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YouTube As Well As SoundCloud Should Worry About PRS Lawsuit

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Music Ally:

We reported yesterday on PRS for Music’s decision to sue SoundCloud for copyright infringement. Over the course of the day, the key contradiction between the two parties’ statements became clear: it’s about whether SoundCloud is willing to strike a licensing deal, and specifically whether that deal would apply to both its existing free service and its upcoming subscription tier.



Meanwhile, it also became clear that this lawsuit may have strong implications for YouTube, not just SoundCloud.



In recent months, when rightsholders have complained about what they see as misuse of safe-harbour protection, they have often grouped SoundCloud and YouTube together as examples. YouTube, of course, has a licensing deal with PRS for Music last renewed in 2013.



If PRS for Music takes SoundCloud to court and wins, delivering a blow to that mooted safe-harbour defence, think how much stronger its hand will be when the time comes (as it soon will) to renegotiate its YouTube deal. Multiple sources have suggested to Music Ally that this is the real significance of the SoundCloud lawsuit. “The stakes are super high,” as one of them put it. Indeed.


2016 may turn out to be ‘The Year Of The Shake-Up’.

(previously)

We Now Return To The SoundCloud Soap Opera …

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FACT:

The Performing Rights Society for Music has taken legal action against (SoundCloud).



In an email sent out to PRS members, the body explains that “after careful consideration, and following five years of unsuccessful negotiations, we now find ourselves in a situation where we have no alternative but to commence legal proceedings against SoundCloud.”



PRS is responsible for collecting publishing royalties for musicians, for radio plays, public performances and more. Its issue with SoundCloud stems from the fact that despite having over 175m unique listeners per month, SoundCloud “continues to deny it needs a PRS for Music licence for its existing service available in the UK and Europe, meaning it is not remunerating our members.”


Now here’s a thorny situation for SoundCloud to address, especially if other PROs (BMI and ASCAP especially) choose to follow in PRS’s lead. There are rumblings that indeed these US counterparts are also considering action. I’m thinking an amicable resolution is required as part of SoundCloud’s impending alliances with the three majors (see below) but, if not, is it a realistic possibility that litigation from the publishing royalty collectors could finally bring the site down, Grooveshark-style? Do the majors, with their shiny new percentage stakes in the company and cash advances, even care?

Let’s reminisce about the early days of SoundCloud, pre-2010. It was a godsend to producers and musicians, promising a social network where they could not only post and share their own material, but also create embeddable players for their own sites. I know I was excited and, like many, ponied up the $500+ a year fee for the convenience and potentially powerful new avenue for self-promotion. I believe this was the early intention of SoundCloud: a place for audio content creators to share and promote their own material, and royalty and rights weren’t a concern. The fact that we’re uploading our own material implies compliance, and how easily we can spread our SoundCloud players was an agreeable trade-off.

Of course, SoundCloud’s growth seems to have gotten in the way of that good thing we took for granted. Remember the numerous times the site was down five years ago? Running all those audio streams isn’t cheap, and I’m figuring the powers that be saw mainstream adoption as a way to solve revenue drought. The nearly $1000 a year ‘Pro’ accounts suddenly were reduced to about $99. SoundCloud was becoming less of an exclusive club, and it seems a lot more users – and not just ‘content creators’ – came on board. (Side note: I remember, a mere few years ago, telling a friend to check out my SoundCloud account for my new music. This friend – not a musician, but probably a bigger, more obsessed music fan than me – had no idea what SoundCloud was. Never heard of it. It was an interesting realization that SoundCloud was kind of this insular club house, and this was probably the root of its woes at the time.)

As SoundCloud’s earliest adopters were electronic musicians (who, more often than not, double as DJs), DJ mixes have always been a major part of the offerings on the site. Growth meant that DJ mixes were becoming more commonplace, especially as mixes were the sole offering of many accounts (it would be interesting to know how much DJ mixes make up the total percentage of site content). The issues with these mixes weren’t completely under the radar in the early days – I received a take-down notice for a DJ mix containing a Marvin Gaye track about four or five years ago – but there certainly seemed to be a permissiveness, or at least a fingers-in-ears “nah nah nah” approach to the problem. PRS, in the article above, claims to have been speaking with SoundCloud about this for five years … probably mainly about their represented tracks included in DJ mixes.

It’s far too late, but it would be great to see SoundCloud try to pivot back to their content creator-focused days. Perhaps they can have a two-tiered system – a paid option for musicians to post and embed their own work without the hassle of advertisements, and then one for the DJ mixes and whatever else is being posted outside of the uploader’s copyright authority. I can’t imagine this happening … now that the majors are stake holders I’m not sure that they would like to see SoundCloud re-focus back towards independent and unsigned artists.

But it’s not all bad news for SoundCloud … or is it?


Digital Music News:

Universal Music Group and SoundCloud are now ‘days away’ from finalizing a momentous agreement, with sources close to the negotiations pointing to a pact potentially by the end of this week. The deal follows a massively-protracted, multi-year and cantankerous tug-of-war over licensing costs and a range of other issues, with critical financiers and a stable of lawyers hovering on the sidelines.



According to key sources with knowledge of the negotiations, the deal with Universal contains a substantial percentage stake in SoundCloud, with a significant upfront payment likely but not confirmed. That bears similarity to ongoing major label licenses with mega-streamers like Spotify, and reflects an interest in capturing an elephantine payout around a ‘liquidation event’.



“The majors are getting more interested in making money around the acquisition or IPO,” one industry lawyer told Digital Music News. “That’s more important than the huge advance but a lot of times they’re getting both.”



Indeed, we may be looking at the beginning of an entirely different SoundCloud, one that would replace billions of unpaid streams with actual payments to rights owners. Great news for artists, right?



Not exactly. Fast-forward a few months, and a fully-licensed SoundCloud is likely to replicate the problems currently dragging rival Spotify, with artists seeing tiny micro-payments while labels hoard gigantic lump sum payments. That includes proceeds from a massive acquisition or Wall Street IPO, something the largest rights owners will now enjoy as part owners.


The entire Digital Music News article is worth reading, as it goes into great detail about these sorts of deals and the aggressive maneuvering of the major labels. As a music publisher myself, I certainly know and applaud the benefit of royalties accrued from DJ mixes – especially those reaching thousands of plays – but I’m not certain that the deals that are being made will deliver for songwriters, especially independent ones. These agreements aren’t being made with the artists in mind, as evidenced by the lack of distribution of the upfront cash payouts (at least the PRS grievance is legitimately in representation of affiliated songwriters). Instead, my concern is that SoundCloud will become crippled or useless as a ‘level playing field’ promotions platform, and we’ll look back wistfully at the site’s golden days as we receive yet another tiny ‘micro-payment’ for our trouble.

Universal Music Cuts Deal With Soundcloud, Reported Equity Stake Could Hurt Artists

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Hypebot:

Soundcloud is in the final stages of a licensing deal with the Universal Music Group, sources tell MBW. The deal would reportedly give UMG a substantial stake in Soundcloud.



While details of the deal are not yet known, many in the industry question the efficacy of similar label deals with other music streamers which exchange potential revenue for artists for an equity stake for the corporation which artists often do not participate in.



That leaves Sony, the second largest player after UMG, the missing deal in Soundcloud’s monetization strategy; and given Sony forced takedowns earlier this year, a deal may not be imminent.

An Update: What The Hell Is Going On With Soundcloud?

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I really don’t mean to be posting about SoundCloud every single day, but this new article from FACT, nicely summing up the service’s recent headaches and the cause for these issues, is too good to pass up.

FACT:

Moves like this and the suspension of Dummy’s account aren’t great PR for SoundCloud. In both cases there’s no evidence to suggest they’ve done anything to warrant having their accounts shut down, and it affects the livelihood of both. Dummy, like many music sites, relies on its account to host track premieres from small artists, who in turn get the boost from Dummy’s following. If a music magazine were to lose its SoundCloud account, it could suffer a loss of traffic from a lack of premieres, and smaller artists lose a platform for exposure. But anecdotal evidence suggests this isn’t necessarily the fault of SoundCloud, but of heavy-handed requests from major labels over a licensing impasse that’s been going on for over a year.



SoundCloud has an official line on copyrighted material, but much of what goes on behind the scenes is still unknown to most people. In Dummy’s case, the trigger for its problems was material it claims had been sitting there for years. The goalposts seem to be moved on a daily basis, and nobody really has any idea why, or to what extent.



FACT asked Sony Music for comment on both their policy regarding SoundCloud account takedowns and Dummy’s allegations that it was given the tracks to host by the company itself, but Sony has yet to respond. Sony has every right to ask SoundCloud to remove illegally uploaded or remixed material, but its treatment of Dummy seems especially heavy-handed given the situation, and its silence on the matter makes it seem as if it’s happy to let SoundCloud take the blame.



The potential loss of the platform would have fairly serious implications, not just for small artists but the music industry as a whole. If the service goes the way of Grooveshark, it won’t just be underground artists like Plastician that lose their access to a wealth of undiscovered talent – it’ll be the majors losing their access to the next generation of hitmakers too.

SoundCloud’s ‘Three Strikes’ Policy Claims Another High Profile Victim

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Dummy:

Soundcloud have frozen Dummy’s account which we have grown to over 21,000 followers having used and supported the service since it first launched. Although the page is still visible, we can no longer access to repost or upload tracks.



The reason Soundcloud has given is that we have received three strikes for content that we have uploaded which is in breach of major record company Sony’s copyright, although Soundcloud have so far not told us which tracks are in question.



Soundcloud have stated if we can persuade Sony to remove the objections then they will remove the strikes to restore and unlock our account. However, under instruction from Sony, Soundcloud are not allowed to tell us who to contact within the organisation. We have only ever uploaded music that Sony have sent us to promote, so it seems ridiculous that they would want to shut down our account and prevent us from supporting new music signed to their label in the future.


This is an update to yesterday’s post, and more evidence that the pressure on SoundCloud is getting to deep sea levels. Not that I’m advocating favored exceptions to SC’s policy, but it hardly seems like a good idea to target a respected and somewhat influential music site like Dummy. And obviously Sony isn’t the one getting tarnished in the eyes of the public. Perhaps SoundCloud should be more transparent in their take-down notices as to why certain content is not permitted, spinning it as more of a case of boycotting content from those who won’t play nice at the bargaining table. All of this backwards-bending and high stakes negotiating won’t mean anything if SoundCloud emerges with a MySpace-like public indifference.

Living In Fear Of Soundcloud’s Take-Down Robot

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FACT:

In April, we reported that SoundCloud’s new copyright infringement software was removing DJ mixes from various websites, including FACT’s.



Things appear to have got worse. London internet station Radar Radio has today had its entire account taken down, despite clocking up over 900,000 plays.



We spoke to Radar Radio, who told us that they were originally told that they had seven days to sort out any copyright infringements on their page, but the account was closed the next day.



Mystifyingly, on top of that DJ Plastician has had his account suspended over a track that he produced, released and owns the publishing rights to.


Behold, once again, the perils of automatic copyright-detection software combined with intense legal pressure from outside forces. There’s no real mystery why Radar Radio was penalized — I’m sure they were posting shows with content that triggered the detection software — but the DJ who claims to have ownership of every facet of the removed track seems to have been a victim of electronic misidentification. (Update: Another possibility I just considered is that his distributor may have claimed the copyright which triggered the take-down. It wouldn’t seem that a distributor would hold the necessary rights to be able to do this, but I do know — from experience — that INgrooves was causing some take-downs for a while. If that’s still happening or how common a practice this is among digital distribution entities is unknown to me.)

I was told that SoundCloud had a ‘three strikes’ rule, where an account would be terminated if this threshold of copyright infringement had been reached. This was worrisome for me as I have a lot of Q-Burns Abstract Message content on my SoundCloud account that have master rights ownership by various entities, though I am the songwriter and publisher. Legally the master holders do have the right to flag my content, but I am always able to work it out with them to keep these tracks live on my account. But every time SoundCloud updates this detection software (or new audio fingerprints are added en masse) then I’m confronted with a number of new take-downs to dispute. It’s annoying, but even more annoying is the fear of suddenly acquiring three take-downs at once for my own compositions, and then I’m going through the hassle of reinstating my terminated account.

One should not have to use a service — and pay for it, as I am — while being fearful that it could be taken from you for reasons outside of your control. Surely this can’t be the way forward.

I am pretty certain SoundCloud are sick about all this and wish it weren’t the case. Indeed, our friends at Universal, Sony, et al are to blame. And credit where credit is due — when I do have to deal with a take-down, SoundCloud are always reasonably swift to consider my dispute and have the track reinstated. As always, I remain interested, though not necessarily optimistic, in how the company works to resolve their own dispute with the major label bullies.

SoundCloud Losing Money Fast As Record Labels Apply Licensing Pressure

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More SoundCloud pain.

Tech Times:

Digital Music News has reported that SoundCloud is hemorrhaging cash so quickly that it might actually run out before the end of the year, unless it can convince a bank or other investment group to hand out more dough until it can figure out a way to monetize its business model. This is despite a recent report valuing the company at $700 million dollars.



One reason SoundCloud is burning through money so quickly is the huge legal expenses the company is incurring. Record labels are growing impatient with talks intended to legitimize the service through licensing deals, with most labels currently uncompensated for the content streamed on SoundCloud. The record labels are threatening to sue the company if talks don’t progress faster.



I always tell labels / musicians that there’s a danger in making a site that’s outside of your control the main aspect of your promotional strategy (i.e. Facebook, etc). But SoundCloud has been such a useful one, especially as an embeddable platform for our own sites. I’ll be in some trouble just like the rest of you if SC goes under, or if they limit streams for non-paying listeners or start to include audio ads in my content … there will be a heavy load of site embeds to replace. It might be a good idea for us all to start thinking about and preparing for this now.

A SoundCloud Subscription Service Is Officially On The Way

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Complex:

Over a month after a leaked contract broke the news of SoundCloud’s plans to implement a paid subscription service the company’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Eric Wahlforss has confirmed the move. While Wahlforss didn’t confirm or deny the details featured in the June leak, the contract that popped up online last month outlined a three-tier subscription service consisting of a free option and two premium offerings. The free option will allegedly give users access to a limited catalog with advertisements included while the cheapest paid service offers a larger catalog and an ad-free experience. The most expensive option would allow users unlimited and ad-free access to SoundCloud’s entire catalog.



SoundCloud’s paid services applied solely to musicians / labels up to this point, with potential listeners being the reason to deposit the yearly fee. It will be interesting, and probably frustrating, to see how SoundCloud will juggle its usefulness to professional users with an apparent new emphasis on listener generated revenue. Many labels and artists — including those in the ‘majors’ — are reliant on SoundCloud for promotion and embeds on their sites. If this forced compromise cripples its effectiveness for promotion then there will be a bit of scrambling from labels of any stature.

The Tonearm — Music Pitches

If you’d like to cover anything listed below, please shoot an email to michael@thetonearm.com

Please don’t share any of the (listen) links.

The release dates give an idea of when we would like to publish a story on a release, but they’re a guide, not a rule. We can still cover a release or artist if the date has passed.

Akasha System – Heliocene (100% Silk, Sep 5)

Eco-Futuristic Electronica

Heliocene ushers in a fresh chapter in the Akashic record, recasting the project’s precision synergy of cellular melody, pitter patter pads, spiral-tribalist dub, and eco-futurist swing for a new solar age. The album’s eight songs were recorded across 2023 and 2024, inspired by explorations of the many secret sanctuaries hidden in Florida’s sunblind paradise: singing towers, ancient grottoes, emerald lagoons. From vortex house (“Purity Vector,” “Sun Particle”) to mirage electronica (“Haunted Planet,” “Soma Totem”) to drum circle comedown (“Terraform Dream”), the sides flow, glow, and gleam, dialed in but dreaming out, tracing radiant waves of the eternal now.

(listen)

Chimehours – Underneath the Earth (Cold Spring – Oct 16)

Dark Folk / Gothy Melodrama

RIYL: Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Sigur Ros, etc. || Inspired by ethereal minimalism, retro cinema and folk narratives, Chimehours craft a sonic palette reflecting on the pressures of modern life and the desire for reconnection with the natural world. Written and produced between Derbyshire, London and Margate, the album incorporates drones, drums, gritty guitars merging with woodwind, strings and voice textures that resist clear linearity. The result is a balanced blend of naturalism, tonal clarity, and experimental sonic tension. “We started to get bigger and bolder in our approach, and it was fun and mysterious and compulsive to bring it all together (as though other forces were at work…),” shares the duo.

(listen)

Chris Casey – Buried Out Back EP (Alamo Records – Aug 22)

Rap Collides With Indie Rock in Savannah

Chris Casey is a 20 year old artist hailing from Savannah, Georgia. Combining the sounds of alternative rock and hip hop, Chris finds influences on a range of Tyler, The Creator to Weezer, and brings a vibrant sound to it all. His biggest success came earlier this year with his song “Cow Killers”, as it highlights the experience of growing up in the south as a black youth in a tongue in cheek manner. How common is it for a rapper to be compared to Rivers Cuomo? What about Beck? Bradley Nowell? Buried Out Back is not only the newest project from flourishing alternative/hip hop artist Chris Casey, but it’s also a showcase of passion and genre-blending. This year, Chris has been consistently adding to the budding indie rock-rap subgenre. 

(listen – “Bodies” + “Play Dead” + “Head In The Dirt“)

СОЮЗ (SOYUZ) – KROK (Mr. Bongo – Oct 24)

Jazzy Lounge Pop / Global Folk Fusion

“Krok” means “step” in Belarusian – and for Alex Chumak and his band this word comes with a lot of meaning. It’s the title and theme that run throughout COЮ3 (SOYUZ)’s fourth album, reflecting the journeys the band has navigated in recent years, having moved to Warsaw due to political unrest in their homeland of Belarus and the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Embracing the uncertainty became both the inspiration and main lyrical theme for Alex Chumak, SOYUZ’ composer and arranger, who also decided to go a step further and change the language in which he writes songs from Russian, which is used as lingua franca in many post-Soviet countries, to his native Belarusian. The result is nine songs about dreams and outer space, ordinary miracles, things very close and very distant at the same time. Though primarily recorded in Brazil, KROK is not a Brazilian or MPB album. It blends the band’s Eastern European roots with jazz, folk and global influences. The genre of the music is hardly identifiable: there are folk ballads and jazz-driven pop compositions covered in lush and often dissonant string and woodwind arrangements where each note is placed with care and meaning behind it.

(listen)

Dylan Henner – Star Dream FM (Phantom Limb – Oct 17)

Nostalgitronica / Memory-Laced Ambient

Marking his first proper full-length release since 2022’s You Always Will Be on AD 93, Dylan Henner introduces this deeply considered, choral-laced work of experimental ambient music. The backdrop to Star Dream FM represents a tactile canvas on which the record’s true meaning is painted. It is, through Henner’s now-characteristic employment of ambient-textured synthesis, marimba, digital choir, and processed voice, a study of late adolescence and the experience of being seventeen. The result of this examination is a collection of meticulously constructed human-not-human compositions built from Henner’s mesmeric brand of desolate beauty. His immersive, storytelling range is broad, spanning from serene to cerebral, from powerful to uncanny. Henner references ambient and experimental music, chamber composition, the human voice, sound design, and field recordings, and wraps everything in the myth of his imaginary radio station Star Dream FM.

(listen)

Eric Angelo Bessel – Mirror at Night (Lore City Music – Oct 31)

Ambient Mycology / Ethereal Minimalism from the PNW

Mirror at Night is the second solo album from Portland, Oregon audio + visual artist Eric Angelo Bessel. Composed of twelve instrumental songs, the album paints an ambient landscape of dispersed artificial clouds and bioluminescent waters. Bessel imagines the nostalgic sounds of the Mellotron and the early aughts multitimbrality of Alesis synths. Mirror at Night is composed of twelve vignettes glimpsing the in-between realm; the past, present, and future merging into a still, obsidian surface. “File under: Ambient, Drone, Ethereal, Instrumental, Post-rock, Psychedelic”

(listen)

Hainbach & Simon Spiess – We Collide, We Shatter, We Grow (Mystery Circles – Sep 5)

Water Tank Ambient / Meditative Experimental

Hainbach: “There is a third contributor to this record, but it’s not a human, it’s a space. In one of the stranger live sessions I’ve ever had, I broadcast music from my studio to an abandoned water tank on the outskirts of Colorado. … A few weeks later, as I sent Simon’s live saxophone performance into the tank, he became the voice that had been missing on the record. We Collide, We Shatter, We Grow is an album that embraces both accident and experience. It’s about the random encounters that shape our lives, enrich them, and help us grow as artists and as humans. Abstract pings and drones flirt with wafts of jazz, as electricity and breath float through cosmic emptiness. Yet, there’s a sense of gravity that keeps it emotionally grounded, even in its freest moments of improvisation.”

(listen)

Jason Rigby – Mayhem (Endectomorph Music – Aug 22)

Improvised Sax + Drum Jazz / Studio-as-Instrument Vibes

After nearly a decade away from recording as a leader, saxophonist Jason Rigby returns with a groundbreaking duo album featuring renowned drummer Mark Guiliana. Mayhem showcases Jason Rigby’s evolution through its incorporation of sounds and instruments Rigby had never explored in his recordings before—synthesizers, keyboards, electronic processing, and more—creating both a sonic and emotional shift that represents a new chapter in his musical journey. Recorded at Pete Min’s treasure trove studio Lucy’s Meat Market in Los Angeles, the album emerged through what Rigby describes as an “effortless” creative process. While he brought a handful of compositions—some more fleshed out than others—the album came together organically with significant creative input from both Guiliana and engineer Pete Min. The duo made full use of Lucy’s Meat Market’s unique collection of instruments: a celeste, Moog bass and synths, a treated miniature piano, a beautiful grand piano, a pump organ, and a variety of vintage electronic signal processors. They also drew from Guiliana’s extensive percussion collection, including gongs and cymbals. Roughly half of the tracks are based on composed material Rigby brought into the studio, while the other half emerged through improvisation, layering, and collaborative construction during the recording process.

(listen)

Jorge Espinal – Bombos y Cencerros (Buh Records – Aug 29)

Experimental Guitar / Improvisational Music

After more than a decade of touring, collaborations, and sonic explorations, Peruvian guitarist and improviser Jorge Espinal presents Bombos y cencerros, his first solo album, released through Buh Records. Based in Buenos Aires since 2007, Espinal has been part of projects such as Ricarda Cometa and Calato, where he developed a musical approach in which body and instrument function as a single rhythmic unit. The idea for the album took shape after a 16-date European tour in 2023. Back in Buenos Aires, Espinal entered Estudio Belcebú to record, in a single session, a series of pieces that condense years of practice. Here we hear him playing, all at once: prepared electric guitar, bass drum, cowbell, pedals, and laptop. He triggers samples, builds loops, freezes sounds. The guitar becomes a source of rhythm rather than harmony.

(listen)

Kara-Lis Coverdale – A Series of Actions in a Sphere of Forever (Smalltown Supersound – Sep 12)

Solo Piano / Expressive Nocturnes

Kara-Lis Coverdale returns to Smalltown Supersound with her fourth full-length album, A Series of Actions in a Sphere of Forever, a collection of nine pieces, dedicated to solo piano. The album’s nine pieces are in a way classic nocturnes (i.e. inspired by night), but also evoke tangential, abstract associations: an animation of melodic webs; moving through a thick substance; sound objects in space. Written and recorded during winter in a small rural studio in Ontario, they also reflect Coverdale’s retreat from maximal sound and a return to acoustic fundamentals. The piano’s natural resonance guides the structure of the works, with Coverdale applying subtle electronic processing only to lightly blur the edges of melody and blend harmonics. Additionally, audible breaths underscore the album’s connection to the body’s inherent rhythms and multiple sonorities: the piano’s timbre and natural harmonics, as well as its effect in creating an elusive state of semi-consciousness. A Series of Actions in a Sphere of Forever is slow and focuses as much on the decay of piano melody as on its attack. In Coverdale’s own words: “This album is an exploration of harmony in space, music as an antithesis to silence. A silence that does not exist.”

(listen)

Land Of Echo – Almost Music (Wah Wah 45s – Aug 15)

Mutant Disco / End-Of-Summer Vibes

Almost Music, the debut album from Land of Echo, is a deeply personal celebration of return — to the city, to community, and to sound. Released via Wah Wah 45s, this record marks a heartfelt re-entry into a post-pandemic and politically confused world, with music shaped by reflection, hope, and the timeless pulse of the dancefloor. Blending altered disco, downtempo soul, and experimental electronics, Almost Music invites listeners into an emotive soundscape where every beat and bassline carries weight. It’s a sonic journey through shared struggles and future-facing optimism. At the heart of Land of Echo is Rob Mac, producer and longtime figure in UK underground music. From running the legendary Scratch hip-hop nights in the ’90s to releasing under aliases like Speeka (on Wah Wah 45s), Gum Drop, An Explore, and Jumbonics, Rob returns here to the soulful edges of dance music — armed with vintage gear, fresh vision, and a deep connection to his collaborators. Lucy Wilkins, violinist and synth explorer, brings cinematic sweep and subtle textures to the record. Known for her work with Massive Attack, Radiohead and Roxy Music, Lucy is Rob’s most consistent creative partner. Her contribution is both foundational and exploratory.

(listen)

Living Hour – Internal Drone Infinity (Keeled Scales/Paper Bag Records – Oct 17)

Noisey Pop / Shoegaze-Adjacent Indie

Winnipeg indie rock heavyweights Living Hour are back with their fourth full-length album, Internal Drone Infinity… Known for their lush fusion of dream-pop and shoegaze, the band continues to evolve, merging folk-inflected slowcore, fuzzy indie-pop, and hazy noise-rock into a sound that’s both expansive and emotionally piercing … full of icy, melodic vocals, grainy textures, twangy warmth, screeching distortion, and immersive percussion. Drawing inspiration from Yo La Tengo, Magnolia Electric Co., The Weakerthans, Feeble Little Horse, Yuck, and DIIV, the album explores the cyclical process of observation, documentation, and projection. Living Hour offer a raw, commanding expansion of their dreamy sound—a bold step into new territory that gives voice to the quiet strength and simmering rage of the overlooked.

(listen)

Mappe Of – Afterglades (Paper Bag Records – Sep 19)

Electronic Avant-Pop

A sweeping experimental sci-fi-folk album, Afterglades is a meditation on the end of the world—and what it means to face it alongside the people you love. Blue and orange hues permeate the aesthetic, along with decaying archways, antiquated technology, and overgrown greenhouses. Lost transmissions echo across desolate landscapes. Remains of the digital world distort the fabric of reality. Still, there are glimmers of light, ethereal beings floating above the earth. There is still hope left in the world at the end. From classically inspired, masterfully performed intricate guitar arrangements to hauntingly beautiful melodies and vocal textures to lush epic soundscapes, Mappe Of (aka Tom Meikle) is an artist unafraid to annihilate any musical boundaries and chart his own course.

(listen)

Marc-Antoine Barbier – Musée Des Espèces (Not Not Fun – Oct 3)

Electro-Acoustic Ecology / Canadian Kankyō Ongaku

The ‘soundscape ecologies’ of Montreal composer Marc-Antoine Barbier first emerged from late-night home studio improvisations triangulating Jon Hassel, Bernie Krause, and sleep deprivation. Gradually a palette congealed – granular tapestries of modal electronics woven with percussion, sax, flute, and DX7. The result is a low-lit patchwork of dream and delirium, fractal ambient and fifth-world freefall: Musée Des Espèces [‘Museum of Species’]. Barbier’s background in new wave world-building and synth-patch sculpting fuses here to full effect. The songs are alternately soothing and serpentine, swaying with smoke, rhythm, color, and ceremony. It’s album-as-environment, a harmony of spheres and vertical terrain, swiftly tilting through a tunnel of sky, sea, and circuitry. “I wanted to create something between chaos and harmony – a naturalistic dialogue.”

(listen)

Mason Lindahl – Joshua / Same Day Walking (Mt. Brings Death – Sep 24)

Solo Guitar w/ Atmospheric Might / Post-Flamenco

A solo guitar double album where flamenco virtuosity meets the dusky ambience of Fennesz’s Endless Summer. Crazy good chops, visionary application. Though packaged together, Joshua and Same Day Walking chart distinct worlds. Recorded in northern California and produced by Robby Moncrieff (Dirty Projectors, Zach Hill), Joshua is woolier and warmer, evoking haze, humidity, and overgrown Spanish moss. Meanwhile, Same Day Walking — recorded in Iceland and produced by Moncrieff alongside two-time GRAMMY-winning composer / sound designer Sam Slater (Joker, Chernobyl) — is, appropriate for its icier climes, windswept and beholden to the vast emptiness of harsh landscapes. As a pair, they provide a thorough portrait of Lindahl’s singular and versatile playing.

(listen)

Names on Tapes – We Weren’t Programmed For This (No Input – Oct 3)

Post-Electronica / Decay Beats / Techno-Adjacent

Names On Tapes is the collaboration between Neil Kleiner — electronic composer and jazz musician (Dark Captain Light Captain, Lo Recordings; Four Tet & Steve Reid collaborator, Soul Jazz Records) — and Stacey Hine — avant-garde guitarist (The Sailplanes, Mihai Cucos Trio). Together, they explore the fragile spaces where machines fail, loops decay, and memory falters. The result is an album of drone, glitch, and post-rock electronics that feels both calmly disorienting and quietly defiant. Drawing on influences from William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, Warp-era experimentalism, and early Tortoise, We Weren’t Programmed For This unfolds in movements of half-erased melodies and broken signals, stitched together with ghostly precision. The album’s title reflects its emotional core: alienation, memory, and rage in an era where humans and technology blur into “emotional cyborgs,” using machines to process grief, longing, and joy.

(listen)

Oleksandr Kolosii – Crossed Sounds (Oct 2)

Straight Ahead Jazz / Bebop + Hard Bop

Denmark-based Polish jazz saxophonist Oleksandr Kolosii has a style of playing that pays tribute to legendary bebop and hard bop players like Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and John Coltrane. He currently combines this with continuous inspiration from a wide array of world music. Oleksandr has worked and performed with Alex Sipiagin, Donald Edwards, Doug Weiss, Matt Penman, JK Kim, Kenneth Dahl Knudsen, Anders (AC) Christiansen, Anders Mogensen, Carl Winther to name a more than a few.The fusion of world rhythms, classical music and straight-ahead jazz makes his music recognizable on the jazz scene today. Oleksandr new album “Crossed Sounds” features Alex Sipiagin on trumpet, Lorenz Kellhuber on piano, Makar Novikov on double bass, and Donald Edwards on drums. 

(listen)

Pulse Emitter – Tide Pools (Hausu Mountain – Sep 26)

Caffeine Electronica / Syncopated Synth Fusionistia

Portland based producer / synthesist Daryl Groetsch composes music under the moniker Pulse Emitter. Channeling his love and mastery of styles ranging from new age to Berlin school kosmische to drone to progressive electronic music to noise akin to junk floating through deep space, Groetsch crafts emotionally resonant synth pieces teeming with diverse melodic architectures and textural details. The album teems with rapid-fire arpeggios and labyrinthine melodies as Groetsch lays out intricate webs of shifting chords and changes tempos between passages, laying out a series of distinct environments that we watch unfold from the shoreline. Though it rarely breaks into any legible drum beats, relying on the percussive tones of his synthesizers alone to sketch out his ornate rhythms, the album channels the forward motion of IDM and prog rock as much as the harmonies and irregular time signatures found in jazz fusion, translating ideas from these traditions into the frameworks of purely electronic synth fantasias.

(listen)

Rand – Teer (Rand Music – Aug 15)

Ominous Experimental / Techno Drone

In their latest release, ‘Teer’ (english: tar), rand unveil two uncompromising extended tracks, ‘Teer I – fluid’ and ‘Teer II – rolled’, which were recorded live in one take … a collaborative project with Jan Gerdes, a renowned concert pianist in Germany, particularly known for his interpretations of contemporary music. “Together, we explore the possibilities of combining acoustic and electronic sound worlds. However, on the new Teer EP, Jan leaves the traditional piano sound behind, so we remain unpredictable.”

(listen)

Roméo Poirier – Off The Record (Faitiche – Oct 10)

Audio Collage / Sound Art / Experimental Hijinks

The new album by French collagist Roméo Poirier, is an amusing romp through the discarded history of recording studios. It contains fourteen miniatures based on accidental recordings of studio talk, revealing things that were never meant for the public: we hear instructions from studio staff, scraps of talk between musicians, or just microphones being adjusted, as well as false notes, false starts: everyone stops. Start again: 1, 2, 3, 4! Off the Record combines more than a thousand found sounds from studio archives into complex miniatures. The audio content of these outtakes is twisted, stretched, cut, reassembled, slowed down and accelerated. Voices cut into a microgroove, from a very old recording, intertwine with digital voices gleaned from YouTube. All of them in dialogue, engaging the listener with the impression of being part of a new music group.

(listen)

Rutger Zuydervelt – The Wonder Of It All (self-released – Sep 9)

Longform Electronica / Score for Choreography

Music for a performance by Daniel Linehan-Hiatus. “Choreographer Daniel Linehan’s The Wonder Of It All radiates joy and togetherness. From cerebral to wildly energetic, the piece feels like a ritual that slowly transforms into a euphoric dance party. Creating the music for this was a joy. It brought me back to the nineties, when I was discovering electronic (dance) music. That feeling of wonder and discovery seemed an apt comparative to the sense of awe that Daniel and the dancers convey in The Wonder Of It All. Hopefully without sounding too vain, this score feels like quite an achievement for me, also because it’s so different from ‘my usual sound’ (if there is one). The slow 15 minute build-up might not surprise, but what happens after feels novel within my discography, and might charm fans of Plaid or James Holden.”

(listen)

SOHN – Albadas (Dawn Songs) (adaptpivotmove – Oct 10)

Expressive Electronics / Expansive Ambient

With the release of three critically acclaimed albums for heralded UK label 4AD, British producer & composer SOHN‘s transcendent and intricate productions married analog warmth with modern minimalism, creating a powerful sentimental honesty that runs through even his most electronically driven compositions. Hailing originally from London, his musical journey has seen him call Vienna and Los Angeles home, before settling in the forested region of  Garraf, Spain. lbadas (Dawn Songs) signals a quiet shift in SOHN’s creative process, exploring emotion through sound alone rather than through lyrics. The upcoming album is a quiet, contemplative work that foregrounds melody, mood, and texture. It’s music created in the first moments of the early light, at times contemplative, patient and optimistic, at others foreboding and ominous. It encapsulates the potential of a new day and the many roads it may present.

(listen)

Spaceface – Lunar Manor (Mothland – Aug 22)

Skewed Indie Pop / Sun-Bathed Psychedelia

Spaceface — the groovy neo-psychedelic dream pop project led by Jake Ingalls (formerly of The Flaming Lips) and Eric Martin — has evolved into a dynamic four-piece with the addition of Marina Aguerre (Teal Pop) on bass and Garet Powell (Double Wish) on drums. The groovy bunch harness the transcendent pulse of the spacetime continuum into catchy songs that whirl and twirl, bend and stretch, attract and propel. Spaceface turned to producer and multi-instrumentalist, Taylor Johnson, as well as fellow LA based southern transplant, Dent May, finally immortalizing their third opus. This collection of beautiful musical oddities, ranging from moody indie ballads to modern disco anthems is scheduled for release via Montréal boutique imprint Mothland. RIYL: MGMT, Broadcast, Pond, Deerhunter, The Flaming Lips, ELO, Pearl & the Oysters etc.

(listen – “Be Here Forever” + “Everything is Money” + “Bittersweet Symphony“)

Steiger – Mowglowski’s First Take (Oct 17)

Electronic-Infused Jazz / Jaunty Jams

Steiger seek to explore unfamiliar territory with a strong emphasis on sound exploration and pinpoint the organic and timeless music of Latin Playboys, the punkiness and playfulness of Deerhoof, the lyricism of Ruben Gonzalez, the mystical Jon Hassell, and Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru as influences. One of the more idiosyncratic bands on the thriving Belgian jazz and improv scene, pianist Gilles Vandecaveye-Pinoy (Peenoise, PJDS, Uma Chine), bassist Kobe Boon (mòs Ensemble, The Milk Factory, Kreis) and drummer Simon Raman (Ivy Falls, Uma Chine, mòs Ensemble) continue to explore the outer margins of jazz and dive into other universes including post-classical, electronic, free improvisation and minimalism. ‘Mowglowski’s First Take’ is the next step in Steiger’s fascinating evolution as the trio continue its path of renewal, enterprise, and the search for the unpredictable.

(listen)

Steve Hauschildt – Aeropsia (Simul Records – Oct 10)

Kosmische Electronica / Melodic, Flowing Ambient

Steve Hauschildt returns after six years with his new album Aeropsia. After a transcontinental relocation from the U.S. to Tbilisi, Georgia, the electronic composer emerges from a personal and global transformation to explore themes of perceptual distortion, disconnection, and renewal. In the years since his last solo release, Hauschildt’s world has been marked by relocation and a growing sense of global turbulence. These experiences became the raw material for a work that navigates institutional haze and uncertainty itself. The result is music that employs decay as method, structure as entropy, and mutation as expression. While Aeropsia remains subjective in its vision, Hauschildt invited two previous collaborators to expand the album’s gravitational pull. Cellist Lia Kohl, who previously performed on Nonlin, returns and brings a textural warmth to select tracks, while guitarist Michael Vallera threads spectral harmonics into the mix. The album’s electronic foundation and its tactile elements meet in a state of luminous suspension to navigate the shifting physical and psychological terrain.

(listen)

Sturle Dagsland – Dreams and Conjurations (Deathbomb Arc – Oct 10)

Dramatic Art Pop / Norwegian Avant-Folk

RIYL: Kate Bush and similar dramatic art pop. || Sturle Dagsland is a highly acclaimed genre-bending artist from Norway. Together with his brother Sjur they have toured extensively at festivals all across the world, from Shanghai to New York, Greenland and all the way to the Source of the Nile in Africa. The two brothers conjure an expressive ever-changing soundscape with a distinctive sonic palette and an uncompromising whirlwind of sound. Dominated by Sturle’s astonishing voice their sound evolves from the ethereal and beautiful to wild and abrasive in a matter of seconds. Expect the unexpected and lean into a musical odyssey that conjures sounds of the netherworlds and intertwines old primordial knowledge with avant-garde pop music, screaming metal, folk music and immersive electronic soundscapes; From the beautiful and haunting ambient landscapes of “Windharp,” the Norwegian folk dance inspired track “Hallingen,”the self-collected ghost stories which inspired “Kwaidan,” the genuine joyfulness of “Whispering Forest, Echoing Mountains” and “The Ritual”- a song inspired by a raw shamanistic ritual that Sturle once found himself engaged in.

(listen: “Whispering Forest, Echoing Mountains” + “Galdring”)

Ted Hearne (with The Crossing) – FARMING (Deathbomb Arc – Oct 17)

Complex Hyperpopisms / Radioactive Choral Mutations

RIYL: SOPHIE, Meredith Monk, Oneohtrix Point Never, Anohni, etc. || Against an uncanny soundworld fraught with neck-breaking shifts and stylistic contradictions, Hearne tackles the long-tail impact of settler colonialism, agricultural degradation, big tech utopianism, corporate religiosity, and the abstraction of community. The album’s unholy marriage of ersatz Americana, digitally altered choral arrangements, and hyperpop’s synapse-frying maximalism inverts technology’s smoothing impulses in favor of an unwieldy, knotty expression of modern ennui and alienation. Throughout FARMING, every soulful element of human performance — a beautiful vocal phrase, a touching harmony — is threatened to be enveloped by the sinister application of technological processing, conjuring this aural trip into the Uncanny Valley.

(listen)

U – ARCHENFIELD (Lex Records – Oct 10)

Hauntological Collage / Ambient Folklore

To construct this record U mined a wealth of recorded material relevant to the area in Herefordshire known as Archenfield. With a nod to traditional music, he takes samples from these records and creates beautifully atmospheric sound pieces that are often mixed with painstakingly researched snippets from film, TV, YouTube and found home recordings to create a stirring reflection on local history and broader themes of how we interact, or even fail to interact, with English folklore today. There’s a hauntological aspect to these tracks too – firstly in how the disembodied instruments seem to yearn for physicality having long shed the corporeal presence of the human creating the sounds.

(listen + “Black Vaughan” video)

Verses GT – Verses GT (LUCKYME® – Sep 12)

Breakstep Electronic Soul / Burial-ish

Verses GT— the duo of Jacques Greene + Nosaj Thing— announce their self-titled debut album. Verses GT is the project, the group, the album, the live show, and the moving image—an all encompassing banner for a new collaborative world. There’s a hazy, meditative weight to Verses GT, not in an overtly emotional way, but as the result of intention and purpose. The album is coupled with an understated confidence to strip things back and cause a slow down in our everyday—an internal and external move that exists if we want it to. The intrinsic duality of Verses GT means the album also surges with the energy of empathetic, connected body-music. The album includes features from Kučka, George Riley, and TYSON and a collaborative art-working team of photographer-director Xavier Tera, creative director-writer Terence Teh, and artist-designer Erin D. Garcia. Together, they have created a project that is a globally-spanning, call-and-response mantra.

(listen — “Unknown” + “Your Light (ft. George Riley)“)

3+1: Ordos Mk.0

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The 3+1 paradigm is simple: the subject receives over a dozen questions. These queries are mostly ‘stock,’ but I specifically target a few at the artist’s work. And then, the subject is asked to name something loved but has yet to be widely known. That’s the ‘+1.’ I expect a paragraph or two, three at most, with the 3+1 pieces serving as a quick look into an artist and their worldview. 

Ordos Mk.0 has other ideas, and I’m thankful for that. Avoiding the stock questions, Ordos Mk.0 honed in on the ones that directly addressed his craft and intentions. The resulting responses are lengthy and thoughtful. I could post each answer as a stand-alone post if I wanted to. I admit surprise, but I should have known Ordos Mk.0 would deliver with such depth. That’s because the launching point for this piece is the ambitious and sprawling three-part album(s), Sisyphean Audio Therapy. 

Ordos Mk.0 (I only know the artist by the alias) leans into the therapy aspect, presenting the three installments as a healing process for both the musician and the listener. ‘Music as therapy’ is a familiar trope, but in answering these questions, Ordos Mk.0 brings a unique and interesting take. In the press write-up, the artist explains:

[The albums] are intended to serve as tools for relief from stress and anxiety as well as being inspired by and about the music and other media we turn to escape from it. It was due to this cyclical nature of being music to relax and escape while also being about media to relax and escape to, combined with the unending need to do so, which feels impossible to fulfill, that it is described as “Sisyphean.” 

And the music approaches the idea distinctively, too. The albums’ tracks — admittedly and audibly influenced by the likes of Biosphere, Alessandro Cortini, Suzanne Ciani, and Trent Reznor’s work with Atticus Ross — favor song-like lengths as opposed to extended ambient drone exercises. There are nods across the electronic music spectrum and references to its history. Field recordings flutter in and out, triggering imagined possibilities and sonic contextualizing. Melody is also an essential element; there are plenty of compelling synth lines and motifs to grab us. These tracks are like snatches from misremembered dreams.

Ordos Mk.0 states that he intended his latest album, Sisyphean Audio Therapy 3, to have balanced doses of hope and despair. I hear an unequal division — there’s a bit more hope when I listen, but I tend to be a glass-half-full kind of guy. Perhaps part of the therapy for the listener is how Ordos Mk. 0’s music is open to emotional interpretation, a sort of Bandcampian Rorschach test. These cuts slice through hard times and take us — creator and listener — along with them. And it’s important when listening to remember that Camus considered Sisyphus a happy but absurd hero, “one who does not have false hope but also does not sink into despair.“

Enjoy this extended bit of 3+1 with Ordos Mk.0 — there’s a lot to sink your teeth into. Also — the artist provided the original photography on which this post’s graphics are based.

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