A Closer Listen
Some of the year’s most unique releases appear here, including the sounds of Middle Eastern street protests, traditional Crimean song, diamond on disputed mud and a seminal field recording series. Some of these artists record in perfect freedom and peace; others operate amid airstrikes and blackouts. Despite their different timbres, they are united by their love for experimentation and their disdain for traditional forms of sound. Whether through field recording, sample, voice, music or a combination of the above, they produce startling juxtapositions that expand their listeners’ sonic horizons. Whether subtly or overtly, half of these artists also make crucial socio-political statements, adding an additional layer of gravitas to music that is already powerful.
Lyra Pramuk ~ Hymnal (7K!)
What if a hymnal were like none that had ever existed ~ a wholly original text whose words, when uttered, were in unexpected octaves and keys, with variable intonation and unpredictable timbre? Would this hymnal not be closer to the Divine than a traditional collection of texts, preserving well-worn pieces for unified public singing? This is the effect of Lyra Pramuk’s Hymnal, which whirls at the edge of comprehension like a whisper in the wind. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
Machine Listening ~ Environments 12: new concepts in acoustic enrichment (Futura Resistenza)
Machine Listening offers a speculative, mind-bending successor to the classic 1970s field recording series, used copies of which are ubiquitous in record and thrift shops. Using the original tapes as raw material, they weave a narrative voiced by human performers and their AI clones, interrogating a world where nature is endlessly reproduced, synthesized, and managed for cybernetic ecology. The result is a post-historical soundscape, a garish, perplexing, and beautifully absurd libretto for the Anthropocene where authentic field recordings blur with synthetic imitations until all distinction dissolves. Environments 12 provocatively questions our relationship to authenticity, technology, and the very sounds we use to define the natural world. (Joseph Sannicandro)
Original Review
Masimba Hwati & Paul Nataraj ~ Soil Leaf Root (Collapsing Drums)
Soil Leaf Root is a grounded, site-specific meditation where land itself becomes the medium. The piece is centered on a unique record, covered in textile dyed with mud from a historically charged location in Harare, and is disseminated via cassette tapes that each include a physical sample of this earth-dyed cloth. Across its long-form duration, field recordings of prayer and voice merge with experimental turntablism, blurring personal ritual and geopolitical memory. This work transforms each copy into a singular artifact, connecting the listener materially to questions of belonging, displacement, and the stories held within contested soil. (Joseph Sannicandro)
Original Review
Nobukazu Takemura ~ knot of meanings (Thrill Jockey)
Light behaves in fully esoteric ways – it changes its own “nature” as it is emitted and absorbed, and its entire existence is a probabilistic event. As it traverses space and time, it could be metaphorically said that it figures itself out, in the process realizing that its purported meaning is always already another. This entanglement is a core mystery of beautiful implications, as Takemura’s proposal mirrors through the expressive use of computer tones, the challenging, intellectualizing modernity of his compositions ending up a child-like filter of tenderness, atonality as vehicle for melody… after all, the “parts” of light are sums in and of themselves. (David Murrieta Flores)
Original Review
Penelope Trappes ~ A Requiem (One Little Independent)
As we wrote in our original review, Penelope Trappes is positioned to become a gothic icon for the new century. The combination of heavenly voice and horror video strikes at the balance between light and dark, with no clear winner emerging until the end. When it does, in the incandescent “Thou Art Mortal,” the results are transportive. A companion piece, Æternum, was released on Halloween and deeps the mythology. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
Polje ~ Incomplete (Liky Pid Nohamy)
Incomplete is a gentle celebration of fragmentation, a collection shaped not by excess but by instinct—only the tracks the artist “never feels like skipping” made the final cut. Released on Polje’s own label, Liky Pid Nohamy, the album aligns seamlessly with its ethos of the incidental and unfinished, unfolding in a trademark dreamy haze where playful motifs, bubbling undercurrents, and wandering healbient textures drift in and out of focus. Some pieces surface here for the first time, while others echo from past mixes and charity compilations—including Janmarko from Ukrainian Field Notes Vol 1—all woven into an intimate portrait of creative ebb and flow. The Bandcamp edition offers two bonus tracks, “Lacrymatory” and “Balamut,” adding further depth to this tender, deliberately imperfect universe. (Gianmarco Del Re)
Ukrainian Field Notes XLIX
Various Artists ~ Blackout Tape (20ft Records)
The full-scale invasion has forced electronic musicians to rethink their entire craft, first by downsizing and sometimes resorting to creating works on their phones or with minimal gear while displaced, and then by adapting to constant power outages interrupting the creative flow. 20ft Radio further nudged electronic musicians toward analog, handmade, and acoustic approaches for Blackout Tape. The result is an intimate soundscape: Tofudj’s belliphonic sonogram of celestial terror, where looped vibrations of fear unsettle the body’s usual rhythms; Maryana Klochko’s nocturne of domestic lunacy, all creaking silence, mirrored breath, and leaning shadows; Native Outsider’s solitary, tactile walk through imagined fog; Polje’s hypnagogic spin into voluntary isolation; and Noorj’s brief, trembling elegy, whose anxious overtones offer a piercing lesson for those who did not sleep yesterday and will not sleep tomorrow. (Gianmarco Del Re)
Original Review
Various Artists ~ Only Sounds That Tremble Through Us | فقط أصوات ترتعش في أجسادنا (Bilna’es)
This timely double-album extends the decade-spanning project May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth by B. Abbas and R. Abou-Rahme. The first record layers their own compositions around archival field recordings of communal singing and dance from Palestine, Iraq, and Syria, transforming intimate acts of joy and resistance into resonant electronic frameworks. The second LP features powerful commissioned works from artists including Muqata’a, DJ Haram, and SCRAAATCH, who use sampling and synthesis to engage directly with the source material’s spirit of embodied defiance. Only Sounds That Tremble Through Us is a profound archive of resilience, a living document where voice and rhythm become political acts against erasure, connecting past, present, and a chorus of solidarity. (Joseph Sannicandro)
Original Review
Various Artists ~ SHUM:QIRIM (Shum.Rave)
Following the 2023 release of Спадок (Spadok – Legacy)—Gasoline Radio’s Carpathian-rooted compilation built from field-recorded Hutsul sample packs—SHUM:QIRIM extends this model into new cultural terrain. The project draws on recordings of everyday life and folkloric traditions from the Crimean Tatar diaspora, distilled into a rich sample archive of 157 tracks featuring baglama, saz, santur, percussion, piano, and vocal textures. The material was offered openly to experimental and electronic producers, inviting them to reshape these sounds without constraint. The compilation is strikingly cohesive despite the breadth of contributors. SHUM:QIRIM moves beyond preservation toward a living, forward-facing practice, creating works that feel archival and innovative, asserting electronic music as a potent site for cultural revitalisation and the reclaiming of suppressed histories through sound. (Gianmarco Del Re)
Ukrainian Field Notes XLVIII
Yara Asmar ~ everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much (Hive Mind/Time Released Sound)
From her home in upstate New York, Yara Asmar created keepsake records unique to each copy of the special edition. This homemade facet lies at the heart of this tender release. Family recordings from Beirut are intertwined with laces of reminiscence, beauty and hope. The artist is no stranger to despair, but instead of turning away from the cruelty of the age, she leans forward to inject tiny reminders of humanity’s shared dreams. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
Mon Dec 15 00:01:23 GMT 2025