Cerca:new sense

Following recent appearances on Permanent Vacation, Mute and Correspondant, Terr makes a triumphant return to Phantasy with a deeply dreamy new single, ‘Wings of Time’. Marking Terr's third appearance on the label, and her first since 2019, 'Wings of Time' is complimented by a momentous remix from Tornado
Wallace.

‘Wings Of Time’ serves to underscore Daniela Caldellas’ talents as both a producer and performer, a songwriter and a master of dancefloor atmosphere. Terr’s assured vocal performance once again takes front-and-centre, a warm beckoning light through a journey made of shimmering pads, wistful chords and
defined by a powerful sense of groove. An instrumental edition further highlights the arrangement, which resolves with rare, cosmic catharsis.

Tornado Wallace appears to stretch the time Terr sings of on his elastic, tunnelling remix, grinding out every inch of tension and detail from the blueprint, expanding minds and widening eyes in the process. While Terr’s original will likely send dancers to the heavens, Wallace reverses the energy source for an unexpectedly bass-heavy interpretation that generates a different, earthier pleasure.

Wasted Cathedral is the solo project of Saskatoon-based musician Christopher Laramee (Shooting Guns, The Switching Yard, and The Radiation Flowers). This new album is the latest in an impressive line of releases that have explored a variety of sounds, from ambient drone and electronic disco to experimental chaos and downtempo electronica. I'm Gonna Love You 'Til The End Of Time is made up of seven songs and is undoubtedly influenced by the starkness of the Canadian Prairie and long Saskatchewanian nights. It serves well as a soundtrack to the setting of any number of listening experiences, particularly when experienced with headphones. No matter the direction Laramee has chosen to guide Wasted Cathedral, the result has always been intriguing and captivating. I'm Gonna Love You 'Til The End Of Time is certainly no exception.

Laramee describes Wasted Cathedral as incidental music, improvised soundscapes created in passing moments, like musical snapshots. This makes perfect sense, considering the likes of Sarah Davachi, Peter Kember, Terry Riley, and Augustus Pablo inform Laramee's approach to composition, as well as tone-setting and mood. According to Laramee, this collection of songs is a continuation of his previous work, albeit in a more stripped down fashion.

Wasted Cathedral is recommended for listeners of Flying Saucer Attack, DJ Shadow, Spectrum/Sonic Boom, Spiritualized, and Portishead.

In the afterglow of her acclaimed 2020 album Silver Ladders, Los Angeles-based harpist Mary Lattimore returns with a culminating counterpart release, Collected Pieces: 2015- 2020. The limited-edition LP features new and previously unreleased material, Bandcamp-only singles, and other obscurities alongside standouts from her 2017 tape Collected Pieces. Beyond the vinyl compendium, an expanded tracklist on the cassette/digital version brings more of Lattimore's archives together for the first time. Lattimore has described the process of arranging these releases as akin to "opening a box filled with memories," and here that box continues to populate, accessible for both the artist and fans. Evocative material separated by years, framed as a portrait of an instrumental storyteller who rarely pauses, recording and often sharing music as soon as it strikes her. Seemingly in constant forward motion for the last five years since her Ghostly debut, Lattimore glances back for a breath, inviting new chances to live in these fleeting moments and emotions; all the beauty, sorrow, sunshine, and darkness housed within. Opening the cassette version is "Mary, You Were Wrong," which mirrors an author's bout with a broken heart. "It's about how you have to keep on going even if you make some mistakes," she says. The bittersweet refrain cycles throughout, a little brighter every time, slowly, like the way time tends to heal. Unreleased track "Sleeping Deer" came together during Lattimore's artist residency on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. She remembers, "a small deer whose mother I think had been run over by a car would hang out in the yard. I called him Lollipop and would leave vegetable scraps out." Lollipop returned daily to eat, rest, and wait for more. The music this vision inspired is patient and droning, with light plucks giving way to deeper, vibrating tones, permeating with a sense of anticipation. Next is a newer single, "We Wave From Our Boats," which she improvised after walking her neighborhood during the early days of lockdown in 2020, and shared on her Bandcamp. "I would just wave at neighbors I didn't know in a gesture of solidarity and it reminded me of how you're compelled to wave at people on the other boat when you're on a boat yourself, or on a bridge or something. The pull to wave feels very innate and natural." The heart of the track is a somber loop, over top which Lattimore's synth notes ruminate, each a gentle shimmer of optimism in the most anxious and absurd of days. Also recorded in 2020, "What The Living Do" is inspired by Marie Howe's poem of the same name, which reflects on loss through an appreciation for the mundane messiness of being human. The echoed, slow-marching track has a distant feel to it, as if the listener is outside of it, watching life play out as a film. "Princess Nicotine (1909)" scores actual footage, a dream sequence Lattimore imagined for J. Stuart Blackton's surreal silent film Princess Nicotine; or, the Smoke Fairy. She adopted the same approach for "Polly of the Circus," explaining it was the name of one of the old silent films discovered in permafrost in the Yukon featured in the documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time, "the only copy that survived and it kind of warped in the aging process." A trove of pieces are collected here, most recorded in the moment, just Lattimore and her Lyon and Healy Concert Grand Harp, contact mics, and pedals. Like her most affecting work, these songs showcase Lattimore's gifts as an observer, able to shape her craft around emotional frequencies and scenes. Her power as a musician is rooted in how she sees the world: in vivid detail, profoundly empathic, with deep gratitude for nature and nuance.

Kalipo prepares to launch his new album Happy Little Accidents, which counts with twelve electro-focused tracks as well as the participation of feature artists Rampue, Ira Atari, Oberst & Buchner and subkutan. Iconic 80s painter and TV host, Bob Ross is celebrated for his thirty-minute landscapes, recognizably soothing voice as well as the 'happy little quotes' he imprinted on pop culture. One of Ross' most memorable turns of phrase, "We don't make mistakes; we just have happy accidents," went on to encourage thousands worldwide. And not just painters. "For me, this album was about letting the songs develop very quickly and not evaluating them too much, or trying to avoid mistakes," says German electronic music producer, Kalipo (Jakob Häglsperger) who named his latest release Happy Little Accidents after Ross' signature phrase. "Bob Ross really impressed me as a child, he was always so accessible to everyone and demonstrated how easy it was for anyone to work creatively," says Kalipo, who translated Ross' fast and instinctive wet-on-wet painting technique to music-making on Happy Little Accidents. The 12 tracks that make up PART I and PART II of the album are a celebration of the method - sometimes it's a floaty journey with tinkering sounds, at other times dark fast beats create the core of the music, but there's always a sense of intuition and heart driving Kalipo's productions.

It’s been said that writing about music is like dancing about
architecture but what about singing about movies? Sufjan
Stevens and Angelo De Augustine have paired up for a
collaborative project that does just that. ‘A Beginner’s Mind’ is
their debut album and contains 14 songs (loosely) based on
(mostly) popular films.  The source material is highbrow, lowbrow and everything in
between. The music is folksy, sweet, sincere and harmonically
effervescent - Simon & Garfunkel with New Age flourishes. This
album runs the gamut and has fun with it, even while its
songwriters remain fully rooted in the melancholy folk idioms
they are known for.  Daniel Anum Jasper, a pioneer of Ghanian movie poster
painting, was commissioned to paint a series of new works for
‘A Beginner’s Mind’. His paintings are a graphic simulacrum for
the same sense of wonder, wordplay and intrigue that shape ‘A
Beginner’s Mind’. By transforming old films into vital new songs,
Stevens and De Augustine ask us to consider ourselves from a
previously unconsidered vantage point - a new way of seeing
and hearing - an exercise that’s as necessary and relevant now
as it’s ever been.  “In the dizzying chime of his careful fingerpicking and highpitched howls, De Augustine captures love’s bright blaze.” - Pitchfork
 “What we find here, on what is arguably the pinnacle of his
output to date, is De Augustine achieving the beautiful balance
between introspection and grandeur; straddling the place where
pain and hope intersect.” - Line of Best Fit

HONNE have announced the release of their much-anticipated new album, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ – a record that toasts the start of a new era of music from one of the UK’s most inventive and original outfits.

Releasing on October 22, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ forms HONNE’s third studio album following critically acclaimed LPs, ‘Warm On A Cold Night’ (2016) and ‘Love Me / Love Me Not’ (2018), as well as ‘no song without you’ – a surprise 14-track mixtape released last summer.

Written throughout the course of 2020, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ captures HONNE in limitless full bloom – as songwriters, producers and collaborators. “In the past, we’ve limited ourselves”, HONNE explain. “We might get to a section of a song and things are getting really exciting, but we then pull ourselves back and say, ‘Can we really do that?’. Now, we’ve sidestepped the rules and done whatever we wanted to do.”

This sense of freedom permeates the tracklist, which is defined as much by its eye-catching collaborations – Khalid (‘Three Strikes’), Griff (‘Back On Top’), 88 Rising’s NIKI (‘Coming Home’) – as it is by its musicianship, shimmering pop feel and intelligent song-writing; Sam Smith (‘Back On Top’) and MNEK (‘Easy On Me’) also co-wrote songs on the album.

Bold and ambitious , ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ brings together everything HONNE have worked towards in their career so far, while simultaneously pushing them into broad and exciting new spaces.

HONNE have announced the release of their much-anticipated new album, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ – a record that toasts the start of a new era of music from one of the UK’s most inventive and original outfits.

Releasing on October 22, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ forms HONNE’s third studio album following critically acclaimed LPs, ‘Warm On A Cold Night’ (2016) and ‘Love Me / Love Me Not’ (2018), as well as ‘no song without you’ – a surprise 14-track mixtape released last summer.

Written throughout the course of 2020, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ captures HONNE in limitless full bloom – as songwriters, producers and collaborators. “In the past, we’ve limited ourselves”, HONNE explain. “We might get to a section of a song and things are getting really exciting, but we then pull ourselves back and say, ‘Can we really do that?’. Now, we’ve sidestepped the rules and done whatever we wanted to do.”

This sense of freedom permeates the tracklist, which is defined as much by its eye-catching collaborations – Khalid (‘Three Strikes’), Griff (‘Back On Top’), 88 Rising’s NIKI (‘Coming Home’) – as it is by its musicianship, shimmering pop feel and intelligent song-writing; Sam Smith (‘Back On Top’) and MNEK (‘Easy On Me’) also co-wrote songs on the album.

Bold and ambitious , ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ brings together everything HONNE have worked towards in their career so far, while simultaneously pushing them into broad and exciting new spaces.

HONNE have announced the release of their much-anticipated new album, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ – a record that toasts the start of a new era of music from one of the UK’s most inventive and original outfits.

Releasing on October 22, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ forms HONNE’s third studio album following critically acclaimed LPs, ‘Warm On A Cold Night’ (2016) and ‘Love Me / Love Me Not’ (2018), as well as ‘no song without you’ – a surprise 14-track mixtape released last summer.

Written throughout the course of 2020, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ captures HONNE in limitless full bloom – as songwriters, producers and collaborators. “In the past, we’ve limited ourselves”, HONNE explain. “We might get to a section of a song and things are getting really exciting, but we then pull ourselves back and say, ‘Can we really do that?’. Now, we’ve sidestepped the rules and done whatever we wanted to do.”

This sense of freedom permeates the tracklist, which is defined as much by its eye-catching collaborations – Khalid (‘Three Strikes’), Griff (‘Back On Top’), 88 Rising’s NIKI (‘Coming Home’) – as it is by its musicianship, shimmering pop feel and intelligent song-writing; Sam Smith (‘Back On Top’) and MNEK (‘Easy On Me’) also co-wrote songs on the album.

Bold and ambitious , ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ brings together everything HONNE have worked towards in their career so far, while simultaneously pushing them into broad and exciting new spaces.

HONNE have announced the release of their much-anticipated new album, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ – a record that toasts the start of a new era of music from one of the UK’s most inventive and original outfits.

Releasing on October 22, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ forms HONNE’s third studio album following critically acclaimed LPs, ‘Warm On A Cold Night’ (2016) and ‘Love Me / Love Me Not’ (2018), as well as ‘no song without you’ – a surprise 14-track mixtape released last summer.

Written throughout the course of 2020, ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ captures HONNE in limitless full bloom – as songwriters, producers and collaborators. “In the past, we’ve limited ourselves”, HONNE explain. “We might get to a section of a song and things are getting really exciting, but we then pull ourselves back and say, ‘Can we really do that?’. Now, we’ve sidestepped the rules and done whatever we wanted to do.”

This sense of freedom permeates the tracklist, which is defined as much by its eye-catching collaborations – Khalid (‘Three Strikes’), Griff (‘Back On Top’), 88 Rising’s NIKI (‘Coming Home’) – as it is by its musicianship, shimmering pop feel and intelligent song-writing; Sam Smith (‘Back On Top’) and MNEK (‘Easy On Me’) also co-wrote songs on the album.

Bold and ambitious , ‘Let’s Just Say The World Ended A Week From Now, What Would You Do?’ brings together everything HONNE have worked towards in their career so far, while simultaneously pushing them into broad and exciting new spaces.

My Morning Jacket proudly announce the upcoming release of
their ninth studio album, the self-titled ‘My Morning Jacket’.
The band’s first new music since 2015’s GRAMMY Awardnominated ‘The Waterfall’, ‘My Morning Jacket’ reaffirms the
rarefied magic that’s made My Morning Jacket so beloved,
embedding every groove with moments of discovery, revelation
and ecstatic catharsis.
Produced and engineered by James over two multi-week
sessions at Los Angeles, CA’s 64 Sound, the album came to life
after what looked like a permanent hiatus for the band. But after
performing four shows in summer 2019 - beginning with two
mind-blowing nights at Red Rocks Amphitheatre - My Morning
Jacket were overcome with the urge to carry on.
That sense of purpose can be heard throughout the thrillingly
expansive ‘My Morning Jacket’. For all its unbridled joy, songs
like ‘Regularly Scheduled Programming’ and the otherworldly,
album-closing ‘I Never Could Get Enough’ once again reveal My
Morning Jacket’s hunger for exploring the most nuanced and
layered existential questions in song form while simultaneously
harnessing the hypnotic intensity of their legendary live show
more fully than ever before.
“I hope this album brings people a lot of joy and relief,
especially since we’ve all been cooped up for so long,” says
James. “I know that feeling you get from driving around blasting
music you love, or even lying in bed and crying to the music you
love. The fact that we’re able to be a part of people’s lives in
that way is so magical to us, and it feels really good that we’re
still around to keep doing that.”
CD in digisleeve with 12pp booklet.
Double LP on clear vinyl featuring a gatefold jacket with artwork
by Robert Beatty, custom inner-sleeves with lyrics and digital
download. (Once this format has sold out, a standard black vinyl
format - ATO0573LP - will be made available.)

For Andy and Edwin White, the brothers behind Orlando’s Tonstartssbandht, a song is a living, breathing thing. Through constant touring, the Whites’ songs both take shape and change shape, becoming something a little different every night as they explore the possibilities inherent within them. With time, attention, and intention, these songs—long, languid, full of open musical questions and temporary answers—become distinct objects, and the process begins again. On Petunia, Tonstartssbandht’s 18th album and second for Mexican Summer, they bring us to the earliest moments of this process, showing off a barn full of hatchlings already decked with splendid plumage. Using little more than a 12-string guitar and a drum kit, Andy and Edwin weave together the gentle headiness of Laurel Canyon and the sweaty pacing of Cologne; like a gyroscope, its constant motion produces the illusion of stillness—and that stillness gives it a sense of intimacy and introspection, something that’s further illuminated by the new emphasis placed on the brothers’ vocals. It allows the quiet wisdom of the lyrics—what Andy self-deprecatingly calls “generic broad platitudes that I still think resonate when I say them”—to slip in almost unnoticed, delivering their emotional truths while preparing a feather bed for you to collapse into. “All roads will lead to the heart of town, when you’ve been running too long,” he sings in the album’s opening moments. “Being at peace only slows you down, but you’ve been running so long now.” If Petunia feels like a journey in the direction of peace, that, too, is a reflection of how it was made—the entire thing was written and recorded in Orlando in 2020, rather than pieced together in spurts over the years. This is an album built on level ground that shows what can happen when the artistic environment is stable, even while the world’s environment is anything but. Petunia is not Tonstartssbandht’s definitive statement on these songs, because how could it be? But it is a portrait of Andy and Edwin White at home in Florida, an artfully staged landscape rich in detail, its winding passages and airy environment waiting to be explored.

After being out of print for years, Atmosphere’s fifth studio album, You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having, returns on vinyl. Following the breakthrough success of their four th album, Seven’s Travels, the group returned in 2005, showing impressive growth and inventiveness in their new compositions. Citing inspirations f rom a list of less-than-expected sources, including Tom Waits, Mark Lanegan, Shawn Phillips, Spoon, The Mars Volta, alopecia, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, The Beauty Pill, infected wisdom teeth, Craig Finn, TV On The Radio, Australia and I-94 East, among others, the album pushed boundaries without over reaching.

“Atmosphere has never sounded as pointed and focused as it does here on its fifth album.” –Billboard [8 Oct 2005]

“Both a return to form and a major step forward.” –URB Magazine [Dec 2005, p.94]

“Producer Ant’s production is full and springy. Whether flipping operettas on ‘Say Hey There’ or dropping pianos from five floors up on ‘Musical Chairs’ he’s got sundry abilities.” –Pitchfork [3 Oct 2005]

“Ant has never captured Slug‘s pen strokes quite like this, and as an emcee and a songwriter, Slug has never sounded this good over the course of an LP. [You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having] is absolutely their zenith, in every sense.” –HipHopDX [4 Oct 2005]

• Vinyl has been out of print for years.
• Written and performed by Slug. Produced by Ant.
• Features popular tracks “Smart Went Crazy”, “Pour Me Another”, and
“Little Man”.
• Vinyl packaging includes 12” gatefold jacket housing black double

To emerge from a global pandemic with a renewed sense of situational awareness, hard won insight, and a new album is the kind of move we've come to expect from THRICE over the last twenty years. With Horizons/East, Dustin Kensrue and his bandmates address, with candor and courage, the fragile and awkward arrangements that pass for civilization, while inviting us to dwell more knowingly within our own lives. Without surrendering any of the energy and hard edge of their previous albums, they've given us a profoundly meditative work which serves as a musical summons to everyday attentiveness. Since forming THRICE with guitarist Teppei Teranishi, bassist Eddie Breckenridge, and drummer Riley Breckenridge in 1998, Kensrue has never been one to back down from a mental fight. This mood is set by the opening synth-driven number "Color of the Sky," which sounds well-suited to accompany the closing credits of the Stranger Things season finale. Think Flying Lotus giving way to Elbow and setting the listener down in a new dimension. A self-recorded effort, Horizons/East conveys a palpable sense of danger, determination, and possibility.

It’s been said that writing about music is like dancing about
architecture but what about singing about movies? Sufjan
Stevens and Angelo De Augustine have paired up for a
collaborative project that does just that. ‘A Beginner’s Mind’ is
their debut album and contains 14 songs (loosely) based on
(mostly) popular films.  The source material is highbrow, lowbrow and everything in
between. The music is folksy, sweet, sincere and harmonically
effervescent - Simon & Garfunkel with New Age flourishes. This
album runs the gamut and has fun with it, even while its
songwriters remain fully rooted in the melancholy folk idioms
they are known for.  Daniel Anum Jasper, a pioneer of Ghanian movie poster
painting, was commissioned to paint a series of new works for
‘A Beginner’s Mind’. His paintings are a graphic simulacrum for
the same sense of wonder, wordplay and intrigue that shape ‘A
Beginner’s Mind’. By transforming old films into vital new songs,
Stevens and De Augustine ask us to consider ourselves from a
previously unconsidered vantage point - a new way of seeing
and hearing - an exercise that’s as necessary and relevant now
as it’s ever been.  “In the dizzying chime of his careful fingerpicking and highpitched howls, De Augustine captures love’s bright blaze.” - Pitchfork
 “What we find here, on what is arguably the pinnacle of his
output to date, is De Augustine achieving the beautiful balance
between introspection and grandeur; straddling the place where
pain and hope intersect.” - Line of Best Fit

Norah Jones has been a steady voice of warmth and reassurance for nearly 20 years since her cozy 2002 debut album Come Away With Me became a familiar musical companion for millions of people around the world. Now the 9-time GRAMMY-winning singer, songwriter, and pianist has made her first-ever holiday album with I Dream Of Christmas, a delightful and comforting collection of timeless seasonal favorites and affecting new originals that explore the complicated emotions of our times and our hopes that this holiday season will be full of joy and togetherness. I Dream Of Christmas will be released October 15 on Blue Note Records and can be pre-ordered now on vinyl, CD, and digital download.

“I’ve always loved Christmas music but never had the inclination to make a holiday album until now,” Norah says. “Last year I found myself listening to James Brown’s Funky Christmas and Elvis’s Christmas Album on Sunday’s during lockdown for a sense of comfort. In January 2021, I started thinking about making a Christmas album of my own. It gave me something fun to work on and look forward to.”

The album’s opening track, Norah’s original “Christmas Calling (Jolly Jones)” is available to stream or download today. Over chiming piano chords, Norah expresses a deep desire for holiday cheer and companionship. “I wanna hear the music play / I wanna dance and laugh and sway / I wanna happy holiday for Christmas.”

“When I was trying to figure out which direction to take, the original songs started popping in my head,” Norah explains. “They were all about trying to find the joys of Christmas, catching that spark, that feeling of love and inclusion that I was longing for during the rest of the year. Then there are all the classics that have that special nostalgia that can hit you no matter who or where you are in life. It was hard to narrow down, but I picked favorite classics that I knew I could make my own.”

Among the album’s many pleasures are Norah’s playful reinvention of The Chipmunk’s “Christmas Don’t Be Late” by David Seville (aka Ross Bagdasarian), which is given a languid beat and swaggering horns. Other highlights include sublime versions of “White Christmas,” “Blue Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” and “Christmas Time Is Here.”

I Dream Of Christmas was produced by Leon Michels, and features an excellent cast of musicians including Brian Blade on drums, Tony Scherr and Nick Movshon on bass, Russ Pahl on pedal steel guitar, Marika Hughes on cello, Dave Guy on trumpet, Raymond Mason on trombone, and Michels on saxophone, flute, percussion, and more.

Norah Jones first emerged on the world stage with the February 2002 release of Come Away With Me, her self-described “moody little record” that introduced a singular new voice and grew into a global phenomenon, sweeping the 2003 GRAMMY Awards. Since then, Jones has become a nine-time GRAMMY-winner. She has sold 50 million albums and her songs have been streamed six billion times worldwide. She has released a series of critically acclaimed and commercially successful solo albums—Feels Like Home (2004), Not Too Late (2007), The Fall (2009), Little Broken Hearts (2012), Day Breaks (2016), Pick Me Up Off The Floor (2020), and her first-ever live album ‘Til We Meet Again (2021)—as well as albums with her collective bands The Little Willies, El Madmo, and Puss N Boots featuring Sasha Dobson and Catherine Popper who released their second LP Sister in 2020. The 2010 compilation …Featuring Norah Jones showcased her incredible versatility by collecting her collaborations with artists as diverse as Willie Nelson, Outkast, Herbie Hancock, and Foo Fighters. Since 2018 Jones has been releasing a series of singles including collaborations with artists and friends such as Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy, Thomas Bartlett, Tarriona Tank Ball, Rodrigo Amarante, and Brian Blade, some of which were compiled on the 2019 singles collection Begin Again.

‘The record is inspired by the idea of humanity’s ever-increasing entanglement with technology and artificial intelligence, balancing fears and moral concerns with the possibilities of evolution’s next phase’

A new Soccer96 album is a chance for Danalogue (Dan Leavers) and Betamax (Maxwell Hallett) to return to something of a spiritual creative home. Between them, the keyboardist and drummer have become synonymous with the thriving London jazz scene and, in their mind-bending incarnation as the astral synths-and-drums pairing, they’ve traversed stylistic worlds. Over nearly a decade, the duo have metamorphosed from a DIY outfit whose rough-edged recordings hit with a punk spirit, to cosmic dreamers that use sound to travel the reaches of the mind.

First single Dopamine features Nuha Ruby Ra on vocals who sings from the perspective of human and machine throughout the track. This concept overlaps with the music seamlessly, forming a meeting point between technological and human exploration.

Dialogues between the band and Nuha crystallised a shared vision of a future where humans and artificial intelligence are entangled in a codependent relationship based on the giving and receiving of pleasure hormones, the robots only source of dopamine is to receive it from humans, and the humans’ ability to unleash the monsters of the worst of human emotion.

Danalogue and Nuha sing together ‘It’s a Long Way down’ .. the feeling of jumping from the cliff of our current state as humans and ‘free-falling’ into the unknown of robot-human intertwining. By the outro they are pleading with each other over their dopamine co-dependency, in terms of both giving and receiving the hit. "Dependency leads to free-falling integration, a moment of freefall into robotic consciousness. Humans and machines are locked in a dance of addiction." explains Betamax.

Soccer96 has always been a vessel for Danalogue and Betamax to find clear water from their multitude of other collaborations, their most notable being as two-thirds of The Comet Is Coming alongside Shabaka Hutchings. Danalogue’s other recent production credits include Snapped Ankles and Calabashed, whilst Betamax has been making music with Champagne Dub and Coma World.

“Through collaborating with various artists and developing our own sonic language, it feels like we have created a sound of our own,” says Danalogue. “Now we think less literally and take more liberties to not necessarily sound like a duo. It’s more like a production team that can be augmented or stripped back depending on what the music calls for.”

Dopamine, though, sees the pair back together once again, incubating their findings of the past two years and moving Soccer96 into new territories. The record is maybe darker in some senses than what they’ve put out before; it’s inspired by the idea of transhumanism and humanity’s ever-increasing entanglement with technology and artificial intelligence It balances fears and moral concerns with the possibilities of evolution’s next phase. “The LP title Dopamine refers to the type of neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, that enables technology to hack into our minds and control us, creating addiction, dependency,” Betamax explains.

Dopamine began life as a sonic reaction to the graphic novels of ‘Moebius’ Jean Giraud. The duo then started swapping reel-to-reel tape ideas through each other’s letterboxes in lockdown, before eventually convening in the studio and displaying one of the revered French artist’s images in the middle of the studio for inspiration.

“All musical decisions would centre around this image,” Betamax says. “It was a depiction of a cosmic traveller gazing across a desert at a sort of crystal city. If the music was resonating with the image then we knew we were on the right path. We are both glad there is a lot of emotional warmth underpinning the whole thing. We are trying to connect with the human essence at all times.”

No one combines death and black metal quite like Poland’s Hate . With unflinching viciousness and a sense of atmosphere unique to the band, on Rugia, their twelfth full-length, they push the boundaries of their craft even further. Writing for Rugia commenced shortly after Auric Gates of Veles was released. However, Hate soon began to tour extensively in support of their then new opus, and the production of new music was put on the back burner. But come 2020 and the COVID pandemic, the band’s touring plans with Belphegor and Suffocation were abruptly cut short. With this unexpected infusion of free time, the band decided to buckle down and finish writing the material they were working on. .” The album title is taken from the archaic name of a German island on the Baltic Sea now called Rügen. In ancient times, Rügen or Rugia, was a site of holy pilgrimage to the pagan Slavic people. It was the very heart of the western Slavic faith, housing the fabled stronghold of Arkona. The album is at its core a tribute to Rugia and its tribes and the culture they created. The band elected to once again track the album in the Hertz Recording Studio in Poland, and it was recorded, mixed and mastered by the Wiesłaski Brothers (Behemoth, Decapitated).

Eleven groups in eight days. A marathon recording session in a makeshift storefront studio in a 100-year-old building in the tiny Eastern North Carolina town of Fountain. Once the idea for the project was in place, Alice Vines of the Glorifying Vines Sisters started calling local musicians. It didn’t take her long to line up almost a dozen groups to come lift their voices and represent the region’s unique Sacred Soul traditions. When the groups on this record gathered to record in February of 2020, they couldn’t have known that the world was on the heels of a global pandemic, or that the year would bring great turmoil and social upheavals. But in the reality created by gospel songs even the greatest of trials are not surprising, nor can they be ultimately devastating. Every time singers stepped up to the mic during these sessions, they created a sonic world where no amount of bad news can undermine the truth of The Good News. Even when “you can’t really see a solution to what you’re dealing with at the moment,” says Kiamber Daniels of Faith and Harmony, singing gospel music will remind you, “hey, I’m still here; I got what it takes to make it through this. It will give you a sense of peace.” Produced by Bruce Watson (Fat Possum/Big Legal Mess/Bible & Tire), this collection of sacred soul recordings of Eastern North Carolinian gospel groups is a one of a kind exploration. With a rich heritage of family gospel music, the artists in this area have been honing their craft over generations and have their own way of making the material original and unique. This is Sacred Soul of North Carolina.

Cult American ambient label Past Inside The Present looks to New York City-based composer Christina Giannone for her new full length Glazed Vision, which is pressed to nice heavy 160 gram pink vinyl. This is her third full length following 202's The Faint and a collaborative work also last year, and it is another development of her dark, heavy, drone fulled ambient landscapes. These are lo-fi, foggy tracks that hang in mid air and make you feel like you're doing the same as only the most subtle of shapeshifting chords brings a sense of motion. It is bleak yet beautiful and never less than hugely absorbing.

Composed by the Capcom Sound Team, Masami Ueda, Makoto Tomozawa and Akira Kaida, Resident Evil’s brooding score became a benchmark for horror games, giving the original genre-defining masterpiece a persistent and unnerving sense of claustrophobia.

Each soundtrack has been remastered specifically for this release and will be pressed onto audiophile heavyweight, deluxe double-vinyl 180g LPs on black vinyl.