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A year after its first edition, the Open Space series returns in order to keep exploring what ambient music might mean nowadays.

A breadth of fresh artists, some new to the label and others renowned for their more dance-centric works, the compilation aims to give each individual artist their creative freedom to explore the space.

Techno producers such as Arthur Robert or label head Len Faki himself keep the beats present but this time focus on evoking states of introspection rather than the shuffle of dancefloors.
On the other end of the spectrum, we find seasoned multi-instrumentalist Laraaji, who has been crafting deeply meditative soundscapes since the 80’s. Using the special opportunity, the label reaches outside its usual sphere, inviting artists like the modular synth expert Jeremy Wentorth or Jimmy LaValle’s band project The Album Leaf. All while still featuring some well known veteran producers the likes of John Beltran or Exos.

No matter their respective scene or background, all artists are using their unique approach to display something deeply emotive. Be it the warm, expansive electro of Future Beat Alliance or a bubbly cosmic arpride by Hamburg Duo Can Love Be Synth.

Truly living up to its name, the Open Space series aims to open up possibilities for artists to freely pursue their creativity in a completely undefined area, a space for exploration and connection.

Westcountry folk singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Seth Lakeman was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2005 for 'Kitty Jay'. It catapulted Lakeman into the forefront of the new British folk movement and his follow up was the gold-selling ‘Freedom Fields’ which was released twice in 2006. Produced by his brother Sean Lakeman it came out on iScream and was then re-released by Relentless (EMI) where it went on to become Seth’s first of 6 UK Top 40 albums.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary, Seth has announced a Deluxe Reissue of the album on CD & Vinyl plus a huge tour in November playing the album, which includes ‘Lady of the Sea’, ‘King and Country’ and ‘White Hare’, plus other favourites.

Freedom Fields helped Seth build on his traditional cult following but found him a whole new audience for his rhythmic, captivating brand of indie-folk song writing. He was named Folk Singer of the Year, and ‘Freedom Fields’ awarded Album Of The Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2007.

Available to order on CD and double vinyl - Limited Edition Coloured & Black – all with exclusive bonus content including unreleased tracks and rare demos.

“Delicious harmonies and the occasional fiery fiddle are the order of the day, with his impressive song-writing skills shining out of every tune.” BBC Music (Freedom Fields)

SA015 is a split vinyl taken care of by long term label artist, Pfirter, and by a new voice that's been adding to the SA story across the summer, Kangding Ray. Pfirter's 'Caos y Orden Superior' is a weighty odyssey spread across nine minutes. Its opening is languid but somehow relentless as strange synthesised sounds are interrupted by insistent beats. Across the arc of this track 'chaos' and 'order' lose their static definitions, and played over a large club rig this has the potential to throughly disorientate. From here Kangding Ray takes over duties with 'Wars', a fragmented meditation on the darkest side of human nature. Created from hues saturated by the pain of mistakes and regrets, it pulses, rocking gently, swooning in and out. This stunning slice of electronic music acts as a balm for the very wounds that conflict leaves behind.

The Israeli producer Yotam Avni, though not one of the main players in the Stroboscopic Artefacts story to date, nevertheless shows that he is definitely here for a reason: having contributed with an entry in the Monad series back in July, he returns with a new set of tracks that fit perfectly into the label's overall aesthetic of evolving hyper-reality, while also being a strong personal statement. With both his S.A. debut and this new offering, Avni shows himself to be a truly 'progressive' musician: a creator whose musical techniques are informed by his creative disposition and not the other way around, an individual who seems to be using the richness and differentiation of human experience in order to let yet more of it arise.

The new record begins with the galloping rhythm of "Tehillim", bringing a whole inventory of struck wood and metal elements into play, and leading listeners on an adventurous voyage through liturgical chanting and volcanic eruptions of synthesizer magma, all the while being accented with nimble percussive fills that convey the improvisational feel of classic bebop drummers. The following "Orma," while more stripped down in terms of individual elements, continues down the same path with clever spatial arrangements, and with tonal and percussive elements that seem snatched out of their buys urban environments and placed under austere laboratory investigation: this holds true for the isolated bits of sax and vaguely middle-Eastern percussive accents that the improvisational feel of classic bebop drummers. The following "Orma," while more stripped down in terms of individual elements, continues down the same path with clever spatial arrangements, and with tonal and percussive elements that seem snatched out of their buys urban environments and placed under austere laboratory investigation: this holds true for the isolated bits of sax and vaguely middle-Eastern percussive accents that distinguish this track, and which leap out mischievously from their carefully controlled setting.

"Shlok" begins with a deep subterranean kick pattern and percolating bell tones that, while first bringing to mind recent efforts from Planetary Assault Systems, soon transform into something much unique to Avni's imagination - smooth arcing vocals and contrasting shades of nocturnal ambience turn this into a very sinuous and sultry piece of rhythmic music. Once the listener has been lured in by this siren song, the closer "Even" brings the EP's most forceful and demanding beat - though its heavy punch is tempered with a sense of contemplative sophistication. Once the insistent beat is overlaid by a shimmering latticework of piano, breezelike pads, and concentrated string plucks, it testifies to Avni's ability to create tracks that are loaded with emotional nuance and defy easy description.

Survival depends on evolution. As conditions change and tides turn, we must change with them in order to stay one step ahead of the coming challenges. It’s clear that Fit For An Autopsy have embraced that mantra as they continue to perpetually evolve with each subsequent body of work. Not just blurring, but eradicating the lines between technical metal virtuosity, death metal menace, hardcore intensity, melodic insidiousness, and abstract approaches, the New Jersey band embody an uncompromising vision of their own.

The six-piece—Joseph Badolato vocals, Patrick Sheridan guitar, Timothy Howley guitar, Will Putney [guitar], Peter Blue Spinazola [bass], and Josean Orta Martinez [drums]—perfect this approach on their sixth full-length offering, Oh What The Future Holds [Nuclear Blast Records].

Fit For An Autopsy have never stopped moving forward though. Following their caustic 2011 debut The Process of Human Extermination, the group quietly carved out a place among extreme metal’s modern vanguard with their second LP Hellbound. Revolver cited 2015’s Absolute Hope Absolute Hell among “15 Essential Deathcore Albums.” And In the wake of The Great Collapse two years later, the band had truly created their own space in the realm of what could be described as “post-deathcore”. This ascent reached another level on the 2019 opus The Sea of Tragic Beasts. Widespread praise from the fans and press alike is all but too common for their refreshing approach to modern aggressive music both on record and in concert.

When the Global Pandemic changed everyone’s tour plans, Fit For An Autopsy dove into writing in spring 2020 and made the most of their time off the road.
“We had no real timeline, so we didn’t feel much pressure,” says Putney. “Once we realized touring wasn’t opening up, we decided to have fun with the process. I got to spend more time than I usually do on records. We definitely took some of the songs into new places because of that. It’s our longest album. We composed more than we ever have and it was a rewarding feeling to put real work into all these ideas.”

In early 2021, Fit For An Autopsy congregated in-person at Putney’s Graphic Nature Audio and recorded Oh What The Future Holds. Now, they introduce the album with the single “Far From Heaven.” Swirling as a perfect storm, airy guitar cuts through a pummeling percussive groove as melodic vocals slip into a guttural groan offset by neck-snapping riffs and powerful dynamics.
“The world we exist in is clearly “far from heaven”. Institutions are exploited, and people are taken advantage of. There’s a power struggle between those in control and those who aren’t. This is a fairly literal reflection on the world today.”

In the end, Fit For An Autopsy haven’t just personally evolved on Oh What The Future Holds; they’ve brought heavy music with them.

Copenhagen based label Escho release “Escho 15 år: Burgers for my new life” - an extensive compilation of exclusive material for their 15th anniversary (2005-2020). The compilation gathers music by all the currently active artists of Escho - both Danish and international - 27 artists in total. Contributing artists for the compilation are (in alphabetical order): Anders P Jensen, August Rosenbaum, Astrid Sonne, Baby In Vain, BishBusch, The Bleeder Group, Bona Fide, Collider, Dane TS Hawk, Eric Copeland, Excepter, First Hate, Gullo Gullo, Homies, iB101, Iceage, Joanne Robertson, Kh Marie, Liss, Puyain Sanati, Small White Man, Smerz, Søren Kjærgaard, Thulebasen, Varnrable, Yangze and Ydegirl. About Escho and the compilation: The Escho sound was born 15 years ago in small apartments around Enghave Plads, a slightly run-down square at the west end of Vesterbro, Copenhagen, past the kebab shops and the porno shops and the drunks. A few years earlier, as teenagers, several members of the Escho crew had made extremely strange, crisp metal in a very popular band. Escho was a promoter and booking agent as much as it was a label in the early days. They put on small shows to foster and hype the local scene and they brought important performers from all over the world to Copenhagen for the first time. Black Dice, Gang Gang Dance, White Magic, Excepter, Hype Williams, Boredoms, Charles Hayward, they rippled through Copenhagen after they came. Eric Copeland stayed for months. Lorenzo Senni, now well known as a vanguard dance producer, brought his high-school hardcore band to Copenhagen. Escho found and asked these artists to play. And Escho played their humble part in giving sound back to the world. Iceage, Posh Isolation and the Mayhem scene went global. Escho is a lot about being in Denmark, what that sounds like, and projecting it for anyone to hear. Across its releases, Escho’s aesthetic has allowed for the amateurish and the obsessive, the soft and the hard. Escho is about the power of shared experimental experience. Escho has been going for such a long time that the kids who started it are now twice as old as they were when they came up with the name, the idea, the desire to start something. Much younger people, generations younger, work at the label. The world has transformed since then. Escho was born in a period of time where alternative and underground music existed on a private, separate plane to mass culture, and it now finds itself in a time where mass culture and the underground are porous. Tribalism and niche knowledge has been blended by the internet, erasing the border between mainstream and underground modes. Alternative thinking takes many forms now, and new artists continue to expand and interpret the sound of Escho, carrying with them the same curiosity that lit the first Escho sparks 15 years ago. As a whole, this compilation — it is important to note — is jagged in form and tone. It is not even close to a conventional scene compilation, where the sound of a clan flows together. This record doesn’t flow like that. And this, fittingly, makes this anniversary album a ‘classic’ Escho release, because conventions about form and presentation are thrown out the window and new conventions proposed. It is a reminder that Escho quietly remains an ongoing art project as much as anything else. More than its form and tone, however, this compilation is jagged because it is a document of today. It is not final, or conclusive in any way, because the contours of contemporary music are boundless. It’s jagged because Escho has been to a million shows, and put on a million shows, and still loves going to shows. It is a picture of pluralism, discovery and openness. It makes a case for having ears, and making art, and propagating this so that successive generations of young people do it too. This is exactly as it was in the beginning






















[v] 22 First Hate – Vampire Boy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [2020 Demo]

The ambient / cross-genres label Concentric Records launches its first solo release as a special edition LP written and composed by the celebrated and influential techno / experimental producer Tobias. It is the first strictly-ambient solo album of Berlin's Tobias. aka Tobias Freund.

Entitled Hall Ov Fame, the 42min. full length album is a rare ambient journey into a sonic world that is full of narrative and cinematic imagination, blurring boundaries between perceived and staged reality, past and future memory.

“I have movies in my head” describes Tobias Freund the source that inspired his new album to fill it with a fantastic life of its very own. Consequently, each of the eight tracks represents a scene out of a fictitious short film, some of them with a claustrophobic and tense atmosphere while others appear light and hopeful on the screen of imagination. What they have in common is an adventurous spirit that is inherent in and played out by three main characters: repetitive electronic and acoustic patterns, voices from far away and field recordings of obscured origin. All the episodes combined introduce this “Hall Ov Fame” as a psyche-cinematic event which resonates with “ambience in its natural shades” to evoke the whole range of sensations that make a proper, suspenseful mind movie.

Tobias. (Freund) is long established as an influential artist and has - since the early 1990s - been working as a professional producer, sound engineer, label owner and strictly live musician. The Berghain resident constantly keeps exploring the vast synth-driven Techno, Experimental and Ambient territories on journeys in-between genres, both as a live act and on his countless releases.
Besides his early solo projects (such as Pink Elln, Metazone or Phobia) he’s also been collaborating with Dandy Jack (as Sieg Über Die Sonne), Ricardo Villalobos (as Odd Machine), Max Loderbauer (as NSI.), Valentina Berthelon (as Recent Arts) and AtomTM to only name a few. With his vast experience, diverse output and interests, Tobias. doesn’t tire to actively push against existing boundaries and explore new areas of electronic music. By this he stands in a long tradition of electronic music, scrutinizing the self while reaching out towards the unknown, approaching sound with an appetite for the new, in the tradition of true innovators.

Hall Ov Fame follows a compilation in three parts that introduced Concentric Records’ roster and exploratory sonic realm over the past year and half, featuring unique and wide-ranging works by (in order of appearance) Pole, Daniela Huerta feat. Cornelia Thonhauser, Samuel Rohrer, Vladislav Delay, Jake Muir, Hotel Neon, Soundwalk Collective, Etapp Kyle, Tragic Selector (Daisuke Tadokoro & Terre Thaemlitz), Kareem Lotfy, Christina Vantzou, Jana Winderen, Echium, Max Loderbauer, William Selman, Petre Inspirescu, Supply, The Waves, HOLOVR, ASWA.

Written and Produced by Tobias Freund at Non Standard Studios, Berlin. Mastered by Tobias Freund. Lacquer Cut by Mike Grinser. Cover Image: TV Caption of Marcello Mastroianni in 'La Città delle Donne' by Federico Fellini, 1980. Artwork by Blackbirds Inc.

Pioneering Kansas City, MO emo rock band The Appleseed Cast's 2002 Deep Elm release 'Lost Songs' is now available to pre-order on vinyl via Thirty Something Records. Comprised of material recorded after the band's 1998 debut 'The End Of The Ring Wars' and before 2000's 'Mare Vitalis', 'Lost Songs' displays the transitional phase of the band in between the two albums. Carefully uniting old-school and new-school songwriting styles, 'Lost Songs' combines the bitter emotional release of the band's earliest recordings and the meticulous soundscapes crafted through endless hours of studio time on later recordings. Dynamic song structures, hurricane-force rhythms and ultra-vivid lyrics paint bold portraits of disillusion and heartache, while at other points 'Lost Songs' overflows with swells of symphonics, feedback and electronics. The title joins the already released (and still available) vinyl reissue of the band's long out-of-print 2000 Deep Elm sophomore release 'Mare Vitalis.' Ominous, powerful, and magnetizing like the sea, 'Mare Vitalis' is dreamy and charming, and flows from a tide of moody energy with guitars that sweep around complex, precision rhythms. A masterpiece of timeless inspiration, the record is absolutely stunning.

Marshall McLuhan’s famous edict ‘the medium is the message’ has never been more apt than with regard to modern remix culture. Although the idea of the remix goes way back to the Jamaican dub pioneers and New York disco remixers of the 1970s, the form didn’t truly come into its own until the acid house explosion of the 1980s, when remixers’ credentials often subsumed — and sometimes surpassed — the original source material. Some, among them our lost friend Andrew Weatherall, used remixing as a springboard into multiple other directions, and became auteurs in their own right.

Forged in the white-hot heat of post-acid house Britain, these Heavenly remixes are perfectly weighted with respect and irreverence, the remixer in each case carefully chosen to add heft to the song (as on Al Breadwinner’s dubwise reworking of Mattiel’s ’Guns of Brixton’— the pairing more a game of chess than a best-of-three arm wrestle).

Although Heavenly was founded in the wake of huge upheavals in electronic music, it was still imbued with its own curious parallel life. I’ve always thought of Heavenly as one of the UK’s alt-pop labels; a place where brilliant pop bands live and record, if the general public would only realise. Some of them have ended up in the real, actual charts (Saint Etienne, Doves), but that’s missing the point about Heavenly, who are, like Factory and Fast Product before them, pop music’s conscience.

There is no sense of order to this compilation and we make no apologies. It’s the Heavenly way. Think of it as a present from Loki, the Norse god of mischief. You’ll find a smattering of older tracks: album openers Saint Etienne are taken on a Poseidon Adventure with Underworld, who inject ‘Cool Kids of Death’ with typically manic energy. Elsewhere, ’90s Brum duo Mother add dancefloor pzazz to Espiritu’s innate glamour on an all-funked-up reworking of ‘Los Americanos’, and Mark Lusardi’s remix of Moonflowers’ ‘Get Higher’ is an early Heavenly classic.

On ‘Terracotta Warrior’, a perfect, psyched-out, Mancunian union is created betwixt Jimi Goodwin and Andy Votel, whilst Goodwin cohort Simon Aldred, in his Cherry Ghost guise, receives a proper Tamla-Motowning from Richard Norris (aka Time & Space Machine) on an inspired cover of Cece Peniston’s glam-house hit, ‘Finally’.

There are several of Heavenly’s current darlings here too. One of the most exciting young British prospects, Yorkshire’s Working Men’s Club, effectively remix themselves, as Minsky Rock — WMC’s Syd Minsky-Sargeant and producer Ross Orton — cleave ‘X’ into a riotous industrial racket. Jagwar Ma’s Jono Ma takes the Kraftwerkian leitmotif on ‘Automatic’ and drives the Australian jazz-funkers Mildlife down an electro-convulsive psychedelic tunnel (thankfully no-one was harmed during the making of this remix); Sheffield’s DJ Parrot and Jarvis Cocker deliver one of the outstanding remixes of 2018, turning Baxter Dury’s ‘Miami’ into a lovelorn minor opera; and, making its first appearance on vinyl, David Holmes’ Unloved project is taken on a panoramic Welsh waltz thanks to Gwenno.


There may well be no rhyme, nor reason, to how these compilations have been put together, beyond the fact that they are assembled with love, an innate understanding of the power of great pop music, and a skilled marriage of song and remixer — but does one really need anything more than that for an album to make sense? I’d suggest not.

Jeff Parker's Forfolks - a new album of solo guitar works - was recorded by Graeme Gibson at Sholo Studio in Altadena, California (aka Jeff's house) over two days in June 2021. It includes interpretations of Thelonious Monk's "Ugly Beauty" and the standard "My Ideal," plus six original compositions including "Four Folks," "La Jetée" (a tune he recorded with Tortoise in 1998), and four totally new loop-driven, stratiform works that marry melodic improvisation with electronic textures. "It's a particular thing to hear Jeff play solo," writes veteran Chicago musician and longtime Parker collaborator Matthew Lux in his liner notes for Forfolks. "He is an unusually selfless improviser, oftentimes laying out and highlighting the contributions of his band mates... On this recording, however, he is by himself, joined only by his own ideas, looped or frozen, to flesh out the music he's creating in his mind. Hearing him craft entire sound worlds on these eight selections gives us an opportunity to really see how Parker orders sound." Forfolks follows Parker's critically acclaimed 2020 record Suite for Max Brown, which Pitchfork called an "effortlessly detailed album, full of tradition and experimentation that spans generations ... It lives at the vanguard of new jazz music." The album went on to debut at No. 1 on Billboard's Current Contemporary Jazz Chart.

"Released in October 1971, Frank Zappa’s “200 Motels” was a miraculous feat, a cinematic collision of the venerated musician and composer’s kaleidoscopic musical and visual worlds that brought together Zappa and his band, The Mothers, Ringo Starr as Zappa – as “a large dwarf” – Keith Moon as a perverted nun, Pamela Des Barres in her acting debut, noted thespian Theodore Bikel, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and an incredible assortment of characters (both on screen and off) for a “surrealistic documentary” about the bizarre life of a touring musician. The 2LP set : We are pleased to present the original soundtrack, a double-album set featuring all original packaging including the booklet & poster and a brand new remaster by legend Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. Pressed on 180g black vinyl by Optimal Media in Germany.
In celebration of “200 Motels” golden anniversary, Zappa Records, UMC and MGM have assembled a definitive Super Deluxe six-disc box set of the beloved, yet hard to find, soundtrack. Fully authorized by the Zappa Trust and produced by Ahmet Zappa and Zappa Vaultmeister Joe Travers, the monstrous 200 Motels 50th Anniversary Edition brings together the original soundtrack, newly remastered by Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, along with a staggering amount of unreleased and rare material unearthed from FZ’s Vault, including original demos, studio outtakes, work mixes, interviews and movie ads, along with newly discovered dialog reels, revealing an early audio edit of the film. Also included is a wealth of never-before-heard audio documentary material surrounding the project.
The six-disc set will be housed in a 64-page hardcover book in a handsome 12” x 12” slipcase. The packaging replicates the original booklet updated with revealing new liner notes from Pamela Des Barres, Ruth Underwood and Joe Travers, as well as Patrick Pending’s essay from the 1997 reissue, and is chock full of motion picture artwork, stills and images, from the film and its making, many which have never been seen before. This must-have collector’s release will also include a custom “200 Motels” keychain and Do-No-Disturb motel door hanger and a full-size replica of the original movie poster. Years in the making, all the audio was meticulously identified and transferred over several years as Travers dug through the Vault to create a new high resolution 96K/24B digital patchwork stereo master from the original analog tapes. The Vault material was mastered by John Polito in 2021. We are pleased to present the original soundtrack on 2 compact discs featuring all original packaging including the booklet & poster and a brand-new remaster by legend Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. *Existing orders still stand."

Originally released in 2005 on Cooper's Hipshot Cd-r label, and reissued here for the first time on vinyl, Spirit Songs deserves to be regarded as a true rediscovered gem, remixed and remastered by Mike Copper himself!

Spirit Songs comes as a highly organic form of Ambient-Folk-Blues with Cooper reordering material to create an immersive listening experience. A stream of cut-up lyrics inspired by Thomas Pynchon's writing slide across multiple electronic layers and masterfully fingerpicked acoustic guitars combining into a moving tide. This is deeply inspired music from a unique artist: Mike Cooper the so called "icon of post-everything music” a true sound explorer constantly pushing the boundaries of genres and styles, Folk, Blues, Free Improv, Exotica, Ambient, Electronica...

"Spirit Songs.. a glorious marriage of all three of Cooper's previous musical strategies; creating a stunning hybrid. The album contains 10 songs performed on finger-picked acoustic and electric lap steel guitar,
often looped and treated in real time, with Cooper singing lyrics in a quietly meandering, semi-improvisatory manner that recalls a more polished Jandek. The style of songwriting is immediately recognizable as blues, but an intuitive, idiosyncratic form of folk-blues, with Cooper narrating laments over matters personal and global, gentle universalisms that double as political messages. All of this occurs over a loose rhythmic framework provided by various noisy loops, with cracks, scratches and pops, echoes and distortions skipping out from every refrain. It's a gentle cacophony with subtle undercurrents of beauty and sadness, effortlessly nostalgic but still very rooted in the now. I think that Mike Cooper can genuinely call this style his own; I've never heard anything remotely like it, and it works beautifully, highlighting both song and singer, as well as the happy accidents resulting from the intersection of structure and chaos."- Pitchfork Review.

He's back! After nine years away from the big screen, the Big G reappeared for his 30th anniversary in THE RETURN OF GODZILLA. Produced by Godzilla's creator Tomoyuki Tanaka and directed by Koji Hashimoto, the picture returns the uber-kaiju to the ultimate antagonist he was always intended to be. Watch as he devastates Tokyo after being resurrected by an underwater volcano and thrill to the dramatic and explosive musical score by Reijiro Koroku!

Having previously worked with Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, Koroku was the perfect choice to score the Big G's triumphant return, creating no less than three themes for everybody's favourite kaiju. Listen to the rumbling low-frequencies and powerful brass attacks as he ravages a power plant and fights the Japanese Self Defence Forces (JSDF) and swoon to the love theme for Maki and Naoko. Koroku also wrote exciting pieces for the JSDF and the Super-X, a particular machine designed to fight Godzilla. Still, it's his respect and reverence for the Big G that makes THE RETURN OF GODZILLA such a success. The score ends with vocalists The Star Sisters lamenting Godzilla's disappearance, cementing the place he has in our hearts. "Take care now, Godzilla, my old friend."

Jeff Parker's Forfolks - a new album of solo guitar works - was recorded by Graeme Gibson at Sholo Studio in Altadena, California (aka Jeff's house) over two days in June 2021. It includes interpretations of Thelonious Monk's "Ugly Beauty" and the standard "My Ideal," plus six original compositions including "Four Folks," "La Jetée" (a tune he recorded with Tortoise in 1998), and four totally new loop-driven, stratiform works that marry melodic improvisation with electronic textures. "It's a particular thing to hear Jeff play solo," writes veteran Chicago musician and longtime Parker collaborator Matthew Lux in his liner notes for Forfolks. "He is an unusually selfless improviser, oftentimes laying out and highlighting the contributions of his band mates... On this recording, however, he is by himself, joined only by his own ideas, looped or frozen, to flesh out the music he's creating in his mind. Hearing him craft entire sound worlds on these eight selections gives us an opportunity to really see how Parker orders sound." Forfolks follows Parker's critically acclaimed 2020 record Suite for Max Brown, which Pitchfork called an "effortlessly detailed album, full of tradition and experimentation that spans generations ... It lives at the vanguard of new jazz music." The album went on to debut at No. 1 on Billboard's Current Contemporary Jazz Chart.

Minimal Wave presents a reissue of the seminal first album from Swiss Wavers, Guyer's Connection. Tibor Csébits and Philippe Alioth formed Guyer''s Connection in Basel, Switzerland when they were only 14 and 15 years old. At the time they were in a new wave rock band called 'Kurtzschluss' which they decided to break from in order to make purely electronic music. They began with two synthesizers, a drum machine, a 4-track tape recorder and a multitude of ideas. They channeled their unique and humorous vision into their first album, entitled Portrait which they produced themselves and self-released in 1983. Over the years, the album became a highly sought after minimal synth cult classic. It stands alone as one of the strongest examples of Swiss Minimal Wave, and probably the only one that is in Baseldytsch.

UK label Wisdom Teeth returns with its third long-form offering - Sculpturegardening: a new LP by Mexico City-based artist and producer, Tristan Arp. Incorporating elements of ambient, glitch, microhouse and downtempo, it’s an otherworldly record populated by knotty modular textures, blossoming floral melodies, tight pointillist rhythms and glossy acoustic instrumentation. The record was born from a process of “collaborating with machines”: using modular synthesisers to generate probabilistic melodies and rhythms, with the artist taking on the role of sculptor and curator. Throughout, the boundaries between the organic and digital are playfully blurred: we hear synthesisers played by guitars; emotive and distinctly human melodies generated by modular circuits; digital percussion drummed by hand; and live cello processed with a digital finish. The results sometimes recall Roman Flügel at his most colourful, or Benge’s meandering synth workouts, and even at times echo the dubbed-out cello experiments of Arthur Russell.But really sculpturegardening occupies a sonic world of its own, born from a unique web of happy accidents and incidental arrangements. The record’s bright colours and subtle rhythms make it a fitting follow-up to K-LONE’s 2020 LP Cape Cira and Facta’s 2021 LP Blush, and place it neatly alongside the work of label mates Duckett, Benoit B, Steevio and Iglew.
“With sculpturegardening, my concept was to approach music like gardening. I collaborated with machines inspired by the way a gardener collaborates with the earth. A gardener creates the conditions for the plants to come to life and develop on their own. In a similar way, I created a set of conditions and probabilities for the music to make itself. Who is making the music here? “A sculpture garden to me can be a really beautiful environment of balance between randomness and order––between nature and human interaction. Things that are either extremely organized or completely random tend to not resonate with us. On the other hand, something very interesting happens when a balance between the randomness and organization is struck. I invented this verb sculpturegardening to represent creating with the aim of this balance, and the with the aim of building a world in which each piece is a zone, or a sculpture in a garden.” The record will be twinned with a physical iteration - a sound installation at an exhibition curated by Tristan Arp titled Nada Se Pierde; Todo Se Transforma. The show opens on 9th October in Mexico City at Avant.dev. The physical sculpture garden will be a collaboration with Mexican sculptor Pablo Arellano. The sound installation will centre around a 4-channel audio system that gives voice to different sculptures and allows visitors to create a mix of the sounds depending on their position in the garden.

Brownswood Recordings are proud to presentan extension of the ever-evolving world ofSTR4TA, the brainchild of long time friends

and collaborators Gilles Peterson and JeanPaul “Bluey” Maunick. ‘The Invicta Mixtape’is a limited edition cassette format mixed

by Gilles Peterson & Sam Bhok (WorldwideFM/Stay Put). Available on pre-order from November 1st, released on December 3rd 2021

‘The Invicta Mixtape’ features an array of illustrious producers and polymaths unleashing their unique interpretations ofSTR4TA’s standout tracks. With a percussives tripped-back rework of ‘Dance Desire’ by Steve Conry & Takashi Nakazato; a funk-laced ‘Rhythm In Your Mind’ by Ashley Beadle plus Glasgow’s Nuovi Fratelli add a cosmic disco flare in the mix. Dave Lee’s rework of ‘After The Rain’. ‘Vision 9’ is reconceived by Melé’s rhythmic inventiveness & Delfonic’s virtuoso. Also iconic reworks by techno pioneer Dave Aju, the spellbinding Demus Dub& DJ veteran Greg Wilson.

The mixtape honours the importance of Radio Invicta, London’s very first soul station, which was running from the late-60s to ther mid-80s. The B-side contains the complete STR4TA album.

Here is the second volume of Serge Gainsbourg's complete vinyl collection which traces the artist's career from 1971 to 1987. In order to provide the best sound quality, the original mixed tapes were entrusted to the sound engineer Miles Showell ( responsible for the reissues of the Rolling Stones, Queen, etc.) who did the mastering at Abbey Road studio with Half Speed ​​Master technology. 180 gram vinyl box.Reviews and Ads –, London Macadam, Mojo, Sunday Times, R2

Maddie Jay has always had a fixation with taking things apart, examining every tiny piece, and putting them back together in her own way. In fact, in her teens, she tore out all the electronics of her first bass guitar in her parent’s garage, in order to re-paint it neon yellow, green and pink. This fascination with restructuring didn’t end with gear. For years, she has been taking apart music itself, and studying every facet of songwriting, melody and production, in order to patch it back together into her own colorful, quirky package.

This approach in life has brought her from her tiny hometown in northern British Columbia, Canada, to studying bass in Boston, and then to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a “hired gun.” After a year of travelling and supporting artists all around the globe, she was finding more satisfaction on her days off, producing on her laptop. Fast forward to 2020, and Maddie’s first EP “Mood Swings” has gained over 2 million streams on Spotify, and she has a feature on Grammy winning artist RAC’s LP “BOY.”

With Companion, Otto A Totland completes his album trilogy of personal, sparse piano compositions, following in the footsteps of 2014's Pinô and 2017's The Lost.

As a self-taught pianist, Otto further determines himself as a timeless composer who follows nothing but his own gut and heart. The outcome is something so pure it’s hard to not be affected. The development of his pieces over the years has grown into something so himself that it's almost immediately recognisable. With Companion he has matured in his own craft, and the various pieces here feel confident and absolutely beautiful in a way that sees the end of the trilogy as a warm, empathic document for the times.

As with the previous two albums, Companion was again recorded at Nils Frahm's Berlin studio for optimal warmth and space, Pinô and The Lost at his previous Durton Studio while Companion at the historic Studio 3 at Funkhaus. All three records are released by Sonic Pieces in hand-crafted limited edition covers as a statement showing that craftmanship and humanity still exists in this world constantly moving towards the exact opposite.

This quote by Norwegian philosopher Guttorm Fløistad seems an appropriate connection to both Otto's music and the way we are all heading : “The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on you better speed up. That is the message of today … In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There we will find real renewal.” With this in mind, Companion is exactly what it's title sets out to be. A friend that can follow and comfort in both good or bad times.

With governments finally admitting that UFOs do in fact exist, and humanity attempting to heal from a state of recent crisis, the timing couldn’t be more appropriate for the newest addition to the HYPOCRISY catalog: WORSHIP, due to be released Fall 2021 via Nuclear Blast Records. Aptly titled, the album cover shows a mass of humans reaching up mindlessly to the sky as glowing spaceships shaped like the HYPOCRISY crosses sigil beam down to descend upon earthen civilizations and Mayan temples. Designed by artist Blake Armstrong (Kataklysm, In Flames, Carnifex, etc.), WORSHIP’s artwork speaks to the history of the relationship between humanity and extraterrestrials. “They’re coming back to collect,” explains founder and HYPOCRISY mastermind Peter Tägtgren.
A track entitled CHEMICAL WHORE breaches the subject of pharmaceutical addiction, and those who engineer it. “We are all chemical whores. We regularly consume prescriptions and drugs because we think we need it; we use one pill to heal the damage done by another medicine... it’s a vicious cycle.” Musically, it’s the only song that was written by all 3 core members of the band and translates into a recognizable, mid-tempo HYPOCRISY sound much like ERASER or FRACTURED MILLENIUM. Traveling from Sweden to Russia, the band also shot an official music video for CHEMICAL WHORE.
The DEAD WORLD music was written by Peter Tägtgren’s son, Sebastian. “We actually started to write an album together, something like 11 or 12 songs, but we never put any vocals in there and we just sort of set it aside. Then when I started writing HYPOCRISY I realized I really liked the song… it feels fresh. I think my kid got some new blood in there.” While the song comes equipped with a modern feel, the writing is still old fashioned at its core. Going into detail about the illuminati and black ops government, the lyrics examine how miserable these figureheads and theories can make us. “Call it fantasy, call it sci-fi, there are plenty of conspiracies in the world but I find these ones interesting,” explains Tägtgren.
GREEDY BASTARDS is another track outlined by simplicity and catchiness. Chugging riffs encapsulate a sound that almost verges on the realms of thrash while still keeping its feet firmly planted in the world of death metal. The lyrics touch on the greed and methods of control that we see various governments around the world today; how they manipulate people against one another and abuse the masses.
For Tägtgren, the inspiration to write new HYPOCRISY comes in waves. “I believe we were out on tour for another project and I began to get hungry again. I started spitting out some new riffs and when I had 7-8 songs done, I invited the rest of the guys to join me and contribute, and from there we started putting everything together. We had a break for a few months, continued recording, went back on tour… it never stops. There was a lot of jumping back and forth, and then COVID came and things got really weird.”
Tägtgren was one of the many musically inclined who was forced into sudden isolation upon the onset of COVID 19, only for Tägtgren, this is common practice when creating new songs. “A lot of things in the world stopped, and it was time to finish everything I hadn’t finished.” As usual, all recording and mixing took place at Tägtgren’s home studio in Sweden.
It has been 8 long years since the last record, and HYPOCRISY fans can feel the itch. WORSHIP is 11 tracks of precise, ferocious musicianship. Commonly inspired by the fusion of the modern and the ancient, HYPOCRISY has once more found a way to combine innovative ideas with classic sound in order to deliver something metalheads can enjoyably consume with awe and brutal vigor. HYPOCRISY is Peter Tägtgren (Lead Guitar & Vocals), Mikael Hedlund (Bass Guitar), and Reidar “Horgh” Horghagen (Drums).

Game returns after their 2019 full-length No One Wins with the Legerdemain EP. Piercing the listener with nonstop aural carnage, the EP would be an apt soundtrack to the armageddon. Part Venom, part Death Side, all live and loud, Legerdemain offers no restful moments. An instrumental masterclass with blistering drumming from Jonah Falco, weird and wonderful guitar melodies conjured up by Cal Baird, and a rumbling and decapitating buzzsaw bass by Nicky Rat, the release's finishing move is an ever-changing vocal tone by Ola H. Legerdemain can be a rewarding, or punishing, aural journey depending on your perspective. The new release, which was recorded and mixed by Jonah and mastered by extreme music legend Arthur Rizk finds Game leaning heavily into their metal influences, with sounds of early 80s UK steel given extra ferocity through the lens of Japanese hardcore punk from the same era. Having toured multiple times in Europe and North America, Game, which features members of Fucked Up, Arms Race and Violent Reaction, is equally comfortable playing to punks, metalheads and everyone in between. ‘Legerdemain’ is a magician’s term meaning sleight of hand, a key skill of deception. The term is used as a metaphor for our current post-truth society where governments, technocracies, and financial institutions use smoke and mirrors to create a farcical and bewildering existence where one cannot know if something is real or not in order to cover up social injustice and mechanisms that drive inequality. As Legerdemain progresses, one is being continually dragged along towards an apocalyptic ending on "Release", which reflects on this current predicament as a nuclear explosion approaches with nothing left to do except give into the madness. There is a constant cycle of rising again, fighting against wrongdoing, exhaustion, and endings. The lyrics in Polish, English and a sprinkle of French, represent the multinational members of the band, who feel culturally in a no man’s land, which in fact is everyone’s experience in 2021. Legerdemain tries to answer this anomie with urgent metal punk that is hauntingly relevant. Check out the music video for single "Atomowa Rekonstrukcja," from NYC punk freaks D4MT Labs here

Skydive Trio: Thomas T Dahl, gitarer, Mats Eilertsen, kontra- og elbass, Olavi Louhivuori, trommer. SkyDive Trio’s second album ‘Sun Sparkle’ - which arrives three years after its acclaimed predecessor, ‘Sun Moee’ - presents the listener with an intriguing set of paradoxes. A power trio who use full throttle only very sparingly, the band can appear to play loud music quietly, and quiet music, loud, countering jazz subtlety with rock attack. They also partner the relatively clean and melodic sound of Thomas T. Dahl’s guitar with the mountainous riffs and deep, seismic explosions of Mats Eilertsen’s bass, rather as if Pat Metheny was being accompanied by Peter Hook, of Joy Division and New Order. The great Finnish drummer Olavi Louhivuori somehow bridges the aesthetic gap, alternating crunching four-square rhythms with delicately shimmering percussive strokes.

Tape

SectorSept’s ‘954’ is a boldly original record, one which announces the arrival of a singular musical mind. Its creator states that he crafted this EP by trying to make tracks that were ‘a representation of how I believe music would sound in some distant land in the future’. On ‘954’ this vision takes flight in the form of eight multifaceted, genre-defying electronic productions.

To unpack this record one must first understand the myriad influences which feed into SectorSept’s style. The producer grew up between the UK and Florida - indeed, the record’s title references the area code he had while in the USA. His formative years were spent soaking in the dancehall sounds he heard around him in his Jamaican household as well as techno, jazz, Miami bass and the city’s ‘Love 94 Smooth Jazz’ radio station.

All of this and more can be heard in the fabric of ‘954’. The drum programming alone reveals SectorSept to be someone with extremely wide-ranging musical tastes. Cuts such as ‘Get Ready For The Programme’ and ‘Be There’ are powered by deft beats that have Miami bass, Jersey Club, juke and more in their make-up. Drexciya-adjacent machine-funk creeps into the mix in ‘954’s mid-section, ‘Golden Third Eye’ touches on trap, and closing duo ‘Tropic Universe’ and ‘Prize’ bring dancehall dembows to the fore.

The productions of ‘954’ are simultaneously driving and chilled, coasting nicely yet still plumbed with enough bite to do damage on the dancefloor. It’s a feeling which is heightened by SectorSept’s gorgeous textural work. Several of the tracks here soften up collages of vocal clips with wistful, dreamy synths - see the way that club-caller snippets orbit Boards Of Canada-esque keys on ‘Get Ready For The Programme’ or how closing cut ‘Prize’ works both the classic Warp/Planet Mu sound and the pitched-down stylings of DJ Screw. It’s a rich and fully-formed artistic aesthetic, something which is all the more impressive when you consider that ‘954’ is SectorSept’s first official release.

That said, while the overall flavour of ‘954’ is SectorSept’s and SectorSept’s alone, one also finds links to Gobstopper’s previous output here. Those dancehall influences on ‘Tropic Universe’ and ‘Prize’ line the record up with Gobstopper drops like Otik’s ‘Thousand Year Stare’ while the emotive, soulful synth work that has long been a Gobstopper calling card is also in evidence here. Perhaps the thing about ‘954’ which makes it feel most at home on Mr. Mitch’s label is SectorSept’s imaginative futurism. SectorSept is a keen scholar of anime composers Kenji Kawai and Joe Hisaishi, and as such it is no surprise that there is a slightly fantastical quality to ‘954’. This is most boldly expressed on ‘Intuition Segment’, a magic-realist vignette which looks to Oneohtrix Point Never.

Blending ethereal textures with hybrid electronic grooves, SectorSept’s ‘954’ EP uses the sounds, influences and cultural experiences that have shaped its creator in order to build a vibrant vision of the future.

To write these few lines, we spoke to saxophonist François Jeanneau, an old friend of Jacques Thollot who also played on several of his albums, including the “Watch Devil Go” which interests us here. He told us a story which, according to him, sums up the personality of Thollot. A noted studio had reserved three days for a Thollot recording session. The first morning was devoted to sound checks and putting some order in the score sheets which Jacques would hand out in a somewhat anarchic manner. Then everyone went for lunch. When the musicians returned to the studio, Thollot had disappeared. He wasn’t seen again for the three days. When he reappeared, he had already forgotten why he had left, The music of Jacques Thollot is in the image of its’ author: it takes you somewhere, suddenly escapes and disappears, returning in an unexpected place as if nothing had happened.

Four years after a first album on the Futura label in 1971, Jacques Thollot returned, this time on the Palm label of Jef Gilson, still with just as much surrealist poetry in his jazz. In thirty-five minutes and a few seconds, the French composer and drummer, who had been on the scene since he was thirteen, established himself as a link between Arnold Schoenberg and Don Cherry. Resistant to any imposed framework and always excessive, Thollot allows himself to do anything and everything: suspended time of an extraordinary delicacy, a stealthy explosion of the brass section, hallucinatory improvisation of the synthesisers, tight writing, teetering on the classical, and in the middle of all that, a hit; the title-track - that Madlib would one day end up hearing and sampling.

“Watch Devil Go” was in the right place in the Palm catalogue, which welcomed the cream of the French avant-garde in the 70s. But it is also the story of a long friendship between two men. Jacques Thollot and Jef Gilson had known and respected one another for a long time. Though barely sixteen years old, Thollot was already on drums on the first albums by Gilson starting in 1963 and would play in his big band (alongside François Jeanneau once again), ‘Europamerica’, until the end of the 70s.

In a career lasting half a century and centred on freedom Jacques Thollot played with the most important experimental musicians (Don Cherry, Sonny Sharrock, Michel Roques, Barney Wilen, Steve Lacy, François Tusques, Michel Portal, Jac Berrocal, Noël Akchoté...) and they all heard in him a pulsation coming from another world. (Jérôme "Kalcha" Simonneau)

30 is the first new music from Adele since the release of her third studio album 25 in November 2015. The album is produced with former collaborators Greg Kurstin, Max Martin and Shellback and Tobias Jesso Jr., as well as new collaborators Inflo and Ludwig Goransson.

This product is currently on pre-order. All orders containing this product will be dispatched in line with the release date. Available from November 19th, 2021.

Does returning to a place have a sound? Can the ear have a memory? And what if places which we return to are just empty shells? Choreographed rooms which we need to play, fill from scratch each time with fragments from the past and present, layer upon layer, familiar and still somehow always new and differently assembled. Paula Schopf’s Espacios en Soledad are acoustic walks around present day Santiago de Chile, the city where she was born - which she always left, had to leave and to which she always returns - but more than anything also through her own memories which resonate throughout the public places, squares, streets though still in their own way remain strange.

„Every immigrant in the world has a piece like this - a kind of missing link, something which is incomplete. And every time one returns to the home country you are looking for it. For me it was a matter of sound.“ (Paula 2019).

In the mid 70s leaving Santiago was a flight of exile as a child with her family. Leaving in 1990 was an autonomous decision to head for Europe, Berlin, where the wall fell, where the heavens opened up all at once and electronic music became a kind of new home to so many. Paula Schopf belonged there. For her the Ocean Club at Tresor club was a central place where friends and mentors like Gudrun Gut and Thomas Fehlmann made it possible for her to get really into it. Dancing, being and feeling your body, forgetting oneself in the bass and beats, who one is and where one’s from, to becoming the DJ Chica Paula. Chile was very far away during this time, Latin America was more just a code, a musical and habitual cliche to be cautious of. This was especially true for the culture of the Chilean exile, the pathos of the “Canto Nuevo”, the sound and ideologically charged instruments of the „música andina“, for example the Zampoña, Quena or Charango. Techno was the greatest thinkable alternative to this even if or perhaps because so many kids exiled from Chile became key figures in the German and European scene: Ricardo Villalobos, Dandy Jack, Cristian Vogel, Matias Aguayo and many more.

How does returning to a place sound? Does the ear have its own memory? The field recordings which were recorded in Santiago de Chile in 2016 and form the central sonic material for Espacios en Soledad represent the paradox for Schopf’s return to her home country after emigrating: the inevitable drifting apart of her own lived time from that of her former home. Already the Venezuelan and Colombian hawkers are unmistakable signs of the deep change in Chilean society which has happened in recent years due to immigration. Which is in contrast to the old lady who sits on the floor in a pedestrian zone and without break sings the same three songs by Violeta Parra and then keeps falling asleep while doing so. The fragile presence of her voice is joined with a repertoire which is almost mythologically timeless in Chile in a particularly moving way.

By layering, ordering and conjoining such found sounds from modern day Santiago this piece become about the urban sound of Chile’s present. But more than anything by doing this Paula Schopf becomes an arranger of her own sonic memory or sound-triggered memories of returning to this city. Just as techno and Berlin helped her for such a long time to get away from too strong of an identification as a Chilean in exil, now with Espacios en Soledad she has found a way to bring these two seemingly disparate lives and remembered worlds together.

Matthias Pasdzierny

Red Vinyl

nown for her delicate compositions, soaked in dream-like surrealism, Icelandic musician Sóley has attracted a huge following since launching her solo career back in 2010. Her 2012 single ‘Pretty Face’ went on to generate an enormous amount of buzz, and quickly became a viral sensation. Now, with three solo LPs under her belt, Sóley is preparing to debut a completely new sound via the release of her new concept album, Mother Melancholia, on October 22nd.

Described by the artist as "Nosferatu meets Thelma and Louise in a vampire church under the watchful eye of David Lynch", Mother Melancholia is the soundtrack to the end of the world as we know it. As a self-confessed news addict, Sóley became obsessed with the idea that the world is ending. Having surrounded herself with real-life stories of global warming and patriarchal politics she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going to die. This feeling was so all encompassing that it sparked the idea for a new project. Could there be a soundtrack for the last days of humans on earth? How would that sound?

“I read books about possible dystopian worlds and started writing poems about irrational and in love characters who live in gray and cold imaginary loneliness. In each other’s burning arms. Walking in circles with no way out” she explains. “After all, the album reflects our life here and now. Our life and reality is a kind of dystopian world.”

Whilst writing the album, which serves as a tongue-in-cheek eulogy to our planet, Sóley began reading about ecofeminism, a branch of feminism which uses the concept of gender to analyse the relationship between humans and the natural world. Ecofeminism emphasizes that both women and nature must be respected but also separated. Since the beginning of time, the natural world has been synonymous with female identity, phrases like Mother Nature are commonplace. “The patriarchy views women as volatile and hysterical. Earth and women are either our saviours or our destroyers,” explains Sóley. “It’s so easy to abuse the earth, like the patriarchy has abused women since the dawn of time, then ask for forgiveness afterwards and promise they´ll never do it again”.

The new album sees Sóley move away from the indie-pop of her previous releases. She began by experimenting with writing songs on the accordion, allowing her a new sense of freedom in her writing. The process allowed her to broaden her horizons even further and experiment with a whole range of new and exciting sounds. “I bought myself a theremin as I was really excited about the unpitched sound and there is no perfect pitch during the end of days,” she laughs. “I also bought a mellotron, my first moog and a cello and taught myself how to play each of them. All of these new instruments are particularly suitable for the kinds of aesthetic inconveniences which I have learned to embrace.”

Album opener ‘Sunrise Skulls’, one of the most cinematic moments on the album, was inspired by the Me Too and SlutWalk movements and tells the story of a group of women who rise up and fight the patriarchy. ‘Blows Up’, a track that would be at home on any horror soundtrack, is a sarcastic love letter from the Earth to humans. Standout track ‘Desert’ is an incredibly moving song dedicated to the next generation. “It’s about the guilt you feel, as a mother, for having children and leaving them on the frontline. My daughter, for example, will take over this inevitable war” explains Sóley.

In true soundtrack style, the album flows through the end of the world in chronological order, closing with the Earth’s final moments. ‘Sundown’ is a dark piano ballad detailing human kind’s final day on Earth. “And everyday, I dig my own grave, and as I dive in you´ll hold my hand” she sings, over twinkling piano and swirling synths. We then hear the world end on ‘XXX’, a dark and swirling soundscape that swells before fading to silence. On ‘Elegía’ the silence then turns to the sound of the ocean, as we hear the Earth, like a woman finally free from a violent relationship, healing on her own.

Mother Melancholia is the mark of an artist confidently striding into more experimental territory. With a lengthy and successful career behind her, Sóley felt compelled to try something new and express the real her. The music might be shrouded in darkness but it’s a move that fills her with joy and freedom. “I hope that people not only enjoy the new sound, but also that Mother Melancholia might raise some questions in people, particularly women,” she says. “I’m under no illusions that this album will change the world but I hope that people can connect with the idea”.

ALTER- : A REACTION TO THE ALTERMODERNISM IN SOUND ART
For the Automatisme - Alter- album. I am inspired by how the art historian Nicolas Bourriaud defines the Altermodernism. Bourriaud understands the term "Alter" as a way to mean "other". The altermodernism would be another modernity that is different from the avant-garde modernism and post-modernism. More precisely, this is a new paradigm from the XXIe century with alternative ways to motivate artists to be more radical in art by traveling in the physical and digital world, by cutting the frontiers and by creating other time lines. I apply the "alter" subject to time and to landscape and those, to the rhythmic and the ambient glitch music.

1- THE ALBUM HAS A RHYTHMIC SIDE AND A LANDSCAPE SIDE.
1- a : The rhythmic tracks are named Alter-Rate. That means that I offer other types of rhythms by calculating beats with time rate experimentations. The form of the rhytmic tracks, expresses a course, a wandering, which, in the altermodern life, is not just in a standard 4/4 , or just grid based or non-grid based, but it's in a complex hybrid of all of those.

1- b : The ambient tracks are named Alter-Scape. That means that I offer another type of landScapes by a paused temporality and not by a random time or by the time of the nature. Alter-Scape tracks mimic the saturated globalized soundscapes of the XXIe century.

2- THE GLOBALISED AND SATURATED TIME
For Bourriaud, the artists respond to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expressions and communications1. The Alter- album tracks have saturated rhythms Rates and static ambient soundScapes. The specific context within which we live is the age of globalisation2. In this album, it means that globalised or always evolving rhythm Rates are in constant movements and are also different every time an Alter-Rate track is exported or performed. On the other hand, a globalised landScape is an ambient track with a motionless temporality. In the era of the altermodern, displacement has become a method of depiction3. The movement of the sound in the Alter- album is two sound spaces. The first is the rhythms that make time movement become apparent and the second is an ambient paused or static time that makes possible to feel and to analyze the movement effect of our surroundings.

3- THE CONSTANT TENSION STATE OF ART
For Gilles Deleuze, art is in a constant state of tension, in as much as it oscillates between the poles of chaos and order4. The Alter- album is a tension between chaos and order in rhythmic beat tracks and ambient soundscapes tracks. It is a deterritorialization of the rhythms and the ambiences of today's natural and digital landscapes and it brings them into the computer glitch music format.

By pushing new softwares to their limits, I push at the extreme the software capacity to calculate and to generate sounds. The Alter-Rate tracks are experimentations with time rates and rhythms with the use of probability and artificial intelligence based sequencers. The partition signal starts from a master sequencer that gets into all instruments on a track. Each instrument receives this signal and modulates it with other sequencers that are each programmed differently for every instrument. Finally, all the instruments signals return to a master output that contains a stutter effect. This master channel is sequencing all other channels into one single rhythm. In short, a single rate merges and expands into a vast archipelago of rates and the transformed signal becomes a new single rate. The Alter-Scape tracks are experimentations with midi triggers that give the sensation of a timelessness. Multiple reverb effects are also routed into each other to create soundscapes of continuity. About the type of sounds created in this album, I do experimentations with deep frequency modulation synthesises (FM) on all Alter-Rate and Alter-Scape tracks.

I put a few layers in the tracks to be able to focus on the time space and perception. The tracks are generative and every parameter uses probabilities to be programmed. This is something that was not possible some years ago. The computers are enough powerful to generate that now. I export many times the tracks and i push the computers to their limits by making hard for them to calculate and to generate the tracks with a deep, a pointillist and an extreme software programming. These techniques do different versions every time that I export or perform a track and in my opinion, that opens a fresh and innovative way to do new experimental club music and ambient music. The computer has its own limits too.


Reviews in The Wire, Gonzo, A Closer Listen, Datacide, African Paper, Silent and Sound, and more

Restlessly awakening from the depths of a feverish slumber, doomed heavy metal masters KHEMMIS return to reveal their fourth full length studio album, DECEIVER, arriving via Nuclear Blast Records in November 2021. Six tracks of desolate, soul-awakening heaviness encapsulate a project that has been nearly three years in the making. With a title that reflects the internal struggles that many of us battle in our daily lives, DECEIVER is a ferociously honest and appetizingly raw piece of musical artistry.
The first single LIVING PYRE signifies far more than just the beginning of another musical endeavour for the band; it is a substantial benchmark for emotional struggle and growth. “When it comes to my own mental health, when I’m in a bad place, I can’t access the part of me that creates art. After reaching that understanding of myself, the bulk of this song came out in one sitting. I was feeling stable. I was feeling hopeful–even though so much outside in the world was not exactly inspiring. All of us needed a reason to feel a glimmer of hope,” recounts Hutcherson. With a big, quintessentially KHEMMIS chorus embellished by a swampy sorrow, this song incorporates familiar elements of the band’s sound with a touch of Swedish death metal in its latter half. “The reason that this was the song that came first lyrically was because I was juggling all the things that were happening with the inside and outside world intersecting. All the lyrics for me feel very ‘of the time.’ So much was happening in this world, and they were just my efforts to contend with it,” explains Pendergast. “Like Ben, this was a breakthrough moment for me. Once I got the song out, it allowed me to write other songs for the album. It’s less about the fire metaphor implied by the title than about the fact that in order to escape fire you have to find water. You find the deepest, darkest cavern…you just want to stay there forever. It slowly fills up and you eventually drown.”
HOUSE OF CADMUS was another deeply collaborative writing effort between all three members of KHEMMIS. “I thought the opening riff had this cool almost-swing to it...but evil,” recalls drummer Zach Coleman. “I was drawn to the atmosphere of that first riff, and it felt like it needed to be a song that was dark the whole way through. Ben and I discussed getting some New Orleans-style sounds somewhere on the album, and I think this is where we were able to sneak some in to tie together other aspects of the song.”
“I knew that I wanted the lead guitar line in the second half of the song to tie two very different parts together,” explains Hutcherson, “but the idea was all really abstract until we were in a room together. It wasn't until we jammed out that big funeral/death doom bridge and the slow, sad coda that we found out what we wanted that lead line to be: memorable and emotive. It was a very honest musical moment together.” The writing and recording processes of HOUSE OF CADMUS were so emotionally driven that even producer Dave Otero of Flatline Audio (Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, Act Of Defiance) encountered his own deeply personal and intense connection with the song. “With the lyric turn at the end, I was inspired by Dave’s imagery,” says Pendergast. “This idea of a person leaving some important part of themselves behind as they float away and leave the thing they love on the shore. The sound of this song is like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog in a dark night on the ocean.”
While the lyrical themes of DECEIVER;sorrow, pain, longing for hope, will no doubt be familiar to longtime fans, these six songs display a broader collection of musical influences than on any other KHEMMIS record to date. “It being our 4th album, especially after the transition between the last two albums, it felt really freeing. We felt that we could really do anything on this record,” explains Coleman. “There’s a lot here that we’ve never done before,” adds Pendergast. “In some areas it gets darkly psychedelic. I think we found a cool way to mutate things using transitions that feel really natural. There is a subtle symmetry between the first and last songs which is one of the things that makes listening to the full album a satisfying holistic experience. It builds from almost nothing, becomes very dark, and then you slowly crawl out of that lowest circle of hell.” KHEMMIS’s DECEIVER is a beautiful, musically ambitious journey from beginning to end drenched in impassioned melody and complex, unrestrained variations of sonic savagery adorned with chilling, intensely tragic cover art by frequent collaborator Sam Turner.

Restlessly awakening from the depths of a feverish slumber, doomed heavy metal masters KHEMMIS return to reveal their fourth full length studio album, DECEIVER, arriving via Nuclear Blast Records in November 2021. Six tracks of desolate, soul-awakening heaviness encapsulate a project that has been nearly three years in the making. With a title that reflects the internal struggles that many of us battle in our daily lives, DECEIVER is a ferociously honest and appetizingly raw piece of musical artistry.
The first single LIVING PYRE signifies far more than just the beginning of another musical endeavour for the band; it is a substantial benchmark for emotional struggle and growth. “When it comes to my own mental health, when I’m in a bad place, I can’t access the part of me that creates art. After reaching that understanding of myself, the bulk of this song came out in one sitting. I was feeling stable. I was feeling hopeful–even though so much outside in the world was not exactly inspiring. All of us needed a reason to feel a glimmer of hope,” recounts Hutcherson. With a big, quintessentially KHEMMIS chorus embellished by a swampy sorrow, this song incorporates familiar elements of the band’s sound with a touch of Swedish death metal in its latter half. “The reason that this was the song that came first lyrically was because I was juggling all the things that were happening with the inside and outside world intersecting. All the lyrics for me feel very ‘of the time.’ So much was happening in this world, and they were just my efforts to contend with it,” explains Pendergast. “Like Ben, this was a breakthrough moment for me. Once I got the song out, it allowed me to write other songs for the album. It’s less about the fire metaphor implied by the title than about the fact that in order to escape fire you have to find water. You find the deepest, darkest cavern…you just want to stay there forever. It slowly fills up and you eventually drown.”
HOUSE OF CADMUS was another deeply collaborative writing effort between all three members of KHEMMIS. “I thought the opening riff had this cool almost-swing to it...but evil,” recalls drummer Zach Coleman. “I was drawn to the atmosphere of that first riff, and it felt like it needed to be a song that was dark the whole way through. Ben and I discussed getting some New Orleans-style sounds somewhere on the album, and I think this is where we were able to sneak some in to tie together other aspects of the song.”
“I knew that I wanted the lead guitar line in the second half of the song to tie two very different parts together,” explains Hutcherson, “but the idea was all really abstract until we were in a room together. It wasn't until we jammed out that big funeral/death doom bridge and the slow, sad coda that we found out what we wanted that lead line to be: memorable and emotive. It was a very honest musical moment together.” The writing and recording processes of HOUSE OF CADMUS were so emotionally driven that even producer Dave Otero of Flatline Audio (Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, Act Of Defiance) encountered his own deeply personal and intense connection with the song. “With the lyric turn at the end, I was inspired by Dave’s imagery,” says Pendergast. “This idea of a person leaving some important part of themselves behind as they float away and leave the thing they love on the shore. The sound of this song is like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog in a dark night on the ocean.”
While the lyrical themes of DECEIVER;sorrow, pain, longing for hope, will no doubt be familiar to longtime fans, these six songs display a broader collection of musical influences than on any other KHEMMIS record to date. “It being our 4th album, especially after the transition between the last two albums, it felt really freeing. We felt that we could really do anything on this record,” explains Coleman. “There’s a lot here that we’ve never done before,” adds Pendergast. “In some areas it gets darkly psychedelic. I think we found a cool way to mutate things using transitions that feel really natural. There is a subtle symmetry between the first and last songs which is one of the things that makes listening to the full album a satisfying holistic experience. It builds from almost nothing, becomes very dark, and then you slowly crawl out of that lowest circle of hell.” KHEMMIS’s DECEIVER is a beautiful, musically ambitious journey from beginning to end drenched in impassioned melody and complex, unrestrained variations of sonic savagery adorned with chilling, intensely tragic cover art by frequent collaborator Sam Turner.

Ltd White vinyl LP w/ printed inner sleeve lyric insert (1000 copies ww)! Emma Ruth Rundle's forthcoming Engine of Hell is stark, intimate, and unflinching. For anyone that's endured trauma and grief, there's a beautiful solace in hearing Rundle articulate and humanize that particular type of pain not only with her words, but with her particular mysterious language of melody and timbre. The album captures a moment where a masterful songwriter strips away all flourishes and embellishments in order to make every note and word hit with maximum impact, leaving little to hide behind. "I really wanted to capture imperfection and the vulnerability of my humanity," Rundle says of the album's sonic approach. "Here are some very personal songs; here are my memories; here is me teetering on the very edge of sanity dipping my toe into the outer reaches of space and I'm taking you with me and it's very fucked up and imperfect.'" Emma Ruth Rundle has always been a multifaceted musician, equally capable of dreamy abstraction (as heard on her album Electric Guitar: One), maximalist textural explorations (see her work in Marriages, Red Sparowes, Nocturnes or collaborations with Chelsea Wolfe and Thou), and the classic singer-songwriter tradition (exemplified by Some Heavy Ocean). But on Engine of Hell, Rundle has opted to forego the full-band arrangements of her previous albums in favor of the austerity of a lone piano or guitar and her voice, which creates a kind of intimacy, as if we're sitting beside Rundle on a bench, or perhaps even playing the songs ourselves. It's an extremely up-close and personal confessional with a focus on the rich subtleties and timbre of Rundle's graceful performances. "For me this album is the end of an era to the end of a decade of making records. Things DO have to change and have changed for me since I finished recording it." In essence, Engine of Hell signifies a major turning point for Rundle as both an artist and as a person. The catharsis of this type of songwriting has effectively served its purpose, and to continue ruminating on the past going forward is less of a healing process and more like picking at a scab and refusing to let it heal. This may help explain why Rundle is less than enthusiastic about divulging the details about her muses, but it doesn't alter the fact that these songs served a purpose in their creation, and that they may continue to bring comfort to others.

Muscle Shoals singer-songwriter Dylan LeBlanc releases his new EP,
‘Pastimes’, a self-produced collection of covers of songs from Glen
Campbell, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Buffalo
Springfield and JJ Cale that inspired him to create his own acclaimed altcountry sound.
 ‘Pastimes’ is released on orange coloured vinyl.
 LeBlanc shared his thoughts about his cover of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Going to
California’: “When I was 15 years old I got my first paying gig at a local
coffee shop called Juri’s,” says LeBlanc. “I remembered this girl that sat
behind me in class and I bonded over Led Zeppelin ‘IV’. I remember I
had gotten a Led Zeppelin box set that year for Christmas, and her
favorite song was ‘Going to California’. I rushed home to learn that song
for her and spent hours in my room at my grandmother’s house where I
lived at the time so I could play it for her and impress her. This song will
always hold a special place in my heart. I love this record and this era of
music that I think will always remain untouchable forever and always.”
 Each song was chosen for its deeply personal impact: JJ Cale’s
‘Sensitive Kind’ takes LeBlanc back to the smoky dive bars his father
would bring him along to as a child. Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Expecting to
Fly’ reminds him of teenage joyrides, speeding through the country and
listening to music to escape life’s harsh realities. He learned the art of
storytelling through songs with the Rolling Stones’ haunting ‘Play With
Fire’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Blind Willie McTell’ - a track that he compares to
reading a Southern Gothic Faulkner novel. And Glen Campbell’s ‘Gentle
on My Mind’ is a song he remembers from his early childhood, when his
grandfather, also a guitarist, would throw parties where friends would
gather to drink and sing and forget their troubles.
 ‘Pastimes’ was recorded at Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals,
live and with as few takes as possible in order to capture a sense of
authenticity. Says LeBlanc, “I feel like music is nothing more than a
spiritual endeavour to widen the horizons and heighten the senses of the
things inside of everyone that sometimes feel unreachable.”
 Dylan LeBlanc has spent the last decade releasing four acclaimed
albums, winning praise for his arresting alt-country style, collaborating
with the likes of Emmylou Harris and Brittany Howard, and sharing
stages with heavyweights like Bruce Springsteen and Lucinda Williams.
 “One of modern country’s most interesting voices, in both senses of the
term.” - Uncut
 “Sublime voice and evocative songwriting.” - Nashville Scene

For the first time a Black vinyl pressing of the sold out LP of the latest Chills album. Latest studio album from the Dunedin (NZ) songsmiths helmed by the enigmatic Martin Phillipps with artwork by Trees’ David Costa. Dunedin’s finest, The Chills release their seventh studio album ‘Scatterbrain’, a glorious self-examination of Martin Phillipps’ songwriting hot (ish) on the heels of the hugely successful ‘Snowbound’ (2018) and the critically-acclaimed movie ‘The Chills: The Triumph And Tragedy Of Martin Phillipps’ a year later. “It’s about artistic integrity, self-realisation, self-acceptance and a reflection on mortality.” The Guardian…. Now in 2021, Phillipps is now taking stock of things – everything. Yes, everything. The result is this triumphant new Chills’ album ‘Scatterbrain’, a thought-provoking and evocative take from a man who has lived through good times and bad. A mature and honest reflection on life, destiny and the fate of our times delivered in beautiful melodies with Phillipps’ trademarked incisive turn of phrase. Viewed from the perspective of a man understanding his age and indeed his own mortality, the new album takes a mature look at matters arising with a side order of perspective. ‘Scatterbrain’ is a life passing before your ears as uncertainty increases and fake news rumbles on; during which aliens invade, Phillipps scales the walls beyond abandon as he probes the minutiae of worlds within worlds and the hourglass fills. A landmark album from one of the great modern song writers, it’s pure pop music for the new normal and we can’t wait to see how it ends…“This is what a living legend looks and sounds like” Rolling Stone // “An architect of New Zealand’s fabled Dunedin sound” Pitchfork

We used to enjoy presenting Chapelier Fou's work using the idea of music in the form of a treasure hunt. However, while the phrase in itself it still just as relevant today, we would never have imagined that it would become such an integral part of one of his albums. Or two of his albums to be perfectly exact - Méridiens and Parallèles. Two records with twelve songs each which answer each other back in the form of anagrams. They are like the two sides of the same planet - similar but simultaneously so different. They need to be discovered one after the other taking the time necessary to travel through the sound territories produced by his imagination. The starting point is a sombre night in Uqbar… Chapelier Fou's opening reference to Borgès was obviously not made by chance. He subsequently confided in us the objective of his diptych, namely to combine reality with fiction to question certainties and our relationships with the imaginary sphere. He has continued with his traditional classical-contemporary electronic approach which, although now known to a wide audience, has the advantage of opening up a whole range of possibilities right up to the infinite scale. Moving away from an "État Nain" (Dwarf State) to take refuge on an asteroid...Throughout Méridiens, each composition can be seen as a universe in itself or a specific landscape with its own temporality. Proof of this is the introduction to the chamber music format composed for and performed by only strings which can only be given the date we want to give it. This is "État Nain" in which violins are played like guitars. In some parts we find the spirit of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the idea of cheering up classical instruments and not taking everything too seriously. In other parts, we find something close to a mischievous and childish unplugged grunge anthem that could be from the French series Les Shadoks. This mischievous view of things is shown to full effect in Am Scharchtensee. The introduction shows Chapelier Fou's whole classical universe and mastery of orchestration in which "modular" electronics provide a subtle and discreet backdrop. Then, the record suddenly switches to a surrealist dialogue between these classical sounds and modular synthesizers with the flavour of the German pioneers Kluster/Harmonia to name but one example. Timelessness and imaginary places. La vie de cocagne confirms this choice of total freedom. It's traditional music with old sounds, a kind of forgotten bourrée (old French dance) in which electronic sounds disturb the established order and thus reach another musical dimension. Le méridien du Péricarde followed by Désert de Sonora push this idea of a trompe l'oreille and a hall of mirrors even further. The latter track ends almost like a catchy 80s melody and we can no longer find any logical meaning. We let ourselves be carried away by this profusion of madness and are a little amazed by this mastery of sound, composition and space. It sometimes all seems like a succession of conjuring tricks. Chapelier Fou takes not being serious very seriously indeed. The end song Everest trail is the perfect conclusion, a deadpan track in which the primary aspect of a totally classical melody in all its straightness is underpinned by a permanent exchange of electronic tweets which mocks the main musical posture. This impertinence harks back to Pierre Schaeffer who directed the ORTF's very serious experimental department in another era and allowed the development of Jacques Rouxel's series Les Shadoks thus introducing the general public to the notion of concrete music. This is also perhaps why Louis Warynski's stage name is French – because he has opted to use his French musical heritage. Thus the first singles selected from this album, Constantinople with its groovy and jazzy allure and Le Triangle des Bermudes evoke composers like Michel Magne or Michel Colombier both of whom have totally open minds and consider all music to have the same importance, namely that of sound. In absolutely all the tracks that make up Méridiens, you will find at least one detail - a pattern, melody, sometimes a simple sound - that will draw you back to explore it a little more. And the words are carefully weighed for sure. It's quite simple. This is undoubtedly his most hypnotizing and catchy album. Chapelier Fou has become a complete master of his own universe. He draws the start and finish lines himself and no one can follow him in a field that now belongs to him alone. Composed imaginary spheres, illustrated territories...Music is just as meaningful as the more visual arts. Therefore the artwork of Méridiens had to project each of the twelve tracks considered individually and not just the whole album as such. Chapelier Fou therefore asked his old friend the contemporary artist Corentin Grossman to create twelve windows to represent glimpses of the twelve worlds composed for the record. Windows or mirrors when it comes to that? You can never be sure of anything...Space OK. But what about time? The years go by and sometimes we forget that fact. But a simple glance back is often enough to gently touch the time that has passed. It is over 10 years since his first official record and he has been composing, recording and sharing his music for almost 20 years. 20 years is a long time. It makes some people look old while others fall into reassuring but sterile nostalgia. Chapelier Fou, on the other hand, has released his most ambitious project and tried to take a higher view of his discography that was itself nevertheless irreproachable. Although the journey is over we can see Parallèles universes on the horizon. Chapelier Fou has announced 12 additional tracks which are like echoes of the compositions on Méridiens' and will be released on the album Parallèles next spring. They are neither twins nor opposites – they are instead totally original new compositions which go further in exploring a universe which is already richly abundant.

WAR’s head-nodding mix of music and message started a revolution 50 years ago that continues to win over the hearts and hips of fans around the world. “Greatest Hits 2.0” will be available 29th October and is a new, career-spanning collection that expands on WAR’s platinum-certified 1976 greatest hits album, featuring the legendary songs “Spill The Wine,” “Low Rider,” “Galaxy,” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”

WAR’s “Greatest Hits 2.0” 2LP contains 20 tracks, 2CD contains 24 tracks recorded between 1970 and 1994, including the gold-certified singles “Slipping Into Darkness,” “The World Is A Ghetto,” “The Cisco Kid,” and “Summer.” Another gold single, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” stayed on the charts for 31 weeks and became the soundtrack to the US-Soviet space mission where astronauts and cosmonauts linked up in the spirit of friendship. In the modern era, it has been streamed more than 100 million times. Also included is the #1 R&B smash “Low Rider,” which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2014.

In the collection’s liner notes, Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano says GREATEST HITS 2.0 does more than capture WAR at its creative and commercial peaks. He writes: “All the big hits are here, of course, in chronological order from the Eric Burdon days up through cuts from 1982’s underrated Outlaw…But what I love about this collection is that it’s a symphonic suite for a perfect Southern California Sunday afternoon, the kind the rest of the world wants to experience but can only dream about. You can envision it by playing these albums from start to finish.”

With "Broken Land" Daniel Nitsch presents the first album of his latest project "Hounah" - and thus grants a deep look into his feelings and thoughts. Pieces like "Sorrow", "Fairbanks" or "Norton Bay", which invite you trace inside, are accompanied by those that present Daniel's personal views on very political and generally relevant issues, presented in songs like "Revolution", "Guilty State" or "Cash For Your Home". They cover topics like racism and gentrification, deal with the burden that imperialism places on us. Ask for what a future could look like - and how it could successfully happen at all. Thus, Hounah is not a feel-good project, "Broken Land", the title suggests it, a profound, here and there even painful inventory, which wants to stimulate reflection and further thinking. Very diverse, thematically as well as musically – and created with great attention to detail. Listening closely allows light bulb effects in terms of content, but also in terms of sound, lets us walk in the footsteps of downbeat, hip-hop, trip-hop, ambient, electronica and jazz. Hounah quickly reveals here that they are not afraid of breaks, but are also capable of soulful fusions in sound collages. The circle of friends behind Hounah, consisting of producer Daniel Nitsch, pianist Johann Blanchard, singer Lena Schmidt and guitarist Marten Pankow, came together for the album "Broken Land" in order to immediately try out further alliances: two of the songs on the album were created in creative cooperation with A-F-R-O, the internationally known rapper from Los Angeles. And so it is little surprise that each song creates a new world of sounds and thoughts – and one suspects already after the first tracks that there is more waiting for us, that "Broken Land" will not remain Hounah’s last work.

Distilling order from a crushing whirlwind of chaos has been the stock in trade for Red Kite since the Norwegian jazz-rock supergroup joined forces in 2014. Apophenian Bliss, the much anticipated follow-up to the quartet’s powerhouse 2019 self titled debut references the tendency in the human brain to find patterns and connections even when none actually exist. While it may be a stretch to call Red Kite’s blistering alchemy of surging psychedelia, steamroller rock and fringe-dwelling jazz “benign,” it’s at least a far less harmful application of the term than the conspiracy theories warping minds across the globe.Still, corralling the heady pandemonium of heavy prog, free jazz, combustible fusion and avant-metal into a cohesive sound is one thing; bringing that music to life in the face of the real-world chaos of a global pandemic is something else entirely Musicians : Even Helte Hermansen – Baritone guitar Trond Frønes - Bass Bernt André Moen – Rhodes Torstein Lofthus – Drums and percussion For Fans Of: Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever

Early, yet mysterious collaboration between Sun City Girls and Life Garden reissued on Unrock. Recorded live on Sept. 22, 1991 and originally released by visionary operator Nick Schultz on Majora Records, Tsunami .2↑ was, still is, and will remain a mysterious album. Because the music didn’t represent or sound like either of the bands involved, they decided to call the group Square 9 and chose to leave everybody’s names off of it. No further information was given, only "Recorded at Grand Theater, Buenos Aires, Argentina". Until today, nobody knows exactly who was behind the record. Rumors came up that is was part of the Sun City Girls legacy, but the "truth" lingered in the dark. So unusual and experimental the approach to record this album was, so remarkable it finally turned out. By the time it was released back in 1992 only a few dedicated core followers were aware of its existence. Everybody played anything and everything on this recording, no specific instruments are assigned to players. Different instruments, various percussion instruments, a piano and other sound sources. Insiders maybe recognize the voices of Su Ling and Alan Bishop or a piano sounding like Richard Bishop playing it. Some of the live sounds have been treated and processed live by W. David Oliphant. It was an impromptu series of improvisations by Sun City Girls and members of Life Garden (W. David Oliphant‘s main working group after Maybe Mental) and probably the last recordings made by members of Sun City Girls before the band fully re-located to Seattle. In retrospect it is a belonging and relevant part of the history of both bands, which needs to be broadcasted to a wider audience. 30 years after the recordings were made, a remastered version of the album is made available through Unrock. While the original release was two side-long tracks, the remastered version is split into 6 separate tracks, remixed and mastered by W. David Oliphant. Vinyl cut by Peter Koerfer at Ivory Tower. Square 9 were (in alphabetic order) Alan Bishop - Richard Bishop - Charles Gocher - Su Ling - W. David Oliphant - Peter Ragan

FOR FANS OF.. Mayer Hawthorne, Durand Jones, Leon Bridges, Nick Waterhouse. Ben Pirani & The Means Of Production are back with their first single from their newly built studio! Heavy dancefloor vibes with a punk attitude are the order of the day! Dig on Ben's new composition "More Than A Memory" with lush, soulful string arrangements from Ben and mix engineer Rafferty Swink!

This double album is a new collaboration between long-time Umor Rex artists Andreas Gerth (one half of Driftmachine) and Carl Oesterhelt (11 Pieces for Synthesizer). Both developed their shared musical cosmos during their time with the now defunct Tied +Tickled Trio. Oesterhelt is also known for his solo compositions for orchestras and for collaborations with Johannes Enders and Hans-Joachim Irmler of Faust.

As futurism seems inherent to electronic music, the backward-looking view is alien to its nature – consequently, a dialectical struggle between these principles is rarely expressed with the means of electronics. Especially today, its essence as a medium of progress stands in opposition to a sceptical position. By reconnecting us with history, The Aporias of Futurism seeks to define a critical location, that stands in opposition to the postmodern concept of interpretation, deconstruction and reformulation and the belief in progress that goes with it.

The working method for the album Andreas and Carl followed was the usual musique-concrète-technique – cut/assemble/edit/process pre-recorded sounds – but instead of deconstructing the concrete noises into an abstract sound entity, they followed a different path: the organic interweaving of orchestral structures with the electronically processed noise layers into a composition in the sense of classical modernism at the beginning of the 20th century.

Carl started with sketches recorded via a broken CD player, processed through a ring modulator, which sounded like old electronic music from the 1950s. To interact with these fragments Andreas recorded and processed a plethora of everyday noises, atmospheres, tonal fragments from the modular, industrial and shortwave radio noise, percussion in the form of door slamming, falling metal sheets, ball tracks, and so on. So, while they still played within the futuristic discipline, the reference to the past is actually unmistakable. One can hear it in the tonality of the contrasting orchestral passages, in the sound character of the processed samples and the sonic electronic layers. But it is precisely here, where a narrative tension develops. Theses and antitheses, extreme (unresolved) opposites, contrasts… essentially inner contradictions, or expressed in another word aporias… … but there is another factor at play here, something that plays a subordinate, almost ostracized role in the post-modern context: beauty (albeit the beauty of ruins) – beauty, the only refuge of the pessimist.

In the course of the process, a wide range of motifs and ideas emerged from the fog of memory. Free associations of concepts, books and authors from a wide period of time, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, William Blake, Robert Graves, ancient Rome, as well as Borges and Juan Rulfo. This flood of images is also incorporated on the album cover as a "free interpretation" of cultural objects and their relations in time.

The overarching motif of a sceptical rejection of the idea of Futurism is illustrated by a quote from Emile M. Cioran, the writer who most closely embodies the common spirit of the work presented here.

"But here comes the strangest thing: the Futurist idolizes becoming only until he has enforced that order for which he fought; then the ideal conclusion of time becomes apparent to him, the ‘always’ of utopia, which concludes and crowns the historical process. The conception of the Golden Age of Paradise par excellence, thus grips believers and unbelievers alike. But between the original paradise of the religions and the eschatological of the utopia there is the whole distance that separates a nostalgia from a hope, a repentance from a delusion, an achieved from an unrealized completion."

All music composed by Andreas Gerth and Carl Oesterhelt between Berlin and Munich, Germany in 2021. Produced and mixed by Andreas Gerth in Berlin. Mastered by John Tejada in Sherman Oaks, USA. Artwork by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City.

Chicago singer, songwriter and pianist Neal Francis is ATO
Records’ newest signing, and today presents his new album, ‘In
Plain Sight’, the follow-up to Francis’s 2019 debut, ‘Changes’, a
New Orleans-R&B-leaning effort that landed on Best Of The
Year lists from the likes of KCRW, KEXP and The Current, and
saw him hailed as “the reincarnation of Allen Toussaint” by BBC
Radio 6.
 After returning home from touring on the back of ‘Changes’,
Francis went through a breakup and found himself living in a
church, where he ended up writing a series of new songs about
honesty and resilience. “I’m owning up to all my problems within
my relationships and my sobriety,” he says. “So much of it is
about coming to the understanding that I continue to suffer
because of those problems. It’s about acknowledging that and
putting it out in the open in order to mitigate the suffering and try
to work on it, instead of trying to hide everything.”
 Francis and his bandmates recorded In Plain Sight entirely on
tape - and mostly in that same church - and the resulting songs
are dreamlike and reflective, anchored in the rock and soul
sound that has led critics to compare him to legends like Allen
Toussaint and Dr. John. ‘In Plain Sight’ was mixed by the
Grammy-winning producer Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips,
Tame Impala, MGMT).
 “There are hints of ’70s Brit Rock (including a very visceral
touch of Elton John) as well as New Orleans jazz-funk, gospel
soul, and some lighthearted Randy Newman - and the
amalgamation felt like a time-stamped treasure,” wrote the
Chicago Sun-Times on his recent hometown performance at
Lollapalooza. Early 2022 will see Francis embark on his first
ever UK and European tour.
 LP pressed on Cherry Red vinyl and includes lyric insert with a
deluxe embossed vinyl jacket and custom inner sleeve. (Once
this pressing sells out, a standard black vinyl format -
ATO0577LP - on will become available.)

Nottingham don Lukas Wigflex and "The Wizard" Tom Smith come correct with their Me & Meds project. Following on from their debut together on Wigflex, the follow up is just as inventive & playful.

2 years in the making- the studio skills of the pair shine through across the 3 tracks. The opener "Curtains Nine Tails" moves and warps over the first few minutes only to penetrate the listener with a crescendo of god-like basslines and tripped out vocals.

Faffhammer which gained big popularity when Lukas played it on that boat party at Love International is an atmospheric, wonked out euphoric number of the highest order.

The records finished off with the offside ramblings of another notorious Notts head - Des Hagenasty. This is his first outing on wax and it does not disappoint, backed by the analog wobbles and techno grit of Me & Meds, this one bites. The videos an eye opener too, just you wait!

0115 is alive.

On 19th August at 2PM BST, Ed Sheeran will announce his brand new album ‘=’ alongside an album pre-order. 14 tracks in length, the album will be released on 29th October 2021.

Ed Sheeran is an era-defining artist. Through his fusion of thought-provoking songwriting, universal pop and multi-genre influence, his rich tapestry is not only perfectly suited to his audience but it’s something that transcends generations.

Since surfacing on the UK circuit in 2010 with his ‘No.5 Collaborations Project’ – an eight-track EP featuring his favourite grime artists of the time – the Suffolk-raised recording artist has resonated with fans across the world through his peerless songcraft and versatility. And now, with four UK No.1 albums to his name – ‘+’ (2011), ‘x’ (2014), ‘÷’ (2017) and ‘No.6 Collaborations Project’ (2019) – he has sold over 55 million albums and 160 million singles across the world.

Most notably, Ed’s 2017 blockbuster release, ‘÷’ (Divide), saw Ed reign supreme as one of the most in-demand pop stars on the planet – a feat he has continued to sustain ever since. Crowned as the fastest-selling album, ever, by a male artist in the UK, the chart-shattering album housed a swarm of singles including ‘Castle on the Hill’, ‘Perfect’ and ‘Shape of You’, with the latter becoming Spotify’s most-streamed song of the last decade.

But it’s not just his recorded music that’s seen the former Glastonbury headliner become one of the sought-after artists of the 21st century either. Possessing a mystical ability to turn 90,000 capacity venues into the pub back-rooms that he first started playing in, Ed made history in 2015 after becoming the first-ever artist to play Wembley Stadium solo - without a band and with just his guitar and loop pedal - over three, consecutive sold out nights. Move forward to the summer of 2019 and Ed would re-enter history books after the completion of his mammoth two-year Divide tour, which would officially become the most-attended tour of all time after it culminated with special homecoming shows in Ipswich, Suffolk.

Ed Sheeran - who was awarded an MBE for his services to music and charity in 2017 - is the proud recipient of 1 x IFPI Award (best-selling global artist of 2017); 4 x Grammys; 4 x Ivor Novello’s; 6 x BRIT Awards (including two consecutive wins for ‘Global Success’ in 2018 and 2019); 7 x Billboard Awards + more.

At the end of 2019, Sheeran was presented with the Official Chart Company’s first-ever ‘No.1 Artist of the Decade’ award following a host of accomplishments in his native UK including the most No.1’s across the UK’s Official Singles and Albums chart from the years 2010-2019.

The next phase in our ongoing Spice Girls campaign sees a series of releases on CD, cassette (d2c only), vinyl and digital to mark the 25th anniversary of the Spice Girls multi-platinum debut album ‘Spice’, first released in the UK on 4 November 1996 and number 1 in 18 countries around the world. An expanded 2CD set contains the original 10 track album, along with bonus tracks / B-Sides taken from the four singles ‘Wannabe’, ‘Say You’ll Be There’, ‘2 Become 1’ and ‘Mama’/’Who Do You Think You Are’ (all No. 1 in the UK). The second disc contains a selection of the many remixes commissioned for the singles, along with previously unreleased songs. The original 10 track album will also be made available as a Zoetrope (animated) vinyl picture disc and five different coloured vinyl LPs . LIMITED EDITIONS. NUMBERS WILL BE SHARED OUT ONCE ALL ORDERS IN FOR DEADLINE.

Tracks by Wisp and Alek Stark. This record was only available previously as a gift to those who pre-ordered the box when Fundamental Records released it. It's a tribute to Ikutaru Kakehashi, founder of Roland Corporation, pioneer in electronic music instruments and creator of the original Roland TR-808. The Time Capsule project, also known as 808 Box, is a project created by Fundamental Records. The six boxes released in recent years include 56 records with over 300 tracks from artists from every corner of the world. Some warehouse copies have surfaced of the 5th 808 Box, and these will be available individually. These are new copies in perfect condition, with the original sleeves printed with the classic Roland TR-808.

‘SON’ was recorded in London and Freetown between 2019-21. Inspired by the pair’s shared love of choral music, it began as an experiment to explore playing with the voice in more creative ways, using layered vocals as an instrument following piano harmony, arrangement and sampling.

The project started in London with the title track and became a story about a world in which we hide our true ‘colours’ in order to fit in. A mother tells her son that he needs to fit in to survive before realising that she is following the same tropes passed on to her as a child. Following this realisation she encourages her son to protect his dreams and not to listen to anybody telling him he can’t be whatever he chooses.

Rosie joined Duval for a week in Freetown in February 2020 where they wrote the rest of the project, bringing friends Daniel Koroma, Kandeh Bangura, Valentine Coker, Chino Greene and Tom Herbert in for musical contributions;

“We were interested in bringing our surroundings into the recordings; leaving doors open, recording in different spaces and locations, inviting the listener to experience the life that was going on around us whilst capturing the process”.

Full-colour inner sleeve
Illustrations by Duval Timothy
Insert of a specially commission Julianknxx poem
Shrink-wrapped

Mystery Jets announce that their sixth studio album ‘A Billion Heartbeats’ will be released on 27th September on Caroline International. The band also release ‘Screwdriver’, the first single to be taken from the album.

Screwdriver is an uncompromising look at the rise of the rebranded alt-right in the UK, built around a powerfully positive message: "Fight them with love / then the world will be ours".

Lead singer Blaine Harrison says of the song, “Screwdriver is about the mechanics of intolerance. Looking back at times of economic instability in history, we see how easily deep chasms grow in society and the population seeks change wherever it is most convincingly promised. Conflict arises as cultures and belief systems clash, unwilling to accept one another’s place in society, because we are fed the rhetoric that our neighbours are those responsible for our problems: then inevitably nationalism once more raises its ugly head above the parapet. But whereas political agendas fuel divisiveness, music unites and reminds us of all that we have in common. The message of Screwdriver is not a pessimistic one - because perhaps faced with confrontation we can find understanding, and even maybe learn how to listen to, and love one another.”

Each room of the house in the video is a metaphor for the different sections of society in the UK. It wraps around the narrative of the song, that in order to overcome adversity, you have to “Fight Them With Love”. The visual showcases the song’s inherent message, clashing aggressiveness with tenderness, and culminates in showing after anger, we can always come together through love.
All great albums start from a unique perspective. But try a window on the Strand, in an abandoned office block, overlooking the kind of political upheaval London hasn’t seen in a generation. Blaine Harrison was living as a property guardian right around the corner from Trafalgar Square when he found himself witness to an entire year of protests. Every weekend from January 2017 on, people were marching for a different cause: "In the space of six months it was Black Lives Matter, the huge ‘Our NHS’ march, Unite for Europe," he recalls. "Then the solidarity sleep-out organised by Help Refugees, where we slept in Whitehall for the night... The protestors would wake me up in the morning. I’d just walk down and join in.”

Over the course of that year, Mystery Jets' sixth long-player, A Billion Heartbeats, was born. "This album wasn’t about making pointed opinions,” says Blaine. “It was about being a mirror for what’s going on, reflecting back the way people are feeling.” By turns tender and fierce, abstract and full of classic rock energy, A Billion Heartbeats achieves a balance of passion, fear and hope. Amid the colourful cavalcade of rich harmonies, heavy guitars and rallying cries, the album’s essential message - about personal responsibility, and the power in becoming engaged. In a sense, it's not just their "state of the nation” record but their “state of a generation” record too.

We increasingly hear from musicians that music should be an escape these days - that there’s enough suffering in the world, enough misery on the news, without writings songs about it too. A Billion Heartbeats makes all that sound like a bit of a cop-out. These are songs of protest that get the heart racing in joy; high on hope, and serious in their message. Proof, basically, that music speaks louder than words.

The next phase in our ongoing Spice Girls campaign sees a series of releases on CD, cassette (d2c only), vinyl and digital to mark the 25th anniversary of the Spice Girls multi-platinum debut album ‘Spice’, first released in the UK on 4 November 1996 and number 1 in 18 countries around the world. An expanded 2CD set contains the original 10 track album, along with bonus tracks / B-Sides taken from the four singles ‘Wannabe’, ‘Say You’ll Be There’, ‘2 Become 1’ and ‘Mama’/’Who Do You Think You Are’ (all No. 1 in the UK). The second disc contains a selection of the many remixes commissioned for the singles, along with previously unreleased songs. The original 10 track album will also be made available as a Zoetrope (animated) vinyl picture disc and five different coloured vinyl LPs . LIMITED EDITIONS. NUMBERS WILL BE SHARED OUT ONCE ALL ORDERS IN FOR DEADLINE.

The next phase in our ongoing Spice Girls campaign sees a series of releases on CD, cassette (d2c only), vinyl and digital to mark the 25th anniversary of the Spice Girls multi-platinum debut album ‘Spice’, first released in the UK on 4 November 1996 and number 1 in 18 countries around the world. An expanded 2CD set contains the original 10 track album, along with bonus tracks / B-Sides taken from the four singles ‘Wannabe’, ‘Say You’ll Be There’, ‘2 Become 1’ and ‘Mama’/’Who Do You Think You Are’ (all No. 1 in the UK). The second disc contains a selection of the many remixes commissioned for the singles, along with previously unreleased songs. The original 10 track album will also be made available as a Zoetrope (animated) vinyl picture disc and five different coloured vinyl LPs . LIMITED EDITIONS. NUMBERS WILL BE SHARED OUT ONCE ALL ORDERS IN FOR DEADLINE.

The next phase in our ongoing Spice Girls campaign sees a series of releases on CD, cassette (d2c only), vinyl and digital to mark the 25th anniversary of the Spice Girls multi-platinum debut album ‘Spice’, first released in the UK on 4 November 1996 and number 1 in 18 countries around the world. An expanded 2CD set contains the original 10 track album, along with bonus tracks / B-Sides taken from the four singles ‘Wannabe’, ‘Say You’ll Be There’, ‘2 Become 1’ and ‘Mama’/’Who Do You Think You Are’ (all No. 1 in the UK). The second disc contains a selection of the many remixes commissioned for the singles, along with previously unreleased songs. The original 10 track album will also be made available as a Zoetrope (animated) vinyl picture disc and five different coloured vinyl LPs . LIMITED EDITIONS. NUMBERS WILL BE SHARED OUT ONCE ALL ORDERS IN FOR DEADLINE.

'After 20 years of absence THE THE celebrated their comeback with a glorious UK and US Tour in 2018, topped by a sold-out performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the so called “Comeback Special”. What started as an unforgettable live experience now turns into something even bigger as THE THE announce their new live album and make the whole comeback experience available to fans worldwide. Available as 2CD Digipak, 2CD Mediabook, 3LP Black Vinyl, Limited 3LP Crystal Clear Vinyl, Blu-ray, and DVD formats.LIMITED NUMBERS. ALLOCATION SHARED OUT WHEN ALL ORDERS IN AT 12PM DEADLINE.

The fertile South African house scene keeps on giving rise to brand new goodness. Token is a label whose mission it is to bring such sounds to the wider world and this second EP is another winner. 'Stay' immediately gets you dreaming of warm climates and gorgeous sunsets before 'Set It' picks up the pace but keeps the pads warm and fuzzy and the bass elastic and deep. There is spiritual vocal faire on the cosy 'A Winters Night' and a melodic masterclass on 'The World Order' that is steeped in US house tradition but brings something fresh.

Clap de fin for the "Cabinet des Curiosités" : 15th and last episode of Vol.1 with The Architect.

Since last fall, Al'Tarba has been able to mix his talents with those of a beatmaker, a producer or a rapper, for hybrid experimental collaborations, composed with 4 hands or more, mixing styles and sounds. In November 2020, somewhere in France, we could hear the noise of some machines breaking a silence of lead, due to the general fever of the cultural scene. In a studio-laboratory looking like a "Cabinet des Curiosités", where far-fetched ideas are piled up on as many dusted shelves, Al'Tarba and his instruments were still running at full speed.

Anxious to find the antidote, a handful of beatmakers, producers and rappers, all gathered under the aegis of the Toulouse-based scientist, have been fine-tuning, week after week and month after month, the ingredients of their new serum. Over the seasons, they have unveiled, with regular intake, hybridizations of composed styles. Between sharing sounds, ideas, sample loops and vocal takes, like a "Cabinet des Curiosités" containing a thousand and one unusual objects.

On this foggy road and until the lightning, crossed Mounika, Structural Anomaly, Aguirre and Prometheus, Yous MC, Beus Bengal, Goomar, DeZordre, ProleteR, Degiheugi, K.D.S and Stabfinger, DJ Low Cut, DJ Nix'on, Sarbacane, Mani Deïz, Slim Paul and Grin. The day when the echo of the party is heard again in the distance, the sky is discovered the time of a new story. The clouds finally dissipate, for the last chapter of this first volume.

Between two rocks, the sea and its blue, bathed in sunlight. On the horizon, the authentic "Orange Sea" sailing in the distance. It is Al'Tarba and The Architect who arrive against all odds, to tell us the last story of the "Cabinet des Curiosités", first volume. The Architect, overproductive beatmaker and informed digger, knows how to take his audience on a journey through the world and styles. A last collaboration which promises the great crossing, its hot and ardent breath like fire, bell sound of the beginning of summer found and its epics.

Melancholy of a past world and dreamlike flights of fancy, hope of the world after, will rub shoulders in a double-vinyl album that will bring together the entire adventure. Pre-orders are now open !

So many bright perspectives, which would even let us foreshadow a forthcoming release of Al'Tarba's second solo album on I.O.T Records: "La Fin des Contes".

There is a moment halfway through Hand Habits’ Fun Houseat which musician Meg Duffy asks the question, “How many times must I rewind the tape?”It’s a fitting question planted squarely in the middle of a sonically adventurous record concerned largely with making sense and taking stock. How much time must we spend examining our own past in order to fully understand it? How can we safely acknowledge pain in order to release it and fully actualize who we are supposed to be? Buffeted by strings, synths, and a gently-shook tambourine, the aptly-titled track, “The Answer,” highlights the emotional engine at the heart of the record. “I know the answer,”Duffy sings, “Here’s what I hope to find - it’s always mine.”

There is a moment halfway through Hand Habits’ Fun Houseat which musician Meg Duffy asks the question, “How many times must I rewind the tape?”It’s a fitting question planted squarely in the middle of a sonically adventurous record concerned largely with making sense and taking stock. How much time must we spend examining our own past in order to fully understand it? How can we safely acknowledge pain in order to release it and fully actualize who we are supposed to be? Buffeted by strings, synths, and a gently-shook tambourine, the aptly-titled track, “The Answer,” highlights the emotional engine at the heart of the record. “I know the answer,”Duffy sings, “Here’s what I hope to find - it’s always mine.”

LP + DVD

Factory Benelux presents a 180gm vinyl edition of The Invisible Girls, a collection of rare lost studio recordings by legendary new wave production duo Martin Hannett and Steve Hopkins (aka The Invisible Girls).

The album has been newly remastered by Peter Beckmann at TechnologyWorks and is pressed on 180gsm black vinyl. The outer sleeve is printed in black with a silver pantone. The inner bag includes detailed liner notes by Steve Hopkins, as well as archive TIG and Strawberry images.

Martin ‘Zero’ Hannett is the legendary Manchester producer famous for his work with Joy Division, Buzzcocks, New Order, Magazine and Happy Mondays. Steve Hopkins was his musical partner in The Invisible Girls, a floating studio collective which shaped epochal records by John Cooper Clarke, Pauline Murray, Nico and several others.

The first five tracks on the album are a selection of previously unreleased demos (‘moods’) recorded at the famous Strawberry Studios between 1980 and 1987. “These were the beginnings of Martin’s Invisible Girls world domination plan,” ace arranger Hopkins explains. “The idea was to assemble a roster of key instrumental players, produce tracks to be fronted by different singers/stars - and get some hits!”

Also included are 3 Hannett solo pieces recorded in 1978 and 1979, with the deluxe package rounded off by a DVD featuring a remarkable 13 minute trio improvisation by Hannett, Hopkins and Vini Reilly of The Durutti Column, recorded for television in January 1980.

Praise for FBN 65: ‘This store room grab conjures Manchester’s scarred wastelands, jazz-funky library music and ambient disquiet. Blade Runner via the Arndale Centre. A strange wayward collection, just like the thought processes of Hannett’s brain’ (Mojo)

‘Lovingly annotated, these effortlessly melodic backdrops offer a glimpse into what could have been as a post-punk one-stop-shop Chic’ (Q); ‘Captivating’ (Classic Pop); ‘The Nelson Riddle of narcotic rock’ (The Wire)

Following on from the release of ‘Ultra Mono’ in 2020,
IDLES are back to release a version of ‘Model Village’ with
none other than slowthai.
 In vocalist Joe’s words: “We are fortunate to announce our
forces have joined with the enigmatic and vibrant soul that
is slowthai. Go dig.”
 ‘Ultra Mono’ was a UK Number 1 album, with over 75k
global sales in week one and over 19k UK pre-orders
before album release.
 The band had five sold out Brixton Academy shows in
2021 and were the cover stars of Music Week, DIY and
Kerrang last year. Three sold out live streamed
performances at Abbey Road, with over 10k tickets sold.
 Praise for ‘Ultra Mono’:
 “Louder, angrier & more political” - Q (★★★★)
 “Alive, bristling, vicious and hopeful” - Financial Times
(★★★★)
 “The band want to take you on a trip and for you to enjoy
the ride, and for the destination to be serene. Hold on
tight.” - NME (★★★★)
 “it’s unapologetic and cements their status as one of the
most important bands in the country.” - Evening Standard
(★★★★★)
 “IDLES have concocted an explosive formula unlike
anything currently being offered in the arena of rock
music” - Crack (9/10)
 “it would take a brave person to bet against this from firing
IDLES to even more ridiculous levels” - Dork (★★★★)
 “This is rock music that compels you to pay attention” -
Independent (★★★★)

Biffy Clyro will release the surprise new project ‘The Myth of the Happily Ever After’ on October 22nd. The record is a homegrown project that represents a reaction to their #1 album ‘A Celebration of Endings’ and a rapid emotional response to the turmoil of the past year. It is the ying to the yang of ‘A Celebration’, the other-side-of-a-coin, a before-and-after comparison: their early optimism of 2020 having been brought back to earth with a resounding thud. It’s the product of a strange and cruel time in our lives, but one that ultimately reinvigorated Biffy Clyro.

“This is a reaction to ‘A Celebration of Endings’,” says vocalist / guitarist Simon Neil. “This album is a real journey, a collision of every thought and emotion we’ve had over the past eighteen months. There was a real fortitude in ‘A Celebration’ but in this record we’re embracing the vulnerabilities of being a band and being a human in this twisted era of our lives. Even the title is the polar opposite. It’s asking, do we create these narratives in our own minds to give us some security when none of us know what’s waiting for us at the end of the day?”

Grounded by lockdown, Biffy Clyro recorded ‘The Myth’ in a completely different way to how they approached ‘A Celebrations’. Rather than spending months in Los Angeles, they traded one West Coast for another by recording for just six weeks in their rehearsal room (converted DIY style into a fully functional studio by rhythm section brothers James and Ben Johnston) in a farmhouse closer to their homes.

The trio went in with the intention of completing some unfinished songs from ‘A Celebration’, but instead ‘The Myth’ took over as it started to take shape late in 2020, with everything written and recorded within a ten-mile radius. Traditionally, 90% of Biffy songs have been written in Scotland before the band head to London or Los Angeles for recording, but this represented the first time they’ve ever recorded in their homeland. As Simon jokes, “It’s our first full-on tartan album!”

‘The Myth’ blends experimental flourishes with flashes of old school Biffy. ‘Existed’ is the moment that shaped the record an elegant expression of self-doubt that redefines the sonics of the band’s catalogue of vulnerable slowburners, while ‘DumDum’ is an even bigger departure, having been constructed primarily around soft synths sampled from Simon’s voice. And ‘Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep’ is just as audacious a closer as ‘Cop Syrup’ from ‘A Celebration’. It also represents one of a selection of “easter eggs” or “turns of phrase” that subtly complement and contrast the two records.

At the other extreme, devoted fans will connect with the feral anger of ‘A Hunger In Your Haunt’, the arena-scaled drama of ‘Errors In The History of God’ and the sheer catchiness of ‘Witch’s Cup’.

‘The Myth’ has been launched alongside the new track ‘Unknown Male 01’. In six adventurous minutes, the band explore every facet they’re renowned for, taking in the unguarded emotion of its introduction, a skewed off-kilter breakdown, and a jagged, spiralling riff that builds towards a cataclysmic crescendo. The song reflects on friends who have taken their own lives.

“When you lose people that you love deeply and have been a big part of your life, it can make you question every single thing about your own life,” he says. “Like a lot of creative people, I struggle with dark thoughts. If you’re that way inclined you realise you’re staring at darkness, but you don't want to succumb. Those moments don’t stop. As the song says, ‘The devil never leaves.’ There’s never a day where you wake up thinking, ‘I feel great, it won’t cross me ever again.’”

A recurring concept of the album is the power of personal convictions, which have taken on an almost religious fervour via the echo chambers of social media and news platforms. But that idea has the nuance to rise above contrasting sides of an argument, arguing that greater unity and open-mindedness is the only way forward. Elsewhere, it spans everything from gaslighting to the ultimate devotion of cults and the beautiful failure of a Japanese racehorse.

‘The Myth of the Happily Ever After’ is now available to pre-order here, with ‘Unknown Male 01’ provided as an instant download. It will be released on CD and digital formats, as well as a limited edition red vinyl which is packaged with a must-have bonus CD for fans: full audio of the acclaimed livestream show that Biffy Clyro performed at Glasgow Barrowland in August 2020 to commemorate the release of ‘A Celebration of Endings’.

After headlining Reading and Leeds in August, Biffy Clyro will also play further large-scale outdoor gigs this summer at Cardiff Bay and Glasgow Green. Plans for 2022 are also taking shape, with April’s long sold-out ‘Fingers Crossed’ intimate tour and a huge Saturday night headline set at Download. Please see the band’s official website for a full list of shows and ticket information.

After a four-year hiatus exploring ambient and meditation music, Danish multi- instrumentalist Anders Rhedin has returned to his indie roots. Dream Work, his third album as Dinner, is a lush collection of synth and guitar-laden indie pop that expertly channels Ryuichi Sakamoto, early British indie, and the sound of water.

Like most worthwhile pursuits, the path to Dream Work hasn’t been straight. After signing to Captured Tracks in 2014, he released a series of synth-based avant-pop albums and toured the world with the likes of Mac Demarco, Sean Nicholas Savage, Prince Rama, and King Gizzard, all while splitting his time be - tween Berlin, LA and his native Copenhagen. This whirlwind period ended when, following the release of 2017’s New Work, Rhedin relocated to Copenhagen and took a step back from the Dinner project in order to explore his long standing personal interest in ambient production and guided meditation. Over the last few years, he’s released a series of ambient releases under his own name geared towards meditation, sleep, and relaxation. He’s also led live guided sound baths and meditations at art museums, churches, and rooftops all over the world.

The Rolling Stones have announced the release of 40th anniversary, expanded deluxe editions of their chart-topping, multi-platinum 1981 album Tattoo You, via Universal Music. The newly-remastered set, out on October 22, will be accompanied by no fewer than nine previously unreleased tracks from the era. '1CD: 11track remaster of album. 2CD Deluxe: 20 tracks over 2Cd's and also included is a 20 page booklet including an essay from Kevin Howlett & Jeff Slade. 1LP: 11 track remaster on 180g vinyl. 2LP Deluxe: Pressed on double 180g Black Vinyl in gatefold sleeve. 4CD+1LP Box: Includes 4 x CDS (CD1 - Remastered Album, CD2 - Bonus 9 Tracks + CD 3 & 4 - Still Life: Wembley Stadium 1982 + Tattoo You 12” Picture Disc + 124 Page Book + Lenticular Art. 5LP Boxset: Includes 5 x 180g Heavyweight Vinyl. (LP1 Brand New 2021 Remaster of Tattoo You, LP2 Lost & Found: 9 Previously Unreleased Tracks, LP3, 4 & 5 Still Life: Wembley Stadium 1982) + 124 page book & lenticular artwork. LIMITED EDITIONS. FIGURES SHARED OUT ONCE ALL ORDERS ARE IN AT DEADLINE.

Looks like we are hittin’ a milestone here. A little background has to be provided though, in order everyone to fully understand why it took us that long to put out this Album, which was already
announced at the dawn of 2020. The ELECTRIFIED project started almost 2 (TWO) years ago, with the first vocal takes recorded a few days ahead of Cannonball Weekender in November 2019. Everything seemed fine and in good working order so the release date was
planned and announced for june 2020. All self financed, self conceived and self realised in that style that’s a point of distinction of our small group of labels. Then the CVD damn thing kicked in. “So What?” some of you would be very entitled to ask. And,
believe me, I’d be on the very same
#sowhat lines as you, only that each member of our team reacted to the shitstorm in his very different and individual way. While folks all over the world were confined home
setting up new ventures, creating new labels and dedicating themselves to something productive not to get psychologically annihilated by the media induced fear, our project was totally disrupted instead. It took the first wave to fade away to gather our stuff
together and movin’ the production forward. Anyway, whatever the reasons, the album came ready and mixed by march 2021. So here we are. Further than the two acclaimed singles
“Break Free” and “Sitting On Top Of The World”, the tracklist includes 6 completely new songs, a smashing cover of
Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy” and the rearrangement of the two classics
“There Are No Winners” and “Mother Got A Way”. The style goes from modern funk experimentation to a more classic soul and a groovy electronic ender foreseeing the future of this beautiful music.

Work on 'Fragile' began last August at the height of lockdown. Grill locked himself in the recording studio where he found himself experimenting with new sounds and technologies and was able to learn more about the techniques involved in mixing, production and arrangement. "The aim was to write a physical album maintaining an energy throughout and utilising sounds and structures I'm interested in. Using limitation was a big part of the process to push what I used as far as possible. Reading about Robin Guthrie's breakdown of Cocteau Twins minimal setups across different albums and how Prince distorted the Linn Drum Machine were also inspirations."

Musically, 'Fragile' is a more dance-centric record than 2020's 'Ride', with eleven blistering tracks aimed straight for the dancefloor. From the lush, pulsing synths and blistering beats of 'Another Time', to the hazy, sun-soaked 'Wildflower', Grill seeks to create dance music that is endlessly catchy and hugely uplifting. He draws heavily on a Euro-dance influence in his search for pop perfection with melody instrinsic to each track. The Italo disco sound of Giorgio Moroder is never too far away, climaxing with the pumping 'Crash' while the emotive dance of New Order is echoed in 'Wandering Sky' and 'Romance'.

From a visual perspective, 'Fragile' is inspired by gothic, renaissance art and architecture. The album artwork is a photograph Grill took on Château d'If, a fortress and former prison located on the Île d'If, the smallest island in the Frioul archipelago, a short distance from Marseille in southeastern France.

First time on vinyl
10th Anniversary of the Breaking Bad TV Series
5 x 10' vinyl in 5 different jackets, 1 relating to each season
Each 10' is the same colour, Strictly Limited Edition Albuquerque Crystal Coloured (transparent with a hint of turquoise) Vinyl!
Lift off box-set with Breaking Bad logo on front with special drip-off varnish
Exclusive Breaking Bad Poster & Pollos Hermanos plastic ID badge
Booklet with exclusive pictures and extensive liner notes by Thomas, the musical supervisor of Breaking Bad
One run only of this very exclusive BOX-SET
Individually numbered the manufacturing qty for Worldwide is est 4000 with 800 for the UK - we could get some more
PLEASE ORDER BY 12.00 TUESDAY 25 SEPT TO BE GUARANTEED YOUR QTY
Available worldwide
Weight ESTIMATED 950g
All the essential Breaking Bad songs by Badfinger, Calexico, Far East Movement, America, Fever Ray, Apparat, Whitey, Knife Party, The Peddlers and others
Various dialogies by Walter, Jesse, Skyler, Mike, Gus, Saul and many more
This release will be heavily promoted on social media, including the social media accounts of Breaking Bad (facebook, over 11 million followers!!!).

MOV proudly presents the OST - BREAKING BAD (MUSIC FROM THE ORIGINAL SERIES) 5 x 10' BOX-SET!

A TOP PRIORITY RELEASE with WORLDWIDE RIGHTS!

So far only the score music has been released on vinyl and now finally, for the very very first time, the original soundtrack music is released on vinyl!

Breaking Bad is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time and celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2018.

The legion of fans have been waiting for this to be released for a long time. There will be a huge demand for this exclusive BOX-SET!

This release was never released in any other format (CD, vinyl, digital) before and will only be available on vinyl!

OST - BREAKING BAD (MUSIC FROM THE ORIGINAL SERIES) is presented in a beautiful Lift off box-set with Breaking Bad logo on front with special drip-off varnish. The box-set includes a selection of defining songs, devided in five 10' records on coloured vinyl, each representing a season with accessory artwork. The numbered box-set also includes a booklet, poster and Pollos Hermanos plastic ID Badge. Next to all essential Breaking Bad songs by Badfinger, Calexico, Far East Movement, America, Fever Ray, Apparat, Whitey, Knife Party, The Peddlers and others, the 10' records also include various dialogies by Walter, Jesse, Skyler, Mike, Gus, Saul and many more. The box-set is a ONE-RUN-ONLY and is STRICTLY LIMITED!

Breaking Bad is an American neo-western crime drama television series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. The show originally aired on the AMC network for five seasons, from January 20, 2008 to September 29, 2013. The series tells the story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a struggling and depressed high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with lung cancer. Together with his former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), White turns to a life of crime by producing and selling crystallized methamphetamine to secure his family's financial future before he dies, while navigating the dangers of the criminal world. The title comes from the Southern colloquialism "breaking bad", meaning to "raise hell" or turn toward crime. Breaking Bad is set and filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Walter's family consists of his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) and children, Walter, Jr. (RJ Mitte) and Holly (Elanor Anne Wenrich). The show also features Skyler's sister Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt), and her husband Hank (Dean Norris), a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent. Walter hires lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), who connects him with private investigator and fixer Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) and in turn Mike's employer, drug kingpin Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). The final season introduces the characters Todd Alquist (Jesse Plemons) and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (Laura Fraser).

Breaking Bad is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time. By the time the series finale aired, it was among the most-watched cable shows on American television. The show received numerous awards, including 16 Primetime Emmy Awards, eight Satellite Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Peabody Awards, two Critics' Choice Awards and four Television Critics Association Awards. For his leading performance, Cranston won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series four times, while Aaron Paul won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series three times; Anna Gunn won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series twice. In 2013, Breaking Bad entered the Guinness World Records as the most critically acclaimed show of all time.

Born in Majorca, Marc Melià is a composer/producer, who’s been based in Brussels for over 10 years. First spotted alongside Françoiz Breut, Lonely Drifter Karen or Borja Flames, he released Music for Prophet in 2017. It was issued on Gaspar Claus’s label Les Disques du Festival Permanent, as part of Flavien Berger’s curation.

On that first album, Marc Melià had explored the possibilities of a mythic synth; on Veus, as if sloughing, he applied the process of sound modification to his own voice, until becoming an android. But an android who sings of love and dreams, a sensitive automaton who plays with the tropes of pop music. Through this device, Marc Melià knowingly seeks poetry and beauty within transgenics, in the search of a universe where one can surf though waves of profoundly moving chord patterns, hear voices unconstrained by range limitations, or dance freely, as in zero gravity.

Part of the album has been recorded in Une ferme dans les Vosges, courtesy of Rodolphe Burger. It was recorded with Roméo Poirier, one of the most promising figures of ambient, and the elegant multi-talented Lou Rotzinger. As if progressing in parallel with his own linguistic experience, to add another layer to the sloughing, side A is sung in Catalan, Marc Melià’s mother tongue, and side B in French, his adopted language.

Like an echo to his previous album, Veus opens with an instrumental, “Pulse on a E”, which starts with a sequence created with a single note transposed to its octave, just like “Fata Fou”, the last song on Music for Prophet.

Although the title seems to reference an iconic 80s synth, “DX7” is actually about the seven days of the week. It is a love song, about the temperamental oscillations which make every morning the blank canvas of an unpredictable story. Wednesday, I hate you, Sunday, I love you. With few words and a lot of emotion, a synthetic voice is trying to grow more human each day.

“Dent de Serra” deals with the weight of memory on our relationships, but also with the way we revisit them constantly in order to integrate souvenirs within present relationships. Suddenly, the song stops and enters a new dimension, everything is different, as if what had just happened was now forgotten forever.

Oxytocin (“Oxitocines” in Catalan) is said to be the hormone of love. This song deals in a playful way with the duality between science and faith, between rational and magic, when it comes to sentimental relationships. Love is a universal theme, it is everywhere in the world, and love songs have been written for a very long time. But this particular love song is an ode to an aspect of love that has been less sung about: biology, which makes it possible to feel like you’re floating in space when you fall in love.

“Les étoiles” is a trio with Flavien Berger and Pi Ja Ma. The song is about attraction. What attracts humans to each other, but also the inevitable gravitational attraction. The song is also about accidents, magic moments that take us outside of our daily lives and give us the possibility to imagine a sidereal, infinite love.

“A propos d’une chanson” was born after Marc Melià had dreamed he had written the most beautiful song he’d ever created. When he woke up, he realized that song was actually O Superman by Laurie Anderson.

Aside from these songs, Marc Melià offers a few breaks, instrumental but no less narrative.

“Final d’hivern” conjures these quiet moments between two intense events; sleeping at night between two days; the calm that settles in after a hard winter, right before spring properly starts.

Using a musical language that clearly references Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Romain”, with its theme based on a melancholic chord pattern, could be the soundtrack to a 1970s movie lost in time. Little by little, elements that seem to come from a completely different context find their place, while turning the initial mood into something strange and unexpected.

Finally, “Retorn”, which finishes the album, is a reprise of the theme of “DX7”.

From the chords that make up a song, to the days that make up our lives, existence is but a cycle, and Veus is an exploration of them. Marc Melià keeps on drifting on his personal path, between homage to the past and visions of the future.

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.

On the fringe of the indie Rust Belt scene since the 1990s,
Moviola has quietly forged a low-key career of high-quality
recorded output over twenty-five years, issuing ten (!) records
and countless 7-inch singles (including splits with Cobra Verde,
Hiss Golden Messenger, Handsome Family and many others).
In this artistic continuum, the band has evolved from everything
from 4-track fuzz to hi-fi country soul. Today, the band steps
forward with Broken Rainbows, its strongest collection of songs
to date, written, recorded, and mixed inside the group’s HQ in
Columbus.
Jake Housh started Moviola in 1993 as a student at “The”
Ohio State University as a noisy, fuzzed out lo-fi noisemakers.
Over the years, the band has morphed into a unique DIY
music and art-making collective with five distinct singers and
songwriters, recalling the creatively democratic lineage of The
Mekons, The Band, Pink Floyd, many others. Moviola is Jake
Housh, Ted Hattemer (Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments),
Scotty Tabachnick, Greg Bonnell, and Jerry Dannemiller.
Broken Rainbows is a milestone release, showcasing a band
newly energized and assured in its artistry, and supportive of its
members’ songcraft. The eleven-song album hovers over a plot
of ground that’s optimistic in its despair. Album topics range
from the personal to the political, showcasing each member’s
unique songwriting within an overall cohesive band aesthetic.
“Moviola was one of those groups I met early on back in the day
that showed me how to do it. Broken Rainbows is a highlight—
pastoral thumpers, fuzzy indie radness, hooks to spare, pretty
much all the good stuff. Feels like a glorious drive from one
disparate end of Ohio to another. I love this band.”
—Eric Johnson (Fruit Bats)

"Empty Facile" is the second EP from Body Portals. Delivering a spellbinding foray into down-tempo caustic temperatures; where samples and hardware create a full-on, yet carefully crafted singular sonic experience.

Nocturnal Manoeuvres – the new album from JOHN - finds the duo expanding upon their celebrated idiosyncrasies once more. It sees them returning to their trusted producer Wayne Adams (who was behind the boards for both of their previous albums) knowing his success in capturing their presence as a live band. Realising the expansive quality of the resulting recordings, they then enlisted mastering engineer Sarah Register (Protomartyr, Future Islands, Chastity Belt) in order to deliver the sense of space that the

varied track-list deserved. The result is a towering, titanic body of work – one that moves easily between cinematic post-rock, elastic post-hardcore and pummelling noise rock.

Nocturnal Manoeuvres – the new album from JOHN - finds the duo expanding upon their celebrated idiosyncrasies once more. It sees them returning to their trusted producer Wayne Adams (who was behind the boards for both of their previous albums) knowing his success in capturing their presence as a live band. Realising the expansive quality of the resulting recordings, they then enlisted mastering engineer Sarah Register (Protomartyr, Future Islands, Chastity Belt) in order to deliver the sense of space that the

varied track-list deserved. The result is a towering, titanic body of work – one that moves easily between cinematic post-rock, elastic post-hardcore and pummelling noise rock.