Finally the 5th album of the imaginary German quartet - as always via Denovali. Although the title "Systeme" suggests a perhaps rather distant-cool album, it is the most personal and concentrated soundtrack so far created by Thomas Bücker from Münster in his "E-Smog-Playground" studio. In 2008, the quartet still flirted with cyrillic-mysterious melancholy and red wine-swilling trakl melancholy. 15 years and four albums later, it seems almost cynical to simply continue at this point. Because: late modernity delivers its very own complex tragedies - in real time.
This feeling of "Something's not right here" runs like a thread through the entire new album. While it still sounds popularly symphonic here and there, there are also many soundscapes that have an observing, almost unmasking effect. Microtonal shifts, polyrhythmic structures, tempo fluctuations and sound aesthetics torn out of context create a fragile, unpredictable foundation - as if Talk Talk, Tim Hecker and Skrillex were making music together and challenging our tolerance for ambiguity.
Typical of the Bersarin Quartet: sparks of optimism shimmer through everything. However, sitting back and enjoying doesn't really want to work - necessarily. Because that makes it exciting without freezing in escapism - fortunately.

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laaps 032
season: autumn
duration: 31.46 mn
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« 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.

Since its inception, producer and composer Joe Acheson has carefully developed Hidden Orchestra from a simple initial project concept of ‘an imagined orchestra’ into something that has flourished into a widespan musical universe of its own, that is truly unlike anything else.
After multiple albums with respected independent label Tru Thoughts, continued support from the likes of The Guardian, BBC6Music, FIP, JazzFM, several awards for innovative soundtrack work intertwined with AI and consistent global touring of an energetic and intriguing live show featuring two duelling drummers, their reach and influence has swollen to make them one of the highest regarded names in independent music today and has even led to collaborations beyond the world of music, with The British Library, Kew Gardens and National Trust all enlisting Acheson for unique installation projects. Yet regardless of the current brief in front of him, the initial mission statement to ‘create electronic music with acoustic means’ remains.
Acheson achieves this task with aplomb, conjuring intricate yet expansive worlds of sound, built in collaboration with a select core of talented musicians, combined with Acheson’s bespoke samples, field recordings, and carefully honed composition and arrangement sensibilities. Detail and craftsmanship are at the core of everything he does, even musically directing a diverse array of instrumentalists to capture unique samples of both improvised and scored nature. This ingenious approach really sets his work apart from the crowd and allows Acheson’s artistic vision to come to life exactly as intended.
While new album ‘To Dream is to Forget’ certainly maintains this mission statement, it does also bring about a sea change for the project on a few fronts. Released via Acheson’s own newly formed Lone Figures imprint, the musical direction for the record involved a concerted effort to condense musical themes and ideas into more immediate arrangements, with less utilisation of field recordings than previously released material.
Predominantly sticking to this ethos has indeed meant an average track length reduction throughout, however there is still the same high level of musicality and no shortage of ideas within this rich collection of 10 original tracks.
A familiar cast of contributors return - with long term members Jamie Graham (drums), Tim Lane (drums), and Poppy Ackroyd (violin) all present, alongside newer personnel - Jack McNeill (clarinet) and Rebecca Knight (cello) all helping to realise Acheson’s musical vision.
The album title is taken from a line by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa - “No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake.”
And this seems an apt calling card for a collection that draws influence from a fantastic and diverse array of places. Musically at any given point you are as likely to hear sounds akin to Max Cooper or Four Tet as you are Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel.
With the idea of ‘reimagining’ playing a key role in the creation of the project, this track leans into the overarching concept and nature of dreams reworking everyday experience into new subconscious stories…

This release marks Volume 4 in Mode’s Radulescu Edition.
The three works on this disc explore different aspects of Radulescu’s theory of Sound Plasma as it evolved over the course of the 1970s, from Radulescu’s early to middle periods.
Capricorn’s Nostalgic Crickets (1972) presents a simple pulse of spectrally dense sound events, described in the composer’s own words as a “PULSE-TIDE of MUSIC and SILENCE.” The seven clarinetists should transcend their instrumental selves, coming together to evoke the sounds of the natural world — the timbres of electronic music, the magical and phonetic aspects of language, even other instruments. This is to be done in the most fluid way possible, never dwelling on any one interaction but rather creating a sense of a whole universe of sounds constantly evolving and decaying.
Small Infinities’ Togetherness (1972) is the shimmering articulation of a single sound spectrum (that of a low ‘D’) that shifts between harmonicity and inharmonicity, spectral narrowness and spectral width. The version presented on this CD features two archival recordings of Radulescu playing organ (the original tape from Fountains of My Sky) and synthesiser (initially intended as a backing track for a duo version with Fernando Grillo). These are augmented with two... sound groups recorded in the period between 2018–21, one of electronics (analogue and digital synthesis together with tape manipulation) and one of acoustic instruments (a set of Radulescu’s original Romanian folk wooden flutes, and a specially tuned sound icon).
In Opus 42: Inner Time / Outer Time (1980-83), paired compositions presented together here for the first time, a spectrum of odd number harmonics is deconstructed and rebuilt by overlaid flutes and clarinets, the instruments’ natural variations of pitch causing the total sonic mass to seethe and boil.
Opus 42 began life in 1980 as Outer Time for 23 flutes, and from this original score a second piece, The Inner Time for solo clarinet, was then generated. These two versions are identical except for the pitches, which are inverted in the clarinet version. The two “origin scores” use a unique spectral notation developed by Radulescu in the late 1970s. Realising these origin scores using overdubbed flutes and clarinets, rather than electronically generated tones, injects a degree of instability and unpredictability from fluctuations in wind instruments’ sound and is a natural (and unavoidable) part of instrumental technique. When presented as part of a large mass of sound, these micro-movements can have unexpectedly large consequences — the instrumental sounds will still fuse together to create the sense of a single sonic entity, but with an inner dynamism that gives an extra sense of temporality, growth, and evolution within a sound that would otherwise be read as purely static.
This CD’s performer/producer, Sam Dunscombe, is a performer-composer specializing in the use of clarinets, computers, and microphones. He is s the chief archivist and assistant to the editor of the Horatiu Radulescu Archives and Lucero Print in Daillens (Switzerland), where they work to digitise, revise, and re-publish many of Radulescu’s scores for the next generation of interpreters and musicologists.
Liner notes by Sam Dunscombe.