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Avant-garde cosmic sounds from Senegal, Wau Wau Collectif's "Yaral Sa Doom" is a groundbreaking album spanning borders and musical scenes. Inspired from West African tradition, Sufi praise songs, spiritual jazz, and dub rhythms, the effect is a genre defying entry in outernational sound. Hypnotic percussion loops across sweeping pads, call and response chants echoes layer over electronic beats, and children's voices sing out to recordings of crashing waves. In 2018, Swedish music archeologist and leftfield musician Karl Jonas Winqvist traveled to Toubab Dialaw, Senegal, a small fishing village turned hub of Senegal's bohemian art scene. Over the next weeks, local musicians, percussionists, poets, and beat makers came together, sketching out ideas and recording free improvisation. Winqvist returned to Sweden, trading recordings back and forth over WhatsApp with Senegal based collaborator and studio engineer Arouna Kane. "Yaral Sa Doom" is a Wolof phrase that means "educate the young." Central to the album is this theme of education, with songs that directly address social issues facing contemporary Senegal, education, and immigration. "Today you must educate children with an instrument and art, when you teach them an instrument you teach them to use their spirit," says Djiby Ly. With over 20 contributing performers from Senegal and Sweden, Wau Wau Collectif's debut is layered and complex, yet maintains a central vision. "It's like diving into the sea," explains Kane. "There are all different species of fish swimming around, but together they make the ocean." Nonetheless, it's also a geographic anomaly, made possible only by exchange of the internet age. An exceptional recording on its own, "Yaral Sa Doom" is a visionary entry in the future of transglobal collaboration

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Parampara Festival 13.3.1992, a stunning performance by Amelia Cuni captured live in Berlin almost thirty years ago. Milanese by birth and resident in Berlin for many years, Cuni lived in India for over a decade, studying the classical vocal style of dhrupad under masters of the form. Though perhaps known to many listeners primarily through her performances of the vocal music of John Cage and collaborations with Werner Durand and Terry Riley, she is recognised internationally as one of the great contemporary proponents of traditional dhrupad singing. These recordings document her performance at the 1992 Parampara Festival at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, a landmark event celebrating the global spread of Indian classical music, bringing together Indian teachers with their international students.

Accompanied by Gianni Ricchizzi on vichitra vina (a plucked zither played with a glass ball slide) and her own tanpura, Cuni stretches out for a languorous side-long performance of the late night Raag Bageshri, the limpid tones of her vocal improvisations illuminating the droning strings like flashes of the moon revealed by rushing clouds. Initially working patiently through a series of subtle dialogues between Cuni’s melodic extemporisations and phrases in response from Richizzi’s vichitra vina, the performance builds to a series of strikingly beautiful, virtuosic held notes from Cuni at the beginning of its second half, before picking up some brisker rhythmic articulation on the way to its conclusion.

On Devino Amor, Cuni presents her own composition, a setting of mystical texts by the 13th century Franciscan friar Jacopone da Todi, elaborated through various traditional raags. Like the words used for most dhrupad compositions, the text Cuni has selected from da Todi praises divine love, thus linking her otherwise unorthodox use of Italian text to the dhrupad tradition. The result is a performance of a yearning intensity that communicates across any language barrier. On the final performance, Cuni and Ricchizzi are joined by Helmut Waibl on the two-headed pakhawaj drum for a piece using a 14 beat rhythmic pattern that sets in motion a cycle of tension and release, metrical dissolution and resolution, possessing a subtle grandeur.

Illustrated with archival images of the performance and accompanied by new liner notes from Peter Pannke and Lars-Christian Koch, Parampara Festival 13.3.1992 invites listeners to lose themselves in Amelia Cuni’s unique approach to ancient tradition.

After the exploration of snowy mountains of Alpestres, released on Hands in the Dark in 2018, French composer Matthias Puech ventures into new territories, sketching a cartography of the invisible where the journey, in chiaroscuro, is announced as a rite of passage. A Geography of Absence, as introspective as unpredictable, immerses the listener into a unique sensory whirlwind where organic matter becomes almost palpable. A researcher in theoretical computer science and an engineer at GRM, Matthias Puech constructs a dialog between synthetic music and field recording, capturing sounds that surround him and creating his own sonic language with the help of synthesizers he designs and develops; notably the Oscillator Ensemble and the Tapographic Delay, made by the American company 4ms.

Composed during a moment marked by ordeal and mourning, A Geography of Absence retraces an inner journey where the physicality of sound leads the listener into an initiatory tunnel filled with apparitions, ghosts, visions. With sound oscillations as a navigational map, we progress, step by step, through the meanders of an unknown world, dazzled by the prospect of a new synthetic horizon, an electronic biotope teeming with life and incarnations. Playing with time, space and matter in an approach similar to that of musique concrète, Matthias Puech combines ambient and noise, floating sounds and electroacoustic experimentations, thus shaking up our listening perspective, which finds itself walking through a parallel universe, strata after strata, sequence after sequence.

The trip begins with “Hollow”, as if on board a night train travelling at full speed through ghost towns. Or is it a spaceship? Removed from their original habitat, sounds – picked up during walks or moduled by synths – are free to be interpreted differently by everyone, according to the memories that shape us. Granular and metallic, this first piece takes us to an elsewhere in orbit. "Work Song" is built around the pulsation of the void, of space, where strange creatures and liquid emanations abound. We become fetus, cocoon coiled in the placenta, heart beating to the rhythm of the gooey choreography of the human body. "Chrysalis" awakens the racket that lies dormant in us, when the skin changes, when the transition takes place. One seems to recognize certain sounds stemming from nature but they could also be mirages, imitating reality to render the barely perceptible engulfing. “Tunnel Vision” brings out a herd of haunted bells, slowly swelling in a pastoral maelstrom, ending in a deafening buzz. Further on, the chirping of an animatronic bird mixes with the hooting of an owl: "A Faint Beacon" invokes a nocturnal vigil that mixes the crackling of a fire and icy gusts of wind blowing everything away. Like an epic, sucking the listener into the breach of a black hole in the center of the Milky Way, it's up to "Homeostasis" to conclude in the high spheres and contemplative vapors, where the balance of dawn announces a rebirth.

A Geography of Absence is a meticulous and sensitive piece that constructs a delicate symphony of extremes, between introspection and desire for the unknown. Accompanied by the ink work of the artist Léa Neuville, whose folds of prints sketch this imaginary atlas, Matthias Puech becomes a narrator of mental adventures. And succeeds once again in transcending reality to dig a path to the unspeakable.

Black Truffle is pleased to present Sylva Sylvarum, an epic new work from Ora Clementi, the collaborative project of crys cole and James Rushford. Primarily conceived and recorded over several months together in Melbourne, Sylva Sylvarum is a stunning step forward from the mumbled, creaking sound world of the duo’s debut, Cover You Will Softer Me (Penultimate Press, 2014). From the opening ‘Peach of Immortality’, which takes an unpredictable journey from layers of chiming bells, vocal harmonies and lush synth pads to a desolate landscape of half-animal, half-digital wooshes and cries, it is immediately clear that cole and Rushford are working here with an entirely unique sound palette. Throughout the record’s four sides, we hear a large array of carefully detailed synthesizer sounds (many of them recorded at the remarkable Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio), sparse drum machine hits, wind instruments and field recordings of animals, often with a twistedly late 80s/early 90s flavour that at various points calls up New Age references, Robert Ashley’s later operas or the thinned-out textures of early digital GRM.

Threaded through this distinctive array of sounds are the two musicians’ voices, sometimes singing, sometimes speaking through varying degrees of manipulation. A guiding thread through the pair’s collaboration, beginning with their initial experiments with lip-readings, the presence of these two voices – cole’s crisp and sibilant, Rushford’s rich and low – reinforces the sense that the music is immersed in itself, less performed by two people than occurring between them. On Sylva Sylvarum, these voices first come to the forefront on the third piece, ‘Dialogue Between a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller and a Genoese Sea Captain’, where in unison they intone fragments of a description of an imaginary space taken from a 17th century utopian text. The two voices resurface periodically thereafter, most stunningly in the unexpected turn into cushiony dream pop on ‘Magic Mountain’. At other points, the subtle manipulation of pitch and intonation in the close-miked vocal performances filters the recitations through a fog of abstraction that climaxes with the almost incomprehensible alternating syllables of the side-long closer ‘Forest of Materials’. Like the album’s title, these textual elements are drawn from various literary descriptions of utopias, a theme that also informed the pair’s musical approach. Far from anything dryly illustrative, utopia figures into Sylva Sylvarum as an invitation to inhabit otherworldly spaces that, like the empirical details that proliferate in these literary utopias, are grounded in mundane reality but shot through with the eldritch. Admirably framed by the abstracted digital topographies of Sabrina Ratté’s artwork, the uncanny sweep of the album’s fifteen pieces is expansive enough to take in stretches of crackling austerity, warped microtonal keyboard etudes and moments of stunning beauty, the latter most strikingly when cole and Rushford are joined by Callum G’Froerer on trumpet and Joe O’Connor on trombone for a series of dream-like moments moving from growling overtones to poignant lyricism.

Presented in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with stunning artwork by Sabrina Ratté and pressed on mint green vinyl. Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Berlin.

Debut solo album by the Red River Dialect songwriter. Recorded at the Hotel2Tango, Montreal, by Howard Bilerman. Featuring Thor Harris (Swans, Thor & Friends, Shearwater) on drums and Thierry Amar (GYBE!, ASMZ) on bass, with guest appearances from Tom Relleen (RIP) (Tomaga, Melos Kalpa), Catrin Vincent (Another Sky) and Coral Rose (The Silver Field, Red River Dialect).

I first discovered khroniky – Ukranian folk songs – in the Highlands of Scotland. I was watching a screening of Bajka, a mesmerising documentary made by the filmmaker Lucia Nimcová and sound artist Sholto Dobie. I knew nothing about these ballads beforehand, but I was fascinated by these odd, beautiful songs, especially the easy way in which they mixed misery and levity, where gentle melodies blend with tales of dark violence. The folk songs describe hardship, murder, torture, death in gulags, heavy drinking, outsmarting men, love affairs. But they’re often very funny too – many of the songs make fun of marriage, and there’s an amazing subcategory of khroniky songs called potka (vagina) songs.

The khroniky have never been properly documented because they were considered too crude, or contained lyrics that were problematic, politically. When Ukrainian folk songs have been archived in the past, it’s normally a sanitised, more polite version of the ones that Lucia remembers from her childhood. Lucia grew up on the other side of the Ukrainian border in Slovakia. She is part of the Rusyn (Ruthenian) minority ethnic group found in the borderlands of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine and Poland. Rusyn is a centuries-old Slavic language, looked down upon as a poor, uneducated dialect by the neighbouring Ukraine and Slovakia. It was forbidden to talk about Rusyn culture at Nimcova’s primary school, but the khroniky stayed in her memories.

“I remember weddings when I was young,” says Lucia, who now lives in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. “At the end of the night, when everyone was drunk and the young couple would go around their guests, people would sing in Rusyn. There was singing and dancing, and songs about being in prison or falling in love. I picked up the lyrics and sometimes my mum would make my sister and I sing them for people we met on the train. I was about five or six but the lyrics still come back when I sing to my kids.”

Determined that these rich, nuanced, unique songs shouldn’t be forgotten, she decided to record them. Over two years, Lucia, joined by experimental musician Sholto Dobie, visited Rusyn villages high in the Carpathian mountains to rediscover the songs and make the documentary. It was at the beginning of war breaking out in Ukraine in 2014.

“The Rusyn community is a very closed one,” explains Lucia. “Sometimes we’d have to wait several days to hear someone sing; we had to earn their trust before they shared something very personal to them. We’d stay up ‘til 5am at a wedding, then go straight to a morning baptism, or collect haystacks with the villagers, hoping they’d sing while they were working.”

DILO is named after an important independent Ukrainian daily newspaper that was shut down when the Red Army entered Lviv in 1939. The four long tracks on DILO blur field recordings with song; an unpolished, privileged glimpse into a private world. We hear dogs barking and insects buzzing in the summer heat, then a blast of hurdy gurdy or violin will drift in, or a plaintive song soars softly over the rural background noise, with casually harrowing lyrics about a cuckoo, “lifeless in a world of misery”, as translated in the album’s booklet.

For both Lucia and Sholto, it was important not to tamper too much with what they heard. “When you think about ethnography,” Lucia explains, “you have to have a lot of time, love and respect to document it with sensitivity.”

“The songs all have their own atmosphere and intimacy from the spaces they were recorded in and it was important to maintain these particularities and move with them,” adds Sholto, who now lives in Vilnius, Lithuania. “They guide and sometimes interrupt a journey between interiors – domestic spaces; in kitchens, by the fire – and exteriors; marketplaces, cow sheds. We used contact microphones to record metal bridges and fences, and we spent one afternoon recording a wool processing machine, the details of the rattling and tuning wheels are the ground layer for the third track.”

Lucia took rough notes and diary entries during the recording process, which are now shared in the booklet alongside a selection of lyrics, loosely translated, but revealing the depth and astonishing beauty that sometimes lies in the language of these folk songs.

The feel of the album is intimate, flipping between laughter, where a woman sings about selling her pussy to buy a cow in one track, then shifts to a raw, painful truth; an adult son asks his mother why his dad won’t be back for dinner, as he’s gone to war.

Since Lucia and Sholto began working together in 2014, they have shared the audio recordings on radio and film and shown photos in gallery spaces, making sure these special, smutty, poignant songs don’t get lost. This new record and booklet joins that same continuum, another glorious fruit from the same rare tree.

Re-mastering by: Kevin Gray



The best of pianist Horace Tapscott's recordings for the tiny Nimbus label is this 1981 LP which features him in a sextet with trumpeter Reggie Bullen, altoist Gary Bias, tenor saxophonist Sabir Matteen, bassist Roberto Miranda and drummer Everett Brown, Jr. The group stretches out on a couple of Tapscott's originals plus a 19½-minute version of Linda Hill's "Dem Folks." Although the music could be called avant-garde, its use of rhythms and repetition keep the results from being forbidding and the performances have a momentum of their own.

Scott Yanow/AMG

A great group recording from pianist Horace Tapscott – recorded in LA in the early 80s, but done with all the righteousness and spirituality of his earlier albums! Tracks are long and exploratory, but also relatively lyrical too – stretching out with a style that's never too "outside", and which has Horace and the group really soaring to the heavens on the best moments! The group here is a sextet – with the great Gary Bias on alto and soprano saxophone, plus Sabir Matteen on tenor, Reggie Bullen on trumpet, Roberto Miguel Miranda on bass, and Everett Brown on drums and percussion – all working with a cohesiveness that reminds us of some of Tapscott's larger group recordings, but with a cleaner, leaner kind of feel. Titles include "Lately's Solo", "Dial B For Barbara", and "Dem Folks".

This journey, this slowly drifting sonic meditation, is an 'inner soundscape', a dialogue between the senses, the conscience and the world, inside / outside, interconnected. Like waking up from a long dream, and being stuck into its echo. The April Sessions immerges the listener into a drone-ish universe, full of random acousmatic events, inner monologues and a vast and unwritten subjective map to be drawn.

The April Sessions has been living in a seedy hotel in Brussels for a few months. She listens to the sparse traffic outside her window, locked in and locked down. 'Everything is constructed', she says to herself, 'even the sound of a solitary aircraft at 25,000 feet traverses the sky no further out than the inside of my skull'. Other weird sonic phenomena criss-cross the inner cosmos of her brain and streak across her private sky like comets. And then there is the unshakeable presence of that inner monologue, known to her variously as the Tacit Dictator, the Subvocaliser and, nightmarishly enough, the voice of the Merlucid Hake. (Anthony Moore, St Leonards, 10th of March 2021)

Anthony Moore, Dirk Specht and Tobias Grewenig have known each other and worked together since the early 2000s. They have collectively participated in a number of projects including live performances and recordings. In 2016, as part of The Missing Present Band, they released the live LP 'The Present Is Missing' on A-Musik. The following year they released 'Ore Talks', a double LP, realised in collaboration with Therapeutische Hörgruppe Köln.

Anthony Moore was born in 1948, founded the band Slapp Happy (circa 1972) with Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause, then worked alongside a.o. Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson in the unclassifiable band Henry Cow. He released several solo albums, composed soundtracks for experimental movies. His path also crossed Kevin Ayers's, Pink Floyd's, Richard Wright's. He was appointed professor for research into sound and music in the context of new media at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. He still continues to write and perform.

Dirk Specht is a sound artist, musician and curator. He studied architecture and media art and is active in the fields of sound works for choreography, radio drama, sound art, film and video art soundtracks. He published releases with several bands and projects. He has been an assistant for research into sound from 2011 to 2016 at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, and is a founding member of Therapeutische Hörgruppe Köln.

Tobias Grewenig studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. He primarily deals with non-linearity in his audiovisual installative works and performances, including projects with the artist group 'Therapeutische Hörgruppe Köln', the ensemble 'The Knob, The Finger & The It' and the improvisation collective "Frequenzwechsel". The conception and development of electronic instruments and code is a key component of his artistic work. He lives and works in Cologne.

Death Waltz Recording Co. is thrilled to bring you BenDavid Grabinski's directorial debut Happily on vinyl. Happily is a dark, twisted romantic comedy full of surprises (and one dead body). It's the kind of film you do not want to read reviews on as you should go in with no spoilers and fresh eyes.

Spot varnish gatefold sleeve with liner notes by writer/director BenDavid Grabinski & composer Joseph Trapanese and featuring a download of the entire score, plus nine bonus cuts not on the physical format.

BenDavid Grabinski (Are You Afraid Of The Dark?) pulled in a stellar cast, including Joel McHale, Natalie Morales, Kerry Bishe & Natalie Zea, who are having fun with his script full of intriguing turns and snappy dialogue.

Joseph Trapanese's score (Tron: Legacy, Straight Outta Compton) is a moody, mysterious piece of work, full of space, quiet, contemplative moments but with an unnerving sense of dread below the surface that gives just the right amount of unease whilst listening.

Composed by Joseph Trapenese
Artwork by We Buy Your Kids
Manufactured in the Czech Republic

White Vinyl

The record opens out with clamouring field recordings taken on Vernon's travels in Japan; the cacophony melts effortlessly into the muted beauty of "Amber Fade", its cold synths and sombre chords striking a perfect emotional balance. "Tilted" similarly plays with ambient elements, lush pads easing their way out of the sounds of a waterfall but the natural sounds are contrasted by a touch of acidic 303. This hint of the club is forefronted in "Late Nights", which dials up the energy with chunky big room drum loops, a stirring piano section showing Vernon can turn up the heat without losing the emotional side.

On the B-side, "This Moment (I Feel)" toys with a muzak sound palette and dazed poolside beats. "Disappear" lean heavily on an electro beat; but for a hazy elongated drop it's a heady dancefloor number, before easing off again into the closing track. "Start Again" is full of texture and character, cleverly arpeggiated synths cascading over a soft house jam.

After severals EPs on labels such as Lumière Noir, Kill the DJs or Bahnsteig 23, here is the first album of french duo Il Est Vilaine, infused with a "Yellow Magic Orchestra-ish" touch, rooted in the french musical landscape.

A road trip in Brittany as a red thread, the two hooligans of Il Est Vilaine revisit Kawaii pop, crazy rock like DEVO and Detroit techno with a surprising coherence. An album long matured and awaited by the band's fans.

Il Est Vilaine aren’t Bretons, but they sure are tricksters. The Francophiles among you might have caught on to the corny pun in their name (beating a certain presidential candidate to the punch all while turning the name of the pastoral Ille-et-Vilaine region into, literally, “he’s a nasty woman,”) but the real takeaway is that these born-and-bred Parisians don’t take themselves too seriously – especially in an era in which there is much too much of that happening.
It was in 2014 (and on Dialect Recordings) that Florent and Simon tossed their debut 12” into the ring, the rightfully named Scandale – a tight little bombshell released that roused the electronic music scene out of its complacent little catnap.
So there we had it, two outcasts refusing to eat at the same table as the tech-house scene queens, serving up three whiplash-on-the-dancefloor cuts drenched in sweaty hedonistic disco and wrapped in a battered motorcycle jacket (with a gooey post-punk-pop core for good measure.) A clear mission statement right out of the gates, watermarked with mystical incantations and throbbing with rock ’n’ roll’s primitive drive. Everything and the kitchen sink, and a bag of chips – an invitation to just let lose that’s even better than the sum of its parts.

Debut solo album by the Red River Dialect songwriter. Recorded at the Hotel2Tango, Montreal, by Howard Bilerman. Featuring Thor Harris (Swans, Thor & Friends, Shearwater) on drums and Thierry Amar (GYBE!, ASMZ) on bass, with guest appearances from Tom Relleen (RIP) (Tomaga, Melos Kalpa), Catrin Vincent (Another Sky) and Coral Rose (The Silver Field, Red River Dialect).
David has written five critically acclaimed collections of songs under the Red River Dialect name. The last two albums (released by Paradise of Bachelors) achieved a glowing Pitchfork review and a Folk Album of the Month award from the Guardian. Selected press below.
“Folk Album of the Month. Alert, anti-colonialist folk. Songwriter David Morris brings alternate seduction and disquiet on this worldly album steeped in the British landscape... a wide-eyed, curious creature, willingly alert to the world.” – 4/5 The Guardian
“Animated with a new intensity, the Cornwall band’s fifth album may be its most ingenious and immersive mix of folk and rock yet. It’s also Morris’ most compelling set of songs. He invests small sensations with outsize power, finding joy in sensory pleasures as well as in the mystical inquests that music allows. Even as the record is steeped in the long history of British folk music, that balance of the tactile and the spiritual anchors these songs in the present moment.” – Pitchfork
“The most underrated folk-rock band in Britain. The idea of them as a Cornish-born, Buddhist-inclined Waterboys is more potent than ever. Their fifth album of elementally-battered, rueful and rousing folk-rock ... is as stirringly anthemic as they've managed thus far.” – MOJO
“A beguilingly atmospheric record… imagine Steve Gunn transplanted to Kernow.” – Clash
“Gorgeous and moving, anchored by the heft of the physical but reaching for more. The epic spareness, the way it manages to be both still and an enveloping swirl, reminds me most of Talk Talk. There’s a prayerful intensity to the quiet bits, a listening, wondering awe, that makes the rock payoffs more powerful. The album works as a restless, searching, gorgeous whole. Morris and his band have never been better.” – Dusted
“It’s not often that a band comes along and over the course of nine songs both plays to the tradition and stands it on its ear. RRD has taken the challenge of playing with reckless abandon to heart, generating an album that stands on the shoulder of giants showing no fear.” Folk Radio

Monastic Love Songs continues the tradition that David has established over the course of five albums with Red River Dialect: using a song cycle to articulate a relationship with inner and outer landscapes, inspired by the Taoist approach of observing the movement of the heavens in order to understand the cosmos within, and vice versa. The joyful closing track Inner Smile was initially written as a poem of thanks to his Tai Chi teacher Hollis and takes its name from a Taoist practice.
The songs were written during the final weeks of a nine-month retreat at Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia where David took ordination as Buddhist monk. The album title is sincere, with a little tongue-in-cheek. The songs mostly explore human relationships within the community, with outliers: Gone Beyond shimmers with cosmic devotion, in Rhododendron a reverie grows from the shadow of a flower. Steadfast concerns the love to be found beyond the urge to like and be liked, when you can’t avoid that difficult person. Leonard Cohen, on his six years living in a monastery:
“You know, there’s a Zen saying: ‘Like pebbles in a bag, the monks polish one another.’
David considers this album to be a follow up to 2015’s Tender Gold and Gentle Blue. The cover of that lp featured an image of him on top of Skellig Michael, in the years before the island was made famous as the home of the Jedi. He considers the visit to that abandoned Celtic monastic site to be one of the influences that stirred up his motivation. Skeleton Key speaks of what was given up to go, and what he was giving up to leave, referencing the Tibetan concept of the ‘bardo of becoming’.
The album came about through a series of fortunate encounters. David’s friend Tom Relleen visited him at the Abbey in May 2019, mentioning a postponed plan to visit the Hotel2Tango. A spark was sown: this studio had long figured in David’s imagination. Many of the releases on Constellation Records, which he had become a die-hard fan of in his teens, were recorded there. Tom contributed some Buchla synthesizer to the opener New Safe, which concerns healing in emptiness and light.
In May David was given permission by the senior monastics to acquire a guitar, which was swiftly baptised as “Malibu Barbie”. Having let the identity of being a songwriter loosen up, not playing an instrument in six months, he was unsure what would happen. In the single hour he was permitted to practice each day, songs began to cascade. The first, Purple Gold, concerns a reacquaintance with first love. David wrote to the Hotel2Tango asking if they had any days available in mid-July?
Engineer and studio co-owner Howard Bilerman replied that they did, and a date was set. Did Howard know any local drummers or bass players who might do a session? He did, too many to choose from, what kind of style? David decided to ask for his ideal: did Thierry from Godspeed ever do sessions? Howard sent him the demos. Thierry was up for it. On the day he went deep into the cover of traditional song Rosemary Lane, his double bass singing on this and on Circus Wagon.
David asked if there were any local drummers he would recommend? Thierry said “many, what style?” David tried his luck again, “two of my favourite drummers are Thor Harris and Jim White.” Thierry said let’s invite them. Thor, having met David a decade earlier, flew from Austin to Montreal for that July day in the studio. Nine months of watching thoughts come and go in meditation helped David recognise this as an opportunity to practice enjoying the day without expectations.
He is, however, grateful that this album came out the way it did, channelling some of what it was like to live those nine months in a monastery overlooking the Gulf of St Lawrence, frozen and flowing.

Mixed by Jimmy Robertson at SNAFU, London, mastered by DenisBlackham.

Red Vinyl

The unmissable, head-twisting debut LP by Cairo’s 1127 returns on red vinyl pressing for those who missed its shockwaves for the first time back in summer 2019, Huge recommendation if you’re into Autechre, Arca, Croww w, Rabit...
Getting right under the skin with its hugely variegated palette of brutalist, rhythmic power electronics and evocative location recordings, ‘Tqaseem Mqamat El Haram 2016-2019’ resembles something like a soundtrack to a Neil Blomkamp flick set it Cario, Egypt, 2050 where stifling heat and pollution means everyone wears
breathing apparatus and hover cars sputter about its dusty sprawl. It’s surely one of the most shocking and transfixing sides from North Africa this side of the debut LPs by 1127’s peers, Myslma and Zuli, and should be prized by anyone with an ear for futurist rhythms and microtonal synths of a modern, Afro-futurist order.
Comprising collaged chunks from 1127’s archive arranged in a seamless, diffracted flow that recalls Autechre as well as the mutant adjuncts in Arca’s &&&& or Croww’s ‘Prosthetics MechaMix’, the results feel as though scraped from the insides of 1127’s skull, capturing and rendering the sounds of Cairo street raves ricocheting
with spasms of gristly noise, strafing into pockets of cutthroat flashcore and dropping out into smoky,
intimate scenes of Arabic dialogue, all threaded together with a distinctive taste for metallic microtonal synthlines and coruscating noise.

Oiche, the debut album from Fears, available 7th Mayl 2021. Pieced
together over five years, Oiche chronicles growth through challenges,
instability, and relationship changes, both with one’s self and others.
The album reveals itself much like a coming of age novel about the breaking
apart of girlhood and rebuilding of a young woman. An intimate depiction of
discovery, Oiche unearths internal dialogue, and makes peace with uncertainty.
Oiche, meaning ‘night’ in Irish, was recorded in three bedrooms, hospital, and
the Domino Recordings studio in Brixton.
Fears is London-based Irish artist Constance Keane. Combining reflective electronics, acoustic samples, and haunting vocals with organic visuals, Fears invites the listener on an ethereal journey, blurring the boundaries between
music and visual art. Her minimalist approach centres on emotive subjects,
which are all-at-once deeply personal yet remarkably universal. Oiche is the
first release on TULLE, run by and for exceptional womxn.

Shapes of Rhythm welcomes Emanative to the label for his first vinyl project following contributions to its Isolation Compilation and an Awkward Corners EP both earlier in 2020. Known for his love of collaboration, Emanative connected remotely with Bex Burch during the global lockdown. Disrupt #4 is the result of a meeting of two percussive minds in the midst of a pandemic, and like all good things it started with a groove. Nick initially provided Bex with a hazy, electrified afrobeat sketch. What followed was a musical dialogue which quickly gained momentum. A punk-esque vocal mantra was added, reflecting the here and now of 2020 to drive the track forward. Bex's trademark Ghanaian Gyil xylophone is the conversation with the groove throughout the track. Hector Plimmer also joins the collaboration, seasoning the mix with synthesizers and fx.

Following his stunning Dislocation Songs LP, the label drafted in Awkward Corners AKA Paradise Bangkok's Chris Menist for a remix on the flip that heads towards the club (remember clubs?). Adding 808s, his own conga recordings, synth lines, a sprinkle of acid and a warped vocal treatment, this is classic Awkward Corners: pumped with feeling and rhythm. If Andrew Weatherall was still with us today he'd be digging this take on the a-side.

An unlikely meeting of two like-minded spirits, »First Man in the Moon« sees the former Swans guitarist and Hallow Ground regular Norman Westberg and the prolific double bass player Jacek Mazurkiewicz collaborate for five evocative tracks. The pair finds common ground beyond the boundaries of atmospheric drone, abstract jazz and experimental music and blurs the lines between the acoustic and the electronic.The two first met when the composer Mazurkiewicz supported Swans with his solo project 3FoNIA on their 2014 European tour. »I really enjoyed his approach,« says Westberg about the Polish musician’s blending of the acoustic qualities of his instrument with electronically generated sounds. A decision to collaborate was made and when the US-American musician returned to Eastern Europe to support Michael Gira on his solo tour in late 2019, Mazurkiewicz reached out to him with the idea of booking some studio time before Gira’s two concerts in Warsaw. »Recording was very fun and easy,« remembers Westberg. »It was just two people enjoying hearing and reacting to what the other is doing.« »First Man in the Moon« is not however a plain document of these improvised sessions, but also shaped by Mazurkiewicz’s approach as a composer. Once the recordings were finished, he selected and edited the recorded material, refining the peculiar dialogue between the guitarist’s meditative drones and bright chords and his own rhythmic yet subtle approach to playing the double bass, sometimes plucking the strings and occasionally using his bow to underscore
Westberg’s fleeting melodies, but also using the instrument in unconventional ways to generate sound. A feeling of weightlessness prevails throughout the aptly-titled »First Man in the Moon.« Even at their most abstract however, these five improvisations-turned-compositions remain tangible, lively, and joyfully explorative. It is a record that you wouldn’t expect from either of these musicians, but
the logical result of two idiosyncratic minds sharing not only space and time, but also their respective visions with each other. Credits:
Recorded at Studio Diamentowy Pies/ Damian Pielka, engineering/Piotr Mazurek, engineering assistance/Jacek Mazurkiewicz, mix/
Lawrence English, mastering/John Fell, photographs.

Stimulator Jones breaks new ground on his sophomore LP, La Mano. The Stones Throw affiliate heads over to Mutual Intentions for a novel instrumental record that expands a musical dialect built on his singular fusion of sounds. The artist explores the musical possibilities contained in his hands as he moves between keys, guitars, drums and wind instruments in arrangements that break down the intellectual barriers of genre for the corporeal intimacy of the soul.

Vital Sales Points:
The title track is already picked up and compiled by Gilles Peterson on Brownswood Recordings.
La Mano is Stimulator Jones first instrumental LP between two Stones Throw albums as a singer.¨


Scroll to next page for audio and artwork links + resources…

Waking the Dreaming Body is the follow-up to Tucson artist Karima Walker's 2017 standout album Hands In Our Names, which garnered praise from Pitchfork, MOJO, and Bandcamp. The album includes dense harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and Karima's dulcet singing voice. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient work and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged songwriting, their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night's dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.

Waking the Dreaming Body is the follow-up to Tucson artist Karima Walker's 2017 standout album Hands In Our Names, which garnered praise from Pitchfork, MOJO, and Bandcamp. The album includes dense harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and Karima's dulcet singing voice. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient work and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged songwriting, their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night's dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.

Waking the Dreaming Body is the follow-up to Tucson artist Karima Walker's 2017 standout album Hands In Our Names, which garnered praise from Pitchfork, MOJO, and Bandcamp. The album includes dense harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and Karima's dulcet singing voice. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient work and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged songwriting, their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night's dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.

Born in Croydon, UK in 1960 and working in Switzerland for decades, Michal Turtle has led a storied career as a composer, arranger, technician and producer, consistently aligned with some
of the most exciting bands and projects within the realms of pop and experimental music. A figure as masterful in the realm of expansive ambient recordings as advertising jingles, it’s only in recent
years that Michal’s solo productions have gained acclaim and a cult following that continues to grow ever wider.
Turtle made a long-awaited return earlier in 2020 with the extended ‘On a Canvas Lived a Baby’, a one-sided twelve of new material released on Planisphere Editorial. Now, the Basel based label
invites a diverse and international cross-section of electronic musicians to reinterpret the artist’s back-catalogue, each delivering a thoughtful remix driven by the same sense of curiosity,
exploration and genre-blurring that Turtle himself helped pioneer. Each track on the remixes collection was originally recorded between 1980 and 1985, in between Turtle’s regular tours with established bands. Opening the collection, Laurel Halo adopts her LH alias for a textural and tripping revisit to ‘Phantoms of Dreamland’, transporting the haunting original to a hyper-detailed alternate dimension. Zoning back in, Neue Grafik finds typically eclectic form with ‘Men in Green’, turning the dials and blending ideas as if tuning between the emerging musical scenes that defined Turtle’s early-eighties life in Camden, London. In stark contrast, avant-garde polymath Felicia
Atkinson designs a ‘Fennel and Moon’ version, weaving between earthy field recordings and an aching piano line, conjuring an almost ritualistic atmosphere, far from the city. Radical musical turns continue to define the collection as son of Detroit, Jimmy Edgar takes
‘Rainwater Fijit’ down a dark, damp tunnel, expanding on the pitter patter of Turtle’s more outlandish studio experiments, blending vocal experiments with fresh funk. Colombian experimentalist Lucrecia Dalt pulls further bizarre shapes from a patchwork of samples, a heaving,
gasping industrial shuffle, before French producer D.K. returns a stronger rhythm, both building on Turtle’s lovingly naive tributes to the legacy of sample culture and his trusty ARP2600.

Ostgut Ton mainstay and Panorama Bar resident Nick Höppner proceeds to sensitively rewire ‘Maid Of The Mist’ into a blossoming, introspective celebration of melody and ambience, an
almost weightless experience that lends itself well as a breather before Luca Duran’s analogue, acid-tinged take on Spookie Boogie takes Turtle’s esoteric touches back into the direction of the
funk and italo records at the heart of his initial inspiration.
The Remixes final chapter continues to expand in distinct and wide-reaching sonic directions. London’s Object Blue seems to slow time itself across her sublime interpretation of ‘Ball Of Fire’.
Initially Turtle’s tribute to Howard Hawks 1941 film classic and the legacy of old Hollywood, worlds further collide into rolling, weightless bliss.

Fellow Swiss citizen Mehmet Aslan stirs an enchanting, percussive mystery that unfolds with great
pleasure on El Teb, while Parco Palaz conjures not one but two radically different remixes of ‘Are
You Psychic?’, demonstrating both their imaginative nous, as well as the depth of Turtle’s legacy.
Finally, an irresistible vocal contribution from Oso Leone adds even further colour and joy to ‘Maid
of The Mist’, sending off this ambitious collection on a transformative, dream-pop high.
With further details set to be revealed, there is an ongoing development focused around the
accompanying art and visuals. The Peruvian born and now Amsterdam based graphic designer
Jonathan Castro leads the art direction, along with visual artist Chris Harnan. Both artists look to
explore the intersection between sound, imagery and its reorientation, exhibited through the
musical contributors and visual translation.

“I am happy and honoured to have been the spark for this remarkable compilation.
The magnificent work done by this collection of very special people speaks for itself, so listen and
be transported. It has been half a lifetime since my original tracks were written, and I am gratified
to know that they are somehow still relevant enough to be reworked and reinvented.”

Mason Bee is the solo project of Benet Walsh, multi-instrumentalist producer based in the Welsh Marches, best known as long-term co-writer and touring partner with U.K. electronic duo Plaid (Warp Records). His debut album ‘Play Flights’ is a brilliant patchwork of diverse influences, from choral folk mantras to modern glitch guitar sounds and beyond. If you hear live instrumentation on a Plaid track, it’s often Benet. His writing relationship with the iconic Warp duo dates back to the early days and has spawned some of the most evocative and heartfelt electronic music of our times.

Now as Mason Bee, Benet invites us into his own sonic universe, drawing on psychedelic, electronic and folk sounds to produce something quite different. There’s a narrative feel to the songs which unfolds to reveal morphing organic forms and technicolour landscapes, realised through a rich blend of acoustic instruments, phone recordings and DIY studio techniques. Although masonry

bees are solitary by nature, this album was recorded with the help of an international cast of musicians, from Australia and Portugal to the Welsh Marches of the U.K. adding considerably to the album’s richness. The title itself refers to the first outings (or Orientation Flights) of bees, making ‘Play Flights’ a fitting name for this unique debut.

Limited edition cloudy clear vinyl. Combining processed recordings of wind and water with analog synthesizers and chamber orchestra, Elori Kramer's The Blue of Distance is an audio dissertation on the role technology plays in our relationships to geography and nature, unspooling into an examination of memory and longing across seven sections that layer filmic minimalism over churning electronic soundbeds. Half of the suite was written in the Adirondack mountains during summer amid lakes, rivers, and moss-laden forest floors, while the other half was conceived on a frozen Lake Superior island in deep winter, creating a subtextual dialogue between the two extreme settings. Kramer, who was born in 1990 and grew up alongside the internet, uses her music to explore nature in the actual and the virtual world, through direct experience and facsimile alike, focussing and blurring the line between the two. "Looking back at my videos of that summer-- which is where the processed audio came from-- I tried to remember what it had felt like to be there," she recalls, "thinking about questions of reality versus imagination; physical versus digital; and the ways in which memory shifts through our minds and technology." The title The Blue of Distance was derived from Rebecca Solnit's book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, referring to the phenomenon of faraway mountains appearing blue due to light particles getting lost over distance. "If we were to go up to the mountains that appear blue from far away, we would see that they weren't actually that color." she says. "This beauty is made possible because of their distance," much in the same way that the splendor of a lush season is only fully realized in the throes of a bleak one, and the joy of an event can only be felt when it has long since been consigned to remembrance. R.I.Y.L Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Josiah Steinbrick, Emily Sprague

“Easy rider, come and take me higher”. When the world seemingly crumbles around, music can provide an escape few other mediums can. For their debut self-titled LP, Velour effortlessly levitate you above the madness below, each track taking a new turn, cruising over hazy flecked skylines, bustling walkways and bleary eyed bedlam. A trajectory that takes in all of jazz’s vibrancies, blending elements of neo soul, broken beat and hip hop coupled with a much-needed sense of hope across nine deep, soul-searching tracks released via WOLF Music Recordings.

A style and sound taking influence from genres and moods, environments and experiences, Essen-based Velour stretch their legs for this, their first full length album. From the off, they nestle you under their wing with the rustling sax washes of opener ‘CLP’ before diving into an epic slo-mo burner, swooping down into the chaos as singer, Eva Czaya, wistfully narrates the scenes beneath.

Unafraid to shift pace within songs, the likes of ‘Pose’, sauntering from soulful summer groove into woozy late night affair, and ‘Tom's Garage’, that progresses from roadside recounting to grungy basement blowout, finished with a sample of jazz-tinged dusty beats, show that accomplished and adept heads rest on the shoulders of these relative newcomers.

WOLF Music mainstay Mr Fries continues to head up production for Velour, his trademark touch capturing the intimacy of Velour’s sound presenting it in a way that’s considered yet raw - nothing feeling rushed, nor cluttered. A separation and space that gives each element the room it deserves to breathe, with short interludes and skits providing the perfect bridge between tracks, guiding you through smokey jazz bars and twilight whisperings.

Moving through the album, Czaya at points wanders in a serene spoken dialogue, at others letting her voice loose, but always with an ethereal demeanour that comes off with natural ease. One of many highlights, ‘Anthony Davis’ shows off this celestial prowess whilst perfectly embodying Velour’s dream-like escapism. A pent up release of creativity, as moody bass tones mix with deft keys, rolling snares sit behind swirling saxophones.

The journey ends with ‘Luminate’, a transcendent closer laced with space-echoed vocals that reverberate around over-driven Rhodes and feverish drums. Cymbals crash, as modulated synths rise, building and building before easing you off into the night and on your way to a parallel universe.

As a body of work, ‘Velour’ is a shining example of the freedom, energy and enthusiasm of the new school of jazz that’s been captivating minds the world over. An instant on repeat staple - let go, feel the flow, it’s what we need in a time like this.

Favorite Recordings presents an exclusive collaboration between French producer Bruno ‘Patchworks’ Hovart (Voilaaa, Mr President, Taggy Matcher, …) and Australian NYC-based rapper and poet Nelson Dialect. The two artists met two years ago after Nelson’s gig in Lyon and, of course, they discussed and seriously planned to collaborate one day, both having an everliving love for early nineties hip hop. Then came the quarantine and Covid-19 with Patchworks locked in Lyon, Nelson Dialect in NYC: it seemed to be the right time to do it. A few months later and they finally drop Blue Benz, the result of their long distance collaboration, coming as a beautiful 7inch filled with proper Jazz & Soul Hip Hop vibes.
On A side, « Blue Benz » reminds indeed the best feelings of the nineties hip-hop with its infectious slapped bass rhythm and subtle Rhodes chords, all fiiting perfectly with Nelson Dialect’s serious flow!
On B Side, « Jazzy Blue Benz » offers an alternate take on the same groove, focusing more on the electric guitar gentle slides with a more percussive beat and horns arrangements with a proper NYC jazz
feeling.
From Adelaide, Australia, Nelson Dialect now lives in New York working with Bronx label Red Apples 45 started by AG of DITC and Ray West. Making music since he was 16, he has received critical acclaim for his work with producer Must Volkoff and their most recent album Magnetism. Before moving to New York, Nelson toured extensively in Australia supporting some of the biggest international Hip Hop acts including Mobb Deep, Lupe Fiasco, Ghostface Killah, GZA, RZA, Pharoahe Monch and DJ Premier among many more. He just released a new album Opal Mind with French producer NuTone.

Between Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001 producers Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu recorded an album of warm, soft, delicately crackling electronic music in the space of that week. It was christened with the ambivalent title "Heroin" and was released on CD via the label Brombron in 2001 and later in 2003 re-issued on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork on double-LP with remixes the pair had commissioned as expansions.

17 years later Heroin sees its first vinyl release to include all 13 tracks from the original CD track-list on this LP + 12“ set. The centerpiece "Herz" finally receives its long deserved vinyl treatment (side C, at 45rpm) and on the flip side Thomas Brinkmann contributes a mirror in a magnificent remix of that very piece on side D.

Ehlers and Mathieu were both highly prolific solo artists during the period 2000-2004, and in just two years after the initial release of "Heroin" each had produced over half a dozen new solo recordings: among them the serial masterpiece Ehlers' "Plays" (Cornelius Cardew, Hurbert Fichte, John Cassavetes, Albert Ayler, Robert Johnson) released as 5 stunning LPs in a series on Staubgold, while Mathieu's 'Full Swing Edits' spread over five 10" records plus his album 'FrequencyLib' on Mille Plateaux, 'Die Entdeckung des Wetters' on Lucky Kitchen and ‘The Sad Mac’ on Atsushi Sasaki’s Headz label were greeted to critical acclaim.

Both artists were expanding their conceptual sonic approaches in the glow of developing laptop technologies which would to these times in 2020 seem quite primitive, but these two in that period used the state-of-the-art to aid and abet their conceptual visions, while at times the duo used unorthodox experimentation - yet always had a distinctively melodic and musical form at its heart and soul.

Ehlers can be seen as a conceptualist, as a meta-musician who interrogates the mediums and methods of sound production - reflecting on the conditions and possibilities of improvisation (e.g. "Plays Albert Ayler") and exploits ideas of mutation and distortion of popular aesthetics played out within a ghostly form of divine pop beauty in his project März.

Mathieu, originally a drummer and co-founder of what has come to be known as the Berlin 'Echtzeitmusik' scene. His approach could be similarly described as working a critical analyst and researcher: Subtly and precisely working in the realm of processing as a method of intervening in melodious/harmonic analog sound sources.

Ehlers and Mathieu may not think too much about their singular productions and publications outcomes, but instead concentrate on the process and musical personality that characterizes their gesture- style itself stays in the background - and they usher a music from small minimal sound sources coaching a patient music of slow intervention - much like a refraction of light than a concrete painting or a blurred photograph - beatus accident.

And indeed, "Heroin" is an album that embraces the happy accident being made up of reduced, often very catchy and very direct micro hooks which seem laser-guided into a space accepting obvious melodic beauty in what feels like an observation of musics unfolding and revealing it's DNA, embed with for a kind of yearning for innocence and naiveté - as if Satie were on the jukebox in "The Crying of Lot 49". Not to say the music is "reduced", but rather: 'restricted' and born from acceptance of limitations, and the artists allowing the sounds to just "be.." with some incremental degrees of coercion.

The album not only sounds like that of 2 producers who are both dreamers and scientists, but that Ehlers and Mathieu chose to work with these means in a dialogue together to reduce pop music to its musical/tonal core, it is not Pop music anymore, rather a ghostly pointilistic itteration of song. "Heroin" is located at this transition, around that point at which tracks, that were or could have become pop compositions, irrevocably slip into a static harmonic nirvana. We are invited to follow the arch of Heroin in a slow-motion morphine musical haze.

Heroin sounded timeless when originally released and proof is that it remains so, one wishes that Ehlers and Mathieu would convene again for a week, a month or an entire year to continue this process of slow rumination, picking affectionately over the sounds they both love - and then maybe when everything is condensed, evaporated they would write more songs with those sonic refractive elements that remain.

*** Ltd. Edition 300 Copies on RED VINYL with insert! ***

These rare recordings were recorded as part of the legendary prescription label album series in the late 1990's that resulted in the album "Astral Disaster". Coil were invited to record at Sun Dial's studios beneath the London Bridge Hop Exchange. This studio was originally know as Samurai studios that was originally built and owned by Iron Maiden.

The premises in Victorian times was an old debtors prison which had three levels underground, and still had the original chains, manacles and wrought iron doors from the old prison. This caught the attention of John Balance and was very keen to record there.

At Gary Ramon's invitation, Coil spent a number of days recording at the studio during Halloween 1998 and they developed a number of tracks some of which resulted in the "Astral Disaster" album. For various reasons, some of the unissued material and mixes released on this album were omitted from the original Astral Disaster album, and so now is the opportunity to listen to the second volume of "The Astral Disaster sessions".

The album includes all previously unissued mixes and alternative versions, and includes "The Mothership" which was the first version that was later remade in the sessions as "The Mothership and the Fatherland".

Taken from the master tapes and remastered by Denis Blackham.

*** Ltd. Edition 500 Copies on BLACK VINYL with insert!

These rare recordings were recorded as part of the legendary prescription label album series in the late 1990's that resulted in the album "Astral Disaster". Coil were invited to record at Sun Dial's studios beneath the London Bridge Hop Exchange. This studio was originally know as Samurai studios that was originally built and owned by Iron Maiden.

The premises in Victorian times was an old debtors prison which had three levels underground, and still had the original chains, manacles and wrought iron doors from the old prison. This caught the attention of John Balance and was very keen to record there.

At Gary Ramon's invitation, Coil spent a number of days recording at the studio during Halloween 1998 and they developed a number of tracks some of which resulted in the "Astral Disaster" album. For various reasons, some of the unissued material and mixes released on this album were omitted from the original Astral Disaster album, and so now is the opportunity to listen to the second volume of "The Astral Disaster sessions".

The album includes all previously unissued mixes and alternative versions, and includes "The Mothership" which was the first version that was later remade in the sessions as "The Mothership and the Fatherland".

Taken from the master tapes and remastered by Denis Blackham.

Originally recorded direct to disc and released by Incus in 1978, this new edition from Treader is pressed from the original stampers. Hand-finished sleeve.

‘Parker uses rapid tonguing techniques and circular breathing to create a sound all his own, marked by the simultaneous intonation of multiple notes. One hears a note as well as all the residual tones around it; each breath ends up sounding like a battle between the different registers of the horn. At various times, Parker’s saxophone sounds like dolphin speech, electronic tape squeals, or human murmurs; namely, anything but what it actually is. His language on the instrument is essential listening for anyone interested in acoustic experimental music’ (AllMusic).

‘Eight years after Topography Of The Lungs, and two years after his Saxophone Solos, Monoceros was the most muscular statement of Evan Parker’s solo saxophone muse. Superbly recorded, it seemed to place the listener within the chaotic air flows of the saxophone’s own tubing. Philip Clark said: ‘Parker’s dialogue with the saxophone throws up so much that is unexpected, and indeed unknowable, that the problem he faces is how to keep pace with his own invention’’ (The Wire, Best Albums Of The Year).

French synth-pop talent Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra unveils his new solo piano album, a journey into cinematic soundscapes

Alone at the piano, Lucien takes us on a very personal album in a deep and quiet reverie. We spend a soft winter morning in his company, reminiscing about tender childhood memories.

Between previously unreleased tracks and revisited Kimono Orchestra pieces, "Piano Matinée" concludes a trilogy of recordings which have barely been released, while paving the way for a wider future. Universal, sensitive, cinematographic, the piano language spoken here by Lucien opens us to his musical world in a light that is both more authentic and accessible.

The album also tells us a personal story. That of a grandfather - an exceptional pianist but forced to give up his career when the Second World War broke out - who passed on to him a taste for music in his early childhood, before passing away.

Many years later, Lucien came across old cassette recordings of his eldest son, soon afterwards having a disturbing dream in which he swore he had had a dialogue with him and decided to go his own way. The self-taught musician spent a whole year honing his piano skills before deciding to freeze his performance in the summer of 2019 at the legendary Steinway at the Studios Saint-Germain.

Drawing freely on all his influences - jazz, funk, classical, cinema - Lucien's "Piano Matinée" is a special object, as intimate as it is melodious.

Ghent's Steiger are a piano trio, but not in the classical sense. With their versatile style, influenced by different musical genres such as jazz, rock, pop, classical and electronic music, they try to find a balance between composition and improvisation through the use of experimentation and electronics.

Considered pioneers of the Belgian jazz crossover scene, Steiger have been active for 6 years and have recently found themselves performing at major jazz venues in Flanders, picking up numerous accolades along the way.

The trio's highly anticipated sophomore album 'Give Space', released 14th September on Sdban Ultra, was recorded at 7 different locations, with the music composed to fit and fight these locations within a dialogue of acoustics, atmospheres and appetition. Field recordings, reverbs, ambient sounds, all collected within the search for the unpredictable, were given space within this dialogue as the essential part of the encounter. As a result, the locations emerge somewhat as a fourth member of the trio. The music - sometimes fixed, sometimes completely free - takes on an ever-changing journey into their multi-faceted world.

Reemerging from the threshold of the cosmic vortex, Black Lodge returns with another sonic artifact that is charged with vigorous chaotic energy, known as EXPERIMENT_ZERO. Accounts of the radiant object's origin are as mysterious as the raw energy that utters from its core. Following a close study, the guardians of the portal suspect that "Experiment Zero" was a primordial experiment rooted in the slam jack pits and DIY warehouse rituals of ages passed. A sonic dialog constructed of various languages, spanning from roots-house jak to bare-knuckled electro are revealed across the artifact - a revolutionary tale that surpasses the constructs of ephemerality, with a refusal to be ignored. Across the release the listener is confronted with fearless acid lines that are underscored by a tone of revolution, and sets the stage for a human voice that switches between modes of a sharp and mutated presence. The power of such sonic objects are both celebrated and rejected by various tribal societies. It is all dependent on the belief structures and traditional histories of its members. Those that belong to the cult of Ron Hardy, Mad Mike Banks, Traxx, and JTC will welcomingly be drenched in its riotous energies. It is for the dedicated, not the light-hearted. After further research it has been discovered that, Experiment Zero is the product of Dona, aka Dj Plant Texture and Mike Tansella Jr. of Son of Traders, both products of the ancient mercantile city of Bari in Southern Italy. Previous works from these artists have been featured on Creme Organization, Gravitational Waves, Unknown to Unknown, and Illian Tapes. All sonic experimentation was recorded in one take to capture the raw energy of instantaneous collaborative sound craft operating in flux. Black Lodge's 4th release is sure to find a space in the music collections of those seeking to travel within the uncanny portals that unforgivingly defy the status quo. Mastered by: Alex J Michalski Label design: Kosmik Pressing: Deepgrooves (NL)

Back with his third EP for Dave Harvey’s forward thinking Futureboogie label, Kiwi serves up three pulsating jams on ‘Charlie’s New Vision’, backed with a remix from Johnny Aux.

Drawing upon his many influences across the house/disco/funk spectrum, South London based Kiwi has been illuminating the more discerning dancefloors of late with a strong of releases for Cin Cin, Needwant and his own new label venture, Crossbreed.

A low-slung groove is explored on ‘Charlie’s New Vision’, incorporating tripped out film dialogue, bleeps and dubby tones, and a serpentine bass riff, all forging an off kilter yet infectious & hedonistic chugger. Johnny Aux follows up recent appearances on Man Power’s Me Me Me, Party Central, and Multi Culti with his own take on the lead track. Churning over a bleepy and epically transcendental remix of the highest order, this is the stuff of sunrises and enlightening moments!

The sprightly ‘Ghiaccio’ draws together a kaleidoscopic array of opulent synth melodies with an compelling rhythm, whilst ‘Italian Heat’ doffs its cap heartily to the Italo disco choons of yore that always strikes a potent chord to this day.

It’s that time of the year again: we’re finishing our 6th year of Heist Recordings with our annual potpourri of remixes with this
year’s artists on ‘The Round up part VI’. This year, we’ve got a few really cool newcomers on the label like Demuir, Perdu and
Makèz, as well as label mainstays Fouk and yours truly delivering a great collection of remixes.

The EP starts off with label heads Detroit Swindle giving their high-energy take on Fouk’s ‘Need my Space’. They’ve chosen for
a stabby club version of the more introverted original, with different layers of synths building up alongside a pumping drum track
and a punchy Moog bassline. Check the break for a nice dreamy broken beat section before the track comes back into full
dancefloor madness.

Makèz have only just released their well-received debut EP and now they’re flanking Detroit Swindle on the A-side with their
remix of Perdu’s hit ‘Sacramento’. They replace the broken beat vibe of the original and instead go for a 4x4 track with a driving
bassline, warm pads and subtle placement of Perdu’s original elements.

On the B-side, we have Fouk reinterpreting Demuir’s take on Detroit Techno with their remix of ‘3nity returneth’. Their version is
a tom-heavy high-energy club track with a strong nod to the past, whilst still keeping that strong Fouk signature intact. They
mangle the vocal sample in a drunk and twisted break before setting the track back on fire with an extra acid line for good
measure.

The B2 goes to Perdu’s dreamy slow burning remix of Detroit Swindle’s classic house bomb ‘Music for clubs’. His version takes
the tempo down and dials the dreamy level up a notch. A mellow but punchy acid line and worldly synth hits give this remix it’s
cool twist and it’s a great showcase of Perdu’s view on the broad world of house music.

This year’s Round up finishes with Demuir’s trippy ‘playboy edit’ of ‘Random Visits’ by Makèz. He takes the vocal sample and
layers it behind a haunting string, dreamy keys and a steady groove. It’s got a funky vibe where Demuir’s knack for a good
groove fits perfectly with the fresh original.

The Round up is a special moment for us each year and we’re excited to share these reinterpretations of another year’s worth of
house from the world of Heist Recordings with you.

Yours Sincerely, Lars & Maarten.

TERANGA BEAT proudly presents MAR SECK, a delicate singer and songwriter who marked the history of Senegalese music. TIP!A cross over between Cuban compositions and Senegalese Folklore, his songs gave birth to Salsa-Mbalax, the popular dance music of '70s Senegal that went onto influence a new generation of Senegalese musicians including a young Youssou N'Dour. Featuring 12 tracks recorded over three different sessions, ‘Vagabonde’ focuses on the best of MAR SECK’s career. The first recordings are taken from a raw and unreleased 1969 session at the Dakar National Radio. Recorded with his first group SUPER CAP-VERT from Rufisque, it captures an 18-year old MAR singing the first version of his now famous composition “Vagabonde”. The remaining six tracks from the session includes a beautiful cover of Fonseca’s “Sibouten”. A 1973 live recording is also featured here, made with the STAR BAND de DAKAR in Saint Louis. Previously unreleased, it comes from a time when MAR was establishing his name playing at the legendary Miami Club in Dakar, the “École de Passage” for all great Senegalese musicians. The final two tracks (one of them unreleased) finds MAR accompanied by the most complete band of Senegal, the NUMBER ONE de DAKAR. The 2LP & CD booklet includes photos and liner notes outlining MAR’s career. LP version comes with silk screen print, European 60s style, gatefold sleeve. All tracks are mastered & mixed from the original recording tapes.

London based producer Christian Piers has a decade of production experience and a discography that spans house, techno and drum and bass. He is a long-term friend of 17 Steps, and became the second artist to release on the label after label heads Dusky back in 2015. Acclaimed releases on Curle and with Leon Vynehall as Laszlo Dancehall have sustained Christians' reputation as a truly versatile producer.

With ‘Virus’, his debut LP under this alias, Christian puts himself forward an exceptional and compelling voice in UK techno, drawing on his experience in drum and bass and breaks, a sample heavy hip-hop inspired approach to production and a dubbed out, industrial techno aesthetic.

Opener ‘Extrinsic’ lays the foundations, combining cavernous drones and rattling breaks over submerged kicks, conjuring up images of chasmal warehouses, dusty basements and rattling window frames. Elsewhere delay soaked stabs bounce off combative breaks. A dialogue between Christians’ influences ensues that’s as captivating as it is individual.

Christian creates passages of intense energy without breaking a sweat. Cold atmospheres are navigated with an unhurried authority and confidence that prevents them from becoming desolate. Behind the gritty haze and forceful bassweight Christian hides the playful, agile rhythms that have become his signature – percussive sounds stumble and roll in the background, whip like snares slice through the fog.

‘Virus’ is an exhilarating ride; right up to the final bars of the teasing, anti-climactic dancefloor weapon ‘Resource Depletion’. The infinite rising tones of the closer are a bold and forward looking statement of intent from an artist whose evolution continues to unfold.

When acclaimed South African musician Guy Buttery first sought out Dr. Kanada Narahari in late 2016, it was as his patient.

“It was a dark time.” Buttery recalls, “I had been bedridden for months and had been suffering from debilitating bouts of fatigue which no diagnosis or medication could help me get to the bottom of. When I first met Kanada, I was at the stage where even picking up my guitar to make music had become a joyless and taxing exercise.”

As Buttery’s searched for a cure, a family member recommended he see Kanada an Ayurvedic doctor who had relocated to South Africa from India and set up a practice in Durban. It was during this consultation, that the musician first experienced how Narahari infused the healing properties of Indian Classical music into his practice. Rather than treating him with a smorgasbord of pharmaceuticals, Narahari played his sitar and set Buttery on a strict daily diet of Raga’s to fast track his recovery.

Buttery was not only struck by his doctor’s musical talents but by the powerful healing properties inherent in his sitar compositions. When he left Narahari’s doctors room that afternoon, he asserts he was feeling decidedly clearer, lighter and stronger.

“Diving into Kanada’s music was definitely one of the reasons I'm still here today.” he admits. “The consistent tonal centre at the heart of Indian Classical Music, literally became my support pillar over this period. A central core of sorts in which to fall back on, strengthen and discover.”

Narahari as it turned out, was not only a prominent music therapist (and one of the only Ayurvedic doctors practicing in South Africa) but like Buttery, a highly accomplished musician with a devoted following back in his homeland.

Born in a small village along the Western Ghats in Karnataka, India, Narahari, at the age of nine, had enrolled to study Carnatic classical vocal and developed an interest in Hindustani Classical music with a particular passion for the sitar. While Buttery had secured his reputation as one of South Africa’s musical treasures, a multi-instrumentalist who commands sold-out performances both locally and internationally and more recently had been awarded the prestigious 2018 Standard Bank Young Artist for Music.
From this consultation, a friendship developed between the two musicians with Buttery soon inviting Narahari to join him in his studio. But it wasn’t all plain sailing in the beginning. While Buttery and Narahari’s sensibilities were very much aligned, there were a range of cultural and musical influences, nuances and inflections that first needed to be navigated and understood.
“I suppose we had to find a common ground.” Buttery says, before adding, “Which in the end turned out to be pretty "uncommon ground" for the both of us.”
It was after a few intensive sessions together that something exhilarating began to emerge. What began as a few idle improvisations soon evolved into feverish and lengthier jams. Whenever time permitted, the musicians would meet, descending deeper into the emerging sounds, while reimagining the realms that existed between their African and Indian heritages.
Over the next few months, the duo would rack up over fifteen hours of recordings in studio, and it was up to Buttery to shape the material into an album which they collectively titled Nāḍī, which Narahari translates from the Sanskrit as "The Channel" or "An Internal River".

During this period, Narahari bestowed upon Buttery, the moniker Guruji while Guy would refer to him, in affectionate return, as Panditji. Each time the musicians would meet, the studio space would be cleared by an impromptu ritual, with Guruji burning African Imphepho while Panditji would chant a Sanskrit mantra dusting Indian Agarbatti clouds over their instruments.

Once the room had been made hazy with this aromatic alchemy (with the ancestors welcomed in) the musicians would pick up their instruments and plunge into shimmering tides of sound. Reflecting on these sessions, Narahari recalls the immense creative freedom he felt throughout: “Guy and I tried to wander as much as possible, without any speculative, preoccupied ideologies or limitations. Love remained at the forefront of our journey together.”

“Those evenings we spent together in the studio” adds Buttery, “felt incredibly rich with purpose and a profound sense of freedom. While improvising, anything could happen and mostly did.”

On a first listen, the tracks on Nāḍī emerge as salty, humid invocations to the inscrutable depths and misty myths of the Indian ocean-- that vast body of water that stretches between, and laps the shorelines, of the artists’ respective homelands.

When asked to describe the sound him and Narahari refined, Buttery prefers to relay a series of evocative images.

“For me” he explains, “Nāḍī is a lighthouse, a beacon that resides at the bottom of the ocean.” As Buttery envisions it, “what once offered light to guide ships to safety, has been submerged and re-purposed by marine life as a coral-reef temple. Similarly, this sunken lighthouse exists as a concealed cenotaph, memorializing the ancient sea-routes and passages that once connected the two distant lands.”

On paper this may sound obscure but listening to the songs, it serves as an apt metaphor.

Across each meditative movement, listeners are able to relive the journey, immersing themselves in a series of incantations, replete with high dynamics, delicate African-Indian inflections and virtuoso string playing of an entirely new order. Further complimenting the fusion of musical dialects are a range of guest artists including Shane Cooper on bass, Thandi Ntuli on vocals, Chris Letcher on organ, Ronan Skillen on tabla and percussion and Julian Redpath on guitar, synth and backing vocals.

Now like the submerged lighthouse, the recordings stand as a monument, a marker and snapshot of this fortuitous meeting, a tribute to the healing gifts of Guruji and Panditji in performance. It’s a process that already, both musicians look back on with reverence and nostalgia.

Buttery ruminates in closing, that when he first met Kanada his illness correlated with the biggest drought South Africa had experienced in many years “…for whatever reason, whenever we would connect and make music together, the sky would tend to open. Even if it was just a few drops. This went on for months, until finally the drought dissipated and my health had been restored.”

By the time the heavens did open across the East Coast, a deep friendship had been forged and with it abundant musical offerings poured down. A treasured sample of which we able to share in every time we press play and immerse ourselves in the sacrosanct musical universe that is Nāḍī.

Yeketelale is the third album from Franco-Ethiopian group uKanDanz, combining a heady brew of rock energy, saxophone zigzags and Ethiopian melodies, all fronted by veteran singer Asnake Gebreyes grooving harder than ever.

In Ethiopia, sons follow fathers and, together, their names tell a story. Some discographies are the same way. After Yechelal (''It's Possible''), Awo (''Yes!''),here's Yeketelale (''It Continues''), the third album from Ukandanz.
The adventure that links Damien Cluzel (guitars) and Lionel Martin (tenor sax), the two founders of the group, with the Ethiopian singer Asnake Guebreyes continues and, with this album, takes on new colors and a new dimension. It is a polished synthesis that keeps the rock energy of their first recordings and gives even more space to the subtle vocal ornamentations that mark great Ethiopian singers. Add to that a groove that is more danceable than ever, carried by Adrien Spirti's synth bass and Yann Lemeunier's drums, and you have the magic formula of Yeketelale.

This came about slowly over the course of a dialogue that began in the early 2000s when Damien Cluzel, arriving with a circus in Ethiopia, met up with the occupant of the next room in their hotel. A stroke of luck: this was Francis Falceto, high priest of the Ethiopiques collection (Buda, 30 volumes to date) which had introduced to the West the treasures of swinging Addis, the capital that vibrates to the sound of big brass orchestras. With him, he dives into the capital's nightlife and meets a galaxy of musicians. The singer Asnake Guebreyes is among them.

Recruited by the famous Police Orchestra at the tender age of 16, he already had all the power, energy and class of his role model, Tlahoun Guessessé ''the Ethiopian James Brown''. He began his solo career at the beginning of the 1990s with several major successes, most famously an explosive duo with the singer Fekker Addis.

This experience made a big impact on the French guitarist. Having learned how to blend in with a uniquely Ethiopian groove, he was now ready to take it to other places and in other directions. In his old friend Lionel Martin, he found an ideal partner to engage in such experiences. But they needed a singer. The idea of Asnake Guebreyes was mentioned. Then Francis Falceto called and suggested going to see him at the Addis Music Festival. Ukandanz, a rock version of Ethiopian groove, was born.

Some pieces, like the disturbing Yene Hassab, call to mind Herbie Hancock's experiments in the seventies, as well as the Juju guitars of the Gulf of Guinea. Others, like the dark Fetsum Deng Ledj Nesh, allow Asnake's voice to soar above the synthetic waves, like a siren song for a freighter in distress. Dance and trance are not left out, with inspiration from the inexhaustible Ethiopian traditional repertoire. In a nod towards Asnaké's first album (Ahadu, also reissued by Buda) Ukandanz returns to its track Ajiré, transfigured by the guitar, claps and synthetic bass and takes us back to the glory days of breakdancing. Listening to the two versions gives the key to understanding the unique touch of Ukandanz and of the rich musical colours of Yeketelale (''It Goes On''), a fusion musical journey that brings the electric spark of the Frendj (Westerners) to Ethiopian lyricism.

Coming out of London and the South West of England, Hey Colossus are one of Europe's great live bands. Since 2003 the 6-piece has been driving around the continent with their “pirate ship” backline of broken amps and triple-guitar drang, elevating audiences in every type of venue imaginable; a doctor’s waiting room in Salford, an industrial unit in Liege and a vast field next to a river in Portugal. Wherever they may roam.

Four Bibles is their twelfth studio album and the first to be released by London label ALTER, whose sole proprietor (the electronic producer Helm) encountered the group at their first gig in 2003. Recorded by Ben Turner at Space Wolf Studios in Somerset, it's their most direct album yet and follows a well-documented trajectory of evolution that began (in the truest sense) with 2011’s RRR for Riot Season and continued across three albums for Rocket Recordings. Lead vocalist Paul Sykes sounds more in focus than before, dialling down the effects and using reverb / delay to carry his lyrics rather than smother. The band has also fine-tuned to leave some room for extra depth. Piano, electronics and violin (by Daniel O'Sullivan of This is not This Heat / Grumbling Fur) all find a way in amongst a familiar mesh of interlacing guitars, wrapped round a taut rhythm section. Like every other Hey Colossus record before, the line-up has altered and the sounds reflect this.

From the weight of “Memory Gore”, to the subtlety and swag of “It's a Low”, via the sonic extremes of “Palm Hex/Arndale Chins” this is exactly as the band are live; raging & rail-roading but somehow in control. Grooves for those who want to dance or for those who want to hug a wall and nod...bleak dystopian imagery submerged in relentless rhythms and low-end rattle. The songs breath life and soul - Hey Colossus have never sounded fresher or more on point.