Suche:double ac

Since the release of the highly acclaimed album Mamari (2021), the Muito Kaballa project has continued to develop.


The new album Little Child (2022) starts with a cracker called Inside Outside. The song addresses the hypocrisy and double standards of the European Union when it comes to refugee policy. The group works together with the renowned German/Nigerian musician Ade Bantu and the Angolan guitarist Juresse Amie Tieti Ndombasi and picks up their listeners where they were parked with Mamari. Fat grooves with clearly recognizable Afrobeat influences.


However, the musical journey leads step by step away from the usual sounds of the band. Already the second track Dansez! Dansez! shows that. The sound leads to Angola, Congo and a bit of Mali. The band stacks so many rhythms on top of each other that the word poly appears in a whole new light. It becomes clear that the nine deal intensively with the music that is the source of their inspiration. The gifted guitarist Juresse Amie Tieti Ndombasi puts the icing on the cake with his sound.


Let's continue with No = No. Here at last it becomes clear: Muito Kaballa has escaped from his drawer and is now in free flight, somewhere between jazz, fusion, afrobeat and whatever. But who cares? The sound is convincing, the feet shake to the beat and cannot be calmed down even with great effort and the message "Don't protect your daughter, educate your son" can't be said often enough.


The next song, Memories, reveals completely different sides of the band. While the sound is suddenly much more relaxed and, let's call it jazzy, the lyrics also become much more intimate and poetic. "Keep in mind, it makes you blind, starring in the sun". We don't find out what memories Niklas Mündemann, composer of the song, has in mind here but that shouldn't bother us. We just put on our sunglasses and let ourselves be carried away by the almost epic track, which with its ten minutes of playing time leaves nothing to be desired in terms of diversity. Sophisticated listeners will wonder if Niklas Mündemann listened to a bit of Kamasi Washington while composing. Maybe even a lot? Be that as it may - a special treat in the piece: the trombonist Saskia-Marleen Dahms, who makes a guest appearance on this song, rounds off the sound of the brass section again.


Last but not least, we come to the namesake of the album: the song Little Child builds on the mood of the previous track and rounds off the musical odyssey with a good portion of goosebumps. But the song doesn't just leave its mark on the surface, no, it also gets under your skin. While the melody has considerable catchy tune potential, it is above all the lyrics and the message that grab you here. Niklas Mündemann wrote the song during a phase of mental depression. Above all, psychotherapy helped him to think more positively again and to comfort his own inner child. We've all heard about that child in us. But when was the last time we hugged it? The song Little Child is the perfect accompaniment for this, because when you hear it, you immediately feel hugged, pressed and safe. Another highlight are the incredibly beautiful solos, played by Benjamin Schneider on guitar and Saskia-Marleen Dahms on trombone.


That's the end of the album and, to be perfectly honest, you don't feel left out in the rain, but you do feel left out in a (warm) shower. Time flies when you hear Muito Kaballa's new album and in the end you want more. 4 remixes for the dancefloor are delivered by French producer Kuna Maze, Polish/Angolan duo Lua Preta, French producer La Dame and Brazilian producer Badsista, tipping the remix balance into more female input.

In 1975, under the oppressive air of military dictatorship in Brazil, brothers Lelo and Zé Eduardo Nazario invited bassist Zeca Assumpção to join their musical experiments in a basement under Sao Paulo’s Teodoro Sampaio Street. As teenagers, the trio had already been playing together in Hermeto Pascoal’s Grupo, alongside guitarist Toninho Horta and saxophonist Nivaldo Ornelas, and it was while working together under Hermeto’s direction that the Paulista rhythm section (as they were then known) began to realise their own potential.

With many nightclubs and venues closed in the mid-70s and government censors dictating the output of radio, TV and art galleries, many Brazilian artists fled during the years of dictatorship. But underground, Grupo Um were fusing avant garde ideals with contemporary jazz and Afro Brazilian rhythm; making phenomenally free and expressive music - in stark contrast to the sterile, conservative conditions being imposed above ground.

Just like Hermeto Pascoal’s Viajando Com O Som from the following year, Starting Point was recorded over two days at Vice-Versa Studios, by revered engineer Renato Viola. The studio was one of the best in Sao Paulo and musicians communicated with engineers through cameras and a monitor, allowing the group complete immersion in the process. They also made use of the studio’s hemispherical tiled room, which served as an acoustic reverberation chamber.

The album begins with Zé Eduardo Nazario’s thunderous drum solo on “Porão da Teodoro”, before clearing the clouds with the lone Berimbau which opens “Onze Por Oito”. Built around a hypnotic electric bass line, heady Fender Rhodes improvisations, and more rip-roaring drums, it’s a rapturous, electrifying freak-jam in 11/8.

Like some invertebrate deep-sea curiosity, the free-form “Organica” is made up of Lelo Nazario’s playfully eerie prepared piano, with Zé Eduardo’s percussion flurries darting around Assumpçao’s double bass. The equally non-conformist, percussion-only piece “Jardim Candida” features many of Zé Eduardo’s home-made instruments, including a long saw blade played with vibraphone sticks and violin bow. While working with Hermeto, Zé Eduardo famously built his own all-in-one percussion set-up known as the “Barraca de Percussão” (Percussion Tent) - the first of its kind in Brazil, which he would also use on Hermeto Pascoal’s Viajando Com O Som and throughout his career.

“Suite Orquidea Negra'' (Black Orchid Suite) was written by Lelo Nazario as the score for an imaginary movie - the story of a rare, black orchid which produced a substance meant to cure all diseases, but which had mysteriously disappeared from the laboratory… “As a screenplay it’s not very good” reflects Lelo in jest, “but the music ended up being very interesting, the way its parts are chained to one another carries a little of the mystery I imagined for the movie.”

The album closes with the triumphant “Cortejo dos Reis Negros” (Procession of Black Kings) - a groovy variation on the Maracatu rhythm, with a two-note bassline underpinning piano improvisations, exultant wordless vocals, cuicas, slide-whistles and a very special guest appearance from Zé’s dog Bolinha.

Starting Point was to mark the inception of one of Brazil’s most daring instrumental groups. Their debut now sits in the lofty echelon of otherworldly 70s Brazilian music, alongside the likes of Marcos Resende & Index’s self-titled debut, Cesar Mariano & Cia’s Sao Paulo Brasil, Azymuth’s debut and indeed Hermeto Pascoal’s Viajando Com O Som. But just like all of those titles, which were either shelved or largely ignored at the time, Grupo Um - so radically ahead of their time - struggled to find a label to release their debut album. So Lelo kept the tapes safe in his archives, which is where they sat for almost half a century. Finally, almost fifty years later, this mesmerising piece of history is here, and it was only the beginning...

Grupo Um’s Starting Point will be released by Far Out Recordings, on vinyl LP, with an insert featuring unseen photos and liner notes by the Nazario brothers, as well as a CD on 17th February 2023.

There’s more than a hint of ambition on the double LP sophomore effort from Sam Austin Rabede, the producer known as DJ Black Low. Pretoria, South Africa-born and based, the young man makes amapiano with new ways of expressing this local turned-global style of dance music.

In DJ Black Low’s musical imagination, the songs manage to smoothly vacillate between dreamy and firmly-grounded. Adorned with vocalists across most of the twelve tracks, there’s a new dimension to Black Low’s now-signature approach to abstract, angular deconstruction of the rhythmic developments in his songs.

The album references influences and ambitions in its song titles and lyrics while the music itself is anthemic in its sonic and structural aspirations. On many of the songs a slow-burning tension transforms into something unexpected until you’re somewhere else as the track concludes. There is an emotional and compositional maturity that builds on his earlier work. Vocals and lyrics are in focus.

Production collaborators among Black Low’s Gauteng Province circle add to the constantly churning array of ideas that populate this consistently surprising release. Despite being a relative newcomer, DJ Black Low is onto something here.

Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work and this second volume is available in an audiophile quality double LP edition.

Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere.

Opening with airwave drones, Dockstader gradually allows elements to slowly come and go, summoning an ominous atmosphere of ethereal cloud clouds. Malignant placidity continues, giving the feeling of eavesdropping upon late-night audio activity not unlike discovering number stations while sweeping the dials. These sounds pull you in as their density and rhythms come and go.
Backward voices, deep echoing choruses of conversations flowing under the surface, ocean sounds, pulsing electro-rhythms, all seem to be created via the collaging of many hours of source recordings. A masterwork of collage and juxtaposition by an overlooked pioneer of American electronic music.

Artwork by John Brien (Imprec) is inspired by the propagation of shortwave radio signals throughout the earth's atmosphere.

"This return of Dockstader is something to cherish, not just because his output has been so limited and scarce but because what we do have is so intriguing, persuasive and cliche-free; the music of an inspired explorer who trails in nobody's slipstream." The Wire

"One of the great figures of musique concrete composition." Dusted

The Aerial project

I've written before of my interest in shortwave radio, in the notes to the Quatermass CD. Also, in the notes to the Omniphony CD (which has my first "Aerial" mix, "Past Prelude," in it), I mentioned "The Aerial Etudes," which was my working title for what became the three CDs you have. And, at the end of an interview with Chris Cutler (which can be found in the "Unofficial TD Website"), the piece I mentioned I was starting to work on at the time became Aerial.) When I was very young, people got most of their entertainment from radio. They called it "playing the radio," as if it were a musical instrument. That's what I've tried to do in this piece. About this time, a few people encouraged me to look into using a computer for this work.

I'd never used one, but I saw it would allow me to keep my mixes digital - no more transfer losses. So, at the end of 2001, I got a computer and an editing program for it, and spent what seemed a long time learning it. I began selecting mixes and loading them into the computer in late March, 2002. Out of the 580, I selected 90 "best" mixes - eventually reduced to 59, the ones on the CDs. Finally, in assembling the CDs, I followed David Myers' suggestion to allow each piece to flow into the next - making a continuous journey to the end. Tod Dockstader, 14 september 2003

About Tod Dockstader: Dockstader moved to New York in 1958 and became a self-taught sound engineer and sound effects specialist and apprenticed as a recording engineer at Gotham Recording Studios. It was around this time that he started to use his off-work hours to experiment with mixing and manipulating sounds on magnetic tape (musique concrète). By 1960 he had amassed enough material to assemble his first record Eight Electronic Pieces which was released on the Folkways label in 1961 (this would later be used in the soundtrack of Fellini’s Satyricon). The last of the eight pieces was later re-worked into his first stereo piece. In 1961 he applied to use the facilities at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and was denied access by Vladimir Ussachevsky. Ussachevsky’s official reason was the “overstrained” scheduling of the studios, although many suspect that Dockstader’s lack of academic training was a factor in the decision. He continued to create music throughout the first half of the 60s, working principally with tape manipulation effects. His last piece at Gotham was Four Telemetry Tapes in 1965, after which he left to work as an audio-visual designer on the Air Canada Pavillion at Montreal’s Expo ‘67. It was around this time in 1966 that some of Dockstader’s pieces were released on three Owl L.P.s, and his work became known to a larger audience. He achieved modest recognition and radio play alongside the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, and John Cage.

(warehouse find)

With an extensive legacy and a list of alter egos longer than your arm, Martin Damm aka Biochip C achieves a delicate balancing act on this 11 year old record, a handful of extras copies of which were recently unearthed in what can only be described as a highly fortunate 'warehouse find'. He pulls off a delicate balancing act here, letting the abrasive, industrial punk rock side of his music off the leash to frolic unhindered, while never losing sight of the needs of dancefloor and its needs across the six tracks. Highlights? Well, the title track's speedy electrofunk is highly addictive, 'Eraser' has a driving, chunky techno edge that fans of Force Inc will love, while the double dub speed grooves of 'Knobgine' and 'Liquid Silence' are forces of nature in themselves.

Originally Re Eff (pronounced Ri Èf) was a bunch of texts. One hundred and fifty pages that Julien Gasc wrote by trying his hand at the art of cut-up: a literary and political act of counter-fiction based on William Burroughs’s method. It was also Julien Gasc’s response to the isolation of 2020, while he was seeking refuge in the Southwest of France, with time as far as the eye could see, and a piano.

For a long while, it hadn’t been about songs, but about expressing the indescribable by cutting randomly from books and his own notes, attempting to fleetingly strike a balance, find a beauty, a happy accident. Incidentally, it was almost by accident, while recycling a piece that he’d composed for steel guitar pedal, that Julien Gasc sketched the first draft of “Ce soir les bouteilles dansent” (“Tonight the Bottles Are Dancing”). This was combined with a version of “Rosario Bléfari”, recorded on an inexpensive Casio synthesizer. These were Re Eff’s baby steps.

While everything was at a standstill, in stasis, Julien Gasc wanted to send a group message to some friends, to his family, a message from a confinee to those who weren’t answering, friend or foe, imaginary or otherwise. It was this collective recipient that he nicknamed Re Eff. The name comes from “re” (re-) and “effacer” (erase), words found during a cut-up and transformed into ri èf for added euphony, like a facetious grief (grievance, reproach in French) without the “g”.

Like its title, a kind of serious joke, the album is one long interplay between humour and gravitas, sense and nonsense, shadow and light, aiming to fully describe feelings in terms of their ambiguous and contradictory elements.

Through a return to regular piano practice, calm recovered at a holiday resort town, and literary experimentations, to which he added transcribed dreams, as in “La scie de la vision modern” (“The Saw of Modern Vision”), Julien Gasc composed ten demos on his computer. These demos were then rerecorded at Syd Kemp’s Haha Sound studio in London, in December 2021. The mix was completed there again, in February 2022, by Syd and Julian.

Play to play and write to write, those are the keywords of Re Eff, in which memories are freely combined (“À travers le regard de l’indienne” / “Through the Amazon’s Eyes”), the theme of enclosure and passion (“Amour velours” / “Velvet Love”), melodrama ("Délivrance"), and romantic novella (“Tout ne peut pas nécessairement donner quelque chose” / “Not Everything Leads to Something”). Music resolutely oriented towards the piano, towards bold and filmic harmonic movements that make a successful form of lyrical poetry possible. Because all in all, by singing about current events – his own and those of the world – in an elegiac tone, like bards, Julien Gasc was gradually transformed from pop singer into poet.

Group Modular is celebrating 10 years of cinematic space age funk with a new double-sider on Delights.

The new 45 is a follow-up to the duo's highly-acclaimed second full-length "Time Masters" and sees Markey Funk and Mule Driver exploring and expanding their sonic palette even further. The result is two drum-heavy cuts, that take their inspiration from the synth-driven sci-fi/horror sound of Goblin, John Carpenter and the late great Vangelis: the sinister and spiky "Per Aspera" ("Through Hardships") on side A and spacy and dramatic "Ad Astra" ("To the Stars") - on the flip.