Squid's guitarist spends twenty minutes driving past some very muscular cows 樂團自己都沒留底的錄音帶，四十一年後上了黑膠

Anton Pearson — Driving Through Belgium

Genre類型

Ambient / Experimental / Drone

Label廠牌

World of Echo

Format介質

Vinyl / Streaming

The opening piece on Anton Pearson's debut is twenty minutes long and called "Driving Past the Muscular Cows in Belgium," which is a fair summary of the method: stare at something flat long enough and it turns strange. Pearson plays guitar in Squid, a band that treats precision as a sport; this record was made in the gaps between their tours, at a shared studio in Brighton, with no MIDI, no click track, no samples, and a policy of honouring first takes. The opener spends its first ten minutes letting a slowed guitar drone wake up, then walls it in with muted brass and sends it off on a rising arpeggio. His trumpet playing is, by his own admission, not good; the squeaks stay in. Two "Tintinnabulation" pieces frame the album with looped bell tones, and "Tern Daylight" closes on a single sustained Pianet note, held like a breath someone forgot to let go. The Quietus made it album of the week and heard Arvo Pärt in all the subtraction. It moves at the speed of continental drift, which turns out to be a workable tempo for a man whose day job is whiplash.

Jan Dismas Zelenka — 6 Sonatas, ZWV 181（Sánchez Moreno / Ortega Quero / Trénel / de Boevé / Sebastián Alegre）

Genre類型

Classical / Baroque / Chamber

Label廠牌

Genuin

Format介質

2 CDs / Hi-Res / Streaming

Kazuya Nagaya（長屋和哉） — Lumina

Genre類型

Ambient / Neo-Classical / Chamber

Label廠牌

Self-released

Format介質

Streaming / Digital

Kazuya Nagaya is known for bronze: bells, gongs, singing bowls, the ritual end of Japanese ambient, with Richie Hawtin among his collaborators. Lumina mostly sets the metal aside. His mother died last summer at ninety-four; she had lived by the Nagara River, and Nagaya had promised to bring her back to it before time ran out. The album he wrote afterward is chamber music for violin, viola, cello, and koto, with a soprano processed until she seems to surface out of the strings rather than stand in front of them, and Buddhist chanting recorded with thanks to Hosen-in temple in Ohara. Nearly every title is wet — "Ondine," "All Sunken Ships," "Sea and Eternity" — before the record climbs toward "Lux." Minor keys, looking for a major-key exit. I have been through it twice and keep starting over at "Ondine"; the far end I am still mapping.

GiGi FM — Shelter Our Time

Genre類型

Electronic / Jungle / Liquid D&B

Label廠牌

Sea~rène

Format介質

Vinyl LP / Streaming

GiGi FM built her name on techno; jungle was the first love, and this EP is her return to it, five liquid drum & bass tracks on her own Sea~rène label with her own singing at the center for the first time. Written during a period of enforced stillness, it moves the way she then couldn't: "Here and Now" rides skippy breaks and a Rhodes while she repeats "Sun in me, still burning" like a vital sign, and the gamelan-ish bells on "Pacific" are worth the price of entry alone. 柏林 techno DJ 回頭撿起初戀 jungle，在自己廠牌發第四號，第一次把自己的詞與唱放進核心。被迫靜養期寫的，音樂替她代步——去不了的地方靠 breaks 去。〈Here and Now〉裡 skippy breaks 墊著 808 sub 和 Rhodes，她像唸咒一樣重複 "Sun in me, still burning"；〈Pacific〉收尾的鐘音接近甘美蘭。Bandcamp Daily 六月電子榜替她辯護的論點值得抄下來：jungle 的柔面從來就在血統裡，UK street soul 和 ambient techno 第一天就在場。拆得越少，飛得越高。

EarthBall — Actual Earth Music - Volume 3 & 4

Genre類型

Free Rock / Improv / Noise

Label廠牌

Upset The Rhythm

Format介質

Vinyl 180g / CD / Streaming

加拿大納奈莫五人組，全即興、無彩排，成員出身 Shearing Pinx、Kamikaze Nurse，合作名單裡有 Deerhoof 和 Chris Corsano。這張收兩個歐巡現場：A 面日內瓦 Cave12，阿爾卑斯山路白刃下山開完、手汗沒乾就上臺，五十三分鐘的 set 黑膠只裝得下前二十二分鐘（全長在 CD）；B 面烏得勒支 Le Guess Who?，被開場的 Dwarfs of East Agouza 逼出狠勁。吉他手 Van Wyke 自述那晚進入 group mind：九十度急轉五個人同時咬死，talk box 像復活的靈從頭頂澆下來，鼓在底下馱著所有混亂。聽的就是五個人共用一套神經系統的物證。

F/i — Invisible Men

Genre類型

Experimental / Kosmische / Industrial

Label廠牌

Birdman Records

Format介質

2LP (ltd. 500) / Streaming

In the Milwaukee of 1985, F/i didn't sell their cassettes; they traded them, one copy at a time, with whichever distant obsessives were running parallel experiments. Invisible Men is the rarest artifact of that economy — founder Richard Franecki never kept a copy himself, and where earlier tapes carried the fake label name Uddersounds, this one didn't bother with a label at all. Birdman's reissue, its first time on vinyl, files the band as a missing link between Throbbing Gristle and Spacemen 3, which sounds like press-release talk until the rushing lift-off roar of these tracks resolves into layers: synth melodies hidden just under awareness, and a shortwave radio that catches a Tuff Darts song at the end of "Untitled IV" like a broadcast still playing after the apocalypse. The bonus track "Air," twenty-three minutes from 1984, gives the kosmische game away. Two LPs, five hundred copies, out June 26. 1985 年的密爾瓦基地下是這樣運作的：錄音帶只錄來交換、不賣錢，一捲換一捲，換完就散。F/i 這捲《Invisible Men》稀有到主腦 Richard Franecki 自己都沒留底——早期作品還掛個虛構廠牌 Uddersounds，這捲連假名都懶得掛。四十一年後 Birdman 首次壓成雙黑膠，定位一句話：Throbbing Gristle 與 Spacemen 3 之間被遺忘的一環。整體像火箭升空的持續轟鳴，細聽全是層：藏在意識邊緣的合成器旋律，還有〈Untitled IV〉結尾短波收音機飄進的 Tuff Darts 片段，像末日之後沒人關的電臺。附 1984 年的二十三分鐘〈Air〉，kosmische 血統藏不住。限量五百張，收藏向。