Years on from his tape-wrangling beginnings, with two Japan tours and a cult following behind him, Joseph Bastardo’s mid-2025 release Polyshades should have marked a defining moment for both the artist and the outer edges of electronic music—even if its quiet arrival now makes this praise overdue.
Author: Alan Lockett
aus + The Humble Bee :: Chalybeate (FLAU)
Conceived during a month-long Autumn 2024 residency in the Onsen town of Ikaho, Chalybeate distills aus and The Humble Bee’s bath-born installation into a mineral-rich ambient work where listening becomes a bodily immersion, steeped in steam, stone and subterranean drift.
Kayla Painter :: Tectonic Particles (quiet details)
Kayla Painter’s Tectonic Particles delicately choreographs micro-worlds of sound—melding subtle melody, diverse timbre, and found sonic textures—into minimalist, immersive compositions that trace the small processes shaping the universe, from stardust to stalactites and seeds, with her technical mastery matched by a tactile, art-driven presentation.
Craven Faults :: Sidings (The Leaf Label)
Northern mysterion Craven Faults maps post-industrial Yorkshire through shadowy analog synths and hypnotic rhythms, with Sidings turning regional history, industrial decay, and seminal music influences into a mesmeric, hour-long sonic archaeology.
autumna :: forget me not (Self Released)
Arriving in late 2025, forget me not extends autumna’s dusty-ambient lineage—bookended by Emile Wauters’ vast, style-roaming discography—into a haze of memory, melancholia, and softly shimmering sonic tableaux.
Dirk Serries :: Infinite and Unbound (Projekt)
Dirk Serries (formerly vidnaObmana) marked a new year with Infinite and Unbound, five long-form works wrought in real time with simple guitar+FX. A veteran’s touch […]
Guentner Spieth :: Conversion (Affin)
Markus Guentner and Joachim Spieth reunite for Conversion, their second collaboration on Affin, blending ambient expanses with dub-driven detail through a contemporary lens. Minimalist yet immersive, the album balances rhythmic depth and atmospheric stillness, reflecting the artists’ shared roots in early ambient, dub, and deep techno while continuing their distinctive sonic evolution.
Murcof :: Extended Play No. 2 (InFiné)
EP No. 2 is a febrile weave of introspective ambient and diverse electronic elements spawned in Plasma Studio Spain and IRCAM Paris sessions with vibrant forms of deep drone, glitchy percussives and glassine texture deployed in the service of sound world-making at once reflective and unsettling to deliver a resonant narrative inhabiting liminal space between contemporary sound art and immersive cinema.
zakè :: Selected Remixes (Zakè Drone)
Selected Remixes reflects Zach Frizzell’s collaborative ethos and transformative ear, reworking tracks from across the ambient and experimental spectrum. With his signature analog warmth, chthonic textures, and spectral drift, zakè reshapes source material into a cohesive suite of deep-listening reinterpretations that reveal his intuitive sonic alchemy.
KILN :: Lemon Borealis (A Strangely Isolated Place)
Indeed over the course of this first for ASIP KILN fire shivering shapes and febrile forms into a timbral trade-off of hi v. lo-fi; a quiet riot of rhythm’n’sound ranging from “DrnkGrlfrnd” with its ‘aquarium-on-fire radiance’ to “Maplefunk Diptych”’s ‘garden groove of field-recorded percussion’ to the ‘sizzling whiteout’ of “Deacon Rayhand.”

















