Chicago-based contemporary electronic musician Steve Hauschildt has composed panoramas of synthesized sound for over a decade. First within his former band, Emeralds, an American touchstone of 2000s home-recorded psychedelic noise music, and later across a steady and critically-acclaimed stream of solo releases spanning ambient techno, arpeggiated electronica and post-kosmische styles utilizing synthesizers, computers, and digital processing. In 2018, he extended a collection of rich, visceral tracks titled Dissolvi, his first release on Ghostly International and his most collaborative work to date. Just a year later, Hauschildt returns with Nonlin, an album that’s freer, leaner, and looser, both structurally and conceptually; less linear compared to its predecessor, but still captivating. Developed and recorded in several studios during and around the edges of tour — Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Tbilisi, and Brussels — this material emulates an alienating encounter with a smattering of places, a replicant of culture shock, a solitary and stark experience with uncanny environments, melody and dissonance as oblique locales.

Nonlin finds Hauschildt evolving his palette of tools, integrating modular and granular synthesis. The improvisatory and generative nature of modular systems, when paired with his signature grid-oriented and hand-played techniques, guides these compositions slightly out of line to hypnotic effect. Opener “Cloudloss” permeates the mix with an unsettling smog, which reappears and all but engulfs “A Planet Left Behind.” On cuts like “Attractor B” and “Subtractive Skies,” pockets of air rest between sequenced pulses, whose crumpling and flattening folds build into a restrained rapture of crisp frequencies and milky reverb-swallowed coruscations.

The album’s title track and centerpiece logs on to a foreign network, a fractured percussion signal that modulates and stutters into static amidst curious melodic sparkling in the hazy bandwidth. “Reverse Culture Music” casts an elegant and brooding stream of strings, pizzicato and churning bow from Chicago cellist Lia Kohl, against chiming minimalist synth frameworks. A surprising pattern emerges in the taciturn systems at work. Hauschildt continues to expand his already horizon-wide repertoire, here exploring the effects of corrupting coordinates; a flight subject to the collapsable abilities of time in remote spaces, a smearing of the axis to elegiac ends.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another outstanding LP from the ever-reliable Steve Hauschildt here, and his first for Ghostly. This time we go further down the ambient seam he's been exploring of late (though Tragedy & Geometry and Sequitur had hints of airy ambience, they were essentially propulsive kosmische music), with slowly evolving walls of sound twisting around the overriding melodic theme, going almost full circle towards his work in Emeralds.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Super limited “Liquid Mercury” colour (silver suspended in transparent vinyl).

Way back in 2004, ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. released the CD only album 'Minstrel In The Galaxy' on Riot Season Records. The decision to make it CD only at the time was down to the epic title track being almost 42 minutes in length. Fast forward fifteen years and new technologies and we have the first ever vinyl release of this classic album, with a new edited especially for vinyl mix by main man Makoto Kawabata.

What we said back then ...

‘Minstrel In The Galaxy’ is the sound of the newly slimmed down four-piece AMT recorded in their smoke filled basement Studio in Nagoya during summer 2004. The sounds captured on these three tracks are the first post-Cotton Casino AMT workouts. The diminutive beer and cigarettes goddess has upped sticks and moved to the USA to start a new life and plan her solo career. We’ll miss her that’s for sure but we can’t worry about that now, AMT have another ten albums to lay down before New Year.

The AMT line up for this album features the core trio of Makoto Kawabata (Guitar), Atsushi Tsuyama (Monster Bass), Hiroshi Higashi (Guitar & effects) and new permanent drummer (and ex-Mainliner man) Hajime Koie (Drums). The free jazz style drumming from Hajime has helped give AMT their sense of improvisation back, most of their work is improvised and recorded live to tape which gives that great loose feel they have that takes them off on tangents and makes each new record that little bit different from the last. And with this new studio album I think we can safely say it’s something of a new direction.

They’re joined on this album by Japanese underground queens AFRIRAMPO, who’ve just finished a tour with Sonic Youth and look set for big things themselves in the near future. Musically this album is a slight departure for AMT, anyone buying it expecting a head-melting riff heavy record are going to be disappointed.

To these ears ‘Minstrel In The Galaxy’ sounds darker and more stripped down that any previous AMT release. The title track alone lasts a staggering 41 minutes, over the course of which the band take our heads in a few gentle directions before letting rip towards it’s crushing finale. For me it’s the gentle openings that make me tick, I love the way it rolls for what seems like ever just going round and round in your head. You almost expect it to explode way before it does and that my friends is the art of foreplay AMT style!

FORMAT INFORMATION

Ltd LP Info: Limited edition 500 only coloured vinyl LP with download code in gloss finished 350gsm board sleeve.

Even though This Is for the White in Your Eyes, the full-length debut by Danish collective Choir of Young Believers, is teeming with instruments--voices, pianos, synthesizers, banjos, an orchestra’s ransom in strings and French horns--it’s not the arrangements that dominate so much as the images they conjure. Snow-flecked moun-taintops, deserted city streets, ghost-filled churches, a final kiss between estranged lovers--this is the emotional terrain trod by Jannis Joya Makrigiannis and his Choir of Young Believers. This Is for the White in Your Eyes is an album of orchestral indie-pop, but its artistic scope extends beyond melody and harmony: Choir of Young Believers paint cinematic tableaux, with Jannis cast as the silvery-voiced narrator.

Jannis produced This Is for the White in Your Eyes with his old friends and collaborators Anders Rhedin and Fridolin, constructing cavernous sound-worlds around his own skeletal guitar and piano compositions. (“I don’t have a computer, so I almost never record demos,” Jannis says.) The song cycle begins on a somber note with the lonely piano atmospherics of “Hollow Talk,” a dirge that builds towards a climax of machine-gun snares and sneering children’s choir.

It’s followed by the soaring balladry of “Next Summer” and the anthemic single, “Ac-tion/Reaction.” Jannis’ voice is something to behold--a reverb-slicked, bell-like tenor in the Neil Young mold--and his golden pipes haunt the album, floating over “Un-der the Moon” like a celestial body, riding the thundering piano notes of “Claustrophobia,” and rippling on the horizon of the country-tinged “Why Must It Always Be this Way.” And yet, for all of the record’s orchestral gran-deur, there’s an icy Nordic remove running through This Is for the White in Your Eyes that keeps the overflowing emotions in check. In Choir of Young Believers’ hands, even the sweetest melodies carry a hollow, solitary mood that lingers long after the music has stopped.

deathcrash are a melodic post-hardcore band from London. Bearing influence from Chemikal Underground's output, the band play between moments of introspective lyricism and quiet tunefulness, and grinding, distorted guitars.

Shana Falana returns with a new album, continuing where her Team Love output left off. Described playfully by its maker as ‘druggy music by sober people,’ Shana Falana’s Darkest Light is as full of mystery, contrast, and paradox as the title would suggest. The Kingston, New York songwriter and record maker works her own deep niche in the psych-rock, shoegaze, and ethereal punk neighborhood. On Darkest Light, she converts all that weird, magical, and occasionally nasty energy into authentic messages of personal empowerment, rebirth, and redemption.

RIYL: The Black Angels, PJ Harvey, Alvvays, Black Belt Eagle Scout

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive random multi-coloured vinyl. Each copy is unique.

In 1984 post-industrial obscurists O Yuki Conjugate had completed their first album "Scene In Mirage". At a turning point in their development, they released one side of their electronic sound, one side of their ambient. They had a choice of a musical route forward. They chose to pursue ambient / fourth world music and garnered a reputation for that particular sound. Now, 35 years later, they have come to reflect on their choice. What would have happened had they taken the electronic route? What would they sound like now? OYC decided to retrace their steps and imagine life as another OYC, the Ocean Youth Club. "Divided Self" is the result. "Divided Self" is thus a highly conceptual release, not just a clever disguise for their burgeoning electronic activities. Ocean Youth Club have performed live only once, in Barcelona where they supported the other OYC. They were immediately invited to do a release on Spanish label Hivern Discs. "Divided Self" is the Ocean Youth Club's first outing into electronica. It shows an exciting disregard for the convention of remixing, being an unapologetic four variations on a theme. "Divided Self" is a collaboration of current OYC members Roger Horberry and Andrew Hulme with the legendary producer Colin Potter, who jointly share the mixing and producing credits. Recorded at Colin's IC Studio live in a day, "Divided Self" was a semi-improvised work that took a couple of attempts to get into the groove of before the tape rolled and it was committed to the digital realm. The only regret is that real tape wasn't used on the day. Next time! Ocean Youth Club may be conceptual, but it's also an open and playful entity. Ocean Youth Club would like to invite anyone over the age of 50 to join them in unmaking music. The future is bright; the future is youth.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Wonderful, rich, thick, duck-down blankets of sound from O Yuki Conjugate's co-conspirators. RIYL: Shorelights, Seahawks, Ghostride The Drift, Huerco S etc.

Their third album in as many years, 1995’s The Future of What is an unrelenting, constructivist masterstroke. The Olympia trio’s signature sound—grinding bass, syncopated drums, and fragmented guitar over measured yelps—ratchets past the thread into a stripped-out metallic slurry. Equal parts noise and adrenaline, the album opens with a simple question: “Where’s your energy?” It’s been 25 years and we’re still searching for the answer.