The Monthly Dig - September 2026

The Monthly Dig - September 2026

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Dragoș Rusu

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Welcome to the September edition of the Monthly Dig, our regular roundup of new music. With summer in the rearview mirror, think of this collection as your favorite oversized sweate, the perfect cozy companion for the crisp autumn air.

What's new, what's good, what's hot or not, what's obscure or under the radar, music wise, here's the Monthly Dig. If you think that we've missed something or want to send a tip, please get in touch.

From Bill Orcutt to Black Meteoric Star

Adam Rudolph - Invisible Threads (Omni Sound)
Adam Rudolph - Invisible Threads (Omni Sound)
Adam Rudolph - Invisible Threads (Omni Sound)
Over the course of more than half a century, the visionary percussionist and composer Adam Rudolph has been a pioneer in weaving together inspirations and collaborators across cultures, traditions, backgrounds and styles. For his new album Invisible Threads, Rudolph is joined by Ahmet Hacı Tekbilek (ney), Jesper Egelund Pedersen (bass and electronics), Marco Cappelli (classical prepared guitar and electric guitar), Okay Temiz (tuned bells, cuica, waterphone, talking drum, thumb piano, darbuka, wood blocks, percussion), Özlem Kaya (violin), Sıla Gerbağ (bass and C flute) and Sumru Ağıryürüyen (vocal).

Alan Courtis & Pablo Reche - Desde el Aljibe (Sonido Atmosférico)
Desde el Aljibe is a live collaborative album by experimental musicians Alan Courtis and Pablo Reche, released under the Córdoba, Argentina-based independent label Sonido Atmosférico. Described by the label as an abrasive, dense, and "crushing" sound wall featuring experimental electronic textures and improvisation.

Bardo Todol / H.Flora - Honeybee Pollination Service (The Geoul Records)
H. Flora is the moniker of german-based sound explorer and recordist Felix Birke. He is owner and curator of the DIY- Tapelabel Frenetic Magic Sounds, presenting a vital network and a variety of global sound and field recording arts. Pablo Picco records and makes music under the name of Bardo Todol. His music is a mix of various music concréte techniques that involves tapes, flutes, field recordings, noise and acoustic elements.



Bill Orcutt - Four Louies Live (Palilalia)
An all-star live rendition of Steve Reich’s Four Organs-inspired take on the Kingsmen classic Louie Louie, captured in full flight at Roulette Intermedium. It is a brilliant collision of minimalism, rock history, and fearless ensemble playing. Featuring Eli Knowles, William Winant, Wendy Eisenberg, Mari Maurice, Cyrus Pireh, Alan Licht, David Golightly, Chris Corsano, Eli Streich, Jas Stade, Emmalee Johnson-Kao, Bryan Day and Bill Orcutt.

Black Meteoric Star - Wet (Ransom Note Records)
Wet is the fifth full length album by Black Meteoric Star and the 10th release. Black Meteoric Star is a project Rayna started in 2006 when she was living in Berlin that brought together her life long love of dance music culture with spiritual themes, drag, and her formative experiences of S/M culture.
DIKDÆDØR - The Entertainer (Edelfaul Records)
DIKDÆDØR - The Entertainer (Edelfaul Records)

From Carmen Villain to Grex

Boysonic - Madhouse (Ondes)
"The original music on Madhouse was made in Brasov during 1993–1994. Situated away from Bucharest’s political and cultural centre, Brasov gave the project its own slightly detached rhythm. Classically trained in piano and active in local radio, Mihai Barb developed Boysonic as a largely one-man act, often joined live by a changing cast of dancers and vocalists."

Carmen Villain - Memoria (Smalltown Supersound)
Memoria, Carmen Villain’s latest album on Smalltown Supersound, begins like an opened valve; exhaling flute chords slowly fill a vast sonic landscape as an invitation for the listener to slow down and enter a state of deep listening. It’s an introduction that guides expertly into an album of decelerated, spectral dub, which shimmers, growls and decays across the narratively ordered seven tracks.

Davide Cedolin - Cjera Aʃìn (Torto Editions)
"There is a timeless quality to Davide’s art that feels so fully realised on Cjera Aʃìn that the music becomes almost anachronistic. (...) The absence of any real signs of contemporary music making or artistic influence instills an added power in the work that makes it mesmerizing and often quite spooky to listen to". GK.



DIKDÆDØR - The Entertainer (Edelfaul Records)
The DIKDӔDØR duo (comprising Han Kuwiz and Sun Ra Bullock) returns with a new album, The Entertainer. What really sets the sound apart from earlier works, however, was the involvement of a third player – a scarred and battered power mixer, inconspicuously called The Entertainer, that was found by Edelfaul founder Ilia Gorovitz in a drum closet where it has been gathering dirt for the better part of two decades. Ilia discovered the Entertainer’s potential for no input use, and passed the technology on to DIKDӔDØR who applied it to their mixing set up and re-shaped the existing arrangements into their current form by way of a brutal dub mix.

Grex - Auntie + Tebs (Geomancy Records)
Grex (Karl Evangelista and Rei Scampavia) is an experimental/art rock band based out of Oakland, California. On the new album Auntie + Tebs, they are joined by Robert Lopez (drums), D. Chavez (bass), Bobby Bradford (cornet), Zoh Amba (saxophone) and Misha Khalikulov (cello). Their new release is dedicated to two political figures, Auntie and Tebs. Miriam Defensor Santiago (“Auntie”) was a Filipino politician and lawyer, widely acknowledged as the rightful winner of the 1992 Filipino presidential election. She fought a lifelong battle against graft and corruption. Louis Moholo-Moholo (“Tebs”) was a South African drummer and anti-Apartheid activist. The purpose of his music, he claimed, was to “free South Africa.”
Intibint - Half Moon Eyes
Intibint - Half Moon Eyes

From HMOT to João Machado

HMOT - Here in the Future, Waiting for You (Hive Mind Records)
Hive Mind Records presents Here in the Future, Waiting for You, the spellbinding incantation in musical form by artist, researcher, and musician Stas Shärifulla, also known as HMOT. On his new album, Shärifulla steps away from the synthesis and computer algorithms that have characterised previous releases, and instead favours raw, natural sounds. The album is built around a virtual quartet of musicians who, like Shärifulla himself, exist between different worlds, both artistically and geographically.

Intibint - Half Moon Eyes
Yemeni artist Intibint releases her much anticipated debut album, Half Moon Eyes. Four years in the making, the self-produced album is a travelling, traversing and morphing body of work shaped across Yemen, Egypt, Slovakia, England and Scotland, bringing together field recordings, traditional Yemeni references, intimate voice notes and electronic textures into a deeply personal sonic document, while blending Arabic modal influences with experimental pop, downtempo, grime and darker electronic/EBM textures.

Jay Mitta - Kazi Kwanza (Niege Niege Tapes)
Arriving seven years after his debut 'Tatizo Pesa' helped crack open Tanzania's hyperactive underground scene at its heart in Dar Es Salaam, Jay Mitta's sophomore charts the evolution of a sound that's still going from strength to strength.



João Machado - Meliponica (Baroque Sunburst)
Baroque Sunburst presents Meliponica, the unique and unheard music of the interdisciplinary Brazilian artist João Machado, entirely created by electronically processing the recordings of stingless bees. Machado's work with field recordings of native bees form a sound library held in international collections such as the British Library and the Animal Sound Archive in Berlin, and his research into stingless bee communication has unfolded into experimental electronic music, finally finding its way on vinyl for the first time.

Jules Reidy - Clerestory (Thrill Jockey Records)
Shadow Symmetric is a string quartet commissioned by the celebrated JACK Quartet as part of their JACK Studio program. Jules Reidy’s pairing with the quartet is felicitous: JACK are one of the preeminent new music ensembles working today, with a particular interest in just intonation, for many years an important component of Reidy’s music. The piece makes simultaneous use of two pitch sets, beginning from the same starting point but expanded using different scaling to produce what Reidy describes as “two offset spectral layers.”
Marja Ahti & John McCowen - Errands (Black Truffle)
Marja Ahti & John McCowen - Errands (Black Truffle)

From Payton MacDonald to Richard Sage

Ka Baird & Chris Ryan Williams - Enthalpy (Outside Time)
Ka Baird and Chris Ryan Williams are well-schooled in the power of using pressure and movement to amplify the mystery of an invisible force animating a metal tube. They augment their instruments, flute and trumpet respectively, with electronics, sometimes obscuring the acoustic sound source, sometimes making it hyperreal. Flutters of lip and tongue slither over the listener’s ear, and sustained tones become a dense fog, pushing on other kinds of visceral, emotional pressure points.

Marja Ahti & John McCowen - Errands (Black Truffle)
Errands is the first duo recording from Marja Ahti, Swedish-Finnish sound artist and electroacoustic composer, and John McCowen, a native of Southern Illinois, now residing in Iceland, whose work centres on a radical exploration of clarinet multiphonics.

Payton MacDonald - Transients Vol. 1, 2, & 3 (Infrequent Seams)
Marimba player/composer/improviser Payton MacDonald explores the frontiers of the sonic arts in a variety of settings, from Carnegie Hall to remote wilderness locations. Here he presents a collection of duo recordings with fellow esteemed percussionists Susie Ibarra (Pauline Oliveros, John Zorn, Ikue Mori), Nava Dunkelman (Angélica Negrón, Du Yun, Fred Frith), and Billy Martin (Medeski Martin & Wood, Bill Frisell, Lounge Lizards). The duos explore global music traditions and non-traditions.

Richard Sage - Norfolk (Driftworks)
"Norfolk is an ambient musical love letter to the north Norfolk coast. Seven songs both inspired by, and created with the unique sounds, textures and tones field recorded at seven locations along the coast. Each song is a meditation on the feelings that each location evokes within me." Richard Sage



V.A. - Synthetic Water Music (Mappa)
Synthetic Water Music is the second of three compilations, following Synthetic Bird Music and timed to mappa's 10th anniversary. As with the birds, it gathers friends of the label, artists who have released with mappa or played our shows. Most of the music is new, made to measure for this compilation, much of it from Central and Eastern European hands.
About the Author

Dragoș Rusu

Co-founder and co-editor in chief of The Attic, sound researcher, DJ, and allround music adventurer, with a keen interest in the anthropology of sound.

@dragos_rusu_
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