Поиск:bloom

Acclaimed NY-based singer songwriter Jordan Lee aka Mutual
Benefit announces ‘Growing At The Edges’, on Transgressive
Records, his first record since 2019.
 ‘Growing at the Edges’ is sonically expansive, artfully blending
genres from country to classical with the help of multifaceted
co-producer Gabriel Birnbaum (Wilder Maker) and critically
acclaimed string arranger Concetta Abbate. The band,
alongside Lee and Birnbaum, was made up of Wilder Maker
members Sean Mullins (Andy Shauf) and Nick Jost (Baroness)
and features help from Jonnie Baker of Florist and Eva
Goodman of Nighttime among others.
 “I approached ‘Growing at the Edges’ as an act of worldbuilding. It was a place we visited often over the past 5 years
collaging and sonically redecorating until it reflected the joy and
the pain of being human in a universe that will always be
changing. I wanted to make music that could simultaneously
mourn versions of the past but still find hope in the seedlings
which could, perhaps, bloom into better futures” - Jordan Lee
 The album cover is a purposefully ‘unfinished’ weaving by fibre
artist Natalie Phillips.
 “I had this theme for ‘Growing at the Edges’ where I was
thinking about the first little life forms that pop up after
something natural like winter or less natural like a disaster and
kind of channeling their spirit for the art and music. That got me
imagining one of Natalie’s beautiful weavings but in-process
with stray yarn and loom still visible. Incomplete yet still
beautiful. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.”
 Mutual Benefit’s live shows are known for their rotating cast of
wide-ranging musicians leading to inspired interpretations of the
extensive catalogue on notable stages like MoMA’s sculpture
garden or UK’s Green Man Festival as well as the occasional
surprise park or basement show at home in Brooklyn.
 Throughout the years Mutual Benefit has been in Album Of The
Year lists among Pitchfork and Stereogum, as well as Folk
Musician Of The Year by New York’s Village Voice.

Der Titel der neuen Oakhands EP 'A Circle with Many Centers' ist eine Referenz an eine Kurzgeschichte Haruki Murakamis und gleichzeitig die Erkenntnis von Oakhands, dass sich das Leben und die Gefühle doch nicht so logisch Auseinanderdifferenzieren und Zerdenken lassen, wie es auf dem vorhergehenden Album 'The Shadow Of Your Guard Receding' angenommen und praktiziert wurde. Sondern dass Gefühle ganz einfach erlebt, wie gelebt werden müssen und all die persönlichen Konflikte doch alle stärker und universeller zusammenhängen, als einem lieb ist. An der Wurzel aller zusammenhängenden Lebensfragen liegt das Thema Depression, welches alle Emotionen durchdringt und erstickt. Ein gesellschaftlich wie individuell unvermeidliches Thema, mitten im Zeitgeists. Die Depression, der große Gegner aller Gefühle oder auch die große Abwesenheit aller Gefühle, lässt sich nicht einfach analytisch ausdifferenzieren, sondern ist "einfach da". Und sie stellt sich hier auf der EP gegen das Kaleidoskop der Gefühle auf dem Debütalbum und alle deren analytische Erklärungsversuche. 'A Circle with Many Centers' ist also wahlweise die Fortzsetzung, Antwort oder Widerlegung ihres Debütalbum. Dieses beschäftigte sich in beinahe schon manischer Präzision analytisch und lyrisch mit den eigenen Gefühlen und wurde künstlerisch (nicht wissenschaftlich) von Plutchicks Rad der Emotionen inspiriert. Wenn man so will, kann 'Circle with Many Centers' auch als eine späte Coming-Of-Age Platte gelesen werden. Eine post-adoleszente Platte über das "wahre" Erwachsenwerden um die 30, späte individuelle Sturm & Drang-Phasen. Über die Erkenntnis, wo die Wurzel aller persönlichen Konflikte liegt: der Depression.

LiV Warfield's live show has been described as "like watching Tina Turner,
Sade and James Brown all in one"
Throw in Mary J. Blige, Etta James and Nina Simone and you're getting closer to
an accurate description of singer-songwriter and dynamic performer LiV Warfield.
A Soul Train Music Award winner and former member of Prince's New Power
Generation, Warfield showcases her wide-ranging musical tastes on The Edge.
From the rock- tinged title track, which bears the stamp of her mentor, to her
autobiographical "Bloom" and her take on the Phil Collins' power ballad, "Another
Day in Paradise," LiV inhabits a myriad of attitudes while expressing her inner
strength and soul on her third album overall and first for Leopard.

In 2020, the previous band formation announced its breakup, leaving Nelson at a pivotal turning point musically, and more broadly, in life, to determine what came next.

Over the next couple of years, Ayala grappled with issues of loss, addiction, coping with pain, relationships gone awry, and relationships anew. He also experimented more sonically, spending countless hours in the studio jamming with friends and using (Covid) boredom as an incubator for creativity. The result of this time period is Lonely Citizen, Indian Askin's third album. Lonely Citizen finds Nelson exploring his own personal story in perhaps the band's most intimate work to date.

Musically, he nods to his Latin roots, with a focus on percussion and groove being a thread throughout the record. Simultaneously, the lyrics find Ayala taking a magnifying glass to his personal reflections on his hometown, Amsterdam.

He says on the album, "It's about feeling sick and tired, and maybe even ashamed, of the place I grew up in and what it's become. And especially what I've become while living my life here. I was born in this machine and I will forever be a part of it, yes. I just can't shake the feeling that I need to leave this noise behind."

With over 40 musicians across 28 tracks, Essentials Spring 2023 might be our most treasured one yet. Featuring a who's who of some of our favorite musicians in the community, we present a 2xLP to keep everyone vibrant and alive as the seasons change and days start to warm. Essentials Spring 2023 features recent Chillhop beat tape alumni like El Train, Evil Needle, illiterate, and Mr. Slipz, while also showcasing songs from familiars like Oatmello, SwuM, Toonorth, Blue Wednesday, HM Surf, The Doppelgangaz, and dozens of others.

This album features over 70 minutes of chillhop, jazzhop, lofi hip-hop, downtempo R&B, lounge jazz, soulful beats, boom bap, old school. However you might like to classify this. Study beats? Sure. Beats to go on a road trip to? Absolutely. Gaming beats, coding beats, beats to daydream to? You betcha. The essentials return for 2023, adding to the ever growing collection of limited edition seasonal releases on vinyl!

When South Korean balearic prodigy Mogwaa came to MM Discos with an idea for his rst full-length album, we were a bit surprised.
He said, ‘I want to do an album of bossa tracks with synths, a drum machine and my guitar’. We obviously had to take him up
on that deal.

Fresh from the recent Bandcamp feature on his own brand of danceoor-ready modern boogie, Seungyoung Lee (aka Mogwaa)
arrives back on MM Discos with his - and our - rst full length exercise. With six tracks per side of 80s inuenced synth and bossa
badness, ‘Hazy Dreams’ is an exercise in simplicity, and more proof of the ever-expanding musical horizons of one of the scene’s
most virtuosic instrumentalists.

Pairing a sensitivity to the construction of ambient, funk, bossa and cassette-tape 80s experiments with his own cinematic subtlety,
‘Hazy Dreams’ takes a gentle, minimalistic approach, crafting its own escapist world that oers a welcome diversion from the
steady ow of busy balearica and downtempo.

Opening track ‘Full Bloom’ paints a picture of midsummer at dawn, some clear-skied island where lush vegetation climbs through
hibiscus gardens. ‘Nacimiento’ is an AOR/bossa crossover evoking West Coast yachting in full afternoon, and A3, ‘Soothing’, adds
a touch of wistfulness with reverb-doused guitars over meandering bass motifs.
The easy kick-and-snare combo of ‘Levitation’ sets the scene for a drum machine love aair, unrequited love on the rocks, and
‘Flashback’ plays with short delay trails and o-kilter melodic sequences, where you feel the soft presence of the nebula approaching
at the break of day. Closing out the A-side, ‘Dispatching’ reaches out even further into the imagined cosmos of Mogwaa’s
picture-perfect world, portraying an ambience at dusk, observing, calmy, as pued-up pink clouds melt into the evening canvas.
On the other side, Mogwaa explores quiet corners with ‘Illusions’, a slow meditation on the nature of simple presence, and ‘Echoes
of You’, a stream of subdued brush strokes that crescendo into higher frequencies on gently undulating pads. B3, ‘Moondance’,
ups the tempo and recalls classic Mogwaa with its sideways shue and starry melodic refrain, pivoting through folk-dance
moods and surprising chord changes.
Nearing the end of the album, ‘Footprints’ wades through tall grass in search of altered states, innite and hypnotic, changing
course only to crouch down and study the landscape, and B5, ‘It always comes and goes’, pictures the to-and-fro of jetstreams and
comets in the blinding midday sky. Finally we have the closing credits of ‘Swingin’ that looks o into the horizon, jaunty and exalted,
a guitar-led tribute to an easy-going world, and ultimately mindful of the power of dreams.
We’re humbled to have such a special record for our rst full-length release on the label.

The latest EP from Drab Majesty marks the start of a stirring new chapter in the band's majestic legacy. Written during a 2021 retreat to the remote coastal Oregon town of Yachats, Deb Demure leaned into the neo- psychedelic resonance of a uniquely bowl - shaped 12 -string Ovation acoustic/electric guitar. After early morning hikes in the rain, Deb would record ambient guitar experiments the rest of the day, tapping into "flow states," letting the sound lead the way. These sessions were then refined or recreated, and later elevated further with key collaborations by Rachel Goswell (Slowdive), Justin Meldal Johnson (Beck, M83, Air), and Ben Greenberg (Uniform, Circular Ruin Studio). An Object In Motion is true to its title, capturing the chrysalis moment of an artist evolving, reborn and untet hered, silhouetted against an open horizon. "Cape Perpetua" kicks off the collection's divergent palette: sparkling acoustic fingerpicking refracted through delay, equal parts raga and reverie. Melodies and moods congeal and dissipate, at the threshold of rustic American primitivism, brooding neo-folk, and pastoral melancholia. "The Skin And The Glove" deploys jangle to different effect baggy, soaring, grey skied kaleidoscopic pop in the spirit of Stone Roses, Primal Scream, and The Glove. Rachel Goswell lends her iconic freefall voice to The Cure - esque ballad, "Vanity," infusing poetic gravity to the doomed refrain: "If the valve breaks / then the earth quakes / and history finds a way / to put you in your place." "Yield To Force", the closing track of the EP, may be the most anomalous offering of the set. A 15 minute instrumental odyssey of cyclical strings, ominous slide guitar, and simmering synthesizer, the piece sways and spirals like a long zoom into distant storm clouds. Demure finesses the guitar with a restless but regal grandeur, unfolding a panorama of peaks, shadows, and plateaus. It's music both intuitive and prophetic, tracing the slow swing of pendulums across an endless plain. Taken as a whole, An Object In Motion presents a showcase of potential futures from Drab's evolving domain, their sound poised to bloom at the precipice of transformation.

Four years after they went all the way to Antarctica, Flat Worms are back in gen pop with the rest of us - but, as intoned on the album opener "Sigalert," "back again like I never was." Is this a nod to the way time passes over our sorely vexed synapses? Or are we to believe that there"s hope to be found in this broken world? Kick back with Witness Marks and see what other traces Flat Worms have left us in the dust. The album title alone leaves a foreboding impression. But look closer - "witness marks" aren"t something out of a forensic analysis - they"re actually practical; scratches placed in old clocks designed to aid continued maintenance further in time. Sure, there"s big questions and more on the board; primarily if we"re at all distinct from the absurdity coming down around us, or just another character in the mirror? Flat Worms are looking inward this time, outlining personal space in relation to themselves and others - sometimes even people they barely know. Among the slabs of slategrey outrage, the flowers of compassion are blooming, and the simmering power of their trio grows exponentially. Working once again with Ty Segall, Flat Worms continue to find new answers by digging into themselves and playing their kind of rock: hard and flat, bass and drums thrusting stalwartly forward with conviction, guitar twisting and spinning in outrage, deadpan vocals decrying a dire set of circumstances. The democracy of working together, so often messy and frustrating, was found to be a powerful release for Justin, Tim and Will. Acting as one, Flat Worms navigated challenging times by coming together, finding release in the clockwork repetitions of practice and the shared creative space they occupied together against the encroaching world. In the short century of their existence, Flat Worms have agitated against the status quo with a disquieting lyric bent, to emphasize the psychosis of the times. These are positions taken within songs, sung out to individuals in the world. As evidenced by the lyrics, "But I know I can always see you at the show Even though it"s only temporary and it"s time to go." . . .Witness Marks surveys an evolving sense of community. Flat Worms are dedicated to persevering and using the power of their collective. Come witness!

Four years after they went all the way to Antarctica, Flat Worms are back in gen pop with the rest of us - but, as intoned on the album opener "Sigalert," "back again like I never was." Is this a nod to the way time passes over our sorely vexed synapses? Or are we to believe that there"s hope to be found in this broken world? Kick back with Witness Marks and see what other traces Flat Worms have left us in the dust. The album title alone leaves a foreboding impression. But look closer - "witness marks" aren"t something out of a forensic analysis - they"re actually practical; scratches placed in old clocks designed to aid continued maintenance further in time. Sure, there"s big questions and more on the board; primarily if we"re at all distinct from the absurdity coming down around us, or just another character in the mirror? Flat Worms are looking inward this time, outlining personal space in relation to themselves and others - sometimes even people they barely know. Among the slabs of slategrey outrage, the flowers of compassion are blooming, and the simmering power of their trio grows exponentially. Working once again with Ty Segall, Flat Worms continue to find new answers by digging into themselves and playing their kind of rock: hard and flat, bass and drums thrusting stalwartly forward with conviction, guitar twisting and spinning in outrage, deadpan vocals decrying a dire set of circumstances. The democracy of working together, so often messy and frustrating, was found to be a powerful release for Justin, Tim and Will. Acting as one, Flat Worms navigated challenging times by coming together, finding release in the clockwork repetitions of practice and the shared creative space they occupied together against the encroaching world. In the short century of their existence, Flat Worms have agitated against the status quo with a disquieting lyric bent, to emphasize the psychosis of the times. These are positions taken within songs, sung out to individuals in the world. As evidenced by the lyrics, "But I know I can always see you at the show Even though it"s only temporary and it"s time to go." . . .Witness Marks surveys an evolving sense of community. Flat Worms are dedicated to persevering and using the power of their collective. Come witness!

Woods are in bloom again, inviting you to disappear into a new spectrum of colors and sounds and dreams on Perennial. Formed in Brooklyn in 2004, Woods have matured into a true independent institution, above and below the root, reliably emerging every few years with new music that grows towards the latest sky. Operating the Woodsist label since 2006 and curating the beloved homespun Woodsist Festival for the musical universe they’ve built, Perennial is the sound of a band on the edge of their 20th anniversary and still finding bold new ways to sound like (and challenge) themselves. Perennial grew from a bed of guitar/keyboard/drum loops by Woods head-in-chief Jeremy Earl, a form of winter night meditation that evolved into an unexplored mode of collaborative songwriting. With Earl’s starting points, he and bandmates Jarvis Taveniere and John Andrews convened, first at Earl’s house in New York, then at Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California, site of sessions for 2020’s Strange To Explain. With a view of the sparkling Pacific and tape rolling, they began to build, jamming over the loops, switching instruments, and developing a few dozen building blocks. The album’s resulting 11 songs, 4 of them instrumental, are in the classic Woods mode--shimmering, familiar, fractionally unsettling--but with the half-invisible infinity boxes of Earl’s loops burbling beneath each like a mysterious underground source. From source to seed to bloom, each loop unfolds into something unpredictable, from the jeweled pop of the aching “Little Black Flowers” to the ecstatic starlit freak-beat of “Another Side.” They are blossomings both far-out and comforting, like the Mellotronic cloud-hopping of “Between the Past,” or sometimes just plain comforting, like the widescreen snowglobe fantasia of the instrumental “White Winter Melody,” touched by Connor Gallaher’s pedal steel. Woods have long used the studio as a place of songwriting, naming 2007’s At Rear House after their shared dwelling and recording space. But Perennial also carries with it an even longer view of Woods. Emerging from the process alongside the music was Earl’s reflection that “perennial plants and flowers are nature’s loops,” an idea rolling under the album’s lyrics like the loops themselves. It certainly applies to the band, too, who have quietly tended to a long, committed project of being a band in the weird-ass 21st century, both individually and communally. Though separated by coasts, the communal sprit carries through Earl, Taveniere, and Andrews’ collaboration, a living embodiment of the freedoms rediscovered every time a new collectively created piece of music emerges. For nearly two decades, Woods have survived subgenres, anchored in the fertile soil below hashtags like lo-fi and freak-folk and psychedelic and indie, and built a shared history that’s something to marvel at. As the flagship band for Woodsist, they’ve accumulated a striking extended family of collaborators (and Woods alum) that have made the label one of the most dependable imprints in the kaleidoscopic low-key underground. It’s a glow that’s transferred whole to the blissed-out Woodsist Fests held in Accord, New York in recent years, which have folded in a wide range of diverse sounds, from the the jazz cosmoverse of the Sun Ra Arkestra and adventurous legends Yo La Tengo, to a hard-to-even-count family tree of contemporaries, like Kevin Morby (who served a few tours of duty as Woods bassist) and Kurt Vile (who released his 2009 debut on Woodsist), a living community in sound. Perennial carries all of this, shaped by decades, but made in the moment, and here right now. The smell of the flowers doesn’t remain, but sometimes the flowers do. Jesse Jarnow Recorded and mixed by Jarvis Taveniere at Panoramic House in Stinson Beach, CA with additional recording at The Ship in Los Angeles, CA and Cottekill Bird Sanctuary in Stone Ridge, NY. Produced by Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earl. Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering in Portland, OR. Jeremy Earl - vocals, guitars, drums, percussion, sk-5, mellotron, vibraphone, autoharp, loops Jarvis Taveniere - guitar, bass, upright bass, hammond, vocals John Andrews - piano, organs, mellotron, drums, vocals Connor Gallaher - Pedal Steel Kyle Forester - sax, wurlitzer

Woods are in bloom again, inviting you to disappear into a new spectrum of colors and sounds and dreams on Perennial. Formed in Brooklyn in 2004, Woods have matured into a true independent institution, above and below the root, reliably emerging every few years with new music that grows towards the latest sky. Operating the Woodsist label since 2006 and curating the beloved homespun Woodsist Festival for the musical universe they’ve built, Perennial is the sound of a band on the edge of their 20th anniversary and still finding bold new ways to sound like (and challenge) themselves. Perennial grew from a bed of guitar/keyboard/drum loops by Woods head-in-chief Jeremy Earl, a form of winter night meditation that evolved into an unexplored mode of collaborative songwriting. With Earl’s starting points, he and bandmates Jarvis Taveniere and John Andrews convened, first at Earl’s house in New York, then at Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California, site of sessions for 2020’s Strange To Explain. With a view of the sparkling Pacific and tape rolling, they began to build, jamming over the loops, switching instruments, and developing a few dozen building blocks. The album’s resulting 11 songs, 4 of them instrumental, are in the classic Woods mode--shimmering, familiar, fractionally unsettling--but with the half-invisible infinity boxes of Earl’s loops burbling beneath each like a mysterious underground source. From source to seed to bloom, each loop unfolds into something unpredictable, from the jeweled pop of the aching “Little Black Flowers” to the ecstatic starlit freak-beat of “Another Side.” They are blossomings both far-out and comforting, like the Mellotronic cloud-hopping of “Between the Past,” or sometimes just plain comforting, like the widescreen snowglobe fantasia of the instrumental “White Winter Melody,” touched by Connor Gallaher’s pedal steel. Woods have long used the studio as a place of songwriting, naming 2007’s At Rear House after their shared dwelling and recording space. But Perennial also carries with it an even longer view of Woods. Emerging from the process alongside the music was Earl’s reflection that “perennial plants and flowers are nature’s loops,” an idea rolling under the album’s lyrics like the loops themselves. It certainly applies to the band, too, who have quietly tended to a long, committed project of being a band in the weird-ass 21st century, both individually and communally. Though separated by coasts, the communal sprit carries through Earl, Taveniere, and Andrews’ collaboration, a living embodiment of the freedoms rediscovered every time a new collectively created piece of music emerges. For nearly two decades, Woods have survived subgenres, anchored in the fertile soil below hashtags like lo-fi and freak-folk and psychedelic and indie, and built a shared history that’s something to marvel at. As the flagship band for Woodsist, they’ve accumulated a striking extended family of collaborators (and Woods alum) that have made the label one of the most dependable imprints in the kaleidoscopic low-key underground. It’s a glow that’s transferred whole to the blissed-out Woodsist Fests held in Accord, New York in recent years, which have folded in a wide range of diverse sounds, from the the jazz cosmoverse of the Sun Ra Arkestra and adventurous legends Yo La Tengo, to a hard-to-even-count family tree of contemporaries, like Kevin Morby (who served a few tours of duty as Woods bassist) and Kurt Vile (who released his 2009 debut on Woodsist), a living community in sound. Perennial carries all of this, shaped by decades, but made in the moment, and here right now. The smell of the flowers doesn’t remain, but sometimes the flowers do. Jesse Jarnow Recorded and mixed by Jarvis Taveniere at Panoramic House in Stinson Beach, CA with additional recording at The Ship in Los Angeles, CA and Cottekill Bird Sanctuary in Stone Ridge, NY. Produced by Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earl. Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering in Portland, OR. Jeremy Earl - vocals, guitars, drums, percussion, sk-5, mellotron, vibraphone, autoharp, loops Jarvis Taveniere - guitar, bass, upright bass, hammond, vocals John Andrews - piano, organs, mellotron, drums, vocals Connor Gallaher - Pedal Steel Kyle Forester - sax, wurlitzer

"If you can imagine a love child between MAC DEMARCO and SPAR-KLEHORSE, then this would be what you're left with." - SO YOUNG MAGA-ZINE
Raised in North Queensland, Australia, Jarrod Mahon is not one to shy away from bold new endeavors. Once parting ways with his previous record label in 2019, Mahon chose to go fully independent, relocating to Berlin in 2019 (where he still resides), despite having no contacts at all in the country. What’s more, having recorded/performed under the pseudonym Emerson Snowe for over a decade - during which time he home-recorded five albums and 13 EP’s, toured with the likes of King Krule or Ariel Pink, played showcases SXSW and the Great Escape, the works - Mahon took that brave, most uncommercial decision to release under his own name and start almost totally anew.
“There was never really a concept to that name Emerson Snowe other than having some kind of separation from who I was as a person,” Mahon explains, “using a moniker gave me that confidence to push myself further mentally and to give myself some kind of a freedom”. And through the process of creating what would become his debut album, Mahon saw that he had outgrown the need for this protective persona. ‘Everything Has A Life’ was meant to be the debut Snowe album”, he admits, “but after I finished mixing it with Syd Kemp, co-producer I realized that I had actually grown a lot and was much more comfort-able with who I am and what my personal beliefs are.”
The choice of ‘Everything Has A Life’ as the album title, pulled from beauteous opening track ‘All I Know’, neatly summarizes this new outlook: moving on from ‘self-pity’ of the past-self by becoming present for the loved ones around you, improving understanding of one’s own self, via the wider world at large.
That track marks the first written during a lockdown stint in LA where Mahon wrote and recorded every day for 2 months, produced nigh on 250 demos and birthed the bulk of the record. It also brought Mahon back to his all-time favorite, Sufjan Stevens’ Ilinois and its blend of widescreen orchestral landscapes and more candid, naked acoustic-leaning variations - an important influence for the album's stylistic contrasts. Another key inspiration for the record too brought Mahon back to his roots - those full-bloom strains of his Mum’s Beloved Neil Diamond, an annual Christmas irritant to Mahon as a child, yet an artist he’s come to respect in adulthood. “Whatever the reason, with age I came to love the big show band sounds,” he says, “the idea of a performer on stage with a mas-sive orchestra with strings was amazing to me.”
With the help of producer Syd Kemp (Ulrika Spacek, Vanishing Twin), such grand designs could be met. - “When we first met, he asked me if I would like real strings on it. I said of course.” Enter Magda Mclean on violin (Caroline/the Umlauts), and Gamaliel Rendle Traynor on Cello (Sweat, Fat White Family), whose strings helped lift the record to romantic new heights.
He continues: “I said to Syd that the only thing I wanted to achieve with this rec-ord was that I wanted it to make me cry at one point. And we got there eventual-ly.” The final culmination of all these strands, ’Everything Has A Life’ is indeed a treasure trove of emotive riches. Locking into that bittersweet, quintessentially ‘pop’ combination of triumphant rhythms and confessional, stream-of-consciousness lyrics plucked straight from the heart, Mahon faces up to years of substance abuse with a series of gorgeous, blushing melodies: “I was using, I was drinking, I was lying to my friends, I was messing up again, I was hiding from myself”, he joyously chants on ‘The Growing’.
A banquet fit for an indie king, Everything Has A Life is loaded with psych-pop lusciousness (‘All I Know’) and anthemic glam fuzz (‘Death Of The Ladies Man’, ‘Deadstar’, or ‘Sonny is my Best Friend’); recalling that foundational Sufjan Ste-vens influence too with shambling flecks of country (‘Charly (Romantic Heart)’). There’s also those lo-fi crepitations of ‘My Man’ and ‘I can’t’ harking back home-recorded demos that lie at the core of Mahon’s creative process.

Palma Music Studios, Oktober 2022. Die funkigen Vier aus Schweden werden während der sonnigen Tage beim Trinken von Margaritas und Estrella Damms gesichtet, aber nach der Siesta legen sie das laute Fundament für das achte Album der ELECTRIC BOYS."Die Pandemie inspirierte zu einigen ernsteren Themen, so dass "Ups!de Down", das 2021 erschien, ein etwas düstereres Album war, auch wenn die Hoffnung immer präsent war", sagt Conny Bloom, der Hauptsongschreiber der Band."Grand Explosivos", das neue Electric Boys-Album, das am 15. September über Mighty Music erscheint, ist jedoch genau das Gegenteil. Es könnte tatsächlich sein, dass die Jungs die beste Party seit "Groovus Maximus" schmeißen!

Das Album ist ein hart rockendes, melodiöses, funkiges und spaßiges Abenteuer, das zu einem Markenzeichen der Band geworden ist.Die erste Single "I've Got A Feelin'" wies den Weg in die klassischen Rock-Arenen, während die Folgesingle "Domestic Blitz" wie ein Maultier kickt und keine Gefangenen macht. (Oder vielleicht doch?)
Schauen Sie sich das Video an und entscheiden Sie selbst:). Die Jungs haben sichtlich Spaß daran, zusammen zu spielen und wir freuen uns auf ein verdammt gutes Partyalbum am Ende des Sommers.

Palma Music Studios, Oktober 2022. Die funkigen Vier aus Schweden werden während der sonnigen Tage beim Trinken von Margaritas und Estrella Damms gesichtet, aber nach der Siesta legen sie das laute Fundament für das achte Album der ELECTRIC BOYS."Die Pandemie inspirierte zu einigen ernsteren Themen, so dass "Ups!de Down", das 2021 erschien, ein etwas düstereres Album war, auch wenn die Hoffnung immer präsent war", sagt Conny Bloom, der Hauptsongschreiber der Band."Grand Explosivos", das neue Electric Boys-Album, das am 15. September über Mighty Music erscheint, ist jedoch genau das Gegenteil. Es könnte tatsächlich sein, dass die Jungs die beste Party seit "Groovus Maximus" schmeißen!

Das Album ist ein hart rockendes, melodiöses, funkiges und spaßiges Abenteuer, das zu einem Markenzeichen der Band geworden ist.Die erste Single "I've Got A Feelin'" wies den Weg in die klassischen Rock-Arenen, während die Folgesingle "Domestic Blitz" wie ein Maultier kickt und keine Gefangenen macht. (Oder vielleicht doch?)
Schauen Sie sich das Video an und entscheiden Sie selbst:). Die Jungs haben sichtlich Spaß daran, zusammen zu spielen und wir freuen uns auf ein verdammt gutes Partyalbum am Ende des Sommers.

In Rumi's poem A Great Wagon he writes of a place of total acceptance. "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there," It is a boundless, liminal space where we can release the judgments we make and carry of ourselves, and the comparisons to others. When we think of this field, there is a sense of tranquility that only comes when we are undisturbed by the shadow self and see existence as neither bright nor dim, white nor black. But as lead singer Greg Bertens explains, arriving there is a whole different story. "This is a poem I've returned to over the years, and I love the idea of this place, but getting there is life's journey." Bertens adds "I think the longing for and elusiveness of this field is a recurring theme in our music." Field is enveloped by themes of regret, disconnection and frustration but with the space to understand that these feelings are a natural part of the struggle between reconciling the inner and outer self. The Los Angeles/San Francisco-based group have been indie shoegaze stalwarts since their formation in 2001. After two decades and a handful of line-up changes, their extensive discography presents a dynamically textural, lush psychedelic rock that has featured guest appearances by members of Pavement, My Bloody Valentine, and Snow Patrol, among others. 2021's LP We Weren't Here was hailed for its dense instrumental blanket, where unrelenting hi-hats and heavy kicks exist alongside dreamy drone guitar. This propulsive nature permeates Field, as members Bertens, Noël Brydebell (vocals), Nyles Lannon (guitar), Jason Ruck (synths), Justin LaBo (bass), and Adam Wade (drums) produce a kaleidoscopic sonic landscape. Patient, sprawling instrumentation builds a foundation in which Bertens' themes of endurance, perseverance and clarity can bloom with a considered poise. As a lyricist who writes in response to the instrumental arrangements, rather than a focus on a specific theme or person, Field is a testament to Film School's ability to create in the moment, and to showcase the magic that stems from when we are truly present. Album opener "Tape Rewind" is a swirling rush of color, as sustained guitars, darkened bass lines and urgent, percussive swells dance alongside each other. "This is the newest of all the songs on the record and feels like a new level of heaviness for the band," Bertens explains, noting that its lyrical context of struggling to move past trauma adds to its cathartic essence. Field is bookended by heavier themes, with closer "All I'll Ever Be" taking on the perspective of those we hurt when we embrace our own toxic behaviors. Originally written to be a simple acoustic guitar and vocals song soon turned into an ethereal, effects-laden composition, with Noël's hazy lead vocals ushering in a new-found acceptance. "It's all I want / To be released / And all I can be," she laments, cementing Field's message of accepting ourselves in whatever form we find ourselves in. "Defending Ruins" is a murky relentless underworld, inspired by the freewheeling tones of Texas-based band Holy Wave. "Defending the ruins, defending remains," Bertens spits, among a richly-layered outro. "Don't You Ever" confirms Film School's ability to merge both delicate and growling instrumentation throughout the album, with the song's softly spoken section hovering above sparkling guitar. "Is This A Hotel" bends towards the electronic aspects of the band, with wailing synths accompanying a story of bitter desire. With over two decades in the industry, Field cements Film School as a distinct, dominant force in the shoegaze scene. Soaked in an emotionally open, imaginative atmosphere, the album is both singular and expansive, and leaves the door open for a constantly evolving interpretation. Film School have never confined themselves to the rigidity of specifics, and it's on Field that they urge us to look beyond the binary of certainty, and to take a second look

The latest EP from Drab Majesty marks the start of a stirring new chapter in the band's majestic legacy. Written during a 2021 retreat to the remote coastal Oregon town of Yachats, Deb Demure leaned into the neo- psychedelic resonance of a uniquely bowl - shaped 12 -string Ovation acoustic/electric guitar. After early morning hikes in the rain, Deb would record ambient guitar experiments the rest of the day, tapping into "flow states," letting the sound lead the way. These sessions were then refined or recreated, and later elevated further with key collaborations by Rachel Goswell (Slowdive), Justin Meldal Johnson (Beck, M83, Air), and Ben Greenberg (Uniform, Circular Ruin Studio). An Object In Motion is true to its title, capturing the chrysalis moment of an artist evolving, reborn and untet hered, silhouetted against an open horizon. "Cape Perpetua" kicks off the collection's divergent palette: sparkling acoustic fingerpicking refracted through delay, equal parts raga and reverie. Melodies and moods congeal and dissipate, at the threshold of rustic American primitivism, brooding neo-folk, and pastoral melancholia. "The Skin And The Glove" deploys jangle to different effect baggy, soaring, grey skied kaleidoscopic pop in the spirit of Stone Roses, Primal Scream, and The Glove. Rachel Goswell lends her iconic freefall voice to The Cure - esque ballad, "Vanity," infusing poetic gravity to the doomed refrain: "If the valve breaks / then the earth quakes / and history finds a way / to put you in your place." "Yield To Force", the closing track of the EP, may be the most anomalous offering of the set. A 15 minute instrumental odyssey of cyclical strings, ominous slide guitar, and simmering synthesizer, the piece sways and spirals like a long zoom into distant storm clouds. Demure finesses the guitar with a restless but regal grandeur, unfolding a panorama of peaks, shadows, and plateaus. It's music both intuitive and prophetic, tracing the slow swing of pendulums across an endless plain. Taken as a whole, An Object In Motion presents a showcase of potential futures from Drab's evolving domain, their sound poised to bloom at the precipice of transformation.

Vargmal Records continues to explore immersive, thought-provoking techno with an abstract spirit by presenting Corners EP from the emergent collaborative UK project Terrain. The Kosovo-based label was launched in 2022 with a considered balance of classic and contemporary techno, featuring Italian techno pioneer Leo Anibaldi and commissioning attendant remixes by contemporary Italian maestro Donato Dozzy.

Continuing the label's embrace of subliminal sounds for adventurous dance floors, Terrain deliver four tracks of snaking, subtle rhythms pivoting away from rigid structures towards a more fluid kind of techno. It's a sound the duo of Joe Baker and Voytek Stanley channeled on their debut release and they expand on the principles from that record in superlative style on Corners.

The EP opens up with the weighted pressure of 'Blind Spot', a dense workout pivoting on a fractured kick punching out underneath interwoven sheets of texture and atmosphere. 'Vintage' develops this theme with dubby chord washes which bloom out over the fine detail of the deceptively complex beat configuration. 'Corners' meanwhile adjusts the temperature from cooly meditative to subtly fierce accents Terrain edge into their sound.

It's an elegant fusion that remains at ease with the overall mood of the EP, but a noticeable shift in energy for the B side. 'Singularity' completes the picture with additional input from Localhost, welcoming layers of noisy melodics which sit comfortably on top of Terrain's dubby pulses. More open and searching than the introspection which holds sway elsewhere, it's a tonal shift that opens the sound of Terrain out and brings a sense of balance to their assured second record.

Fünf legendäre Charlie-Parker-Klassiker in einem luxuriösen LP-Set!

Würde man diese Alben als Original-LPs kaufen wollen, müsste man einen Kredit aufnehmen. Deshalb erscheinen die legendären Charlie-Parker-LPs jetzt als Special Collector’s Edition Box-Set! Fünf der größten (und meist-verkauften) Bebop-Alben aller Zeiten als Neuauflage im Original-10-inch-Format.

Neu gemastert von Alex Abrash bei AA Mastering, 180g- Vinylpressungen, originalgetreue Reproduktionen des Original Artworks von David Stone Martin. Im Schuber befindet sich auch ein 10x10-inch großes Buch mit neuen und exklusiven Linernotes von Ethan Iverson, einem neuen Aufsatz von Autor David Ritz und vollständigen Track-by-Track-Notizen.

Die Alben: „Charlie Parker With Strings“ (1950), “Bird & Diz” (1952), “Plays South Of The Border” (1952), “Charlie Parker With Strings Vol. 2” (1953), „Charlie Parker” (1954)

Julian Cannonball Adderley's only Blue Note album, Somethin' Else, would likely forever be famous in music lore if just for the presence of Miles Davis. The iconic composer/trumpeter steps into the role of sideman on the 1958 set, one of just a handful of times he'd make such a move after the calendar passed the mid-1950s. Yet evaluating Somethin' Else strictly on Davis' involvement misses the big picture. Plain and simple, Adderley's jubilant work remains a jazz landmark due to the chemistry of its Hall of Fame personnel, enthusiasm of its participants, and sophistication of its arrangements – not to mention the reference-grade production and inclusion of the definitive renditions of two all-time jazz standards.

Limited to 6,000 numbered copies, pressed on dead-quiet MoFi SuperVinyl at RTI, and mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's ultra-hi-fi UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP collector's edition pays tribute to the record's merit and includes the bonus track "Allison's Uncle." Offering reference-calibre sonics, this spectacular collector's version provides a clear, transparent, ultra-dynamic, and up-close view of a cornerstone effort that witnesses Adderley and Davis sharing horn duty alone for the only time in their fabled careers – an arrangement that occurred as a result of Adderley having joined Davis' majestic sextet a year prior.

The premium packaging and beautiful presentation of the UD1S Somethin' Else pressing befit its extremely select status. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendour of the recording. No expense has been spared. Aurally and visually, this UD1S reissue exists as a curatorial artefact meant to be preserved, touched, and examined. It is made for discerning listeners that prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in the art – and everything involved with the album, from the iconic photos to the gorgeous finishes.

The vibrant potency reveals itself openly on an analogue set that provides full-range reproduction of an ensemble that also includes pianist Hank Jones, bassist Sam Jones, and drummer Art Blakey. Each and every snare hit, downbeat, and cymbal splash registered by the latter take on realistic proportions, blooming and decaying as they would right in front of you on a stage. Jones' foundational bass lines register with uncommon depth and palpability, the litheness of the strings and fullness of the instrument epitomizing the definition of rhythm. Stellar, too, are the surefooted 88s. Sublime in scale, tonality, and attack, with the delineation such you can practically separate the white and black keys in your mind. As for that liquid interplay between Adderley and Davis? Breathtakingly lifelike in timbre, naturalism, purity, and presence. This collector's version takes you there – there being Rudy Van Gelder's legendary New Jersey studio in March 1958 to witness it all unfold, again and again.

For reasons that extend far beyond the outstanding playing and flawless repertoire, Somethin' Else is without question a record you'll always want to watch and hear come together. As veteran critic Bob Blumenthal observed writing about the album four decades after its release, "The instant rapport achieved by the quintet is thus the product of much shared and common history, though the tensile strength that they create throughout created a totally unique feeling that can be attributed to the sensitive musicianship of all concerned, including the supposedly hard bopping leader and drummer." Such inimitable feeling, or emotion, courses throughout every passage, and no where more obviously than on "Autumn Leaves" and "Love for Sale."

Without question, the discreet interpretations of the Johnny Mercer and Cole Porter songs, respectively, found on Somethin' Else have long been considered part of jazz's alluring mystique. Adderley and Davis bring contrasting approaches to the table yet sound of a singular mind on "Autumn Leaves," with the latter's muted trumpet and the headliner's lush alto saxophone dovetailing into a performance that endures as a blueprint for expression, counterpoint, sophistication, fluidity, and linearity. Blues, melody, and romance pour from their horns. Their bandmates, picking up on the intimate vibe and calm mood here – as well as on the spry, head-over-heels spirit of "Love for Sale" – join in on the conversation with sharp economy and float-on-air roundedness.

Not to undersell the other three numbers, all deserving five-star status. Twelve measures in length, the title track offers a slow burn in swing. Written by Adderley's brother, Nat, the 12-bar "One for Daddy-O" transmits funk flavors. The closing "Dancing in the Dark" pops with lushness and temptation, its stream of bold colours and understated textures calling for a moonlight twirl, or at least fantasies suggestive of a memorable night. Somethin' else, indeed.

New album from West Virginia based singer-songwriter, William Matheny, set for release on Tyler Childers' Hickman Holler Records. While That Grand, Old Feeling is a document of Matheny’s own journey as a seeker, he hopes that the album can inspire anyone else out there searching for meaning in their own lives, whether they’re searching at a truck stop or in an album of old photographs.“I feel like I've just been trying to recapture that youthful excitement my entire life, trying to regain that clarity and that feeling of purpose,” he says. “And it comes and goes. I mostly seem to be looking for it at gas stations and rest areas and at gigs. But I think a lot of people are probably looking for it in a lot of places like that, too. Pilgrim to pilgrim, I hope you find it.”

"When the call came from WDR Rockpalast, we were thrilled - And the joy
grew from day to day," says Peter Bursch, head of the German Krautrock
legend Broselmaschine, founded in 1968 by "Germany's most famous
guitar teacher".Back in 1968, the Heinrich-Robert coalmine in Hamm was
still in its full bloom
Coal had been mined there since 1901, the year in which the Heinrich and Robert
shafts - as they are called in miners' jargon - were "abgeteuft", followed by the
Franz shaft in 1923. On November 10, 1997, the colliery closed its doors forever.
In the colliery's former wage hall, where the miners used to receive their
envelopes with their weekly wages, Broselmaschine rolled out carpets, plugged in
cables and set up their instruments on April 20, 2021. The high-ceilinged rooms
not only provided a matchless scenery, but also the basis for a unique ambient
sound. The perfect setting for Broselmaschine. But Corona had almost
completely paralyzed public life at this point; the pandemic was taking its toll on
the entire cultural scene. Spectators were not allowed to the events. The artists
and bands gave concerts anyway, sometimes from their flats, rehearsal rooms or
in small, empty clubs, and then came to the fans' homes via live stream. This also
applied for the WDR's Rockpalast with its "Offstage" series. The makers of
Rockpalast organized concerts with performances by artists in special places
that were deserted during the lockdown. That had its own charm and was
something very special.
This was also the case with Broselmaschine. The band played almost exclusively
songs from their latest studio album "Elegy" from 2019, as well as the title track
of the previous album "Indian Camel" and as a finale the Marc Bolan cover of
"Children Of The Revolution". Broselmaschine put on a great performance, no one
missed the audience that was not physically present. But it was there, this
audience. And it was in the hearts of the musicians. You can feel this with every
note this outstanding band was playing. Never were Broselmaschine more
musically valuable than on that special occasion.But judge for yourself.
Unique Rockpalast concert OFFSTAGE from the Corona era, recorded on April 20,
2021 at Heinrich-Robert colliery in Hamm, Germany - also available on vinyl

On 'Love Hallucination' Jessy Lanza is in control as a songwriter and producer, flexing her skills in the studio and rebuilding her sound, taking chances with production and energy in all directions, from club-ready, to downbeat and sultry, with the theme of trusting yourself in the moment and using intuition as a compass driving the record forward. ‘Love Hallucination’ is the sound of an artist in bloom, an album of big emotions and big songs, with direct, personal lyrics, such as the upbeat but panicked opener 'Don't Leave Me Now' and the 2-step drama of 'Midnight Ontario', or 'Limbo', an ear worm disco stomper about produced with Marco 'Tensnake' Niermeski. Also featured as co-producers are David Kennedy (Pearson Sound), adding slick arrangements for the club, long-time collaborator Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys), and Paul White. ‘Love Hallucination’ is a bold and immediate record from Jessy Lanza, her most clear, authentic and best to date.

'Jump Into Love' is the new album from Half Japanese, true DIY noise-rock royalty, led by the ever-effervescent Jad Fair. It's a meeting of minds, a coming together from the world's favourite indie-alt-rock outsiders. Atypically out there and off-kilter, the album wears its heart on its sleeve through a cascade of new, dark and brooding songs from the band who would be king. Loved by Kurt Cobain, Daniel Johnston, Penn Jillette and outsiders everywhere, Half Japanese continue their quest for answers; creating a soundscape for a post-zombie land where bells chime and it's OK to say "Yes". It's another adventure; series 20 from an introspective parallel world where the super prolific Jad Fair cogitates on life, love, giants, the possessed and even bigger issues that simply swell the brain. Musing on the writing process, Jad explains "I feel a need to do music and do song writing. It's something I really miss when I'm not doing it. There's a certain amount of tranquillity that's obtained from the fact that you can be working on songs each day. I think you use that certain portion of your brain that is otherwise not used. I kind of kind of prefer using it than not using it." Half Japanese currently includes Jad with John Sluggett, Gilles-Vincent Rieder, Mick Hobbs and Jason Willett, a veritable who's who of DIY indie culture. 'Jump Into Love' was recorded at Tempo House, Baltimore, Russian Recording, Bloomington Indiana, Studio de la Trappe, Donneville France and la Casamurada, Tarragona Spain. The album was mixed by long time Half Japanese sparring partner Jason Willett at his home in Baltimore, Maryland. "Amid hard-riff jams, swinging ditties, lovelorn ballads and other catchy gems, Jad persistently breathes life into the Half Japanese" NPR "One of indie rock's most reliable sources of positivity" Pitchfork

LP includes Poster.

When Sacred Bones first began their Mort Garson reissue project in 2019 with a proper reissue of Plantasia, the Garson-naissance began in earnest. Soon after, you could hear Mort Garson and his Moogs bubbling up on TV shows, documentaries, podcasts, hip-hop tracks, or anywhere else, the man a cultural phenomenon once more.

Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom.

Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man's sound. There's the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson) alongside some newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is "Zoos of the World," where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slumbering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name.

The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like "Western Dragon," but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information. The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson's soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. But for decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive.

So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort's many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.

Maybe at the time it scanned as crass and opportunistic for Garson to apply his keyboards to subjects like astrological signs, the occult, hippiedom, houseplants, or the moon landing. But more than most other electronic music pioneers of his ilk, Garson foresaw the integration of such electronics into our daily lives, how they would allow us to engage with the world.

LP includes Poster.

When Sacred Bones first began their Mort Garson reissue project in 2019 with a proper reissue of Plantasia, the Garson-naissance began in earnest. Soon after, you could hear Mort Garson and his Moogs bubbling up on TV shows, documentaries, podcasts, hip-hop tracks, or anywhere else, the man a cultural phenomenon once more.

Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom.

Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man's sound. There's the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson) alongside some newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is "Zoos of the World," where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slumbering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name.

The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like "Western Dragon," but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information. The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson's soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. But for decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive.

So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort's many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.

Maybe at the time it scanned as crass and opportunistic for Garson to apply his keyboards to subjects like astrological signs, the occult, hippiedom, houseplants, or the moon landing. But more than most other electronic music pioneers of his ilk, Garson foresaw the integration of such electronics into our daily lives, how they would allow us to engage with the world.

True to themselves and their art, as always, no matter the cost, Axe To Fall continues to push relentlessly forward, much like a shark that needs to always keep swimming to survive. Where No Heroes was a refinement and broadening of hostilities declared on previous assaults such as Jane Doe, Axe To Fall returns to the more AmRep-inspired noisecore abrasions of You Fail Me while also updating and making vital the thrash influences that defined earlier Converge efforts (Caring and Killing, Petitioning the Empty Sky) and retaining the hardcore hostilities and frantic pace so vital to their foundation.

Sophistication is a very apt description of both the music and the performing artist that is Bill Albright (real name Anthony Bills). Born in 1961 and raised in Baltimore, MD. Albright received a vocational as well as an associates degree in Electrical Engineering and Technology during 1981 the same year as he was blessed with the birth of his son Anthony Jr. From 1982 through to 1985 Bill had moved to New York City to model professionally for several major retail corporations such as Macy’s and Bloomingdales making good use of 170 pounds, six feet tall frame and handsome photogenic looks, while still finding time to hone his singing, songwriting and studio engineering skills through attending art Composers Theatre. His musical management and composing skills were to continue upon his return to his native Baltimore in 1986 as the prelude to him joining the national fundraising touring team for The United Negro College Fund in conjunction with the National Basket Ball Association (NBA) Slam Dunk Contests. Interacting with such celebrity players as Magic Johnson, Arsenio Hall, Spike Lee and Robert Townsend and Atlanta Hawks team mates Spud Webb and Dominique Wilkins.



Through his travels during 1989 Albright decided to settle in Atlanta, GA, making it his home to this present day. Once settled he founded his own cleaning business ‘All Bright Cleaning Services Inc’ built on good old-fashioned ethics of hard work and a strong determination to succeed, the exact same traits that he would later display in his future musical journey. While providing his cleaning services to major commercial companies, home, office and car detailing Albright found the time to continue pursuing his musical ambitions with a strong emphasis on live and recorded performances. In 1993 Albright formed ‘Bill Albright Productions Inc’ working with the late Keith “Keecho” Rawls the former Keyboardist and Musical Director for Peabo Bryson. Albright’s work has often been likened to Peabo’s for obvious reasons as well as Luther Vandross and Johnny Gill, He also draws inspiration from the stars of his youth Nat King Cole, The Isley Brothers, Frankie Beverley and Marvin Gaye amongst others. Albrights productions while being contemporary still retain an old school leaning which widens his appeal to a broader audience. Feeling that the time wasn’t right to release his material Albright continued with his successful cleaning business and live performances, that was until 2022 when he released the first of his productions (as a download only) the stylish “Sitting By The Phone” which gives more than a passing nod to Billy Stewart’s timeless classic “Sitting In The Park” but recorded in Albright’s own unique way. Albright’s second and forthcoming release is the more contemporary mid-tempo mover “In The Middle Of The Night” (only available as a download in the United States) but is due for a simultaneous vinyl 45 release in the UK paired with the aforementioned “Sitting By The Phone” as Soul Junction’s next 45 outing.

Part fantastical historic sonic biopic, part anthropologic
journey into the deep roots of Belgium’s monstrous
cosmic rock sound, this wholly individualistic concept
album combines the lead members of the mighty COS
(Daniel Schell and Pascale Son) with studio genius
Alain Pierre (Ô Sidarta / Des morts) and celebrated
Dutch progressive rock singer Dick Annegarn, for what
many consider to be both the overlooked hiding place
of Belgium’s deepest psychedelic moment and
European prog’s lost map to the ‘Franco-Flemish
Boom’.
 Emerging from the wider musical family that counted
Marc Moulin, Placebo and Marc Hollander amongst its
creative kin, Daniel Schell’s most profound conceptual
project ambitiously combines the tale of the heroic
historical figure of Count Egmont (1522–1568), while
simultaneously tracing the evolution of the ud, or oud,
(‘the grandfather of the guitar’) in this multifarious
hallucinogenic epic.
 Featuring key members of other collectable groups
such as drummer Felix Simtaine from Solis Lacus and
bass player Jean-Louis Baudoin from the mythical
Classroom (COS predecessor), this best-kept secret
vinyl release also harbours the voices of Dirk Bogaert
(of Belgian hard rockers Waterloo), as well as Catalan
singer Ilona Chale (Marc Hollander / Aksak Maboul)
before her later tenure as the COS front woman.
 Initially released in 1978 via Zeuhl school distributors
Free Bird alongside French pressings of Don Cherry,
Jacques Thollot and CAN, it is plain to understand the
niche nature of this maligned ‘lost COS’ LP as it finally
blooms from between the cracked branches of
European jazz-rock-synth-psych-prog-pop history…
and beyond

Blue Lake is the musical moniker of American born, Copenhagen based multidisciplinary artist and musician Jason Dungan, who signs to the Tonal Union imprint for the release of his new longform album ‘Sun Arcs’. It follows 2022’s release ‘Stikling’, earning a nomination for ‘Album of the Year’ at the Danish Music Awards plus warm praise from The Hum blog and musicians and DJs alike including Jack Rollo (Time is Away/NTS) and Carla dal Forno. A self taught player, Dungan began freely experimenting with self-built multi-string instruments, preferring to build his own hybrid 48-string zither and working in the realms of left-field ambient music, off kilter folk and improvised acoustic minimalism.

The starting point of ‘Sun Arcs’ saw Jason travel for a week alone to Andersabo, a cabin set in the idyllic Swedish woods just outside of Unnaryd, known also as the music project, festival and residency space which has been run by Dungan since 2016, hosting artists like Sofie Birch, Johan Carøe and Ellen Arkbro. Whilst writing 1-2 pieces per day, a conscious decision was made to leave behind everyday distractions and shut out the outside world to instead focus on the natural passage of time as Dungan recalls: “My only sense of time came from these daily walks out in the woods with my dog, and an awareness of the sun’s path as it moved across the sky each day.”

The album’s immersive world unfolds with the opener ‘Dallas’, an ode to his home state and a musical synthesis of these two disparate spaces (Texas and Denmark), the touchstones of Dungan’s life. A folk-esque single acoustic builds to a flowing arrangement of clarinets, organ and cello drones coupled with percussion. ‘Green-Yellow Field’ chimes in as the first of two solo oriented zither recordings twinned with the dreamlike title track ‘Sun Arcs’, both densely rich as cascading and overlapping harmonic tones resound. ‘Bloom’ emerges with a krautrock psyche before an eruption of cello drones, slide guitar and free-ranging zither playing, ushering in the anticipation of spring. With half of the recordings conceived in Andersabo, Jason returned to Copenhagen to form the album's centre piece ‘Rain Cycle’ which features a tempered Roland drum machine alongside shifting zither improvisations. ‘Writing’ explores the shimmering harp-like qualities of sweeping playing figurations with Dungan mapping out adjusted tuning “zones” on the zither for unconventional but creatively liberating effects. ‘Fur’ captures the feeling of openness and the momentum of time, seeing Dungan perform waves of solo clarinet, often in one takes and embellished with textural drones, a zither solo, and layers of guitar. ‘Wavelength’ the album's closer is fondly inspired by the film works of Michael Snow and Don Cherry’s seminal live album ‘Blue Lake’ (1974), as it builds out from a drone-generated zither chord and features an alto recorder solo. Dungan found a deep connection to Cherry’s stripped back performance ethos, focusing on the core beauty of minimal instrumentation creating a genre-less meeting between folk and jazz. A dialogue is formed between the solo and the bandlike performances, interlinked in a geographical duality with all finding a sense of commonplace as musical sketches of visited landscapes. The bountiful instrumentation ebbs and flows as further layers emerge with Dungan constructing his material much like an artist would, recording and reviewing, adding and subtracting.

Musically it portrays a form of double life led by an American-identifying person living in Scandinavia, and a new found presence in Denmark, seeking out underdeveloped marshlands and barren stretches of beach adrift from other rhythms and distractions. Highlighting their individual and potent importance Dungan concludes: “Both places feel like “me”, I think on some level the music is always some kind of self-portrait.” ‘Sun Arcs’ depicts the intricate balance of nature’s cycles and the paths outlined by the seasons, from a winter dormancy to a warm sun drenched scene. The album scales new glorying heights and further defines Dungan’s musical narrative, inhabiting a unique space in left-field, improvised and experimental music, borning his most accomplished compositions to date. A singular and visionary expression, drawing on an array of instruments and sound worlds with a renewed sense of joy and discovery.

The album's rich tapestry was mixed by Jeff Zeigler (Laraaji, Mary Lattimore, Kurt Vile /Steve Gunn) and mastered by Stephan Mathieu (Kali Malone, KMRU, Félicia Atkinson).

American Football (LP3) is the third album from the scene giants - American Football. American Football’s original triumph, on their 1999 self-titled debut, was to reunite two shy siblings: emo and post-rock. It was a pioneering album where lyrical clarity was obscured and complicated by the stealth musical textures surrounding it. Like Slint’s Spiderland, or Codeine’s The White Birch, even Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, American Football asked far more questions than it cared to answer. But there wasn’t a band around anymore to explain it, anyway. The three young men who made the album – Mike Kinsella, Steve Holmes, and Steve Lamos – split up pretty much on its release. Fifteen years later, American Football reunited (now as a four-piece, with the addition of Nate Kinsella). They played far larger shows than in their original incarnation and recorded their long-anticipated second album, 2016’s American Football (LP2). The release was widely praised, but the band members still felt like their best work was yet to come. ‘I feel like the second album was us figuring it out,’ says Nate. ‘For me, it wasn’t quite done. I knew there was still more.’ Enter American Football (LP3). ‘We put a lot of time and a lot of energy into it,’ says Mike. ‘We were all thoughtful about what we wanted to put out there. Last time, it was figuring out how to use all of our different arms. This time, we were like – Ok we have these arms, let’s use them.’ The band used the same producer, Jason Cupp, and recorded the album at the same studio (Arc Studios in Omaha, Nebraska) as its predecessor – yet they approached it in a markedly different way. There was a determination to let the songs breathe, to trust in ideas finding their own pace. The final result is a definite, and deliberate, stretching of the band.

The post-industrial Ruhr-Area has been an indisputable part of Germany's techno landscape since the very beginning. More than 30 years after techno's golden era and after a manifold challenging pandemic, the scene and its sounds are blooming like never before. Ahmet Sisman and his project The Third Room can be described as key factors for both the area's ongoing, sustainable dedication to electronic music and its current success, being more and more embedded in cultural contexts and society overall.

It's unsurprising that the first album of Ahmet Sisman, the multitalented artist and man of action, is a well-considered mix of familiar and pioneering sounds, enriched by countless influences within and beyond technos constantly evolving sub-genre scenery. With a sophisticated 50/50 mix of four on the floor strikes and innovative breaks, Sisman manages to hit a sweet spot between raw but groovy, experimental but subtle nostalgia, melodious but noisy.

All this is already worthy of a listen, but placed in context, it perfectly fits the musical approach of the Ruhr-Areas biggest transcendental techno project - The Stone Techno Series and Festival. Like the bound-breaking release series of the last two years, 'The Third Space' maintains the metallic and fierce sound vision of a coal mining tradition with everlasting impact. The time travel through industrialization and renaturation continues here with T3R008 and gains a whole new dimension from Sisman's skilled handwriting.

In the quiet surrounding the pandemic, Madeline Kenney made sonic sketches in the basement studio she shared with her then-partner. She arranged phrases that called her—the sharp knife of a synth cutting a path along a blooming arpeggio, drums stuttering firm and tight. Working this way, she amassed a collection of songs she had no particular aims for. Some formed her 2021 EP Summer Quarter, others languished.

But in 2022, Kenney’s partner left suddenly and without warning, plunging her into the solitary act of untangling what happened. In the wake of her ensuing depression, she revisited these songs and found in them something prescient. She’d already laid the foundation for A New Reality Mind.

That her relationship’s end came without warning is only half true, though. The warnings were in the feelings and fears that inspired Kenney’s critically-acclaimed third album, Sucker’s Lunch (2020), which was co-produced by Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes) and centered around the idea of flinging oneself freely into the seemingly-assured destruction of new love, come what may.

If sonically Sucker’s Lunch was letting yourself be pulled into the warm bath of a good story, A New Reality Mind reflects the harsh light of truth coming to break the spell. But as sobering as morning light can be, there’s brilliance to it, too. To see in the clarity of day is a gift. A revolution. Rather than reckoning with love lost, the songs on A New Reality Mind grapple with the self that chose to fall. “I guess I only needed to look twice / Reflected in my attitude, my constant compromise,” Kenney sings on “Red Emotion,” the musical landscape screeching and gasping around her observations of how she made herself small to keep the dream of love alive.

These notions of sight and vision pervade the record as Kenney stands before the infinity mirror of selves she’s been to preserve bonds in her life. On “I Drew a Line,” Kenney contends with the stories she’s told herself to keep plodding along, and the way those stories shape her perceived reality. She invokes John Berger’s Ways of Seeing—“Everything around the image is part of its meaning,” we hear him say. “Everything around it confirms and consolidates its meaning.” Here, Kenney isn’t interested in shaming herself for being carried away by the fantasies of the heart, but rather in investigating the unavoidably human propensity to do so. “I, like everyone else, am muddling through my most ordinary disaster of a life,” she acknowledges, a sentiment which reverberates through album opener “Plain Boring Disaster.” “I don’t need to start again,” she sings at the song’s close. “But I can change when it ends.” We may all be doomed to repetitive, ordinary heartbreaks, Kenney realizes, but at least we can cultivate a capacity to witness our missteps and build new realities for ourselves.

This is Kenney’s most expansive work, while also her most solitary. Produced and recorded alone in her basement, these songs are manifestations of what it feels like to be transformed by pain. Textures collide and collude; sonic ornaments emerge and dissipate capriciously; saxophones soar untamed, as on the 80s pop elegy to self-sacrifice, “Reality Mind”. These songs beg you to dance, then pull the rug out from under you once you’ve caught the beat, leaving you dizzy like the whiplash of love’s end.

But in the propulsive power of A New Reality Mind, there’s also acceptance, self-forgiveness, and a willingness to move forward into life, with all its ways of making a sucker of you. “That way of living, I’m over it,” Kenney declares of the habits that hold her back on “Superficial Conversation”. “I do not need to be reminded of what I did,” she assures, the song opening wide and beaming, like a smile expanding to taste a new breath of air.

Did you know that if we go back 10 generations, we could count for each of us some 2,046 ancestors, going back 20 generations there would be 2.097.150 ancestors and going back 40 generations each of us would have more than a trillion ancestors, which is more than all the people who have ever lived on earth?

This complicated paradox, known as the Pedigree Collapse, however, leads to the simple conclusion that we all share at least one ancestor with each other.

Inspired by this reflection, "How many ancestors do we have?" is the latest EP by Woxow, sound mixologist and mastermind of Little Beat More, translating the concept into a profound journey in search of the roots of music, to find that ancestral vibration that has resonated in every human being since the dawn of time.

Jazz atmospheres, refined hip hop beats, world music overtones, dub rhythms and reggae reminiscences, all enriched by the dense and meaningful voices of London's Reggae RoastMC Natty Campbell, the eclectic and electric Raashan Ahmad and the legendary rapper and
performance poet Azeem, bringing to light the infinite connections that unite all humanity.

The album is further enriched by the precious remixes of underground legend Koralle, electronic shaman Deela, dub master Paolo Baldini Dubfiles, and gifted hip-hop head Luke Beats, who hybridise Woxow's ancestral vision with their skillful artistry, giving a new dimension to the tracks.

The artwork by visual artist and filmmaker Simone Brillarelli captures the essence of the album in a vibrant bloom of colourful flowers sharing the same soil, and ultimately the same planet, reiterating the message of shared family and unity that is celebrated in the music.

The EP is available both as a gatefold with two 7-inch vinyls and as a single 12-inch vinyl, as well as digital. Join the family now.

Did you know that if we go back 10 generations, we could count for each of us some 2,046 ancestors, going back 20 generations there would be 2.097.150 ancestors and going back 40 generations each of us would have more than a trillion ancestors, which is more than all the people who have ever lived on earth?

This complicated paradox, known as the Pedigree Collapse, however, leads to the simple conclusion that we all share at least one ancestor with each other.

Inspired by this reflection, "How many ancestors do we have?" is the latest EP by Woxow, sound mixologist and mastermind of Little Beat More, translating the concept into a profound journey in search of the roots of music, to find that ancestral vibration that has resonated in every human being since the dawn of time.

Jazz atmospheres, refined hip hop beats, world music overtones, dub rhythms and reggae reminiscences, all enriched by the dense and meaningful voices of London's Reggae RoastMC Natty Campbell, the eclectic and electric Raashan Ahmad and the legendary rapper and
performance poet Azeem, bringing to light the infinite connections that unite all humanity.

The album is further enriched by the precious remixes of underground legend Koralle, electronic shaman Deela, dub master Paolo Baldini Dubfiles, and gifted hip-hop head Luke Beats, who hybridise Woxow's ancestral vision with their skillful artistry, giving a new dimension to the tracks.

The artwork by visual artist and filmmaker Simone Brillarelli captures the essence of the album in a vibrant bloom of colourful flowers sharing the same soil, and ultimately the same planet, reiterating the message of shared family and unity that is celebrated in the music.

The EP is available both as a gatefold with two 7-inch vinyls and as a single 12-inch vinyl, as well as digital. Join the family now.

Did you know that if we go back 10 generations, we could count for each of us some 2,046 ancestors, going back 20 generations there would be 2.097.150 ancestors and going back 40 generations each of us would have more than a trillion ancestors, which is more than all the people who have ever lived on earth?

This complicated paradox, known as the Pedigree Collapse, however, leads to the simple conclusion that we all share at least one ancestor with each other.

Inspired by this reflection, "How many ancestors do we have?" is the latest EP by Woxow, sound mixologist and mastermind of Little Beat More, translating the concept into a profound journey in search of the roots of music, to find that ancestral vibration that has resonated in every human being since the dawn of time.

Jazz atmospheres, refined hip hop beats, world music overtones, dub rhythms and reggae reminiscences, all enriched by the dense and meaningful voices of London's Reggae RoastMC Natty Campbell, the eclectic and electric Raashan Ahmad and the legendary rapper and
performance poet Azeem, bringing to light the infinite connections that unite all humanity.

The album is further enriched by the precious remixes of underground legend Koralle, electronic shaman Deela, dub master Paolo Baldini Dubfiles, and gifted hip-hop head Luke Beats, who hybridise Woxow's ancestral vision with their skillful artistry, giving a new dimension to the tracks.

The artwork by visual artist and filmmaker Simone Brillarelli captures the essence of the album in a vibrant bloom of colourful flowers sharing the same soil, and ultimately the same planet, reiterating the message of shared family and unity that is celebrated in the music.

The EP is available both as a gatefold with two 7-inch vinyls and as a single 12-inch vinyl, as well as digital. Join the family now.

Raveena Aurora’s debut album was released on EMPIRE in 2019. As she wrote on social media the evening of its release, “What a dream to be able to give u this piece of my soul.”

The album features 12 songs exploring themes of sexuality, womanhood, and her Indian heritage. Raveena cites Sade, Corinne Bailey Rae, Minnie Riperton, and Indian singer, Asha Puthli, as inspirations.

Eponymous collaboration between Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay - their first
since 2018's 'The Hawksworth Grove Sessions' and their debut for Topic
Records
Postponed for two years due to the small matter of a global pandemic, finally, as
some semblance of normality took shape, in February 2022, the duo headed into
Giant Wafer Studios, mid-Wales, with very little rehearsal time and recorded the
entire album live, with no edits or overdubs over three days.
Jim Ghedi and Toby Hay are both prolific, praised and established artists in their
own right. Hailing from South Yorkshire, Ghedi's previous work has often been
instrumental, exploring the natural world and his relationship to it, as seen on
2018's A Hymn For Ancient Land but also developing into using his voice,
songwriting and traditional material on his more recent album, In The Furrows Of
Common Place. Toby Hay, hailing from the Cambrian mountains, professes
likewise, that the landscape serves as eternal muse and the spiritual groundwork
of his entrancing guitar playing which has dazzled critics and listeners alike
throughout his career. All of this makes their collaboration with the world's oldest
independent label and custodians of UK folk music, Topic Records, a natural
home for this exceptional record.
The album arrtwork includes beautiful liner notes by Andrew Male, senior
associate editor of Mojo magazine; film, radio and TV writer for Sight and Sound
and Sunday Times Culture.

Deprived of sanity, Paul Régimbeau aka Mondkopf found new territories of expression with »Spring Stories«, a collection of post-rapture moods full of glorious chaos, ready to absorb and re-ignite all that is worn.

As a phoenix raising from the ashes, »Spring Stories« captures the earth in full bloom. Darkness & Insanity looses it´s grips as the roots and fresh leaves creates a slow dance towards the sun. Similarly sine-wave drones move around exploding electric guitar improvisations as new light beams on shadow cast corners. The album feels like a 60ies jam set in the post-world psychedelic underground. Heavy, absurd, beautiful and ready to sooth burnt out, depleted minds. Paul has citied that he´s affected as much by folk improvisors such as Master Wilburn Burchette & Robbie Basho as well as the doom drone of giants Earth & Sunn O))). Spring Stories invokes on these, while feeling like a personal blow-out, coming right from the core. Touching and grand, like spring itself.

The album also features Frederic D. Oberland on two tracks playing variously Duduk & Alto Saxophone. Lastly, The Necks drummer Tony Buck shakes & rattles all over the final - and seriously epic - piece “Continuation”, as the world aligns while the sun rises over its near-dead shape.

First LP from Donna Candy, the bass-vocal-drums trio trawled from the sub genres of experimental rock and busy pushing to the front of heavy music. Nu metal bass riffs, switch-pitched fuzz vocals and big, splashy drums layer over unsettling narratives and extreme loops to bring a bit of the pit to the dancefloor.

Begun as an off the cuff party band with the idea of finding a live sound that would fit between 4am trance sets, the trio soon found themselves addicted to the euphoric sludge they created. Swapping their usual guitar for a bass, JS Donny drives Donna Candy with simple riffs, split half clean and half shredded with Boris / Sunn O))) like distortion. Head-banging the whole way, they’ll switch speed or stop suddenly, bending and drawing out notes to ratchet things up for release. Nadja's vocals tear through the top layer - heavily processed and warped with weird imagery. Together there’s a feeling of what it might be like to see Sightings slowed by codeine but with Elvin Brandi on the mic.

Always set up facing each other, off stage and surrounded by the audience, Donna Candy encourage catharsis - reciprocally transforming energy between themselves and the crowd. They build a queer euphoria that pulls apart metal’s narrow dichotomy of nihilistic machismo vs. hyperfemininity, and begins to make the visceral faux-hybridity of nineties nu metal feel possible this time around. ‘Blooming’ brings us six offerings from the band on a four way split release that speaks for itself - once on board with the DC energy you’ll want to be a part of it.

Murmer is the long-standing project for Estonian field recordist and composer Patrick McGinley, and in Tether, The Helen Scarsdale Agency welcomes Murmer back to our roster, over a decade since he graced us with his last production for the Agency. His field recordings often center upon the amplification and activation of resonance from a particular space, landscape, or object. Such sounds emerge from a condition as begin fleeting, inconsequential, or ephemeral and explode into that which alien, sublime, and profound. Here lies the tremendous prowess of the contact microphone, as wielded by an accomplished musician! The source material cited by McGinley includes cables, fences, wires, and vents.

There is a heft to many of these sounds as heard throughout all of "Taevast" with deep throbbing pulsations from arctic wind generating subharmonic patterns upon thick high-tension wires. Elsewhere the subtle dissonance from a rasping cooling fan blooms into a brooding ambience that is sublimely rich in its metallic timbres and complex reverberations. McGingley has long been an exemplary artist in the field of phonography even as he is less prolific than others. On Tether, he has produced a majestic if occasionally foreboding work on par with the mythic wire recordings of Alan Lamb, Jacob Kirkegaard's haunted resonance from Chernobyl, and much of the Touch catalogue for that matter!

Patrick McGingley on Tether:

In 2006, I made a collection of recordings at a mobile phone mast in Mooste, southeast Estonia. It is a guyed tower, 80 meters tall, affixed to 3 support points with heavy cables. I attached my self-made contact microphones to these cables with poster tack, and spent many hours over several weeks recording the various wind and weather variances (it was summer), and the birds that passed or settled on the tower or cables. This was one of my first visits to estonia, where i now live, and one of the things that marked me about that experience was the access: the tower had no fences or protections around it (I have not been back there recently to answer my own question of whether or not this is still the case); it stands in the middle of a field of tall grass along a dirt road in the countryside, just out of view of the few nearby houses, and during all the hours I spent there I was never disturbed or shooed away.

For more than 16 years, I have been thinking about this location and these recordings, and have made several attempts to work with them. I have used the sounds in installations a handful of times, and uploaded one short edit to the Aporee soundmaps, but have never managed to use them in any composed work. They always seemed too big for any structure I could provide them, whether I left them on their own, or partnered them with other sounds. Finally, in 2019, after putting them down and picking them up again repeatedly over so many years, they seemed to allow me in, although it took me another few years before they were happy with what I could offer. They stand now not quite alone - the majority of the layered sounds in the piece come from various edits of those cable recordings, but I added two other contrasting sounds, related to one another: one is snowflakes landing delicately on a plastic cakebox with microphones inside it, and the other is a frosted field of grass thawing on a lightly warming autumn morning (both these recordings can also be heard on their own on the Aporee maps).

Coming back to those cables brought to mind so many other wind-driven sounds that I had spent time with and recorded, but never returned to, that I began digging through my archives looking for them. I ended up with a pool of sounds from resonant wires, cables, fences, poles, fans, and vents, which became the basis for the 2nd work on this release. One of these sounds is among the first sounds I ever recorded, possibly within a month or so of buying my first microphone and minidisc recorder: the rhythmic fan of a beer cooler in a pub where I worked in North London in 1999. Other sounds in the piece include another phone tower, recorded on the northern coast of France in 2008, a telephone pole recorded in the Beaujolais region in 2010, the drone of ventilator fans at a factory in Tezno, Slovenia in 2012, an electric sheep fence in the Scottish borders in 2013, a hanging wire in a storage space in Rovaniemi, Finland in 2016, and, with no relation to cables or wind at all, calcium deposits being cleaned from the inside of an electric kettle here in Estonia in 2019.

I offer these two new pieces as my first solo publication since 2018, the first release on a physical medium since 2016. No one has ever accused me of working too fast, or being too prolific. I have a need, it seems, to leave a physical space of time around my work, before I can consider it 'finished'. Perhaps it is a simple need to forget how I did something, or that I did something; perhaps I have a need to be able to hear a work as a first-time listener would, before I can consider it ready for such an encounter. In some part of my mind I have to forget it before I can let it go. Well, I've just about forgotten that London beer cooler now, and that walk in the Beaujolais (with my father, who has since passed away), and that sheep fence next to our campsite in the borders, and that kettle that is now leaky. So I guess it's time.

Having emerged as a luminary of the Los Angeles Beat Scene, MatthewDavid immersed himself for several years in the rich, neglected, and all-too-often-derided archive of New Age sound/culture, stewarding a kind of New New Age sensibility into being. Mycelium Music constitutes a synthesis of these aesthetics, an alchemical marriage of sorts, in which the digital and the organic, the earthen and the aethereal, the bloom and the rot all collide and coexist. How might the Mycelium sing? Where other sound artists might be tempted to capture the phenomena, reaching for a field recorder, MatthewDavid responds with a succinct, impressionistic, and diaristic suite of “songs” (although, as with the mycelium itself, one cannot easily distinguish where one song/organism ends and another begins). Leaving Records founder Matthewdavid announces his new album Mycelium Music, his first proper full-length since 2018. The first single to be taken from the album 'Liquidity', was created as a direct response to ambient pioneer Laraaji encouraging Matthewdavid to innovate zither music. Beautifully textural, Mycelium Music constitutes an alchemical marriage in which the digital and the organic, the earthen and the aethereal, the bloom and the rot all collide and coexist. The record is a product of serious contemplation on the meaning, the problems, and the promises of interdependence.

Der blitzartige Aufstieg von Freya Ridings mit ihren Singles „Lost Without You“ und „Castles“ aus ihrem selbstbetitelten Debütalbum machte sie zu einem der internationalen Überraschungserfolge der letzten Jahre. Mit „Lost Without You“ wurde Freya zur ersten weiblichen Künstlerin, die einen komplett selbst geschriebenen UK Top-10-Hit seit Kate Bushs „Running Up That Hill“ im Jahre 1985 feiern durfte.

Das ebnete ihrem Debütalbum den Weg zu einem immensen weltweiten Erfolg: Platz 3 der britischen Charts, über eine Milliarde Streams und phänomenale 47 Platin- und Goldauszeichnungen aus aller Welt.

Das mit Spannung erwartete zweite Album ”Blood Orange” wurde von Freya geschrieben. Dazu kamen ausgesuchte Kollaborationen mit Steve Mac (Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi), Kamille (Dua Lipa, Little Mix), Will Bloomfield (Alfie Templeman, The Vaccines), LostBoy (Mimi Webb, Rita Ora), Phil Plested (Lewis Capaldi) und Scott Harris (Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes). Das Ergebnis ist ein Album, das in 14 lebensbejahenden Songs alles auf den Tisch legt, was sie ist, was sie durchgemacht hat und was sie geworden ist.

Dauw presents 'babel', the debut album from Belgian duo ZONDERWERK. The duo’s name means ‘’without work’’, but it also comes from “bijzonder werk”, where bijzonder is particular, special, unique. They like to work with images/paintings that are “bijzondere werken”, odd works.

babel is an ambitious exercise in translating images into sound. babel was initially created for the eponymous theatre piece by architect and artist Steve Salembier. Inspired by the biblical legend, Salembier envisions the legendary city as an abstract, sprawling modern metropolis in continuous flux. Its steel and glass skeleton is a representation of both an accumulation of overlapping contemporary cityscapes and a metaphor for the anonymous repetitiveness of our daily routines mirrored by the architecture. Subway lines, sky scrapers and whirling highways converge into a megalopolis of monstrous proportions. Despite the composition’s initial context as soundtrack for a theatre play, for the band this album is seen as a standalone work, whose complex sonic material can be appreciated without having seen the piece.

Their score focuses on fleshing out the imposing imaginary universe both in terms of scale and meaning. One of their biggest inspirations were Michael Woolf’s photographs, which served as the basis for the original theatre piece. His use of grey and repetition is translated into looped harmonies and fine-grained drones that progressively open up like blooming ice flowers.

With sounds of bells and metal as their primary materials, Carrijn and Sanders build soundscapes that are at once seductive and unsettling. The atmosphere on tracks like “DreamArp4Kort4” make for majestic, mysterious synths conjuring otherworldly visions, while the angelic glockenspiel set against subtle explosions in “VuurFeest” suggest a serene yet potentially dangerous place. Other tracks like “RoomCarousselTapeLoop5” create multi- layered textured drones through the process of tape decay, a commentary on the cannibalistic nature of the city.

Resulting from an arduous improvisational processusingold samplers with elements such as the Beam harp, a self-made metal instrument with piano strings, reel to reel tape recorders, field recordings and violin, babel perfectly captures the oxymoron of the man-made concrete jungle that is at once inhospitable yet endlessly awe-inducing.

ZONDERWERK is a duo consisting of Linde Carrijn and Dijf Sanders who started this project during the pandemic as a way of exploring their relationship as creative partners. Carrijn has a background in acting but recently came more to the fore as composer/performer with original scores for theatre and her other band Brik Tu-Tok founded with multi-disciplinary artist Maxim Storms. Sanders is a composer and gear enthusiast, more well-known for his eclectic works that draw from a wide-array of non-Western music. His milestone-album Moonlit Planetarium paved to way to a broader audience and recognition from major press in Belgium. In 2021, his work as a producer was recognized with a nomination at the Music Industry Awards.

Pale Blue unveil the penultimate single from their forthcoming album on Crosstown Rebels with ‘Together Alone’, accompanied by a driving and hypnotic remix from Kölsch. Artists with renowned solo careers alongside their ever-evolving journey as the critically acclaimed duo Pale Blue, Mike Simonetti and Elizabeth Wight continue to showcase why their collaborative material is much-loved from all corners of the electronic realm and beyond. Arriving on the heels of the release of the playful and charming ‘No Words’, the pair return to Damian Lazarus’ Crosstown Rebels with the third and penultimate single ahead of their forthcoming album release as they switch up the mood and veer into wistful territories across the absorbing ‘Together Alone’ - backed by a remix from Kompakt mainstay and electronic heavyweight, Kölsch.

A carefully created journey across almost eight minutes, ‘Together Alone’ is an exemplary showcase of balance and restrain as delicate melodies and hazy tones float amongst subtle nimble percussion arrangements, blooming synths and Wight’s captivating vocals for a deep dive into dreamy spheres. Bringing his own take to the record, Danish electronic pioneer Kölsch heads to Crosstown Rebels with his excellent crafted ‘I Have You’ remix, as he builds on the original with a powerful and emphatic introduction of anthemic leads, crisp kicks and a warping bassline rooted at the track’s core to transport the production firmly into the heart of the dancefloor.

Matador makes his debut appearance on Crosstown Rebels with his absorbing new EP ‘My Yellow Coat’, accompanied a remix from NYC house and techno favourite Levon Vincent.

An outstandingly technical live artist, DJ and producer, Matador, real name Gavin Lynch, has a prolific discography with releases on renowned labels such as Minus, Hot Creations, and Cocoon. A resident at Richie Hawtin’s iconic ENTER series in Ibiza, the past decade has seen the Irish talent tour the globe consistently with performances at some of the world’s most prestigious festivals and clubs, including Awakenings, TimeWarp, and Neopop, while featuring in Resident Advisor’s ‘Tip 20 Live Acts’ on three separate occasions. ‘My Yellow Coat’ marks his first appearance on Damian Lazarus’ Crosstown Rebels, describing the debut as “a result all round” with the imprint featuring as a personal favourite of his over the years.

The EP features two original tracks, ‘My Yellow Coat’ and ‘What You Say Is So’, showcasing a dynamic approach to electronic music with a deep dive into rich beds of emotive and spellbinding tones. Title track ‘My Yellow Coat’ is a slow-blooming and delightfully suspenseful production guided by the track’s charming vocals as soft synth melodies and refined percussion build gracefully across its eight-minute duration. . Novel Sound boss Levon Vincent’s dynamic interpretation of the title cut welcomes a new side to his expansive sound, building on his distinctive sound palette and welcoming a shift towards faster realms.

Understated, yet dramatic, Nana Adjoa combines storytelling, poetry and instrumental musicality for Bloomer Records’ fourth release. Songs are flecked with alternative sound designs but always ride atop rich acoustic foundations. The A-side presents orchestral and jazz fusion interpretations whereas the B-side recordings have a more grounded edge, completed with Nana's 5-piece tour band. As a multi-instrumentalist and powerful vocalist, she gives substance to the term modern-day musician.a few driving and noticeably danceable numbers, offering glimpse of familiarity amidst emotive and inquisitive soundscapes.

• Bob Thiele is one of the great producers. For his work with John Coltrane alone, where he gave free reign to the saxophone great's wildest musical visions including “A Love Supreme”, ignoring the usual cost consciousness of a major label, he deserves to be lauded. In addition to this, his eight years at Impulse! saw him recording seminal works by scores of musicians including late-blooming masterpieces by Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges, and a whole wave of 'new thing' jazzers such as Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders. He didn't stop there and when he launched his own label, Flying Dutchman in 1969, he continued to innovate and record music that reflected its times, but that also resonates down through the ages. It is to Flying Dutchman that we are paying tribute on this compilation.

• Gil Scott-Heron's recordings for the label ran to three records, which sold well but not spectacularly at the time. They have since taken on a resonance that makes the album "Pieces Of A Man" in particular one of the most important recordings of the last century, and its opening track 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' an anthem. Pianist Lonnie Liston Smith had been on Thiele's final important Impulse! Recording, Pharoah Sanders’ "Karma", and continued to appear on Flying Dutchman, first as a sideman and then as a leader. His 1975 album "Expansions" was the perfect encapsulation of his 'cosmic jazz' and the title track is a moment of near perfection which has become one of the foundation pieces of modern dance music.

• Flying Dutchman's other great discoveries are here. Vocalist Leon Thomas found a new route for jazz vocals in the early 70s, which made him a star and earned him a place in Santana. Gato Barbieri became one of the major saxophone stars of the era, after Thiele enabled him to meld his free jazz leanings to the rhythms of South America. The label also made important recordings with Tom Scott (featured on Thiele's own 'Head Start'), Ornette Coleman and Oliver Nelson, whilst interesting records appeared by Esther Marrow, Harold Alexander and many more.

• This is Flying Dutchman is a considered tribute to the label, and features in depth and fully illustrated sleeve notes. In the year when Bob Thiele's son is gearing up to release the first new music on the label since 1976, it is an apt and timely reminder of the power of the music.

‘Sinking Ships’ is the much anticipated seventh studio album from the acclaimed Alberta Cross. A gorgeous 10-track collection of modern indie-rock including an irresistible cover of Sharon Van Etten’s ‘Every Time The Sun Comes Up’.

The album is at times expansive & subtly anthemic, beautifully mellow, folk-tinged and awash with a layered, maximalist sound that variously recalls The War On Drugs, Bon Iver & Phosphorescent. At all times, lead singer Petter Ericson Stakee’s un-mistakable high-vocals, which have at times been compared to Jim James & Neil Young, soar through the music – particularly on album stand-outs ‘Mercy’ & ‘Glow in The Dark’.

The album was written mostly at the legendary The Wool Hall in Frome Somerset with Petter’s long term producer and collaborator, Luke Potashnick - who recently bought and renovated The Wool Hall (legendary in part due to Van Morrisson and Tears for Fears recording albums there).

2020’s A Hero’s Death saw Fontaines D.C. land a #2 album in the UK, receive nominations at the GRAMMYs, BRITs and Ivor Novello Awards, and sell out London’s iconic Alexandra Palace.

Now the band return with their third record in as many years: Skinty Fia. Used colloquially as an expletive, the title roughly translates from the Irish language into English as “the damnation of the deer”; the spelling crassly anglicized, and its meaning diluted through generations. Part bittersweet romance, part darkly political triumph - the songs ultimately form a long-distance love letter, one that laments an increasingly privatized culture in danger of going the way of the extinct Irish giant deer.

Elias Devoldere is the drummer in bands such as Nordmann, Hypochristmutreefuzz, Suwi, Robbing Millions, and John Ghost. Following an ep, Kaiku, released last summer, Bloomed > Exploded is his debut full length as a solo artist. Besides writing and singing, he composed, played, recorded, and produced the bulk of the ten songs himself. 'Everything blooms', he explains the title of his first album. 'Until it explodes, and something else is able to grow from it'. In this case, what came full cycle is an intimate coming-of-age album of intangible atmospherics, crisp melodies, and understated rhythmical patterns.

BLOOMED >

'As a kid, I just wanted to play football, you know?', says Elias. 'But when I was eight years old, my parents made me choose between drawing school and music school'. And thus began a dedication to rhythm for Elias. At 18, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown of Ghent, opting for a jazz education. 'Not because I aspired to become a master 'jazz drummer', but to learn music, to become a good musician'. It was at the academy that, after an impromptu jam session, Nordmann first came together. The exhilarating instrumental quartet went on to win second place at the prestigious Humo's Rock Rally in 2014, and released three albums to critical acclaim, with a new one in the works.

Devoldere, in the meantime, had completed his degree with a craving - ironically - for music. 'I was in over my head with jazz for such a long time, and went on an epic discovering spree. Moses Sumney, James Blake, Kendrick Lamar, Connan Mockasin... Lots of stuff I had missed over the years. In a way, I reconnected with the kind of music I was into before jazz dominated my life. Pink Floyd was my first love, for instance, and later Radiohead proved to be a game changer. Diving back into those kind of sounds, I was feeling the urge to follow my old dreams, of being a solo artist - or something more than 'just' a drummer, anyway. So I bought a guitar, an interface for my laptop, and started writing'.

EXPLODED

When he released his 5 track ep Kaiku in the summer of 2021, it summarised a lot of firsts for Elias. First time writing lyrics, first time as a lead vocalist, first time recording his own songs all by himself. The songs had been around for a while, but taking those leaps took a long time. 'Making the ep helped me to find my voice, in every way possible'. Still, in the aftermath of the pandemic, the songs on Bloomed > Exploded sprouted in a time of upheaval. 'Musically the album is quite serene, gentle even. But the themes speak of internal unrest and uncertainty. There are a lot of questions on the album, as it turned out. Duality, as the title suggests, coming from the struggle between a wish to turn everything upside down and a search for peace. Honestly: the prospect of my 30th birthday was messing with my head too'.

Recording during a period of solitude in France, Elias initially relied heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. 'Explode / Boalis was one of the first songs I wrote for this album, and pivotal for its atmosphere, based mostly on electronic elements. Later, I did use 'real' drums on most of the other songs, though, and contributions from other musicians, but the overall mood is very cohesive'. 'Pure', that's how Bruno Ellingham, the UK engineer who mixed the album, described it. Much to the delight of Elias, who reached out to Ellingham because of his previous work with bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead. 'Hearing the end result, I thought he really captured the essence of the original demo's. For me, that adds to this album being a sincere reflection of my true self. 'Take a dive/ Into the place where it's more quiet', as I sing in the last song, that kind of sums it up for me'.

Previously only available as a digital release, Lucid Express’ Floret, has been remastered and expanded to include remixes from a host of
international, acclaimed shoegaze and dream pop artists. For the first
time on vinyl, the limited (500) edition orange vinyl will be released March

3, 2023 (Kanine Records).

Lucid Express is five young dreamers who create a stunning airy blend of shoegaze and indie pop amongst the skyscrapers, mountains, and packed alleyways of Hong Kong. The name itself a modest mission statement of the band’s intent: lucid in the poetic sense of something

Dino Lenny returns to Crosstown Rebels with his latest single ‘I’ve Learned That’, accompanied by remixes from Shadow Child and Jonathan Kaspar - plus his own take with Fed Conti.

A regular on labels including Afterlife, Ellum, Innervisions, and Diynamic, London-based Italian-born DJ/producer and Fine Human Records boss Dino Lenny’s solo and collaborative catalogue continues to grow as he features as one of the most consistent names within the worlds of house and techno. Having released his first EP on the label in 2019, he now returns to Damian Lazarus’ Crosstown Rebels for a second outing with the release of his touching new single ‘I’ve Learned That’ - which is one of a collection of records dedicated to his daughter - with remixes from Shadow Child, Jonathan Kaspar, and his own interpretation alongside Fed Conti.

Shaped by emotive piano keys, blooming strings and refined drums, ‘I’ve Learned’ showcases a rich and heartwarming production taking cues from dance music and beyond as the track’s uplifting and inspiring vocals carry the production across nine minutes of delight.

Beginning the transition towards more traditional electronic spheres, his remix alongside Fed Conti utilises vibrant guitar licks and a luminous bassline to head into a late-night discovery of disco influences. Next, Shadow Child’s ‘Classic Mix’ is a skippy house gem as bumping low-ends work amongst hazy chords, with Jonathan Kaspar’s remix moving deeper via surging synths for a hypnotic and thrilling ride to close.

Sacramento, CA duo Blank Gloss’s third album, Cornered, is an exquisite statement of pop ambient starkness, an album that oscillates between lush beauty and spare melancholy. It follows from their 2021 debut for Kompakt, Melt, an album that saw Morgan Fox (piano, synths) and Patrick Hills (guitar) aligned, loosely, with the cosmic pastorale of the ‘ambient Americana’ movement. Cornered feels like a significant step forward, though – by peeling back the layers of their music, they’ve revealed both its restful core and its solemn gravitas. It is unendingly lovely, but with something disquieting at its centre.

Cornered was recorded quickly, over two days in December 2020. There’s nothing rushed or haphazard about the album, though; everything has its place, with each sonic element contributing profoundly to these nine miniature dioramas. It signals change, quietly but perceptibly, through the way the duo sculpts their material, building out of loose improvisations that morphed into songs. While there was no plan in mind when Blank Gloss settled into the studio, Fox recalls that “right away we realised that things were sounding and feeling a bit different than any of the sessions we had previously.”

That difference can be heard in the increased amount of space Blank Gloss gift to their sound sources. Some of the most moving moments on Cornered come when Fox and Hills strip everything back – see, for example, “Crossing”, which sets pensive piano across a shyly humming drone and quiet arcs of guitar, recalling the driftworks of Roger Eno. Curiously, the album’s distinctive shape and mood develops, at least in part, from a change in instrumentation, with Hills using a MIDI pick-up on his guitar. “This resulted in making things happen a lot quicker,” Fox says. “It also helped create what I think is a bit more sombre, dark feeling to some of the songs.”

Elsewhere, on songs like “Salt”, the piano tussles with flecks of guitar, single tones sent out to mingle with the stars, like Morricone at 16 RPM, while Cornered’s centrepiece, the eleven-minute “No Appetite”, lets long arcs of electronic texture breathe and sigh, tangling together in a cat’s cradle of bliss. Throughout, it feels as though the music is blossoming as you hear it, like watching time-lapse footage of flora in bloom. But perhaps the most seductive thing about Cornered is the sense you get, listening, that the music was something unexpected, a visitation. “It almost felt like we weren’t dictating where the music went and how it sounded,” Fox agrees. “We were just there in a room together in December and these sounds were happening, and we were lucky enough to be recording the process.”

Cornered, das dritte Album des kalifornischen Duos Blank Gloss aus Sacramento, ist ein exquisites Statement von pop ambienter Krassheit, ein Album, das zwischen üppiger Schönheit und sparsamer Melancholie oszilliert. Es folgt ihrem 2021er Debüt für Kompakt, Melt, einem Album, auf dem sich Morgan Fox (Klavier, Synthesizer) und Patrick Hills (Gitarre) locker an der kosmischen Pastorale der „Ambient Americana“-Bewegung ausrichteten. Cornered fühlt sich jedoch wie ein bedeutender Schritt nach vorne an – indem sie die Schichten ihrer Musik abschälen, haben sie sowohl ihren ruhigen Kern als auch ihre feierliche Schwere offenbart. Es ist unendlich schön, aber mit etwas Beunruhigendem in seiner Mitte.

Cornered wurde relativ schnell aufgenommen, über zwei Tage im Dezember 2020. Es klingt jedoch nichts überstürzt oder willkürlich an diesem Album; alles hat seinen Platz, wobei jedes Klangelement einen wesentlichen Beitrag zu diesen neun Miniaturdioramen leistet. Es signalisiert Veränderung, leise, aber wahrnehmbar, durch die Art und Weise, wie das Duo sein Material formt und aus losen Improvisationen aufbaut, die sich in Songs verwandeln. Als Blank Gloss sich im Studio niederließen, gab es zwar keinen Plan, aber Fox erinnert sich: „Uns war sofort klar, dass sich die Dinge etwas anders anhörten und anfühlten als bei allen vorherigen Sessions.“

Dieser Unterschied ist in der größeren Menge an Raum zu hören, die Blank Gloss ihren Klangquellen bietet. Einige der bewegendsten Momente auf Cornered kommen, wenn Fox und Hills alles zurücknehmen – siehe zum Beispiel „Crossing“, wo ein nachdenkliches Klavier über einen schüchtern summenden Drone und leise Gitarrenloops setzt und an die Driftworks von Roger Eno erinnert. Seltsamerweise entwickelt sich die unverwechselbare Form und Stimmung des Albums zumindest teilweise aus einer Änderung der Instrumentierung, bei der Hills einen MIDI-Tonabnehmer an seiner Gitarre verwendet. „Dies führte dazu, dass die Dinge viel schneller abliefen“, sagt Fox. „Es hat auch dazu beigetragen, einigen der Songs ein etwas düstereres, dunkleres Gefühl zu verleihen.“ An anderer Stelle, bei Songs wie „Salt“, spielt das Klavier mit Gitarrenfetzen, einzelne Töne werden ausgesandt, um sich mit den Sternen zu vermischen, wie Morricone bei 16 U/min, während Cornereds Herzstück, das elfminütige „No Appetite“, lange Bögen schlägt, elektronische Texturen atmet und seufzt, um sich in einem Katzenkörbchen der Glückseligkeit zu verheddern. Während des Hörens fühlt es sich an, als ob die Musik blüht, als würde man sich Zeitrafferaufnahmen von blühenden Pflanzen ansehen. Aber das Verführerischste an Cornered ist vielleicht das Gefühl, das man beim Zuhören bekommt, dass die Musik etwas Unerwartetes war, eine Heimsuchung. „Es fühlte sich fast so an, als hätten WIR nicht diktiert, wohin die Musik geht und wie sie klingt“, stimmt Fox zu. „Wir waren just im Dezember zusammen in einem Raum, als diese Geräusche passierten, und wir hatten das Glück, dass die Aufnahme mitlief.”

There’s something almost magical about a great
collaboration. When two artists are able to
synchronize on an infinitesimal level, where each
note and breath and strum aligns to create a
perfect whole. The Colorist Orchestra know how to
do this - in fact, they’ve made it their speciality. Since 2013, the Belgian duo (comprised of multiinstrumentalists and long-time friends Aarich Jespers and Kobe Proesmans) have made a
career out of reimagining the discographies of a wide array of artists, using their background in
pop, electronic, and world music to transform the songs. Recently, they have reconnected with acclaimed
Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini, with whom they first collaborated in 2018, on the album, ‘The Colorist Orchestra & Emilíana Torrini’. This time, however, the project exceeded even
their own expectations. In 2023, The Colorist Orchestra and Emilíana
release ‘Racing The Storm’, a joint record tha takes both artists to towering new heights. An album of all original material, it melds The Colorist Orchestra’s classical chamber pop roots with the
power and fragility of Emilíana’s understated
songwriting. LP pressed on 140g white vinyl in 350gsm spined
sleeve on silver foil board with 200gsm reverse
board inner sleeve

For Erika's second album "Anevite Void", she explores her live process as it permeates everything she does, including documenting the process of life in the elaborate sci fi mythology she created. Erika began performing live in Ectomorph in 1997 when she was gifted a TR-606 by BMG and asked to join the group. This grew to her building her own studio, performing solo as Erika, collaborating with people like Jay Ahern and Noncompliant, and performing as a member of Circle of Live. Her depth of thought and clarity of vision has led to her mentoring people on live performance through the In Bloom platform, where she has made a large impact on many up and coming musicians. "Anevite Void", Erika's new album, finds her organically writing songs for her live shows, allowing them to take shape through performance, and later recording them in the studio, making this the first album she has entirely written and produced on her own. Mixed by long time collaborator BMG, she finds this record as the launching point for a new process for her. Conceptually, this album was inspired by "the irregular life cycles created by three suns circling over a planetary organism that presents two major biomes: rocky crystalline desert, and deep layered forest, each of which exists above and/or below ground, depending on what phase the suns are in." From this realm the album took shape. She also chronicled this concept in drawings but found this painting by Detroit puckish punk legend Nai Sammon perfectly visually explained the concept, and chose it for the cover. She describes "each track is about an organic process that occurs: acts of survival of the biomes, or what happens between them and the multitude of other beings that they host." Erika is currently splitting her time between being based in Berlin and Detroit, is part of the triumvirate that runs Interdimensional Transmissions (BMG, Erika and Amber) that are releasing this record and produce legendary events such as No Way Back, Samhain and Return to the Source. She performs live and DJs and collaborates and oozes sonic truth in its many forms. Visit the "Anevite Void" in early 2023.

Nach der Veröffentlichung ihres ersten Albums 2018 ging das französische Duo auf Welttournee zu Festivals und ausverkauften Hallen. In ihrer Musik mixen The Blaze Einflüsse aus Dub, House und Popmusik. Sowohl Guillaume als auch Jonathan Alric singen auf einigen der Tracks. Als Einflüsse für ihre anspruchsvollen Musikvideos nennen sie die Regisseure Ken Loach, Jean-Pierre und Luc Dardenne sowie den Fotografen Sebastião Salgado. Bereits von ihrer Debüt-EP 'Territory' konnte das damals noch unbekannte Duo aus dem Stand einige Hundert Einheiten auf Vinyl verkaufen!
Guillaume und Jonathan Alric haben ihr neues Album 'Jungle' mit dieser Live-Perspektive komponiert und aufgenommen: introspektive, elektronische Musik, getragen von Bildern und Melodien, die immer voller Emotionen sind. Im Rahmen einer Tour gastieren sie u.a. in der renommierten O2 Academy Brixton als auch im Berliner Velodrom, das bereits jetzt ausverkauft ist. Die beiden bereits vorab veröffentlichten und visuell perfekt umgesetzten Singles 'Eyes' und 'Dreamer' sind Vorboten eines von vielen Fans anspruchsvoller elektronischer Musik erwarteten Albums.

Beide Versionen, LP als auch CD erscheinen mit einem bedruckten Slipcase (CD) bzw. bedrucktem PVC-Outer Sleeve (LP).

Marroon coloured vinyl.

1st pressing on Maroon coloured vinyl. Manzanita is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It's also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can't actually tell you how much we love this record because you'd never believe us, so we'll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019's Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman "Sun Ra" Blount and Octavia Butler, Manzanita concerns the love that loves to love. "This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness," Cleveland explains. The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland's nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It's peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in "Mystic Mine," with its "Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country." So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but Manzanita concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: "The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son's birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B)," she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you've heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland's successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). This is a love album that's somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, Manzanita sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there's a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana's solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord-little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records-Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world.

Tape

1st pressing on Maroon coloured vinyl. Manzanita is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It's also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can't actually tell you how much we love this record because you'd never believe us, so we'll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019's Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman "Sun Ra" Blount and Octavia Butler, Manzanita concerns the love that loves to love. "This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness," Cleveland explains. The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland's nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It's peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in "Mystic Mine," with its "Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country." So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but Manzanita concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: "The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son's birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B)," she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you've heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland's successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). This is a love album that's somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, Manzanita sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there's a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana's solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord-little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records-Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world.

Following well-received collaborative outings for us as 1/2 of the SF dynamo duo Moniker whose classic “Billy D” anthem and respective Patrice Scott remix graced the early catalog, followed by the galactic
flex Straylight EP with Cali brethren Dave Aju on velvet vocoder vox b/w a stellar Kai Alcé remix on the Another offshoot imprint, and of course his indelible contributions to the arrangements/derangement of the wondrous KAMM LP Cookie Policies, Kenneth Scott is essentially an extended family household name for our camp and so we’re beyond proud to present his initial solo release for the Circus Company label proper. Schooled as always in the deepest of electronic music roots and classiest of track traditions, the three pieces that form the Light Blooming EP puzzle display all the prized synth wizardry and production ingenuity we’ve come to expect from the Berlin-based veteran.
“Firesound” kicks us off in fine form, with a glistening array of pads and tight arpeggios that give way to a soulful funk strut that any fan of Detroit-style electro flavors will enjoy to the fullest. We then move to
the stylized 4/4 pulse of the aptly-titled “Lost Sonar”, an extended live set for Lost Sonar Collective skillfully condensed and finessed into a smooth-as-silk true deep house cut, where warm synth tones set the sound bed while shards of sharper percussion and angular textures flash and fizz throughout, creating an ultra-fresh contrasting feel while a rock-solid groove grinds us along faithfully. Scott then finally closes out the set with the powerful and titular “Light Blooming” which begins with a similar rising pad intro before unleashing fierce and raw overdriven drum programming, teasing us out to the two minute mark when the mighty sub bass line and multi-layered arps drop in to devastating effect, bubbling and building to a bold harmonic apex, before eventually bringing us down softly and somehow with ease
after such a glorious rise.
Filled with early-Warp feels and futurist sci-fi hopes in equal measure, the Light Blooming EP is three tracks of pure funk precision and expressive musical class from the man Kenneth Scott

With her hypnotizing voice and vivid lyricism, Jackie Mendoza makes fantastical, intimate electro-pop propelled by ukulele-based dance grooves. Having grown up between her birthplace of Chula Vista, California and Tijuana, Mexico, the 29-year-old singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist bridges these two worlds with dynamic soundscapes that pull from Latin pop, electronic music, and indie pop. She creates a musical universe that exists beyond strict borders of genre and geography, giving her the space to traverse the vast expanse of her interiority. Mendoza first started performing in 2014 as the vocalist for Brooklyn dream pop bands Gingerlys and Lunarette. She then broke out as a solo artist with her 2016 pop hits "Islands" and "La Luz," which showcased her imagery-packed, yet deeply introspective lyrics. On LuvHz, her 2019 adventurous debut EP that was initially inspired by a painful breakup, she turned her personal experiences into songs that observe greater truths about the world around her. As a result, the project became a broader reflection on varying forms of love, in relationships with your partner, your culture, and the natural environment. Mendoza expands this approach on her debut album, Galaxia de Emociones (Galaxy of Emotions), which sees her exploring a great range of feelings, from depression, celebration, outrage, numbness, hopelessness, and thrilling love. She uses each emotion as a portal to convey the intricacies of her experience as a queer, first-generation Mexican American woman, who actively defies and criticizes machismo and the Christian culture she was surrounded by. Brought up in the suburban border town of Chula Vista, she recalls being told by her parents to not mix English with Spanish, but speaking "spanglish" quickly became inevitable. It wasn't until high school, that learning to play ukulele and singing in school musicals allowed her to authentically express herself. "This album is about finding the courage to not only face my emotions, but also sharing them by singing them out loud." Mendoza says. The project was co-written and co-produced by Mendoza and Rusty Santos (Animal Collective, Panda Bear), with a contribution from Grammy winning producer and accordionist Ulises Lozano. As Galaxia de Emociones cruises from shimmering indie pop to accordion-laced electronic norteño, Mendoza proves there is both power and tenderness in embracing the fullness of your being and not doubting your instincts that might have been discouraged by society. She says it all in the opening song, "Natural," which blooms with spacey synths and twinkling ukulele plucks. "There is no use in controlling what comes natural to you," she sings in Spanish in a spellbinding loop. With her new album, she hopes that listeners can connect with her words and look within to explore their own galaxy of emotions.

On her third album, Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli, aka Grand River, asks what guiding forces might be driving, enticing, and affecting us. “All Above” is rooted in her deeply personal philosophy as an artist, blurring the boundaries between electronic music and acoustic music and sculpting familiar ambient forms into personal themes painted with rich emotional colours. Written painstakingly over the last two years, the album is the most ambitious and divergent set of music Portioli has assembled so far, with a wide variety of instrumentation (including voices, strings, organs, guitars, and synthesisers) focused around the piano. She‘s keen to assure listeners that while that instrument isn‘t always heard, it‘s constantly at the forefront of the album, shepherding its emotions and anchoring its mood. It makes sense then that on the opening track ‘Quasicristallo’, the acoustic piano is the first element we hear, recorded closely, so its characteristic rattle and creak can speak as loudly as the familiar tones themselves. When the music blooms into abstraction and processed electronics, it‘s almost imperceptible: reverb mutates into ghostly vapour trails, and distortion forms the keys into another instrument entirely.

“All Above“ follows 2020‘s acclaimed “Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes“ and 2018‘s “Pineapple” released on Donato Dozzy and Neel‘s Spazio Disponibile imprint. Having garnered praise from outlets like Resident Advisor, XLR8R, The Quietus, Inverted Audio, and The Verge, Portioli operates in a unique space within the electronic music scene, straddling the art world and the wider electronic music scene. She‘s developed sound art installations for Rome‘s La Galleria Nazionale and the Terraforma Festival-related Il Pianeta, and has appeared at Barbican, MUTEK, Le Guess Who?, Kraftwerk, and other internationally renowned venues and festivals, often collaborating with Marco Ciceri on A/V presentations. Ciceri also maintains the visual identity of Portioli‘s label One Instrument, a concept imprint that asks artists to create music only using a single device. All this experience is poured into “All Above”, a richly visual album that‘s far more than just an imaginary film score. While on ‘Human’, her piano punctuates a rhythmic synthesised bassline and smudged choirs that can‘t help but trace out the silver screen. The composer is keen to clarify that she doesn‘t think of her music (or sound in general) in visual terms.

Portioli studied as a linguist and used her art to develop an emotional language that‘s not bound by expected cultural constraints. When she adds a different instrument or process, it‘s not to reference a visual cue but to mark a journey through different states of being. Each element embodies a different emotion or mood: the electric guitar represents strength or violence, synthesisers shuttle us into the dream world, and the acoustic instruments highlight intimacy and warmth – even heart. Read like this, the tracks are like meditative poems rather than cinematic vignettes: ‘The World At Number XX’ is seemingly centred around a chugging synthesised arpeggio, but the cosmic, Klaus Schulze-esque pads, strangled guitar and evocative organ tones hint at the open-hearted, literate psychedelia of the 1970s; ‘In The Present As The Future’ meanwhile is breathy and windswept, juxtaposing urgent rhythmic phrases with light, flute-like gusts of harmony.

Dedicated to Editions Mego founder Peter Rehberg, who died suddenly last year, “All Above” demands engagement and refuses to evaporate into the background. The album asks listeners not just to absorb the album as a whole but notice the cracks in the structure and discern the tension they cause. That‘s never more evident than on the closing track ‘Cost What It May’, a piece of music almost jarring when Portioli chops into noisy waves of electric guitar. In the wrong hands, this might sound like a power move – some rock posturing to act as a finale. But Portioli‘s expression is different. She‘s forcing a level of engagement that perceives the negative space as just as necessary as the saturated positive, and what could be more haunting and emotionally resonant than that?

Composed, produced and mixed by Aimée Portioli.
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.
Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin.
Photography by Federico Boccardi.
Design and layout by Riccardo Piovesan.

If we want to look into the future, we have to start considering the implications more holistically. All too often, science fiction is a dystopian projection of the current era's grimmest realities spiked with pragmatic historical hindsight - but what if instead it was able to reflect our needs, hopes, and dreams? On "SPINE", award-winning Danish composer SØS Gunver Ryberg considers a sustainable alternative, buoyed by interconnectedness, empowerment, and understanding. Channeling her dextrous sound design into advanced, time-bending music that fluctuates through techno, experimental ambient, and soundsystem-vibrating bass music, she maps out an artistic landscape that's futuristic and complex, but never oppressive.

Ryberg is an accomplished producer who's developed her sound over many years, playing concerts and working tirelessly on video game soundtracks, film scores, dance, performance, and multichannel installation pieces. Her first solo album "Entangled" appeared in 2019 on Berlin's esteemed Avian imprint, and was praised for its sensitive approach to noise and abstracted techno, while its EP-length followup "WHYT 030" was nominated for the Nordic Council's prestigious music prize this year. "SPINE" is the inaugural release on Ryberg's own label Arterial, and stands as a thematically dense statement of intent. The label provides a platform to extend Ryberg's artistic goals and reflect not just her world but a world she wants to see develop in the future: somewhere connected and creative, where exploration and free expression is prioritized over genre division and petty compromise.

This philosophy is central to the sounds on "SPINE", which have been carefully sculpted to accurately lay out Ryberg's worldview. Opening track 'Unfolding' presents a sonic ecosystem that flourishes as it spreads itself out, and quivering kick drums vibrate alongside unstable atmospherics. There's the faint fingerprint of Chain Reaction's notional dub techno in there somewhere, but Ryberg interrupts the thought before it can coagulate, assuring the listener that her vision isn't ponderous but playful and optimistic. This mood flickers into view again on the title track 'Spine', as fragmented breaks rumble beneath disorienting synths, faint images of a life we once knew refracted into cosmic beams of light. 'Mirrored Madness' meanwhile is warm, assertive, and optimistic, contrasting skittering cybernetic percussion with dense, enveloping harmonies.

When she pushes rhythm into the background, like on the cinematic 'We tumble on the edges', Ryberg's compositional skill is placed under the microscope. We're presented with the opportunity to examine another dimension of her work, the mystery beneath the stone, hearing saturated, alluring pads infused with hidden harmonies. In these moments, Ryberg implores all of us to consider the environment, asking us to think about the earth's essential nutrients on the dreamy 'Phosphorus Cycle', and what we might do to save ourselves on the delirious 'Where do we go from here'. Ryberg's concern isn't chastising, it's laid out in a warm embrace. The future could still be bright - there's something beautiful in the complexity if you just take the time to look closely.

Cosmic Romance is the first LP from Los Angles producer MoodHay that beams down to planet Earth in a swirl of lush synthesisers, hypnotic melodies and warm grooves. It’s a journey of emotions, contemporary and classic all the same. The album orbits around earthly elements of R&B, funk and house, seamlessly blurring in a unique way that MoodHay pulls off with an endearing ease here in the early 21st century. It’s a sonically beautiful love note with a lot of attitude that pilots right to the center of your soul, while keeping your body rocking out real smooth.

MoodHay’s hilltop studio is like a hidden oasis out in the desert, mystical and soothing, where he brings gems (like the ones you’ll hear on this album) to life. He sings and plays all the instruments on this record (minus the hot sax on ‘Melodies’) and is truly blooming as a songwriter.
MoodHay has such a fresh energy around him that is certainly felt throughout Cosmic Romance and these songs were methodically crafted to maximise the vibe out on the dance floor on this planet and others out there.

“Dandelion” blooms a previously undiscovered and unknown sweet spot between 60’s psychedelia and 70’s power-pop, equally pastoral and street-wise, every note tuned to moving and astounding melody. “Dandelion” offers lush arrangements of unforgettable, legend-making songs, performed entirely by Daniel himself.

Meg Baird’s songs are rarely made up of tidy stories. In fact, for Meg, mystery itself is often the
medium. With ‘Furling’, Meg’s fourth album under her own name, she explores the breadth of
her musical fascinations and the environments around them - the edges of memory,
daydreams spanning years, loose ends, loss, divergent paths, and secret conversations under
stars. ‘Furling’ moves through these varied spaces with the slippery, misty cohesiveness of a
dream - guided by an ageless, stirring voice that remains singular and unmistakable.
Since co-founding the beguiling and beautiful Espers in the mid-aughts amid Philadelphia’s
fertile underground music community, Meg’s solo recordings have constituted just a fraction of
her work.
Her first solo LP, the disarmingly out-of-time ‘Dear Companion’ (2007), saw her carve a quiet,
sunlit space away from the flickering swirl of Espers. Since her last solo releases, ‘Seasons on
Earth’ (2011) and ‘Don’t Weigh Down the Light’ (2015), Meg has lent thunderous drumming,
lead vocal, and poetry to Heron Oblivion (Sub Pop) on an album that garnered praise from the
New York Times and made Mojo’s Top Ten Albums Of 2016 list. She collaborated with harpist
Mary Lattimore on the mesmerizingly hazy ‘Ghost Forests’ (2018). She’s played drums with
Philadelphia scuzz-punks Watery Love (In The Red, Richie Records) and explored her deep
familial folk roots in the Baird Sisters (Grapefruit Records). She also contributed her vocal
arrangements to albums from Sharon Van Etten, Kurt Vile, Will Oldham and Steve Gunn, and
toured with Angel Olson, Dinosaur Jr., Bill Callahan, Thurston Moore and Bert Jansch, among
others.
Yet ‘Furling’ is the album that most irreverently explores the span of her work and musical
touchstones. It showcases her natural tether to 1960s English folk traditions. But it also reveals
her deep love for soul balladry, the solitary musings of Flying Saucer Attack and Neil Young
shackled to his piano deep in the foggy pre-dawn, dubby Bristol atmospherics, the melancholy
memory collage of DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing’, and the delicious, Saturday night promise of
St. Etienne.
‘Furling’ was primarily recorded at Louder Studios by Tim Green (Bikini Kill, Nation of Ulysses,
Melvins, Wooden Shjips). Additional piano and vocal recording were captured at Panoramic
Studios in Stinson Beach, CA with Jason Quever (Papercuts). It was mastered in Brooklyn by
Heba Kadry, who mixed Bjork’s ‘Utopia’ and mastered albums for Slowdive, Cass McCombs
and Beach House.
For all its adornments, ‘Furling’ remains deeply intimate. The entire album was performed by
Meg and her long-time collaborator, partner, and Heron Oblivion bandmate Charlie Saufley.
While her prior solo work hinted at more expansive horizons, ‘Furling’ explores the idea of Meg
Baird as a band much more freely. Venturing beyond the musical confines of fingerstyle guitar,
she plays drums, mellotron, organs, synths, and vibraphone over her piano and guitar
foundations. Her distinctive, simultaneously elegiac and uplifting vocals, meanwhile, connect
surreal dream montages, graft sunshine sonics to swooning mediations on romantic solidarity
in trying times, and weave odes to the simple gestures of friendship - and the loss of family and
friends.
This rich sound world makes the songs a varied bunch: ‘Twelve Saints’ mates Pacific sunset
ambience and Pink Floyd pastoral to a meditation on mortality and escape. The infectious and
kinetic ‘Will You Follow Me Home’ contemplates hope and longing through the looking glass of
a Jimmy Miller-era-Stones strut. And in the closing piece, ‘Wreathing Days’, language
disintegrates over tone clusters that feel somewhere between falling and flying.
‘Wreathing Days’ also reveals much about Meg’s mastery of contrast - situating the dear and
delicate adjacent to chaos. And while it’s true that some songs on ‘Furling’ grapple with
humanity’s existential unknowns in stark terms, they primarily revel in the mysteries that hide in
nature and humanity at their most ordinary. ‘Furling’ lives in the notion that whole universes of
experience, enlightenment, elation and ecstasy can bloom in these corners.