Buscar:dream control

"Dwell time is defined as the length of time a shopper spends in a shopping center, starting from the moment they enter till the moment they exit."

Experimental artists Xqui & Dogs Versus Shadows join forces in this lively, dadaesque spree through the earthly delights of shopping mall muzak and consumer theory. Xqui is a prolific experimental electronic producer based in Lancashire UK, known for his mind melting-palettes and brooding abstract soundscapes: "carefully constructed, intelligent and mature.. a musician very much in control of his art" - We Are Cult "As good as Basinski, and neck and neck with the degenerative sounds of Eno's best." – TQ Dogs Versus Shadows is a prolific experimental electronic producer based in Nottingham UK, known for his boundless invention and quick-witted powers of reflective observation. Formerly a much-loved broadcaster, Lee 'Pylon' was known for his influential underground radio show Kites & Pylons, before changing tack to delight and intrigue listeners with his DVS project: "A rare example of gamekeeper turned poacher...a welter of impressive electronica"

xd H2 Rockers Revenge - Walking On Sunshine feat. Donnie Calvin (12" Version)

Sam Gendel, Benny Bock and Hans Kjorstad as Gendel Dream Trio.

Sam Gendel is known for his work with saxophones and wind controllers. Benny Bock is a keyboardist, composer, producer and sound designer from Oakland, California. Hans Kjorstad is a musician and composer in the field of contemporary microtonal music, informed by Norwegian traditional music and experimental improvised music.

Comes on 180g black vinyl.

The Numero Group guide to private issue new age. Featuring Laraaji, Iasos, Joanna Brouk, Don Slepian, Peter Davison, Master Wilburn Burchette, Jordan De La Sierra, David Casper, Robert Slap and 9 other pioneers of the Perrier underground. Adorned with Marcus Uzilevsky's Linear Landscapes, this 2xLP compilation is housed in a sturdy tip-on jacket and is accompanied by a 32-page booklet. The fourth world awaits.

The Numero Group guide to private issue new age. Featuring Laraaji, Iasos, Joanna Brouk, Don Slepian, Peter Davison, Master Wilburn Burchette, Jordan De La Sierra, David Casper, Robert Slap and 9 other pioneers of the Perrier underground. Adorned with Marcus Uzilevsky's Linear Landscapes, this 2xLP compilation is housed in a sturdy tip-on jacket and is accompanied by a 32-page booklet. The fourth world awaits.

Marina and the Diamonds is an award winning platinum selling artist. She has three top 10 albums including Gold certified The Family Jewels and her second studio album Electra Heart which debuted at No.1 on the UK’s official charts. In celebration of 10 years since the original release of Electra Heart, Electra Heart (Platinum Blonde Edition) will be released on magenta vinyl on the 23rd September 2022. This special edition features additional tracks as previously heard on alternate releases of the album.

Featuring the hit single ‘Primadonna,’ as well as TikTok sensation ‘Bubblegum Bitch’ which had a massive revival with TikTok in 2021. The album will also include two tracks, ‘Electra Heart’ and ‘E.V.O.L’ that have never previously been released physically.

"In Game of Thrones Season 5, nine noble families fight for control of the mythical land of Westeros. Political and sexual intrigue is pervasive. Robert Baratheon, King of Westeros, asks his old friend Eddard, Lord Stark, to serve as Hand of the King, or highest official. Secretly warned that the previous Hand was assassinated, Eddard accepts in order to investigate further. Meanwhile the Queen's family, the Lannisters, may be hatching a plot to take power. Across the sea, the last members of the previous and deposed ruling family, the Targaryens, are also scheming to regain the throne. The friction between the houses Stark, Lannister, Baratheon and Targaryen and with the remaining great houses Greyjoy, Tully, Arryn,Tyrell and Martell leads to a full-scale war. All while a very ancient evil awakens in the farthest north. Amidst the war and political confusion, a neglected military order of misfits, the Night's Watch, is all that stands between the realms of men and icy horrors beyond. Game of Thrones has always featured excellent music. The opening theme is practically iconic at this point, having been played and covered so many times. Composer Ramin Djawadi’s heavy, atmospheric tunes have always helped set the mood, no matter what tone the show is going for at any given time. Game of Thrones Season 5 (Music From The HBO® Series) is available as a limited edition of 750 numbered copies on translucent red coloured vinyl and includes an insert."

The brainchild of drummer/producer Chiminyo, NRG is more than just an album, label or event. It’s a concept. Born out of a conversation about the UK Jazz scene (is it really jazz?) Chiminyo concluded that this musical expression is less about ‘jazz’ and more about energy (NRG).
So with this in mind, he set about to explore, celebrate and harness this NRG in its purest form. No labels, no promoters, no industry, no control. Just Chiminyo and members of his musical community exchanging (strictly improvised) NRG with audiences and capturing the spontaneous beauty to be shared with the world.
This third edition, NRG 3, features an all-star line-up. Modular synth wizard and Ariwo band leader Pouya Ehsaei, electro synth-pop artist and incredible keyboard/synth player Maria Chiara Argiró, and Hak Baker's trumpet player Sam Warner. And you can really feel the vibrant NRG of the capital pulsating throughout. Raucous dance-floor stompers such as 'Enter the Dragon' and 'Fred not Again' are beautifully contrasted with the dreamy, cinematic 'Avalon'. And the addition of instrumental and vocal guests on the night really adds a special touch. 'Stories Untold' opens with flautist Lluis Domènech Plana's lyrical exploration on bamboo flute before developing into an up-tempo house inspired dance tune, whilst Nadeem Din Gabisi's 'Fire' presents a unique perspective on a trap groove that you simply couldn't imagine outside of the context of NRG 3, and towards the end of the track the audio cuts to camera audio due to an issue with the desk recording, a magical moment that puts you in right there in the room and reminds you that this was a live gig!
It is incredible to think this record is improvised, because each tune comes across as a carefully sculpted master-piece, a clear testament to the incredible musicians on the line-up.

"In Decay" bietet eine faszinierende, alternative Route für die idiosynkratische Reise des Produzenten SETH HALEY aus New Jersey - aka COM TRUISE -durch die Geschichte der elektronischen Musik. Als Compilation bisher unveröffentlichter, früher Aufnahmen umfasst ,In Decay" 13 Titel, die bisher nur als Online-Demos erhältlich waren und gänzlich ungehörte Titel, die aus der Zeit vor Haleys offiziellen Veröffentlichungen stammen - sein Debüt, die ,Cyanide Sesterz" EP, ihr Nachfolger, das Langspiel-Album ,Galactic Melt" und die ,Fairlight" EP aus dem letzten Jahr. Während die 80er Synth Sounds, die flexiblen Basslinien und Sci-Fi Aromen, die Haleys spätere Arbeiten prägen, hier schon unverkennbar sind, bleibt ,In Decay" aber auch vollwertig als für sich stehendes Album und gleichzeitig ein Einblick in die Entwicklung des einzigartigen COM TRUISE Sounds. Der Produzent erforscht eine ganze Reihe von Soundfacetten, von 8-bit inspiriertem Experimentalismus zu eindeutig tanzbaren Beats - oft innerhalb nur eines einzigen Songs. ,Controlpop" zum Beispiel kündigt sich selbst mit einem Intro an, das nach einem Commodore 64, der mit einem Hammer geschlagen wird, klingt, um sich dann zu einem langsamen flüssigen Synth. Funk weiter zu entwickeln, der an ,Galactic Melt" Highlights wie ,VHS Sex" und ,Flightwave" erinnert. Die langsam schwelende Dance Vibe wird von vielen anderen Tracks geteilt - wie zum Beispiel von ,Colorvision" und ,Yxes" - während HALEY das Tempo an anderen Stellen drosselt und die psychedelischen, kosmischen Abschweifungen von Ahnen wie TANGERINE DREAM und POPOL VUH beschwört. ,Dreambender" klingt nach einem Soundtrack zu einer Reise in unerforschte digitale Zwischenräume, während ,Video Arcade" eine wirr steigende und fallende Bassline sein Eigen nennt - ein Song wie eine Fahrt auf einer Achterbahn der virtuellen Realität. Wie jedes Werk HALEYs ist auch "In Decay" eine Pforte zu einer seltsamen, digitalen Parallelwelt - einem Ort, der aus bekannten und doch durch und durch frischen Klängen konstruiert ist; ein Ort, den es zu besuchen lohnt.

The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri’s latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn’s unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named “il Mito Americano” – meant as “The American Dream” but translated literally to English as “The American Myth” – sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical.

Amid the chaos of 2020, while exploring the stark world of brutalist architecture and inspired by the false fronts of Potemkin villages, a vision started to take shape: FAÇADISMS. Composed over three years, it’s a late capitalist lament of simmering electric despondency.

Irisarri’s obsession with repeating motifs mirrors the cyclical nature of our tumultuous political history. The album’s eight tracks heave and storm like a tempest being drained of its rage. This is the sound of majestic dissipation, of morning afters, fashioned from a mournful haze with cavernous guitars and granular twilight. A euphony of a receding tide as one sifts through the remnants of what remains: dust, delusion, and memory.

Opening with the somber gauze of “Broken Intensification," FAÇADISMS moves fluidly between moments of absence and abandon. Ashen swaths of electronics billow above smoldering embers of melody, guitar, and scattered streaks of processed strings and voice, as on the rapturous doom of “Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom,” featuring Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals. "The impoverished peoples of the Americas have known all along that 'freedom' is a cruel illusion crafted by the elites, akin to Potemkin's fake villages designed to impress Catherine the Great," Irisarri indicates. "FAÇADISMS illustrates a twisted inversion where the rulers deceive their subjects with illusions of safety, democracy, and free speech to create a grotesque mirage of control over their own lives.”

Elsewhere, Irisarri leans into passages of hushed oblivion (“Hollow,” “Dispersion of Belief”), while ragged drones rumble and disintegrate into wind-battered ambient wreckage. One has the sense that it’s all too late. The hour of fury has passed. The beauty has come and gone. Irisarri’s muse has become the crack in the façade of the unraveling myth.

The record closes with a climax of grand departure. Co-written with Kenyan sound artist KMRU, “Red Moon Tide” surges from flickering elegy to celestial disquiet, roiling waves of hymnal descent, and bristling noise. The effect is unsettling and unmooring: a soundtrack for the soul leaving the body, only to discover a void. It’s the sound of the center not holding, of shared illusions being dissolved in a tunnel of white light.

The cover photograph captures a profound sense of desolation. Taken in the historic shanty town of La Perla, Puerto Rico, where Irisarri spent his childhood, brutal colonial mysteries are lost to time. A skeletal concrete structure decays against an expansive blue horizon. Only the shadow of its shell ripples on the empty sea.

Has the American myth finally run its course?

The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri’s latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn’s unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named “il Mito Americano” – meant as “The American Dream” but translated literally to English as “The American Myth” – sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical.

Amid the chaos of 2020, while exploring the stark world of brutalist architecture and inspired by the false fronts of Potemkin villages, a vision started to take shape: FAÇADISMS. Composed over three years, it’s a late capitalist lament of simmering electric despondency.

Irisarri’s obsession with repeating motifs mirrors the cyclical nature of our tumultuous political history. The album’s eight tracks heave and storm like a tempest being drained of its rage. This is the sound of majestic dissipation, of morning afters, fashioned from a mournful haze with cavernous guitars and granular twilight. A euphony of a receding tide as one sifts through the remnants of what remains: dust, delusion, and memory.

Opening with the somber gauze of “Broken Intensification," FAÇADISMS moves fluidly between moments of absence and abandon. Ashen swaths of electronics billow above smoldering embers of melody, guitar, and scattered streaks of processed strings and voice, as on the rapturous doom of “Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom,” featuring Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals. "The impoverished peoples of the Americas have known all along that 'freedom' is a cruel illusion crafted by the elites, akin to Potemkin's fake villages designed to impress Catherine the Great," Irisarri indicates. "FAÇADISMS illustrates a twisted inversion where the rulers deceive their subjects with illusions of safety, democracy, and free speech to create a grotesque mirage of control over their own lives.”

Elsewhere, Irisarri leans into passages of hushed oblivion (“Hollow,” “Dispersion of Belief”), while ragged drones rumble and disintegrate into wind-battered ambient wreckage. One has the sense that it’s all too late. The hour of fury has passed. The beauty has come and gone. Irisarri’s muse has become the crack in the façade of the unraveling myth.

The record closes with a climax of grand departure. Co-written with Kenyan sound artist KMRU, “Red Moon Tide” surges from flickering elegy to celestial disquiet, roiling waves of hymnal descent, and bristling noise. The effect is unsettling and unmooring: a soundtrack for the soul leaving the body, only to discover a void. It’s the sound of the center not holding, of shared illusions being dissolved in a tunnel of white light.

The cover photograph captures a profound sense of desolation. Taken in the historic shanty town of La Perla, Puerto Rico, where Irisarri spent his childhood, brutal colonial mysteries are lost to time. A skeletal concrete structure decays against an expansive blue horizon. Only the shadow of its shell ripples on the empty sea.

Has the American myth finally run its course?

The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri’s latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn’s unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named “il Mito Americano” – meant as “The American Dream” but translated literally to English as “The American Myth” – sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical.

Amid the chaos of 2020, while exploring the stark world of brutalist architecture and inspired by the false fronts of Potemkin villages, a vision started to take shape: FAÇADISMS. Composed over three years, it’s a late capitalist lament of simmering electric despondency.

Irisarri’s obsession with repeating motifs mirrors the cyclical nature of our tumultuous political history. The album’s eight tracks heave and storm like a tempest being drained of its rage. This is the sound of majestic dissipation, of morning afters, fashioned from a mournful haze with cavernous guitars and granular twilight. A euphony of a receding tide as one sifts through the remnants of what remains: dust, delusion, and memory.

Opening with the somber gauze of “Broken Intensification," FAÇADISMS moves fluidly between moments of absence and abandon. Ashen swaths of electronics billow above smoldering embers of melody, guitar, and scattered streaks of processed strings and voice, as on the rapturous doom of “Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom,” featuring Julia Kent on cello and Hannah Elizabeth Cox on vocals. "The impoverished peoples of the Americas have known all along that 'freedom' is a cruel illusion crafted by the elites, akin to Potemkin's fake villages designed to impress Catherine the Great," Irisarri indicates. "FAÇADISMS illustrates a twisted inversion where the rulers deceive their subjects with illusions of safety, democracy, and free speech to create a grotesque mirage of control over their own lives.”

Elsewhere, Irisarri leans into passages of hushed oblivion (“Hollow,” “Dispersion of Belief”), while ragged drones rumble and disintegrate into wind-battered ambient wreckage. One has the sense that it’s all too late. The hour of fury has passed. The beauty has come and gone. Irisarri’s muse has become the crack in the façade of the unraveling myth.

The record closes with a climax of grand departure. Co-written with Kenyan sound artist KMRU, “Red Moon Tide” surges from flickering elegy to celestial disquiet, roiling waves of hymnal descent, and bristling noise. The effect is unsettling and unmooring: a soundtrack for the soul leaving the body, only to discover a void. It’s the sound of the center not holding, of shared illusions being dissolved in a tunnel of white light.

The cover photograph captures a profound sense of desolation. Taken in the historic shanty town of La Perla, Puerto Rico, where Irisarri spent his childhood, brutal colonial mysteries are lost to time. A skeletal concrete structure decays against an expansive blue horizon. Only the shadow of its shell ripples on the empty sea.

Has the American myth finally run its course?

The Boysnoize Records catalogue contains more than a decade of milestones in the life of Angeleno DJ and producer PILO. His signatures—a focus on sound design, and a digital crunch evocative of hardware rather than software—are present from the very beginning, but the evolution of Pilo’s skill and sophistication is clear as he stretches from electro to experimental to techno and back again in a slowly oscillating gradient. Yet despite his dozen or so releases in just as many years, G.L.A.M. (dropping November 8th, 2024 from BNR) is Pilo’s first proper album. That the record embraces the cyclical nature of time is apropos; the artist’s journey towards self-actualized mastery always ends with a new beginning.



Over the eight tracks of G.L.A.M., Pilo reaches deep into the dream that first ignited the passion that has driven him since. For a chosen few internet-connected American teens in the aughts, the sounds of European electro (and electroclash) trickled down their ethernet cables and instilled a fantasy of exotic, sartorial, sexually-fluid hedonism that felt a world away from the hard-edged masculinity of the hip-hop and skate cultures dominant at home. Pilo opens G.L.A.M. expressing this idealized fantasy with the track “Superstar DJ,” channeling the tongue-in-cheek self-celebritizing of Miss Kitten and The Hacker’s seminal work. “I’m a superstar, come meet me at the bar,” hiss Pilo’s heavily effected vocals, over a bassline of chopped mentasm synths driven by a swift, club-ready rhythm. The fingerprint of 2000’s electro a la International Deejay Gigolo Records is recognizably present, yet Pilo is too adept, too confident in his studio abilities to let his tracks rely on the retro. A great joy of this album is the future-facing richness of its production, always nodding to its spiritual guide of the past, while constantly breaking new sonic ground.



G.L.A.M. continues with “Girls Rule The World,” its vicious, droning bassline and sticky, titular hook making it the perfect electroclash soundtrack for a revenge plot on an ex-boyfriend. “What you Want” offers an instrumental exercise in “synthesizers are the new guitars,” and Pilo’s FX chops really shine as he warps and distorts his sounds into an undiscovered dimension existing somewhere between both. “Loverboy” enters the more melodic, Legowelt-inspired realm of electro, pushing above and beyond the foundation of analogue minimalism with flourishes of impressive sound design to construct something both climactic and cathartic. Scopa lends her perfect coldwave sprechgesang to titular track “G.L.A.M.,” with Pilo’s vocal processing offering surprises throughout and his FX chains wielded as instruments unto themselves.



On the track “A Slow Thinning Halo,” Pilo might be conjuring the haunting vocal chops and chiptune simplicity of early Crystal Castles, but the whiplash snap of his drums and sizzling production are all his own. “Spend the Night” is G.L.A.M.’s least nostalgic—and most unashamedly pop—offering, with the mic being passed between Sana and DEEVIOUS (previously featured on Pilo and Boys Noize’s 2023 track “Pvssy.”) DEEVIOUS’ sultry singing rides atop the bassline as it hypnotically struts across the floor, while Pilo’s skillful arrangement, deft rhythm programming, and atmospheric control elevate the songcraft into full-spectrum worldbuilding.



As the penultimate track, the contemporaneity of “Spend the Night” serves as transition away from the album’s previous, past-leaning exercises, allowing Pilo to step fully into the future with “One Last Embrace.” The closing track still references aughts sounds, but it borrows so widely and prolifically that Pilo’s reassemblage can only be described as singular. Here, Pilo pushes his engineering into psychoacoustic territory, as the eerie, beautiful melancholy of “One Last Embrace” explodes into a thrashing bassline that warbles like a drowning memory, struggling against the sinking weight of time. Pilo allows it to survive for 16 electrifying, gut-wrenching bars before letting go. In G.L.A.M., as in Pilo’s career, as in life, every ending can only be a new beginning.

Something About Livingis an album of live recordings by experimental jazz composer/multi-instrumentalist Robert Stillman. The music was captured over the course of Stillman's time as the solo support act for The Smile (Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Tom Skinner). The album weaves excerpts from various theater and arena shows along the tour's North American routing into a seamless whole, creating a 40-minute program that represents an expanded version of Stillman's ever-transforming live set.

Something About Livingis the product of a steady, on-stage evolution that happened over the course of the nearly 60 shows opening for the Smile across the EU, UK, US, Canada and Mexico. However, the creative origins of the set began in relative isolation during the pandemic, through Stillman's work on projects like his multi-media installationUnseen Forcesand his monthly broadcast for Margate Radio, both of which drew upon solo improvisation using saxophone, cassettes, Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, and effects.

"At the time The Smile asked whether I'd like to open for them on their first tour, I felt like I'd already been preparing without really knowing it," says Stillman. "I'd been doing this music constantly, but always for a hypothetical audience" During the pandemic, Stillman's solo set-up served as the research lab where he worked on all the concepts he was interested in: solo improvisation, creating and manipulating cassettes, FM synthesis, analogue delays chains, no-input mixing, and non-metric rhythmic pulses. So when he was offered the first Smile tour, the idea was to bring "the lab" onto the stage.

What Stillman could not have prepared for was the experience of playing in venues with capacities of up to ten thousand listeners. "The first tour was in summer 2022, so not that long after the worst of the pandemic, when I had pretty much made peace with the idea that I might never be able to perform for an audience again. Then all of a sudden I found myself in front of huge numbers of people, and felt the massive responsibility of being with an audience, of this thing I'd done alone for so longactually being witnessed, and it was completely overwhelming!" On the flip-side, Stillman also recalls, was a new appreciation of how powerful the live performance was as a social phenomenon. "It's a cliche, but also true: the moment of making and hearing music in a shared time and space has a very specific meaning and power; there was a sense that everyone in the venue was necessary to make it real, regardless of what they were doing, or how they felt about it. There was an inevitability about it that I'd never fully appreciated."

Over the course of the tours that followed, Stillman transformed this appreciation of the shared moment into an ethic of spontaneity that guided the development of his live set. "An important reference for this set has always been an Animal Collective show I saw when I first moved to New York, probably in 2001 or so, that has always set the high-water mark for what I wanted to do live- they were improvising a lot, and out of what would seem to be absolute chaos they'd find their way to something structured, and then back out again into the unknown. It was so thrilling to witness".

ThoughSomething About Livingcompiles recordings from different dates along the tour, Stillman has edited and mixed them into a work that seeks to reflect the ebb and flow between 'chaos and control' that characterizes his live set. Among the compositions featured are some from previous album releases ("Time of Waves", "What I Owe", "What Does it Mean to Be American") as well as some new compositions ("The Dream of Waking", "Renaissance 2.0," and the title track, "Something About Living").

The album/track title "Something About Living" is a reference to a line from Stillman's favorite film,My Dinner With André: "André Gregory is explaining the value of life experiences that, as he says, are'to do with living'.That really struck me, the way he articulated it. I strongly believe live music situations can ask these kinds of questions, for performers and audiences. I hope that's reflected in this music."

[a] 01: Time of Waves (Live in Miami FL) [Live]
[b] 02: What Does It Mean to Be American (Live in Forest Hills NY) [Live]
[c] 03: The Dream of Waking (Live in St Augustine FL) [Live]
[d] 04: Something About Living (Live in Richmond VA) [Live]
[e] 05: What I Owe (Live in Chesterfield MO) [Live]
[f] 06: Renaissance 2.0 (Live in Chesterfield MO) [Live]

Icelandic indie-pop songwriter Kaktus Einarsson will release his second album ‘Lobster Coda’ via One Little Independent Records on October 25th. Amidst a collection of lush, electronic earworms, Kaktus has penned an honest account of his recovery from a sudden functional neurological disorder (FND) that required him to relearn how to use his motor functions, while also performing his duties as a new father.

‘Lobster Coda’ incorporates dreamy, glistening synth-pop and melancholic ambience, created through layers of atmospheric keys, percussion, and groove-laden funk bass. Kaktus details his journey following a stress-induced nonepileptic seizure that halted his brain’s ability to communicate with the rest of his body, resulting in losing control of his legs, arms and causing involuntary facial tics. Crucially, he spent months on a course of physical therapy while also trying to care for his children and his partner, that by his own admission he then needed to reconnect with. With an occasionally brutal candour, Kaktus’s new album is about taking the time to reflect and recognise changes that need to be made, to listen to your body, and to trust the process no matter how long it might take.

Icelandic indie-pop songwriter Kaktus Einarsson will release his second album ‘Lobster Coda’ via One Little Independent Records on October 25th. Amidst a collection of lush, electronic earworms, Kaktus has penned an honest account of his recovery from a sudden functional neurological disorder (FND) that required him to relearn how to use his motor functions, while also performing his duties as a new father.

‘Lobster Coda’ incorporates dreamy, glistening synth-pop and melancholic ambience, created through layers of atmospheric keys, percussion, and groove-laden funk bass. Kaktus details his journey following a stress-induced nonepileptic seizure that halted his brain’s ability to communicate with the rest of his body, resulting in losing control of his legs, arms and causing involuntary facial tics. Crucially, he spent months on a course of physical therapy while also trying to care for his children and his partner, that by his own admission he then needed to reconnect with. With an occasionally brutal candour, Kaktus’s new album is about taking the time to reflect and recognise changes that need to be made, to listen to your body, and to trust the process no matter how long it might take.

Die britische Sängerin, Songwriterin, Multi-Instrumentalistin und Produzentin Fabiana Palladino veröffentlicht am 5. April 2024 ihr selbstbetiteltes Debütalbum bei Paul Institute / XL Recordings. Das Album entstand nach dem Ende einer langen Beziehung und setzt sich mit komplexen Fragen zu Liebe und Einsamkeit in Beziehungen auseinander. Das Ergebnis sind 10 Songs, die sich von den großen R&B-, Soul-, Pop- und Disco-Studioproduktionen der 80er und 90er Jahre inspirieren lassen, gefiltert durch einen modernen Blinkwinkel. Es ist eine intime Platte, die die Toughness und Weiblichkeit von Janet Jackson auf ihrem 1986er Album "Control" und Annie Lennox" bei "DIVA" ausstrahlt, das klassische Songwriting von Kate Bush und Joni Mitchell aufgreift und die romantischen Motown-Duette von Marvin Gaye und Tammi Terrell unterläuft, um die Normativität in Beziehungen zu hinterfragen. Das von Palladino selbst geschriebene und eigenproduzierte Album enthält Beiträge von renommierten Musikern und engen Freunden, darunter vom Mitbegründer des Paul Institute, Jai Paul, dem legendären Session-Bassist Pino Palladino (Fabianas Vater), ihrem Bruder und Yussef Dayes-Bassisten Rocco Palladino, dem bekannten Schlagzeuger Steve Ferrone sowie Streichern von Rob Moose. Fabiana Palladino hat in den letzten Jahren als gefragte Session-Musikerin für Acts wie Jessie Ware, Sampha, SBTRKT oder Laura Groves gearbeitet, während sie in ihrer eigenen Musik intensiv nach Pop-Perfektion strebt. Im vergangenen Jahr war sie Teil von Jai Pauls Band für sein lang erwartetes Live-Debüt, sowie Support-Act der gefeierten Shows.

"In partnership with Milan Records, Waxwork Records is proud to release KINDS OF KINDNESS (ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK) with music by multi-instrumentalist, producer, and Oscar®-nominated composer JERSKIN FENDRIX. The album reunites Fendrix with director Yorgos Lanthimos following the breakout success of Poor Things, which earned the first-time composer an Oscar® nomination and marked Lanthimos’ first-ever collaboration with a composer. For Kinds of Kindness, Fendrix has crafted a soundscape rooted in solo piano and choral music, peppering the 22-track collection with hymnals throughout. Rounding out the soundtrack album are pop tracks like Cobrah’s “Brand New Bitch” and Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” both of which were featured in the film’s trailers, plus a cover of “How Deep Is Your Love” by film star Margaret Qualley as well as a demo from Fendrix’s personal discography. Searchlight Pictures’ Kinds of Kindness is available in theaters now.

Similar to Poor Things, Fendrix began working on Kinds of Kindness with relatively few materials, utilizing only the film’s script, black and white photographs from set, and conversations with Lanthimos as a guide. This time around, however, Lanthimos provided Fendrix with specific guidance on instrumentation, instructing the composer to craft a soundscape rooted in piano and choral music.

“I love working with Jerskin, and I guess he’s the reason why I am now working with a composer – I’ve found someone that works for me,” says director Yorgos Lanthimos, continuing, “Jerskin worked on this in the same way he worked on Poor Things, which is before even seeing a frame of the film. I gave him the script and started sending him black and white pictures that I shot on set. Our agreement in the beginning was, ‘This time, I want to use piano and choir, and go down that direction,’ which was very different to Poor Things. When I went into the edit, he had this library of music that he created to work with, and it turned out great.”

Also helpful to Fendrix at the start of the project was a conversation with Kinds of Kindness star Jesse Plemons, who helped the composer wrap his mind around the complexity of Lanthimos’ triptych story.

“I was very lucky to go on set at the very beginning of filming, and I asked Jesse about the emotions because I was struggling to understand where so many of these characters were coming from,” composer Jerskin Fendrix confesses. “He spoke to me about his interpretation, and how he planned to embody his characters, which was great. I ended up thinking about the abstract space between the emotions and whether that space was empty or noisy. From there, I utilized the piano and choir to explore those spaces.”

Waxwork Records is thrilled to release KINDS OF KINDNESS as a picture disc featuring artwork and design by Vasilis Marmatakis housed in a crystal clear poly-bag.

ABOUT KINDS OF KINDNESS

KINDS OF KINDNESS is a triptych fable, following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader."

The unconscious and unknown must be really nice places. In any case, if you take the second album of Menelaos Tomasides under his given name as travelogue. A trip into dreamlike territory, yet concrete enough, a journey without target yet looking forward and looking back into familiar places, „dreamhike“ both continues and departs from the style Menelaos has found earlier, in “When the Moon Comes Through”, or his more conceptual-intentional “31 Minuten” works. As the album title - which roughly translates to “dream hiking” but also hints on “walkabout” and “songlines” – suggests, we are rambling between the real and the imaginary. From the bucolic border triangle of Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands to the buzzing streets of the capital of Cyprus, where Menelaos has lived for many years, the tracks are about real places, about real experiences and emotions yet interwoven with a dreamlike fabric. Something that is just not tangible, yet substantial and palpable. Something concrete that manifests in the genuine and special sound design of this records - basically all of Menelaos’ works - his really special treatment of dynamics and loudness. It is one of the very few records where the established language of music making, specifically Techno, House, Dub, and early 2000’ Electronica, the clicks, thumps and plops from an earlier age of electronic music, transmogrify into slow movements of something new. Something that is gentle and truly personal, looking inwards. There are four-to-the-floor beats, there is wobbly bass, and dubby chords, even sublimated clarion calls. There is an immense energy in these tracks, the sheer materiality of low frequencies of a massive sound system manifested in a tiny room. Yet it is without any aggression, stripped bare of sonic pressure. It is quiet music no matter how high you turn up the volume. A rare treat, that requires exceptional skills and exceptional restraint and control on the technical side of music making. Probably it is a result of Menelaos specific combination of instinctual, intuitive approach to making music, which meets a genuine love for sound in seemingly endless loops of refinement that can lead to such a result as „dreamhike“. The elegant floating balance of control and playful experimentation manifests for example in a track that continues the ongoing collaboration with seasoned Cologne improviser Achim Fink on bass trumpet. Not only in this respect, the album can be described as a product of openness. It comes from a lot of taking in the world, of travel, of places and people met, of friendship and conversation (not necessarily with words). The deep trip of “dreamhike” further manifests Menelaos as one of the truly independent voices of electronic Cologne and beyond. Somewhat alike in character and attitude probably to what late Pete Namlook has established for Frankfurt with his label Fax +49-69/450464 (though ultimately warmer and much less uncanny) Menelaos has found his very own sound and vision. Music that answers to no one but speaks to everyone. Uncompromising yet gentle to the core: kind sounds from a kind spirit, arguably the most extraordinary and valuable quality music can have these days.