Markus Guentner
Extropy

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

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅With ‘Terrain,’ Joachim Spieth presents the fourth long player on his Affin imprint.The follow-up album to ‘Ousia’ (2021), ‘Terrain,’ reflects on the human relationship with nature. The album title is a reference to a musical language that layers Spieth’s music production practices and intimacy with nature.‘Terrain’ was forged in deep solitude.“ It’s an interplay of euphoric flashes and introspection” – says Spieth. The eight compositions take the listener into a captivating cascade of sonic textures resembling internal states fluctuations and emotional release. The tension between the organic warmth and static curves broads tones into liquified roars and empty spaces.Unlike Spieth’s previous albums, ‘Terrain’ holds more intimate gestures and emotional sensibility. Soothing frequencies here are intended to create a state of awareness in the listener. It is a work of conceptual and emotional beauty, evoking a form of spatial imagery that is as grounding as elevating.

For nearly 40 years, English producer Mark Van Hoen has been making challenging music that eludes easy categorization under his own name, as Locust, and in the groups Autocreation, Scala, and Drøne. While his output has skirted around the fringes of IDM, techno, trip-hop, ambient, drone, and electropop, it has mutated these genres' elements in distinctive ways, revealing a mind always questing for unprecedented sounds.This is Mark Van Hoen’s ninth album as Locust, and an instant classic.Drifting, hanging, holding. Hoping, seeking, searching. And then finding.Mark Van Hoen's ninth album as Locust is a cosmic whisper, a tender touch, where candid songwriting commingles with the afterimage of trip-hop and jungle. Across eight tracks, spectral melodies dance between languid breakbeats, and a formless murmur drifts through the ether, seeking a common thread.Layered in strata, "The First Cause" reveals itself anew with each listen. Delicate tones share space with bass weight. Drums crunch, and rhythms cascade. Voices loop and intone, bodiless. What at first seems melancholy, you may later find reoriented—toward promise.We seek solace in each other, and we seek solace in sound. Kinship isn't easy to come by. When a record offers its kind embrace to us as this one does, without reservation, we should take heed.Written, performed and produced by Mark Van Hoen© Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd℗ 2023 Mark Van Hoen under exclusive license to Mysteries of the Deepmarkvanhoen.comMastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio, NYPhotography by Grant AaronDesign by Gabriel BenzurWords by Chris Zaldua

Following their 2021 debut album, ‘Brama’, One MillionEyes return with their highly anticipated second album,‘Iris’, set to captivate us once more through akaleidoscope of rich analog and instrumentalfragments.The inspiration behind the album was born from apowerful symbol—the iris of the eye. Controlling theinflow of light, the iris mirrors the duo's mission for thealbum, “letting light in, even in the darkest of times”.Representing an attempt to shed new insight on theirsometimes indescribable approach, Paolo and Lucianocompare the ambition (and consequent imperfections)throughout their music to that of the imperfect, yetunique array of color found within an iris, in the hope itcan completely entrance and mesmerize.With much of the album recorded live, ‘Iris’ marks arefined evolution in the One Million Eyes sound bornunder their Tempelhof guise many years ago. Infusingorganic sound elements such as voice fragments,acoustic guitar lines, and drum beats at the forefront oftheir compositions, their vast array of analogsynthesizers once again provide added depth andwarmth, resulting in majestic, hypnotic circular motifsthat Paolo and Luciano describe as "Mantras, rising andfalling in volume and intensity."Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, and featuring artworkby Ventral Is Golden, ‘Iris’ will be available onNovember 10th, on turquoise vinyl, digital, and streaming.There will also be a limited run of multi-colored ‘Iris’ 12”available directly on the label’s Bandcamp.

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅After two years of silence Alpenglühen returns with a new release by Jaime Romero aka Estrato Aurora. Jaime is an old acquaintance of the label as he is a member of Pajaro Dune with David Ortolá who were who kicked off the label in 2017. The EP Margen is a turning point in the label since you will not find only deep techno, which until now had been the characteristic sound of Alpenglühen. In this fourth reference you will find downtempo, halftime, breaks, even ambient, and of course some touches of profound techno that make this reference the most heterogeneous and also one of the wealthiest of the series. Of course, while still exploring the thin line that separates light from darkness.

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ❌With "Onda", Regensburg artist Markus Guentner releases his follow-up to Empire, which appeared on A StrangelyIsolated Place in 2021."Onda" captivates with its orchestral-like progressions, an endlessly interwoven carpet of sound that spreads out over six etudes. As if in slow motion, he scans through the individual sound particles, works out details, lets dust fall from the source material, cores, connects and in the end lets everything flow...