Bristol-based solo electronic producer LTO returns to Injazero Records following his (and the label’s) debut, 2015’s No Pasa Nada EP. While plaudits for LTO have tended to focus their praise on No Pasa Nada’s tense and eerie programming, its deep sonics and waves of static, Storybook gives us access to the beating heart within the machine. It is an album not purely of mechanics, but also of human warmth, formed with a colour palette of equal digital and organic materials. There is expression and articulation, delicateness of performance, voices both natural and treated, piano and brass, all deftly placed about a canvas of electronic fabrics.

LTO first made waves as part of mysterious electronic collective Old Apparatus. Their music - anonymous, dark, ghostly, subterranean - was reminiscent of garage and grime scenes, but sheened with a nocturnal miasma and a fierce intellect, obfuscated by deliberate myth-making. And while LTO as a solo producer retains elements of this darkness and beguiling sound-design, Storybook sees him let the light in.

A vision is laid out by album opener ‘Change’. It combines gentle, dulcet synthesis with a percussive line made of table-tennis recordings and Spanish-language voices that softly echo in and out of the space, like Katie Gately remixed into Brian Eno’s ambient records or the poise of Max Richter filtered through Chris Clark’s production lens. These themes wander and weave through the record. They comprise wilfully corrupted notions of the ‘single’: broken, distorted vocal pieces that never quite move as expected, yet somehow remain approachable and deeply touching. They comprise fluidity and elasticity, a human-ness that enwraps the mechanical parts, in the same sense as Holly Herndon or Nils Frahm. A highly accomplished pianist (indeed, a piano teacher in his civilian life), LTO’s astute musicality is the foundation stone beneath the magic and abstractions of Storybook.

Listen to 'When' here

Besetting The Altar is the latest innovative release from American metallers, Serpentshrine. Born in 2015 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA, by founding members Connor Randlett and Bryan Bosch, Serpentshrine was created with the hopes of blending melodic, minor harmonies with the rawness of black metal.  The addition of high pitched vocals, atmospheric compositions, and death metal intensity bred a unique sound unlike others. 

Their debut album Besetting the Altar, was released in January 2017, but this is only the beginning, with material and concepts for future albums already in the works.  Serpentshrine is poised to push the boundaries of genre-defining music.

Originally released in January Besetting the Altar is digitally distributed by Sepulchral Silence.

Tracklisting;

1. The Black Temple

2. A Journey Through the Haunted Forest

3. Transvecti Lintribus Amnem

4. The Beautiful Descent

 5. Besetting the Altar

 6. The Serpent's Lair

 7. Unholy Affliction

 8. Revelation

 9. Shadowed Compline