Fluid Audio

Emmanuel Witzthum & Benjamin Miller - Shevarim (Fractures)

For brass quartet (2024)...

The shofar, an ancient horn traditionally fashioned from a ram’s horn, has long functioned as an instrument of signal, rupture and resonance. Across centuries, its raw and unstable timbre has carried associations of warning, remembrance, awakening and return. Rather than focusing on its liturgical role, Shevarim (Fractures) draws upon the physicality of the shofar’s voice itself: fractured breath, broken calls, unstable overtones and the psychological weight of repetition.

The title Shevarim translates as “breaks” or “fractures”, one of the three principal shofar calls, formed from three broken cries often associated with weeping or rupture. Alongside the sustained Tekiah and the urgent, fragmented T’ruah, these archetypal forms become structural and rhythmic material within the work.

Witzthum reinterprets these ancient sonic gestures through brass quartet, treating the ensemble less as a traditional chamber formation and more as a resonant body of breath, pressure and metallic vibration. Attacks splinter and dissolve, fanfare-like figures emerge only to collapse inward, and moments of density give way to exposed silence and suspended harmonic space.

Rather than presenting the shofar as a symbolic religious object, the work approaches it as a primal acoustic phenomenon, a sound positioned somewhere between human voice, alarm signal and collective memory. Through cycles of deconstruction and reconstruction, Shevarim (Fractures) inhabits a liminal territory between noise and utterance, intimacy and distance, fragmentation and repair.

The result is a plaintive and deeply physical work that reflects upon instability, dislocation and the fractured emotional texture of the present moment, while searching, through resonance itself, for the possibility of connection.

A new collaborative album by Sainkho Namtchylak and Mirco Magnani. 
Beyond Fine Lines is a deeply introspective and evocative album that explores the boundaries between life and death, light and darkness, chaos and stillness. Blending poetic and symbolic texts with immersive, ethereal soundscapes, the record unfolds as a contemplative journey into the emotional and philosophical depths of the human
experience.

At its core is the extraordinary voice of Sainkho Namtchylak, whose unique vocal language moves between hypnotic tones, spoken word, and powerful improvisations rooted in Siberian and Tuvan traditions. Her voice becomes a true instrument, shifting from intimate whispers to primal expressions-carrying lyrics that reflect on hope, toughness and the cyclical nature of life.

The sonic framework is shaped by Berlin-based composer Mirco Magnani, whose compositions create a refined balance between structure and improvisation. His work provides a cohesive and dynamic space where voice and sound interact in a fluid and
expressive dialogue. The collaboration began in 2023, following an initial encounter during the production of Zarathustra – Der Grosse Mittag, and evolved into a full-length project recorded in Berlin later that year. The album developed organically, with vocal lines, overtone
singing and spoken word emerging in direct response to Magnani’s evocative compositions.

Beyond Fine Lines is not an album that demands attention, it invites surrender. A sonic meditation on presence and transformation, it offers listeners a space of stillness and reflection, where introspection becomes a shared, universal experience.

Credits:

Music performed by Mirco Magnani


Voice, lyrics, spoken word by Sainkho Namtchylak


Produced and mixed by Mirco Magnani at Undogmatisch, Berlin


Mastered by Ken Karter at Decode Studio


Original artwork by Valentina Bardazzi


Track 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10: Music by Mirco Magnani, Lyrics by Sainkho Namtchylak


Track 3, 4, 5, 6: Music by Mirco Magnani, Sainkho Namtchylak

There is a point at which something familiar begins to dissolve...

Not all at once, but slowly, a quiet erosion. Edges soften. Meanings drift. What once held form becomes uncertain, and in that uncertainty, something else begins to surface.

Benzalkonium inhabits this threshold.

Across two discs, EPIMYTH traces a landscape of pressure and distance, not as narrative, but as presence. The work does not speak directly of its origin, but carries its residue throughout: a tension held beneath the surface, an undercurrent that never quite settles.

The first disc is dense to the point of saturation. Sound gathers in thick, collapsing layers, a continuous field without clear entry or release. It presses inward, blurring the boundary between listening and being inside the sound itself. There is no relief offered here, only immersion. And yet, within that immersion, a strange stillness begins to take hold, not calm, but suspension.

The second disc withdraws, but does not escape. The weight disperses into fragments, into quieter, more porous forms. Texture replaces force; space becomes an active presence. What remains is a kind of after-image, the imprint of something that has already passed, but continues to resonate. It neither resolves nor resists. It lingers.

Together, the two discs exist in quiet opposition. Not as contrast alone, but as parallel states, density and dispersal, proximity and distance. One does not complete the other. They remain unresolved, suspended in relation.

Benzalkonium does not offer clarity. It stays with the moment where clarity fails.

Presented as a limited double CD edition, each copy is assembled by hand using raw, tactile materials. The physical object mirrors the work itself: restrained, weathered, and intentionally unresolved.

No repress.

17:22.500/0:38.500/12:01.000/7:30.000/2:28.000

Audio/Mixing/Mastering - EPIMYTH

Dedicated To Lou Reed

There is a quiet moment as winter begins to loosen its grip, when the frost softens, the light lingers a little longer, and time seems to gently unfold. With 'Piano Distance', Japanese composer Nakamura Hiroyuki invites us into that fragile threshold between seasons.

A pianist, composer, and visual artist working at the intersection of acoustic instrumentation and electronic processing, Nakamura’s work dissolves boundaries, between sound and environment, between memory and presence. His compositions weave together piano, field recordings, and textured electronics, forming immersive soundscapes that feel as much like places as they do pieces of music.

Where earlier works traced a dialogue between cultures and sonic traditions, 'Piano Distance' turns inward towards stillness, reflection, and quiet transformation.

This is music of thaw.

Delicate piano phrases surface like meltwater, tracing gentle paths through layers of drifting texture and soft harmonic haze. Sounds emerge, linger, and dissolve, carrying with them the subtle tension of something changing, something opening.

Time no longer feels suspended, but unfurling.

Moments stretch and release, folding softly into one another, echoes of winter still present, yet slowly giving way to light. There is a tenderness here, a sense of transition: of memory beginning to fade, of stillness giving way to movement, of endings quietly becoming beginnings.

Nakamura’s process remains intuitive and deeply atmospheric. Rather than imposing structure, he allows the music to gather and recede naturally, like frost melting from a surface, revealing what lies beneath. The result is a work that feels both intimate and quietly expansive-a meditation on impermanence, on seasonal change, and on the gentle passage from stillness into motion.

With 'Piano Distance', Nakamura Hiroyuki joins the Fluid Audio catalogue with a release that resonates with its ethos, yet carries its own distinct clarity: restrained, luminous, and deeply contemplative. This is music for the in-between-for the first warmth after cold, for the slow return of light, for the moments when the world begins again.

Fluid Audio is proud to announce the forthcoming release of 'Batiledhu', a new work by Aaron Martin.

Composed for a quietly enigmatic film shot in Sardinia, Batiledhu unfolds as a deeply textural and contemplative body of music, existing both in service to the moving image and as a standalone meditation in its own right.

Co-directed by photographer and filmmaker Nicol Vizioli, the film inhabits an elemental landscape, coastal, ancient, and quietly surreal. In response, Martin’s score leans into restraint and atmosphere. Subtle strings breathe beneath open spaces; tones linger like sea air against stone. Rather than guiding the narrative overtly, the music hovers at its edges, creating emotional undercurrents that feel both timeless and immediate.

Recorded with Martin’s characteristic sensitivity to tone and decay, the compositions are sparse yet immersive, a study in patience, tension, and unresolved beauty. The Sardinian terrain is not illustrated so much as absorbed; its textures and silences become part of the music’s internal architecture.

The visual material for the release draws directly from Vizioli’s photography for the film, preserved with care and minimal intervention to honour its integrity. The artwork design has been prepared in collaboration with Ryan Keane, maintaining a cohesive and understated visual identity.

Audio mastering has been handled by Ian Hawgood, ensuring depth, clarity, and spatial presence while preserving the fragile dynamics at the heart of the compositions.

Following the film’s festival premiere, Batiledhu will be released by Fluid Audio in a limited edition, custom-made format, presented in bespoke packaging, hand-assembled and carefully produced in keeping with the label’s commitment to tactile, archival objects.

With Batiledhu, Aaron Martin continues to refine a language that is intimate, elemental, and quietly transcendent, a work shaped as much by silence as by sound.

Credits: Music - Aaron Martin / Mastering - Ian Hawgood / Film - Nicol Vizioli / Artwork support - Ryan Keane / Design - Daniel Crossley

Too many new worlds had been discovered; there was a latent wish not to find anything more. Over the reports of explorers on land or on sea there lay a sense of disappointment, an unlocalized pain of vast distances more important than anything to be found beyond them. - Robert Cantwell

Kirill Nikolai is a Ukrainian American composer currently based in Seattle. Solennelle marks his first new music in nearly a decade. The work occupies a quiet space between the considered minimalism of Alvin Lucier and Éliane Radigue, and the haunted tonal drift of Gavin Bryars and The Caretaker.

Muted sine wave test oscillators hum with the distant steadiness of obsolete laboratory equipment. Sustained clarinet multiphonics hover at the edge of breath. Tape gradually frays and buckles, evoking both motion and suspension - a landscape in which time neither advances nor recedes.

Silence plays a central role. Absence becomes structure. Tone dissolves and reforms. The composition unfolds with patience, eventually thinning and eroding at its own edges.

“There really is silence, a ten-second void like an inhalation of breath, preceding a soft return, like a ceiling fan in motion… the composition begins to crumple, burning at the edges… distorted and eventually turning into ash.” - Richard Allen, A Closer Listen

Following its initial digital release on the French experimental label Falt in early 2026, Fluid Audio presents Solennelle as a limited edition compact disc housed in a hand-selected vintage cartographic cover. Each edition features vintage map fragments, individually sourced and trimmed, making every copy subtly unique.

Solennelle for oscillators, clarinet and tape (2025)

Kirill Nikolai - composition, sine oscillators, tape

Selene Vass - clarinet

Recorded and mixed by Kirill Nikolai in Seattle, WA, 2025

Mastered by Alan F. Jones at Laminal Audio, Tracyton, WA, 2025

Design - Daniel Crossley

Fluid Audio is proud to present 'arthur & jeremias', the forthcoming album from Danish composer and sound artist øjeRum - a quiet, introspective work named after two characters from The Castle, Franz Kafka’s unfinished and haunting novel.

Like Kafka’s world, 'arthur & jeremias' exists in a space of uncertainty and longing. It drifts between presence and absence, where meaning is sensed rather than stated. The album unfolds as a slow sonic exploration, fragments of memory, half-remembered rooms, and corridors that seem to lead nowhere and everywhere at once.

Dusted loops circle gently, worn at the edges. Tape hiss breathes between notes. Electronic phrases appear like passing thoughts, only to dissolve again into ambience. There is a deep sense of nostalgia throughout, not for a specific place or time, but for something just out of reach, hovering at the edge of consciousness.

Rather than telling a story outright, 'arthur & jeremias' invites the listener to inhabit a mood. Repetition becomes ritual. Small imperfections are left intact, giving the music a fragile, human quality, as though the recordings themselves are artifacts uncovered from another era.

This is music that rewards patience and stillness. It asks for attentive listening, for surrender to its quiet pull. Like The Castle, the album resists resolution, finding beauty in ambiguity and tenderness in restraint.

The album is mastered by Ian Hawgood, whose sensitive and understated approach preserves the music’s intimacy and dynamic range, allowing the dusted loops, tape hiss, and fragile melodic fragments to remain unpolished and alive - faithful to the album’s quiet emotional core.

Released through Fluid Audio, 'arthur & jeremias' will appear as a limited, hand-assembled physical edition, created with the same care and attention to detail that defines the label’s ethos - a tactile companion to an intimate and reflective listening experience.

Fluid Audio presents 'Broadcasting From Nowhere', the debut album from Ondelunghe, a collaboration between Tokyo-based multi-instrumentalist Hiromu Yamaguchi and Italian composer Guido Lusetti. Conceived not through physical proximity but through distance, correspondence, and quiet exchange, the album feels like a message transmitted across frozen air-intimate, fragile, and partly obscured by static.

Yamaguchi’s contributions-piano and field recordings, carry the brittle tenderness of winter breath. Keys sound as though pressed with hesitation, leaving behind vapour trails of melody that threaten to vanish the moment they form. The recordings themselves crackle and hiss, as if weathered by frost, capturing the small, persistent noises of a world bracing against silence: creaking surfaces, shifting air, something moving just out of sight.

Lusetti’s work-what he refers to as electronic pointillism, does not counter these gestures but suspends them. His tones drift like cold particulate matter, dust motes in a beam of static, circling the piano without ever enclosing it. Occasionally, other voices, Henrik Meierkord’s cello, Ed van der Berkel’s trumpet, Daniele Varelli’s shakuhachi-surface not as performers but as spectral presences. Their sounds arrive like signals from an abandoned transmitter, lingering momentarily before dissolving back into the dark.

The album unfolds slowly, as though aware that silence has weight, and too sudden a movement might shatter it. Notes hang, unravel, and fall away like light snow. The music never insists; it waits. To listen to Broadcasting From Nowhere is to tune into a frequency that feels both familiar and unreachable, a broadcast sent from a place you’re not entirely sure exists, or ever did.

Credits:

Hiromu Yamaguchi: piano, field recordings

Guido Lusetti: free electrons, found voices

Henrik Meierkord: cello

Ed van der Berkel: trumpet

Daniele Varelli: shakuhachi

Mixing and mastering: Hiromu Yamaguchi

www.fluidaudio.co.uk

Recorded between March and June of this year, Future Flowers is both a reflection and a rebirth - a gentle yet resolute act of hope from composer Hans Nox.

Some of these pieces have lived quietly for years - written a decade or more ago, resting like seeds beneath the soil. Others emerged spontaneously during the recording sessions, unfolding in real time as Hans allowed instinct and feeling to take the lead. The result is an album that bridges past and present, memory and anticipation - where old melodies find new breath, and improvisation opens unexpected pathways.

“I wanted the entire experience to be more free-flowing, more playful, more adventurous than the usual cautious approach I take to composing,” Hans writes. “Rather than regretting where I’ve been or the paths that led nowhere, I’ve chosen to trust my Savior and strive toward the brightness ahead. Yesterday is gone - tomorrow is coming. How much better it is to pursue confidence and courage.”

That sense of spiritual renewal and creative surrender runs through every note. There is a tender humanness here - fragile piano phrases that pause as if mid-thought, ambient textures that drift like light across water, melodies that carry both ache and affirmation. Even the silences seem to speak, offering a kind of stillness that listens back.

Future Flowers is, in many ways, an album about release - about letting go of the weight of the past to make room for something more open, more alive. It celebrates the decision to move forward with faith and boldness, even when the path ahead is unclear. The music does not rush; it unfolds patiently, like petals opening in the sun - quiet gestures of trust and becoming.

Like its title suggests, Future Flowers invites us to believe in renewal - to tend to the unseen roots beneath our lives, trusting that beauty will bloom again in time.

In keeping with the spirit of the music, this release has been lovingly hand-assembled in a limited Fluid Audio edition, pairing Hans Nox’s compositions with bespoke artwork and tactile design. Natural textures, archival papers, and hand-numbered inserts bring a physical warmth to the experience - each copy a small act of devotion, crafted with the same care and intentionality that shaped the album itself.

Gentle, honest, and filled with quiet light, Future Flowers is not just a collection of songs - it’s a testament to resilience, to grace, and to the faith that something beautiful still lies ahead.

Music - Hans Nox

Mastering - Ian Hawgood

Design - Daniel Crossley

Gray Acres has always been a space for subtlety and restraint, distinct from the denser, more cinematic atmospheres of Hotel Neon. Where that project often explores process, technique, and narrative arcs, Gray Acres tends to be produced "in the moment" and stays still. It lets you think for yourself. Soft Erasure especially embraces that characteristic stillness.

This is the first full-length Gray Acres album since 2021’s “Dreams and Phantoms.” It’s a project that came together slowly with an intentionally light touch…more about dissolving sounds than constructing them. Subtraction vs. addition.

The title Soft Erasure came about as we noticed a recurring quality across the recordings: a sense of tangible things like guitars, pianos, and strings fading, softening, and slipping just out of reach as we shaped and processed them. The music feels like it’s constantly on the verge of vanishing, or being gently wiped away into an indistinct atmosphere. That idea of erasure not as violence, but as gentleness, decay, or transformation, felt like the right metaphor to latch on to. It speaks to memory, distance, and time, and how all of those forces shape and reshape our perception of sound and self.

Musically, this album is built mainly from resampled acoustic instruments: delicate piano lines, sustained strings, frozen and looped guitar textures. Much of the source material was recorded clean, then stretched, blurred, and layered until it became something abstract…like an impression of a song, or a half-remembered phrase. In some ways, we were trying to find the most washed-out and ephemeral version of each sound. The result is a record that is designed less for narrative and more for immersion.

If you’ve followed this project before, I think you’ll hear a natural continuation of its aesthetic. But if you’re new to Gray Acres, this is a great entry point. It’s music that tries not to demand attention, but rewards those who tune in closely for a while.

Gray Acres - Soft Erasure

Music by Andrew & Michael Tasselmyer

Mastered by Alex at Quiet Details