quête:a work in progress

The full-length debut from Bendigo Fletcher, Fits of Laughter is a collection of moments both enchanted and mundane, sorrowful and ecstatic: basking in the beauty of a glorious lightning storm, waking with a strand of your beloved’s hair happily caught in your mouth, drinking malt liquor while bingeing “The X-Files” on a lonesome Saturday night. As lead songwriter for the Louisville, KY-based band, frontman Ryan Anderson crafts the patchwork poetry of his lyrics by serenely observing the world around him, often while working his grocery-store day job or walking aimlessly in nature (a practice partly borrowed from the late poet Mary Oliver). When matched with Bendigo Fletcher’s gorgeously jangly collision of country and folk-rock and dreamy psychedelia, the result is a batch of story-songs graced with so much raw humanity, wildly offbeat humor, and a transcendent sense of wonder.

True to its spirit of purposeful wandering, Fits of Laughter unfolds in a wayward yet lushly detailed sound, embroidered with everything from crystalline harmonies to blistering guitar riffs to heady drum-machine beats. For help in forging the album’s ragged elegance, Bendigo Fletcher worked with producer Ken Coomer (the original drummer for Wilco and Uncle Tupelo), whom Anderson met in a flash of strange serendipity. Soon after he’d connected with Coomer via phone and bonded over a shared affection for Pink Floyd’s Obscured by Clouds, the band headed to Nashville to record in Coomer’s garage studio, laying down the album’s eight songs in nine frenetic days.

In keeping with the regional perspective that defines much of folk and country music, Fits of Laughter ponders certain paradoxes inherent in the band’s homeland. “In Kentucky there’s a long-running frustration of tradition and stubbornness versus progress,” says Anderson. “On one side you’re looking at things like the coal industry or Mitch McConnell, but then there’s also a feeling of togetherness and a fuck-the-man attitude and a loving desire for everyone to be left alone.” Referring to Fits of Laughter as a coming-of-age album, Anderson also examines a more internal conflict throughout the songs, including his choice to abandon his medical-school aspirations in favor of pursuing a career in music. “The title’s really about the spectrum of emotions I’ve felt on the way to finding what makes me feel like I’m living truthfully, rather than holding onto what I think other people’s expectations are of me,” he says. “It’s a phrase that bridges all of those emotions—everything from joy to hysteria.”

Introducing a brand new label of mutant, fusioneering styles from the pulsating brain that rules from the centre of the Firecracker constellation.

The maiden voyage by Healing Force Project traverses further and deeper into the wormhole that was first explored in his Gravitational Lensing EP on Firecracker.

A full panoply of bubbling, semi-submerged, electro-acoustic abstraction, lysergic drones and oblique, polymetric time signatures recalling the work of Italian avant-jazz outfit Gruppo d’Improvvisazione while simultaneously picking up distant echoes from 'Pangaea' era Miles Davis, 23 Skidoo, Source Direct, Squarepusher, The Heliocentrics, This Heat and Mosquitoes.

'Fizz-cracking drum machines and sparring breakbeats knitted with eyes-shut chord progressions and a seemingly mystic sampler that spits pure magick vibes'.

This is electrified, psychozoic jazz fusion for tomorrow's unlocked vortices!

Today, beloved DJ, producer and songwriter Lauren Flax announces her forthcoming EP, Out Of Reality out August 6 via 2MR. Much of Out Of Reality’s cohesion comes from Flax’s expansive production, using simple elements to craft intricate backdrops for the questions posed by her songs. On the EP’s titular track, Alejandra Deheza (School of Seven Bells)’s crystalline vocals are woven against a delicate tapestry of arpeggiated keys, sparse percussion and haunting cello. Watch “Out of Reality” here.

Detachment isn’t always detrimental; sometimes you have to step outside to get a better view. Lauren Flax knows this - as a DJ, producer and songwriter, her discography is notoriously genre-defiant, consisting of an impressive array of solo tracks, collaborations, and remixes. The most recent of these – her mesmerizing take on Pale Blue’s “Breathe” - saw her experimenting with a new style of writing. “I wanted to explore that sound more,” Flax explains, “more of a synth exploration, textures with less beats.” The pared-down songwriting approach lent itself to thematic considerations as well: she’d been thinking about the repetitive nature of the life cycle - the Indian concept of Samsara - and felt a general disappointment at humanity’s lack of progress. On her new EP Out Of Reality, she washes that disappointment in lush sonic hues, stepping outside the quotidien for a new perspective.

Though its themes span beyond the scope of our current socio-political moment, Out Of Reality feels, right now, like an especially tantalizing proposition. Pandemic-driven escapism has bred a new crop of otherworldly music designed to transport the listener somewhere better. But Flax isn’t interested in escapism for its own sake - there’s still work to be done here on Earth, after all. Instead, through a combination of live instrumentation and ethereal synths, Out Of Reality grants us a respite from the real so we can return to it with a clear head.

After the exploration of snowy mountains of Alpestres, released on Hands in the Dark in 2018, French composer Matthias Puech ventures into new territories, sketching a cartography of the invisible where the journey, in chiaroscuro, is announced as a rite of passage. A Geography of Absence, as introspective as unpredictable, immerses the listener into a unique sensory whirlwind where organic matter becomes almost palpable. A researcher in theoretical computer science and an engineer at GRM, Matthias Puech constructs a dialog between synthetic music and field recording, capturing sounds that surround him and creating his own sonic language with the help of synthesizers he designs and develops; notably the Oscillator Ensemble and the Tapographic Delay, made by the American company 4ms.

Composed during a moment marked by ordeal and mourning, A Geography of Absence retraces an inner journey where the physicality of sound leads the listener into an initiatory tunnel filled with apparitions, ghosts, visions. With sound oscillations as a navigational map, we progress, step by step, through the meanders of an unknown world, dazzled by the prospect of a new synthetic horizon, an electronic biotope teeming with life and incarnations. Playing with time, space and matter in an approach similar to that of musique concrète, Matthias Puech combines ambient and noise, floating sounds and electroacoustic experimentations, thus shaking up our listening perspective, which finds itself walking through a parallel universe, strata after strata, sequence after sequence.

The trip begins with “Hollow”, as if on board a night train travelling at full speed through ghost towns. Or is it a spaceship? Removed from their original habitat, sounds – picked up during walks or moduled by synths – are free to be interpreted differently by everyone, according to the memories that shape us. Granular and metallic, this first piece takes us to an elsewhere in orbit. "Work Song" is built around the pulsation of the void, of space, where strange creatures and liquid emanations abound. We become fetus, cocoon coiled in the placenta, heart beating to the rhythm of the gooey choreography of the human body. "Chrysalis" awakens the racket that lies dormant in us, when the skin changes, when the transition takes place. One seems to recognize certain sounds stemming from nature but they could also be mirages, imitating reality to render the barely perceptible engulfing. “Tunnel Vision” brings out a herd of haunted bells, slowly swelling in a pastoral maelstrom, ending in a deafening buzz. Further on, the chirping of an animatronic bird mixes with the hooting of an owl: "A Faint Beacon" invokes a nocturnal vigil that mixes the crackling of a fire and icy gusts of wind blowing everything away. Like an epic, sucking the listener into the breach of a black hole in the center of the Milky Way, it's up to "Homeostasis" to conclude in the high spheres and contemplative vapors, where the balance of dawn announces a rebirth.

A Geography of Absence is a meticulous and sensitive piece that constructs a delicate symphony of extremes, between introspection and desire for the unknown. Accompanied by the ink work of the artist Léa Neuville, whose folds of prints sketch this imaginary atlas, Matthias Puech becomes a narrator of mental adventures. And succeeds once again in transcending reality to dig a path to the unspeakable.

**LONG OVERDUE REPRESS - CLEAR VINYL 300 COPIES ONLY** “With Ela’s music I feel emotional, engaged… I can’t help but feel she’s always looking for a sense of belonging and it
seems to inform all the music that she makes. Glasgow must have more of that belonging feeling than most
cities because she’s spent the most time here, an exotic bird in a rainy city she maybe finds a lttle bit of comfort in. It’s
a pleasure to have her here, in this awful time to be living in Britain, her illuminations feel important and hopeful. A
stubborn light; someone making great timeless music out of the humdrum of the everyday.” - Stephen Pastel
Movies For Ears is a retrospective collection of works by Polish-born, Glasgow-based artist Ela Orleans which
navigates almost two decades of songwriting in the heart of the global pop underground. This remastered collection casts
an ear over what Orleans might call the ‘pop sensibility’ within her back catalogue. Released previously on a number of
small DIY labels, Orleans’ music coincided with the explosion of auto-didactic musicians finding their voice in the age of
the blogosphere, artists emboldened by the democratisation of music-making afforded by the internet. From the outset,
Orleans’ childhood studying formal music mixed with cut-up techniques, sampling, sound-art and experimentation to
create a distinctive signature cloaked in an innate melancholy and playfulness. Fully remastered by James Plotkin,
featuring extensive sleeve-notes and rare photos from Orleans’ archive, Movies For Ears presents an appraisal of the
musician’s work, painting a portrait of an artist with an uncanny ability to evoke emotions and ghosts of memories in the
listener.
Each song pulls sunshine from its surroundings, moments of pleasure plucked from eulogies. The Season employs a
hypnotic loop with Orleans’s prophetic voice heralding the season we’re doomed to repeat. In fact the singer is often cast
as the changing protagonist in her songs: on Walkingman, a hazy ballad heavy with ennui, the narrator is laden with the
world’s weight, forever pacing a groundhog day world blank, a pissed-off actor in a Kafka-esque melodrama. On Light At
Dawn we’re in a seedy kitsch bar-room go-go scene, a ghostly rock’roll romance with shimmering percussion, poledancing
in a Lynchian half-dream. Movies For Ears’ moods straddle memory and fantasy: scratchily invoking halfremembered
exotica, the flickering shadows of europhile cinemas screens, a delicately woven world anchored in Orleans
existential meditations on longing, intimacy, solitude and the search for love. These rich textures in every song don’t
overpower some crystalised moments of emotion however: on In Spring Orleans sings simply “I have been happy two
weeks together,” summarizing that feeling of elation when emerging from a depression, a long winter. It’s a moment that
perfectly illustrates the lightness of touch and clarity in the singer’s voice.
The power of the loop and Orleans’ weaving songwriting that breaks its spell is illustrated perfectly by I Know. Over an
aching chord progression, the vocal takes flight into bittersweet loneliness, Pachelbel’s Canon played at a wedding where
only one person shows up. The repeated refrain “I know, I know” ascends to the heavens as the chords descend to the
dumps and the listener is left in the middle, happy but not knowing why, maybe a little changed, two weeks together. On
Movies For Ears, Ela Orleans lets us into a secret: the rare moments of joy to be found in the joins of the loop, the spaces
between things, the spring after the winter are the moments that last after the day has faded.

The original Rio beach boy returns in style, with a new record of unabashedly feel-good Brazilian party music. Featuring Azymuth bassist Alex Malheiros (responsible for some of Brazil’s all-time funkiest low-end licks), a horn section including Valle’s go-to high-trumpeter Jesse Sadoc, and percussion master Armando Marcal, Sempre has all the masterful composition, exceptional musicality, and forward-thinking ideas you’d expect from the Brazilian titan, and it’s fresher than a fruity caipirinha in the Copacabana sunshine.

Updating Marcos Valle’s seminal boogie-era sound, Sempre spans ecstatic disco, cosmic samba, and late-night jazz-funk, drawing obvious comparisons to some of Valle’s late-seventies and early-eighties output. ‘Estrelar’ (1983), for example, an ode to the joy of exercise, has become one of the biggest Brazilian disco hits of all time. But lyrically the new album is more closely reminiscent of Valle’s progressive early seventies’ releases. Heralding love, tolerance and living in the present, while satirising political corruption, the new release recalls a time in which Valle, together with his brother Paulo Sergio, was writing subtly subversive lyrics in order to bypass the censorship imposed by the military dictatorship, which ruled over Brazil between 1964 and 1985.
The album marries compositional genius with pure pop perfection. From the blistering brass arrangements on up-tempo disco hit ‘Olha Quem ta Chegando’ and the infinitely classy ‘Vou Amanhã Saber’, to the nine-minute synth heavy instrumental funk stepper ‘Odisséia’, which gradually morphs into an interplanetary samba jam, the songs are tightened and given an extra coat of gloss, by London based producer Daniel Maunick (son of Incognito frontman Bluey). More moments of boogie delight come in the form of ‘Minha Roma’ (a musical nod to the famed ‘Estrelar’), and the sunshine anthem title-track ‘Sempre’.

Translating as ‘Ever’, Sempre is a testament to the continual drive for development and reinvention that has defined Marcos Valle’s astounding six-decade career. Ever changing, ever moving forward, he began as one of the second-wave of early bossa nova composers in the sixties, writing the world famous bossa standard ‘Summer Samba (So Nice)’ for his sophomore album ‘Samba 68’. After a brief stint in the States, Valle returned to Brazil, and the early ’70s saw the release of four ground-breaking Valle albums which incorporated progressive rock, psychedelic influences, pop, jazz, soul and cinematic arrangements. These albums would see Valle work alongside a number of hugely influential Brazilian bands, including Milton Nascimento’s backing band Som Imaginaro, the prog-rock band O Terco and jazz funk legends Azymuth. Returning back to the US in ‘75, Valle resided in LA, writing music for the likes of Eumir Deodato, Airto Moreira, Chicago, Sarah Vaughn and Leon Ware, before returning to Brazil once more, where after releasing a handful of hit pop records, he took a hiatus from recording.

Since the mid-nineties, Marcos Valle has been experiencing a renaissance with London based label Far Out Recordings, where his approach to music has remained, as always; decidedly open to new influences, possibilities and technologies. Sempre is Marcos Valle’s fifth album for the label, following 2010’s critically acclaimed Estatica.

Just in time for summer, Sempre is out on Vinyl LP/ CD on 28th June 2019 on Far Out Recordings, and Marcos Valle and band will be touring Europe in May /June (see below for dates).

Previously known for his progressive trance works, van Wyk has spent a lot of his time as of late composing for the film industry. In 2013, his solo output switched to more pastoral forms of neo-classical leaning ambient with his first full-length Days You Remember, before moving into more piano-based composition for Attachment (2016) and Opacity (2017).

Threads does reflect some of his previous ambient works; however, the album shows van Wyk composing music for (and of) current times. There is a much-welcomed underlying beauty to Threads, but there are also threads of anxious- ness and unwavering intensity throughout its forty-minute run-time. It's an engaging listen full of texture where each piece takes you on an engrossingly escapist journey.

Hitting number two in the UK album chart and with over a billion streams, in Dissimulation KSI creates space for both his public persona and the personal: big hit features with the likes of Rick Ross and Lil Baby (Down Like That) and AJ Tracey (Tides) sit alongside more intimate, honest tracks. No stranger to defying expectations, Dissimulation received critical acclaim. Clash labelled it “an excellent body of work”; “he’s absolutely smashed it” proclaimed Metro.

It’s no surprise that KSI has been seen on the cover of The Sunday Times Magazine and Music Week; The Observer Magazine, Viper and Notion. Other labels and artists want a piece of the KSI pie too: just look to the success of his features on S1mba’s Loose and Nathan Dawe’s BRIT nominated Lighter. 



With his second album on the horizon, a 2021 tour which sold out in seconds, the launch of his own label and a single with Craig David (Really Love), Anne-Marie (Don’t Play) and YUNGBLUD (Patience), KSI is proving that music is very much his domain. 



KSI brings with him the unrelenting work ethic and infectious energy which YouTube instilled in him. Despite his debut’s success, he’s certain Dissimulation just scratched the surface: the next record, he’s clear, will showcase his artistry’s further progression again. Given FAULT Magazine described KSI as “one of 2019’s biggest success stories - “an emergent hip-hop star” said The i - all eyes will be on his follow up. KSI’s task - writes The Observer - is “not just to make “YouTube rap” but the real thing”. Their verdict? “Mission accomplished.”

2023 Repress

This latest limited 7" from Mr. K features two incomparable baroque soul masterworks, one from a Chicago-based band that defied categorization and the other a deep cut from a living legend songwriter and performer.

The psychedelic soul of Rotary Connection’s “I Am the Black Gold of the Sun” still sounds revolutionary and unlike anything else, a full fifty years after it was originally released in 1971. Swathed in ethereal ripples of strings (courtesy the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) innovatively arranged by unsung genius Charles Stepney, and rooted in a rock solid foundation provided by the cream of Chicago’s cutting edge session musicians (among them guitarist Phil Upchurch and drummer Morris Jennings, veterans of countless soul jazz cuts), “Black Gold” sits in uncharted territory somewhere between soul, rock, jazz and classical chamber music. It’s a gorgeous territory, a fantasy land where Minnie Riperton and Sidney Barnes’s vocals transmit mystical, uplifting vibes, the entire affair anchored throughout by an addictive piano riff—a mixture that proved irresistible to Masters at Work, who covered it for their Nuyorican Soul project in 1997. Mr. K’s edit doesn’t try to force anything fancy on this masterpiece, simply tightening it up and taking advantage of the lush remastering to present this progressive classic on 45 for the first time.

In keeping with the orchestral soul mood, Mr. K turns to Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” for the flip. Whereas “Black Gold” paints a portrait of a magical land, Stevie’s lyrics on “Pastime Paradise,” originally issued in 1976, are a penetrating look at the very earthbound concerns of modern society and its follies, an urgent message to look ahead rather than languish in dreams of the past. The sensitive string accompaniment provides just the right amount of gravitas and emphasis to Stevie’s voice without overwhelming it, while the hare krishna-inspired tambourine keeps the rhythm effectively. Mr. K’s edit again keeps things true to the original, simply providing a subtle intro that uses the tambourine rhythm to lead into the body of the song.

In the fall of 2016, having overcome serious health issues, Marco Repetto – Bigeneric – begins to weave new delicate soundscapes from a place of stillness, unaware of his emerging role in the fabled magic web of the fairy queen Helva. Inspired by an encounter with the storyteller Andreas Sommer and the legend of Helva, the fairy queen who lives on the Gantrisch mountain, and another gentle message from the universe, Marco Repetto merges his electronic strands of magical sounds into a tender and mystical composition he names Helva. Helva is a cinematic work of sound with long, hypnotically mesmeric tonal progressions and subtle ambient colors, combining influences from the electronic avant-garde and the futuristic spectrum of contemporary electronic music. This is the spiritual soundtrack of the Heart Rebels Gang who ceaselessly radiate into the world a powerful and profound force of beauty

Produced by long-time friend Cate Le Bon, ‘Boy from Michigan’ is Grant’s most
autobiographical and melodic work to date. Grant stopped being a boy in Michigan aged
twelve, when his family moved to Denver, Colorado, shifting rust to bible belt, a further
vantage point to watch collective dreams unravel. Across 12 tracks, Grant lays out his
past for careful cross-examination.
In a decade of making records by himself, he has playfully experimented with mood,
texture and sound, all the better for actualizing the seriousness of his thoughts. At one
end of his musical rainbow he is the battle-scarred piano-man, at the other a robust
electronic auteur. ‘Boy from Michigan’ seamlessly marries both.
With Le Bon at the helm, Grant pared back his zingers, maximizing the emotional impact
of the melodies. A clarinet forms the bedrock of a song. One pre-chorus feels lifted from
vintage Human League. There is a saxophone solo.
‘Boy from Michigan’ ultimately swings between ambient and progressive, calm and livid.
The album’s narrative journey opens with Grant at his artistic prettiest, three songs drawn
from his pre-Denver life (the Michigan Trilogy, as Grant calls them): the title track, ‘The
Rusty Bull’ and ‘County Fair’. Each draws the listener in to a specific sense of place,
before untangling its significance with a rich cast-list of local characters, often symbolizing
the uncultivated faith of childhood.
Elsewhere, tracks like ‘Mike and Julie’ and ‘The Cruise Room’ offer an affecting plunge
deep into Grant’s late teenage years in Denver, while the midpoint of the album is
highlighted by ‘Best In Me’ and ‘Rhetorical Figure’, a pair of skittish, scholarly dance tunes
that build on the lineage of Grant’s electropop heroes, Devo.
Childhood as a horror narrative is the theme of ‘Dandy Star’, which observes a tiny Grant
watching the Mia Farrow horror movie ‘See No Evil’ on an old family TV set and finally, on
‘The Only Baby’, Grant removes his razor blade from a pocket to cleanly slit the throat of
Trump’s America, authoring a scathing epitaph to an era of acute national exposition.
Though he has lived in Iceland since 2011 - the same year he was also diagnosed HIVpositive - Grant spent his childhood and formative years in the US and maintains US
citizenship. Growing up, Grant was subjected to a deeply ingrained hatred of anyone
perceived as homosexual at school. Following the demise of his first band The Czars,
Grant left music entirely for over five years, only to achieve greater success as a solo
artist (his acclaimed 2015 solo LP ‘Grey Tickles, Black Pressure’ went Top Five in the
UK). Grant has sold out Royal Albert Hall, performed at Glastonbury, Latitude and more
and his song ‘Snug Snacks’ was featured on Pitchfork’s Songs That Define LGBTQ Pride.
BBC Radio 6 host Mary Anne Hobbs described Grant’s music: “Most songwriting, even if
it’s based on a true story ... is embellished in some way. But John's lyrics - they’re so true
they might as well be written in blood.”

Deluxe 2LP pressed on 140g black vinyl in inner sleeves with paintings by Gil Corral, 2
unique prints, 36-page photo booklet, pull out lyric sheet and digital download card, all
housed in a beautiful black velvet O-Card gatefold sleeve with Glitter Spark Eye.

Produced by long-time friend Cate Le Bon, ‘Boy from Michigan’ is Grant’s most
autobiographical and melodic work to date. Grant stopped being a boy in Michigan aged
twelve, when his family moved to Denver, Colorado, shifting rust to bible belt, a further
vantage point to watch collective dreams unravel. Across 12 tracks, Grant lays out his
past for careful cross-examination.
In a decade of making records by himself, he has playfully experimented with mood,
texture and sound, all the better for actualizing the seriousness of his thoughts. At one
end of his musical rainbow he is the battle-scarred piano-man, at the other a robust
electronic auteur. ‘Boy from Michigan’ seamlessly marries both.
With Le Bon at the helm, Grant pared back his zingers, maximizing the emotional impact
of the melodies. A clarinet forms the bedrock of a song. One pre-chorus feels lifted from
vintage Human League. There is a saxophone solo.
‘Boy from Michigan’ ultimately swings between ambient and progressive, calm and livid.
The album’s narrative journey opens with Grant at his artistic prettiest, three songs drawn
from his pre-Denver life (the Michigan Trilogy, as Grant calls them): the title track, ‘The
Rusty Bull’ and ‘County Fair’. Each draws the listener in to a specific sense of place,
before untangling its significance with a rich cast-list of local characters, often symbolizing
the uncultivated faith of childhood.
Elsewhere, tracks like ‘Mike and Julie’ and ‘The Cruise Room’ offer an affecting plunge
deep into Grant’s late teenage years in Denver, while the midpoint of the album is
highlighted by ‘Best In Me’ and ‘Rhetorical Figure’, a pair of skittish, scholarly dance tunes
that build on the lineage of Grant’s electropop heroes, Devo.
Childhood as a horror narrative is the theme of ‘Dandy Star’, which observes a tiny Grant
watching the Mia Farrow horror movie ‘See No Evil’ on an old family TV set and finally, on
‘The Only Baby’, Grant removes his razor blade from a pocket to cleanly slit the throat of
Trump’s America, authoring a scathing epitaph to an era of acute national exposition.
Though he has lived in Iceland since 2011 - the same year he was also diagnosed HIVpositive - Grant spent his childhood and formative years in the US and maintains US
citizenship. Growing up, Grant was subjected to a deeply ingrained hatred of anyone
perceived as homosexual at school. Following the demise of his first band The Czars,
Grant left music entirely for over five years, only to achieve greater success as a solo
artist (his acclaimed 2015 solo LP ‘Grey Tickles, Black Pressure’ went Top Five in the
UK). Grant has sold out Royal Albert Hall, performed at Glastonbury, Latitude and more
and his song ‘Snug Snacks’ was featured on Pitchfork’s Songs That Define LGBTQ Pride.
BBC Radio 6 host Mary Anne Hobbs described Grant’s music: “Most songwriting, even if
it’s based on a true story ... is embellished in some way. But John's lyrics - they’re so true
they might as well be written in blood.”

Deluxe 2LP pressed on 140g black vinyl in inner sleeves with paintings by Gil Corral, 2
unique prints, 36-page photo booklet, pull out lyric sheet and digital download card, all
housed in a beautiful black velvet O-Card gatefold sleeve with Glitter Spark Eye.

Blue Vinyl

We continue our sonic adventure with Blovk, producer and sound designer from Madrid, he has refined his musical idea with his peculiar way of understanding techno and electronic music in general.
Releasing on labels such as Awry, Subosc, Postdynamic, Subsist, Doppt Zykkler, MainConcept… and his own imprint, Outside Noises.
In our XL series we want to showcase every corner of our artists’ sound spectrum. We are not just commited to raw and direct dancefloor weapons, we are also aiming the mind of the listener.
To make attemporal electronic music is one of our objectives and this record in particular deserves a place in the list of music to be played loud when all this nightmare finishes.
First cut on wax is Of sleep and tears, an emotional title that describes a dronney atmospheric introduction. Beatless, textured, full of resonant details and space wind.
Pouring Flesh brings the beat to the scene with a clear bass drum and a shuffled bassline setting the patch to martian synth noises and stereo details, all enclosed in an intelligent structure full of subtle twists and hypnosis. The thinking hand combines synthetic details with precise beats on a progressive arrangement.Elements come into action wisely, pulsating electronic grooves fighting with floaty elements make the recipe. Fluids above the skin open the B side in a darker mood. Heavy sub bass action and profound synthesizer lines setting the mood for what comes next.
Shedding machines acts as an ambient interlude in similar coordinates as the first cut in this mini LP.
Closing the release Fluent Gods, an electrified mental dance workout using a similar sound palette as the previous ones. Detailed and precise sound design ranging from sharp asymmetrical sequences, ethereal textures and profuse bass frequencies.
Music by Blovk, text by Hd Substance

LP black vinyl with Download Code. Ltd. Edition of 500. "Free-spirited rapture" Gareth Thompson RNR Magazine Nov 2020. A statement of intent from The NJE. Spirit of Indo takes up the whole first side of their RSD 2021 mini-album - and it certainly doesn't outstay it's welcome. Improvised over a gently incessant yet soporific loop, bassist Mark Bedford and drummer Simon Charterton fall in and out of grooves while multi-instrumentalist Terry Edwards deftly moves between saxes, trumpet and melodica to invent topline melodies within that comfortable straitjacket. As the track progresses bigger instrumentation is suggested by the tunes - and so the track builds with more horns and percussion, the resulting climax making way for the comforting loop to bring us back down to the start. Side 2 opens with an instrumental version of Bowie's Five Years, even more pared down than Edwards' previous take on the tune for a John Peel session in the nineties. Bedders' acoustic and electric basses weave around each other while Simon's understated cymbal-work buoys up the fragile melodica melody. Tizita raises the tempo slightly and is inspired by Ethiopian jazz-legend Mulatu Astatke who Terry had the pleasure of working with a few years back. Title track Nought to 60 is driven by Teutonic beats on electronic Wave drum, a Motorik bassline and heavily effected saxes which thunder towards the buffers - after which you'll want to flip the album and start all over again.

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything." - Plato.

Music is an innate sense that taps into our very core. It exists on a prism, and the range is infinite, for anyone to think they've heard everything would be imprudent. Inspiration strikes in a myriad of waves, acting as a cascading waterfall in which each idea is a droplet converging into one stream. Music doesn't know the rigid constraints of exclusivity. Preferences and ideologies can mould an individual; circumstance and fleeting moments require different melodies throughout the part being played by each being in the cosmos.

As each moment calls for an explicit sound, so too does Axis with it's latest release from the heterogeneous Raffaele Attanasio. The multifaceted Italian has delivered an eclectic sound over the years, from devious techno to melodious rhythmic beats. Attanasio delivers a jazz-tinged, angular, progressive and championing album by coalescing influential factors: a musician father, a multifarious palate in music, and prowess as a multi-instrumentalist.

Nuovo Futuro is creating a new future by travelling to the past. Digging into the Zeitgeist of Naples post-second world war, Attanasio extrapolates the sound to present day, combining modern flair with an enriched sound. The influence of American blues and jazz is felt in his hometown, celebrating the lore of Neapolitan musicians through the track 'Parlesia'. The history comes to life through these compositions, influenced by 70s spaghetti films and rich Italian exuberance. Ardour, lust and avidity ensnare the listener in 'Indagini Sospette'. This album is a journey through the streets where he grew up, but also, encapsulates a wandering mind, meandering into the harmonious Mediterranean under the watchful eye of Mount Vesuvius. 'Equilibrio Dinamico' is a snapshot of the working mind of Attanasio, balancing the impromptu of jazz with a gentle caress of his honed craft. Melodies are soft, smooth, progressive and fulminating the constraints of contemporary music. It emanates a renaissance for a sound that Axis is espousing in their releases.

“In some respects, Trust is a simultaneous documentation of progression and regression. A homecoming of sorts, influenced by the interim where we developed our skills as producers and our skills as artists. Armlock, as a vehicle, seems like returning full circle to where we started.”

Trust, out June 2, 2021, is the debut release of Australian duo, Armlock. It’s a nuanced record that explores trials felt in personal growth, from resentment to submission to complacency. A quiet, thrashing gem of songcraft, the record makes as much use of the intimate, empty space as it does of its layered, heavy instrumentals. Each one of these songs conjures a summer storm of internal conflict, with the angst and uncertainty that comes with realizing that you’re finished growing, and rather than feeling a sense of ease you’re left restless and discontented.

Multi-instrumentalists Simon Lam and Hamish Mitchell met studying jazz together at Monash University in Melbourne. While rehearsing standards for a small ensemble in 2010, the two discovered their mutual hatred of the genre, opting to explore experimental, song-based electronic music. Alongside Solitaire Recordings owner, Dan Rutman, they went on to form the group I’lls, releasing four records in five years, and, later, the two went on to form Couture. Simultaneously, Lam (along with his cousin Chloe Kaul) found success with the synthpop group Kllo, amassing over 100 million streams on Spotify and critical acclaim from Pitchfork, The Guardian, GQ, NME, NYLON, and Stereogum. Lam’s solo project Nearly Oratorio (also on Solitaire Recordings) has achieved acclaim in its own right, as has Mitchell’s work as a producer and designer for artists like Jack Grace.

With their first release as Armlock, the duo maintains the depths of I’lls’ electronic soundscapes but brings the warmth of analogue instruments with Lam’s clear, disillusioned singing up front. He sounds both heartfelt and dejected in equal measure, with a dispassionate coolness that synergizes with the vulnerability of his lyrics. Live, the duo are backed by a reel-to-reel tape, with Mitchell on guitar and Lam singing, bridging their electronic past and indie present.

Leo Ceccanti should be a familiar name to all followers of the Claremont 56 label. Alongside sometime studio partner Gianluca Salvadori, he was responsible for two delightfully distinctive Almunia albums released on the label, 2011’s New Moon and 2013’s Pulsar. Both sets were filled with golden, sun-kissed sounds, psychedelic grooves and immersive, life-affirming soundscapes.

Now he’s decided to go it alone as Leo Almunia, delivering a debut album for Claremont 56 that’s every bit as alluring, wide-eyed and evocative as those he made with Salvadori. In keeping with his previous work, the album blends layered acoustic and electric guitars with toasty bass, dreamy synthesizers and grooves that variously touch on hypnotic house, chugging mid-tempo disco, sunset-ready Balearic beats and, on the glistening, life-affirming album highlight ‘Wishing Star’, loose-limbed jazz breaks.

What’s most significant about Ceccanti’s personal musical style is not the blend of stylistic influences he draws on – think psychedelic rock, progressive rock, jazz-rock, new age ambient and slow-motion disco – but rather the way he uses it to paint vivid aural images that genuinely linger long in the memory.

After opening with the duelling guitars and chunky dub disco grooves of ‘Sinking Fields’, Ceccanti sashays between magical moments of rush-inducing positivity, heart-tugging poignance and heady nostalgia.

Along the way, you’ll find numerous sonic highlights. On the intoxicating 21st century psychedelia of ‘Panerea’, jangling chords and eyes-closed psych-rock guitar solos ride a chugging, thickset electronic bassline, while ‘Il Cormorano’ is a metronomic, flash-fried workout rich in fuzz-tone guitar motifs, bluesy riffs and echoing instrumental touches.

He cannily joins the dots between Mid-West Americana and throbbing, psychedelic disco-chug on ‘Loveblind’, while ‘Minor Circle’ sits somewhere between Santana, the Pat Metheny Band and sunrise-ready Balearic blues. Arguably even better is the saucer-eyed brilliance of ‘Brillo De Luna’, where a dubbed-out electronic beat becomes enveloped in life-affirming acoustic guitar chords, exotic slide guitar motifs and string-bending solos. If John Lennon had ingested MDMA rather than LSD before writing ‘Across The Universe’, it would probably sound like this.

Then there’s the album’s crowning moment, closer ‘Can’t Hold a Lover’. A heart-aching, largely ambient instrumental that channels the loneliness and anguish felt by many of those separated from their nearest and dearest during the pandemic, it sees Ceccanti brilliantly wrap a variety of sun-bright guitar textures and solos around some of the loveliest synthesizer chords you’re every likely to hear. On an album packed with effervescent, mood-enhancing musical highs, it’s a rare moment of bittersweet bliss.

After the moderate success of the debut album "Live in Montreux", Agorà published their first and only studio work in 1976. The possibilities offered by the recording studio seemed more congenial to their proposal, which turns out to be a deeply matured LP, technically flawless and with songs that still belong to the best Italian jazz-rock, with a more intense jazz component at the expense of the progressive one.
Unfortunately, both “Agora 2” and the single “Cavalcata Solare” taken from this work were almost completely ignored, in a period in which the vast universe that revolves around the Italian progressive was slowly decaying.
The Atlantic label, also due to a very poor familiarity with the Italian bands and scene, didn’t renew Agorà’s contract and the group disbanded after a final appearance at the Parco Lambro Festival in 1976, with their various members that dispersing in many other jazz bands, in some cases up to the present day.
“Agorà 2” still sounds wonderfully today, and deserves a respectable place within a serious Italian progressive rock discography. The album is here reissued on LP for the first time ever, in a faithful reproduction of the original edition of ‘76.

If you mention the name of Metamorfosi in front of any fan of Italian progressive rock, you get a unique effect: awe, wonder, united to the memory of the masterpiece that firmly established them as fundamental exponents of the genre. We are obviously talking of "Inferno", published in January 1973 and inspired by the eponymous first poem of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

But the musical maturity of "Inferno" had not come immediately, at least not in discographic terms, as it happened for example in the case of Alphataurus, Biglietto per l’Inferno and Campo di Marte, typical meteors of Italian prog that made their debut with a bang and then dissolved into thin air for decades. In fact, Metamorfosi debuted with a work that was indeed less complete, but not negligible.

“...e fu il sesto giorno” is born after two years of gestation, since the singer Jimmy Spitaleri joined the band I Frammenti in 1970. It is the period of maximum splendour for the music which at the time was called ‘avant-garde pop’ and that only later would be labeled as ‘progressive rock’, a music scene in which the Metamorfosi of the beginning just partially fit in as they were partly still anchored to old beat styles, and as they engaged in the exaltation of the Catholic faith at the textual level. The religious content of the album is substantially unequivocal from the cover, in which Jimmy Spitaleri is portrayed in a symbolic laying on of hands to the rest of the band, his disciples and fellow adventurers.

If it is true that the weakness of the Italian prog scene has always been found in the singing, Spitaleri is a notable exception, who does not show any shortcoming throughout the disc. In addition, some elements - the guitar solos, the interventions of flute and keyboards, a solid rhythmic base, a sometimes unpredictable song structure - anticipate what will come from there after a few months. "...e fu il sesto giorno" is, therefore, contrary to what is often said, a major premise, a flower waiting to bloom and show everyone its own beauty.

Moving into 2021 Pure Space is excited to deliver another year of Australian electronic music. Lately we’ve found therapy through regular body movement to help us see that better days are ahead. We hope you feel this too with this new release…

For our first release of the year, Melbourne’s Third Space captures his most club-focussed exploration to date. It offers a broad path which melts genres, instead showing us an alternate domain.

Having started his own label ‘Nice Setting’ in 2020 and self-releasing an album and an EP, Third Space has established his sound of complex undulating rhythms. For his release on Pure Space, ‘Pattern of Spring’ continues this exploration of dramatic structures with continually shifting timbres - morphing them as they progress through energies, rumbles, and struck surfaces.

The two A-side tracks are powerful displays of organic instrumentation with fluttering pads and subtle resonations. An upbeat tempo and abright atmosphere underpins the opening side, anchored by dnb leaning programming and off-kilter polymetric rhythms.

‘170 Shitshow’ showcases complex percussion underwritten by a formidable resonating karplus-strong section throughout the track. Whilst ‘Pulsing Delay Mod’ builds upon this notion of polymetric rhythms continually at play with one another, it offers a crisp and menacing drum pattern pulsating amongst metallic timbres.

Flipping to the B-sides; ‘Cyclical Pan Workout’ reflects an unruly and evolving atmosphere, anchored by a wonderfully cerebral drum pattern and delicate pad toward the close.

The final track ‘Nonlinear (For Pillows)’ offers re-contextualised melodies and percussion, providing a sense of closure and sonic bookending by linking tones and timbres referenced throughout the EP into a pillow like state.