Back catalogue: Ambient/Drone

Review: Portraits GRM offer a split release between Beatrice Dillon and Hideki Umezawa, riffing on 'basho' and Baschet respectively. Dillon's 'Basho' is shaped on the mortar of a Japanese philosophical concept: conceived by Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida, basho describes a post-physical plane in which experiences and thoughts interconnect, dissolving subject-object distinctions. Dillon and Umezawa's music both resist fixity, reactivating the listener's attention by way electronic sounds stripped of origin. Umezawa's 'Still Forms', however, contrasts Dillon's firm-footed techno curtails with an entirely beatless piece, exploring the sonic potential of Baschet sound structures: experimental instruments developed in the 1950s by Bernard and Francois Baschet. Electroacoustic cognitions branch out like newly grown synapses on this fresh 12".

Review: Ensemble Modern and experimental, Berlin-based music composer and sound artist Hainbach come together for Primer, an album sourced from their 2022 Checkpoint concert and reworked in the studio with bassist Paul Cannon. The record transforms their fine live performance into a rich, immersive home listening experience with Hainbach's signature use of nuclear research gear, tape loops and vintage electronics weaving haunting, ever-shifting textures throughout. As such the pieces pulse with a sonic spark that captures the spirit of experimentation and collaboration and is taps into plenty of avant-garde thinking in its approach to drone and ambient.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


The fourth ever solo studio album from the acclaimed electronic artist and composer Laurel Halo, Atlas is intended to guide the listener through their own subconscious mind, coming as an intense sequence of soaring ambiences and beatless jazz montages. Finding its footing in instrumental improvisation by Halo herself, plus featuring artists Coby Sey, James Underwood and Lucy Railton - and then blowing any assumptive connotation with jazz out of the park with its subtly effected vocal processing and electronic tinkerings and washes thereafter - fans can be sure that this is not going to be your stock experimental affair.

Review: Talk about appropriate names. There's something about Helen Island that sounds as though it has been cast adrift, washed up, and left to establish its own thing. The Parisian enigma's work feels ghostly, haunted by a past that has vanished into the ocean mist. Whether they'll ever be reunited is the real question, but mystery is the joy here. Whether it's at the uptempo, synth pop hued 'Hot Zone Regular Day', or the weird and wonderful psyche-electronica-field style 'Forever Starts Today', breathy samples on 'Indivisibl' or the innocent contemporary classical-cum-ambient plucked strings and keys of 'Restless Lovers' and 'Gore Lore', the whole thing is a strange and beguiling ride through the outer reaches of popular music.

Review: Producer and guitarist Yutaka Hirasaka enjoyed a peaceful career pitstop with Breath, one of many to top up the beatsmith and cassette artist's now towering discography, and which now comes released on vinyl for the first time. Hirasaka's approach to music covers ambient, beat-driven landscapes, a format which has led him both to immersive live performance work and commercial ends. The homely aesthetic of Hirasaka's sound is heard once more on the wordless, texturally unperturbed Breath, which clears our airways far better than any shop-bought nostrum ever could, be it via the deconstructed guitar pan-plays of 'Orion' or the marzipan piano maunders of 'Amaretto'.

Review: A dream pairing from opposite corners of the sonic world, British synth polymath James Holden and Polish clarinettist Waclaw Zimpel land somewhere deep in the trance zone on this six-track debut. Opener 'You Are Gods' flickers into motion with modular ripples and clarinet spirals, setting a tone that's at once meditative and exploratory. 'Sunbeam Path' floats toward more radiant territory, while 'Time Ring Rattles' and 'Incredible Bliss' channel fast-paced, arpeggiated fervour. 'Sparkles, Crystals, Miracles' cools the system with ambient drift, before the closer melts into layered organ drama and a reverent air. The pair's range of instrumentation-violins, algoza flutes, lap steel, and modulars-gives each piece a handmade feel, but it's their shared commitment to improvisation and trance that binds it all. Rather than chase genre, they zero in on shared instinct-and let the current carry them.

Review: The Expanded Edition of Alan Howarth's They Live brings new life to the cult classic 1988 film's soundtrack. Howarth is well respected, not least for his collaborations with John Carpenter, and here captures the film's eerie tension and anti-consumerist themes with moody synths, bluesy motifs and minimalist sound design that is always hugely evocative. This expanded edition offers remastered audio and additional cues that heighten the mood and deepen the atmosphere. The music's hypnotic, slow-burning energy perfectly mirrors the paranoia and grit of the movie, so it's a landmark score in sci-fi and horror soundtracks.

Review: Trumpeter Chris Ryan Williams and cellist Lester St. Louis form HxH (H by H) are a boundary-pushing electroacoustic duo who work with acoustic instruments and electronics in real-time. Their debut album, released on KMRU's label OFNOT captures their expansive, sculptural sound, and it is one rooted in jazz, noise, classical and Black experimental traditions. Drawing comparisons to Sun Ra or Laurel Halo, their music is fluid, unpredictable and emotionally resonant. Tracks like 'Pyrex Vision' and 'BEACH' showcase a dynamic interplay between form and freedom and are influenced by visual artists like Torkwase Dyson. HxH's sonic world is both daring and intimate and is an ever-shifting architecture of sound.