KALLE WYRSCH — ZUM VERSCHWINDEN GEBRACHT

Sounding like Sir Arthur from Ghosts 'n Goblins has exchanged slaying monsters for a lovely car ride along an open stretch of Autobahn, 'Zum Verschwinden gebracht' is the new single from dungeon synth-aligned musicmaker Kalle Wyrsch.

Atypically for the genre, the artwork features a contemporary cemetery instead of a fantasy graveyard — rightly so, being the first single from a new project by Wyrsch exploring "aesthetic concepts behind the architecture of the dead, strange customs and trivial folklore of burial rites and the liminality of graveyards".

Bass plays a propulsive octave groove while clipped drum machine percussion keeps time, giving a distinct Neue Deutsche Welle feel to this morsel of music. While this provides the vehicle for the music, the melodies that are conveyed along with it retain a sense of adventure still, muted chiptune-adjacent wanderings that evoke small doses of wonder and melancholy all at once. Bookending the piece, birdsong: fragile reality between far-flung, funereal thoughts.

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• 🔔 'Zum Verschwinden gebracht' (translating roughly to 'made to disappear') is taken from the forthcoming album Der letzte Garten & Das erste Geheimnis. Promising a "documentary-like approach to the dungeon synth genre", it is a split between Kalle Wyrsch and Topograph (Thomas Helm). It's out 9th September.

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VARIOUS ARTISTS — EPHEMERAL & FLEETING - MODULAR MUSIC OF JAPAN

In a digital world of AI and algorithms, analogue electronic music is as human as it gets. Through it we see human chaos, in the form of whim and curiosity, erupting in the midst of circuitry and order.

Any given modular setup is tangled with any number of wires, more and more wires connecting to various other boxes and controllers with buttons and dials and switches. In a sea of perfect glassy screens and haptic feedback, of code that does the heavy lifting, these physical objects are almost as anachronous as typewriters.

Such analogue antiquity is at the heart of Ephemeral & Fleeting - Modular Music of Japan, a new compilation album that arrives to us from Tokyo-based ato.archives ("an archive and a label"). Curated by Tokyoite and ambient producer Yumi Iwaki, the album encapsulates this duality of chaos and order: the ordered circuitry of analogue objects and the ordered mathematics of music and its rhythms、 versus the chaos of creativity and the random results that form through careful manipulation of modular synths.

As such, Ephemeral & Fleeting is an album of two halves, fittingly separated by Straytone (who also runs the label Obscure Sound Research) and their two-sided bass-heavy track 'Χάος Order Chaos'. Brooding and baleful, it begins quietly with insectoid chirrupings, which develops into a creeping flood of noise, whooshing like a stormy sea; an intense series of chords around halfway signals a lift-off into the sky — a cosmic orchestra tuning up before a symphony. Distorted feedback-esque melodies play us out with a noise-adjacent lament, sub-bass pulsing like a distant star. It is the album's pivotal point, before which we have (relative) order and lightness, and after which chaos plays out in darker tracks.

It's followed up with two contrasting tracks: 'exhale' by Chie Otomi, which is this awakening within the void – sparse and meandering, Kenichi Takagi's track, 'SBERM', which with juddering analogue thunder, balances rhythmic clattering order with experimental clouds of chaos, glimmering synths and waves of noise coinciding. Think sun gleaming behind mutating grim-grey clouds.

Two other tracks bear have this opposing relationship, in this instance appearing to mirror each other as a kind of pre- and post-track-five version of the other. 'Coalescence' by Endurance (Nara-based musicmaker Joshua Stefane) is expansive and cold, with icy electronic tricklings like the thawing of some giant, ancient bio-mechanical machine.

Then that same frigid atmosphere arises again with 'mete' by tatata5 (part of the label/collective Hasshiki), except by this time whatever was thawed in Endurance's track is well and truly alive, synths a solid chime yet fluid at the same time, distant howls and hoots as if heard within frosty burrows that tunnel like angular veins through a gargantuan living entity.

Order can be seen represented in 'A Gentle Feeling', the compilation opener by Yu Ogu. Feeling akin to the hirajōshi koto tuning, the guitar arpeggio forms a comfortable counterpoint with wandering high-register melodies. It is perhaps the most "conventional" of the tracks on Ephemeral & Fleeting.

Elsewhere, and for much of this exploration of the modular music of Japan, we hear the disarray of anlogue sounds arrange themselves into order — either through audio trickery or else via human intervention. For example, there is the seemingly random pattern of percussion and shifting sounds of 'Sound of uncertainty #001', but Jun H.'s track melds these into a legible beat, a complicated polyrhythm of glitching intricacies that form themselves into an illusory groove. Again, the track has a "partner" in the form of 'chronofracture' by analogue veteran HATAKEN: a sci-fi collage of disparate beats and propulsive rattlings.

Compilation curator Yumi Iwaki also plays with these percolating percussive sounds. In her track 'Styx Drift' they're like a colony of microscopic pebbles pulled along by some heavenly version of the track's namesake river. Its softness is a satisfying juxtaposition to Straytone's exploration of chaos.

But in the swirl of spells cast through these electronic devices, these wires and chips, are the humans who wield this modern magic. This is perhaps most obvious on compilation closer 'Fable of the Transient Soil', Chihei Hatakeyama's electronic tone poem on the theme of flux.

As it begins, we hear Hatakeyama, the human at work, hands moving, switching, turning dials, until around the two-minute mark, when it begins to sound as though we tuned in to an interdimensional frequency. It moves on, soaked in reverb that appears infinite but with a raw intimacy of something close at hand, in the same room.

It's a fitting finale to the harmony that has been struck throughout the compilation — the harmony between chaos and order, that is. Whether the resulting sound is classed as ambient music, or if it can be neatly filed away under "glitch" or the catch-all of experimental, Ephemeral & Fleeting has showcased a precarious, precious balance between modular synths and the mortal minds that use them.

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• 🔔 You may purchase Ephemeral & Fleeting - Modular Music of Japan over on Bandcamp, either digitally or on cassette tape.
• 🔔 The album release comes with an annoucmenet of the festival Ambient / Week (4-10th May), put on by "festival platform" MIMINOIMI. Several artists featured on this compilation will also make appearances, including Chihei Hatakeyama and tatata5, the latter of whom will be presenting her own event series within the festival, titled blue moment.

  The lineup includes Inoyama Land, Lawrence English, Masayoshi Fujita, Shuta Hiraki, Tatsuro Murakami, Toshi Tsuchitori, among others. For more information see the MIMINOIMI site and also this Resident Advisor page.

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☟ Jun H. Internet Presence ☟
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IRL — QUEST MASTER (SUPPORT ARCANE OUBLIETTE, PORTCULLIS) AT KOLA, PORTSMOUTH ⚔️ 5/4/26

BY ALEX GIBSON
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

VENUE: KOLA, PORTSMOUTH, UK
DATE: 5/04/2026
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX GIBSON

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Beneath clinking glasses and moody electric candle-lights, wizard hats and Renaissance dresses sway to the descending Korg staccatos of ARCANE OUBLIETTE. This magician, hunched over his synthesizer in resplendent red robes, transforms this lively Portsmouth dungeon into a glittering, mesmerising tavern.

Attendees chatter in low, excited voices, bobbing and teetering as Arcane Oubliette enchants the room, one wavering sawtooth chord at a time. Mellow arpeggios trickle up and down against ambient blasts of synthesizer organs. It is a curious blending of medieval ruins and twentieth century videogame OSTs, simultaneously comfortingly nostalgic and daringly unfamiliar — the halcyon days of long summers, fantasy RPGs, and make-believe. He beckons us to join him on this adventure.

Scrying with synth: Arcane Oubliette takes to the stage

From time to time, this dungeon master triumphantly raises Easter eggs above his head. The sword in the stone parallel is not lost on this crowd, who cheer in excitement each time an egg is raised. For a lot of attendees, Arcane Oubliette is their introduction to the vast, sprawling world of dungeon synth. And what better introduction than one which hurls Easter chocolates across an ecstatic crowd, their arms up in cheer, their fingers splayed.

PORTCULLIS, a one-man fellowship of keyboards, guitar synthesizers, and drums, usurps Arcane Oubliette to draw us further into the mysticism of fantasy synth. As Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 Lord of the Rings animation projects onto the backdrop, Portcullis leads the audience in chants and cheers, bellowing a ‘HEY!’ into the crowd, who – their voices canyon-deep and their fists tightly clenched – reply with a ‘HO!’. The audience might as well be a brotherhood of dwarves egressing their subterranean domain.

Portcullis weaves magic with a digital guitar and tabor

Between pounding drumbeats and enchanting refrains on his oddly-shaped guitar synthesizer, Portcullis’ call to adventure is a tranquilising contrast to the epic ambience of Arcane Oubliette’s atmospheric electronica. Here, audiences sway to instrumental odes on gentle seaside life, Tolkien’s Shire, and the South Coast’s own Hiorne Tower, projected in fantastical raven’s view behind the master musician. As Portcullis strolls up and down the synth fretboard in gentle, mesmerising licks, we can almost hear the lapping of waves against the shore, or the lackadaisical dancing of grass blades beneath Gothic towers.

Lowering the drawbridge into ruins of ancient magic is Australian dungeon-synth sorcerer QUEST MASTER, a warlock of dark ambience and textual synths. Quest Master ensnares the audience in a swirling cauldron of N64-era Korg keyboards, imitation cathode ray graphics, and dark fantasy-inspired harmonies. Oscillating between the sepulchral and the sylvan, Quest Master’s setlist strides confidently through a nostalgic fantasy land, from ‘Holy Glass Monolith of Rose River Canyon’ to ‘The Radiant Glow of the Submerged Temple’ (both on his 2021 album The Twelve Temples).

Dungeon synth stalwart Quest Master concentrating on his spells

Where many other dungeon synth maestros – including the UK’s own Arcane Oubliette and Portcullis – incorporate robes or crowns or on-stage roleplay into their repertoire, Quest Master enchants the room with his epic instrumentals alone. Like the most pensive wizard, he is silent in this darkened stronghold. One moment, the crowd sways with shut eyes to the crystalline, plinking keyboard drip-drops of a cascading waterfall. The next, they rock out to epic organ drones, led by hand and horse through crumbling cathedrals and cursed towers.

In between these epic juxtapositions of serenity and noise, the crowd chatters. Quest Master is not merely a musical moment but an enveloping experience. The audience themselves, enrobed in wizard hats and medieval dresses, understand dungeon synth as a soundtrack to their own lives. This is their tavern — as Quest Master warps through his blending of PlayStation cyberspace and Nintendo RPGs, they drink, debate, and dance.

In these mellow interims between dark wizards and elven crusades, the audience take each other’s hands and twirl. Others pump their fists to the pounding dungeon drumbeats. No two people dress the same. All dance together. This is dark magic. This is dungeon synth.

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ANADOL & MARIE KLOCK — RENTRER À LA MAISON

Turkish sound artist Anadol (Gözen Atila) and French writer-musician Marie Klock have teamed up once again teamed up to create an upcoming album, Manivelles (May 15). The first single, 'Rentrer à la maison', also arrives in video form, a wonderous home movie-style affair in grainy VHS quality that very much fits the vibe of the song — the drear brick walls of the suburbs; driveways and gardens; dad is washing the dog.

Klock sings of the trials we face when confronted with that most comforting yet most alienating of things: returning home. How far we come only to arrive home again! Whether it's Christmas or someone's birthday or popping over for a cup of tea, to sit around the same table and hear the same stories and feel the same way as the child version of you all over again — a bittersweet tragicomedy (or comitragedy?).

With characteristic Klock humour, the lyrics for 'Rentrer à la maison', for the chorus at least, translate to

Whenever you go home
You start off with great intentions
And then, shove ‘em up your ass
Nice and deep, nice and deep

For some, I imagine that sounds about right. And with the vocal melody and the accompanying soundscape, the song has the melodic drone of a moralistic folksong or classic chanson, while during the verse the vocal skips over the lines like beat poetry.

Atila's instrumental work features time-worn analogue synth and thin drum machine beat, the kind of sounds that might emerge from a dusty childhood keyboard inherited from some uncle or another. It's as if the pair, one having accompanied the other to their parents' house, actively composed and recorded the song during such a visit, barricaded in a tiny time capsule of a bedroom and won't emerge until everyone has mercifully gone to bed.

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• 🔔 The video for 'Rentrer à la maison' was created by video artist and film-maker Timo Schierhorn and was produced by Hamburg-based filmmaker collective Auge Altona. Unfortunately we do not have a name for the dog. [Edit: The dog's name is Fips, and his owner was Schierhorn's grandfather; it's a special posthumous appearance from them both.]
• 🔔 Anadol & Marie Klock's new album Manivelles is scheduled for release 15th May on Hamburg label Pingipung. You may pre-order it in vinyl and digital form from Bandcamp.

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CHINO YOSHIO — そのうちいいことあるよ

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'Someday, something good will happen' — so says the translated title of Japanese composer Chino Yoshio's latest piece. These words form part of the poignant refrain sung by collaborator Michiru (Michiru Tamaki), whose vocals ring with far-off hope. Michiru, a lyricist and doujin singer, brings more than a hint of anime OST to the song, resulting in a decidedly J-pop aesthetic.

But Yoshio's ambient approach to composition results in something different to pure J-pop — something meditative and magical, with the warm silky tones of his synth creating a smooth texture that underpins everything, wrapping it in a gossamer veil. Particularly evocative are the strings provided by MIZ (Mizuho Mori) — a prolific composer and musician who with credits in the classical, pop and video game music (including Final Fantasy Record Keeper) worlds.

Lyrically and sonically, Yoshio pieces it together like a modern-day, minimalist passacaglia: sombre and somewhat serious, yes, but also an optimistic mantra for simple wishes.

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• 🔔 If you really enjoyed 'そのうちいいことあるよ' by Chino Yoshio you can even purchase it on vinyl, if you like.

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MIDORI JAEGER — EXASPERATE

'Exasperate' feels like a heist. It's the way cellist midori jaeger plays her instrument in a syncopated dance of pizzicato swirl, body-popping its way through a what might as well be a tangle of red lasers and tip-toeing through shadows. It's fitting, given that jaeger says the song is centred on the "overpowering urge to break away from old patterns, to so desperately want the new at any cost, but to feel overwhelming regret for things lost." It makes sense that we have this sense of minimal noir jazz, like a break-in, except this is a break-out — from the old and what no longer serves, but to what, and at what cost?

"I’ll leave this door wide open / To remember how you filled my days, oh but now / I want something unfamiliar, unpredictable" she sings, amidst a lyrical labyrinth delivered in jaeger's cool tones and tumbling vocal style.

On a broadly jazz-inflected canvas, the London-based composer paints a bristling blend of organic and artifial, with icy reverb on her woody cello lines and understated synth gently blooping alongside intricate clattering percussion (provided by co-producer Felix Higginbottom). It feels earthy yet augmented, an idiosyncracy that more or less reflects the song's raison d'etre: restlessness, the desire and constant push for newness. Though sonically harmonious, this cocktail of living instruments and the synthetic figuratively creates the tension inherent in an unnatural pairing, a desperation like a tree wanting to uproot and sprint off into the sunset.

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• 🔔 'Exasperate' is taken from (Un)planted (due out 9th March), the result of ten days of recording in Lisbon. It's the first in a pair of upcoming EPs by midori jaeger.
• 🔔 Another track has already been released from the EP, namely 'dark green' — gentler and warmer than 'exasperate', but with a similar minimalism and that same characteristic stamp of living-and-breathing crossed with buttons-and-waveforms.
• 🔔 The EP's confessional cover art (as seen above) is the work of Glasgow-based photographer Inigo Blake.

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SLAKE MOTHS — AFFECTION

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How so dirge-y a song, so despondant and swept up in a sense of looming despair, can be so exciting is only down to the skill in its execution. The simplicity at work in the moody and minimalist 'Affection' by Glasgow musical entity and human beings Slake Moths is part of this. They describe their music as "melancholic and electronic, a result of listening to too much Neu! and the like during their lost adolescences in the sunlit uplands of North Lanarkshire."

Not a bad description. Splashes of synth move in static ripples, ending in resonating one-note skirls, above a bubbling column of glossy but pitted bass. All of it cycles over a stoic, disjointed half-skeleton of a beat, the slow scuttle of hi hats, taut kicks and fibia-tapping snare clicks.

Halfway through, the simplest of switches: an addition of slow arpeggio of gentle boops, but set rhythmically so they cut in syncopation with the beat. If this is affection, it is unreturned, unfulfilled, clouded and cursed — apt enough for a music-making unit named after giant interdimensional mind-eating butterflies. Indeed the track feels very much like an evolved form of witch house; combined with the occultish artwork, the adjacency is clear to see.

But it wasn't always so minimal. The band tells yes/no via email that 'Affection' was "originally a lot more complex and layered, but we pared it down to just a couple of tracks and slowed it way down, which seemed to bring out all the ambiguity and sinister feeling." It's the first track taken from their upcoming self-titled debut album, due out this year on Slake Moths' own microlabel, Firth Records.

Live shows may be forthcoming, they continue, if interest is there. "The internet might have made music omnipresent, but performance, proper theatrics, is still a rare quantity. If people are fine going to a cinema to be made uncomfortable, to be disturbed, then why not a concert?" the band says. "We have a great many ideas, most of which are probably unsound and ill-advised, but it would be nice to try them out on-stage."

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• 🔔 'Affection' is taken from Slake Moths' debut album, also called Slake Moths, due out sometime in 2024.

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[PREMIERE] MARCUS HERNE — FORMS

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"I have always been fascinated by evolution," says UK-based composer Marcus Herne, and it certainly shows. 'Forms' is a track that begins as practically nothing — whispering wind with glimmers of sound like dappled light — and evolves into something momentous.

What starts as ambient haze, this fragile, pastoral scene with shimmering synthetic birdsong (almost) gradually grows into something more complex and nuanced. A twinkle of piano here, a croon of cello there; analogue synths tumble in from the distance, falling like angular rain, a hail of colorful, textured static. Finally 'Forms' gallops into life.

It's an apt title, as each formless element entering into earshot is sculpted into something recognisable — that rainy synth, for example, rolls into a galloping frenzy of melody. It also refers to the interplay of organic and artificial sounds, something that Herne is eager to blur the lines between: "My sound lives somewhere in the expanded middle," he says.

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• 🔔 'Forms' is taken from Marcus Herne's Forms EP, which is out today. Listen to it over on Spotify.

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PICTUREPLANE — AVALANCHE

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There’s a cocktail of influences at work in ‘Avalanche’ by Pictureplane (aka Travis Egedy), a track as hefty as its title suggests. But aside from the macrocosmic weight of Egedy’s music — the crunchy synths, the industrial-strength drums, the clusters of metallic breakbeats — there is the microcosm of the avalanche beyond the shattered pines: the close-up of soft snow. Here be bright synth, hushed waves of ambience.

This creative contrast is an apt soundscape for tale of love and loss spun by the lyrics, sung in a caressing, guttaral whisper. These also give an easter egg-esque hint to influences at work on Egedy: “I’ve been in the garage again / listening to dungeon synth”. Accordingly, while the bridge features crushing wobbles of distortion, there is a mythic flavour, a fantastical element, infused in the music. It’s an avalanche alright, but it may not have even happened in this dimension.

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• 🔔 'Avalanche' is the opening track from Pictureplane's latest album DOPAMINE, which is out now on 100% Electronica. You may stream or purchase it on Bandcamp, if you like.

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JODÖVADE — IT’S NOT IGNORING YOU IF I TURN MY PHONE OFF

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Behind the eminently evocative title of this track, Jodövade (aka Jodie Primadonna) conjures more than the simple action of deliberate social denial. The world of ‘It’s Not Ignoring You If I Turn My Phone Off’ is expansive and glacial, the bass boom providing a gloopsome contrast to the playful mundanity of the modular synth chords and melody, padding like phantomatic footsteps throughout; the wibbling, wordless vocal chops like unheeded words of someone you wish not to heed. (Why do any of us turn our phones off, right?)

An additional clatter of beats and the angularity of those synths give Jodövade’s track an excavatory feel, the twist and turn of cavernous corridors — the sonic shoulds and coulds of life.

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• 🔔 'It's Not Ignoring You If I Turn My Phone Off' is out on Contre Jour Records. You may alternatively stream and/or purchase the track on Jodövade's Bandcamp.

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TSUNDERE TWINTAILS — HAPPY WEDNESDAY

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Part inescapable groove, part pastel playground, ‘happy wednesday’ by apparent composer of “comfort synth” tsundere twintails is a tumble through an upbeat world washed with cute video game sensibilities. The organic beat rattles and thuds alongside FM bass, bold and booming as the backdrop to the soft and colourful gloss of glassy keys.

The whole track is characterised by small noises, giving the perspective that somehow it is smaller than other sounds: a car going by, shutting the fridge door, K-pop. Accordingly, synths like virtuoso birdsong swaying into the air, and scattered vocal chops wobble and snap, adding humanoid minutiae to proceedings.

In an interview with Real Simple, forensic psychiatrist Varun Choudhary said: "Subconsciously, we positively associate tiny objects with the security and comfort they brought us in an earlier time in our lives.” Does the same go for small noises? If so, well, then this really is comfort synth.

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• 🔔 If you liked 'happy wednesday' you'll be happy to know there's more where that came from. And if you really liked it, you can purchase it on Bandcamp.

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FIVEIGHTHIRTEEN — SOME QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERS

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Pulsing to the velcro snap of hip-hop infused drums, yawning ambient synths roar at the base of fiveighthirteen’s ‘some questions are answers’. But being the chimeric track it is, there’s more to it than that. It’s a mix of sensitive drones and legible grooves, an urgent, infiltrative bassline, a shuffling math rock spirit, with an indefinable synth melody played in soft, mythic sweeps.

The bass becomes distorted, rampaging in a steady gallop in the track’s most propulsive parts, with officious vocal samples (reminiscent of Public Service Broadcasting) topping it off like a psychedelic trip through archival ruins centuries from now.

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• 🔔 'some questions are answers' is taken from fiveighthirteen's upcoming album a fever of rays due out on 13th August.

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ÆGIR — LOOK AT PRETTY THINGS

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To hear something from Iceland that isn’t solely gently electronic or obviously introspective is a huge gulp of fresh air. ‘Look At Pretty Things’ begins with a mesmeric fumble through tracts of bubbling synth, an oscillating hot tub of thick relaxation, but this serves to lull your ears into a state of malleability.

For Icelandic musicmaker Ægir, clearly this is the ideal ground on which plant his bumper crop of barrelling breakbeats. These come into earshot like a mob of metallic beetles — the snarling snap of snares slapping the air while the kick drum thunders and quakes.

Ægir’s background as a hardcore drummer gives the percussion a living-and-breathing feel; the sense of direction in the beat, despite its speed, is expertly crafted. Overall, ‘Look At Pretty Things’ is a cross between an alien abduction and a sweaty basement gig: weird, but 100% worth it.

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• 🔔 This track is taken from Ægir’s album The Earth Grew Uncertain, released back in June on Reykjavik’s very own Why not? Plötuútgáfa! Records. Stream, purchase it on Bandcamp. There's also a video for 'Look At Pretty Things'.

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ODALIE — LES HYBRES

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A robust pizzicato arpeggio picks its way through the aching air of ‘Les Hybres’, a hybrid track by French musicmaker Odalie. Urgency arrives as ticking modular synth chimes in like a clock ticking too quickly through the seconds, the bow now drawing across the strings and giving an extra richness to the track.

It’s not just this difference in organic sounds though, but the subsequent evolution of the track as the synthesiser grows into a many limbed beast, a creature of plasma that tumbles and twists as the cello strains and scratches below. Human and machine, soft and harsh, ‘Les Hybres’ is the exploration of biomechanical creativity.

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• 🔔 Taken from Derrière l'écran, out now. Listen and buy (if you like) on Bandcamp.

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KIWOKUZA — 茶摘み

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⌾ LISTEN TO 茶摘み BY KIWOKUZA ⌾

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A tumble of beats gallops at the heart of ‘茶摘み’ (Chatsumi; “tea picking”) by Tokyo troupe Kiwokuza. This kinetic foundation is perfectly complemented with a collage of synth: ebbing, electric chords, bouncing mid-level pops, rapid-firing trickling synth, soft melodies. The vocals also play a part in the track’s forward motion, wordless syllables keeping syncopated time.

But the vocals, or rather the lyrics, play a deeper part than their role in the rhythm section; as with many of Kiwokuza’s songs, ‘Chatsumi’ is a reworking of a folk song of the same name, bringing the unknown composition squarely into the modern day.

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• 🔔 Listen to more from Kiwokuza on their Spotify account.

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STH — FINISH CROSSING

⌾ LISTEN TO STH, FINISH CROSSING ⌾

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It's on a backdrop of skittering Geiger ambience, the fuzz and dust of the years made sound and launched burrowing into the air, swarms of Big Bang television static, that Russian producer sth (short for "synthetic sequencing") overlays an otherwise calm, relaxing atmosphere.

There is a panicked feel in 'Finish Crossing' — noticeable in the bio-mechanical micropercussion shredding the air like paper rain, and the gurgling güiro-esque calling out like unknown nocturnal insects, the arrhythmic deep bass thuds — but there is laid-back lounge cool that exists here, too.

Electric piano chords spread muted gleaming softness into the proceedings, with later melodies inching in from far-off corners, and the clonk and woozy resonance of a vibraphone providing horizontal jazz. sth summons wordless vocals from the noise, adds a few drops of elastic synth and punches in dynamic punctuation (an abrupt one second of quiet at 3:16) to complete this comprehensive study in atmospheric sample-made music.

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• 🔔 'Finish Crossing' is one of the tracks taken from sth's album 35mm, the musicmaker's latest release for Russian label Radiant Sound. Recorded between 2018 and 2020, it's dedicated to analogue people living in the digital world. You can download it or stream 35mm on the label's Bandcamp if you like.

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☟ sth Internet Presence ☟
⚘ soundcloud ⚘

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CUUSHE — MAGIC

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Cuushe is back. Recently she announced her upcoming album WAKEN via the fresh vitality of its first single, 'Hold Half'. This time around, it's 'Magic' that faces up to the grey piercing light of morning.

A slow steamroller of a beat thuds as the propulsion to 'Magic', rusted metallic percussion ticking faintly at its mechanical heart. A set of heavy-hearted piano chords plays a downcast reverb-laden refrain; "I just wanna die.." Cuushe's voice whispers from this fog of sound. Craggy synths crack in mournful reply, a glistening gloomy call-and-response.

Starting quietly, almost from another perspective, later in the track her vocals rise up, outraged: "Magic... Why are you so silent?" A question perhaps posed to the once-dreaming individual now scrutinised by reality. Lightness eclipsed. This refrain cuts through a wash of intense sounds, synths glittering and roaring together with the clatter of a bright guitar riff — a combination of playful concreteness and fantasy synthetic noise that runs through 'Magic'.

It's all been brought to life with a video by director Tao Tajima. On a backdrop of footage filmed in the wilds of Tibet, it's a tale of ghostly girls tied with string to insistent flapping birds, drawn in their phantomic pastels by sometime Cuushe collaborator Yoko Kuno. The music — mysterious yet methodical in its makeup — matches the stark marching mountains and vast empty tundra.

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• 🔔 'Hold Half' is taken from Cuushe's forthcoming new album Waken, set for release 20th November on her label home flau. Pre-order it over on the flau bandcamp.

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☟ Cuushe Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ wikipedia ⚘

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TAY NOEL — LAST TIME

⌾ LISTEN TO TAY NOEL, LAST TIME ⌾

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With its beat echoing in a collage of ticks and booms as if caught in a looping memory, 'Last Time' is a vessel of tender emotion tumbled along by the multifaceted rhythm of time. Sultry chords paint a soundscape with muted synth glow, a picked melody adding a gentle delicacy to the scene.

All the while, percussion rattles, cymbals whisper metallics into the air, a lone, full-bodied snare explodes in the near-distance laden with reverb. Created by Virginia producer Tay NoeL, 'Last Time' is a gleaming marvel of measured, minimal production.

"This song came from a personal experience," the producer tells yes/no via email. "It was inspired from a mutual breakup between me and a girl before I shipped off to the Navy."

A hollow synth melody that calls out every now and then, a hollow, flute-esque R&B-flavoured beacon that stretches out slowly above it all. It's a sound that summons the spiritual aesthetic of old-school lovesongs, but in its descending notes, its hint of a mournful tone, it becomes emotive.

"When I create I need to have an emotion in my mind, either from personal or what I believe the song is trying to show me," he adds.

"In better words, I speak my mind and emotions through my music."

The unpretentious simplicity of 'Last Time' — and indeed many of the instrumental soundtracks to emotion and experience to be found on Tay NoeL's album The Vibez: Chill Instrumentals — calls to mind the vaporwave sensitivity to scenes, times, places, fantasy visions, nostalgia. But there's one presiding difference: this music remains gloriously rooted in and inspired by reality.

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• 🔔 You can stream and/or download The Vibez: Chill Instrumentals, Tay NoeL's collection of instrumentals, over on Bandcamp.

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☟ Tay NoeL Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify

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PAUL COUSINS — THOUGHTS IN THE ETHER

⌾ LISTEN TO PAUL COUSINS, THOUGHTS IN THE ETHER ⌾

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Written "as a soundtrack to daydreaming," London-based producer Paul Cousins track 'Thoughts in the Ether' is all-encompassing. It toes a balance between warm pianos and gossamer threads of synth that tick with icy intent. It evolves organically, like the moment of pouring a drop of milk into the darkly glimmering black-gold depths of tea, or how smoke curls through the air.

"The scene changes reflect the different thoughts we have as we let our mind wander," Cousins says via email.

The gentle touches of piano, its chords and descending notes, serves as a heartfelt metronome to the shifting sounds. It may be intended as the soundtrack to daydreaming, but the slow piano melody seems to step into a fog of melancholy, a gentle realisation of deeper feelings when the mind steadies itself. The rhythm of the natural world floats past us, insubstantial; conversations, cars, convenience stores drift by; and inside, the slow tick of ourselves.

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• 🔔 Purchase, stream or otherwise admire 'Thoughts in the Ether' in hypertext stasis over on Bandcamp.
• 🔔 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfDABxWSF0Y There's a film to accompany 'Thoughts in the Ether'. Created by director Edward Harber, it's "an aerial study of the North Sea from Happisburgh in Norfolk, documenting a week in the evolving appearance of the water."

  Cousins adds: "I wanted the video to take place from a floating viewpoint, and to be similar to the phosphenes we might see when closing our eyes for a few minutes."

• 🔔 Inspired by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, the track artwork — following the form of videos on Cousins' Instagram account — was created in collaboration with London-based graphic artist Signalstarr.

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☟ Paul Cousins Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify

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FRANKIE REYES — ALMA DE LA PALMA

⌾ LISTEN TO FRANKIE REYES, ALMA DE LA PALMA ⌾

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Gabriel Reyes-Whittaker — perhaps beter known for his label Gifted & Blessed and making house music as GB — has a string of musicmaking aliases. One of these is Frankie Reyes, the name behind the wonderful 'Alma De La Palma' — a fuzzed-out dappling of emotive notes 'n' chords for a sort of supercharged classical-minimalist lounge music.

With its soft and muted textures, the bold stretches of delay further heightening its languorous glimmering feel, the scattering of sweeping notes, 'Alma De La Palma' feels as though you're looking down and something through water. The rippling surface skews the scene; a hint of warped beachside heat, too hot to move, sparkles around the edges.

The notes themselves, a distant disoriented tumble of longing, pull classical music through the portal of time, leaving the wooden depth and angularity of the piano behind and exchanging it for the magic of circuitry. And in the minor chords and descending notes of Frankie Reyes piece, there is something reminiscent of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 aka 'Moonlight Sonata'; a sense of being tethered to something vital that, once close at hand, has moved on and away.

Here we have a sort of contemporary vision of the Beethoven standard. It was called "a nocturnal scene, in which a mournful ghostly voice sounds from the distance" by the composer's student (and composer in his own right) Carl Czerny. While Frankie Reyes' piece may not be "mournful", there is a lamenting feel that shapes it as similar in tone.

Less highly regarded, but no less atmospheric, the Castle Theme from 1990 SNES game Super Mario World — complete with the soft somersaulting of synthesised keys — is something else that 'Alma De La Palma' is aesthetically akin to. The Frankie Reyes track bubbles with this same, now retro, subdued and synthetic sound, and twinned with its classical, if not romantic flair, this is a song that captivates not just with its intoxicated effects, but also with its heartfelt composition.

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• 🔔 'Alma De La Palma' is taken from Frankie Reyes' forthcoming album Originalitos, set for release via Stones Throw Records on 23rd October. You can pre-order the album and listen to 'Alma De La Palma' over and over again on Reyes' Bandcamp.

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☟ Frankie Reyes Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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