Label Description: A Lily – aka British-Maltese musician and founder of Phantom Limb James Vella – releases Id-Dar Tal-Missier, a collection of dark and mythological ambient-doom-folk compositions laced with his signature deep moodsetting.
Vella wrote and performed the instrumentation on Id-Dar Tal-Missier himself, recording at home and creating finished pieces layer by layer. Though the main body of composition is based on guitar and voice, Vella’s list of instruments performed also includes banjo, cello, organ, xylophone, an ancient Chinese harp named guzheng, and drumkit, amounting to subtle and intelligent arrangements, heavenly textures and a more song-based approach to the work he is best known for. Present here are verses and choruses, as if pop music, but also hazy, dreamy journeys through nocturnal sparseness and strangeness.
A few contributions from Vella’s friends also grace the record: Mercury Prize Nominee C Duncan lends lush choral vocals to “Banana Moth” and (yndi halda co-founder) Daniel Neal performs violin across several pieces.
Often inspired by non-musical forms, Vella writes that Id-Dar Tal-Missier was instead created under the influence of sensory experiences. He lists filmmakers Werner Herzog and Apichatpong Weerasuthakul; the TV show Stranger Things; his dog Sully; the (“painstaking”) process of writing his first novel; books by Cormac McCarthy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Cheever and Carson McCullers; travels around India, South America and the Middle East.
Mixed by Julian Tardo Mastered by John Hannon Photography by Mark Vella Design by David S. Blanco
Label Description: Our new release is from a new artist on SubCastCo. Glacial long form electronica. This from the artist.
“Slowly building, repeating washes of synthesised sound and noise envelop all around it. Overtaking, consuming, suppressing and supplanting background signals. Noises ricochet through the consciousness; ghostly snares echo back and forth as in an imagined cathedral. Anxious calls and distorted responses. A cloud of hazy dissonance rises, forced up and through intricate tones and space.
The thaw. Ice melts, turns to water, trickles and weaves, carving out streams and pathways. Slowly, shapes emerge from a frosty prison. Moist moss and lichen, once deformed, returning to shape; reappearing from the cold.
An antidote to pain.”
Music and visuals by Arran Poole.
Created using guitars, bass and snare drums, strings, tape hiss, synth and effects.
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.
Label Description: Nils Frahm, born in 1982, had an early introduction to music. During his childhood he was taught to play piano by Nahum Brodski – a student of the last scholar of Tschaikowski. The three instrumentals, which make up his debut ‘Wintermusik’ are piano led pieces, coloured with occasional celeste and reed organ parts. The record’s equal measures of sorrowful refrains and uplifting passages, combined with a real intimacy that makes for an album you’ll want to return to again and again. The songs were originally intended as a Christmas present for friends and family, hence its winter release.
Frozen Bloom is our fourth album where we took some different routes compositionally(sic). Two of four tracks are traditionally storm-like blackgaze passages and another two are leaning towards more meditative drone experience.
It is about unfulfilled dreams. About how we sacrifice everything today for some abstract “tomorrow” which may never come. But tomorrow and yesterday don’t exist – only this very moment of static contemplation.
When winter is just starting to fade and give some space for a spring’s first steps, when first life starts to reappear and the very early flowers peek through the thawing soil a sudden shift in temperature can leave them petrified and frozen back again like being punished by the Queen of Fields. This statuesque dead beauty, being infinitely alive and dead at the same time is Frozen Bloom.
We got a chance to collaborate with A. Lunn (appearing courtesy of Bindrune records) who kindly agreed to record an electric guitar solo as well as acoustic parts and choral parts on Frozen Bloom I
Recording, mixing and mastering by Mihail Kurochkin Cover art by Daniel Teisakowski (@daniel_tskwsk) Guest electric guitar, acoustic guitar, square neck resonator guitar and choral vocals – A. Lunn (Appearing courtesy of Bindrune recordings) Physical release via Avantgarde music Cassette release by Slowsnow records
Foetus is one of the major musical projects of NYC composer JG Thirlwell.
HALT is the final Foetus album, and the first Foetus album in twelve years. It completes the cycle of an arc that began in 1981 with the first Foetus album DEAF.
Thirlwell worked on HALT on and off over a period of eight years. As with each album he has made, he wanted to reinvent the music, use new forms, innovate and introduce new surprising forms into his musical palette, at the same time as feeling like a leap forward.
HALT deals with themes of war, religion, disease, media, global warming, anxiety, hypocrisy, conspiracy, death and mortality, among other things. Dread is a leitmotif through many of the Foetus albums and this one is no exception.
HALT will be followed by its companion album, LEAK, in 2027.
COMPOSED, PRODUCED, PERFORMED AND RECORDED BY JG THIRLWELL AT SELF IMMOLATION STUDIOS
MIXED AT SELF IMMOLATION STUDIOS AND CIRCULAR RUIN STUDIO FINAL MIXES WITH BEN GREENBERG AT CIRCULAR RUIN STUDIO DRUMS RECORDED AT 30 BELOW ENGINEERED BY BRENT MCLACHLAN
SPECIAL GUESTS LEAH ASHER (The Rhythm Method) VIOLIN ON 2, 11 JAKE BALDWIN TRUMPETS ON 3, 7, 10 BRIAN CHASE (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) DRUMS ON 1,3 ,8 TIMO ELLIS (Netherlands) GUITAR ON 3, 7 SIMON HANES (Tredici Bacci) BANJO ON 9, BASS ON 9, 11, ACOUSTIC GUITAR ON 9 BRENDON RANDALL MYERS (Dither) GUITAR ON 3, 4, 10 SAMI STEVENS VOCALS ON 3 LAURA WOLF ADDITIONAL VOICE ON 8
In 2020, I, along with many folks around the world, stopped playing live shows. I also stopped writing songs with lyrics. It was something about my voice. I didn’t want to hear it.* During this moment, time was on all of our minds. We had a lot of it. Pre-pandemic, we seemed to be in a rush. And for some, post-pandemic, that pace came back with a vengeance.
I never wanted to be late. I feared late. But then someone issued me the challenge – be late. Challenge accepted.
This EP is the culmination of that meditation. I wrote these songs between 2020 and 2025. The song titles may be ridiculous, but so is always being on time.
Be late. (Unless it’s an emergency, of course. Or dinner’s ready.)
*I am writing songs with lyrics again. Yay.
All songs composed, performed, mixed, and mastered by Michael Aquino
Music For The Rest Of Us 