New Arrivals
Ingrid Linnea
Swedish singer and composer Elin Piel returns to Mystery Circles after making a debut appearance on the Las Vegas-based ambient label back in 2020. Piel's sound deals in microscopic layers of textural detail slowly shifting around delicately embellished melodies - 'Tunnlar' is a perfect opening statement in this sense as glassy synth phrases pass through prismatic DSP and faint flickering interference skips around in the background.
Saor
Following her previous solo works Solas (2016), Fairge (2017) and Trian (2019) Saor [pronounced Sieur: meaning "free" in Scottish Gaelic] is the first release in a triptych of albums, inspired by escapes to the peaks of Claire M Singer's homeland of Scotland. Saor perfectly encapsulates Claire's experimental approach to the pipe organ, exploring rich harmonic textures and complex overtones creating ever-shifting melodic and rhythmic patterns, which conjure visions of the Scottish dramatic landsc…
Mediterranean Music-Water + Schafe Statt Geigen (2LP Bundle)
* The two recent Henning Christiansen releases in a special discounted bundle * A brand new and much needed vinyl reissue of “Schafe Statt Geigen / "Verena" Vogelzymphon”, as well as a never before released work by Henning Christiansen entitled “Mediterranean Music-Water”. Truly remarkable immersions into the sonorous world of one of the 20th Century’s most visionary creative minds - issued in very limited vinyl editions of 250 copies, with a 20-page photographic book, and 350 copies with a 16-p…
Sainte Anthony's Fyre
A wild, loud, raw New Jersey hard psych beast that’s been a favorite target of record collectors, dealers, bootleggers, and swamp dwellers for the past two decades, originally released on the Zonk! label.
Cold Reading
"Flora Yin Wong’s ravishing interiority finds lucid expression on an absorbing second album for Modern Love, manifesting her instrumental storytelling in a syncretic bind of supernatural themes with hyperrealist, concrète sound design. Through ten parts, Flora crystallises the ennui that followed an uncanny, disorienting trip to East and Southeast Asia. “On an unexpected stopover in Hong Kong after five years away, my friends took me to a Bazi reader one night - something I was curious about, bu…
Halos of Preception
"'Halos of Perception' was inspired by Lerkenfeldt's encounter with a member of Cave Clan, an Australian "urban exploration" group who probe abandoned forts, drains, bunkers and tunnels, searching out places that most people ignore or purposefully avoid. Her friend would travel underground to visit a small room and read alone by candlelight, prompting Lerkenfeldt to consider how sound travels through concrete tunnels, and how people used to put on underground shows. She recreates this nervous at…
Nippon Acid Folk 1970-1980
A counterculture movement united by an expansive, experimental and deeply soulful sensibility, Japan’s rebel protest music challenged the status quo and changed the country’s music industry in the process.
New Rudiment Candidates For Snare Drum
*100 copies limited edition* With a microscopic focus on the snare drum, Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy extracts and manipulates its sound in a variety of tunings whilst maintaining a precision and simplicity of method and form. This exercise is a common one for the artist, in which he limits both the instruments used and the techniques with which its sounds are processed — in this case using only reverb and hard EQ-ing to engineer the final outcome. Even with these self-imposed restrictions, there is a…
Trap
Michal Vaľko, aka Line Gate makes a return to mappa with his third cassette for the label. Once again the material is deeply minimalist, but shows marked evolutions in the Slovak, Prague-based artist’s unique trajectory. This time comprising two relatively short pieces (compared to the 40- and 60-minute works previously published on mappa), 'Trap' is perhaps Line Gate’s darkest yet. Whereas previously his works focused on psychoacoustic phenomena, or highlighted the sacredness and timelessness o…
Defragmentierte Assoziationen
*200 copies limited edition* Abstracke presents Cristov's debut LP. The Hamburg-based artist and designer Christoph Lohse delivers an amazing record inspired by technology and dystopia. German futuristic electronics, mechanical synths, primal rhythms... a cold, sometimes industrial sound, balanced with the jazzy acoustic drums and percussions performed by Manuel Chittka. Influenced by Ike Yard, Craig Leon, Monoton, and the German kraut maestros renewed by people like Kreidler, Die Wilde Jagd, To…
Project Frequency
* Limited edition of 105 copies * Originally recorded and mixed at ZSF Produkt Studio 1995. This second re-issue comes in green vinyl and with an updated artwork by Masami Akita. Remastered at Munemihouse in 2019 by Masami Akita.
Coupla Triples
*200 copies* Coupla Triples is a collection of two recordings made by MP Hopkins in 2014. The first piece, Spins, Groans, Tones, was previously self-released as part of a CDR/chapbook edition, while the second piece Waves, Feedback, Thoughts, has remained unreleased until now. Both pieces were created using a simple compositional method, in which random word prompts were selected from a list of sounds and ‘interpreted’ in an immediate manner with only basic recording equipment - a microphone, a …
Lados B
On October 15th and 16th, 2020, drummer Daniel Villarreal was joined by guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butterss for two afternoons of recording in the backyard of Chicali Outpost in Los Angeles. For all three musicians, it was the first ensemble recording session they’d done in-person since the pandemic locked the world down just seven months prior. Some choice moments from these sessions made it onto Villarreal’s critically-acclaimed 2022 album Panamá 77, but most of the music remained …
The World Was Turning Before
*200 copies limited edition* Bill Seaman, Tim Diagram and Stephen Spera talked about making music together during the composing of the Architectures of Light album which Tim released on his Handstitched imprint. Over the course of a few months this evolved into the new LAAPS album — "The World Was Turning Before" which focuses on a balance of sound making and collecting processes explored individually as well as between the three. The network of images of sonic imagination started forming into m…
Hide Behind The Silence EP 4
Vladislav Delay presents the fourth EP in his "Hide Behind The Silence" series with five 10" releases coming throughout 2023. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label "Rajaton".
Stillness is a myth. Consider concepts such as ”still water”, or ”still air” for that matter. Go to a restaurant, ask them for a glass of still water, hold it against the light and see where we’re at. Even though the water itself has been captured and imprisoned in the glass, it …
In de sloop der tijd
Bazip Zeehok Superstar? That might be taking it slightly too far, perhaps, but a fact is that all three artists on this album have had over 40 years of musical experience each, gained in a massive range of projects. And when we say massive, then we mean: a lot. G.W. Sok (The Ex, Zoikle, Oiseaux-Tempête, L&S, Coddiwomple, King Champion Sounds, Svätsox, Cannibales & Vahinés, Action Beat), Lukas Simonis (Dull Schicksal, Zoikle, Stepmother, Trespassers W, Coolhaven, Mothers of Exit), and Gert-Jan Pr…
Mardle: Daily Rhythms of a Pond
Tip! Musician and field recordist Action Pyramid finds magic in the everyday on Mardle, a compelling and confounding suite of hydrophone compositions revealing the sonic 24-hour cycle of the UK’s freshwater ponds. Rooted in Jack Greenhalgh’s sonic research on pond biodiversity, Mardle brings to the surface the delicate sounds of aquatic insect stridulations, plant respiration and photosynthesis - an ecology of otherworldly rhythms and alien hyper-sounds that feel more like early synth experiment…
Murder In Blue
Not that droney as often but circular, grainy, dreamy melodious doodles from Scotland's finest Fraser Burnett…. Might ring in your head just like a summer hit!
Rosume
Italian sound artist Ezio Piermattei returns with a new tape. Atopic sound reality made of voice, tapes, unrecognizable guitars, post horn, organ. Stratifications through subtractions, autobiographism wrapped in abstraction, musique concrète and idiosyncrasies transcoloring in tones of contemporary darkness.
Hverdag
Fragile yet intense compositions for acoustic instruments and field recordings. Recorded on tape and carefully dubbed from the original cassette master.