A CLOSER LISTEN weekly #44
AKOUSMA, Bandcamp, Ukraine, and more
Dear Listeners, welcome back to another fortnightly ACL roundup. Joseph here once again, and as of late last night I am safely back in Montreal after a few weeks on the road. I’m working on my Unsound 2023 review essay today, which should be up on the blog by the end of the week.
And as I’ve mentioned, following Unsound, I spent last week consulting the archive of composer Egisto Macchi (1928-1992) in Venice’s Fondazione Cini. Macchi was a member of il Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, alongside his friend Ennio Morricone. The group was founded by composer Franco Evangelisti as a means for composers to move beyond composition, exploring free improvisation and extended technique, and they organized an influential concert series in Rome, as well as recording many classic records, including The Feed-Back, which became prized by crate diggers and hip hop producers. Other contributors to the group included Mario Bertoncini, Roland Kayn, Frederic Rzewski, among many others.
But my interest in Macchi is in his film scores and library music, particularly those he did for Italian ethno-documentaries throughout the 1960s, including films by Mario Gallo, Cecilia Mangini, and Luigi Di Gianni, mostly based in the Italian south or otherwise on the periphery of modern urban life, focused on marginalized groups be they street kids, Greek enclaves, or Calabrese peasants. There was very little correspondence in the archive, mostly letters and faxes the maestro had received from friends and collaborators in the final years of his life. So besides being able to read a hard to find monograph on his work, most of the week was spent paging through Macchi’s scores for these various ethno-documentaries. I wrote a paper analyzing the music in these films last year, which I presented in Rome at the annual meeting of the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, but before submitting the paper for publication I wanted to review the scores and any notes I could find. The scores certainly provided me additional insights into Macchi’s work and how it developed over that first decade of composing for film, but there’s also something to be said about the physical connection of being in an archive, holding the actual papers that your subject once held. The archive didn’t allow pictures, though here’s a screenshot of an unrelated score from their website.
I’m now back home in Montreal, but as they say, there is no rest for the weary. I’ve just finished an interview with Aho Ssan about his upcoming performance of the “The Falling Man” (produced at the GRM studios in 2021, part of which appears on his latest album, Rhizomes) here in Montreal on Friday 20 October, closing out the 2023 AKOUSMA festival, which is dedicated to electroacoustic music. Held in a former jam factory that has been converted into a state of the art site for theatre and music, Usine-C boasts an incredible 48.8 sound system that is perfect for the kind of multichannel diffusions electroacoustic music is known for.
I last wrote about AKOUSMA in 2019, when Francois J. Bonnett (aka Kassel Jaeger) performed not only his own work during the festival but also manned the boards for a diffusion of two works by Eliane Radigue. (I had previously reviewed the 2012 edition of AKOUSMA, which included a turntable quartet directed by Martin Tétreault, and a performance by Francisco Lopez, who I interviewed for the occasion.) This year the festival, which begins tonight, will also include performances from Nicola Ratti, Tomoko Sauvage, Olivia Block and many others, and I highly encourage anyone in the area to attend if at all possible.
This One Time, At Bandcamp…
With all that’s going on in the world, it feels strange to focus on the latest sale of Bandcamp, but I wanted to just round up a few links on that situation. As you probably know, the independent music marketplace we have all (mostly) come to love and rely on in the last decade or so was sold by its founders to Epic Games in early 2022. Despite some dire predictions that the maker of Fortnite would not be an appropriate steward for this thriving community of independent musicians, very little seemed to have changed at Bandcamp, and what changes were made were largely improvements. However selling out is selling out, and doing so put Bandcamp in a position to be sold once again, as Epic felt the need to make some adjustments to their own organization. Two weeks ago it was announced that Bandcamp had once again been sold, this time to Songtradr, a company whose CEO, Paul Wiltshire, is part of the producing team, The Matrix, whose credits include Avril Lavigne, Korn, and Hilary Duff. (I can’t and don’t speak for everyone at ACL, but personally, I’m a big advocate of publicly shaming rich and powerful assholes, and I hope this guy is never able to show his face in public again.) Songtradr’s acquisition of Bandcamp seemed like a bad sign, and indeed we’ve had nothing but bad news in the weeks since. The company released a press release full of corporate douche speak, carefully avoiding saying anything of substance, refusing to comment on the recognition of Bandcamp’s employee union or the future of the Daily.
So we were disappointed but not surprised to learn that about half of Bandcamp’s staff, both at Bandcamp Daily and on the techside, had been laid off (and it does appear they were laid off, not given any severance packages). To make matters worse, according to SF GATE, “Every member of Bandcamp union bargaining team was laid off in huge cuts at Oakland firm.”
As of Monday, Bandcamp has been sold by video game juggernaut Epic Games to Songtradr, a music licensing firm. The acquisition closed with just half of Bandcamp’s employees offered jobs at the Santa Monica-based company. Fans of the site — music writers, employees, users and bands — erupted with anger on social media, worried that the resulting layoffs of half the staff would lead to a worse version of the artist-friendly music service, which has both streaming and retail components.
The job cuts, which SFGATE reported Monday amounted to about 60 of 118 employees, disproportionately hit union leaders, Bandcamp United told SFGATE in a Tuesday press release. Every member of the union’s eight-person bargaining team was laid off, it said, and in sum, 40 of the bargaining unit’s 67 people lost their jobs.
The union added that Bandcamp’s editorial team, responsible for the independent- and small-artist focused Bandcamp Daily, has been cut in half, and two-thirds of union-eligible engineering team members have been laid off too. Twelve out of the 13 union-eligible support staff are out as well, the union said, plus 70% of the vinyl team. Bandcamp’s vinyl pressing service lets artists run pledge campaigns to test out their market for potential vinyl releases.
This is blatant union busting, and I hope the company is penalized and held accountable in some way. But this is the US, so I won’t hold my breath.
Over at Pitchfork, Philip Sherburne asks “Is Bandcamp as We Know It Over?” Usually when a headline is phrased in the form of a question, the answer is “no,” but there’s not much here that is promising. Instead it’s simply too soon to answer affirmatively.
In the absence of a clear statement from Songtradr, we don’t know what the company’s plans for Bandcamp are—but prospects don’t look good. To begin with, a business-to-consumer retailer like Bandcamp doesn’t seem like a natural fit for a B2B company like Songtradr. When it made the acquisition, Songtradr hinted vaguely at the possibility of synergy across the two platforms, noting that Bandcamp artists would be able to license their music to a wide variety of clients “and increase their earning capacity from Songtradr’s global licensing network.” But even here, the two companies’ philosophies appear fundamentally at odds. To Songtradr, which licenses mood music to advertisers and content creators, music is an add-on, an extra, a Pavlovian trigger to help brands sell more chalupas. To Bandcamp, music is unique, unrepeatable, the be-all and end-all—it’s everything.
There are reasons to doubt that Songtradr will be able to pull off its business goals. Founded in 2014, the Santa Monica company has raised roughly $101 million in financing, much of which it has put toward an aggressive strategy of mergers and acquisitions—that is, driving growth by bringing other companies under its umbrella. CEO Paul Wiltshire claims that the company nearly doubled revenue in 2020, but Songtradr’s revenue appears to have flattened out for the past three years. So far, the company’s communications regarding its acquisition haven’t been totally on the level. When announcing this week’s job cuts, Songtradr said that “50 percent of Bandcamp employees have accepted offers to join Songtradr.” In fact, only half of Bandcamp’s employees were offered employment in the first place; the other half were summarily let go.
Bandcamp is so central to the business of independent music that it’s tempting to see it as too big to fail, yet its failure is a real possibility. “Nationalize Bandcamp” is a Twitter meme, not a political program; not even Bandcamp’s union was able to help save employees from this round of layoffs. And if Songtradr did implode—or, perhaps worse, strip Bandcamp for parts and discard the rest—the consequences could be catastrophic for independent music. Whether the death of Bandcamp came in one fell swoop or as a result of a thousand cuts, artists and labels would find themselves deprived of both a crucial income stream and their extensive mailing lists of supporters. Digital download sales would stagnate. More power would shift toward the major streaming platforms. And for listeners, it would become that much harder to discover strange, singular, unpopular new music outside of established scenes and communities.
So where does that leave us Listeners? For starters, you should consider downloading all your Bandcamp purchases, because we obviously can’t trust these vampire VCs to steward this invaluable archive. Megan Mitchell (aka Cruel Diagonals) wrote this piece for The Fader back in 2019, which is particularly apt given the ongoing situation at Bandcamp, and the discussions it has spurned about potential alternatives: “Corporate giants like Myspace shouldn’t be trusted with your songs.” And here is a link to Batchcamp, the Bandcamp batch downloader Marc Masters mentions in the Xeet below.
Now onto other, slightly more uplifting, things.
Ukrainian Field Notes VA + Book
Gianmarco Del Re’s Ukrainian Field Notes debuted on ACL on 19 March 2022, nearly one month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, later expanding into a monthly radio/podcast series broadcast on London’s Resonance FM. The series has sadly continued much longer than we had originally hoped, as this conflict has dragged out with seemingly no end in sight. Gianmarco has collected the first year of interviews as a lengthy book, now available physically and digitally, accompanying a fundraising compilation
Ukrainian Field Notes VA is a fundraising compilation with a difference, music with a backstory that gives a first-hand account of the unfolding events since the full-scale Russian invasion in real time, and presents an overview of the changing face of the Ukrainian music scene dictated by blackouts and curfew restrictions.
What started off as an ongoing series of interviews with Ukrainian artists for the experimental music website A Closer Listen has now become a book comprising all 170 interviews conducted over the course of a year mapping out the electronic and experimental scene in Ukraine.
To mark its publication, all musicians involved were asked to submit a track composed after February 24, 2022. The resulting material reflects the diaristic nature of the book and deals with PTSD, displacement, separation, and loss, and shows at the same time the strength and resilience of Ukrainian artists with a meditative and uplifting reach.
The track listing follows the chronological order of the interviews, switching from ambient and electronic to classical and experimental in a seemingly random fashion, but war is chaotic and shattering, or as Serhii Zhadan writes in Sky Above Kharkiv, “War sharply changes ways of seeing, changes feelings.” Ukrainian Field Notes is a testament to the shifting sonic and human landscape.
Welcome New Label Vast Habitat!
The roots of L.A.’s Vast Habitat are found in the partnership of Daniel Lea and Michael Deragon, whose music as Heliochrysum first appeared on the Bedroom Community label. On Friday the 13th, Vast Habitat launches with three albums, one by each of the founders as well as a compilation.
On VHS 001, the first of a series, we encounter some familiar names, a sign that the label is off to a solid start. Bethan Kellough, Yair Eleazar Glotman, Stelzer / Murray and Pinkcourtesyphone are familiar to our readers. The compilation introduces a porous blend of drone and electronics that will likely be the label’s signature sound.
Vast Habitat is off to a solid start with this introductory triptych. Despite the many collaborations, the works are consistent in tone and have a multi-genre appeal. We welcome the label to the fold and look forward to hearing what comes next!
Read the entire piece 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.
Claire Deak ~ Sotto Voce
Claire Deak first appeared on our site with the old capital, a 2020 collaboration with Tony Dupé that was released on nearly the same date as Sotto Voce. Like that album, this one seems well-suited for October. Deak again plays over a dozen instruments, and Sotto Voce is billed as a solo album, although Dupé is again present, along with four additional collaborators. The difference is that this is clearly Deak’s vision: an occasionally speculative and consistently imaginative dive into the music of Baroque composers Francesca Caccini (1587-c.1645) and Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), built on a musculature of “musical traces.” Fleshing out their work, Deak makes the most of the available notation and instrumentation, putting a modern spin on their music and resurrecting their names.
From the Mouth of the Sun ~ Valley of the Hummingbirds
Our second Lost Tribe Sound review in two days, Valley of the Hummingbirds is a piece of the label’s series Maps to Where the Poison Grows, along with Claire Deak’s Sotto Voice and nine other discs, all set for release this year. When playing multiple albums in a row, one can begin to see how they relate. Each of these two albums uses static and drone, although Deak’s album falls just within the realm of ambience, while From the Mouth of the Sun‘s album travels across the border into modern composition. Each displays melancholic strings. Dag Rosenqvist and Aaron Martin add drums. This was certainly a boon to the dancers, moving to the choreography of Danae & Dionysios. In the twemty-minute opener “The Herd (Murmuration),” the volume builds from near-silence to a maturation of strings, buzzes and beats. One can picture the flock, a small gathering at first, expanding to the murmuration of the title, performing elaborate dances in the air as the dancers on the earth imitate their movements.
Galya Bisengalieva ~ Polygon
Sometimes horrible things happen in the world, and the general populace only learns about it much later. Such is the case with the Semipalatinsk Test Site, also known as The Polygon, in Galya Bisengalieva‘s native Kazakhstan. This nuclear testing site for the former Soviet Union was active from 1949-1989, exposed 1.5 million people to fallout, and in the time immediately following its closure did little to protect its leftover plutonium from terrorists. When pressed as to the human impact, the Soviet response was that the area was “uninhabited.” The darkness of Bisengalieva’s last album, the score to Hold Your Breath: The Ice Dive, is a forerunner of the depths heard here. The shadows descend in the opening seconds and never fully dissipate. The violin conveys mournful melodies, akin to whale song in “Alash-kala,” while static charges imitate Geiger counters. On occasion the sun seem ready to break through, but then another cloud interrupts this momentary hope. The danger has existed so long, the mutations so many, that some locals now believe they are a “new form of human being.”
The Inward Circles ~ Before We Lie Down in Darkness
Anyone diving into Richard Skelton’s Before We Lie Down In Darknesse and expecting to encounter his uniquely sumptuous, sonorous layers of music may be in for a bit of a surprise. Some of the same sources that inform other releases from Skelton’s guise as The Inward Circles can be discerned on the new album. As with And Right Lines Limit and Close All Bodies (2017), Sir Thomas Browne’s august and mysterious work Hydriotaphia, Or Urne-Burial provides a conceptual guiding light and a quotable source. And as on 2015’s Belated Movements for an Unsanctioned Exhumation August 1st 1984, there is a continued fascination with the interment and exhumation of human remains, reflected in Skelton’s gripping exploration of distorted and degraded sound elements. Finally, there is Skelton’s meticulous mastery of studio production, evident in all his work. He conjures up atmospheres that feel as haunted and bereft as they do beautiful – tragically, even at times sinisterly, beautiful.
Markus Floats ~ Fourth Album
Fans of Markus Floats‘ Third Album will receive the fourth record as an expansion of timbre and theme; newcomers may go back to seek out his Constellation debut. That percolating record was filled with layer upon MIDI layer, as effervescent as sparkling water. On Fourth Album, the artist invites musicians from Egyptian Cotton Arkestra (in which he plays bass) to improvise over an electronic base: Ari Swan on violin, James Nicholas Dumile Goddard on saxophone and mbira and Lucas Huang on drums and guitar. The collaborative effort is an organic-electronic blend, a shared vision that is more than the sum of its parts. Not that any of this is apparent from the beginning. “Introduction” is a perky piece, primarily electronic, brief and beguiling; when the friends arrive, they do so sweetly, in a mid-piece serenade. The track is accessible, appealing and over far too soon. After this, Floats introduces some heftier themes, with the two-part “Death,” the diptych “AS ABOVE/SO BELOW,” “mdhvn” and “Heaven Is Each Other,” which seems an excavation of the album’s theme. Humans are not meant to be alone. Even “Introduction” finds a partner in “Second Introduction.” But don’t expect these tracks to be matching pairs; they are more complimentary in nature, as the album grows more abstract as it unfolds, a reverse Genesis, order to (not quite) chaos.
UPCOMING RELEASES
(complete list with Bandcamp links here)
The autumn cavalcade continues in October, with over 300 instrumental albums already announced, an incredible ten releases a day ~ and these are only the ones we know about! There are two ways to look at the biggest fall slate we’ve ever seen. One is to feel paralyzed by the possibilities. The other is to rejoice that there is so much to choose from. We’re of the latter mind. New previews are added to this page daily; we hope you’ll find your next favorite album right here!
Ah! Kosmos & Hainbach ~ Blast of Sirens (FUU, 20 October)
Anna Webber ~ Shimmer Wince (Intakt, 20 October)
Azmari ~ Maelström (Sdban, 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)
The Bridge ~ Beyond the Margins (trost, 20 October)
D-Fried ~ The Spirit of the Young Poets (See Blue Audio, 20 October)
Emergency Group ~ Venal Twin (Centripetal Force, 20 October)
Emptyset ~ ash (Subtext, 20 October)
Erlend Apneseth Trio ~ Collage (Hubro, 20 October)
Eulipion Corps ~ Strange Familiar (Wormhole Music, 20 October)
Evitceles ~ Accession (Amek Recordings, 20 October)
Francisco Mela & Jonathan Reisin ~ Earthquake (577 Records, 20 October)
Galya Bisengalieva ~ Polygon (One Little Independent, 20 October)
Genís Bagés ~ MENTAL (Protomaterial, 20 October)
Giulio Stermieri ~ Fort Da (Maple Death, 20 October)
Hauschka ~ Philanthropy (City Slang, 20 October)
Jason Blake ~ Radiant Dusk (20 October)
Joseph Shabason ~ Welcome to Hell (Western Vinyl, 20 October)
Judgitzu ~ Sator Arepo (Nyege Nyege Tapes, 20 October)
Kasra V ~ Flood the Club (Shaytoon, 20 October)
KMRU ~ Stupor (Other Power, 20 October)
Lipsticism ~ Elapsed Kiss (Phantom Limb, 20 October)
Markus Floats ~ Fourth Album (Constellation, 20 October)
Massimo Pupillo ~ Our Forgotten Ancestors (Glacial Movements, 20 October)
Matthew Sheens ~ Written in the Dark (20 October)
Maxime Dangles ~ Les Délivrés – Remixes (Lifeguards, 20 October)
MCS ~ Late Horizon (SFI Recordings, 20 October)
Michael Moore / John Pope / Johnny Hunter ~ Something Happened (New Jazz and Improvised Music Recordings, 20 October)
Sylvere ~ EP3 (Monkeytown, 20 October)
Teichmann+Soehne ~ Flows (Altin Village & Mine, 20 October)
Triola ~ Scapegoat (Constructive, 20 October)
Verdance ~ Intertwined (Loci, 20 October)
VLMV ~ Flora & Fauna (Reworks) (Bigo & Twigetti, 20 October)
Monocot ~ Leave to Cool (Astral Editions, 22 October)
Bill Seaman / Tim Diagram / Stephen Spera ~ The World Was Turning Before (LAAPS, 23 October)
Action Pyramid & Jack Greenhaigh ~ Daily Rhythms of a Pond (mappa, 24 October)
Ian Power & Anne Rainwater ~ Ave Maria: Variations on a Theme by Giacinto Scelsi (Carrier, 24 October)
Kristof Bathory ~ Haunted Dystopia (Cryo Chamber, 24 October)
Piiptsjilling ~ in spoar (Cloudchamber, 25 October)
Line Gate ~ Trap (mappa, 26 October)
Alarico ~ Klockworks 38 (Klockworks, 27 October)
The Angelica Sanchez Nonet ~ Nighttime Creatures (Pyroclastic, 27 October)
aus ~ Revise (Everest Remixed) (flau, 27 October)
Beck Hunters with Laura Cole and John Pope ~ From Wolves to Water (New Jazz and Improvised Music, 27 October)
DODE ~ Remixes for Critters (Oigovisiones, 27 October)
Doug Bielmeier ~ Music for Billionaires (New Focus, 27 October)
Jackson Greenberg ~ The Things We Pass Through Our Genes (cmntx, 27 October)
Kin Leonn ~ mirror in the gleam (Kitchen, 27 October)
Linus Alberg ~ Elements (Moderna, 27 October)
The Lovecraft Sextet ~ The Horror Cosmic (Denovali, 27 October)
Mario Diaz de Leon ~ Spark and Earth (Denovali, 27 October)
Michael Peter Olsen ~ Narrative of a Nervous System (Hand Drawn Dracula, 27 October)
NxCx ~ Time Funeral (Moon Villain, 27 October)
Panyolo & Akio Watanabe ~ Yanami (Schole, 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)
Rakhi Singh ~ Purnima (Cantaloupe Music, 27 October)
Secret Pyramid ~ A Vanishing Touch (Ba Da Bing, 27 October)
Siavash Amini ~ eremos (American Dreams, 27 October)
Sparkle Division ~ FOXY (Temporary Residence, 27 October)
A Spot on the Hill ~ Patterns (Tenth wave, 27 October)
tAk ~ Murmurations (Dewfall, 27 October)
Thomas Vanz ~ Colors of Invisible (Mesh, 27 October)
Tiger Village ~ The Celebration (Hausu Mountain, 27 October)
Tim Linghaus ~ Me in Your Rear-View Mirror (Bigo & Twigetti, 27 October)
Veryan ~ Reflections in a Wilderness (Werra Foxma, 27 October)
Yuko Araki ~ IV (Room40, 27 October)
Shall Remain Nameless ~ Siete Sol (28 October)
Chrisman ~ Dozage (Hakuna Kulala, 31 October)
Magic from Space/Moonlight Sword ~ 3bpev/Moonlight Sword 1 (Bivalve, 30 October)
EQ Why ~ Dance Floor (Orange Milk, 31 October)
Jürg Frey ~ Les Signes Passagers (Elsewhere, 1 November)
Marc Kellaway ~ Nocturnal Machines (The Cat Box Corp., 1 November)
Pisitakun ~ KUANTALAENG (Chinabot, 1 November)
M.Takura ~ Live at 3XR (Edelfaul, 1 November)
Amor Muere ~ A time to love, a time to die (Scrawl, 3 November)
Anagrams ~ Blue Voices (Balmat, 3 November)
Anatolian Weapons ~ Earth (Subject to Restrictions Discs, 3 November)
Anthéne & David Cordero ~ Lost Under the Sea (Home Normal, 3 November)
Anthony Pirog ~ The Nepenthe Series Vol. 1 (Otherly Love, 3 November)
Beatriz Ferreyra ~ UFO Forest + (Room40, 3 November)
Better Corners ~ Continuous Miracles, Vol. 2 (the state51 Conspiracy, 3 November)
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das ~ Black Box EP (3 November)
Christine Ott ~ Eclats (Piano Works) (Gizeh, 3 November)
CHROMB! ~ Cinq (Dur et Doux, 3 November)
Daniel Carter et al ~ Open Question, Vol. 2 (577 Records, 3 November)
David Cordero & Rhucle ~ Summer Chronicles (Home Normal, 3 November)
Euan Dalgarno ~ A Short Dream About Jupiter (Not Yet Remembered, 3 November)
Eugene Carchesio & Adam Betts ~ Circle Drum Music (Room40, 3 November)
Gabriel Birnbaum ~ Nightwater | All the Dead Do Is Dream (Western Vinyl, 3 November)
Guentner | Spieth ~ Overlay (Affin, 3 November)
Honour ~ Àlàáfía (PAN, 3 November)
James Heather ~ Reworks: Vol2 (Ahead of Our Time, 3 November)
J.WLSON ~ Slipped (Room40, 3 November)
Leonardo Barbadoro ~ Musica Automata (Helical, 3 November)
Low End Resorts ~ Dungeons of Miami (Megastructure_, 3 November)
Mark Solotroff ~ Today the Infinite, Tomorrow Zero (3 November)
Marta De Pascalis ~ Sky Flesh (light-years, 3 November)
Matmos ~ Return to Archive (Smithsonian Folkways, 3 November)
Merzbow ~ Cafe OTO (Cold Spring, 3 November)
Michael Pisaro-Liu ~ A room outdoors (Elsewhere, 3 November)
Nicole Rampersaud ~ Saudade (Ansible Editions, 3 November)
PoiL ~ Yoshitsune (Dur et Dox, 3 November)
Prins Emanuel ~ Diagonal Musik II (Music for Dreams, 3 November)
Resavoir ~ S/T (International Anthem, 3 November)
Sick Boss ~ Businessless (3 November)
Sign Libra ~ Hidden Beauty (RVNG Intl., 3 November)
Six Days of Calm ~ My Little, Safe Place (Midsummer/Cargo, 3 November)
Skyphone ~ Oscilla (Lost Tribe Sound, 3 November)
Société magique ~ Fantôme sinusoïdal (3 November)
tellKujira ~ S/T (Superpang, 3 November)
Abby Downs ~ Ngunmal (Room40, 10 November)
Asha Sheshadri ~ Whiplash (Recital, 10 November)
Brian Wenner ~ Age of Execution (Grind Select, 10 November)
Bruce Brubaker ~ Eno Piano (InFine, 10 November)
Cloud Management ~ V.A. (Altin Village & Mine, 10 November)
David Bird ~ Wire Hums (Oxtail Recordings, 10 November)
David Lee Myers & Toshimaru Nokamura ~ Elements (Surface World, 10 November)
Dijf Sanders ~ SUPRA (Unday, 10 November)
Hana Berg, Joanna Knutsson ~ Exquisite Corpse (UFO Station, 10 November)
Hior Chronik ~ Theory of the Dawn (Bigo & Twigetti, 10 November)
Jos Smolders, Guido Nijs & Koen Delaere ~ Smolders / Nijs / Delaere (Moving Furniture, 10 November)
Lau Nau ~ Aphrilis (Fonal/Beacon Sound, 10 November)
Moritz von Oswald ~ Silencio (Tresor, 10 November)
99LETTERS ~ Zigoku / 地獄 (Phantom Limb, 10 November)
Ordeal ~ Vätterns Pärla (Aguirre, 10 November)
Patrick Shiroishi ~ I was too young to hear silence (American Dreams, 10 November)
Rich Hinman ~ Memorial (Colorfield, 10 November)
Sébastien Guérive ~ Obscure Clarity (Atypeek Music / The Orchard, 10 November)
Slow Draw ~ The Mystic Crib (10 November)
Swartz et ~ Leviathan II (10 November)
Timelash ~ Feral Lands and Forbidden Cities (Aguirre, 10 November)
Werner Durand, Amelia Cuni, Uli Hohmann ~ Clearing (Aguirre, 10 November)
V/A ~ Radar Keroxen Vol.4 (Discrepant, 11 November)
Aiko Takahashi ~ It Could Have Been a Beautiful (IIKKI, 13 November)
Spray ~ OT Rails (Spray, 13 November)
Olivia Louvel ~ DoggerLANDscape (15 November)
ZÖJ ~ Fil O Fenjoon (Parenthèses, 15 November)
Driftmachine/Komodo Kolektif ~ The Encyclopedia of Civilizations Vol. 5: Babylon (Abstraksce, 16 November)
Andreas Gerth and Carl Oesterhelt ~ Music for Unknown Rituals (Umor Rex, 17 November)
Anenon ~ Moons Melt Milk Light (Tonal Union, 17 November)
Arrowounds ~ The Honeycomb Labyrinth (Lost Tribe Sound, 17 November)
Bassoon ~ Succumbent (Nefarious Industries, 17 November)
Beifer ~ Constant Transition (tunnel.visions, 17 November)
Cécile Seraud ~ XAOS (17 November)
CoLD SToRAGE ~ wipE’out” – The Zero Gravity Soundtrack (17 November)
Daniel Bachman ~ When the Roses Come Again (Three Lobed Recordings, 17 November)
Danny Daze ~ :BLUE: (Omnidisc, 17 November)
Dead Cosmonauts ~ Parasomnia (Trepanation / Do It Thissen, 17 November)
Drazek / Fuscaldo / Drake / Aoki / Jones / Abrams ~ June 22 (Astral Spirits / Feeding Tube, 17 November)
Eddie Prevost et al ~ The Secret Handshake with Danger, Vol. 2 (577 Records, 17 November)
enchanted forest ~ Semele’s Tryst (Jolt Music, 17 November)
Fabio Perletta ~ Nessun Legame con la Polvere (Room40, 17 November)
Joshua Van Tassel ~ The Recently Beautiful (Backward Music, 17 November)
Kate Carr ~ A Field Guide to Phantasmic Birds (Room40, 17 November)
Richie Culver ~ Scream If You Don’t Exist (Participant, 17 November)
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe/Lichens ~ Grasshopper Republic (Invada, 17 November)
Shipwreck Karpathos ~ Being Human (A Thousand Arms / dunk!, 17 November)
Vic Mars ~ The Beacons (Clay Pipe Music, 17 November)
Adam Coney ~ Ashwin & Above (Trestle, 24 November)
Corrado Maria De Santis ~ Over a Long Time (Lost Tribe Sound, 24 November)
Hand to Earth ~ Mokuy (Room40, 24 November)
Liz Helman ~ The Colour of Water (Flaming Pines, 24 November)
Mister Water Wet ~ Cold Clay from the Middle West (Students of Decay, 24 November)
Nicolas Bernier ~ Structures et formes d’ondes (Label Formes-Ondes, 24 November)
Silent Servant ~ In Memorium (Tresor, 24 November)
Sun Electric ~ Live at Votivkirche Wien (Arjunamusic, 24 November)
V/A ~ Common Ground vol.3 (Safe Ground, 24 November)
Toada ~ Slow-Paced Tangents (Pluma, 30 November)
Ensemble 1 ~ Delay Works (Halfmeltedbrain, 1 December)
Ghost Marrow ~ earth + death (The Garrote, 1 December)
Jim Perkins ~ Imprints (Bigo & Twigetti, 1 December)
Joshua Marquez ~ Dirt (1 December)
JWPaton ~ Structures (Room40, 1 December)
Lavatone ~ Lunar Mining and Excavation (Lost Tribe Sound, 1 December)
Lea Bertucci ~ Of Shadow and Substance (Cibachrome Editions, 1 December)
Meitei ~ Kofū III / 古風 II (Kitchen, 1 December)
ni ~ Fol Naïs (Dur et Doux, 1 December)
R.A. Sánchez ~ L’Ottava Sfera (Lost Tribe Sound, 1 December)
Henrik Meierkord & Ni! ~ Ekosystem (Ambientologist, 5 December)
Emil Friis & Patricio Fraile ~ The Expected Sounds of Minor Music (Fatcat/130701, 8 December)
Trem 77 ~ Vivid Vibration EP (1 January)