ANDRAS FOX quietly drew attention when "Magpie Echoes," an ambient house cut included on last year's blue vinyl reissue of his popular debut single "Your Life EP" (with a different tracklist from the original pressing), was picked up early on for a CMT mix CD. Having recently visited Japan as a duo with female singer Sui, he now presents his long-a ...Read morewaited new work: a mini-album-like 12-inch single on the Dutch label DOPENESS GALORE. Built from cheap yet warm vintage rhythm machines, the sound images are carefully selected as if drawn out note by note, seeping softly and mellowly into the heart with a beauty that can completely transform the scenery around you—a flavor that only he can deliver. With electric piano, flute, hand-played bass, and sensual male vocals adding color, it also comes highly recommended as an urban soundtrack!

He started out as a keyboardist, touring with everyone from Herbert to Amy Winehouse, so the electronics ∞ piano foundation was always there — and yet you'd think a record like this would exist elsewhere, but it really doesn't. Call it ambient if you like, but it's not West Coast new age à la Leaving Records; the quality of its stillness leans clos ...Read more (Original Japanese text by Shhhhh)er to kankyo ongaku. And you can also feel the lineage of UK chill-out / downtempo — Mix Master Morris, Coldcut, James Blake — not to mention UK soul. His choices are superb, like the cover of Ethiopian nun Emahoy (sample 2). Personally, Sunset Village (sample 3) is the one for me.
New piano music that updates classical, ambient, and downtempo alike — a gem you can live with for years and years.
He also played EACH STORY in Japan in 2023 and 2025, delivering wonderful live sets.
The reissue two years ago sold out instantly. Don't miss out! (Original Japanese text by Shhhhh)

Canadian musician Michael Brook, also known as the inventor of the infinite guitar, the famous modified guitar used in U2 songs, released "Cobalt Blue" on the 4AD label in 1992, a quiet, breathtaking soundscape, It has been reevaluated over the years as a timeless masterpiece. The album features ambient pioneer Brian Eno, composer/multi-instrumenta ...Read morelist Roger Eno, and Grammy-winning producer Daniel Lanois. Live at the Aquarium, recorded later that year, is a rare solo performance in London that captures the hypnotic sustain, expansive textures, and atmospheric depths of Michael Brook's distinctive sound world.

It was seven years between his debut album "Hybrid" in 1985 and the release of his second album "Cobalt Blue" in 1992. Michael Brook signed with Brian Eno's label and management, Opal, and moved from his hometown of Toronto to England. While collaborating with Eno and Lanois, touring with Jon Hassell, and participating in the legendary Opal Evenings live project with Roger Eno, Harold Budd, and Larage, he broke new ground experimenting with looping, sequencing, and sound processing on stage. He also broke new ground experimenting with onstage looping, sequencers, and sound processing. Shortly after "Cobalt Blue" was completed, however, Opal lost its distribution deal and the release was canceled. Michael Brook says of that time, "I was friends with Ivo Watts-Russell of 4AD, and he offered to release the album for me. But for a long time after its release, we didn't get a sufficient response. Because the music press avoided anything that was hard to classify into genres.... So in the beginning I didn't know what the public would think. It was like a guitar crying in the wilderness." he said. During the same period, he collaborated with Pieter Norten on "Sleeps with Fishes" (1987), a masterpiece of 4AD ambient music, and with world music giants such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Youssou N'Dour in the course of his energetic activities. The result of absorbing these vast inspirations and experiences was "Cobalt Blue," which, although not fully appreciated at the time of its release, has continued to grow in fame and influence over the years and has proven to be an important turning point in a distinguished career.

He went on to receive a Grammy nomination in 1996 for his album with Nusrat, "Night Song," and a Golden Globe nomination in 2008 for the soundtrack to the classic film "Into the Wild. El Infierno" won the Best Music Award at the 2011 Havana Film Festival. An accomplished film music composer, he has worked on more than 50 films, and his Nusrat album Chain of Light, produced in 2024, was named World Music Album of the Year by The Guardian. Of course, these glorious achievements were still in the future when he began work on Cobalt Blue. The sound that emerged from "Cobalt Blue" was "not strictly ambient," says Michael Brook. More rhythmic and melodic, he describes the material as Wordless Songs. This drive and orientation toward change represented a shift in priorities - a kind of rebellion.

Imported 2LP (standard black vinyl w/Japanese obi)

It’s been a year since “DUBMAID”—that unique, unconventional, and polarizing dub album that challenged new roots and defined the first half of 2025 as a dub-themed masterpiece. Has it gotten even more powerful? With a subtle increase in its fluffy uniqueness, lyrical sensibility, nostalgia, and driving energy—all built on a foundation of sine waves ...Read more alone—it embraces an imperfect, experimental quality while showcasing an exquisite, childlike sense of style in its selection of classic cover songs. It’s quirky yet cute, blending her own vocals and high-pitched squeaks into a perfectly balanced, strangely smirk-inducing bath-dub-electronica-soulful-cozy finish. B1 “Baby” (sample 1)—a cute, mellow dub cover of Freddie Scott’s sweet soul classic “(You) Got What I Need,” best known from Biz Markey’s “Just A Friend”—is also a real standout. The sense of unfulfilled melancholy is irresistible. With its meticulously crafted artwork, this is a stunning physical gem. Since the previous release sold out in no time, don’t miss out on this one if you’re interested.
Featuring artwork by Sei Suzuki and mastering by Makoto Oshiro, this is a beautifully finished analog LP masterpiece. Limited to 500 copies.

With its utopian beauty and pastoral nostalgia—a unique, cute, and avant-garde soundscape that could be described as “electronica ambient jazz” performed by a tranquil chamber music ensemble with exotic, rhythmic elements—I am captivated by this rich, talent-filled musical world.
Performed by the artist herself on guitar, bass, synth, recorder ...Read more (Original Japanese text by COMPUMA), percussion, and piano, along with SML members: saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, drummer Booker Stardrum, and London-based saxophonist and singer-songwriter Alabaster Deplume, who contributes on saxophone and vocals. (Original Japanese text by COMPUMA)

A team-up between in-demand German artist LUDWIG A.F., who has long conspired with the Canadian scene, and Montreal talent PRIORI — we thought it was a one-off, but here's a welcome comeback! "IV." (sample1) pairs a garage-swinging beat with a straight-from-the-heart melodic landscape, playing like an homage to the nostalgia of electronica evolving ...Read more (Original Japanese text by Akie) into club sound. "I." (sample2) sets finely crafted, mysterious synthesizer work over a restrained dubstep beat — throughout, the record conjures a mood reminiscent of early Warp and Rephlex releases. (Original Japanese text by Akie)

This album was born out of the daily sessions between Copenhagen-based multi-instrumentalist Jason Dungan aka Blue Lake and Johan Carøe. The title "Routine" refers to exactly that — the daily routine of layering sound — encompassing relaxation and tension, shifts in condition, the weather, and flashes of inspiration.
This time around he plays a ...Read more (Original Japanese text by Shhhhh)self-built 36-string zither (different from the 48-string used on "Sun Arcs"), 6- and 12-string guitars, pump organ, clarinet, sax, cello, flute and more. Johan handles cello, violin, guitar, synth, piano and electronic processing.
The playing is assured enough to make it easy to see why Pitchfork picked him for their Best Jazz & Experimental of 2023, and with influences drawn from Arthur Russell and Disques du Crépuscule — the '80s crossroads of chamber music, minimalism and art pop — the balance between simple sonic pleasure and an unforced layer of intelligence leaves a strong impression. You could also hear it as experimental yet earnest pop music. There's a whiff of American folk too, with moments that feel like John Fahey plus ambient.
Released on Tonal Union, a label with an interesting curatorial streak, having enlisted the likes of the master Laraaji and up-and-comers Dylan Henner and Jeremiah Chiu for remixes. (Original Japanese text by Shhhhh)

Guided by the philosophy that "the voice itself is an instrument," the album fuses spoken word, jazz abstraction, hip-hop's rhythmic sensibility, West African-rooted polyrhythms, ambient, experimental music, dub, beatdown and ritualistic sound design. With improvisation at its core, language itself is treated as vibrating rhythm as the record explo ...Read more (Original Japanese text by COMPUMA)res expression pushing into new territory.
In an age of confusion and division, "Leap Life" redefines music as a vehicle for emotion, memory and transformation — ritual music, sacred music, something akin to prayer, built through dialogue with the unseen. It is Afro-futurist spiritual science for a new era, from SUN RA to LAST PORTS, from P-FUNK to G-FUNK: a quietly soul-infused work has been born. 16 tracks in all.
A stellar cast comes together here: 3D, aka Robert Del Naja (Massive Attack), Kamasi Washington,
Carlos Nino, Gonjasufi, Moor Mother, Georgia Anne Muldrow and more all take part in its making! (Original Japanese text by COMPUMA)

A session between Ariel Kalma and Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer. Kalma is a French synthesizer artist working in ambient / new age, carrying on the "Fourth World" idea proposed by Jon Hassell; he has been self-releasing DIY records since the '70s, and in recent years a great many of his works have been unearthed and reissued — starting with the ...Read more (Original Japanese text by Saito) RVNG INTL. compilation — bringing him wider recognition. Chiu & Honer are the duo behind International Anthem's bestseller Recordings From The Åland Islands. The project began when they were invited onto BBC Radio 3's special collaboration program "Late Junction": Ariel and Chiu & Marta each made their own material, then exchanged sound files, collaging and editing them into this finished work. INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM keeps the great releases coming. (Original Japanese text by Saito)

Takashi Kokubo — one of Japan's foremost environmental music composers and sound designers, known for creating the Emergency Earthquake Alert tone and the payment confirmation sound for iD — built this album from natural sounds he captured using Cyberphonic technology in the Ion Forest of Mukawa Village, Yamanashi Prefecture. Aiming for the sweet s ...Read morepot exactly between music composed by a musician for listening pleasure and the sounds of nature itself, he pursued a "soundscape" whose comfort goes on forever. Three tracks are included: 1. "Awakening of the Forest" (sample 1), 2. "Memories of Summer" (sample 2), and 3. "The Distant Blue Star" (sample 3).
Using headphones brings out even more of the immersive sound of the Cyberphonic (three-dimensional ultra-acoustic) system employed here. Composed according to the 1/f fluctuation theory of rhythms found in the natural world — gentle breezes, shifting sunlight — the record was made with the wish that listeners, worn down by the relentless pace of modern life, might occasionally set themselves down within a slowly flowing soundscape. It reigns as a masterpiece of Japanese environmental music, new age, and ambient: calm, gentle, richly sensitive, and offering a listening experience much like forest bathing.
What's more, this CD is said to be the world's first to capture "high-frequency noise" (the noise abundant in natural sounds that stimulates the cerebrum and relaxes the listener), making it a recording that conveys an analog-like warmth despite being a CD.

Originally a duo, ARTEFAKT—which has released music on numerous prestigious techno labels such as 〈DELSIN〉, 〈SEMANTICA〉, and 〈PROLOGUE〉—has now transitioned to a solo project led by NICK LAPIEN. Following the fantastic MAAYAN NIDAM collaboration, here’s the latest installment in this series! KMRU—a prodigious talent whose track “Peel” on 〈EDITIONS ...Read more (Original Japanese text by Akie)MEGO〉 is legendary, and who has since released countless ambient and electronic masterpieces on labels like 〈TOUCH〉 and 〈WARP〉 through various collaborations—takes the stage. In addition to two versions of “Piano Movement”—which feature meticulously arranged and processed improvisations on classical piano—the album consists of recordings made in two distinct environments: an improvised session in a wooden cabin nestled among the pine forests of Brandenburg. The creation of textures that evoke a sense of immersion and the storytelling-like development—which defies belief that it was improvised—are simply breathtaking. It blurs the boundaries between genres such as ambient, acoustic, and electronic. (Original Japanese text by Akie)

From the DIY left-field sound mecca, 〈FUTURA RESISTENZA〉! Legendary OREN AMBARCHI, founder of 〈BLACK TRUFFLE〉, and drummer/percussionist WILL GUTHRIE—two artists who continue to pioneer experimental sound electronics and free improvisation at the forefront of their fields—have reunited. Side A features a static approach, with cymbal and gong sounds ...Read more (Original Japanese text by Akie) layering over guitar playing that makes full use of effects pedals, paired with the spiraling tone of a Leslie speaker and sustained harmonies from organ drones. The B-side features a dynamic approach that boldly unfolds with intense feedback resonance, shattering riffs, and quiet yet delicately pulsating drumming. A journey pursuing the ultimate in abstraction—one that, while operating in a realm of complete freedom, is clearly underpinned by decades of experience, as you’ll understand at first listen. Personally, this is undoubtedly one of the best releases of the year. I recommend it with the hope that it will be repressed. *Very limited stock available; please limit your purchase to one copy per person. (Original Japanese text by Akie)

Since emerging on 〈Ghostly〉 in the mid-2000s, Lusine has kept winning over fans from the dancefloor to the bedroom, becoming a key figure in the electronica scene. This is the first repress in roughly ten years.
Listening again with today's ears turns up plenty of fresh discoveries: the mysterious sci-fi downtempo of "Operation Costs" (sample_1) ...Read more (Original Japanese text by AYAM) and "Tin Hat" (sample_2), led by robotic vocals; "Twilight" (sample_3), with its beautifully stacked layers of electronics and voices; and the album's most dancefloor-minded cuts, "Every Disguise" and "Crowded Room." (Original Japanese text by AYAM)

Eleven tracks in all, including "Slow Motion" (sample_1) with its beautiful, kaleidoscopically unfolding synth chord work, plus "The Level" (sample_2) and "Won't Forget" (sample_3), with their crisply snapping snares, chopped woodwinds and keys, and dizzying shuffle rhythms — a masterpiece that will captivate everyone from electronica listeners to ...Read more (Original Japanese text by AYAM)cut-up, glitch and minimal fans. A commemorative edition marking its 10th anniversary, pressed on 2LP black-and-white splatter vinyl. (Original Japanese text by AYAM)

Corpus Delicti EP is the first vinyl release from Mazlika, a Tokyo-based track maker and DJ who is also active as a dancer. Mazlika began producing tracks in 2017 and has since self-released albums via Bandcamp and streaming services, following up in 2023 with the cassette album "Texture and Physics." Dance has been the center of Mazlika's life sin ...Read morece childhood, and today, under the name Jasmine, they pursue their own "movement" through free motion unbound by existing forms or styles — what's generally called physical expression or contemporary dance. The music follows suit: a rhythmic sensibility that roams freely across the time axis without being tied to the concept of meter, paired with sonic textures that keep the listener's ears on edge, suggesting the possibility of sound that is abstract yet still functions as BODY MUSIC. Mastering/cutting by the master craftsman POLE gives the highs a finer delicacy and lets the lows dive deeper. A record we'd also recommend trying out at 33 RPM.
Dotei/Takuro Higuchi