V.A. - Filaments (Silver Threads)
Filaments is a 13-track compilation of experimental, ambient, electronic and electro-acoustic music by exceptional artists from three continents. Jo Johnson (quiet details, Muzan Editions, Mysteries of the Deep), who founded the label and curated this album, explains, “Filaments are the invisible threads that connect us across space and time, transcending borders, binaries and barriers. A place between voids.”
Geologist & Kyle Simon - The Sirens (Outside Time)
The sun sat high above the desert outside Joshua Tree on October 17, 2024, baking the rocks and shrubbery outside the Farrington Observatory as a small group of invited guests ventured up a steep path towards the telescope. Kyle Simon, the artist and printmaker who founded the Observatory, was standing outside the print studio sat below the towering cylindrical building, greeting friends alongside his wife Sarah and lifelong friend Brian Weitz, the musician widely known as Geologist of Animal Collective. Simon and Weitz had spent the previous day testing and retesting a system that would transform the light of the oncoming full moon captured by the gigantic telescope into a signal that would modulate the control voltage of Weitz’s modular synthesizer. As the sun dipped below the horizon line, the audience gathered on a small wooden patio surrounded by speakers while Weitz readied himself behind the array of patches and knobs. Simon addressed the group, presenting the history of The Sirens, the sonic exploration of the night sky’s mystical and scientific significance about to unfold.
Giovanni Lami - Fantarombo (Discrepant)
Discrepant presents
Fantarombo, a new album by Giovanni Lami. While his previous works often moved through memory, residue, degradation, and dialogue with existing materials,
Fantarombo takes shape as an unstable, bodily gesture. Sound is not recalled or reconstructed, but triggered, pushed, and set in motion as an active force. Lami approaches modular synthesis as a physical, hands-on practice rather than a technical exercise or display of system mastery. The modular setup becomes a responsive body: something to be nudged, listened to, and occasionally resisted.
Hautzinger / Zoubek / Schick / Buck - Pulsar (Trost Records)
Trost Records presents the new release of Pulsar, the otherwordly improvising quartet of drummer Tony Buck, trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, turntablist Ignaz Schick, and keyboardist Philip Zoubek, a collective comprising four of the world’s most distinctive, musically-deep experimentalists.
James Brandon Lewis / Red Lily - Calling Antonín (TAO Forms)
Tenor saxophonist-composer James Brandon Lewis returns with his 3rd scintillating Red Lily offering, following on the impeccable Jesup Wagon (2021) and For Mahalia, With Love (2023). Red Lily currently consists of Kirk Knuffke on cornet, Melanie Dyer on violin, Tomeka Reid on cello, Joshua Abrams on bass and Chad Taylor on drums – each a leading light on the American jazz scene. As Michael Beckerman, Dvořák scholar and dean of the UCLA School of Music, writes in the detailed liner notes for Calling Antonín, “the group blends chamber-like textures with the expressive fire of contemporary jazz, forging a language that is both deeply rooted and boldly forward-looking.”
