Akari is the third album from Tokyo duo Illuha. Following 2011’s debut Shizuku (12k1067) and 2013’s Interstices (12k2028), Akari takes the next artistic step for the band. While Shizuku was recorded in the US and completed separately by the artists, Interstices captured the duo creating their exceptionally detailed music together live during a Japaneses tour. Akari, in turn, is the first studio album where Illuha recorded and mixed together, throughout the entire process. The beautiful st-robo studio in Tokyo put a collection of amazing equipment at their fingertips, from vintage mics and outboard gear to a vast collection of instruments, both acoustic and electronic. Their writing sessions were numerous and long with details meticulously obsessed over for nearly a year. The result is the most bewildering music Illuha have created to date. An album swimming with the most delicately tactile sounds and instrumentation that draws the listener in with hushed, motionless attention.

While Illuha’s Corey Fuller and Tomoyoshi Date are often drawn to the most sparse notes of Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos, acoustic grand piano and guitar, the breadth of instrumentation is partially what makes Akari so abosrbing. They have succeeded in creating their own universe of sound, so beautifully recorded, where each element not only has its own space but connects and interacts so fluidly with the other sounds. It is as if they are placed perfectly by nature, the compositions are fluid and organic, a far cry from anything calculated or structured. It is this open space that the music exists in which in turn defines the music itself. There is ample room to breathe within this forest of gentle tines, bubbling analogue synthesizers, clicking percussion and quiet field recordings. This is subtlety at its most refined; hushed without being saccharine, distant without being morose.

Akari is the Japanese word for light. Conceputally the duo used this word as a guide, as if they were searching through the dark, trying to keep the light alive, as if one is cradling a candle doing everything in their power to keep it alight in a storm. It is this almost visceral sense of sheltering, of protection, that gives Akari a very human and personal sound whose intensely deep focus is as impressive as it is arresting.

Akari

Structures Based on the Plasticity of Sphere Surface Tension

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Structures Based On The Plasticity Of Sphere Surface Tension

Craig Leon - Nommo

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Taken from Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 1: Nommos / Visiting.


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Craig Leon - Nommo

Bing & Ruth - Reflector

Video: https://youtu.be/2xgcnaqKxoI

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From the album Tomorrow Was the Golden Age

© and Ⓟ 2015 RVNG Intl. / www.igetrvng.com

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Bing & Ruth - Reflector

A hazy, violet-washed morning on the coast. This track drifts like film grain across the sea — ambient, dreamlike, and timeless.

Violet on the mornings cheek (rough)

ETHEREAL AMBIENT SOUNDSCAPES INSPIRED BY GAME OF THRONES AND THE  LORD OF THE RINGS AND MANY OTHERS. RELAX, ENJOY AND DRIFT AWAY.

ETHEREAL - VALINOR'S DREAM

Music from the forthcoming EP by Luke Abbott and Jack Wyllie of Portico. 

Released via Buffalo Temple (BFFT003) on 25th September available on 12" vinyl and digitally.

Xantako

Vergers is Davachi's third full-length release following Barons Court (2015, Students of Decay) and Dominions (2016, JAZ Records), and her second appearance with Important Records following 2014's August Harp cassette on the Cassauna imprint. 

In this work, she meditates on a single electronic instrument, the EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer, while also weaving sparse acoustic elements – her own voice and violin – into a series of three long-form, muted gestures.

Elements of distance and alienation are certainly at play in the textural quality of these compositions, a feeling that is further defined by track titles that reference the spirit world and an album title that calls to mind the solitary tasks of the church orderly.

The record opens with the aptly titled, Gentle So Gentle, a side-long movement that harkens the glacial character of Davachi's previous efforts. Ghosts And All and In Staying suggest a more disjointed path, with the latter culminating in a subtly dissonant dirge that leaves little absolve between the organic, the artificial, and the impermanent.

Vergers

Sarah Davachi - Ghosts And All - from Vergers LP - IMPREC442

Premiering on the Ransom Note: https://bit.ly/2MyJojX

"An enchanting new album." - The Ransom Note 

Heinali is the alias of self-taught composer and sound-designer Oleg Shpudeiko from Ukraine. Now well established under the name he brings along his latest full length ‘Iridescent’ due for release on October 12th on Injazero Records. 

Having garnered rapturous responses to his earlier output and last year’s ‘Anthem’ Oleg continues to push the boundaries and experiment with altering mood and atmospheres of any space - with abstract yet deeply personal transmissions of ambient synthesiser work and subaqueous, minimal techno contortions. 

‘Iridescent’ consists of fragments of studio improvisation sessions recorded in 2016 and 2017, some of them recorded in one unedited take on a modular system and some layered and later morphed into compositions. As the title suggests Heinali crafts shimmering, incandescent portraits, rich in his unique characteristics and compositional liberty. 

Apart from the “musical sculptures,” that represent the bulk of this LP, Oleg was interested in the exploration of polyphonic capabilities of the modular system. ‘Rainbow Folding’, a loose homage to Terry Riley’s 'A Rainbow In Curved Air,' features an interplay of several independent, but distinct voices and their processed shadows — ‘ghost voices’. In 'Shadow Invention’ eerie atmospherics steal the spotlight and dominate the composition, ending in a cacophony of the ‘ghost voices’. 

Oleg says of the album, “it’s a kind of studio dairy. A reflection on the development of my relations with the hardware instruments and exploration of them as channelling vessels for my experiences and ideas.” 

“One can think of Iridescent’ as ‘musical sculpture’ analogy — when the body of music stays the same, but its surface is flickering with various colours over time — sometimes in a subtle manner, sometimes loud and clear. Or it can be understood in the context of various colours of polyphony, or as a liminal condition of the colour as if it’s being ‘stuck’ in the mist of twilight zone between neighbouring colour-states, so it can’t become a particular colour and is in a flickering kaleidoscopic state.” 

‘Iridescent’ bares Oleg’s style of sonic storytelling and austere, otherworldly textural embellishments that bring to mind Ben Frost, Akira Yamaoka, and Oneohtrix Point Never but also plants the seed for much more club ready electro. ‘Starling Reprise I’ is a scorching piece of ambient techno that conjures Four Tet, LTO and Susumu Yokota’s blissful, kaleidoscopic synth work whilst ‘Starling Reprise II’ retains the frosty, steely ambience that has become Heinali’s calling card. 

Cover artwork by Olga Gaidash.
Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12k Mastering.

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Heinali - Rainbow Folding

Freedom

Taken from the upcoming album Both Lines Will Be Blue, out July 12th on Smalltown Supersound. Produced by Carmen Villain. Flute performed by Johanna Scheie Orellana. Mastered by Matt Colton.

Observable Future

From the album "Tea Notes". All music by Jatinder Singh Durhailay & David Edren. Recorded january to march 2018 in Antwerpen and London. Mixed and edited by David Edren at ll150. Mastered & cut by Anne Taegert at Dubplates & Mastering Berlin.  Artwork by Victor Robyn. Vinyl + digital release on Ekster: 12th of September 2019: https://eksterlabel.bandcamp.com/album/tea-notes