released april 2nd 2021

digital & vinyl:
https://lobstertheremin.bandcamp.com/album/unfinished

Unfinished (Full Album)

Sleep was all she could think about; she couldn’t get enough of it, no matter how long she dozed or napped she never felt satisfied. Her bed was her sanctuary, her best friend and confidant, the only place she felt truly safe… It wouldn’t be unusual for her to spend an entire day there, wrapped up in the warmth of her duvet and in the safety of her dreams. To her, there was no place better…

Last summer Sunju Hargun’s Siamese Twins imprint shared their second pan-Asian compilation which gave a spotlight to artists who are exploring ambient and psychedelic terrain. The cassette release, titled Kāthā - a Khmer and Thai name for sacred mantras that are chanted to bring protection and charm - featured music from Khun Fluff, Nic Ford, Mogambo, Temple Rat and more. The label have brought on board a new roster of artists who offer up their own takes on the original material; there’s a rhythmic low end excursion from Konduku; a double offering from Jonathan Kusuma; and a modulated IDM trip from Higher Intelligence Agency.

PREMIERE: Temple Rat - The Garden of Earthly Delights (Higher Intelligence Agency Mix)

Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/agartha_lp_dl

‘Where is Agartha? What is the specific region in which it lies? Along what road, through what civilizations, must one walk in order to reach it?.’ Saint-Yves d’Alveydre in 1886

Agartha, the debut full-length album by Japanese producer Wata Igarashi, is a mysterious, divine thing. Named for the mythical secret kingdom, understood as a complex maze of underground tunnels, perhaps designed by Martians who colonised the Earth tens of thousands of years ago, it’s a similarly mystical, perhaps even cosmic trip – but this time, exploring an inner, deeply personal cosmos. Beautifully detailed and bustling with rich incident, it takes Igarashi’s music to new places, which still retaining his unique sonic imprimatur; in this respect, it’s perfectly at home with Kompakt, a label that’s always encouraged artists to make the visionary music they need to create, to take risks and make sideways steps into uncharted territory.

An eloquent producer and DJ, Igarashi has been releasing techno for eleven years now, appearing on such imprints as The Bunker NY, Delsin, Midgar, and Time To Express; he has also self-released his productions via his WIP net label. Throughout, Igarashi has consistently explored his unique approach to techno and electronic music, one that’s eloquent and poised, even when it shifts into more psychedelic terrain; he’s a master at balancing the sensual and the functional, and he has an unerring ear for the right texture, the right tone, at the right time. He brings all of this into Agartha, his most thorough-going expression of self to date.

For Agartha, Igarashi had a strong concept he wanted to explore. Visualising specific scenes from an imaginary film based on the titular secret kingdom, he created soundtracks for those scenes, spending time during the pandemic in his studio, working away carefully at the ten tracks here. Given his background in creating music for television and advertisements, Igarashi is well-placed to explore the marriage of the sonic and the visual in such intimate ways, but freed from commercial concerns, he let his imagination run riot. He also drew on a rich palette of musical influences – techno is in there, of course, but you can also hear the smoky, improvised jazz of the likes of Miles Davis (to whom the album’s title is an indirect nod), and the minimalism and systems music of Steve Reich.

The latter is particularly pronounced on the gorgeous, beatless drift of “Floating Against Time”, where an arpeggiated sequence lingers, lovingly, around your ears for nine blissful minutes, coasting across swooning drones and waves of ambient noise. “Ceremony Of The Dead”, originally composed as part of a Sony 360 Reality Audio spatial sound concert, is a deep pass into systems composition, with various patterns overlaid and interlocking, before a wordless vocal rises from the depths, a gorgeous counterpoint to the swarming textures that gather across the track. On the other hand, tracks like “Burning” and “Subterranean Life” nudge toward Fourth World territory, painting deluxe dreamscapes of uncertain provenance; the title cut is an abstract drift-world, Igarashi painting an alien tableau dotted by shape-shifting creatures.

Agartha’s conceptual framework means that everything on the album sits perfectly together; listening to it in one sitting is a dizzying, lush experience. Its imaginings of inner landscapes recall, in some respects, the nautical, aqueous mythologies of the Drexciyan universe, though from different perspectives. But the result is Igarashi’s own creation, a deluxe, enchanting trip through the visionary Agartha of this unique producer’s cinematic mind’s-eye.

Agartha

Wata Igarashi - Searching

from ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ There Is A Place For Me

Releases July 7th
nthng.bandcamp.com/album/there-is-a-place-for-me

Written & Produced by nthng
Designed by Maciej Przężak (MJWP3.com)
Mastered & Cut at Scape by Isabel and Stefan
Pressed at RAND Muzik
Published on Transatlantic

There Is A Place For Me

Memories

subversa

B1 from i'd love to fly
releases may 30

pre-order
nthng.bandcamp.com/album/id-love-to-fly

music by nthng
artwork by Karina Rovira
video by Raen Coplin
mastered by Isabel @ OLO Mastering
pressed at RAND MUZIK
distributed by Inchbyinch

In the city

Enter the chill-out zone with the forthcoming album from https://soundcloud.com/radart-url, a new Naarm-based solo project, brought to you by the https://soundcloud.com/papercutslimited label. Featuring works composed by the creative mind behind the label from 2022-2024, Blips & Bleeps wanders toward blissful ambient, downtempo, and breaks in style. 

Find the full read here: https://www.minimalcollective.digital/editorial/premiere-radart---flying-fox-colony

Blips & Bleeps will be out on January 31st 2025. Pre-order a copy via https://paper-cuts.bandcamp.com/album/blips-bleeps-lp-pcltd10

Premiere: Radart - Flying Fox Colony [PCLTD010]

Twenty-four years on from its original release, Monolake's seminal Gravity receives its first vinyl pressing courtesy of Field Records. Occupying its own space at the intersection of dub techno, minimal and electronica, it's an ageless album of staggering vision and technological prowess which has matured into an all-time pillar of electronic music. This edition, remastered by the album's key architect Robert Henke, follows on from the recent reissue of Monolake's first album, Hongkong.

Arriving just after the turn of the millennium, Gravity marked a turning point for Monolake. With co-founder Gerhard Behles moving on to other ventures, Henke produced most of the album solo and journeyed deeper into spatial exploration and the dub-informed principles that underpinned their project from the start. Minimalism and negative space run through the whole record, from the keen slithers of percussion pinging through lattices of delay to the hypnotising pulse of subliminal basslines anchoring the tracks. Gravity is a record which hangs on techno's linearity as a form of meditation, but the crystalline clarity of the mix allows every micro-fluctuation in rhythm and sound to cut through.

Compared to a lot of overly sterile digital music released in the early 2000s, Gravity endures thanks to the warmth and texture Henke elicited from his processes — even when leaning into none-more-digital effects like bit reduction. He described the ninth-floor view over Berlin from his studio at night as a key influence on the sound of the record, but the space Gravity shapes out feels thrillingly implacable. Unbound by the standard conventions of time and space, Gravity stands proud as a true original and finally gets the ceremonious vinyl pressing it so richly deserves.

Aviation

Bandcamp

Monolake - Aviation

Never forget that

This piece was inspired by a character I created in the video game Baldurs Gate 3. I loved the character and she needed a theme. It features some beautiful cello and harp playing. Music written by R.Thorpe 2025. Artwork by nano banana.