Buscar:concept

2022 REPRESS

In the tireless pursuit of Tensal to finish the whole alphabet, the letter I is up next. In this new work called "Certain Magnitude" he explores the limits between the dance floor and more industrial concepts, the energy that is unleashed and calculated in equal parts in this game of textures recaptures the classic essence with an avant-garde approach.

On his debut album producer and Squama co-founder Martin Brugger hovers through Ambient, (upbeat) Downbeat and unfulfilled build-ups.
Conceptualized as a blank soundtrack, the music was sent to fellow artists who shared their visual and verbal associations which became the source for the artwork and tracktitles, effectively making the album a collective effort.
Evident in all of his recent projects is Brugger's passion for working and thriving within closely set limits.
The only audio sources in the process of making the album were his record player and a Dave Smith Prophet 08 synthesizer. In an antithesis to most sample-based music, Brugger takes the more ephemeral moments of recorded music and uses pitching tools as a magnifying glass to dive deeper into the sound and bare layers that normally remain unheard.

We Jazz Records presents the second volume of their reworks albums dealing with source material from the Helsinki-based label's catalog. This time around, it's Carl Stone's turn to tackle the source albums at hand and filter the label's output through his musical lens.

We Jazz Reworks is an idea that repurposes some of the label's output 10 albums at a time. That is, the label invites producers whose music they love on board, and one by one, they tackle 10 albums worth of source material, of which they are free to use as much or as little as they choose. The series evolves chronologically, so this volume being number two, the source material is pulled from We Jazz LPs numbers 11 through 20. The artist has complete freedom.

Volume 2 in the series happens with Carl Stone, a legendary figure in creative music. His career spans decades of unlimited musical innovation. Stone's recent output on Unseen Worlds, the label who has also been instrumental in issuing some of his remarkable earlier work, ranks among the most original art of our time and renders notions such as "genre" virtually meaningless.

Here, We Jazz originals by Terkel Nørgaard, OK:KO, Jonah Parzen-Johnson and more are met here with a fresh sense of discovery, spun around and delivered ready for the turntable once again.

Carl Stone says:

"It was wonderful that We Jazz gave me carte blanche to work with any materials from the set of ten releases in its catalog. This freedom to work with everything could have been a mixed blessing though, as it could be a challenge to try to deal with so much musical information. In the end I did what I almost always do: Let my intuition be my guide and to seize upon any musical items that seemed to fit into an overall approach."

"To make a new piece I usually start with an extended period of what really is just playing, the way a child plays with toys. Experimentation without necessary expectation, leading to (hopefully) discovery of things of musical interest, then figuring out a way to craft and shape these into a structured piece of music. Each track uses a different approach, which I found along the way during this play period."

This conceptual approach becomes complete with the design, in which album graphics are treated in a similar fashion, reworking what's there. This time around, the artwork is reinvented by Tuomo Parikka, a regular cover collage contributor for the We Jazz Magazine.

CURACAO BLUE TRANSPARENT VINYL, INSIDE OUT SLEEVE, OBI W/ LINER NOTES, PRINTED INNER SLEEVE WITH SOURCE ALBUM DESIGN REFLECTIONS.

„All The Colours“ was a concept that came about from Andy Ash bringing together his music and visual art in an attempt to try and identify the common ground between the two. In both mediums, Andy attempts to convey the full range of human identity – at first you see and hear euphoria and playfulness, but look a little closer and you will also notice anger, sadness and tension. On this album, Andy approaches house music as the vehicle to convey many different feelings. These tracks are designed to be played on the dancefloor and bring people together – this is what house music has always been about!

The whole album was made over a two-year period in Andy’s home studio using a mixture of analogue hardware and samples. During this period, Andy was suffering with some significant mental health problems and this album represents his attempts to channel this energy into something productive. This is also the first time Andy has worked with vocalists, bringing a new dimension to his music. Whether it is the old school inspired „The sound“ which features vocalist Erik Rico, or the deep and moody „I’m Here“ featuring Liverpool vocalist Amber Kuti, this album brings many different shades of house music to the table! A real statement!

Since making his mark in the ‘90s through the early aughts as a part of the legendary Boot Camp Clik and one half of “Da Incredible Rap Team” and duo Heltah Skeltah, Rock (also known as the Rockness Monsta) has been conservative with solo efforts. With one of the most distinct voices in hip-hop, the Brooklyn emcee released his full-length debut solo albumRockness AP in 2017, and now looks to step back into the spotlight with his sophomore album, Ether Rocks.

Produced entirely by Harlem, New York’s Ron Browz (Nas’s “Ether”, Jim Jones’s “Pop Champagne”, etc.), the project sees Rock’s ominous tone and sharp flow transposed from the traditional Boom-Bap beats of Da Beatminerz and others, into a sonic backdrop that retains grit yet bolsters an updated and more sophisticated style from the legendary emcee.

The 12 track LP boasts guest appearances from Method Man, Steele (Smif-N-Wessun), Ruste Juxx and more, and is available via DSPs, CD and vinyl through American B Boy Records in partnership with Fat Beats.

“Dope is dope. I'm trying to break out of the underground rap box and ease into ‘grown man rap’. This album is basically my way of showing y’all more sides to myself musically and conceptually. A lot of our culture wants you to do the same thing over and over. That’s understandable but not realistic as we are forever evolving as human beings. So, while I continue to serve jedi level barbarian bars, I’m adding some things to the menu.” – Rockness Monsta

The origins of Cos date back to the second half of the sixties when Daniel Schell joined forces with Jean-Paul Musette, Pascale Son and Robert Pernet to form Classroom. When Classroom split, Daniel Schell and Pascale Son moved ahead and formed Cos together with Charles Loos, Alain Goutier and Bob Dartsch. They produced an experimental jazz rock sound linked to the influences above mentioned, but without being mere copycats since they always managed to keep to their own personality.



Viva Boma was their second LP, originally issued in November 1976, and added some African influences to the mix, including the cover which, designed by Alain Goutier upon a concept by Daniel Schell, depicted a trio of hipopotamus that made reference to Boma, a portuary city at the banks of the river Congo, and Bomma, Belgian word for grandmother (hence the title appearing either with one or two m's on different parts of the artwork).



The Wah Wah reissue comes housed in a

Following the compass of an entrancing debut, Flore Laurentienne’s Volume II presents another palette of rich orchestral sound, where changing forces of water inspire metaphorical markers that navigate passages of life and loss.

Mathieu David Gagnon resumes his voyage into environment and emotion with Volume II, drawing inspiration from the rivers and rugged wilderness of the composer’s native Quebec. In his return as Flore Laurentienne – the namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora – Gagnon assembles vivid melodic motifs and delicate modulation with a vast string ensemble to emulate the tides of human experience.

Listeners of Volume I will recognise Gagnon’s signature approach towards reworking and reframing an emblematic melody or concept across a series of works inVolume II, a process he likens to that of a painter creating multiple sketches of the same view. Continued from the first album, the enigmatic “Fleuve” series is conjured to evoke the multiple personalities of the great St. Lawrence River, and the “Navigation” works (“III” and “IV”) wade through dappled progressions and expansive streams of string, the latter of which harbors the gentle meanderings of improvised clarinet.

“Haunting vocals backed up by an intimate guitar” -
Rolling Stone
“With its icy charms unfolding at a devastating
pace, this marks the emergence of a bold new
talent” - Clash Magazine
‘they only talk about the weather’ is an album of
acute emotional exploration. It’s Arny’s coming-ofage journey, from writing in school, staring out of
dorm room windows, being on the road, to today.
With poetic proficiency and a knack for composing
melodies that bury themselves deep into the
subconscious, Arny writes of loneliness and
existentialism with stark relatability. There’s a quiet
confidence that comes from these tracks; crystal
clear in their conception, completely honest, and
masterfully arranged.
She walks us through her relationships growing up
and her realisations about other people as well as
herself. We listen as she unpacks herself to a
backdrop of vividly painted natural landscapes.
Pink vinyl LP.

NY-based cellist / composer Clarice Jensen’s third LP,
‘Esthesis’, is a deep and gorgeous new work,
conceptually structured around the emotional and
harmonic spectrum and the phenomenon of
chromesthesia - a condition whereby sound
involuntarily evokes an experience of colour, shape
and movement.
Following up her critically acclaimed 2020 LP, ‘The
experience of repetition as death’, ‘Esthesis’ sees
Jensen expanding her oeuvre and introducing a wider
instrumental range, including the piano of Timo Andres
and the voices of Laura Lutzke, Francesca Federico
and Emma Broughton. Mixed by Francesco Donadello
and mastered by Matthew Agoglia, it is released ahead
of a UK / EU tour supporting Dustin O’Halloran.
Jensen has recorded and performed with a host of
artists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter,
Björk, Stars of the Lid, Dustin O’Halloran, Nico Muhly,
Taylor Swift, Michael Stipe, the National and many
others.
CD in gatefold card wallet.
LP includes digital download code.
For fans of Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hildur Gudnadottir,
Stars of the Lid, Max Richter, A Winged Victory For
The Sullen, Sarah Davachi, Kali Malone, Kaitlyn
Aurelia Smith

‘Stumpwork’ is the follow-up to 2021’s ‘New Long Leg’. The
South London-based group’s first studio album, recorded in
just two weeks with producer John Parish at the iconic
Rockfield Studios, became a huge critical and commercial
success reaching #4 in the UK Album Charts and featuring in
Best Of 2021 polls across the board. Buoyed by its success,
Nick Buxton (drums), Tom Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard
(bass) and Florence Shaw (vocals) returned to rural Wales in
late 2021, partnering once more with Parish and engineer
Joe Jones. Working from a position of trust in the same
studio and with the same team, imposter syndrome and
anxiety was replaced by a fresh freedom and openness to
explore beyond an already rangy sonic palette, a newfound
confidence in their creative vision. A longer period in the
studio afforded the time to experiment, improvise, play,
sharpen their table tennis skills.
‘Stumpwork’ was inspired by a plethora of events, concepts,
and political debacles, be they represented in the icy mess of
ambient elements reflecting a certain existential despair, or
the surprising warmth in celebrating the lives of loved ones
lost through the previous year. Surrealist lyrics are as ever at
the forefront - but there is a sensitivity now to the themes of
family, money, politics, self-deprecation, and sensuality.
Furious alt-rock anthems combine across the record with
jangle pop and ambient noise, demonstrating the wealth of
influences the band feed off and their deep musicality. With
the pressure of their debut album behind them, Dry Cleaning
have crafted an ambitious and deeply rewarding new work
that marks them out as one of the most intelligent and
exciting acts to come out of the UK.
LP pressed on white vinyl.

‘Stumpwork’ is the follow-up to 2021’s ‘New Long Leg’. The
South London-based group’s first studio album, recorded in
just two weeks with producer John Parish at the iconic
Rockfield Studios, became a huge critical and commercial
success reaching #4 in the UK Album Charts and featuring in
Best Of 2021 polls across the board. Buoyed by its success,
Nick Buxton (drums), Tom Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard
(bass) and Florence Shaw (vocals) returned to rural Wales in
late 2021, partnering once more with Parish and engineer
Joe Jones. Working from a position of trust in the same
studio and with the same team, imposter syndrome and
anxiety was replaced by a fresh freedom and openness to
explore beyond an already rangy sonic palette, a newfound
confidence in their creative vision. A longer period in the
studio afforded the time to experiment, improvise, play,
sharpen their table tennis skills.
‘Stumpwork’ was inspired by a plethora of events, concepts,
and political debacles, be they represented in the icy mess of
ambient elements reflecting a certain existential despair, or
the surprising warmth in celebrating the lives of loved ones
lost through the previous year. Surrealist lyrics are as ever at
the forefront - but there is a sensitivity now to the themes of
family, money, politics, self-deprecation, and sensuality.
Furious alt-rock anthems combine across the record with
jangle pop and ambient noise, demonstrating the wealth of
influences the band feed off and their deep musicality. With
the pressure of their debut album behind them, Dry Cleaning
have crafted an ambitious and deeply rewarding new work
that marks them out as one of the most intelligent and
exciting acts to come out of the UK.
LP pressed on white vinyl.

“Final Departure” is the debut album by J-Shadow, a widescreen vision expanding out on an event horizon before us. Built using influences from London’s rich electronic, pirate radio and black music lineages (jungle, grime, hip-hop, electronica etc), the album twists and turns, lifting listeners up towards a more ethereal plane. “I see beauty in the complexity of life from the cosmic scale to the quantum,” he explains. “From all that we can observe, this world stands as a uniquely multifarious sphere in which we just happen to exist.” “I love to take ideas and attempt to conceptualise them into an audible expedition,” he explains. “I find that music serves as an extraordinary medium to project my perception of the universe.” “Sometimes I will reach for certain influences and deconstruct them into an amalgamation of conscious experiences that reflect my vision of how I see the world.”

As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…"

Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within."

"I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them.

"Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone."

"People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something.

"That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me."

In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."

=

Born in 1963, the baby boy of nine siblings, Lee Tracy spent his earliest years living amidst the shotgun houses on Nashville's south side. "We was poor, man!" he says, recalling the outhouse his family used for a bathroom and the blocks of ice they kept in the kitchen to chill perishables. "But I actually don't think I really realized I was in poverty until I got grown and started thinking about it." Lee's mom worked at the Holiday Inn; his dad did whatever he had to do, from selling fruit from a horse drawn cart to bootlegging. "We didn't have much," Lee continues, "but my mother and my father got us the things we needed, the clothes on our back." By the end of the decade with the city's urban renewal programs razing entire neighborhoods to accommodate construction of the Interstate, the family moved to Edgehill Projects. Lee remembers music and art as a constant source of inspiration for he and his brothers and sisters – especially after seeing the Jackson 5 perform on Ed Sullivan. "As a small child I just knew that was what I wanted to do."

His older brother Don began musically mentoring him, introducing Lee to a variety of instruments and sounds. "He would never play one particular type of music, like R&B," says Lee. "I was surrounded by jazz, hard rock and roll, easy listening, gospel, reggae, country music; I mean I was a sponge absorbing all of that." Lee taught himself to play drums by beating on cardboard boxes, gaining a rep around the way for his timekeeping, and his singing voice. Emulating his favorites, Earth Wind & Fire and Cameo, he formed groups with other kids with era-evocative band names like Concept and TNT Connection, and emerged as the leader of disciplined rehearsals. "I made them practice," says Lee. "We practiced and practiced and practiced. Because I wanted that perfection." By high school the most accomplished of these bands would take top prize in a prominent local talent show. It was a big moment for Lee, and he felt ready to take things to the next level. But his band-mates had other ideas.

"I don't know what happened," he says, still miffed at the memory. "It must have blew they mind after we won and people started showing notice, because it's like everybody quit! I was like, where the hell did everybody go?" Lee had always made a point of interrogating prospective musicians about their intentions before joining his groups: were they really serious or just looking for a way to pick up girls? Now he understood even more the importance of finding a collaborator just as committed to the music as he was.

=

Isaac Manning had spent much of his life immersed in music and the arts – singing in the church choir with his family on Nashville's north side, writing, painting, dancing, and working various gigs within the entertainment industry. After serving in the armed forces, in the early '70s he ran The Teenage Place, a music and performance venue that catered to the local youth. But he was forced out of town when word of one of his recreational routines created a stir beyond the safe haven of his bohemian circles.

"I was growing marijuana," Isaac explains. "It wasn't no business, I was smoking it myself… I would put marijuana in scrambled eggs, cornbread and stuff." His weed use originated as a form of self-medication to combat severe tooth pain. But when he began sharing it with some of the other young people he hung out with, some of who just so happened to be the kids of Nashville politicians, the cops came calling. "When I got busted," he remembers, "they were talking about how they were gonna get rid of me because they didn't want me saying nothing about they children because of the politics and stuff. So I got my family, took two raggedy cars, and left Nashville and went to Vegas."

Out in the desert, Isaac happened to meet Chubby Checker of "The Twist" fame while the singer was gigging at The Flamingo. Impressed by Isaac's zeal, Checker invited him to go on the road with him as his tour manager/roadie/valet. The experience gave Isaac a window into a part of the entertainment world he'd never encountered – a glimpse of what a true pop act's audience looked like. "Chubby Checker, none of his shows were played for Black folks," he remembers. "All his gigs were done at high-class white people areas." Returning home after a few years with Chubby, Isaac was properly motivated to make it in Music City. He began writing songs and scouting around Nashville for local talent anywhere he could find it with an expressed goal: "Find someone who can deliver your songs the way you want 'em delivered and make people feel what you want them to feel."

One day while walking through Edgehill Projects Isaac heard someone playing the drums in a way that made him stop and take notice. "The music was so tight, just the drums made me feel like, oh I'm-a find this person," he recalls. "So I circled through the projects until I found who it was.

"That's how I met him – Lee Tracy. When I found him and he started singing and stuff, I said, ohhh, this is somebody different."

=

Theirs was a true complementary partnership: young Lee possessed the raw talent, the older Isaac the belief. "He's really the only one besides my brother and my family that really seen the potential in me," says Lee. "He made me see that I could do it."

Isaac long being a night owl, his house also made for a fertile collaborative environment – a space where there always seemed to be a new piece of his visual art on display: paintings, illustrations, and dolls and figures (including an enigmatic cardboard robot). Lee and Issac would hang out together and talk, listen to music, conjure ideas, and smoke the herb Isaac had resumed growing in his yard. "It got to where I could trust him, he could trust me," Isaac says of their bond. They also worked together for hours on drawings, spreading larges rolls of paper on the walls and sketching faces with abstract patterns and imagery: alien-like beings, tri-horned horse heads, inverted Janus-like characters where one visage blurred into the other.

Soon it became apparent that they didn't need other collaborators; self-sufficiency was the natural way forward. At Isaac's behest Lee, already fed up with dealing with band musicians, began playing around with a poly-sonic Yamaha keyboard at the local music store. "It had everything on it – trumpet, bass, drums, organ," remembers Lee. "And that's when I started recording my own stuff."

The technology afforded Lee the flexibility and independence he craved, setting him on a path other bedroom musicians and producers around the world were simultaneously following through the '80s into the early '90s. Saving up money from day jobs, he eventually supplemented the Yamaha Isaac had gotten him with Roland and Casio drum machines and a Moog. Lee was living in an apartment in Hillside at that point caring for his dad, who'd been partially paralyzed since early in life. In the evenings up in his second floor room, the music put him in a zone where he could tune out everything and lose himself in his ideas.

"Oh I loved it," he recalls. "I would really experiment with the instruments and use a lot of different sound effects. I was looking for something nobody else had. I wanted something totally different. And once I found the sound I was looking for, I would just smoke me a good joint and just let it go, hit the record button." More potent a creative stimulant than even Isaac's weed was the holistic flow and spontaneity of recording. Between sessions at Isaac's place and Lee's apartment, their volume of output quickly ballooned.

"We was always recording," says Lee. "That's why we have so much music. Even when I went to Isaac's and we start creating, I get home, my mind is racing, I gotta start creating, creating, creating. I remember there were times when I took a 90-minute tape from front to back and just filled it up."

"We never practiced," says Isaac. "See, that was just so odd about the whole thing. I could relate to him, and tell him about the songs I had ideas for and everything and stuff. And then he would bring it back or whatever, and we'd get together and put it down." Once the taskmaster hell bent on rehearsing, Lee had flipped a full 180. Perfection was no longer an aspiration, but the enemy of inspiration.

"I seen where practicing and practicing got me," says Lee. "A lot of musicians you get to playing and they gotta stop, they have to analyze the music. But while you analyzing you losing a lot of the greatness of what you creating. Stop analyzing what you play, just play! And it'll all take shape."

=

"I hope you understood the beginning of the record because this was invented from a dream I had today… (You tell me, I'll tell you, we'll figure it out together)" – Lee Tracy and Isaac Manning, "Hope You Understand"

Lee lets loose a maniacal cackle when he acknowledges that the material that he and Isaac recorded was by anyone's estimation pretty out there. It's the same laugh that commences "Hope You Understand" – a chaotic transmission that encapsulates the duality at the heart of their music: a stated desire to reach people and a compulsion to go as leftfield as they saw fit.

"We just did it," says Lee. "We cut the music on and cut loose. I don't sit around and write. I do it by listening, get a feeling, play the music, and the lyrics and stuff just come out of me."

The approach proved adaptable to interpreting other artists' material. While recording a cover of Whitney Houston's pop ballad "Saving All My Love For You," Lee played Whitney's version in his headphones as he laid down his own vocals – partially following the lyrics, partially using them as a departure point. The end result is barely recognizable compared with the original, Lee and Isaac having switched up the time signature and reinvented the melody along the way towards morphing a slick mainstream radio standard into something that sounds solely their own.

"I really used that song to get me started," says Lee. "Then I said, well I need something else, something is missing. Something just came over me. That's when I came up with 'Is It What You Want.'"

The song would become the centerpiece of Lee and Isaac's repertoire. Pushed along by a percolating metronomic Rhythm King style beat somewhere between a military march and a samba, "Is It What You Want" finds Lee pleading the sincerity of his commitment to a potential love interest embellished by vocal tics and hiccups subtlely reminiscent of his childhood hero MJ. Absent chord changes, only synth riffs gliding in and out like apparitions, the song achieves a lingering lo-fi power that leaves you feeling like it's still playing, somewhere, even after the fade out.

"I don't know, it's like a real spiritual song," Lee reflects. "But it's not just spiritual. To me the more I listen to it it's like about everything that you do in your everyday life, period. Is it what you want? Do you want a car or you don't want a car? Do you want Jesus or do you want the Devil? It's basically asking you the question. Can't nobody answer the question but you yourself."

In 1989 Lee won a lawsuit stemming from injuries sustained from a fight he'd gotten into. He took part of the settlement money and with Isaac pressed up "Saving All My Love For You" b/w "Is It What You Want" as a 45 single. Isaac christened the label One Chance Records. "Because that's all we wanted," he says with a laugh, "one chance."

Isaac sent the record out to radio stations and major labels, hoping for it to make enough noise to get picked up nationally. But the response he and Lee were hoping for never materialized. According to Isaac the closest the single got to getting played on the radio is when a disk jock from a local station made a highly unusual announcement on air: "The dude said on the radio, 107.5 – 'We are not gonna play 'Is It What You Want.' We cracked up! Wow, that's deep.

"It was a whole racist thing that was going on," he reflects. "So we just looked over and kept on going. That was it. That was about the way it goes… If you were Black and you were living in Nashville and stuff, that's the way you got treated." Isaac already knew as much from all the times he'd brought he and Lee's tapes (even their cache of country music tunes) over to Music Row to try to drum up interest to no avail.

"Isaac, he really worked his ass off," says Lee. "He probably been to every record place down on Music Row." Nashville's famed recording and music business corridor wasn't but a few blocks from where Lee grew up. Close enough, he remembers, for him to ride his bike along its back alleys and stumble upon the occasional random treasure, like a discarded box of harmonicas. Getting in through the front door, however, still felt a world away.

"I just don't think at the time our music fell into a category for them," he concedes. "It was before its time."

=

Lee stopped making music some time in the latter part of the '90s, around the time his mom passed away and life became increasingly tough to manage. "When my mother died I had a nervous breakdown," he says, "So I shut down for a long time. I was in such a sadness frame of mind. That's why nobody seen me. I had just disappeared off the map." He fell out of touch with Isaac, and in an indication of just how bad things had gotten for him, lost track of all the recordings they'd made together. Music became a distant memory.

Fortunately, Isaac kept the faith. In a self-published collection of his poetry – paeans to some of his favorite entertainment and public figures entitled Friends and Dick Clark – he'd written that he believed "music has a life of its own." But his prescience and presence of mind were truly manifested in the fact that he kept an archive of he and Lee's work. As perfectly imperfect as "Is It What You Want" now sounds in a post-Personal Space world, Lee and Isaac's lone official release was in fact just a taste. The bulk of the Is It What You Want album is culled from the pair's essentially unheard home recordings – complete songs, half-realized experiments, Isaac's blue monologues and pronouncements et al – compiled, mixed and programmed in the loose and impulsive creative spirit of their regular get-togethers from decades ago. The rest of us, it seems, may have finally caught up to them.

On the prospect of at long last reaching a wider audience, Isaac says simply, "I been trying for a long time, it feels good." Ever the survivor, he adds, "The only way I know how to make it to the top is to keep climbing. If one leg break on the ladder, hey, you gotta fix it and keep on going… That's where I be at. I'll kill death to make it out there."

For Lee it all feels akin to a personal resurrection: "It's like I was in a tomb and the tomb was opened and I'm back… Man, it feels so great. I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin." Success at this stage of his life, he realizes, probably means something different than what it did back when he was singing and dancing in Isaac's front yard. "What I really mean by 'making it,'" he explains isn't just the music being heard but, "the story being told."

Occasionally Lee will pull up "Is It What You Want" on YouTube on his phone, put on his headphones, and listen. He remembers the first time he heard his recorded voice. How surreal it was, how he thought to himself, "Is that really me?" What would he say to that younger version of himself now?

"I would probably tell myself, hang in there, don't give up. Keep striving for the goal. And everything will work out."

Despite what's printed on the record label, sometimes you do get more than one chance.

Hus continues his streak of conceptual albums, "The Firm" comes in fresh off of his last LP, the Portishead inspired album titled "Portishus", which is currently sold out. Inspired by the 1997 group The Firm (Nas, AZ, Foxy Brown, Cormega, Nature) and the 1993 film "The Firm" starring Tom Cruise. The album features Canibus, Max B, SmooVth, SageInfinite, Khrysis (Jamla) + more.
TRACKLIST: 1. Ray Mcdeere (Prod. By Macapella) 2. Devasher (Prod. By Scary Hour) 3. Affirmative Action (Feat. SmooVth & SageInfinite) (Prod. By Prynce P) 4. The Moroltos (Feat. BeenOfficialLord & Apollo Ali) (Prod. By Kencussion) 5. Lambert & Locke (Feat. Ali Vegas) (Prod. By Stu Bangas) 6. Glass Castle (Prod. By Khrysis) 7. Cayman Islands (Feat. Rozewood) (Prod. By Macapella) 8. Harmony (Prod. By Sean Zeon) 9. Desperados (Feat. Canibus) (Prod. By Macapella) 10. Firm Biz (Feat. Pure) (Prod. By Stu Bangas) 11. The Wave Angels (Feat. Max B) (Prod. By Prynce P) 12. Firm Fiasco (Prod. By Blaqknight) 13. Executive Decision (Prod. By DJ Tako)

Following the compass of an entrancing debut, Flore Laurentienne's Volume II presents another palette of rich orchestral sound, where changing forces of water inspire metaphorical markers that navigate passages of life and loss. Mathieu David Gagnon resumes his voyage into environment and emotion with Volume II, drawing inspiration from the rivers and rugged wilderness of the composer's native Quebec. In his return as Flore Laurentienne - the namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora - Gagnon assembles vivid melodic motifs and delicate modulation with a vast string ensemble to emulate the tides of human experience. Listeners of Volume I will recognise Gagnon's signature approach towards reworking and reframing an emblematic melody or concept across a series of works in Volume II, a process he likens to that of a painter creating multiple sketches of the same view. Continued from the first album, the enigmatic "Fleuve" series is conjured to evoke the multiple personalities of the great St. Lawrence River, and the "Navigation" works ("III" and "IV") wade through dappled progressions and expansive streams of string, the latter of which harbors the gentle meanderings of improvised clarinet. In the world of Flore Laurentienne, complexity emerges from simplicity as the composer roams familiar environments in constant flux. Gagnon extracts beauty through repetition and constraint, utilizing the writing style of counterpoint for which one of his greatest musical inspirations, Johann Sebastian Bach, is renowned. The lilting waves of "Canon" possess the eponymous formation of melodic 'leader and follower' motif, and magnify the softness of the album's eighteen string musicians into a force of full euphoric resonance. In Volume II, Gagnon continues his expansion of classical composition archetypes to meet a new realm of sonic romanticism. Thematic conventions of wandering the pastoral sublime become altered into glimmering refractions, relaying the emotional and kinetic power of natural energies. Volume II forms an estuary where streams of auditory microcosm reach a horizon of dynamic contrast, and reflect the parallel tenors of nature and humankind.

DUBFIRE ANNOUNCES HIS DEBUT SOLO ALBUM ON HIS SCI+TEC IMPRINT
With a career spanning over 3 decades, Dubfire has achieved global success as an artist with relentless drive, talent, and intuition. Pioneering commercial notoriety came initially as one half of the Grammy award (2001) winning duo Deep Dish, before embarking on a truly groundbreaking solo career in 2007. A career filled with timeless tracks include his early works ‘Ribcage’ (2007), ‘Emissions (2007), ‘Roadkill’ (2007) and the highly acclaimed ‘Exit’ (2014) a debut collaboration with Kiss Kitten. Collaborative work highlights include Luke Slater, Moscoman, Oliver Huntemann, Chris Liebing, Tiga and co-producing two tracks on the legendary Underworld’s ‘Barking’ album. A true artist, he has always been heavily invested in exploring boundaries or audio and visual technologies, which he displayed more than ever with his HYBRID show. A two-year world tour with a goal to reinvent the concert experience in 2015, also became his muse for his retrospective album ‘A Decade Of Dubfire’. A collection of all his biggest tracks and remixes from the last decade, released in 2017. It may come as a surprise to many, with so many landmark releases, that Ali ‘Dubfire’ Shirazinia hasn't yet released a totally solo album, until now.
EVOLV is an 11-track visionary into the mind of Dubfire to be released on his long-standing label SCI+TEC. It’s concept? The journey of the ‘hybrid’ being and its evolution, which kicks off with ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘Dust & Gas’ set a brooding atmosphere. The rougher percussion, and eerie lead in ‘Dark Matter’ is accompanied by a stripped back sound and glitchy vocals sitting in a spaced-out atmosphere in ‘Dust & Gas’. Its deep and minimal drum work is exceptional. ‘Escape’, a deep, dark and pulsating track that sets the tone for the body of work on the album. Coupled with ‘Elevation’ and it’s understated arpNew Release Information and crisp percussion for the second single. ‘Bottom Dweller’ give you two different versions, the original is straight forward, yet effective for a late-night head down cut, where the ‘Meltdown Mix’ takes a minimal path, and faster pace. ‘Swerve’ sees Dubfire return to that stripped back sound with heavy swinging
percussion, a landmark and much-loved element in his music. Sonically, the journey so far has been like a dystopian landscape, but ‘Decent’ brings a kaleidoscope of colour and sound before dropping into the ‘CHALLNGR’ duo. ‘CHALLNGR 1.1’ is perhaps the most contemporary track on the album. Dubfire picks up the rhythm for a full-on dancefloor focused track. It’s no-nonsense techno at its best, with heaps of pure energy. Two versions appear on the album, ‘CHALLNGR 1.2’ retains the BPM but reigns in the percussion with a snappier approach and a more euphoric warped effect. Closing out, is a special digital only track ‘The Bells Tolls’. This one drives the energy back to ground level, into a more unsettling and mysterious end to a killer 11 track debut album. The music will also be accompanied by a new audio-visual show from the revered DubLab team based in Portugal. Test shows at DGTL (Amsterdam),
Caprices (Crans-Montana) and in Sofia between 2018 and 2019 had created lots of buzz just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down for two years. But now the stage is firmly set for the new album
and live shows. As music evolves, so does Dubfire. EVOLV is a special project from this pioneering producer showing his interpretation of techno in his own unique vision.

Italian duo Agents Of Time have been incredibly busy over the past few years, from releasing a string of classic singles – including their recent single for Afterlife, “The Mirage”, which earned more than five million views on Instagram – to remixing The Weeknd’s “Take My Breath”, which appeared on his recent Dawn FM (Alternative World). But the biggest news is here now – their second album, Universo, is ready. Elevating their trademark melodic techno with an exquisite pop-ness, Universo has found its ideal home with Kompakt, following their Music Made Paradise 2020 debut EP for the label. It’s a meeting of minds that makes perfect sense.

Andrea Di Ceglie and Luigi Tutolo, the two members of Agents Of Time, used their time during the pandemic to work on Universo, an album loosely conceptualised around their ‘personal universo’, a manifestation of the world Di Ceglie and Tutolo built both within and around their studio. This accounts for the sparkle and brightness of Universo – it’s full of personality, vim and vigour, the duo experimenting with their music, exploring its furthest corners. If you come to Universo expecting just another album of melodic techno, get ready to be pleasantly surprised – there’s a whole lot more going on here, and it’s all equally compelling.

After a typically poetic opening gesture – the swirling, synaesthetic, self-titled intro track – expectations are immediately blindsided with the two-step pop of “Fallin’”, sung with gentle clarity by guest Audrey Janssens, a dream of a song that harks back to the glory days of early ‘00s UK garage. “Interstellar Cowboy” is a confident, lithe, disco-fied strut; the gentle minor-key piano of “Liquid Fantasy” spirals into a gorgeously melancholy techno-pop epic, Vicky Who?’s voice rich with yearning. Janssens also reappears on the electro-swirl of “Poison”; “Dream Vision” revisits their single “The Mirage”, soft with sweeping strings, loaded with drama; “Part Of Life” sashays into view with a schaffel-stomp.

This rich variety throws the more dancefloor-focused tracks, like “Ciao”, into even starker relief – they’re more decisive, streamlined, yet rich with detail, chugging, Moroder-esque bass meeting strobe-lit synths that fire melodies out into the firmament. Universo feels texturally dense, but it still breathes, its sounds so tactile you want to reach out and grab them, its tunes so seductive you can’t get them out of your head. Universo is a fiercely beautiful album, brave in its spirit, a perfectly poised meeting-point of pop melody and stylish, lush techno: Agents Of Time in excelsis.

Das italienische Duo Agents Of Time war in den letzten Jahren unglaublich fleißig, von der Veröffentlichung einer Reihe klassischer Singles - darunter ihre jüngster Beitrag für Afterlife, "The Mirage", der mehr als fünf Millionen Aufrufe auf Instagram erhielt - bis hin zum Remix von The Weeknds "Take My Breath", der auf dessen aktuellen Album “Dawn FM (Alternative World)” erschien. Aber die bahnbrechendeste Neuigkeit ist erst jetzt endlich da - ihr zweites Album "Universo" ist fertig! “Universo" verbindet ihr Markenzeichen, melodischen Techno, mit einer besonderen Pop-Haltung und findet nach der EP "Music Made Paradise 2020" sein ideales Zuhause bei Kompakt. Eine Seelenverwandtschaft, die absolut Sinn macht.

Andrea Di Ceglie und Luigi Tutolo, die beiden Mitglieder von Agents Of Time, nutzten die Zeit während der Pandemie, um an "Universo" zu arbeiten, einem Album, das lose um ihr "persönliches Universum" herum konzipiert ist, eine Manifestation der Welt, die Di Ceglie und Tutolo in und um ihr Studio herum aufgebaut haben. Das macht den besonderen Glanz und die strahlende Helligkeit von "Universo" aus - es strotzt nur so von Persönlichkeit, Elan und Kraft, das Duo experimentiert mit Musik und erkundet auch noch deren entfernteste Ecken. Wer bei "Universo" nur ein weiteres Album mit melodischem Techno erwartet, wird angenehm überrascht sein - hier ist viel mehr los, und alles ist gleichermaßen spannend.

Nach einer poetischen Eröffnungsgeste - dem wirbelnden, synästhetischen, selbstbetitelten Intro-Track - werden mit dem 2-Step-Pop von “Fallin” alle Erwartungen sofort über den Haufen geworfen. Mit sanfter Klarheit von Gastsängerin Audrey Janssens gesungen, ist “Fallin” ein Traum von einem Song, der an die großen Zeiten von UK-Garage in den frühen 00er Jahre erinnert. "Interstellar Cowboy" ist ein selbstbewusstes, geschmeidig über den Laufsteg stolzierender Disco-Track; das sanfte Moll-Klavier von "Liquid Fantasy" entwickelt sich zu einem wunderbar melancholischen Techno-Pop-Epos, mit Vicky Who?’s Stimme voller Sehnsucht . Danach taucht auch Janssens Gesang auf dem Elektro-Wirbel von "Poison" wieder auf; "Dream Vision" greift die Single "The Mirage" auf, sanft und mit schwungvollen Streichern, voller Dramatik; "Part Of Life" dagegen ist ein echter Schaffel-Stomp.

All der Abwechslungsreichtum lässt eher tanzflächenorientierte Tracks wie "Ciao" noch deutlicher hervortreten - sie wirken noch entschlossener, stromlinienförmiger und dennoch reich an Details, pluckernde, Moroder-eske Bässe treffen auf stroboskopisch blitzende Synths, von denen aus die Melodien ins Firmament schießen. “Universo” fühlt sich textlich dicht an, aber es atmet trotzdem, seine Klänge sind so greifbar, dass man sie anfassen möchte, seine Melodien so verführerisch, dass man sie nicht mehr aus dem Kopf bekommt. “Universo” ist ein wunderschönes, mutiges Album, ein perfekter Treffpunkt von Pop-Melodien und stilvollem Techno: Agents Of Time in excelsis.

South-east Turkey born DJ, sound artist and producer Banu uses music as a political tool. For her, the strong message carried through sound is a vehicle to express emotions as well as a means of fighting against oppression. Using participation, social design, ecology, feminist and queer theory to create multimedia installations with sound as a main element, Banu‘s practice is closer to contemporary art and activist spaces than the club realm.

Banu‘s debut album TransSoundScapes is an exercise in female solidarity between her as a migrant woman and her sisters from the trans community, where an artist from one marginalised group is showing support towards her trans sisters, using her platform to help them amplify their voices and building a bridge towards a mutual understanding of femininity.

Conceptually, TransSoundScapes comes in continuation of Banu‘s previous research-based work, using music as a positive tool for change while working with various marginalised communities. The album originated from the very real experience of being confronted with verbal harassment in Berlin on a daily basis, particularly aimed at her transfeminine friends and companions. As a queer woman of Turkish and Kurdish origin, Banu did not only observe the verbal aggression directed at her friends, but also understood most of the insults shouted in languages such as Arabic. Seeing how she got signifi cantly more verbal violence directed at them when in company of trans people made a lasting impression on her, so she wanted to try and use her relative privilege to amplify transfeminine voices through her music.

Coming from a very conservative family, making music has been her lifelong dream. It was the moment she had the opportunity to work with the iconic Arp 2600 synthesiser (a younger sibling to Eliane Radigue‘s infamous 2500 machine) that all her disparate interests came into place to create an empowering soundscape with the aid of analogue drum machines. TransSoundScapes has a very full, porous sound, where every element that comes into play sounds soft yet clear. Across the 7 tracks, Banu conjures pounding subterraneous bassy techno („Surgery“), slithering tentacular EBM („First Time“) and pulsating cavernous soundscapes („Harem“), where oversized dancefl oor elements are woven with poetic spoken word passages, resulting in sensusous yet political anthems. Banu artfully merges loosely related genres such as techno, electro, dub and sound poems into a sound that is at once deeply personal and extremely compelling.

All of the tracks are collaborative efforts, Banu seeing the process as an exchange of care and shared experiences, while integrating research into her writing process. The lyrics in „Transition (part 1+2)‘‘ are an adaptation of Sara Ahmed’s “Living a Feminist Life”, while „Surgery“ was born out of series of interviews with trans people, channeling the metallic sounds of a surgery room to refer to society‘s perception of transness as a medical condition. Tracks like „First Time feat. Patricia“, „Harem feat. Prince Emrah“ or „We feat. Aérea Negrot“ document her encounters with various trans women, centering their life experiences while also developing a deep dialogue through the process of making music together.

The darkest and perhaps the most emblematic track is ‚‘Bianka (In Memory Of)‘‘, dedicated to the late Bianka Shigurova, a 22-year old Georgian actress found dead in her apartment. It was her Tbilisi photographer friend George Nebriedze who told her Bianka‘s tragic story, whose death is suspected to be an assasination due to transphobia. Banu chose one of Nebriedze‘s analogue photos of Bianka as the album‘s cover art.

Heir Corpse One is one of the latest projects of
multi-shredder / vocalist Rogga Johansson
(Paganizer, Stygian Dark, Massacre, Blood Gut,
Dead Sun, Megascavenger, Ribspreader,
Putrevore, Revolting).
 For this zombie horror-themed album he teamed
up with some friends from the Swedish death
metal scene: Kjetil Lynghaug (Mordenial,
Paganizer), Peter Svensson (Furnace Moon) and
Marcus Rosenkvist (Assasins Blade, Void Moon).
 ‘Fly The Fiendish Skies’ is a concept story about a
zombie apocalypse that starts after a plane cockpit
crew crashes and dives in a zombie filled swamp.
Expect dirty old school Swedish death metal as
only the Swedes can produce.
 For fans of Unleashed, Grave, Entrails, Bloodbath,
(old) Entombed

Heir Corpse One is one of the latest projects of
multi-shredder / vocalist Rogga Johansson
(Paganizer, Stygian Dark, Massacre, Blood Gut,
Dead Sun, Megascavenger, Ribspreader,
Putrevore, Revolting).
 For this zombie horror-themed album he teamed
up with some friends from the Swedish death
metal scene: Kjetil Lynghaug (Mordenial,
Paganizer), Peter Svensson (Furnace Moon) and
Marcus Rosenkvist (Assasins Blade, Void Moon).
 ‘Fly The Fiendish Skies’ is a concept story about a
zombie apocalypse that starts after a plane cockpit
crew crashes and dives in a zombie filled swamp.
Expect dirty old school Swedish death metal as
only the Swedes can produce.
 For fans of Unleashed, Grave, Entrails, Bloodbath,
(old) Entombed