Label Description: ‘Undercurrents’ is an interconnected body of work that drifts into moods and mind travel through the slower side that distances from prior dance/club-intended tracks, a new yet familiar exploration in search of emotional resonance, resemblance and tonal identity following the downbeat, hazy granular synthesis and low lit atmospheres developed on recent and not so recent releases.
For enjoyers of the sound palette from previous albums like Motion Pictures Regime, Screening Plexus, Land Of Hidden Variables and Diffractions but also for new listeners discovering Filmmaker’s catalog.
Music & artwork by Faunes Efe Recorded in Envigado, Colombia in early 2026.
Limited and handcrafted, the wooden box houses five professionally manufactured cassettes and stands as a tribute to one of the most distinctive and uncompromising projects in the Nordic dark ambient scene.
Label Description: I am a Polish musician specializing in electronic, experimental, dark ambient, and plunderphonics music. My work explores the boundaries of sound through unconventional textures and immersive atmospheres, often blending found sounds with synthetic layers to create unique sonic landscapes. Drawing inspiration from both the eerie and the abstract, I aim to evoke deep emotional responses and transport listeners into otherworldly auditory experiences.
This album was heavily based on sampling the short snippets of music from old Adult Swim bumpers. And as usual with my work, I also sampled stuff from old public service advertisement, like anti-drug ads, etc.
There’s everything on here: tracks that are calm, sad, bright or aggressive. There is always a severe amount of different emotions in the void.
All tracks mixed and produced by j4vaman Artwork by j4vaman Additional chords on Track 3 by Michael Monaghan.
From Stephen: written and produced by variant in ann arbor, mi. [2020-2025] additional modular synthesis provided by antiquemodulations, detroit, mi. usa. mixdown and premastering by alex gold. mastered by stephen hitchell in echospace. thanks to: alex gold, chris federsen, gerard hanson, martin, richard, jimmy, kevin martin, rod modell, sam valenti, steve barker, tomoko and family at disk union and everyone around the world supporting this sonic art.
For the fiftieth release in the series, I’m thrilled to share an extended-length interpretation from a foundational figure in the electronic music world, the Detroit-based Stephen Hitchell, here as variant.
Describing the importance of Stephen’s contribution to electronic music is a huge task – born out of the visionary axis between Detroit, Chicago and Berlin, he built on structures laid by those before him to create a universe of vast depth and sonic beauty. Along with many collaborators, his label echospace [detroit] became a home for forward-thinking dub-spirited music.
This, and numerous releases on other labels, including the seminal The Coldest Season on Modern Love with regular partner Rod Modell, and ground-breaking live performances everywhere from Berghain to Movement, made Stephen indivisible from any conversation of the most important artists of our time.
Under the guise of variant, we might find Stephen at his deepest, as he puts it: “to score the constellation of mystical events occurring in the depths of space”
With while the universe sleeps, he has achieved something remarkable. As with all the variant music, Stephen takes influence from the vast recesses of the cosmos, both imaginatively and sonically.
Drawing on NASA’s sound archive, “the vast echoes of space have been manipulated and resynthesized throughout the duration of this sonic experience.”
Through decades of dedication to his craft, Stephen has become a producer of almost unparalleled skill – all seen through the lens of formative years immersed in the inception and evolution of techno, house, ambient and countless detours. All this is brought to bear on while the universe sleeps – a truly masterful deep-space voyage, eighty minutes submerged in cathartic waves of interstellar bliss.
Infinitely spacious – echoing chords and endlessly sustaining pads establish an emotional core, surrounded by highly-processed astral transmissions and organic analogue noise. Always underpinned by sub-bass reminiscent of the lowest frequencies emanating from the studios of Jamiaca, that are also of massive significance to Stephen’s work.
Huge thanks to Stephen, an incredible addition to the series.
The artwork was made as always influenced by the music and idea behind the album – originating from a photo from Stephen which was then captured with analogue photography and processed here at quiet details studios.
As usual, the album is presented on the physical edition, a custom six-panel digipack with a separate fine art print too.
The CD also has a special long-form continuous mix of the album, representing the music in its purest form.
From Stephen:
written and produced by variant in ann arbor, mi. [2020-2025] additional modular synthesis provided by antiquemodulations, detroit, mi. usa. mixdown and premastering by alex gold. mastered by stephen hitchell in echospace. thanks to: alex gold, chris federsen, gerard hanson, martin, richard, jimmy, kevin martin, rod modell, sam valenti, steve barker, tomoko and family at disk union and everyone around the world supporting this sonic art.
Label Description: Collected together for the first time, this five-CD box set brings together the various works from the Music For Real Airports project.
The collection not only includes Music For Real Airports, Music For Airport Lounges, and Music For Dead Airports, but also features a substantial amount of new, unheard material, alternate mixes and live recordings taken from our archive. This second box set reflects a long and uneasy relationship with airports.
After years spent sitting in airports, travelling to and from gigs, we have seen past the polished surfaces and the promises of comfort and efficiency. They present a controlled fiction, a managed calm built on delay, surveillance and routine.
Across five hours of music, much of it previously unheard and available for the first time, the box set confronts the modern reality of travel and the corporate structures that shape it. The music documents these spaces as they are experienced rather than as they are sold.
20 Years into the future, we return to you with the world’s illest hard drum n bass beats. In 2006, we released Counterstrike, Identity (BTK + Spleen), Corrupt Souls, and Lethal & Khanage, making a 4 continent super weapon of drum n bass. We arrive in 2026 with the hottest new talent – Rawbreaker, Anika D, paired with legends such as Jaise, Submerged, and inimitable voice of Flowdan. Disciples of the Unreal II is our return to wax also, with a 2×12″ cut to vinyl by Stefan Betke for the DJs and distributed worldwide.
Each artist contributes a piece of the hard sound in their own fashion – from the roughneck beats of Medium, Rawbreaker, Submerged, and Scartat, to the Sinthetix-fueled neurofunk of Code2 and Anika D, and a foray into industrial techno from Slave to Society’s rework, and landing in the world of original Jungle sound with Jaise. From every corner – we come correct with the drum n bass intellect.
The over 60-minutes’ long ‚All Gates Open (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)‘ demonstrates Blood Incantation’s diverse capability of songwriting and reveals a light, beautiful and holistic side, serving as the pastoral „yang energy“ of the dark atmosphere of ‚Timewave Zero‘
Line-Up: Paul Riedel Jeff Barrett Morris Kolontyrsky Isaac Faulk
Formed in the late 90s, Tulsa’s Unwed Sailor embrace a unique form of bass-led, instrumental pop with post-rock dynamics that glide between white-knuckled heaviness and breezy melodicism. Since returning from a decade-long pause in 2019, a prolific spree of creative exploration and genre blending has yielded their finest work to date, including Mute The Charm (2023), Underwater Over There (2024), and Cruel Entertainment (2025).
To craft their eleventh album, High Remembrance, founding member Johnathon Ford brought a series of home-recorded drafts, demos, and hooks to the studio, where they came to life with long-time collaborators Matt Putman (drums) and David Swatzell (guitar) guided by themes of nostalgia and the bittersweet comforts of memory. Across the album’s eight tracks, there are shades of peak era alt-rock grit, late 70s AM radio swagger, and rapturous New Wave abandon, among other touchstones that defy easy categorization.
“Truest Sentence” opens with vinyl crackle and a tremolo chime that summons an effortless groove full of layered guitars, complex percussion, and Ford’s distinctive bass guitar buzz, as catchy and head-noddingly punchy as ever. Lead single, “West Coast Prism”, pairs an indelible melodic hook with upbeat drums and a jangly arrangement that transforms into a driving, technicolor refrain. True to its title, the song evokes white light splitting into a spectrum, as spacious synths and soft backing vocals create an aura of melancholic bliss; Ford fittingly cites “a deep fondness for the ocean, surfing, redwoods, and rocky coastline of Oregon” as the spiritual backdrop for its environment.
Inspired by the ways that memories create personal identity, “Don’t Let Go” could be a lost alternative radio earworm with its taut pacing, crunchy tone, and woozy guitars, while its deceptively simple rhythm section and glitchy electronics root it firmly in the present. “Cinnamon” forefronts beautifully arranged acoustic guitar countermelodies, along with layers of subtle detail, choral vocals, and relaxed, upper-neck bass guitar strums. According to Ford, the song is “a tribute to the 70s and 80s country music that soundtracked family trips to the desert when I was a kid,” with Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty” as a particularly meaningful anchor point.
At this point in Unwed Sailor’s storied career, Ford finds some of his strongest inspiration in reflecting on where the project began, while perpetually pushing it forward with new ideas, arrangements, and genre infusions. “It’s become about holding onto the things you love the most,” he notes, “including yourself.” His chord-driven bass playing remains the common thread through the band’s records, lending a familiar gravitas and warmth to every new collection.
The second side of High Remembrance commences with “Punk Broke”, an homage to the band’s Seattle origins – and David Markey’s famed documentary, 1991: The Year Punk Broke – where whammy-bar wobble, palm muted picking, and shimmering synth stabs lead into an anthemic guitar solo that descends over a field of crisscrossing melodies. With its twang, reverb, and cumulus clouds of slow-attack keys, “Gingerman” evokes a nighttime desert drive with the cobalt fade of the day behind a jagged silhouette of distant mountains, while the sonic contrasts and layered mix of “Three Jewels” offer up the album’s most rewarding headphone listen.
Title track, “High Remembrance”, showcases Unwed Sailor’s ability to employ a relatively simple arrangement to create a memorable, widescreen finale and embody the tone of the album as a whole. Written back during the band’s hiatus in the 2010s, the song feels like a familiar forest trail seen during all four seasons at once, and as it closes with a long fade, we are left in the blurry, liminal space of memory, absorbing the last few moments of a reverie before returning to reality.
