Suche:composer

The reactivation of the Made To Measure series continues with this CD
reissue of ‘Geographies’, a very special album by the maverick French
composer and producer Hector Zazou that features an orchestral suite
originally released in 1985.
It showcases some of Zazou’s most exquisite compositional work, fusing a chamber ensemble, some classical and contemporary vocals, unorthodox production, and an ironical, affectionate take on early 20th century classics (think Satie et al).
With evocative song titles such as Cine Citta and Sidi Bel Abbes, and even a catchy folk-like tune, Vera C, this album is a playful voyage in time and space. In addition to the original 9 tracks there are 13 bonus tracks, entitled 13 African Proverbs for Vocal Quartet.

The venerable composer and keyboardist Stale Storlokken follows up his previous Hubro release (and solo debut recording), The Haze of
Sleeplessness, with a second solo album performed entirely on pipe organ and recorded at Steinkjer Church by Stian Westerhus.
He describes the album as “a cavernous cathedral of sound”. While the Norwegian Grammy-nominated ‘The Haze of Sleeplessness’ used a whole keyboardmuseum’s worth of antique synths and contemporary digital software to create
its vast array of sounds, everything on ‘Ghost Caravan’ is the product of one organ’s pedals, pipes and sonic plumbing.
“There’s not so much of a relationship to ‘Haze’, says Stale Storlokken of the new album. “That album was more based on improvised ideas that were tweaked and arranged , while this one is all improvised with almost no editing at all. Everything you hear is from the church organ, with no additional instruments.
The basic concept of the record, and the arrangement of the titles and pieces, is done in such a way that they alternate between a fluent, “on the move”, abstract mood and a more recognisable, concrete and grounded mood. At the same time it should be so open that listeners will hopefully have their own unique experience. The organ at Steinkjer is not a big organ but it has some really nice sounds, with a number of quirks and mechanical eccentricities that suit my music.”
The organ is partly a reconstruction based on a Wagner organ in Nidarosdomen built originally in 1741, the organ is housed in the strikingly modernistic Steinkjer kirke, designed by Olav S. Platou in 1965, and featuring glass panels by the artist Annar Millidahl. What Ghost Caravan does share with its predecessor is a seemingly limitless acoustic space for the listener’s imagination to roam in, with Storlokken creating a cavernous cathedral of sound.
The audio dynamics span an enormous range, capable of stretching from the quietest breathy whisper to a basso profundo squawk or scream, sometimes within seconds of each other. Similarly, the incredible variety of sounds that Storlokken coaxes from the organ can defy rational analysis, with the resolutely analogue instrument appearing to echo the industrial, found-sounds of clanking machinery or buzzing electronics that one might expect to encounter through digital sampling or the tape-based experiments of musique concrete.
Over ten separate improvised pieces which connect into an informal suite through the repetition of key elements and sequential titles (with four ‘Spheres’ and four ‘Cloudlands’, plus ‘Ghost Caravan’ and ‘Drifting on Wasteland Ocean’), Storlokken has made a strikingly unified, self-referential aesthetic world that can stand as a true work of art.

INTERMISSION MUSIC is the soundtrack to An Intermission, an artists film by Edwin Mingard made in collaboration with a group of young people experiencing homelessness in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Like the film, the soundtrack was made collaboratively by the group, working with Edwin and composer Tom Haines.

ALL PROFITS from the soundtrack go to a dedicated fund to support the young people as they take their next steps in life. All partners have worked for free or at cost to make sure this is as much of the cover price as possible.

The film won Jury Special Mention at IDFA, the world's most prestigious documentary festival; was selected for New Contemporaries, and longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize. In 2021 it is screening at the London Short Film Festival; Future Now Symposium; and is being exhibited at South London Gallery from May 2021.The soundtrack is being showcased on all these platforms.

The Guardian are releasing the film in 2021. Their documentaries consistently receive tens of thousands of views, and the release of INTERMISSION MUSIC will be highlighted here also.

repress on BLUE vinyl

A reputed classical violinist and music teacher on the one hand, a curious jazz cat on the other. A business man and control freak, but an artist and free spirit as well.

Still, rather little is known about René Costy. Small wonder: the Belgian musician and composer was in many, if not all, respects a singular man. The lure of international show business was wasted on him and consequently, his name has remained a well-kept secret.

But cream always rises to the top. Some twenty years after his passing, his work - finally - goes global.
Moreover, this being a selection out of more than 400 tracks from a virtuoso, versatile and insatiable artist, it's hard to underestimate the importance of this compilation, which focuses on Costy's library music production from the 70's.

If you collect vintage 70's soul-jazz vinyl, there is a good chance that you already own a record that features the amazing vocal talents of Dee Dee Bridgewater. Whether it be Roy Ayers, Norman Connors, Billy Parker or Carlos Garnett - Dee Dee is the glue that fuses these artists together. Although best known for her jazz work, Dee Dee has had a wonderfully rich and varied career encompassing soul, musicals, gospel, and underground disco from the 70's to the present day. She is still active as a vocalist, composer, and producer and remains one of our favourite vocalists at Mr Bongo HQ. We take things back to the early years of Dee Dee's career with her debut album 'Afro Blue'. Recorded in Tokyo in 1974, the album was released exclusively in Japan via two different Japanese labels (Trio Records in 1974 and All Art in 1985 respectively). Each release had unique cover art and we have opted to present the album in its original 1974 form.

'Afro Blue' features an exquisite collaboration of American and Japanese musicians, such as Cecil & Ron Bridgewater, Motohiko Hino and producer Takao Ishizuka. The result is a sublime deep soul-jazz masterpiece with timeless versions of 'People Make The World Go Round', 'Love From The Sun', and 'Afro Blue'. It is arguably one of the finest albums in its genre. This record has long been a sought-after item for DJs and collectors alike, so we are delighted to finally make this wonderful music from an understated great available to all.

Chronos is the new album by Rostock´s composer Johann Pätzold aka Secret of Elements - a heartfelt, richly visual journey through which the German composer channels personal struggles alongside the social upheavals to which he has dedicated himself as a 'music activist'.

Textextext - (add your write up)

Chronos charts an eventful period during which Pätzold learned to deal with mental illness, travelled to the Mediterranean to save lives during the refugee crisis, fell in love and lost love - ten years is a long time. The album tells of people, moments or phases from the musician's life. It opens with the ominous melodies and immersive choral ambience of 'Grace', which reflects on a friend's suicide attempt, before riding the euphoria of Pätzold's wedding and the birth of his children in 'A Last Waltz.'

Third track 'Memento' narrates the epic journey of a refugee Syrian mother whom Pätzold accompanied from Greece to Germany, its emotive swells and subtle crescendo evoking simultaneously the dawning of a new world and the melancholy of what has been left behind. 'Vinculum', built around an Indian mantra, also dates from the same period and was written as a last tribute to a small child who drowned in the Mediterranean. The piece combines church organ - renown as part of Christian music, and indeed recorded in the Marienkirche in Gnoien on an original 18th century Lütkemüller organ - with a mantra, seeking to unite various religious symbols in an attempt at reconciliation in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Propelled by mechanical percussion, 'Rage' uses the Shepard scale, a musical phenomenon in which two cyclically rising octaves are played on top of each other in a staggered fashion to create the illusion of an infinitely swelling scale, perfectly mirroring the image of blind spiralling, hysterical anger. When we arrive at 'Aurora, we feel Pätzold musing about the end of the world, but also the end of the self. What remains when humanity is wiped out by a pandemic or something similar? In Johann Pätzold's case, what remains is, among other things, a monumental album, a musical chronicle of his life: Chronos.

** 12” LP edition of 300 copies with cover artwork and booklet featuring illustrations by Ettore Tripodi ** In September 2019 Alessandro Bosetti was invited by fellow composer and curator Riccardo La Foresta to create a new work for a newly created ensemble as part of a residency program hosted by Centro Musica in Modena, Italy. The very first encounter took place on Skype – kind of a prediction of the forthcoming physically distanced pandemic times. The first, straight-to-the-point question Bosetti posed to each musician was to tell him the history of their life. The materials collected in the interviews subsequently underwent a process of anonymization, selection and cut-up in order to create the imaginary autobiography of Didone, a genderless character on whom Bosetti composed a combinatory poem in 84 aphorisms, six of which have been translated into music. The ensemble consists of extremely different musical profiles: the contemporary soprano Giulia Zaniboni, minimalist banjo and acoustic guitar player Glauco Salvo, and four musicians with a jazz background such as guitarist Luca Perciballi, drummers Andrea Grillini and Simone Sferruzza, and saxophonist Dan Kinzelman (also part of Hobby Horse trio and long-time collaborator of Enrico Rava). Some of the stylistic features of Bosetti’s project Trophies (along with Kenta Nagai and Tony Buck) can be detected here and there. Persistent repetitions, mesmerizing sonic masses and extended, oblique melodic lines are here led by the clear and precise voice of soprano Giulia Zaniboni.



The voice is at the heart of this work: the textual fragments of the autobiographies are filtered through Zaniboni’s contemporary vocality, while informing the instrumental writing as well. Themes and textures unveil traces of words or sentences; fragments of biographies are embedded in the intricate instrumental dialogue between the two drummers. A final layer was added by Ettore Tripodi, a unique and out-of-time visual artist who imagined Didone in a series of illustrations accompanying the poem. "Didone" is a work about the reconfiguration and recombination of identities, where every specific sense of belonging melts into an indistinct swarming of possibilities.



Alessandro Bosetti is a Marseille-based composer and sound artist with a particular interest in the musicality of language and in the voice, conceived as an autonomous object and an instrument of expression. His works enact a dialogue between language, voice and sound within complex tonal and formal constructions, often crossed by oblique irony. He builds surprising devices, often linked to the radio medium and to a tireless reflection on the relationships between music and language, questioning aesthetic categories and listening postures.



His work has been shown in reference venues such as the GRM / Présences Electronique festival in Paris, Roulette and The Stone in New York, Café OTO in London, the Liquid Architecture Festival in Melbourne and Sydney, the Serralves Museum in Porto and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. His music is released by labels such as Errant Bodies Press, Holidays Records, Rossbin, Sedimental, Unsounds, Monotype, Weird Ear Records.

‘Kick The Ladder’ the anticipated debut album from Icelandic composer and songwriter Kaktus Einarsson, frontman of post-punk outfit Fufanu, will be released by One Little Independent on May 7th. It was produced by Kaktus, alongside Swiss electronic composer Kurt Uenala, and finished in New York City. It draws heavily on the concept of how we as a society relate to our surroundings, whether it’s environmental or personal.

Colleen is an aboundingly inventive composer and artist. For two decades Cécile Schott, as Colleen, has crafted welcoming, enchanting, and bewildering music. The multi-instrumentalist and vocalist's timeless compositions make use of carefully selected tools to mold memories into transcendent splendor. The Tunnel and the Clearing finds Schott at her most vulnerable and confident, invoking contemplative and swirling organ processed through analog electronics, steady drum machine syncopations and her distinctive voice. On an album centered on processing the complicated washes of emotion through tribulations and revelations Colleen presents a vision of breathless clarity.

Colleen is an aboundingly inventive composer and artist. For two decades Cécile Schott, as Colleen, has crafted welcoming, enchanting, and bewildering music. The multi-instrumentalist and vocalist's timeless compositions make use of carefully selected tools to mold memories into transcendent splendor. The Tunnel and the Clearing finds Schott at her most vulnerable and confident, invoking contemplative and swirling organ processed through analog electronics, steady drum machine syncopations and her distinctive voice. On an album centered on processing the complicated washes of emotion through tribulations and revelations Colleen presents a vision of breathless clarity.

Mica Levi is a musician and composer living in
South East London who uses programming
software, written notation and improvisation to
produce music. They are currently a member of
the groups CURL, Good Sad Happy Bad and
Tirzah and have composed scores for a number of
films including Under The Skin, Jackie, Monos,
Zola and Mangrove (part of the Small Axe series).
‘Blue Alibi’ is the second album Mica has released
under their own name. Vinyl edition released
concurrently alongside first album ‘Ruff Dog’.
‘Blue Alibi’ is available on black vinyl in uncoated
printed inner sleeve in printed reverse board 3mm
spine outer sleeve, with retail sticker and digital
download card.
‘Ruff Dog’ is the first album Mica has released
under their own name. Vinyl edition released
concurrently alongside second album ‘Blue Alibi’.
‘Ruff Dog’ is available on black vinyl in white paper
inner bag in printed reverse board 3mm spine
outer sleeve, with retail sticker and digital
download card

Henry Cavill (Man of Steel) stars as Napoleon Solo opposite Armie Hammer (The Social Network) as Illya Kuryakin in director Guy Ritchie’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E., a fresh take on the hugely popular 1960s television series.

Ivor Novello-winning and multi-BAFTA nominated composer Daniel Pemberton (known for “The Awakening” and the Sundance Jury winning “Enemies Of The People”) created an exciting soundtrack with relaxing lounge instrumentals full of Jazz and Swing elements. Moreover, the soundtrack contains seven original classics like “Compared To What” by Roberta Flack and “Take Care Of Business” by Nina Simone. Pemberton has also scored countless Emmy, BAFTA, Grierson and RTS winning comedies, documentaries and lifestyle shows and worked with Oscar winning directors and editors.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also stars Alicia Vikander (“Anna Karenina”), Elisabeth Debicki (“The Great Gatsby”), with Jared Harris (“Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows”) and Hugh Grant as Waverly.

Conrad Clipper is the pseudonym of an anonymous composer and multi-instrumentalist, with a focus on prepared,
programmed & played piano. He lives and records in Berlin.

His debut album, Cycle of Liminal Rites, was released on Emily Elhaj’s Love Lion label (Angel Olsen). He is set to releasehis follow-up release, Heron’s Book of Dreams, on Luau Records (Theo Alexander, Sontag Shogun, Segal) on March 26th 2021. It was recorded in Arizona and Berlin, and was mixed and mastered by Deerhoof’s John Dieterich.


Conrad on the recording of Heron’s Book of Dreams:

Through the window at Arcosanti, I could see the desert, vast and transformative. Inside the room was an upright piano, a Fender

Rhodes, and several synths. For five days - every morning, afternoon and evening - I sat in this room with the circular window and wrote the music you can hear on this record. Outside, intimate crowds gathered to watch some of the world’s best musicians play unique and unrepeatable sets.

“Arcosanti, AZ is a prototype arcology designed by Paolo Soleri. Picture, if you can, moonbase architecture inspired by late-60s sustainable ideologies. Concrete atriums screened with poplar and olive trees. Shady, calm apses to keep the desert sun off. The low roar of the iron forge, casting the famous Arcosanti bells that are shipped around the world.”

Hella Love, the Hardly Art debut from Marinero, is an album about closing a chapter. It’s Jess Sylvester’s grand farewell, and love letter to his hometown and the place he grew up, The San Francisco Bay Area, before relocating to Los Angeles after finishing his debut release. Using the moniker Marinero (which means “sailor” in Spanish), Jess Sylvester was drawn to this name as a means to honor his parent’s stories -- his father, a sailor, and mother, a Mexican-American who grew up in San Francisco. This record blends many worlds from beginning to end, and as you go deeper it hits harder. It’s his goodbye to The Bay. Pulling sonic influences from classic Latin American groups and international composers from the 60’s & 70’s: Los Terricolas, Ennio Morricone, Esquivel, Carole King and, Serge Gainsbourg Hella Love finds Sylvester fusing classical arrangements with a variety of different genres, evoking a sonic nostalgia blended with other contemporary artists like Chicano Batman, Connan Mockasin, and Chris Cohen. The album was written, played, and produced by Jess Sylvester with help from Bay Area engineer Jason Kick (Mild High Club’s Skiptracing) at Tunnel Vision and Santo Recording in Oakland, California. On the standout single “Nuestra Victoria,” Sylvester shares “It’s my way of talking about gentrification in SF, or specifically the Mission where my mom and family grew up. The song is about a bakery, or panaderia called La Victoria, and was a place where my mother and tias went growing up, a place I also went to that is no longer there.” It was one of the oldest Mexican-American businesses in SF and I wanted to honor it”. “Through the Fog” highlights Sylvester’s exploration of his influences from the Tropicalia movement, weaving bossa rhythms with lush percussion and orchestration. Using SF’s infamous fog as a metaphor for “tough times”, Sylvester expands that it is a dedication to his friends and family who have helped him get through substance abuse issues, heartbreak, and other painful experiences. “There are a few easter eggs in the lyrics for Bay Area folks or people who have followed my music in the past but it’s mostly about getting through something difficult with the love and support from the homies and fam.” The album’s title track, “Hella Love,” summarizes both of his parent’s stories of how they ended up in the bay. The first verse is about his father’s voyage out west as a sailor during the late ’60s while the second verse follows his mother’s experience moving to The Mission District when she was a young girl.


It’s difficult to classify or generalize about Marinero’s music or identity. To him, it’s important to let his music do the talking. “I’m Chicanx, a bay native, biracial, and I’ve luckily gotten to travel and spend time in Mexico and I feel like my personality and specific musical tastes come through on this album. More than these generalizations we often make, I’m just a human who can both fear and love, and I’m just hoping to connect with others to share optimism and experience joy and laughter, even if for a moment.” Lean your ear to the ground because Jess Sylvester has been many things and will continue to share his journey. It is clear this gifted creator has more to say.
-Luz Elena Mendoza

Deep spiritual jazz recorded in Germany, performed by Jamaican born saxophone player Fitz Gore and his international group The Talismen, featuring a.o. bassist Gérard Ebbo from Morocco and drummer Philippe Zobda-Quitman from Martinique. This is the first reissue of their second album, released in 1976 by the small private label GorBra from Bonn, including "Delilah" and "Requiem For Julian Cannonball Adderley". The rare LP comes in a newly mastered version with original cover design and sleeve notes. Fitz Gore's music is full of tremendous tension and movement between deep seriousness, inwardness and humility; it affects your life, it liberates and heals.

Original sleeve notes from 1976:

"Soundmagnificat" is the successor to "Soundnitia" (GorBra Records F 665 532), the first release from the Talismen, an international group with Jamaican Tenor saxophonist Fitz Gore (born1935) as founder, spiritual and musical leader, main soloist. "Soundnitia" contained concert performances of June, 1975, including compositions by John Coltrane, Horace Silver and one by Gérard "Prof. Dr. Splüm" Ebbo, bassist of the Talismen.

This second offering from the Talismen is more varied. It has four tracks recorded at four different occasions. It presents Fitz Gore as a singer, a composer, as well as, a tenor saxophonist. The opener, Requiem for Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, is a moving tribute to a great American artist, the late alto saxophonist "Cannonball" Adderley. On this track, Hungarian drummer Janos Sudy is heard with the Talismen, for the first time. The playing by the quartet on this slow lament very adequately illustrates the mood of the composition

For the next piece, a concert performance, Gore selected a gem from the American Negro Song Tradition and he displays a mighty, masculine and soulful voice in Steal Away. An example of a modern artist using an old traditional to express his own inner feelings. Delilah is taken from another concert performance, the same concert as the music on "Soundnitia". It has extensive playing by Gore, a bass solo by Gérard Ebbo, leading into some exciting conga playing by Lamont Hampton.

The final track, A Sinner Kissed An Angel, was recorded by another tenor player, Wardell Gray, in 1950, but this version is all Gore's. After the piano introduction, Gore delivers the melody with authority and with an expressive use especially of the high register of his instrument. In his improvisation, Gore's playing becomes more dissonant. Some of his playing here causes me to think of the way the late Albert Ayler sounded on his first recordings done in Sweden, in the beginning of the 60s. No drums here, but nice accompaniment and solo work of Jochen Paul on vibes.

I met Fitz Gore in Copenhagen in the fall of 1975. We were both listening to the trumpet playing of Harry "Sweets" Edison at the now defunct Café Montmartre. Prior to that time, I did not know Gore and his music, but listening to his playing on this album and the earlier one, has once more widened my musical horizon. His music has struck some chords within me. "Music is communication", John Coltrane once said. I feel sure that as you listen to the music of Fitz Gore and his Talismen, you will get the message.

In these notes, I have mentioned a couple of jazz artists and another one ought to be named primarily, because he has meant a lot to Gore: Sonny Rollins. The two met in Paris in 1966. Gore says of Rollins: "He openend my eyes ...big man … phenomenon … my man". As Sonny Rollins's artistry, the music of Fitz Gore holds many aspects, some being aggressive and even hysterical, others being those of beauty and peace. As life itself … (Roland Baggenaes, June 1976)

The music of Fitz Gore, rooted in the blues, is full of tremendous tension and movement between deep seriousness, inwardness, humility and humor, hardness and tenderness; it affects your life, it liberates and heals - a hopeful, a truly groundbreaking, a timeless, a new music - Newsic!
(Gisela Braasch, 1976)

In memory of Fitz Gore.
Mastered 2020 by Roskow Kretschmann at Audiomoto,
kindly supported by Tom Sky. Vinyl cut at SST.
Producer for reissue: Ekkehart Fleischhammer,
reproduction of original cover design by Gisela Gore:
Patrick Haase aka rab.bit.

Be With is delighted to present Jorge López Ruiz’s El Grito (Suite Para Orquesta De Jazz), eternal Argentinian magic released on CBS in 1967 that must be one of the most sought-after South American jazz LPs.

Living in Buenos Aires in the 60s, driven by creative impulse and rage Jorge López Ruiz used music as his platform to protest the Argentine military dictatorship: “I could never stand dictatorships, to be told how you have to think, what you have to do. Nor did I endure discrimination”.

A young López Ruiz had appeared on a television panel alongside writer, politician and philosopher Arturo Jauretche, criticising the Onganía dictatorship. Jauretche told López Ruiz “Now say it with music”. This was the deep inhale that lead to El Grito, literally “The Scream”. As López Ruiz later explained “Jauretche urged me that my protests should not remain in words and acquire the consistency of a work… but it was not so much what he told me but how he told me, what prompted me to make the work take shape, first in a live concert and then in a recording”.

As the police and military began resorting to kidnapping, torture and summary executions to quiet dissent, with depressing inevitability the artist community and their work were a particular target of the increasingly brutal regime. El Grito was banned not long after it was released and the majority of original copies were unceremoniously destroyed.

The work of a genius artist living under an opressive dictatorship, erased by the government of the time, this is buried treasure in every sense and it’s been a rare record for over 50 years. But it isn’t just being hard to find that has pushed up the prices of those few original copies that survived, this is a foundational record in the development of jazz in South America.

El Grito (Suite Para Orquesta De Jazz) is a showcase for Jorge López Ruiz’s skills as a composer and arranger as he leads a virtuoso orchestra of the likes of Mario Cosentino (alto sax), Baby López Furst (piano), Pichi Mazzei (drums), Gustavo Bergalli (trumpet), Oscar López Ruiz (guitar), Arturo Schneider (flute) and Jorge López Ruiz himself plays double bass on the fourth and fifth movements.

As the album’s sub-title explains, The album is a Jazz orchestra concept suite. Five movements, to be heard as a whole, that end where they begin.

“When I wrote it there was no history of a cyclical work in jazz. But I didn't notice that, I needed to express something and I did it. At that time they told me I was crazy, that such a thing was very difficult to do. But hey, I like challenges”.

Yet this is not challenging jazz. There are certainly avant garde, free jazz flourishes, but the hard bop characteristics make this a very accessible album: easy to listen to without being easy listening. López Ruiz’s love of film brings a definite cinematic feel.

The title movement opens the album in bombastic style. “El Grito” grabs you by the lapels and refuses to let go. Raw then controlled, it’s by turns stabbing then soothing, with rage weaved in and out of the elegant styles. “M.A.B. = Amor” is our favourite here. With a tense introduction and a patient build, a gentle sax sweeps in to lift everything up to meet the serene piano and soft drums. Elegantly paced, it moves back and forth between deep contemplation and a more urgent call and response between strings and horns. A near-eight-minute, slow motion marvel.

The second side eases in with the beautifully-titled “Hasta El Cielo, Sin Nubes, Con Todas Las Estrellas” (“Up To The Sky, No Clouds, With All The Stars”) a relatively brief mid-tempo piece featuring López Ruiz’s insistent bass notes high in the mix, and again blending the sublime with the emotive with its wild horns and tight rhythm section.

It’s followed by “Tendré El Mundo” (“I Will Have The World”) which also leads with hypnotic bass, but this time swifter, driven by crashing drums, rapid horn conversations and effortlessly cool piano flourishes. Rounding out the suite, “De Nuevo El Grito” (something like “The Next Scream” or “The Scream Renewed”) is a stylish closer. Whilst López Ruiz’s bass shifts the track along, the horns and piano are more restrained, yet no less stunning.

This Be With edition of El Grito sounds sensational, if we do say so ourselves. Working with audio from the original analogue tapes, the vinyl mastering chops of Simon Francis are on full show here in what he considers to be some of his best ever work for Be With. Pete Norman’s cutting skills have made sure nothing is lost. The tortured artwork has been restored here at Be With HQ as the finishing touch to helping this revered work find a rightful place in every protest art collection.

Having already explored the archives of a number of overlooked Greek composers, Into The Light is now turning its attention to the uncharted territory of Greek film soundtracks of the 70s and 80s - a boom period for mystical, transcendental arthouse cinema in Greece.

GOST: A Spiritual Exploration into Greek Soundtracks (1975-1989) is a passion project from the Greek filmmaker and composer Yannis Veslemes, that took years of engagement, exhaustive research and persistence. The collection features a mixture of rare, hard-to-find and previously unreleased material from musicians and composers including Yannis Kostidakis, Thesia, Dimitris Papadimitriou, Michalis Christodoulides, Stamatis Spanoudakis, Haris Xanthoudakis, Vangelis Katsoulis and Charlotte Van Gelder . All material is accompanied by detailed linear notes from the curator Veslemes, explaining the stories behind the tracks and the movies they first featured on.

The compilation celebrates the inventiveness and experimentation of Greek soundtrack composers in the ‘70s and ‘80s, by presenting a surprising mixture of musical hybrids that bridge the worlds of electronic and acoustic music, and compositions that bring together Western and Eastern musical traditions, in uniquely idiosyncratic ways.

On Halloween 2014, the director and composer John Carpenter introduced the world to the next phase of his career with “Vortex,” the first single from Lost Themes, his first-ever solo record. In the months that followed, Lost Themes right-fully returned Carpenter to the forefront of the discussion of music and film’s crucial intersection. Carpenter’s foundational primacy and lasting influence on genre score work was both rediscovered and reaffirmed. So widespread was the acclaim for Lost Themes, that the composer was moved to embark on something he had never before entertained – playing his music live in front of an audience. 2016 will host the first ever John Carpenter tour and in true Carpenter spirit, a sequel to Lost Themes: Lost Themes II. The follow-up brings quite a few noticeable changes to the process, which result in an even more cohesive record.

Lost Themes’cowriters Cody Carpenter (John’s son) and Daniel Davies (John’s godson) both returned. Cody was recently also heard as a composer for Showtime’s Masters of Horror series (Cigarette Burns and Pro-Life), and NBC’s Zoo. Davies was a composer for NBC’s Zoo, as well as the motion picture Condemned. All three brought in sketches and worked together in the same city, a luxury they weren’t afforded on the first Lost Themes. The result was a more focused effort, one that was completed on a compressed schedule — not unlike Carpenter’s classic, notoriously low-budget early films. The musical world of Lost Themes II is also a wider one than that of its predecessor. More electric and acoustic guitar help flesh out the songs, still driven by Carpenter’s trademark minimal synth.Keep your eyes peeled for John and his co-writers to hit the road next year performing both lost and newly found themes, in addition to retrospective work from Mr. Carpenter’s multi-generational career. Long live the Horror Master.

color/ltd

Columbia, South Carolina’s Chaz Bundick (aka Toro y Moi) rose to the fore of the music blogosphere in summer 2009 when he and a few peers made their hazy bedroom recordings the most talked-about sound of the season. Critics across the board took notice of the range of his compositions, and his debut album, Causers of This, showcased his ability to make elements of Brian Wilson’s pop, 80s R&B, and Stone’s Throw hip hop coalesce into a distinct sound that’s as suitable for a dancefloor as it is a pair of headphones.

When Chaz first signed to Carpark Records, the plan was to release two records in 2010 — one electronic and one with live instrumentation — and although it didn’t quite fit into the same calendar year as his debut, Underneath the Pine is that latter offering. This release sees him following the same creative urges to completely different ends. Having spent the year listening to film composers like Ennio Morricone and François de Roubaix, Bundick returned to his home in Columbia, the birthplace of many Toro tracks of yore, to bring his new ideas to fruition. The result of these sessions is an album evocative of R. Stevie Moore’s homespun ruminations, David Axelrod’s sonic scope, Steve Reich-ian piano phrasing, and the pervasive funk of his first record. Underneath the Pine announces a new phase for an artist whose talent defies classification.

Throughout his vast career, the New York based Australian composer JG Thirlwell has adopted many masks as a means of infiltrating and subsequently subverting a wide range of pop cultural forms. His work under the Foetus moniker has taken on everything from big band to opera to noise-rock. Steroid Maximus embraced exotica and the world of soundtracks, while his Manorexia project continued his quest to the outer limits of contemporary composition and musique concrete. Thirlwell has also carved out a significant output in the field of the soundtrack via the large body of work created for the animated television shows Archer and The Venture Bros. In addition he has been commissioned to create compositions by such notables as Kronos Quartet, Bang On A Can, Alarm Will Sound, String Orchestra of Brooklyn and many others.

Now we have ‘Omniverse’, the second release under the moniker Xordox. Xordox is a synthesizer-based project, and on this evocative album we see the project branch into many new avenues. The science fiction element brushes up against crime noir, even veering into areas that could well fit in the video game soundtrack genre. With an audacious attitude and an arsenal of machines Thirlwell serves up a selection of thrilling retro-future mind capsules. This is music made from a life saturated in culture, both underground and mainstream, high and low. Tense sequencing and noir tinged keyboard lines invoke a powerful visual image of films and memory, of screens and speakers, of sound and space, all entering the cosmos and the subsequent galactic race. Thirlwell’s decades long exploration of sampling and sequencing, composing and ingesting a daunting amount of audio and visual artworks speaks volumes for the bold assimilations exposed here. ‘Between Dimensions’ lays out a tense theme which starts off like a score to a a crime thriller before morphing into a simulacra of Kraftwerk scoring a video game. The living ghosts of Giorgio Moroder and John Carpenter haunt ‘Oil Slick’ as it permeates wormholes, updating lifeforms with its stealth sequencing and tense momentum.

‘Omniverse' is a synthesised soundtrack journey, one which embraces past forms whilst reshaping them for the new unknown. ‘Omniverse' is a thrilling liquid ride through fear and hope, and like all the best of Thirlwell’s output, is simply one hell of an enjoyable journey to take.