Rainbow Rat – Perfect Face No. 1 (Self-Released)
Tag Archives: electronica
Ursula’s Cartridges – Sleep Deprivation Cities (Self-Released)
Label Description:
Visiting the downtown life while under the sleep deprivation.
“Funky, largely upbeat take on vaporwave aesthetics that incorporates a wide range of other styles into the mix. Incorporating elements and samples of electro funk, hip hop. Chemical Brothers-style breaks and beyond, the artist pulls some pretty interesting stuff into the vaporwave space, and it mostly works.
Things even get weird and experimental at times, still anchored to the overarching aesthetic. Slushy vibes, smeary reverb, and making everything sound like a dying VCR works across a wide variety of styles! Definitely one to check out if you appreciate the Vaporwave Extended Universe.”
-Ether Diver, OPM: Hybrid Aesthetic
Contagious Orgasm – behind closed doors (Ant-Zen)
Label Description:
CONTAGIOUS ORGASM, the brainchild of hiroshi hashimoto from nagoya, japan, stands as a bold exploration of experimental sound and ambient noise. his compositions are a captivating blend of swirling psychedelia, crude samples, abandoned rhythms, and post-industrial noise, all woven into a seamless tapestry of ambient and concrete elements. this is music that demands active engagement, rewarding the listener with a hypnotic, immersive experience that is both inviting and disconcerting.
each composition is a rich vignette, balancing noise-soaked textures with exotic percussion, and gradually winding down into dreamlike interludes. CONTAGIOUS ORGASM’s work draws listeners into its nebulous darkness, offering a space for introspection, tension, and revelation. turn off the lights and let yourself be carried by this multifaceted, elegant journey through intimacy, alienation, and the blurred boundaries of perception and reality.
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, time softened and blurred. each room held a fragment of feeling – a flicker of mood, a whisper asking thirsty?, and somewhere, a reflection of longing beneath the moon under water. shadows stretched gently, revealing a soft sensitivity in everything touched, a quiet ache threading through silence. reality wavered in the glass of an inverted mirror, showing not what was, but what might have been. then came the return – subtle, weightless, yet undeniable. beneath a suspended ceiling, where thoughts drifted like dust in filtered light, he understood: some truths only reveal themselves in silence, and only BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.
composed and performed by h h. and fts. recorded and mixed at cool anatomy and yard cemetery, 2023-2024
artwork by stefan alt
this is ant-zen act475 & raubbau raub-107
The Black Dog – Loud Ambient (Dust Science Recordings)
Label Description:
Making this album was an absolute joy. We used Rothko’s artwork as a major influence. His use of colour fields, blending, mood and scale really helped us build an album of tracks that could stand on their own and also work together as a coherent whole across all the tones we had been working with. It was also a chance to fall back in love with our 909, 808 and 707.
While working on music for several other projects, the “Rothko” project got renamed Loud Ambient because it did not really sit right with the My Brutal Life series. We often talked about what people make of The Black Dog and whether they think we only make ambient music. We do not. Over the last year or so, one of us would be working on something and someone else would say, “That is a Loud Ambient track.” The name stuck. We liked the funny side of it.
With Loud Ambient, everything just fell into place creatively. Surprisingly for us, the tracklisting never changed, just small tweaks here and there. That rarely happens. It marks a first for us as a band. All the stars aligned and the confidence in this album is the strongest we have ever had.
Loud Ambient was made to dance to, something we have not done in a while. We welcome the return to the dance floor with both hands. Will you join us?
Chloroforms – Lay Low And Be Held (Triplicate Records)
Label Description:
Immediately, the industrial beats of the opening track ‘Rattle Can Paint Job’ tell you all you need to know about Chloroforms’ Triplicate debut ‘Lay Low and Be Held’. 1. The beats and fire and will consistently catch you off guard. 2. You’re gonna be taking in a genre, or subgenre at least that’s not immediately clear, but you’ll notice it’s seldom heard on our label. 3. You’re about to have a good time. Time to make it happen!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
INTERVIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~
George Ernst, Triplicate Records: OK before I ask anything else, please, can you give some context to the mysterious MC referring to you by name on ‘Sonar for Sore Eyes’?
Michael Marchant aka Chloroforms: Yes. I like to collect audio snippets of things I hear out in the world and recontextualize them to besmirch my name. Ha! This was the first time I’ve used one from my collection. I’d be super curious if someone could place where this was taken from! We’d probably have an annoying amount of things in common.
GE: What IS heat vision? Or was that a Jeopardy answer?
MM: That is MY question, sir! WHAT IS HEAT VISION?! A question that randomly popped into my head while trying to name the project file for this song. Instead of making myself a separate note so I could go look up what heat vision was later, I named the song “What is Heat Vision?” as a reminder. Which reminds me…According to Wikipedia, heat vision is ‘the fictional ability to burn objects with one’s gaze’. Perfect.
GE: Was MX-80 a reference to the noise-rock band from Indiana?
MM: You know, it wasn’t; but my noise-rock band, IfIHadAHiFi, has played quite a few shows in Bloomington. And I really like the MX-80 album Out of the Tunnel. When I was making the track “MX-80” I was trying to make it sound like the musical equivalent of an old dot matrix printer shaking itself off of a desk. I named it after the Epson MX-80 which would be an incredibly bitchin’ instrument in the hands of the right noise-rock band.
GE: Can you tell us a little about both the name of your project Chloroforms’, and the inspiration behind the album title?
MM: I’m going to show my age here, but Colorforms were a toy from my childhood that were these little vinyl clings in the shape of cartoon characters that you could stick to smooth surfaces. That was BIG entertainment to a small child at the time, but life goes on and I had fully forgotten they existed.
Then one day not too long ago I see them for sale out in the world, the first time since I was a child. I instantly recognize their iconic logo, but my brain reads it as CHLOROFORMS. Instant band name. FONT FACT, the font that I used for the free_refills_or_die EP is the closest to the Colorforms logo I could find.
As far as the album title goes, Lay Low and Be Held is two things to me. First, it’s a play on the phrase “lo and behold”. Second, it’s just a nice thing to aspire to.
GE: Your honest opinion on kangaroos: give it to me please. I’ll know if
you try to lie.
MM: I love these questions. I am strongly in favor of kangaroos. Especially YouTube videos of kangaroos who are keeping it real. One long night after a show in Louisville, Kentucky my bandmates and I watched a video titled ‘Kangaroo Shoved Through Fence During Tussle at Canberra Nature Reserve’ approximately 135 times and almost died from laughter.
Link to the good stuff:
youtu.be/N7M6lhzYOow?si=rAjq4gzSz2tsNJ6m
GE: What was your favourite track to work on? I really love Maximum
Capacity Dry Spell.
MM: Thank you! I was 100% happy with everything on this album so it’s difficult to choose a favorite. “Maximum Capacity” has a great groove and was the quickest thing I wrote for the album. Satisfying when that happens. “Cadaver Chiropractic” was written in 5/4 which is strange and proggy and took the longest to get right, so that sticks out. “Hide the Smoke” was an exercise in subtlety which is not always where my brain leads me. “The Proud Parer” might be the winner (for today) since it was my attempt to write a Chloroforms version of “I Wanna Dance
with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”. I think I nailed it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
REVIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chloroforms: ‘Lay Low and Be Held’. A fascinating project from Milwaukee that we couldn’t be more excited to share with you! With dark titles like ‘Mugger’s Lullaby’, ‘Cemetery Symmetry’, and ‘Cadaver Chiropractic’, no one has tricked you. You’re going to be diving head first into some extremely danceable murk. Let’s analyze!
As soon as the industrial beats of ‘Rattle Can Paint Job’ blast out from the periphery and into the forefront, you know you’re in for something engaging, something you’ve not heard before. Hardcore, relentless pounding, interspersed with light-speed wooshing and a bassline that perfectly flirts with fuzz without leaving it feeling overbearing.
There’s also a paranoid bent to several of the songs on show here, the first bearing such baggage is the fraught yet funky ‘What is Heat Vision’. Alienated fear-beats or funk-laden bop. You be the judge. But really it’s both, and manages to pull these vibes off in a spectacularly grandiose manner. ‘Mugger’s Lullaby’ on the other hand, tricks you. You think you’re in for a straightforward stripped down macho-sounding THUNK-THUNK beat, then half way through, the gentleman responsible for this record, whose first name I know but will henceforth be referred to as ‘Mr. Chloroforms’, swipes the floor away, and you’re left in a void of ultra-fast IDM. It’s a trip that comes out of nowhere and pulls off a perfect bait and switch!
‘Lay Low’ on the other hand offers a lighter collection of melodies and textures than the opening trio. That’s not to say it’s some breezy intermission. The tambourine jangle works beautifully with a series of warbling synths, and I mean, hey! (extreme Ron Howard Voice) ‘That’s partially the name of the record!’. We segue neatly then, into the equally brief, yet decidedly more Lynchian-static-laden eccentricity of the aforementioned ‘Cadaver Chiropractic’, which to be fair does indeed give the old bones a good thorough shake. As does the similarly darkly titled ‘Cemetery Symmetry’, which offers a bag full of beat-treats, and Mr. Chloroforms’ isn’t shy about switching things up on a dime, creating a blistering, disorienting, but undeniably appealing effect. This three-minute microcosm of an industrial mixtape is done when he damn well says so, ok?
Then we have ‘MX-80’. At several points this track feels like it’s pursuing you. You know? No? Just me? Ok… moving on.
‘Hide the Smoke’ conjures the misty atmosphere in your mind that the title promises. Whirring disembodied wind-enveloped synths haunt the mix, while a stark and sparingly-riffed-on bit of percussion rumbles away in the dark. It’s effective and fun, even if it’s not meant to be. Meanwhile ‘Route Driver, Asleep at the Wheel’ feels so hyper-charged with dark static that it might combust at any second. Here the drums pound with greater grit and otherworldly malaise than ever, and coalesce to make a murky and melodically fascinating piece of music, increasingly frantic until the half-point switch up, the delightfully batshit-ramifications of which, you need to hear and draw your own conclusions. (But if they’re not positive, you’re wrong.)
‘Maximum Capacity Dry Spell’ Starts as a ultra-focused, borderline synth-wavey bop, and for the most part maintains its slick composure in the face of equally slick percussive flourishes. The rubbery, cool-as-shit bassline compliments the arrangement perfectly and cements MCDS as a highlight. Similarly fun, yet decided more off-kilter is the mysterious ‘Sonar for Sore Eyes’, a relentless slammer, soaked in spooky vibrations and prefixed by an equally unnerving recording of a woman referring to Mr. Chloroforms by his government name. What does it all mean? Well keep reading to find out, hopefully. Otherwise, it just slaps!
Equally slapworthy is the final, ‘The Proud Parer’. A fun pun, and a decidedly chill way to end a record. While ‘Lay Low and Be Held’ can at times feel like a mission statement akin to ‘make cool weird music and set yourself apart from the herd’ (stop me if I’m way off), the music is utterly unpretentious. Borrowing its studious delights from sources across the electronic spectrum, with some good industrial rock thrown in for good measure, the album ends as it started: with a fabulous piece of music that puts you in a lively mood. That was all I ever wanted. I want that for you too, dear reader.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
INTERVIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~
George Ernst, Triplicate Records: OK before I ask anything else, please, can you give some context to the mysterious MC referring to you by name on ‘Sonar for Sore Eyes’?
Michael Marchant aka Chloroforms: Yes. I like to collect audio snippets of things I hear out in the world and recontextualize them to besmirch my name. Ha! This was the first time I’ve used one from my collection. I’d be super curious if someone could place where this was taken from! We’d probably have an annoying amount of things in common.
GE: What IS heat vision? Or was that a Jeopardy answer?
MM: That is MY question, sir! WHAT IS HEAT VISION?! A question that randomly popped into my head while trying to name the project file for this song. Instead of making myself a separate note so I could go look up what heat vision was later, I named the song “What is Heat Vision?” as a reminder. Which reminds me…According to Wikipedia, heat vision is ‘the fictional ability to burn objects with one’s gaze’. Perfect.
GE: Was MX-80 a reference to the noise-rock band from Indiana?
MM: You know, it wasn’t; but my noise-rock band, IfIHadAHiFi, has played quite a few shows in Bloomington. And I really like the MX-80 album Out of the Tunnel. When I was making the track “MX-80” I was trying to make it sound like the musical equivalent of an old dot matrix printer shaking itself off of a desk. I named it after the Epson MX-80 which would be an incredibly bitchin’ instrument in the hands of the right noise-rock band.
GE: Can you tell us a little about both the name of your project Chloroforms’, and the inspiration behind the album title?
MM: I’m going to show my age here, but Colorforms were a toy from my childhood that were these little vinyl clings in the shape of cartoon characters that you could stick to smooth surfaces. That was BIG entertainment to a small child at the time, but life goes on and I had fully forgotten they existed.
Then one day not too long ago I see them for sale out in the world, the first time since I was a child. I instantly recognize their iconic logo, but my brain reads it as CHLOROFORMS. Instant band name. FONT FACT, the font that I used for the free_refills_or_die EP is the closest to the Colorforms logo I could find.
As far as the album title goes, Lay Low and Be Held is two things to me. First, it’s a play on the phrase “lo and behold”. Second, it’s just a nice thing to aspire to.
GE: Your honest opinion on kangaroos: give it to me please. I’ll know if
you try to lie.
MM: I love these questions. I am strongly in favor of kangaroos. Especially YouTube videos of kangaroos who are keeping it real. One long night after a show in Louisville, Kentucky my bandmates and I watched a video titled ‘Kangaroo Shoved Through Fence During Tussle at Canberra Nature Reserve’ approximately 135 times and almost died from laughter.
Link to the good stuff:
youtu.be/N7M6lhzYOow?si=rAjq4gzSz2tsNJ6m
GE: What was your favourite track to work on? I really love Maximum
Capacity Dry Spell.
MM: Thank you! I was 100% happy with everything on this album so it’s difficult to choose a favorite. “Maximum Capacity” has a great groove and was the quickest thing I wrote for the album. Satisfying when that happens. “Cadaver Chiropractic” was written in 5/4 which is strange and proggy and took the longest to get right, so that sticks out. “Hide the Smoke” was an exercise in subtlety which is not always where my brain leads me. “The Proud Parer” might be the winner (for today) since it was my attempt to write a Chloroforms version of “I Wanna Dance
with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”. I think I nailed it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
REVIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chloroforms: ‘Lay Low and Be Held’. A fascinating project from Milwaukee that we couldn’t be more excited to share with you! With dark titles like ‘Mugger’s Lullaby’, ‘Cemetery Symmetry’, and ‘Cadaver Chiropractic’, no one has tricked you. You’re going to be diving head first into some extremely danceable murk. Let’s analyze!
As soon as the industrial beats of ‘Rattle Can Paint Job’ blast out from the periphery and into the forefront, you know you’re in for something engaging, something you’ve not heard before. Hardcore, relentless pounding, interspersed with light-speed wooshing and a bassline that perfectly flirts with fuzz without leaving it feeling overbearing.
There’s also a paranoid bent to several of the songs on show here, the first bearing such baggage is the fraught yet funky ‘What is Heat Vision’. Alienated fear-beats or funk-laden bop. You be the judge. But really it’s both, and manages to pull these vibes off in a spectacularly grandiose manner. ‘Mugger’s Lullaby’ on the other hand, tricks you. You think you’re in for a straightforward stripped down macho-sounding THUNK-THUNK beat, then half way through, the gentleman responsible for this record, whose first name I know but will henceforth be referred to as ‘Mr. Chloroforms’, swipes the floor away, and you’re left in a void of ultra-fast IDM. It’s a trip that comes out of nowhere and pulls off a perfect bait and switch!
‘Lay Low’ on the other hand offers a lighter collection of melodies and textures than the opening trio. That’s not to say it’s some breezy intermission. The tambourine jangle works beautifully with a series of warbling synths, and I mean, hey! (extreme Ron Howard Voice) ‘That’s partially the name of the record!’. We segue neatly then, into the equally brief, yet decidedly more Lynchian-static-laden eccentricity of the aforementioned ‘Cadaver Chiropractic’, which to be fair does indeed give the old bones a good thorough shake. As does the similarly darkly titled ‘Cemetery Symmetry’, which offers a bag full of beat-treats, and Mr. Chloroforms’ isn’t shy about switching things up on a dime, creating a blistering, disorienting, but undeniably appealing effect. This three-minute microcosm of an industrial mixtape is done when he damn well says so, ok?
Then we have ‘MX-80’. At several points this track feels like it’s pursuing you. You know? No? Just me? Ok… moving on.
‘Hide the Smoke’ conjures the misty atmosphere in your mind that the title promises. Whirring disembodied wind-enveloped synths haunt the mix, while a stark and sparingly-riffed-on bit of percussion rumbles away in the dark. It’s effective and fun, even if it’s not meant to be. Meanwhile ‘Route Driver, Asleep at the Wheel’ feels so hyper-charged with dark static that it might combust at any second. Here the drums pound with greater grit and otherworldly malaise than ever, and coalesce to make a murky and melodically fascinating piece of music, increasingly frantic until the half-point switch up, the delightfully batshit-ramifications of which, you need to hear and draw your own conclusions. (But if they’re not positive, you’re wrong.)
‘Maximum Capacity Dry Spell’ Starts as a ultra-focused, borderline synth-wavey bop, and for the most part maintains its slick composure in the face of equally slick percussive flourishes. The rubbery, cool-as-shit bassline compliments the arrangement perfectly and cements MCDS as a highlight. Similarly fun, yet decided more off-kilter is the mysterious ‘Sonar for Sore Eyes’, a relentless slammer, soaked in spooky vibrations and prefixed by an equally unnerving recording of a woman referring to Mr. Chloroforms by his government name. What does it all mean? Well keep reading to find out, hopefully. Otherwise, it just slaps!
Equally slapworthy is the final, ‘The Proud Parer’. A fun pun, and a decidedly chill way to end a record. While ‘Lay Low and Be Held’ can at times feel like a mission statement akin to ‘make cool weird music and set yourself apart from the herd’ (stop me if I’m way off), the music is utterly unpretentious. Borrowing its studious delights from sources across the electronic spectrum, with some good industrial rock thrown in for good measure, the album ends as it started: with a fabulous piece of music that puts you in a lively mood. That was all I ever wanted. I want that for you too, dear reader.
Written and Produced by Michael Marchant
Artwork by Michael Marchant
Mastered by Michael Southard
Dead Voices On Air – Silence, Melt And Mourn (Re:Mission Entertainment)
Label Description:
Re:Mission Entertainment is proud to announce SILENCE, MELT AND MOURN, the new album from Dead Voices on Air, arriving October 31st, 2025. Created during preparations for a US tour, the album features new material alongside reimagined versions of songs from across Mark Spybey’s career. The live set will include selections originally released by Download, Beehatch, DVOA, and other collaborative projects. Working with Nathan Jamiel of The Drood and longtime friend Stephen Weatherall, Spybey approached the process by writing new music and revisiting older work with fresh arrangements and a renewed focus on vocals and song structure. SILENCE, MELT AND MOURN is a reflection of that journey, built on collaboration, reinvention, and respect for the creative voices that shaped it.
All music produced by:
Nathan Jamiel, Mark Spybey and Stephen Weatherall
Nathan Jamiel – Guitar, Bass, Synthesizers, Keyboards, Vocals
Mark Spybey – Drums, Keyboards, Vocals, Trumpet, Toys
Stephen Weatherall – Bass, Vocals
Mark Sanderson – Synthesizer, Baritone Ukelele (2,5)
All lyrics by Nathan Jamiel and Mark Spybey
Mastered by Mark Pistel
Art by Mark Spybey, layout by David Babbitt
With thanks to Wes Turner and scott crow
eMERGENCY heARTS / Re:Mission Entertainment
Dedicated to Vince Wald (1976-2024) and Daniel Doss
Anatoly Grinberg – Snowing (Ant-Zen)
Label Description:
snow pellets are small, resilient spheres or irregular fragments of crystallized snow, often encasing frozen water within their compact structures. born through delicate atmospheric processes, partial melting, refreezing, or the gradual compaction of snow by wind, they embody the intricate geometry of winter’s transient artistry.
this winter, anatoly grinberg invites us into his newest creation: a resonant world of granular synthesis where sound becomes sculpture, and the hush of frozen air turns into music – a space where science dissolves seamlessly into poetry.
credits
releases November 4, 2025
anatoly grinberg, known by his artistic moniker tokee, is a moscow-based sound mixer, mastering engineer, and composer whose work bridges film, television, and experimental electronica. he refined his craft in sound engineering and mastering at the israeli school of sound in tel aviv, where his fascination with the hidden architecture of sound began to take shape.
since the early 2000s, anatoly grinberg has sculpted sonic landscapes that balance emotional resonance with meticulous precision, marking the emergence of a distinct and contemplative voice within the electronic avant-garde. through the influential ant-zen label, he has collaborated with artists including mark spybey, gwenn tremorin (flint glass), and andreas davids (xotox), each project revealing new dimensions of his immersive and introspective sound world.
artwork by stefan alt.
this is ant-zen dig110
Lila Tirando a Violeta – Dream Of Snakes (Unguarded)
Label Description:
Over the last half-decade, Uruguayan music producer and vocalist Lila Tirando a Violeta has distinguished herself internationally through a series of releases for Hyperdub and N.A.A.F.I and audiovisual sets for Mutek, Primavera Sound, Boiler Room TV, and Unsound Festival. Along the way, she has positioned herself on the vanguard of an aesthetic that reframes South American melodies and percussion inside avant-garde soundscapes and hard-edged machine beats equal parts IDM, industrial, techno and gabber.
Recorded during the introspective quietude that followed her relocation from the Netherlands to Ireland in 2023, Dream of Snakes is Lila’s first album for the Berlin-based record and art label Unguarded. A cycle of visceral, experimental club tracks, the album merges Lila’s memories of South America with her present-day realities, filtered through a longstanding love of sci-fi and post-punk and a desire to bring dancefloors together without letting go of her distinctive musical voice.
After falling in love with the Emerald Isle’s lush countryside, Lila began making outdoor field recordings on daily hikes. “I started to feel a strong urge to create music that would inspire me to move around or at least feel the music in my body,” she explains. Having previously created two concept albums in quick succession, Desire Path and Accela (with Sin Maldita), Lila was more than ready to put pre-existing narrative and subtext to one side during creation. “I wanted to feel the music coursing through my nervous system, that same adrenaline rush I get when watching a David Cronenberg film,” she continues.
Before moving to Ireland, Lila experienced a recurring dream about snakes. Rather than being frightening, however, it was comforting. As she began to layer up her field recordings with synthesisers, urgent rhythms, voice and studio production, she found herself researching the meaning of her dream. “During this process, I rediscovered a song from my childhood, ‘Sueño con Serpientes’ by the Cuban songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, which my grandparents often played,” she says. In the song’s eerie, leftfield folk soundworld and impressionistic lyrics, Lila found a north star to return to while completing Dream of Snakes.
Opening with the nocturnal ambience of ‘Unworthy Praise,’ Lila collapses the boundaries between field recordings, synthesis, and percussion until they become indistinguishable before taking things in a technonaturalistic direction on ‘New Flesh. ‘Created with Björk collaborators SideProject, ‘Ostrich: Ñandú’ is a flurry of ostrich calls, synth arpeggios, and fast-paced man-machine rhythms. Up next, ‘Heavy Is The Soul’ sees her keeping up the intensity while drawing from her love of Goth-rock.
From there, Lila explores a Latin American slanted rhythmic ambient soundscape on ‘Retumba En Tu Piel’, blends breakbeats with mantras via ‘Rest & Relaxation’, turns the echoes of oblivion into a new wave/synth-pop inspired dancefloor anthem called ‘Eco del Olvido’ with Lighght. Closing with the frenetic cyborg rhythms and synth-squelches of ‘Eye Slice’ featuring JQ, Dream of Snakes lands in the sweet spot between braindance and the sweaty physicality of body music. It’s ready for the dancefloor and so much more.
Recorded during the introspective quietude that followed her relocation from the Netherlands to Ireland in 2023, Dream of Snakes is Lila’s first album for the Berlin-based record and art label Unguarded. A cycle of visceral, experimental club tracks, the album merges Lila’s memories of South America with her present-day realities, filtered through a longstanding love of sci-fi and post-punk and a desire to bring dancefloors together without letting go of her distinctive musical voice.
After falling in love with the Emerald Isle’s lush countryside, Lila began making outdoor field recordings on daily hikes. “I started to feel a strong urge to create music that would inspire me to move around or at least feel the music in my body,” she explains. Having previously created two concept albums in quick succession, Desire Path and Accela (with Sin Maldita), Lila was more than ready to put pre-existing narrative and subtext to one side during creation. “I wanted to feel the music coursing through my nervous system, that same adrenaline rush I get when watching a David Cronenberg film,” she continues.
Before moving to Ireland, Lila experienced a recurring dream about snakes. Rather than being frightening, however, it was comforting. As she began to layer up her field recordings with synthesisers, urgent rhythms, voice and studio production, she found herself researching the meaning of her dream. “During this process, I rediscovered a song from my childhood, ‘Sueño con Serpientes’ by the Cuban songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, which my grandparents often played,” she says. In the song’s eerie, leftfield folk soundworld and impressionistic lyrics, Lila found a north star to return to while completing Dream of Snakes.
Opening with the nocturnal ambience of ‘Unworthy Praise,’ Lila collapses the boundaries between field recordings, synthesis, and percussion until they become indistinguishable before taking things in a technonaturalistic direction on ‘New Flesh. ‘Created with Björk collaborators SideProject, ‘Ostrich: Ñandú’ is a flurry of ostrich calls, synth arpeggios, and fast-paced man-machine rhythms. Up next, ‘Heavy Is The Soul’ sees her keeping up the intensity while drawing from her love of Goth-rock.
From there, Lila explores a Latin American slanted rhythmic ambient soundscape on ‘Retumba En Tu Piel’, blends breakbeats with mantras via ‘Rest & Relaxation’, turns the echoes of oblivion into a new wave/synth-pop inspired dancefloor anthem called ‘Eco del Olvido’ with Lighght. Closing with the frenetic cyborg rhythms and synth-squelches of ‘Eye Slice’ featuring JQ, Dream of Snakes lands in the sweet spot between braindance and the sweaty physicality of body music. It’s ready for the dancefloor and so much more.
released April 25, 2025
All tracks written and produced by Lila Tirando a Violeta, except where noted:
Additional production on tracks 2,5,6 by Pobvio and Sin Maldita
Eco del Olvido, Heavy is the Soul featuring Lighght
Eye Slice Featuring JQ
Ostrich/Ñandú featuring Sideproject
Artwork by Dario Alva
Mixing and Mastering by Sin Maldita
Text by Martyn Pepperell
Released by Unguarded, 2025
All tracks written and produced by Lila Tirando a Violeta, except where noted:
Additional production on tracks 2,5,6 by Pobvio and Sin Maldita
Eco del Olvido, Heavy is the Soul featuring Lighght
Eye Slice Featuring JQ
Ostrich/Ñandú featuring Sideproject
Artwork by Dario Alva
Mixing and Mastering by Sin Maldita
Text by Martyn Pepperell
Released by Unguarded, 2025
Lagowski – The Super Green E.P. (Self-Released)
Label Description:
A lot happens in the night garden. You need to allow your senses to tune in.
*There’s a lot of bass here, yadda, yadda, yadda….you won’t feel it on your expensive earbuds.
Dylan Henner – Star Dream FM (Phantom Limb)
Label Description:
“Henner reaches out to the listener directly…Rejuvenating and universal…Gorgeous.”
The Quietus
“Meandering from emo rave to gamelan, Henner pours his heart into these elegant ambient soundscapes.”
MOJO
Enigmatic UK producer Dylan Henner announces new album of deeply considered and choral-laced experimental ambient music Star Dream FM, said to be taped from a mysterious radio broadcast that plays his favourite memories from adolescence.
“Late one evening, I was listening to the radio alone at home. I couldn’t find the station I wanted, so I shifted the dial around for a while. Between frequencies, fading in and out of fidelity, I found a station I’d never heard before. To my amazement, the station was broadcasting my own memories. Memories from when I was seventeen. Some of the most formative and important moments of my life, alive on the air,” Dylan Henner’s self-penned mythology begins. “I called some friends and asked if they could find the same frequency, but no-one did. So, quickly as I could, I stuck a blank tape into my hi-fi and hit record. At some point I heard the jingle and the name of the station: Star Dream FM.”
Though (clearly) fictional, the backdrop to new album Star Dream FM represents a tactile canvas on which the record’s true meaning is painted. It is, through Henner’s now-characteristic employment of ambient-textured synthesis, marimba, digital choir, and processed voice, a study of late adolescence and the experience of being seventeen.
“Why seventeen? Because (in Western, 21st century culture at least) it is a unique time of fragility and self-realisation. A gateway between the joy and wonder of childhood and the heavy realities of adult life. A seventeen year old has almost formed their outlook, mindset, purpose, drive, but only as a hop away from childhood. It’s a challenging period, sure, but also a time of optimism, of excitement for a new life to begin in your own image.”
The result of this examination is a collection of meticulously constructed human-not-human compositions built from Henner’s mesmeric brand of desolate beauty. His immersive, storytelling range is broad, spanning from serene to cerebral, from powerful to uncanny. Henner references ambient and experimental music, chamber composition, the human voice, sound design, and field recordings, and wraps everything in the myth of his imaginary radio station Star Dream FM. Opening with the station’s sting and “I Borrowed my Dad’s Car But We Had Nowhere To Go So We Drove Around Listening to Music All Night”, a disconnected, fuzzy DJ osmoses between non-human singing and floral synthesis that opens and flutters like fast-motion botany, eventually yielding a choral denouement of magisterial elegance.
Key moment “I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with her Beauty” marries heavily processed and near-wordless vocals with angelic harp swells, gently undulating bass frequencies, and digital string ensemble to mimic the glory and reverence of early church music. Which is, incidentally, a key influence to Henner’s practice.
Little is known about Dylan Henner, who landed on the ambient scene in 2020 with cassette releases for Phantom Limb, Belgian label Dauw, and cult tastemakers AD93. He barely promotes himself publicly, instead choosing to communicate through disarmingly poetic song titles. His debut album “The Invention of the Human” (AD93, 2020 – a recipient of BBC 6Music’s Album of the Year honours) responds to a set of philosophical questions – what exactly makes us human? What good is civilisation when there’s so much misery attached to it? How will technology affect humanity in the long run? In 2022, he released follow-up You Always Will Be on AD93, which traced the course of a single life from birth, to childhood, to adolescence, adulthood, parenthood, middle-age, old-age, and demise. He has also covered Raymond Scott, Terry Riley, Aphex Twin, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Su Tissue among numerous further projects.
Music For The Rest Of Us 