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Across eight studio albums, DECAPITATED grew from the adolescent dream of teenagers from a small Central European town to one of the leaders of the metal genre. Each successive album further expands the band’s sound with genre-bending authenticity and integrity. As Metal Injection rightfully observed, “any self-respecting death metalhead knows the name well.”

DECAPITATED’s music is a weapon forged by four young men from a historic medieval-fortified town in Poland, which catapulted them to the top of a worldwide subculture. Like a rose in the devil’s garden, the DECAPITATED story builds triumph from tragedy. The gleeful grotesquery of extreme metal imagery and rifftastic bludgeoning beckons listeners to uncover broader truths.Upon the release of 2017’s Anticult, Metal Hammer declared DECAPITATED “a serious successor to the likes of Pantera and Lamb Of God – a band who can draw new legions into the metal world as its new champions.” Their diverse follow-up, 2022’s Cancer Culture, delivers on that promise.

Instantly recognizable devastation and deceptively sinister hooks abound. Freshly minted DECAPITATED anthems like “Last Supper,” “Hello Death,” “Just Cigarette,” “No Cure,” “Iconoclast,” and “Cancer Culture” shimmer with sonically sharp production and unrelenting bombast. There’s also a newly increased emphasis on melody, even venturing into darkly romantic territory. Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka (guitar), Rafał "Rasta" Piotrowski (vocals), Paweł Pasek (bass), and James Stewart (drums) are at the top of their game, delivering the goods at peak performance. Jinjer vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk and Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn make guest appearances.

Set on the descending plains of a mountain range amid a dense forest, Krosno boasts a 14th-century Gothic church, a Subcarpathian museum, and stunning artisan glassware. In this Polish town, teenage music student Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka discovered records from bands like Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Metallica, and Machine Head. The guitarist and his younger brother, drummer Witold “Vitek” Kiełtyka, cofounded DECAPITATED in 1996, inspired by a wide range of technical death, blackened thrash, and local heroes, like KAT and the world-renowned Vader. Death and black metal reigned supreme in the Polish scene of the 1990s, where Behemoth originated as well. In fact, a Vader song called “Decapitated Saints” inspired the band’s moniker.
The organic musical chemistry between the Kiełtykas was akin to the brotherly connectivity and vibe driving Pantera, Gojira, and the classic era of Sepultura. In 2006, Kerrang! praised the first three DECAPITATED albums - Winds of Creation (2000), Nihility (2002), and The Negation (2004) – as “superbly conceived and executed eruptions of technical brilliance and razor-sharp songwriting that turned these youthful Poles into one of the genre’s most widely respected bands.” That year’s Organic Hallucinosis further perfected Vogg’s penchant for blending extremity with catchy hooks.

The rule-breaking ferocity and invention of the first four albums reinvigorated death metal, as DECAPITATED inspired a new generation of bands who followed suit. Sadly, this era came to a shocking end in late 2007. While touring Russia, the band’s bus collided with a large truck near the border with Belarus. Both Vitak and then-singer Adrian “Covan” Kowanek sustained severe head injuries. Tragically, Vitak passed away in a Russian hospital a few days later. He was just 23.Vogg summoned the courage to continue, in honor of his brother and what they created, and returned with a new incarnation of DECAPITATED and the fiercely adventurous comeback album, Carnival is Forever (2011) featuring new vocalist Rafał "Rasta" Piotrowski. Blood Mantra (2014) introduced bassist, Paweł Pasek. Blabbermouth declared it “perhaps the most poised and gutsy” DECAPITATED album, adding “its courageous bends make it a turbulent but pleasurable ride.”

Cancer Culture sounds brilliant, modern, and tasty. “There is no place for any fake, plastic, bullshit drum machine or anything like that,” Vogg insists. “It’s all organic, pure, and clear, showing the true face of the band. Vogg and company entrusted the Cancer Culture mix to David Castillo at Sweden’s Fascination Street Studios / Studio Gröndahl (Sepultura, Carcass, Opeth, Katatonia), and legendary American producer Ted Jensen (Metallica, Slipknot, Pantera, Machine Head, Korn).
The devoted supporters who traveled to see DECAPITATED on international tours with the likes of Lamb Of God, Meshuggah, Soulfly, Fear Factory, and Suffocation over the years will recognize the ever-present pummeling backbone. Longtime fans and newcomers alike will connect to the variety of atmospheric depth throughout Cancer Culture’s ten boundlessly energetic and creative tracks.
“If you told me 25 years ago, in my neighborhood in the South of Poland, that I would be in Machine Head, sharing riffs with Robb Flynn,” Vogg marvels. “It’s simply incredible. It means that everything is possible in your life. That gives me the faith to believe that I can achieve even more in my career. The dreams we have when we are kids, things we can barely imagine, can happen.” Flynn contributes a hauntingly beautiful vocal to the Cancer Culture track “Iconoclast.” “Clean vocal singing is a really new thing in DECAPITATED,” Vogg notes. “It’s really unique and amazing.”

Driven by Vogg’s passion and integrity, the dual emphasis on creative invention and technical prowess maintains DECAPITATED’s stature as genre-leaders in 2022 and beyond. The band’s supporters continually demonstrate confidence and absolute certainty DECAPITATED will deliver.

Across eight studio albums, DECAPITATED grew from the adolescent dream of teenagers from a small Central European town to one of the leaders of the metal genre. Each successive album further expands the band’s sound with genre-bending authenticity and integrity. As Metal Injection rightfully observed, “any self-respecting death metalhead knows the name well.”

DECAPITATED’s music is a weapon forged by four young men from a historic medieval-fortified town in Poland, which catapulted them to the top of a worldwide subculture. Like a rose in the devil’s garden, the DECAPITATED story builds triumph from tragedy. The gleeful grotesquery of extreme metal imagery and rifftastic bludgeoning beckons listeners to uncover broader truths.Upon the release of 2017’s Anticult, Metal Hammer declared DECAPITATED “a serious successor to the likes of Pantera and Lamb Of God – a band who can draw new legions into the metal world as its new champions.” Their diverse follow-up, 2022’s Cancer Culture, delivers on that promise.

Instantly recognizable devastation and deceptively sinister hooks abound. Freshly minted DECAPITATED anthems like “Last Supper,” “Hello Death,” “Just Cigarette,” “No Cure,” “Iconoclast,” and “Cancer Culture” shimmer with sonically sharp production and unrelenting bombast. There’s also a newly increased emphasis on melody, even venturing into darkly romantic territory. Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka (guitar), Rafał "Rasta" Piotrowski (vocals), Paweł Pasek (bass), and James Stewart (drums) are at the top of their game, delivering the goods at peak performance. Jinjer vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk and Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn make guest appearances.

Set on the descending plains of a mountain range amid a dense forest, Krosno boasts a 14th-century Gothic church, a Subcarpathian museum, and stunning artisan glassware. In this Polish town, teenage music student Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka discovered records from bands like Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Metallica, and Machine Head. The guitarist and his younger brother, drummer Witold “Vitek” Kiełtyka, cofounded DECAPITATED in 1996, inspired by a wide range of technical death, blackened thrash, and local heroes, like KAT and the world-renowned Vader. Death and black metal reigned supreme in the Polish scene of the 1990s, where Behemoth originated as well. In fact, a Vader song called “Decapitated Saints” inspired the band’s moniker.
The organic musical chemistry between the Kiełtykas was akin to the brotherly connectivity and vibe driving Pantera, Gojira, and the classic era of Sepultura. In 2006, Kerrang! praised the first three DECAPITATED albums - Winds of Creation (2000), Nihility (2002), and The Negation (2004) – as “superbly conceived and executed eruptions of technical brilliance and razor-sharp songwriting that turned these youthful Poles into one of the genre’s most widely respected bands.” That year’s Organic Hallucinosis further perfected Vogg’s penchant for blending extremity with catchy hooks.

The rule-breaking ferocity and invention of the first four albums reinvigorated death metal, as DECAPITATED inspired a new generation of bands who followed suit. Sadly, this era came to a shocking end in late 2007. While touring Russia, the band’s bus collided with a large truck near the border with Belarus. Both Vitak and then-singer Adrian “Covan” Kowanek sustained severe head injuries. Tragically, Vitak passed away in a Russian hospital a few days later. He was just 23.Vogg summoned the courage to continue, in honor of his brother and what they created, and returned with a new incarnation of DECAPITATED and the fiercely adventurous comeback album, Carnival is Forever (2011) featuring new vocalist Rafał "Rasta" Piotrowski. Blood Mantra (2014) introduced bassist, Paweł Pasek. Blabbermouth declared it “perhaps the most poised and gutsy” DECAPITATED album, adding “its courageous bends make it a turbulent but pleasurable ride.”

Cancer Culture sounds brilliant, modern, and tasty. “There is no place for any fake, plastic, bullshit drum machine or anything like that,” Vogg insists. “It’s all organic, pure, and clear, showing the true face of the band. Vogg and company entrusted the Cancer Culture mix to David Castillo at Sweden’s Fascination Street Studios / Studio Gröndahl (Sepultura, Carcass, Opeth, Katatonia), and legendary American producer Ted Jensen (Metallica, Slipknot, Pantera, Machine Head, Korn).
The devoted supporters who traveled to see DECAPITATED on international tours with the likes of Lamb Of God, Meshuggah, Soulfly, Fear Factory, and Suffocation over the years will recognize the ever-present pummeling backbone. Longtime fans and newcomers alike will connect to the variety of atmospheric depth throughout Cancer Culture’s ten boundlessly energetic and creative tracks.
“If you told me 25 years ago, in my neighborhood in the South of Poland, that I would be in Machine Head, sharing riffs with Robb Flynn,” Vogg marvels. “It’s simply incredible. It means that everything is possible in your life. That gives me the faith to believe that I can achieve even more in my career. The dreams we have when we are kids, things we can barely imagine, can happen.” Flynn contributes a hauntingly beautiful vocal to the Cancer Culture track “Iconoclast.” “Clean vocal singing is a really new thing in DECAPITATED,” Vogg notes. “It’s really unique and amazing.”

Driven by Vogg’s passion and integrity, the dual emphasis on creative invention and technical prowess maintains DECAPITATED’s stature as genre-leaders in 2022 and beyond. The band’s supporters continually demonstrate confidence and absolute certainty DECAPITATED will deliver.

 Lucrecia Dalt’s debut film score to ‘The Seed’, a sci-fi horror
film directed by Sam Walker on Shudder.
 Pressed on black vinyl and housed in a deluxe spined sleeve
with printed insert with digital download card included.
 “The score is heavily based on pulses that I made from tape
loops from my Copicat tape delay, using various pieces of
metal to create the sound of the horror parts by bowing them
alongside digital synths and the Korg Monologue.” - Lucrecia
Dalt
 “I wanted to play with the feeling of multiple paces in it, a
voice pulse that keeps us grounded in the subjectivities of
the women who are losing their sanity, a synth line that
places us in the sci-fi side of the film,” she explains.
 ‘The Seed’’s release follows the Colombian artist’s
collaboration with Aaron Dilloway, Lucy & Aaron, her
acclaimed 2020 album ‘No era sólida’ (RVNG Intl), a site
specific performance for the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in
Barcelona, plus sound installations for CTM Festival and
Medellín’s Museum of Modern Art. Often seeking inspiration
in the worlds of fiction, poetry, geology and desire,
excavating nuanced references to untangle and respond to
in her music, Dalt’s debut score is incredible stand-alone
piece of work.
 In ‘The Seed’, lifelong friends Deidre (Lucy Martin / Vikings),
Heather (Sophie Vavasseur / Resident Evil: Apocalypse) and
Charlotte (Chelsea Edge / I Hate Suzie) travel to the Mojave
Desert for some time away, with the upcoming meteor
shower as the perfect social media backdrop. But what starts
out as a girls’ getaway descends into a battle for survival with
the arrival of an invasive alien force whose air of mystery
soon proves to be alluring and irresistible to them.

In March 2020, Tahiti 80 had a plan to start recording their new album in the studio. That plan, of course, along with everything else in the world, got derailed. But the five-piece group was resilient and resourceful. They quickly shifted to a socially distanced plan B that included file swapping and virtual sessions, all refereed by producer Julien Vignon. The result, due for release in March 2022, is the buoyant Here With You, a collection of eleven upbeat songs that unfold like a prescription for a post-pandemic panacea.

“When lockdown in France happened, we said, 'We're not going to stay at home not doing anything,'” says singer-guitarist Xavier Boyer. “And our new plan became a hopeful thing, waking up every morning and seeing what the other guys had worked on. It wasn't always easy, but this new method allowed a freer approach where we could really go all the way with an idea without being influenced by each other’s suggestions. It must've been overwhelming for Julien, who ended up selecting all our arrangements. But he stayed positive all the way through.”

To help stay inspired and focused during their time in isolation, the band created a mood board, with the centerpiece a photo of an early '90s rave in the UK.

Boyer says, “Whenever you see pictures from this era, people seem very innocent. There are no cell phones and everybody is in to what they are experiencing. We kept that picture in mind as a kind of mantra that would help everyone feel connected to this idea of people celebrating, gathering and just having fun. We were missing the connection with people, and thought it would be great if we could create music that would inspire that kind of emotion.”

Indeed, the songs on Here With You are brimming the feeling of communion that we've all been missing over the past two years. It's there in the catchy opener Lost in the Sound, which walks the walk with Chic guitar flicks, urban nightfall sparkles and an inviting chorus (“Your heart grooves like a thousand 808s on the right time”). It's there in the Jackson 5-style syncopated bounce of “Vintage Creem,” the lush, dreamy “Breakfast in L.A.” and the panoramic sweep of “UFO.” And it's there in the first single “Hot,” which matches an irresistible groove with a neon-lit, percolating arrangement that evokes the disco clubs of 1979.

What's remarkable is that though Tahiti 80 displays a clear affection for sounds of the past, from bubble gum to '70s soul, they never trade in mere pastiche. Their take is more a slightly warped and playful carnival mirror mash-up of classic pop styles, given depth through Boyer's hang-gliding, coolly emotive vocals and lyrics that often rub against the euphoric grain of the music.

“I like to think of songs as a three-minute drama,” says Boyer. “This concept of drama definitely adds different levels to our music. There's the melody, the lyrics, then the production that can maybe emphasize or counterbalance the interaction between the yin and yang in a song.

“There's a difference between the very upbeat, sunshine-y soft rock and the lyrics, even on our past albums,” he continues. “Not dark, but a little more melancholy, and also looking for some kind of motivation, talking to yourself. Like with a lot of Motown songs, you get that feeling where you body’s dancing while your mind’s reflecting, reminiscing.”

That alluring blend of happy-sad has been a signature part of the Tahiti 80 sound from the time Boyer and bassist Pedro Resende formed the group in 1993, as students at the University of Rouen. Taking their name from a souvenir t-shirt given to Boyer's father in 1980, the duo recruited guitarist Mederic Gontier in 1994, and with the addition of drummer Sylvain Marchand a year later, the lineup was complete. The foursome released a self-produced and self-financed EP, 20 Minutes, in 1996, which resulted a record deal with French label Atmospheriques in 1998. Their full-length debut Puzzle, produced with Ivy's Andy Chase and mixed by Tore Johansson, went gold and featured the international hit “Heartbeat” that established the band throughout Europe and Asia.

In the years since, Tahiti 80 – with the additions of Raphaël Léger on drums and Hadrien Grange on keys - has released eight acclaimed albums. The band has fused what MOJO called a “glorious entente of old and new technology” (including singles like “Yellow Butterfly,” “1000 Times,” “Sound Museum,” “Crush!” and “Big Day,” which was featured on a FIFA video game soundtrack), while collaborating with such producers and arrangers as Richard Swift, Tony Lash and Richard Anthony Hewson, who famously arranged The Beatles' “Long and Winding Road.” Boyer has also put out two solo albums, the first under the anagram Axe Riverboy and the second under his name. In 2019, the band released Fear of an Acoustic Planet, a stripped-down reimagining of some of their best-loved tracks from the previous twenty years. It served not only as a look back but a reminder of their formidable songwriting skills.

Boyer is definitely a student of the timeless three-minute pop song format pioneered by '60s artists like The Beatles and The Beach Boys. He says, “I see it as kind of a frame for a painting. Most of the songs on this album, I wrote a verse, pre-chorus and chorus. There aren't many middle eights. I wanted it to be very concise. I feel like people have less attention. There's so much music. It's too easy to switch off or skip to another track, so I want to hook the listener. The three-minute song is kind of an easy code to crack, but at the same time you have to figure out a new way to tell the stories that we've heard before.”

And the stories on Here With You are very much about the longing for connection. Of the album title, Boyer says, “In the world right now, that can mean a lot of different things. Like missing our fans, missing going to concerts. In a way, it can be a statement of what happened last year, and a wish of 'I want to be here with you again.' It's our ninth album. We've had some had some very open, conceptual titles like Puzzle, Activity Center. Sometimes they were more specific like Fosbury orWallpaper for the Soul. Here with You, seems more personal, more engaging in terms of relationships. When I suggested that title, everyone in the band said, 'Yeah, that's it.'”

Until Tahiti 80 can resume a full tour schedule, Boyer says he hopes the new record will make that personal connection. “If I see from the point of view as a music fan, sometimes I see albums I like as companions throughout my life. So if we can be a part of people's existence, even if it's a song that reminds them of the time they were driving with the windows open and it was sunny. Or a sad song that resonates with them after a breakup. That's what we're all looking for when we're making music. You do this very personal thing and you want it to touch as many people as possible.”

Cassandra Jenkins' An Overview on Phenomenal Nature emerged from the blue earlier this year. With pandemic unknowns and political upheaval leaving most at frayed ends, the New York-born musician’s assuring voice and expansive fresh take on songwriting created a much needed reflective space for listeners worldwide. As 2021 comes to a close, Jenkins revisits those flowing textures and refrains with (An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature, a collection of previously unreleased sonic sketches, initial run-throughs, demos, and sound recordings from the cutting room floor that provided the scaffolding for what became one of this year’s most critically acclaimed albums.

When Jenkins visited Josh Kaufman’s studio this summer, they opened up their original sessions to uncover the ideas that were shed in the creative process. The new collection, (An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature, isn’t merely a retrospective; it acts as a clear-eyed addendum as well as a compelling origin story, coming to life as a subconscious companion to the original album.

First takes of “New Bikini” and “Hailey” are born from opposite starting points; while “New Bikini” began as an airy alto meander, “Hailey”’s origins lie in an upbeat dance track. On “Crosshairs (Interlude),” Jenkins’ pitched vocal delivers a straight monotone, recasting the format as poetry with music highlighting her words, and “Ambiguous Norway (Instrumental)” lifts the ambient nature of the mournful song into glimmering waves. The demo version of “Michelangelo” contains alternate lyrics “I’m Michelangelo, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,” a lost contrast to the later verse where Jenkins’ likens herself to the sculptor. On “Hard Drive (Security Guard),” we join Jenkins as she listens to a passionate museum guard whose promised “overview” of the exhibit on view builds into a monologue of observations on art, politics, feminism and the human condition. This candid interaction evolved into the cornerstone and title of Jenkins’ album.

Before they decided to make an album together, Jenkins brought Kaufman a song called “American Spirits.”The dusky ballad takes us to the Texas plains via a voicemail from the payphone of a county jail (“Miss Cassandra”). Cassandra sings, “Time here burns through the sunsets / Like you and a pack of American Spirits” over warm instrumentation with a vocal delivery that reinforces Jenkins’ unwavering tenderness towards her subjects.

(An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature bookends Cassandra Jenkins' musical output this year with nuance, coloring in the corners, and giving us another window into her ever-expanding world of chance encounters, experiences, and sonic textures. They glimmer like the sun’s changing patterns on the wall as a new day gets going.

Mercurial London artist Nilüfer Yanya announces her hugely anticipated second
album, ‘PAINLESS’, for release via ATO Records.
 ‘PAINLESS’ is the follow-up to Nilüfer Yanya’s renowned 2019 debut album, ‘Miss
Universe’, which fully established her as a singular artist and a distinctive voice that
simply has to be heard.
 The critically acclaimed ‘Miss Universe’ - a widescreen concept record that took a
tongue in cheek swipe at the most self-involved corners of the health and wellness
industry - was followed last year by the three song EP ‘Feeling Lucky?’, which further
explored Yanya’s fascination with ‘90s alt-rock melodies and drew on themes of
resentment, her fear of flying, and the concept of luck. Pitchfork summed up ‘Feeling
Lucky?’ and her now peerless songwriting aptitude best: “Nilüfer Yanya’s melodies
have a pull so strong they almost necessitate their own law of physics.”
 Yanya also re-released her early EPs on vinyl for the first time this year, on the
record ‘Inside Out’. The release is a fundraiser for Artists in Transit, a collaborative
not for profit group she founded with her sister Molly that delivers art workshops to
displaced people and communities in times of hardship.
 As the daughter of two visual artists (her Irish-Barbadian mother is a textile designer
and her Turkish-born father’s work is exhibited at the British Museum), creativity was
always destined for Nilüfer Yanya’s future. Now she enters the next stage of her
creative journey - Yanya is running head first into the depths of emotional
vulnerability on her sophomore record, ‘PAINLESS’. The album was recorded
between a basement studio in Stoke Newington and Riverfish Music in Penzance
with ‘Miss Universe’ collaborator and producer Wilma Archer, DEEK Recordings
founder Bullion, Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo and musician Jazzi Bobbi.
 Where ‘Miss Universe’ stretched musical boundaries to include a litany of styles from
smooth jazz melodies to radio ready pop, ‘PAINLESS’ takes a more direct sonic
approach. By narrowing down her previously broad palette to a handful of robust
ideas that revolve around melancholy harmonies and looped industrial beats to mimic
the insular focus of the lyrics, Yanya has smoothed out the idiosyncrasies of previous
releases without losing what is essential to her.
 ‘PAINLESS’ is a record that forces the listener to sit with the discomfort that
accompanies so many of life’s biggest challenges whether it be relationship
breakdowns, coping with loneliness, or the search for our inner self. “It's a record
about emotion,” Yanya explains. “I think it's more open about that in a way that ‘Miss
Universe’ wasn't because there's so many cloaks and sleeves with the concept I built
around it.” Summing up the ethos of the new album, she adds, “I’m not as scared to
admit my feelings.”
 Should stock of ATO0594BI1 sell out, a different standard vinyl format will be made
available (ATO0594LP).
 “A distinctive new voice in indie rock, a deeply expressive singer and sharply
inventive guitarist” - Uncut
 “On a musical and human level, then, the world needs more people like Nilüfer
Yanya” - MOJO
 “A true original” - The Guardian

Omowale is the powerful new album from Wildchild, one third of the legendary Lootpack crew and a formidable solo artist who released many projects on the iconic Stones Throw Records. Across the 15 tracks, the Cali rapper deftly explores what it means to be a Black man in the U.S. today with timely, poignant lyrics. It’s a hard-hitting look at this country and its decades of wrongdoing, all with an air of optimism for the future. This album is Wildchild’s first solo release since 2016’s T.G.I.F., though he’s clearly kept busy in the interim by working on Omowale and making a number of standout guest appearances. Many of his past collaborators are returning the favor, as we’re treated to dope features from Posdnuos (of De La Soul), Big Daddy Kane, Guilty Simpson, Ras Kass, Murs, and more. Plus, there’s head-nodding production from Madlib, Nottz, Georgia Anne Muldrow, and Mr. Brady, among others. They’re all bringing their A-game on Omowale, an impeccably produced album beyond its instrumentation and rhymes. Wildchild builds on the project’s narrative by incorporating audio from newscasts, protests, and other live events. He also brings that real-world feel to his lyrics, from joyful raps with his son (Black-ish actor/emcee Miles Brown) on the funky “G.O.A.T.” to raw rhymes about police brutality on “Breathe.”
When the album culminates with “Say Their Name”—a moving tribute to the rap legends we’ve lost over the years—Wildchild proves on Omowale that you can balance hope with the harsh, unjust realities of the world.

San Francisco Moog: 1968-72 documents a missing link in the history of electronic music, as well as the little-known moment when psychedelic music went electronic.

In 1968, Bay Area native Doug McKechnie got hold of one the very first modular Moog synthesizers ever made and began finding his own way to play it. Soon, he was hauling the finicky instrument around to perform improvised concerts at colleges and ballrooms, as well as an ill-fated appearance on the bill at Altamont. Many of the performances were recorded, and the surviving tapes—never before released—capture a free- flowing, transportive sound that fills in the gap between the austere mid-century academic avant garde and the expansive cosmic suites of Tangerine Dream and the rest of the Berlin School in the ‘70s.

This is not another corny old Moog record. San Francisco Moog sounds as fresh as anything by today’s analog-synth heads while bringing to life a lost moment in the development of the music.

All pieces were created improvisationally in an atmosphere of exploration and discovery on a Moog Modular Series III synthesizer and recorded live with no overdubbing to Ampex PR-10, Nagra 3, or TEAC four-channel recorders.

Produced by Doug McKechnie, Lee Gardner, and PJ Dorsey
Mastered by A.F Jones at Laminal Audio
Art direction by Frank Hamilton and Nolen Strals
Mandala art by Richard Winn Taylor

"Même Soleil" is the result of a dialog between the French photographer Gaël Bonnefon and the French musician Frédéric D. Oberland initiated by IIKKI, between December 2019 and June 2021.

Self-taught multi-instrumentalist & photographer, Frédéric D. Oberland finds himself at the crossroads of image and sound, favoring a synesthetic approach. He articulates different modes of narration, combining the raw character of the documentary form with the transfigured reality of myth and poetry, allowing him to question notions such as the sacred, the monstrous, the fraternity, while at the same time returning to the political news of the present. Attentive to the pulse of the body, his work is willingly itinerant, modulating between the ripples of dreams, watching the points of incandescence and the bursts of electricity that act as revelations of our presence in the world, here and now. He’s the co-founder of leading bands such as Oiseaux-Tempête, FOUDRE!, Le Réveil des Tropiques, FareWell Poetry and is co-curating the label NAHAL Recordings.

"Fueled by travels and their emanations, Frédéric D. Oberland’s music had to build new horizons this year, outlined by the curves of semi-modular synthesizers, the avalanches of effect pedals and the zigzagging paths of electric circuits. Même Soleil, his third solo album, manages to merge mystical visions of the unconscious and the absurdity of an apocalyptic present in a sensory whirlwind, operating an astonishing mutation with tones still unexplored in his previous releases. A visual as well as a musical journey that takes shape in a book and a record of the same title, Même Soleil is the result of a collaboration with the photographer Gaël Bonnefon. Seeking the tension between the blinding light of day and the glittering visions of saturated night skies, the two pieces in dialogue transcend reality to deliver their own truth, as bright as the first light of the sought-after morning." (Alice Butterlin)

Gaël Bonnefon graduated with highest honours from the Fine Arts School of Toulouse (Isdat) in 2008. He has exhibited at Villa Pérochon, at the Eté photographique in Lectoure, at the 104 in Paris during Jeune Création 2012, at Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles and at PhotoEspaña, at the Abattoirs Museum in Toulouse in 2014, at the Château d’Eau Gallery in 2012 and 2019 and in the Vitrine of Frac Île-de-France in 2020. His work is part of the collections of Frac Midi-Pyrénées, Château d'Eau gallery, Kulturamt in Dusseldorf and Kiyosato Museum in Japan ; he participated in Temps Zero projects Berlin, Braga, Rome, Bucarest, Groningen and Thessaloniki. He has also been granted artist’s residencies in Germany, France and Israel. His first book Elegy for the Mundane was published by La Main Donne in 2019. He continues his intimate and dense journey and presents his second publishing, Même Soleil with photographic works from 2009 to 2021.

"At first brutal and declining, the substance of Gaël Bonnefon's photography is just like a gaze that fears being one day extinguished and that is always looking to be born again. In photography as in love, recoil and desire, tension and easement, repetition, wandering and rest, flight and pursuit. Here photography allows itself to be traversed by flashes of life, renewed forces, echoes of far-off kindnesses and lost joys. It sings silently, lover of a thousand faces from which the thread of a single and same image is born, followed without relent, from the snowy peaks of childhood to the lost worlds of the present." (Michaël Soyez)

Grammy-nominated band TRIVIUM — Matt Heafy vocals, guitar, Corey Beaulieu [guitar], Paolo Gregoletto [bass], and Alex Bent [drums] — has announced that it will release its latest tenth album, In The Court of The Dragon, on vinyl on 28th January via longtime label Roadrunner Records. The album will be available on 2LP Transparent Yellow Vinyl. The record was produced and mixed by Josh Wilbur and recorded in the Fall of 2020 at Full Sail University in Orlando.

The album cover is an original oil painting by French artist Mathieu Nozieres (@mathieunozieres on Instagram)

"While the music of In The Court Of The Dragon was taking shape, we knew we needed epic artwork of the type that you might see on the wall of an important museum from a long dead renaissance master," says Heafy. "After extensive research, we found one of the few living artists who is capable of creating artwork like Caravaggio and Gentileschi — painter Mathieu Nozieres. Mathieu took our song title and created an original oil painting on canvas unlike anything we could have ever imagined. It's so staggeringly breathtaking and epic and it looks like what the song and album sounds like."

"In Vivo" is the result of the photographic work of Klavdij Sluban at the Fleury-Mérogis Young Offender Institution (France) from 1995 to 2016 Beds in addition to his work from Izalco prison, located in El Salvador, from 2008 [visiting rooms] connected to the music of Gareth Davis.

Gareth Davis is an artist, composer and musician living in Amsterdam. He plays clarinet(s), the result of a somewhat impulsive purchase whilst window shopping in Covent Garden, London, around ten years before the turn of the century. The serendipitous location of a rather wonderful (and equally important, rather cheap) second hand record shop less than 10m from the bus stop required for seven years of schooling, combined with delivering newspapers on a daily basis, lead to a somewhat eclectic, dusty and generally unclassified taste in music.

The result. Activity covering sonic art and contemporary classical music through rock, improvisation and noise with collaborations that have included the premiering of new written pieces by composers such as Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger, Toshio Hosokawa and Jonathan Harvey, soloist with orchestras including the SWR Symphonieorchester, Warsaw Philharmonic and Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, performances with groups and performers ranging from the Neue Vocalsolisten and Arditti Quartet through to improvisers Elliott Sharp and Frances Marie Uitti, electronic artists Robin Rimbaud and Merzbow and multimedia work with artists including Christian Marclay and Peter Greenaway.

"In Vivo" is his second solo release after to have recorded a bunch of collaborative albums with artists such as Scanner, Machinefabriek, Steven R. Smith, Kleefstra Brothers, Frances-Marie Uitti, Merzbow, Adain Baker, Duane Pitre and more...

Klavdij Sluban, winner of the European Publishers Award for Photography 2009, of the Leica Prize (2004) and of the Niépce Prize (2000), main French prize in photography, is a French photographer of Slovenian origin born in Paris in 1963.

He develops a rigorous and coherent body of work, nourished by literature, never inspired by immediate and sensational current affairs, making him one of the most interesting photographers of his generation. The Balkans, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caribbean, Central America, Russia, China and the Antarctic (first artistic mission in the Kerguelen islands) can be read as many successive steps of an in-depth study of a patient proximity to the encountered real.

His images have been shown in such leading institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Photography of Tokyo, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Rencontres d’Arles, the Museum of Photography in Helsinki, the Fine Arts Museum in Canton, the Musée Beaubourg, the Museum of Texas Tech University. His many books include East to East (published simultaneously by Actes Sud, Dewi Lewis, Petliti, Braus, Apeiron & Lunwerg with a text by Erri de Luca), Entre Parenthèses, (Photo Poche, Actes Sud), Transverses, (Maison Européenne de la Photographie) and Balkans -Transit, with a text by François Maspero (Seuil). Since 1995, Sluban has been photographing teenagers in jails. In each prison he organizes workshops with the young offenders to share his passion. First originated in France, in the prison of Fleury-Mérogis with support of Henri Cartier-Bresson during 7 years, as well as Marc Riboud and William Klein punctually. This commitment was pursued in the disciplinary camps of Eastern Europe –Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldavia, Latvia – and in the disciplinary centres of Moscow and St Petersburg as well as in Ireland. From 2007 to 2012, Sluban has been working in Central America with imprisoned youngsters belonging to maras (gangs) in Guatemala and Salvador. In 2015, he started photographing imprisoned teenagers in Brazil. In 2013, the musée Niépce showed a retrospective of K.Sluban’s work, After Darkness, 1995-2012. In 2015/16, he was awarded the Villa Kujoyama Residence in Kyoto, Japan. K.Sluban is member of national and international jurys, such as prix Niépce, prix de la Jeune Photographie de Niort, prix Leica, All About Photo…

Turquoise Vinyl

The "Tetragonal EP" marks the fourth and final release of the Stone Techno series for this year. Together with the Ruhr Museum foundation we were able to create a very unique concept which refers to the notable history of the Ruhr Area. The collaboration with each artist was a great pleasure and experience for us and as you might already know if you're following this project since the first release: all of the results that reached us were impressively various and ingenious.

On the "Tetragonal" EP you will find a nicely curated mixture of artists and tracks, which takes you on a mesmerizing journey. In the beginning our dear friend Dax J delivers a straightforward 6-minute banger that he's known for. Followed by an anthemic and yet percussive piece of Hadone which reminds us of the long raving nights we all have missed so much.

On the B-side Colin Benders ennobles mineralogy with a carefully composed arrangement which drives you deep into modular synthesis, while Felix Fleer takes you on a late night trip with oscillating tones and harmonies.

We hope you enjoy our last Stone Techno release for this year and don't worry: there's a lot more to come in 2022 with a new sample library as well. Stay tuned!

Each release is limited to 300 copies (180gr marbled 12" Vinyl, Full Cover Print).

Humanoid strikes back on De:tuned with a remastered version of the pioneering 1988 crossover UK number 1 Dance Single "Stakker Humanoid". This major influential UK acid house cut has been breaking down UK culture barriers since its original release. Humanoid's music was also used in Stakker "Eurotechno", now housed in The Museum of Modern Art located in New York. De:tuned have invited personal favourites Autechre, Luke Vibert and Mike Dred to rework the new and uncompromising update "sT8818r" (previously released on DE:10.08) to complement the classic original. Prepare to have your mind blown once more!

The impeccable Ian Anderson at The Designers Republic created all the graphic work. Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis and pressed on 180 gr vinyl. Stay tuned!

clear magenta vinyl
Humanoid strikes back on De:tuned with a remastered version of the pioneering 1988 crossover UK number 1 Dance Single "Stakker Humanoid". This major influential UK acid house cut has been breaking down UK culture barriers since its original release. Humanoid's music was also used in Stakker "Eurotechno", now housed in The Museum of Modern Art located in New York. De:tuned have invited personal favourites Autechre, Luke Vibert and Mike Dred to rework the new and uncompromising update "sT8818r" (previously released on DE:10.08) to complement the classic original. Prepare to have your mind blown once more!

The impeccable Ian Anderson at The Designers Republic created all the graphic work. Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis and pressed on 180 gr vinyl. Stay tuned!

Spoken word recordings from Gregory Corso, Tina May Hall, Sam Lipsyte, Christine Schutt, Gary Lutz, Allen Ginsberg, Dawn Raffel, Jason Schwartz, Kathryn Scanlan, Scott McClanahan, & Terry Southern. About 40 years ago, in a record shop on Long Island during a weekend visit there to see my parents, i found a double-LP that looked like something i should definitely buy. It was called "BIG EGO", by the The DIAL-a-POEM POETS. On the cover was a picture of John Giorno (a great poet Ed Sanders had turned me on to) on a NYC rooftop with Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and two kids. It cost $2. I bought it and rushed back to my parents house, where i still had my old turntable in the basement, not far from my Jimi Hendrix and Zappa Crappa posters, and my framed portrait of John Cage. My copy of Eno's "Discreet Music" was still on the turntable, having been left there years before, when i'd fled Long Island for good. I lifted it from the platter, gently slid it back into its sleeve, like a priceless religious artifact, and put Side A of the Dial-a-Poem LP on. I almost lost my mind while listening to it. The next day i went back to the same record shop looking for more DIAL-A-POEM LP's. i found two. One had a long list of names on the back, some famous, and some i'd never heard of before. I bought both LP's, and an hour later, for the first time in my life, i was exposed to the art of Laurie Anderson, whom i'd never heard of before. This was 1978. Her contribution was a piece called "Time To Go". It changed my life. Or at least, that’s how I remember it. I was just a kid, so there were a lot of moments like that, around then. Nowadays, these moments can be had in seconds, with a click of the cursor. That evening, as i sat alone by my imaginary campfire (ie; that record player in my parents basement), i promised myself that someday, somehow, i would embark upon a WORDS & MUSIC project that might move people the same way i was moved when i first heard Laurie, and Robert Wilson & Christopher Knowles, and Burroughs, and Ginsberg, and Corso, and Anne Waldman, and John Ashbery, and the great Charles Olson, and so many others. Words, for the very first time, had wielded the same power as music. And it was visceral. Just like music. It ran deep. It was a FEELING. John Giorno died in 2019, but he kept poetry alive like nobody's business. I was lucky enough to have spent some time with him in the early 1980's, when i was briefly a member of The Fugs, and often found myself surrounded by those Ginsberg called, "...the greatest minds of my generation". Ed Sanders (who'd ushered me into that scene) once told me that when he came to NYC, it was easy to go to a cafe, or to St Marks Church, and hear Burroughs, Corso, Ginsberg, and all the greats, reading their poetry. He said that even if you were just a bum on the street, you could just walk right up to them, and start a conversation. They were totally accessible, if they were in the right mood at that particular moment. So i was shocked when Sanders told me he didn't approach any of them, not even once, til he'd been going to their readings for nearly ten years. "For almost a decade, I went to every reading, every lecture, every panel discussion. But I never went near them. Never approached them. Not even once", Sanders told me. "For ten years, all I did, was listen." It took me four decades, but ... better late than never. I finally made WORDS & MUSIC, Book One.

20 YEARS OF MUSIC FOR MARCEL ODENBACH

Richard Ojijo’s music for the films of german video artist Marcel Odenbach not only underscores and accentuates the imagery and motion, but also serves to propel the narrative too. The compositions are auditory distillations of the visual and create a synergy between music and image that draws the observer ever deeper.

With Odenbach’s and Ojijo’s collaboration now entering its 3rd decade, Ojijo was recently inspired to revisit and remix some of the themes contained within the extensive body of work.

— Matt Karmil, Aug 2021

Die Musik von Richard Ojijo für die Videoarbeiten des Künstlers Marcel Odenbach sind eindrucksvolle Beispiele dafür, wie Klänge Filmbilder nicht nur untermalen oder deren Wirkung atmosphärisch verdichten können, sondern neben dem Visuellen ein gleichberechtigtes Eigenleben entwickeln, das auf das Gesamterlebnis des Films zurückwirkt: plötzlich auftauchende innere Bilder oder Assoziationen, die das Gesehene mit noch größerer Komplexität und Mehrdeutigkeit versorgen.

Wenn sich etwa in „Innerer Sicherheit“ oder „In stillen Teichen lauern Krokodile“ sphärische Flächen und Soundeffekte ausbreiten, erinnert dies zuweilen an elektronische Stimmungen der späten 90er Jahre, obwohl die Thematiken der Filme in gänzlich andere Richtungen weisen. Dabei wird nie der Spannungsbogen der filmischen Dramaturgie vernachlässigt. Vielmehr kommt es zum Wechselspiel von dienender und freier Funktion, in dem die Musik nicht nur ihre schöne, sondern – den Themen der Filme angemessene – beunruhigende Wirkung ausbreiten kann. So tauchen wie aus dem Nichts Stimmen auf oder Geräusche, etwa von Stiefeln in „Beweis zu nichts“, die parallele Narrationen auf die Audiospur legen, um die zum Teil bedrohliche Wirkung der Bilder zu verstärken und womöglich Bereiche des Unterbewussten zu berühren.

Die Zusammenarbeit von Ojijo und Odenbach dauert mittlerweile über 20 Jahre an. Ojijo hat nun seine Arbeiten für die Filme Odenbachs neu zusammengestellt und neu gemischt. Die Platte erscheint im Herbst 2021 aus Anlass der großen Odenbach-Retrospektive im Düsseldorfer K21-Museum. Dort werden auch sieben Videoarbeiten zu sehen sein, von denen fünf in Zusammenarbeit mit Richard Ojijo entstanden sind.

— Michael Kerkmann, Aug 2021

LTD. COLORED VINYL

Somewhere Between: Mutant Pop, Electronic Minimalism & Shadow Sounds of Japan 1980–1988 hovers vibe–wise between two distinct poles within Light In The Attic’s acclaimed Japan Archival Series—Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980–1990 and Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976–1986. All three albums showcase recordings produced during Japan’s soaring bubble economy of the 1980s, an era in which aesthetic visions and consumerism merged. Music echoed the nation’s prosperity and with financial abundance came the luxury to dream.

Sonically, Somewhere Between mines the midpoint between Kankyō Ongaku’s sparkling atmospherics and Pacific Breeze’s metropolitan boogie. The compilation encompasses ambient pop, underground electronics, liminal minimalism and shadow sounds—all descriptors emphasizing the hazy nature of the nebula. Out–of–focus rhythms wear ethereal accoutrements, ballads are shrouded in static, and angular drums snake skyward on transcendent tones. From the Avant–minimalism of Mkwaju Ensemble and Yoshio Ojima, to the leftfield techno-pop of Mishio Ogawa and Noriko Miyamoto (featuring members of YMO), and highlights from the groundbreaking Osaka underground label Vanity Records, these are blurry constellations defying collective categorization.

These tracks also exist in a space of transition when the major label grip on the Japanese recording market began to give way to the escalation of independents. Thanks to the idyllic economic climate and innovations in domestically–manufactured music gear, creators on the edges were empowered to focus on satisfying their artistic visions in the open headspace of home studios. While labels like Warner Music and Nippon Columbia explored new sounds through traditional channels, it was possible for Vanity, Balcony and other indie labels, not to mention self–released artists like Ojima and Naoki Asai, to publish their work via affordable media such as cassettes, 7" vinyl, and flexi–discs.

Expertly curated by Yosuke Kitazawa and Mark “Frosty” McNeill (dublab), Somewhere Between is a collection of music, much of it released for the first time outside Japan, that is bound more by energetic vibration than shared history, genre or scene. They are the sounds of transition and searching—a celebration of the freedom found in floating.

Note: The track “Days Man” by Yoshio Ojima is only available on the LP and Cassette versions.

Limited edition vinyl set featuring eight live installations from the ISM Hexadome, recorded in binaural sound at MASS MoCA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts) in December 2019. Listening to the recordings on headphones recreates the detailed sense of spatialisation and movement of the ISM Hexadome's immersive 52-channel sound system that these works were exclusively composed for. The album also includes artwork prints of 10 still images excerpted from the installations created by visual artists in collaboration with the sound artist. The prints by Holly Herndon & Mathew Dryhurst and Tarik Barri are bonus visual material, as it was not possible to use the tracks for the record.

'The Works and Days: The Black Sections' is a sound collage album that emerged out of the production material of the film, The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin). The film — winner of the Encounters Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2020 Berlinale — is the second feature of C.W. Winter & Anders Edström. It is an eight-hour fiction shot for a total of twenty-seven weeks, over a period of fourteen months, in a village population forty-seven in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It is a geographic description of the work and non-work of a farmer. A portrait, over five seasons, of a family, of a terrain, of a sound space, and of a duration. The film was named one of the Ten Best Films of the Year by critics at: Artforum, Cargo, Cinema Scope, Desistfilm, Filo, La Internacional Cinéfila, Mubi, Nobody, Senses of Cinema, and Sight & Sound.

The film is accompanied by this LP, TheWorks and Days: The Black Sections, by C.W. Winter, and the photo book, Shiotani, by Anders Edström. The album features musical excerpts from Tim Berne & Bill Frisell, Tony Conrad, Graham Lambkin, Mary Jane Leach, Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Folke Rabe, Éliane Radigue, and Akio Suzuki. Producing, editing, and recordings by C.W. Winter. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.

Winter & Edström’s first feature, The Anchorage, won a Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival and won the Douglas E. Edwards Independent/Experimental Film/Video Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. It was named one of the Ten Best Films of the Year by critics at Cinema Scope, Film Comment, Senses of Cinema, Variety, and Indie Wire and was named Best First Film of the Year by The New York Times. Their first film, a documentary short called One Plus One 2 was made in collaboration with the late British guitarist, Derek Bailey. Their film/video work has shown at such venues as the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Centre national de la photographie (Paris), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Fotomuseum Winterthur, NRW-Forum (Düsseldorf), the Harvard Film Archive, Anthology Film Archives, the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), Centre de cultura contemporània de Barcelona, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and the National Museum of Modern Art (Kyoto).

C.W. Winter was born in California. In 2020, he completed his DPhil in Art Practice & Theory at The Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford. He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts where he studied closely under Thom Andersen, James Benning, and Allan Sekula. His writing has appeared in Cinema Scope, Moving Image Source, Purple, and Too Much. He lives in the United Kingdom where he is currently a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art and a Lecturer at the University of Oxford.

Side A excerpts:
“Thursday, May 5, 1977 & Friday, May 6, 1977: Part 4” Performed by Tony Conrad. Used by arrangement with The Tony Conrad Estate
“Sethwork” Performed by Phill Niblock. Used by arrangement with Phill Niblock
“What?? (Second Version)” Performed by Folke Rabe. Used by arrangement with the Folke Rabe Estate
“Pipe Dreams” Performed by Mary Jane Leach. Used by arrangement with Mary Jane Leach
“What?? (Second Version)” Performed by Folke Rabe. Used by arrangement with the Folke Rabe Estate
“2011” Performed by Tim Berne & Bill Frisell. Written by Tim Berne. Published by Party Time Music BMI. Recording courtesy of Minor Music Records/Screwgun Records

Side B excerpts:
“Ceremoniolose” Recorded by Graham Lambkin. Used by arrangement with Graham Lambkin
“Kugiuchi” Performed by Akio Suzuki. Recorded live for TheWorks and Days Used by arrangement with Akio Suzuki
“Music on a Long Thin Wire (Side A)” Performed by Alvin Lucier. Used by arrangement with Alvin Lucier
“A Third Trombone” Performed by Phill Niblock. Used by arrangement with Phill Niblock
“Triptych: Part 1” Performed by Éliane Radigue. Used by arrangement with Éliane Radigue

In the most literal sense, globally renowned whistler Molly Lewis makes her gorgeous
and curious compositions out of thin air.
New entrees into the Exotica canon; sprawling, would-be Spaghetti Western scores;
and a dash of Old Hollywood glamour - the whistle-led songs on her debut EP ‘The
Forgotten Edge’ are as complex, delicate and indelible as anything performed with
viola or piano.
“Whistling is like a human theremin,” said Lewis, an Australian native who’s spent the
last several years in LA and whose performances there and around the world are
changing any preconceived notions of whistling by the room-full.
That’s not to say Lewis is all serious and snooty about the craft. Quite the contrary.
Her sense of humour is witty, self-deprecating and zany. She’s as likely to reference
the slapstick Leslie Nielsen film series ‘Naked Gun’ for music video concepts as she
is a classic piece of noir cinema.
Look no further than the equatorial and breezy opening cut ‘Oceanic Feeling’, a
lovely walk across the flotsam-sprinkled sands in the rum-pumping vein of Les
Baxter. Meanwhile, the title track - and really, the entire collection here - is a loving,
albeit rather haunting, salute to one of Lewis’s heroes, the Italian composer and
musician Alessandro Alessandroni, whose whistle and guitar you hear on the title
theme of Ennio Morricone’s ‘A Fistful of Dollars’. Lewis and her ensemble create
classic cinema for your mind.
Her own love for the artform began when, around the age of twelve she was given
the CD ‘Steve ‘The Whistler’ Herbst Whistles Broadway’. Something contained in it
clicked. “It wasn’t that I was immediately obsessed, but I knew it was something I
could do well,” Lewis said.
The daughter of a musician mother and a documentary filmmaker father who often
focused his films on niche communities and topics, Lewis recalls watching a
television documentary with her parents about The International Whistlers
Convention in Louisburg, North Carolina. “My dad said, ‘If you ever make it into the
competition, I’ll take you there’,” Lewis said. Turns out, there was no bar to entry, just
a small fee. And so, several years later, she and her father travelled to the
convention. New to the form, Lewis didn’t take home one of the bigger prizes but they
were awarded the prize for Whistler Who Traveled The Greatest Distance. “We really
just used the trip to drive around the United States,” she said.
After studying film in Australia, Lewis moved to Los Angeles to be close to the film
industry. There, her circle of artist friends grew naturally and with providence - her
unique talent drawing more and more recognition. And over the last few years,
Lewis’s Café Molly events at LA spots like Zebulon, Non Plus Ultra and The Natural
History Museum have become fabled, elegant happenings with appearances from
guests like John C. Reilly, Karen O and Mac DeMarco.
Recorded with a crack team of friends and musicians during 2020’s quarantine, ‘The
Forgotten Edge’ is rife with incredible performances from Thomas Brenneck (Sharon
Jones & The Dap-Kings / Budos Band), Joe Harrison (Charles Bradley, Lee Fields),
Eric Hagstrom (Brainstory), Abe Rounds (Meshell Ndegeocello, Andrew Bird, Blake
Mills), Leon Michels (El Michels Affair), Gabriel Rowland and Dave Guy.

Tangents formed in Sydney in 2010 and released their debut album "I" in 2013, a recording of their first ever meeting and live show. Follow-up albums Stateless (2016) and New Bodies (2018), and linked singles and EPs, explored a style of post-produced live improvisation that marked the group's distinct blend of electronic, jazz, rock and new music-inspired styles. Amidst other international recognition, New Bodies was nominated for the Australian Music Prize in 2018. Their latest release, Timeslips & Chimeras, continues their studio recording journey after a detour into intensive live performance (idiosyncratically captured in a cramped radio studio on the Risk Reaps Reward EP) and a major digital art installation, Spiral, at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The record continues their relationship with New York label Temporary Residence through the challenges of music production in the Covid-19 era. Tangents are Ollie Bown, Evan Dorrian, Peter Hollo and Adrian Lim-Klumpes. Sia Ahmad is a former member whose work continues through the Timeslips & Chimeras production period.

From the many musical lives of artist Glenn Donaldson emerges The Reds, Pinks and Purples, a project that sifts out the purest elements of pop music and in the process chronicles the point of view of an assiduous San Francisco-based songwriter. The Reds, Pinks and Purples’ third album, called Uncommon Weather, is both an elusive portrait of San Francisco––during one of its fluctuations as an untenable place for musicians and artists––and also a self-portrait, however inverted, of a songwriter who has dispatched another treasured collection of timeless sounding DIY-pop songs.

How The Reds, Pinks and Purples arrived here is a story with many roots, the most consequential of which is perhaps the musical aftermath of his earlier band, The Art Museums, whose brief tenure in the late ’00s coincided with an explosive period of the Bay Area rock scene and was followed by a hermetic musical period of Donaldson’s. Disenchanted with the dissolution of his band, Donaldson averted the DIY-pop sound with an instrumental, conceptual project called FWY! but meanwhile started a habitual songwriting practice, sharing nascent songs with friends in an email exchange. In 2013–2014, The Reds, Pinks and Purples took shape as the moniker for Glenn’s most direct expressions in the DIY-pop mode, enabled by this new disciplined output. By then, San Francisco was already a changed place. The tragic loss of his former bandmate in Art Museums was another source of discontinuity and rupture. You can hear in The Reds, Pinks and Purples’ earliest songs this grappling with life, anxiety, and atrophying subcultures. For an artist with an overriding interest in the aesthetic principles of discrete musical genres, this turn toward his immediate world for subject matter was a major shift, setting The Reds, Pinks and Purples apart from Donaldson’s other musical ventures.

Preceding the release of Uncommon Weather was the Reds, Pinks and Purples’ 2nd album, one of the record buying joys of 2020, You Might Be Happy Someday, and, earlier, their first proper full length Anxiety Art, a title that might nod to the classic Television Personalities song “Anxiety Block.” Donaldson’s music continuously reckons with the influence of Dan Treacy, whose own forays into drum-machines, echo, and reverb in the early 1990s is an important reference point for The Reds, Pinks and Purples’ musical template. Paul Weller, Robert Smith, and Sarah Records also come to mind. But, as important, Donaldson sees his projects as visual expressions too, often blurring the lines of records and physical art objects. They could just as well be “art multiples” as well as records. The pattern for Reds, Pinks and Purples’ records is to document San Francisco’s Inner Richmond district in photographs: the muted, pastel colours and unpeopled compositions unfold in a series of images that read like counter-melodies to Donaldson’s distinctive voice, a vocal tone that always complements the colours.

Self-recorded and mostly self-performed, Uncommon Weather features pinnacle versions of songs Donaldson has honed since the beginning of the project. The album arrives with grateful timing, quick on the heels of You Might Be Happy Someday, and alleviating, for a brief window at least, whatever it is that keeps us coming back to this elemental music. Donaldson imagines his listeners are just like himself: fascinated and addicted to the spiritual power of uncomplicated pop classics. Anthony Atlas

Tonnon produced the album with longtime collaborator, and The Beths’ guitarist and producer, Jonathan Pearce. Tonnon wrote the bulk of the songs during an extensive period of touring after the release of Successor - a period where Tonnon performed with Nadia Reid in Europe, The Veils in the USA, and The Chills, The Phoenix Foundation and Don McGlashan in New Zealand. The pair workshopped songs between tours, often recording new parts as the live versions developed.

Tonnon and Pearce recorded between 2017 and 2020, and in that time, Tonnon’s practise evolved heavily. He incorporated new technology into his set, including the Wellington-designed Synthstrom Deluge, which allowed him to adapt his set for new performance environments;Art Galleries, Museums, even New Zealand Fashion Week. He took that technology further when he collaborated with the Otago Museum on the immersive show for Planetariums, A Synthesized Universe, which travelled to Arts Festivals around New Zealand in 2019.

Creating a music video for ‘Old Images,’ which explored a lost passenger train network, Tonnon came to the idea for a new experience-based show called Rail Land. It took audiences on railways to reach distant community halls around Aotearoa. The show saw Tonnon combine historical research and spoken word narrative, with the immersive lighting and musical technology he developed for A Synthesized Universe. In March, Rail Land finished a three-night run at Auckland Arts Festival, cementing Tonnon’s move to the concept show.

Over time, Tonnon and Pearce’s production moved further from the traditional rhythm sections that powered songs like Successor’s ‘Water Underground.’ In their place came off kilter electronic rhythms, like the beat in ‘Two Free Hands,’ and textures that blur lines between organic and synthesized sound. Guitars are set against synthesizers, and drums against drum machines in ‘Entertainment’ and ‘Peacetime Orders,’ which Tonnon also used in his soundtrack for RNZ’s 80s spy-themed podcast The Service. In ‘Leave Love Out Of This,’ a ballad starts with a piano and a string quartet, but ends in a wall of electronic sound.

The constant has been Tonnon’s lyrics. Whether singing about evolution and the future of work in ‘Two Free Hands,’ the television industry in ‘Entertainment,’ or environmental disaster and regulatory failure in ‘Mataura Paper Mill,’ Tonnon has followed a distinct approach to subject matter, description and phrasing that have seen him longlisted for the APRA Silver Scroll three times.

Tonnon’s explorations of local government and civic infrastructure in his work - an unusual preoccupation for a songwriter, have taken new meaning in his adopted home of Whanganui, where last year, he was elected by councillors as Whanganui District Council’s representative for public transport.

After Tonnon moved to Whanganui, and Pearce toured almost constantly after the success of The Beths’ first album, the pair conducted their collaboration over distance, but with key sessions at Pearce’s Karangahape Road studio, including drums and bass with long time band members Stuart Harwood and David Flyger, a string quartet led by Charmian Keay and arranged by Matthew Bodman, and additional drums with The Beths’ Tristan Deck.

As Leave Love Out Of This is released, Tonnon and Pearce find themselves in very different places to where they started, working on Auckland’s Karangahape Road, close to the venues like Wine Cellar and Whammy Bar where they regularly performed. Back in New Zealand since Covid, Pearce has had to adjust to being in one of Aotearoa’s best-known bands, while Tonnon, when not working on conceptual shows, wrestles with how to restore civic infrastructure to a post industrial city in the regions.

Created over a life-altering period of, Leave Love Out Of This is the culmination of years of experimentation and development - with new technology, new sounds, and new ways of creating, and performing music.

Out now for the first time on vinyl! The world first heard Pill on their self-titled cassette release on Dull Tools. And the world took note. Evan Minsker, writing for Pitchfork, says 'they are loose with form, they pack in a lot of ideas, and they successfully deliver an emotionally complex narrative where joy is accompanied by an impossible-to-ignore undercurrent of danger. The band's debut outing is enigmatic—a Dull Tools record through and through—but it's also well crafted, full of stellar performances and unflinching lyrics.'
The band then signed to Mexican Summer, releasing their debut LP. Shortly after, prolific in a way that has become a hall- mark of Dull Tools artists, they release another cassette, 2017's 'Agressive Advertising'. If one thought the self-titled cassette couldn't get more acerbic and confrontational, Agresstive Advertis- ing proved them wrong.
Now both releases are available on one LP. This LP is an important document of New York City's DIY scene and one of the best bands to emerge from it. Pill are an ever present force in NYC's scene. Playing small clubs like Baby's All Right, DIY spaces like Silent Barn and even the Museum of Modern Art. When the art and culture of New York is examined in, much in the way we examine culture from the past, you can bet that Pill will be a shining example of this moment in time.

Discos Transgénero re-issue the Marnie Weber classic first solo LP, “Songs Hurt Me” originally from 1989. This seminal record was an important part of the Los Angeles post-punk performative art rock scene. Brooding synthesizers, heavy bass, strange melodies, and poetic lyrics lead you through an industrial journey. These songs were born from Weber’s earliest performance art characters: a deer, an old woman, a manic courtesan, and a butterfly. Songs Hurt Me was originally co-produced by Phillip Drucker AKA Jackson Del Ray of Savage Republic and 17 Pygmies fame.

Marnie is a pioneer in art rock from the 80’s in Los Angeles. She emerged early in the music scene as the bass player in the Party Boys, a formative and important Los Angeles post-punk downtown art scene band. During this period, the Party Boys performed shows with The Minute Men, Savage Republic, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fourwaycross, The Blue Daisies, Perry Farrell’s first band Psi Com, Camper Van Beethoven, and many more. Bruce Licher of Independent Project Records, whom Marnie met in art school, released the first Party Boys record. After performing with the Party Boys, Marnie went on to become a noted solo performative art musician in her own right. She has released five solo records and numerous group album releases.

As a visual artist Marnie created the cover of Sonic Youth’s A Thousand Leaves album – interesting to note Marnie is the hamster girl on the cover. She also designed posters for Sonic Youth and did a co-release of her second album with Thurston Moore on his label Ecstatic Peace. Expanding from her musical roots, Marnie exhibits artwork, films, sculptures, collages, sound installations, and costumes internationally in museums and galleries. She has had two extensive survey exhibitions of her artwork ­– most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Geneva.

Songs Hurt Me was remastered by Mark Wheaton at Catasonic Studios Los Angeles using the original tapes for an unprecedented restoration of this historic album. Discos Transgénero has thoughtfully designed and pressed the reissued LPs in Germany. This unique edition of Songs Hurt Me is a limited release of 400 copies distributed worldwide.

In view of the immense Black Lives Matter mobilisation in reaction to the murder of George Floyd and the comparatively meagre societal reaction to the attack in Hanau, the question arises: How come our society does not show the same empathy and solidarity towards its own fellow citizens with Kurdish, Turkish, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Afghan migrant backgrounds or members of the Roma and Sinti?

How limited is our postcolonial discourse if we are unable to address the racist exploitation of those who repair our cars, deliver our parcels or harvest our asparagus?

It’s all a sham. Shake it off like a biometric photograph. Shake off that false consciousness. The Black Diaspora is a transatlantic lie invented by music curators and journalists. Embrace this nuanced return to structures and superstructures, to articulations and historical constellations as analytical tools.

Allow me to dampen your expectations. This is not the sound of decolonisation. This is no compilation of BLM protest songs. This is no celebration of Black emancipatory struggles. You will not be able to play this at your hip post-pandemic house party. This will not go down well with your woke friends. This is music for the square in the room. For that reluctant BAME/Person of Color repelled by your fetishisation of the African-American experience.

This is music for gated communities. This is Fehler Kuti singing of class relations, not of identities and positionalities. This is Fehler Kuti resisting.

Listen to these songs of infrastructure and appraisal of the welfare state. Join me in mourning the broken promises of prosperity for all. Send that “Ausländer“ of your mind to heaven. Colonialism fucked you up. Platform Capitalism is keeping you in chains. Are we to unionise all human and non-human workers at Amazon? Will modernity always have that "forever nigger“? What about those dispossessed field hands harvesting your asparagus?

All is lost. The system is rigged. Because all histories, gestures and identities have been absorbed into this late capitalist apparatus we call diversity. It can integrate anything and anyone. It made me. It is the price of the ticket. And it is unable to challenge its own premise of an atomised society. As if you and I had so little in common.

They will try and help you. They will build a museum for your history and a scholarship program for your future. I warn you. Don‘t let them give you a name. Resist appellation. Don’t get that German passport. Don‘t eat asparagus.

Fehler Kuti, Spring 2021

All songs by Julian Warner. Produced by Markus Acher and Tobias Siegert.

Markus Acher – drums, percussion, backing vocals Micha Acher – sousaphone, trumpet Cico Beck – synthesizer Jenny Bohn – backing vocals Pacifico Boy – vocals Katja Kobolt – spoken word Theresa Loibl – bass clarinet, backing vocals Sascha Schwegeler – steeldrum, kalimba, percussion, backing vocals Tobias Siegert – bass, synthesizers, percussion, backing vocals Julian Warner – piano, memotron, vocals

recorded and mixed by Tobias Siegert at Minga Records, july – december 2020 mastered by Moritz Illner at Duophonic

Cover art and photography by Andreas Neumeister. Layout by Sascha Schwegeler.

Fehler Kuti “Professional People” is part of the same multiverse as “The History of the Federal Republic of Germany as told by Fehler Kuti und die Polizei”. A production by Julian Warner. In cooperation with Münchner Kammerspiele. Funded by the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich. Released by Alien Transistor.

The Chilean/French duet are known for their hypnotic music which incorporates eerie sounds generated by raw and mineral materials (metal, rocks etc) to create tracks that are in turn hyper-rhythmic and dreamy, poised between postpunk rock and electronic dance music. The band have also been very active in the field of multimedia & performance arts, and Xpujil explores that other dimension of their talent. Released on Crammed's revered MADE TO MEASURE series (which is dedicated to experimental, minimal & ambient music), Xpujil consists of a single 40-minute track, which draws the listener into an aural, immersive experience. Based on sounds recorded by Nova Materia during a trip in the Mexican jungle, in Maya territory (Xpujil is the name of an old Mayan city, now lost in the middle of the forest), the album was then produced in the band's Parisian studio, and features contribution by electronic musician/drummer Ikue Mori (of DNA fame) and cellist Gaspar Claus. The album was mixed in binaural, and is best enjoyed on headphones. Nova Materia will be performing Xpujil in appropriate settings (museums, performance arts spaces), with multichannel immersive sound systems. Nova Materia are Caroline Chaspoul and Eduardo Henriquez, formerly with Panico, the alternative rock band they had created in Chile, with which they toured around the globe and released several albums.

Reissued for the first time.
Double vinyl that includes their critically acclaimed and highly sought after debut album ‘Glasshouse’ from 1985 and the 1986 follow up ‘Simplicity’. Presented in a gatefold sleeve adorned with the artwork from the Glasshouse EP, which features in the Prints & Drawings collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
With printed inner sleeves and a download code for all 31 tracks on the double CD. Including all tracks from the singles and EP’s plus unreleased recordings
Pressed on colour vinyl. Disc 1 is Purple. Disc 2 is Gold.

Formed in Barnsley in 1981. Party Day, with their bass led rhythms and sharp powerful drums gigged extensively and released their debut single ‘Row The Boat Ashore’ in 1983.
Their brand of Post-Punk Indie Rock with Gothic overtones soon got the attention of DJ John Peel and sold out almost immediately.
The follow up single ‘Spider’ from 1984 again received extensive airplay from John Peel and received rave reviews from the national music press. “Mouthy pellets of malevolence” NME “Excellent punk junk howl” Sounds.
Their self released debut album ‘Glasshouse’ was released in 1985 to glowing reviews and has gained popularity over the years. Now very collectable, it exchanges hands for big money on the second hand market.
The Glasshouse EP followed later in 85 heralding a more commercial approach and widening appeal.
Their second album ‘Simplicity’ was released in 1986
“Proving that they’ve grasped more than an inspirational nettle, the recurrent throb finds their trousers igniting during the quite punctilious rawk of the title track, the urgent prodding of ‘Career’, which reminded me uncomfortably of early Killing Joke and the attractive, though slightly over-wrought black sheep, ‘Glorious Days’, which could have brought a lump to Mario Lanza’s trousers.”
Party Day Split in 1987.

HIGHLIGHTS An emblematic figure of the Brazilian avant-garde and a key part of the cultural climate that made the rise of tropicália possible, Walter Smetak was a Swiss musician and inventor of instruments who developed his career in Brazil. "Smetak" (1974), his debut album, was produced by Caetano Veloso and Roberto Santana, and had the support of Gilberto Gil. It sums up a personal universe that combines Afro-Brazilian ritual traditions, theosophy, microtonal studies, collective improvisation and the use of unconventional musical instruments. Liner notes by Caetano Veloso. DESCRIPTION Walter Smetak was a Swiss cellist, composer, inventor of musical instruments, sculptor and writer who developed his career in Salvador, Brazil, and became an emblematic figure of the Bahian avant-garde and a key part of the cultural climate that made the rise of tropicália possible. Since 1969, he has carried out various workshops of experimental music at University of Bahia. His music was materialized in two albums: "Smetak" (1974) and "Interregno" (1980). "Smetak" was produced by Caetano Veloso and Roberto Santana, with the support of Gilberto Gil. There he unfolded a radical sound universe, based on the investigation of Afro-Brazilian ritualistic traditions, microtonality studies and collective improvisational open processes, always under the influence of theosophy, which he discovered in Brazil, and which allowed him to generate a symbolism represented in the construction of his own unconventional instruments, many of them of a sculptural nature, made with unusual materials such as PVC pipes, pumpkins and polystyrene foam, which he called plásticas sonoras. Around 150 instruments were created by Smetak, many of them in a surrealist style. They have been exhibited on various occasions in museums and galleries. His music was often based on graphic scores, many of them of great beauty. In addition to Smetak, Caetano Veloso and Roberto Santana, musicians such as Gereba, Tuzé Abreu, Djalma Correa, Capenga, among others, participated in the recording of this album. The author of one of the most important studies on Smetak, Marco Scarassatti, has written on the work of the Swiss-Brazilian artist: "His original and metaphysical work goes beyond any mysticism created around his figure. He investigated the relationship between sound and light, space and form, microtonality, collective improvisation, as a sound alchemist, a multimedia and unplugged prophet-visionary. While transforming matter, Smetak transformed himself and many of those around him." This reissue reproduces the much sought after original 1974 edition, published by Phillips. It includes the catalog of instruments used, adds a brochure with new photos and presents the remastered audio. The liner notes were written by Caetano Veloso. This project is part of Incidencias Sonoras: COINCIDENCIA experimental music & sound art platform, by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Green yellow red splatter vinyl
Into the Future’ is the ninth studio album by the American hardcore punk band Bad Brains, which was originally released on November 20, 2012 on Megaforce Records.
t is a tribute dedication to Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, a longtime friend of he band who died of cancer six months before its release, and produced their previous album ‘Build a Nation’
This “Into The Future’ vinyl reissue is on green, yellow and red splatter vinyl in gatefold packaging featuring cover art by Shepard Fairey, a street artist who became widely known with his Barrack Obama “Hope” poster used in his 2008 campaign. His work has been included in many contemporary art museums luding the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

‘Crestone’ is the debut feature written and directed by
Marnie Ellen Hertzler in partnership with Memory.
Hertzler enlisted the pioneering experimental act
Animal Collective to compose the film’s score, a first
for the band.
Marnie Ellen Hertzler on the score: “The town of
Crestone is not only the location of the film, but also
an important character. I wanted a score that was able
to highlight and elevate its importance. There are no
musicians I’d rather work with more on this film, and
no band that can sonically describe a landscape better
than Animal Collective can.”
Set in the desert of Crestone, CO over the course of
eight days, ‘Crestone’ follows a group of SoundCloud
rappers who live in solitude, growing weed and
making music for the internet. When an old friend
arrives to make a movie, reality and fiction begin to
blur.
Animal Collective previously created the audiovisual
album ‘Tangerine Reef’ (2018) in collaboration with
Coral Morphologic, released ‘Transverse Temporal
Gyrus’ (2012) as the music for an installation at the
Guggenheim Museum alongside the visual work of
artist Danny Perez and released the visual album
‘ODDSAC’ (2010), also in collaboration with Danny
Perez. ‘Crestone (Original Score)’ is the band's first
film score.
140g black vinyl LP with colour labels and standard
3mm spined jacket plus digital download card.

Kink Gong is back with his unique take and re-interpretation of the music he’s been recording and documenting for years in the South East Asian highlands.

Zomia Vol.1 takes the conceptual idea of ZOMIA, proposed by James C Scott in The Art of Not Being Governed, an Anarchist History of Upland South East Asia, to construct its very own mythological soundscape inspired by a semi-utopic region where state rules don’t apply. Zomia might be (almost) gone but Kink Gong is keen keep its spirit alive by releasing a series of albums celebrating the region’s quasi mythological features.

‘’Zomia is an idea, a concept that, not so long ago, there were two very distinct worlds in southeast Asia, the valley VS highland/hinterland, the civilisation VS the primitive, paddy rice VS slash and burn agriculture, Buddhism VS Animism, fixed territory VS movement/migration, written system VS oral culture, the state VS anarchy, property VS squat, controlled population VS autonomy, bricks VS bamboo and wood and, at my level museumified traditional mainstream music VS real emotions/songs of devastated lives and/or gongs ceremonies with buffalo sacrifices, extreme heat in the valleys VS shade in the jungle. I could go on and on but let’s not forget that ZOMIA is disappearing fast, if not altogether already. How many of the people I’ve recorded are still alive?

As you might know, before composing new music from my own ZOMIAN experience (from 2001 to 2014 in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and China) I had to find those musicians, be able to communicate with them, record them as good as I could with very limited finances and gradually release a collection of 160 CDrs. It is very important for me to make sure you to listen to the fantastic original recordings before or after you’ve listened to this experimental reconstruction I called ZOMIA!

Expect more volumes to come, this is my biggest source of inspiration, and the reason why I’ve been involved for years in constructing a mythological experimental musical ZOMIAN soundscape.’’
Laurent Jeanneau, Berlin 2020

Avont is a music project by Amsterdam based artist Arjan Timmermans The music on Avont's #1 EP was mainly created with the use of a four-track tape machine, guitar, hardware synths and a eurorack modular synthesizer. Avont juxtaposes the element of chance and the glitches that are inherent in the use of tape loops, with meticulous sound design and synthesizer programming.

Genres that influenced this collection of recordings range from krautrock and noise to jazz and ambient. This resulted in combining atmospheric tape loops with the lush Rhodes piano improvisations of Onno Beukenhorst on "Camtas", while the ambient of "Even" is based on a classic jazz chord progression. Arjan Timmermans studied music at London's Middlesex University, has been a successful sound designer for creative brands such as Van Gogh Museum and Bas Kosters and gained notoriety with new wave and electro infused solo performances in European clubs in the early 00's. For the music on this EP, he was equally influenced by electronic acts like Bitchin Bajas, the krautrock of Harmonia and jazz artists such as Jakob Bro and The Necks.

Unobvious Creative Studio created the concept & design for the cover. They asked Amsterdam based collage artist Dewy Karouw to create artwork. Dewy combined fragments of black and white photo's from vintage adult magazines. By omitting the genitals of the original photos, she prevents an explicit sexual image, in favour of sensual, organic shapes. By adding geometric shapes and colour to these images, Unobvious found a way to underpin the contrast of organic and artificial sounds found in the music.

Warning: don't pull off the fluorescent sticker! Enjoy!

Saturations is a composition by Danish multidisciplinary artist Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard, and features a clarinet choir consisting of 19(!) clarinet players.

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard (b. 1979) considers his work to be a basic research in realities working within the domains of imaginary & physical sound as well as other non-sonic media, and since 2012 Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has experimented with creating music that lets the instruments transcend their inherent sonic norms and reappear in another form by way of multiplication of sound.

His work with multiplication of sound has led to numerous compositions in which one instrument is multiplied a number of times: One piece is written for 9 pianos, another for 10 hi-hats and yet another for countless triangles and so on.

The multiplication brings out bodily timbral phenomena, interference of sound waves and vibrations, and brings out what Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard calls the sound’s potential of transformation. He describes this as the quality in a musical piece, when you no longer hear recognizable instruments, but instead the individual sound, as well as the individual musician, is dissolved into the collective sound.

A sonic as well as human synthesis.

He explains the concept of this sound as follows:

“Imagine you enter a room with vibrant acoustics, such as a cafe full of people having conversations, and when you’re close to those conversations you hear the language and understand the words. If you step away from the tables, however, and stand in the doorway, you begin to loose the ability to distinguish the words from one another. Now instead of hearing the individual conversations, melts all the conversations together, and transform into a one new sound. A sound of people without words and language. Just as when you hear a group of geese squawk, or the wind in tree tops, a kind of nature given sound of people. Once the language is dissolved and the words stop making sense, what is left, is the sound."

The work of NLL has been presented at a variety of different venues and museums such as MoMA (NY - as a part of the René Magritte exhibition The Mystery of the Ordinary, 2013), Imaginary West Indies (Overgaden Copenhagen, 2017), ISCM (Vancouver, 2017), Radiophrenia (Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, 2017), CPH:DOX (Copenhagen, 2017), Roskilde Festival (2017), Harpa (Reykjavik, 2017), G((o))ng Tomorrow Festival (Copenhagen 2016, 2018), Nordic Music Days (Norway, 2019), Akusmata (SF, 2020) and his works has been released on labels such as Topos (DK), Archive Officielle (CA) and Important Records (US). NLL is associate professor at RMC in Copenhagen, and has given lectures at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Goldsmiths University of London a.o.p. NLL has been awarded with several prizes a.o. from the Danish Art Foundation and the Sonning Foundation.

“Nothing ever really disappears,” Cassandra Jenkins says. “It just changes shape.” Over the past few years, she’s seen relationships altered, travelled three continents, wandered through museums and parks, and recorded free-associative guided tours of her New York haunts. Her observations capture the humanity and nature around her, as well as thought patterns, memories, and attempts to be present while dealing with pain and loss. With a singular voice, Jenkins siphons these ideas into the ambient folk of her new album.
An Overview on Phenomenal Nature honors flux, detail, and moments of intimacy. Jenkins arrived at engineer Josh Kaufman’s studio with ideas rather than full songs — nevertheless, they finished the album in a week. Jenkins’ voice floats amid sensuous chamber pop arrangements and raw-edged drums, ferrying us through impressionistic portraits of friends and strangers. Her lyrics unfold magical worlds, introducing you to a cast of characters like a local fisherman, a psychic at a birthday party, and driving instructor of a spiritual bent.

Jenkins’ last record, 2017’s Play Till You Win, confirmed the veteran artist’s talent. Evident of Jenkins’ experience growing up in a family band in New York City, the album showcased her meticulous songwriting and musicianship, earning her comparisons to George Harrison and Emmylou Harris. Jenkins has since played in the bands of Eleanor Friedberger, Craig Finn, and Lola Kirke, and rehearsed to tour with Purple Mountains last August before the tour’s cancellation. Her new record departs from her previous work in its openness and flexibility, following her peripatetic lifestyle. “The goal is to be more fluid, to be more like the clouds shifting constantly,” she says. The approach allowed Jenkins to express herself like she never has.

On album opener “Michaelangelo,” before the heavy drum beat and fuzz guitars enter, Jenkins sings quietly “I’m a three-legged dog, working with what I’ve got / and part of me will always be looking for what I lost // there’s a fly around my head, waiting for the day I drop dead.” Phenomenal Nature thrives in this dichotomy between ornate sonics and verbal frankness, a calming guided tour to the edge. Later, on “Crosshairs,” amid lush strings, she sings conversationally: “Empty space is my escape / it runs through me like a river / while time spits in my face.”

“Hard Drive,” the third track and album centerpiece, opens with a voice memo Jenkins recorded at The Met Breuer: a guard muses about Mrinalini Mukherjee’s hybrid textile and sculpture works, which were then on display in a retrospective titled Phenomenal Nature. “When we lose our connection to nature, we lose our spirit, our humanity,” she explains. Stuart Bogie's saxophone & Josh Kaufman's glittering guitar make way for Jenkins' spoken word which constellates scenes from her life, gradually building and blossoming as she recreates a meditation guided by a friend who incants, “One, two, three.”

Sounds of footsteps and bird calls run through the album’s glittering conclusion, “The Ramble.” Meditative and bright, it recalls how Jenkins felt while writing and recording her new material: “Everything else is falling apart, so let’s just enjoy this time,” she said. If Phenomenal Nature has a unifying theme, it’s the power of presence, the joy of walking in a world in constant flux and opening oneself to change.

Montreal art pop group Freelove Fenner release their long-awaited album, The Punishment Zone, on Moone Records. The 14-song collection is an exercise in pleasing sounds, diaphanous textures, and concise song structure. The group listened to a century's worth of experimental, often cacophonous sounds and reshaped it into a mellow pop music.

The group’s workshop is the strictly analog Bottle Garden Studio, a small room full of tape machines and homemade equipment that is integral to the group’s sound and process. Avoiding 21st century technology not out of any sort of snobbery or nostalgia but rather a desire to avoid the work habits inherent with contemporary tools, the band embraces the different results that come with a slower, more tactile process: the happy accidents; the absence of visual stimuli (no screens); the difficulty in attaining high gloss finishes.

Freelove Fenner have released two EPs, In the Bottle Garden (2009), and Pineapple Hair EP (2012); as well as the full-length album Do Not Affect a Breezy Manner (2013), all on Montreal’s Fixture Records. The Punishment Zone will be released on Arizona’s minimal art label Moone Records, joining an eclectic roster featuring artists like Tori Kudo, John Dieterich, Little Wings, Lithics, and others.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, De Nor had no choice but to free all its prisoners - even the jazz ones - and shut its gates. But the red beacon shall shine again! Until such a time, we asked some of the artists who were booked to play there this summer to submit a piece for this new publication in lieu of their cancelled performance. This compilation lp contains tracks by Lori Goldston, Hiele, Agnes Hvizdalek, Nubots, Justine Grillet, Thurston Moore, Sami Bergold, Possessed Factory, Stacks, David Edren, Aaron Dilloway & Lucrecia Dalt, Ka Baird, Ben Bertrand, Miaux, Lorie Bevins, and C.O.P. and is housed in a deluxe dye cut linnen sleeve and comes with an insert and a mini Nor cut out made by Gerard Herman. De Nor is a sculpture-pavillion in the grounds of the Middelheim Museum conceived and designed by Dennis Tyfus and FVWW Architecten. In peace time it hosts concerts, lectures, and various presentations throughoutthe summer.

Laurel Halo, Donato Dozzy and Teheran sound artist Tegh give us their "Glassforms Versions"alongside a new edit by Max Cooper. The works of Philip Glass are reflected and refracted in a myriad of ways by some of the most renowned electronic artists alive, making for a blissful, multi-dimensional listening experience.


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With "Glassforms", Max Cooper and Bruce Brubaker set out on an intimate, nuanced exploration of the works of Philip Glass. The resulting recordings, developed in a fluctuating exchange between the American pianist and the Irish scientist-artist, are an astounding testament to the innovation that artistic collaboration can achieve and what depths are yet to discover in Philip Glass' compositions. The two artists did not just rework, but fundamentally rewired the original songs using algorithmic software to process and augment the musical data it received from Brubaker's piano live on stage.

When approaching his remix, Donato Dozzy also tapped into that inspiration to create something new rather than just reworking it, which is one of the core motives that emanates from "Glassforms". The Italian producer and label owner is known for his drive to explore: he develops installations for public spaces and museums, uses obscure musical instruments and collaborates with classical singers or visual artists. "I chose "Two Pages" for it's hypnotic feel in the notes repetition", he says, "but I did not want to merely sample the piano, but instead ask someone I trust and admire to carve it from scratch and even go further." So he followed the lead of Brubaker and Cooper and teamed up with the renowned Italian percussionist and jazz musician Daniele Di Gregorio to completely rewire "Two Pages" into a gorgeous piece of endlessly modulating ambient electronica.

Laurel Halo, the second remixer on "Glassforms Versions", does not need a long introduction either: the American musician is at the forefront of electronic music in 2020, a bright star today after releasing her debut "Quarantine" on Hyperdub in 2012. Her remix of "Opening" brings to mind the string section of an orchestra tuning their violins before the performance - forever. They glide in and out of tune, sometimes individually, then together, then are accompanied by keys that are most likely a ghostly representation of Brubaker's piano, sampled and pitched down, but sound almost jazzy in the context of Halo's remix. It's a blissful listening experience, calling to mind her recent collaboration with cellist Oliver Coates on "Raw Silk Uncut Wood" and showing a deep understanding of Philip Glass' work.

Sound artist Tegh is the third on the remix bill - the electronic musician from Teheran delivers his take on "ƒTwo Pages", once again showcasing how versatile, how inherently complex the works of Philip Glass are. They can be interpreted in a myriad of ways - Tegh's version is a bounding, brooding piece filled with raw energy that feels like it is performed live, just for you, every single time you listen. His version is, at first, much more focused on the underlying moods, electronic undercurrents of the original than Dozzy's version, and yet, when the piano finally does break through, it becomes clear that we are listening to Philip Glass, reflected manifold: through the piano of Bruce Brubaker, the synths of Max Cooper, and then again through the mind of the artist Tegh.

Concluding the new "Glassforms Versions" is a previously unheard edit of "Two Pages". It's difficult to edit a piece of minimalistic beauty without losing it's essence, but Max Cooper - after many efforts and close conversations with Bruce Brubaker - managed to bring these shorter edit into a satisfying, conclusive form.