Cerca:series x

Revisiting a press release for the Nightingales' last album, Four Against Fate, we recalled hesitant anticipation for the forthcoming King Rocker, a film documentary of Robert Lloyd and Nightingales, made by Michael Cumming and Stewart Lee. After forty years of activity, Robert and the band had seen hyped recordings go lost, scant commercial success. Royalties? Ha. Yet response to King Rocker was immediately positive. Fab reviews galore, a long process regaining master rights which led to a series of expanded reissues with Fire. A tour postponed three times finally took place, to fully-packed houses. It was a very good year. The band felt a degree of anxiety prior to the sessions, which took place at Valencia's Elefante Studios. With bassist Andi Schmid isolated during Covid, the band had yet begun working out individual rough sketches, typically battered into songs over a period of months. They went into a new studio blind, with a new producer, Jorge Bernabe, without rehearsals . . . and produced a top-to-bottom masterpiece. Thirty seconds in, "Sunlit Uplands", is already a classic showcasing Fliss Kitson's increased songwriting power and the core dichotomy of the groups's best songs: perverse as fuck, catchy as fuck. I � CCTV is highlighted by a fab Jim Smith astral-garage guitar riff . . . and that's a one-two punch few albums ever equal, let alone carry over to the affectionate "Frances Sokolov", Robert's ode to mentor Vi Subversa, the playground riff that underlines "Spread Yourself Out" and then "Bloody Breath", the best encapsulation of all the band's genius in developing a kind of "pop" that no other combo has ever cracked. Other highlights include the lopsided mysterious beauty of "Magical Left Foot", the courtly raver of "I Need The Money At The Time" with a wonderful motorik groove driven by bassist Andi Schmid, and the album closer, "My Sweet Friend", a rockabilly lullaby which sounds like a magical outtake from Robert's one and only solo album It's a corker, it's a marvel, it's the best Nightingales record to date. Try and deny it. Tracks: 1 Sunlight Uplands (Turn That Frown Upside Down) 2 I � CCTV 3 Frances Sokolov 4 Spread Yourself Out 5 Bloody Breath 6 Mind Of Stone 7 I Needed The Money At The Time 8 The Very Nature 9 Magical Left Foot 10 Mark Meets No Mark 11 My Sweet Friend

To Commemorate The 30 Year Anniversary Of Cypress Hill, Get On Down Presents A Series Of 7 Inch Singles Of Every Cut From One Of The Most Legendary Debuts Of All Time.

City Of Light was recorded in Banaras, India, and mixed in Greenpoint, NY. It is about Banaras, a city older than history, tradition, and legends. It is Shiva's land, founded at the dawn of creation. It is India's oldest and most fabled city. The Hindus call it Kashi, the luminous... The City of Light. Music composed by Bill Laswell + Coil, Trilok Gurtu, Tetsu Inoue, and features texts and vocals from Lori Carson and an historical introduction by Hakim Bay. First time ever on vinyl, re-released in our Sub Rosa Blackcore series. City of Light is the sixth solo album by American composer Bill Laswell, released on July 29, 1997. While it may appear an anachronism in his catalog, fans of Bill Laswell will find City of Light an extension of ideas he has explored throughout his career. His strong interest in Eastern music and religion resulted in this 1997 collaboration with Janet Rienstra. Part sacred, spoken word, part meditative soundscape, City of Light takes as its inspiration the holy region of Banaras, India. Said to belong to Shiva, Banarasalso contains the Ganges river: a place sought by Hindus for their cremation. Surrounding the texts is some of the most compelling music this genre has produced featuring Trilok Gurtu on tablas, Coil (Peter Christopherson + John Balance) on electronic, Tetsu Inoue at sound collages and Lori Carson at vocals. Track Listing LP side 1 01 Nothing 13'03 02 Kashi 7'19 side 2 03 Kala 13'06 04 Above the Earth 11'19

Baltimore’s Julien Chang writes music that tunnels
toward a series of deeper truths, investigating
everyday existentialism, love and life, art and the artist.
Arriving in 2019 with his critically acclaimed album
‘Jules’, Chang set a precedent with his breezy, dreamy
debut and is now exacting his focus on 2022 with new
music.
 Chang’s second album, ‘The Sale’, testifies to his
talents as he wrestles with enviable grace across his
new 12-track opus the idea of estrangement and the
problematics of artistic creation. Chang leans sonically
into indie-pop, with guitar-driven instrumentation
burbling across punchy drums and his layered,
ethereal vocals, yet the album is still replete with
touchstones of the psychedelic popcraft that
enamoured listeners on his debut.
 Recorded partially in his hometown of Baltimore and
partially in his dorm room at Princeton, ‘The Sale’ is a
homegrown effort with Chang playing all instruments,
bar the odd exception of a few notable cameos from
Baltimore locals, classmates and old friends. Following
his debut ‘Jules’ - which saw Chang earn praise from
the likes of Pitchfork, Fader, The Guardian, NME, Loud
& Quiet, DIY and Billboard, alongside support from
BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music via Annie Mac, Jack
Saunders and Jamz Supernova - his new album
explores the discrepancy between two worlds, a
struggle to get comfortable in either one of them, and
ultimately an artistic fascination with this very struggle.
 A statement of intent from an artist who promises to be
an important rising voice of our times, Chang’s new
album is released on CD and crystal clear vinyl.

Throughout the last decade, Strange Ranger have been crafting seamless
indie music that feels both already classic and precisely of its time
From Daymoon's strains of the Microphones by way of the Pacific Northwest-era
indie scene to the dark elation and Cure-reminiscent stylings of Remembering the
Rockets' they've become one of the rare standouts of a crop of bands that have
managed to grow up with us. More than just a stopgap along that progression,
the new mixtape entitled No Light In Heaven holds some of the band's most
experimental and ambitious work yet. Stitched together through a series of
sessions at both a house in rural NY and Strange Ranger's home studios in both
Philadelphia and NYC (where Eiger and Woodman moved in 2021, the mixtape
possesses something both abstract and astute; the product of a band in
transition and a group of people making something effortlessly transcendental
out of their new surroundings. Heralded as unpredictable and expansive, a
thrilling document of a band with an ever- changing muse,with songs that are
packed with hooks and an abundance of feeling (Stereogum). This outpouring of
evocative emotion makes the band's more traditional song structures read like a
new breed of pop music in its purest form. From Needing You 's effervescent
euphoria to string- laden album close It's You, the record seamlessly fuses
together a multitude of genres, where the industrial punch of In Hell sits
alongside the chopped up vocals and melodic keys of Get Right Up to the Mic.
"No Light in Heaven" marks the beginning of a bold new era for the band & the
groups first release with Fire Talk.

Magazine is glad to announce the album Waves 3 by Curd Duca, 
 the third and last part of the trilogy Waves: Austrian electronic composer Curd Duca is widely known for his 1990es series of critically acclaimed easy listening 1-5 (Normal) and elevator 1-3 (Mille Plateaux).

After a long break from the studio, Duca has issued part 1 of the Waves series in late 2020 on Magazine. This was in fact his first album in 20 years. The Waves recordings pick up the thread of his 90s work and open up a new chapter. Again, everything is shifting constantly and all tracks are quite different (soft, rough, melodic, abstract ... ), but complement each other in a surprisingly coherent way to form an idiosyncratic universe.

While other experimental artists can sound as if they're attempting to lift lead weights over their heads, Duca is content flicking feathers into their faces. After his impressive 1990s/00s run on Normal and Mille Plateaux, Curd Duca had disappeared for 20 years before emerging from the aether last year.

The albums of the new "Waves" Trilogy represent a flawless examination of sound and texture. The Vienna-based producer still straddles high and low culture, but approaches his sonics with a more historically aware ear. So plain and resonant gong recordings are placed next to pop music loops and DSP-fractured cut-ups, and icy electronic jams nudge up against cassette warped instrumental sketches.

Waves 3 is a continuation and culmination of the series. In the final chapter, we’re drawn in with church bells on dome, but quickly transported to another era entirely with the crackly bläser and absurd zither, a tongue-in-cheek plunderphonic experiment assembled from zither samples. Duca follows this evocative run of tracks with a machine-gun blast of experimental sound, from the percussive 500 GRM to the ferric ASMR birdsong of ziegenmelker.

This is Duca at his most uncompromising, grabbing central European culture and dragging it through his array of processes. Playing the album from beginning to end opens up a weightless cut-and-paste mixtape, stitched together with expert foresight and a knowing wink to camera.

Like the best psychedelic experiences, memories are triggered and turned inside-out, and knowledge is allowed to blossom. Curd Duca has been refining his process for three decades now, and few artists have quite the same ability to challenge, provoke, and inspire.

20 years of Tapete Records - Our first release, if memory serves, was in 2002. Damn, time flies so fast when you"re having fun. The world has changed a lot in the last 20 years but one detail has remained the same: We"re still putting out great music. That"s a bit reassuring, isn"t it? So we thought in our Tapete Building at Stahltwiete 10 in Hamburg-Altona: Let"s look back and start a series of good, old-fashioned, fantastic label compilations in the style of "Shadow Facory", "Tamla Motown Is Hot! Hot! Hot!" or "Wanna Buy A Bridge?"...something like that. And so here is "Intact & Smiling - The Weird & Wonderful World Of Tapete Records Vol.1". It wasn"t that easy to choose 28 out of about 5000 released songs, but what"s easy? Therefore a series. "Intact & Smiling Vol. 1" concentrates on the poppy side of Tapete Records, the basic tone is upbeat and uplifting. Can"t hurt these days. The title comes from the John Howard & The Night Mail song which says: "Intact and smiling, an independent soul, nobody"s slave". What could be more fitting? We would like to thank all the great artists who have released music with us over the last two decades, especially the bands and artists who have so kindly and unbureaucratically made available their great songs for this compilation. And of course a big thank you to you who listen to, buy and stream (well, yes) Tapete Records albums and songs. So close your eyes, open your ears, open your hearts, open up a bottle and step into The Weird & Wonderful World Of Tapete Records Vol. 1.

As three souls plunge down from the heavens, death and destruction can be felt hanging in the air like a foul stench. Red clouds swirl around a black sun that never sets and an erratic clock ticks off-tempo, moving faster and slower before rewinding and starting anew.

“Let me paint you a picture…” vocalist Mikey Arthur sings, welcoming listeners with a dramatic opening scene. It takes a skillful guide to navigate the darkest depths of hell. And, as The Gloom In The Corner depict in their second full-length album Trinity, death is merely the beginning of the series of chilling adventures

Purposefully aligning their song count with unlucky number thirteen – a reoccurring symbol in the ever-unfolding Gloom Cinematic Universe or GCU – it comes as little surprise to longtime fans that each of the Australian quartet’s enticing tracks intertwine to form an interlocking tale; this time centered around the appropriately labeled unholy trinity.

Comprised of previously deceased characters Rachel Barker, Ethan Hardy, and Clara Carne, the group’s bloody battle is woven throughout the album as the anti-heroes determinedly claw their way back to Earth from the Rabbit Hole dimension, slashing, shooting, and extinguishing anyone who dares to oppose their quest. Yet, for the Girl of Glass, Ronin, and Queen of Misanthropy, there is clearly more to the story than what can be contained within a single package.

Projecting a wide and complex web of lore, plot twists, and tongue and cheek humor, frontman Mikey Arthur, guitarist Matt Stevens, bassist Paul Musolino, and drummer Nic Haberle, have been producing highly detailed concept releases since their formation. And, consistently filling in more missing pieces of the puzzle with every body of work, the band equate each new record to a fresh season of The Umbrella Academy dropping on the streaming service of your choice. Because, just as a great TV series captivates viewers with its music and storytelling, the quartet’s work provides a complete experience designed to allow fans to check in with their favorite characters, all the while enjoying a cinematic new soundtrack.

For those just joining the GCU, as well as those looking for a quick refresh, 2016 debut album Fear Me introduced listeners to main protagonists Julian “Jay” Hardy, a Section 13 agent consumed by anger over his girlfriend Rachel’s death, and Jay’s gloom (later known as Sherlock Adaliah Bones), a demonic entity who at times takes over Jay’s body as a host vessel. 2017 EP Homecoming tells the tale of Jay’s brother Ethan, a war veteran suffering from PTSD, who upon discovering his brother’s struggle, kills himself as part of a Dante-style rescue mission to bring Rachel back to life. In 2019 EP Flesh and Bones, we’re introduced to Clara Carne, a past witness to one of Jay and Sherlock’s crimes, who instead of taking revenge, began a twisted love story with Sherlock, only to be murdered by his forced hand. And 2020’s Ultima Pluvia EP where we finally learn of Sherlock’s past as an ancient warlord under the tyrannical King Baphicho, and see Sherlock and Jay’s deaths ushered in by Section 13 opponent and New Order leader Elias DeGraver and his gloom Atticus Encey.

After 2016’s Fear Me, the band admit that their original intention was to jump straight into the events of Trinity before pivoting to create Homecoming, Flesh and Bones, and Ultima Pluvia. However, upon reflection, primary storywriter Mikey Arthur believes that pushing the timeline back actually provided greater opportunity for the group to properly flesh out the songs and plotlines for their sophomore studio record.

Indeed, while Trinity re-introduces the three central “heroes” of this new arc, it’s important to understand that while familiar, the characters are not carbon copies of who they were earlier in the story. And neither is the band who brought them to life.

Fully embracing the weird and whacky has never been a struggle for The Gloom In The Corner. Rather, it’s together with this attitude that the group come away with special moments such as the fascinating old and new dynamic between neighboring tracks “Red Clouds” – a song whose initial version predates the formation of The Gloom In The Corner as an official band – and “Gravity” in which a demo intended for future material was adjusted to fit the sonic drop.

Mirroring this evolution in the band’s musical approach, a sense of growth can also be seen projected in the characters and story that the quartet chronicle across the thirteen tracks.

Classifying their individual sound as an intricate form of “cinema or theater-core” due to the depth and breadth of their musical approach, features, samples, symphonic elements, and conceptual nature, The Gloom In The Corner continue to prove that they’re more than just a simple concept band.

In fact, similar to character theme music in movies and video games, the group seamlessly play off their diverse sonic story in a variety of ways. Continuing to breathe new life into older staples from their catalog, the quartet reworked their infamous “Oxymøron” breakdown from Fear Me into an impactful moment in Trinity’s “Nor Hell A Fury” and sprinkled audio easter eggs of this sort all throughout their new music for fans to discover.

Listeners are also brought further into the world of the GCU with the help of what The Gloom In The Corner call their “casting process.” Like picking actors for a musical, the band meticulously selected eleven different vocal features and several additional voice actors to bring the album and characters to life. Described as a 50/50 split between notable talents such as Ryo Kinoshita (Crystal Lake), Joe Badolato (Fit For An Autopsy), and Lauren Babic (Red Handed Denial), as well as talented friends and family like Elijah Witt (Cane Hill) and Mikey’s sister Amelia Duffield, each featured artist brought their own touch and realistic spark to the characters they portrayed.

For in the end, as much as Trinity and it’s cast live within the confines of their own supernatural worlds, themes such as falling out of love (Gatekeeper), battling depression (Obliteration Imminent), and standing behind women’s empowerment (Nor Hell A Fury), are ones that many can relate to or understand. And, while most individuals may avoid drowning their woes by way of transforming into full-on egotistical murderers like the Queen and King of Misanthropy and the gang, The Gloom In The Corner have illustrated that time and time again, life’s a little more fun when you can crack a smile. Taking a page from the trinity’s playbook: try to avoid the end of the world. But if you can’t…at least spend it with a killer soundtrack.

Heavy dubs on the way by producer trio Champion Sound from moscow. Dubcore Volume 22 is a diverse selection of different paced jungle tunes. Champion Sound released before on Through These Eyes Records, Defrostatica, Dub & Roll Records, Uncultured, Frozen Plates and Influential and now dropping four track on the dubcore series.

Best-Of-Album mit allen 18 Singles in chronologischer Reihenfolge, die die Smoke Fairies seit ihrer Debüt-7" 'Living With Ghosts' 2008 veröffentlicht haben. Ein ganz besonderer Bonus sind die beiden von Jack White produzierten und an Schlagzeug und Gitarre begleiteten Songraritäten 'Gastown' & 'River Song', die 2009 exklusiv als limitierte, doppelseitige 7" in Third Man Records' berüchtigter Blue Series erschienen und jetzt erstmals auf einem Album erhältlich werden.

New Various artists series on SNTS sub label Sacred Court with the Fourth Sentence.

Well known as the Deep’a half of Deep’a & Biri, and a huge influential source of energy and innovation in Tel Aviv’s house and techno community, Yaron Amor goes solo for the very first time with an incredibly personal project. Introducing Zeena…
“The decision about the solo project was made during a visit to Morocco, in the main city square of Marrakesh I came across an improvised jam of 20 drummers from all over the country, the crazy rhythms they played together spontaneously amazed me and made me realize that the perfect beat I've been looking for, for so many years, was under my nose. In Arabic and Moroccan music that was constantly played in the house where I grew up…”
Home is where the soul is… Zeena translates to beauty in Moroccan and this label exists wholly to celebrate and push cutting edge Arab electronic music. It starts here with Yaron’s first solo EP. The result of an inspired creative series of recordings with drummers and musicians from Israel, Algiers, Morocco, and Berlin, across three tracks we’re taken on a beautiful excursion of emotions, tension and introspective places.
“I tried to merge together influences from the world of techno which I have been active in for almost 20 years along with the rhythms of Arabic music while paying respect to each of the genres.”
From the tension and powerful emotion of ‘The Pain Body’ (a mesmerising kick-less tableaux that would work perfectly for an intro or mid-set game-changer) to the powerful synth-laced Detroitian drive and thump of title track ‘Zeena’ via the wild rolling toms of ‘Omipresence’, this is Yaron Amor as we’ve never heard him before… Raw, honest, direct and totally at home. The middle east has played a huge role in so many inspirations, influences and sample sources since the very start of electronic music. Now its time to bring that to the fore and celebrate it on a whole new level. Zeena is that level. Stay tuned…

"Under This Hunger Moon We Fell" is the new album from the uniquely talented, multi-instrumental artificer Lomond Campbell, the third and final instalment of his experiments using tape loops at the heart of his music making process. Campbell notes that "as the album was nearing completion there was a particularly dramatic Supermoon called a Hunger Moon. Apparently it has this name because it occurs right at the end of winter, when predators are at their most lethal and desperate, and those seen as less powerful are preyed upon". These themes can be clearly heard on an album that feels cold and bleak in tandem with moments of vulnerability and tenderness. "Under This Hunger Moon We Fell" stalks from the shadows with a natural, quiet confidence before exploring more carnal heaviness and occasionally brutal displays of dramatic tension. It meditates in cycles and is at both times predator and prey, conveying the balance of these relationships with its cinematic compositions. The album ranges from soft, delicate atmospheric musings such as "Bastard Wing" and "Leave Only Love Behind" to the dark electronics of "And They Are Afraid Of Her" and "Phonon For No One", which Campbell describes as "akin to a massive machine starting up, like a huge sinister power mobilising". During its gloomier moments, "Under This Hunger Moon We Fell" buries tonally ambiguous ambience underneath hazy, distorted textures created via the gradual degradation of the tape. It creates a dream-like backdrop with a moody undertone created by deep basslines and hulking percussive elements, blended with orchestral sounds that add an air of humanity. Although his music is grounded in sound it often incorporates sculpture, engineering, product design and visual art. Using a combination of hardware hacking and industrial manufacturing techniques, Lomond builds his own unique instruments and devices for creating sound which he combines with modular synths, piano and voice. The album also sees Campbell"s vocal debut on "For The Uncarved", having originally written the part for a friend. "I was supposed to be recording her album in my studio The Lengths, but she was struck down with Covid so the session was scrapped. It felt like the album needed some kind of human element so I resorted to singing the part myself". "Under This Hunger Moon We Fell" concludes a trio of albums using tape loops, which was kickstarted with an email from Lomond"s long-time friend and collaborator King Creosote. He was looking for a custom tape looping machine so Lomond set about designing and building a unique music machine, inspired by Reich and Basinski, that plays 10 second tape loops which disintegrate over time as they pass near a rotating magnetic disc. Campbell built and then tested the machine by recording a series of improvisations with it which became LUP, the first album in the trilogy.

Recital publish an album of lost Derek Bailey sessions recorded with his friend and collaborator Charlie Morrow. In 1982, Bailey and Morrow organized a series of live concerts and studio sessions around New York. This new LP is a boiled-down rendering of the master tapes that lived dormant in Charlie’s archive, until now.

Throughout the album, Bailey and Morrow are joined by a rotating cast of New Wilderness players including frame drum percussionist Glen Velez, sound poet Steve McCaffery, publisher and artist Carol E. Tuynman, composer Patricia Burgess, and multimedia artist Michael Snow. The results are surprising and marvelous.

The energy of the live concert, which makes up the first half of the record is particularly exciting, with Morrow and McCaffery’s visceral sound poetry and Glen’s frame drum echoing off of Derek’s fret stabs, and Carol, Patricia, and Michael’s horns swirling through the air between. A very raw and intense recording.

The second side of New York 1982, is a session recorded at The Record Plant, and is clearly more ‘produced’ with panning and tape echo processing, plus experiments with water whistles and other devices.

Derek Bailey stands out for personal achievements as a guitarist and for his way of bringing together performance meetings ranging from duos to large ensembles. Working across style and genre, his music and musical unions have inspired the breakdown of boundaries, embracing all flavors of musicians as improvisers. Players focusing on the moment, “without memory.”

LP Edition of 400 copies on 175gram black vinyl, including an 8-page booklet with program notes and artwork.

Derek Bailey - Acoustic Guitars
Charlie Morrow - Trumpet, Ocarina, Voice
Glen Velez - Percussion
Patricia Burgess - Saxophone (1,3,6)
Steve McCaffery - Voice, Saxophone (1,3)
Carol E. Tuynman - Trumpet (1,3,6)
Michael Snow - Trumpet (3)

The Decades Collected compilations are part of the new Collected compilation series, which is a collaboration between Universal Music and Music On Vinyl. The compilations bring together the biggest names of each decade, combined with forgotten hits and less discovered gems, giving the listener an experience of listening to their favorite tunes while uncovering new musical grounds at the same time.

Various Artists - Tens Collected features Sam Smith “Stay With Me”, Lorde “Royals”, The Weeknd “Starboy”, Dua Lipa “Be The One”, Niall Horan “Slow Hands” and Ellie Goulding “Love Me Like You Do” amongst others.

As Anomalie, the shape- shifting production project he unveiled in 2016, Dupuis has channeled his musical upbringing (his mother, a piano teacher; his father, a host on Radio- Canada), formal schooling, and stage- seasoned chops into two companion EPs — Metropole and Metropole II — the Chromeo collaboration Bend the Rules, and a series of singles lighting a pathway to his upcoming long-form debut, Galerie.
Galerie’s forward-facing approach may call to mind a timeless phrase familiar to any jazzhead: The Shape of Jazz to Come. Ornette Coleman’s 1959 opus reconfigured traditional notions of harmonic structure, its title and content serving as both a blueprint and open question for progressive music’s future. With Dupuis’ reverent but revolutionary project, that answer is no longer in the past or on the horizon; it’s here.

Growing up in Chicago, later Detroit-based music producer, Theo Parrish is internationally well known for his own inimitable downtempo house music style. The approach Parrish took to compiling DJ-Kicks was very ambitious, inviting his Detroit peers to produce a collection of brand new material, and in turn creating the first ever all exclusive entry to the esteemed series.

"Detroit creates. But rarely imitates. Why? We hear and see many from other places do that with what we originate. No need to follow. Get it straight. In the Great Lakes there are always more under the surface than those that appear to penetrate the top layer of attention and recognition. What about them that defy tradition? Those that side step the inaccurate definitions often given from outside positions? This is that evidence. Enjoy."


First official compilation by Theo Parrish
All exclusive unreleased material
Includes new music from Theo Parrish
Triple LP sampler containing 15 full length tracks

JARV IS... have written & performed the original soundtrack for the critically acclaimed BBC TV series "This is Going to Hurt" based on Adam Kay"s award-winning international multi-million selling memoir of the same name. The soundtrack was recorded at Narcissus Studios, London by Drew Dungate-Smith during various sessions throughout 2021. Most of the performances are live takes featuring the entire band - often recorded whilst they watched the playback of key sequences from the series. Each episode features at least one song with lyrics by Cocker, who had access to the scripts (adapted by Adam Kay from his own book) from an early stage in the production process. JARV IS... is a band comprising Jarvis Cocker, Serafina Steer, Emma Smith, Andrew McKinney, Adam Betts & Jason Buckle. The soundtrack consists of a mixture of songs & instrumental pieces, with Cocker & Steer being the main composers. Cocker is quoted as saying "It"s our love song to the NHS".

Ekkehard Ehlers' seminal plays series was originally released on three 12inches (Staubgold) and two 7inches (Bottrop-Boy) in very limited runs. The entire series was previously only available as a CD compilation or digitally. Keplar finally presents it on double vinyl for the first time, featuring a new cover artwork.

Domestic ethnology: Ekkehard Ehlers plays.

‘Play’ is a word in English with many meanings attached. Each one sends you down a different cognitive pathway. When I think of ‘playing’, in the sense of a game, I think of an activity involving more than one person. When Ekkehard Ehlers plays, he is very much on his own. Or, at least, alone but at the same time keeping intimate company with the artistic innovators named in his titles. Robert Johnson. John Cassavetes. Albert Ayler. Cornelius Cardew. Hubert Fichte. Is he playing with them, against them, about them, for them, to them? This can never be known.

It is certainly a mistake to try to hear the ‘work’ of these originals in the sounds played by Ekkehard. They’re not cover versions. They’re hardly tributes in the conventional sense. Cassavetes and Fichte are not even musicians, although music played an important part in both their careers. Sure, there are little nods and flashes of recognition – tiny guitar licks among the minimal beats of ‘Robert Johnson 2’; rich bowed instruments in ‘Albert Ayler’, recalling the violin, cello and double bass arrangements on Ayler’s 1967 Live in Greenwich Village LP; the elongated organ lines of ‘Cornelius Cardew 1’ gesturing towards passages in Paragraph 1 of the British composer’s 1971 Marxist monolith, The Great Learning. Ekkehard is not so much playing these figures as allowing himself to be played by them.

Playing as an activity also suggests freedom. Maybe the only thing all five named persons have in common is that they were all quiet radicals. In music, literature and cinema, they all stepped, without self-promotion or fanfare, into unmapped territories. Once there they found it necessary to invent new languages in order to survive. Necessity was the mother of their inventiveness. They were also uncomfortable avant gardists. Lonely types, fighting their corners out on the margins, with little reward, often misunderstood, ridiculed or ignored.

All died unfairly young. Fichte a victim of HIV/AIDS, Cassavetes of cirrhosis of the liver. (‘Cassavetes 2’ sounds like a tender farewell played across the 59 year old alcoholic director’s death bed.) The deaths of Johnson, Ayler and Cardew have never been satisfactorily explained, and remain shrouded in myths and conspiracy theories. The pioneering expeditions of all five began in that spirit of playful freedom, but inexorably drew them towards the heart of darkness.

So these ‘plays’ are micro-dramas, sonic soliloquies, monolog-ins to the private accounts of various geniuses in Ekkehard’s ‘follow’ list. Hacked sensibilities. Artistic manifestos boiled down and distilled, skinned and dried in the digital smokehouse. (Ekkehard Ehlers Flays.) Each of these plays was originally floated out into the world alone on its own disc. The collected works play well as a team – a tranquil, introspective experience where each artist has his own identifiably unique sound character. As an album, Plays is a ‘Plattenragout’ – a ‘record stew’ – which was the title of Hubert Fichte’s LP review column in the leftist culture magazine konkret in the 1960s. The novelist’s work investigating the cultures of South America and the Caribbean islands has been called ‘domestic ethnology’. The writer himself referred to his ‘ethnopoesie’. Ekkehard Ehlers’s intuitive electronic portraits are a form of domestic ethnology in themselves. Invoking another of Ekkehard’s musical aliases, they are portraits of cultural ‘autopoiesies’ – creators whose works were strong enough to have their own self-regenerating life force. (by Rob Young)

All tracks written and produced by Ekkehard Ehlers.
Featuring Stephan Mathieu, Joseph Suchy, Anka Hirsch.
Tracks A1 to C2 originally released on three 12inches via Staubgold.
Tracks D1 to D4 originally released on two 7inches via Bottrop-Boy.
Plays originally released as CD compilation in 2002 by Staubgold.
Mastered by Rashad Becker.
Cut to vinyl by Lupo, Berlin, 2022.
Redesigned by Sandra Kastl, 2022.
Photos by Ludger Blanke

The fourth installment of MdCL’s Midnight Snacks series features remixes of snacks from vol 1 & 2, reimagined by Foursixone (Germany), Sound of Fractures (UK), Laroye (France) and Coflo (USA) – instrumental dancefloor pressure for the broken beat and soulful house heads. Curated by the Mashibeats community – community-sourced remixes and community-A&R’d – the EP kicks off with Foursixone’s broken beat reimagining of ‘Crush Velvet’: file alongside BITA and 2000Black. Sound of Fractures blends jungle bass-line pressure with a 2-step bounce on ‘Blue Hour’. On the flipside we dive into house with Laroye’s alternate mix of ‘Crush Velvet’ – a future nu-jazz house classic, and wrap up with the gospel organs and deep 4/4 grooves courtesy frequent Osunlade collaborator, Coflo.

After "La Légende d'Eer" in 2016, the PERIHEL series presents one of the milestones of electroacoustic music: IANNIS XENAKIS' mindblowing 54-minutes oeuvre "Persepolis", mixed from the original 8 track tapes by MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered / cut by RASHAD BECKER.

"Persepolis" is the longest electroacoustic composition by IANNIS XENAKIS (1922-2001) who ranks among the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. Commissioned by the Persian Shah, the piece was part of a multimedia performance - XENAKIS' so-called "polytopes" - which premiered in 1971 in Shiraz-Persepolis (Iran) as a performance including light-tracks, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 59 loudspeakers to project the music in an open-air situation. XENAKIS had realized "Persepolis" on 8-track analogue tape in the Studio Acusti in Paris and released a stereo reduction on vinyl in the famous Philips series "Prospective 21e Siècle" in 1972, adding the new subtitle "We bear the light of the earth", his most hymnal title ever.
Out of print for decades now, the LP became - especially the Japanese edition from 1974 - one of the most expensive collector's item of electroacoustic music. There were some later CD versions with different durations - too long due to a wrong sample rate, others shortened by 3 minutes due to other reasons. The PERIHEL series now presents a new version: mixed from the original (!) master 8 track tapes by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by RASHAD BECKER at D&M, Berlin - the same experts who had already taken care of the 2016 KARLRECORDS release of "La Légende d'Eer", another milestone composition among the works of the Greek-French avant-garde composer.

When IANNIS XENAKIS (1922-2001), who had fought against the occupation as part of the communist Resistance, moved to Paris in 1947 it was the start of a highly creative and impressive career. XENAKIS not only studied composition with MESSIAEN and became one of the most innovative composers of the 20thcentury, he also worked as assistant to LE CORBUSIER and realized a.o. the Philips Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Brussels 1958. His compositions often are based on mathematical principles (in 1966 he founded the CEMAMu - Centre d'Etudes de Mathematique et Automatique Musicales), which give his music an unprecedented aesthetic and "shocking otherness" (The Guardian). The most famous works of XENAKIS, who won the Polar Music Prize (considered the unofficial Nobel Prize for music) in 1999, are his compositions for orchestra Metastasis, Pithoprakta and Terretektorh (where the 88 musicians are spread within the audience) and the electroacoustic compositions Persepolis (to be re-released later on as part of the PERIHEL series), Concret PH, Bohor and La Legende d'Eer where XENAKIS integrated his stochastic synthesis sounds for the first time. As legendary as this piece itself is the impenetrable thicket of versions and stories around La Legende d'Eer - it exists in different releases, wrong sample rates, digitized backwards ..., this now is a new version, using the 8-track-version that XENAKIS himself presented at Darmstädter Ferienkurse in august 1978. As the automatic spatialization is lost, this became the only original version of this composition and is presented here (mixed down to stereo by MARTIN WURMNEST who tried to preserve the spatial movements as perceptible as possible - mastered by RASHAD BECKER at D&M) for the very first time. La Legende d'Eer not only became a milestone of electroacoustic music but is also an important reference for noise and industrial musicians up to the present day!

Green Vinyl

Shogun Audio are proud to present the ninth volume of the acclaimed Shuriken vinyl series - featuring four of the most popular tracks from the Shogun vaults that have never previously appeared on vinyl

Set on green vinyl, this is a strictly limited edition collector’s item so don’t miss your chance to assemble a set of weapons any warrior would be proud of, when they are gone they are gone…

David Gedge says: "With its 1950s theremin and science-fiction sound effects, `Astronomic' sounds a bit like a cross between a psychedelic pop song and a television theme. It's also The Wedding Present's job to be educational as well as entertaining, of course, and who knew that `hypersonic speed' is actually defined as one that exceeds five times the speed of sound? Certainly not me. But I know now! Oh, and wait until the very end of the track to hear another of those occasional Wedding Present references to Status Quo, too. Meanwhile, `Whodunnit' no question mark because it's referring to the literary genre rather than asking a question is a much more melancholy affair, which is what we've come to expect from songs which are primarily Melanie Howard co-creations. It might win the prize for the most powerful chorus of the series, though" Tenth release in this monthly series, in 2022 The Wedding Present will be releasing a new 7" single every month, #9 is available for indie record stores only soonThis fascinating project - which goes under the name of 24 Songs - comes thirty years after the band's similar Hit Parade series of 7"s in 1992 and features two brandnew recordings of the current WP incarnation. Each of the records comes in a beautifully designed sleeve featuring brutalist photography by Jessica McMillan

We Jazz Records presents the second volume of their reworks albums dealing with source material from the Helsinki-based label's catalog. This time around, it's Carl Stone's turn to tackle the source albums at hand and filter the label's output through his musical lens.

We Jazz Reworks is an idea that repurposes some of the label's output 10 albums at a time. That is, the label invites producers whose music they love on board, and one by one, they tackle 10 albums worth of source material, of which they are free to use as much or as little as they choose. The series evolves chronologically, so this volume being number two, the source material is pulled from We Jazz LPs numbers 11 through 20. The artist has complete freedom.

Volume 2 in the series happens with Carl Stone, a legendary figure in creative music. His career spans decades of unlimited musical innovation. Stone's recent output on Unseen Worlds, the label who has also been instrumental in issuing some of his remarkable earlier work, ranks among the most original art of our time and renders notions such as "genre" virtually meaningless.

Here, We Jazz originals by Terkel Nørgaard, OK:KO, Jonah Parzen-Johnson and more are met here with a fresh sense of discovery, spun around and delivered ready for the turntable once again.

Carl Stone says:

"It was wonderful that We Jazz gave me carte blanche to work with any materials from the set of ten releases in its catalog. This freedom to work with everything could have been a mixed blessing though, as it could be a challenge to try to deal with so much musical information. In the end I did what I almost always do: Let my intuition be my guide and to seize upon any musical items that seemed to fit into an overall approach."

"To make a new piece I usually start with an extended period of what really is just playing, the way a child plays with toys. Experimentation without necessary expectation, leading to (hopefully) discovery of things of musical interest, then figuring out a way to craft and shape these into a structured piece of music. Each track uses a different approach, which I found along the way during this play period."

This conceptual approach becomes complete with the design, in which album graphics are treated in a similar fashion, reworking what's there. This time around, the artwork is reinvented by Tuomo Parikka, a regular cover collage contributor for the We Jazz Magazine.

CURACAO BLUE TRANSPARENT VINYL, INSIDE OUT SLEEVE, OBI W/ LINER NOTES, PRINTED INNER SLEEVE WITH SOURCE ALBUM DESIGN REFLECTIONS.

Following the compass of an entrancing debut, Flore Laurentienne’s Volume II presents another palette of rich orchestral sound, where changing forces of water inspire metaphorical markers that navigate passages of life and loss.

Mathieu David Gagnon resumes his voyage into environment and emotion with Volume II, drawing inspiration from the rivers and rugged wilderness of the composer’s native Quebec. In his return as Flore Laurentienne – the namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora – Gagnon assembles vivid melodic motifs and delicate modulation with a vast string ensemble to emulate the tides of human experience.

Listeners of Volume I will recognise Gagnon’s signature approach towards reworking and reframing an emblematic melody or concept across a series of works inVolume II, a process he likens to that of a painter creating multiple sketches of the same view. Continued from the first album, the enigmatic “Fleuve” series is conjured to evoke the multiple personalities of the great St. Lawrence River, and the “Navigation” works (“III” and “IV”) wade through dappled progressions and expansive streams of string, the latter of which harbors the gentle meanderings of improvised clarinet.

Murderers & Robbers is the first album by American rapper Project Pat (Patrick Houston). Pat is the brother of Juicy J (Jordan Houston) of the Three 6 Mafia. The album was released on July 25, 2000, through Project Records. Labeled as an “underground album”, it is mainly a compilation of the rapper’s mixtape material from the early 1990s before a prison sentence interrupted his career.

It’s similar to Three 6 Mafia’s Underground series of compilation albums released from 1999-2000.

Produced by Juicy J & DJ Paul.
Featuring: Lord Infamous. Juicy J, DJ Paul and T-Rock

The classic sci-fi series teleports to Demon Records for two thrilling full-cast radio adventures.
From 1977 to 1981, a heroic band of freedom fighters waged war against the merciless Terran Federation,
spearheaded by Supreme Commander Servalan. In the mid-1990s Terry Nation’s intergalactic epic switched from BBC
TV to radio with two new adventures, The Sevenfold Crown and The Syndeton Experiment. Both now come to vinyl
for the first time, alongside cast interviews and extracts from Zen and the Art of Blake’s 7.
Presented across 3 x 140g vinyl discs in three colours, these full-cast dramas star Paul Darrow as Avon with Jacqueline
Pearce as Servalan, Michael Keating as Vila, Steven Pacey as Tarrant, Paula Wilcox as Soolin, Angela Bruce as Dayna,
and Peter Tuddenham as Orac and Slave. Written by Barry Letts (Doctor Who) they feature incidental music by Jeff
Mearns as well as the familiar strains of Dudley Simpson’s iconic theme music.
The removable slipcase cover reveals a trio of coloured LPs - plus a frameable art print - in a widespine sleeve. The
discs are presented in individual sleeves which, when place side by side, reveal a landscape scene of Scorpio in flight.
Full cast and credits are accompanied by graphics illustrating the tech of Blake’s 7.
Make sure you’re Down and Safe with this exclusive limited edition.

The end of the Doc Pavlonium's trilogy has come. Third and final chapter of the series.

"Is 2333 dc and humanity decided to leave planet earth as they don't need it anymore. The Earth is only but a limit to the inescapable human evolution: from simple terrestrial to new outer space inhabitants who are able to live without a planet, nature, art or music. In this robotic, hi-tech, and perfectly controlled future, somebody will be wondering if they can discover another moon, another sun, another galaxy..."

Press play on Lanois’ captivating new instrumental collection, Player, Piano, and you’ll be transported, too. Each song here is a portal, an invitation to lose yourself in the moment and disappear into a world of imagination and memory. Lanois recorded the entire collection himself, capturing a series of gentle, exotic piano performances at his studio in Toronto with the help of co-producer Dangerous Wayne Lorenz, and the results are both intimate and expansive all at once. Melodies unfold slowly with patience and grace; ethereal arrangements drift around them like fog rolling through the mountains. More than just an album, Player, Piano is a gateway into a cinematic sonic universe full of mystery and wonder, a place where the lines between reality and fantasy blur and deep truths and desires reveal themselves in profound and unexpected ways.


“Making this record transported me,” says Daniel Lanois. “I got to travel to Cuba and Mexico and Jamaica. I got to visit with the ghosts of Erik Satie and Oscar Peterson and Harold Budd. I got to go back in time to my work with Brian Eno and Kate Bush and Emmylou Harris. And I did it all without ever leaving my studio.”

Purple Vinyl in PicCover

"Since it's inception, the various artist compilation series SATURATED! has proven to be the epitome of curation in this small niche scene called bass music or whatever.
Each volume is carefully hand picked and is a picture in sound of the music at that point in time but overall has proven to be timeless.
The arrangement works in such ways that each tune flows perfectly into the next one and actually (given that you have two vinyls like a real dj), you could mix seamlessly from the first through the last track.

Saturate Records has become a hotspot for those seeking fresh sounds from well known and emerging artists within the scene.
Channeling the quintessential stylings of low-end driven beats from across the globe, they have been leading the way in all things bass heavy, broken-beat, experimental, glitch, hip-hop, psychedelic and trap for years now. Having featured releases from names like heRobust and G Jones early on in their careers, SATURATE! continues to help push the new school, hip-hop influenced sound forward with their fingers firmly on the pulse of future freshness.
A weird, wonky and wonderful journey through the raw attitude of the blistering beat driven electronic music scene.

The second release in My Morning Jacket’s ‘MMJ
Live’ series.
Recorded live at the Auditorium Theatre in
Chicago, IL on November 11, 2021 and featuring a
setlist of career highlights from recent tracks: ‘Love
Love Love’, ‘Complex’ and ‘Never In The Real
World’ from the recent self-titled album, plus
classics ‘Dondante’, ‘Mahgeetah’ and ‘Phone Went
West’.
Three LPs pressed on limited-edition translucent
orange vinyl and packaged in a triple gatefold
sleeve.

Composer François de Roubaix was born in 1939. He didn’t receive any formal musical education, but he became interested in jazz from the age of 15. His professional musical career only spanned ten years, from 1965-1975. During that period he composed for commercials, TV series, shorts, and about 30 feature-length films.

The most striking aspect of François de Roubaix’s music is its versatility: on one hand, it’s his ability to create simple, memorable tunes; on another hand, it’s his bolder experiments with different timbres and recording techniques. He freely combined folkloric and electronic instruments, embracing the advent of the first synthesizers and rhythm boxes. Being a multi-instrumentalist gave him a high degree of artistic freedom, as he spent long hours at his home studio overdubbing various parts of his scores until he would reach the desired result.

Du Jazz à L’Electro 1965-1975 is a brand new compilation album consisting of compositions by Francois de Roubaix. It includes previously unreleased and hard to find compositions from tv-series like Les Survivants and Tarif De Nuit. This compilation also includes compositions for commercials of Cointreau, Muratti and Fiat Coupé. Du Jazz à L’Electro 1965-1975 is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on solid yellow coloured vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve with liner notes and background stories about the compositions.

“Micro tonal poetry” - Mats Gustafsson

'Its an honor for the AFJ-Series to introduce the self-titled debut album by Danish Oslo resident Signe Emmeluth. Recorded at Flerbruket, in the forest an hour outside of Oslo - Emmeluth alone in a room with her alto and tenor saxophones.

A fantastic session of sax solo ecstasies recorded by Magnus Hemnes Nergård. Much like Joe McPhee’s Tenor and Peter Brötzmann’s 14 Love Songs, this album share the same beautiful intimacy. It is close, sparse, poetic and raw at the same time. Minimalist and soulful free music.

Signe Emmeluth is a Danish saxophonist and composer educated by the Jazz Department in Trondheim and is currently based in Oslo. Emmeluth has recently become a rising star on the international scene for improvised music. She has her own quartet Emmeluth’s Amoeba and has worked with Trondheim Jazzorkester, John Edwards, Tony Buck, Paal Nilssen-Love, Mats Gustafsson and Mette Rasmussen to name a few.'

All music by Signe Emmeluth, except 'I’ll Be Seeing You' by Sammy Fain
Signe Emmeluth: alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, recorder and electronics
Recorded at Flerbruket, Hemnes (December 2020/January 2021)
Sound Engineer: Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard
Mix/Master: Lasse Marhaug
Artwork: Kim Hiorthøy

Tak til Karl, Magnus, Lasse og Joakim for hjælp og gode vibber

'Swooping, sub-heavy sci-fi from Riz Maslen. Leda Maar is a new moniker for the established artist who’s released a crop of downtempo and electronic music as Neotropic and Small Fish With Spine, as well as collaborated with the likes of Future Sound of London, filmmaker Andrew Kötting, and featured in PSP-era Grand Theft Auto soundtracks.

Mana’s long lasting love of Riz’s 1996 Laundrophonic EP, released under her Neotropic name, spurred this new release. That 12” was a deep and dark web of rhythm and ghostly urban found sound that one Discogs reviewer aptly named “coin-slot Dubstep”. With elements mostly sourced from tape recordings made in and of her local laundromat, it still stands out as a remarkably contemporary feeling work; more like a post-Fisher, post-hauntology observation of urban life from the last decade, taking the ambient temperature and undercurrent pressures of the 90s. Asking if she had anything in continuity with this slice of her discography, and describing our interest in her take on “space and bass”, Maslen returned to us with Stairway 13.

Heavy-lidded and ethereal in long form, the album’s balance of bass weight, mechanical metre, and darkly tinted new age feels like a cinematic re-approach to some of the textures, moods, and themes of Laundrophonic. Originally designed for an installation, Stairway 13 folds in her decades’ experience in sound design and theatre, along with shards and elements abstracted from her more recent folk-like music, zoning into a deep, retreated, altogether dreamlike and expansive atmosphere. The scale and soundscape is reminiscent of Geinoh Yamashirogumi and their Ecophony album series, resonating to similar frequencies and exploring themes of chaos and re-birth in feature-length form.

Stairway 13’s four parts spread and swoop as single extended sides across this double LP. Carried by waves of sub bass and heavenly chorus, and later punctuated with autonomic clicks of machinery, whirrs, and pulses - sometimes reminiscent of FSOL’s weirder and more clipped staccato sampling in sections of their cyberpunk ISDN - the work forms a gothic, otherworldly ambience. A subtle space opera.'

What happens when you mix gangster rap legend Schoolly D, punk rock & skateboard icon Chuck Treece, with the bluesy Philly soul of G-Love? Love from Philly! G.Love feat. Schoolly D & Chuck Treece, the first release from the "Live From Philly" series from Brewerytown records and 30amp circuit - the premier Philly based musician not-for-profit. For more info see: https://30amp.org/

Pure Wicked Tune is a mixtape-style collection of extracts & cut-ups, taken from DIY cassette recordings featuring rare groove and "soul blues" soundsystems playing at early morning house parties and blues dances - mostly in South & East London - between the mid 1980s & early 90s.

Sounds like Funkadelic, Touch of Class, Latest Edition, JB Crew, Manhattan, 5th Avenue (and the many more featured on this tape) originally began to form in the mid-1980s. With lovers rock dwindling, and the reggae scene becoming dominated by harder digital-style dancehall, these sounds provided a tight but loyal crowd with a potent alternative - playing a mixture of killer rare soul, funk and boogie records in an inimitably reggae soundsystem style, complete with toasting, sirens and effects aplenty.

They were most well-known for playing at house parties and blues dances, typically in small flats or warehouses, with timing of such events generally running from the early morning hours until late the next afternoon. Though the popularity of the sounds faded following the dance music explosion of the early 1990s, there has been continued demand for revival sessions ever since. Whilst the influence of key British reggae & dancehall soundsystems on subsequent UK sounds like hardcore & jungle is relatively well documented, a similar line can just as easily be drawn from these sounds and the aforementioned styles' tendency toward sampling popular rare groove cuts, particularly well evidenced in the work of Tom & Jerry, 4hero, Reinforced & LTJ Bukem among others.

This represents the first outing in a series of collections exploring the sounds of UK soundsystem culture, via extracts from archival DIY cassette recordings of blues parties, dances & clashes made between the late 70s and early 90s. Often duplicated and shared widely, these ruff and ready "sound tapes" provided keen ears with music that wasn't otherwise readily available on the airwaves or in the record shops, and would go on to leave a deeply-rooted but too often overlooked influence on the UK's musical landscape.

We are happy to release another vinyl 12“ with Carsten Halm adding up to the series we have released with him so far. This ep marks the end of the series, but not the end of the relationship with Carsten. Carsten has been very successful with his releases on Traum starting with his "Taubenflug" ep in June 2020 followed by "Fuchsbau" and "Hammerhai". As we stated with his first ep: „His music has the unique quality to bring people together and experience something very positive“. Carsten showed this quality with all of his eps and last but not least this also makes him a popular DJ. Carsten plays clubs all over Germany but he still sticks to his roots and organizes parties in his hometown Cologne in his own dedicated space which he has rebuild with his friends after it was destroyed last year.

The fourth vinyl release with Carsten Halm "Licht Und Schatten" highlights another cover design by graphic designer Daniela Thiel and shows collages of the animals in a similar graphic context as his previous releases. The idea was to keep the graphic idea of the series but to use only artifacts of his previous designs to create a new cover.

The ep kicks off with "Licht" a track that has the quality to embrace you emotionally as well as musically with a massive warm and widening synth sounds that is a true a-side tune.

"Chimäre" instead is more jumpy and good natured, resulting in a nice break to carry the listener throughout the track.

"Schatten" kicks off with a rather dry drumming but in the course of the track is joined by a merry melody which is pushed aside by a bad ass rectangle synth sound that inflates the track with a techno spirit that is very welcomed at open airs.

The ep closes with the track "Notes" a horse ride though valleys of sparse vegetation with a happy sad Morricone inspired soundtrack that is very easy to like.

Following the compass of an entrancing debut, Flore Laurentienne's Volume II presents another palette of rich orchestral sound, where changing forces of water inspire metaphorical markers that navigate passages of life and loss. Mathieu David Gagnon resumes his voyage into environment and emotion with Volume II, drawing inspiration from the rivers and rugged wilderness of the composer's native Quebec. In his return as Flore Laurentienne - the namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora - Gagnon assembles vivid melodic motifs and delicate modulation with a vast string ensemble to emulate the tides of human experience. Listeners of Volume I will recognise Gagnon's signature approach towards reworking and reframing an emblematic melody or concept across a series of works in Volume II, a process he likens to that of a painter creating multiple sketches of the same view. Continued from the first album, the enigmatic "Fleuve" series is conjured to evoke the multiple personalities of the great St. Lawrence River, and the "Navigation" works ("III" and "IV") wade through dappled progressions and expansive streams of string, the latter of which harbors the gentle meanderings of improvised clarinet. In the world of Flore Laurentienne, complexity emerges from simplicity as the composer roams familiar environments in constant flux. Gagnon extracts beauty through repetition and constraint, utilizing the writing style of counterpoint for which one of his greatest musical inspirations, Johann Sebastian Bach, is renowned. The lilting waves of "Canon" possess the eponymous formation of melodic 'leader and follower' motif, and magnify the softness of the album's eighteen string musicians into a force of full euphoric resonance. In Volume II, Gagnon continues his expansion of classical composition archetypes to meet a new realm of sonic romanticism. Thematic conventions of wandering the pastoral sublime become altered into glimmering refractions, relaying the emotional and kinetic power of natural energies. Volume II forms an estuary where streams of auditory microcosm reach a horizon of dynamic contrast, and reflect the parallel tenors of nature and humankind.