Buscar:ex society

“I hope you die by my side, the two of us at the exact same time, I hope we die not long from now, the two of us at the exact same time”
By the time Molly Nilsson released History, she had already established a fledgling cult status built on homemade YouTube videos and home-burnt Cdrs. Writing from a distance, it’s clear that History is the first classic album in her canon and arguably a classic of the 21st Century underground music panorama.While the methodology on History hadn’t changed from Nilsson’s previous 3 albums – it was recorded solo at The Lighthouse, Nilsson’s home studio based on a Berlin crossroads – on this record the songwriting reached a new peak and the emotional scythe cut deeper. Here, Nilsson managed to combine a cosmic, outward looking perspective with an intimate knowledge of the human condition and its place in these turbulent times. In truth, no other songwriter has excavated the modern psyche so clearly and perfectly.
The tracklist to Nilsson’s fourth album reads as an early greatest hits for Molly Nilsson followers and also serves as the perfect entry point to a whole world the artist has been building for the last 10 years. In Real Life crystalises the millenial obsession with relationships built online, with a generation paying for the baby boomer’s excesses with their anxiety towards the harshness of every day life. It’s a call to arms for a generation who fell in love on Skype. On I Hope You Die, one of Molly Nilsson’s most iconic songs, the songwriter flips the song title into a tale of doomed romance, a relationship based on discommunications and the thrill of the other. It’s also one of the most heartfelt songs full of pathos written by anyone, an ode to obsession. Doomed romance, life lived on the flipside of day and the role of the outsider in society are themes that crop up through-out History. On
Bottles Of Tomorrow, the narrator is sweeping up, in love with the night and examining the remains a society leaves behind.
On City Of Atlantis, Nilsson veers from the plaintive balladry she had begun to make her name with, embracing trance-like synth and dance music details to create an unlikely anthem using the mythological city as a means to comment on the patriarchal rendering of history by power. With by now trademark panache, she turns complicated subject matter into a glorious song that transforms into an ecstatic pop moment.
Hotel Home, another Nilsson classic, paints loneliness not as a debilitating anxiety, but as a powerful to that propels the artist forward through her travels. It’s a song that hints at an endearing self-awareness also; the writer is never at home, living life on the road, content that “the world will find me when the time is ripe.”
There’s never been a greater time.

Sven Torstenson's notorious Drugs is a loopdigga's fever dream, bursting with breaks for days and featuring possibly the most iconic cover of all library music's cult classics. First released in 1980, it's now a hyper-rare and seriously sought-after electronic album full of experimental soundscapes and samples just waiting to be flipped. It's both terrifying and terrifyingly good. So much so, it's been brilliantly sampled by Kendrick Lamar and Chance The Rapper.

The sleeve describes Drugs as containing "the newest dimensions of electronic sounds. Dramatic underscores for all problems of today's life and society, at the border between reality and delusion." That's pretty spot-on. The fast moving "Euphoria" is an incredible, unignorable opener. It's loaded with disorientating effects and really needs to be heard to be believed. It's followed by the gorgeous "Soft Hallucinations", containing quiet, meditative and beautiful sounds - as the title suggests. One listen and you'll want to live in the warm embrace of this beatless, harmonic gem. Sinister squelchy synth stabs don't distract from the sheer beauty of the track's main (gentle) thrust. They only serve to elevate its trippy magic.

Next up, "Sky Move"'s agitated and repetitive rhythm makes it an intense listen but with a broad melody that will appeal to many. "Destroyed Dreams" utilises a muffled church organ and it sounds heavenly to begin with but it gradually invites increasingly distorted elements. Yes, you've had trips like this, we're pretty certain. Mental! Talking of bad trips, never have they sounded so good as "Horror Trip"; this fractured drama-synth just needs some some dusty beats to hold it up - get involved.

"Floating Illusions" almost sounds like a beatless Spiritualized bomb from the early-mid 90s; melodic, synthy, church organ-drenched. The mournful, dramatic "Lost Chance" pulses along on a bed of acidy synths whilst "The Morning After" is the sonic equivalent of the extreme fear and doom experienced in the aftermath of the previous night's carnage. Whilst somewhat uncomfortable listening, again, it's pretty compelling thanks to the myriad effects being expertly utilised. Fascinating. The sprawling, fragmented "Random Thoughts" is described as containing "confused melody phrases" - yeah, pretty much sums this one up.

The B-Side is ushered in by "Heroin" and it's as sketchy as you might think, all mysterious minor chords with a dominating - but not overbearing - bass refrain. Next up, the dream-like synthy fanfare of "Night Trip" climaxes after a few minutes of dramatic, ecclesiastical sounds whilst "Day Trip" layers its melody over a repetitive rhythmic base.

Next up, one of the *REAL* highlights makes itself known. Absolutely not to be missed, "Dealer's Corner" is all shifting tenors from quiet to hectic and back around again. The hectic parts are like a totally synthed-out-the-eyeballs jazz-funk collective wigging out with the latest electronic toys from 1980. This one totally SMOKES.

The dramatic "Sad And Hopeless" is appositely replete with dissonant, minor church-organ chords whilst "Riding Pegasus" uses a creepy ostinato bass melody to create irrational bleepy menace that's ripe for sampling. The penultimate track, "Hopeless Chaos" is another disorientating trip, a bleepy confection of sounds and phrases whilst closer "Goin' Mad" is all electronic percussion with an unpleasant rhthymic feel and irritating melody. Music to annoy your partner with!

Established in Munich in 1965 by Gerard and Rotheide Narholz, Sonoton introduced library music to Germany. Initially intended to cater to the country's new TV market, the library also provided an avenue for Gerhard Narholz's astonishing musical prolificacy, and soon became a haven for a wide range of European composers and musicians. In 1969, Sonoton struck a deal with the British label Berry Music for international publishing rights, exposing its catalog to a worldwide audience; when Berry was bought out by EMI in 1973, Sonoton transitioned into a full-fledged international label, with successes in the library and commercial fields and many innovations to its credit. Now a worldwide operation with hundreds of producers and composers under its employ, Sonoton nonetheless remains an independently run business still helmed by its founders - a remarkable achievement in an era when nearly every other major library has been absorbed by a multinational conglomerate.

The audio for Drugs has been remastered by Be With regular Simon Francis, ensuring this release sounds better than ever. Cicely Balston's expert skills have made sure nothing is lost in the cut whilst the original, iconic sleeve has been restored here at Be With HQ as the finishing touch to this long overdue re-issue.

"You, Me, & The Violence" explodes out of the gates with "Pilori", a statement of personal independence among society's faults and fractures. Birds In Row continue down this road, expressing disdain in songs like "Cages", "Guillotine", and "Walter Freeman". All of them musically harboring a tangle of emotional vocals and rabid distortion. Just when it feels like the album is almost too overpowering, Birds In Row unfurl a moment of clarity in "Last Last Chance", a haunting guitar and vocal break. The control of their dynamics is masterful work. "You, Me, & The Violence" and "Grey Hair" are near perfect examples of this, shifting between searing and serene in tone. And if you weren't in awe of Birds In Row in the first eleven songs, the twelve minute closer "Lovers Have Their Say" will leave you floored.

"You, Me, & The Violence" explodes out of the gates with "Pilori", a statement of personal independence among society's faults and fractures. Birds In Row continue down this road, expressing disdain in songs like "Cages", "Guillotine", and "Walter Freeman". All of them musically harboring a tangle of emotional vocals and rabid distortion. Just when it feels like the album is almost too overpowering, Birds In Row unfurl a moment of clarity in "Last Last Chance", a haunting guitar and vocal break. The control of their dynamics is masterful work. "You, Me, & The Violence" and "Grey Hair" are near perfect examples of this, shifting between searing and serene in tone. And if you weren't in awe of Birds In Row in the first eleven songs, the twelve minute closer "Lovers Have Their Say" will leave you floored.

Repress!

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytumcomosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.

The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’snew renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

Folk Magic Band represents one of the most interesting and original, yet lesser-known experiences of the italian jazz scene of the 1970s. In the legendary alternative environment of the Folk Studio in Rome, an open 18-members lineup is inspired by the free jazz of its time, a music that encompasses the whole world and its polychromy of sound. The echo seems to resonate the pan-ethnic motifs of Don Cherry and his Organic Music Society, but also the spiritual jazz of Pharoas Sanders and the orchestrations of the Sun Ra Arkestra. The textures chase a chinese melody, ignite with african scents and south american jungles, flow into fusion violin drifts a la Archie Shepp's Attic Blues or Mingus-like orchestral sections. The fascination of this collective affair still strikes for its playful and ironic nature, still impressing for its strength and willingness to open and influence new directions.

Breaking Teeth (3rd Single / Will have a music video & Reddit AMA) Breaking Teeth is the 3rd of 4 singles from their new album The Fear Of Letting Go. Tyler Tate (vox) describes this track as the heaviest song on the record and sounds simply - "pissed off". "When I wrote the lyrics I was so fed up with the world & my life in general. Set back after set back, problems around every corner. Living should be simpler but the society we live in prevents that. We should all be pissed about it.” Band will do Reddit AMA & MV Visualizer We're All Left Suffereing (2nd Single / With Album announce) 'We're All Left Suffering' is the second of four singles from Michigan based metalcore band Hollow Front's upcoming album 'The Fear Of Letting Go'. The release follows their 2022 album ‘The Price Of Dreaming’ (#9 Current Hard Music Albums, #35 Current Digital Albums, #42 Independent, # 48 Current Rock Albums) which received praise from New Noise “a blistering and bruising experience, evoking myriad emotions and conveying a heady and moving blend of euphoria and despair.” and RockNLoad “Hollow Front has dropped nothing short of a phenomenal album with The Price of Dreaming. While the release doesn’t do anything new, it takes an already established formula and polishes it into a perfect shine. If you’re a fan of any of the modern Metalcore titans, you’ll love this release, hopefully as much as I do. Utterly brilliant.” 'We're All Left Suffering' is the first song the band has released since the announce of Dakota Alvarez's departure (former guitarist/singer) and marks the next chapter in the bands journey. The song will be accompanied by a music video and lined up with the announce of their forthcoming record "The Fear Of Letting Go" (Out October 27th). Lead vocalist states “This track is an anthem for the broken spirited. We live in a world riddled with heartache and constant struggle. Whether mentally, physically, or financially; we area collective of human beings doing our best to survive. I think with everything that’s happened in the world over these last three years, things might seem hopeless. It feels like the whole world has gone mad, and we’re all just here suffering along for the ride. It can be incredibly discouraging being a human in today’s social and economic climate. So I think this song is for those people who are sick of dealing with the bullshit life is throwing at them, and just want to truly breathe for once.”

As the music industry continuously evolves, pushing boundaries and challenging conventions, artists like Michael Peter Olsen emerge to redefine the very essence of their chosen instruments. With an
impressive career spanning nearly three decades, Olsen has had mainstream exposure through collaborations with renowned artists like Drake, Ed Sheeran, and Arcade Fire and developed multifaceted talents as a player, producer, composer, and Grammy-nominated songwriter.

However, it is his electric cello based solo project, which debuted in a grimy basement club in Berlin in 2019, and his 2021 album “Yearning Flow'' that truly showcased his desire to subvert expectations of what a cello can be. With the release of "Narrative of a Nervous System," Olsen taps into the prevailing sense of disconnection in modern society, accentuated by the recent pandemic. The record delves into the increasing divisions between the mind and body, metaphorically capturing the struggles many individuals face with their mental health.

Olsen aims to bridge this disconnect through his music,
creating a powerful fusion of sonic and visual elements. While the album is instrumental and conceptually-driven, Olsen remains committed to making the music accessible and relatable. Olsen's
vision is further realized through the inclusion of special guests Owen Pallet, Màiri Chaimbeul, alaska B, and Zoon, each representing older music traditions. Celtic, European, North American Indigenous,
and Traditional Chinese are explored and stretched, offering a modern perspective on ancient intuitively based traditions. While Michael Peter Olsen dismantles the preconceived notions surrounding the cello, he continues to create evocative emotional music.

"Narrative of a Nervous System" invites listeners to explore the disconnections between mind and body, and offers a transformative musical journey that resonates with both the modern world and ancient traditions. “Essentially I’m trying to destroy the cello, but do it in a nice way”

The popularity of speed/thrash metal in the late 80's and early 90's is undeniable.

After the demise in the late 80's of cult speed metal band BLOODLUST, Sandy K and John Lisi embarked on a new project, remaining true to their roots in fierce and fast metal. With the addition of Jeff Mohr and A.J. Cavalier to the group, LAST RITES emerged, wanting to assert themselves as a "schizophrenic speed metal" band.

And that's exactly what we can expect from LAST RITES! In this vinyl release, where we put together the band's two cassette recordings ("Don't Be Denied" from 1990 and "Agony" from 1991), we can find a perfect example of the speed/thrash of the turn of that decade: fierce, intense and uncompromising, roaming on themes of personal despair and social criticism

BLUE-BLACK COLOURED VINYL! LIMITED TO 100 UNITS
Irakli’s new album is due to come out October 2023 on Live at Robert Johnson. Mechanical Moon is a retrofuturistic adventure of beautiful compositions and pulsating rhythms which are weaved together over the span of eight tracks.

We are immersed into evocative atmospheres, full of intricate textures. This is techno where you close your eyes and board an ocean liner that slowly rises and floats towards the moon.

Happy human with sad eyes roamed the neon-lit streets of the artificial island. This section of the metropolis had been designed as a necessity more than any other amenities. It had been allocated a budget surpassing the one for waste management in a city housing over a billion inhabitants.

Society had managed to eradicate love, yet it still grappled with untamed primal instincts such as dancing, sex, or violence. The island provided a discreet haven, away from the prying eyes of telescreens that silently stared into all souls. Similar to Las Vegas centuries ago, it was a safe space where anything was fair game.

Once there, night time lasted all day. Everything retained an analog essence. Music emanated from vintage record players. Amidst the laughter and tears, the artificial glow of the mechanical moon had become the last reminder of life outside.

A life so repetitive that he had been consumed by the desire to transform into a machine or a human satellite. Yet, breaking the cycle in such a manner remained impossible. And so, he wandered for hours on the island, among the weary faces.

Happy as one could be.

Tallahassee, FL singer-songwriter Sarah Morrison's debut studio album
Attachment Figure depicts the strangeness of exploring new
relationships with subtle and spacious electronic production - As a
former live keyboardist in Locate S,1, Morrison co-produced Attachment
Figure with fellow bandmates Ross Brand and Clayton Rychlik, both of
whom also play in Of Montreal's backing band
She was motivated to experiment with looser song structures and more
unconventional chord progressions by her collaborators' fondness for avantgarde jazz, as well as Locate S,1 frontwoman Christina Schneider's idiosyncratic
writing style.
Throughout the album, echoing keys, woodwinds, and guitar ripple like a moonlit
lake from which Morrison's voice emerges. Her presence is spectral, yet
conversational, willing to conjure concrete imagery of mango- flavored vitamins
and the warmth of phone chargers alongside ghost stories of mannequin corpses
and epistolary curses, a balance shaped by an obsession with the theatrical
sincerity of Kate Bush and Mark Hollis.
Lyrically, Attachment Figure meditates on questions about identity, personal
growth, and helplessness - whether within a relationship or the oppressive
structures of society itself - often rooted in Morrison's experiences growing up in
the South. "There's a connection between Southern hospitality and femininity and
just allowing things to happen," Morrison says. "I've been in many relationships
with people who have used that 'southern charm' to their advantage. I think a lot
of people, non- men in particular, put on this charm instinctively. It's a defense
mechanism that I was interested in studying."
Attachment Figure is perpetually suspended between states of being, harmony
and dissonance, and contradictory sentiments we all hold as we enter into the
arms of someone new, but ultimately, it's guided by a desire for authentic love--
and a flair for intricate, intuitive songcraft.

Slave To Society pays homage to the legendary cultural theorist and philosopher, Mark Fisher. Diving into some of the conceptual ideas of Fisher’s literature and philosophy, you'll feel like you're wandering through a post-apocalyptic landscape in the future with this hard hitting, haunting and atmospheric piece.

‘The Future That Never Arrived’ experience the paranoia and anxiety of the digital age with this gritty and dissonant track. Fisher's ideas about technology's impact on society come to life in a sonic onslaught.
‘Cyberspace’ exploration of desire and its endless repetition. The frenetic energy of this track mirrors the insatiable hunger of consumer culture.
’Is There No Alternative’ the title track offers a sense of reflection and departure. It echoes Fisher's thoughts on escaping the boundaries of the present moment.
‘Ghosts Of My Life’ this track encapsulates Fisher's critique of our modern capitalist society. The heavy beats mirror the relentless grind of capitalism, while the haunting melodies reflect the loss of authentic experiences.

Cybotron has re-emerged in our contemporary cybercultural age when artifactual futures begin a transition into a new era of "Meta".

By combining their knowledge of philosophy, science fiction, and mechanical engineering, at a time when electronic instrument companies were only just beginning to distribute their products to the masses, two prosumer audio technicians named Juan Atkins and Rik Davis were able to re-engineer Cybotron – a combination of the words “Cyborg” and “Cyclotron” (an atomic particle accelerator) – to be used as a home studio performance music that would change the course of independently produced and distributed electronic music.

Dissolving the boundary between singer, songwriter, and producer, Juan Atkins named Cybotron’s future forward funkadelic sound “techno” in reference to Alvin Toffler’s concept of unlikely “techno rebels” against technocracy. Techno is music that sounds like technology, and its purpose was to help society survive our collision with a universally felt “future shock” by inserting an audio virus into the cultural matrix.

Techno’s blueprint spread across the Detroit-Berlin Axis between Metroplex and Tresor. As human society began its transition from a post-industrial to an information-based market economy, Cybotron enabled a thorough system override of the human senses towards a tangible man-machine hybridity and showed the world how to channel their emotions and imaginations into new sound technologies and create new ‘sonic’ spatialities where listeners can transport themselves out of the physical world into the future. The cover of their debut album Enter (1983) transmitted a fragmented view of a body in motion being digitized mid-stride, dissolving physical and virtual reality into sonic fiction.

Today, the man-machine hybridity of Cybotron is still the truest form of techno, coevolving in conversation with the technological music they created and inspired. The latest data disk marks a new chapter that reflects a techgnostic musical expression of the knowledge acquired during their decades-long hiatus. Unlike the dance music industrial replications of the Model 500 formula, acknowledging the content marketing expectations that segments music into specific, sellable genres, this techno music is self-aware. Cybotron processes dance music tropes spawned from its very own blueprint with a meta-tactical precision out of sync with our current rave new world.

Cybotron’s return demonstrates a studied engagement with what techno was and should be with a peerless update of Juan Atkins’ initial inventive idea of do-it-yourself electrically reengineered music xeroxed onto both sides of the 12” – uploaded directly into the alleys of your mind.
- The Rhythmanalyst

TOP PRIORTY RELEASE. Escape Music is delighted to announce the release date for the long awaited Jelusick debut album title “Follow The Blind Man” featuring Dino Jelusick the most well loved and respected vocalist in the Rock World! will be available on CD, Vinyl, and digital platforms! The Vinyl will be limited edition to 500 copies only! “Blade Bullet” colour and all will be numbered 1-500.Jelusick is: Dino Jelusick – vocals, keyboards, guitar / Ivan Keller – guitar / Luka Broderick – bass, backing vocals / Mario Lepoglavec – drums, backing vocals / Produced by Dino Jelusick, Mixed and Mastered by Simon Jovanovic, Executive Producer Dario Jelusic - JELUSICK played on 4 European tours during 2021- 2023 which also included Guitar Scene festival 2021 where they played with all star band together with John Norum and Gus G. The same line up also played there in 2022 and shared the stage and jammed with Airbourne, Johnny Depp & Jeff Back, Black Label Society, and Beth Hart. Dino Jelusick, born 4 June 1992, is a Croatian rock singer, musician, and songwriter. He was the founder, principal songwriter and lead singer of hard rock band Animal Drive, which was formed in 2012. and dissolved in 2020. Since 2016 Dino became a permanent member of American rock band Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He also worked with Gus G, Mike Mangini, George Lynch, Will Hunt, Michael Romeo, Jeff Scott Soto, Joel Hoekstra, Steve Smith, Jon Oliva, Kip Winger, John Macaluso, Deen Castronovo, Phil Demmel, Mike Portnoy, Henrik Linder, Justin Johnson, Tony Franklin, Kyle Hughes, Virgil Donati, Kiko Loureiro, Jordan Rudess, David Coverdale, Tommy Aldridge, Reb Beach, Michele Luppi, Lachy Doley etc. On July 27th, 2021, upon direct phone call from David Coverdale shortly after that David announced that Dino had become the new member of Whitesnake! In 2009 he started recording a new studio album in Melbourne, Australia which was finalised with producer Robert Ahrling in Malmö, Sweden. The album named “Living My Own Life” was released in August 2011. Between 2012 and 2013 Dino was hired to take part in an international project in South Africa named “Synkropation” where he was featured in several songs and played to an audience of 50.000 people in Johannesburg and also participated in two rock operas. In 2015, American drummer John Macaluso (Ark) invited him as singer and the keyboardist for his new American-Croatian band Stone Leaders. During this time, Dino was also a member of Croatian metal band The Ralph with whom he released the album “Enter Escape” in February 2017. In February 2016 he was noticed by American rock band Trans-Siberian Orchestra. After auditioning and meeting with producer Paul O’Neill and Dino was chosen to join the group. 2018 his band Animal Drive released debut album, “Bite!”, to critical acclaim. April 2019, they released a covers EP titled “Back to the Roots”. Dino was also featured singer on two songs on Magnus Karlsson “Free Fall” album. 2020 Dino Joined ex-Krokus members and Mandy Mayer (Gotthard, Asia, Unisonic…) for a concert project named Gotus and they released a video for the song “Souls Alive” (Unisonic). July 2021 Michael Romeo, guitar master from NY insisted that Dino should sing on his new album “War of the Worlds part 2” and it became a great and successful collaboration. 2022 Dino toured Europe with Whitesnake. As the last part of the EU tour was cancelled due to some DC health issues, Dino joined The Dead Daisies tour replacing Glenn Hughes who got unwell at the end of November 2022.A 2 year long legal battle with Dino’s ex-label was over and he immediately started recording new songs for his band JELUSICK…Welcome back Dino!

* 6 melodic instrumental tracks presented in the traditional extended “discomix” showcase dub style, that lean heavily towards the sounds of late 70’s / early 80’s.
* The melodica carries echoes of Augustus Pablo, while the acoustic guitar give the recordings a lighter, more atmospheric touch - reminiscent of Fazal Prendergast - before the dub mixes come in and cause havoc in a King Tubby’s/Scientist style.
* Guiding Shield comprises of producers Liam McGurk from Partial Records and Dougie Wardrop from Conscious Sounds who both share instrument credits and production duties.

The Mapendo album of the Mighty Cavaliers, up to today, has been shrouded in mystery. If you look at the original cover of this very rare Kenyan funk-infused album all you will find are the names of the engineer and the producer, as EMI Kenya omitted the names of the musicians and the songwriters. Digging deeper a rather sinister story of deceit develops whereby Mapendo becomes symbolic for all what was wrong about the Kenyan record industry in the 1970s, and the music industry in Africa as a whole. As this maltreatment of artists proved endemic throughout the continent, although little talked about.

One of the three surviving members of the Mighty Cavaliers, bass player Bonnie Wanda - who started his career in 1971 with Gloria Africana - vividly remembers participating in the recording of the two albums the band made in 1976 and 1977 - Fisherman and Mapendo - and how they, especially on the last album, got short-changed by shrewd record label executives. In the 1960s it was mostly Indian and European record bosses that called the shots and usually gave musicians the chance of a one-off payment for their session time and recorded songs or wait for - hopefully - a generous royalty check. In most cases records didn't sell more than a thousand copies with an occasional hit selling in the tens of thousands, so musicians were reluctant to register themselves with the Music Copyright Society of Kenya. Although without doing so one couldn't receive royalties.

'For two years the Mighty Cavaliers performed five nights a week at the Starlight Club for five hour sets.

The re-release of Mapendo, the first of the German Want Some Records label, is another exciting puzzle piece in the tapestry of groovy Kenyan music. It proves that there are still great gems out there to be re-discovered for audiences worldwide.

Text written by Michiel van Oosterhout

This Album is dedicated to the musicians
Bonnie Wanda, Rashid Salim, Vuli Yeni, Juma Waweru Njuguna and Athmani 'guitar boy'."

Rarely could a project be called such a culmination point of a career as what Kris Defoort presents with Pieces of Peace. Just about all the backgrounds, influences and acquaintances the iconic Belgian composer and improvising pianist collected throughout his long career come together in this distinct and original musical adventure.

Together with vocal artist Veronika Harcsa and three fellow musicians, he forms a chamber orchestra in the strict sense of the word, although they are by no means restricted to that one idiom. As an experienced opera and classical composer, Kris Defoort dribbles the timbres, harmonies, dynamics and, if you like, drama of a complete (opera) orchestra through these compositions, supplemented by an inescapable layer of jazz, obviously the other form of music that remains continuously prominent in Kris' life and DNA.

As always in his work, also improvisation is added as a core element, not least thanks to the voice and inventive personality of Hungarian vocalist Veronika Harcsa, a true European reference in this field. This duo has worked together regularly over the past decade, including for Diving Poet Society (2017, W.E.R.F.148) and in DUET: pure vocal and piano improvisations, on poems by Theodor Roethke, Peter Verhelst and William Blake.

Those musical ideas formed the framework when composing the final new song cycle Pieces of Peace. The duet was then quickly expanded into a quintet, with Lode Vercampt on cello, Jean-Philippe Poncin on clarinets and Benjamin Sauzereau on electric guitar. These three musicians are as well compagnons de route of Kris has since many years, allowing him to incorporate each one's own playing style in a special way throughout these compositions: therefore, the entire orchestral spectrum (woodwinds, strings, percussion) is thus prominently represented through these five instruments.

Intimate and joyful, playful and complex, lyrical and rhythmic, ... and layered and full of detail, each track on the eponymous record unfolds like a story in itself. They are all states of emotions, impressions from real life - another reference to opera. They are also an ode to the voice, the human instrument par excellence. As improvised compositions (or composed improvisations?), Pieces of Peace represents a constant evolution that offers hope, softness and inspiration in times when all this sometimes dares to be lacking.

After a busy and prolific work on his acoustic-electronic project and soundtrack compositions, Mischa Blanos wears again his clubbing outfit, returning with a three track EP for his techno and live electronics awaiting crowd in the dancing arena. Linear EP evokes the ethereal experience of clubbing, where time feels like grinding to a halt as if plunging through an open door into a new world.

Taking the vantage point of the dancefloor, Mischa Blanos recalls entering this space where time doesn't play a heavy role anymore. Be it two hours or eight in a nightclub, be it day or night, dusk or dawn, one doesn't seek time traveling but time stopping, as a way to relieve the time burden in our high-speed society. We tend to perceive that time is running at a faster pace, but time itself does not pass, what passes are things and living beings. Time is neither linear nor circular, time does not flow or move, but allows us to do so. And it is here on the dance floor that this reality can be felt.

Everything is moving, vibrating and changing from the flashing lights to the loud decibel kicks and everyone is both audience and performer on the stage. They all belong to the scene. Sometimes this could mean an individual experience, being completely absorbed in dancing or a parallel space, and other times it means togetherness, feeling an integral part of the experience. In his techno dedicated Linear EP Mischa Blanos speaks about clubbing as a form of escapism, but a form that can help us to reach a better understanding of our relationship with time.

In 1995 the self-titled full-length debut of Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung (DAAU) was released. The band consisted of four young, 'classically derailed' musicians who played their own compositions with acoustic instruments such as violin, cello, clarinet and accordion. Their work contained influences from Roma music, Eastern European folk, klezmer and jazz, but was performed with the energy, rebellious spirit and Sturm und Drang of a bona fide punk band. DAAU was part of the fertile Antwerp scene, which also produced dEUS, Zita Swoon and Kiss My Jazz, and soon signed an international record deal with Sony Classical.

The group's influential first record, which has been out of print for a while, is now finally being released again and is available on vinyl for the very first time.

In those early days, DAAU consisted of four young, classically trained musicians who tackled their instrumental compositions with a true punk spirit. 'If we'd had guitars, bass or drums at that time, we would probably have been just another rock band', says accordionist Roel Van Camp, who, together with his schoolmates Buni Lenski on violin, the latter's brother Simon on cello and Han Stubbe on clarinet made up the Antwerp quartet. 'With our acoustic instruments we tried to create our own version of the music we loved listening to, from sixties rock and prog to new wave.'

The quartet, which initially played in streets and cafes, appealed to a diverse audience and sometimes joked that they were a classically trained unit that had 'gone off the rails'. 'As befits teenagers, we wanted to shake things up', Stubbe remembers, 'even though we always kept cherishing our classical backgrounds.' Van Camp: 'Our education was never supposed to feel like a straitjacket. We were free-spirited enough to ignore the laws and regulations of the music academy and to create our own sound. Our compositions were open to influences from Roma music, Eastern European folk, klezmer and jazz'. 'That eclecticism was a direct result of the zeitgeist', Han Stubbe adds. 'We loved different styles and happily mixed them together'.

The monniker Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung was derived from Steppenwolf, a novel by German writer Hermann Hesse about a character who was outside society. 'In the book, the narrator talks of a theatre', Van Camp explains. 'And at the entrance there is a warning sign sign that says: if you go in here, you are guaranteed to lose your mind. That was an apt description of the way our music worked'.

Almost all tracks on DAAU's first album were 'Drieslagstelsels' (or 'three-course rotations'). The term referred to an agricultural method of the early Middle Ages, but also to the fact that each song of the group consisted of three major movements. Van Camp: 'The titles of those pieces referred to our method of writing. We piled up a huge bunch of ideas, because we wanted to tell more than just one story. With each composition, we took the listener for a ride'.

In 1995 the self-titled full-length debut of Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung (DAAU) was released. The band consisted of four young, 'classically derailed' musicians who played their own compositions with acoustic instruments such as violin, cello, clarinet and accordion. Their work contained influences from Roma music, Eastern European folk, klezmer and jazz, but was performed with the energy, rebellious spirit and Sturm und Drang of a bona fide punk band. DAAU was part of the fertile Antwerp scene, which also produced dEUS, Zita Swoon and Kiss My Jazz, and soon signed an international record deal with Sony Classical.

The group's influential first record, which has been out of print for a while, is now finally being released again and is available on vinyl for the very first time.

In those early days, DAAU consisted of four young, classically trained musicians who tackled their instrumental compositions with a true punk spirit. 'If we'd had guitars, bass or drums at that time, we would probably have been just another rock band', says accordionist Roel Van Camp, who, together with his schoolmates Buni Lenski on violin, the latter's brother Simon on cello and Han Stubbe on clarinet made up the Antwerp quartet. 'With our acoustic instruments we tried to create our own version of the music we loved listening to, from sixties rock and prog to new wave.'

The quartet, which initially played in streets and cafes, appealed to a diverse audience and sometimes joked that they were a classically trained unit that had 'gone off the rails'. 'As befits teenagers, we wanted to shake things up', Stubbe remembers, 'even though we always kept cherishing our classical backgrounds.' Van Camp: 'Our education was never supposed to feel like a straitjacket. We were free-spirited enough to ignore the laws and regulations of the music academy and to create our own sound. Our compositions were open to influences from Roma music, Eastern European folk, klezmer and jazz'. 'That eclecticism was a direct result of the zeitgeist', Han Stubbe adds. 'We loved different styles and happily mixed them together'.

The monniker Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung was derived from Steppenwolf, a novel by German writer Hermann Hesse about a character who was outside society. 'In the book, the narrator talks of a theatre', Van Camp explains. 'And at the entrance there is a warning sign sign that says: if you go in here, you are guaranteed to lose your mind. That was an apt description of the way our music worked'.

Almost all tracks on DAAU's first album were 'Drieslagstelsels' (or 'three-course rotations'). The term referred to an agricultural method of the early Middle Ages, but also to the fact that each song of the group consisted of three major movements. Van Camp: 'The titles of those pieces referred to our method of writing. We piled up a huge bunch of ideas, because we wanted to tell more than just one story. With each composition, we took the listener for a ride'.