quête:ghost town

"‘One of the most exciting composers alive.’ – Daily Telegraph

Nonesuch will release the original score for Ken Burns’s new two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw; the documentary airs on November 18 and 19 on PBS. The album features performances by the composer’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score.

In celebration of LEONARDO da VINCI, New York City’s historic venue The Town Hall presents an evening of performances from Shaw’s score by Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth on October 29. The filmmakers will also preview excerpts from the four-hour film..

LEONARDO da VINCI is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns’s first non-American subject. It also marks a significant change in the team’s filmmaking style, which includes using split screens with images, video, and sound from different periods to further contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations. LEONARDO da VINCI looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human?

“No single person can speak to our collective effort to understand the world and ourselves,” said Ken Burns. “But Leonardo had a unique genius for inquiry, aided by his extraordinary skills as an artist and scientist, that helps us better understand the natural world that we are part of and to appreciate more fully what it means to be alive and human.”

“To help give depth and dimension to Leonardo’s inner life, and to carry our viewers on his personal journey, we enlisted the composer Caroline Shaw,” McMahon says in the album’s liner note. “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern. A fully original score, we believed, would add crucial connective tissue to areas where the record of Leonardo’s life is thin and it’s possible to briefly lose his trail. The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder.

“This soundtrack is a testament to the inspired efforts of Jennifer Dunnington, who marshaled it into being, the brilliant musicians and vocalists who, with the help of Alex Venguer, Neal Shaw, Colton Dodd and Tim Marchiafava, made it soar, and most of all Caroline Shaw, who might be Leonardo’s soulmate from across time,” he continues. “With her help, the Leonardo who emerges is no wizard shrouded in mystery, but a prideful, obsessive, at times lonely or flustered, occasionally ecstatic, and, in the end, content man who is in ways both modern and thoroughly of his time.”

“As we set out to explore Leonardo’s life, we realized that while he was very much a man of his time, he was also interested in something more universal,” said Sarah Burns. “Leonardo was uniquely focused on finding connections throughout nature, something that strikes us as very modern today, but which of course has a long history.”

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with a range of artists including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma, and she has contributed music to films and TV series including Fleishman Is in Trouble, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, and Beyoncé’s Homecoming. In addition to three albums with Sō Percussion, Narrow Sea, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, and Rectangles and Circumstance, Nonesuch has released her two Grammy-winning albums Orange and Evergreen, both of which feature Attacca Quartet. “Two-Step” and “Ghost,” Shaw’s songs with Ringdown, her duo with Danni Lee Parpan, are available now on Nonesuch. Caroline Shaw is Wigmore Hall’s 2024-25 Composer in Residence."

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is available as a limited edition of 2500 copies on “Muncher” coloured vinyl (crystal clear & transparent green). The heavyweight gatefold sleeve has a special UV Spot varnish + embossing finish. The package contains a printed innersleeve and 4-page booklet (featuring several of your favorite mini-pufts!) and a special litho of the gatefold artwork.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is co-written and directed by Jason Reitman and stars Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhar, Mckenna Grace, Annie Potts, and Paul Rudd. The film follows a single mom and her two kids who arrive in a small town, where they begin to discover their connection to the original ghostbusters and the secret legacy their grandfather left behind.

Rob Simonsen rejoins director Jason Reitman with his score for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, having scored The Front Runner & Tully for the director. Other recent film scores include The Friend, The Way Back, and Love, Simon. Based in Los Angeles and ever with his finger on the pulse of contemporary music, he co-founded the influential collective The Echo Society with the mission ‘to inspire, challenge, enrich and connect the community through the creation and performance of new sonic and visual art’. Simonsen’s debut artist album Rêveries was released in 2019 on Sony Masterworks.

On November 8th, 2Tone Records/Chrysalis Catalogue will release a 40th Anniversary Half-Speed Mastered Edition of The Special AKA 'In The Studio' album. This release has been liaised and approved by the band's founder and main songwriter Jerry Dammers. Formed in Coventry in the mid-1970s, The Specialswas the idea of musician Jerry Dammers, who brought together an eclectic array of individuals to fulfill his vision of a multi-racial band, fusing the energy of punk with the legendary but, at the time, often overlooked, sound of Jamaican ska. The band rose to prominence along with the 2Tone movement, which included two No. 1 singles, Too Much too Young and 1981's Ghost Town, which theme still resonates today before Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple left to form the Fun Boy Three and Roddy Byers left to tour with his band the Tearjerkers. The remaining members, Dammers, Bradbury and Panter, recruited guitarist John Shipley from The Swinging Cats, ex-Bodysnatcher Rhoda Dakar and lead vocalist Stan Campbell,reverting the original band name of The Special AKA and set to work on a new album. Released in 1984, 'In the Studio' was a brave mix of bold and challenging music, with a strong political, social and moral conscience. The album made it into the Top 40, and while it might not have been a huge commercial success, it was, and still is, an astonishingly unique work: a haunting, claustrophobic mix of lounge, soul, reggae, jazz and Arabic rhythms, with uncompromising subject matter. It featured two classic singles: the joyous, yet serious rallying anthem for the then imprisoned South African ANC leader, 'Free Nelson Mandela', and 'What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend'. As time has gone by, the status of 'In The Studio'has grown, and today it is rightly viewed as a genuine lost classic. Like the previous two Specials 40th Anniversary vinyl editions, this has been newly remastered and cut at half-speed by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios, London. Format: Wide spine sleeve, 2LP 180gm Black Vinyl cut at 45rpm with insert inside and OBI.

Last Dinosaurs has found a rhythmic succession over the last decade, one that’s plucked them out of Australia, pulled them through the eye of the European needle, off to write in ancient Japanese ghost towns, onto America’s most iconic stages, and somehow grounded them in the middle of a sacred loophole - a ring of fire, really - that few artists find. They call it a loophole because it hasn’t been linear, it hasn’t been promoted, it hasn’t been announced and popularized and pushed through the press. Blame it on the Latino and Asian kids streaming the sh*t out of their trifecta of indie-rock records or the internet’s international party knuckles banging at their digital door 24/7, but Last Dinosaurs are erupting. They’ve all felt it onstage and backstage in every sold-out sanctuary of sound they have ripped through.

Young-Girl Forever' ist das neue, schillernde Elektropop-Album der in Wien lebenden Künstlerin Sofie Royer. Es folgt auf ihr Debütalbum 'Cult Survivor' von 2020 und 'Harlequin' von 2022.

Das Album zeichnet ein kühnes Porträt davon, wie es ist, heute eine Künstlerin zu sein - inmitten der Fallen des Kapitalismus, der existenziellen Unsicherheit und des ständigen Gefühls, mit Gleichaltrigen nicht im gleichen Takt zu sein.

Royer entlehnt den Begriff 'Young-Girl' aus den Preliminary Materials on the Theory of a Young Girl, die ursprünglich in der französischen anarchistischen Zeitschrift Tiqqun veröffentlicht wurden. Darin wird das Young-Girl als Symbol für den Konsumismus der Moderne dargestellt.

'Young-Girl Forever' schwankt zwischen Optimismus und Verzweiflung - es feiert das junge Mädchen und tadelt gleichzeitig die Kultur, die es hervorgebracht hat, und drückt so den Wunsch nach wahrer Befreiung aus.

Sofie Royer ist bereits mit Künstlern wie LCD Soundsystem, Lana Del Rey und Air aufgetreten.

- Für Fans von Weyes Blood, Lewis OfMan, Okay Kaya, Caroline Polachek, The Weather Station, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jockstrap.

For fans of The Stray Cats, Brian Setzer, Swing and Big Band! The Brian Setzer Orchestra (sometimes known by its initials BSO) is a swing and jump blues band formed in 1992 by Stray Cats frontman Brian Setzer. In 1994 they released their debut album which was followed up in 1996 with Guitar Slinger. In 1998, for their breakout album The Dirty Boogie, the group covered Louis Prima's "Jump, Jive an' Wail", which originally appeared on Prima's 1957 album The Wildest!. The BSO's follow up single, appearing on the album Vavoom!, was "Gettin' in the Mood." Now get Guitar Slinger from the Brian Setzer Orchestra for the first time on vinyl since 1996. Remastered on 180g vinyl in an amazing limited- edition color. There are only 700 of the Silver Melt. Guitar Slinger is the second release from the Brian Setzer Orchestra and where the band really started to come together. The album leads off with "The House Is Rockin'" and features the Brian Setzer/Joe Strummer (The Clash) penned tracks "Ghost Radio" and "Sammy Davis City". There are 12 tracks in all, and it clocks in at just over 43 minutes. This is the first in a series of three reissues coming from Deko Entertainment with The Dirty Boogie scheduled to also hit by the end of 2024, with Vavoom! to follow in early 2025.

Ten years after the first chapter, Smoke DZA is back with the 2nd instalment of "The Hustler's Catalog". The Bronx native teams up with heavyweights such as Westside Gunn, Benny The Butcher, Dave Easy, Curren$y, Dom Kennedy and his RFC team with Nym Lo, Jayy Grams and OT The Real among others.

Following his collaboration with 9th Wonder on "The Don & Eye" earlier this year, Bronx lyricist The Musalini teams up with another Jamla representative, this time joining forces with Khrysis on brand new full-length "Pure IZM". Luxurious lifestyle bars delivered on Khrysis top tier productions, featuring guest appearances by Planet Asia, Ian Kelly, Reuben Wright, King Draft, Izzy Hott, O Finess and Ice Lord, and killer artwork by Huey P.

The two separate double vinyl sets are now available that correlate to the triple CD released earlier this year. TMTCH stumbled into existence onstage at the Alternative Country Festival, Electric Ballroom, Camden on Easter Sunday in 1984; after a long afternoon busking and drinking in a Hammersmith subway. They knew three chords and a hundred songs all of which sounded a bit the same, a frenzied skiffle that was exciting to jump around and drink snakebite to. If they thought about longevity at all, a lifespan of 40 days seemed most likely. It's forty years later and they are still running. Since those early days, and without much of a game plan other than always stepping onward, TMTCH have released around 20 albums plus many side projects, bootlegs, curios and an unknown number of T shirts. They've toured constantly, whether in dingy pub backrooms or Grand Ballrooms and Festival Stages. From Cairo to Reykjavik and all points in between, the TMTCH roadshow has shambled and thrilled through the decades, always passionate, always literate, occasionally dishevelled. Forty years of recording has spawned a vast back catalogue, well represented here by songs from each album, style and era; a tapestry of human stories and vibrant characters. So there are the fast sprints like early folk hoedown 'Ironmasters', the frantic shanty 'Raising Hell' and the amphetamine punk blues of 'Going Back to Coventry'. Then there are the waltzing folk ballads, from their impassioned version of the anti war standard 'Green Fields Of France' to the bitter regret of 'The Bells' and the righteous testimony of 'Our Day'. Elsewhere there are anthems galore; 'The Crest' a swirling gaelic chant, 'Rosettes', a fast marching assault of drums, fiddles and mandolins; historical epics such as 'Ghosts Of Cable Street', 'Shirt of Blue' and 'The Colours'; romantic ballads like the wistful 'Parted From You' and 'Island in The Rain'. All the eras are here; from the wiry lo fi of the first album, through the eighties into full blown MTV ready multi trackers with vast charging drums; the initial simplicity of their recipe deepening and darkening. And then on through the nineties, noughties and tens; always the double pronged vocals drifting between harmony and unison, always the celtic, folk and country tones vying for attention, the emotive fiddle, the top end mandolin above the thundering rhythm section. On through bouffant hair, spiky hair, dyed hair, thin hair and hats; on through Grunge, Baggy, Madchester, Rave, Britpop. On through the Miner's Strike, Poll Tax, New Labour, Iraq and Brexit. On through marriage, children, loss and revival. Forty years at the working end of rock and roll is a feat achieved by very few bands. It requires tremendous chemistry, a deep catalogue; both panoramic and miniature, a vital and irrepressible energy, all of which is on resplendent display in this sprawling 3 disc compilation. But most of all it requires an intense resilience, something that TMTCH possess in spades. Forty years on the run; was ever a band so aptly named?

The Stripp sind eine energiegeladene Rock'n'Roll-Maschine aus der Underground-Rockszene Melbournes. Angeführt wird die Band von Bek Taylor, die als perfekte Mischung von Joan Jett und Lemmy Kilmister beschrieben werden kann. Die fesselnden Live-Shows und ausgedehnten Tourneen haben ihnen den Ruf als eine der besten, energiegeladenen Rock'n'Roll-Bands Australiens eingebracht. The Stripp gingen 2022 erneut ins Studio und veröffentlichten ihr Debütalbum ,Ain't no crime to Rock ' Roll", das der Band sofort in ganz Australien und international weitere Aufmerksamkeit verschaffte. 2024 bringt The Stripp ihr Debütalbum endlich nach Europa, welches zwei zusätzliche Titel ,Bad News" und ,Rock Machine" enthält. Auf nur 250 Exemplare limitiert!

NOW Music is proud to present the newest addition to the ‘Yearbook’ series: NOW – YEARBOOK 1982. 3 LPs of 44 defining tracks that ruled the charts in 1982.
Featuring number 1s, including ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ (Survivor), ‘Ebony And Ivory’ (Paul McCartney), ‘Town Called Malice’ (The Jam), and 1982’s biggest seller ‘Come On Eileen’ from Dexys Midnight Runners.
1982 saw the first huge hits from a wealth of new artists including Culture Club, Wham! and Tears For Fears, as well as an incredible line-up from artists who had established their chart presence in the prior 18 months and would produce some of the greatest tracks of the decade; Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, ABC, Haircut 100, Soft Cell, The Human League, and a newly solo Adam Ant.
‘Fame’ was the TV phenomenon of the year, and Irene Cara’s theme from the original 1980 film enjoyed massive success.
As ABBA released their last singles for nearly 40 years, pure-pop from Bucks Fizz, Blondie, and Madness is celebrated alongside synth-pop gems from New Order, Simple Minds, Visage and Japan.
Leading artists from the punk scene enjoyed continued and renewed success, including The Stranglers, The Clash and Pretenders, whilst Foreigner, Meat Loaf with Cher, and Steve Miller Band provided radio-favourite rock and power ballads.
1982 saw a huge chart presence for dance music – from the hi-NRG of Boys Town Gang, to the electro-infused beats of Malcolm McLaren, and Rockers Revenge, the 1980’s disco of Shalamar, alongside soul classics from Marvin Gaye and Donna Summer… plus stellar ballads from Elton John, Lionel Richie, and Roxy Music.

NOW Music is proud to present the newest addition to the ‘Yearbook’ series: NOW – Yearbook 1981. NOW – Yearbook 1981; a celebration of the eclectic and creative brilliance of the year in pop. 4 CDs of 85 tracks that defined the charts in 1981. Available on a 4CD special edition which is housed in ‘hard-back book’ packaging, including a 28-page booklet with a summary of the year, a track-by-track guide, a quiz, and original singles artwork, and as a standard 4-CD package. A limited edition 3LP set pressed in translucent red vinyl, limited to 3,000 units and a 4CD set

Freestyle Records drop a killer UK soul/early street soul reissue LP from 1988, in the form of Rick Clarke's hard to come by 'Time Keeps Moving On' album.

Originally appearing on the Raven label in 1988, Time Keeps Moving On constituted Rick Clarke's first LP following his work in the earlier eighties as part of brit-funk groups Potion and Side On, and solo output including Love with a Stranger (released on The Specials' Ghost Town's producer John Collins' Local Records imprint) and a few singles for RCA. Largely co-written and co-produced with Peter Hinds (Take Three, Atmosfear, Light of the World) and a guest turn from Master T aka Toyin Agbetu - this is foundational street soul that appeared at a time when the likes of Loose Ends were starting to break through to the US, and Soul II Soul just emerging.

Die wohl kalifornischste aller deutschen Streetpunkbands kommt aus Stuttgart. Obwohl die Schwaben nicht mit Anleihen bei den Dead Kennedys geizen haben sie ihren eigenen, schnörkellosen Stil entwickelt. Nach nur 3 Tagen hatten die 4 Jungs das Album "Waterfront" im Kasten, so erfrischend rough und dreckig wie der Fluss der durch ihre Heimatstadt fließt. Das düstere Cover ist Programm: ein kloakiger Fluss vor nächtlicher Stadt voller Qualm und Rotz. "Fuck The World" ist ein bissig-ironischer Text über den Raubbau an unserer Mutter Erde, die sich verzweifelt wehrt. Wenn der texanische Sänger "Mother gets angry" raushaut erinnert er an die bitterbösen Zeilen etlicher Jello Biafra Songs. Bei "American Devolution" gehts weiter mit einem 100% DK-Intro. Desillusioniert stellt sich die Frage wieso Werte wie Toleranz und Freiheitsliebe verschwunden sind. Die Hommage an Cock Sparrer "Where Are They Now" haut in dieselbe Kerbe. Wo sind die geblieben, die mal von Anarchie, Kampf und Zusammenhalt geredet haben? Mit "Here We Go" wird bei hämmernden Drumsticks und toughen Gitarren der hauseigene Stil der Band blankgelegt. Das biestige "Crazy Axe Wife" erzählt von einem Typen der seinen Kopf verliert weil seine liebende Ex-Frau ihn davon per Beil befreit. Viel schaffen für nix ist Thema von "Ghost Lights", nochmal mit Anklängen an die toten Kennedys. Kurz und knüppelig darf der Leckt-mich-am-Arsch Saufsong nicht fehlen bevor am Ende nochmal abgehottet werden darf. Also Daumen raus und ab auf den Roadtrip nach Necka(r)lifornien.

It took four years for The Lumineers to follow up their platinum-plus, multi-Grammy-nominated, self-titled debut. Cleopatra proves Schultz and Fraites - along with cellist/vocalist Neyla Pekarek- are neither taking their good fortune for granted, nor sitting back on their laurels. With the help of producer Simone Felice (The Felice Brothers, The Avett Brothers), the man Wesley calls "our shaman," the band ensconced themselves in Clubhouse, a recording studio high atop a hill in rural Rhinebeck, N.Y., not far from Woodstock. The Lumineers then set about trying to make musical sense of their three-year-plus roller coaster ride. Their skill at setting a visual story to music comes through amidst the delicate, deceptively simple acoustic soundscapes. This time, though, bassist Byron Isaac provides a firm, low-end on the apocalyptic opener "Sleep on the Floor," a ghostly tune about getting out of town before the "subways flood and the bridges break." It's a densely packed, cinematic song that echoes Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City" and John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Cleopatra also deals with what Wesley terms "the elephant in the room," the band's success and the way it can sometimes put a target on your back. The syncopated piano rolls in "Ophelia" , the organic sound of fingers squeaking on guitar strings in "Angela" and the Faustian bargain described in "My Eyes" consider the perils of getting what you wish for, with everyone knowing your name, and your songs. The band had total artistic freedom in writing and recording the album, so Wesley and Jer pushed the envelope. "We continue to make the kind of records we want to," says Wesley. "We believe in this music. It's a true labor of love. We just want to keep reaching more people with our songs." Given the evidence on The Lumineers' sophomore album Cleopatra, that shouldn't be a problem.

It took four years for The Lumineers to follow up their platinum-plus, multi-Grammy-nominated, self-titled debut. Cleopatra proves Schultz and Fraites - along with cellist/vocalist Neyla Pekarek- are neither taking their good fortune for granted, nor sitting back on their laurels. With the help of producer Simone Felice (The Felice Brothers, The Avett Brothers), the man Wesley calls "our shaman," the band ensconced themselves in Clubhouse, a recording studio high atop a hill in rural Rhinebeck, N.Y., not far from Woodstock. The Lumineers then set about trying to make musical sense of their three-year-plus roller coaster ride. Their skill at setting a visual story to music comes through amidst the delicate, deceptively simple acoustic soundscapes. This time, though, bassist Byron Isaac provides a firm, low-end on the apocalyptic opener "Sleep on the Floor," a ghostly tune about getting out of town before the "subways flood and the bridges break." It's a densely packed, cinematic song that echoes Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City" and John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Cleopatra also deals with what Wesley terms "the elephant in the room," the band's success and the way it can sometimes put a target on your back. The syncopated piano rolls in "Ophelia" , the organic sound of fingers squeaking on guitar strings in "Angela" and the Faustian bargain described in "My Eyes" consider the perils of getting what you wish for, with everyone knowing your name, and your songs. The band had total artistic freedom in writing and recording the album, so Wesley and Jer pushed the envelope. "We continue to make the kind of records we want to," says Wesley. "We believe in this music. It's a true labor of love. We just want to keep reaching more people with our songs." Given the evidence on The Lumineers' sophomore album Cleopatra, that shouldn't be a problem.

“Big City Blues” is the title of the new – fifth – album by the Antwerp band Handkerchief , which will be released on September 27. As the title suggests, the big city now plays a more central role in the band's world. This results in a harder rocking sound, more guitars, but
still the bluesy feeling with a steamy horn section and the rough voice of Christof Annaert, which also sounds like he has single-handedly cleared every dark alley in the big city of every possible scum.

Their latest albums “Mutiny Ballads & Fishguarding Songs” and “Ghosts of this Town” were particularly well received by the press and fans. Singles such as “They Drive by Night”, “Human Sense” and “Lucky Day” were regularly heard on national radio: including Willy,
Radio 1… and the band played dozens of shows in Belgium and the Netherlands. This fall the band will go on tour to present the new album.

Zak Olsen, the creative force behind the guitar riffs of Australian doom psych band Orb, is set to release his highly
anticipated solo album, Ghost Notes, under his Traffik Island moniker. 12 Esoteric Instrumentals for Ethereal Beings
feels like going on an acid trip through a haunted house, where folk melodies merge seamlessly with jazz rhythms and
psychedelic textures. Creating freakout moments such as the track ‘Pandemoniom!’ featuring Kenny Ambrose-Smith of
King Gizzard and haunting folk horror moments on ‘winds’ Fans of esoteric instrumentals and spooky soundscapes alike
will find much to love in this haunting collection. Frank Maston of Maston captures the essence of Ghost Notes perfectly:
“Olsen has created a monster - channeling Joe Meek, Goblin, and Broadcast in this cursed disc of groovy fugues. Traffik
Island may be alive and well in these tracks, delivering premium melodies with ease, but the undead certainly had their
say. Mixing terrifyingly sick beats with warped organs, sinister synths, and spooky found sounds, this is the horror movie
soundtrack we deserve. An instant Halloween classic.”

Red in Clear Vinyl. First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon's Milk (in Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness.Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)").Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant" to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance's oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future."The album's final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall's doomed, beautiful voice.The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation - both sonic and bodily. From post-industrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design.

"My Lover The Killer" is the latest collaboration between Lydia Lunch and Marc Hurtado. They first worked together on the 'Sexodrone' track of the Etant Donnés's album "Re-Up" in 1999. Featuring Terry Edwards (Gallon Drunk), Ian White (Gallon Drunk), Mark Cunningham, We Are Birds of Paradise, David Lackner. "My Lover The Killer" is a collaborative project with Marc Hurtado. What began as a loose musical concept in the summer of 2012 became a prophecy written in blood by November of the same year. "My Lover The Killer" is a late night noir confessional. Sinister, sexy and mysterious, the music slithers, erupts and caresses the seductive vocals as they relay twisted tales rife with innuendo, promises and threats. The text is based on the murder/suicide of an ex-lover whom I had recently contacted for the first time in over a decade. Caught in the early fall hurricane which leveled the East Coast of America while enroute to Los Angeles, I had sent an invitation proposing that we meet for drinks. Two days later, during a alcohol fueled fight with his girlfriend about whether or not he should come to see me, he shot and killed her, called the police, turned the gun on himself, and died the next day on his 55th birthday. A tragic event, which "My Lover The Killer" attempts to make sense of. Each song is a rumination on the frightening effects of a mad love spun out of control and the haunting remnants of a lover who still stalks from beyond the grave.