The 51st release of katharsis is the album Afterlife by Danish artist Johan Carøe. The album takes shape through a collection of synth vignettes and spectral landscapes, where fragmented strings and ephemeral pads merge into weightless, hyper-lush forms. Created in a period of both new life and impending loss, Afterlife lingers in the space between presence and absence—a fragile transmission of shifting states, quiet relief, and fleeting sonic imprints. It stands as an isolated relic of a time that no longer exists—a collection of echoes, projecting the paradoxical nature of life and death.

Created in solitude on headphones and a MIDI keyboard in a transitional period in life, the album embodies a raw and intimate catharsis—the word in its truest sense. Without the usual studio space, these pieces emerged through line-in synths, VST textures, and fragments of old recordings—saxophone, cello, violin—stitched together like distant memories resurfacing. The absence of microphones and monitors lends the music an eerily virtual quality—a small life in a small box, a stretched-out portrait of a passing moment. It is introspective yet expansive, a meditation on the transient nature of memory, sound, and being.

releases March 31, 2025

mastering by jjjacob
artwork by jjjacob

premiere: Johan Carøe - Early Song

pre-order

premiere: Johan Carøe - Theme from Attachment

premiere: Johan Carøe - Reprise

Johan Carøe - Solbruchstelle

Johan Carøe - Unease

Johan Carøe - Dying

Johan Carøe - Afterlife [Parts I,II & III]

Johan Carøe - Abend Stimmung

Johan Carøe - Song of Age

Johan Carøe - Sorrow

@isabarb
@m0ntage

Inferior Design, the moniker of Brussels-based artist Isaac Barbé, creates ambient music from his small bedroom studio on the top floor of a dilapidated office building. This is internet music to patch your soul.
Isaac’s debut album, …to be whole, takes us on a 40-minute journey through experimental sound design. Soft melodies gently guide us forward, while rubbery plucks and icy stabs keep us on edge. This is computer music at its purest: layers upon layers of processed samples and snippets, forming a beautiful collage. We hear arpeggios drift in and out, while gentle pads wash over rhythmic soundscapes.
…to be whole embodies the concept of MONTAGE: music that uses editing techniques to create a unique narrative. Different styles and genres collide, conflict, and merge in an inspiring sonic journey
.
Releases April 24, 2025.


premiere: Inferior Design - Babbelgeest

@david_engelbrecht
"Memory Music" is the debut EP from Danish composer and sound artist David Engelbrecht, aka Dudde, coming out in full on April 24th on katharsis. Crafted over several years through the careful gathering and processing of sonic fragments, the release captures the emotional weight and wonder of sound as memory. Each track is a small time machine, inviting listeners to drift between past and present - those moments when a single sound unlocks a flood of forgotten feelings, places, and people.

Moving seamlessly between ambient textures and sharp, high-paced drum patterns, Memory Music balances clarity and chaos with a sense of play. Breakbeats collide with nostalgic synth lines, melodic motifs shimmer alongside digital shadows, and echoes of vintage videogames flicker in and out like ghosts. It’s music that remembers and reimagines all at once - where fragments of the past become blueprints for the future.

releases April 24, 2025

artwork by ZECIN ( www.instagram.com/zecin_001/ )
mastering by Dudde
trumpet on "Core Memory" by Carlo Becker Lauritsen
guitar on "Sunday scaries" by Lola Hammerich

premiere: Dudde - Core Memory

Isabelline curator and label head Practitioner reveals a stunning selection of his own archival productions with 'Portobello Innocent', the third release on the mysterious and acclaimed Berlin-based imprint.

Recorded between 2016 - 2024, these five selected works offer a broad look into Practitioner’s sonic sphere. Introspective club reflections that cover a grand scope of machine-translated human emotions. The EP feels like a dug-up lost tape, timeless tracks untouched by current modes or trends, each composition progressively digging deeper into unknown chasms of the enigmatic producers' distinct sound.

premiere: Practitioner - Male to Female [label: Isabelline]

premiere: Dudde - Shopkeeper

@allenheimer
@goodmoondeer

Symbols echoing like cymbals. The deafening noise of steam-powered looms. The rallying calls of demagogues. Sickly wallpaper peeling from a wall. A brick crumbling in a field. Tarnished coins in a fountain basin. Words and images like rings around some heavenly body. A tangled web, contorted like a rhizome, silken threads resonating with the strange songs of a thousand ragged ghosts.

releases April 29, 2025

Music and artwork by Atli Bollason and Guðmundur Úlfarsson.
Mastered by Miles Whittaker at Full Range Mastering.
This record was made in Fabryka Sztuki in Łódź, Sláturhúsið in Egilsstaðir and at home in Reykjavík.

premiere: Unfiled - The Image and the Word [label: Unfiled]

@cargaerea
@colectivo-casa-amarela

The EP is called Sonda and that name came about as a bit of a silly exercise in trying to name the songs, which ended up making more sense as I thought about it and developed the idea. I thought I'd name the songs after the months when I wrote them (between September 2019 and January 2020, more or less, which was the time I was on Erasmus in Holland), and the initials of the months gave me “sondj”. That led me to probe, and from there I started thinking about various things. How the EP was born out of a process of research and inner searching, compositional and even academic, to a certain extent, to try and overcome a creative block; how each of the songs is a bit of a portal to memories of very specific moments, feelings, places and people, all closely linked to that time; let's ignore the obvious thing about having “sound” in the word.

Music by Carga Aérea
Mastered by Bruno Pereira
Artwork by Mafalda Melim

premiere: Carga Aérea - outubro [label: Colectivo Casa Amarela]

@wtnsmusic

WTNS announces the release of her new EP, vidéal, an experimental and bass-heavy exploration of the fluid boundary between ideals and perceived reality. Entirely self-produced, performed and designed by the Franco-Serbian artist, vidéal is a sonic journey travelling from neofolk, trip-hop, to ambient and club music that blends introspection, instinct, and technicalexperimentation.

production/performance: WTNS
mastering: Maximilien Dudemaine @ Sodasound

premiere: WTNS - myopic brain [self-release]

FLORAS is the new album from katharsis founder jjjacob, releasing on May 21st to mark the five-year anniversary of the label’s first output. A celebration shaped by time, patience, and transformation, FLORAS is an assemblage of seven tracks - each with its history. The oldest dates back to 2018; the newest bloomed only months ago. Initially intended for other projects or collaborations that never fully took root, these compositions have been reworked, reimagined, and refined - transformed by years of quiet attention. Stylistically, the release moves between the physical and the introspective - crushed drumbreaks, poignant basslines, grand synth melodies, and obscure granular vocals.

Each track is like an ancient, fluorescent flower rediscovered in a distant cave, alien in form yet deeply familiar. Cyclical in structure, they mirror the seasonal processes: emerging, flourishing, decaying, returning. There’s a strange botanical logic at play, as patterns and shapes reappear like genetic echoes, and even discarded stems sprout new life. Melodic ideas and textural procedures reverberate across tracks like shared ancestral material, connecting them like a hidden underground network. Some tracks still bear traces of feedback or collaboration that never fully materialized - ghost limbs and branches that helped shape the whole.

Built from ambient textures, hard-hitting percussion, and sonic details that reward deep listening, FLORAS is a meditation on growth, time, and potential. The release reflects not only a shift in jjjacob’s personal process, but also a new chapter for katharsis itself: after five years of near-monthly releases, the label now turns toward a slower rhythm - giving each release more space to breathe, settle, and take root before moving on.

releases May 21, 2025

artworks & mastering by jjjacob

premiere: jjjacob - WARSH

@satellitenavigation
@thebigoilrecordingcompany

SATNAV - the experimental electronic project of Sebastian Zieler (co-founder of The Big Oil Recording Company) - releases his debut concept album, every•thing•a•part, on June 13. A meditation on climate grief, the album imagines distant-future AI lamenting the loss of Earth’s living world. The first single, r u alpha waving at me??, drops May 8, but premieres on katharsis today, May 5th.

With detailed sound design, pop-inspired harmony and high-contrast sonic imagery, the album is a series of lamentations and love songs for nature. First single r u alpha waving at me?? is a lullaby for extinct species, whispered in binary. Its eclecticism moves from a dungeon synth-inspired intro to shifting avant-garde electronics - a fitting introduction to the album’s play with form and colour, described by SATNAV as “painting with an imaginary palette.”



premiere: SATNAV - r u  alpha waving at me?? [label: The Big Oil Recording Company]

katharsis is a label founded by @jjjacob focusing on the purification and purgation of emotions through music.

contact: jacobfosgrau@gmail.com

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