Back catalogue: All genres

Review: These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound is Richard Skelton's first for Phantom Limb and the latest in a long line of standout releases from the cultured British star. It features plenty of the hallmarks of his signature sound - strings, pianos and acoustic instruments all mired in audio dust and dirt to make for tense pieces of electronic experimentation and ambient that can freak you out or calm you down depending on his mood. The artist again here uses signal-degradation "as a means of reflecting the processes of decay and transformation in the natural world" and the results are compelling.

Review: Polish composer Aleksandra Slyz is back with a second album, a first on Warm Winters, that sees her "finding connections between acoustic and synthetic sounds, creating rich drone structures, slowly but intensely pulsing and resonating within the surrounding space and within each listener." The physicality of the instruments used in the record also defines its sound, from the way fingers press down on bows to the air pressure of each sax note. Across three pieces, it makes for an emotionally impactful record in which you can almost see the musician at work as you listen, such is the palpable playing style.

Review: This adaptation of The Wizard of Oz features standout tracks like 'Ease on Down the Road' and 'Home' which blend r&b, funk and pop to create a fresh and dynamic sound for the legendary movie. The album's innovative approach redefined musical theatre while also setting a new standard for African-American productions. Its energetic compositions and modernised storytelling resonated with audiences which in turn gave rise to a landmark film adaptation. The production remains a significant milestone in musical history and what better way to relive it than with this vinyl version.

Review: After being commissioned to produce several 'interlocking' ambient pieces for an art gallery piece in LA, Brian Foote and Sage Caswell decided to take the concept of 'audience crossfading' to the next level, creating an entire ambient album using a particular sonic technique. Over five long pieces from 'Waterwheel' to 'Smiley', their aim was to evoke the feeling of bodies moving in thoroughfares. The tracks are long-exposed movements captured in ambient space, blending rhythms and soundscapes for chillout rooms that exist only in memory now.

Review: This first album from Sons proves them adept at a range of techno soundscapes, It was written as the soundtrack to a movie that does not exists and it plays out with a great sense of narrative because of that. It tells the story of Anna and her escape from earth to a new planet, Seylanide. The record features well-received singles such as 'Identity' (ft. Sun) and 'Eternity' (ft. OCB), complete with plenty of rich layers of emotive pads, deep basslines and melodic vibes that have your mind cast adrift in a cosmic abyss.

Review: The first release on SOS Gunver Ryberg's own imprint, Arterial Recordings, is a great example of how wrong assumptions and presumptions can be when based on labels. And no, we don't mean record labels. Ryberg is an award-winning sound artist, but what do we mean when we say things like that? Is it the dense theoretical and conceptual sonics designed solely as installations within the institutions of art itself, or something more tangibly recognisable as 'music' itself? Maybe it's neither. It can definitely be both. Spine proves that last point wonderfully. Yes, this is electronic music at the bleeding edge, strange aural worlds crafted from noises and gadgets that could be the controls of a space craft from the future for all the average person might know. But the tracks here are definite and deliberately designed to be heard as tracks, whether that's the serene, floating-past-the-cosmos ambience of 'Sensuous Sky', or the frantic breakbeat tension of the title track.

Review: Dean Honer and Kevin Pearce - a pair of musicians and critics enmeshed in the British music landscape since day dot - grew so sick of the manufactured children's songs they'd heard on vinyl and CD over the years that they decided to create their own version, albeit with a twist. 'The Sound Of Science' is a tongue-in-cheek rendition of this unique utility music format, designed to bypass its tendency to quickly "become a form of torture" for the adults in each other's families. Instead, this album is fun for both the kids and the parents, with science and astronomy forming the bulk of its themes.

Review: Originally from Rome, Italy, Marco Antonio - the man behind the mask, or the MaSpaventi moniker - relocated to Amsterdam in 2007. A switch from one historic and stunning city to another, in doing so he landed himself smack bang in one of the most vibrant and pro-active electronic music communities and industries on the planet. Suffice to say, then, he's both in the right place and the wrong place to get noticed, with a healthy scene also meaning lots and lots of noise to shout over.
As Vicino Lontano proves, the man in question - who also teaches electronic music production software Ableton alongside other lessons at music schools, including Abbey Road Institute - isn't really up for shouting at all. His work speaks volumes and much louder than most anyway, through sci-fi-hued cosmic dance floor stuff, space age drone, off-centre Italo, and futuristic ambient of the highest possible order.

Review: Mad-heads, rave veterans and lovers of having their brains rewired by previously unexplored sonic realms unite, because here comes the first of four, yes four, new albums from the fantastic freak of nature that is Special Request. His 'What Time Is Love? Sessions' arrives in several different formats this month and across six sizzling tracks that re-wire the KLF's hit of that name, he taps into everything from "ephemeral ambiance to barnstorming hardcore, pummelling house to pointillist trance" and does so with a mix of the surreal and the psychotic, the psychedelic and the downright ridiculous. It's mental, and we love it.

Review: As you know if you have followed the work of Special Request aka Paul Woolford, it often comes in huge bursts and across several releases at once. So it is that this year the one-man production machine is to drop not one but a four-album run over the next 12 months, all independently. Quite what he runs on we do not know but we need some because once again on this limited clear vinyl version of his 'What Time Is Love? Sessions' he taps into the future as he rewires the musical DNA of rave, techno, bass and jungle into tracks that make your brain fizz and your body move. Unreal work once more from this unstoppable force.

Review: If you're not familiar with Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan's SQURL project, then it's time to rectify that. Over the past eight years, the two interdisciplinary creatives have been touring some of the most prestigious venues in the world (Art Institute of Chicago, Elizabeth Hall, London, Center Pompidou, Paris), presenting live scores to the experimental films of Dadaist pioneer Man Ray. Can you guess where this is going? As Logan puts it: "It's a journey we want to take the audience on, illuminating themes throughout these films. They are discrete, but there are also recurring echoes throughout the whole programme". Music For Man Ray presents some of those spellbinding ideas-as-soundtracks in an album form. Tunes and noises created and developed to accompany the film Return To Reason, when experienced as standalone audio it emphasises just how captivating the tones are.

Review: Shame On Dry Land (Syndabocken) is an award-winning Swedish movie that picked up the Guldbagge prize for best feature film soundtrack in 2024. That soundtrack has been written and produced by sometime Studio Barnhus associate and mythical young artist Baba Stiltz. It arrives on vinyl for the first time here and is a dense affair with plenty of esoteric stylings as you would expect of a man with a famously hard-to-pin-down sound. It goes from heavy and dark to airy and Mediterranean and needs to be heard nice and loud for the best effect.

Review:  Zaheer Gulamhusein (Xvarr, Waswaas) and Justin Tripp (Georgia) are String and they make the sort of ambient music that is so absorbing you lose all concept of space and time. This latest limited edition pouting comes on tape and vinyl and will suck you in deeper than ever to w world of subtle pulses, sonar bleeps, distant machine hiss and cancerous ambient that is like a beatless counterpart to the most sci-fi work of Detroit don Jeff Mills. Sounds are elusive as they come and go, rhythms only implied, and horizons the work of your own imagination.

Review: You don't need to know that Craobh Haven was made during a one week residency at a tiny cabin in a remote Scottish village of the same name. One play through of the latest stunner to land on the ever-excellent ambient institution SWIMS and it'll feel like you were there in person. A witness to the creation of this strangely natural-feeling, highly technically-crafted, six tracker. Everything about the work by London-based musician and visual artist Loz Keystone and Glaswegian synth explore and jazz trumpeter Christos Stylianides feels in the right place. Its warm and fuzzy but vast and windswept. It's avant garde and abstract, but rounded and complete. It's incredibly inviting and slowly hypnotic. Distant samples of inaudible chatter and looped melodic refrains. Distorted walls of noise masking the patient power of aching brass. You get the point.

Review: Japanese ambient owes a great debt to Masahiro Sugaya, whose work has been re-assessed and taken on all the more importance in recent years. The now cult musician and composer released his The Long Living Things album in 1988 for the performing arts company he belonged to, Pappa Tarahumara. Though it was overlooked for many years, it is now in sharp focus and gets a deserving reissue on vinyl for the first time ever by P-Vine which he also belonged to, and has long been overlooked by all but a few enthusiastic music lovers. One track from it was Grammy-nominated and rich of the record is minimalistic, with soft interwoven sequences that keep you afloat amongst the warming pads.

Review: Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones head back into the studio and fire up the Eurorack modular synth for a third adventure into the great unknown of sounds and noises seemingly once heard in another dimension before being brought back to planet Earth with the hope of recreating whatever the rumbling or bleeping was. Electronic Music Improvisations Vol.3 is exactly that, building on the self-imposed musical parameters that guided the preceding two parts. Deep, otherworldly, vast, and unique, the beauty of Miller and Jones' Sunroof project is how it's also the opposite of all those words. Sparse, pared back, familiar, very much born of manmade machines, since these endeavours began we've crossed through the looking glass into a world that often feels like it's spinning out of human control, not least with the advent of music entirely made by AI. Here's proof people can still take complete charge of their creative process.

Review: A new chapter in the 'zen music for disturbed souls' series, Erik K. Skodvin adds to his legacy as alter-ego Svarte Greiner with another stunning EP that has plenty of layers to dive into, albeit on the surface seems constructed in an ultra-minimalistic way. Understanding the nuances takes a little background reading, but before that let's talk sounds - reverse out fragments of cello, electric-acoustic improvisation, sparse, dark, almost bleak and certainly a little but eerie. If that sounds intriguing enough, the process behind it should seal the deal. 'Devolving Trust' is actually a live recording, captured in the depths o the Schneider Brewery, Berlin. A setting the producer himself describes as "wet and hollow" with "long reverb", it's aural effect defines the music that's here. 'Devolve' then takes those tones and rethinks, retouches and reorganises them with similar gravitas.

Review: For their new album Lust 1, Voice Actor's Noa Kurzweil joins Welsh producer Squu for a woozy, intimate exploration of ambient sensuality. Following the sprawling Sent From My Telephone, this 45-minute work feels more focused but just as dreamlike with Kurzweil's hushed, often unintelligible vocals hovering over Squu's glowing pads and dubby pulses. With additional glitchy textures, soft hits and melancholic drones, the work forms a world that teeters between erotic hypnosis and emotional exhaustion. Highlights like 'You' and 'Nekk' blend vague ambience with jolting detail while pushing the sung-spoke-whispered words to the brink of abstraction. This is an album rich in fleeting emotions, tactile textures and forgotten memories.

Review: Twilight of the Gods features one of many evocative soundtracks from Hans Zimmer, Omer Benyamin and Steven Doar. Between them, they bring a sweeping cinematic scope to an epic narrative with their usual sense of masterful scoring. Zimmer and his collaborators blend orchestral intensity with atmospheric depth here to enhance the mythic tone of the story. From haunting melodies to powerful crescendos, this soundtrack captures the emotional gravity and grandeur of the gods' twilight moments and each track layers intricate instrumentation that pulls listeners into a vivid, immersive world that echoes the film's themes of fate, power and destiny.