I’ve been a fan of Rie Nakajima for longer than almost any other sound artist, but I’ve surprisingly never written at length about her solo material for the site (though I have reviewed two releases by O Yama O, her pop-inflected duo project with Keiko Yamamoto, and Free Percussion, a V/A comp curated by fellow fan Francesco Covarino to kick off tsss). This latest tape on Tokyo imprint ato.archives is as great a first as any, a full-length live session that showcases everything I love most about her work. Those who have been to or even just seen footage of a Nakajima performance are familiar w ..read more

00:00. Désormais – “From Now On” from Iambrokenandremadeiambroken… (Intr_version, 2003) 05:21. The Wind-Up Bird – “That I’ve” from Whips (Music Fellowship / Translucence, 2003) 10:40. Arden – “Cello for Sudden Goodbyes” from Conceal (Stilll, 2005) 15:53. Nicolas Bernier & Simon Trottier – “Bois Mort” from Et Retrouvé en Fôret (12rec, 2009) 19:36. Guillaume Gargaud – “Pas Là” from Lost Chords (Dead Pilot, 2011) 23:15. Joshua Treble – “A Serious House on Serious Earth” from Five Points Fincastle (Intr_version, 2004) 27:52. Mountains – “Simmer” from Sewn (A ..read more

I always used to say that if a year seems to be lacking in terms of good new music, I’m just not looking hard enough. But then 2024 happened. I know I’m not the only one who feels like those first five months were slow as hell (with some scattered gems in the rough, of course). Thankfully, things started to pick up in a big way recently—you’ll probably notice that the lion’s share of the releases on this list dropped in June. Let’s hope that trend continues, because I could use the win. As always, if I’m missing anything, please let me know. Kazumoto Endo – At the Controls (Dada Drumming, Jun ..read more

Magnetic tape, as a sound-producing material, is often something to be wrangled or wrestled with. Though it can be elegant in its humble warble, its insubstantial and unpredictable nature is usually the selling point. Concrète and/or collage conjurers can achieve greater precision and more complexity with digital tools, but analog remains many artists’ first choice for a reason. On Postures, a new C23 from Minnesota’s Marsha Fisher, small-scale percussion performances serve as the basis for a concise quartet of sketches, each one a great example of how the classic approach can give new life to ..read more

The members of Human Adult Band each have one foot in the world we know and the other in someplace entirely different. The crucial components of Western popular music are present, at least: guitar, bass, drums; some sort of dynamic progression; semi-intelligible recording techniques. The way in which these ingredients are baked, brewed, and fermented, however, follows no known recipe; The Movers Brought Rainbows, the project’s newest offering, feels like it was conjured on an interdimensional plane, aspects from both this and that side of familiarity curdling into a psychoactive mass. It’s not ..read more

Sometimes you just need to lie down, listen, and smile. That applies to both the source recordings from which Nanahari Edit grew and the finished product itself. Billy Gomberg (whose work I originally discovered by way of Fraufraulein, his ongoing duo project with Anne Guthrie) has hinted at this strain of wholesome, well-lit synthesis on previous solo releases, and it finally shines with fullest brilliance on this second Dinzu tape. Environmental sound itself can be breathtakingly beautiful, but that beauty too easily loses its luster during the process of capturing it and then presentin ..read more

Geneva’s presque fantôme has been one of my favorite tape-based projects since I got a hold of their self-titled cassette back in 2021. A generous care package sent by the artist on behalf of their label dents de scie dosed my ears with the murky sounds of chutes as well as the extensive back catalogue of prior alias crève-chiens, which is full of equally enrapturing analog gloom. Though the distinct style teeters over the symbiotic abysses of noise and dark ambient, presque fantôme remains faithful to its specific spin on rustic, basement-bred musique concrète, ensuring that each release neve ..read more

This inaugural batch from new Copenhagen label Kaos og Stjernen, which also includes tapes by Dagsrejse and an anonymous artist, illustrates the simple truth that ambient music only works when it is genuine. That quality doesn’t necessarily require an analog approach, but (at least for me) it almost always does. Though J. Folke does make use of “obscure audio-looping softwares” to lightly manipulate some of their source material, Mare is a decidedly warm and muffled affair, the kind that can only come from spool and spindle. Following close on the heels of the project’s debut release Pale Bowe ..read more

There are few forms of music that are as simultaneously minimal and life-affirming than acoustic drone. The big names were some of the first to fill my heart when I began my deep dive into the avant-garde, and now more recent projects like Natural Snow Buildings, Pelt, and Toad keep my ears to the heavens. Something unsayable shines in the titanic tones produced by instruments played with human hands and/or breath. Though California-based artist Kaori Suzuki employs a creative process that’s very much exploratory, even scientific, she is not at all averse to embracing that radiant simplicity ..read more

The material that You Are Not Alone collects is as ephemeral and piecemeal as Teignmouth Electron’s discography itself. The solo project of Brighton sound artist Maureen Hallomas (also a past or present member of Polly Shang Kuan Band, Rubber Demon, Leopard Leg, Men Oh Pause, etc.) most commonly manifests as a “live performance guise,” to use the liner notes’ phrase, and only a small handful of tapes and CD-Rs have been sporadically released over the past two-or-so decades. As it happens, “ephemeral” and “piecemeal” are descriptors that also apply to Hallomas’s music. “From Beyond the Attic ..read more