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Originally released in 1994 on Calypso Records / Irma Records in a triple vinyl promo white label version, Don Carlos's album Aqua is the
second album by the Varese-based DJ producer, already then known for his first two singles Alone and Mediterraneo, then both included in
his first album entitled Mediterraneo and released only in Compact Disc format in 1992 for the American market printed and distributed by
IRMA U.S.A., the American subsidiary of IRMA Records Italy.
The same fate will also have the Compact Disc format of the Aqua album, again printed only on the American market.
But the triple vinyl, printed in a limited edition of 500 copies in a white generic envelope, was never reissued and has become a rare record
over the years.
After almost thirty years, after countless requests for reissues, especially in the last few years in which the name and music of Don Carlos
has made a comeback, Irma Records has decided to reissue the vinyl in exactly the same original triple version.
DJ Don Carlos (born Carlo Troja) with his productions in the 90s has become one of the cult producers for DJs around the world.
His track Alone released in 1991 for Calypso was and still is one of the classics of House Music, played by all the major American and British
DJs.
At the time of its publication it was considered an underground song and therefore did not sell very much, but over the years its myth has grown
thanks to its subsequent productions as for example his second single, the EP entitled Mediterraneo, title which it will then inspired his first CD
album printed in the USA with the same title.
Several other singles followed, another album, always printed only in the USA, entitled Aqua, from which a triple promo vinyl was extracted which
today is one of the artist's most requested rarities.
In Italy his third album was released in 2002 entitled The Music In My Mind where Kim Mazelle, Michelle Weeks, Taka Boom and Kevin Bryant
were present as vocal guests. In 2009 a collection of the first two albums released in the USA titled Mediterraneo-Club Favourite Collection '90-
98 and in 2010 his fourth album entitled The Cool Deep which reproduced the sounds closest to his first productions.
Also active as a remixer for Italian and international labels, one of his most important works is the remix of Byron Stingily of the song You Make
Me Feel of which he made a worldwide hit. As a producer he also used other pseudonyms such as Montego Bay, Aquanuts, Sotterranea and
Love 2 Love Orchestra. He has played and plays in different countries such as London, New York, Miami and at various festivals, such as the
Robot and the Stickermule Festival in an evening with Apparat, Derrick May, DJ Koze, Lil 'Louis, Young Marco and Ellen Allien, LTJ Xperience

Green Vinyl

Föllakzoid are nearly unparalleled in the hypnotic lysergic drenched neo-psychedelic experience. On their debut it is mostly a rather bulky one, determined by the downright dirty, distorted electric guitar, which is also usually accompanied by a spacey, howling and herbaceous howling one. In addition, there is fat bass and powerful drums. During the prolific post-napster musical era dominated by myspace, the Chilean musical field opened up so that many bands could broaden their creative spectrum by taking global and timeless references as an aesthetic holy grail. This experimentation had the internet and specialized forums as a search engine, which not only provided the world parameters in trends, but also allowed to find true hidden gems, bands that were adored by a few connoisseurs of the real quality left behind by the record labels. In this context, a group of university students who have known each other from school began to rehearse in the Caracol Vip underground (Santiago, Chile), in a room owned by a local heavy-metal legend, Juanzer. Equipped with tube amplifiers, Marshall and other custom made, the members of that time: Gonzalo Laguna on vocals, Juan Pablo Rodriguez on bass, Domingo García-Huidobro on guitar, Diego Lorca on drums and Francisco Zenteno on second guitar, they began to play endless jams without a strict sense of songs or directed compositional notion. The rule was to follow the noise in a journey through valleys and peaks that allowed the spontaneous appearance of textures, lyrics, phrases and some invented chords that did not resemble anything that had been heard at that time. The rehearsals were transformed into true live performances without an audience, which were only seen by a few curious, among alcohol, smoke and deafening noise, which could only end when the owner of the room (Juanzer) entered to turn off the equipment. Over time he himself stayed as an auditor, witnessing how the musicians stripped themselves in their rehearsals. Considered at that time as play or fun, the idea of forming a band with a name came with the real live performances to which they were invited, without yet having songs made, at the end of 2006. The myth of their first live performance alludes to a numerical superstition, on July 7, 2007, in a small bar in Providencia (Santiago), which also provided the band with an upward recognition for the psychedelic-punk music they were doing, with a voracious vocalist who destroyed everything on stage and a band that stood firm on the endless songs they built. The name that was invented for that occasion was the result of a nonsense about the German word feuerzeug brought to the group by their close friend Alfredo Thiermann (who would later make the cover of the first album and become keyboardist), which the members of that time took and Spanishized at will. This neologism represents the second founding myth of the band since the interest in bands like Can, Neu! and AMON DUUL II and the characteristic motorik rhythm would soon arrive, in the form of kosmische musik. By 2008 the band had already added several live performances and some songs appeared, among which were Directo al Sol and Loop (nod to the English band), which allowed a greater deployment of ambient-noise resources, almost close to the 'concrete' music. The deconstructed rock of Spacemen 3 was also present in the form of repeated sequences on the bass and drums, as the layers of shrill guitars formed the foam of the tide bursting in the darkness of space. With the ideas and general feeling of the sound that they already had, the band made the decision to record their first album with the sound engineer and Juan Pablo's brother, Ignacio 'Nes' Rodríguez, who later together with JP would form the BYM label to make the first CDs of the forthcoming debut of Föllakzoid and other bands that Nes was recording. Sheltered that winter in the studio that Nes had built in an old house in Recoleta, the band recorded the bulk of the songs on the album with a new jam that emerged in that room composed of 1 note and moments of rising intensity: Sky Input I and II appeared to complete a set of songs that came from rock but were slowly passing to a level of trance and cacophony typical of orchestrated and atonal music. With three takes per song but only one take of the jam, the album was finished with a few extra takes and overdubs, some made in the house of Nes himself, who contributed a guitar to Loop, although it does not appear in the credits, and additional takes of "Pelao" Zenteno with delay and reverse for almost all songs. The names of the songs came from the lyrics that Laguna had worked from the live versions to the studio finals, except for Loop, Sky Input and El Humo. The cover of the album, which as mentioned was made by Thiermann, represents well the spirit of those days, when creative magma looked for an outlet through the instruments without any restriction or explicit direction from any of the members of the group. The image of the tree towards the sky speaks of the roots that rise towards the immensity, the nature projected towards the stratosphere. Ideas that the neo-psychedelia of those years seemed to capture well, echoing in the Chilean bands that at that time were gathering around the BYM label. Both the creative fluency and the lack of a musical director ensured that Föllakzoid was an original band that did not impose themselves a way of doing things or sounding, collective music took shape in the most wonderful way, without characters, without a record name, without faces. Just an instant in space. 2022 GALAXY GREEN coloured vinyl

Für Fans von: Anathema, While Heaven Wept, Solitude Aeturnus, My Dying Bride, Primordial, Dead Can Dance.
Thy Listless Heart veröffentlichen "Pilgrims on the Path of no return", pünktlich zum Doom-Metal-Newcomer des Jahres 2022! Ein epischer
Soundtrack von Trauer und Sehnsucht auf der Reise ins Ungewisse. Leid, Schmerz, Sehnsucht und Hoffnung, alles verpackt in einem Doom-Metal-Soloprojekt von Simon Bibby.
Nach Erhalt der sieben Tracks, die zusammen "Pilgrims on a Path of No Return" bilden, war Hammerheart Records überzeugt, dass die Welt dieses
großartige Album hören muss.
Thy Listless Heart ist die alleinige Schöpfung von Simon Bibby, der das Album in seinem Haus in Derbyshire, England, aufnahm und dann die Fähigkeiten von Greg Chandler (Esoteric) in den Priory Recording Studios für das Mixing und Mastering in Anspruch nahm. Simon hat einen großartigen
Track-Record im Metal, der bis in die späten 80er Jahre zurückreicht, als er Bassist und später Gitarrist bei Seventh Angel war, die ein paar coole
Thrash Metal-Alben auf Under One Flag Records veröffentlicht haben.
Thy Listless Heart ist etwas ganz anderes; es ist atmosphärischer Metal, gefüllt mit Doom-Elementen und traurigen Melodien, gekrönt von leidenschaftlichem Gesang. Man kann sich vorstellen, dass die atmosphärischen Teile von Primordial auf spätere Anathema treffen, mit einer Prise
Dead Can Dance als Zugabe. Das Album muss in seiner Gesamtheit gehört werden, um die vollen Emotionen und Atmosphären, die es erzeugt,
zu erfassen, es ist in der Tat eine Pilgerreise. Von melodischen, härteren und doomigeren Tracks wie "As the Light Fades" und dem ergreifenden
"The Precipice" bis hin zu Ambient/Folk inspirierten Stücken wie "When the Spirit Departs the Body" und "Aefnian" bis hin zum fast monströsen
(in der Länge) Track "The Search for Meaning" ist alles leidenschaftlich und schön, wenn auch auf eine traurige Art und Weise.

Këkht Aräkh is the Ukrainian project founded in 2018 by Dmitry Marchenko. Originally released on the Finnish label Livor Mortis in 2021, Pale Swordsman goes to even greater extents in building a bold and atmospheric sonic palette, and it’s now seeing a worldwide reissue via Brooklyn label Sacred Bones.

For the sound design of the album, Dmitry was inspired by The Stooges’ Raw Power to deliver a more soft sounding album, decisively less “metal”. Traditional black metal song structures still persist in songs like “Night Descends” and “In The Garden”. However, their rawness and fast tempos is quickly cut through by dark ambient passages in “Amor” and “Intro” and softly played desolate ballads like “Nocturne” and “Lily”.

Këkht Aräkh is the Ukrainian project founded in 2018 by Dmitry Marchenko. Originally released on the Finnish label Livor Mortis in 2021, Pale Swordsman goes to even greater extents in building a bold and atmospheric sonic palette, and it’s now seeing a worldwide reissue via Brooklyn label Sacred Bones.

For the sound design of the album, Dmitry was inspired by The Stooges’ Raw Power to deliver a more soft sounding album, decisively less “metal”. Traditional black metal song structures still persist in songs like “Night Descends” and “In The Garden”. However, their rawness and fast tempos is quickly cut through by dark ambient passages in “Amor” and “Intro” and softly played desolate ballads like “Nocturne” and “Lily”.

Jude Woodhead AKA Saint Jude is a born and bred South London based producer who first approached songwriting after being diagnosed with Tinnitus which prevented him from pursuing his DJ career. While his previous works found space between genres, with elements of indie, ambient pop, hip-hop, Uk garage and noise, his debut self-produced album 'Signal' - out in November 2022 - rejects the limitations of genres altogether while anchoring his music firmly in the sounds of his native South London.
Conceptualized during the lockdown in 2020, ‘Signal’ is a self-portrait about coming of age during a time of political crisis and social change. Enlisting the help of past collaborators and friends (Aga Ujma, Low Loudly - Sarah from Drug Store Romeos - Louis Culture, Trim, HALINA and Zeke Ultra), Jude uses a wide range of voices to communicate different perspectives on his subject matter.

Thy Listless Heart to release “Pilgrims on the Path of no Return”, just in time for 2022’s Doom Metal newcomer of the year! An epic soundtrack of sorrow and longing as we journey into the unknown. Sorrow, pain, yearning and hope all wrapped up in a solo Doom Metal project by Simon Bibby. Upon receiving the seven tracks which together make “Pilgrims on a Path of No Return”, Hammerheart Records was convinced that the world needed to hear this great album. Thy Listless Heart is the sole creation of Simon Bibby, who recorded the album at his home in Derbyshire, England and then enlisted the skills of Greg Chandler (Esoteric) at Priory Recording Studios for mixing and mastering. Simon has a great track-record in creating Metal dating back to the late 80’s when he was bassist and later, guitarist in Seventh Angel, who released a couple of cool Thrash Metal albums on Under One Flag Records. Thy Listless Heart is a different entity; it is atmospheric Metal, filled with Doom elements and sad melodies, crowned with passionate singing. Think as if the atmospheric parts of Primordial meet later Anathema, with a pinch of Dead Can Dance thrown in. The album needs to be heard in its entirity to get the full emotions and atmospheres it creates, it is indeed a pilgrimage. From melodic, heavier and doomier tracks as “As the Light Fades” and the grasping “The Precipice” to ambient/folk inspired pieces as “When the Spirit Departs the Body” and “Aefnian” resulting in the almost monstrous (in length) track “The Search for Meaning”, it is all passionate andbeautiful, although in a saddened way.

Seabuckthorn is the alias used by Andy Cartwright for his solo works. Cartwright uses finger picking & bowing techniques combined with various open tunings to form a mixture of approaches, often with layered accompaniments. Generally the songs lean towards to the experimental genre, whilst on the edge of the ambient and folk.

Having grown up in Oxfordshire, Cartwright studied sound engineering in Cornwall and then lived in the cities of London, Paris & Bristol working as a broadcast wireman. He now resides in the French Southern Alps making music.

Cartwright has been actively touring internationally for several years performing in festivals and events throughout Europe.

Various songs have been featured in documentaries, film and contemporary dance. His works has been released since 2009 on labels such as Dead Pilot Records, Bookmaker Records, Lost Tribe Sound, Eilean Rec., IIKKI and Fluid Audio. "Of No Such Place" is his 13th solo releases.

Self-recorded indie experimentalist from the Pacific Northwest. For fans of Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You. Features Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. In 2019, Drowse’s Kyle Bates set out to produce a self-recorded new album. Marked by moving across state lines, long-distance relationships, and deaths in the family, the following years proved to be metamorphic. Now, three years later, he’s emerged with Wane Into It, continuing a distinctly Pacific Northwestern tradition of self-recording indie experimentalists (Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You). One of the most impactful moments came during the looming passing of a family member. With death expected, the choice was made to conduct a bizarre “living-wake” gathering—with the soon-to-be1deceased in attendance. Shortly after, Bates found himself disturbed, preoccupied with the abstraction of memory. The experience led him to reassess the tool one uses to curate our selective memories: the internet. The internet, which creeped into even more aspects of life during the pandemic, serves as our self-made digital link to the past. Its uncaring presence layered over humbling thoughts of death and his own childhood memories of the Oregon Coast as he worked on Wane Into It; life’s hyperreal texture sank into the recordings as he felt his body age and wane. Big sounds were captured in bedrooms, hallways, practice spaces, forests, and on highways throughout West Coast vibraphones chime over black metal guitars, a mellotron drones under degraded samples, violins splinter against granular field recordings. In the process of documenting these aural moments Bates completed an MFA at Mills College, coloring the album with shades of avant electronic and minimalist composition (Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Maryanne Amacher, Sarah Davachi etc…). To realize this scope Drowse collaborated with Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. Bates’s songwriting and production have never been more lucid; sounds flicker as he sings with fragile intensity. The record, Drowse’s third for The Flenser, impressionistically distills loss, distance, mystery, prescription drugs, the preservation of memory via recording, and ambient anxiety through its titular act: to Wane Into It, to disappear awaiting the next moon phase, water returning to sea before reemerging as a wave. Track Listing: 1. Untrue In Headphones 2. Mystery Pt. 2 3. (Ashes Over The Pacific Northwest) 4. Wane Into It 5. Telepresence 6. Gabapentin 7. Blue Light Glow 8. Three Faces (Cyanoacrylate) 9. Ten Year Hangover / Deconstructed Mystery

Self-recorded indie experimentalist from the Pacific Northwest. For fans of Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You. Features Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. In 2019, Drowse’s Kyle Bates set out to produce a self-recorded new album. Marked by moving across state lines, long-distance relationships, and deaths in the family, the following years proved to be metamorphic. Now, three years later, he’s emerged with Wane Into It, continuing a distinctly Pacific Northwestern tradition of self-recording indie experimentalists (Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You). One of the most impactful moments came during the looming passing of a family member. With death expected, the choice was made to conduct a bizarre “living-wake” gathering—with the soon-to-be1deceased in attendance. Shortly after, Bates found himself disturbed, preoccupied with the abstraction of memory. The experience led him to reassess the tool one uses to curate our selective memories: the internet. The internet, which creeped into even more aspects of life during the pandemic, serves as our self-made digital link to the past. Its uncaring presence layered over humbling thoughts of death and his own childhood memories of the Oregon Coast as he worked on Wane Into It; life’s hyperreal texture sank into the recordings as he felt his body age and wane. Big sounds were captured in bedrooms, hallways, practice spaces, forests, and on highways throughout West Coast vibraphones chime over black metal guitars, a mellotron drones under degraded samples, violins splinter against granular field recordings. In the process of documenting these aural moments Bates completed an MFA at Mills College, coloring the album with shades of avant electronic and minimalist composition (Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Maryanne Amacher, Sarah Davachi etc…). To realize this scope Drowse collaborated with Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. Bates’s songwriting and production have never been more lucid; sounds flicker as he sings with fragile intensity. The record, Drowse’s third for The Flenser, impressionistically distills loss, distance, mystery, prescription drugs, the preservation of memory via recording, and ambient anxiety through its titular act: to Wane Into It, to disappear awaiting the next moon phase, water returning to sea before reemerging as a wave. Track Listing: 1. Untrue In Headphones 2. Mystery Pt. 2 3. (Ashes Over The Pacific Northwest) 4. Wane Into It 5. Telepresence 6. Gabapentin 7. Blue Light Glow 8. Three Faces (Cyanoacrylate) 9. Ten Year Hangover / Deconstructed Mystery

Originally released in 2006 as a mini-CDr in a limited edition of 300
signed and numbered copies, this immersive selection of solo recordings
by Savage Republic, Scenic and Independent Project Records founder
Bruce Licher finally gets the expanded reissue treatment
Newly packaged in oversized die cut pocket folders complete with various inserts
to give a more complete artistic presence to the unique and special music that is
being shared. CD packaging is designed by world-renowned graphic design artist
Bruce Licher.
The three original tracks "recorded in the summer of '97 on a cassette 4-track" are
now accompanied by a fourth instrumental that ventures into atmospheric
electronic territory. The bonus track was composed on an old Roland SH-2000
synthesizer Licher found while living in Arizona; it is, rather fittingly, named
"Number 09" "an homage to the Beatles' most adventurous piece of
experimentation. 'Exploratorium' reclaims equal fondness for the natural and the
industrial. This inquisitive approach is made clearer "and intriguing" by the
unexpected pairing of the original three tracks with "Number 09". Whereas "Peak",
"Going Home" and "The Penstemon Field" eagerly play with stretching the role of
guitars and bass, "Number 09" takes its cue from the hypnotic synths of the
Human League's 12" from 1979 'The Dignity of Labour' and sets off for an
unconstrained sonic trip that goes from the jarring to the meditative. It's a
mesmerizing blend of ambient and post- rock, noisy shoegaze and pastoral
melodic structures, droning avant-garde and soundtracks at their most.

Wretch shows mysterious black metal band Anti-God Hand at the height
of its powers
Anti- God Hand are reportedly based in Vancouver and connected to brutal
electronica /// progressive Industrial /// ritualistic ecstatic ambient musician City,
though we can neither confirm nor deny such circumstances. We can tell you that
Wretch is positively cosmic and toys readily with established black metal tropes,
pushing so-called genre conventions in directions atmospheric, experimental and
electronic. Recorded in Vancouver, Andrew Weathers (claire rousay, Threshing
Spirit, Hayden Pedigo, More Eaze) mastered and Sebastian Ruslan provided
album art.
RIYL: Krallice, Deafheaven, Spectral Wound, Wolves In The Throne Room, Liturgy
File under: Metal, Black Metal

Yet again, Helena Hauff's Return To Disorder label brings us a new talent from the world of electro production, this time in the shape of India's Investigations of a Dog. The four tracks here contain a lively, energetic feel sure to tempt the reticent onto the dancefloor, matched with a dreamy optimism that gives them an ultra pleasurable head-in-the-clouds celestial feel. 'Heliocentrism' has echoes of classic LFO's naive melodicism, '11 July' is sunny and gently bubbling in the same vein as Aphex's first 'Ambient Works' LP, and the rest is generally infectious and loveable yet employed with a touch of subtle restraint. We look forward to further Investigations

Ingredient is the elegant collaboration of Toronto poets, composers, producers and dear friends Ian Daniel Kehoe and Luka Kuplowsky. Their self-titled release is an enigmatic electronic avant-pop record attuned to the micro and macro perspectives of the natural world. Ingredient is an album whose lyrics are more poem than lyric, and whose songs exist in a merger of house music, philosophically-minded lyricism and contemporary R&B. One might recall electronic and art-pop luminaries such as Yukihiro Takahashi, The Blue Nile, and Arthur Russell, or connect it to contemporaries like Nite Jewel, Westerman and Blood Orange. A distinct world of dance, of questions, of secrecy and ultimate softness.

Eight years of friendship forges strange telepathy.

In the summer of 2020, Ian Daniel Kehoe was entrenched in a new feeling of heaviness; psychosomatic symptoms had started to proliferate; stress made new pores across the body, bending sensitivity into pain. His days were met with confusion, detachment, sleeplessness and pain without causation. Disfigured, he felt that what had been central and centering was blown out to the periphery of things. In a moment of self-preservation he reached out to his dear friend Luka Kuplowsky to make an album together. For Kehoe, it was an instinctual grasp for the anchoring truthfulness of deep friendship and the potential for a dedicated creative collaboration. Kuplowsky’s presence was light, supportful and curious, eager to explore musically the sounds they were mutually drawn to: house music, ambient pop, dub. The duality between Kuplowsky and Kehoe – between the Aflight and the Unmoored – is a portrait of a friendship whose exchanges came easy and produced an outpouring of song. Creation and therapy crisscross. In email correspondence that catalogs their process of collaboration, affection abounds: “feels bare without the Luka Licks”, or “Love you so much”, or “Kinda just overwhelmed with deadliness coming in at all angles.” When their voices first come in together on “Wolf,” that harmony arrives in a dramatic avant-pop sound that is bold and wondrous.

Kuplowsky and Kehoe both arrive at Ingredient as established artists whose works are committed to language’s propensity to provoke and mystify. Kuplowsky’s 2020 album Stardust is an idiosyncratic and otherworldly blend of pop and jazz romanticism grounded by Cohen-esque vocals and a stirring philosophical curiosity. Kehoe’s entrance into the new decade has hatched four records of pop experimentation, most recently 2022’s Yes Very So, a euphoric and bold album of poetic synth-pop and meditative ambient instrumentals. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s union as Ingredient is a beautiful and unusual chemistry that integrates their distinct approaches while bringing forth a newness: a sound that alternates between cinematic technicolor and dubbed out fogginess; a lyricism that exchanges their lucid and clear poetics for a playful and obtuse verse. The album intuitively taps into the opposing emotional states of Kuplowsky and Kehoe during the conception of the record, contrasting the buoyancy of trumpeting keyboards (“Resurface”), angelic synthesized voices (“Come”), and rolling bass (“Photo”) with the record’s underlying darkness of whirring buzzsaw textures (“Transmission”), whooping sirens (“Wolf”) and murky ambience (“Illumination”). Lyrically, this duality arises in the record’s flux between openness (“Variation”, “Raindrop”) and existential dread (“Wolf”). “Illumination” most clearly crystalizes this opposition, reconciling the verses’ neurotic yearning for enlightenment with the chorus’ liberating doctrine of negation: “no more devotion… no more delusion”. Amidst the gradations of light and dark, Kuplowsky and Kehoe trade indelible, lush melodies as though their voices are made of a substance that melts easily one into the other. The harmony of poetry, sound, and texture cuts through your brain fog like a wet diamond.

Ingredient’s self-titled record was assembled by Kuplowsky and Kehoe over the course of six months in a home studio they frequented daily. Amidst synthesizers and drum machines they composed, re-composed, and workshopped a wide array of music, ultimately focusing on a set of eight songs that lived in a shared musical and philosophical world. Recording days often ended in basketball games at a local court or a rooftop commune over a pot of tulsi tea and a crossword puzzle. Kuplowsky brought in the Blue Cliff Record – the classic anthology of Chan Buddhism – whose inscrutable and sublime insights remained constant throughout the recording process as an activator of reorientation and reflection. While Kehoe was frequently rendered physically immobile by bouts of anxiety, a patience and mutual caring governed the pace of their creation; rest, stretching and meditation became equally important as the act of arrangement. Invited into their intimate circle of composition was Thom Gill, whose heavenly voice uplifts “Variation” and “Raindrop,” and Karen Ng, whose alto sax simmers and dances around the funky strut of “Raindrop.”

The lyrics on Ingredient reflect the persistence of change, the infinite variability of nature where randomness and divergence are no accidents. In Daoism, duality, in the form of Yin and Yang, is not contradictory as it is in Western idealist philosophy, but rather composes the eternal and lived paradox of our changeless-changing universe: changeless because all is change, and changing because the dynamism of the Dao makes each moment transformational. Kuplowsky and Kehoe refract this way of seeing the world, as in Variation: “Variation in the natural world / there it is.” Ingredient is an experience of the manifold ways of saying there it is of the transformational world, and there it is, unfolding. Elsewhere, change and ephemerality is addressed through the record’s preoccupation with non-human perspectives, reorienting the listener to the wolf, the mouse, the emerald frog, the centipede, the bird, the fly in the lamp. The album cover visualizes this fascination with the striking image of a reddish-orange frog atop a defamiliarized landscape of dark green leaves. Mirroring the exploratory process of the record’s collaboration, the frog also signals the amphibian’s natural inclination to leap into boundless potential. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s lyrics manifest philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton’s concept of “the mesh,” drawing attention to the “vast, entangled web” of interconnectedness that connects all life forms and interweaving the songwriters’ shared wonder into the Animal’s unknowability. As Luka narrates in the breakdown of the dance-floor ready “Photo,” “the closer we observe things, the further they retreat into abstraction.” In Ingredient’s ecosystem, perception is a reversible fractal where the world’s minutest details mirror the shape of the cosmos.

According to the Dao, the path to healing starts by reorienting perception away from the self and toward the self’s subsumption in Totality. For Kehoe, collaborating with Kuplowsky became the reorientation necessary for the self-preservation he was seeking, opening up a shared creative practice to navigate and soften the complexity of his psychological shattering. The album begins with Kuplowsky intoning “colossal faith” which bounces around the stereo field in a cloud of echo, and it is the enormity of “faith” that centers both Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s collaboration and their inquisitiveness in the vast mysteries of our very being. Truth in Ingredient is not an essential nugget, but a bending of the light – it is the equivocal entanglement of how we are in nature as nature, but with a plea or prayer under our breath that marks our felt distance from what we are a part of: “carry me towards the mountains of my birth / returning to the nest / the silence of the earth.”

Widely-loved electronic maestro Gigi Masin returns with ‘Vahinè' – a mini album of beautiful and distinct music that is unmistakably his, sounding better than ever.

Masin always pours his heart into composing, but here it takes on a potent new level of heavy emotion – as it’s a tribute to his late wife, who sadly passed away last year.

“There is a Tahitian dance called ‘Aparima’. It consists of graceful, sinuous and fascinating movements, which tell you stories and legends about love or tradition. The ‘Vahinè' are now dancing, the Tahitian females, with smiles and gestures that could be symbolic or descriptive but are always gentle, harmonious, charming. I was watching this documentary, it was almost 4 in the morning, but I couldn't sleep; I was in front of the television for hours, my wife had passed away the day before, and I was watching hands and arms swaying.

I told myself that maybe it’s so, at the end of the road it’s possible to realize dreams, and I’m sure that she is finally able to dance like never before, and is able to move without any impediment, with no suffering, free to make all the movements that she couldn't make for so long, turning to me with a smile and a wink. So, in the clouds, you will discover and see an extraordinary 'Vahinè', because she will move and dance and smile until the end of time.”
Gigi Masin

A future-retro dreamscape where stripes of early evening sun pour through partially closed venetian blinds; kalimba, piano and steel pans meet on the incredibly evocative ‘Marilene (Somewhere in Texas)’.

The Balearic/Italo house heart of ‘Barumini’ throbs throughout a celestial epiphany, whilst ‘Shadye’ is a sun blinded ambient mirage where angelic voices and electric guitar intertwine, before more heavenly music ensues on the trance-like ‘Malvina’.

A heart-wrenchingly beautiful evocation of transitioning to the other side, ‘Valerie Crossing’ is Gigi’s compelling and inspirational take on death, with a vivid evocation of something spiritual, existential and metaphysical. His exemplary approach shows decease not as a cause for despair, but a philosophical and poetic exploration of where souls go, when they leave their earthly bodies.

Masin closes with ‘Vahinè' – a twitchy, levitational piece of sublime deep techno, which transmits high strength vibrations of powerful emotions. On both this track, and the album of the same name, there’ s no pseudo intellectual ambient posturing with cod academic angles tagged on; This is music of real substance, coming from a real place. It’s saturated with feelings, but turns mourning into affecting art, and even a beacon of hope.

In recent years ambient music has changed and encountering Jon Hassell's fourth world design has become easy. Most of the time there’s no feeling, no narrative, a nothingness of ideas through layers and layers of pastiche and boring bedroom music. This is not bashing. Just a reminder that sometimes the information trap delays an understanding of how good music really is.

“Cavalcante” is the new release by funcionário (born Pedro Tavares). You’ll find Jon Hassell in these eleven pieces. And yes, sometimes you’ll think about ambient music. Most of the time you’ll wonder about what is really happening. And why it's only now you’re hearing about this twenty-something musician from Setúbal, Portugal.

A little bit more than one minute into “En Garde!”, the opening track, one feels challenged by the idea that everything that was listened up to that moment was a false start. The piece abruptly stops, flips some digital sound, and restarts in a whole new direction. As this happens it becomes obvious we are in for a treat. Those two, three seconds create a sensation that everything happens in a moment that introduces you to funcionário's craft: delicate complex sounds infatuated with the idea of movement and the never-ending notion that there’s no dividers in the fourth world. Music can go beyond that.

As it moves forward – “Verde”, “Sierra” or “Publicidade Arco e Flecha” -, the album (his fourth) morphs around variations or perceptions of ambient / electronic / experimental music. And as the language evolves, it hints on how funcionário keeps stretching the boundaries of digital music as he wishes to advance to a more analog setup. In a way, he confronts foundational ideas while having breakthroughs and realizing he is at a top level. Justifiably ambitious, bright and discreetly edgy.

Das südafrikanische Duo CONSTELLATIA taucht mit seinem eleganten und düsteren neuen Album „Magisterial Romance“ existentiell in die menschliche Natur ein - mit überlebensgroßen romantischen Kompositionen und gefühlvollen Ambiente, das ein Album erschafft, das ebenso kraftvoll und schön wie verletzlich und verheerend ist.

Das südafrikanische Duo CONSTELLATIA taucht mit seinem eleganten und düsteren neuen Album „Magisterial Romance“ existentiell in die menschliche Natur ein - mit überlebensgroßen romantischen Kompositionen und gefühlvollen Ambiente, das ein Album erschafft, das ebenso kraftvoll und schön wie verletzlich und verheerend ist.

Written and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, Back to the Woodlands is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album Neighborhoods . A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, Back to the Woodlands offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind. Born into a musical family, Ernest Hood began a promising career as a jazz guitarist during the 1940s, touring internationally with his brother Bill Hood and the saxophonist Charlie Barnet , before contracting polio in his late twenties. The disease left Ernest unable to play the guitar and confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It also forced him to adapt and innovate around his musical practices in the face of adversity; Hood's value of sound matured with a remarkably democratic and nonhierarchical approach and application. Taking up the zither, a less physically-demanding stringed instrument to the guitar, embarking upon the unprecedented process of incorporating field recordings into his work as early as 1956, and eventually discovering the synthesizer, Hood's music became imbued with optimism and subtle cultural critique. This ethos and technique - refined over the coming decades - would lay the groundwork for a sprawling body of radio work, mail order recordings for homebound listeners, and Neighborhoods , self- issued as a small vinyl edition in 1975. Where Neighborhoods , a nostalgic opus, drawing from a well of collective memory of the 1950s, is defined by traces of human activity, Back to the Woodlands leaves the modern world behind, delving into Hood's love for nature. Only recently discovered in his archives, the album dramatically expands his concept of "musical cinematography," imagistically triggering states of sensory memory from within its zither and synthesizer melodies, intertwined with field recordings made during Hood's extensive travels throughout Oregon. If Neighborhoods is a retreat into the gauzy joys of a romanticized past, Back to the Woodlands is an immersion in the timeless sanctuary of the natural world. A fascinating counterpoint to its predecessor, Back to the Woodlands brings us even closer to Hood's belief in the transportive qualities of sound; that field recordings could serve as a vehicle for the imagination and liberation, particularly for those with similar mobile disabilities as his own. Across the album's twelve compositions, the rippling instrumental harmonics - shifting between abstraction and playful melody - fold so seamlessly into the birdsong, bubbling brooks, and other environmental ambiences, that they often give the impression of having been recording within the landscapes toward which they whisper. Falling somewhere between the immersive calm of healing music and New Age, the creative field recording practices of sound ecologists world building for Folkways, and the jazz infected ambiences during Obscure / Editions EG's highest heights, Back to the Woodlands sculpts an singular proximity of music for its moment; a form of ambient sonic realism that draws the consciousness toward its surroundings as much as within. Working closely with his estate to maintain his original vision, Freedom to Spend has restored and remastered this never before released, lost masterpiece by Ernest Hood from the original tapes. Ernest Hood's Back to the Woodlands will be issued on vinyl, as well as on CD in combination with its contemporary Where the Woods Begin , with new liner notes by Michael Klausman . On behalf of Ernest Hood and Freedom To Spend, a portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Oregon Wild, an organization dedicated to protecting and restoring Oregon's wildlands, wildlife, and waters as an enduring legacy for future generations.

"Playing The Angel | The 12" Singles" enthält in dieser als Deluxe-Box Set aufgelegten Sammler-Edition insgesamt zehn 12" Vinyl-Schallplatten, die die Single-Auskopplungen aus dem im Oktober 2005 veröffentlichten elften Depeche Mode-Studioalbum "Playing The Angel" repräsentieren, und die neben den eigentlichen Titeln "Precious", "A Pain That I'm Used To", "Suffer Well" und "John The Revelator/Lilian" auch umfangreich mit B-Seiten, Remixen, Instrumental- und Dub-Versionen sowie anderen Aufnahmen aus dem Album-Umfeld ausgestattet sind. Die zehnte und letzte Platte, speziell für diese Kollektion zusammengestellt, offeriert B-Seiten und Remixe, die seinerzeit verstreut auf CDs und Maxi-Singles erschienen waren.Jedes Box Set innerhalb dieser Reihe enthält die Singles jedes einzelnen Depeche Mode-Albums auf hochwertigem Vinyl, wobei die remasterten Tonspuren direkt von den ursprünglichen Mastertapes stammen. Die spezielle Box Set-Grafik wurde von den jeweiligen Original-Alben inspiriert, während für die 12" Singles selbst die damaligen Cover-Artworks herangezogen wurden.

Ltd Edition White Vinyl, DL card.

Debut from genre-defying producer, Yosa Peit. Laurie Anderson meets Bjork; Prince overlapped with Arthur Russell and the hum of Blue Velvet, with jarred and splintered ambient production reminiscent of Aphex Twin. ‘Phyton’ gets a special expanded edition via Fire Records, featuring unreleased tracks; ‘Tyrann’, a live version of the haunting album track ‘Serpentine’ and end of the night lament, ‘Rise’. ‘Phyton’ is a conundrum with its own humour and beauty amid the electronica soundtracking; it’s a record that’s defied genre categories when first released on Tax Free Records two years ago. Yosa’s ascension from singer to producer is now complete. “In my head I was making a movie,” Yosa told No Wave magazine, “I dreamed up a Coen Brothers’ movie scene for a few tracks.” The result is a haunting, provocative sound; a soundscape where songs merge and splinter, a trip that’s never predictable.

"The production is super fresh" Holly Herndon. // “Warped lo-fi meets glitchy electronica and pop” The Vinyl Factory //

Download extras: 1. Serpentine (Live Bonus) 2. Rise (Bonus)

A muffled cry into the technological darkness, Contemporary Movement slid into the world right as the MP3 was seeping out of college dorms. A 39-minute drift into the void, drenched in Cold War-era reverb and then submerged in four track hiss for good measure. Duster constructed a Brutalist masterpiece on the outskirts of a suburban mall, as if to say, “We were here.”

“Music for dark spaces and closed eyelids, deeply psychedelic but without sprawl, ambient music with a serrated edge of punk.”—The Ringer

“Warm, fuzzed-out sounds that hit home like a tight, melancholic embrace from your favorite person.”—Vice

A muffled cry into the technological darkness, Contemporary Movement slid into the world right as the MP3 was seeping out of college dorms. A 39-minute drift into the void, drenched in Cold War-era reverb and then submerged in four track hiss for good measure. Duster constructed a Brutalist masterpiece on the outskirts of a suburban mall, as if to say, “We were here.”

“Music for dark spaces and closed eyelids, deeply psychedelic but without sprawl, ambient music with a serrated edge of punk.”—The Ringer

“Warm, fuzzed-out sounds that hit home like a tight, melancholic embrace from your favorite person.”—Vice

Best listened to from inside the womb, Duster’s 1998’s debut Stratosphere simultaneously capped off and reinvented the slow core’s first wave. A four track dreamscape that will wake the neighbors and then lull them back to sleep. Hazy, arpeggiated guitars layer over a deliberate drummer with no real place to be, as semi-inaudible vocals warn of millennial malaise and subtly encourage the listener to “rock out, rock out, rock out, rock out.

“Music for dark spaces and closed eyelids, deeply psychedelic but without sprawl, ambient music with a serrated edge of punk.”—The Ringer

“Warm, fuzzed-out sounds that hit home like a tight, melancholic embrace from your favorite person.”—Vice

Since its formation in 2010, the Melt Trio has become one of the world's most innovative guitar trios in contemporary jazz. And way beyond. Stylistically speaking: If you like Tortoise, Khruangbin, but also Philip Catherine, Bad Plus or Marc Ribot, you can already look forward to one of the outstanding albums in November of this crisis-ridden year.

On their countless concerts and tours all over the world, the three Berliners have refined their special style more and more and show an even stronger will to create in details. Their combination of acoustic and electronic sounds seems more subtle and at the same time more powerful than ever, specific influences from jazz and classical modernism to post- and prog rock can at best be made out dimly, because the music simply sounds like Melt Trio. It is and remains a guitar trio that does without any comparison. "Melt is neither Nirvana on jazz, nor Bill Frisell Trio in rock, nor Massacre in ambient. Melt is Melt, unique, individual, gripping and moving," it was once said elsewhere.

Issued by Leo Fegin's visionary record label in 1993, this refreshed and revised reissue collection of Hungarian composer Tibor Szemző's chamber pieces with spoken text – composed at 1980s for the legendary GROUP 180 – is unlike anything else of its kind.

No one has survived life. Everyone has died from it so far. Man must realize that He is responsible for His own life and fate and must insist upon this responsibility beyond all limits. And since Man has dissociated Himself from the sphere of irrationality, He has no way of getting in touch with death, or of establishing control over it. How we achieve the final result is merely of secondary importance. If the vision is clear to everyone, there is no need at all to look back. In a time of complete mental disturbance, only one chance remains to us: crystal-clear thinking. This leads us back to total mental disturbance, which everyone has died from so far. (Pavel Havliček – Miklós Erdély – Tibor Hajas)

Text and Music | Language and Speech | Sound and Music

The common basis of the three works by Tibor Szemző heard on this album is the inalienable relationship to text – as an a priori principle. Text and music: the formal attributes of significance, intentions, and levels of meaning inherent in verbal communication as it is transformed into audible code. Language and speech: the structural level of communication, where it becomes purposeful expression, acoustic statements of variable modality. Vocalization as sublimation. Sound and music: By becoming an auditory signal, communication is deprived of its sense and reduced to musical articulation and abstraction.

Skullbase Fracture: Shards of reality – senseless, disconnected fragments of recorded “living speech” – simultaneously disintegrate and merge to create meaning through the musical process, while it is degraded and stylized to represent a single layer of the ambient noise one would hear in a hospitality setting.

Optimistic Lecture: The theses – like a practical, everyday user’s manual to cognitive tendencies and aims as they apply to the entirety of existence – convey their meaning through simplified rhythmic speech, galvanized into commands. As a counterpoint to recited prayers, they comprise a uniform soundscape.

The Sex Appeal of Death: The head-on simplicity of communication creates such extremely reductive musical interrelations that they cannibalize themselves in a necessary and inevitable fashion. And, in this manner, the text as well

Brilliantly unclassifiable ambient midi-jazz salvo from Brazil’s Gabriel Guerra aka Guerrinha - member of PAN/Future Times' Lifted ensemble and lynchpin of the Rio De Janeiro underground. Very highly recommended noir sleaze x fantasy lounge music somewhere on the spectrum between Gigi Masin, Spencer Clark, 0PN, Flanger and Koji Kondo’s iconic video game soundtracks.

Deployed as the third release on the expertly curated confuso editions, ‘Cidade Grande’ sees Guerra unfurl an immersive and deeply enveloping variant of lounge jazz noir intersecting Japanese city pop, classic video game soundtracks and future-primitive kosmische signatures in a way that defies easy categorisation. Guerrinha colours outside the lines in swirling, exquisitely trippy designs that are as easy on the ears are they are hard to fully fathom over a single sitting.

Mirroring a strain of jazz music’s evolution from sophisticate lounge soundtrack to more psychedelic lustre when musicians found acid and Brazilian styles in the ‘60s, Guerrinha slants the paradigm thru the prism of late ‘80s midi with a c.21st suss that coolly echoes hauntological takes from Spencer Clark & James Ferraro to Leyland Kirby, and Eli Keszler’s electro-acoustic jazz proprioceptions, as much as emotive Kenji Kawai soundtracks. There's a complete lack of cynicism in his approach, and dense, hypnotic tracks like 'Venda Casada Village' and the moving 'Kafta Hoje' sound so completely straight-faced it's impossible not to respect the flex.

It’s a hugely trippy listen, at once calming and eerily evocative, with a wipe-clean palette of deft midi orchestrations that conjure flashbacks to soundtracks for everything from Twin Peaks to Sharky & George or Patlabor, but with more opalescent depth, dancing around motifs in holographic designs that mark the uncanny valley of perception.

Since starting Babehoven in Portland, Oregon in 2017, Maya Bon has
shown herself to be a gifted heart-on-sleeve songwriter, using music to
peel back the layers of her own experience "sometimes sad, sometimes
surreal, always vividly rendered " to reveal universal emotional truths
hidden in the most intimately personal of details
After a handful of self- released EPs and their label debut on Double Double
Whammy with 2022's "Sunk" EP, Babehoven's first full-length album "Light Moving
Time" is due October 28 2022.
"Light Moving Time" is emblematic of Babehoven's wide range of dynamics, and
each of those sounds are taken further. You can hear the pared-down languor of
"Yellow Has a Pretty Good Reputation", the smoldering guitars of "Demonstrating
Visible Difference of Height", the peculiar charm of "Nastavi, Calliope", and the
soft tenderness of "Sunk". Alternating seamlessly acrossstyles, Circles and
Philadelphia have the wispy ambient calm of a Liz Harris track, I'm On Your Team
falls somewhere between a flowy country song and an 80s power ballad, Marion
contains the plucky indie- folk warmth of Hovvdy, and Stand It and Pockets are
coated with My Bloody Valentine's wobbly shoegaze. But in contrast with those
EPs, these tracks utilize Bon's voice with greater emotional impact than ever
before. Pressed on Bone Color vinyl

Using just piano and a Weissenborn guitar, Helge Lien and Knut Hem
sculpt a timeless sound that conjures up images of endless planes,
feelings of freedom and nostalgia
They make use of the harmonic vocabulary of jazz, and the feeling of Country and
Bluegrass while occasionally hinting at ambient and film music. Journalists have
come up with clever genre names such as "Nordicana" to try and capture this
direction. But although Hem and Lien share influences with these acts, their style
feels like a distinct own branch within this fascinating scene.
At its very core, 'Villingsberg' is music for inner wandering, a cosmos of solitude,
in which the silence behind the notes is as important as the actual sounds made.

Italian sound artist GIULIO ALDINUCCI returns with his 4th album on KARL: "Real" is again a truly masterfully composed and sound-designed ambient masterpiece and a more than worthy follow-up to the critically acclaimed "Borders And Ruins" (2017), "Disappearing In A Mirror" (2018) and "Shards Of Distant Times" which all made it onto several year's best lists.

With now his 4thalbum for Karl, the sound artist from Siena / IT has proved a steady and prolific artist on the label roster. And each time, GIULIO ALDINUCCI delivers a new ambient masterpiece that clearly carries his signature as composer / producer and yet reveals a slightly different approach to his modus operandi. ALDINUCCI's massive layers of sound, built from field recordings and an array of electronic gear, blend droney ambient with heavenly voices / sacred music that create an atmosphere of a consolatory melancholy – alien, but with a graspable presence of human souls. And each album deals with a topic that ALDINUCCI came across in his observations of and reflections about today's society.

In the words of GIULIO himself:

"The digital media we live with shape and define reality by filtering it, letting us run the risk of living without our personal and unique one. My new album expresses a need of something unmediated and authentic. "Real" is a reflection on the endless possibility of sonic transformation, the ability we have to create new realities transmuting the soundscape around us and the inner soundscape inside us, even only by imagining it. A (deep)real experience permeated by dreamy lyricism."

• DELUXE HEAVYWEIGHT SLEEVE WITH SPOT-VARNISH AND ALTERNATIVE ARTWORK
• INCLUDING INSERT WITH LINER NOTES
• PVC PROTECTIVE SLEEVE
• 1994 BANK HEIST MOVIE PRODUCED BY ROGER AVARY & QUENTIN TARANTINO
• SCORE BY TOMANDANDY (THE HILLS HAVE EYES, THE STRANGERS)
• AVAILABLE ON VINYL FOR THE FIRST TIME
• LIMITED EDITION OF 2000 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED COPIES ON FLAMING COLOURED VINYL

Killing Zoe is a 1994 crime / bank heist film written, directed and produced by Roger Avary and co-produced by Quentin Tarantino. Killing Zoe follows the story of a safe cracker named Zed who returns to France to aid an old friend in performing a doomed bank heist. The film was labeled by acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert as “Generation X’s first bank caper movie”. After the production of Killing Zoe, Avary and Tarantino continued their collaboration and produced both the iconic award winning movie Pulp Fiction and several radio dialogues in Reservoir Dogs.

The score to Killing Zoe was produced by Tomandandy, aka Thomas Hajdu and Andy Milburn. This duo is best known for their horror scores like The Hills Have Eyes and The Strangers amongst others and many collaborations with great artists such as Lou Reed, David Byrne, U2 and Laurie Anderson.

Killing Zoe is available on vinyl for the first time as a limited edition of 2000 individually numbered copies on flaming coloured vinyl and includes an insert with liner notes.

On their debut LP “Pome”, Liai has given us a stunning work of expertly crafted rhythmic ambience, inspired by the intimacy and solitude of the midwestern countryside. Having grown up in rural Missouri, Liai channels the mixed feelings that can accompany solo contemplation in nature - expansiveness, sentimentality, vulnerability and eeriness. This deeply personal set of tracks took 3 years to make, revealed in the precision of sound design and use of space. The work feels at once familiar and organic, yet technical and futuristic, almost alien - a product of digital melodies, granular processing and frequent sampling of their own previous works.

Bio:
By way of rural Missouri to Chicago to New York, Liai melds sonic elements of each city from pastoral, expansive drones to Chicago experimentalism and the rhythmic ambient that’s arriving on both coasts of the US. With two albums forthcoming, their work marks the meeting point of experimental sound design with emotional pop-like melodies.

Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy, x2 LPs of long-form, lyrical, groove-based free improv by acclaimed guitarist & composer Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet. Recorded live at ETA (referencing David Foster Wallace), a bar in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood with just enough space in the back for Parker, drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, & alto saxophonist Josh Johnson to convene in extraordinarily depth-full & exploratory music making. Gleaned for the stoniest side-length cuts from 10+ hours of vivid two-track recordings made between 2019 & 2021 by Bryce Gonzales, Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy is a darkly glowing séance of an album, brimming over with the hypnotic, the melodic, & patience & grace in its own beautiful strangeness. Room-tone, electric fields, environment, ceiling echo, live recording, Mondays, Los Angeles. Jeff Parker's first double album & first live album, Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy belongs in the lineage of such canonical live double albums recorded on the West Coast as Lee Morgan’s Live at the Lighthouse, Miles Davis' In Person Friday & Saturday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco & Black Beauty, & John Coltrane's Live in Seattle.

While the IVtet sometimes plays standards &, including on this recording, original compositions, it is as previously stated largely a free improv group —just not in the genre meaning of the term. The music is more free composition than free improvisation, more blending than discordant. It’s tensile, yet spacious & relaxed. Clearly all four musicians have spent significant time in the planetary system known as jazz, but relationships to other musics, across many scenes & eras —dub & Dilla, primary source psychedelia, ambient & drone— suffuse the proceedings. Listening to playbacks Parker remarked, humorously & not, “we sound like the Byrds” (to certain ears, the Clarence White-era Byrds, who really stretched it).

A fundamental of all great ensembles, whether basketball teams or bands, is the ability of each member to move fluidly & fluently in & out of lead & supportive roles. Building on the communicative pathways they’ve established in Parker’s -The New Breed- project, Parker & Johnson maintain a constant dialogue of lead & support. Their sampled & looped phrases move continuously thru the music, layered & alive, adding depth & texture & pattern, evoking birds in formation, sea creatures drifting below the photic zone. Or, the two musicians simulate those processes by entwining their terse, clear-lined playing in real-time. The stop/start flow of Bellerose, too, simulates the sampler, recalling drum parts in Parker’s beat-driven projects. Mostly Bellerose's animated phraseologies deliver the inimitable instantaneous feel of live creative drumming. The range of tonal colors he conjures from his extremely vintage battery of drums & shakers —as distinctive a sonic signature as we have in contemporary acoustic drumming— bring almost folkloric qualities to the aesthetic currency of the IVtet's language. A wonderful revelation in this band is the playing of Anna Butterss. The strength, judiciousness & humility with which she navigates the bass position both ground & lift upward the egalitarian group sound. As the IVtet's grooves flow & clip, loop & repeat, the ensemble elements reconfigure, a terrarium of musical cultivation growing under controlled variables, a tight experiment of harmony & intuition, deep focus & freedom.

For all its varied sonic personality, Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy scans immediately & unmistakably as music coming from Jeff Parker‘s unique sound world. Generous in spirit, trenchant & disciplined in execution, Parker’s music has an earned respect for itself & for its place in history that transmutes through the musical event into the listener. Many moods & shapes of heart & mind will find utility & hope in a music that combines the autonomy & the community we collectively long to see take hold in our world, in substance & in staying power.

On the personal tip, this was always my favorite gig to hit, a lifeline of the eremite records Santa Barbara years. Mondays southbound on the 101, driving away from tasks & screens & illness, an hour later ordering a double tequila neat at the bar with the band three feet away, knowing i was in good hands, knowing it would be back around on another Monday. To encounter life at scales beyond the human body is the collective dance of music & the beholding of its beauty, together. – Michael Ehlers & Zac Brenner

Beth Orton returns after six years with her new album, ‘Weather Alive’.

“Through the writing of these songs and the making of this music, I found my way back to the world around me - a way to reach nature and the people I love and care about. This record is a sensory exploration that allowed for a connection to a consciousness that I was searching for. Through the resonance of sound and a beaten up old piano I bought in Camden Market while living in a city I had no intention of staying in, I found acceptance and a way of healing.” - Beth Orton

Album collaborators include Tom Skinner, Alabaster dePlume, Shahzad Ismaily and Tom Herbert.

Big headline UK tour in October 2022, including a headline show at Koko in Camden, London.
CD housed in digipak packaging. Clear vinyl in a single-sleeve jacket and printed inner. Black vinyl, housed in a single-sleeve jacket and printed inner.

“As the music rises against the ragged pulse of her vocals, the English artist, nearly 30 years into her career, constructs an entirely new landscape for her songwriting - a wide-open space that grows stranger and more beautiful the further inside she leads us.” - Pitchfork

“The musical richness only mirrors Orton’s astounding writing” -MOJO (★★★★)

“Viscerally corporeal music, full of gristle and breath and richly ambient” - Uncut (8/10)

“‘Weather Alive’ is an enormously exciting record” - The Guardian

“Soaring” – NME

“Best New Track” - Pitchfork

“Singular and captivating” - Stereogum

Beth Orton returns after six years with her new album, ‘Weather Alive’.

“Through the writing of these songs and the making of this music, I found my way back to the world around me - a way to reach nature and the people I love and care about. This record is a sensory exploration that allowed for a connection to a consciousness that I was searching for. Through the resonance of sound and a beaten up old piano I bought in Camden Market while living in a city I had no intention of staying in, I found acceptance and a way of healing.” - Beth Orton

Album collaborators include Tom Skinner, Alabaster dePlume, Shahzad Ismaily and Tom Herbert.

Big headline UK tour in October 2022, including a headline show at Koko in Camden, London.
CD housed in digipak packaging. Clear vinyl in a single-sleeve jacket and printed inner. Black vinyl, housed in a single-sleeve jacket and printed inner.

“As the music rises against the ragged pulse of her vocals, the English artist, nearly 30 years into her career, constructs an entirely new landscape for her songwriting - a wide-open space that grows stranger and more beautiful the further inside she leads us.” - Pitchfork

“The musical richness only mirrors Orton’s astounding writing” -MOJO (★★★★)

“Viscerally corporeal music, full of gristle and breath and richly ambient” - Uncut (8/10)

“‘Weather Alive’ is an enormously exciting record” - The Guardian

“Soaring” – NME

“Best New Track” - Pitchfork

“Singular and captivating” - Stereogum

clear vinyl

Colours Of Absence is the follow up to Original Soundtrack. Both albums were written during the 2020 pandemic lockdown, which was no doubt a phase of experimentation and pushing boundaries, as producers found themselves with a lot of time and no dancefloors.

This saw ASC pushing himself creatively and focusing on instrumentation within his ambient music, and in the case of both Original Soundtrack and Colours Of Absence, this meant the piano. The piano focus is a little less obvious in Colours Of Absence though, as this album attempts to strike a balance between ASC's 'traditional' beloved ambient work, and the aforementioned Original Soundtrack. 9 tracks spread over two slices of clear vinyl that will take your emotions on a journey like no other. Sit back and absorb Colours Of Absence.

Damian Schwartz makes a welcome return to Pulp for his third full-length album, La Sal De Tu Especie. The 11 track record was written over the last three years as a way of coping with some tough experiences and features remixes
from K15 and Gifted & Blessed. It once again finds the Madrid producer serving up the sort of richly musical house that has always stood him apart.

Schwartz has been away for a while but emerged in the early 2000s with an artful take on house music. As a student of jazz, composition and bass, his intricate grooves have always been embellished with real melodic craftsmanship. In the past, they have come on this label, Esperanza and A Harmless Deed which he co-runs with Jose Cabrera. He has put out two albums before now and also works under the Epiphany alias as a producer and live act. He is a real master of his analog machinery and someone who never fails to bring fresh ideas. This superbly adventurous and widescreen new album proves that once again and shows off diverse influences such as 90s broken beat by acts like Hanna and 4 Hero, the early IDM of LFO and Aphex Twin and the Detroit house and electro styles of greats such as Juan Atkins, Teknotika, Marcellus Pittman and Kyle Hall.

It kicks off with Renacido which is a cinematic synth opener that places you into orbit. La Elipa is expansive and jazzy house with cosmic chord work over the tight, punchy kicks and Lopp then gets physical with broken beat drums and funky bass dancing around each other to uplifting effect. The superb Zwei Danke is another masterclass in off-grid beat programming and soulful machine sounds that captures the essence of early Detroit house.

It is remixed by K15, a vital London beatmaker with credits on labels like Eglo and Wild Oats. His version showcases rugged, lo-fi and dusty drums softened by heart-melting chords and angelic vocal coos.

Schwartz's 'Morro Da Urca' is a suspensory ambient interlude that makes way for the crisp electro-funk and starry-eyed pads of 'Rufo,' then 'Meco' cuts loose
with boogie bass and glistening drums and perc that voyage through a whole eco-system of bright, nebulous synths. 'Mika' is another out of this world house composition with majestic leads and pixelated pads that bring warmth and future soul. There is real electricity in the freeform keys and corrugated drums of Coney Island that will ensure any dance floor takes off.

Final remixer Gabriel Reyes-Whittaker aka GB (Gifted & Blessed) is a composer and sound artist whose music is a constant exploration of the bridge between the technological and the ancestral. He flips 'Loop' into an Afro-future jazz dance with infectious percussion and expressive chords that never rest.

La Sal De Tu Especie is a timeless fusion of jazz freedom and house grooves that takes you into a magical new dimension.

'Transplant Rejection’ is the second in a trilogy of cassette albums released via Muscut in the latter half of 2022. The work of Estonian artist and IDA Radio co-founder Robert Nikolajev, this collection of seven ‘almost’ dark ambient tracks embody the melancholy of autumn whilst hinting at the forthcoming eternal winter. A man with many hats, Nikolajev operates on the fringes of the leftfield house underground for labels such as Incienso, Collect-Call and Sad Fun as well as being one half of the sporadic DIMA DISK act with Ragnar Rahouja. Eschewing the more rhythmic side of his productions for this Muscut tape, Nikolajev taps into the fictional soundtrack atmospheres the label is known for and brings his own brand of wistful, introspective world-building by way of machine harmony to the now Tallinn based imprint.



There’s a lo-fi, grainy quality running throughout the collection, a kind of sepia-toned nostalgia that envelops the listener and disorientates any perception of time or place. Buried vocal fragments sit in the mix on ‘Stifled’ alongside decaying synthesiser drones whilst ‘DDM’ channels an edgy post-rock dirge with its use of sagged bass guitar. Overall, an inspired look into the more ‘at home’ side of this increasingly prolific Estonian artist.

Third time's the charm - here comes the third vinyl release of TDS Records. The label's original artists formed a two-person formation under the name: Z1B2. ZOL and n-2b together wrote three tracks, commemorating their subjective perception of the last years, sublimating life into ambient technodub melodies. All three tacks are examples of sentimental minimalism, with a simple techno groove. The fourth track is a closing remix by krisz deak which delivers a very optimistic vibe that will make your feet move.