Author Archives: John Lithium

Sohme – PSALM23: Palm (Phantom Limb)

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Label Description:

Persian-American ambient producer sohme joins Phantom Limb’s Spirituals imprint for debut album Palm, a study of new fatherhood and changing stages of life for synthesis, acoustic instrumentation, and field recording, integrating a practice in architecture and two distinct cultural heritages.

Saumon Oboudiyat, aka sohme, is a Persian-American sound artist, producer and architectural designer based in Philadelphia. His music is informed by a decade of work in architecture and a lifetime of musicianship. Through a careful balance of soft harmonics, Eno & Lanois-esque melodic detail, slo-mo chordal shifts, and drifting, dreamlike field recordings, the music of Palm reflects Oboudiyat’s entry into parenthood and the accompanying transformation therein. “When I began working on the album in New York, we were just starting to see the other side of the pandemic,” he writes. “Upon completing mixing in my home studio, my wife and I prepared to welcome a new life into this world.”

Opening track and first single “These Are All My Thoughts” combines monastic reflection with a swelling and sirenic pathos, employing the kind of cosmic redolence that conjures early space travel documentary or hermetic contemplation. Hues of twentieth century German ambient production glitter and enshadow its powerful sonics.

Later, “The One, The Other” is more reminiscent of Middle Eastern musics. An oud-like pluck shudders and shimmers about broken and nonlingual vocal snippets, a howz of still water amidst a desert plain of sparse and arid instrumentation. Another key moment is “Signal”, and its deceptively pop-oriented chord structure. Housing clattering steps, shooting stars of high frequency melody, and single notes of conical synthesis that resemble the Persian karna, its soundworld is warm and enveloping, safe and secure.

sohme joins A Lily, Jan Esbra, Eamon Ivri, Sachi Kobayashi, Dau, Ibukun Sunday, Beqa Ungiadze, Suso Saíz, Menhir, Francsesca Ter-Berg, Dylan Henner, and Pram of Dogs (and others) on Phantom Limb’s Spirituals imprint, a sub-label offering works of high grade, emotive ambient and experimental music from emerging artists from across the world. Palm is his debut release.

Jorge Queijo & Yoshio Machida – TOKYO (VLZ PRODUKT)

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Label Description:

スティールパン、EMSシンセをはじめとした様々な楽器に精通し、NHKドキュメンタリーのサウンドトラック他、多岐に渡る制作をするベテラン町田良夫。
ジョン・ゾーン、クリス・コルサーノなど即興ジャズ界隈でのセッション、実験的ガムランの主宰、TVドラマ、舞台音楽のサウンドトラック、意欲的な実験音楽を発表するポルトガルのドラマー、ジョルジュ・ケイジョ。

両者によるコラボレーション作品”TOKYO”をリリースする。

両者は2016年にベーシスト千葉広樹と共に”LUMINANT”CDを制作しており、今作でも2人は息の合ったコラボレイトを見せている。

それぞれの録音素材をJorgeが中心となりミックス、編集している。

町田のスティールパン、ガムラン、ウクレレなどのアコースティックサウンド、Jorgeのライトなドラミング、電子音が一体となり、Jorgeがイメージした”TOKYO”を形成する。
それらのサウンドの在り方は非常に絶妙なバランスを持ち、アナログとデジタルの差を越えて完全に融合している。

そのサウンドは、東京の持つソリッドなイメージを具現化したものというより、都市の喧騒のすぐ隣に存在する”静けさ”や”儚さ”を感じさせる。
アスファルトや眩いまでのビルディングからの太陽光の照り返しから逃れ、ほんの少し入った路地裏の、ひんやりとした日陰の涼やかさと静けさ。

遠くに響く首都高の音、デジタルサイネージの喧騒、その隙間に響く寺院からの鐘の音。足元に響く地下鉄の振動。

「東京」の持つ華やかさの数歩横で感じるメランコリックさや憂いを思い出させる、非常に
情緒に富んだ作品となっている。

From his work with steelpan, metal percussion and EMS synthesizers to his NHK documentary scores, seasoned multi-instrumentalist Yoshio Machida’s path has been wide-ranging. He now joins Portuguese drummer Jorge Queijo, whose practice spans free jazz, experimental gamelan, theatre soundtracks and collaborations with John Zorn and Chris Corsano.

Their latest release, TOKYO, follows 2016’s LUMINANT with bassist Hiroki Chiba, and again the two reveal a natural, intuitive chemistry. Queijo handled the mixing and editing, shaping their recordings into a cohesive whole.

The result is a delicate, atmospheric portrait of the city. Machida’s acoustic palette—steelpan, gamelan and ukulele—blends with Queijo’s light percussive touch and electronic textures to create something that moves gracefully between analog and digital.

The Tokyo they evoke isn’t the hard-edged metropolis, but its shadowed backstreets: the hush of a narrow alley, the clang of temple bells cutting through LED screens, the subterranean rumble of the metro beneath the drone of the expressway.

Tokyo is an album of nuance and atmosphere, capturing the fleeting stillness that lingers alongside the city’s constant motion.

English translation: Cal Lyall.

{AN} EeL – Trance Music (Pan Pan Pan Avian Distress Call)

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Label Description: One of the Best Times Ever
Was Sex on the Beach
And not the Drink – Nothing
Metaphorically, Wet Wild & Juicy
Sex on the Beach, Stars in our Eyes
The Glow of reckless Youth Riding
Waves of Pale Moonlight
I Saw the Stars that Night, But they
Were Outshone
Always there
But
Always Alone – A Blink
in Time, A Moment in Stride
Inside so Close
The Dance of Sighs,
The Pitter Patter pattie
Try it on for Size ~
It’s What passes for Clase
Classy
Both Here
And Far
And Wide ~

Innumerable Forms – Pain Effulgence (Profound Lore)

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Label Description: Pain Effulgence, the third LP from INNUMERABLE FORMS sees founder Justin DeTore and crew, them being guitarists Chris Ulsh (who also handles bass on the LP) and Jensen Ward with drummer Connor Donegan, deliver their most powerful tectonic-shifting release yet. To be released on Aug 22 Pain Effulgence sees INNUMERABLE FORMS elevate the trajectory, initially brought forth with their Punishment In Flesh debut and 2022’s Philosophical Collapse, to a new plateau of megalithic death/doom virtuosity. Old-school early ‘90s Finnish death metal coalescing with early ‘90s UK death/doom (i.e. OLD Paradise Lost and OLD Anathema) continues to be the blueprint upon which INNUMERABLE FORMS contrive their sound from and with Pain Effulgence, it continues to become that much more towering and imposing. Akin to feeling the weight of an immense ancient stone of granite being lowered upon you, overwhelming suffocating darkness and monumental mournful triumph.

Spycker – The Very Thing We Need (Submarine Broadcasting Company)

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Label Description:

The Very Thing That We Need can be experienced as a temporary sonic journey, a drifting passage through layered soundscapes. Each track unfolds like a chapter in an inward-bound narrative, leaning into atmosphere over urgency, weaving layered rhythms and unconventional melodies.
The album opens with a soft glow: piano and guitar drifting together in a quiet nostalgia. From there, the grooves loop and simmer, steady but just out of reach, like something half-remembered. Moments of calm give way to darker turns, sliding gently into a dreamlike haze that moves between the familiar and the uncanny.

In According To One, piano and guitar drift together in quiet conversation, conjuring a sense of ease, like looking back on something you never quite left behind.
From there, sink deeper into the slow-burning pulse of Induce the Peasants. Its steady groove is hypnotic and unhurried, perfect for losing track of time and letting the present dissolve.
With Santi Asoke, the mood lightens. Breezy and effortless, it carries you somewhere warm and weightless, a place where nothing is expected, and everything just is.
Things shift with Of Money Use. Here, the familiar starts to slip away and you’re left in a vivid, uncertain dreamscape where imagination takes the lead.
Finally, Asoke Hierarchy pulls it all back together. It’s a subtle revival: steady and composed, like standing up again after a long, introspective drift.

Filmmaker – Dehumanization (Self-Released)

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Label Description: This EP is about the overwhelming exponential data, corruption fatigue, blatant govt cover-ups, the ongoing wars, the struggle as an artist dealing with shadowban, bots in platforms, AI content creators, biased algorithms in social media, being undervalued locally, and all that off-sensations in the dystopian times we’re living.

Editor’s Note: For those interested, there is also an instrumental version of this EP as well.

Aftergloom – Don’t Wake The Dreamer Part III (Self-Released)

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Label Description:

Don’t Wake the Dreamer Pt. III is the final installation of the series that tells the story of a young woman escaping the grieving process by reliving memories within her lucid dreams. The adventure follows a young woman who is mourning the loss of a parent. Instead of moving on, she manifests her deceased parent in her dreams, unwittingly bringing to life a brand new being who realizes it needs the dreamer even more than she needs her dream. This dream-parent tries to keep her sleeping for extended periods of time. What follows is a series dreams that ultimately changes the course of the young woman’s life forever.

Where we left off and where we’re going:
The dream-parent has just convinced Marsha to stay within the dream and run away from the Memory Wiper. They jump from dream to dream, exploring old memories and slowly forgetting the waking world as they desperately try to keep the dream alive.

All songs written by Michael A. Brunacini