Search:hall

L’Escalier des Aveugles, or The Stairway of the Blind, was commissioned in November 1990 by Spanish National Radio (Radio Nacional de España). Asked for a piece to premiere as part of the European Day of Music, Luc Ferrari returned with a radiophonic concept that organised his anecdotal music into montage form, sequencing short, elusive narratives in a successive way.

The completed composition is formed of thirteen chapters containing a mixture of environmental and synthesised sound, commentary, chatter, and encounters with people and places. Each focuses on a small event within this playbook, and Ferrari notes that each “in addition to being a realistic photograph, will be the subject of a ‘setting to music’: fragments of voice and atmosphere will be sampled and will produce musical matter or a ‘song’.”

The sonic language of Madrid forms the setting to which Ferrari lays out the persistent theme of the piece, that of the composer being guided throughout the city by a young woman. Using a game-like structure (liners for this edition include Ferrari’s “Regles de Jeu”, or “Rules of the Game” which act as a script or score to the piece) the motivation is posed: imagine that one day you are told “I know a place in Madrid that sounds amazing (or bizarre)”, to which you reply “Let’s go to it together.” The recordings toy with the relationships between guide and tourist, translator, director and actress, and masculine and feminine that emerge as Ferrari and the actresses follow this action, documenting the shared experience and connections they make as they visit these places.

Six actresses guide Ferrari (and the listener) through locations simultaneously ordinary and sonically rich: the metro; the El Corte Inglés department store where we hear the gossip from changing rooms set against music emanating from the PA; vagabonds declaiming their political stance in the Conde de Barajas plaza; interactions buying apples in a market; the reverberant and spacious halls of the Prado Museum where one actress gives a moving description of her favourite painting - Goya’s The 3rd of May 1808.

Ferrari replies in French to their comments in Spanish, and there are several self-referential plots, devices, and word games that flirt with the poetics and rhythm of language and sound. A recital of Lorca’s poem "La Casada Infiel" in “Hommage À Lorca” in amongst the location recordings feels striking, and the call and response of “La Nouvelle de L’Escalier”, where one of the actresses descends the staircase of the blind - a long stone stairway in Madrid proposed to Ferrari as an interesting location to visit during the trip by producer José Iges. She replies to Ferrari’s vocal enunciation of the place (and title) in French - L’Escalier des Aveugles - with the place-name in Spanish: La Escalera de los Ciegos.

Using this repeated title and image of the staircase of the blind as a symbolic place, a line is drawn to a situational landscape experienced and diffused through snapshots and allusion rather than holistically overviewed, sound conjuring pictures within the imagination. In the sensorial qualities of Ferrari’s treatment of emotion and language—fortified with electro-acoustic motifs and musical properties—the piece accelerates towards a render that is truthful, beautiful, yet also surreal; somewhere between theatre and reality, a gonzo cinema of the ear.

Newcomer Hekla releases her uniquely beautiful debut album for solo theremin and voice Á through Phantom Limb Records - run and curated by former FatCat Records, Thrill Jockey and Royal Albert Hall execs James Vella, Ken Li and Mark Pearse.

A Berlin-residing Icelander, Hekla's sparse, delicate, fractal music exists within these two worlds: dark and magical as Iceland's permanight folklore; and (though beatless) as deeply sonic and intense as Berlin's electronic scene. A long-term scholar of solo theremin, Hekla (shortened from her own name Hekla Magnúsdóttir) uses her instrument as an otherworldly and highly evocative Siren-call. A spectral, wailing, howling, lamenting yearning second-voice that underpins a soft vocal delivery, as if her studio had been haunted with a chorus of ghostly backing singers.

While a handful of reference points share a similar ground to Á - Colleen's interplay of voice and instrumentation; the richly immersive filmscore work of sadly passed fellow Icelander Jóhann Jóhannsson's; 'grandmother of theremin' Clara Rockmore's close relationship with such a singular instrument; Julia Holter's intelligent and classically-aligned songwriting - Hekla's music still exists singularly. A one-off talent, emerging from no particular scene, ascribing to no particular rules.

As a creative tool, the theremin - bizarre, unique, rarely heard - can be expressive, intuitive and highly adaptable. In Hekla's hands, her instrument covers an enormous range, from skittering birdsong of high frequency chirrups and chirps, to grinding, tectonic sub-bass. We are given the throbbing, apocalyptic dread of 'Muddle' and the baroque beauty of traditional Icelandic hymn 'Heyr Himna Smiur' in sequential tracks on the album's a-side. Appropriately, she also writes that the album title - Á - is similarly multifaceted in her native Icelandic: 'a river is an á and also it means ouch like when you hurt yourself, and also when you put something on top of something you put it á (on) something.'

The album was written and self-recorded by Hekla in her home studio in Berlin around her son's daycare schedule. Icelandic super-musician Mr Silla (a part-time múm member) guests on a number of tracks. Tallinn-based engineer Jose Diogo Neves - a stalwart of Icelandic and Portuguese music - mixed and mastered Á.

James Vella formed Phantom Limb in June 2017 after eight years in A&R for FatCat Records. Mark Pearse (formerly head of contemporary music programming at the Royal Albert Hall) and Ken Li (formerly of Thrill Jockey, now of Nettwerk) joined the team shortly after.

One of the biggest selling hits by T. Rex from late spring/early summer 1971. These bare alternative versions were recorded in London during January 1971. 500 copies pressed on red vinyl in T.REX House Bags, 500 copies pressed as picture discs. All royalties go to The Light of Love Foundation (These recordings and many more were amongst the tapes stolen from Marc & Gloria’s home in 1977, some of this material was returned to The Light of Love Foundation last year). This year sees T. Rex inducted into the U.S Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in May and has already seen the profile of T.Rex heightened.

Forma by Lucy Railton, is a work that digs into us. It disorients us, plays with us, but without malice. It is like a nocturnal butterfly whose wings reflect a dark light, thus projecting fleeting hallucinations, which nevertheless persist on the surface of our retina. Its trajectories, too, are unpredictable. But such disorientation is not that of a chaotic space, it is rather a mysterious reason that presents itself to us, an imperious unfolding whose logic escapes us, but which nevertheless fascinates. It is also a history of shapes and their becomings. A story, also of their own vanishing.

Metabolist Meter (Foster, Cottin, Caetani and a Fly), by Max Eilbacher is a teeming piece, a matrix where textures and structures merge together, where the polyrhythmic instances become timbre, where the formal abstraction of the harmonic volutes coagulates around a vibrating form that is actualized in the dramatic reality of a dying fly. And this formal mastery is not disembodied in Max Eilbacher's work and the kaleidoscopic forms of the sound spectra that he has deployed know how to resonate in the sensations and experiences of each one.

These two pieces have this in common, but each with their own agenda, that they evolve with grace and inspiration in the vast domain of the sound world and it is a great pride for us to present them in this new collection.

Released in association with Editions Mego.
Coordination GRM: François Bonnet, Jules Négrier

Executive Production: Peter Rehberg

Multidisciplinary NYC artist Gavilán Rayna Russom launches her own label Voluminous Arts, dedicated to highlight electronic and experimental artists whose work challenges fixed categories of genre and categorization. Her aim is to create a platform for multidisciplinary work and events. The inaugural release being her second solo album as Gavilán Rayna Russom 'Secret Passage', following up last years 'The Envoy, an homage to the East Side Rail Tunnel in Providence, Rhode Island, and the friendships she made there.

In Rayna’s words:
“I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1970’s and 80’s. The booming jewelry and textile industries of the previous decades had pulled out by that point. The Italian mob ran most details of the day to day operations of the city. As kids coming up in that environment, before the internet, me and the people I hung out with didn’t know anything else and we worked with what we had to entertain ourselves. We found places that had been forgotten by market interests and made them spaces of creative community building. One of the most special of these places was the East Side Rail Tunnel. Running for almost exactly one mile beneath the city’s streets, the tunnel and nearby Crook Point Bridge were unsupervised autonomous zones where I tasted the possibilities of a world without surveilance. The tunnel was particularly important in my creative development because not only was it a marginal zone apart from monetized spaces of creative consumption, but it also had specific experiential properties. It had a bend in it which meant that when you got to the middle of it you were in complete darkness, and I learned quickly that when you spend enough time in complete darkness you start to hallucinate, which I liked. The acoustics were also remarkable; long natural delays and harmonic-reinforcing reverberances. Making any sound in there added layers of acoustic effects which made noises physical and fluid and, combined with the complete darkness, absolutely dissolved boundaries between internal and external experience. I started hanging out there when I was 14 and continued to return there regularly until development, gentrification and policing eventually made it inaccessible. By the mid ‘90s it was sealed off with progressively more impenetrable barriers. Nowadays it looks very different. This music is about some of the significant experiences I had in this beautifully neglected place and the people I had them with.”

»Efia,« the sophomore album by Rosaceae, picks up where the Hamburg-based sound artist’s 2019 debut on Neoprimitive left off, further exploring the topics that had already informed »Nadia’s Es- cape«. From its confrontative front cover to the eight tracks on the album, »Efia« is fully dedicated to the motif of resistance, but does not exhaust itself in polemics. Rather, it masterfully translates the complexities of its underlying central themes into a visceral narrative.
»Efia« was originally conceived as a commissioned work for the 2019 edition of Hamburg’s Noise- xistance festival and departed from a sentence uttered in the British 1980s TV show »Sapphire & Steel« which inspired cultural theorist Mark Fisher in his analysis of what he had coined »hauntolo-gy,« a term originally coined by the Algerian-French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the early 1990s: »There is no time here, not anymore.«
The album again showcases Rosaceae’s knack for combining abstract experimental sound art with a form of storytelling that had already been at the centre of »Nadia’s Escape« and which relies on both verbal and musical means of giving a voice to the voiceless. The disembodied voice of - amongst others - Jesseline Preach and manipulated vocal samples blend in with dense soundscapes, elements of Neue Musik and occasional pure harsh noise. It’s a mix that deliberately puts different artistic tradi-tions into a dialogue with each other: the hallmarks of European salon culture are con- fronted with Kurdish wedding music and the unnerving loop of someone demanding a »Zugabe« (»encore«).
Thus, »Efia« not only blurs the lines between cultural and regional traditions, but also conjures up the ghosts of a past, ghosts that are more than ready to haunt the timeless present trying so hard to repress the atrocities happening at its fringes. As a whole, this makes »Efia« both a chilling work of sound art and a vibrant political statement fuelled by burning hot energy.

One of the biggest selling hits by T. Rex from late spring/early summer 1971. These bare alternative versions were recorded in London during January 1971. 500 copies pressed on red vinyl in T.REX House Bags, 500 copies pressed as picture discs. All royalties go to The Light of Love Foundation (These recordings and many more were amongst the tapes stolen from Marc & Gloria’s home in 1977, some of this material was returned to The Light of Love Foundation last year). This year sees T. Rex inducted into the U.S Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in May and has already seen the profile of T.Rex heightened.

Last summer Liam Gallagher joined the list of all-time greats (Paul McCartney, Page and Plant, Nirvana and many more) who have filmed a prestigious MTV Unplugged session. Having missed Oasis’s 1996 session through illness, the show at Hull’s City Hall found Liam fulfilling some unfinished business entirely on his own terms.

Now Liam is set to release the ‘MTV Unplugged’ live album of the show on April 24th.

The show’s electrifying atmosphere is palpable from the very beginning with a phenomenal reaction as Liam takes to the stage with ‘Wall of Glass’. Material from Liam’s solo career such as his personal favourite ‘Once’ and the joyous ‘Now That I’ve Found You’ resonates in this stripped-back format, with his vocal shining alongside a trio of backing singers and string arrangements performed by the 24-piece Urban Soul Orchestra.

Oasis guitarist Bonehead features on performances of ‘Some Might Say’, ‘Stand By Me’, ‘Cast No Shadow’ and Liam’s first ever live vocal performance of the ‘Definitely Maybe’ bonus track ‘Sad Song’. The show concludes on a crowd-pleasing high with an emotive take on the classic ‘Champagne Supernova’.

Liam launches the ‘MTV Unplugged’ album by sharing the new version of ‘Gone’, which was one of the strongest performances of the night. Stripped of the force of the studio recording, ‘Gone’ instead reveals new-found bombastic dynamics and an evocative cinematic atmosphere.

Uniting cosmic tones and lovely notes, unique sound collages and electronic noises, Muzak pour ascenseurs en panne ("Muzak for Broken Lifts"), Brigitte Barbu's first album, explores a dreamy universe, at the crossroads of electronica and the 70s’ post-tune-in/drop-out, echoing shadows of the peculiar doppelgänger; Pépé Bradock. Ça Plane pour Brigitte Barbu…

Resonant guitar notes, odd sounds, electronic hallucinations, and unexpected warm synth layers all gather together in Brigitte Barbu's first enigmatic album. Recorded and mixed during a reclusive one-week residency in a very special studio, under the benevolent cubic radiation of "Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant,” using a computer, synthesizers, and various string instruments, giving birth to this resolutely unique album. The guitars were sharply disciplined, propelling strings into strange and hypnotic limbos, somewhere between a weightless journey through time and a fresh science lab experiment.

A perky cosmic album running away from rules and gravity.

"I wanted to compose an ethereal abstract Hip-Hop LP" says Brigitte, "with guitar as a brainwashed instrument, mirroring machines and computers, even if surely far from being unplugged". So much for that… With a real introspective dimension, the record stands out for its pure whimsical mood. The artist had strict rules for composing: “Each track is based on the association between a title chosen for its consonances, an open tuning, a random tempo and frequencies chosen for their supposed effects, real or imagined, on the mind, body & soul.” For example: Taro Patch -> Whale -> 93,75 BPM or Dobro -> Bear-> 118,125 BPM, Air Resistance -> Open Em -> Panther-> 480 BPM etc.

Brigitte surgically framed an electro-acoustic compendium, finding its atmospheric mothership… Brigitte Barbu, referring to a special interlude from a vintage release "Escalope de Dingue” (Fool’s Cutlet), explains that Muzak pour Ascenseurs en Panne is in fact a custom tribute to family, friends, triggered cosmonauts, René Clément and the card game where the winner is the bearded monarch nonchalantly stabbing himself in the head. It’s a lot!

Dua Lipa announces news of her highly anticipated new album Future Nostalgia, revealing artwork and track listing information for the upcoming second LP, due for release on April 3rd.Future Nostalgia will include the Number 1 global hit single ‘Don’t Start Now’, and new single ‘Physical’, which is available to stream now.

The new album will be available for download on all digital platforms as well as physical on the following formats; pink neon vinyl, CD, picture disc, gold cassette and deluxe box set, all of which are now available from Dua’s web store.

The third release from Night Dreamer’s essential “Direct-to-Disc” sessions sees an incredible meeting between legendary US saxophonist Gary Bartz and leading UK spiritual jazz ensemble, Maisha, featuring two Bartz classics and three brand new joint songs written by both Bartz & Maisha in close collaboration. Having cut his teeth playing with the likes of Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Art Blakey and finally in 1970, Miles Davis at the peak of his electric period, Gary Bartz became a leading figure of the early-to-mid 70s spiritual jazz movement, releasing a string of ground-breaking albums on legendary NYC jazz label Prestige Records with his NTU Troop, featuring classics such as “Celestial Blues”, “Uhuru Dance” and “I’ve Known Rivers”, before collaborating on Blue Note Records with the Mizell Brothers on the anthemic jazz funk of “Music Is My Sanctuary”. An oeuvre much loved by soul jazzers and hip hop fans alike. Led by drummer Jake Long, Maisha have been central to the UK’s jazz explosion, and have fast become the UK’s most exciting and in-demand young spiritual jazz ensemble, from steller shows at Jazz re:freshed, Total Refreshment Centre & Church of Sound and supporting the Sun Ra Arkestra, to releasing their critically acclaimed debut LP, “There Is A Place” on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings in 2018. Theirs is an organic & explosive sound that blends influences from afrobeat and broken beat to Persian music, with a deep love and understanding of jazz, particularly the heritage of spiritual jazz led by titans such as Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and of course, Gary Bartz. Which makes this collaboration even more special. Bartz was first invited to share a stage with Maisha by Gilles Peterson to headline the inaugural We Out Here festival. Their chemistry was rich and instantaneous, certainly a two-way street, with the young musicians reinvigorating the legend’s performance and wowing the intergenerational festival audience. A European tour followed, including a London Jazz Festival highlight at the Royal Festival Hall, celebrating the 50th anniversary of his album “Another Earth”, originally featuring fellow legends, Pharoah Sanders, Charles Tolliver, Stanley Cowell, and John Coltrane’s own bassist, Reggie Workman. Now the relationship has evolved into a special straight-to-disc recording for Night Dreamer Records, that captures the vitality of their collaboration. Whilst Bartz and Maisha reinvent classic Bartz compositions “Uhuru Sasa” and “Dr Follows Dance”, extending the pieces into long piece improvised grooves, their recording session gave birth to three brand new joint compositions, written the very same day. These include the propulsive “Leta’s Dance” that magically combines the Bartz’ soulful musical lyricism with Maisha’s African-jazz influences, and the organic jazz funk of “Harlem to Haarlem”, featuring a hot solo from guest trumpeter Axel Kaner-Lidstrom of Cykada & Levitation Orchestra fame. Like previous Night Dreamer efforts from afrobeat star Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, and the beautiful
collaboration between Brazilian stars Seu Jorge & Rogê, the album was recorded in Haarlem’s Artone Studio, a stones throw from Amsterdam, in just one-take, straight-to-disc, avoiding postproduction embellishments and retaining the purity of the performance lost in modern recording techniques. This record really is an event, in and of itself, a meeting of talents, minds, generations and zeitgeist moments, captured in a unique and pure manner. The music does not disappoint, as Maisha have been inspired to reach new heights whilst we find Bartz truly reinvigorated, and both artists in tune to the spirit of the other.

2LÄRM UND STAHL 2" is a new worldwide radiography of the actual “hidden” scene in dark electronics offering sharp- and crude minimal industrial beats as it's best; the featured bands are 89’s† from Mexico, S.A.D from UK, PALMARIELLO from Argentina & CHRIS SHAPE from Italy. All tracks have been specially remastered for LONG CUT Vinyl by Daniel Hallhuber at Young & Cold Studios!

Rising Manchester star FINN takes the helm for the next release on Ruf Kutz with two hyper-real contemporary raw bangers crafted for maximum emotional impact backed with remixes from RK big guns RUF DUG & GLOWING PALMS.

Even though he's a comparative youngun, this is by no means Finn's first time at the rodeo - he's a label boss, an NTS pioneer, a Boiler Room veteran, a Defected Records Old Boy and also holds down the coldest twitter account on the information superhighway. It's a big deal to us that we managed to snare him for a release on his ascent to whatever accelerated dimension he is headed for.

Purposely conceived as raw club tracks after a heavy Paul Johnson listening session, TRICK TRICK and BELLE THEME contain many of his beloved hallmarks while also showcasing new creative pathways - the title of the EP surely alluding to what Finn is about to pull from up his sleeve...

Opener TRICK TRICK is many things all at once - a raw turbo-jacker, a hugely emotive bassline roller, a super-fresh club banger that has few elements, yet uses them with such efficiency it's impossible not to be drawn up into its vapour trail.

BELLE THEME winds the pace & harmonic tension up with manic abandon as we find ourselves in Finn's familiar 130-plus territory but while the tempo is slamming he somehow manages to drape everything in a lacy coating, as if we were playing a bonus level from a lost Studio Ghibli PS1 beat-em-up.
Back in the real world we flip the record for 2 textbook Ruf Kutz remixes. First up label boss RUF DUG guts Trick Trick and serves up the fillet on an unashamedly tech-house bed, purpose-built for DC10 circa 2009 - meanwhile Ruffy's partner in crime GLOWING PALMS dips into his secret stash of double doves and takes Belle Theme for an unforgettable night out in a Burnley warehouse.

Of the release Ruf Dug says "It's been a big thrill to follow Finn"s development over the years since we first met. I've been hoping to collaborate with him for quite a while so for it to be finally happening especially at this stage in his career is a genuine mega buzz!"
Finn says: "Been a keen Ruf Kutz fan since Rachel's Team in 2016! So happy to contribute to the label with two rough (ruf) and ready club tracks - late night/early morning hymns"

hree years on from their debut collaborative album “Passive Aggressive“, Jonny Nash and Suzanne Kraft return with "Knife", the lead single from their forthcoming album, “A Heart So White”.

The single comes with an exclusive bonus digital track, "Processing The Negative", which will not appear on the full album.

“A Heart So White” represents a continuation of the working philosophy adopted during the recording of their debut; immersion in an unfamiliar recording environment with a limited set of tools and the goal of exploring the possibilities that lie within these limitations.

The album was written and recorded in the Willem Twee Concertzaal, a converted synagogue in Den Bosch, Holland. Whilst “Passive Agressive” explored virtual instruments and environments, “A Heart So White” shifts the focus to acoustic instrumentation, breath, air and physical space. Using the hall’s mechanical drawer organ and Steinway piano, the pair craft a delicately balanced suite of compositions, stripping things back to reveal the bare essence of their shared musical language.

Repress

Leading lights of the neo ambient rhizome alongside Huerco S’ West Mineral label, Experiences Ltd has already amassed a cult following after just one release - ULLA’s ‘Tumbling Towards A Wall’, now returning to relay a sublime, probing debut of crackling, cross-continental communications from mdo, Ultrafog, and Nikolay Kozlov, aka Folder.
Weft from dematerialised ambient tropes spooled between their respective bases in Kansas City, Tokyo, and Samara in Russia, ‘New Path’ slots fuzzily into an expanding prism of contemporary ambient music which echoes the purpose and effect of the original thing via traces of ‘90s/‘00s experimental techno and minimalist rhythms. Their sound effectively recalls K. Leimer’s systems music as much as the Pole’s eerie dub malfunctions; running a lushly frayed and decentralised style that embraces a gently psychedelic sort of chaos and lysergic, hallucinatory vision in an up-to-the-moment way shared by the likes of Huerco. S and uon.
If original ambient was analogous to THC and LSD, and in the ‘90s MDMA, then the effect of Folder’s music, and that of their peers, adds the putative, lushly dissociative effect and non-linearity of Ketamine and psilocybin to that formula. As such ‘New Path’ attempts to follow new routes through your neurons, sparking at new junctures of style and form that better reflect and counter a current psychic state of stasis and anxious anticipation.
Coming from the label behind those cult ‘bblisss’ volumes of 2016-2018, listeners can trust their needs for relaxation and otherworldly curiosity will be sated by ’New Path’, as it courses from iridescent ambient noise in the titular opener, to the laminal diffractions of ‘Plasma’, and soothing textural abstraction of ‘Reset’, shoring up in ‘Node’ as though oceanic ambient currents have individually lead them to this bobbing buoy inthe middle of a noumenal ocean.

Active since the late 1990s, Brussels-based Frenchman Sylvain Chauuveau is an unsung pioneer of a now burgeoning scene and was making elegant post-classical compositions years ahead of celebrated current peers like Max Richter, Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds, Dustin O’Halloran and Hauschka.

Now reissued in a remastered, first-ever vinyl edition, ‘Simple’ was originally released in 2012 as a CD collection of Sylvain’s works for cinema - a set of out-of-print, rare, and unreleased tracks composed between 1998-2010 that span stark / minimal electronic drones, processed guitar explorations, chamber pieces, solo piano and two 40-piece string orchestra recordings.

Chauveau’s work here sounds as fresh and relevant today as it did back then and its author is long overdue some recognition / reappraisal of his role in helping prepare the ground for today’s scene. His music has been praised by numerous peers - Ryuichi Sakamoto listed ‘Nocturne Impalpable’ as one of his Top 5 records; Hauschka and Peter Broderick have admitted his influence and Jóhann Jóhannsson, Adam Wiltzie (A Winged Victory / Stars Of The Lid) and Fennesz have also praised his work.

“Occupies the twilit area where downbeat, muted experimental electronic music melts into downbeat, muted chamber music” - Pitchfork “One of the most brilliant minds of French Music” - Les
InRocks

For fans of Max Richter, Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Johann Johannsson, Erik Satie, Arvo Pärt, Labradford, Mogwai, Peter Broderick and Hauschka.

If you’ve visited Ibiza in the last few years, there’s a fair chance you’ll have encountered DJ Pippi and Willie Graff. The experienced duo has been DJing together on the White Isle for years, finding time between sundown sets to make music together in Italian veteran Pippi’s home studio. The pair’s first collaborative EP dropped on Drumpoet Community way back in 2007, with the belated follow-up appearing a decade later on Compost Disco. Here they make their bow on Leng with the “Lunares EP”, a typically warm and woozy collection of cuts named after the Spanish word for “polka dots” (a fashionable item in Spain and the Balearic islands throughout the 1980s).

They begin with the slow-burn sunrise bliss of “Lunares”, a shuffling and glassy-eyed affair in which evocative, emotion-rich strings, heady vocal samples, echoing sitars and lilting guitars slowly rise above a thickset backing track rich in dubby bass, swelling pads, starry electronics and snappy drums. Capable of tugging at the heartstrings, it’s a sublime slab of mood-enhancing bliss perfect for both weary dancing and sofa-bound relaxation. “Saxolicious” lives up to the premise of the title, with Pippi and Willie wrapping snaking, effects-laden saxophone solos around a languid, slow motion groove bristling with hazy intent. Expect chiming electric piano chords, dreamy pads, rolling grooves and another fine bassline that will worm its way into your subconscious, spark up a spliff and stay there for days.

The EP’s final musical moment is, if anything, even more spaced-out and intoxicating. Employing extra-slow beats and a prominent jazzy bass guitar part, the pair invites us to get locked in to a chuggy rhythm. Throw in druggy synth lines, tactile electric piano stabs and some suitably cosmic effects and you have a hallucinatory treat that would no doubt have gained the approval of the late, great Andrew Weatherall.

Compositions and lyrics by Conny Fornbäck. Eurorack, LYRA-8, speech synthesis and vocals by Conny Fornbäck. Additional drums on Geosmin by Zeke. Produced, recorded and mixed at Grappling Hook Studios, Stockholm, Sweden. Mastered by Rude 66. Curation and executive production by Mika Hallbäck Vuorenpää. Artwork by Titta Kallio and Fredrik Möller. Photograph: “Attentive gaze - Painful attention” (detail) by Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne.

Das wohl wichtigste britische Duo dieser Zeit kehrt in den zwischenzeitlich verlassenen Heimathafen Rough Trade Records zurück und bittet nach dem Appetithäppchen English Tapas ohne Umschweife ans Buffet! Denn mit dem am 15. Mai erscheinenden All That Glue tischen Jason Williamson und Andrew Robert Lindsay Fearn ein wütendes Potpourri an Songs aus den letzten 7 Jahren ihres Schaffens auf - und halten damit wieder mal der gehobenen britischen Gesellschaft sowohl den Spiegel als auch den Mittelfinger entgegen. We call it: 22 Banger für ein Halleluja! Genauer: Langjährige Favoriten, B-Seiten, unveröffentlichte Tracks und Raritäten - alles natürlich handverlesen von der Band! Willkommen zurück Jungs und wohl bekomm's! Das Album erscheint als CD und LP. Außerdem gibt es eine limitierte deluxe Vinylausgabe in weiß mit extra ausführlichem Booklet.

The Current Inside”, Marja Ahti's sophomore album for Hallow Ground, plays with the theme of currents - connecting and animating movements in the form of air, water and electricity. It approaches sound as a poetic medium, focusing both on the experience of sound as form and energy and on a loosely narrative arc, suggesting a riddle on the relations between the sounds. It implements alternative as well as intuitive tunings, analog and digital synthesis, recordings of sonorous spaces and vessels, electromagnetic fields transduced into audio, acoustic close-ups of elements in motion and other field recordings. Fluently connecting quite diverse sound sources, Ahti's music lingers in a zone between abstract sonorities and vaguely familiar acoustic environments.

The first half of the album consists of ”The Altitudes”, a piece commissioned by Ina GRM for Présences Électronique and Sonic Acts. It was inspired by descriptions of the layers of Earth's atmosphere. Imagining a movement through layers of air, the piece unfolds with a slow intensity, interweaving concrete sounds and closely tuned electronic sonorities. Traversing the altitudes, a landscape of entangled elements, masses and currents emerges. The air around us has weight and it presses against everything it touches. As gravity pulls it to Earth, it is sensed as pressure. The rotation of the planet, the angle of the sun at any new moment sets the elements in motion in a chain reaction.

The other side consists of four shorter pieces. ”The Currents” opens with a dance of trembling charged movements. ”Lost Lake” extracts resonant tones from a trail of close-up recordings of winter environments, while ”Fluctuating Streams” channels streaming air in different forms. The closing track, ”Sundial”, could be construed as the steady turning of the planetary angle towards the sun, unfolding through fragments of everyday activity against the backdrop of piercing, slowly twisting, suspended tone.

Marja Ahti (b. 1981) is a musician and composer based in Turku, Finland. Originally from Sweden, Ahti has been a part of the Finnish experimental music scene for more than ten years in different constellations. She is currently active in the duo Ahti & Ahti with her partner and as a member of the Himera artist/organizer collective. Her critically acclaimed 2019 solo debut, Vegetal Negatives, explored a new formal language and sonic palette inspired by a short text by René Daumal.

Slow, excruciating, hard techno cuts by a mysterious group of 3, called GLMG.

Ital Tek (a.k.a. Alan Myson) returns to Planet Mu with his sixth album ‘Outland‘. The album was written during a period of new beginnings following a move out of the city to a quieter space and the birth of his first child. During this time of self-imposed isolation Alan recorded a huge amount of source material and spent weeks and months sitting up at night with his newborn, listening back and making notes on how the new record should take form, focusing and developing ideas to shape this lean ten-track album.

Alan talks of the record being a collaboration between two parts of himself, something that definitely comes across as the album unfolds. Textures are something Alan excels at and on his last album, the largely beatless ‘Bodied’, it felt as if he was building a new sound-world. On ‘Outland’ he expands upon this. The album brings together the extremes of Alan's sound, contrasting roughened bass and beats with starker more detailed atmospheres and emotions.

The most beat-driven song here is ‘Deadhead’, with its gnarled bouncing bass, angular distorted melodies and cavernous textures. On tracks like ‘Bladed Terrain’ the contrasts are even more defined with buzzing drones and razor sharp drums plunging into a grainy fog, giving the track a dramatic 3D feel.

Then there are the stop-start pauses of ‘Leaving The Grid’, where the song evaporates into space before reemerging with shuddering rhythms and ghostly textures. Melodies crawl around these tracks as if they’re just waking up, as heard on the atmospheric ‘Angel In Ruin’.

The sleep-deprived fraying of the senses became Alan’s routine and one which he says gave him a renewed creative energy; half-asleep, working through the night, and then into the daytime super-focused but exhausted. Prone to audio hallucinations whilst writing the album, he aimed to capture these distortions in his perception of pitch and time, and you can hear these effects interpreted on tracks like ‘Endless’ and ‘Open Heart’ as melodies phase and slip out of time like an emotional Doppler effect.

This is also true of the soaring atonal synths at the peak of ‘Diamond Child’, which feel like the aural equivalent of eye floaters. These intuitive feelings and functions are a difficult thing to capture in sound, but Alan manages it beautifully and always makes the result feel warm and adventurous, heartfelt and epic.

Portuguese- Italian Producer "Vhycepicks" up where he left off,
once again teaming up with the talentedvocalistYves Paqueton Kraak & Smaak's very own Boogie Angst imprint.

He's already got an impressive list of top DJ fans in the shape of
Pete Tong, Claptone, Gorgon CityandSatin Jackets, and it's no surprise given his clean, pop aesthetics and catchy dancefloor sensibilities.Indeed it has led to releases on some of today's most respected dance labels like Kitsune, Future Disco and Casablanca Sunset.

As well as collaborating on their previous single 'Duran Duran' together, Brazilian born soulful vocalist Yves Paquethas previously collaborated with the likes of Aeroplane,and scored #1 in the Belgian dance charts with The Subs. He provides the perfect foil to Vhyce'sbeats with just the tonic – a melodic toplineall about the good times, having a drink and getting high…

In addition to the original mix there's another special treat as stepping up to provide a stellar remix is none other than PrinsThomas, a true pioneer of 'space disco' and regular bandmate of nu disco royaltyLindstrømin their imaginatively titled project 'Lindstrom & PrinsThomas'.

Yes, he takes his arpsynth lines out for a spin and serves up a prime cut of good time, ethereal, dancefloor fire. With all the hallmarks of his crisp and upbeat spacey productions it's not one to miss out on.

For those who are all about the beats, fear not we got you covered as there's an instrumental safely stowed in there too …

You have reached the Infolines. Tonight, you will be given links to preview a reverence to the venues that helped shape an industry and generations of musical technological wizardry. ‘Packard’ features a compilation of cuts fitting to the experiences by those who once frequented the halls of Detroit’s urban decay.
Bendersnatch, kicks things off with a ‘Homage’ fitting of the mainstay venue paying reverence to the classic Detroit Techno sound. ADMN’s Machine 8 shows a lust for a bass grind synonymous with the engines machined in the halls of its urban decay. Remote Viewing Party’s minimal break ‘fuxwiddit’ whistles echo to us through the warehouse former machine shops. Maxlow makes sure you ‘heard’ what they must say pushing air from the subs ensuring you feel the room.
Keep an eye on this space and be sure to call in for the waypoint to the party.

Nils Frahm, born in 1982, had an early introduction to music. During his childhood he was taught to play piano by Nahum Brodski a student of the last scholar of Tschaikowski. It was through this that Nils began to immerse himself in the styles of the classical pianists before him as well as contemporary composers. Today Nils Frahm works as an accomplished composer and producer in Berlin. In early 2008 he founded Durton Studio, where he has worked with Peter Broderick and Dustin O' Halloran amongst other fellow musicians.

The three instrumentals, which make up his debut release 'Wintermusik' are piano led pieces, coloured with occasional celeste and reed organ parts. The record's equal measures of sorrowful refrains and uplifting passages, combined with a real intimacy that makes for an album you'll want to return to again and again.

The songs were originally intended as a Christmas present for friends and family, hence its winter release via London-based cinematic music label Erased Tapes. As the curator of the Swedish boutique label Kning Disk's Piano Series, Peter Broderick invited Nils to record a new Nils Frahm, born in 1982, had an early introduction to music.

During his childhood he was taught to play piano by Nahum Brodski a student of the last scholar of Tschaikowski. It was through this that Nils began to immerse himself in the styles of the classical pianists before him as well as contemporary composers. Today Nils Frahm works as an accomplished composer and producer in Berlin. In early 2008 he founded Durton Studio, where he has worked with Peter Broderick and Dustin O' Halloran amongst other fellow musicians.

The three instrumentals, which make up his debut release 'Wintermusik' are piano led pieces, coloured with occasional celeste and reed organ parts. The record's equal measures of sorrowful refrains and uplifting passages, combined with a real intimacy that makes for an album you'll want to return to again and again. The songs were originally intended as a Christmas present for friends and family, hence its winter release via London-based cinematic music label Erased Tapes.

As the curator of the Swedish boutique label Kning Disk's Piano Series, Peter Broderick invited Nils to record a new album of piano improvisations the result is 'The Bells', which will now be released on Erased Tapes in the UK, Ireland and North America. Perhaps the most stunning aspect of what on the surface appears to be an entirely pre-planned and composed body of work comes with the discovery that these pieces were in fact improvised.

These two friends share a common affinity in that they both possess an absolute mastery of melody, composition and performance able to deliver with devastating effect. The modest Mr. Broderick states 'I remember thinking to myself as I lay there stunned, that I could spend ten years trying to write an amazing piece of piano music, and still it would never be half as good as these improvisations!'

Recorded in a rented, beautiful old church in the heart of Berlin over two nights, Nils 'just played' with the occasional instruction from Peter 'I spouted "Make a song using only the notes C, E, and G", or "Make a song that you could imagine me rapping over the top of" (Track 8 'My Things'). At one point I was even inside the piano, laying on the strings, asking him to make a song called 'Peter Is Dead In The Piano'. The resultant work 'The Bells' shares the same excitement and air of playfulness.

For a musician this early in his career, Frahm displays an incredibly developed sense of control and restraint in his work. As the recognition continues to grow for both, 'Wintermusik' and 'The Bells', we are pleased to announce that 2010 will also see his next album release on Erased Tapes.

On his new record "Companionship", London-based Soft-Rock, Soul and Disco artist Joel Sarakula keeps the mood easy and the grooves deep. Ten new songs see Sarakula develop a deeper, more introspective lyrical style from his previous works as he celebrates and laments friendships, love and loneliness. Interspersed with a few standout up-tempo tracks to keep the ship sailing, "Companionship" is a chill-out album and listening experience of the highest order.

"Companionship" opens with "Midnight Driver", a driving soft-rock fantasy where the narrator laments his partner's nocturnal habits: 'When she's coming up, it gets me down'. The Californian sun-kissed guitars, vocal stylings and percussion all help to set a cinematic mood which unsurprisingly also makes it a great driving song. On the introspective "King Of Clowns", Sarakula creates a pop song that calls to mind the craftmanship of Hall & Oates and Elvis Costello. Both an admission of guilt and an unapologetic statement of intent, his low vocal careens in the dangerous divide between self-pity and self-parody: "My bad decisions worked out for a while, I'd do my dance tried to make you smile, I'll never wise up it's just the way I am". These confessions all occur over a down-tempo funk groove complete with some vintage synthesizer musings that makes the track ready to be sampled for a hip-hop record.

"Sunshine Makes Me" steps straight out of its mid-1970s swimming pool, heavily dripping in jazz fusion to dry off in the cold light of today's sunshine. The chorus is a mantra of desire, needs and reality that sees Sarakula sing 'Sunshine makes me lose my mind, thirty degrees and my eyes get so wide. Dreaming big and living slow, don't you know that time is on our side". On "Companionship", Joel Sarakula, prolific writer, producer, performer and multi-instrumentalist finally unleashes his chill-out pretensions. In this follow up to the critically acclaimed "Love Club" (2018) he develops a deeper and more mature compositions and production style. His love of all things vintage extends to a devotion to analog synthesizers and on "Companionship" you can hear a genuine love of synthesis that at moments is reminiscent of 70s synth production pioneers Todd Rundgren and George Duke.

Joel Sarakula will tour "Companionship" through Europe and the UK this Spring and Summer 2020 with his musical companions. Born in Sydney, based in London and a true internationalist, Sarakula tours with pickup bands sourced from each territory he plays in: a Barcelona band for Spain, a Berlin band for Germany and so forth. This cross-cultural exchange is a sly nod to the golden era of the 1960s and 1970s when travelling US pop, soul and blues artists would do the same.

Pilo returns to BNR in 2020 with the “A.R.E.A.” EP. Since his first release for the label in 2013 at a very young age, each subsequent record could be seen as a milestone of growth - the “A.R.E.A. EP” feels confident, produced with consummate skill, focusing on the LA-producers strongest themes and devices. This is not, however, the sort of “maturity” that sees things get boring, more restrained. Pilo’s drum is the beat of LA’s unhinged underground techno scene - they don’t do boring - and this drum is always banging.

A-side examples: “Acid by Mouth.” A stuttered kick and a gated, uncanny valley voice form the backbone for increasing layers of texture and percussion. It’s a rollercoaster, as viscerally satisfying on the way up as on the way down. Pilo’s production journey has been increasingly cinematic, and you can see the songs here - “Acid by Mouth” is suited for a Gaspar Noe nightclub scene, and you love to hear it as long as no one gets murdered. “Ruhig” is tribal, made for spaces with 4 story high ceilings and sparse but blinding flashes of light. You can hear steel beams buckling under pressure, a breath too close behind you. The workers of the factory in fit of madness started raving to the sounds of their own machines. They’ve been dancing, without pause, for years now.

The B-side opens with “Exit the Artificial.” Headbanging broken beat kick, aggressive Skinny Puppy snares, ghost voices in hallucinatory bursts too short to confirm to be real. The draw-distance of the stereo spread seems infinite - listen at the very edges and a whole other (ominous) world is taking place. The ghosts mock you in gated laughs by the end. “Adapt Tactics” leads you out - low tempo, hissy percussion, haunted again at the fringe. Things break down, reduced to grain - brain short-circuits, “will I feel like this forever?” It’s a warning - turn back, there’s nothing for you out there. You embrace the madness, and start Pilo’s “A.R.E.A.” EP again from the beginning.

Something is stirring in downtown Tucson. That's no great surprise perhaps: Calexico have been sending out missives from the desert for 20 years now, Giant Sand for even longer than that, and the Green on Red revival is surely overdue. Let us remind ourselves that this isn't a big city in the American sense, but that its hinterland is indeed as big as it gets. For an hour south, Mexico starts. And this is where things get interesting.

Born in Nogales, Arizona, raised in Nogales, Sonora, multi-instrumentalist and band-leader Sergio Mendoza grew up listening to the Mexican regional styles jostling for headspace in a young, music-mad mind - cumbia mainly, but mambo, rancheras and mariachi too. The border is always a fierce arena of exchange, both commercial and cultural, and so there was American music too. At one point 'rock and roll, the classics', as Mendoza himself deadpans, seemed to win out and he stopped playing those 'Latin styles' for a good decade and a half.

The return to those sounds was a strong one in 2012's Mambo Mexicano, co-produced by Mendoza and Joey Burns of Calexico - a band for which Mendoza has become an increasingly integral touring and recording member. While that record had a studied air, tentative in parts (as befits the renewal of an old love affair), ¡Vamos A Guarachar! is another beast entirely: by turns raucous ('Cumbia Volcadora', featuring Mexican electronic pioneer Camilo Lara), tender ('Misterio', surely Salvador Duran's finest moment with the band so far) and plain serious fun, as in 'Contra La Marea' and 'Mapache', it also bears a robust electronic edge, a keen pop sensibility and all the hallmarks of Mendoza's love of 60s rock, with the closing track, 'Shadows of the Mind', sure to be included if anyone decides to update the Nuggets collection for the 21st century. This is roundabout way of saying that it appears to have everything, but never too much of anything. Focused, fierce and beautifully executed by a superbly drilled set of musicians, it is a record that fully matches the band's explosive live performances.

You could, of course, take the trip to Tucson yourself, to the home of this essential set of field recordings. The scene hangs out together, so ... if the stars align and their frantic tour schedules permit, you might see any number of folks from Calexico, Giant Sand or up-and-coming cumbia rockers Xixa deep in conversation somewhere in town with a quiet young man in black. That's Sergio. Right now, in this endless game of Tucson tag, Orkesta Mendoza are IT.

Brooklyn-based cellist Clarice Jensen’s gorgeous
sophomore album and first for FatCat’s pioneering
130701 imprint, ‘The experience of repetition as death’
was recorded and mixed by Francesco Donadello at
Vox-Ton studios in Berlin in late 2018 and mastered by
Rafael Anton Irisarri.
 Following up her hugely impressive 2018 debut, ‘For
This From That Will Be Filled’, which included
collaborations with Jóhann Jóhannsson and Michael
Harrison, all of the material on this new album was
written and performed by Clarice alone and all of the
sounds on it were created with a cello through a
variety of effects and effects pedals.
 Clarice has recorded and performed for a host of
stellar artists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max
Richter, Björk, Arcade Fire, Nick Cave, Jónsi, Stars of
the Lid, Dustin O’Halloran, Joanna Newsom, Nico
Muhly, Dirty Projectors, Frightened Rabbit and Beirut.
 Receiving glowing critical acclaim, both her previous
releases made it into Pitchfork’s End Of Year charts.
 For fans of Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hildur Gudnadottir,
Stars of the Lid, Max Richter, Pauline Oliveros, Harold
Budd, A Winged Victory For The Sullen, Sarah
Davachi, Resina, Maria W Horn, Ellen Arkbro, Kali
Malone, Christina Vantzou, Abul Mogard, Galya
Bisengalieva, Richard Skelton, GAS, Steve Reich.

Detroit blue-eyed soul from The Flaming Ember, a band who signed to the then newly created Hot Wax Records (founded by the prolific hit making Motown team Holland Dozier Holland) Sunshine is the bands third Hot Wax LP with highlights including ‘I’m Not My Brothers Keeper’ to ‘1200 Miles From Heave’. Recognised for their contribution to music and inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 1999
This 1971 album is reissued with original artwork presented in a gatefold sleeve and preseed on 180g heavyweight black vinyl with printed inner sleeve

To coincide with the announcement, the pair have shared a video for the album’s title track directed by Sam Davis and Tom Andrew, who has previously received two UK Music Video Awards nominations for his work with Avery. Speaking about the video, Andrew explains, “We were keen to capture a visual representation of the tempo and atmospheric emotion of the track and make a video exploring the notion of collaboration. A super-motion approach allowed us to explore details of motion shared between two people, in tactile actions of aiding and supporting.” Cortini adds, “The video embodies the volatility and hidden nature of the music’s subject and meaning. A meaning that is ultimately personal and unique the listener/spectator.” Watch the clip .



Beginning as a collaborative experiment before the pair had even met, Avery and Cortini then worked remotely and free of concept or deadline over several years. The result, finally completed when both artists were touring with Nine Inch Nails in 2018, is a quietly powerful album rooted in trust, process and experimentation. The first fruits of their labour were unveiled last year when ‘Water’ and ‘Sun’ appeared online, subsequently released as a very limited 7” run that was sold at FYF Festival and Mount Analog in Los Angeles, and Phonica Records in London. Both tracks are included on the album.



“It was very much a shared process”, notes Avery. “I would like to credit Alessandro with his belief that music has a life of its own, as well as the importance he places on the first take... That even something that may be considered out-of-step by some should be respected. Some of the tracks were borne simply out of a tiny synth part, or a bit of tape hiss that we had recorded. And that approach taught me a lot. It’s a record that’s been worked on hard, but not laboured over.”



“I was a big fan of Daniel’s, and his work always spoke to me in a certain way,’’ explains Cortini. “Then, when we started working together, it just clicked. It’s very hard to explain, but I can always hear the love in his work, and that is true on this record. After our first collaboration, we just kept sending each other music and maintaining that dialogue. Next thing you know, we’re sitting in a hotel room in New York and had finished the record in three hours.”



The collaborative album follows Avery’s second record Song For Alpha, released in early 2018, and last year’s expanded edition B-sides & Remixes. Mixmag called the sophomore LP “A beautiful maturation of Avery’s work as a producer,” while The Guardian hailed its “Majestic, cavernous techno” and Loud & Quiet praised Avery as “A producer fast approaching the peak of his powers,” “This album cements Daniel Avery as one of the best,” wrote DIY. The London-based producer will perform at BBC Radio 3’s Unclassified Live on April 3rd, a new series of concerts in the Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall presented by Unclassified host and presenter Elizabeth Alker and conducted by André de Ridder – tickets are available here. Avery has also just been announced in the first wave of acts for London festivals Re-Textured and the inaugural Wide Awake, taking place in April and June respectively.



Cortini released his most recent solo album Volume Massimo on Mute in July 2019, following Fine, the Italian artist’s final album under his SONOIO alias, which came out the previous year. The Quietus called the former “an album that showcases just how much Cortini‘s aesthetic has developed since his early days,” while Exclaim! hailed it “a melodic exploration of textures and layers … an instrumental masterpiece that adds to an already incredible body of work by the gifted and skilled composer.”

"Available again for the first time since original release in 1974, Outernational Sounds proudly presents one of the deepest custom press jazz recordings of all – Jaman’s spiritualised and funky Sweet Heritage.

The history of jazz is often told as though it was principally a history of releases and recordings. On those terms, it’s easy to mistake a small recorded footprint for obscurity or silence. But that is to put the cart before the horse, for the true history of the jazz is the story of the music as it was played night after night in the clubs, bars, concert halls and backrooms of cities and towns across America and the world. Only a tiny fraction of this living tradition ever makes it onto a recording. The far greater part is embodied in the musicians and their music as they play it and live it. And even though 1974’s Sweet Heritage is James Edward Manuel’s only release, the pianist and educator better known as Jaman has undoubtedly lived it.

Brought up in Buffalo, New York, Jaman studied classical piano before beginning formal jazz studies under greats including Earl Bostic and Horace Parlan. Quickly becoming a respected regular on the club scene in Buffalo, Jaman held down innumerable residencies and worked with top local musicians – one of his early trios included the renowned bassist John Heard and drummer Clarence Becton, both of whom were poached one night by a visiting Jon Hendricks; sometime Sun Ra Arkestra bassist Juini Booth and regular Ahmad Jamal sideman Sabu Adeyola (also of Kamal & The Brothers) have graced his groups too. At famous night spots all over Buffalo’s East Side and on excursions to Manhattan’s storied jazz clubs, Jaman has shared the stage with some of the most illustrious names in jazz and blues: Big Joe Turner, Muddy Waters, Joe Henderson, Ruth Brown, Frank Morgan, Woody Shaw, Sonny Stitt, and too many others to mention. His eponymous group, Jaman, was formed in 1970; they toured the US and Canada steadily in the years that followed. He became, in short, one of Buffalo’s true jazz stalwarts, and so he remains.

But despite a life lived deep within the music, Jaman only recorded a single LP, 1974’s Sweet Heritage. Pressed in tiny quantities by the Mark Records custom service, and issued with a stock landscape cover, Sweet Heritage featured the regular Jaman group playing a mixture of covers and originals. The whole LP showcases an ensemble in compete control, and with the flying, spiritual sound of ‘Free Will’ and the upful, Latin-tinged ‘In The Fall of The Year’ – both Jaman originals – the album has since become a legendary collector’s classic. Unavailable since its original issue, Outernational Sounds is proud to present Jaman’s Sweet Heritage – the soulful and spiritualised sounds of a master at work."

Taylor Swift, seven-time GRAMMY award winner, and the
youngest recipient in history of the music industry's highest
honor, the GRAMMY Award for Album of the Year. She is the
#1 digital music artist of all-time and is the first artist since the
Beatles (and the only female artist in history) to log six or more
weeks at #1 with three consecutive studio albums. Taylor has
an album on Rolling Stone's prestigious The 50 Greatest
Albums of All Time (by women) list, Time magazine has named
her one the of the100 Most Influential People in the world, and
she is Billboard's youngest-ever Woman of the Year. Taylor
has career record sales in excess of 30 million albums and 75
million song downloads worldwide, and has had singles top both
the pop and country radio charts around the globe.
LONDON, 18th August 2014 - Taylor Swift, announced her new
album 1989 and it is available immediately for pre-buy on
TaylorSwiftand iTunes. In addition, Taylor released Shake
It Off, the first single and video from her fifth studio album.
1989 is a touchstone - Taylor's songwriting and sonic evolution
surprises us more than ever before. Heavily keyboard and beat
driven, the pop sensibilities that have always been the hallmark
of Taylor's music now move front and centre on 1989. "I spent
two years making 1989. Two years gives you enough time to
grow and change and let things inspire you. I was listening to a
lot of late 80's pop music and how bold those songs were and
how that time period was a time of limitless possibilities. In
thinking about that, this album is a rebirth for me. This is my
very first documented, official pop album. 1989 is the most
sonically cohesive album I have ever made and my favourite
album I have ever made," said Taylor.

Yokohama-based producer Foodman - aka 食品まつり or Shokuhin Matsuri - continues his expansive sonic voyage with his new EP Dokutsu, out on 6th March 2020. It follows his 2019 release ODOODO, which was issued on Diplo’s Mad Decent label. Dokutsu is the first release on Highball, a brand new label exporting forward-thinking music from Japan.

Foodman emerged from Japan’s nascent footwork scene, using the genre as a springboard for an escapist exploration into a dazzling array of sounds. He’s since earned the respect of influential fans including Diplo, Benny Blanco, Cashmere Cat and HOMESHAKE, while Pitchfork, Noisey, FACT and Tiny Mix Tapes have included his releases in various ‘best of the year’ lists since 2016.

Opening track Kazunoko sets the tone for what will follow. Its woozy rhythm is evocative of the off-kilter playfulness that’s become a hallmark of Foodman’s uncategorizable artistry. It’s also a sign of his inventiveness that he constantly adds fresh layers to the track without losing sight of its light-hearted, spacious feel.

Another of Foodman’s unorthodox traits is his ability to meld the frenetic with the soothing. Hirake Tobira is a case in point. Its production is hypnotic, while its central motif - endless twists and variations on a vocal sample - is sufficiently insistent to demand attention. Kachikachi reverses the trick with a thrilling rush, stuttering otherwise unobtrusive sounds.

Elsewhere the EP plays on sonics which have echoes of the familiar while remaining alien: the boss fight soundtrack of Oshiro, the clattering percussion that dominates Imo Hori, and the ambient psychedelia of Konomi.

Based in Yokohama, an hour south of Tokyo, Foodman’s multifaceted skills also encompass DJing and painting. His press image, shown above, is a self-portrait. From the stripped-back sketches of his 2012 set Shokuhin (released on Giant Claw’s Orange Milk label) to the richer textures of ODOODO, Foodman has subverted everything from Okinawan folk to J-Pop to D&B/classical fusion into his own otherworldly inventions.

Christophe Chassol is reshuffling the deck. After making his name worldwide with three magnificent ultrascore compositions (Nola Che?rie in 2011, Indiamore in 2013 and Big Sun in 2015), working with Solange and Frank Ocean, and playing the most prestigious halls, he's taking his quest to arrange reality even further with Ludi, his new project that includes an album, film and show. It's play - an all-important word in music - that underscores this impressive, masterful construction freely inspired by Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. Everything is part of the melody: a playground or basketball players in the suburbs, an arcade in Tokyo, a roller coaster, singer Crystal Kay and rapper Kohh. Solo musicians were filmed in rehearsal, like flautist Jocelyn Mienniel and the composer's partner, drummer Mathieu Edward, who managed to reprise on stage

Chassol drew from the great German author's utopic book, where music, mathematics, aesthetics and spirituality intermingle, to create a passionate work produced by Bertrand Burgalat's label Tricatel that once again justifies his special place in the musical landscape.

With Ludi, Chassol directs his own round of Hermann Hesse's game, taking on the title of Magister Ludi, master of The Glass Bead Game. With this double album, Chassol realises his ambition: to compose unprecedented music that fills us with joy and prompts reflection.

Ruutu Poiss returns to International Major Label with two evolutionary,
spacetime bending dance floor hitters.
The Estonian sound artist revisits the psychedelic approach used for his first 7" release on the label (Halli / Uttu, 2016), expanding his refined palette with the use of modular synthesizers.

Pull / Push holds extraterrestrial, contemporary techno music. Off-kilter, but very effective.
These two powerful gems could easily be described as 'heavy' or 'weighty', but that seems very unfitting here. Where Pull immediately entraps us in a soaring vortex, Push takes a long intro
to launch us hard into a compelling stratosphere.

"Me Against the World" is the third studio album by 2 Pac, released on 14th March, 1995 by Out Da Gutta/Interscope Records. Drawing lyrical inspiration from his impending prison sentence, troubles with the police, and poverty, the album is described as being 2 Pac’s most introspective album

Released while 2 pac was imprisoned, the album made an immediate impact on the charts, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200. “Dear Mama” was released as the album’s first single in February 1995 and would be the album’s most successful single, topping the Hot Rap Singles chart, and peaking at the ninth spot on the Billboard Hot 100.

"Me Against the World" won best rap album at the 1996 Soul Train Music Awards. In 1996, at the 38th Grammy Awards, Me Against the World was nominated for Best Rap Album and the single “Dear Mama” was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance.

Touted as “confessional,” “reflective,” and “soul-baring,” Me Against the World was as one of 2pac’s most positively reviewed albums,
with many calling it the magnum opus of his career.

The work is considered one of the greatest and most influential hip hop albums of all time. In 2008, the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, in conjunction with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, recognized 'Me Against the World' as one of the “most influential and popular albums,” ranking it number 170 on a list of 200 other albums by artists of various musical genres.

Still deeper forays into the musical landscape of the Windrush generation. A dazzling range of calypso, mento, joropo, steelband, palm-wine and r’n'b. Expert revivals of stringband music, from way back, alongside proto-Afro-funk. An uproarious selection of songs about the H-Bomb and modern phones, prostitution and Haile Selassie, mid-life crisis and the London Underground, racism and solidarity, the Highway Code and a 100% West Indian Royal Wedding.
For example some frantic British-Guianan joropo music-hall about Eatwell Brown from Clapham, who starts out biting off a piece of his mother-in-law’s face at a party, then devours everything in his path… a chunk of Brixton Prison, a Union Jack, a policeman’s uniform. Or Marie Bryant — collaborator of Lester Young and Duke Ellington — taking time off from skewering the South African PM Daniel Malan at her West End revue, to contribute some arch, swinging filth about uber-genitalia. Superior sound, courtesy of Abbey Road, D&M and Pallas; lovely gatefold sleeve; full-size booklet, with full notes, and fabulous previously-unseen photographs, including a set from the family archive of Russ Henderson (who led the first, impromptu Notting Hill Carnival march, in 1966).