Search:oc

Anything goes, everything is OK,’ is New Cool Collective’s free and easy creed. These eight jazz players are continually reinventing themselves, finding new inspiration and inspiring others. Brilliant as ever under a new spotlight, New Cool Collective excels on their 25th album Everything is OK, released by Dox Records this autumn on 25 October 2024.

Earlier this year, the band celebrated its thirtieth anniversary with a pocket-sized ode to their prolific past: 30 Years Live. Having played and partied, the group turned their attention to the future: what next for an ensemble that thrives on musical experiment and collaboration? Where to now? Which way to go to rekindle that creative spark and foster that flame?

New Cool Collective has met the challenge head-on, determined to surprise their audience, and themselves too. They spent a little time reflecting, considering suggestions, weighing up options – eight creative artists exploring, coalescing. Soon their ideas gelled into something special. They laid down a series of tracks that both build on the band’s thirty-year history and feed on a newfound freedom to simply be New Cool Collective. Everything is OK embodies that sense of a group which knows how to surpass expectations, to make music from the heart, to go back to their roots, back to the essence of those early years.

Anything goes, everything is okay on a record that features extensive brass arrangements and orchestral elements. There’s something magnificent about those seductively intimate tracks, something way beyond the traditional orchestral big band sound. New Cool love to experiment with alternative production techniques, developing the final mix themselves to create a unique, unmistakably recognizable sound – however surprising or unusual the music, you know you’re listening to New Cool Collective – like you’re there and the band is playing just for you.

Everything is OK is brimming with ideas, surprise and humour. The music is contemplative, yet it also leads straight to the dance floor: it gets you moving – body and soul. This is music for the intellect, to take you out of your comfort zone and to show you subtly, ironically: is everything really ok?

NYC duo Straw Man Army return with their third LP, “Earthworks”, to complete a trilogy of records begun with 2020’s “Age of Exile,” and 2022’s “SOS”. Whereas “Age of Exile” dealt with the haunted landscapes of colonial history in the Americas, and “SOS” gave voice to a crisis of the present moment, like a prayer in bewildering times, 2024’s “Earthworks” signals the band’s attempt to close this trilogy by turning their gaze towards the future, where paradox, complexity and contradiction spiral in ascendance to an agonizing pitch. While continuing to develop their own style of anarcho-punk, “Earthworks” finds the band pulling once again from jazz and ambient influences, expanded Krautrock rhythms, and post-rock experiments, with a stronger emphasis on melodic vocals and varied song structures than on previous offerings. Taking cues from the wistful anti-war harmonies of The Byrds and the angry melodies of Zounds, tracks like “Turn the Wheel” and “Second Nature” mark new territory for a group whose messages and methods of experimentation have merged to form a singular sound equally at home on All the Madmen Records or in the spiritual legacy of ESP Disk. “Earthworks” is an album that holds and subverts many contradictions—juggling the weight of melancholy, grief, guilt, impunity, and the yearning for clarity against the backdrop of boiling wrath; the wrath of nature, the occupied, the dispossessed, and of the mind against itself. To quote the track “Spiral” — “Is this all that’s left for us these days? / Apathy and rage?”— Straw Man Army offers this record as a companion to our frustration, our sickness, our despair, and a lifeline for our fugitive attention in the struggle for peace.

"From the ashes of Linköping’s pioneering punk band, Tings of London, IQ 55 emerged onto the scene in 1978. Their compelling performances quickly made them the most sought-after band in their hometown. In 1979, IQ 55 recorded their first and only single, ”Livet Är En Bluff (Balladen)/ Bara Svårigheter,” in Gothenburg. Following their contribution to the compilation album Arnes Korvbar and numerous attempts to attract record labels, the band disbanded in October 1983. Now, for the first time, the full-length album ”Livet Är En Bluff” containing IQ 55’s timeless, original, and raw sound is here."

Producer, designer, publisher, filmmaker, all-round scene phenom - Lasse Marhaug returns with his first album since relocating from Oslo to the Arctic Circle, surveying his 35-year career for a set of grizzled, doom-pocked rhythms and foghorn drones pulled from the aether. Expansive and hard to categorise, it's a precision-tooled set of ice-cold tonal productions that heavily lean into Mika Vainio’s rhythm experiments, with extra levels of growling bass and curious noises to send us deep into the uncanny.

Lasse Marhaug has put his mark on literally hundreds of albums - working with artists like Jenny Hval, Merzbow, Jim O'Rourke, Kevin Drumm, Hilary Woods - so many others - yet he still regards himself as a primarily visual artist who got diverted into an occasionally different path. If his last album 'Context' was a kiss goodbye to decades of life in Oslo, 'Provoke' turns a new page, but one that draws heavily from memories of the distant past, reflecting on the way the topographies of Norway's frozen north helped shape his creative worldview. Weaving electronics into environmental recordings captured in the bleak Arctic winter, the album was mixed during the Polar night season, when, for two straight months, the sun never rose past the horizon. Somehow, even at its bleakest, Marhaug avoids the usual aesthetic signifiers for this kinda thing, finding elements of queered beauty in all the severity, juxtaposing elements that shine a bright light on all the odd spaces in-between.

A consideration of noise music's place in 2024, and whether it can still be a tool for subversion when its aesthetics have been so commodified, ‘Provoke’ also refernces an experimental '70s Japanese art magazine that attempted to define a new language for photography. Operating somewhere between these two guiding poles, Lasse feels his way through a subtly altered mode of expression, a new approach to familiar concepts. Album opener ‘Plates’, for example, gives it the full Ø treatment, like some exceptional ‘Oleva’-outtake, but , eventually, shards of interference start to exhale like horses blowing, creating uncanny sensations that hit through ambiguous feeling rather than sheer noise terror. Ritualistic, corporeal - hard to know what you’re listening to and why it makes you feel that certain way - so much more than just machine cycles optimised for their ultimately hollow brutalist aesthetic.

Marhaug paints vivid pictures from a carefully chosen palette, drawing us into a soundworld that's rich with contradictions and contrasts. Even the relatively deafening 'New Topographics' offsets its wall of distortion with a muffled, perforating kick drum, cutting into the noise like a knife through butter. And all of this preparation makes the album's lengthy centrepiece 'Monochrome Head' even more impactful; hinging on a Pan Sonic-like alloy of bass and drums, the track snowballs through tempered feedback and improv scrapes and whistles that pick up into an orchestral din. Marhaug accents the bluster with rhythmic hums that gather in momentum until they're almost oppressively heavy, as if everything's about to collapse.

A masterclass in quietly subversive world-building, 'Provoke' invites us to peer at an expansive sonic landscape and marvel at its intricacies, but this time around there's a Lovecraftian behemoth lurking somewhere beneath its icy surface.

Rejoice fiends, as this halloween Utter ventures into the darkness for its long-lost 13th release, a limited double LP by infamous electro sorcerer Labyrinthine.

'II-V' wrangles 11 daemonic invocations from the infernal vortex, cut loud at 45rpm on deep red vinyl and incarcerated within artwork by Alison Flora, painted in her own blood.

'II-V' is not for the faint of heart, as its cursed soundscapes have been known to intoxicate and overwhelm even the strongest and purest of minds. Listener beware!

2025 Repress

Only Cuts return with an EP from the jackin' house legend DJ Sneak.

4 bangers from the 'House Gangster' himself!

"‘One of the most exciting composers alive.’ – Daily Telegraph

Nonesuch will release the original score for Ken Burns’s new two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw; the documentary airs on November 18 and 19 on PBS. The album features performances by the composer’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score.

In celebration of LEONARDO da VINCI, New York City’s historic venue The Town Hall presents an evening of performances from Shaw’s score by Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth on October 29. The filmmakers will also preview excerpts from the four-hour film..

LEONARDO da VINCI is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns’s first non-American subject. It also marks a significant change in the team’s filmmaking style, which includes using split screens with images, video, and sound from different periods to further contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations. LEONARDO da VINCI looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human?

“No single person can speak to our collective effort to understand the world and ourselves,” said Ken Burns. “But Leonardo had a unique genius for inquiry, aided by his extraordinary skills as an artist and scientist, that helps us better understand the natural world that we are part of and to appreciate more fully what it means to be alive and human.”

“To help give depth and dimension to Leonardo’s inner life, and to carry our viewers on his personal journey, we enlisted the composer Caroline Shaw,” McMahon says in the album’s liner note. “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern. A fully original score, we believed, would add crucial connective tissue to areas where the record of Leonardo’s life is thin and it’s possible to briefly lose his trail. The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder.

“This soundtrack is a testament to the inspired efforts of Jennifer Dunnington, who marshaled it into being, the brilliant musicians and vocalists who, with the help of Alex Venguer, Neal Shaw, Colton Dodd and Tim Marchiafava, made it soar, and most of all Caroline Shaw, who might be Leonardo’s soulmate from across time,” he continues. “With her help, the Leonardo who emerges is no wizard shrouded in mystery, but a prideful, obsessive, at times lonely or flustered, occasionally ecstatic, and, in the end, content man who is in ways both modern and thoroughly of his time.”

“As we set out to explore Leonardo’s life, we realized that while he was very much a man of his time, he was also interested in something more universal,” said Sarah Burns. “Leonardo was uniquely focused on finding connections throughout nature, something that strikes us as very modern today, but which of course has a long history.”

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with a range of artists including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma, and she has contributed music to films and TV series including Fleishman Is in Trouble, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, and Beyoncé’s Homecoming. In addition to three albums with Sō Percussion, Narrow Sea, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, and Rectangles and Circumstance, Nonesuch has released her two Grammy-winning albums Orange and Evergreen, both of which feature Attacca Quartet. “Two-Step” and “Ghost,” Shaw’s songs with Ringdown, her duo with Danni Lee Parpan, are available now on Nonesuch. Caroline Shaw is Wigmore Hall’s 2024-25 Composer in Residence."

Who You Selling For is the third studio album by American rock band The Pretty Reckless. It was originally released on October 21, 2016 and since reached #13 on the US Billboard 200, #12 in Canada, and #23 on the UK Albums Chart. Its lead single, "Take Me Down", topped the Billboard US Mainstream Rock chart in October 2016. Produced by longtime collaborator Kato Khandwala, the album is a unique collection of scorching rock tunes with soulful, bluesy undertones. Who You Selling For reveals the band’s continuing evolution in songwriting, as frontwoman Taylor Momsen maintains her signature dark lyrics and raw, sexy vocals while delving deeper into elements of blues and southern rock guitar than on the band’s previous albums.

Founded during 2015 in New York’s Hudson Valley, Shadow Witch is an enigmatic beast of a band, harnessing decades of varied influences with a decidedly ‘vintage rock’ sensibility. Beginning with their first release “Sun Killer” in 2016 and “Disciples Of The Crow” in 2017, the band has garnered excellent reviews from the international heavy music community. The band returned in 2020 with their brooding occult-rock ode to obsession with their third album “Under The Shadow Of A Witch”. Now with their new full length, ”Eschaton (The End Of All Things)”, Shadow Witch explore new boundaries, digging into folk, prog and hard rock best traditions; a monumental heavy metal album made of retro, classic and proto rock/metal sonorities, occult doom vibes and enigmatic psychedelic twists.

Ocean Grove is an electrifying force in the world of heavy music, blending elements of nu-metal, hardcore and alternative rock to craft a sound that is uniquely their own i.e. Oddworld Music. An eclectic trio of misfits spawning from Melbourne, Australia, OG has rapidly risen to prominence with their dynamic and genre-defying approach to music. Comprised of vocalist Dale Tanner, bassist/vocalist Twiggy Hunter, and drummer/producer Sam Bassal, OG have a ‘collective’ mentality in their approach to creativity, drawing upon their unique talents with a shared passion for inventive thinking that goes against uninspired standards and challenges musical norms. Since their inception, OG has captivated audiences with their high-energy performances and infectious melodies, earning them a devoted following around the globe. Their debut album, "The Rhapsody Tapes," released in 2017, garnered widespread acclaim for its ground-breaking sound and fearless experimentation. With influences ranging from Korn, N.E.R.D and Faith No More, OG create a sonic experience that is both visceral and thought-provoking. Their music transcends traditional genre labels, appealing to fans of metal, rock, and alternative alike. In addition to their musical prowess, OG is known for their visually striking aesthetics and imaginative artistic direction, further cementing their status as one of the most exciting bands to emerge in recent years. As they continue to push the boundaries of their craft, OG remains at the forefront of the alternative music scene, inspiring audiences with their fearless creativity and unwavering commitment to artistic integrity. With each new release, they defy expectations and solidify their position as one of the most innovative and compelling bands of their generation.

Ocean Grove is an electrifying force in the world of heavy music, blending elements of nu-metal, hardcore and alternative rock to craft a sound that is uniquely their own i.e. Oddworld Music. An eclectic trio of misfits spawning from Melbourne, Australia, OG has rapidly risen to prominence with their dynamic and genre-defying approach to music. Comprised of vocalist Dale Tanner, bassist/vocalist Twiggy Hunter, and drummer/producer Sam Bassal, OG have a ‘collective’ mentality in their approach to creativity, drawing upon their unique talents with a shared passion for inventive thinking that goes against uninspired standards and challenges musical norms. Since their inception, OG has captivated audiences with their high-energy performances and infectious melodies, earning them a devoted following around the globe. Their debut album, "The Rhapsody Tapes," released in 2017, garnered widespread acclaim for its ground-breaking sound and fearless experimentation. With influences ranging from Korn, N.E.R.D and Faith No More, OG create a sonic experience that is both visceral and thought-provoking. Their music transcends traditional genre labels, appealing to fans of metal, rock, and alternative alike. In addition to their musical prowess, OG is known for their visually striking aesthetics and imaginative artistic direction, further cementing their status as one of the most exciting bands to emerge in recent years. As they continue to push the boundaries of their craft, OG remains at the forefront of the alternative music scene, inspiring audiences with their fearless creativity and unwavering commitment to artistic integrity. With each new release, they defy expectations and solidify their position as one of the most innovative and compelling bands of their generation.

J. Written has been preparing for this moment almost his entire life. From early on he has been writing. You might even say he was obsessed with writing. It did not matter what he was writing, he just felt compelled to write. Hence the name Written.
Born on January 18, 1994 (yes, he will gladly accept birthday greetings!) in the Payne Land neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica, J. Written entered this world as Jason Rasheed Wright. Due to certain financial instability in his family they had moved around a bit to various locations within the Kingston area. His parents, wanting him to be safe, encouraged him to be at home with his two sisters and to occupy his time at home he began to write. And write and write. And write some more.
He would write daily journals and even create newspaper articles written on the walls of their home. This creative outlet gave way to writing poems, speeches and essays while a student in high school. At 16 he started a dance trope known as the ACEZ dancers who were quite popular around Kingston.
He was then drawn to music around age 18 and began to create beats at a studio in Trench Town. He became part of the Trench Town community and is still very connected with the people there. His drive to write songs became his new medium for expressing himself. And this has led to him being recorded for various producers and included in the song “Fear To Understand” with Albarosie. Other songs and music videos followed and J. Written was brought to the attention of reggae producer Doctor Dread.
“When I first saw a video with J. Written and began to listen to more of his songs I knew this was a unique artist with a special vibe and a knack for writing interesting songs” says Doctor Dread. So he came to Jamaica and produced a first album “Kaleidoscope” for J. Written which is due for release in late 2024.

“My mission is to be active and positive. Not to confirm with the norm. To sometimes make people feel uncomfortable with issues impacting our community and society at large. To give thought to what is happening in the world and presently around us”. J. Written has made his intentions clear and it is revealed through his music.
And of special note is that J. Written has a role in the Bob Marley movie “One Love” as Junior Braithwaite, a member of the early Wailers in the scene when the young Wailers first come to audition for Coxsone Dodd of Studio One.
The future is bright for J. Written. He is creating music and lyrics as a constant in his life. And now the world will be able to share in his vision of creative expression.

“Music is my forever cove,” writes Portland, Oregon’s Luke Wyland of the ideas that give shape to Kuma Cove, his latest album under his own name. Though named after a real place on the Oregon coast, Kuma Cove casts its gaze far beyond the sightseer’s line of vision. Recorded live in the studio and blurring obvious lines between computer-based composition and electro-acoustic instrumentation, it is an album about flow, borders, transitory states, and shelter. Composed of discontinuous ripples and repetitions (“I’m forever searching for a better descriptor than looping, which feels too simple and flattened by overuse,” Wyland says), shaped into richly emotive arcs, and informed by his experience as a person who stutters, it is also an album about identity, self-expression, and the energies that sluice through and across what we perceive as linear time—like floodwaters seeking an exit, like streams running into the sea.

Artist’s Statement:
I made this record while spending significant time in the woods by the Sandy River in Corbett, Oregon,
where I've had my studio for the last five years. It is a diary of spontaneous live recordings edited to highlight the moments of clarity that emerge from long-form improvisations. These compositions express a slowing internal rhythm. An unwinding. A somatic recalibration as I enter middle age. A newly empowered vulnerability.

Here are the internalized cadences of my stutter, flowing freely from my fingers. The musicality of my disfluency is revealed in its frictions, elongations, and foreshortenings. Disruptions in linear time, where the bubbling cadences of my stutter find unexpected pathways, reveal the elasticity of the present moment. This is my idiosyncratic language, shaped and inspired by my disability. Subliminally mirroring internal processes, neural firings, cognitive entanglements...

The title, Kuma Cove, refers to a beloved cove on the coast of Oregon my wife and I return to yearly. There has always been something so magnetic about coves. The way they cradle one from the overwhelming enormity of the ocean beyond, muting a primordial fear. I experience these improvisations as ecosystems I'm able to inhabit for stretches of time, embodying the particular rhythms and sensorial textures within each. Music is my forever cove. Everything you hear is created live in Ableton on a setup I've been honing for 15 years. I celebrate MIDI and computer music as an extension of self and strive to make it as expressive as any analog instrument. I was a visual artist for the first half of my life and quickly adapted those skills to composing and producing on a computer. The transition felt natural within the landscape of DAW's interfaces, especially as a synesthete. Ableton and its community of Max creators continue to surprise me with its expansiveness.

I'm forever searching for a better descriptor than looping, which feels too simple and flattened by overuse. I envision sonic loops as tangled masses of time, three-dimensional knots spinning on tilted axes, or overlapping wreaths refracting out a myriad of colors. My practice is continually refocusing my ear to what is revealed in the repetitions, searching for the fingerprint of each. I find it incredible how technology lets us manipulate time like this. Nothing on this record is quantized or locked to a universal bpm. Experiencing numerous tempos at once feels important. Recordings as mirrors. Freedom from expected (conversational) flow as we hold time for each other.
-Luke Wyland, August 2024

Artist Bio:
Luke Wyland is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, and performer based in Portland, OR (USA). Wyland has been releasing critically acclaimed records for the past 20 years in the groups AU and Methods Body, as LWW, and under his own name, working with such labels as New Amsterdam, Beacon Sound, Balmat, The Leaf Label, and Aagoo Records. As a person who stutters, Wyland’s approach to music is informed by his idiosyncratic relationship with language. Wyland believes deeply in the cathartic power of live performance as a means for collective healing. Through an interdisciplinary art practice that focuses on improvisation, somatic embodiment, bespoke tuning systems, the cadences of disfluent speech, and time manipulation technologies, he’s collaborated with choreographers, high-school choirs, filmmakers, sound designers, and renowned musicians such as John Niekrasz, Holland Andrews, Colin Stetson, and Abraham Gomez-Delgado. He’s also the co-creator of the “It’s A Fucking Miracle” dance class with Tahni Holt.
Wyland has toured nationally and internationally and performed at the Whitney Museum, Ecstatic Music Festival, Issue Project Room, PICA’s Time-Based Arts Festival, End of the Road Festival, and Les Nuits Botanique, among others.

Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the release of the sought-after soundtrack for cult 1980 French film "Clara Et Les Chics Types," featuring Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil and the Splendid troupe actors. The Jazz-Funk soundtrack, composed by Michel Jonasz and featuring Manu Katché and Sylvin Marc has never been reissued since 1980. Remastered from with original master tapes, the release includes two never-released bonus tracks and a 4-page booklet with liner notes by French music expert and musician Guido Minisky (also a member of Acid Arab) who interviewed Michel Jonasz and actor Christophe Bourseiller for the occasion.

Dark Evergreen VInyl. The odd couple of Kristian Dunn (El Ten Eleven) and Damon Che (Don Caballero) was the result of some clever musical matchmaking by Karl Hofstetter, founder and curator of Joyful Noise Recordings. Karl introduced Dunn and Che via email in April 2023 after Dunn's prolific output outgrew the resources and abilities of his instrumental duo El Ten Eleven. Less than a year later, after countless text messages and song sketches were exchanged, and one fateful meeting at a recording studio was organized, their nascent project's debut record, See You at the Solipsist Convention, was complete. Despite Che's initial unfamiliarity with Dunn's musical output, their personalities bridged any and all gaps_both Che and Dunn share a flair for the comically absurd and musically adventurous, a mindset that shines throughout See You at the Solipsist Convention. Che has become legendary for his calculated polyrhythms and undeniable physicality, while Dunn is known for relentless experimentation and productivity akin to a freight train. Quickly, the unlikely pair transformed into destined collaborators. Scaffolded around eight-string bass, knotty percussion, and intricate syncopation, See You at the Solipsist Convention is a carnival of delights for fans of the post-everything persuasion_uncategorizable yet reverent to the altar of instrumental rock. Beyond all measure, Yesness stands as a testament to the powerful dividends of friendship and collaboration. We are nothing without each other - our partners, our local record store clerks, our neighbors. Music, too, thrives on our entanglements. With twelve tracks, an upcoming tour, and an unexpected friendship stemming from one email, Yesness underscores the brilliant machinery of human connection.

Nach Releases mit namhaften Künstlern wie Blockhead und Stro Elliot kehrt die Def Pressé Editions x KPM Reihe zu dem Artist zurück, der sie 2021 ins Leben rief: Damu The Fudgemunk aus Washington D.C. Angekündigt bereits in den Linernotes des Vorgängers "Conversation Peace" hielt Damu Wort. "Peace Of Action" enthält 9 brandneue Instrumentals und ist damit sein erstes offizielles Instrumentalprojekt seit über 7 Jahren. In der Zwischenzeit produzierte er für MC's wie Raw Poetic oder Blu und arbeitete an aufregenden Jazz-Projekten wie dem gemeinsamen Album mit Archie Shepp, "Ocean Bridges" (2021), das Gilles Peterson bis heute abfeiert.

"Es ist mir eine Freude, Peace of Action vorzustellen. Es war so aufregend, mit KPM zusammenzuarbeiten und Teil ihrer Geschichte zu werden. Wenn ich mir das fertige Album anhöre, höre ich all die Aufregung und Leidenschaft, die ich für die Musik hatte. Das Entdecken von Dingen in ihrem Archiv hat mir geholfen, Dinge über mich selbst zu entdecken und wiederzuentdecken, die ich in früheren Arbeiten normalerweise einschränke. Es hat Spaß gemacht, einige Regeln zu brechen und dennoch einige Einschränkungen aufrechtzuerhalten, insbesondere nach über 20 Jahren des Musikmachens. Da ich mit dem künstlerischen und kommerziellen Erfolg meines ersten Def Pressé x KPM-Albums im Jahr 2021 sehr zufrieden bin, bin ich stolz darauf, die Handlung 2024 mit dieser besonderen Energie und diesen Themen zu erweitern." Earl Davis (Damu The Fudgemunk)

Initially coming from the DIY hardcore scene, Coilguns have since then crafted their very own blend of punk and ecstatic noise-rock. The history of the band is deeply bound to the development of guitarist Jona Nido’s own label – Humus Records – that now gathers up to 150 releases from Swiss artists of all sonic horizons.

Though their last two albums were 100% self-produced, engineered and mixed by the band members, Coilguns drove in the summer of 2022 to end-of-the-world’s Oceansound Recordings in Norway with producer Scott Evans to track their 4th studio album which was then mixed by grammy nominated producer Tom Dalgety.

The band is known for its raw, uncompromising and euphoric live performances, proudly serving the dancing freaks and the crowd-surfing weirdos.

For Talia Hoit from Colorado, who has been classically trained to play the piano since the age of five, her early musical education has definitely paid off. Now she writes original songs, performs on vocals and keyboards, and composes orchestra scores for symphonic metal. For many years, she has also had a passion for writing songs outside of any formal band situation, and is now working with talented producers and musicians to bring her most personal and intimate songs to life to share with the world. For five years, Talia was the keyboardist and a songwriter for the band AnaDies. Presently she is the lead singer, orchestrator and co-songwriter in the symphonic metal band Beyond Forgiveness and the keyboardist for the metal band Ob Nixilis. As a solo artist, she recorded two original home studio albums for personal purposes, Fate’s Too Small (2007) and A Little Longer (2012), which had a limited physical CD release only, mostly just for friends and family. Back in 2019, she recorded the single Angel (produced by Jarek Musil), which just recently received a new master, and after the experience of working with a professional producer she decided to pursue her solo project, to professionally produce and commercially release as many of the personal songs she had written over the years as possible. In 2023, she released two more singles: Abandon and Whispers in the Storm. Her extensive experience in the music industry and understanding of classical music are quite audibly reflected in these works, which show a high level of quality and expertise. Talia’s music is definitely a treat for symphonic metal fans and heavy music lovers, showing influences of bands such as Within Temptation, Nightwish, Evanescence, and Visions Of Atlantis.

"Can machines sing? With his Synthetic album cycle, Rich Aucoin answers that question with a resounding, exuberant ""yes."" The four-part project sweeps listeners through a gallery tour of synthesis history, giving voice to a chorus of specimens from the past century of electronic sound. On Season 3, Aucoin deepens his dive into the variegated genealogy of dance music, charting a joyful course through the many flavors of rave euphoria.

From March 2020 through February 2024, Aucoin recorded Synthetic: Season 3 during a series of visits to the National Music Centre in Calgary and the Vintage Synthesizer Museum in Los Angeles. Among these collections, he found historic synthesizers ranging from the ubiquitous to the esoteric, each with its own voice just waiting to be jolted to life. During these sessions, Aucoin took the opportunity to air out some of synth history's most iconic instruments.

From the mass-produced to the bespoke, each synthesizer on Synthetic: Season 3 sends a transmission from its makers' own historical vision of the future. The instruments' tactile interfaces -- from fields of patch jacks to 50-year-old optical discs to rows and rows of voltage dials -- all lend embodied dimension to the practice of shaping sound from raw electricity. Each of them carries a story about what might have tumbled into being from the moment of their creation. In awakening these machines, Aucoin cross-pollinates a choir of futures into an ecstatic, reverential present."

Esoteric Warfare is the fifth full-length studio album by Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. It was released by Season of Mist on 6 June 2014 in Europe and Asia, and on 10 June 2014 in North America. It is the band's first album with Teloch on guitar since Blasphemer's departure from the band in 2008. As with the previous album, the lyrics focus less on the classically Satanic themes of the band's early work, instead referring to occult and conspiracy theory concepts such as psychic powers, mind control and alien tampering with human evolution. (For instance, the song "Corpse of Care" appears to be a direct allusion to Bohemian Grove and the Cremation of Care ceremony performed there.)