Issue 121: Grassroots Electronica 2025
We're kicking off 2025 with a special issue to celebrate UK Grassroots Electronica – the ever-growing number of bedroom producers and independent record labels across the country – and we're bundling the magazine with an exclusive double CD featuring 30 killer tracks from some of the most exciting underground artists on our radar.
Caelum
Caelum is the third entry in an ongoing series of longform, loop-based sound sculptures from zakè (aka Zach Frizzell), sustaining the tranquil beauty explored on Unfurled Works (2020) and Deep Into the Unknown, We Shall Endlessly Roam (2023). Its four pieces were selected from more than two dozen sketches born out of experimentation in the quiet hours, and refined through Frizzell’s signature treatments, which conjure new worlds from antiquated means.
“Caelum (No. 2)” is led by a cycle of breath…
13
For its inaugural release of 2025, Past Inside The Present proudly offers a powerful set of new pieces from experimental ambient veteran bvdub (aka Brock Van Wey), simply titled 13. Across its duration, spacious arrangements nest in clouds of reverb, underscored by granular details and entrancing synth arpeggiations. According to Van Wey – a long time scholar of Eastern ideas and literature – every section represents one edict or idea from chapter 13 of the Tao Te Ching, the foundational text of…
Eperta Reewer Pilgrimages
Composed and recorded between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Suebic Sea. Cut & mixed at Room 411 Studio.Mastered at Analogcut Mastering, Berlin.
Music and sounds: Simone Guido IzziArtwork: Simone Guido Izzi
Hamel
Very rare original copy in great condition of the 1st album from 1972 on the Vertigo swirl label by meditative minimalist composer Peter Michael Hamel. A trippy 2xLP masterpiece with gatefold sleeve.
L'oiseau
"A beautiful solo album by experimental electronician/multiinstrumentalist Jean-Marc Foussat. The album is clearly dedicated to his son Victor Foussat, a young poet and painter who died this year. One of his paintings his reproduced on the inner sleeve, and Jean-Marc recites a poem of his in-between the two 20-minute tracks that make up the album. I rarely cross paths with Foussat’s music, but each opportunity is a delight. The two pieces here are powerful amalgams of synths and objects. Foussat…
The Interstellar Music of Martin Glass
Martin Glass had been a surprise choice for the commission. It was the Spring of 1977 and two Interstellar Mariners were to be sent hurtling into deep space. Glass was to provide weekly "sonologues" of their progress, audio diarist for a pair of mute mechanical adventurers. Delivered with a near fanatical diligence over the course of nearly three decades, these stuttering musical biographies would soon bewilder those who had first asked for them. Martin's work, they judged, had begun to plot its…
Music For Bus Stations
*2025 much needed repress!!!* Music For Bus Stations is an astonishing work that pours into the soul of those allowing themselves to be transported in a dimension where sound turns into background noise. Sound becomes part of us, of our movements, our thoughts, our looks and our silences. There is no reason for resistance. Let's be silent. The noise around us is quite good.
"Generative sonic backdrop for bus stations. Designed to enhance space and portray a mod of progressiveness, grandeur, and …
Iso-Erotic Calibration
Carefully constructed aural rituals from T.A.G.C., this album maps new realms in the area of sensual electronic music. Founder Adi Newton (Clock DVA) uses The Anti Group as an outlet for his research in psycho-acoustic music. "Iso-Erotic Calibration" explores the potent topic of human sexuality. Recorded over a period of three years, this could be considered on of their more "accessible" albums. Originally released in 1994 (Side Effects, the label of Lustmord, Musica Maxima Magnetica, and Adi's …
Elusive Shimmer
Erik Klinga presents "Elusive Shimmer," the first installment in a trilogy of albums released by the Thanatosis label. On his debut, the Swedish electroacoustic composer offers a euphoric, celestial body of work, with the Buchla 200 synthesizer as the primary source of sound. Combined with delicate field recordings and pipe organ performances, the eight tracks here burst with melodic poignance and glow with incandescent brilliance.
The opening track awakens like the first rays of dawn, with wind…
Cambium
*300 copies limited edition* French photographer and visual artist Nihil announces the release of Ascend, an extraordinary artbook that transcends traditional creative boundaries by merging visual art, ancient sacred texts, and a hauntingly immersive soundtrack by Swedish Dark Ambient master raison d’être. This ambitious project is the culmination of Nihil’s fifteen-year career and promises to take audiences on a deeply introspective journey through humanity’s most profound archetypes. Ascend dr…
A Juxtaposition Of Distant Realities
*300 copies limited edition* Paw Grabowski, known artistically as øjeRum, is a Danish visionary whose work exists in the evocative realms between memory, dreams, and the passage of time. Renowned for his intricate and meditative collages and musical output, øjeRum transforms fragments of vintage materials into timeless compositions that resonate with haunting beauty. His art invites viewers to engage with a dialogue of silence—one that whispers of loss, transformation, and the fragility of exist…
Primeval
*300 copies limited edition* Sutekh Hexen at the core has conducted experimental black metal deconstructionism from the blight of the Bay Area, and depending on conceptual framework, with a global cast of high-calibre talented collaborators for over 14 years. Initially (and anonymously) Sutekh Hexen took the underground by storm with a trio of very limited demo tapes utilizing their distinctive unification of raw atmospheric black metal with scathing noise electronics, heavy textural anti-rhythm…
Music for Tomato Plants
Loris S. Sarid is a Rome born musician and sound designer living in Glasgow (Scotland). Music for Tomato Plants was born while taking care of a little tomato plant, grown on the windowsill of his flat during the winter 2020. The album is a homage to the unapparent courage of simplicity, and the beauty and lightness of the most ordinary things.
“In the same spirit of Mort Garson, Green-House and others who synthesize the natural and musical worlds, this ambient serenade for tomato plants is a wel…
Selene
Limited edition of 500 on cloudy white vinyl. Atmosphere and gravity lean into each other. They are simultaneously expansive, and anchoring. They hold us, and lend a sense of perspective. Akira Kosemura & Lawrence English provide a stability and a knowingness which is essential in the absolute, and yet we can't help but find ourselves gazing upward, outward and reaching towards that which sits outside those things and ways we know. Selene is a record about that this lingering desire for that whi…
Palaces Of Pity
Malibu is the ambient alias of French experimental artist Barbara Braccini. Working with regular collaborators celebrated cellist Oliver Coates and gifted guitarist Florian Le Prisé, she released the 5 song set Palaces Of Pity back in 2020. Expanded to 6 pieces, this recently received a sellout vinyl pressing. Opening number, The Things That Fade, will tell you all that you need to know about Malibu’s modus operandi. This is a siren’s song woven from seductive, spectral sighs, drones, which come…
Tonarium Live
The Tonarium is an idiosyncratic instrument comprising of two sets of modular synthesizers: Serge by Random Source, and another one by Bugbrand, both of which operate alongside a mixer constructed by Piotr Ceglarek and Jan Dybata. This intertwinement facilitates precise control over audio and CV signals and integrates technology with analog sound, offering the artists a distinctive sonic palette to delve into.
The Pocket Of Fever
Masahiro Sugaya is a Japanese composer with a prolific career in music for film, television, and the performing arts. Renowned for crafting soundscapes that invite deep contemplation, his music blends synthesizers, field recordings, and traditional Japanese instruments, achieving a delicate balance between minimalism, ambient, and folk influences.
In addition to his experimental compositions, Sugaya has been a pivotal figure in Japanese television and cinema. He collaborated with NHK, Japan’s n…
Five Minutes To Self-Destruct
On this EP, Schlagwerk motorist Hubert Zemler and Schaltwerk operator Felix Kubin unflinchingly follow the guideline for syncopated sequencer escalation: ‘Pulsate - Vibrate - Alternate’. The German-Polish duo have filtered out five previously unreleased tracks from live recordings in Warsaw, Geneva and Rotterdam, which have been remixed by Warsaw sound engineer Jan Wroński. Their unbridled live energy can hardly be reproduced in the studio. All the pieces gather in their DNA the paranoid plasma …
There's no wifi in the barn
“… Seeing the deepest night still bright, waking up at 9pm to get in the zone. Its foggy landscape was a newly found home, a spiritual one we unconsciously yearned for. Feeling nostalgia from something new, here we instinctively use our most comfortable language to create.”
This project started from our visit to Hosanger, a suburban town near Bergen, Norway. Field recordings were collected all thoughout Europe; the Hosanger cabin, train track apartment in Düsseldorf, and more.Both grown up in mu…