Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: The state51 Conspiracy label comes very much correct early on in the New Year with this two-track grey marbled vinyl 12" in a fancy spot-varnished sleeve. It takes the form of two fresh Santaka reworks of original compositions by Rytis Mazulis and avant-garde choir Melos Collective which were first released back in 2020. Santaka, which means "confluence" in Lithuanian, is the coming together of DJ and producer Manfredas and drummer and producer Marijus Aleksa and here they layer up disembodied vocals and dark jazz melodies on 'Ramybe' and then 'Autoportretas' is a textural ambient exploration packed with fascinating sound designs.

Review: Kali Malone's The Sacrificial Code stands as a defining work of 21st Century minimalism, shaped by years of intensive study. Originally released in 2019, the album emerged from her time at Stockholm's Royal College of Music, where she explored sound, space, and alternate tuning systems under the guidance of organ tuner Jan Borjeson. Stripping composition down to its starkest form, she embraced canons and slow-moving harmonic shifts, slowly but surely stepping into a sound emphasising monumentality. Now, six years later, The Sacrificial Code is reissued via Ideologic Organ, featuring a new 2023 recording of the title track on a 16th-century organ. Malone's self-taught recording techniques bring out the instrument's spirant resonance, creating a time-dilating sound. Less mournful, more tranquil, the new version mirrors the concurrent transformations of music and listeners in step, over time.

Review: If you're keyed into the modern classical stretch of the contemporary ambient world, you'll have likely discovered Kali Malone before. Her works have been largely focused on the organ, which she has pushed into all manner of experimental realms as a vessel for life-affirming drones, but don't be misled into thinking that's the only tool in her kit. Malone is a constantly evolving, inquisitive artist and her new album All Life Long confirms this with specific pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Rewarding the patient listener and breaking new ground in her compelling, studious approach to music, this is another firm reminder of Malone's formidable presence in contemporary experimental music circles.

Review: Ideologic Organ do things their own way here with an uncompromisingly long new album Does Spring Hide Its Joy from Kali Malone. It comes as a triple LP set that cannot fail to immerse you into rich soundscapes that are aided by Stephen O'Malley on electric guitar and Lucy Railton on cello. Composer Malone herself contributes sine wave oscillators as she focuses on harmony, non-linear arrangements and intonation. It is an album of nuanced minimalism that builds on and departs from previous themes in her work to make for a stand-alone and stand-out record.

Review: Soundtrack heavyweight Clint Mansell was the perfect choice to score 2009 film Moon, in which Sam Rockwell goes through a brilliantly off-beat adventure while working a solo stint on a base on the dark side of our nearest celestial object. It's an artful, subtly eerie film with a score to match, and Mansell perfectly conveys the isolation of Rockwell's character while evoking the sense of wonder a sci-fi film demands. For the first time since its original release, the Moon OST is available once more on vinyl, appropriately enough pressed up in lunar white.

Review: This is the first-ever reissue of Gianni Marchetti's 1978 LP Solstitium, which was originally released as part of RCA's "Original Cast" series in limited promo copies and has long been considered one of the most rare and enigmatic pieces of Italian library music. Library music was primarily created for television, radio and film but often yielded hidden gems that fused jazz, lounge and soul into storytelling vignettes of sounds. Marchetti's wonderful Solstitium is a prime example of innovation within this space which rightly remains a classic in the history of Italian music.

Review: Debuting on Soda Gong, Memotone aka. Will Yates brings new album Fever Of The World to our ears. Sporting a high temperature and a brain foggy pall, the world today is indeed insalubriously feverish, and Memotone crafts an arresting record in tribute to the Earth, serving as both an elegy and an elixir for it depending on how you hear it. Built on and around a set of compositional and live techniques fashioned over years, Yates' newest output is amorphous and palliative, putting our symptomatic souls at rest, with softly truck caresses by gong and pan; twinkles on the piano; real, boughed, and fed back mic-ups. The whole thing plays out like a half-hypnoic reverie, in which dream-images coalesce with engrams of the past and made manifest in the auditory field; be these the deja entendus of the abstracted children's laughter on 'Fever Of The World' or the sense of mobile, civic, automatic movement, via a continual textural wash, on 'The Bus'.

Review: Steve Moore's Cursed Objects is a thrilling return to the library music realm, presenting a masterful blend of prog-synth-wave with chamber and symphonic elements. Released on the limited-edition Fold label, this album is a feast for fans of epic electronic explorations as Moore, known for his work with Zombi, Miracle, and Titan, delivers a captivating solo effort under his own name. The LP opens with 'The Uninvited One,' where serene arpeggiated synths intertwine with sweeping strings and plucked harp, creating a mystical atmosphere. The title track escalates into dark, brooding territory with a blend of synths, piano, and strings. 'Evolutionary Steps' showcases epic synthwave with expansive strings and driving rhythms, while 'The Icarus Feather' and 'Daily Affirmations' offer cinematic and meditative textures, respectively. Side-2 begins with 'Mesmer's Bauble,' a track imbued with introspective dread, followed by 'Quiet Springs,' which builds to a hopeful and panoramic scope. 'Festival Of Samhain' delivers a slow, desolate piano melody layered with dark synths, and 'The Icarus Feather (Revisited)' revisits epic synthwave themes. The album concludes with 'Shard Of Medusa,' combining a dark piano melody with harp and strings for a suspenseful finale. Featuring Steve's signature Prophet 6, Moog Minitaur, and Korg Polysix, and with a cover by Chris Stevenson, Cursed Objects is a standout in the library music genre, meticulously mastered and pressed for optimal enjoyment.

Review: Japanese artists Yumiko Morioka and Takashi Kokubo unite for a journey through blended piano, atmospheric synth and nighttime field recording. Both Morioka and Kokubo are pioneers of Japanese new age import, with the former lyricist, pianist and composer trailblazing with her sole 1987 album Resonance and the latter composer and musical environmentalist responsible for a string of geometrically-charged, fantastical LPs from 1980 onwards. Morioka herself makes a welcome return to music after taking a staunch step back to raise her family in the late 80s; her music has since been quietly cherished, and now Gaiaphilia evidences her not-lost ivorian flair, with her piano melding blissfully with pop-out sea- and soundscapes.

Review: Dietro il Processo is a TV investigation series directed by Franco Biancacci that was broadcast by RAI in Italy from 1978 to 1980 as part of the Storie allo Specchio series. The legendary Ennio Morricone composed the main theme and scored three episodes: L'urlo, L'ultima notte di Pier Paolo Pasolini and Il caso Montesi. Although the tracks were not initially released in any format, the soundtrack became available on CD in 2009. For Record Store Day 2025, this first-ever LP edition has been assembled and comes on white vinyl so allows a chance to revisit to these most dramatic pieces.

Review: The makings of Murcof's new album Twin Colour were first germinated in 2020, shaped by the early days of the pandemic lockdowns. The first volume in a new multidisciplinary project between Fernando Corona (Murcof), his daughter Alina Corona, and his colleague Simon Geilfus, Twin Colour is born of less conception and more studio heuristics, though it draws many of its inspirations from some of the 80s material that Murcof had laid down at the start of his career. As such, an impressive combo of tape-hissed coldwave and modern, progressive ambient is heard here, straying from Murcof's trickier material for something much more roughshod, tawny and dramatic.

Review: Deep Valley is a new collaborative work by Australian artists Seaworthy aka Cameron Webb and Matt Rosner and they came together for it during a week-long residency at Bundanon Art Museum in New South Wales. The property which was gifted to the Australian public by artists Arthur and Yvonne Boyd in the 1990s offers a unique landscape along the Shoalhaven River and is surrounded by sandstone cliffs and diverse wildlife. Drawing inspiration from Boyd's belief that "you can't own a landscape," Deep Valley combines the inspiration of that setting with environmental recordings, guitars, piano, and electronic processing all of which aim to highlight the transient nature of ecosystems and encourage you to reconnect with the sounds of nature.

Review: Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a harmonious triangle, both musically and geographically. Hailing from Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, they converged at Sage's barn studio nestled at the foot of the Rockies to explore their shared talent for finding beauty in life's mundane moments. Shabason, known for blending late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into ethereal soundscapes, joins forces with Sage, who combines instrumental prowess with synthesis and field recordings to evoke the natural world's whimsy and profundity. Completing the trio is Krgovich, whose observational poetics add a relatable touch to their calm expressionism. Their collaborative album, warmly Shabason, Krgovich, Sage extends the wry and melancholic micro-miracles established in their previous works.

Review: La Monte Young is one of the most important figures in the development of American minimal composition and performance, having explored the science of sound at an atomic level through his use of just intonation and rational number-based tuning systems. His wife Marian Zeeler was also one of his closest collaborators, and in 1974 they released their second album Dream House 78'17" as a demonstration of the ideas they had been proposing in their work. Side A was recorded at a private concert which also features Jon Hassell and Garrett List, while Side B is an extended tonal study via a bowed gong, which was monitored precisely through oscilloscopes for an exacting immersion in harmonic interplay and its physical and psychoacoustic properties.

Review: American minimalism pioneers La Monte Young and Marian Zeeler released their second album in 1974, when they were already well-established in the US avant-garde. This serves as a document of their work and ideas at the time, with two very different sides on offer. The first side was recorded at a private concert, in which Young and Zeeler's voices interact with sustained drones and some occasional trumpet from Jon Hassell and trombone from Garrett List. The second side focuses on a bowed gong study, ruminating on the particulars of frequency and harmonics and their potential effects on the listener and the space in which they're heard.

Review: Fluxus drone pioneers La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela present the latest reissue of 31 VII 69 10:26-10:49 PM/23 VIII 64 2:50:45-3:11 AM The Volga Delta, a historic and mesmerizing soundworld which captures the '60s pioneers' twin paths through the worlds of performance art, sculpture-based acousmatic music, and an overall real alternative beatnik lifestyle . Made between 1964 and 1969, the album has gone down in history as a captivating fusion of dreamy electronic sounds and Eastern-influenced vocalization, with techniques such as microtonal tuning and extended repetition laying its experimental groundwork.