Caural Releases Archival Compilation ‘Aura,’ Spanning 1999–2003

The collection unearths unreleased material and compilation-only tracks from the turn of the millennium, capturing Caural’s formative blend of instrumental hip-hop and left-field electronics.

Two decades after his last Caural release, Zachary Mastoon returns with Aura, a set that gathers lost recordings and one-off compilation pieces from the 1999–2003 window. It’s less a new album than a careful remaster of fragments salvaged from scratched CD-Rs and scattered digital debris, pieces that sat alongside the work that landed on his early EPs and LPs.

Mastoon’s path was already well-etched by then: jazz training under Anthony Braxton, exposure to Javanese