quête:lang fr

'After a first album as a duo released on Okraina Records: "Le Corps Défendant", Delphine Dora and Mocke invite us to join them again in listening to a new album. We slip into it as if in a dream, the music carries us away with its floating images.

Heard before on a handful of disturbingly beautiful solo albums and in collaborations such as Midget!, Arlt, Chevalrex, Mohamed Lamouri, Mocke (Dominique Dépret's nom de plume) is a subtle and inventive guitarist, who draws melancholic arpeggios, with a beautiful languor, that walk the line between tensions and tears. Delphine Dora has been heard with Roxane Métayer, Sophie Cooper, Andrew Chalk, Jackie McDowell, Helena Espvall, Valentina Magaletti ... meeting in a moment of improvisation, a solitary sincopated voice blooming between the black and white keys of her piano, tuning betwist these keys, or at other times in the gap of the right note. Here improvisation feeds on melody, or is it the other way round?

Recorded in an old church in the village of Mauzun in the Puy-de-Dôme, by Cyril Harrison, "L'invisible est multiforme" is an invitation to join them, to let these abstract songs erase our obsessive thoughts of the day, to open ourselves to the vibrant poetry of the air and the evening, to finally forget ourselves. Each note played by these four intertwined hands is like a slight break in the fabric of time, sliding one over the other, reminding us of mortality and its beauty. Ritornellas flow out of mechanical clocks, fragile, taking care not to hurt the silence. Both seek to dig and open up new paths to enrich their duet, to open up imaginary landscapes. Sometimes the guitar cuts through the fabric of an organ, fractures the song, just as the rain erases a landscape, redrawing it. But very quickly, both of them continue to follow this new path, improvising what will serve as a framework, a perspective, a language. There is a kind of praise for slowness in this "invisible", a desire to hold back the song, not to let it slip away, to let the listener's ear enter its course, to share the last note, its illumination. Each of these thirteen short sound pieces merge into a common colour, a vibration close to the different tonalities, which inter-penetrate, like a cubist painting. Words cannot take away the mystery of this record, words can only fail to describe the music, you must hear it.'
- Michel Henritzi

microCastle’s third offering of 2023 welcomes Ditian back to the label for his first artist EP. Splitting time between Buenos Aires, Berlin and Barcelona, the Argentinean artist has carved out a unique place in the electronic underground over the last half decade. With an immediately recognizable sonic signature, Ditian channels languages of varied musical landscapes, churning them into his own complex rollercoaster of intricate electronica. A sound that is equally at home on rebellious dance floors around the world or in the sweet spot of a late-night leftfield listening session. A short but meticulous discography reflects Ditian's choosy nature; with Exit Strategy, Innervisions and TAU serving as the primary landing spots for his musical output. Having remixed Ivory’s ‘Arpstairs’ for his microCastle debut last summer, a project which was followed by a contribution to Dixon and Ame’s Secret Weapons 15 collection to begin the year, Ditian now returns to the label with a four-track showcase entitled ‘Serpenta’.

The crushing title track crashes in and sets any preconceived ideas of Ditian’s music alight, forecasting jet force propulsions and wild signal bending synths. As somewhat of a departure from his previous experiments, Ditian’s clustered pungi mutations provide an enduring main theme, while a wonderfully warped break is sure to cast a paranoid spell over the dancefloor.

‘Venena’ follows in fine style and further hammers down Ditian’s elusive vision. Dizzying, rapid-fire sequences of rhythm, granular textures and heavily manipulated synths travel to the very edges, while maelstroms of drums and contorted basslines highlight a high-octane second act.

‘Inertia’ lands at the collection’s midway point and does so in remarkably twisted fashion, stepping decisively on the gas and steering into shadowy transgressions. Never one to shy away from darkness or pushing boundaries, Ditian’s metallic storyboarding rises and falls across act one, consciously withholding energy, as grooves pulse and effects orbit, creating tension that eventually gets resolved as clusters burst open and oscillate in kaleidoscopic fashion.

Ditian’s creative attitude reveals itself further on collection closer ‘Influenza’. Presenting some of his most club-adjacent rhythms yet, it’s a clever coax of billowing tones and scrappy melodica which get wrapped up in a concordant fog, eventually getting washed away; because after all, the oceanic drones are all the better when they’re magnified to full size.

Cover art: Mauricio Seidel

La MegaCobla: an experienced traditional Catalan cobla wind quartet, born after an improvisation workshop with ZA! two years ago. Pep Moliner, Jordi Casas, Xavi Molina and Xavi Torrent are four of the most reputable and innovative cobla musicians, experts in hacking tradition and using their folk instruments in any modern musical genre.
Tarta Relena, young a capella trans-folk duet that have shook up theire scene. With their use of polyphony and voice FX, Helena Ros and Marta Torrella are digging in the deepest Mediterranean folk repertoire and placing it in the XXIst century with aesthetic renewal.
ZA!: Papadupau & Spazzfrica Ehd are European benchmarks of the underground Do-It-Yourself music community. Their uniquely intense shows, as well as their collective/collaborative work (wokshops, benefit shows, Do-it-Together cooperation) have allowed them to tour the whole world, from Tokyo to Maputo, from Tasmania to Sao Paulo, from New York to Saint Petersburg. Under the premise that avant-garde art is not incompatible with collective horizontal creation, ZA! mix cult, underground and popular music without asking permission.
These three elements come together with the purpose of portraying their own vision of Mediterranean music, filtered by distortion (so current in cognitive, social and identity terms) and psychedelia (so inevitable in an increasingly accelerated and saturated reality). A retro-futuristic journey from folk to free exploring the shores of the Mediterranean, claiming its power as a living core, never as a deadly border.

The TransMegaCobla fuses traditional Mediterranean culture -from bulería to kopanitsa, from gnaoua to sardana- with contemporary culture to create a fictional but deeply human and festive universe. Resurrecting the Phoenician language, the octet seeks common roots to fuse and remake them with contemporary molds such as rock, punk, free jazz and conducted improvisation. A timeless orchestra ready to invent, with real elements, a science-fiction Mediterranean in a parallel reality.

Manda Moor steps out on Mood Child for the first time as the label co-founder links with mysterious talent Trangaz for four fresh productions on their collaborative ‘Peligro’ EP.

Ever since dropping her debut release in 2020, Danish-Filipino talent Manda Moor has been on an impressive upwards curve and one that doesn’t seem to be slowing anytime soon.

Having dropped back-to-back releases on Jamie Jones and Lee Foss’ iconic Hot Creations imprint, the hotly-tipped DJ/producer and label founder heads to her Mood Child label for the first time. Founded and created alongside Sirus Hood, the label serves as an artistic platform, a community-focused label, and an events series that delivers quality music via digital and physical formats, plus NFTs, unique experiences, and more. An ‘invitation to a journey that blends feelings, emotions and desires’, with takeovers at Hï Ibiza, Café Mambo, Lovefest, Fabrik and more, the first release saw Sirus partner with fellow Frenchman Malikk, and now the second arrives in perfect time for the peak summer months as Manda combines with Boogeyman and Pakate signee Trangaz.

New York City born-and-raised, he draws lines between primitive and futuristic sounds and rhythms influenced by world travel and different cultures, and the two reunite for their four-track ‘Peligro’ EP.

Crafted together in Ibiza, the EP showcases sonics capturing the island’s unique magic. Lead cut ‘El Peligro (Ibiza Mix)’ is a production made after a special day at the coves and hidden treasures of Atlantis, under full moonlight near Talamanca, with the rolling organic drums grooves, playful vocal murmurs and vibrant melodies journeying deep into the night.

Next, ‘Tagalog’ keeps the energy bubbling with another percussive workout sprinkled with vocal interjections and spoken words in the native Filipino language it is named after, while B1 ‘Chatita’ is a slinking production as wonky stabs meet and snaking low-end grooves. Closing the EP, the pair deliver the most stripped-back track with ‘Buena Vibra’ as a killer groove guides vocal chants to wrap things up in fine fashion.

Manda Moor & Trangaz ‘Peligro’ EP drops via Mood Child in July 2023.

Nach einem Jahrzehnt der Abwesenheit erwachen The Mars Volta aus ihrer langjährigen Auszeit mit einem gleichnamigen Album, das ihr Selbst-verständnis radikal reformiert.

The Mars Volta wurden 2001 von Gitarrist/Komponist Omar Rodríguez-López und Sänger/Texter Cedric Bixler-Zavala gegründet und gingen aus der Punk-Rock-Band At The Drive-In aus El Paso hervor. Mit dem Ziel, "unsere Wurzeln und unsere Toten zu ehren", schufen The Mars Volta Musik, die die lateinamerikanischen Klänge, mit denen Rodríguez-López aufwuchs, mit dem Punk und Underground-Lärm, in den er und Bixler-Zavala jahrelang eingetaucht waren, und den futuristischen Visionen, die sie verfolgten, fusionierte.

Die folgenden Alben waren einzigartige Meisterwerke, deren Songs von atemberaubender Komplexität und zugleich von kraftvoller emotionaler Unmittelbarkeit geprägt waren.

Nachdem die Gruppe verstummt war, hielt eine Vielzahl von Fans (darunter Kanye West) die Trommel für ihre Rückkehr aufrecht. Das neue Album schüttelt einige der langjährigen Traditionen von The Mars Volta ab: Nur zwei Stücke sind länger als vier Minuten, und der
schwindelerregende, abrasive Prog-Stil der früheren Alben ist nicht vertreten. Stattdessen pulsiert "The Mars Volta" mit subtiler Brillanz, karibische Rhythmen untermauern die ausgefeilte, turbulente Songkunst.

Das ist The Mars Volta in ihrer reifsten, prägnantesten
und konzentriertesten Form.

Back in 2011 when I was tentatively looking for a second release for my fledging record label Clay Pipe Music, I stumbled upon a mysterious MySpace page by a group called ‘Tyneham House’, the page was decorated with artwork by Rena Gardiner (who was unknown to me at that time) and the music was an otherworldly mix of field recordings, Mellotron and acoustic guitar. It turned out that Tyneham was promised to Glen Johnson’s Second Language label, so I offered to do the artwork, and in January 2012 the two labels co-released it on tape and CD in a cardboard box with a handmade booklet of my illustrations.

In 2016 Clay Pipe reissued it on 10” vinyl, in an edition of just 300, which has since become sort after. The new 2023 pressing is on blue and transparent marbled vinyl, with a reverse board cover and inner sleeve, and the booklet of illustrations has been given a complete redesign. Frances Castle 2023

The pastoral, wistful yet ineffably disquieting music of Tyneham House is made by artists who wish to remain anonymous here, save for their eponymous title. The musicians are happy, however, to let it be known that these recordings have been around for some years (many of them complied from old cassettes) and that they take inspiration from the 1960s/’70s/’80s work of the Children’s Film Foundation – a body who really ought to have made a film about this mysterious West Country curio. At least now we have its endlessly poignant soundtrack.

The small village of Tyneham, on the beautiful Isle of Purbeck, in Dorset, was once a thriving little community – that is until the British Government requisitioned it for training manoeuvres and other ‘strategic purposes’ in the run up to WWII. This was supposed to be a temporary measure, but the area remained in military possession long after hostilities had ceased, causing distress among former inhabitants, many of whom were farmed out to prefabs in nearby Wareham and Swanage.

Tyneham was characterised by its red telephone box, a tiny parade of shops – Post Office Row – and a grand country pile which stood about half a mile away from the village: Tyneham House. The army removed the building’s oak panelling and ornate decorative details and promptly set about using it for target practice. So great was the shame expressed locally about the damage inflicted upon one of Dorset’s grandest houses that the powers that be decided to grow a copse around the remains of the structure to give the impression that it was no longer there. Despite this, a substantial part of the structure remains intact, including its Saxon hall.

Land access around Tyneham was opened up in the 1970s, but admission to the house remains strictly verboten. Those who’ve been found around the premises, especially anyone wielding a camera, have felt the full weight of military trespass law. Tyneham today is regarded as a nature reserve by some – as a national embarrassment by others. It’s still a political hot potato, in Dorset at least.

"We entered the shadowy mouth of a new space, descending into a realm that precedes the underworld, the arcane, far from our time. We met beasts that gave us lessons about their language which we started learning without grammar."


'The animal world is a constant in the work of Milan improvisational duo Rosso Polare. If Cani Lenti was guided by the diaphanous birdsong integrated into their sparkling mix of folklore, ambiences and occasional humming, on Bocca D’ombra the themes go darker, textures are harder to pin down and the animal presence takes on new connotations.

Instead of an anonymous, patchworked outdoors we enter a cavernous space that invokes the collective unconscious with bestial and funereal undertones, as the animals take on the role of the psychopomps, ancient guides through the shadow realm.

The album is influenced by Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology, a thinker who sees the constant exchange between the human and natural world as an ongoing dialogue, the two influencing each other, in a series of reverberating loops. This looping is also reflected in their compositions, where improvisations with traditional instruments like electric and acoustic guitars, monophonic synths, horns or flutes meet natural noise-making tools like branches, rocks or nuts that amount to lugubrious, often dissonant textures. Bocca D’ombra is built on a series of whispers, breaths, panting and rustling, creating a feeling of closeness sometimes verging on the claustrophobic, ingeniously set against sounds evoking space – fireworks crackling, crows echoing, church bells reverberating, indistinct cries from a children’s playground.

Distance and repetition are deeply ingrained in their own understanding of sound and their surroundings, becoming the building blocks of their practice. Just like Gregory Bateson in the ‘70s, the duo believes in a more romantic approach to ecology, seeking a porous border between self and environment, human and animal, internal monologue and external ambient hum.

If earlier releases were noisier and denser, Bocca D’ombra is tight and focused - every sound and melody is given room to breathe and develop on its own, enhancing the haunting, otherworldly aspect of the music. The result is heady, intoxicating mix which sublimates chaos into sparkling compositions of contemporary animism.'

The Belgian vibraphonist Guy Cabay has played with Toots Thielemans, Philip Caherine or Raoul Faisant. Composer, arranger, musicologist and singer, he also wrote and recorded two extraordinary albums in Liege Walloon. Tricatel is happy to make them available at last, 46 years after their publication.

"Gravity kills us. Perhaps that is the meaning of Adam's Fall. We are condemned to be Newton's apple, not the balloon carried away by the wind. But it happens nevertheless that, by the grace of music in particular, we escape gravity, that time escapes time, that another breath inflates our lungs, so much lighter than the one that usually suffocates us.

We don't take light music seriously, and that's good. Only serious music deserves to be treated so badly. Guy Cabay's music flows from a purer source and speaks to us in a more tender voice. One can obviously describe it as one labels export product. Origin: Belgium. Ingredients: jazz, bossa nova, tropicalism, song - proportions may vary. Calorific value: none.

Non-perishable product. But this would say as much about what this music really is as if, in. order to evoke what the foggy blue of a Norman sky inspires, one were to take note of the variations in the percentage of humidity in the atmosphere at Etretat and make a learned presentation on the laws of refraction.

Guy Cabay did pass through Brazil and still lives there a little, a Brazil that is not the one ofcartographers or travel agencies, a Brazil that is as real as the Far West in which Fenimore Cooper's child readers lived, as blurred and limpid as a dream. It is not the Amazon thatflows through this Brazil, but the Ourthe, a tributary of the Meuse, which makes it morefamiliar, stranger and even more poetic.

To let oneself be bathed in this melancholichappiness, to let oneself be carried by this river is sweet, as sweet as the fluid consonants of the Walloon language, this 'd' which becomes 'dj' in his mouth, as in Portuguese, by the way. To know how to create melodies that hold on a note like Jobim's samba, like a fildeferist above a waterfall of chords, is not given to everyone. It is a gift. Knowing how to lace others on dozens of points, as on Tot a-fet rote cou d'zeur cou d'zos, a poignant encounter between Randy Newman and Robert Wyatt, is another. These are not the only ones that the fairies offered to Guy Cabay and that, by an almost miracle, he offers us again today. Hearts up."

Bertrand Burgalat

Debut album by Akane, a new bedroom solo project by Tenerife's Carolina Machado - best known for her role as drummer and singer in space rock psychedelic outfit Gaf y La Estrella de la Muerte.

Cooked and slowly matured over the last couple of years, Carolina opens up her heart to present an intimate collec-tion of dreamy avant pop songs under the banner title Night-Time Birds.

With various nods to David Lynch’s dreamlike imagery and weird americana landscapes, Carolina gracefully merges her own local sensibilities to re-imagine a panoramic, fictional soundtrack to an unmade road movie, creating a per-sonal musical language made up of vintage pop songs, lush ambient soundscapes and West Coast lo-fi electronica. Her pursue of sonic exploration through modular synthesis techniques pushes her sound further out into a wider realm as she blends exotic alien-like melodies with her trademark soothing, shoe-gaze style voice. An album that seems to be floating gracefully and frozen in time…

The album’s seven tracks were recorded live during her performance in a disused gas tank at the Keroxen festival in 2022 and counts with the special collaboration of her bandmate in Gaf César Chinarro on guitar. No doubt, Night-Time Birds is not the last we’ll hear from Carol demonstrating once again the varied and eclectic creative energy currently flowing from the Canary archipelago shows no sign of slowing down.

Repress!

New material from the enegmatic Mr Langestraat. TIP!

"One afternoon a couple of years ago, an excited Ronald Langestraat could barely contain himself. “I’ve started dancing!” he exclaimed. “I never did it before - I’d always admired it in the past, but just wasn’t able to move like that!” But then, at the ripe old age of 81, Ronald was gripped by the urge to respond to the rhythm and express himself in this physical way.

For a man who’s dedicated his life to music, in particular Jazz with a funky Latin inflection, it feels like an especially sage realization - like the treasure at the end of a long quest, or the princess after the end-game boss. The prize is freedom, and the shapes we make on the dance floor are mirrored in that piano solo over the stanzas - a caravan that trips from smokey basement clubs all the way to Shiva’s Tandava on the edge of the universe.

The music on this album is inspired by this revelation. Although these songs were written many moons ago, their interpretation is modern, full of renewed energy, with young, yet well-worn players. While it slots neatly into the daily music practice that Ronald adheres to, it’s a new chapter in a story that is still being written - and an invitation to get in touch with your dancing self and try out some new moves."

Mouche (real name Tim Karmouche) returns to Australian label Research Records with another full-length of imaginary soundtracks, instrumentals and sun-kissed digital jazz. Active on the Melbourne scene in projects such as Crepes/The Murlocs/Swazi Gold/Dreamin' Wild, Tim's first album Live From The Bubble arrived back in 2020 as an ode to his aptly named studio space - The Bubble.

Lake Songs builds on those same atmospheres, showcasing the inward-looking craft of his one-man band. Cicada field recordings and light keys open proceedings, reflecting the warmer side of 80s new age, though before long we're introduced to a variety of stylistic shifts incorporating elements of cosmic funk, lounge and library-style compositions. There are traces of Steve Hiett, Max Groove or even the recently re-discovered Ronald Langestraat, though the strength of Mouche's talent for harmony shines through on its own level.

Shifting between moods yet reflecting an overarching sense of positivity, listening through the ten tracks gives off a real sense of place, though time is somewhat irrelevant. The warm climate and sandy beaches of Australia seem eternally embodied in 'Juice' or 'Crystal Water'. Perhaps where Live From The Bubble was dedicated to the very studio that birthed it, Lake Songs is dedicated to the vast land that surrounds it.