New releases last two weeks: Leftfield

Review: Ezekiel Honig is a New York City-based artist who founded two vital labels, Anticipate Recordings and Microcosm, and now he is back with a new album on 12K. Unmapping The Distance Keeps Getting Closer is a tender and honest work of art that wears its heart on its sleeve with piano, horns and broken rhythms all characterising the palette. Field recordings are also worked into the arrangements to add a real narrative and to really evoke a sense of place. Add in plenty of textural and tactile motives and you have a journeying album full of melancholy but also a sense of hope.

Review: Hyldipi's impressive and immersive debut album Heilun distils Iceland's stark natural grandeur into 90 minutes of superb ambient soundscapes. Every piece is a spontaneous expression improvised through meditative states using only guitar and basic hardware. Textured and emotionally rich, the album invites you into an internal voyage of discovery. 'Vor' opens with solemn warmth, while 'Sorg' embraces imperfection in the form of tape hiss, fretboard creaks and subtle dissonance, which all lend it a human touch. Hyldipi's approach treats sound as something to be channelled, not owned. Heilun is one of those albums that is not just heard-it's felt, like mist hanging over a quiet fjord, gently shifting with each breath.

Review: Kali Malone's The Sacrificial Code stands tall, meditating on the perception of time through the pipe organ. Originally released in 2019, the album was shaped by Malone's engagement with tuning systems, electroacoustic composition, and Sweden's experimental music scene. Following her apprenticeship with organ tuner Jan Borjeson, she embraced historical temperaments and archaic compositional forms, stripping them down to their starkest essence. Now reissued by Ideologic Organ, this 2025 edition features a newly recorded 'Sacrificial Code III,' captured on the 16th-century meantone organ at Malmo Konstmuseum. Malone's meticulous recording process, from close-micing techniques to the spatial placement of sound, enhances the organ's physical presence, creating an immersive, time-dilating effect. Each chord resounds with the breath of the instrument, as the record's restrained grandeur invites listeners into an amorphous, time-bending experience.

Review: Hadley Roe is a UK-based artist whose debut album on peerless ambient label Past Inside The Present adds up to a healing sonic journey crafted with electric guitar, synths and software trickery. Themes are drawn from Roe's personal struggles with mental health, trauma and isolation so make for sounds that blend melancholy, bliss and moments of calm and comfort. Take the serene 'The First Day' or the evolving 'No One Ever Touched Me Before You' - both are hugely emotive and absorbing for the way they patiently unfurl. Roe's ability to express herself through intuitive, wordless music is truly standout.

Review: Deep Valley is a new collaborative work by Australian artists Seaworthy aka Cameron Webb and Matt Rosner and they came together for it during a week-long residency at Bundanon Art Museum in New South Wales. The property which was gifted to the Australian public by artists Arthur and Yvonne Boyd in the 1990s offers a unique landscape along the Shoalhaven River and is surrounded by sandstone cliffs and diverse wildlife. Drawing inspiration from Boyd's belief that "you can't own a landscape," Deep Valley combines the inspiration of that setting with environmental recordings, guitars, piano, and electronic processing all of which aim to highlight the transient nature of ecosystems and encourage you to reconnect with the sounds of nature.

Review: 11 years after it first appeared in stores, sometime Kill Laura amd Misty Dixon member Jane Weaver's sixth solo album Silver Globe has been given the reissue treatment. This is undoubtedly a good thing, as it remains one of Weaver's most magical and consistent full length excursions - an inspired blend of neo-psych-folk, Elizabeth Fraser style vocals, kosmiche-influenced "motorik" grooves and cosmic effects. Lightly conceptual, it's packed with highlights, not least the driving and spaced-out 'Argent', the twisted cosmic pop meets jangly indie-pop of 'The Electric Mountain', the dubbed-out and densely layered 'Arrows', the glassy-eyed lo-fi dream pop of 'Mission Desire' and the effects-laden pastoral dreaminess of 'Your Time In This Life is Just Temporary'.