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Santilli returns to Mad Habitat after a European sojourn on Growing Bin! The Eora-based multi-instrumentalist is one half of Angophora, but his solo work exists in the lineage of electro-acoustic visionaries like Steve Tibbetts. With each subsequent release, Santilli strikes the balance between mining his well-defined personal aesthetic and expanding his vision.

The instrumental palette of this record is centered around guitar and synthesizer, bolstered by an incredible array of idiophones and membranophones. There is no shortage of spellbinding moments, like the glacial synths that pan across “Mirrors”, the cascading beauty of “Colours” or the woodland symphony of “Hollow” - the latter even recalls the environmentally-focused work of Waak Waak Djungi’s Peter Mumme.

There’s a common thread across this album in the way it evokes the expanse of nature that Santilli spends much of his time in. All 9 tracks feel like a glimpse into an exquisitely realized scene and across all of them, Santilli's music is suffused with an unhurried sense of ease. The music here feels immersive and panoramic as a result, and we’re grateful to share a glimpse into the worlds Santilli captures.

ME LOST ME led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent announces a new album RPG via Upset The Rhythm on 7th July, and is touring across the UK including support dates with Pigs x7. RPG (recorded in Blank Studios with Sam Grant of Pigs x7) is ME LOST ME’s fourth outing as a collective, having transitioned from an ambitious solo project in 2017, Jayne now regularly collaborating with acclaimed North-East jazz musicians Faye MacCalman and John Pope.
ME LOST ME delights in experimenting with songwriting and storytelling, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully weave together disparate genres, drawing influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music. Hauntological in part, RPG is concerned with tales and with time - are we running out of it? Does insomnia cause a time loop? Do the pressures of masculinity prevent progress? Jayne Dent asks these questions and more on RPG, her homage to worldbuilding and the story as an artform, calling back to those oral traditions around a campfire, as well as modern day video games - bringing folk music into the present day as she does so.
ME LOST ME presents sound reaching in opposite directions, straddling time towards the archaic and timeless traditions of folktales, and towards the possible and potential futures of pastoral Britain and the world at large. Part speculation, part reminiscence, what results on the new album RPG is music that sounds ultimately displaced and yet omnipresent, adjacent to a hapless Vonnegut hero whose life is scattered throughout time and history, but full of wonder and curiosity rather than fear.
On track “The Oldest Trees Hold The Earth”, we see time stretched out between the branches of impossibly old beings in the woods. This track was co-written in Aarhus, Denmark with fellow Newcastle folk musician (with Danish heritage) Ditte Elly. The pair wordlessly passed a sheet of paper between each other to write the lyrics, inspired by Højbjerg and Mosegård, the woods they were sitting in. “How long should I wait/Before the moss grows?/On my skin, on my outstretched arms,” the lyrics are sung in a round, the close harmonies delicate and detailed.

A central thesis of this album is the joy of creation, something which is paid homage to in the album’s final track, “Science And Art” (Not because we need it to last/just because we needed to make it - so we invented the words/this language). It is also reflected in the definition that Jayne gives for “folk” itself. She comments, “To me, folk is quite an expansive idea. I think of it as creative work that's often made ad-hoc, with things that are at hand and more often than not it's born of a DIY ethos. It is songs and stories of the people, as in the traditional sense, but also creative coding, game design etc. Whatever outlet someone has for their creative expression could be described as folk. It's the things we make because humans need to make things, and the stories we tell about ourselves and the world around us.”
Crucially, on latest album RPG, Dent expands her songwriting and looks towards the unreal locations of worldbuilding in video games for inspiration. She comments, “I think the main similarity is the importance of a song's setting/environment to inform its narrative and textures, I'm often most inspired when out walking in the natural landscape, in cities and travelling to places I've never been before - the environment I'm in really impacts the work I make. While writing this album, however, I found myself inspired by imaginary landscapes, those in video games, paintings, etc. I was writing stories into these unreal locations instead. Even the songs inspired by real places, like The Oldest Trees Hold the Earth, have a very surreal quality to them in the songs, like they're being warped and turned into something not of this world. I think that's the main difference for me in terms of the thematic content and inspiration behind this album - I've been getting more and more interested in balancing surreal and fantastical environmental elements with ordinary and everyday settings.”
RPG upends the concept of the eternal return - we may be in the midst of inevitable repetition, but we tell stories whilst awaiting the passage of time.
"Being familiar with, and a fan of Jayne's earlier work, it was great to get the opportunity to work with her on the production of her new record. I had in mind a sense of what the record might be, but what came of the sessions, led by the vision Jayne had for the record, totally exceeded my expectations. As far as albums go, it has a breadth of writing and a sonic depth that made it a truly brilliant record. Having Jayne join us on a leg of the Pigs x7 tour in April is going to be ace. The creative nature, the sincerity and bold strokes of ME LOST ME put it in that space outside of any genre pigeonholes, and between our two sets I imagine the audience is going to have a proper sonic bath..."
Sam Grant, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, 2023
“The music of Me Lost Me is beguiling, idiosyncratic and cinematic - or should that be video-game-omatic? This suite of songscapes often hits the sweet spot between ancient and modern with its masterful blend of stark folk, neon electronic burbling and unusual arrangements. Jayne's singing is refreshingly straightforward and nuanced - it's exquisite! - and perfectly punctures the nebulae of synths and brass which billow around the old wooden frames of the songs. Whilst listening I had images in my mind of what Northumberland might look like through the eyes of Simon Stalenhag - foggy moors, a robot looking across the sea to Lindisfarne, twinkling lights on metal towers.... that sort of thing. It's a really great album.”
Richard Dawson, 2023

Originally released as part of Perc's Greed Dance 12" in late 2021 Resistor has since taken on a life of it's own, receiving plays & support from I Hate Models, Randomer, Somniac One, Cera Khin, Umwelt, New Frames, Cassie Raptor, Ghost In The Machine and of course Perc himself. Now Resistor returns with three brand new remixes, each taking the original mix to entirely new places.

First up is UK underground hero and Skuxx Records main man Tassid delivering a festival slaying slice of sub heavy UK techno which has been Perc's closing track at his gigs, including at Awakenings in April, from the moment he heard it. Next Jensen Interceptor takes a completely differed approach dropping subtle elements of the original mix of 'Resistor' and a sprinkling of science fiction samples over a hard jackin' groove sitting perfectly between techno and electro.

Finally Berlin based Wallis, shows why she is leading the new school of French producers with a gritty industrial groove, with just the slightest hint of 'Resistor's infamous lead lines breaking through the dirt, to round off a diverse, yet satisfying remix collection.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Down On Darkened Meetings, the first solo release on the label from the quietly prolific Giuseppe Ielasi. Recorded at Ielasi’s studio in Monza outside of Milan over two days in February 2022, the seven pieces presented here continue the renewed exploration of the guitar that marks much of his solo work over the last few years. Emerging in the late 1990s as an improviser working primarily with prepared acoustic and electric guitars, the instrument became less prominent in his work over the next decade, ceding to loop-based constructs that would eventually split into abstracted takes on club music and hip-hop (including his work as Inventing Masks), on the one hand, and spectral electroacoustic explorations (such as the stunning triple disc 3 pauses), on the other. Returning to the guitar in recent years, he has approached the instrument as a source of shimmering metallic glissandi (Five Wooden Frames) or as the vehicle of elegiac double-tracked lines that feel almost like Frisell playing Feldman (The Return). Here the focus is on electric guitar filtered, looped, and splayed out into fields of irregular echoes through a bank of pedals. Like many of Ielasi’s releases, Down On Darkened Meetings is structured as a set of short untitled pieces (here ranging between two and six minutes in length) that single-mindedly explore a single instrument or source throughout. The opening track immediately introduced the distinctive timbral world of fizzing, heavily filtered tones, chiming harmonics, and woozy looping bass figures inhabited throughout. At points it becomes near impossible to trace these sounds to the strings of an electric guitar; at others, as on the final two pieces, the instrument is unmistakable, as Ielasi builds up his shifting loops from snatches of almost unintentional sounding half-playing that give these closing tracks a hushed, private atmosphere reminiscent of Tolerance’s Anonym. While the repeating chords and hanging melodic figures present on many tracks call to mind earlier Ielasi classics like Gesine and Untitled, here the music feels less meticulously constructed than played: Ielasi’s lyrical guitar lines obscured by a battery of effects at times come across like a dilated take on the outer-fringe fretwork of improvisers like Henry Kaiser and Raymond Boni, and the muddy, asynchronous fields of pops and hiss at times wander into areas reminiscent of the hand-played dub techno of Vladislav Delay’s Multila. Like much of Ielasi’s work in recent years, these seven pieces perform a delicate balancing act: between abstraction and immediacy, austerity and abundance. Imbued with Ielasi’s distinctive lightness of touch, considered approach to pacing, and subtly psychedelic approach to the stereo field, Down on Darkened Meetings is a major new work from a quiet master of contemporary experimental music.

Liberation is the latest evolution by David West, a dedicated underground dweller and traveler with his groups Rat Columns and Rank/Xerox and previously spotted in Lace Curtain and Total Control. Many familiar elements of West's songwriting creep out from the speakers this time around, albeit in a sonically more adventurous and personal manner. Swathed in analogue and FM synths, pinned down by near-funk drum machines, and with a vision expanded into the past and future. While in previous incarnations, West's alienated and fragile vocal has battled with jangling guitars and distortion, Liberation sets free his woes and ruminations into space. Taking inspiration from the heyday of Mute Records, the beginnings of electronic dance music's rudimentary sampling, broken and sound art, Liberation's debut LP is 10 songs of the road, about the nameless ghosts on the highway, accidental lovers, the alienation of the stranger in a strange land, the unbearable weight of freedom.
Beginning with a curveball, Liberation's first vocal sets out the position of the forever-cuckold, the sad lover hanging on: Looking For A Lover combines a Roland 707's loping mid-tempo with creeped-out synth lines as West intones his intentions close to the ear. Continuing in a more baroque manner, Move Me makes astounding use of string samples and space, with esteemed engineer Mikey Young's (Total Control / Eddy Current Suppression Ring) production prowess making for a distilled yet inviting loneliness. Forget is the night-drive centerpiece of the album, a 7 minute that erupts into a nihilistic sub-disco darkness. A constant theme of Liberation is the friction between West's characters: a frustrated love in victim-status paired with a menacing intent. The adorable, fragile stalker in the moonlight, illuminated by Whatever You Want, a
subjugated protagonist offering they have while the city burns. The brightest pop moment of the album has this in abundance: Cold And Blue, a classic synth pop jam to be played on repeat til the end of time, like New Order played by one man in his bedroom, with no drugs for a cushion, coming down the stairs, she looks like a perfect fear and Im a monument to your existence. But West has moments of touching sincerity that speak direct to the listener, as in album highlight Leaves Falling; a sparse string arrangement frames his vocal, "why do I keep falling for you I must just really like to be alone." Liberation is the freedom from attachments, about how sometimes they're what you want most.

The first ever cut on the seminal and stellar German record label Acid Orange, owned by Beroshima himself, aka Frank Muller. An absolute masterpiece of intelligent dance music that with its over thirty total minutes opens up wide spaces of pure listening and lays the foundations for the development of what will soon be recognized as minimal techno. But above all it is a political record that frames delicate social issues and carries a clear message of how music and art in general stands against all forms of occupation and repression. The reissue comes courtesy directly by the author, great artist and true ambassador of good vibes, and we are proud to contribute to the spread of the "Untitled" manifesto.

Conceived as a manifesto for eponymous all-female label Permanent Draft, this limited flexi comes with a booklet of poetry and pictures based on the prime number 13. Permanent Draft aims to highlight works showing a certain taste for fragmentary, irrepressible creative eruption and lo-fi experiments. Leaving the grandiose apart to pay and bring attention to the sounds, details and anecdotes of everyday life, picking up raw material from the ordinary. Bitter truths, migrainous fulfilments, dead clowns, broken gods, taffeta fairies, fruit foxes and non-binary empty frames outline these very aesthetics.

Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed at RTI on dead-quiet 180g vinyl, Mobile Fidelity's numbered-edition 180g LP of Local Hero gives the beloved effort audiophile-grade sound on a par with the reference-quality sonics afforded Dire Straits' Mobile Fidelity reissues. In each arrangement, Knopfler's methodical guitar lines emerge with supreme transparency and multi-hued textural detail. The intricate notes, finger-picked passages, and cosmopolitan lines come across as if they're transmitted just feet away from you in real time.

Ditto the diverse accompaniment, including the Celtic-themed effects, supplemental jazz accents, and folk inflections. The keys to the nearly 44-minute effort's success and continuity relate not only to Knoplfer's laidback style and low-key approach, but his ear for uncanny melody and blues traces. Woven acoustically and electrically, his tapestries benefit from the newfound airiness, openness, and balance that live on this reissue. No matter the instrument or treatment, the music arrives with pinpoint imaging and vibrant liveliness. Close your eyes, and the Mobile Fidelity version of Local Hero projects movies in your head.

For instance, take the closing "Going Home," a cherished instrumental whose proud spirit resonates with English football fans and features saxophone playing by the late, great Michael Brecker. Heard before every Newcastle United F.C. home game, it has become an anthem on both sides of the Atlantic. Or, look to "The Ceilidh: Louis' Favorite Billy's Tune" on which Scottish-flavored vibes and dance tempos conjure a festive jig until a transition gives the number a more subdued, romantic feel. Then, the pattern repeats. Seeking to expand beyond the parameters of Dire Straits, Knoplfer taps into a global economy of structures and sounds, and takes anyone with a sense of adventure along for the ride.

Not that his hallmark six-string is absent from the proceedings. It frames the lovely tin-pan whistle motif of the aptly titled "Whistle Theme," acts as a beacon for the elegant, vibraphone-kissed "Smooching," and pushes forward the jovial, top-down momentum of "Freeway Flyer," among other highlights. Knopfler also receives assistance from session pros Mike Mainieri, Steve Jordan, and Terry Williams, as well as vocalist Gerry Rafferty on the set's sole vocal tune, "That's the Way It Always Starts."

Gold Vinyl

No binaries, no simple opposition. Either/or is subsumed by infinite relations and dizzying possibilities, by the perpetual crest of and/and. Freedom is the key to bring about all complex and incongruous multiplicities. Embodied, embedded, relational freedom is the key.
Mue is a duo based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal composed of Catherine Debard and Léon Lo. Formed in the Spring of 2020, the electronic musical project merges two distinct practices and explores the way they interact with each other. Drawing on early-IDM, illbient, minimalism, and natural phenomena, the resulting real-time hardware improvisations weave asymmetric patterns, create spaces, and digest various sounds.

Recorded in 2020, Les vasières explores unsynchronized hardware electronic impro-visations where individual sonic elements come to life by creating new and complex layers and organizational logics — melodically and rhythmically modulating each other.
The French album title translates to “The mudflats.” Sounds from disparate sources form an aural silt that is brought to life by waxing and waning cycles, each improvi-sation presenting a new, different mudflat scenario.
Mue asked visual artist Katherine Melançon to create the album’s artwork, which was the artist’s first dive into compost as source material. The resulting image—an otherworldly organic smear, both intimate and alien — was incorporated into graphic designer Haley Parker’s montage, hard frames recalling the flatbed scanner used by Melançon, and branch-like typography nodding to the organic concerns of all the artists involved.

Second Editions presents a new collaborative work by Marja Ahti and Judith Hamann.

After their distinguished duet ‘Portals’ for Cafe Oto's Takuroku label, ‘A coincidence is perfect, intimate attunement’ is a wonderful sophomore collaborative work pieced together over two years of changing seasons, ideas, moods, and feelings. The release is formed from a shifting field of sound correspondence that pivots on moments of coincidence, of a tuning in.

What are we opening ourselves to when we tune in to sound? How can one be truly open to a sound? How can the activity of recording move beyond notions of capture and release into more generative frames? Rather than a tool purposed for preservation or ‘conservation’ of memory, of time and place, can recording sound instead form new vibrant or vibratory spaces of attunement?

‘A coincidence..’ is an LP length composition of multiple interlocking parts, created through exchange, alignment, unpredictability: the title borrowed from poet Fanny Howe falling right into place, a flock of birds in flight, pitches matched and moved across different geographies and temporal frames. Marja & Judith have created an intuitive, lyrical longform piece that considers the idea of attunement itself as, in some sense, the smallest form of measure or denominator connecting their respective practices: across field recording, just intonation, electronic sonorities and instrumental bodies. ‘A coincidence..’ reflects a sense of a willingness to tune in to impulses given, or gifted to the other, a position that embraces an intimate synchronicity.

Recordings & correspondances between 2020-2022. Mixed by Marja Ahti & Judith Hamann. Mastered and cut by Anne Taegert at Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin, 2022. Title quotation from Night Philosophy by Fanny Howe, Divided Publishing, 2020. Photogrpahy by Joshua Bonnetta. Thanks to Nino Bulling, Niko-Matti Ahti and leo. The work was supported by Kone Foundation, Akademie Schloss Solitude and NEUSTART KULTUR.

Marja Ahti (b. 1981) is a Swedish-Finnish composer and sound artist based in Turku, Finland. Ahti works with field recordings and other acoustic sound material combined with synthesizers and electronic feedback in order to find the space where these sounds start to communicate. She makes music that rides on waves of slowly warping harmonies and mutating textures – rough edged, yet precise compositions, rich in detail. Ahti has presented her music in many different contexts around Europe, in Japan and the United States. She is currently active in the duo Ahti & Ahti with her partner Niko-Matti Ahti and in the artist/organizer collective Himera.

Judith Hamann is a cellist and performer/composer from Narrm/Melbourne in so-called Australia, currently based in Berlin. Their work encompasses performance, improvisation, electro-acoustic composition, field recording, electronics, site specific generative work, and micro-tonal systems in a deeply considered process based approach to creative practice. Currently Judith’s work is focused on an examination of expressions and manifestations of 'shaking’ in solo performance practice, a collection of works for cello and humming, as well as ongoing research surrounding ‘collapse’ as a generative imaginary surface, and the ‘de-mastering’ of bodies (human and non-human) in European settler-colonial heritage instrumental practice and pedagogy. Judith likes working with and thinking-with other artists which sometimes includes people like Joshua Bonnetta, Dennis Cooper, Charles Curtis, Golden Fur (with James Rushford and Sam Dunscombe), Lori Goldston, the Harmonic Space Orchestra, Sarah Hennies, Yvette Janine Jackson, and Anike Joyce Sadiq.

In a collaboration you might never have expected but somehow makes perfect sense, original Brit blues mastermind Jeff Beck teams up with a little known American by the name of Johnny Depp to render some of the latter's songs alongside some finely selected covers. From The Beach Boys to John Lennon, The Velvet Underground to Killing Joke and more besides, this is the sound of two lifelong music lovers letting it all hang out and playing with the impassioned energy and innocence of youth. More than just a throwaway side project for a global superstar, this is a deeply discerning project which frames Depp's music in a whole new light.

For their Drag City debut, the enigmatic duo expand into eight-armed wonder; all the better to reach ever-deeper into their bag o' tricks. Slinky and sliding elegantly, the kids forge tunes with a harmony of ambiguity and nostalgia, effortless yet precise, and rounded with thick bottom - a dancing clash of cognition and dissonance! Since 2015, Kamikaze Palm Tree have been a relative mystery. Now, in times no less mysterious, Drag City welcomes them, celebrating the energy of their second LP, where KPT play their offbeat strain of 21st century rock. Making MINT CHIP, Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner reach deeper into their bag of tricks than ever before, dialoguing with an absurd shared intent they haven't yet paused to question. The off-center pieces gathered together for Good Boy have given way to pulsing aquatic compositions on MINT CHIP. Cole's guitar tones, wire thin, bell-like, bluesily downtuned, slinky and sliding elegantly, arc purposeful around their peripherals. Dylan's kit work, effortless yet precise, grounded with heavy bottom, drives and interacts organically with all the emerging structure, nailing down finely detailed frames and canvases to backdrop her singing and the unremitting landing of melodies and songs. With the addition of Josh Puklavetz, things that didn't make sense before - like bass - are now on the beach, fully lotioned, essence to essence. Violin and clarinet (Laena Myers Ionita and Brad Caulkins, respectively) round out the tonal spectrum. All strung together in the foothills of Altadena's Wiggle World Studios with Hartling back in the engineer's seat and Tim Presley producing the proceedings!

For their Drag City debut, the enigmatic duo expand into eight-armed wonder; all the better to reach ever-deeper into their bag o' tricks. Slinky and sliding elegantly, the kids forge tunes with a harmony of ambiguity and nostalgia, effortless yet precise, and rounded with thick bottom - a dancing clash of cognition and dissonance! Since 2015, Kamikaze Palm Tree have been a relative mystery. Now, in times no less mysterious, Drag City welcomes them, celebrating the energy of their second LP, where KPT play their offbeat strain of 21st century rock. Making MINT CHIP, Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner reach deeper into their bag of tricks than ever before, dialoguing with an absurd shared intent they haven't yet paused to question. The off-center pieces gathered together for Good Boy have given way to pulsing aquatic compositions on MINT CHIP. Cole's guitar tones, wire thin, bell-like, bluesily downtuned, slinky and sliding elegantly, arc purposeful around their peripherals. Dylan's kit work, effortless yet precise, grounded with heavy bottom, drives and interacts organically with all the emerging structure, nailing down finely detailed frames and canvases to backdrop her singing and the unremitting landing of melodies and songs. With the addition of Josh Puklavetz, things that didn't make sense before - like bass - are now on the beach, fully lotioned, essence to essence. Violin and clarinet (Laena Myers Ionita and Brad Caulkins, respectively) round out the tonal spectrum. All strung together in the foothills of Altadena's Wiggle World Studios with Hartling back in the engineer's seat and Tim Presley producing the proceedings!

For an artist whose career is flush with enigma, myth, and disguise, Nashville Skyline still surprises more than almost any other Bob Dylan move more than four decades after its original release. Distinguished from every other Dylan album by virtue of the smooth vocal performances and simple ease, the 1969 record witnesses the icon's full-on foray into country and trailblazing of the country-rock movement that followed. Cozy, charming, and warm, the rustic set remains for many hardcore fans the Bard's most enjoyable effort. And most inimitable. The result of quitting smoking, Dylan's voice is in pristine shape, nearly unidentifiable from the nasal wheeze and folk accents displayed on prior records.

Mastered on our world-renowned mastering system and pressed at RTI, this restored 45RPM analog version zeroes in on the shocking purity and never-again-replicated croon of Dylan's vocals. Enhanced, too, are the images associated with the calmly strummed and picked acoustic guitars and decay connected to the fading notes. The dimensions and ambience of the Columbia studio translate via subtle echoes and natural blend of instruments melding with one another, akin to honey integrating with tea. Providing comparably soothing effects, relaxing vibes pour forth from this reissue, which affords this masterpiece the fidelity it's always deserved. Wider grooves mean more information reaches your ears.

"Is it rolling, Bob?," Dylan famously queries producer Bob Johnston at the beginning of "To Be Alone With You," indicating the laissez-faire feelings that surrounded the sessions and helped yield the laidback, convivial music defining the album – arguably the most unique in the artist's vast catalog. While he dipped his toes into country waters on the preceding John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline throws its collective arms around the style in bear-hug fashion and drops any obvious folk references. Everything from the songs' moods to the amicable arrangements reacts against the era's turmoil and popular sounds.

This beautiful and beautifully executed effort might stand as Dylan's most effective protest ever, even if many missed the point upon original release. Advocating peace, love, and old-world allure without calling attention to any characteristic in an overly forward manner, Dylan frames the songs as ballads, rags, lullabies, and gentle honky-tonk dances. He adheres to expeditious brevity, keeping the arrangements tight and free of any filler, thus allowing the melodies to immediately work their magic and place hummable memories inside listeners' heads.

Indeed, if any Dylan masterpiece is overlooked, it's Nashville Skyline. In addition to his superb singing and infallible songs, Dylan enjoys backing from a crackerjack assembly of Nashville session musicians including Charlie Daniels, Marshall Grant, W.S. Holland, Charlie McCoy, Ken Buttrey, and Norman Blake. Country pros, and their respective performances, don't come any better.

As much as on any of his records, Dylan resides in a good place, mentally and emotionally. The idyllic, warmhearted environs of Nashville Skyline stand apart now just as they did in the late 1960s. The sincerity conveyed on the inviting "Lay Lady Lay," relief sighed on the romantic "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," and unlimited promise expressed on the jittery "To Be Alone With You" parallel the lessons-learned yearning and genuine desire found on "One More Night," bracing "I Threw It All Away," and eternal "Girl From the North Country," performed to perfection with Johnny Cash.

Following the release and subsequent year of our first album, "The Hearth," we began nurturing some new compositions for a second release. This process began similar to the first album, each of working us separately on songs, then bringing the bones, veins, and skin of a track to the rest of The Creux to fully animate. We were all taking off in a lot of directions, which tends to lend greatly to our dynamic sound once harnessed, and it was a good departure after playing "The Hearth" tracks live for two years straight during tours and festivals. We ended up with around 25 or so song frames and delighted that list down to about 12 to lay into. Then, the pandemic hit. We were all separated into our own bubbles, trying to make responsible choices on how to continue writing and recording this record promptly as we had just penned a deal with our new label Freakwave; with a target of releasing sometime in 2020. It was a pretty challenging endeavor for a band that typically relies on each member to bring greatness to the sound. We began experimenting with using virtual jam sessions and shipping files to each other. Luckily, we are all decent home sonic production creators so creating and flying around edits and changes over the months leading up to our time in the studio wasn't tricky. Around the end of Summer 2020, we finally had the demo tracks prepped enough to start working with our engineer and producer, Patrick Hills of Earthtone Studios. He worked with us on our last album and is sort of a special weapon of creativity for what we can pull off. We would send in one member at a time to lay down studio versions of the finals in a separate room from Mr. Hills; mask on, the whole nine. We would fly out the takes each day and make edits, rinse, and repeat. It was tedious and was pretty trippy to make a record in that manner. "Goodbye Divine" took almost a year to finish recording and mixing. So, here we are, in the Summer of 2021, and it is complete and ready for release this October. Expect both departures and arrivals of what you might have predicted following "The Hearth." Yet, this album does, in true Creux Lies fashion, offer a complete range of emotions throughout the album; prepare to find yourself ass shaken, and watery-eyed before you raise the needle on "Goodbye Divine."

In the old attic, among dust and dimness, I once found an old children's magazine, that opened itself on a photograph of three melancholic girls eating soup. A distant voice, quietly singing ravels of poems from the 19th century, all gone and forgotten long ago, is accompanied by monotonous loops, played on toy keyboards, or are they maybe a rustling and hissing of twigs on the roof? repeating gusts of wind, slightly moving curtains over a flaking window frame? the pace of moonlight on the carpet? Do you also hear a horn, every now and then sounding from a frayed and yellowed picture of a castle on flower dotted wallpaper? Kot Kot’s "i pni" ("and stumps") LP brings another glimpse into Lena Filatova’s sound gathering & recording process and her unique sensibilities. Feeling as though born from some kind of advent calendar hiding forgotten sounds, neglected moments and haunting sentiments, waiting there for those inclined to have a look. Lena is curiously opening doors individually and in new unisons to arrive at sound collages & compositions born from both accident and design (see the 5/4 odd time signature in „Ottepel“). Vocals that are fragile yet often laced with a feeling of determination and emotive persuasion. Lyrics pulled from old children’s books, juxtaposed with often dark and foreboding loops and samples that dance asynchronously around each other beneath Lena’s voice & piano/toy keyboards. Often recognising and embracing the magic in imperfection and choosing to keep early takes & improvisations, capturing and treasuring what others might have failed to recognise and hold dear. Lena is always demonstrating an innate ability to sew all of these things together in such a way as to cast a spell on the listener from inside a zoetrope of curiously collected & curated frames. „i pni“ is a big and serious poetic work about the most hidden, almost lost and perished, but forever wandering between sleep and waking in an eternal hauntological dream of an old attic.

Strictly limited to 10,000 numbered copies, pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl at RTI, and mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's ultra-hi-fi UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP collector's edition enhances the blockbuster work for today – and the ages to come. Surpassing the sonics of any prior version, it peels away any remaining limitations to provide a transparent, lively, ultra-nuanced presentation of a record that won six Grammy Awards – including prizes for Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Song. The expanse and depth of the soundstage, fullness of tones, natural snap and extension of the guitar strings, realistic rise and decay of individual notes, and roll of Clapton's vocals all attain demonstration-grade levels.

Housed in a deluxe box, the UD1S Unplugged pressing features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording and the reissue's premium quality. No expense has been spared. Aurally and visually, this UD1S reissue exists as a curatorial artifact meant to be preserved, touched, and examined. It is made for discerning listeners that prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in the art – and everything involved with the album, from the images to the finishes.

Truly, everything about Unplugged matters. Having sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. and more than 26 million copies worldwide, the 1992 work resonates with listeners of all generations and speaks a universal language. Recorded for MTV before a very small audience on January 16, 1992, the 14-track set became the signpost for future acoustic-based endeavours that witnessed artists of all stripes re-examining their catalogues and, in many instances, as Clapton does here, placing familiar originals in fresh contexts and unveiling spirited versions of cover material. Needless to say, Clapton's session turned MTV's series into can't-miss programming for which the likes of Rod Stewart, Tony Bennett, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and more would soon participate.

Kicking off his performance with a spirited instrumental to establish the mood, Clapton immediately wades into the style that originally caught his attention as a British teenager in the early 1960s: American blues. Backed by a superb band that includes guitarist Andy Fairweather Low, pianist Chuck Leavell, bassist Nathan East, and drummer Steve Ferrone, Slowhand delivers a rhythmic, toe-tapping rendition of Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me" that announces he's come to reconnect with his muse. What follows over the course of nearly the next hour stirs the heart, shakes the soul, moves the mind, and invigorates the senses.

Of course, there's no talking about Unplugged without keying in on "Tears in Heaven," the striking ballad Clapton penned about the death of his four-year-old son. More emotional, direct, spare, and healing than the studio version released a year prior, it crackles with an intimacy, maturity, poignancy, honesty, sweetness, and integrity that inform the entire concert. Indeed, how Clapton frames other favorites here – transforming "Layla" into a relaxed, comfortable stroll and ruminating on the seasoned ripples flowing throughout "Old Love," for example – indicate both a creative rebirth and gleeful acceptance of the next phase of his career.

And that very direction (two of Clapton's next three albums would be all-blues projects) is what really makes Unplugged so indispensable. Equivalent in mastery if not in volume to the output that earned him his "God" nickname, interpretations of Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues" (complete with kazoo!), Big Bill Broonzy's "Hey Hey," Robert Johnson's "Walkin' Blues" and "Malted Milk," and Muddy Waters' "Rollin' & Tumblin'" showcase a learned professor in his element and all the wheels turning.

In every regard, Clapton's Unplugged session was appointment listening when it came out in August 1992. With the arrival of MoFi's UD1S pressing, that sensation is more urgent than before.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior

Instead of utilizing the industry-standard three-step lacquer process, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's new UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss. While three-step processing is designed for optimum yield and efficiency, UD1S is created for the ultimate in sound quality. Just as Mobile Fidelity pioneered the UHQR (Ultra High-Quality Record) with JVC in the 1980s, UD1S again represents another state-of-the-art advance in the record-manufacturing process. MFSL engineers begin with the original master tapes and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. These lacquers are used to create a very fragile, pristine UD1S stamper called a "convert." Delicate "converts" are then formed into the actual record stampers, producing a final product that literally and figuratively brings you closer to the music. By skipping the additional steps of pulling another positive and an additional negative, as done in the three-step process used in standard pressings, UD1S produces a final LP with the lowest noise floor possible today. The removal of the additional two steps of generational loss in the plating process reveals tremendous amounts of extra musical detail and dynamics, which are otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. The exclusive nature of these very limited pressings guarantees that every UD1S pressing serves as an immaculate replica of the lacquer sourced directly from the original master tape. Every conceivable aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the most perfect record album available today.

MoFi SuperVinyl

Developed by NEOTECH and RTI, MoFi SuperVinyl is the most exacting-to-specification vinyl compound ever devised. Analog lovers have never seen (or heard) anything like it. Extraordinarily expensive and extremely painstaking to produce, the special proprietary compound addresses two specific areas of improvement: noise floor reduction and enhanced groove definition. The vinyl composition features a new carbonless dye (hold the disc up to the light and see) and produces the world's quietest surfaces. This high-definition formula also allows for the creation of cleaner grooves that are indistinguishable from the original lacquer. MoFi SuperVinyl provides the closest approximation of what the label's engineers hear in the mastering lab.



SACD



Mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's numbered hybrid SACD enhances the blockbuster work for today – and the ages to come. Peeling away remaining sonic limitations to provide a transparent, lively, ultra-nuanced presentation of a record that won six Grammy Awards (including prizes for Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Song), it places Clapton and company in your room. The expanse and depth of the soundstage, fullness of tones, natural snap and extension of the guitar strings, realistic rise and decay of individual notes, and roll of Clapton's vocals all attain demonstration-grade levels. A perennial audiophile favourite, Unplugged now tosses its hat into the ring as a demonstration disc.

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Tinnitus Tonight is the latest & sneakiest full-measure serving from LARS FINBERG, world-class bon vivant and prolific Panic Rock artiste. Why so sneaky? Here’s the dirt: Finberg developed a nerve rash leading up his 2017 tootle, the TY SEGALL-assisted Moonlight Over Bakersfield. Rather than blindly leap from the comfy zone, he tip-toed in secret to a friendly but far-flung (cough*Sacramento*cough) studio to capture a reserve of slanted tunes with a proven-effective team of buds. Those comrades – the glorious LAUREN MARIE MIKUS on keys, frequent collaborator & forever-gent KAANAN TUPPER on drums and, at the controls and elsewhere, the indestructible CHRIS WOODHOUSE – all fostered a supportive framework that first allowed Finberg to “think” beyond THE INTELLIGENCE, gearing him up for a life in the spotlight (or moonlight, as it were). So yes indeed: what appears to be an adventurous follow-up also doubles as a prequel. Keep accurate score or you’re dusted. The core of Tinnitus Tonight centers on an assemblage of Finberg’s most golden riffs – trash-coustic but driftwood-smooth, naughty and infinite, all of ‘em bangers and/or buggers. Tunes sprout and move matador-like until an inevitable goring. The past-it grunt that kicks off “Burger Queen” prompts a mimed chef’s kiss. “My Prison” and “The Doors” are quintessential, truly distilled Finberg moments, compounding his trademark acerbic, out-for-blood wit with these absurdly cool, whip-crack guitars. The massively impressive “Public Admirer” is unequivocally the loudest, most damaged blurt from this doggie in at least a decade. In total, Tinnitus Tonight is a wonderful and welcome reminder that our guy is a very real rouser and a vital, unique purveyor of artful aggression, playful and powerful. Finberg beams really fuckin’ brightly under his own name, perhaps more so than with any group orchestration he happens to be braising with. Do these higher personal stakes call for a dastardlier delivery? Maybe this permeating 2020 End Times feeling prohibits the normal corralling of the subconscious mind? Whatever the answers are, you will find them here.
"The gift Lars Finberg has to disfigure rock riffs into minor chord marvels should serve as a glowing example for those who feel the need to pick up a guitar and make some noise to share with the world. Using the conventional tools of rock and roll flavored with a mix of garage punk, post punk, synth punk and mutant surf, Mr. Finberg, with seemingly effortless cool, has crafted or contributed to countless albums with bands like The Intelligence, Puberty, Rubber Blanket, A Frames and more, all with a magnetic pull and genius lyrics that stand out from the indie rock heap and reveal an exceptionally creative mind that’s actually done its homework." - Noise For Zeros