ridiculous.

51 songs! Usually when someone tells me there are 51 tracks on anything I start sweating as it sounds like a lot of homework. Some kind of archival way of punishing fellow sapiens or something. But Synthetic Water Music somehow avoids that as it feels like a landscape or place where you can meet a friendly stranger doing magic.

To even start picking and plucking the whole thing would need much more than one wants to read from a single Substack post, but I must say that what Synthetic Water Music does so damn well is that it can be sort of seen as a map of some kind. Not as a compilation where somebody has thrown together 51 vaguely compatible pieces because they happen to belong to the same ”scene” or whatever. There is an honest sense of cultural geography happening. You perhaps start to recognise different currents and temperatures, different ideas of what this strange thing called ambient or ”melodic and slow experimental music” can actually be.

And this is where the whole “internet information music” thing becomes tolerable. There is an enormous amount of new music now that feels like information about music rather than music itself. You must know the stuff that I’m talking about. “Fourth world”, “ambient”, “new age”, “field recordings”, “deconstructed whatevs”. This tape is not just that bla-bla-bla. I chose to believe that this is truly a holy pursuit. Its function is to give you names and connections, it’s a teacher that lets the might of sound drift.

And that drift I think is really the key. Even when the sounds are obviously coming from completely different practices, there is this strange common atmosphere (in a lack of a better word) holding the whole thing together. Something that is fluid, that is liquid, that is weightless and mysterious. So yeah, the title starts making more and more sense the longer you listen. I wish I had a waterbed. Synthetic water, not natural water.

It’s a miracle when something so manufactured can nevertheless manage to behave like a living thing. This feeling is good. Really good. Put the map on, tune in, drop out and let the water take you baby!

Friendly Science Orchestra - Miniature Album (Friendly Science Enregisterments)

I’m ranting about a record that’s one year younger than me that never got a reissue. So what, I can do it. This is after all J.T sez. I can do whatever I want. I can write:

Horse cock

Corse hock

Horse cock

Corse hock

Aaaaaaaaa

Bbbbbbbbb

Ccccccccc…

You get the point?

Ex-Pale Saint Ian Master’s label FSE is rather new territory for me, but never have I heard a 7” that keeps you guessing like this one. The ol’ UK Industrial attitude, bleeps, melodies and acoustic guitar zoners all hand in hand. Don’t mind me, I’m just enjoying the hell out of this shit.

Gifted and bonkers is the name of the game today.

Originally released in 1998 in a (during that era) tiny edition of 500 copies, this thing somehow even managed to become N.M.E. ‘s Single of the Week. Reading John Mulvey’s blurb from October 3rd, 1998, makes the whole thing even funnier. He basically had to reassure the readers that this wasn’t some pointless novelty record while simultaneously admitting that it contained more invention than anything else that week. Fair enough, John.

There’s that British industrial labor mentality going on in the seven inch, but there’s also something much older and more playful happening underneath it. Joe Meek is a perfectly reasonable ancestor to point out, but the record sounds like somebody took the whole reach of bedroom electronics, weird pop, tape experimentation and wonky songwriting, threw it down the stairs, and then decided to wrap up whatever landed at the bottom.

I keep coming back to the idea that nobody really makes records like this anymore. Or 7”’s for that matter. Maybe Tom Val tries to? Maybe my thinking is bullshit as there are always weirdos doing weird shit, or at least until some a-hole tries to deny the very possibility of acting out of place... I feel like there is hope in people taking apart machines and putting shit through things they shouldn’t be put through. But this particular combination of English eccentricity, primitive electronics, proper songwriting and complete disregard for genre boundaries feels almost extinct.

A tiny 1998 7” that got a Single of the Week nod from N.M.E., disappeared into the underground and now sits here waiting for some idiot like me to discover it nearly three decades later.

Well, hello. Horse cock.

V/A - I’ll Never, Never Die (Death Is Not The End)

Now that I’ve read that the 2026 harvest will be an all-time low, it seems reasonable to put on I’ll Never, Never Die, a shape-note / gospel compilation by Death Is Not The End, both because of my power fantasies about being able to endure the post-apocalypse and because of its fitting and optimistic name. Even though I have done the reconnaissance officer training from the Finnish Defence Forces, I will surely die a horrible and violent death in a post-apocalyptic scenario, and so will my family.

To quote Patsy from The Sopranos: “It won’t be cinematic.”

Well, anyways. The enormous cultural impact of the Fallout video game series has made a very particular kind of American past feel to an outsider almost post-apocalyptic by default. Gas stations, dead motels, country radio, church hymns, hillbilly ballads, ancient technology still somehow sputtering along. Listening to I’ll Never, Never Die makes you realise that this music doesn’t need the nuclear wasteland radio. Perhaps the apocalypse was already there.

These recordings come from the American South between 1948 and 1955, so I bet the atmosphere must have been pretty bad. Death, salvation, sickness, work, resurrection, damnation. All that stuff. Yikes.

The shape-note stuff is particularly beautiful on this comp. There is something so skilled about these voices. The records can be rough and that obviously pleases a scum like me.

I keep thinking about the difference between imagining the apocalypse and actually having to live through a bad harvest. One is a game scenario where you collect bottle caps and shoot mutants in the face; the other is a clear and undisputed agricultural statistic, something that enters the price of my bread, the viability of farms and pretty soon the question of whether everyone has enough to eat.

So here I am, listening to people from seventy-five years ago singing about death and eternal life while worrying about the harvest of 2026. Different apocalypse, same basic problem.

Steven R. Smith - Half Light Unfolding (Eiderdown)

One of the first labels I ever sent a demo to was Seattle-based Eiderdown Records. Back then my heart had recently melted completely for the enigmatic San Fran based Jewelled Antler collective and their deeply wooded recordings, spread across multiple CDRs, obscure releases and little corners of the underground the label shed some light on.

Eiderdown was and still is one of the few labels continuing to release artists connected to that world after the Jewelled Antler years, so I thought, what the hell. My Eiderdown release never happened. Probably for the best (or not, who knows), but are here for Steven and his beautiful way of hearing the world, not for Toivonen’s lost demos rambling on and on.

Steven R. Smith has done pretty much all of it in the underground. As part of Mirza in the 1990s, he explored loud, psychedelic guitar music. By the early 2000s, with Thuja, the San Francisco freak zone had moved further towards abstraction, patience and strange acoustic spaces most likely thanks to the fantastic brain that carries the name Loren Chasse. Along the way there has been Hala Strana, the various Ulaan projects and a vast amount of other work mapping out folk, improvisation, drones, psychedelia and whatever happens in between.

Half Light Unfolding is something else, though.

It sounds unmistakably like Steven R. Smith as he has a very distinct way of composing that I cannot really explain, but I recognise immediately. There is something in the movement of his melodies, the way one phrase seems to open another that belongs entirely to him, but at the same time to this classic lineage of American guitar music. I’m pretty sure I could Pepsi test this stuff and get it right. The basic building blocks here and the clarity with which they are used makes me think this could be a new chapter in Smith’s work. If I’d have to compare it to something it would be perhaps the more evocative bit of Movietone meeting Neil (not Cloaca) Young’s scummy cousin down on his luck?

What is particularly striking is how consistently strong the songs are. No fragments, sketches or atmospheric environments here - which for some reason I’ve been mostly championing on this newsletter. These fuckers are plain ol’ songs, properly built and memorable, with plucked or strummed acoustic guitar carrying melodies. Sometimes overdubbed piano lines enter around the guitar and elevate it fantastically. Sometimes they underline a melody, sometimes they open a little space around it and sometimes they make the whole thing suddenly feel much larger than mere sum of what’s presented.

Not exactly re-inventing the wheel I’d say, but there is serious hope dripping from these melodies. The music does not feel like someone looking back at thirty years of underground recordings and collecting random pieces. It feels like its eye is pointing forward.

Maybe that is the thing that has kept Steven R. Smith building this vast world of his own for so long. For 40 more years ladies and gentle men.

And what a busy July it was. With both “Find the Gyres” and “Ok Hotel” loose in the world, we’ve had slightly less time to attend to the needs of this old soap box than normal. Of course there have been the repeated trips to the post office (thank you to everyone who bought an LP and every shop who stocked them <3), but we’ve also been hard at work covertly assembling the moving pieces of what we hope will eventually become the third Monk’s Hood release of 2026. The masters have been approved, the artwork is in development. With any luck you should all have the option of acquiring this yet to be named mystery disc yourselves by early-to-mid Autumn. Don’t worry about marking your calendars, we’ll be sure to remind you.

Elsewhere, Conor played the lonesome troubadour on the banks of Duwamish river for a cryptic evening headlined by none other than Adam Croce, the truest wizard of the west. It sounded like a real word of mouth affair, but if someone, somewhere, has photos or video we’ll be sure to circulate them.

Sterling had the esteemed pleasure of doing a guest mix for Peak Oil’s monthly Dublab show, Tipping Point (thanks as ever to both Bria/ons for the support). Take a listen HERE, if you’re curious.

We’ll also shamelessly be participating in the sleazy fabricated retail holiday that is “bandcamp friday” by offering two discounted bundles of our dwindling stocks for both MH001 and MH002. For a limited time (IE, today) you can purchase both False Berries and Conor Kiley records as a nifty discounted bindle of wax (check it out HERE). Alternatively, there’ll also be the even cheaper option of picking up both releases as a test press pack (aka, the creepy completist edition).

And finally, of course, we have a small fleet of reviews and recommendations for your perusal. Juho, as per usual, has outdone himself and met the standard quota (likely owing to the generous 10+ weeks the Finnish state grants their teachers over the summer), whilst Sterling has struggled on his end to shore up the full complement (this must have something to do with the late summer family reunion he currently has on his hands). Regardless, without further ado…

*****

Sterling sez:

The Ferries – Eye Wander [World of Echo]

It’s surely just the giant jack-o-lantern on the cover, but I can’t help but compare the evolution between Eye Flutter and Eye Wander to the seamless narrative continuity that links John Carpenter’s Halloween to its 1981 sequel. Where that movie resumes Dr. Loomis’ fevered pursuit of Michael Myers a mere 60 seconds after the story in the first film concluded, Eye Wander feels like a similarly fluid and uninterrupted re-entry into the same swirling dub-kraut cosmos they left us with on their terrific debut.

This is absolutely meant as a compliment. Because Ferries LPs play less like linear programmes of discrete compositions and more like a revolving door into a haunted room where the band is always playing, Eye Wander never sounds like retreads or double dipping, but like getting a second chance to observe a painting that’s always changing.

The palette between Flutter and Wander is pretty similar, as are both the fidelity of the recording and their penchant for time-dilating sequencing tricks. What’s different here is a question of space. Several of the tracks can get really stretchy (album stand-outs “leave behind” and “tank town” are roughly 7 and 10 minutes long, respectively). In the end, despite all the continuity, Eye Wander plays as a weirder, deeper LP. Which is really saying something considering how far they pushed the boat out the first time around anyhow.

Visit Me – Daystar [Smudge Records]

This cassette is a deceptively simple (and gently experimental) suite of tunes primarily framed in minimal guitar/key arrangements undergirded by the built-in rhythm boxes you find on church organs. I’d normally write this off for being safe and a little boring (to me). The thing is, however, that the vocal performances (and the harmonies in particular) are often transcendent. This accomplishes two important things. On the one hand, it alludes to an outsized potential that makes me really curious of where this project is going and growing. But it has also caused me to relisten, reevaluate, and appreciate the arrangements for how effectively they platform my favourite parts of the record.

Less convincing, but still intriguing, are the album’s detours into sprigs-like found sounds and ambient composition. When they work they smell like the woodsmoke inside a storm beaten cottage. When they don’t they can sound a bit self-conscious or unsure of themselves. I was particularly distracted anytime I’d hear an overdriven guitar in the mix (and was that an e-bow??). Which I suppose means I occasionally felt like I was listening to the group try things before they were sure they worked (which I also fully support).

Lots to like, sounds like the start of something special.

*****

Juho sez:

William Henry Meung - My Memory Of The Temple [Burgan Triangle Tapes]

William Henry Meung has always struck me as one of those artists whose music feels inseparable from the person behind it. The records carry a ton of emo weight, as if every sound has been lived through, if you know what I mean. As has been said, beautiful minds are often fragile and ever since I first encountered WHM’s work I’ve found myself thinking about him in much the same way I once worried about David Berman during my teenage Silver Jews obsession. When an artist’s work resonates this deeply, you can’t help but hope they’re doing alright.

After his stunning debut long player on Horn Of Plenty, Meung seemed to drift quietly out of sight. Whether that was due to relocating to Australia, personal circumstances, or simply taking the time he needed, there was a somewhat noticeable silence after that release. Well, to me that absence only makes My Memory of the Temple feel more spot on. More than just a new release, it feels like the return of a singular voice whose absence I genuinely felt.

Released as an annoyingly limited cassette edition by Burgan Triangle Tapes, My Memory of the Temple finds Meung rooting for a rough, rhythmic language of broken electronics and different collapsing synth structures. They cough and malfunction with a sort of hometaped elegance. Nothing is polished, yet every distorted bleep feels deliberate and just the way they are supposed to. The cassette is full of crude textures and unstable machinery, but beneath the surface is the work of someone with an exceptionally sensitive ear. Meung understands deep listening, the act of patience and his compositions seem to reward if one dives deeper into the waters.

At moments the music edges towards a some kind of primitive techno, stripped of dance music’s certainty and left with only its hypnotic (non-)pulse. Tracks like Why Is Killer locks into that sap and brings us repetitive, ritual grooves. Throughout the tape there is a fascinating tension between both movement and collapse, as if every rhythm is constantly threatening to fall apart but somehow always finds its footing again.

The closing eighteen-minute piece, Otepoti Winter Solstice - My Memory of the Temple is the emotional centre of the album. It’s a slow burner, immersive wash of hissy/droney electronics that seems to suspend time.

The title of the song raises the question, what is the temple? A physical place? A state of mind? The mind itself? Memory itself? Meung offers no answers. His music has always existed somewhere between self-documentary and dream, so like some parts of a dream, the temple remains unknowable, but the search for it is what gives the album its power.

It’s wonderful to have William Henry Meung making music again. There are few contemporary artists who can make broken machines sound this vulnerable, or who can transform such modest means into something so emotionally rich. Wherever the temple may be, I hope he keeps finding his way back to it. The only unfortunate part of this whole venture is the size of the highly limited pressing. The solar power thing is cool and all, but stuff would be proper to keep in print at least for a day or two.

Hiroshi Minami/Eiko Ishibashi - Gasping_Sighing_Sobbing [self released?]

Although Eiko Ishibashi has become well known through her solo records and film scores, Gasping Sighing Sobbing reveals another side of her practice. Made in collaboration with veteran pianist Hiroshi Minami, the 2021 recording slipped to Bandcamp before later receiving a deserved wax format. Rather than feeling like a random detour, it sits well alongside Ishibashi’s wider body of work, all where improvisation, composition and sound design dissolve into one another.

At its core, Gasping Sighing Sobbing is basically a chat between Minami’s luminous jazz piano and Ishibashi’s delicate electronic interventions. Piano standards are never actually played, but their ghosts linger in everywhere on the album.

Minami’s patient calssical melodies drift through spacious tingling rooms while Ishibashi quietly reshapes them with processing and whispered vocals, stretching time until each note seems suspended somewhere liminal. Upright bass appears only occasionally and with taste.

Every beautiful moment is interrupted by electronic textures, frozen electronic resonances or distant environmental sounds. The effect is cinematic, as if an intimate late-night piano recital is slowly dissolving into a ones and zeros. Musicians trust the atmosphere and decay and they let you imagine alongside them.

Like much of Ishibashi’s finest work, Gasping Sighing Sobbing rewards zoner. It is music that breathes in the flame slowly. Beneath its tranquil surface lies a totalistic roaring beauty, one that suggests it is not something to be captured and put in to a jar, but something endlessly slipping away from your hands - and that you need to always be in hunt of.

Aava Alue - Itoshima no Komoruita [self released]

Aava Alue is the musical project of Kimito Island based multidisciplinary artist Lisa Holmén, whose practice has gradually shifted from performance art towards sound. That background in the abstract is still very much present on her debut offering, a self made CDr Itoshima no Komoruita. Rather than approaching composition as a musician alone, Holmén creates liminal ~~~ spaces, treating each piece as a space for the listener to inhabit and wrap itself to the sound rather than creating simply a song to be enchanted about.

The album works with many of the familiar building blocks of contemporary meditative and environmental music aka field recordings, sparse piano figures, improvised voice and long stretches of ambience. None of these elements are particularly novel in themselves, but Holmén arranges them with enough patience and sensitivity that they never feel like genre exercises. Instead, they become fragments of a personal travel diary, filtered through memories of foreign land.

There’s an unmistakable fascination with Japan running through the record. In lesser hands this could easily drift into empty aesthetic weeb tourism, but Itoshima no Komoruita captures something more nuanced, the heightened and heady awareness that comes to happen when finding yourself in an unfamiliar place, where every sound feels profound simply because it is new. The record inhabits that liminal state that happens between languages, between cultures, between a visitor and the one who participates. It lingers in the beautiful uncertainty of not quite belonging to a place, allowing natural curiosity and mental displacement to exist side by side.

One of the album’s greatest strengths is its pacing. Holmén moves effortlessly between more abstract non-musical passages and moments of gentle melodic clarity, never lingering too long in either territory. Each piece feels like another small step through the landscape, with enough variation to keep the journey compelling. The sequencing gives the record a natural sense of movement that feels rewarding.

Sonically, the album leans a bit towards a contemporary ambient aesthetic that I don’t usually find myself drawn to. Its cleanish and restrained palette could easily have felt a little too polished for my tastes. Yet Itoshima no Komoruita consistently wins me over because the music never mistakes sweetness for substance. The fantastic pacing, emotional sincerity and understated confidence prevents the from becoming an obstacle of any sorts.

This is a debut record about being attentive to the subtle shifts that occur when we find ourselves between worlds. Holmén doesn’t try to explain those experiences as much as she naturally presents them as they were felt.

Carla dal Forno - Confessions [Kallista]

Carla dal Forno has spent the last decade moving at her own pace, doing her own stuff. Known equally for her magnetic solo records and for championing heartbeat-slowing underground music through her long-running NTS Radio show (<3), she has become one of those rare and beautiful artists whose influence extends beyond her own catalogue to multiple directions.

Beginning her solo journey with UK label Blackest Ever Black, dal Forno has since seized the means of production through her self run Kallista imprint. Confession feels like the natural culmination of those moves towards independence as it is a study in contradiction.

Confession presents the loving and desiring sides of dal Forno while never losing sight of the unease that accompanies those feelings. These songs circle around the internal negotiations we make with ourselves: staying sane amidst beauty (and horror) resisting the temptation to fall in love again, watching the mind argue endlessly with the body. There is melancholy in that, but it feels like it’s observed with certain clarity and power.

The dub rhythms, skeletal and tasty basslines and her unmistakable post-punk palette remain instantly recognizable, grounding the record in the sonic world she has little by little refined in her practice over the years. Yet what stands out most is not the production but the emotional core beneath it. There is a vulnerability and intellectual honesty to these songs that feels increasingly rare in these ironic times. Dal Forno allows the desire to exist without trying to turn it to anything else and in doing so arrives at something/somewhere close to what could be labelled as radical truthfulness.

I know it’s a bit gauche to start any conversation or update with comments about the weather, but it’s been so god damned hot and humid here in London these last few weeks that it’s been difficult to talk, let alone think, about much else. Thankfully the the stifling and monotonous stupor of life under the dreaded heat dome was punctured last week by the arrival of these handsome bastards:

Would you take a look at that? Yes, that’s correct: the records are finally here. Even if the unprecedented heat wave meant a certain portion of our stock showed up a little warped (making both releases even MORE limited then before), we are THRILLED to finally see our inaugural offerings in the flesh. The distro’s are loaded, the pre-orders are packed, and we’re more than ready to let MH001 and MH002 off the chain. The official release isn’t until tomorrow, but both are now available to stream in full HERE.

In other news, JT made it back in one piece from his expedient jaunt across the northern climes of Europe. He even made it back in time to play a solstice party on the rocky shores of some idyllic Finnish beach. I can’t get over how much this image looks like a Hipgnosis cover…

Finally, because we’re feeling that extra bit generous, we’ve also done our best to stay up to date with our ears on the ground. Below you find a quick tour through some of the more notable releases of the late spring and early summer…

Sterly says…

Bot1500 - The Black Sea (Short Span)

In the wind up to writing this review I ran an internal indexing exercise of nautically themed electronic music. Not because I think there is anything particularly innovative about writing music inspired by the sea (a more energised or informed scribe could run that thought experiment backwards for centuries), but because I think there is a particularly well-established vernacular of the aqueous within techno, ambient, and drone. Whether you want to point to “North Pole by Submarine”, the surfing of sine waves, Biokinetics, or any number of Gigi Masin releases, marine layers and infinite expenses have always felt like particularly fertile ground for the knob and button jockeys. That doesn’t mean it always works as well as it does when Porter Ricks or Richard D James find themselves feeling beachy. Most of the time I find aqua dub to be pretty boring, if I’m being honest. For me, such motifs just as readily conjure images of a very specific type of dude as they do limitless blue horizons. You know, po-faced hi-fi fetishists in black designer tee shirts and rimless eye glasses.

This record, the latest from Short Span (who really seem to be having a banner year), is a bit of a needle threader in that regard. It’s an expertly constructed web of echo-locative melodies which, at key points, feel alternately conversant with some of the best records I alluded to above. I’m most into the inspired choices Black Sea makes around rhythm in particular. Normally, one would expect a record centred around a map of sonar-like sonics to be undergirded with the rolling thump of a minimal and endless kick/hat combo. Instead Black Sea is largely upheld by a lifted and fizzy array of idm patterns at a nearly uniform pace of 140bpm. This means that for as spacious and watery as things can get here, they’re also occasionally moved to animation in unpredictable ways. High marks for the whole thing except for the trip hop afterthought of album closer “White Flocks”. I wasn’t feeling that.


Topdown Dialectic – False LP A (False Aralia)

False Aralia seemed to start with a lot of wilful obfuscation about how the project was actually configured. There was a barrage of 12”s unified by a hermetic sound and aesthetic, yet each release came tagged with a different cryptic alias. Was it all the same person? People gossiped. Now on its 7th release – and its first long player – the mystery has all but fallen away, with the whole endeavour revealed as a work of fastidious curation between producer Izaak Schlossman and label head Brian Foote.

Holding the whole scope of the project together so far, I’d describe it as a meticulous exercise of intensely cerebral techno formalism. Like Bergman movies, each of the initial FA 12”s trade in a type of experimental craft defined their clean lines and discipline. I’m particularly struck by how the negative space between their collective notes and rhythms holds a quality of airlessness. The effect is often stirring and alienating; where the vacuum between the sound and frequencies functions like a semi-opaque and synesthetic threshold. Much like their stark monochromatic covers, the sound of these records splay and fade like dapplings of evaporating rain on warm slabs of white concrete. They comprise beautiful but fleeting patterns that are ultimately a bit difficult to hold or stay with.

It makes me wonder; what does it mean for this release to not only be the label’s first long player, but also the first emblazoned with a smudge of psychedelic colour (instead of the black on white pointillism of all its other releases)? I’ll confess that I didn’t realise until very recently that Topdown Dialectic was another of Schlossman’s aliases. Not really a surprise given the project’s past affiliation with the Peak Oil (another Foote-helmed imprint) or the palpable sonic throughlines you can trace between both projects.

I love the self-titled Topdown Dialectic debut from 2013 but have grown less enthusiastic with each subsequent release. S/T 2013 is a record defined (for me) by the thick, warm, almost humid atmospheres it cultivates around and inside the contrasting crispness of its melodies and rhythms. It’s also the only TD release to not feature clean and clipped runtimes (the tracks on every record since, including this new double platter, are all cropped exactly to an even 5:00). This new LP is notable for injecting some of the warmth and texture that initially drew me to Topdown Dialectic back into the wider False Aralia oeuvre. Yet I can’t get over feeling like the whole project’s concept-first approach is designed to keep the listener at a distance rather than call them in. Maybe I’m too drawn to mess to really feel at home here, but I’d compare the experience of listening to this LP to how I often feel in a prestigious art gallery; intrigued and occasionally fascinated, but ultimately kept just on the outside of some impermeable barrier.

EDITORS NOTE: an earlier version of this post misleadingly identified peak oil as the work of Brian Foote alone. Peak Oil was, in fact, co-founded with Brion Brionson, who was an excellent neighbour to me, a trusted cat sitter, and a man always on the ready with a cold can of Coors Light when I needed it.

Nuke Watch – Fusion (Sagome)

I was lucky to catch the album release for this LP just a couple of weeks ago; a memorable evening of psycho mod synth and reed jams, all backlit by a deranged collage of images and short vids sequenced like a flipbook from internet hell. Things got particularly interesting when the band was joined on stage by the legendary Peter Zummo, who painted the corners with slippery trombone squelches and intermittent couplets of gonzo haiku. All of which has partially served as useful scaffolding for finding some of the tools I’d need to unpack this headfuck of a record.

My first impulse is to get real pointy headed about it and describe Fusion through allusions to Beaudrillard, hyperreality, and Dream Theory in Malaya. On the one hand, this is a record with a lot of Hassell in its bones; it’s deeply, crookedly groovy and bird-like. On the other, it’s also frightening and sweaty in a way that vibrates with the ultra-contemporary paranoia, despair, and absurdist humour seemingly central to the overarching framing of the larger Nuke Watch project. Furthermore, part of what makes Fusion such a distinctive listen is how indistinguishable it renders the organic from the synthesised. Particularly in its two central movements (“War Lock” and “New American Psycho”), the thickets of whispers, scraping reeds, and strobing flutters eventually become so subsuming that they collapse into an inverted reality defined by obtuse and illegible logics.

Lau Ro – Lau (Mexican Summer)

From their excellent debut to this sophomore follow-up, Lau Ro’s records are clearly made in dialogue with a corpus of Brazilian music I’m not going to pretend I know much about. I had some Os Mutantes CDs back in the day and I bought a Fernando Falçao reissue a couple years ago, but that’s basically it. Writing about this record, then, presents the opportunity for the always useful exercise of describing how something sounds without defaulting to an obnoxious parade of taxonomic genre terms and lazy comps.

I’ll start by saying that I really admire how Lau evolves from the music Ro left us with in Cabana (2024). That record was notable for its overall palette, which was classical in the sense of being particularly evocative of the lush, gentle psychedelia of the 1960s and 70s. It was filled with delightfully vertiginous compositions drawn with smoke-like softness; a weightless bouquet of melodies anchored by an equally tasteful and sophisticated base layer of rhythm (Ro is also a touring percussionist of some note).

All of what made that record special is carried over here to Lau, but is wonderfully upscaled in key ways. As talented as Ro is as a multi-instrumentalist it’s really exciting to observe their development as a producer. Lau is notable for both how florid its arrangements are (specifically the strings) and how subtly it deploys definition inside of those arrangements. When things are really going Lau gels in such a way that its collective sound moves and emotes as a single instrument. This is a collection of songs that dissolve and metabolises its listeners into a cosmic matrix of astounding baroque pop. And holy smokes, if album closer “corn moon” is any indication of where Ro is headed next, I cannot wait to get there.

*****

Juho’s sez….

Boards of Canada - Inferno (Warp)

I’ve been following Boards of Canada since my childhood friend’s big brother showed me the animated series Salad Fingers on YouTube when I was 11 or something. And to be fair, only a few bands have occupied that much real estate in my life for such a long period.

Which is probably why Inferno lands like such a sucker gut punch.

After thirteen years of silence and one of the most overcooked, internet-brained teaser campaigns in recent memory, I wanted to believe. The friggin’ VHS fragments, cryptic breadcrumbs, the whole mythology machine pretending to fire up like it still had fuel in the tank. The album starts.

And I just keep waiting and waiting for the moment where it justifies any of that anticipation. It never comes.

Everything that once felt uncanny now feels self-aware in the worst way. Vox loops made by grandpa’s who remembered they used to be mysterious and decided to monetize it before the feeling fully died. O tempora, o mores! The tapey sounds, the faded synths, the processed voices, the counting murmurs it’s all still there, but it increasingly resembles my dads fat cousin wearing their old leather jacket and insisting it fits perfectly.

The mystery doesn’t feel like a mystery. It feels like branding. FUCK! Maybe I’ve grown up. Likely not.

And the weirdest part is watching some loser critics bend over to bootlickrrr mode to call this a triumphant return, praising its “restraint” and “longform structure” like those words would automatically equal depth worth listening to. No. You can praise Ellen Fullman’s restraint and longform structure. This is just… bullshit loops and vox samples doing absolutely nothing for an hour.

For now, I’d rather just put Geogaddi back on.

Or even that feels kind of dumb now, like I’m trying to recover a old memory of mine that’s already been turned into merch.

The Spatulas - A Blue Dot (Post Present Medium)

Sometimes in life you encounter people, places or records that are simply intoxicating. They make you smile without really knowing why and for a little while, take your focus away from all things material.

One such force is Miranda Soileau-Pratt, the driving spirit behind The Spatulas. On A Blue Dot, Soileau-Pratt & pals have crafted what might just be the perfect soundtrack for all you beautiful losers out there. Across ten songs, she finds that elusive balance between ragged guitar pop, heartfelt songwriting and melodies (and energy!) that seem to linger in me after the record has stopped spinning.

There are echoes of the good ol’ Dunedin sound throughout, but the album never feels like any kind of exercise in revivalism. If I have to make a comparison, fuck it, Barbara Manning, maybe Francisca Griffin too comes to mind. Lesley Paris? Sandra Bell?

Its a cliché I know, but The Spatulas seem to occupy a world entirely of theirs. The hooks work, the guitars jangle without sounding annoying and every song carries the warmth of music made from a clear need of self expression. It is the sort of record that hits perfect with brewski after a long day.

A few weeks ago, while in Berlin, I picked up The Fulmars LP from Static Shock. After a couple of listens I remember thinking, “Shit. It can’t get better than this.”

Well, Miranda clearly thought otherwise. What a stunner. Put in the papers already, Jack!

V/A - A Glow Of Hands (Altered States Tapes)

Some compistadors feel like playlists assembled by the committee. A Glow Of Hands feels like an exo planet with its own weather system.

If we talk in the lingo of nature and space, the whole thing rains down, blows like a wind and exists in a sort of similar universe. You could argue it occasionally drifts too close to Troth’s own thermal territory, but instead of feeling repetitive it comes across as a label documenting a shared aesthetical language shared with like-minded bastardos. The sequencing is patient, the pacing impeccable, (chef’s kiss) and every track adds another shade to the same fading light. Bravo Mr. und Missus Troth.

The real standout tho is Static Cleaner Lost Reward (side note: please Sir Manek bring more of this shit to the world, I’m eating the whole plate, licking it and asking for more) whose contribution to me quietly steals weirdly the whole thing. Equal parts fragile, beatsy and uncanny, it manages to sound deeply intimate without collapsing into the usual swambient clichés.

The kind of track that makes you stop whatever you’re doing and be like wow, wow, wow… Rewind!

This seems to be one of those releases that rewards listening front to back, no questions asked. No attention-grabbing gimmicks, no desperate zigzags… just an hour or so of beautifully done music that trusts the listener to meet it halfway and shake hands.

Altered States Tapes continues to build one of the most ”verkligt intressant” (as the Swedes would say) catalogues around and A Glow Of Hands is another reminder that a strong curatorial vision (puke sound inserted) can be just as compelling as individual star power.

Adrian Rew - Slot Machine Music, Vol. 1 & 2: Field Recordings from Middle American Casinos (Death is Not The End)

”John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

The American dream has always had a soundtrack. Turns out it’s mostly blinking machines endlessly congratulating people for losing money.

Adrian Rew’s casino recordings are somehow both brutally literal and twistedly cinematic. A sea of ding ding dings and synthetic fanfares slowly melt into something almost orchestral. It’s easy to forget you are listening to field recordings and not some very detailed electroacoustic composition.

This is the sonic equivalent of a Terrence Malick film if he traded wheat fields and whispered prayers for patterned carpets, fluorescent lights and endless rows of slot machines. America is presented as an eternal state of suspended anticipation, where every chime promises salvation and every jackpot jingle resets the cycle. Beautiful, unsettling, hypnotic. One nill to big C! Capitalism composes one of the best ambient records you’ve heard all year.

V/A - Toothpaste For Your Elephant

Putting out a 2LP comp as your label’s first release in 2026 is a prettyyy ballsy move. Not exactly the safest way to introduce yourself when everyone’s attention span is measured in swipes and most labels are struggling to get a single LP out the door.

I salute that. I salute this!

Toothpaste For Your Elephant doesn’t feel like a random pile of tracks either. There’s an actual sense of curation (and taste) here, bouncing between endless six-string oceans, leftfield folk mutations, basement noise experiments and beautifully confused moments that somehow all make sense together. It rewards the full listen instead of begging you to skip around.

Compilations can be hard. Most of them end up more as playlists pretending to be albums. This one actually feels like an album and that is probably the biggest compliment you can give to a comp.

A debutante that takes a risk, commits to the format and actually delivers. More of this energy, please!!

Brokenchord - Lima Echo Crack! LP (South of North)

Repetition is one of those things that either makes you transcend or makes you check your handheld death cult device. Lima Echo Crack! lands firmly in the first camp.

South of North continues to be one of the few labels where repetitive rock music still feels healthy instead of nostalgic or just plain dumb. Yeah, the CAN etc. similarities are obvious. Pulse, hypnotic repetition, riffs that lock in and refuse to let go. But I’m getting no cosplay vibes here. Another ref could be 12 Rods’ Gay EP that we used to adore in our teens with my best friend Rasmus ”The Rock” Östling. There’s this scrappy energy running through the whole thing, stopping it from becoming another museum/revival piece. The songs actually move me. They have hooks hiding inside and the repetition has enough confidence and flow not to constantly annoy me.

Everything sounds lived-in.

Are you experienced? etc. etc.

Tight performances, just enough grime, just enough studio weirdness. The kind of record that understands restraint is often more ”psychedelic”, in the lack of a better word, than throwing x-amount of effects pedals at the problem.

Could I nitpick? Sure. But when the songs rule this hard, there’s honestly not much bitching to be done. Lima Echo Crack! baby. If repetitive rock n’ roll still has a pulse in 2026, South of North is definitely checking the heartbeat. <3

Well, hello everybody. Things have been real busy around here lately; Juho (aka, JT Cusamano) has been travelling around Sweden, Denmark, and Germany delighting audiences with his ever charismatic roadshow. There are still a couple dates in Copenhagen and Berlin to come, so if you happen to be in either place tonight or tomorrow, I highly recommend you get yerself down there. Meanwhile things continue to ramp up as we inch ever closer to launching the Monk’s Hood record label. In the event you’ve missed this update (and apologies if you’re already growing weary of hearing about it), we have TWO LPs set to release on July 10th. You can read a bit about them both in detail HERE. Better yet, you can stream and order them HERE.

With all that on, we’re running a bit below the standard clip in the MH reviews department. So, to both get the pump primed for the release of Ok Hotel (aka, MH002), and provide a bit of a compensatory place holder for snarky content you might have been expecting, good ole Conor Kiley himself has prepared a wonderful mix to keep you happy. We did manage to tack on a couple reviews at the end, too.

Cold Connie sez:

Radio KOKH: The Clean Hour!

Brought to you by the Compass Hygiene Center in Pioneer Square, Seattle.

https://www.mixcloud.com/monkshoodrecords/monks-hood-ii-june_mmxxvi-guest-dj-ck1/

1. Homer Quincy Smith - I Want Jesus to Talk with Me

Operatic, Gothic, Pre-War Gospel?! Is there more stuff like this out there?? Is this from planet Earth??

2. Cold Way Walking - Hot Luv in the City

Seattle’s greatest, absolutely least known band. I DO have a favorite song and this is it. Cats outta the bag now…

3. Incredible String Band - On the Dear Old Battlefield

4. The Grand Elegance - Song 1, Side 1 from the Warm Summer Nights LP

This band captured the darkness of Southern California in a beautiful and somewhat terrifying way. It was unintentional, but Grand Elegance scared the hell out of me when I saw them live. There was something truly dark going on…

5. Iggy and the Stooges - Hollis Brown

6. Thug Life - Under Pressure

7. New York City - Hang Your Head in Shame

8. Charles Stepney - No Credit For This

Taken from a collection of home demos. It’s like the lighter, more uplifting cousin of “There’s A Riot Goin’ On.’”

9. Royal Trux - Funky Son

10. Hanoi Rocks - Cafe Avenue

This is the first, punker, SUPERIOR version of this song. The b-side to their second single. Cafe Ave is more autobiographical than not, the band were legit homeless in Stockholm at the start of their run. I guess Helsinki was THAT BAD.

11. Cheater Slicks - Refried Dreams

I got this album from a friend as a teenager. I liked it, it was cool. Later, it came to make sad sense, as an “adult”, then I truly Loved it.

12. Charly Patton - Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues

Ruthlessly chooglin’ song about a tiny bug destroying your entire life.

13. Dave Davies - All Night Stand

Dave wrote this at 18 years of age.

14. The Vampires - Why Didn’t I Listen to Mother

15. The Heartbreakers - So Alone

Recorded live, 1976. I don’t think The Heartbreakers were ever better, or more dynamic, than with Richard Hell.

16. Washington Phillips - Mothers Last Words to Her Son

Signing off,

DJ Ck1

*****

As promised…

Sterling sez:

The Sprigs – For Red Riverbank (Bison)

At long last, some Sprigs on wax. I’m embarrassed to care as much as I do about the formatting — it really shouldn’t matter — but I’ve been waiting to own a proper Sprigs LP for quite some time. What to say about this project for the uninitiated? It’s a trio involving British underground polymath Rory Salter loosely inspired by Wind in the Willows.

There is both a playfulness and an obtuse gesture to narrative which renders all Sprigs recordings uniquely transportive. It’s rare to hear music this abstract feel so grounded in a sense of character and place. Part of this is on account of the specific blend of field recording, drone, and intermittent bursts of melodicism they always seem to braid in just and equal measures. For much of For Red Riverbank you’ll feel like a voyeur, hidden underneath a crowded table in a union hall for marxist moles and badgers; the sounds of their heavy pints and raking claws raining down clouds of psilocybic spores on your head. From here whistles, whispers, and static will stack and blend into long hazy passages that almost always arrive in tuneful reveries both strummed and plucked, but never sung.

Texturally and atmospherically, I’d say there is a lot about this record that might remind of early Microphones/Mt. Eerie. Both projects are remarkably adept at home recorded acousto-experimental world building. But where Phil Elvrum often opts to both disarm and ground his listeners via the naked vulnerability of his voice and prose, the Sprigs call you in with an impish sense of humour and an uncanny ability to kindle a nostalgic warmth at the centre of their experiments while also frosting the windows of your imagination.

Sanctuary of Praise – Ether Unending (Silver Traces)

I was never familiar with this group until the months leading up to the release of this record when, out of nowhere and seemingly all at once, a handful of buddies asked if I knew much about them. I did my due diligence, listened to what was already released online, and walked away a bit non-plused; studied, tasteful, home recorded gothic-leaning post punk. Really well done, but not really my cup of tea either. This LP, on the other hand, is a witchy head turner.

The distinguishing ingredient on Ether Unending is the spectral psych flavour most forwardly expressed in its instrumental passages and the key moments where acoustic stings are favoured over electric ones. In fact, calling the instrumental tracks on the LP “passages” isn’t really quite right. This record is boldly sequenced in a 50/50 balance of conventional songs and quasi-formless atmospheric compositions. Put another way, it’s as much an exp record as it is a “pop” one.

Where the earlier cassette release I’d scoped reminded me of grey-scaled, cold temp. 80s classics (the Sound, maybe even TVP’s Painted Word) Ether Unending conjures a more loamy collage of crow feathers, lascaux tattoos, chicken bone necklaces, and the wafting puffs of clove cigs. The particularly innovative bits are where they manage to graft the former onto the latter, landing on a quite original blend of the propulsive and jagged with the cryptic and incanted (see album highlight “Shattering (101 Days)” for reference).

Or Sobre Blau – Making Friends (Stroom)

I really admire how omnivorous Stroom is as a label. They cover so much ground in terms of style and flavour that I don’t think it’s really possible to describe what a prototypical release would even sound like. Of course this also means that I don’t always like everything they put out. There are a handful of items in their catalog every year which are just a little too aligned with specific aspects of the modern zeitgeist for my taste (namely, those which trade in the sonic equivalent of E-aesthetics). However, because the spirit of the label is so inherently curious and ranging, when the occasional release does fall flat for me it almost never turns me into the shit-talking grump the same record might do under another banner.

What’s interesting about Making Friends is the bipolarity it flashes between playing as a record I’d be just as likely to recommend as I would moan about. The half which works for me is stoney, collaged, and often sounds like Andreu G. Serra and Kiran Leonard not only have their guitars mic’d, but have directional condensers pointed out of their kitchen windows as well. At its best Making Friends remind me a bit of a particularly European version of Scott Tuma’s inverted renditions of American primitive guitarscapes.

I do, however, bump against the remaining half of this record which leans real hard into a 90s/00s post rock vibe. This is purely a taste issue for me, but I’ve never been into this type of guitar music. I find it self-serious and dull. As the world of indie-adjacent music seems to cycle through a parade of 90s influences, I’m not surprised we’ve ended up here in 2026. The collective celebration of releases like that Cancer House LP on Motion Ward being a prime example of what’s sticking in my craw at the moment.

The programme on this album frustratingly pivots back and forth between these two modes. I found the first track to be quite alluring, but by the time a full drum set and vocals showed up on the third track I was ready to turn it off entirely. But then, almost as quickly I was right back in it. And so on and so forth. Playing it back, and playing it again, I wanted to pan this album as much as I thought I wanted to recommend it. Which in the end, I guess, means I found it interesting on balance.

Cusamano’s sez:

Stephen Cogle w/Peter Stapleton - An Afternoon With Victor Dimisich (Siltbreeze)

There is a certain kind of never ending mystery surrounding recordings made by people in their twenties with little more than a few small beers, a four-track tape recorder and a half-collapsed vision of romance and the ruin. The mythological rites of the underground often try to flatten these moments into historical milestones or stamp them with a label of a proto-scene of some sorts (insert a joke about egg punk).

The immense cultural gravity surrounding both Cogle and especially Stapleton feel almost secondary when listening to this material. Stapleton’s role within the Christchurch underground from The Pin Group, SEP, and later The Terminals (my timeline and bands may be yay off - sue me, I don’t have the time or the energy to fact check from Discogs, it’s a goddamn Substack post after all) has become so canonized that it can sometimes obscure the immediacy the songwriting. What comes to life here is a group of young musicians trying to preserve moods / “compositions” before they disappear.

As expected the album’s rough feel is essential to its success, if you can use the word in this context, heh. Beneath the familiar demo-level gurgle that often accompany archival and non-archival NZ recordings from this or any era there are genuinely fantastic songs hiding in plain sight, like Mekong for starters.

It’s a standout - you know, one of those songs that feel like they are pressed between folkster lament and post-punk frustration. Even in the skeleton form, the songs reveal how intuitively Cogle and Staplester understood the atmospheré. It is easy to imagine more beating or more arranged versions existing somewhere in the parallel universe of Flying Nun mythologia, but this stripped-down feel feels definitive precisely because it remains itty bitty unresolved.

There is something deeply moving about hearing musicians before the full architecture of myth settles around them, before there are stories like Haino and the Dunkin Donuts.

The New Zealand underground of the late 70s and early 80s has become heavily historicized and understandably so, but records like these restore some nice instability to the whole. That is precisely why Siltbreeze remains such an important label. For decades Thomason Lax has operated like an cartographer of damaged and thanks to that american obsessive mad fuck and his gift of pressing records we have an documenta obscura in our hands - not for any completist value, but because the emotional core of the music breathes through the deceivingly simpleton form and the usual pulp.

Alice Kemp – A Profound Loss of Meaning (Tochnit Aleph)

“I’ve seen things, I’ve seen them with my eyes. I’ve seen things, I’ve seen them in disguise.”

On this stunner released by Tochnit Aleph, a label that I somehow always spell wrong, Alice Kemp uses duration and silence not to produce any calm, but to expose the listener to the ontology of silence.

The dominant and very long pauses between sounds become the true compositional material: stretches of near nothingness where anticipation begins to mutate into discomfort. Like waiting on somebody to slap you. Listening digitally, without the softening veil of wax’s surface noise, the emptiness becomes rather absolute.

There is something somewhat violent in this absolute, in this produced restraint. Contemporary experimental music tends to often treat silence as this spiritual hippie nonsense, as if reducing sound automatically would produce something, IDK - purity or transcendence. Kemp gracefully avoids this entirely. Her silences feel stripped of utopianism. Cold and suspended.

In the stark digital form of Bandcamp, the gaps and gasps form a frightening whole. Clean, severed, inhuman. The record seems to get that silence in the contemporary context is no longer ”natural”, but it is technological silence, emptied and compressed. Void produced by systems.

Thus Kemp has created a work that resists emotional legitness and legibility. It asks to be endured and in that endurance, something unsettling happens: the sense that silence is not the opposite of sound, but something much much more than that. Bravo!

*****

More soon <3

Just a quick-hit update to announce Juho will be peddling his way through Sweden, Denmark, and Deutschland in just a few weeks. In the event you cannot read my chicken scratch handwriting, fully legible info and ticket details (where available) below:

June 11: Umeå, Sweden at Hemliga Skolan
June 12: Stockholm, Sweden at Heaven Up Here
(book HERE)
June 13: Gothenberg, Sweden at Gathenhielmska Huset
(write discreetmusic.order_at_gmail_dot_com to book)
June 15: Copenhagen, Denmark at Peephole (next to Mayhem)
(write peepHole_at_proton_dot_me to book)
June 16: Berlin, Deutschland at West Germany

If you happen to find yourself in any of the above cities and places at the corresponding time I highly recommend making it out for our boy. You will not regret it, you will not forget it.

*****

In other news things have been cruising nicely along with the roll out of our first two physical releases. If you havent already, please get in and take a listen to both False Berries — Find the Gyres and Conor Kiley OK Hotel HERE.

As has likely been obvious since we joined forces in March, this newsletter is, in fact, the propaganda arm of something far more ambitious. And it’s with great excitement that we are now ready to announce our first two releases on Monk’s Hood Records.

Our first will be one of my own and my second release as False Berries. This is an album I’ve been chipping away at since Cuneiform Tabs put the bells and whistles on Age. In many ways I suppose it’s a logical extension of what I’m normally up to, maybe a bit more melodic this time around? You can decide.

Our second will be the solo debut record from my dear friend and long time collaborator, Conor Kiley. This is a haunted home-recorded wonder and a major impetus for my wanting to start a label in the first place.

There’s extensive detail below in the form of proper press releases and streaming widgets, all styled here in our standard review format. There’ll be hyperlinks for pre-orders for each, too.

We’re letting both these cats out of their respective bags on July 10. We’re so thrilled, and there’s plenty more coming soon as well. Without further ado…


Juho Sez:

False Berries – Find the Gyres [MH001]

Edition of 300 copies

Over the years Sterling has quietly carved out an essential role for himself. As half of Cuneiform Tabs (W.25/Superior Viaduct, World of Echo), an original member of Violent Change (Slothmate), and the sole driver behind False Berries (Slothmate), he has functioned as a facilitator of momentum - a kind of midfield presence. You know, the number 8; vision, restraint, distribution. The one who sees the play before it fully forms and moves it along accordingly. There’s a certain amount of humility to that position, but also a limitation. Because every so often the same sensibility that organises begins to demand its own centre, and the game shifts.

Find the Gyres is that shift made audible. Through the tape loops, collage, and songcraft, this is an album composed of processually re-shaping material where phrases repeat slightly off-axis and fragments resembling familiar tunes and melodies evolve into colorist visions echoing the cosmic.

Like a swirling vortex, it’s an album which consistently negotiates and plays with the orientation of the listener. Manipulating feelings of immediacy and distance in alternating patterns, all while consistently orbiting a centre of ecstatic melody. The results occasionally recall the crooked homespun clarity of figures like Syd Barrett, Martin Newell, or Flaming Tunes, though Find the Gyres cannot be reduced to points of reference and genre signifiers. If anything, such parallels only highlight how singular the surrounding architecture actually is.

As the first Monk’s Hood release, Find the Gyres feels like a condition being set. A way of approaching sound where construction and erosion are not opposites, but part of the same movements and systems. As such, it feels less like a beginning and more like a component within a much larger device that is always already revolving.

Digital and Vinyl pre-orders for both Europe and UK on our bandcamp HERE
UK vinyl preorder via our friends at World of Echo HERE
USA vinyl preorder via our friends at Stranded Records HERE

Sterling Sez:

Conor Kiley – Ok Hotel [MH002]

Edition of 200

A long time ago, during the messy death rattle of guitar music in the early 21st c., the NME once declared a young Conor Kiley “the future of rock and roll”. The hyperbole of this statement has proven unsurprisingly ironic; not because Kiley remains an obscure artist, but that now, nearly two decades on, it’s obvious that rock never had the future the journalists and industry bigwigs of the late aughts had deluded themselves into thinking it did. So, what happened to all those promising young talents raised on rock dreams? With ample time and perspective, it seems that removing the aspirational carrot from those who came of age thinking they could have careers like Oasis or GNR has meant those same talents have ultimately matured into far stranger, more complex and subtle artists.

For Kiley, this has meant evolving into a songwriter and recording artist who has repeatedly broken, rebuilt, and reimagined the prodigious gifts he started with into something refined, honest, and singular. He’s an alchemist; as interested in the ugly and crude DNA gurgling beneath the lids of all beautiful records as he is the witchcraft that can turn that same ugliness into beauty.

This record takes its name from a historic building in the Seattle neighbourhood of Pioneer Square. Built in 1914, it began as a haven of ill repute for shore-leave hooligans before improbably becoming a landmark venue during the grunge years of the 1980s. Eventually it fell derelict and was subsequently refurbished as low-income accommodations for artists. Kiley lived here from 2011 to 2015 and made this record at home in that time.

It is a deeply personal and diaristic album which takes a couple of key pieces as sacred texts; the post-structuralist blues of Hagerty and Herema, the pulpy romance of Sudden and Kusworth, and the ever-so-slightly more high-brow junkie bardism of Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, or Tim Buckley. It features some of his finest and most nakedly rendered compositions. Yet it’s also shot through with a wild spirit of experimentation. There are repeating intercalary blasts of thematic noise. There are covert recordings of blurry and touching interchanges between both friends and strangers. All of which is further scaffolded with telling renditions of tunes you may already know well. Taken in the aggregate, Ok Hotel plays like a recording that was made in secret by someone you love; a work so vulnerable it needed some time to meet its audience. Fortunately for us, that time is now.

Digital and Vinyl pre-orders for both Europe and UK on our bandcamp HERE
UK vinyl preorder via our friends at World of Echo HERE
USA vinyl preorder via our friends at Stranded Records HERE

In the brief space between this and our last dispatch of reviews it feels like the globe’s been spinning at 1.5X speed. Maybe that’s because my previous preamble was drafted from vacation. I even had the time to windbag about T.S. Eliot and twitching around with German moorhens. No such luck this time out. Maybe all this spring solar radiation is making the molecules vibrate faster, but this spring has made me feel like I’m living in one of those time lapse videos of flowers blooming at break-neck speed.

One thing I can say for sure is that there has been a surfeit of interesting releases in these last few weeks. Too many to capture in one go, in fact. But putting my arms around the ones Juho and I did manage to catch in our respective nets, I guess there are a few loose organising principles for the programme we’ve curated below. There’s less of the old thumps and bumps than normal (though I’m sure they won’t be gone for long). Lets just say it’s a selection of releases that sound particularly good while listening with your green ears on.

And would you look at that? We’ve even managed to get another mix up.

Just. In. Time.

It’s not quite as beefy as our last offering, but hey, who has time for all that, really?

https://www.mixcloud.com/monkshoodrecords/monks-hood-ii-april_mmxxvi/

And now…



Sterling Sez:

Tristan Magnetique – kasio volta, kasio ton [Cosmic Winneatou]

Tristan Magnetique is an alias of German synth wizard Guenter Schlienz, another perennial favourite around here going back to the early Slow Dose days. He is not only astoundingly prolific, but particularly adept at dilating time in his music. I don’t normally feel like this, but I really appreciate Schlienz’ proclivity for pushing runtimes well beyond the length of a standard wax platter. When coupled with the breadth and frequency of his release schedule, the wider character of his oeuvre takes on a remarkably generous, cosmos-scaled, scope where the borders between releases become gooey and permeable. Held together, it feels less like a formal discography and more like a comprehensive abstraction of a single person’s interior creative world.

Schlienz also has a composer’s touch for modular synthesis, which I usually find a bit inscrutable. Too often mod synth records strike me as inside-baseball showcases for a built-in audience of gear heads. No such trouble here, Schlienz’ most distinctive characteristic is actually a melodic one, meaning the technical bones of these recordings is almost always sublimated to the transportive primacy of the music they’ve been coaxed into producing.

kasio volta, kasio ton is my fav release of his in some time. It’s centred around the trademark melodic ambience Schlienz has cultivated over the years, but buffeted with repeating motifs which evoke early romantic and baroque atmospheres. It’s fitting that this release begins with a sample/collage of a German classical radio as the overall effect of this excellent cassette feels like a Sunday service in a church on the moon.

Alex Macfarlane – Gleams Louring [Hobbies Galore]

I hold many sonic fascinations and like to think that maintaining a healthy interest in the contemporary underground will keep you feeling young and sharp. But if there has ever been an ageless key to my heart, an enduring first love, it’s records that sit somewhere in the hinterland between “art rock” and prog. You know; Recommended Records, Warm Jets, No Birds, Signed Curtains, Jennifer and the yellow jokes coming out of her mind.

This LP speaks in a language I’m always ready to hear. It’s gentle, melodically spiraling, acid in the meadow music. It’s punctuated with vignettes that flirt with ambient composition, but is more firmly grounded in a sophisticated songcraft that is complex, graceful, and impeccably arranged. Nylon strings and Macfarlane’s willowy alto are the twin anchors here, with both often framed in beds of flutes, reeds, and crystalline keys. All stitched together with overdriven Kurihara-like leads.

Because it touches nerves that are both nostalgic and evergreen for me, there’s quite a bit I feel I’d compare it to. There’s heavy doses of Canterbury (solo Ayers or Allen especially), some Kate Bush evocations (particularly in the sliding fretless bass that occasionally features), and a good deal of turn of the century drag city-era Ghost. I realise now I’ve spent a fair amount of this blurb invoking bygone artists from decades long past, but it’s only because this LP reminds me of some of the records I’ve loved the longest. If you’d prefer contemporary analogs, I’d say Gleams Louring would fit nicely in a sequence between Clarissa Connelly’s The Voyager and Francis Plagne’s Into Closed Air. More importantly, though, is how this record plays as an evolution or extension of Macfarlane’s excellent earlier work (such as my personal fav., 2021’s excellent collab project Chateau I).

EMRA GRID – Eleven Finns [LINE]

Eleven Finns begins with a processual but patient stacking of gentle repeating motifs that gradually amount to a woozy head tripper that is really just my speed and flavour. If, like me, you can easily listen to the same 8 beautiful seconds of sound looping on a sampler, seemingly forever, it’s the kind of tune that will have you blissing out and closing your eyes almost as soon as it has started.

My excitement for the remainder of this album, however, varies a bit. Its second track, “Fact + True”, shifts into a head space that is crisp, brittle, and overtly ominous. It’s a bit of a tonal neck snapper, especially when compared to the overture. The generous way of reading such a shift is that EMRA GRID is expanding the palette of possibilities for the record. To my ears, however, it causes a disruptive bit of turbulence. Furthermore this clashing is not just about mixed moods, but also of fidelities at work throughout the remainder.

As it progresses Eleven Finns does eventually find a precarious balance between its modes of operation, alternating between gauzy ambient and jagged hi-definition dub-scapes. Collectively it most immediately reminds me of the LP Leland Kirby released as “The Stranger” back in 2013. The harsher bits also have a bit of an early Demdike flavour to them, too. On balance, though, Eleven Finns plays a bit too much like two different records that have clumsily sequenced together. The standout moments are stupendous, but the aggregate is a bit of a wobbly ride.



Thomas Bush – Rejoining [Kashual Plastik]

Basically released simultaneously as Bush’s Lost Domain debut, Guld (which I reviewed just a few weeks ago), Rejoining leaves me gobsmacked for a couple of reasons:

1.) This is an expansive companion to the Lost Domain release, which is an early short list front-runner for AOTY (it hasn’t really left my turntable at all since I brought it home). There’s an alternate scenario where these records could be sequenced as a single behemoth. They’re aesthetically contiguous without being duplicative in any way, which is quite an achievement considering how much music Bush is offering up at once. If you’ve already been grooving to Guld the last couple days, opener “Bleeding Edge” is going to feel like a logical extension of the same vibe. But where Guld is drum tight in its sequencing and palette, Rejoining is charmingly less disciplined. It’s slower moving, more expansive, and often quite surprising.

2.) When you take these records with Bush’s entire discography (under his own name, with RAP, or more recently with cATHOLIC CHURGH), it’s beginning to take on the profile of a truly distinctive recording artist. In the aforementioned write-up I posted for Guld I compared Bush to Richard Youngs for this reason; they both seem voraciously expressive while also sharing a polymath’s skill for code switching across different types of releases. Most importantly, you can always tell it’s Bush regardless of how collaborators, modes, or instruments are configured around him.

I don’t really know what else to say. He’s on a roll. Get ‘em both, and get ‘em now.


My New Band Believe – My New Band Believe [Rough Trade]

I normally don’t feel like releases of this scale are worth writing about, mostly because I’d rather recommend LPs you won’t find exhaustively covered in places like pitchfork or quietus. And while I suppose I can enjoy getting into my own editorial headspace about pretty much anything, I’m fairly certain most of you read this blog for the links more than the prose. In keeping with the timeless maxim, however, there are naturally exceptions to every rule.

So, why this one? My New Band Believe has been both the source of some ongoing debates with a handful of my closest consiglieres and an album I find intriguing and irritating in equal measures. It’s admirably bold and ambitious as well as annoyingly maximalist and overly reliant on virtuosity. In short, I guess I think it’s pretty interesting regardless of whether or not I can make up my mind if I “like” it.

I didn’t care much for black midi, Cameron Picton’s previous band, and generally find the surrounding notion of the “Windmill scene” both precious and contrived. I’ve definitely approached this album with specific preconceptions, but it’s been curious to see where and how they actually map onto Picton’s new project.

For starters, unlike black midi’s Naked City for zillenials routine, this is a florid art-pop record whose closest analogs (to my ears) are Song Cycle era Van Dyke Parks or even Neil Hannon at his most avant. In terms of songcraft, arrangements, and production, it’s filled with capital C Choices. When they work the results can be arresting, but when they miss they really spoil the soup. Unfortunately, even the tunes I’m most impressed by tend to feature at least one of either an overwrought choir, a hammy crescendo, or passages of excessive noodling I could do without.

I chalk part of the lack of restraint to age and part of it to taste. But I also wonder what this LP would have sounded like without the apparatus of Big Indie behind it. Existing publicity makes explicit mention of how many musicians, engineers, and studio spaces were used to make this record. When you tally it up it’s comparable to the org chart for a Small to Medium Enterprise. The problem is how often it feels like you can hear all that machinery. All of which was further compounded watching an un-mic’d acoustic performance from the Rough Trade shop in Brick Lane, which I think I actually prefer to the album itself.

Juho’s sez:

Kaloja - A Body of Water [Artetetra]

Kaloja’s A Body of Water marks the first vinyl outing from Finnish outsider mainstay Jan Anderzén and UK-based Hive Mind affiliate Paul Wilson, operating usually under his F.Ampism moniker. ABoW is a record that feels, above all, like a real blend - not people meeting, but their ways of being with sound mixing into one strong whole.

If Jon Hassell once framed the “fourth world” as a fusion of the primitive and the futuristic “coffee-coloured classical music”, then A Body of Water cheekily goes a step beyond. This is fifth-world music: synthetic & humid, a place where digital gloss and organic growth blur into an unstable continuum.

Kaloja amplifies perhaps the more hyperactive end of F.Ampism’s palette. Like it’s been nudged softly into drive mode, jittery and euphoric, equal parts Adderall sharpness and weed-haze diffusion. There’s a constant sense of motion: swooping arcs, bubbling textures and elastic non-rhythms that never quite settle. And yet, beneath the spastic surface, the record retains a meditative core, a strange pull that keeps it from dissolving into chaos.

For Anderzén (and why now Wilson too for that matter, as he is too hailing from the same parts of the underground), this feels like a natural progression. Where earlier phases leaned into improvisational, semi-acoustic folk abstraction, his more recent (15 years or so) output has embraced bright, candy-coated electronics. A Body of Water sits firmly in that latter zone, pushing the artist’s practice further into surreal, almost cartoon physics.

There’s also a distinctly Clarkian-school quality to the whole affair, echoing the saturated/maximalist weirdness that is associated with maestro (*takes a bow*) Spencer Clark, but to be fair to them Kaloja feels not so much as a derivative, but a clearer mirror on the wall of the shared corridor. If Clark is Mr. Newton these boys are Einsteining, you catch my drift.

Ultimately, A Body of Water lives up to its name: a shifting, reflective surface where instincts, and sensibilities ripple into one another. It may be the sum of its parts - but those parts have rarely sounded this uncontained and smile inducing.


Love Chants – Live on Cockatoo Island [Burgan Triangle Tapes]

Ok! Now my radar is BEEPING a little louder. After the magnifique “FA SP SV” tape, Burgan Triangle follows up with an Aussie band Love Chants live cassette! Yeah baby!

If I remember correctly, usually operating as a duo, but here expanded into a trio (?) Love Chants travels the rocky road of non-form rock instrument improvisation. A travelled road fo’ sho’, but in no way an easy ride and certainly not one taken for granted.

LC is exploratory but not totally meandering more & it’s kinda hard to melt hearts with this kind of material in 2026, but Love Chants somehow bypasses that entirely. With their noodle soup hey make the Root Chakra tingle and hum rather than aiming for an easy cowards way out.

The recording itself captures that edge-of-structure feeling well. Loose & intentional, raw but not totally careless of form. You can sense the environment pressing in, the trio reacting not just to each other but to the moment, stretching the presented ideas until they almost break and then pulling them back just enough to keep the red thread alive.

The release comes somewhat back-to-back after the Grapefruit LP and considering how rare a treat it is for Love Chants to even switch on their gear we should consider ourselves Lucky Lukes catching this one in the wild.

Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra - Concert A Paredes Le Lez Vol.1 & 2 [Souffle Continu]

Pretty self-explanatory from the title alone, but it still manages to surprise. Jazz with a pulse - loose, ecstatic, naive and deeply rhythmic music that insists you move. There’s a warmth to the thingy & a communal glow, where horns and percussion seem to orbit each other in this joyful, chaotic n’ feverish danca. It’s beautiful, smile-inducing French jazz that melts your heart while simultaneously nudging the temperature up a few degrees toward summer. I can see myself opening a second bottle.

François Tusques set out to open French hearts with this project, but somewhere along the way he reached much further, past time, through vinyl, all the way to a Finnish maniac in 2026. Political, spiritual, celebratory, all at once. Just groovy bastardos, chants, and a sense that music can still gather people into something bigger than themselves.

I already know what tomorrow looks like: I’ll be dancing my way to work with this in my headphones and somewhere in Pori, people will glance over a bit and wonder what’s gotten into that madman.

Chihei Hatakeyama - Unconsciousness Silence [Constellation Tatsu]

Lots of water has flowed under our local river Kokemäki since Hatakeyama’s 2006 Kranky debut Minima Moralia, named after Theodor Adorno’s book of the same title, a text preoccupied with alienation, loss, and the dulling force of conformity. In the years since, successive waves of post-internet aesthetics have redistributed the language of ambient music to the point where Hatakeyama’s once somewhat distinct hissing drone now registers as a preset. What used to feel patient and intentional increasingly comes across as a kind of ambient default setting. Heavy on the reverbia, ”pleasantly” textured, vaguely melancholic etc. etc.

There’s a sense that the wider ecosystem has caught up and in doing so quietly drained the impact from this particular approach.

Still, writing Hatakeyama off entirely in some detached, nihilistic “yeah, this is some kind of tapestry, sure” mode would feel like giving the music too easy an exit. If anything, the more frustrating thing is how comfortably it sits within that very reading, just existing in that broad, overfamiliar middle ground where influence and indistinction blur together.

I read today that the infamous first canto of The Wasteland is widely interpreted as an inversion of the opening to the Canterbury Tales. Where Chaucer sees a spring rain that bathes “every veyne in swich licóur” Eliot sees April, “the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of a dead land”.

As an April Taurus it’s easy for me to see it both ways; I always start to feel a little anxious and wobbly this time of year. Something about cyclical renewals starting to feel increasingly morbid. That being said, at present I’m sat here in the lovely southwest of Germany, visiting family. 5 days ago I was shin deep in melting snow, hiking the Schwarzwald. Shortly after I was walking the banks of the Neckar river, keeping an eye on the moorhens.

Thinking about how any of this relates to Monks Hood, I suppose the mixed polarities of my alternating optimism and dread mean that I’ve chosen to highlight a handful of prickly anxious releases dosed with dimensions of beauty (maybe this describes all the records I tend to feature here??).

Not unlike the moorhens, I suppose there is also something relevant about industrious romantics building futile little nests on the edges of swift-moving fluvial ecosystems. Just what are Juho and Sterling building here, you might ask? And what bounty or folly will our efforts ultimately bring by the arrival of sweet summer? You’ll have to keep checking in to find out. BUT, for now, we press chaotically ever onwards.

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Sterling sez:

Index for Working Music – Bunker Intimations II [Tough Love]

I’ve seen Index play quite a bit over the last few years and will say that they’re a truly charismatic live band. They present themselves with an organic chemistry that’s really only possible when creative people commit to acting as an actual collective. This also means they can occasionally catch fire and go from being quite good to positively scorching over the course of a set.

What really works for me about Bunker Intimations II is that it’s a recording which feels sired by the same wild animating spirit that can produce their most memorable gigs. According to the liners it was improvised and recorded within a brief window of 3 days. The result sounds both fluid and unrehearsed, in all the best ways. The performances are patient and heady, and you’ll often feel as if you can hear the individual players carefully listening to each other before they pick up their own instrument(s) and engage.

Furthermore, Bunker Intimations II is exacting and deliberate as to where and when it does choose to either deploy its spare moments of multi-tracking or to use the studio as an instrument itself. It always knows when to lean into its (largely) live/improv energy and when to introduce that extra touch of post-facto magick to elevate the mix (see the latter-half acoustic guitar part on vibey a-side standout Rice Timeshare for reference).

Finally, the sequencing is also really well considered for an album with this type of energy. “Going to Heaven on the End of a String”, the album’s most conventional song, arrives like a hit of bitter sucrose just when you need it. That extra little lift to carry you all the way through the excellent deconstructionist Chrome-scape of album closer “World, Goodnight”.

Trogloditii – Rececaverna (EP) [Stoned to Death]

Long-time subscribers should be well familiar with the tired hobby horse that is my complete lack of amusement or interest in the seemingly endless revival of 90s alternative stylings. All of which is to say I’m quite surprised to find myself enjoying this concise yawlp of Cows/AmRep-styled cave rock from the almost-too-aptly named “Trogloditii”.

For starters, I’m quite into the fidelity. This has a practice space jaggedness that most immediately reminds of Bridget Hayden’s excellent “SCHISMS” releases from a couple years back. But I’m also quite into the vocal performances, which are almost entirely onomatopoeiac and pre/post lingual.

It’s drunk and psychotic in a way that makes me nostalgic for the countless times I’ve tried to capture this type of shampoo-drinking magic with any number of wobbly peers in the wee hours over the years. Basically, Rececaverna plays like the type of recording you always hope you are going to make when you agree to go to an unfamiliar rehearsal space after the bar closes.

Édition d’Art – Déploiment de L’immuable [Kashual Plastik]

I have a lot of time for Laure Boer. Compared to many of her peers, I find her specific brand of hauntological collage to be particularly distinctive precisely because it’s always spiked with a little nastiness. With this record, a collaboration with Franz Wrakhowitch, noise always feels like the scaffolding and melody the trim (rather than the other way around). Passages are unmistakably beautiful, but danger is seemingly always around the corner; a looming threat that any melody or delicate vocal performance could ultimately resolve as a bleary peaked and blinking signal, or an unending flat tire thump of static.

Both Franz and Laure are Kashual Plastik stalwarts, so if that’s always been your kinda thing there’s nothing here you aren’t going to like. If you’re listening for the first time this is just as solid as anything either has released before.


dc11 – Stuck in the Overhead [Falling Ethics]

I drifted towards dance music in my 20s because it felt more vital and legitimately underground than what had become of the punk and metal scenes of my youth. A lot of this was about the functionality of the music; namely, its capacity to make people just forget themselves and start moving. But more than that, it was also realising that a lot of what I found still appealed to the sensibilities of my dark rat heart.

For better or worse I’m mostly a housecat these days, so — when I do get the occasional wild hare to stay up late and join the night people — I am almost always hoping it sounds like this once I’ve been patted down and had my wrist stamped. Stuck in the Overhead is an EP that comfortably fills that precarious zone just between the hostile and the intoxicating. It’s frothy, dark, repetitive, and squarely on the grid. It’s also another killer EP from Falling Ethics, who seem to specialise in this specific mode.


Skee Mask – F [self-released]

I hesitated to include this as I just reviewed his recent Illian 12” a couple weeks ago. F is part six of a series of curatorial hard drive work Skee Mask has been uploading to his bandcamp since March 2022 (though the dates of the recordings included in each seem to go back much farther). If you’ve been following along the whole time, the formatting here should be quite familiar. This series functions like a bottomless appendix to his already robust catalog of official releases, even down to its indexical naming convention.

Each edition contains an expansive collection of experiments in atmosphere and rhythm; always playful and occasionally unexpected. However, because this series seems to operate as a meditation on process as opposed to, say, a boundaried idea of “an album”, it’s a bit difficult comparing or differentiating F from E, D, C, etc. Not that it should matter. It’s really compelling to hear Skee Mask show his work this way.

Furthermore, given that each collection allows you to “name your price”, the whole series feels like an incredibly generous way of calling his audience into the wider project. Many of my favourite recordings are works in progress which were shared with me by friends and peers because they feel like hardwired access to the wild and true nature of creativity before it’s edited, polished, and circulated for consumption.

That being said, given how great much of this unreleased material is — and considering how much Skee Mask has already officially released — one cannot help but also wonder what might happen if he experimented with being more of a D’angelo and less of Bob Pollard, so to speak.

Abby Sundborn – Holding Pattern [A Colourful Storm]

I don’t know when it happened, but I seem to have grown immune to the sophisticated charms of the cello, at least to how it’s normally deployed in the context of underground or experimental music these days. I have better sense than to hyperbolically write off an entire instrument, but I must say I’ve reached my saturation point for minor key mood pieces that could interchangeably work as soundtracks for “elevated horror” films.

It’s a shame because this recording is technically and texturally really well put together. The live mic sounds are deep and gorgeous. The delay work (particularly on the first track) is really subtle and wonderful. Sundborn is also, clearly, a super skilled and emotive player. As a thought experiment, though, I like to imagine a version of this exact set up and concept but centred around major key melodies and patterns. That or leaning all the way in the other direction and exploring the brutal severity you can wrench out of horse hair and cat gut (a la Conrad’s Four Violins, say). As it’s actually presented, though, Holding Pattern unfortunately lands a little too squarely in the goatee stroking middle ground for me to recommend.

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Juho sez:

Alyssa (Förlag För Fri Musik)

Melancholia, or melancholy, is a concept found throughout ancient, medieval and premodern medicine in Europe, describing a condition marked by depressed mood, bodily complaints and at times even hallucinations and delusions. The name “melancholia” comes from the old medical belief of the four humours: disease or ailment being caused by an imbalance in one or more of the four basic bodily liquids.

It is precisely this idea of invisible magic fluids tipping out of alignment that forms the spine of Alyssa’s self-titled record. What we hear is a system in flux: tones accumulating, disappearing and reconfiguring, never fully settling.

Personality types were similarly determined by the dominant humour in a particular person. According to Hippocratic tradition (internet helping me here), melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile, hence the name, from Ancient Greek μέλας (melas), “dark, black,” and χολή (kholé), “bile.” A person predisposed to this imbalance was thought to carry a melancholic disposition. Within the broader schema, this condition was associated with earth, autumn, the spleen, and qualities of coldness and dryness; in astrology, it fell under the influence of Saturn, giving rise to the term saturnine.

The duo of Irma Krook and Dan Johansson make this godawful condition into sound. They wrap the listener in a dense ongoing blanket, stretching it across speakers until it becomes less a piece of music than a place. By nature architectural, even perhaps monumental. Their restrained ecstasy manifests as static, luminous drones rising from hissing fountains of sound. At some points the synthetics swell so motionless if pressure were being redistributed within the speakers. Hah. I’ve said it once, but Dan Johansson is a human pedal that has one knob, more sap.

Over time, the granular hissings & drones and the occasional more structured parts begin to take function.

The wholeness of it all starts to resemble a death chant... Across different cultures and places and stuff, these death waltzes have occupied a particular role in musical history - laments sung to guide the dead, to process communal grief, to mark thresholds between worlds. These forms frequently rely on repetition, duration and vibration. Alyssa taps into this lineage indirectly, stripping the chant and leaving only its skeletal residue.

From here, the question emerges almost unavoidably: is this a lament of sum sorts? Certainly not a personal one, but perhaps something broader, collective and unresolved and too unclear to articulate directly. The slow suffocation of ecosystems, the quiet escalation of destructive technologies, the normalization of all things fucked up. Modern music for modern troubles.

The music does not point explicitly, but its refusal to resolve begins to feel analogous to a wider refusal of the so-called capitalist realism.

It is difficult in this context not to think of the writer I’m currently listening to, Mark Fisher, who described contemporary life as marked by “the slow cancellation of the future.” The phrase hangs over this boat like a horizon. Fisher’s work traced the ways systemic conditions produce these psychic states, how imbalance is not just within you, but in its essence is ambient and constructed. That he later died by suicide (RIP) only deepens the resonance here: melancholia as constantly lived condition, inseparable from the fucked up world that produces it.

Still, to reduce Alyssa to a political statement would totally flatten what makes it so fucking compelling. Its strength lies in Total Ambiguity, in its ability to function simultaneously as abstract sound and as a kind of omen. The droning feels both ancient and subterranean, like wind moving across structures or a transmission arriving from a future already stripped of expectation.

Henry Birdsey - Blue Fifty-Seven [Blue Tapes]

Slow-forming drowners from this Vermont-based composer. When someone studies static or what could be called near-static textures, the risk is always sterility but here the attention to timbre becomes one of spiritual level. Birdsey leans into hyperfocus with a devotional patience that feels like listening extended.

It recalls one of magister Alvin Lucier’s ideas that sound itself is already sufficient material that resonance, interference, and decay can carry meaning. But where Lucier went and often exposed acoustic phenomena with clinical clarity, Birdsey lets things go to haze.

The non-melodic aspect is crucial to the Toivonen-lens. By skipping or not relying too much on melodies, Birdsey kinda avoids the emotional shorthand that can so easily tip into half-assed sentimentality - what smartpants Mr. Adorno once criticized as the false immediacy of aesthetic pleasure. There is no simple entry point, no resolution waiting at the end - instead, the listener is asked to endure a kind of suspension where meaning is slowly becoming alive. As with the best static pieces, the longer you stay, the more you notice. Not just in the sound, but in the ways of your own listening.

Iris Our - Victual Vittle Bottle Cunt [Recital]

New projects often signal fresh starts, but some artistic impulses feel like threads that refuse to be cut / sins that don’t wash themselves away.

Iris Our, consisting of Recital mainstay and ambient maximalista Kiera Mulhern and fellow label mate Sydney Spann, operates muh in a space where spoken word, fragile atmospheres and poetic intent intertwine. Mulhern’s reputation as a composer of thoughtful ambience (don’t you dare to fucking @ me) carries through refracted - not-so-solitary, dialogic, jokester and iddy biddy confrontational, as can be drawn from the title itself already.

There’s an interesting parallel to be drawn with a certain corner of gothenburgianism associated to the trio Demeters Döttrar (Ida Skibstedt, Astrid Mortensen, Charlott Malmenholt) and perhaps also to Carrie DeCunzo Mirande’s recent long player My Shadow. All of these projects & ideas share a kind of angst & intensity that feels rooted in text and in equal parts to sound. Moments of sparse tonal drift are punctuated by language that leans toward the philosophical, brushing against the pessimistic introspection in the lineage of Schopenhauerism gone femme.

Yet, for all its heaviness, the record is not devoid of light. Small glimmers of beauty emerge. Emergent ambience(?), Victual Vittle Bottle Cunt ultimately feels like a work of suspended play between expression and restraint, the decay of poetry and the decay of sound, lingering within, letting discomfort / beauty / highs / lows - coexist, here is presented the trve beauty of uneasy balance. Recital delivers, as can be expected from torchbearers - amalgamated melt of Flux and ambience.

Jonas Torstensen - Vildfaren i hjertet [Afvikling Kassetter]

Labeled on Bandcamp as “not very impressive piano music” by the blind and insanely productive composer / label head / tape head Jonas Torstensen, this release sets its own tone with a kind of disarming humility that feels both sincere and slightly misleading. I had the chance to hang out and share the stage (and few beers) with him in September 2025 while visiting Copenhagen, and that experience alone made it clear that understatement is very much part of Torstensen’s artistic language.

Issued in a god-knows-how-many edition and quite possibly never much circulating in any physical or digital form until now, when it quietly appeared on Bandcamp via the artist himself - this recording feels not like a formal release and more like a document that slipped into public view. It consists of two tracks: one stretching to around 13 minutes, the other just over eight. Across both pieces, JT circles around these fragmented & hesitant themes, letting them come alive and dissolve. Pauses and bleeps of his smartphone interrupt the flow, giving the music a sense of thinking in real time.

It may not be his most “worked-out” material, nor does it necessarily feel fully composed in the traditional sense of composition, but I think that’s where its core value lies. It’s a process recording. As a release, it functions like a primitive map of his approach to his main instrument that is piano. It’s inherently exploratory, intuitive and pretty much unconcerned with conventional structures and function of a release. You can hear ideas forming and unforming, motifs that seem to kinda question their right to exist as they come to be.

Torstensen clearly possesses an intense, almost manic creative drive and he belongs to that rare group of artists who allow music to arrive rather than forcing it into predetermined shapes. There’s a raw immediacy here that recalls Brian Wilson’s “cocaine sessions” recordings, moments like where the tape is simply rolling and the artist is fully inside the act of making, completely unfiltered and aware of him/herself. It has that “fly on the wall” quality, where the listener is not an audience member and is more a witness of all things happening.

For those interested in tracing Torstensen’s inner workings i.e. how sound becomes form, how hesitation becomes gesture etc. etc., this release offers something rather intimate. It may call itself “not very impressive,” but in its openness and refusal to work on itself (does this sound familiar, if so…), it reveals a certain cockyness that more deliberate works often obscure.

Andrianne Lenker - Live at Revolution Hall [4AD]

Sometimes some people, no matter what you think about it, are simply gifted in a way that resists explanation.

And yet, I have to admit something that’s always very complicated my relationship to Lenker’s work: I’ve often felt an almost disproportionate amount of disappointment in the company she keeps and in the vessel she chooses for her music. The broader context like the band arrangements and the so-called “aesthetic framing” can feel like a kind of soft barrier between her and the raw source she’s more than clearly tapped into. It’s as she travels this “river of sound”, the same river all of us who care about music are trying, in our own ways, to navigate, but she sometimes chooses a boat that’s too ridiculously decorated and too plastic for the journey. You can still sense the depth of the water beneath her, but the surface is muddy and clouded.

Because of that those choices have at times stood in the way of my full immersion in her songcraft. Not completely, no no. Never completely, but enough to create a kind of distance, a hesitant feeling of “mmmhm”. I kind of hear what’s possible, what’s almost breaking through and I wish for less obstruction, less of anything that isn’t absolutely necessary.

But then I collide with the Live at Revolution Hall tape and suddenly most of these barriers fall away.

Listening to her in this tape’s setting, I can’t help but think of maestra Joni Mitchell - not in any structural kind of way, but in that deeper recognition of singular gift. The songs navigate fastly, hiss & sincere songwriting pops up, fingerpicked plucks hit or miss and the tape flutters. I’m happy that such a hyped superstar (yuck) that is Adrianne Lenker, presents herself in this context as it might pull the Populus finally towards the appreciation of imperfection.

Travel this wooden boat, Lenker! It will do the world a world of good.

H.T Nuotio - The People’s Synthesizer Plays Itself [Hemliga Skolan]

When I press the play button on the internet H.T Nuotio punches me in the face w/ a question: “what remains of human intention when systems begin to operate beyond us, beside us and perhaps eventually without us.” The premise of this all is deceptively simple. A modular system derived from the vision of visionary Serge Tcherepnin is set into motion, left unattended, allowed to go about its way.

The mad artist becomes a creator of conditions. Does this sound familiar? It should. This gesture immediately raises a question that extends far beyond the body of electronic music. Art even.

What is Work when the Worker steps away? Where lies the responsibility when the process continues without supervision?

The historical weight of the Serge system is pretty much the key point here. It was conceived as an instrument for the people, an answer to exclusivity, a democratization of sonic exploration. It belongs to a lineage of utopian technological promises, moments when machinery was imagined as a liberating force rather than mechanisms of oppressive control that they are today. The system plays itself, but it does so in a world where automation and AI has long ceased to be emancipatory by their nature and has instead become symbols of robbery of labor, meaning and value.

One is reminded in the blurb of the early experiments of Morton Subotnick and Pauline Oliveros, yet there is a crucial difference. Those earlier works were full of human & optimistic probing, gestures of curiosity reaching into the unknown. Here, the untamed unfolds with a certain amount of darkness.

The comparison to William Basinski’s loops and The Caretaker is inevitable, but also very pleb. Those works dealt with memory, decay, and the fragility of recorded media. Here, decay is not imposed upon the medium. It’s a mapping of a system alongside the presence of an observer, not a decayer. The circuits here do not remember “anything”. There is no hauntological blanket to wrap yourself to. Circuits merely transform energy from 0 to 1, but there’s an amount of beauty in that bruteness too.

The tension of the album lies in its relation to labor. Think more: a cousin to Omit’s isolated engineer paranoia or Phil Niblock’s fixation on work and its inherent aesthetic and revolutionary qualities. The track titles as dates imply documentation, routine. Some kind of workmanlike approach. Nuotio has a clear process. He sets up the conditions, observes and records. This all resembles a kind of certain scientific or industrial approach.

There is nothing new in all this, but that is the laziest argument in the world - and as we all know the self playing synthesizer is no symbol of freedom. It mirrors a fucked up world in which systems operate without direct human control. May it be the financial markets observed by the bulls and the bears, algorithmic platforms created by fascistic nerds with schoolyard bruises, automated infrastructures of psychotic gazillionaires; these all exhibit similar qualities. They are set amorally in motion, perhaps adjusted, sometimes monitored, but never fully understood.

Well… Brave new world, I presume? Ecce Homo 2.0. Well, at least Hannu gave me some lamentation tunes. See you fucks in the afterlife afters!

I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but here in London we seem to finally be capable of stringing together 3-4 consecutive days of warmth and sunshine. This isn’t to say the lords of March and April don’t have any icy surprises left in store, but for now it’s difficult not to feel the lift of spring. There are breaking leaf buds on the trees, I’m waking up to the sound of birdsong, and dammit if my fingers don’t feel a bit lighter, too. Since joining forces and rebranding as Monk’s Hood, Juho and I find ourselves that extra bit motivated to stay abreast of some new releases and type up our inane opinions about them. If we can keep it up, we’d love to deliver a dispatch of reviews on a fortnightly basis, but seeing as this is ultimately a labour of love we also reserve the right to play hooky now and again. But, just to prove we really do have the wind at our backs, please also enjoy the first of what we hope will be a regularly repeating series of Monk’s Hood mixes as well. Nothing necessarily thematic tying this one together, just a programme of tunes we’ve been talking about lately:

https://www.mixcloud.com/monkshoodrecords/monks-hood-i-march-2026/

Tracklist:

Archipelago Brewing Company — Child of God
Peter Hammill — Motorbike in Afrika
George Harassment — ToTo Rollo
Daisuke Tobari — [02.24]
Dog Food — His Hand Tightened
Death Ryder Band — Lay Me Down
Arianne Churchman & Benedict Drew — Cuckoo
Blades of Joy — Ill Be Around
Kevin Ayers — Song From The Bottom of a Well
Pretty Things — Parachute
Nadi Qamar — Earth Quintessence
Red Crayola — The Shirt

Ghedalia Tazartez —La Berlue Je T’aime
Buffy-Saine Marie — God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot
Gyllene Divor — Ni Har Ingen Tunnelbana
Pekka Streng — Sisältäni Portin Löysin
Collette Roper —Piano Pieces #1
Connie Converse —Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains)
Vyto B — Tricentennial 2076
Dadamah — High Tension House
Nico —The End (John Peel session 1974)

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And now, some reviews…

Sterling’s picks:

Dogs Versus Shadows & Nicholas Langley – 16mm [Strategic Tape Reserve]

A lot of what Strategic Tape Reserve normally peddles isn’t quite “musical” enough to fully grab me. But their releases possess an anarchic spirit I find reliably interesting, which is why I always tune in. This tape turned my head right away. There is actually a surprising amount of musicality afoot, but it’s cleverly obscured, just offstage, by a scrim of fizz, crackles, and creeps. This inversion of atmosphere and tunefulness frequently produces the effect of feeling like you’re listening to two improbably synchronized recordings simultaneously; the record you’re listening to on your system and the one bleeding through the floorboards from your downstairs neighbour. If, that is, your neighbour also has a penchant for records that sound like exotic postcards from fever dreams. For sure RIYL Ferraro/Clark, etc. The best moments throughout definitely will remind you of Pacific City Sound Visions.

Briva – Pelaggio [Burgan Triangle Tapes]

Absolutely killer drone cassette running the gamut from patient, brown-note synth dirges to long-form disembodied nerve janglers. Listen loud enough and you should get some solid molar rattles going. But it’s not all just slow motion thunder. There is a cinematic and transportive programme here, too. And if you ride along for the whole tape it’ll really take ya places.

It’s also worth shouting out Burgan Triangle Tapes which, to my mind, fills a very specific niche really well. Since starting in 2023 they have done nothing but release reliable noise and drone records (I think I counted 38?!), always high quality, and always priced to move (especially if you’re looking to buy digital. This release will run you $1 AUD, for example). It’s quite the resource if you’re a specific type of head (which if you’re subbed to this boondoggle, it’s likely safe to assume you are).


Picture – eeeeeeee [Short Span]

Yet another impressive release for Sheffield’s Short Span and my first favourite record of 2026. Firstly, for an album with this type of palette it feels dizzyingly uptempo. It blends a familiar mix of knocks, thumps, and dubbed-out groaning into a positively kinetic flurry. The effect is like watching a zootrope lurch into motion. At first you can identify all the pieces, each individually animated by a rising centrifugal force. Yet eventually, after crossing some imperceptible threshold, the total effect changes and an entirely new sensation of motion is rendered; a gentle loping gracefully inscribed within a swiftly moving cyclone of sound.

A lot of this is rendered by its penchant for keeping time with both an unending kick/hat combo and the pervasive use of strobing metronomic hums and wobbles. The first two tracks of this record in particular feature repeated bursts of sound which feel like staccato’d gusts of wind on your ears, lending it a distinctive sense of producing forward motion through space. When held together with the relentless on-the-grid programming of the underlying drum tracks, all the compositions of eeeeeeee magically produce a twin experience of momentum in both the mind and the body. Sometimes moving together, sometimes wandering on parallel exploratory trajectories. It’s all quite psychedelic.


Turner Williams Jr. – Viperine [Mistralphone]

Okee doke. I’m a bit all over the road with the Disque Omission crew and its affiliates. I really don’t get the hype around the Orion Music Workshop LPs, but I LOVED the Krakatoa record from Shelter & Orion with Turner Williams Jr. So, I approached this record with a cautious optimism and it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride sorting out where I’m landing.

It really doesn’t help that the first track is far and away my least favourite. In fact, it irked me enough to start a far more reactionary review about what experimental guitar records can do or should be, in an existential sense. I basically missed the remainder of the LP while I drafted an entire polemic about the crucial difference between being able to cultivate moods but not build worlds. It really didn’t help that Tom Val’s liners begin by comparing Williams Jr. to the twin giants of psychedelic guitar music, Fahey and Basho.

But then I settled down, started it over, and found myself really enjoying significant passages of this album. Sure, I still have some nit-picks (mostly concerning an over-use of digital reverb in specific spots), but its best moments are indeed quite transportive. As a player, Williams Jr. has a particular skill for deploying economic bursts of speed on the fretboard which, when paired with tasteful delay-work and/or multi-tracking, can transform frenzied flurries of hammer-ons into swarms of sonic insects.

By the end, the album I came away thinking about the most was Fred Frith’s first, Guitar Solos. In other places (namely the standout, blueweed) I felt I detected the use of Evening Star-esque harmonic swells. All catnip for me. I don’t know why I wanted to be so hard on this. It’s probably because Tom Val stole my lighter at Cafe Oto one time.


MoMA Ready – Day Ones [MoMA Ready]

Infectious programme of what the artist themself has advertised as “STRAIGHT UP CHEAP SHOTS”, Day Ones is collection of house remixes that overtly cannibalises some of the most classic items from the 90s songbook (the first track is built around an instantly recognisable Kerri Chandler/System vamp, for example). Nothing remotely cryptic, ironic, or gate-keepy happening here at all. Just a celebration of dance music as a gratis collection from an excellent artist to their supporters. You can pay what you want for this, but considering how inherently generous this “LP” is, you should be too.

The Only Living Boys – First Album Demos [Vegetarian Records]

I’m not sure I can objectively evaluate this record as it forges quite specific regional pathways of nostalgia directly to my upbringing as a teenager in the pacific northwest. In the late 90s and early 2000s, for me and my sleazy buddies, I don’t think there was a cooler local rock band than the Makers. They were originally from Spokane (see: small-town Washington), they’d been making deeply anachronistic music since the early 90s (garage punk at the height of grunge, glam at the height of screamo and electroclash), and they were absolutely fantastic live.

So, imagine my curiosity when an old friend sent me these recordings explaining that they were the work of Michael Maker’s son. For starters, the timbre of phrasing of the singer’s voice is uncanny in its resemblance. Anyone who grew up jamming “psychotropic supergirl”, for instance, is in for a treat. But the wider surprise is how mature and well crafted these compositions are. Sure, this is power-pop, but it hews much closer to the Big Star, Twilley, or Shoes end of the spectrum than something like the dreaded Pez band. Which is to say that while it’s pretty straightforward in its alignments, it also flashes unique potential to eventually bloom well beyond certain genre signifiers.

I guess I find all the stylistic orthodoxy simultaneously refreshing and just a little too cute. On the one hand, I’m tired of hearing younger artists make records that sound like the process they’ve used to discover their touchstones and influences (chaotically, alone, and on the internet). I’m sort of into the studied and strict adherence to aesthetic rules on display here. On the other hand, I’ve always judged the Seattle music scene for being needlessly tribal and averse to cross pollination. So there is also a part of me that hears these recordings and wishes they were already confident enough to colour outside the lines more than they do.

But as it says right there in the title, these are apparently just demos for a forthcoming album. Nit-picking and regional bias aside, I’ll conclude by saying there is a lot of promise on tape here and I am quite excited to see where this project goes.


Xylitol – Blumenfantasie [Planet Mu]

This one tickles some of my nostalgia antennae, too. Not so much in the sense that I was ever super into jungle, but in the way that Blumenfantasie contrasts its steady march of breakbeats with spectral synths and morning dew melodics. To me it often recalls the glory days of Warp, Ninjatune, and the mainstreaming of IDM that occurred in the early 2000s (no wonder it’s on Planet Mu).

Doing a little background, it was interesting to learn that Catherine Backhouse has been producing music since that time, which has changed the way I ultimately hear this LP. What had initially struck me as an earnest but studied project of revivalism has shifted into what is more clearly a work of refined and polished craft infused with love and memory. I’m also really into the slightly rough hewn quality of her production. I have no idea whether this album was assembled in a DAW, hardware, or a hybrid, but it bears the maker’s marks in a way that is often glossed by hyper efficient recording software.


Thomas Bush – Guld [Lost Domain]

It makes a certain type of sense that Thomas Bush would eventually join his former RAP counterpart Guy Gormley on my fav London label, Lost Domain. At the same time, after several years of carving his own distinctive warm-jetsian art pop cosmos, I was particularly interested to see where and how he’d fit into the wider oeuvre of LD’s cruel pulses and cold temperatures. The answer; this record functions as a fascinating showcase for the processual evolution of both the artist and label.

The 6 long-ish form tracks assembled here primarily comprise a congress of whispered incantations and spider silk melodies, all contrasted with an expansive rhythmic landscape of bumps and thumps. Its true underground alchemy (gold = guld?) in that it builds unexpected and omnivorous bridges between disparate modes of songcraft, composition, and production. It is a bit reminiscent of the best Richard Youngs LPs and also possesses some spiritual kinship to the third annual report. Most importantly, though, Guld synthesises Bush’s prolific contemporary output (both as TB and cATHOLIC CHURGH) with the cultivated aesthetic of Lost Domain to give us something that sounds new for all involved.

In the cryptic and economic parlance Lost Domain often uses to describe its own releases, Guld is simply advertised “Hortical Teckno”. At first I assumed this descriptor was a bastardised botanical neologism, but then I also found it in a dictionary of UK slang to mean “sincere or honest” (remember, I may live in the UK, but I ain’t from here). Regardless, I think it works either way; there’s a lot of unique growth on display here.


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Juho’s picks:

Field Commander Ali – The Next From Field Commander Ali [World of Echo]

Have you ever truly stepped into the butoh with the one you love, sharing the eyes of someone whose eyes have seen more than yours - and sees, via touch, everything you thought you knew and more? I’m talking about synesthesia through motion. Waves sparkling & moving, particles pushing, colliding.

Have you been the one steering the ship? Have you ever been the ship?

In Field Commander Ali’s The Next From Field Commander Ali you hear a voice that hits like a thousand lightnings. Honest to God. Trve & awake.

In Next From Field Commander Ali she takes the dusty voices of old folk songs; the wandering men, the heartbreak prophets, the guitar saints by the fire and folds them into herself and suddenly everything changes. The songs aren’t “of something” anymore. They start to belong to Ali. She moves through the past like a fucking divine hurricane ghost in a Sistines Chapel. Every note is hers, every whisper chokes. Every shadow stares in the quietness.

The record starts all delicate, handmade, soft. Think of early Locust-era Lau Nau, but don’t get it twisted. That mysterious fragility is a trap. The delicate quiet bends inward. The old pictures hide shadows. You start to feel genius in motion. As per usual, simple on the outside, total chaos inside. I’m being reconfigured.

Every track is total. You can feel the artifice but it’s pulsing. Gender flips, voice flips, tradition flips. She xposes the machinery of folk music and then turns it (fuck yes/thank God), back into something human & touchable.

I can hear you, Ali!

This is a craft at a level that I aspire to - this makes me question everythingness and its butoh. I see the love of my life and I see her growing old, faster than me, leaving me alone with this fractal chaos of all things colliding.

Ali is a hall of masks with multiple crooked faces hanging. Past lies and present uncertainties mush into each other. The songs remind me hauntingly of the old couple I saw a few weeks ago walking past while I was dropping records at the post office today. Totally in their hive multiverse, looking at me like a monkey speaking in tongues. Every Ali line a fucking stab to the chest. Every pause is a lesson in me being an impatient loser.

We should be reorganizing love over this. Ali should be in the pantheon and us giving the crown and throwing flowers to fill the hallways. Instead you hear about it through whispers from the stainy creeps of the untergrund.

A secret so dumb it hurts.

Violent Shogun / Haudat [Satatuhatta]

Violent Shogun and Haudat join forces for a compelling split tape on the Finnish power house Satatuhatta, bringing together two distinct yet deeply similar approaches to sound. Both artists operate within a shared sonic philosophy: one rooted in the rawness of analog tape, the unpredictability of decaying in action & the expressive power of genuinely fucked up textures.

Across the splitster, their respective contributions unfold as dense, tactile environments where distortion and deterioration come to life. *Warped* looping, corroded tones and fragmented noise gestures emerge and dissolve, creating a sense of movement that feels both carefully considered and unstable by its core. Despite the “abrasive palette”, there is a careful balance at play; each piece feels sculpted, almost composed, with space and restraint allowing the finest of details of their sound to surface through the speakers.

What I think makes the collaboration especially punchy is how seamlessly their individual voices interlock. Rather than feeling like two separate halves, the split holds together as a unified statement. Well, perhaps the Haudat side is a touch more fucked up. Go and figure.

Anyways… Anchored by a mutual interest in the fragile, the broken and the beautifully imperfect, this works as a fine statement that the boys are back in town! Hooray! Hooray! The noise won’t go away.

Health & Safety - s/t [FELT]

The reissue corner of the Felt label begins by unearthing fascinating relics from the recent past and this time it reaches into the somewhat chaotic archive of the now defunct but still much mythologized Posh Isolation.

Few imprints of the last decade were as polarizing as Posh Isolation, a Copenhagen hub that released an avalanche of records ranging from sublime zoners and rhythm zikzak to deliberately abrasive BM & noizu.

Health & Safety is the solo project of Johan Wieth, known to many as the guitarist of the Copenhagen “cool kid” rock band Iceage. Listeners arriving here with expectations shaped by Iceage’s ”charismatic”, leather-jacketed rock mythology may initially experience a somewhat pleasant shock. Any associations with swaggering post-punk dissolve immediately. What Wieth does here is reveal an inward-looking zoner that reaches not so much for spectacle but for atmospheré.

What emerges across the three track record is droning of the highest order - both slow and luminous. Rather than relying on density or the blunt brute action, Wieth builds his pieces through the subtle shifts in timbre.

There are resonances here with the new age phase of maestro and one true zoner Arv & Miljö, particularly in the sense of simplicity and unease that permeates the compositions. Yet I think the comparison only goes so far. While the record occasionally brushes against the territory of modern classical minimalism, it completely avoids the brown-tongued institutional clang that sometimes characterizes that field. Instead, Wieth’s music embraces the ethos of true contemplation.

Label head Fergus Jones’ decision to reissue this material proves justified and essential, as H&S highlights the label’s more contemplative side and reminds us mere mortals how fertile that Copenhagen scene truly was.

Arnaut Pavle - Transylvanian Glare [Amor Fati / Mystiskaos]

Let it be decreed: those who dare summon Arnaut Pavle shall find themselves marked with sigils of shadow. His vortex of sound is a dark current that rends the veil of reality, conjuring visions of ruins, torn flesh, and the northern abyss, where winter reigns eternal and the stars bleed silently into the void.

Or something like that… or at least that’s what I always imagine the inner dialogue of BM geezeers to be as they murmur in “reverent horror” while going about their daily lives.

I know nothing else beyond this: it’s a solid, kvlt, thrash-y BM hate-spreader/shredder - outside the repulsive, armpit-ventilating idiots of the Finnish BM scene. So it will do, thank you very much. UwU.

Vikki Jackman - Of Beauty Reminiscing [Faraway Press]

The shimmering of cosmos captured that is Vikki Jackman’s Of Beauty Reminiscing, released by Andrew Chalks Faraway Press. The amount of pressings signal both demand (oh yes, the language of capital has entered Monk’s Hood), but also this: shimmering is and stays relevant. As the more ironic layers in sound tend to become hip as the world turns more than ever to shit, these sounds of sincerity can be seen as more and more valuable.

There is something very patient about the way Jackman lets her motifs unfold, a quiet trust that the listener on the other end will meet her halfway. Sounds like the moment between dreams, edges softened to the point where sounds beginning and ending lose meaning. Before you lies a reconstruction of feeling - fragile, luminous, and just slightly out of reach.

Where many contemporaries lean into density of everythingness or the conceptual framing (myself sometimes included), Jackman strips things back to their emotional core. The manipulated piano figures feel suspended in time, as if they’ve always been playing somewhere just beyond perception. In that motion of breathing, the album finds its fantastic power, as small sounds tend to carry the biggest of emotions.

If anything, this CD underlines how resistant Of Beauty Reminiscing is to cycles of trend. It doesn’t age because it never tried to belong to a particular moment. Instead, it hovers somewhere between the memory and the atmosphere. In a landscape increasingly jammed with gestures toward pseudo-profoundness, Jackman’s work remains what I would call profoundly unforced. And that perhaps is why it continues to resonate. An ongoing place where you are drawn to visit - again and again.

P. Wits & P. Sorrow - Smashed Pulse Movements [Midnight Mines]

Have you ever picked up a six-string already humming through a half-broken 25-watt amp, the kind that starts feeding back before your fingers even make contact? That moment where the instrument seems to precede you… Of course you have. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. You know, the guitar becomes less of a tool and more of a conduit of the muddiest of waters.

Peter Von Wits and Paul Sorrow understand this zone. More than that, they goddamn live there.

This two-track lathe feels somewhat a document of first impact. You don’t get the sense of musicians constructing something in real time so much as attempting to hold on with white knuckles while something pushes back the heaviest door of the cosmos...

“Monkey and the tools”- type of energy? Absolutely!

Primitive in the best possible sense, but also arrogantly focused.

Pulse 1 sets the general condition immediately. The drummer doesn’t so much play the kit as fucking pound against it, as if trying to rupture the skin. Each hit feels like an attempt to punkture, to move from the rhythm into an impact. Meanwhile, the guitar locks in.

If Raw Power gave us the language for rock at its most confrontational, this feels like its further strain. Something prior to style. Prior even to intention. Call it True Raw Power.

SHERAPHIM - London Is Tired of Me [Lost Domain]

Very much covered labelinho by Unc Sterly in the past, but now it’s my time to shine! Two years ago, Bandcamp, or more specifically Mr. Pattison ran a piece titled “Blackest Ever Black’s Kiran Sande Returns With Lost Domain,” and since then the label has quietly but decisively carved out its own space. It sits somewhere on the fringes: prickly yet danceable, rhythmic without slipping into blunt-brute-force functionality, experimental in a way that feels strangely warm. Music that goes for both your attention and your body, not one or the other.

Not-so-long-ago, I found myself talking to a couple of techno heads and thinking, fuck man, these people are truly the scum of the earth. But it’s funny - thirty seconds into this SHERAPHIM release and that entire wave of irritation just dissolves.

It helps that London Is Tired of Me isn’t really a single-artist statement as presented but a compilation, a loose constellation of sounds, finds and approaches. That openness is exactly what makes it a total hit in my books. The best moments drift between strange, sea-chanty folk inflections glued w/ low-end-heavy room experiments, then suddenly you find you have been bloomed into rhythmics or psychedelic synth passages that feel both disorienting & comforting.

So, it’s a genuinely amazing release! One of those records that reminds you why digging through the underground still matters. This is the kind of music that keeps the heart beat bouncing & excitement alive: unpredictable & unpolished and full of ideas that haven’t yet calcified into a dumbass trend or cliché with a turtleneck.

Bill Orcutt - Last Days [Fake Estates]

Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money.

Take my money.

Take my money. Take my money. Take my money.

Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money.

Take my money. Take my money. Take my money.

Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money.

Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money.

Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money. Take my money, Mr. Orcutt!

FA SP SW - Rumination Lapse [Burgan Triangle Tapes]

Very much in line with the Vikki Jackman release mentioned above, but this one is maybe going a touch more towards my dusty heart, with its lo-fidelisms and FSA type noodles. The melodies are those of a searcher, going towaerdssss something, but with Tolkien Striderisms, a smooth, smoky travelling style.

There’s a sense of dusk in Rumination Lapse, or that in-between hour where things feel suspended and unreal. The tape breathes in a slow, unhurried way, i.e., it’s unpolished and quietly glowing.

FA SP SW also feels conversational in some way. The movement is gentle but persistent, tracing small arcs of cries. Nothing is overstated; everything just kind of is, unfolding with quiet wails and looking up towards the stars. And underneath it all there’s that same sense of depressive direction, even if it’s a feeling that something final is being approached, slowly, patiently, through texture and tone rather than with a bang. Like starving to death. Goodbye! Goodbye!

J.O Mallander

Back in 1966, 22-year-old Helsinki-born Swedish speaking Finn, J.O. Mallander stepped onto the Swedish-American liner MS Kungsholm and sailed toward the United States. He worked as an assistant purser, but the journey was not only professional. It became personal, mental and now when we look at it from an historical lens, spiritual. The ship was heading to New York, and without maybe fully knowing it, Mallander was heading towards a completely new understanding of art.

He has later described his first encounters with modern art in New York as a ”very powerful experience”. For a young man coming from Helsinki in the 1960s, this modest expression meant total shock and awakening at the same time. Finland then was careful, reserved, and politically sensitive. The Soviet Union was near, and scars of the war of all wars and closeness of the aggressor suffocated the atmosphere. Culture felt and in many ways was controlled - serious and almost always heavy.

New York was something else entirely. As we very well know now, in the mid-1960s the city was restless and experimental. There were all kinds of Fluxus happenings, Pop art exhibitions, strange concerts, performances where nobody was sure what could be art and what could not. In Greenwich Village, life became art in cafés, small theaters and loft spaces. People were awakened. People were alive.

Artists like the infamous John Cage were redefining music through chance and silence. Andy Warhol turned consumer culture into icons and introduced hype to the avantgarde. Jasper Johns questioned symbols and meaning. Bob Dylan shook the foundation of popular music with poetic and political lyrics. For young Mallander this was proof that art could be free, playful, critical, and deeply personal all at the same time.

When he returned to Finland, he did not continue life where he had left it off, but he carried this learned energy back with him. In Finland the art scene was still strongly influenced by political realism and tediously traditional forms. Conceptual art and performance were not widely understood as art or even appreciated. Mallander began to work to change this.

Iiris Magazine, 1970

He founded and edited small but important magazines such as Iiris, Aura and Suomi. They were perhaps modest publications, but they opened windows to the international avant-garde and radical political ideas. Through them, Finnish readers could encounter ideas that were circulating elsewhere in Europe and in America. Mallander also wrote art criticism, both in Finnish and Swedish. His writing was thoughtful and curious, sometimes playful, always intensely engaged.

In 1971 Mallander co-founded the gallery ”Cheap Thrills” in Helsinki, known to Finns as Halvat Huvit. The name suggested the Fluxus values; irony and accessibility. It became a space for happenings, performances, experimental exhibitions and discussions. Young artists such as Pekka Airaksinen, Stuart Wrede and Carolus Enckell gathered there. The gallery helped create a profound sense that something beating and new was happening in Helsinki. Around the same time the artist collective Elonkorjaajat emerged, meaning The Harvesters. The group worked across disciplines, mixing visual art, performance, sound and text. There was a feeling of shared exploration, of building something together that did not yet have a clear name.

Sperm, picture by Erik Uddström.

Sound too was there for Mallander. He was involved in the experimental and provocative avant-group Sperm, which combined performance, sound and the conceptual. The name alone challenged and provoked Finnish polite society.

The group blurred boundaries between concert and art action and is seen today as a major meeting point in what is referred to as Ensimmäinen aalto or Helsinki Underground - if interested you can read more about it in Jukka Lindfors’ book of the same name.

Extended Play, Eteenpäin!, 1968

In 1968 Mallander released the legendary 7” Extended Play on M.A Numminen’s radical Eteenpäin! label. The EP is today considered one of the most pivotal and earliest Finnish conceptual sound works. On the record there is looping sound work consisting of ballot reading, endless repetition of the name of longest standing Finnish president Urho Kekkonen.

The repetition transforms mundane political language into radical sound material, feeling both humorous and sharp. By reducing speech into rhythm, he questioned the authority and the formal icy atmosphere and tradition of the said ”Kekkonen-era” Finland.

The piece and its thought is minimal, but conceptually o’ so on point.

Later recordings from that period are compiled to two newer releases, as More Time - Hits & Variations CD and as Musik LP, released via record labels Anoema Recordings and Die Schiene Editionen, both revolving around Finnish noise legend Tommi Keränen.

These works show that sound was, for Mallander, perhaps a bit secondary, but still very much a laboratory for radical ideas. Repetition, reduction, language as material, medium as the message - these elements connect directly to his visual art.

In his visual practice he often uses simple materials: paper, bricks, charcoal. ”Kohti puhdasta maata” creates a space that feels both physical and symbolic. The brick installation is minimal, but it suggests something larger - purification, grounding, and spiritual search. Quiet work, but not in any way ”empty”.

WANG, 1986, charcoal

His large chalk drawing WANG, shown for example at Moderna Museet, goes beyond representational traditional drawing. It feels like an action, almost like a ritualistic practice. The repeated gesture of tapping becomes more important than the image itself.

In no surprise, over time Buddhism became an important influence in Mallander’s life. Not so much as in new-age decoration or exotic interest, but as a serious philosophical and practical path that he still follows. Mallander collected South Asian and Tibetan art, and these collections later were formed into exhibitions. For Mallander collecting was another way of learning and reflecting. In interviews Mallander has described art as a contemplative activity that requires concentration and sincerity. For him art is about three things; process, awareness, questioning. This attitude also connects to his various roles in art, - the artist, musician, critic, curator, collector.

Today J.O. Mallander is starting to be recognized as one of the central figures in Nordic conceptual art. He helped introduce the spirit of Fluxus to Finland and created platforms for other artists to experiment. Mallander represents the possibility that even from a relatively small and quiet country, one can engage in global conversations, even at the time. His life and work are continuous movement, not a certain rigorous fixed style or militant one discipline. He acts like a current that goes where it wants, flowing between mediums - sound, image, text and thought.

Mallander remains as the same sailor who crossed the Atlantic once and in some way he never stopped travelling.

Some news around here, dear readers: after 4 or so years of going it on my own, the head count of resident slow dose scriveners is officially doubling. Legendary tone poet Juho Toivonen is joining the ranks. Long time readers will know I’ve championed Juho’s albums in this newsletter from the outset. And while it’s bittersweet to lose that tradition to what will now amount to a conflict of interest, I promise that it will only be your gain. Anyone who has read his AKTI zine should know we’re all in for a full complement of humour, insight, and hot tips for avant snobby bobbies like you and me.

We’re both healthy omnivores so, with any luck, this whole operation should evolve into a more dynamic offering of contrasting and complimentary tastes and voices. To bastardise the inimitable D & G, “since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd”. Or, more simply, you should expect more to read, more regularly. We’re even threatening to branch out and break off the occasional interview and featurette (keep your eyes peeled for the first such item in a few scant weeks).

Perhaps most confusingly, we’re changing the name of this publication from Slow Doses to Monk’s Hood. A decision which we promise will make more sense in the near future.
For the immediate business at hand, however, let’s just get down to it; the first slew of LP reviews since Sterling put a bow on 2025. Without further ado!

*****

Sterling’s Reviews:

Mind Over Mirrors — Particles, Peds, & Pores [Hands in the Dark]

Hands in the Dark has done well to fashion itself as a sturdy and stalwart way-station for stately avant music. It tends to tip a bit too heavily on to the “wine and cheese” end of the spectrum for me to dive in regularly, but few labels are as reliably elegant and tasteful when it comes to pointy-headed composers and artists. All of which is to say; when it hits for me, it really hits (see: Läuten Der Seele’s Die Reise zur Monsalwäsche or Varby Vokalgruppe’s Solids for Voices).

I’ve spent a fair amount of these last bleak winter months warming up next to Particles, Peds, and Pores, an earthy gurgling programme of synth meditations from Mind Over Mirrors. This is kosmiche bubble bath music for noise rats, and it lives comfortably in a liminal space between dark space travel and new age sunrises. Recommended if big analog synth sounds give you “gänsehaut”.

Excalibur & DJ Spence – Medium Rare [Doo]

I now consider anything sold on tracksplease.com as “buy on sight”. I recently shortlisted SnPLO’s Last Day Cookie in my recent “best of the last five years” round-up, and I’ve kicked myself repeatedly for not acting faster on the subsequent Pin releases of “The Cocaines”, “Ciganisati”, or “Infinity Substance” (all of which cost at least twice the sticker price on secondary markets).

This brings us to Medium Rare. Taken in the context of everything that has now come before on either Pin or Doo (I confess to not fully understanding the precise relationship between the two), this tidy EP of flawless dub techno brilliantly inverts the spatial expectations I think we normally bring to dance music. Other listeners would likely use taxonomic descriptors like “micro” or “minimal” as shorthand for describing what’s going on here, but I’m more prone to think about how close and proximate this record feels. It’s not small or diminutive in any way, but it certainly plays with the dimensions and scales of the sonic imagination (IE, it’ll get ya lost in the club of your miiiiiiiiind, man).

Surface Access – Transfer [Other People]

Speaking of dub techno, this one is far more on-the-nose in its Basic Channel worship. Released on Nicolas Jaar’s Other People imprint, Transfer is crafted to the point of being over-polished, and studied enough to sound clinical. If you’re in the mood (which I often am), and you have your green ears on (which I often do), this should still do the trick. But it doesn’t necessarily take me as far out as I’d like it to. High quality, not essential.

Tuluum Shimmering – Tuluum’s Time Travel Tape Trunk Vol. 4 [self-released]

Ah yes, the ever reliable Tuluum Shimmering. I’ve never gotten to the bottom about who’s behind this project, or what its exact provenance of it all is. I never seem to hear about them performing, despite the fact the “UK” is monolithically listed as their place of residence on bandcamp. I like all the mystery, though, and I haven’t been particularly motivated to dig any deeper to learn more. The TS discography is so immense it almost strikes me as something akin to the neo-psychedelic Collected Works of William Shakespeare. There are “albums” comprised of numerous album-length tracks (see: 2023’s Behind the Cloud Horizon). There is the wonderful and ongoing series of raga “covers” (most recently featuring 2024’s cheeky Donna Summer/Coltrane entry). And then there is the seemingly bottomless and alliterative Tuluum’s Time Travel Tape Trunk archive series (of which this release is the most recent entry). It’s collectively so staggering in the aggregate, I can’t help but wonder if it’s the product of conspiracy. Is this really one person? In many ways it sure sounds like it. And yet the output is so prolific it wouldn’t surprise me to learn this is all the work of many hands operating in a synched up lysergic hive mind.

If you’ve been following along for a while you’ll feel quite comfortable with what’s on offer here; deep time-release mind benders that will certainly entice anyone chasing after more records that sorta sound like Arica, Ariel Kalma, or Darrell DaVore. What’s unique about this particular entry is that, compared to other Tuluum Shimmering “LPs”, it’s just about standard album length. Making it an unlikely, but approachable, entry point to this wonderful and boundless project.

Skee Mask – ISS012 [Ilian Tape]

Another of the underground’s busiest bees, Skee Mask continues his relentless release schedule with another 12” entry in the series of such EPs he iteratively produces for Ilian Tape. As ever, the standard of quality here remains impossibly high, even if this particular offering isn’t quite my favourite. Uptempo and occasionally busy, ISS012 can feel a bit like there are more ideas at work then there is space for (which, considering how often Skee Mask releases both proper records and hard drive dumps, is pretty wild!). If I have any complaints about Skee Mask it’s only about his occasional lack of restraint. This is nitpicking, though, and at the end of the day it still all rolls off as being impossibly danceable, easier to access than it should be, and always unmistakably him.

Sternpost – unworld.afterpop [Concentric Circles]

To my mind, one of the surest indicators that we are indeed living in an age of acute decline is the fact that the Sternpost discography has been almost exclusively pressed at micro scale. His 2016 album, Statues Asleep, is one of the best records of the last 10 years, yet its physical edition was limited to a mere 100 copies. 2023’s Ulrika was initially released in an edition of 200 before being modestly reissued by US label Concentric Circles. By contrast, it’s wild to think that once upon a time Van Dyke Parks’ art-pop template-setter Song Cycle was steered through the vast resources of a major entertainment conglomerate like Warner Bros. Even as recently as the 1990s, major label money still seemed to improbably find its way to chamber pop albums overseen by svengalis like Jon Brion. It’s positively stupefying that a producer, composer, and multi-instrumental as prodigious and visionary as Peter Herbertsson should remain so obscure.

The newest entry in the Sternpost project, unworld.afterpop, is yet another impeccable offering of lush and anachronistic mastery. This is a record simply too melodically elegant, self possessed, and sophisticated for the modern palettes and attention spans.

Chantal Michelle – All Things Might Spill [Shelter Press]

Given this is a Shelter Press record with a typically pretentious pr blurb, I was primed to write this off as little more than self-serious artist residency core. And in many respects, it still is. There are moments, however, where it transcends the severe and restrictive framing it has set for itself. At its best All Things Might Spill has memorable passages of real warmth and intimacy, particularly in the rare spaces when the human voice is featured. It’s also nice that it’s sequenced more as a collage of impressions and sketches than your standard 3 track drone record. The better compositions here are actually the shortest, its weaknest points surfacing whenever the runtime ticks about the 5 minute mark. There is a really good record somewhere in here, but – as is often the problem with any release that willfully evokes both post-graduate degrees and Berlin – All Things Might Spill is ultimately self-sabotaged by an over commitment to cool texture at the expense of vulnerability and accessible expression.

Ben Vince – Street Druid [AD93]

I feel I’m particularly disposed to be hard on this record because it let me down while ostensibly trading in modes and idioms I’m usually fond of. This is a jazz-adjacent LP built on a foundation of looped 4th-world reeds and an industrial-leaning dub palette. So far, so good. And yet, when I close my eyes, the space it most readily materialises is a trendy restaurant in Hackney; aglow with mood lighting, hinge dates, and expensive orange wine.

The strongest part of any track is always the sax and its subsequent looping. It’s everything else that drives me nuts:

Why is there so much digital reverb on everything?
Why are these often compelling compositions backlit by toothless new age soundscapes?
What is up with the digital wah noodling on “deepbluereflection”?
You really shouldn’t be able to hear this much software on a record like this.

Granted, things do get more interesting in the back half, but even there I’d argue the choices around programming and rhythm feel forced, or underbaked. In the end it all plays like a melange of tastes and influences I should enjoy, but digested for an audience and context I don’t wanna relate to.

Velv.93 – Maidstone [STROOM]

Maidstone begins in a deep and cleansing pool of pulsing tremolo before patiently blooming into one of the more dynamic and compositionally interesting ambient albums I’ve heard in some time. Its most identifiable influence is likely SAW2 which, while lofty, is earned. This is an LP comprised of subtle romantic dramas, where compositions are assembled via the counter programming of texture and melody to produce a work that is too detailed and descriptive to be mistaken as somatic. What a stunner.

*****

Juho’s Reviews:

Esse Pi Enne – Chamber Music LP [All Night Flight]

One of the foundations of a meaningful life can be the recognition of a fundamental value that one defines for oneself, and the decision to move towards it. To choose such a value is already to take distance from passivity. To follow it is to accept that change will come. The psychological process of self-reflection that follows from this stubborn, but necessary, way of living does not always feel pleasant. At times it can feel uncomfortable and even alienating, despite the moments of clarity and ecstasy it may also bring.

When a person constantly redefines themselves, the self becomes like a stream. It moves, it changes shape, and it cannot be fixed in one place. The central difficulty is time. How can I define myself when I can only find myself in time, and when I understand the present through the past? Literature and art have tried to answer this question for centuries. Again and again, artists have built structured webs through which a sense of continuity can be created.

Since last year, one such structure has been brought to light by Turin-based Esse Pi Enne. Carrying the previously mentioned atmospheres of clarity, alienation, and ecstasy, Pi Enne’s vision is also smeared with industrial gutter oil and a post-punk a la AC Marias meets-Jandek kind of melancholia.

Like most releases from the esteemed Stockport-based record shop All Night Flight, Esse Pi Enne maintains a certain distance between the listener and the object. This distance allows gracefully the wax to function as all parts of a holy trinity - a mirror, a candle, and a lysergic element. From the mirror arises the question: am I merely a small branch, a physical manifestation of the universe watching itself in motion?

It may be this or it may be that. We can never be certain. But one thing I am certain of is that I recognize Esse Pi Enne as pure force and as a part of that collective plane, the same plane that gives rise to the emotional connection I sometimes feel when I am carried away by the amalgamic force that is described by humans as sound.

Tooper Keps - 1000 Guest Rooms 7”

[South of North]

Tooper Keps has seen it all, spunk stained sheets, bad breakfasts and smells of duty free perfume. Now he sits down with his keyboards and instead of entertaining the rich retirees he blows out Herr Amok-vibed confession songs.

1000 Guest Rooms is a minibar diary recorded after the fifth complimentary gin by the lounge bar. The Yamaha PSR-11 and PSS-360 sound exactly how they should sound: cheap. Presets wobble like the colored lights at the lounge.

As a Finn I recognize something very Finnish in this sadness disguised as entertainment work. You can imagine the audience wanting schlager hits and nostalgia, but instead receiving a totally back-drunk-again-from-hungover inferno type existential audit. Tooper Keps could be in the next Kaurismäki film if it were set in Tenerife.

The production feels rather uncomfortable. It is like elevator music that has escaped the elevator. The Ape Escape of the experimental underground. The arrangements never fully land, which in my books scores more points. Landing would mean satisfaction, and Keps clearly gets no satisfaction.

Side A feels like a bonky arrival to the Canary Islands. Side B is checkout in the morning when you realize that nothing ever happens except for the drowning kids in Bangladesh.

Humor music, but a full blown tragedy. Like a clown who reads physics theory backstage. A parasite in paradise.

Anne Gillis – Eyry [Art into Life]

Do you know that feeling when something repeats so much that it stops being the same? The familiarity of the known slowly fades, and what once felt fixed begins to fucking shimmer. Repetition in life feels safe. It confirms and reassures, but it also carries a great potential to destabilize. It can turn the familiar into something haunting. I think Anne Gillis is a master of that art, and it stands clearly at the center of her ninth solo record, Eyry].

The music is sometimes beautiful, but always raw. There is no polish to make the material easy to digest. She feels like a master of falling down the stairs, like a frozen stiff swan trying to ballet dance.

Her electronics are difficult to trace, at least for someone like me who isn’t a gear head. I can’t map the machinery, nor do I feel the need to. What matters is her sound itself. It reminds me of 80’s blunt electronics, like John Duncan’s Japan era and Cosey Fanni Tutti, et al. But unlike those weirdoes, Gillis has a unique compositional instinct that makes me want to call her, first and foremost, a composer rather than just another random ass experimentalist.

Certain themes repeat until they begin to break apart, or until the listener’s mind bends around them. In that way, the sound psychology of Eyry is almost sadistic and abusive. One might think of Michel Foucault and his idea that power doesn’t always show itself as direct force but as structure. Here too, the power works through arrangement.

One such structure in the history of human behavior was fagging, a traditional practice in British public schools and many other boarding schools, where younger students had to serve as personal attendants to the older boys. I have a feeling some of the seniors at 1800’s Eton College would have appreciated this Gillis record.

Anyways. If you briefly set aside the accidental beauty that emerges, the loops start to train the ear. They create a certain framework within which the listener must function or comply. They press slightly too long and hold slightly too tight. The listener is kept within the structure without a clear exit.

What impresses me the most is the control behind this so-called punishment. Any instability is carefully arranged. It feels like a trap. The collapse never seems accidental. It feels precise. And once you let go of the record, something unsettling remains: the loops tend to continue within you. The structure lingers. You seem to carry the pattern with you. Repetition has done its work.

Anthony Moore – Monkey’s Birthday LP [paragram discs]

There are albums you play casually while cleaning your apartment or making dinner, and then there are albums that make you question the fabric of reality for 40 minutes. Monkey’s Birthday is definitely the latter.

This LP is a condensed soundtrack to a six-hour experimental film by David Larcher. Six hours. From what I understand, the film was shot in the ’70s across Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Turkey. It’s called a road movie, but don’t be expecting highways, stacks of weed and cool sunglasses. Think more: dust in your eyes, drifting thoughts, looping encounters and a tape recorder running.

Anthony Moore is by and large an artist that treats sound like clay. Recording chants, voices, random convos, jam sessions etc. and then he goes about his business and reshapes them. The result feels like somewhere between prayer and a metamorphosis. If software-based fuckery sits at one end of the spectrum, this is at the other.

There are looped and chopped-up voice fragments from his band Slapp Happy. Then you have Heathcote Williams reading some weird ass mystical texts in a tone of dramatics… floating over Islamic chant, field recordings, and tape loops. The whole pack.

What I enjoy most about this condenser is Moore’s attitude. This record does not work as a cinematic pleaser and it doesn’t insist upon itself (ladies and gentlemen, a joke). It doesn’t smooth stuff out. The edits can be traced to a certain part of the sound fabric and are obvious. As we all know by now, the loops can and should wobble. Things collide instead of blend. And that’s exactly why all this works so damn well.

There’s also something beautifully anti-commercial about the whole thing: a six-hour experimental film track turned into an edition of 500 LPs. Monkey’s Birthday is a moving collage - spiritual, chaotic & confusing. It feels like being on a long cubensis ride where you’re not fully sure where you’re going, but you trust your gut and the guiding element anyway. It’s also weirdly reminiscent of the most psychedelically potent side Nordic experimentalism (for example, the Sewer Election & Ån that rocked pretty damn hard) happening around Göthenburg - where my heart belongs.

Not an easy listen. We don’t want to give you those. But a rewarding one for sure.

Lénok - Langue of Tongue LP
[Mappa]

look how deranged and uncompromising I am
look how deranged and uncompromising I am
look how deranged and uncompromising I am
look how deranged and uncompromising I am
look how deranged and uncompromising I am
look how deranged and uncompromising I am
look how deranged and uncompromising I am
look how deranged and uncompromising I am

First of all, this piece of shit mistakes density for depth. The record piles hi-fi glitch, distortion, shrieks, and synthetic pad spasms on top of each other until the listener gets dental caries from their overt sweetness.

And the supposed “wackiness”? It lands like Clockwork Orange eye-lock-level forced eccentricity, the musical equivalent of someone loudly laughing at their own joke. You know this album wants you to feel it’s so liberatingly artsy and unhinged, but you can practically hear the careful curatorial decisions of a juggalo.

The real ”masterpiece” here, however, is the Bandcamp blurb itself. Words like netherworld and deranged disquiet get thrown around so aggressively that I kind of start to root for the guys who want to abolish arts funding.

And then there is Mappa, continuing once again to treat lack of clarity as an artistic quality (excl. two comrades Cucina Povera & Olli Aarni, they are legit & heroes in this house). At this point, really, Mappa releases feel like endurance badges for art school kids who want a golden star, the fucking masochists they are. The label’s aesthetic philosophy seems to boil down to: if it’s quirky enough, someone will call it mesmerising. Instead of nurturing truthfulness as a core value, they often just amplify the feeling of alienation and proclaim it as some sort of vision.

The result? Music that feels steroid engineered for a niche prestige jerk-off ring rather than sincere listening. This album feels like fucking group homework with Pol Pot & Hitler and the homework is math.

Langue of Tongue isn’t horrifying or alien. It’s worse: it’s tediously pompous middle-class-kid shit while insisting it’s profound. The album asks you to lift the rock and observe the writhing life underneath. You won’t struggle to tear yourself away broskis. You’ll just eventually realize you already checked out ten minutes ago. I’d rather watch Salò at McDonald’s.

Sean McCann — Leopard 2CD / 3LP

[Recital]

Recital label head Sean McCann has long occupied a strong position within contemporary experimental music: known equally as a mastering engineer, composer, curator, and publisher. Through his label, over the years, McCann has cultivated a catalogue defined mostly by patience, precision, and an unusually coherent aesthetic vision, especially considering the label’s longevity. The imprint has consistently favored works that unfold with time and reveal themselves only through the deepest of attentions.

His curatorial sensibilities form a necessary prelude to Leopard, McCann’s first opera and arguably the most expansive manifestation of the ideas that have quietly structured the label’s ethos for years. A word I sometimes use as gigantic fuck you, a dismissive shorthand - cinematic - proves to be pretty unavoidable here, but entirely to the material’s benefit.

Rather than adopting the traditional operatic structures - aria, recitative, climax (Google helped me a bit here) - McCann constructs an philosophical and psychological version of it in which the forward pulling momentum occurs on multiple levels at once.

The opening roar of the album functions as an initiation rite. Think of the opening sequence of Come and See: the two boys in the sand discovering the gun, the haunting face twisting - the sense that something irreversible has already begun before the narrative properly forms/unfolds. Leopard operates in this similar way, beginning the trip with a total psychic displacement.

The narrative resonates strongly with ideas articulated by Erich Fromm, particularly his analysis of modern alienation and the self-consuming ways of contemporary society. Fromm described psychological (in McCann’s case also de facto) cannibalism as a condition in which individuals, deprived of authentic relations, begin consuming their own emotional and social structures in order to survive systems that slowly erode meaning. McCann’s opera translates this particular diagnosis into sonic form.

The boat has become a closed system with no escape, a floating society detached from anything external. A cannibalistic utopia. The inhabitants’ pitfall reads simultaneously as both, adaptation to reality and psychotic savagery. When you look at the medium on your sofa before your speakers you slowly get it, in front of you lies the total aestheticization of the unthinkable taboo.

A revealing comparison comes up when Leopard is placed alongside the noise landmark Ottoman Black by Jason Crumer. At first glance, the two works appear to occupy the different poles of experimental music, yet both pursue a strikingly similar objective: the dissolution of distance between the sound and the subject listening to the sound.

This parallel sheds light to the fact that Leopard is actually operating closer to noise music than its surface initially suggests. The opera replaces volume with disturbia, distortion with ambiguity, brutality with inevitability. The effect is no less violent - only less crude in its arrival.

The cannibalistic self-created ”society” is never explained away. Its implications remain uncomfortably close to contemporary existence: communities sustained through total self-exhaustion, cultural systems feeding upon their own rotten past, individuals internalizing survival mechanisms that gradually assault the very self - the ego they, for some reason, aim to preserve.

Well, the macro-meanings can be mapped more clearly through the fantastique libretto formed by McCann. The most fascinating puzzle, yes.

The Best of 2025:

Shelter and Orion with William Turner Jr. – Krakatoa [Les Disques Omnison]

Les Disques Omnison received a fair amount of hype last year for the Orion Music Workshop LP. For whatever reason I found that record a bit too obtuse and studied; like a forced collage of obscure influences with distractingly visible seams. This record, on the other hand, grabbed me right away. Krakatoa is an inspired congress of improv; fizzy, alive, and organic. It also helps that the pressing of this record is multi-dimensional in its clarity and depth. In its best moments this recording will take you to the Vuh-zone (im den garten pharaos, specifically).

Cliche Toupé – Endlessly Continuous [SELN]

A delightful surprise from SELN — who normally trade in industrial dub and techno — this cassette release from early Jan instead delivers an accomplished programme of gothic-leaning experimental bedroom pop. Endlessly Continuous presents a nice balance of instrumental night-scapes and song-forward compositions, both of which trade in a specific type of cold temperature songwriting that sparkles in key moments of iridescent melody. Also worth mentioning their in-store at World of Echo this year, which was excellent. I hope to see and hear more in future.


MPU101 – MPU106 [Illian Tape]

Illian Tape seems to release excellent techno 12s at an almost monthly clip. Yet another one of the great pleasures of following IT is the annual release they seem to deliver from MPU101. Beatless and warm, each of these releases showcase the type of synthesis that sound like sunsets and moonscapes. This is gentle, earthy electronic music. The kind that can remind you that currents and signals were transmitted by weather patterns and neural pathways long before they were captured inside of machines.


Conrad Pack – Commandments [Lost Domain]

No surprises here. Loyal readers will know I’m essentially pot-committed to both Conrad Pack and Lost Domain. Commandments is Pack’s debut full length and it plays like a future classic. All the moves he’s flashed over his 5 year run of stellar EPs and singles are synthesised here. But most importantly, it plays like a cohesive work you’ll want to run from A1 to the B side run out.

Volodja Brodsky – Raindrops [mpcs

Delicate piano albums can be a bit tough for me as the threshold between cornball indie film sentimentality and inspired Debussey-like mastery is not only thin, but often one defined by just-barely-perceptible subtle melodic choices and judicious levels of restraint. This stunning LP—performed entirely on piano and vibraphone—keeps enough of a foot in the jazz idiom that its flirtations with romantic impressionism always feel inspired, elegant, and playful instead of hamfisted.

Mammo – General Patterns [Short Span]

Right at the end of last year, Mammo released “Slows the Pace and Goes Farther”. An excellent EP that got a bit lost in the surge of other terrific dub techno released late in 2024. General Patterns is an ambitious and mature upscaling of palette for Mammo. A double LP full of gorgeous minimal dub.


Irini – Lost in Dreams [All Possible Worlds]

Not a whole lot I can say about Traumprinz that hasn’t been said elsewhere for years. It’s truly rare that, across all their aliases, the excellence of the albums and EPs stand in balance with the carefully cultivated mystique of the “project”. Lost in Dreams originally appeared in 2021 as a 3+ hours soundcloud mix and was also the first under the new name Irini. This LP version (6 platters in total), is actually an abridged version of that mix. It’s remarkable that Lost in Dreams never feels like hard work. Sure, any 2 to 3 of these tracks could work just as well as discrete 12” EPs, but taken in the aggregate this album functions as its own comprehensive cosmos. One which gathers something from all the preceding personas (Healer, POD, Golden Baby, Metatron, etc.) and coheres as yet another masterful unified theory of techno.


The Ferries – Eye Flutter [Bergpolder]

Another ace from Bergpolder, this one came a bit out of nowhere for me. Easily my favourite “rock” record of the year, Eye Flutter is a melange of woozy new wave and narcotic kosmische that I find particularly disassociative in all the most delicious of ways. This album is an exercise in motifs, circular logic, and callbacks in a way that really stretches and dilates time as its spinning; melodies resolve, dissolve, mutate and reappear. Grooves roll, thump, expire, only to wobble back into shape a couple minutes later. It’s a record that simultaneously feels expansive, cavernous, and always over all too quickly. Which is to say, it’s one you’ll want to immediately flip over just as soon as it’s done.

False Aralia 4 – Iri.gram [False Aralia]

Selecting this particular False Aralia release (instead of the other 4 from 2025) is a bit arbitrary; they’ve all been excellent/worth picking up. More than anything, these are some of the most interesting rhythmic recordings I’ve heard in some time. Not in the sense that they bend the logic of time signatures, or pattern-clash their way queasy hypnotic trance-scapes. But in the sense that both the sonic palette and the syncopated tattoo of their delivery is so well matched that listening to them can feel positively synthesthetic. Each of the 4 tracks on this particular EP is like a rain shower of phosphenes simultaneously experienced as acupuncture.


Juho Toivonen – Lapsikuninkaan Fanfaari [Discreet]

Juho is a perennial favourite of mine because his output is prolific, dynamic, and ever-evolving. Lapsikuninkaan Fanfaari, his latest for Discreet Music, is arguably his strongest and most confident release so far. Where Kasveille Ja Eläimille (2023) was a beautifully patient meditation in slow-motion melodics (à la Budd and Voigt), and Sisarusten Toistuva Uni (2024) felt like a collage of field recordings smuggled across the threshold of sleep, Lapsikuninkaan Fanfaari strikes a compelling middle-ground. It’s an expertly sequenced record brimming with the best-yet versions of his increasingly signature craft for drones, chants, loops, and watercolour-like piano.

Dagmar Zuniga – In filth your mystery is kingdom… [Tandy]

I bumped on this the first time I heard it. Something about how aggressively hissy the recording sounded made me feel as if it wasn’t just the by-product of a home setup, but a carefully cultivated affect or “instrument” of its own. By my second time through all I could hear was how beautiful and frequently transcendent the highlights on this record are. As someone who spends a lot of my free time toiling with a Tascam 414 portastudio, I think I was, or still am, just insanely jealous. The best tracks on this album sound SO much bigger and so much more expansive than you would think 4 tracks could hold. Which, of course, is a testament to how imaginative both the songwriting and production here really are.

Molly Raben – In the Kingdom of Flowers [Love’s Devotee]

It seems the ascension of Kali Malone as a drone superstar has improbably raised the profile of organ music in the 2020s. Add in FUJI|||||||||||||TA, Ellen Aarkbo, or Alice Von Hausswolff, and you end up with lots of stretchy sounds on pipes and reeds to choose from. As a hater who cannot help himself, I have to say I find much of this new organ music colourless and severe. Especially when you compare it to this positively florid collection of Persian Surgery Dervishes-esque improvs by Minnesota organist Molly Raben. In the Kingdom of Flowers is every bit as spacious, textured, and microtonal as the others, it just happens to also be bursting with melody and a vivid sense of play. Perhaps it’s because psychedelia is, and will always be, my first love in music, but I’d rather spend my time with a record that conjures petals, pistils, and swarms of winged insects than those that sound like frozen sheets of drifting ice.

Priori – This but more (Loidis reconfiguration) [naff]

Pretty much everything on naff recordings is at least worth checking out. This but more, the 2024 source material for this pair of remixes, was a graceful, atmospheric and ranging release that occasionally flirted with uptempo workouts, but was more firmly placed in a dance-adjacent zone of ambient pop. Here Brian Leeds polishes two of the more beat-oriented tracks into a delicious chaser for anyone hyped on Loidis.

Old Yellow Serpent – Old Yellow Serpent [Early Music]

Super solid cassette release from Jon Collin’s Early Music label. Clocking in at around 80 minutes, I can only assume the reason there isn’t an LP version of this is due to the prohibitive cost of pressing up double platters. This is an elegant serving of rugged and pastoral psychedelia. If you dig Pelt or the Scott Tuma solo records, you should feel right at home here. The biggest marks of distinction for this release are its spartan arrangements (live/two instruments), and how the frequent pairing of electric guitar and fiddle enables the duo to code switch between folky grooves and a specific strobing Reed/Cale effect.

SW – TekkNOthing I/II [SWOB]

Parts one and two of a triptych of releases planned to launch a new label from Stefan Wust (SW. himself) and Oliver Bristow (Ave66/Acid Test). This digital/cassette release has been presented by the label as something of a teaser for an LP to come, but it’s far more expansive and exciting than that. TekkNOthing I/II produces tremendous space and imaginative depth with what I assume is an intentionally confined palette (I’m also guessing an emphasis on specific hardware). Tracks rarely comprise more than 4 individual sounds at a time yet often resolve in varying degrees of complex uptempo disorientation. There seems to be a unique subversion of specific revivalist tendencies. Familiar modes and motifs commonly associated with specific gear are tipped only to be completely turned inside out. And in the end it takes you somewhere unexpected.


Megabasse – Flamenca [Efficient Space]

I am unequivocally a Megabasse fan. But I confess I resisted this release — ever so slightly — because I find the Megabasse catalogue can tend to blend together a bit. And while there hasn’t been any marked shift in approach or technique, something about the set of endlessly chiming 12 string longform pieces collected on Flamenca sound more distinctive and singular than they do familiar. What a beautiful record.

WINO-E [Wah Wah Wino]

I’m pretty into all the obtuse mystique Wah Wah Wino has cultivated around itself. Sure, it’s pretentious, but it has also been a lot of fun. More importantly, all the willful obfuscation and cryptic anonymity does a lot of work to foreground the sound that’s actually on the platter. WINO-E is a catnip record for me; it’s a techno record that sounds like it was made on hardware, in a bedroom, for people who’d rather get wavy alone.


Läuten Der Seele — Unterhaltungen mit Larven und Überresten [WOE]

I’m sort of surprised how much I prefer this record to the Brantten Schnüre LP that was also released this year (their final album, apparently). But then again I also feel that, now on its 5th release, Läuten Der Seele has grown into one of the most surprising and dynamic catalogs of music you can find. I’m most interested in how these records are alternately formatted; some as long form side-longers, others which seem to restlessly flip between ideas, almost frenetically. The singular quality of them all, however, is that Christian Schoppik is possibly the best collage artist working in music. Unterhaltungen mit Larven und Überresten serves as confirmation of this, particularly because it comprises some of Schoppik’s shortest compositions. Across its 14 tracks this album plays like a century’s worth of dispatches from ghosts, all filtered by a medium so receptive and attuned they flow past you like a lyrical river.



Honourable Mentions:

Harmony Index — Winter Breaks

Jim + Digbee — Hidden Hits

Erin Hopes — Ketnology

Flamingo Base Jumpers — Wet Past

Severin Black — Country Black

Torn Hawk — Watching Heat on Mute

Borez — Borez

Jake Muir — Campana Sonans

Nastia Reigel — Over And EP

*****

SD best of the last 5 years:

*****

Cindy Lee – What’s Tonight to Eternity

At this point it feels like crossover success of Diamond Jubilee has partially eclipsed more than 10 years of Cindy Lee music that preceded it. I’ll be as quick to say DL is a masterwork as any, but the truth is that it omits much of what turned me into such a fan in the first place. Namely, that Pat Flegel is just as adept in noise rock as he is at re-inventing the Brill Building. It shouldn’t surprise you, then, that I consider What’s Tonight to Eternity the more alluring record. WTTE is a truly psychotic LP so singular that distilling it to a catalog of influences and evocations would do injustice to how wildly original it is.

Ana Roxanne – Because of a flower

This album is an ocean of beautiful sound. Each of its six core compositions are their own time-release somatics, with melodies that patiently bloom like drops of blue dye in a glass of warm water. Ana Roxanne’s voice is an astoundingly powerful instrument which often serves as the primary anchor for the majority of the album’s arrangements. Yet Because of a Flower is also a showcase for Roxanne as both an exceptional producer and multi-instrumentalist ( I’m especially fond of her bass playing). Both this LP, and her debut (XXX), situate Roxanne squarely in the lineage of pseudo-new age world builders like K. Leimer, Eno, or Enya. More than this, I don’t know if I own another album that sounds as deep, well mixed, or well mastered. So, technical plaudits abound as well. It’s steadily been in the rotation since the day I brought it home.

The Lavender Flu – Tomorrow Cleaners

Lavender Flu code switches LP to LP, alternating between noise and improv styled albums like Admiration for a Dancer or V1: Mirror Bright and more traditional song-forward LPs like 2018’s Mow the Glass or 2020’s Barbarian Dust. The real magic, for me, happens when they split the difference. Despite being their 4th LP Tomorrow Cleaners feels very much a sequel to their towering double plattered debut, 2016’s Heavy Air. Like that record, this is an absolute clinic on home recorded psychedelia. Boundlessly imaginative and listenable, Tomorrow Cleaners is perhaps even more impressive in that it contains almost all the signature Flu sounds in a thrilling two-sided programme as opposed to the 4 that make up the former.


Monokultur – Ormens Väg

No “scene” has captivated me quite as much as the sounds coming out of Gothenburg Sweden the last 10 years. And in the time since I started paying attention I’ve come to hold Discreet/Forlag and Mamas Mysteriska Jukebox in contradistinction as two of the core pillars defining that region’s sound. Ormens Väg, the second LP from Monokultur, epitomises (to me) all the best of the slanted, skewed, and sub-zero pop music MMJ has so-far surfaced. As a duo comprised of both JJulius and Loopsel (both excellent solo artists in their own rights), Monokultur captures the best of what I admire in their respective solo careers; JJulius’ intuition for inverted pop scaffolding and Loopsel’s deft ear for crafting melodic spiderwebs.

Hugo Randulv – Radio Arktis

Speaking of Forlag for Fri Musik, this is still my favourite release from either the FFFM or Discreet Music catalogs. Warm, patient, collaged, aqueous, and delicately buzzing, Radio Arktis is simply too melodic and tonally rich to be strictly classified as a noise/drone record. This is honestly the type of LP I always have time for and it remains my favourite release from the deep pandemic years.

Kareem Ali – Getting Through

I’m not too much of a house-head, but in the glacially slow days of 2020/2021 I had lots of time for Kareem Ali’s particular brand of house futurism. The Getting Through EP came out in April 2021, just in time for my first booster. This is ecstatic and hopeful music and this record seemed to sync up flawlessly with the daybreak feeling that arrived in the late spring of that year.

Cucina Povera – Dalmarnock Tapes

An album so inventive it subsumes its own displays of virtuosity. Dalmarnock Tapes is technically an LP of solo vocal performances; outside of the loop stations and production techniques used for its processing, the only sound you’ll hear are the vocals of Cucina Povera. Wordless and onomatopoeia-based, this cassette only release is gentle, expansive, and enveloping. It’s a bit like Meredith Monk on ludes.


Amateur Hour – Krökta Tankar och Brända Vanor

The rare double album that I cannot imagine being any leaner. Its palette is expansive and dynamic; there are passages of noise and hiss that occasionally flirt with (and ultimately foreshadow) the stunning melodic turns that blossom at key climactic points throughout. Where the album really shines, however, is in the interplay between two types of tracks that make up the programme. There are long passages of sound collages that alternate between the pleasantly atmospheric and the bracing. There are also gorgeous and melodic “pop” songs (for lack of a better word) delivered as candy-like rewards for listeners patient enough to ride along for all four sides. Julia Bjernelind’s vocal performances are particularly noteworthy and when the album does break into its key melodic set pieces it is elevated from being simply a killer lo-fi noise rock record into something that has the potential to reach a lot of different kinds of listeners. The triumph, ultimately, is that it’s impossible to imagine either these stark dynamics succeeding on the level they do without their sonic counterparts. It’s masterfully constructed collage-rock.

Ssabae – azurescens

When this mysterious record arrived it sounded like a peak example of musical collectivism to me. It has both a sonic multi-vocality and singular cohesion of spirit that simultaneously reminds of contemporary projects like Enhet For Fri Musik and bygone examples such as the first incarnation of Amon Duul or the Faust Tapes. A positively bottomless cabinet of curious field recordings, melodic lullabies, and commune jazz, azurescens is so full of inventive ideas, performances, and breathtaking moments that it rewards each and every spin with new discoveries. This one desperately needs a repress.

Discount Heaven House Band – S/T

This record has a truly distinctive and unique vibe. When I first wrote about it here on the blog I likened it to what it might sound like to hear Augustus Pablo jamming with the Stray Gators on lost outtakes from On the Beach. Late night and west-coastal to the core, the sound is both live and largely improvised. More importantly, however, it possesses a detachment and cool that, despite all its beachiness, also lends it a distinct and groovy darkness.

Dawuna – Glass Lit Dream

I wasn’t writing this newsletter when Glass Lit Dream came out in Nov. of 2021, but If I had been it almost certainly would have ended up in whatever AOTY discussion I might have typed out with myself. There is a gothiness and creep to this record that easily makes it my favourite r&b record since Blond. Especially in terms of beats and processing choices, there are even moments where I’m tempted to compare it to late era Coil. Sexy sleaze for dark princes.

Juho Toivonen – Kasveille Ja Eläimille

An expert study in slow head music built around both organic instruments and technique. It evokes the type of psychedelic experience one might achieve whilst simply sitting still in a beautiful place for a long time, regardless of whether there is a lysergic element to it or not. Listening to the 5 tracks assembled here is like watching the morning sun transform a frozen field into a lilting haze of spiralling vapour. Which is to say, these deceptively simple compositions reveal immense depth and complexity if you’re patient enough to let them. It’s another impressive release for Toivonen, whose elegant output consistently plays like a lo-fi extension of drone heavyweights from Yoshi Wada to Wolfgang Voight.

Frances Plagne – Into closed air

The definition of “a grower”. I’ve always admired Plagne’s output without ever fully falling for it. I bought this LP on a whim right when it came out (liked the cover, had store credit), and it hasn’t really left the rotation since. Three long form pieces which all sound incredibly tight and live. This is very much a “band” record, and the performance captured here alternately recalls jazzy prog rock (a la Matching Mole, or something) and the gentler side of the ‘classic’ records Ghost released on Drag City. The most striking element, however, is the melodic command Plagne has as a songwriter. The compositions here are long enough to feel like they should be improvised, but spend the time and you’ll find rich, patient, melodically deep, and expertly crafted compositions.


Saul Adamczewski – Adventures in Limbo

I anticipated the release of Saul Adamczewski’s solo debut, Adventures in Limbo, since the rumours about it started in 2020 or so. I was never much interested in the Fat White Family outside of a small handful of Saul-sung tunes that crop up throughout their discography. I’ve also been mixed about Saul fronted FWF spin-off, Insecure Men, where I often felt objectively great songs were occasionally over-stylised. Pared-back, lean, and focused, this LP showcases just what a serious and fascinating songwriter Saul Adamczewski is. He has a unique gift for balancing irreverence with earnestness, of spinning the political and the absurd into the banal and the morose in a way that can be alternately moving, hilarious, and soberingly frank. It’s rare that something so ostensibly clever can often feel so personal and vital. Much of this is aided by Adamczewski’s gift for melody and his strengths as a vocalist. Run the standard lazy music criticism exercise of “two parts artist a, one part artist b” with Adventures in Limbo and you’ll be surprised by the names you’ll find yourself saying; Lou Reed, Harry Nilsson, Van Morrison, Tim Buckley. Maybe even a tunesmith like Bacharach will come to mind (though, admittedly, a very narcotic version of one).

Natalia Beylis – Mermaids

My favourite of Beylis’s stellar output over the last five years, Mermaids is presented almost as something of an exercise in experimentation with arbitrary boundaries; an album intentionally made on one instrument (a CRB Elettronica Ancona Diamond 708 E Electric Keyboard), inspired by a recently unearthed family photograph. The result is the most melodic and entrancing recording Beylis has made.

Vessel – Vessel

This tape feels like a lab-grown-for-me hybrid of kosmische synth improvs and 90s japanese noise/drone. While it’s tempting to say this record plays a bit like a newly discovered Cluster or Ash Ra Tempel bootleg from 1971, doing so would do a disservice to the intentionality of the hostile fidelity this psychedelic music is so very purposefully wrapped up in. The trippiest part of Vessel is its atmosphere; a haze filled with components and sounds you can just about describe, but not quite. It’s also actually quite scary music, and as much as it can evoke certain Florians and Klauses, it has a harsh industrial veneer that also marks it as a classic Diazepam release. Maybe the best they’ve done?

Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch

Like Diamond Jubilee, this is another transcendent 2024 release that was basically instantly canonised by everyone from pitchfork to the new york times. In terms of the growth it showcases and the new audience it seems to be reaching, Here in the Pitch has changed the way people discuss Jessica Pratt. It’s also another release that has been exhaustively profiled elsewhere and with far more detail than you’ll find here. I’ll just say this record is a magic trick. One where the intimacy and sophistication of Pratt’s songwriting is given a seemingly weightless upscaling of palette. The effect is astounding. Here in the Pitch manages to simultaneously sound intricate and lush while still maintaining its vital immediacy. All of which has been particularly evident if you go see it performed live. Look around and you’ll notice a rapidly growing audience of listeners who all seem to feel like she’s singing directly just to them.

Loidis – One Day

By far my favourite of the Brian Leeds projects. This is not only the album I played the most in 2024, but easily my fav from that year. It hits a very specific sweet spot I feel like I’m always chasing but can never seem to find; “dance” music that is as psychedelic as it is loping and endless. I’ve seen this release compared to classic Chain Reaction records in a lot of other places and, while I do think it’s accurate to describe One Day as an iteration on that specific legacy of dub techno, I also think there is something distinctively warmer and more pointedly lysergic going on here. Every track contains the same gauzy, deceptively complex, and soft-touch melody Leeds has mastered as Huerco S/Pendant. What’s unique to this release (and different even from the excellent Loidis EP from 2018) is the positively vibrant injection of tempo present on nearly every track of this album. Deliciously, trippy movement.

SnPLO – Last Day Cooki

Despite making my year end list in 2024, this record came out just a little too late in the year for me to properly digest it. Since its release it has easily become one of my most played LPs. I’m loath to use genre signifiers like “minimal” or “micro-house” to describe this (mostly cause I’m not positive I really know what they mean), but suffice it to say this record trades in a specific type of remove that I find really engaging. It’s as if the set of sonic components which are endlessly looping hypnotise you into hallucinating your own motifs and melodies into the components that feel deliberately obscured and blurred.

Arianne Churchman and Benedict Drew – MAY

I somehow missed this record when it was first released in 2024. MAY is an expertly conceived and deftly executed piece of work; a song cycle of traditional folk renditions shot through a kaleidoscope so lysergic and dense that the majority of the LP plays more like a colourful noise record. What’s key here is how the compositions develop; IE, as long-evolving exercises in witchiness that begin as recognisable incantations and resolve in mazes of green psychedelia.

Krakatoa – Shelter & Orion with Turner Williams Jr.
See above

WINO-E
See above

Irini – Lost in Dreams
See above

Honourable Mentions

DJ Python – Mas Amiable

Lone Capture Library – All Natures Most Mundane Materials

IXT036 – MPU106

RAP – Junction

Conrad Pack – Commandments

Solar Unity Ensemble – Upstream
Tara Clerkin Trio – On the Turning Ground

Milan W – Leave Another Day

Goldblum – Tears in Limbo

Memotone – Tollard

Acemo – Moblu

Lewsberg – out and about

Cosmic Drag – Bo

Little Skull – untitled

Schisms – Hanging with the Heretics

Violent Change — Starcastle

Erin Hopes — Lucid Dreaming

Tony Molina – In the Fade

Blod – ABBA

Lauten der Seele – Lauten der Seele

Clarissa Connelly – The Voyager

Valentina Maglietti and Marlene Riebero – Duo Matte

Treasury of Puppies – S/T

If you live in the UK or elsewhere in Europe there are a handful of places you can also pre-order, but I’d recommend doing so with our friends at World of Echo who are carrying an exclusive edition with riso print poster and coloured wax. I think they look well handsome:

FINALLY, we’re also going to be playing live in the following American cities VERY SOON:

Friday May 30 — LA — @ Non Plus Ultra w/ Pink Trash Can and Semi Trucks (tickets)

Saturday May 31 — SF — @ 4 Star Theater w/ Jordan Pantalone and Cave Babe (tickets)

Tuesday June 3 — Portland — @ Turn! Turn! Turn! w/ Shop Regulars

Wednesday June 4 — Seattle — @ Vera w/ Diminished Men (tickets)

Friday June 6 — Olympia — @ Le Voyeur w/ Swanox

*****

OKAY. Thank you for tolerating another burst of tedious self promotion. It's also been an exciting spring for new releases, mostly from some familiar names and labels. Some killer new techno, some delicate and transportive head music, some stretchy gooey stuff, too.

Nastia Reigel — Over And EP [Falling Ethics]

This tidy EP is my first encounter with Nastia Reigel, so I actually know precious little about her or how this release stacks up against previous work. What I do know is that Over And is a breathless and relentless exercise in dark, on the grid techno that nicely straddles both truly propulsive movement and a vibe jagged enough to please the sickos.

Volodja Brodsky — Raindrops (Miraaz Records)

Delicate piano albums can be a bit tough for me as the threshold between cornball indie film sentimentality and inspired Debussey-like mastery is not only thin, but often one defined by just-barely-perceptible subtle melodic choices and judicious levels of restraint. This stunning LP—performed entirely on piano and vibraphone—keeps enough of a foot in the jazz idiom that its flirtations with romantic impressionism always feel inspired, elegant, and playful instead of hamfisted. Cannot recommend enough.

Megabasse — Flamenca [Efficient Space]

I am unequivocally a Megabasse fan. But I confess I resisted this release — ever so slightly — because I find the Megabasse catalogue can tend to blend together a bit. And while there hasn’t been any marked shift in approach or technique, something about the set of endlessly chiming 12 string longform pieces collected on Flamenca sound more distinctive and singular than they do familiar. What a beautiful record.

Adam Badí Donoval — A Mirror Where The Image and the Mirror Wholly Coincided [Mappa]

Check the liners on many of the best releases from the European underground and you’re likely to find Donoval credited as the mastering engineer. In addition to elevating the sonics of some of my favourite artists and releases, he also runs both the excellent Warm Winters Ltd. imprint as well as the Táto Strana Európy substack. The music he makes for himself, when it seems to arrive every 2-3 years, is some of my favourite ambient/drone out there. I really flipped for his first LP, and this one sounds every bit the worthy follow-up. Donoval trades in a specific type of sonic dream logic collage that few do quite as well. This is truly “seamless” music, where the craft of blending the composed with the “found” or field recorded is subsumed by the transportive and organic amalgam of the whole.

SW. — TekkNOthing I & II [SWOB]

Parts one and two of a triptych of releases planned to launch a new label from Stefan Wust (SW. himself) and Oliver Bristow (Ave66/Acid Test). This digital/cassette release has been presented by the label as something of a teaser for an LP to come, but it's far more expansive and exciting than that. TekkNOthing I/II is a masterclass in producing tremendous space and imaginative depth with what I assume is an intentionally confined palette (I’m also guessing an emphasis on specific hardware). Tracks rarely comprise more than 4 individual sounds at a time yet often resolve in varying degrees of complex uptempo disorientation. There seems to be a unique subversion of specific revivalist tendencies. Familiar modes and motifs commonly associated with specific gear are tipped only to be completely turned inside out. And in the end it takes you somewhere totally unexpected. Really sick tape.

Florian TM Zeisig — Trax Versions [Enmossed]

Wild that this is basically a sequenced mix of cast-offs and scraps. Yet between last years Planet Inc., Bong Boat, this year's Spool project, and this Zeisig seems to be on a particularly prolific tear. Most of this flows like its own discrete album with highlights that measure well against the best parts of any of the aforementioned releases.

Torn Hawk — Watching Heat on Mute (NNF)

Hard to tell where the bit ends with this project. Or if it’s even a bit at all. The output is relentless. I find most of it mildly obnoxious, but then every once in a while there’s a Torn Hawk/Valcrond release that really lands for me. And rarely as well as this one has. For a project so heavily coded in the aesthetics of the sour irony of the terminally online, this collection of tracks is stitched together with sincere expressions of melody and romance. It also sounds like it was recorded to the audio side of a VHS, which gives it a specific glaze that’ll make you feel like you’re drunk on gooey blender drinks.

Borez — Borez (Trilogy Tapes)

No-brainer collab between Rezzett and Beau Wanzer that basically sounds exactly as good as you would think it might; a humid, degraded, open bar for shampoo drinkers.

I will also flag that I’m going to tag a smaller number of January releases that I think are worth mentioning at the bottom of this post. ENJOY!!

*****

Conor Kiley — OK Hotel (2013/2014?)

Everything I’m featuring for this segment is technically homie rock by varying degrees of separation. This one, however, requires a bold and flashing proxy-bias disclaimer right at the top: Conor is one of my oldest collaborators and best friends. Way back in the day, he was the principal songwriter and general head honcho of both Holy Ghost Revival and Broken Nobles (two groups I was also in). He developed a distinctive voice very early and has matured as a songwriter and recording artist by processually chipping away and polishing his sonic signature. It's a unique brew that takes a couple key pieces as its sacred texts; namely, the pulpy but sincere romance of the Jacobites, the blues deconstructionism of Herrema/Haggerty, and the ever-so-slightly more high brow junkie bardism of the likes of Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, or Tim Buckley. OK Hotel is not only the best unreleased album I have on file, it's also my favourite recording Conor has ever assembled. Sprawling out at nearly an hour, it features some of his best compositions (the A side, in particular, is front loaded with two of my favourites; “Go On” and “Concrete Clover”). But it also features some of his loosest and most successful experiments; covert recordings of blurry and profound interchanges, intercalary blasts of thematic noise, and spontaneous-sounding covers recorded with friends well after midnight. As sad as it is imaginative, this is a deeply personal and diaristic album built through a collage of home recordings. One day I will see it pressed on wax.

Blades of Joy – Untitled Second LP (2019?)

A bay area outfit with a lone “official” LP on the now defunct Melters label. Blades of Joy has a unique pedigree. As I understand it, the group was primarily a duo of Anthony OBC (of Swanox infamy), and Inna Showalter (both now of Magic Fig, and a frequent collaborator of bay area mood masters Cindy). This record came across my prow at the peak of lockdown 1.0 while being discussed in a group chat I still share with some bay area friends. If there was gossip/scuttlebutt explaining why this record never came out or why the band broke up, I honestly don’t know/remember (or really care). It’s just a shame that this particular release got left behind. The first Blades LP was essentially a power trio album cut somewhere between the Rain Parade and the Telescopes. It was a strong and competent debut, but not exactly in my wheelhouse. Where that record was taut, muscular and shoegaze-adjacent, the followup is an elegant exercise in hushed understatement. Stripped-back and home recorded, its palette is almost entirely composed of multi-tracked vocals, guitars, and delicate tape machine flourishes. The tunes themselves present a mature and evolved take on the dream pop affectations they dabbled in on the first record, recast here as 7 outstanding psych-pop ballads.

Usputuspud – Live in the Shit (2009)

Ah yes, Usputuspud. The infuriatingly unpronounceable noise alias of one Matthew J. Rogers, another close and dear friend of mine (see FMVEE for current output). When Matt made this tape (which, in fact, was actually released as an artist edition cassette of maybe 80 copies) he was living in the basement of a truly depraved party house in the Central District of Seattle, WA (I also lived upstairs). Listening back now, which I often do, I’m struck by how closely this cassette hews to some of my favourite contemporary releases (specifically those coming out of Gothenburg or Belgium the last handful of years). I have a lot of nostalgia for the imaginative/resourceful limits weirdos had to go to find new sounds before the advent of ableton. This release (I think) was recorded live to tascam using an array of electronic drum pads, pedals, and heavily delayed chromatic harmonicas (a trick, I admit, I myself have cribbed on a tune or two). It starts as a jetty of noise that slowly smears and builds into something almost approaching dance music. Live in the Shit is both unmistakably of its time (not difficult to imagine this as a mid-aughts Hanson records release) and still very contemporary sounding, somehow.

[EDIT: I annoyingly only have the A side of this tape available to upload. Sorry!!!]

Androgynous Elk — A. Elk(?) (2012?)

When the criminally overlooked Sopors disbanded they basically split into Violent Change and Androgynous Elk. This record (their only recording?) was briefly circulated as a hand screened CDR before they, too, quickly broke up and collectively went on to other things far beyond the bay. The highs on this record are very high, with the whole caboodle nicely wound around the outstanding guitar playing of Spencer O’Karma (whose style can often recall Anton Hayman of the Homosexuals). The other key mark of distinction, however, is the contrast between the messthetic palette of the band and the earnestness of the Westerbergian vocals. Normally you’d expect someone moaning in monotone over the top of riffs and tunes like these, but each track here is charged with too much unpretentious urgency to be mistakenly labeled “post-punk”.

*****

WINTER HIGHLIGHTS 2025

*****

Cliché Toupee – Endlessly Continuous [SELN]

A delightful surprise from SELN — who normally trade in industrial dub and techno — this cassette release from early Jan instead delivers an accomplished programme of gothic-leaning experimental bedroom pop. Endlessly Continuous presents a nice balance of instrumental night-scapes and song-forward compositions, both of which trade in a specific type of cold temperature songwriting that also sparkles in key moments of iridescent melody.

Shelter & Orion with Turner Williams Jr. — Krakatoa [Les Disques Omnison]

Les Disques Omnison received a fair amount of hype last year for the Orion Music Workshop LP they released in September. For whatever reason that record felt difficult for me to hold on to; a bit too obtuse and studied, maybe. A forced collage of obscure influences with distractingly visible seams. This record, on the other hand, grabbed me immediately. Alive and organic sounding, Krakatoa is a continuously active sonic fermentation which lands squarely in the im den garten pharaos zone.

Voice Actor — Lust 1 [Stroom]

Voice Actor’s debut, “Sent from my Telephone”, felt so conceptual, so tied to the time dilation of the peak covid years, I kind of assumed the whole project was a stand alone work. Lust 1, its excellent follow up, improbably manages to both significantly reimagine the project and iterate on what made the debut so fascinating. This is a lean, focused, and beautifully textured album which plays as both deeply considered and intentional.

Conrad Pack — Commandments [Lost Domain]

No surprises here. Loyal readers will know I’m essentially pot committed to both Conrad Pack and Lost Domain. Commandments is Pack’s debut full length and it plays like a future classic. All the moves he’s flashed over his 5 year run of stellar EPs and singles are synthesised here. But most importantly, it plays like a cohesive work you’ll want to run from A1 to the B side run out. I just got this in the mail yesterday, but I’m certain to have more to say when I get to the big roundup next December. This one’s an early AOTY contender for me.

Because this will be the third consecutive year I've made this list it has been interesting to observe specific patterns in the names and releases I've found myself gathering. The reliable labels and stalwart artists, so to speak. In some ways it's led me to question whether this exercise is as much about spot-lighting new music as I once thought it was? Maybe time and habit turn everything predictable? The point is, I was a bit shocked to realise that practically everything that blipped for me (with a few exceptions, of course) was either an artist or label I've featured here before. Maybe it's time to start turning over new rocks? Maybe I am who I am and I like what I like?

This doesn't mean I think 2024 necessarily sounded like 2023. And if I were to compare the list I'll be presenting below to the round-up I posted last winter (or any list I've made since I started this thing in 2022), I'd say it all distills into a couple identifiable themes:

• I'm increasingly interested in "dance" music though I'm incredibly self-conscious writing about it. As the most litigiously taxonomised genre besides metal, it's hard to do and not to feel like a poser.

• I am (still) positively ALLERGIC to the revival of 90s alternative and am specifically annoyed by the apathetic art-school version which seems so pervasive and chic now…

• This has been thrown into stark relief by the astounding records lately released by different types of 'revivalists’.

• I'm finally a bit oversaturated with the hauntological home-made folk of Scandinavia and northern Europe.

Rather than drag out the prologue any further let's knuckle down into the releases themselves. As usual, nothing here is "rated". In the past I've opted to sort my recommendations chronologically. This year I'm gonna attempt to group my picks using some arbitrary criteria that hopefully gel into cogent connective tissue. Also, I'm mixing the reissues with honourable mentions as footnotes to the individual sections.

*****

"Good For the System"

I recently moved and assembled the first proper hi-fi I’ve ever had. Nothing bananas, just some pieces with decent reputations for modestly sized rooms. The boost in quality has changed what my ears crave. Outside of breathing new life into parts of my collection I had kind of forgotten about, I will say that “dance”/beat-oriented music has been sounding particularly good to me these days. Part of that is also living in London, where one is spoiled for choice when it comes to hearing that stuff in the wild. All of which is to say a lot of my fav records this year have been techno releases.

Rezzett — Puddings (RZ)

This concise EP is a delectable and woozy exercise in a very specific type of wobble I find pretty irresistible. The tracks have plenty of movement, but in a contentedly tipsy sort of way. Lead off, Plum Duff, is particularly nice; a dizzy tone setter centred around a core melody that sounds like a toucan hiccuping. From there things spin out in shorter meditations on that theme, all resolving in the light dose throb of closing track, Treacle.

Loidis — One Day [Incienso]

Loidis is by far my favourite of the Brian Leeds projects. This is not only the album I’ve played the most this year, but likely my favourite as well. It hits a very specific sweet spot I feel like I’m always chasing but can never seem to find; “dance” music that is as psychedelic as it is loping and endless feeling. I’ve seen this release compared to classic Chain Reaction records in a lot of other places and, while I do think it’s accurate to describe One Day as an iteration on that specific legacy of dub techno, I also think there is something distinctively warmer and more pointedly lysergic going on here. Every track contains the same gauzy, deceptively complex, and soft-touch melody Leeds has mastered as Huerco S/Pendant. What’s unique to this release (and different even from the excellent Loidis EP from 2018) is the positively vibrant injection of tempo present on nearly every track of this album. Deliciously trippy movement.

Skee Mask — ISS010 (Ilian Tape)

Not quite as elegant as the Loidis LP, but absolutely capable of taking me similar places. Bit tougher and more immediate, maybe.

Ivan Robirosa — Scred (SELN)/Country Western (Wain)

The labels of SELN, Lost Domain, and Wain Records comprise my favourite contemporary “sound” coming out of London. There's a lot of overlap between artists like Conrad Pack, Leeway, and Ivan Robirosa (as well as their respective aliases and side hustles). These particular Robirosa releases both really landed for me. Demented, mean, and propulsive.

AceMo — Moblu (self-released)

Of the three LP-length collections Acemo released this year, I’ve come back to Moblu the most. Seemingly driven by a loose narrative concept, Moblu finds a deft balance between immersive and wobbly lo-fi head trips with intermittent bursts of on-the-grid gravity eaters. I wish someone would press this up on LP.

SnPLO — Lastday Cookie (Pin)

Sneaking right under wire for '24, I only heard this a week ago and can already tell I'll be listening to it far into next year. I'm loathe to use genre signifiers like “minimal” or “micro-house” to describe this (mostly cause I'm not positive I know what they mean), but suffice it to say this record trades in a specific type of remove that I find really engaging. Its as if the set of sonic components which are endlessly looping hypnotise you into hallucinating your own motifs and melodies into the components that feel deliberately obscured and blurred.

reissues and further notables:

*****

"The Shampoo Drinkers"

Call me crazy, but nothing wheedles its way into my heart quicker than recordings which sound the way the grotty carpeting in a practice space looks and smells. That is, like a tangled nest of instrument cables and little red blinking lights, all improbably melding into sounds both unrefined and non-replicable. I use the "Shampoo Drinker" descriptor a lot around here as a catch-all for artists and records that take me to this specific zone. I guess it's all about immediacy, amateurism, and a nihilistic flair for the psychedelic, to some extent. To me it's an evergreen "genre" precisely because it doesn't actually exist or mean anything outside of this vibe I find singularly evocative. Not the largest graduating class of SD's this year, but a rock solid crop all the same.

Green Tea — Owl Arcana (Satatuhatta)

Satatuhatta, the Finnish noise label, churns out killer releases all year (20 plus in 2024). That I landed on this Green Tea CD is almost arbitrary; it's status as my "favourite" of this year's crop is a bit relative (more Satatuhatta releases are gonna pop up down the list, too). What's interesting about Owl Arcana is in how deftly it ranges from harsh noise to new age sound-scapism. In specifically blending the two expertly, part of what this release demonstrates is how transportive and meditative a well made harsh noise record can actually be. I don't expect everyone to feel the same, but I always feel oddly refreshed after scraping my brain out and rinsing it with pulsating puffs of static.

Nærværet – Når Man Ser Inn I En Annens Hjerte (Satatuhatta)

This just came out as I finished putting this together and I’m not quite finished digging all the way into it. Can already tell it's a highlight, though!

Goldblum – Tears In Limbo (Bergpolder)

I gave this curious EP some very hasty love in my hurried Covid dispatch this June and it's only grown on me more since. As I mentioned there, I consider this prankster music somewhat in the vein of Hype Williams. It's where the comparison stops, however, that this release becomes interesting to me. For one, Tears in Limbo is explicitly an album of samples; short, repetitive, and hypnotic samples. As a result, it feels less like a trojan horse for covert pop aspirations and more overtly an album conducive to dissociative drug use. There's also a repeating and bizarre glaze of jazzy/lounge-y hokum that really ratchets up the gonzo factor.

Vessel — Vessel (Diazepam)

Another title I tipped in June. This one hasn't just grown on me, it's a short lister for my fav release of the year. This tape feels like a lab-grown-for-me hybrid of kosmische synth improvs and 90s japanese noise/drone. While it's tempting to say this record plays a bit like a newly discovered Cluster or Ash Ra Tempel bootleg from 1971, doing so would do a disservice to the intentionality of the hostile fidelity this psychedelic music is so very purposefully wrapped up in. The trippiest part of Vessel is its atmosphere; a haze filled with components and sounds you can just about describe, but not quite. It's also actually quite scary music, and as much as it can evoke certain Florians and Klauses, it has a harsh industrial veneer that also marks it as a classic Diazepam release. Maybe the best they've done?

reissues and further notables:

*****

“String Theorists”

Something like the opposite of the Shampoo Drinkers, the string theorist tag is here deployed to indicate artists whose precision and meticulous mastery of songcraft is the key mark of distinction. These records can also produce interesting questions about revivalism and guitar music more generally, too. Is it possible to make an album with a guitar at the centre without critics thinking first about the music of the 20th century? Does it matter? At the end of the day, this section is about melody and songwriting so well done and arresting it cannot help but disrupt your sense of time. I'd further contend that there is a crucial difference between an album that detaches you from the present and one that deliberately uses the past for affect or as a signifier of taste. If any of the records listed below happen to recall the sounds of a bygone era, I'd argue that's likely because it is tempting to compare them to canonised masters…

Cindy Lee — Diamond Jubilee (W.25)

I'm all over this and it doesn't bother me in the least that the cult of Cindy Lee now includes legions of entry-level pitchfork readers. Don't really have much to say here that hasn't been said in loads of other places already; this "LP" is a massive achievement in addition to being a fascinating experiment in formatting. Diamond Jubilee is an album so expansive that it feels more akin to a career retrospective like the classic VU box set "peel slowly and see" than it does any discrete album. It's actually really difficult to digest this in one go. So, instead, I've found myself integrating it throughout my daily listening. It's just kind of always been on since April. Furthermore, how Diamond Jubilee is situated to the rest of the Cindy Lee catalogue is something of a further curiosity; is this a masterful brain dump ahead of an eventual persona retirement? Will Pat Flegel return to making concise, dynamic, documents that play and feel more like traditional albums? It's remarkable that after delivering this much brilliant and new music in one go I find myself asking so many questions about where and what's next for this project.

Jessica Pratt — Here in the Pitch (Mexican Summer)

Like Diamond Jubilee, this is another transcendent release that has basically already been canonised by everyone from pitchfork to the new york times. In terms of the growth it showcases and the new audience it seems to be reaching, Here in the Pitch will inevitably change the way people discuss Jessica Pratt from now on. It's also another release that has been exhaustively profiled elsewhere and with far more detail than you'll find here. I'll just say this record is a magic trick. One where the intimacy and dense modal sophistication of Pratt's songwriting is given a seemingly weightless upscaling of palette. The effect is astounding. Here in the Pitch manages to simultaneously sound intricate and lush while still maintaining its vital immediacy. All of which has been particularly evident if you go see it performed live. Look around and you'll notice a rapidly growing audience of listeners who all get to feel like she's singing directly just to them.

Johnny O’Donnell — MEmBraNe (self-released)

Full disclosure: Johnny is probably my oldest friend. So, while I’m sure that no small degree of proxy bias absolutely precludes me from being a purely objective critic of his music, I am well certain in my conviction that he is a true underground original. His ample back catalog is full of thrilling pop frankensteins stalking the humid, macabre, and romantic swampscapes of his mind. He is a canon-focused songwriter with a particular affection for American eccentrics ranging from Leon Russell to the Mothers of Invention, even Michael Jackson. His most widely available release is an EP he made with Van Dyke Parks, for instance. This record (his second in 2024) is easily his most understated and also his most convincingly psychedelic. Built almost entirely around voice and acoustic guitar, MEmBraNe is a graceful delivery system for restrained studio tricks and dream logic lyricism. While Johnny is a songwriter who has basically only ever sounded like himself, the tone and arrangements of MEmBraNe remind me most of Robyn Hitchcock’s I Often Dream of Trains. Which, coincidentally, also happens to be one of my favourite albums ever.

reissues and further notables:

*****

"One helluva player…"

I normally prefer the amateur to the virtuoso, but I can be just as taken with mastery as the next nerd. Below is a short list of major standouts by artists who can indulge in some toots, squeels, and noodlin’.

Chris Cundy — Of All the Common Flowers (Ear to the Ground)

Cundy had a 7” a couple of years ago that I really flipped for. Much as I liked it, though, I couldn’t help but feel that the abbreviated format wasn’t quite right for the content. I’m so grateful, then, there is now a long player of his water colour-like sketches for bass clarinet. Long ago I likened him to a non-macho/non-athletic Colin Stetson (see: elegant, understated), a comparison I think still holds. Another one I wish was pressed up on wax!!!

George Kuo — Kiho’alu: Stories in Song, Vol (Dancing Cat)

I am not ashamed to say that I “discovered” this release mindlessly reading through a “bandcamp daily” article while avoiding my actual job. Don’t let the cover fool you, this is much, much better than it looks. I know very little about slack key guitar outside of whenever Fahey has affected it (not that I can reliably recognise when he does, either), but this gorgeous record has started a true slack key phase for me this year. Now I’m on the hunt to find his first LP.

Venediktos Tempelboom — Syne Vuyle Hoeck (Kraak)

Another excellent platter of Jack Rose-esque gothic twelve string from Venediktos Tempelboom. For anyone who, like me, flipped for their cassette from 2022 (also on Kraak), this full length iteration (which is also on wax!) should function as rare and spooky mana from the bog.

Solar Unity Ensemble — Upstream (Ultraääni)

Hyped on this record and basically everything that Ultraääni does. The best contemporary jazz label going, imo.

reissues and further notables:

*****

“The Jelly Steppers”

My patience for slow-motion music has ebbed a little bit. I’ve found that if/when I’m in the mood for something amorphous, I tend to either lean a bit more on the noise side of things, or I’ll prefer if there’s a little thudding beat underneath all the gauze. When done well, however, I still have all the time and patience in the world for a good drone/ambient record. I’ve managed some good meditative couch melting this year to the following…

Free Tala — Underwater Sounds to Lure Fishes (Satatuhatta)

It wouldn’t be an end of year round-up for me without highlighting something from the ever-reliable Finnish ace Juho Toivonen. This record, his second released under the alias of Free Tala, is the first of his to show up on the aforementioned Satatuhatta. There is a certain on-the-nose-ness about this record that's baked right into its title. And in keeping with its nautical theme I’ll say that where Toivonen’s music normally reminds me of gas and vapour, there is something distinctly aqueous about this record. Maybe I’m just open to suggestion but, as someone who grew up on a damp northern island, the three tracks presented on this LP are evocative of hallucinating sounds in the fog of a marine layer while catching the scent of oil on iron at a ferry terminal early in the morning.

Miro-Benjamin Lindström — Unessakaan ei voi välttyä ratkaisun etsimiseltä (AKTI)

This record (coincidentally out as a CD on Toivonen’s label, AKTI) has a couple distinct and compelling modes. It pivots between almost chamber-like organic/reedy pieces and smeared, foggy drone. In its best moments it gives me strong Turman/Flux vibes.

ITX035 - MPU105 (Ilian Tape)

Brendan Moeller — Signal (Constellation Tatu)

I’m grouping these two releases together as they both play as good companions to much of the dance music I recommended earlier in the newsletter. Each possesses a light and kosmische propulsion that render them cousins of much the trippy/beat-oriented stuff I loved this year. Where they are distinctive, however, is in how they suggest movement without quite fully delivering it. Both manage to play with space and openness in such a way that they invite you to fill in the gaps yourself which, if you can't tell, is shaping up to be a theme for the newsletter.

Florian T M Zeisig — Planet Inc

This excellent cassette manages to smuggle some killer dubby techno in with its more predominantly stretchy ambient goop. 2024 seemed to be a particularly busy year for Florian T M Zeisig, but this release (from back in Feb) is still the standout for me.

reissues and further notables:

*****

“The Pencil Necked-Geeks”

A sister category to the “players”, perhaps, these records are notable in how they lean more towards aspects of what students might call “modern composition”. While this entire list is arguably a pretentious exercise, I would say that — even compared to their peers — these releases are particularly suited for the wine and cheese crowd. I suppose I’m suggesting these albums feel almost academic in a way. Not a derogatory signifier, by any means, just an indication of which parts of my brain they happen to tickle.

Jack Sheen — Croon Harvest (Trilogy Tapes)

I was lucky and managed to catch a live performance of this piece at the Camden Arts Centre this February. It probably included about 25 people all perched on wooden stools, each with pre-recorded hiss and static buzzing from their phones while they intermittently sang sustained tones at sub-conversational levels, all coalescing into pulses of harmony. I definitely caught a Meredith Monk/Fluxus style vibe from the whole thing. While this recording doesn't quite do justice to the stereoscopic experience of being able to move around and inside its gentle but enveloping sound, it still really works for me as a facsimile of that experience. A bit more theatrical than a dream house and almost as transporting.

Läuten Der Seele — Die Reise zur Monsalwäsche (Hands in the Dark)

I’d describe Christian Schoppik’s 4th album under the Läuten Der Seele alias as “orchestral-scale collage”. Where previous work — particularly with Brannten Schnüre — has felt drawn in longform loops that open and close as patiently as flowers, this LP shifts and pivots between movement and texture in a way that feels newly dynamic for him. The effect is stunning. This LP is chock full of both sound and ideas. What’s remarkable is that the edits which connect them are just as seamless as Schoppik’s earlier, more high-viscosity work.

Alepher — Dodges Aim (Stroom)

A digital only behemoth that trades in both Henry-esque concrete-ism as well as K. Leimer style melodic new age. Dodges Aim is — among many other things — a masterclass in sequencing. It’s rare to find records which are so consistently rewarding for both passive or active listening. This is because this is an album that actually dynamically curates how you listen to it. Which, at 33 tracks and 2+ hours, is really something.

reissues and further notables:

*****

“Don’t Forget to Use Your Green Ears…”

…is a childish phrase one of my best buddies and I use to indicate when a recommendation will be particularly lifted by smoking some grass. A lot of what I’ve recommended this year feels pretty rooted in the city, but a big part of my heart still belongs to pastoral psychedelia. That is, to head music well free from ableton. For the hill people!

Shakali — Rihmatossa (Not Not Fun)

This record would have been absolute catnip for me 10 years or so ago, and it is still hitting all my sweet spots. I don’t throw on Arica or post-synth era Popol Vuh as much as I once did (though I probably should), but when I’m in that mood, this baby fits right in there.

Eftergift — Vatten Över Vatten

My fav release this year from Discreet Music, this one fits into the noisier side of their catalog (which happens to be my preferred contingent of the ever prolific Gothenburg scene). My fav two Forlag/Discreet releases are probably Hugo Randulv's Radio Arktis and the Dream Autopsy LP by Drifting. Vatten Över Vatten manages to remind me of both while also carving its own icy path through the forests of hiss.

reissues and further notables:

VERY EARLY NOTICE, but thrilled to announce Matt and I are going to perform live for the first time as Cuneiform Tabs to celebrate six years of World of Echo on Halloween this year. Tickets linked below:

https://link.dice.fm/w1aa212361a9?dice_id=w1aa212361a9

I honestly was not sure whether I'd get around to posting much this year. It's been a busy one, and — outside of the occasional piece of self-promotion and an end of year list I'm sure to produce this coming november — I had sort of surrendered to the idea that this forum might lay fallow for a while. But here I am, propped up in a sick bed, cycling through the gamut of cold and flu symptoms as I patiently wait for a new bout with the dreaded covid to wash over me. What better time than now to cycle back through my listening diary on telegram and pick out the choicest morsels for your recommendation. Let's call it a selection for the solstice; that time in the calendar where everything feels literally and figuratively the lightest it will all year (unless, that is, your bones ache and your throat is raw, like mine). 

So, what has 2024 sounded like so far? This is cringy to admit, but I might as well get this personal update of general self-aggrandisement out of the way now. To be completely transparent, I've spent a lot of the year listening to music of my own. The Cuneiform Tabs LP I posted about in February has been kindly reissued by W.25/Superior Viaduct (you can now stream/purchase it here) and it should be back out in the world in physical form on or around June 28. More than that, though, Matt and I are in the process of tracking a second LP which should hopefully follow hot on the heels of the repress. 

BEYOND that, 2024 has felt a bit average to me. Maybe I need to start looking in new places, but the majority of what I find myself recommending at the moment I would describe as reliably solid rather than surprising, stunning, or revelatory. Not that any of those synonyms should be taken as a baseline. I still consider ourselves lucky to have as many "solid" releases as we do. But I'd be fibbing if I said I was as juiced up now as I was this time 2, 3, or 4 years ago. I'm particularly fatigued by the deluge of emails I get from labels via bandcamp (if this sounds like moaning, remember I'm typing this from the infirmary).

That being said, there's still lots to recommend. So let's get to it.

Ivan Robirosa — scred (SELN)

I always get a little self conscious when I decide to write about electronic music. If prompted, I would really struggle to explain the difference between jungle and drum and bass, for example. It's not my forte and it's never been my bread and butter. Lately, though, anything released from the London crews of Lost Domain or SELN has been really hitting the sweet spots. I guess that means I mostly ride for industrial and dub techno? Someone please let me know. This release was my first fav of the year; 5 variations on a theme; the original track and 4 subsequent remixes are all vital.

Jack Sheen — Croon Harvest (The Trilogy Tapes)

I was lucky and managed to catch a live performance of this piece at the Camden Arts Centre this February. And while this recording doesn't quite do justice to the stereoscopic experience of being able to move around and inside its gentle but enveloping sound, it still really works for me as a facsimile of that experience. More theatrical then a dream house, but just as transporting.

Nate Scheible — or valleys and (Outside Time)

I know next to nothing about Nate Scheible, but this EP-length cassette really grabbed me. I'm a sucker for any release where generous amounts of atmosphere feel deliberately cultivated in order to foreground and frame spare moments of melody. The ratio on this release is heavily stilted towards the atmospheric (lots of recordings of rain), which makes the satie-like closer "small and horseless" almost sound like rain itself. I only wish this release were twice as long.

Jules Archive — Platonic Tales (Hidden Harmony)

It's interesting to compare the Estonian label Hidden Harmony to something like Leaving Records. To me, the success of the latter is couched in their ability to repackage new age music in such a way that people who consume it become convinced they're hip/modern for also buying crystals and eating chia pudding. Meaning, they get to ignore the connection between their privilege and their pursuit of wellness because it's being sold to them as something both au courant and enlightened. BARF. Hidden Harmony, by contrast, releases records that look like they should be discovered in the bargain new age bins of yore. Meaning, they get much closer to the deeply outsider heart of what makes the genre so special in the first place. Platonic Tales is moody, dark, and romantic ambient music befitting the clip-art looking lunar eclipse on its cover as well as the (hopefully) genuine weirdos who made it.

Florian T M Zeisig — Planet Inc (Stroom)

This one would pair as an interesting complement to the Ivan Robirosa record recommended earlier in that it's a compelling two-hander of dubby techno smuggled via really spaced out atmospherics. My fav release from stroom in a while, too. 

Cindy Lee — Diamond Jubilee (Realistik)

This record has been widely acclaimed in so many other places, I'm not sure there is much I can add to the discourse. Outside, that is, of saying that Cindy Lee has been making my fav guitar centred music for quite some time and it's thrilling to see someone capture so much rightfully earned recognition their own way and on their own terms. Given the rumours about this being the final Cindy Lee release, it makes sense that it feels like 3 albums worth of material at once. It somehow plays like both a wholesale excavation of every melodic idea they've ever had as an artist AND an impeccably crafted, format defying masterpiece. Despite all this, though, it's still not my favourite Cindy Lee record. The conspicuous absence of intercalary noise pieces that have defined much of the Cindy Lee catalogue before Diamond Jubilee, for example, is odd to me. It's always been the balance of high drama pop and sonic violence that made Cindy Lee so exciting. So while the sheer scale of brilliant and memorable songs composing Diamond Jubilee is undeniably staggering (and worthy of the praise its received), I'm still deeply curious about what Pat Flegel is going to do next.

Natalia Beylis — Lost - For Annie (Outside Time)

I'm generally up to hear anything Natalia Beylis releases and her records have shown up in this newsletter since it started (although I cannot believe I missed the release of Mermaids last September, by far her best record!). Lost - For Annie plays as an interesting blend of Beylis's many modes; part pseudo-ethnographic field recording, part travelogue, part far out and slow melodic bliss. Another winner for Outside Time, too!

Jessica Pratt — Here in the Pitch (Mexican Summer)

Like Cindy Lee, another record that feels like a transcendent release (both in terms of the artistic growth it showcases and the audience it seems to be reaching). Also, another release that has been exhaustively profiled elsewhere and with far more detail and class than you'll find here. Suffice it to say, I find this record to be something of a magic trick. Where the intimacy and dense modal sophistication of Pratt's songwriting is given a seemingly weightless upscaling of palette. The effect is pretty astounding. Here in the Pitch manages to simultaneously sound intricate and lush while still maintaining its vital immediacy. If you go see it performed live, look around and you'll notice all of her fans feel like she's singing directly to them.

Goldblum — Tears in Limbo (Bergpolder)

An interesting fusion of Blunt and Copland-style prankster collage and the new European loop aesthetic typified by artists like Brannten Schnüre, maybe. All with a thick glaze of sleazy jazz or lounge on top. Heady and dissociative. Tripped out, but funny. Not for everyone, but definitely for me.

Vessel — Vessel (Diazepam)

Definitely my fav release of the year so far. Not the most novel, but definitely the most well done. The A side of this two-hander is a sizzling riff on Terminal Beach style noise/drone; seemingly both exotic and sinister, jagged and humid. It reaches that special space where the harsh and psychedelic find a unique dual resonance. The B side is more komische, and plays like a lysergic Tascam regurgitation of In Den Garten Pharaos-era Pop Vuh. I could say a lot more about this record, but I think I'm about to collapse into a nap. Til next time <3.

For orders in the USA, see the Sloth Mate Productions bandcamp page.

Here is the little blurb/bio we're using:

Cuneiform Tabs is a correspondence recording project between Matt Bleyle (Violent Change/Sopors) and Sterling Mackinnon (False Berries/Violent Change). Compiled from 18 months of recordings traded between their respective homes in the Bay Area and the UK, this eponymous debut was assembled with Tascam portastudios and entry-level home studio software. For anyone familiar with Violent Change and the False Berries, this will sound like a hybrid of both. For the unfamiliar, this recording is recommended if you like R.D. Laing, technology in flames, Sylvia Browne, blue dream, Sid and Marty Krofft, narrow band light therapy, Vera Figner, Kim Philby, Art Bell, and Gunfight At Carnegie Hall.

The Cuneiform Tabs are:

Matt: Voice, Guitars, Bass Guitars, Drums, Drum Machines, Tambourine

Sterling: Voice, Guitars, Samplers, Keys, Drum Machines, Synths

with...

James Sullivan: Engineer and Mandolin on "Space Crone"
Conor Kiley: Orator on "Not Another Priest"

Recorded in the Bay Area and London, 2022/2023
Mastered by A.B. Donoval

"I was recently celebrating a momentous life event when I made the mistake of scanning my telephone to read that the gulf stream could collapse as early as 2025."

I guess I was tooling around with a concept about framing the summer's best releases as specific devices for coping with contemporary feelings of angst and dread. Those which appealed to my sense of escapist nostalgia (see Famous Mammals Ínstant Pop Expressionism Now!), for example, or others that really grounded me in the shit (anything on Lost Domain). But it felt a little dark and I wasn't enjoying writing it. I've been actively spending far more of my time offline since. The bad news hasn't really abated, but my conscious engagement with it has. The unintended consequence of which has been that I'm also a bit less inclined to hang out in a google doc composing 2000 word essays that approximately 55 people will maybe read. 

Good things keep happening, too, of course. As do excellent releases (this past November alone has been bananas). So I return to you now, more excited about the state of sonic affairs than I've been all year. Looking back, there's loads to recommend. And while I could labour through the exercise of punching up some thematic essay about what it all means to me in the aggregate, I'm less inclined to do so than I was when I started this newsletter last winter. I'd also rather save the proverbial ink (and literal time) to highlight the individual LPs I dug the most. I hate ranked lists, so everything below is gonna be organised chronologically by release date (we'll break it down month by month). I'll blurb a bit for the records I liked best and do basic links for all other notables of each month too. If I happen to have already written about something I'm listing here, I'm just gonna recycle the original post. That means the blurbs of releases from Jan to June may be something you've already read before. Everything from June onwards will be new, however. 

Let's just get down to it.

:::::::::::::::

JANUARY

Core of the Coleman — Klein Bottles (Ikuisuus)

This tape—from the ever reliable Ikuisuus—starts off positively sizzling. It opens with a blared signal pushed to such a decibel that it's difficult to decipher what instrument, exactly, is generating the sound. It then patiently mellows into a long-form collage of swirling electric pianos and what sounds like a (possibly synthesised?) vibraphone (tasteful nods to Reich and Riley abound). It's a striking piece of music that deftly ebbs between noise and melody, all while forming a sonic cocoon that feels restorative and relaxing. The B side is similarly effective; another long journey that alternates between cluttered gurgling and slow melodic ground swells. When percussive elements do enter the picture, they're buried underneath layers of sound to such an extent you may think they're coming through the wall you share with your neighbour. It's a super heady and stunning release.

best of the rest…

FEBRUARY

Conrad Pack — DOMA4 EXP (Lost Domain)

Lost Domain is easily the best new label of the year, if not the best label of the year, period. I've dug everything they've put out; from their inaugural release (Conrack Pack—DOMA4), to their most recent (Erin Hopes—Lucid Dreaming). That I've chosen to blurb this specific digital only release is somewhat arbitrary. I'm honestly tempted to write about all of them. Part of the label's appeal is just how consistently resonant the vibe has been for me. I've found myself a little bored of most of the predominant trends of a lot of modern electronic music. It's usually either too crisp and digital, too online sounding, or too much of an escapist "good time". This release in particular helped me clarify what I think I'm most after these days; looping, repetitive, mean, and home-made sounding industrial techno. 

Cosmic Drag — Bo (Stoned to Death)

This is a jagged and hostile offering of noise rock with transcendent moments of smeared psychedelia. Peaking signals are processed into hypnotic rhythms as eerie formless vocal melodies blur into occasional focus. I'd be tempted to describe it as psychotic if the big picture of it didn't feel so well put together. It's all a bit reminiscent of Hanson Records or Paw Tracks in the early aughts, which I've found myself feeling pretty nostalgic for this year, somehow.

Jef Mertens — No Mathematics (KRAAK)

This outstanding drone record blends a range of borrowed psychedelic motifs into a rich brew that is at once both highly original and expertly studied. Bookended by two stunning tracks anchored in the heady reference tones of a shruti box, the five longform tracks that make up No Mathematics glide between reedy hums, cascading zithers, and waves of feedback strobed through heavy tremolo units. Substantial parts of the album evoke something I might describe as 4-track Fluxus; a soundtrack for turning grotty practice spaces and modest bedrooms into temporary Dream Houses. In other places the drones sound as doped-out as they do psychedelic, à la the early offerings of Peter Kember/Spectrum, say. Taken collectively, No Mathematics plays a bit like meditative head music for people who have little to no interest in wellness whatsoever. Which is to say, it's a psych album for noise creeps.

best of the rest…

MARCH

Günter Schlienz — Current [Muzane Editions]

I hadn't heard Günter Schlienz until last year's "Music that Glows in the Dark" (Eiderdown Records), but he is now likely my favourite contemporary synth-focused artist. If spacious, meditative, and psychedelic moonscapes are your cup of tea you can lose yourself in his robust discography for ages. This release from March on Osaka's Muzane Editions is particularly dazzling (he somehow has, impossibly, 3 new releases so far this April). While never dark or sinister in sound (though Schlienz does that palette well on other releases, too), the compositions gathered here on this release are so vital and concentrated in tone and delivery that listening to them feels like the aural equivalent of bathing in solar flares.

Haudat — Energiavampyyri [Satatuhatta]

Exquisite harsh toke comprised of two side-long scorchers. Each composition is bifurcated into channels of hiss and static so dense and (occasionally) rhythmic that they produce a magic sensation of thrust and forward motion. It's like struggling to stand on the prow of a cigarette boat being launched through a toxic fog. Maybe it's my un-diagnosed adhd, but I find the sensation this record produces strangely relaxing. It also features some of my favourite album artwork of the year.

best of the rest…

APRIL

Little Skull — untitled [Horn of Plenty/Anomolous]

If someone blindly put this on for me and told me it was a demo for Obscure Records that somehow didn't happen, I would believe them. This is flawless homespun ambient music in a classic fashion. To listen to it is like watching rain fall on a placid lake in slow motion through a veil of smoke rings. Its moments of pure texture are focused and time-dilating. Its moments or melody are utterly enchanting and (dare I say it…) Satie-like. And — much as I'm prone to gush about a synth record or something made in ableton — nothing quite does it for me as much as a record this transportive and meditative being composed of looped strings, bells, tines, and minimal electronics. I love that there is audible tape hiss over everything, too.

Saul Adamczewski—Adventures in Limbo [Juicy Juice]

Saul Adamczewski—Music of Hate Songs of Frustration Jigs of Lust [self-released]

I've been anticipating the release of Saul Adamczewski's solo debut, Adventures in Limbo, since the rumours about it started in 2020 or so. I was never much interested in the Fat White Family outside of a small handful of Saul-sung tunes that crop up throughout their discography (see the Christmas card "The Drones" or the closer "Goodbye Goebels" from the second FWF LP for reference). I've also been mixed about Saul fronted FWF spin-off, Insecure Men, where I often felt objectively great songs were occasionally over-stylised. Starting sometime around 2018/2019 a series of true "solo" performances started circulating as videos online; sometimes just voice and acoustic guitar, others accompanied by sax and flute. Pared-back, lean, and focused, these videos showcased just what a serious and fascinating songwriter Saul Adamczewski is. He has a unique gift for balancing irreverence with earnestness, of spinning the political and the absurd into the banal and the morose in a way that can be alternately moving, hilarious, and soberingly frank. It's rare that something so ostensibly clever can often feel so personal and vital. Much of this is aided by Adamczewski's gift for melody and his strengths as a vocalist. Run the standard lazy music criticism exercise of "two parts artist a, one part artist b" with Adventures in Limbo and you'll be surprised by the names you'll find yourself saying; Lou Reed, Harry Nilsson, Van Morrison, Tim Buckley. Maybe even a tunesmith like Bacharach will come to mind (though, admittedly, a very narcotic version of one). Strong AOTY contender, to be sure.

Much to my particular delight, however, Adamczewski is equally compelling as a noise artist. Music of Hate Songs of Frustration Jigs of Lust was announced shortly before the release of AIL and deserves every bit as much attention as its pop counterpart. What's notable here is how this release feels in conversation with both the legacy of higher-brow atonal music of the 20th century (Legeti, Varese) as well as the legacies of more pedestrian approaches to "noise" (KK Null, etc.) This is a heavily composed, controlled, and intentional piece of abstract music that is also produced in high fidelity. Music of Hate is a fascinating counterpart to Adventures in Limbo and, when taken together, comprises one of the more dynamic and captivating artistic profiles of anyone currently working (be sure to scope his Dubuffet-like paintings too).

best of the rest…

MAY

Juho Toivonen — Kasveille ja Eläimille [Ultraääni]

This LP makes a great double feature with the Little Skull record reviewed above in that it's another expert study in slow head music built around both organic instruments and technique. It evokes the type of psychedelic experience one might achieve whilst simply sitting still in a beautiful place for a long time, regardless of whether there is a lysergic element to it or not. Listening to the 5 tracks assembled here is like watching the morning sun transform a frozen field into a lilting haze of spiralling vapour. Which is to say, these deceptively simple compositions reveal immense depth and complexity if you're patient enough to let them. It's another impressive release for Toivonen, whose elegant output consistently plays like a lo-fi extension of drone heavyweights from Yoshi Wada to Wolfgang Voight. 

best of the rest…

JUNE

Laure Boer — Les cités englouties [Kashual Plastik]

It's now my feeling that — despite the cultivated obscurity that defines so many of my favourite records/labels in the last 5 or so years — a specific lane of European experimental music has calcified as a distinct aesthetic or "sound". There are now reissues of "classic records" (Erinnerungen An Gesichter, Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig, for example), unmistakable stylistic hallmarks, and acolytes aplenty (releases from Kou and Johannes Björk spring to mind). What's unique about this release from Laure Boer isn't that it sounds novel (she's an OG, to be sure), but that it sounds like a idealised and nearly perfectly executed distillation of this particular scene or sound. A watermark, even. Les cites englouties deftly blends melody and noise, evoking both the intergenerational pathos of ageless folk songcraft (see "Lapin") as well as a cathartic approach to noise which I feel grounds this record in the singular angst of our contemporary moment.

best of the rest…

JULY

William Henry Meung — Hiraeth and Limerence [Horn of Plenty] 

"Chain of Birds" is one of the loneliest side one/song one lead-offs I've ever heard. It hooked me as soon as this album was announced. As an album, Hiraeth and Limerance feels both claustrophobically private and intimate while also feeling incredibly spacious in its imaginative scope. It's as if WHM, in pulling you inside this densely internal meditation on pain and longing, is also showing you that the flipside of bottomlessness is a space full of possibility.

best of the rest…

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

The Dengie Hundred — Tube [Sagome]

Another good one from one of my favourite London labels. The Dengie Hundred released a proper LP this past autumn, but I actually prefer this cassette release. Something about these long form pieces plays like an atmospheric thread connecting Throbbing Gristle to the type of vibe you're likely to find turning up to the right weeknight at Oto, Iklektik, or New River Studios. Solid industrial dub. 

7FO — Homemade Inspirations [Conatala]  

I flipped for the 7FO compilation, 'Moment', that came out on Metron records in 2017 and have been chasing that vibe with them (with slightly diminishing returns) ever since. This release is the first 7FO in a minute to hit the same sweet spots. As with 'Moment', this tape is a phantasmagoric riff on the atmosphere of dub without actually trading in the standard motifs and affectations of the genre. It's quite a magic trick, and it stakes them as an artist who — when they're on fire — can sound pretty singular.

best of the rest…

OCTOBER

Rest Symbol — Rest Symbol [AN1MA]

Don't know much about the provenance of this release or project other than the fact Wendy Lavone is involved. So much of what comes out lately is heavily 90s influenced. Normally that's a turn off. This debut, however, is a stunner that recalls (in key moments and places) the best of late 90s trip hop. I think the reason it works so well for me is that the updates Rest Symbol bring to their revivalism are seamless and successful. Time dilates entirely differently here than it does on something like a Portishead or Peace Orchestra LP. The moods and atmospheres are wholly enveloping, too. And just when you start to feel lost there's a central vocal performance so vital and magnetic you won't forget where, and when, you are.

best of the rest…

NOVEMBER

Francis Plagne — Into Closed Air [Bison]

The definition of a grower. I've always admired Plagne's output without ever fully falling for it. I bought this LP on a whim right when it came out (liked the cover, had store credit), and it hasn't really left the rotation since. Three long form pieces which all sound incredibly tight and live. This is very much a "band" record, and the performance captured here alternately recalls jazzy prog rock (a la Matching Mole, or something) and the gentler side of the 'classic' records Ghost released on Drag City. The most striking element, however, is the melodic command Plagne has as a songwriter. The compositions here are long enough to feel like they should be improvised, but spend the time and you'll find rich, patient, melodically deep, and expertly crafted compositions.

Static Cleaner Lost Reward — Breathing Under Honey [Low Company]

Apparently the final LP from Low Company. Major shame on the one hand, but also a fitting choice for a great label's farewell release. This record is catnip to me. It's dubby, it kinda sounds like Clarke/Ferraro, and there's a bit of Black Noise records in there, too. Sounds great when you're domed, makes you feel domed when you're straight.

best of the rest…

DECEMBER

memotone – Tollard [Trilogy Tapes]

I ran outta steam and energy in the end, folks. Not much grabbed me in the final month of this calendar year. To be fully transparent, I also took a much needed holiday to a country where my cell phone wouldn't work and intentionally left my computer at home. I loved this record, though. Never heard anything else by memotone before, though there seems to be a decade plus worth of back catalogue to look forward to. When paired with something like the recent EP from the Tara Clerkin Trio, one gets the feeling something particularly special is always happening in Bristol.