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

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

"Still Forms in Air" is the debut album by Italian composer Francesca Marongiu under her own name. It draws inspiration from mid-1980s Japanese ambient music — Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa, Takashi Kokubo — and, more subtly, from Italian experimental echoes rooted in both personal and cultural memory.

The album unfolds like suspended time, like architecture that quietly bears witness to the shifts that have shaped our cities and the ways we live in them. These tracks reflect an emotional and urban landscape, shaped by a gaze cast upon the mid-1980s and early ’90s — a time of subtle yet lasting changes in the form and meaning of shared space. That period marked a delicate turning point, later described as les années d’hiver: the slow onset of fragmentation beneath a surface of creative openness.

"Still Forms in Air" doesn’t dwell in nostalgia (though it draws from it), but reimagines that duality through a contemporary lens. Its sound blends memory and presence, layering ambient textures with a refined spatial sensitivity. It is a dialogue across decades — clear-eyed, affectionate, and quietly luminous.


Written, arranged and recorded by Francesca Marongiu in Rome and Pistoia between May 2024 and March 2025. Francesca Marongiu: electronics, synthesizers, vocals, sound objects. Antonio Gallucci: wind arrangements on track 1 and 4, bass and sound objects on track 3, drums on track 3 and 4. Mixed by Francesca Marongiu and Antonio Gallucci. Mastered by Antonio Gallucci at Mercurial Mastering in Pistoia. Artist photo by Elisabetta Scarpini. Artwork by Daniel Castrejón




cassette & digital

A Dome Under The Pines

https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/spaces-between-words

In a world where every word carries weight, UK based electronic producer Simon Vince (HERE) invites listeners into a sonorous exploration of the unnoticed silences and spaces. With his latest ambient album and second release on Shimmering Moods ; Spaces Between Words. HERE crafts eight beautifully fragile and melancholic electronica tracks that delve into the delicate nuances of love and loss. 
Each piece is a hauntingly wistful soundscape, woven from electro-acoustic ambience and drones to shimmering synths, delicate textures, and gentle pulses that evoke the bittersweet essence of separation. 

From the emotive echoing tones in “Spaces Between Words” to the nostalgic reverberations and drawn out chords of “I Find You In Whispers" this album invites you to embrace the unspoken and the unshared, allowing you to linger in the quiet spaces that define our connections.

releases July 21, 2025 

Music & Cover Design By Simon Vince (HERE) 
Mastering By James Woodsmith 

SoundCloud : @here_music 
Instagram : @here.music.official 

SHM 351 
Shimmering Moods Records 2025

HERE - Spaces Between Words

Release date: 29/08/25

If you would like to review this release, please email info@astralindustries.co.uk

180g vinyl//mastered by Noel Summerville//original artwork by Theo Ellsworth.

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Wolfgang Voigt makes a return to Astral Industries, seeing the continuation of his long-running Rückverzauberung (Reverse Enchantment) series. In line with previous volumes, one may expect the unconventional, idiosyncratic sound Voigt is reputed for. ‘Im Tunnel’ however, takes a more concentrated viewpoint - a metaphysical transmutation that brings with it an experience of mind-melting drones and swelling intensity.

Entering the tunnel is like opening a portal, but as the fabric of time-space begins to collapse on itself, it feels more like a rude awakening. Pulsing undulations rise and fall like the turbines of a spacecraft, marked by dissonant chords and a simmering cloud of complex and ever-shifting textures. Pushing thresholds and expectations, the unearthly nature of the tunnel over time disintegrates any proposed state of completion.

A treacherous voyage, and possibly bewildering for some, the work is both unrelenting and uncompromising. Should one decide to step into the tunnel, be sure to take all necessary precautions and procedures.

Side B

Side A

Name your price

Chiaroscuri: Ghost Work I

There are a few collaborations that work really well. And, when something works well, why not double down? Two years ago [I almost said last November], Markus Guentner and Joachim Spieth came together for a full-length release on Spieth's own Affin imprint. This was more than just their initial conversation, which appeared on Kompakt's Pop Ambient's 2022 installment. Overlay was full of lush texture and ambience, which gently tickled the sensitive nerve endings in my ear canal, leaving my brain to decipher the signals into analgesic pleasantries. This year, the duo returns with a follow-up full-length release, delving deeper into atmospheric soundscapes, punctuating them with a dub-inspired heart-pounding beat. Fans of hypnotic, kaleidoscopic, and sonically rich environments will surely want to lose themselves in the caverns of this all-encompassing sound. If you are a fan [as much as I am] of their solo works, you will find that here, together, the multiplier is higher. They're truly at the top of their art here, so let's put on a heavy ADS for a fully submersible voyage. A subwoofer is recommended. 

TRACK PREMIERE : Guentner + Spieth - Chrysalis

Venera - Asteroxylon
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 153S2
Release Date: 21 August 2025
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Asteroxylon

Venera shares ‘Asteroxylon’, the second single of the upcoming album ‘Exinfinite’ out via PAN on September 12th, 2025.

Having defined a multi-dimensional sonic universe on their acclaimed eponymous debut album, composer/filmmaker Chris Hunt and Korn’s James “Munky” Shaffer abandon the familiar and drift towards a kingdom of recursion on EXINFINITE, staring down a tangled mass of mirrored wormholes that hum with eldritch ambiguity. They launch squelchy, decelerated techno into occult noise reflecting pools on the slithering ‘Asteroxylon’.

Recorded in Downtown Los Angeles, CA and Atlanta, GA
Mixed by Chris Pawlusek in London, UK
Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis, London, UK
Art by EFFIXX with Samanta García

Venera - Asteroxylon (PAN 153S2)

originally released on Tilman Ehrhorn - Task / Mille Plateaux 2003

Drop | Tilman Ehrhorn - Task | Mille Plateaux 2003

Working as a producer, composer, saxophone/reed player and sound designer, Berlin-based TILMAN EHRHORN appears on many jazz records as well as presenting himself as an electronic artists. 

Within the last few years he has released critically acclaimed solo albums on Mille Plateaux, Resopal Schallware, Zymogen Neo Ouija.

 He contributed tracks to several compilations and carried out some remix tasks.

In addition to influences from contemporary electronic music, modern jazz is an important source of inspiration for his compositions, creating similarities with the improvisational niveau of jazz and contemporary composed music. 
