Notes
Issue · 8 October 2026

#002 — Burning Air

New records from the week, nights still ahead from church naves to club floors, four picks from Bach's church to a haunted dancefloor, a Stockholm label in focus and a deep cut that keeps its secrets.

This week the music went indoors, under high ceilings. Kali Malone filled Bach's church with burning air, Maria W Horn turned a walk with Sebald into melting snow, and the two meet again in the label in focus, XKatedral, the Stockholm label they started together. Four picks, then: start with Horn, stay with Malone, get lost with Saint Abdullah & Eomac, and keep THISISTHX for after midnight. The deep cut, SHXCXCHCXSH on Northern Electronics, asks for a whole night.

Picks

Pick Ideologic Organ · SOMA078 · Vinyl, CD, Digital · 2026

Kali Malone Burning Song

Bach served this church for the last twenty-seven years of his life, and the walls seem to remember. The harmony moves the way light crosses a nave in winter: slowly, then all at once. Shadow gathers, a window opens, shadow returns. When the organ climbs into its highest pipes, the air itself seems to catch fire. Nothing here is rushed. Everything arrives.

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Pick XKatedral · Vinyl, Digital · 2026

Maria W Horn Melting Pillars of Snow

It opens with a line from an old book about burial urns: there is no antidote against the opium of time. Then everything starts to thaw. Sound hangs in the air like breath on a cold morning, the seasons turn without asking, and the music walks the way Sebald walked the Suffolk coast, past ruins, counting what is already gone. Fragile, never weak: snow that knows it is melting, and stands anyway.

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Pick Planet Mu · ZIQ493 · Vinyl, Digital · 2026

Saint Abdullah & Eomac When The Sandbox Has No Edge

Somewhere between a car-boot sale and a motorway service station, a box of forgotten tapes changes hands. This is where it starts. A hip-hop pulse lays the first stone, then steps aside: strings creep in, guitars split the ground, voices speak instead of singing. Chance and memory keep trading places. A sandbox with no edge, built from what other people left behind, and every scrap still remembers its first owner.

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Pick Planet Rhythm · Digital · 2026

THISISTHX Ghost EP

Late, cold, and the room still full. Somewhere in the fog a voice tries to speak and comes out bent, like a transmission from a ship that should have landed years ago. The drums never let go of your collar; the synths gleam like wet steel under a streetlight. Tension and motion walk in step until you can't tell which one leads. For the floor, after midnight, with the lights almost gone.

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Deep cut

Deep cut Northern Electronics · NE106 · Vinyl, Digital · 2024

SHXCXCHCXSH ......t

A title made of almost nothing: six dots and one letter, like a message cut off mid-signal. Fifteen tracks that refuse to land where you expect them. Beats splinter, grit rubs against the skin, voices are twisted out of shape, then everything stops and holds its breath. A melody flickers, and is gone. Nearly two years on, it still keeps its secrets past the first listen. Give it a whole night.

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Label in focus

XKatedral

Katedral is Swedish for cathedral, and the name is fair warning. XKatedral began in Stockholm as a small tape label and concert series, set up by two composers, Kali Malone and Maria W Horn, to put out their own work and the work of the people around them.

What holds the catalogue together is a way of listening more than a sound: music that changes slowly, through harmony and timbre, made with electronics and acoustic instruments alike. Organs, voices, small ensembles, long tones. Pieces that ask for time and give back a room.

Many of the artists run the label together, as a collective. The early tapes carried work by Horn, Malone, Ellen Arkbro, Caterina Barbieri and Mats Erlandsson. The Anthology Series later gathered the circle on vinyl: its third volume, for the label's tenth year, spans pieces from 2014 to 2025 by Malone, Horn, David Granström, Jessica Ekomane, Stephen O'Malley, Erlandsson, Theodor Kentros and Daniel M Karlsson.

Start with the anthologies, then follow the names.

XKatedral on Elettronica Concreta →

New this week

Records chosen this week

Nights chosen this week

A selection, not a full listing. Dates can change: check the official page before you go.

Notes

  • 07.10 Note A one-hour dive into her musical circle: to mark the arrival of Melting Pillars of Snow, composer Maria W Horn shares a mix of inspirations from peers and affiliated artists. nts.live
  • 07.10 Note Actress and Acronym lead the tracklist on the 42nd episode of Marco Dianese's Spring Street Insomnia for Radio Sherwood. Titled "Pause," the October 5 podcast also weaves in selections from Robert Hood, The Bug, and Ben Klock. sherwood.it
  • 07.10 Note Four Tet and Massive Attack have both been announced for Primavera Sound Barcelona 2027. primaverasound.com
  • 07.10 Note Puce Mary makes her orchestral debut at the Barbican alongside Sinfonietta Cracovia. The premiere features a new ten-minute work developed during a residency at Corsica’s Providenza, as part of a special ensemble commission by Warp and Unsound. barbican.org.uk

Also this week