I didn’t set out to make an album. I set out to survive some long, stressful nights.
I tend to take on many projects at one time, often too many and this album came from a place I don’t talk about much anxiety and isolation. I made Tired Monster during a period of serious burnout, physically, creatively, and emotionally. Not the loud kind, but the slow, creeping kind that wears you down until you barely recognize yourself. In between albums, and starting a record label, the music started as a way to process that. It’s the sound of pushing forward when you’re running on fumes, of feeling heavy but still restless. The “monster” in the title isn’t a villain, it’s the tired version of yourself that refuses to give up, even when you kind of want to.
This album is my most personal work yet. It blends my love for cinematic sound design with the darker beat driven textures I’ve always gravitated toward. You’ll hear ambient decay, distorted rhythms, and moments of tension and release that mirror how I was feeling while making it.
There’s no single genre here it’s my hybrid of cinematic electronic storytelling, crafted in isolation and shaped by late nights; the need to process life without words. I hope these tracks feel like a mirror, or maybe a companion.
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed but couldn’t slow down… this one’s for you.
Thanks for listening to what I couldn’t put into words.
Decades of attempts later. Escaping the pull of gravity. Released into the void. Yet another culmination. I disappeared, intermittently. I appear, briefly. “Please enjoy this soundtrack to a parallel world. Creating, recreating, and fine-tuning this experience has brought me great satisfaction and much needed diversion. May listening to it provide you with something valuable as well.”
Another collection of orphaned tunes lurking in the nether regions of my laptop.
These are tracks that were lined up for a bit more polish and probable release – but since then my attention has moved elsewhere as I got all excited about new shiny projects and these tracks got left at the ‘nearly there’ stage. So they’re a little rough around the edges in places, but I’m claiming that as part of their charm.
That said, when I played a couple of these to people they got broadly appreciative nods – so I thought another githerments release may be in order.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag.
ether is so old, all I have is the audio file. Which is a shame ‘cos there was a lovely long reverb tail on the end and it’s cut off in the version I found sat in a random folder.
There’s upbeat electro in Storm, Noir-esque noodling with some spoken word in Thomas, and even some guitar on Tom Five.
Streets and Blue Hills are pseudo-themes for some never made US cop dramas.
Of course there’s a tune or two with stuff from my much raided US evangelists sample folder. Will I ever grow out of that?
There’s some sort of poppy songs, some sub Daft-Punk vocoder work courtesy of a Arturia pssst I found that I meant to replace the sample in. And some things I’m not sure how to describe.
All in all – something for everyone or maybe everything for someone.
CDs available here and from the artist in a super limited quantity!
Please follow and support the artist here: heaventopology.bandcamp.com heaventopology.net
Previous release on Ingrown here: ingrown.bandcamp.com/album/worldpath-yggdrasil
ING062
If you dig this we think you’ll dig: ingrown.bandcamp.com/album/lately-sprung-up-in-appalachia ingrown.bandcamp.com/album/i-2 ingrown.bandcamp.com/album/aw-cute ingrown.bandcamp.com/album/bup-land-anomaly-audio
In the late-1990s, after a successful career as an MTV-era music video director, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson moved with Jhonn Balance – his partner in life and in Coil – from London to the rural Weston-super-Mare, creating an environment for all things “musick, musick, musick!” with a revolving door of new members, including Thighpaulsandra. This eruption in activity saw Coil’s discography nearly double, and during this fruitful period, Thighpaulsandra asked the simple question: why doesn’t Coil play live? After a 16-year wait, thanks to the rapid technological advancement in the form of MacBooks, DAWs, VSTs and plugins, Coil were able bring their music to the stage as always envisioned. In live performance, they could embrace the risks and freedoms of real time sonic manipulation, as noted by Sleazy: “Reshape the show minute by minute… the direction is very spontaneous, not so much in the way of like jazz improvisation but in a kind stream of consciousness… Thighpaulsandra brought us his wisdom, and he was able to convince us we could do it.”
From 1999 to 2003, Coil was “like a snake shedding its skin,” transforming every six months into something “completely different.” Their evolution was documented in real time through the recent advent of lower-cost CD-R manufacture, on limited edition albums including ‘Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil’ and ‘Queens of the Circulating Library.’ In preparing for 2004’s “Even an Evil Fatigue” live series, Coil began work on their next period-defining masterpiece, ‘Black Antlers.’
‘Black Antlers’ showcases late-period Coil at their purest: stripped down, tighter, and leaner. The music became more rhythmic, with a greater emphasis on beats: “the songs we did tend to be more… not rock in any sense of a word, but you know, more conventional in terms of structure, but now what we’re doing is sort of within an ‘electronic’ genre.” The sound of ‘Black Antlers’ is of an intoxicating energy, combining Thighpaulsandra’s advanced synthesis, Balance’s poetic lyricism and Christopherson’s flirtations with jazz and Ableton-aided PowerBook maximalism. Rounding out the trio were renowned hurdy-gurdy player Cliff Stapleton on a “specifically commissioned” electric variant, to merge into the band’s “strange and other-worldly music”; Royal Academy of Music trained percussionist Tom Edwards (who also appeared with Thighpaulsandra in Spiritualized’s live band); and European and Near East winds specialist Mike York on pipes, bombarde, duduk and balalaika. Initially released as an “album-in-progress” in June 2004, a post on the Threshold House website noted, “Please remember that September will see Coil recording the album “Black Antlers (Proper)”.” Jhonn Balance passed away that November; Christopherson would reunite with ‘Love’s Secret Domain’ collaborator Danny Hyde to complete ‘Black Antlers’ by May 2006.
Revitalized energy marked ‘Black Antlers”s recording, paired with the group’s signature wordplay and humor (the name came from a series of imagined adult film titles). At their “Evil Fatigue” tour opener in Paris, Jhonn Balance presented the revised “Teenage Lightning (10th Birthday Version)” as, “an updated version of one of our older-never ‘hits.'” The song, about the energy generated by “two teenagers, or old age pensioners” rapidly pulses, with Edwards’s marimbas electronically modified and arpeggiated by Christopherson. Album opener “The Gimp (Sometimes)” is hypnotic and hallucinatory, recalling Coil’s 90s period, with a potentially uneasy air, filled with repetition, distorted vocals, and Thighpaulsandra’s modulated drone. “Sex With Sun Ra (Part One – Saturnalia)” reveals the potentials of the 2004 lineup, as it writhes and glides through an imagined conversation with the legendary composer, building into overdrive. On the complementary piece, Christopherson & Hyde’s “Sex With Sun Ra (Part Two – Sigillaricia)”, the song evolves into a throbbing ouroboros of glitches and free flowing energy, with York’s pipe samples reverberating almost filmically. One highlight is “The Wraiths And Strays Of Paris”, an expansion of the song’s first release (as “Wraiths And Strays (From Montreal)”, available as a downloadable bonus track). “Of Paris” takes Thighpaulsandra synthesized warmth and Christopherson’s PowerBook manipulations & stylizations from the original, adding samples taken from multi-track recordings of the full live band – including Balance’s vocals from the Paris show – fully realizing Christopherson’s desire of “taking the (electronic) genre to a place that people would find unexpected, and more challenging.” Adding to the unexpected, and building upon their own uncompromising legacy, Coil delicately cover the traditional African American lullaby (and “friend’s song”) “All The Pretty Little Horses”, with Balance’s vocals soothing the listener in an almost hushed whisper.
For Christopherson, following Jhonn’s death, the relevance and power of Coil’s creative output changed. He had one goal in mind: “to maintain the availability of the archive for future generations.” In original form, ‘Black Antlers’ represented the possibilities of a new era for the group, built from the momentum of live performance, new sounds and ideas. For the final version, ‘Black Antlers’ reunited Coil members from over the decades, collaborating across the boundaries of fixed time. There would be no more new Coil, only the completion of unfinished projects, bringing them to a standard which Balance would “have loved and approved of.”
Dais Records would like to thank Thighpaulsandra and Danny Hyde for their collaboration on this reissue.
The Dais reissue presents Coil’s 2006 version ‘Black Antlers’ with 2004’s “Wraiths And Strays (From Montreal)” available as a downloadable bonus track.
Tracks 1-7: All songs by Coil except “All the Pretty Little Horses” (trad.) and “Where’s Your Child” (Bam Bam). Most versions of “Wraiths and Strays” feature a sample from the King of Woolworths’ track “Montparnasse” now used with permission. A shorter version of tracks 1-6 were originally released on cd-r format by Threshold House, to accompany Coil’s 2004 “Even an Evil Fatigue” live series in: Paris, Leipzig, Amsterdam, Rome, Fano, London. Tracks 7-9 were written, produced & mixed May 2006 by Peter Christopherson & Danny Hyde for the 2006 cd release.
Coil were: Jhonn Balance Peter Christopherson Tom Edwards Cliff Stapleton Thighpaulsandra Mike York
Artwork by Ian Johnstone & Jhonn Balance. Remastered by Josh Bonati. Layout & artwork restoration by Vinnie Massimino.
Label Description: Tunes recorded to Fostex 280 4-track in Leeds between 1992 and 1994. Mastered by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw in 2025. Cover art by Jermaine Legg.
The coastline comes alive at low tide on a full moon. This one is for all the followers. I hope you EMjoy this Liquid Mix as my special gift to you with a FREE download code available in the community post for this album release. Thanks for listening. This mix includes music from the following releases:
Jack Hertz – Cover Art, Mix, Composition, and Production.
Jack Hertz is fascinated by all aspects of creating sound. From the earliest instruments to the present day hardware and software innovations. More at JackHertz.com
Aural Films is an online record label (netlabel) that releases high-quality soundtrack albums for movies that do not exist. We cover a wide range of music styles ranging from ambient to experimental to popular to soundtrack musics. Often on the same albums. You can find our complete catalog of releases online at AuralFilms.com
The album was created by a secret society of time travelers calling themselves *The Harmonic Chrononauts*. This group discovered that January 6rd is the day when time itself pauses for a moment, allowing people to reflect on their most sacred moments. On this day, memories of significant events from the past can be viewed as if through a prism, revealing them in a new light. *The Harmonic Chrononauts* decided that releasing their album on this very day would provide the perfect opportunity to take humanity on a journey through time not only for the enjoyment of music, but also to awaken the sacred moments within each of us. The songs are composed at a frequency that allows listeners to reflect on their own emotional experiences and connect them with the sounds of the universe. The choice of the date is therefore no coincidence, but the result of a secret ritual in which the members of the society meditated in an underground cave to the sounds of a crazy, dancing unicorn. This unicorn, known for its ability to manipulate time, revealed to *the Harmonic Chrononauts* that January 6th is the only day on which the memories of sacred moments can be transferred into the musical dimension. In summary: The album release on January 3rd is not just a strategic move, but a transdimensional experience that invites us to reflect on the deepest emotions of our existence while traveling in time all thanks to a dancing unicorn and a secret society of time travelers!
But since time and space are irrelevant to us, the album is only coming out now.
MDK
MDK is:
Mik Schuppin (M), Diego Madero (D) and Kai Kraatz (K)
Mixed, Mastered & Cover Artwork by D. Cover Layout FD
More Info & Music at: mdkband.com mdkmdkmdk.bandcamp.com
– Published by Klappstuhl International. ‘Where borders are fiction’
“Explores ancient, unseen worlds…immersed in mythological recollections…Yoga packs countless ideas into these pieces, but the album flows with an underlying narrative, searching for new living pathways.” Foxy Digitalis
Solo Indonesian ambient producer Yoga Nugraha Usmad joins Phantom Limb’s Spirituals imprint for new album Gurnida, an aqueous and archipelagic collection filled with ruminative pathos, ancient mythology, and carefully applied grit.
Yoga Nugraha Usmad began the creative process that yielded new album Gurnida at the once-sacred Boyong River in Yogyakarta, Java. “A river that once carried myths, prayers, and daily rituals,” he writes. Now a centre for aggressive and destructive sand-mining, the river’s beauty is being eroded. “It is slowly losing its flow, drowned out by the roar of machines and the dust of exploitation,” Usmad laments. The music of Gurnida asks: “do the spirits that once dwelled within it disappear, migrate, or linger restlessly among the remnants left behind? Do they seep into the earth, seeking refuge elsewhere, or remain in silent defiance?”
Through looping bamboo flutes, reflective harmonics, undulating drones, and nocturne synthesis, the music of Gurnida speaks not only of physical loss but also of the fading spiritual and ecological bonds between humans and nature. It is an album “composed of soundscapes from geographical and symbolic realities. A place that holds souls and spirits that continue to resonate between existence and memory,” writes Usmad. Field recordings taken on location at such environments haunt his musical spaces like these spirits, their ghostly ephemera lacing Usmad’s arrangements with fragments of ancient stories, sometimes real and sometimes imagined.
Opening track and first single “Old Trees” is at first groaning and low-lit, an eldritch dusk rising over the metallics and machinery of an ecosystem shattered by industrial landstripping. But as a scintillating, wooden flute melody snakes through to its surface, the spirits of the old river begin to find their voice. They call and conjure in a multitude that drowns out the destruction, the place that we have found ourselves revealing a pristine and perfect state of ancient reverence.
Next, “Fluid and Solid” is founded on field recordings from Yogyakarta’s Plunyon River, a landscape traversed by lava from Mount Merapi’s last eruption. “In this track,” writes Usmad, “I imagine the dual nature of lava—its destructive force that devastates natural habitats, topples trees, and disrupts wildlife, as well as its regenerative power. Despite the destruction, lava also creates opportunities for the emergence of a new ecosystem.” Lava is here represented by throbbing synthesis tuned directly into geologic frequencies, sometimes flowing at engulfing speed and sometimes resting and breathing, on the earth, while the birdsong and insect chirp of the Plunyon forestry coagulates around its stream.
Music For The Rest Of Us 