Cerca:but

Mustapha Skandrani, a luminary of Algerian music, possessed a unique musical sense, able to transcend the borders of musical cultures to create a distinctive fusion of Arabic-Andalusian and European styles.

"Istikhbars and Improvisations", recorded in 1965 in Paris, is a solo piano album presenting a trans-Mediterranean crossover based on traditional Algerian vocal pieces known as istikhbars. Playing these istikhbars (which have roots in the Islamic Arab-Andalusian culture which flourished in Spain) on the piano - that quintessentially European instrument - Skandrani was greeted with derision by some purists. His powerful musical vision, however, perceives the European element involved in Arabic-Andalusian musical culture, a world of exchange and co-existence.

Skandrani's modus operandi on this release is to present each istikhbar, modal in nature, then to play an improvisation based on it, and its attendant mode. This A/B alternation continues throughout. The pellucid clarity of Skandrani's playing on this album may remind the listener of a modal Goldberg Variations, Bach and Glenn Gould transplanted to Andalucia. Other ears will hear the Arabic/Maghreb elements more strongly. Skandrani's precise touch and clear, symmetrical rhythmic sense links both worlds, assuring us that the Mediterranean is not a barrier, but a unifier, and that the differences between the cultures are not so vast. This is an admirable achievement, resulting in beautiful music of a rare charm.

Mustapha Skandrani was born in Algiers in 1920, and died there in 2005. He mastered a number of instruments at an early age, and his musical prowess led him to work with the great singers and ensembles of his day, in live performances, recordings, and radio broadcasts. Later in his life, he devoted much energy to education.

Originally reissued by Em Records as a limited edition of 200 in 2012, now available once again, in offset printed sleeve, with insert of Japanese and English sleeve-notes and rare photosMustapha Skandrani, a luminary of Algerian music, possessed a unique musical sense, able to transcend the borders of musical cultures to create a distinctive fusion of Arabic-Andalusian and European styles.

"Istikhbars and Improvisations", recorded in 1965 in Paris, is a solo piano album presenting a trans-Mediterranean crossover based on traditional Algerian vocal pieces known as istikhbars. Playing these istikhbars (which have roots in the Islamic Arab-Andalusian culture which flourished in Spain) on the piano - that quintessentially European instrument - Skandrani was greeted with derision by some purists. His powerful musical vision, however, perceives the European element involved in Arabic-Andalusian musical culture, a world of exchange and co-existence.

Skandrani's modus operandi on this release is to present each istikhbar, modal in nature, then to play an improvisation based on it, and its attendant mode. This A/B alternation continues throughout. The pellucid clarity of Skandrani's playing on this album may remind the listener of a modal Goldberg Variations, Bach and Glenn Gould transplanted to Andalucia. Other ears will hear the Arabic/Maghreb elements more strongly. Skandrani's precise touch and clear, symmetrical rhythmic sense links both worlds, assuring us that the Mediterranean is not a barrier, but a unifier, and that the differences between the cultures are not so vast. This is an admirable achievement, resulting in beautiful music of a rare charm.

Mustapha Skandrani was born in Algiers in 1920, and died there in 2005. He mastered a number of instruments at an early age, and his musical prowess led him to work with the great singers and ensembles of his day, in live performances, recordings, and radio broadcasts. Later in his life, he devoted much energy to education.

Originally reissued by Em Records as a limited edition of 200 in 2012, now available once again, in offset printed sleeve, with insert of Japanese and English sleeve-notes and rare photos

High Hopes - New album from the Mole.
High Hopes is 17 songs across 40 minutes on one slice of wax that, as advertised, sounds nothing like last month’s Ep, High Dreams. Here, rather than the long form dance form, is a continuation of the beat tape pacing from the last album, a collection of moments posing as ideas posing as a narrative stuffed with oddities and surprises that reward the close listen.
What’s heard on High Hopes is the Mole’s exploration of a love letter, from one person to a family, from the northern Pacific to the southern Atlantic, from a boy to a painted bird. Vancouver Island to Manantiales. The songs range from ambient sound bath and hip hop sludge, up to micro boogie and almost House before tumbling back down and forth again. Bubbling synths, MPCs swung out, samples chopped and chewed, bass and violins from Rick and Sophie, field recordings of birds and frogs and beaches, friends and family and fiestas. Did we mention the love ?! This album has got it all! Original collages from Antonio Carrau envelope this wax: jacket, sleeve and cookie. Antonio’s work is typified by playful combinations and bold statements about living in a embrace of analog and digital health. His co lages marry the corporeal world with an updated, digitalized age of reproduction, inducing feelings of gratitude for the simple everyday scenes we sometimes lose touch with when we forget to slow down. Good living, like breathing, requires inhaling as well as exhaling.
We can’t always produce content, make art, we must also pause, and listen. And enjoy. The Mole is joined by friends and colleagues on several songs included on High Hopes. Rick May plays bass on both Que Rico and album stand out GoinF4er. Sophie Trudeau (Godspeed You Black Emperor) plays and arranges violins on GoinF4er and Danuel Tate (Cobblestone Jazz) and Julz Chaz (Wagon Repair) both play Vibes and Emaxx throughout the album. Working with these incredible talents not only enriched this album, but fulfilled a long standing goal of the Mole’s; to work again with the musicians from whom he learned so much. People who helped inform the shape of Mole to come.
The Mole who was As High As The Sky. The Mole has been ‘recognized’ by the ‘global underground’ since his critically celebrated premiere album, As High As The Sky, but his earlier Eps (Wagon Repair, Philpot, Musique Risquee) got the attention of Top DJs, clubs, and festivals around the world first. His sound remains unique, fresh and deep: enjoying plays in a wide variety of spaces and places.
High Hopes is the Mole’s 5th solo album and his 2nd album for Circus Company (The River Widens) who have also proudly released two eps of Mole magic (Little Sunshine, High Dreams).
*Isn’t that too much time for one record? Short answer - No. Long answer - depends on the material. Due to the many quiet passages in the album, the groove spacing can be modulated and the needle can slow it’s progress towards the center/end resulting in longer sides with continued high gain and low distortion.

High Hopes - New album from the Mole.
High Hopes is 17 songs across 40 minutes on one slice of wax that, as advertised, sounds nothing like last month’s Ep, High Dreams. Here, rather than the long form dance form, is a continuation of the beat tape pacing from the last album, a collection of moments posing as ideas posing as a narrative stuffed with oddities and surprises that reward the close listen.
What’s heard on High Hopes is the Mole’s exploration of a love letter, from one person to a family, from the northern Pacific to the southern Atlantic, from a boy to a painted bird. Vancouver Island to Manantiales. The songs range from ambient sound bath and hip hop sludge, up to micro boogie and almost House before tumbling back down and forth again. Bubbling synths, MPCs swung out, samples chopped and chewed, bass and violins from Rick and Sophie, field recordings of birds and frogs and beaches, friends and family and fiestas. Did we mention the love ?! This album has got it all! Original collages from Antonio Carrau envelope this wax: jacket, sleeve and cookie. Antonio’s work is typified by playful combinations and bold statements about living in a embrace of analog and digital health. His co lages marry the corporeal world with an updated, digitalized age of reproduction, inducing feelings of gratitude for the simple everyday scenes we sometimes lose touch with when we forget to slow down. Good living, like breathing, requires inhaling as well as exhaling.
We can’t always produce content, make art, we must also pause, and listen. And enjoy. The Mole is joined by friends and colleagues on several songs included on High Hopes. Rick May plays bass on both Que Rico and album stand out GoinF4er. Sophie Trudeau (Godspeed You Black Emperor) plays and arranges violins on GoinF4er and Danuel Tate (Cobblestone Jazz) and Julz Chaz (Wagon Repair) both play Vibes and Emaxx throughout the album. Working with these incredible talents not only enriched this album, but fulfilled a long standing goal of the Mole’s; to work again with the musicians from whom he learned so much. People who helped inform the shape of Mole to come.
The Mole who was As High As The Sky. The Mole has been ‘recognized’ by the ‘global underground’ since his critically celebrated premiere album, As High As The Sky, but his earlier Eps (Wagon Repair, Philpot, Musique Risquee) got the attention of Top DJs, clubs, and festivals around the world first. His sound remains unique, fresh and deep: enjoying plays in a wide variety of spaces and places.
High Hopes is the Mole’s 5th solo album and his 2nd album for Circus Company (The River Widens) who have also proudly released two eps of Mole magic (Little Sunshine, High Dreams).
*Isn’t that too much time for one record? Short answer - No. Long answer - depends on the material. Due to the many quiet passages in the album, the groove spacing can be modulated and the needle can slow it’s progress towards the center/end resulting in longer sides with continued high gain and low distortion.

This third volume of Universal Synthesizer Interface delves further into early MIDI sequencing software for personal computers, focusing on Intelligent Music Software founded by Joel Chadabe in 1984. In a short period of time (1986-1990) Intelligent Music published a series of MIDI sequencing software titles that would have rippling effects throughout the music world: M, Jam Factory, UpBeat, MidiDraw, Ovaltune, Realtime, as well as an unreleased first version of Miller Puckette’s Max. These programs were a reflection of Chadabe’s desire to create interactive and intelligent algorithmic tools for home computers. Intelligent compositional tools had been floating around for decades in mainframe computer labs, but they had largely only been accessible to people working in academic or corporate laboratories. With the birth of Intelligent Music, these tools became available to anyone with a home studio. As the personal computers of this era had become less expensive and more accessible, they had also grown exponentially in processing power and seeming intelligence. In the music press from this time, we find the same two words used again and again to describe algorithmic computer systems: smart and intelligent. The tone of such articles may seem quaint by today’s standards, when AI and algorithmic control underpin so much of our technology, but the question of machine intelligence remains. Universal Synthesizer Interface VOL III Focuses exclusively on one of the more obscure of Intelligent Music’s software creations - UpBeat: The Intelligent Rhythm Sequencer, released in 1987, and hailed by reviewers of the time as “the world’s best drum machine.”

Two years ago, after Covid sent the industry into a tailspin I made the sad decision to stop pressing Holding Hands records to vinyl. This was gutting as the label had been putting records out from the first release and it had always felt like an integral part of the label’s identity.

It sucked but I always hoped that in the future I would be able to feel confident in pressing records again and I am so happy to say that the time has finally come again!


Earth Trax popped into my inbox with some demos and I instantly knew there was something special here. The tracks are absolutely timeless and will do the business on any dancefloor from now until the end of time.

The A sides have more of loopy club quality that you could listen to all night. The sort of thing that you just lose yourself to when it comes on in the club. You aren’t sure exactly when it came on but you suddenly realise that you’ve been gurning with your eyes closed for some indeterminate amount of time. Basically, they’re very chewy loops (note to self: potential cereal idea).

The B sides have more of a...for lack of a better word, B side quality to them. They’re both broken and they make me want to move my body from side to side in a sort of jagged cool 80’s way. Ones to make you move and think at the same time.

OK enough of my blather. Go and listen to the damn things yourself and decide if you like them, rather than trying to work it out from reading a bloody press release you weirdos.

All four tracks are produced and sculpted for the club. They want big sound systems and dark rooms.

Close your eyes, hold hands and experience transcendental space flight...

Crankers of amp, torturers of fuzzbox and denizens of small-hours salvation, Thee Alcoholics dished out a rancorous and righteous debut in their decent `Feedback' - one that filtered gnarled riffage and motorik malevolence through a uniquely debauched prism in pursuit of some extremely ill-advised audial dystopia. Thee Alcoholics may have started life as the home-birthed brainchild of Rhys Llewellyn (Hey Colossus/Acidliner/Drmcnt) yet an evolution since has proven the ultimate form of this beastly creation to be the live arena. In assembling cohorts to turn these visceral jams into something to shake rafters and rattle pint-glasses, new frontiers of ornery intensity have made themselves manifest, and such is the form of the monstrous Bear Bites Horse Sessions, a live-in-the-studio document recorded with Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse studio in Haggerston, London, chronicling a band breathing life into a Stoogian paradigm, and doing so apparently whilst barely breaking a sweat. Taking essential elixirs of in-the-red mania, hypnotic repetition and deathless swagger, these twelve jams walk a crooked path that neighbours the nihilistic vortex of Loop, the saturnine lurch of The Fall and the deadpan derangement of The Heads but remains possessed of a maverick charisma and mischief all its own. Lovers of lysergic heaviosity and the sound of a Marshall 4x12 violently spluttering its last will find much to satisfy here, but moreover Bear Bites Horse Sessions is a testimony to sonic punishment as a gateway to new horizons, audial excess as a path to wisdom, and answers, right or wrong, being found in the bottom of a glass.

Gavin Vanaelst runs the space Aboli Bibelot in Antwerp where exhibitions and musical performances can happen side to side with dealings in centuries-old furniture and unique pieces of folk art or volkskunst. Gavin makes music under the aliases DJ Charme, Kassett and So Sorry. This is the first album under his birth name. Takeaway Loops cycles back to the days when Gavin was working as a courier for .

is a food delivery company. Their couriers - ehm, brand ambassadors, as the company prefers to call them - dressed in bright orange, they race their bikes around the city. They deliver meals and groceries for all sorts. Thanks to them, the privileged can stay tucked in their private spaces. Interaction between the two groups - the privileged and the brand ambassadors - is mostly kept to the bare minimum. And sparse communications are often driven by annoyances - “my Coke is warm because you kept it too close to the French Fries.” And on the streets the general public dis-approaches the brand ambassadors with pity. We tell our peers: “That’s not a good job,” and “stay away from the Sharing Economy.” Because, you know, in our capitalistic dollhouse we all stand our grounds and play our parts wholeheartedly.

During his shifts for , Gavin recorded location sounds on his phone at fast food restaurants while waiting on the orders he had to pick up and deliver. Later in his home studio Gavin added piano and electronics to this source material. The result: a gloomy soundtrack for a shadow world. Seven songs in evening blue with a bright orange glare.

A few years ago, our favorite Belgian publishing house Het Balanseer released Seizoenarbeid by Heike Geissler (available in English trough Semiotext(e)). Geissler writes about her job at Amazon in Leipzig. Because her writing and freelance work did not pay the bills any longer, she was forced towards this underprivileged shadow-world of unwanted jobs. Seizoenarbeid shed a light on freedom in an unfree world. A monument of ‘we are all in this, but not together’. Takeaway Loops gives us a similar peak in a world that is at the same time so visible, but then also very veiled for many. A world that we prefer to use, yet that most of us prefer not to see - a world that we don’t like to enter.

Last year at Harbourland subway station in Kobe i was mesmerized by its sound design, created by Hiroshi Yoshimura. For each part of the subway station he composed a short phrase. While walking trough the station, a full composition grows in your head. The looping melodies guide you trough a microworld. Trough a blue world of commuters, of the homeless, of the lonely, of the fast paced, of the tourist. Gavin creates a similar effect with Takeaway Loops. The tonality somehow corresponds to Yoshimura’s work. Yet instead of being guided trough a building, we are now taken to the after dark. You feel the concrete evening heat of the city. You hear the rain. Stiff fingers during cold winters’ nights. You are alone on the bike, cruising. Your maps app telling you where to go. You just left the fake leather bench of the well-lit pastiche interior of a fast food restaurant.

Next order, number ECN44! Please wait outside, sir?

Back in 2019 when we launched Vinyl Fanatiks we dropped the first two of the Ellis Dee Project series. Well, its taken us a while but 5 years later we follow up with Part 3! And what an absolute monster release it is!

A little bit of extra info on the remix that Rennie sent me today (25.9.24):

'I was honoured to be asked to remix Dance Factor for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Roy AKA Ellis Dee was the first person in the Rave scene I met and he made the time to encourage me and believe in me and he became one of the most important DJs in the scene. Secondly, it was literally my first ever remix out of about 100. It’s a bit crazy, but back then, things were pretty crazy. I even had hair!'


b b1 | Dance Factor Rennie Pilgrem Remix)

PRESSED ON BLACK & WHITE SPLASH COLORED VINYL

Limited to 1000 copies

Benny The Butcher and 38 Spesh helped put Upstate New York rap on the map when they released Stabbed and Shot, their now classic collaborative album. Since then each rapper has reached new levels of commercial and critical success while cementing their legendary status in the rap game. However, throughout their rise, fans of Benny & Spesh have never stopped asking for the duo to reunite for a full-length album. More than six years after the initial release of Stabbed & Shot, the wait is finally over as Benny & Spesh are drop Stabbed & Shot 2, their long-awaited, full-length collaborative album, and follow up to Stabbed & Shot. The new 16-track project was worth every bit of the wait, as the duo trade bars with each other alongside featured guests Ransom, ElCamino, Klass Murda, OT The Real & Busta Rhymes over production by Daringer, Harry Fraud, V Don, StreetRunner & Chup the Producer and more

PRESSED ON CLEAR WITH RED & BLACK SWIRL COLORED VINYL
Limited to 1000 copies

Benny The Butcher and 38 Spesh helped put Upstate New York rap on the map when they released Stabbed and Shot, their now classic collaborative album. Since then each rapper has reached new levels of commercial and critical success while cementing their legendary status in the rap game. However, throughout their rise, fans of Benny & Spesh have never stopped asking for the duo to reunite for a full-length album. More than six years after the initial release of Stabbed & Shot, the wait is finally over as Benny & Spesh are drop Stabbed & Shot 2, their long-awaited, full-length collaborative album, and follow up to Stabbed & Shot. The new 16-track project was worth every bit of the wait, as the duo trade bars with each other alongside featured guests Ransom, ElCamino, Klass Murda, OT The Real & Busta Rhymes over production by Daringer, Harry Fraud, V Don, StreetRunner & Chup the Producer and more

Not at all dangerous, but no less powerful and devoted to one another, the Coppola family have loomed large in film and the arts for decades.
The head of this particular family was not a Don lurking in the shadows, but a brilliant composer arranger and conductor: Carmine Coppola.
On the face of it, this album is a bit of a curiosity, though it was surely the first recording to bring together music from both Godfather films in this way.
Its original release coincided with a high-profile television event called The Godfather: A Novel for Television (also known as The Godfather Saga).

The extended cut necessarily featured additional music and arrangements, which were overseen by Carmine Coppola.
We can safely assume that at least some of that forms part of what is included in The Godfather Suite. For it, Coppola selected and re-arranged musical highlights from the two films,
including all of Rota’s main themes and his own source music pieces, creating what is essentially a 14-part symphonic suite.

It’s all rather beautifully executed, with great romantic flourishes, and it’s a fitting tribute to Carmine Coppola’s talent, not to mention his contribution to two legendary films.
Carmine Coppola himself passed away just months after the release of The Godfather Part III. A highlight of that final score is the ‘Love Theme’,
which was the basis of Carmine Coppola and lyricist John Bettis’s Oscar-nominated original song ‘Promise Me You’ll Remember’. The instrumental arrangement is included here in addition to the Suite.

A magical and inspirational collaboration between musicians from Burkina Faso - including West African griot and balafon player Seydou "Kanazoe" Diabate and guitarist Abdoulaye "Debademba" Traore - alongside French jazz vocalist and flutist Clotilde Rullaud. In the streets of Burkina Faso, the phrase "ka nana ye" can be heard everywhere. It means "it's not easy" but also implies that things will be okay. With the album Kananaye, which takes its name from this popular saying, things can only get better. Its foundational multiculturalism, conscious lyrics, intertwined traditions, and contemporary grounding are essential qualities in these times when optimism has become a survival virtue. It's not easy, but it will get better - provided we make the effort, crossing borders where others seek to close them. Clotilde Rullaud, Abdoulaye Traore, Achille Nacoulma, Seydou Diabate and Boubacar Djiga, the creators of Kananaye, are dedicated to this cause.

On November 8th, 2Tone Records/Chrysalis Catalogue will release a 40th Anniversary Half-Speed Mastered Edition of The Special AKA 'In The Studio' album. This release has been liaised and approved by the band's founder and main songwriter Jerry Dammers. Formed in Coventry in the mid-1970s, The Specialswas the idea of musician Jerry Dammers, who brought together an eclectic array of individuals to fulfill his vision of a multi-racial band, fusing the energy of punk with the legendary but, at the time, often overlooked, sound of Jamaican ska. The band rose to prominence along with the 2Tone movement, which included two No. 1 singles, Too Much too Young and 1981's Ghost Town, which theme still resonates today before Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple left to form the Fun Boy Three and Roddy Byers left to tour with his band the Tearjerkers. The remaining members, Dammers, Bradbury and Panter, recruited guitarist John Shipley from The Swinging Cats, ex-Bodysnatcher Rhoda Dakar and lead vocalist Stan Campbell,reverting the original band name of The Special AKA and set to work on a new album. Released in 1984, 'In the Studio' was a brave mix of bold and challenging music, with a strong political, social and moral conscience. The album made it into the Top 40, and while it might not have been a huge commercial success, it was, and still is, an astonishingly unique work: a haunting, claustrophobic mix of lounge, soul, reggae, jazz and Arabic rhythms, with uncompromising subject matter. It featured two classic singles: the joyous, yet serious rallying anthem for the then imprisoned South African ANC leader, 'Free Nelson Mandela', and 'What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend'. As time has gone by, the status of 'In The Studio'has grown, and today it is rightly viewed as a genuine lost classic. Like the previous two Specials 40th Anniversary vinyl editions, this has been newly remastered and cut at half-speed by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios, London. Format: Wide spine sleeve, 2LP 180gm Black Vinyl cut at 45rpm with insert inside and OBI.

Is A Feeling ensures that their new 12" very much is with some classically inclined but not overly nostalgic deep house from Scott Featherstone. 'Plan B' is a bulky, wonky deep house cut for the pumping after party hours, then 'We Played House' taps into the early Chicago sound with Peach Boys style synths and dubbed-out vocals. 'Bad Mother Fucker's a raw, sleazy looper that DJ Sneak would love not least because of the rude-boy vocals and filtered synths, then 'Badass Breaks' spins out on just that. 'Journey' might be the best off the lot with its soulful xylophone melodies and smooth-cruising deep house beats. An eclectic and excellent EP.

Coco & Clair Clair wussten von dem Moment an, als sie sich trafen, dass sie dazu bestimmt waren, gemeinsam Musik zu machen. Ebenso werden die Zuhörer sofort von dem Duo aus Atlanta durch seine cleveren, mitreissenden und genreübergreifenden Songs angezogen. GIRL ist ihr zweites Album nach dem gefeierten Debüt SEXY aus 2022, das Lob von Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Fader, Nylon, u.a. erhielt.

- "Pioniere des "Dämonen-Glam-Rock", ihr kompromissloser und unverkennbar Hip-Hop-beeinflusster Sound haucht dem Lo-Fi-Schlafzimmer-Pop-Genre neues Leben ein." dreamhaus.de

"For me this is a testimonial. When I was growing up an important part of church service was people having the opportunity to stand up and give public testimony on their trials, tribulations, and triumphs. After the celebratory atmosphere that followed MICHAEL I was reminded that tribulations never cease, but God is always with me and this is a testimonial of my tumultuous times, my trials, and my continued triumph in spite of doubt, outright hate, and fear. I am here to speak to and with my fellow sinners and Saints.” - KILLER MIKE



MIchael & The Mighty Midnight Revival - Songs For Sinners And Saints", a ten song collection that provides a bookend to the 3 time GRAMMY winning MICHAEL era and puts the speculation about the aftermath of February 4 to bed. Killer Mike states "This is the epilogue to MICHAEL. This is what comes after Feb 4th. I had a year to live with MICHAEL and realized I had more I wanted to do with this sound before moving on."

Multi-talented artist Poppy Ajudha will be announcing her sophomore album, titled ‘Poppy’, which will be released 22nd November 2024. This follows Poppy’s triumphant return to releasing music this year with the release of 'My Future', following a two year hiatus. ‘Poppy’ was created alongside Mike Malchicoff (Kanye West/King Princess) with contributions from the likes of producers Maestro (Rihanna), Fred Ball (Alicia Keys/Raye/Mariah Carey), Grades, (Kali Uchis, Dua Lipa, Britney Spears), and Travis Sayles (Ariana Grande).

Poppy says: “I can’t believe I’m writing this, but my sophomore album is finally coming out! After numerous trips back and forth from London to LA, millions of revisions to perfect each song and a lot of moving the track listing around, I’ve made an album I’m so in love with, with people who I felt truly seen by, who I respected and found a natural synergy with. I really put everything into this album, it is a reflection of my growth over the last 2 years, an outward pouring of my raw vulnerability, the inner workings of my chaotic brain and the deep desire I have to challenge myself with everything I do. I’m really proud of what we made, and I hope that when you hear it, it means something to you too.
Thank so much to all the special people who contributed to the making of this project, the producers, engineers, musicians, visual creatives, the friends who listened to me while I processed my life in order to write it down, I wouldn’t have been able to manifest this dream without you.”

Alongside the announcement of her upcoming album, Poppy has also released new single ‘Lean On Me’, a bold pop banger about the importance of community and showing support for each other even during challenging moments. ‘Lean On Me’ was written by Poppy with production from Wesley Singerman (Kendrick Lamar/Anderson Paak).

On ‘Lean On Me’, Poppy says: “We realise true friendship in the moments we are most vulnerable with each other. When I wrote ‘Lean On Me’ I was going through a breakup and struggling to make sense of my world. My friend who was experiencing their own kind of grieving found the time to give me the advice I needed, and the next day I wrote this song about the power of friendship, community, unconditional love and showing up for each other through our hardest times.”

Robin Carolan's latest soundtrack for Robert Eggers' highly anticipated Nosferatu is a haunting, gothic-infused and meticulously crafted work that draws from a vast palette of sounds, instruments, and inspirations. Following their successful collaboration on The Northman, Carolan reunites with Eggers to bring the legendary tale of Nosferatu to life, infusing the film with a score that is as complex and nuanced as the story itself. With Daniel Pioro, one of Britain's most exciting young classical musicians, at the helm as the orchestra leader and first chair for a vast majority of the recording, the soundtrack features a vast orchestration, including 60 string players, a full choir, various horns and woodwinds, a harpist, and two percussionists. Despite the grandeur of the orchestration, one of the most challenging pieces was the music box used at the film's beginning. Carolan and Eggers struggled to perfect its sound, a process marked by their meticulous attention to detail, which Carolan describes as almost telepathic. Set in the 1800s, Nosferatu allowed Carolan to incorporate contemporary instrumentation, though he made a deliberate effort to ensure the score didn't sound overly modern. Letty Stott, who also worked on The Northman, contributed ancient horns and pipes, enhancing the soundtrack's eerie atmosphere. Additionally, percussionist Paul Clarvis custom-built a toaca-like instrument for added authenticity. Carolan's inspirations for the soundtrack were as eclectic as they were profound. He frequently drew upon the works of Bartok and Coil, while films like The Innocents, Angels and Insects, and Eyes Wide Shut provided cinematic inspiration. Additionally, he explored the more obscure side of Hammer Horror soundtracks and found a deep connection to the music of the Ukrainian film The Eve of Ivan Kupalo, which helped shape the score's otherworldly tone. Carolan intentionally moved beyond the typical horror score, focusing on capturing the tale's melancholy and tragic elements while weaving in a sense of warped romanticism. The result is a soundtrack that not only complements the film but also stands on its own as a testament to Carolan's artistry and the enduring power of collaboration.

Robin Carolan's latest soundtrack for Robert Eggers' highly anticipated Nosferatu is a haunting, gothic-infused and meticulously crafted work that draws from a vast palette of sounds, instruments, and inspirations. Following their successful collaboration on The Northman, Carolan reunites with Eggers to bring the legendary tale of Nosferatu to life, infusing the film with a score that is as complex and nuanced as the story itself. With Daniel Pioro, one of Britain's most exciting young classical musicians, at the helm as the orchestra leader and first chair for a vast majority of the recording, the soundtrack features a vast orchestration, including 60 string players, a full choir, various horns and woodwinds, a harpist, and two percussionists. Despite the grandeur of the orchestration, one of the most challenging pieces was the music box used at the film's beginning. Carolan and Eggers struggled to perfect its sound, a process marked by their meticulous attention to detail, which Carolan describes as almost telepathic. Set in the 1800s, Nosferatu allowed Carolan to incorporate contemporary instrumentation, though he made a deliberate effort to ensure the score didn't sound overly modern. Letty Stott, who also worked on The Northman, contributed ancient horns and pipes, enhancing the soundtrack's eerie atmosphere. Additionally, percussionist Paul Clarvis custom-built a toaca-like instrument for added authenticity. Carolan's inspirations for the soundtrack were as eclectic as they were profound. He frequently drew upon the works of Bartok and Coil, while films like The Innocents, Angels and Insects, and Eyes Wide Shut provided cinematic inspiration. Additionally, he explored the more obscure side of Hammer Horror soundtracks and found a deep connection to the music of the Ukrainian film The Eve of Ivan Kupalo, which helped shape the score's otherworldly tone. Carolan intentionally moved beyond the typical horror score, focusing on capturing the tale's melancholy and tragic elements while weaving in a sense of warped romanticism. The result is a soundtrack that not only complements the film but also stands on its own as a testament to Carolan's artistry and the enduring power of collaboration.