Label Description: The ghost was in the refrigerator…. Dormant for years. Just part of the furniture in an expensive , fashionable kitchen. An ingredient, an under taste, aftertaste. Recently departed yet undeniably present. A memory trapped in the freezing domain , jealous of the new life that developed when a slice of cheese or carton of yoghurt had been there just a little too long. The ghost had all the time in the World. Not our World .The ghost’s World… parallel with no overlap, no line of reliable communication until one ordinary day in October. That was the day when the dimensions collided and crumbled . And The family was away on vacation as the ice melted, the butter melted, the milk boiled, the carrots cooked, the cans blackened and the flames leapt. That’s when the ghost left the refrigerator….. Restless ,onwards . To the microwave. Off with the child lock, crunching the numbers. Spinning upwards as the flames spread and engulfed the expensive kitchen. And the ghost in the tv triggered Channel X, the forbidden one. As performers tumbled from the screen, fused together on a burning carpet while the alarm howled… howled with laughter. And the thermostat flashed crimson and an impossible number jumped from the display, cartwheeled to the curtains, climbed the curtains and behold… the ghosts were upstairs. Floor 2, floor 3, floor 53. A sky on fire as the frightened city dialled for help. But there was no help. Because the ghosts in the phones jammed the touchscreens, sang jingles, burned holes in the palms of impassioned believers, who prodded and prodded, and couldn’t give in.Yet they had to give in. See…This was the day the experts predicted. The was the day we knew HAD to come. And the star chambers buzzed while bad actors cried ‘blameless’.And fingers tapped buttons that beamed leafy green.. This fire raged from Seattle to Seoul, Penn State to Pyongyang, Santiago, Saskatchewan, Moscow, London, Paris ,Prague. The planet burned brightly as ghosts raised their torches. The dead took revenge on the living … until no one was living. EK
Label Description: In 2023, Kraków-based composer Martyna Basta and Los Angeles-based sound artist claire rousay were invited to Poland by Unsound for a short residency, where they spent a few days trading ideas and concepts, and brainstorming their first collaboration. Initially motivated to create lengthy, expansive pieces together, they also ended up experimenting with shorter vignettes, and ‘hotel room’ expresses these two extremes, featuring three long-form tracks and three brief, euphoric songs. “It wasn’t something we specifically planned,” explains Basta. “It just unfolded that way.” The most important stage of the process, however, was the period that followed the residency, when rousay and Basta began working on their sketches in isolation, trading drafts and sculpting the sounds independently before rousay handled the final mixdown. In the comfort of their own bedrooms, they were better able to reflect their individual creative routines, organically reaching a junction where their music felt truly unified. Even while they were in Poland, the duo joked that it might have been easier if they’d been holed up in separate rooms emailing each other.
Both artists have had an energetic few years: after steadily building a reputation for her diaristic and candid concrète experiments, rousay signed to Thrill Jockey in 2023, releasing the acclaimed ‘sentiment’, ‘a little death’ and the more eaze collaboration ‘no floor’; Basta, meanwhile, followed up 2023’s hallucinatory ‘Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering’ and her debut for Belgium’s Stroom imprint, ‘Diaries Beneath Fragile Glass’ with a studio album on !K7’s 7K sublabel: ‘Winged in Collapse’. The title of their collaboration reflects rousay and Basta’s hectic touring schedules in the wake of these releases, the constant feeling of displacement and the emotions that emerge when the environment is in flux. “I know we aren’t the only musicians traveling and creating work at the same time,” says rousay, “but being able to speak about that experience and all the things that come with it was comforting.” And the music itself, assembled from hypnagogic field recordings, spectral voices, electronics and filtered instrumental improvisations, sounds bewitchingly unmoored, not tied to a specific location but hovering around the uncanny space in-between.
Scratchy ASMR sounds introduce us to the opening track ‘Zoom’, initially obscuring the duo’s elegiac harmonies. They are careful to let the various elements evolve at their own pace, with the fictile guitar drones melting into the foreground while Basta’s dissociated whispers and rousay’s illusory synths pick out the subtlest subliminal shades. It all builds to the piece’s dramatic third act, when layered chords ring out like organ blasts, enveloping the negative space. The shorter, more anxiety-provoking ‘Denim’ is remarkably divergent, a dismantled folk memory pieced together from skeletal piano notes, vaporous choral echoes, haunting string plucks and pulsating feedback. Where the music aligns is in the mood itself, capturing a feeling that’s neither completely abstract nor fully referential. Not ambient exactly, ‘hotel room’ is a suite of soundscapes that gesture towards structure while repeatedly folding in on themselves.
On ‘Lost and Found’, wordless Autotuned ad-libs spiral around delicate guitar plucks and washing waves, coalescing into a faded Polaroid of opiated Americana, and on ‘Where Are You Now’, operatic squeals and corroded orchestral scrapes are juxtaposed with nauseous low-end tones. Evaporating until only industrial whirrs and music box chimes remain, the latter encapsulates the entire album’s chilling liminality, smudging saturated voices with casual electro-acoustic interjections before it erupts abruptly, transforming into a dense, pitch-skewed hymn. ‘hotel room’ plays like a surreal travelogue, teasing listeners with airy familiarities as it humidifies dry, awkward spaces. More a labyrinth of catacombs than a single, fixed chamber, it’s Escher-like – cryptic and seductive – and decked out with personal asides and intimate details that reward the most patient, curious listeners.
recorded by claire rousay & martyna basta mixed by claire rousay & martyna basta mastered by stephan mathieu at schwebung mastering lacquer cut by stefan betke at scape mastering album cover painting and design / typography by karolina szwed layout by aleksandra grunholz curated by mat schulz and wannes cuypers commissioned by unsound
Label Description: Keen listeners who have dug below the surface of Oren Ambarchi’s triple-digit discography know that alongside hypnotic minimalism, veins of irreverent and joyously wayward exploration run deep. Cooked is something of a landmark in Oren’s work, bringing this gloriously cuckoo sensibility right into the heart of his most high-profile solo work. Carrying on the grand Ambarchi tradition of meticulously constructed all-star studio jams (which reached new heights with Shebang, his 2022 Drag City debut), Cooked brings together collaborators from Australia, Germany, Japan and Sweden for two side-long epics where the foot keeps tapping even as the mind boggles.
Beginning with piano ripples from Eiko Ishibashi, after only a few seconds “Hidden Tableau” takes an unexpected turn with the entrance of a groaning synthetic voice (created by Konrad Sprenger, production mastermind at the helm for Shebang and this piece). The first half of the piece develops as an oddly moving concerto for this moaning and growling ghost in the machine and a delicate backdrop of piano, organ-like tones, and Oren’s signature shimmering Leslie guitar. As the beautifully flexible swing of Joe Talia’s drums enters, the harmonies fill out into woozy clouds and the synthetic voice seems to morph into something approaching a mutant trumpet. In a left turn that seems to come out of nowhere yet make an inexplicable kind of sense, the piece is then overtaken by patterns of intricate guitar and synthetic arpeggios. These might be Jim O’Rourke on synth, but who knows? If we learned anything from Simian Angel and Shebang, it’s that almost anything we hear could come from Oren’s guitar.
Cooked is a long way from the spacious, light-dappled grooves of Ghosted, but Oren’s Swedish bandmates play starring roles here, with Johan Berthling’s double bass anchoring both sides, and drummer Andreas Werliin lending his delicate touch to the second piece, “Sleight of Hand”. Beginning with glistening layers of electric 12-string guitar, “Sleight of Hand” takes some key cues from electric Miles touchstones like “Feio” or his epic take on David Crosby’s “Guinnevere”, with Berthling’s sparse basslines punctuating an almost weightless cornucopia of shifting detail, glimmering with subtle contributions from Michiko Ogawa on shō and James Rushford on a panoply of acoustic keyboards. Suddenly, everything is overwhelmed by a knotty, hyper- complex ‘solo’ from Marcus Pal on digital synthesis, teleporting us to an alternate history where Allan Holdsworth traded the SynthAxe for Xenakis’ UPIC. Building with additional drums and percussion from Will Guthrie to a peak of sizzling intensity, the music then goes sideways into a gently surreal coda, where some distinctly Zawinul-esque chords and Fredrik Rasten’s guitar float over a sprightly rhythm box, the avian inventions of Swedish virtuoso whistler Isak Hedtjärn wafting atop the sunlit stew.
It’s certainly Cooked, but not overcooked. Like 10cc in their prime, it layers a dizzying number of elements through intricate studio processes, yet somehow remains open, spontaneous, and intuitive, the whole thing suffused with an omnivorous love of music where everything is up for grabs. It’s a big call, but Cooked might just be the wildest ride that Oren Ambarchi has taken us on yet.
2026, Drag City
Oren Ambarchi – Guitars and whatnot
Hidden Tableau: Johan Berthling – Double bass Eiko Ishibashi – Piano Jim O’Rourke – Synth Konrad Sprenger – Voice synthesis, electronics & production Joe Talia – Drums
Sleight of Hand: Johan Berthling – Double Bass Will Guthrie – Gamelan & drums Isak Hedtjärn – Whistling Michiko Ogawa – Shō Marcus Pal – Synthetic Sound Fredrik Rasten – Guitars James Rushford – Celeste, piano & portative organ Andreas Werliin – Drums
Hidden Tableau was made in collaboration with Konrad Sprenger and recorded October 2022-January 2025 at: Choose studio, Berlin (engineer: Joerg Hiller) Hoshi To Niji recording studio & Steamroom, Japan (engineer: Jim O’Rourke) Hello Daydreamer studio, Macedon Ranges, Victoria (engineer: Joe Talia) Rymden studio, Stockholm (engineer: Daniel Bengston) Mixed and edited by Joe Talia with Oren Ambarchi February 2025 in Melbourne
Sleight of Hand recorded December 2024-August 2025 at: Sun Lint studio, Berlin (engineer: Fredrik Rasten) Rymden studio, Stockholm (engineer: Daniel Bengston) Brian Brown studio, Melbourne (engineer: Joe Talia) The Crystal Ball, Berlin (engineer: Sam Dunscombe) Studio D’En Haut, Nantes (engineer: Lucas Pizzini) The Marcus Pal Institute of Abstract Epistemology, Berlin (engineer: Marcus Pal) Edited by Oren Ambarchi at the Shitting Wheel, Berlin Mixed by Joe Talia with Oren Ambarchi January 2026 in Melbourne
Mastered March 2026 by Joe Talia
Photos by Lasse Marhaug Sleeve design/Typo/Color tweaking by Stephen O’Malley
Label Description: NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM’s Éons Quartet is a resurrection of the original lineup, the primal spirit of NNMM, entirely improvised and as gargantuan and cataclysmic as ever, as well as a ritual steeped in black magic.
“Nāgabhūtaṃ” immortalizes a splendid concert of the quartet, who met on the stage of Le Botanique in Brussels on April 9, 2025. The long (over 42 minutes), trance-inducing recording of the event is divided into 11 tracks and is titled “Devānām madhye nāgabhūtaṃ dṛṣṭvā te bibhyati,” which means “Among the gods, at the sight of the one who has become a serpent, they are afraid.” Jean Jacques Duerinckx unleashes his colossal saxophone while Guillaume Cazalet invokes chthonic forces with his heavy amplified guitar and ferocious vocals. Pierre Arèse, one of the original drummers, is no longer playing and is replaced by guest musician, the prolific and expressive percussionist Dirk Wachtelaer, who engages in a transcendental and martial percussion duel with Sébastien Schmit.
With a title inspired by the cover painting of the same name by the great Daniele Valeriani, “Nāgabhūtaṃ” —a term that combines the words nāga (serpent) and bhūtaṃ (to become)— is a magical ritual of spiritual transformation, a symbolic mutation in which the divine takes on evil connotations, perfectly described by NEPTUANIAN MAXIMALISM in their evocative shape-shifting drone doom with jazz and psychedelic flavors.
CONDITION HUMAN (CNDHMN):You live in suburban Illinois. What is the most midwestern thing about you?
TIME RIVAL (TR):I grew up within one mile of the world’s largest corn maze
CNDHMN: Your album is titled ìCooked.î Care to explain? Are you a major foodie?
TR: Not really a foodie, no. I mean…I like food but I usually go for the simple things. Cooked, first and foremost, is some Gen Alpha slang. My son’s a pre-teen and into video games so he uses it in his vocabulary pretty regularly. I try to pepper it in when I talk to him just to be annoying. On top of that, though, it relates to the music because to me, this album has an over saturated, sun-bleached sound to it that connects the tracks together and makes it sound, well…cooked.
CNDHMN: Describe your journey to becoming a musician. Did you grow up in a household of music? Was it artsy? Were you always drawn to it or was it a later development?
TR: My parents aren’t musicians but they did expose me to different types of music. Listening was a big part of my upbringing, and allowing me to have my own musical tastes in my more impressionable years helped. I had a tape collection at 6 years old and a growing CD collection shortly after that. Any money I got as a kid went into buying CD’s.
I played trumpet in 5th grade band but it didn’t really interest me. My journey as a musician really started when I was around 14 years old and a friends’ older brother gave me a burned CD-R with some cracked music software on it. I taught it to myself and it really just grabbed my attention in a way nothing else did at the time. I decided to pursue music in college and played percussion in ensembles and orchestras. The engineering and production side was always more my speed though.
CNDHMN: You run the eclectic label Triplicate Recordings. Where’d the name come from and how does running it inform the music you make as Time Rival?
TR: There’s a little backstory here, in the early 2010’s I was invited to join an electronic music producer collective that we eventually called Mangled Music. There were about 12 of us ranging different styles. As the members started to lose interest and disband, I thought it would be cool to start a label with two of the artists in the group (George ìSuncastleî Ernst & Bryan ìBVSMVî Kraft) as a way to release our own music while sharing the workload. If you look back at the first year of Triplicate, all of the albums from 2018 come from the three of us. We picked Triplicate Records as a name because there were three of us, and it was a mildly amusing play on words.
As Time Rival, I record a seriously unnecessary amount of music and very little of it ends up on Triplicate Records. There are several other amazing artists that keep coming back to us and the release schedule is pretty limited, so I don’t want to take opportunities away from them because I decided to make 16 albums this year. I set aside music throughout the year that I think would be good for Triplicate and I squeeze myself into the schedule when I can.
CNDHMN: There’s a rumor you have a secret rap album as MC SOUTHSIDE MIKE called “MIC IT LIKE ITS HOT.” If false play it like it’s true. If true play it like it’s a terrible secret. So? (BONUS: your top 5 MC’s)
TR: Funny you should mention that, so I grew up listening to rap and very early on in my music production, I would find vocal stems of rap songs on file sharing services (this was pretty tough in the early days of the internet) and put them over weird beats I made. I certainly wouldn’t call it hip-hop, it was a very strange fusion. I lost all of those old recordings so I doubt they will surface any time soon.
Top 5 MC’s Andre 3000 (Outkast) Raekwon (Wu-Tang Clan) Guru (Gang Starr) Rakim (Eric B & Rakim) Black Thought (The Roots)
CNDHMN: Time to play “Desert Island Device!” You’re stranded on a desert island and you can bring one piece of electronic gear. Doesn’t have to b e musical even. What is it?
TR: This might be a cop out answer but I’d bring a field recorder. I’m currently using the Zoom H6 and I have a few of the different mics you can swap in, but the X/Y gets the job done. If I was going to take it to a desert island I’d probably upgrade to the newer versions with 32-bit float recording to bring down that noise floor.
CNDHMN: What’s the most ridiculously overpriced piece of high end stereo equipment out there?
TR: There are some vanity home theater setups out there that cost upwards of $5,000,000 and I’m guessing a blind A/B test with a $5,000 system would be too close to call. The technology now is all pretty good, even for budget stuff. If I really wanted to splurge on something I’d build my own open baffle kit. But I would need a bigger room for that.
CNDHMN: Do you have a specific approach to making music? Any thoughts or overarching ideas when you sit down or stand to play?
TR: It starts in my paper planner when I have “new music” written for the day. I do this three times a week. I don’t always come up with something usable but I usually do. If it’s in the schedule, I just sit down and do it. I work in a few different genres so I like to switch it up to keep things interesting. I draw inspiration from field recordings, books, music, movies, etc. Even if I’m not particularly inspired, once I start working the ideas start to flow.
CNDHMN: What were the instruments used on “Cooked?” Do you have a favorite?
Label Description: no one remembers when the first false wind stirred, nor a time before their song began. as the still of night soothes our slumbering valley, the first crackle of embers sways in the shadow of elm and willow. atop a bed of deadened bark comes the hiss of a breeze that disturbs not the canopy above, nor does it wick the salt from one’s skin. here does coloured dust swirl against the darkness, and the first hollow, melancholy chime ring out
i close my eyes and recall the flavour of scorched ash and a hint of her favourite mango bubblegum sweetening the filter of the cigarette we passed between us. laid upon the roof of our car, staring ever upwards awaiting the lanterns of the past’s nightporters to decorate the sky. always caught mid-laugh by the sounding of the lambent bells off in the distance, though hardly ever in any hurry to make ourselves their audience. not while we had a fool’s infinity to spare
sunken notes whistle through the abandoned woods. the lights of every promised yesterday glows upon my lidded eyes. i feel a dim, charred flake at my lip. i wish for it to taste of mango. this desire is enough to alert me once more to my sense of the present, and my eyes would draw open to a flurry of cinders as a bellow strikes deeply into the air. i step into the cloud of dim flickers, and listen to its cry wavering into the ink-black eternity as it fizzles away
within my chest, a sigh begs. yet i remain silent, lest my pained breath mask the warm tone of her voice. each night unmoored between the blooms may i remain, until i find her among the glittering chorus of the gone
