Buscar:at project

London-based DJ and producer 1991 has emerged as one of the most exciting artists in dance music. Since starting the project back in 2016, within a year he'd won the 'Best Newcomer' award at the 2017 Drum & Bass Awards. He has held down a steady release schedule of hits, collaborating with the likes of Sub Focus and Netsky, and remixed Axwell, Chase & Status, Claptone and Basement Jaxx. His touring schedule has seen him travel across the globe, with sell out tours across Europe, North America, Japan and Australia & New Zealand.

After releasing two critically acclaimed albums in the span of 10 months (TA13OO and ZUU, respectively), Denzel Curry starts off 2020 with a menacing and concise full length produced entirely by Kenny Beats. Unlocked is the product of a manic 3 day studio session following Denzel recording for an episode of Kenny's YouTube show, The Cave. The project finds the two mining sounds outside of what prompted their respective rises in recent years. While Denzel pulls influence from various members of The Wu-Tang Clan, Kenny taps into a sound inspired by the holy trinity of Madlib, Dilla & MF Doom. Despite these classic influences, Unlocked sounds like something completely new and sees Denzel setting the tone for a new decade once again just as he and Raider Klan at the outset of the 2010's.

It's an all electronic affair, harmonically maximalist, predominantly symphonic-synthetic, requiring active listening. Some pieces function as challengers of musical structural habits, provoking the short attention span culture, others present a problem-solution scenario, collectively via a neoteric noise aesthetic and detailed melodic weaving. Ultimately, the objective was to engineer an assortment of works full of sound, euphonic and vivid in nature.

The making of this album was intentionally a very personal process, going into self therapy territory at times interpreting the composer's contemplating mind dealing with tolerance, destruction, compassion, misery, grace and tyranny in an auditory manner. Some pieces function as challengers of musical structural habits, provoking the short attention span culture, others present a problem-solution scenario, collectively via a neoteric noise aesthetic and detailed melodic weaving. Ultimately, the objective was to engineer an assortment of works, awash with euphonic sound vivid in its essence, with a deep focus on various synthesis techniques within a compositional framework.

Dedicated to Peter Rehberg aka Pita

Ata 'Sote' Ebtekar composes music with a deeply-held conviction that rules and formulas should be deconstructed and rethought. He alters musical modal codes from their original tonality and rhythmic tradition to achieve vivid, synthetic soundscapes. Over the last three decades, his work has been published by labels such as Warp, Sub Rosa, Opal Tapes, Diagonal, Mute and Morphine, among others. In 2018, he founded a new label called 'Zabte Sote', which focuses on releases by Iranian experimental electronic composers from around the globe.

Known for creating compositions that range from the delicate to the abrasive, using sounds both of acoustical and electronic origins, Ebtekar sees music as the expression of cultural habits in sound and anti-sound (silence). Seeking to expand such traditions he creates music that, while rooted in many cultures at once, belongs to none in particular. Sote's work deals with various blueprints, in particular his solo all synthetic music, his electroacoustic audio/visual group project, and his multi-channel sound installations. Sote is on the jury panel of The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, and has created commissioned work for and performed at a.o. Berghain and CTM Festival (Berlin), Unsound Festival (Krakow), Cafe Oto (London), Jazzhouse (Copenhagen), TodaysArt Festival (The Hague), Bozar (Brussels), Ultima Festival (Oslo), Donaufestival (Krems), Donaueschinger Musiktage, Mira (Barcelona), Terraforma (Milan), and many more.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Cloud Nothings' seminal album, Attack On Memory, the band has announced a very special limited edition vinyl pressing. 3000 copies worldwide.

It’s housed in a foil jacket with all new colorized artwork, is pressed on Sky Blue vinyl, and includes two bonus flexi 7"s with two never-before-released tracks, "You Will Turn" and "Jambalaya" from the original sessions at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio.

In 2009, Cleveland’s Dylan Baldi began writing and recording lo-fi power-pop songs in his parents’ basement, dubbing the project Cloud Nothings. His music quickly started making the Internet rounds, and fans and critics alike took note of his pithy songcraft, infectiously catchy melodies, and youthful enthusiasm. Baldi soon released a string of 7”s, a split cassette, and an EP before putting out Turning On—a compilation spanning about a year’s worth of work—on Carpark in 2010. January 2011 saw the release of Cloud Nothings’ self- titled debut LP, which, put next to Turning On, found Baldi cleaning up his lo-fi aesthetic, pairing his tales of affinitive confusion with a more pristine aural clarity. In the interval since the release of Cloud Nothings, Baldi has toured widely and put a great deal of focus on his live show, a detail that heavily shapes the music of his follow-up album, Attack on Memory.

After playing the same sets nightly for months on end, Baldi saw the rigidity of his early work, and he wanted to create arrangements that would allow for more improvisation and variability when played on the road. To accomplish this desired malleability, the entire band decamped to Chicago—where the album was recorded with Steve Albini—and all lent a hand in the songwriting process. The product of these sessions is a record boasting features that, even at a glance, mark a sea change in the band’s sound: higher fidelity, a track clocking in at almost nine minutes, an instrumental, and an overall more plaintive air. The songs move along fluidly, and Baldi sounds assured as he brings his vocals up in the mix, allowing himself to hold out long notes and put some grain into his voice. Minor key melodies abound, drums emphatically contribute much more than mere timekeeping, and the guitar work is much more adventurous than that of previous releases.

For all of early Cloud Nothings’ fun and fervor, Baldi admits that it never sounded like most of the music he listens to. With Attack on Memory, he wanted to remedy this anomaly, and in setting out to do so, Baldi and co. created an album that showed vast growth for a very young band.

Espen Friberg’s solo album debut. Sun Soon is Espen Friberg´s solo album debut, consisting of eleven compositions made up of synthesizer and field recordings. The album is formed as a collage, with compositions patched on a Serge modular synth and field recordings. The patches portray the mood and wandering in mountains and forests – while at the same time meditating on the area of the Norwegian valley Hallingdal´s local history. The collage technique is something Friberg uses in both his musical and visual art. The album is meditative and exploratory, and at the same time playful and immediate. Trucks, trash cans, flowing streams, lemon soda, horses and wandering mountains, find its place between slow melodies, scratching, sinus tones and bass lines. Dissonances and harmonies come together in gliding transitions and abrupt stops, while an electronic willow flute sings and the sun is rising. The recording is done at Leveld Kunstnartun in Ål in Hallingdal, later mixed and produced in collaboration with Jenny Berger Myhre. The project captures the ambiance in the valley around Leveld, through Espen´s experiences in nature, but also from the paintings of Marianne Røthe Arnesen and Gøsta Munsterhjelm. Espen Friberg is known as an artist, designer, illustrator, cartoon creator and musician, and has received numerous awards and stipends for his work. In the beginning of 2000 he was a part of establishing the design studio Yokoland, but later started his own studio. In addition to his visual practice he has built a sound studio consisting of complex synthesizer systems and a variety of obscure electronical instruments and effect processors. He has been a central person in experimental and electronic music in Norway. He started and runs the record company Take It Easy Policy in collaboration with Emil Høgset, and has been a curator for the concert series Rett Ned. Since 2005 he has participated in a long line of sample albums under different artist names, before releasing his first EP under his own name in 2015. After this he has released six different albums with Øivind Olsen, André Borgen and Marianne Røthe Arnesen. Friberg has been active on the concert stage, both as a solo artist and in different collaborations. 1.Lazy cobweb 2.Wandering mountain 3.Gøsta Munsterhjelm 4.Foggy glow 5.Pasture patch 6.Motor sunup 7.Thirteen paintings 8.Marianne Røthe Arnesen 9.Sinuous river (part one) 10.Sinuous river (part two) 11.Orange moss bridge

Back in 2007, three DJs from a mountainous region in Austria called
Vorarlberg teamed up to form Struboskop.
They’ve always been huge Jazz, Funk and Disco lovers, Hip-Hop
heads and House aficionados at the same time –– and after moving
their homebase to the Austrian capital, Vienna, they’ve made
themselves a name for their versatile and eclectic productions and
DJ sets.
They’re also pushing boundaries with their newest side project
Duboskop, merging hypnotic dub sounds with cheesy 80s pop hits.
Be prepared to expect more craziness from them in the future!
ESSENTIAL!!

Oan Kim, the revelation that transcends jazz. Oan Kim is a French Korean awarded saxophonist, filmmaker and photographer.

As a film director, he recently won awards for his documentary about his father: the famous Korean painter Kim Tschang-Yeul (Silver Horn prize in Poland and the Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award at the DMZ International Festival in Korea).

As a musician, experienced with numerous bands (Film Noir, Chinese Army), it was during lockdown that he composed and recorded his first solo album, ‘Oan Kim & The Dirty Jazz’.

This project immediately got the attention of JeanPhilippe Allard through Artwork Records, a new label created with PIAS.

Oan Kim is a multi-faceted contemporary artist, as comfortable in galleries as in concert halls, who plays a unique music beyond the boundaries of jazz.

Oan Kim has been described in the French media as “The missing link between Portishead and Che Baker.”

Celebrating a momentous five decades in the industry, legendary
musician and songwriter Paul Carrack, who's 'Golden Voice' features on
numerous classic world wide hits such as 'How Long' (ACE') ,
'Tempted' (Squeeze), 'The Living Years', 'Over My Shoulder' ( Mike and the
Mechanics) teams up with the GRAMMY Award-winning SWR Big Band &
Strings on epic new album " Don't Wait Too Long"
The covers album celebrates the pioneering golden era in music from the 50s and
beyond spanning blues, gospel, country and jazz. The first single "Cryin' Won't
Help You" out in Jan 2023 is Paul's tribute to the legendary BB King.Paul has a
deep love of R&B songs from the fifties and beyond. For him, 50s music was filled
with intense emotion, it was wildly kinetic and had a profound impact on his
career. In Paul's mind, it's where all modern pop music began, the sounds were
spectacular and revolutionary. Days when the change from jazz to pop was
stretched via pioneers and great singers like Bobby Bland, Ray Charles, Aretha
Franklin, and Lloyd Price..These artists always resonated as fantastic performers
with stylistic records that had such joy and intensity.
The 50s were not only a time for musical revolution but a social and generational
upheaval of vast and unpredictable scope. The power of this music is as vital
today as it ever was with the power to change lives forever.
After working with the SWR band on a number of projects, Paul and his producers
had the idea to find and record a selection of these time-warped classics, some
well- known, others not so much, and the title track , a modern song that harks
back to those times called 'Don't Wait Too Long'. The result is an impassioned,
compelling album. Honest, epic, touching, the album showcases a great vocalist
who is at home with his art and talent.
NATIONAL TV & RADIO.BBC Breakfast - Will take first week Jan / BBC Radio 2 -
Cerys Matthews - First Week Jan / Talk Radio - 2nd week Jan / Sky News - Beth
Rigby Interview - Second Week Jan / Greatest Hits - First Week Jan / GB News -
Live Interview via Zoom First Week Jan / Talk TV - Live Interview via Zoom first
week Jan / Ch 5 News - TBC week 2 Jan / ITV News - 2nd week Jan

Originally released in 1981, Rasa has long been admired and studied by
musicians as a model for how to do a cross-cultural recording project
where the musicians actually understand something of each other’s
musical cultural and actually feel it
Remastered from the original tapes by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering.
Energetic, delightful, virtuosic and soulful, and available again for the first time in
over 40 years. Includes extensive liner notes by Jody Stecher and a new essay by
Baiju Bhatt.

In Western thought and culture, voice without speech is viewed as irrational and dangerous. Across myth and history, these voices must be contained or prohibited due to the threat they pose on social order. Female, animal, artificial and inanimate, lamenting, screaming, dreaming, mumbling. Fugitive voices, entangled in a parallel ‘nonhuman history’ coming together to create a chorus. Future Chorus is based on a collection of readings, spoken word, nonlinguistic sound, poetry, MCing, and animal sound, combined with machine learning processes to generate a genderless voice speaking a nonhuman language. The vocal database and AI voice became the raw material for five remixes by AGF, Chino Amobi, Harrga, Savvas Metaxas, Trustfall and Lafawndah. The project was conceived and curated by writer, theorist and practitioner Eleni Ikoniadou, a Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art and member of the art collective AUDINT. The album is released by Hypermedium in collaboration with MAENADS — Anne Duffau, Eleni Ikoniadou, Aphroditi Psarra — a platform for collaborative art projects, musical, visual, performative or text based, releasing work that seeks to inhabit polyvocal narratives, group joy, alternative worlds or subjectivities, spontaneous collective ruptures.

The second single to be pulled from upcoming BBE album ‘Strata Records – The Sound of Detroit – Reimagined By Jazzanova’, ‘Saturday Night Special’ features remixes by Kai Alcé and DJ Amir & Re.decay, as well as The Lyman Woodard Organization’s 1975 original. Possibly the best-known piece of music from the Strata label’s diverse and innovative catalogue, the unique, low-fi, moody, understated aesthetic of ‘Saturday Night Special’ has captured the hearts of music fans and DJs worldwide. “When I first heard the Lyman Woodard Organization ’Saturday Night Special’,” says DJ Amir, “I thought it was a song from a Blaxploitation soundtrack. Once I realized that Lyman was from Detroit, I immediately thought that if there was ever a ’theme song’ for Detroit that ’Saturday Night Special’ would be it. There is such a cinematic vibe to the song full of grit, rawness, and determination that just soaks into your veins. This album/song will always be in my bag of records to survive the apocalypse with!’” When DJ Amir and Jazzanova began work on the ‘Reimagined’ project, breathing new life into the Strata Records archive, this jazz-funk classic was right at the top of the list of ‘musts’ for the band to re-interpret. “I had no idea what direction they were going to go, musically” says Amir. “The original song had been sampled more than a few times, but in my opinion, it was never done tastefully. However, from the first practice session, I knew that they were spot on with the right direction! Their version is the perfect blend of Detroit and Berlin!” Kai Alcé’s ‘NDATL’ remix of ‘Saturday Night Special’ (named, like his label, after his three hometowns of New York, Detroit, ATLanta) brings a sure-footed lightness to Jazzanova’s version of the song, making the absolute most of the track’s stellar horn solos. “After hearing the unreleased Kamasi Washington/Gregory Porter remixes he did, I knew I had to reach out Kai” says Amir. “With this remix, he stretches out the track into a seven minute groove, in the direction of a soulful house/future jazz interpretation.” Alongside his Berlin production partners, Re.decay DJ Amir turns in a low-slung rework of ‘Saturday Night Special’, using as many parts from the Jazzanova version as possible. “We tried to emulate the intro to one of my favourite jazz dance tracks, ‘Expansions’ by Lonnie Liston Smith” says Amir. Mission accomplished.

Oslo-based four-piece Legs 11 return to Beatservice Records with their third studio album, serving seven beguiling tracks on the delightfully off-kilter 'Welcome Home'.

Comprising of deviant players Sigmund Floyd, Torstein Dyrnes, Nils Tveten, and Audun Severin Eftevåg, Legs 11 have been Beatservice mainstays since making their label debut back in 2016. Fusing a disparate blend of esoteric sounds that include synth-pop, post-punk, new wave, house and more, the quartet journey from the murkiest depths into the pop-leaning stratosphere, taking in all manner of mind-altering detours along the way. Throughout their production journey, they've revelled in the unexpected, and 'Welcome Home' masterfully continues this aberrant trajectory.

Kicking things off in energetic mood, the new wave swagger of 'Flawless Logistics' dives deep into late-night rave abandon, Unhinged vocals and throbbing synth bass drive the cut through a futurist landscape of stripped rhythms and sinister tones before an atmospheric sax solo rises in to augment the searing lyrical message. Casting a critical eye on consumer-driven culture and mercenary musical forms, the vital composition is at once an unmissable social commentary and an irresistibly floor-filling groove.

Next, the glistening synths and sing-along vocals of 'Coup' saunter over bouncing bass notes and crisp machine drums. Acid licks rise in to add thrust to the club-primed groove while brooding pads and sultry spoken words meander through the sonic space. Elegantly sashaying into post-punk swirls, the hallucinatory swagger of 'Sax Consensual' bursts with theatrics. Seductive dart across the hyper-atmospheric backing track of pointed instrumentation, with glassy synths and fizzing drums joined by an evocative sax solo to vividly conjure late-night moods.

'Into The Darkness' bubbles with sinister intent, as striking bass and stripped rhythms charge through nocturnal synths, the serrated vocals purposefully projecting through the powerfully vivid subterranean mist. Maintaining the floor-focused tempo, 'This Is Your Home' sees sleazy vocals soar across an alien landscape. Distorted toms drive the groove as mysterious swirls and metallic textures fizz across the off-world horizon. Growling bass arrives alongside a searing sax lead as the endlessly-morphing rhythm undulates and evolves.

'The Crawley Within' sees darkly suggestive vocals enveloped by ominous synths and snarling acid licks, the determined rhythm steering the sparsely-woven instrumentation across alien topography as sensual whispers permeate the groove as the music undulates to an aberrant climax. Finally, completing a strikingly coherent collection, 'fuckboi' brims with attitude, with unhinged synths joined by growling rhythm guitar as the erotically-charged vocals project the steamiest of post-club invitations.

This is entirely unique work from Legs 11. Deviant, potent, and fiercely energetic, each track is propulsive enough to ignite dancefloors while embodied with more than enough profundity for headphone immersion. Utterly compelling.

The 1980s will forever be remembered for electropop sensations, yet few, if any, are quite as sensational as Yaz's Upstairs at Eric's. A standard-setting mélange of smoky blues singing, jazzy arrangements, disco-tinged beats, and dancefloor vibes, the smash debut fits equally as well at a late-night club as it does in a living room, where the record's complexity and exoticism takes listeners hostage. No wonder the 1982 landmark remains one of the decade's most essential albums.

This numbered edition Silver Label LP breathes with a decongested openness, textural richness, and expansive tonal palette. Alison Moyet's inimitable vocals, such a huge part of the record's appeal, are dramatically enhanced, her sensual timbre, bittersweet crooning, and knockout range now encompassing the full frequency spectrum and projecting outward in a way that traverses the flatness of the original pressings.

Indeed, her bluesy deliveries are at once elegant and exuberant, and give collaborative partner Vince Clarke free range to construct beat architectures that encompass freewheeling disco, house music, uptempo dance, and chilled-out pop. The former Depeche Mode member also layers on elegant keyboard melodies, establishing contagious hooks and electronic-laced landscapes that preceded the techno explosion and do so with a cooler elegance. Tape loops, random field-noise dialogues, and synth-stroked bass notes add to what's nothing less than a perfect collusion of moody paranoia and soulful warmth.

While a cousin to synth-pop LPs by the likes of the Eurythmics, Soft Cell, OMD, and Depeche Mode, Yaz's Upstairs at Eric's is singular for its chemistry between Moyet and Clarke – and an insouciant batch of songs high on emotion, style, and substance.

Ellen Allien and the We Are Not Alone collective are back with a second edition of the We Are Not Alone series. A 36-track compilation split into 3 parts, each consisting of 12 cuts, dedicated to the infamous We Are Not Alone event series and the best of Berlin’s underground techno talent.

Ellen Allien's innovative party series We Are Not Alone was launched in 2016 and remains committed to inviting an exciting crew of artists to perform at the 36 hour events, now in a new home at RSO.BERLIN, where they returned with bang over 36 hours and 3 floors in May.

The We Are Not Alone compilation features artists that have played at the parties, as well as those who will join the line-up for future events. The 4th, 5th and 6th parts include music by Ellen and established names names such as Thomas P. Heckmann, Dollkraut & DJ Europarking, Francois X, Phase Fatale and Etapp Kyle. Rising stars Nene H, Nur Jaber, Stephanie Sykes, Wallis and Métaraph. BPitch signings including Rosa Anschütz, Shaleen, Matasism and Uncrat.
For this installment of the series, Ellen Allien collaborates with esteemed director and photographer Stini Roehrs for the multidisciplinary project ‘’AFTER DARK – Emotional States of Techno’’, consisting of a virtual rave film, book and exhibition produced by AKKURAT Studios, and the We Are Not Alone VA, which is to be released physically and digitally via BPitch.

The next We Are Not Alone parties take place at RSO, Berlin in July, August and October of this year. 22nd July, CSD weekend, is set to be a single night event on two floors. 20th August a We Are Not Alone floor during the RSO Club Festival and then we’ll be back for over 30 hours on 15th & 16th October. Watch this space.

Billy Nomates, the project of the Bristol-based songwriter, producer
and multi-instrumentalist Tor Maries, announces the release of her
much anticipated second studio album, ‘CACTI’, via Invada Records.
 Recorded at her flat and Invada Studios, ‘CACTI’ is a huge step up
for the artist, who received widespread critical acclaim for her
eponymous 2020 debut album, with heavy airplay across BBC Radio
6 Music and support from luminaries such as Iggy Pop, Florence
Welsh and Steve Albini.
 Though every bit as unrepentant as Billy Nomates’ debut, ‘CACTI’
comes from a much more exposed place and sees Tor further
develop her instinctive, inventive songwriting and production.
Unafraid to wade into the traumas of the past two years and the eerie
sense of apathy that lingers, alongside heartache and more political
themes, the 12-track collection openly confronts uncomfortable truths,
as Tor puts it, “70-80% of being bold is about being vulnerable as
hell.”
 Maries said: “Writing ‘CACTI’ took just over a year. I wrote very
intensely and then none at all. (This seems to be the way I work
best). I picked up old drum machines, mapped out things in my
kitchen with the same small micro keyboard I always use and then
raided the cupboards and rooms at Invada Studios, to play and
experiment with old synths, an upright piano, this weird organ thing. I
hope everyone finds their own narrative in ‘CACTI’. I think it’s about
surviving it all.”
 ‘CACTI’ features ‘blue bones’ and ‘balance is gone’, both of which
have been playlisted at BBC 6 Music.

Before Mahjun (of which Souffle Continu reissued, in 2016, the two albums released on Saravah), there was... Maajun. Five musicians (Jean-Pierre Arnoux, Cyril and Jean-Louis Lefebvre, Alain Roux and Roger Scaglia) and three times as many instruments at the service of an electric-poetic guerrilla group moulded from folk and blues. The group’s unique album, “Vivre la Mort du Vieux Monde” evokes an (imaginary) association of Frank Zappa and Jacques Higelin, of Sonny Sharrock and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. Under these conditions, Long Live Death!

“The most French of all the French groups, determined to take Maurice Chevalier’s place in American hearts.” This was how Rock&Folk presented Mahjun in 1977. So be it. But when “Vivre la Mort du Vieux Monde”, was issued, it was 1971, and the name, though the same group, was still spelled Maajun. So, let’s look back at the story.

At the end of the sixties, five blues fans decided to form a French group ready to break down the barriers: Jean-Pierre Arnoux (drums, vibraphone, saxophone), Cyril Lefebvre (guitar, organ), Jean-Louis Lefebvre (bass, violin, guitar, vocals), Alain Roux (saxophone, flute, harmonica, vocals) and Roger Scaglia (guitar, vocals). This was Maajun, and Vivre la mort du vieux monde would be their only album, but which would (nevertheless) be followed by those of Mahjun created later by Lefebvre (Jean-Louis) and Arnoux.

Recorded for the Vogue label, “Vivre la Mort du Vieux Monde” would disturb a number of people. This is mostly due to the lyrics, many of which were written by Gérald Escot-Bocanegra, who, while summoning the spirit of Lautréamont and Rimbaud, turned the Maajun musicians on to rock and free jazz. Add a bit of politics into the mix, and the release of the album was delayed for several months. But then, wasn’t it worth waiting for?

Because “Vivre la Mort du Vieux Monde”, a real concept-album, is an important and iconoclastic statement made directly in the face of (francophone) dreamers of all countries. Over heavy guitar riffs, psychedelic interludes or fantasy-fuelled digressions, Maajun built mazes on the advice of alchemists known only to themselves before heading off on a long march on the “cracking walls”. It was an ambitious project, but Maajun could handle it, going so far as to proclaim: “Tomorrow will be a huge party!” But as we can see “tomorrow”, is now!

Spills is the debut album from Spairs (made up of Jonn Penney and Dan
Worton of Ned's Atomic Dustbin) and features mighty riffs, emotion and
rock/moshability one would expect from such pedigree
This prolific lyricist, combined with the multi- instrumentalist talent that is Dan
Worton, has created something very special. This isn't a Ned's Atomic Dustbin
side project, this is a totally new beast born out of lockdown.

Hamburg’s Polycarp Records delivers the ‘Never Ever’ EP by Bonn this January, backed with remixes from Johannes Albert and The Cruiser.
The Polycarp Records imprint was launched in 2016 by Simon Ferdinand and across its past ten releases has unveiled an array of material from the likes of Pleasant Systems boss Tilman, Frank Music founder Johannes Albert and Simon Ferdinand and Basch both under their own artist names and of course their collaborative project, Bonn. In 2019 Ferdinand and Basch inaugurated their Bonn guise with a debut album entitled ‘Forget Forgot Forgotten’, 2021 saw the release of a follow up EP entitled ‘Ravenous’ and here the story continues with the pair’s latest collaborative works.
The original mix of title-track ‘Never Ever’ opens the EP and lays down
crunchy, off-kilter drums alongside mystical atmospherics, an unfurling acid bass lead and loopy, fluttering stab sequences. Johannes Albert’s twist on ‘Never Ever’ follows next, the fellow German producer takes things down his signature cosmic, nu- disco path via bubbling arpeggio lines and 80’s tinged resonant leads melded together with fragments from the original composition.
‘Phero’ then opens the flip side and sees Bonn deliver a twitchy house
workout fuelled by fidgety synth bleeps, dubbed out chords and bumpy,
saturated drums. Last up to round things out, The Cruiser turns in a
high- octane interpretation of ‘Phero’, upping the tempo and reshaping the original’s raw elements into a murky, dynamically unfolding thumper.

In the Beginning (Vol. 2) continues the treasure trove of the early works of Declaime & Madlib, the longtime collaborators who helped usher in a new sound and style from the city of Oxnard, Calif. This collection is brimming with previously unheard tracks from this beyond-creative duo that blends hip-hop with funk, jazz, soul, and psychedelia to lay the groundwork for so many other emcees and producers.

For Declaime (a/k/a Dudley Perkins), this series serves as a way to honor his friends and the city that raised them. He shouts out names like The Almighty Metaphor (aka MED), Oh No the Disrupt, DJ Romes, Kazi, and more, who he says “created a lane for the city of Oxnard to get the recognition it deserves.” Some of them make an appearance in one form or another on this collection, too—Romes, for example, mastered the project—that compiles 10 previously lost tracks that were recorded from 1993 to ‘96.

In The Beginning (Vol. 2) is entirely produced by Madlib, who provided all the cuts as well. His instrumentals are on that raw and dusty vibe as they move freely through genres and sounds, like on standout cuts “Bandwagon,”WLIX,” and “Signs (feat. Wildchild).” Those are all highlights for Declaime, too, and they demonstrate his ability to blend his observations of the world with bravado and third-eye insights. Even as young kids just getting their feet wet in the studio, these two were firmly on their path.

That path started, in a way, when the two became friends as young kids. “I first met Madlib when he moved across the street from me; I was around nine years old at the time,” Declaime says, adding that their fathers were friendly with one another. Despite the two losing touch after Madlib’s family moved, they reconnected just a few years later and the rest is musical history.
In The Beginning (Vol. 3) is set to drop via SomeOthaShip Connect in partnership with Fat Beats. This alliance will include several new albums and previously unreleased projects from the Cali veteran that have yet to appear on vinyl, in addition to new releases from the SOS artist roster.

Poolblood, the musical nom-de-plume of Toronto's Maryam Said, is an
ethereal spirit of punk rock, swirling and dancing in the air with a
collection of gorgeously orchestrated bedroom pop music
Raised in a religious household at arm's length from popular music, they
nonetheless found themselves drawn in by the music of Yusuf Islam (Cat
Stevens), who left an indelible imprint on their relationship to music and
songwriting. The results of their upbringing "time spent practicing chords in guitar
class, learning about hardcore from friends after school and honing their
songwriting as an early teen "is a winding path of melody, making stops along the
way to dabble in everything from noise rock to lush and gorgeous pop hooks.
poolblood is a pastiche of genres and styles working in blended harmony.
poolblood understands the tender urgency in crafting stories around deep and
abiding intimacies, romantic and platonic, that run so far below the surface they
become the root of everything that grows on the surface. These stories have
come together to create the ethereal bedroom pop songs on their debut LP
"mole" out on Next Door Records.
It is fitting that on an album so much centered around the connectivity of deep
and abiding friendships that "mole" is awash with collaborators, each bringing
their own unique talent and skill into the mix. Louie Short and Shamir Bailey
worked with Maryam as producers on the project, and played on a number of
tracks in addition to a cadre of musicians filtering in and out of each song.
Not afraid of letting their sly sense of humor bleed through the layers, poolblood's
"mole" is rife with humor and wonder, dancing playfully along. Pressed on Aubade
Blue Color vinyl.