Terminal 11 - Suffocating Repetition 
(OPAL259)

Released on CD and Digital format. 
February 23rd 2024

"Each track on this release is an expression of the heightened tension that came with existing in a room that operated as a work office, creative space, and bedroom between 2021 and 2023 mostly during the more confined days of the pandemic. Although the tracks seem in constant flux, there is some form of repetition in each that caused discomfort that was worked through, or they were created in a time where one day bled into the next and the last thing I wanted was to be in that room.

This text is coming across more depressing than I intended. On a more positive note, this release became an opportunity to question my aversion to repetition and to analyze how much the trap of perfectionism still played into any decision made during the process of its creation. I have walked away from this with a better sense of when a piece of music is complete as well as how to actively avoid perfectionistic pitfalls. I hope you enjoy it."

        -   Michael Castaneda / Terminal 11

Mastered by Michael Buchanan
hyperborealaudio.com
IG: hyperboreal_audio

Cover art: Maria Mendes
mariacmendes.com
IG: maria______mendes

Terminal 11 - Hectic Incidentals

Crown of Cerberus - Chinning, Sometimes Even Bunnies Fight

Eks - Intro / Only Input >> Hi Rates (feat. SENSATIONAL)

Eks - Litania Della Scelta (feat. Franco Franco) Talpah Remix

Granite Mask - Lost Hills
OPAL263
Releasing on Tape and Digital
26/04/2024

Granite Mask - Lost Hills

Purgate - Transcend
OPAL262
released in collaboration with https://soundcloud.com/aesthetical_recordings
CD / Digital

Pre-Order from 24/04/2024
Full release 17/05/2024

Frederic Arbours musical output over the last twenty five years has been one of consistent, dark eyed focus. His project Visions and the collaborative Skorneg has issued abyssal dark ambient and textured minimal drones respectively. Further, the output of Stärker, his duo with Martin Dumais, published isolating industrial techno on Hospital Productions and Zhark, notable amidst a sea of clones for their conviction in utterly colourless productions, the sound of factories producing for a customer long since dead. Purgate feels like a conglomeration of this previous work with eyes set outward and upwards, space gazing instead of bowed toward the iron ball beneath all of our feet. 

Opener ‘Starlight’ rubs its eyes open to a freezing morning shuffle. Pulsing effects bleating a line drawn through snow while hats wrinkle around the globular mass of the centre. It’s dubby heart obscured in a cloud of acrid smoke. ‘Solar Flare’ is a reverberant chorus of chirping metal delay lines entwined around a thick techno throb, a smokescreen of detail ready to disrupt anyones passage through the club. 

Things get more discordant and drawn away from the slope with ‘Dawn’. Again a motif of birdsong and animalia are chromed out and burnished at the polish. A vertigo music for the 3am swap out. ‘Mist’ offers a light touch, a clearing in the sky where the perfect black backdrop can be better felt, each repetition puncturing and punctuating a profound minimalism. We close, of course, with ‘Closure’, the weight repositioned into a rich sub burrowing. Wood and metal sound against one another as the sky touches the earth.

Purgate - Starlight

sSludge and Tricknology
(and the Eternal Dynamo (777Hz AC) of Life and Afterlife: a Yakubian Symphony in Cmaj)
,
Produced by
♫♪NDNMK↕ ☼Solutions™
`
Text,
Music,
Images,
Direction: ♧yY☆°

.Copy editors.
Askar Novak
Tiiu Meiner

.Voices.
Camille Barton
Cristina Cochior
Laurel Cunningham
Lide Groutars

.Human sprite.
opengameart.org/content/2d-iso-human-naked

.Big knees.
BigKneeLover

.Hardstyle.
[free] hardstyle x zyzz type beat - idol

♧yY☆ - Snow & The Moose that Fucks + Hall of Stomachs + Forrest Stuarts 2 Cents

Atsushi Izumi - Observable
Released 31st October 2024

The initial information the observer has about the system comes from a set of measurements. The operator is a specific instruction or set of instructions. Every observable is associated with its own operator.

Written and Produced by Atsushi Izumi
Painting by Linnmaru
Mastered by Bishop

OPAL267

Atsushi Izumi - Observable

German Army - 1% Silk
Released October 31st 2024



German Army - Jighuristan

Absurder & Lacrima - Vore Digitalis
Released October 31st 2024

The process of digestion, ordinarily hidden and mechanized, is here eroticized and brought to the forefront, a taboo that inverts the natural order of nourishment. The swallowed body, in this fantasy, is not food in the traditional sense but a vessel of desire, absorbed and dissolved into the other, blurring boundaries between self and other, predator and prey.

Absurder & Lacrima - Houdini

Xorgett - Pareidol Detarutas
OPAL271 / Digital
Friday 29th November 2024

Xorgett's new release is an exploration of boundaries, where cello, voice, and electronics converge to devastating effect, plunging the listener into the heart of "pareidolic hallucination." This visceral experience reimagines formless chaos into transient shapes, embodying a dynamic flux where order and entropy collide. Like granular synthesis, the sounds here are mutable, textured, and alive—layering waves of noise and harmony that slowly disassemble back into primal abstraction.

These compositions venture beyond traditional art or aesthetics, inhabiting a space where form disintegrates into formlessness, and the faint hum of structure gives way to the raw pulse of life. The cello becomes a primordial force—a womb, an engine, a heartbeat—grounding the erratic electronic tones and haunting vocal echoes. This interplay of chaos and order feels almost alchemical, capturing the moment where chaos revitalizes stasis and the symbolic is obliterated by pure sound.

In moments of "representational catastrophe," Xorgett transports us into a hypnotic state, a radical sensory overload that dissolves meaning and thrusts us into "hypostasis"—a liminal zone where abstraction and the concrete collide. These tracks are a sonic journey from order to abyss, from symbolic meaning to pure, resonant sensation—a soundtrack to the world's own oscillating dance between chaos and creation.

Xorgett - Reversed Pareidolia

Emra Grid - Ancient Banquet
OPAL272 / Digital
Friday 29th November 2024

Emra Grid - Greenwood Falls

Released January 24th 2025

The flagship of occidental art music meets amplified scrap: The grand piano meets electronic saturation, feedback and noise. And out comes music, played live. No cuts, no overdubs, no edits. But the formal logic is evident, underlying threads connect and run throughout vleisch, the individual pieces showing a strong coherence, revealing intrinsic structures by recalling sonic variants as if from memory: hidden bells, bumpy scratches, wonderful noises, juxtaposed with unstable screeching and velvety bass fields, merge into sensual sonic vlesh. Moreover, Reinhold Friedl and Georg Zichy share Pierre Schaffer’s focus on sound perception: listen, listen, listen! Noises are music, noise is pleasure.
credits


Georg Zichy: Reinhold Friedl:
electronics + piano +
recorded and mixed at duke’s studio, Berlin, 2024 all music by Georg Zichy and Reinhold Friedl

OPAL273

Georg Zichy + Reinhold Friedl - Vleisch (Excerpts)

Kagami Smile - Lifeless

1. Light Cauldron 07:21
2. Lifeless 07:54
3. Tears of the Sunset 06:54
4. Seeds of a Pearl 05:50
5. Tears of a Rose 08:16
6. Shine of a Star 09:51
7. Memories of the Pearl Sunset 06:18

Released Jan 24th 2025
CD / Digital


Kagami Smile - Lifeless

And so I retreat, a rogue node adrift, un-updated and unbothered. The world screams its urgent chorus—wars, wonders, viral dances—and I sip my coffee, a monk in the monastery of blissful unawareness. No notifications here but the birdsong, no trending topics but the weather.

Ah, ignorance—sweet, soft, like a pillow stuffed with clouds. Let the hivemind hum without me; I’ll be here, offline, where the only algorithm is my own heartbeat, and even that skips a beat whenever someone mentions the metaverse.

djb - Please

“Subject 137, your epidermal inversion is a temporary side effect of reintegration. Please remain calm.”

“Temporary?!” My voice was shredded, like it was being dragged over gravel.

The voice continued, ignoring me: “The process will stabilize once you complete artifact alignment. Please report to Excavation Site 3 immediately. Your condition will worsen if you delay.”

“Artifact alignment? What the hell are you talking about?”

But the comm went silent with a definitive click.



Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das - art1fact

Despite its conceptual framework, there's a mischievous playfulness lurking beneath the surface of van Herpen's latest sonic investigation. Drawing from extremely reduced free jazz and skeletal compositional structures, Derivatives presents pairs of pieces that exist in dual states: "Sources" - electronic and electro-acoustic compositions that serve as germinal materials - and their "Derivatives" - transformed through a process that's both rigorous and playful.

The methodology itself hints at van Herpen's sly approach to experimental music. Each Derivative emerges through a series of solo improvisations, recording one instrument at a time in response to a source's characteristics, but deliberately isolated from previous takes. When these responses are finally combined, with their inspirational Source removed, the result is a phantom ensemble performance that manages to be both deeply experimental and quietly humorous in its unlikely instrumental conversations.

This playful deconstruction of group dynamics yields music that's refreshingly unpretentious despite its experimental pedigree. Van Herpen's multiple instrumental personas interact in ways that subvert expectations, creating unconventional combinations that challenge traditional approaches to space, sound, and noise while maintaining an undercurrent of subtle wit.

The album becomes a kind of musical puzzle box, inviting listeners to match Sources with their Derivatives while experiencing how reduced electronic structures can birth organic, breathing improvisations that dance between the serious and the joyous.

All music, instruments, compositions,
performance, mix and master
by Raoul van Herpen

Instruments:
Japanese Shakuhachi, Daxophone, Toy saxophone
Clarinet, Tenor saxophone, Flute headpiece,
Indian Bansuri flute, Western concert flute,
Piano, Wurlitzer piano, Electric Guitar,
Serge and Modular synthesizers, radio,
Diy Ciat-Lonbarde instruments, Modified guitar pedal,
Bastl Kastl synthesizer, Arp Axxe synthesizer.

Raoul van Herpen - Aerial Dance

Augustin Braud - Trônes Amoncelés
CD / Digital
Released 28.03.25

Following a monograph of chamber music pieces performed by Ensemble Alternance, Trônes Amoncelés is the second LP by composer, musicologist and multi-instrumentalist Augustin Braud — a recipient of commissions from groups such as Ensemble Intercontemporain or Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, as operatoring under the industrial experimental moniker Ohr Hiemis as well as in the progressive metal band Erebe.

Inspired by Antonin Artaud's Les dix-huit secondes and written during a residency at La Muse en Circuit, the piece blends digital manipulations of Braud's voice with the legendary 50 years-old Serge modular synthesiser as well as meticulous guitar work. The restriction of the instrumentarium offers a coherence in otherness, as the sound sources blend into an analogue, distorted maelstrom. The abrupt variations and use of feedback reflect the madness and dread transpiring from Artaud's art, as when listening to the chilling Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu (1947).

In this piece, the composer becomes a récitant as well as a performer and improviser, blurring the boundaries of the roles usually assigned to composers; the text of Les dix-huit secondes is thrown into an abyss blurred by frameworks and functions, but also by genres. Braud borrows as much from musique concrète as from no-wave in this hallucinatory, radical work, carried along by the obscure breath of black metal, the soundtrack of a world more than ever eroded.

Augustin Braud - Trônes Amoncelés (excerpt)

Raoul van Herpen - Derivatives
CD / Digital
Released 28.03.25

Despite its conceptual framework, there's a mischievous playfulness lurking beneath the surface of van Herpen's latest sonic investigation. Drawing from extremely reduced free jazz and skeletal compositional structures, Derivatives presents pairs of pieces that exist in dual states: "Sources" - electronic and electro-acoustic compositions that serve as germinal materials - and their "Derivatives" - transformed through a process that's both rigorous and playful.

The methodology itself hints at van Herpen's sly approach to experimental music. Each Derivative emerges through a series of solo improvisations, recording one instrument at a time in response to a source's characteristics, but deliberately isolated from previous takes. When these responses are finally combined, with their inspirational Source removed, the result is a phantom ensemble performance that manages to be both deeply experimental and quietly humorous in its unlikely instrumental conversations.

This playful deconstruction of group dynamics yields music that's refreshingly unpretentious despite its experimental pedigree. Van Herpen's multiple instrumental personas interact in ways that subvert expectations, creating unconventional combinations that challenge traditional approaches to space, sound, and noise while maintaining an undercurrent of subtle wit.

The album becomes a kind of musical puzzle box, inviting listeners to match Sources with their Derivatives while experiencing how reduced electronic structures can birth organic, breathing improvisations that dance between the serious and the joyous. 

Raoul van Herpen - Hasei Kansū

YancityGurl - Shynet Ghost Macrotouch
Digital / Charity Release
28.03.25

"This release narrates fluently, but quite broadly. Its ellipsis symbolizes the permanent and arrhythmic pulse of time, in which anxiety and uncertainty have become the main criteria dividing any agency.

"A" is the initiating moment, immersion. Here, poetic postcards of the environment sparkle, inside which a ball of noise confidently swells, gradually pursuing and displacing a concise model of behavior, eventually turning everything into chaos.

"Topology" is a bundle of sounds and memories, where each slot becomes a marker of change, whether it's stumbling modular samples, a piano recorded in browser tabs, or a full—fledged story with a holistic structure that fades before it even begins.

"Walls", a final title composed of R&B diva vocals, a doomed reese bass part and infernal pads, sums up the mood, defining itself as a kind of symbol of the illusion of stability in this ragged chain."

All funds from this release are donated to https://livyj-bereh.org/

Livyj Bereh restores roofs for families and individuals who have had their homes decimated in the brutal war in Ukraine. 

“Their use of modest black corrugated metal roofs produces an architectural act of collective care and resistance across the country, as powerful as any civic monument and documented with the unflinching eye of the greatest war art.”

– Jury chair Tom Emerson RA and Stephanie Macdonald RA, 6a architects

Since May 2022, they have restored over 380 roofs across the Charkiv, Černihiv, and Kyiv regions at a cost of around €2000 per roof.

Alongside this hands-on restoration work, Livyj Bereh raises awareness globally through exhibitions, documenting the cultural and architectural heritage threatened by the conflict.

YancityGurl - A

EIII - Refraction 2

Andi Jackson - Movement 1

PureData - construct_11

øjeRum - Tactic

Single release ahead of the album "Managed Decline" which is release on June 27th 2025. 

All songs written, performed and mixed by Isaac Robertson and Jack Elliot Barton

Mastered by Dominic Clare at Declared Sound

Artwork by Yottie Zapantis


Wetroom - Any Job Of Work

Emra Grid - Mente
CD / Digital
September 20th 2025

Emra Grid - Mente

The Rêve Orchestra - the veil, the limit and everything on the other side
Digital
September 20th 2025

The Rêve Orchestra - on

Mercedes Cambridge - The Portrait of a Rabie
Digital
September 20th 2025

"I'm listening now with my morning coffee! It's amazing! Thanks so much for this beautiful work! I love the Mercedes Cambridge name. The 'Mc' having been snipped off for use elsewhere! I hope a lot of people catch this project, it's truly great. I'll be a frequent listener!"

~ Guy Maddin

Produced by Nick Harte. This album is for Hannah. The Augment Plantation is dedicated to Ryuichi Sakamoto. Thanks: Junji, Mark McNeill, Will Callaghan, Will Ayrey, Nick Yeck-Stauffer, Ahmed Abaza, Henry Turner, Gareth Brighton, Bruce Russell, Jeff Henderson, Reuben Derrick, Matt Middleton, Robin Osborn, Nick Paris, Mary Wiles, Andrew Tebbutt, Damian Golfinopoulos and Guy Maddin.

Popular tracks by OPAL