Tape Loop Orchestra is pleased to present the Returning series, which is comprised of two volumes, Awakening Reincorporation and Becoming Thinking Flesh.

Seventh album from Carlos Niño, the Los Angeles polymath, enlists trusted friends to mould another astral, Afro-futuristic suite of unrelenting beauty which teeters at the edge of New Age and spiritual jazz.

Eminent field recordist/alchemists Watson & Rodgers hear Giacinto Scelsi in the natural world on their respective longform works for Adrian Corker’s SN Variations label.

Ulla’s recordings of phone conversations and wildlife diffuse into the most vaporous and unsettling ambient dub textures on the third in our Documenting Sound series, recorded over the last few weeks in Philadelphia and recalling Sam Kidel’s ‘Disruptive Muzak’, DJ Lostboi’s ambient hymnals and Vladislav Delay’s Chain Reaction pearls.

Written and produced by Sam Shackleton and Waclaw Zimpel. Electronics, sequencing, and programming by Sam Shackleton. Alto clarinet, violin, harmonium, e-piano, organ, frame drum, percussions, lira, and monochord by Waclaw Zimpel, If Shackleton made Klezmer…

Portico Quartet has always been an impossible band to pin down. Sending out echoes of jazz, electronica, ambient music and minimalism, the group have created their own singular sound.And while their new music mixes dense layers and textures with electronic and acoustic instruments the sound remains uniquely, recognisably their own.

Portico Quartet return with Memory Streams, their fifth studio album and one that continues the journey that first started with 2008’s Mercury nominated debut Knee Deep in the North Sea. It’s a creative path that has seen the band embrace new technology and explore ambient and electronic influences alongside minimalism, jazz and beyond.

Mercury Prize-nominated Portico Quartet has always been an impossible band to pin down. Sending out echoes of jazz, electronica, ambient music and minimalism, the group created their own singular, cinematic sound over the course of three studio albums, from their 2007 breakthrough ‘Knee-Deep in the North Sea’, and 2010 John Leckie produced ‘Isla’, to the self titled record ‘Portico Quartet’ in 2012. Now rebooted as Portico Quartet after a brief spell as the three-piece Portico, the group are set to release their fourth studio album Art In The Age Of Automation this August on Manchester’s forward thinking indy jazz and electronica label Gondwana Records.

Schleswig-Holstein is a thin land bridge between the mighty hull of the North German lowlands and the long pointed head of the Jutland peninsula, with the gentle Baltic Sea on one side, and the rough North Sea on the other. Numerous lakes, deciduous forests and wide corridors have shaped this region since its formation during the last ice age. The varied landscape, covered with fertile clay and littered with countless large and small granite blocks, is the legacy of the glaciers.

The first volume of ‘Selected Percussive Tracks…’ begins to collect some of the myriad material Paw Grabowski aka øjeRum has created over the last 25 years. Known primarily as a collage artists and practitioner of some of the most lauded and admired ambient music being created today. With ‘Selected Percussive Tracks…’ the velveteen warmth often associated with Paw’s music is still there but as was seen on his first Opal release ‘Through The Archway Of Mouths’ minimal, rhythmic features start to become the force of momentum in a music which often feels endless and gaussian.

Nectar Meditation is the debut collaboration from Steve Roach (synths) and Serena Gabriel (harmonium, voice, temple bells). The focus of their work together is to provide a potent, immersive and transcendent experience through the power of sound. This intention is activated through the combination of acoustic instrumentation of ancient origins with a vast array of vintage and current analog synthesizers, creating a compelling new hybrid of archaic and contemporary sacred space music.

Everyone knows these moments, hours or days, where one is feeling cornered, it is like running in circles or one is just trying to see something from a different angle. The new album by Sankt Otten - "Lieder für geometrische Stunden" ("Songs for geometrical hours") - offers tracks for these kind of scenes. It's the soundtrack of the ups and downs of life and everyone's entirely personal geometrical hours.

Robin Schlochtermeier is an Anglo-German composer who has written the music for several award-winning broadcast documentaries and features. Classically trained, his music often combines organic sound design elements (and occasionally synthesis) with more traditional instrumentation (piano, orchestra).

Almost an hour of heart-stopping location recordings made by Lawrence English in Queensland, Australia in the aftermath of a summer of intense bushfires and just as the lockdown started to re-shape lives globally earlier this year. These are technically brilliant and emotionally pregnant recordings from “The Zone”, a place we find ourselves in right now, where we just might still have time to reshape the world around us if we pause to acknowledge and address our own actions.

A companion piece to 2018’s Listening To Pictures, this second volume in the pentimento series presents eight new tracks by the music visionary, continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing. Pentimento is defined as the “reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over” and this is evident in the innovative production style that ‘paints with sound’ using overlapping nuances to create an undefinable and intoxicating new palette.