quête:it s thinking

Still only 29 years old when composing and recording this album, Kjetil Mulelid is one of the brightest talents in Norwegian jazz, and these days that really says something. In Kjetil's childhood home they had a subscription for a "Classical Masterpieces" CD collection. One that especially caught his attention, and would be played repeatedly, included the most melodic piano music of Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy. At the same time his elder brother introduced him to "old" rock like Led Zeppelin and Queen, winning him over and getting him interested in the guitar rather than the piano. When he later applied to music education in high school with electric guitar as his main instrument, the teachers asked if he played other instruments. He duly played a song on the piano, and heard nothing more of it. Months later, thinking he was enrolled as a guitarist, he was (to his horror) introduced to the class as a pianist. While he loved listening to classical piano music, playing it he felt tied up in the "rules" and the sheet music. It was simply more fun to play rock music on electric guitar_ surely a familiar story! Later a classically trained piano teacher played him some gospel and boogie woogie and introduced him to some simple pentatonic hooks on a C major blues. He hadn't really touched the piano in a very long time, but the same night he started experimenting and improvising around what she had shown him, and from that moment he was all into the piano and would dig further into improvisation and jazz. And the rest is history, as they say. Kjetil was sceptical when we first suggested a solo piano record back in early 2018, but the idéa slowly grew on him and when the pandemic exploded and other plans had to be scrapped, he suddenly had the time as well as the means to do it. So the bulk of the album was written in a hectic lockdown period and recorded on a steaming hot June day in the legendary Athletic Sound studio on their unique and characteristic Bösendorfer grand piano from 1919. Of the piano Kjetil says the sound is one of a kind, very clear and not typically "perfect" like most new ones. We can only wholeheartedly agree, it sounds great and is also very well recorded and mixed, giving the impression that you sit next to him, and not in a concert hall. In turn joyful, playful and elegant, the album fully shows Kjetil's harmonic and melodic mastery and the influence from those early introductions to the classical masters. Whether staying with the tune or taking off on improvised flights, there is an ease and assurance in his playing that betrays his young age.Kjetil has a bachelor degree in jazz performance from NTNU in Trondheim, has played in most European countries, Japan and USA, released two acclaimed albums with his trio on Rune Grammofon, and is also a member of Wako.

Little do we know about Moondance, in fact when these tracks just showed up in the inbox one day, we said "Moon who?".
All we got was a link to a dropbox folder with three tracks signed Moondance.
One thing is for sure though, the music peaks volumes and that is why we didn't hesitate to sign all three of them.

The title track, 'Never Found Love' comes in two different shapes. While the original is a colourful, rich, and jazzy piano driven house track with a vocal to tie it all together, the Amen Mix is an off-kilter dub inspired version, it sounds like something straight out of a Innerzone Orchestra jam session

Moondance's own theme, 'The Moon Dance (2020)' sounds like the perfect blend between house and techno, carefully dipped into a pot with equal parts of forward thinking Detroit style and organic house.

CLEAR VINYL

DAS LEGENDÄRE MINI-ORCHESTER AUS MONTREAL MELDET SICH NACH ÜBER 10 JAHREN MIT NEUER MUSIK ZURÜCK. House Music unfolds as one long piece, a recorded-then-sculpted improvisation that vastly expands their work, coalescing classical and electronic instrumentation in the creation of genre-defying musical worlds. With help from engineer Hans Bernhard, the band wired every corner of Sarah Neufeld's (Violin, vocals) multi-story rural Vermont house. She and the mini orchestra's other five members - Pietro Amato: French horn, keyboards, electronics; Michael Feuerstack: Pedal steel guitar, keyboards, vocals; Kaveh Nabatian: Trumpet, gongoma, keyboards, vocals; Richard Reed Parry: Bass, vocals; and Stefan Schneider: Drums - assigned themselves to different rooms. They spent two weeks together in camaraderie, creation, and focused isolation to record their improvised sessions every day, but ultimately structured a 45-minute album out of a one hour-and-a-half long improvisation.

Anohni has shared an emotive cover of Gloria Gaynor's 1978 classic 'I WIll Survive'. The track was a staple of her early live shows and opens with a graceful string arrangement by Maxim Moston, paired with piano performed by Anohni. Prior to the track being widely available on streaming platforms, Anohni shared a video incorporating live footage alongside messages dedicated to groups and causes that Anohni has long been an activist and advocate for. During the clip, Anohni dedicates the song to "the sacred gay people"; "all endangered Black trans lives"; "those in the US who die from medical neglect"; "the coral reefs of the world, now rotting"; "all those awaiting execution in US death chambers"; "Black lives tortured and stolen by American cops" and more. The messages reflect Anohni's longer values and work as an artist, trans activist, environmentalist and advocate for social justice. Alongside the release is a statement from Anohni, on the track being the subject of a licensing offer she turned down due to the platform in question hosting misleading pro-Trump ads. Further on the track, Anohni explains: "It was the first song I ever sang in nightclubs in NYC when I was 20 years old. I sang it hundreds of times. In those days I sang it thinking of Marsha P. Johnson and the underground queer community struggling to survive in the face of AIDS. Now it seems to me like an anthem for the future of life on earth." 'I Will Survive' follows a brace of releases from Anohni this year: most recently 'R.N.C 2020', a track inspired by the Republican National Convention which took place in August and the dread Anohni felt while watching it. Prior to that, Anohni released a 7" consisting of two covers, one of Bob Dylan's 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' with a b-side of Nina Simone's 'Be My Husband'.

It doesn't happen too often that you come across someone with Sam's composure and artistry at such a young age. 22 year old Sam De Nef has been in music for a while as lead singer of indie outfit 'Danny Blue and the Old Socks', but It wasn't until last year he started thinking of a solo career. Influenced by a generation of songwriters he listens to every day, Sam felt an urge to follow his own path and write genuine songs he could play all by himself and at any time, unadorned and without pretence.

He started recording demo's during the March lockdown, swiftly landed a record deal and started recording his debut with Nicolas Rombouts (Dez Mona, Ottla, Stef Kamil Carlens) and PJ Decraene (Rhinos are People too) - also his live band - in an old house in the French Vosges mountains.

The first tracks he released did not go unnoticed at national radio, press and streaming playlists alike. Sam is a prolific writer and lyricist, he recorded a 7 track debut mini album, expected in February. We are instantly struck by his stunning vocals, his versatility and maturity as a songwriter, embracing the classics but never without transcending their influence.

Sam De Nef's first solo project is a vehicle to tell his own stories and write songs that come to him in the most natural way. His debut mini album is an inspired collection of visceral folk and singer songwriter tunes, drenched in nostalgia. He's inspired by the likes of Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Leonard Cohen and Karen Dalton, but displays a unique voice and decidedly steers clear of platitudes.

"On my first trip to Serbia, visiting my girlfriends family, I discovered a whole new world in music. People played their songs around the diner table. What I saw was a family sharing food, alcohol and stories everyone could relate to. This experience opened up a new window, the wind blowing inspiration. I want to tell stories and touch people with simple songs and colorful language."

There is a directness and intimacy throughout each of the record's 23 minutes, which both sparks universal melancholy and makes Sam De Nef's debut very personal.

In the American midwest, the two weeks or so in mid-Spring that brings the year's most vibrant crop of edible mushrooms coincides with the busiest season for a few of it's most deceptively poisonous fungi: the false morels. Bearing a pale stalk and a halo of cerebral folds, they look like a lot of similar mushrooms, but if you can't identify them for what they are, and treat them the right way, consuming even small quantities can cause vertigo, vomiting, and organ failure.

Lemon Quartet probably weren't thinking about mushrooms when they made their debut album Crestless, but the false morels still provide a window into understanding their music. When you catch their intricately arranged instrumentals at a glance, you can see flashes of other airy artists — they trade in compositional ruffles that may feel familiar to followers of Gigi Masin or any number of releases on Valley of the Sun — but there's this deep, dark something hiding in the record's shadowy corners.

It's not poison though, just a mycelial complexity that begs that you take each piece and study its contours as you take and eat. The work that you put in makes it feel all the more nourishing.

The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries - ‘Suns Out Guns Out’ Over the course of two prior releases — 2010’s ‘In The Pond’ (Sickroom) and 2013’s ‘Mass Grave’ (Kiam) — The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries quietly carved out a high-IQ corner of the U.S. rock underground reserved for taut, deathly catchy songs that showcased deft (if get-to-the-point) instrumentation. That the band have been kinda/sorta under the collective radar has more to do with their being otherwise occupied (more on that in a minute) than a lack of artistic ambition; they’ve slayed before and after a long break, they’re back to slay again. So you’re wondering, what could possibly take precedence in real life terms over playing in a band this awesome? Much as I hate to compare and contrast, part of the dilemma is that the principals of The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries — commonly referred to by their fans as “the Fuckin’ Ferries”, “The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries” by everyone else --- are in too many awesome bands already. Guitarist/vocalist Elisha Wiesner has previously set the world on fire with the Massachusetts sextet Kahoots and earlier this year released a 63 song (!) digital masterclass in songwriting under the John Pancake nom de plume. Drummer/vocalist Chris Brokaw has previously pounded on things for heavyweights including but not limited to Codeine, The New Year and Obnox, though there’s a fair chance you’ve also heard his guitar/vocal performances, both solo and with Come (as well as an impossibly long list of contributions to the likes of The Lemonheads, Dirtmusic, Thurston Moore, Consonant and more). Bassist/vocalist Bob Weston is internationally renowned for his sternum-crushing work on behalf of Shellac, Volcano Suns and sound manipulation tactics for Mission Of Burma (I’ve not heard any of the above, but I’m told they’re all “ok, if you’re into that sort of thing”) Add to this workload the tiny matter of the 3 players having spent most of the last 7 years living in 3 different time zones, it’s nothing short of a miracle the 3rd and finest Martha’s Vineyard Ferries album could pass for the sustained effort of 3 men who’ve been locked up together all this time, writing and recording a powerful statement to rival anything in their collective catalogs (I’m thinking of a scenario kind of like “The Lighthouse”, except there’s 3 men instead of two and there’s more guitars than birds, but maybe the occasional bird, as you tend to get a few of them near the water).

Raleigh Ritchie releases his highly anticipated second album, ANDY. A twelve track project, Andy sees Bristol born and London-hailing Raleigh holding a colossal magnifying glass to himself. Over the production, for the most part, from long-term collaborator Chris Loco but also, the incredibly talented GRADES on “Time In A Tree” and “27 Club”, Raleigh leaves no stone unturned. The album is a creation of heartbreakingly honest songs that seamlessly fuses sweeping soul and mellow R&B with forward-thinking electronica and gutsy orchestral moments. (Raleigh has become well known for working with the sensational Rosie Danvers and Wired Strings.) This is a truly powerful record, a long-awaited return that packs a poignant punch.

It has been four years since Raleigh aka Jacob Anderson, released his inaugural debut album You’re A Man Now Boy but fans have not been left wanting. When he wasn’t releasing music, performing at his sold out show at Shepherds Bush Empire, or alongside Stormzy in his iconic Glastonbury headline, featuring on Gang Signs & Prayer, Stormzy’s critically acclaimed debut, or acting as Grey Worm in the hit HBO series Game Of Thrones, he was and is “Andy”.

Freestyle Records are proud to present the first ever reissue of this rare Black Ark-era Lee "Scratch" Perry production on LP & CD w/ bonus tracks. Both formats feature liner notes from author of the acclaimed People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee 'Scratch' Perry and Solid Foundation: An Oral History of Reggae, David Katz.

The late Bunny Rugs was best known as the frontman for legendary reggae band Third World, but prior to that he completed an apprenticeship at Lee Perry's Black Ark resulting in this solo LP, originally released in 1975 and credited to Bunny Scott.

The album captures the laid-back sessions of the early Black Ark, with a few surprising innovations lurking amongst the soul covers and love ballads. Highlights include the sought after Blaxploitation-influenced funk track 'Kinky Fly' featuring members of The Chi-Lites' backing band, passing through Perry's infamous studio whilst in Jamaica for a series of shows - their horn section and Chinna Smith's wah-wah guitar give the track its outstanding difference as synth overdubs add to the moody feeling, underpinned by the ghostly click tracks of the Conn Rhythm Unit (constituting one of Perry's earliest experiments with drum machines).

Breakup track 'Second Avenue' shows how suited Rugs' powerful, deep tenor was suited to a soul framework, the Chi-Lites' horns again making a striking difference. The Bee Gees' evergreen 'To Love Somebody' takes James Carr's soulful rendition as its reference and 'Big May' re-works the 'Return Of Django'/'Sick And Tired' rhythm, with a new drum part. while the broken-hearted 'What's The Use' was cut at the request of Sonia Pottinger, who ultimately failed to release it.

Somehow the sublime rendition of William DeVaughans' 'Be Thankful', recorded during the same session, was left off the LP - but appears here as a bonus track on the CD along with I Never Had It So Good & Hip Harry + it's version track.

Looking back on the sessions documented on this LP, Rugs said that Perry's creativity taught him that music could be limitless. As he explained, 'It was so simple that it became complex. The approach he has to music and to recording, I think the music nowadays lack that kind of intuition. He's somebody that would use pliers and a screwdriver to create percussion; he wouldn't hesitate to experiment. He was a little...not crazy, but somebody with that kind of thinking must be somewhere else, in another zone sometimes.'

*Repress*

Ruffhouse dropped their debut on Ingredients in October with 'The Foot / Bypass' to much acclaim. Already touted as a force to watch, their follow up is as good if not better!
'Demand' really shows their ability to make progressive, forward thinking music and it's the unpredictability of 'Demand' that makes it a stand out track. 'Division III' is equally as impressive, room shattering drums & almighty stabs. Pressed onto 300 limited edition white vinyl.
* DJ support comes from Break, dBridge, Loxy, Skeptical, Dub Phizix, Fracture, Doc Scott TRACKLIST: A: Demand || B: Division III.

Hot on the heels of our tentacular project "The Most Famous Unknown", Planet Phuture is proud to welcome rising French talent Cuften to the fold. A most fitting match for PP's phuture-facing vision, Damien Peltier has been pushing some of the finest techno around over the last couple of years, landing a handful memorable cuts via the likes of Parisian label Tripalium and his own imprint, Purusu. Cloaked in dim-lit atmospheres and open-ended post-apocalyptic narratives, his debut solo 12" blends in all of the elements that made his sound stand out from the crowd of releases coming up these days - traversed by dogged primitive rhythms and reassessed 303-infused Detroit'isms, but also stamped with his signature no-frills rave elegance.

Speeding up the cosmic highway like Deckard roams San Fran's neon-splattered alleys on the hunt for replicants, Cuften takes us on a full-immersion journey into dystopian electronic soundscapes. Full-beam on, "Solar Ashes" has us drifting amidst ruins of a devastated city - its lysergic bass languidly threading its way across brutalist concrete facades and cold ember set for reignition. A more martial affair, "The Black Rain Order" pulls out the rattling drums, slo-boiling arpeggios and moebius-strips of wistful acid to score a supremely tense crescendo, both optimally tasted on and off the dance floor.

Moving up closer to the free-spirited vibe of the '90s open-air raves, "Rise Of The Neo-Humans" unleashes a baroque firestorm of sucker-punchy toms and hyperventilating shuffle, woven against an endlessly expanding corolla of hallucinogenic shapes and fluttering harmonics. Sinking further deep into all-dark dubby grounds, "Lasttt Batttle" extrudes its obsessive melody out a thick gangue of squelchy chords and bleepin' engineering to form the kind of brain-washing hybrid pumper that'll roast your last remaining neurones. Trouble-brewing isn't over though and the droney "Kjhfskjoize" shall take you to places unknown through eleven minutes of envelope-shifting shamanism, thinking noise bake-off and gravity-defying arrangements. Bend your mind.

“The album title ADELA comes from a song by Rodrigo which constitutes the emotional culmination of our duo’s programme. What counts is not the name, but the person we love and long for. Everyone certainly has such a person, and so we hope that each listener will find something close to his or her heart on our album.

The piano and classical guitar virtually never collaborate in music. However, after our first joint performance with Łukasz Kuropaczewski, we immediately realised that we could create intriguing music worlds together. We followed the same line of thinking in our choice of programme, which derives from both the piano and guitar repertoires, though the spirit of the South that informs most of that music is more typically associated with the guitar tradition. In my arrangements of classical works, I strove to represent the sonic qualities of both instruments, their unique expression, and cultural associations. I reworked Domenico Scarlatti’s famous “Sonata in D Minor (Toccata)” K. 141 so as to bring out its Spanish roots. Titled “Domingo” on our album, it features distinctive flamenco qualities and an improvised layer. The “Aranjuez Concerto BWV 1056” is, as its very name suggests, a fusion of the world’s most famous piece for guitar and orchestra, Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez”, with Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Keyboard Concerto in F Minor” BWV 1056. Themes from the second, slow movements of both concertos interlink here as in the film cross-cutting technique, and we swap roles, Łukasz leading the Bach theme while I take up Rodrigo’s.

Three of the works on this album have been enriched by the angelic voice of Jakub Józef Orliński. In these three, Egberto Gismonti’s guitar composition “Água e Vinho”, my own “Quarantine Song”, and even the famous “Adela” by Joaquin Rodrigo, the voice has been treated more as an instrument than a lyrical subject. “Quarantine Song” was composed during the COVID-19 quarantine in 2020 specially for Jakub Józef Orliński as its performer. “Pedro” was inspired by the films of Pedro Almodóvar.




[c] A3. Água e Vinho [feat. Jakub Józef Orliński] - Egberto Gismonti


[f] B2. Quarantine Song [feat. Jakub Józef Orliński] - Aleksander Dębicz

[h] B4. Adela [feat. Jakub Józef Orliński] - Joaquín Rodrigo

Beyond the striking photography of the cover artwork, a cursory glance at this LP may appear misleading. One could be forgiven in thinking that what they had discovered was of a more obvious British provenance, but on closer inspection the truth is revealed… London in fact refers to London, Canada, an artistic hotbed that famously spawned the highly influential insurgent noise ensemble, 'The Nihilist Spam Band'. Less celebrated yet equally remarkable was the improvisational powerhouse 'The London Experimental Jazz Quartet', a short lived group led by the forward thinking saxophonist Eric Stach.

Their debut album, Invisible Roots is an overlooked jewel from the Canadian jazz scene. Inspired by the revolutionary artists from the New York free-jazz movement, (namely Ornette Coleman, Archie Sheep and Cecil Taylor), and fuelled by the exciting possibilities afforded by a completely free approach to music, Invisible Roots is an album of potent spontaneous composition, exhibiting both fiery unharnessed blowing alongside lyrical streams of consciousness. In recent years, the album has achieved notoriety in certain record collecting circles mainly due to the track Destroy The Nihilist Picnic, an infectious piece of vamping avant-funk. Despite the commanding presence of this track, it would be misguided to judge the merits of the album on this piece alone, for Invisible Roots is a much deeper and more complex musical statement. This is confirmed by the Iberian-jazz sketch, Spain Is For Old Ladies, the spiritual introspection of Jazz Widows Waltz or the ferocious yet soulful Eric's Madness, a track which wouldn't be out of place on an ESP-Disk or BYG Actuel album. Behold, a rare piece of fire music from the Canadian Free-Jazz underground.

First LP reissue of rare 1974 Canadian Free Jazz album.
Featuring the Avant-Funk classic 'Destroy The Nihilist Picnic'
Includes liner notes and rare photos.
Tip-on sleeve

St Leonard’s premier manipulator of drones, loops and echoes delivers his most buzzed out, kosmische and beat driven work to date in a deluxe white vinyl album release for Castles in Space.

Here, Kieran explains the genesis and production of his masterwork:

“Eternal Return was unusual for me in that I actually set out to make an album, rather than find myself with a set of tunes that evolved into a project.

The “Eternal Return” is a concept I have been inspired by before. However it clicked with me in a more profound way recently. Far from seeing the prospect of living life over, unknowingly, on an endless loop as depressing, I suddenly felt amazing comfort in the theory. The Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius said, “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” Far from being trapped in the loop I am elated to feel that it's simply about living the best life you can. One that you wouldn't fear having to live again.

To place the album in context against this newly realised perception, I think of the Side One as the battle to get to that realisation and enlightenment and Side Two represents the acceptance and the decision on how to proceed. The turning point is from thinking about the things I love most and what I would want to experience over and over again. I hope it is an uplifting listening experience. As it happens, the album originally had a darker ending. I think I actually learned a bit about my point of view during the process. There are drums, which wouldn’t often feature in my music (there are in fact more drums on this LP than in my combined output over the last 8 years) and the pieces are noticeably shorter, more focussed and concise than my usual longer form work.

Musically this album is probably the least clearly influenced by anything I regularly listened to. The main outcome was wanting to challenge myself and to add whatever the pieces needed and go with that. I think I was also probably pushed on by the wealth of amazing music being made by my peers across Bandcamp and social media. 2020 was an incredible year in this particular sphere of electronic music. The album was made as I started to transition from a semi-modular to a modular synth set up. I think that this was a key driving force, since a lot of the time I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. It is nice to be surprised by what you’re creating.

Finally, whilst this is in no way a “lockdown album”, the period of time in which much of it was recorded definitely had a bearing on how it sounds. For one thing I spent a lot more time around my studio space when working from home. In keeping with the album's theme, the lockdown also helped consolidate my feelings on what is important in life and what isn’t. One piece was in fact sketched out as a first draft while I sat on mute during a Zoom meeting.

“The Vale” is in immersive electronic album of dark soundtrack work. It’s the first of several Everyday Dust releases scheduled for Castles in Space in 2021.

Everyday Dust is RJ McConnell. Based in Scotland, RJ ditched piano lessons when he realised I had no interest in being an instrumentalist. Instead he wanted to create his own musical works from the ground up. He goes on, “I was much happier working my way through music theory books on my own and applying my learning to my own music. We had a little home studio when I was a child. My Dad was also a musician and was involved in local amateur theatre where he prepared and operated all the sound cues on reel to reel tape. So from an early age I was messing around with tape machines, making tape loops and recording music. For years I tried to make the most interesting tones I could from a Yamaha home keyboard by passing it through my Dad’s guitar pedals, or recording to tape and playing it back at different speeds etc. My first proper synth was the Roland SH101.” He went on to study music and sound for theatre and worked for many years as a theatre composer before branching into larger events and eventually film and documentary work.

The Vale story starts in 2018. RJ again, “I was brought in as composer for an independent horror short that was being filmed in Istanbul. The film was a vampire movie, very atmospheric and beautifully shot. I was aware of being a Scottish composer on a Turkish film and therefore didn’t want to attempt in any way to make anything that sounded traditionally Turkish. I wanted to represent the idea of these ancient beings who had existed in one of the oldest cities in the world for centuries. I wondered how I could imply this “ancient” world with the instruments I had to hand. I recorded various old metal whistles, which were slowed right down to become eerie arcane horn blasts that sounded like they had come from another time. I also recorded lots of melodica, which was again slowed down to sound like wheezing old harmonium drones. I spent another day recording inside an old piano, plucking individual strings and also hammering them percussively with wooden beaters. Using synthesizers and effects as the “glue” to bring these sounds together I started to work on the cues for the film. I had scored most of the film by the time I heard it was being cancelled. The concept and story had been taken over by a streaming site who wanted to make it into a series - with a drastically different tone and style.

“Later that same year I had worked on a project that incorporated the folklore of a celtic water sprite who kept the waterfalls and streams running smoothly so they could turn the mills of the local village. In return the villagers would bring the water sprite bannocks (Scottish flatbreads) each day. I started to daydream about a darker, Lovecraftian twist on this story. Some Ancient One dwelling in the forests and controlling the water - the very life essence of the village - in return for offerings of the soul. The concept was filed away in the back of my mind for some months.

“The following year I was on a flight to visit my friend in Bodrum. He had been the producer and editor on the original disbanded Vampire film, and I found myself thinking about the project again. I wondered if the sound cue files were still on my laptop, which they were. It had been a year since I’d even heard them. Hearing the eldritch folk-tinged sounds of the whistles and plucked strings my mind instantly returned to the idea of the Lovecraftian folk horror story. I started jotting down notes and musical ideas and by the time I landed in Bodrum I already had the album title - The Vale. Having the album concept and prototype ideas to work with was a huge head start in making the album. Although all of the original cues were so dramatically developed and transformed that they really just served as the initial clay on the wheel.

“I used a Doepfer A100 modular synth to create the animalistic yelps, conches and horns that were improvised over the original cues as a response to the arcane “folk” world of the acoustic instruments. This half-acoustic half-modular landscape was the sonic scene-setter I needed to move onto the composition and musical journey of the album. I composed and developed most of the musical parts on an Oberheim Matrix 6 synthesizer. However all the percussion, rhythmic sequences and ornamental synth sounds were created from improvised modular sessions multitrack recorded. A lot of editing later, the soundtrack to the movie in my mind was finally there.

official re-issue / 180 grams

Holy-grail private-press "Attack Of The Boogie" from 1984 by Andrew Kitchen very own Chicago artists who represented and still represent the most underground side of Chicago dance music as a worldwide inspirational and always forward-thinking scene. The official reissue comes courtesy of Andrew Kitchen himself via Seminato (Strictly Groove) with the help of other two cutting edge artists like Pepper Gomez still from Chicago and DJ Rocca from Italy. Fully restored reissue now available for you.

These newly remastered editions of Bill Fox’s second album are the first since its 1998 release, including the first-ever vinyl pressing. Listeners will hear a wider soundstage, more detail, and improved listenability. Recorded on 4-track cassette, the fidelity belies the sophistication and nuance of the songwriting, This adept remaster by John Golden Sr helps bring definition to the intimate, at-home feel of the album. It sparkles.Very similar in feel and quality to Fox’s debut album, much of Transit Byzantium draws from the same group of recordings. It has the same feel of musical inevitability, that the songs exist beyond time itself, their eventual manifestation guaranteed by Apollo. He could’ve given them to the Everly Brothers, or the Byrds, or the Who, but instead they were channeled through an everyman from Cleveland with an aversion to the limelight. And while a traditional folk influence colors several songs, even those possess the indelible stamp of Fox’s charismatic voice and personality. Although nearly entirely acoustic and with minimal percussion, these eighteen songs cycle through a remarkable variety of textures and moods.While much has quite rightly been written about the god-tier songwriting here (“Song of a Drunken Nightingale,” “My Baby Crying,” “I’ll Give It Away” for starters), it should also be noted that this is a guitar player’s record, though more in terms of conception than flash. Lines of harmony and counterpoint wander between parts, sublime in their invention though sometimes crudely documented.

NEP was a loose multimedia collective formed in 1982 Zagreb, ex-Yugoslavia. The founder Dejan Krsic collaborated with various artists in a quest of re-thinking the stale concepts of art history, position of the author and the barriers between pop and elitist high culture. Heavily influenced by Walter Benjamin and Andy Warhol in theory and Brian Eno and Kraftwerk in music, Krsic created NEP as an umbrella term (meaning Nova Evropa or New Europe) of diverse rule-breaking activities, covering graphic design, music, photography, video, news-media and theoretical work. Musically NEP focused on experiments in ambient and tape-music, self-released and hard to find compilation tapes like "The Cassette Played Poptones" (1988). Deeply immersed in pop-culture, politics and art theory Krsic's search for perfect pop music with cutting critical edge peaked in 1989, the year 'Decadance' track was conceived in studio. Fox & His Friends published the single in 2017 with Snuffo Remix on B-side. It received rave reviews in music press like MixMag and DJ Mag and it is still played on dance-floors around the world. But the story around the NEP is musically (as well as artistically) much wider: for the first time Fox & His Friends team compiles best cuts from unreleased and rare NEP tapes, covering the period from 1985 to 1989 on POP NOT POP abum. Dejan Krsic is now famous graphic designer and art historian in Croatia. Other collaborators include Laibach and Borghesia photographer Jane Stravs, artist and TV director Gordana Brzovic, Jovan Culibrk, now Bishop at The Serbian Orthodox Church and Anja Rupel, singer of cult Yugoslavian synth-pop group Videosex as well as the other members of Videosex, Iztok Turk and Janez Krizaj who produced some of the tracks. Other collaborators were talented producers Robert Logozar and Davor Daga Devcic, singers Linda Cooper, Natalija, Alexx Kovacs... The list of collaborations is long. Some of the memorable moments on POP NOT POP album are early demo version of Decadance 'How Do I Dance To This Music?' with blue movies samples and drum machine experiments like early Cabaret Voltaire, then Krsic's reinterpretation of legendary Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express anthem as 'Transcendance', or 'Radical Chic', where Dejan himself and Anja Rupel from Videosex make lovely couple of dandy-esque fashionistas, singing chart-friendly radio synthpop tune that contrasts the A-side (The 'NOT POP' side) - full of experiments, dark wave and industrial nods to Test Department and Cabs. B-side is 'THE POP' side that will surprise most of the NEP followers from their early experimental cassette days. Sunny, danceable, joyfull pop that reveals the many faces of NEP. As Kraftwerk today is more of a concept than a band, NEP does the same by re-writing its products (musical, graphical, theoretical, activist) and constantly puts them in permanent state of change or re-mix. In the future, only NEP logo will be enough to consider something an art piece, and NEP will be everybody who wants to, as their Art Manifest claims. Until that day comes, 'POP NOT POP' is a document of how the vivid and creative were art-scenes in socialist Yugoslavia. Some of the graphic work, cut-ups from theory and Manifesto are also included on this LP, designed by Dejan Krsic aka NEP himself. This release is made from the original master tapes and published for the first time on vinyl.

Limited edition cloudy clear vinyl. Combining processed recordings of wind and water with analog synthesizers and chamber orchestra, Elori Kramer's The Blue of Distance is an audio dissertation on the role technology plays in our relationships to geography and nature, unspooling into an examination of memory and longing across seven sections that layer filmic minimalism over churning electronic soundbeds. Half of the suite was written in the Adirondack mountains during summer amid lakes, rivers, and moss-laden forest floors, while the other half was conceived on a frozen Lake Superior island in deep winter, creating a subtextual dialogue between the two extreme settings. Kramer, who was born in 1990 and grew up alongside the internet, uses her music to explore nature in the actual and the virtual world, through direct experience and facsimile alike, focussing and blurring the line between the two. "Looking back at my videos of that summer-- which is where the processed audio came from-- I tried to remember what it had felt like to be there," she recalls, "thinking about questions of reality versus imagination; physical versus digital; and the ways in which memory shifts through our minds and technology." The title The Blue of Distance was derived from Rebecca Solnit's book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, referring to the phenomenon of faraway mountains appearing blue due to light particles getting lost over distance. "If we were to go up to the mountains that appear blue from far away, we would see that they weren't actually that color." she says. "This beauty is made possible because of their distance," much in the same way that the splendor of a lush season is only fully realized in the throes of a bleak one, and the joy of an event can only be felt when it has long since been consigned to remembrance. R.I.Y.L Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Josiah Steinbrick, Emily Sprague