In the words of her Blood Stereomate and partner in heavy domestic crimes Dylan Nyoukis: "Karen's sounds are true aural ugsters for people who like their 'music' really broken. Joyous, hysterical, fucked up, primitive, drunken and just plain 'out'. It is an mystifying and odd universe. The bright and lurid sound colours of her work will primarily lure you in, sweet style, but it doesn't take long before the goofed out and bent content takes hold and really snatches you."

One third of YOR and a full T.u.B, Nataly Hulikova incorporates mundane wanderings and stray thoughts into quizzical soundscapes that can result in poetically sparse meditations and/or experiments in new/old pop/rock canons. A weirdo terrain mined with unpredictable delights and a touch of Leipzinger irreverence: about as punk as the sound scene can get, if you ask us.

Elisabeth Klinck uses the violin as her compass and confidante as she moves through the different techniques that inform her practice. Currently a student of Live Electronics at the Conservatory of Brussels, Klinck is one of the co-founders of Nemø Ensemble, a group of young musicians pushing the envelope in Belgian contemporary music. Her release Woning Jozef Schellekens on the Brussels label HUIS illustrates an inquisitive approach to compositional strategies, orchestral in scope and hard-hitting where it counts. She makes some pretty dank electronics, too.

Lamina is the alias of Clarice Calvo-Pinsolle, a Villa Arson graduate and established sound sorceress out of the French Basque country. With an artistic practice that marries the material to the ethereal, Lamina's interest in time and memory has a direct incidence in the way that she approaches her installation work. The results are hypnotic sonic locales for elements to be molded and deformed literally and lyrically. An illusionist of perceptive fields animating the unseen ~ Knud Victor would dig.

Composer, researcher, author, resident DJ/curator at Düsseldorf's Salon des Amateurs, and founding member of the Institut für Feinmotorik collective and the now-defunct trio The Durian Brothers, Marc Matter's interest in sound curio has made paved him a playfully inscrutable path that skirts the margins between academia and absurdia through his myriad compositions and releases on Chocolate Monk, Tanuki, Slimvolume, Mount Analogue and Research & Waves. For Total Stooge FM, this dokter of mirth will present a new composition featuring software-coding by Florian Zeeh and which consists of short word-loops that interact with each other, resulting in a glitchy, repetitive sound-text ~ speech-techno is this year's hot new genre, jawohl.

Living legend Maggi Payne uses synthesizers and altered sounds from nature to compose deeply absorbing environments that are immersive to the point of tangibility. Her collaborations in the late eighties with video pioneer Ed Tennenbaum displayed to full effect the physicality of her music, and the recent re(re)releases by our fellow Belgo Aguirre of Ahh-Ahh and Arctic Winds have more than ensured her a glistening spot in the pantheon of modern composition.

Lucy Railton's musical universe finds its roots in classical and contemporary composition, existing within the lineage of modern instrumentalism and musique concrète and spurring off into its own unpredictable orbit. She has cut her teeth in the most reputable institutions (Tate Modern, Barbican Center, Blank Forms New York & Groupe de Recherches Musicales) and associated with the most impressive company (Catherine Lamb, Kali Malone, Sofia Jernberg, Pauline Oliveiros, Alvin Lucier...!). Also endorsed by our dearest nearest Henry Andersen, whose taste in sound and people is not to be questioned.

Fancy fair folklore takes a Deep Listening turn, or so the young Simon Van Honacker pitched his sound practice to Lieven Martens in hopes of scoring an internship at Ediçoes CN. Not only did he land the gig, he got himself released with a cassette of Italian braderie recordings aptly titled Italian Airs. What organic symphonies will come out of this world's spontaneous orchestras are the quest and the treasure, already set in motion yet waiting to be perceived as such. Van Honacker is on it and in on it.