Already firmly established as one of the most elegant international collaborations in contemporary ambient music, Vermilion Hours marks a significant step in the discography of Melaine Dalibert, creatively joined here by David Sylvian - a legendary figure in electronic and post-pop ambient music.

Dalibert, a French composer born in 1979, reinterprets his mesmerizing piece "Musique pour le lever du jour", originally over an hour long, in a condensed twenty-minute version. Yet, the floating, resonant repetition that made the original so meditative remains intact. Sylvian, for his part, adds discreet but decisive electronic shadings: his touch doesn’t overpower but rather enhances the piano’s aura, like a translucent veil that transforms the light without dimming it.

The album’s two pieces, "Musique pour le lever du jour" and "Arabesque", unfold between the rising day and encroaching dusk. In the second piece, Dalibert’s “spectral” compositional system - centered on the lowest fundamental note and its harmonics - becomes a fluid dialogue between tonal registers and subtle electronic vibrations. It’s an embrace of rigor and palpable musicality.

What emerges isn’t just a reinterpretation, but a shared space. The album flows like a slow awakening or a gentle embrace at dawn or dusk, asking nothing, suggesting nothing - simply existing. Sylvian’s presence, bearing decades of experimental legacy (from Japan to his most introspective ambient works), lends the whole an intergenerational aura, a quiet handover, a bridge between sensibilities converging in a unified, modern, and meditative sonic vision.

There’s even a hidden touch of humor: one might imagine Dalibert carefully stitching a long harmonic sine wave with surgical precision while Sylvian silently strolls by with an electronic diffuser, misting scattered droplets of sonic light where the silence already seemed perfect. Vermilion Hours is the kind of album that allows you to forget time - and perhaps even a bit of who you are - for the span of an hour suspended.

In conclusion: a generational meeting of refined simplicity, a concise yet elusive work where every resonance matters. Perfect for those who like to lose themselves in music as if wandering through a contemplative landscape.

Giuseppe Ielasi and Riccardo D. Wanke’s "with time, we learned to ask less" is a gentle meditation on the spaces between sounds, a duo album forged from decades-long friendship and mutual respect. Their dialogue - woven through electric guitar and electric piano - is minimalist yet lush, where every note is allowed to breathe and the silences sing almost louder than what surrounds them.

The album blossoms from a two-day improvised session at Ielasi’s Monza studio, refined through patient editing. The result is a coherent 44-minute journey, where the musicians anticipate and complement each other in real time. Their interplay feels less like performance and more like sculpture - chiseled with precision and care, reminiscent of Feldman’s affectionate minimalism applied to modern electric timbres.

Ielasi, known famously for his mastery in microtonal textures and electroacoustic restraint, balances Wanke’s electric piano with piercing sensitivity and subtle reverb washes. Wanke - also a scholar of psychoacoustics - matches this restraint with harmonic patience. Together, they craft a space where tempo seems suspended, and compositional intent slips almost imperceptibly into ambient drift.

This isn’t an album dictated by structure - it invites you to enter a breathing space. Its beauty lies in what isn’t said: a note held long enough to echo in memory, a gentle chord progression that resolves by disappearing. "with time, we learned to ask less" is aptly named; it’s an exercise in restraint, a duo trusting time to unfold the narrative. In a world cluttered by digital clutter, this album feels like a breath of fresh air - quiet, thoughtful, and profoundly human.

This EP by NickonFaith is a thoughtful rift in the digital techno landscape - equal parts cerebellum and cortex, if you will. A double-A side that bristles with hypnotic intent, it showcases a producer tapping into both the pulse of the dancefloor and the recesses of the meditative mind.

On “Medulla”, Faith weaves an Eastern-tinged melodic techno journey built on a rolling low-end and polyrhythmic percussion that coalesces into a high-voltage drop (vaguely resembling a possible slow motion of that kind of Goa trance pushed by labels like Blue Room decades ago). It’s festival-ready yet intimate - mystical but muscular. That thumping bassline evokes a visceral response, while the exotic scales and layered instrumentation hint at a deeper, spiritual quest - like a raver on pilgrimage.

“Stasis”, by contrast, is a contemplative dip into progressive house territory. Drawing inspiration from classic labels like Hooj Choons, it introduces spacious, emotional builds and evolving synth motifs. The result is melancholic yet euphoric - a sonic tension that keeps you suspended in thoughtful stillness, as if caught between two worlds.

Thematically, Nickon Faith explains that both tracks are tied to the mind - its rigid patterns and breakouts from inertia - framing them as reflective inversions of thought loops. The music captures that friction between stasis and motion with a painter’s precision.

What’s notable is how this release marks City Wall Records’ 200th output, a milestone that Nickon acknowledges with pride. It’s fitting that such a landmark comes at a moment when the EP itself negotiates tradition - older melodic and progressive house idioms - and innovation, through rhythmic complexity and thematic depth.

In sum, this EP is more than dancefloor fodder. It’s a mini-essay in electronic form about liberation - mental, bodily, existential. Nickon Faith stands not just as a DJ behind the decks but as a composer exploring resilience, transition, and the infinite potential of sound to map our inner landscapes.

HampusLindwall’s Brace for Impact feels like a thunderclap in a cathedral - but one shaped by software as much as stone. A Swedish-trained organist now based between Paris and Brüssel, Lindwall channels his roots in rave and guitar into a suite that bristles with post-internet bravado - ancient meets algorithmic in every resonant swell.

The record’s centerpiece - a title track featuring StephenO’Malley of SunnO))) - is nothing short of a collision: metallic guitar riffs erupt against Lindwall’s organ tremors, like tectonic plates shifting in real time. There’s a raw, thrilling tension in this union, as though centuries of organ tradition are being dragged reluctantly into the digital age.

But the album isn’t mere shock value. Lindwall’s skill lies in his rhythmic precision: tracks like “AFK” and “Swerve” weave syncopated pulses under sustained pipe tones, replicating rave syncopation within an ecclesiastical space. The organ hums and jolts, sometimes unsettlingly dissonant, yet always intentional - playing on that friction between human-era tension and machine-era structure.

There’s also a conceptual pulse here - Lindwall isn’t just playing organ, he’s interrogating it. Is this ancient instrument still capable of surprise? Can it dance, glitch, freak out? “A Bruit Secret” and “Piping” blur centuries of organ practice with digital choreography, reminding us that every tradition - no matter how grand - can be bent, glitch-enhanced, re-routed.

Lindwall’s background - treading paths between rave culture, guitar virtuosity, and classical organ training - makes him uniquely suited to this project. It’s as if he’s saying: “Yes, the organ is legacy - but legacy includes evolution”. The result is elemental: majestic yet restless, liturgical and dystopian, playful yet profound.

In short, Brace for Impact is a manifesto: the pipe organ can still shock, still surprise, still move us - if we let it fall through the folds of now.

Timothy Fairless’s Keep Talking to Me is a cerebral meditation on communication’s fragility, a sonic labyrinth built from overheard speech, field recordings, generative installations, and glitchy electronics. Over five long-form tracks, Fairless treats sound as language’s unreliable echo - each phrase is stretched, delayed, re-sequenced, and subtly smeared until its original context slips into the ether. The result is an immersive interrogation of how we decode, distort, and reconcile meaning in an age where machines mediate our every conversation.

While reminiscent of experimental ambient’s best - dark but never indulgent - Fairless’s work steers clear of icy minimalism. Instead, it offers a moody yet engaging drift through shifting textures, where fragmented voices wash over resonant drones. The listening experience is akin to eavesdropping from behind a curtain on a packed train: familiar tones ripple through, but comprehension fades just at the edges. That imperfection sparks curiosity, as we instinctively fill in gaps or simply bask in uncertainty.

Fairless is no stranger to this territory, with a lineage of installations and audiovisual projects exploring place, identity, and technology. His golden touch lies in balancing intellectual rigor with a warmth that never alienates. Though the atmosphere is occasionally unsettled, the album is surprisingly accessible - an invitation, not a barricade.

According to my humble opinion the standout tracks are “Tullamarine” - setting the tone with hazy whisperings and glitch-lilted tones, laced with emotional undercurrents - and “Currency Exchange” - closing the album with circular, almost ritualistic decay, an elegy to how language loses integrity over time! -.

Technically, the reworking of installation material into distinct album pieces is deft - transformed into coherent yet elusive narratives. Mastering by Lawrence English ensures depth without drowning subtlety.

In essence, Keep Talking to Me is a poetic reflection on miscommunication, a mirror that reveals how easily signals fracture through amplification. It doesn’t preach; it invites you to listen - and mislisten - with intention. In a world drowning in data and noise, Fairless’s work reminds us to cherish the spaces between words.

Fans of installation art and ambient introspection - those drawn to headphone listening and quiet revelation - will find much to unpack. This album is an invitation: come closer, but don’t expect clarity.