Weirdo Rippers #16

January was unlike many others in recent times. Inauguration Day brought the expected dread most had forecasted, with the world plunging into even greater depths of the unknown. But it wasn’t the lowest point of the month, with the Los Angeles fires causing destruction and displacement for many citizens of California, including many in creative communities.

The compilation, For LA Vol.1, has been organised by experimental artist, Hollie Kenniff. Featuring 34 tracks of previously unreleased material from composers all across the world, including Hollie herself, The Album Leaf, Patricia Wolf, Markus Guentner, Pepo Galán, Joachim Spieth, Benoît Pioulard, and many more, all proceeds from For LA Vol. 1 will support We Are Moving The Needle and Give Directly, helping frontline organisations dedicated to relief and recovery to those affected.

Our thoughts are with everyone in the L.A. community during these challenging times, and for those who can, please give your support by purchasing a copy of For LA Vol.1 here.

With the above events taking precedent over many other things, January found it tougher to digest new music. A world that keeps spinning of course, as always, with our first Weirdo Rippers feature of the year, there’s a mixture releases from both the past year and present.

This is a feature that always throws up surprise or two, and our latest edition is no different, with a mixture of artists that have previously adorned these pages along with several brand new ones, too.

With regards to the former, it’s a pleasure for us to premiere the video for Love’s Blue Echo – the latest track to feature on Ryan James Mawbey’s forthcoming album, Nature Mirror, set for release on February 21 via Cruel Nature Records (more on that below).

In the meantime, stay safe and stay tuned for plenty more around these parts in the month ahead.

Sun 13’s Top 25 EPs of 2024

Departure Street: So let our scars fall in love
Kalamine Records

Parisian experimental guitarist, AJ Kimmel, released some beautiful music last year, and under his Departure Street moniker, he returned in the first month of 2025 with more.

So let our scars fall in love is like poetry in motion. The ebbs and flows, like a river of sound, as Kimmel’s melodic style of guitar rings out, covering every inch of space.

It’s ethereal stuff, and one that is unlike any other in the world of experimental guitar music. Kimmel, the exponent of a hypnotic dream state from the outer worlds, and on So let our scars fall in love, he does it as vividly as ever.

 Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp

Earth Speaks: At Gold Beach
Self-released

Environmental-based artist, Matthew Himes, returns in what is the first of two new releases featured in our latest edition of Weirdo Rippers.

Under the Earth Speaks moniker, Himes shares a release that merges environmental sound art with meditative-like practices in a single 30-minute field recording captured along the Northern Pacific Ocean.

The results intersect art with mindfulness, connecting emotion with nature through the lens of deep-listening. They say the best things in life are often free, and on At Gold Beach, that saying can be deemed as two-fold in what is a calming movement designed to cleanse body and soul. Another a positive continuation on what Himes does.

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Avi C. Engel: Nocturne (Soundtrack for an Invisible Film)
Somewherecold Records

Canadian songwriter, Avi C. Engel, started the year with their latest release, Nocturne (Soundtrack for an Invisible Film) (set for physical release on February 28 via Somewherecold Records).

Combining their ghostly vocals with sparse instrumentation and field recordings, Nocturne’ was a product through a spell of sleeplessness and depression, resulting in what is a series of nightscapes that form as a comfort blanket.

Rich, warm and slightly aloof, Nocturne (Soundtrack for an Invisible Film) continues the experimentalist’s solid run of form during this decade. For those not attuned to Engel’s body of work, this isn’t the worst place to start.

Listen/Purchase from Bandcamp

Sun 13’s Top 50 Albums of 2024

Être Ensemble: Sans Toi
Katuktu Collective

Following their 2023 debut, CLOSE / SPACE, the venerable JONI VOID returns with the Être Ensemble for the project’s second release, Sans Toi.

This time joined by a slew of guests including Midwife’s Madeline Johnston, N NAO, Sarah Pagé, Maya Kuroki, Ida Toninato and Gabrielle Godbout (Anette Zénith/me float), VOID spearheads something that glistens with futurism.

This is feverishly warped experimentalism drawn from the vestiges of dub, techno and club culture, gently ushered into the world of sound design. The latter, a world where the floors are cold and the walls are harsh, but on Sans Toi, the Être Ensemble manages to provide some light and warmth to this space.

Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp

EUERPI: 1971
Self-released

In one of the more interesting albums in this feature, 1971 is the latest escapade from Bulgaria’s Mirian Kolev.

Under the EUERPI moniker, Kolev recorded on a 1971 Riga from Gabrovo, Tsareva to Livada – a train that carries a unique, multi-layered sound and vibration, and through field recordings, Kolev captures some unique, seismic noise throughout the journey.

Think Hell on Hearth with more dissonance, almost to the point where these field recordings put you inside the train itself. Chaos moves in different ways and on 1971, Kolev manages to find some of it in the most unlikely places, producing something new and positively forward-thinking.

Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp

FluFlaFen: Sorcery Sauce
Ramble Records

The cover art is pretty special, huh? So are the sounds. Meet FluFlaFen. Consisting of trio, clarinettist Hadi Marvian, guitarist Jukka Ahonen and drummer Yoni Geller, the trio whip up a sinister form of punk-jazz.

On their latest, Sorcery Sauce (it just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?) this is an escapade across rugged terrains and the humid marshlands of experimentalism. No stone is left unturned by the trio, as Marvian leads the charge with some of the most unhinged clarinet committed to tape in years!

As its title suggest, it’s all sorcery, and it has plenty of sauce. The hottest out there. Just press play and listen for yourself.

Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp

Label Watch: Katuktu Collective

Chihei Hatakeyama: Lucid Dreams
First Trace Records / White Paddy Mountain

Following his excellent 2024 Gearbox Records releases alongside jazz drummer Shun Ishiwaka, ambient composer, Chihei Hatakeyama, returns early in 2025 with his latest solo album, Lucid Dreams.

It sounds like it says on the tin, really. Blending acoustic guitar and a swathe of soft synths, these tender, shiny interludes breakdown the complexities of life into something that has no currency.

And that’s what Lucid Dreams is. Borderless. The kind of recordings that make your worries fade, and as this world continues to move at a pace most of us can neither comprehend nor contend with, on Lucid Dreams, Hatakeyama creates something that manages to slow it down to a crawl.

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Purchase from Bandcamp

Hiram: Green Green Earth
Self-released

The second of his releases in this feature, under the Hiram alias, the Minnesota environmental-based artist returns with perhaps his most dynamic recordings yet with Green Green Earth.

Eight tracks at under 35 minutes, Green Green Earth consists of the kind of sounds that illuminate everything around you. There’s a fresh brand of hope through these subtle, uplifting dreamscapes that reverberate with a deep meditation that reaches all corners of the earth.

Matthew Himes has always been inspired by reaching the inner-core of one self, and his explorations through sound confirm that this can be done through field recordings where body and mind can be aligned to nature. Not living on earth but living with it and Green Green Earth is a beautiful exploration of that.

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Purchase from Bandcamp

Language Field: Reworks
Precariat Records

Under the Language Field banner, London-based producer, Paul Cheshire, hit the frequency midway through last year with his Fluctuations EP. At the backend of 2024, he followed it up with Reworks. 

Like live albums or ‘best ofs’, remixes aren’t really something that fill the column inches around these parts, simply because there’s just too much other material out there in the wilderness. Here, though? Well, Cheshire’s Reworks is an exception to the rule.

A collection of reworks from Language Field’s debut LP, Fearful Symmetry, this remix album features Saint Etienne, Sulk Rooms’ Thomas Ragsdale, Paddy Steer, Listening Center, Pulselovers, The Twelve Hour Foundation, Une, Palm Skin Productions, Bernard Grancher, and Swansither. A star-studded line-up with each of these interpretations matching the strength they suggest on paper.

Listen
Purchase / Bandcamp

Thomas Ragsdale Interview: “I love the idea of albums having an anti-concept”

Olga Anna Markowska: ISKRA
Miasmah Recordings

It’s hard to choose favourites in a feature like this, but ISKRA, the debut album by Polish multi-instrumentalist and composer, Olga Anna Markowska, is certainly in the conversation.

With a swathe of instruments not limited to zither, cello, and wordless vocalisations, on ISKRA Markowska is the architect of something ethereal and filmic. The use of cello, giving these compositions a rich cadence likened to the sun reflecting off icecaps.

For a debut offering, ISKRA covers so much ground with confidence and grace. From drone to minimalism and to neo-classical meanderings, while it may seem a lot to get your head around, Markowska delivers something frighteningly seamless, revealing something new each time.

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Purchase from Bandcamp

Ryan James Mawbey: Nature Mirror
Cruel Nature Records

Remember when Dylan went electric? On Nature Mirror, U.K. experimentalist Ryan James Mawbey has done something similar, moving beyond his blissful, experimental outings for, well… a bunch of needle-shifting freak-outs.

Well, not freak-outs per se, but drafting in Jonathan Hill, Jonathan Deasy, and Yumah, the drummer deconstructs jazz, adding beautiful inflections to it, pulling the mind to places where trouble is a distant memory.  

Amalgamating deep-listening passages throughout these four recordings, Nature Mirror opens up portals that lead to out-there possibilities. Taken aback at just how different this is to Mawbey’s previous works, it showcases just how dynamic his songcraft is.

Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp

The Nighttime Ensemble: The Nighttime Ensemble
Longform Editions

With the sad news that February’s drop will be the last for Sydney label, Longform Editions, now is the time to pay tribute by digging into the label’s wonderful back catalogue.

One of which came in the label’s December 2024 run, with The Nighttime Ensemble. Comprising of Daniel Wyche (guitar) and Brian J. Sulpizio (piano) with help from Lia Kohl (cello, radios) and Sam Scranton (drums, objects), this is beautiful, longform meandering doom jazz with echoes of The Necks paying tribute to Bohren and der Club of Gore.

And it’s funny, because the album is said to be inspired by a YouTube comment referencing Bohren’s 1995 release, Midnight Radio, which read: “I can feel how fragile our world is, how lonely people are after midnight, how absurd it is to be attached to anything!” By listening to the 52 minutes of this wonderful piece, truer words have not been spoken.

Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp

Rhubiqs Interview: “I’m not at all inspired to create the same song over and over”

Jimmy Peggie: Dusted in Darkness
Self-released

Jimmy Peggie first dropped onto our radar last year with the excellent Book of Erosion release, and late last year, the Arizona producer followed it up with Dusted in Darkness.

Peggie is the engineer of stark, grainy minimalism. The backdrops of his native Arizona can’t really be traced throughout his works, including the compositions on Dusted in Darkness. Minimalism that feels like a set of field recordings from an industrial estate melted down in some eerie, post-apocalyptic wasteland.

It’s minimalism for dark times. Does it make Peggie’s latest works a political statement? Maybe, for the sounds on Dusted in Darkness feel eerily attuned to these times.

Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp

Winterwood: To the White Sea
Cruel Nature Records

Despite releasing the beautiful Hillingar tape towards that back end of 2024, it was more of a fallow year in the world of Winterwood. However, 2025 sees the New Zealand-based duo out of the gates early with with To the White Sea.

A sound word inspired by the novel by James Dickey about an American tail gunner who parachutes from his burning airplane into Tokyo in the final months of World War II, throughout these three long-form compositions, Winterwood bring to the eerie apocalyptic passages such scenes command.

There’s a minimal tenderness to these recordings. It’s Winterwood in cinematic mode, pulling away from the exploratory guitar that has served them so well in favour of field recordings and soundbites from public domain archives. It makes for a beautiful collage of sound, and with To the White Sea it’s yet another boon for the duo.

Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp

zakè & Benoît Pioulard: Eve
Zakè Drone Recordings

On Christmas eve, the Indianapolis producer and New York-based composer joined forces to spring the surprise that was the aptly titled Eve.

Both proficient in the world of glacial moodscapes and emotive tape loops, on Eve the pair are responsible for one of the most beautiful releases this winter.

They say electronic music is for dark rooms and headphones, but what zakè and Pioulard engineer on Eve is something more wholesome. Something that should be shared and celebrated with those you’re closest with. Just press play and let the duo take you into their beautiful sound world, because over the last five weeks, there hasn’t been one better.

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Previous Weirdo Rippers features:

#15
#14
#13
#12
#11
#10
#9
#8
#7
#6
#5
#4
#3
#2
#1