Suche:into it over it

Richie Culver had been waiting his whole life to record I was born by the sea. His debut album immediately and messily inscribed the artist into the canon of outsider music and experimental electronics, serving both as an arresting statement of intent and a painful reckoning with the difficult path that lead up to it, stealing one last glance back at a place he always knew he had to escape. Between grim lamentations, faded memories and anxiety attacks, all told with searing honesty and disarming openness, I was born by the sea excavates a space for hope, finding Culver digging through Humberside silt to find a world weary optimism, the raw material from which his visual and sound art is shaped. For this collection of expansions and inversions, Culver invites a collection of kindred spirits, contemporary inspirations and old heroes to wade into the salt water of his formative years spent living for impromptu raves and afterparties, connecting vivid memories of his birth place of Withernsea to artists hailing from as nearby as Preston and Bridlington, further afield, from Manchester and London, Berlin and Paris, before returning back to Hull, to where it all began.

For some, responding to I was born by the sea means diving even deeper into the record’s furthest reaches. Space Afrika clear away the pummelling loops of noise from ‘It’s hard to get to know you,’ revealing a cool and cavernous expanse in its wake. Distant chatter, previously heard as though through thin, plasterboard walls, now echoes from outside the maddening claustrophobia of the original’s Sisyphean sonics, illuminated as a dense storm cloud suspended amidst a more open scene, washed clean by a lighter rain, allowing the tender heart of the track to beat clear. London producer MOBBS stretches out ‘Pigeon Flesh’ into an epic, 10-minute, cold-sweat spiral, strung-out tension wrung from disconnected phone tones twisted in unexpected directions, snatches of Culver’s voice turned inside-out and deep fried bass threatening to tip the track over into oblivion, the build-and-release of a nervous breakdown experienced in real time. In an act of subversive self-reflection, Morgane Polanski switches one kind of ennui for another in her adaption of ‘I was born by the sea,’ swapping the sea for the city, English seaside towns in January for summer evenings in Paris and flashing lighthouses and sparkling oil rigs for the Eiffel Tower and the traffic around L’Arc de Triomphe. Even Culver finds time to revisit ‘Dream About Yourself,’ a track taken from his EP Post Traumatic Fantasy, breathing new words into its glacial drift, the half-remembered testimony of a shut-in: Woke up in the evening / Pray for me / Don’t trust anyone / Pray for algorithm. Reframed in a more melancholy light, the track’s reverberant keys even more clearly evoke a mournful nostalgia, fresh pain felt in old wounds.

Others find a parallel universe in Culver’s visceral world building. Rainy Miller flips the script with a scorched, avant-drill rework of ‘Daytime TV’, threading puncturing hi-hats and queasy low-end surge through the track’s steady ambient cascade, invoking the irresistible Preston beat magic of Miller’s own essential debut album, Desquamation. Aho Ssan melts away the crystalline textures of ‘Love Like an Abscess’ with the ominous crackle of a nascent fire, building through swathes of organic Max/MSP squelch and brittle, nails-down-chalkboard scrape, swelling and metastasising the original to spill over Culver’s desperate hymn to corporeal desire, at once flesh and not. Teresa Winter transports us an hour up the coast from Withernsea to her native Bridlington, replacing the sea wall of synthesis on ‘Nervous Energy’ with muffled ASMR murk and fever dream whispers, transforming Culver’s unflinching observations into a haunting call-and-response, filling in the blanks with her own eerie utterances, a fleeting conversation with a ghost. In a touching victory lap, Fila Brazillia, eccentric stalwarts of beloved ‘90s trip hop imprint Pork Recordings, whose performances at Hull institution The Lamp convinced a young Culver of the necessity to make his mark on club culture, resurface for their first remix in 20 years. Steve Cobby and David McSherry lead a low-slung, heartfelt stroll back through a suite of tracks from I was born by the sea, tracing a full circle saunter from Culver’s origins to his current musical practice, the sounds of his present repurposed by the sound of his youth. In a gesture that reflects the emotional complexity of the project, Fila Brazillia find joy at the end of Culver’s troubled reflection, picking out an undeniable groove in the stasis of feeling trapped in your hometown. Underlining Hull’s vital musical legacy, from Baby Mammoth to Throbbing Gristle, Cobby and McSherry demonstrate that, though there are certainly storms, by the sea there is also sun and through the fog, if you listen, you can hear a singular sound, a sound now carried by Richie Culver.

Participant is a record label and creative studio run by William Markarian-Martin and Richie Culver

Repress!

‘Shapes,’ the third album from London-based multi-instrumentalist, Robohands, fuses elements of jazz, krautrock, hip hop and ambient music. For fans of Khruangbin, Yusef Dayes, CAN, Coltrane and 70s library music moods.

Shapes is the solo project of London based composer, instrumentalist and producer Andy Baxter. His debut LP Green was released on Village Live Records in 2018 and was received with much love and acclaim in the UK Jazz, hip hop and surrounding scenes.

His follow up full-length, 'Dusk’, dropped in 2019, combining soul, funk, Latin & experimental moods. It featured vocalists & musicians from around the world including legendary New York French horn player, John Clark, who has worked with Isaac Hayes, Gil Evans Orchestra, McCoy Tyner, Jaco Pastorius, Ornette Coleman and many more greats.

'Shapes' is inspired by 1970s library music and their legendary composers including Piero Umiliani, David Axelrod, Brian Bennett and co. The album builds on these influences and incorporates modern motifs, contemporary jazz/hip hop drumming styles with a nod to 1990s Mo Wax artists such as DJ Shadow. The theme for the record is future/nostalgia, mixing vintage & modern instruments and production techniques.

Much of ‘Shapes’ was recorded with JB Pilon at Buffalo Studios in Limehouse, London. Due to the COVID restrictions that changed everything in 2020, the remaining parts were recorded in Andy’s flat using a collection of old mixing desk preamps and instruments.

For the heads – ‘Shapes’ features an array of vintage snares, including a 1960's Ludwig Pioneer and a mono, overhead ribbon mic on the drum kit provided extra old school points! The kick drum was re-amped through a huge vintage bass amplifier on a couple of tracks to give it some real character: “My favourite guitar sound achieved on this LP project is a Sontronics Sigma ribbon microphone in front of a WEM Dominator amp, which you can hear on the track 'Odysea'. The bass sound for all the tracks is a 1973 Fender Precision into an old Altec valve preamp, the one used on most Motown recordings."

In the quiet surrounding the pandemic, Madeline Kenney made sonic sketches in the basement studio she shared with her then-partner. She arranged phrases that called her—the sharp knife of a synth cutting a path along a blooming arpeggio, drums stuttering firm and tight. Working this way, she amassed a collection of songs she had no particular aims for. Some formed her 2021 EP Summer Quarter, others languished.

But in 2022, Kenney’s partner left suddenly and without warning, plunging her into the solitary act of untangling what happened. In the wake of her ensuing depression, she revisited these songs and found in them something prescient. She’d already laid the foundation for A New Reality Mind.

That her relationship’s end came without warning is only half true, though. The warnings were in the feelings and fears that inspired Kenney’s critically-acclaimed third album, Sucker’s Lunch (2020), which was co-produced by Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes) and centered around the idea of flinging oneself freely into the seemingly-assured destruction of new love, come what may.

If sonically Sucker’s Lunch was letting yourself be pulled into the warm bath of a good story, A New Reality Mind reflects the harsh light of truth coming to break the spell. But as sobering as morning light can be, there’s brilliance to it, too. To see in the clarity of day is a gift. A revolution. Rather than reckoning with love lost, the songs on A New Reality Mind grapple with the self that chose to fall. “I guess I only needed to look twice / Reflected in my attitude, my constant compromise,” Kenney sings on “Red Emotion,” the musical landscape screeching and gasping around her observations of how she made herself small to keep the dream of love alive.

These notions of sight and vision pervade the record as Kenney stands before the infinity mirror of selves she’s been to preserve bonds in her life. On “I Drew a Line,” Kenney contends with the stories she’s told herself to keep plodding along, and the way those stories shape her perceived reality. She invokes John Berger’s Ways of Seeing—“Everything around the image is part of its meaning,” we hear him say. “Everything around it confirms and consolidates its meaning.” Here, Kenney isn’t interested in shaming herself for being carried away by the fantasies of the heart, but rather in investigating the unavoidably human propensity to do so. “I, like everyone else, am muddling through my most ordinary disaster of a life,” she acknowledges, a sentiment which reverberates through album opener “Plain Boring Disaster.” “I don’t need to start again,” she sings at the song’s close. “But I can change when it ends.” We may all be doomed to repetitive, ordinary heartbreaks, Kenney realizes, but at least we can cultivate a capacity to witness our missteps and build new realities for ourselves.

This is Kenney’s most expansive work, while also her most solitary. Produced and recorded alone in her basement, these songs are manifestations of what it feels like to be transformed by pain. Textures collide and collude; sonic ornaments emerge and dissipate capriciously; saxophones soar untamed, as on the 80s pop elegy to self-sacrifice, “Reality Mind”. These songs beg you to dance, then pull the rug out from under you once you’ve caught the beat, leaving you dizzy like the whiplash of love’s end.

But in the propulsive power of A New Reality Mind, there’s also acceptance, self-forgiveness, and a willingness to move forward into life, with all its ways of making a sucker of you. “That way of living, I’m over it,” Kenney declares of the habits that hold her back on “Superficial Conversation”. “I do not need to be reminded of what I did,” she assures, the song opening wide and beaming, like a smile expanding to taste a new breath of air.

Japanese folk-rock legend Morio Agata stunned fans with this way-outta-left-field dispatch - a synthesizer-laden, new-wave/post-punk classic. Originally released by Osaka’s Vanity Records in 1980 and back on vinyl for the first time in nearly 40 years, this fully authorized reissue has been remastered from the original analog tapes. In tip-on sleeve, with double-sided insert.

50 years ago, Hokkaido-born singer-songwriter Morio Agata released his debut single, Sekishoku Ereji (Red Elegy), an emotive, shuffling piano ballad that (shockingly) sold half a million copies in Japan. While he would never have another Top-40 hit, Agata would spend the next half century issuing a series of idiosyncratic, experimental pop albums. Today, he’s a beloved cult figure, still actively touring and recording in his seventies.

In his first decade as a recording artist, Agata released a stream of classics right out of the gate — Otome No Roman (1972) melded American-styled folk rock with traditional Japanese melodies, Zipangu Boy (1976) was a sprawling, Haruomi Hosono-produced psychedelic opus, and Kimi No Koto Suki Nan Da (1977) saw Agata tackle slick, lightly funky AOR. While this sort of stylistic schizophrenia might sink your average artist, Agata’s singular voice and magnetic charisma elevates everything he touches, and subsumes it all into Morio Agata World — a joyous, playful and frequently unhinged world.

Arguably the biggest left-turn of Agata’s early career, however, came in 1979, when legendary experimental label Vanity Records’ Yuzuru Agi paired Agata with major players from his label’s roster and the Osaka punk scene for an impromptu recording session. An impressive list of musicians took part (SAB, Yukio Fujimoto (Normal Brain), Masahiro Kitada (INU), Taiqui (Ultra Bide), Jun Shinoda (SS), Chie Mukai (Che-Shizu), and others) and even though they all came from different wings of the underground music scene, together they built an arresting, minimalistic bedrock of synthesized and acoustic sounds for Agata to work his magic over. The recording sesssions were tense and it took a while for the collective to find their footing. But the hard work paid off — Norimono Zukan is a masterpiece of ramshackle new wave and droning dirges, topped off with Agata’s unmistakeable croon, at times delicate, other times twisted. It’s a relatively short album, but a deep one, and Mesh-Key is honored to introduce it to a new generation of music fans.

Ravanelli Disco Club is a disco house label based in Marseille that was established 2019. Over its three short years they have worked with key artists including Ron Basejam, Jimpster, JKriv, Cody Currie, Retromigration, Joe Corti, and Scruscru, with releases in the wings by Prins Thomas and Pete Herbert.

Next up on Ravanelli Disco Club comes slick French duo Palavas who hail from the sun-drenched coast of the South of France, somewhere between Montpellier and Marseille. Named after the Pavalas resort - that was once the splendid queen of Mediterranean sandy beaches - the AZZUR Records founders are the epitome of the French dolce vita! With previous releases on Toucan Sound and Future Disco, their music is an intoxicating blend of nostalgia and cosmic futurism that dazzles discerning dancefloors every weekend with their shimmering solar odyssey.

On ‘Déesse D’été’ – which poetically translates to Summer Goddess - Palavas pay homage to the vibrant and infectious sound of the 80s, blending disco, funk, and new wave with a contemporary twist. This full-length journey provides us with a perfect summer soundtrack for the sunshine season, with upbeat rhythms and warm catchy melodies designed to get sun drenched bodies moving and grooving. Composed and sung in both French and English, the duo show case their tasteful aesthetic, versatility, and artistic flair effortlessly blending their musical influences resulting in a sound that is totally unique.

From the infectious beats of ‘We Are Strong Enough’ to the soulful ballad ‘One Night is Not Enough featuring Ryan Konline' or the new wave tribute ‘You Can't Get Away’, each cut is a beauty in its own right. Guaranteed to make you feel the warmth of the sun on your face and to lift your winter spirits.

Orpheu the Wizard has a magic touch at finding records that fall between the gaps in music - oddities, curios, the weird, the wonderful. But that's just half the trick. It takes a sensitive and selective ear to construct a coherent, accessible narrative from them. So you get DJs who can play for the crowd and "selectors" adept at mining the black gold. In Orpheu, you've got yourself someone who can do both. On a festival main stage, he can keep it weird enough for the heads. In an audiophile setting, he'll keep the flow.

These skill sets come into play on the fifth The Sound of Love International compilation. Jumping between genres, decades, continents, the truly rare, and many B-side cuts that passed you by. But never eclecticism for its own sake; this collection makes sense. Orpheu never loses sight of the listener - he's a friendly and knowledgeable guide to the cosmic outer reaches.

He opens his account with the warm, psychedelic electronics of Drawing Future Life, with ‘1969’. Tucked away on the B-side of an LP of ambient/trance hailing from Fukuoka, this is a very pretty piece of music on a truly rare piece of wax. Then, leapfrogging a couple of decades and timezones, we have Rutuu Poiss' "IHATSIN." Off-kilter, experimental sounds with an endearing melodic hook, followed up by the with lethargic ambient breakbeat of Digital Distortion's "Mellow Bug".

On the B-side, things start to get lively. French Audacity featuring Valerie's "That Fine One" is Gallic garage that has simultaneously got it hugely wrong and mas­sively right. Owing as much to new wave as New York house, this is propulsive and quirky dance music at its finest. Next, we're on a ferry over the channel for DJ Spike and "Gaps In Space." Up-tempo electro with a fondness for sampled vocal cut-ups, like its predecessor.

lnterdance's "Kurz" (another B-side) is the perfect segway - house from 1990 with that sweet, slightly goofy naivete. Things move toward the gnarly with Bad Behaviour and "Living on Smoke," a lesser-known cut on the legendary Atmosphere records. The tempo edges upward on "Systematic Input" by Frequency, hectic hardcore techno that still retains a lightness of touch.

"Lushes" by Diffusion spins us off into space, filigree techno with an emotive trance edge. The chiming intro of "Blue to Be Happy" by MFA lulls us into a sense of false security before massively putting the boot in with a pounding kick drum, bassline, and arpeggiation. From there, it's a sharp left turn into the urban psychedelic dub of R.I.P's "E.O Pan" on cult label Digi Dub.

Sticking with UK sound system music but taking it down a notch, Orpheu closes proceedings with a leftfield reggae excursion from the master of the mixing desk, Mad Professor’s"Oh Hell".

It's a compilation as varied as the many moods and grooves of Love International itself - from sun-dappled olive groves to moments deep in the strobes. This is serious music for party freaks or party music for serious freaks. Tisno is calling.

Egyptian-Australian DJ/producer moktar announces his second boundary-pushing five track EP, ‘Immigrant’. An expressive and considered journey that combines his Middle Eastern heritage and influential club sounds in one.

‘Immigrant’ sees moktar continue to bring traditional Arabic instrumentation into the club by weaving samples like polyrhythmic drumming and the Arabic Oud into experimental club music which has captured the attention of many tastemakers. Giant Swan, Anz, Tash LC, Raji Rags, Jamie XX, Bonobo, Groove Armada, Hudson Mohawke, Mary Anne Hobbs and Jamz Supernova all championed his highly favoured self-titled EP in 2021, which topped the Australian community radio charts as a number #1 most played alongside the global support it received. The release represented re-learning the value of his Egyptian heritage following racism and stereotyping growing up. ‘Immigrant’ expands on the story.

Debut single ‘Immigrant’ was released in September and served as a backdrop for moktar to air the stories of many as well as his own, told through a chopped vocal sample of Arsenal Football Club’s host and hype man, Frimpon. ‘North Africa’ and ‘Al-Duqqi’ are a homage to moktar’s roots. ‘Crossroads’ represents his need to push himself and grow in life and music, and ‘Send it’ (a term in Australia that means you're about to do something wild) also aims to represent Middle Eastern communities in Bankstown, Sydney.

moktar explains - “Through Immigrant I wanted to highlight the struggle many people all over the world go through to be accepted, while representing the community in Egypt, North Africa and Australia. Fusing Middle Eastern sounds into sounds into my music has been a big part of helping me become proud of who I am. I feel passionate about bringing these sounds to a wider audience in the hope it helps others in the identity struggle feel a sense of pride too”

The EP falls just as moktar’s highly anticipated debut EU tour comes to a close, playing b2b with DJ Plead at Phonox for Yung Singh, Adaptations Festival, Repercussions Festival, Werkhaus Festival, b2b with Mr Scruff at Field Day, Lost Village, Amsterdam for ADE with Kode 9, Rex Club in Paris, and Takseer festival Berlin.

For it's 46th outing, Klasse Wrecks recruits the Brooklyn based producer Gee Dee to it's ranks. Gee Dee aka Greg Droggitis turns in a wonderful and fully fledged collection of tracks that burst to the brim with atmosphere and sunny vibrations. True to the label's ethos, the music is as always, hard to pin down under one specific genre but instead slyly calls on various classic House, Electro and Acid tropes. The overall sound is one that is both universal and transcendent, feeling familiar but still surprising. 'Dream In Colour' is indeed an apt title for the EP as it spans the musical spectrum and is a lucid and vivid trip into the imagination of this new and exciting producer.

When I first heard Natalie Rose LeBrecht's time-suspending, air-ionizing music, more than twenty years ago, I thought "this kid is on to something." She's been proving that thought right ever since. Her recordings, from the teenage 4-track tapes she made as Greenpot Bluepot to the recent albums under her own name, have been fascinating dispatches from her progressively deeper dives into her gorgeous, weird, wildly idiomatic aesthetic. Holy Prana Open Game is a jewel of intensely personal cosmic music, created through a remarkable process of openness, craftiness, addition and subtraction. It belongs to a tradition of albums that document a rich, meditative sound as it rises up to join the world outside its creators' minds: Alice Coltrane's Universal Consciousness, Harmonia's Musik von Harmonia, Philip Glass's North Star, Talk Talk's Laughing Stock.

"Meditative" is specifically the idea here: Holy Prana Open Game had its origins in the fourteen days LeBrecht spent silently meditating in her home's small music room in the summer of 2019. "I came out of that bursting with the will to create new music," she says, and she created it sound-first. LeBrecht taught herself to program an analog synthesizer's timbres from scratch, and built a new set of glacial, heady compositions out of them, eventually singing to accompany the keyboard parts she was playing.

Then she closed her eyes at her computer, "let my mind be clear and open, imagined light pouring down through me, and began auto-writing to my memory of the music playing through my mind. Most of the lyrics emerged this way, and then I used my conscious mind to refine them a bit at the end." One other song came along with LeBrecht's new pieces, a cover that seems wildly unlikely from the outside and makes total sense in its context: it's a version of Atoms for Peace's "Amok" (which had been created by improvisation and editing, too), mutated into her own idiolect.

In early March of 2020, LeBrecht recorded Holy Prana Open Game's analog synth parts with Martin Bisi at his studio in Brooklyn--and then the world shut down. As you may have gathered, LeBrecht is very much a spiritual, head-in-the-stars type. She is also extremely hardcore, and if making the art she wants to make means doing things the hard way, she cracks her knuckles and gets down to it. Within weeks, she had taught herself how to record, mix and edit with a digital audio workstation. She recorded her vocal parts (sometimes multi-tracked into a radiant choir) at home, assembled a rough mix of the album, and sent it off to her collaborators.

LeBrecht spent some years studying with and assisting La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at their legendary sound-and-light installation, the Dream House. As with their work, her singular, precisely focused vision is shored up by its openness to artistic voices beyond her own. For Holy Prana Open Game, she worked with the Australian guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White (both of Dirty Three, the Tren Brothers and innumerable other projects), as well as woodwind player David Lackner, a longtime presence on her recordings.

Turner and White have been playing together in one context or another since 1985; in the summer of 2020, they were only blocks from each other in Melbourne, Australia, whose strict lockdown meant they couldn't meet up to record together. So both of them, as well as Lackner, recorded their improvisational additions to LeBrecht's rough mixes individually, often without hearing each other's contributions. "I had asked them to play as much as they could on each track," she says, "and told them that I would edit it all down in post, so I had a lot of source material of theirs to work with."

LeBrecht arranged and edited the recordings from all four of their homes to flow together like breath across the duration of her suite. Prana, one of the album's central conceits, is in fact the Sanskrit word for breath, with the connotation of the breath of life. Like LeBrecht's music, prana flows at its own pace, and demands stillness to take in fully--but it's also subtly playful and surprising, a force that can be as light as air or as immersive as the atmosphere itself.

Repress!

N0!zy blighter Russell Haswell returns to Diagonal 5 years after his label debut with a spontaneously combusting follow-up to ’37 Minute Workout’ generated again from a mix of analog/digital synths and modular systems edited on a computer. It was inspired by a visit to CERN, The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in Geneva; and dinner with Ted Nelson, whose theories of interwingularity and transclusion chimed with the direction recordings took.There are few artists who can genuinely make music that sounds like your needle and/or record is melting, but Russell Haswell is one of them. His 2nd volume of extremely kinky calisthenics is a potent example of daring to be different in a world where exponentially increasing production options are leading producers of all stripes to the exact same conclusions. But, with thanks to Russell’s iconoclastic intent, restless nature and ascetic aesthetics, he still sounds quite like nobody else, and, even better yet, doesn’t give a shit if you like it or not. For the record (this one in particular), we’re all over it like a hot rash.
Since reincorporating his early love of freestyle electro and Industrial dance music into his patented n0!ze matrices circa the 1st volume of ’37 Minute Workout’, Russell has steered that rhythm-driven style into a string of fizzy bangers for Diagonal and even applied it to his production for Consumer Electronics with typically radical results. Russell’s 2nd volume of ’37 Minute Workout’ is cut from similarly (but never the same) ragged material as the first batch, and spits, kicks and claws with equal amounts of eething, pent energy and rambunctiousness ready to jab the ‘floor in the eye or dissolve a party where needed.
Crowbarring cues ranging from the Latin Rascals to Incapacitants and Jeff Mills into 7 wickedly awkward designs, Haswell keeps his avant aerobics radically irregular as he hops from the tendon-twitching angularity of ‘The Wild Horses of the Revolution have arrived Without Knight’ to steel-hoofed clatter in ‘Central Crisis Management Cell’ and the lacquer-eating dynamics of ‘Painful
Memories From The Past Need To Be Acknowledged’, before toning a proper nasty acid special in the UR inversion ‘Dancing on the Head of an Eagle’, and seemingly sucking your brain out thru a straw with ‘Starting Something You’re Not Able To Finish’, with the dry witted, skeletal jazz-funk squirm of ‘Diplomatic Cocktail Circuit’ closing the party down in style.

In August 2020, following some typical delays at the plant, Fourth Dimension Records released the limited edition 2LP (and now sold out) set of Kleistwahr's This World Is Not My Home and Over Your Heads Forever albums, originally released by the same label in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Packaged together in a single sleeve with printed inners reproducing all the artwork found on the original CDs, the 2LP was always designed to represent the first volume in a series of them. This next volume gathers everything on the next two albums, Down But Defiant Yet and Acceptance is Not Respect, both also initially released on CD in, respectively, 2017 and 2018, and presented in the exact same way. 2017's long sold out at source album, Down But Defiant Yet, collects four lengthy cuts which catch Gary Mundy (also known for Ramleh, Breathless and Broken Flag Records) furrowing his distinct and recognisable take on a kinda contemporary psychedelia with dystopian leanings. Each piece nods towards the fug generated by certain ‘krautrock’ groups whilst retaining threads of those uncompromising power-noise surges he built his reputation on, this is music guaranteed to take you to new spaces before forcing you to nervously look over your shoulder. 2018's Acceptance is Not Respect collects two lengthy pieces themselves broken down into seven parts often tempered to the point restraint assumes new, often disturbed (and disturbing) psychedelic or even filmic, properties, this music arrives like a spitting and foaming scream into the insanity of the void and the myriad challenges and questions it inexorably keeps hurling at us. Whereas Ramleh captures the sound of at least two people dealing as best they know how with the constantly rising rivers of shit around us, Kleistwahr is akin to one man having scaled a great height poking out of an infinite chasm and wondering why he bothered. This is uneasy listening sometimes renderedvirtually elegiac by dint of a prowess rarely found in such realms. Of this, Gary himself quite prophetically, in light of how events have shaped the world since said, “I was trying to make the music more spiritual sounding this time as the album is about belief. The first half is about personal and political belief and the second half about religious belief. I was wondering about whether in the 21st Century, you can seriously get anyone to completely change their beliefs and [am] asking is there anything you believe that you would be willing to die for, and the difference between the way that most beliefs have been accepted/tolerated and [are] supposedly respected in recent times in [the UK]. Now our society is starting to break down, it becomes clear that that acceptance tends not to actually be the same thing as respect at all.”

blue + red marbled vinyl
"Dog Eared"! Named as such as it marks a turning point in my productions and releases. Made while moving from Bristol back to London this as a theme pops up throughout the EP.

"Ithaca Vox" is the name of my first ever favourite preset - a CMI-inspired pad from GarageBand which I've been using since I was 11 but never on a release. The track also samples the screeching of Victoria line on my way back from nights out.

"Bubble Trouble" caused many headaches to finish hence the addition of the word "Trouble". The track pops, floats and bursts into the space between simplistic cartoon sound sources and excessively over the top sound design and production.

"Dive" dives further into these production ideas swapping tight space tiny bubbles for wide grinning resonance. The twisting track cuts these resonances leaving a large valley of missing frequencies that gets suddenly filled by an unrelentingly simple bell centring the listeners balance.

"From Window to Wall" gives a not so subtle nod to one of my favourite excessive chart hits as well as a further nod to the source of some of the track samples (see if you spot them).

"Calpohol" is the first collaboration Ive released (another reason to Dog Ear this release). Made from an afternoon of recording with Delay Grounds on his custom Eurorack the track was shaped by us over the weeks that followed.

...And I Mean It is an amalgam of girl group, new wave, blues, pop, and folk-rock by Genya Ravan. To hear her exquisite voice on "Night Owl" soaring above her own backing vocals is intense, imagine Etta James backed by the Sex Pistols doing a rock version of "Earth Angel." Of all Ravan's work, ...And I Mean It is possibly the most concise and picture-perfect statement of what the woman is musically about. A girl group pioneer who worked with Richard Perry prior to his finding the Pointer Sisters groove, there is no doubt Ravan influenced that major producer, and his work did the same for her. "Pedal to the Medal" is high-end treble rock before it came into vogue. This is the other side of Siren, the album Genya produced for Ronnie Spector, with more emphasis on a good-time rocking party. "I'm Wired, Wired, Wired" is a rock & roll anthem for people who burn the candle at both ends, while "I Won't Sleep on the Wet Spot" embodies the unbridled sexuality of this album. The music crunches while Ravan uses her voice, her production skills, and her legacy to create something far removed from her days in Ten Wheel Drive. The horns are replaced by searing guitars and Charlie Giordano's magical piano work. The sound of the keyboard and its erratic splashes really are key to "I Won't Sleep on the Wet Spot," while the guitar and bass battle it out. "Steve...," on the other hand, is Goldie & the Gingerbreads ten years after. This Ravan/Conrad Taylor composition was the 45 from the album, and it has "hit" written all over it. 20th Century just didn't have the right mechanisms in place to get some of the great music they put out on radio, such a pity as Harriet Schock, Randy Edelman, and the fake soundtrack for All This and World War II (a Beatles tribute album) contained songs that should have been big hits. What did hit off this album, on FM radio as an album track, is the brilliant duet by Ian Hunter and Ravan, the subtle and folky "Junkman." Released on Hunter's excellent Once Bitten Twice Shy CD on Legacy in 2000, the song and the performance are timeless. Ravan once said: "I was asleep with the tv on, and was saying to myself...that's my voice...that's my song...that's me! I woke up to find "Junkman" on TV in a film." The song got placed in a cable movie without the producer's knowledge! "Junkman" was a sound not heard on FM radio prior to its release, much like MTV's "unplugged" versions of songs, but it is more unplugged than most of this material -- take the rocked-out version of Motown that is the cover of Marvin Gaye's "Stubborn Kinda Girl," or the Springsteen-style blast that is "It's Me," a tune Springsteen should cover.

...And I Mean It is an amalgam of girl group, new wave, blues, pop, and folk-rock by Genya Ravan. To hear her exquisite voice on "Night Owl" soaring above her own backing vocals is intense, imagine Etta James backed by the Sex Pistols doing a rock version of "Earth Angel." Of all Ravan's work, ...And I Mean It is possibly the most concise and picture-perfect statement of what the woman is musically about. A girl group pioneer who worked with Richard Perry prior to his finding the Pointer Sisters groove, there is no doubt Ravan influenced that major producer, and his work did the same for her. "Pedal to the Medal" is high-end treble rock before it came into vogue. This is the other side of Siren, the album Genya produced for Ronnie Spector, with more emphasis on a good-time rocking party. "I'm Wired, Wired, Wired" is a rock & roll anthem for people who burn the candle at both ends, while "I Won't Sleep on the Wet Spot" embodies the unbridled sexuality of this album. The music crunches while Ravan uses her voice, her production skills, and her legacy to create something far removed from her days in Ten Wheel Drive. The horns are replaced by searing guitars and Charlie Giordano's magical piano work. The sound of the keyboard and its erratic splashes really are key to "I Won't Sleep on the Wet Spot," while the guitar and bass battle it out. "Steve...," on the other hand, is Goldie & the Gingerbreads ten years after. This Ravan/Conrad Taylor composition was the 45 from the album, and it has "hit" written all over it. 20th Century just didn't have the right mechanisms in place to get some of the great music they put out on radio, such a pity as Harriet Schock, Randy Edelman, and the fake soundtrack for All This and World War II (a Beatles tribute album) contained songs that should have been big hits. What did hit off this album, on FM radio as an album track, is the brilliant duet by Ian Hunter and Ravan, the subtle and folky "Junkman." Released on Hunter's excellent Once Bitten Twice Shy CD on Legacy in 2000, the song and the performance are timeless. Ravan once said: "I was asleep with the tv on, and was saying to myself...that's my voice...that's my song...that's me! I woke up to find "Junkman" on TV in a film." The song got placed in a cable movie without the producer's knowledge! "Junkman" was a sound not heard on FM radio prior to its release, much like MTV's "unplugged" versions of songs, but it is more unplugged than most of this material -- take the rocked-out version of Motown that is the cover of Marvin Gaye's "Stubborn Kinda Girl," or the Springsteen-style blast that is "It's Me," a tune Springsteen should cover.

Rule of Thirds is the debut album from Nine Windows, a collaborative project between Kid Drama & DJ Trace.

The album pulls inspiration from the golden era of atmospheric jungle with the focus on labels like Good Looking, Deejay Recordings and Lucky Spin.

Expect deep nostalgia and euphoria as the pads wash over you and breaks skitter over subsonic 808 basslines as these two veterans take you on a journey into 90s bliss.

To top it off there are features with the Pioneer of the new Jungle movement - Tim Reaper and the legendary Skream making an appearance on the album.

So sit back, reminisce and listen to the sounds of Nine Windows.

While Duster went into hibernation in the year 2000, Clay Parton's four-track never stopped rolling. Recorded alone at home over several years, Birds In The Ground is an album of 30-something, post-9/11 malaise. Under his Eiafuawn (Everything Is All Fucked Up And What Not) acronym, Parton hides beneath layers of fuzzy and clean guitars, his hesitant, cottony vocal disappear into noise. This deluxe pressing is packaged in a gorgeous tip on sleeve and includes the complete lyrics for this cryptic entry of the Dusterverse.

Bunny White Vinyl! While Duster went into hibernation in the year 2000, Clay Parton's four-track never stopped rolling. Recorded alone at home over several years, Birds In The Ground is an album of 30-something, post-9/11 malaise. Under his Eiafuawn (Everything Is All Fucked Up And What Not) acronym, Parton hides beneath layers of fuzzy and clean guitars, his hesitant, cottony vocal disappear into noise. This deluxe pressing is packaged in a gorgeous tip on sleeve and includes the complete lyrics for this cryptic entry of the Dusterverse.

Remotely Together introduces new works by claire rousay & Morita Vargas, Maria Chavez & Valentina Magaletti, and KMRU, all commissioned through remote residencies for Rewire’s 2021 - online edition. In the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns, Rewire initiated these collaborations between disparate artists from all over the world, connecting them remotely to explore new creative practices both online and in isolation. The audiovisual results of these residencies were presented during the online edition of the 2021 festival. Newly edited versions of a selection of these performances have now been compiled for this release.

Featuring an enthralling mix of ambient, noise, field recording, and experimental sound art, the scene of Remotely Together is set by the crunching sounds of footsteps over a grassy environment on atmospheric opener Humo De Margatina Dulce, a collaborative song between North American percussionist and improviser claire rousay and Argentinian vocalist Morita Vargas. rousay’s textural mix of field recordings, everyday sounds, and deep electronics coalesce with Vargas’s ethereal vocals, paving the way for compelling music that gradually draws its listeners deeper into its mysterious soundworld.

Meanwhile, New York–based turntablist Maria Chavez and celebrated Italian percussionist Valentina Magaletti collaborate on Particle, featuring hypnotic textures and dreamlike percussion that seems to sonically propel itself forward, slowly expanding into a rich and layered work of stretched-out free jazz.

During his online residency, Kenyan sound artist KMRU teamed up with Dutch filmmaker Donna Verheijden. MicroVerse showcases his evocative mixing of field recordings, entrancing noise, and improvisation, resulting in a piece where the seemingly gentle sounds of the natural world begin to blend in with the artificial muck of droning noise.

Peruvian-born and Amsterdam-based graphic designer Jonathan Castro Alejos has designed the artwork of Remotely Together. It was thought of as a sculptural documentation of the unnoticed urban gestures between Amsterdam and Lima during the pandemic – further reinforcing the relationship between isolation and interconnectivity explored during the remote residencies of Rewire.

Richard Lamb’s second and (presumably) final release under this moniker is a bit of a special one. Lamb starts off with ‘Salt Lick’. A track with beautiful, lush, sunny sounds that lure you into an unexpected world of electro, heavy bass and more dance orientated tracks like ‘A Life In Harmony’.

Following up his first EP ‘Automatic Tango’ on his own Montreal based Temple imprint, there’s still hints of early Moog greasiness but overall it’s a more decisive production compared to the previous one. Intricately layered percussion mixed together with dreamy pads take you on a journey to a hidden Utopia where tight arrangements and tribal-esque rhythms dictate the pace. Once more we are shown how versatile Lamb’s productions are and how he juggles genres freely, ranging from dub to electronica, experimental, idm and techno.

The second side of this EP features two remixes by non other than Norwegian DJ and producer DJ Sotofett. A heavyweight in the electronic music scene who needs little introduction takes on the EP’s title track ‘A Life In Harmony’ and turns it into two electro-acid pieces ready to tear up any dance floor, or anything else for that matter. Surrender to the acid and indulge in these masterful tracks.

Lost soul phenomenon Lewis Taylor's Numb finally arrives on double vinyl! One of UK soul’s most fascinating artists, most enigmatic figures and most under-appreciated talents, Andrew Lewis Taylor is a prodigious multi-instrumentalist and eclectic polymath. He enjoys a fiercely loyal following which, over the years, has included celebrity champions like Bowie, Elton and D'Angelo. Numb is Taylor's sixth album, initially released on his own label Slow Reality (an anagram of his name) and licensed to Be With for this long-awaited physical edition. It captures Taylor's wholly unique, intoxicating take on lush, late-night psychedelic soul music.

Lewis wrote and recorded these 10 brand new tracks after a 17 year break from making music, although the album came together over a two-year period. The years away have done nothing to dull Taylor's unique musical vision. He still astounds. The lyrical themes, however, have shifted. Understandably, more than a decade and a half of soul searching and unflinching self-examination cannot fail to influence this most honest of songwriters, and boy does it show. Numb marks a return to the darker, more mysterious side of his output: "Brian Wilson-channels-Smokey Robinson atmospheres", as Mojo put it recently.

After playing a rapturously received gig at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC in 2006, Lewis unceremoniously walked away from music and disappeared completely. An interview in 2016 shed light on some of the reasons for Taylor’s withdrawal from the business, but there was no hint of a return anytime soon. Then in June 2021, news emerged out of the blue that he was readying new music alongside Sabina Smyth with whom he had worked first time around.

On Numb, Lewis deftly balances stark, soul-bearing lyrics with moody mid-tempo pop-soul sheen. He deals candidly with depression, mental turmoil, even thoughts of suicide - clearly more personal than Taylor's earlier songs. The music is rich, warm and layered, with infectious melodies and hooks that stick with you. A true grower of an LP, it really does reward repeated listens. As Jim Irvin in Mojo reflected, "despite the depths these plumb, it's a curiously uplifting experience, unfurling like a concept album about life's challenges with an optimistic beauty at its heart."

Triumphant dubwise horns ring out yet, almost instantly, “Final Hour” takes on a dark, downbeat vibe. With lyrics that confront (and, seemingly, confound) death head-on, Lewis ensures the groove is still there, the beats still swing and your head still nods, strings glissade. Woven around delicate yet insistent piano and subtle strings over a killer bassline, the title track “Numb” is a good example of the lyrical themes throughout the album. As Taylor reflects, "So removed I feel no pain / And for all I know I could be having the time of my life" with a coda that feels very much in conversation with Brian Wilson's finest harmonies. "Feels So Good" is sophisticated 90s-sounding soul of the highest order. The music and vocals feel simultaneously optimistic and despondent. Downlifting. A neat trick, and one Lewis has been so adept at over the years. "Apathy" is a mini-epic, a symphonic-soul gem which builds and glides and, eventually, soars. “Worried Mind" is another slow-builder, creeping out the gate in a sketchy, discordant fashion before climbing to half-crescendo but never quite breaking free of its disorientating restraint.

The brighter "Please" presents a more hopeful mood, with the refrain "I still believe" ringing out as Lewis harmonises with himself. "Brave Heart" quietly struts from step one, as Lewis's falsetto swaggers over a downtempo backdrop with ace echoey drums, beautiful strings and serene electric guitar. Closing out Side C, "Is It Cool" answers its own (non-) question with a spellbinding five and a half minutes of swoonsome deep soul that oscillates between a restrained, barely-there backdrop and a lushly full musical accompaniment of acoustic and electric guitar and organ over bass and slick drums. The penultimate track "Nearer" is a magical, soul-stirring ballad in which Lewis sings of reaching a sweet salvation and achieving a peace of mind. If the hairs on the back of your neck aren't standing up by the midway point, you might need to check your pulse. Album closer and true tear-jerker "Being Broken" places Lewis's gorgeous voice high in the mix and the wordless falsetto and melodies invite you to ponder what Pet Sounds might sound like if it were refashioned as a dubby 21st Century electronic soul album. Astonishing.

Simon Francis’s vinyl mastering spreads out the ten tracks over a double LP so, as ever, nothing is compromised. And as usual, the records have been cut by Cicely Balston at Air Studios and pressed at Record Industry. Turn it up and let the Lewis Taylor sound envelop you.