honest words on honest music
Mike Jedlicka
I’ll show you mine…
Take a peek into the collection of records owned by the host of Optic Echo Presents.
In the studio with Hania Rani
“… I usually try to bring new elements to the process or deliberately limit myself to one instrument…”
In the studio with Eluvium
“… many of my favorite compositions have been created using pretty simple and relatively cheap tools…”
The Audio CD Flaw
My journey into a rabbit hole of bit-perfect data transfer
How to fall in love with digital music…
All about appreciating the medium from a connoisseur’s point of view…
June 8th, 2025
Good morning, and happy Sunday. I’ve gathered another collection of recently released beautiful music that I …
Sankt Otten
Die Gute Fee War Schon Da
“… blending live DX7 pulses, ambience and haunting synthetic breath into foreboding future-retro…”
“… a haunting meditation on memory and sound, where restored fragments unfold into hypnotic, all-enveloping sonic light…”
“… evoking a sense of loss, disintegration, and the fragility of our temporal selves…”
“… a hypnotising cocktail of spatial ambience and pulsating rhythms…”
The following is an excerpt from an Interview with Erik K Skodvin, who is currently the featured artist on Headphone Community. For only $1 a month, you can join us in an intimate discussion, where you get to ask your questions as well, knowing that every contribution goes directly back to support the artist. Join us now for an ongoing conversation about Erik’s music, where this interview is currently in progress, published in multiple parts!
May 18th, 2025
Good morning and happy Sunday! Welcome to the May edition of my OUT TODAY column, which …
April 18th, 2025
It’s been a month since my last update, and, once again, what is now a ritual …
Djrum, Billow Observatory, Peter Gregson
“… genre-bending, time-blurring, soul-stirring daily soundtracks…”
Timothy Fairless
Tullamarine
“… confronting the limits of their own interpretative frameworks…”
“… deeply effected piano motifs reverberate and echo in the depths of the room, evolving through looping electronics into a blissful, mesmerising cloud of (dis)harmony…”
Ben Chatwin
Verdigris
Sonic Contrasts: Destruction as Creation
In the composer’s hands, the obliteration embraces beauty, creating contrasts in harmony and dissonance. Like the album’s namesake, these compositions reveal how beauty emerges not despite deterioration, but because of it.
Ben Chatwin
Caldera
“… darkened, quiet and euphonic spaces between synthetic, buzzing pulses and organic, breathing textures…”
Øystein Skar
Levva
“… mapping a journey of homecoming to the landscapes within…”
… the music that’s inspired Jeremy throughout the last album’s creation…
March 16th, 2025
It’s [early] Sunday morning, and I sit down in my studio with headphones to collect and …
February 23rd, 2025
Happy Sunday, my friends, and welcome back to a brand new entry in my OUT TODAY …
“… about discovering deep listening and reconnecting with the music and the artist…”
Quiet Husband
At Your Worst
“… this is music from the peripheral spaces of experience…”
Evan Gildersleeve
Grief
“… about our immense capacity for empathy, regardless of our lived experiences…”
“… everything comes to me as it is meant to be…”
Monoparts, Will Samson, ATŌMI and Demetrio Cecchitelli
“… a musical exploration of personal revelations and environmental echoes…”
Sinemis
It’s Not Fate, It’s You
“… at once a love letter to a beautiful land and a scathing indictment of the governing powers that have harmed its people…”
From the Mouth of the Sun
In Wind or Dust
“… transcendent soundscapes where earthbound textures meet celestial drones…”
FTMOTS gifts us with music that functions as emotional cartography for unexplored territories of human experience.
“… I am a firm believer in the concept of eliminating choices to move forward and come up with interesting ways of arriving at a goal…”
Markus Guentner
The Turning Wheel
“… reinforcing that feeling of not being able to hold onto something…”
Dött ljus
Bottna
“… shaking off the winter clouds and pulling the listener into a warm blanket of sincerity… “
“… sometimes I think trying to improve the sound all the time with equipment just disturbs the creation process…”
Ben Lukas Boysen
Alta Ripa
… blending nostalgic sentimentality with forward-thinking electronica…
From intricate synthesis to dance-floor-worthy rhythms and touches of darkness, this album captures the essence of this German electronic musician’s early adventurous experimentation, now enriched with maturity and experience.
A vinyl-only mix from Mike Jedlicka celebrating his favourites of last year from this still-spinning format…
… I try to think more about how far you can edit elements in terms of sound and how much resonance you can extract from an element in order to be able to represent the essence of the desired sound…
Taylor Deupree
Sti.ll
An excerpt from a monumental project released in the newly launched FOLIO format on greyfade
Belief Defect
Desire and Discontent
… punishing soundscapes, dissonant progressions, and visceral tones…
This album offers an uncompromising reflection on the state of mankind. Explore this stunning potion of industrial proto-techno and experimental avant-garde for these pre-apocalyptic times.
50 tracks from 50 releases of 2024
December 8th, 2024
It’s already that time of the year when I feel a winter’s shadow breathing down my …
Ava Rasti
The Dead Horse
“… a mesmerizing soundscape of longing and reflection…”
“There are certain video games that let you start the game from the start after you complete it, but you keep all your experiences and gear you collected in your playthrough. This feels like a good analogy to me.”
Alva Noto
Xerrox Nausicaa
“… a very emotional and personal album centered around the themes of farewell…”
Philip G Anderson, Bibio, and 36
“… emotional modern classical with piano, strings, and authentic warmth …”
… how childhood mishaps, a well-worn dehumidifier, and 9-euro earbuds shape a creative journey…
Hammock
From the Void
… the soul-soothing soundscapes offering a bridge from Love in the Void to their next sonic journey …
The latest release from Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson, blending four previously unreleased songs with four new compositions inspired by their celebrated album.
Hildur Guðnadóttir, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Ian Hawgood
“… dark, brooding…”
Black Swan
Somewhere But Here and Time Loop
“… exploring the shadowed depths that linger at the periphery…”
Alessandro Cortini
NATI INFINITI
“… balancing dark ambience with pulsing textured rhythms, creating an unforgettable visceral experience…”
Explore Alessandro Cortini’s latest album, featuring his Strega synthesizer, which he co-designed with Make Noise. A primordial, evolving sonic journey, now out, via Mute.
Max Richter
In A Landscape
“… between the external and the internal, electronic and instrumental, the technological world against the natural world…”
Max Richter returns with his ninth studio album on Decca employing his minimalist approach to themes of the big questions of life and the quiet pleasures of living.
Dustin O’Halloran
Blue Summer Mixtape
“… capturing the feeling of waiting for an Icelandic summer which leaves as suddenly as it arrives…”
r beny
fir-sweet and mossed
“… a contemplative journey inspired by nature and the quiet details of the world around us…”
Richard Skelton
the old thrawing crux
“… inspired by the landscape and loss, capturing the ephemeral beauty of fading memories and meditative spaces…”
Recorded on a reel-to-reel using the unique ‘Carna’ clavophone, this album blends atmospheric textures with deeply emotive soundscapes.
“… I look for good quality in almost anything. It’s more than just an aesthetics but a way of living in the world…”
Jon Hopkins, Clark, µ-Ziq
“… from meditative journeys to visceral film scores and nostalgic breakbeats…”
Marcus Fjellström
Last Morning Watch VII.
“… a remarkable sonic line from contented exploration, to staggering decline, to death…”
“… an important step for me regarding ideas is to not search for ideas…”
Kiasmos
II
“… eleven tracks of pure and lighthearted bliss, ideal to lift your spirits and quench the thirsty mind…”
The duo of Ólafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen are back with their follow-up on Erased Tapes triumphantly bridging cinematic and modern classical sound with micro-sculpted tech-house beats.
“… the world is truly a canvas where we can identify some patterns and learn to appreciate its chaotic aspects…”
Dustin O’Halloran
1 0 0 1
“… an auditory exploration into the crossroads of artificial intelligence and our comprehension of existence…”
Beginning its life as a collaborative dance piece with choreographer Fukiko Takase, the new solo album on Deutsche Grammophon probes the deep questions surrounding nature, consciousness, technology, and the profound implications of AI.
“… the human sense of hearing does not perceive all sound, and there is much more unconsciously excluded sound in the world…”
“… I must be moved in some way; it doesn’t matter if for good or bad, positive or negative, as long as I’m emotionally involved…”
“… to foster creativity, it helps to understand how different phenomena appear in the universe…”
36
Trance Anthems For A Sunken Generation
“… an aggressive inversion of euphoric sound […] fractured and beaten into submission…”
Dennis Huddleston smacks us in the face with his rawest emotion to date.