Spring has truly sprung. Beltane is just around the corner. Here in Portland, the weather keeps promising summer, some 70° temperatures, and dreams and opportunities to do events outside. Albums are being released fast and furiously. Festivals are kicking off. Positive times, to feel positive.

MMLL (the bigger creative project) is still floating in pre-production, (I am in the dip of hard work, which I end up always avoiding - I would rather do the planning, the conversations, rather than the harder work to get it done) I am being distracted by some new ambient nights I am developing in town here, a healing sounds session focusing on various musical fields that will help support us in this tricky time, and a new design salon for the designers and makers. But if you have the resources to support independent music publishing and would like to pay some advance for issue 1 of a thing, please do get in touch. Some seed money is definitely in need right now.

This experimental project will evolve over time. I will try some new tunes and rediscover old albums, too. I may also try some themes and specific vibes, but definitely no requests. This is a full crate of albums this month, and some quite varied genres too, strap yourself in.

7 releases for May

Under Tangled Silence
Djrum (never pronounce the J)
Houndstooth (2025)

Classical | IDM | Drum n Bass | UK

Some albums exist within a genre, and some albums exist within a feeling. Under Tangled Silence is very much the latter, a record born from personal loss, technological catastrophe, and a long, looping creative path that feels as much like recovery as it does reinvention. Djrum, aka Felix Manuel, brings us close to something super private, like overhearing someone else talk about a half-remembered dream. Tracks like “Galaxy in Silence” and “Unweaving” linger in that space between digital and organic, where warped orchestral piano lines, textural glitches, and blurred percussion drift just out of time.

Sonically, the album resists easy categorization. Djrum has always been a shapeshifter, someone who pulls from jungle, ambient, classical, dubstep, and broken techno without settling anywhere for too long. But here, that genre-spanning impulse has softened into something slower and more exploratory. A track like “Tune for Us” builds from a long improvisation, without loops or rigid time signatures, its beat a delicate frame around something airy and loose. There’s no moment of climax, no drop to wait for, just the constant drift of a producer opening up. Even the title, Under Tangled Silence, feels like a nod to the emotional tangle he’s been unwinding, post-pandemic, post-grief.

If Portrait with Firewood was about vulnerability and emotional honesty, then Under Tangled Silence is about what happens after. What do you make when you lose your hard drive, the plan, the certainty we all felt? Djrum builds something from old fragments, working with old mixdowns, remaking tracks from memory, letting mistakes lead the way. It’s not just an album, it’s a story of resilience, of enjoying the imperfections, one foot in front of the other, trying to find beauty in what's broken. And in that sense, it might be his most human record yet.

I don’t want nobody
Eddie Harris
Atlantic Recordings 1969

Jazz | RnB / Chicago

I honestly can’t tell you how I found this record, it is weird. The track begins with the strangest filter vocal, kind of like those comedy rap inserts, or vocoda vocals - that honestly I hate, unless it was early Kanye. The track is 12 minutes long. It ends with some incredible group vocals. And the rest of album sounds like it was made by a collab between Herbie Hancock, the muppets, and something from a star wars band. After digging further into Eddie Harris, I found that he was not only an accomplished Jazz musician, but a stand-up, and never quite found his niche. But this track kills me.

Long underrated in the pantheon of jazz greats, Eddie Harris was an eclectic and imaginative saxophonist whose career was marked by an appetite for experimentation. Harris' tastes ranged across the spectrum of music, not all of which was deemed acceptable by jazz purists. He had the chops to handle technically demanding bop, and the restraint to play in the cool-toned West Coast style, but he also delved into crossover-friendly jazz-pop, rock- and funk-influenced fusion, outside improvisations, bizarre electronic effects, new crossbreedings of traditional instruments, blues crooning, and even comedy. Much of this fell outside the bounds of what critics considered legitimate, serious jazz, and so they dismissed him out of hand as too mainstream or too gimmicky. To be fair, Harris' large catalog is certainly uneven; not everything he tried worked.

Harris was born in Chicago on October 20, 1934. His first musical experiences were as a singer in church, starting at age five, and he soon began playing hymns by ear on the piano. After serving in the army, Harris returned to Chicago in 1960 and signed with the successful, locally based Vee Jay, which was better known for its R&B and blues acts. Although the label signed Harris as a pianist, he played only tenor sax on his first album. That album, 1961's Exodus to Jazz, would become one of jazz's most surprising success stories. The key track was "Exodus," Harris' easygoing rearrangement of Ernest Gold's theme from the epic Biblical film of the same name. It was an unlikely source for a jazz tune, and an even unlikelier hit, but it managed to catch on with mainstream radio; Its success pushed the LP all the way to number two on the pop album charts, and Exodus to Jazz became the first jazz album ever certified gold.

Many critics lambasted Harris for his commercial success, overlooking his very real talent; for one, Harris played so sweetly and smoothly in the upper register of his horn that many listeners assumed he was playing an alto, or even a soprano sax. Stung by the criticism, Harris long refused to play "Exodus" in concert;

In 1969, Harris joined pianist Les McCann's regular group at the Montreux Jazz Festival; Meanwhile, Harris' solo career continued apace, with increasingly playful, and sometimes bizarre, experiments. 1970's Come On Down! was a more jazz-rock-flavored session that found Harris singing into his horn through its effects unit. He also began to experiment with new horns, inventing such instruments as the reed trumpet (basically a trumpet fitted with a sax mouthpiece; heard most notably on 1970's Free Speech and 1971's Instant Death) and the saxobone (a sax with a trombone mouthpiece). Subsequent albums like I Need Some Money, Bad Luck Is All I Have, and That Is Why You're Overweight were all over the musical map, but favored comic R&B-style vocal numbers, now without the electronic effects. Who on earth allowed him to release albums with names like that?

Harris' sales had been slipping, but were still fairly strong for a jazz artist, up until 1975's The Reason Why I'm Talking Shit, which abandoned humorous songs in favor of full-on, adults-only stand-up comedy. Only a few bits of music were interspersed between all the nightclub patter, and the results seemed so left-field that Harris' never quite hit the big time again. 1976's How Can You Live Like That? seems to have been largely ignored, and Harris parted ways with Atlantic. Harris went to RCA for two albums recorded in 1979, the fusion outing I'm Tired of Driving and the solo Playing With Myself, on which Harris dubbed horn solos over his own piano work. He made his final studio recordings in the mid-'90s, and was forced to stop performing by the combined effects of bone cancer and kidney disease. He passed away in Los Angeles on November 5, 1996.

Ghanaprajna
Decoder
Fixed Rhythms (2024)

Dub Techno / Texas

Decoder’s Ghanaprajna feels like stepping into a humid, overgrown dream where time bends and logic dissolves. Built on really slow-moving drones, submerged textures, and buried percussion, the album pulls you downward rather than forward. It hums with intensity, yet it’s not interested in drops or climax. Instead, it lingers in the murk. There are hints of dub, field recording, ambient, and ritual music, but none take center stage. It’s music that resists genre and insists on mood.

What makes Ghanaprajna so compelling is its commitment to atmosphere over architecture. The sounds seem sourced from a machine in the jungle, half organic, half clockwork, and always out of reach. Listening feels like eavesdropping on ancient machinery. It’s not background music, but it never demands attention. It waits. It breathes. It changes shape depending on the room, the light, the time of day. In a world obsessed with immediacy, Ghanaprajna rewards patience.

Coco Cubes (Kasper Koman Remix)
Jelly for the babies + Kasper Koman
One of a Kind (2025)

Techno / Progressive House

I am breaking all the rules - it is not an album, it is not even a raw track - a remix, but Hey, it fits, it slaps, and I thought readers might like it after Decoder.

Sierra Tracks
Vega Trails
Gondwanan Records (2025)

Jazz / London, UK

Vega Trails is the project of double bassist Milo Fitzpatrick, best known for his work with Portico Quartet. With Vega Trails, Fitzpatrick steps away from expansive, cinematic textures of Portico to explore more intimate sounds. On Tremors in the Static, his 2022 debut he teamed up with saxophonist Jordan Smart to create a stripped-back conversation between bass and sax. Sierra Tracks, their follow-up, deepens that connection. It is a record of landscape and longing, built on the interplay between melody and silence.

Where their debut felt like a foggy winter morning in the Cotswolds, Sierra Tracks has the warmth of late summer light. Smart’s saxophone lines are more lyrical here, sometimes recalling Pharoah Sanders at his most meditative. Fitzpatrick’s bass remains the grounding force, guiding each track with patience and clarity. There is a sense of spiritual searching throughout. The duo stays focused on the subtle magic of restraint. In an era of maximalism, Sierra Tracks is a quiet triumph.

The record is actually pressed on BioVinyl, a sustainable alternative to traditional vinyl, which is a petroleum by-product. “This innovative product uses bio-based PVC in the production process. It is identical in quality to a conventional pressing, allowing us to press to the highest audio quality whilst using a responsible and sustainable PVC supply chain.”

Beatless
Fila Brazillia
Re:Warm (2023)

Leftfield / Ambient / Trip Hop / House / Jazz

Fila Brazillia have always been one of my favorite bands from the 1990’s less popular than Nightmares on Wax, more eclectic than Bonobo, more weird than the Ninja Tune lot. On smaller labels, harder to grasp genres, more challenging, warmer, but as I look back, I find more and more tunes in their discography that mean more now - maybe I was just too young.

A new album (it was new in 2023) - how?

Fila Brazillia, from Hull, UK, were one of the most quietly influential forces in British electronic music through the 1990s. Formed by Steve Cobby and David McSherry, they emerged just as the UK’s chillout and trip-hop scenes were taking shape, offering a more eclectic, jazzy, and often cheeky alternative to the moody atmospheres of Massive Attack or Portishead. Their output on labels like Pork Recordings were prolific, ranging from dubby downtempo to funk-soaked electronica.

Originally released in 1999, it stands apart from their more groove-driven albums like Black Market Gardening or Luck Be a Weirdo Tonight. Tracks float rather than strut, built from minimal beats, and space for reflection. You can hear the jazz influences more clearly—Bill Evans and Harold Budd are spiritual reference points—and there’s a softness to the production that feels timeless, untethered from the trends of its era.

Though they were often filed next to trip-hop acts, Fila Brazillia never quite fit the label. They were less cinematic, more curious, content to wander down side streets rather than follow a script. That spirit is all over Beatless, which feels like a late-night experiment that turned into something deeper. It’s a record that rewards repeat listens, not for any dramatic payoff, but for the details hiding in the margins. Long before ambient music became “AMBIENT”, Cobby and McSherry were finding ways to stretch out and slip away.

If Fila Brazillia had set out to make an ambient album, it would sound like this. The 17-track collection contains music recorded at different times between 1990 and 2023, in different studios and in all manner of headspaces. There are classic cuts lifted from LPs and EPs (‘Subtle Body’, ‘Spores’); familiar favourites presented in unfamiliar forms (‘DPs R Us’, from Mess, appears in its unheard full-length form); cuts created for, and subsequently omitted from, film soundtracks (‘Theia’) and acclaimed albums (‘Vanitas’, ‘Yesternight’ and ‘Van Cleef’, all of which were intended to be included on 1994’s Old Codes, New Chaos); standalone tracks recently crafted from elements of more up-beat workouts (‘Ambient Apehorn’, which showcases the overlapping synth sounds of 1997’s ‘Apehorn Concerto’, and ‘Regard The End’, which is based on a small portion of ‘Heil Mickey’ from 2004’s Dicks) and even a brand-new recording, ‘Tone Poem’.

Moods and ideas are mixed and matched, borrowed from Harold Budd, Cluster, The Orb, and their repurposing of public service announcements.
There are no standouts as such, but DJs looking to score a sunset or sunrise could do a lot worse - creating something most definitely Cafe del Mar worthy.

Channels of the Lake
J Rowe
Sounds of the Dawn (2019)

Ambient / New Age / Spirtual Jazz

J Rowe’s Channels of the Lake feels like a transmission from another easier time, where music was made for proper chill out rather than getting metrics, on a streaming platform. Issued on cassette in the spirit of the private press New Age scene of the 1980s, the album hovers in a liminal space between meditation and memory. It’s rich in soft-focus textures and slow, unspooling melodies it rewards deep, attentive listening. There’s a clear connection to regional mystics and homegrown healing music—an aesthetic lovingly resurfaced by Sounds of the Dawn.

For over a decade, Sounds of the Dawn has been archiving and reissuing private meditation tapes, spiritual jazz, and subtle nature recordings, shining a light on a subculture of music that had largely disappeared from view. Channels of the Lake fits beautifully into that tradition, not as a reissue but as a contemporary continuation. In that sense, it’s part of a quiet lineage, one that includes labels like Inner Islands or Leaving Records, and extends to radio shows like NTS’ Sounds of the Dawn residency. These are artists and curators treating sound as ceremony, and Rowe’s album plays like a modern-day field recording from a temple just outside of Eugene, Oregon in 1978.

All albums are listed on Record Club if anyone is playing with that right now.

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