It's with great joy that we welcome one of Japan's most revered Ambient act. Manabu Hiramoto has been creating deeply distinct atmospherics since 2003. On this new album he's combined ritualistic elements with lush, foreboding passages, creating an ode to his country's unique nature worship.

Music is imprinted into Persian culture pre-dating Islam by more than 1400 years. By the time of its arrival in Iran in the 7th century, Persians had already developed the core of the theoretical framework of music of Middle Eastern origin still valid to this day. The 12th Century represented a point of departure as Sufism penetrated Persian culture and poetry became intertwined with music. By surveying avant-garde music in Iran, Unexplained Sounds Group has made their first incursion outside “western culture” into a highly fertile ground. Not surprisingly, this journey has been handsomely rewarded. The sample consists of high quality tracks where we found a wide range of unique voices and compositional styles resulting in a mature body of work. Upon listening to these remarkable artists you are left wondering if there is a better cultural fit than Iran for experimental music to develop outside the west.

Ignore Grief is the thirteenth studio album by American experimental band Xiu Xiu, released on March 3, 2023, by Polyvinyl. It was written by band frontman Jamie Stewart and new member David Kendrick. It was produced by fellow member Angela Seo, and recorded by Stewart at his home studio in Los Angeles, alongside a wide array of guest musicians including Charlie Looker, Ben Chisholm, Ezra Buchla, Patrick Shiroishi and Ian Wellman. The album artwork was designed by Janelle Abad, and depicts a white bat over a black background.

Virgin's fourth Ambient volume is the first of all-new material from contemporary artists, and it provides the most highlights of any in the series. Tracks from a score of crucial new-ambient producers, including Aphex Twin, Seefeel, O'Rang, EAR, Main, Final, Lull, Labradford, Techno Animal, Scorn and Paul Schütze. Seeing as each track is available only on this collection, it became the hardest-to-find of the entire series soon after its release.

Edgar Allan Poe’s power to inspire artists of various different mediums and styles has been a significant factor of his enduring popularity, as has the man and the mystery himself. Whilst the academia hauntings of M.R. James and the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft have experienced something of a renaissance in recent times, E.A. Poe has always been a lingering presence. His meandering stories featuring such things as the onset of plague in a quarantined complex, troubles at sea, a murderer preying upon victims in their homes in the streets of Paris and quite frequently the haunting phantasms of guilt and grief and loss. At the times the supernatural drifts in, it is frequently with a disconcerting subtlety, even when wreathed in Gothic robes. His horrors are relatable, timeless and ultimately haunting and therefore they and Poe endure.

This new Eighth Tower Records project, dedicated to the Lucio Fulci’s “Trilogy Of Death”, a unique and unrepeatable corpus in the history of Italian “supernatural cinema”, tries to imagine an alternative soundtrack for those movies. The several souls of Fulci’s movies are evoked by the musicians - Nàresh Ran, Mario Lino Stancati, Daniel Ferreira (Kloob), Leonardo Granchi (Bad Girl), Cristiano Bocci, Paolo Acquaviva (DuoSerpe), Sara Fontana, Dario Arrighi (Progetto No Name) - through a variety of music styles (electroacoustic, dark ambient, concrete music, progressive rock, drone music). Some of them kept in mind the lesson of the master Fabio Frizzi, the well known composer of the original soundtracks, while others escaped any attempt to revive that glorious tradition and interpreted Fulci’s horror universe in a totally contemporary and unedited way.

First released in 1989, much of FACES, FORMS & ILLUSIONS jettisons the rough-hewn bass sequencers of Front Line Assembly mainmen Rhys Fulber and Bill Leeb's previous records for twilight electronic soundscapes that combine the gothic with the modern, the transcendent, and the darkly spiritual. Most of this album is solely the work of Bill Leeb, although Fulber and producer Michael Balch make significant contributions.

Ambient, sometimes dark beats fused with industrialised gregorian chants make this album a must for any hardcore Delerium fan. There are 6 tracks on the first volume all over 5 mins in lenth. It is a album that is probably meant for 100 years in the future. Leeb and Fulber got the mix right and the CD cover is perfect, the back showing our moon and the front Saturn and its splendid rings.

One of the first and best Delerium LPs, Morpheus leans closer to the pagan death-folk of Current 93 than any of Leeb and Fulber's more industrial recordings.

Since 1996 Northaunt is the dark ambient project of Hærleif Langås, from Trondheim, Norway. With a special focus on remoteness, melancholy and introspective moods Northaunt combines traditional dark ambient electronics with field recordings (mainly from nature in Norway), minimal acoustic melodies and samples from other cultural sources, such as the movies of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman…

It is virtually impossible to write a review which does justice to this impressive release. No less than 4 CD’s at a time of one of the best dark ambient acts around, which has always stood more for quality than quantity. Since the early 90′s this German project, consisting of René Lehmann & Knut Enderlei, only released three albums, plus a couple of hard to obtain vinyl and tape releases and compilation appearances. All the material included in this boxset was recorded during live performances and rehearsal sessions. The recordings span almost their entire career, from 1995 to 2002, at appearances in Germany, France, Russia, Prague, the UK, the USA and Canada. While listening you will hardly notice that these are live recordings, since they were edited and mastered to create the highest possible sound quality…