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11 tracks

Astral Cinema is a collaboration between four musicians and film composers from Copenhagen and London: Jonas Struck, Nikolaj Torp Larsen, Anders 'ac' Christensen and Jakob Høyer. The four acclaimed artists have worked together in many contexts, but in 2022 they decided to create an ensemble to play a single live job. The result was so unique that they subsequently went into Black Tornado and recorded a record full of cinematic, dreamy soundscapes, which at the same time contain the structure of melodic signature themes.

Astral Cinema is now releasing their first album, which primarily consists of original compositions with the DNA of all four musicians – inspired by electronic music, space-age, jazz, afrobeat and surf. All tracks go in their own direction, where a theme or an idea from the studio is allowed to go off the rails, while the rest of the soundscape follows. With thoughtfulness, dreamy ballads and recognizable melodies, the band thus takes the listener on an otherworldly journey, where there is room to form your own images and interpretations. In addition to the four musicians, the album features guests from Mette Lindberg and Karen Krogshøj on choir and Anders Malta on trumpet. In addition, London-based singer Hattie Webb (Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty, David Gilmore) features on the single "A Peace Process".

Wanderwelle is the Amsterdam-based ambient duo of Phil van Dulm & Alexander Bartels, who mint their Maalstrom label with Wat Gebeurde Er Met Sergeant Massuro?, a concept album based around Harry Mulisch's 1957 story of the same name (What Happened To Seagent Massuro?). The story weaves anti-colonial concepts with mythical realist elements, and is sonically brought to life here through atmospheric electronics and prepared instruments. A moody, resonant and ultimately deep groundswell of an album, one that compels the listener to venture ever further into the a spine-tingling heart of darkness.

Nika Son stitches together spoken word, concrète and extracts from various installations into a hazed ode to the nocturnal world on this highly intoxicating new album, landing somewhere between the surrealist sound poetry of Nozomu Matsumoto, Arthur Lipsett’s abstracted film works and Michèle Bokanowski’s acclaimed scores for her husband Patrick.

Constructed out of the kind ephemeral building blocks conjured in liminal space, Nika Son (Golden Pudel Club, Entr'acte) collages moonlit organ vamps, stifled voices and disembodied, robotic poems on this deliriously slippery album. Heaving from smeary abstraction to penetrable drama, featherlight rhythms are cut short by uncanny voices: "stop, turning, a page," like some rogue navigation assistant, slicing into ticking clocks and xerox noise.

Like listening to a film without access to its visuals, all the foley sounds remain (windscreen wipers, trains passing, conversations) but we're left puzzling over what any of it means. The only context provided is from Son herself, who says that although the album doesn't have a consistent theme, each piece is inspired by the night's capability to shift our perception and memory. It comes off like a crepuscular sketchbook of ideas and themes that coalesce into an opaque sonic landscape.

It's music that defies simple categorisation; Son doesn't tie herself to any identifiable mode of expression, and there are no knowing nods to early electronic innovators either. Rather, she follow her own nose, drawing us into an elusive personal space. On 'It's just a cucumber', environmental recordings are edited just enough to enhance the illusion, before voices curl and decompress into rousing bass womps and unmetered rhythms prickle around punkish shouts. The use of voice is omnipresent throughout, even when not there, they appear on the periphery: on 'La nuit tombe', they're muffled behind echoing footsteps and creepy synth wails, on 'Gelbes Feld', incomprehensible chatter envelopes cricket chirps and b-movie arpeggios.

Many artists have tried to map out the dreamworld using sound, but Nika Son takes us to a place that genuinely feels in-between worlds, capturing those moments before vivid memories slip away from the mind's eye forever.

Recorded in 1994 in Berlin, 'Stone' has been remastered by Lawrence English and sounds better than ever. The perfect introduction to veteran Japanese sound artist's raft of material, it's an exploration of sound, space and time using found objects and flute.

Suzuki's work is fiendishly difficult to describe - it's far better to experience. He became interested in sound after studying architecture, and quickly developed a fascination with spaces - specifically the echoes that existed within them. 'Stone' was a further development of his "throwing and following" technique, where he would cast sounds and gestures into space and catch whatever returned.

So, stationed in Künstlerhaus Bethanien, he used the vast studio to create unique atmospheres, alternating between flute and clattering rhythms from found objects. It's beguiling stuff, that on the CD version thankfully comes with photo documentation and notes from David Toop that should make Suzuki's process a little clearer.

Hypnotic drum dervishes by HHY & The Macumbas, pursuing a killer Nyege Nyege Tapes retrospective with the debut shot on their Horror Vector label. Tweaking springy rhythmic workouts with sinewy dub processes that bring the B-movie/VHS horror influence right to the fore, it’s a delirious set tipped if yr into CZN, Konono No.1, Shackleton, Raja Kirik, Metal Preyers, Adrian Sherwood.

Helmed by Jonathan Saldana and counting crack percussionist João Pais Filipe (czn) in the quintet of drums, subs, and noise, HHY & The Macumbas are prized for their thunderous energy, and ‘Bom Sangue Mau' (good bad blood) was recorded on stage in an empty theatre with a full soundsystem, lighting rig and smoke machines, to better capture the vibe.

Fixed in place with post-production and mixing at their Skull Cave Studio, the results represent the band in swingeing effect, knotting gnawing and bittersweet noise and see-sawing trance arps to thunderous rhythms inspired by myriad Black Atlantic traditions: West and Central African, Haitian, Brazilian. At its best, the record sounds like a deranged cross between John Carpenter and Adrian Sherwood, a Stroom or Finders Keepers oddity that's been re-imagined for a snuff theatre performance like some darkside wormhole that pushes rhythmic and sonic intensity into carnivalesque new places.

Analog synths and brass fanfares cut into 4/4 thuds and rattling skins on 'Via Negativa', sounding like the introduction to a technicolor '70s zombie flick, while 'Mão Esquerda' deploys ugly hardstyle squeals sandwiched between rubbery bass, and 'Serpente Explícita' is a humid fever dream - ominous, creeping synths and a hand drum that keeps building in intensity until it's ruptured by garbled voices and unsettling strings. ‘Fundição Termal Caçada’ is a militaristic death rattle that evolves into a synth-led burner before roaring with blood-curdling, brassy terror. And on the brilliantly titled 'Porno Perpetuum', they take on exploitation and sleaze soundtracks, cutting their frenetic drumming with animalistic screams and macabre whispers.

It's a haunted boat ride down the uncharted tributaries of an unknown continent, colourfully rendered by an artist who's at the top of his game right now.

Ghost Phone is back! Blowing in from Bristol with another hand of anonymous aces. Glossy R&B in flagranti and off it’s tits in a dank, heaving basement session.

The opener Hologram is characteristically greened-out: a 160bpm g-funk odyssey for the autonomic massive. Then it’s back to earth with Want U, a nectar-sweet, stripped-back dancefloor heater, complete with tongue in cheek nods to the Jersey Club sound. Tough, loose jungle breaks revitalise a 90s classic on the flip, in So Gone; before Darkness Finds Home With U wraps things up with dense, heady atmospherics and ethereal vocals.

Inspired by a life long obsession of dub, synth, industrial and different kinds of minimalism, "Extended Player" 12"ep by The Idealist is a tribute to these inspirations aswell as an attempt to move forward or elsewhere. This is experimental techno and electronic music from an artist that is freely moving between drone and noise to this. Party music for professionals.

"In the core of the album’s creation, lies my fascination with unveiling the piano overtones by harnessing the properties of complex systems, which emerge when competing oscillations of strings interact with room acoustics, microphone placements, the piano's pedals, and its soundboard. Through long forms, incremental gestures, and nuanced timbral artifacts, the album aims to distort the perception of time and invite an introspective experience of multiple and expanded temporalities." - Zoe Efstathiou.

Zoe Efstathiou, pianist and electro-acoustic composer, originally from Greece, has lived in Sweden since 2015. Her interest shifts between the intricate relationships of the overtones of acoustic instruments, electro-acoustic textures, and the sonic potential of light installations. Her music interpolates the momentary with the ever-evolving, exploring ideas related to time, expectation and memory.