Cerca:morton

Nach fünfundzwanzig Jahren Musikkarriere mit fünf Grammy-Nominierungen, zwei RIAA-zertifizierten Goldenen Schallplatten und der jüngsten Veröffentlichung von 'Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir', einer ehrlichen Reflexion über sein Leben in der Musik und darüber hinaus, befindet sich Mark Mortons kreative Energie auf einem Allzeithoch.

'Without The Pain', sein zweites Soloalbum, ist eine Hommage an seine langjährige Liebe zum Südstaaten-Rock und wurde von seinem langjährigen Weggefährten Josh Wilbur produziert. Auf dem Album als Features vertreten sind einige der größten Namen aus Americana, Rock und Country:

Der Outlaw-Country-Star Cody Jinks liefert zwei kraftvolle Songs, darunter das eindringliche 'Brother'; Blackberry Smoke-Frontmann Charlie Starr tut sich bei 'Come December' mit Americana-Superstar Jason Isbell zusammen, während Jaren Johnston (The Cadillac Three) beim Eröffnungstrack 'Hell & Back' eine Performance voller Hingabe liefert.

Der Country-Hitmacher Travis Denning - ein aus Georgia stammender Künstler mit einer früheren Nummer 1 in den US-Country-Airplay-Charts - arbeitet an zwei bewegenden Stücken mit, die beide subtile und zarte Gitarrentexturen aufweisen und eine andere Dimension von Mortons Songwriting zeigen.

Troy Sanders (Mastodon) singt bei 'Nocturnal Sun', einer donnernden Doom-Klage und dem schwersten Stück des Albums, während Blues-Gitarren-Phänomen Tyler Bryant sich mit Morton bei dem psychedelischen Blues-Rummel 'Forever In The Light' ein Gitarrenduell mit Feuerwerk liefert.

Für Fans von: Lamb of God, The Cadillac Three, Whiskey Myers, Travis Denning, Clutch, Brothers Osbourne, Blackberry Smoke, Black Stone Cherry, Lynyrd Skynyrd

- Ltd. Col. LP: (Orange Vinyl)

From Cape Town to Cairo, and now to fans, stages and screens around the world, PJ Morton shares his newest album, fully made in the motherland. Cape Town to Cairo is a collection of songs that he created in 30 days throughout 4 countries in Africa — South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Egypt. Described as the best trip of his life, this transformative journey began as just the seed of an idea last fall, but instantly grew into his most sonically-sprawling and immediately-inspired record to date. With no music, lyrics or preconceptions, he stepped foot onto the continent with two thoughts: a wild dream to write and record his next LP in less than a month, and a mission to immerse himself in as many different cultures, stories and communities as he could.

Surrounded by featured collaborators like Fireboy DML, Mádé Kuti, Asa, Ndabo Zulu, and Soweto Spiritual Singers, as well as additional producers including P.Priime and The Cavemen., his own live band and local musicians, PJ Morton used music as his common language. Always his greatest way of communicating, he expressed his feelings and experiences of Africa through songs he and others were forming together on the spot, side-by-side in different studios, cities and towns for the very first time. None of the tracks were written before he arrived or after he left, and the arrangements showcase both the countries’ native genres as well as the innate, stylistic instincts that have made Morton a 5x GRAMMY-winner and 20x GRAMMY-nominee, whether it be his soul, R&B and gospel roots, or the pop prowess he has further honed as a member of Maroon 5.

“When you’ve been in music as long as I have, you’re constantly looking for inspiration,” says PJ Morton. “And you’re looking for the things that made you want to do it in the first place. I’ve made albums every type of way you can think, so I wanted to try something I hadn’t done before. As a Black American who had never been to South or West Africa, I knew there was something there waiting for me. So I put a little pressure on myself to make a full record in a month, but I also said, ‘If I’m gonna go to Africa, I want to see Africa.’ We made music, but we also formed connections. We made new friends, and this is just the start.”

ESSENCE adds, "This trip is not just a physical move, it's a spiritual return…The soul of Africa pulses through every note he plays and every word he sings,” and VIBE adds that “the multi-faceted artist is fully embracing a new phase in his life.” Cape Town to Cairo marks PJ Morton’s first album since 2022’s Watch The Sun, which featured collaborations with Stevie Wonder, Nas, JoJo, Wale, Jill Scott, Alex Isley and more. Since then, Morton has become the first Black composer to write an original song for a Disney attraction, having just finished making the music for Tiana's Bayou Adventure, opening on June 28th, 2024 at Disney World and Fall 2024 at Disneyland. He also won his latest GRAMMY earlier this year, worked with Samara Joy on “Why I’m Here” for Regina King’s Netflix film Shirley, and landed a cover of his song “Don’t Let Go” as the soundtrack to Apple’s iPhone 15 commercial.

PJ Morton recently returned from headlining his debut shows in Asia, New Zealand and Australia, and announced an extensive Cape Town to Cairo Tour for North America summer and fall 2024. Following iconic performances at New Orleans Jazz Fest, The Kennedy Center, Roots Picnic and Newport Jazz Fest, Morton will embark on a run of more than 25 dates across the country, including New York City’s Beacon Theatre, Chicago’s Chicago Theatre, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Los Angeles’ The Wiltern, and dozens of others.

On the heels of his headline tour and Maroon 5’s Las Vegas residency, PJ Morton will publish a life-spanning new book titled Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. The memoir sees him recounting and reflecting upon a trailblazing path that continues to defy expectations and straddle the tensions of music and faith, race and culture, expression and identity. As the son of two pastors and gospel artists, Morton grew up grounded by the sound of the Church, but soon found himself drawn to R&B, pop and soul, writing songs that the industry, his family and community struggled to understand. In the face of mounting pressure, rejection and constant miscategorization, he committed himself to a steadfast path of independence: making music on his own terms, launching his own record label, joining one of the biggest bands in the world while staying true to his New Orleans roots. The risks he took paid off, and through his transformation from preacher's kid to the busiest man in showbiz – performing everywhere from his local congregation to the Super Bowl, collaborating with everyone from his father to Stevie Wonder, Erykah Badu, Jon Batiste and Lil Wayne – he hopes to encourage readers and listeners to overcome obstacles as they seek their dreams.

SAM MORTON, das musikalische Duo, bestehend aus der Sängerin, Songwriterin und jüngst mit dem BAFTA (dem britischen Äquivalent zum Oscar) ausgezeichneten Schauspielerin und Regisseurin Samantha Morton und dem Musikproduzenten und Co-Songwriter Richard Russell, veröffentlichen ihr gemeinsames Debütalbum. Das Album trägt den Titel "Daffodils & Dirt" und wird am 14. Juni über XL Recordings veröffentlicht. In zwölf atmosphärischen Tracks bauen die beiden eine zutiefst persönliche musikalische Welt auf, die gleichzeitig intim und zart, aber auch kraftvoll und mitunter schroff wirkt. In der teilweise autobiografischen Songfolge bilden Russells spartanische Klanglandschaften das fragile Gerüst für Mortons wunderschönen wie ätherischen Gesang. Unterstützt werden sie dabei von einer Reihe musikalischer Freunde. Darunter Alabaster DePlume, Laura Groves, Jack Peñate und als zusätzliche Sängerin Ali Campbell (bei "Broxtowe Girl"). Obwohl Samantha Morton schon ihr ganzes Leben lang Musik liebt und sich mit ihr beschäftigt, ist dies ihr erstes Projekt als Musikerin überhaupt. Die Zusammenarbeit kam zustande, nachdem sie im Oktober 2020 in der BBC-Sendung "Desert Island Discs" auftrat und Russell zufällig zuhörte. Er war nicht nur von ihrer Songauswahl beeindruckt (einschließlich der gemeinsamen Vorliebe für ein bestimmtes Lied: "I Remember" von Molly Drake), sondern auch von der Art und Weise, wie die Musik ihre Lebenserfahrungen verwebt. Die beiden nahmen Kontakt auf und tauschten Ideen, Skizzen und Gedankenströme aus. Schließlich trafen sie sich Monate später im Studio und begannen eine spontane wie intensive und ergebnisoffene Zusammenarbeit, die sich für beide Künstler als kathartischer musikalischer Prozess erwies. "Daffodils & Dirt" wurde schließlich 2023 fertiggestellt und zeigt, wie es klingt, wenn Sound-Kosmen miteinander zu einer wunderschönen Fusionen verschmelzen. "Daffodils & Dirt" ist digital und als CD, LP und exklusive gelbe Indie-Vinyl erhältlich. Das Cover des Albums zeigt ein Archivfoto des renommierten britisch-amerikanischen Fotografen und bildenden Künstlers Nick Waplington, der das Leben in Nottinghams Broxtowe Estate zur gleichen Zeit dokumentierte, als Morton dort Mitte der 1980er Jahre aufwuchs. Bereits heute erscheint die neue Single "Let"s Walk In The Night" aus dem Album. "Let"s Walk In The Night" ist eine gespenstische, jenseitige Neuinterpretation des britischen Street Soul und wird von einem Video begleitet, bei dem Samantha Morton selbst Regie führte. Das Video wurde auf der jährlichen Goose Fair in Nottingham gedreht und ist das zweite Musikvideo, bei dem Morton Regie geführt hat, nach dem Video zu "Cry Without End", in dem sie auch die Hauptrolle spielte Anfang des Jahres.

SAM MORTON, das musikalische Duo, bestehend aus der Sängerin, Songwriterin und jüngst mit dem BAFTA (dem britischen Äquivalent zum Oscar) ausgezeichneten Schauspielerin und Regisseurin Samantha Morton und dem Musikproduzenten und Co-Songwriter Richard Russell, veröffentlichen ihr gemeinsames Debütalbum. Das Album trägt den Titel "Daffodils & Dirt" und wird am 14. Juni über XL Recordings veröffentlicht. In zwölf atmosphärischen Tracks bauen die beiden eine zutiefst persönliche musikalische Welt auf, die gleichzeitig intim und zart, aber auch kraftvoll und mitunter schroff wirkt. In der teilweise autobiografischen Songfolge bilden Russells spartanische Klanglandschaften das fragile Gerüst für Mortons wunderschönen wie ätherischen Gesang. Unterstützt werden sie dabei von einer Reihe musikalischer Freunde. Darunter Alabaster DePlume, Laura Groves, Jack Peñate und als zusätzliche Sängerin Ali Campbell (bei "Broxtowe Girl"). Obwohl Samantha Morton schon ihr ganzes Leben lang Musik liebt und sich mit ihr beschäftigt, ist dies ihr erstes Projekt als Musikerin überhaupt. Die Zusammenarbeit kam zustande, nachdem sie im Oktober 2020 in der BBC-Sendung "Desert Island Discs" auftrat und Russell zufällig zuhörte. Er war nicht nur von ihrer Songauswahl beeindruckt (einschließlich der gemeinsamen Vorliebe für ein bestimmtes Lied: "I Remember" von Molly Drake), sondern auch von der Art und Weise, wie die Musik ihre Lebenserfahrungen verwebt. Die beiden nahmen Kontakt auf und tauschten Ideen, Skizzen und Gedankenströme aus. Schließlich trafen sie sich Monate später im Studio und begannen eine spontane wie intensive und ergebnisoffene Zusammenarbeit, die sich für beide Künstler als kathartischer musikalischer Prozess erwies. "Daffodils & Dirt" wurde schließlich 2023 fertiggestellt und zeigt, wie es klingt, wenn Sound-Kosmen miteinander zu einer wunderschönen Fusionen verschmelzen. "Daffodils & Dirt" ist digital und als CD, LP und exklusive gelbe Indie-Vinyl erhältlich. Das Cover des Albums zeigt ein Archivfoto des renommierten britisch-amerikanischen Fotografen und bildenden Künstlers Nick Waplington, der das Leben in Nottinghams Broxtowe Estate zur gleichen Zeit dokumentierte, als Morton dort Mitte der 1980er Jahre aufwuchs. Bereits heute erscheint die neue Single "Let"s Walk In The Night" aus dem Album. "Let"s Walk In The Night" ist eine gespenstische, jenseitige Neuinterpretation des britischen Street Soul und wird von einem Video begleitet, bei dem Samantha Morton selbst Regie führte. Das Video wurde auf der jährlichen Goose Fair in Nottingham gedreht und ist das zweite Musikvideo, bei dem Morton Regie geführt hat, nach dem Video zu "Cry Without End", in dem sie auch die Hauptrolle spielte Anfang des Jahres.

Feldman's last composition, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, was completed in 1987; although its instrumentation largely corresponds to that of Piano and String Quartet, with one instead of two violins, it differs in almost every other respect from the composition written only two years earlier, for here, in contrast to Piano and String Quartet, Feldman makes every effort to integrate the piano into the string section, and the basic formal components of the composition are no longer staves, as they were in Piano and String Quartet, but individual bars... ...From a compositional point of view, the essential change that transfers the "monolithic block" of late orchestral works such as Coptic Light and For Samuel Beckett to chamber music instrumentation is that the material, already largely homogeneous, is rearranged not in whole systems but in small-part permutations, so that the systems and pages no longer represent periods or sections, and a continuous musical progression emerges with a much reduced internal structure compared to previous works.

from liner notes by Sebastian Claren
dissonArt Ensemble is Lenio Liatsou, Piano Theodor Patsalidis, Violin Chara Seira, Viola Vassills Saitis, Violoncello

Watch The Sun is the next studio album from the acclaimed musician, PJ Morton. Following a prolific and remarkable creative run that saw 5 consecutive years of GRAMMY Nominations and 6 LPs since 2017, Watch The Sun aims to take a step back from it all. Looking to escape from outside noises and influences, PJ Morton chose to record in the secluded and storied Studio In The Country, where Stevie Wonder worked on 1979’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants, and artists like Allen Toussaint, Betty Davis and Dr. John have all recorded. Featuring the previously released “Please Don’t Walk Away,” & “My Peace,” the album is set to be his biggest and most anticipated release to date, delivering one of the most expansive sonic palettes he has ever developed as producer. Watch The Sun includes appearances from JoJo, Mr. Talkbox, Chronixx, Stevie Wonder, Nas, Wale, Jill Scott, Alex Isley, El Debarge, Zacardi Cortez, Gene Moore, Samoht, Tim Rogers & Darrel 'MusiqCity' Walls.

They drift with phantom ease from spare, intimate, literate alt-country to a nuanced, weighted music bearing the marks of rock'n'roll history..." Classic Rock 8/10 // ”...slow burning, emotional intensity" Mojo **** // ”Alluring and seductive." Uncut **** // Morton Valence’s eighth, and eponymously titled album, comes to you, courtesy of Cow Pie Recordings, featuring 11 new songs, produced by the legendary BJ Cole. Robert ‘Hacker’ Jessett and Anne Gilpin, who form the nucleus of Morton Valence, effortlessly take the country music genre, which is generally considered a uniquely American musical form, and create something uniquely English, without ever compromising their authenticity. The atmosphere that BJ Cole brings to the album is palpable, in both production values, and his unmistakable pedal steel guitar performances, on songs such as the plaintive ‘Together Through the Rain’, where an estranged Anne and Hacker reunite under the shelter of an umbrella, walking through the rain and trading verses along the way. Or the more upbeat country rock of ‘I’ve Been Watching You/You’ve Been Watching Me’, which is almost as if Richard and Linda Thompson had touched down in some Nashville backbar before heading for the bright lights. And of course, the scintillatingly down-beat opener, and instant urban-country classic; ‘Summertime in London’, where Hacker reflects on his home city from afar, through simultaneously tear-stained and rose-tinted glasses. What gives the album its country hallmark, are the narratives in the songs. However, they forego the typical Americana for an altogether more kitchen-sink aesthetic. We see the return of MV alter egos Bob and Veronica in ‘Bob and Veronica’s Big Move’, as they make their way from the big city to what could only be the arcadian blue-collar tranquillity of Hastings, or Skegness perhaps? There’s the bewildered small-town homecoming of a wannabe prodigal son in ‘A Town Called Home’. And a conversation with ‘Jim’, a seemingly old-school kind of bloke, with a penchant for midday drinking and late-night city shenanigans. As well as BJ Cole’s steel guitar, there are other collaborations too. ‘Like a Face that’s Been Starved of a Kiss’, co-written with Band of Holy Joy front man, and lyrical visionary Johny Brown. Flamenco guitar genius, Amir John Haddad, sits in on the urban-cowboy ballad, ‘Me & My Old Guitar’, the skewed violin of Dylan Bates brings something of the vaudeville to songs such as ‘It Isn’t Easy Being an Angel’, Guy Jackson adds his sublime keyboards throughout, and the whole thing is held together by unsung rhythm section heroes Jamie Shaw on drums and Josh De Mita on bass. As with all Morton Valence albums, along with the shade, there is always some light, in particular the escapist cosmic romp of ‘It’s a Brand-New Morning’, or the wryly observant, ‘It Isn’t Easy Being an Angel’, where the protagonist discovers that he’s living in some weird kind of purgatory where even the late Johnny Thunders has quit smoking. This is an ambitious album, formed through a unique symbiosis of musical characters, which is ready to redefine UK country music, put ‘urban country’ centre-stage, and should be heard by everyone

Based on an ancient Sumerian poem, MORTON SUBOTNICK's follow-up to his highly influential milestone "Silver Apples Of The Moon" is no less an adventurous sonic trip on the Buchla synthesizer. Limited edition (300 items) audiophile 180gr LP, especially remastered for vinyl. 2022 repress, 300 items.

Born 1933, MORTON SUBOTNICK is a key figure in the progress of electronic music: along with PAULINE OLIVEROS and RAMON SENDER he co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1961 and from 1963 on he worked with DON BUCHLA on the development of the early synthesizer "Buchla Series 100". In 1967 the composer and musician released his debut "Silver Apples Of The Moon", which proved to be one of the most influential albums and an undoubted milestone in electronic music (which was even selected for the Library Of Congress in 2009). A year later MORTON SUBOTNICK presented his adventurous follow-up "The Wild Bull". Loosely based on / inspired by an ancient Sumerian poem of the same name - a lament about loss and death caused by war - the two parts embark on further explorations into the hitherto unimagined creative possibilities of the synthesizer. 54 years after its initial release, "The Wild Bull" has not lost a single bit of its visionary magnitude and is still an adventurous sonic trip.

(High quality 45 in a silk screen sleeve) Mind-blowing melting pot of jazz, funk, rock and ska. These two songs were the only releases by this outstanding band led by American organist / pianist Scott Bradford with musicians of the Jess and James band and Belgian jazz legend Philippe Catherine on guitar.

In support of their forthcoming documentary 'Subotnick - Portrait of an Electronic Music Pioneer', Waveshaper Media — the same team behind the wildly-popular, acclaimed modular synthesizer documentary 'I Dream Of Wires' — presents a special reissue: a deluxe, 50th-anniversary-edition vinyl LP of Morton Subotnick's landmark 1967 debut electronic release, "Silver Apples of the Moon." Here are some of the features that make this 50th-anniversary-edition vinyl LP special:

All-new, full-colour gatefold jacket.
Vinyl edition is strictly limited to 1,000 copies.

Audio has been REMASTERED from the original, pre-mastered digital tape transfers. Unlike previous reissues of this LP (both vinyl and CD), remastered for Wergo's 1994 CD edition and narrowing the recording's stereo field, our reissue has been remastered maintaining the full stereo field of the original recording.
Brand new liner notes by Morton Subotnick.

The original, iconic liquid-light cover artwork by Tony Martin has been re-scanned for full-resolution clarity.
Featuring rarely-seen, newly-scanned photos of Morton Subotnick in his Bleecker Street studio where "Silver Apples..." was recorded.

Also includes a scan of the LP's original Nonesuch-edition liner notes

Superbien electro album, still carrying sound and focusing on loops. BIG VOL 2 on Handicap !

Dr. Silberman makes a welcome return to Atom Trance Force and kicks things off in 2026 with his EP 'Welcome To The Future'. Two mixes of the title track are included: The fast paced original and the trance mix. The original is a serious ode to the late 90s Hamburg hard trance sound, and you can hear the influence of labels like EDM, Tunnel & Spaceflower. For the trance mix, he brings the tempo back down to 140 and moves more towards older Positiva energy. Rounding off the EP is Friends & Enemies, keeping the energy high but the quality to match.

From Atom - we thank you for your continued trust, and bigups to those supporting this release:

1995 Trance Sessions, Adam (Last Of The Mohicans) Apple FM, Adam Bellew Global Hard House Radio, Angie (FR), Busho, Choci, Digital Devil, Dimitri Kechagias, DJ Brisk [Stimulant DJs], DJs Present, Evolving Suns Audio [Cohesion / The Attic], Giuseppe Ottaviani, J.O.E [Tomorrows World], Jake Ayres, Jake Grace [TranceUnite / FCM Live], Jake Nicholls [Uprising], Loki [Terminal Trax], Louk / Hidden Identity, Mat Phat & Fugee Show [Newport City Radio], Mind Control [Noise Pollution], Mindflux, Paul Nineham [Brisk], Pete Morton [Harderfaster], Remnis, Renegade System, Rennz [Distorted Dreams], Rightsound [Dancesation / Timewarp], Rocco Jonsson [Collide / The Carnival Sweden], Spaceman [Tuned Flow], Spektral Noise, Suzy Solar, Tjerk Coers

With their upcoming album Waves, Moonchild enters a bold new chapter. A deeply personal and emotionally raw project, Waves explores themes of grief, healing, resilience, and self-worth, eschewing the love songs that once dominated their catalog. "This album is about processing loss and stepping into your power," says Amber. "It's a lyrical departure, but it reflects what I've been going through these past few years."

The project also marks a return to in-person collaboration and a new embrace of sampling and sonic experimentation. The result is an album that feels more vulnerable and grounded than ever, while still pushing the boundaries of their signature sound.






f 06: Fear (Hey Friend) feat. PJ Morton






f 06: Fear (Hey Friend) feat. PJ Morton






f 06: Fear (Hey Friend) [feat. PJ Morton]

With their upcoming album Waves, Moonchild enters a bold new chapter. A deeply personal and emotionally raw project, Waves explores themes of grief, healing, resilience, and self-worth, eschewing the love songs that once dominated their catalog. "This album is about processing loss and stepping into your power," says Amber. "It's a lyrical departure, but it reflects what I've been going through these past few years."

The project also marks a return to in-person collaboration and a new embrace of sampling and sonic experimentation. The result is an album that feels more vulnerable and grounded than ever, while still pushing the boundaries of their signature sound.






f 06: Fear (Hey Friend) feat. PJ Morton






f 06: Fear (Hey Friend) feat. PJ Morton






[f] 06: Fear (Hey Friend) [feat. PJ Morton]

‘In Virus Times’ is an acoustic instrumental piece by Lee Ranaldo.
Composed during the pandemic, ‘In Virus Times’ is released as a onesided LP with an etching on Side B. The cover is a beautiful photo by
Lee’s friend, the great Brazilian photographer Anna Paula Bogaciovas.
 Originally released as one track as part of a collaboration with Lucien
Jean for Le Presses du Reel, the music was featured on a mini CD that
accompanied a book that featured two short stories.
 ‘In Virus Times’, released by Mute, sees the track transformed into 4
pieces and is available on transparent turquoise vinyl with digital
download and an exclusive poster, designed, signed and individually
numbered by Lee Ranaldo. The poster design is based on an electron
microscope photo of the COVID-19 molecule.
 Lee has written some of his own ‘loner notes’ for the release:
 “This recording began on an evening in September 2020, stuck at home
in lower Manhattan during the dark days of the Covid-19 pandemic as
we came out of a deadly summer. A heightened sense of anxiety
stemming from the then-upcoming US Presidential elections as well as
the virus seemed to pervade all aspects of life, for myself and everyone I
knew. Its minimal quality reflects the sense of ‘motionless time’ that
many of us felt. I set up some microphones in our darkened living room
(studios being closed due to Covid restrictions), coaxing out one simple,
repetitive phrase, and then another, sounding them out into the air. The
casual home ambience - a siren or truck rumbling down the street out
the window; someone talking around the table in another part of the loft;
water running - intrudes at points. I worked to develop a few simple
thematic elements, but mostly I wanted to hear the notes and chords
ringing out, hanging in the air for a long time on that evening when the
world seemed close to stopped on its axis.
 “I’d been listening closely to Morton Feldman’s catalog throughout the
pandemic. His sparse, long-duration music could often be heard playing
on repeat as we spent endless days locked inside. His willingness to do
very little, with very simple elements, and to such profound effect, has
been inspirational. I found the vast open spaces in his works thrilling,
miraculous, and comforting in those empty times. Additionally, the Drop
D guitar tuning used here has prompted my own variations on Bach’s
works for solo cello, open strings droning against melodic lines, so
simple and perfect…” - Lee Ranaldo, New York City, August 2021

Birchy is a relative newcomer to the Kniteforce label, although his previous release (KF266) that played with the Terminator theme tune was a big seller. It's not overly surprising, as Birchy may be new to the label, and a new name to many old skool heads, but he is an experienced producer who has been around for decades, with releases spread far and wide...
This EP samples the classic news broadcast surrounding the famous Castle Morton event in the UK, and the whole EP is deeply old skool and classic in feel. Full on breakbeats, pianos and authentic rave sounds are the name of the game here, and Birchy creates a timless feel to all of it!

The first release to document the solo cello work of musician and composer Lucy Railton, the 40-minute composition Blue Veil recorded at Église du Saint-Esprit in Paris invites listeners into the realm of precision-tuned states of resonance: states made manifest through Railton's careful traversal of her cello's most subtle acoustic characteristics as they harmonically interlock with mind's embodied modalities of attention and imagination. Blue Veil arises out of, is sustained in and finally dissolves back into Railton's momentary presence with her intimate connection to the cello, a way of hearing that allows for a deeper engagement with harmonic resonance, one that opens a space for immediate encounters of mind and sound. Railton's exploratory practice of harmonic perception emerges from a focus on the physical qualities of intervallic and chordal sounds, their textural qualities, degrees of friction, and inner pulsations. Composing in the moment guided by resonances within the cello's body, her own, and their shared vibrational space, Railton moves through Blue Veil by giving sounds what they ask for: sounds of pure texture manifesting as a move through temporal transparency, sounds of rough texture marking regions of dimensionally dense space. Railton's creative and highly refined use of just intonation harmony deforms sound's inner movements in ways that suggest a mode of listening that actively supplies imagery of sounds implied or completely absent rather than merely savouring those fully present. This active mode of "listening-with", playfully and semi-metaphorically referred to by Railton as "sing-along music", allows listening to reflexively participate in the music's movement as it gradually passes through richly saturated domains of harmonic imagination. And just as the precision-tuned tones of Blue Veil lose their individuality when fusing multifaceted uniformity, listening's structures of reference and recognition dissolve into nameless waves of intensity, continuously unfolding themselves upon and merging with the listener. Blue Veil is the result of a deep exploration of the inner worlds of tuning, an undertaking in turn informed by and emerging out of Railton's realisations of the music of Catherine Lamb and Ellen Arkbro, her collaborative work with Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley as well as her interpretive practice in performing the work of Maryanne Amacher, Morton Feldman and others.

First Word Records is proud to bring you 'The Making of Silk', the brand new album from Allysha Joy.

Allysha Joy is a deeply-expressive singer, songwriter, producer & keys player hailing from Naarm (Melbourne), known for both her solo work and as front woman for 30/70. A uniquely-talented artist, her husky soulful voice, formidable Fender Rhodes prowess and raw poeticism has garnered legions of attentive fans the world over.

As an integral performer in the modern day jazz-soul scene, previous support has included selectors Gilles Peterson & Jamz Supernova (BBC 6 Music), Jamie Cullum (BBC Radio 2), China Moses (Jazz FM) & Laurent Garnier (PBB France), along with stations such as NTS, Lot Radio, KEXP & KCRW, and publications including OkayPlayer, Dazed and The Vinyl Factory.

Along with a recent foray into the USA market with a string of successful shows, Allysha Joy has performed alongside acts such as Snarky Puppy, PJ Morton, The Teskey Brothers, Kokoroko and Children of Zeus, to name a few.

Joy has previously released two full-length solo albums 'Acadie : Raw' in 2018, 'Torn : Tonic' in 2022 and an EP, 'Light It Again' in 2020, along with countless collaborations and features over the past few years.

Entirely self-produced and affectionately poured over, 'The Making of Silk' is about a new understanding of the meaning of love.

Joy says, "it's the kind of love that bell hooks writes about, that lives in the poetry of Mary Oliver, Hafiz and the passionate dreaming of a Koryusai painting. It's about a love that is compassionate, that lives in open conversation, deep listening, the front lines of social movement and would never seek to stifle the light in you. It's about accepting our aloneness, the impermanence of all things and still forever wanting to prove it wrong, to say that I understand that all things change, all things end, hurt exists, but I will love regardless."

Riding on the waves of rich string arrangements, layers of vocal harmony and the raw poeticism she is known for, Allysha Joy's next album is embodying love.

'The Making of Silk' is due to be released on vinyl & digital worldwide, September 13th 2024.

Global icon and five-time GRAMMY® winner Angelique Kidjo returns with HOPE!!, a revelatory 16-track collection that serves as a vibrant antidote to the times. Following her 2021 success Mother Nature, this album bridges continents and genres, featuring a star-studded lineup including Pharrell Williams, Quavo, Ayra Starr, Nile Rodgers, and Davido among other A-listers

Produced by Pharrell and Shizzi, and featuring songwriting by the legendary Diane Warren, HOPE!! is more than an album—it’s a global musical movement dedicated to the resilience of the human spirit.

Kezia Gill hat sich schnell zu einer der renommiertesten Country-Künstlerinnen Großbritanniens entwickelt und wird für ihre kraftvolle Stimme sowie die Qualität und Ehrlichkeit ihrer Songtexte gefeiert. Sie ist bereits ausgiebig in ganz Großbritannien aufgetreten und hat bei Festivals in Europa, den USA und Australien gespielt. Dabei setzt sie weiterhin neue Maßstäbe und vertritt stolz die britische Country- und Roots-Musik auf der internationalen Bühne.

Allein im Jahr 2025 trat sie beim renommierten Country 2 Country Festival in London und Glasgow auf, gefolgt von weiteren großen Festivals (Splendour, The Long Road). Außerdem besuchte sie Frankreich, Dänemark und die Niederlande und war zuletzt Co-Headliner einer Tournee mit Imogen Clark in Australien. Die vorherige Single „Dublin's Outta Whiskey“ wurde von Bob Harris in der Country Show auf BBC Radio 2 vorgestellt und sofort bei Planet Rock und Absolute Radio Country in die A-Liste aufgenommen. Sie markierte auch den Beginn einer neuen Zusammenarbeit mit Snakefarm, der weltweiten Heimat von Marty Stuart, Mark Morton und Austin Meade und dem britischen Label für einige der größten Namen der Country-Musik in den USA und Kanada (Eric Church, Brothers Osborne, Darius Rucker, Josh Ross usw.). Die Single „If Heaven Has A Honkytonk”, eine von Kezia’s Lieblingskompositionen wurde von der US-Künstlerin Alyssa Bonagura mitgeschrieben, produziert und gemischt und ist eine von Herzen kommende Hommage an das reiche Erbe der Country-Musik. Kezia wird im Februar 2026 auch eine Headliner-Tournee durch Großbritannien starten, unterstützt von Bonagura.

„All On Red“ ist ein mutiger Neuanfang in der Karriere einer Künstlerin, die bereits Auszeichnungen und Nominierungen der British Country Music Association („Entertainer of the Year“ / „UK Female Artist of the Year“) erhalten hat und sich für ein Musikgenre einsetzt, das vor allem in Großbritannien stark im Kommen ist.

Everything Is Recorded, ist das musikalische Kollaborationsprojekt von XL-Recordings Chef Richard Russell. Auf dem Album "Temporary" sind zu hören u.a. Sampha, Bill Callahan, Noah Cyrus, Florence Welch, Maddy Prior, Berwyn, Alabaster Deplume, Jah Wobble, Yazz Ahmed, Laura Groves, Kamasi Washington, Ricky Washington, Roses Gabor, Jack Penate, Samantha Morton, Clari Freeman-Taylor und Nourished By Time. "Temporary" entstand im Verlauf von vier Jahren in Russells Londoner Copper House Studio und während einiger zusätzlicher Sessions in Tottenham, Cumbria, Dorset, Los Angeles und Las Vegas Es schließt an die vorangegangenen Releases wie das 2018 für den Mercury Prize nominierte Debüt an. Auf dem neuen Album erfährt Russells musikalische DNA allerdings ein Reboot: Sein Cut & Paste Approach reicht in die Zeit vor Sampling-Helden wie The Bomb Squad und Prince Paul zurück bis hin zu Innovatoren wie Steve Reich, Robert Rauschenberg und William S. Burroughs. Während Russells Musik bislang geprägt war von Rhythmus, Worten und Melodie - in ebendieser Reihenfolge - tauschen zwei Aspekte diesmal ihre Rollen. Der Rhythmus tritt zugunsten der Melodie in den Hintergrund. Musikalisch ist "Temporary" vom Gedankenexperiment "what if folk music had "gone digital" in the 80s, just as reggae had?" geleitet, während sich in spiritueller und lyrischer Hinsicht vieles um Trauer und den Verlust von Freunden, Familienmitgliedern und Kollegen dreht. Im Ergebnis stehen leuchtende und gelassene Kompositionen, auch dank der faszinierenden und vielfältigen Gästeliste, die "Temporary" mitbringt. Die fragilen, zärtlichen und stillen Tracks liefern vielleicht eines der sanftesten Alben, die je über den Tod geschrieben wurden. "Das Album zu machen, war erfüllend, eine Art, das Leben zu heiligen", so Russell. "Temporary" ist die erste reguläre Veröffentlichung von Everything Is Recorded nach über vier Jahren. In der Zwischenzeit war Russell allerdings nicht untätig. Via Soundcloud und Bandcamp erschienen zuletzt "Summer Solstice", "Autumn Equinox", "Winter Solstice" und "Spring Equinox", die alle mit einer Reihe von Gastmusikerinnen und -.musikern im Rahmen ausgiebiger Jams an jeweils nur einem Tag entstanden. Mit der Schauspielerin und Regisseurin Samantha Morton tat er sich zum Duo Sam Morton zusammen, welches sein Debüt "Daffodils und Dirt" veröffentlichte. Für Peter Gabriels Comeback-Album "i/o" produzierte Russell den Song "Four Kinds of Horses".

The capstone of Miles Davis’ electric period, Agharta reigns as a funk-rock fireball — a blazing comet streaked energy and elan, a fearless organism feasting on adventure and freedom, a seven-headed Godzilla stomping its way through Osaka, Japan. Recorded on February 1, 1975 at Osaka Festival Hall at the first of a two-show stand, the double album offers an endless abundance of surprises and shifts — as well as a road-proven ensemble whose chemistry and abilities equal that of any of Davis’ celebrated bands. If the true measure of jazz is the capacity to adapt to the moment and challenge perception, Agharta is consummate.

Sourced from the original master tapes, housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 33RPM 2LP set of this epic live release presents it in audiophile sound on a domestic pressing for the first time. Offering greater degrees of separation, detail, and richness than the compressed CD editions and more clarity, openness, and presence than older vinyl copies, this version of the 1975 release helps bring the concert stage to your home. Just make sure your turntable and speakers are up to the challenge of Davis and Co.’s explosive performances — and producing the decibels they demand.

Teeming with vibrant colors, tones, and pace, Mobile Fidelity’s reissue captures the hear-it-to-believe-it flow, sweep, and moodiness of the music. Though the group honors looseness and freedom with religious verve, the specificity and scale rendered by this remaster allows you to detect methods behind the alleged madness that are often otherwise harder to discern. This insight extends to the understated changes in volume, harmonics, and phrasings. In many ways, you can listen as Davis himself did that early February evening as he helped coordinate the overall direction and decided on whether to blow his wah-wah-wired trumpet or take a turn on the organ.

Tellingly, Agharta would likely never have been made if not for Davis’ ventures overseas and, specifically, to the Land of the Rising Sun. Having for years faced a backlash on his native soil for his choices to experiment and blow past all known borders, Davis was welcomed with open arms in Japan. The concert documented on Agharta — as well as the day’s later show, captured on the equally exciting Pangea — stemmed from a sold-out three-week tour that would ultimately mark Davis’ final public appearances for years, as he soon settled into semi-retirement and nursed the wounds connected to an unprecedented stretch of restless and relentless output.

For all the band-fueled merit of Agharta — and there’s plenty, given the cast of saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster, percussionist James Mtume, and guitarists Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey seemingly blasts off to outer space and travels distant galaxies by the time this minimally edited record runs its course — Davis’ own playing often remains overlooked. As critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton observed, it is “often fantastically subtle, creating surges and ebbs in a harmonically static line, allowing him to build huge melismatic variations on a single note.” He attacks like a man on a mission, out to prove naysayers wrong and bent on trailblazing another new path forward. Convention and skeptics be damned.

Noisy and furious, dark and discordant, abstract and off-balance, radical and intense, abrasive and atmospheric, strangely beautiful and hypnotically eccentric: Agharta evades simple description, and refuses to be pinned down in any established category — rock, jazz, punk, ambient, prog, avante-garde, or otherwise. Shot through with trench-deep grooves, screaming riffs, scalding solos, and free-improv leads, its cosmic thrust comes on as the equivalent of an animated pointillist painting comprised of millions of textured dots, dashes, and dabs that hold your attention so raptly you want to revisit the ideas again and again.

Always steps ahead of everyone else, Davis knew what he was doing even when Agharta debuted in Japan before later hitting U.S. markets. Though “Maiysha” and “Theme from Jack Johnson” are identified in the track listing, the record contains a number of uncredited references to other Davis works, including a nod to “So What.” This decision to bypass labels only adds to the art of the reveal — the rare black magic in which Agharta expertly deals.

Markus Mattern, a.k.a. Kapillarkraft, lands on Slow Process with ‘Transdermal Patches’, a left-field exploration of vintage electronica.

Mattern, a Bavarian experimental electronic musician and professional drummer, builds this album around a plethora of interesting rhythmic elements. Aquatic timbres ebb and flow around almost-beats from analog drum boxes and Moog synthesizers.

Channeling inspiration from the likes of Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Morton Subotnik and even early hip hop and electro-funk, some of it could be described as left-field electro, while some is just outright off the wall. An ever-present Roland Space Echo assists in the creation of rattling rhythm patterns and pitch dives, two of the album’s prominent sonic signatures. Atonal droplets and washes of simulated industrial noise yield an abiding sense of foreboding and tension, sitting in contrast to a few brief harmonious moments.

It may not be one for the clubs exactly, but it’s a deftly shaped piece of work, brimming with inventive sounds.

Released November 28th on limited edition “pharmaceutical” boxed cassette and digital formats.

In ihrer kurzen gemeinsamen Zeit schufen Albert Ayler und Don Cherry ein Musikwerk, das wirklich im Moment existiert. Ohne Rücksicht auf Regeln und ästhetische Grenzen spielten sie, was sie fühlten, und nahmen Fehler und falsche Wendungen als Teil der Erfahrung des künstlerischen Schaffens im Moment an. Auch nach über sechzig Jahren klingen diese Aufnahmen noch genauso kraftvoll und lebendig wie damals, als sie entstanden sind. Dieses 4xLP-Boxset enthält vier Aufnahmen aus dem Herbst 1964, darunter Live-Auftritte im Jazzhus Montmartre in Kopenhagen und eine VARA-Radio-Session in den Niederlanden. Der Ton wurde remastered und zum ersten Mal auf Vinyl zusammengestellt. Albert Aylers bedeutendes Free-Jazz-Quartett bestand aus Don Cherry an der Kornette, Gary Peacock am Kontrabass und Sunny Murray am Schlagzeug. Mit ausklappbarem Insert mit ausführlichen Liner Notes von Brian Morton.

Dutch artist Sander van der Toorn returns to Kit Records, following his much-loved work with analogue-decayed folk duo Love is Yes, in 2024. While Sander's signature haze of tape-smeared synthesis and motorik guitar is ever present, "kom-kom" represents a departure from the elysian warmth of Love's debut.

The industrial throb of tracks like 'FIVE' and 'Rainhum' bear the deconstructed hallmarks of krautrock pioneers Neu!, and even the dystopic glow of artists like Plastikman or Pole. When kom-kom's harmonic ambitions resurface, such as on the synapse-aching 'Dwarsdoor', or the glassy structures of 'Hazenhart', the effect is startling.

van der Toorn cites the inspiration of Morton Feldman and Sarah Davachi when describing his work less as a linear listening experience, more a collection of sculptures that can be viewed from different angles. In this way, kom-kom doesn't have to move forward; the encounter can be one of stillness, of static objects given movement by the beholder's shifting perspective.

Sounds like: John Fahey being stretched into infinitely long pieces of spaghetti.
Recommended if you like: intercontinental rail travel, Mark Fisher, a nice malbec.

Limited edition of 100 cassettes, with risograph printed artwork.

Everything Is Recorded, ist das musikalische Kollaborationsprojekt von XL-Recordings Chef Richard Russell. Auf dem Album "Temporary" sind zu hören u.a. Sampha, Bill Callahan, Noah Cyrus, Florence Welch, Maddy Prior, Berwyn, Alabaster Deplume, Jah Wobble, Yazz Ahmed, Laura Groves, Kamasi Washington, Ricky Washington, Roses Gabor, Jack Penate, Samantha Morton, Clari Freeman-Taylor und Nourished By Time. "Temporary" entstand im Verlauf von vier Jahren in Russells Londoner Copper House Studio und während einiger zusätzlicher Sessions in Tottenham, Cumbria, Dorset, Los Angeles und Las Vegas Es schließt an die vorangegangenen Releases wie das 2018 für den Mercury Prize nominierte Debüt an. Auf dem neuen Album erfährt Russells musikalische DNA allerdings ein Reboot: Sein Cut & Paste Approach reicht in die Zeit vor Sampling-Helden wie The Bomb Squad und Prince Paul zurück bis hin zu Innovatoren wie Steve Reich, Robert Rauschenberg und William S. Burroughs. Während Russells Musik bislang geprägt war von Rhythmus, Worten und Melodie - in ebendieser Reihenfolge - tauschen zwei Aspekte diesmal ihre Rollen. Der Rhythmus tritt zugunsten der Melodie in den Hintergrund. Musikalisch ist "Temporary" vom Gedankenexperiment "what if folk music had "gone digital" in the 80s, just as reggae had?" geleitet, während sich in spiritueller und lyrischer Hinsicht vieles um Trauer und den Verlust von Freunden, Familienmitgliedern und Kollegen dreht. Im Ergebnis stehen leuchtende und gelassene Kompositionen, auch dank der faszinierenden und vielfältigen Gästeliste, die "Temporary" mitbringt. Die fragilen, zärtlichen und stillen Tracks liefern vielleicht eines der sanftesten Alben, die je über den Tod geschrieben wurden. "Das Album zu machen, war erfüllend, eine Art, das Leben zu heiligen", so Russell. "Temporary" ist die erste reguläre Veröffentlichung von Everything Is Recorded nach über vier Jahren. In der Zwischenzeit war Russell allerdings nicht untätig. Via Soundcloud und Bandcamp erschienen zuletzt "Summer Solstice", "Autumn Equinox", "Winter Solstice" und "Spring Equinox", die alle mit einer Reihe von Gastmusikerinnen und -.musikern im Rahmen ausgiebiger Jams an jeweils nur einem Tag entstanden. Mit der Schauspielerin und Regisseurin Samantha Morton tat er sich zum Duo Sam Morton zusammen, welches sein Debüt "Daffodils und Dirt" veröffentlichte. Für Peter Gabriels Comeback-Album "i/o" produzierte Russell den Song "Four Kinds of Horses".

"Sun" ist das erste Album der aus Tennessee stammenden Baritonsaxophonistin Zoh Amba für das in Oslo ansässige Label Smalltown Supersound - und ihr zweites Album nach "Oh Sun", das 2022 auf dem Label Tzadik erschienen ist. Auf "Sun" stellt Amba eine neu zusammengestellte Gruppe mit einer Reihe von Kompositionen vor, die die Grenze zwischen Performance und Prozess verwischen - wobei sich sowohl die Musik als auch der Akt ihrer Aufnahme in Echtzeit entfalten, teilweise geleitet von improvisatorischen Aufnahmetechniken. Als Bandleaderin bewegt sich Amba an den Rändern eines improvisatorischen Deltas, in dem spiritueller Jazz und Free Folk nicht als getrennte Genres auftreten, sondern als Nebenflüsse derselben Strömung, die beide aus einem gemeinsamen Glauben an die Musik als heilige Kraft entspringen. Die Entscheidung, "Sun" auf Smalltown Supersound zu veröffentlichen, entstand aus einer gemeinsamen Verbindung zum verstorbenen deutschen Saxophonisten Peter Brötzmann, der sowohl ein spiritueller Mentor für Amba war als auch mehrere Platten auf dem Label veröffentlicht hat. Und während das Album in amerikanischen Folk-Traditionen verwurzelt ist, ist es Brötzmanns furchtloser Geist - selbst ein immenser historischer Katalysator für den europäischen Free Jazz -, der wie ein roter Faden durch die musikalische Zusammenarbeit des Ensembles und seine experimentellen Aufnahmetechniken verläuft. Für Amba war es jedoch wichtig, dass das Ensemble - bestehend aus Caroline Morton (Bass), Lex Korton (Piano) und Miguel Marcel Russel (Percussion) - vor den Aufnahmen eine tiefere musikalische Verbindung aufbauen konnte: ,Wir haben tagelang einfach nur zusammen gespielt, und ich habe versucht, mir mental Notizen zu machen, was in dieser Band ganz natürlich vorhanden war - bevor ich Anweisungen gab oder Noten austeilte. Ich wollte sehen, wo wir alle in diesem Moment in unserem Leben standen. Von dort aus begann ich, mit ihnen den Prozess zu gestalten. So entstanden die Struktur der Band und der Ansatz für das Album."

MEMOTONE, aka Will Yates, has announced details of a new 12-track album, smallest things, set for release on World of Echo on 1 August 2025 on vinyl and digitally.

The album launches today with first track, ‘Time Is Away Theme’, a live favourite that is finally available on album. Watch the video HERE Talking about the release, Will has said, “Staring at a square inch of neglected concrete, I recognise the beauty of existence. Quietly hysterical. While humanitarian catastrophes bubble across the planet, the tides remain in constant and disinterested motion. Your money is worth less than the dusty moss that powders this pavement.

It's certainly not worth a life. We are the smallest things, along with everything else." Will Yates has made music as Memotone since 2007. He operates in the tradition of what Robert Fripp has called 'a small, independent, mobile, and intelligent unit.' If you book him, he will come. When he arrives, he will have everything he needs to make his complex, engaging music: a clarinet, a guitar, synths, samplers and pedals, quickly unpacked in the corner of a club, gallery or village hall. Starting small, he will build layer upon layer of melody, accompanying himself and cutting across himself, creating a music that avoids cliche and moves beyond easy description. His recordings have followed the same trajectory. Moving quickly, he has released fifteen or so albums across various labels (including Trilogy Tapes, Discrepant, Soda Gong). Taken together, these recordings are the sound of a skilled, inventive composer pushing at the edges of what he wants to listen to himself. It is possible to hear a variety ofinfluences in his music: folk and jazz forms, the textural inventiveness of British DI electronica and Chicago post-rock and the blurred sci-fi brass of Jon Hassell are all discernible. But mostly, Will's work seems to stem from a constant drift between long hours in his home studio, and time spent outside in the woods and hills around his home in Wales.

Listening to the album, lushness creeps in at the edges, tiny green shoots appear on what might at first appear to be bare soil. smallest things sheds the skin of Will's previous recordings, removing the electronics and the looping and layering of previous work, to create something almost entirely acoustic. But don't be fooled into imagining music that's folksy, pastoral or twee. Opening track 'I Could See the Smallest Things' is a statement of intent. Widely spaced guitar is underpinned by earthy cello and sleepwalking clarinet, making a gorgeous threadbare pattern, which recalls a Morton Feldman miniature or a Morandi still life.

Beyond the skill involved and the years of self-taught music making that have gone into putting this record together, it is Will's close, careful attention and his talent for existing, observing and creating in the moment that make his work special. Memotone will perform at World of Echo’s annual birthday celebration on 8 Nov Expected Music, when they take over Walthamstow Trades Hall for an inter-genre, day-long investigation into some of the more outré manifestations of the contemporary worldwide underground.

For five decades, Harold Budd stood on the forefront of the West Coast avant-garde. Born in Los Angeles, he studied with Schoenberg-pupil Gerald Strang and began teaching at CalArts in 1970. While searching for his own voice, he was influenced as much by abstract expressionist painters as by John Cage and Morton Feldman. In his work, Budd brought delicate, slowing-moving melodies to the foreground – creating a new musical language based on “eternally pretty music” and smooth surfaces.

In the early ’70s, Budd started an extended cycle of compositions that would comprise The Pavilion Of Dreams. For Budd, the album was a signpost for a new direction in thinking about music: “The Pavilion Of Dreams erased my past. I consider that to be the birth of myself as a serious artist. It was like my Magna Carta.”

Produced by Brian Eno in 1978, The Pavilion Of Dreams stands toe-to-toe with another minimalist masterpiece also released that year, Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians. Budd’s gorgeous pieces reveal a lightness of touch that draws the listener in, while sublime voices float in and out as if in a recurring dream. Featuring saxophonist Marion Brown and multi-instrumentalists Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman, The Pavilion Of Dreams remains a master class in exquisite timbre and shimmering texture.

The Pavilion Of Dreams was both the final release on Eno’s Obscure imprint and a transition point towards his seminal ambient series. This first-time reissue is recommended for fans of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jon Hassell and Mark Hollis.

Since its founding back in 2014, Blume has carved a unique place in cultural landscape, issuing free-standing works, spanning the historical and contemporary, that represent singular gestures of creativity within the field of experimental sound. Joining their broad efforts in building networks of context and understanding that already includes the works by Werner Durand, Sarah Hennies, Bruce Nauman, John Butcher, Jocy de Oliveira, Mary Jane Leach, Valentina Magaletti, Alvin Curran, Julius Eastman, Alvin Lucier, and following the first ever vinyl release to attend to James Tenney's legendary Postal Pieces, the label now presents the first LP published by the visionary Swiss composer Jürg Frey. Drawing from the transformative power of breath and resonance, this release represents one of the most profound explorations of musical metamorphosis to emerge from the contemporary experimental landscape.

The completed work represents a "conjunction of these two artists" that has "activated a transformative form of experimentalism." These renderings "dance with an airy lightness, humour, and play, imbuing them with a beauty and emotiveness that can be rare within experimental music." They exist as "breaths, carrying the curiosities of life, belonging to no time and all time, to no one and everyone: a human music to be inhaled and pondered, for which the outcome remains unknown." In this liminal space between composition and interpretation, between breath and resonance, Zurria and Frey have created something that transcends the boundaries of experimental music itself, offering what might be called a metaphysical cartography of sound in its most essential form. As Bradford Bailey observes in his penetrating liner notes, "music is rarely a fixed entity," existing instead in a state of perpetual flux, "taking on the influences of its interpreters and performers." This fundamental truth finds its most eloquent expression in the transformative collaboration between Italian flutist Manuel Zurria and Frey, longtime member of the Wandelweiser Group. Where conventional recordings might preserve a definitive version, this release activates what Bailey calls "states of unknowing and continued experimentation," allowing Frey's compositions to evolve into entirely new dimensional territories. The original string quartet and piano works dissolve into breath-carried architectures of sound, where "the original remains in a constant dialogue with its transformation." This is not mere arrangement but ontological metamorphosis - an alchemical process through which crystalline harmonies are reborn as atmospheric phenomena.

The metaphysical dimensions of this transformation become clear through detailed analysis of the musical result. Where Frey's original compositions operate through what he calls "basic confidence in the clear and restricted material," Zurria's interpretation activates entirely new perceptual territories. Space holds almost atomic sense of weight against the airy punctuations of timbres, textures, and tones, creating "suspensions of time within which questions and identities posed by instrumentation fade." The Extended Circular Music pieces - each comprising "a small number of bars to be repeated an undetermined number of times" - become organizations of sound that defy being definitive or fixed. Originally scored for different combinations of violin, viola, cello, and piano, these works now exist as pure phenomena of breath and resonance, where "hanging, breath-length utterances dance and intertwine amongst complex harmonic clusters and conjunctions."

The philosophical implications of this transformation illuminate a lineage of composers who have moved "away from abstraction and responding to the need to create" something beyond mere technique. Drawing parallels to Morton Feldman's understanding of non-functional harmony, Zurria's approach represents "a transformative form of experimentalism" that activates what Frey calls the "thaumaturgic power" of music - its capacity to heal and transform consciousness itself. The result is "a radical reimagining of ambience: sprawling sonorities and resonances adrift in space, carrying the liberated traces of the work's former incarnations and their truths." In Zurria's interpretation, Frey's String Quartet n.3 becomes something approaching "an organ played in slow motion, its seals leaking," while the Extended Circular Music pieces transform into "glacial chords from a diverse palette of voicings, harmonies, timbres, and tones."

Performed by Manuel Zurria. Recorded and mixed by Zurria at BigCardo, Catania between 2022-2024, with mastering by Bruno Germano at Vacuumstudio, Bologna, this Blume release represents a profound exploration of musical transformation.

The Making Of Five Leaves Left tells the story of how Nick Drake’s debut album ‘Five Leaves Left’ came to be released in 1969. This Nick Drake Estate authorised 4LP edition comprises over 30 previously unheard outtakes from the sessions, compiled across three discs. The final disc to complete the package is the original Joe Boyd produced album. The whole set has been mastered by John Wood. Accompanied by a 60 page book printed on special textured paper stock, written by Neil Storey in collaboration with Richard Morton-Jack, complete with full track recording details, charts and recording history. This Nick Drake Estate authorised 4CD edition comprises over 30 previously unheard outtakes from the sessions, compiled across three discs. The final disc to complete the package is the original Joe Boyd produced album. The whole set has been mastered by John Wood.
Accompanied by a 60 page book printed on special textured paper stock, written by Neil Storey in collaboration with Richard Morton-Jack, complete with full track recording details, charts and recording history.

The first and most independent of all independent producers, Joe Meek needs little introduction. He was the first to chart in both the UK and the USA with an independently produced song -which was actually recorded in his home’s kitchen- when The Tornados' Telstar took the world in 1962. Meek was, of course, one of the most in vogue producers of the first half of the 1960s, providing the soundtrack to the evolution of UK Rock’n'Roll to Swinging London, scoring hits with actors like John Leyton (Johnny Remember Me), showmen like Screaming Lord Sutch and bands like The Outlaws and The Tornados. He also produced a wide stream of R&B and freakbeat 45s that are nowadays hardly sought after by the collectors with the biggest bank accounts.

Joe Meek experimented with all kinds of recording techniques in his home studio, his tricks and gimmicks won his productions chart placement and critical and public acclaim, but none of his projects was so advanced and way out as the avantgarde experimentation showed in his I Hear a New World electronic symphony from 1960. Aided by The Blue Men formed by Rod Freeman (group leader, guitar, vocals), Ken Harvey (tenor sax, vocals), Roger Fiola (Hawaiian Guitar), Chris White (guitar), Doug Collins (bass), Dave Golding (drums) -also known as Rodd-Ken and The Cavaliers- who provided a tight base to his electronically produced sounds, Meek came up with what he envisioned as the soundtrack of the future, the sounds he envisioned were to be heard in outer space. It was too way out for its time, certainly. To the point that of all the opus, only four tracks saw the light of day on a 7" EP released on Triumph, Meeks very own label. It wouldn’t be until 1991 that the whole recordings from the I Hear a New World sessions would see the light of day on a CD issued by the RPM label.

Wah Wah offers a new reissue of this now classic early electronics masterpiece, housed in a beautiful front-laminated back-flapped sleeve and offered as a limited 400 copies only black vinyl version and an ultra-limited 100 copies only transparent purple vinyl. Get yours before they fly!

RIYL : Delia Derbyshire and The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Louis and Bebe Barron’s soundtrack to Forbidden Planet, Raymond Scott, Tom Dissevelt & Kid Baltan, Morton Subotnick…

The first and most independent of all independent producers, Joe Meek needs little introduction. He was the first to chart in both the UK and the USA with an independently produced song -which was actually recorded in his home’s kitchen- when The Tornados' Telstar took the world in 1962. Meek was, of course, one of the most in vogue producers of the first half of the 1960s, providing the soundtrack to the evolution of UK Rock’n'Roll to Swinging London, scoring hits with actors like John Leyton (Johnny Remember Me), showmen like Screaming Lord Sutch and bands like The Outlaws and The Tornados. He also produced a wide stream of R&B and freakbeat 45s that are nowadays hardly sought after by the collectors with the biggest bank accounts.

Joe Meek experimented with all kinds of recording techniques in his home studio, his tricks and gimmicks won his productions chart placement and critical and public acclaim, but none of his projects was so advanced and way out as the avantgarde experimentation showed in his I Hear a New World electronic symphony from 1960. Aided by The Blue Men formed by Rod Freeman (group leader, guitar, vocals), Ken Harvey (tenor sax, vocals), Roger Fiola (Hawaiian Guitar), Chris White (guitar), Doug Collins (bass), Dave Golding (drums) -also known as Rodd-Ken and The Cavaliers- who provided a tight base to his electronically produced sounds, Meek came up with what he envisioned as the soundtrack of the future, the sounds he envisioned were to be heard in outer space. It was too way out for its time, certainly. To the point that of all the opus, only four tracks saw the light of day on a 7" EP released on Triumph, Meeks very own label. It wouldn’t be until 1991 that the whole recordings from the I Hear a New World sessions would see the light of day on a CD issued by the RPM label.

Wah Wah offers a new reissue of this now classic early electronics masterpiece, housed in a beautiful front-laminated back-flapped sleeve and offered as a limited 400 copies only black vinyl version and an ultra-limited 100 copies only transparent purple vinyl. Get yours before they fly!

RIYL : Delia Derbyshire and The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Louis and Bebe Barron’s soundtrack to Forbidden Planet, Raymond Scott, Tom Dissevelt & Kid Baltan, Morton Subotnick…

[a] A1 竹内まりや*– Brighten Up Your Day!; Arranged By – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Computer Programming], Drum Programming, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Keyboards; Percussion, Backing Vocals – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[b] A2 竹内まりや*– 小さな願い (2024 New Remix); Arranged By – 山下達郎*; Backing Vocals – ハルナ; Drums – 島村英二*; Electric Bass – 伊藤広規*; Piano, Organ – 難波弘之*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[c] A3 竹内まりや*– ベイビー・マイン (日本語Ver); Acoustic Guitar – 佐橋佳幸*; Music By – Frank Churchill; Percussion, Backing Vocals – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Computer] –; Anders Dannvik; Words By – Ned Washington; Words By [訳詞] – 竹内まりや*, 古垣内麻衣
[d] A4 竹内まりや*– 君の居場所 (Have A Good Time Here); Arranged By – 山下達郎*; Bass Trombone – 山城純子*; Concertmaster [Strings] – 今野均*; Piano, Marimba, Soloist – 難波弘之*; Programmed By [Computer Programming], Drum Programming, Electric Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Backing Vocals – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Trombone – 鍵和田道男*, 高橋朋史; Trumpet – 具志堅創*, 二井田ひとみ*; Voice – ピカチュウ*, コダック; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[e] B1 竹内まりや*– Smiling Days (2024 New Remix); Programmed By [Computer Programming], Drum Programming, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Keyboards, Ukulele,; Percussion, Backing Vocals – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Soprano Saxophone – 宮里陽太*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[f] B2 竹内まりや* Duet With 杏里*– Watching Over You; Alto Saxophone – 宮里陽太*; Backing Vocals – Ena*, 三谷泰弘*, ハルナ; Concertmaster [Strings] – 加藤Joe*; Electric Guitar – 山下達郎*; Electric Guitar, Keyboards, Programmed By – 林哲司*; Music By, Arranged By – 林哲司*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Words By – 竹内まりや*
[g] B3 竹内まりや*– 遠いまぼろし; Arranged By – 杉真理*, 小泉信彦*; Backing Vocals – 竹内まりや*, 杉真理*; Cello – 平山織絵*; Classical Guitar [Gut Guitar], Backing Vocals – 渡辺格*; Keyboards, Programmed By – 小泉信彦*; Music By – 杉真理*; Percussion, Backing Vocals – 高橋結子*; Violin – 阿部美緒*; Words By – 竹内まりや*
[h] B4 竹内まりや*– Subject:さようなら; Arranged By – 鈴木俊介*; Backing Vocals – 松浦亜弥*; Electric Sitar, Acoustic Guitar, Programmed By [Computer Programming] – 鈴木俊介*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[i] C1 竹内まりや*– 夢の果てまで; Arranged By – 増田武史*; Backing Vocals – 竹内まりや*, 早見沙織*, 山下達郎*; Concertmaster [Strings] – 室屋光一郎*; Programmed By [Compuer Programming], Electric Bass, Electric Guitar, Soloist – 増田武史*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[j] C2 竹内まりや*– Tokyo Woman; Arranged By – Box (16); Drums – 島村英二*; Electric Bass, Handclaps, Backing Vocals – 小室和幸*; Electric Guitar, Handclaps – 田上正和*;N Handclaps – 竹内まりや*; Handclaps, Backing Vocals – 松尾清憲*, 杉真理*; Piano, Organ [Hammond] – 小泉信彦*; Tambourine – 飯尾芳史*; Words By, Music By – Box (16)
[k] C3 竹内まりや*– 旅のつづき (2024 New Remix); Arranged By – 牧戸太郎*; Backing Vocals – 竹内まりや*; Concertmaster [Strings] – 室屋光一郎*; Electric Bass – 伊藤広規*; Electric; Guitar, Backing Vocals – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Tenor Saxophone – 鈴木圭*; Trombone – 半田信英*; Trumpet – 二井田ひとみ*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[l] C4 竹内まりや*– Coffee & Chocolate; Arranged By – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Computer Programming], Drum Programming, Acoustic Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion,; Backing Vocals – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[m] C5 竹内まりや*– Days of Love; Music By, Arranged By – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Computer Programming], Drum Programming, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Ukulele, Percussion – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Words By – 竹内まりや*
[n] D1 竹内まりや*– 歌を贈ろう; Arranged By – 山下達郎*; Backing Vocals – 生田絵梨花*; Programmed By [Computer Programming], Drum Programming, Electric Guitar, Acoustic; Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Backing Vocals – 山下達郎*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[o] D2 竹内まりや*– 今を生きよう (Seize The Day) (2024 New Remix); Arranged By – 山下達郎*; Backing Vocals – Ena*, 三谷泰弘*, ハルナ; Drums – 島村英二*; Electric Bass – 伊藤広規*; Piano, Organ [Hammond] – 中西康晴*; Programmed By [Computer Programming], Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Backing Vocals – 山下達郎*
[p] Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*

[r] D4 竹内まりや*– 今日の想い (2024 New Remix); Acoustic Guitar – 佐橋佳幸*; Arranged By – 牧戸太郎*; Concertmaster [Strings] – 今野均*; Electric Guitar – 山下達郎*; Flute – 高桑英世*; Oboe – 庄司さとし*; Programmed By [Computer Programming], Drum Programming – 牧戸太郎*; Programmed By [Synthesizer] – 橋本茂昭*; Words By, Music By – 竹内まりや*
[s] D5 竹内まりや*– May Each Day; Arranged By – 服部隆之*; Arranged By [Chorus] – Jennifer Lucy Cook; Backing Vocals – Jennifer Lucy Cook; Clarinet – 高子由佳*; Classical Guitar [Gut Guitar] – 石成正人*; Concertmaster [Strings] – 室屋光一郎*; Drums – 山木秀夫*; Electric Bass – 高水健司*; Flute – 下払桐子*, 森川道代*; Harp – 朝川朋之*; Liner Notes [日本語訳] – 丸山京子*; Oboe – 最上峰行*; Piano – 野力奏一*; Words By, Music By – George Wyle, Morton J. Green*

Bryan Beller's (Joe Satriani, Aristocrats, Dethklok) epic progressive double concept 2019 album feat. 26 all-star musicians now on Blue Swirl 2LP in gatefold jacket available! Bassist/composer Bryan Beller (The Aristocrats, Joe Satriani, Dethklok, Steve Vai) presents a sweeping, epic-scale modern progressive double concept album that asks the question: When the storm comes for us, the big one after which things will not be the same, who are we and what do we become in those defining moments? What do we keep, and what do we let go? "Scenes From The Flood" employs an all-star cast of 26 musicians to explore themes of ambition and loss, intentionality and reality, hope and disillusionment. It uses every second of its 18-song, 88-minute running order to tell an emotionally consuming and unforgettable musical story. Produced and composed by Bryan Beller (except "Angles & Exits," composed by Janet Feder), mixed and mastered by Forrester Savell. "Scenes From The Flood" is performed by: Christopher Allis, Bryan Beller, Nili Brosh, Paul Cartwright, Darran Charles, Julian Coryell, Mike Dawes, Janet Feder, Guthrie Govan, Ray Hearne, Gene Hoglan, Mike Keneally, Jamie Kime, Fred Kron, Teddy Kumpel, Jake Howsam Lowe, Evan Mazunik, Nate Morton, Rick Musallam, Mike Olekshy, Griff Peters, John Petrucci, Matt Rohde, Joe Satriani, Rishabh Seen, Joe Travers, Leah Zeger.

Auf ihrem neuen, fünften Studioalbum "Kidron" defi niert sich die deutsch-niederländische Progressive Metal Kultband SACROSANCT neu und überzeugt auf acht episch-melancholischen, teils schnellen und durchweg hymnischen Tracks, samt Gesangs-Neuzugang Max Morton, auf ganzer Linie. Ein Freudenfest für Fans anspruchsvoller, komplexer Klänge mit Tiefgang.

Never to rest on his laurels, Pronsato returns with two motif based tracks on Logistic. In this new work, Pronsato stitches four motifs together over two tracks (plus two digital only outtakes). Vocals, marimba, piano and pads are the forces at work here. Each playing a game of peek-a-boo throughout the four pieces...

Pronsato's approach to each of these compositions highlights his mastery in balancing complexity with accessibility, allowing each motif to shine individually while contributing to the overall narrative arc of the four pieces. Think ECM in the 80s meets Morton Subotnick...With dance stuff thrown in for good measure.

When Sonny Rollins arrived to Los Angeles in early 1957, he discovered that Ray Brown was also in town with Oscar Peterson's trio and that Shelly Manne was on hand leading a band of his own. The result was a March 7, 1957 recording session, Way Out West, which marked Rollins' very first date in a trio setting and his first recording without the accompaniment of a piano or guitar. The saxophonist was at the height of his career during this period and in 1957 he was named the "New Star" tenor saxophonist in the Down Beat critics' poll. THE COMPLETE ALBUM + 1 BONUS TRACK - Contains new specially prepared liner notes by Penguin Guide to Jazz's writer BRIAN MORTON and by Paris' prestigious JAZZ MAGAZINE.

While working on his next studio album Allen Stone realized he had enough material for multiple records, and thus the 7-song Mystery E.P. was born. Featuring 7 new songs including the title track produced by 5-time Grammy winner PJ Morton (Stevie Wonder, Maroon 5) and "Can't Explain This Love" produced by Eric Krasno of Soulive, Allen Stone returns with a groovy, vibrant mini-album that hooks you from the first beat.

Unlike most of Grant Green's many trio albums, Green Street, which was his second LP as a leader following Grant's First Stand, didn't make use of the organ or the piano, consisting instead of guitar-bass-drums format. Backed by such subtle players as Ben Tucker and Dave Bailey, Green could showcase his talents with no inhibition, making this one of the most remarkable works of his whole career. 180-GRAM COLORED BLUE VINYL - THE COMPLETE LP + 1 BONUS TRACK - Contains new specially prepared liner notes by Penguin Guide to Jazz's writer BRIAN MORTON and by Paris' prestigious JAZZ MAGAZINE. LIMITED EDITION







[f] Alone Together [Alt. Take]

Originally issued under Cannonball's name (but with both Wes Montgomery and Ray Brown mentioned on the cover), Cannonball Adderley and the Poll Winners was one of countless albums that used awards garnered by the participating musicians as a promotional tool. Of course, all of this publicity seems irrelevant now, considering that both leaders have long been consecrated as among the best jazz men ever. Both showcase a wonderful chemistry here, in their only session ever as co-leaders. 180-GRAM COLORED RED VINYL - THE COMPLETE LP + 2 BONUS TRACKS - Contains new specially prepared liner notes by Penguin Guide to Jazz's writer BRIAN MORTON and by Paris' prestigious JAZZ MAGAZINE. LIMITED EDITION




[d] Au Privave [Alt. Tk]

The complete album + one bonus track - 180-gram virgin vinyl includes especially prepared essay by jazz writer Brian Morton.

In 1977 this classic punk album had a sound flaw and wasn"t heard properly until it was recompiled in 1994 - after both former New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan had died. Now songs like Born to Lose and Chinese Rocks are acclaimed as punk anthems. The album was remastered and repackaged in 2017 to celebrate its 40th anniversary, but has only ever been in black vinyl since then. "That "L.A.M.F.", the only studio album by Johnny Thunders" swaggering, smacked-up post New York Dolls outfit, The Heartbreakers, is one of New York punk"s defining artefacts (despite being recorded in Britain), is beyond dispute. 12 songs that put the guitarist"s abiding passions - Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, Phil Spector and Shadow Morton girl groups, glam, garage, trash and junk - in perfect, speedy collision." - Damien Love, Uncut mag, 9/10.

'Freak The Speaker' is an evolution of The Allergies trademark sound, seeing duo Moneyshot and Rackabeat deliver their biggest beats to date on their latest album. They enlist a quality melting pot of artists to bring additional vibrancy with K.O.G, Ohmega Watts, Dynamite MC, Dr Syntax, and Skunkadelic, all stepping up to the plate. Long-time collaborators and live tour band members Andy Cooper Ugly Duckling, sax supremo James Morton and soul sensation Marietta Smith, continue to keep it nice and lively, rounding off another quality album full of funk, soul and hip-hop, guaranteed to provide good vibes and shake your sound system.

Promo

"A banger from those Bristol boogie boys" Craig Charles on 'Koliko'

"Obsessed with this new track from The Allergies." Lauren Laverne on 'Koliko'

"I love that it's recognisably you but also an evolution from what you've done before... " Adam Walton - BBC Wales

"All over this one. Absolutely incredible." Lauren Laverne on 'No Flash'

"Hot new release." Steve Lamacq on 'No Flash'

"Boom-bap rap cut from the finest cloth." Chuck D (Public Enemy) on 'No Flash'

Alter is proud to present the debut full length release from devotional music outfit Unstern, a collaborative effort between deep ambient artist Arzat Skia and prodigal pianist Leo Svirsky. Co-mixed by Swedish electronic music luminary Civilistjävel! and Arzat Skia and mastered to tape by Stefan Betke, the album features lush electronics, two pianos refracting across the stereo field, processed recordings from the Peruvian Amazon, bowed percussion by Greg Stuart, alongside strings and renaissance meantone organ recorded at Orgelpark in Amsterdam.

The results are an abundant audio illusion where what seemingly repeats slowly over time morphs in a manner where the destination escapes the departure point with extreme discretion, a reverent nod to Morton Feldman's compositional method of "Crippled Symmetry."

Throughout Es Geht Der Tag there is a muted, refined melancholy imbued with a constantly fluctuating pulse which generates a sense of temporal disorientation, leaving the listener lost in a strange yet not at all unfamiliar sonic labyrinth. It is a journey whereby a glorious subtle tension exists between the grandiose and the restrained.

This is environmental music, not in the sense of capturing nature itself, more with regards to an unfolding of audio elements which move in a manner in tune with the multitude of flows in the world.

Unstern’s Es Geht Der Tag is a deep mental journey, rich in subtle transcendental tendencies and psychic liberation.

The very first Buchla synthesiser performance by revolutionary composer Suzanne Ciani finally makes its fifty year journey from its switch-on New York art gallery to its long deserved and discerning global phonographic audience.

With this previously unheard vinyl pressing, Finders Keepers Records are proud to present an archival project of ‘art music’ that not only redefines musical history but lays genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we have come to understand it. To describe Italian-American composer Suzanne Ciani’s resurrected Buchla concert records as genuine gamechangers would be a gross understatement. These records represent a musical revolution, an artistic revelation, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counterculture creativity. This sonic installation album, alongside her recently liberated WBAI/Phill Niblock 1975 sessions (FKR082), are triumphant yardsticks in the synthesiser space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial musical moon. While pondering the early accolades attached to these golden era New York recordings it’s daunting to learn that these records were in fact not even records at all.

What exists on this disc now was a manifesto and a one-time gateway to a new world, which somehow was only partially pushed ajar. Captured here is a genuine live act exploring new territories with a fully performable music instrument. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic pulses, tones and harmonics found on these 1970’s artistic gallery collaborations/ live presentations (then soon to be followed by academic grant applications and educational demonstrations) had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the widely marketed work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita, then the name Suzanne Ciani and her infectious influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record.

With the light of Buchla and Ciani’s initial flame Finders Keepers continues the journey through the vaults of this increasingly celebrated music legacy, illuminating these ‘non-records’ that evaded the limelight for almost half a century. You can’t write history when you are too busy making it. With fresh ink in the bottomless well, let’s start at the beginning. Again

Specially prepared liner notes by renowned music writer Brian Morton.
Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982) became one of the best- known and
most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century and particularly renowned
as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Gould's
playing was distinguished by his remarkable technical proficiency and his
capacity to articulate the polyphonic texture of Bach's music.
This release presents Gould's complete original 1955 rendition of Bach's Goldberg
Variations (Columbia, ML-5060). The work launched the pianist's career as a
renowned international player and became one of the most well- known piano
recordings. Sales were astonishing for a classical album at that time - 40,000
copies by 1960, and more than 100,000 by the time of Gould's death in 1982.

COMPLETE ALBUM + 8 BONUS TRACKS -180g VIRGIN VINYL - LIMITED EDITION

Specially prepared liner notes by renowned music writer Brian Morton. From his early days as a pioneer of rockabilly and rock & roll in the 1950s, to his decades as an international representative of country music, to his resurgence to fame as both a living legend and an alternative country icon in the 1990s, Johnny Cash has influenced countless artists and left a body of work matched only by the greatest artists of his time. This LP presents some of his greatest hits, including the classic I Walk the Line.

Johnny Cash (1932-2003) developed a unique sound from his early Sun recordings with the Tennessee Two. His unusually deep, resolutely un-decorous voice rode atop the boom- chicka- boom guitar style invented by his right- hand man Luther Perkins and a rockabilly-ish slap bass by Marshall Grant.

ALL-TIME GREATEST HITS - 20 TRACKS - 180g VIRGIN VINYL - LIMITED EDITION

Specially prepared liner notes by renowned music writer Brian Morton. Ray Conniff (1916-2002) was a powerful arranger and trombonist who created a subtle combination of big band jazz with the most varied genres of pop music. He became successful early in his career and his music is still played and admired. Presented here are twenty of his all-time greatest hits. "Don't make art for other artists or 'intellectuals', make art for people - and if you can touch just one person in a lifetime and make a difference - you have succeeded" -
Ray Conniff

Specially prepared liner notes by renowned music writer Brian Morton.

After an impasse in which she mostly recorded with tightly arranged groups (for Commodore) and big bands with strings (for Decca), Billie Holiday signed her last long-term contract with Norman Granz who tried to repeat the small group magic of her early days.

Solitudewas among Billie's first studio sessions for Granz and features the singer backed by Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, the Oscar Peterson Trio, and Alvin Stoller or J. C. Heard.

Specially prepared liner notes by renowned music writer Brian Morton. Brazilian singer/ song writer Joao Gilberto was a legend of bossa nova. While Antonio Carlos Jobim set the standard for the creation of bossa nova in the mid-'50s (with songs like The Girl from Ipanema and Desafinado), it was Gilberto who brilliantly reimagined defined the genre.

In 1959 Gilberto presented his first LP, Chega de Saudade presented here. The title song turned into a massive hit, launching Gilberto's career and the bossa nova craze.

"In 1959, before I left my hometown, I heard Joao Gilberto. And hearing Joao Gilberto was a revolution in my mind; it was an enlightenment, really. I knew that something had to happen, something was already happening, and that Brazil could be freer and bigger and could make some kind of original contribution for world
civilization." - Caetano Veloso (Brazilian singer/composer)

2024 Repress

Finders Keepers invite you to witness the incredible first ever Buchla synthesiser concerts/demonstrations providing a distinctive feminine alternative to The Silver Apples Of The Moon if they had ever been presented in phonographic form. This is history in the remaking.

This spring Finders Keepers Records are proud to release an archival project that not only redefines musical history but boasts genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we've come to understand it. To describe this records as a game-changer is an understatement. This record represents a musical revolution, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counter culture creativity. This record is a triumphant yardstick in the synthesiser space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial moon. While pondering the early accolades of this record it's daunting to learn that this record was in fact not a record at all... It was a manifesto and a gateway to a new world, that somehow never quite opened. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic, pulses, tones and harmonics found on this 1975 live presentation/grant application/educational demonstration had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the promoted work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita then the name Suzanne Ciani and her influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record collections. Hopefully there is still chance.

In short, Suzanne was a self-imposed twenty-year-old employee of the Buchla modular synthesiser company, San Francisco's neck and neck contender to New York's Moog. Buchla was run by a community of festival freaks and academic acid eaters whose roots in new age lifestyles and the reinvention of art and music replaced the business acumen enjoyed by its likeminded East Coasters. In the eyes of the consumer the creative refusal to adopt rudimentary facets like a piano keyboard controller rendered the Buchla synthesiser the more obscure stubborn sister of the synth marathon, steering these incredible units away from the mainstream into the homes and studios of free music aficionados, art house composers and die-hard revolutionaries. Championed and semi-showcased by composer Morton Subotnick on his albums The Bull and Silver Apples Of The Moon, Buchla's versatility began to open the minds of a new generation, but the high-end design features and no-compromise modus operandi was often confused with incompatibility and, in the pulsating shadow of Moog's marketing, the revolution would not be televised nor patronised. Suzanne Ciani, as one of the very few female composers on the frontline (and also providing the back line) did not lose faith.

These concerts' are the epitome of rare music technology historic documents, performed by a real musician whose skills and academic education in classical composition already outweighed her male synthesiser contemporaries of twice her age. At the very start of her fragile career these recordings are nothing short of sacrificial ode to her mentor and machine, sonic pickets of the revolution and love letters to an absolutely genuine vision of and 'alternative' musical future. In denouncing her own precocious polymathmatic past in a bid to persuade the world to sing from a new hymn sheet, Suzanne Ciani created a bi-product of never before heard music that would render the pigeon holes ambient' and futuristic' utterly inadequate. Providing nothing short of an entirely different feminine take on the experimental records' of Morton Subotnick and proving to a small, judgmental audience and jury the true versatility of one of the most radical and idiosyncratic musical instruments of the 20th century. These recordings have not been heard since then.

The importance of these genuinely lost pieces of electronic musics puzzle almost eclipses the glaring detail of Suzanne's gender as a distinct minority in an almost exclusively male dominated, faceless, coldly scientific landscape. Those familiar with Suzanne's work, a vast vault of previously unpublished non-records', will already know how the creative politics in her art of being' simultaneously reshaped the worlds of synth design, advertising and film composition before anyone had even dropped a stylus in her groove. Needless to say this record, finally commanding the archival format of choice, courtesy of the Ciani and Finders Keepers longstanding unison, was not the last first' with which this hugely important composer would gift society, and the future of a wide range of exciting evolving creative disciplines.

You have found a holy grail of electronic music and a female musical pioneer who was too proactive to take the trophies. With the light of Buchla and Ciani's initial flame Finders Keepers continues to take a torch through the vaults of this lesser-celebrated music legacy shining a beam on these non-records' that evaded the limelight for almost half a century. You can't write history when you are too busy making it. With fresh ink in the bottomless well, let's start at the beginning. Again. You, are invited!

Zweimal jährlich, wenn die Sonne direkt über dem Äquator steht, sind Tag und Nacht fast gleich lang. Sofia degli Alessandri-Hultquist, alias Drum & Lace, fasziniert diese Symmetrie. Ihr neuestes Album 'ONDA', inspiriert von den Wellen des Ozeans, spiegelt ihre musikalische Reise wider, von der Kindheit in Florenz bis zur elektronischen Avantgarde.

'ONDA' vereint Tanzrhythmen und tiefe Bässe, eine Hommage an ihre Zeit in Florenz und ihre Leidenschaft für europäische House-Musik und experimentelle Klänge. Drum & Lace verbindet darauf elektronische Texturen mit natürlichen Aufnahmen und schafft so eine erdverbundene, organische Klangwelt.

Sofia studierte Musiktechnologie an der NYU und wurde u.a. von Größen wie Morton Subotnik inspiriert. Ihre bisherigen Alben 'Natura' (2022) und 'Frost' (2023), sind beide stark von der Natur beeinflusst. In Live-Performances kombiniert sie audiovisuelle Elemente und teilte bereits die Bühne mit Künstlern wie Suzanne Ciani, William Basinski oder Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.

'ONDA' (Fabrique Records), das sich tief in Tanzrhythmen und die Schönheit des Ozeans vertieft, markiert auch einen neuen musikalischen Weg für Drum & Lace.

- Ltd. LP: (Transparent Vinyl)

Probably the best Milt Jackson LP as a leader, Plenty, Plenty Soul presents him playing the blues in the company of such stars as Cannonball Adderley, Joe Newman, Jimmy Cleveland, Horace Silver, Oscar Pettiford and Art Blakey, among others. THE COMPLETE ALBUM + 1 BONUS TRACK - Contains new specially prepared liner notes by Penguin Guide to Jazz's writer BRIAN MORTON and by Paris' prestigious JAZZ MAGAZINE




d Heartstrings [With the Oscar Peterson Trio]




[d] Heartstrings [With the Oscar Peterson Trio]

"""Trumpeter, vocalist, songwriter, and producer Keyon Harrold will release his debut album Foreverland, blending a unique hybrid of Jazz and Hip-Hop/R&B on Concord Jazz, January 19, 2024. This special curation of 10 original tracks includes special guests Common, Robert Glasper, PJ Morton, and more. Keyon Harrold was born and raised in Ferguson, Missouri, one of 16 children in a family of musicians. He graduated from the School of Jazz at The New School. Keyon considers Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet, Prince, Dr. Dre, J Dilla, and Common as influences. His first solo album, Introducing Keyon Harrold, was released in 2009 to high praise. During that time, Keyon became a notable crossover performer, becoming a staple of New York jazz clubs and providing instrumentation for recordings by Jay-Z, Beyonce, 50 Cent and touring with Rihanna, Eminem, D'Angelo, and many more. Keyon received wide acclaim for supplying all of the trumpet playing in Don Cheadle's Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead (2015). His sophomore album, The Mugician, released in 2017, was well-received by fans and critics alike.
HIGHLIGHTS: Sold Out 2 x Ronnie Scotts, Jazz FM Playlist, 6Music Support FINANCIAL TIMES ★★★★ – “a closely produced set that supports and surrounds his elegant, soulful fluency with vocals, edgy beats and rap”
THE OBSERVER “genre-defying post-bop” THE OBSERVER ★★★★ Album review"""

The complete original album Money Jungle (United Artists UAS 15017), which was the only trio collaboration of Duke Ellington with Charles Mingus and Max Roach. Both youngsters greatly admired Duke. Ellington himself briefly featured Roach in his band during the early 1950s, and expressed on multiple occasions his appreciation for Mingus' compositions. Most of the repertoire here was especially composed for the date, while the only old tunes they recorded were "Warm Valley", "Caravan", and "Solitude". 180-GRAM COLORED BLUE VINYL - THE COMPLETE ALBUM - Contains new specially prepared liner notes by Penguin Guide to Jazz's writer BRIAN MORTON and by Paris' prestigious JAZZ MAGAZINE

The complete original Erroll Garner album Concert by the Sea (Columbia CL-883), which marked the pianist's best-selling record ever. There was actually no official plan to record the concert, and the release came about because Garner's personal manager, Martha Glaser, spotted that a tape recorder was running backstage and decided to use the tape, originally intended for the Armed Forces Radio Network. A live version of the perennial Garner composition "Misty," performed by the same trio the following year, has been added as a bonus. 180- GRAM COLORED RED VINYL - THE COMPLETE ALBUM + 1 BONUS TRACK - Contains new specially prepared liner notes by Penguin Guide to Jazz's writer BRIAN MORTON and by Paris' prestigious JAZZ MAGAZINE

Loup Vert is the first jazz album of French pianist Julien Grassen Barbe, joined for the occasion by double bassist Sébastien Bacquias and drummer Fabien Duscombs. Conceived and composed in the Pyrenees mountains, recorded around Paris, it is an album of twelve tracks that came as a response to the proposal of Julien Galner (producer, founder of HIDD label). Loup Vert is the name of a fetish, a creature that breathes inspiration. Informed by many influences, from Frédéric Chopin to Morton Feldman, from Erik Satie to Herbie Hancock, through Keith Jarrett, Madlib and Naftule Brandwein, Julien Grassen Barbe's music opens a space dedicated to improvisation, melody, and the exploration of textures. Trained in classical music, graduate of the conservatory of the Hautes-Pyrénées region, where he is originally from, Julien Grassen Barbe is a songwriter and a musician, but also an ethnomusicologist, specialist in Jewish music, and a published author. A trip to New-York, land of Thelonious Monk, had a deep impact on him. He used it as a time for jam sessions, lessons with some of his favorite musicians, Aaron Parks, Aaron Goldberg, Barry Harris. Between 2014 and 2016, he explored pop, invited by Chateau-Marmont and Exotica to collaborate on two records as a keyboardist. It is on this occasion that he got closer to Julien Galner, producer, founder of the HIDD record label who asked him to record a jazz record. They entered the studio to record Loup Vert, a project that is a cross between impressionism, cinema, be-bop, mathematics and improvised music. Most of the pieces were written by Julien Grassen Barbe, mixing acoustic and electric/electronic worlds.

Love Is Yes is the first album by Sander van der Toorn and Dax Niesten, an audio-visual duo de force of the same name.

This heady debut is rooted equally in the worlds of fine art and experimental music. Sound and image meld wonderfully across 10 tracks, with shifting movements of music accompanied by a wealth of paintings and animations.

Niesten's work summons the likes of Philip Guston and Maurice Sendak - with its crestfallen, cartoonish voids and cockle-warming grotesquery. Serenely contorted creatures are rendered on large canvases, and brought to fuzzy, maudlin life through a full-length animation that can be viewed alongside the record.

Musically, the pair cite influences ranging from Vashti Bunyan to Morton Feldman. There is an ornate fragility, smeared by zero gravity focus shifts. Some glimpses suggest a corroded grail of Boards of Canada samples; motorik guitar, whispered messages, euphoric vistas and tangled memories all bathing in atomic glow.

With his seemingly endless capacity for creating compositions which have an alluring quality, and which are often wrapped in a mesmerising arrangement that pays homage to those towering sound constructions made by Phil Spector, Shadow Morton, Brian Wilson and the likes, veteran New York polymath Marc Jonson is also deserving of household name status. Involved in making records since the mid-sixties, Jonson's latest long-play collection is a particularly special glimpse into a secret stash of recordings made between 1979 and 2012 in his tiny flat on Cornelia St., New York's Greenwich Village, during the years we spend living (and surviving) there. These tracks are only now seeing the light of day, with many featuring Jonson at his melodic, awe-inspiring best; soul-baring, honest and vulnerable. Spanning these grooves are such delightfully told stories as 'The Man Who Walks On Air', 'November Paint Brush', the atypical jazz stylings of the instrumental title cut, plus the revealing light that is 'The Moon' and the magical, wide eyed beauty as conjured by 'Ages Of Wonder'. These tracks are only now seeing the light of day, with many featuring Jonson at his melodic, awe-inspiring best; soul-baring, honest and vulnerable. "Those who have taken the leap into Jonson's hitherto unknown musical world will be able to tell you that this is not only an experience which is immensely rewarding, but it's also one which needs to be heard to be believed. The captivating layers and mesmerising quality heard throughout lies in the way Jonson's startling array of songs seem to breathe in and exhale from many different, often eclectic elements." Lenny Helsing (Shindig!, Ugly Things Magazine).

Amazing floaty modern soul / disco goodness out of late 70s Queens, NY. 'Love Is The Same' two brilliant and different versions, both dancefloor fire…

Mark Beiner met Ben Iverson in 1976 when I was 17 years old, at the time he was a junior at Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens. Mark had taken a part time job as a Produce Clerk at Walbaum's Supermarket on Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights, Queens, where I met Ben Iverson, the "Frozen Food Manager."

Back then Mark remembers, 'I was going to work early just to talk to him about his musical background and his time spent in the 50's and 60's with the Ohio Doo Wop Group, "The Hornets", or better known as, "Ben Iverson and The Hornets."'

In 1978 after Ben and I discussed getting together and composing music, I started writing poetry and expressing in writing my break-up with my college girlfriend, Paula. Ben and Mark went on to writing two albums worth of material, which in turn gave us a lot of time and presence on stage at our live gigs.

The regular Coast to Coast Band members consisted of Ben Iverson on Lead Vocals, Rhythm Guitarist and Co-Executive Producer, Joe Crowley, who is known today as "New York Congressman Joe Crowley." Carl (Woody Wood) Morton on Bass Guitar, Jimmy Johnson on Keyboards. Lead Guitarist, Lou Jimenez, currently owns his own recording studio, Music Labs in Elmont, Long Island. On Drums, Eddie Byam, on Alto Sax, Jay Cohen, who in the 70's used to record for "Gary U.S. Bonds." Gary Pevols on Trumpet. On Bone, Scott Burrows, Trumpet player, Steve Becker, along side Neil Levine, Stan Stockley, Tom Russo.

In his “Pulse Music” compositions of the mid-1970s, composer John McGuire forged a unique interpretation of European serialism. A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki and Gottfried Michael Koenig, McGuire moved to Cologne, Germany in 1970, where he become associated with the world-leading Studio for Electronic Music at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne. Like Stockhausen, McGuire found his musical imagination both constrained and inspired by the technology that was available to him.

A conversation with sculptor Hans Karl Burgeff led McGuire to think beyond the horizon and into limitless space. For “Vanishing Points” (1985–1988), McGuire used an entirely digital set-up for the first time: a digital sequencer, eight Yamaha DX-7 synthesizers and a Studer 24-track digital tape recorder. The piece was conceived as a “sequel” to the Pulse Music series, but also a step forward from it. Whereas the Pulse Music pieces had employed steady streams of pulses, with Vanishing Points McGuire employed pulse layers that accelerate or decelerate against one another, vastly increasing the resulting rhythmic complexity.

McGuire's exploration of music technology continued in “A Cappella” (1990–1997), written for his wife, the soprano Beth Griffith, known for her recording of Morton Feldman’s “Three Voices” made in 1983. Using samples, he created a four-voice choir of voice samples and arranged them into interacting parts. The composition faced challenges due to the organic nature of the human voice compared to the precision of synthesized sounds. This process involved extensive editing and a negotiation between the "material" and the "original conception". This sort of negotiation applies as much to the composition of a single piece as it does to the work of two decades.

Homemade, charming folk-rock with the lovely voice of MANDY MORTON, 12-string guitars, dulcimer, mandolin, fiddle… Fabulous covers of “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme”, “Matty Groves” and more!

Formed in the early 70s, Spriguns of Tolgus evolved from the folk duo of Mandy & Mike Morton and the scene centered around their Anchor Folk Club in Cambridge. In 1974, the band (Mike and Mandy plus Rick Thomas and Chris Russon) decided to produce a recording to raise funds for new equipment. Using a small tape recorder and mixing desk, “Rowdy Dowdy Day” was recorded live in the dining room at the band’s rented house. A small number of cassettes were produced and subsequently sold at the Anchor Folk Club.

With the original cassette impossible to find now, we’re glad to present a new vinyl edition.

“We grew up in the ’60s to the sound of The Beatles; we embraced flower power and all it brought with it; and we indulged ourselves in every type of music on offer. From America came The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, and here in the UK we celebrated our own heroes, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band and later Steeleye Span” – Mandy Morton

“Jack With A Feather” was the first vinyl album (after the private cassette only release of “Rowdy Dowdy Day”) by SPRIGUNS OF TOLGUS, just before they shortened their name to SPRIGUNS and signed to Decca, recording two classic progressive folk-rock albums.



Recorded in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, the album offers mostly traditional songs with charming homemade atmosphere, psychedelic touches, male / female vocals (by MANDY MORTON), acoustic/electric guitars, mandolin, dulcimer, fiddle… One of the tracks, “Seamus The Showman”, originally written by Tim Hart of Steeleye Span (future Spriguns producer), landed the band a deal with Decca Records.

Dreams are made and displaced on Mark Fell & Rian Treanor’s oneiric electro-acoustic inception 'Last Exit', borne from long days in the family garden, and assembled into a mesmerising masterpiece of minimalist modal rhythm and atmospheric exploration, into rapt smallsound detailing in breathtaking form. It’s a bit like listening to Virginia Astley’s ‘From Gardens Where We Feel Secure’, with washes of Autechre seeping into the mix from outside.

‘Last Exit…’ originally appeared in a different form as a cassette release for our Documenting Sound series in 2021, and was edited this year by Mark and Rian for this new expanded and altered edition, mastered by Rashad Becker. It renders a painterly,psychedelic, and diaristic depiction of sublime atmospheric tension, occasionally ruptured by their typical, asymmetric rhythm impulses in a form that rudely transcends their respective aesthetics. Across four parts, they kern, juxtapose and diffract synthesised percussion and field recordings into polymetric arrangements riddled with timbral nuance of a highly unpredictable nature.

While patently inflected with nods to Indonesian gamelan, Ugandan folk, Indian Carnatic classical, Morton Feldman-esque minimalism, free jazz improvisation and a sort of rhythmic cubism that speaks to their mutual, voracious listening habits and tastes, the results are arguably without direct compare. Attentive listeners will recognise, however, that ‘Last Exit’ effortlessly transcends their respective styles, achieving a new high watermark of imaginary future-hyperfolk expressed in a sort of personalised but highly relatable meta-musical language.

Seriously, they’re working beyond known conventions here; opening to a sublime frisson of Feldman-esque keys, birdsong and distant car engines, and closing to a combo of just-intoned drone and wafts of distant ballroom music. The 80 minutes in between feel like returning to a dream, with flashes of FM strings dabbed to sloshing rhythms and domestic detritus, tilting into a nervously tentative tension ruptured with abstract dance dynamism and angular free jazz ballistics.

The rejigged recordings also reflect the fidelity of memory recall, expressing an altered perspective on their time spent in the multigenerational family’s Rotherham garden during spring/summer 2020, replete with their mum/grandmother on piano and overheard singing and in convo, but now fraught with a more melancholic, distempered quality that makes for a genuinely unforgettable listening experience. A long-form isolationist fantasy, consider it crucial listening if yr into Robert Ashley's 'Automatic Writing', Graham Lambkin, Autechre or Nuno Canavarro.

New double-LP edition of a selection from Saltern’s acclaimed collection of recordings surveying the career of renowned, American cellist, Charles Curtis. Selected by Curtis and Tashi Wada from recordings spanning two decades, Performances & Recordings 1999-2018 offers a broad, inclusive view of Curtis’ activities across the diverse worlds of music he inhabits, featuring the music of

The Sun Makers (written by Robert Holmes) aired in November and December of 1977 with Tom Baker as the Doctor and is set on a tax-crippled planet Pluto. Along with trusty assistant Leela and faithful K9, he exposes the corrupt Company, defeating the Collector and freeing the population from financial misery.

Composer Dudley Simpson (1922-2017) wrote prolifically for the BBC, producing hundreds of soundtracks for Doctor Who, The Tomorrow People, Blake’s Seven and many others. The Sun Makers was scored for just six musicians and recorded, for the main part, live in the studio. However, such is the musicianship of the players, several of whom where multi-instrumentalists, the resulting sound is much bigger. The sleeve includes full notes by Mark Ayres.

The Sun Makers (written by Robert Holmes) aired in November and December of 1977 with Tom Baker as the Doctor and is set on a tax-crippled planet Pluto. Along with trusty assistant Leela and faithful K9, he exposes the corrupt Company, defeating the Collector and freeing the population from financial misery.

Composer Dudley Simpson (1922-2017) wrote prolifically for the BBC, producing hundreds of soundtracks for Doctor Who, The Tomorrow People, Blake’s Seven and many others. The Sun Makers was scored for just six musicians and recorded, for the main part, live in the studio. However, such is the musicianship of the players, several of whom where multi-instrumentalists, the resulting sound is much bigger. The sleeve includes full notes by Mark Ayres.

The electric eels were the first punk band, full stop. They may not have “started” the genre, but they were the first to tick all the boxes. The eels rejected every 1970s rock convention—professionalism, virtuosity, subject matter, image. Dave E.’s caustic vocals, complete with an aggressive lisp and a head full of snot, would become de rigeur a few years after the group disbanded. Meanwhile, the songs’ focus on car crashes, suicide, neuroses, and generally hating people were as far out of the mainstream as possible. The two eels tracks that do approach the subject of romance couch it in terms of not really caring that much about it (“Jaguar Ride”) or placing it in the context of a grisly murder (“Silver Daggers”). Also consider John Morton’s signature guitar sound, a nails-on-chalkboard tone with brutally free soloing inspired more by Albert Ayler than the blues or aspirations to technical facility. Ditto Dave E.’s clarinet playing and affection for lawnmowers and vacuums during live performance. They were notoriously violent not only among themselves, but towards audiences, police, and anyone unfortunate enough to be around them when things went south. Then of course there are the leather jackets, the clothing festooned with rat traps or safety pins. And no bass player, why bother. There is simply no other “proto” band to have had all these pieces in place circa 1973- 1975. Yet it is a mistake to consider the eels exclusively in such a context. Yes, the eels could and did shock anyone who encountered them, but they also had great songs. While both Dave and John were visionary writers, they also had rhythm guitarist Brian McMahon, a melody and riff machine who wrote many of the band’s signature songs. And they were no one-trick pony. Although much of the band’s material is appropriately high-energy, there is also the downer eels—morbid, harmonically risky, and in full existential crisis. Although it’s not a focus of this compilation, the eels also had a penchant for completely free improvisation. Over the last forty plus years, there have been several electric eels compilations. Spin Age Blasters is quite simply the best one ever assembled, every single key track is here in its best version, properly mastered by John Golden, and sequenced with an eye towards both flow between tracks as well as individation between sides. A true monster of an album.

Mighty Baby evolved out of the Action, club favourites who released a number of poor-selling singles. Dropped by Parlophone, musical chairs saw Ian Whiteman (keyboards/flute) and Martin Stone (guitar) join and the music now blended progressive psychedelia with longer pieces dominated by instrumental prowess rather than Reggie King’s soulful vocals. King departed and guitarist Alan King and Whiteman began to share vocal duties on newly penned material like ‘Egyptian Tomb’ and ‘House Without Windows’ that, in retrospect, can be seen as reflecting light from the dark star of the Grateful Dead.

“Mighty Baby” was first released on the Head label on 7th November 1969 in a superb gatefold sleeve with artist Martin Sharp serving up the arresting front cover that looked like a lion being showered in blood. The album received positive reviews, with International Times stating “The music has a hundred characters… Eastern, Oriental, country, folk, rock, blues, pop etc. etc… At this moment in time Mighty Baby’s record is simply THE best thing in its class.”

The album is now seen as a progressive rock classic; cohesive, with no low spots, the inventiveness and musical prowess on a par with the equally revered, albeit jazzier, prog rock band Cressida. This latest edition from Ace, not only replicates the gatefold sleeve of the original but also contains an inner sleeve replete with memorabilia from the collection of Richard Morton Jack

“Mighty Baby” is a must-have purchase not only for fans of the band but those who want to discover this classic progressive rock album for the first time.

Limited edition classic LP, reissued on 180g vinyl, audiophile pressing
One of the best albums by the ill-fated trio of Bill Evans with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian.

Penguin Guide To Jazz review:
"All the Vanguard music is informed by an extra sense of discovery, as ifthe musicians were suddenly aware of what they were on to and werecelebrating the achievement.

This is music which continues to provokemarvel and endless
study." - Richard Cook & Brian Morton

Devon Church ist ein aus Winnipeg, Manitoba, stammender und in New York City lebender Singer-Songwriter. Er war viele Jahre lang Multiinstrumentalist, Co-Autor und Produzent des Dreampop-Duos Exitmusic, dessen Album Passage 2012 bei Secretly Canadian erschien und von Pitchfork als "aufrührerisch, cineastisch und manchmal brillant" beschrieben wurde. 2018, im selben Jahr, in dem Exitmusic ihren Abgesang The Recognitions auf felte veröffentlichte, brachte Church sein Solodebüt We Are Inextricable ebenfalls auf felte heraus, das die texturalen elektronischen Elemente, die er während der Exitmusic-Jahre genutzt hatte, in den Dienst eines Songwriting-Stils stellte, der in der Folk-Rock-Tradition verwurzelt ist. Nachdem Church 2019 in den gesamten USA aufgetreten war (im Vorprogramm von Orville Peck, Adam Green, Kirin J Callinan und Black Marble), machte er sich an die Arbeit, um sein neuestes Werk, Strange Strangers, aufzunehmen, während er in einer Scheune im ländlichen Pennsylvania Zuflucht vor der globalen Pandemie suchte. Das größtenteils selbst produzierte Album klingt, als hätte Eno aus der Apollo-Ära Phil Spector auf halbem Wege zu den Aufnahmen von Death of a Ladies Man die Regler (und die Pistole) entrissen. Die atmosphärischen Elemente von Churchs früheren Produktionen werden auf dem Album sublimiert und in den Dienst von bandgesättigtem Gesang, Combo-Orgeln und Gitarren gestellt. Seine Stimme, die seit seinem Debüt selbstbewusster und zurückhaltender geworden ist, ist immer noch irgendwo zwischen einem lakonischen Lee-Hazelwood und einem rauchigen Tom Waits, aber sie wird bei Stücken wie dem intensiv melodischen und treibenden "Flash of Lightning in a Clear Blue Sky" deutlich ruhiger. Die engelsgleichen Backing Vocals von Churchs Partnerin, der Künstlerin Ada Roth, verleihen dem Bariton des weltmüden Erzählers eine Aura von traumhafter Leichtigkeit. Wenn Roth in gedämpften, an Hope Sandoval erinnernden Tönen in den Vordergrund tritt und einen Text wie "We're so bored of the apocalypse" vorträgt, nehmen die Dinge eine subtil bedrohliche Wendung in Richtung Pop-Surrealismus. Ein Sinn für kosmischen schwarzen Humor hat sich in Churchs Texte eingeschlichen. Strange Strangers leiht sich den Titel von dem Öko-Philosophen Timothy Morton: "The strangeness of strange strangers is itself strange, meaning the more we know about an entity the stranger it becomes."

The Well & The Gentle, two of the major works of Pauline Oliveros, are presented here in a first time reissue on double vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with extensive liner notes.

If Oliveros had followed a more conventional path she may have, all social obstacles aside, been considered among the major composers of her time. However, Oliveros approached composition in a more egalitarian manner. She wrote music for musicians to interact with or, in the composers words, she wished to create "an inclusive and interdependent and unfolding world of relationships."

Oliveros' propensity towards inclusion is part of what makes this work so remarkably distinctive. The Well & The Gentle is carefully crafted, allowing performers to participate in the creation of the work. Players are asked to collaborate, focus, react and make imaginative choices. Only then can the performers "pass through stages of awakening to the possibilities inherent in making music, working together, leading to the essence of what can shape musical impulses and individual freedom simultaneously."

Unlike most major composers of the era, Oliveros' work focuses on collaboration and improvisation. For Oliveros, the processes involved in making music are as fundamental as the music itself. Oliveros creates, as Arthur Sabatini put it so eloquently in the liner notes, "A world in which sound and the practices entailed in making music merge; become, at once, source and atmosphere, energy and essence, presence and dynamic."

Pauline Oliveros was an electronic music pioneer, accordionist, composer and educator who resided in Kingston, New York. Her instrument was tuned in Just Intonation and she often included it in her meditative improvisational music. Her music is not meditative in the sense that it is intended for listening to while meditating, rather each piece is a form of meditation, such as her aptly titled Sonic Meditations.

A central figure in post-war electronic art music, Oliveros is one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (along with Morton Subotnick, Ramon Sender, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Anthony Martin), which was the resource on the U.S. West coast for electronic music during the 1960s. The Center later moved to Mills College, where she was its first director, and is now called the Center for Contemporary Music. Oliveros often improvised with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.

It is recognized today that these tutelary pieces for four pianos are among the most powerful in contemporary music,their impact is almost unparalleled. After the historical version recorded forty years ago, this one, featuring four of the greatest European performers, is now regaining its full power. High level recordings too.

There was some for John Cage, then came Christian Wolff, and finally Morton Feldman, from this school in New York. Only Julius Eastman remained outside the game, the last figure, the most solitary and enigmatic - undoubtedly also one of the most powerful, and it is this power that is revealed through these recordings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. He was politically committed, a figure of queer culture and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny : suffering from various addictions, declared missing, actually homeless. During Winter of 1981-82, he got deported from his apartment by the police, who destroyed most of what he owned - including scores and recordings. He was found dead in 1990, on the streets of Buffalo, after years of vagrancy.

The Performers Nicolas Horvath, pianist and electroacoustic composer Nicolas Horvath is known for his boundariesless musical explorations - he has collaborated with leading contemporary composers from around the world, including Alvin Lucier, Alvin Curran and Valentyn Silvestrov - the recordings of his complete works for piano by Phil Glass made a lasting impression. He has collaborated recently with Lustmord on the Deconstruction of November by Dennis Johnson (Sub Rosa SR502: The Fall).

Melaine Dalibert, a French composer and pianist, fascinated by natural phenomena which are both expected and unpredictable, Dalibert has developed his own algorithmic procedures of composition which contain the notion of stretched time evoking Morton Feldman, minimal and introspective, adopting a unique concept of fractal series.

Stephane Ginsburgh, a tireless surveyor of the repertoire but also explorer of new music, collaborated with composers such as Philippe Boesmans, Jean-Luc Fafchamps, Stefan Prins, Frederic Rzewski and Matthew Shlomowitz of whom he premiered works, as well as with choreographers such as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Rosas) and recorded Feldman, Duchamp and Satie for Sub Rosa and the complete set of Prokofiev piano sonatas for Cypres. Wilhem Latchoumia, he embraces both new music and the classical repertoire with success and charisma. His two last recordings for La Dolce Volta (Prokofiev and de Falla) have been highly acclaimed by critics with a FFFF in Télérama. Winner of the Hewlett-Packard Foundation and the Montsalvatge International Piano Competition, he brilliantly won the First Prize in the 2006 Orléans International Piano Competition.

There is an endless abundance of variations that the clarinet can use in changing the colour of a single note. As a privileged listener - and - experiencer, Ben Bertrand through his favourite instrument shared the musical blueprints with me, which resulted in this album. His music has become a vivid part of my almost daily thoughts - allowing what I hear to clash and sing with the patterns and rhythms already established in my mind. A voluntary trip, an absorbing experience in our Brussels vibrant cultural life. With his instrument and countless machines, Ben creates a web of sounds that are hard to pin down but easy to absorb as a whole. Ben Bertrand happened to me. His music, full of beauty, is good to listen to and pleasant to follow. A sense and perception of continued growth too illuminated and overwhelming to resist. While I sense when a new composition is coming, Ben was able in our daily conversations, to progressively untangle a musical mystery and layout the puzzle of a new creation. Listening to his music is like sitting at the sea, watching a slow motion of our crazy life sailing by. You, as a listener, with this record stepped in an early stage of his career, with hardly any involvement of other people, composition wise. Besides composing alone, there have been countless hours when Ben Bertrand worked and interacted with Christophe Albertijn for the recordings. There is also the essence of our regular exchanges and the visions we knit. These are in my opinion just the starting points of plural interactions and musical endeavours to be. It is a matter of his artistic trust and let go, while Ben creates his own language, package and macrocosm. The excellence of Ben Bertrand's music lays in its involving and easily accessible nature, regardless of your personal or musical past experience. Ben Bertrand is all before you for you to dig, and nobody is asking you to file him away under any category. - Tommy Denys

Louis Armstrong and The Good Book pressed on 180g red vinyl, includes
new specially prepared liner notes by Penguin Guide To Jazz's writer
Brian Morton and Paris' prestigious Jazz Magazine
" An unusual album in the Louis Armstrong canon, this collection of gospel songs,
spirituals, homilies, and comic vignettes was the only religious album this
determinedly secular musician recorded." - AllMusic

Repress.

There is an endless abundance of variations that the clarinet can use in changing the colour of a single note. Ben creates a web of sounds that are hard to pin down but easy to absorb as a whole. A sense and perception of continued growth too illuminated and overwhelming to resist.

Ingredient is the elegant collaboration of Toronto poets, composers, producers and dear friends Ian Daniel Kehoe and Luka Kuplowsky. Their self-titled release is an enigmatic electronic avant-pop record attuned to the micro and macro perspectives of the natural world. Ingredient is an album whose lyrics are more poem than lyric, and whose songs exist in a merger of house music, philosophically-minded lyricism and contemporary R&B. One might recall electronic and art-pop luminaries such as Yukihiro Takahashi, The Blue Nile, and Arthur Russell, or connect it to contemporaries like Nite Jewel, Westerman and Blood Orange. A distinct world of dance, of questions, of secrecy and ultimate softness.

Eight years of friendship forges strange telepathy.

In the summer of 2020, Ian Daniel Kehoe was entrenched in a new feeling of heaviness; psychosomatic symptoms had started to proliferate; stress made new pores across the body, bending sensitivity into pain. His days were met with confusion, detachment, sleeplessness and pain without causation. Disfigured, he felt that what had been central and centering was blown out to the periphery of things. In a moment of self-preservation he reached out to his dear friend Luka Kuplowsky to make an album together. For Kehoe, it was an instinctual grasp for the anchoring truthfulness of deep friendship and the potential for a dedicated creative collaboration. Kuplowsky’s presence was light, supportful and curious, eager to explore musically the sounds they were mutually drawn to: house music, ambient pop, dub. The duality between Kuplowsky and Kehoe – between the Aflight and the Unmoored – is a portrait of a friendship whose exchanges came easy and produced an outpouring of song. Creation and therapy crisscross. In email correspondence that catalogs their process of collaboration, affection abounds: “feels bare without the Luka Licks”, or “Love you so much”, or “Kinda just overwhelmed with deadliness coming in at all angles.” When their voices first come in together on “Wolf,” that harmony arrives in a dramatic avant-pop sound that is bold and wondrous.

Kuplowsky and Kehoe both arrive at Ingredient as established artists whose works are committed to language’s propensity to provoke and mystify. Kuplowsky’s 2020 album Stardust is an idiosyncratic and otherworldly blend of pop and jazz romanticism grounded by Cohen-esque vocals and a stirring philosophical curiosity. Kehoe’s entrance into the new decade has hatched four records of pop experimentation, most recently 2022’s Yes Very So, a euphoric and bold album of poetic synth-pop and meditative ambient instrumentals. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s union as Ingredient is a beautiful and unusual chemistry that integrates their distinct approaches while bringing forth a newness: a sound that alternates between cinematic technicolor and dubbed out fogginess; a lyricism that exchanges their lucid and clear poetics for a playful and obtuse verse. The album intuitively taps into the opposing emotional states of Kuplowsky and Kehoe during the conception of the record, contrasting the buoyancy of trumpeting keyboards (“Resurface”), angelic synthesized voices (“Come”), and rolling bass (“Photo”) with the record’s underlying darkness of whirring buzzsaw textures (“Transmission”), whooping sirens (“Wolf”) and murky ambience (“Illumination”). Lyrically, this duality arises in the record’s flux between openness (“Variation”, “Raindrop”) and existential dread (“Wolf”). “Illumination” most clearly crystalizes this opposition, reconciling the verses’ neurotic yearning for enlightenment with the chorus’ liberating doctrine of negation: “no more devotion… no more delusion”. Amidst the gradations of light and dark, Kuplowsky and Kehoe trade indelible, lush melodies as though their voices are made of a substance that melts easily one into the other. The harmony of poetry, sound, and texture cuts through your brain fog like a wet diamond.

Ingredient’s self-titled record was assembled by Kuplowsky and Kehoe over the course of six months in a home studio they frequented daily. Amidst synthesizers and drum machines they composed, re-composed, and workshopped a wide array of music, ultimately focusing on a set of eight songs that lived in a shared musical and philosophical world. Recording days often ended in basketball games at a local court or a rooftop commune over a pot of tulsi tea and a crossword puzzle. Kuplowsky brought in the Blue Cliff Record – the classic anthology of Chan Buddhism – whose inscrutable and sublime insights remained constant throughout the recording process as an activator of reorientation and reflection. While Kehoe was frequently rendered physically immobile by bouts of anxiety, a patience and mutual caring governed the pace of their creation; rest, stretching and meditation became equally important as the act of arrangement. Invited into their intimate circle of composition was Thom Gill, whose heavenly voice uplifts “Variation” and “Raindrop,” and Karen Ng, whose alto sax simmers and dances around the funky strut of “Raindrop.”

The lyrics on Ingredient reflect the persistence of change, the infinite variability of nature where randomness and divergence are no accidents. In Daoism, duality, in the form of Yin and Yang, is not contradictory as it is in Western idealist philosophy, but rather composes the eternal and lived paradox of our changeless-changing universe: changeless because all is change, and changing because the dynamism of the Dao makes each moment transformational. Kuplowsky and Kehoe refract this way of seeing the world, as in Variation: “Variation in the natural world / there it is.” Ingredient is an experience of the manifold ways of saying there it is of the transformational world, and there it is, unfolding. Elsewhere, change and ephemerality is addressed through the record’s preoccupation with non-human perspectives, reorienting the listener to the wolf, the mouse, the emerald frog, the centipede, the bird, the fly in the lamp. The album cover visualizes this fascination with the striking image of a reddish-orange frog atop a defamiliarized landscape of dark green leaves. Mirroring the exploratory process of the record’s collaboration, the frog also signals the amphibian’s natural inclination to leap into boundless potential. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s lyrics manifest philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton’s concept of “the mesh,” drawing attention to the “vast, entangled web” of interconnectedness that connects all life forms and interweaving the songwriters’ shared wonder into the Animal’s unknowability. As Luka narrates in the breakdown of the dance-floor ready “Photo,” “the closer we observe things, the further they retreat into abstraction.” In Ingredient’s ecosystem, perception is a reversible fractal where the world’s minutest details mirror the shape of the cosmos.

According to the Dao, the path to healing starts by reorienting perception away from the self and toward the self’s subsumption in Totality. For Kehoe, collaborating with Kuplowsky became the reorientation necessary for the self-preservation he was seeking, opening up a shared creative practice to navigate and soften the complexity of his psychological shattering. The album begins with Kuplowsky intoning “colossal faith” which bounces around the stereo field in a cloud of echo, and it is the enormity of “faith” that centers both Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s collaboration and their inquisitiveness in the vast mysteries of our very being. Truth in Ingredient is not an essential nugget, but a bending of the light – it is the equivocal entanglement of how we are in nature as nature, but with a plea or prayer under our breath that marks our felt distance from what we are a part of: “carry me towards the mountains of my birth / returning to the nest / the silence of the earth.”

A premiere recording from the Talujon percussion ensemble of The Plains at Gordium by composer Petr Kotik, whose pioneering work as founder and leader of the S.E.M. Ensemble has been a stalwart champion of the Avant-Garde from its inception, at the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, SUNY/Buffalo, in 1970 to present day. Well-loved recordings by the S.E.M. Ensemble (Julius Eastman: Femenine, The Entire Musical Work of Marcel Duchamp, Morton Feldman: For Philip Guston) are easy to find. That has not been the case for Kotik's own music. This beautiful recording of a relatively recent work by Kotik provides a beguiling, labyrinthian entry into Kotik's own musical vision.

A legendary indie audio artist blurring his lifelong attachments, from spontaneous composition (in the late 70's with John Zorn) to experimental rock (with Bongwater and other bands in the 80's) alongside his recent inquiries into the intricacies of ambient-folk songcraft (with his most recent solo LP, "And The Wind Blew It All Away"), Kramer continues to explore the possibilities of shaping naturally occuring aural landscapes into intoxicatingly affecting music. Sound and language - not just melody and ambient textures - has been his raw material for decades. He nowjuggles them more deftly than ever on his newest ambient opus. In the ten compositions that comprise this new LP, mournful at times yet mysteriouslylife-affirming and generous in their scope, Kramer sees films where there arenone, and composes his accompanying ambient soundtracks in a state of interrupted grace. Words, text, complete screenplays, character arcs, shooting scripts and storyboards swirl through his head as he puts his imagery to sound, and the results evoke a world in which moths, drawn to the bright flickering lightsof Cinema and the low humming lights of Dreams, in Kramer's own words, "...might never die". The LP's nature reveals an interior dialogue between musician and choice. Each piece represents Kramer's encounter with the blank canvas of silence that greets him as a composer. Embracing sounds as objects and instruments of Truth, the end result of his process is as much about what is absent and what has been removed or edited away than what is left in its wake as artifacts of emotion. These pieces are the Spring frost of lost imaginings, vanitas to broken connections, visions nearly unrecordable by the human eye. Kramer envisions a music that functions to stoptime, as an event that always plays in the present and never needs a past to give it a reference point. It is music that communicates in the most intimate way possible, as intricately and as deeply as the way it blossoms and shifts and evades categorizationwhen exposed to thin air. Drawn toward the light of a multitude of influences, we hear echoes of the feverishly frozen dreams of composers Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, Brian Eno and Arvo Part, melting alongside the surreal cinemas of David Lynch and The Brothers Quay, all parts converging to evoke a time and place that does not exist outside of the mind's eye of the listener. These ten works are fluid adventures in fathomless landscapes, emotions distilled and offered as a paintless painting without a physical home. Each individual composition is an offering to a future memory, a chalice to be filled with the listener's own reactions to them. As a whole, the ten pieces form an image of ten circling planets in an expanding galaxy that colors itself anew with each subsequent listen. Movement, grace, and Peace.

Matmos are one of the most prominent experimental electronic artists working today, crafting work by creating new conceptual frameworks & immediately testing those frameworks absolute limits. For Regards / Uklony dla Boguslaw Schaeffer they've focused on another artist known, in large part, for doing the same. Boguslaw Schaeffer was one of the first Polish artists creating electronic music. In step with American contemporaries like John Cage and Morton Feldman, he worked across the boundaries of classical composition, electronic experimentation, and radical theater in playfully form-breaking ways. Matmos are not the first ones to recognize the power of his catalog, from Solo (a 2008 documentary that garnered numerous international awards), to the annual Shaeffer's Era Festival (most recently celebrated simultaneously in Warsaw and Los Angeles) his work continues to inspire. Regards.. however, was not just inspired by his work, Matmos were given access to the entirity of Schaeffer's recorded works to use as they saw fit, commissioned by the prestigious Instytutu Adama Mickiewicza. They re-assembled & re-combined these recorded works with modern instrumentations in a way that only Matmos could, and what emerges is a composite portrait of the utopian 1960s Polish avant-garde and the contemporary dystopian cultural moment regarding each other across a distance. To facilitate the transcultural exchange that is the album's essential premise, all song titles and liner-notes are provided in both English and Polish. The album was mastered by Rashad Becker and features illustration and design by acclaimed artist Robert Beatty (Tame Impala, Osees, Mdou Moctar). Like the anagrams of the letters of Boguslaw Schaeffer's name that were re-assembled to create some of the song titles, the album itself is a musical re-assemblage of component parts into possible but unforeseen new shapes. Adding harp from Irish harpist Una Monaghan, erhu, viola and violin from Turkish multi-instrumentalist Ulas Kurugullu, and electronic processes from Baltimore instrument builder Will Schorre, and Horse Lords wunderkind Max Eilbacher, the resulting arrangements constantly toy with scale as they move from the close-mic-ing of ASMR and the intimacy of chamber music to the immensity of processed drones and oceanic field-recordings that close the album. Offering a "life review" of production styles, Regards / Uklony dla Boguslaw Schaeffer builds temporary shelters out of the panoramic wreckage of modernist composition, sixties tape music, seventies dub, eighties industrial music, nineties postrock and dark ambient, 2000s era glitch fetishism, and contemporary post-everything collage sensibilities.

 Matmos are one of the most prominent experimental electronic artists working today, crafting work by creating new conceptual frameworks and immediately testing those frameworks’ absolute limits. For ‘Regards/Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer’ they’ve focused on another artist known, in large part, for doing the same.

 Bogusław Schaeffer was one of the first Polish artists creating electronic music. In step with American contemporaries like John Cage and Morton Feldman, he worked across the boundaries of classical composition, electronic experimentation and radical theatre, in playfully form-breaking ways.

 Matmos are not the first ones to recognize the power of his catalogue, from ‘Solo’ (a 2008 documentary that garnered numerous international awards), to the annual Shaeffer’s Era Festival (most recently celebrated simultaneously in Warsaw and Los Angeles), Bogusław Schaeffer’s work continues to inspire.

 ‘Regards/Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer’, however, was not just inspired by his work. Matmos were given access to the entirety of Schaeffer’s recorded works to use as they saw fit, commissioned by the prestigious Instytutu Adama Mickiewicza. They re-assembled and re-combined these recorded works with modern instrumentations in a way that only Matmos could, and what emerged is a composite portrait of the utopian 1960s Polish avant-garde and the contemporary dystopian cultural moment regarding each other across a distance.

 Vinyl packaged with digital download card.