Proof Of Identity
More than a decade ago, I made a piece of beat-based electronic music and titled it "Middle Eastern IDM" for a course assignment. After listening to it in class, my professor asked what was Middle Eastern about it. It was only a year after I had left Iran to study in the US, and I didn't know that I could say "I am. I made the piece". So I went back and superimposed a sample of Egyptian protest chants on top of the piece, to make it "sufficiently Middle Eastern". What prejudiced conservatism and…
Befreit die Maschinen
The promise has for a very long time been that machines will free us from idle labor. They are to take the drudgery away from us so that we can turn our attention to the beautiful, pleasant and sublime things. And music machines have long carried with them the promise that they would enable everyone to make music. Any music that can be conceived and dreamed should be able to be sounded. But neither are people working less today, nor has the fascination with true virtuosity disappeared. On the co…
Ultra-Materials
Andrew Black, who hails from one of the UK's post industrial North West Milltowns has a sensitive feeling for space and its acoustics. Having trained as a designer and operated within the realms of architecture and public space, it was only natural to extend his interest to manipulating field recordings.
The six pieces collected on Ultra-Materials provide an insight into Black's highly sensitive minimalism: they stand for a subtly meandering mediation on room acoustics and place, which are man…
Anon 1
“This is bittersweet and beautiful ambient music that combines the widescreen vision of bvdub with chemtrail atmospherics that nod to William Basinski.” —Bleep
Color Of Time
Color of Time is a long distance, ambient and drone project featuring Kévin Séry (From Overseas) and Nick Turner (Tyresta). Created with guitar, synthesizers, Mellotron and effects, their music focuses on themes of impermanence, loss and the impact that humans have on each other and the planet.
Crossing Water
Cat Tyson Hughes is an Australian composer and artist working in experimental music and contemporary art. ‘Crossing Water’ is her debut album with Past Inside the Present, in addition to it being her first formal full-length. She has spent the last few years working on various music projects including her appearance on our compilation ‘Healing Together: A Compilation For Mental Health Recovery’ 2LP and appearing on zakè’s long-player ‘Remembrance’ 2LP with a beautiful rework. She has also worked…
Fever Dreams
“Composed during one of London's endless dark and locked down winters, Fever Dreams is a fantastical, speculative take on high density living. From dark, mouldy rooms, subterranean depths, symbiosis and multi-species entanglements, it cloaks itself in the claustrophobia, excitement and despair of living in a metropolis. It is a work which both celebrates and fears the weeds, spores, vermin and grime of London. The dark fantasies, frustrations, and utopian aspirations of its urban survivors. Froz…
Orchestral Tape Studies II
Orchestral Tape Studies II is an enthralling amalgam of orchestral textures carefully crafted by zakè. It is a continuation of its predecessor, Orchestral Tape Studies which was released to high acclaim in 2019. Bringing forth pastoral meditations with becalmed, atmospheric intent, Orchestral Tape Studies II is a convincing display of beautiful scores primed for the self-reflective moments that are both contemplative and thought provoking. These delicate repetitions, reticent sound treatments, a…
Stoneface
*300 copies limited edition* Accumulation and assembly in the Derbyshire Dales in the Caroline K studios. Digital mastery achieved in Silver Octopus studios Buxton, Derbyshire, England, 29th July 1989. Mastering : Paul Lavigne March 2023. Layout : Pole Ka. Dedicated to the new active listener.
Áhkká
Pauline Hogstrand's music – and Áhkká, in particular – is deeply inspired by both inner and outer influences, by the mystical as well as the rock-solid, by fictitious conversations and the queen mountain of Lappland (Áhkká).
Dissections
Here the work of the last 4 years by Capricorni Pneumatici. A double CD with 8 medium/long sound dissections recorded in Sweden, UK and Southern Italy. Dissection 1 is a frizzling track based on Tibetan bowl, maracas and music machine. Dissection 2 is a very long suite introducing low, calm waves of a forgotten sea that you should listen in a dark room. Dissection 3 is shorter with the addition of percussive echoed noises. Dissection 4 has a harsher sounds produced by synth, el guitar, tubular …
Out Of Standard!! Italia 11
Chapter 11 of this infamous compilation released in collaboration between italian labels ADN and Out of Standard!!
Dystopia
Since relocating to Brazil some years back, Needs Music co-founder Lars Bartkuhn has returned to his long-held love of musical improvisation. Although it’s a product of his jazz roots and classical training, the German producer has constantly found new ways to apply it to his work in the sphere of electronic music. ‘Dystopia’, his first solo album for almost nine years, was born out of two interlinked ideas: a desire to create improvised music without the aid of computer sequencers or an electro…
Electronic Music from 1972-2022
Electronic Music from 1972-2022 seeks to frame fifty years of Carl Stone's compositional activity, starting with Stone's earliest professionally presented compositions from 1972 ("Three Confusongs" and "Ryound Thygyzunz", featuring the voice and poetry of Stefan Weiser – later known as Z'EV) up to the present. This collection is not meant as a definitive history but rather as a supplement to be used alongside the previous two archival releases. It is simultaneously an archival release marking Ca…
Formationer På Gyldne Græsgange
This is the second release from our dear friend Sebastian Bruun. He makes truly beautiful ambient music, with a slightly melancholic but still optimistic sensibility, uniquely his own. His music is primary based on warm synth-loops and Field-recordings recorded to tape. This is a quite minimal release hence the limited nature of 4 track tape recording, but the compositions are filled with emotion and care for detail in sound. This is a beautiful tape that we are happy to put out.
Reality Opposition
A note from Christina Giannone
Dissociation is the driving force behind the composition. The act of surrendering, the attempt to observe our existence from the outside.
Giving in feels like giving up.
Acceptance feels like resignation.
The process included digital sound experimentation by means of observance and detail orientation and the idea of sound presenting itself in different identities depending on the listener. This attention to detail acts as a hologram, changing shapes depending on th…
Aether Ore
*300 copies limited edition* New album from Josiah Wolfson’s X Or Size project, all washed out and reverberating dub. X Or Size throw just the right amount of darkened ambiguity into proceedings to render the sound at its most compelling, borrowing from the classic dub techno playbook with wave after wave of luxurious, eroded dub chords and fractured percussion somewhere between vintage Chain Reaction and the more contemporary wave of late night zoners as best exemplified by Actress’ ghost-in-th…
Mauve District
After issuing an incredible stream of collections featuring archival and recent material in the last years, electroacoustic journeyman, Stephan Mathieu, returns with “Mauve District”, his first physical solo stand-alone release of new material since 2017’s “Radiance”. Created as the soundtrack for an exhibition of the American painter, Helen Frankenthaler, at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, earlier this year, it encounters Mathieu weaving a truly mesmerizing minimalist work for piano and …
Vakning
Tip! "Nothing is fixed, nothing is permanent, nothing holds for anyone, any time or anything.
As stable as we might choose to think it is, this planet is anything but that. A paper thin crust, the zone in which we find ourselves, and mostly concern ourselves with, exists as a modest veil cloaking a dynamic seismic turbulence that is as powerful as it is unknowable.
There are moments though where ruptures occur. The pressure from within carves its way to, and through, the surface of the planet si…