Following an illustrious stint as founding member of Mercury Music Prize nominated The Comet Is Coming, and also Soccer96, the producer and synthesist Danalogue heralds a new chapter, with his debut solo album Teleportations. His music has been supported by Mike D from The Beastie Boys and Thom Yorke, has been A-listed on BBC6 Music, where he has performed sessions for Mary Anne Hobbs, Tom Ravenscroft, Gilles Peterson and Steve Lamacq. His tracks have featured on numerous TV shows such as I May Destroy You, Black Ops and Utopia. He recently wrote his first video game soundtrack for C Smash VRS on Playstation, his work featuring alongside UNKLE and Ken Ishii. As an integral part of the legendary East London studio/venue/community Total Refreshment Centre, Danalogue has produced/mixed records for Snapped Ankles, Joshua Idehen and Rozi Plain, and collaborated on albums with Alabaster DePlume, and Sarathy Korwar.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Awakening On The Planet
Mother Of Mars
Far Beyond The Sun
Moebius Triptych
You Are On The Right Track 

Side B
Theta Wave Convergence
Arrival At Rho Ophiuchi
Fallen Out Of Phase
Onto The Next Dimension
Earth Remembrance Day

I remember when at school on the last day of term, all the class would bring games in to play, but it always seemed that no one really knew the rules or could fathom out how to play some of them. However, a lot of the games had interesting artwork and fantastic layouts with all sorts of cards and paraphernalia, which I really enjoyed. Around the same time I received a magic set for Christmas. The packaging, images, type, colours on the box and instructions were wonderful.

I would entertain members of the family over the festive period with my conjuring skills. My family would humour me by clapping at the end of every really obvious trick and then make excuses to leave the room.

A few years back a friend gave me a great book on old Firework packaging, labels etc. The colour, wonderful images and names (Martian Ray, Fireball, Silver Rain, Lightning Chaser) were so evocative. I remembered that every November I would be taken to a fantastic local shop that was packed with fireworks encased under smudged and fingerprint stained grubby glass. A highlight of the year. Memories of magic tricks, bizarre board games and amazing looking fireworks, all began to come together to feed and inform a growing idea for another album. Not so much a concept album but one very loosely based around some of the above and much more.

One time member of Portsmouth Psych/Noise/Indie Band Psylons, Keith Seatman has released 8 albums and 3 EPs of strange Electronics, Psych, Radiophonics, Drone and quirky Folk. Keith Seatman has been played on BBC Radio 6 music's The Freak Zone, Gideon Coe Show and BBC Radio 3 Late Junction.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tonight's Guests Are?
2. Molly Dolly Stain Glass
3. Clip Clop To The Shop
4. Between Tide And Town
5. Smoke And Mirrors
6. Starting First As A Pastime
7. A Posh Hat And Timepiece
8. Another Strange Thing
9. Before Your Very Eyes
10. Counting To Ten Then Back Again

Hot off the heels of producing Benefits’ critically acclaimed album Constant Noise earlier this year, and following a continual flow of live shows, singles, EPs, collaborations and remixes by the likes of Hayden Thorpe, Blood Red Shoes & Benefits. The former Pulled Apart By Horses guitarist turned electronic pathfinder James Adrian Brown unveils his long-awaited debut record Forever Neon Lights.

A deeply personal yet outward-looking debut, Forever Neon Lights is a conceptual record that draws on memory, imagination, and transformation. Across its tracks, Brown reflects on childhood wonder, the excitement of possibility, and the struggles and triumphs of chasing a creative life. The Blackpool Illuminations serve as both literal and metaphorical inspiration: dazzling, unending, and powered by unseen energy.

Sonically, the album finds Brown pushing into new territory with long-time producer James Mottershead, weaving pulsing electronics, immersive textures, and evocative melodies into a dynamic, shifting instrumental landscape. It marks a bold evolution from his guitar-led past into a fully realised electronic vision.

Speaking about making the record, Brown says:
 “This album is me laying everything out, the things I’ve carried since being a child, the hopes, dreams, and doubts I’ve felt as an adult, and the stubbornness to see things through. Writing and recording it felt like reconnecting with that wide-eyed version of myself who thought the lights back in Blackpool wrapped right around the entire country every Christmas and went on forever. It’s about taking that feeling and turning it into something lasting and real.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Forever Neon Lights
2. Generator
3. Sidestep
4. The Firing Range
5. Promenade
6. Northwestern
7. Poster Child
8. Up In The Nest
9. Somewhere I'm Not
10. Remember

The sixth Warrington-Runcorn album continues to explore New Towns and the demise of the post-war consensus. This time Gordon Chapman-Fox’s gaze falls on our public services that have been starved of cash or privatised since 1980.

“It seems ridiculous in hindsight for a developed country to have packed up and sold off vital infrastructure such as power, water or the rail network” says Gordon. “40 years down the line, and all of these vital industries are barely functional. Their prime function now is to drain cash from our pockets and into the bulging wallets of shareholders.”

Gordon’s anger continues to power his desire to make Warrington-Runcorn a statement for the here and now, rather than an exercise in rose-tinted nostalgia.

The People Matter, as side two’s sole track will attest.

“This album very much came from my live shows” says Gordon. “A lot of these tracks were designed to be performed live, and you will have heard quite a few of them if you’ve seen me live in the last year.”

There is a certain rawness to some of the tracks, not to mention an almost upbeat danceable quality. This is no less atmospheric than previous albums, but it has become fused with an urge to get you to move your feet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Yet another stunning suite of evocative, progressive electronica with a focus on the development and growth of society and infrastructure in *the past*. What's particularly striking about Gordon's work here is that it feels like one of his incendiary, hypnotic live shows and veers more into shadowy ambience and crackling saturation that he does so well. A superb, and completely essential continuation of the WRNTDP story.

TRACK LISTING

1. Swift Safe And Comfortable
2. Sunset Over Stanlow
3. 800 Yards Down At Ince Six Feet
4. Water Treatment Works
5. Renewal And Regeneration
6. The People Matter

Appendix I brings together three Warrington-Runcorn EPs onto CD for the first time. Comprising Building A New Town, A Shared Sense Of Purpose and Overspill Estates, this CD brings together some of the more esoteric elements of the world of Musical New Town Planning.

2023’s Building A New Town EP moved the reference point of Warrington-Runcorn back from the synth-drenched late 70s to the more post-psychedelic, folk infused world of Mike Oldfield and Pentangle. The four tracks on offer here are guitar led, but retain Gordon’s mix of optimism and sinister atmosphere.

The next EP, A Shared Sense Of Purpose was the leading single from the Your Community Hub album, and released in both 7” and 12” versions. This CD takes the single edit from the 7”, and adds the bonus tracks from the 12” - including a remix from the legendary Vince Clarke, and another guitar-led folk remix of the title track.

Lastly, Overspill Estates fits in four songs taken from the sessions for Your Community Hub that didn’t make it onto the full album. The tracks here were an integral part of the album until a late surge of creativity brought forth some new tracks which displaced them from the full item.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The thing I love about Gordon's music (as both WRNTDP and his more recently adopted full-name moniker) is that it's brilliantly diverse in style, him being a talented guitarist as well as avid synthesist, but we don't hear that quite as much in the albums as we do in the EP's and singles. Here, we've got a lovely selection of the latter INCLUDING one of my favourites, 'Oakwood' from the Shared Sense Of Purpose EP. Also, VINCE CLARKE REMIX! Ace.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Fresh Dawn For North Cheshire
2. The View From Halton Castle
3. Solid Foundations
4. The Cornerstone
5. A Shared Sense Of Purpose (Single Edit)
6. A Shared Sense Of Purpose (Vince Clarke Remix)
7. Oakwood
8. A Shared Sense Of Purpose (1973 Version)
9. The People Of The Town
10. All Mod Cons
11. Open Green Spaces
12. All You Need In Five Minutes Brisk Walk

Castles in Space presents the first ever vinyl release for Mordant Music’s landmark 2006 release “Dead Air”. Remastered for vinyl with all new artwork from Admiral Greyscale.

“Dead air” is what broadcasters are supposed to avoid at all costs, what continuity personnel are employed to plug up with pleasantries. Mordant’s fascination with that lost figure, the TV announcer, led them to track down Philip Elsmore, whose warm, soothing tones will be recognizable to anyone who grew up in the UK in the 1970s from his work for ITV regional franchises like Tyne Tees and Thames. The duo persuaded Elsmore to come out of retirement and provided continuity for Dead Air, his reassuring voice applied to an increasingly bizarre series of utterances, from "apologies for the sundry glitches… in the meantime, keep your nerve" to “the following contains graphic scenes of a strobing magpie's wing" to “keep sporing in the nessst”. Near the end, Elsmore declares that "Mordant Music will be back once the dust has settled with more vague unpleasantness.”

“A mild sense of apprehension is actually far more acute than out-and-out drama,” says Greyscale. “It’s everyday, what the Mordant virus feeds on.”
“Musty” is a big Mordant buzzword. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Transmission Start Up
2. Post-Apocalypse Listings
3. Plant Room
4. Interdependent Authority
5. Thames Over Nijmegen
6. Malcolm's Driven Me Wild
7. We Are The Mean
8. Man On A Spool
9. Expendable Productions
10. The Black Crush
11. No Harvest
12. Read Between The Raster
13. Obituaries
14. Cirrhosis Of The Booth
15. Survival Ltd.
16. Winding Ourselves Into The Ground
17. Proof-Read By Spores
18. Germoir
19. Fallen Faces
20. Tosaki Closedown
21. Dead Air: Side One (Remastered)
22. Dead Air: Side Two (Remastered)
23. Dead Air: Side Three (Remastered)
24. Dead Air: Side Four (Remastered)

With 2021’s ‘Mystery Fields’, Phil Heeks delivered a stunning homage to 1970s library LPs and soundtrack compilations, in his debut record as The British Stereo Collective. The long-awaited sequel ‘Iniquitous’ brings together two-decades-worth of TV music from an alternate reality.

Says Phil: “I feel that Volume 2 nails the concept of the TV themes compilation much more successfully, being more varied and more expansive, and with greater authenticity.” Once again, Volume 2 of the ‘Sound Library’ is a heart-felt homage to a beloved era of classic themes and channel idents, inspired by the combined influences of Vangelis, Jeff Wayne, Peter Howell, Mike Oldfield, Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Barry Gray, Francis Monkman, Paddy Kingsland and countless others. Pressed up on beautiful "green leaves" vinyl and featuring a TV Times referencing insert, the album works as a complete and aesthetically gorgeous time capsule for those who are perennially nostalgic for the golden age of TV. Melodic, eclectic, part-electronic, part-traditional, ‘Iniquitous’ will sit comfortably among your Geoff Love and BBC Themes albums and adds to the ever expanding and impressive body of work that Phil is building.

TRACK LISTING

1. Through The Ages
2. Unexplained
3. Theme From 'Iniquitous'
4. Tech Talk
5. Come What May (from 'The Sins Of The Living')
6. Music For The 1980 Moscow Olympics
7. Language And Culture (Educational Radio)
8. The Meyer-Bergman Experiment
9. Iniquitous (End Titles)
10. Southeast Television (Ident)
11. London Television (Ident)
12. See! Hear!
13. The Sandon Village Tales
14. Future World
15. The Van De Berg Mysteries
16. Open University ('Skip And Jump')
17. Astronautical (Theme From 'Star Quest')
18. Highway Inn
19. Goal! (Opening Credits)
20. Wires Are Dangerous Too
21. Theme From 'The Fire Keepers'

On a remote gravel-covered spit of land on the east coast lie the abandoned buildings of a government facility for weapons testing and experiments with radar.

In the mid 1960s this site witnessed the construction of an over-the-horizon radar, a technological marvel bouncing signals off the ionosphere, built to covertly monitor the activities of other nations.

The reflectivity of the ionosphere is a function of frequency, time of day, time of year and of the solar cycle. In essence, a sympathy for the celestial was required to fully exploit this man made construction.

Plagued by noise that created false returns on the monitors, the intended performance was never achieved, and despite several investigations the system was shut down and eventually dismantled in the early 1970s.

The long dormant Cobra is now a nature reserve.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A more gloomy but impeccably brilliant affair here from Dalham, with all of their meticulously written melodies and finely wrought developments coated in a sheen of shadowy unease and crunchy analogue haze. It's all good, never a dull sound.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pulse Repetition
2. Absolute Elsewhere
3. The Proxy
4. Progress Report
5. Buran
6. Tesseract
7. Backscatter
8. Frequency Shift

As humankind strives to create artificial intelligence what will faith, love, or morality look like to a nascent consciousness? Will it be capable of understanding its creators who often hold logic and superstition within themselves? In return how will humans comprehend its hallucinations? And the Sun, a ball of hot plasma oblivious to our existence continually burns hydrogen until it runs out and swallows its three closest neighbours.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Rare modern braindance music that's hugely innovative, non-derivative and genuinely wonderfully put together. Rippling synths and machinated drum machine glitches break into widescreen bliss and retro-futuristic momentum.

TRACK LISTING

1. Vorei
2. Air
3. Jawns
4. Redd
5. Kristall
6. XOR
7. Chalk
8. Tare

Gordon Chapman-Fox, the genius behind WRNTDP says “I’d worked on these tracks for the best part of a year, and, in my mind, they were a fundamental part of the whole 'Your Community Hub" project. I was heartbroken when they couldn’t make it onto the album, so it’s an enormous relief to see them come to life here.” The initial concept for the fifth WRNTDP album was to expand beyond north Cheshire, and dedicate a track to some of Britain’s other New Towns. Being part of the project from early on, these four tracks were dedicated to Basildon, Cwmbran, Redditch and Harlow. To give an idea on how long these things can take to gestate, the opening track "The People Of The Town was performed at the End Of The Road Festival in 2022.

TRACK LISTING

1. The People Of The Town
2. All Mod Cons
3. Open Green Spaces
4. All You Need In Five Minutes Brisk Walk

Castles in Space is delighted to have been able to curate an album pulled from Robin The Fog's unreleased tape archive. A true innovator and incredible live performer, Robin comments on the album "A Loop Where Time Becomes. Rare and Unreleased Recordings 2012-2017"

After twelve years, ten albums and innumerable live shows (including at least one former underground reservoir), the Howlround sound has indeed changed quite a lot, but the basic ethos remains the same as it did back in 2012. All tracks are created by manipulating field recordings dubbed onto analogue tape, with all digital effects and artificial reverb strictly forbidden - a process that has been described by Electronic Sound magazine as ‘conjur[ing] magic’. Of the twelve tracks here, only one has been physically released on a limited edition and long out of print compilation. A second appeared on a download only release several years ago and a third was created as part of the unreleased soundtrack to a documentary. Everything else on this compilation is seeing the light of day for the first time.

All were created in South London at various periods between 2012 and 2017, five years during which the project evolved from the Radiophonic mournfulness of 2012's debut album The Ghosts Of Bush ('The ultimate Hauntological artefact' - Simon Reynolds), to 2015's tour with tape legend William Basinski, to 2016's darker and weirder soundtrack to Steven McInerney's multiple award-winning film A Creak In Time and on towards what would become the wilder, gnarlier noise of 2019's The Debatable Lands. This retrospective from the first five years marks the gradual evolution of Howlround from the earliest days conjuring 'aural ectoplasm' from nocturnal field recordings of the last days of an underground BBC studio to increasingly spurning of the external world altogether by creating blistering no-input noise and raw analogue feedback. It's been quite a trip.

The Pool represents Apta's most focused and compelling release to date. Based on the transformative plunge of a psychedelic experience, it maps both tentative footsteps into the unknown and euphoric, melodic bliss. Recorded using a combination of modular synthesis, Arp Odyssey, bass, guitar, Elektron grooveboxes and (for the first time in Apta's recorded history) a hint of vocals. There are wisps of melody from the outset, woven through skittering modular synths and saturated bass guitar. But it's on the post-rock indebted 'Shiver' and follower 'Awash' that Apta's distinctive mix of ambient music and flourishing melody take the fore. We also get some more off-piste excursions, widening the boundaries of Apta's already diverse sound and resulting in an album that falls somewhere in the middle ground between post-rock, pop ambient and kosmische. Though there are definitely echoes of that pristine production aesthetic that has defined Apta's sound to date, there are a lot more layers involved, with both gritty percussion and analogue distortion playing a much more significant role, echoing the waves of emotion involved in the tryptamine plunge, and resulting in a stylistically varied, but familiar experience. 'The Pool' is both surprising and intriguing, richly layered but undeniably melodic, and has found it's perfect home on Castles In Space.

Barry Smethurst expands: "The Pool' to me feels like the sort of album that epitomises what I'm trying to do with my music, influenced by melody-laiden electronica and guitar-led post rock while sounding like neither. I've always felt that it would be nice to have another layer to my compositions (a minor key here or there) and some less upbeat pieces, and I think the theme of the LP works perfectly as a parallel, with both moments of sublime joy and flickers of the intimidating unknown coming together. The album was 'Finished' just before I got the Arp Odyssey, so was originally a lot less Arp heavy, but because the noise oscillator mix of the synth works perfectly with the saturated haze of the LP as a whole, I went back and recorded a load of tracks to add it in."

Castles in Space are delighted to be releasing this beautiful and euphoric album as their first release of 2025. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Apta’s latest libation has been a long time brewing. He released his first E.P. back in 2011 - for context, David Cameron was prime minister, the UK was still happily part of the E.U. and pandemics were the stuff of history lessons and disaster movies. So much has changed since, not least in Apta’s sonic world, although in this case those developments have not been jarring, each new iteration building on the fertile ground of the former; this being the most complete realisation of his creative vision to date.

“The Pool” is a sympathetic expression of psychedelic experience through music, with accents of post-rock, kosmische, Icelandic glitch popsters Múm and even folk inflexions adding texture to a modular electronic core. For the first time in his recorded history there are even vocals (hushed mind you, and only on the one song, the gorgeous drift of “Emerge”).

Yes, it’s taken 14 years to get to this point, but it’s definitely been worth the wait - and infinitely more welcome than some things I could think of.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sink
2. Shivers
3. Awash
4. One Foot
5. MLT
6. Meniscus
7. Dive
8. The Depths
9. Emerge
10. Breathe

Based in Malmö, Sweden, Den Osynliga Manteln (The Invisible Cloak) comprises producer duo Ola Sandberg and Fredrik Grönvall.

They describe their intention as making albums that tell stories and make journeys through textures and soundscapes of fictional places and spaces. With one foot in the past and the other in the future, the music is created to conjure both nostalgia and activate the imagination of what’s not yet here, touching both the known and the unknown.

If Under Grön Himmel has an apocalyptic feel, it's reflective of our tumultuous times which pulled the music into a different and darker post-pandemic territory than their stunning debut. "Insekstfolk" (CiS, August 2021).

The title translates to "Under Green Skies" which points to the melancholy but also, the potential beauty of our doomsday. The fever dream depicts an alternate reality, a different planet, some kind of shift. A turbulent place, a fugue state, a death of sorts.

At the same time there’s a psychedelic undertone to the record, a transformational arc spanning from the first hiss to the last. The titles of the songs align with this theme, translating roughly as "Glitter Mountains", "Purple Forest", "Movement of the Hills", "Triple Moon", "The Planet Whisperer" and "Triple Sun"

An array of analog synthesizers and electrical organs rescued from flea markets meets tape hiss, saxophones and a hidden vibraphone. Drum kits, electric bass and guitars, the occasional vocals dubbed with an eighty year old piano and glittering bells. Under Grön Himmel has layers of dust from the distant past yet it arrives here in a polished chrome vessel from the future. It's like Neu! broke out the jazz chords and the whole album has an un-graspable quality that's hard to define. Like a benevolent psychedelic mist, it’s here to hold you at the end of times and celebrate its beauty.

Ola Sandberg is a Swedish producer based in Malmö — a multi-instrumentalist with a masters degree from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and a deep love for sound. As well as sound installations, film scores and collaborations (making up one half of Den Osynliga Manteln), Ola has an ongoing solo project called Osynliga Rum, or Invisible Room, which is also the title of the first record coming out of this project. Invisible Room circles around the idea of using music making and sound as ways to explore the audible qualities of architecture, while also using architecture to explore sound, and having it guide and shape the music being made. Sandberg was influenced and inspired by, to name a few, Paul Horn's sonic experiments in both Inside the Taj Mahal and Inside the Great Pyramid, Pauline Olivero playing in a huge underground silo in Deep Listening, and Alvin Lucier's acoustic explorations in I Am Sitting in a Room.

Invisible room was created and recorded in St John’s Church in Malmö during March of 2021 using a modular, analog synthesiser, speakers and microphones. Building on the premise that the essence of a room, the space it holds, is invisible but audible — the music was created with the purpose of exploring and activating the sonic aspects of the room, aiming for a non hierarchical relationship between room and sound. Many nights were spent alone in this church and over eight hours of music was created and recorded.

"Remains" is the debut album from composer and sound artist Will Gardner.

Will has worked extensively behind the scenes as an arranger, orchestrator and pianist in both Berlin and London, arranging strings for alt-J, Daughter, Låpsley and Madness. This debut solo work explores the experience of caring for his father through the final stages of Parkinson’s dementia.

The album is both an aural imagining of the dementia experience (it’s memory slippages, disturbances, delusions and paranoias) and also a deeply personal account of grieving for a parent, and what it means to grieve for someone who is still alive.

The composition process started after Will began reading from his Dad’s personal diaries which stretched back over twenty years. The exploration of memory through music is a constant thread throughout the album.

“I became quite preoccupied with the idea of memory whilst reading the diaries and caring for my Dad (who’s own memory was faltering). I was thinking about where memories belong, who do they belong to, what does it mean to ‘share’ a memory, and where do they go, shared or otherwise, if they are ‘lost’?”

Will began to compose themes using extracts from his dad’s diaries. Fragments of the text were used to derive the rhythms and melodies on which the tracks are built. Through this process, a sort of translation occurred: the immediate meaning became lost, but an imprint of it remained within the music.

The old family piano keeps returning as a presence throughout Remains - a seared memory alongside strings, voices and other indiscernible textures, often altered and disfigured through digital effect chains. Ideas repeat themselves. Moments of clarity fall away into fog; sounds glitch in and out of focus and are distorted almost beyond recognition. Signals of separate audio chains influence each other, morphing together in an uncanny conversation - mirroring the deterioration and disorientation brought on by the disease.

Despite the gloom, however, there is a softness that underpins these nightmares. “Whilst trying to capture this dark and incoherent internal world that my Dad was experiencing, I noticed that I kept returning, somewhat counter-intuivately, to quite delicate, soft sounds. I realised that these sounds were like seeing my own reflection emerge within the work - my own sense of concern for what he was going through and my own grief for what was being lost day by day."

"Remains" deals with a raw, complex subject from multiple angles, slipping back and forth between Will’s own perspective and the imagined perspective of his father.

Growing up in the Fens, East Anglia, Will’s early life was steeped in classical music. His earliest musical experiences were singing as a chorister in Ely Cathedral and he went on to study classical music at Cambridge, and obtain a piano diploma from the Royal School of Music.

On graduating, Will moved to Berlin and spent a number of years working for composer Jonathan Bepler on Matthew Barney’s experimental operatic film "River of Fundament". It was here that he began to explore electronic music and sound design for the first time.

Will moved to London in 2016, where he established himself as an in-demand musician, working across a variety of different genres and practices. In 2021 he wrote and conducted the arrangements on alt-J’s fourth studio album The Dream, and in 2019 was commissioned by Låpsley to write a collection of works in response to her second album "Through Water", to be played on her European Tour. He has also written arrangements for Daughter (Rough Trade 2023), HMLTD’s "The Worm" (2023). His film and TV orchestrations can be heard in Sky Atlantic's "Tin Star" (2017), "Oceans Eight" (2018), and BAFTA-nominated "Blue Jean" (2022).

All of this collaborative experience across multiple genres plays a significant part informing Will’s own sound. Comfortable in both studio and concert hall, he demonstrates a wide variety of creative techniques from both classical and electronic music traditions.

"Remains" is the work of a skilled and experienced practioner that is both fragile and powerful at the same time. It's an album that stays with you long after the needle has been lifted and ironically, lives long in the memory.

This debut album from previous Sink Ya Teeth member Maria Uzor treads softly upon opening, before charging headfirst into a cosmic landscape of electro, avant-pop, footwork and stark techno.
Nine tracks delivered as the building blocks for a world seen through Uzor’s eyes where there are no boundaries, there are no walls, just a gentle beckoning to be yourself. ‘Soft Cuts’ is a joyful and groove-led journey with unexpected twists through the darkness.

Eclectic and esoteric, the album revels in it’s own diversity. There are echos of Aphex Twin in there, of Zapp, Kate Bush and Drexciya. And yet for all it’s influences, Maria has created a body of work that’s beautifully seamless in it’s amalgamations. Play loud and lose yourself to find yourself.

This past year has seen Maria Uzor release the first single ‘Ventolin’ from the Soft Cuts album to praise and support from John Kennedy (Radio X), Amy Lame, Tom Ravenscroft, Deb Grant, and Jamz Supernova (BBC 6 Music). She has also played festivals including The Great Escape, Nox Orae (Switzerland) and Manchester Psych Fest, and collaborated with Acid Klaus, !!!, and A Certain Ratio.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As perfect as it is for home listening, there's no doubt that the endlessly talented Maria Uzor's music is courting the dancefloor, with shimmering arps and hefty percussives perfectly working beneath her haunting, perfectly produced vocals. A heady, dynamic mix of gothic wooze and dance-adjacent rhythm.

The fourth Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan album, The Nation's Most Central Location is released via Castles in Space and it's another absolute gem. This album sees Gordon Chapman-Fox (the man behind Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan) explore the north-south divide and reflect on 40 years of broken 'levelling up' promises.

With eight tracks across 40 minutes, the album offers Gordon's usual mix of mournful remorse and upbeat optimism. Gordon has now added an underlying anger that burns through on tracks such as London's Moving Our Way and A Brighter And More Prosperous Future.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A much needed repress of the great Warrington Runcorn's 'The Nation's Most Central Location', a benchmark release in the Castles in Space catalogue and a beautifully enchanting LP throughout. You need this in the collection.

ALSO, Gordon's come and signed a load of records for us! When they're gone..

TRACK LISTING

1. Just Off The M56 (J12) 03:06
2. Rocksavage 05:36
3. Daresbury Laboratory 04:51
4. London's Moving Our Way 07:13
5. Thelwall Viaduct 04:37
6. Europa Boulevard 07:05
7. Busway 03:14 
8. A Brighter And More Prosperous Future 04:12

The fourth Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan album, The Nation's Most Central Location, will be released on 19th May 2023. This album sees Gordon Chapman-Fox (the man behind Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan) explore the north-south divide and reflect on 40 years of broken 'levelling up' promises.

With eight tracks across 40 minutes, the album offers Gordon's usual mix of mournful remorse and upbeat optimism. By now, however, there’s an underlying anger which burns through tracks such as London's Moving Our Way and A Brighter And More Prosperous Future.

Syrup House is the follow up to Jilk’s 2022 Castles In Space album, “Haunted Bedrooms”.

Haunted Bedrooms established the Jilk sound with a clash of cascading chamber instruments meeting brittle electronics and experimental noise. Frequently quiet and emotional but also edged with spikes and sharp teeth. On Syrup House, however, the collective dig out a much smoother and sweeter sound. And while ‘expect the unexpected’ should still be your guiding principle, here you can dive deep into luscious droning textures and swelling orchestration which sits alongside the warmth of analogue house and techno.

A series of church based improvisations are reworked into clockwork symphonies of clattering percussion and driving, joyous synth workouts. Vocals are much more present in the Syrup House, as Jilk draws from ethereal dream pop motifs while deconstructing traditional song structures into warm blankets of cloudy dynamics.

Syrup House follows a loose narrative about a magic-realist night club that appears and disappears at will. Inside, a labyrinthine interior contains corridors of ecstatic love and self realisation. Ultimately, during testing times, it is compassion that will prevail and Syrup House is where that compassion goes to dance away the blues.

Jilk are a UK based collective of musicians, fusing a bewildering collage of home-found sounds with the ambient soundscapes of washy synths, exquisite strings, insect-like clicks and cuts, and huge gorgeous waves of all encompassing experimental noise. Collaboration and open minded exploration are at the centre of all that they do.

On this album Jilk were: Cags Diep, Paul Eadie, Neil Gay, Jon Gibson, Nuala Honan, Emma Hooper, Andreas Laudwein, Kayla Painter, Beth Porter and Jon Worsley.

Syrup house was mastered by Shawn Joseph at Optimum Studios, Bristol.

Imperfect Stranger is the pseudonym of Glasgow based soundtrack composer and producer Kenny Inglis. “Everything Wrong is Right” is his debut solo album for Castles in Space.

Born in 1975, Kenny didn't listen to much music, unless it was the opening credits to a TV show or a film score that had caught his ear. "I loved the pre-title music on a lot of those 80's U.S. TV shows. From the family orientated stuff like The A-Team, to darker dramas such as The Equalizer. My mother would let me stay up to watch the opening sequence of the latter then send me to bed because the story would be too heavy for a kid. That left me with this hanging sense of ambiguity as to what would happen in that hour after the titles came up.”

Exposure to a work colleague’s tiny project studio in a kitchen cupboard was a lightbulb moment for him and the experience of utilising music technology as a way of writing and producing entire tracks stirred a wave of determination to chase a career in music using the opportunities that technology could offer. Kenny figured the best way to move forward was to start a small project studio and learn his craft as a recording engineer. "It was a bit of a shock to the system. I literally had no idea how to work any of the equipment. Kenny focused on learning as much about the craft as he could whilst winging his way through recording and mixing everyone from the likes of singer/songwriters to bands, to voiceovers artists and anything in between. "Eventually, I stopped writing the music I thought people would want to hear, and started writing the music I wanted to make. I didn't come from a music loving background, but I was always obsessed by the way music and film would interact - how music brings this atmosphere and tone to even the most mundane visual stuff. I wanted to capture that. I wanted to grab some of that ambiguity I felt from the TV shows of my childhood and make it into a project of some sort". That project was Spylab. A dark, downtempo project with a cinematic edge. The initial demo consisted of three tracks, with the melancholic 'This Utopia' leading the playlist.

"At the time you did demos on normal cassette tapes. I remember having this endless battle with the bias control to try and get the best sound I could on these little tapes. Ten went in the post one Monday morning, and the following Monday there were three offers from three different labels. Studio K7 were interested in a singles deal, as was Flying Rhino in London. But then there was an offer from a Chicago based label by the name of Guidance Recordings. They wanted an album, and were offering a $15,000 advance. It wasn't a difficult decision to make"

Writing and recording Spylab 'This Utopia' began in 1999. The album took a whole year to produce. The album was to catch the attention of Mary Anne Hobbs at Radio One. At the time Mary Anne was presenting The Breezeblock - a late Sunday night show with an eclectic playlist of alternative electronic music. Picking out the album's title track 'This Utopia', Mary Anne would go on to play it no less than 8 weeks in a row. A request for Spylab to DJ on the show was to follow. "I had never DJ'd before. I think I had a week to figure out how to do that and put a playlist together. I'm not entirely sure how I pulled that off.” In March 2001 the Spylab album was finally released to a hoard of excellent reviews. A North American live tour would follow. From the launch party in Los Angeles, to a sell out show at SXSW in Austin. "I then started a new project under the name Cinephile. It had some of the core elements of the Spylab sound but it was deeper, more cinematic.” Kenny received news that a track from the previous project Spylab had been requested by HBO for the first episode of a new TV drama called Six Feet Under. This was to become a major turning point in Kenny's career. The Spylab track 'Celluloid Hypnotic' dropped during a poignant party scene of the first Six Feet Under episode. Within a couple of days Kenny was getting requests for music from other music supervisors. "It was a chain reaction. The Six Feet Under sync was like the tip of an iceberg. One day I called CBS in America and they put me on to the CSI music supervisor and I managed to get on a call with him. I sent the Cinephile stuff out and within a few months I got this fax through from CBS - a quote request for one of the tracks for a potential use on CSI. It changed my life."

The tone and style of Kenny's music sat perfectly with the CSI score requirements. So much so he found himself part of a pool of incidental writers who worked on all three aspects of the franchise - CSI, CSI: NY, and CSI: Miami. This would continue until 2013, when the last of the series would come to an end.

"I was juggling a bunch of stuff for those ten years. Writing material for CSI, whilst releasing new Cinephile stuff and playing live. As Cinephile continued to gather pace, one of the tracks from Kenny's efforts on CSI was chosen for the Hollywood trailer for the Samuel L. Jackson film 'Lakeview Terrace'. Further trailers would follow, from Gangster Squad to Dead Man Down, Spike Lee's Undisputed Truth, to Fifty Shades Freed.

At the same time, Kenny picked up his first factual commissions in the UK, and this too would be the beginning of a regular run of fully scoring factuals and documentaries. By 2021, six of these had won BAFTAs. He also would find himself soundtracking adverts for the likes of Nike, Audi, and American AirlinesIn early 2020, Kenny made a return to focusing on his own music under the pseudonym Imperfect Stranger. A tweet from Colin Morrison from Castles In Space regarding a charity compilation album 'The Isolation Tapes' caught his eye. Kenny had made a start on his debut album as Imperfect Stranger and submitted the track 'Hymn To The Sun' (which would become the lead track on the album). Further discussions ensued, and the album found a home on CiS. "I had been doing TV and film stuff for almost ten years. It paid the bills and was as close to a 'real job' as I'd had, but I yearned to get back to writing for myself, so doing an album for Castles in Space was a joy.

“The music I write is like a diary. There's an authentic narrative to everything i do. I don't write tracks for the sake of writing. I write tracks to diarise and process the stuff that I've lived through, and the experiences that have come along with the passing years. That's what makes me tick. It's a very public and vulnerable way of expressing myself. If people want to know the real me, all they have to do is listen."

For the first time, Jon Michaelides allows his Dalham project more space to breathe in two new long tracks of sky-scraping, world building ambient (or is it) techno.

Dalham is the long term of project of Suffolk born Londoner, Jon Michaelides.
Here he discusses “Fünf” (his fifth release, natch), which is subtitled “The Past Is a Foreign Country”: “There have always been “ambient” tracks on previous albums but they have in some ways served as a bit of peace and respite from the more busy percussive tracks. The purchase of some effects units triggered the decision to use delays and reverbs during the composition process much more and an entirely ambient record seemed the best vehicle for this. I was simultaneously attempting, and not for the first time, to fully grasp the concept of special relativity and so a record about time and space, focussed on the manipulation of time (delay) and space (reverb) was born.

“Some of the phenomena associated with this theory, for example the relativity of simultaneity, lead to the questioning of the nature of reality and at times a sense of disconnect with much of what was happening in the concrete world. Coupled with the desire to revisit the past, where certain friends and family are still alive and well, this set the emotional tone for these two extended tracks. Fünf is a journey to acceptance. Not only is the past a foreign country, but our passports have been revoked and we won’t be returning.”

It’s interesting that Jon uses the term “ambient”: ”I guess I call it ambient because it doesn’t have any ‘beats’ but yes, it is still very rhythmic.”

For many, these compositions will sound too intricate and complex to be termed “ambient”, but as ever, we find it difficult to find the words to describe the unique music that Jon makes. A true individual, there is literally nobody else that sounds like Dalham.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Dalham's 'Funf' is a wonderfully realised selection of crystalline synth walls and cavernous reverbed spaces, bringing to mind a juxtaposition of the evocative soundtrack work of Drokk or Survive mixed with the ambient swells and catatonic heft a-la Jon Power / Blanck Mass. Another amazing CiS release.

Debut album from Luke Requena on Castles In Space. “Mirror Stage”. As the Lacanian title suggests, it is a collection of meditations and self-reflection translated into sonic explorations of the space that connects the macrocosm and the microcosm. Inspired largely by Tarkovsky’s film Solaris, the making of “Mirror Stage” was a musical journey of internal struggle across subconscious landscapes.

Requena is a composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Vancouver, BC. Although his main source of sound is analog synthesizers, he also integrates santur, guitar and organs into his pieces. Drawing influences from artists such as Günter Schickert, early Pink Floyd, and classical Persian music, “Mirror Stage” emits waves of sonics and lush textures while exploring the dark cosmos. It’s a genuinely enthralling work.

Luke has already released a double album, “Nocturnal/Seasonal” with John Jeffrey, drummer of Moon Duo, for the Castles in Space Subscription Library as part of the new age electronic jazz project, Oscilloclast.

TRACK LISTING

1. Metallic Plastic
2. Venus Maternal
3. Comet Mist
4. Death Sunrise
5. Subjugated Moons
6. Sleepwalking Seagull

“It's about the in-between moments.” - Hattie Cooke “Bliss Land” is the new LP from Brighton born artist Hattie Cooke. Her third album and debut release for Castles In Space opens up her sound by managing to find a balance between the introspective and the communal. It is an album that looks forward whilst acknowledging the creators past creating a work full of a nostalgia that also feels vitally current. Initially conceived as a soundtrack album, during its creation, “Bliss Land” morphed into a beautiful set of personal songs born out of anticipation, excitement and anxiety.

Speaking about the themes of the albums, Hattie says: "It wasn’t until the album was finished that I realised what it was about. I had recently graduated from university and people were beginning to take more notice of my music. I was excited about the possibilities of the future, but at the same time the immediate future had been put on hold due to the pandemic, so I was frustrated and anxious. And then whenever I think about the future, I can’t help but think about the past and where I’ve come from and what I’ve been through to get to that point. So in some ways it’s a reflective record and in other ways it’s a record full of anticipation. “One Foot Out The Door” is a track that really resonates with me - it’s about that liminal space between the past and the future when you’re on the threshold of something. I think that’s what the album is about, it’s about the in-between moments. "I grew up on a small council estate on the outskirts of Brighton in a house that was full of music. Both my parents played guitar and my dad also bought and sold records for a living. I taught myself the guitar when I was twelve and made plenty of music throughout my teens. At 17, I won a scholarship to study at the British Institute Of Modern Music and continued writing and playing local shows. I also started to learn how to record and produce my own music on GarageBand as a necessary alternative to going into an expensive recording studio. GarageBand has some fantastic synth and electronic drum sounds and that’s when I became more interested in electronic music and music production. In 2015, Third Kind Records approached me after hearing my songs on a homemade demo CD that a friend had passed on. We released my debut album in 2016 and I’ve been making and releasing music ever since.”

Hattie writes, records and produces all her own albums, however she is keen to express how others have helped shaped parts of Bliss Land: “The record isn’t a completely solo effort, I had people along the way to help shape this album into what it became, although I had complete artistic freedom to let the album grow into what it wanted to be. I had invaluable help from Dom Keen who helped me mix the album. We spent a good number of nights in his studio drinking gin and trying to get everything just right. He did things to the music that I would never have even considered doing. I had no idea what compression really was until the making of this record, which probably sounds mad considering I’ve produced three records but when you’re self-taught you can miss out learning about so much! Antony Ryan’s mastering added a whole new dimension to the record as well.”

“Bliss Land” is an album soaked in the outer edges of pop music making it a cohesive and beautiful album full of dense textures held together by Hattie's unique voice. It’s an album that will undoubtedly chime with a cross section of audiences. So where does Hattie see her music in the landscape of the current UK electronic scene? "There’s a lot of instrumental/soundtrack music coming out of the scene, a lot of synthwave music which seems to be a real throwback to the 70s and early 80s. I think that’s because so much of the music coming out of the scene is made by those who grew up during those decades. So I think I’m a bit of an outlier when it comes to the UK electronic scene for two reasons. Firstly, I’m at the lower end of the age range and secondly, I’m a woman in an extremely male dominated scene. “Bliss Land” is intentionally quite poppy, which seems to be less in fashion at the moment whereas my other instrumental stuff is more inspired by classical music than by IDM or ambient music, so I think I’m coming at writing and producing from a slightly different angle. However, I still definitely feel part of the scene. There’s a particularly strong sense of community within the UK electronic scene on Twitter and I’ve been nothing but welcomed and supported by the artists, fans and labels. It’s like being part of a strange and wonderful family.”

You’ve made a video for the track “Youth” with Chris Standley from Rogue Robot which is both funny and shot through with real melancholy. “Youth" is about reflecting on the past. I turned thirty this year and sometimes (more than I'd like to admit) I worry that I've gotten more boring as I've gotten older. I was pretty wild and unhinged when I was younger and sometimes I miss those mad nights out where it felt like absolutely anything could happen - although saying that I just don't have the energy to stay up for three days or the stomach to cope with the hangovers anymore. Still, there are days when I miss the way that everything feels new and exciting when you're in your late teens/early twenties - everything is more intense when you're younger and the world around you seems bright and buzzing with life. I've been thinking about it a lot this past year. I've not had much to do for the last twelve months besides walk around on my own and reflect on the past, since the future has basically been put on indefinite hold, so that has almost certainly fed into some of the lyrics and maybe even the feel of the music.”

The album is already garnering a lot of attention and praise. What’s next for Hattie after the album is released? "Who knows what’s next! I have plans to tour the album when the world opens up again. I’d also love to have the chance to score a film or to work with some other artists doing guest vocals or some remixes. And I’d like to get back to doing some music-related charity work again as my family were supported by a number of charities when I was growing up and think it’s important to give back when you can."

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Having formed one of the most enduringly superb 'pseud-ost' releases of the past few years in 'The Sleepers' for the excellent Spun Out Sounds, Cooke hits electronic stalwarts Castles In Space for her excellent new LP 'Bliss Land'. Brilliantly toeing the line between electronic and acoustic, there are moments of pure Broadcast-y bliss and echoes of the soundtrack moments from the previous LP too. Do not sleep on this one.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. I Get By
2. Mistaken
3. Cars
4. One Foot Out The Door
5. Youth

Side B
6. Don’t Wanna Talk
7. Invisible Lines
8. Fantasies
9. Lovers Game
10. Summer Time

Dinked Edition Bonus 7”
1. One Foot Out The Door (Acoustic Version)
2. Above My Bed