News

Freedom to Spend Shares Norma Tanega and Aida Pavletich's "TV" and "Prison"

“TV” and “Prison” are the final movements from Norma Tanega and Aida Pavletich’s trio of operettas before this extraordinary collection of sound re-emerges this Friday, October 9 on Freedom to Spend.

On their 1989 cassette album Ways Away, Tanega and Pavletich expanded the emotional breadth of their tape-hissed sonic universe with a home-recorded operatic song cycle exploring themes of freedom and confinement, tales of travel by road and sea, and increasingly macabre diagnoses of our societal ills.

A love affair is set in unresolved musical tension with the rapturous pull of a glowing screen; windswept synths wall the listener into an unsettling portrait of captivity and loneliness. Affectionately eerie, “TV” and “Prison” see the duo leverage their sound to new, uncanny heights.

Norma Tanega and Aida Pavletich’s Saturday Dancer, Ways Away, and Run Runner will be released in newly transferred and remastered digital editions, and a small, dwindling inventory of original cassettes this Friday, October 9.

Freedom to Spend Shares Lotti Tauber's “Be-Stimmung (das Pochen)”

“Be-Stimmung (das Pochen)” is the next transcendent expression from Lotti Tauber’s Concern and Simplicity Volume 1: Original Recordings 1981-1986, unfolding November 13, 2026 on Freedom to Spend.

“Be-Stimmung (das Pochen)” is originally the closing piece from Tauber’s 1982 album Bestimmung. While “das pochen” can be translated from German to English as “the throbbing,” in possible reference to either the pain with which Tauber lived or the drum and gong-backed rhythm of the piece itself, “be-stimmung” can mean “determination,” “destiny,” “purpose.” Here, continuity is not freely given or ambient: rather, it is created and preserved with effort, focus, and contemplative intention.

Lotti Tauber’s Concern and Simplicity Volume 1: Original Recordings 1981-1986 arrives in its entirety on November 13, 2026 on Freedom to Spend.

Emily A. Sprague's Cyano is Out Now!

Emily A. Sprague’s Cyano rises into this world today.

Emily’s experience as singer and songwriter for Florist manifests for the first time in Cyano, an album whose concept began forming many moon ago. At its core, Cyano is an imagined world that exists in a utopian state, yet with a buried dark history. Emily was deeply invested in exploring the outer reaches of our world to inform Cyano, and in December of 2019, embarked on a profound trip to Iceland to conduct this field research with her life and creative partner V Haddad.

Over the next several years that followed, including a couple where we all found ourselves huddled in isolated introspection, the story of Cyano began to center around a character who feels and desires deeper language and nuanced sharing of experience and feeling. this kind of communication is what became the downfall of Cyano in the long past, so it is in many ways forbidden. Thus, Cyano became an album about searching for, and finding, connections through emotions and shared experiences.

In an effort to make those connections, and explore this forbidden language, Emily moved from composing instrumentals to composing with vocals, incorporating her voice into her solo, environmental music making. And while Rmily’s vocals do at times feel transmitted from a remote galaxy, they are distinctly hers, eternally empathetic and human.

So, in many ways, Cyano is a first offering, a symbolic juncture, a new world entirely of Emily’s design. We truly could not be more honored to play a role in helping this sound find its audience.

Emily A. Sprague’s Cyano is available now in vinyl, CD, Japanese CD import via Plancha, and digital editions.

Emily A. Sprague Shares "Rising"

“Rising” is the final meditation from Emily A. Sprague’s Cyano, materializing this Friday, October 2.

“Rising” brings flickering rhythm to minimally variant phrases that permeate as they repeat and coil. Sentiments interlock through images of night, faith, remembering—all incantatory, all hushed. Emily’s vocals emerge as a whispered deliberation from the depths of static, as melody spills effortlessly to encompassing zones of deep green, palpable earth gloss. In a bright and muddled sweep, “Rising” catches moss and rain and light, a refraction of intertwining symbols falling up.

The track unwinds alongside another mesmerizing video from Emily’s creative and life partner V Haddad, channeling inspiration from the night sky and glitter into an “open and abstracted visual space that celebrates our relationship with the cosmos.”

Emily A. Sprague’s Cyano will be released this Friday, October 2, 2026 in vinyl, CD, Japanese CD import via Plancha, and digital editions.

M. Sage's Brush Flier is Out Now!

M. Sage’s Brush Flier drifts into our shared air today.

Brush Flier emerged from material crafted around his 2025 album Tender / Wading, as Sage slowly nurtured a few acres of neglected space with his family. These songs represent the “outlier areas,” a brush pile of moments that were tenderly trimmed from the final tracklist. If Tender / Wading was sliced directly from human experience, outlining Sage’s recalibration into country living as father, partner, and homesteader, Brush Flier surveys these pastoral scenes from a more fantastical vantage point.

Across these sessions, Sage embraces an elemental, intentional songwriting style at the upright piano, an evolved approach after growing more comfortable behind the keys with Fuubutsushi. However, while culled from the same sessions as Tender / Wading, these offerings represent a stranger, stormier, noisier grouping, revisited in open space and teeming with wonder.

M. Sage’s Brush Flier is out now on all digital platforms.

7FO Shares "In A Watermelon Head"

“In A Watermelon Head” is the second aquatic adventure from 7FO's Water Falls Into A Blank, re-emerging this November.

“In A Watermelon Head” begins with a burst of bubbling droplets, signaling our descent into murky, unfamiliar depths. Light-hearted synthesizers glimmer through the swaying algae, ushering us towards something deep and wondrous. Soon, a choir of trilling sounds emerge, alternating at sudden, sunken intervals. Equally wonderful and wonky, the track observes an uncharted microcosm, teeming with mischievous creatures and primitive lifeforms.

After 10 years, Water Falls Into A Blank will be available on all digital platforms and as an expanded CD edition via Plancha on November 6, 2026.