Zobol - Retrofuturism EP is a nostalgic yet forward-looking release that invokes past visions of the future.
It features five original tracks, ranging from upbeat and energetic to more ambient and introspective. Each track is a storytelling journey, exploring different aspects of Electro and Braindance.
Crafted with both analog and digital machines while enhanced by modern production techniques, it epitomizes the main concept of Retrofuturism. The result is a series of warm, melancholic soundscapes where the past meets the future.
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Mit ”kühnem und visionärem Geist”, um eine Downbeat-Rezension aus dem Jahr der Veröffentlichung dieses Albums zu zitieren, haben die drei Meisterimprovisatoren John Abercrombie, Dave Holland und Jack DeJohnette auf ihrem ersten gemeinsamen Werk unter dem Namen Gateway einen unvergleichlichen Ansatz des Triozusammenspiels geschmiedet. Das Trio geht die Eigenkompositionen von Dave Holland und Jack DeJohnette feinsinnig und mit innovativem Gespür an.
Wie The Observer seinerzeit in einem Artikel bemerkte, ”machen das telepathische Zusammenspiel und der perfekte Vortrag es schwer zu glauben, dass diese Musik fast vollständig improvisiert ist”. Die jeweils einzigartigen instrumentalen Stilistiken der Musiker hatten sich hier bereits voll herauskristallisiert und deuten außerdem auf die große Musik hin, die von den jeweiligen Individuen noch kommen sollte.
Die Luminessence-Edition des Albums erscheint in einem Tip-on-Klapp-Cover und ist mit bisher unveröffentlichten Archivfotos sowie einem neuen Begleittext des Wilco-Gitarristen Nels Cline ausgestattet. Eine Gemeinsamkeit der meisten Aufnahmen des Labels ist das Einfangen besonderer Momente in Echtzeit.
Das ist es, was ”Gateway” ausmacht, und so fühlt es sich auch so viele Jahre später immer noch an, und solange wir Ohren haben, um zuzuhören. – aus den Liner Notes von Nels Cline.
COBRA THE IMPALER is now a well-oiled killing machine, ready to take on anything that comes on its path. Taking strong cues from the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, COBRA THE IMPALER forges together larger-than-life grooves and spirited guitar leads with enchanting clean vocal harmonies and razor-sharp screams. Effortlessly flowing from breakneck riffs to tasteful melodic breaks, the band makes strong use of stylistic elements from groove, thrash, and classic heavy metal. Like many legendary metal acts from the 90s, COBRA THE IMPALER marries brute force with meticulous attention to detail, amounting to an unstoppable advance and an enticing experience diverse in punishment. 'Karma Collision' is an exercise in empowerment as well as a show of subtle restraint. Defiant to the end, COBRA THE IMPALER deliver a blatantly guitar-powered album full of huge riffs and equally huge choruses that instantly nestle themselves in your mind. Proving themselves as masters of melody as well as destruction, COBRA THE IMPALER hits hard while forcing an inescapable headlock, delivering salvation to those who worship, but certain punishment for those who dare to stray. For fans of Mastodon, Gojira, Baroness, Megadeth
The Scientists' 1981 wild debut bewildered Perth, Australia's punters with its charging anthems centered on themes of young love and alienation. Obvious in its rebellion yet more pop than punk, the self-titled "Pink Album" deftly embodied the tough-yet-danceable outsider aura of The Ramones, and its unheard of, feverish clip shook the shores of the geographically confined Swan Coastal Plain of down under. Recorded just as the lineup of guitarist-vocalist Kim Salmon (The Cheap Nasties), drummer James Baker (The Victims) and bassist Ian Sharples were breaking up, the album stands as a testament to the contagious chops of Perth's swelling pool of musical talent, and to the promise of Salmon's unwavering vision that would become one of the most celebrated acts of the Aussie underground.
The Scientists' 1981 wild debut bewildered Perth, Australia's punters with its charging anthems centered on themes of young love and alienation. Obvious in its rebellion yet more pop than punk, the self-titled "Pink Album" deftly embodied the tough-yet-danceable outsider aura of The Ramones, and its unheard of, feverish clip shook the shores of the geographically confined Swan Coastal Plain of down under. Recorded just as the lineup of guitarist-vocalist Kim Salmon (The Cheap Nasties), drummer James Baker (The Victims) and bassist Ian Sharples were breaking up, the album stands as a testament to the contagious chops of Perth's swelling pool of musical talent, and to the promise of Salmon's unwavering vision that would become one of the most celebrated acts of the Aussie underground.
A landmark recording and masterful symphony of performance, composition, and execution, Miles Davis' E.S.P. established the template jazz would follow for the following decade. The 1965 record splits the gap between accessible hard-bop and the cutting-edge approach Davis increasingly pursued into the 1970s. Adventurous, sophisticated, and yet altogether cohesive, E.S.P. stands out not only due to its elastic compositions but via its chemistry, interplay, and feeling attained by the instrumentalists. The first album Davis' classic second quintet made together, it's also very arguably the group's best. Never before has the effort been experienced in such transformational sound.
Pressed at RTI, this 180g 45RPM 2LP set of E.S.P. renders the music's dynamics, pitch, colors, and textures with lifelike realism and proper scale. Reference-caliber separation, wall-to-wall soundstages, and distinct images magnify the intensity and beauty of Davis and Co.'s creations. Whether it's the distinctive snap of Tony Williams' drum sticks against the snare head, air moving through Davis' trumpet, acoustic thrum of Ron Carter's bass, or upper register of Herbie Hancock's piano, the sound is better than you'd even hear in the most intimate jazz clubs. Prepare to be swayed on every level.
For many, E.S.P. looms among the decade's best albums if only because of the significance of Davis' line-up. While Hancock, Williams, and Carter are holdovers that began playing with one another on 1963's Seven Steps to Heaven, Wayne Shorter functions as the secret weapon and key addition responsible for this ensemble hitting a new peak. Indeed, the saxophonist helped pen two of the seven compositions here – notably, E.S.P. is entirely comprised originals and clocked in as one of the longest-running jazz LPs issued at the time – and, more importantly, grants Davis the confidence and leeway necessary for the eruption of enigma, steadiness, and tension.
As he did with John Coltrane year earlier, Davis hangs back and picks his moments to solo, with Shorter stepping up to supply the churn. Their bandmates respond in kind, itching to take off into new stratospheres all the while keeping their improvisations grounded and connected to the piece at hand. Guided by Davis' visions and inspired by current boundary-pushing works by the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Coltrane, the magnificent results spark with variation, harmony, emotion, energy, and brilliant movement.
Interlocking lines drive "Little One," alternating rhythms pulse through the funky "Eighty-One," melodies soar on the balladic "Iris," the aptly titled "Mood" broods over minor-key structures, and "Agitation" – goosed by a two-minute percussive introduction by Williams – delivers on its promise. No record – and no group of musicians – have ever balanced coherent themes and exploratory playing in better fashion than Davis' quintet on E.S.P. It's the avant-garde record even jazz traditionalists love, and essential on every level.
rush2theUnknown is a project born in pandemic-era provincial New Zealand, developed in the hills of Izu Peninsula, Japan, but forged in the fire of potent teenage memories — the flames of the future sounds of jungle and drum 'n' bass that exploded onto dance floors across the urban centres of New Zealand in the mid 90's. Two old friends, both who played pivotal roles in the development of New Zealand's own jungle and drum 'n' bass scenes in the 1990s, estranged for decades, reunited amidst the isolation and chaos of covid. They began an experiment, attempting to recapture the feeling of having their heads overwhelmed by sounds they couldn't quite comprehend as adolescents — in particular, channeling the energy, spirit, and vibe of 1995 to 1997, where the ever-mutating evolution of jungle intersected with the dawning of drum 'n' bass to create a utopian future vision, before the latter genre changed course and moved increasingly darker.
By weaving in the influences that these two long-lost friends had accumulated over the decades, most notably from ambient, kankyõ ongaku, new age, minimalism, and some of the deepest research into the history of Japanese video game music ever conducted, the pair attempt to discover new terrain from an specific era of dance music that was never fully explored.
DJ Support: Gilles Peterson, Sean Johnston, Jaye Ward, Max Essa and Francois K
Limited to 300 copies
Having been long-time admirers of one another from afar, Hell Yeah and Michele Mininni finally come together for Pop Archetypes. It is a multifaceted debut album that collides broken beats, worldly rhythms, jazz, eastern melodies, live drums and much more into one thrilling 15-track opus that arrives on May 31st.
Italian artist Mininni has always had a leftfield take on electronic music and imbued it with rhythms, melodies and instruments from around the globe. He has released it on cult labels like R&S, Optimo Trax, Internasjonal and Curle Recordings but has saved his magnificent debut album for Hell Yeah. It is much more than a collection of sounds he has already explored and instead finds him heading off into all new territory without losing his signature sense of inventive and beguiling rhythm and melody. It is a multicultural journey that takes in heterogeneous styles and diverse influences but distills them all into one cohesive album with its own unique storyline.
Says Mininni of the record, 'I wanted each track to be like pieces of a unique, multifaceted picture, like walking through train cars or progressing through the levels of a video game, all filtered through my own vision and concentrated into 36 minutes. I wanted a pop album rooted in the extraordinary richness of popular music and projected into the future, a continuum where pieces communicate with each other and are received by the ears in symbiotic balance.'
Despite that concept, the album is a spontaneous listen full of surprises, left turns and original ideas that all hold together in thrilling fashion. It kicks off with the tumbling jazz drums and swirling synths of 'Spinning Around Cotton Candy', takes in mellifluous melodic layers and broken beats on 'Golden Room' and 'Slipped Air' casts you adrift amongst gorgeous piano keys and refracted vocals on the suspensory 'Vertigo'. There are jungle interludes with Eastern string melodies like 'Bangkok Tempo', lavish fusions of organic and synthetic sounds on 'Kundalini' and more charming Far Eastern rhythms on 'Muting Cat'. 'Congoflash' brings electrifying cosmic rays to busy hand drum patterns, 'The Magic Of Synesthesia' combines dark amen breaks and bright and uplifting flutes while 'Carousel Of Tears' douses you in watery melodies and celestial pads that awaken the soul.
Pop Archetypes is an adventurous work packed with meticulous and infinite details but all with an overarching narrative that makes it far more than the sum of its parts.
- A1: Chosen Few – Dancin’ All Over The World
- A2: The Freex Machine – Freexfunkatized
- A3: Nzimande All Stars – Sporo Disco (Woody Bianchi Edit)
- A4: The Firebolts – Firebolt Hustle
- B1: Aggression - Tag (Woody Bianchi Edit)
- B2: The Movers – Onthekele Beer (Jwala)
- B3: World - You Got The Power
- B4: Joe & Lee – Black Gold Disco Moving Machine
- C1: Joe Pugliese - Plie And Isolation
- C2: The Family Tree - As
- C3: Pressure Point - Straight To The Point
- C4: John Blair - Momma Said Shut Up
- D1: The Headquarters - Sweetie
- D2: Wylie - Fan-Tasy (Woody Bianchi Edit)
- D3: Cania - Visions
- D4: Montreal - Night People
Repress!
We"re back with another instalment of badass Funk from the Disco era with Supafunkanova Volume 3 which has been selected by prolific DJ, producer, remixer and record collector Woody Bianchi. Woody digs deep into his collection, compiling a high-quality album filled with lesser-known disco, funk and boogie. As the title suggests, Supafunkanova focuses on the funkier end of the 70"s & 80"s, showcasing some of the bumpier grooves recorded in the disco era when even James Brown had to take notice of the Saturday Night Fever inspired disco explosion. It will come as no surprise to hear some particularly hard to find gems have been unearthed here, and ones that aren"t just rare and expensive (if you can even find a copy!) but genuinely merit being re-issued. With expansive sleeve notes by Woody himself to give you an in depth insight to the music, artists and personal discovery of each record.
Deluxe 180g vinyl. Art Edition LP includes set of six 12”x12” art cards.
The follow-up to Kee Avil's acclaimed 2022 debut Crease: "A stunning debut" (The Quietus); "A whiplash style of uninhibited exploration" (The Wire); "Kee Avil's debut is a force" (Foxy Digitalis); "A work of Frankensteinian wonder" (Electronic Sound); "A tightly coiled, finely wrought vision of avant-pop" (Exclaim); "A debut of fiendish creativity" (Bandcamp Album Of The Day / Albums Of The Year) Kee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of The Year along the way. Its intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge take on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin. A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs. With Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much rawer sound. She calls it folk… and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences. There's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements - guitar, electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front. Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. "We're shaped by many versions of ourselves," says Avil. "I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could have been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that through time. Seeing the future, the past." Spine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months - a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: "This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch." In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts. Sometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really are. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic, it hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much time in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar bends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There is something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's own feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most important things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next step forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on its own, a bracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in being human. - jj skolnik
- A1: Samba 00 04:58
- A2: Panorama 00 04:39
- A3: Golfo Mistico 00 04:34
- A4: Open Sky With Tears Of Blue 00 04:56
- A5: Contemporary Lullaby 00 03:05
- A6: Requiem 00 02:55
- B1: Whispers 00 04:19
- B2: Modular Clouds In Rome 00 03:21
- B3: Piano Bells 00 03:30
- B4: Space Call From Mars 00 03:01
- B5: Tuning The Orchestra With Tears Of Blue 00 03:22
With Lucifer, Kompakt presents an album of rare beauty from two masters of modern music. A family affair, it’s a collaboration between the Italian father-and-son duo of Luciano Michelini and Lorenzo Dada, whose combined histories bring to Lucifer a depth of experience alongside clarity of vision and a finely tuned, neatly developed combined compositional voice. A lovely, beguiling suite of music that combines the electronic and the acoustic, the urban and the pastoral, its gorgeous night-eye vision and tender melancholy sits neatly within the Kompakt universe, while offering the curious listener some rich new perspectives.
There is already plenty to know both artists by. Lorenzo Dada creates across multiple fields – a techno producer and DJ who has already worked with the likes of Jay Haze, Fete, Leo Benassi, and Der, he’s released a small clutch of stylish, smartly designed EPs, and a solo album, Second Life (2018). His complementary background in classical music and composition informs his ensemble project, Tears Of Blue (who appear on Lucifer), where Dada paints with neo-classical tones for a quartet of violin, viola, cello and grand piano, supplemented by electronics for live performance.
Luciano Michelini’s history is yet richer. He may be best known, to many, for his piece “Frolic”, the theme to Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm series; it was also sampled by Snoop Dogg for 2022’s “Crip Ya Enthusiasm”. But there’s much more to Michelini’s story. A successful soundtrack composer, Michelini both studied and taught at the Conservatoro di Santa Cecilia, and worked for RCA from the sixties to the eighties; his soundtracks from this period are gorgeous examples of the form, particularly his work for Il Decamerone Nero (1972), L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce (1979), and the devastatingly gorgeous Dimensione Donna (1977).
In the eighties, Michelini and his wife Anna Gutling founded the Electronic Music Division studio and academy in Rome, which is where the majority of Lucifer was recorded. Dada reflects on the experience: “We never worked together before, so it was all new for both of us,” with Michelini adding, “I truly love this experience with my son. He’s a talented pianist and composer. I am not very familiar with electronic music nowadays, but we did it fluently.” There’s certainly a familial energy at play through Lucifer, and you can hear how Dada and Michelini, through exploration and experiment, find a shared language, balancing Dada’s tendency toward minimalism, and Michelini’s composerly voice.
Lucifer flows as a suite that interweaves electronic music with acoustic instruments: the lonely sigh of saxophone; Michelini’s lush, verdant piano; the weeping strings of Tears Of Blue (recorded at the studio of Michelini’s friend, the late Maestro, Ennio Morricone). These multiple voices are located within the electronic sighs and swarms from Dada’s kit; there are moments of propulsion, and passages of lambent drift, where the album revels in its tonal sweetness. If it flows so effortlessly, that’s because Lucifer was designed that way, as a suite or a sonata of sorts.
And the title? Dada reflects, “Lucifer was an angel who decided not to be one anymore. The miracle of life is that we can decide what we want to be, even if we are born as angels or vice versa.” This feels somehow apposite: there’s certainly something of the transformative, and the transportive, in Lucifer, a unique family collaboration of rare poetry and sensitivity, where two generations meet in the modern crucible that is the electronic music studio.
For Twice Infinity’s second solo release, the London and Geneva-based DJ and producer GFX – one of the most active newcomers of the past years – makes his vinyl debut with the aptly named Vibing The Groove EP. His three original tracks span a wide array of playful, groovy, punching and driving techno that perfectly showcase GFX’s musical vision for the near future and mark a preliminary goal in his search for a unique musical expression since his release debut in 2020.
The B-side accompanies two remixes by equally exciting members of the next generation of producers; while the approach by Cuban techno activist Hioll is more to the point and made straight up for peak time sets, Manchester-based trance wunderkind Faster Horses explores his not so well know passion for funky and stepping contemporary techno.
Clear/Black Smoke Vinyl[38,87 €]
Svart Records are proud to release the long-awaited full length album "SÁLA" by Kati Rán in May 2024
If the most profound treasures are often the most deeply buried, the journey to uncover them is vital process of discovery. Five years after the 15-minute single “Blodbylgje” signaled the birth of a new, more primordial, and immersive vision after the dissolution of her band L.E.A.F., Nordic dark folk artist Kati Rán has expanded on its oceanic theme for her long-awaited full-length album, “SÁLA”. Embarking on a far-reaching musical and personal travelogue, it’s a reawakening of both the feminine narratives submerged and fragmented within Norse mythology, and the enduring, healing powers held within.
Named after the Old Norse word for ‘soul’ and ‘sea’, “SÁLA” is an act of ‘soul retrieval’, the shamanic art of trauma recovery, be it illness, death, heartbreak or loss, and the reintegration of a splintered self. Across its 13, wide-ranging, elegantly unfolding tracks, the album is an embodiment of different feminine voices and perspectives – from the Norse nine daughters of the sea, or ‘billow maidens’, through various historical and fictional figures to the late-night voices we hear in our most liminal states – all with tales to tell, riddles to solve, challenges to be accepted and guidance to offer. It’s a multiplicity that, like the ocean itself, belongs to a vast, restless dynamic: a matrix of mysteries, unfathomable depths and ever-shifting currents, accumulating into an elemental, regenerative source of power.
Recorded in a barn in Húsafell, Iceland – home to glacier ice caves and a rare lava stone marimba rediscovered for the track “Stone Pillars” – as well as Finland, Norway and at home in Kati’s native Netherlands, “SÁLA” is as much chronicle of Kati’s own perspective-shifting recording process as it as a pilgrimage through different viewpoints and internal states. That itinerate urge is also reflected in the use of different languages, ranging across Norwegian, Old Norse, Icelandic, and, for the first time, English, her combination of ancient texts, historical reimagining’s and unguarded personal reflection backed up by deep research into the most resonant recesses of Nordic lore.
Spun throughout every thread of “SÁLA” is a sense of communion - with the power of stories to offer moral guidance and the thrill of the unknown; with the element of water, recreated across the album both in field recordings and the agelessly organic nature of the music itself; with the archetypes whose qualities we are called upon to embody at our most critical moments; and with the internal hidden realms forever whispering at us from the far edges of our consciousness.
Appropriately, it’s a collaborative venture too. As well as working closely together with Finnish producer Jaani Peuhu, there are contributions from across the musical spectrum, including extreme metal vocalist extraordinaire Gaahl, the Icelandic female choir Umbra Ensemble, renowned Norwegian jazz musician Karl Seglem, Björk and Brian Eno contrabassist Borgar Magnason, members of pagan folk acts Völuspá, Gealdýr, Heilung and Theodor Bastard and even Napalm Death’s Mitch Harris on vocals.
For all the many sources “SÁLA” draws from, the result is a singular, intimately transformative rite of passage, and a retuning of the heart to the reverent continuity of the sacred. It will take you from the opening title track’s chest-pounding rhythmic pulse emerging from a traditional Norwegian bukkehorn (recorded by Karl Seglem), a galloping horse-rider and Kati’s glacial, velveteen chant, through “Kólga’s” recounting of female persecution through the ages borne on the most gossamer-light yet unbreakable of timbres and “Stone Pillar’s” gently percolating, deep wells of abandonment and incantations to recovery. “SÁLA” closes with the track “Sátta” - Old Norse for ‘peace’ and ‘reconciliation’ – ending the album as it began with the bukkehorn, as it weaves rich drones and experience-stamped poems and prayers, Kati’s vocals the most sensitively tuned of emotional barometers. An album made in dedication, and in thrall to, its own sense of destiny, “SÁLA” is, as all quests must ultimately be, a homecoming.
Album introduction written by Jonathan Selzer.
Black Vinyl[34,87 €]
Svart Records are proud to release the long-awaited full length album "SÁLA" by Kati Rán in May 2024
If the most profound treasures are often the most deeply buried, the journey to uncover them is vital process of discovery. Five years after the 15-minute single “Blodbylgje” signaled the birth of a new, more primordial, and immersive vision after the dissolution of her band L.E.A.F., Nordic dark folk artist Kati Rán has expanded on its oceanic theme for her long-awaited full-length album, “SÁLA”. Embarking on a far-reaching musical and personal travelogue, it’s a reawakening of both the feminine narratives submerged and fragmented within Norse mythology, and the enduring, healing powers held within.
Named after the Old Norse word for ‘soul’ and ‘sea’, “SÁLA” is an act of ‘soul retrieval’, the shamanic art of trauma recovery, be it illness, death, heartbreak or loss, and the reintegration of a splintered self. Across its 13, wide-ranging, elegantly unfolding tracks, the album is an embodiment of different feminine voices and perspectives – from the Norse nine daughters of the sea, or ‘billow maidens’, through various historical and fictional figures to the late-night voices we hear in our most liminal states – all with tales to tell, riddles to solve, challenges to be accepted and guidance to offer. It’s a multiplicity that, like the ocean itself, belongs to a vast, restless dynamic: a matrix of mysteries, unfathomable depths and ever-shifting currents, accumulating into an elemental, regenerative source of power.
Recorded in a barn in Húsafell, Iceland – home to glacier ice caves and a rare lava stone marimba rediscovered for the track “Stone Pillars” – as well as Finland, Norway and at home in Kati’s native Netherlands, “SÁLA” is as much chronicle of Kati’s own perspective-shifting recording process as it as a pilgrimage through different viewpoints and internal states. That itinerate urge is also reflected in the use of different languages, ranging across Norwegian, Old Norse, Icelandic, and, for the first time, English, her combination of ancient texts, historical reimagining’s and unguarded personal reflection backed up by deep research into the most resonant recesses of Nordic lore.
Spun throughout every thread of “SÁLA” is a sense of communion - with the power of stories to offer moral guidance and the thrill of the unknown; with the element of water, recreated across the album both in field recordings and the agelessly organic nature of the music itself; with the archetypes whose qualities we are called upon to embody at our most critical moments; and with the internal hidden realms forever whispering at us from the far edges of our consciousness.
Appropriately, it’s a collaborative venture too. As well as working closely together with Finnish producer Jaani Peuhu, there are contributions from across the musical spectrum, including extreme metal vocalist extraordinaire Gaahl, the Icelandic female choir Umbra Ensemble, renowned Norwegian jazz musician Karl Seglem, Björk and Brian Eno contrabassist Borgar Magnason, members of pagan folk acts Völuspá, Gealdýr, Heilung and Theodor Bastard and even Napalm Death’s Mitch Harris on vocals.
For all the many sources “SÁLA” draws from, the result is a singular, intimately transformative rite of passage, and a retuning of the heart to the reverent continuity of the sacred. It will take you from the opening title track’s chest-pounding rhythmic pulse emerging from a traditional Norwegian bukkehorn (recorded by Karl Seglem), a galloping horse-rider and Kati’s glacial, velveteen chant, through “Kólga’s” recounting of female persecution through the ages borne on the most gossamer-light yet unbreakable of timbres and “Stone Pillar’s” gently percolating, deep wells of abandonment and incantations to recovery. “SÁLA” closes with the track “Sátta” - Old Norse for ‘peace’ and ‘reconciliation’ – ending the album as it began with the bukkehorn, as it weaves rich drones and experience-stamped poems and prayers, Kati’s vocals the most sensitively tuned of emotional barometers. An album made in dedication, and in thrall to, its own sense of destiny, “SÁLA” is, as all quests must ultimately be, a homecoming.
Album introduction written by Jonathan Selzer.
Through his project Lionlimb, New York based singer/songwriter/producer Stewart Bronaugh crafts unfurling soundscapes that feel mysterious and otherworldly, yet timeless and nostalgic at the same time. He presents his most ambitious vision of these inner vistas on his new album, Limbo, arriving May 24th on Bayonet Records. Inspired by a palette of '70s Italian film soundtracks, '60s girl group music, and funk and soul ballads, Bronaugh brings these influences together to invent an immersive sound all his own-with help from close collaborator Joshua Jaeger, whose live drums bring a rawness to Limbo's meticulously layered production. Led by the smoldering single "Dream of You," featuring Angel Olsen, Limbo taps into universal themes of romance, longing, and loss, while still offering a hazy escape from our present reality. Bronaugh penned the songs with "classic" songwriting in mind, transforming his personal struggles with grief and addiction into love songs. Using images inspired by nature (like the sun, moonlight, hurricanes, and deep water), he expresses being overtaken by a force greater than himself, as the psychedelic production evokes a sense of being plunged into this vast landscape. Limbo benefits from its eclectic influences, as Bronaugh overlays sitar-sounding guitar on top of funky basslines, melodramatic string arrangements, and fuzzed out guitar, making for music that could easily belong on Twin Peaks just as much as a Western cowboy film. An album of duets, Limbo features a host of female vocalists-Angel Olsen, Ewa Synowiec, to Bion augil, nderstad ocal periora ne Bill bout vocal sad ate another instrument* he explains. "When we first tried to have someone else sing, I liked it, because I felt more akin to a producer than a songwriter." There's a dreamy quality to how these singers trade off with Bronaugh, both parties expressing his inner emotions. Limbo is a culmination of Bronaugh's years of production experience, as he composed, produced, and mixed the project almost entirely by himself, with additional recording from Robin Eaton. Always inspired to make bold and experimental choices that capture his instincts in the moment, Bronaugh's production style is informed by "wanting to do the weird thing that engineers wouldn't approve of," as he describes it. "My favorite part of making music is the mistakes."
"Who am I to myself? Just one of my impressions" by F. Pessoa
The new album of the Polski Piach trio is titled Anomalia (Anomaly), and is the band's third album.
They play:
Piotr Mełech - bass clarinet
Piotr Domagalski - bassetl
Patryk Zakrocki - acoustic guitar, general vision and care of the band.
After Południe and Północ (South / Noon and North/Midnight - thematically referring to the time of day and night as well as geographical directions), the band recorded a fully acoustic album, raw but brighter than Północ. The songs contain the title anomalies and are narrative, even cinematic. They flow. The music of Polski Piach is a journey, both through the listener's imagination and musical styles.
The album was recorded live in Piotr Zabrodzki's analog studio. The music was recorded on tape and mixed in analogue way.
The cover was designed by Paweł Ryżko using drawings by Patryk Zakrocki.
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Rami Gabriel has been a motive force in rock n' roll, jazz, Arabic, and experimental music communities across North America for over twenty years. In that time, he has released numerous projects across genres and under many names. On his debut LP for Sooper Records, Rami trips all the breakers. In his own name and voice for the first time, That's what I been sayin' is not so much a debut as a conflagration in Rami Gabriel's worldly underground. Drawing on Punk, Krautrock, Dub, No Wave, and lo- fi, the territory occupied by That's what I been sayin' is astringent, minimal, and buzzing with the sound of machines dancing in the wind. "I'm used to putting out records based on genre," says Rami of his multiple endeavors. "I was listening to one of the `70s Brian Eno records where he took his experimental work and his songs and put it all together, and I was thinking, `Why don't I try to put all the different ways I've been working for the last couple years onto one record?'" That's what I been sayin' ignites this vision with an album that ranges from the motorik-driven krautrock of "Like a monk" to the unexpected trance-like pairing of "Buzuq synth." That's what I been sayin' is a furnace of Rami's insuppressible impulses, where he undertakes to ask and answer: what is left of punk but making do with what is at hand? At times direct and scorching, at others meditative and wandering, That's what I been sayin' compresses Rami's understanding as a composer, musician, and singer into a restless, 11-track love letter to the underground. For Fans of The Fall, Haruomi Hosono, Brian Eno, and Scientist.
"The outsized sounds emerging from the Excelsior Mill organ captured here constitute a unique chapter in the Sun Ra story, a dizzying phantasmagoria that offers a whole new view on what Ra could do. It might thrill you; it might unnerve you; it might strum your heartstrings; it might spook the living daylights out of you. Most likely you’ll experience all of the above before the jolting musical jeremiad is done. The CD includes the full uncut show with music not featured on the LP version!
When you’re Sun Ra, you don’t need synthesizers to evoke apocalyptic visions and interstellar excursions. You don’t even need a band.
Ra is most widely known for working with various iterations of his Arkestra, but he was no stranger to unaccompanied keyboard expeditions. His discography contains solo piano albums, solo Fender Rhodes records, and solo recordings on conventional organ, the latter going as far back as his home recordings from the 1940s. But none of those instruments ever offered Sun Ra the kind of sonic artillery that waited beneath his fingers and feet when he sat before the keyboards, pedals, and multicolored constellation of tabs controlling the Wurlitzer pipe organ.
Mystic and magisterial, Ra comes off here like a cross between a demonically riffing ‘50s horror movie villain and a futuristic congregation leader delivering the interplanetary gospel. Brassy stabs provide the kind of punctuation that could be graphically rendered as an endless string of exclamation marks in 500-point font. String-like swoops and swirls dance across the top of the carnage, cooling the flames just enough to keep the whole thing from combusting (for a while at least) but never dousing the fiery fury that Ra draws forth from the instrument.
- A1: Conway Kasey - Gassed
- A2: Ron Trent - Star Strut
- B1: Vick Lavender - Daylight
- B2: Dj Punch - Make My Body Shake
- C1: Timmy Registford - Tuna (Instrumental)
- C2: Vick Lavender - Mjs Revenge
- C3: Joe Claussell - A Deeper Grace (Lp Version Edit)
- D1: Jovonn - Latin Deep
- D2: Dj Punch - Afro Traxx
- D3: Mark Francis - Love U More
- D4: Conway Kasey - A Comino Espiritual
BANGER MAKE MY BODY SHAKE MAKE THE SPEAKERS SHAKE
It was two and a half years ago when a conversation took place between Sal Carmona and Dj Producer Jovonn Armstrong; talks of which planted a seed in Sal Carmona's ear, which years later would manifest what was once a dream into a reality. No stranger, nor a newcomer in the world of dance music, Sal's experience in the club scene goes way back to the days when his sisters, to whom he credits for helping shape the person he is today, took him to Dave Mancuso's The Loft. An experience that he recalls being nothing short of magical. It was a spiritual encounter that immediately took over thus steering him towards the direction of clubs such as The Paradise Garage, Bentley's, Underground, Red Parrot, Latin Quarters, Roseland, Studio 54, just to name a few. Years later, Sal decided to take on the role, of which he became quite successful at, of promoting his own events in New York City; throwing regular parties at venues such as Park Circle & USA roller skating rinks, Red Parrot, The Palladium, The Copacabana and many others, soon becoming one of the premier go to promoters in NYC. Taking a long and well-deserved hiatus from the club scene, in 2012 Sal decided to make his return back to what he loves. It was around this time that he began thinking what it would be like to venture into creating his very own record label. Envisioning his first release being a bona fide House Music Album, one that would include some of his favorite producers. Not one to let dreams drift into the ether, while recollecting on that conversation with Jovan way back, Sal set out to make that vision manifest into a reality and thus emerged this dope compilation titled Banger "Make My Body Shake" "Make the Speakers Shake"
A great idea which brings together an interesting mix that includes highly sought out and respected veteran producers in the scene, such as Timmy Regisford, Ron Trent, Dj Jovonn, and Joe Claussell. Alongside with up and coming DJ producers who are garnering their own adulation of fans, in the likes of Vick Lavender, Mark Francis, Conway Kasey, and DJ Punch. With valuable directional contributions from friend Joe Claussell, this, to say the least, has become far more than just a seriously dope compilation that consists of a unique coming together of serious dance music. More than the aforementioned, Sal Carmona has manifested a dream into a game changing music scripture that is one of a kind, especially in this day and age where it seems where things are thrown together hoping for something to stick. On the contrary, this is well planned and thought out dopeness at A higher level consisting of all new house music that hasn't been brought together like this in a very long time and probably not for a while afterwards.




















