Back catalogue: Classical

Review: "In 1987, a Japan-only Laserdisc was published by intermission. It showcased one our of works created by renowned German environmental artist NILS-UDO with specially commissioned music by Japanese Kankyo-Ongaku group Interior... Soon after, the world vanished." As a label, WRWTFWW Records have done a stellar job at setting the scene and establishing the perfect atmosphere for Sculpture of Time: Apocalypse. Released on vinyl for the very first time since it was made, almost 40 years ago, it's a lush, tranquil, and reflective slice of earthly ambient that sounds as though someone has just walked out of the jungle and picked up a synthesiser. You can almost reach out and touch the blue and green spaces the soundtrack evokes. Transportive in the truest sense.

Review: The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri's latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn's unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named "il Mito Americano" - meant as "The American Dream" but translated literally to English as "The American Myth" - sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical. Thus was Facadisms born, a mesospheric meditation on the world's many shared fictions and fantasies, essential and inessential. Listening to this ambient record is like standing naked on the outside terrace of a mountain aerie, blustery winds disturbing but not stopping our staring out over the miniature civilisations clustered below. With gnomic titles like 'A Little Grace Is Abundance' and 'Control Your Soul's Desire For Freedom', Irisarri compels the psyche to exward attention; his thickly packed, subliminal walls of ambience act as vessels through which to meditate on the injustices that puncture, and self-sever, the integrity of the American fundamental fantasy. Even going so far as to decry the concept of freedom itself (au contraire), Irisarri states in support of the record: "The impoverished peoples of the Americas have known all along that 'freedom' is a cruel illusion crafted by the elites, akin to Potemkin's fake villages designed to impress Catherine the Great," Irisarri indicates. "Facadisms illustrates a twisted inversion where the rulers deceive their subjects with illusions of safety, democracy, and free speech to create a grotesque mirage of control over their own lives."

Review: Rafael Anton Irisarri's Facadisms, presented on striking "clear petrol" vinyl, delves into the depths of drone music through a collection of eight immersive tracks. This album, conceived during a time of significant social and political unrest, highlights contemporary experiences while intertwining musical exploration with profound thematic narratives. Irisarri's use of guitars takes center stage, favoring them over synthesiwers to establish a rich, acousmatic atmosphere throughout the album. While the drone elements predominantly shape the sound, distinct guitar melodies occasionally emerge, adding layers to the listening experience. Collaborative highlights feature prominently, particularly in 'Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom', where Julia Kent's cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox's ethereal voice converge to create a lush, enveloping soundscape. KMRU's contribution on 'Red Moon Tide' introduces intricate oscillations and ghostly vocal layers, gradually constructing a compelling sonic journey. The album serves as a poignant commentary on late capitalism, reflecting the repetitive cycles of political disillusionment. Each composition transitions through moments of absence and reflection, crafting a mournful soundscape infused with cavernous guitar textures. As the album culminates, it leads listeners into unsettling territories filled with celestial disturbances and resonant noise, evoking the feeling of a soul's exit into an expansive void. The album cover, showcasing a crumbling structure in La Perla, Puerto Rico, powerfully embodies the themes of loss and decay that permeate the music, making Facadisms a haunting yet deeply resonant experience.

Review: Prolific experimental musician Eiko Ishibashi and filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi follow up their for-the-ages 2021 collaboration for the latter's film adaptation of Drive My Car, with a slick and bold proclamation in jazz, electronica and improv: Evil Does Not Exist. Indeed, only the enlightened among us know that the ills of the world largely boil down to misunderstandings - oversights contra insights - thereby rendering any recourse to real malice by bad actors null, even when they themselves think it true. Evil Does Not Exist once more appears as both an album and film; the former artist's soundtrack here is as sublime as the realisation itself, combining dense copses of brass and freeform drumming to produce a euphoric miasma.

Review: Alan Myson returns once more as Ital Tek, continuing a not-so-well-cited yet important sound. There's never been much of a name for it, maybe thanks to its appearance in the meting-potty post-dubstep era - but Tek's is a sound of minimal aesthetics and glossy-wonky beats. Other artists might include Kuedo, Lorn or MssingNo (but it's not wave, witch house or purple). Genre-mindedness aside, Timeproof is Myson's fifth album for Planet Mu, following 2020's Outland for a long meander through the fluid timey-wimey nature of time, and how it varies depending on its perceiver(s)' mental states. Beaty sublimers like 'Phantom Pain' and 'One Eye Open' make this a staggering time-dilating journey, one whose appeal, true to its name, will surely last for electronic music fans decades into the future.

Review: Passepartout Duo is formed of Nicoletta Favari and Christopher Salvito, whom since 2015 have been on a continuous journey travelling the world's corners, engaged in a creative process they term "slow music". Their most recent record, in collaboration with fellow duo and peers Inoyama Land, Radio Yugawara is the latest reaffirmation of this affinity with the global slow movement, an increasingly, wilfully pan-resistant lifestyle umbrella. This record was recorded in 2023, in the latter duo's Makoto Inoue's hometown of Yugawara, where his family runs a kindergarten, and whose space then doubled up as a recording studio. Made largely with children's instruments - handbells, a glockenspiel, a xylophone, recorders, melodicas, and harmonicas - an obvious association of naif innocence might be taken away from this record, but this is of course a surface interpretation. By the time we've hacked past the surface thickets of 'Abstract Pets', we enter much murkier territory, the slow unfurling of 'Simoom' and the monoized ambient assemblages of 'Mosaic' among the most notable. Through its formative rooting in themes of childhood and play, and titular reference to radio, this dyadic double date portray an effective rep of the act of 'tuning in' - something we can only really do at all in a slower-paced environment.