Suche:celestial shore

The Telescopes were founded in England in 1987 by chief member Stephen Lawrie and released several recordings in the late 1980s but it is in 1990, when the band signed to legendary label Creation, that they hit their stride and helped to define a decade of UK rock music. Fusing elements of psychedelia with noise-rock, and dreamy pop, The Telescopes were near the forefront of the early shoegaze scene and hugely influential on the next wave of early 1990s Brit-pop. This crucial collection complies all 4 of their 12" singles on Creation as well as a 1991 John Peel session and other bonus tracks. Issued on 180 gram 2LP with a deluxe double sided poster insert.

Dive head first into a parallel universe where the facts of music history have been turned into pliable putty and an alternative world where Rod Temperton never met Quincy Jones, never joined Heatwave and never wrote songs for the greatest pop soul artists of the 70’s and 80’s BUT instead, hung out at a West Berlin commune with a cast of trans-continental musicians playing a hybrid of post-psychedelic rock with overtones of Ghanaian funk and early 80s synth experimentation all the while exploring the mystic tundras of the mind and the celestial palisades of the soul...

This is the parallel universe that the Suffolk based studio dwellers, Pleasurewood inhabit. Let them take you on a journey through some of Temperton’s biggest hits in only a way that Pleasurewood’s genre defying style and studio prowess will allow.

Heatwaves kicks off on vinyl, with a tasty 7” Double A side that is dance floor ready...

It’s an off-kilter affair from side one with ‘Off The Wall’ swirling in a dense fog of phased bass guitar and emerging onto the shore with jutting hips to a groove underpinned by a sweating percussion section and early forms of synthesiser soaring above like crazed Pteranodons.

On the flip side is ‘Boogie Nights’ striding slowly and purposefully into frame with an apocalyptic Bass guitar line riding a solitary cowbell before a synthesiser clarion ushers in the break and the familiar hook with Moog thunder-strikes glowering in the distance.

The 7" includes digital download of the 7-tracks album "Heatwaves".
Limited to 200 copies.

Young Gun Silver Fox are the captains of AM Waves, setting sail towards an isle where melodies soak the shoreline and grooves sway like palm trees. Their route traces a natural progression fromWest End Coast, an album that cast Andy Platts (Young Gun) and Shawn Lee (Silver Fox) as musical virtuosos of SoCal-infused pop. AM Waves does more than duplicate the perfection of West End Coast. It improves it.

Recorded at The Shop in London and Roffey Hall in the English countryside, AM Waves burnishes the blend between the duo's modern aesthetic and their sumptuously crafted homage to '70s-styled pop, rock, and soul. "This music hits a certain spot for me personally that nothing else quite does," says Shawn, who produced the album amidst his projects for Saint Etienne, Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra, and several other acts. "It's real high-caliber music. It's easy and breezy to listen to but it's really hard to make. Every aspect is A game."

The A game behind AM Waves fuels 43 minutes of Young Gun Silver Fox in peak form. "AM Waves is much more instinctive," says Andy, whose penchant for writing irresistible hooks and melodies also shapes his role as lead singer and lyricist/composer for the band Mamas Gun. "It's more vivid. You can see the clarity to the colors of AM Waves whereas West End Coast is slightly more impressionist, as it were."

Originally issued as a single in September 2017, "Midnight in Richmond" is the anchor of AM Waves. "I hit one chord, which I'd never played before, and the song sort of wrote itself," notes Shawn. "It was intuitive. In many ways, the primary function of what I'm doing is trying to find that chord that opens a door and takes you someplace else. Those chords have magic." Andy embellishes the song's appeal by nimbly juxtaposing wistful emotions with a sun-kissed melody, his voice evoking richly drawn memories. The qualities that make "Midnight in Richmond" an instant classic abound throughout the album.

"Lenny" and "Take It or Leave It" spotlight Andy's versatility as a songwriter. The former was inspired by a dream he had where Lenny Kravitz owned a bar. "It was surreal," he says. "He was polishing the glasses and just serving me hit after hit." Like swimming through moonshine, Andy languorously savors every syllable in the song. "Take It or Leave It" is pure pop bliss. "That was one of those songs that fell out in half an hour," he says. "I had everything and it was done." Shawn adds, "It's such a perfect song in itself. When I listen to it, it's like you've created a record that already existed."

Young Gun Silver Fox introduce a five-piece horn section on "Underdog" that literally trumpets the song's protagonist. Shawn affectionately dubbed them the "Seaweed Horns" in honor of the Seawind Horns, an LA-based unit that recorded with powerhouses like Michael Jackson,Rufus & Chaka Khan,and Earth, Wind & Fire during the late-'70s. Andy explains, "The horns grab another hue of the west coast sound, which is the starting point, but it's also maybe the point where we're injecting a little bit more of ourselves and some outside colors into the familiar west coast palette."

A bounty of treasures course through AM Waves' ebb and flow. "Mojo Rising," which the duo penned with Rob Johnson, is a veritable retreat to paradise. "Sky-bound, heaven sent / Way above the clouds watching shootingstars descend," Andy sings, mirroring the music's celestial undertones. Sensuality contours the notes on "Just a Man," a song that basks in the allure of a woman who leaves "footprints on the water" while "Love Guarantee" is festooned with the Seaweed Horns. "I wanted to bring more of that R&B slickness into the mix," Shawn notes about the latter track. "We hadn't done a tune with that sort of groove." Similar to his work on "Underdog," Nichol Thomson's intricate horn arrangement on "LoveGuarantee"exemplifies another distinction between AM Waves and its predecessor.

"Caroline" occupies a special place on AM Waves, beyond spawning the album title. It tells the story of Radio Caroline, a pirate radio station that broadcast from an offshore vessel during the '60s and '70s. "They played the music that kids wanted to hear, whether it was the old stuff or cutting edge stuff," says Andy. "'Caroline' is about Radio Caroline's eventual capture." Complementing Andy Platts' deft wordplay, which draws parallels between radio airwaves and the station's literal home on the ocean, Shawn Lee layers nearly a dozen different parts on "Caroline," showcasing the vastness of his musicality. "I loved that track as soon as I heard it," Andy continues. "It's a beautiful fusion of me and Shawn."

The Seaweed Horns joinYoung Gun Silver Foxas they detour to the dance floor on "Kingston Boogie." Shawn explains the track's genesis, "I was thinking, what have we not done yet We definitely should get an AOR disco thing happening. I quite like disco. The beat is so metronomic that it allows you to be really sophisticated on top. 'Kingston Boogie' just laid itself out. I call it 'midnight disco.'" With a nod to "Lenny," Andy Platts sets "Kingston Boogie" back at Lenny's Bar, this time revealing a detail or two about its mysterious proprietor as he pours sweet wine and moonshine.

In a sense, AM Waves ends with the beginning. Even before there was Young Gun Silver Fox, there was "Lolita," the first song Andy Platts and Shawn Lee wrote together and a crowd-pleasing staple of the duo's live sets. The tale of a femme fatale who harbors a secret was recorded for West End Coast but instead furnished the B-side to "Long Way Back" as well as a bonus track on the North American edition of the album. Despite the song's checkered trajectory, its infectious chorus sparked the brighter, more buoyant orientation of AM Waves.

Like the moon pulling the tide, Young Gun Silver Fox are a magnet for good songs. "We're both so obsessed and constantly interested in music-making," says Andy. "We're both thinking about it all the time. When you know you have an accomplice with you that's the same as you, it's very liberating. Suddenly, worlds of color start to appear." Indeed, AM Waves is elemental in its power to induce pleasure. Dive right in.

Christian John Wikane

(New York City / February 2018)

'Atmospheric death metal'. Three simple words to describe one's music, chosen by JADE mainman J. himself, although they don't seem to quite pay justice to the gigantic scope of their music. Because ever since the release of their debut demo back in 2018 they've proven again and again to be more. Much more. Historically speaking, the word 'jade' referred to a rare but valuable mineral in ancient times all over the world. From Mesoamerican cultures to Chinese and Southern Asian ones, the greenstone was conferred with deep spiritual symbolism and used to connect the earthly level to the unknown. The history of countless traditions, legends and cults remain as an endless source of topics in terms of lyrics for the band, with a rich historical narrative also poetized. JADE's music is described by J. as "a tribute to the timeless obscure metal language, from early death/doom manifestations to later atmospheric black acts, in a really heavy, intense and epic form which transcends ages, as the greenstone cult has endured." The sophomore album, and second full-length after last year split LP with SANCTUARIUM, Mysteries Of A Flowery Dream carries an ominous wave of darkness, redefining heaviness with new levels of musical production and arrangements, compared by J. to "a journey into the dialogue between conscious and subconscious dreaming states and the mysteries around." The album's lyrics are in direct line of those themes, echoing the celestial world and how it can help us overcoming ominous times ("The Stars' Shelter"), how dreams can be interpreted as omens ("Light's Blood") and how they allow us to travel the Mayan cosmovision and its various worlds for guidance, healing and messages ("Shores Of Otherness"), among others. You can even find on the cover artwork elements of the ancient Mesoamerican cosmovision, mainly the powerful moon goddess Ixchel, a creative yet destructive entity, portrayed here as the Spider and threading human fate like an umbilical cord, determined to give life but also to destroy it if needed. A frightening, fragile yet utterly fascinating balance perfectly illustrated by Mysteries Of A Flowery Dream.

On A Golden Shore arrives as The Hanging Stars reflect on a year of triumphs. With an Americana Music Association Bob Harris - sanctioned award and a Nashville sell-out in Third Man’s Blue Room with Jack White approvingly looking on, they’re a leading light in the UK Cosmic Americana cohort. Their standing has allowed them to pay less attention to any preconceptions of what they are ‘supposed to be’. On A Golden Shore - their fifth album and their second for the pioneering Loose Music, following 2022’s Hollow Heart - finds them definitively themselves and presents a set of disparate songs whose fundamental linkage is the band that made them. On A Golden Shore was recorded at Edwyn Collins’ Clashnarrow Studios with Sean Read producing. Singer/guitarist Richard Olson, drummer Paulie Cobra, multi-instrumentalist Patrick Ralla, plus freshman bassist Paul Milne – laid down the album’s backbone over eight days. Mostly recorded live, even the solos done as a piece. Much is first take because trying better, it never worked as well. Pedal-steel player Joe Harvey-Whyte created and added his parts at his London studio bringing ‘shimmery psychedelic goodness’. Smartly sequenced On A Golden Shore proceeds in clusters of songs; commencing with the free and easy choogle of ‘Let Me Dream Of You’, encompassing the sunny glam of ‘Sweet Light’, the baggy Balearic waft of ‘Happiness Is A Bird’, the pan pipes and bongos of the exotic ‘Golden Shore’, through to the rolling banjo of ‘No Way Spell’ and the celestial cascades of ‘Heart In A Box’. Fashioned instinctively On A Golden Shore is ultimately an album of sensation as much as thought, filled with fleeting moments of blissful excess, and stumbling, rushing flutters of sound; its evanescent psychedelia, divine choruses, and shards of strings combine into an infectious, compelling Cosmic Heartbreak Boogie.

The music heard on this album was originally the result of a commission to score the second half of the film Nico/Nico Crying made by Andy Warhol in 1966. The commission was made by Art Cinema OFFoff in collaboration with B.A.A.D.M for a screening of the film together with a live presentation of the score in September 2021 at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. The recording presented here was made in the last week of that year and mixed soon after in January 2022. These recordings are essentially live-recordings performed by the composers together in the same room and recorded in a manner reminiscent of the record making process as it was in the late 1960s. The instrumentation used to make the sounds on this album consists of modular synthesis, zither, voice, contaminated field recordings and metal percussion.

Mats Erlandsson is a composer and musician part of the vibrantly re-emerging field of drone music in Stockholm, Sweden, and is associated with practices characterized by the extensive use of sustained sound. Erlandsson presents his work both as a solo artist and in collaborations, most notably together with Yair Elazar Glotman and Maria W Horn. Recent releases include Gyttjans Topografi on XKatedral, Minnesmärke on Hallow Ground and the collaboration Emanate made with Yair Elazar Glotman on the label 13070. In addition to his own artistic practice Erlandsson holds a position as studio technician and was temporarily, from October 2022 to September 2023, the acting studio director at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm.

The compositions of Maria W Horn implement synthetic sound, electroacoustic and acoustic instruments and audiovisual components, often devicing generative and algorithmic processes to control timbre, tuning and texture. She employs a varied instrumentation ranging from analog synthesizers to choir, string instruments, pipe organ and various chamber music formats. Acoustic instruments are often paired with digital synthesis techniques, in order to extend the instruments timbral capacities. Often based on minimalist structures, her music explores the inherent spectral properties of sound and their ability to transcend time and space, reality and dream.

Two stone cold classics right here from the Roy Ayers masterminded RAMP, taken from the holy grail album Come Into Knowledge. Sampled the world over, influentially positive and as prized as they get, South Street’s new sub-label South Street Soul couldn’t have picked a more perfect double header to reissue as their inaugural release.

Although the RAMP acronym Roy Ayers Music Productions bared Ayers’ name, he did not perform with the Ohio band instead writing, arranging and producing the tracks alongside Edwin Birdsong and also William Allen. Drafting in some of the best session musicians in the game, from vocalists Sibel Thrasher and Sharon Matthews, The Spinners drummer John Manuel, guitarist Landy Shores and Cincinnati bass maestro Nate White, the result was pure ethereal excellence.

Rare groove at its finest ‘Daylight’ is one of the standout cuts from RAMP’s only album - soulful, sumptuous and laced with a celestial touch that takes this track to another realm of conscious. A track that was famously sampled by A Tribe Called Quest for their hit ‘Bonita Applebum’ and J Dilla’s remix of Common – Come Close.

On the B side, a Roy Ayer’s masterpiece 'Everybody Loves The Sunshine' given the RAMP revamp, an end of the night masterpiece, a hazed-out dreamer - just downright blissful grooves from start to finish. Ready-made to ride out into the sunset with.

Legendary New York band M'lumbo distil experiences from their pre-pandemic shamanic travels into their stunning new album The Summer Of Endless Levitation. The eight-track vinyl LP is an avant-garde take on folk music informed by painter and sculptor Jean Hans Arp's 'Biomorphic' works and it serves as a sonic renewal of self.
The cult M'lumbo collective has been a legendary and groundbreaking act since first forming in the mid-80s. They cross genre boundaries as they draw on jazz, world, electronic, rock and experimental music that escapes the commercial world and take you into another realm entirely. There is no limit to their sound; each member brings their own cultural background to the mix, making the band all the more unique.

As the coronavirus pandemic struck, three members of the band Rob Ray Flatow, Paul-Alexandre Meurens and Brian O'Neill under-took a regimen of shamanic traveling in New York City. The experiences led them to spontaneously compose and perform a suite of pieces, informed and inspired by Jean Hans Arp's works but also by the feelings of isolation and indefinite exile yet to come in their urban environment.

Compared to the works they have done as part of the larger M'lumbo band, this album is a more modest and naive affair that is "a vehicle for the renewal of feeling using only a few instruments - acoustic and electric guitar, keyboard, flute, small percussion, kalimba and clarinet - and locating a sense of both the deep sadness and uplifting powers of reverie."

'There Are No Words' kicks off with heavenly chords and organic percussion that recalls the jungle jazz of Don Cherry, then 'Shoreline' is a five-minute dub with percolating rhythms and new age melodies before the soul-soothing acoustic guitar of 'The Afternoon Levitation' blisses you out on a sunny day. The perfectly entitled 'Swoon' is another gloriously uplifting piece of musical spirituality that fuses the electronic and synthetic with the ancient and ritualistic. There is more jungle jazz, big-band horn work and cosmic synth modulations of 'Open The Heavens' while 'Quanta' is a shuffling, jumbled mix of radiant chords, wigged-out electronic lines and celestial charm. 'Planetfall' goes from free-form jazz to double-time techno and back to cathartic ambient. The final trio of tracks conjures up everything from the transcendental jazz of Alice Coltrane to the cinematic downtempo of Calm.

red marbled vinyl

Crisp beats open a serene, relaxing track in Celestial Beings. Smooth synth work fades in and the dreamy atmosphere builds and smoothly carries the listener along for a blissful ride, which Aural Imbalance fans will be well accustomed to.

Washing in with a lush pad-work intro, light analogue breaks creep in gradually over a deep brooding bassline, setting the tone for a delightful pad-laden journey through time and space.

Smooth glorious pads & light hi-hats welcome exquisite beat-work using the classic Circles break, a collage of delicate samples lightly adding to the ambient tone of the track.

Another treat for the ears with Caladan Shores, Aural Imbalance conjuring serene atmospheric vibes with graceful, elegant pads and synths complemented by that classic understated 808 bassline.

Words by Chris Hayes (Spatial / Red Mist)

Limited Vinyl LP edition!

The second volume in a two-part collection of Jamaican doo wop from the late 1950s through to the early 1960 represents a period in which sound systems began to dominate the island, and were starting to step up their rivalry by beginning to record heir own platters rather than rely on imports to gain the competitive edge.

With the uniquely Jamaican ska craze yet to fully catch hold, these tracks are largely imitative of the sounds that had been reaching the island from American shores, albeit peppered with hints of what was to come ~ some of the future stars of ska, rocksteady and reggae are starting to cut their teeth here on these records, providing a unique view into the fledgling industry at a time of creative flux.

Jon Tye and Pete Fowler have been making music as Seahawks for a decade now. Given the sounds they’ve been exploring over those ten years it was a cosmic inevitability that they would be asked to contribute to the catalogue of the legendary library label KPM.

They replied with Island Visions, an exploration of sound for vision where they construct “audio micro-worlds to explore and inhabit”. A way to transport the listener away from the everyday without the bother of getting on an aeroplane. Mind travel is space travel after all, and much better for the environment.

Mostly recorded at The Centre Of Sound in Cornwall, with additional recording at Studio 34 in London, Jon and Pete’s travelling companions on this particular trip were boogie wunderkind Sven Atterton on fretless bass and keys, Nick Mackrory on percussion and the Seahawks live team of Dan Hillman and Alik Peters-Deacon.

From the grooves of Brian Bennett to the moog vibrations of Mike Vickers, the lush textures of Les Baxter to the experimental sounds of Delia Deryshire and David Vorhaus, this new music channels sounds and moods from across the KPM universe.

The spacious “Hot Sand Shuffle” opens the record with some of Seahawks’ familiar “deck-shoegaze”. The slinky digi-dub of “Sky Blue Sky” follows, gently encouraging us to lay back and relax. “Mystic Beach” is a refreshing ocean spray of a synthetic groove that clears the head, priming a pathway to receive “Crystal Forest”, a new age house groove of birds and flutes.

Dense, deep and dreamlike, “Distant Shore” is ambient rainforest house with a 90s vibe, its dense foliage clearing to let us bask in the shimmer and shine of “River Run”. Hang drum, electric gamelan, flute and loon close side A.

Side B bounces into being with “Catch A Wave”, an upbeat beach groover of synthetic guitar, effervescent synth and snappy drums. Equatorial bubbler “Paradise Bird Bath” soon glides in with marimba, crisp beats and fat synth bass. Fender rhodes, space echo and fretless bass make “Smooth Runnings” a laid-back poolside groove.

“Spirits Have Flown” conjures a hazy vibe with marimba, sax, synth funk bass and chilled beats before “Rolling Deep” serves up a light cocktail of sultry rhythms, refreshing textures, cooling sax and fretless bass. Almost-title track “Island Blues” brings the horizontal poolside feels with melodic chimes, oboe and more fretless bass for maximum vibrations. The marina drone of modular electronics, celestial trumpet and jungle ambience pay the album’s final respects to the cosmos on “Sun Salute”.

Like many KPM suites, this is a record of two distinct sides. The sunrise of side A brings a deep meditation, a journey within to renew the jaded self. Side B refreshes with cocktails by the pool and a chance to groove away the evening at some sunset beach party before dancing under the stars in the house of dreams.

Pete’s front cover for the LP is part map, part postcard: “the record has five different sections and I wanted to reference those in the worlds they created, musically and physically. From beach campfire, to poolside hanging and nighttime dancing. A kind of portal to those places and the pictures they inspired in my mind. All places we’d like to be in this turbulent year”. The track descriptions on the back help guide the way.

2020 marks 10 years since Ocean Trippin’, the first Seahawks release, and Island Visions is the perfect distillation of the sounds, sights, textures and moods that Jon and Pete have been exploring over the last decade. Sunrise to sunset condensed to two sides of an LP. The normal rules of space and time don’t apply here.

This is the first time Be With has worked with Seahawks, but individually Jon and Pete have been members of the extended Be With family since forever (Pete did those posters for our Ned Doheny tour and we worked with Jon on the vinyl version of Hatchback’s Colors Of The Sun). Of course we were going to put this out on vinyl.

Mastered by balearic engineer of choice (and Be With’s regular audio co-pilot) Simon Francis, cut by the legendary Pete Norman and pressed in the Netherlands by Record Industry, the sonic frequencies of these Island Visions have been precision tuned and encoded for optimum travelling conditions. Take the trip.