Since he started producing music, Berlin-based American sound artist Jake Muir has been obsessed with sampling. His 2018 album "Lady's Mantle" was based on manipulated chunks of vintage Californian surf rock, and its follow-up, 2020's midnight symphony "The Hum Of Your Veiled Voice" was sourced from a wide variety of old records, and inspired by the work of experimental turntablists like Marina Rosenfeld, Janek Schaefer and Philip Jeck.
On "Mana", Muir looks back to a misunderstood musical movement. Around 1995, a group of New York producers and DJs - including DJ Olive, DJ Spooky and Spectre - pioneered a genre-dissolving sound by unifying hip-hop techniques with ideas pulled from dub, jungle, ambient music and industrial noise. Badged "illbient", it was a short-lived genre that felt like a high-minded psychedelic cousin of the UK's trip-hop.
Muir uses illbient as the springboard for "Mana", utilizing a selection of samples to inform his frothy drones and foreboding atmospheres. He ushers the material into 2021 by diverting it through his own contemporary worldview, attempting to recreate the hyperreal fantasy histories of Japanese RPGs (think "Dark Souls" and "Final Fantasy") and nod to sensual, tactile soundscapes of European... industrial labels Staalplaat and Soleilmoon. The result is a magickal, sensory journey that's as physical as it is representational.
If the illbient producers were encouraging a burgeoning experimental music landscape to emphasize the tactile feeling of turntablism and sample manipulation, Muir is doing the same with "Mana". Each track heaves and breathes not just with his cultural reference points, but with layered, complicated emotions. We can hear joy, sadness, desire and anguish, obscured by disintegrating noise, hallucinogenic harmonies and sub-aquatic bass. It's electronic music that's rooted not in technology, but in touch. more

Antidawn reduces Burial’s music to just the vapours.
The record explores an interzone between dislocated, patchwork songwriting and eerie, open-world, game space ambience.
In the resulting no man's land, lyrics take precedence over song, lonely phrases colour the haze, a stark and fragmented structure makes time slow down.
Antidawn seems to tell a story of a wintertime city, and something beckoning you to follow it into the night. The result is both comforting and disturbing, producing a quiet and uncanny glow against the cold. Sometimes, as it enters 'a bad place', it takes your breath away. And time just stops.
credits
released January 6, 2022
Sleeve Painting: Maya Hewitt
Sleeve Design: Optigram

Sunnies on, drop-top down, sferic cruise the best coast with Jake Muir, an artist and field recordist hailing from Los Angeles, California, where he’s previously recorded and released albums under the Monadh moniker for Further Records and Touch, the latter of which on the compilation ‘Live At Human Resources’, where he took part in a beautiful group tribute to Jóhann Jóhannsson along with a number of solo contributions.
On ‘Lady’s Mantle’ Muir unfurls a poignant sound image crafted from samples of a well loved American pop group and later smudged with aqueous field recordings made everywhere from Iceland to the beaches of California. In nine succinct scenes, the results loosely limn a wide sense of space and place with its fading harmonic auroras and glinting, half-heard surf rock melodies rendered in an abstract impressionist manner that suggests a fine tracing of in-between-spaces, perhaps describing metropolitan sprawl giving way to vast mountain ranges and oceanic scales.
In effect the album recalls the intoxicated airs of Pinkcourtesyphone (a.k.a L.A. resident Richard Chartier) as much as Andrew Pekler’s sensorial soundscapes and even the plangent production techniques of Phil Spector. But for all its implied sense of space, ultimately there’s a paradoxically close intimacy to proceedings which feels like you’re the passenger in Muir’s ride, and he patently knows the scenic route...

We are intensely excited to bring the sounds of Nairobi based sound artist KMRU to the world. Joseph Kamaru is a Kenyan musician who takes found sounds and field recordings and knits them together into nuanced audio collages. KMRU is at the forefront of an exciting scene of African electronic music pioneers.

to whom it may concern...
its too beautiful to embrace change and to challenge urself to find something meaningful in it... i love my friends and love is deep :') i want them to know that always... but sometimes i get busy and overwhelmed n im not the best at saying how i feel always... just want to sit around and talk and feel understood together w someone who you like or u find interesting.. thats the best :) and if the day is nice or if the day is not nice but ur inside and its cozy.. thats too wicked. and ur making a soup and eating it together... just with the stuff in the kitchen.. dont even go out to get ingredients.. no need to follow a recipe.. cause ur grandma taught u to cook w the "sazon" (cooking by tasting w as u go on adding diff ingredients and spices.. no recipes. .. u can only really cook if u can freestyle in the kitchen she said).. and then u think about how ur grandma taught u that.. and your w someone in the kitchen making something together.. and then u taste it and it warms u up and ur like damn this is fire.. thats what this and i think maybe what "its all" about... thank u for taking time to read this and i hope you enjoy the album...
kiss u...
brian
***If you purchase the full album, you will receive the 48:31 piece of music as one file as a bonus track, as well as the eight separated tracks***
credits
released April 10, 2020
Written, Produced, and Mixed by Brian Piñeyro
Vocals on 'ADMSDP' courtesy of LA Warman
Mastered by Chris "CZ" Wang
Cover Photo by Lazaro Rodriguez
Graphic Design by Josh Abramovici
Front Cover Design by Sophie Diiorio
Out on Vinyl/Digital/Cassette April 10th
license
all rights reserved

Temporary Music by Asa Tone, released 31 January 2020
Asa Tone is Jakarta-born Melati Malay and New York based Tristan Arp and Kaazi. In January 2018 the trio travelled to Indonesia during Melati’s annual return home, set up a temporary studio in a house nestled in the jungle’s canopy and recorded a series of improvisational pieces together, later edited for brevity. The music incorporates both digital and analogue processing and largely draws upon the groups collective voice, a small selection of instrumentation (Rindik, Moog Sub 37, Infinite Jets, Suling) and their immediate environment. Despite this, they aimed to record a kind of music together that doesn’t seem to come from one specific place, but instead, from everywhere.
The result is an idiosyncratic voyage of equatorial excursions in voice, mallets and synthesis, both transportative and fluid, yet firmly grounded in the earth. Cyclical, randomized patterns grow and blossom during these often delicate and heartfelt renderings, staying with the listener long after both sides fall silent.
Temporary Music LP will be released on January 31, 2020 on Leaving Records. It is the group’s debut album.

Kiasmos is made up of Icelandic BAFTA-winning composer Ólafur Arnalds, known for his unique blend of minimal piano and string compositions with electronic sounds, and Janus Rasmussen from the Faroe Islands, known as the mastermind of the electro-pop outfit Bloodgroup. Based in Reykjavík, Arnalds used to work as a sound engineer, often for Rasmussen's other projects, where the two musicians discovered their common love for minimal, experimental music. They eventually became best friends, often hanging out in their studio, exploring electronic sounds.

Following the release of his stunningly crafted ‘It Should Be Us‘ LP in 2019, Andy Stott announces his next album on Modern Love.
‘Never The Right Time‘ LP marks a decade since the release of ‘Passed Me By‘ – a masterfully deep and shadowy album of claustrophobic electronics and thumping dark dub that blew our minds upon first listen.
Written throughout 2020 and said to be inspired by the music the Manchester-based producer was listening to, ‘Never The Right Time‘ features hauntingly beautiful vocals from Alison Skidmore plus “hours of raw material; slow horns, sibilance, delayed drums, wondering flutes”.
As you can expect the results are nothing less than spectacular. Nine tracks, straight from the catacombs of Manchester’s finest. We won’t reveal all, but personal highlights include ‘Never The Right Time‘, ‘Repetitive Strain‘, ‘Don’t Know How‘ and ‘Answers‘.
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在一片静谧之中，Chaotic Effigy通过感知人潮的情绪，触摸社会规则中看不见的气压，描绘了关于意识的深层流动。宁成在社会群体形象中获取灵感，利用即兴、情绪导向等方式构建出一种出离氛围本身的思考引导。他通过有形存在的声音片段，在冲突之中彼此排斥再融合。宁成所想构建的绝非一个自然的空间，他意在表达一种“真实社会的不自然”。
In the midst of the silence, Chaotic Effigy portrays the deep flow of consciousness by sensing the emotions of the crowd and touching the invisible air pressure of social rules.Ning Cheng draws inspiration from the images of social groups and uses improvisation and emotional orientation to construct a thoughtful guidance that is out of the atmosphere itself. Through the sound fragments of tangible existence, he repels and re-integrates them in the midst of conflict. What Ning is trying to build is not a natural space, but an expression of the "unnaturalness of the real society".

2020年夏天的一个雨夜，我散步至湖边，看见一个女人在月光下端坐于湖中心。她怀琴向我演奏一曲。此曲只有一个音符，却整整演奏了七天十二夜。曲毕之时，她化作无数萤火虫飞散，这个音符也随之在世间所有音乐中凭空消失。

夕阳中紫红色的薄雾，
褐⾊石头与⽔晶交替闪烁。
川流不息的⽇与夜，
海岸上消散又凝聚的风。
2019年Guzz发布了第⼆张专辑《走不出的梦境》，伴随着唱⽚还有一个由加拿大导演Matt Moroz执导拍摄的同名MV。这张唱片的⾳乐延续了他对亚洲⾳乐的探索，是具有独特个人⻛格的亚洲新声。
母带：Geoff Pesche
封面艺术：继琼

"小圈子" is a beautiful and somber ambient synth album with a rain theme, featuring haunting synth soundscapes and nocturnal field recordings throughout. 輕描淡寫 delivers a debut album absolutely dripping with atmosphere and emotion in this latest vital addition to the BLUD collection of hypnagogic synth.

▼WV059: Mong Tong 夢東 - Orientations 向位
Excluding percussions and sound samples and using only guitar, bass and synthesizer, Mong Tong brings the latest album titled "Orientations". Different from the heavy use of loops, the band tried a different way of composition and emphasizes abstract sounds, making the whole album more delicate and soft in the sense of listening.
The song titles are coordinates representing the 3 cardinal directions, with the exception of the East, for this has shown up in the word "Orientation". Contrary to their claimed "superstition music", this album is an attempt at ambient music crafting from Mong Tong's iconic sound and improvisation.
As the world's borders gradually open up, Mother Earth slowly comes back to life. "Orientations" is a piece that not only puts all listeners in a trance, but takes them far beyond.
抽去了打擊樂和取樣，只使用吉他、貝斯和合成器創作，Mong Tong 帶來最新專輯《向位》。有別以往的一個 Loop 重複循環，本作嘗試了不同的作曲方式與抽象聲響，使得整張專輯在聽覺上更為細膩與柔和。
「向位」除了指方向與位置，也是聲音「相位」的諧音。曲名則以南北西代表方向，數字代表位置。和以往詭異的迷信音樂不同，本專輯更接近氛圍音樂作品，當然，還有Mong Tong標誌性的音色和編曲。
在全世界邊境逐漸解封的當下，地球慢慢恢復生機。希望每個聽眾都能帶著這張專輯，一同前往更遠的方向。

The return of storied Southern Gothic electronic entity Telefon Tel Aviv is as unexpected as it is impressive. Their three influential albums of the 2000's-Farenheit Fair Enough, Map Of What Is Effortless, and Immolate Yourself-charted an increasingly turbulent and textured vision of post-IDM synthetic songcraft, until the sudden passing of founding member Charlie Cooper in 2009 ceased the project, presumably forever. During the decade since, co-founder Josh Eustis has performed with, produced, mixed, and mastered countless artists, from high-profile institutions (Nine Inch Nails, Puscifer, Apparat) to underground fixtures (Belong, Vatican Shadow, Drab Majesty, Tropic Of Cancer), in addition to his own solo and collaborative work in Sons Of Magdalene and Second Woman. But years of reflection and processing gradually seeded in him a desire to revive TTA and venture a fourth full-length, in the spirit of what they started: Dreams Are Not Enough. From the shuddering software oscillations of the opening piece, "I dream of it often," the classic Telefon palette of hyper-modern sound design and smoky nocturnal emotion feels vividly revitalized. The songs stand apart but belong together, threading a veiled narrative of loss, anger, and age-the crumbling of constancies, shifting sands slipping through the hourglass. The album's fragmented track titles relate a recurring dream that's haunted Eustis since childhood, based on a murky incident during a family vacation to a remote Alabama coastline when he was eight. In the dream he swims alone through the waves past the sandbar to where the ocean shelf abruptly drops away into a gradient of infinite darkness; awed, he peers into the depths and sees himself down at the bottom, mouth open and eyes blank, standing motionless like a corpse. An undercurrent of eerie melancholy flows through the album, manifested in shivering widescreen meditations, depressive twilit modern pop, and devotional industrial abstractions. Melodies emerge and evaporate; rhythms lock in step then fracture and fade; centers cannot hold.