NEW ARRIVALS

In August 2022, Australia-based, French born fourth-world music legend Ariel Kalma was invited to participate in BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction series of special collaborations. The program pairs artists who have not previously worked together to create new music cooperatively. Kalma was quick to suggest working with two musicians whom he had never met – International Anthem recording artists Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer, whose critically-acclaimed duo debut 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' had been released just a few months earlier. An invitation was sent to Chiu and Honer, which was received with great enthusiasm, as Chiu had long been a fan of Kalma’s work, even citing him as a major influence on his approach to electronic music composition. The essential structure of the Late Junction collaboration was that the artists would work together to create around twenty minutes of music. They began passing music back and forth, some that Kalma had started, and some that Honer & Chiu had started, with each adding to or editing the track before returning it to the other. The music would only go back and forth a few times before being finalized. After meeting their twenty minute goal for the program (four pieces total), the three musicians were satisfied in what they would present and sent along their work to the producers of Late Junction. However, there was a nagging suspicion that this wasn’t the end of the story. There were several pieces that they had nearly completed but that weren’t sent for inclusion in the radio program, and there were many ideas for refining those pieces that had. With this in mind Kalma, Chiu and Honer agreed that they would continue to work together to try to push the music further. The freshly minted trio felt like there was much more to be said and more work to be done. The Late Junction program was broadcast in September of 2022. Simultaneously, Kalma, Chiu and Honer began expanding upon the music they had started for the purpose of the broadcast, working diligently on the music for several months. After meeting their twenty minute goal for the program (four pieces total), the three musicians were satisfied in what they would present and sent along their work to the producers of Late Junction. However, there was a nagging suspicion that this wasn’t the end of the story. There were several pieces that they had nearly completed but that weren’t sent for inclusion in the radio program, and there were many ideas for refining those pieces that had. With this in mind Kalma, Chiu and Honer agreed that they would continue to work together to try to push the music further. The freshly minted trio felt like there was much more to be said and more work to be done. The Late Junction program was broadcast in September of 2022. Simultaneously, Kalma, Chiu and Honer began expanding upon the music they had started for the purpose of the broadcast, working diligently on the music for several months. Their collective approach to this work was born in improvisation and realized via collage-based editing. The end result brings several distinct musical moments — recorded sometimes decades apart — into conversation with one another, forming new narratives from building blocks of old ones. There are snippets of improvised playing from each musician, edited together with recordings that Kalma had made in the 70s at GRM, and even moments of audio notes — like Kalma explaining his ideas — that would make it into the final mixes. Their collective approach to this work was born in improvisation and realized via collage-based editing. The end result brings several distinct musical moments — recorded sometimes decades apart — into conversation with one another, forming new narratives from building blocks of old ones. There are snippets of improvised playing from each musician, edited together with recordings that Kalma had made in the 70s at GRM, and even moments of audio notes — like Kalma explaining his ideas — that would make it into the final mixes. Ultimately, the collection of music highlights the work of all three musicians, intertwining the contextual immersion heard on Chiu & Honer’s 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' with an intergenerational reverence for (and the undeniable presence of) Kalma’s decades-spanning body of work. It is work that has definitively enshrined him as one of the true, transcendent pioneers and sages of new age and fourth-world music. That reverence is affirmed by the album title chosen by the group — "The Closest Thing to Silence" — which is taken from a quote by Kalma included in a documentary by RVNG Intl (as part of their release of the 2014 compendium/retrospective An Evolutionary Music). Perhaps coincidental, Kalma’s quote was a slight modulation of a legendary ECM Records motto, as he said: “Music is the closest thing to silence.” Ultimately, the collection of music highlights the work of all three musicians, intertwining the contextual immersion heard on Chiu & Honer’s 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' with an intergenerational reverence for (and the undeniable presence of) Kalma’s decades-spanning body of work. It is work that has definitively enshrined him as one of the true, transcendent pioneers and sages of new age and fourth-world music. That reverence is affirmed by the album title chosen by the group — "The Closest Thing to Silence" — which is taken from a quote by Kalma included in a documentary by RVNG Intl (as part of their release of the 2014 compendium/retrospective An Evolutionary Music). Perhaps coincidental, Kalma’s quote was a slight modulation of a legendary ECM Records motto, as he said: “Music is the closest thing to silence.” The Closest Thing To Silence is an album-length collaboration between fourth-world music icon Ariel Kalma and the recording duo Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer, which evolved from a twenty-minute selection pieces they recorded in 2022 for BBC Radio 3’s ‘Late Junction’ program as part of a scheme that places together artists who have never worked together before. Chiu and Honer, who both cite Kalma as a huge influence on their work, beautifully fit into Kalma’s vision.

Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, the mysterious steel pan outfit hailing from Hamburg, Germany have amassed a cult following around the globe. With a slew of classic 7”s and three critically acclaimed full length albums, they set a high bar for themselves, one they clearly intend on pushing even higher with this new offering. On their fourth album BRSB, Bacao are back with more of the same, but more of the same with them is inherently different. Covering songs that span genres and range from mega hits to underground album cuts, they make them their own with their unique approach to the traditional steel pans of Trinidad and Tobago. While part of the allure of a new Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band album is finding out what covers they do it is equally intriguing to see what original tunes they cooked upland this record is foul of stand out originals. The album opener, “In The Crosshairs” is a rough and tough mid tempo head nodder while both “Grilled” & “Treasure Quest” pick up the tempo with heavy African Funk influences on both. Bacao goes deep with “Hazy Memories”, a bass heavy slow burner that walks a line between hypnotic and hype. All these originals stand as testament that the term “cover band” is a shoe that could never fit Bacao. However, in the tradition of steel pan music, they do a heavy amount of covers. This time around there is a big West Coast Hip Hop influence with covers of Game & 50 Cent’s “How We Do”, Dr Dre & Snoop Dogg’s “Nuthin But A G Thang”, and Tupac’s “Got My Mind Made Up” all of which take on new energy and lend themselves to the BRSB steel treatment. Bacao puts another certified dancefloor filler on their resume with their cover of Claudja Barry’s uber Disco classic “Love For The Sake Of Love” which they flip into a dubbed out affair aptly changing even the title to “Love For The Sake Of Dub”. Pulling from the contemporary smash hit section of Hop Hop they cover Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and “Love$ick” by Mura Masa & A$AP Rocky. Then they go very unexpected with “Stranger Things Theme” where they take the synth heavy theme song to the hit show and give it a more hypnotizing tone than the original.By the time BRSB is through, Bacao has taken the listener on a journey spanning a myriad of energies, tempos, and moods while keeping it all under one umbrella. For all that, these songs are alive, and they will be taken out of the context of this album and sewn into the fabric of DJ sets around the globe for many years to come. Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band continues building their legacy and pushing the boundaries of steel pan music forward with another rock solid musical offering. Enjoy.

Release date Feb. 9th. Kali Malone's anticipated new album "All Life Long" is a collection of music for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet composed by Kali Malone, 2020 - 2023. Choral music performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L'Immaculée-Conception in Nantes. Brass quintet music performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York City. Organ music performed by Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs at Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden. Kali Malone composes with a rare clarity of vision. Her music is patient and focused, built on a foundation of evolving harmonic cycles that draw out latent emotional resonances. Time is a crucial factor: letting go of expectations of duration and breadth offers a chance to find a space of reflection and contemplation. In her hands, experimental reinterpretations of centuries-old polyphonic compositional methods become portals to new ways of perceiving sound, structure, and introspection. Though awe-inspiring in scope, the most remarkable thing about Malone’s music is the intimacy stirred by the close listening it encourages. Malone’s new album All Life Long, created between 2020 - 2023, presents her first compositions for organ since 2019’s breakthrough album The Sacrificial Code alongside interrelated pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Over the course of twelve pieces, harmonic themes and patterns recur, presented in altered forms and for varied instrumentation. They emerge and reemerge like echoes of their former selves, making the familiar uncanny. Propelled by lungs and breath rather than bellows and oscillators, Malone’s compositions for choir and brass take on expressive qualities that complicate the austerity that has defined her work, introducing lyricism and the beauty of human fallibility into music that has been driven by mechanical processes. At the same time, the works for organ, performed by Malone with additional accompaniment by Stephen O’Malley on four different organs dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, underscore the mighty, spectral power that those rigorous operations can achieve. All Life Long simmers in an ever-shifting tension between repetition and variation. The pieces for brass, organ, and voice are alternated asymmetrically, providing nearly continuous timbral fluctuation across its 78-minute runtime even as thematic material reiterates. Each composition’s internal framework of fractal pattern permutations has the paradoxical effect of creating anticipated keystone moments of dramatic reverie and lulling the listener into believing in an illusory endlessness. On an even more granular level, the historical meantone tuning systems of each organ used, and the variable intonation of brass and voice, provide further points of emotional excavation within the harmony. The titular composition “All Life Long” appears twice on the album, first as an extended canon for organ and again in the final quarter, compactly arranged for voice. In the latter, Malone pairs the music with “The Crying Water” by Arthur Symons, a poem steeped in language of mourning and eternity. For organ, “All Life Long” moves with a patient stateliness, the drama concentrated in moments when shifting tonalities generate and release dissonance and ecstasy. For voice, each word is saturated with feeling, the singers swooping gracefully downward to capture the melancholy of the narrator’s relationship to the timeless tears of the sea. “Passage Through The Spheres,” the album’s opening piece, contains lyrics in Italian pulled from Giorgio Agamben’s essay In Praise of Profanation. In it, Agamben defines profanation as, in part, the act of bringing back to communal, secular use that which has been segregated to the realm of the sacred, a process Malone enacts each time she performs on church organs. This is not music of praise, or of spiritual revelation, but it is an artistic enactment of translating the indescribable. It carries the gravity of liturgical chant, and its fixation on the infinite, but draws its weight from the earthly realm of human experience. A music that draws the listener into the present moment where they can discover themselves within the interwoven musical patterns that can come to resemble the passage of days, weeks, years, a lifetime.

This is the Medium's 2nd ambient compilation album.We offered this compilation to 24 artists from all over Japan, Canada and Shenzhen who have a great expression of ambient music, and it has finally come to fruition.

“Spuren & Gegenworte” began with a quasi-telepathic collaboration between KM and RW. Both recorded a track on May 3, 2021, from 8:00 PM to 8:10 PM. These recordings were subsequently transformed, combined, juxtaposed, and further modified over the course of several months, resulting in the completion of the four pieces on the CD.
“Spuren & Gegenworte” can be translated as “traces & antonyms”, opening up a wide range of interpretations. “Traces” may refer to the remnants of the original sounds that have been transformed in the process of reworking, or it can symbolize the cultural and musical influences that can be discerned. “Antonyms” oscillates between contrasting/contradictory and complementary meanings. Of course, other interpretations are also possible.
The 4 titles are indicated as Japanese terms on the cover:  痕跡、対立、変動、補完. They stand for the themes of traces, confrontation, fluctuation, completion.
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Kohei Matsunaga is a musician and illustrator, born in Osaka in 1978. He has been actively making music since 1992, with notable releases on labels such as Raster Noton, Wordsound, Mille Plateaux, Important Records and PAN. He has collaborated with many artists, including Mika Vainio, Sean Booth from Autechre, Conrad Schnitzler, Merzbow and Asmus Tietchens. He lives in Osaka and Berlin.

Ralf Wehowsky is one of the most respected electronic composers of our day and was also a founder member of the seminal German group P16.D4 and label Selektion whose ground-breaking releases influenced many working in today’s experimental music scene. His work is split between solo releases (under the moniker RLW) and collaborations, exploring all fields between media exchange and realtime presence recordings. His music is impossible to pigeonhole into one simple bracket. It is neither industrial or musique concrete, nor computer music nor improvisation. In fact, it could be all of these.

Korpses Katatonik was a musical solo project of Zoe DeWitt during the years 1982 and 1983. Unlike DeWitt's later project Zero Kama, the work of Korpses Katatonik remains entirely within the realm of electronic music and shows an uncompromising experimental style comparable to that of other industrial bands like Throbbing Gristle, SPK, or Cabaret Voltaire. Like many other exponents of industrial culture Korpses Katatonik was inspired by dark psychiatry, pathological abnormalism, necrophilia, and other types of paraphilic aberration. These served as a metaphor for the dark side of a dehumanized society that seeks to maintain control by the suppression of anything that could be regarded as dark, sinister, deviant, or unpleasant from the viewpoint of popular mass culture. As a means of escape from this totalitarian pressure - thus a statement by Korpses Katatonik - there remains only self-destruction, murder, or the withdrawal into catatonic schizophrenia. Korpses Katatonik's first release was a Nekrophile Rekords cassette entitled subklinikal leukotomy aphrenia spasmophiik lyssophobo asphyxia sinister lethal anorex. The titles on the album were: shatok, schmertzlabor, enzephallik mortuor, nekom, kcok transzlant, kaltfleisch corporor, skarzisko and okzipital slash. The terminology of psychopathological disorders was used by Korpses Katatonik in a subversive way for its own poetic value and many of the rare vocals and track titles (as for example shatok, enzephallik mortuor and kaltfleisch corporor) were taken from writings of patients of Viennas famous psychiatrist hospital in Maria Gugging (dissolved in 2007). The title skarzisko refers to a national socialist concentration camp in the polish town Skarżysko-Kamienna. The upcoming influence of occultism within the postindustrial underground of the 1980s is finally reflected in the last track of Korpses Katatonik, Choronzon, which was published on the Nekrophile cassette compilation The Beast 666. This track, which refers to a ritual performed by Aleister Crowley and Victor Neuburg in the desert Sahara in 1909, anticipates the strong occult implications of Zoe DeWitt's musical follow-up project Zero Kama. In 2012 all recorded tracks by Korpses Katatonik have been released under the title Oeuvres complètes by the Viennese label Klanggalerie. Currently, the remastered album is reissued on IFP on VINYL, CD, TAPE, and ultra-limited collectors box. Recorded in 1982 by Michael Zoe Dewitt (synth, guitar, voice, tape loops) and mixed at the Institute for Composition and Electroacoustics at the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Wiener Konzerthaus studios). First published as audio cassette NRC01 on Nekrophile Rekords in 1983. Remastered by Zoe Dewitt for Infinite Fog Records in 2022.Korpses Katatonik was a musical solo project of Zoe DeWitt during the years 1982 and 1983. Unlike DeWitt's later project Zero Kama, the work of Korpses Katatonik remains entirely within the realm of electronic music and shows an uncompromising experimental style comparable to that of other industrial bands like Throbbing Gristle, SPK, or Cabaret Voltaire. Like many other exponents of industrial culture Korpses Katatonik was inspired by dark psychiatry, pathological abnormalism, necrophilia, and other types of paraphilic aberration. These served as a metaphor for the dark side of a dehumanized society that seeks to maintain control by the suppression of anything that could be regarded as dark, sinister, deviant, or unpleasant from the viewpoint of popular mass culture. As a means of escape from this totalitarian pressure - thus a statement by Korpses Katatonik - there remains only self-destruction, murder, or the withdrawal into catatonic schizophrenia. Korpses Katatonik's first release was a Nekrophile Rekords cassette entitled subklinikal leukotomy aphrenia spasmophiik lyssophobo asphyxia sinister lethal anorex. The titles on the album were: shatok, schmertzlabor, enzephallik mortuor, nekom, kcok transzlant, kaltfleisch corporor, skarzisko and okzipital slash. The terminology of psychopathological disorders was used by Korpses Katatonik in a subversive way for its own poetic value and many of the rare vocals and track titles (as for example shatok, enzephallik mortuor and kaltfleisch corporor) were taken from writings of patients of Viennas famous psychiatrist hospital in Maria Gugging (dissolved in 2007). The title skarzisko refers to a national socialist concentration camp in the polish town Skarżysko-Kamienna. The upcoming influence of occultism within the postindustrial underground of the 1980s is finally reflected in the last track of Korpses Katatonik, Choronzon, which was published on the Nekrophile cassette compilation The Beast 666. This track, which refers to a ritual performed by Aleister Crowley and Victor Neuburg in the desert Sahara in 1909, anticipates the strong occult implications of Zoe DeWitt's musical follow-up project Zero Kama. In 2012 all recorded tracks by Korpses Katatonik have been released under the title Oeuvres complètes by the Viennese label Klanggalerie. Currently, the remastered album is reissued on IFP on VINYL, CD, TAPE, and ultra-limited collectors box. Recorded in 1982 by Michael Zoe Dewitt (synth, guitar, voice, tape loops) and mixed at the Institute for Composition and Electroacoustics at the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Wiener Konzerthaus studios). First published as audio cassette NRC01 on Nekrophile Rekords in 1983. Remastered by Zoe Dewitt for Infinite Fog Records in 2022.

Raising Earthly Spirits was conceived as a ritualistic, shamanistic album centred around the concept of transcending this level of consciousness and existing mindfully in multidimensional space and time. It draws heavily upon the sacred ideas and practices of many indigenous peoples from this earth and how they communicate and interact with their ancestors and how they see themselves in relation to this world. It was made with respect towards these beliefs. - Robin Storey/Rapoon

"Today's dancefloors are wakes in remembrance of a mythological era of openness that never was. Remember where you were. See where you are.... I'm in Kami-Sakunobe." (K-S.H.E) "Routes Not Roots" is the debut album by K-S.H.E (Kami-Sakunobe House Explosion), the newest project from internationally celebrated producer, label owner and DJ Terre Thaemlitz. K-S.H.E "Routes Not Roots" combines Comatonse Recordings' notorious "Fagjazz" sound with the classic NY Deep House and Cross-over dancefloor sensibility of "DJ Sprinkles' Deeperama," Thaemlitz' bi-monthly event held at Club Module, Tokyo. The results are spacious, bass-heavy, epic dance mixes filled with dark humor and harsh realities. As people have come to expect of Thaemlitz releases, "Routes Not Roots" mixes a wide range of social themes such as identity vs. immigrant status; community vs. tranny-on-tranny violence; authenticity vs. cultural decontextualization; openly gay African-American club imagery vs. gay sex on the Down-Low; innocence vs. childhood fantasies of violence; and more. From HIV drug trials to tranny and women's unemployment rates to sexually amorphous Japanese cross-dressers posing as high school girls, K-S.H.E doesn't miss a beat.

What have we here? 16 pieces of hard-to-classify music, created during the period 1994-2008, a cornucopia of playful, intelligent, questing and eminently listenable electronic music from Osaka-born artist Hyu, who released two albums on Nobukazu Takemura’s Childisc label, in 1999 and 2002. Although a member of the turn-of-the-century generation of artists subsumed under the rather vague term “electronica”, his work stands apart in many ways, particularly in his unique exploration of microtonality, his ability to humanize music technology, and his distinctive trait of combining a light touch and sense of fun with conceptual rigor. This collection is an intriguing mix of previously unreleased tracks and re-edited versions of previously released pieces. There is a wide range of music here, many of the pieces truly unique: wiggy and wiggly robo-pop, fractured funk, swinging sample assemblages of subtle sensory overload, dynamo-drones, overtone explorations. All of it distinctive, much of it prescient, all of it rising above the strictures of genre. Hyu’s music is appealing and fun, but driven by a desire to not only create music, but to create ways of creating music. This desire, this quest, is clearly audible in all of these tracks, and in the overall excellence of his music. Available on CD or 2LP with DL. The 2LP features a bonus cover of “Kaze wo atsumete” by Happy End. A notable feature is the entertaining and enlightening notes, written by Hyu himself.

MAAVAK a two 10xCD box sets presenting the intense, present, sometimes fragile & often challenging music of Swedish/Israeli composer, musician, artist and activist DROR FEILER, celebrating 50 years of musical, artistic and political actions in Sweden and around the world. These two box sets presents his wide range of styles; from noise attacks to orchestral compositions, from chamber music to solo saxophone pieces. There is a sort of brutal sensitivity to his works, or maybe rather a sensitive brutality. Let it be works for solo acoustic instruments or full symphony orchestra works (in one of them with Blixa Bargeld as vocal solist). Each volume is limited to 300 copies and is mastered and designed by Lasse Marhaug. To be released in Stockholm on October 7th 2023 on Feiler’s new archival label The Celestial Fire which is a sublabel to iDEAL Recordings.

MAAVAK a two 10xCD box sets presenting the intense, present, sometimes fragile & often challenging music of Swedish/Israeli composer, musician, artist and activist DROR FEILER, celebrating 50 years of musical, artistic and political actions in Sweden and around the world. These two box sets presents his wide range of styles; from noise attacks to orchestral compositions, from chamber music to solo saxophone pieces. There is a sort of brutal sensitivity to his works, or maybe rather a sensitive brutality. Let it be works for solo acoustic instruments or full symphony orchestra works (in one of them with Blixa Bargeld as vocal solist). Each volume is limited to 300 copies and is mastered and designed by Lasse Marhaug. To be released in Stockholm on October 7th 2023 on Feiler’s new archival label The Celestial Fire which is a sublabel to iDEAL Recordings.

Avalon Emerson & The Charm is an evolution. Created during an extended break from the hectic blur of her life as a touring DJ, the album is a personal statement of intent from an artist who’s long looked beyond the club for inspiration. It’s also the first time that Emerson has put herself, her emotions and, most notably, her voice fully into the spotlight. Having spent her entire career working more or less alone, Emerson purposely sought out a small cast of like-minded artists to help bring the album to life. Chief among them was UK avant-pop savant Bullion, who executive produced the record and, most importantly, shares both Emerson’s predilection for shimmering pop melodies and her boundaryless approach to music-making. Working together, they cracked open her head and heart alike, creating a space where she could intimately reflect on the people and places she’s loved and left behind. Set for release on Another Dove—a new label that Emerson has launched alongside AD 93 founder Nic Tasker—Avalon Emerson & The Charm places lyrics and emotion at the forefront of its identity.

Palto Flats / Putojefe Records present the first ever reissue of the work of American composer Dorothy Carter, master of the hammered dulcimer, zither, and other instruments of the hammer chord zither/psalterium family. A true musical vagabond, Dorothy was born in New York in 1935, though her spiritual pursuit of an expansive musical knowledge would take her to monasteries in Mexico, conservatories in France and London, and the founding of the Central Maine Power Music Company (CMPMC), with new-age/minimalist luminaries such as Constance Demby and Robert Rutman. Dorothy Carter was many things - a virtuoso player, storyteller, historian of Celtic and Appalachian folk music, avid lifelong busker, avant-garde musician, and itinerant troubadour, laying a framework for music that existed both within and outside of standard folk idioms - never better represented than on her 1978 masterwork, Waillee Waillee. Underscored by Bob Rutman’s cavernous bowing of the steel cello, the richness of Waillee Waillee’s sound produces an album unlike any other in her discography. In particular, its two side-ending pieces, “Summer Rhapsody” and “Tree of Life,’’ glide with the shimmering filigree of hammered dulcimer and Dorothy Carter’s ephemeral voice floating over Rutman’s droning buzz of the steel cello. The elements of these two tracks suggest something akin to a transcendental Appalachian raga or whirling cosmic folk music, an effortless combination that serves to add additional substance to the remaining tracks on the album. The title track is one of her most enduring compositions, often performed in stripped down versions throughout her career, and one of her sole recordings featuring a full band, with the contrapuntal interplay of tremulous flute, vibrating steel cello, bass and drums. Lyrically and tonally, her voice would never sound as stirring and refi ned as on this, her most outwardly accessible song. She counted musical colleagues as diverse as Constance Demby, Einstürzende Neubauten and Laraaji, as well as her lifelong artistic partner and friend Bob Rutman, whose imprint is felt throughout the grooves of this record. The master tapes for this recording were fortuitously discovered in Rutman’s Berlin studio, many, many years later. As recounted in Laraaji’s contribution to the liner notes, Dorothy was “someone who really influenced my early zither exploration and vocabulary and inspired my shift toward hammered zither performance and recording,” after encountering him busking on the sidewalk one day in the 1970s. Later, when living in Berlin in the early 1990s, Dorothy would begin work on manuscripts detailing the history of the dulcimer family and providing extensive sheet music, selected material of which is reproduced in the twelve page booklet included with this release. Dorothy would find later success touring and performing in the late 90s with the ensemble Mediæval Bæbes, which she led with British musician Katherine Blake, playing a prominent role on their first four albums.

Early morning mist in the mountains, the lakeside ripples in the stillness. On rainy days, open the window and lie in bed. The moment when a margin is created in me. I want to feel these senses forever. » iu takahashi is a sound artist and composer living in Yokohama. She produces her works using her own voice and field recordings since 2018. This is her sixth releases.

FLOCKS is a new duo, formed by drone specialist WERNER DURAND and ULI HOHMANN. Musical landscapes that move between traditional as well as experimental sounds with influences from Krautrock and JON HASSEL's "fourth world" aesthetics. WERNER DURAND has made himself a name with various projects with Dhrupad singerAMELIA CUNI, playing with URBAN SAX, ARNOLD DREYBLATT, HENNING CHRISTIANSEN, DAVID BEHRMAN, ELLEN FULLMAN, CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX, as the co-founder of THE 13th TRIBE, ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER and TONALIENS (with ROBIN AYWARD and HILARY JEFFERY) plus numerous solo albums, released on labels like Black Truffle, Unseen Worlds or Edition Telemark. Having studied saxophone as well as Indian / Persian flutes, the Berlin based DURAND is a highly reputated protagonist in the drone scene, famous for his self-built wind instruments like buzz-clarinets or his PVC neys & horns. His partner in FLOCKS (and longtime personal friend) is ULI HOHMANN whose early encounters with music from Asia, India and Africa led to studies with the Ghanaian master drummer MUSTAPHA TETTEY ADDY and later Tombak and Daf with NEMAD DARMAN (Iran). HOHMANN played in a couple of projects that explored the language of classical Persian music, and started building his own stringed instruments (being an educated carpenter). In 2014 he joined DURAND and AMELIA CUNI for the album "Clearing", and 2018 DURAND and HOHMANN decided to continue as a duo: FLOCKS was born. On their selftitled debut they shape drone-y soundscapes based on their self-built wind- & stringed instruments, Persian percussion and subtle electronics, drawing additional inspiration from Krautrock (listen to the irresistible, hypnotique groove of "Quicksand") as well as JON HASSEL's "fourth world" aesthetics, placing the duo nicely between tradition and experiment!

ZEHRA is proud to present the debut album ISTEHLAL by the MOHAMAD ZATARI TRIO, consisting of musicians from Syria, Iran & India. The trio merges traditional Middle Eastern sounds with contemporary vibes incl. interpretations of Hossein Alizadeh & Riad Al-Sunbati classics. In a contemporary globalised world where music has lost its borders and is fighting a constant – yet particular – stream of Western commodification, the Mohamad Zatari Trio stands out as an original cultural artefact, aiming at transcending the boundaries between different music worlds. Founded in 2019 the ensemble had its first public appearance in 2020 at the Outernational Virtual Festival. Comprising the performers Sara Eslami (Iran) on tar, Avadhut Kasinadhuni (India / Romania) on tabla and Mohamad Zatari (Syria) on oud. Their debut ISTEHLAL plunges into its own aesthetics, politics and sound intricacies and represents the combined efforts of three musicians hailing from different, yet deeply rooted cultures. Over the course of eleven songs, the album transcends stylistic, ideologic and geographic boundaries and reflects on the human condition in an interconnected and interrelated technological world. The repertoire includes not only original compositions in different stylistics but also rearranged traditional pieces by influential composers Riad Al Sunbati (Egypt) and Hossein Alizadeh (Iran). The Mohamad Zatari Trio introduces itself as a strong new voice within a new generation of young musicians that carry the musical heritage of great masters like Ravi Shankar, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Zakir Hussain with a fresh and contemporary approach. Mohamad Zatari is a composer and oud player from Aleppo, Syria, currently based in Bucharest, Romania. His artistic effort is devoted to deconstructing stereotypes and blending various musical genres. He has been taught traditional and regional music by Tarek Al-Sayed, and has a Bachelor in classical composition at the National University of Music Bucharest (2021). His compositions were used for short films as well as educational courses. He performed in various ensembles and groups, in countries such as Syria, Romania, Hungary, Germany, Italy and Austria. Sara Eslami is an Iranian composer, tar and setar instrumentalist and improviser. She has a bachelor’s in musical Performing at the Tehran University of Arts (2011). Romanian/Indian Avadhut Kasinadhuni has a Master in Musical Performing / Violin at the National University of Music Bucharest (2022) and started studying tabla intermittently in India with Prof. Kamal Kant (2008) and Prof. Durjay Bhaumik (2017).

CALAMITA = KARKHANA members TONY ELIEH, SHARIF SEHNAOUI and Lebanese drummer MALEK RIZKALLAH join forces with the Egyptian singer AYA METWALLI - the result is the improbable meeting between free jazz / improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum! CALAMITA is the “rock project” of SHARIF SEHNAOUI and TONY ELIEH, two of the most active musicians on the Lebanese experimental scene (among others projects, both are members of the “free Middle Eastern music” collective KARKHANA). SEHNAOUI comes from a jazz and improv music background, ELIEH is primarily a rock musician and founding member of the Lebanese post-punk band THE SCRAMBLED EGGS whose work in the last decade has covered many directions from pop-rock to plain experimental. They are joined by Lebanese drummer MALEK RIZKALLAH (WHO KILLED BRUCE LEE, ex THE SCRAMBLED EGGS). As trio they develop instrumental pieces that draw their inspiration from artists as diverse as Tony Conrad, Last Exit or Oum Kalthoum. AYA METWALLI is an Egyptian singer/songwriter, composer and sound artist currently based in Beirut. Grown up in Cairo, her father would play non-stop Oum Kalthoum songs on road trips to the beach and Aya’s mother; known to have the most beautiful voice in the family, she always sang at home and at family gatherings, so long before Aya was able to form her own music taste, immense amounts of Arabic classic songs and melodies already settled in her subconsciousness … After her first EP „Beitak“ in 2016, Metwalli (named “a musical enigma” by The Guardian) started to integrate more experimental and eerie sonic excursions into her avant-pop, so the collaboration with CALAMITA feels like a natural or logic step. The roots for „Al Saher“ („stay awake“) were laid when SEHNAOUI and METWALLI first worked together in “Night”, a dance piece by ALI CHAHROUR which included a wide collection of Arabic songs and ancient poems, later Sehnaoui invited her to work with CALAMITA. The four met in a recording studio in Beirut, using songs by "The Voice of Egypt" Oum Kalthoum as starting point. Together they aim to fully revisit the song format and explore the possibilities of classical Tarab songs, extracted from their origins and reframed within the music of the twenty-first century. The result is a mix of various styles and influences that often seek to stretch the contrasts to towering extremes - an improbable blend between free jazz & improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum!

ASA Arturo Lanz Saverio Evangelista AtomTM are the last three futurists on earth. »Radial« is the result of a vivid creative merge between Esplendor Geométrico and AtomTM. A transparent diamond formed by a heavy implosion. Its underlying massive mechanics are covered by a crystal surface made to cut reality in half. Just one letter short of “radical”, this album is no less than exactly that - an orgy of powerful, blunt repetition and hyperbolic simplicity, a profound evocation of nothingness and its surroundings. The 13 tracks (which comprise the digital full-length version) of »Radial« are the exact expansion of sonic ideas those three artists have explored during the last couple of decades. Unexpectedly so, this makes this production an outstandingly atemporal one - some would even classify it as meta-contemporary. A selection of 10 tracks of the digital full-length album will be released on CD through raster on September 01, whereas an accompanying vinyl release is scheduled for the end of 2023.

Matrices of Vision is the debut release of experimental music artist Abigail Toll (UK/DE) on Shelter Press. Toll composed Matrices of Vision during her Masters in Electroacoustic Composition at the KMH in Stockholm. The piece is a sonic interpretation of a data set which details higher education trends in Sweden across seven decades. It is placed in conversation with her collaborator artist-scholar Tiara Roxanne’s revelatory inquiries into AI bias and data colonialism, where the title references Alexander Galloway’s description of atomised points of view “flanking and flooding the world viewed”. The compositional study uses data aesthetics as a means to critically engage with the social and political mechanisms that surround us. Specifically how categorisation impacts the way we move through the world. Matrices of Vision expands Toll’s interest in psychoacoustics and tuning as a durational and experiential response to this data, where flutes, strings, vocals and electronics culminate in an emotional sonic meditation. Toll transcribes the data through the Matrices of Vision graphic score, which maps the data with frequencies, or partials, that together make up the harmonic series, an approach which she developed with composer Rebecca Lane. What is reflected in the musical gestures – through glissing, beating and cacophony – is a destabilising of rational systems into harmonic chaos, resulting in what Roxanne describes as a kind of flooding of listening and experiencing, from the body and the spaces that surround the body. Matrices of Vision was premiered as an ensemble performance in Berlin on 30 June 2022 at KM28 and 6 July 2022 at the Klosterruine hosted by KW Institute for Contemporary Art’s Pogo Bar series. Featuring Lucy Railton, Rebecca Lane, and Evelyn Saylor, along with an introduction by Tiara Roxanne at the Klosterruine. The performances and record are kindly supported by Initiative Musik. — BIOGRAPHY Abigail Toll (UK/DE) is an experimental music artist based in Berlin. Her psychoacoustic soundworlds combine ambient, electroacoustic techniques which unfold as meditation and upheaval. Her artistic research focuses on data aesthetics and harmonic chaos as a mode for critical thinking, which is often in collaboration with musicians, artists and writers.

Hania Rani announces her new album, Ghosts, bringing her songwriting and beautiful vocals to the fore and featuring special guests Patrick Watson, Ólafur Arnalds and Duncan Bellamy (Portico Quartet). Ghosts is the sound of an ever-evolving artist and, just as the album’s title suggests she passes repeatedly and gracefully between musical worlds: as composer, singer, songwriter, and producer. This album builds on Rani’s earlier successes Esja and Home with an expanded yet still minimal setup of piano, keyboards, synths (most importantly her Prophet) and features more of her mysterious, bewitching voice. Its spirit is warm, beckoning one into an ambitious double album that unfolds at an exquisite pace, informed by her revelatory, exploratory live performances. Ghosts is also an album of collaborations as Rani is joined by Patrick Watson, who breathes unearthly life into the ethereal ‘Dancing with Ghosts’. ‘Whispering House’is written and recorded with her friend, Ólafur Arnalds and casts a peaceful, ineluctable spell; and Portico Quartet’s Duncan Bellamy contributes vital loops to ‘Don’t Break My Heart’ and ‘Thin Line’. Rani’s lyrics are partially inspired by a two-month residency in a small studio in Switzerland’s mountains, where Rani was working on the soundtrack On Giacometti for a documentary about the renowned Swiss artist. “Where I stayed was once an old sanatorium in an area which used to be very popular, but now there are huge abandoned hotels where the locals say ghosts live. I mean, it's kind of a local belief system – these ghosts even have names! – but once you're deep into nature or some abandoned place, your imagination starts working on a different level.” “The edge of life and death,” Rani summarises, “and what actually happens in between: this was what really interested me. Even singing the word ‘death’ was quite a shock. It’s such a weird word to say out loud, and people are afraid of it, which I found extremely interesting. Most of the songs probably still talk about love and things like that, but Ghosts is more me thinking about having to face some kind of end.”

Based in musically fertile Leeds, the 14-member jazz ensemble Ancient Infinity Orchestra have made an album (their debut for Gondwana Records) that marries influences like John and Alice Coltrane with an emphatically Northern style, alongside a communal aspect of recording that fits both the aforementioned artists and the thriving jazz scene of their hometown. River of Light was recorded in just 3 days, the massive cast of players – key member and saxophonist Matthew Halsall is part of a rotating lineup of violinists, harpists, flautists and more – working with a similarly sized choir of Brighton friends. Over this time, the collective made food together and jammed in the heat between tracks, inducing a wholesome, exuberant warmth that percolates throughout the album.

Atlas, the latest album from renowned electronic artist Laurel Halo, is a suite of sensual ambient jazz collages, designed to take the listener on a roadtrip through the subconscious. Blending both synthetic ambient textures and acoustic instrumentation, the album is a series of endlessly listenable maps, rife with hidden detail. “Belleville” - the first single on Atlas - is a disarming piano ballad, recorded in one take during the spring of 2021. It's embellished with undertows of processed vibraphone, as well as a sudden, gorgeous stack of vocal harmonies featuring Coby Sey.

music and design by buttechno vocals and graphics by Triš © Psy X records, Berlin, 2023

My Strong Will is a new album of "Ethiopian Classical Music" by Girma Yifrashewa. Recorded with Bulgarian musicians and the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in Sofia, Bulgaria, the album is a return to where Yifrashewa completed his own conservatory training in the late 1980s and early 1990s, across both sides of the fall of Communism. Guided by Yifrashewa's piano, these chamber works bring the music of Ethiopia into a Western Classical format, uncovering meditative and emotional new vistas for both traditions.