quête:other form

"“The New Backwards” was conceived by Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson in 2007, revisiting stray tracks which hadn’t seemed to gel with the material he had chosen for the more somber “Ape of Naples” from 2005, COIL’s initial posthumous release, a sort of requiem and a kiss-goodbye to his then recently deceased partner John Balance.

Significantly different to its sister release, this album collects the brilliantly chaotic and outrageously rhythmic material from the original sessions for the album that was begun as early as 1993 and had originally been conceptualised as the follow-up to “Love’s Secret Domain”. These songs are as diverse and wild as the places they originated from, partly infamously spawned in Sharon Tate’s former home in the Hollywood Hills, the Nine Inch Nails home base in New Orleans and London’s Swanyard, remixed and restructured with the help of long-term friend Danny Hyde in Thailand, this collection has its own unique flow and an atmosphere not found on any other COIL release.

Both “AYOR” and “Backwards” had by the time the album was first released already become favourites in COIL’s manic live performances. Some of the other tracks had only leaked in demo versions and are here presented updated and polished as Christopherson and Hyde intended them to be heard. It is interesting to consider Balance’s vocal contributions, too. Whilst on the albums COIL did release at the time this material was first put aside (“Black Light District” and “ElpH”) his voice is all but absent, his vocal performances and his lyric writing here are arguably more closely indebted to the previous “Love’s Secret Domain” era, especially the epic “Copacaballa” is noteworthy in that respect.
The New Backwards” effectively became the final official COIL studio release of all new material whilst Peter was still alive and is here presented for the first time fully supervised by Danny Hyde, its co-creator.
The stunning cover uses a detail from artist Ian Johnstone’s “Cubic Raven” painting, licensed from the estate of IJ..

It is high time to rediscover this timeless album now!

Recorded at Swanyard, London and at Nothing Studios, New Orleans, 1996.
Thanks to everyone there, especially Trent Reznor who made it all possible.
Written & Produced by Coil & Danny Hyde.
Remixed by Peter Christopherson & Danny Hyde, Bangkok 2007.
For that session Coil were: Peter Christopherson, Jhonn Balance & Drew McDowall.
Mastered by Jessica Thompson.
Front artwork by Ian Johnstone.
Artwork licensed from The Estate of Ian Johnstone.
Layout Cold Graves and Oleg Galay."

For more than twelve years, Morphology have been re-writing the rules of electronics. Michael Diekmann and Matti Turunen have melted electro, IDM and techno into their own unique sound. To celebrate their achievements, FireScope has sifted through the impressive discography of this Finnish pairing to bring long out of print tracks back to life.

Twelve 2 brings together a decade’s worth of music released between 2009 and 2019, a dozen works that traverse genres and labels like Abstract Forms, AC Records, Analogical Force, Central Processing Unit, Cultivated Electronics, diametric., Inner Space Records and Vortex Traks. Spliced beats and bulging bass lines introduce the album with "Karma Flies.” Rhythmic patterns are condensed and stretched in “Inversion Layer” and “Amphidiscosa”, the latter’s aquatic undercurrents melting an organic touch with the coldness of the machine. Darker tones lurk, the long shadows cast by “Convince the Computer” spread to other tracks like “Nucleosynthesis.” Yet, despite these more sombre shades, pieces with a human element punctuate the album. The frenetic pace of “Fluid Dynamics,” with its playful melody, throbs with the pulse of a city while the ebbs and flows of the watery “Active Optics” explore an ever morphing and shifting sound. An imagined future is never far away in Morphology’s machinations. These other places are given sound in the frigid grooves of “Sentinel,” the primal beauty of “New Horizons” and the stark structures of “Landforms.”

Not only does this double LP gather rare tracks never heard together before, but also each piece has been lovingly remastered to breath new life into these wonderful works. Twelve 1 celebrates the music of Morphology in all its glory, two masters of modern electronic music who continue to re-define and re-design genres.

Propulsive tabla percussion and meditative drones collide in deep instrumental conversation on Shruti Dances, the debut collaborative album between UK heavyweights Auntie Flo and Sarathy Korwar, forthcoming on the newly relaunched, Make Music imprint.

Across six exchanges of dynamic electronic production and richly layered Indian classical percussion, Shruti Dances discovers two architects of rhythm and movement on an explorative journey through South Asian tonality and diasporic identity.

One an elemental force on drums, the other on the decks, London-based, Indian-raised drummer/composer, Sarathy Korwar and Scottish-Goan producer/DJ, Auntie Flo first connected back in 2019, unaware both were navigating opposite ends of the beat equilibrium. Where Auntie Flo (aka Brian D’Souza) was new to Korwar’s reimagining of jazz, Indian classical music, electronics and spoken word, Korwar was already a big admirer of Auntie Flo’s intl-facing club output, having first discovered D’Souza’s Rainfall On Red Earth off his Soniferous Garden 12” and 2019 SAY award-winning (Scottish Album of The Year), Radio Highlife. Once properly acquainted, Korwar invited Auntie Flo to remix a track off his landmark 2019 album, More Arriving, described by The Guardian as “a stylistic leap from jazz to hip-hop to spoken word…a protest record encompassing the breadth of immigrant experiences”.

The seeds of an unlikely yet powerful musical bond had been sown and when mutual friend, co-founder of Mixcloud, and Make Music label organiser, Nikhil Shah, asked the duo to inaugurate the label’s new live/electronic direction (previously home to Leon Vynehall, U and George Fitzgerald), Korwar and D’Souza hit the studio. Expanding on early conversations around traditional Indian instrumentation, practicing meditation and improvisation, Shruti Dances (a riff on free dance movement, Ecstatic Dance) was born. Meaning 'that which is heard' in Sanskrit, shruti refers to a note in musical terms, but in this case also references the album’s most prominent influence and instrument, the shruti box.

“The shruti box formed the basis of the sound of the project. It’s a drone instrument, similar to a harmonium, and it makes an amazing sound. I’ve spent the last two years studying sound therapy, and immersing myself in ambient and drone through the Ambient Flo project, and am particularly interested in how they can induce meditative states of consciousness. I was really excited to hear what the Shruti box could do with this EP.” Auntie Flo

Across six tracks, (each named after 6 of the 7 main musical notes in the Indian solfege system), Shruti Dances draws on a celestial mix of traditional percussion and processed digital effects. On opening track Dha, Korwar’s sparse tabla rhythms hop across D’Souza’s scattered, arpeggiated synths, where as on Pa, a Balearic shuffle channels Moroccan Gnawa music and Senegalese sabar meets Mark Ernestus’s Ndagga Rhythm Force. Harmonic speed tabla and roaming drones provide a sense of the ethereal and fourth-worldly on Ma, a track that’s resplendent, curious atmosphere would fit snug into the deep listening-focused programming of Auntie Flo’s Ambient Flo online radio station, a curatorial platform and avenue exploring his interest/promotion of mental health, launched over the UK’s first lockdown. Ni sees Korwar pick up the sticks, thrashing toms in a spirited frenzy, whilst downtempo album closer Sa offers some room for reflection, its slow, swirling chords cloud our focus, leaving us with all but the distant sound of birdsong.

For more than twelve years, Morphology have been re-writing the rules of electronics. Michael Diekmann and Matti Turunen have melted electro, IDM and techno into their own unique sound. To celebrate their achievements, FireScope has sifted through the impressive discography of this Finnish pairing to bring long out of print tracks to a life.

Twelve 1 collects music released between 2009 and 2016, a dozen works that span labels like Abstract Forms, AC Records, Cultivated Electronics, diametric., Semantica, Stilleben and Vortex Traks. Opening with the cold love affair of “Manmade Woman,” this collection brings together frosted floor funk, cerebral armchair electronics and a quality of composition that only Morphology can provide. Embedded in the album are outposts of electro menace, tracks with that extra bit of bite such as “Dementia” and “Dalek Invasion. Deep and thought-provoking pieces abound, such as the otherworldly dreamscapes of “Magellan Probe” and “Moebius Strip” which were first heard on Arne Weinberg’s diametric. An understated balance permeates the record, broad concepts are interwoven with subtle shifts to bring a timeless quality to pieces like “Spacetime Interval”, “Europa” and “Plankton.” A perfect expression of over a decade of work.

Not only does this double LP gather rare tracks never before heard together, but also each piece has been lovingly remastered to breath new life into these wonderful works. Twelve 1 celebrates the music of Morphology in all its glory, two masters of modern electronic music who continue to re-define and re-design genres.

A totally obscure release from Youngstown, Ohio's Tony Lavorgna and his late 70's early 1980's band: The St. Thomas Quartet. Like many private press album's it's an ad for their set list, recorded on the cusp of cassettes and definitely pre-cd so strictly vinyl it is. A mixed bag of tunes and influences but two of the tunes absolutely leap into your ears.

A Hammond led Soul Jazz version of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" at nearly ten minutes that seems to just get more drivingly funky and intense and David Thomas on the B3 is absolutely inspired on this monster of a track. It makes you wonder why on earth more Hammond players didn't make a feature of this tune?

The other inspired choice is War's "The World Is A Ghetto" which just has to be one of the funkiest versions of this much covered tune. Some soulful sax from leader Lavorgna signposts the way for the rest of the bands soulful and jazzy contributions with again Hammond man David Thomas underpinning with his funk drenched riffs.

Tony Lavorgna is a one off too, his life story is available in Comic Book form under the title "Bebopman" by American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar.

Alex the Fairy is an artist based in Berlin producing music with an emphasis on electronic and concrete methods. Alex the Fairy is also part of the 3Ddancer trio, a live act focusing on improvisation and expression using electronics.

Alex The Fairy writes: "I had sent The Tapeworm tracks before, but I was being difficult so was asked to send a new bunch, with a deadline. I sent the new bunch, a fairly odd collection expecting perhaps some of them to be combined with the older stuff but not seeing any coherence in them. I figured The Tapeworm would find at least something. To my surprise the suggestion that came back was exclusively the tracks I had sent the second time, and, re-listening through the tracks in this new order after returning from a Christmas dinner lying on the floor of my nephews bedroom gave them a completely new context. Despite them being quite varied in terms of age (one had been flung together a few days earlier on the train while another was approaching Schulreife) they seemed to meld together in such a way that I hardly recognised them…

Last year my grandmother died. My last grandparent. I had put off seeing her during corona, as I thought it best not to put her at risk and had almost left to visit her days before her death but had delayed my departure because of a medical appointment. My failure to her weighs heavy on my mind - fates grimacing grin: too little, too late. The approaching march of death, one generation closer was a confrontation I wasn't prepared for.

While clearing out her flat in the following weeks I had kept some of my grandfathers cassettes, live recordings of jazz greats, Pink Floyd, Sade and some classical among them, none originals, several presumably from the radio e.g. a church organ rendition of Bach. At the time I wasn't sure why I was hanging on to them, other than the urge to hoard, and that it felt wrong not at least to keep some. Half a year later, half way through mixing this cassette, suffering from my first bout of COVID, I had the insatiable urge to hook up the cassette player I had received from my grandfather after his death around nineteen years earlier and had been dragging along with me since. I stuck a cassette in only to immediately return to the safety of my covers. I began to work my way into what I had saved, hearing the fruits of my grandfathers labour decades before. It felt like quite an intimate interaction with someone I had long lost contact to/was long gone. Quite a wonderful thing, these time traveling cassettes.

I returned to the tracks to mix them shortly before my corona/cassette experience, with a new mixing console at hand. I had been looking for one for several years, but nothing had ever clicked, until I found this old broadcast desk 30 minutes from my place (it also coincided with a payment from a job the sum of which matched the price identically… fates return). Installing became a massive hassle and I doubted my decision continuously, but the further it was implemented the more it made sense. The first track I recorded with the mixer is on this cassette. Shortly before the mixing I was introduced to an Effektgerät by a friend, Rapha. Another good friend Art lent me their one, and I ended up using copious amounts of it throughout mixing, alongside my usual space creators. All the tracks on this release were mixed again on this mixer and are in a sense all a bit of a dub of the originals. I wouldn't have worked this way without the mixer, and the effect gave me a dimension I hadn't had before, so, from a technical perspective, the mixer and this effect define this release, giving it a coherence, at least for me. Emotionally of course the chaos and turbulence of the preceding year and my newfound appreciation for the medium give it a meaning I will struggle to formulate." – Alex The Fairy, Berlin, 9 May 2022

Having initially met more than a decade ago at a local community radio station, sometimes doing guest slots on each other’s live, improvised noise shows, Cormac Culkeen and Dave Grenon knew they had a mutual interest in working with sonic textures. They listened to each other’s bands for a handful of years, and in 2017, “made good on a threat” that they’d been making for quite a long time: to start a band. At Cormac’s gentle but clear urging—declaring that they’d gone ahead and booked a space in which to record a video—the two wrote their first song, “Sebaldus,” an ambitious 12-minute trip, which also serves as the fireworks finale to their self-titled debut album. With surges of pathos that smooth out into something more soothing in turn, Cormac goes: “The hunter, you’ve seen him / The archer, his arrows are strong / And hunger, you’ve known her / I know the winter is long.” The track is as much about enduring a Canadian winter as it is about the eponymous 8th century hermit, shot through with sublimated desire. As Cormac put it, Joyful Joyful’s songs are “a little bit outside of time.” But while the lyrics beg close, oblique reading unto themselves, there’s also a distinct sense that they’re only one of many more ways that the duo shapes sound. Cormac, whose voice is like a sea with irregular tides, lights up about an idea in traditional sean-nós Irish music that songs already exist and are out there; it’s up to the singer to become the conduit. This belief in music as something to be channelled, and something more than sound, resonates with the singer’s fundamentalist religious past. To paraphrase: lots of group singing, harmonies, no instrumentation, totally unmediated, no priest, congregational—not choral, not a performance, not about talent, the spirit moves through people. “Of course that informs how I think about singing,” Cormac says. So, when they were exiled from the church because of their queerness, they took the music with them, dislocating it from its dogmatic bounds but not from its transcendent potential. This record might be thought of, then, as a kind of queering of sacred, devotional traditions—or at the very least, a space where all of these things can be held at once. Perhaps perceivable by some as contradictions, these intersecting influences create the conditions for an incredibly singular sound. Dave is steady and exploratory in his handling of this multiplicity, arranging sounds as they’re revealed, corralling them, coaxing them into form. “Because Dave is there,” Cormac says, “I get to sing three times higher, and three times lower, and faster, and backwards, and all of these sounds! That are there. They’re all there.” When asked about early musical memories, Cormac recalled an immediate fascination with harmony: from demanding that the first person they ever heard singing it explain what they were doing, to always (still, to this day) singing in harmony with their twin sister around the house, to being part of a children’s choir that sang soprano in Handel’s Messiah—not realizing until they entered the room with all the other ranges that their learned melody was but one part of the whole. Just as tellingly, Dave reflects on his early attraction to “abstraction and becoming abstract,” describing childhood afternoons messing with microphone and speaker feedback loops, producing long, enduring sounds with almost undetectable variations. In a way unique to the coalescing of these two listeners, notions of harmony are central to their output. Dave samples field recordings, old keyboards and synths, and vocal drones, running the live singing through four or five parallel effects chains, sampling and treating everything again in the moment. “Another way to put it is that Cormac’s voice comes into the board and then comes back out shifted, delayed, and shattered; Cormac and I hear it, live with it, and respond,” Dave says. This work is contingent not only on a deep intuition (neither of them read sheet music) of polyphony and due proportion (something St Thomas Aquinas famously listed as an attribute of beauty) but also on their connection to each other and ability to read subtle cues. Dave says they’d hold each other’s hands while performing if it was more convenient to do so, riffing on something else Cormac mentioned about traditional Irish singing: that someone would always hold the singer’s hand, for fear that without a tether to the ground they might find themselves utterly lost, unsure how to return. Joyful Joyful doesn’t shy away from offering such experiences of departure; they’re willing to unsettle their audiences because they themselves are unsettled. Their shared penchant for spooky, heavy music, and self-described “omnivorous” listening practices equip them with an array of sonic concepts that support this effort; Diamanda Galás, The Rankin Family, Pan Sonic, Pauline Oliveros, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Yma Sumac, and Catholic hymnody were just a few that came up. Observing their audience gives them insight about the effect of each song—something they considered while arranging the album. Its arc is marked by soft, sometimes sudden oscillations between cacophony and euphony, day and night (listen for insects), and from sexual, visceral entanglements to more ephemeral, celestial ones. Front to back, it arouses expansion, unraveling. Of lightning, Vicki Kirby writes: “quite curious initiation rites precede these electrical encounters. An intriguing communication, a sort of stuttering chatter between the ground and the sky, appears to anticipate the actual stroke.” By all accounts, something similar seems to happen at Joyful Joyful shows, between those on the stage and those off it, between what’s earthly and what’s beyond. “A lightning bolt is not a straightforward resolution of the buildup of a charge difference between the earth and a cloud … there is, as it were, some kind of nonlocal communication effected between the two,” writes Karen Barad, extrapolating on Kirby’s thought. Cormac acknowledges that while they and Dave play a role in this mysterious charge that comes about, they’re not solely responsible. However ineffable it may be, it’s undoubtedly a form of communion—and a sensuously shocking one at that

Rarely do two types of music meet on a level where they threaten to cancel each other out - let alone create something even more meaningful in their mutual vanishing. But the music created within the seminal Murder Ballads (Drift) by Martyn Bates (Eyeless in Gaza, & parallel solo career) and Mick Harris (Napalm Death, Lull, Painkiller, Scorn) creates just such a world. Murder Ballads (Drift) evolves Martyn Bates vocalisations / storytelling song-voices, by turns expressed as labyrinthine layers, calls and responses, muted and distant echoes, sung whispers and counter-melodies, ultimately resulting in a mesmeric conversation of musical inferences and correspondences. Murder Ballads (Drift) created the post-isolationist frame of reference, innovating and extemporising into a truly original dazzlingly unique form.

Mick Harris traffics in the isolationist ambience of Lull, while Martyn Bates is the emotive voice of literate cult-pop duo Eyeless in Gaza. The unlikely pair - one given to terminally frigid drone, the other to impassioned, bittersweet voicings - finds common ground in folk music's most macabre tradition, the murder ballad. These ghoulish parables are awash in blood and tears, the strands of love, hate, birth, death, sin, and salvation entwined within like the roots of an ancient tree. Mothers callously kill their children; suitors slay their maidens without remorse; and fate exacts its cruel price from all.

The archaic murder ballads that leak from Bates' vocal cords are intensely sad and carnal. They tend to leap off cliffs of hollow effects or drone darkly, offering neither a robust delivery nor an element of irony to take the edge off. The archetypal characters that live and die in them give life's full tragedy back to Harris' electronically numbed "post-isolationist" dreaming.

Drift (originally released in 1994) plays out an unbreakable and timeless cycle of bloody folklore (people) and hypnotic soundscapes (the god who watches). The effect is chilling yet engrossing. Where most ambient music has barely enough courage to ring the doorbell and run, Murder Ballads slips through the cracks of the unconscious and does its work with remarkable ease.

All the more reason to listen thoughtfully.

In 2021 - re-emerging nearly twenty years after its initial inception, and first time on vinyl - somewhat surprisingly, Murder Ballads (Drift) still remains/exists in an area overlooked by other artists, an area that truly still remains the sole province of M.J. Harris / Martyn Bates.

The movements of KUNZITE’s Mike Stroud and Agustin White have seen them orbiting around each other, occasionally crossing paths yet consistently admiring each other’s work. The pair traversed the globe separately with their different projects and personal adventures -- Mike touring with his band Ratatat and Agustin on a spiritual journey exploring yoga, meditation and psychedelics -- while looking to one day do something together. The formation of KUNZITE saw them finally able to merge their minds and mission, with a sound that blends psychedelia with electronic, beat-heavy production and live instrumentation. Most of the recording process for their new album, VISUALS, started while at Agustin’s stripped back studio in Hawaii, and finished at Mike’s barn studio in upstate New York, with instrumentation including acoustic, electric and lap steel guitars, organ, synthesizers and the charango.

Fuchs is a band that never was. It vanished as quickly as it appeared in the picture, much like the animal that can be seen on this album and after whom it was named. In 2005, Kante singer and guitarist Peter Thiessen travelled to Weilheim to visit Markus and Micha Acher in their studio, where they were joined, among others, by Notwist-affiliated musicians like Cico Beck, Robert Klinger, Carl Oesterhelt and Stefan Schreiber. Spirits were high, but schedules were full: after a week of improvised sessions, everyone went their own way. The recordings gathered dust until Markus Acher found them again in 2021 while cleaning out his studio. After carefully re-evaluating the rough mixes, the musicians decided to finally release them. The resulting album comprises six tracks that musically draw on jazz, aesthetically lean on dub techniques and ideologically pick up on krautrock: there’s no solos to be heard on this record, just a few equally skilled and open-minded musicians listening to each other carefully, providing each other with space in which to unfold. »Fuchs« is a document of egos dissolving in a collective spirit.

Thiessen and the Acher brothers met in the 1990s and bonded not only over their shared background in hardcore music and the DIY ethos in which it was rooted, but also over their love for jazz. »If you look at those two things combined, you will eventually become convinced that you don’t have to be formally trained to make music that at least resembles jazz«, says Thiessen today. He invited Micha Acher to join his band Kante on flügelhorn in 2004 for a tour that saw the expanded group play unusual encores after the official concert was over. »Micha had taught us some dixie pieces, so night after night we would play a freestyle dixieland ska set in front of the remaining audience!« Naturally, the Acher brothers didn’t have to ask twice when they invited him for a visit in Weilheim to further explore their mutual interests in a studio setting. »I got on my way immediately and took two or three loose ideas, a tape echo and a guitar on whose headplate you could create fantastic sounds with me«, says Thiessen.

Between immersing themselves in books by the photographer Leonore Mau, cooking together and drinking the occasional fruit schnapps, the trio went into the studio. Says Thiessen, »Micha brought his flügelhorn and some wonderful ideas with him, Markus an Indian harmonium and a plan, Carl Oesterhelt came with a glockenspiel and a Chinese zither and a bunch of amazing jazz musicians joined in, too.« He considers the resulting recording sessions to be a kind of attempt at musically translating their conversations during those days. They discussed different approaches to jazz, whether sampling and musical miscitations can unlock ecstatic potentials and the possible parallels between syncretistic religions and pop music. »There’s traces of glossolalia, it's like a blurry séance«, adds Thiessen in regard to the sessions.

It is especially this spirit that managed to live on even though the recordings themselves were abandoned. »What we all liked most when listening back to the recordings is probably their marginal and fragmentary character, the empty spaces—the moments in which the virtuoso solo never comes, in which the centre remains empty.« The six pieces on »Fuchs« are chock-full of exactly these moments. When at one instant, the players seem to disperse and improvise freely, they always meet again on common ground a short time later, continuing on their way together. There are no conventions or even previous agreements that guide them, just a shared will to explore a vast range of curious sounds and unusual rhythms together as a truly unified constellation of very different musicians. Fuchs is a band that never was. Its ideas still reverberate vividly even 17 years later.

Rarely do two types of music meet on a level where they threaten to cancel each other out - let alone create something even more meaningful in their mutual vanishing. But the music created within the seminal Murder Ballads (Drift) by Martyn Bates (Eyeless in Gaza, & parallel solo career) and Mick Harris (Napalm Death, Lull, Painkiller, Scorn) creates just such a world. Murder Ballads (Drift) evolves Martyn Bates vocalisations / storytelling song-voices, by turns expressed as labyrinthine layers, calls and responses, muted and distant echoes, sung whispers and counter-melodies, ultimately resulting in a mesmeric conversation of musical inferences and correspondences. Murder Ballads (Drift) created the post-isolationist frame of reference, innovating and extemporising into a truly original dazzlingly unique form.

Mick Harris traffics in the isolationist ambience of Lull, while Martyn Bates is the emotive voice of literate cult-pop duo Eyeless in Gaza. The unlikely pair - one given to terminally frigid drone, the other to impassioned, bittersweet voicings - finds common ground in folk music's most macabre tradition, the murder ballad. These ghoulish parables are awash in blood and tears, the strands of love, hate, birth, death, sin, and salvation entwined within like the roots of an ancient tree. Mothers callously kill their children; suitors slay their maidens without remorse; and fate exacts its cruel price from all.

The archaic murder ballads that leak from Bates' vocal cords are intensely sad and carnal. They tend to leap off cliffs of hollow effects or drone darkly, offering neither a robust delivery nor an element of irony to take the edge off. The archetypal characters that live and die in them give life's full tragedy back to Harris' electronically numbed "post-isolationist" dreaming.

Passages (originally released in 1997) plays out an unbreakable and timeless cycle of bloody folklore (people) and hypnotic soundscapes (the god who watches). The effect is chilling yet engrossing. Where most ambient music has barely enough courage to ring the doorbell and run, Murder Ballads slips through the cracks of the unconscious and does its work with remarkable ease.

Landscape Tantrums Lost for two decades, the recent rediscovery of Landscape Tantrums the first attempt at recording the music that would become The Mars Volta’s De-Loused In The Comatorium revealed an important and hitherto missing chapter in the group’s evolution. Selfrecorded by Omar (assisted by Jon DeBaun) at Burbank’s Mad Dog Studios within a head spinning four days, Landscape Tantrums captures De-Loused in somewhat embryonic form, though much of what would make The Mars Volta’s debut album such an electrifying, sublime experience was already in place: the fearless invention, the fusion of futurist rock elements and traditions from outside of the rock orthodoxy, the sense of virtuosity working in service of emotional effect. From a distance, The Mars Volta must have seemed as if they were on a high when they walked into the studio to record what they expected to be their debut album (“I didn’t think of it as demos or a dry run,” Omar says). The group had recently played the Coachella festival to rave reviews, a vindication of the quixotic risk Omar and Cedric had taken, quitting At The Drive In to lead such an uncompromising musical proposition.






Their debut EP, Tremulant, had similarly signalled their singular vision, and been rewarded with similarly positive feedback. But the truth was that The Mars Volta entered Mad Dog in tatters, scarcely believing anything other than failure lay within their reach. They’d recently lost their bassist, Eva Gardner, and parted ways with keyboard play Ikey Owens. Tensions were brewing with drummer Jon Theodore, too himself a replacement for founding drummer Blake Fleming Omar questioning Theodore’s commitment to the group. And sound manipulator Jeremy Michael Ward’s drug problem had gotten so far out of hand that he’d been sent to rehab, and wouldn’t return until two days into the Landscape Tantrums. The pressure upon Omar was intense, and it began to manifest in the form of physical and emotional breakdowns. His art was his life, but now he began to wonder if it was actually going to kill him. Under such heavy manners, miracles occurred at Mad Dog. Surely that’s the only way to describe the music contained on Landscape Tantrums, as Omar fashioned early versions of Inertiatic ESP, Drunkship Of Lanterns and Eriatarka that rivalled the Rick Rubin produced versions that ended up on De- Loused for intensity, precision and immediacy, as Cedric delivered a powerfully intimate reading of Televators, and as a bare bones version of the group sketched out the peaks of what would become their debut masterpiece in barely half a week, on a shoestring, and believing they wouldn’t last long enough to see it hit the shelves. Listening to Landscape Tantrums now, with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge of what these songs will become, one notices Cedric has yet to fully find the voice that will lend The Mars Volta their devastating authority, that Eriatarka will evolve even further under Rick Rubin’s watch, and that the lyrics to De-Loused’s climactic chapter, Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt, have yet to be penned. But one also notices how lithe the group sound here, how hungry, and one appreciates the raw edge that Rubin would later polish to a venomous sharpness. More than mere historical curiosity, Landscape Tantrums is an essential text for the dedicated Mars Volta aficionado, and a breathtaking album in its own right.


[a] a1. Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) [Unfinished Original Recordings Of De-Loused In The Comatorium]

Batsaykhan is the rebirth of the first project to ever release on Favela Discos, only a few hours after the label’s blogspot was put online back in 2013. Formerly known as Batsaykhantuul, Batsaykhan is not only one of Nuno Oliveira’s alter-egos but also something between a science fiction character and an ancestral spirit doomed to wander the earth in an apparently human physical manifestation.

The first album, Maestro Ir Noras, is a small and simple collection of tracks featuring only guitars and other stringed instruments, the second, being even smaller (only a single track) already seemed to lead us on through the psychedelic desert that would define the sound of the project.

After a long hiatus, Batsaykhan finally emerged from the drawer, or maybe it was from the desert, only to reveal that he had shape-shifted, now taking the form of a trio. With the help of André Azevedo and Tito Silva, Nuno started working on old demos of unpublished compositions and adapting them to the new formation. The trio started the process of refining the songs and the sound of the record, using only a strict selection of synths, percussions, bass and guitar.

They ended up settling down on a terrain of moving sands for those who feel the need to define their sound, between a forest of psychedelia, a river of ambient and the obvious desert that has buried the guitars under its “western” sand.

Batsaykhan’s self-titled release, and the project’s first long play will finally unveil itself on the last day of February, digitally and on 12’’ vinyl, with design and artwork by Rita Laranja.

First Word Records is extremely delighted to present 'Torn : Tonic' — the sophomore album from singer, performer, poet and producer, Allysha Joy.

Delivered unfiltered, straight from the soul, ´Torn : Tonic' pulls us into a 10 track journey that weaves through the multiplicity of letting go, standing tall, and creating space all at once. The album's expansive and vivid exploration of healing examines the power that comes with accepting the complexity of change. Allysha walks listeners through the remedy she finds in sound and emerges empowered to share this healing with others. Deeply moving and lyrically compelling, 'Torn : Tonic' hosts a stellar line-up of artists, creating a world of collective power, growth, and hope.

Allysha Joy is an integral member of the vibrant Melbourne soul & jazz scene, well known for both her solo work and as lead vocalist for 30/70. A uniquely-talented soul, her husky voice, and formidable Fender Rhodes prowess have garnered attentive audiences around the world.

Her 2018 debut album 'Acadie : Raw' was named 'Best Soul Album' at the Music Victoria Awards, featured in Bandcamp's 'Top Soul Albums' of the year and received a nomination for 'Best Jazz Album' at the Worldwide Awards. An incredibly prolific artist, Allysha has released on labels; Rhythm Section, Gondwana, Future Classic, Total Refreshment Centre and now another drop for First Word, after her acclaimed 2020 EP, 'Light It Again'.

Allysha's production on 'Torn : Tonic' effortlessly arches across a sonic palette, comprised of shuffling broken grooves and exquisite celestial melodies. There are healthy swathes of skippy neo-soul boom bap sensibilities, entwined with stark swing-laden electronic percussion, Detroit-esque sun-saturated synths, and Antipodean bruk backbeats. And whilst this project was produced entirely by Joy herself, she is far from alone, inviting in an array of female and non-binary artists to bless assorted tracks with their own unique gifts. Ego Ella May, BINA, Rara Zulu, Belle Bangard and Dancing Water all appear, expanding upon the formulaic roles of featured artists to share the creative space as equal collaborators.

'Torn : Tonic' exudes vibes, from the opening whiplash snare of 'Peace, to the rolling jazz-bruk of lead single 'Let It!', to the sweet soulful sonics of 'Still Dreaming', to the closing triumphant shout of "All Joy!!" on 'G.N.D.', this is a 40-minute opus that will definitely require repeat listening.

Allysha's poetic introspection reveals the album's intention to demand space, purpose, and pleasure. Her words are deliberate and direct to the alarm bells and messages her artistic vision carries. Fluid, cross-genre, and spirited with generational stories embodied, 'Torn : Tonic' sits at the intersection of a feminist manifesto of Joy's momentous leap as an artist, and her exploration of what it means to be human in today's capitalist-driven world.

In Allysha's words, 'Torn : Tonic' is exactly as the name describes. "It is looking directly into the shadow of pain and overcoming it with joy. No love songs! Just social, political, emotional anthems for change! It is the first record I have produced entirely on my own and it feels like that perseverance that I have consistently had to conjure up is embedded in this music, overcoming my own conditioning in a society and industry that constantly tells me I can't, so I must!"

The Spy from Cairo (aka Moreno "Zeb" Visini) returns with his 5th studio album on Wonderwheel Recordings: "Animamundi" features some special collaborations from his travels & live shows from over the past few years. The album reflects the move from his home in NYC to his mother's home in a quiet village in Italy to take care of her in her older age. It's been a difficult transition with Italy's challenging experience with the pandemic, including some of the strictest measures enforced on the public. He recalls by stating "This album was conceived between 2020 and 2021 in Italy, between lockdowns, restrictions, and various pandemic mandates. Its message is of hope and positivity - a reminder that we are all spiritual beings… Free spiritual beings… and that freedom can't be broken."

"Animamundi" is a reconfirmation that The Spy from Cairo overcomes all obstacles & delivers a diverse progression of his iconic "Arabadub" sound, with the help of collaborators like Andalucian vocalist Carmen Estevez, Mexican vocalist Mambe Rodriguez on the heavy hitting "Criminal," Egyptian vocalist Adii Small on "Beautiful Baraka," and former touring band member, the multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Fatima Gozlan from Hungary. The music can vary from heavy deep electronic synths and live eastern instrumentation with Zeb playing oud, saz, chiftelli, bass, percussion, and other instruments, all along giving it his signature dub mixing style.

The songs take inspiration from a wide range of musical traditions and cultures, including Turkish (on "Cosmic Pasha," "Qanun in Dub" – using the qanun, an instrument popular across the Middle East, with a sound between the European harp and a dulcimer – and "Black Sea," which utilises a typical Dabke melody), Egyptian ("Mizmirized," sampling riffs from a mizmar), Indian ("Seeds of Culture), and Sufi ("Divination," a devotional composition), fusing these reference points with healthy doses of cumbia, funk, reggae, psychedelic, and dub. Thematically, "Animamundi" deals with some of the struggles Zeb – and all of us – have faced the last two years, through the lens of his personal experiences. Yet, the tone of the record manages to remain positive, like an uplifting dance through the world's sounds; after all, "Animamundi" means "soul of the world" in Greek. With album art by Sam Angeli and layout design by Marcial Arts, this beautiful album is a truly well-rounded worldwide collaboration.

"Animamundi" will be released digitally on March 4th, 2022, with the LP to follow shortly after.

Folksongs and Ballads by Tia Blake & Her Folk-Group, is more than just a “lost classic”. As clear and honest as can be, Folksongs and Ballads is a magnetic record, a refuge like only Nick Drake, Nico, and a few others have been able to create. A graceful, delicately minimalist approach to classic Appalachian and British folk songs.The perfect balance between melancholy and daydream. Originally released only in France in 1971, Ici Bientôt is very pleased to present the first-ever reissue on vinyl.

When she recorded her only album, Tia Blake was nineteen years old and had just arrived in Paris a year and a half beforehand. She spent most of her time at Disco’Thé, a record shop in the Latin Quarter, a free space, peaceful and inspiring, a hub for students as well as the local artistic community.

There, Tia would occasionally sing—when she managed to overcome her shyness. Two young guitarists who were passionate fans of folk music and regulars at the shop began to accompany her, forming “Her Folk Group.” One year later, they cut 11 tracks at Pierre Barouh’s Studios Saravah.

Folksongs and Ballads is composed of traditional tunes that have been covered many times, but they’re not the best-known folk standards. A collection of stories ranging from the Middle Ages to the 1960s, bringing together sublimely doleful ballads, lamentations for a lost lover, and an unexpected, brilliant version of the road anthem “Plastic Jesus.”

Tia Blake's haunting, unaffected voice captivates and comforts us, wrapping us in its cool embrace. Meanwhile, the tasteful, stripped-down, mellow acoustic arrangements provided by the guitarists, reminiscent of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, occasionally supported by a kena flute, have created the space Tia Blake needed to reinvent these traditional songs.

Folksongs and Ballads is a timeless record, deep and unique, a longtime companion for repeated listening, in the vein of works by Sibylle Baier, Bridget St. John and Vashti Bunyan.

REMASTERED

Grönland Records announce a revised, remastered reissue of “Sleepwalkers” by DAVID SYLVIAN. Available as a gatefold 2LP with exclusive art print and as a gatefold digipack CD, this new edition also features the previously unreleased track “Modern Interiors”.

in the 00s, DAVID SYLVIAN produced two of his strongest and most solitary statements, BLEMISH and MANAFON. but those records don’t tell the whole story. during that the same period, SYLVIAN created an alternate body of work: a series of collaborations and side projects with leading talents of pop and improv, electronic and contemporary classical music. the best of these recordings are gathered here on SLEEPWALKERS, meticulously sequenced and remixed: the fruits of one-off meetings and lifelong partnerships, they jump from bliss to intrigue, romance to sensuality, as arch experiments lead into the lushest pop.

the single ‘world citizen – i won’t be disappointed,’ written with RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, is a sublime example, with an impeccable melody and lyric warmed by SYLVIAN’S gorgeous tenor. SYLVIAN has worked with SAKAMOTO for close to three decades. by contrast, on ‘pure genius,’ a collaboration with CHRIS VRENNA aka tweaker, he sounds like he’s walked into a heist flick, singing the part of a delusional, dangerous bedroom genius. as sylvian explains, tracks like this ‘give me a chance to write in a way that’s completely non-personal, playful. it’s an exercise of some kind, working within the parameters of a given assignment.’

intrigue of a different kind drives ‘sugarfuel,’ with music by JEAN-PHILIPPE VERDIN, aka READYMADE FC. the lyrics offered ‘an opportunity to grapple with a more overt sexual theme than anything i’d previously attempted, as suggested by a vocal sample in the original track provided, a threateningly insistent ‘i’m on your side.’ so i took that as my point of entry and ran with it. i would love to write more on this subject should i find the right context. you’re always aware of walking a thin line exploring sexuality with language alone. the failings of the great and the good are strewn all around.’

NINE HORSES’ ‘wonderful world’ strolls in on a black tie bassline and the echoing coos of swedish chanteuse STINA NORDENSTAM, whose high chirps brush hands with SYLVIAN’S lead; there’s the blistering ‘money for all’ by FRIEDMAN and SYLVIAN, an oblique response to the fallout of 9/11 and the war on iraq. this is followed by the last known recording of SYLVIAN’S singing voice in over a decade, ‘do you know me now?’, a live studio recording later augmented by JAN BANG, EIVIND AARSET and ERIK HONORÉ. it’s certainly a title that’s become more relevant over time as SYLVIAN, in the latter stages of his career, repeatedly comes face to face with a new generation of admirers fixated on the life and times of the band formed by his younger self. SYLVIAN is one of only a handful of musicians to have successfully moved on from overt pop beginnings into a domain all his own but is consistently plagued by the misguided desires or expectations of some unfamiliar with his evolution to do a u-turn, pick up where he left off in the late 90s. although this compilation, as well as his writing for NINE HORSES, adequately shows SYLVIAN’S traditional love of melody is
intact, that it’s consistently remained part of his output, there’s no denying his focus has shifted, evolved.
the refusal to embrace complacency, the need to cover new ground ‘as older generations of popular musicians have a moral duty to explore despite, or because of, the greater possibility of failure’ will, i believe, lead to a reassessment of his later work that embraces a sightly more complex relationship with what we’re referring to as ‘melodic’, accompanied by an exploration of improvisation without dogma or beholden to any ‘givens’ for which he’s not infrequently been castigated. for SYLVIAN, there are no such boundaries. it’s obvious that different facets of his work co-exist without conflict but not necessarily for the majority of his audience. again, this places SYLVIAN in the odd, rare, unenviable(?) position of moving forwards leaving many in his devoted audience behind as, should he decide to return to music, it’s unlikely he’ll be aiming to placate an audience in love with work that preceded the 00s. in fact we’ve no idea where new work, should it surface, may lead.

SLEEPWALKERS also spotlights the innovators who contributed to MANAFON and BLEMISH. CHRISTIAN FENNESZ hangs a crackling, shimmering curtain behind the vocal on ‘transit,’ matching his signature mass of sui generis sounds to sylvian’s stately performance. and the title track began with an instrumental handed to SYLVIAN by MARTIN BRANDLMAYR of POLWECHSEL, soon after the first recording session for MANAFON. spite crackles in the gaps between the percussion, and onkyo artists TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA and SACHIKO M set the stage for the scathing lyrics in the chorus.

it cuts close to the bone and so do the two spoken word cuts, ‘angel’ and ‘thermal,’ produced by SAMADHISOUND recording artists JAN BANG and ERIK HONORÉ (and featuring ARVE HENRIKSEN on trumpet). SYLVIAN describes the latter work as a ‘love poem’ to his daughter. ‘‘thermal’ reflects on a period when our time in sonoma, ca was coming to an end. we’d stayed in temporary accommodation which had lulled us into a false sense of security. we had pear, apple, lemon, and figs trees growing in the yard. a small but exotic paradise. a cocoon. but the cracks were beginning to show in the relationship between ex-wife INGRID CHAVEZ and i which is where i think this underlying sense of anxiety, which runs throughout the poem, is derived from, coupled with the need to provide physical and spiritual stability to the children, the youngest of whom was just under two at the time. the poem is addressed to her. our world was dissipating, coming apart at the seams, but we were an island unto ourselves.’

‘five lines’ marked the start of a new partnership with acclaimed young composer DAI FUJIKURA, who at the time of recording was also working on remixes of MANAFON for what became DIED IN THE WOOL. the string quartet was performed by the celebrated ICE ENSEMBLE and written for SYLVIAN, who FUJIKURA cites as an early influence. says SYLVIAN, ‘the composition moves through numerous changes in time signature but as i had no knowledge of what these were i just relied on my gut instinct, and responded, as i always do, with what felt right to me, composing an entirely new melody in the process. some months later i was working in a studio in london and dai dropped by. i rather tentatively asked if he’d like to hear a rough mix of the song as it stood, painfully aware that my contribution might make no sense to him at all but, to my relief he loved the result.’

there’s one further new addition to this collection, the first official release of a track composed in response to the tsunami in fukushma, ‘modern interiors’, featuring SYLVIAN once again in collaboration with BANG and AARSET.

like 2000s EVERYTHING AND NOTHING, SLEEPWALKERS is a retrospective of a particular decade when SYLVIAN was free of major label interference and could follow his own instincts without having to explaining himself – but it’s also an eye-opening complement to his solo releases. as SYLVIAN explains, ‘some collaborations seem to be a one-off exchange but you can never be too certain of that fact. others have been long term. in this respect, RYUICHI comes to mind. there’s others with whom you hope to continue working as you feel you’ve barely scratched the surface. other times offers come out of the blue, welcome, inspired. regardless, it’s wonderfully explorative to have so many possibilities to juggle with. each collaboration seems timely. it’s as if there’s a rightness to the exchange at a given moment in time.’

in the meantime, we hope you enjoy the work presented here, personally selected, remixed and sequenced and entirely remastered. these are the orphans, abused, estranged, exotic, migrating from diverse corners of the globe, brought together under one roof which they're learning to share despite their differences.

‘as many of you will already be aware, despite relatively continuous work on solo albums, i’ve maintained strong ties with a number of musicians throughout my life in one context or another. on this new collection, let’s call it SLEEPWALKERS 2.0, a selection of collaborative work produced over the period encompassing blemish through to manafon, i’ve included compositions by nine horses as well as more fleeting flirtations and one-offs. neglected offspring. represented also is long term friend and writing partner, RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, as well as more recent but potentially equally productive partnerships such as CHRISTIAN FENNESZ, ARVE HENRIKSEN and contemporary classical composer DAI FUJIKURA.
i hope you enjoy the work presented here, personally selected, remixed and sequenced and entirely remastered. these are the orphans, abused, estranged, exotic, migrating from diverse corners of the globe, brought together under one roof which they're learning to share despite their differences.

we contain multitudes. we’re nothing if not contradictory.’

DAVID SYLVIAN, 2010

(consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life: aldous huxley)

Black Truffle is pleased to present Landscape and Voice, a radical new work (and rare vinyl release) from major Japanese sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda. Undoubtedly one of the most influential artists working with location recordings since the 1990s, Tsunoda’s work possesses a rigorously searching quality that sets him apart from his contemporaries. Tsunoda is known to many listeners for the subtle atmospheric poetry of his early Extract from Field Recording Archive series, which focussed on vibrations recorded in various indoor and outdoor environments in his native Miura Peninsula, often inside pipes, bottles and other vessels. In more recent years, his work has explored the implications of his claim that field recording should be seen as ‘depiction’ rather than ‘documentation’. He has explored disorienting editing and processing in his works with Taku Unami, and, perhaps most radically, represented Maguchi Bay as a kind of kinetic sculpture for shaking speakers by removing all but the inaudible low frequencies from a field recording (Low Frequency Observed at Maguchi Bay).

One of the recurrent concerns of Tsunoda’s recent work, as he explains in the crystalline liner notes accompanying this release, is ‘exploring how I can establish a subjective relationship with an environment, rather than seeing it merely as an object to be recorded’. This has taken various forms, from documenting simultaneously an outdoor environment and the blood flowing through the listener/recorder’s body (captured with a stethoscope) on The Temple Recordings, to representing his own experience of the landscape as made up of ‘grains of space and time’ by inserting looped fragments into field recordings in Grains of Spring.

On Landscape and Voice, this meeting between subject and object becomes an almost mystical union between the natural and the human. As with all of Tsunoda’s work, a relatively simple concept leads to compelling, thought-provoking results. Landscape and Voice combines vowel sounds spoken by six voices with short, looped fragments of field recordings, their noise character suggesting consonants: voice and landscape thus join together in something like words. The record consists of three pieces, each using a different, richly evocative field recording, which periodically freezes, catching on a looped fragment to which is synchronised an abruptly looped spoken vowel sound. The lengths between these interruptions vary, as do the tempi of the loops. The interruption of these lushly immersive recordings of the world – bristling with bird song, rushing water, distant traffic, and clinking metal – only serves to intensify them, as if the depicted environment itself had been returned to the listener each time it abruptly reappears. At the same time, the constant interruption creates an uncannily frozen effect, as if the recorded environment were an object rather than a stretch of recorded time. When combined with the bare human presence of the vowel sounds, the result is both austere and magical. Pressed on 45RPM for maximum fidelity, in a gorgeous sleeve designed by Lasse Marhaug with liner notes from the composer, Landscape and Voice is a radical proposition from one of the deepest thinkers in contemporary sound.

In 1997 and 1998, the late great Japanese composer, producer, and DJ Susumu Yokota released two of the most eclectic albums of his decades-long career, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace. Recorded under his Stevia alias for Tokyo Techno pioneer DJ Miku’s Newstage Records/NS-COM, they were Yokota-san’s homage to the foundational days of club music in Japan.

This year, Glossy Mistakes are proud to present the first official vinyl editions of Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, originally released on CD during the golden days of the format. Packaged in reimagined cover artwork created by the celebrated Japanese visual artist Masaho Anotani, these two albums perfectly capture the diversity at the heart of Yokota-san’s oeuvre. Across Greenpeace sees Yokota-san conjuring up a heady concoction of dusty loops, sampledelic breaks, kraut-rock and psychedelic downbeat. A remarkable listening experience based on the inspired era of a genius.

When Yokota-san wrote and produced the music on Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace in 1997, he was reflecting on the broader culture that surrounded dance music in Japan in the early to mid-nineties. It was an era when the psychedelic culture of late sixties America, the afterglow of UK acid house/rave, the new age movement and cyberpunk dovetailed together. Within DJ Miku and Yokota-san’s social circles, the thinking of Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs electrified the air.

By 1996, the moment, brilliant and blinding as it was, was over. “We all felt that the rave scene fizzled out,” DJ Miku says. As he puts it, there was a collective feeling around him that it had all become too much. From the calm that followed, DJ Miku, Yokota-san and their open-eared peers made the decision to switch tracks and start from scratch. DJ Miku believes that with his Stevia releases, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, Yokota-san wanted to express the sweet and sour nature of the passing of those wild early days and his wish for true peace. “At the time, we saw eye-to-eye, with an implicit understanding of each other,” he explains. “Even now, twenty-five years later, I am confident it was like that.”

Belgian / New York supergroup Fievel Is Glauque comprises of jazz keyboard auteur Zach Phillips, angel-voiced singer / rapper Ma Clément, and whichever other virtuosic noodlers happen to be slumped about the place.

Their cult tape "God's Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess" is a sprawling epic of pop, hip-hop and country inspired jazz arrangements. 20 tracks that form a jenga tower of expertly placed jazz chords, interlocking, sliding and collapsing with a short and sharp punk sensibility - all recorded live to tape.

Recommended if you like Arthur Russell's heart-on-sleeve wonky horn arrangements, or the infectious home-made jazz-hop of Louis Cole. We've pressed 300 copies of "Trashmen" to vinyl, and we don't expect them to stick around for long.