Vital new supergroup Corroded Spiral - comprised of Sepultura co-founder Iggor Cavalera, Venezuelan electronic producer Cardopusher, and Dwid Hellion, founder of early hardcore trailblazers Integrity - announce punishing debut EP Ancient Nocturnal Summoning.

Corroded Spiral’s debut release crosses the boundaries of black metal, hardcore, new wave, industrial and EBM, a sum of decades of experience and powerful musicality from bona fide giants of their respective fields. Its three members contribute not just stylistic influence but three unique voices and a boundless ocean of abilities. “Corroded Spiral is a collaborative creation of different ideas, pushing the limits of our outputs, puzzled together during this doomed time of isolation,” explains Iggor Cavalera. “An aural assault.”

Ancient Nocturnal Summoning captures the intensity, horror and supernatural dread of its title. Its darkness is more creative and more demanding than distorted riffs or blastbeats; but instead is raw, spiritual, apocalyptic, and occasionally illuminated with sparks of melody that shimmer within a suffocating blackness. A seething tension that excavates deep, dark fissures of the soul. Opening track “Ancient Nocturnal Summoning” haunts such recesses, its ghostly vocal lines drowning beneath howling sirens of broken synthesis and a relentless industrial beat. “Through The Eyes Of Madness” invokes insanity with billowing ashclouds of noise and static, a crushing, doomladen descent into terror destined to annihilate speaker systems. Next, “Resulting Fragments Splinter Existence” runs like a destroyed new wave piece, a departure from the sonic obliteration of the previous track but an intense experience in a very different way. Hellish growls underline mutated synth arps, over a beat that could be danceable if it were not so claustrophobic. Closer “Forgotten Ether” evolves from air raid wails and inhuman screaming to tribal percussion and piercing squeals, its merciless pressure always threatening to detonate deep within the brain.

Venezuela’s Cardopusher (producer and DJ Luis Garban) is a collaborator of Arca, Boys Noize and Rosalía among others. His pursuit of uncompromising production and pounding rhythms stems from a background in rave culture and an early immersion in Caracas’ underground electronic scene. Brazilian musician Iggor Cavalera co-founded the iconic and seminal force of thrash and death metal Sepultura with his brother Max in Belo Horizonte in the early 80’s. Having left Sepultura, Cavalera has continued his musical journey with Cavalera Conspiracy, Mixhell, Petbrick, MUDO and Soulwax. Belgium-based US musician Dwid Hellion is known for his work with peerless early hardcore punk / metal sonic explorers Integrity, paving a path for generations of bands to follow in entwining their battery with elements of noise, industrial and experimental music. Dwid also produces “apocalyptic harsh noise” under his Psywarfare solo alias.

Ancient Nocturnal Summoning

Forgotten Ether

Rising, enigmatic Brighton songwriter Milo Korbenski precedes his full debut for Phantom Limb with Vol. 1, a collection of key tracks taken from previous self-releases, exemplifying his trademark haunted, heavy, unique art-dream-indie-pop earworms.

Milo Korbenski is a shadowy, anonymous Brighton solo musician only publicly seen in a featureless white mask, Stetson and denim jacket. However, his deeply expressive take on lo-fi slacker indie invokes a heartfelt intimacy, singing straight from the soul. A true auteur, and inexhaustibly prolific, Milo recorded, designed and self-released a number of albums on streaming platforms (and enjoyed staggering listening figures) without any backing, and only recently signed his first record deal. The fruits of this self-releasing period are collected on Vol. 1, in celebration not only of his first initiation into a label roster, but also of the thrilling deftness of his songcraft. The collection explores a multitude of catchy-as-hell hooks, clever lyrical wordplay, and deceptively lean instrumentation that belies its own simplicity.

The opening single ‘All Hallows Grieve’ flows with sweet melodic bounce and motorik rhythms that propel Milo’s vulnerable, mercurial vocal delivery into glorious head-nodding bliss. Chorus hooks spring up with colour and irrepressible joy, while Milo’s lyrical themes remain dreamily evocative and subtly melancholic. The sense of storytelling he often refers to is evident throughout Vol. 1, taking us to dark woods to cast spells with witches, to the Yeti’s lonely caves, into the mind of a spooked child shining torches about the night in search of ghosts, to Appalachian foothills where Satan may roam, even to “having a bit of a shit time on Halloween.”

Milo Korbenski - All Hallows Grieve

Beyond The Uncanny Valley

myst milano. - Thirteen

Rising, enigmatic Brighton songwriter Milo Korbenski delivers his debut album proper When You Gonna Tell ‘Em the Truth, Aaron?, a stunning collection of haunted, heavy, unique art-dream-indie-pop earworms.

Milo Korbenski is a shadowy, anonymous Brighton solo musician only publicly seen in a featureless white mask, Stetson and denim jacket. However, his deeply expressive take on lo-fi slacker indie invokes a heartfelt intimacy, singing straight from the soul. This new album - an official debut following a period of self-releasing - displays endless catchy-as-hell hooks, clever lyrical wordplay, and deceptively lean instrumentation that belies its own simplicity.

Across Milo’s new album, hooks spring up with colour and true joy, shining through a newfound love of gritty overdrive and dark themes. ‘Booksmart Hunny’ is a stunning example of this deft ability to weave the dreamily evocative and subtly melancholy with genuine riffs and a relentless driven tempo. Its chorus hits like an arena-filler, but retains the spectral, rarefied magic that makes Milo’s music so singular. “It’s a record of people who are stuck in a kind of spiritual void and don’t want to change. They become a sort of ghoul or phantom in their own reality,” we are told.

The music of WYGTETTA? (Milo’s own stylisation) crosses references points as broadly spread as Kurt Vile, Helado Negro, Black Sabbath, The xx, The Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie Sioux, Jagwar Ma and Calvin Johnson while retaining a vitally singular energy. Milo’s underlying unreality is more haunted than the indie-leaning acts mentioned here, and the readymade homespun cassette sonics lend a charm beyond the prettified sheen of his pop influences.

A true storyteller, Milo tells us “every song on the album is about a dysfunctional character enduring a relationship that isn’t really working.” Throughout the record, we are introduced to a series of surreal, mythologised narratives that make up a wide, interconnected arc. “There is a lack of honesty to the narrator's stories throughout the album, hence the title: When You Gonna Tell ‘Em the Truth, Aaron?”

Quickly becoming a formidable live act, Milo Korbenski performs live (in mask and Stetson) with a full band, and has played alongside acts such as Babii, Jeffrey Lewis, Art d’Ecco and others with a flourishing stage presence. A true auteur, and inexhaustibly prolific, Milo home-recorded, designed and self-released a number of albums on streaming platforms (and enjoyed staggering listening figures) without any backing, and only recently signed his first record deal. The fruits of this self-releasing period are collected on Vol. 1, released by Phantom Limb as a limited cassette in May 2023 - a record that sold out in minutes.

Milo Korbenski - Booksmart Hunny

Acclaimed Japan “minyo footwork” duo WaqWaq Kingdom - aka Shigeru Ishihara (DJ Scotch Egg / Seefeel) and Kiki Hitomi (ex-King Midas Sound) - follow October’s feverish Hot Pot Totto album with a brand new EP of adjacent works Mind Onsen.

While vividly coloured with the heady ecstasy and dizzying day-glo sonics that we have come to expect from WaqWaq Kingdom, brand new EP Mind Onsen also marks a compelling diversion from their usual velocity. Partly influenced by producer Shigeru Ishihara’s newfound love of minimalism (he references Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, Philip Glass, and E2-E4), there is a beguiling and hypnotic sense of the transcendental and meditative laced through the record, albeit threaded into the breakneck rhythms and hi-octane energy in which Ishihara and Hitomi excel.

Opening with the Tanzanian Singeli-inspired rave thump, speedracer synth, and gamelan bells of the title track’s first movement, a brief window into WaqWaq Kingdom’s evolving palette appears in the track’s mid section. Unravelling into Shinto chimes and chanting voice before spinning away, within moments, to reclaim its joyous SNES and gabba delirium, Ishihara tells us that the track is also influenced by traditional Japanese minyo and the koplo dangdut dance music of Indonesia. Later tracks “Hado” and “Aigo” lean further into the mystic: menu-select screens to the blistering bossfights of “Yaren Soran” and “Mind Onsen”. Here, Hitomi’s voice is treated, reverberous, and recharging, while Ishihara’s production chatters and undulates with sonorous Reichian repetition.

“Mind Onsen is not about an escape from reality, but rather a way to rest your brain and get the energy you need for tomorrow,” vocalist Kiki Hitomi tells us. “It’s a positive message.” The concept is drawn from the traditional Japanese onsen, natural hot springs used for bathing and relaxation. In response to the social and political issues of the current era, Hitomi speaks of the necessity to find peace and calm even in stressful moments. “I visualise myself in the hot spring where I can see the beautiful Japanese mountains and hear the river and natural spring hot water is running,” she writes. “It is a sort of mindfulness meditation that makes me feel happiness and appreciate my life.”

Kiki Hitomi was formerly a member of Ninja Tune / Hyperdub’s King Midas Sound (along with The Bug and Roger Robinson), and co-founded iconic Japanese dubstep-noise duo Dokkebi Q. She is also a celebrated illustrator and designer, having created artwork for countless record sleeves (including this one) and brands. Shigeru Ishihara - aka DJ Scotch Egg - has been orbiting the dance music galaxy for over a decade, releasing radiantly unpredictable solo records through Lightning Bolt’s Load Records, as a member of Warp Records’ legendary Seefeel, and performing with both projects across the world.  He recently undertook a residency at the Nyege Nyege Villa in Uganda, working with Phantom Limb alumnus MC Yallah. More recently, Ishihara has been releasing music under the guise of Scotch Rolex, collaborating with the likes of Shackleton, Swordman Kitala, Lord Spikeheart and more.

Mind Onsen, follows the rapturously received albums Hot Pot Totto (2023) and Essaka Hoisa (2019) and EP Dokkoisho in 2020. WaqWaq Kingdom have more new music planned for late 2024.

Mind Onsen

WaqWaq Kingdom - Mind Onsen

Acclaimed Icelandic theremin musician Hekla returns with Turnar, her third album of devastatingly heavy, spectral soundscape-songwriting, entering a sublime paranormal plane of haunting dread.

Now augmenting her virtuosic solo theremin work with cello, voice, and the sacred church organ of Icelandic master Kristján Hrannar, the evolution of Hekla’s unique magic summons new worlds with Turnar. The album was recorded partly in (and named after) a medieval castle tower in rural France, its ruinous black broken in spare beams of angelic stained-glass light. But, writes Hekla, “the sound of theremin kind of opens up a portal into a new realm that both looks into a dark old world and to the future.” The record is an alternately beautiful and crushing space voyage into a glacial underworld cascading with phosphorescence and cave drip, conjuring ancient choral ritual just as readily as redolent sci-fi gloam.

“Gráminn” wails with ghostly harmonics while distorted drones crash together in a stormy and blackened netherworld sea. It traces a neat progression from Hekla’s last album - the acclaimed Xiuxiuejar - while also welcoming an expanded timbral palette and flourishing compositional confidence.

Hekla is a rare specialist of the theremin, a notoriously inscrutable electronic instrument, joining a miniscule group of musicians in mastery of its esoteric mysteries. Classically informed, her playing covers an enormous range, from skittering birdsong of chirrups and chirps to tectonic sub-bass. Her fans in the wider music community - PJ Harvey, for example - describe her style alongside musicians such as Colleen, Julia Holter or the late Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Turnar is Hekla’s third album, following 2018 debut Á, 2020 EP Sprungur, and 2022’s Xiuxiuejar.

Turnar

Hekla - Gráminn

Chicago solo artist Lipsticism uniquely interweaves elements of shoegaze, house, hyperpop and experimental pop, and ambient music for her debut Phantom Limb album Wanted To Show You, a highly accomplished listening experience both honeysweet and emotionally crushing.

A key moment on Lipsticism’s Wanted To Show You is the single “Feeling Why Do You Follow”. Its entrancingly measured alchemy of Lipsticism’s precious materials - spacious, haunting synthesis, angelic voice, thumping house kick-n-hats, balmy and achingly melodic prettiness - coalesces with the spellbinding imagery cast by its opening lyric: Why do you follow me into dreams? / you crawl on top of me. While Lipsticism’s music is inherently dreamlike (and dream pop-like) in its gauzy, hazy unreality, it brings a tangible embodiment along for its bliss-out joyride, at once nostalgically familiar and skewed.

The record, writes Alana Schachtel - the musician behind Lipsticism - grapples with “the fleeting nature of relationships. The feeling of wanting to connect with someone after they have passed.” Schachtel’s songcraft reaches across a plane, its slow-motion dancefloors imbued with magical light to make even recognisable instrumentation float weightlessly through her sonic space. The acoustic guitar appears on occasion, revealing Lipsticism’s early, self-released roots of freak-folk and bent-Americana. Her voice is often so lush as to seep like plasmic energy through the blinking lights of her synthesis and beat programming, but always true, always authentic.

Bound together in adroit narrative flow, Wanted To Show You swells and eddies. “That’s Enough”, midway through the album, drops all masks for a quiet and swooning study of vulnerability, and the alien-planet club that had welcomed AR Kane, Animal Collective, and Gillian Welch for a Chicago house rave DJ’d by Ivo Watts-Russell reaches an unexpectedly beatific and confessional comedown.

Later in the album, “Erased” begins with a deceptive lite-jazz synth wiggle that morphs into a swampy, fugged-out wash of pads over intoxicating two-step beat programming. Its spectral vocal halo is a kind of deja vu of quasi-familiar shadowplay, here and not here, but revealing deep mysteries in understated and unassuming catharsis. Here, and across the record, the presence of Schachtel’s mix and mastering engineer Angel Marcloid (aka Fire-Toolz) can be felt in its strange and changeling giddiness, in its balance of sound design against voice.

Lipsticism is the solo project of musician and producer Alana Schachtel. Born and raised near Chicago, she spent the majority of her adult life in the Pacific Northwest, where she first started experimenting with sound. Because of her background in dance, she began writing music by imagining choreography and creating the rhythms and melodies to match. Her latest compositions blend her love of sound design and song and integrate a broad spread of influences. Some highlights of her musical career have been performing and touring with Chanel Beads, Urika's Bedroom, Avey Tare (of Animal Collective), Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Blue Hawaii, and Jerry Paper.

Lipsticism - Erased

Vital UK auteur-songwriter Milo Korbenski returns with new album Sex Angel, a masterfully crafted suite of slacker-dream-pop whose irresistible and addictive earworming reveals a deceptively deep songcraft.

Scuzzy, irreverent, and brimming with irresistible energy, “Six Angle” is a sonic rush that channels the spirit of DIY basement gigs and explodes into a stadium-sized chorus. Driven by hypnotic chord repetition, thunderous drums, and layers of sly, shape-shifting falsetto, the track toes the line between chaos and control.

“It’s mostly inspired by the fatigue of constantly feeling like everything has to be productive or marketable,” says Korbenski. “Like every moment needs to mean something or become something. So the song is just two endlessly repeating chords the whole time—it’s very high energy, very distorted. I wanted it to sound kinda like the White Stripes doing Daft Punk.”

Korbenski’s deeply expressive take on lo-fi art-pop indie invokes this optimism in an unexpectedly emotional way. Throughout the record, catchy-as-hell hooks and canny lyrical wordplay sing straight to the soul. Moments of boxy, torn-cone distortion and octave-dropped vocals coalesce with the sweetest synth and vocal interplay. The record crosses references points as broadly spread as Kurt Vile, Helado Negro, Black Sabbath, The xx, The Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie Sioux, Jagwar Ma and Calvin Johnson while retaining a crucially singular energy: Milo’s underlying unreality is more haunted than the indie-leaning acts mentioned here, and the blown-out cassette grit lends an intimacy beyond the prettified sheen of his pop influences.

“It's an optimistic album, an album of positive realisations,” writes Milo Korbenski, a shadowy, Brighton-based solo musician only publicly seen in a featureless white mask, Stetson and denim jacket. “The narrator of each song is having a 'light at the end of the tunnel' moment. You have to go through something to get to where you are and you'll hopefully be better for it.”

“I wanted it to sound like an album you found on a floppy disk in a puddle and then you took it home, put it on your iPod, and it became the soundtrack to your summer of fun and debauchery. I don't know if people will feel that way about it, but who knows. I'm optimistic.”

Incorrigibly prolific, Korbenski wrote Sex Angel in a flurry of activity after the release of 2024’s acclaimed debut When You Gonna Tell ‘Em The Truth, Aaron? Following the wholesale scrapping of an earlier version, he has created a deft, weird, and lean record that balances shades of light and dark. It represents a flourishing songwriting confidence and, naturally, is uniquely characteristic to Milo Korbenski.

“Interestingly, it was definitely the most difficult album that I've ever made. I had a big moment of thinking I'd lost it. But this record made me realise that, if that feeling of failure creeps up again, it will probably never affect me as deeply.” Light and darkness, together as one, just as the record plays out.

Milo Korbenski - Six Angle

Vital UK auteur-songwriter Milo Korbenski returns with new album Sex Angel, a masterfully crafted suite of slacker-dream-pop whose irresistible and addictive earworming reveals a deceptively deep songcraft.

Following the singles “Ratworm” and “Six Angle”, “Bedrock” shifts the pace with a stirring indie-slacker ballad, channelling the raw emotion of an early U2 demo tape reimagined through a modern, experimental lens. Shimmering synth lines build toward a magnetic chorus, where vocals drift in and out of focus beneath layers of lush effects, producing an atmosphere that’s both haunting and unforgettable.

“It was the last song I recorded for the album, over two consecutive days,” Korbenski explained. “After the first day of recording, I dreamed I was listening to the song, it was really strange, soupy, distorted, the vocals stretched and weird. I woke up remembering that sound and wanted to get it on the track, so I added synths, pushed the distortion, and shifted all the vocals down. I loved it, and it fit the glitchy, dusty feel of the other tracks on the record. The lyrics in the second verse are my favourite on the whole album. Tbh, I think it’s probably my favourite track.”

Korbenski’s deeply expressive take on lo-fi art-pop indie invokes this optimism in an unexpectedly emotional way. Throughout the record, catchy-as-hell hooks and canny lyrical wordplay sing straight to the soul. Moments of boxy, torn-cone distortion and octave-dropped vocals coalesce with the sweetest synth and vocal interplay. The record crosses references points as broadly spread as Kurt Vile, Helado Negro, Black Sabbath, The xx, The Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie Sioux, Jagwar Ma and Calvin Johnson while retaining a crucially singular energy: Milo’s underlying unreality is more haunted than the indie-leaning acts mentioned here, and the blown-out cassette grit lends an intimacy beyond the prettified sheen of his pop influences.

“It's an optimistic album, an album of positive realisations,” writes Milo Korbenski, a shadowy, Brighton-based solo musician only publicly seen in a featureless white mask, Stetson and denim jacket. “The narrator of each song is having a 'light at the end of the tunnel' moment. You have to go through something to get to where you are and you'll hopefully be better for it.”

“I wanted it to sound like an album you found on a floppy disk in a puddle and then you took it home, put it on your iPod, and it became the soundtrack to your summer of fun and debauchery. I don't know if people will feel that way about it, but who knows. I'm optimistic.”

Incorrigibly prolific, Korbenski wrote Sex Angel in a flurry of activity after the release of 2024’s acclaimed debut When You Gonna Tell ‘Em The Truth, Aaron? Following the wholesale scrapping of an earlier version, he has created a deft, weird, and lean record that balances shades of light and dark. It represents a flourishing songwriting confidence and, naturally, is uniquely characteristic to Milo Korbenski.

“Interestingly, it was definitely the most difficult album that I've ever made. I had a big moment of thinking I'd lost it. But this record made me realise that, if that feeling of failure creeps up again, it will probably never affect me as deeply.” Light and darkness, together as one, just as the record plays out.

Milo Korbenski - Bedrock

Following the success of 2024’s reissue of 1980’s key works by cult Japanese outsider composer K. Yoshimatsu, Phantom Limb return with compendium release Zentai: The Collected Works of K. Yoshimatsu, collecting nine albums created from 1980-1985, over three volumes spanning exploratory home-recorded 4-track experiments.

Over a furiously prolific period from 1980 to 1985, K. [Koshiro] Yoshimatsu composed, recorded and released some forty albums. These records primarily appeared under his own name, some required aliases, and others saw him compose, arrange, and produce for friends and peers in his creative circle. All of them, however, surfaced on Japan’s cult and inimitably fertile DD. Records, an astonishingly exhaustive catalogue once described as “the most amazing DIY effort ever undertaken to document an alternative music scene”. Led by close Yoshimatsu associate T. [Tadashi] Kamada, DD. Records released exactly 222 cassettes of brazenly, addictively weird Japanese outsider music over a period of five years, each with typewritten liner notes and enigmatically constructed Xerox artwork of found materials. The cassettes remain the stuff of collectors’ dreams, fetching astronomic prices on the rare occasions they surface in record stores or private sales. However, a keen archivist, Koshiro Yoshimatsu’s master recordings remained in his possession (a not unreasonable outcome given that his work was all self-recorded in his home) and meticulously filed, ready for rediscovery.

Over the breadth of Yoshimatsu’s work - solo, ensemble, and in composition for labelmates - we see a remarkable generosity of musical talent. Some records (such as those produced for Fumie Yasamura) are formed of hazy, gliding 4-track pop songs coursing with hallucinogenic electricity. Others, such as 1982’s Poplar combine bucolic nylon-string guitar rambles, vibrantly coloured with sequenced MIDI arpeggiation and the dulcet bloops of early computer programming. Further still, Pastel Nostalgia, from 1983, marries primitivist piano with wailing siren tones and dripping tap percussion. It is significantly creepier, more acerbic and disembodying than the ambient or New Age music of the era, despite a similarity in raw materials.

Zentai Vol. I bundles together Spherical Voyage (1982), Strawberry Secret, and Sepia Renaissance (both 1983) and focuses on Yoshimatsu’s pastoral and organic period. Vol II includes Life In The Water, Commercial Romanticists, and C’est La Vie (all 1983), records all in a (roughly) pop or songwriter vein. Vol III covers Curios (1982), Pastel Nostalgia, and Last Lizard (both 1983), leaning into Yoshimatsu’s most experimental collage recordings. “My musical interests were diverse, and I created works aiming to expand my musical worldview,” he tells us. “During the five years from 1981 to 1985, I was obsessed. It was a very magical experience.”

Alongside 2024’s career retrospective album Fossil Cocoon, Yoshimatsu’s substantial catalogue now happily, newly sits in a neat collection, compressing his enormous abilities into single moments. Koshiro himself was an invaluable lighthouse throughout the curation process, a guide through the depths and annals of his recording career, now forty years hence, shining light onto forgotten music rescued from home-recorded tapes. The result may be an expressly varied collection of works, but it is held magically together by Yoshimatsu’s profoundly singular creative alchemy.

Koshiro Yoshimatsu was born in 1960 in Yamaguchi City in the Chugoku region of southern Japan. In 1978, then a student of Yamaguchi University and already deeply engaged in the local arts scene, in the classified ads of communications magazine PUMP, he chanced upon the creative work and curatorial interests of the aforementioned Tadashi Kamada, at the time a medical student in a nearby town, and there DD. Records was born.

K. Yoshimatsu - Pastel Nostalgia part 2

Enigmatic UK producer Dylan Henner announces new album of deeply considered and choral-laced experimental ambient music Star Dream FM, said to be taped from a mysterious radio broadcast that plays his favourite memories from adolescence.

“Late one evening, I was listening to the radio alone at home. I couldn’t find the station I wanted, so I shifted the dial around for a while. Between frequencies, fading in and out of fidelity, I found a station I’d never heard before. To my amazement, the station was broadcasting my own memories. Memories from when I was seventeen. Some of the most formative and important moments of my life, alive on the air,” Dylan Henner’s self-penned mythology begins. “I called some friends and asked if they could find the same frequency, but no-one did. So, quickly as I could, I stuck a blank tape into my hi-fi and hit record. At some point I heard the jingle and the name of the station: Star Dream FM.”

Though (clearly) fictional, the backdrop to new album Star Dream FM represents a tactile canvas on which the record’s true meaning is painted. It is, through Henner’s now-characteristic employment of ambient-textured synthesis, marimba, digital choir, and processed voice, a study of late adolescence and the experience of being seventeen.

“Why seventeen? Because (in Western, 21st century culture at least) it is a unique time of fragility and self-realisation. A gateway between the joy and wonder of childhood and the heavy realities of adult life. A seventeen year old has almost formed their outlook, mindset, purpose, drive, but only as a hop away from childhood. It’s a challenging period, sure, but also a time of optimism, of excitement for a new life to begin in your own image.”

The result of this examination is a collection of meticulously constructed human-not-human compositions built from Henner’s mesmeric brand of desolate beauty. His immersive, storytelling range is broad, spanning from serene to cerebral, from powerful to uncanny. Henner references ambient and experimental music, chamber composition, the human voice, sound design, and field recordings, and wraps everything in the myth of his imaginary radio station Star Dream FM.

Dylan Henner - We Walked all the Way to the Lake and The Water Was So Still We Jumped in Naked

Dylan Henner - I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with her Beauty

Phantom Limb’s noted filmscore series Imaginal Soundtracking returns after a short hiatus, uniting Iranian filmmaker Somayeh’s three-minute work The Wound Where The Light Enters with five contemporary musicians to be re-scored in five different ways.

Designed to reframe underexposed works of cinema and to offer a new artistic challenge to the contributing musicians, Imaginal Soundtracking acts as a dialogue between the creative minds at play. The third release in the series sees a quintet of highly inventive, fascinatingly varied takes on The Wound Where The Light Enters, a powerful and affecting study of intimacy and tension written and directed by Iranian director Somayeh. The film’s language and gaze are markedly feminine, its choreography raw and potent, uniting Somayeh’s Iranian heritage and its traditions with western influences.

Its two roles - performed by Pippa Melody and Tyler Conti - entangle into a push and pull of love, familiarity, and acrimony, as their relationship begins to fracture. Their tactile interactions could be perceived both as romantic or hostile, but in both cases charged with effervescent, teeming emotion.

Musicians Siavash Amini, Saint Abdullah, Roxanna Albayati, Nesa Azadikhah, and sohme all began with the same source material, but - not hearing each other’s work until the project was completed - their respective new soundtracks are strikingly different.

Saint Abdullah is the moniker of Iranian-Canadian brothers currently based between Tehran and London. Their practice is rooted in sonic storytelling that seamlessly blends geo-politics, religion, and social behavior. The brothers have developed a studio practice exploring improvisation, electronics, plunderphonics, and sampling. Their soundtrack begins with squealing string harmonics and an insistently rhythmic strum that maintains a high pace, until a barrage of noise splits the piece in two, and an unheimlich singing voice walks through fire over wagon circle guitar. Reflecting the love and acrimony of Somayeh’s film, its two halves are cohesive only in their disparity.

The Wound Where The Light Enters is the third in Phantom Limb’s Imaginal Soundtracking series, following a re-score of 1984 Soviet animation There Will Come Soft Rains (which was delightedly received by its director Nazim Tulyakhodzayev) and another of Japanese puppeteer Kihachiro Kawamoto’s 1972 bunraku stop motion piece 鬼 [eng: The Demon]. To date, the series has comprised musical contributions by Ami Dang, Midori Hirano, 食品まつり a.k.a foodman, Sabiwa, Tori Kudo, Masaaki Yoshida, Lakker, Rully Shabara, and Dylan Henner.

Saint Abdullah - The Wound Where The Light Enters

"Elusive pop fantasias, and intentionally so." - Pitchfork

"Unquestionably multi-talented as well as multilingual... wqe should all be grateful that Miho Hatori speaks the universal language of music so fluently." - Impose

NYC's rare and inimitable talent New Optimism (aka Japanese musician Miho Hatori, co-founder of the beloved Cibo Matto and a collaborative partner of Gorillaz, Beastie Boys, John Zorn, etc) releases her vibrant debut EP Amazon To LeFrak on July 27th through Phantom Limb.

New Optimism is Miho’s newest project, a vivid, unpredictable and technicolour sonic palette that shapeshifts mercurially around grooving basslines, subtle electronica, leftfield sound explorations and playful experimental pop.
 
New Optimism can be seen as a natural landing point for Miho's past musical journeys - strange and wonderful, encompassing pop, experimental, hip-hop and dance music: her work with Beck's backing musicians may have contributed to the brightly-coloured avant-soul of Amazon To LeFrak; her time as a Gorillaz member (Miho was the voice of cartoon band-member Noodle) offers a window into the intelligent, mischievous pop songwriting heard in New Optimism's structure-toying and Miho’s infectious singing voice. The strains of Caribbean/Brasilo-beat littered through the record are evidence of Miho's fascination with Latin music and follow her curveball 2003 bossanova duet album with Smokey Hormel. The additional production credits of ex-Vampire Weekend member Rostam [Batmanglij] enter the mix as noise-driven synth lines and bubbling percussion.

Miho writes that the name for her project acts as a response to the post-postmodernist term "New Sincerity", pertaining to contemporary anti-cynical and anti-ironical earnest creative expressions. "New Optimism", as a title, means the opposite of this, says Miho.

Amazon To LeFrak was written and produced with recording collaborators in a handful of key New York studios around Miho's multiple other projects, including mixtapes for RVNG Intl.'s Commend store in Manhattan and numerous sound design compositions and installations.

Miho will be performing live at Basilica SoundScape 2018, held in New York's Hudson Valley on September 14-16th, alongside Lightning Bolt, Grouper, Haxan Cloak x Nick Zinner and more. 

http://mihohatori.com
www.phantom-limb.co.uk

James Vella formed Phantom Limb in June 2017 after eight years in A&R for FatCat Records. Mark Pearse (ex-head of contemporary music programming at the Royal Albert Hall) and Ken Li (formerly UK/EU senior publicist at Thrill Jockey) joined the team shortly after.

AMAZON TO LeFRAK

New Optimism - Jet Setters

Manapi (aka Brian Close of experimental New York duo Georgia) remixes New Optimism's Dr.My-Ho.

New Optimism's debut EP Amazon To LeFrak is out now: https://phantomlimblabel.bandcamp.com/album/amazon-to-lefrak 

Georgia: http://www.ggeeoorrggiiaa.com/ 

New Optimism is the project of Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto, Gorillaz).

Catch Miho live at these dates in Winter 2018:
Oct 31 - Nantes, FR - SOY Festival 
Nov 1 - Paris, FR - Pitchfork Music Festival 
Nov 7 - Aveiro, PL - Avenida Café-Concerto
Nov 8 - Vigo, ES - Radar 
Nov 10 - Utrecht, NL - Le Guess Who? Festival 
Nov 18 - Brooklyn, NY - Market Hotel w/ Kero Kero Bonito [Sold Out] 
Nov 30 - Copenhagen, DK - Brakken 
Dec 1  - The Hague, NL - HINK Festival 
Dec 2 - Karlsruhe, DE - Jubez 
Dec 4 - Hamburg, DE - Hafenklang 
Dec 5 - Frankfurt, DE - Mousonturm Lokal 
Dec 6 - Brussels, BE - Bang Festival
Dec 10 - London, UK - The Shacklewell Arms 
Dec 12 - Brighton, UK - Green Door Store 
Dec 13 - Bristol, UK - Cafe Kino
Dec 14 - Manchester, UK - Night & Day

New Optimism - Dr.My-Ho [LETITGO CONTROLME Remix by Manapi (Georgia)]

Miho Hatori's own unique remix of New Optimism's Dr.My-Ho.

New Optimism's debut EP Amazon To LeFrak is out now: https://phantomlimblabel.bandcamp.com/album/amazon-to-lefrak 

New Optimism is the project of Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto, Gorillaz).

Catch Miho live at these dates in November 2018:
Nov 30 - Copenhagen, DK - Brakken 
Dec 1  - The Hague, NL - HINK Festival 
Dec 2 - Karlsruhe, DE - Jubez 
Dec 4 - Hamburg, DE - Hafenklang 
Dec 5 - Frankfurt, DE - Mousonturm Lokal
Dec 6 - Brussels, BE - Bang Festival 
Dec 10 - London, UK - The Shacklewell Arms 
Dec 12 - Brighton, UK - Green Door Store 
Dec 13 - Bristol, UK - Cafe Kino
Dec 14 - Manchester, UK - Night & Day

New Optimism - Dr.My-Ho [New Office Hour Mix by Miho Hatori]

“Fevered and inventive minds, who have cooked up, perfected and put a lid on their own genre...An explosion of dayglo invention that sings with the freedom of creativity”
The Quietus

“A heady combination of effusive vocals, 8-bit whorls and hypnotic rhythms...psychedelic delights spill from every corner.”
FACT

Essaka Hoisa, the thrilling, brand new LP of “minyo footwork” by Japanese musicians Shige Ishihara (DJ Scotch Egg / Seefeel) and Kiki Hitomi (of King Midas Sound) under their WaqWaq Kingdom guise lands in November 2019 on Phantom Limb.

Uniquely omnivorous in their approach, WaqWaq Kingdom’s endless range of stylistic adventures sees them draw lines between traditional Japanese and contemporary electronic, between Jamaican dancehall and 8-bit techno, between African polyrhythms and experimental music, with plenty more helping to colour a powerful, vibrant palette. This new record - after 2017’s debut Shinsekai - is the first under the new line-up of Hitomi and Ishihara, as former drummer Andrea Belfi leaves the band for his own projects. This shift in personnel and dynamic has allowed Hitomi’s vocal delivery and Ishihara’s production to explore even deeper new ground, borrowing infinitesimally small snippets of sound and style to craft a singular hotpot of musics. From opener “Mum Tells Me” (written after Kiki sadly lost both her parents in a short period of time) and its Shinto bells and Afro-trap percussion, to “Itakadakimasu” and its reproach of human greed via twisted Cubo-Cumbia beats, Essaka Hoisa rarely stays in one place at a time. 

Conceptually, Essaka Hoisa draws influence and imagery from traditional Japanese history and mythology. The title is taken from the cry of kago carriers - seen as Kiki and Shige on Kiki’s illustration for the record sleeve - two people carrying ruling-class or religious dignitaries over great distances. The shout Essaka Hoisa was said to lift the carriers’ spirits and strengthen their unity. In her lyrics, Kiki uses this imagery to explore our own reflective burden - experiencing life without an understanding of its meaning. Carrying hardship, sadness, pain and difficulty like a kago carrier, shouting essaka hoisa to get through the struggle. “We keep on going and shouting Essaka Hoisa together with partners, our kin, friends and people that we walk together and carrying on our life with laughter and tears,” Kiki writes. “No matter what, I am carrying on my life. I won’t give up and  keep on going, keep on making, keep on learning with hollering the word Essaka Hoisa.”

Shigeru Ishihara - aka DJ Scotch Egg - has been a distinctive alien orbiting the dance music galaxy for over a decade, releasing radiantly unpredictable solo records through Lightning Bolt’s Load Records, as a member of Warp Records’ legendary Seefeel, and performing with both projects across the world. Kiki Hitomi is a member of Ninja Tune / Hyperdub’s King Midas Sound (along with The Bug and Roger Robinson), and co-founded iconic Japanese dubstep-noise duo Dokkebi Q. She is also a celebrated illustrator and designer, having created artwork for countless record sleeves and brands. The combined interests, abilities and creative scope of the two musicians - both Japanese, both based in Germany - results in Essaka Hoisa, a brilliant explosion of noise that speaks volumes to their musical powers.

Essaka Hoisa is released worldwide by Phantom Limb in November 2019 on coloured vinyl and all digital formats.

Essaka Hoisa

Itakadimasu

Having formed over ten years ago, as teenagers, Nantes duo Simon Puiroux (electronics and sax) and Charles Dubois (percussion) construct the music of Humbros on a semi-improvised framework. Rhythmic patterns, samples and melodic phrases act as marker points along each piece’s winding, free-flowing narrative, a musical communication honed over their years of collaboration to reach From 0 to 90’s clairvoyant levels of improvisational understanding.

The record’s wealth of exploratory sonics stems from Humbros’ unique combination of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. Puiroux and Dubois line up recogniseable toms, congas, bells, and exotic wind instruments alongside a cryptic treasury of more curious artefacts: sound-distorting mirrors, wood, skins, metals, voice processors, and percussive stringed instruments. Combined with Puiroux’s modular synthesis and treated saxophone, this journey from heady, pulsating polyrhythms to sparse, chirruping insects of tropical concréte digs deep into hypnotic, meditative textures (they are never “jams”) whilst maintaining a deeply philosophical, conceptual relationship with the energies generated.

Constantly positioned in an intersection, in balance between acoustic and electronic sound, Humbros acts as an exploration of the “in-between”, produced by the marriage of two distinct timbral approaches. They sit between repetitive minimalism and illuminative free-jazz; between angular patterns and lysergic, dripping textures; human fragility and sci-fi sound-design.

From 0 to 90 was recorded over the duration of a week at the end of 2019. Working in their own self-constructed studio, Piuroux and Dubois set about creating a record relatively lighter and quieter than their live performances. Stacking textures, landscapes, structures and “lots of objects hitted with stuffs of all kinds”, the album traces the evolution of living beings - the numbers of its title refer to the angles at which organic life has been orientated, from crawling to standing. “We have passed through different shapes, landscapes and elements (a wispy swamp, an aquarium, a wet skate park, a thick cloud, a medieval kennel…),” they write.

Spending much of their musical career more visible in concert than in recording, Humbros have experienced - and reflected on the theory and the form of - the live performance as a medium since their inception. They have performed in a multitude of concert formats: nightclubs, village halls, an empty highway bridge, abandoned factories, art galleries, vineyard cellars, festivals and across France’s vibrant network of DIY venues. Their first recorded works - the self-recorded demo Night of the Toacas - emerged on Bandcamp in 2018 and immediately caught the ear of Phantom Limb’s A&R department.

From 0 to 90’s will be released in July, 2020

Humbros - Bois Debout [radio edit]

Icelandic theremin maestra Hekla returns with charastically sparse and haunting new EP Sprungur, following her acclaimed 2018 debut Á.

Hekla’s delicate, spectral music pierces the dark negative space within Iceland’s dreamy, permanight magick and folklore with a deep, intense sonic soundworld all her own. A long-term scholar of solo theremin, Hekla (shortened from her own name Hekla Magnúsdóttir) coaxes otherworldly and powerfully evocative sounds from her instrument, alternately howling and yearning with equal grace. Her songwriting and performance are totally unique: no-one uses the theremin as she does. Indeed, very few can.

Her debut album Á was released by Phantom Limb in 2018, attracting high praise for its beautifully expressive range and its eloquent spareness. Sprungur - her first new music since then - develops her palette to include gently reverberated piano lines and subtle synth parts alongside the theremin and her own ghostly vocal delivery. Opening single “Tvö þrjú Slit” begins as a haunted waltz, the forgotten memory of an abandoned ballroom, trading its melody between voice and theremin. “Sofðu Unga Ástin Mín” is an arrangement of a traditional Icelandic lullaby (Hekla writes that it “always scared me out when I was little” - you can see why). Its mournful theremin melody blooms amid a garden of dulcet synthesis and twinkling piano. And within the lyrics lies the line “Í jöklinum hljóða dauðadjúpar sprungur” [Eng: In the glacier rumbles deadly deep cracks], from which Hekla took the title of the EP, exploring the imagery of great mythical beasts inhabiting the earth and causing deep fissures from their rumbling movements.

Sprungur will be released on August 28, 2020 via Phantom Limb.

Sprungur

Tvö Þrjú Slit

African-born, Baltimore-based experimental hip-hop producer Infinity Knives joins Phantom Limb for the release of his unique debut album Dear, Sudan, a vibrant and polymathic labyrinth of moods and colours.

Infinity Knives - aka producer and musician Tariq Ravelomanana - moved from Tanzania (via Kenya, South Africa and Madagascar) to Baltimore with his family as a teenager, soaking up the raw, vociferous hip hop culture around him, devouring Western classical music, and embedding himself with the city’s verdant music scene. This unique combination of life experiences and contrasting strands of musical education empowered and enabled him to create his Infinity Knives guise, allowing us a window into his singular energy with Dear, Sudan.

​Tariq writes “Music has always been my medium. Since I was a child living in Tanzania, music has been my babysitter. The one central idea I kept dwelling on was that all humans experience sorrow, but despite the fact that it's universal, we still experience it as if we were alone.”	

Appropriately, Infinity Knives casts a wide and thrilling net. Dear, Sudan runs like a masterful showreel of deftly balanced disparate elements, a late night channel-hopping between multiple, vital, powerful musics. Tariq himself offers “experimental, Afro-Futurism, drone, hip hop, leftfield minimalism, neo-classical and Baltimore” as his key styles. “I wanted Dear, Sudan to be a record of the things that I enjoy, the things that keep me coming back to this life and I wanted it to be in the language I understand the most.  I hope that this album can be a companion to those in need.”

Opening single “In The Mouth of Sadness” hits like a groove-heavy alt-R&B. Its soulful vocal lines (courtesy of leading Baltimore lights Bobbi Rush and Tyler Moonlight) bounce against the head-bobbing beat production before a yearningly eloquent piano and woodwind coda takes over for its finale. The track is a miniature of the album, taking in all of Tariq’s divergent moods within its confident, enviably effortless brush strokes. “Drug Dealer, Drug Dealer” features Infinity Knives’ frequent co-conspirator, Baltimore MC Brian Ennals. A fierce, hard-hitting response to injustice and inequality, the track leads from crushing beats and Ennals’ brutal rhymes to following track, the breathtakingly beautiful operatic madrigal “Sway Me, Sway Me Into the Arms of the Lord” in one single, stunning move.

Infinity Knives composed and produced Dear, Sudan entirely himself, marking a huge accomplishment for a debuting musician. The record features a handful of key Baltimore collaborators, contributing guest vocals on a number of tracks. Phantom Limb came across Infinity Knives via their friendship with Baltimore experimental sitar player Ami Dang, immediately offering him a record deal on the strength of his home-recorded, Bandcamp-released demo EP.

Phantom Limb

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