Search:scope

THEOPHONOS (ex-Serpent Column) and Profound Lore Records present “Ashes in the Huron River” to be released on LP/CD/Digital Feb 09, 2024. The new LP is named in honor of the local woods and riverlands that continue to inspire the studio project. This record is an account of a life spent in the rotten heartlands of neoliberal capitalism and a tribute to the vibrant underground music cultures that thrived before the second half of the last decade.

Expanding on the directness of “Nightmare Visions”, “Ashes” is grander in scope, and is internally regarded as a more focused analogue to 2019’s “Mirror in Darkness”. Hafsteinn Viðar Ársælsson’s dark and intricate illustrations once again accompany the music with striking depictions of abandoned landscapes, arranged to evoke a sense of catastrophe and unwilling transformation.

Primary musical influences include Death Grips’ “Jenny Death” (which the record homages in its gradient-like structure, its centerpiece “Still You Haunt Me” even acting as a reimagined “On GP”), the downtuned hyperaggressions of Morbid Angel’s “Gateways to Annihilation”, and the cinematic, raw intimacies of Pelican’s “The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw.”

V.I.V.E.K returns to SYSTEM MUSIC with a 3 track EP exploring new grooves within the 140 scope. Following on from his SHAPES EP he continues to try something different within the boundaries of tempo.

U Dub harks back to old school jungle territory, ambient synths with heavy distorted 808 bassline.

Voices explores an Amapiano style at 140 with heavy log drum bass and whispering synths .

While 108 works to bashment style bounce but is heavy on the bass .

The Trashmen's defining moment, 1963's "Surfin' Bird," is perhaps the ultimate lightning-in-a-bottle record. Their first true studio recording, it captures the group's interminable energy and mastery of live performance. But it also is the culmination of spirit and experiment that turned it into something new and, from the perspective of 50 years, unique. This collection shows them to be variously a first-rate surf band, a great protopunk outfit, solid rockers with the raw essence of the earliest originators of the sound, and adept enough to work in some comedy and country. This scope of ability and interest is probably the true basis of the band's following now. But "Surfin' Bird" has more tenacity than other bands' entire better-performing catalogs, and with it, the Trashmen created a work that is arguably today the most relevant release from that storied decade.

"Best Of The Trashmen" by Trashmen includes the following tracks: "Tube City", "Sleeper", "Dance Bird Beat", "Bad News" and more.

This version of the album comes White vinyl.

Another bonafide classic from the all time heavy lifer Scott ‘Wino’ Weinrich. If The Obsessed, St. Vitus, Shrinebuilder, Probot and The Hidden Hand aren’t enough to bring his CV to legendary status, stop reading now. Spirit Caravan’s debut, originally released in 1999, was another massive step in his career, taking his doom-laden guitar work to new heights, with slow ferocity and acidic perfection. Wino, Dave Sherman and Gary Isom weave tight numbers creating a blueprint that is here to stay. Now remastered and released for the first time as a 4 side double LP the album includes beautiful cover art by Daniel Higgs. "Jug Fulla Sun, Spirit Caravan's debut, follows a sonic continuum that began in the late '70s when Scott "Wino" Weinrich emerged from the outskirts of Washington, D.C., with the Obsessed, his stripped-down hybrid of biker rock and metal. That outfit made tremendous strides in bridging the gap between the long-haired metal contingent and the still developing, though already rabid, D.C. hardcore scene. Jug Fulla Sun shows Wino augmenting his trademark brand of doom-laden guitar work and slow-fuse vocal ferocity with greater lyrical depth and overall textural breadth. The songs are rich, refined, articulate, and created by a lifer, a true veteran of the hard music scene. Wino has obviously gone to great lengths here to subordinate his outlaw vision to a more expansive, comprehensive view of mankind, and of greater truths. The somewhat nebulous scope of his lyrics is enhanced by Lungfish vocalist/tattoo artist Dan Higgs' cryptic cover painting. An excellent album

Danielle Boutet’s P »Pièces« is a mysterious artifact of Quebecois marginalia, self-released in 1985. Moving from languid ennui to high drama, »Pièces« is a dreamy gestalt, an album that borders Chanson, spoken-word, jazz noir, and minimalism, conjured from the chasm between acoustic and electronic realms. »Pièces« allows us a window into the highly intimate songcraft and compositional skill of an artist who longed to linger not in the public eye, but in relation with others and the world around her.

Born in Quebec City, Boutet studied music at the University of Montreal, where she focused on composition and percussion, before becoming involved in Montreal’s feminist and lesbian art scene. Primarily written, performed, and recorded by Boutet, with voice, guitar work, and technical assistance by Sylvie Gagnon, Pièces was created during a paradigm shift in home recording. Originally composed for the piano, Boutet and Gagnon utilized a consumer-friendly Tascam 4-track Portastudio and versatile Yamaha DX-7, alongside guitar, bass, marimba, and the human voice, to expand and contemporize the original composition’s scope.

Inspired by prog rock and British poet and musician Anne Clark, »Pièces« translates Boutet’s influence by moving between sunny, wistful fairytale and dark, wintry dirge. Filled with longing marimba, vertiginous, startling synth pads, and folk guitar, each track on Pièces offers a wholly unique proposition. Some are modal and rife with the ethereal psychological tension of a sci-fi soundtrack, while others are more like entering a smoke-laced lounge, the entertainer embodying seduction.

With the sprechgesang of artists like Serge Gainsbourg, there is an intense intimacy to Boutet’s delivery, sometimes as if she is performing for an audience of one. As one lyric goes, translated to English from French: “Like holograms/ Images from a world/ That inhales souls/ And exudes drama.” Another song contains an excerpt from The Tao of Physics: “The eastern sages specify clearly that they do not identify an ordinary void, but rather, a void having an infinite creative potential.”

To English-language audiences, the album’s title, »Pièces«, might seem to simply refer to the eleven different pieces. The title can also, of course, refer to parts of a larger whole, but Boutet is keen to point out that there is also another meaning: In French, a pièce is a room. On the cover of the original cassette, Boutet is seen sitting on a chair, alone in an empty apartment, a cable snaking at her feet. Listening to »Pièces« is like entering eleven different rooms: whether a study encased in shadow, a greenhouse left to wither in an eternal frost, or a divine nave.

Boutet sold a few dozen copies around Montreal, a scene mostly occupied by the new wave explosion de rigueur, but the inclusion of Pièces in the 1987 issue of Ladyslipper—the North Carolina-based mail order catalog that championed women musicians of all calibers and careers—led to more exposure throughout North America. “In the catalog,” Boutet says, “they included it in the New Age section, but I was, and still am, aware that this album is relatively unclassifiable.”

Boutet would release one more album, titled Musiques Urbaines, before getting pulled in the direction of interdisciplinary art and theory. “Although I never stopped making music, I lost all interest in public diffusion or performance,” Boutet says. Despite her departure from performance and publicly releasing music, she left behind a strange and enthralling document of Montreal’s 1980s feminist fringe, an aural document of the historic moment when self-recorded music and its practical potential became a prismatic reality.

Danielle Boutet’s Pièces arrives February 16, 2024 as part of uncommon¢ (“uncommon sense”), an open-ended, serialized endeavor from Freedom to Spend that provides new meaning for rarefied recordings from music’s outermost fringe.

Remastered and first worldwide release (previously only limited availability in Iceland) Since first bursting onto the global punk scene in 2018, Icelandic trio GRÓA have thrilled audiences across the world by fully embracing an unruly freedom. Made up of sisters Hrafnhildur Einars Maríudóttir (aka Hrabba, age 22) and Karólína Einars Maríudóttir (aka Karó, age 20) and their childhood friend Fríða Björg Pétursdóttir (also 22), the Reykjavík-bred band merge elements of post-punk and noise-rock and art-pop with absolute abandon, arriving at an explosive yet magnificently arranged sound unlike any other. A local favorite, the Icelandic government has recently been sponsoring worldwide travel to share GRÓA with the rest of the world and in 2023 they have played shows around the world including in UK, Western and Eastern Europe as well as USA dates including Washington DC, Seattle, Chicago and New York City. They have recently recorded an in studio performance at KEXP which will be broadcast worldwide in January 2024 and more worldwide touring is planned for early 2024 to support the vinyl and CD releases. Listing iconoclasts like Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, and Bikini Kill among their longtime inspirations, the Icelandic punk band GRÓA pursued their experimental impulses with more intensity and confidence on Í Glimmerheimi, matching the album’s shapeshifting sound with a surrealist but emotionally potent form of lyrical storytelling. “It’s about a girl who’s trying to escape the world she’s stuck in—this glitter world that looks so good on the surface, but it’s not where she’s meant to be,” says Karó in discussing the album’s concept. “There’s a song called ‘Jetpackstelpan,’ or ‘Jetpack Girl,’ where she leaves the world on a jetpack and flies away to the moon, and she’s never coming back again.” Opening on the kaleidoscopic rhythms and rowdy call-and-response vocals of “Fullkomið” (“Perfect”), Í Glimmerheimi brings that narrative to frenetic and dazzling life, ultimately closing out on “Skrímslið er að ná þér” (“The monster is getting you”): a serpentine and strangely mesmerizing epic whose swirling textures, otherworldly vocals, and sparse yet complex guitar tones illuminate the immense scope and depth of GRÓA’s artistry.

The Decline And Fall Of Heavenly’ Gets Re-Issued On Vinyl. Skep Wax Records are re-issuing all four Heavenly albums over a two year period, and this is the third instalment, following on from ‘Heavenly vs Satan’ and ‘Le Jardin De Heavenly’. Each LP includes relevant single releases as additional tracks, a 7” booklet with lyrics, pictures, and new sleeve notes by the members of the band. Altogether, the four albums will amount to a thorough collection of the band’s recorded output. Heavenly will be playing gigs in various countries in 2024. The third Heavenly album will be re-released by Skep Wax Records on Friday 2nd February. The re-release will also include all five tracks from the Atta Girl and P.U.N.K Girl 7” singles. The Atta Girl and P.U.N.K. Girl singles were released in 1993; album The Decline and Fall of Heavenly came soon after in 1994: collectively they show a band that is rapidly expanding its scope. The album veers confidently from high speed indiepunk (Me And My Madness) to cool surf instrumental (Sacramento) and back again to the sweetest indiepop (Itchy Chin). Meanwhile, the singles, which include the band’s most celebrated tune - P.U.N.K Girl – demonstrates how much confidence Heavenly were deriving from their involvement in the nascent Riot Grrrl scene. All the anger is there, the politics are direct and crystal clear – yet the whole thing is still delivered with the sweetest pop melodies. It’s like being punched and kissed at the same time. The three releases also show how Heavenly had come to feel equally at home in the UK and in the US. The album maybe feels more British, as demonstrated by the Old World irony of the ‘Decline and Fall’ title. At Heavenly gigs in the UK, often playing with other bands on the increasingly influential Sarah Records, audiences were getting bigger, while the bands were finding a sweet spot where anti-corporate understatement and a dismissive attitude to an increasingly misogynist UK Press was no barrier to success. P.U.N.K Girl and Atta Girl on the other hand, are more gleeful, more headlong, and somehow feel more American: they are carried along by the excitement and adrenaline of having found another spiritual home - the indiepunk Riot Grrrl scene that was focussed on Olympia, WA, the HQ of Heavenly’s US label K Records. (K released P.U.N.K Girl and Atta Girl together on one 10” EP.) Amelia Fletcher and Cathy Rogers were now confidently sharing vocals, sometimes harmonising, sometimes taking it in turns, sometimes singing over each other. Peter (guitar) Mathew (drums) and Rob (bass) had become adept at changing gear from ornate pop to full-on punk, unafraid of genre rules and increasingly happy to make up their own version of what pop music should sound like. The more delicate, more decorative arrangements of Heavenly’s first two albums had been left behind. The band – or more accurately, the women in the band – were still dogged by accusations of being too fey, too ‘twee’: not ROCK enough. But, as the chorus of Atta Girl makes clear, any attempts to define Heavenly by their ‘cuteness’ now received an unambiguous response: ‘Fuck you, no way!’ The fourth and final Heavenly album ‘Operation Heavenly’ will be released later in 2024. Heavenly were: Amelia Fletcher (guitar, vocals), Cathy Rogers (guitar, vocals), Rob Pursey (bass), Peter Momtchiloff (guitar), Mathew Fletcher (drums).

Kali Malone's anticipated new album "All Life Long" is a collection of music for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet composed by Kali Malone, 2020 - 2023. Choral music performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L'Immaculée-Conception in Nantes. Brass quintet music performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York City. Organ music performed by Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs at Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden. Kali Malone composes with a rare clarity of vision. Her music is patient and focused, built on a foundation of evolving harmonic cycles that draw out latent emotional resonances. Time is a crucial factor: letting go of expectations of duration and breadth offers a chance to find a space of reflection and contemplation. In her hands, experimental reinterpretations of centuries-old polyphonic compositional methods become portals to new ways of perceiving sound, structure, and introspection. Though awe-inspiring in scope, the most remarkable thing about Malone's music is the intimacy stirred by the close listening it encourages. Malone's new album All Life Long, created between 2020 - 2023, presents her first compositions for organ since 2019's breakthrough album The Sacrificial Code alongside interrelated pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Over the course of twelve pieces, harmonic themes and patterns recur, presented in altered forms and for varied instrumentation. They emerge and reemerge like echoes of their former selves, making the familiar uncanny. Propelled by lungs and breath rather than bellows and oscillators, Malone's compositions for choir and brass take on expressive qualities that complicate the austerity that has defined her work, introducing lyricism and the beauty of human fallibility into music that has been driven by mechanical processes. At the same time, the works for organ, performed by Malone with additional accompaniment by Stephen O'Malley on four different organs dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, underscore the mighty, spectral power that those rigorous operations can achieve. All Life Long simmers in an ever-shifting tension between repetition and variation. The pieces for brass, organ, and voice are alternated asymmetrically, providing nearly continuous timbral fluctuation across its 78-minute runtime even as thematic material reiterates. Each composition's internal framework of fractal pattern permutations has the paradoxical effect of creating anticipated keystone moments of dramatic reverie and lulling the listener into believing in an illusory endlessness. On an even more granular level, the historical meantone tuning systems of each organ used, and the variable intonation of brass and voice, provide further points of emotional excavation within the harmony. The titular composition "All Life Long" appears twice on the album, first as an extended canon for organ and again in the final quarter, compactly arranged for voice In the latter, Malone pairs the music with "The Crying Water" by Arthur Symons, a poem steeped in language of mourning and eternity. For organ, "All Life Long" moves with a patient stateliness, the drama concentrated in moments when shifting tonalities generate and release dissonance and ecstasy. For voice, each word is saturated with feeling, the singers swooping gracefully downward to capture the melancholy of the narrator's relationship to the timeless tears of the sea. "Passage Through The Spheres," the album's opening piece, contains lyrics in Italian pulled from Giorgio Agamban's essay In Praise of Profanation. In it, Agamban defines profanation as, in part, the act of bringing back to communal, secular use that which has been segregated to the realm of the sacred, a process Malone enacts each time she performs on church organs. This is not music of praise, or of spiritual revelation, but it is an artistic enactment of translating the indescribable. It carries the gravity of liturgical chant, and its fixation on the infinite, but draws its weight from the earthly realm of human experience. A music that draws the listener into the present moment where they can discover themselves within the interwoven musical patterns that can come to resemble the passage of days, weeks, years, a lifetime.

"Warner Music Nashville MULTI-PLATINUM star Gabby Barrett massively anticipated sophomore album Chapter & Verse will release February 2, 2024, which you can pre-order from Friday 5th January 2024.
Her most autobiographical work to date, Chapter & Verse will follow the 23-year-old hitmaker’s PLATINUM debut Goldmine and deliver even more of the fullhearted songwriting that’s made her one of Country’s brightest young superstars

Along with fully leaning into her Country roots on Chapter & Verse, Barrett’s deepened the emotional scope of her songwriting and created an up close portrait of her experience as a wife and mother of two children, with her third baby due early this year. To that end, the album’s title refers to the chapters and verses within each book of the Bible, as well as the still-unfolding chapters in her marriage, family, career, and overall journey through life.

Gabby Barrett continues to prove herself to be an unstoppable force in Country music. Already surpassing 2.8 BILLION global career streams - listen to latest releases You’re my Texas, Glory Days, Cowboy Back & Growin’ Up Raising You’ taking off the forthcoming album Chapter & Verse."

The most political music is often the most explicit, battering its audience with its beliefs. But that isn't always the case; sometimes it embeds its ideas in subtler, more successful ways. Take The Hotelier (previously The Hotel Year), whose second full-length Home, Like Noplace Is There is comprised of what can only be described as anthemic, cathartic rock songs, sent occasionally to delicate and destructive extremes. Singer Christian Holden pushes his clean voice until it crumbles, on "The Scope of All of This Rebuilding" against a strutting pace, and on the furious "Life in Drag", but most powerfully during the chorus of "Your Deep Rest" where his words are heart-wrenching and haunting. As drummer Sam Frederick stamps out an enormous beat and chords - strummed by Cody Millet, Scott Ayotte, and Chris Hoffman - clamor around him, Holden sings, "I called in sick from your funeral / tradition of closure made it feel impossible... / I should have never kept my word to you / Not a cry not a sound / Might've learned how to swim but never taught how to drown /You said remember me for me, I need to set my spirit free." By making political statements through personal explorations, The Hotelier has not only make a uniquely political record, but also a subtler, more successful one.

Gruff Rhys is pleased to announce his new album "Sadness Sets Me Free" which will be released by Rough Trade Records on 26.01.2024. This incredibly will be the 25th album he has released in his 35 year career individually, collaboratively and as a member of various bands. "Sadness Sets Me Free" is also the follow up to 2021"s "Seeking new Gods", his first solo top ten record. The album will be available in a range of formats including a unique Dinked edition on "honeycomb neo-neapolitan" vinyl, an LP sleeve with "container doors" and a bonus 7" with exclusive audio for the first 1500 copies. A gatefold soft pack CD also includes a pull out poster. Lead-off single "Celestial Candyfloss" is a telling four minute glimpse of the forthcoming album, revealing the heady wonders and classic pop sounds within. Soaring strings carry the sweet melodies along, anchored by just enough necessary melancholy to add emotional ballast. The eye-popping video was created by long-time collaborator Mark James and compliments the scope and style of the song on a galactic scale. "Celestial Candyfloss" is, Gruff says, "an attempted pocket symphony about the cosmic lengths that people will travel in the pursuit of love and acceptance. Mark James has brought the Sadness Sets Me Free album cover to life & managed to place me watching TV interference in a shipping container that"s lost in space. For what is apparently the 25th album I"ve had a hand in writing I"ve reverted to a rich seam of inspiration relating to shedding some light on sadness and the general terror of cosmic loneliness." And so it was that Gruff and his band - Osian Gwynedd (piano), Huw V Williams (double bass) and former Flaming Lips drummer turned Super Furry Animals archivist Kliph Scurlock (drums) piled into a van driven by the late, legendary tour manager "Dr" Kiko Loiacono and raced from Dunkirk, where they had just played the final show of a tour of Spain and France, to the outskirts of Paris in the early hours of a March morning in 2022. There, in La Frette Studios, a recording facility installed in a 19th-century house, Gruff and his road-hardened group tracked "Sadness Sets Me Free" in just three days. Backing vocals were added along the way by Kate Stables from This Is The Kit along with additional strings and orchestration and it was mixed between Marseille and Cardiff. What finally emerged from these intense bouts of cross-continental activity was Gruff"s most accomplished and beautiful record to date. In a career that has taken him from the slate-mining towns of north-west Wales, down to the expat communities of Patagonia, up to the Mandan tribe of the Great Plains of North America and across to the Tuareg rock groups of the Saharan Desert, Gruff Rhys, one of Britain"s most beloved and successful singer-songwriters, has always been willing to follow an opportunity, wherever it may lead him. "At this point I quite like working with serendipity," he says. "Not in a cosmic way, but I try and leave things open to chance encounters and chance geography. As I"m around 25 albums in I"m always looking for ways to make a different-sounding record".

Gruff Rhys is pleased to announce his new album "Sadness Sets Me Free" which will be released by Rough Trade Records on 26.01.2024. This incredibly will be the 25th album he has released in his 35 year career individually, collaboratively and as a member of various bands. "Sadness Sets Me Free" is also the follow up to 2021"s "Seeking new Gods", his first solo top ten record. The album will be available in a range of formats including a unique Dinked edition on "honeycomb neo-neapolitan" vinyl, an LP sleeve with "container doors" and a bonus 7" with exclusive audio for the first 1500 copies. A gatefold soft pack CD also includes a pull out poster. Lead-off single "Celestial Candyfloss" is a telling four minute glimpse of the forthcoming album, revealing the heady wonders and classic pop sounds within. Soaring strings carry the sweet melodies along, anchored by just enough necessary melancholy to add emotional ballast. The eye-popping video was created by long-time collaborator Mark James and compliments the scope and style of the song on a galactic scale. "Celestial Candyfloss" is, Gruff says, "an attempted pocket symphony about the cosmic lengths that people will travel in the pursuit of love and acceptance. Mark James has brought the Sadness Sets Me Free album cover to life & managed to place me watching TV interference in a shipping container that"s lost in space. For what is apparently the 25th album I"ve had a hand in writing I"ve reverted to a rich seam of inspiration relating to shedding some light on sadness and the general terror of cosmic loneliness." And so it was that Gruff and his band - Osian Gwynedd (piano), Huw V Williams (double bass) and former Flaming Lips drummer turned Super Furry Animals archivist Kliph Scurlock (drums) piled into a van driven by the late, legendary tour manager "Dr" Kiko Loiacono and raced from Dunkirk, where they had just played the final show of a tour of Spain and France, to the outskirts of Paris in the early hours of a March morning in 2022. There, in La Frette Studios, a recording facility installed in a 19th-century house, Gruff and his road-hardened group tracked "Sadness Sets Me Free" in just three days. Backing vocals were added along the way by Kate Stables from This Is The Kit along with additional strings and orchestration and it was mixed between Marseille and Cardiff. What finally emerged from these intense bouts of cross-continental activity was Gruff"s most accomplished and beautiful record to date. In a career that has taken him from the slate-mining towns of north-west Wales, down to the expat communities of Patagonia, up to the Mandan tribe of the Great Plains of North America and across to the Tuareg rock groups of the Saharan Desert, Gruff Rhys, one of Britain"s most beloved and successful singer-songwriters, has always been willing to follow an opportunity, wherever it may lead him. "At this point I quite like working with serendipity," he says. "Not in a cosmic way, but I try and leave things open to chance encounters and chance geography. As I"m around 25 albums in I"m always looking for ways to make a different-sounding record".

Jakarta Records is proud to present “Les Grandes Vacances” courtesy of Beirut’s Cosmic Analog Ensemble, aka multi-instrumental phenom Charif Megarbane. The LP is an expansive musical odyssey, one that paints a melodic tapestry woven from an eclectic panorama of sonic tools. Funky beats, dreamy melodies + cinematic flair combine to create an experience that transcends time. From vibrant funky energy to introspective moods and library-inspired tunes, “Les Grandes Vacances” captures the essence of past and present, inviting you to indulge in the perfect balance of “groove-stalgia.” Out January 19, 2024.


Cosmic Analog Ensemble (1.6k Spotify Monthly Listeners – SML), the prolific one-man band helmed by Charif Megarbane (61.5k SML), the staggeringly prolific producer, instrumentalist, and all-around musical mastermind, returns to his “Ensemble” with LP “Les Grandes Vacances.” Megarbane's artistry has garnered widespread recognition, with notable placements in Spotify Editorial Playlists like "Global Groove" (679k) and "Folk Fabrique" (162k), along with coverage from esteemed platforms / publications such as BBC Radio, Bandcamp, The Vinyl Factory, Time Magazine, and Esquire, among others. Building on the success of his debut solo release “Marzipan” in 2023 via Habibi Funk, “Les Grandes Vacances” is a sonic journey that captures the full scope of Megarbane’s sonic habitus. As a composer and producer, Megarbane touts hugely versatile, sometimes volatile musicianship — his 100+ catalogue of projects (including legendary groups like the Cosmic Analog Ensemble, Free Association Syndicate, Monumental Detail, etc.) features a huge domain of sonic direction. Now, Jakarta Records presents a new expansion in the Megarbane sonic universe.

In the enchanting sonic world of “Les Grandes Vacances,” Cosmic Analog Ensemble expertly combines diverse musical elements to craft an immersive experience. From vibrant funky energy to introspective moments and library-inspired compositions, the album's sonic palette is rich and varied. The meticulously designed artwork by Simone Cihlar (known for collabs with Anderson Paak., Tom Misch, Ivan Ave, Tapioca and others) complements the album's thematic depth, enhancing the visual and auditory journey for listeners.

First single is the thrilling sonic escapade, “La Ligne Claire,” set to release on November 10th in conjunction with LP pre-order. The track immerses listeners in vintage spy movie ambiance, featuring groovy drums, warm keys, thematic guitars, and strings that create an unforgettable car chase scene. As part of the rollout schedule, this single offers a glimpse into the album's captivating fusion of nostalgia and innovation, promising a musical adventure that lingers and resonates in your ears. Second single, the lush and groovy “Le Dictionnaire des Sentiments,” follows in the sonic footsteps of Serge Gainsbourg (complete with beautifully poignant French lyricism), out December 8th to round out the year. The track jerks the listener towards a more meditative state and expanding, cinematic sound.

Kicking of 2024 will be the absolute funkified single 3 “Maritime Jazz,” out January 5th. The track transports you to a groovy marina where the movement of the sea and boats sways you along a Madlib / Yesterdays New Quintet-esque groove.

Reflecting on his creative process, Megarbane cites a stream of consciousness approach to the Cosmic Analog Ensemble: “It’s a very spontaneous, playful, and diary-like approach and workflow…I trust my instinct because instinct is based on experience.”

The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great
variety of morbid symptoms appear"
-Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks.

Iskandr's latest offering "Spiritus Sylvestris" appears to be a radical
statement in both content and form Signifying a departure from the black metal roots of the project, the psychedelic folk doom of the new album builds upon the directions of where both "Vergezicht" and "Glas" were already moving towards.

"Spiritus Sylvestris" is cinematic in scope: majestic and threatening in its aura of sublime grandeur. The Latin title translates to "spirit of the wild" and also refers to the early modern alchemical name for carbon dioxide - when the spirit of the wilderness is released into the
aether through the burning of wood and charcoal. The songs tell impressionistic stories of natural elements personified; when powerful spirits that linger in the earth are stirred, those elemental forces will be forced to haunt our world.

In an era of irreversible damage to our planet and anthropogenic climate change, Iskandr aims to offer funeral dirges for the world that we have already lost.

"Spiritus Sylvestris" embraces a limitless approach to translate this vision into musical form. Employing musical elements from a broad array of genres; easily moving between the martial stomp of early Laibach and the ethereal melodics of Dead Can Dance.

Recorded and mixed by the legendary Pieter Kloos (The Devil's
Blood, Motorpsycho) at The Void Studio in Eindhoven, the new Iskandr record has broadened the scope and sound of the project beyond any confines, resulting in the most open soundscapes from Iskandr to date. The heavy baritone guitar riffs that form the backbone of the record provide a pitch-black canvas in which huge percussive rhythms and psychedelic layers of Hammond organ, Mellotron as well
as subtle acoustics move in and out of focus. If this world is at an end it deserves a requiem for that what is lost.

Producer / composer / multi-instrumentalist Angel Marcloid records music under the moniker Fire-Toolz. Though Marcloid’s output emerges in a litany of aliases and projects — from the jazz fusion / new age of Nonlocal Forecast to the vaporous nostalgia of MindSpring Memories — the Fire-Toolz catalog remains the central focus of the prolific artist’s musical universe and a home for Marcloid’s most ambitious work.

"I am upset because I see something that is not there.", the fifth Fire-Toolz album to join the Hausu Mountain catalog since 2017, follows 2021’s sprawling double-album Eternal Home and 2022’s self-released EP I will not use the body’s eyes today. I am upset… offers listeners a prismatic cross-section of juxtaposed genres and compositional contortions to explore, maintaining Fire-Toolz’s signature density and complexity while tightening the scope of Marcloid’s experimentation into the project’s most focused song cycle to date.

Perhaps more than any previous Fire-Toolz album, I am upset... presents some form of pop music, carried in Marcloid’s passages of clean vocals, in the bright synth tones that animate its tracks, in the yearning saxophone lines that pour into view and whisk the narrative onto a new path. The format of a one-person “band” carries a different weight in a landscape of solo artists crafting modernist productions that don’t allude in the slightest to various twentieth-century rock-related traditions. Fire-Toolz exists on both sides of this divide. The music of Fire-Toolz draws energy on a moment-to-moment basis from the constant fluctuation between seemingly disparate styles, yet Marcloid repeatedly pulls off the impossible feat of making chaotic deviations and improbable jump-cuts between ideas sound holistic, as if such compositional gambits were already logical to begin with. Bursts of harsh textural noise cut into drifts of new age synth bliss, while screamo verses bookend passages of hyper-technical jazz fusion.

A1 - Healing Properties
Opening his Spatial account with Healing Properties, Eusabia immediately throws down the gauntlet showcasing an inimitable versatility with breakbeats, permeated with a jungle flex so rarely captured in the atmospheric D&B landscape. Pivoting effortlessly as the track progresses from drumloop to thunderous drumloop with a simmering haunted atmosphere and deep, weighty basslines to yearning filtered vocal samples, this track has it all.

A2 - The Space Between
Smooth jungly synthwork seizes the foreground before crisp breaks begin to reveal our direction through The Space Between, jittery key stabs and familiar old school FX create a unique sci-fi style backdrop as the breaks drive the vibe forward, switching and weaving in style, constantly mixing it up to ram the point home that you cannot fully appreciate a Eusabia track until every second has been consumed - many times over, as The Space Between demands.

AA1 - Scope of Understanding
A more contemplative piece, Scope of Understanding strips things back with a synthwave-esque vibe tinged with intrigue and allure. Soon the breakbeats leap into gear and develop with an incredible level of refined detail, expertly edited, chopped and cut to a darkly undertone of sub bass and subtle micro melodies. Scope of Understanding will leave you in awe of the quickfire ideas Eusabia can conjure in the space of 6 minutes.

AA2 - Self Reflection
A smooth atmospheric introduction ushers in a thumping drum tools workout, somehow perfectly in sync with the calm harmonies dancing around in the composition. Certainly a track to enjoy both on the discerning dancefloor and while driving home with rain lashing at the windscreen at 2am, Self Reflection's synths and breaks conclude the EP in style leaving a long lasting memory of a Spatial debut you will not forget.

Words by Chris Hayes.

Van Halen did more than announce to the world the earthshaking arrival of a revolutionary guitarist. Performed by an enterprising California quartet that took its name from two of its principal members, the 1978 debut ripped headlines away from punk, injected fresh energy into a then-moribund rock 'n' roll scene, reimagined how heavy music and throwback pop could coexist, and invited everyone to experience the top-down pleasures of a beach-front Saturday night every day of the week no matter where they lived. Painstakingly restored by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, and the first of a multi-album series in an exciting partnership between the famous reissue label and Van Halen, Van Halen delivers feel-good thrills and hormonally charged desires like never before.

Limited to 12,000 numbered copies, pressed on dead-quiet MoFi SuperVinyl at RTI, and mastered from the original analogue master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's ultra-hi-fi UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP collector's edition pays tribute to the record's merit and allows fans to experience Van Halen's original blend of raw power, Hollywood flair, and vaudeville fun for generations to come. Playing with reference-setting sonics that elevate a 10-times-platinum landmark whose importance cannot be quantitatively measured, this definitive version provides a clear, clean, transparent, balanced, and turn-the-volume-up-to-11 view of an album that birthed entirely new styles. Since MoFi's unique SuperVinyl compound allows you to crank the decibels to your wildest desires without risking noise-floor interference, prepare to not only hear but feel Van Halen in your chest, no fifth-row concert seat necessary.

The premium packaging and gorgeous presentation of the UD1S Van Halen pressing befit its extremely select status. Housed in a deluxe box, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. No expense has been spared. Aurally and visually, this UD1S reissue exists as a curatorial artefact meant to be preserved, touched, and examined. It is made for discerning listeners that prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in the art – and everything involved with the album, from the iconic cover art to the meticulous finishes and, yes, of course, Eddie Van Halen's pioneering fretwork and his brother Alex's double-bass percussion.

Indeed, could a piece of music that transformed how countless guitarists approached their instrument be more fittingly named than "Eruption"? Likely not, and in just 102 seconds, Eddie Van Halen rewrote, reimagined, and reconfigured a vocabulary last significantly updated a decade earlier by fellow six-string wizard Jimi Hendrix. Akin to the Washington State legend, Eddie Van Halen developed his own techniques and tones all the while making his seismic accomplishments seem effortless. Devoid of the pretence, ego, and showiness that infected many of his imitators, the Dutch native sticks to a straightforward approach that underlines the authority, prowess, and visionary scope of his playing and then-unheard-of finger-tapping skills. Throughout Van Halen, he establishes himself as an instant idol – a savant whose otherworldly combination of breadth, poise, feel, speed, force, and melody seems beamed in from another galaxy.

As does nearly every song on the record, whose cohesiveness and dynamic put into perspective the advanced chemistry and one-for-all spirit the youthful band had out of the gates. Having paid its dues for years in bars and clubs – going as far as recording a 24-track demo for Kiss bassist Gene Simmons at Village Recorders only to be spurned by management companies that felt its music wouldn't go anywhere – Van Halen finally got a deserved break when Warner Bros. executives signed the group in 1977. The subsequent recording sessions further testify on behalf of the band's synergy and alignment. Completed in just a few weeks with producer Ted Templeman, Van Halen was primarily cut live in the studio with minimal overdubs and edits. The explosiveness, energy, and electricity remain definitive, and as heard on this UD1S set, put the group on a private stage – humming amplifiers, Frankenstrat guitar, bright spotlights, sweaty headbands, and then some.

Van Halen yielded just one hit in the form of a Top 40 single (a breathless cover of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me") but practically every song on the revered LP has become a staple. Named the 202nd Greatest Album of All Time by Rolling Stone and considered by countless experts as one of the best debuts in history, the record displays what can happen with four distinct talents gel and strive for the same purposes. In Van Halen's case, the latter almost always involved partying, freedom, sex, and, in the immortal words of singer David Lee Roth, living "life like there's no tomorrow." The celebration manifests from the opening notes of the strutting "Runnin' with the Devil" – announced with the blare of droning car horns, Michael Anthony's robust bass line, and Alex Van Halen's thumping drumming – and continues through the conclusion of the white-hot "On Fire," goosed by Eddie Van Halen's race-track-ready lines, Roth's flamboyant deliveries, and the rhythm section's cat-like pounce.

Picking out individual highlights on Van Halen is akin to trying to count all the stars in a clear nighttime desert sky: There are far too many to identify, once you see one you notice another dozen you didn't spot before, and the cluster is best enjoyed as a whole. What's evident over repeat listens is the sheer diversity, a fact that's often overlooked: The high harmonies and background funk of "Jamie's Cryin'"; the insistent cane-and-a-tophat shuffle and doo-wop shoo-bop vocal break on "I'm the One"; the throwback acoustic blues that spreads into fast-paced, single-entendre wildfire on the Roth-led standout interpretation of John Brim's "Ice Cream Man." Like the man says, on Van Halen, all the flavours are guaranteed to satisfy.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior


Instead of utilizing the industry-standard three-step lacquer process, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's new UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss. While three-step processing is designed for optimum yield and efficiency, UD1S is created for the ultimate in sound quality. Just as Mobile Fidelity pioneered the UHQR (Ultra High-Quality Record) with JVC in the 1980s, UD1S again represents another state-of-the-art advance in the record-manufacturing process. MFSL engineers begin with the original master recordings, painstakingly transfer them to DSD 256, and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. These lacquers are used to create a very fragile, pristine UD1S stamper called a "convert." Delicate "converts" are then formed into the actual record stampers, producing a final product that literally and figuratively brings you closer to the music. By skipping the additional steps of pulling another positive and an additional negative, as done in the three-step process used in standard pressings, UD1S produces a final LP with the lowest noise floor possible today. The removal of the additional two steps of generational loss in the plating process reveals tremendous amounts of extra musical detail and dynamics, which are otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. Every conceivable aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the most perfect record album available today.

MoFi SuperVinyl


Developed by NEOTECH and RTI, MoFi SuperVinyl is the most exacting-to-specification vinyl compound ever devised. Analogue lovers have never seen (or heard) anything like it. Extraordinarily expensive and extremely painstaking to produce, the special proprietary compound addresses two specific areas of improvement: noise floor reduction and enhanced groove definition. The vinyl composition features a new carbonless dye (hold the disc up to the light and see) and produces the world's quietest surfaces. This high-definition formula also allows for the creation of cleaner grooves that are indistinguishable from the original lacquer. MoFi SuperVinyl provides the closest approximation of what the label's engineers hear in the mastering lab.

Repress!

On 22nd October, the Nottingham-raised and highly-praised musician/DJ/producer Matt Cutler, AKA Lone, presents his 8th album – and first in 5 years – ‘Always Inside Your Head’. It marks two major changes, with both a new label and new approach – featuring vocalists for the first time.

This deeply textural and ethereal artwork is situated high above the clouds, amidst the heavens, occupying a stratospheric state where swathes of synthesized vapour and azure rays sound like a literal breath of fresh air.

A varied selection of music influenced the record, but two main influences were Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine. “I wanted to approach a range of different styles, but attack them from their angle in a way, so for example on 'Inlove2' I tried to imagine what a Balearic / acid house tune might sound like if it were produced by Kevin Shields”, comments Lone.

Another key example of Cutler’s strange but successful combination of elements is the halcyon bliss of ‘Echo Paths’, where his trademark fat drums and love for hip hop meet double-time pan pipes, dub effects and dream pop, mixed into a wonderfully lysergic concoction.

This rarefied auditory stratus was previously evident in tracks like ‘Alpha Wheel 4 (Ambient Mix)’ from ‘DJ Kicks’, ‘Under Cherry Blossoms (Minds Eye Reprise)’ from ‘Ambivert Tools, Vol. 2’, ‘Pulsar’ (from ‘Ambivert 4’), and ‘How Can You Tell’ (from ‘Abraxas’), but is now more fully-fledged, broader in scope and even more celestial.

In addition to the above, the LP exists somewhere between trip hop on Mo' Wax, 90s Warp, intelligent drum & bass and ambient house. There are heavier forays too, like ‘Mouth Of God’, where darker clouds emerge, but are pierced like acid lightning with fierce, tearing tech-step bass.

Although still firmly rooted in club culture – here Lone shows a definite leaning towards a song-based sound, with several tracks edging towards the same crossover space as the nineties hits which also inspired him – particularly William Orbit’s production on Madonna's 'Frozen', and Olive's 'You're Not Alone'. This is especially evident on the bright, spacious brilliance of 'Hidden By Horizons', where vocals and synths swirl around one another, with crisp breakbeats and reggae rolls pushing purposefully through the ether.

Despite initially seeming almost entirely sunny of disposition, upon deeper immersion there’s lot more beneath the album’s surface, both in its deep pools of immiscible layered elements, and also thematically. When recording Cutler kept in mind a loose narrative based on birth, death, and our existence in-between.

He then extended this idea to reach what may happen after death, which is reflected in the sequencing: By penultimate track ‘Undaunted’ the life reflected in this longplayer has come to an end, which is then followed by 'Coming In To Being And Passing Away' – an afterlife epilogue, which evokes a transition from this world to the next.

Swim is super happy to welcome their first 12” record into the world, and Mark Lando is up for his second release! The first side is a body affair, with acid-tinged techno dominating both cuts. Formation is a fun, muscular take on the format, while Scope zones in on his industrial forays. The other side gives time to heady, joyous gear, sporting two tracks spreading far in style and tempo. The title track is nimble and fast on its feet, a rhythmic workout indebted to bass music as much as to new age experiments. Rounding things out, In This Light harks back to the heydays of atmospheric trance excursions, leaving in its wake a warm note of care.

Deafheaven’s monolithic second LP Sunbather, was not only a massive success in 2013, it created a radical shift in heavy music culture, an acceptance of the genre by previous outsiders, and a trailblazing sound that heretofore hadn’t been heard outside of learned circles. It was a reville introducing the changing of the guard in metal, featuring phenomenal reviews across the board, and breaking the mold used by buttoned-up indie types and false-flag musical dilettantes intent on keeping the status quo. A maverick release in every facet, the cornerstone for the triumph that is Sunbather truly lies in its world class songwriting. From the opening anthem “Dream House,'' it's clear to see that Deafheaven was soaring triumphantly into the unknown, through the emotional highs and lows, the fire and rain, and onto the unseen road ahead. Lyrically, Sunbather examines themes of existentialism, diving headfirst into the abyss, and the pursuit of self-discovery. The album's title itself is similar in scope, representing the embrace of the light and movement out of the dark unknown. Sunbather takes influence from the majesty of early Emperor and underground US heroes Weakling, the dark beauty of France’s Alcest, the introspective nature of post-rock and shoegaze gods like Mogwai and Slowdive, as well as the DIY spirit of punk ranging from Fugazi to Man is the Bastard to create a new realm for their emotional and expansive epics.