Back catalogue: Classical

Review: Fresh from curating a fine compilation marking 25 years of his admirable DiN label, Ian Boddy unleashes the latest in a long-line of collaborative works. He's previously released joint studio works alongside Chris Carter, Erik Wollo and Mark Shreeve, amongst others and here is in cahoots with Parallel Worlds member (and DiN semi-regular) Dave Bessell. In true ambient fashion, Polarity boasts a two-part, near 52-minute title track: an evocative, creepy and slowly shifting fusion of modular electronic bleeps, vintage analogue synthesiser melodies, immersive chords and - for shortish blasts amongst the aural weightlessness - bubbling beats. To round off the album, the pair drifts further into deep space ambient mode via the Pete Namlook-esque 'Confluence'.

Review: Healing Sound Propagandist releases Julien Demoulin's Ephemeral Maps, a beautifully fitting follow-up to Dreams In Digital Dust. This album continues the journey through the same lush soundscapes that captivated listeners on Demoulin's previous work, but this time subverts them to produce a, well, less dusty, more aerial take. The LP, released on cassette and digital only, sounds like it took a long time to make, and as though its drones were being overturned through and out of ancient soils. From the jump of 'Land Before Memory', we're thrust into what sounds like a contradictorily landed but birds-eye-view of an epochal realm, with an atonal drone heard pocketed below a set of slow-release rustlings and leaven fadings-away. Some moments, like 'Through The Drowned City', revel in high pitch and clarity, while chromaticism and tension thrive elsewhere on moments such as '27th Day (Challenger Deep)'. Intended as a challenge to the idea of the anthropocene, this is somewhat abstracting, depersonalising ambient record, so it's not for the faint of heart, but it doesn't come without a deep reserve of human sentiment either.