I’m not sure if they’re related, but flau and Symbolic Interaction are two Japanese labels that have been recently putting out plenty of interesting records exploring the post-rock, IDM, glitch, electro-acoustic and folk genres. This double disc compilation is another fine sampling of sounds from around the globe.

Sounds on here range from post-rock to various shades of drone to electro-acoustic weirdness. Bitcrush and Yellow6 provide some more guitar-based sounds. Geskia and Yaporigami ramp things up a few notches with some more frenetic IDM/glitch. D_rradio open disc 2 with a stunning woodwind-based piece, and this is followed by a Moskitoo track which sounds a lot like the So album Markus Popp did a few years back (his best work, in my opinion). Overall, disc 2 seems to lean a lot closer to electronic/IDM/glitch tracks, with disc 1 being more drone, post-rock and electro-acoustic.

The only track on here that I’m not so hot on is the track by Euphoria which closes disc 1. It’s the type of new-agey post-rock that sounds like it was made for a teen drama film or something. Other than that, this is a pretty solid collection of tracks. 8/10 -- Paul Simpson (4 March, 2009)