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MOOD CHILD is the new artistic platform of DJ/Producers, SIRUS HOOD & MANDA MOOR.

Evolving from a collective idea during our difficult pandemic period, MOOD CHILD is, at its centre, about community, collaboration, friends and family. Working together, feeding each others creativity and forging fresh and exciting new sounds and projects.

MOOD CHILD is an invitation to a journey that blends different feelings, emotions and desires. To activate your inner child. Reinvigorate the wild, primitive and unfiltered state of being and create an almost divine sense of unity. All through the power of music and art.

Their collective sensibility is nurtured upon the dancefloor and last summer they were blessed to have presented a first MOOD CHILD experience in collaboration with Hï and Café Mambo in Ibiza. The mood then took them to Bagatelle in Zürich and Lovefest in Serbia and they now prepare to launch their 2023 campaign alongside the elrow family for a sold out event in Andorra 1st of April.

However, what is a party without its soundtrack? Their first release, as its title suggests, brilliantly displays the labels primal perception… ‘Homo Sapiens’ is the mood child of Sirus Hood and Malikk. Four carnal creations, all guaranteed to ignite a rabid dancefloor response.

‘Booty Side’ uses its compass to expertly navigate its way through bubbling acid and rolling snares as we go in search of Jack, while the title track will have us going ape to its chest-beating bump and knuckle-dragging groove.

Silverback beats swing low on the flip too as ‘King MTF Kong’ bites hard with its heavy Chicago hustle and detuned synth, while the feral Juke-infused finale, ‘Gorilla Walk’, is a break-neck bass-driven and bruising encounter that is more Jersey club than Empire State building.

The ‘Home Sapiens’ EP is released on the 14th April and will be available on vinyl and digital formats, alongside a series of exclusive NFTs.

MOOD CHILD’s official online store will launch soon and feature not only the music and digital art projects, but also an official clothing brand, sample packs and exclusive content from their artists.

It’s time to connect with your MOOD CHILD.

Futuristic electronics by Niels Luinenburg (Delta Funktionen) under his new guise Immediate Proximity - in collab with Diana Napirelly. Ambient, Bass, Electro and Techno are the main identifiers for their output. Deep and emotive is the mood, but at the same time the music is playful and has a robust and confident character. This distinct direction, which was laid-out on the pair's debut LP '2334', has now led to the start of their own label: IMPROX - on which they'll release a series of EPs. On IMPROX, the duo experiments vivaciously with color, rhythm, space and tempo. Hi-tech, yet tribalistic rhythms are interlaced with elusive sci-fi themes. Big stage anthems are comfortably combined with cinematic ambient excursions. And through self engineered audio-gen modules, backed by a stark focus on sound design, the IMPROX series marks a powerful upgrade to Luinenburg's production capabilities.

CHRIS CLARK
Ms. Clark is often cited as the Dusty Springfield of Motown, a white soul singer with a black Southern voice. And she is no stranger to the Northern Soul scene with songs like “Love’s Gone Bad”, her version of Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You” and the unreleased “Something’s Wrong”. But Clark’s Motown legacy continues surprise with the 2018 discovery – “Whenever I’m Without You” – originally recorded in 1968. Finally making its vinyl debut 55 years on!

THE TEMPTATIONS
The Temps need no introduction, they were, of course, Motown’s most successul male vocal group scoring 18 No.1 R&B/Hot 100 singles and 3 Grammy’s. “All I Need Is You Love To Me” is another 1968 recording that eluded release at the time and is one their best, how could this slice of Motown magic escape. Finally making its vinyl debut 55 years on!

Angelo is an LP, named after a car, featuring nine songs Brijean have crafted and carried with them through a period of profound change, loss, and relocation. It finds percussionist/singer Brijean Murphy and multi-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart processing the impossible the only way they know how: through rhythm and movement. The months surrounding the acclaimed release of Feelings, their full-length Ghostly International debut in 2021 which celebrated tender self-reflection and new possibilities, rang bittersweet with the absence of touring and the sudden passing of Murphy’s father and both of Stuart’s parents. In a haze of heartache, the duo left the

Bay Area to be near family, resetting in four cities in under two years. Their to-go rig became their traveling studio and these tracks, along with Angelo, became their few constants. Whereas Feelings formed over collaborative jams with friends, Angelo’s sessions presented Murphy and Stuart a chance to record at their most intimate, “to get us out of our grief and into our bodies,” says Murphy. They explored new moods and styles, reaching for effervescent dance tempos and technicolor backdrops, vibrant hues in contrast to their more somber human experiences. Angelo beams with positivity and creative renewal — a resourceful, collective answer to “what happens now?”

Angelo the car is a 1981 Toyota Celica they got off Craigslist during their first stint in Los Angeles, where Murphy and Stuart have since settled. “Such a bro-y, ‘80s dude car, it’s been super fun to drive around in a new town,” Murphy says. “He’s older than us, he’s a classic, he’s got a story.” It is a spiritual vehicle with a cinematic appeal, first dropping them off in an alleyway for the scene-setting intro, “Which Way To The Club.” The question is quickly resolved by “Take A Trip” as a cruising bassline mingles with crowd sounds, hand-claps, cuíca hiccups, whip-cracks, even a horse neigh. Brijean have found some club on this cross-dimensional trip — the kind of

imagined space or chamber within one’s self capable of “shifting a fraction of who you are,” says Murphy. They wrote the track with the simple intention to be “as free as we could be,” adds Stuart, likening the flip on the B section to a realm unlocked: ”What if the world changed completely? You open the door to a new room.”

Next is “Shy Guy,” a motivational anthem for the wallflowers among us. Murphy sets up the daydream: “We are in junior high, we’re on the dance floor, what’s going down, who is dancing, who is not, how are we gonna make them dance?” The narrator, the MC, hypes up the room as conga-driven rhythms bounce between languid synth and guitar lines. “Show me how to move...I feel something...I know you feel it too,” Murphy sings sweetly, calling back to the opening lines of Feelings, and this time the audience chants it back. It is easy to picture Brijean performing this one — something they only got to do a handful of times until more recently, opening shows for Khruangbin and Washed Out, an experience they found informative. Murphy explains, “It was inspiring to be out there and let loose more. To see how people can expand their expression on stage gave me more liberty with how I viewed my musicianship. My role for so long was to be a backup percussionist, so why would I ever leave the drums, you know? But then after playing all these runs, you see these artists and realize you can, you have permission.”

“Angelo” and “Ooo La La” deliver the danciest stretch in Brijean’s catalog to date. The title track adopts a deep house pulse replete with strings, hi-hats, and kicks. The latter opts for a funkier groove that foregoes verses in favor of warbled hums and extended breakdowns. What follows is perhaps the duo’s dreamiest run, a comedown initiated with the honey-hued interlude “Colors” drifting into “Where Do We Go?”, a tropicália reverie where Murphy contemplates the passage of time and space.

It all culminates in “Caldwell’s Way,” a fond farewell to their Bay Area community — “a part of my life that I knew couldn’t come back,” says Murphy. Above shimmering organ sounds, lush strings, and the birdcall of their former neighborhood, she wistfully articulates the uncertainty of moving on by remembering the characters dear to them. There’s the wisdom of their neighbor, Santos, who refused payment when helping them move out: “I’d rather have 100 friends than 100 dollars.” And the song’s namesake, Benjamin Caldwell Brown, a friend and club night cohort for many years. “I’m only miles away, maybe I’m just feeling lonely,” the line resigns to warm nostalgia, and “Nostalgia” runs the closing credits to this healing and transportive collection.

A lost MPB gem from rural Finland! We Jazz presents the first ever reissue of this rare 1990 local release by Brazilian duo Rosanna & Zelia. 7" EP with inside out 3mm spine sleeve. RIYL: Gilberto Gil, Joyce, Musica Popular Brasileira, bossa nova, bossa jazz

Liner notes by Mikko Mattlar:

"Rosanna & Zélia were a Brazilian duo of singers and musicians Rosanna Guimarães Tavares and Zélia Nogueira da Fonseca. They moved from Minas Gerais, Brazil to Europe in 1988, released five albums in Germany between 1993–2004 and featured vocals on an Ian Pooley house track Coração Tambor before Rosanna died of cancer in 2006. Zélia still continues her career in Germany, touring actively and releasing new music.

The duo's journey from Brazil to Germany also included two brief visits to Finland. In the years 1989–1990, they spent time in the small town of Seinäjoki in Ostrobothnia. Rosanna & Zélia performed Brazilian music in Finnish clubs and festivals and recorded a 7" EP for local label Maumau Music. The record was distributed mostly in the Seinäjoki area, but the three songs are well-performed and authentic Brazilian MPB, so the largely unknown record now gets its first reissue for a wider audience on We Jazz Records.

But how did two Brazilian women find their way to a small Finnish town to record an EP? The main reason for this was music journalist and promoter Risto Vuorinen, who was on a holiday in Albufeira, Portugal, where a friend of his lived. The streets were almost empty that evening, but Vuorinen and his friend heard fine guitar playing and singing from a bar. There were Rosanna and Zélia performing on a small stage, and the two Finnish men happened to be the only customers. When the artists ended their performance, Vuorinen's friend, who spoke Portuguese, went to talk to them. Rosanna and Zélia told him they had recently come from Brazil and are trying to gain ground in Europe with their music.

Because Rosanna and Zélia didn't know where they would head next, and because Vuorinen liked their music, he thought of bringing the duo to his hometown, Seinäjoki. They immediately liked the idea, and in the autumn of 1989 they arrived in Finland. The national Finnish jazz festival was held in Seinäjoki, and Vuorinen thought Rosanna & Zélia's Brazilian music would fit right in. They performed at the festival and in November 1989, also made recordings in a local studio with backing musicians from Seinäjoki.

Music enthusiast Pertti Hakala had a record shop and label Maumau Music in Seinäjoki releasing music from local artists. He released a three-track EP from the sessions. with two tracks written by Rosanna & Zelia themselves and their cover version of Extra (Brazilian Reggae), written and originally performed by Gilberto Gil in 1983. A small pressing was made for the Finnish market, and Hakala also sent a box of records to Brazil, but for some reason it was sent back.

After their first visit to Finland, Rosanna & Zélia headed back to central Europe, but Vuorinen decided to organize more performances for them for the next summer. Maybe he also wanted to show them the beautiful Finnish summer, as Rosanna and Zélia had so far seen the country only during the darkest autumn. The duo came back to Finland for the summer of 1990 and performed at the Womad world music festival organized as a part of local Provinssirock. They also played in Nummirock and Puistoblues, both respected music festivals, and performed on TV in Helsinki.

Rosanna and Zélia lived in a small apartment in Seinäjoki and played two to three gigs per week all summer. Because there were only two of them, even small pubs could afford to book them, and in 1990 the economic situation in Finland was good. It was before a major economic depression hit the country. The duo travelled by bus or train, and because they were an acoustic duo, they could easily carry their instruments in public transport. Vuorinen got excellent feedback from organizers. Rosanna and Zélia were good performers, but also really nice people.

With the income from their summer gigs, Rosanna and Zélia could buy a PA mixer and other musical equipment. When the summer 1990 turned to autumn, they continued their journey from Seinäjoki to Germany where they settled down."

George Palmer is a young artist from the DUB and sound system scene where he quickly stood out thanks to these stage appearances. It was with the international label Irie Ites Records that he wanted to collaborate in order to produce his first album.

Entitled "Working Man" this opus is composed of 10 titles including 2 combinations with LION D, famous international singer based in Italy and SOLO BANTON, famous English singer and toaster who needs no introduction.

The instrumentals are composed by big names of the genre: Sly & Robbie (Jamaica), Jammy's (Jamaica), Naram (New Zealand), Med Tone (Israel), Irie Ites (France) giving this project a great scope.

After the release of 6 music videos from the album and the physical (CD) and digital release at the end of June 2022, the project will soon be released on LP due to strong demand from its fans. In addition, this summer you were able to find George Palmer alongside Irie Ites Sound for fiery stage performances at various European festivals.

To accompany the release of the LP, several clips will be released and a new tour is in preparation.

Staran Wake is a collaborative project by Andrew Bunsell and Tom Relleen. After several years creating music in various groups together, followed by countless hazy late night recording sessions at each other’s studios and crisper afternoons producing the results, the British duo’s musical vision materialised with this self-titled instrumental album, taking nearly 4 years to complete.

This collection of pieces is composed with a wide range of instruments and combines multiple dark, experimental genres to form a rather lavish and unique proposition. It is imprinted with intense turgid textures, interweaving the hyper-tactile characteristics of analogue sound with field recording elements and sound effects.

Although the project’s name suggests a rather celestial concept (‘an’ means moon in one of the early protolanguages), the music actually explores the intimate feelings of transient space and otherness. It uses subtle build-ups of tension and repetitive progressions to shape an impression of distended time and space. More than a mere treat for the ears, it’s a multi-layered album that invites reflection.

All tracks composed, performed and recorded by Andrew Bunsell and Tom Relleen at Dalston Studios, Space Studios and The Bunker, London, UK

Arranged, produced and mixed by Andrew Bunsell and Tom Relleen at The Bunker, London, UK

Mixed and mastered by Marta Salogni at Studio Zona, London, UK

Artwork and design by Jonas Meier

One of the greatest soul voices working in the US today, Billy Valentine's latest release, first plotted out in the summer of 2020, sees the artist responding to the chaos of a global pandemic and the seismic impact of George Floyd's murder via legendary works from Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scot Heron and Pharaoh Sanders. In collaboration with acclaimed producer and songwriter, Bob Thiele Jr. (son of Flying Dutchman founder, Bob Thiele), Valentine's rich, velvety vocals breathe new life into these already-powerful tracks, bringing them into the contemporary political context with renewed urgency. Released on Acid Jazz in partnership with renowned US label Flying Dutchman, Valentine's latest output marks the first new music from the label since the '70s - a momentous return for a keystone tastemaker of the American jazz world.

In the early 1990s, a handful of black metal artists were enticed by the possibility of conjuring new fantastical worlds from the deep isolation of their home setups. Rather than the dense metal sound of their existing projects, this new direction would be centred around intimate synth soundscapes: forlorn organs and otherworldly MIDI theatrics.

The music on ASCEND is predominantly from self-produced, self-distributed releases, typically manufactured in small numbers. Though some artists producing this style of music, most notably Mortiis and Burzum, gained wider recognition outside underground circles, it is only in recent years that the sound and its influence has really been appreciated. This is particularly the case with the late Matthew Davis and his recently reappraised Secret Stairways project, whose song ‘Lammas Tide’ (from the 1997 Enchantment of the Ring album) appears on ASCEND. A simple home recording on a Yamaha KX-W392 manages to be both elegant and tortured, ambiguously devotional and recalling latter years Popol Vuh.

This battle between dark and light is a constant thread through ASCEND, with simple minimal synth lines that can be both delicate and menacing. Compilation opener ‘The Dark Dreamquest’ from Italian black metal group Evol is loaded with occult warning, and Finnish act Kadotus 609’s ‘The Summoning Through Crimson’ is languid, twisted and dark. In spite of the darkness, several pieces of the music on ASCEND have formal similarities with the sometimes saccharine new age music that rose to prominence in that era: but to a rougher, darker ends. The closing song from Darkthrone icon (and past NTS radio host) Fenriz, under his Neptune Towers pseudonym, pulls us further out, with ‘To Cold Void Desolation’ — an astral synth project, akin to ’70s kosmische muzik masters Harmonia.

The gentler side can often amplify an uncannily sinister edge, heard in German act Dolch’s ‘Tumulus’, where orc marching horns contrast against delicate rompler harps and softly whispered chanting. It hammers home a deep loneliness and detachment constant throughout ASCEND, made possible by these unusual contrasts, both unsettling and otherworldly.

After a rather long hiatus due to well known circumstances, Stützpunkt returns with its third release. Berlin based French producer and DJ Casual Treatment makes his debut on the imprint with the „Devotion EP”. Uncompromising while staying true to the genre’s roots, the record embodies the soul of the German capital’s sound.
„Tourmente” recognizes the itch under your skin, feeling it out and giving in to the demand.
Taking a „Trip to Alderaan” feels like going on a journey to a blooming past that hypnotizes its passengers in an unforeseeable future and into a magical past.
„Abrasion” breathes life into the tired soul, never losing its prey, putting you in consequential trance and ecstasy.
The fourth track „Devotion” not only gives the record its title but also caps a voyage down memory lane into the most perceptible realms.

Orange Vinyl

»Love As Projection« is the new album by Frankie Rose, her fifth studio LP and second for Night School following the reissue of her interpretation of The Cure’s »Seventeen Seconds«. Frankie Rose has forged an enviable musical legacy, from playing with bands like Crystal Stilts and The Vivian Girls but on »Love As Projection« she takes a bold step into electronic pop production. A sumptuous recorded statement, it dances in ecstasy and broods on the tumult of the western world’s decay in equal proportion. At the heart of the album is glowing, confident songwriting, resplendent in hooks and choruses but still touched with an optimism undimmed.

After spending nearly two decades establishing herself across New York and Los Angeles independent music circles, Rose re-emerges after six years with a fresh form, aesthetic, and ethos. Celebrated over the years for her expansive approach to songwriting, lush atmospherics, and transcendent vocal melodies and harmonies, »Love As Projection« is a reintroduction of her established style through the lens of contemporary electronic pop. Recorded with producer Brandt Gassman and mixed with long-term collaborator Jorge Elbrecht this is the album Frankie Rose has been building up to her entire career.

More than a rebirth, a refinement, a resurgence, »Love As Projection« boasts a widescreen scope: a long- form project heavily considered for half of a decade, culminating in the most personal and accessible collection of art-pop that Frankie has ever written. When Rose aims for the pop jugular as in first lead track »Anything«, the result is unstoppable. A majestic pop song built for radio, it erupts into an irresistible chorus that marries classic epic 80s American pop with the cult effervescence of Strawberry Switchblade »It’s like a prom scene in a John Hughes movie. It’s a hopeful song about abandoning fear even if the world is quite literally on fire.. In the end, at least we have each other,« says Rose. »Sixteen Ways« further boasts a propulsive, massive chorus, though tempered by a cynicism built in global post-truth, global malaise. »It’s about getting your hopes up, but simultaneously making lists in your head about how it will never work out in your favour.«

The big anthems don’t let up there. On »DOA« some massive, rolling drums lathered in big mid-80s gated reverb dovetail with a syncopated baseline for the ages as Rose’s vocal sails effortlessly above. The effect isn’t unlike ethereal vocalists Clannad circa Howard’s Way or Enya jamming with Simple Minds in their stadium-conquering heyday. Rose tempers the adrenalin with heart-tugging bittersweet tones and there are plenty of them. »Sleeping Night And Day« takes its time with an off-the-cuff chorus, swirling around in harmony and chorus-bass. »Saltwater Girl« picks up the balladeering baton with another nod to album track-mode Switchblade, deep space opening up in the mid-tempo drum track and soupy, digital atmospherics. Album closer »Song For A Horse«, reimagines modern Pop production a-la-PC Music but shorn of the meta-atmosphere. Pianos, swelling synths, minor keys cut through with major. These moments, also seen in Feel Light offer ballast to the soaring pop choruses. Moments like these are big oceans of emotion to fall into before being led out by Rose into a bright new day.

»Love As Projection« is released in the USA by Slumberland.

Two years after their previous effort, regular as clockwork, Swiss throbbing synth pop duo Veil Of Light is back with a new album and what can we say? These guys keep on getting better and better.

If you have followed the Zurich-based outfit over the past few years, you must have noticed the constant moving towards 80’s FM new wave and synthpop tones – without losing their electro/body music outline – that have marked the band’s parable, especially since their latest Landslide LP.

Sundancing is their sixth full-length and it stays the course, bringing what we’ve just said to the next step. Nine new dancy and bright tunes with emotional depth that blend lush instrumentation and robust rhythms, guided by funky and rubbery basslines. Syncopated rhythm sections match suburban cool synths in the lead single Apricot Kiss and Hypersleep, while Raindancing and Tonight summon a sinuosity long gone since the mid Eighties. The musical backdrop here serves as the fundament for emotional vocals delivering lyrics dealing with the fragility of love, joy and loneliness.

There’s some subtle addictiveness to these songs, one that will gently grab you by the collar of your coat and stick the refrains from Sundancing inside your head for good.
Veil Of Light might make it look easy to keep it neat without being minimalist, intimate without being depressing, romantic in the most true sense of the word, but we know that’s possibly the hardest thing to do.

Psycho 2000 - A dark but funky theme that begins with an occulting Italian echo-oscillator drone that is soon followed by pulsating bass and breakbeat drums, leads to tremolo guitars, an ostinato on electric mandolas, strings climbing eloquent ladders, otherworldly electronics, and a cinematic finale.
An evocation of a parade of wooden nutcracker soldiers elaborately dressed in gold-trimmed black uniforms down a wide avenue decorated with mardi gras beads and animal skulls upon golden cobblestones toward a tornado spiralling out purple-hued glissandos and curlicues of elephant smoke.

White Spiritual - Head nod action, the twinkling of a late 60’s Vox Continental II with sickly transistors, the noodling matrix of an intergalactic telephone exchange carried on a bed of bouncy bass with a firm backbeat.
The Johnny Guitar Watson-esque bite and sting of a ‘67 Teisco guitar preludes slabs of unison dark brown moog and organ giving way to the dance of fingers over the black naturals and white sharps of the Continental II.

The batteries are charged again! After an adequate summer break the Fortunea Records crew continues its mission to bring out extraordinary compositions with a brand-new EP by Moff & Tarkin.

The Icelander is currently living in Vienna and presents on this record his multi-variant taste in music. Poems of Soy starts with the cinematic opener ‚Sting’. Playful arpeggio synths dive headfirst into an hypnotic shuffle beat which is companied with siren-seeming vocals from the distance. The follow up ‚Love or Something‘ takes that groove and expands it with more pressure and a snappy baseline.

The B-side starts with an acid injected rave bomb called ‚Dating on LinkedIn‘. A track of sublime quality featuring 909 driven beats merged with acid bass lines. And with ‚Great Tan‘ M&T takes us back to the glory days of the big beat movement.

repressed !

From samba and bossa nova through to baile funk, with carioca expressions of jazz, rock and hip hop in between, the sound of Rio de Janeiro, while continually evolving, has always held an unnameable quality which reflects the magic and mystique of the city itself. Multi-instrumentalist and arranger Antonio Neves is the city’s newest trailblazer: the enfant-terrible of Rio’s music scene, leading a vital and diverse constellation of both emerging and well-known artists advancing the city’s musical legacy.

“It all started one sleepless night, after watching a Quincy Jones documentary”. Inspired by the legendary music magnate, Neves began writing a list of artists residing in Rio de Janeiro “people that I admire, that I consider geniuses of their instruments, who share with me affinities, anxieties and projects.” The list included some of Brazil’s most revered living musicians who Neves has worked with in recent years: Hamilton de Holanda, Leo Gandelman and Dorival Caymmi. Neves also called on some of Brazil's most exciting emerging talents including Alice Cayymii and Ana Frango Eletrico.

A Pegada Agora É Essa (The Sway Now) is Neves’ second album: a vibrant portrait of the current Brazilian music scene. From the regional to universal, popular to erudite, samba to rap, Latin rhythms to jazz, MPB and pop to good old rock'n'roll, Neves walks with fluency and mastery amongst all the musical genres that Brazil has to offer.

“My offer to the musicians was complete freedom to express themselves through the songs I proposed – classics like “Summertime”, “Luz Negra” and “Noite de Temporal”, and compositions of my own – creating a space of authorship for the band and the guests. A space for inventions, purges, delusions, laughter. The idea was to bring the freedom of jazz crossed by Brazilian rhythms, such as the traditionals Partido Alto (A Pegada Agora É Essa) and Jongo (Jongo no Feudo and Luz Negra); rhythms of African-Brazilian religions like Candomblé (Noite de Temporal) and Umbanda (Forte Apache); and a tribute to newest Rio de Janeiro’s contribution to Brazilian music, the Funk Carioca (Simba)”.

Coming from a musical family, Antonio’s father, Eduardo Neves, was a renowned conductor and a professor at Juilliard School of Music and the California Jazz Conservatory. In the bohemian neighbourhood of Lapa, aged 14, Antonio began his career as a drummer, before experimenting with brass. He would soon become a skilled trombonist and arranger achieving the recognition of his teachers and peers. It wasn’t long before he would be playing with some of the biggest names in Brazilian music, such as Hamilton de Holanda, Leo Gandelman, Moreno Veloso, Kassin and Elza Soares.

His debut album as a trombonist was PA7 (2017, Rock It), released at the same time he was travelling the world playing with artists like Moreno Veloso, Kassin and Leo Gandelman, and recording the albums Jobim, Orquestra e Convidados (2017, Biscoito Fino), with Mário Adnet and Paulo Jobim; and Elza Soares Canta e Chora Lupi (2017, Coqueiro Verde Records). More recently, Neves was the arranger for the acclaimed Little Electric Chicken Heart album, by Ana Frango Elétrico, which has been nominated for a Latin Grammy and voted 2019’s ‘Brazilian Music Revelation’ by The Art Critics Association of São Paulo.

In 1975, under the oppressive air of military dictatorship in Brazil, brothers Lelo and Zé Eduardo Nazario invited bassist Zeca Assumpção to join their musical experiments in a basement under Sao Paulo’s Teodoro Sampaio Street. As teenagers, the trio had already been playing together in Hermeto Pascoal’s Grupo, alongside guitarist Toninho Horta and saxophonist Nivaldo Ornelas, and it was while working together under Hermeto’s direction that the Paulista rhythm section (as they were then known) began to realise their own potential.

With many nightclubs and venues closed in the mid-70s and government censors dictating the output of radio, TV and art galleries, many Brazilian artists fled during the years of dictatorship. But underground, Grupo Um were fusing avant garde ideals with contemporary jazz and Afro Brazilian rhythm; making phenomenally free and expressive music - in stark contrast to the sterile, conservative conditions being imposed above ground.

Just like Hermeto Pascoal’s Viajando Com O Som from the following year, Starting Point was recorded over two days at Vice-Versa Studios, by revered engineer Renato Viola. The studio was one of the best in Sao Paulo and musicians communicated with engineers through cameras and a monitor, allowing the group complete immersion in the process. They also made use of the studio’s hemispherical tiled room, which served as an acoustic reverberation chamber.

The album begins with Zé Eduardo Nazario’s thunderous drum solo on “Porão da Teodoro”, before clearing the clouds with the lone Berimbau which opens “Onze Por Oito”. Built around a hypnotic electric bass line, heady Fender Rhodes improvisations, and more rip-roaring drums, it’s a rapturous, electrifying freak-jam in 11/8.

Like some invertebrate deep-sea curiosity, the free-form “Organica” is made up of Lelo Nazario’s playfully eerie prepared piano, with Zé Eduardo’s percussion flurries darting around Assumpçao’s double bass. The equally non-conformist, percussion-only piece “Jardim Candida” features many of Zé Eduardo’s home-made instruments, including a long saw blade played with vibraphone sticks and violin bow. While working with Hermeto, Zé Eduardo famously built his own all-in-one percussion set-up known as the “Barraca de Percussão” (Percussion Tent) - the first of its kind in Brazil, which he would also use on Hermeto Pascoal’s Viajando Com O Som and throughout his career.

“Suite Orquidea Negra'' (Black Orchid Suite) was written by Lelo Nazario as the score for an imaginary movie - the story of a rare, black orchid which produced a substance meant to cure all diseases, but which had mysteriously disappeared from the laboratory… “As a screenplay it’s not very good” reflects Lelo in jest, “but the music ended up being very interesting, the way its parts are chained to one another carries a little of the mystery I imagined for the movie.”

The album closes with the triumphant “Cortejo dos Reis Negros” (Procession of Black Kings) - a groovy variation on the Maracatu rhythm, with a two-note bassline underpinning piano improvisations, exultant wordless vocals, cuicas, slide-whistles and a very special guest appearance from Zé’s dog Bolinha.

Starting Point was to mark the inception of one of Brazil’s most daring instrumental groups. Their debut now sits in the lofty echelon of otherworldly 70s Brazilian music, alongside the likes of Marcos Resende & Index’s self-titled debut, Cesar Mariano & Cia’s Sao Paulo Brasil, Azymuth’s debut and indeed Hermeto Pascoal’s Viajando Com O Som. But just like all of those titles, which were either shelved or largely ignored at the time, Grupo Um - so radically ahead of their time - struggled to find a label to release their debut album. So Lelo kept the tapes safe in his archives, which is where they sat for almost half a century. Finally, almost fifty years later, this mesmerising piece of history is here, and it was only the beginning...

Grupo Um’s Starting Point will be released by Far Out Recordings, on vinyl LP, with an insert featuring unseen photos and liner notes by the Nazario brothers, as well as a CD on 17th February 2023.

You Can Can is an echoed affirmation, an album which traces song forms around silence, field recordings, and degraded analog memories. This is folk music transmogrified and mutated, as if recorded and reconstructed in Pierre Schaffer’s GRM studio.

Not your typical Mariposa folk duo, the group is comprised of Toronto avant-music scene stalwarts, vocalist Felicity Williams (Bernice, Bahamas) and bricolage artist and synthesist Andrew Zukerman (Fleshtone Aura, Badge Epoch). The album feels like a somnambulant conversation, fragmented and half-remembered with Williams’ vocals traveling through a landscape of field recordings and Zukerman’s saturated concrète topographies. It is an electro-acoustic assemblage, both analog and digital, comprised of air, electricity, minerals, wood, and water. Although the album nods towards traditional forms of folk and musique concrète (if at this point it can be called a traditional form), it is outwardly and inwardly contemporary; non-linear, citational, opaque, and sui generis. In a way it feels like a sonic index of the narrative experiments found on the infamous Language school-related publisher The Figures, in the work of Lyn Hejinian, Clark Coolidge, and Lydia Davis. In the musical continuum, the album picks up where Linda Perhacs left off in the early 70’s—explored by Gastr Del Sol in the ‘90s—a convergence of rural acoustic idioms and urban avant-electronics. This is country music for the discerning cosmopolitan citizen of the 21st Century.

RIYL: Luc Ferrari, Brannten Schnüre, William Basinski, Oval, Eric Chenaux, Emmanuelle Parrenin About Everything In Time and Failure Figures, Felicity Williams says:

Everything In Time is indebted to the language of Brazilian author Clarice Lispector (as translated by Alison Entrekin). Drawing on insights from psychoanalysis, we trace the roots of melancholy to render them available to consciousness; words from the ghostly realm of the transpersonal filter through dreams and shine a beam of light onto a lone trillium in a forest at night. Other influences include the experience of not knowing, of being subject to a gestation outside of one’s control. This is an ode to the power of naming to obliterate, to set free.

Failure Figures is a meditation on the radical contingency of reality and the vicissitudes of the will. With Slavoj Zizek as my guide (think: “Hegel for dummies” - I’m the dummy in this scenario), I wander through the valley of the shadow of death, and take heart. The last verse refers to an experience I had recording at a studio in Brussels. I was singing in French, with which I have some fluency, and the producer was complaining to the artist whose song it was that my delivery was not convincing. Thinking I was out of ear shot, he said in French, “c’est comme elle n'est pas là”; I was pronouncing the words correctly, but I failed to express anything. So what or whom is responsible for conveying meaning, if not the form of the word itself? And if the connection between meaning and form is broken, how do we fix it?

Gratitude to Thom Gill (guitar) and Daniel Fortin (bass) who joined us on the recording of Failure Figures. Thanks as well to my old roommate Christopher Willes, who unwittingly left behind his hand bells deep in the hall closet. We unearthed them by accident, and the bells became an important sound element. Thanks to other past roomies Robin Dann and Claire Harvie, whose childhood piano and guitar respectively still reside with us, and were used in the recording. Field recordings were made in Toronto, Canada and Celestún, Mexico in 2020.