Bryan Day, who runs the labels Public Eyesore and Eh?, has built an incredible catalog of music since he began recording. Known for creating his own instruments, he’s even credited on Discogs as an “instrument inventor” probably the most accurate way to describe what he does.
This brings us to Pet The Tiger, a project that appears to be a collective of instrument inventors and experimental musicians. Their album Hail The Traveler could be described as “free music,” beginning with musique concrete style sounds before shifting into drone-like chants and eventually a more sing-song feel.
Personally, I really enjoy the experimental, chilled tone of many of the tracks. The vocal led pieces don’t resonate with me as much, though vocalist David Samas is clearly talented. I suspect I might appreciate his work more in a different context. That said, this is purely my perspective, and I encourage others to form their own impressions.
Tracks like Garden of the Gods are especially captivating and might be even more powerful if experienced live, watching the artists bring these unusual sounds to life. Overall, it’s a rewarding listen, and one I’ll definitely return to.

Being a fan of Ant-Zen in the late ’90s, I discovered the Hybryds and quickly dove deeper into their catalog. Through them, I also found other labels that I still follow today. Recently, I received a review package that included a handwritten note signed by Sandy Nijs, best known from the Hybryds. At first, I thought it had been slipped in by accident, but after looking closer I realized it was connected to a side project: Rabbits Wear Boots, a trance/techno/house venture.
While I haven’t followed techno closely in years, I can say this definitely carries the unmistakable feel of a Hybryds side project which I thoroughly enjoy. The tracks don’t really need a track-by-track breakdown; it’s hypnotic, driving, and, in the best sense, “mindless” music perfect for dancing or just zoning into the rhythm.
If you’re into this style, or if you’re already a fan of the Hybryds, Rabbits Wear Boots is worth checking out.

The Deep Bells is a collaboration between Yellow6 and The Corrupting Sea that has been 20 years in the making. Having met through The Corrupting Sea’s love of Yellow6’s music circa the early 2000’s, Jon Attwood (Yellow6) and Jason T. Lamoreaux (TCS) have become fast friends over the course of those years. 'Liberté' is their debut album. The core of the album’s ethos lies within the current geopolitical issues impacting much of the world. The cover image emphasizes the crack in the liberty bell found in Philadelphia in the United States. It references the massive divide among humans at any given moment through our history but especially in this current moment. The title, Liberté, is a reference to the French’s ability to revolt against those in power who would take advantage of and target citizens using the government as a cudgel.

I really do appreciate the fascism vs. freedom theme that Attwood and Lamoreaux espouse, but without the backstory text, you'd be hard pressed to find it in the music on 'Liberté' Just going by some of the titles on The Corrupting Sea's Bandcamp site, it seems as though Kentuckian Jason Lamoreaux is the more political of the two. It's the music, not the concept that speaks volumes to the listener, so let's delve into it.

The album is 8 tracks in 74 minutes, slightly lengthy for a Sound In Silence release. Beginning with "City," there is a repeating figure of a plucked sound over ambient processed guitar with an ambient wash in the background. The plucked sound is slightly out of tune but it disappears not far into the mix, while the rest remains. There is either a bit of slide guitar or the sound of a string being detuned adding a wooziness to the atmosphere. It goes on a bit too long, but that's okay. "Not All History Is Preserved" features tinkling bells and a shakuhachi-like flute over ambient guitar drone, and ominous minor guitar chords. The vibe I'm getting from this is an awakening of sorts, preceding a call to action. "Pooled" is the most song-like piece so far, with a slowly repeating melodic guitar theme over a background of ambient pads. There is a haziness about it giving it a trance-psychedelic quality. "Shelter" mixes piano and guitar chord progressions that may seem out of sync, but they're really not. With something this defined (less ambient) the repetition really stands out and as there is little that changes; it seems as though the composers just put it on autopilot.

"Shout Shout" is the longest track on the album (15:26) and also the coolest. The backwards guitar in the beginning heralds the entrance into the psychedelic realm, and while there is repetition, it seems as though the music folds in on itself like the layers of puff pastry dough in a croissant. It keeps morphing and morphing with heavier chords emerging through the ambient marshes. This is a mushroom trip likely to rearrange your psyche, building in intensity all the way through. But like all psychedelic trips, it gradually subsides, leaving you imprinted with a fading memory of its glorious haze. There is a different sort of atmosphere on "The Falls," reminiscent of something off of one of Eno's ambient albums (can't recall which, perhaps one with Harold Budd?) with interplay between piano and guitar. The changes are subtle on this one and unless you listen really carefully, you're not apt to notice them at all. "Time Ticks" is another lengthy piece (12:19) and what gives this piece its personality is the slow slide guitar over ambient piano and guitar. Repetitious but glorious, more trance-psychedelic, and the second best track on the album. I like how it falls apart towards the end but still keeps going, like color trails on the after-trip. They could have ended it here and had a fine album. They probably should have ended it before the final piece, "Times Of Change" (12:26) which offers some rather aimless improvisation, especially on the part of the piano. Otherwise, this is a very cool ambient album with a heaping does of psychedelia. Maybe that's the ticket, revive the late '60s, drop some psychotropics and head to the next protest march!

Stellar Dynamics is one of the multiple alter-ego-projects of the steady and hard working Russian artist Alexander Borsov. We had him here on our site under his Dark The Keeper-project which has featured a deep biographic stab into his rather Death Metal-activities in his early years. Nowadays he's almost completely producing Electronic-based Industrial music with several stylistically variations. While Dark The Keeper was the more slow, dense- and sick-atmospheric Dark Electro-project pretty much inspired by a veteran act like G.G.F.H., Stellar Dynamics brings up a more pounding and rhythmically kicking outfit. Alexander meanwhile quite often releases regularly new compositions of his multiple projects mostly via his Bandcamp-account linked above. Also “Dark Elite” got released here and it looks that he has lately stopped his collaboration with the US-based DSBP label.
Stellar Dynamics with this new album is musically still a very close expedition to a classic Dark Electro-minded sound outfit. What impresses the most in Alexander's tracks is his ability to create melodic, but spooky, dense atmospheric synthesizer-layers always concentrating to leave a thrilling and creepy effect. Here and there, especially with the slower tunes like “Dark Elite” or “A Nail Put Out Of A Wound” he comes closer into the creepy Dark The Keeper-territory.
While most tracks of this album remain instrumental, Alexander offers with a few collaborations providing guest vocals (M. Ghost of G.G.F.H, Tommy T. Rapisardi of Diverje, and … well... me...) a throughout diverse sounding full-length album with 13 tracks to the listener. It is without doubt his most matured work under this project so far. Also worth to mention on here is a remix by the German talent StateMent on the track “Preachers Of Hell”, which fills in a few cool voice samples and refreshes the whole track by installing more almost catchy sounding synthesizer-pads.
As for criticism on this album – and yes, I listened several of Alexander's works so far – it wouldn't be a bad idea to add in a bit more variation into the chosen drum- and percussion-sounds. Always to use the same-sounding cymbals, hi-hats, snare- and kick drum-sounds over years and on several releases has finally become too one-dimensional. Here should be space for further development.
Once again an album out of Alexander's deep-dark laboratory which balances well on the fine line between the musically depths of classic Dark Electro / Industrial and the pounding Harsh-EBM style. This one should appeal friends and listeners of these genres.

Some records arrive like meteors, burning briefly and leaving only a scar in the dust. "Feuer Lust Licht", instead, behaves more like a prism: catch it from one angle and you’ll hear Kraftwerk humming through vocoders; tilt it another way and suddenly you’re in a Berlin side street where acid lines crawl lazily across cracked asphalt.

The trio behind this odd creature - Hendrik “Henne” Vaak (co-founder of the electronic music duo Sender Berlin, who forged many awesome releases for Tresor Records), Sven Elmlund, and Greek DJ-vocalist Até (Nina Kotini) - aren’t interested in categories. They slip between them with the same ease you’d change subway lines: trip hop, dark wave, acid techno, even hip-hop’s shadow appears here. One minute Anne Clark’s ghost is declaiming against a wall of synths ("Shadow on the Wall"), the next you’re propelled into space on the battered wings of a 303 ("Reaction 303").

The title track makes its intent clear with its mantra - “Do it again… Lass es nochmal probieren”. It’s both a demand and a philosophy: repetition not as monotony, but as method, as ritual, as insistence that something new will eventually emerge if you keep trying. Até’s vocals - half warm embrace, half android command - thread it all together, keeping the record from collapsing under its own multiplicity.

There’s humor here too. "Mono Machine" is a Kraftwerk cosplay so affectionate it almost feels like a thank-you letter to Ralf Hütter. "Destination" turns into technoid hip-hop, like Dre’s MPC being stolen and rewired by a Berlin basement tinkerer. Even in its more melancholic passages ("First Touch", "What’s Next"), there’s a playfulness, as if the trio are constantly winking at each other from behind the machines.

Is it cohesive? Oddly, yes. Despite the wide stylistic leaps, there’s a red thread woven through - the curiosity of people who’ve been tinkering with electronic music since the ’90s and refuse to let go of that childlike sense of wonder. "Feuer Lust Licht" is an album that asks you to listen several times, not because it’s impenetrable, but because each pass uncovers another mischievous detail.

It’s not a meteor, then. It’s a kaleidoscope: fragile, colorful, and endlessly reconfigurable, provided you’re willing to turn it over in your hands again and again.