Cerca:after work

On Origins Chris Bartels takes on the role of singer-songwriter for the first time under his Elskavon moniker, unveiling a voice that wouldn't sound out of place next to vocal-forward artists like Justin Vernon, Jónsi, or Baths, who master the balance between conventional songcraft and bold, idiosyncratic experimentation. Origins is vast yet intimate, fluttering yet cohesive, tattered yet clean, a little like rainfall during sunlight. Shedding the ambient-classical confines of his previous output, the album's opener and title track, offers a swirling mosaic of acoustic textures that recall the beloved duo The Books, laced with warped vocal utterances flitting in and out of a club-friendly beat. "Origins" is followed by the equally danceable "Coastline," which drives home the smiling melodies and intricate sound-design that form the spine of Origins, keeping Bartels' voice in a largely decorative and impressionistic role up to this point. "Blossom and the Void" dissolves the introductory tension as Bartels comes out lyrically swinging, his digitized voice chanting widely over the mutated New Wave-esque anthem. Here, Bartels shows his instinct for dynamics by rising to bombast and quickly dispelling it, making steep yet grace- ful descents into skillfully delicate sound-design. Throughout Origins, the patient glacial aesthetic of his previous work is still discernible-- there are wordless, expansive panoramas that stretch out patiently for minutes at a time and smartly resist the impulse to pack each moment with a persona made even more impactful when Bartels chooses to wield it. At other times, his spokesmanship is woven discreetly into a larger tapestry, like on "See Out Loud" (and its ambient reprise) where Bartels' voice shimmers from a distance, covering the scene in diffuse splendor. "There is so much warping, mangling, re-sampling, reversing and pitching," Bartels says of his intricate vocal manipulations. "I printed a lot of the vocal recordings onto a tape machine from the `60s, first at one speed, and then I'd halve, or double the speed going back into my comput- er," he elaborates, illustrating how this kind of analog processing freed him from his habits. "Sometimes I'd do this multiple times on one recording or layer-- it gave me such a unique and unexpected sound. At this point, I threw away any inhibition on what type of vocals to have, or not have, on the album." This newfound freedom is palpable in the peaks of soaring grandeur that dot the emotional landscape of Origins. "All These Years" cathartically reaches one such summit in its second half after laying a path of gently plodding indie-IDM in its first. The cinematic vignette "Dreymur Aftur" provides pause for reflection amid its brisk procession of string plucks and rhythmic synthesizer while marching wordlessly into album-closer "This Won't Last Forever." Here at the end, Bartels' guitar playing is laid bare in the mix, skeletally framing a single ribbon of his voice as it unfurls into the atmosphere. Though the track isn't expressly lyrical, its starkness still exemplifies the new leaf of vulnerability Bartels has turned over on Origins, an album that documents his hard-won evolution from musician, to producer, to composer_ and finally_ his confident arrival in the role of songwriter.

50 years after the genre turned the music world upside-down, GRADE 2 bring the raw power of old school punk to a new generation. Their second release on Tim Armstrong’s legendary Hellcat Records is a thumping 15 track tour de force melding the uncompromising ethos of punk with the howl of contemporary injustice, personal identity and frustrations of Gen-Z youth, authentically told by three lads with punk
coursing through their veins.
Formed on their native Isle of Wight when they were just 14 years old, Jack Chatfield (guitar & vocals), Jacob Hull (drums) and Sid Ryan (bass & vocals) honed their craft covering punk pioneers before creating a sound uniquely theirs: ten years on, the eponymous Grade 2 is their magnum opus.
The new album was produced by the band along with Tim Timebomb (Armstrong) and T.J. Rivers at Armstrong’s Ship Rec Studio in Los Angeles. “Returning to Ship Rec Studio resparked that magic dynamic” says guitarist Jack Chatfield. “When we’re in there I feel like we reach our full potential.
Tim would offer tweaks and tips for some songs, while others he’d compliment as finished first time we played them.” “We worked flat-out recording this record,” says drummer Jacob Hull, “but we never felt pressured, Tim keeping us in the zone to make the best tunes of our lives.

Limited Yellow Coloured Vinyl Edition

50 years after the genre turned the music world upside-down, GRADE 2 bring the raw power of old school punk to a new generation. Their second release on Tim Armstrong’s legendary Hellcat Records is a thumping 15 track tour de force melding the uncompromising ethos of punk with the howl of contemporary injustice, personal identity and frustrations of Gen-Z youth, authentically told by three lads with punk
coursing through their veins.
Formed on their native Isle of Wight when they were just 14 years old, Jack Chatfield (guitar & vocals), Jacob Hull (drums) and Sid Ryan (bass & vocals) honed their craft covering punk pioneers before creating a sound uniquely theirs: ten years on, the eponymous Grade 2 is their magnum opus.
The new album was produced by the band along with Tim Timebomb (Armstrong) and T.J. Rivers at Armstrong’s Ship Rec Studio in Los Angeles. “Returning to Ship Rec Studio resparked that magic dynamic” says guitarist Jack Chatfield. “When we’re in there I feel like we reach our full potential.
Tim would offer tweaks and tips for some songs, while others he’d compliment as finished first time we played them.” “We worked flat-out recording this record,” says drummer Jacob Hull, “but we never felt pressured, Tim keeping us in the zone to make the best tunes of our lives.

Pink Vinyl
Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

“A unique and refreshing release.” — Earmilk
“Stellar… an exciting and surprising release” — Popmatters

Cut Copy’s January Tape, an ambient project originally released in 2016 as a limited-edition run of 400 cassette tapes, comes to vinyl for the first time on January 2023 via Cutters Records and Diggers Factory.

Dan Whitford of Cut Copy said the project took shape after the band took a break from recording the follow-up to 2013’s Free Your Mind. “Having worked for much of the previous 12 months on a new Cut Copy album, we decided in January it was time to give ourselves a well earned break, “Whitford stated. “But instead of retreating to the wilderness or decompressing on a beach somewhere, we spent ten days in the studio making a collection of ambient instrumental works. We wanted to share outtakes from these sessions in all their unedited glory with you, and put them out as an extremely limited edition cassette, available mainly through our webstores.” Now with this limited vinyl release, more fans will be able to grab a hold of a physical copy of the music (the OG cassette’s are now a long-gone and highly coveted collector’s item).

Composed and recorded by Whitford and Cut Copy’s guitarist Tim Hoey, January Tape was accompanied by a short video, January Trip, by Glen Goetze and Brendan MacLeod. The video takes from several parts of the tape, evoking the lush, cinematic and occasionally disparate moods in the music via split screen themed imagery, both man-made and elemental in origin. More meditation than music video, more hypnosis than hype, January Trip works as a harmonious visual companion to the soundscapes in the tape.

Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue. His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

160-gram heavyweight Vinyl LP with gatefold jacket displaying the painting series that inspired the music, and the story of Newtok. Newtok is a remote Alaska Native village situated on the Ningliq River, near the west coast of Alaska. Although a very remote and quiet place, Newtok has come face-to-face with climate change. Due to a combination of thawing permafrost, low levels of sea ice, and strong storms, the coastal land of Newtok is eroding dramatically. In 2016, Chicago visual artist Jennifer Cronin embarked on a trip to Newtok to document this changing environment. Upon returning, she spent the next several years developing a series of paintings and screen prints titled Seen and Unseen that captured this eroding landscape. In 2019, Cronin and musical Artist Patrick Mitchell (a/k/a Dusty Patches) began discussing the project after Cronin asked him to perform at the Gallery opening for the series. As a result, Mitchell created this album, Newtok - inspired by Cronin's Seen and Unseen series and the story of Newtok, Alaska. Mitchell is a multi-instrumentalist songwriter and producer from Chicago who has led numerous past projects in the Chicago DIY community including De Triomphe, New Color, and Whiskey Wise. He dove headfirst into synths in 2017 and adopted the electronic alias Dusty Patches. Dusty Patches released his debut project Filthy Four Track Machine: Volumes I & II (2018, Sooper Records), largely made with the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators and OP-1. In 2020, he released Nocturnal Emissions from the Dablatory, his first project fully realized with modular synthesis. In approaching Newtok, Mitchell composed all of the constituent musical elements of the work and then recorded and live mixed the album during a single live performance on modular synthesizer. The album draws heavily on sprawling ambient synths, electric and acoustic post-punk guitar motifs, cryptic vocal sampling, vintage drum machines, and modular patches that often sound like birds or the sea. The subject matter of the album, the complexity of its arrangement, and its execution as a single live recorded performance makes Newtok a unique musical experience. About Newtok, Mitchell says: This record was an exploration of themes. When faced with the immense canvases Jen Cronin produced upon her return from the village of Newtok, one can't help but feel awe. With the sheer size of the works towering above you, you are compelled. There is overwhelming beauty, desolation, a sense of urgency, and a sense that it is, in fact, far too late. These visual themes, and the emotions they evoke, were connected to the sounds and compositions of this record. There is a coldness to the digital soundscape, but organic sounds of nature and humans tether and steer the album through a journey of musical storytelling. Newtok is a journey of musical storytelling about the tragedy of the Anthropocene in the age of climate change. FOR FANS OF: Mother Earth's Plantasia, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Boards of Canada, Bibio

Daddies of riff, shuffle, southern swing, with backbeat and chicken funk spiel, all very much "Sons of Memphis", these six established performers, in the pure Stax/Atlantic style, produce a profound Deep Soul, held together by a hot and groovy bass, a V8 drumbeat, a possessed trombone, a charismatic and powerful lead vocal, and a roaring Hammond Leslie united with the spring reverb guitar and its 60"s tremolo. Zoot suit, black and white Derbys, dark glasses, this Take 6 knows the song, the story and all the strings of the Soulman with that little added extra, the irresistible French touch embellished by their roots in the Bearn, in the Pyrenees. This energetic combo creates fireworks on stage and through them Deep Soul remains what it has always been, a music of hope! Of sharing! Music of the soul! The soul revelation of 2021/2022!! The SuperSoul Brothers began in 2016 as a quartet (bass, drums,guitar, vocals) working relentlessly through the year, with rehearsal after rehearsal. In 2017 came their first concert. The keyboards arrived in 2018. The final balance came in 2019 with the arrival of the trombone. Take 6 was the magical formula. In 2020 their first album, "Shadows and Lights" was written and recorded old-school style. That summer, they fronted the NEG "MARRONS at the Pau Summer Festival. In 2021 they signed with Dixiefrog Records and released their first global album, "Shadows and Lights". The newly created stage show, "Soul Revue" is ready to roll.

Cat Clyde’s 3rd album Down Rounder is a wonder of deeply felt songwriting, a record that finds the Canadian singer-songwriter marveling at what’s around her while considering her own place within it all. With ten songs on the album, Down Rounder possesses an intimate and personal feel, transporting the listener to the recording studio as Cat performs these hair-raising tunes with confidence and passion. Cat joined producer Tony Berg in Los Angeles’ famed Sound City studios to lay down the entirety of Down Rounder in six days flat. The record sounds both lively and lived-in, with Clyde’s malleable singing voice—spanning an appealing twang to a lovely, plaintive croon and anywhere in between—espousing an essential connection between our spiritual center and the natural world that surrounds us. The album is an exploration and expression of self, patterns in the natural and unnatural world, connecting to nature, the turning wheel of life, shedding old selves, embracing new selves, and the ever changing, expanding and contracting nature of love and life. After racking up millions of streams across multiple platforms with previous releases, Down Rounder sounds like the work of someone who’s found themselves artistically and holistically, while extending a hand to any listener who wants to follow Clyde on her singular and thrilling path.

Sony Music Masterworks announces the vinyl format release of 'Sable (Original Video Game Soundtrack)', featuring instrumental and vocal music written by Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner for the globally acclaimed open world video game. The critically celebrated soundtrack is now being released as a stunning double coloured vinyl (purple/pink). This wasn’t Zauner’s only video game contribution of 2021: for the trailer to the new Sims 4 expansion pack 'Cottage Living', the singer/musician/director/bestselling author recorded a new version of her song 'Be Sweet' in Simlish, the fictional language featured in the Sims games. Drawing from her years of songwriting experience, Sable finds Zauner making new explorations into ambient and experimental music, the resulting soundtrack as breathtaking and otherworldly as the game itself. Sable had been hotly anticipated after being teased at E3 2018. The game is a unique and unforgettable journey accompanying guide Sable through her Gliding; a rite of passage that will take her across vast deserts and mesmerizing landscapes, capped by the remains of spaceships and ancient wonders. Of the soundtrack, Zauner says, “It was important to me that each biome in this world felt unique. I used woodwinds and vocal layering to make monumental ruins feel ancient and unknown, industrial samples and soft synths to make atomic ships feel cold and metallic, classical guitar and bright piano to make encampments feel cozy and familiar. I wanted the main themes to recall iconic works of Joe Hisaishi and Alan Menken, to fill the listener with the childlike wonder of someone on the precipice of a grand discovery."

Raised in Queens, New York, rapper, actor, and media personality Noreaga (N.O.R.E) has spent the better part of the last 3 decades topping charts, pushing buttons and capturing the world's attention. While he may be known these days as the host of one of the most popular podcasts in the world, "Drink Champs, " it was his earlier work as an unapologetic, energetic MC that helped to catapult the multi-talented artist into the spotlight. First making waves with his work as one half of duo Capone-N-Noreaga alongside fellow Queens rapper Capone, N.O.R.E.'s career has been unrelenting since first hitting the charts in 1997. Shortly after the release of their massively successful debut album, "The War Report", Capone landed himself back in prison and N.O.R.E. moved ahead as a solo act, finding further success with his first, self-titled album, "N.O.R.E.". Released in 1998, the album catapulted up the charts, peaking at #3 on the Billboard 200 and went on to be certified platinum by the Riaa. With features from fellow NYC MC's Nas, Kool G Rap, Big Pun and Busta Rhymes and featuring production from then-up-and-coming producers, The Neptunes and Swizz Beatz, "N.O.R.E.", was praised by critics for it's modern, futuristic sound and helped to further cement N.O.R.E.'s spot as one of the most successful and memorable artists in Hip Hop. Thanks to the massive success of singles like, "Superthug", "N.O.R.E.", and legendary posse cut, "Banned from T.V.", N.O.R.E.'s debut album has continued to find success around the world and is without a doubt an undisputed classic amongst Hip Hop heads. As part of their 40th Anniversary celebration, Tommy Boy will be reissuing this game-changing album in limited, colored vinyl which is sure to be a must have for records collectors far and wide.

Re-release for the first time on vinyl for this album originally from 2004 on Daft Records. “Behind The Sun” marked the return of Dirk Ivens after five years focused on other projects (The Klinik and Sonar). This time in collaboration with the Spanish musician Rafael M. Espinosa (Geistform) and with production skills of Eric van Wonterghem (Monolith, Insekt). All gained experience by Dirk shapes this album in a perfect way and the Dive-typical sobriety is not long in coming on every track with a sense of electronic menace, shown through a blaze of squeaks, hisses and subliminal aggressiveness. “Behind The Sun” is a first class work and Mr. Ivens once again confirms his exceptional position in the EBM-industrial scene.

Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on double orange vinyl record, gatefold and printed inner sleeves. Includes all original album tracks plus a bunch of extras taken from the “Frozen” EP recorded together with Diskonnekted, the complete “Lies In Your Eyes” EP and the rare song “Lost Horizon”.

Following up last year's orchestral album opus “Overtones For The Omniverse", Mocky has been releasing a number of upbeat and uplifting instrumental tracks and now collects them as "Goosebumps Per Minute, Volume 1" on classic vinyl and digital. Putting his vocals and songwriting to the side for this project, Mocky employs harps, horns, and 70’s analogue synths to provide a funky soundtrack that spreads a little of that California sunshine in the listeners direction. Built around Mocky's signature basslines and ensemble vocal arrangements that include his son Telly and his daughter Lulu, all recorded to his vintage ampex tape machine, Mocky did away with the normal metronomic BPM calculations in modern production and instead measured his music in "GPM" (the tempo at which music transmits Goosebumps) - and on top of a multitude of summery bass, drums & strings perfection, Vicky Farewell drops a blistering Rhodes solo on "Flutter" and Carlos Niño lends a percussive hand on the sublime "Iridescence”. Todd M. Simon handles the horn duties, and Liza Wallace infuses the dance tracks with live harp which recalls the floating approach of Alice Coltrane. Titles like "Refractions", "Wavelengths" or "Conduction" are hinting at a scientific approach to creating the conditions for "Goosebumps Per Minute" - his own calculus for the timing of how and when to hit and strum the things in his studio to make it raw & funky.

The songs were also inspired by his time hanging out at the Goldline bar in LA’s Highland Park. “Throughout the pandemic it was the one place I could go and sit outside and hear incredible music as I listened to my friend DJ Phonecalls playing from the Goldline's vinyl collection. He would be dropping these uplifting funk and disco cuts - and at the end of the night I would go home to my studio and make a track and upload it to my Bandcamp and the streaming services immediately … It reminded me of my time in Tokyo's vinyl bars so "Goosebumps Per Minute" owes a lot to that inspiring culture as well“.

About Mocky:
Performer, producer, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Dominic "Mocky" Salole came to prominence in the Berlin electronic scene of the mid 2000s, releasing three acclaimed solo albums and co-writing and producing classics like Jamie Lidell's "Multiply" and Feist's "The Reminder". In 2009, his music took a jazz-inflected turn to the acoustic with the release of "Saskamodie" and in 2011 Mocky relocated to Los Angeles, where he quickly established himself as a co-writer with uncommon credentials collaborating with L.A.’s brightest breakthrough artists like Kelela, Joey Dosik, Vulfpeck or Moses Sumney. Mocky channeled those new creative energies into his fifth full length album "Key Change" and four digital mixtapes/EPs "The Moxtapes" Vol. IIV. After co-producing and co-writing Feist's "Pleasure" and Kelela's "Take Me Apart", in 2018 Mocky released two albums: "Music Save Me (One More Time)" and "A Day At United", an instrumental jazz album, recorded in a single day. In 2019 Mocky delved into soundtrack work by collaborating with legendary Anime director Shinichiro Watanabe on the first two seasons of the breakthrough show “Carole and Tuesday” (Netflix) for which he won Best Score at the Anime Awards. In 2020 he started a new Single series with 2 releases featuring the portugese singer Liliana Andrade and in 2021 he released his orchestral album "Overtones For The Omniverse" and started a series of funky instrumentals under "Goosebumps Per Minute".

Cosmic Simmering is a very personal new album of unreleased material from Chris Gray on saft. The 13 track album has been composed of previously lost archives, restored DAT tapes and old CDs and it plots the musical evolution of one of house mysic's most underrated artists.

Work on this album started in March 2020 when Chris started digging around in his archives. Some of what he found was sketched in the late 80s, while other tracks were written a few months after Chris moved to Chicago and was living in his uncle's south side attic in early 1993. There are also some cuts from 1995 onwards which have been salvaged from deteriorating DAT tapes after a friend of CHris fixed his player. There is also a selection of early 2000s deep4life material taken from 20-year-old backups on cheap CDs, all brought back to life for this record.

Cosmic Simmering is a beautifully widescreen album that works equally on mind, body and spirit.

It seems fitting that a trilogy of albums celebrating nature should conclude some eight years after its second chapter. Manchester-via-Todmorden based instrumental trio Plank’s first two LPs – 2012’s kosmiche-inspired Animalism and 2014’s more expansive and structurally disruptive follow-up Hivemind – enjoyed relatively quick gestation periods. However, Plank are firm believers in letting nature run its course, and so it is that their third LP Future of the Sea arrives early in 2023. “I always knew I wanted to make three albums inspired by nature” says Plank main-man David Rowe (synths / guitar). “Future of the Sea is another exploration into odd time signatures and traditional rock instruments alongside synths and electronics.”

“Future of the Sea is a celebration of the power and majesty of our oceans and how humankind has been destroying them through industrial scale fishing and global warming” says Rowe. “Rachel Carson put it more eloquently in her book The Sea Around Us: ‘It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.’” A post apocalyptic underwater city scape adorns the cover in an illustration by Jake Blanchard, whose work you'll also see on Richard Dawson's latest album 'The Ruby Cord'.
The synthetic nature of Plank’s sprawling rock odysseys feel at their most pronounced on Future of the Sea which leans to the band’s love of Pink Floyd era Meddle, Camel, film score composers like John Carpenter and Vangelis, 70s experimentalists Harmonia, 1980s King Crimson and 90s post-rock adjacent group Tortoise. In polyrhythmic dexterity if not heaviness, Plank also take some influence from Meshuggah, and it’s in their movement between the 16 minute final album track’s sections that it feels most prominent. They swerve from crunching stoner rock jams to more ambient spatial explorations, crescendoing progressive peaks, 80s synth pop and finally a crushing riff-laden finale.

PINK VINYL

Austin-based, shoegazers Blushing will see the release of their debut EP Tether for the first time on vinyl on February 10, 2023 through Kanine Records. The limited (700 copies) pink colored vinyl is packaged as a double EP. Paired with sophomore EP Weak on the b side, the vinyl features new double-sided cover artwork, where fans can choose which side's cover art to display and includes an mp3 download code. Blushing's first step out into the musical world showcases shimmering guitars chords and infectious choruses, which sent shivers through the deam-pop community upon its original release After receiving such a positive response from Tether, Blushing quickly got to work writing and recording a follow up EP. Weak, a bit of a misnomer, solidified the group's reputation for writing catchy hooks over dreamy, soaring and at times extremely heavy instrumentation, which resulted in the band finding their signature sound. This release follows up Blushing's 2022 full album release, Possessions, an album with charismatic vocals, dreamy guitar hooks, swirling bass lines, filled with dream pop intensity and produced by Elliott Frazier (Ringo Deathstarr). Lead single "Blame" featured Miki Berenyi (Lush) and Mark Gardener (Ride) lent a hand on mixing and mastering. Blushing features two husband and wife duos consisting of Michelle Soto (guitar, vocals), Jacob Soto (drums), Christina Carmona (vocals, bass), and Noe Carmona (guitar). Jacob and Noe have been lifelong friends that played in bands growing up in El Paso, TX. Blushing is a part of the modern dream pop and shoegaze community that has helped Blushing create an album that all indie music lovers need to hear. Fans of LUSH, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, RIDE, Slowdive won't be able to resist.

RED APPLE MARBLE VINYL REPRESS.

Everything changed for The Beths when they released their debut album, Future Me Hates Me, in 2018. The indie rock band had long been nurtured within Auckland, New Zealand’s tight-knit music scene, working full-time during the day and playing music with friends after hours. Full of uptempo pop rock songs with bright, indelible hooks, the LP garnered them critical acclaim from outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and they set out for their first string of shows overseas. They quit their jobs, said goodbye to their home town, and devoted themselves entirely to performing across North America and Europe. They found themselves playing to crowds of devoted fans and opening for acts like Pixies and Death Cab for Cutie. Almost instantly, The Beths turned from a passion project into a full-time career in music.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Elizabeth Stokes worked on what would become The Beths’ second LP, Jump Rope Gazers, in between these intense periods of touring. Like the group’s earlier music, the album tackles themes of anxiety and self-doubt with effervescent power pop choruses and rousing backup vocals, zeroing in on the communality and catharsis that can come from sharing stressful situations with some of your best friends. Stokes’s writing on Jump Rope Gazers grapples with the uneasy proposition of leaving everything and everyone you know behind on another continent, chasing your dreams while struggling to stay close with loved ones back home.

"If you're at a certain age, all your friends scatter to the four winds,” Stokes says. “We did the same thing. When you're home, you miss everybody, and when you're away, you miss everybody. We were just missing people all the time.”

With songs like the rambunctious “Dying To Believe” and the tender, shoegazey “Out of Sight,” The Beths reckon with the distance that life necessarily drives between people over time. People who love each other inevitably fail each other. “I’m sorry for the way that I can’t hold conversations/They’re such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of,” Stokes sings on “Dying to Believe.” The best way to repair that failure, in The Beths’ view, is with abundant and unconditional love, no matter how far it has to travel. On “Out of Sight,” she pledges devotion to a dearly missed friend: “If your world collapses/I’ll be down in the rubble/I’d build you another,” she sings.

“It was a rough year in general, and I found myself saying the words, 'wish you were here, wish I was there,’ over and over again,” she says of the time period in which the album was written. Touring far from home, The Beths committed themselves to taking care of each other as they were trying at the same time to take care of friends living thousands of miles away. They encouraged each other to communicate whenever things got hard, and to pay forward acts of kindness whenever they could. That care and attention shines through on Jump Rope Gazers, where the quartet sounds more locked in than ever. Their most emotive and heartfelt work to date, Jump Rope Gazers stares down all the hard parts of living in communion with other people, even at a distance, while celebrating the ferocious joy that makes it all worth it -- a sentiment we need now more than ever.

Nada is Bérurier Noir's first 45t EP, released in 1983, originally on vinyl, shared with the band Guernica. 6 punk-psychiatric, aggressive and cold tracks. All in a black and white sleeve, with a terribly disturbing illustration signed by François (singer).

"A delirious rhythm box, relentless guitars, impeccable lyrics, voices from hell, all in a sordid and unhealthy climate, puking as you wish. They walk in the forest, for sure, but their forest is made of concrete, psychiatric hospitals and torture rooms. They're getting uglier and uglier, it's true, but their ugliness is like their music, cold, dark and totally derisory. At last, a dirty record in which one can wallow with pleasure.

In Cauda Venenum n°7 - 1983



The band's name alone evokes the epic of alternative rock: rebellious and committed.

Born by mistake on a February evening in 1983, Bérurier Noir soon found itself the driving force behind a vast "Youth Movement", determined to take control of its life in the face of a society that was ultra conservative at the time. Times have hardly changed.

From the first self-produced records distributed by hand to the creation of self-managed labels, from concerts in squats and wild appearances in demonstrations, on the street or in the metro to endless tours, from interviews given to fanzines and free radio stations to unclassifiable appearances in the mainstream media, Bérurier Noir has waged the most exciting war of independence in the history of French rock, with only a microphone, a guitar, a drum machine, a few red noses and patched-up theatre masks.

The last finger of honour of this turbulent and irrecoverable raia, François, Loran and their "Troupeau d'Rock" commit hara-kiri, at the peak of their glory, during three last concerts in the heart of Paris in November 1989.

Forty years after its birth, Bérurier Noir's work still resonates, whether in demonstrations or free parties, nourishing the hopes of those who wish to overthrow this world to build a truly libertarian, united and fraternal society.

The label Archives de la Zone Mondiale reminds those who missed this unprecedented adventure, 8 discographic parts of the group Bérurier Noir in the form of reissues on particularly original colour vinyls (crown finish), in a limited series and distributed throughout the year.

Ian Haywood aka Ian Sweetness was born in Kingston, Jamaica. Gifted with talent, this versatile singer of culture Reggae music and Lover’s Rock, started at the age of nine with the church choirs. Bob Marley, Dennis Brown, Beres Hammond, Frankie Paul and the old school Reggae foundation artists are his greatest inspiration. His first recording was at the age of nineteen at the Creative Sounds Studio in Kingston. The tune’s title was “Rude Bwoy” feat. Simpleton. After that, he started to work with sound systems in his area, and from there he began to spend time in studios around Jamaica, such as Arrows Studio, King Tubby’s, King Jammy’s, Penthouse, Bobby Digital, and more.
Ian recorded tunes with different producers and labels, for example, Jah Life, and Bobby Digital, and was based at Arrows Studios, but still working with producers in Jamaica & overseas.

Concerto Pour Détraqués" was ranked 52nd best French rock album by Rolling Stones magazine in 2010.

Eleven tracks like so many vitriolic pictures of a sick society: rape, extreme right-wing, psychiatric confinement, security paranoia, alcoholism and all the other crap that the future seems to hold. Loran and François express more than ever their rage and their refusal of the adult world in a recital with three chords: more aggressive guitars, more incisive lyrics and voices while an armada of chorus members and a saxophone come to heckle or underline this darkness.

"Concerto Pour Détraqués" is the band's reference album, with a string of hymns to insubordination and freedom: Petit Agité, Vivre Libre ou Mourir, Les Rebelles, Porcherie, Hélène et le Sang...

The band's name alone evokes the epic of alternative rock: rebellious and committed.

Born by mistake on a February evening in 1983, Bérurier Noir soon found itself the driving force behind a vast "Youth Movement", determined to take control of its life in the face of a society that was ultra conservative at the time. Times have hardly changed.

From the first self-produced records distributed by hand to the creation of self-managed labels, from concerts in squats and wild appearances in demonstrations, on the street or in the metro to endless tours, from interviews given to fanzines and free radio stations to unclassifiable appearances in the mainstream media, Bérurier Noir has waged the most exciting war of independence in the history of French rock, with only a microphone, a guitar, a drum machine, a few red noses and patched-up theatre masks.

The last finger of honour of this turbulent and irrecoverable raia, François, Loran and their "Troupeau d'Rock" commit hara-kiri, at the peak of their glory, during three last concerts in the heart of Paris in November 1989.

Forty years after its birth, Bérurier Noir's work still resonates, whether in demonstrations or free parties, nourishing the hopes of those who wish to overthrow this world to build a truly libertarian, united and fraternal society.

The label Archives de la Zone Mondiale reminds those who missed this unprecedented adventure, 8 discographic parts of the group Bérurier Noir in the form of reissues on particularly original colour vinyls (crown finish), in a limited series and distributed throughout the year.

With their emotive melodies, propulsive rhythms, angular guitars and dark cinematic electronics, TRAITRS have quickly become one of modern post-punk’s fastest rising independent bands. Consisting of Sean-Patrick Nolan and Shawn Tucker, TRAITRS formed during the summer of 2015 in Toronto, Ontario Canada. The duo recorded demos with producer/engineer Josh Korody (Nailbiter, F*cked Up, Japandroids, Dilly Dally), garnered the attention of Pleasence Records label head James Lindsay and released their debut cassette Rites And Ritual in April 2016. After gaining buzz in the European and North American dark music scenes, TRAITRS released their critically acclaimed LP Butcher’s Coin (Pleasence Records, Manic Depression Records, Alchera Visions) in May 2018. Backed by the strength of lead single ‘Thin Flesh’, the duo embarked on a series of lengthy tours overseas, performed in over a dozen countries including showcases at Wave Gothik Treffen, Castle Party, Extramuralhas, Nocturnal Culture Night, Wavefest, Canadian Music Week and Pop! Montreal. Their relentless touring schedule and work ethic caught the attention of Schubert Music Publishing’s Thomas Thyssen and Eric Burton, and in October 2020 they announced TRAITRS as the first signing to their brand-new record label Freakwave Records. This year, TRAITRS will release ‘The Sick, Tired And Ill’ EP on July 30 and the full-length LP ‘Horses In The Abattoir’ on November 19.

Gotts Street Park are a proud bunch of throwbacks. The Leeds-based trio - Josh Crocker (bass, production), Tom Henry (keys) and Joe Harris (guitar) - met through various music studies and friendship networks. Individually their tastes are diverse: from North Indian classical to experimental jazz, soul to alternative hip hop but their vision is united: “The idea of doing things live in one room has always been important,” remarks Josh. “That’s how they used to do it. Our identity evolved from that.”

The inception of the collective goes back to around 2012. There have been minor line up tweaks - they currently record with a rotating list of drummers - but the philosophy has stayed the same: an ongoing pursuit to capture the raw, unparalleled vibe that comes from recording music together, usually as one take, sometimes to analogue tape.

That approach is a deliberate call back to the methods made famous by legendary studios like Sun and Stax in Memphis, or FAME and Muscle Shoals in Alabama and their in-house bands. That’s why for years, GSP set up their own studio in a shared house in a tough (but, crucially, affordable) corner of west Leeds, Armley. Gotts Park (historically the home of industrialist Benjamin Gott) was close by - the group’s name was a nod to their local geography but also the fact it sounded like an area plucked straight out of some of their favourite East Coast hip hop releases.

Their work was quickly noticed, and it was from that base where they began working with an eye catching list of collaborators: Rejjie Snow, Kali Uchis, Cosima, Yellow Days, Chester Watson, Greentea Peng and Benny Mails. Tom also played keys in Mabel’s band. Early on, while performing as a band for hire for those artists, they were simultaneously honing their own sound; a deliberately retro “heavy, saturated” atmosphere that married the languid vibe of traditional soul with the pin sharp clarity of contemporary hip hop. Old leanings, sure, but upcycled with their own modern twist. “We’re constantly trying to build a catalogue,” says Tom. “Writing new stuff and sending it out to people.” That’s why after the release of their debut EP, ‘Volume One’, in 2017 the invitations kept coming; most notably from Brits Rising Star award winner Celeste, with whom they recorded two tracks on her debut EP ‘Lately’.

‘Volume Two’ once again features an impressive raft of vocalists - all female - from established names to fresh talent. This time, musically, the overall tone is lighter; less gritty, more optimistic. “It’s definitely not as gloomy,” says Josh. “Still though, there is this kind of dark, mysterious thing that we do a lot that works,” he continues. “Like the song we’ve done with Grand Pax, for example - it’s got that kind of witchy darkness to it. I think if you do a really straight male soul voice, it can be a bit cheesy and sound like you’ve heard it a million times before.”

Their collaborations might be some of the freshest of 2020 but make no mistake: Gotts Street Park are out there looking to create something timeless.

Iceland's Thule offshoot label 66 Degrees was a vital label back in the day. After a 20-year hiatus, it came back strong in August and now follows up quickly with a second superb EP. This one is a carefully curated various artists collection that pulls together some local house anthems new and old. Ozy's 'Sequential Dub' is a super smooth deep house number with lush chord work. Sanasol brings heavier, more raw house drums and grinding bass that will get floors in a sweat. Oz Artists mixes up a raw, mechanical groove with balmy, dreamy pads up top to make for something utterly compelling on 'Atomox; while last of all Terry Cummingz pays homage to dusty Windy City house on his perfectly lo-fi 'Cherry Bon Bon. Classy business for sure.

The inception of 49North marks the beginning of a brand new era for Duncan Forbes; who most emphatically made his mark on the WW scene as one half of legendary duo - Spooky - alongside Charlie May; releasing a string of landmark singles and albums over 3 decades, not to mention timeless remix / production work for International heavyweights like Depeche Mode, M83, Sasha, William Orbit, Mr.G and Apparat.

A1: ‘Strobe Dancer’
“Duncan Forbes’ maiden solo voyage and first ever release on recently birthed imprint, 49North - 'Strobe Dancer' is 9+ minutes of exquisitely-paced, hypnotic dance-floor drama. Sitting somewhere between Deep, Acid House and Slo-mo, Dub Techno - Duncan's opening effort is a wickedly brooding, yet seductive joy to behold.”

B1: ‘Continental Drift’
“After the hypno-House stylings of 'Strobe Dancer' - Duncan takes us to another far-flung corner of his scopic, creative spectrum - via the fittingly titled, ‘Continental Drift’; a pitched-down, acid-glazed slice of mesmeric, widescreen Electronica.”

B2: ‘In The Mansion Of The Gods’

Moiss Music is dropping two slabs of heat this month - their sixth and seventh EPs overall. Both are various artists' collections with plenty of 'floor-facing disco fun. Mathew Ferness opens this one with 'Paradisio' which has plenty of inspiration taken from late afternoon dances somewhere like Ibiza. 3kelves & We Are Neurotic get you working your feet with the busy percussive grooves and squelchy synth funk of 'Laguna Reservoir Funk' while Naux brings lots of loopy fun and throwback vocal goodness to his steamy 'Foxxy Cleopatra.' Partner Music rounds out the EP with the most energetic and busy of the lot - the restless melodies of 'People Should Romance.'

Initially planned as a trilogy, given the success of this project, the series of 12” EPs featuring reinterpretations of tracks from the album “People Need People” - the brilliant work by Nicola Conte and Gianluca Petrella released in 2021 - closes with this fourth chapter, with the excellent contribution of Fred P. and his Interpretations.
Artist, DJ, Producer, Remixer and A/V Designer - born in New York and now living in Berlin - Fred P. has encompassed what it truly means to be an artist in the 21st century. With a discography growing exponentially year after year, he continues to push forward in his sound and his mind.
These two new interpretations of his constitute a little jewel in which Fred P. offers us a skilful blend where afro, jazz and house music create a cosmic spiritual journey at times nocturnal, suitable for the most sophisticated dance floors - in both cases with different rhythmic patterns, broken-afro for “African Spirits” and cosmic-house for “Tribes”, Fred creates here an open space, deep and simply at the centre of the music!

The pandemic affected each of us in different ways. From colossal stars to complete unknowns, it up-ended our lives, and demolished our expectations.

Take Lil Skies. The Philly talent found himself back in his home city, completing a journey that began in pace on his 2017 mixtape ‘Life Of A Dark Rose’. Re-connecting with his roots – his moniker is a nod to his father, while 2019 debut album ‘Shelby’ named after his mother – he’s delivered some of his most potent, open material to date.

‘Unbothered’ is a tight, focussed return – a snappy 14 tracks, is exudes a sense of purpose, retaining the swagger of his debut while upping the word play. It’s an inward journey, one exemplified by those early viral singles ‘OK’ and ‘Havin’ My Way’ but it’s also lit up by some special guests.

Working with alacrity, Lil Skies built ‘Unbothered’ from a series of freestyles, yet every element on the album feels exact, placed with real precision. Using a mere three features – a trilogy that boasts Wiz Khalifa, Lil Durk, and Jodeci – the emphasis is placed on his vocals, on his ability to utilise the voice as an instrument.

‘Trust Nobody’ hinges on fragile paranoia, while ‘Riot’ bristles with a palpable sense of rage. An attempt to channel the repressed – and often extreme – emotions of the past 12 months, ‘Unbothered’ pitches a cool facade against a depth of feeling that often threatens to explode – just check out ‘Think Deep Don’t Sink’ for a mission statement.

Working within clear definitions, ‘Unbothered’ feels more distilled than Lil Skies’ previous work, the sound of someone choosing to work with what they know. Lyrically it’s marked by pain and redemption, lingering on messages of perseverance, and renewal. He may claim to be ‘Unbothered’, but the marks of the pandemic are there for all to see on a brave, at times powerful, new album

(Anil Aras, Kepler, Thoma Bulwer & Anna Wall, & Laidlaw mixes)

For a few years a while ago, Robert James was one of the hottest names in house. He ushered in the post-minimal era with colourful, accessible sounds that brought some much needed life and charm back to the scene. After disappearing for a time he returned with his debut album in May and now some of it gets some top remixes. Slapfunk's Anil Aras pumps a nice cosmic house vibe, Kepler does his tight, high tempo work and Thoma Bulwer & Anna Wall combine their skills once more on a clipped, punchy tech house version of 'Planet 90.' Laidlaw lays out some electronic drum funk with a fine version of 'Infinity' to close.

It is recognized today that these tutelary pieces for four pianos are among the most powerful in contemporary music,their impact is almost unparalleled. After the historical version recorded forty years ago, this one, featuring four of the greatest European performers, is now regaining its full power. High level recordings too.

There was some for John Cage, then came Christian Wolff, and finally Morton Feldman, from this school in New York. Only Julius Eastman remained outside the game, the last figure, the most solitary and enigmatic - undoubtedly also one of the most powerful, and it is this power that is revealed through these recordings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. He was politically committed, a figure of queer culture and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny : suffering from various addictions, declared missing, actually homeless. During Winter of 1981-82, he got deported from his apartment by the police, who destroyed most of what he owned - including scores and recordings. He was found dead in 1990, on the streets of Buffalo, after years of vagrancy.

The Performers Nicolas Horvath, pianist and electroacoustic composer Nicolas Horvath is known for his boundariesless musical explorations - he has collaborated with leading contemporary composers from around the world, including Alvin Lucier, Alvin Curran and Valentyn Silvestrov - the recordings of his complete works for piano by Phil Glass made a lasting impression. He has collaborated recently with Lustmord on the Deconstruction of November by Dennis Johnson (Sub Rosa SR502: The Fall).

Melaine Dalibert, a French composer and pianist, fascinated by natural phenomena which are both expected and unpredictable, Dalibert has developed his own algorithmic procedures of composition which contain the notion of stretched time evoking Morton Feldman, minimal and introspective, adopting a unique concept of fractal series.

Stephane Ginsburgh, a tireless surveyor of the repertoire but also explorer of new music, collaborated with composers such as Philippe Boesmans, Jean-Luc Fafchamps, Stefan Prins, Frederic Rzewski and Matthew Shlomowitz of whom he premiered works, as well as with choreographers such as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Rosas) and recorded Feldman, Duchamp and Satie for Sub Rosa and the complete set of Prokofiev piano sonatas for Cypres. Wilhem Latchoumia, he embraces both new music and the classical repertoire with success and charisma. His two last recordings for La Dolce Volta (Prokofiev and de Falla) have been highly acclaimed by critics with a FFFF in Télérama. Winner of the Hewlett-Packard Foundation and the Montsalvatge International Piano Competition, he brilliantly won the First Prize in the 2006 Orléans International Piano Competition.

After a year and a half writing and recording rock music, I needed to clear my head. I listened to and made music where things generally happen gradually rather than suddenly. I would set up patches on a Monomachine or Analog Four and listen to them, hearing one sound morph into others, making changes to a patch only after having listened for quite a while, gradually adding elements, and finally manipulating the sounds on the fly. All tracks were recorded live to CD burner, with no overdubs, and executed on one or two machines.

While I was almost exclusively listening to artists such as Chris Watson, Peter Rehberg, Bernard Parmegiani, CM Von Hausswolff, Jana Winderen, Oren Ambarchi, Hazard, Bruce Gilbert, Klara Lewis, Ryoji Ikeda, and so on, I was also inspired by my mental image of John Lennon's tape and mellotron experiments he made at home during his time in the Beatles, as well as events like the first minute of Bowie's Station To Station, ...And The Gods Made Love by Jimi Hendrix, the synths in the song Mass Production by Iggy Pop, and the general idea of Eno's initial concept of Ambient music.

Music being a solitary sculpture in sonic space was the main motivating thought. I was looking at pictures of sculptures and trying to make music that simultaneously conveyed both movement and stillness. I refrained from sudden musical changes, especially avoiding sequences of notes and rhythms. In fact, this music was made from sequences which never exceed a single note, many of these pieces being made on a single pattern. The movement which a good sculptor conveys when the shape of his medium meets the eyes of the viewer who walks around the piece, or the sun changes its position, are the kinds of movement which it was the role of the synth patches to communicate.

I've been listening to music like this since I was 13 or so, but I felt that making it was out of my reach because of the amount of restraint I imagined it required. Once I found myself making this music, it did not feel like a matter of restraint at all. I wanted to build a certain type of building, and hear certain types of movement, and I knew when it was complete. There was no place for sequences of notes and rhythms in my plans.

I also cannot overstate the role that being in my band played. I had previously spent 12 years programming and engineering my own music, and then spent a year and a half making music where my role was basically to write songs and play guitar. When the band's recording phase was completed, I needed to go back to my adopted language. I had done enough with chords, rhythms, notes, defined sections, sharp transitions, etc.. What I needed was to create music from the ground up with nothing but sound, and have that music reflect "being" rather than "doing". It was a therapeutic way of re-balancing myself, before and during my band's mixing process.

This music seeks to just exist, and is not attempting to manipulate or grab the listener in any way. I believe it works well if one listens loud and focuses on it, but also works well at soft volumes and in the background. It can compete with silence on silence's own terms, and it can also happily wipe silence out.

There are two versions of this album. The CD version is pronounced "two" and called : I I . This is the longer version. The vinyl version is pronounced "one", and called . I : This version is shorter, but contains one vinyl-only track. The reason the vinyl is shorter is that some of the tracks have sounds that can not be pressed on vinyl.

John Frusciante

Repress on white vinyl!


In the 4 years after The Clipse dropped their sophomore classic Lord Willin’ the duo
was able to build a legacy that had fans hungry for new material. After the smoke
cleared and they hit the studio the Virginia brothers recorded the confidently mature
sophomore effort, Hell Hath No Fury. Best known for their unconventional radio
smash “Grindin’,” Clipse are no strangers to taking risks with the boundary-pushing
Neptunes, who return as trusted co-pilots for Hell Hath No Fury. As always the duo
is right at home over The Neptunes crafted beats which perfectly embrace Pusha’s
inventive drug-game metaphors and Malice’s soul-baring confessionals.
From the bouncy lead single “Mr. Me Too” and the Slim Thug assisted “Wamp
Wamp” to the oddly haunting "Keys Open Doors" to "Momma I'm Sorry", Hell Hath
No Fury represents some of the duo’s best work. On the hypnotic “Keys Open
Doors,” over the eerie mix of screwed-up angelic voices, chimes and congas, the
brothers run circles around the competition, while the spine-tingling boom-bap of
“Ride Around Shining” sets the stage for Pusha’s hilarious boasts. Whether rhyming
over distorted, lo-fi guitar plucks (“Dirty Money”) or overblown 808s (“Trill”), the
brothers come with colorful references and inventive word play that easily places
them in a lyrical class of their own. Get On Down now proudly issues this Neptunes
produced favorite on LP for the first time ever with the first run on white vinyl.

In November of 1982, I went into the studio with Government Issue to record what was to be their first full-length album. Up until that time, they had only released the Legless Bull 7”EP, and the tape they recorded early 1982 would take over a year and a half to be released as the Make An Effort 7”EP. The members of G.I. excelled at driving each other crazy and there was a lot of arguing, but still we had a great session at Inner Ear and we managed to track 20 songs in one day. From the beginning the band had been divided on what to record, and it was only after much debate that they decided to leave off the material they had recorded with the earlier line-ups and only put out 10 new songs.

In early 1983 Dischord was strapped for cash, meaning that we could only work on one release at a time. Since all of our money was tied up with the manufacturing of Minor Threat’s Out of Step 12” EP, the G.I. record would have to wait. A new DC label, Fountain of Youth, expressed an interest in releasing Boycott Stabb, so it was decided to do a ‘split-label’ record. In this case, Fountain of Youth put up the money and we let them use the Dischord Records name to help with context and distribution. It has since been reissued on a number of different labels and formats, but after coming across the master tapes and hearing the songs that had been left off, we thought it would be cool to release the complete session, and to finally release the record on Dischord proper.

In going through the tapes, I discovered that most of the outtake songs were never mixed, so earlier this year I took the recordings back into the studio. Hearing the separated tracks amazed me. Such great playing and songs! With the technological advances in the recording world made multi-tracking and overdubbing so common, it’s easy to forget that studios could also be used as something more akin to a photo-booth, capturing what was happening at that very moment. Most of the early Dischord sessions were essentially ‘live’ recordings, so the bands had to be able to play, and because the budgets were minuscule, they had to get the songs down in short order. G.I. stepped up on both counts. -Ian MacKaye, August 2010

James Brandon Lewis is a New York-based jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. His instrumental voice marries the emotional power of gospel and the grit and groove of blues and R&B to the modal and vanguard influences of Albert Ayler and John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins" expressive melodic and tonal discipline. Moments, his 2010 debut, was followed by two outings for Sony Masterworks" revived OKeh imprint: Divine Travels in 2014 and the widely celebrated Days of Freeman the following year. After working American stages and clubs, he toured European and Asian festivals. Radiant Imprints, a duo outing with drummer Chad Taylor, appeared in 2018 and was followed by the quintet offering An UnRuly Manifesto a year later. In 2021, after he was selected as the "Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist" in the Downbeat International Critics Poll, Lewis issued The Jesup Wagon, his debut for Tao Forms. Along the way, Lewis drew the attention of many improvising artists, most notably the saxophonist and jazz deity Sonny Rollins, who doesn"t offer effusive praise very often. Moved by Lewis" deep, spirit-seeking sound, Rollins said "When I listen to you, I listen to Buddha, I listen to Confucius ... I listen to the deeper meaning of life. You are keeping the world in balance." Eye of I opens with 44 seconds of gritty, high-throttling low-down groove, an ear pulverizing opening designed to cleanse all traces of ordinary from the palette. From there, Lewis offers a prayerful cover of Donnie Hathaway"s "Someday We"ll All Be Free" and then the first of his disarmingly addictive originals, "The Blues Still Blossoms" in addition to many others.

In November of 1982, I went into the studio with Government Issue to record what was to be their first full-length album. Up until that time, they had only released the Legless Bull 7”EP, and the tape they recorded early 1982 would take over a year and a half to be released as the Make An Effort 7”EP. The members of G.I. excelled at driving each other crazy and there was a lot of arguing, but still we had a great session at Inner Ear and we managed to track 20 songs in one day. From the beginning the band had been divided on what to record, and it was only after much debate that they decided to leave off the material they had recorded with the earlier line-ups and only put out 10 new songs.

In early 1983 Dischord was strapped for cash, meaning that we could only work on one release at a time. Since all of our money was tied up with the manufacturing of Minor Threat’s Out of Step 12” EP, the G.I. record would have to wait. A new DC label, Fountain of Youth, expressed an interest in releasing Boycott Stabb, so it was decided to do a ‘split-label’ record. In this case, Fountain of Youth put up the money and we let them use the Dischord Records name to help with context and distribution. It has since been reissued on a number of different labels and formats, but after coming across the master tapes and hearing the songs that had been left off, we thought it would be cool to release the complete session, and to finally release the record on Dischord proper.

In going through the tapes, I discovered that most of the outtake songs were never mixed, so earlier this year I took the recordings back into the studio. Hearing the separated tracks amazed me. Such great playing and songs! With the technological advances in the recording world made multi-tracking and overdubbing so common, it’s easy to forget that studios could also be used as something more akin to a photo-booth, capturing what was happening at that very moment. Most of the early Dischord sessions were essentially ‘live’ recordings, so the bands had to be able to play, and because the budgets were minuscule, they had to get the songs down in short order. G.I. stepped up on both counts. -Ian MacKaye, August 2010

Following up on reissues of the 2000 compilation »Multila« and 2001’s »Anima,« Sasu Ripatti has thoroughly revisited the classic »Whistleblower« for its first ever vinyl issue on the German Keplar label. Ripatti created entirely new mixes of previously unheard-of alternative versions of the tracks that first appeared on CD through his own Huume imprint in early 2007. He thus shines a new, different light on a record that was as much an expression of reaching a turning point in his life as it also showcased a new, more direct and perhaps more abrasive side of his Vladislav Delay project. »Whistleblower« was marked by the insertion of more noise and disruptive elements into Ripatti’s slowly moving take on intricate electronic music that heavily leaned on dub techniques. Fittingly for an album written at the threshold between one life and the other, »Whisteblower« seems at once melancholic and forward-looking in both tone and style.

»Whisteblower« was the follow-up record to 2005’s »The Four Quarters« and produced in the German capital. »I had quite a hard time in Berlin towards the end and I'm sure the track titles and the music reflect some of that uneasiness,« Ripatti says 15 years later. Changes in his personal life had a profound impact on him when making the record. The fifth track, »Lumi,« was dedicated to his daughter who was born shortly after the album was finished. »I had to reconsider what my life had been,« he recalls this watershed moment in his biography. Having already previously embraced a sober lifestyle—hinted at with the last piece’s title, »Recovery IDea«—Ripatti started questioning his life choices more thoroughly. This is also expressed in »He Lived Deeply,« a track inspired by Miles Davis’s love for Duke Ellington whose title can be read as an implicit question that Ripatti nowadays paraphrases thusly: »Had I been living fully, or fully not living?«

The seven tracks also marked a musical turning point in Ripatti’s work as a producer, not only because it was the last one for which he primarily used analogue and vintage equipment. They are also more straightforward on a music level, more demanding and at times more concerned with subtle rhythms than with the thick textures that were so integral to his earlier work. »Whisteblower« represented the first step in a process of focusing less on sonic abstraction and more on direct (self-)expression. While Ripatti admits that he found working on the album difficult back then, he also points out that he was surprised to hear how »gentle and peaceful« it sounded when he started revisiting the original files he used as a basis for these newly mixed versions. »It probably proves how much more comfortable I had become with sound.«

Kirk Degiorgio is becoming somewhat of a mainstay on the Belgian De:tuned label. Here he returns with 'The Unveiling'. The title track stands out with a classical synth progression and beautiful harmonies, resulting in an uplifting Detroit fused techno cut. 'Descent Module' takes you on a driving acidic trip and has all the characteristics of a hypnotic floater for the after-hours. On the flip you'll find two exclusive remixes from Kirk's 'Communion' album on De:tuned. Ian o'Brien showcases his vast musical talent and opens up his soul with a warm and lengthy retake of 'The Ladder'. Luke Slater debuts strongly on De:tuned and provides a rare The 7th Plain remix of 'Absorption Spectra'. Luke's take is a sentimental and lush ambient techno interpretation where its unique sound oscillates between a melancholic state of nostalgia and modern escapism.

Kevin Foakes (Openmind, DJ Food, Ninja Tune) created all the graphic work. Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis and pressed on 180 gr vinyl. A separate digital release will also be available at the usual digital shops. Stay tuned!

blue marbled vinyl

Kirk Degiorgio is becoming somewhat of a mainstay on the Belgian De:tuned label. Here he returns with 'The Unveiling'. The title track stands out with a classical synth progression and beautiful harmonies, resulting in an uplifting Detroit fused techno cut. 'Descent Module' takes you on a driving acidic trip and has all the characteristics of a hypnotic floater for the after-hours. On the flip you'll find two exclusive remixes from Kirk's 'Communion' album on De:tuned. Ian o'Brien showcases his vast musical talent and opens up his soul with a warm and lengthy retake of 'The Ladder'. Luke Slater debuts strongly on De:tuned and provides a rare The 7th Plain remix of 'Absorption Spectra'. Luke's take is a sentimental and lush ambient techno interpretation where its unique sound oscillates between a melancholic state of nostalgia and modern escapism.

Kevin Foakes (Openmind, DJ Food, Ninja Tune) created all the graphic work. Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis and pressed on 180 gr vinyl. A separate digital release will also be available at the usual digital shops. Stay tuned!

Scaphandre' is the story of an image found in a lost time on the internet a few years ago. It inspired two sound pieces conceived so that one can dive into it as into the sea.
Once their composition was finished, I looked for the origin of this image. It is one of the very first submarine pictures in history, taken by Louis Boutan in 1893 in the bay of Banyuls-sur-Mer... my home town. The original photo as well as a fantastic series of archives documenting this event can be found at the Arago Laboratory, where I often went as a child, after school, amazed by what the researchers were showing me. They just had never told me this story.
This is how this record found its scenery.
Gaspar Claus


The two pieces Gaspar Claus brought together on Scaphandre form an abstract and mysterious B-side of Tancade, released in the fall of 2021. Both composed during the long, initial period of his first album's conception, this mini album's two episodes, each tinged with minimal and noisy abstractions, unfold more than 10 minutes of total immersion into the abyss of experimental music on the first, and drone for the second.

In their own way, these tracks are a form of raw, unadorned escape, a film negative of the cellist's surface creations, which we know are bathed in sunshine and fresh air.

'Inside' is a moment of distraction while Gaspar worked on a film soundtrack. The title took time to mature in the musician's head, abandoned then picked up again and modified until it found its signature progression of strings where time seems suspended. The reverberations dress its fourteen-minute sound canvas in a way that is reminiscent of endless, sub-marine darkness.

'Beyond' was recorded in three takes during a writing session for his first album with David Chalmin in the Basque Country. The post-production phase required a long process of refinement to obtain this invasive sound material that cuts the listener off from their real environment and films them with a hypnotic feeling of depths and apnea.

Taken in 1898 by Louis Boutan a few dozen kilometres from the beach of Tancade in Banyuls sur mer - Gaspar's family village - the photographs of Scaphandre seal the vinyl sleeve with a unique auditory experience presenting the submerged side of the cellist. Obscure, dense, haunting, excitingly weightless.

Originally released in 2013, now re-issued on their own Extreme Eating imprint. FROM THE 2013 PRESS RELEASE - Sleaford Mods started out sometime during 2006 whilst Jason Williamson was living in Nottingham. Born out of part frustration and part accident, it quickly found its feet as an aggressive verbal onslaught on all that is contrived and connected to the day-to-day hammer of low paid employment and domestic situations arising from that trap. After a year of working ideas out in both the studio and in live performance around Nottingham, Williamson moved south and took the cause to London for a couple of years, before returning to Nottingham in 2009. Soon after that he that he met Andrew Fearn and the Sleaford Mods became a duo. The rest, as they say… “

Rubinho E Mauro Assumpção's 'Perfeitamente, Justamente Quando Cheguei' has to be up there as one of the finest Brazilian-psych-folk-MPB records we know. Unfortunately, it's very hard to find in the wild; even on digging trips to Brazil, an original copy rarely shows up, and when it does, it comes with a hefty price tag.

This highly sought-after rarity was released on the Brazilian label Tapecar Records in 1972 and is the one and only album by the sensational pairing of Rubinho and Mauro Assumpção. Effortlessly blending folk, MPB, funky-psych, rock, and relaxed, swaggering samba, this record ought to be heralded as a true Brazilian classic. However, maybe due to its scarcity and the previous reissue predominantly being only available to the Brazilian market, it has not had a chance to fully shine and find the wider audience it deserves. Through our reissue we hope to put things right. Fans of records by Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges are sure to enjoy the same magic and allure in 'Perfeitamente, Justamente Quando Cheguei'.

In addition to being the album’s songwriters, Mauro Assumpção took on the role of producer and Rubinho was co-producer as well as playing piano, organ, acoustic guitar and performing vocals. The record features the drummer Gegê who worked with Milton Nascimento, Edu Lobo, Nana Caymmi, Dom Um Romão and more. It also features guitarist Rick Ferreira, who played with Erasmo Carlos, Gal Costa and other greats. Rounding off the players on the album are Darcy Da Cruz and Formiga who have graced many a fine recording on horns.

'Perfeitamente, Justamente Quando Cheguei' is a truly stunning work that washes over you with beauty. Delve in and savour.