Plutonic Rainbows

I ordered two Maison Francis Kurkdjian samples — Reflets d’Ambre and Absolue Pour le Soir. These are essentially re-releases from last year, with Reflets d’Ambre replacing the long-discontinued Ciel de Gum, while Absolue Pour le Soir retains its original name.

Ciel de Gum is the name of a high-end department store in Moscow. Maybe the original name, with its Russian associations was deemed not suitable in the current climate.

Reflets d’Ambre arrived a few days ago, and it does smell quite similar to Ciel de Gum. I’ll need to compare them more closely before deciding whether it’s worth purchasing as a replacement. I haven’t used Ciel de Gum since it was discontinued—thankfully, my bottle is still nearly full.

Demdike Stare & Cherrystones’ collaborative journey into the underworld of sound delivers a masterclass in dark ambient and experimental electronics. Recorded in London and Manchester, the album bristles with scrappy, industrial-noise textures reminiscent of 1970s ECM, Minimal Man, and Conrad Schnitzler, brought together with haunted vocal flourishes from Laura Lippie. This is no casual listen: Who Owns the Dark? unravels like a ritual — merging technoid shrapnel, hyper-compressed loops, and chanted incantations into psychoacoustic mazes that feel both crystalline and corrosive. At once feral and refined, it’s among the most compelling deep-gear drops of the century.

Unveiled by Heat Crimes, Avenir’s archival compendium Primitive Maxi Trial is a time-stamped mixtape of Palermo-based rave relics from 1998–2006. Sourced from CD-ROM pack detritus and MPC/VST experimentation, it refracts hardcore jungle and IDM through a prism of haunted ambient and bent tekno. Tracks jump from the jagged breakcore of CVS Recipes to the acid nods of Just Friends, weaving an uncanny tapestry that feels both deeply nostalgic and strangely new. It’s a vivid snapshot of an era, unearthed and limned with eerie clarity — a sonic archaeology well worth exploring.

Amosphère’s debut album for Hallow Ground, created in meditative isolation over three years, is a cosmic deep dive into the interplay of belief, space, and human perception. Across three generative pieces — featuring vintage organ, handmade ceramics, flute, and bass clarinet — Cosmogonical Ears conjures vast sonic architectures: from frigid organ drones and off‑tuned wooden winds to ethereal flute and church organ reveries. The result is both sculptural and cinematic — you’ll find yourself tracing the boundaries of time, an immersive meditation on the cosmos that feels as intimate as it is infinite.

It opens today — another roar into the modern age. On Saturday, I will see it in Bristol, though not in the same cinema where it all began. That theatre, where I first witnessed wonder, fell silent in the late ’90s — its curtains drawn forever, its magic folded into memory. It was 1993. I was a younger man, sitting in the hush of that darkened room as prehistory stormed back to life. The screen lit up with beasts and awe, and something in me shifted — wide-eyed, breath caught, the future vast and alive. Now, in a different cinema, older, steadier, I return not to recapture youth, but to honour it. To feel the echo of that first thunder, still rumbling somewhere beneath the years.

It’s already dropped online — and the movie has only been out for a few hours. I need to resist the temptation and wait for the full big-screen experience.

In a time when the world shimmered with optimism and edge, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren reigned as icons of the late nineteen-eighties, their adverts capturing more than clothes — they captured desire. Calvin’s vision was athletic minimalism: clean lines, sun-bleached denim, and the suggestion of motion even in stillness. Ralph, ever the storyteller, spun Americana into elegance, all polo fields and windswept hair, his models cast like Gatsby’s heirs. These brands didn’t just sell garments — they conjured a lifestyle, one of convertible drives along coastal highways, glances exchanged on tennis courts, and the promise of summer stretching endlessly ahead.

Each campaign was a window into a dream, printed across glossy magazine pages with grainy textures and radiant light. The faces, the fabrics, the fonts — they spoke of youth, confidence, and aspiration dressed in linen and ambition. Even now, decades later, those adverts hum with nostalgia: a soft-focus reminder of when fashion felt mythic and a slogan could make your pulse race. To revisit them is to time-travel, not just through style, but through feeling—back to a golden hour of elegance where image became legend.