Back catalogue: All genres

Review: ASC returns with a deeply emotive album on Past Inside the Present, showcasing a new chapter in his musical journey. Known for his versatility across electronic and drum & bass genres, James Clements channels introspection and healing in Loss. Quiet bird calls and field recordings intertwine with ASC's expertly crafted synths, creating a therapeutic sonic landscape. Each track evokes a range of emotions, from melancholy to hope, acceptance to sorrow. Loss invites listeners to embark on a poignant journey, where ASC's mastery shines through in every moment. It's a captivating and beautiful testament to the power of music as a form of self-expression and healing.

Review: Brock Van Wey hails from the Bay Area but his BVDUB project is known worldwide. It sees the American provide a near-constant stream of innovative ambient music on the Past Inside The Present label - this new double album comes just a couple of months after his last one, Fumika Fades, but is essential once more. There are plenty of intense and heavily textured tracks as well as more empty and escapist pieces with heavenly melodies and subtle vocals worked into to dreamy effect. As always he serves up the album in various formats and this is the double cassette version which lends itself to the lo-fi aesthetic perfectly.

Review: Past Inside The Present go big with this Winter 2022 Deluxe Boxset across three cassette tapes. It's a superb showcase of the talents on their roster and includes a collection of music made by Italian composer Sofia degli Alessandri-Hultquist aka Drum & Lace between 2016 and 2019. There is also an album by London-based Will Bolton which finds the "beauty in ruins, decay and the details and textures of everyday scenes" and an album from People Galan and David Cordero which saw the pair send sound fragments back and forth over the internet and develop them until they both liked what they heard. It all adds up to a brilliant snapshot of some of ambient's best current practitioners.

Review: Past Inside The Present co-founder Isaac Helsen - a multi-disciplinary artist from Michigan, creating photography and paintings as well as music - in action on this double cassette alone after a string of collaborations with labelmate 36 and fellow label co-founder zake. Helsen's sound works on a grand (electronically) orchestral scale at times, the proverbial cathedrals of sound coming to mind, at others (see 'Duniskwalgunyi') understated and intimate. On first listen, it's the simpler moments like 'Whisper At A Party' that grab you, but the 17 track selection slowly reveals itself to be quite special on repeated rotations.

Review: After the shocking news of frontman Chester Bennington's untimely passing in 2017, many presumed it to be the sudden yet apparent bookend for nu-metal turned alt-rock megastars Linkin Park. Following a definitive greatest hits collection featuring the last known remnants of material recorded with their original vocalist, it's now clear that compilation served more as closure to the band's original era rather than the initially perceived farewell most fans ascertained. Returning with Dead Sara vocalist Emily Armstrong as well as new drummer Colin Brittain (following the departure of founding member Rob Bourdain), From Zero marks the eighth full-length from the group and first since 2017's divisive, pop-oriented One More Light. Taking its title from their original moniker of Xero, the material seeks to find a fulcrum between the band's more aggressive nu-metal beginnings and the latter-day electronic pop-rock formula, whilst sonically bearing familiarity to the musical entity fans have stood by for multiple decades yet altering the playing field to complement their vastly different new vocalist.

Review: Returning with his redemption attempt follow up to 2020's We Are Chaos, industrial metal shock-rock provocateur Marilyn Manson seeks to skirt the numerous controversies and accusations accrued in the last few years with his most potent musical statement in decades. Signing with Nuclear Blast and enlisting the likes of Chelsea Wolfe collaborator/producer Tyler Bates to helm the project, his 12th full-length One Assassination Under God: Chapter 1 (indicating that more is sure to follow), offers up some of the heaviest and introspective material of his career to date, with cuts such as 'Nod If You Understand' harking back to the unhinged angst of Antichrist Superstar, whereas 'As Sick As The Secrets Within' breathes with the same mercurial synth-gloom as the strongest moments on Mechanical Animals. A cynical attempt to regain fan adoration, or the sound of a tortured artist finally coming to terms with his own demons and attempting to rediscover former glory and prowess, the interpretation is entirely your own to consider.

Review: Meg Mulhearn and Belly Full of Stars come together for this split release on which the former takes care of the first four tunes and the latter the other five. For her part, Mulhearn harnesses the power of fire and ice, sunshine and torrential rain in tracks that are occasionally gentle and sometimes harsh. The textures are fuzzy and grainy but synths and strings bring light and hope. Kim Rueger's Belly Full of Stars alias finds her going deep into subterranean worlds of cavernous sound detailed with the finest of wispy melodies on' Ebon Flow' while 'Perihelia' has a more organic and summery feel desire being so pressurised and tense. These are enchanting sounds for sure.

Review: Theo Parrish is giving his new album with Maurissa Rose the full treatment - serving it up on his preferred vinyl, but also as a CD and here a cassette on his own label Sound Signature. It is a complete coming together of these two revered Detroit musical talents following a string of great singles with one another since 2019. As you can expect, the grooves are dusty, complex and rooted in house but with plenty of influences from soul, funk and jazz. The vocals from Rose are as smooth as you like and take the form of soulful streams of consciousness. Utterly vital.

Review: With a title referring to an underreported aerial incident above the Willamette Valley, when a mysterious fireball soared through the atmosphere and disappeared into the light of the rising sun, Strategy aka Paul Dicklow from Portland embarks on his third outing for the LA label Peak Oil, albeit his first for eight years. Dicklow describes this album as both a "love letter to the myriad strains of breakbeat house", and "a specific attempt to grapple with iconic samples in a kind of archaeological dissection", but results are neither as lairy and straightforward as the first definition, nor as academic and dry as the second attempt to sum it up. Rather, we get a wonderfully frisky style of electronica that is informed by classic beats and samples but finds a way to re-invent them for the 21st century rather than simply roll them out the way you'd expect. 'Bassmaker', for instance, takes a very famous hip-hop sample, loops it and weaves it into the sonic fabric of the track until you forget it's even there. 'Bug Bongo' has a madcap keyboard line that's like Luke Vibert on speed, bursting with cheeky wit. 'Inside The Pyramid' is possibly the album's natural climax, Amen breaks and nostril-tweaking sub-bass, but everything here is what too much electronica tends not to be, namely full of personality and human touches. Quite, quite, loveable.

Review: A new double cassette box from Past Inside The Present, which sees its co-founder zake in relatively rare solo mode mixing soothing ambient sensibilities with orchestral, classical influences. 'Dernier Souffle (Pt 1)' is a great example of how the two can meld very easily and comfortably, a sense of slowly retreating heartache creeping over its open, slabs of floating sounds, whereas the three parts of 'La Paix Eternelle (Pt 1), on the other hand, evoke heavenly choirs of angels. An album with its head in the clouds, for sure, but once you join it there you won't want to come down.

Review: Esteemed ambient auteurs, zake and ossa's collaborative output continues to soothe and delight in equal measure. After Syntheticopia in August 2022 and the dark long-player 'A Pale Shelter' in 2021 between zake, ossa, and City of Dawn comes Module, a collaboration that includes seasoned electronic producer Ruben A. Tamayo, under the alias FAX. The power trio brings forth an eight-track excursion into heavy ambient atmospheres with moody soundscapes and a real weight of melancholy. As always, the textures are grainy and lo-fi, the drones long-held, and the chords which poke through the clouds, bring subtle rays of hope and optimism. It is the latest and maybe the greatest chapter in this ongoing story from zake and ossa with featured collaborators.