Buscar:pure exotica

In the fall of 2022, celebrated UK chill-out institution Seahawks landed in Los Angeles for the first time in their 15-year history, with plans to record a sweeping new age downtempo "exploration of visionary California."

Instead, they immediately fell ill with flu (Fowler collapsed next to a taco truck; 911 was called), and were bedridden for the better part of a week. Upon recovering, they resituated at the synthesizer sanctuary of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Kranky, Leech), channeling their post-sickness psychedelia into one of the band's lushest and most elevated creations to date: Time Enough For Love. Inspired by the "groove and mood" of Harry Nilsson demos, as well as its wider 70's wavelength - Rhodes, Wurlitzer, wood paneling - Seahawks transposed their classic post-rave ambient exotica onto a warm and woozy Golden State palette. Buoyed by the liquid touch of English maestro Kenny Dickenson on keys, the results rank high among the duo's smoothest and most multi-sensory voyages. "Sail Across The Moon" delivers on its title, a simmering, phaser-smeared cruise through the beauty of the night. "Messengers" echoes the cosmic lounge of Air's Moon Safari, shuffling, weightless, and ethereal, while "Falling Deep" reaches for the stars, pure cascading bliss, the ecstatic moment writ large.

The album skews steadily more astral as it progresses, drifting towards jazzy, galactic outer reaches. "Like A Grain Of Sand" opens with a spoken sample by the celebrated late American poet Rachel Sherwood ("The children watch, breathless / with the birds / They feel an emanation / from this shuddering place"), before taking flight on a Balearic trip through island house, PM Dawn gold dust, upright bass meditation, and kaleidoscopic light. A remix of the title track by Chicago trio Purelink closes the record in a suitably subdued and skittery state of mind. Time Enough For Love radiates color, complexity, and positivity, infused by the "life enhancing" nature of the band's time in Los Angeles - sunsets, sound systems, and sativa, framed by coastlines and cloudbanks, the city's mystic sprawl glittering beneath purple dusk.

Black Truffle is thrilled to present the first vinyl reissue of David Rosenboom’s unique Future Travel, originally released on the short-lived Detroit label Street Records in 1981 and here presented in an expanded edition with an additional LP of wild, previously unheard live and studio material from the same period.

Future Travel emerged from the confluence of two important streams in Rosenboom’s work at this time. First, his exploration of ‘propositional music’, defined as ‘complete cognitive models of music’ that start from the radical question, ‘What is music?’ In this case, the music belongs to the universe of Rosenboom’s In the Beginning (1978-1981), in which proportional relationships determine the material available to the composer in all musical parameters (harmonic relationships, melodic shapes, rhythmic subdivisions, dynamics, and so on). Second, the work documents a key moment in Rosenboom’s long collaboration with synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla. Having played a role in developing concepts for some of the modules of the Buchla 300 Series Electric Music Box (an innovative analogue modular system controlled by micro-processors), Rosenboom went on to write the software for Buchla’s hybrid analogue-digital keyboard synthesiser, the Touché, the instrument heard most prominently here.

In a way that no purely analogue synthesizer could, the 300 Series and Touché allowed Rosenboom to work with the In the Beginning algorithms in real time, the synthesizers becoming ‘intelligent instruments’ that actively collaborate with the performer. Developing the open structures of the electronic pieces from In the Beginning, Future Travel explored the possibilities of simply ‘playing the system’, recording live at Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope studio in San Francisco. Working from loose sketches, Rosenboom added acoustic instruments to the electronic sounds and, on some pieces, the processed voice of Jacqueline Humbert. Like Rosenboom’s collaboration with Humbert on the abstracted synth-chanson of Daytime Viewing, this music set out deliberately to challenge the ‘stratified and illusorily coagulated identities in the musical culture of the time,’ refusing distinctions between ‘serious’ and popular music. But where Daytime Viewing achieves this in part through genre references, Future Travel is bracingly sui generis, existing in a unique universe where radical formalisation à la Xenakis spontaneously gives rise to expressive jazz harmonies and old-timey folk melodies.

The crystalline quality of many of the Touché sounds gives Future Travel a sparkling, immediately enticing surface, its layers of shifting ostinato patterns pulsating outside conventional meter, rippling like waves on the surface of water. On opener ‘Station Oaxaca’, ping-ponging synth arpeggios and hand percussion accompany a sentimental violin melody, abruptly overtaken by layered keyboard runs, before the entry of tinkling marimba-like sounds reframe the scene as sci-fi Martin Denny exotica. ‘Time Arroyo’ begins as an austere study in staccato synth sounds in multiple overlapping tempi, reminiscent of Ligeti’s famous ‘clock’ rhythmic effects. Before long, it opens up into a melodic passage with the gentle heroism of classic Roedelius, which proves to be only a brief interlude before the layers of rhythmically distinct synthesiser patterns begin to build and accelerate into an increasingly dense cacophony. The wildest twists and turns are saved for the epic closer ‘Nova Wind’, where the arrangement focuses on Rosenboom’s virtuoso piano playing, perfectly embodying the project’s radical disregard of stylistic orthodoxies as he moves from hyperactive pointillistic flurries to a kind of space-age gospel.

At several points throughout the record, the distinctive voice of Jacqueline Humbert is heard reading passages from the text component of In the Beginning, a dialogue between The Double (an embodiment of humanity’s timeless desire to replicate itself in spiritual and technological copies) and two Spirit Characters. Fittingly, as all are conceived as embodiments of a future form of techno-human collective consciousness, distinctions between the three characters are not immediately evident in Humbert’s delivery, just as the music blurs the boundaries between intelligent computing and human spontaneity. Adorned with a striking retro-futurist cover (and here accompanied by extensive new liner notes and archival images), Future Travel is a time capsule of radical imaginings at the birth of our digital age, reminding us of utopian possibilities of which our own present seems so often to fall short.

The tom-tom heavy tribal rhythm of “Wela Wela” is one of the rawest, hardest cuts from the band Black Blood, a conglomeration of musicians from the central part of the African continent who were based in Belgium. The group had a breakout single in 1974 with the exotica-leaning “A.I.E. (A Mwana)” but never were able to quite capture the excitement that single generated with their follow up records. We can only guess that songs like “Wela Wela” were simply way too heavy for the pop tastes of the day, since the groove is a beast! — an acid rock tangent of the “Soul Makossa” riff that radiates pure energy. Mr. K aserts “It’s an incredible song to dance to, but was not very DJ friendly, and I never seem to hear other DJs play it... or even talk about it.” Originally debuted on his Grass Roots album, Mr. K's new rearrangement should change that, especially now that it's been made available on this hard hitting, portable 7-inch format.

Originally released the same year as Black Blood’s debut, “Komi Ke Kenam (Fish & Funjee)” was discovered and distributed by a small independent Brooklyn label that featured many other incredible African bands of the 70's. The song opens with a tough breakbeat (subtly extended by Mr. K on our release), and rumbles over a funky bassline and slicing wah-wah guitar before bursting out with a sax-led climax, a gritty get-down jam if there ever was one.

Both cuts have been remastered expressly for DJ play and are loud and clubworthy, in new extended edits that tease every last bit of funk from the originals.

Tempo Temple (Caravan & Lord Safari) longtime Planet Trip family enter the stage with a heavy 12” of elevated machine jams and dance-floor ready heaters.

The A side starts things off with high intrigue initialised through the exotica laden, midtempo weapon Spell. Steezy title track Enter The Temple (Outstanding Invoice Mix) splices together a forward facing arrangement with early Belgian New Beat DNA to create a downtempo track for the ages. On the flip the energy gets boosted up to the maximum. The heaving Days of Chandra is a pure, non-stop body mover primed to raise a dancer's heart rate. Its companion piece Nights of Chandra raises the pressure and enhances the euphoria. Closing off with the two steppin’ Spell (Transit State Remix), flipping the records opener into the garage and finishing things off in style.

Another Planet Trip Sureshot!

A globetrotter in the most pure and respectful sense, away from the trappings of neo-colonialist ventures and predatory tourism, Discrepant head honcho Gonçalo F. Cardoso returns to his Island impression series to offers us another glimpse of his deep, abstract impressions of (an)other island.

After passionately collecting the sounds and lives inhabiting the main Island of Zanzibar, Unguja, released through Edições CN back in 2018, Cardoso now dwells into the Malaysian heartbeat of the Borneo forest through Island recordings made during a trip in 2016. Assembled in situ with meticulous craft from portable recorders, samplers and battery powered synths, these nice recollections conjure the spirits that lurk behind the inhabitable and the communal that are as much part of a personal memoir as an impressionistic portrait open to new meanings. Focused compositions that flow organically, bending the environment in & out of shape into a new dreamlike exotica with plenty of breathing room for every detail, silence and movement to surface.

A particular moment suspended in time, haunted perpetually by its bygone existence. Something no postcard or photograph could ever, ever come even close to.

Interiors, the title of this new release from Ultramarine, may have a topical resonance for many listeners who have found themselves in involuntary confinement during the past year, but the five tracks on this EP were actually recorded in 2011, and they represent a significant opening out of the duo's evolving musical perspective.

Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond, who had become friends while growing up together in the Essex countryside, formed Ultramarine in 1989. Throughout the 90s their distinctive music, an enticing blending of acoustic with electronic instruments, secured a loyal following and won critical acclaim. Then, throughout the whole of the next decade, Ultramarine lay dormant. Interiors documents their reawakening, with Cooper and Hammond exploring approaches to music-making made possible by recently developed software, designed specifically with live performance in mind.

Four of the five tracks to be heard here were issued digitally last year. But as Paul Hammond has pointed out, "with Ultramarine the whole point is to create an artefact, so the form and the look of the finished product is central." That's an outlook shared passionately by Simon Lewin's label Blackford Hill, and the music now available on this vinyl record is appropriately enhanced with cover art by printmaker Katherine Jones. Her imagery matches the music neatly in its nuanced interplay of solidity and shadow, line and colour, geometric form and organic growth.

Ultramarine returned refreshed in October 2011, bursting back into public awareness with "Find A Way," issued as a 7" single on their own label, Real Soon. Clive Bell, writing in The Wire, extolled its engaging mix of electronic beats with cool vocals and tropical percussion. More generally Bell embraced Ultramarine's thoughtful hybrid electronica as "music you could enjoy at home without feeling your intelligence was being scorned, or that if you were not physically in a club, you were wasting your time."

On Interiors, the roots of that slinky single are laid bare on the purely instrumental track "Find A Way Back." Its two distinct parts stretch out the beats and flaunt those tropical flourishes, shuffling and flexing, vibrant and heady, languid and sultry. This is techno filtered through the fabric of magic realism, an exotically spiced concoction, chilled and ready to be savoured at home.

With the diagrammatic clarity of its punchy thrust and spooling loops "Even When" distils the essence of Cooper and Hammond's way of working with their musical material: layering and shaping, nurturing textures, plaiting rhythms and juggling accents. The cumulative impact is almost sculptural in its physical immediacy and looming presence. In contrast, on "By Return" the duo skew the outcome, projecting a selection of limber figures into dub's auditory hall of mirrors. They are clearly revelling in the reverb, relishing the recoil and decay.

Interiors ultimately opens out onto "Decoy Point (Version)." With its ozone saturated ambience, this closing track evokes marshland and mudflat soundscapes, seabird mews, maritime signals and tidal wash. Cooper and Hammond feel deep attachment to the Essex landscape and, in particular, to the local history and physical features of the Blackwater estuary. Blackford Hill provides an accommodating home for Ultramarine's ongoing project Blackwaterside, which has featured to date a 7" vinyl record plus 28-page booklet, and a photo film with soundtrack. Now, delving into the Ultramarine archive, this welcome incarnation of Interiors offers a fascinating glimpse of the duo finding their bearings, at a vital stage along the way.

"Do you feel what I feel too?" Brijean Murphy floats the question at the start of Feelings, the full-length Ghostly International debut from Brijean, her collaborative project with Doug Stuart. Guided by a lush mix of charismatic keyboard chords, grooving bass lines, and radiant bongo-driven rhythms, the "Day Dreaming" lyric doubles as an invitation and a statement of intention. Brijean want you to move, physically, mentally, dimensionally; this is dance music for the mind, body, and soul. With Feelings, they've manifested a gentle collective space for respite, for self-reflection, for self-care, for uninhibited imagination and new possibilities. The album cultivates a specific vibe, a softness Murphy has come to call "romancing the psyche." Growing up in a family immersed in jazz, Latin and soul music, Murphy would become an accomplished DJ, session and live player in Oakland's diverse music scene and one of indie's most in-demand percussionists (Poolside, Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls). In 2018, she began recording songs with multi-instrumentalist and producer Doug Stuart, who shares a background in jazz and pop in bands such as Bells Atlas, Meernaa, and Luke Temple. Following their first sessions, which resulted in the mini-album Walkie Talkie (released in 2019 on Native Cat Recordings), the duo continued freeform hangs in Oakland, inviting friends Chaz Bear, Tony Peppers, and Hamir Atwal. "We improvised on different feels for hours," says Murphy. "Nothing quite developed at first but we had seeds. We re-opened the sessions a couple months later, after returning from tours, and spent a month developing the songs in a little 400 square foot cottage." Aforementioned album opener "Day Dreaming" is a dynamic celebration of newness: the excitement in finding deeper understandings of yourself as you get to know someone, something, or somewhere new. "Wifi Beach" drops a pin in pure psych-pop exotica. With Atwal on drums, Stuart on bass, Peppers on keys, and Bear engineering, the group improvised the track's intro sequence based on the vision of a lavish 1970s pool party. Establishing the scene is a mid-frequency drum kit disco shuffle augmented by tight congas and timbale effect, as Murphy sings in spurts: "I want to be / Deep in love / I want to be / Say you love me too / I want to be / Honey." The stanzas cut between "reflective moments of wants and being overwhelmed by feelings of the present," she explains. "A lot of the `love songs' I write are to my psyche, self-reflections on how to encourage tender perspectives and make more time for the sweet stuff." Though there is a loose, dance-oriented motif throughout, the material gives way to somnolent turns. On "Ocean," Brijean's anodyne lyrics, reminiscent of Astrud Gilberto's airy croon, float atop a brushed drum pattern, sparkling rhodes lines, and pittering and softly funky woodblock bops. The opening line sets up the rest, "In this gentle space we lay" _ among the album's propensity for movement, tracks like "Ocean" stand out by leaning back for momentary sways of blissful introspection. Murphy calls the charming "Hey Boy" a "psychedelic guide _ the exploration of finding what feels good _ through sorrow, anxiety, apathy." This mentality applies to Feelings on the whole: in these nebulous and verdant worlds of hazy melodies, feathery hooks, and percussive details, the songs simply want us to feel alive. They radiate in wonderful abandon and with a sense of devotion to the self. RIYL: Stereolab, Astrud Gilberto, Air, Little Dragon, Broadcast, Khruangbin, Poolside.

LTD. BLUE & PINK SWIRL VINYL

"Do you feel what I feel too?" Brijean Murphy floats the question at the start of Feelings, the full-length Ghostly International debut from Brijean, her collaborative project with Doug Stuart. Guided by a lush mix of charismatic keyboard chords, grooving bass lines, and radiant bongo-driven rhythms, the "Day Dreaming" lyric doubles as an invitation and a statement of intention. Brijean want you to move, physically, mentally, dimensionally; this is dance music for the mind, body, and soul. With Feelings, they've manifested a gentle collective space for respite, for self-reflection, for self-care, for uninhibited imagination and new possibilities. The album cultivates a specific vibe, a softness Murphy has come to call "romancing the psyche." Growing up in a family immersed in jazz, Latin and soul music, Murphy would become an accomplished DJ, session and live player in Oakland's diverse music scene and one of indie's most in-demand percussionists (Poolside, Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls). In 2018, she began recording songs with multi-instrumentalist and producer Doug Stuart, who shares a background in jazz and pop in bands such as Bells Atlas, Meernaa, and Luke Temple. Following their first sessions, which resulted in the mini-album Walkie Talkie (released in 2019 on Native Cat Recordings), the duo continued freeform hangs in Oakland, inviting friends Chaz Bear, Tony Peppers, and Hamir Atwal. "We improvised on different feels for hours," says Murphy. "Nothing quite developed at first but we had seeds. We re-opened the sessions a couple months later, after returning from tours, and spent a month developing the songs in a little 400 square foot cottage." Aforementioned album opener "Day Dreaming" is a dynamic celebration of newness: the excitement in finding deeper understandings of yourself as you get to know someone, something, or somewhere new. "Wifi Beach" drops a pin in pure psych-pop exotica. With Atwal on drums, Stuart on bass, Peppers on keys, and Bear engineering, the group improvised the track's intro sequence based on the vision of a lavish 1970s pool party. Establishing the scene is a mid-frequency drum kit disco shuffle augmented by tight congas and timbale effect, as Murphy sings in spurts: "I want to be / Deep in love / I want to be / Say you love me too / I want to be / Honey." The stanzas cut between "reflective moments of wants and being overwhelmed by feelings of the present," she explains. "A lot of the `love songs' I write are to my psyche, self-reflections on how to encourage tender perspectives and make more time for the sweet stuff." Though there is a loose, dance-oriented motif throughout, the material gives way to somnolent turns. On "Ocean," Brijean's anodyne lyrics, reminiscent of Astrud Gilberto's airy croon, float atop a brushed drum pattern, sparkling rhodes lines, and pittering and softly funky woodblock bops. The opening line sets up the rest, "In this gentle space we lay" _ among the album's propensity for movement, tracks like "Ocean" stand out by leaning back for momentary sways of blissful introspection. Murphy calls the charming "Hey Boy" a "psychedelic guide _ the exploration of finding what feels good _ through sorrow, anxiety, apathy." This mentality applies to Feelings on the whole: in these nebulous and verdant worlds of hazy melodies, feathery hooks, and percussive details, the songs simply want us to feel alive. They radiate in wonderful abandon and with a sense of devotion to the self. RIYL: Stereolab, Astrud Gilberto, Air, Little Dragon, Broadcast, Khruangbin, Poolside.

They Say: “Descriptive scores for scenes of visual impact”.

We say: Arguably the single greatest album in KPM history. An ensemble piece of staggeringly heavy works from none other than Brian Bennett, John Scott, Steve Gray, Jim Lawless and Johnny Pearson.

For our immense pleasure, Visual Impact includes the insanely ace “Nuplex” by Brian Bennett, a nagging, sweeping, punchy funk piece that exists in a world of its own. If you don’t know, get to know - the record’s worth getting for this track alone. The same goes for the beautifully paced, string-drenched, horn-fed LP opener “Canaveral Scape”, courtesy of John Scott. Truly sublime. Other highlights on the A-side include Bennett’s easy, bass-heavy jazz groover “Sequence Of Events” and the spare, building, undercover funk of Steve Gray’s aptly-named “Low Profile”.

The B-side is straight-up fantastic. The percussive, vibey exotica of Jim Lawless’s “Keeping Pace” is followed by five tracks of slick, weighty funk breaks from Johnny Pearson. Check the pure groove of “Jaguar” with its head-nod drum break intro, the creeping piano-strings combo and… er… giant neck-snapping breaks of “Giant’s Causeway”, the speaker-smashing progressive bass groove of “Fugitive”, the tense "Rock Climb" and the sheer heft of "Heavy Load". Library largeness. If that isn’t enough, John Scott’s incessant “Flight Of The Phoenix” ends the session, brilliantly pilfered by M.O.P. for their much-loved “We Run New York”.

Originally released in 1976 but wonderfully timeless, Visual Impact is a rare example of a library record that’s genuinely great listen from start to finish. Just too good…

As with all of our KPM re-issues, the audio for Visual Impact comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis. We’ve taken the same care with the sleeves, handing the reproduction duties over to Richard Robinson, the current custodian of KPM’s brand identity.

And don’t worry! Those KPM stickers aren’t stuck directly on the sleeves!

Too Pure and Beggars Arkive reissue 'Peng!' and 'The
Groop Played Space Age Batchelor Pad Music' on clear
vinyl.
'Peng!' is the band's 1992 debut album. 'The Groop
Played Space Age Batchelor Pad Music' is an 8-track
mini album, released in 1993.
Often noted as being one of the most influential and
original bands of the 90s, Stereolab were formed by
Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier in London in 1990 and
released 13 studio albums, 15 EPs and numerous
singles. Simon Reynolds commented in Rolling Stone
that the group's early records form 'an endlessly
seductive body of work that sounds always the same,
always different.'
They are often noted as being one of the most
influential and original bands of the 90s. Theirs is a
rich, overflowing palette, readily able to blur the gulf
between Os Mutantes and the BBC Radiophonic
Orchestra; merge Krzysztof Komeda with the Velvet
Underground, Francoise Hardy with Neu! and Burt
Bacharach with Esquivel. A deluxe blend, in other
words, with ingredients plucked assiduously from
pop's coolest outposts: 50's lounge, Rive Gauche
chanson, Brazilian tropicalia, North American art rock,
East European film music, Krautrock. hi-fi test
recordings, mood music and more. Somehow they
distil these apparently incongruent components into
an ageless exotica that is all their own.

Too Pure and Beggars Arkive reissue 'Peng!' and 'The
Groop Played Space Age Batchelor Pad Music' on clear
vinyl.
'Peng!' is the band's 1992 debut album. 'The Groop
Played Space Age Batchelor Pad Music' is an 8-track
mini album, released in 1993.
Often noted as being one of the most influential and
original bands of the 90s, Stereolab were formed by
Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier in London in 1990 and
released 13 studio albums, 15 EPs and numerous
singles. Simon Reynolds commented in Rolling Stone
that the group's early records form 'an endlessly
seductive body of work that sounds always the same,
always different.'
They are often noted as being one of the most
influential and original bands of the 90s. Theirs is a
rich, overflowing palette, readily able to blur the gulf
between Os Mutantes and the BBC Radiophonic
Orchestra; merge Krzysztof Komeda with the Velvet
Underground, Francoise Hardy with Neu! and Burt
Bacharach with Esquivel. A deluxe blend, in other
words, with ingredients plucked assiduously from
pop's coolest outposts: 50's lounge, Rive Gauche
chanson, Brazilian tropicalia, North American art rock,
East European film music, Krautrock. hi-fi test
recordings, mood music and more. Somehow they
distil these apparently incongruent components into
an ageless exotica that is all their own.