Blurstem’s 'Remnants and Whispers' is an album of memory-of echoes and fragments, of moments gathered and reshaped, of the past carried gently into the present. Released on Fluid Audio, renowned for its exquisitely crafted physical editions, this collection of soundscapes and textures is imbued with nostalgia, intimacy, and the quiet weight of time.

The album weaves together the delicate and the vast, the small and the sweeping. Tiny, almost imperceptible guitar plucks flicker like candlelight amidst expansive ambient washes. The sonic palette moves seamlessly between lo-fi warmth and pristine clarity, embracing the imperfections of cassette recording and the wobbly, warbled charm of home videos from a lost era. Each track breathes with a human touch-organic instruments processed and reimagined, from tremolo strings pitched and resampled on “Tethered” to layers of sound that feel like old photographs brought to life.

At its heart, 'Remnants and Whispers' explores the idea of remnants-what we carry with us through life, the fragments of friendships, memories, and fleeting moments that shape who we are. Much like the album’s sonic construction-built from past sketches, ideas, and textures revived and given new form-the music mirrors the way we collect and reinterpret our own experiences over time.

This ethos extends beyond the music itself into its physical presentation, with Fluid Audio’s deluxe edition incorporating 1920s sheet music and book fragments as old as the 1890s-historical relics that feel like the perfect visual counterpart to the album’s themes of memory, loss, and renewal. The tactile nature of these artifacts deepens the listening experience, making 'Remnants and Whispers' not just an album, but a tangible connection to the past.

Mastered on Bartels’ late ’60s analog tape machine, the album’s final touch further enhances its warmth and character, adding an unmistakable depth and timeless quality to its sonic palette.

A meditation on change, nostalgia, and the beauty of imperfection, Remnants and Whispers is an invitation to pause, reflect, and listen-not just to the music, but to the quiet echoes of our own stories.

Music: Blurstem
Mastering: Bartels
Design: Crossley

www.fluidaudio.co.uk
www.blurstem.bandcamp.com

Blurstem - Along the Rails

Ashes

Remember Me

Waning Traces

I don't think I will ever forget the first time I heard m.=addiction. I can also confirm that every time I played out that record, folks waltzed over to me to find out the name. Something mystical and enigmatic brought them over to music, making me feel like I was a snake charmer enchanting a cobra with the sounds of a pungi. The music of Dictaphone often evoked hazy spaces, full of jazzy smoke, lo-fi textures, and noir voices, occupying those distant corners of your memory where you felt glamorous comfort, charming enchantment, and warming delight. Since the 2002 debut, the Berlin-based duo of Oliver Doerell and Roger Döring released five more albums, all of which I think I have covered on Headphone Commute. And, in my humble opinion, their latest upcoming release is the closest to that special aura I felt nearly two decades ago. Unstable is Dictaphone's 6th full-length, where Doerel and Döring are also joined by Alexander Stoze (on violin) to mesmerise us with that special scent of future-retro nostalgia that seems to drift in the air like thick incense in a temple of soporific ghosts.

TRACK PREMIERE : Dictaphone - Desplendor

Fluid Audio presents Giulio Aldinucci & Matteo Uggeri - The Promise of a Threat coming soon on Fluid Audio...

In The Promise of a Threat, two veteran composers of ambient and electroacoustic music - Giulio Aldinucci and Matteo Uggeri - converge on a collaborative terrain that is at once intimate and immense, reflective and unsteady, beautiful and unsettling.

Created between June 2021 and early 2022, and mastered by Aldinucci in 2025, the album stands as a slow-burning document of digital and emotional correspondence. It reflects the language of ambient music not as static wallpaper, but as a deeply expressive form - one that allows silence and signal, memory and disturbance, to coexist within the same fragile space.

A Digital Dialogue Across Distance...

The entire work emerged through remote exchanges between Aldinucci (based in Siena, Italy) and Uggeri (Milan, Italy), unfolding gradually through shared sessions, sketches, and iterations over time. The process was not unlike the movement of tectonic plates - imperceptible at first, yet with weight and intention. Layers of processed field recordings, abstracted rhythms, and spectral textures accumulate into dense yet transparent forms. Every detail is traceable, yet elusive.

Giulio Aldinucci, known for his deeply spatial drones and sensitive treatment of field material, builds immersive sonic beds that seem to hover just above the surface of the Earth - simultaneously grounded in place and untethered from time. Matteo Uggeri, by contrast, applies a more tactile touch: assembling beats, samples, and environmental recordings into patterns that give pulse and tension to the atmosphere.

Together, their styles intersect in subtle and surprising ways - sometimes bleeding into one another, at other times standing apart in contrast. The balance between order and entropy, harmony and noise, creates a dynamic that speaks to the album’s title: The Promise of a Threat. Beauty does not arrive alone. It is always shadowed by its inverse.

Processes of Presence and Absence...

Across the album’s runtime, the listener is drawn through zones of dissolving melody and shadowy rhythm, passing through spaces that feel neither entirely natural nor entirely artificial. A drum sample on Track 2, provided by Andris Brinkmanis, adds a skeletal percussive element - a quiet agitation beneath the calm. The rhythms are not dominant but suggestive, like distant industrial echoes or memories of forgotten structures.

The artists manipulate the digital medium not as a tool of perfection, but of erosion and transformation. Hiss is preserved. Glitches are welcomed. The human ear remains present in every detail. The processing - granular, filtered, stretched - is not ornamental but fundamental, a way of sculpting emotion out of signal. Field recordings are often submerged, embedded beneath layers of drones and rhythms, yet their presence adds a layer of organic residue - a trace of wind, rust, or breath beneath the circuitry.

A Tactile Offering...

True to the ethos of Fluid Audio, the physical release of The Promise of a Threat will be crafted with great care and material sensitivity. Expect a limited, hand-assembled edition that honours the intimacy and intricacy of the music - an object to be held, as much as heard. Full packaging details and release date will follow.

For now, The Promise of a Threat lingers just at the edge of hearing - like the low hum of an incoming storm, or the quiet reassurance of knowing something is coming, even if its shape remains undefined.

www.fluidaudio.co.uk

So Finally I Stared at It All, Still and Satisfied

Gray Acres has always been a space for subtlety and restraint, distinct from the denser, more cinematic atmospheres of Hotel Neon. Where that project often explores process, technique, and narrative arcs, Gray Acres tends to be produced "in the moment" and stays still. It lets you think for yourself. Soft Erasure especially embraces that characteristic stillness.

This is the first full-length Gray Acres album since 2021’s “Dreams and Phantoms.” It’s a project that came together slowly with an intentionally light touch…more about dissolving sounds than constructing them. Subtraction vs. addition.

The title Soft Erasure came about as we noticed a recurring quality across the recordings: a sense of tangible things like guitars, pianos, and strings fading, softening, and slipping just out of reach as we shaped and processed them. The music feels like it’s constantly on the verge of vanishing, or being gently wiped away into an indistinct atmosphere. That idea of erasure not as violence, but as gentleness, decay, or transformation, felt like the right metaphor to latch on to. It speaks to memory, distance, and time, and how all of those forces shape and reshape our perception of sound and self.

Musically, this album is built mainly from resampled acoustic instruments: delicate piano lines, sustained strings, frozen and looped guitar textures. Much of the source material was recorded clean, then stretched, blurred, and layered until it became something abstract…like an impression of a song, or a half-remembered phrase. In some ways, we were trying to find the most washed-out and ephemeral version of each sound. The result is a record that is designed less for narrative and more for immersion.

If you’ve followed this project before, I think you’ll hear a natural continuation of its aesthetic. But if you’re new to Gray Acres, this is a great entry point. It’s music that tries not to demand attention, but rewards those who tune in closely for a while.

Gray Acres - Soft Erasure
Music by Andrew & Michael Tasselmyer
Mastered by Alex at Quiet Details

Gray Acres - Vestige

~ LAAPS 048 ~ [SEQ.06 - LP48]

artist : Ensemble 0
album : L'Incroyable Femme Des Neiges
duration : 26.40 mn
date : November 12th, 2025

edition :
-  vinyl : limited to 200 copies / white LP / selective UV varnish (front+back) / hand numbered 
- cd : limited to 150 copies / pantone / hand numbered + handcrafted, sealed

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pre-order : October 23rd, 2025 / official release : November 12th, 2025
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Composition and arrangements: Joël Mérah, Stéphane Garin, Sylvain Chauveau

Performed by:
Jérôme Capdepont - trombone
Sylvain Chauveau - acoustic guitar
Vianney Desplantes - euphonium, tuba, flugabone
Tanguy Gallavardin - clarinets
Júlia Gállego Ronda - flutes
Stéphane Garin - percussion, piano, organ
Joël Mérah - acoustic guitar, piano, ukulele, organ, harmonium

Recording and mixing: Johannes Buff, Shorebreaker studio (Tarnos, France). 
Assistant: Xan Bidegain
Artistic director: Joël Mérah
Administration: Nicolas Michamblé

Thanks to Alexandre Maillet, Vanessa Pigot, Laurie Garcia Garin et Sébastien Betbeder.

Mastered by Simon Lancelot
Artwork by Jonathan Smith
Design by Sprflxgrfzm
 
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Links :
https://laaps.bandcamp.com/music
www.instagram.com/iikki_laaps/
https://www.ensemble0.com/
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℗ & © 2 0 2 5 - L A A P S - L A A P S 0 4 8

Ensemble 0 - Les Grands Espaces

Each leaf shimmered with runes that whispered forgotten incantations to those who dared listen

‎‏‎

a complicated irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one's way; a maze:

Passage [Intro]

November Snow

Disquiet0426 - Cellular Chorus

Focusing on experimental genres, we aim to provide a space to share in the creative process and spread the experience of inner exploration through musical expression.