French artist Bruno Duplant gifts us a 36 minutes long piece insaisissable(s) instant(s)', a reflection both on time and the complex emotions under covid-19 lock-down. With field recordings of voices, birds and dogs, electronic bips & clicks and lingering piano notes, he draws his curtains and welcomes us to his discreet aural world. "Time has only one reality, that of the Instant. In other words, time is a reality tightened on the instant and suspended between two nothingness. Time will undoubtedly be able to be reborn, but it will first have to die. He will not be able to transport his being from one instant to another to make it a duration. The instant is already loneliness ... It is loneliness in its most stripped metaphysical value. But loneliness of a more sentimental order confirms the tragic isolation of the instant: by a kind of creative violence, time limited to the instant isolates us not only from others but from ourselves, since it breaks with our dearest past."Gaston Bachelard, L'intuition de l'instant, Editions Gonthier, méditation, 1932, p. 13-15. Dedicated to Reinier Van Houdt -- Bruno Duplant - field recordings, electronics, piano --   Cover design by Oliver Barrett from a photo by Bruno Duplant.

Switch that light off.Switch that light off.Still the night appears in her relentless bright stupor. A collection of unsung sleepless nights. A percussive collage of low-fi frequencies documenting a journey that never took place. Il silenzio non arrivaIl conto è salatoIl sole riscalda i fallimentiNiente ma tutto è cambiato --- Valentina Magaletti played and assembled percussion, drums, field recordings, vibraphone, toys, and oscillators. --- Produced and edited by Leon Marks. Special thanks to: Tom Relleen, Marta Salogni, Evelena Ruether, and João Pais Felipe for the love and support. Cover design by Oliver Barrett.

Tracklisting:   1 - Wormhole to Nowhere [16:55] 2 - Epilogue [5:03]"Having brought together two entirely independent solo improvisations like this, one from near the start of the lockdown and the other very recent, and finding that they fit together so well that I must have been  following the same pattern albeit on two very different instruments, what does that tell me? Have I merely folded time on itself without any corresponding fold in space and thereby gone precisely nowhere? Have those intervening months vanished in the attempt? And what can I call the fruits of that attempt? An imaginary duo between present me and early-lockdown me, made real by a stray thought taken too far (because I hadn't intended to put the two together when I recorded them). Have I learned nothing? By themselves, each is both an attempt to reach beyond time in itself, by touching the infinite variability of the reality beyond illusion and, by that very variability (and unpredictability) a blow struck against the homogenising forces of consumerism, a wrench thrown in the gears of the satanic mill. But when combined, then, the variability is multiplied. Not by dialogue (since each was blind to the other) but the stark fact of their separation in time and the events that they book-end. 50,000 dead, give or take. Have we learned nothing? Must the same battles be fought over and over again every single time? Will we still follow the same pattern, when this is all over?" - Massimo Magee, London, 11 May 2020 Cover image: '144 Pills' by MiHee Kim Magee

Belgian multidisciplinary experimental artist Floris Vanhoof shares with us 3 new tracks, bursting technicoloured electric energy through fields of static. Dealing with found sound and homemade old electronics and positioning them in the lock-down context, Floris reigns the line between the ecstatic present and the reflective past. Phrasing his narratives with dizzying spirals of iterative sound and off-kilter rhythmic punctuation, he offers us a portal in his world: an introductory leap into his fascinating practice. "Falala Falderiere Falderaldera are three snapshots from my studio, as a happy goodbye to the old world. Enjoying a system’s complex behavior, whether that system is a network of primitive homemade electronics or frogs in an Australian pond." - Floris Vanhoof -- Floris Vanhoof / various homemade electronics & sound founds -- Mastering & artwork design by Oliver Barrett

Spewing forth from the gutter into our comfortable abodes, Wolf Eyes' own Johnny R. Spykes (aka Inzane Johnny) treats us to five mind-melting tracks, melding electronic and saxophone elements together in snapshots of disarray. Like Wolf Eyes' own work, Johnny captures the dust bowl industrial milieu of Michigan; holding dense clouds of static noise, the buzz of telephone wires and electricity pylons in a tactile compositional grip. On tracks 2 and 5 he hits out with some muffled alto sax lyricism, occasionally meeting concurrent lines of other saxophones as if lost together in a maze. Now in their 4th decade, the Wolf gang never fail at confusion, disorientation and entracing aural inzanity. --   John Olson - saxophone, electronics & recording   --   Cover artwork by John Olson   Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

"Word Origins consists of improvisations recorded in my house during the current lockdown. Each one was recorded at around 17.00-18.00 pm. I allowed myself to just get my cello, sit, start the record button and play, just once, each day. I wanted to make concise, stream of consciousness music, in some ways it relates to a lot of the paintings I have been making recently, but also the poetry I have been reading. The titles of each track are taken from words in The Sonnets by American poet Ted Berrigan, which were written in the 60’s and constructed by chance operations." - Anton Lukoszevieze -- All music by Anton Lukoszevieze. Recorded by Anton Lukoszevieze. Artwork by Oliver Barrett.

Featuring a distant collaboration with Ben Vince; an online exercise class with Hannah Aspinall; fermented memories captured on a portable recorder and a multitude of 3-D printed reed instruments, synths, voices and more, Wojciech Rusin gifts us a six part celestial journey as if fished from a dream. Drawing on inspiration from alchemical and gnostic texts and early renaissance choral music, Wojciech's work takes a pluralist approach, letting contradictory elements bathe together, coagulate and be brought forth into the awkward present. A sci-fi, ancient and futuristic micro opera for our extremely strange times, shooting from the bedroom to the fourth dimension. Jodorowsky, Parajanov and Miguel Gomes would be proud."Rusin builds beautifully eccentric dreamscapes, audaciously blending courtly choir song, prim cello, occult mutterings and technological squawks." The Wire"FEARLESSLY INVENTIVE PUZZLEBOXX. File under: Eh?! '" - Low Company -- Wojciech Rusin - recording, mixing & mastering Feauturing guest appearances from Hannah Aspinall (voice) & Ben Vince (saxophone)   --   Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

Assembled & recorded in a small village in the Vosges hills in Frances, Marianne Schuppe treats us to 3 new tracks brought to life by her voice, a lute and uber bows. Shared with an eerie, spine-tingling intimacy, Marianne's ghost-like presence feels like she's sharing her own headspace with the aural world, conjuring songs stripped to their bare components. Each folk song, refrain and lament - presented in a mixture of English & German - carries with it a malleable weight that seems to suck the air around it into a vacuum, rupturing space and capturing a sepia-soaked moment in time. A tender, precious release by a singular artist.  --- Written and recorded by Marianne Schuppe. Artwork design and mastering by Oliver Barrett

"Under the declared state of emergency due to the COVID 19 pandemic, I am recording the next album in my room. For me, recording is about creating my own future, and I am working on it everyday sometimes suffering from auto-intoxication. Recording makes the future, In other words, my present might be reflected in what was recorded in the past. So I dug out three songs tracks from my old hard drive that mirror the current situation and edited a mini-album. Synthesized dimensions for Len Lye Trilogy is the sound source I provided for the exhibition Sensory Agents at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in 2018." - Phew --- Phew / voice & electronics --- Recorded at Phew’s room in Kawasaki 2015-18Mixed by Hiroyuki NagashimaPhoto by Masayuki Shioda Artwork design by Oliver Barrett 'Synthesized dimensions for Len Lye Trilogy' - Recorded in 2018 Courtesy of Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and the Len Lye Foundation. Commissioned by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery for the exhibition Sensory Agents, 2018 'Can you keep it down,please?' Recorded in 2016. Featuring Hiroyuki Nagashima on synthesizer. --- Phew's Bandcamp page

Together in pandemic isolation we face things, including sound. These duo recordings were made in London confinement. Caroline Kraabel improvises on alto saxophone, John Edwards on double bass; gloves off was recorded on Tuesday 12 May 2020, at midday; masks off was recorded on Friday 15 May 2020, at midnight. Photo by Régine Edwards. Artwork design by Oliver Barrett. © and℗2020 John Edwards and Caroline Kraabel, PRS, all rights reserved. http://www.masskraabel.com/  https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/  https://johnedwards.bandcamp.com/

Dusting the cobwebs off any dry free-improvisation dogma, Kazuhisa Uchihashi serves up some rainbow coloured explorations on his guitar and Daxophone - an electric wooden instrument invented by German guitarist Hans Reichel. All created in one take with no overdub, Uchihashi is able to explore a vast array of territory with the help of a few effect pedals: There's buzzing drones, writhing cycles of wiry noodling, elastic detuning jumps and lightning-speed tonal changes. Five Strings for solo guitar hits out with some seasick & emasculated math-rock, while 'Guitar Solo Reflect' revels in near-obscene spiral of multi-fx short circuiting, not too unlike Alan Sondheim's radical early work on ESP Disk. The ridiculous sense of play and FUN extends to his daxophone, where he focuses his energy on timbral qualities of the instrument: scrapping, tapping and creating little dancing rhythmic patterns. A real treat, this one. Cover design by Oliver Barrett from an artwork by Ethan Barrett.

Ken Ikeda pushes his multi-faceted electronic dream music skyward in this dizzying new release. Compiled at home using a selection of dub based fx components and improvised techniques, Ken splashes collapsing waves of digital synthesis against one another, creating moments of crescendo before pulling the plug and letting the sounds drain out completely. In between each small cyclical movement Ken enters wandering phrases that blip and bob, as if his electronic space station is caught in free fall, teetering on the edge of lost transmission. There's a timeless feeling to this 27 minutes - the sort of thing you can imagine aliens discovering somewhere alongside Morton Subotnick's 'Silver Apples of Moon' and thinking, "hey, do you think they know about us?" -- Ken Ikeda / electronics & fx   --  Artwork by Oliver Barrett.

When Tatsuya Yoshida, Makoto Kawabata and Richard Pinhas were making their 2017 self-titled trio album for Bam Balam, Makoto made some spare loop tracks which were going to be melded together with guitar and drums to form a new piece of work. The resulting album was never made until now, where in lockdown Tatsuya and Makoto recorded the absent guitar, drum and synthesizer parts to complete an album for Takuroku. The outcome - a ravishing suite of cyber prog-rock - feels nothing near to fractals or pieces of loose meat. Tatsuya and Makoto push their technical prowess to the fore for 8 technicolour tracks, revelling in the sort of kinetic energy of Ruins and Acid Mothers Temple at their most full-frontal and ecstatic. Sounding like a machine being re-wired to operate at a different velocity - sparking, malfunctioning and panting clouds of smoke - it gives little room to breath in its overwhelming vacuum of sound. Elements hot-wire into overdrive and never cease to slow outside of their given track-length time frame. Bring a few bottles of water and a fresh towel - this a total trip, from two heroes of the Japanese underground.

Spanish artist Victor Herrero dusts the cobwebs off his old computer hard drives and rekindles himself with a series of unreleased solo recordings, self-recorded over 2015-2018. The cherry-picked selection of tracks offers an exquisite corpse of past moments in time, recollected and reordained to reflect the awkward present under covid-19 lockdown. In it, the strings of his nylon string guitar gently weave mellow melodic refrains in a rough and ready aesthetic. Little movements, laments and circling dances are given time and space to grow, allowing his songs to sing from the ground upwards and seep into oneiric states. Victor is a DIY troubadour, conjuring the ghosts of Spanish guitar maestros Francisco Tárrega and Fernando Sor and the haunting of times past. As we listen to this we can imagine him sitting on the edge of our sofa in dim candlelight, whisky in hand at 4am, with the sunrise slowly peeking its head above the horizon. A really special collection. -- Victor Herrero - guitar & recording   --   Recorded in Tangier, Porto, Sweden & Cádiz Artwork by Marcela Mico Artwork design by Oliver Barrett

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC    Tracklisting: 1. Scene 1, after Hobart Smith - 5:58 2. Scene 2, after Dock Boggs - 4:06 3. Scene 3, after Dink Roberts - 3:02 4. Scene 4a - 5:49 5. Scene 4b - 3:27 6. Scene 5 - 4:43 7. Scene 6, after Margaret Barry - 4:49Dusting off the earthy sounds of American old-timers Hobart Smith, Dock Boggs and Dink Roberts, as well as Irish singer Margaret Barry, London-based Jacken Elswyth lets their influence flood their consciousness and weave itself into 7 stirring tracks. Side-stepping any revivalism, Jacken allows each track the space to trail its own path, letting the spindling strings of their banjo knot their own patterns and colours. With occasional accompaniment by shruti box and melodeon, there's a trance like nature to each proceeding, situating Jacken's work firmly in the tradition of the "avant-folk" (see Henry Flynt's experiments in country music), but very much tempered to their own voice, as if the listener is being given an intimate private view to Jacken's memories: both past and present. --- Jacken Elswyth / banjo --- Recorded and mixed by Jacken Elswyth. Mastered by Oli Barrett.  Cover design by Oli Barrett from a photo by Molly Budd.

Swedish-Finnish composer/sound artist Marja Ahti and Australian cellist/composer Judith Hamann developed Portals collaboratively from their respective lockdown spaces in Finland, sending recordings back and forth across the eastern most arm of the Baltic sea from Turku to Suomenlinna. Their lines of acoustic & electronic sound pull each other through different composite terrains, revealing imaginary scenery and creating a palimpsest of geographies and time. Akin to film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky's focus “on the pressure of time", Marja and Judith give weight to each frame of sound’s internal narrative, letting each move slowly from land to island, sea to forest, mundane to remarkable, domestic to public, as if caught in dream motion. As the title suggests, the release offers frames, or windows into Marja and Judith's combined hearing, into spaces they've created together during this time: simultaneously near and distanced. Marja Ahti / electronics, magnetic tape, field recordingsJudith Hamann / cello, field recordings With thanks to HIAP Suomenlinna for providing Judith with safe harbour this spring. Cover design by Oli Barrett

Darcy Spidle (chik white) explores the fugitive spaces in and around his home in Chezzetcook (Nova Scotia), mapping a multi-faceted aural topography with his mouth and various objects. In the old outhouse in his shed he plays some mouth harp, regurgitating his emotions in a series of spasms and tightly controlled muscle flexes. Over in the humble cold porch he treats us to a bit of yodelling that borders both the beautiful and the absurd. Along by the mailboxes down the street a little strip of cove becomes a temporary space for some bird nose flute recordings, whilst back on his property he picks up electronic magnet field recordings using a handy Soma Ether V2. Recordings of the utility box in his driveway and the fuse box in his basement seem to be haunted by the ghost of Merzbow, but we'll leave that problem to Nova Scotia's parapsychologists. In short, in Darcy's own words... "if I can't leave home, I figure I can at least expand my limited location by exploring the multiple realms of sound all around me. All this to say, the album is really a meditation on place..."     ...   All music written & recorded by Chik White   ---     Mastered by Oliver Barrett   '207' was originally commissioned by Kraak Records for their Spring Brakers video series.

Lament in Three Parts was improvised and recorded on April 30th in the quiet bunker-esque venue, Ausland, just 20 doors down from where I live in Berlin. Additional processes and editing were completed on May 1st 2020. Special thanks to Cafe Oto, Ausland, Billy Steiger and Petter Eldh for their part in the making of this release, and especially to Sophie Fetokaki for her generous writing in response to the music. Her foreword and Billy Steiger's artwork accompany this release. I would also like to acknowledge Catherine Lamb, Rebecca Lane and Johnny Chang whose music, playing and friendship has made a significant mark on my own meanderings in to new musical territories in recent years. Extract from the foreword, 'Thoughts for Lucy: a foreword to Lament in Three Parts' - by Sophie Fetokaki: "...What is it about the telling that provides comfort or consolation? Perhaps it's partly in the curative power of naming, an act that can bring our experience into relief and ward off the depressive forces of nothingness, formlessness, and monstrous plasticity. There are also other forms of telling that are not lexical, and our too-easy separation of sound and speech, music and words, belies the existence of something deeply healing and transformational that grounds and unifies them both." - read the full text here (pdf). www.lucyrailton.comwww.sophiefetokaki.comwww.billysteiger.com