Brutal cybernetic bass music from 5 GATE TEMPLE’s affiliate XTEREA on Bristol’s mindseyesrecords.xyz. Genuinely contemporary dance music, a perfect fit for the dystopian junk that our information societies are. Exclusive CD edition for Office PSR & Osaka’s naminohana records. Highly recommended.
Channeling, chopping, rearranging a mess of wires and signals into compact high-impulse, jaw-clenching, bass heavy productions, XTEREA dodges the nostalgia syndrome that has perniciously infected UK bass in recent years, charting instead a new stopover in the hardcore continuum. This era’s current obsession with Mark Fisher’s writings and turn-of-the-century cyberpunk aesthetics (Serial Experiments Lain) signals a desperate need for vernacular futuristic visions - no matter how dark they might be, as long as they offer a counter-narrative to the colorful corporate AI-generated slop we’re constantly being spoon-fed. Mode Of Existence offers such visions, and as contemporary as they are, they nonetheless update a tradition of paranoid, amphetamine-heavy and insurrectional cultural productions, those adjacent to free party and alter-globalization movements for instance. A welcome update.
XTEREA - Mode Of Existence
(mindseyesrecords.xyz, UK, 2026)
@xtereaa@mindseyerecords.xyz
#uk #bass #future #lain
Following Sans fin sans fond, an introductory EP released in 2026 on Les Disques de la Bretagne, this LP on Éditions Gravats is Maxime Primault’s debut album as Deep Triskell.
Sacho Fest, New Trad Festival, Instants Chavirés, Mofo Festival… Deep Triskell came into shape through a series of live performances, each one bringing the project one step closer to its current sound, that Primault defines as “stoner-trad” (as in traditional): a sonic matter that is dense, abrasive, incompressible and whose beauty can only be fully comprehended when being physically exposed to it over a long period of time.
Deep Triskell’s artistic approach falls within a scene that mesh experimental practices with traditional music and that has been strongly resurging in France in recent years. On the album, it takes the form of dissonant motives, typical of drones in traditional music - sometimes dark and lingering (“Devant le Silence Noir”), sometimes throbbing and techno-leaning (“Il recrache le diable”) - that Primault integrates into a broader idiosyncratic musical language, made of psychedelic figures developed via his High Wolf project and digital distortions - characteristic of his recent work as BZMC.
More than mere sonic motives, Deep Triskell borrows from Brittany’s traditional music scenes something fundamental: the sense of a space and time that is shared, and in which bodies - driven by an archaic energy conveyed by dance - form an insubordinate group; something deeply rooted in Breton culture, weaving its way through Fest-noz and Britany’s high-spirited free parties.
Deep Triskell provokes in our body a resonance that recalls the persistence of the breaking of the sound barrier, or that of kan ha diskan, that age-old Breton vocal tradition in which point and counterpoint ceaselessly intertwine and unfold themselves without pause or down-time. He spreads a continuous tension in a circular circuit that inevitably excludes any possibility of pause, a physical phenomenon made particularly explicit by the anthemic “Le sonneur devenu pierre”. (more words on officepsr.com)
@editions_gravats@b.z.m.c
Deep Triskell - Deep Triskell
#editionsgravats #deeptriskell
New release on Young Parisian imprint, Protopost, with close links to Les Disques Omnison and Les Disques de la Spirale. After releases by HWYUIOD and Krakaota, this LP led by Shelter further assesses the influence of DIY experimental rock on this bunch of musicians, connecting dots between post-1968 French psychedelia and alternative & post-rock scenes from the 1990's.
"Gritty guitars, lethargic bass, motoric rhythms, twisted voices and slowcorification : with their debut LP, Raya 13 offers a new reimagination of the stoner & post-rock lore, bathering in lethargic mutant sounds. A trio made up of Shelter, one third of improvised rock band HWYUIOD; and Brittany Dubson & Mathieu Deschênes, both musicians in Montreal experimental music collective MOAB.
These captured moments of pure improvisations, infused with unclear spontaneity, evoke the French underground rock born in the aftermath of Mai 68 events; mostly Mahogany Brain, Red Noise, Fille Qui Mousse, or also Dashiell Hedayat at his most experimental moments. Those records that kept something special in their spontaneity, their exuberance and the unapologetic « let’s put this jam on a record » attitude.. Much of it thrived thanks to that cultural ferment of the time, nourised by the french hippies and first independant labels - Saravah, Futura, BYG, Shandar... Shelter extends that lineage today, producing this record on his own imprint Protopost.
But we’re no longer in a free-jazz, world-music influenced rock territory like the bands I mentioned earlier. Raya 13 leans instead toward a kind of naked-shoegaze without sustained notes, without drums and with only the faintest trace of distortion. A psychedelism distillied to its purest essence, and a fragile emotional sensitivity akin to the melancholy we found in Tanz Mein Herz’s pagan folk-rock or in Jemima’s hauntological rock. These brief fragments feel like found relics, always in danger of vanishing. Inevitably, we also hear echoes of infuence of early Sonic Youth, Sun City Girls or Young Marble Giants; and the great golden age post-rock bands like Labradford or Slint..."
Raya 13 - Bardo Rafting (Protopost, France, 2026)
#raya13 #protopost
Two atomizing micro-tonal drone/ambient pieces by Irish musician Mel Keane (Princ€ss) for smallpipes. Very warmly recommended release in that field of experimental / ambient music that acts on an almost molecular scale, the rare kind that is technically abstract but also emotionally generous, recalling in that sense much loved releases by Rafael Toral, as well as the strangely whimsical but heartwarming sounds of computed electronic music pioneer Charles Dodge. Special shout out to the label, Deardogs, for the utmost care with which they released the music on vinyl (180g, slick artwork).
Mel Keane - PIPEWORX (Deardogs, France, 2026)
@mel__keane@__deardogs__
#melkeane #deardogs #microtonal #ambient #drone #ireland
I have a very special fondness for early 2000’s weightless indie electro pop - probably one of the least respected genres by the community of records buyers these days, if I trust Discogs stats (bad have/want ratios, low grades and even lower prices). All the better; it’s a territory lying in the shadow of Lali Puna that I can explore freely - without fearing any kind of interferences, no hype, no peer-pressure - with only one criteria: either I like the music or I don’t. My own private Idaho.
I understand why people have been instinctively dismissing the music of German duo Komeït for the past 20 years: it’s uncomplicated, sugar-coated and polished. Their debut album simply consists of dreamy ritournelles and post-Durutti Column jams of easy guitar chords and simple machinedrum patterns (two things I tend to fall for easily): music with a long history of facing disdainful remarks from journalists and music nerds (the same applied to Sarah Records and a lot of now celebrated dream pop imprints and acts from the early 1990’s). But it always seemed that none of these dream pop people ever cared. They knew they weren’t 1990’s Zappas, and certainly didn’t pretend they were, anyway. And precisely because of that, their music often reached degrees of spontaneity rarely reached by more self-conscious musicians, whether because they were addressing bigger/ more mainstream audiences or because they were coming from more artsy scenes.
Komeït’s tunes remind me of « Just You », that song James, Donna and Maddy sing in the second season of Twin Peaks (Komeït has a song called « Instead of You »): their songs seem to come from similarly wired late teenagers’ brains, who grew up in Europe in the early days of Internet and 3D animation instead of a remote Washington State town during the last stage of the Cold War. It’s music discreet and subtle enough for one to come back to regularly over the months and years. Music I can never really get tired of.
Komëit - Komëit
(Lok Musik, Germany, 2000)
#dreampop #indie #2000 #germany #lalipuna
Recently, I stumbled across Nirvana’s 1993 unplugged version of “About A Girl” - hearing it for the first time in almost 20 years - then, out of curiosity, I checked the original song that the band released on their debut album, Bleach, in 1989. Safe for the audience loudly cheering, I could swear that the MTV version was in fact the original “About a Girl” recording and the album one a psyched up take on that acoustic original - no matter what the chronology told me. With Unplugged Music for April Fool’s Day, Jazz Lambaux plays a somehow similar trick on us: by giving to hear now what seem like the definitive original versions of songs he has been distilling for the past 4 years - and that eventually ended up sitting all together on the programmatic Music for Fools (2022-2024) (released almost exactly one year ago) - he re-enacts that Nirvana time paradox. 2026, 2022, 2025… a chronological mayhem that sounds like some Christopher Nolan’s hocus-pocus. My mentioning of Nolan here is purely accidental though, as there’s very little reason to force a comparison between the British American film maker and the French jester/musician. The America portrayed by Jazz Lambaux and his team on Unplugged Music for April Fool’s Day is quite the opposite of that in Nolan’s films: it’s unheroic and trashy, but also fun, uncompromising and sexy in its own bizarre way.
While the original Music for Fools (2022-2024 opened (or smashed) a window onto a white American middle-class driving around suburbia in $40,000 Lexus and Toyotas (bought on credit), the unplugged version, takes us to the dive bars and pubs of yet-to-be-gentrified downtowns and city centers. The kind of places where McNulty and Bunk get gently hammered in The Wire: slightly stuffy, heart-warming wood-paneled pubs that reek of bud lights, bourbon and Newports... (longer text on Office PSR's website)
Jazz Lambaux - Unplugged Music For April Fools Day (Editions Gravats, France, 2026)
@jazzlambauxx@editions_gravats
Another excellent tape from Kashual Plastik! Warm and slightly ghostly (neo)folk for frosty days. Thought this kind of lo-fi & scrawny minimal chanson has become a much widely explored territory since roughly the early days of the pademic, Torstensen avoids the lack-of-spontaneity pitfall many musicians in that field felt for recently. Den falmede dag (“The Faded Day” in Danish) is as intuitive and evocative as early 2020’s favorites by The Sprigs, and somehow discreetly reminds of Jim O’Rourke, sharing with the Chicago musician a sense of generosity and gaiety. Music for the break of dawn.
Like the first signs of spring, Torstensen’s music is embedded in a soil not completely unfrozen. One of the first songs on the tape, “Kedeligere og nogen gange gladere”, with its sweeping piano ritournelle, signals the humble dawn that follows a long, profound winter night. As the still day quietly unfolds, the Danish musician effortlessly improvises dozing psychedelic guitar ballads (“Når det flyder ud over dig”), Laraaji meets Daniel Johnston’s kind of Church music (“Dagene er alt for lange”), imaginary gospels about light in darkness, candle songs, clair-obscur music.
Though made of a different cloth than Maxine Funke’s fantastic Timeless Town tape (that also came out on Kashual Plastik, a couple of months ago), it shares with the New-Zealand songwriter’s that strong optimism, a sincere appreciation for joy that - as I recently noted - also emanates from a bunch of releases that came out in the last few months or so (most notably in Turner Williams Jr’s Vipérine LP). Persephonian hope put on tape, that coincidentally gets released around Aïd, Purim, Easter.
Jonas Torstensen - Den Falmede Dag
(Kashual Plastik, Germany, 2026)
@afvikling_kassetter@kashual.plastik
#candlemusic #breakofdawn #danishfolk #diy #experimental
Windy solos of double bass and electric bass (sometimes both, via the use of overdubbing) by French musician Jeanne Gorisse, aligning with a long tradition of bass solos and its specifically French lineage (Joëlle Léandre immediately comes to mind). Powerful record!
“Another window opens - and with it, another singular mystery of modern impressionism joins the catalogue of Les Disques Omnison. Classically trained yet reshaped by Paris experimental and improvisation scene, Jeanne Gorisse pushes her "bass" practice further on her second solo album, a follow-up to her 2024 debut "Immersion Libre". Alongside the double bass, she explores bowed electric bass, and re-records herself to tape on several tracks; creating an intimate dialogue between the acoustic and the electric.
Joëlle Léandre’s quickly come to mind, but Moires also recalls Rachel's chamber music & post-rock crossover, and echoing the raw energy of teenage bedroom rock through deliberately imperfect electric riffs. In doing so, it expands the vocabulary of solo bowed instruments, 57 years after Barre Philipps opening the continuum of solo bass recording with his diametrically different Unaccompanied Barre. While it resonates with the modern classical and underground noise of cellists Lucy Railton and Leila Bordreuil, as well as Félicie Bazelaire, and the spacious minimalism of composers like Éliane Radigue or Pauline Oliveros, Jeanne Gorisse takes the road of a strikingly stripped-down instrument, unmediated by electronics and production reduced to some very simple re-recordings used to echo and layer her playing”
Jeanne Gorisse - Moires
(Les disques Omnison, France, 2026)
#contrebasse #solo #improvisation #lesdisquesomnison #jeannegorisse
The takeaway coffee-drinking and pastel-colored tights-wearing Parisian girl makes an anticipated debut in the physical world with a CD mixtape that convokes many of the miniature worlds that inspire her: purse/handbag microcosms, cereal box toys and diary doodles. Twee pop for our age <3
Rightfully titled « Essentials Vol.1 », Michele Bry’s debut mixtape is completely filler-free and stands - sonically speaking - somewhen between Madonna’s Ray of Light and Music albums. Deceitfully candid, it narrates the bittersweet existence of a young woman slowly biding farewell to adolescence. All the heavily-nostalgic tropes of childhood - watching cartoons in the morning (« cartoons and cereals »), getting ready for school (« 3+3 »), the stream-of-consciousness-type of writing in her diary (« j’adore ») and Alice’s rabbit (« two rabbits and a hat ») - are soaked in a discreet but enduring pain. The narrator seems to be constantly torn between frustration and delusion, and regrets loom (« things I didn’t do »).
« Yet here I am, having metaphysical thoughts while brushing my hair »
Michele Bry gives to hear a fresh (French?) and singular alternative to the current resurgence of Y2K indie pop aesthetics as championed in a highly ironic manner by The Femcels and the World Peace DMT galaxy. The Paris-based singer focusses instead on a more lyrical - post Pastels, post Field Mice - early-2000’s heritage: that of delicately watercolored bands like Trembling Blue Stars or The Postmarks. Moreover, she offers her own twisted take on French-ism: the fruit of a vision skewed by her consumption of US medias - especially the kind that fantasize France (from Funny Face to Emily in Paris via Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette) - and further amplifies these fantasies before sending them back to the English-speaking world, via these 10+1 candy-perfumed and subtly melancholic pop songs.
Michele Bry - Essentials Vol.1
(Self-Released, France 2026)
@michelebry
#parisiangirl #tweepop #thepostmarks #indie #guitar #sofiacoppola
