Cerca:friendship

Ob vor der Kamera, am Mikrofon oder jetzt im Musikstudio - Marleen Lohse beweist erneut ihr kreatives Gespür und ihre Vielseitigkeit. Bekannt ist sie aus erfolgreichen TV-Produktionen wie "Nord bei Nordwest", "Unsere wunderbaren Jahre", "Katakomben" oder Kinofilmen wie "Cleo", "La Palma" und "Happy Burnout". Nun zeigt sie eine neue Facette ihres Talents - als Musikerin. Mit "Wide Awake" veröffentlicht sie ihr erstes Album auf ihrem eigenen Label Amore Mio - ein Werk voller Gefühl, Tiefe und musikalischer Handschrift. Die Songs bewegen sich zwischen introspektivem Indie und melodischem Pop, getragen von einer warmen, atmosphärischen Klangwelt. Gemeinsam mit Andi Fins (u.a. Cäthe, Moritz Krämer) entstanden Texte und Melodien, die berühren und im Ohr bleiben. Für den Sound sorgte ein erfahrenes Team: Hanno Stick (Judith Holofernes) am Schlagzeug, Julius Hartog (Andreas Bourani) und Tim Neuhaus (Clueso, Glen Hansard) an den Gitarren. Henrik Menzel (Udo Lindenberg, Yvonne Catterfeld) verlieh dem Album durch Co-Produktion, Mix und Mastering seinen finalen Glanz. "Wide Awake" ist ein musikalisches Statement - ehrlich, emotional und eigenständig. Für alle, die Musik mit Charakter und Seele lieben.

Phylipe Nunes Araújo's songs are as rich and varied as the diverse landscapes they were written in. The hills of Pernambuco, the lagoons of Alagoas, and the beaches of Bahia are all woven into his stripped-back, folk-inspired Brazilian songwriting. As part of a wider movement of musicians originating from Brazil's Northeast, Phylipe sees the process of music-making as the search for beauty itself.

Collaborating with fellow Northeastern artists Bruno Berle, Batata Boy and Nyron Higor among others, Phylipe's debut album represents the latest flowering of this exceptionally talented community's creative search.

The Northeast holds an almost sacred importance in Brazil's collective cultural imagination. The region bore witness to the brutal histories of Portuguese colonization and the African slave trade, while simultaneously amalgamating the diverse cultures, religions and traditions of those who have called it home. Countless Brazilian music greats - Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Hermeto Pascoal, Djavan and Luiz Gonzaga - have emerged from this vast cultural melting pot.

Born in Caruaru, Pernambuco state, and raised in the city of Santa Cruz do Capibaribe (famed for its textiles industry), Phylipe describes his music simply as "Brazilian music from the Agreste of Pernambuco". His masterful compositions thread together regional rhythm, folk poetry and sophisticated harmony.

Phylipe's musical foundations were laid in youth, listening to the local elders rehearsing their forrós, attending São João street parties in front of his house and watching the Junina Quadrilhas dance through his neighborhood. At street fairs he would read the Literatura de Cordel (handcrafted pamphlets of Brazilian folk literature), and watch the rhyme battles between cantadores, violeiros, and repentistas, who improvise verses on daily life, social commentary and philosophy. This tradition of Northeastern folk poetry proved particularly formative for Phylipe as a lyricist. "I always try to write things as simply as possible. I believe that beauty must be easily understood. If I can facilitate the path to the message, there's no reason not to. It's something I learned from the traditional poetry here: it's more beautiful if everyone understands."

At the age of 11, Phylipe first got access to the internet. As he explains: "Still in adolescence I was also able to discover things like The Beatles and Nick Drake - I started to get to know music from the rest of the world and later to correlate that with my local musical experiences." Rich with extended chords and artful dissonances, it's clear from his compositions that jazz and bossa nova also took hold, but he's quick to eschew stereotypes. "Inevitably, people associate a Brazilian musician playing a nylon-string guitar with bossa nova..." "But the foundation is another story," he asserts, "It's the Northeast."

On the guitar Phylipe experiments with the binary rhythms inherent in traditional Northeastern music. Coco, frevo, maracatu and baião are recontextualised, placed alongside Brazilian popular music (MPB), gentle lullabies and stunning ballads. "In these 10 songs, I am experimenting with making pop music on a nylon-string guitar with my foundation in the Northeastern songbook."

The contemporary musical community which Phylipe belongs to developed initially in Pernambuco's neighbouring state Alagoas. Phylipe lived in its capital Maceió for three years, where he built friendships and musical bonds with Bruno Berle and Batata Boy who together produced his album. Bruno also sings in unison with Phylipe on the duet "Valise", a song Phylipe wrote aged just 15.

In recent years, Phylipe, Bruno and Batata have migrated south to São Paulo, where the majority of the album was recorded. Other collaborators on the album include Alici, who provides vocals for the ebb and flow of "Temperim", Nyron Higor who plays drums on lead single "Asa" and the sweet indie moment "Ziz"", bassist Meno Del Picchia who plays on the mystical baião "Bixin" and the propulsive "Subindo a Ladeira", and Raphael Coelho who joins Bruno and Batata on percussion for "Santa Cruz", Phylipe's hypnotically powerful portrait of his hometown.

PinkPantheress’ debut mixtape to hell with it marked the anti-popstars seismic arrival.

Released in 2021, the project fused bedroom pop, jungle, drum & bass and UKG, introducing these sounds to a new generation through her saccharine vocals and diaristic lyrics about obsession, hopelessness, friendship, and loneliness.

The debut mixtape has received 2.5 billion streams to date with all five singles; Just for me (No. 27), Pain(No. 35), Passion (No. 73), Break it off (No. 74), and I must apologise (No. 85) charting in the UK Top 100.

The following year saw the rising star win BBC Music’s Sound of 2022, grace the cover of The Face whilst catching the attention of British Vogue where she was the only musician featured on the prestigious Vogue 25 list. to hell with it has since received Gold certification and cemented PinkPantheress as one of the most important new voices in British music.

Many Amerindian cultures share the belief that the future lies behind us, while the past is what we face ahead. This challenge to Western chronology is, however, rooted in common sense: the open possibilities of what is to come are, in theory, what we cannot see—the uncertain—whereas the events that have already happened unfold before our eyes and are available for us to learn from.



This second album by Chilean producer, live performer, and DJ Valesuchi could be described as an experiment with time through music. Some years after relocating to Rio de Janeiro, she released Tragicomic LP (2019) on MAMBA rec—a label founded by the boundary-pushing Brazilian party Mamba Negra—and the self-released EP Cascada (2024). In both works, we can already appreciate her musical imprint: rhythmic and emotional timbral lines—wet, filtered, mathematical,

devotional, multilingual, fantastic, and unreal. However, in Futuro Cercano (Discos Nutabe, 2025), we can hear a leap: the sedimentation of her lived experiences in electronic communities across Latin America, her search for a universal yet personal language to convey emotion and new spiritual meaning, finds in this release a consistency and spontaneity that is rarely heard these days.



In a time when all cultural expression is not only expected to be taggable, but is also increasingly produced from templates that precondition our perception—favoring categorization and connections to works or scenes of the past—the tracks on this album are generically unclassifiable. They represent an openness to experiment without prejudice with electronic instruments and rhythms that are asancestral as they are futuristic. They publicly reveal an intimacy born from the compositional process, a bond formed through the encounter—sometimes tense, sometimes harmonious—between human will and that of the machines themselves. Or, as Valesuchi put it, "cyborging my friendship with the machine and becoming a tempest." Tempest as an eruption of the unknown into the present, the result of opening oneself to a nearly meditative state to uncover the deepest feelings through improvisation on cybernetic feedback and loops. And in that improvisation, to develop “técnicas para estirar o medir el tiempo”

“techniques to stretch or measure time” as she sings in 22, the album’s first track. “Connecting knowledges” as a portal to access that future so near it lies behind us, and to anticipate it as intuition and prospection.



That’s why Futuro Cercano is more than just electronic music: it is a technological ritual, an immersion into the secrets that machines hold as artifacts of human and non-human knowledge, as mysterious objects that allow us to connect with our own otherness—the personal alien hiding beneath the skin that opens us up to uncertainty as possibility rather than catastrophe.

Taylor Swift's 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, will be released worldwide October 3, 2025. The LP includes 12 songs, Portofino Orange Glitter Vinyl, Double gatefold jacket, unique front and back cover, and never-before-seen photos and album lyrics. The Life of a Showgirl CD includes 1 double-sided folded poster, collectible disc artwork and an 8-page lyric booklet that includes never-before-seen photos and song lyrics.

Black Ice Vinyl. On her debut album One Sided, 20 year-old Georga-native Sydney Rose wrestles with growth: growing up, growing apart, growing within. While the singer/songwriter’s 2022 EPs You Never Met Me and This Kind of Thing Doesn’t Last showcased intimate lyricism with the help of understated synths, muted drum machines, and stacked harmonies, One Sided returns to her stripped-back roots, offering tenderhearted meditations on childhood, love, and the evolution of friendship, with a guitar in hand. After Feb 2025 single, We Hug Now, had huge viral success, Syndey Rose has sold out shows all over the US, UK, and Europe.

"Hyperglyph" is the first new album in 11 years from composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor"s long-running Chicago Underground Duo project. Mazurek and Taylor have played music together in a multitude of formations over nearly three decades, including their ongoing partnership in Mazurek"s large-format-skyward-expressionism vehicle Exploding Star Orchestra, in the expanded Chicago Underground Trio, Quartet and Orchestra (all with guitarist Jeff Parker), as well as a plethora of other assemblages. The early albums by the Duo have proven to be embryonic blueprints for the avant-jazz / electronic / indie rock hybridizing of the time, making them majorly important moments in the articulation of the "jazz" dimensionality of the then-burgeoning "post rock" sound. That sound, of course, was being transmitted far and wide due to the success of these groups as well as the Mazurek/Parker project Isotope 217, and the Chicago Underground"s frequently-intersecting collaborators in Tortoise. Just as most of the still-working projects born of that era have evolved, reconfigured, and grown, the Chicago Underground Duo has undergone a number of musical moltings, with the project always in the background of disparate individual aural investigations. The concurrent personal evolutions of Mazurek and Taylor as the Duo project drops off and picks back up makes it a true reflection of their own lives and friendship.

Some things simply need time to brew. Loek Frey returns to Omen Wapta with his third release on the label: Nayan. The Amsterdam-based artist shares a long-standing friendship with label head Woody92 - keeping each other in motion as artistic peers since the label's inception. Over time, they've built a shared archive of material: sound sketches, tracks, and sonic touchpoints - an ever-evolving third space where their paths continue to meet as they move in parallel. Nayan emerges from this deep-rooted exchange: a distilled six-track release that fuses Frey's cerebral intricacy with the label's primordial uncanniness, reaffirming both as key voices in a yet-to-be-defined sonic realm. Diving into the release, Frey's signature remains intact - tactile, spatial, and rhythmically precise - but a subtle shift is at play. A paring down. A move toward something more reduced, maybe even more patient, yet no less absorbing. The A side leans inward: deep pressure, spectral traces, and an undercurrent of tension that never quite resolves. It's music for staying with, not escaping from. Flip to the B side and the palette widens - kicks land heavier, patterns loosen, textures fill the full frequency field. Still deeply rooted in the Wapta world, but with an assertiveness that whispers rather than shouts. Somewhere between absence and force. With Nayan, Loek Frey carries his Omen Wapta narrative into new territory - merging restless experimentation with dancefloor intention.

NILS FRAHM and F.S.BLUMM have confirmed the release of their fifth collaborative album, Handling. Containing three tracks but 40 minutes long, it finds the duo advancing from 2021’s dub-influenced 2X1=4, deploying its lessons in ambitious new territory that also nods to earlier collections. Recorded at his studio in Berlin’s Funkhaus, the album will be released by LEITER on vinyl and via all digital platforms on September 19, 2025.

Handling’s three exquisitely detailed pieces are each entitled ‘Leuchter,’ German for ‘candlestick,’ encapsulating the LP’s luminescent glow and rising inner energy. Its scrupulous arrangements exploit a magic cabinet of instruments, among them pianos, celestas and cristal baschets, glockenspiels, guitars and multiple forms of percussion. Their painstakingly engineered improvisations were equally meticulously reassembled in a series of intense editing sessions.

That the duo’s collaboration is built on a friendship and mutual admiration dating back to the early 2000s enables an unusual level of trust, despite both operating in their own distinct manner. “It’s not Frank, it’s not Nils,” they reflect. “We’ve become a new persona.” Handling blends Blumm’s organic chaos with Frahm’s structured intuition, offering a distinct and luminous experience that doesn’t just sound different, but feels like its own evolving world.

"Later Than You Think" erscheint bei seinem neuen Label YOUNG und beschäftigt sich mit Themen wie Trauer, Gerechtigkeit, Wiedergeburt, Transformation und spirituellem Kampf. Es ist ein Werk von Bekenntnis und Konfrontation, für das sich Affekt, Intellekt und Geist auf der Suche nach dem Schönen, der Wahrheit und dem Realen zusammenschließen. Entstanden ist das Album in den Ozarks von Missouri. Die 16 Tracks vereinen Elemente und Gegensätze wie Üppigkeit und rohe Reduziertheit, das Heilige und das Profane, minimalistische Disziplin und maximale Schwelgerei, Kontrapunkt und simple Popharmonien. Im Kern unterstreicht das Album aber vor allem Maus" Hingabe an radikale Aufrichtigkeit und emotionale Wahrhaftigkeit in einem Zeitalter der Entfremdung - angetrieben von Konfrontation, Glauben und der tiefen Überzeugung, dass Sinn und Bedeutung noch immer etwas meinen. Maus, der einen Abschluss in Experimental Music und einen Doktortitel in Politikwissenschaft hat, wurde für die Art und Weise, auf die er akademische Sorgfalt und Lo-Fi Synthpop-Ästhetik verbindet, mal als "philosopher pop star" mal als "analog futurist" bezeichnet. Sein Wirken zieht sich dabei quer durch die Popkultur - von der Grime-Ikone Skepta, der seinen Track "I"m Only Human" sampelte bis zum Gen-Z-Rapper nettspend, von Filmemacher Josh Safdie ("Uncut Gems") bis zum Fotografen Wolfgang Tillmans. Sein Track "Cop Killer" ist im 2025er Film "Friendship" mit Tim Robinson und Paul Rudd enthalten. Mit exzessiven Liveshows und seinen bislang erschienenen Alben, auf denen Ironie, Trauer, Freude und Absurdität stets dicht beieinander liegen, hat Maus einen einzigartigen Weg beschritten und sich eine ergebene Fanbase erspielt.

A new label is born. With artists based both in Barcelona and São Paulo, CAMPANA Records' first release showcases the personalities of two of its members with a split EP. On the A side, Villaça brings two techno-trance tracks made in 2023 for his live act, and after two years of testing these tracks all around Latin and North America, he arranged these high-energy pieces for this release!

And on the other side, we have the always evolving, fresh, and intelligent dark grooves from Trajano - two tracks made with care that showcase his unique vision for dance floors. Above all, this release is about resilience, friendship, and dedication from two Brazilian artists who have a deep love for making people dance with underground music.

After years of friendship and sound fragmentation, Felipe Valenzuela and Federico Molinari have succeeded in capturing and distilling their unique musical perspective into a single frame.Throughout this process, these two minds from across the Andes have developed numerous productions with a broad, multidirectional genre range.This release features four tracks, each with its own distinct identity. The A1 track, FORCED TO THE SCALES, which lends its name to the EP, blends elements of Spanish classical music with a futuristic edge, seamlessly adapting to various moments within a set.The second track on side A, RAPS TIGHT, is an experiment born from the same session, where a subtle sensitivity is expressed through a a slow beat, enveloped in a harmonious world.On side B, 503 emerges from a different creative process, combining two divergent paths that naturally intersect, resulting in a track full of energy and dynamism.The EP closes with DEAD MAN, a one-shot recording that, through its raw spontaneity, encapsulates the conclusion of a fragmented journey within a frame full of versatility.

"Hyperglyph" is the first new album in 11 years from composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor"s long-running Chicago Underground Duo project. Mazurek and Taylor have played music together in a multitude of formations over nearly three decades, including their ongoing partnership in Mazurek"s large-format-skyward-expressionism vehicle Exploding Star Orchestra, in the expanded Chicago Underground Trio, Quartet and Orchestra (all with guitarist Jeff Parker), as well as a plethora of other assemblages. The early albums by the Duo have proven to be embryonic blueprints for the avant-jazz / electronic / indie rock hybridizing of the time, making them majorly important moments in the articulation of the "jazz" dimensionality of the then-burgeoning "post rock" sound. That sound, of course, was being transmitted far and wide due to the success of these groups as well as the Mazurek/Parker project Isotope 217, and the Chicago Underground"s frequently-intersecting collaborators in Tortoise. Just as most of the still-working projects born of that era have evolved, reconfigured, and grown, the Chicago Underground Duo has undergone a number of musical moltings, with the project always in the background of disparate individual aural investigations. The concurrent personal evolutions of Mazurek and Taylor as the Duo project drops off and picks back up makes it a true reflection of their own lives and friendship.

Parisian label Chuwanaga is thrilled to announce the upcoming release of "The Milky Way", the first EP from the dynamic Milk & Honey duo, comprised of producers Saint-James and Tour-Maubourg. Known for their raw sound reminiscent of the late nineties house sound, Milk & Honey bring a fresh yet nostalgic energy to the scene, blending vintage hardware with modern sensibilities. Available as Limited Vinyl 12" (300ex) and Digital.

This EP, is a testament to their musical chemistry and shared passion for the classic deep house. Composed in just two days at Tour-Maubourg's studio in Ixelles, Belgium, "The Milky Way" captures the essence of their creative synergy.

From peak-time club heaters like "Back in the Hood", "Lost and Found" and "Sour" — the latter tinged with a darker UK sound - to deeper, more introspective cuts like "Deeper and Deeper","Venus Effect" and "City Stabs" the EP is a rich and textured journey. It's also a testament to friendship: a story told through syncopated rhythms, hypnotic melodies, and intricate drum programming.

Milk & Honey have previously challenged the deep house scene with releases on Groovence Records, drawing inspiration from legends like Glenn Underground.

180g, turquoise vinyl. Perhaps the hardest thing about Soul music is convincing. If the place and the experiences don't somehow shine through and meet us, we risk missing out on what's on offer completely. "But first_ are you experienced?" as Jimi Hendrix asked. That's precisely why Soul music is difficult in Sweden. There are few who can portray their experiences in music in a way as convincing as in the Black US Soul tradition. This however seems almost provocatively easy for Bror Gunnar Jansson to do. On the album People, it's as if he pours both lyrics and melodies that have grown slowly in life and that come naturally if you grow up on the right soil. And on almost every song, it only takes a few bars for Bror Gunnar Jansson & The Escapism to show who their musical relatives are. Although Gunnar seems to move freely in musical landscapes ruled by the greats of seventies soul from Al Green, Curtis Mayfield and Aretha Franklin, as well as in some of the fringes of blues and jazz territory, both he and drummer and producer Christopher Cantillo explain that the album has took a long time brewing. And that what may appear obvious and simple has sprung out of a friendship that spans more than half of their lives.

Black Vinyl LP with insert (including the story behind the album and lyrics with English translation)

After their first LP, in 1987, Pedro gathered his usual band, Carlos Sousa on keyboard, Bulimundo on drums, Nuno Santos and Zézé on lead and rhythm guitars, Augusto Rasta on bass, Daló on sax and finally Dalú on percussions, for yet another project, one that carried both their names: Jacinta Sanches - Pedro Ramos. Eight days, no more, that’s all Pedro Ramos and Jacinta Sanches needed inside the Estúdios Musicorde. The process was natural, as with all their music, memories recollected and arranged by Pedro on café napkins, rehearsed and perfected at home with Jacinta. Together they imagined music where Cape Verdean saudade could dance together with Kingston’s skank, two island hearts beating inside European concrete.

His name is Pedro Correia Ramos Varela, born in Praia, Santiago, Cabo Verde on April 6th 1954; her name is Jacinta Lopes Veiga Varela, born in Cidade Velha, Santiago, Cabo Verde on January 22nd 1959. The two met in Praia, where a few exchanged words turned into long evening conversations; conversations into friendship; friendship into love; and love into six wonderful children. After the independence of Cabo Verde, they got married in 1978 and moved to Portugal, where Pedro started working as a welder for Lisnave and playing the guitar in a band in Ramada. Trading shipyard sparks by day for the after-hours pulse of Cova da Moura, his love for music proved harder than steel. And in 1982, after seeing Bob Marley and Peter Tosh in Rotterdam, he opened his own Dancing Bar just below their house, a pioneering space for the promotion of reggae music in Portugal.

Their Dancing Bar kept its doors open from 1982 to 1994, seeing the release of two albums and more singles. To this day, Pedro and Jacinta are still making music, one the inspiration of the other. They define themselves as simple people, living happy without prejudice, friends with the world.

Ian Moore, Johnny Moeller, and Jesse Dayton-three of Texas' fiercest fretmen-join forces at last as Texas Headhunters, a band born from deep roots, old friendships, and a shared reverence for the raw, swaggering spirit of Texas blues. Their self-titled debut isn't a nostalgia trip. It's a declaration.

Cut over five days at Willie Nelson's Pedernales Studio, 'Texas Headhunters' deals 12 tracks of grit, groove, and gut-level truth. No smoke, no mirrors-just seasoned musicians in a room, plugged in and turned up. The chemistry is real. The result is mind blowing. Clifford Antone looms large in the story of Texas Headhunters-the spiritual godfather of the project, and the man who first recognized the fire in each of its members. All three-Johnny, Jesse, and Ian-were among the last generation of young guns taken under his wing.

Texas Headhunters isn't just a summit of three badasses with guitars. It's a reclamation. A statement. A reminder that Texas blues, in all its grit and glory, still matters. It's not retro-it's revival. And it's not a tribute-it's a shot across the bow.

Format: Standard Jacket with printed sleeve with lyrics. Pressed on Opaque Red Vinyl.

Born out of the early 1980's Austin noise punk scene, Scratch Acid deliberately eschewed the loud, fast rules of hardcore as everything they didn't want to be and embraced a weirder, artier sound. Prior to the release of their 1984 debut S/T EP, someone gave Touch and Go Records owner Corey Rusk a cassette of the recording, and he was instantly a huge fan. Rusk was immediately interested in releasing the EP and contacted the band to express his admiration. At the time, Scratch Acid had already committed to working with Rabid Cat Records. The group quickly developed a riveting performance aesthetic, and, as the debut S/T EP made its way around the country via fanzines, college radio, and word-of-mouth, the band mounted short tours to the Midwest and the East Coast. While he was not able to work with Scratch Acid directly through Touch and Go, Rusk had begun booking shows with Scratch Acid in Detroit, so he could see them live and meet them. A friendship formed, and Touch and Go Records would eventually release the band's second EP, Berserker, in 1987.

Old-time and traditional music stay exciting for their contrasts. Exacting instrumentation honed through mentorships and late-night jams at fiddler's conventions tangles with a community-sourced inventiveness that influences variants and new sounds. Joseph Decosimo is a master of this genre for this very reason, blending deep technique with an openness and curiosity that keep his music crackling with life. A "marvelous fiddler" (No Depression) and banjo player who braids "exultation and veneration" (INDY Week) into his music, on his third solo album Fiery Gizzard Decosimo gathers a close-knit ensemble of friends from his musical career to infuse his interpretations of fiddle and banjo pieces with a contagious communal joy. As an artist working with traditional music from the South and Appalachia, Decosimo chooses songs based not only on historical significance and lineage but also his own sensory approach. For Fiery Gizzard, his ear was tuned to otherworldly tones and mystery, sourcing from field recordings such as Virginia fiddler Luther Davis' hypnotic version of "Shady Grove" while amping up the music's psychedelic potential. On the middle Tennessee banjo composition "Flowery Girls," a VHS of bluesman Abner Jay inspired Decosimo to rig up a pickup inside a fretless banjo and play it thr ough a tube amp to capture some of Jay's edge and funkiness. But to round out the sound and keep it kinetic meant galvanizing a genre-eschewing crew to jam out - and not in a "spaced-out drooly" kind of way, he laughs, but as a sort of "responsive conversation." Decosimo has always been a community-minded artist. He began playing as a seventh graderin Tennessee, fostering relationships with older players at jams and in homes, a learning mode natural to his inquisitive nature and desire for musical connection. A folklorist by intuition, he later became one by profession, studying with old-time legend Clyde Davenport, teaching in East Tennessee State University's renowned bluegrass program, and receiving his PhD at the University of North Carolina with a dissertation titled "Catching the `Wild Note': Listening, Learning, and Connoisseurship in Old-Time Music." In North Carolina, Decosimo kicked about in the verdant environment of Durham and Chapel Hill's folk and indie scenes, collaborating with artists including Alice Gerrard, Hiss Golden Messenger, and Jake Xerxes Fussell. This community has influenced his own music, including his "sublime and strangely heartening" (Bandcamp Daily) 2022 release While You Were Slumbering and Beehive Cathedral, Decosimo's 2024 "Appalachian mountain music treasury" (New Commute) trio album with Luke Richardson and Cleek Schrey for Dear Life Records. Continuing on this path, Fiery Gizzard is home base for a loose outfit of mostly Tarheel-based musicians from within and beyond traditional music. Inspired by a tour with fiddler Stephanie Coleman (Nora Brown), guitarist Jay Hammond, and synth builder and multi-instrumentalist Matthew O'Connell, Decosimo assembled studiomates based on close friendships and comfort. Coleman, O'Connell, and Hammond contribute to Fiery Gizzard, along with bassist and producer Andy Stack (Helado Negro, Wye Oak), horn player Kelly Pratt (Beirut, David Byrne), Mipso and Fust's Libby Rodenbough, Joseph O'Connell (Elephant Micah), andtrad/experimental artist Cleek Schrey. Decosimo's fiddle and banjo work is virtuosic, intricate and simple simultaneously, a testament to his many years of study. On some tracks, his playing or lovely, plain-hearted singing is the centerpiece, such as on his interpretations of Texan street preacher Washington Phillips' 1929 recording "I Had a Good Father and Mother" or the Eastern Kentucky fiddle barn-burner "Glory in the Meetinghouse," famously played by Luther Strong for Alan Lomax. But there's also a trusting open-door policy, like where Southern Appalachian tune "Ida Red" relaxes into Coleman's sweet, confident fiddling and Hammond's loping guitar. As a bandleader, Decosimo's confidence and enthusiasm for the music reveal the heart of traditional music and how it can come to life through community. Fiery Gizzard is Joseph Decosimo as a powerful champion of traditional music - a sponge who soaks up as much as he squeezes out, a responsive artist who makes his genre accessible, and a magnet who can bring musicians of all sorts into his orbit with his same passion.