Limited 10 year anniversary repress with black/white artwork. In May 2014, Icelandic producer Yagya released his fifth album, Sleepygirls, across three slabs of vinyl on Dutch label Delsin. It's a deep, spacious and dubbed out affair that stays locked at a pleasingly sedentary tempo throughout. Since 2002 Yagya has been crafting lush electronic albums and always manages to find pure bliss and beauty and his simple, nature inspired soundscapes. "I wanted to create an album that's atmospheric, repetitive, and easy to listen to over and over again," says the man himself. "Something that works well in the background (e.g. when concentrating on work), as well as up close in a big sound system. I also wanted to learn how to make my music sound better than before, since I'm a huge sound-nerd, so that was a part of the goal for me personally." The album is a fine fusion of tropes from Yagya's earlier albums, features jazz instrumentalists that improvise beautiful melodies over monotonic, almost drone-like, techno beats and also uses live recordings of Japanese vocals, saxophone and guitar to counter the repetitiveness of the rhythms. Right from the rolling bliss of the opener, you're suspended in a womb like pillow of sound that is soft, warm and serenely beautiful. As tracks roll on, the pace stays the same but themes vary from upright and summery to more elongated and insular. This is natural, organic dub that is a delight and a pleasure to listen to. The vinyl versions of each track have been specially mixed with random LFOs, sonic quirks and unique fingerprints making them the subtly different to the CD version, but overall this is a brain soothing and mind melting album that can soundtrack lazy days, long summer afternoons and warm winter evenings in equal style. More

From the old demo music vaults of Yagya, we found this amazing dub techno track dating back 15 years to the summer of 2008! Directly at the first listen we knew that this had to be fully released, Yagya was quick to agree, and also delivered 2 remixes himself and added another one from Octal Industries which resulted in a dub techno jam made in heaven! More

It seems like an age since Icelandic producer Adalsteinn Gudmundsson's last album as Yagya, 2020's "Old Dreams and Memories." The first album to be released on his own label Small Plastic Animals it was followed by the four-track "Always Maybe Tomorrow" EP in 2021. "Faded Photographs" is his ninth studio album, the most involved and time-consuming project to date and collaborative on a scale not seen since 2012's "The Inescapable Decay of My Heart." It also marks an exceptionally confident return to the art of song-writing, but where that earlier album was a more upbeat dub techno-pop affair, "Faded Photographs" is nostalgic, wistful, reflective and steeped in poetic romanticism. Gudmundsson's love of the art of the album is also more pronounced here than ever before, almost every single track tied together by the particularly unifying use of triplet rhythms in combination with 4/4 beats, beguiling hushed vocals and enveloping, molten dub bass tones. Combined with a typical dedication to sound design and production, "Faded Photographs" is rendered an utterly seamless experience, demanding to be heard as a whole. Written and produced when we had become more distant and disconnected from one another than ever before, "Faded Photographs" brings together and showcases an ensemble of artists in a spirit of collaboration that flies in the face of adversity, a true product of its time. More

After the 2020 release of Old Dreams And Memories, Icelandic dub techno linchpin Yagya returns for a second release on his emergent label, Small Plastic Animals. This latest venture marks a new chapter in the artist's accomplished career, having released on Delsin, Subwax BCN and A Strangely Isolated Place as well as forming a core part of the Thule collective alongside his partner in Sanasol, Thor. As those associations ably point out, the music Yagya crafts is spacious and atmospheric, using the techno tradition as a vessel for meditative as well as emotional exploration and experimenting with sound design according to a specific, patiently cultivated style. Always Maybe Tomorrow finds Yagya ruminating on the behavioural energy of environments as viewed from afar - the man-made electricity of urban expanses and the interconnected flora and fauna of ecosystems. Looking to his chosen tools as a means to express these ideas, he employed a non-linear approach to each of the four tracks on this EP, choosing to create musical systems in constant flux rather than composing each piece in a conventional left-to-right narrative. Yagya's trademark voluminous chords and vast pads ebb and flow through filters controlled by LFOs and randomness, creating their own micro-incidents and macro evolution as though holding a mirror up to the environments the initial inspiration was drawn from. More

Icelandic producer Adalsteinn Gudmundsson aka Yagya now launches his own new Small Plastic Animals imprint with a brand new album, Old Dreams and Memories. After nearly two decades of releasing his Icy dub techno on labels like Sending Orbs, Delsin Records and A Strangly Isolated Place, his latest album marks a subtle move away from the sound he has dealt in before. Still slowly propulsive rhythms underpinning every track, but they are only a small part of the overall picture. Old Dreams and Memories is a rich symphony of luxurious sound, with transportive rhythms and hugely evocative layers of melody, the human voice and cinematic sampling all showing a further evolution in the art of this standalone producer. With vocals by Natsuko Yanagimoto, poems by Michizo Tachihara and saxophone by Oskar Gudjondsson. More

Atmospheric and ambient dub master Yagya serves up Stars and Dust, his seventh full length album and second on Delsin. It finds the Icelandic artist perfectly pair melody and minimalism to create ten more tender tracks that will sooth both body and mind with a range of very real emotions. Electronic but organic, it is another complete work that encourages you to lay back and get lost in sumptuous sound. More

In May 2014, Icelandic producer Yagya will release his fifth album, Sleepygirls, across three slabs of vinyl and one mixed CD on Dutch label Delsin. It's a deep, spacious and dubbed out affair that stays locked at a pleasingly sedentary tempo throughout. Since 2002 the definitive member of the Thule Musik collective has been crafting lush electronic albums under his Yagya alias and always manages to find pure bliss and beauty and his simple, nature inspired soundscapes. He deals exclusively in full lengths and to date they have come on labels like Sending Orbs, Force Inc. and Subwax Bcn. "I wanted to create an album that's atmospheric, repetitive, and easy to listen to over and over again," says the man himself. "Something that works well in the background (e.g. when concentrating on work), as well as up close in a big sound system. I also wanted to learn how to make my music sound better than before, since I'm a huge sound-nerd, so that was a part of the goal for me personally." The album is a fine fusion of tropes from Yagya's earlier albums, features jazz instrumentalists that improvise beautiful melodies over monotonic, almost drone-like, techno beats and also uses live recordings of Japanese vocals, saxophone and guitar to counter the repetitiveness of the rhythms. Right from the rolling bliss of the opener, you're suspended in a womb like pillow of sound that is soft, warm and serenely beautiful. As tracks roll on, the pace stays the same but themes vary from upright and summery to more elongated and insular. This is natural, organic dub that is a delight and a pleasure to listen to. The vinyl versions of each track have been specially mixed with random LFOs, sonic quirks and unique fingerprints making them the subtly different to the CD version, but overall this is a brain soothing and mind melting album that can soundtrack lazy days, long summer afternoons and warm winter evenings in equal style. Barcode: 871 8754950275

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Rumbling beat, mindbending dub chord and atmospheric safari by one of the absolute veterans of the Icelandic techno scene. Q-Box was originally released in 1999 on the legendary Thule Records and has since then been one of the ultimate go-to dub techno track for DJs worldwide. Now, 22 years later, the release has been remastered – and to add a little sprinke to the cake we have worthy remixes from some of the mightiest of the current Reykjavik techno scene. More

OHM has impressive catalog of releases already and is well known within the dub techno scene already. One thing has united his previous releases and that's the fact they have been done in collaboration with others - such as with Exos, Octal Industries and Kvadrant. Now X/OZ offers the debut solo release by OHM - and what a beauty it is! More

For the first X/OZ release of 2018 we have brand new material from Russian musical prodigy Nikita Zabelin. His first release in two years, Nikita brings us a fresh take on minimal techno with a breadth of styles and approaches to the genre. Previously releasing on Nina Kraviz's Trip label this will be Nikita's X/OZ debut. This release, Trans Siberian Express also features a remix by label head Exos, thus combining the forces of both artists to create the Russian/Icelandic collaboration of the year.
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