Cerca:last session

One of Rio de Janeiro's most exciting singer-songwriters of the last fifteen years is now living in Los Angeles, where he stands on the verge of an overdue American breakthrough. Before the move, Latin Grammy nominee Rogê (pronounced haw-zheh) was the prince of Lapa, the bustling downtown center of Rio's nightlife. Charismatic and scruffy, with a distinctively raspy yet boyish voice, Rogê_born Roger José Cury_gained an avid following for his swinging samba-funk, tinged with Brazilian Soul. His acclaim rose when he cowrote the theme song for the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil. Lavishly produced by the Budos Band's Thomas Brenneck, a top session guitarist and collaborator with the stars (Lady Gaga, Beyoncé & Jay-Z, Amy Winehouse), Curyman will launch Brenneck's new label, Diamond West.

ShitKid is the project of 24-year- old Åsa Söderqvist who made her debut last spring with a self-titled debut EP, which quickly propelled her into being one of the most talked about new acts in Sweden. The three-track ShitKid EP was released via the Stockholm based label PNKSLM Recordings in the spring of 2016 to great acclaim, reaching far beyond its lo-fi confines to find fans at the likes of The FADER, Pigeons & Planes and SPIN internationally, while her debut single "Oh Please Be A Cocky Cool Kid" appeared on national TV in Sweden the morning after it was released. An expanded version of the debut EP was released in the summer of 2016, which saw ShitKid playing several Swedish festivals before making her debut international appearances in the fall, alternating between playing to full houses in London and monthly shows in her new hometown Stockholm. Now ShitKid is ready to announce her long-awaited debut lp - titled "Fish" it's due for release on June 2 via PNKSLM Recordings on vinyl, cd and digitally. Recorded during the same sessions as "EP 2"it's another step on ShitKid's musical journey - offering up a sound that's clearer than the lo-fi murkiness of the debut EP but still very much the opposite to the slick pop dominating the musical landscape today. ShitKid will be doing select festival shows during the spring, leading up to a UK and EU tour around The Great Escape ahead of the album before spending the summer on the road with slots at ex Roskilde Festival announced already, with a lot more UK and EU dates TBA. Fish is written, recorded, performed and produced by Åsa Söderqvist and mixed by Simon Skeleton.

Sunergy brings together synthesists Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani for the thirteenth installment of FRKWYS, RVNG Intl.'s intergenerational collaboration series. For this edition, a panorama of the Pacific Coast provides the place and head space for a musical appreciation and consideration of a life-giving form vast and volatile with change. Fortuitously (as is the freaky way), Smith and Ciani were discovered to be neighbors in the small coastal community of Bolinas, California. The two had become close friends, bonding over their experience as woman musicians and, more unusually, their shared passion for the Buchla synthesizer. The music of Sunergy embraces this kinship, with Ciani and Smith respectively performing on the Buchla 200 E and the Buchla Music Easel, two modern configurations of the innovative instrument developed in the '60s by Don Buchla.
Sunergy was recorded in the Bolinas home where Ciani has lived for the last twenty-four years. Her living room overlooks the Pacific Ocean from a cliffside perch, creating an idyllic, inspired setting for music making. Setting up their synths side-by-side, Ciani and Smith took turns keeping time and freely improvising for the album sessions. As a complete piece, Sunergy is shaped by slow, pulsing forms and sinuous, melodic sequences that conjure both an oceanic world and the unlimited sound made possible by modular processing.For her part, Ciani has long been a Buchla voyager. Suzanne proselytized the potential of Don's synthesizer instruments in the '60s and '70s, performing her own compositions before introducing synthesized jingles and sound effects to household audiences. Ciani then achieved wide recognition for her debut album Seven Waves, a collection of colorful, classical song-like melodies fluidly working with harmonic textures and sounds of the ocean shore. Since its 1982 release, Seven Waves has become an important chapter of the ambient canon within which contemporary artists like Smith have developed their own synth syntax. Smith was born just a few years after the appearance of Seven Waves, growing up in Orcas Island, Washington. A place of profound natural beauty, the islands would inform Tides, her first instrumental collection from 2014. Smith composed Tides as an accompaniment for Yoga classes, ultimately freeing her from conventional songwriting into the exploratory, synth-based compositions demonstrated in ecstatic variety on 2016's Ears. Despite the serene setting where Sunergy was realized, the album does not romanticize a complete oneness with nature. Smith and Ciani use their collaborative ground to reflect on the unstable forces at play across the Bolinas horizon. Sunergy takes stock of Bolinas in the 21st century, a once-thriving artist's refuge now vulnerable to real estate pressure extending from affluent San Francisco, and more irreparably, the specter of climate change erasing its many waterfront habitats.
A diametric dynamic is present in Sunergy, a somber meditation amidst the intense cultural and solar forces transforming the landscape, and a hopeful assertion of the surviving creative culture of Bolinas. Far from rehashing the gentle grace of the artists' seminal works, Sunergy instead seeks to awaken and bear witness, employing the Buchla waveforms to mirror the infinite rhythms of the ocean and our essential relationship to it.
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani's Sunergy will be released on September 16, 2016 on LP, CD, and digital formats. An accompanying documentary by Sean Hellfritsch will be offered in tandem.

Elias Devoldere is the drummer in bands such as Nordmann, Hypochristmutreefuzz, Suwi, Robbing Millions, and John Ghost. Following an ep, Kaiku, released last summer, Bloomed > Exploded is his debut full length as a solo artist. Besides writing and singing, he composed, played, recorded, and produced the bulk of the ten songs himself. 'Everything blooms', he explains the title of his first album. 'Until it explodes, and something else is able to grow from it'. In this case, what came full cycle is an intimate coming-of-age album of intangible atmospherics, crisp melodies, and understated rhythmical patterns.

BLOOMED >

'As a kid, I just wanted to play football, you know?', says Elias. 'But when I was eight years old, my parents made me choose between drawing school and music school'. And thus began a dedication to rhythm for Elias. At 18, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown of Ghent, opting for a jazz education. 'Not because I aspired to become a master 'jazz drummer', but to learn music, to become a good musician'. It was at the academy that, after an impromptu jam session, Nordmann first came together. The exhilarating instrumental quartet went on to win second place at the prestigious Humo's Rock Rally in 2014, and released three albums to critical acclaim, with a new one in the works.

Devoldere, in the meantime, had completed his degree with a craving - ironically - for music. 'I was in over my head with jazz for such a long time, and went on an epic discovering spree. Moses Sumney, James Blake, Kendrick Lamar, Connan Mockasin... Lots of stuff I had missed over the years. In a way, I reconnected with the kind of music I was into before jazz dominated my life. Pink Floyd was my first love, for instance, and later Radiohead proved to be a game changer. Diving back into those kind of sounds, I was feeling the urge to follow my old dreams, of being a solo artist - or something more than 'just' a drummer, anyway. So I bought a guitar, an interface for my laptop, and started writing'.

EXPLODED

When he released his 5 track ep Kaiku in the summer of 2021, it summarised a lot of firsts for Elias. First time writing lyrics, first time as a lead vocalist, first time recording his own songs all by himself. The songs had been around for a while, but taking those leaps took a long time. 'Making the ep helped me to find my voice, in every way possible'. Still, in the aftermath of the pandemic, the songs on Bloomed > Exploded sprouted in a time of upheaval. 'Musically the album is quite serene, gentle even. But the themes speak of internal unrest and uncertainty. There are a lot of questions on the album, as it turned out. Duality, as the title suggests, coming from the struggle between a wish to turn everything upside down and a search for peace. Honestly: the prospect of my 30th birthday was messing with my head too'.

Recording during a period of solitude in France, Elias initially relied heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. 'Explode / Boalis was one of the first songs I wrote for this album, and pivotal for its atmosphere, based mostly on electronic elements. Later, I did use 'real' drums on most of the other songs, though, and contributions from other musicians, but the overall mood is very cohesive'. 'Pure', that's how Bruno Ellingham, the UK engineer who mixed the album, described it. Much to the delight of Elias, who reached out to Ellingham because of his previous work with bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead. 'Hearing the end result, I thought he really captured the essence of the original demo's. For me, that adds to this album being a sincere reflection of my true self. 'Take a dive/ Into the place where it's more quiet', as I sing in the last song, that kind of sums it up for me'.

As rookies in the thriving Brussels scene, jazz fusion quartet LũpḁGangGang have been making waves the last couple of years. After the EPs 'Stalingrad' and 'Urban Detox', they are now releasing their debut album 'Dopamine Overdose' on March 17 via Sdban Ultra.



Lyrically the inspiration for the album comes from growing up in a digital world and the constant dopamine we all have to deal with because of that. Musically their sound is rich, diverse and hard to pin down, looking at Yussef Dayes, BADBADNOTGOOD and even Black Country, New Road for inspiration.



LũpḁGangGang started out as a jazz/funk cover band in 2017. Anton, Miel, Lena and Rob all met at a jam session summer camp while still in school. Over time, the band started writing their own songs and released two EPs to critical acclaim. Due to the band's desire for creative expansion over genres, they have been able to perform on various Belgian stages for the past three years including Ancienne Belgique to Flagey, Gent Jazz and Handelsbeurs in support of label mates, Black Flower.



The album title 'Dopamine Overdose' is a quote from the track 'Dada Data', a track about the influence social media tends to have on our lives. The album's recurring theme is definitely the struggle with today's hyper virtual society and the overwhelming influence tech is having on society. With unbridled enthusiasm the band tackle relevant themes and combine striking observations with a highly contagious and very diverse sound.



From "Out the Light'', a smooth track about being stuck in the image we all try to create of ourselves, to 'Wanderer', a jazzy tune about the road to self-acceptance, and from 'Candy', combining a punk attitude with infectious hand claps, to 'Time Faded', about the difficulty of finishing your artistic work, LũpḁGangGang constantly showcase their genre-defying versatility.



As a whole, the album is a very balanced collection of tracks, ranging from brooding atmospheres to punky explosions with a constant drive, social criticism and an indomitable energy binding it all together. A promising debut, indeed.

The roots of JuJu started in San Francisco after Plunky had met his musical mentor, Zulu musician Ndikho Xaba, helping to form his band Ndikho and The Natives. Three members of The Natives (Plunky, bassist Ken Shabala and vibes / flute player Lon Moshe) then joined Marvin X’s theatrical production The Resurrection Of The Dead, joining local musicians Al-Hammel Rasul (keyboards), Babatunde Lea (percussion) and Jalango Ngoma (timbales).

When the production ended, the six musicians formed Juju. “We had high-energy rehearsals that lasted for hours and, as a band, we became powerful and began gigging around the Bay Area,” remembers Plunky. Although orientated towards Black Nationalism, the

band fed off the Bay Area’s culturally diverse communities as Plunky shaped an inclusive worldview based on collective political, social and artistic activities. During this time, the Soledad Brothers case and Angela Davis were prominent and the band supported Professor Davis and the cause. Juju’s music matched the fire of their activism. “As a band, we blew, pounded and stroked our instruments like there was no tomorrow, like our life’s work was wrapped up in each session. We approached our performances like religious rites and the music mesmerised, informed and awakened people.” The band’s first album, a Message from Mozambique, was intentionally political. While the anti-war movement focused on Vietnam, Juju looked towards wars being waged in South Africa, Angola and Mozambique over issues of white supremacy and control of natural resources. A second album, ‘Chapter Two: Nia’ would follow before the birth of Oneness Of Juju during the mid-‘70s. This definitive reissue is fully remastered by The Carvery from the original tapes and features original artwork and a new interview with Juju bandleader James “Plunky” Branch.

Strawberries ripen in the spring. Or so they used to, in a more reliable world, one that seems to be rapidly receding in our collective rearview mirror. Presently, “spring” is a troubled concept — fraught with anxiety. Our seasons, if they are seasons at all, are paradoxical. Crops fail, or they ripen prematurely, all at once, and into a burst of rot. Impossibly, somehow, the supermarket shelves stay stocked (mostly, for now at least), and there are buckets of strawberries on every corner. But, of course, their nature is suspect. And they don’t taste like they used to. Or maybe that’s just ruinous nostalgia. But somewhere along the way we certainly lost something. Everybody knows.

Strawberry Season (Leaving Records, November 9 2022) responds tenderly to this sorry state of affairs, not with false comfort — nor escapism. Rather, the album conveys, often wordlessly, that there remains an abundance of sweetness amidst our increasing unease. While much of twentieth century American popular and folk music may have dwelt on the beauty and plenitude of the prairie, More Eaze applies a similar Romantic focus to the small bursts of fecundity that now hide in plain sight. Blending found sound, generative music, a knack for elegant, classically-informed melodic arrangement, and a sort of Liz-Fraser-by-way-of-hyperpop approach to vocals, Strawberry Season offers unique solace — providing an occasion for the kind of deep listening that our overstimulated and undernourished spirits require if there is to be any hope at all (and of course there must be hope).

More Eaze (serving as composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and sound artist) guides us incrementally to this locus of attentiveness. Strawberry Season begins with the softly sweeping gentle pets. Early intimations of Velvet Underground give way, indeed, to a string arrangement that John Cale might have saved for Paris 1919. The second track, Suped, features a kaleidoscopic swirl of grocery checkout scanners that eventually coalesce and release with the subtle strumming of a harp. On known, in the midst of a nearly elegiac outflow of feeling, a shower starts to run. Someone steps inside, pulling the curtain back, sending the plastic rings clattering. Moments later, the unmistakable sound of the showerer blowing their nose — an inclusion that is at once light-hearted and jarringly, movingly intimate.

Strawberry Season’s second to last song, low resolution at santikos, serves as a sustained meditation on all that has come before it. Building slowly throughout its nine minutes, teetering, at times, on the edge of danceability, it dissipates suddenly, and Strawberry Season concludes with the rustling of clothes, snippets of distant conversation, creaking floorboards, an exhale and a sniff. There is a feeling of having arrived, of temporary reprieve in the face of uncertainty. A hint of a season yet to come, or one that is perhaps only now accessible in dreams.

As rookies in the thriving Brussels scene, jazz fusion quartet LũpḁGangGang have been making waves the last couple of years. After the EPs ‘Stalingrad’ and ‘Urban Detox’, they are now releasing their debut album ‘Dopamine Overdose’ on March 17 via Sdban Ultra.
Lyricaly the inspiration for the album comes from growing up in a digital world and the constant dopamine we all have to deal with because of that. Musically their sound is rich, diverse and hard to pin down, looking at Yussef Dayes, BADBADNOTGOOD and even Black Country, New Road for inspiration.
LũpḁGangGang started out as a jazz/funk cover band in 2017. Anton, Miel, Lena and Rob all met at a jam session summer camp while still in school. Over time, the band started writing their own songs and released two EPs to critical acclaim. Due to the band’s desire for creative expansion over genres, they have been able to perform on various Belgian stages for the past three years including Ancienne Belgique to Flagey, Gent Jazz and Handelsbeurs in support of label mates, Black Flower.

The album title ‘Dopamine Overdose’ is a quote from the track ‘Dada Data’, a track about the influence social media tends to have on our lives. The album’s recurring theme is definitely the struggle with today’s hyper virtual society and the overwhelming influence tech is having on society. With unbridled enthusiasm the band tackle relevant themes and combine striking observations with a highly contagious and very diverse sound.

From “Out the Light'', a smooth track about being stuck in the image we all try to create of ourselves, to ‘Wanderer’, a jazzy tune about the road to self-acceptance, and from ‘Candy’, combining a punk attitude with infectious hand claps, to ‘Time Faded’, about the difficulty of finishing your artistic work, LũpḁGangGang constantly showcase their genre-defying versatility.

Death Is Not The End's 333 sub-label follows the reissue of Devon Russell's Darker Than Blue LP late last year with a first-time reissue of a veritable reggae-dancehall holy grail - Robert Ffrench's 1985 LP 'Wondering'.

Pioneering artist and producer (and cousin of the late, great Pat Kelly) Robert Ffrench was born in central Kingston in 1962, recording his first records in 1979 at the age of 17. Coming out off the back of a slew of roots & early dancehall-style 45s cut with a wide range of producers thoughout the early '80s, the Wondering LP followed closely after two acclaimed LP sets ('Showcase' produced with Lord Koos & 'The Favourite' for Ossie Thomas' Black Solidarity label - plus a split showcase LP with Anthony "Gunshot" Johnson for Jah Thomas' Midnight Rock label).

Ffrench would write and produce the Wondering LP himself in it's entirity, laying down the tracks at Herman Chin-Loy's Aquarius & Michael Carroll's Creative Sounds studios with the help of engineer Christopher Daley. Representing the sound of an artist first confidently sriking out on his own, the album elegantly mixes a classic rub-a-dub & lovers rock-inspired sound with nascent digi-esque flourishes. It boasts an enviable list of contributors too, incl. Sly & Robbie, Dwight Pinkney, Robbie Lyn, Nelson Miller (Burning Spear) and Ronald "Nambo" Robinson among others, with Beres Hammond also providing backing vocals in places.

Following the release of Wondering, Ffrench would continue to write and produce, soon after releasing two further self-produced LPs for Edgar White's Parish label - and founded his own 'France' label in the late 80s, through which his productions would start to hit big, most notably alongside Courtney Melody on 'Modern Girl', and with US rapper Heavy D on the track 'More Love'. Robert's productions released through later label 'Ffrench' would go on to boast the cream of the crop of dancehall artists throughout the 90s and early 2000s, and he is often credited with discovering Buju Banton (producing his first single "Ruler" on the Stamina riddim). Ffrench is still actively producing music of his own to this day, having released singles 'Everyday of My Life' and 'Black Is a Colour' in late 2022 and Feb 2023 respectively, available through all digital platforms now.

333, under exclusive license from Robert Ffrench.

Roadrunner United war ein Projekt des berühmten
Hardrock-Labels Roadrunner Records, das 2005 zur Feier
des 25-jährigen Bestehens organisiert wurde und seinen
Höhepunkt in den "All-Star Sessions" fand, einem Album,
das für Chart-Platzierungen in Deutschland, den USA,
Großbritannien und weiteren Ländern sorgte. Vier
"Spielführer" (Joey Jordison von Slipknot, Robb
Flynn von Machine Head, Dino Cazares von Fear
Factory und Matthew K. Heafy von Trivium) wurden
auserkoren, sich mit 57 Artists aus 45 ehemaligen und
aktuellen Roadrunner-Bands einzufinden. Ein
Metal-Familientreffen der besonderen Art!
Ab dem 10. März 2023 sind sowohl das Original-Album
der "All-Star Sessions" als auch das Konzert selbst in
Vinyl wieder erhältlich.

We have opened the vault to bring to you for the first time on a 2CD set Roadrunner United ‘The Concert (Live at the Nokia Theatre, New York, NY, 12/15/2005)’, featuring members of Slipknot, Anthrax, Trivium, Machine Head, Fear Factory, Sepultura & more. Roadrunner United was a project organized by the heavy metal record label Roadrunner Records to celebrate its 25th anniversary. On December 15th, 2005, in New York City, the label produced the Metal Concert to end all Metal Concerts: 39 musicians, representing 25 different Roadrunner bands, performed 25 songs from 19 different bands’ repertoire. This unique and unprecedented aggregation of musicians was no jam session. Each song was studiously rehearsed and arranged, coming together with exuberant perfection, to produce a concert that can only be called “Legend.”

Conceived as a follow-up to the Roadrunner United All-Star recording sessions, the label recruited the core team of musicians (Dino Cazares, Adam Duce, Paul Gray, Joey Jordison, Andreas Kisser and Roy Mayorga) as the backbone of the performance. Sure enough, as they fine-tuned the songs and rehearsed them tirelessly, dozens of other musicians came on board.

This 3LP set represents the gathering of a community of musicians that spans the heavy metal history of the first 25 years of Roadrunner Records: from King Diamond to Slipknot and beyond. Those who were lucky enough to be there experienced a night they will never forget. For the first time as a live concert album, this 3LP set on red, white and black coloured vinyl is a chance to relive that special night again and again.

Tears are in the eyes of Xabiib Sharaabi, nicknamed the Somali King of Pop when he entered the stage of Berlin’s HKW. It is a mix of nostalghia, pain and joy. Like many Somalis he had been deprived overnight of both glamour and friends, the war in his homeland had sent him into exile. The glamorous discos and beachfront stages Mogadishu had once been famous for, had disappeared as the city was bombed to the ground. The King of Somali pop found himself stranded in Sweden, others like the members of Dur-Dur Band Int. ended up in London which until today has the largest Somali diaspora in Europe.

In the last decade many early recordings of Somalia’s funk, soul and disco era have been reissued. This record is not a reissue. The Berlin Session – is the first studio album of its kind since the golden days of Mogadishu came to a halt three decades ago. It is the living proof that Somali music is hot, funky and (!) well alive.

The record captures a historic reunion which took place in 2019 in Germany’s capital Berlin. London-based Dur-Dur Band Int. an eight-piece powerhouse of Somali live- music unites with three legendary Somali singers: Xabiib Sharaabi, Faduumina Hilowle and Cabdinur Allaale for a concert at Berlin’s HKW. Fueled with a restored sense of pride, the freshly reunited musicians decided to get together in a Neukölln studio for two amazing days of recording.

Female vocalist Faduumina Hilowle opens the album with an invitation to kickass: “Let’s shake off the dust, boys!” (Inta ka hurguf). Grooving with such a strong accent on the off-beat, any non-Somali listener may think of Reggae. But when you ask the musicians, they tell you: “They took it from us! It’s Dhaanto! It’s our rhythm”. Originating from the Ogaden region (now in neighbouring Ethiopia’s borders), Dhaanto dates back to the era of “clap & chant”. Some say it is an imitation of the camel’s bounce. Xabiib Sharaabi was once nick-named Somalia’s King of Pop for the body language and magnetising voice with which he incorporated the latest global musical trends - even recording two disco albums entirely in English. On the album Xabiib chooses to sing his Somali adaptation of “Lady” originally by Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. Not unlike the Motown Sound of Detroit and Kingston’s Studio One: a small scene of musicians were fueling that new Somali Disco scene in Mogadishu. Cabdinur Allaale, the third vocalist on the album comes from neighbouring Djibouti. In the heydays the leader of then famous Sharaf Band was a frequent visitor, flying back and forth between Mogadishu, Hargeisa, Kismayo & Djibouti entertaining his fans on the Horn of Africa.

Dur-Dur Band Int. ‚The Berlin Session‘ brings the spirit, joy and hope of this era back: In the last decades Somalis stars have lived among us, spread all over the world, it is time to see them step into the limelight again.

Nicolas Sheikholeslami:
In 2015 Berlin-based Nicolas Sheikholeslami became fascinated by Somali music and ended up compiling a mixtape to share his passion. He did not know that his tape Au Revoir, Mogadishu Vol. 1 - Songs From Before The War would spark a massive international interest for Somali music. Soon later Nicolas co-compiled Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa for Ostinato records which got a Grammy-nomination in 2017. Berlin’s venue HKW took notice and asked him to set up a show with a selection of Somali artists from the golden era. This lead to this remarkable reunion. A studio was booked and within 2 days this album was recorded. The Berlin Session captures this emotional moment. In 2021/22 Nicolas Sheikholeslami finally sat down and mixed the recorded material. This record is the living proof that Somali music is hot, funky and well alive.

Over the last half decade, the music collective Constant Smiles has produced a prolific output of acclaimed music, culminating in their forthcoming record Kenneth Anger, masterfully brought to life by engineer Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Liars, Dougie Pool). The group is known most recently for their much-praised debut album for Sacred Bones records, Paragons, an emotionally resonant offering of indie folk masterpieces that all confront the internal ways we process our struggles with intimacies, addiction and humanity produced by Ben Greenberg. Constant Smiles' primary singer/songwriter Ben Jones uses the creative process as a tool for working through deeply transformative periods in his life. The band's indie folk music lays bare this internal process, but on Kenneth Anger, the music shifts to synth pop and looks externally, examining creativity, community, ritual, and their place in the healing process. Ritual takes a primary role in the eponymous Kenneth Anger. Not only is auteur Kenneth Anger himself known for his sensorial depictions of ritual, Jones often used the films as a silent visual back drop during his song writing sessions, a ritual that grounded the creation of the album. And while the director's use of saturated color inspired the warm `80s synth style production, the director's trailblazing spirit of authenticity also pushed Jones through his most vulnerable expression to date. While the narrative undertones of the songs deal with fear and isolation and anxiety, the songs themselves were created through the healing process of ritual, and enriched with collaboration, community and trust. The resulting music produces a balm that can genuinely recalibrate the nervous system. The listener journeys through the depths of every track while being lifted and guided by the music's transformative, hypnotic power and this illustrates one of the foundational accomplishments of the album. Just as a Kenneth Anger film explores the underbelly of the unconscious through often soothing visuals, Kenneth Anger the album conjures the underworld into a series of synth pop classics.

In 1976 Michael Hoenig had a brief collaboration with Ash Ra Tempel's
Manuel Gottsching in Berlin; A 48-minute recording of one of the
sessions, which was released in 1995 under the title "Early Water" on
Bernd Kistenmacher's Musique Intemporelle label.The album was deletedand unavailable for a long time
Now, finally, a re-issue of "Early Water" will be available again.
Michael Hoenig still remembers: "While I had been working on the "Departure From The Northern Wasteland" album, Manuel Gottsching had asked me if I would team up with him for some concerts in France, since his group had just gone through one of its hibernation
periods. We rehearsed in my place for three or four weeks. One evening we got a call regarding some missing guarantee, which ultimately led to the decision to cancel the tour. Just for fun, we played one of the planned sets for a last time.
Even though I do not recall pressing a record button, somebody recently dug up a Revox tape of that very set. After performing some digital sonic archaeology on it, it was just released under the very appropriate title Early Water."
And Manuel Gottsching adds: "Unfortunately, some of the concert dates were not confirmed in time and we had to cancel the complete tour just on the day before we wanted to leave for France.
On that evening, nevertheless, we recorded our last rehearsal "just in case". It turned out as a flowing harmonic piece, reflecting much of the optimistic air of 1976. Michael made his 'departure' to Los Angeles in the early 1980ies. When we met again in November 1994 I proposed to release this old track of ours. Michael took the original tape to Los Angeles, lovingly restored it and - well, here is it again!"

Keyboardist and composer Weldon Irvine is among the most celebrated Jazz-Funk artists of all time. He was Nina Simone's bandleader for years, and wrote the lyrics for her iconic civil rights anthem To Be Young, Gifted and Black'. Throughout the 1970s, Irvine released a series of seminal albums full of deep, soulful, funky grooves. The Sisters is a collection of lost tracks and demos from his late-1970s studio sessions with fellow Jazz-Funk luminary Don Blackman. Featuring the hit single Morning Sunrise' (later famously sampled on Jay-Z's Dear Summer'), the album contains a mix of instrumental and vocal tracks that stand up with the best work in Irvine's impressive catalog. Courtesy of Nature Sounds, this rare collection is finally back in stock on limited-edition vinyl. Order this official reissue of The Sisters now while supplies last.

Hailu Mergia & Dahlak Band's Wede Harer Guzo is the third release on Awesome Tapes From Africa for Ethiopian keyboard and accordion maestro. In the years since Shemonmuanaye, Mergia has revamped his touring career, playing festivals and clubs worldwide, including a recent tour supporting Beirut. By 1978, Addis Ababa's nightlife was facing challenges. The ruling Derg regime imposed curfews, banning citizens from the streets after midnight until 6:00 am. But that didn't stop some people from dancing and partying through the night. Bands would play from evening until daybreak and people would stay at the clubs until curfew was lifted in the morning. One key denizen of Addis' musical golden age, Hailu Mergia, was preparing a follow-up to his seminal Tche Belew LP with the famed Walias Band. It was the band's only full-length record and it had been a success. But his Hilton house band colleagues were a bit tied up recording cassettes with different vocalists. Still Mergia, amidst recording and gigs with the Walias, was also eager to make another recording of his instrumental-focused arrangements. So he went to the nearby Ghion Hotel, another upmarket outpost with a popular nightclub. Dahlak Band was the house band at Ghion at the time. Together they made this tape Wede Harer Guzo right there in the club during the band's afternoon rehearsal meetings, with sessions lasting three days. Dahlak Band catered to a slightly more youthful, local audience, while Mergia's main gig with the Walias at Addis' swankiest hotel had a mixed audience that included wealthy Ethiopians, foreign diplomats and older folks from abroad. Therefore, their sets featured lighter fare during dinnertime and a less rollicking selection of jazz and r&b. Meanwhile, Dahlak was known more for the mainly soul and Amharic jams they served up for hours two nights a week to a younger crowd. Mergia released Wede Harer Guzo ("Journey to Harer," a city in eastern Ethiopia) with Sheba Music Shop, which was located in the Piazza district but has long since shut down. His cassette copy is the only known source we could find. Jessica Thompson at Coast Mastering managed to restore the recording to clean up layers of hiss, flutter and distorted frequencies, made worse by years of storage. Although there are some remaining sonic artifacts of the era's recording and cassette duplicating quality, this reissue captures the band's inimitable vibe. Recalling the audience's positive reaction to Wede Harer Guzo's novel arrangements, he says it sold well and found many fans. However, as no trace of the tape can be found online, there's no indication as to why the cassette appears largely forgotten until now

V.I.V.E.K announces his second release on the self-named VIVEK label. Known for his cult label, SYSTEM MUSIC, this label focuses more on eclectic 140 bpm outside the realm of the dance floor.

The 4 track EP explores broken beat, ambience, melody and rhythm at 140, something that has been missing over the last few years within the genre. Colours is not only the EP title, but a reflection of the diversity of the tracks. Musicality sits at the heart of this with a nod to easy listening.

“The main focus of this release was to take me out of my musical comfort zone. I wanted to work with other musicians as well as push myself to inhabit new creative ideas.” - V.I.V.E.K

Whether it’s as an artist, label owner, a deep-drawing world-touring selector or system-building soundman behind some of London’s most important dances, V.I.V.E.K has an inherent drive to push things forward and contribute to the craft of music with serious attention to detail. A life-long frequency student dedicated to soundsystem culture, he has total respect for the heritage, value and rich variety of true music, an ability to totally arrest your full attention and imagination with his music... And has done so since he emerged in the early 2000s.

Musically pressed and blessed on key imprints such as his own System Music, Deep Medi, Tectonic and iconic reggae imprint Greensleeves, V.I.V.E.K’s creations are a crucial brew of bass styles encompassing everything from heavyweight bass hypnosis to flighty, steppy garage hybrids via sweet dub soul and all-out low-end pressure. His self-built custom soundsystem, SYSTEM, meanwhile, is a unique force of nature in UK bass music culture; the most prominent modern system to be established this decade, it’s a whole new chapter in the UK’s longstanding and illustrious history of barrier-breaking soundsystem communities. As such, it attracts committed fans from around the globe and selectors from across the system spectrum.

His label System Music has the same treasured, trusted status; not only as a source of legit never-to-be-repressed artefacts that prize the real value of music, but also as a key platform for encouraging forward-thinking, powerful system music from across the OG – freshmen continuum. Karma to Kromestar, Sleeper to SP:MC, LAS to Egoless: System Music’s celebration of bass music’s sonic scope and nurturing of talent and craft ensures its consistent buy-on-sight ranking.

Most importantly it’s as a selector that V.I.V.E.K’s position is the most vital. The selective tailor of rich, immersive and eclectic sessions, few DJs dig as deep, join the dots or draw for dubs quite like this West London operator. Accentuating his influence as a producer, engineer, dubsmith, label curator and system builder; his creative excursions as a DJ, both on the dancefloor and the airwaves as a broadcaster on the likes of Rinse FM, galvanise his status as one of the most respected, influential and singular artists who is driven by nothing but craftsmanship, unity and the sense of culture that UK bass music needs to thrive and inspire.

Jazz Blues Session is the first connected disc from Blues Collection by Vinyl and Media.

From Howlin Wolf to Slim Harpo, this Jazz Blues Session compilation takes you on a journey through jazz.

The podcasts on jazz history offered in the VINY Music app connection (on IOS or Android) are exciting.

If you love jazz, you'll love continuing the connected recording experience with Jazz Collection by Vinyl & Media.

Erstpressung auf pinkem Vinyl. "Breaking The Balls Of History" ist das insgesamt zehnte Album von QUASI, das am zehnten Februar, zehn Jahre nach ihrer letzten Platte, erscheint. Drei Zehner, was sich mit den dreißig Jahren deckt, die sie zusammenspielen. Sam Coomes und Janet Weiss sind zu Ikonen des pazifischen Nordwestens geworden, und QUASI hat sich immer so beständig angefühlt - ihre dauerhafte Freundschaft so generativ, ihre Energie unendlich, jedes Album rauer und eingängiger und wilder und lustiger als das letzte. Aber wir haben uns geirrt, QUASI jemals für selbstverständlich zu halten. Eine Zeit lang dachten sie, dass das komplizierte "Mole City" von 2013 ihr letztes Album sein könnte. Sie würden mit einem großartigen Album abtreten und weiterziehen. Dann, im August 2019, krachte ein Auto in Janets Haus und brach ihr beide Beine und das Schlüsselbein. Dann kam ein tödlicher Virus über uns, und niemand wusste, wann oder ob Live-Musik, wie wir sie kannten, jemals wieder würde stattfinden können. "There's no investing in the future anymore", erkannte Janet. "The future is now. Do it now if you want to do it. Don't put it off. All those things you only realize when it's almost too late. It could be gone in a second." Während des Lockdowns standen die Straßen von Portland still, Flugzeuge verschwanden, wilde Tiere tauchten auf. Und mit der ausgelöschten Normalität kam ein unerwartetes Geschenk: ununterbrochene Zeit, Stunden am Tag, um Kunst zu machen. QUASI konnten nicht auf Tournee gehen, also hatten sie eine Idee: Sie taten so, als wären sie auf Tournee und spielten jeden Tag zusammen. Jeden Nachmittag verschanzten sich Sam und Janet in ihrem winzigen Übungsraum und kanalisierten die Verwirrung und Absurdität dieser fremden neuen Welt in Songs. Sie beschlossen, dass sie die Songs live und gemeinsam aufnehmen würden, um einen Moment einzufangen. Das unglaubliche Ergebnis dieser Sessions ist "Breaking The Balls Of History", aufgenommen in fünf Tagen und produziert von John Goodmanson. Hier sind zwei Künstler*innen in ihrer Blütezeit, jede*r ein menschlicher Fundus an musikalischem Wissen und Erfahrung, völlig unverwechselbar in ihrem Songwriting und Sound. In der QUASI-Form wird die Band alchemistisch noch größer als die Summe ihrer Teile. Mitten in einem katastrophalen sozialen und politischen Moment haben sie exquisite, melodische Songs geschaffen, die vor Wut, wildem Humor und Intelligenz nur so sprühen, angetrieben von einem großen, zerschundenen, pochenden Herzen. "A last long laugh at the edge of death", singt Sam zu Beginn des Albums, und dieser fröhliche Trotz - der genauso gut der Logbuch-Eintrag unserer Gegenwart sein könnte - gibt den Ton für die kommenden Songs an. Es klingt düster, und das ist es auch, weil es sich dem Moment stellt. Aber es ist auch eine Platte, die vor Energie, Vergnügen und Freude nur so strotzt.

Cornetist Don Cherry first rose to prominence as part of the revolutionary Ornette Coleman Quartet that turned the jazz world on its ear in 1959 when it arrived at the Five Spot Café in NYC. Though Cherry co-led the album The Avant-Garde with John Coltrane in 1961, it wasn’t until he signed with Blue Note in 1965 that he began his career as a leader with a run of fiery albums including Complete Communion, Symphony for Improvisers, and 1966’s Where Is Brooklyn? This last session was a highly interactive quartet date that featured Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone and piccolo, Henry Grimes on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums. This Blue Note Classic Vinyl Edition is all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal. from Coleman's playful lyricism.

Moreover, the rhythm team of Ed Blackwell on drums and Henry Grimes on bass provides a scintillating underpinning for the music that is worth listening to all on its own. Sanders' mix of Coltrane's yearning long notes, Ayler's ghostly, fluttering wail, Coleman's fast, bumpy phrasing and his own manic bagpipe screams certainly separates the faint-hearted from the stayers on the opening Awake Nu. But the conversation between Sanders and Cherry is light, lyrical and engaging on The Thing, and the saxophonist even gets into a stubborn, Sonny Rollins-like repeating Latin vamp on There Is the Bomb. An unflinchingly quirky classic. (THE GUARDIAN)