Ransom Note

Samson A.K. has been a heady presence amidst the underground for a long time now having cut his teeth in various guises.

However, more recently he has begun boldly making music under his own name, cementing himself with a new position having released material on the likes of Berceuse Heroique, MAL Recordings and via his own newly launched imprint Ideal State. 

From a musical perspective Sam tends to be drawn to the darker, more abstract fringes of electronic music. There's a lot of noise involved and at times things get tough. 

This mix reflects that ethos, powering its way through a heady assortment of jackin' house, techno, bass and the spaces which sit in between. Its rough as f**k. Just how we like it.

Patricia Wolf makes music from the inside of an ecosystem.

Her recent release on Music To Watch Seeds Grow By; Yarrow (the 9th edition in the series) emerged from weeks spent at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, working alongside ecologists studying plants, pollinators, and the slow pressures of a changing climate.

Patricia Wolf Mock Up

The album maps a Yarrow’s life from root to seed: the conditions needed to grow, the quiet underground, the moment a flower opens to something that might carry it further. Field recordings from those Colorado summers are woven through the compositions, leaving room, as Wolf puts it, for the natural sounds to come through – her way of sharing an emotional inner life when thinking about these environments.

For this mix, Wolf turned her attention to morning. Imagining this year’s Watching Trees festival crowd coming down from a long night of dancing – we talked her through in the afterglow of this year’s edition. Wolf built A Wander in the Garden for that specific threshold hour – somewhere between nine and ten, when birdsong starts to reassert itself and the body wants something slow, expansive, and unhurried.

The anchor track arrived first: the Cosmic Tones Research Trio’s Photosynthesis, from which everything else grew. What follows is a walk through an imaginary garden with several climates – shade beneath a linden tree, open meadow thick with yarrow and field poppy, a pine grove smelling of warm sap, an orchard of cherries and mulberries just beginning to ripen.

If she had to name the plant that holds this hour best, Wolf chooses lavender: something with a direct line to the nervous system, a quiet insistence on calm.

FULL INTERVIEW HERE: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/seeds-mix-11-patricia-wolfs-wander-in-the-garden/

Wigs is part of a new school of dj's pushing faster tempo's and frequencies.

Releasing records and playing at some of the most interesting new parties on the circuit he has begun to make a name for himself for his euphoric, energetic sets which blur the lines between house, trance, tribal and beyond. 

His latest release comes on Kasra V's label, a record which makes sense in context with Kasra also holding a penchant for the progressive era of 2000's house music which helped push and inspire his own sound.

There's no punches held here. This is a fast and fiery assortment straight from the off - a promising entry to the series from a DJ popping up in all the right places.

We’re premiering the video for ‘Abiotic Factors’ – Patricia Wolf’s opening dispatch from Gothic, Colorado and the invisible forces that determine whether anything grows at all…

Tia and Wil’s Music To Watch Seeds Grow By series – the ambient/new-age/planty cassette label has in nine editions, tried to make a compelling case that the best way to understand ambient is to get your hands in some soil and think about it properly. Each artist chooses a plant that inspires their music and can be sown in the month of the release. Simple. Seasonal. You may have noticed it already.

For the ninth edition – the third of Season Two – they’ve brought in Portland, Oregon-based musician and field recordist Patricia Wolf, whose album Yarrow takes its name from Achillea millefolium, a flowering plant whose broad geographic range spans North America and Eurasia, which also happens to make it the perfect conceptual thread to connect Portland (where the music was written and recorded) to London (where the cassette was pressed and will land through your letterbox alongside a packet of yarrow seeds and a fact card about the plant). A transatlantic weed of the most beautiful kind.

Wolf is one of the most interesting people quietly operating at the edges of sound art. Her recent arc has taken her from grief (I’ll Look For You In Others, 2022) to a kind of luminous rebirth (See-Through, 2022), then to birds – literal birds, in Iceland, for a documentary score (Hrafnamynd, 2025) – and now, with this album, to plants. Specifically, to the invisible forces that determine whether plants live or die at all.

Yarrow was created in response to Wolf’s artist residency at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, as part of the Art-Science Exchange Project in the summer of 2024. She worked closely with ecologists Dr Paul CaraDonna, Dr Amy Iler, Dr Jane Ogilvie, Dr Nickolas Waser, Dr Mary Price, and Dr Will Petry, spending weeks embedded in long-term research on plants, pollinators, and their interactions as the climate changes. This is not, in other words, an ambient album about plants in the vague, pastoral sense. It’s an album about plants in the way a botanist might describe them: as dynamic organisms in constant, often invisible negotiation with their environment.

Which brings us to ‘Abiotic Factors’, the album’s opening track and the subject of today’s premiere. Abiotic factors – for those of us who skipped that particular biology lesson – are the non-living environmental conditions that determine whether an organism can exist at all: light availability, temperature, rainfall, wind, soil composition. They are the infrastructure beneath the visible world, the silent set of forces that a plant cannot choose but must simply work with, adapt to, or perish. As a concept for an opening track, it’s contemplative and a perfect orientation into the album… which you’ll all hear in its entirety soon little seedlings.

The video was shot closer to home – in Wolf’s Portland neighbourhood - through the lens of Edward Pack Davee, the filmmaker behind the Hrafnamynd documentary Wolf scored last year.

Watch here: https://www.theransomnote.com/art-culture/video-premiere-patricia-wolf-abiotic-factors/

Manami is firing on all cylinders.

If you’ve spent any time on a UK dancefloor over the last decade, you’ve likely crossed paths with her. Born in Japan and raised on Bristol’s foundational dub, house and bass scenes, she’s built a fierce reputation for holding down a room with unmatched energy and a distinct sense of community.

From early days raving at Livity Sound, Futureboogie, Timedance and Deep Medi to co-founding Bristol's Better Days parties, her musical DNA has always balanced the deep and the progressive. Now, she’s channelling that background into a distinct sonic realignment. Her latest productions and fresh live set lean heavily into sub-heavy 140, breakbeat, jungle and footwork, all tied together with those familiar progressive sensibilities.

Beyond the booth, Manami is mentoring FLINTA talent with Saffron and connecting East and South East Asian creatives through the East & Most initiative.

With appearances spanning from Berlin’s Atonal to unforgettable sets at UNFOLD, DGTL, Junction 2 and Boiler Room, she remains one of the UK's most reliable, anything-goes selectors.

We locked her in for a mix. Check it out now.