Gentle beings, we are entering the world of the ambient, atmospheric, downtempo, and sublime. Transcend at your leisure. [cover Alexandra Spence | photo Lucy Parakhina]

Third State

Sea Space - Emily A. Sprague

Stay, Nomad

Stutter

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

Cellular Songs

Breathstream

Written, recorded and produced off grid in a solar-powered caravan the remote, Aussie outback “expansion a (south)" is the latest solo offering from Naarm/Melbourne-based vocalist, multi instrumentalist, sound healer and producer IKSRE (aka Phoebe Dubar). Gorgeous, evocative and intimate, an expansion of the body, mind and soul, this album traverses ambient, cinematic, experimental, dream pop and psychedelia and is quite unlike anything she has ever released before. Equal parts intimate travel journal and expansive, ambient journey; an aural adventure to some of the wildest places on earth.

From April to August 2025, IKSRE (Phoebe Dubar) and her husband and their eight-year old daughter packed up and hit the road to explore the road less travelled - westward from their home in Naarm/Melbourne to incredibly isolated, Western Australian coastline, and through the Northern Territory and Central Australian outback. They travelled 20,000km over a four-month period to some of the most untouched, pristine places left on earth. True wilderness.

Armed with a small selection of instruments - electric guitar (her first foray into the instrument), OP-1 field synth, SM58 microphone, two small singing bowls and a selection of guitar pedals - every song was written off grid in the confines of the family’s solar powered caravan after an awe inspiring moment. From swimming with whale sharks at Nyinggulu/Ningaloo, to listening to swimming in ancient gorges in Karijini National Park and crossing the vast, endless expanse of the Nullarbor plain, each track hints at these iconic places, captured in the moment in sound and accompanying photographs and video. A multi dimensional postcard from the wilderness.

Arguably her most intimate album, definitely her most raw - background noise left in and no post production after she returned home; vocals are far from perfect in places, and include clicks and background sounds from inside (and outside) the small space they called home for months. It also includes field recordings collected in some of these places.

karijini (iron. spinifex): red, iron rich dirt; shimmering clumps of golden spinifex; vertigo-inducing gorges and freshwater swimming holes. A week spent in this glorious place - the highlight of 120 days on the road. Recorded in an afternoon in the caravan, this is a pure love song to this special place. Trademark, heart-centred vocals coo “Karijini” while guitars, bass and synths swirl around. 

written, performed, recorded, produced and mixed by Phoebe Dubar (IKSRE)
mastered by James Bernard, Ambient Mountain House
photography by Phoebe Dubar

karijini (iron. spinfex)

Cyprien Gaillard - Retinal Rivalry
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 157
Release Date: 17 October 2025
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/RetinalRivalry

Retinal Rivalry is the soundtrack to Cyprien Gaillard’s new stereoscopic film, Retinal Rivalry (2024). It is an entrancing journey through Germany’s urban landscape and its layers of historical and social significance. Building on his previous exploration of the sculptural qualities of three-dimensional moving images, the work extends beyond the confines of the screen. By harnessing cutting-edge technology to its full potential, Gaillard offers an expanded, sharpened and deeply affecting novel view of the world around us.

Retinal Rivalry is named after the visual perception phenomenon that occurs when the brain receives two conflicting images at the same time. Instead of blending into one 3D image, the neural system alternates between prioritising one image while suppressing the other, causing confusion and discomfort for the viewer.

Gaillard’s film engages with these complexities of visual processing and the limitations of technology, collating visual information through exceptional, often tongue-in-cheek, shots that intertwine the inside and outside, the contained and dispersed, and the natural and built.

His camera adopts unusual viewpoints, shifting from smooth aerial perspectives to a rodent’s low gaze to the dizzying darting in and out on the bulbous nose of a sculpture, or a long shot of a train moving through a landscape, drawing us into a layered experience that teeters between a bad trip and unexpected beauty providing solace.

The film’s score draws from diverse sonic elements, bolstering its exploration of dissonance and synchrony. Indonesian instrumental music is reworked and combined with field recordings of heavy machinery rumbling and strangely melodic retching. The soundtrack also incorporates the opening lines to Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), along with its accompanying overture by German band Popol Vuh. 

The soundscape of Retinal Rivalry contrasts its images—what we see is often at odds with what we hear. Only one section lets sound and image converge: a fractured leg pumps the pedal of an interactive organ to play a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach that repeatedly falters.

The film Retinal Rivalry will be on view at Haus der Kunst in Munich from October 17, 2025, to March 8, 2026.

Cyprien Gaillard - Retinal Rivalry (PAN 157)

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curation by Krystal Rodriguez & Zel McCarthy

Sea Space - Emily A. Sprague

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