Not Not Fun

The music of St. Petersburg keyboard fantasist Vova Kolbin aka Childese fuses reverie and melancholy in a wobbly mirage of memory, tape hiss, field recordings, and cosmic church organ: welcome to Minor Eden. Inspired by a particularly idyllic childhood su

The tenth official full-length by St. Petersburg synth savant Vladimir Karpov aka X.Y.R. is a liquid suite of surreal tranquility, divined and designed to soundtrack the shimmering mysteries of underwater life: Aquarealm. Inspired by vintage Soviet cartoo

Named for a familial forested retreat on Wisconsin’s Shell Lake, Scout Island is the vessel for Jungle Gym audio boss Jared Carrigan’s compact and compelling instrumental guitar vignettes. His latest, Laurentian Voyage, charts a rich trip down river throu

Yokohama multi-instrumentalist Tokio Ono’s debut is a collection of 13 confinement compositions woven from field recordings, percussion, various keys, samples, and a sense of being far away. He characterizes it as a type of “island music” – isolated but i

Moscow multi-instrumentalist Marat Shainsky aka Frunk29’s newest opus of bedroom Balearica birthed in a room with a view: trees, rolling hills, and a mountainous, majestic landfill (“It looks like Fujiyama in winter – or how I imagine it”). Stirred by a m

Moscow duo Forgiveness fuse tower block trip-hop with stargazer downtempo into a smeared Soviet Balearic haze, equal parts dust, dreams, and delirium. Collaborators Alexander Kalinin and Ilya Kasharokov share a history of deejaying, production, and party