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Fresh and zesty with subtle tropical flavours, this is a delightfully listenable debut from Matthieu Beck on Growing Bin. Inspired by the lilting rhythms, jazzy instrumentation and slow listening gems found on his Love In The Afternoon radio show, the Frenchman has crafted a gorgeous collection of laid back sophisti-pop, perfect for long summer days or seasonally affected escapism.
Any suggestion of sorrow in the album title is actually a mislead - this may be a solo LP, but Matthieu's surrounded himself with the musical friends he's made over the years, serving as composer and bandleader to a willing troop of collaborators. Longtime friend and former Metronomy bassist Gabriel Stebbing, Source Ensemble drummer Emmanuel Mario, and of course Laetitia Sadier herself, stepped in to lend their services and bring Matthieu's music to life, before Jérôme Caron (Blackjoy) expertly mixed it all down.
Though the tracklist may read like a travelogue, these nine tracks all began at home with Matthieu sat behind a Fender Rhodes with a drum machine by his side. Soon live bass, saxophone and flute strolled into his unhurried arrangements, retaining the simplicity of his demos while expanding the emotion. Weighty synth drones and bubbling bass balance the airy elements of tracks like "California" or the dream-pop romance of "Rooftop Rome", while the mellow "Malika" and joyful "Retour De Plage" showcase the Frenchman's relationship with jazz. Elsewhere there's hints of digi-dub ("Island" and "Suede"), coastal boogie ("Tokyo Montana"), stripped back city pop ("California") and downtown nostalgia ("Dora"), before Beck arrives at the poetic, progressive but peaceful finale "Piano Fin", which recalls Air at their prettiest, without stepping outside Matthieu's well defined sound.

SONIKKU announces the release of their new album ‘Joyful Death’, via Bella Union. “I love songs that make you want to cry and dance at the same time,” says Tony Donson, the London-based musician who records as SONIKKU. That sense of unfettered release and liberation drives their new album, ‘Joyful Death’. A fluent, fertile and full-colour hybrid of vibrant Italo-house, liquid synth-pop, righteous disco and French philosophical asides, it’s an album that signals the emergence proper of SONIKKU - a fully formed dancefloor artist. It’s also a farewell of sorts, perhaps, but with an emphatic rebirth at its heart. “This album feels like a transformation in the sense that I’m creating the music I’ve always wanted to make. A fully realised, coherent pop record that showcases my craft as a song-writer and producer.” Total control of their craft is swiftly asserted on ‘Let The Light In’, where the
influences of lost-in-music disco and the Pet Shop Boys merge under vocals from immersive, exploratory British singer-songwriter Douglas Dare. The pace accelerates as ‘WKND’ gets into a groove pitched somewhere between Madonna, Daft Punk and Indeep, with LA future-pop singer LIZ primed for dancefloor abandon on vocals. Meanwhile, SONIKKU’s independent intent is firmly asserted on the freestyle-inspired ‘Don’t Wanna Dance with You’, where singer Aisha Zoe coolly brushes off unwanted advances in favour of dancefloor pleasures.
LIZ assumes vocal duties again for ‘Sweat’, a song fully equipped to make dancefloor devotees do as its title suggests. Dreamily melodic evidence of SONIKKU’s dynamism (and love of melancholy Swedish electro-pop queen Robyn) beckons on ‘X Hopeless Romantic’, where Little Boots contributes a sweetly loved-up vocal over a sublimely
infectious chorus. Pummelling synths signal a dramatic shift of pace on the almost electro-darkwave dash of ‘Remember To Forget Me’, where actor/singer Chester Lockhart presides over a summit meeting between Depeche Mode and New Order. Performance artist Tyler Matthew Oyer takes the vocals for the Italo-disco-inspired title-track, a vividly imagined album manifesto - of sorts - inspired to varying degrees by an 1892 poem, French thinker Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the “body without organs” and a 1997 anime called The End Of Evangelion. Finally, that grand piano takes over as Dare returns, presiding over an achingly stripped-back version of ‘Remember To Forget Me’. With help from friends and artists they admires on vocals, ‘Joyful Death’ is a hugely confident and self-contained leap forward for SONIKKU after his time as a feted DJ. Having moved from Derby to London at the age of 18, Donson worked as an intern (at MTV, Dazed & Confused, SHOWstudio and elsewhere) then turned to DJing (from
London to Tokyo, Paris and Berlin) after they were signed to London label Lobster Theremin. Though they continues to DJ regularly at Tottenham’s LGBTQ rave-up Adonis, they have extra ambitions in mind: “I love DJing but I’m more looking forward to developing a live show.” LP pressed on mint green vinyl with digital download.

The LP version is limited to 1000 copies, pressed on blue vinyl, in a high grade spot-varnished gatefold sleeve.

700 Bliss is the forward-thinking duo of DJ Haram and Moor Mother. Their first full length for Hyperdub is an album of noise rap that ties together the raw edges of club music and hip hop with punk energy, jazz, house-party catharsis, percussion-heavy analogue sound design, and cheeky skits, ranging from experimental rap tracks with rolling hi hats and lyrical bravado, to poetry set to noise and sound collage.

Moor Mother and DJ Haram started collaborating in 2014 and eventually formed 700 Bliss, a blistering live act in Philly's DIY scene, releasing their 2018 debut, Spa 700 on Halcyon Veil / Don Giovanni Records. Since that time, both artists have grown global followings. Moor Mother is a prolific solo artist and collaborator, writer, and member of Black Quantum Futurism while Haram has been curating and creating radio shows, DJing, and producing (including an EP for Hyperdub in 2019).

‘Nothing To Declare’ is a smart, danceable revelation, a chiseled soundscape of dive bombing bass, piercing bleeps, crunchy distortion, and wavering synth lines. Welcoming in a variety of voices from their extended, cross-genre scene, 700 Bliss also bring along a cast of collaborators, including vocalists Orion Sun, Lawfandah, Ase Manual, and Ali Logout (from the band Special Interest), plus Palestinian producer Muqata'a, and writer M Téllez who delivers a surreal sci fi monologue over a pounding kick drum on ‘More Victories’.

‘Nothing To Declare’ is a deeply layered rewriting of hip hop and electronic music that gives more with each listen. You won't hear another rap album like it in 2022.

Chicago-meets-Philly when Vic Spencer and Small Professor connect on Mudslide, the incredible new album from this pairing of raw talents. Coalmine Records is proud to share this project with the world, and it marks Small Pro’s third collaborative release on the label after he previously linked with Guilty Simpson and the late Sean Price.

For the producer, it was an exciting new opportunity to team up with an emcee who’s gruff-voiced, hilarious, and can out-rap anyone on the planet. “Plus, my past Coalmine projects have their own neo/prog-boom-bap vibe, and ‘Mudslide’ continues that particular sonic blueprint,” Small Pro said.

And for fans of that sound, you’re not going to find a better example of that sound than this album. It’s just as experimental as it is steeped in the traditions of rap thanks to Vic’s boundary-pushing rhymes and Small Pro’s immensely satisfying instrumentals.

Tracks like “Lil Jon’s Weed Stash,” “Ew McNasty’s Revenge,” and “Selfcare Welfare” marry psychedelic vibes with grounded and clever lyricism. Another immediate standout is the lead focus track “Pitfall Music,” which features a mean-mugging guest verse from Flee Lord with cuts supplied by acclaimed turntablist, DJ Revolution.

Mudslide will be available digitally, as well as on CD, cassette and vinyl in three configurations; classic black, brown w/ white color-in-color, and a limited Ghostly Brown vinyl edition.

The Gamelatron is many things; one could call it a sculpture, a multimodal installation, an instrument, a robot, a feat of engineering, a vision—and it is all of these things. More importantly, though, it is a concept sustained by Aaron Taylor Kuffner, aka Zemi17, whose Gamelatrons are “sound producing kinetic sculptures” designed to create an immersive, visceral experience for the listener. Not a small feat, and yet the ambitions of Zemi17 are absolutely realized in this long-standing project, culminating now in his third release for The Bunker NY: Gamelatron Bidadari.

The Gamelatron Bidadari is not just a name—it is one of seventy-plus musical sculptures that Zemi17 has conceptualized, designed, and fabricated. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to think of this release as simply a series of arrangements composed in a finite period of time. Rather, it’s a window into a project and a process that is much larger than any single album can encapsulate. Gamelatron Bidardi is the culmination of more than a decade of work, and is central to Zemi17’s evolution, not only as a musician but as an artist.

Having studied gamelan for many years in Indonesian villages and at the Institut Seni Indonesia in Yogyakarta, Kuffner is a musician, an artist, technologist, and craftsman. The gongs in his sculptures are co-created with master Indonesian artisans. Each Gamelatron composition is site-responsive, meaning its sounds are composed for the acoustics and intentions of the space it inhabits, whether it’s an art gallery, a wooded landscape, or the inner temple of Burning Man. The Gamelatron does not stand alone: it is in constant co-creation with its physical environment, and in dialogue with gamelan’s long-standing history.

Originally exhibited at the Smithsonian Renwick as part of a show entitled, No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, the Gamelatron Bidadari produces sounds that are delicate yet strong, and deeply hypnotic. Textured chiming creates intricate polyrhythmic patterns that are both complex and simple, or in a word, elegant. On Gamelan Bidadari, Zemi17 refrains from adhering to the strict musical structures; his approach to composition is free flowing.

He says, “I want to evoke what the music tells me it has to offer. It is like following water to its conclusion (or non-conclusion).” The arrangements on this album, written by Zemi17 and performed by the robotic arms of the Gamelatron, leaves the listener feeling enchanted, nourished and enriched.

A sense of the mystical comes through in the tonal quality of the instrument, and is conceptually felt in the sculpture’s name: the Bidadari, which loosely translates to “forest nymph.” The music conjures up natural wonder, and the four sculptures that make up the Gamelatron Bidadari, in fact, resemble trees. They are four independent yet connected entities, each with a large gong situated at their structural base—the sonic “roots” of the sculpture—while smaller gongs branch off of a golden, trunk-like spine. The Gamelatron Bidadari is as physically stunning as it is mesmerizing to the ear. A kind of divinity is invoked through its sound, or a sacred cohesion between past and present, tradition and new form. Meant to be viscerally experienced, the sounds of the Gamelatron call for sublime togetherness. Gamelatron Bidadari is not just an album but the crystallization of Kuffner’s work; it is a condensed yet spacious glimpse into the sonic power of Zemi17’s Gamelatrons, which have already been heard and experienced live by over a million people.

A previously unreleased project of Henning Christiansen, monumental in scope, traversing years, countries and now, formats. The Henning Christiansen Archive is proud to finally present one of the crown jewels of the archive, the masterpiece ‘Penthesilea’ as a 2LP and 5CD set. Both limited to 300 copies. Pentheseila is one of the most ambitious works in the entire Henning Christiansen oeuvre. A large-scale work from the mid eighties based on the play of the same name by Heinrich von Kleist (1808). Both Henning and his widow, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, were enthusiastic about Kleist’s text, both making works around the themes within this portent text. Henning Christiansen first developed a work around this text for the Rosenfest festival performed in Berlin in 1984. Rosenfest was curated by René Block and featured a variety of composers presenting works in response to Kleist’s work including Robert Ashley, “Blue” Gene Tyranny etc. Henning formulated a composition utilising tape, field recordings, voice, soprano, and violoncello alongside the home made instruments of Werner Durand. The live presentation was then expanded upon and first performed two years later at Teatro Olímpico, Rome on the 8th November 1986 as directed by Carlo Quartucci. The two releases presented here include a 2 x vinyl LP of the Rosenfest recordings in 1984 and a 5CD set sharing the four and a half hour backing track prepared for the Teatro Olímpico performance in Rome in 1986. Together these two releases make up a substantial overview of one of the most significant works in the entire Christiansen canon. THE REALITY IS A GHOST IN MY MIND (LP1) is a work that unfolds patiently with a mix of field recordings; wind, bird song and the sound of snow being crushed underfoot all unite in a foreboding atmosphere. IN PENTHESILEAS HÖHLE (LP2) features electronic treatments to the original field recordings found on THE REALITY IS A GHOST IN MY MIND, a representation of psychological reorientation perhaps? A deep ground tone (or ROOT as Henning calls it) leads the listener through a variety of realistic and unrealistic environments. As Henning says in his essay reprinted on the back sleeve: “Then comes a section where the field recordings of the sea, the storm, birds, cars and other things, are built together so that the realism of these sounds become unreal. For example the cars drive into the sea and the birds are singing within the storm. When you hear footsteps in the show, it’s Kleist sneaking past Deutsche Schauspielhaus. When you hear a deep, human sleeping noise, it’s Achilles sleeping. When you hear hammering it’s the weapon smith working. When you hear a stone being thrown it means the unanswered question: “Who threw the first stone?” These recordings lead to the finale where Carla Tatò’s haunted vocals into her singing mournfully along with Jan Tilman Schade’s violoncello and tuba, then a chainsaw appears. Presented in a deluxe di-cut sleeve with writings by Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Henning Christiansen and adorned with an artwork, Penthesilea by Ursula Reuter Christiansen, 1983.

Back in stock !

Canadian songwriter and producer Jeremy Haywood-Smith needed an escape from his state of mourning when he began working on Slingshot, his most recent LP as JayWood. After the loss of his mother in 2019, and a global standstill with multiple social crises throughout 2020, Haywood-Smith yearned for some forward momentum. "The idea of looking back to go forward became a really big thing for me _ hence the title, Slingshot." Feeling disconnected from his past and ancestry after the death of a parent, Haywood-Smith made a conscious effort to better understand his identity and unique Black experience living in the predominantly white province of Manitoba. Merging fantasy scenarios, personal anecdotes, and infectious pop and dance instrumentals, Slingshot is a self-portrait of JayWood at his surface and his depths. Musically, Slingshot reaches into sounds and styles Haywood-Smith has continued to explore throughout his catalog. "I think I made a really big deal to not pigeonhole myself," he explains. "Whatever is inspiring me at one point will work it's way into whatever I'm creating." Slingshot is an amalgamation of Haywood-Smith's many musical sensibilities, achieved with help from a crew of talented peers. Haywood-Smith wrote and performed a bulk of the track's instrumentations, but the LP has notable appearances from Canadian contemporaries Ami Cheon (on "Just Sayin") and Mckinley Dixon (on "Shine.") The album's penultimate track, "Thank You," was co-produced with Jacob Portrait of Unknown Mortal Orchestra. The song brings JayWood's sound full circle, offering something reminiscent of Haywood-Smith's earliest recordings, while flaunting that "The best is yet to come."

On High Flying Man, the third LP by Matt Berry’s pseudo-eponymous project The Berries, loss and desire take center stage. Berry delves deep into 21st century malaise, crafting densely layered songs which project an unshakable yearning for deliverance from the world’s shortcomings. Each track extends an outstretched palm towards universal connection, blending a complex of mix of pop hooks, rock swagger, and psychedelia into dejected populist anthems. Faced with the perils of an isolating world, High Flying Man reignites the tradition of great American songwriting, speaking in the voice of the longing masses. At heart, Berry demands more life, rejecting both arty cynicism and nostalgic escapism.

Berry cut his teeth at a young age playing in the bands Happy Diving (Topshelf Records) and Big Bite (Pop Wig), and has since regularly served as a touring member for bands like Angel Dust and Dark Tea. His early work with Happy Diving and Big Bite solidified his position as an upcoming star in the world of fuzzed-out indie rock, earning him tours and opening slots with the likes of Turnstile, Dinosaur Jr., Nothing, The Swirlies, and The Coathangers. With The Berries, however, Berry turns the Big Muffs down (although not off), creating sonic space to stretch his wings as a burgeoning pop songwriter. The psychedelic-surrealist textures of his earlier output are not gone, per say, but rather find themselves folded into more expansive, rock-oriented arrangements, becoming accoutrements as opposed to the driving force of each song itself.

High Flying Man follows The Berries’ previous releases, 2018’s Start All Over Again and 2019’s Berryland. While longtime listeners will undoubtedly recognize Berry’s disaffected drawl and melodic sensibility, High Flying Man’s complex arrangements and expansive sonic landscape place it well apart from its predecessors. Berry enlisted live band members Danny Paul (drums), Emma Danner (backing vocals), and Lance Umble (bass) during the recording of High Flying Man, as well as the mixing talents of Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck, Guided by Voices), breaking from the self-produced home recording ethos of the previous Berries LPs. The collaborative nature of High Flying Man’s recording process is reflected in the quality of each song’s arrangement. Freed from the pressure of being individually responsible for every detail committed to tape, Berry was able to focus his attention more fully on the creative demands of constructing a dynamic and cohesive record. High Flying Man pivots away from any sort of obvious nod to Americana tropes, baggy British attitude, or Neil Young-esque riffing, leaning head on into a lush, idiosyncratic grandeur.

Each track evokes the irreverent and flashy style of a songwriting voice finding itself for the first time. Berry’s guitar heroics extend towards new heights, channeling the simple pop mastery of Lindsay Buckingham (“Prime”) and the wicked emotion of a 21st century “November Rain” (“High Flying Man”). Unusual stylistic juxtapositions give certain songs an almost timeless quality: Bert Jansch-esque crooning finds its counterpoint in sweeping, distortion-soaked riffs (“A Drop of Rain”), the primitive rhythms of Amon Duul are given an arena-sized, Britpop facelift (“Life’s Blood”). On High Flying Man, however, the ballad reigns supreme. “Down That Road Again” drips with sentimentality, powered by soft, undeniable pop melodies and pared-down chord progressions. Album-centerpiece “Eagle Eye” teeters between pure grace and extreme sorrow, unfolding into a massive, immediately memorable tide of melancholic beauty.

Lyrically, High Flying Man is both simple and direct. Although often bitter about the state of the world, Berry has no overtly political axe to grind. In some instances, he takes jabs at the moral laziness of aging millennials, expressing his yearning for a return to vitality and conviction (“Prime”). In other instances, Berry turns his criticism inwards, examining his longing for a better life and his repeated tendency to self-sabotage (“Down That Road Again”). These two poles balance each other out, creating a thematic tenor which is more so self-implicating and empathetic than critical. If anyone is to blame, it is the world we have been saddled with, not the people left to pick up its pieces. Although often personal, Berry’s words evoke a universal experience of continued belief in the face of loss. “High Flying Man” chronicles the growing distance between Berry and an old friend who has been shipwrecked by the weight of trauma, evoking the sorrow of trying to love someone who is no longer able to keep up with reality. Even the most somber passages of “Eagle Eye” (“long before I become aware of it, my friend/it’s 6 AM and I’m gonna die”) find their redemption in a burning devotion towards something worth living for (“If there’s one thing I can depend on/it’s my old friend/my shining light/my eagle eye”).

With High Flying Man, Matt Berry embraces undying love in the face of isolation. Daring to want more life becomes a spiritual rallying cry against a world that has failed to make life either meaningful or beautiful. At their core, these songs are not about revolution, but they are about the faith that gives something like revolution a purpose in the first place.

180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
• GATEFOLD SLEEVE
• INCLUDING INSERT WITH LINER NOTES
• HIGH RESOLUTION AUDIO MASTER, CUT ON 45 RPM
• GRAMMY AWARD NOMINEE, THREE-TIME ECHO AWARD
NOMINEE, THEODORE PRESSER AWARD RECIPIENT JAZZ MUSICIAN THEO CROKER
• FEATURING ARI LENNOX, GARY BARTZ, CHARLOTTE
DOS SANTOS, MALAYA, IMAN OMARI, KASSA OVERALL &
WYCLEF JEAN
• LIMITED EDITION OF 750 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED
COPIES ON TURQUOISE COLOURED VINYL

Every trip needs a guide. Through the trumpet, the Grammy Award-nominated artist, producer, composer, tought leader, influencer and tastemaker Theo Croker narrates a human story rooted in intimate experience, yet cognizant of cosmic consciousness. This journey unfolds in technicolor on his sixth full-length offering, BLK2LIFE || A FUTURE PAST.

“BLK2LIFE || A FUTURE PAST is meant to be a deeply impactful, personal experience for the listener. One that you can also dance to - it is Black music after all,” Croker says.

BLK2LIFE || A FUTURE PAST consists of 13 tracks and is inspired by the forgotten hero’s journey towards self-actualization within the universal origins of blackness. It’s a sonic celebration of Afro-origin, and ultimately a reclamation of the culture, for the culture. Joining Croker on the album are Ari Lennox, Charlotte Dos Santos, Gary Bartz, Iman Omari, Kassa Overall, Malaya, and Wyclef Jean.

BLK2LIFE || A FUTURE PAST is cut on 45 RPM with a high resolution audio master. The album is available as a limited edition of 750 individually numbered copies on turquoise coloured vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve.

Continuing the ‘first time on vinyl’ purge of the AMT archives. Here’s the band's classic 2006 album finally available on double vinyl for the first time. Housed in full colour gatefold sleeve.
‘Myth of the Love Electrique’ is another scorcher from these ridiculously prolific psych masters. This album is notable for being the debut of their newest band member: Kitagawa Hao. Kitagawa's presence doesn't dominate the recording by any means, but her contributions nicely complement the swirling chaos the group generates. Acid Mothers Temple always manages to find a breath of fresh air at the most opportune times, and this is no exception. While remaining a tight unit, bringing Kitagawa into the fold adds another dimension to their chaotic sprawl without having to sacrifice any of their strengths on this incendiary album.
“Comprised of four lengthy tracks, the album explodes with a start: "The Man from Giacobinid Meteor Comet." Kawabata Makoto's guitar quickly becomes a tangle of screams, a frenzied surge that drags the band along with it. The rhythm section is ferocious. Bassist Tsuyama Atsushi frequently ventures out to the stratosphere, but he also knows when to hold back or to provide a vaguely melodic foundation. Likewise, the amount of energy drummer Shimura Koji dedicates to his performance is a lesson in endurance. Divided into three movements, this track eventually cools down and then glides to a drone landing, alighting the listener breathlessly upon calmer ground.
Kitagawa's voice makes its first appearance on "Five Dimensional Nightmare," floating over a bouzouki arrangement that sounds like singing glass. This one is divided into three sections like the previous track, but starts airy and then goes into a drone as Tsuyama briefly takes over the vocals. From here, strings are tortured like fingernails on a blackboard before a guitar and Higashi Hiroshi’s water drop electronics restore balance.
As much as I loved the two previous tracks, the band forges ahead into something different on "Love Electrique." Kitagawa's presence is most felt on this track. Her voice streaks across the mix as blistering guitars and freaky electronics blast all over the place. Over the course of 20 minutes, it hits several different moods and textures on a truly transcendent journey.

Of the four tracks, only the live staple "Pink Lady Lemonade (May I Drink You Once Again?)" may seem a little redundant. Kitagawa, however, breathes new life into this standard by bringing her vocals to the fore over the entire track, as if restoring an element that previously had been missing. It's hard to call it a definitive version because so many other excellent versions already exist, but it is a great one in its own right. For fans who may be weary of this song after all of its appearances over the years, it is easy enough to stop the disc after gorging on the first hour of music, and it is still a welcome dessert if the mood should strike”

Limited to: 300 copies.

Lera Lynn blurs the boundaries between genres, carving out a sound inspired by art-pop, indie-folk and the outer edges of American roots music. She’s a singer. She’s a songwriter. She’s a road warrior. She’s a multi-instrumentalist and producer. She’s a mother.

Texas born, Nashville resident Lera Lynn is just as comfortable creating an album entirely by herself, as she is collaborating with her heroes. In 2018, she worked with T Bone Burnett and Rosanne Cash on tracks that were not only picked up by the TV show True Detective, but Lynn was cast as a recurring character who performs in a dive bar frequented by the main characters.

However, nothing could have prepared Lynn for the lessons learned during motherhood. She welcomed her first son during the early months of the pandemic and began writing down her insights, chronicling this newfound experience of shifting priorities, strange endings, and new beginnings. Inside, she was battling postpartum depression. Outside, a bigger picture began taking shape: a feeling of interconnectedness, of cyclic renewal, of the knowledge that every beginning is an end and every end is a beginning. Those realizations coalesced into Something More Than Love, a record filled with synthesizers, lush soundscapes, the pop-noire punch of Lynn's voice, and the most dynamic melodies of her career.

Inspired by the cyclical patterns that shape our place in the world, Something More Than Love was co-produced and largely performed by Lynn and her partner, Todd Lombardo (Kacey Musgraves/Donovan Woods/Kathleen Edwards). They'd met years earlier, not long after Lynn relocated to Nashville from her college town (and musical launchpad) of Athens, Georgia. "My first time ever co-writing a song was in Nashville with Todd," she says of the ACM-nominated multi-instrumentalist. The two became fast friends and, eventually, partners; their creative chemistry giving way to romance and a growing family. That partnership reached a new milestone in 2021, with the newfound parents sharpening their creative instincts and expanding their palette for Lynn's sixth album.

"A lot of people were making records during the pandemic," Lynn notes, "and all they had was time. But it was the opposite experience for us. We created this whole record while still in the fog of early parenthood, and we didn't have the luxury of waiting for lightning to strike. We had to be focused and intentional."

Striking a balance between intimate self-reflection and universal insight, Something More Than Love poses big questions over even bigger-sounding music, with tempos and layered arrangements that find Lynn at her most dynamic. Illusion opens the album with spacey synthesizers before snapping into a taut, 1980s-influenced groove, combing reverb and rhythm into a song that swoons one minute and struts the next. I'm Your Kamikaze — a deconstructed burst of indie garage-rock, heavy on melody and percussive pulse — unfolds like a salute to self-sacrifice, with Lynn dedicating her own existence to ensuring her child's flourishing. What Is This Body? finds her reassessing her ideas of physical identity and womanhood, while the album's gorgeous title track makes room for slow-burn strings and a meteoric chorus.

Together, those songs turn Lera Lynn's experience with absolute surrender — surrendering oneself to the trials and triumphs of motherhood — into a universal record about the experiences that bind us together. This isn't just Lynn's story. It's the story of a life cycle that repeats itself over and over, every termination point becoming a starting line, every death matched by a rebirth, every edge giving way to the circular slope of the ouroboros.

Twenty-six year old South African producer Mbulelo Mehlomakhulu grew up with a passion for house music. He began releasing music early at only 18, working with Blaque Core's Profound Nation and issuing a slew of records under the Xerophytic Soul moniker. Achieving local and global success with tracks like 'Ancient Cultures', he began to pioneer a more experimental sound - a cross between Durban's dark, propulsive gqom sound and vintage Detroit techno. This forward-thinking composite didn't go unnoticed, and Mehlomakhulu was tapped by Derrick May to release "The Robotics People" EP on Transmat in 2018. Now Mehlomakhulu returns with four stargazing hybrid compositions that again dance in the shared sonic space between Detroit and Durban. Gqom's slow, sensual pulse carries 'Play the Beat' with chants and echoing cowbell smacks swallowed into a wormhole of squashed analog bass and reverberating Underground Resistance stabs. Title track 'Kalibre' is less florid, but commands the dancefloor with clattering South African drums, ballroom slams and the ticking urgency of Chicago's DJ Sneak. 'Uranus' and 'God's Groove' lift the dancefloor to a higher plain, spiritually connecting with Carl Craig's historic early run and layering synthetic neon pads and cinematic shimmering effects. Mbulelo's sound is smart and poignant, and completely his own. By linking contemporary South African dance music to Detroit's pioneering 1980s techno vision, he makes a connection that's never felt more current.

Long before Lina Seybold became a geologist, the singer and guitarist was already writing songs and making a name for herself far beyond the city limits of Munich with her Steve Albini-trained (and produced) quartet candelilla, before the band dispersed into new projects. During her studies, she met Moritz Gamperl and the two realised that what they learned in rock research could also play a role in rock music. Thus, the material history of the planet became both a source of existential reflections for the two and the impetus for a highly accomplished and often graceful sound, which has been expressed in the band pirx together with drummer Sascha Saygin since 2019: Technically sovereign, obstinate songs that - with Seybold now on bass and vocals - create subtle dramaturgies, cinematic aesthetics, far-reaching arcs of tension.

With Lamina, the trio now presents an excellent debut album, recorded by Martin M. Hermann, which shoots out of the earth with explosive force as hot lava, only to flow into the valley in glowing beauty the next moment, changing the earth's surface, telling of elemental forces - until it finally evaporates the water in the sea and lays a comatose fog over all existence. Or in other words: pirx make creation music, in all directions of time!

Belgian composer Otto Lindholm presents his new LP titled FortyTwo, releasing in early June on Totalism with support from Phantom Limb. Consisting of two complementary entities of equal duration (21 minutes), the album really is one. Together, the two longform pieces are like two sides of one coin, like the two motions of a rocking chair; forwards and backwards. The first piece titled “Reg” explores the simplicity of the stroke with veiled, beautiful melodies, while the second called “The Donkey Theory”, built on an octatonic scale, delves into deeper, more atmospheric zones.

FortyTwo is intentional in its duration, as Lindholm tries to question our relationship with time itself. Extending and expanding the natural sounds of the double bass and expertly arranging and layering them, he is able to toy with time, refocusing the experience on the act of listening itself. The results are rich tapestries of voluptuous tones, deeply felt emotions and elongated melodic motifs which are completely enveloping, almost overwhelming. As the Brussels-based composer and double bassist's focus shifts from instrumental performance to composition, he delves deeper into the world of drone music influenced by contemporary classical composition.

Otto Lindholm is a composer and double-bassist based in Brussels. He has released music on Icarus Records, Gizeh Records, Houndstooth, Aurora Borealis Recordings, Bedouin Records, Midira Records, 7k!, Takuroku and other labels. His new LP, FortyTwo, is due to be released in 2022 on Totalism with the support of Phantom Limb. He is a keen collaborator, working alongside many artists such as Ross Tones aka Throwing Snow, Aidan Baker, string quintet BOW, Jean D.L., P.Maze, and others.

CHICAMACOMICO is a record about loss. Over a six-month span at the end of 2019/beginning of 2020, I lost my grandmother, my mother and watched as the world fell into a 2+ year pandemic that decimated businesses, relationships and dreams. This is a record about dealing with those losses. My hope is these songs serve a salve for anyone else experiencing loss. A reminder that you are not the only one that lost a friend this year, or a parent, or a loved one. There's a special kind of hope that comes from that realization. I am not alone. I wrote this record in the February 2020 on the northern coast of Hatteras Island in a small beach town called Rodanthe. In the summer, this area is an extremely popular vacation destination packed with tourists, but in the winter, it was a desolate ghost town. The perfect backdrop for the record I was trying to write. Over the course of two weeks these songs would take shape and come to life, and it quickly became obvious that the overall theme would be dark. During my stay I realized that the town used to be named Chicamacomico until the locals changed it in the name of ease and progress. In that moment, I knew I had the name of my record. We enlisted Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Nathaniel Ratliffe, Waxahatchee) to produce the record and traveled to Sonic Ranch, a world-renowned recording complex tucked in the middle of a 1,700-acre pecan orchard, in the Texas border town of Tornillo. Over the course of ten days, we watched these songs go from simple folk ruminations into fully formed band arrangements. In my sixteen-year career I have never been prouder of a set of songs, lyrically or stylistically. The songs have weight, but they aren’t weighed down. It’s a sad record, that makes you feel good. It's a culmination of nearly two decades of work. Chicamacomico sounds like nothing we've ever done yet it sits comfortably amongst the rest of our catalog. My records are chronological observations and I feel like this record perfectly represents the highs and lows of the last few years. Themes: Loss, Death, Darkness, Suicide, Divorce, Losing A Child, Losing A Parent, Losing A Spouse, Addiction, Recovery

Runhild Gammelsæter and Lasse Marhaug are two Norwegian musicians/sound artists. Both started in the early 1990s music underground and have worked in many constellations with a wide range of collaborators.

Despite knowing each other for a long time, Gammelsæter and Marhaug’s first collaborative work was the “Quantum Entanglement” LP in 2014. The album ignited a collective spark that both wanted to pursue further. Still, other commitments got in the way, and the project lay dormant until Stephen O’Malley, and Greg Anderson invited them to open for Sunn O))) for a special gig in the St. James Church of Culture in Oslo in the autumn of 2019. The two gathered for a long series of rehearsals, and after the successful performance, it was clear that it was time to start working on new compositions and recordings. That process initiated in late 2019 and continued to early 2021, encompassing before and after the world went through the lockdown. The result of this long development to be heard accumulated upon their new album “Higgs Boson” on Ideologic Organ Music.

Throughout the profound process of creating “Higgs Boson”, Gammelsæter and Marhaug drew inspiration from various subjects and artists. For Marhaug, it was concepts informed by the structuralist experimental cinema of Japanese directors Takashi Ito and Toshio Matsumoto, futurist worlds of French comic book artists Philippe Druillet and Jean Moebius Giraud, landscape photography of Fay Godwin, Kåre Kivijärvi, and Tamiko Nishimura, amongst others.

It became a metaphysical juxtaposition involving Gammelsaeter’s research and lyrical ideas based on several seemingly unrelated principles. A process of association inspired by “the Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse. The discovery of the Higgs Boson as a confirmation of the physical universe. The work of Ernst Schrödinger on the uncertainty principle. The four forces of physics. The Force. Helplessness under armed forces - as the war sailors in World War II. The influence of magic as expressed in tarot.

Gammelsæter experiments with a boundary involving the thresholds amongst various states of focus and legibility by forensic experimentation with techniques such as exclusive expression of consonants, syllabic repetition, retrograde text vocalisations and multi-lingual layering. Her vocal inspirational sources include Sidsel Endresen, Diamanda Galas, Natacha Atlas, the choral works of Rachmaninov, and the bands Carcass and Grave.

Two worlds coming together, making the music special. Mixing hard facts with science fiction helps create a kaleidoscopic cross point between the complex realities of the past and a possible future.

“Quantum Entanglement” featured two long-form pieces centred around a prepared piano and layered voice, while “Higgs Boson” developed a much more elaborate and ambitious compositional work. Across eight parts, the two artists brought a broad palette of instrumentation and sound. Electronic and acoustic, objects and field recordings, and pipe organ define the structures of which the centre is Gammelsæter’s magnificent voice. She has become known for her legendary voice, with her vast and unique range of inflective techniques and affective colour through her 30 years creating music. In the mix, Lasse approached the instrumental elements like landscapes, then Runhild’s vocals as characters that inhabit those worlds. Often, Gammelsæter multiple characters fused with the landscape. Make them occupy space, sometimes blend into it, sometimes dominate it. Constructing and setting visual guidelines helps set focus and open possibilities.

As an album, “Higgs Boson” is direct and focused, drawing on song structures. Within these tracks are vast strata of sound, an immersive multi-dimensional depth of music. Creating a feeling of depth while working with a flat two-channel stereo format - and how dimensions of texture and distortion can help develop the illusion of a space. The album structure is a story-like arc, a malleable subjective path, set as the album traverses oblique and suggestive areas, opening the concepts for the listener to unpack as they like.

– exclusive consultation with Gammelsæter & Marhaug, edited by Stephen O’Malley, June 2022

The third release from Night Dreamer’s essential “Direct-to-Disc” sessions sees an incredible meeting between legendary US saxophonist Gary Bartz and leading UK spiritual jazz ensemble, Maisha, featuring two Bartz classics and three brand new joint songs written by both Bartz & Maisha in close collaboration.

Having cut his teeth playing with the likes of Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Art Blakey and finally in 1970, Miles Davis at the peak of his electric period, Gary Bartz became a leading figure of the early-to-mid 70s spiritual jazz movement, releasing a string of ground-breaking albums on legendary NYC jazz label Prestige Records with his NTU Troop, featuring classics such as “Celestial Blues”, “Uhuru Dance” and “I’ve Known Rivers”, before collaborating on Blue Note Records with the Mizell Brothers on the anthemic jazz funk of “Music Is My Sanctuary”. An oeuvre much loved by soul jazzers and hip hop fans alike.

Led by drummer Jake Long, Maisha have been central to the UK’s jazz explosion, and have fast become the UK’s most exciting and in-demand young spiritual jazz ensemble, from steller shows at Jazz re:freshed, Total Refreshment Centre & Church of Sound and supporting the Sun Ra Arkestra, to releasing their critically acclaimed debut LP, ​“There Is A Place” ​on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings in 2018. Theirs is an organic & explosive sound that blends influences from afrobeat and broken beat to Persian music, with a deep love and understanding of jazz, particularly the heritage of spiritual jazz led by titans such as Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and of course, Gary Bartz.

Which makes this collaboration even more special. Bartz was first invited to share a stage with Maisha by Gilles Peterson to headline the inaugural We Out Here festival. Their chemistry was rich and instantaneous, certainly a two-way street, with the young musicians reinvigorating the legend’s performance and wowing the intergenerational festival audience. A European tour followed, including a London Jazz Festival highlight at the Royal Festival Hall, celebrating the 50th anniversary of his album “Another Earth”, originally featuring fellow legends, Pharoah Sanders, Charles Tolliver, Stanley Cowell, and John Coltrane’s own bassist, Reggie Workman.


Now the relationship has evolved into a special straight-to-disc recording for Night Dreamer Records, that captures the vitality of their collaboration. Whilst Bartz and Maisha reinvent classic Bartz compositions “Uhuru Sasa” and “Dr Follows Dance”, extending the pieces into long piece improvised grooves, their recording session gave birth to three brand new joint compositions, written the very same day. These include the propulsive “Leta’s Dance” that magically combines the Bartz’ soulful musical lyricism with Maisha’s African-jazz influences, and the organic jazz

funk of “Harlem to Haarlem”, featuring a hot solo from guest trumpeter Axel Kaner-Lidstrom of Cykada & Levitation Orchestra fame.

Like previous Night Dreamer efforts from afrobeat star Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, and the beautiful collaboration between Brazilian stars Seu Jorge & Rogê, the album was recorded in Haarlem’s Artone Studio, a stones throw from Amsterdam, in just one-take, straight-to-disc, avoiding post-production embellishments and retaining the purity of the performance lost in modern recording techniques.

This record really is an event, in and of itself, a meeting of talents, minds, generations and zeitgeist moments, captured in a unique and pure manner. The music does not disappoint, as Maisha have been inspired to reach new heights whilst we find Bartz truly reinvigorated, and both artists in tune to the spirit of the other.

Recorded direct-to-disc @ Artone Studio, Haarlem, The Netherlands on Tuesday 29th Wednesday 30th October 2019

Pelican"s debut album Australasia, originally released in late 2003 by Hydra Head Records, is a landmark record in the shifting tides of heavy music that took place at the turn of the millennium. 20 years since its release and several sold out represses, Australasia is a proven essential for any listener exploring the bounds of rock music. Now issued as a deluxe double LP edition of the , newly remastered for vinyl and complete with 3 never-before-released bonus Songs , including a remix by James Plotkin and digital downloads of early Pelican live recordings. Artwork by ISIS and Sumac founder Aaron Turner. Following the release of the band"s auspicious self-titled EP, Australasia"s singular integration of melodic complexity and tremendous density redefined conceptions of what constituted "heavy." Pelican"s unique manipulation of atmosphere and dynamics seamlessly alchemized their disparate influences beyond metal into music grand, mercurial and utterly sublime, worthy of the album"s namesake. Billowing clouds of strange serenity give way to tectonic riffs. Hypnotic rhythms chug at the precipice between doom and euphoria. Guitarists Trevor Shelley de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec twirl soaring harmonies around the roaring thunder of bassist Bryan Herwig and drummer Larry Herwig. Throughout the album, the quartet move as one like a glacier, awesome and forever imbuing the landscape with their mark. Australasia stands as a pioneering work, unmatched in the level of unbridled beauty and devastation Pelican wields across the album.

Collins Dictionary Example sentence: „Other ocular signs include involuntary rhythmic movement of the eyeball.“ Someone in the editorial department wasn‘t paying attention and involuntarily spoke a deeply buried truth: The movement from the eye to rhythm and from there to sound is sometimes a small, puny one.

Now Infuso Giallo provides the proof at the same time and implements his live show for last year‘s debut album „Ocular Soda“ as an audio-visual show, as intertwined senses. Visible sound, audible images. Such ideas only last when they are put to the test and scrutinised by several experts.

The duo Globus, which consists of 2/5 of the post-hardcore band PTTRNS, examines the synth hook of the second part of the double-opener „Every Waking Hour Pt.2“ by playing it, varying it, letting it sway.

In contrast, Anatolian Weapons from Athens can‘t help but immerse the ambient, Soft Machine-production-like first minutes of „Every Waking Hour Pt.1“ in a sinister black light. Staggering into a basement club filled with nocturnal shadow people and indulge in carousing. Cautiously at first, then more and more determinedly.

From Hamburg and Berlin, the „Mole Gaze“ gets a special treatment. The trio Love-Songs drags the number off to Hamburg harbour, packs it onto a steamer, deep into the bow and lets it operate the sonar there. Conrad Schnitzler would have been delighted.
Infuso Giallo, meanwhile, realises that there is nothing more boring than standing still, so he revamps „Hello World“ and gives it a rear spoiler that keeps this number in lane even at club speed.
Speaking of „keeping in lane“: Niklas Wandt, the magician, doesn‘t even try such tricks. He simply throws an acid bolt on the closer „Ocular Soda“ and waits to see what happens. Alongside breakbeats from nowhere, Albert Hoffmann himself appears on a bicycle.
„Ocular Soda Remixes“ is the first tape on the Kame House label, so there‘s only one thing to do: open your eyes and listen!

New full length album of Franck Vigroux's uncompromising signature sound of colossal electronic music. Atotal gathers material from Franck's latest live A/V of the the same name. Working with his long time visual partner Antoine Schmitt, ATOTAL is an audiovisual performance aiming to reconstruct in order to better deconstruct the processes of imposition of will by repetition and absolute synchronism, to propose a breach to a potentially life-saving decoincidence. The total work of art, when pushed to its paroxysm of absolute coincidence of the perceptions of a captive spectator, is similar to the techniques of mental manipulation of totalitarian regimes, proceeding by annihilation of the critical mind, repetitive semantic pounding, subliminal messages. The ideal of a deterministic universe of Newton in which everything rationally stems from its causes, in which everything is predictable like a totality for Laplace’s daemon, where everything can be considered already written, has been undermined in the infinitely small of the uncertainties of Heisenberg which tell us that it is impossible to know everything about a particle, in the quantum mechanics of Schrödinger which reveals to us that the looker affects the looked-at, and in the infinitely abstract of Gödel’s incompleteness which explains to us that certain things are literally unexplainable. The show ATOTAL slips into these flaws and, like a clinamen of Lucretia, deviates the visual and audio atoms from their destiny. Mastering by Denis Blackham. Artwork by Mostafa Khaled

Come for the leopard, stay for the stone cold jams. Yet another thrilling, funky-prog jazzy-rock fusion beauty from Ian Carr’s Nucleus. Originally released on Vertigo in 1975, Alleycat was never re-pressed so those original copies are now very tricky to score. Like all the Nucleus records, it’s aged ridiculously well and this Be With re-issue, re-mastered from the original analogue tapes, shows off just why this deserves to be back in press.

Genius trumpeter and visionary composer Ian Carr was one of the most respected British musicians of his era. He was a true pioneer and saw the potential in fusing the worlds of jazz with rock, just as Miles Davis and The Tony Williams Lifetime did in the US. In late 1969, following the demise of the Rendell-Carr quintet, and tiring of British jazz, Carr assembled the legendary Nucleus. Regarding music as a continuous process, Nucleus refused to “recognise rigid boundaries” and worked on delivering what they saw as a “total musical experience”. We can get behind that.

Under bandleader Carr, Nucleus existed as a fluid line-up of inventive, skilled musicians. This constant evolution and revolution was all part of the continuous musical exploration and discovery that took jazz to new levels. And the music has stayed relevant. To steal a line from a recent review of our re-issue of Roots, when it comes to anything Nucleus “it’s basically already hip-hop”.

Alleycat was the last Nucleus album recorded for the Vertigo label. Released in 1975, it was again meticulously produced by Jon Hiseman and is every bit as sinuous as anything else the group had recorded. As far as riff-laden accidental cop-funk goes, there’s so much energy coursing through the music that at times it sounds like a live recording. It’s pretty unbeatable.

Uptempo opener “Phaideaux Corner” is a funk-flavoured opus with a groove that simply swaggers. This trademark Roger Sutton piece benefits from Trevor Tomkins’s percussive expertise and some excellent sax and keyboard soloing. Check out Geoff Castle on squelchy, stabbing Moog duties. Ian Carr’s elegantly laidback title track is a lengthy suite of magisterial themes. Typically complex, it still gets you hooked and is just riddled with the funk. Carr builds up his initially “straight” trumpet solo with later use of echo to mesmeric effect. And there’s some excellent wah-wah guitar shredding by Ken Shaw too. Nice.

The second side opens with the killer “Splat” and finds Nucleus really ripping it up. A fat, funky bass guitar riff introduces us to the track and stays with us until the end. The often mangled bass groove is pushed along by rattling drums and percussion, dropping out for some restful moments of spacey calm, and along the way picking up some lengthy keyboard noodling by Castle. So so good.

The cool “You Can’t Be Sure” is a gentle jam with Shaw on 12-string acoustic guitar, together with Carr’s muted trumpet and some marvellous fretless work from Sutton for extra colour. The album closes with Bob Bertles’ galloping “Nosegay”, written perhaps as a response to some of the faster Mahavishnu Orchestra pieces. It’s an example of well crafted jazz-rock that doesn’t compromise any of its jazziness, yet it still very definitely rocks.

This Be With re-issue of Alleycat has been re-mastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, Simon Francis’ mastering working together with Pete Norman’s cut to weave their usual magic with these wonderful recordings. The cool AF cover - that leopard was just a cat before he heard Nucleus, you know - has been restored as the finishing touch to this long overdue re-issue.

Black Truffle is thrilled to continue its program of archival releases from Arnold Dreyblatt with a recently unearthed concert recording from Dreyblatt and Paul Panhuysen’s "Duo Geloso". While isolated examples of Dreyblatt’s collaboration with the legendary Dutch multi-media artist appeared on the CD reissue of Propellers in Love and Black Truffle’s wide-ranging archival Second Selection, this is the first release to document the variety and playfulness of the concerts that Duo Geloso performed throughout Europe in 1987-88. Both working across sonic and visual forms, fascinated by numerical relationship and the infinite complexity of string harmonics, Dreyblatt and Panhuysen had a natural affinity for each other’s work, strengthened through Dreyblatt’s many visits to Het Apollohuis, the important experimental art space Panhuysen helped to found in Eindhoven. However, as René van Peer suggests in the liner notes enclosed within this release, Dreyblatt and Panhuysen took very different approaches to these shared interests; the wonderful energy of these Duo Geloso performances results from the meeting of Dreyblatt’s more austere, compositional process with Panhuysen’s spontaneity.

Recorded at a concert at Het Apollohuis in December 1987 (a series of beautiful photographs of which adorn the LP’s packaging), each of the six pieces presented here is distinctive in terms of instrumentation and performance approach. Using electric guitar and bass tuned by Dreyblatt and played using E-Bow and Panhuysen’s motorised plectrums, the opening ‘Razorburg’ moves slowly through a long series of held notes with a madly insistent tremolo that crosses Dick Dale with a mechanised take on the layered guitars of Günter Schickert. The same pair of instruments returns on ‘Duo for Guitars’, where the mechanised attacks dissolve into a harmonic wash, reminiscent of the machine guitar work of fellow Het Apollohuis alumni Remko Scha. On ‘Love Call’, the guitars and bass are accompanied by Panhuysen’s distant warbled vocals, familiar to Maciunas Ensemble listeners. On the remarkable ‘Synsonic Batterie’, Panhuysen begins proceedings with a solo barrage of electronic percussion on the Synsonics Drum Machine (a simple drum synthesiser produced by the toy manufacturer Mattell), joined eventually by Dreyblatt performing his signature percussive natural harmonics on pedal steel guitar. When Panhuysen adds his bird whistle to the mix, the performance becomes the perfect exemplar of the Duo Geloso’s unique mix of studious close listening and subtle absurdity.

Presented in a gatefold sleeve with archival photos and illuminating liner notes from René van Peer.

(feat. Claire Davis)

300 copies pressed

The A side was released back digitally in March. "Hope To See You Again" Which is an original song with Claire Davis on lead vocals

Better things is coming out digitally 15th July and it will be on a Ltd edition 45 vinyl. The Pre-Orders for the vinyl will be starting soon.

The B side is a killer version of her classic tune, "Better Things" The soulful vocals of Claire Davis are accompanied by jaunty horns and keyboards, and the cool groovebefits the positive lyrics ("I'm a better woman than I have been")

Introducing The HP's. This talent-studded Hamilton-based funk/soul collective is poised to make major moves with the release of their debut 45. The group is the brainchild of drummer/bandleader 'Parkside' Mike Renaud, the founder/owner of noted Canadian music company Hidden Pony Records & Management. A life-long fervent fan of funk and old school soul, Parkside has assembled a crack team of musicians and vocalists dedicated to his vision of breathing vibrant new life into these classic forms. Drawing inspiration from the likes of James Brown and The J.B.'s and Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings. The title pays tribute to Renaud's hometown, Hamilton, and The H.P.'s sound

honours The Hammer's core characteristics of rugged authenticity. Get ready to get Gritty!

— The HP's have partnered with UK based soul label LRK Records for the release of their latest single "Hope To See You Again", featuring Canadian soul singer and LRK alum Claire Davis

— "Hope To See You Again" arrives digitally March 31st, 2022 with the 45" expected summer 2022

— The 45" single will also include a cover of the Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings classic "Better Things"

The HP's.

To the Canadian music industry, 'Parkside' Mike Renaud is best known as the founder and owner of Hidden Pony

Records & Management, now widely recognized as one of Canada's premiere talent-development labels and artist

management companies. Past and present artists on Renaud's roster include Said The Whale, The Elwins, The Dirty

Nil, Hannah Georgas, Imaginary Cities, Jeremy Fisher, Odds, and many more.

Not many are aware that this popular industry power player actually got his start in music as a drummer in a '90s

Montreal soul/funk band called Parkside Jones (the source of his nickname). When he moved over to the business

side of music, beginning with top indie label Aquarius Records, Mike Renaud packed the kit away, launching himself

into the biz with full passion, commitment, and skill.

Mike has now resurrected his kit (after 20 years), honed his chops, and emerged as the driving force behind The

Renaud recalls the spark that reignited his love of playing drums: "The first time I played them in 20 years was at the

memorial for industry comrade Jon Box at The Opera House in Toronto. I was talked into playing with Chris Murphy

Sloan, Terra Lightfoot, and the Dirty Nil guys on a version of 'Handle With Care.'"

This renewed love affair would lead to Mike's vision for The H.P.'s. From his teenage years, his favourite musical

genre has been classic soul and funk, and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of these styles. Heartened to see the

growing international community building around these sounds, Mike decided to make his own creative contribution to

the form. He recruited musical and vocal collaborators from his hometown (plus a couple of Toronto imports) for the

project, and The H.P.'s were born.

The group name, The H.P.'s, pays homage to James Brown's legendary band, The J.B.'s, with these initials

referencing Hidden Pony. The album title is a tribute to Renaud's hometown, Hamilton, and The H.P.'s sound

honours The Hammer's core characteristics of grit and authenticity. Mike actually spent some time co-managing the

current J.B.'s.

The late Sharon Jones, a key inspiration for Renaud, is honoured via a killer version of her classic tune, "Better

Things." The soulful vocals of Claire Davis are accompanied by jaunty horns and keyboards, and the cool groove

befits the positive lyrics ("I'm a better woman than I have been").

Giving this cover extra resonance are the memorable encounters both Davis and Renaud had with Jones back in

2015. A documentary portrait of the soul great, Miss Sharon Jones!, had its world premiere at the Toronto

International Film Festival (TIFF), and Claire Davis was doing a house concert playing DapKings songs that night.

The band came across the party and jammed along, then, when one of the Dap Kings backup singers couldn't cross

the border, Claire got the call to fill in at Sharon Jones' headlining show at Hamilton's Supercrawl fest.

In a cool twist of fate, Mike Renaud was one of the organizers of that show, and was tasked with looking after

Sharon. The two bonded instantly and deeply, as Mike recalls. "While driving her to soundcheck, Sharon confided in

me that her cancer had returned. She didn't want anyone to know, as the documentary was about her conquering it,

and she didn't want people to be bummed out at the news. It was my 40th birthday that day, and Sharon actually

stopped her show to sing me Happy Birthday in a soulful way!"

Shakethehoof added "Hope To See you Again' to their playlist musicto/shake-a-hoof/the-hps-ft-claire-davis-hope-to-see-you-again-the-hoof-chats/

"BETTER THINGS" has gone straight into the UK Soul chart breakers at No 8

UK label Dawn State continue their hot streak this summer with further eclectic moods for the dance floor and beyond. On the tools for the fifth outing on the label is KIDWHO, a blossoming talent who through the last years whilst enduring the pandemic found light by burying himself in his studio experiencing new creative flows. The “Warez House” EP varies in tastes, similar to the highs and lows of the times that just passed us by.

Diving into the deep end is the title track, “Warez House”, loopy and hypnotic, swaying between shades of low end leaned house and techno. Off kilter synths and pads maneuver their way around the driving force of the track. “It came together layer by layer, eventually turning into a dense (and at times, unruly!) groove. A final touch
of atmospherics from an old Roland ROMpler and the track was done - bar a generous helping hand in mixdown from Joel Kane (who also turned out a heads-down dub version which might make an appearance!).”

Leaning in a more hazy direction is the blissful cruiser, “Leploop Lagoon”, a deep and emotive vibe crafted especially for the early mornings. A sophisticated deep house energy from the talented producer. “‘Leploop Lagoon’ is the oldest track on the EP, a cleaned-up version of a rough jam I made around four years back. It takes its name from the Leploop, a quirky semi-modular analogue groovebox of sorts, hand-built in Italy. A very unique and unpredictable machine, it’s on bass duties here as well as providing some percussion sounds via the MPC sampler.”

On the flip side lies “Spectral Pattern”, and it packs a certain punch. The rolling arrangement converses in harmony with icy hi-hats that flash in and out teasing the energy, all of the elements having space to breathe and work their magic.“‘Spectral Pattern’ came together quickly one very productive weekend in the studio last year. It developed from the bass sequence, which comes from a Yamaha TG-33, an unassuming 80s digital synth known for its glassy mix of ROM samples and FM tones - very New Age sounding, or 90s computer game soundtracks. But when you strip it back to basics, it punches hard in the low-end.”

Slipping on to the B side is a five minute transcendental trip, offering yet another series of textures to this otherworldly EP. The final track “At Least We Hav Music” is an ethereal soundscape waiting to be explored, wandering amongst ambient realms throughout. “The label was keen to include an ambient track on the release, and I wanted to record something specially for them. At first I had in mind something droning and melancholic, but after a few experiments with cassette
loops and reverb pedals this was the one that stood out. It was recorded during one of the lockdowns, and I guess I needed to create something that sounded more hopeful than brooding. I messaged DS boss Tom Haus with a rough version, and we went on to have a grumble about the gloomy state of things, locked-down in our respective cities and missing friends, family, activities… At some point I wrote ‘at least we have music’ - and almost as soon as I had sent it I knew I had found the track’s title. I’m very lucky to have had my home studio as a refuge through the long months of lockdown, and I’m honoured to have the chance share some of my output from this period on this record.”
KIDWHO fitting the Dawn State ethos to a tee here as they set up shop for what looks to be another fantastic release. “Each of these tracks came about in quite different ways. Like many creative people, I had moments of struggle during the pandemic, where the lack of variety and day-to-day stimulation lead to periods of writer’s block, and so I used those times to focus on smaller, more manageable projects such as making synth patches, recording sounds and and throwing together short loops in my samplers for later use. A number of
these short loops eventually laid the foundations for title track ‘Warez House’. Big thanks to Dawn State, Joel Kane, El Choop and everyone else who has helped make this happen.” -

KIDWHO

"Full recording of one of the most engaging and beguiling Late Junction live sessions we’ve ever heard - the one off first meeting between Korean multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha and writer and performer Roy Claire Potter.
It’s an unlikely pairing which works from the first breath. Park Jiha plays the saenghwang, a Korean mouth organ which she blows in long multiphonics to set pace for Potter’s words. They unfurl a scene slowly in front of you, rich and focused, shifting your field of vision and drawing you in, elsewhere. It’s impossible not to follow, not to look for where they point. When the piri sounds for a flooded town on the B side, the water flows between your own feet; Potter’s words a sometimes frightening hörspiel in scouse.

Though the details are fine, the space each artist gives one another and their instruments, their language, is given to the listener in turn. A careful melody picks out a route for words with no fixed meaning, a body with no fixed direction, and we are invited to listen and see a kind of music made visible in its inference. A truly very special record we are very proud to share.
—
Influenced by linguistics and performance theory, Roy Claire Potter makes performance, text, drawing, installation and film, and oen collaborates with musicians and sound artists to make audio for music festivals and radio. Across the wide range of their practice, Roy tells stories built from fragmented, intense images that depict moving bodies or domestic scenes and architectural settings. Roy’s interest in subtext and narrative sequencing is felt in the way they use fast-paced talking or reading speeds, and restricted or partial views of space. Complicated social or group dynamics, and the aftermath of violent events are common themes in Roy’s work and are usually treated with a dark, sometimes wilful humour.

Park Jiha creates exploratory music rooted in traditional Korean instrumental performance. To this session she brings three instruments: a Korean hammered dulcimer called a yanggeum, a saenghwang which is an instrument made of 24 slender bamboo pipes attached to a bowl and played like a harmonica and a double-reed bamboo flute called a piri, which sounds similar to an oboe.
—
Recorded and mixed on: 30 January 2020 by Rob Winter, Pete Smith and Andy Rushton at Maida Vale Studios, London for “Late Junction - Roy Claire Potter and Park Jiha in session”. Produced by Rebecca Gaskell, Katie Callin and Alannah Chance at Reduced Listening for BBC Radio 3."

Originally released in July 2021 on blue vinyl – this is a yellow vinyl re-press – original notes below

During 2019, Blondie was invited to perform in Havana, Cuba as part of a cultural exchange through the Cuban Ministry of Culture. This was a 40 year ambition come especially for songwriter & guitarist Chris Stein, who had longed to visit Cuba for most of his life. Artist and director Rob Roth documented this special moment and career highlight by shooting a short film titled “BLONDIE: VIVIR EN LA HABANA”.
The film is broken up into 3 parts — Water, Fire and Air — and present a meditation on the experience as well as highlights from the two-night live musical performances with special guests Alain Perez, David Torrens and Cuban Fusion Pioneers Sintesís at Havana’s famous Teatro Mella.
With narration from Blondie founding members Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, and Clem Burke, providing a glimpse into the passion and beauty they discovered in Havana and the magic moments of performing alongside incredible Cuban artists. “BLONDIE: VIVIR EN LA HABANA” goes beyond the atypical short form film and live music documentary by presenting a portrait of the legendary band’s first experience in Havana and of the magical exchange between musicians from the two cities each call home and their intertwined influences.

The sound track for the film features Cuban musicians Carlos Alfonso, Ele Valdés, María del Carmen Ávila, Alejandro Delgado, Juan Carlos Marin, Jamil Schery, Degnis Bofill, Adel González

Released in July on limited edition pale blue vinyl to accompany the film which will feature throughout 2021 in many prominent Film Festivals inc the Tribeca Film Festival.

Strictly hush-hush bootleg remix action here, as Russian turntablist-turned-producer Paul Sitter delivers two more hand crafted gems based around vocals and samples from a wide variety of sonic sources. We're particularly enjoying A-side 'Galvanize', which adds Q-Tip's vocals from the Chemical Brothers tune of the same name to MPC tapped-out hip-hop beats and the horns, bass, guitars and organs from what sounds like an old psych-funk instrumental. He ups the tempo on 'Chewtacca', opting for a cheery, sample-heavy blend of boom-bap hip-hop and 1960s mod madness featuring snippets of the Ohio Express's 'Chewy Chewy' and a 2010 jam from rap duo Das Racist. It's very silly, but also very entertaining - the kind of thing guaranteed to put smiles on faces

‘Reich’s music expands from minimalist austerity to more full-bodied passages and back again. Reminiscent of his earliest work, it is very beautiful.’ – Financial Times

‘The music has tender energy, and an undercurrent of melancholy. Its droning tones sometimes seem to be pulling apart – like taffy, or like Richter’s stretching spaghetti stripes of color.’ – New York Times

Nonesuch Records releases the first recording of Steve Reich’s Reich/Richter, performed by Ensemble intercontemporain and conducted by George Jackson. The composition was originally written to be performed with German visual artist Gerhard Richter and Corinna Belz’s film Moving Picture (946-3).

Reich describes Richter’s book Patterns, which served as source material for the film: “It starts with one of his abstract paintings from the ’90s. He scanned a photo of the painting into a computer and then cut the scan in half and took each half, cut that in half and two of the four quarters he reversed into mirror images. He then repeated this process of ‘divide, mirror, repeat’ from half to quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, all the way up to 4096th. The net effect is to go from an abstract painting to a series of gradually smaller anthropomorphic ‘creatures’ (since the mirroring produces bilateral symmetry) to still smaller very fine stripes.

“Belz described the film in terms of ‘pixels’. It begins with two-‘pixel’ stripes and the music begins with a two-sixteenth note oscillating pattern. When the film moves to four ‘pixels’, the music moves to a four-sixteenth note pattern, then to eight, and sixteen,” the composer continues. “After that, I began introducing longer note values – initially eighth notes, and later to quarter notes. By the middle of the film, when the images move from 512 to 1064 pixels, the music really slows to dotted half notes. Finally, as the ‘pixel’ count begins to diminish, the music moves back into more rapid eighths and then ending with the most intense rapid sixteenth movement.”

After more than one hundred performances of Reich/Richter at The Shed in New York in 2019, it was performed in London at the Barbican by the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Colin Currie and then in Paris at the Philharmonie, where this recording was made. The Austrian ensemble Windkraft Tirol, led by Kasper de Roo, will perform Reich/Richter on September 8 at Szentrum, Silbersaal in Schwaz, and the LA Phil New Music Group, led by Brad Lubman, performs the piece, accompanied by Richter and Belz’s film, at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on April 1, 2023.

Nonesuch has recorded every new piece of music by Steve Reich since 1985, beginning with The Desert Music and continuing through 2018’s Pulse/Quartet, resulting in twenty-two albums and the two box sets Phases in 2006 and Works: 1965-1995 in 1997. The label will put out a collection of his complete works in 2023.

Reich released a book last month, Conversations, that includes dialogues with past collaborators, fellow composers, musicians, and visual artists who have been influenced by his work, including: David Lang, Brian Eno, Richard Serra, Michael Gordon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Russell Hartenberger, Robert Hurwitz, Stephen Sondheim, Jonny Greenwood, David Harrington, Elizabeth Lim-Dutton, David Robertson, Micaela Haslam, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Julia Wolfe, Nico Muhly, Beryl Korot, Colin Currie, and Brad Lubman. Booklist said in its review, ‘Iconoclastic American composer Steve Reich is singular in his own right, and when he is in conversation with other equally iconoclastic composers, conductors, sculptors, musicians, percussionists, and video artists, sparks not only fly, they sparkle. Reich and his colleagues conduct lovely give-and-takes during which they share stories, creative approaches, and viewpoints. Reich's Conversations is the best kind of eavesdropping.’

Steve Reich has been called ‘America’s greatest living composer’ (Village Voice), ‘the most original musical thinker of our time’ (New Yorker), and ‘among the great composers of the century’ (New York Times). His music has influenced composers and mainstream musicians all over the world. Music for 18 Musicians and Different Trains have earned him two Grammy Awards, and in 2009, his Double Sextet won the Pulitzer Prize. Reich’s documentary video opera works – The Cave and Three Tales, done in collaboration with video artist Beryl Korot – have been performed on four continents. His recent work Quartet, for percussionist Colin Currie, sold out two consecutive concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London shortly after tens of thousands at the Glastonbury Festival heard Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) perform Electric Counterpoint followed by the London Sinfonietta performing his Music for 18 Musicians.

In 2012, Reich was awarded the Gold Medal in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has additionally received the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo, the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, the BBVA Award in Madrid, and the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. He has been named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Royal College of Music in London, The Juilliard School, and the Liszt Academy in Budapest, among others. ‘There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them’, states the Guardian.

Pierre Boulez founded the Ensemble intercontemporain in 1976 with the support of Michel Guy (who was France’s Minister of Culture at the time) and the collaboration of Nicholas Snowman. The Ensemble’s thirty-one soloists share a passion for twentieth and twenty-first century music. Under the artistic direction of Matthias Pintscher, the musicians work in close collaboration with composers, exploring instrumental techniques and developing projects that interweave music, dance, theater, film, video and visual arts. In collaboration with IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), the Ensemble intercontemporain is also active in the field of synthetic sound generation. New pieces are commissioned and performed on a regular basis. Resident of the Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris, the Ensemble performs and records in France and abroad, taking part in major festivals worldwide.

George Jackson, winner of the 2015 Aspen Conducting Prize, came to attention after stepping in at short notice with Orchestre de Paris, where he stepped in for Daniel Harding. Recent highlights include leading Ensemble intercontemporain at Festival Romaeuropa, the Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg, and Festival D’Automne in Paris, as well as conducting the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of Opéra de Rouen and the world premiere of Tscho Theissing’s Genia with Theater an der Wien. His varied operatic experience includes performances at Opera North, Hamburg State Opera and Opera Holland Park, as well as conducting a new production of Hänsel und Gretel at Grange Park Opera.

Strut present the first box set release to bring together the 1970s recordings of The Pyramids, led by Idris Ackamoor. As students at Antioch College, Ohio, alto saxophonist Idris Ackamoor, flautist Margaux Simmons and bass player Kimathi Asante created three lasting monuments in sound - Lalibela, King of Kings, and Birth / Speed / Merging, a trio of albums produced without any label backing or distribution between 1972 and 1976. Their music is unique among the varied canon of avant-garde and experimental music of 1970s America: high intensity African-styled percussion topped with songs, chants, and horns, laced with African instruments and arranged into long, flowing suites that surge and

1970 was a time for heady experimentation in popular music, but very few records—and even fewer on major labels—come close to matching the stylistic ground covered by William S. Fischer’s album
Circles.
African American composer/arranger/keyboardist/saxophonist Fischer grew up woodshedding with the likes of Ray Charles, Fats Domino,
Muddy Waters, and Percy Mayfield…and then took a sudden left turn by studying electronic music in Vienna during the mid-‘60s. There, he met Joe Zawinul, and ended up penning five of the six tunes on Zawinul’s groundbreaking 1968 album The Rise and Fall of the Third Stream. Fischer went on to arrange for Herbie Mann, who signed him to his Embryo imprint for Atlantic Records; Circles was Fischer’s one and only release for the label. And he didn’t waste the opportunity; an utterly mindblowing mix of Sly Stone funk, heavy Hendrix-y metal, Southern soul, jazz fusion, and Stockhausen-esque explorations on the Moog synthesizer, Circles enlisted the same band (bassist Ron Carter, guitarists Eric Weissberg and Hugh McCracken) that Fischer had worked with while acting as Musical Director on Eugene Daniels’ underground classic Outlaw, complemented by drummer Billy Cobham and a five-piece cello section. With a line-up like that, it’s little wonder that the artistic reach of Circles is breathtaking, but it somehow manages to cohere according to its own internal, crazy logic; it remains one of the most adventuresome and collectible releases of its day. For this, its first-ever vinyl reissue, we’ve pressed 2000 copies in “black ice” vinyl, preserved the original “circle” cut-out stencil cover, and added liner notes by Peter Relic that feature quotes from Fischer himself. For the intrepid listener!

‘’The band brings out instrumentation and vocal melodies that are of the same lineage as more modern indie bands like Parquet Courts and Ought. “ POST-TRASH

Hailing from Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela and Nashville, Tennessee, Rui DeMagalhaes and Mac Folger found a middle ground in skewness. Heavily influenced by kiwi pop acts like The Bats and The Clean, as well as British post-punk pioneers Swell Maps and Wire, Lawn maintains a balance of classic pop sensibilities and sharp, curious energy.
Indeed, Lawn's sound is a marriage between two different songwriting approaches that make both members step out of their comfort zones without losing their bearings. The result is a partnership that thrives in exploring how their differences make them a solid unit. DeMagalhaes and Folger are different, but never at odds.

After approaching their second full-length with a sense of ease and composure, New Orleans' Lawn found themselves embracing a sense of urgency for their follow-up work, Bigger Sprout. Written, rehearsed, and recorded under a month-long period, Bigger Sprout explores a feeling of urgency as a theme and a catalyst: urgency to get out of uncomfortable situations, urgency to take relationships more seriously, urgency to work on themselves, urgency to play shows again, urgency to record, urgency to start a family, urgency to make plans and leave old settings behind, urgency to grow up and become more in tune to your surroundings, urgency to quit old habits and pick up new ones. The EP, co-written with former drummer Hunter Keene, is a document that embodies the anxieties of change, for better or worse. This idea is juxtaposed by including a remastered version of Big Sprout, their first-ever release, as side B. Big Sprout, which was also written and recorded over a short period of time, has never been released in any physical capacity. The inclusion of these songs provides a contrast into who the members of Lawn were in their early 20s against who they are now.

Back in 2016, producer Seth Applebaum released two EPs that marked the inauguration of the band Ghost Funk Orchestra. `Night Walker' and `Death Waltz' were conceived as one-man-band, reel-to-reel tape recorded experiments that would bring together elements of all the sounds that Seth most adored at the time: tape-saturated drums, gratuitous spring reverb, surfy guitar, Latin-style percussion, odd time signatures, and Spanish-language female vocals. Initially released only in the digital domain and on a short run of cassette tapes, these two EPs that defined the early era of GFO are now finally available together on a single LP via Colemine Records. The tracks have been lovingly remastered by Doug Krebs. We invite you to take a dive into the humble beginnings of a project that has continued to grow, shape shift, and accrue new and exciting sounds for its sonic palette.

Stemming out of an offer from Roadburn Festival organizer Walter Hoeijmakers, mutual acquaintances, and a shared love of each other's output, May Our Chambers Be Full is the first recorded document of collaboration between Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou. While their solo material seems on its face to be quite disparate, both groups have spent their respective careers lurking at the outer boundaries of the heavy metal scene, the artists having more in common with DIY punk and its spiritual successor, grunge. May Our Chambers Be Full straddles a similar, very fine line both musically and thematically. While Emma Ruth Rundle's standard fare is a blend of post-rock-infused folk music, and Thou is typically known for its downtuned, doomy sludge, the conjoining of the two artists has created a record more in the vein of the early '90s Seattle sound and later '90s episodes of Alternative Nation, while still retaining much of the artists' core identities. Likewise, the lyrical content of the album is a marriage of mental trauma, existential crises, and the ecstatic tradition of the expressionist dance movement. "Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps." Melodic, melancholic, heavy, visceral. The visual art accompanying this work was created in collaboration with preeminent New Orleans photographer Craig Mulcahy. The faceless, genderless models are meant to emphasize this pervasive state of ambiguity and emotional vacillation, the images falling somewhere between modern high fashion and classical Renaissance.

The turn of the millennium ushered in an apex visionary phase for English esoteric duo Coil. Relocating from the city to the coastal quiet of Westonsuper-Mare freed them to follow even more fringe obsessions, fully untethered from peer influence. During a single six-month stretch in 2000 they released the devious underworld sequel to Music To Play In The Dark, arcane drone summit Queens Of The Circulating Library, and a malevolent hour-long synthesizer exorcism prophetically titled Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil. This latter work remains one of the group’s most miasmic and mind-expanding creations, on par with Time Machines – a sustained divination of shuddering, psychoactive noise, rippling with the motion sickness of an all-seeing eye.

Thighpaulsandra characterizes the album as “an exercise in brutality,” born from a thorny patch of his Serge modular unit that Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson found entrancing. Processing this sliver of electronics into a ravaged labyrinth was a trial and error process, aided by Christopherson’s visual sense of sound, stretching and manipulating it for maximum spatial disorientating. Frequencies nauseously crawl across the stereo field, burrowing into the ear like a sinister brainwashing experiment. An outlier / centerpiece is the 13-minute alien tribalist sea shanty, “I Am The Green Child,” guided by John Balance’s sung-spoken free verse concerning vengeance, oblivion, and insanity, culminating in the memorable refrain, “We're swimming in a sea of occidental vomit.” But the rest of the record seethes in unhinged instrumental chaos, divided into 18 micro-movements of a composition called “Tunnel Of Goats.” Intended to scramble the functionality of a CD player’s shuffle mode, the piece throbs, thrashes, and flatlines in compressed frenzies of twisted synthesis, at the threshold of some bottomless purgatory, forbidding and unknown.

Mondo, in conjunction with Back Lot Music, are proud to present the final chapter of the Jurassic saga: Michael Giacchino’s score to JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION.

Giacchino started his early career at Disney Interactive Division where he had the opportunity to write music for video games. After moving to DreamWorks Interactive, he was asked to score the temp track for the video game adaptation of The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Subsequently, franchise creator Steven Spielberg hired him as the game’s composer and it became the first PlayStation game to have a live orchestral score, recorded with members of the Seattle Symphony. Now, 25 years later, Giacchino comes full circle with this soundtrack to the epic conclusion of the Jurassic era, recorded with 87 orchestra members and 30 choir members at Abbey Road Studios in London. Fans can expect Giacchino’s usual tongue-in-cheek track titles that highlight the action of the score cues.

Mondo has released all Jurassic World franchise series albums on vinyl to date, so complete the trilogy with the Jurassic World Dominion release. Custom artwork was designed by artist Justin Erickson of Phantom City Creative. The package will include liner notes from Jurassic World architect and director of Dominion, Colin Trevorrow, and pressed onto 180-gram webstore exclusive color vinyl.

Composed by Michael Giacchino
Artwork by Phantom City Creative
Manufactured in Czech Republic

2020. The year of the corona-pandemic, when the music world was forced into a standstill, five old friends put in motion an old idea that had been lingering - and what eventually was to become a new band and powerhouse: The Halo Effect.
The members of The Halo Effect are not only masters of their domain, but also some of the pioneers of the Gothenburg melodeath scene; Lead guitarists and melodic deathslingers Niclas Engelin and Jesper Strömblad, lead singer and raging growler and lyricist Mikael Stanne, further on adding to this mix is the solid backbone and foundation of power bassist Peter Iwers, and his partner in crime since twenty plus years, hard-hitting drummer Daniel Svensson.
Knowing each other from an early age during the late 80’s and then playing together in different constellations during the 90’s, they came to dominate the Metal scene in Gothenburg - mainly being part of the two major bands and metal exports In Flames and Dark Tranquillity, also two of the pioneers and major forces behind the melodeath monicker: The Gothenburg Sound. A sound that would echo far and wide across the world and influence countless of metal bands during the 90’s and early 2000’s.This was also the initial thought behind The Halo Effect - to go back to the roots and
explore what the groundbreaking metal sounded like then. And add the experience and skills of what the members could bring to the table now. The result is an exceptional album and real tour de force to fans of melodeath where the echoes of the Gothenburg Sound is evident. The Halo Effect delivers the goods in a brutally efficient display of heart pounding beats, melodic mayhem and furious growling at its best. Raw, yetmelodic, and in your melted face.Buckle up and remove your ear plugs. The restrictions are being lifted, the pandemic is over, and The Halo Effect is finally ready to meet its audience all over the world.

2020. The year of the corona-pandemic, when the music world was forced into a standstill, five old friends put in motion an old idea that had been lingering - and what eventually was to become a new band and powerhouse: The Halo Effect.
The members of The Halo Effect are not only masters of their domain, but also some of the pioneers of the Gothenburg melodeath scene; Lead guitarists and melodic deathslingers Niclas Engelin and Jesper Strömblad, lead singer and raging growler and lyricist Mikael Stanne, further on adding to this mix is the solid backbone and foundation of power bassist Peter Iwers, and his partner in crime since twenty plus years, hard-hitting drummer Daniel Svensson.
Knowing each other from an early age during the late 80’s and then playing together in different constellations during the 90’s, they came to dominate the Metal scene in Gothenburg - mainly being part of the two major bands and metal exports In Flames and Dark Tranquillity, also two of the pioneers and major forces behind the melodeath monicker: The Gothenburg Sound. A sound that would echo far and wide across the world and influence countless of metal bands during the 90’s and early 2000’s.This was also the initial thought behind The Halo Effect - to go back to the roots and
explore what the groundbreaking metal sounded like then. And add the experience and skills of what the members could bring to the table now. The result is an exceptional album and real tour de force to fans of melodeath where the echoes of the Gothenburg Sound is evident. The Halo Effect delivers the goods in a brutally efficient display of heart pounding beats, melodic mayhem and furious growling at its best. Raw, yetmelodic, and in your melted face.Buckle up and remove your ear plugs. The restrictions are being lifted, the pandemic is over, and The Halo Effect is finally ready to meet its audience all over the world.

2020. The year of the corona-pandemic, when the music world was forced into a standstill, five old friends put in motion an old idea that had been lingering - and what eventually was to become a new band and powerhouse: The Halo Effect.
The members of The Halo Effect are not only masters of their domain, but also some of the pioneers of the Gothenburg melodeath scene; Lead guitarists and melodic deathslingers Niclas Engelin and Jesper Strömblad, lead singer and raging growler and lyricist Mikael Stanne, further on adding to this mix is the solid backbone and foundation of power bassist Peter Iwers, and his partner in crime since twenty plus years, hard-hitting drummer Daniel Svensson.
Knowing each other from an early age during the late 80’s and then playing together in different constellations during the 90’s, they came to dominate the Metal scene in Gothenburg - mainly being part of the two major bands and metal exports In Flames and Dark Tranquillity, also two of the pioneers and major forces behind the melodeath monicker: The Gothenburg Sound. A sound that would echo far and wide across the world and influence countless of metal bands during the 90’s and early 2000’s.This was also the initial thought behind The Halo Effect - to go back to the roots and
explore what the groundbreaking metal sounded like then. And add the experience and skills of what the members could bring to the table now. The result is an exceptional album and real tour de force to fans of melodeath where the echoes of the Gothenburg Sound is evident. The Halo Effect delivers the goods in a brutally efficient display of heart pounding beats, melodic mayhem and furious growling at its best. Raw, yetmelodic, and in your melted face.Buckle up and remove your ear plugs. The restrictions are being lifted, the pandemic is over, and The Halo Effect is finally ready to meet its audience all over the world.

Pale Waves’ third studio album is a bold statement of reclamation – from the lyrics to the title itself. 'Unwanted' reaches out into the community of misfits and LGBTQI fans around the band, tapping into darker emotions than ever before while striking a fresh tone of defiance. Since their 2018 debut 'My Mind Makes Noises', the band has accumulated over 1.5 Million+ Social Followers, 250 Million+ Steams, and have grown to embrace their queerness... these experiences have shaped Pale Waves’ music over the last few years, but they jump to the fore on Unwanted. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Zakk Cervini, 'Unwanted' is 13 tracks of classic pop punk with an edge; It feels like the purgative scream at the end of a years-long inhalation. Pale Waves' latest album follows 2021's 'Who Am I' and 2018's 'My Mind Makes Noises' which reached #3 and #8 on the UK Album Charts respectively.