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Elations Recordings presents "Return of the Airpoets", an exploratory recording from longtime collaborators Reuben Lewis (I Hold The Lion's Paw) & Adam Halliwell (Mildlife, IHTLP), occupying a unique space between contemporary experimental music and avant jazz. Engineered and mixed by Reuben Lewis in 2023, and featuring guest appearances from acclaimed Australian drummer Ronny Ferella.

"Return of the Airpoets" continues a conversation begun with 'Cygon Dance', an extended duo between Lewis and Halliwell from Halliwell's 2023 LP "Freedom Lapse"; a dialogue that stems from a shared love and respect for Jon Hassell's Fourth World music. Sonic pioneer and adventurer, Hassell's futuristic vision advocated possible musics, stressing plurality and multiplicity. Faithful to his vision, Adam and Reuben, as trailblazers rather than imitators, delight in boundless musical possibilities, adopting Hassell's futurism as stock-in-trade, making it their own while augmented with neo noir hues and hints of the tilted electro-funk of Miles Davis' collaborations with Marcus Miller.

These nine tracks flow together as a unified suite, their shadowy presence stitched from fractured narratives: imaginary crimes, murders, dreams, the unspoken. At the same time, you can detect the artists' meticulous attention to sonic detail, feel the undercurrents, the complex layering. This music has been distilled, winnowed, from extended improv sessions, with the artists - as producers - zeroing in on offcuts, shards, and splinters, seamlessly patching together fragments in post-production to construct intricately layered sound collages, taking a leaf out of Tao Macero's book, building from the ground up.

Who are these airpoets? Their mystifying trial suggests the travails of Joseph K, sentenced for unspecified crimes. But I prefer to see them as fugitives escaped from Robert Bolaño's novel, "Savage Detectives". In Bolaño's book, poet Juan Garcia Madero is granted admission to the shadowy group of poets, the Visceral Realists, whose movement has no clear aims, and whose members "walked backward . . . gazing at a point in the distance, but moving away from it, walking straight toward the unknown." Like the visceral poets, these airpoets, Reuben Lewis and Adam Halliwell, set their sights on a point on the distant horizon, setting off without map or compass, drawing nearer and moving away, towards the unknown.

Elations Recordings presents "Terra Ignota", the long-awaited new full length album from elusive Melbourne-based fusion ensemble Krakatau. "Terra Ignota" marks a return and an epochal shift for the group, a deep exploration of possible sonic spaces and a portent of things to come.

In the years since 2016's cosmic jazz funk-prog-spiritual 12" "Tharsis Montes/Apogean Tide" Krakatau have worked on refining their craft as instrumentalists and writers, expanding further into the world of jazz and fusing influences from world folk musics, contemporary jazz and the European post-minimalist music of the 1980s and early 90s. "Terra Ignota", literally translated as "Unknown Land", takes its name from the cartographer's notation for uncharted territory, the blank spaces on maps where knowledge gives way to imagination and speculation, gesturing towards the group's studio explorations and search for new sonic worlds in the years spent developing the record.

The results are a diverse yet unified combination of sounds and influences across five tracks that see Krakatau drawing closer to the independent underground "world" jazz scene of the 1980s than anything contemporary. The album opens with the digi-minimalism and fourth world atmospherics of title track "Terra ignota", a percussion heavy latin fusion sound in "Birds of Passage", and melancholic ambient saxophone and synthesiser duo "In Memory". Three-part epic "Cosmetic Surgery" journeys through a long, complex post-minimalist arrangement into latin fusion and contemporary jazz, followed by the contemplative ECM-styled acoustic quartet closer "Trial in Absentia".

The album features significant contributions from saxophonist Rob Vincs, former Victorian College of the Arts head of Jazz and Improvisation and a collaborator with Australian musician Brian Brown; layered percussion and wordless vocals from Brazilian percussionist and esteemed songwriter Alcides Neto; and a guest performance from trumpet player Reuben Lewis on the title track.

Recorded over a four-week period in early 2022, Freedom Lapse is the debut solo release of Australian multi-instrumentalist and composer Adam Halliwell. A versatile improviser and lover of performance, Halliwell has been an active contributor to numerous musical communities in recent years. The release of Freedom Lapse marks an exciting stage in Halliwell’s journey as an artist with the culmination of several important musical facets that are now becoming foundational to his practice.

As Halliwell tells us, Freedom Lapse owes its genesis to an epiphanic moment experienced whilst traversing a mountainous passage in Mexico, a place where ‘the past present and future stretch out in one place’. Entranced by this environment, its colours, the villages and local life, Halliwell listened to music that inspires him (he cites Jon Hassell here). The result: ‘complete aural, visual and spiritual completeness’, a moment of discovery, he explains. Shortly after, the material that now comprises Freedom Lapse was recorded, distilling this powerful sensorial experience into a body of music that he has now invited the world to share with him.

Throughout these recordings restrained improvised phrases and melodic ideas feature, often appearing as long refrains that soar above idiosyncratic beds of fractured percussion and junkyard bass-work. This use of contrast, which is central to the work, allows Freedom Lapse to tap the lucidity-chaos juxtapositional-style that lies at the heart of all good music in the ‘fourth-world’ idiom. Halliwell’s sensitivity to dynamics, form and narrative is potent on these recordings, which allow his winding, free-improvisations the space to unfold and extend patiently. All instruments on Freedom Lapse were written and recorded by Haliwell, with additional trumpet on Cygon Dance supplied by regular-collaborator Reuben Lewis. Freedom Lapse was mixed and produced by Halliwell and Jim Rindfleish.

Bristol's jazz daddies The Jazz Defenders drop their second album for Haggis Records (home of UK funk kings The Haggis Horns), in March 2022 and it's a real departure from their debut release "Scheming" (released in 2020). Whereas that album was a homage to the late 1950s/early 1960s classic jazz style known as hard bop, this release moves into new territory with hip-hop/jazz, cinema soundtrack flavours, Latin rhythms and soul-jazz all upfront in the mix. Three taster singles from the album released in mid/late 2021 and march 2022, "The Big Man/Love's Vestige, "Live Slow" (featuring US rapper Herbal T), and "Perfectly Imperfect" (feat Doc Brown) received great radio support from the likes of Craig Charles (BBC 6 Music), Helen Mayhew (Jazz FM), Jamie Cullum (BBC Radio 2), Ashley Beedle (Worldwide FM), Colin Curtis (Worldwide FM) amongst many others, all loving the Jazz Defenders' musical fusion of retro meets modern.

The classic sound that has inspired the band this time is very much from the mid-late 1960s era and the merging of soul and funk beats with jazz solos/improvisation. Tracks like "Wagger Jaunt" and "Munch" nod to the piano and organ-led soul-jazz of artists like Ramsey Lewis, Herbie Hancock, Reuben Wilson, and Jimmy Smith. Meanwhile "Saudade" and "Love's Vestige" feature Brazilian bossa rhythms but with some added film soundtrack overtones. Speaking of movie soundtracks, "The Oracle'' is a pure homage to the classic cinematic compositions of maestros like John Barry(James Bond, The Ipcress File) or Lalo Schifrin (Mission Impossible, Bullitt) right down to the very impressive string arrangement, beautifully scored and orchestrated by band leader George Cooper.

A big departure from the previous album comes via the two hip-hop/jazz tracks, both of which feature guest MCs. "Live Slow" has US rapper Herbal T blessing the mic over an uptempo soul-jazz number whilst "Perfectly Imperfect" features London MC/actor Doc Brown rapping on a nice and slow 90's style head-nodding hip-hop groove. Both compositions show George Cooper's love for old-school boom-bap hip-hop (by the way, he also plays keys with renowned UK hip-hop big band Abstract Orchestra). For classic jazz lovers who dug the first album, there are two pure jazz tracks that join the dots between that debut release and this sophomore one - "Twilight" and "From The Ashes" - with plenty of vibrant solos for the discerning listener.

"King Phoenix" is a statement in itself from The Jazz Defenders. After 2 years of music being destroyed by the pandemic and many musicians inactive, the band has risen from the ashes with new vigour, energy and vision to try something new and not just repeat past musical glories. A band that sticks to the same script every release might just end up having a short shelf life but the Jazz Defenders are planning on being around for a long time.










j Live Slow (Album Version) feat. Herbal T

Salin Records proudly presents Sable Blancs debut album
„Homecoming“. Each Salin Records release is about telling a
story and taking you on a journey. The day Sable Blanc told us
about the idea of producing an EP based on the memories of a
trip to New York City he made with three close friends in the
summer of 2018 we instantly fell in love with this idea. After a
few months of intense work, it became an LP - Sable Blanc‘s
debut album and also a debut for Salin Records as this is the
first album for the label. Inspired by the beautiful colours,
outstanding energy and peace all around New York City that
specific summer, Sable Blanc produced „Homecoming“. Every
track on the album is about memories and friendship. For two
reasons it felt like coming home for him. He lived a few years
in the US and went to high school there. It was amazing to
come back and finally meet a very close friend again. Sable
Blanc chose a photo for each track - taken by his friend Adrien
Philibert - which connects to the moment that inspired the
track. Daria Salin developed the photos using the cyanotype,
an analogue photo development process that was also used
for the cover background. Together with the stories that Sable
Blanc tells about each photo, the cyanotypes build an artistic
booklet that is a special feature of the album. Homecoming isan album for a quiet, cosy evening, where you sit back in your
favourite chair and hold the booklet in your hand to follow
Sable Blanc and his friends on their trip to New York City. Enjoy
the trip...Thank you for your support <3 Christophe & Daria