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The late percussionist Milford Graves was one of the most unique artists the world has ever seen. Born in Jamaica, Queens in 1941, he began his career in the early '60s as a part of New York's vibrant Latin jazz scene. His focus quickly turned inward, shifting towards a practice that explored the very nature of self. From his work in the New York Art Quartet and collaborations with Albert Ayler, Sonny Sharrock and more to his important contributions during NYC's loft era – he is, simply put, free jazz royalty.

In April 1966, the duo of Graves and pianist Don Pullen played at Yale University. As John Corbett writes in the liner notes, "This performance was something of a turning point for Graves. Until then he had been working in other people's bands or collective ensembles. He was phenomenally busy. In 1965 alone, he recorded with NYAQ (two LPs), Giuseppi Logan Quartet, Paul Bley Quintet and Lowell Davidson Trio, and he made his first recording released under his own name, Percussion Ensemble. Every one of these is important in its own way, but none of them quite anticipate how radical was the music that he and Pullen would unleash that evening in New Haven."

Originally released on the artists' own Self-Reliance Program label, this legendary one-night performance would be split into two volumes: In Concert At Yale University and Nommo. While rooted in African rhythms, Graves' music has its own sense of time. As the drummer stated in a 1966 DownBeat interview, "Time was always there, and the time I see is not the same as what man says time is. It works by impulsion."

What are the differences and similarities between human and artificial sound, between oscillations generated by vocal cords and synthesizer voices, voltage amplified by speakers? On Silencio, his latest album for Tresor Records, Moritz von Oswald works with a 16-voice choir to explore this concept.
Drawing from the ensemble works of long-standing inspirations Edgard Varèse, György Ligeti and Iannis Xenakis, von Oswald and Vocalconsort Berlin delve into the space between sounds, creating a deeply textured collection that shifts between light & ethereal and
dark & dissonant.
As masterfully demonstrated in the early work of von Oswald and Mark Ernestus’ influential Basic Channel project, repetition and reduction are key elements here, much in the tradition of techno and minimalism. The vast dynamism of the human voice adds to the
profound weight of electronics while offering up a rhythmic source and sonic noise palette unexplored in von Oswald’s repertoire. In Silencio, von Oswald dredges a dank murk, pulling clouds over a distant pulse. It hangs, ready to take on new forms.
The compositions were written in von Oswald’s Berlin studio on classic synthesizers, such as the EMS VCS3 & AKS, Prophet V, Oberheim 4-Voice and the Moog Model 15. These abstract recordings were transcribed to sheet music for choir by Berlin-based Finnish composer and pianist, Jarkko Riihimäki and performed by Vocalconsort Berlin in Ölberg church in the city’s Kreuzberg district, only few metres down the road from where Dubplates & Mastering and Hard Wax opened their doors for music enthusiasts for many years so long. The recordings of the choral versions were then incorporated into the synthesized parts of the album and brought into anew electronic context; in Silencio, the focus is not on using one means to imitate the other, but to sonically discuss the tensions and harmonies between the two worlds and create a dialogue between them.
The relationship between von Oswald and Tresor Records goes back thirty years, all the way to Blake Baxter’s Dream Sequence in 1991 - which von Oswald engineered alongside Thomas Fehlmann. The collaboration with Fehlmann lived on, seeing the duo team up as 3MB with Eddie Fowlkes or Juan Atkins. More recently, the Detroit-Berlin connection continued as Juan Atkins & Moritz von Oswald present Borderland.
For von Oswald, Tresor Records and also the participating guest musicians of the choir, this release brings together audiences from other musical areas, cross-pollinating; Silencio is an album that stands for itself beyond the musical genre boundaries.

"There could barely be a better figurehead for Belgrade's simmering multi-limbed music scene than Jan Nemeèek" The Quietus `Dissolved', a new album by Serbian synthesist and sound designer Jan Nemeèek, began its life cycle in a studio live room. It unpacks the paradigm of the individualistic act of computer music creation, transporting it into the communal setting of a band, its performers contributing elements ranging from prepared piano to Turkish lyre. The album opens with an unexpected falter, a false start that imbues the album with a sense of vulnerability. It's as if the album itself is finding its footing, mirroring the dissonance of an orchestra tuning. This digital ensemble, an assembly of electronic voices, seems to search for its harmony, its discord, its pitch, its timbre - much like a traditional counterpart would. As it unfolds, `Dissolved' further taps into the raw tonalities of partially defunct digital synthesizers, ranging from early 2000s' attempts at neural networks to precursors of oscillator-laden software synthesizers, in order to build its cloud of suspended tension and alternate histories. Through this clash of wistful piano and biting frost of digital pads with the iridescent hum of tube amps, the album reflects New Age tropes through the prism of metal (machine) music. Hailing from Belgrade, Serbia, Jan Nemeèek has been releasing electronic music since 2005, with a particular focus on ambient and bass-heavy electronic compositions. Nemeèek's music is characterized by his use of a wide range of sound generating tools, including neural networks, analog synthesizers, and granular synthesis. His approach to music production allows his work to unfold with patience, influenced by borderline dub sub-bass movements and heavily based on deconstructed recordings. Jan has released several albums, most notably 2014's Fragmented and later Recurrences. Prior to that, he co-founded the Creative Commons-based net label Norbu. `Dissolved' is set to be released on vinyl and digital on 10th November 2023 via Refractions, a new imprint founded by Nemeèek.

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This is one of Tito Puente’s best original albums released under the label of Tico in the 60s. The album features one of his best hits, “Oye Cómo Va,”. Tito Puente and his orchestra lay down a driving irresistible beat that moves from beginning to end in a pulsating performance and create an added appeal with their ensemble singing which lends an authenticity to the music. Pressed on 180g black vinyl with a tip-on-jacket. US Import.

The funky, atmospheric, evocative and sometimes downright weird output of companies such as DeWolfe, Cavendish, Burton and the ubiquitous KPM have always been a guiding inspiration for ATA Records, as evidenced in the spooky soundtrack vision of The Sorcerers, the big band brass of The Yorkshire Film & Television Orchestra and even in the soul-jazz of The Lewis Express & Outer Worlds Jazz Ensemble. It only seemed natural for the team at ATA Records to scratch their own Library itch and so "The Library Archive Vol. 1" was born in 2019. Recorded over a series of sessions in the Aladdin's Cave of vintage recording equipment that is ATA studios, it featured many of the ATA stable of performers. Released in 2021, "The Library Archive Vol. 2" still had the golden age of European Library music squarely in it's sights, but this time the focus was drawn more to the off-kilter soul organ sound of Italian quartet I Marc 4. These two volumes garnered praise from Library aficionado Shawn Lee ("Holy...

A thrilling immersion into FM synthesis and a puzzle of MIDI data, the Los Angeles based multi-instrumentalist Gregg Kowalsky returns to Mexican Summer with Eso Es, his sophomore outing for the label and first new music since 2017’s L'Orange L'Orange. Representing a significant creative leap for the veteran composer, Eso Es unfolds as a hypnotic journey into Kowalsky’s inner world, laced with a depth of emotiveness and vulnerability that’s rarely encountered in the electronic music realm. Raised in South Florida and trained at Mills College under Fred Frith and Pauline Oliveros, Kowalsky first came to prominence during the mid-2000s as a member of the thriving experimental music scene in the Bay Area, issuing a series of stunning albums on imprints like Kranky and Root Strata and contributing to a reinvigoration of American made Minimalist and electroacoustic music. In an addition to composing solo works, pieces for large ensembles, film soundtracks, dance performances, and site-specific installations over the past twenty years, during the 2010s Kowalsky concentrated his energies as one half of the critically acclaimed duo Date Palms, performing extensively and releasing three hypnotic albums, including 2011’s Honey Devash on Mexican Summer.

Toy Machine skateboard's seminal 1996 video “Welcome To Hell” features a unique and progressive patchwork of skateboarders, most of which would become icons in their world, and helped redefine
what the modern skateboarding video could be. A young Joseph Shabason felt that impact. The acclaimed musician hit rewind on his VHS copy of “Welcome To Hell” hundreds of times in his youth,
each watch as thrilling as the last. That invigorating, improvisational, full-body experience of skateboarding is one that Shabason likens to jazz, where a shared language exists between the wheels and woodwinds. The way the skateboarder and musician command that language is what distinguishes them, adding definition to the mercurial concept of “style.” This connection becomes most apparent in collaboration; ensembles of skaters and musicians are a noisy, creative bunch.

Reflecting on this relationship and the Toy Machine classic would ultimately lead Shabason to wonder: what does hell sound like? The answer was a concept album that, like his previous records, lives in
the personal. One that, much like skateboarding itself, would push him to try something new: rescoring "Welcome To Hell". Out on October 20th, 2023.

Off World presents the final album in its trilogy of surreal and spacious leftfield electronics. "A stellar project headed by Sandro Perri, one of the most singular producers in contemporary music" (Boomkat), this third volume is another distinctive collection of tracks constructed from semi-improvised ensemble recordings made over the past decade with a varied cast of coconspirators. Drew Brown, Matthew Cooper, Susumu Mukai and Andrew Zukerman join Perri again on a variety of synths and machines, along with violinist Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq, Fond Of Tigers). Perri also continues to add organ and piano to the mix, while Volume 3 notably features first-time Off World contributors Nicole Rampersaud on trumpet and Martin Arnold on guitar, both mainstays of Toronto's vibrant improv and out-music scenes. The Quietus calls Off World "genuinely explorative_the musical equivalent of a Dali-esque landscape" which through all sorts of genre-defying twists and turns, at times evokes "offkilter, late Miles Davis ambience". Off World 3 doubles down on that jazz-adjacent trope in certain respects, while holding fast to Pitchfork's dictum that Perri "cultivates his own genreless brand of futurism." Marked by longer tracks than previous collections, three of the album's five songs clock in around the 10-minute mark, where overtly improvised instrumental playing wends its way across alternately bubbling and woozy electronic beds. "Impulse Controller" is a languidly skewed rhumba where ambling melodic undercurrents and dubby electronic pointillism provide a dulcet promenade for Rampersaud's Miles-esque trumpet excursions. "Ludic Loop" see-saws along in a slow synthy two-step, punctuated by Perri's restrained piano chords and Arnold's fried electric guitar. "Empasse" is perhaps most reminiscent of earlier Off World collections, though again slowed and stretched, with oozing synth bass ostinatos counterposed by ambient layers of viola and violin filigree from Zubot. These three centerpiece longform tracks each highlight one of the album's instrumental improvisers, and taken together, make for the most scintillating sedate and ruminant album in the trilogy. Off World 3 sounds as sui generis as ever, but in wrapping up the series, Perri sprinkles the project's emblematic alien surrealism with decidedly anthropic elements and temporalities. This final volume in the trilogy could also be seen as a re-statement of Perri's politico-aesthetic mission, as aptly celebrated by Pitchfork and its glowing 8.0+ reviews of Perri's 2018/2019 solo albums In Another Life and Soft Landing (released between Off World 2 and the present volume): a uniquely purposeful, subtly detailed cannon of songs "busy, vibrant, and bursting with life, but that aren't ever in a rush to get anywhere."

Dreyblatt"s minimalist conception - a rhythmic drone played on a double-bass strung with piano wire, playing in concert with other stringed instruments performing in 20 unequal microtones per octave and changing key but keeping the same fundamental pitch - dates back to the 1970s, while he studied under La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros. Resolve acts in intermittent dialogue with the first Orchestra of Excited Strings release, 1982"s Nodal Excitation.

Since then, Dreyblatt has formed new orchestras across various countries and decades, with each phase of his music requiring several overlapping periods of gestation and arrangement.

The current Orchestra is formed by Konrad Sprenger, Joachim Schütz and Oren Ambarchi. On Resolve, each of the members" playing brings new angles to the compositions. Konrad Sprenger"s involves solenoids, sine waves and a computer-controlled multi-channel electric guitar (as well as a relentless style behind the drum kit and oversight of the album production), while Joachim Schütz"s individual conception of electronics and electric guitar and Oren Ambarchi"s undeniable innovations with signal path work together with Dreyblatt"s bass (still strung with piano wire) as magnetic component parts of Resolve.

These contributions lead to Resolve"s dialogue with the early Orchestra of Excited Strings canon - for instance, the track previewed here, "Flight Path" takes off at a pace not often found in the minimalist genre - a rolling lope! Yet the sense of play is palpable: the ensemble scale their microtonal keys with punkish brio, a stance sharing much with the original Orchestra"s downtown pulse, even as as the new Orchestra burn their own path through Dreyblatt"s music.

Approaching his 70th birthday, with over 40 years of work as a solo artist, collaborator, composer, educator and bandleader, Arnold Dreyblatt views Resolve as an important expression within the long story of The Orchestra of Excited Strings. The album title"s tendency to mean different things is an indicator of the dynamic qualities of his music in all its different phases - an evolution that continues to produce new dimensions in acoustic sound with every new release.

Breezy headwinds, orange-tinged skies, hazy, serene bliss – just some of the profound feelings to be had on the latest release from Oath, a masterclass in melody and mood from one of the finest ever to do…..

Italian producer and DJ Jacy remains one of the stand-out musical characters from a dazzling ensemble of atmosphere builders who were so prevalent during the late 80s and early 90s. His craftsmanship is simply legendary, his music quite simply some of the finest to exude from this period of time, and of which is still making waves in the collective sands now. His dedication to the creation of emotive sweeps, gorgeous rippling tones and easy going, freeing atmospheres has remained a cornerstone of his sound, from the early days through to his excellent work on his imprint Home of House, along with sublime releases on Kalahari Oyster Cult and Hot Haus Recs. Jacy’s sound was broadcast to the world once again via Safe Trip’s ‘Welcome To Paradise’ compilations, where his inclusions were something that lingered long in the memory – an essential component of what is known as the ‘Dream House’ sound. It’s difficult to convey into words exactly how a Jacy record can take the listener, but perhaps it’s different for everyone – one thing can be agreed on though, it’s an experience like no other.

‘Night Fantasy’ is Jacy’s first EP in 4 years, and much like his other records, this one blesses us with warmth, delight and joy, in the softest and most subtle of manners. The title track, which opens up the record, greets the listener with a familiar drum pattern, one which then gives way to the rock-hard bass line, and then the pads arrive. Heavenly angelic in form, their presence is complimented by the arrival of the breathy vocal sample, which evolves to provide a wondrous narrative with the cascading synth line that comes soon after. As a combination its intoxicating, with the breakdown giving us time to get to know this mixture very well, indeed, before powering home with excellence. ‘Just Change’ comes on next, and this one opens up with that classic and explicitly dreamy chord sequence we all know and cherish, with Jacy allowing us to soak up this goodness before shifting the perspective to the rhythm. The interplay that occurs here between keys and drums is something different, before everything transitions into a sequence to close your eyes too. ‘Dat Tape’ shifts perspective to more of a swing in terms of the groove, with sweeping background pads doing much to tug at the heartstrings. The vocal sample is so very effective at crafting an audial narrative, inviting the listener to swim deeper into the goodness, with the subtle transitions doing much to keep things ticking over. Finally, we have ‘Come On’, and this one keeps a spacious feel between the keys and the drums, and it works ever so well. The bass line occupies the bottom ends superbly, with interchanges in chords and some ever-so-familiar vocal samples thrown into the mix – and its simply wonderful.

To convey deep set feelings is to have faith in musical dexterity, to understand the grooves in the record, to follow instinct and trust in the process and precedent. Jacy has always found the sweet spot in his music by following this approach, it seems, and this new record of his is an accumulation of a lifetime of dedication and passion to music and all of its many flavors. Soaring, effective melodic undulations and rapturous, fluctuating rhythms, coupled with atmospheres to drift into – what more could you wish for? Lets get lost within it once again….

Sounds While Waiting documents the latest organ works by composer and musician Ellen Arkbro – following her phenomenal debut, 2017's For Organ And Brass, and the more recent CHORDS. Recorded at a centuries-old church in Unnaryd, Sweden in June 2020, these pieces reveal the enchanting qualities of sustained harmonic sound, how patterns of listening dissolve and emerge as textured space. On opening track "Changes," long radiant tones ebb and flow like divine breaths, while "Leaving Dreaming" builds with dynamic tension to unlock a subtle, otherworldly ambience.

As the composer states in the sleeve notes, "These recordings are traces of something I have come to love to do in large resonant spaces, which is to set up sustained chords on multiple organs and then move slowly through the sound. The instruments are usually far apart, which makes for the emergence of large fields of continuous change, spaces of harmonicity that can be passed through layer by layer and which contain within them points of both clarity and overwhelming complexity. The organ pipes are tuned and retuned, though sometimes I leave them just as they are. What I'm searching for is the moment when a particular kind of sounding texturality is revealed – it is rough, focused and yet strangely transparent."

Arkbro composes for acoustic instruments, for synthetic sound and for combinations of both, including music for orchestra and smaller chamber ensembles and large scale installation works. She currently performs in Catherine Christer Hennix's Kamigaku ensemble, and she previously studied with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. Recommended for fans of Sarah Davachi, Eliane Radigue and Charlemagne Palestine.

Formed in 1999 by bassist Jim Barr and drummer Clive Deamer, best known as the rhythm section of seminal act Portishead, award-winning Bristolian jazz-rock disruptors Get The Blessing present their seventh studio album 'Pallet' Like most artists around the world, the pandemic forced the ensemble to rethink their creative processes. Born from a series of improvisations between Barr, Pete Judge on trumpet and Jake McMurchie on saxophone, the trio built up a rough portfolio of recordings which they then sent to Deamer, who added his drum parts at home in Oxfordshire. The result is nine minimalist compositions driven by groove, texture, electronics, and spontaneity. Built around the hypnotic loops that have become synonymous with their sound, 'Pallet' is an exploration of the nexus of improvisation and modern production. Grounded by thick, punchy bass lines and playful drum grooves, the record creates deep sonic spaces through the use of dizzying delays, squelching filtered loops and trails. The album's title owes much to the obtuse punning jazz musicians have enjoyed since the '50s; the song titles conjure up an imaginary colour chart with which the listener can fill in the paint-by-numbers image of a wooden pallet on the cover art

Takeo Moriyama, Japan’s leading jazz drummer, loved by many new and old fans. Since the late 1960s, he has swept the free jazz world with the Yosuke Yamashita trio. After leaving the group, the radiating heat was condensed into an ensemble, evolving and deepening the musicality in a more melodic and rhythmic direction. And that activity will reach a peak in this work “Smile”.

Toronto label Selections has become a firm favourite with house heads and now starts a nice sideline with its Special Edition 2023 series. This one welcomes Lea Lisa with her track 'Conversation Between Us' (Heide Club Mix) which is straight up underground house for the heads. Then comes an unreleased Javonntte remix of Evenn's 'One For Love' that pairs things back to raw dub essentials. Dan Only's 'Love Saturates' then gets a fine and formerly unreleased remix by Italy's Black Loops that has pristine drum programming and a fine bassline. Add in Sean Roman's jazzy dancer 'Sir William' and Jamn Ensemble's 'Convection' and you have a timeless house EP.

The follow-up to his acclaimed Constellation debut Third Album released in lockdown spring 2020, Markus Floats returns with Fourth Album, pushing the Montréal-based artist's distinct abstract electronic compositions into newly evocative terrain (while preserving his record-titling literalism). Faced with another couple of years spent unexpectedly, though not unfamiliarly, secluded and studio-bound, working on both paintings and music, Floats emerged by the end of 2022 with a set of tracks "about 60% finished" and a determined desire to throw off the shackles of distancing and isolation. "I had always thought about Markus Floats as a solo project but I am wrong about that. Fourth Album is about asking for help, inviting in, and making a home. It's about trust, exploration, and the effort of letting go."Sharing his in-progress recordings with a trio of close friends and collaborators from the powerhouse free music ensemble Egyptian Cotton Arkestra, each of these players then spent a day improvising to the tracks at Montréal's Hotel2Tango studio. With violin by Ari Swan, saxophone and mbira by James Goddard, and guitar and drums by Lucas Huang, Floats stitched their extemporized instruments back into his compositional process. The result is a fluid, lustrous, dynamic expansion of his sound and structure that continues to strike the ineffable balance of abstraction and soulfulness rightly highlighted and celebrated in the critical response to Third Album. Fourth Album sustains much of that previous work's enchanting equanimity, while inviting a bit more restlessness, accident and grit, with the incorporation of acoustic instruments and improvisation melding Floats' own background in Electroacoustic Studies and Jazz Performance more than ever before.Signature avant-electronic explorations of arpeggiated and timbral transformation, subtle shifts in harmonic consonance and dissonance, and a through-composed praxis that draws coterminously upon free jazz, musique concrète and modern Minimalism, all continue to shape Fourth Album to great effect. But an additional palette of sonic and gestural raw material is now also decidedly "out-of-the-box", charting a wider range of gestures, textures and temporalities. Fourth Album complexifies and intensifies across its 12 tracks, thematizing dualities and introducing new elements of play and accident, even a sort of looseness here and there, as it conjures communal expressivity within shorter, still scrupulous formal structures. Fourth Album also for the first time includes spoken word as a recorded element, previously only (and always) a feature of Markus Floats live performances. The album's final track samples the poet and activist Fred Moten, closing with these words: "What we've been trying to figure out how to get to is how we are when we get together to try to figure it out." This koan of socially-engaged process and creation/advancement of meaning through praxis and immanence reflects the unique fusion of intangible materiality and affective sensibility at work in Markus Floats music, unfolding in new depths and currents with Fourth Album.

Feldman's last composition, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, was completed in 1987; although its instrumentation largely corresponds to that of Piano and String Quartet, with one instead of two violins, it differs in almost every other respect from the composition written only two years earlier, for here, in contrast to Piano and String Quartet, Feldman makes every effort to integrate the piano into the string section, and the basic formal components of the composition are no longer staves, as they were in Piano and String Quartet, but individual bars... ...From a compositional point of view, the essential change that transfers the "monolithic block" of late orchestral works such as Coptic Light and For Samuel Beckett to chamber music instrumentation is that the material, already largely homogeneous, is rearranged not in whole systems but in small-part permutations, so that the systems and pages no longer represent periods or sections, and a continuous musical progression emerges with a much reduced internal structure compared to previous works.

from liner notes by Sebastian Claren
dissonArt Ensemble is Lenio Liatsou, Piano Theodor Patsalidis, Violin Chara Seira, Viola Vassills Saitis, Violoncello

12” black vinyl, standard sleeve, limited to 500 copies, download card included. The long sold-out ‘Random Acts of Total Control’ EP by French outfit Unschooling is now being reissued by London-based label and promoters Bad Vibrations. The five-track EP was originally released in 2021 and deals in an energetic, lo-fi post-punk that revels in calculated discord. Their chaotic ensemble of complex mathy guitar lines, dissatisfied vocals and twitchy rhythm sections have drawn comparisons to such contemporaries as Omni, Crack Cloud and Women, but all wrapped up in a Contortions-esque No Wave spontaneity. Unschooling emerged with their self-released nine-song ‘Defensive Designs’ cassette in 2019 which made a splash in the French indie scene (and is now also being reissued on vinyl for the first time by Bad Vibrations). Its follow-up, the ‘Random Acts of Total Control’ EP, solidified their reputation further afield and established them as one of the most exciting new acts in the current school of post-punk revivalists. The band have since toured heavily around UK and Europe and appeared at Great Escape, Green Man, Wide Awake, Le Printemps De Bourges, Levitation France, Dot to Dot and more. Tracklist: 1) More Is More 2) Boo Boo Dragon 3) Social Chameleon 4) No Shoes 5) NYE

Appleton, Wisconsin’s Dusk may seem to have fallen from the sky. Surrounded by a music climate of destination festivals and instagram celebrity, they’ve remained reclusive, yet focused on the proverbial
carrot on the end of the stick that’s hard for so many working musicians to define. For the past four years, they’ve maintained a steady schedule of recording and “hitting the dirt,” as they say: spending weeks on the road playing dives and basements. The group was conceived in 2014 as a casual recording project between vocalist and bassist Amos Pitsch and drummer Colin Wilde. Amos had just
completed recording Predatory Headlights, the critically acclaimed double album by his other group, Tenement, and with the new found down time, he and Colin arranged their own versions of vintage
soul songs. The intention was to treat the project like a revolving door for collaborators, but soon the permanent additions of vocalist/pianist Julia Blair, lead guitarist Tyler Ditter, and Ryley Crowe on pedal steel, rhythm guitar, and vocal duties would cement the band into a connsistent rock and roll ensemble; informed by soul music, country, jazz, and beyond.

Classic black vinyl plus bonus 7"-single with two exclusive tracks! Babydoll is the fifth Rat Columns album and, following 2021's Pacific Kiss, the second to be released on Tough Love. The recordings took place in Perth, Western Australia, partially by engineer Jason Hayles in a 1960's office building that formerly housed the secretarial pool of a successful mattress company, and partially by DW in an industrial unit, and feature the ensemble cast of Taylah McLean, Chris Grunwaldt, Scott Payne, Richard Ingham, Cohen Bourgault and, of course, DW himself. It was then mixed and mastered in Melbourne by Mikey Young and Joseph Carra, respectively. Babydoll seems to mark a return to a murkier, dirgier Rat Columns format. Distortion is fetishized again and many small amplifiers were tortured in the album's production. Tempos have drifted down and the lyrical concerns move ever inward, in an inverse bloom. The mood is dour, introspective, circular, the songs long, and short attention spans are neglected. 'Cerulean Blue' churns through a crystalline memoryscape, homaging low-brow grunge auto-fiction and a partial history of mid-period rave. 'Life In The Jungle' is a fever dream of imperialist wartime fantasy projection. 'Heavenly Assault' attempts a crushing density amid visions of transcendent devotion. 'Virtual Sweden' takes us ever northwards into the frosted tip of Scandinavian détente. 'Babydoll', like 'Cerulean Blue', homages a primarily imagined low-cosmopolitan world of alt-lit digi-poets, bedroom fantasists, underwater prisons for gorgeous, gorgeous girls. 'Bees Make Honey' lets more sophisticated music machines into the conversation, and marks the first use of vocal tuning software on a Rat Columns album, albeit in an avant-amateurist fashion. 'Jane, I Live For You' enters the space-ballad race, dreaming of synthetic folk-rockers, leaning on sampler keybeds in the half-light. 'December' is yet another tribute to fallen Stars, mansions on the hill, winter skin in cashmere sweaters, truth in education, love, faith, (im)purity. In all these respects, it is a classic Rat Columns record. Because all Rat Columns records are classic records.

As the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago celebrates its 50th anniversary, Soul Jazz Records are releasing a new fully re-mastered edition of the group's seminal album 'Les Stances à Sophie' (1970), which features the great singer Fontella Bass on the opening track 'Theme de Yoyo', a stunning 9-min opus that continues to startle and compel new audiences today.
Drawing upon the mutual soul and funk background of Bass and her then husband Lester Bowie with all the power of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's collective musicianship on board, 'Theme de Yoyo' is powerfully funky, soulful and free at the same time, a classic fusion of black music styles.

Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II continues Black Truffle’s documentation of the late work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, who sadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. Like the first volume of the series, the two works recorded here were written for The Ever Present Orchestra, an ensemble founded in Zürich in 2016 to perform Lucier’s work exclusively. At the core of the music Lucier wrote for the ensemble is the electric guitar, an instrument he began to explore in 2013. Played with e-bows, in these works electric lap steel guitars take on roles akin to the slow sweep pure wave oscillators heard in many of Lucier’s works since the early 1980s. This strikingly elegant pair of compositions would serve as an ideal introduction to Lucier’s late music for a listener as yet unfamiliar with its graceful exploration of beating patterns and other acoustic phenomenon.

The two pieces have quite different characters, exemplifying Lucier’s ability to harvest a remarkable range of musical results from closely related compositional procedures and concerns. In Arrigoni Bridge (2019), Lucier uses a technique familiar from earlier works such as Still Lives (1995), where sine waves traced the shapes of household objects. Here, three lap steel electric guitars (played by Oren Ambarchi, Bernhard Rietbrock, and Jan Thoben) follow the form of the Arrigoni Bridge that connects Middletown and Portland, Connecticut. The bridge’s two enormous steel arcs become slowly sweeping pitches, alongside which alto saxophone (Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos), violin (Rebecca Thies) and cello (Lucy Railton) sustain long tones, creating a variety of audible beating patterns depending on their distance from or proximity to the guitars. With its stately pacing, warm middle register tones, and rich timbral variety in the sustaining instruments, Arrigoni Bridge is a beautiful example of compositional reduction producing immersive results. Flips (2020), on the other hand, is more austere. Scored for two lap steel electric guitars (Rietbock and Thoben), double bass (Ross Wightman) and glockenspiel (Trevor Saint), the two acoustic instruments played with bows, the piece zooms in on the range of a major second (two semitones). The two guitars sweep in opposite directions within the range, crossing every four minutes; the double bass and glockenspiel sustain long tones, producing beats of different speeds determined by their distance from the guitar tones. This limitation of the tonal range means the music is often dissonant and forces the phenomenon of audible beating to the surface, resulting in a paradoxical music composed entirely of long tones yet alive with pulsating rhythm. Exemplifying Lucier’s ability to uncover near-infinite complexity within seemingly simple materials, Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II is a fitting tribute to one of the major figures of the experimental music tradition and a testament to the continuing power of his work.

The Art of Surrender marks a return to life, sown from primal impulses and hard-won emotional truths. Unrestrained melodic rapture soars above a relentless kick drum, speaking a need to move, to dance, to love. The music is as ambitious as its origins are personal. Tignor plays with scale, crafting multi-movement epics alongside one-minute miniatures. The smallest, most fragile violin gestures, where the finger barely touches the string to extract natural harmonics exist side by side with angular, exotic melodies, asymmetric rhythms, and rapid-fire string crossings. On this LP, Tignor digs even more deeply into the violin and its technicolor reimaginings under his electroacoustic treatments. Christopher Tignor is a composer, violinist, lecturer, and software engineer. His emotionally charged scores and unique focus on live, performance-based electroacoustic practice has won acclaim within both the classical and experimental communities across 10 LPs on the Western Vinyl and New Albion record labels. He creates the live performance software he uses, shared freely. As a composer he has written and recorded work for ensembles including The Knights, A Far Cry string orchestra, and Brooklyn Rider string quartet, performing alongside them at premiere venues including Carnegie's Zankel Hall. As a string arranger he has worked with Helios, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, John Congleton, This Will Destroy You, Meshell Ndegeocello, and several other artists at the boundaries of popular music. This music breathes, swoons and swoops elegiacally, in the same way a crack symphony might on a good night." MAGNET // "A bulwark against the ambient clatter of everyday life...sheer technical mastery" BANDCAMP (ALBUM OF THE DAY) // "Tignor creates a muttered hum of activity that burbles at the fringes of an internally focused halo of sustained, glowing chords, and the effect is powerful." NPR // "Making computers coexist in harmony with acoustic instruments in a live setting is more easily imagined than achieved. But Christopher Tignor, a young composer and performer shaped as much by his work in downtown nightclubs as by his formal education at Bard College and New York University, proves that it can be done." THE NEW YORK TIMES // "Absurdly talented"

Auf den Golden Records, die die Voyager-Missionen 1977 ins All transportierten, um außerirdischen Lebewesen unter anderem ein musikalisches Bild der Erdenbewohner zu vermitteln, waren zum Beispiel Werke von Johann Sebastian, Ludwig van, Wolfgang Amadeus, Chuck und Louis verewigt.

Mission Not Accomplished, …. yet, we lost control! Zeit für einen neuen Anlauf mit Space-Jazz von Sebastian Gramss’ STATES OF PLAY: METEORS - message to outer space. Ein vielschichtiger Bericht von der Erde in Ton & Text 45 Jahre nach den ersten NASA-Missionen als Doppel-Vinyl in 180 gr. auf clear orange & clear blue vinyl im Klapp-Cover mit bedruckten Inner Sleeves.

Shannon Barnett - trombone; Hayden Chisholm - saxophone; Philip Zoubek - piano, synthesizer; Christian Lorenzen - e-piano, synthesizer; Sebastian Gramss - double bass; Dominik Mahnig - drums plus guests (2022 wurde das Ensemble mit dem Deutschen Jazzpreis ausgezeichnet) A recording that will last!

'In 1972, trumpeter Baikida Carroll and some of his colleagues from the Black Artists Group (more precisely saxophonist/flutist Oliver Lake, trombonist Joseph Bowie, drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw and trumpeter Floyd LeFlore) took the advice of their friends in the Art Ensemble Of Chicago and left their native Missouri to come and discover the bright lights of Paris for themselves. The following year they would even get the chance to record their only album which would rapidly attain mythical status and a collector’s item: “In Paris, Aries 1973”.

Therefore, it was not surprising that they crossed paths with Jef Gilson in the capital. He was always on the lookout for new artists for his recently formed Palm label and had been active on many fronts in jazz since the end of the 50s. The French bandleader / pianist / composer / sound engineer had already recorded, in the preceding months other American musicians who would go on to have great careers: Byard Lancaster, Keno Speller, Clint Jackson III, Khan Jamal... Gilson therefore offered Baikida Carroll the chance to record his first album under his own name, which would be the 13th release on the label. Carroll logically asked Oliver Lake to join him. He also recruited Manuel Villaroel, a young Franco-Chilien pianist from the group Matchi-Oul, who had already released an album on Futura in 1971 and would release another on Palm in 1976. The group was completed with the addition of Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, who had just released a well-received album on the Saravah label. They were ready to enter the studio for the 3rd, 4th and 5th June 1974.

The first side of the album is divided into two long tracks which send free jazz back to its long-lost African roots. The opener “Orange Fish Tears” indeed rolls out a jungle of percussion of all sorts and sizes -the whole group is involved- which weave and mix together reaching a point where all bearings are lost, lending a sense of wonder to the majestic entry of the brass and woodwinds, flying suddenly out from the undergrowth. “Forest Scorpion” (sic) is a real voodoo ceremony where a venomous percussive groove backs the fiery solos from keyboards and saxophone in a furious trance. A warning; after these two tracks listeners are physically and emotionally wiped out!

The other side is more introspective. Deliberately using dissonance and repetition, “Rue Roger” -the only composition by Oliver Lake- in a long dialogue between trumpet and saxophone, could almost remind us of Terry Riley in his favourite ballpark. “Porte D'Orléans”, the fourth and final track on the album, has the group back to their old tricks in a long hallucinatory jam which owes as much to the contemporary music of György Ligeti as to the most angst-ridden Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack music (remember the heavy chords which beat through “Planet of the Apes»).

With these two sides, and in under 45m, Baikida Carroll and his musicians show just what they can do, from cerebral to charnel without ever simplifying things. This is an essential album if you are a fan of free-wheeling avant-garde music from the Art Ensemble of Chicago to Sonic Youth and including Shabaka Hutchings and Rob Mazurek. For those with good taste, in other words.'

Another dream coming true! One of Giuliano Sorgini's finest and most sought-after titles is finally available as an official LP reissue – the first ever – remastered from the original tapes.

Originally released in 1971on the small library music imprint FAMA, which operated as a sub-label of RCA Italy, the record contains the original music written for Scappo per cantare, a small, pseudo-psychedelic 'musicarello' (musical comedy film) broadcast on RAI television and starring, among others, Italian singers Gianni Morandi and Mauro Lusini.

The only credited album artist is Sorgini, but it's impossible not to perceive, in this record, the hand of his close friend and colleague Alessandro Alessandroni.

This should not come as a surprise. In the early 70s, the two composers and multi-instrumentalists had a fruitful collaboration that saw them, under the monikers Braen (Alessandroni) and Raskovich (Sorgini), produce an abundance of works together, most of which have now gained the recognition they deserve. These include, among others, two 7" singles from their band The Pawnshop, three records in the series Alle sorgenti delle civiltà (Folkmusic), the crime/noir library albums Quarta pagina (Usignolo) and Inchiesta giudiziaria (Octopus Records), as well as the LP Tempo Libero (Panda Records), which was released shortly after the record presented here and in some ways drew rhythmic inspiration from it.

While their collaboration remained unacknowledged on the original release of Scappo per cantare (this was not uncommon at the time, especially in the field of library music), the record sounds perfectly in line with other works composed by Alessandroni in the early 70s, such as Complesso Gisteri's Mostra Collettiva (co-written with Oronzo De Filippi), or even a landmark album like Spontaneous, where Sorgini contributed to a handful of tracks.

So, yes, the sheer beauty of Scappo per cantare is the result of an incredible synergy between two heavyweights of Italian library music! Airy and sweeping melodies à la Zoo Folle, psychedelia à la Under Pompelmo, and various percussion instruments played by Sorgini seamlessly blend and fuse with elements and touches provided by Alessandroni.

More specifically, we find Alessandroni's signature, melancholy whistle in "Desolazione"; the peaceful and dreamy sound of his 12-string guitar in "Scogliere" and "Con Amore"; the trademark harmonies of his vocal ensemble Cantori Moderni in the last two tracks mentioned and in "Per cantare"; and his ingenious use of distortion on his Fender Stratocaster in the suspenseful transitions "Concentrazione" and "Fantocci", as well as in the frantic/hypnotic hippie numbers "Mordente" and "Fendente" (as a side note, it is worth remembering that Alessandroni experimented extensively with distortion in the rock-infused album Underground, co-written with De Filippi and released in 1971 under the moniker Braen's Machine, probably a reference to British psychedelic band Soft Machine).

The creative relationship between Sorgini and Alessandroni was so symbiotic that it would be useless to try to identify in more detail their respective contributions to the sound of Scappo per cantare. The alchemy between these two musical geniuses is the key to the album's exquisitely Italian mixture of cheerful lounge, sweet psychedelia and smooth easy listening.

To do justice to the quality of the music, this remastered reissue is enriched by a new artwork by Eric Adrian Lee, who drew inspiration from the psychedelic visual culture of the period in which the album was written and recorded.

Skultura is Nick Dunston’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Spider Season, which was released in July 2022. On Spider Season, Martin Johnson of Jazz Times said “Dunston is a sonic revolutionary in many ways, not the least of which is the instrumentation of his bands.”Spider Season also received glowing reviews from Pitchfork Magazine, TheWire, and New York City Jazz Record. While Skultura is an entirely new band,(featuring Cansu Tanrıkulu on voice/effects/electronics, Mariá Portugal on drums, Liz Kosack on synthesizer, and Eldar Tsalikov on alto saxophone/clarinet), fans of Dunston will find much to admire, and hear a compositional, improvisational, and notably, production style that is becoming uniquely his own. The repertoire of original music on Skultura ranges from spontaneous electro-acoustic ensemble exchanges, to carefully sculpted tone poems that meditate on the manipulated sample-based sides of the quintet. Composition, improvisation, and performance are no longer the only elements at playin Dunston’s recorded work. On Skultura, he continuously shapes the music with various sound-manipulation techniques to create an album that is meticulous as it is visceral. To quote Jacob Garchik’s liner notes, the ‘work is made of continuous waves of inspiration and creation, strata of improvisations made permanent, each layer related to the one below, or not’. Skultura is revered in Europe and the U.S., and will be co-released on the Berlin-based record label Fun In The Church, and the American tape cassette label Tripticks Tapes. Upcoming European performances in the Fall 2023 include Wels Unlimited Festival in Austria, and the Jazz Exzess concert series in Berlin.

Northern California psychedelic sorcerers Carlton Melton are brain surfers, mind trippers, … “psychlists,” if you prefer. The band will take your head for a ride, occasionally rushing at superluminal speeds through a wormhole or gliding softly on a gentle breeze in a leafy glade. Sometimes your brain needs to rage, and sometimes it needs to repose. For a decade and a half, the band has yo-yo’ed, almost schizophrenically, between these two modes: walloping space jams with furious guitar solos in one hemisphere of the brain and ethereal, feather-light splashdowns in the other. Not to mention a track here and there that builds from the latter into the former. But with two new releases in 2023, the band has evolved. Whether psych rock or ambient trance, their sound remains driving, organic, and flowing. With the addition of Anthony Taibi (White Manna, DDT), however, the group’s metal freak-outs are Hawkwindier and their droning kraut trances are Spacemen 3-er. In January, the quartet released the playfully spacey Resemble Ensemble, recorded in Taibi’s home studio 3D Light. October now sees the band Turn To Earth, a work with scents of Autumn, a season of death and transition. The cover art evokes a vine-covered, electric crucifix. The sound is, well, earthy but also gritty and striving towards change. The album was recorded in Fall 2022 and now harvested in Fall 2023. Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in San Francisco.

With Becker at the helm, the synths have become more prominent (“Cosmicity,” “Roboflow,” “Migration”) and the tone heavier on the doom (“Cloudstorming,” “Unlock The Land,” title track): several moments could even serve as background music for epic dark fantasy films like Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, or Heavy Metal. As exquisite as Turn To Earth is, Melton are best appreciated as a live act: their recordings as well as their gigs are largely improvised – not so much composed as birthed. And yet their most recent tour ended abruptly and perilously. The group had to cancel its final three shows once members were admitted to Arnhem hospital in the Netherlands. Five years later, reinforcements have strengthened the band and restocked its arsenal of great tracks. After the rockus interruptus of that 2018 tour and the tantric tease of the intervening Covid lockdown, Melton have some unfinished business. An October 2023 tour is poised to set the freshly minted quartet back onto the stages of Europe and within the cerebral folds of its fans. Turn To Earth, sure … but keep your head in outer space. Carlton Melton is: andy duvall – drums/gtr; clint golden – bass; rich millman – gtr/synth; and anthony taibi – synth/gtr.

In order to record the compositions in his critically acclaimed 2022 release GOLD, Alabaster DePlume instilled a culture of creativity by leading his ensembles In spontaneous composition and development. This resulted in an abundance of material that he has since produced and arranged, resulting in this collection.

Staying true to who they are this dozen strong band have created an ensemble body of work ranging from relentless heavy Grime to Latin House to Jazz….that might sound like it shouldn’t work…it weirdly does…and does very well!

This album is almost nothing but singles, each track standing strong on its own making for a force of musical nature.

Aurora Records proudly presents Temporal Gardening, featuring
composer and performer Stephan Meidell and the baroque ensemble
Bergen Barokk
The new album will be available on vinyl and digital platforms on15th of
September 2023.
Temporal Gardening was originally a commission written in 2020 for Bergen
Barokk. The idea was to explore using early music instrumentation in dialogue
with new electro-acoustic technology. The unique and remarkable ecology grew
from pseudo- baroque music playfully reimagined, reinterpreted, disassembled,
remixed, and resampled.
The trio has been expanded with drums, functioning as speakers for the
electronic manipulations of the ensemble. A double-bass recorder vibrates a subwoofer speaker mounted inside a bass drum, and a live sampled harpsichord
sounds through cymbals, gongs, and a snare drum. Meidell himself part takes as
a musician in the performance, doing live sampling and electronic contributions.
Musician-composer Stephan Meidell is a musical adventurer who, in a nomadic
fashion, improvises his way through a plentitude of styles. Meidell's music exists
where genres dissolve into fragments that canbe picked apartand combined in
new ways. He frequently combines sounds from electronic, acoustic, and
electromechanical instruments and machines and then recontextualises them
with his finely tuned intuition and sense of detail. Meidell has a plentitude of
releases and commissions, including with Erlend Apneseth Trio, Strings &
Timpani, Cakewalk, and TRIGGER on labels such as Hubro, Clean Feed, Playdate,
and Ideophone.
Bergen Barokk was established in 1994 and is today one of Norway's leading
early- music ensembles. The group has concertized and appeared in radio
broadcasts in Europe, Russia and USA. Their recordings on Simax Classics, BIS,
Bergen Digital Studio and Toccata Classics include German, English, Italian and
French repertoire. Bergen Barokk has collaborated with several ensembles
through the recent years, some of them are Pratum Integrum (Moscow),
Norwegian Soloists' Choir and Barokksolistene (Norway). Bergen Barokk has
performed in festivals like Festspillene i Bergen, Bach Festival of Philadelphia,
Moscow Early Music Festival and Janacek International Music Festival (Czech
Republic).

Since his early days with Henry Cow, Fred Frith has been regarded as a brilliant instrumentalist and improviser, but what has been overlooked is that he is also a first-rate composer. This recording offers both aspects. His most complex orchestral composition and two selected improvisations with the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. Fred Frith, as an infusion of energy and inspiration.

''Something about this Landscape was commissioned by Ars Musica in 2018. I composed the piece during a residency at Lou Harrison's straw-bale house in the desert at Joshua Tree, California. It's an inspiring place for a number of reasons - the silence, the light, the life, the history. The extraordinary diversity of birds during the migration season. Both other pieces are improvisations. The first one is the one we did during the concert (in public), the other one, very different, is the one we did during the dress rehearsal (on the day of the concert).'' - Fred Frith

Musiques Nouvelles is one of the two most successful and diversified contemporary music ensemble in this country with Ictus. With, under the influence of Jean-Paul Dessy, a deeply spiritual and mutual listening aspect. This meeting with the legendary Fred Frith will remain as an important step.

Original self-released by Malik king this lp has been on many peoples lists of holly grail private-press jazz wants for years , very rarely turning up on ebay and the like.. selling for up to $500.

Malik King was an important part of the St Louis jazz scene of the 70's & 80's.

He studied under Albert Ayler in NY in the early 70s before returning to the Midwest. He was a member of; The Human Arts Ensemble, the Shirley Le Flore's ensemble "Free N' Concert". He also served as musical director of The Creative Arts & Expression Lab, The African Peoples Continuum, & The Black Arts Alliance, The worrier poets, as well as various Emerging Force Ensembles.

Zimbabwe Nkenya (1953-2022), a creative artist and innovative musician, was brought up on army bases in the USA and Spain. He spent 30 years traveling and performing in New York, New Mexico, Arizona and St Louis. playing with a who's who of jazz. In New Mexico he became an integral part of the scene, producing and hosting the KUNM'S radio show "THE HOUSE THAT JAZZ BUILT" .

Luckily Malik self-released "Time & Condition" in 1982, capturing his work together with Qaiyim Shabazz. It's not just a crate diggers Holy Grail, but an important artistic and historic document of the St Louis scene. Time & Condition stands alone as a (very) individual, spiritual jazz classic.

We hope this reissue will finally grant these musicians the wider acknowledgement & credit they deserved during their life time.

Original self-released by Malik king this lp has been on many peoples lists of holly grail private-press jazz wants for years , very rarely turning up on ebay and the like.. selling for up to $500.

Malik King was an important part of the St Louis jazz scene of the 70's & 80's.

He studied under Albert Ayler in NY in the early 70s before returning to the Midwest. He was a member of; The Human Arts Ensemble, the Shirley Le Flore's ensemble "Free N' Concert". He also served as musical director of The Creative Arts & Expression Lab, The African Peoples Continuum, & The Black Arts Alliance, The worrier poets, as well as various Emerging Force Ensembles.

Zimbabwe Nkenya (1953-2022), a creative artist and innovative musician, was brought up on army bases in the USA and Spain. He spent 30 years traveling and performing in New York, New Mexico, Arizona and St Louis. playing with a who's who of jazz. In New Mexico he became an integral part of the scene, producing and hosting the KUNM'S radio show "THE HOUSE THAT JAZZ BUILT" .

Luckily Malik self-released "Time & Condition" in 1982, capturing his work together with Qaiyim Shabazz. It's not just a crate diggers Holy Grail, but an important artistic and historic document of the St Louis scene. Time & Condition stands alone as a (very) individual, spiritual jazz classic.

We hope this reissue will finally grant these musicians the wider acknowledgement & credit they deserved during their life time.

Celebrated composer, performer, saxophonist, soloist, band leader, educator, activist, and mixed-media artist Matana Roberts returns with a new installment of their acclaimed Coin Coin series. For over a decade, Coin Coin has been the central artistic project for Roberts, a remarkable exploration of American ancestry and the nature of memory through "sound quilting": modern composition that draws on a wide range of musical sources and traditions, along with research-driven historical and genealogical narratives that yield prose and poetry both spoken and sung, field recordings, and graphic scores. The Quietus declares "when the 12-album cycle is complete, it will be regarded as a singular masterpiece of 21st century sonic and narrative art" and Pitchfork calls it "one of the most provocative ongoing bodies of work by any American musician." Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the garden... is the first new recorded audio chapter since 2019 and centers upon reproductive rights, summoning the story of a family ancestor who died in early adulthood, from a cause kept obfuscated and hushed, shrouded in disinformation and shame. Roberts reimagines diaristic and oral narratives, delivered in strident streams of spoken word that punctuate the hour-long work, with recurring musical themes frequently accompanied by the declarative refrain "my name is your name / our name is their name / we are named / we remember / they forget." As Roberts writes in the accompanying liner notes essay: I find it absolutely disgusting that the same trauma my grand ancestor, whose story we are telling in this chapter, is closely mirroring the experiences of some poor soul today as I write this... Our aforementioned grand, who perished at a young age, leaving her growing children motherless, did not have to die. The negative consequences of her death have reverberated down through generations in my family line, in the same way that a similar resounding might happen for someone else's ancestral line generations from today. While often jazz-adjacent, and with Matana's inimitable saxophone and indomitable voice at the core, Roberts situates Coin Coin outside the Jazz genre and within heterodox pathways of post-modern composition, electroacoustic music, sound collage, experimental voice, and sound art. In the garden... undeniably continues to express and expand upon the project's magnificent iconoclasm, nonetheless being the most jazz-inflected chapter since Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile(2013). Recorded in Brooklyn with a stellar acoustic ensemble that includes Stuart Bogie, Gitanjali Jain, Darius Jones, Matt Lavelle, Mike Pride, Ryan Sawyer, Corey Smythe, and Mazz Swift, abetted by some sparkling pieces featuring modular synthesis courtesy of album producer Kyp Malone (Bent Arcana, TV On The Radio), In the garden... traverses a vivid stylistic array of thematic overtures, excursions and set pieces, ranging from spacious textural invocations to gorgeously tempered horn-led compositions to driving free jazz and exhilarating through composed bursts of cacophony. With storytelling spoken-word lead vocals by Roberts channeled recurringly throughout, alongside various other deployments of layered and group voices, the album is alternately a meditation and fever dream of narrative potency. This is some of the most intense and intensive music Roberts has composed and captured to date, richly conceived and deeply felt, restless yet focused, unflinchingly substantive and unique. Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the garden... channels epigenetic trauma and tragedy with teeming complexity and fierce beauty _ a eulogy, testimony, and celebration, melding music and language in a stunning polychromatic flow of vernaculars and poetics. A powerful work of subjective commemoration and historical-cultural communion that speaks indelibly to the present moment.



2x10” in 350 gsm widespine jacket w/interior colour flood + 300 gsm printed inners + 20”x 10” fold-out insert + DL card

A frequent collaborator of THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN writer/director Martin McDonagh’s, Academy Award®-nominated composer Carter Burwell previously worked on three of his films, starting with In Bruges. He also worked on Seven Psychopaths, as well as his Oscar-nominated score for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, their last collaboration.

For THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN, McDonagh already had, for one section of the film, a piece in mind that’s performed by a Balinese gamelan ensemble – mostly metallic instruments. Taking that inspiration, Burwell weaved gamelin instruments alongside the score’s three main instruments: the celeste – a keyboard that plays bell sounds, the harp, and the flute to create the film’s highly-acclaimed score.

“The score to Banshees is, like its slow simmering conflict, delicate and nuanced and heartbreaking all at once,” said Mondo Creative Director Mo Shafeek..” It takes small steps backwards and forwards like crashing waves on a lonely island, strings and woodwinds dancing with one another, in a waltz. The whole score plays like a dance between two overlapping voices - occasionally harmonizing, but never connecting. Occasionally beautiful, but always a bit melancholy.”

Repress!

1981 SYNTH CLASSIC BY JAPANESE KEYBOARD WIZARD AND YMO PROGRAMMER HIDEKI MATSUTAKE REISSUED OUTSIDE OF JAPAN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 40 YEARS. REMASTERED FROM THE ORIGINAL TAPES WITH STRIKING ORIGINAL ARTWORK BY LEGENDARY ILLUSTRATOR PATER SATO INCLUDING ITS STUNNING FULLY ILLUSTRATED
8-PAGE BOOKLET

His name may not be instantly familiar, but Hideki Matsutake has had a huge influence over Electronic music. Starting his career as the assistant of Japanese Electronic Music master Isao Tomita in the early 70s, he went on to work with Ryuichi Sakamoto and then Yellow Magic Orchestra as their keyboard programmer and unofficial fourth member. In 1981 he started his own Logic System project recording "Venus" that year in Los Angeles with Don Grusin, Nathan East and Michael Boddicker, brilliantly mixing Synth Funk, Ambient and Boogie with a touch of Fusion Jazz predating Vaporwave by a mere 30 years. Wewantsounds is delighted to reissue this visionary album, which
comes remastered from the original tapes and features Pater Sato stunning artwork including the rare beautiful 8-page insert with an exclusive interview of Hideki Matsutake by Hashim Kotaro Bharoocha.
The early 80s were prolific for Hideki Matsutake. As the go-to keyboard programmer for the tokyo music scene, he worked on Akiko Yano's "Gohan Ga Dekitayo", YMO's "BGM", Ryuichi Sakamoto's "B-2 Unit", Mkwaju Ensemble's "Mkwaju" and found time to record two Logic System albums in 1981. While the first album, "Logic" had a harder techno feel, the second one "Venus" was different affair. Recorded in Los Angeles at the new state of the art Yamaha Studio, it was loosely themed on the Greek goddess Venus and had a funkier more organic sound. For the album Matsutake had asked a handful of American musicians to provide songs he would then add his synth magic touch to. Michael Boddicker, Don Grusin, Nathan East and Roger Powell duly complied and also played on the album.

The updated sound was achieved by switching from the Moog III to the E-mu modular System (which Matsutake brought over to LA) and other synths like the Prophet 5, the Roland MC-8 and TR 808 and the Yamaha GS-1, a forerunner of the DX7.

The result is an amazing futuristic mix of electronic music and early 80s funk, announcing many genres to come, from techno and house to French electro and Vaporwave. From the breezy ambient synth of "I Love You" to the city pop edge of "Be Yourself" (originally written by Nathan East for Debra Laws) and the vocoder-led Daft Punk-ish "Take A Chance", Venus is a fascinating album that both pushes the boundaries of electronic music and is yet strangely accessible and beautiful.

The other key elements of Venus is the artwork designed by Japanese legendary illustrator Pater Sato. Sato had started in Japan in the early 70s doing many album covers for Japanese artists including Tatsuro Yamashita's cult Spacy LP before moving to New York in 1979 to pursue a career in fashion and advertising. His airbrush style became hugely influential over the years and in 2018, Stella McCartney dedicated a whole Men’s collection based on his Venus. Star make up artist Pat McGrath also regularly posts his artwork to her 3 million fans on her instagram.

The original album came with a beautiful 8-panel insert illustrated by Sato which Wewantsounds has reproduced on this deluxe reissue also featuring remastered sound, OBI strip and a second insert featuring credits and line up plus liner notes by Hashim Bharoocha. The notes will feature an exclusive interview with Hideki Matsutake reminiscing about the making of this visionary album which Wewantsounds is delighted to reissue.

Toy Tonics brings back the Kapote album. 10 dancefloor tracks originally released 2019 on the „What it is“ album. Now reworked, re edited and with 2 new tracks.

House music, but with a heavy jazz-funk, brasil, lofi - influence. A mood that reminds early Moodymann, Kerri Chandler or 1990ies Paris stuff. Loft Disco and Indie House.
When this album came out originally 3 years ago it caught the attention of many great DJs. DJ Harvey was playing „Jaas Func Haus“ a lot at Pike in Ibiza and Gerd Janson, Motor City Drum Ensemble, Kenny Dope and Blessed Madonna were filmed playing other tracks from the album.

Kapote doesn’t release much music as he is mainly involved in the Toy Tonics label development, creative direction and is also in many productions of other artists that release on Toy Tonics. Originally a piano and art student, he later discovered DJing, nightlife, electronic music and by now is doing what he does with Toy Tonics with a couple of friends and like-minded producers.

Kapote’s real name is Mathias Modica and if you google this you will find out he has been doing music before Toy Tonics under the name of Munk. Doing another label called Gomma Records. Where he and some friends already created a little universe based on electronic music, street art, DIY culture, shirt design, underground exhibitions. Mathias aka Kapote aka Munk has produced and released records with artists like Peaches, James Muprhy and Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem, The Rammellzee and WhoMadeWho. This is the past. The future will be new Kapote stuff currently in the making with Cody Currie and Sam Ruffillo. Meanwhile check out WHAT IT IS – 2nd VERSION.

Originally released on Polydor Records in August 1981, it remains a very special and discrete record and has gone on to achieve a cult status separate from the rest of their august catalogue.

Formed at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama by way of Paris and the Isle Of Wight, Level 42 marked the union of four talented friends – Mark King, Mike Lindup, and brothers Phil and Roland 'Boon' Gould – complete with Wally Badarou, their very own studio-based synthesiser whizz-kid. From building a fervent following through the nascent Britfunk scene, they signed to Polydor and went on to make a series of fascinating albums.

The sheer invention, melody and imagination of this four-piece was astounding, aided by their secret weapon, French-Belizean Badarou, whom the band had met playing sessions for M, Robin Scott's art-disco ensemble. Although Level 42 had recorded – and made waves – for indie label Elite, they signed to Polydor and released this album, with three of their original calling cards, Starchild, Turn It On and the mighty, UK Top 40 breaching Love Games.

By the mid 80s Level 42 had become arena-filling superstars, with their commercial pop-funk with everyman lyrics that delighted fans not just in Europe, but also in America, too. Hear the roots of that on this frequently surprising, always entertaining debut album. Think of this album as the missing link between Talking Heads and Herbie Hancock.

Out of print on LP for a number of years, this re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1981 Polydor UK release with insert and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

Committed to tradition, yet set on innovation, Super Duty Tough Work is a constantly evolving, art-rap ensemble with their intentions set on shaking up the industry and providing offerings that elevate joy, while standing in opposition to the homicidal capitalist ideals of the ruling class and their aspiring accomplices.

Rooted in the tradition of Black American resistance arts, Super Duty Tough Work is known for their scathing wit and thorough analysis, pushing their radical politic of revolution, party, and bullshit - both on record and on stage.

Inspired by the dirty jazz sample sound of 90s east coast hip hop, Super Duty Tough Work are the live incarnation of hip hop culture's quintessential era, appearing as a band but manifesting a sound that's more akin to something straight out of an MPC or SP-404 sampler.

Revered for their methodically curated sets, Super Duty Tough Work mixes laidback rap action and razor- sharp delivery with hypnotic loops and effortless transitions, keeping audiences on their feet and transfixed in anticipation for what's coming next.

Simply put: internationalism is the theme, liberation through hedonism is the dream, and satisfaction is guaranteed from the team whose specialty is taking audiences on a journey through a culture where loops are slayed and jewels are the tools of the trade.

Super Duty Tough Work. Paradigm Shift. Worldwide 9/8 via Next Door Records.

When one of South Africa's most sought after trumpet players steps forward after a career alongside the very best in the International jazz scene, you know it's going to be a special record.

Dennis Mpale was one of South Africa's heavyweights. You'll find his name springing up on every important South African jazz record and billing since the 1960's. Chris McGregor's iconic Jazz/The African Sound LP, Abdullah Ibrahim's Dollar Brand, Barney Rachabane in the highly influential ensemble Roots, and early work in house bands appearing alongside Nick Moyake in The Soul jazz Men to name just a few. His trumpet playing had character, an extension of the body and amplifier of that great South African sound.

Leaving South Africa during Apartheid as a strong supporter and member of the ANC, Dennis made London his home, joining the newly established SA Jazz scene and standing in solidarity against the oppressions back in Africa.

Moving between London and South Africa during the 70's and 80's It wasn't till the early 1990's when Dennis finally settled again to make his biggest transition to solo artist, redefining his Jazz past and putting a heavy kwaito infused house slammer on the agenda. 1994s 'Paying My Bills' (a title maybe more appropriate now than it ever has been) is a mighty jazz kwaito house effort: From the heavy synth beat and gorgeous floating solo opener of 'Paying My Bills', to the highly infectious vocal phrasing on thumping house anthem 'Take My Time'. Paying My Bills takes the sensibilities of a jazz maestro and pairs it with one of South Africa's biggest producers Peter 'Hitman' Moticoe, creating the perfect recipe for a certified summer slammer.

Having previously only ever been released on CD, this is the first ever vinyl pressing of the album (hazy early test pressings lurk on a small number of lucky shelves). Vinyl mastering is handled by The Carvery's very own Frank Merritt here in London, with the resulting tracks generously split over 2 discs to fully appreciate the swampy heavy dub bass drolls for full dancefloor effect. It's loud and punchy and makes space for those glorious trumpet improvisations while keeping the synth refrains and heavy bass thumping.

Early plays include resident NTS DJ's and a feature on Palms Trax Radio 1 residency with surely more support to follow.