Guests is the home recording project of Jessica Higgins and Matthew Walkerdine. Vaguely named as such to avoid any problems with the poster if they pull out of a gig (which has only happened once, about a year and half before any songs were actually written to be fair) but also to capture a sense of reverse hospitality. That is, arriving at your door with a bottle of good wine (can’t turn up empty handed) or a fist full of savoury or sweet snacks (time of day dependant); oversharing at the afters (and then passing out on your couch); reading to your toddler while you make their lunch or put everything back where it was meant to go (only to get torn apart again). So, something about what happens when private worlds meet each other, making or having been made a space for. But at times, it’s a different kind of intimacy, a temporal or material one, like the feeling of crisp fresh sheets, and abundant and soft, body-part appropriate towels in a hotel in a city you’ve been to before and love to go back to.

Their debut record, “I wish I was special”, was variously described as “a collage of concrète experiments and outerzone pop gestures, music that sounds as if it’s been written from the depths of a dream”; “music for people who love music but also hate it too”; “something like chasing ghosts or befriending a wild animal”; “pulling apart nervous sensations with haphazard ease and requisite humour”; and “a melody of refusal, of being all-in (…) finding the exact right WRONG sound to express the discontent”. Common Domestic Bird continues in this vein, layering synthesiser, keyboards and samples over rudimentary drum rhythms and field recordings, which are in turn sung or spoken with to create nine new songs.

Written and recorded between autumn 2024 and summer 2025 in Reading, Berkshire, the music has matured since its last outing, in a way, leaning less into collage and more toward structured composition and melodic depth, yet retains a healthy dose of indeterminacy and off-kilter rhythms for the forever-amateur. The songs on Common Domestic Bird hint at some “about”-ness through a series of discrete vignettes which sound a bit like architecture or end of year lists, gossip or over-thinking subjectivity, like disappearances and impressions, the support structure of the spine, letters and signs offs, things you could really do without and where they should go, hoping you’ll see something that isn’t there, pretences and performance. At times they feel kind of funny, others kind of sad or a bit angry and annoyed, a bit like you really.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
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DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
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Emerging from Studio HC Orchestra, Pakachume is a collaboration between producer Adrien de Maublanc and multi-instrumentalist Yonatan Levi. The album blends minimalism, jazz, chamber music, Afro-carribean sounds, and ambient electronica, recorded intimately in Paris’ Studio HC with acoustic instruments and analog synths.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
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Returning to Peak Oil for a second expedition, veteran Russian producer Kirill Vasin, aka Hoavi, explores an untrodden path on 'architectonics', drawing from his lifelong appreciation of Indonesian gamelan musics to mastermind a rhythmelodic hybrid sound that's sinuous, subtle and remarkably dubby. Over the last three and a half years, Vasin has used the music's methodologies and rhythmic forms to evolve his existing processes and signatures and transform his musical philosophy. To start the exercise, he knew he needed percussion, so used his phone and a contact microphone to pick up nearby sounds, drumming on various tables, railings, empty glasses and other objects to create a library of textured, tonally complex percussive sounds. But the work wasn't done yet - in fact, it was just the beginning of a long process of trial and error: Vasin created two full versions of the album before 'architectonics' was finished.

There are still echoes of the chrome-plated sci-fi atmospheres and complex, stuttering beatscapes that underpinned 2021's 'Invariant', but 'architectonics' asks very different questions, prompting fresher, more innovative responses. Leaning on his bank of organic percussive sounds, Vasin is able to concoct a tactile aura that he fills with eerie fluctuating repetitions that shift subtly, sometimes imperceptibly. The cavernous reverb and booming bass that supported his last few albums is still present, now employed as scaffolding for different architectures: skittering sequences and ornamented overlapping phrases that owe as much to Steve Reich's hallowed minimalist compositions as they do to Indonesian traditional forms. Lulling, almost hypnotic tessellations appear like fractals on the polished surfaces, morphing from jazz to techno and dub while retaining gamelan's haunting xenharmonic resonances and Vasin's concept becomes crystal clear. 'architectonics' isn't an attempt to make a gamelan album, it's Vasin's way of developing his own artistic process by looking far beyond the traditional boundaries of electronic music.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
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Artificial Owl Recordings is thrilled to announce the release of Free Waltz, the latest vinyl album from Yekaterinburg’s multifaceted electronic music visionary Andrey Kurokhtin, known as Shine Grooves. Set for release on Dec-1-2025, Free Waltz is a captivating journey through experimental and ambient soundscapes, pressed on limited-edition yellow vinyl for collectors and audiophiles alike. Free Waltz compiles tracks recorded between 2016 and 2024, drawing inspiration from the vivid images and memories stored in Kurokhtin’s mind.
The album captures the essence of the unusual—moments that linger from past experiences. The mood of each track is shaped by the state of Kurokhtin’s soul, influenced by diverse experiences: serene walks in the forest, the hum of an airplane in flight, heartfelt conversations, cycling through open landscapes, the pulse of love, and the energy of music itself.
Many of these compositions were born from extended jam sessions in his studio, where creativity flows freely. The album showcases Kurokhtin’s mastery of an extensive array of synthesizers, samplers, sequencers, and effectors, blended with intricate digital plugins and meticulous processing. This sonic palette creates a rich, immersive sound that bridges experimental, ambient, and electronic genres, offering listeners a deeply personal and evocative experience.
As a producer, engineer, and creator of the Magnitron cassette mixer, Kurokhtin brings a wealth of technical expertise to Free Waltz. Beyond Shine Grooves, he releases music under aliases such as Quadrat, Unlight, and Rokton Ensemble, and collaborates on live experimental projects like X343 and Ryabina. As the founder of Hanagasumi, a hand-stamped label dedicated to non-commercial music, and owner of a vinyl record store in Yekaterinburg, Kurokhtin is a central figure in the underground electronic music scene. Free Waltz is a testament to Kurokhtin’s boundless creativity and his ability to translate fleeting moments into enduring sound.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
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Bristol duo Pume Orenge unspool a world of spectral electronica from cassette loops and instrumental improvisation on their debut album Angel By Milo for Odda Recordings. It is a world that opens draped in ferric hiss. A fog of sound, dense and yet not quite there, catching the light in strange shades and ambient drifts. Looping and receding, looping and receding, as pucks of static burst like faraway fireworks on a cold winter’s night. Sound sources obscured, ambiguous, not quite what they seem. Angel By Milo takes its lead from the analogue process and textures by which it was made. Percussive and melodic loops were established, manipulated and responded to with instrumental improvisation, in a give-and-take with the materiality of the medium.

Across these seven intricately developed tracks, the sound fluctuates between the cinematic and the introspective, at times melancholy, at others verging on a kind of restrained anger, before the calm sets in once more. It is music for the small hours, awash with the grainy stuff of memory.

Embedded within Bristol’s independent scene, Pume Orenge’s quiet debut also speaks to the duo’s shared roots in the area, and like many of Odda’s previous releases, contains a sensitivity to place and atmosphere, even when these are no more than implied. Angel By Milo builds on the DIY ethos of Pume Orenge's 2023 self-titled debut EP, whose tracks were recorded live in single takes, now honing a more intentional, purposeful approach to music making. It is one in which layers of meaning are allowed to reveal themselves, a way of composing that makes a virtue of its labour and the chance occurrences that can arise in the process.

This is music in praise of shadows. Of the things we can’t quite see, the feelings we can’t quite grasp. Heard through the haze, or maybe not at all.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More