A CLOSER LISTEN weekly #40
Remembering Brian McBride, Interview with Claudio Szynkier, Mutek in review, Subscribe for Unsound, and more
Dear Listeners! What a few weeks it’s been, and now suddenly the end of summer is upon us. I took last week off as I was on holiday and just couldn’t find the time, so expect another newsletter next week. Lucky we have plenty to fill multiple editions, including a new column called Out of the Box, where I write about a 7” record from my collection.
Summer already feels like it’s in the rear view. The semester began for me on Monday, teaching a remote Intro to Media Studies course as an adjunct at SUNY Purchase. Our Fall Music Previews will be up very shortly, but we’ve already got a record number of releases on our Upcoming Releases page. And since many of these are coming out in the next week, they’ll start vanishing off that page very soon, yet another reason to subscribe to this newsletter, where they’ll be archived for all time (or, the way the internet seems to work, the next five years, whichever comes first).
So we’re already shifting into Fall Mode here at ACL, and I’m here for it. What a mostly wet, occasionally hot summer it was, at least here in Montreal. Aside from some visits to see family and friends back in New York, this post-PhD summer has been without my usual travel. The siren call of the job market beckons…
SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE (or, Please Help Joseph Go to Unsound)
That said, I’ve recently secured a press pass to cover Unsound 2023, but since ACL is a volunteer op, I need some help in swinging this trip. So I’m announcing a subscriber push. If I can get 10 new annual subscribers, that will help me cover my costs for attending Unsound in Krakow. During the 2018 edition (whose theme was “Presence”), I published a preview, review article, and a field-recording full podcast including interviews with Resina and Lea Bertucci. For 2023, with the theme of DADA, I’ll do much the same, but for paid subscribers I will also send out daily reviews at the end of each day of the festival, providing additional notes and media. If you have any additional requests for paid content, please let me know. So please consider subscribing via Substack, and tell a friend. You can also support Sound Propositions on Patreon if you are so inclined, or send a one-time donation via PayPal. The first two seasons are also available for purchase on Bandcamp. Anything would help, and I’m grateful for anything you can contribute.
I’m off to see William Basinski tonight, with opening sets from (past podcast guest) Jessica Moss and (future podcast guest) France Jobin. Maybe Billy himself will appear on a future episode? Tonight’s venue is a bit of a surprise, so I’m looking forward to the experience, about which more in next week’s newsletter. But for now, let’s get into it.
RIP Brian McBride
I was deeply saddened to learn of the recent passing of Brian McBride. I don’t remember the first time I heard Stars of the Lid, which actually seems kind of fitting, but it was sometime between the release of The Tired Sounds of… (2001) and And Their Refinement of the Decline (2007), such that the release of the latter registered as an Event. Like so many others, the patience of their music took me by surprise, especially coupled with references to psychedelic experiences, television, and titles such as “December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface” that suggested the duo had a good sense of humor. Probably more so than any other artist, I respected their ability to make absolutely gorgeous slow, serious music without taking themselves too seriously nor disrespecting their own achievements with excess irreverence. Stars of the Lid walked this line like no other, and truly forged their own path.
I also strongly bonded with McBride’s second solo record, 2008’s The Effective Disconnect, which served at the score to The Vanishing of the Bees, released the following year. I could swear that I wrote about this record at some point, but for the life of me can’t find the clip. Probably a year end list of some such lost to time, but it is a record I return to at least as often as McBride’s work with Adam Wiltsie as Stars of the Lid.
The only time that I saw Stars of the Lid was on my birthday in 2008, when they played in a church as part of Wordless Music in NY. Then as now, I was always tight on money, and in fact getting press passes for shows was a prime motivation for my getting into music writing. I volunteered for Wordless in order to see the show, and it was an incredible experience, one that led to more than I can detail here. Since McBride’s passing, I’ve heard from many other fans who saw SotL perform in a church, and while it seems cliche the setting truly enhanced the experience, blissed out on a wooden pew lost in the music. Theirs is music I return to often when I need a bit of that feeling.
I enjoy both McBride and Wiltzie’s solo work and other collaborations, but like everyone else I had been hoping for another SotL album. Wiltizie’s contribution to Temporary Residence, Ltd’s Travels in Constant (2015) alluded to work in progress, but besides some statements from around 2016, new material has yet to materialize. Perhaps that’s for the best, or perhaps sometime in the future we will eventually hear some sort of posthumous record. But no matter the outcome, we at ACL express our deepest condolences to McBride’s friends and family and to all his fellow fans mourning his loss.
Read Philip Sherburne’s memorial at Pitchfork.
Champagne Wishes and Techno Dreams
The 24th edition of Montreal’s electronic music and arts festival ran last week, and I attended the opening night excited for the first full-slate post-pandemic festival, held at New City Gas. The rest of the festival was held at more familiar venues, but the opening party was a bit of a departure, held not in the downtown of the city but a rapidly gentrified and condo-full corner of Griffintown. The venue was new to me, but has apparently been hosting events since about 2012. A converted industrial building, as the name implies, New City Gas nonetheless had none of the charm that of similar venues. In fact, things felt off from arrival, seeing the queue wrap around the block despite a small army of employees.
I’ve been attending Mutek since 2009, the year I first moved to Montreal, and over the years the festival has worked with a wide variety of venues catering to a diversity of music and performance styles. Dance clubs, sit-down theatres, arts and technology spaces, there’s something for everyone. The contemporary art museum that served at the festival’s headquarters in more recent years was always a somewhat awkward fit, but was much preferable to whatever New City Gas is. Again, it’s not really a fair comparison since NCG was just host to the opening party, but it really left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve already complained on Twitter about the surprise $4 bag check and overpriced drinks, but the vibes just felt totally off. Persian rugs for sale hanging on the wall, a Moët vending machine, and there was even an NFT room sponsored by SuperRare. Is this where we’re at in 2023? I still find the push toward VR headsets to be embarrassing, but this is next level.
These are mostly criticisms aimed at the venue itself, which felt like everything about it comes from a Portlandia sketch skewering venture capitalists and modern design trends. But the opening act was also a bit too close of the aesthetic of headliner Tim Hecker, who played a brilliant set spanning various eras of his career, with visuals from Vincent de Belleval and accompanied by Japanese shō player Fumiya Otonashi. I’ve always appreciated bills that can highlight different yet complementary artists, and assigning an opener that couldn’t help but pale compared with the headliner feels like a poor curation decision. I had other obligations throughout the week so decided against attending any other events, although I heard positive reports about many of the events, including Leon Louder’s composition created entirely using sampled sounds of insects recorded at Montréal Insectarium, Joni Void’s duo with harpist Sarah Page, and France Jobin and Markus Heckmann’s quantum physics inspired audio-visual work for the Satosphère dome. So ultimately I still love and respect Mutek, despite mostly taking this year off, but will likely be laughing about champagne vending machines and NFT rooms for some time to come.
A Glimpse of the Post-World ~ An Interview With Babe, Terror
Once again our top interviewer David Murrieta-Flores returns with another thought-provoking longread, in conversation with Claudio Szynkier.
Claudio Szynkier is an experimental multi-media artist from São Paulo, Brazil who records music under the names of Babe, Terror and Zpell Hologos. Through sound collage and an archivist’s mindset, he wills together an art of subterranean connections, random encounters in time and space, and beautifully haunted soundscapes. We had a chance to talk with him via email; apart from being edited and formatted for clarity, the interview was conducted through questions in English and answers in both English and Portuguese, Claudio’s first language. Since Spanish is my first language, I was able to cross-check every answer in Portuguese and English, re-translating various sections of the text with better accuracy in mind. You can find the result below.
David Murrieta Flores (ACL): There is also something of an archival procedure to the work you do. What archives did you “dig up” material from and how did you process that material?
Babe, Terror / Claudio Szynkier (BT): My method for everything, from archival science to composition, is a kind of rigorous anti-programming. I create a system of vague desires that are fed by unusual connections, in turn becoming speculation in a vast terrain, and that wild terrain offers things that were not previously imagined or prescribed in what was, so to speak, “the plan”, in what was “programmed”. Because I assume that not all species have been cataloged. In fact, on the contrary, most have not yet been, and they’re searching for us. That desire to find what might be, what I haven’t seen, guides me to find what satisfies me. What satisfies me is the beginning of the puzzle, which is nevertheless a malleable one. It creates new enigmas and riddles on its own as I assemble and build it.
I harvest from everywhere, but I always start from an idea, something specific but not that much. Like, for example, Turkish neighborhood parties in the 90s. Or I research records and traces of people more or less close to me, and I generate small micromontages and new meanings, at first vague, then more sophisticated. But the important thing is to say, perhaps, as Lucas Stamford from Fordmastiff has said, that the visual archives undergo an alchemical process, becoming something else, destined and reserved for the music. And music too, finds itself even more in what it really is when in contact with them, in this case film and video archives. The music reappears transmuted by this contact with the archive of flesh and bodies that start to tune in and calibrate themselves with my mind-desires at the time of editing. In my case, it is a robbery and a redesign of these archives, a readjustment, in which the power of a desire for composition starts to guide or redraw the deep meaning of that archival world. So they are mine, and they will never really be, because I’m offering the synthesis to the world. The relationship with the archive is not [being in itself] and [being-for-itself], having and not having. Like with those all-nighter bike parties in Detroit and Baltimore, I was never really there, but evidently I was there. I saw when people started to arrive and when the neighbors started to look around.
ACL: What is your selection process like, when it comes to sound collage? Would you say it’s a process of rationalized organization of sounds, or something else?
BT: I stay in the laboratory in the dark, testing potions and combinations between potions that seem to me to be the most exuberantly and excitingly possible, a luxury that is possible when you can imagine yourself composing in a garage, as I have always done. Made possible in this utopian and atypical garage. I think it’s fair to say that I imagine, first of all, where the music I create will exist, how it will be enjoyed, appreciated, how and where it will cause some delight. However, the concrete situations where people encounter my music can be very particular or peculiar. In Teghnojoyg, as in Fadechase Marathon (2018), for example, I imagined a street party in a moldy, closed, old place, a spontaneous party. And I thought of sonic volcanic matters, substances of intimate satisfaction that could catch someone emotionally. This is all too much to imagine.
I freely compose and arrange each piece, even if I’m using samples, because composition and harmonization are related to a very meticulous game about the presences and conversations between instrumental bodies, how they play with each other to make something emerge. I am a dreamer of imagined intimacies, invented in the pleasant freshness of city experience. As funereal as Horizogon (2021) might seem, I think I invented it as a “sticker” album or an “instrumental collectible cards” set, like the old Panini albums of fauna and vegetation, which people would collect as that world and its features could be/were possibly assimilated by them, transmitted to them, those drawings absorbed by them and their world. I use the headphone to draw every last detail, the folds, the densities, the rips, the penetrations between sounds and instruments, but even so I feel like a post-punk garage band, because I allow myself to do all of this with the right rigor, without being, in this baroque process, too restrictive. So I invent these party situations, or a “fauna stickers collection”, or the city really collapsing, as melting and rebuildable theaters in which people will have my music as an emotional vehicle for a really cool experiment with the body, with the mind. I imagine these desires of the city, within the city, and I realize them as habitable places, from my headphone to the people’s headphones. That’s why I think that records work on the move, in the city, in the shared and expandable intimacy of the walks. I imagine people existing satisfactorily out there in cities, and I imagine them alone with my music in some scenario risen from the desire to travel and glimpse pleasant and alienating forces. Alienating here meant in a good way.
Read the entire interview here.
RECENT REVIEWS
Reviews are at the heart of ACL. Here are (excerpts from) a few of my favorite reviews we posted on the blog in the last few weeks. And we have a lot of old friends in this round up.
BMB con. ~ Μεσσήνη (Μαυρομμάτι)
Finally seeing the light of day this summer is a recording over two thousand years in the making. Recorded over the course of three days as part of the 2018 Tuned City festival in Μεσσήνη, Greece, BMB con.’s Μεσσήνη (Μαυρομμάτι) is a documentation of a series of performances, a record of the duo’s engagement with a specific place: the ancient city of Μεσσήνη (Messene). The city’s ruined amphitheater, crumbling walls, and surrounding mountains are the backdrop for an exploration of sound and space in which ancient architects become active and contemporary participants.
Gazelle Twin ~ Then You Run (Original Score)
Is there a Gazelle Twin sound? Early fans believed so, until the dramatic left turn of 2018’s Pastoral and its companion album Deep England. To her benefit, Elizabeth Bernholz is incredibly hard to pigeonhole, confounding expectations at every turn. This being said, the original score to the eight-part Sky series Then You Run is the closest the composer has come to UNFLESH in nearly a decade. Shifting in recent years to scoring work, the artist has already provided music for Nocturne and The Power, both appearing on Invada Records along with the current set. The series revolves around four female friends whose summer vacation involves being on the run with three kilos of heroin. The music highlights both danger and the respites in-between. There’s no reveal of how the story will end, but the listener roots for the protagonists, even without seeing them. The relative peace of closer “Summer’s Not Over” indicates a possible escape, until it turns louder and weirder in the closing minute, with onomatopoeic vocals and aggressive drums. This is one of five single-length tracks on the album, which leads off with an extended version of “History,” a chanted song that invites listener participation. The others are “Herd,” a hard, percussive piece whose drums evaporate in the second minute, only to return with a vengeance; “Two Minds,” a reflective foray into dark ambience; and “The Hotel,” an exercise in choral drone.
Fire-Toolz ~ I am upset because I see something that is not there.
Fire-Toolz’ work has generated no small amount of interest and genuine puzzlement when it comes to her holistic approach to genres and styles. The usual confusion regarding her music’s relationship to vaporwave, for example, reflects that worldly necessity for listeners to be able to connect through separation. What is indeed shared between the two, beyond the occasional electronic arrangement, is that they both do away with distance; sounds that we believe are not us, because they should be confined to the dustbin of history, awaken all sorts of haphazard processes of memory, identity, and belonging. By canceling that separation something weird seems to emerge, not that all those sounds and our experiences of them are all ultimately the same, but that in belonging to the same chipset they are different, differentiated through connection. The technical mastery with which Fire-Toolz unites dozens of genres and styles should not be understated, but it is supported by a conceptualization similar to what the Eudora images used to tell us about email: nothing has been lost. The fact that regular mail is still a thing is a relatively minor aspect of it – the important part is that the image of an old mailbox, a dynamized virtual postperson, email clients, the actual postperson, the mail system, clacking away on your keyboard and writing by hand, are all participants in the same fabric of communicative electronics. In their performance of each other, the distance fades away.
Noel Meek & Mattin ~ Homage to Annea Lockwood
The delightfully snipped Bandcamp description reads, “Homage to Annea Lockwood is housed in a hand …” Having met the artist, we believe that she would be amused by the image. To our (only slight) disappointment, Noel Meek & Mattin‘s loving tribute is instead housed in a hand-numbered paperback book, filled with photos, a transcript of a Skype conversation, and an afterword by Lockwood herself. The interview is embedded podcast-style in the opening track, while Lockwood’s words become song in the closing track.
Penguin Cafe ~ Rain Before Seven
The term “Rain Before Seven” is the first half of the antiquated British saying, “Rain before seven, fine by eleven,” which refers to the alleged tendency for overnight rain to give way to clear weather during the day. Does this notion really hold up to meteorology? Penguin Cafe urges us not to dwell on the data. “In Re Budd’s” title pays homage to the late composer Harold Budds, yet this track embodies the height of the album’s irrepressible optimism. The accompanying music video features band members in penguin costumes playing the jaunty, tropical melody with marimba, maracas, and strings. The track acknowledges death and loss, but only insofar as to highlight why its celebration of life is so sweet. In this vein, “Galahad”– with its swelling strings above strong, steady percussion which beats like a healthy heart– pays tribute to band leader Arthur Jeffes’s pet dog who passed away. “Might Be Something” swells with hope while also seeming to recognize that…it might be nothing. “No One Really Leaves” brings solace to the lonely, and “Find Your Feet,” laced with melancholy, is a dance track for those who have lost their footing.
Rae Howell / Sunwrae String Orchestra ~ Bee-Sharp Honeybee
It’s been a while since we’re heard from Rae Howell, but her Sunwrae String Orchestra makes a glorious return with a project years in the making. Bee-Sharp Honeybee is derived from the “rhythm, pitch, and waggle dance patterns” of bees, who accompany the orchestra (or the other way around), bringing new meaning to the term drone. The world premiere was held at the Natimuk Frinj Biennale, combining music, animation and a stream of live bees. While there’s no indication that honey was sold in the lobby, the sounds were sweet enough on their own.
UPCOMING RELEASES
(complete list with Bandcamp links here)
This is the most music we’ve ever had on this page, amounting to more upcoming albums that there are days remaining in the year. Our Fall Music Preview, which will begin on September 4, will contain even more! We believe we have the most comprehensive music preview on the planet, and so far no one has proven us wrong. There are already hundreds of instrumental releases announced for September and October alone, and those are just the ones we know about! While we can’t possibly review everything, we can list everything, and give fans of the genres we cover the opportunity to learn what’s coming soon.
New previews are added to this page daily; we hope you’ll find your next favorite album right here!
Mark Sanders, Chris Mapp, Andrew Woodhead ~ CollapseUncollapse: TIME IN IMAGES (577 Records, 31 August)
Zachary Walter ~ Drinking Flowers (Auris Apothecary, 31 August)
Arrowounds ~ The Slow Boiling Amphibian Dreamstate (Lost Tribe Sound, 1 September)
autodealer & The Corrupting Sea ~ Sonic Ablutions (Somewherecold, 1 September)
Bon-Psy ~ Chaos EP (Folded Music, 1 September)
Boston 168 ~ Giganta EP (BPitch Berlin, 1 September)
The Color of Cyan ~ Egress (1 September)
Continuity ~ S/T (B.A.A.D.M., 1 September)
Enclosed & Silent Order ~ Entrainment (Hypostatic Union, 1 September)
Future Beat Alliance ~ Lower the Anchor (FBA Recordings, 1 September)
Gross Motor ~ S/T (1 September)
hack mystic + dragged out of paradise ~ after hours at the cantina (Buried in Space, 1 September)
Joshua Marquez ~ Recycled Sounds (1 September)
Lisa Lerkenfeldt ~ Shell of a City (Room40, 1 September)
Luke Martin ~ by our faint shadows going before us (All Sky, 1 September)
Maria W Horn & Mats Erlandsson ~ Celestial Shores (B.A.A.D.M., 1 September)
A Model Kit ~ Sirens (1 September)
moody alien & co. ~ IThinkIMEmpty|D4D (Thirsty Leaves, 1 September)
Natasha Barrett ~ Reconfiguring the Landscape (Persistence of Sound, 1 September)
Noah Ophoven-Baldwin ~ 0 Oktas (All Sky, 1 September)
Opal X ~ Environments (Brachliegen Tapes, 1 September)
Robin Saville / The Leaf Library ~ Siphonophore / Versatile Clouds (Handstitched*, 1 September)
S A R R A M ~ Pàthei Màthos (Subsound, 1 September)
Tom White ~ Medina Vibrations (Brachliegen Tapes, 1 September)
V/A ~ Future Sounds of Kraut Vol. 1 (Compost, 1 September)
KMRU, Abul Mogard ~ Drawing Water (Vaagner, 2 September)
V/A ~ A Communion (Vaagner, 2 September)
Miguel A. Garcia ~ Eraginie (Cronica, 5 September)
Gonubie ~ Signals at Both Ears (Metron Records, 6 September)
Christof Schiller ~ Spinet and Drums (Neither/Nor, 7 September)
Kris Kuldkepp ~ Moonutatud Muundused / Distorted Conversions (zeromoon, 7 September)
RRUCCULLA ~ Zeru/Freq (Lapsus, 7 September)
Alabaster DePlume ~ Come With Fierce Grace (International Anthem, 8 September)
Alan Courtis & David Grubbs ~ Braintrust of Fiends & Werewolves (husky pants, 8 September)
Annea Lockwood ~ Glass World (Room40, 8 September)
blackbody_radiation ~ Ultra-Materials (Faitiche, 8 September)
Channelers ~ Generation/Harvest (Inner Islands, 8 September)
Cole Peters ~ Four Unbindings (LINE, 8 September)
comfortLevel7 ~ Mercurial (Simulacra, 8 September)
Golden Brown ~ Wide Ranging Rider (Inner Islands, 8 September)
Lapsus ~ Absent Friends Vol. III (Balmat, 8 September)
Matthew Halsall ~ An Ever Changing View (Gondwana, 8 September)
Minor Science ~ Absent Friends Vol. III (Balmat, 8 September)
Monopoly Child Star Searchers ~ Barbados Wild Horses (Discrepant, 8 September)
Noel Meek & Matin ~ Homage to Annea Lockwood (Recital, 8 September)
Paarvoharju ~ Yön mustia kukkia (Fonal, 8 September)
Pauline Hogstrand ~ Áhkká (Warm Winters Ltd., 8 September)
Phase4our ~ Coordinates EP (Machine Records, 8 September)
Salò ~ S/T (Kuboraum Editions, 8 September)
Samuel Adams ~ Current (Other Minds, 8 September)
SATØRI ~ The Woods (Cold Spring, 8 September)
Sawyer G ~ It’ll Be Gone For a Little While (Inner Islands, 8 September)
Siema Ziemia ~ Second (Byrd Out, 8 September)
SPIME.IM ~ Grey Line (~OUS, 8 September)
TU M’ ~ Monochromes Vol.2 (LINE, 8 September)
Veil ~ A Circle in Stone (Other Facts, 8 September)
Pulse Mandala & Distant Fires Burning ~ R Abacus Lndr (Audiobulb, 9 September)
Bill Vine ~ Norwich Under the Water (Ryoanji Records, 11 September)
Loris Cericola ~ Memory Hole (11 September)
V/A ~ Longform Visions for Earminded People (Futura Resistenza, 11 September)
LANZ & Kris Allen ~ Ballard (Brassland, 12 September)
Swami Lateplate ~ Doom Jazz II (Subsound, 14 September)
Aki Onda ~ Transmissions from the Radio Midnight (Dinzu Artefacts, 15 September)
Akira Kosemura ~ Rudy OST (Schole, 15 September)
AKKU Quintet ~ Kinema (15 September)
Anthony Davis / Kyle Motl / Kjell Norteson ~ Vertical Motion (Astral Spirits, 15 September)
Arthur Hnatek Trio ~ Apnea (Bridge the Gap, 15 September)
Async Figure ~ It’s Pulling My Strings (Sea Cucumber, 15 September)
Atte Elias Kantonen ~ a path with no name (Students of Decay, 15 September)
Dogs of Pleasure ~ Embrace (Isthmus, 15 September)
Don Kapot ~ I Love Tempo (W.E.R.F., 15 September)
Elephantine ~ Moonshine (Northern Spy, 15 September)
Eric Hofbauer / The Five Agents ~ Waking Up (CNM, 15 September)
E-Talking ~ The Cosmic Egg (Love on the Rocks, 15 September)
Haralabos [Harry] Stafylarkis ~ Calibrating Fiction (New Amsterdam, 15 September)
J Forester / N Kramer ~ Habitat II (Leaving, 15 September)
John Butcher, Pat Thomas, Dominic Lash, Steve Noble ~ Fathom (577 Records, 15 September)
Josh Semans ~ To Will a Space Into Being (Hidden Notes, 15 September)
Kaya North ~ Myths (Lost Tribe Sound, 15 September)
Keope ~ Flikka Flokka (Bigamo, 15 September)
Kjetil Brandsdal & Thore Warland ~ Record players, percussion & sound effects I (Drid Machine / Hærverk Industrier, 15 September)
Lusine ~ Long Light (Ghostly International, 15 September)
Nick Norton ~ Music for Sunsets (people | places | records, 15 September)
Pathos Trio ~ Polarity (Imaginary Animals, 15 September)
PCM ~ Dreamland (n5MD, 15 September)
Piotr Kurek ~ Smartwoods (Unsounds, 15 September)
Purelink ~ Signs (15 September)
Shela ~ TV Songs (Discrepant, 15 September)
Tenniscoats ~ Tasmania Bootleg (Room40, 15 September)
THSHLT ~ IN THE OFFING (peig, 15 September)
Tomas Fujiwara ~ Pith (Out Of Your Head, 15 September)
WaqWaq Kingdom ~ Hot Pot Totto (Phantom Limb, 15 September)
cdg noir ~ Static Momentum (16 September)
Liu Yiwei ~ 暮光夜寻 Twilight Diaries (19 September)
Alessandro Sgobbio ~ Piano Music 2 (22 September)
Ayjay Nils ~ Okay, wait wait wait (Làtension/Schweiger Music, 22 September)
Blurstem ~ Safe Travels, Old Friend (Bigo & Twigetti, 22 September)
BOLT RUIN ~ False Awakening Loops (Infinite Machine, 22 September)
Buildings and Food ~ Infinity Plus One (22 September)
Dai Watts ~ Isolarion (22 September)
Dark Sines ~ The Space Time Paradox (Ceremony of Seasons, 22 September)
D’luna ~ Child of Time and Earth (22 September)
Drawing Virtual Gardens ~ 22:22 (Lost Tribe Sound, 22 September)
Droneroom ~ The Best of My Love (Somewherecold, 22 September)
Eduardo Ella ~ Una Pregunta, Tres Respuestas (577 Records, 22 September)
Emily Wittbrodt ~ Make You Stay (Ana Ott, 22 September)
Föllakzoid ~ V (Sacred Bones, 22 September)
Helena Hauff ~ fabric presents Helena Hauff (fabric, 22 September)
Helen Svoboda ~ The Odd River (Earshift Music, 22 September)
Hidden Orchestra ~ To Dream is to Forget (Lone Figures, 22 September)
Jakob Lindhagen ~ Memory Reconstructions (piano and coffee records, 22 September)
Laurel Halo ~ Atlas (Awe, 22 September)
mayforest ~ herbarium (22 September)
Midori Takada/SHHE ~ MSCTY x V&A Dundee (MSCTY_EDN, 22 September)
MrDougDoug ~ SOS Forks A REM II (Hausu Mountain, 22 September)
Mukqs ~ Stonewasher (Hausu Mountain, 22 September)
The Pitch & Julia Reidy ~ Neutral Star (Miasmah, 22 September)
Powders ~ Concede to Circumstance (Them There, 22 September)
Radian ~ Distorted Rooms (Thrill Jockey, 22 September)
Ross Gentry ~ House as a Person (Ceremony of Seasons, 22 September)
Rutger Zuyderfelt ~ Kaleiding (music for a performance by Lily&Janick (22 September)
Spurv ~ Brefjære (Pelagic, 22 September)
Stereo Minus One ~ Everything Is So Beautiful, I Need to Lie Down (Machine Records, 22 September)
WaqWaq Kingdom ~ Hot Pot Totto (Phantom Limb, 22 September)
zeitkratzer – Reinhold Friedl ~ Scarlatti (Karlrecords, 22 September)
Weston Olenki / Anna Webber ~ Several (Astral Spirits, 22 September)
Jessica Ackerley, Yuma Uesaka, Colin Hinton ~ Petting Zoo (Waveform Alphabet, 23 September)
KAU ~ The Cycle Repeats (Sdban, 23 September)
Vinny Golia ~ Even to This Day…Music for Orchestra and Soloists Movement Two: Syncretism: For The Draw…. (23 September)
Nate Wooley ~ Four Experiments (Pleasure of the Text, 26 September)
Dronal ~ Whilst We Fall (Supple 9, 28 September)
One of Them ~ Excogitation (Artificial Owl, 28 September)
Anna Papij ~ Always Beautiful (29 September)
Brendan Angelides ~ Oxygen (Ancestor, 29 September)
ChiaraOscuro ~ Rancor:Succor (Nefarious Industries, 29 September)
Christopher Tignor ~ The Art of Surrender (Western Vinyl, 29 September)
Dasha Rush ~ Contemplating (raster, 29 September)
dogHn & Badun ~ Talk to the Planets (Love Love, 29 September)
Eric Nachtrab ~ Bastard Ideals (Spiritual Slop, 29 September)
Equipment Pointed Ankh ~ Downtown! (Torn Light, 29 September)
Field of Fear ~ Beyond the Reach of Light (Whited Sepulchre, 29 September)
Fobos Hailey ~ Reduction (Tripalium, 29 September)
Garreth Broke ~ Conversations (1631 Recordings, 29 September)
Hará Alonso ~ Notions of Hope (piano and coffee records, 29 September)
Hearsay ~ Glossolalia (Amalgam, 29 September)
Jason Calhoun ~ small circle (Dear Life, 29 September)
Jeremiah Chiu ~ In Electric Time (International Anthem, 29 September)
Jlin ~ Perspective (Planet Mu, 29 September)
Kenneth Jimenez, Michaël Attias, Francisco Mela ~ Caribú (577 Records, 29 September)
Kilometre Club ~ How to Unravel (We Are Busy Bodies, 29 September)
KMRU ~ Dissolution (OFNOT, 29 September)
Matana Roberts ~ Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the Garden … (Constellation, 29 September)
Metro Riders ~ Lost in Reality (Possible Motive, 29 September)
Nick Dunston ~ Skultura (Fun in the Church/Tripticks Tapes, 29 September)
Odalie ~ Puissante Vulnérabilité (Mesh, 29 September)
Oman Breaker ~ Compromat (BITE, 29 September)
Richard Sears ~ Appear to Fade (figureight, 29 September)
Rumpistol ~ Going Inside (Raske Plater, 29 September)
Ulrich Krieger ~ Aphotic II – Abysmal (Room40, 29 September)
Válek / Merta / Tarnovski ~ Metal (Flaming Pines, 29 September)
Joris Rühl ~ Feuilles (Umlaut, 30 September)
Scott Scholz ~ Whip Sigils (No Part of It, 1 October)
Daniel Villarreal ~ Lados B (International Anthem, 3 October)
Heikki Ruokangas ~ Karu (Orbit577, 3 October)
Kate Ellis & Ed Bennett ~ Strange Waves (Ergodos, 3 October)
eleOnora ~ tuuljamuud (Cruel Nature, 4 October)
Aho Ssan ~ Rhizomes (Other People, 6 October)
Allison Miller ~ Rivers in Our Veins (Royal Potato Family 6 October)
Claire Deak ~ Sotto Voice (Lost Tribe Sound, 6 October)
Daniel Carter et al ~ Electric Telepathy (577 Records, 6 October)
David August ~ VĪS (99CHANTS, 6 October)
Dieter Moebius ~ Aspirin (Curious Music, 6 October)
Hania Rani ~ Ghosts (Gondwana, 6 October)
Jessica Pavone ~ Clamor (Out of Your Head, 6 October)
John Ghost ~ Thin Air . Mirror Land (Sdban, 6 October)
Jordan Martins ~ Fogery Nagles (Astral Spirits,, 6 October)
Lavelle ~ Contemporary DJ’s from the Past (Somewherecold, 6 October)
Leo Takami ~ Next Door (Unseen Worlds, 6 October)
Mary Lattimore ~ Goodbye, Hotel Arkada (Ghostly International, 6 October)
Ocoeur ~ Nouveau Départ (n5MD, 6 October)
Peter Broderick & Ensemble D ~ Give It to the Sky: Arthur Russell’s Tower of Meaning Expanded (Erased Tapes, 6 October)
Bridget Kibbey ~ Crossing the Ocean (Pentatone, 13 October)
Caroline Davis ~ Alula: Captivity (Ropeadope, 13 October)
Everything Falls Apart ~ S/T (Totalism, 13 October)
From the Mouth of the Sun ~ Valley of the Hummingbirds (Lost Tribe Sound, 13 October)
Islaja ~ Angel Tape (Other Power, 13 October)
Justin Walker ~ Destroyer (Kranky, 13 October)
Michel Henritzi ~ Flowers of romance (Bruit Direct Disques, 13 October)
Nicole Mitchell & Alexander Hawkins ~ At Earth School (Astral Spirits, 13 October)
Up High Collective ~ Koinonia (San-kofa Rhythms, 13 October)
Venera ~ S/T (Ipecac Recordings, 13 October)
Ah! Kosmos & Hainbach ~ Blast of Sirens (FUU, 20 October)
Bex Burch ~ There Is Only Love and Fear (International Anthem, 20 October)
Black to Comm ~ At Zeenath Parallel Heavens (Thrill Jockey, 20 October)
Francisco Mela & Jonathan Reisin ~ Earthquake (577 Records, 20 October)
Galya Bisengalieva ~ Polygon (One Little Independent, 20 October)
Hauschka ~ Philanthropy (City Slang, 20 October)
KMRU ~ Stupor (Other Power, 20 October)
Triola ~ Scapegoat (Constructive, 20 October)
Monocot ~ Leave to Cool (Astral Editions, 22 October)
Jackson Greenberg ~ The Things We Pass Through Our Genes (cmntx, 27 October)
Michael Peter Olsen ~ Narrative of a Nervous System (Hand Drawn Dracula, 27 October)
Pidgins ~ Refrains of the Day, Volume 1 (Lexical, 27 October)
Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila ~ Baba Soirée (Pingipung, 27 October)
Quicksails ~ Surface (Hausu Mountain, 27 October)
A Spot on the Hill ~ Patterns (Tenth wave, 27 October)
Thomas Vanz ~ Colors of Invisible (Mesh, 27 October)
Tiger Village ~ The Celebration (Hausu Mountain, 27 October)
Prins Emanuel ~ Diagonal Musik II (Music for Dreams, 3 November)
Slow Draw ~ The Mystic Crib (10 November)
Joshua Van Tassel ~ The Recently Beautiful (Backward Music, 17 November)