Cerca:creation

The story about the lost recordings of Ghia continues: Following the recently released "At The Hilton" single, our label is extremely proud to present "Curaçao Blue", the band's first full-length album. And it is simply mind-blowing, to say the least! The LP features 10 unreleased tracks in a similar Balearic vein as featured on the single.

Incredibly, it was only just a few months ago that these tracks were rediscovered on some old tapes by band members Lutz Boberg and Frank Simon. Could anyone imagine that two physics students from a small German town could create such beautiful, thrilling music in their home studio? Although the technical aspects in the creation of the band's earliest tracks may have been straightforward, the outcome is high-quality, creative, modern jazz-funk, with one step in the electro-funk genre due to the use of a drum machine and synthesizer basslines. The album features mostly 4-track recordings, based mainly on the musicians' weapons of choice: a DX21 keyboard (later updated to the legendary DX7) and a guitar. Many things had to be done live in just one take, though the artists were unafraid of using overdubbing techniques to weave their instrumental journeys. The DIY aesthetics just add more beauty and uniqueness to the songs and compositions, and the result is an extremely harmonic work of undeniable musicality. Ghia delivers Balearic jazz-funk at its finest.

Though the music was recorded in Germany, Ghia had a true relationship with the Balearic region and effortlessly applied the vibes to their compositions. As a side note, one track on their earliest demo tapes was called "3 AM at Moëf Gaga" and we did not know what it meant. The band explained that Moëf Gaga is a nightclub on the Spanish coast that is actually still active today. Boberg and Simon, the two original band members of Ghia, visited the club in the early 80s and spent their holiday close to the sea. With their music, they intended to create a summery vibe, capturing a relaxed and soulful view of the seashore, likely with a drink in hand... Perhaps a Blue Curaçao?

The album starts with a revised version of the title track. The drums in this take are much punchier, and we thought that it would fit just perfectly as an introduction. We continue with the already classic "Down At The Hilton" that was featured on the single, but like us, we are sure you could happily listen to this track on repeat. Next up, "Jump In The Water" opens with a catchy delayed melody, which develops into another perfect jazz-funk piece with an extended guitar solo. Another remarkable song might be "In The Fast Lane". As the name suggests, an uptempo number, now with an electro-funk beat combined with speedy keyboard solos that almost sounds like a marimba. On side B, the album keeps the relaxed seaside vibes flowing. To round out the album, we are treated to two pieces that originated after the return home, with memories of the Spanish coast fading but still lingering, likely recorded between 1986 and 1988. Both are instrumental versions of songs to be used later for studio sessions with their new band member, singer Lisa Ohm (who you will hear on Ghia's next album!). On "Crystal Silence In Dub" we get a perfect downtempo groove, positively reminding us of the sound of the 1980s UK funk scene. The album ends with "Keep Your House In Disorder", here as an earlier, rougher, and funkier take than on the final vocal version, which could be found on the B-side of the "What's Your Voodoo" single.

We hope you love this album as much as we do! Nothing like this has yet been released out of Germany. We hardly can recall any privately produced, home recorded jazz-funk/fusion from the 1980s as free, creative, and uninhibited as Ghia's Curaçao Blue. The playful and creative approach, coupled with those nostalgic tones should make this LP an essential pick for any record collection, whether you are a DJ, a home listener, a music lover, or a modern jazz-funk/synth-funk aficionado.

The album is out now on The Outer Edge, the new label by record collector DJ Scientist, aka John Raincoatman. We also want to thank Frederic Stader for his awesome work mastering and sound restoration of the material on this LP.

Grammy-winning global percussion collective Planet Drum reunite to make their first music in 15 years with In the Groove, out August 5th. Here is an inside look at the creation and inspiration behind In the Groove, featuring renowned global rhythm masters Mickey Hart (USA), Zakir Hussain (India), Giovanni Hidalgo (Puerto Rico) and Sikiru depoju (Nigeria) in the studio. Planet Drum's message of unity is needed now more than ever. In a world rife with conflict and division, Planet Drum leads by example with In the Groove, symbolizing the idea of bringing different cultures together to create one collective rhythm. Planet Drum's groundbreaking self-titled original release, which remains one of the most successful percussion recordings of all time, topped the Billboard Charts for 26 weeks. and won the first-ever Grammy Award for Best World Music Album, completely changing the perception of percussive world music. Their second effort, 2007's Global Drum Project earned their second Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album in 2008.

Grammy-winning global percussion collective Planet Drum reunite to make their first music in 15 years with In the Groove, out August 5th. Here is an inside look at the creation and inspiration behind In the Groove, featuring renowned global rhythm masters Mickey Hart (USA), Zakir Hussain (India), Giovanni Hidalgo (Puerto Rico) and Sikiru depoju (Nigeria) in the studio. Planet Drum's message of unity is needed now more than ever. In a world rife with conflict and division, Planet Drum leads by example with In the Groove, symbolizing the idea of bringing different cultures together to create one collective rhythm. Planet Drum's groundbreaking self-titled original release, which remains one of the most successful percussion recordings of all time, topped the Billboard Charts for 26 weeks. and won the first-ever Grammy Award for Best World Music Album, completely changing the perception of percussive world music. Their second effort, 2007's Global Drum Project earned their second Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album in 2008.

“Arguably his generation’s best lyricist” – Mojo // “The year’s stand-out album for me” – Stewart Lee // “A sort of modern-day pastoral” – Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate // The follow-up to last year’s first volume, English Primitive II continues the themes introduced previously in a harder, more electric and psychedelic style. The songs were mostly recorded during the same sessions but, if EPII showcased the ‘songs of innocence’, this new set comprises ‘songs of experience’. Callahan's lyrical themes here are frequently the sleaze and corruption of our ‘betters’, the intentional and unintentional brutality meted out on those weaker and the sometimes perverse ways in which this happens. There are moments of reflection among the broken mirrors, but they allow scant solace or reassurance. Dressed in another of Scottish artist Pinkie McClure’s witty and detailed stained glass creations and recorded at home and under a railway arch, EPII rises above its origins and invades the wider world, in all its colour, gritand glory. Each song serves as a monument to its internal tale – in fact, the whole LP is as much a collection of musical short stories as it is an album of songs. Opening with Invisible Man, the impression of a regular person with hidden grievances, biding his time and waiting to lash out is given. Waves of distant samples ebb and fall as the warped guitars swell and crash behind the main themes. We don’t know when this explosion will happen – we only know it will. A sleazy celebration of Britain’s position as the laundering capital of the world follows in the form of Beautiful Launderette. It’s good that we keep everything nice and clean for the whole planet, isn’t it? Business as usual, keeping the globe turning – that’s our role and we love it. The Parrot rocks like only a prolonged evisceration of governmental mouthpieces and their court stenographers can. It’s a thankless task making sure that the powers that be retain their authority in all things and patrolling the borders of what is allowed to be said and believed, but somebody’s got to do it. If you’re providing a service, you’ll need to present a united front against the grievances of the public, so you’ll need The Scapegoat. Mistakes and accidents can’t be the company’s fault, so you’ll need to pay someone to be publicly and repeatedly sacked to make it appear as if you’re solving problems and getting better. Lessons will be learned, going forward. The disturbing tale of Bear Factory begins side two and is the real-life story of the murder of one of the singer’s primary-school classmates in the 1970s, and true in every detail. The victim’s body was never found but the killer justifiably imprisoned for life. A more ancient scent of death pervades The Burnet Rose. This ground-hugging plant covers the graves of the victims in a seventeenth-century plague village on the Yorkshire coast to this day, commemorating their sacrifices when all around have forgotten. It’s this particular songwriter’s favourite flower. Orgy of the Ancients describes the intimate intricacies of ageing politicians and the press as they decide whether to go to war. In grotesque scenarios worthy of Caligula, they decide the fates of our children. And it’s not even half the truth. To finish, the songwriter looks back to an admired predecessor, when he sets William Blake’s famous poem London in a groovier setting than we’re used to – in the form of London by Blakelight. If London swings, it’s from the Tyburn tree. Tracks: Invisible Man / Beautiful Launderette / The Parrot / The Scapegoat / Bear Factory / The Burnet Rose / Orgy Of The Ancients / London By Blakelight

Arresto Temporaneo was born very spontaneously as the natural continuation of a collaboration that has lasted for over a year with Tamburi Neri, Adiel and Danza Tribale.

It is pure magic when seemingly different worlds meet and create a dialogue which is the foundation of successfully bringing the creation of this record into fruition. The EP functions as the fusion between the past and the present of the musical experiences of all of us.

Arresto Temporaneo was born by cutting a text "Prepariamoci ad un arresto temporaneo" that the artists liked. The sentence is free to interpret as any of the listeners wish, there is a deliberate reason why the subjective interpretation is avoided.

The EP is filled with the voice and lyrics of A.B. The track "Silenzio" symbolises a moment with which all of us, in spite of ourselves, had to deal with, the deafening noise of silence that can sometimes be devastating and for this reason it is important to understand it and not be afraid of it when it resonates within us.

"Nella penombra" refers to something that moves inside us, not too deep but just important enough to understand, with sounds that nature emits at dawn, when the light still reigns in the dim light, we must learn to move with skills and lightness without harming ourselves and especially others.

Salsoul is the 9th studio album by trailblazing Filipino-African American singer Joe Bataan, featuring his classic single ‘Mujer Mia’.
Re-issued for the first time since 1973 on limited edition blue translucent vinyl, Salsoul was born out of Bataan’s love for salsa & soul, which developed during his youth in New York’s Spanish Harlem.
Such was the impact of Bataan’s new sound, that Salsoul served as the catalyst for the creation of a label by the same name. Formed by brothers Joseph, Kenneth & Stanley Cayre, Salsoul Records spearheaded a new generation of charismatic artists that, influenced by soul, funk & Latin dance rhythms, gave the label a signature sound.
Re-emerging in samples and remixes, the Salsoul Records catalogue is proof of the label’s enduring legacy and it’s crucial role in shaping the sound of a new wave of disco.

Before he co-founded the legendary Sunday afternoon event Body & Soul with fellow New York DJs Danny Krivit and Francois Kevorkian in 1996, Joaquin "Joe" Claussell was the driving force behind Instant House, an eclectic production outift who released a series of uplifting deep house records, several of which were spun by David Mancuso at the 90s iteration of his influential Loft parties.

In 1993, Instant House released their deepest single, Lost Horizons, through Jungle Sounds Recordings. The A-side, ‘Lost Horizons (The Mind Travel Saturday Night Sunday Morning Mix)’ is a seventeen-minute and twenty-second sojourn into the vibrant club sounds of early 90s NYC. Driven by a Latin-accented man-machine beat that marches into infinity, it comes backed by two shorter mixes, ‘Lost Horizons’ and ‘Lost Horizons (Percussion Bonus)’. Twenty-nine years later, Isle of Jura presents an official vinyl and digital reissue of this slow-burning deep cut.

The Instant House story begins in the late 80s at Dance Tracks, an East Village record store established by the businessman, DJ, and graphic designer Stan Hatzakis. Patronised by New York trendsetters like Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan, Dance Tracks was considered one of the world's best underground dance music retailers.

During the winter of 1991, Stan got together with one of his best customers, Tony Confusione, to make music. A wall street guy by day and a keyboardist by night, Tony was also a serious DJ. Not long after their first recording sessions, they invited another Dance Tracks fixture, Joaquin "Joe" Claussell, to join them in Tony’s state-of-the-art home studio in Long Island. He brought a vibrant, percussive edge to the sample-based tracks Stan and Tony were cooking up. Emboldened, the three DJs began recording together as Instant House. That year, they released the Dance Trax EP.

In 1992, after Instant House had dropped two certified classics, 'Over' and 'Awade', for Jungle Sounds Records, Stan exited the group and sold Dance Tracks to Joe and his business partner, Stefan Prescott. Following Stan's departure, Joe and Tony headed into the studio for a special recording session. “I just remember how powerful the connection was while we were making that record,” explains Joe, recalling the creation of ‘Lost Horizons (The Mind Travel Saturday Night Sunday Morning Mix)’. “It was a very spiritual encounter in the studio.”

While laying out the drum patterns, sound effects, and arrangement, Joe explained the vibe to Tony, who played the lush cosmic chords and an effortless keyboard saxophone line over the top. “That was Tony completely feeling himself,” Joe reflects. “He performed majestically.”

After the release of the Lost Horizons 12”, Joe received a phone call from Cisco International Corp. A plane flight later, he was sitting in their label offices in Tokyo, talking to a senior record executive who wanted to introduce Lost Horizons to Japan. “What they were primarily doing at the time was pressing classical records - we’re talking thousand dollar plus classical reissues - and they wanted to license and distribute Lost Horizons,” Joe remembers. Three years later, Joe and Tony released 'Asking Forgiveness', their final 12” as Instant House, before parting ways with full hearts.

In the context of his career as a DJ, remixer, and producer, Joe is known for long songs and compositions. As Lost Horizons illustrates, he’s carried that impulse with him since his foundational days. “When I produce, I don’t believe in the beginning or endpoint of anything,” Joe explains. “I really despise the rules. To me, that’s not true to the art of creation. I just believe there is a flow in creation. When we were making music in the 90s, we were restricted by format, but that record could have gone on forever.”

The 12” is housed in a full sleeve jacket by Bradley Pinkerton based on the original release design.

Psychedelic inspired sound named after one of Alexander Shulgin's early creations, STP, which found its way onto the streets in the 60's. The Cyclist at his best, creating a balance between tension and euphoria. So strap in and hold on tight!

Felix Laband’s The Soft White Hand is the masterwork of an artist who expresses himself through musical and artistic collage acting together to reinterpret his sources and to express significant elements of his own personal story.

Released by Munich-based Compost Records, the 14-track album is Laband’s first full-length offering since the critically acclaimed Deaf Safari in 2015. It is heralded by the single “Derek and Me”, and is being pressed on vinyl for distribution globally.

In The Soft White Hand Laband works with source materials that will be familiar to those who know his previous four records – Thin Shoes in June (2001), 4/4 Down the Stairs (2002), Dark Days Exit (2005) and especially Deaf Safari which reached deep into the South Africa scene and its political culture to inspire its vocal and music sampling. However, the disengagement he felt from his homeland during his latest album’s creation – an abiding sense of untethered-ness to place and space, exquisitely rendered in tracks like “Death of a Migrant” – is perceptible in Laband’s desire to illuminate instead aspects of his own life.

“For this album, my source material became almost autobiographical as opposed to African statements I’ve worked with previously,” says the artist. “I have sampled a lot from documentaries from the 80s crack epidemic in impoverished African American communities and believe my work speaks unapologetically for the lost and marginalised, for those who are the forgotten casualties of the war on drugs. In the past, I have had my issues with substance abuse, and I know first-hand about the nightmares and fears, what it feels like to be isolated and abandoned.”

Few artists have managed to air these intimate aspects of their life so luminously as Laband does in tracks like “5 Seconds Ago”, “They Call Me Shorty” and in the strange and meditative “Dreams of Loneliness”. “I’ve been building this weird, autobiographical story using other people talking. It’s kind of humorous but it is also sad and beautiful,” says Laband.

Yet, as in all of Laband’s recorded output, the delineations between emotions are never starkly drawn and The Soft White Hand is also shot through with beauty. Nature appears in recordings made in his garden in the intimate early morning hours, whether as in the calls of the Hadada Ibis and other birdsong in “Prelude” or of the vertical-tail-cocking bird in “Derek and Me”. The last is a wonderful track with Derek Gripper, the South African experimental classical guitarist of international renown, whose 2020 song “Fanta and Felix” imagines a meeting between Fanta Sacko and Laband.

Laband’s eloquence in reinterpreting classical composers such as Beethoven in “We Know Major Tom’s a Junkie” is another thrilling aspect of the new record. “I’ve been properly exploring classical music on this album,” explains Laband, “taking melodies from classical compositions and reinterpreting them”. A fresh quality comes to his work through this sonic adventuring: the tender manipulation of the mundaneness of the computer’s AI voice to reimagine and reinvent iconic lyrics and melodies in strange and unexpected configurations.

The Soft White Hand is Laband’s most cohesive body of work to date. Yet it remains, in its sheer artistic scope, impossible to describe fully. Darkness abuts the gossamer light. A song that summons the sunrise and all the hope of a new day could also be about the final dipping down of the sun that portends a troubled night ahead. Interludes are invitations to expand outwards or shift inwards. Mistakes and “weird fuckups” in the sound are cherished as convincing statements against what Laband calls the “grossness” of perfect sound in modern music.

For this world-leading electronic artist, the boundaries are unfixed. He is inspired by the German Dada artist, Hannah Höch, who memorably declared: “I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.” His music consequently reflects a primal artistic impulse that is also visible in Laband’s considerable visual art output as seen recently in several solo exhibitions such as that held in the No End Gallery in Johannesburg in 2019 and in the works he produced during his 2018 Nirox Foundation Artists Residency. “My music is always about collage, as is my art,’’ he affirms. “Everything I do is collage. It is a medium I find very interesting because you are taking history and distorting it and changing its meaning and turning it upside down and back to front.” In her book Recollections of My Non-Existence, Rebecca Solnit calls collage “literally a border art”; it is “an art of what happens when two things confront each other or spill onto each other”.

With The Soft White Hand, Laband is confirming his singular ability to achieve this in both art and music, melting the divisions between the two creative disciplines until they become one. He is also affirming his belief that an album of music should be more than a collection of unrelated tracks, but should unfold a fully integrated, cohesive story as in the song cycles of the great classical composers. In doing so, he claims his position as one of the most significant artists working today.

Artist Statement – Felix Laband – August 2022

When the Khmer Rouge took their captives for processing, they identified their class enemies by looking at their hands. If they were sunburned, rough and calloused, they were those of a peasant, a proletarian to be spared. But if they were soft and white, then they were those of a city-dweller, an intellectual or bourgeois, an adversary to be liquidated.

In calling this album The Soft White Hand, I was reflecting on the Cambodian genocide and how it resonates in contemporary South Africa. The apartheid era is over, and gone with it is white political domination. Yet economic and social privilege is still held in soft white hands. But those who grasp it know just how tenuous is their hold, how it singles them out, and my music reflects their subconscious fears, the stress and guilt of clinging on to what others envy and desire.

The soft white hand of the title suggests to me a further image, one that relates to all of postcolonial Africa. In my mind’s eye, I see the soft, duplicitous handshake of the smooth representatives of the superpowers making deals and promising gifts that benefit only them, and not their African dupes.
Yet, soaring above the wailing of sirens sampled from the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, my music is also about love gained and passion lost. It is about the tender caress of a soft white hand that conducts you into a place of dreams to be enfolded by nocturnal melodies.

Broadway in Soho to perform a wholly improvised concert. This ensemble’s solos spring from collective improvisations and a tumultuous backbeat, loosely inspired by the creations of Coltrane, Coleman, Albert Ayler, and their brethren. The de facto leader was Richard “Dickie” Landry, a saxophonist and keyboardist who joined composer Philip Glass’s group in 1969. Landry had become a fixture in downtown New York’s loft and art scenes at the close of the 1960s, after he high-tailed it by car from Louisiana to the Lower East Side and auspiciously encountered Ornette Coleman at the Village Gate the night of his arrival.

For this concert, fellow Glass reedists Jon Smith and Richard Peck joined in, alongside Rusty Gilder and Robert Prado, both doubling on bass (upright and electric) and trumpet. The drum chair was occupied by New Orleans firecracker David Lee, Jr., who brought alto saxophonist Alan Braufman along for the session (Braufman was the only non-Louisiana player in the band). The ensemble stretched

out in the gallery for several hours in a configuration reflecting those that took place at Landry’s Chinatown loft, documented in photos by artists Tina Girouard and Suzanne Harris that adorn the inside of the original gatefold album jacket. Recorded live by Glass’ sound engineer Kurt Munkacsi, the album was released as a double LP on Chatham Square, the small imprint Landry and Glass co-ran, in a stark greyscale cover and simply titled Solos. The order of the players’ improvisations was laid out on the album inner labels, though unsurprisingly there’s a fair amount of blend. At the end of the day Solos is beyond category, a rousing exploration of instrumentation, rhythm, and life.

Thy Listless Heart to release “Pilgrims on the Path of no Return”, just in time for 2022’s Doom Metal newcomer of the year! An epic soundtrack of sorrow and longing as we journey into the unknown. Sorrow, pain, yearning and hope all wrapped up in a solo Doom Metal project by Simon Bibby. Upon receiving the seven tracks which together make “Pilgrims on a Path of No Return”, Hammerheart Records was convinced that the world needed to hear this great album. Thy Listless Heart is the sole creation of Simon Bibby, who recorded the album at his home in Derbyshire, England and then enlisted the skills of Greg Chandler (Esoteric) at Priory Recording Studios for mixing and mastering. Simon has a great track-record in creating Metal dating back to the late 80’s when he was bassist and later, guitarist in Seventh Angel, who released a couple of cool Thrash Metal albums on Under One Flag Records. Thy Listless Heart is a different entity; it is atmospheric Metal, filled with Doom elements and sad melodies, crowned with passionate singing. Think as if the atmospheric parts of Primordial meet later Anathema, with a pinch of Dead Can Dance thrown in. The album needs to be heard in its entirity to get the full emotions and atmospheres it creates, it is indeed a pilgrimage. From melodic, heavier and doomier tracks as “As the Light Fades” and the grasping “The Precipice” to ambient/folk inspired pieces as “When the Spirit Departs the Body” and “Aefnian” resulting in the almost monstrous (in length) track “The Search for Meaning”, it is all passionate andbeautiful, although in a saddened way.

There are only a few figures in music whose work influences and
shapes a genre as a whole. This is undoubtedly true of the Swede
Esbjörn Svensson. With his trio e.s.t., the pianist and composer
wowed audiences beyond age and genre affiliations. And his
influence on jazz as a whole reverberates to this day and already
within the second and third generation of musicians worldwide.
‘HOME.S.’ is Esbjörn Svensson’s only solo album and the sheer
existence of such a recording and its completely unexpected
discovery over a decade after its creation are nothing less than a
sensation: Since the early 1990s, Svensson focused almost his entire
creative energy and recording activities on his work with e.s.t.. Thus,
these new recordings are not only the first, but practically the only
ones that show Svensson in a setting other than that of the trio:
Intimate, concentrated and completely one with himself. The
recordings for ‘HOME.S.’ were made only a few weeks before
Esbjörn Svensson’s sudden death on June 14, 2008. Svensson
recorded the music in his Swedish home.
For almost ten years afterwards, the album rested untouched in his
wife Eva Svensson’s personal archive. Here, she tells the story
behind the discovery of the album and the music: “After Esbjörn’s
passing, I made sure all the contents of his computer were saved to
backup hard drives. And then I basically left them untouched for the
next ten years. At the point where I eventually felt ready to look into
the material, I soon realised that there was something I wanted to
look into.
“I took the hard drive and went to Gothenburg to meet with Åke
Linton, the sound engineer who had worked on all e.s.t. albums as
well as on their live shows. He was also the one who had helped me
to save the material from Esbjörn’s computer in the first place. So he
probably already knew that there was something hidden in there. But
nobody had listened to it.
“We went to his studio. And we pressed the start button. Then there
was a total silence and we couldn't speak for the entire time the music
was playing. After it finished, at first we were not able to say anything,
because we were both so touched and surprised that it was all there,
and that it was so beautiful. The tracks seemed to follow one another
like pearls on a string. After we just had sat there for a while we
agreed: This is really good. Musically, but also from a sound
perspective.”

Miet, the solo project of musician Suzy LeVoid, was born out of a form of absolute urgency, to make music at all costs Self- taught, when she started playing bass in 2013, the desire to compose and perform on stage quickly led her to create this one-woman band, where the bass
and the voice are the foundations of a raw, sincere, skin-deep music.Only backed
by a looper, she writes and performs alone, and quickly made her way onto the
French stages, appearing alongside Jeanne Added or Shannon Wright.
Although she's always alone on stage or in the studio, Miet expresses how much
the discovery of otherness nourishes her creation, to the point of having chosen
for this second album, still in English, a title in German 'Auslander'. For the
Nantes-based singer, this term means the magic of an unexplained but familiar
word. This "foreigner", or more exactly this "other", seems to take on the
appearance of a character that we learn to discover throughout the ten tracks of
the album.
Suzy LeVoid's newest offering is full of her unique signature sound : abrasive
rock, a deeply personal blend of sound loops, hypnotic rhythms and powerful
distorted bass lines. Strongly inspired by the work of Walt Whitman, Miet, like the
American poet, subtly uses repetition to give a hypnotic character to her lyrics.
This feeling of hypnosis is largely accentuated by the sequence of sound loops,
creating a perception of an infinite cycle and thus giving birth to an almost
mystical atmosphere.

'Night Of The Endless Beyond', the sophomore album by Lord Of The Isles AKA Neil McDonald for the ESP Institute, had almost become a mythical piece of work. The tracks very slowly crept into formation from the lowest depths of 2021, and once the completed album finally made the leap from creation into manufacturing, an entirely new onslaught of follies and delays awaited at the pressing plant. We began to laugh, for not only did Mario Hugo’s otherworldly sleeve artwork visually translate this music so well, but it was an uncanny premonition to the album being lost in space, falling through a black hole, evaporating into the aether like a dream that never really happened. But, at long last, ground control has confirmed contact! It did happen, it will arrive, and it’s not a myth.
Listening to 'Night Of The Endless Beyond' now feels like the return of a strayed friend, one whose distance left us pining for an embrace. Although this Techno relies on unassuming means, there is a remarkably complex and persuasive emotional statement embedded here, insisting we learn to endure the long game and allow ourselves patience to investigate and appreciate the minutiae contained not only within the notes, but their negative space. From its introduction, through its mellow crests and valleys, there is a conveyance of restraint — subtle dynamics that quietly beg for attention, repetition so hypnotic that imaginary melodies are inescapable, transient peaks so deliberately scaled that we mourn the subsequent decay. In accordance with Neil’s ESP debut, 'In Waves', we never feel attacked by instrumentation but shielded from sharp edges, able to step inside the music, breathe the air it occupies and know its true intentions, whether bright or bleak.
Just prior to the album close, a film dialogue excerpt summarizes everything quite honestly by proposing, “The truth of the universe is waiting … the truth of what is … it’s all going to go away … everything … into blackness … the void … and nobody is in charge.”
“…and what do you do with that?”
We stare long into the 'Night Of The Endless Beyond' and answer… “You smile.”

Luuk van Dijk has unveiled his hotly-anticipated debut album First Contact, out 11th November on his own Dark Side Of The Sun label. The Dutch DJ and producer’s maiden LP is the end result of a long and intense voyage of discovery.

Years in the making, it’s a project that Luuk can fully stand behind and be proud of. Next to a search for his own identity and his own place in music, it has also become a passage
through time.

By far his largest body of work to date, the 13-track release kicks off with the suitably-titled ‘Cosmiq’, a deep, grooving sonic exploration that immediately sets the tone. “Because of this
track I wanted to make an album to showcase my other kind of music that people won’t maybe expect of me,” Luuk explains.

Next up is the shimmering, ethereal sounds of ‘Love You’, a track that features the irresistible vocals of US singer-songwriter Dawn Richard and will be released as a single in October. “She really brought this track to a whole new level,” says Luuk. “I couldn’t be more happy with the result.”

Further collaborations come in the form of ‘Wolf’, a majestic, strings-led house cut featuring Steve Burton of oneofmanysteves; ‘Master Plug’, a deep, jackin’ number with Chicago artist
Kid Enigma; and the Detroit-indebted ‘Together We Rise’, punctuated by the spiritual vocals of MC Roga. “I tried making a track the way they used to make music,” Luuk says of the latter.

“With as few machines as possible, just a mixer, sampler and some synths.” Additional highlights include the enchanting ‘Let The Bass Kick’, orchestral ‘Lightning
Striking’ and hypnotic ‘Hot Stuff’, before ‘Knowing How To Love’ closes things out on a peculiarly wistful note. “The last track of the album, also a track that started as an interlude and
ended up being a full song,” says Luuk.

“This song basically sums up how I’ve been feeling the years 2020 and 2021, very emotional, sad, but also hopeful. Everything will be alright.”

One of the hottest new names coming out of Amsterdam’s bustling club scene, Luuk van Dijk is currently making waves in international waters with his infectious take on spirited house
music.

He has already released on labels like Hot Creations, Cuttin’ Headz, Solid Grooves Records and Eastenderz have established his name as a house music prodigy.

He launched Dark Side Of The Sun in 2020 with the aim of exploring a broader approach to his signature style.

First Contact represents a vivid sonic snapshot of one of electronic music’s brightest young talents.

Early DJ Support :

Jamie Jones
Marco Faraone
Carl Craig
Yuksek
Sasch BBC
CamelPhat
Paco Osuna
Stacey Pullen
Tocadisco

Ingredient is the elegant collaboration of Toronto poets, composers, producers and dear friends Ian Daniel Kehoe and Luka Kuplowsky. Their self-titled release is an enigmatic electronic avant-pop record attuned to the micro and macro perspectives of the natural world. Ingredient is an album whose lyrics are more poem than lyric, and whose songs exist in a merger of house music, philosophically-minded lyricism and contemporary R&B. One might recall electronic and art-pop luminaries such as Yukihiro Takahashi, The Blue Nile, and Arthur Russell, or connect it to contemporaries like Nite Jewel, Westerman and Blood Orange. A distinct world of dance, of questions, of secrecy and ultimate softness.

Eight years of friendship forges strange telepathy.

In the summer of 2020, Ian Daniel Kehoe was entrenched in a new feeling of heaviness; psychosomatic symptoms had started to proliferate; stress made new pores across the body, bending sensitivity into pain. His days were met with confusion, detachment, sleeplessness and pain without causation. Disfigured, he felt that what had been central and centering was blown out to the periphery of things. In a moment of self-preservation he reached out to his dear friend Luka Kuplowsky to make an album together. For Kehoe, it was an instinctual grasp for the anchoring truthfulness of deep friendship and the potential for a dedicated creative collaboration. Kuplowsky’s presence was light, supportful and curious, eager to explore musically the sounds they were mutually drawn to: house music, ambient pop, dub. The duality between Kuplowsky and Kehoe – between the Aflight and the Unmoored – is a portrait of a friendship whose exchanges came easy and produced an outpouring of song. Creation and therapy crisscross. In email correspondence that catalogs their process of collaboration, affection abounds: “feels bare without the Luka Licks”, or “Love you so much”, or “Kinda just overwhelmed with deadliness coming in at all angles.” When their voices first come in together on “Wolf,” that harmony arrives in a dramatic avant-pop sound that is bold and wondrous.

Kuplowsky and Kehoe both arrive at Ingredient as established artists whose works are committed to language’s propensity to provoke and mystify. Kuplowsky’s 2020 album Stardust is an idiosyncratic and otherworldly blend of pop and jazz romanticism grounded by Cohen-esque vocals and a stirring philosophical curiosity. Kehoe’s entrance into the new decade has hatched four records of pop experimentation, most recently 2022’s Yes Very So, a euphoric and bold album of poetic synth-pop and meditative ambient instrumentals. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s union as Ingredient is a beautiful and unusual chemistry that integrates their distinct approaches while bringing forth a newness: a sound that alternates between cinematic technicolor and dubbed out fogginess; a lyricism that exchanges their lucid and clear poetics for a playful and obtuse verse. The album intuitively taps into the opposing emotional states of Kuplowsky and Kehoe during the conception of the record, contrasting the buoyancy of trumpeting keyboards (“Resurface”), angelic synthesized voices (“Come”), and rolling bass (“Photo”) with the record’s underlying darkness of whirring buzzsaw textures (“Transmission”), whooping sirens (“Wolf”) and murky ambience (“Illumination”). Lyrically, this duality arises in the record’s flux between openness (“Variation”, “Raindrop”) and existential dread (“Wolf”). “Illumination” most clearly crystalizes this opposition, reconciling the verses’ neurotic yearning for enlightenment with the chorus’ liberating doctrine of negation: “no more devotion… no more delusion”. Amidst the gradations of light and dark, Kuplowsky and Kehoe trade indelible, lush melodies as though their voices are made of a substance that melts easily one into the other. The harmony of poetry, sound, and texture cuts through your brain fog like a wet diamond.

Ingredient’s self-titled record was assembled by Kuplowsky and Kehoe over the course of six months in a home studio they frequented daily. Amidst synthesizers and drum machines they composed, re-composed, and workshopped a wide array of music, ultimately focusing on a set of eight songs that lived in a shared musical and philosophical world. Recording days often ended in basketball games at a local court or a rooftop commune over a pot of tulsi tea and a crossword puzzle. Kuplowsky brought in the Blue Cliff Record – the classic anthology of Chan Buddhism – whose inscrutable and sublime insights remained constant throughout the recording process as an activator of reorientation and reflection. While Kehoe was frequently rendered physically immobile by bouts of anxiety, a patience and mutual caring governed the pace of their creation; rest, stretching and meditation became equally important as the act of arrangement. Invited into their intimate circle of composition was Thom Gill, whose heavenly voice uplifts “Variation” and “Raindrop,” and Karen Ng, whose alto sax simmers and dances around the funky strut of “Raindrop.”

The lyrics on Ingredient reflect the persistence of change, the infinite variability of nature where randomness and divergence are no accidents. In Daoism, duality, in the form of Yin and Yang, is not contradictory as it is in Western idealist philosophy, but rather composes the eternal and lived paradox of our changeless-changing universe: changeless because all is change, and changing because the dynamism of the Dao makes each moment transformational. Kuplowsky and Kehoe refract this way of seeing the world, as in Variation: “Variation in the natural world / there it is.” Ingredient is an experience of the manifold ways of saying there it is of the transformational world, and there it is, unfolding. Elsewhere, change and ephemerality is addressed through the record’s preoccupation with non-human perspectives, reorienting the listener to the wolf, the mouse, the emerald frog, the centipede, the bird, the fly in the lamp. The album cover visualizes this fascination with the striking image of a reddish-orange frog atop a defamiliarized landscape of dark green leaves. Mirroring the exploratory process of the record’s collaboration, the frog also signals the amphibian’s natural inclination to leap into boundless potential. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s lyrics manifest philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton’s concept of “the mesh,” drawing attention to the “vast, entangled web” of interconnectedness that connects all life forms and interweaving the songwriters’ shared wonder into the Animal’s unknowability. As Luka narrates in the breakdown of the dance-floor ready “Photo,” “the closer we observe things, the further they retreat into abstraction.” In Ingredient’s ecosystem, perception is a reversible fractal where the world’s minutest details mirror the shape of the cosmos.

According to the Dao, the path to healing starts by reorienting perception away from the self and toward the self’s subsumption in Totality. For Kehoe, collaborating with Kuplowsky became the reorientation necessary for the self-preservation he was seeking, opening up a shared creative practice to navigate and soften the complexity of his psychological shattering. The album begins with Kuplowsky intoning “colossal faith” which bounces around the stereo field in a cloud of echo, and it is the enormity of “faith” that centers both Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s collaboration and their inquisitiveness in the vast mysteries of our very being. Truth in Ingredient is not an essential nugget, but a bending of the light – it is the equivocal entanglement of how we are in nature as nature, but with a plea or prayer under our breath that marks our felt distance from what we are a part of: “carry me towards the mountains of my birth / returning to the nest / the silence of the earth.”

Toronto’s Dan Lee steps out of the spotlight and into the producer’s chair on the new collaborative Lee Paradise LP, Lee Paradise & Co., due October 28 2022 on Telephone Explosion. Lee Paradise & Co. follows 2020’s critically acclaimed The Fink LP, and finds Lee flipping the shadowy nihilism of the project’s previous releases upward into a sort of cybernetic universality. This is Dan Lee in producer mode, veering away from the pursuit of a singular musical direction rooted in personal vision, towards of a process rich in collaboration, emotional expansion and tonal exploration.

Starting off as a set of mood-focusedinstrumental sketches drafted by Dan on his own, the compositions began coloringthemselves in after he started sending the tracks out to collaborators, asking them to contribute without much in the way of direction or intention. With help from an ensemble cast of artists including Carlyn Bezic (Jane Inc.), Jonathan Pappo (Scott Hardware, No Frills, Ducks Ltd), Scott Hardware, Isla Craig, Victoria Cheong (New Chance), Jay Anderson, Charise Aragoza & Lukas Cheung (Mother Tongues) and Daniel Woodhead (Moon King), nearly every aspect of this album’s creation eventually became open to collaboration, from musical performances, lyric writing, and vocals all the way through to mixing and mastering.

Sonically, the record is still unmistakably Lee Paradise: a widescreen polyrhythmic psychedelia that melts, bubbles, whirrs and klanks; the sound of the human and the machine grooving in accordance towards new futures. The album’s sonic palette is at once synthetic, warm and extraterrestrial. Arpeggiated square wave melodies dance in lockstep with crunching hi-hats, digital bells and chimes fall like crystal rain in stereo above plush pads and gurgling bass figures. Used to finishing the records on his own, Lee mixed this album with Montreal’s Asher Gould-Murtagh and the results are spacious, dusty and dubbed out. “Carnival” sets the scene with it’s stuttering, busted funk groove and ribbons of aqueous vocal harmony from New Chance’s Victoria Cheong. “Raffles”(featuring one of Daniel’s two vocal performances on the record) radiates a mellow optimism in its solar-warped balearic bliss. The album’s final track, “Youngish” is a gliding, melancholic downtempo instrumental thumper saturated in a kaleidoscopic array of lysergic tones. As always, the record anchors itself to the dancefloor with the screwed-down electro of “Cement”, the swinging midnight afterglow of “Leaving” and “CS2X”’s fluttering rave arpeggios.

Lee Paradise & Co. is the sound of an expert producer and sound sculptor conceding to the elusive flows of inspiration, knocking genre conventions askew and hopscotching between a variety of styles, musical identities and sound worlds with absolute panache.

Superb EP !
The A1 tune from C. Ysme is a pure jewel... Mental sneaky and twirling, and it's followed by another pearl !
The flip opens with a crazy collab between C.Ysme and Sevenum Six

... but what to say about the Yakh track : a superb creation of a kind... Experimental and dancefloor... Splendid tune !

Madison, Wisconsin producer Sam Link exploded onto the breaks circuit with his debut EP on Prague-based record label YUKU - exploring classic underground jungle and juke templates and stretching them into new and distinct formats - and now the emerging artist readies four varied cuts of stylish, club-ready breakbeats and bass on Low Battery.

With one gun-finger fixated on the past and the other firmly pointing to the future, Sam implements a unique form of production within his work. Holding down a full-time job as an artist is never easy, so Sam now works in 20-30 minute bursts, capturing the creative spurts and happy accidents, and allowing space between creation to allow ideas to breathe.

Ragga-tipped jungle at break-neck pace kicks things off on 'The Breath'; a cut of vortex-breakbeats that strikes a fine balance between meditative and energetic, like all great ragga-inspired cuts should. 'Uproar' lowers the tempo slightly in favour of stretching basslines, underwater-wubs and murky atmospherics on a growling cut of breaks that transatlantically shatters over the UK-sound.

'Chance' puts the emphasis on 'less is more'. Stripped-back percussion, nature-atmospherics and hefty low-end bass vibrations combine on a minimal jungle cut designed to vibe in the rave, before Teklife and Cosmic Bridge affiliate A.Fruit rounds out the release with a stuttering breakbeat-footwork remix of its predecessor.

Strut present the first ever compilation of Balka Sound, bringing together their influential 1980s recordings, Hailing from Congo-Brazzaville and led by revered vocalist and ngonfi player, Nkibi “Lusialala” Albert, Balka Sound created their own unique musical world, re-imagining traditional Congolese Balka rhythms with electric guitars, electric bass and drums, alongside the traditional 5-string ngonfi.

Nkibi Albert had risen to fame in 1972 with his solo hit ‘Ah Lusialala’ and Balka Sound was created to bring the sound of Balka, a folk style from the Beembe people, to modern life and an international audience. With its roots in slavery and colonialism rumba was dominating the music scene in Congo while the philosophy of Balka Sound was to find its inspiration directly in local country life, to associate the modern and the traditional and to revive folk traditions that were dying. Founder member Henri Nsika Nkaya explains, “it was intended to be an update, a unification and an internationalisation of Congolese cultures.”

In 1979, during a festival organised by the Centre Culturel Français, the band won a recording deal to release their first album: Le 1er son du Balka, Lusialala et ses amis, recorded in just one take. Their success led to a second LP, Tu Kine Balka, recorded in Kinshasa in 1982. A third album in 1984, Afro Musik Creation, featured a more modern studio production sound. Their songs drew from traditional folk tales and parables, life lessons and the damage caused by rural exodus to the cities. By 1985, Balka Sound were working full-time with residencies at Chez Tantine Clara in Brazzaville, a well-known tourist venue, and the Frantel Cosmos Hotel.

In 1991, political tensions were rising in the country; civil disobedience and threats of a military coup were followed by a civil war from 1993 to 1994. The band eventually regrouped and were invited to perform in 1996 at the Palais des Congrès for the Fête National. Unfortunately, on the first day of new fighting in 1997, Balka Sound’s studio was looted and the band were forced to finally disperse.

This first compilation of the band’s music is curated and annotated by Makila Nsika Nkaya in conjunction with Balka Sound and has been fully remastered by The Carvery.