SOMEWHERECOLD

Top 10 Albums that Influence The Corrupting Sea Last year, I asked a zine to publish my top 10 most influential albums. They said yes and then later declined. So, I figured I have a place for it on my own blog. This may become a Somewherecold Records’ staple where artists on the label do the same.

FOR PRE-ORDER - John the Silent: Florida Man (Somewherecold Records, 2026) For this post, I felt it right to let the artist speak for themselves. John the Silent has been profound for me as a fan, listener, and curator of music. I hope you find your way into his world of wonder. Most of these songs were composed and recorded in hotel rooms, pubs, and even airports in Florida. I often use songwriting to process experiences. I can remember working on my first John the Silent album Pollution/Opportunity, in 2019. I noticed how the process of composing and creating ambient/experimental music revealed new ways to explore emotions, impressions, and observations with sound and texture. Without the limitations of the structure of the music I usually make: verse, chorus, chords, words, lyrics, melody, I recall thinking that the creative process for ambient music felt more like painting than songwriting. It was profoundly liberating after the initial anxiety of how to start. I’ve often said that music is therapy for me. John the Silent records hold a very special, very personal, internal space for me. I can hide a bit in these pieces that I can’t in my usual singer/songwriter world.  A challenge I’ve found, engaging in a medium that is primarily digital, often utilizing computers and software not only for recording and production, but creation and composition, is a kind of paralysis of possibility. I’ve come to believe that limitation helps creativity. Endless possibilities, at least for me, do not feed or energize, but restrict and paralyze. With digital recording, I find it easy to get lost in menus or settings, to the point where I don’t feel like I’m engaging with music, but with a program, a technology. With John the Silent, I’ve dealt with this personal hangup by experimenting with self-imposed limitations on each record. I’ve made a John the Silent record using only obsolete iPads and keyboard apps, I’ve recorded live in mono through an analog board, and I’ve based an entire album on a phone-recorded prayer spoken by a beloved mentor in his final days. For Florida Man, the limitation was space and timeframe. There isn’t much field recording (raw recording of an environment) on the album, but it was recorded in the field, in the space, and within the context of processing and engaging the heartbreaking wake of a devastating hurricane. I attempted to observe the surroundings, listen to the atmosphere around me, reflect on what I had seen and the conversations I had with people who were processing loss, and express them through music without words. I tried to keep intact those late evening or early morning initial compositions in the final mixes that became the album to be released next month. John the Silent: Florida Man will be released on March 20, 2026 with a listening party happening on bandcamp on March 17th (due to rescheduling if necessary). The album is being released on digital and CD at the label bandcamp page as well as on CD and Vinyl on the somewherecold Elasticstage site.

IMMEDIATE PRE-ORDER - quintelium: continuums (Somewherecold Records, 2026) Quintelium is a drone/ambient/experimental located in the Central Valley of California, an area that, at least according to local reports, is home to fewer ambient artists per capita than any other comparable region in the United States.  Continuums is the title of Quintelium’s latest album, a collection of roughly mixed forays into techno, IDM, noise, and drone. Inspired by simply going for broke, to get way outside of one’s comfort zone to see what can come of it, these tracks represent Quintelium's strangest music to date, an attempt to find beauty in abrasiveness and dissonance.  Quintelium: continuums will be released on CD and Digital on March 6, 2026.  There will be a listening party on the bandcamp page on March 4th for listeners to come and chat and listen to the whole of the album together.

OUT NOW! autodealer: conclusions (Somewherecold Records, 2026)

OUT NOW - Callière: Solar (Somewherecold Records & Shore Dive Records,2026) Callière is the long-running creative outlet of British musician Andrew Rose, a project that first flickered into life in the mid-eighties with banks of synths and a restless imagination. After writing well over a hundred songs without releasing a note, the project slipped into hibernation until Slowdive’s 2014 return lit the fuse again. With an amp gifted by Christian Savill and a guitar from Nick Noble of 93MillionMilesFromTheSun, Callière slowly re-emerged, this time with a small circle of collaborators. The revival led to a steady run of releases: the 2022 debut Barcelona, an accompanying remix album, a string of singles and EPs, and three more full-length albums that sketched out Rose’s evolving world of sound. The new album Solar marks a bold step forward. It’s a shoegaze and dream-pop record shaped by Rose’s journeys along the Camino in northern Spain, where the landscapes and the quiet rhythm of long days on foot sparked a wave of new songwriting. The influences are delightfully unpretentious and wide-ranging: the haze and heart of Slowdive and Ride, the grit of The Velvet Underground, the shimmer of Cocteau Twins, the melodic tug of The Divine Comedy, the raw edge of Tombstones In Their Eyes, and the pure indie charm of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Folded together, they form something unmistakably Callière: melodic, cinematic, glowing with movement and memory. Solar feels like a road unfolding in sound, carrying the listener through mountains, valleys and old Spanish plains with a quiet confidence that this is the strongest Callière album yet. Callière: Solar ia out now on Somewherecold Records on CD and Digital for the U.S. market and on Shore Dive Records for the Euro/Worldwide market. Get your copy while they are still fresh!

OUT NOW! Violet Nox: Silvae (Somewherecold Records, 2025) Violet Nox is back with their eighth album called Silvae. It is a masterpiece of progression for this band. If you have heard their former albums, this one will blow you away. Deep sonic textures, mechanical storytelling, ghostly vocals, and an incredible attention to musical detail, this is Violet Nox at their best. I can't wait to see what comes next.

OUT NOW - The Corrupting Sea: Symphony of a Radical II (Somewherecold Records, 2025) Symphony of a Radical II is a follow up to the first album that was released in 2017 as a reaction to the political climate in the United States. 45 had just won the presidency and the shock of how backwards people were in the United States took its mental toll. Symphony II is a part of the exact same situation but many, many years later and recorded with far more experience. The album is primarily a set of guitar pieces like the first and plays on the current political fascism in the United States. It was hard enough to come to terms with neighbors voting a felon, rapist, misogynist, bigot, nazi, etc into office, but it has become so much more personal after being diagnosed as neurodivergent and watching the government not only target my community but assault so many others. The title, with Radical in it, is a tongue and cheek notion because I'm told I am a radical for being compassionate, standing up for the rights of others, and wanting a society that functions at a high and practical level (not based on capitalism but on compassion). I am far from Radical. I just want to be a decent human being. The Corrupting Sea: Symphony of a Radical II will be released on Vinyl, CD, and Digital on Oct 4th, 2025.Both vinyl and CD are limited to 25 copies.

FOR PRE-ORDER - Violet Nox: Silvae Violet Nox, the Boston-based electronic trio, returns with their eighth album, Silvae, set for release on October 21st via Somewherecold Records. This six-track collection is an imaginative and transformative sonic landscape shaped by Dez DeCarlo’s intricate synthetic frameworks, layered effects, and evolving iterations, alongside Andrew Abrahamson’s fusion of textured synths, samples, and clock-driven machines. Noell Dorsey’s hauntingly organic vocals guide listeners through expansive soundscapes, with her evocative lyricism, emotional depth and introspection. Silvae is a sensorial journey—a delicate interplay of light and shadow, clarity and mystique, fantasy and reality. It invites full immersion, stimulating the body, mind, and soul with a finely tuned balance of universal consciousness and infinite imagination. Violet Nox: Silvae will be released on October 21st on CD, Digital, and Vinyl.

OUT NOW! Danek Lipko: Eclipsoid (Somewherecold Records 2025) Welcome the newest artist to Somewherecold Records, Danek Lipko. Eclipsoid brings another fascinating trip into ethereal sonic journeys and Lipko's work fits the Somewherecold ethos like a glove. Out on Sept 24, 2025, this Somewherecold Records debut brings another artist into the family Ethereal and effusing unearthly vibrations, Danek Lipko’s Eclipsoid is a wandering star that came to Earth. Being ambient in its essence, this album yet has a very tangible core. It draws attention while never demanding it – mesmerizing with a long-forgotten lore, a reminiscence of very simple things and a journey that looms ahead. With journey as its main narrative showing what happens when you awaken, the album itself was written, recorded and mixed in a perpetual journey. This is a limited CD release! Only 25 copies.

Pre-Order Now! Danek Lipko: Eclipsoid out Sept, 24 on Somewherecold Records Welcome the newest artist to Somewherecold Records, Danek Lipko. Eclipsoid brings another fascinating trip into ethereal sonic journeys and Lipko's work fits the Somewherecold ethos like a glove. Out on Sept 24, 2025, this Somewherecold Records debut brings another artist into the family Ethereal and effusing unearthly vibrations, Danek Lipko’s Eclipsoid is a wandering star that came to Earth. Being ambient in its essence, this album yet has a very tangible core. It draws attention while never demanding it – mesmerizing with a long-forgotten lore, a reminiscence of very simple things and a journey that looms ahead. With journey as its main narrative showing what happens when you awaken, the album itself was written, recorded and mixed in a perpetual journey. Danek Lipko: Elipsoid will be out on limited edition CD on Sept 24, 2025 as well as on digital and streaming via Somewherecold Records