Unseen Worlds Vinilo y CD

Review: Plenty of electronic artists can claim to focus on repetitive layers, loops and timbre. Few can say they've explored these ideas to the extent Carl Stone has. Released to mark his 70th birthday, this collection looks not to offer a complete retrospective on the seminal producer, but instead a supporting document to the archival re-releases that have been doing the rounds in recent times. Trying to put a label on what's here is less relevant than the how or even why. Working at CalArts, Stone, a then-aspiring music maker, was tasked with preserving vinyl recordings by dubbing them to tape. This repetitive process was used to store 10,000 albums, from Renaissance to electronica, and involved re-recording multiple discs at the same time. After that experience, it's understandable that he'd find himself using cut and paste style fractions of sound, samples, vocals, and melodies to make old parts new again, removing the source material from time and place so it exists only in the now.

Review: As a follow-up to 2020's acclaimed Felis Catus & Silence, Leo Takami returns to Unseen Worlds with a new album of finely sculpted, airy compositions. Takami's sound often orbits his delicate, jazzy guitar playing, but there's a sumptuous palette of instrumentation which ebbs and flows around it. As well as jazz, there's a strong sense of Japanese environmental music in the over-arching serenity of Next Door. Using the beauty of everyday life experience as inspiration for his meandering instrumental narratives, Takami's latest work is a soundtrack to make even the gloomiest day brighter.