Buscar:g unit

Amsterdam's rising dark horse / talented misfit / rising talent mayo presents her debut EP for United Identities. ''Sad Violin Music'' holds three dirty jams, driven by her self-built modular synth.

Apparel Tronic is proud to present you the new album by Artizhan called Breaks From The V.
The DJ and producer from Naples, who’s been a pivotal figure of the Italian Electronic music scene since a very young age, is not new to the Tronic catalogues with his newest moniker but this one is surely his most complete, heartfelt and anticipated work to date. Having been in the scene for more than 25 years allowed Franky B to experiment, improving his creative techniques with ninja-like dedication and always testing himself along the rapids of music production, DJing and scratching. Now he’s ready to emerge once again from the shadows with his new LP: a groundbreaking, powerful, cutting-edge work we’re all extremely proud to finally release and, most importantly, his most profound sonic confession so far. With ‘Breaks From The V’ (the title of which is a tribute to his homeland, where ‘V’ stands for Vesuvius), Artizhan narrates his life through his music and embodies the best version of himself displaying, through ten stunning tracks, great versatility as a producer, ranging from D&B and Jungle to abrasive beats and some masterly composed and very personal paraphrase of IDM. The LP is a massive showdown by the artist himself and his label, both united towards a single objective: telling Artizhan’s incredible story as effectively and efficiently as possible.

This release is a special one; a moment where the two halves of the Mr Bongo record label unite, our heritage re-issues and our contemporary artists roster.

Minoru Muraoka’s 'The Positive and the Negative’ is a firm favourite at Mr Bongo. It sees a master of the shakuhachi, a traditional bamboo Japanese flute, flex his prodigious skill resulting in a unique mix of breakbeat jazz and Japanese folkloric music. 'The Positive and the Negative’ featured on the 1970 'Bamboo’ album, which Mr Bongo reissued in 2019. Heralded by DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, Egon, and many others. The record’s cult status had us thinking how could we pay further homage to a sublime track such as this. The opportunity came to us in an email from Melbourne’s Surprise Chef with a link to the fabulous reinterpretation of the track which they had just recorded.

"Minoru Muraoka’s ‘Bamboo’ LP has long been a fixture in our record bags, mostly for the killer shakuhachi funk cut The Positive and The Negative. The record is possibly our favourite from Mr Bongo’s extensive catalogue of reissues, and certainly the most influential to Surprise Chef; The Positive and the Negative’s cinematic atmosphere paired with the wonky drum feels and dramatic performance makes it a near-perfect amalgamation of what we try to capture on Surprise Chef records. We’ve borrowed an element or two from the tune over the last few albums (such as the percussion on ‘The Limp’), so it felt right to go head first into reinterpreting the entire track for ourselves. We recorded the tune in Karate Boogaloo’s attic studio with our man Henry Jenkins at the controls and Hudson Whitlock on percussion. We spent an entire day trying to get the take; we felt such a deep responsibility to capture the intensity of the original, we must have done 20 or 30 takes before we were finally happy. We stuck a fork in it late into the night, satisfied that we’d had our best crack at paying homage to a masterpiece by the great Minoru Muraoka.” - Surprise Chef

Forged in their signature sound, "The Chef" have made 'The Positive and the Negative' their own whilst simultaneously treating the original with utmost respect. The shakuhachi and koto have been replaced by synths and guitars, but the breakbeat psychedelic vein flows richly through both instruments

The 7" vinyl format was the right fit for this release, so the original Minoru Muraoka recording which clocks in over nine minutes has been edited into a 7” version to accompany Surprise Chef’s new take.

The soundtrack to the movie The United Way. The United Way is the legendary story of ‘The Red Devils’ – Manchester United. From their humblest of beginnings in England’s Industrial North at the turn of the 20th Century, Manchester United gifted working men, women and children alike, the poor and the struggling, a new Dream – a winning Dream of hope, beauty and ambition. Here is a family club which pulled itself, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the horrific Munich air disaster to become champions of European football, committing to a stunning, relentlessly attacking style and elevating working class boys to the status of gods: Charlton, Best, Cantona, Beckham and Ronaldo. Such is the mythical aura of the club, that its stadium is universally known as “The Theatre of Dreams”. Now, with over 650 million supporters around the world, 73m Facebook fans, 18m Twitter followers and 1.8m shirts sold per season, Manchester United are the most celebrated, widely supported sports club in the world. Presented by the peerless Eric Cantona and featuring stunning archive and never seen before footage, “The United Way” celebrates the birth and growth of a global phenomenon – a unifying club for the people, by the people. The whole film is set to a score by George Fenton - one of the UK’s most successful composers, writing scores for over 100 films and dozens of plays and TV programmes. He has been recognised with numerous awards: 5 Oscar nominations, multiple Ivor Novello, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy and BMI awards, a Classical Brit, The Nina Rota Award at Venice and a World Soundtrack Lifetime Achievement Award from Film Fest Gent.

It is with undoubted excitement that Stroboscopic Artefacts can present the new release from Irish duo Lakker as SA019.




This comes hot on the heels of Lakker's recent work for the label through the dark trappings of Monad XIV. 'Harbour' could imagine a vessel out to sea, battling a tempest. Heavily distorted rhythms build like the swirl of a storm, a distress signal popping on, radio distortion. As implosion seems near a moment of calm sets in and a less maniacal beat assumes control. But the unpredictable hammers resume once more, thumping above a sheet of glinting and sharp precipitation. The storm eventually ceases, abruptly, and the 'Harbour' is left still. 'eeAea' is a different experience. It is based on surer footing, concrete beneath the limbs. A thump, incessant, pounds in the background, giving clarity to a winding sigh and dissonant percussion. Yet there remains melody in the madness, with beautiful hi ends peeking through the atmosphere and a strut which surges towards conclusion. The conclusion ends (unresolved) at 'Valentina Lane'. It is a street of mystery, set upon a gas of syncopated flashes and airy scrapes. An uncomfortable synthesiser hums in the background, darting high and interjecting low. And it meanders thence, pausing for the odd moment of reflection. It is as deliberate as 'Harbour' is chaotic; it is a tight, cogent finale.

At the center of Dadub's SA020 lie the myths of the ancient Greek goddess Demeter - her search for daughter Persephone, the drink at the Eleusinian Mysteries ceremonies in her honour, and the fungus which gave the drink its psychoactive properties. The opening track is 'Mistresses March', a thumping narrative of Demeter's search for her abducted daughter Persephone. At the fundament lies a test of a new generation VST - 'Diachronic' - which is used to manage audio samples. The textures which merge during the near 12-minute march scrape and plummet, raining down upon the ominous marching band beat. This is an odyssey, unhappy and unflinching. Based on the handmade modular synth system from Nicola Buono and Lino Monaco, the representation of ceremony drink 'Kykeon' is on one hand a flowing narrative and on the other a demonstration of intense artistic scrutiny: a perfect, unremitting thud. There is, at five minutes, a subtle key pattern, light but not impermanent under the cacophony of chaos. This is indicative of the ceaseless self-examination. Little details, significant differences. Powered by a sound and groove generator invented by Daniele de Santis (Grün), 'Ergot Kernel' is a chemical cauldron. It's a beat continuously emerging from the undergrowth; an imperious column rising; a train ploughing on, coursing through an arid landscape. Conversely, the atmosphere is bright, full of electricity and warmth, with moisture descending. Dadub's SA020 is a journey through a Greek myth, with textural magnificence and technological innovation.

The third release for Stroboscopic Artefacts in 2014, SA22 is the new cut from Italian producer Chevel. 'One Month Off' is an EP built around the abstract themes of construction, starting with demolition and ending on perspective. Opening track 'One Month Off' combines a warm thump with skittering percussion. Ragged cymbals build pressure. As the track continues to strut, through insistence as much as confidence, it gives out. 'The Wall', next up, is perhaps misleadingly a more unsettled affair. There is little linear impetus, a panoply of syncopated beats and foreign noises from the undergrowth. This is a wall of multitudinous surface, a front concealing the unsettled and unsure within. 'Cave Dwellings' is a more organic construct, building from the traditional basics of a kick drum and hi hat. Like the opening number this is a confident piece, but the Caves resonate with greater darkness and menace. The kick squelches at the bottom, the snare drips; glistening echoes bound through the chamber. 'Marker Shop' is fourth up, uniting disparate urges and glorious moods. The beat is uncomfortable, and repeatedly gives way. The record closes on 'Viewpoint', a piece of warmer perspective. It is not, however, a calm scene: in many ways this is a view of something more unsettled than what has come before. It is both jungular and industrial, an uncompromising marriage of nature and noise. Chevel lands, then, on SA, with a discussion of construction and constructs.

A variety of ambient and experimental cuts to be found here. A re-release of sorts, all original tracks were done by Enitokwa (Takashi Hasegawa) as rehearsal for a live performance at Tokyo - Batofar Festival in Paris in 2001 and were released on a limited CDR "promo." in 2002. All 8 tracks were recorded and mixed live in one sitting, and have been remastered, given names and pressed on heavy vinyl with a beautiful cover design by Berlin artist Nik Patrick.

The sample sources were largely inspired by records that Takashi listened to in High School - and feature two hugely well known British hands (one of whom have just reformed and have a new album out…), some old Jazz, Bossa Nova and Hawaiian records, as well as samples from ambient legends Deep Forest and Brian Eno. The result is an earthly nostalgic feel with deep moods to match the times we are living in.

The first track ‘Pop’ bursts into life with an etherial presence. ‘Ssab’ and ‘Chinese Girl Goes to Hawaiii’ have a rather filmic quality to them, whilst ‘Resonating’ seems to float over the wreckage of human activity, a post apocalyptic vision of Planet Earth. ‘Liquid Sky’ is a minimal groove which could be a sonic report from an eerie space station, which is itself a remix of Dub Sonic aka Takehito Nakazeto’s ‘Donigma Dub’.

‘Hope on Hop’ will appeal to today’s generation with its Techno and D’n’B influences, and features voices taken from Wim Wender’s ‘Paris Texas’. Track 7, ‘Mingos’ turns Gal Costa’s voice into a soaring atmospheric haze of digital memory, and the track ‘Holy Spiral’ is a combination of this one and ‘Resonating’, an ascendent 12 minute march to the release’s final close.



Takashi Hasegawa is a respected DJ, producer and live performer who plays live electronic and DJ sets regularly today in venues and festivals across Japan. He has been producing house, techno, experimental and ambient music since the 90’s - spending some of that time in the United States, including working in the music scene in the New York, before returning to Japan working as a sound engineer, A&R and producer for the famous Tokyo-based record label Club Yellow. Now based in Osaka-Fukuoka, Takashi’s music is still resonating with fellow music lovers around the world.



Now, 20 years on from its creation, this music is rediscovered and given a wider audience. The sound on ’Re-Promo’ interestingly gives an insight into the music Enitokwa is currently working on - reflecting the cyclical nature of creative output - and represents a slight departure from the swirling delicate ambient textures that you can hear in o.n.s.a and on the intricate and more musical 2069, released in 2017 and 2016 respectively.



Each track has a video accompaniment to be released in various media outlets, the label head Tom Ransom having partnered with diverse artists in Colombia, Denmark, Japan, Poland, France, Britain and China to create a wide range of visual outputs.



The release also sees two digital only remixes, one coming from London and Wigan’s enigmatic Isherwood (Edward Regan), and the other from Mat Fink - a unique DJ and up and coming producer raised in Pittsburgh and Berlin. Watch out for these…



Machines used:



Yamaha SU700

Sequential Circuits Pro One

Roland TR909

Roland TR808,

TC Electric D-Two

MAM RS3

Pedals



Remastering and additional audio treatment by Kabamix (LMD) on Dec.4.2017.

Dedicated to Takehito Nakazato (SONIC PLATE)

DISCOVER" is the new album by ZUCCHERO "SUGAR" FORNACIARI. It is the first cover album of Zucchero’s career, who stripped and restyled in his own iconic view, Italian and international music masterpieces. The first single will be "Follow you follow me", an engaging reinterpretation of one of the first great worldwide Genesis’ hits.  “DISCOVER” unites Zucchero’s two musical souls of the best Italian melodic tradition and the deepest Afro-American roots. Also important are the collaborations with BONO in "Canta la Vita" (Italian version with Italian written lyrics by Zucchero of Bono's song "Let Your Love Be Known"), with ELISA in "Luce (Tramonti a Nord Est)", and with MAHMOOD in “Natural Blues”, Moby's version of Vera Hall's song “Trouble So hard”. Also included is the intense duet" Ho visto Nina volare " with FABRIZIO DE ANDRÉ.Reviews Daily Express, Daily Mail, Uncut, Sunday Times, Telegraph Ads Sunday Times, Uncut. LP Version.

A mandatory disc for those who loved Europe and Fair Warning, but highly recommended for those who love good music of those years.“ METAL HAMMER (IT), Andrea Lami „OUT OF THIS WORLD has it all. An album and musicians who will give you total happiness!“ METAL INTEGRAL (F), Laudrome „This album was just sheer enjoyment from start to finish“ METAL TEMPLE (ISR), Will Travers "1988 saw the release of Swedish hard rock superstars EUROPE‘s fourth album entitled “Out Of This World”, which has sold over 3 million units to date and contains hits such as “Open Your Heart”, “Superstitious” and “Let The Good Times Rock” . Ex-EUROPE guitarist Kee Marcello intends to tie in with that era’s style with his new formation that he recruited the perfect companion for: FAIR WARNING-vocalist Tommy Heart. Their self-titled debut album was mixed by Ron Nevison (KISS, OZZY OSBOURNE), who had also refined the aforementioned EUROPE classics in 1988. So they connected all of the obvious dots, with a neverending list of renowened musicians joining in on the recordings. Don Airey (DEEP PURPLE) contributed the keyboards on four songs, while the rhythm section is complemented by Darby Todd (GARY MOORE, THE DARKNESS) and Ken Sandin (ALIEN). Every track of their debut work deserves undivided attention, be it the anthemic “Twilight”, the gripping “Lightning Up My Dark”, the timeless “Warrior” or the amazing ballad “Only You Can Teach Me How To Love Again”. This epic piece makes melodic rock dreams come true and sounds modern while traditional at the same time. Kee Marcello is a genius in his field and carries that certain something in his blood, so wonderfully and emotionally implented by Tommy Heart‘s vocals. OUT OF THIS WORLD is the new star in Melodic Rock heaven, a liaison that has yet a lot left in store. "

Slam collaborate with Hector Oaks, 999999999, Keith Tucker (AKA Optic Nerve), Amelie Lens, Rebekah, AnD & Perc, for a new five part Soma Records project LOUDER THAN CHAOS.

On March 2020 the world was abruptly thrown into collective disarray. The Pandemic stopped almost everything dead in its tracks. No social gatherings, self isolation, a sense of panic and bewilderment prevailed. An industry that had become so dependent on human connection and unity, was suddenly switched off and put on pause for an unforeseeable future.

It was in this climate that The Louder Than Chaos project was born, facilitated by Soma Records head honchos and techno protagonists Slam. A collaborative project with friends, colleagues and contemporaries normally only seen at airports, or events, now brought together under a completely different set of circumstances, allowing for a purposeful connection in a time of disconnect. The focus of the project is built on a powerful mutual participation, remotely constructed over time and fully intended for holding court on peak time dance floors when they inevitably return. That time has now finally come.

The Louder Than Chaos project is a series of 5 releases, on 12 vinyl" & Digital, to be released monthly via Soma Records. Featuring collaborations between Slam & Hector Oaks, Slam & 999999999 Slam & Keith Tucker (AKA Optic Nerve), + more to follow.

Each EP features specially commissioned artwork from German based artist PPP Panic, which consolidates into one constructive piece over the 5 releases.

Slam collaborate with Hector Oaks, 999999999, Keith Tucker (AKA Optic Nerve), Amelie Lens, Rebekah, AnD & Perc, for a new five part Soma Records project LOUDER THAN CHAOS.

On March 2020 the world was abruptly thrown into collective disarray. The Pandemic stopped almost everything dead in its tracks. No social gatherings, self isolation, a sense of panic and bewilderment prevailed. An industry that had become so dependent on human connection and unity, was suddenly switched off and put on pause for an unforeseeable future.

It was in this climate that The Louder Than Chaos project was born, facilitated by Soma Records head honchos and techno protagonists Slam. A collaborative project with friends, colleagues and contemporaries normally only seen at airports, or events, now brought together under a completely different set of circumstances, allowing for a purposeful connection in a time of disconnect. The focus of the project is built on a powerful mutual participation, remotely constructed over time and fully intended for holding court on peak time dance floors when they inevitably return. That time has now finally come.

The Louder Than Chaos project is a series of 5 releases, on 12 vinyl" & Digital, to be released monthly via Soma Records. Featuring collaborations between Slam & Hector Oaks, Slam & 999999999 Slam & Keith Tucker (AKA Optic Nerve), + more to follow.

Each EP features specially commissioned artwork from German based artist PPP Panic, which consolidates into one constructive piece over the 5 releases.

From its earliest utterances, experimental music has been particularly disposed to transnational and cross-cultural collaboration. Seeking the answer for a fundamental problem - how to transcend the boundaries of difference, distance, and time - it presents a means to find common ground and communicate through the elemental form of sound. Over the last 5 years, this precisely what the duo of Félicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has achieved, intertwining sublime sonorities across the geographic expanses between their respective homes in France and the United States. Their third album for Shelter Press, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ (‘A winter in the middle of summer’) - the first to have been largely recorded by Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma together in the same space - distills a mesmerizing pallet of acoustic and electronic sources into an open discourse of radically poetic forms, offering glimpses of warmth and intimacy waiting in the post-covid world to come.

Both veteran experimentalists with celebrated bodies of solo work behind them - each traversing the challenges of electroacoustic practice in their own singular ways - prior to their first recorded outing in 2016, Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma had only crossed paths in person once, initially meeting in San Fransisco during 2009. The mutual bond formed during that brief encounter flowered into their first LP, ‘Comme Un Seul Narcisse’, followed two years later by 2018’s ‘Limpid As The Solitudes’. Both recorded remotely - sending files back and forth, fortified by conversations on a vast range of subjects - these two albums were guided by impassioned conceptual nods to Guy Debord, Baudelaire, Brion Gysin and Sylvia Plath, while seeking resolutions for the challenges and unique possibilities that working at a distance provoked.

Where the triumphs of its predecessors rose from the bridging of disparate moments and divergent spaces, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ culminates as a celebration of closeness, a result of Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma working together in the studio, responsively in real time, for the first time. Recorded in Brooklyn during August of 2019 - a handful of months before the pandemic would impose chasmic distances across the globe - its six discrete works, carefully crafted and finalized over the ensuing year, evolve seamlessly across the album’s two sides, weaving a sprawling tapestry of sonority, within which both artists retaining their own voices and visions, while drawing each other towards uncharted ground.

Atkinson likens the recording of ‘Un hiver en plein été’ to have been akin to “a playground”, each artist “hungry for each sound, a bit like the rush in the Louvre in Godard’s Bande à part”, to which Cantu-Ledesma adds that the process seemed to have had “a mind of its own”, with both “along for the ride”. This organic sense of entropy and enthusiasm - a joyous exploration of the unknown - guides the momentum of the album’s evolving arc, as unfolding chasms of ambient space ripple with humanity, life, and fleeting glimpses of the actions that led to its material core.

Crafted from deconstructed melodic elements and drifting long-tones - laden with subtle nods to Indian classical ragas and free jazz - searching patterns of speech, textural elements captured within the studio and the outside world, and searching tonal and percussive interventions, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ coheres as a multi-faceted series of electroacoustic dialogues; nesting conversations between two artists working at the juncture of abstraction and narration, field recording and harmony, and the philosophical and phenomenological, in search for the meaning of friendship, and its manifestation in pure sound.

Somewhere in Berlin during a cold and foggy winter: Hyboid is recording his album “Sequencing the Apocalypse” directly to a 2-track recorder, using analog synthesizers and a couple of old effects units. Raw and no-frills. Influenced by the great French and German pioneers of the 70s, this is a soundtrack for dystopian minds in dystopian times!

These recordings, made in 2001 in the weeks before September 11, constitute a unique historical document. They are spoken-word adaptations of scenes taken from Destroy All Monsters, the first book by acclaimed writer and 'pop culture alchemist' Ken Hollings. A multistranded postmodern epic, Destroy All Monsters offers a radical retelling of Desert Storm, America's military operation targeting Iraq, using imagery derived from MTV videos, CNN news reports, Japanese kaiju movies and anime, Hong Kong action flicks and tales of alien abduction. The book's entire narrative nervously unfolds in an unstable of world of terror monsters, wrecked cities and dangerously tall buildings: where an event like 9/11 is inevitable. The book was officially launched on September 13, but distribution in the United States was delayed when ports on the Eastern Seaboard were closed to shipping post 9/11, leaving copies of the book stranded in the Atlantic. 'Published the very week of the "attacks on America",' Toby Litt wrote at the time, 'Destroy All Monsters is genuinely, spookily prescient…as a progress report on Planet Earth, it seems to have timeslipped onto the front pages.' Lydia Lunch praised it as 'a hallucinogenic spiral into future nightmare', while The Scotsman called it 'mind bending reading.'

In the summer of 2001, Ken Hollings was approached by sound designer and electronic music composer Simon James, who wanted to create an audio adaptation of scenes from the novel to share with subscribers to a spoken word channel launched by totallyradio. The idea was to record Ken reading his own words and then embed them in a soundscape that evoked the fragmented complexity of the original text. Ken concentrated on a small handful of threads from the overall narrative, while Simon directed and engineered the final recording. This resulted in the two sequences of words, sounds and electronic tonalities contained on this audiocassette: an unsettling portrait of people about to be overtaken by events.

In October 2001, having just got married in London, Ken and Rachel Hollings went to New York for their honeymoon, just as they had originally planned. They spent an unforgettable week in a city struggling to recover from the seismic changes that had just taken place while a sudden wave of anthrax attacks on government and media offices filled the news cycles. Rachel took a photograph of Ken at Ground Zero, where crowds of onlookers continued to gather, and the air still smelled of burning.

Ken Hollings is a writer and broadcaster whose main concern is the relationship between culture and technology. He has written and presented numerous critically acclaimed features for BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and Resonance 104.4 FM His other books include Welcome to Mars, The Bright Labyrinth, The Space Oracle and Inferno all available from Strange Attractor/MIT Press. His latest book, Purgatory, is due from Strange Attractor in Spring 2022.

Simon James is a producer, musician and sound designer based in Brighton, UK, whose work combines electronic sources with field recording techniques and sound treatments, using sound to transport the listener to fantastical audio worlds. Simon's latest release, Electro Smog, collects electromagnetic field recordings from Shenzhen's electronic markets, recorded while he was in China at the invitation of Musicity and The British Council.

The Destroy All Monsters audio adaptations marked the first occasion Ken and Simon worked together – subsequently they collaborated on the 12-part series Welcome to Mars for Resonance 104.4 FM and Connecting, an audio portrait of the original 'phone phreaks', for BBC Radio 3. In 2021 they teamed up again to make Fast Forward, a six-part documentary series for Kasperksy Lab.

“I’m reeling, I’m restless,” sing Deep Throat Choir from the heart of their second album. That restlessness manifests in a set of tremendously abundant, original songs from the east London female and non-binary vocal collective, founded by Landshapes member Luisa Gerstein.

 Released via Bella Union, ‘In Order to Know You’ is a multi-layered assertion of freshly expansive range, driven by two core virtues: a sense of strength in unity and an open embrace of its singers’ personal experiences, shared through collective, supportive vocal expression.

 After 2017’s largely covers-based debut album, ‘Be OK’, the choir recognised the call to evolve. “Having been singing together for five-plus years, and having released an album of mostly covers, it felt like the logical next step to make our own music together,” says Gerstein. “This album is the alchemy of all the specific voices and players that make up the choir, and a collaborative process of writing and sharing music and ideas. Sonically, I wanted to move beyond just voices and percussion, to see what richness could be brought with acoustic instruments and electronics, and to transition from a choir that
does covers to a band with loads of vocalists.”

 ‘In Order to Know You’ heads towards its climax without seeming to touch the ground, from the title track’s devotional exhalation to the stealthy, smoky shimmer of ‘Unstitching’. Its lyrics drawn from a poem by Emma Cleave, the sublime ‘Field of Not Knowing’ closes the album in a vivid tapestry of folkgothic images (moon beams and pipistrelles) and serene-to-soaring arrangements, revelling in possibility: “It’s the place where I begin,” sing the choir.

 For Deep Throat Choir, the result is both an exquisite culmination of journeys taken so far and a lustrous, exquisite springboard for further adventures. Their travels began in 2013, when the collective took shape from a desire to strip music back to the basic elements of raw female voices and drums, united in a fashion that both honours and transmogrifies personal expression.

 A small group of four or five singers steadily expanded, with Zara Toppin’s drums providing a propulsive energy. Cathartic live shows and collaborations followed, ranging from team-ups with Peggy Sue, Stealing Sheep, Horse Meat Disco and Matthew E White, to performances at Green Man, Wilderness, the Southbank Centre’s WOW festival, London’s Scala and beyond. ‘Be OK’ provided a gutsy showcase for the band’s close, collective strengths, bolstered by weekly gatherings at a church in east London to blow
the roof off. A fruitful collaboration with techno-pop duo Simian Mobile Disco on the 2018 album ‘Murmurations’ followed: a testament to the choir’s alchemical abilities.

Who better to help you celebrate that most wonderful time of the year than holiday favorites Bad Religion? Tackling eight chestnuts in their classic punk rock style. From "White Christmas" with its nod to pioneers The Ramones, to the glorious choirboy intro to "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," Christmas Songs is the record you need to get your holiday household's toes tapping. Limited pressing - 1000 units worldwide, for the first time on green and yellow vinyl.

Chìsake Algonquin: to chant; to conjure; to cast a spell; this generally involves a shake-house, or shaking tent, in which the conjurer goes into a trance; the conjurer then has an out-of-body experience, going into the future to predict coming events, or into the past; as well as going into any locality in the universe to seek out someone or something generally practiced for ancestral divination.

The unaccompanied flute pieces within this album are adaptations of Anishinaabeg shaking tent chants. The Anishinaabeg also known as Anishinaabe are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples that reside in areas now called Canada and the United States. They include the Odawa, Saulteaux, Ojibwe (including Mississaugas), Potawatomi, Oji-Cree and Algonquin peoples. The word Anishinaabeg translates to "people from whence lowered". The Anishinaabeg origin myths describe their people originating by divine breath.

The shaking tent or conjuring lodge was the setting for a divinatory rite performed by specially trained shamans otherwise known as Chìsakewininì. During the shaking tent ceremony the Chìsakewininì would construct a special cylindrical framework typically of birch or spruce uprights planted in the ground with respective wood hoops to bind it together. This created a tensile structure of which birch bark, deer skin, or cloth was used as a covering. Rattles of caribou and deer hooves, or cups of lead shot, were tied to the frame. The floor was usually softened with freshly cut spruce boughs. The vertical axis of the shaking tent represents the realm of mediating beings, while the horizontal axis the earth or world of humans. The Chìsakewininì would enter the shaking tent at night and once inside would not be visible from onlookers. The singing of chants and drumming would summon the Chìsakewininì's spirit helpers, whose arrival was signified by animal cries and erratic tent shaking. During this transcendent state, the Chìsakewininì could dispatch these spirit helpers or Manidò to distant regions to answer questions from the onlookers about the most auspicious places to hunt, the well-being of a distant relative, and what would happen in the future.

The chants were usually sung using vocables before, during, and after the Chìsakewininì entered the shaking tent. Like many other similar divination ceremonies, singular or collective, the opening chants begin lyrically. They gradually turn to more reductive abstract structures midway and then end in lyrical chants. This symbolizes the performer and listener leaving the external literal world, entering a more abstract state of mind, and then returning. Traditionally all songs were carved on birch bark for record-keeping with mnemonic pictographs or other marks for future use. Tally mark clustering, sometimes used for song-keeping throughout the Anishinaabeg, is used for this album's track titles and numerical sequence.

The album intro begins with the shaking of a necklace of otter penis bone, fish spine, bear teeth, elk teeth and deer hide, gifted from Algonquin Elder Ajawajawesi. It is meant to focus the listener's attention before the flute pieces begin. The warble or multi-phonic oscillation prevalent in the middle tracks traditionally represented the "throat rattling" vocalization of the tonic note or sometimes known as the horizon of which the melody floats off of. Due to the repetition of multi-phonic oscillation the performer will breathe erratically creating an altered state correlating with the Chìsakewininì ceremonial actions. All songs are repeated seven times to signify the seven sacred directions: east, south, west, north, above/sky, below/earth, and center.

Pioneering Kansas City, MO emo rock band The Appleseed Cast's 2002 Deep Elm release 'Lost Songs' is now available to pre-order on vinyl via Thirty Something Records. Comprised of material recorded after the band's 1998 debut 'The End Of The Ring Wars' and before 2000's 'Mare Vitalis', 'Lost Songs' displays the transitional phase of the band in between the two albums. Carefully uniting old-school and new-school songwriting styles, 'Lost Songs' combines the bitter emotional release of the band's earliest recordings and the meticulous soundscapes crafted through endless hours of studio time on later recordings. Dynamic song structures, hurricane-force rhythms and ultra-vivid lyrics paint bold portraits of disillusion and heartache, while at other points 'Lost Songs' overflows with swells of symphonics, feedback and electronics. The title joins the already released (and still available) vinyl reissue of the band's long out-of-print 2000 Deep Elm sophomore release 'Mare Vitalis.' Ominous, powerful, and magnetizing like the sea, 'Mare Vitalis' is dreamy and charming, and flows from a tide of moody energy with guitars that sweep around complex, precision rhythms. A masterpiece of timeless inspiration, the record is absolutely stunning.