Review: This is a very special gold vinyl version of the soundtrack for the tokusatsu science fiction superhero television series Spectreman. It ran in the early 70s and had three seasons in all with a cult following who will go nuts to finally have these sounds on wax all these many decades later. It has one Japanese side and one American side and is the work of Ricardo Cruz and Kunio Miyauchi. Instrumentals and the theme song all feature to make this a real retro classic.
Review: Finland's Olli Aarni delivers two swirling, longform tape meanderings on Dauw Belgium. Aarni's music is effortlessly analogous to organic structures and growth, and the A-side is a blissfully suspended, gauzy trip, with resonant pads and emotive tintinnabulations permeating thick, gravelly clouds of teeming tape flutter. On the flip, hollow drones give way to a dense haze of soft noise and abstraction, before regressing to purer sine rumblings towards a cathartic conclusion.
Study For Tape Hiss & Other Audio Artefacts (12:01)
Apparition 5 (2:14)
Review: Selected from a decade of recordings, this release showcases Bass Communion at its most experimental and texturally rich. Tracks are layered with analogue imperfectionsitape hiss, wow and flutter, static noiseithat are transformed into haunting soundscapes. The mellotron, buried beneath layers of imagined rust and dirt, adds an eerie, organic depth to the fragmented drones and spectral noise. The carefully constructed album feels like an excavation of forgotten sonic artefacts, with each piece offering a narrative rooted in decay and texture. Pressed on 2xLP, this is a striking addition to the Bass Communion catalogue, perfect for fans of sonic exploration.
Nude Love (long version - previously unreleased - bonus track) (3:20)
Review: Codice d'amore orientale may not be Piero Vivarelli's best film according to those who know, but its fantastically groovy soundtrack is a standout feature. Composed by Alberto Baldan Bembo under the alias Blue Marvin, the nine tracks blend Italian pop, orchestral arrangements, Asian influences, breakbeat, funk and experimental sounds. The soundtrack captures the essence of the era and offers a unique mix of genres that perfectly complements the film's vibe. Its eclectic style makes it a must-have for any self-respecting DJ's collection while showcasing Baldan Bembo's versatility.
Review: Released to acclaim in 1985, The Falcon and the Snowman recounts the extraordinary true story of Christopher Boyce (Timothy Hutton) and Andrew Daulton Lee (Sean Penn), childhood friends who betrayed their country by selling U.S. satellite secrets to the Soviets in the 70s. The film's score, crafted by jazz virtuoso Pat Metheny alongside pianist Lyle Mays, is a masterful blend of tension and melancholy, enriched by orchestral arrangements from the National Philharmonic Orchestra. The standout track, 'This Is Not America,' features lyrics by David Bowie and became one of his notable hits of the decade, reaching No. 14 in the UK. All in all, an exclusive collector's box set.
Review: London-based producer Box5ive is best known for bass-y reverberations, putting together potent UK-sounding club stuff for labels like Panel Audio and Well Street Records. A new direction found, co:clear now presents a stunning and beautiful collection of gentile ambient and drone material which is as transportive as it is trippy. A sunrise, a breathwork session, an odyssey through the mind's eye, a real work of art. At its most lush, Grey Space gives us the spatial twinkles of 'Sour Kiss', or the whispered exhales of 'Rough Sleeper', 'In Grey Space' and its sense of vast emptiness, and the crystalline harmonies on 'First Name'. At its loudest, we have the occasional beats and echoed notes of 'Omni74' and the blissful, d&b-chill of 'Blind' and 'Sell A Door'. The point being, this is never loud or overbearing, but always seductive and immersive.
Review: Quiet Music Under the Moon marks the 2023 debut of Calm, featuring a talented ensemble: Toshitaka Shibata on piano, Yuichiro Kato on saxophone, Tomokazu Sugimoto on upright bass and Kakuei on steel pan. This new collection shifts focus from showcasing virtuosic solos to delivering a meticulously crafted suite of chillout tracks, mostly incorporating "moon" in their titles. The album unfolds like a serene journey through the night, seamlessly transitioning from pieces like 'Drift Into Dreamland' to morning reflections in 'Oyasumi, Ohayo'. The natural sounds of cicadas and gentle summer showers act as connecting threads, enhancing the auditory experience. Musically, the tracks fall into two categories: softly sighing synth melodies reminiscent of 80s cinematic scores and gentle, beatless soundscapes infused with post-rave textures. For example, 'Moonshower' evokes the lush aesthetics of Digital Justice's works, slowed down to a meditative pace. Calm's signature ambient sound shines throughout, characterised by slowly arching pads and sustained chords that invite contemplation. This clear vinyl edition, complete with an obi strip.
Hanging Herself On The Lonely Fifth Column (13:22)
Openings Of Love (Fireworks) (17:01)
Extended Sways Of Silence (18:11)
Review: Will Thomas Long's and Danielle Baquet-Long's magnificent album Celer is an alluring fusion of classic ambient and minimalism that comes steeped in a very real sense of romance. It comes with underlying themes of longing, melancholy, and nostalgia and begins with the sound of a train evoking a sense of travel. Throughout the piece, grandiose string loops alternate with various field recordings, creating contrasts between the concrete and abstract, the mundane and the exalted. Despite the epic feel of the string loops, the title, 'Engaged Touches', hints at intimacy. This powerful romanticism characterises much of Celer's work, making this another noteworthy addition to their growing repertoire.
Review: Oliver Coates' Throb, Shiver, Arrow of Time is an exploration of memory and emotion, blending the tactile with the ephemeral. This third album from the British cellist, producer, and composer, released through RVNG Intl., encapsulates six years of introspection and creative evolution. Following the atmospheric textures of his previous work, skins n slime, Coates delves deeper into the interplay of digital and analogue sound. The album's centerpiece, 'Shopping centre curfew,' reflects a surreal fusion of events from South London during the pandemic, manifesting a unique blend of temporal dissonance and vivid soundscapes. Tracks like 'Please be normal' and '90' showcase Coates' ability to weave misty tones and shifting frequencies into a cohesive auditory experience. Collaborations with Malibu and chrysanthemum bear, along with Faten Kanaan's synth textures, enhance the album's depth. Inspired by artist Sarah Sze's installations, Coates applies a sculptural approach to sound, creating a dynamic interplay between digital manipulation and live performance. The result is a rich experience that resists closure, with the final track 'Make it happen' embodying a defiant push against silence.
Review: The Durutti Column prove just how fertile the North West England music scene was during the mid-late-1970s and through the 1980s. Taking their name from an anarchist military movement active during the Spanish Civil War, the band was formed by Vini Reilly, who brought together a bunch of players from the nascent punk and post punk scene, and managed to turn heads in the process. One of which was Tony Wilson. One of the first acts to sign to his now-legendary Factory Records, they would remain on the imprint until its demise, by which time the project had become a solo thing for Reilly, whose name was already shorthand for risk taking with bold ideas. Take this record, for example, veering from Southern Mediterranean folk to experimental indie, sample-based rock-opera and more, it still defies expectations.
B-STOCK: CD case damaged but otherwise in excellent condition
Review: ***B-STOCK: CD case damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***
Seven arresting, original new exercises from E-Saggila aka Canadian producer Rita Mikhael. She wears her love of dub on her sleeve - see the slow motion skank of 'Amnesiac' aming others - but not in the usual reassuring, bubbling echoes of dub techno, aiming for something much more angular and alarming. "Breaks remain staccato hammers," says the blurb, with maximum accuracy, "and kicks are cast to negate cardiac systems," while the rhythms veer from off kilter to nailed down and the sonics vary from the lush to the caustic. This territory to the left(field) of electronica is over saturated with identikit productions, but Mikhael does it like you've never quite heard before.
Review: "Tracks play out like beatless symphonies of wayward folk music who's basement transmissions have been intercepted from the ether; a stirring limbo of grotty emotions that inspire and conflict in equal measure. Portals into zones of sampladelic oddities, haunted vocals and scatty euphoria that is collectively driven by an (un)willingness to straddle familiar pastures." Firnis DC certainly paint a pretty vivid picture of their latest album, on which things are stripped back to the basics, allowing each individual element to breathe properly. This space really works, creating the sensation of endlessness in sound, and a depth of ideas that you can fall through, slowly descending into a world of strange post-rave ambience, looking up at fluffy clouds passing overhead the morning after that night before.
Review: Wherever You Are is the sonic result, expressed through solo piano, of a bright burst of introspection experienced at home by John Foxx of Ultravox fame. Made up of compositions he created in the quiet hours following a rare performance at Kings Place, London, during the BBC Radio 3 Night Tracks event in October 2023, the majority of Wherever You Are was recorded at home, with Foxx noting that the matutinal hours are the best for minimising self-criticism, and letting creative freedom flow. Morning, on Foxx's watch, is the ideal time to play: and in stark contrast to his oblique solo LP Metamatic, Foxx's latest is a mono-instrumental monument to personal tranquility and contentment. It reiterates the importance of quietude and temperance as crucial start-points for navigating the complex world we face today.
Review: Allegedly one of the first ever records to make use of sampling, Jean-Michel Jarre's seventh album Zoolook brought with it a unique vibe, one well worth looking back on in light of its latest Sony reissue. In terms of notoriety, Zoolook pales in comparison to the electronic music crackerjack's 1976-8 heyday, which saw to both Oxygene and Equinoxe; but this is understandable, as Zoolook came much later, and sacrificed the grandiose mood of otherworldly space-awe for an eerier menage of playful factory hits and cacophonous dance hubbubery. Perhaps this sound - a jankier one that grew in popularity in the mid 80s - was driven by Jarre's use of the Fairlight CMI workstation and sampler, an example of a piece of gear that had the power to define an entire sound. We'd venture to say that the titular "Zoolook" is a kind of gaze that, by virtue of us living in a machine society, makes animals of us all.
Review: The name John Williams towers over the world of movie scores. The American has made some of the most critically acclaimed soundtracks of all time over the last seven decades, and has worked with cinematic greats like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas on his way to picking up 26 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards and countless other awards.This album collects some of his greatest ever silver screen moments, starting with maybe the biggest, the Star Wars theme. Many more from that film plus classics like Jaws and Indiana Jones also feature on what is a brilliantly nostalgic collection.
Review: Since delivering his debut album on PNN a decade ago, Matt Kent AKA Matt Karmil has proved adept at adapting the club-focused sound of his EPs to the long-playing format - as his inspired and wonderfully atmospheric sets for Idle Hands and Smalltown Supersound prove. He continues this notable run of form on this Studio Barnhus released set, crowding ultra-deep, dusty grooves in opaque chords, cut-up sample snippets, lo-fi crackle, hazy ambient textures and nods towards a myriad of ear-pleasing electronic styles and sounds. Highlights are plentiful, with our picks being the dubby, mind-altering late-night hypnotism of 'Still Something There' and the becalmed, meditative ambient deepness of superb closing cut '15 Mins' (which, confusingly, is just 13 minutes long).
Review: Pieter Kock shows us how it's done with The End II, a fantastic new experimental beats LP manifested on the Macadam Mambo label, in a move that has been described as "quite unexpected". A doyen of post-10s German kraut-tronics, Kock first found his savvy as a releaser of retrofutural cassette tapes for various outlets - the likes of RIO, Meakusma and Moonwalk X - all of which assumed album form (to date, Kock has not released a single single or EP). Macadam Mambo offer a suggestion as to why this is: "all the demos that he sent were so good that there was no question about doing something." If by "doing something" you mean releasing over 16 strident club-churners in the style of far leftfield dub, synthpunk and krauty Krankenschaften, you've made no mistake. Dive into any one of these exotic exo-treats, and your eyes will just as surely turn helical.
Review: Newly, radically reimagined remixes created from John Lennon's classic song, Mind Games. These nine Meditation Mixes craft their own space while maintaining firm and authentic roots in John Lennon's original recording. Each have been radically altered, slowed down and extended, ranging from five to ten to over 33 minutes, allowing the soundtrack to wash over the listener and provide a relaxing deep listening experience. Four tracks are presented as binaural versions which each focus on different types of brain waves: Beta, Delta, Gamma and Theta. Named 'Mind', 'Space', 'Spirit' and 'Love', these exploit the response of the ear to left and right frequencies, which constructively combine to produce a new frequency, which in turn, as they say, activates beneficial brain patterns. Produced by Sean Lennon, these contemporary Lennon versions aim to positively impact the contemporary anxiety-racked listener, whose appetite for deep listening has only understandably increased in recent years.
Review: Lorenzo Masotto is an Italian pianist and composer from a village near Verona who studied at the Conservatory F.E. Dall'Abaco and the Hochschule fur Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar. His music now returns to Whitelabrecs with his new album Earde which is inspired by the landscapes surrounding his hometown in Northern Italy and reflects the beauty of local nature and Masotto's travels through Iceland and the Dolomites. Recorded in a deconsecrated church to capture its natural acoustics, the album explores the deep connection between place, memory and creativity which gives rise to a meditative, harmonic experience.
Review: The first-ever vinyl release of Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade soundtrack brings Hajime Mizoguchi's haunting compositions to a new format, elevating the 1999 anime classic to a higher experience. Known for his work on anime and TV scores, Mizoguchi crafts an emotional soundscape that captures the film's dystopian world and its thematic nods to Little Red Riding Hood. His orchestrations combine dark, atmospheric strings and ambient melodies, underscoring the anime's heavy political themes with a mix of classical and cinematic weight. Mizoguchi's score is powerful and resonant, evoking the layered storytelling style of screenwriter Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), who imbues Jin-Roh with tension and depth that Mizoguchi amplifies beautifully. Fans of ambient, dark soundscapes and anime soundtracks will find this release unforgettable. It follows WRWTFWW's esteemed catalogue, alongside previous releases like Patlabor 2 and Ghost in the Shell.
Review: Kobe-based trio o'summer vacation returns with their second full-length of industrial noise fusions in the form of Electronic Eye. After several trips to Berlin and Munich, they've found a home with the Alien Transistor label and now drop plenty of guitarless noise punk with production by Shinji Masuko. It makes for an unmatched, hard-hitting barrage that leaves listeners breathless right from the opener, '(Shuku - A)' with its sizzling hi-hats and a unique lullaby from vocalist Ami. Tracks like 'Luna' and 'Anti-Christ Super Star' shift the album from mosh-inducing chaos to 30-second noise punk anthems, all of which embody the band's anti-racist, anti-war sentiments.
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