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Far Out Recordings presents the peerless and criminally undervalued Quartin catalogue, beginning with the reissue of Jose Mauro’s forgotten masterpiece Obnoxius. Over the course of the 60s, Roberto Quartin released more than 20 albums in Brazil on his label Forma, by artists including the likes of Eumir Deodato and Quateto Em Cy. Selling the rights of Forma to Polygram in 1969, Quartin struck out for pastures new at the dawn of the 1970s with the launch of his self-titled label. Significant works and high-water marks for Brazilian music overall followed in that decade’s first year, with Victor Assis Brasil Plays Antonio Carlos Jobim and the aforementioned Obnoxius. These singular gems in Brazilian music, difficult to categorise yet compellingly haunting, have for too long gone unheard.

Today, very little is known about Jose Mauro and as a result those searching for some kind of insight on the man behind the music must attempt to glean what they can from the music itself. One rumour claims he died in a car accident shortly before the album’s release, a fact that could have lent his brief musical career a touch of mythology were it not for how scant the details concerning any other aspects of his life are. The political turmoil from which the album emerged is significant also; recorded during an era of oppressive state censorship, the album, like all the Quartin catalogue, is the result of steadfast defiance in the face of a crushing military dictatorship. While many musicians of the era fled the country, preferring their prospects in the affluent, liberated USA, rebellious, young musicians like Mauro chose to stay and reflect their anger at the authorities through thinly veiled protest songs such as the stirring ‘Apocalipse’. Herein lies the basis for a more dramatic theory; that Mauro was in fact abducted by the military! Whatever the truth, the mystery remains unsolved, and all that remains is his bewitching music, all of which is composed by Mauro and Ana Maria Bahiana. Production on the record was cancelled after Mauro’s death and it was never sold commercially until its rerelease decades later. What appeal does Mauro’s music hold to today’s listeners, forty-something years removed from its conception? Simply put, there is very little else that sounds much like it all. Take the title track of ‘Obnoxius’. A wholly singular piece of music, blending string-drenched melancholia with orchestral pomp, sunny psychedelic strumming with propulsive percussion, topped off with Mauro’s yearning vocals. The result is indicative of Mauro’s unique blend of sounds from Latin Jazz and samba to psychedelic folk and baroque orchestration.

Today, Obnoxius retains its strange, otherworldly appeal – A firm favourite amongst a small circle of deep diggers including Madlib, Gilles Peterson, Floating Points. Jose Mauro’s mournful and melancholic vocals create a dark, brooding atmosphere that stands in contrast to the usual joyfulness and high-spirited rhythm of the more prominent Brazilian music of the era. Despite this air of foreboding, Mauro’s confident baritones, chord patterns and sumptuous arrangements have the ability to induce in the listener an almost trance-like state of ecstasy. Mauro’s long hidden masterpiece, a complex and uniquely stunning work is being offered the chance to be heard by the wider audience it has always deserved. A second Jose Mauro release, A Viagem Des Horas, compiling more incredible tracks unreleased in Mauro’s lifetime, will follow, alongside other unreleased jewels from the Quartin catalogue, from the likes of Piri and Victor Assis Brasil…

While the world continues to be in a bizarre mixture of feelings and circumstances, we can thankfully still hark back to last fall when the sophomore LP from the elusive and innovative KAMM band, Cookie Policies gave us an opportunity to reflect on the past while fully looking toward the future.
The album presented a beautifully unique blend of listening-oriented music styles, combining the early roots of the four producers and their pre-DJ formative musical travels. It is now our great pleasure to introduce an EP set of specifically dance floor-focussed remixes that take the diverse textural arrangements and expansive sonic bliss of the LP and stretch it around some solid percussive membranes, sure to excite many DJs and dancers out there in the wild as things begin to reopen.

KAMM band members Dave Aju, Alland Byallo, Kenneth Scott, each chose one original album track to rework with a more propulsive feel and from Aju's psychedelic West Coast breaks rendition of the noir-esque "CCBPGC", to Byallo's high vibe leveled-up flight of "Bird Call", or Scott's bold section-by-section recreation of the sprawling "The Soft Glow Of Electric Sex" laser-designed for heads-down late night club sessions, the boys came through to say the least. The real A1 treat of this reinterpretation package however comes from unanimous artist choice and label favorite I:Cube, whose majestic take on "Shleem" sees the veteran producer and master remixer move the bubbling ambient piece into bumping and rich space-age deep house territory, equal parts angelically uplifting and pure 5am club-belter/mind-melter.

A deep dive into the one of most collectable jazz catalogues in the world, a selection of some of the rarest and most sought-after recordings from the 60s and 70s, a time when British jazz began to find its own identity. Drawn from the iconic labels of Decca, Deram, Argo, EMI Columbia/Lansdowne Series, Fontana, Mercury, & Philips. If one were asked to pick an album that represented the best of British jazz in the 1960s, Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe by the New Jazz Orchestra would be a serious contender. Recorded in September 1968, it draws together many of the key streams that had developed in British jazz in the preceding years, and also presages much of what was to come. Notwithstanding the line-up, which includes some of the very best British jazz musicians directed by an inventive and ingenious leader in Neil Ardley, the session features pieces written by the most distinctive jazz composers active in Britain at that time alongside idiosyncratic interpretations of works by John Coltrane and Miles Davis. And it’s all captured beautifully by engineer Howard Barrow and producer Tony Reeves and it features a stella cast of some of the greatest musicians, not just from that era or genre but beyond; Jack Bruce, who would become one of the founding members of Cream, Barbara Thompson, Ian Carr, Michael Gibbs, Dave Gelly, Dick Heckstall-Smith and Jon Hiseman, who went on to form one of the greatest jazz/progressive/rock bands – Colosseum.

Power punks, Hot Milk, have announced their second EP, ‘I JUST WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I’M DEAD” via Music For Nations.

It follows the success of the band’s first EP, 2019’s ‘Are You Feeling Alive?’, a fizzy collection of gutsy emo-pop which established them as one of the most exciting new bands in the UK. Their 2019 was a whirlwind year that saw them tour with Foo Fighters, Deaf Havana and You Me At Six, as well as playing some of the UK’s biggest festival stages.

The band were formed in 2018 by vocalist and guitarist duo, Han Mee and Jim Shaw, two friends who met working behind the scenes in the Manchester music scene. Yet they yearned to be in a band themselves. “We got to the point where we were why not? What else have you got to lose?” says Jim. “We thought, we can go for this or we can get to 60 and know we didn’t do right by ourselves.”

Debut EP, ‘Are You Feeling Alive?’, which was penned during a drunken songwriting session, was an effervescent refusal to settle for second best in life. “We’ve both realised that life you don’t get another face,” Han continues. “You get one face and then you’re done, and you will never exist ever again.”

That sense of not letting life slip through your fingers is at the core of Hot Milk’s punk-indebted ethos. And having taken a leap of faith to grasp their platform, the band, completed by bassist Tom Paton and drummer Harry Deller, aren’t about to let it go to waste. “Art is about your interpretation of your own experience,” adds Jim. “The first EP was written five years ago. We’ve grown up and realised who we are and what the world is like right now.”

‘I JUST WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I’M DEAD’, which was produced by Jim Shaw, is another vivacious call to arms, rammed with sharp hooks and huge, catchy choruses, to encourage everyone, everywhere, to follow their dreams. But elsewhere, the lyrics are more personal, with the band bottling the anxieties and frustrations of their everyday lives. ‘Woozy’ openly tackles depression, ‘Good Life’ takes on societal corruption and the distribution of wealth, while elsewhere the band address the pursuit of happiness in a modern world.

“These songs are honest,” says Han. “I have nothing to hide. Everyone’s on antidepressants these days. It’s the world we live in, it makes people sad. Capitalism. Is it broken? 100 per cent. I’m angry that the fact that we’re sold a world that actually doesn’t make your inner peace happy. Humans need love and community and a lot of the time, there is no love and the community has dissolved.”

“The anger resides in us at the unfairness of the world,” adds Jim. “Online communities are all about flexing and battling your peers to look or sound a certain way that is better than everyone else. It’s constant and it’s dangerous. You’re teaching kids that to be content, you have to be best. It’s a question again. Are you really living?”

“We’re angry, both politically and existentially in terms of the system we now live in. But also, we’re angry at the fact that we’re sad quite a lot,” continues Han. “But we’re trying to not just sit there and take it. We’re trying to fix it, by building a family through this band.”

Walk into any Hot Milk show and you will feel that sense of community. Through their honest lyrics and inclusive approach, the band say their aim is to create an “aggressively space safe” where fans are empowered to be themselves, “authentically and unapologetically”, as well as opening up a dialogue for people to talk. That will become clear later this year when the band get their chance to air the new material. This summer, they will return to Reading and Leeds Festivals, this time to play the main stage, as well as embarking on a headline UK tour in September. And believe, when the times comes to finally get back into those sweaty pits, these new songs will provide the perfect, life-affirming soundtrack.

“Life is fragile,” says Jim. “You can’t take things with you, but you can make the best memories. That’s the most important thing in life. Your currency is your memory.” “What you can take with you is something that absolutely makes the blood pump round your veins and gives you goosebumps,” agrees Han. “That’s what this band is to us. It’s our passion. That’s what this EP is about.”

Spanish Model tells the story of what happens to a seminal album (This Year’s Model) recorded 42 years ago when it is reinterpreted with new voices in another language. This is a story of transformation, adaptation, reflection; a mash-up of language, geography, culture, and passion. How past/present and time/ space can partner with music/talent to reimagine a completely new work – Spanish Model.

'The Works and Days: The Black Sections' is a sound collage album that emerged out of the production material of the film, The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin). The film — winner of the Encounters Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2020 Berlinale — is the second feature of C.W. Winter & Anders Edström. It is an eight-hour fiction shot for a total of twenty-seven weeks, over a period of fourteen months, in a village population forty-seven in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It is a geographic description of the work and non-work of a farmer. A portrait, over five seasons, of a family, of a terrain, of a sound space, and of a duration. The film was named one of the Ten Best Films of the Year by critics at: Artforum, Cargo, Cinema Scope, Desistfilm, Filo, La Internacional Cinéfila, Mubi, Nobody, Senses of Cinema, and Sight & Sound.

The film is accompanied by this LP, TheWorks and Days: The Black Sections, by C.W. Winter, and the photo book, Shiotani, by Anders Edström. The album features musical excerpts from Tim Berne & Bill Frisell, Tony Conrad, Graham Lambkin, Mary Jane Leach, Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Folke Rabe, Éliane Radigue, and Akio Suzuki. Producing, editing, and recordings by C.W. Winter. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.

Winter & Edström’s first feature, The Anchorage, won a Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival and won the Douglas E. Edwards Independent/Experimental Film/Video Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. It was named one of the Ten Best Films of the Year by critics at Cinema Scope, Film Comment, Senses of Cinema, Variety, and Indie Wire and was named Best First Film of the Year by The New York Times. Their first film, a documentary short called One Plus One 2 was made in collaboration with the late British guitarist, Derek Bailey. Their film/video work has shown at such venues as the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Centre national de la photographie (Paris), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Fotomuseum Winterthur, NRW-Forum (Düsseldorf), the Harvard Film Archive, Anthology Film Archives, the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), Centre de cultura contemporània de Barcelona, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and the National Museum of Modern Art (Kyoto).

C.W. Winter was born in California. In 2020, he completed his DPhil in Art Practice & Theory at The Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford. He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts where he studied closely under Thom Andersen, James Benning, and Allan Sekula. His writing has appeared in Cinema Scope, Moving Image Source, Purple, and Too Much. He lives in the United Kingdom where he is currently a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art and a Lecturer at the University of Oxford.

Side A excerpts:
“Thursday, May 5, 1977 & Friday, May 6, 1977: Part 4” Performed by Tony Conrad. Used by arrangement with The Tony Conrad Estate
“Sethwork” Performed by Phill Niblock. Used by arrangement with Phill Niblock
“What?? (Second Version)” Performed by Folke Rabe. Used by arrangement with the Folke Rabe Estate
“Pipe Dreams” Performed by Mary Jane Leach. Used by arrangement with Mary Jane Leach
“What?? (Second Version)” Performed by Folke Rabe. Used by arrangement with the Folke Rabe Estate
“2011” Performed by Tim Berne & Bill Frisell. Written by Tim Berne. Published by Party Time Music BMI. Recording courtesy of Minor Music Records/Screwgun Records

Side B excerpts:
“Ceremoniolose” Recorded by Graham Lambkin. Used by arrangement with Graham Lambkin
“Kugiuchi” Performed by Akio Suzuki. Recorded live for TheWorks and Days Used by arrangement with Akio Suzuki
“Music on a Long Thin Wire (Side A)” Performed by Alvin Lucier. Used by arrangement with Alvin Lucier
“A Third Trombone” Performed by Phill Niblock. Used by arrangement with Phill Niblock
“Triptych: Part 1” Performed by Éliane Radigue. Used by arrangement with Éliane Radigue

The Bright Lights of America is the seventh album released by American punk rock band Anti-Flag. Released in 2008, the album marked a change in the band’s sound: although still very much punk, the album is their first to feature a string section and child choirs. Two singles were released from the album: both the title track and “The Modern Rome Burning”. Other popular songs from this album are “Good And Ready”, “Spit In The Face” and “Vices”. Produced by Tony Visconti, Anti-Flag sounds fiery and angry as ever on this album.

Edu Lobo has to be considered one of the great mysteries of MPB. Already in the early hours of Bossa Nova, he has mainly worked for the renewal and development of the Brazilian Bossa Nova post. Edu Lobo remains a character in the shadows, discreet but effective. Known as a writer "complex and sophisticated", he is part of the circle of composers "melodist" like Tom Jobim, Marcos Valle and Francis Hime. On this 1981 album the duo with Anton Jobim works perfectly, offering classical repertoire played in sobriety. The complicity between the two composers is sincere and it is quite fascinating to see that they interchanged easily their seats.

The greatest diva of the Netherlands, Fay Claassen, joins forces with gifted
Belgian singer-composer-lyricist and longtime Parisian David Linx on ‘And
Still We Sing’, a magnificent collaboration with the WDR Big Band,
conducted by Magnus Lindgren.
The title of this reunion of Claassen and Linx (they sang together on 2005’s
‘One Heart, Three Voices’) is a paraphrase of one of Maya Angelou’s most famous poems: “...And Still I Rise.” Claassen brings her crystal clear delivery and
adventurous scatting chops to the program, blending beautifully and organically with Linx, a singular talent who has gained notoriety throughout Europe
while still flying under the radar on the United States jazz scene.
Produced by WDR tenor saxophonist (and Claassen’s husband) Paul Heller, ‘And
Still We Sing’ features stellar big band arrangements by Heller, Lindgren, Bob
Mintzer and Michael Abene.

Swarm Intelligence’s new album is a remarkable homage to decay and bleakness. He has spent the last year gathering recordings of abandoned power stations and factories, corroded metal and found objects. The source material was rearranged, processed and woven into intense, distorted landscapes and sharp, metallic drums. With “Rust”, Swarm Intelligence has taken the cold hard elements of metal and forged them into a warmer, more organic sound, resulting in a strikingly stark, dissonant and immersive journey. Originally released October 6, 2015 All tracks recorded and produced by Simon Hayes Cover art by Victor Mark Photography by Michelle Hughes Mastered by Angelos Liaros at 4Be

Chrystabell’s smooth as silk vocals transcend the aether as she reinvents classic Cure songs in Strange As Angels.
Post-Punk, New Wave, Goth - for over four decades The Cure created alternative music so powerful that it redefined the mainstream. They didn’t just master genres, they transcended them. Throughout these varied styles the group maintained an aesthetic continuity, creating a world so vast and mysterious that there’s room for other artists to explore it.
And explore it he does on Strange as Angels, Marc Collin’s new collection of reinvented Cure songs, sung by the ethereal Chrystabell. Produced, arranged and conceived by Nouvelle Vague co-founder Marc Collin, he has again woven repertoire, performance, and his uniquely forged arranging aesthetic into something authentically new.

"It all began when one of us was Leaving Laurel". For Pierce and Gordon of Leaving Laurel, their music is a story of an old friendship that over many years, almost accidentally, blossomed into a musical collaboration. Friends on the internet first, and eventually roommates in Los Angeles, the pair spent years together making their own separate brands of dance music, long before ever collaborating with one another. Gordon was one half of bass heavy duo Botnek, whilst Pierce found fame and toured the world with his solo project. One day in Laurel Canyon, California, the pair were sharing their own unfinished music with one another. Pierce had an idea for a demo of Gordon’s, which spawned an impromptu writing session lasting the rest of the day. Elated by what had just happened, they continued to write together over the coming weeks, but just as they were getting new momentum, Pierce had to head back to his home on the east coast. The final song they wrote together before his flight was called 'Leaving Laurel'. The music Pierce and Gordon made together is rich with emotion, densely packed with atmosphere and often featured Gordon’s own gentle vocals.

Recorded over five nights at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, Los Angeles’ cutting edge Ace Theatre and the legendary Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, the songwriting superstar delivers a masterclass in Roots music -- from Rock, Pop, Gospel, Blues that is psychedelic in places and Country in others -- as well as friendship and the joy of being alive. Joined by friends, influences and rising stars such as Brandi Carlile, Emmylou Harris, Jason Isbell, Lucius, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby, Amanda Shires and Stevie Nicks, LIVE FROM THE RYMAN & MORE captures a zeitgeist of knowledge, power and the rapture of utter freedom stretched over some of the tersest playing this side of The Rolling Stones. RADIO: BBC Radio 2 Play, Absolute Country, Chris Country, Downtown Country, Smooth Country. TV: ITV This Morning. PRESS: Country Music Publications. TW: TW: 327.9K, FB: 2M, IG: 297K. Available as a 2 CD and a 4 LP in double capacity gatefold jacket vinyl (available 03/09/21).

"The Witness" markiert eine gewitzte, unkonventionelle Linkskurve und zeigt Suuns in ihrer angenehmsten, offensten Form. Selbst aufgenommen und selbst produziert über den Großteil des Jahres 2020, ein Jahr voller Streit, Einsamkeit und Reflexion, zeigt "The Witness" die Band mit einer Lupe über ihren eigenen Standardzustand des Spielens und Auftretens. Es ist eine rasche Abkehr vom Vorgänger-Album "Felt" und erfreut sich daran, zufällige Ideen in ihren embryonalen Demo-Versionen zu ernten, als ob man ein glorreiches Feuerwerk in den Himmel entlässt. Mit dem Ausstieg von Max Henry als Vollzeitmitglied im Jahr 2018 und dem Wohnort-Wechsel von Ben Shemie, der jetzt einen Ozean entfernt in Paris lebt, manifestierte sich eine neue Herausforderung für das Trio, sich wieder zu finden, sowohl sozial als auch kreativ. Mehr als jede andere Suuns-Platte verwendet "The Witness" eine Jazz-Mentalität, die einen kontinuierlichen Vibe über die Vorstellung von separaten Kapiteln stellt. Es gibt eine Ebene der Entspannung, des Akzeptierens der Urinstinkte der Band und einen konzentrierten Versuch, diese Instinkte zu maximieren und zu überarbeiten. Für eine Band, die für ihre kryptische Anziehungskraft bekannt ist, markiert "The Witness" das bisher großzügigste, reduzierteste und berührendste Werk von Suuns.

"The Witness" markiert eine gewitzte, unkonventionelle Linkskurve und zeigt Suuns in ihrer angenehmsten, offensten Form. Selbst aufgenommen und selbst produziert über den Großteil des Jahres 2020, ein Jahr voller Streit, Einsamkeit und Reflexion, zeigt "The Witness" die Band mit einer Lupe über ihren eigenen Standardzustand des Spielens und Auftretens. Es ist eine rasche Abkehr vom Vorgänger-Album "Felt" und erfreut sich daran, zufällige Ideen in ihren embryonalen Demo-Versionen zu ernten, als ob man ein glorreiches Feuerwerk in den Himmel entlässt. Mit dem Ausstieg von Max Henry als Vollzeitmitglied im Jahr 2018 und dem Wohnort-Wechsel von Ben Shemie, der jetzt einen Ozean entfernt in Paris lebt, manifestierte sich eine neue Herausforderung für das Trio, sich wieder zu finden, sowohl sozial als auch kreativ. Mehr als jede andere Suuns-Platte verwendet "The Witness" eine Jazz-Mentalität, die einen kontinuierlichen Vibe über die Vorstellung von separaten Kapiteln stellt. Es gibt eine Ebene der Entspannung, des Akzeptierens der Urinstinkte der Band und einen konzentrierten Versuch, diese Instinkte zu maximieren und zu überarbeiten. Für eine Band, die für ihre kryptische Anziehungskraft bekannt ist, markiert "The Witness" das bisher großzügigste, reduzierteste und berührendste Werk von Suuns.

The second release in the Slavonic Trilogy reissue series. Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic) is the debut studio album by Polish extreme metal band Behemoth; originally released in April 1995. The 2021 reissue is beautifully packaged and is available on the following formats: Digital, 2 CD media book, and a gatefold 2 LP. Physical formats include bonus audio material and booklets containing exclusive archival content.

The second release in the Slavonic Trilogy reissue series. Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic) is the debut studio album by Polish extreme metal band Behemoth; originally released in April 1995. The 2021 reissue is beautifully packaged and is available on the following formats: Digital, 2 CD media book, and a gatefold 2 LP. Physical formats include bonus audio material and booklets containing exclusive archival content.

In the most literal sense, globally renowned whistler Molly Lewis makes her gorgeous
and curious compositions out of thin air.
New entrees into the Exotica canon; sprawling, would-be Spaghetti Western scores;
and a dash of Old Hollywood glamour - the whistle-led songs on her debut EP ‘The
Forgotten Edge’ are as complex, delicate and indelible as anything performed with
viola or piano.
“Whistling is like a human theremin,” said Lewis, an Australian native who’s spent the
last several years in LA and whose performances there and around the world are
changing any preconceived notions of whistling by the room-full.
That’s not to say Lewis is all serious and snooty about the craft. Quite the contrary.
Her sense of humour is witty, self-deprecating and zany. She’s as likely to reference
the slapstick Leslie Nielsen film series ‘Naked Gun’ for music video concepts as she
is a classic piece of noir cinema.
Look no further than the equatorial and breezy opening cut ‘Oceanic Feeling’, a
lovely walk across the flotsam-sprinkled sands in the rum-pumping vein of Les
Baxter. Meanwhile, the title track - and really, the entire collection here - is a loving,
albeit rather haunting, salute to one of Lewis’s heroes, the Italian composer and
musician Alessandro Alessandroni, whose whistle and guitar you hear on the title
theme of Ennio Morricone’s ‘A Fistful of Dollars’. Lewis and her ensemble create
classic cinema for your mind.
Her own love for the artform began when, around the age of twelve she was given
the CD ‘Steve ‘The Whistler’ Herbst Whistles Broadway’. Something contained in it
clicked. “It wasn’t that I was immediately obsessed, but I knew it was something I
could do well,” Lewis said.
The daughter of a musician mother and a documentary filmmaker father who often
focused his films on niche communities and topics, Lewis recalls watching a
television documentary with her parents about The International Whistlers
Convention in Louisburg, North Carolina. “My dad said, ‘If you ever make it into the
competition, I’ll take you there’,” Lewis said. Turns out, there was no bar to entry, just
a small fee. And so, several years later, she and her father travelled to the
convention. New to the form, Lewis didn’t take home one of the bigger prizes but they
were awarded the prize for Whistler Who Traveled The Greatest Distance. “We really
just used the trip to drive around the United States,” she said.
After studying film in Australia, Lewis moved to Los Angeles to be close to the film
industry. There, her circle of artist friends grew naturally and with providence - her
unique talent drawing more and more recognition. And over the last few years,
Lewis’s Café Molly events at LA spots like Zebulon, Non Plus Ultra and The Natural
History Museum have become fabled, elegant happenings with appearances from
guests like John C. Reilly, Karen O and Mac DeMarco.
Recorded with a crack team of friends and musicians during 2020’s quarantine, ‘The
Forgotten Edge’ is rife with incredible performances from Thomas Brenneck (Sharon
Jones & The Dap-Kings / Budos Band), Joe Harrison (Charles Bradley, Lee Fields),
Eric Hagstrom (Brainstory), Abe Rounds (Meshell Ndegeocello, Andrew Bird, Blake
Mills), Leon Michels (El Michels Affair), Gabriel Rowland and Dave Guy.

Gold Vinyl

Though the hallowed halls of Berlin’s nightlife excess now sit cold, the sounds that once haunted their depths beat ever onward, and colder still. Birthed in these hushed plaguelands, XTR HUMAN’s new full-length G.O.L.D evokes the frozen melancholy of a post-pandemic city, driven ever onward by the impetus of night’s primary currencies: sweat, release and change. The latest full-length from Johannes Stabel, G.O.L.D finds the German producer evolving as much as the rest of the world has had to. Taking his political and socially conscious lyrics into his native tongue brings a deeper and more powerful thrust to their weight—particularly at a time when Germany is weighing its own social consciousness after years of being seen as a leading world figure. Across G.O.L.D’s ten tracks, Stable brings our zeitgeist into a new realm, where the anger and frustration at our current existence is refined into the energy that fuels our engines, that primal desire always amplified during times of social upheaval—the desire to move your body. Many of the songs delve into Stabel’s own experiences as a German, from explorations of the Deutsch mentality of persistent fear to tackling the fake news, jingoism, racists and coronavirus deniers on hypnotic bangers ‘Dark Germany’ and ‘Dieser Klang’; issues just as prevalent in Germany as in the USA and UK. Yet each song carries just as much weight on to the dance floor, melding driving EBM bass with soaring synthlines and coldwave atmospheres that dispel the tenseness that such heavy topics imbue, in favor of intensity and beauty. Influenced by the pop hooks of Austrian New Wave legend Falco, G.O.L.D never neglects its danceability and HD club accessibility, no matter how heady the lyricism. ‘Starker Junge’, a dissection of toxic masculinity, drops down onto the listener with sparkling synths and razor-sharp guitar, while capitalist critique ‘Fleisch’ is a pogo synthpop anthem that could send any floor into a twirling frenzy. Wrapped in darkened beats and political ideals, G.O.L.D can’t hide the light that emanates from within its glistening, imminently catchy hooks and groove-laden rhythms. In a time where the dance floor sometimes seems like a distant memory, it’s the perfect philosopher’s metal to transmogrify your existence. All songs written and recorded by Johannes Stabel Mixing by Andrew Wiseman Arwork by Nicolas Zupfer Mastering at Dadub Studio

New Yorker Singer-Songwriter entdeckt den Westcoast-Sound. Das 2019 erschienene Album "The Unseen In Between" etablierte den amerikanischen Musiker Steve Gunn als einen Großmeister des US-Songwritings - mit seinem neuen Album "Other You" unterstreicht er nun diesen Anspruch. Gunn, der ursprünglich aus Pennsylvania stammt und mittlerweile in Brooklyn lebt, ist für die Aufnahmen zu seinem neuen Album an die Westküste gereist. Das passt perfekt, denn seine Musik ist der ideale Soundtrack für Roadtrips von der Ostküste an die Westküste des Landes. Sein fein destillierter Sound lässt sich dabei zwischen Roots Rock, Americana, Folk und Jazz treiben. Steve Gunn ist Traditionalist und Suchender zugleich. Zumeist geht er nur mit losen Ideen ins Studio, bei denen er am Anfang nie so genau weiß, wo sie ihn am Ende hinführen werden. Ähnlich gestaltete sich das auch dieses Mal. Sein sechstes Studioalbum "Other You" nahm Steve Gunn zusammen mit Produzentenlegende Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith, Kurt Vile) in dessen Mant Studios in Los Angeles Ende 2020 und Anfang 2021 auf. Schnapf hat großen Anteil an der Entstehung dieses Albums. Er schüttelte nicht nur das Soundbett auf, sondern mischte auch Steve Gunns Stimme in den Vordergrund, um den poetischen Lyrics des Songwriters die richtige Bühne zu bieten. Mit Hilfe von befreundeten Musikern wie Juliana Barwick, Mary Lattimore, Bridget St. John, Jeff Parker, Bill MacKay, Ben Bertrand und dem Schlagzeuger Ryan Sawyer (TV On The Radio, Thurston Moore, Gang Gang Dance) entstand mit "Other You" ein Album, mit dem Steve Gunn nicht nur die Grenzen von Genres auslotet, sondern auch seine eigenen.