Sam Brickel
Speaking Through Machines

Space and Awareness is the debut release on Tonight’s Dream Records, a record label and mix series based in Brighton UK, focusing on forward thinking, unique music within the realms of ambient, downtempo and electronica.Space and Awareness is the eighth album from Inhmost, the alias of producer Simon Huxtable. With over 24 years experience Huxtable has released a huge array of music. However, now Huxtable uses Inhmost to serve up deep immersive ambient and downtempo music. Space and Awareness is filled with deep baselines and downtempo breaks that are perfectly balanced with the atmospheric ambient textures making it a thoroughly engaging listen.In the producers words “Space & Awareness was made at a time when I felt particularly conscious and receptive of the space around me and I wanted to create an atmosphere that reflected this organically. A mixed approach of using analogue and digital hardware both in and out of the box along with captured field recordings was used to create a broad and changeable soundscape. I did not want this album to just be purely ambient so the use of downtempo beat structures and rhythms felt like a more appropriate way to convey the variety of emotions that I was feeling at the time.”The album has been mastered by prolific producer and mastering engineer Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio who has worked on albums for artists such as Juliana Barwick, Grouper, Steve Hauschildt, Loscil, Telefon Tel Aviv and Tycho amongst hundreds of others.

A double album of sumptuous, expansive downbeat luxury written by Pete Woosh - one half of the celebrated duo Digs & Woosh and Nottingham's DIY collective - with Andy Riley (Toka Project, Inland Knights) during the illness which would eventually claim Pete's life. Given the background of its creation, it's a blissfully peaceful and optimistic sounding collection.The chilled disco/house hypnotism of 'Keep Yr Shape' and 'For Your Love', all slinky, hazy vocals and headnodding back room hedonism, are obvious highlights, but more reflective moments like 'Piano Fades' make this into a varied and enduring 'proper album' listen rather a mere collection of tracks.All profits will go to the Spirit Wrestlers foundation, founded in honour of Pete's memory and devoted to good causes in his hometown of Nottingham.

Cult London/Tokyo tape label NCA venture Molinaro’s solo debut for the label after a split with Black Void Smith and his future jazz / broken beat 12”s on ApronWe can’t full make out the silhouette of this one, but the demo showreel / montage promises something a little off-centre from his previous turns; a bit more frayed around the edges, with grubbing drums and littered with samples in a mutant sci-fi soundtrack vein. NCA gear always flies out so trust your instincts and think quick.

Francesco Messina is perhaps best known for his collaboration with fellow composer Raul Lovisoni on the album Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo, originally released on seminal Italian label Cramps in 1979. Along with contemporaries Franco Battiato, Juri Camisasca and Giusto Pio, Messina would help reshape the world of modern composition with an organic rawness and haunting beauty.In 1979, Messina was asked to perform at the Teatro Quartiere in Milan. As the composer writes in the liner notes, "Due to the limited availability of key technical features, it would have been too complicated to perform Prati Bagnati, and therefore I opted for these three pieces instead. We had never actually tried them all together, so I thought about renting a recording studio the previous afternoon. In that way, we could rehearse in a suitable place and use the opportunity to record the music on tape."Unreleased for over thirty years, and rediscovered thanks to Die Schachtel label (and included in their Prati Bagnati CD edition), the recordings on Reflex have an unadorned, almost improvisational feel. "Untitled" (featuring Lovisoni's plaintive flute) and "I Nuovi Pescheti" are full of meditative piano passages that lend an aura of new age, while the title track is more insistent with unfurling chords layered in real time via a reel-to-reel tape machine, resembling Steve Reich's mesmeric phase-shifting works of the '60s.A central figure within the Italian avant-garde, Francesco Messina gracefully expands his country's contribution to Minimalism. This first-time vinyl release is recommended for fans of Joanna Brouk, Luciano Cilio and Charlemagne Palestine.