Search:mom

Past Inside The Present is pleased to announce Repetition Hymns, a double album from the enigmatic Black Swan. Comprised of 19 vignettes, the relatively short tracks impart a strong forward momentum despite the 80-minute runtime. Repetition Hymns is thus particularly well-suited to the temporal distortion of quarantine, in which each day feels like an endless repeating loop. Our bleeding hearts are in need of drone like never before. In the decade since the release of In 8 Movements, Black Swan's 2010 debut, the anonymous producer has built a reputation for his unique brand of tape-based symphonic drones. While the author behind the moniker remains hidden, Black Swan is still able to surprise and captivate. The dark symphonic deconstructions of those early works have slowly evolved, making space for lighter textures and tranquil meditations on sound, expanding the palette of tones while staying true to an identity in flux.

Recorded in 2011 in a dusty, beloved barn, ‘Even Your Drums Will Die’ is a time machine, a real one, to a moment packed thick with Richard Swift’s singular, crackling liveliness. Where Swift’s studio recordings are marked by texture, tone and mood, ‘Even Your Drums Will Die’ puts a spotlight on Swift’s voice, his lyrics and his songwriting.
Running through all of Swift’s tunes is a certain agitation - a fidgetiness, a restlessness. It’s clearer than ever now, over two years after Swift’s passing, that he used his music to let a little pressure out of his tire. ‘A Song for Milton Feher’ nods to all this, its namesake coming from the professional dancer and director who taught his students to release their “habits of tension.” The song feels like a skeleton key to Swift’s oeuvre, a clear look into the wild wheels spinning inside his big old artist noggin.
On the flipside is ‘Lady Luck’. The classic. The revived ghost of a lost 45 that never existed, or maybe always did, but that only Richard Swift could make real.
If you know these songs, you will find them set alight here. If you don’t, ‘Even Your Drums Will Die’ is an incomparable snapshot of both art and artist. It is a genie, a real one, let loose from the lamp with Richard Swift’s explosive energy, imagination and mischief.
Recorded Live at Pickathon, 2011.
Swift was a celebrated recording artist, collaborator (The Black Keys, The Shins, the Arcs) and producer (Nathaniel Rateliff, Kevin Morby, Guster, Pretenders).

2015. Two boys with guitars on their chests, stretching songwriting muscles and finding, to their delight, new possibilities at every run up the neck. This means trading vocal parts mid-song, then trading back again, modulating madly through rhythm changes, looking for a note in the harmony they’d never played or sung before. All in the service of locating the feelgood pop alchemy in a song in which no parts are repeated. Laying it all down with a sweet solid state vibe.
“Whatever happened to ‘She’s a Beam’!?!” has been a question/passive-aggressive demand from Ty and Cory aficionados over the past few years. This is what happened. It went to Heaven and lived a beautiful life there. This is the sound of it. Guitars and harmonies. Helium-coated keyboards. A celestial, Steve Millerish synth transformation. Positivity. Lightness. Rock. Epic. Energetic. Happy, headbanging days.
‘Milk Bird Flyer’ is a perfect other ‘A’ to pair with ‘She’s a Beam’, hovering on a fade-in fanfare of gleaming guitar godness before shifting into a countryish tripper with cheerful Psilo-sci-fi-bin lyrics to bend and stretch the ecstatic shuffle of the beat. As with ‘She’s a Beam’, Ty and Cory are floating so tight in the harmony that we’re like “Who’s who?”
The pure sounds of yesterday are bright like a moment in time just waiting for its chance to exist, a nugget of potency landing right between the eyes in any era. Turn it up and smile, smile, smile.

MUSICORAMA OLYMPIA 1961 DOUBLE LP Limited edition (2000 worldwide). The first three Musicorama by Johnny Hallyday recorded at the Olympia in 1961, 1962 and 1965 in double LP openable cover edition. Through the magic of the airwaves, these concerts were the dream of all teenage fans of Johnny who, glued to the transistor, vibrated when listening to the broadcast. These moments are etched forever in their memory. Reviews and Ads in London Macadam, France in London, Ici Londres and L’Echo

MUSICORAMA OLYMPIA 1962 DOUBLE LP Limited edition (2000 worldwide). The first three Musicorama by Johnny Hallyday recorded at the Olympia in 1961, 1962 and 1965 in double LP openable cover edition. Through the magic of the airwaves, these concerts were the dream of all teenage fans of Johnny who, glued to the transistor, vibrated when listening to the broadcast. These moments are etched forever in their memory. Reviews and Ads in London Macadam, France in London, Ici Londres and L’Echo

MUSICORAMA OLYMPIA 1965 DOUBLE LP Limited edition (2000 worldwide). The first three Musicorama by Johnny Hallyday recorded at the Olympia in 1961, 1962 and 1965 in double LP openable cover edition. Through the magic of the airwaves, these concerts were the dream of all teenage fans of Johnny who, glued to the transistor, vibrated when listening to the broadcast. These moments are etched forever in their memory. Reviews and Ads in London Macadam, France in London, Ici Londres and L’Echo

Fellow Rotterdammer Hebbe finally makes his Next Level debut. And what a debut it is ladies and gentlemen. Two of his most sought-after tunes on one smoking looking little marbled 10 inch. Featuring the soundsystem skank tank that is "Quiche" and "Looters" Hebbe's 125 bpm adventure that had us nodding the moment we heard it. What a tune.

Wretched Cuts is the new solo EP by gender-nonconforming techno artist, Projekt Gestalten. The release comes via the New York’s Mild Fantasy imprint run by DJ Elle Dee and features three original themes focusing on introspective techno plus a remix by veteran, The Lady Machine.

The project reflects an array of themes using as the starting point the story of Estamira and the Brazilian documentary of the same name, telling her life story. Estamira was an incredibly enlightened older woman who scattered one of the largest landfills of Rio de Janeiro for food. Not because she had to, but because she loved that place as she loved “her own children” and enjoyed making a living out of other people’s disposable goods. Simultaneously, while dealing with schizophrenia and abuse, she believed she was a superior spiritual being whose magical powers could control time, space, and other elements of nature.

The tracks are inspired by some of her most memorable quotes and moments that made an impact on Projekt Gestalten. “Wise People In Reverse” goes into a darker approach and samples Estamira’s voice talking in a mysterious unknown language with an unrevealed force, using only a broken piece of a telephone that she had just found it in the trash. “Morte Macaca” takes a rhythmic approach towards dub techno, and “Holographic Principle” gets trippier and hallucinogenic with Projekt Gestalten’s signature acid lines. The Lady Machine’s “Wise People In Reverse” remix takes the original theme to a driving, peak hour approach and transforms it into an effective DJ tool.

“There are no more innocent people on Earth, only wise people in reverse”.

An exploratory record that dances across time and genre, guided by fidgety miniatures and jazz inflected collage. Throughout, the band pool together their instrumental chops, moving from fluid and serpentine R&B to meditative, minimalistic piano, evoking a contrast of virtuosity and self-surrender.

While constructed from the inspiration of soul, funk and film music, BÉE mediate those influences having first digested them through the productions of Madlib & the RZA.
A sticker on the sleeve tells us Self Help “combines jazz-funk and mysticism,” a signpost to where its musical and spiritual concerns align. The jazz-funk component translates to arresting hooks in sideways song forms: echoes of Gainsbourg spooled through Azymuth-style Brazilian jazz and punctuated by the whip and snap of Steely Dan. “The Sound Where My Head Was,” the instrumental centrepiece, exemplifies present-wave jazz but also ancient sounds, giving off the mothballed air of a Hiroshi Yoshimura record in a library-music archive.

Self Help’s mysticism emerges in broad and specific ways, denoting not only a search beyond cliché and intellect but also an inquiry into the beat, the spirit, the one will. This isn’t new territory for them: Turnbull—the artist formerly known as Slim Twig, who writes and performs with U.S. Girls and various other Toronto concerns—named the group’s Nature, Man & Woman EP after the Alan Watts book. Building these songs from his drafts over three weekends at Toronto’s Palace Sound studio, the ensemble was free to tap out of the city and into some other place, taking up residence in a collective mind maze. The album produces, in equal measure, familiar surprises and the surprisingly familiar. Intoxicated jazz riffs swerve left at phantom intersections. Rhythms cut loose and tie you in knots. But wired in to each song is a sense of gentle accumulation, making every featherlight flourish weigh a ton. U.S. Girls’ Meg Remy brings serenity to “Sing a Silent Gospel,” and wears its antic melodies lightly. The soul shimmer of “Unity (It’s Up to You)” lets the players pool their R&B chops into something fluid and serpentine while, on guest vocals, the musical performance artist James Baley issues urgent declaratives: “Water must pool, as a rule, before tasted/Or else the water is wasted.” The words throughout the record complement the ensemble music while riffing on the precarious nature of unity itself. Then, closer “Extinct Commune” finds Turnbull deserted at the piano, playing phrases of meditative minimalism taking after the composer Joanna Brouk.

For all the record’s reach, it is these contrasting quiet moments that bring Self Help’s communal spirit into focus. A note on personnel: Badge Époque Ensemble now has a seventh member in Karen Ng, the saxophonist and sometime collaborator of Do Make Say Think, Feist, and others. In BÉE, Ng joins Chris Bezant and Giosuè Rosati, her bandmates in the Andy Shauf live band, as well as U.S. Girls co-conspirators Turnbull and Ed Squires, and other Torontonian cross-pollinators listed below. Guest vocalists across Self Help include Meg Remy, who sings with Dorothea Paas on the opener, James Baley, and Toronto singer-songwriter Jennifer Castle on the remarkable “Just Space for Light.” Words by: Jazz Monroe

Today Margot share new single Walk With Me via Full Time Hobby. The Peckham band ended 2019 supporting Swimming Tapes on their U.K. as well as releasing their debut EP earlier this year. New single Walk With Me is a song about empathy, depression and the power of talking. All channelled by frontman Alex Hannaway's pastel vocal hues and searingly honest delivery. Walk With Me works as a conversation between someone experiencing a depressive episode and another trying to understand. "It’s about listening, friendship, understanding, I’ve had experiences where friends, family members have been patient, they’ve been persistent and caring, and it’s this that has really helped me in my life" explains Hannaway. In addition to the official video, the band have also shared a 'Karaoke Video' for the single. "We've been using home karaoke sessions to blow off steam during the lockdown period. Often feeling confined, bored, angry, frustrated; the elation and release of belting out familiar songs in our living room felt cathartic. So it felt perfect for the video, capturing not only the isolation of lockdown but also the communal, spirited moments too" explain Margot. Margot comprises of five friends who moved from the suburbs of south London to Peckham after finishing University. In two separate bands at the time, drunken nights out discussing the merits of a merger evolved into the first few rehearsals. It went well - Margot formed in 2018 and released a steady stream of singles across the year. The band employ a DIY ethic, self-producing their recordings in their home studio. After ending 2019 supporting Swimming Tapes on their UK tour, the band released their debut EP in February 2020 and are set to support Dana Gavanski on her upcoming tour in March 2021. Margot's nuanced blend of dream-pop, neo-psychedelia and jangle-guitar create a propulsive, cruising feel reminiscent of Real Estate or War on Drugs. Expect to hear more from them in 2020.

Skylax Armagnac's darling who released his first EP just a year ago, which had an international resonance with rave reviews from Resident Advisor, Bicep, Chaos in the CBD, Peach or even soul clap. Rightly some saw it as a resurgence, a modernized version of 90s New York house, silky and elegant in the Bobby Konders, Mr Fingers way. For this new EP, with fantastic remixes of the brilliant Simoncino, our French prodigy is inspired by the beginnings of trance on the title song (and title of the ep by the way) "The world as we know it (masterclass mix)", UK dub and rave influences, as on some Nu Groove releases (notably the first joey beltram) - the lead vocal sample comes from a speech in which Noam Chomsky describes the United States as a violent country and hard. According to the author "If this piece says something, I believe it is that the music and the party should not serve to forget the problems of the world, but rather to find the strength, the resources, the inspiration to solve them." On "Oh La Musique" Armagnac used the sound of his neighbors as a voice sample ! Indeed, during this incredibly complicated period that we are living in, confinement due to the devastating effects of covid 19, one of his neighbors played music really loudly and for 20 minutes ignored the other neighbors who were screaming "oh oh, the music" through the window. "Turning this moment of irritation into a sample to the glory of the music strikes me as pretty funny." Still according to the author. On B1, it’s a house masterclass lesson by the phenomenal & ultra prolific Simoncino, but do i need to remind you how much italians are masters in their way of paying homage to all the best house music that has ever been created & produced ? Good taste is often on their side ! The red zone club is a tense and incredibly effective mix that can be enjoyed either on a house or techno dancefloor, it is clearly a banger. B2 saw the italian master offers us a beautiful ambient mix. And to conclude "On My Own" is according to Armagnac "a title that speaks of the trust that one can place in one's fellow human beings and of emancipation." A superb EP that adds to the long list of must-haves from Skylax Records.

oralle startet ins neue Jahr mit dem Release seines zweiten Albums „Fonografie“.

2020 gleichte einer Achterbahn für den italienischen Beatmaker Koralle. Seine Heimat Bologna wurde schwer COVID-19 getroffen. Währenddessen war Koralle jedoch produktiver denn je und veröffentlichte bereits acht Singles von „Fonografie“, darunter Kollabos mit Kölner Beatschmied Twit One, Londoner MC & Aktivistin Isatta Sheriff, Houston Rapper Anti Lilly und Turt von den Summers Sons. Die Singles waren ein großer Erfolg und konnten bis dato insgesamt über 2,5 Millionen Streams generieren.

„Fonografie“ besteht aus 16 Tracks mit weiteren Features und wird als digitales Album und auf Vinyl erhältlich sein.

Lucrecia Dalt is a Colombian recording artist, songwriter, and producer. After studying civil engineering in Colombia, Dalt worked at a geo-technical company for two years and has since lived in Barcelona and Berlin, where she currently resides. She has released six solo albums and has collaborated with musicians Aaron Dilloway, Jan Jelinek, and Gudrun Gut, to name a few. No era sólida is Dalt's seventh solo record, and her second on RVNG Intl., following the release of 2018's Anticlines. No era sólida is an introspective venture into visceral sonic terrain, as Dalt sets out to capture the moment when one becomes pure sound. The album observes a transition in Dalt herself through the emergence of an alternate ego / state of self named Lia. Each song identifies a different state experienced by Lia, opening with Disuelta (`dissolved') and transforming through pieces such as Seca (`to be dry'), Ser boca (`to be mouth'), Espesa (`thick'). Lia's poetic reflections on the panspermia echo her origins, having come from some other ether. As a lifeform seeded through sound, the very essence of Lia is embodied in the exploratory instincts of her creator Lucrecia Dalt, an artist whose innate sonar system traces the far reaches of musical experimentation.

Nahawa Doumbia's new album Kanawa concisely captures this current moment in Malian history. The singer, whose storied career spans more than four decades, reflects on the immigration crisis from the Malian perspective in the title of her new album Kanawa. Across eight songs recorded in Bamako with a band including traditional and modern instruments, Doumbia merges her early work that relied on a spare expression of her trademark didadi rhythm with the bombastic range of contemporary Malian pop. The beautifully complex musical accompaniment that results is courtesy of the large ensemble she pulled together with producer and arranger (and day one collaborator) N'gou Bagayoko. The band features two highly expressive Malian string instruments, the ngoni and the slightly smaller kamalé ngoni, as well as a variety of percussion, drum programming, karignan (a metal scraper) and acoustic and electric guitars. Doumbia's daughter, a celebrated singer with her own group and busy concert schedule, Doussou Bagayoko sings on "Adjorobena," a song about patience, tolerance and living in peace. Doumbia weaves together a roadmap of her psyche when it comes to the good and bad life has to offer. She talks about marriage and women leaving home to join another through the metaphor of a tree in the garden; she includes gunshot samples in the song "Foliwilen" to honor the bravery of hunters, soldiers and other courageous people; she uses a bird in "Djougoh" to talk about lazy people; and, in "Ndiagneko" she advises people to ignore critics, just do you. Mali has gone through an intense period of regional strife and terrorist incidents over the last ten years and Doumbia roots the album in tragic local concerns with deep global implications. "The meaning of Kanawa is so simple. We see our children trying to cross the ocean all the time. I said that many of our children die in the ocean and some of them die while crossing the Sahara. But I ask them why do they leave their country? They said that they leave because of the family situation or problems like poverty and unemployment. I ask them to stay and work in their country. I call on the UN and African leaders so that we can coordinate our efforts to find a solution, to create jobs for them so that young people stop leaving. That's why I chose it as the title of my album so that everybody can learn from it and also so that there is a reduction in the number of people emigrating. So that some will hear the message and stay home and grow the land. Leaving is not the only solution. My message is to help the youth find jobs."

Ein einzigartiger Künstler an einem legendären Ort: Tripping with Nils Frahm dokumentiert seine transzendentalen Liveshows in der geschichtsträchtigen Kulisse des Funkhaus Berlin. Gleich vier Shows im Funkhaus Berlin gaben den Auftakt zu Nils Frahms ambitionierter All Melody Tournee Anfang 2018, die sein gleichnamiges und allseits gepriesenes Studioalbum in den nächsten zwei Jahren auf die Bühnen dieser Welt brachte. In den folgenden über 180 ausverkauften Shows war der Ausnahmekünstler unter anderem im Sydney Opera House, in der Disney Hall in Los Angeles, im Barbican in London, in der Elbphilharmonie sowie auf zahlreichen großen Festivalbühnen zu Gast. Dennoch blieben Frahm die Konzerte im ehrwürdigen und für seine großartige Akustik gerühmten Saal 1 im Funkhaus Berlin in,mm besonderer Erinnerung.

Als Frahm ein knappes Jahr später zu vier weiteren Konzerten im Funkhaus einlud, waren die Tickets binnen Stunden vergriffen. Frahms langjähriger Freund und Filmemacher Benoit Toulemonde, der unter bereits für die Film-Konzertserie La Blogothèque mit zahlreichen weltbekannten Künstler-innen und Bands zusammenarbeitete, hielt die Abende an diesem geschichtsträchtigen Ort mit einem siebenköpfigen Kamera-Team fest.

Tripping with Nils Frahm ist ein Dokument Frahms vielfach gepriesener Fähigkeiten als Komponist und passionierter Live- Musiker sowie der besonderen Stimmung und Atmosphäre seiner legendären Funkhaus-Shows. Ein außergewöhnlicher musikalischer Trip — exklusiv und intim, roh und direkt.

"It was about time to document my concerts in picture and sound, trying to freeze a moment of this period where my team and I were nomads, using any method of travel to play yet another show the next day. Maybe tonight is the night where everything works out perfectly and things fall into place? Normally things go wrong with concerts, but by combining our favorite moments of four performances, we were able to achieve what I was trying to do in

these two years of touring: getting it right! When you hear the applause on the end of the film you should know that I was smiling happily, being a tad proud and feeling blessed to share these moments with you.

Much love, Nils"

The Anticipatory Organization is an energetic EP that could only be the work of The Sun God. There are three rousing tracks to stir the attention. The Things We Don't Know is a mesmerising key driven journey. It features gorgeous keyed sparkles, washing waves of acid and clopped beats. The Disbelief Habit is driven by a strong melody that really grabs you and won't let go. This is accompanied by a strong bassline, focused keys and closely held percussion. The Achievement Factory rounds off the EP with another distinctive musical effort that marches straight into the middle of the dancefloor. Punishing percussion and an in-step cavernous bassline are joined by loose acid and riffing keys. Once more, The Sun God delivers as only he can.

At the disco there is a mentasm... You will find me there..."

So begins Cornwallis' "At The Disco", a robot-voiced spoken word oddity released on Power Vacuum in 2015.

Power Vacuum is all about the mentasm: the mental orgasm, the moment when psychoactive electronics remould your grey matter into discombobulating new shapes, and when silliness, surreality, and playful aggression flip the sensible order of things upside down.

Dark Entries is pleased to announce a deluxe reissue of Sexual Harrassment’s 1983 opus I Need A Freak. Lynn Tolliver, DJ/Program Director at Cleveland’s WZAK, adopted the pseudonym David Payton in order to keep his musical endeavors separate from his public persona. Sexual Harrassment (misspelled deliberately) was formed as a concept band, with members selected based on appearance and choreographic skill rather than musical ability. Tolliver’s explicit lyrics focused on the central themes of desire and sexual relations. Working at a studio in Akron, he recorded an album of quirky-yet-lurid electro funk, which was released on Heat Records. Tolliver remarks, “I learned as a youngster, sex sells! The things that are rated the worst – violence, horror and sex – are the things people want to see or hear about.” I Need a Freak was a surprise hit, selling over 100,000 copies.

I Need A Freak is presented here for the first time on double LP, pressed at 45 rpm for maximum DJ-friendliness. While the album’s naughtier moments seem quaint by contemporary standards, the fusion of lo-fi funk and disaffected vocals still stuns today. On the eternal electro-raunch anthem “I Need a Freak”, minimalism serves to highlight the lasciviousness of the deadpan lyrics, which were inspired by Lourdes Figueroa, Tolliver’s girlfriend at the time. Tolliver’s whimsy shines on tracks like “If I Gave You a Party” and “K.I.S.S.I.N.G.”, which contrast nursery rhyme structures with decidedly R-rated lyrics. “Exercise Your Ass Off” lampoons the home exercise craze, but with a more-than-suggestive sexual bent. Also included are two bonus cuts, “We Want Prince” and “These Are The Things That I Like”, previously released as singles in 1984 and 1986, respectively. “We Want Prince” is both a homage to the Purple one and a gentle satire of obsessive fandom.

I Need A Freak has been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. The album comes in a gatefold sleeve featuring the original artwork. Included are lyrics, photos, and liner notes by Lynn Tolliver and drummer Dale Jackson. Tolliver’s sly provacateurship is best captured by the quote: “It’s funny – without sex, mankind is dead, yet we hide the very thing we need.”

his is the first vinyl re-issue of Marc Almond’s 4th solo album, “The Stars We Are”, since the album’s original release in September 1988. This re-issue is a limited edition double vinyl that couples the original album with a second record that compiles together all the Bsides of the associated singles as well as two first-timeon-vinyl extended versions of album tracks ‘The Stars We Are’ (Full Length Version) and ‘These My Dreams Are Yours’ (Through The Night Mix). The final extra track included is Marc's solo version of ‘Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart’, which after the album’s original release, was re-recorded with the 1967 hit song’s original singer Gene Pitney, creating a duet that became a UK #1 single for four weeks in early 1989.

“The Stars We Are” was the first of two albums recorded for Parlophone and was Marc Almond’s return to a highly infectious and chartable pop. The first single ‘Tears Run Rings’ confirmed the revitalised, unabashed pop that characterised the record and reached #26 on the UK Singles Chart. The album was recorded with an assembled band ‘La Magia’ which comprised of former Willing Sinners members Annie Hogan, Billie McGee and Steve Humphries as a core unit. The album is a shimmering arc of musical textures, compulsive melodrama and euphoric uplift. As well as further
singles ‘Bitter-Sweet’ (UK#40) and ‘Only The Moment’ (UK#45), the album contains an homage to goth sensibilities in ‘Your Kisses Burn’ a duet with Nico (her last ever studio recording) as well as an extravagant mini-operetta, ‘Kept Boy’, a duet with cult chanteuse
Agnes Bernelle.

Contains sleeve notes from celebrated cult poet and biographer, Jeremy Reed.

“The earth shall rise again...”
AMOR/LEMUR finds the Glasgow quartet AMOR in partnership with Norwegian improvising ensemble LEMUR to hopeful and ecstatic effect. Conceived before the onset of Covid 19 but finished during spring lockdown, their eponymous EP is the most loose, alive and elevated recording in AMOR’s catalog. AMOR/LEMUR takes the template of throbbing avant disco expanded upon on previous recordings for Night School and lifts it into new

territories, with new tonalities and unexpected turns on the journey. More than anything, the expanded, near- cinematic expression of human connectivity feels like a lightning new energy to grasp in the dark.

Following a revelatory concert in Glasgow in January 2020 wherein the two sets of musicians met and performed together for the first time, a recording session was arranged the following day, resulting in the most elevated permutation of AMOR’s art to date. Each track was built upon a rhythmic bedrock of percussion and drums performed by Paul Thomson and samples/synthesizer by Luke Fowler. Thomson used bamboo Javanese gamelan (most notably on For You) and scrap metal, as well as traditional percussion and drums while Fowler incorporated processed ambient field recordings recorded in enclosed acoustic spaces around Glasgow. Singer/pianist Richard Youngs contributes some of the most bright and mindful work of his career. Acoustic bass player Michael Francis Duch, whose lush playing as ever provides the elastic spine to each song, scored the string parts for LEMUR on piano at home in Norway. The addition of swelling strings and drones fills out the AMOR sound significantly, lending a sonorous tone to 8 minute, epic closer For You or an ascending melodic introduction to Stars Burst that feels like a new morning dawning on a world saved from certain death. With the circumstances of lockdown forcing the musicians to work differently, a thread of optimism and utopia grounded in the moment weaves through these tracks. Unravel reveals a spine tingling vocal from Youngs. It’s a song about the simultaneously grounding and ecstatic effect of love, feeling connected to others. It’s a simple message, “I’m finding myself in your smile, always unravels me” speaks of ego death, the dissipation of the material into a nirvana of pure energy, the power of surrender. This isn’t a quasi-religious message, this is the power of each other, a love song to connection in a temporary age of isolation. Stars Burst is a play on the inner and outer cosmos, with narrator Youngs exploring wonder to a pounding galloping rhythm and snake-charming synth. It’s an open dance, with the group locked in together for the wild ride. Fear is the centerpiece of the record, starting with drones and scraped overtones before swirling synth notes filter upwards to meet reverberating minor chords. Over 8 minutes of tight but loose playing, Youngs is the shaman instructing us to use Fear as a celebration of the moment, embrace it and jump into the unknown. The only way to overcome your fear is to feel it, use it as an energy. The use of the studio as an instrument throughout side 2 is particularly important, with the dubbing and mixing prowess of engineer Paul Savage (who mixed unattended due to lockdown restrictions) and tape manipulations performed by Jason Lescallet coming into play. For You closes out with a largely instrumental, evolving composition that uses many of the abstract and novel aspects of this permutation to aid the trance. It’s massive, an unfurling creature with unexpected tonalities and serious heft.