Plutonic Rainbows

New ambient excursions from Tim Hecker on the Kranky label. Konoyo finds this Canadian artist expanding his palette of sounds in new and interesting ways. On this album, Hecker works with the Tokyo Gakuso Ensemble to stunning effect. The pieces are beautiful and confounding - his trademark sound. Highly recommended.

Konoyo is available here on vinyl, compact disc and digital downloads.

Pioneering UK electronic research lab The Radiophonic Workshop has announced the Possom OST, its very first soundtrack for film.

The minds behind the Doctor Who theme song have come together for the soundtrack, which contains remastered material from the Delia Derbyshire archives – discovered in boxes of tapes in the late composer’s attic.

These tapes make up the foundation of the soundtrack, as the collective marry dread synth tones with bowed percussion and pastoral flute for a sound that is reminiscent of classic Italian Giallo scores and British industrial giants Coil.

Possum is the directorial debut from Matthew Holness, most famous for co-writing and playing the title role in cult horror-comedy series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.

Returning to the genre with a much straighter face, Possum tells the story of a disgraced children’s puppeteer returning home to face dark secrets that have taunted him throughout his life.

The Possum OST arrives on CD and digital formats on November 30, with vinyl to follow in 2019. You can preorder the score at The Radiophonic Workshop Bandcamp. Possum arrives in cinemas on October 26.

Suzanne Kraft beautifully paints outside the lines on ‘SK U Kno’, offering studio-rendered snapshots of material that gradually evolved into the pieces in front of you, drawing woozy connections between wistful ambient contours and more vaporous, hypnagogic loops, into unstable House and abstracted midnight Blues. One of the loveliest/smudged listens this year, huge recommendation.

On the A-side Kraft seduces with eight minutes of wilting chords and percolated synth voices in ‘Gaze’, before ‘Vast Mute’ breezes close to the kind of DJ Screw-style magick found in 0PN’s ‘Chuck Person’s Eccojams’, but to more abstracted, hazy effect.

His B-side follows with the beautifully mellow strums of ‘To Make A Stone Weep’ probing a Jim O’Rourke-like transition from acoustic balm to digital saltiness, and then we finally get to hear the full version of ‘Accelerate Me Wildly’, which now comes with an extra 12 minutes of astral synth-scaping and GRM-like electro-acoustics before it drops into killer, airborne funk trills and levitating chords with a proper West Coast US steez.

Available now on vinyl. Digitals coming in November.

Phono Ghosts returns with ‘Photons in Fashion’ featuring eight new tracks of intricately spliced tape samples, continuing the psychedelic eclectic sound that marked out his previous releases on Fonolith (Solar Dream Reel) and Skam (Chrome Position).

Over 30 minutes, ‘Photons in Fashion’ careers between the forceful ‘80s digi-funk blast of ‘Cassential’, space-lounge groove of ‘Binary Dynamics’ and hypnotic disco of the title track; progressing through to the brooding ‘Dramakai’ and slinky fretless bass of ‘Observatory of the Soul’, interspersed with dream-like fragmentary interludes, before closing out with the idiosyncratic synth bleeping of ‘Hear Me Read My Genetic Chirpy Chip’.

Vinyl, Cassette & Digital are available here.

Tomorrow we'll likely see new iPhones and Watches. Should be interesting. Maybe the AirPower charging mat will also make an appearance. There may be other surprises too.

What to expect:

• iPhone XS 6.1 inch LCD display
• iPhone XS 5.8 inch OLED display
• iPhone XS 6.5 inch OLED display
• Apple Watch Series 4
• AirPower
• AirPods

The announcements begin at 10am in Cupertino, California. There are a variety of places you can stream the event.

An EP from 2015 that you may have missed.

Boomkat:

Second EP by Berlin-based Scotsman, Claude Speeed. Steeped in all sorts of mannered loveliness, from classic American minimalism to cinematic post-rock and retro-futurist electronica, its intent is matched by its reach over five succinct pieces fanning out from the distorted dream sequence of 'Traumzeuge' to soaring synth scape 'R U Sorry?' via the curling chimes and zinging digital harmonics and binary cream of 'Dr. Liz Wilson', ascending to the crashing MIDI drums and longing vocal glossolalia of 'Fret'. RIYL Oneohtrix Point Never, Kuedo, Mogwai.

Available here.

Apple today sent out media invites for its annual iPhone-centric event that will be held on Wednesday, September 12 at 10:00 a.m. at the Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park Campus in Cupertino, California.

The media invites released today give a first look at the theme of the event and feature the tagline "Gather Round," likely referencing the main ring-shaped building at Apple Park.

Looks like new stuff coming very soon. My guess is Apple will hold an event on the 12th with pre-orders on the 14th and availability on the 21st.

Boomkat:

Beautifully haunted, tripped out and richly absorbing set of apparitions recalling the most sylvan shadows of Aphex Twin's ‘SAW II’, Leyland Kirby / The Caretaker at his creepiest and the spectres of Loren Connors “airs”, a huge recommendation to followers/fans of any of the above...

Blue Chemise is the alias of Australia’s Mark Gomes and this is his debut for Students Of Decay, recorded direct to Dictaphone with minimal post-production to convey something poignant and eerily intangible.

Following from two similarly etheric gestures, both self-released on Greedy Ventilators, and a 7” with I Dischi Del Barone, Gomes here supposes 16 new passages of time that hold the listener’s aural gaze with uncanny ability. Most effectively, they conjure the sensation of solitude shared with paranormal spirits,, drawing the listener into possible parallel dimensions with a dusky, autumnal subtlety.

If you've been charmed by the desiccated but richly absorbing atmospheres of fellow antipodeans such as F Ingers or LST, those early BoC wildlife documentary interludes, or even the creepiest stuff on Mark Harwood’s Penultimate Press, we wager this one will rule your world. We’ve been listening to it on a loop since early in the morning and really not sure if we’ll shake off that hypnagogic feeling for the rest of the day...

Available on vinyl from today. Digital on September 7th