Review: Barker's latest release is a masterclass in fluid experimentation, embracing unpredictability with a delicate balance of harmony and controlled chaos. Following his acclaimed previous work, this new collection of tracks finds him refining his craft while allowing for spontaneity to take the lead. Opening with 'Force of Habit', the project immediately sets a tone of shifting momentum, while Reframingithe serotonin-laced lead singleispirals through shimmering arpeggios, evoking echoes of classic trance before drifting into uncharted territory. Tracks like 'Difference' and 'Repetition' and 'The Remembering Self' showcase Barker's intricate layering, weaving together mechanical precision with an organic sense of movement. A deep dive into mechanical instrumentation lies at the heart of this work, with Barker exploring the possibilities of automation not as a replacement for human touch, but as a tool for new forms of expression. The result is a body of work that mirrors the uncertainty of its time, embracing change rather than resisting it. As the final moments of this LP fade out, Barker leaves us with a feeling of transformationimusic that adapts to the moment in which it exists.
Review: Mark Barrott's Everything Changes, Nothing Ends is a heartfelt journey through life, loss, and love. Released on Anjunadeep Reflections, the album follows his 2023 record Johatsu and sees Barrott channelling his grief into a meditative, moving collection of tracks. Written during his wife's illness, the album reflects the overwhelming sense of isolation and sorrow he felt following her passing in January 2023. "It became my way of coping," Barrott shares. "Coming back to an empty house after a day at the hospital, music was my only comfort." Across Everything Changes, Nothing Ends, Barrott weaves together orchestral, ambient, and jazz textures. Each track, like an audio diary, captures specific emotional moments from those final weeks. There's a tenderness to the arrangementsipeaks of intensity balanced by gentle, soothing passages. Far from simply wallowing in grief, the album embraces acceptance and gratitude, focusing on the beauty of life and its fleeting nature. The result is a deeply personal, genre-blurring record that showcases Barrott's unwavering creativity over a career spanning nearly four decades.
Review: Originally recorded in September 1982, September 23rd would likely not recognise the DUMBO neighbourhood of Brooklyn in which it was conceived. Post-industrialisation, the area became known as a hotbed for artists due to the inexpensive loft spaces up for grabs, but today has been gentrified thanks to its position - Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass. One thing that hasn't changed in that time is just how spectacular William Basinski's pieces are. Comprising two parts, original piano sections played by close friend and world famous drag artist John Epperson (AKA Lypsinka) were recorded onto a handheld cassette machine, before being fed through a Frippertronics loop and feedback loop tape delay system, with incredible results. Rich, strange sonic textures, beautiful but fleeting moments of melody and a depth that sounds like you can dive into it.
Review: September 23rd is the debut release of William Basinski's new Arcadia Archive series and it features a previously unreleased gem recorded in September 1982 in his first loft in Brooklyn's pre-gentrified DUMBO. This early work, derived from a high school piano composition, evolved significantly after Basinski recorded it using a portable cassette deck on a piano owned by his neighbour, John Epperson at 351 Jay Street. Initially unimpressive, the piece transformed through Basinski's use of the John Giorno/William Burroughs cut-up technique and Frippertronics loop system to yield remarkable results. This discovery adds a captivating layer to Basinski's nearly five-decade career.
Review: The Disintegration Loops man William Basinski has linked up with acclaimed experimental composer Janek Schaefer for this new collaborative record on Temporary Residence Limited. What they cook up is a suite of very unassuming songs that are all dedicated to the late and great avant-garde composer Harold Budd. The record was eight years in the making and is as timeless as ambient gets with 42 minutes of gently undulating sonic terrain gently and quietly detailed with subtle skill and placid melodies. It is as beautiful as it is absorbing once you really give yourself over to the sounds.
Study For Tape Hiss & Other Audio Artefacts (12:01)
Apparition 5 (2:14)
Review: Selected from a decade of recordings, this release showcases Bass Communion at its most experimental and texturally rich. Tracks are layered with analogue imperfectionsitape hiss, wow and flutter, static noiseithat are transformed into haunting soundscapes. The mellotron, buried beneath layers of imagined rust and dirt, adds an eerie, organic depth to the fragmented drones and spectral noise. The carefully constructed album feels like an excavation of forgotten sonic artefacts, with each piece offering a narrative rooted in decay and texture. Pressed on 2xLP, this is a striking addition to the Bass Communion catalogue, perfect for fans of sonic exploration.
Review: A narrative. An odyssey. The journey of a lifetime. As the world locked itself away and the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, Battaglia stepped into the record studio and evidently fired up the ignition rockets. Travel in the literal sense may have been off the cards, but Season One certainly transports the listener through a deep and complex sonic tapestry, telling a tale of struggle from fear into hope and onto something altogether unique and new and enlightened. Plenty here has been inspired by the aural work of John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream, to name but two influences, but ultimately where Battaglia is taking us feels resolutely new. More so, tangibly unchartered. Out to the farthest reaches of the known galaxy and back again in a stunning collection of strange and beguiling electronic business.
The Ballad Of The Witches' Road (True Crime version) (1:41)
The Ballad Of The Witches' Road (Sacred Chant version) (3:12)
The Ballad Of The Witches' Road (Lorna Wu version) (4:41)
The Ballad Of The Witches' Road (Cover version) (4:40)
The Ballad Of The Witches' Road (Nicky version) (0:48)
The Ballad Of The Witches' Road (Agatha Through Time version) (2:29)
The Ballad Of The Witches' Road (Pop version) (2:33)
The Ballad Of The Witches' Road (Score version) (1:23)
Agatha's Theme Score (2:09)
Billy Kaplan Score (2:38)
Rio (Love & Death) Score (4:29)
The Coven March Score (2:49)
Tricks & Trials Score (1:56)
Salem's Seven Score (5:02)
Magick Medley Score (1:29)
Review: The new Disney+ TV miniseries Agatha All Along sees Kathryn Hahn reprise her role as Agatha Harkness, a central superheroine and witch of the Marvel Comics universe. A sequel to the live-action miniseries WandaVision, Agatha All Along charts Harkness' travails of escape and persecution, in a contemporary magic realist narrative blending witch coven and superhero themes. Here the soundtrack to the new series appears in tasteful and fitting fashion and in LP format, featuring such well-chosen as 'Hava Nagila' by Traditional, 'Visions' by Plastic People, 'Season Of The Witch' by Donovan and 'Heads Will Roll' by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Review: Science, Art And Ritual chronicles the musical journey of Kingsuk Biswas, known as Bedouin Ascent. Growing up in Harrow during the 70s and 80s, Biswas was influenced by David Rodigan's dub shows and the post-punk experimentation of the era. His eclectic tastes spanned punk, free jazz, noise, and Indian Classical music, which he fused with his ever expanding record collection. By 1987, his music prefigured what would become techno and gave rise to this album which was released in 1994 by Rising High Records. Science, Art And Ritual now celebrates its 30th anniversary with a deluxe 3LP reissue featuring restored tracks and some bonus new material.
Review: We're starved for two-sided 12"s in the world of ambient music, but Chris Madak aka. Bee Mask has refreshingly graced us with one this week. It should be said that there's Skee Mask and then there's Bee Mask; the latter is far more unsung, undeservingly so. Madak's music is abstract and cerebral enough to have lent him credo enough to have released on the likes of Weird Forest, Spectrum Spools and Room40. But this latest reissue, 'Versailles Is Not Too Large Or Infinity Too Long', hears him plunge the ethereal heights for the US label Unifactor. Originally released on cassette on Chondritic Sound in 2008, these pieces deserve the renewed attention and the fresh laying to wax, since they're not 'regular ole' ambient cuts in the slightest. Unafraid of indulging the high end freqs, Bee Mask fleshes out a mood of uncertain, urgent bliss - sizzling, crunching and soaring the drone, as if its maker were a modern Icarus flying too close to the sun.
Review: Berlin-based Italian drummer and composer Andrea Belfi has long been known as a true sonic explorer. His immersive soundscapes stretch space, time and texture and that's the case again here with new album Eternally Frozen. It was composed for drums, a three-piece brass ensemble and electronics, percussion and synthesizer and makes use of an ancient compositional technique where "an initial melody is imitated at a specified time interval by one or more parts, creating illusionary never-ending musical journeys." It's an endless cascade of timbre and tone that undulates like a distance hilly landscape and leaves you in a state of mindfulness like no other.
Review: After his superlative and rather unexpected foray into Afro and Latin fusion with his Sol Set project, John Beltran returns to more familiar territory with a rendition of his classic mid-90s album 'Ten Days of Blue' recorded at this year's Dekmantel in Amsterdam. We get a real feel for the whole gig experience, from the sound of murmured anticipation and intro tape to the resolution at the outro and the main meat of the music itself - lively, optimistic, groovy but understated and chilled at the same time - sits somewhere between his ambient and harder techno work. Among Beltran's very finest output.
Review: Ben Edwards, better known by his pseudonym Benge, is famed for his grasp of authentic vintage synth technology, called in to produce John Grant aming many others as well as Wrangler and Creep Show. He's been exploring the sonic possibilities of electronic instruments since he was a young boy, in the 1970s, and The View From Vega, his debut solo album on the DiN imprint, is primarily an ambient suite of tracks inspired by the space-music typically produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It uses a selection of vintage synthesisers, sequencers and FX units to provide a fertile sonic landscape to explore. The idea was to use simple sequences (using both analogue and digital units), sustained synthesiser pads and electronic piano improvisations, alongside various ancient delay, flange and reverb units. The beautiful, warm quality of the tones that exude from such instruments are very evident on the six tracks that slowly unfold their oscillations in organic, melodic soundscapes.
Review: California's James Bernard is a much-loved regular on this label as well as being a veteran of the wider ambient scene who has been hard at it for more than three decades. His latest outing on Past Inside The Present with Anthene (aka Brad Deschamps of Toronto) is Soft Octaves, an album that finds them crafting a series of sounds using electric six-string bass. It has a huge range from the deepest depths to the wispiest of highs and each of the tracks here was recorded in one single take. The results are spellbinding indeed and the range of the bass's sonic ability is astonishing as it sounds at times like a cello, at others woodwind and is always intriguing.
Euph (Feelings In Finite) (Bvdubs' Re-Entries) (11:32)
Complete Nonsense (Calm & Chaos) (10:30)
Helix (Radiate In Red) (7:51)
Phosphorous (Elements Of Endlessness) (10:56)
Mars Rain (Freeze & Fall) (6:23)
Lost In It (Life In Lucidity) (10:29)
FM (Frequencies Of Forgiveness) (3:49)
Odyssey (Gazing Into Galaxies) (10:31)
Genetic Experiment (Symbols & Secrets) (2:24)
Review: James Bernard's 1994 ambient masterpiece Atmospherics is now 30 years old. To mark its anniversary the landmark record has been meticulously remastered and paired with a brand-new, track-by-track reinterpretation by Bernard's longtime friend and collaborator, bvdub. Together, these works span four slabs of wax and offer a profound exploration of ambient soundscapes that honour the original while also presenting some fresh, emotive perspectives. A must-have work for your ambient section.
Review: Denovali presents the second cooperation album by Italian composer, arranger, producer and guitarist Eraldo Bernocchi, in collaboration with Berlin-based Japanese violinist, composer, electronic producer and Tangerine Dream member Hoshiko Yamane. Bernocchi and Yamane have come together here for the second time after finding inspiration in the Japanese concept of "sabi" - an aesthetic that celebrates the beauty of impermanence and decay. It is often associated with the simplicity, austerity, and solitude found in nature, and is said to evoke a sense of melancholy, nostalgia, and reverence for the passage of time. The record, to match, is a unique blend of electronic and acoustic music, with Bernocchi's pulsating textures and Yamane's haunting treated violin melodies weaving together to create a captivating and emotional sonic landscape.
Review: Germany's Bersarin Quartett - the imaginary invention of Munster musician Thomas Bucker - drops its fifth album Systeme. Whether the sole product of one man's imagination or the figurative invocation of orchestra-as-tulpa, it doesn't matter. This is an album of full-on metamodern electro-orchestral post-generations, the likes of which generations prior would've never heard before. Described by Denovali as "if Talk Talk, Tim Hecker and Skrillex were making music together and challenging our tolerance for ambiguity", we find this comparison apt if not eliding the real thrust of the record; the likes of 'Liebe' and 'Autopoesie' evidently draw on far more influences than mere composers, building a strikingly oneiric repertoire of crystalline fluctuations and timestretched neoclassical romances.
Review: Portland-based Kevin Palmer tucks himself away in a shed to make his music, so the myth goes. Wherever he makes it, he has always cooked up something special in the in-between electronic worlds. Now he lands on Blundar with a brand new album on numbered and heavyweight translucent green vinyl that offers up 12 tracks of ambient, dub and downtempo experiments which are at times intriguing and cosmic and others laid back and beautifully lazy. Each one is deftly detailed with myriad synth sounds, and atmospheric motifs and they all add up to a perfectly deep, dreamy and immersive listen.
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