Gunnar Jónsson Collider
S.W.I.M.

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.

German musician Mary Yalex debuts on A Strangely Isolated Place depicting a storied transition from our recognizable surroundings, into a vision of the future. With releases and music styles across a variety of labels over the years, it has been Yalex’s more experimental ambient work that has stood out amongst her catalog, and in Fantasy Zone, we find Mary fine-tuning this sound to reflect the work of a true architect of storytelling, mood and atmosphere. Drawing influences from her day-to-day surroundings, Fantasy Zone begins with more vivid pieces; softer melodies and clearer instrumentation, represented as much in song titles such as Air, After Rain Comes Sun, and Half Light of Dawn. The second half of the album transitions into a future state, as Yalex draws on darker manifestations - perhaps intrinsically influenced by the state of the world, and in particular her love of nature, we play witness to more storied, haunting atmospheres, distant voices and slowly shifting gravitational chord movements. Dystopian-bound or pure fantasy, Yalex depicts a future that mirrors some of the more poignant, thought-provoking work of great synthesizer soundtracks of the past. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, and featuring artwork by Noah M / Keep Adding, Fantasy Zone will be available on Purple Smoke 12” and digital.

EU Stock: ✅UK Stock: ✅After two series of conceptual EPs and the intricate experimental “Enso” Festival compilation, Kosei Fukuda returns with a full length solo project – the debut LP. This marks his thirteenth release on the Reiten label – a platform he created to showcase his techno music and the more general, experimental aesthetic agenda of which the club music is but one facet. As a producer and sound artist, Fukuda has shared his time between Tokyo and Berlin. Delving into the music scene of the latter in the late 2010s, he attracted the attention of and has worked with artists including Berghain resident Tobias Freund, Claudio PRC and Rabih Beaini. The album is split into two halves, and in principle, the two albums, 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. The first volume starts appropriately with the unassuming intro “dawn” and proceeds from the investigative look at the evanescent yet tangible droplets of “mist” and on to the contemplative gaze at the most distant, unreachable constellation of “nebula”. Regardless of metaphorical intent though, the music moves within one universe of downtempo, ambient and drone, combining the palpable beats (rhythmic pattern) with the atmospheric backgrounds (harmonic flow).

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ❌"Tides" is Joachim Spieth’s second longplayer which will be released on his own Affin imprint. The album is dividedinto 8 tracks, built by seemingly endless, sensitively interwoven surfaces and creates curves of tension between immersive, melancholic and euphoric moments. Layers of atmospheric sounds create a dense and engaging mood, flowing into a swirl of emotions. This is a re-release of the vinyl album from 2020.

Shipping from EU: ✅Shipping from UK: ✅AI-28 arrives as a double-12” reissue of an album titled “Lucid Dreams”. Formerly released in 1996 as a CD on the now defunct UK imprint em:t, the album now becomes available for the first time on vinyl. Produced collaboratively by Chris Allen, David Thompson (both co-founders of em:t), plus label affiliates Tom Smyth and Will Joss, the record features outlier academic and philosopher Celia Green narrating passages of her classic book “Lucid Dreams” (published in 1968), seamlessly embellished with atmospheric soundscapes throughout.Brooding amorphously on the cusp of the unknown, the music captures the quintessentially mysterious quality of dreams and dreaming. Layer by layer, the listener is submerged deep into the subconscious stream. The record curls and unwinds with bewildering influence whilst exploring key themes of Green’s studies, with topics covering hallucinatory states, apparitions, out of body experiences, and extrasensory perception. The collaborative handling of samples and sound material comes together powerfully to create a piece that is both artistically theatrical in flavour and sumptuously immersive – a true documentary for the ears and imagination.credits

EU Stock: ✅UK Stock: ✅"Accosting Form, Pure Intent" — Nathaniel Young’s debut album for Mysteries of the Deep — is a contradiction that makes sense. At once raw and elegant, it emerges from a place of constraint and desire. Its individual tracks reflect this paradox as the album unlocks itself like a koan: a riddle that, once solved, dawns on the listener like an epiphany.Despite the assorted elements at work, a visceral quality binds everything together. Even the record's more subdued works are textured and tangible, at times balancing or playing against the serrated edges of its more structured pieces. Like all compelling works, the sounds here exist in a liminal space that is not entirely classifiable. Still, it is wholly cohesive in both its moodiness and its adeptness.“The entirety of the LP was written using a Korg MS-20 Mini, Korg SQ-1 step sequencer, Korg Volca Beats, Korg Volca Kick, Behringer Model D, and a Zoom H4N. The core of each track was recorded live in one or two takes and subsequent synth parts were overdubbed after the fact. Since I was working solely with monophonic synths, I utilised a lot of panning in the overdubbing process to help create new harmonics, and even chords in some cases, which really helped flesh out the often extremely monolithic and singular sounding analog synths. Beyond that, as I mentioned, I really focused on creating sequences that I found I could listen to on repeat no matter their level of simplicity.”