Swiss artist Zimoun is best known for installations of industrial objects, creating music from the mechanical, from oscillations and rotation – the sound of movement. If you go to his website you can see some pretty incredible videos which offer a pretty clear indication of his process and the outcome. He also makes specifically audio works, having previously released Dust Resonance…

. YOUR MOTHERS DISGUSTING WINDOW is a solo project from Darlene Aaron, who has previously released music as AA Matheson, Bison Grass, Boquillas, WE1 XAM, Jenny Hickingbotham band, and DARLENE over the last 20+ years. This one's a little noisy, quite misanthropic and very extreme, with heart warming lyrics like: "Set me free from this fucking pig world This putrid shit hole, I’m dying inside…

. Connor D'Netto is a composer, performer and producer who explores the intersections of experimental electronica, ambient and electroacoustic music, combining hardware synthesisers, live instruments, guitar pedals and DIY creations. His music has been performed by the likes of the LA Phil and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and commissioned across Australia and abroad, including by ensembles such the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian String Quartet, and Rubiks Collective, Bang On A Can, Chromic Duo and Cats Cradle Collective.

Initial impressions: vinyl scratches in, insects, kids going aah, muffled voices, a drone, static/white noise, a thunderstorm, machine sounds…a spliffed-out beat, jazz drum breaks, dissonant guitar licks, more scratching exploding into cut-up shouts…field recordings, devices feedback…collagist, beat-juggling, scratching and glitching— restless and fidgety. Turntable Solos shifts through a wide palette of sounds, textures and tempos. It is an intriguing document compiling live recordings made in the second half of 2024.

La Festa Major de Gràcia, a celebration that’s been around for over 150 years, took place this year from the 15th until the 21st of August, holding our beloved sound art festival in the Perills passage-way amongst the festivities. The context of the event we’ll describe is rooted in a long-standing tradition that marks the season in Gràcia, a once autonomous little town (even once being presented as a kingdom), now an iconic part of the heart of the city.

. Ov Pain is Renee Barrance and Tim Player, an Aotearoa born Naarm based duo who have recorded five albums together. Their approach, often improvisatory is based around immediacy. In the past they've released a couple of albums on It Records and have traversed multiple styles that have seen them described as cold wave, post punk and gothic drone. Their latest offering…

Japanese audio visual artist Ryoji Ikeda is so far down the digital rabbit hole now that he’s made the world of 0’s and 1’s and digital code his instrument of choice. It’s hard to think of an artist who has used the sterile world of digitalia as such an effective means of self expression. Aside from his solo albums he’s become increasingly known for his installations which celebrate digital precision, sine tones and pure white digital light.

Berlin based Australian bassist and composer Mike Majkowski is no stranger to Cyclic Defrost. We last spoke with him in 2019, you can read that here, and we've reviewed a bunch of his albums including 2023's durational work Coast (review here), 2019's electronic work Between Seasons (review here), 2017's evocative drone work Days and Other Days (review…

It was impossible not to feel a sense of anticipation as we headed towards Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Buildings on the opening night of the Now or Never Festival, thanks to the warm pink glow emanating from its windows. It conjured up a distinctively woozy Suspiria vibe, suggesting tonight might very well offer something otherworldly, or at the very least out of the ordinary.

Firstly, I just want to shout out to our dearly beloved Fiona Kitschin (Bass player and vocals) who has been through the tough ordeal of breast cancer. Great to see you back Fi. After reviewing their relentless live album Tropical Fuck Storm’s Inflatable Graveyard last year, I was literally climbing the fence at the chance to review their brand-new album “Fairyland Codex”.

. Australian improvisational instrumental trio The Necks have returned with their 20th release. Disquiet consists of 4 long form pieces clocking in at 3 hours plus and not unexpectedly traverses some pretty diverse terrain. That's the beauty of the Necks, you never quite know where they are going, or where they'll end up, or even how they'll get there - but you do know it will be hypnotic.

. Alister Spence is a Sydney based pianist, composer and improviser who boasts a multitude of projects in a variety of styles. We last saw him in Asteroid Ekosystem, a cross genre supergroup of sorts with Ed Kuepper, Lloyd Swanton and Toby Hall, though he also has a duo with Tony Buck, Kira Kira alongside Natsuki Tamura and Satoko Fujii, a trio and a gaggle of other strange and innovative projects.

On a grey drizzly evening in early Spring, punters queued up for a finissage performance at Kraftwerk Berlin, a massive multi-use space in a former powerhouse. It is part of an art and events complex in the centre of the city that includes the iconic club Tresor. Here the LAS Art Foundation and OGR Torino co-commissioned a new major installation from Brussels-based artist Laure Prouvost, to launch its ongoing "Sensing Quantum" programme.

We had a chat with the multi-faceted UK based Turkish artists Elif Yalvaç and Çağrı Tozluoğlu. They released ‘Sediments’ earlier this year on TimbreWorks, and after reviewing this work that we decided to dig a bit deeper into their universe and explored the intersection of acoustics and electronics, the Turkish music scene, and how their migrant experience has impacted on their artistic output in a wide ranging conversation.

Lagoss are a trio boasting Discrepant label head Gonçalo F. Cardoso, along with Mladen Kurajica and Daniel García (Tupperware), who’s debut album featured these electro acoustic snippets of fantastical island exotica. They’re joined by Abagwagwa (aka Nihiloxica), a musical collective based in Kampala (Uganda)/UK, known for their propulsive percussive jams, made up of Henry Kazoma, Henry Isabirye, Jamie Mwanje, Peter Jones, Jacob Maskell-Key.

We were glad to receive Recognition's V.A. in commemoration of their anniversary. The pioneering Polish label turned 25 this year and celebrates with a delicious compilation featuring most of the artists that are part of their catalogue. Started in 1999, they’ve stood apart due to their focus not only in dance music but also in elaborations of its morphing and infinite edges.

Can you believe its been over 20 years since Ben Frost released his incredible Steelwound album? Room40 honcho Lawrence English does. As an early champion of Frost's work, he released it initially back in 2004 and has now produced a remastered 20th anniversary edition. He also supplied the pic above from Frost's Brisbane launch back in the day. At the time it felt like a singular work, these drifting shards of heavily reverbed shimmery guitar drones that did strange things to harmonics, existing somewhere between the nexus of ambient music, drone and sound art.

Released in April on Discrepant's sub label Souk, we've been really enjoying the work of Egyptian-French artist Seif Gaber aka Polonius. It's weird stuttering stilted funk, odd fragmented of sound that seems to synthesize so many references, that are then dragged back into his own unique universe. He has released his music on labels like Ikuisuus, Goaty Tapes and Sun Araw's Sun Ark, and his latest album on Souk, …

Abul Mogard has had a very prolific past couple years, and it wasn’t missed on our radar. Aside from remarkable duos (‘In Uno Spazio Immenso’, ‘Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close’), live shows recordings (with Rafael Anton Irisarri at Le Guess Who or ‘Live At The Athens Conservatoire’), and collaborations or remixes for KMRU, CoH and Joachim Spieth, he’s started his own imprint Soft Echoes with the release of his new album ‘Quiet Pieces’.

Sergio Merce is a sax player and sound artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Beyond the sax he uses a variety of instruments, electronics and field recordings. He has released much of his pretty diverse solo work on the Hitorri label as well as Edition Wandelweiser Records. His sound is wholly idiosyncratic, regularly using extended techniques whether its in a free improv or contemporary compositional setting.

To call Unsound eclectic is an understatement. It never fails to provoke, confound, seduce or dismay – often in equal measure, and often in the course of one set. Held across two nights in the Adelaide CBD it has become something of a beacon for forward thinking international and local artists irrespective of genre. It began, at the Lions Art Centre…

YEARNS is Joel Saunders of Spirit Bunny and A Country Practice alongside Andrew Foley of An Heirloom and Grids/Units/Planes. Outside of YEARNS they have separately appeared on releases on Room 40 and hellosquare Records, collaborating with artists including Erik Griswold (Clocked Out), Andrew Tuttle and Shoeb Ahmad and have had their music featured on ABC TV (The Heights). With a penchant for magic eye album covers, their music excercises remarkable restraint, often utilising circuit-bent Casio keyboards, modular software environments and tape loops to craft gentle ambient soundscapes.

We're pretty taken with this brutal, bleak industrial rework from one of our favourite purveyors of bass music, The Bug. It's his remix/collaboration with Kazakhstani artist Galya Bisengalieva. If you're curious to hear the original version, you can find it here, on her 2023 album Polygon, which was based around the Semipalatinsk Test Site located on the steppe in north east Kazakhstan (known as The Polygon).

A highlight of this year for us came from the hands of Hara Alonso on Fuu Records with her EP touch•me•not. The Stockholm-based pianist and sound artist from Spain is joined by Ryan Packard’s percussion, Ville Bromander’s double bass and Ellen Söderhult’s voice in an immersive experience that we’ll try to dissect. Opening with a track titled ‘Meandering’ and a piano that feels like moving water.

There is a carefree euphoria at the heart of The Universe Will Take Care Of You, the debut long player from forward thinking UK DJ and producer James Holden and Polish woodwind extraordinaire Waclaw Zimpel. The music bubbles, spurts, spits and scrapes, all arpeggiated electrics and sugary atmospherics, eschewing conventional structures and rushing headlong into a joyful ecstatic bliss.