Touch

On Touch (2026), Copenhagen-based Cristalist and producer Mike Sheridan draws on his intuitive, sensory approach to music, his own experience with dyscalculia, and his fascination with early electronic music. Throughout the album's creation, he prioritised the physical experience of playing above all else—seeking, as he puts it, "that state in which presence is heightened and the senses are sharpened through discovery." Touch will be released on September 10th via non.pop.syntax. 

Conventions are set aside in favour of a sound world where melodies are scarce, and rhythm is dissolved. The music is determined entirely by Sheridan's physical interaction with his instruments: a German-made PIN Portabella synthesizer in EMS-style (a 1970s instrument used by artists including Stockhausen and Brian Eno), whose modules are interconnected using gold-plated pins in the system's central matrix, alongside his Cristal Baschet sound sculpture.

The Cristal Baschet –  invented in the 1950s by French brothers François and Bernard Baschet and a part of their cultural legacy “Les Sculptures Sonores” –  is widely regarded as the most recently invented acoustic polyphonic instrument of the twentieth century. It consists of tuned metal tones that are set into vibration when further mounted glass rods are bowed with wet hands. It was inspired by German physicist Ernst Chladni's 1787 experiments with vibrating metal plates. Mounted on the instrument is a large asymmetrically folded metal sheet—the Baschet brothers' signature design.