Lucid Dreams
Lucid Dreams

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅AI-34 arrives from Toki Fuko. Known previously for his contributions of deep and hypnotic techno, he presents on Astral Industries further development of his sound in this long-form work. A two-part sojourn into vibrant organic soundscapes and liminal sonic archaeologies, ‘Spirit Medicine’ is an ethereal yet human-centric venture into the realms of consciousness. Soft chimes mark the opening, making way for expansive pads and the emergence of a bristling jungle panorama. Solitary flute melodies call out to the valley, riding over a bed of drones and earthy rhythms. Later juxtaposed with broadcasted voice samples, the natural fabric ruptures with exposed layers spilling through, only to fade back into the ether. Perhaps a memory, or the momentary glimpse of a parallel reality… Part Two adopts an equally atmospheric flavour, substituting fauna and flora for deconstructed, psycho-somatic mysteria. Overall darker in tone, broken beats combine with avant garde adornments, underpinned by a subtle existential narrative. Wading through a wilderness of eerie remembrances, their starkness is counterbalanced with a peaceful return - a form of clarity and reconciliation that the listener is offered in the final act.

EU Stock: ✅UK Stock: ❌The connection between Dr. Atmo and Mick Chillage goes back to one of the finest ambient labels to ever grace this planet, FAX records. Many will remember the defining collective for their deep, extended excursions into the far-reaches of ambient mysticism - a style that is still revered to this day.Ruhleben sees a welcome return for Dr. Atmo who, after appearing on some of the very first FAX releases under his own name and different guises throughout its tenure, has been somewhat elusive of late with side-steps into other genres. Now, partnering with another FAX alumni and a foundational figure within today’s ambient music genre, Mick Chillage, the pair have returned to their roots and a defining style of ambient music.Taking Dr. Atmo’s distinctive hooks, haunting loops, and graceful melodies, Mick Chillage improvised on these foundational elements further with fine-tuned details such as delicate bass additions, rhythmic looping signals, or more organic fixtures like a finely woven Harp and extended Piano loops.Across its four extended tracks, Ruhleben is an infinite flight into mystical formations that yearn for dramatic soundscapes. A time-lapsed, slow-motion soundtrack, where Mother Nature breathes destructive fire from the depths, breaking the Earth’s surface to form dramatic cathedrals, scarred by super-natural atmospheres and eventually flooded with the life we know today.

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅Multicast Dynamics returns to Astral Industries for AI-26, this time collaborating with Sid Hille, the German born, Finland based instrumentalist and composer. ‘Metamorphosis’ transmutes both artists’ unique styles into a synergistic blend of transportive storytelling, a delicate dance of light and dark.Divided into two parts, ’Metamorphosis’ originates from a live performance recorded at Temppeliaukio church in Helsinki on March 2nd, 2019. The material was then edited, where Hille’s soothing keyboard work and haunting passages on the theremin, combine with processed textures and desolate sonic backdrops from Dijk. In this voyage beyond space and time, the subtle dialogue reveals new and perhaps unexpected dimensions in their creative arsenal, finding fresh new boundaries and enriching the palette of both performers. Encounters of sweet fleeting moments of lyricism emerge amidst the chilling outback, in which we're given some final consolation between the long lines of cavernous rifts and deep space tundra.

EU Stock: ✅UK Stock: ✅Kosei Fukuda presents the second half of his debut album – Ruten. In principle, the two halves, called ‘Ruten –‘ and ‘Ruten +’ are meant to represent the principle of Ying & Yang, the two elemental forces and the eternal cycle of energy. As a whole, they signify a journey from the nascent being to the eventual dissolution of everything into nothing. Yet there’s still a deeper message at play: the omnipresence of patterns. Even the incessant flow of changes is patterned. The philosophers ask what it tells us about reality. The artists offer answers, each coded in the respective artistic language.The second volume offers a different take on such explorations, moving towards more nebulous and fuzzier modes of musical imagination. It is here where Fukuda’s music begins to evince ineffable qualities, going beyond words that could definitively grasp its content. As such it seems to be asking: are patterns really there, or are we projecting them onto the world? This change of the composition style signifies a change of intellectual perspective, the second complementing the first. Drone-like sounds of the opening tracks appear alien initially, but on closer inspection they are reminiscent of this-worldly ambient sounds – just amplified many times over, stretched to a border of recognition, and rearranged for a thought-provoking auditory experience. They are impressionist vignettes where chromatic properties count for much more than any beat or harmonic structure.

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅AI-32 signals the arrival of ‘The Fifth World Recordings’, by Son of Chi (Hanyo van Oosterom) and long-term collaborator Arthur Flink. A tribute to the late Jon Hassell, who passed away in 2021, the album connects a deep running thread that goes back to the source of Chi project. Carrying on from where Hassell left off, the album takes inspiration and references from his Fourth World music concept and the ancient Hopi tradition of Native America. Illuminating the subliminal space of the arising Fifth World, Son of Chi pays respects to an inimitable force in contemporary music.

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅Portland, OR-based multimedia artist William Selman returns to Mysteries of the Deep with his third album for the label. Drawing on influences such as David Toop, Beatriz Ferreyra, Elizabeth Waldo, and David Behrman, “The Weather Indoors” melds live and synthesized instrumentation, field recordings, and digital processing techniques in a new, more melodic and approachable direction.Immersive site recordings open into melodic woodwinds, orchestral instrumentation, bass guitar, gongs, and vibraphone. Borrowing from the anthropologist Tim Ingold’s concept of “inversion,” this widescreen staging cuts immediately to the core of the project: the way human beings use the faculty of imagination to aestheticize their built surroundings with architecture, images of distant locales, and domesticated flora and fauna to contain the anxiety for the natural world that surrounds human life. A clear peak in Selman's extensive catalog, “The Weather Indoors” captures his work at a moment expanding his musical and aesthetic project: Neither genre ambient nor musique concrète, but a unique sound world dense with conceptual play and moments of more traditional harmonic beauty.“We are contaminated by our encounters: they change who we are as we make way for others. As contamination changes world-making projects, mutual worlds—and new directions—may emerge. Everyone carries a history of contamination; purity is not an option.” —Anne Lowenhaupt-Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World