Cerca:black one

One of the Most Exhilarating Live Albums Ever Released: Santana’s Lotus Documents 1973 Performances Distinguished by Passionate Soulfulness, Chemistry, and Inventiveness

Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 33RPM 3LP Set Features Reference Sound and Deluxe Trifold Packaging Faithful to That of the Original Japanese Import: Strictly Limited to 5,000 Numbered Copies, Includes Four Photo Inserts and Two Fold-Out Posters

The bizarre legacy of Lotus transcends its status as both the definitive onstage document of Santana’s career and one of the most spectacular live albums ever released. Originally issued in 1974, the triple LP contains exhilarating performances of the band recorded at two shows in early July 1973 at the 2400-seat Osaka Kosei Nenkin Kaikan concert hall. It bears witness to the eight-piece collective playing with a chemistry, inventiveness, cohesiveness, and soulfulness no other Santana lineup would ever surpass. Featuring seven previously unreleased tracks as well as remarkable renditions of material from Santana’s first four albums and the Carlos SantanaJohn McLaughlin collaboration Love Devotion Surrender, Lotus simultaneously suggests and inspires, dreams and delivers.

Transferred by original engineer Tomoo Suzuki, strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, and housed in deluxe trifold packaging faithful to that of the original pressing, Lotus benefits from reference audiophile treatment on Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 3LP set. Featuring rich tones, smooth dynamics, excellent separation, deep soundstages, and involving presence, this reissue pays tribute to both the virtuosic lineup and the magnetic fusion of Latin- and Afro-Cuban-influenced jazz, rock, psychedelia, R&B, and blues. The complexity of the spiritual passages, demands of the crescendos, delicacy of the calm transitions, electricity of the solos: everything is rendered with superb balance and free of the harshness, compression, and fatiguing peaks that would otherwise distract from the presentations at hand. Black magic, indeed.

Joni Mitchell Gets Jazzy, Counterbalances Love and Trust with Freedom and Confusion on Court and Spark


Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP
Plays with Definitive Detail and Clarity: Pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl Strictly Limited to 5,000 Numbered Copies
Box Set Features New Liner Notes
1/4" / 15 IPS / Dolby A analogue master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe


Court and Spark, the most commercially successful album of Joni Mitchell's trailblazing career, arrived after a year in which she took some time to breathe and kept a low profile. The pause led to more breakthroughs for the singer-songwriter. Marking Mitchell's increasing drift toward jazz (and affinity for Miles Davis and John Coltrane), Court and Spark garnered four Grammy nominations, earned the Best Album of the Year vote in the prestigious Pazz & Jop poll, and ranks #110 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Sourced from the original analog master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing on MoFi SuperVinyl, strictly limited to 5,000 numbered copies, and featuring new liner notes, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP box set presents the 1974 classic with definitive detail, tonality, and directness. Marking the first time the revered LP has received audiophile-quality treatment, it's one of six iconic 1970s Mitchell records Mobile Fidelity is reissuing on vinyl and SACD sets.

Benefitting from a virtually nonexistent noise floor, dead-quiet surfaces, and superior groove definition, this collectible edition reproduces without compromise the textures, details, and breathtaking craftsmanship that help make Court and Spark into what many fans believe is the Canadian native’s finest hour. Notes bloom and decay as they do amid an acoustic live environment. Soundstages extend far and deep, with black backgrounds and balanced tones adding to the uncanny realism.

The reference-grade presence and openness put in transparent view Mitchell’s incisive words and unique phrasing, as well as the contributions of her prized support musicians — including Tom Scott and the L.A. Express as well as guest turns by the likes of David Crosby, Graham Nash, Jose Feliciano, and Robbie Robertson. Mitchell, experimenting with the melodic parameters of guitar and piano, is rightly found at the center of it all. The jazz-rock rhythms of drummer John Guerin, slippery guitar lines of Larry Carlton, vibrant horns and reeds laid down by Scott — crucial to the songs’ shape-shifting arrangements — can now also be heard with fresh ears.

Visually and physically, the packaging of the Court and Spark UD1S set complements its distinguished status. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, both LPs come in foil-stamped jackets with faithful graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. This reissue is for listeners who desire to engage themselves in everything involved with the album, including Mitchell’s “The Mountain Loves the Sea” painting — a picture of waves embracing and receding away from a mountain, a metaphor for the record’s lyrical themes — on the cover art.

Pitching deceptively light compositions against underlying tensions, Court and Spark witnesses the singer-songwriter finding her footing with a group of top-shelf musicians who seemingly understand her visions as well as expanding her lyrical palette and venturing further into territory no artist had dared explore. Mitchell’s accessibly complex structures, beat-propelled rhythms, and spirited interplay with Scott & Co. both give the music a different identity than her prior efforts and point in the directions she soon headed.

Lyrically, Court and Spark matches the wit, integrity, originality, and intellect of anything in Mitchell’s oeuvre — no small feat. Offsetting positives with negatives, and considering circumstances from multiple angles, Mitchell explores issues connected to love and freedom, certainty and confusion, and trust and fear with unfettered boldness and introspective empathy. She teeters between surrender and retreat, and spends a majority of the record sussing out the complications and sacrifices involved with such actions.

Mitchell addresses the transactional nature of desire (the intimate title track, the upbeat “Raised on Robbery,” complete with rock ‘n’ roll pep from Robertson and zesty sax from Scott); anticipation and disappointment of romance (“Car on a Hill,” “”Down to You); fame and celebrity (“A Free Man in Paris,” “People’s Parties”); and sanity (the dark and stormy “Trouble Child,” a satirical cover of Annie Ross’ “Twisted”). Throughout, she sings with an emotionally penetrating beauty and devastating honesty that teaches about ourselves.

Or, as Mitchell relays on “People’s Parties”: “Laughing and crying/You know it’s the same release.”

Die einzige Spur von Kenneth Wright aus Atlanta sind eine Handvoll nicht aufgenommener Songtitel auf BMI, vertreten durch Awares Verlag Act One. Mindestens ein Dutzend seiner Aufnahmen wurden kürzlich in den Tonbandarchiven von Aware gefunden und 'The Souls Of Black Folks' ist die beste davon. Es enthält Kenneths Gesang und eine ebenso beeindruckende unbekannte weibliche Hauptrolle, die dem Projekt noch mehr Mysterium verleiht. Von derselben Quelle des Atlanta-Labels stammt Miss Louistines Interpretation des Sam Dees-Songs 'Extra, Extra'. Ursprünglich von Ben E. King als Albumtitel aufgenommen, war diese druckvollere Version auf einer kürzlich erschienenen 100 Club Anniversary 7inch zu hören und erfreut sich großer Nachfrage.

3rd pressing on 1xLP Black Vinyl with Universe Sparkle Please Note: "The quality of sparkle vinyl is comparable to vinyl with metallic effects" Universe Sparkle: Fine blue glitter Beautiful gatefold sleeve with original art by Daniele Giardini We're excited to announce that we're releasing Chris Christodoulou's soundtrack to Hopoo Games' Risk of Rain 2 DLC SURVIVORS OF THE VOID on limited edition vinyl. The vinyl comes in a beautiful gatefold sleeve with stunning original artwork by Daniele Giardini. While a direct continuation of the original Risk of Rain 2 soundtrack, SURVIVORS OF THE VOID also marks a return to the roots of the ROR music-verse, reintroducing and reimagining several themes from the original game as their void-corrupted counterparts! Heavy on guitars & synths, punctuated by pounding drums, washed in lush reverbs, the album also introduces new timbres with lyrical woodwinds, soaring violins and deranged saxophones. "It's been a fun challenge revisiting these old pieces as was conjuring new ones. The void theme of the DLC offered the opportunity to write some darker-than-usual material, which I really enjoyed, I hope you will too." - Chris

In the beginning, THERE WAS DOOM. The five piece gathers its forces together with the clear intention of celebrating in music one of the first raw appearances of metal: Doom! After a year or so of songwriting and the usual lineup setups, the 5-piece throws in what will become their first studio effort in 2005: a Heavy, Drunken, Doom, Metal demo (with their 700 sold-out copies, now fully downloadable due to popular demand), where the title "Heavy Drunken Doom" clearly and quickly reveals the attitude of the band. Cold Grave Marble, the 6th Doomraiser full doom length, is a frozen view in the darker side of life: Death, the Omega of our earthly dimension. The album is made up of raw riffing seasoned up in heavy, dark and gloomy dreaming atmospheres, and explores a plethora of styles with different sounds and solutions. The songwriting approach is rougher than before, experimental, suggestive, still preserving the classic Doomraiser characteristic sound.

Ltd. Marbled Vinyl. In the beginning, THERE WAS DOOM. The five piece gathers its forces together with the clear intention of celebrating in music one of the first raw appearances of metal: Doom! After a year or so of songwriting and the usual lineup setups, the 5-piece throws in what will become their first studio effort in 2005: a Heavy, Drunken, Doom, Metal demo (with their 700 sold-out copies, now fully downloadable due to popular demand), where the title "Heavy Drunken Doom" clearly and quickly reveals the attitude of the band. Cold Grave Marble, the 6th Doomraiser full doom length, is a frozen view in the darker side of life: Death, the Omega of our earthly dimension. The album is made up of raw riffing seasoned up in heavy, dark and gloomy dreaming atmospheres, and explores a plethora of styles with different sounds and solutions. The songwriting approach is rougher than before, experimental, suggestive, still preserving the classic Doomraiser characteristic sound.

Remember Bones Brigade Video Show, Future Primitive, Animal Chin featuring the skating of Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Tommy Guerrero, Mike McGill, and more? How many times did you and your friends watch these videos? Over and over and over. Did you know there was also original music by various artists playing while you watched these videos? This is the first ever vinyl pressing, double black and red vinyl gatefold jacket with mp3 download card and 2-sided fold out poster. You will instantly be transported back to this visual feast of skating, or if these videos are new to you, you will fall in love with the music from these classic skate videos.

Music lovers will be familiar with his love of Caribbean pearls from the compilations "Ritmo Caliente" and "Message from the Islands" as well as other releases such as "Los Yoyi", "Mighty Shadow" and "Wild Fire". Now Tom Sky, the former creative head of Black Pearl Records, is pulling another tropical discovery out of his travel treasure box on his new record label Sound Essence.
Lloyd and the Joys is truly a real holy grail and one of the most sought-after funky hotel records from the Caribbean islands. Deep, groovy synth Soul with the song "That Look Of You" meets jazzy funk breaks with the strong tune "The New York Business". There are also two stylish 70s postcards from Lloyd himself in a vintage design in each sleeve. The release is a must for all tropical music connoisseurs.

"7"" single for the djs of the initial digital 45 of Peixeira Amolada e Quebra Queixo b/w Mariposa Tigre.

Peixeira Amolada e Quebra Queixo It represents two popular stereotypes common in the third world: the sharp cutting knife and the quebra-queixo, the coconut candy brought from Angola by enslaved blacks. But, playfully, it is also the expression of direct speech and a sharp blow, also as a duo of anti-heroes in search of justice, equality and fraternity. This song also features an element never used before in the band: the guitar. One of the most popular instruments in the world, it provides the basis for the song, which goes through a groove full of counter-melodies that bring that feeling of a cut (hence the name of the song), in non-obvious conventions, and a surprising ending in another time signature. As well as the musical reference for the name, this track represents the struggle that many Brazilians go through every day to have a decent life. You have to have a ""sharpened knife"" to open the way.

Quebra Queixo Represents the playful and magical beings of the forest. How can a moth be a tiger? This song carries a lot of the sound Nomade has built up over the course of their career. Strong funk influences, ethno groove, with unconventional brass themes and a very jazzy accent. Halfway through the song, another of the band's very strong references comes to the fore: reggae, more precisely ragga, which makes the song even more danceable. Finally, a convention from the whole band brings the song to a grand end, making you want to listen to it again."

Founded in the stillness of 2020 when a group of tight tight-knit up and coming musicians were robbed of their livelihood and greatest joy - live performance - the group came together in a graffiti smudged artist s space in an old industrial facility in Copenhagen s outskirts and created a space for themselves to improvise in a funky, groove based setting. A followup to their 2023 debut Moko Jumbie which explored the rich culture of West African music popularised by Mulatu Asastke and Fela Kuti, as the name suggests, Soul Piece leans further into the tropes, grooves and idioms of Western 60" s Soul and Funk. Recorded live over two days at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, the albums raw, warm production captures the energy, intimacy and excitement of a live performance, transporting the listener right in the centre of a pulsating dancefloor. Each song is rooted in groove and exemplary band musicianship, and made up of every stylistic feature one might crave from the genre: crunchy rhodes tones, percussive clavinets, thick organ textures, grooving tambourines, searing guitar solos, deep pocket drum grooves, infectious basslines, punchy horn backings and James Brown Brown-esque stabs. Self described as the young lions " of the Danish jazz scene, each member of the six piece is an active contributor to the country s diverse musical output; Norregaard, Langebæk & Besiakov can be heard performing regularly in the Fela Kuti saluting Black Money Orchestra and Bæst, Eskildsen with the Addis Ababa Band, and Thofte & Toftemark each leading their own projects in contemporary hard hard-hop to name but a few of their many ventures.

Double black vinyl LP available for the first time via Cargo. Stories Don't End is the third studio album by American folk-rock band Dawes, originally released in 2013. At Rolling Stone, David Fricke proclaimed this release to be a "quietly gripping, deceptively gleaming record." Bud Scoppa of Uncut evoked that "the sound is glossier, beefier, less wistful" on the release because the change in producers. // Stories Don't End is a game changer for Dawes and one that's more than likely going to work. Don't be surprised if you find this album propping up the shelves of your local supermarket soon as they leave behind their indie roots for world domination. By the end of the year Dawes are going to be everyone's favourite new band”. Echoes And Dust.

~~~From Mississippi and Olvido Records~~~~~~ Steel-string guitar and vocals by the great Giorgos Katsaros, a mythic figure of Greek rembetiko. Our obsession with underground Greek music continues with 10 ultra-rare recordings of heartbreak and vice from rembetiko legend Giorgos Katsaros. Katsaros, who by some accounts lived to be over 100 years old, carried the old songs of Greece to the Diaspora in the United States, bridging centuries of music in one storied lifetime. Born in 1901 on the Greek island of Amorgos, Katsaros' was enchanted with the songs he picked up as a kid in the streets of Piraeus and Athens. Encouraged by his grandfather, an amateur singer, Katsaros developed a style that mirrored his upbringing - centuries-old Asia Minor songs, island rhythms of his homeland, well-known Athenian songs of the time, and anonymous `rebetiko' songs. Katsaros' songbook was vast, but he was most drawn to the street life and music of the manges of early 20th-century Greece: outcasts who dealt with the indignities of an unstable economy and an inauspicious future with the old standbys: wine, hash, and dancing. These ten tracks are remastered from Katsaros's 64 surviving early recordings, many rarely heard since their original release. Hypnotic melodies plucked over repeating thumbed basslines back his deep, mournful voice. Katsaros brought this nostalgic late-night music to smoke-filled rooms of Greek exiles in Chicago, Philly, and New York, where he emigrated in 1917. He continued to travel the country and play until his music was supplanted by more modern styles in the 1950s. He retired to the town of Tarpon Springs, FL, famous for its Greek sponge fishers, til a late-in-life revival brought him back to Greece for a few massive concerts and national accolades in the 1990s. Like many great artists, Katsaros carefully curated his own mythic backstory over the decades. He sometimes claimed he was born in 1888, making him 109 on his passing, and conflicting accounts of his birth and travels circulate to this day. Greek researchers Stavros Kourousis and Konstantinos Kopanitsanos, who also compiled these tracks, contribute groundbreaking new historical research on Katsaros' life. Lyrics, poetically translated by Tony Klein, further fill in the picture. Clean and rare 78s were remastered by Stereophonic. Katsaros has never sounded better than on this LP, pressed on heavy black vinyl, with extensive notes and lyrics.

Set for release at the height of the season it’s dedicated to, ‘Music For Autumn Lovers’ by Adam Scrimshire is an eight track album of lush, mostly acoustic based, minimal instrumentals eliciting a mixture of feelings for this special time of year.

Four tracks originally released on an EP in 2022 are joined by new compositions ‘Hawthorn’, ‘Hazel’, ‘Willow’ and ‘Blackthorn’. Gently finger-picked acoustic guitars cosy up alongside pianos, synthesisers, strings and horns; filtered through an autumnal hue of susurrous production and effects. In turns comforting, melancholic and evolutionary; it feels like an album that can be kept being made and remade forever, like a season in itself.

Both a relentless creator and inspiring champion of new music; South London based Scrimshire has been recording, producing and DJing since the mid 2000s. Amongst his credits, he was featured by the Guardian as one of three producers behind the new wave of UK soul, alongside Inflo (Michael Kiwanuka, Sault, Lil Simz) and Swindle (Joel Culpepper, Greentea Peng, Kojey Radical). His bold 2023 album ‘Paroxysm’ was a response to the absurdity of the breakdown in the UK government, picking up an Album of the Week award on Huey Morgan’s BBC 6 Music show, and 2021’s beautiful ‘Nothing Feels Like Everything’ received an Album of the Year nomination at the Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards. Scrimshire also somehow finds the time to support a wealth of talent on his label Albert’s Favourites, formed with Dave Koor and Jonny Drop, where they have recently released albums by And Is Phi, Huw Marc Bennet, Inês Loubet, Irini Arabatzi, Jonny Drop & Andrew Ashong, and Qwalia.

Radio Support: Gilles Peterson (BBC Radio 6 Music), Tom Ravenscroft/Deb Grant – New Music Fix (BBC Radio 6 Music), Huey Morgan (BBC Radio 6 Music) Guy Garvey (BBC Radio 6 Music)

2 long sides for 45RPM deep bass ! One side by Hesed, a long developpement from tribal tribe to Acidcore... the perfect morphing and story telling !
n the Flip MNT delivers an old school tribe tune, level-uping the Boucles Etranges style or old spiral effects... Minimal and tribal, pumpin and breathing.

the sleeve is an atwork from Davide Black Qirex, full printed and drawed little casino ! Punk & Tribe !

One Way Trip to Gaia, Alberta Balsam's debut album, propels listeners into uncharted territory, delivering a futuristic fairytale--a utopian world that serves as a sonic refuge from reality. Building on the electro-IDM foundations of her earlier releases , this record evolves into an odyssey of bass-driven beats, breakbeat rhythms, and dub-infused atmospheres. As her most vocal project to date, the album showcases her ability to merge pop sensibility with otherworldly sound design, all while maintaining that club-ready energy. Limited edition: pressed on a black and silver marbled vinyl. Sleeve design by Timaeus

“For fans old and new, they can expect to be reintroduced to some raw, authentic, classic Detroit Hip-Hop from beginning to end.”-Phat Kat on the Deluxe Edition re-release of “Carte Blanche”.

Phat Kat’s phenomenal sophomore solo LP, “Carte Blanche”, first released in ’07 via Look Records, is the sound of Detroit. It’s gritty, soulful, and raw, three key ingredients in bringing the blue-collar city’s vibe to life in music form. It’s also a modern classic that is getting the deluxe edition re-release it deserves, Below System Records is adding two rare bonus tracks produced by late Detroit legend, J Dilla.

Anyone familiar with Kat or Dilla’s work knows the two shared a special bond. In fact, Dilla would often go to the gruff-voiced emcee whenever he was looking to create a particularly tough track. This friendship led to them forming the group 1st Down, and this re-release’s two bonus cuts, “World Premiere” and “It Don’t Get No Liver Than This (feat. La Peace),” which were recording in 1996 and ’97, respectively. Despite 1st Down never taking off due to label issues, Kat and Dilla remained close and recorded a number of underground classics. Those include several joints off “Carte Blanche”, such as the stirring “Don’t Nobody Care About Us”, “Game Time”, and the Elzhi-featured “Cold Steel”. It’s actually that last track that Kat picks as his favorite cut off the record.

“If I gotta choose one, it would have to be ‘Cold Steel’ because it makes you wanna wild out as soon as the beat drops”, he says, adding that this was the first time he got to choose a Dilla beat to rap over. “He would never let me rock over beat tape beats-he use to say ‘Nah Kat, just write to them cause I’m gonna make all ya shit from scratch.’ ”

The album also boasts collaborations with other Detroit rap heavy-hitters, such as Black Milk, Guilty Simpson, Nick Speed, and T3 & Young RJ (of Slum Village). With Kat as their host, they were able to not only capture the sound of the Motor city in 2007 (when the album was originally released), but also cement its place in the greater canon of hip-hop as we know it today.

Human existence in digital times is accompanied by a constant noise of language, words and opinions. It"s a cacophony, it"s all too much. The more is said and written, the less is said at times. The Berlin band neànder has no words. Guitarists Jan Korbach, Michael Zolkiewicz and Patrick Zahn and drummer Flo Häuser rather speak through their instruments. This is not a cliché, but can be heard and felt on the new album "III". Everything is in motion here, one thinks of endless landscapes and unknown worlds. And by the way, if we have refrained from categorizing genres in this text so far, it is because neànder cannot be assigned to any genre in a meaningful way. Of course, this music is somehow post-rock, grunge, metal, prog, ambient and even pop - but at the same time it"s not. You might have to imagine it a bit like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Prong, Mogwai, Black Sabbath, Faith No More and Venom would play a session together in 2024 and the result would be "III".

Ltd Silver Vinyl, DL card. From a long-forgotten trunk; two extended jams, twin slabs, circa 1989. Continuing Fire Records' series of classic remastered albums from Royal Trux, 'Hand Of Glory' is released on silver vinyl. This bad-ass black, white and blue magic is a kind of Burial Dub_ or so preached the sleeve of 'Hand Of Glory' on its original release in 2002. Legend has it, the two sides of this 40-minute gem were recorded between 1985 and 1989. The resultant mountain of creativity from where they hail were inevitably left under a scuzzy sofa as life and a career that ebbed and flowed over nine albums. Royal Trux became an inspirational tipping point for everyone from Pavement & Sonic Youth to the Black Keys, Kurt Cobain, The Avalanches & Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor. "I urge and encourage you to enter the harmolodic multiverse of their music." Alexis Taylor, Hot Chip. 'Hand Of Glory' is not like their other albums but then again none of their albums are alike, it's a two-faced masterpiece. Side one's 'Domo Des Burros'/'Two Sticks' is on par with Beefheart's sprawling 'Trout Mask Replica'. It plays out in 19 minutes, sounding like it was laid down on Warhol's sofa in The Factory; like Dylan's sprawling 'Desolation Row' with, background squalls, interruptions and both Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema's overlayed stream of consciousness peeping through a multi-layered backdrop. It's just staggering. "Royal Trux were nothing if not fearless." Pitchfork. Side two's 'The Boxing Story', a loose homage to William Burroughs, moulds and morphs from tape to tape, a multi-speed soundtrack, while the dynamic duo press pause, guitars ring, occasional melodic lines arrive and evaporate. Lou Reed's pastoral 'Metal Machine Music' could perhaps be recognized as an older and perhaps less challenging sibling. A two-sided masterpiece featuring two wayward pieces of creative genius.

The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri’s latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn’s unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named “il Mito Americano” – meant as “The American Dream” but translated literally to English as “The American Myth” – sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical.

Amid the chaos of 2020, while exploring the stark world of brutalist architecture and inspired by the false fronts of Potemkin villages, a vision started to take shape: FAÇADISMS. Composed over three years, it’s a late capitalist lament of simmering electric despondency.

Irisarri’s obsession with repeating motifs mirrors the cyclical nature of our tumultuous political history. The album’s eight tracks heave and storm like a tempest being drained of its rage. This is the sound of majestic dissipation, of morning afters, fashioned from a mournful haze with cavernous guitars and granular twilight. A euphony of a receding tide as one sifts through the remnants of what remains: dust, delusion, and memory.

Opening with the somber gauze of “Broken Intensification," FAÇADISMS moves fluidly between moments of absence and abandon. Ashen swaths of electronics billow above smoldering embers of melody, guitar, and scattered streaks of processed strings and voice, as on the rapturous doom of “Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom,” featuring Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals. "The impoverished peoples of the Americas have known all along that 'freedom' is a cruel illusion crafted by the elites, akin to Potemkin's fake villages designed to impress Catherine the Great," Irisarri indicates. "FAÇADISMS illustrates a twisted inversion where the rulers deceive their subjects with illusions of safety, democracy, and free speech to create a grotesque mirage of control over their own lives.”

Elsewhere, Irisarri leans into passages of hushed oblivion (“Hollow,” “Dispersion of Belief”), while ragged drones rumble and disintegrate into wind-battered ambient wreckage. One has the sense that it’s all too late. The hour of fury has passed. The beauty has come and gone. Irisarri’s muse has become the crack in the façade of the unraveling myth.

The record closes with a climax of grand departure. Co-written with Kenyan sound artist KMRU, “Red Moon Tide” surges from flickering elegy to celestial disquiet, roiling waves of hymnal descent, and bristling noise. The effect is unsettling and unmooring: a soundtrack for the soul leaving the body, only to discover a void. It’s the sound of the center not holding, of shared illusions being dissolved in a tunnel of white light.

The cover photograph captures a profound sense of desolation. Taken in the historic shanty town of La Perla, Puerto Rico, where Irisarri spent his childhood, brutal colonial mysteries are lost to time. A skeletal concrete structure decays against an expansive blue horizon. Only the shadow of its shell ripples on the empty sea.

Has the American myth finally run its course?

The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri’s latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn’s unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named “il Mito Americano” – meant as “The American Dream” but translated literally to English as “The American Myth” – sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical.

Amid the chaos of 2020, while exploring the stark world of brutalist architecture and inspired by the false fronts of Potemkin villages, a vision started to take shape: FAÇADISMS. Composed over three years, it’s a late capitalist lament of simmering electric despondency.

Irisarri’s obsession with repeating motifs mirrors the cyclical nature of our tumultuous political history. The album’s eight tracks heave and storm like a tempest being drained of its rage. This is the sound of majestic dissipation, of morning afters, fashioned from a mournful haze with cavernous guitars and granular twilight. A euphony of a receding tide as one sifts through the remnants of what remains: dust, delusion, and memory.

Opening with the somber gauze of “Broken Intensification," FAÇADISMS moves fluidly between moments of absence and abandon. Ashen swaths of electronics billow above smoldering embers of melody, guitar, and scattered streaks of processed strings and voice, as on the rapturous doom of “Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom,” featuring Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals. "The impoverished peoples of the Americas have known all along that 'freedom' is a cruel illusion crafted by the elites, akin to Potemkin's fake villages designed to impress Catherine the Great," Irisarri indicates. "FAÇADISMS illustrates a twisted inversion where the rulers deceive their subjects with illusions of safety, democracy, and free speech to create a grotesque mirage of control over their own lives.”

Elsewhere, Irisarri leans into passages of hushed oblivion (“Hollow,” “Dispersion of Belief”), while ragged drones rumble and disintegrate into wind-battered ambient wreckage. One has the sense that it’s all too late. The hour of fury has passed. The beauty has come and gone. Irisarri’s muse has become the crack in the façade of the unraveling myth.

The record closes with a climax of grand departure. Co-written with Kenyan sound artist KMRU, “Red Moon Tide” surges from flickering elegy to celestial disquiet, roiling waves of hymnal descent, and bristling noise. The effect is unsettling and unmooring: a soundtrack for the soul leaving the body, only to discover a void. It’s the sound of the center not holding, of shared illusions being dissolved in a tunnel of white light.

The cover photograph captures a profound sense of desolation. Taken in the historic shanty town of La Perla, Puerto Rico, where Irisarri spent his childhood, brutal colonial mysteries are lost to time. A skeletal concrete structure decays against an expansive blue horizon. Only the shadow of its shell ripples on the empty sea.

Has the American myth finally run its course?