Suche:some exercise

Ostinato as resistance: Rafael Anton Irisarri’s landmark work reimagined. Marking the tenth anniversary of the American composer’s critically acclaimed album 'A Fragile Geography', this new edition arrives renewed, both sonically and visually.

First released in 2015 (Room40) during a period of personal upheaval and creative reinvention, it endures as a testament to resilience, transformation, and the connection we hold with the places that shape us.

Written in the aftermath of a devastating theft, A Fragile Geography was born out of loss. Just days before a cross-country move to New York, Irisarri’s entire Seattle-based studio was wiped out. Instruments. Recordings. Archives. Gone without a trace. He arrived on the East Coast to an empty room and the daunting task of starting over.

“This album wasn’t just a record; it was a lifeline,” Irisarri reflects. “It became a way to process the emotional chaos that followed: uprooting, instability, and ultimately, the slow, intuitive rebuilding of a life.”

Composed and recorded in the rural woods of the Hudson Valley, the album took shape in seclusion, surrounded by nature, and through a process guided by improvisation. Embracing limitations, Irisarri wove textural layers of field recordings with half-remembered melodies from his Seattle years, piecing them together like fragments of memory. Tracks like “Displacement,” “Hiatus,” and “Persistence” juxtaposed haunting stillness with restless momentum, mapping an inner terrain of grief, catharsis, and rebirth.

Among its defining sounds is “Empire Systems,” a monumental centerpiece built around a simple four-chord progression, organ textures, and guitar drones. Gradually, the track expands into layers of immersive loops and thick, enveloping distortion that wash over the listener like a rolling wave. Often cited as the album’s most majestic passage, it captures Irisarri at his most sonically ambitious. With a harmonically saturated structure crafted from restraint and repetition, it remains one of his most recognizable compositions: an exercise in the art of maximal minimalism.

From the outset, “Reprisal” received praise from BBC’s Mary Anne Hobbs, who championed the track on her radio show. Her support played a key role in introducing Irisarri’s work to wider audiences and solidifying his place within the lineage of electronic, drone, and experimental sound artists. A slow-burning elegy, the piece emerges from a haze of distortion and sub-bass, with dense, unrelenting drones carrying a sense of mounting tension. Just as it seems to collapse under its own weight, flickers of guitar emerge like distant light through fog. It’s a meditation on dissonance, resolve, and the elusive possibility of release.

The closing track, “Secretly Wishing for Rain,” is steeped in saudade: a longing for Seattle’s dour grey skies, lush green landscapes, and desaturated sunsets. Through it, Irisarri mourns a vanished chapter of life bound to the city, a time documented in scattered mementos and cherished collections, now permanently gone. A reflection on what could never be recovered: an era lost to time. Julia Kent’s looped cello motifs added a melancholic warmth to the track, marking the first collaboration between the two artists and sparking a musical dialogue that would keep growing in the years that followed.

More than a career highlight, A Fragile Geography has laid the foundation for Black Knoll studio, which Irisarri rebuilt from the ground up. The studio has since grown into a creative hub for countless projects, with Irisarri engineering records for iconic music figures like Terry Riley, Ryuichi Sakamoto, William Basinski, MONO, Devendra Banhart, Grouper, Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt, Julianna Barwick, and many others. Carried by its lasting influence, the album has quietly captured the ear of a younger generation, its sound and emotional arc finding new listeners in unexpected corners.

The album’s new visual language was reimagined in collaboration with Mexico City–based designer Daniel Castrejón. Irisarri captured ghostly images at Gaztelugatxeko Doniene, a historic coastal site in Bermeo, Euskal Herria. Castrejón then treated the photographs with distressed textures and spectral overlays. The final artwork channels the rugged, elemental forces that shaped both the music and Irisarri’s aesthetic, renewing his ties to ancestral ground inspired by the Basque homeland of his bloodline.

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with exceptional attention to detail, this anniversary edition uncovers every nuance in the sound design, enhancing clarity and presence. With each listen, new elements emerge, inviting discovery and reconnection.

“I don’t experience this album as a document of grief anymore,” says Irisarri. “I hear adaptation and I'm reminded that when everything falls apart, something meaningful, maybe even beautiful, can emerge.”

Ostinato as resistance: Rafael Anton Irisarri’s landmark work reimagined. Marking the tenth anniversary of the American composer’s critically acclaimed album 'A Fragile Geography', this new edition arrives renewed, both sonically and visually.

First released in 2015 (Room40) during a period of personal upheaval and creative reinvention, it endures as a testament to resilience, transformation, and the connection we hold with the places that shape us.

Written in the aftermath of a devastating theft, A Fragile Geography was born out of loss. Just days before a cross-country move to New York, Irisarri’s entire Seattle-based studio was wiped out. Instruments. Recordings. Archives. Gone without a trace. He arrived on the East Coast to an empty room and the daunting task of starting over.

“This album wasn’t just a record; it was a lifeline,” Irisarri reflects. “It became a way to process the emotional chaos that followed: uprooting, instability, and ultimately, the slow, intuitive rebuilding of a life.”

Composed and recorded in the rural woods of the Hudson Valley, the album took shape in seclusion, surrounded by nature, and through a process guided by improvisation. Embracing limitations, Irisarri wove textural layers of field recordings with half-remembered melodies from his Seattle years, piecing them together like fragments of memory. Tracks like “Displacement,” “Hiatus,” and “Persistence” juxtaposed haunting stillness with restless momentum, mapping an inner terrain of grief, catharsis, and rebirth.

Among its defining sounds is “Empire Systems,” a monumental centerpiece built around a simple four-chord progression, organ textures, and guitar drones. Gradually, the track expands into layers of immersive loops and thick, enveloping distortion that wash over the listener like a rolling wave. Often cited as the album’s most majestic passage, it captures Irisarri at his most sonically ambitious. With a harmonically saturated structure crafted from restraint and repetition, it remains one of his most recognizable compositions: an exercise in the art of maximal minimalism.

From the outset, “Reprisal” received praise from BBC’s Mary Anne Hobbs, who championed the track on her radio show. Her support played a key role in introducing Irisarri’s work to wider audiences and solidifying his place within the lineage of electronic, drone, and experimental sound artists. A slow-burning elegy, the piece emerges from a haze of distortion and sub-bass, with dense, unrelenting drones carrying a sense of mounting tension. Just as it seems to collapse under its own weight, flickers of guitar emerge like distant light through fog. It’s a meditation on dissonance, resolve, and the elusive possibility of release.

The closing track, “Secretly Wishing for Rain,” is steeped in saudade: a longing for Seattle’s dour grey skies, lush green landscapes, and desaturated sunsets. Through it, Irisarri mourns a vanished chapter of life bound to the city, a time documented in scattered mementos and cherished collections, now permanently gone. A reflection on what could never be recovered: an era lost to time. Julia Kent’s looped cello motifs added a melancholic warmth to the track, marking the first collaboration between the two artists and sparking a musical dialogue that would keep growing in the years that followed.

More than a career highlight, A Fragile Geography has laid the foundation for Black Knoll studio, which Irisarri rebuilt from the ground up. The studio has since grown into a creative hub for countless projects, with Irisarri engineering records for iconic music figures like Terry Riley, Ryuichi Sakamoto, William Basinski, MONO, Devendra Banhart, Grouper, Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt, Julianna Barwick, and many others. Carried by its lasting influence, the album has quietly captured the ear of a younger generation, its sound and emotional arc finding new listeners in unexpected corners.

The album’s new visual language was reimagined in collaboration with Mexico City–based designer Daniel Castrejón. Irisarri captured ghostly images at Gaztelugatxeko Doniene, a historic coastal site in Bermeo, Euskal Herria. Castrejón then treated the photographs with distressed textures and spectral overlays. The final artwork channels the rugged, elemental forces that shaped both the music and Irisarri’s aesthetic, renewing his ties to ancestral ground inspired by the Basque homeland of his bloodline.

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with exceptional attention to detail, this anniversary edition uncovers every nuance in the sound design, enhancing clarity and presence. With each listen, new elements emerge, inviting discovery and reconnection.

“I don’t experience this album as a document of grief anymore,” says Irisarri. “I hear adaptation and I'm reminded that when everything falls apart, something meaningful, maybe even beautiful, can emerge.”

The successor to 2022"s Bajascillators glides easily into frame, but once there, Inland See is deceptively immediate. It"s so dialed in, you hardly even feel how present the music (and you the listener) is. Time wharping"s always been a resident magic for Bitchin Bajas, as is flow, which is translucent like water here. That"s the Inland See vibe, unique unto itself. In turn, each of the four songs here are entirely within themselves, all together forming an essential whole. The coincision"ll cause yer breath to shorten, like an exciting and non-fatal kind of exercise! New freedoms, yet more molecular structure in each one. With every successive Bitchin Bajas release, we see that the real key for them is a sense of discovery, that tingle that comes when you feel something breakíing through. The sky opening up. The stuff that fills this Inland See holds you up powerfully, as if you"re floating, saltwater or helium-wise - effervescent, effortless, elemental.

The successor to 2022"s Bajascillators glides easily into frame, but once there, Inland See is deceptively immediate. It"s so dialed in, you hardly even feel how present the music (and you the listener) is. Time wharping"s always been a resident magic for Bitchin Bajas, as is flow, which is translucent like water here. That"s the Inland See vibe, unique unto itself. In turn, each of the four songs here are entirely within themselves, all together forming an essential whole. The coincision"ll cause yer breath to shorten, like an exciting and non-fatal kind of exercise! New freedoms, yet more molecular structure in each one. With every successive Bitchin Bajas release, we see that the real key for them is a sense of discovery, that tingle that comes when you feel something breakíing through. The sky opening up. The stuff that fills this Inland See holds you up powerfully, as if you"re floating, saltwater or helium-wise - effervescent, effortless, elemental.

Ostinato as resistance: Rafael Anton Irisarri’s landmark work reimagined. Marking the tenth anniversary of the American composer’s critically acclaimed album 'A Fragile Geography', this new edition arrives renewed, both sonically and visually.

First released in 2015 (Room40) during a period of personal upheaval and creative reinvention, it endures as a testament to resilience, transformation, and the connection we hold with the places that shape us.

Written in the aftermath of a devastating theft, A Fragile Geography was born out of loss. Just days before a cross-country move to New York, Irisarri’s entire Seattle-based studio was wiped out. Instruments. Recordings. Archives. Gone without a trace. He arrived on the East Coast to an empty room and the daunting task of starting over.

“This album wasn’t just a record; it was a lifeline,” Irisarri reflects. “It became a way to process the emotional chaos that followed: uprooting, instability, and ultimately, the slow, intuitive rebuilding of a life.”

Composed and recorded in the rural woods of the Hudson Valley, the album took shape in seclusion, surrounded by nature, and through a process guided by improvisation. Embracing limitations, Irisarri wove textural layers of field recordings with half-remembered melodies from his Seattle years, piecing them together like fragments of memory. Tracks like “Displacement,” “Hiatus,” and “Persistence” juxtaposed haunting stillness with restless momentum, mapping an inner terrain of grief, catharsis, and rebirth.

Among its defining sounds is “Empire Systems,” a monumental centerpiece built around a simple four-chord progression, organ textures, and guitar drones. Gradually, the track expands into layers of immersive loops and thick, enveloping distortion that wash over the listener like a rolling wave. Often cited as the album’s most majestic passage, it captures Irisarri at his most sonically ambitious. With a harmonically saturated structure crafted from restraint and repetition, it remains one of his most recognizable compositions: an exercise in the art of maximal minimalism.

From the outset, “Reprisal” received praise from BBC’s Mary Anne Hobbs, who championed the track on her radio show. Her support played a key role in introducing Irisarri’s work to wider audiences and solidifying his place within the lineage of electronic, drone, and experimental sound artists. A slow-burning elegy, the piece emerges from a haze of distortion and sub-bass, with dense, unrelenting drones carrying a sense of mounting tension. Just as it seems to collapse under its own weight, flickers of guitar emerge like distant light through fog. It’s a meditation on dissonance, resolve, and the elusive possibility of release.

The closing track, “Secretly Wishing for Rain,” is steeped in saudade: a longing for Seattle’s dour grey skies, lush green landscapes, and desaturated sunsets. Through it, Irisarri mourns a vanished chapter of life bound to the city, a time documented in scattered mementos and cherished collections, now permanently gone. A reflection on what could never be recovered: an era lost to time. Julia Kent’s looped cello motifs added a melancholic warmth to the track, marking the first collaboration between the two artists and sparking a musical dialogue that would keep growing in the years that followed.

More than a career highlight, A Fragile Geography has laid the foundation for Black Knoll studio, which Irisarri rebuilt from the ground up. The studio has since grown into a creative hub for countless projects, with Irisarri engineering records for iconic music figures like Terry Riley, Ryuichi Sakamoto, William Basinski, MONO, Devendra Banhart, Grouper, Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt, Julianna Barwick, and many others. Carried by its lasting influence, the album has quietly captured the ear of a younger generation, its sound and emotional arc finding new listeners in unexpected corners.

The album’s new visual language was reimagined in collaboration with Mexico City–based designer Daniel Castrejón. Irisarri captured ghostly images at Gaztelugatxeko Doniene, a historic coastal site in Bermeo, Euskal Herria. Castrejón then treated the photographs with distressed textures and spectral overlays. The final artwork channels the rugged, elemental forces that shaped both the music and Irisarri’s aesthetic, renewing his ties to ancestral ground inspired by the Basque homeland of his bloodline.

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with exceptional attention to detail, this anniversary edition uncovers every nuance in the sound design, enhancing clarity and presence. With each listen, new elements emerge, inviting discovery and reconnection.

“I don’t experience this album as a document of grief anymore,” says Irisarri. “I hear adaptation and I'm reminded that when everything falls apart, something meaningful, maybe even beautiful, can emerge.”

Classic black 2LP in gatefold! "Her darkest, heaviest and most personal album yet . . . a haunting, doomy exercise in loud-quiet dynamics." Rolling Stone Sleep paralysis plagues singer/songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, and that strange intersection of the conscious and the unconscious has inadvertently manifested itself within her work. Across the span of her first four albums, there is an underlying tension, a distorted and nebulous territory where dark shadows hover along the edges of the sublime and the graceful. But until now, Wolfe's trials and tribulations with the boundaries between dreams and reality have only been a subconscious influence on her work. With her fifth album, Abyss, she deliberately confronts those boundaries and crafts a score to that realm she describes as the "hazy afterlife. an inverted thunderstorm. the dark backward. the abyss of time." Chelsea Wolfe's material has always felt intensely private, from the almost voyeuristic bedroom-production aesthetic of her debut album The Grime and the Glow to the stark themes and atmospheres of 2013's Pain Is Beauty. "Abyss is meant to have the feeling of when you're dreaming, and you briefly wake up, but then fall back asleep into the same dream, diving quickly into your own subconscious," says Wolfe. To conjure this in-between world, Wolfe continued her ongoing collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and co-writer Ben Chisholm and drummer Dylan Fujioka, with Ezra Buchla brought on board to play viola and Mike Sullivan (Russian Circles) enlisted to contribute guitar. The ensemble traveled to Dallas, TX to record with producer John Congleton (Swans, St. Vincent). In the back of her mind burned the words of designer Yohji Yamamoto: "Perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion." The resulting eleven songs reflect that philosophy as they smoulder with human frailty, intimacy, quiet passion, anxiety, and deep longing. "Sleep and dream issues have followed me my whole life," remarks Wolfe as she revisits notes from the writing and recording sessions. In a way, these issues have become a part of Chelsea Wolfe's identity, for whom the notion of sleep as an escape has been subverted. Abyss captures this dichotomy, this battle between the soothing and the upsetting, and demonstrates why Chelsea Wolfe has become one of the most intriguing songwriters of the decade.

Japanese acid pop outfit Cho Co Pa Co Cho Co Quin Quin channel the globe-trotting spirit of Haruomi Hosono’s 1970s tropical boogie on their debut album, Tradition.

Named after one of the basic rhythms of Cuban folk music and drawing on influences from across the globe, Cho Co Pa Co Cho Co Quin Quin are quite simply a world unto itself.

Comprised of three childhood friends, Daido, Yuta and So, who reconnected during the coronavirus pandemic, Cho Co Pa initially emerged as a playful way for the three 23-year-olds to pass the time. Tapping into their youthful connection, they created a sound that exudes confidence and curiosity, a homage to the masterful world of YMO’s and Happy End’s Haruomi Hosono, rooted in the trio’s own idiosyncratic experience of the present.

Recorded at home and promoted on hugely popular DIY TikTok videos, their debut album Tradition is a technicolour exercise in armchair travelling – a kind of lockdown exotica for the housebound whose nostalgic flights of fancy are laced with a sense of whimsical melancholy for the lost freedoms of youth.

Referencing everything from Afro-Cuban percussion to lo-fi beats, Buddhist spirituality to trap, each member of the band brings different musical inspirations to the table. Latin American and Middle Eastern styles sit adjacent to a fascination for the electronic music of Aphex Twin, Dorian Concept, Underworld and Daft Punk. At times, the music verges on acid pop bliss, at others, it grooves with the instrumental funk sensibility of BADBADNOTGOOD.

“In the first place, when I create a song, my goal is to transport the listener to a mysterious place,” vocalist Daido explained in a recent magazine interview. Using lyrics as another sonic texture in the composition of ideas, Cho Co Pa paint beguiling sonic postcards of far-flung moods across 12 highly original tracks.

Marrying the organic and the electronic on rhythmically sophisticated compositions like ‘Chichibu’ and ‘Watatsumi’, it is on the album’s standout track ‘Gandhara’ that the experimental sound of Cho Co Pa comes to the fore. Referencing the ancient city of Gandhara through which Buddhism made its way from India to China, the track is a vocoder-trap-inspired, Udu drum-driven pop jam that lilts with unmistakable Balearic flair. If that’s difficult to imagine, then know simply that ‘Gandhara’ sounds like nothing else on this side of Saturn. Even Daido seemed surprised by the outcome: “I feel like we were able to create something that exceeded our abilities. That was huge!”

Hugely popular in Japan, with festival appearances lined up alongside BADBADNOTGOOD at Asagiri Jam in October, it's safe to say the success of Tradition has taken Cho Co Pa by surprise. You won’t have heard anything like it."

Repress of 2018’s classic compilation from Brownswood.

A primer on London’s bright-burning young jazz scene, this new compilation brings together a collection of some of its sharpest talents. A set of nine newly-recorded tracks, We Out Here captures a moment where genre markers matter less than raw, focused energy. Looking at the album’s running order, it could easily serve as a name-checking exercise for some of London’s most-tipped and hardworking bands of the past couple of years. Recorded across three long, fruitful days in a North West London studio, the crossover between each of the groups speaks to the close-knit circles which make up the scene.

Surveying the way that London’s jazz-influenced music had spread outside of its usual spaces in recent years, this album bottles up some of the vital ideas emanating from that burgeoning movement. Giving a platform to a scene where mutual cooperation and a DIY spirit are second-nature, it’s a window into the wide-eyed future of London’s musical underground.

Ubiquitous, much-lauded saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings is the project’s musical director. His own recent projects span from South Africa-connected, spiritually-minded jazz players Shabaka and the Ancestors to Sons of Kemet, who match diasporically-connected compositions with viscerally-direct live shows. His entry on the album, ‘Black Skin, Black Masks’, is typically difficult-to-define: with an off-kilter, shifting rhythmic backbone, repeated phrases – mirrored between clarinet and bass clarinet – shape the track with an alluring hue. His input ties together a deft, genre-agnostic sensibility that’s shared through all the players on the record.

Theon Cross – who’s also part of Sons of Kemet with Hutchings – starts his track, ‘Brockley’, with the solo, distinctive low rumble of his tuba. Winding and mesmeric, it sees tuba and sax lines winding together in rhythmic and melodic parallels. Ezra Collective – whose drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso has toured with Pharaohe Monch – run a tight, Afrobeat-tipped rhythm on ‘Pure Shade’, with the final third changing gear into a melodic, momentous closing stretch.

Joe Armon-Jones, whose ludicrous chops on the piano have seen him touring with the likes of Ata Kak, showcases earworm-like, insistent motifs on ‘Go See’, balanced with a playful, improvisatory approach with room for ad-libbing and solos a-plenty. Taking a softer tact than many of the other entries, Kokoroko – whose guitarist Oscar Jerome has been making waves with his solo material – spin a lyrical, steady-paced meditation on ‘Abusey Junction’, matching chanted vocals with gently-played guitar.

Nodding to spiritual jazz influences, Maisha’s ‘Inside The Acorn’ is a wandering, explorative rumination, balancing delicate washes of piano and percussion with sharp interplay between flute and bass clarinet. In contrast, Nubya Garcia’s ‘Once’ is taut and carefully-poised, her tenor sax guiding a carefully-built energy to an explosive conclusion. And finally, Triforce’s ‘Walls’ is a performance in two parts: starting with Mansur Brown’s languorous, lyrical guitar, the second half switches up to a low-slung, g-funk-tipped groove.

Repress of 2018’s classic compilation from Brownswood.

A primer on London’s bright-burning young jazz scene, this new compilation brings together a collection of some of its sharpest talents. A set of nine newly-recorded tracks, We Out Here captures a moment where genre markers matter less than raw, focused energy. Looking at the album’s running order, it could easily serve as a name-checking exercise for some of London’s most-tipped and hardworking bands of the past couple of years. Recorded across three long, fruitful days in a North West London studio, the crossover between each of the groups speaks to the close-knit circles which make up the scene.

Surveying the way that London’s jazz-influenced music had spread outside of its usual spaces in recent years, this album bottles up some of the vital ideas emanating from that burgeoning movement. Giving a platform to a scene where mutual cooperation and a DIY spirit are second-nature, it’s a window into the wide-eyed future of London’s musical underground.

Ubiquitous, much-lauded saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings is the project’s musical director. His own recent projects span from South Africa-connected, spiritually-minded jazz players Shabaka and the Ancestors to Sons of Kemet, who match diasporically-connected compositions with viscerally-direct live shows. His entry on the album, ‘Black Skin, Black Masks’, is typically difficult-to-define: with an off-kilter, shifting rhythmic backbone, repeated phrases – mirrored between clarinet and bass clarinet – shape the track with an alluring hue. His input ties together a deft, genre-agnostic sensibility that’s shared through all the players on the record.

Theon Cross – who’s also part of Sons of Kemet with Hutchings – starts his track, ‘Brockley’, with the solo, distinctive low rumble of his tuba. Winding and mesmeric, it sees tuba and sax lines winding together in rhythmic and melodic parallels. Ezra Collective – whose drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso has toured with Pharaohe Monch – run a tight, Afrobeat-tipped rhythm on ‘Pure Shade’, with the final third changing gear into a melodic, momentous closing stretch.

Joe Armon-Jones, whose ludicrous chops on the piano have seen him touring with the likes of Ata Kak, showcases earworm-like, insistent motifs on ‘Go See’, balanced with a playful, improvisatory approach with room for ad-libbing and solos a-plenty. Taking a softer tact than many of the other entries, Kokoroko – whose guitarist Oscar Jerome has been making waves with his solo material – spin a lyrical, steady-paced meditation on ‘Abusey Junction’, matching chanted vocals with gently-played guitar.

Nodding to spiritual jazz influences, Maisha’s ‘Inside The Acorn’ is a wandering, explorative rumination, balancing delicate washes of piano and percussion with sharp interplay between flute and bass clarinet. In contrast, Nubya Garcia’s ‘Once’ is taut and carefully-poised, her tenor sax guiding a carefully-built energy to an explosive conclusion. And finally, Triforce’s ‘Walls’ is a performance in two parts: starting with Mansur Brown’s languorous, lyrical guitar, the second half switches up to a low-slung, g-funk-tipped groove.

’Still’ is a compilation album first released in 1981 after the death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. Their two previous albums had already cemented the Manchester’s band’s iconic status in music history and ‘Still’ filled in gaps.

It featured previously unreleased studio material, two non-album tracks ‘Dead Souls’ and ‘Glass’ and a live recording of Joy Division’s last ever concert, at Birmingham University. The show included the only live performance of ‘Ceremony’ by the band, who later morphed into New Order and released it as a single.

Stereogum: »Here’s a cool new musical project that feels both out-there and extremely mundane. In 2022, the great Colorado experimentalist M. Sage teamed up with Lieven Martens (Dolphins into the Future) under the name Sage Martens. Their album, »Riding Fences«, was an ambient classical exercise designed to explore the idea of ›Western‹ music. They’re back this year with another conceptual offering (...)«

»Chamber Music for Lawn Mowers« is the second album by Sage Martens. This time, Matthew Sage (RVNG, Fuubutsushi) and Lieven Martens (Edições CN, Dolphins into the Future) sing the lawn.

Did you know a clean-cut lawn is a desire we inherited from the British?

Yes, the British dumped this pleasure into our collective consciousness. Those humorless Victorians who enjoyed having their black pudding on the lawn. They came to this uninspired impression while mis-looking at Italian paintings. Yes indeed, while gazing at these paintings they mistook green lanes for green lawns. Thus it became hip. Every stuffed truffle commanded his gardener to cut the grass.

As a result, this Victorian lust for sterile gardens with pretty green lawns nudged our world into water spillage and pesticide clouds. This new priority produced exhaust clouds and prudish monocultural landscapes. Just by looking at Italian paintings.

As with most of Western history, the practice was exported to America and then turbocharged. By shearing clear the prolific brush of pastures, prairies, forests and glens, biodiversity becomes an aesthetic casualty with long-suffering ecological ripples. An inherited practice narrows the bandwidth of experience.

And so, the childhood habit of humming along in key to the drone of a gas-powered mower while trimming a suburban lawn extrapolates into something expanded — an unanswered question about the harmonics of landscape practices.

M. Sage: Bb clarinet, alto saxophone, sine wave, lawn mowing, processing L. Martens: computer, analog synthesis, digital processing With W. Van Gils: lawn mowing

Eleven is a magic number in many cultures, for us maybe it is… or not, anyway our eleventh release is going to be something special with vinyl again as the main format after some only digital releases.

The man in charge of production duties is well known for crafting merciless techno exercises all over the place, RNGD is not a newcomer at all, his roots come from the late nineties and you can somehow feel that into his modern tunes.

These four cuts have a strong link with the classic Birmingham school, Regis,
Downwards, Female, Surgeon… but with a personal and unique twist.

Direct Source is a clear example of what I mentioned before, a few elements are enough to make the funk happen: a solid sequence, proper drums and a hypnotic arrangement.

Same approach on 037, proper neural funk with basic elements administered properly. B side opens with Degradation, again with the same mantra, anabolic, gymnastic and physical.

To close the release Diabólica, providing the mental slice of the pie with the
occasional pad and vocal samples but yet energetic and direct to the floor.

This is the true spirit of techno, don’t be fooled for the new trends. Timeless is the word here.

Text by Luis Rozalén / Hd Substance

"JUJU" drops on May 17th (WERF Records) and is programmed at Gent Jazz Festival (July 11th)



Juju continues the work done on the second album half, with the Terre Sol Four quartet: Willems' voice, drums, percussion objects, keyboards and field recordings accompanied by the saxes of Marc De Maeseneer, Vincent Brijs and John Snauwaert.Juju fits perfectly in Willems' output. Also: in the coherent oeuvre it has become, it is perhaps her most consistent release yet. It's infectious as hell, carefully crafted, packs a punch and more accessible than ever before.



Everything is connected. Not just in the grand scheme of things - politically, culturally, socially,... - but also in the colourful universe of Karen Willems. A lifelong quest for profound experiences through organizing sound led to the crucial Terre Sol-series, four tapes released in 2020. Out of that fertile well, Grichte (2022) was born. A double LP that presented Willems as an original explorer as well as a committed bandleader, it was her boldest statement to date.

While the first (solo) album halfalready received a follow-up in K A A P M I J (2023), another tape release that suggested there's still a lot of ground left to uncover, Juju continues the work done on the second album half, with the Terre Sol Four quartet: Willems' voice, drums, percussion objects, keyboards and field recordings accompanied by the saxes of Marc De Maeseneer, Vincent Brijs and John Snauwaert. It was already something to behold on Grichte, swerving from introspective exploration to expressionist riff rock and semi-Dadaist avant-garde.

On Juju, the four-piece digs even deeper and the results are utterly spellbinding. One of the many attractions of Willems' recent work is that it combines relentless artistic experimentation with a commitment to broader socio-political issues. In essence, the artist tries to set up a discussion with her surroundings, sending out musical invitations to connect and participate, reminding ourselves of responsibilities that are too easily forgotten in these hectic, self-centered times. The refugee crisis is one, ecology awareness another, and it's hard not to consider "Voor De Stranden Verdrinken" ("Before The Beaches Drown") a caustic warning. Things need to change.

As said earlier, the music on Juju remains as adventurous as before, but this time around, the playing feels even more confident, diverse and punchy. If the album opener accentuates its urgency with a throbbing pulse and reed sirens, "Tako Deli" continues with rich vocal arrangements, roaring saxes and sweeping melodies. What follows strikes with vigor and consistency: "Nuuki" is as dense as it is infectious, while "Fuzzy Williams" manages to combine Ellingtonian abundance with Swans-like preaching.

And there's more, much more. Eccentricity and playfulness ("The Woo Woo Room, Dance Back In Style", "In Open Veld") go hand in hand with smoldering exercises in tension and release ("Koortsdromen") and a ridiculously infectious call for connection in antisocial times ("Come Vai"). Guest contributions by Nabou Claerhout, Kapinga Gysel, Esther Lybeert and Filip Wauters enrich the band's sound considerably. By the time you reach album closer "When Daytime Lands", Willems takes you on a short trip through that eerie soundscape-land she previously explored.

In short: Juju fits perfectly in Willems' output. Also: in the coherent oeuvre it has become, it is perhaps her most consistent release yet. It's infectious as hell, carefully crafted, packs a punch and more accessible than ever before. It's the sound of an artist at the peak of her powers, not just expanding her range, but digging deeper with obvious glee. It's not just intriguing; it's inspiring to witness..

Originally released on Ben Chasny's own Pavilion imprint in 2011.

"I was invited by the Incubate Festival and the city of Tilburg to participate in an artist residency where I would explore the region’s unique chapels built for the Virgin Mary. After writing the music for about six months by drawing on memories of the encounters with the chapels and using techniques inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics Of Reverie, I flew back to Tilburg to perform the music at the Incubate Festival. We recorded the evening and I released the result on my Pavilion label. Each cover was hand painted white on white in the old Pavilion style. I created a stencil and used graphite powder to make the design that is inspired by the sun imagery in Athanasius Kircher diagrams."

Roadside chapels express the identity of the inhabitants of North Brabant, a Dutch province, bordering on Belgium. Roman Catholicism has been the dominant religion in this southern part of the Netherlands since the eighth century. For about a century and a half this religion was strongly suppressed. Only when the French revolutionaries preached freedom of belief around 1800 could the people of North Brabant exercise their faith again. This was the start of a very strong emancipatory development from which a special form of the Roman Catholic faith arose that fully determined everyday life of the people here. This faith was the determining factor in life and the measure of all things. After the second Vatican Council (1962-1965) the reins of the catholic faith in Brabant were loosened as well. This was the start of a revolutionary process of secularisation. Within a decade hardly anything was left of the almighty influence of the Roman Catholic Church and this situation has lasted up to the present day.

In spite of the almightiness of the official, Vatican ruled, Roman Catholic faith, North Brabant has always and perhaps notoriously fostered an undercurrent of popular belief as well. This is a kind of belief in which elements of the official faith and age-old pre-Christian traditions are combined. Worshipping relics, holding pilgrimages and processions, the use of water from holy wells, popular art, recitations and songs, festivals, rituals, folk traditions, superstition and the like are all examples of popular devotion. These matters have strongly influenced and formed the identity of the present-day population of North Brabant. It is part of their immaterial heritage.

An obvious and still very much visible form of popular devotion are the roadside chapels. In Brabant some 400 can be found, most of which have been devoted to Mary. Chapels are small buildings in which Mary or other saints are worshipped. They can be found within villages or towns or in natural surroundings. Always at the finest spots! The beauty of the environment adds a primary religious or mystical feeling to the visitor. Local people attach great value to their chapels. In spite of the overall secularisation in society they are still at the centre of cultural and social life. Where people in North Brabant can hardly be found in the churches nowadays, this doesn’t mean at all they are no longer religious. On the contrary, religious feelings are perhaps stronger than ever, but now people have to find their own expression of them. That’s why they fall back on the age-old popular belief in which chapels play an important role. We can even witness new forms of popular belief with chapels as their focal point. An example of this is the scattering of ashes of people who have been cremated. Chapels clearly also play a role in the lives of young people. On an average five new chapels are added every year.

I have studied the popular culture and belief and the identity of the inhabitants of North Brabant for over thirty years. I have published over forty books on these subjects. In 2010 I was approached by the organisation of the Incubate Festival in the North Brabant town of Tilburg. Their request was for me to lead the American composer and guitarist Ben Chasny around a number of chapels in the province devoted to Mary. He had been invited to North Brabant to write some new compositions. Ben Chasny then chose to be inspired by these chapels and that’s how we met. I was especially curious how an American would react to something as specific and small as a roadside chapel in North Brabant, since we tend to think here of (people in) America in terms of ‘big-bigger-biggest’. Would an inhabitant of this enormous country with this prevailing culture be able to grasp and respect the identity of some 2.5 million people in North Brabant with their chapels? The answer to this question lies hidden in the compositions he made and that can be listened to on this album. Yes, Ben Chasny has been able to convert the phenomenon of a simple chapel devoted to Mary into music. The physical and the spiritual have found each other. What a beautiful world…just listen! - Paul Spapens

Samurai Music returns to the evocative sound world of Ancestral Voices for an album that splits the difference between cinematic sound design and deadly restraint at 170 BPM. Nemeton continues Liam Blackburn's exploration of ancient Celtic mysticism through snaking rhythms and snarling sound design, conjuring a high-definition sonic image of sacred groves and the druids practicing amongst them.

Blackburn's Ancestral Voices project tracks back to 2015, when he debuted on Samurai Horo with the Night Of Visions album. In stark contrast to his celebrated 140 work as Indigo, this project leaned on the inspiration of pagan spirituality to charge his vivid, advanced production style with a rich and mysterious atmosphere. While he's channelled this approach into a variety of tempos and styles, on his 2016 EP Old Earth Voodoo on Samurai Music he applied the concept to a drum & bass framework, which he returns to on Nemeton with rigorous focus.

Far from a straightforward collection of breakbeat tracks, Blackburn uses negative space and pointillist production to carve out an immersive, tense sound world around the 170 grid. He takes a widescreen approach to percussion, running from pin-prick synthesised one-shots to tumbling, organic drums you'd more readily associate with a Hans Zimmer score. Scene-building is the foremost mission across Nemeton, casting otherworldly forces in sweeps of low-end friction and dramatic melodic blooms amidst tangible real-world field recordings of flora and fauna.

Casting the mind back some 2000 years is an exercise in imagination as much as research, and Blackburn ably summons dark fantasy as he delves ever deeper into Welsh mythology with a studious zeal and avid fascination. It's that drive that makes Nemeton burst forth and take shape so powerfully, bristling with kinetic energy and a barely-concealed, strangely seductive menace that leaves a lasting impression long after the last snatch of bass has bared its teeth.

Signs & Gestures is a various artists limited vinyl pressing which will be available digitally later this year. The vinyl version was mastered by Todd Mariana at Chicago's newest cutting studio, Deep Grooves Mastering.

The compilation features four tracks. Longtime friends Awoke (aka John Griffin) and Jack Buser write the two cuts on the A-side. These guys have known each other for many years and the complimentary nature of their tracks echo their years long relationship. Both use analog gear in their productions. In fact, that is an understatement as both are engineers by day and admitted audio gear junkies by night. Awoke's Untitled #2843 is a quirky drama builder throwing the In My House vocal over squelches and acid lines. Buser's Midi Boson is a classic exercise in simplicity. Drums from an MPC and a lead from Elektron's Monomachine are all it takes for this groove to rattle the dance floor.

Side B is also the work of two close friends. Nathan Drew Larsen remixes Little Turtles by Souls Found. Mazi edits Nathan's remix (released earlier on Fresh Meat's When Bad People Cook Good Food Volume 3) to 6 minutes, removing the atmospheric outro and reducing some of the extended sections. What remains is an energetic workout that is uncommonly melodic and emotional. As Audio Soul Project, Mazi's remix 3 of Sentimental Love combines sections from the first two of his remixes of this song released on Vizual Records back in 2011. This new version will hopefully express the care and love that went into preserving the message of Joshua Iz and Chez Damier's original.

The Crystal Hum is the debut vinyl release by Taiwan-based artist Yuching Huang and her first release for Night School.
A beguiling dreamscape of crackles, spluttering, love-struck Casios presided over by the the spectral vocal and guitar work of Huang, Yuching sings love songs at the end of this world and the beginning of the next. Recorded during a hiatus from her group Aemong (a duo with artist Henrique Uba) in Berlin, these songs elevate Huang’s unique vocal style and grasp of atmospherics. The Crystal Hum deconstructs balladry, Garage, guitar music and reforms it into a
unified ghostly otherworld version of these languages.

The Crystal Hum thrums with buried desire, trails of nocturnal reverb seeping out of apartment windows, diaristic vocal performances and deeply emotive, evocative Western-style strings. Formulated by Yuching Huang after periods of frustration and experimentation, the album is an exercise in minimalism and paring back, with some tracks like JohnJohn featuring little else than an elastic bass, spring reverb trails, an interjecting vocal and swelling, dislocated synths. The effect is spellbinding, the soundtrack to getting lost in the labyrinthine, closed streets of Venice, Taipei, Hong Kong, or mirror versions of them in the imagination.

On opener Fly! Little Black Thing, a subterranean funk bassline roots Huang’s singing, a rudimentary, unreliable beat floundering in whimsy underneath. Demure, dream Dance music, Huang references classic lo fi experimenters Suicide and Arthur Russell as well as Night School label mates The Space Lady and Ela Orleans. In fact, after the release of Aemong’s third album Crimson, Huang credits the direction of The Crystal Hum to being enchanted by The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits,
the landmark lo-fi recording made by Susan Dietrich Schneider in 1990. The new, minimalist approach to her sound world reveals and shrouds in equal measure. On the heart-melter Love, a sultry mid-tempo Casio + bass backing drops into the ether with Huang’s vocal swimming in preternatural void before emerging anew, in awe at the world. Every chord change heralds new perspectives, every guitar flurry swells and drips emotion, nothing is wasted and space billows out from between the grooves.
Huang never reveals more than necessary, making this an in-between love album: the right amount of mystery and darkened mirror shines wanely on The Crystal Hum while remaining fragile and vulnerable in the sweet spots. Turning over in pillowing smoke and night in the dark corners, Huang sings in both Mandarin and English. The songs speak of earthly matters seemingly at the edge of dissipating into nothing. Distorted, beguiling Sambas warble like sweating dancehalls in an imagined Lynchian 60s, as on Thoughts. Closer You, An Illusion warps a classic 60s Girlgroup bassline beloved of the likes of Les Rallizes

Denudes into a slight ballad on the edge of the void, held back by the teary-eyed, wistful and enveloping vocal cooed by Huang. Each song feels like a love song dedicated to the bits between worlds, between beats, the negative space between people where desires, feelings and loss hangs in the air, resolute and unresolved.

Music is like literature: getting through a second novel or second album is often a perilous exercise. Spatsz and Mona Soyoc, propelled into the limelight by their explosive Try Out, headed off to New York to record a follow-up to this fabulous debut. By Pass (1983) follows in the musical and sonic footsteps of its predecessor. The same sticky synth layers, the same flayed vocals capable of voluptuous flights, KaS Product still navigates the murky waters of a nervous, unhealthy cold wave, somewhere between the gall of Suicide and the gothic melodies of Siouxsie. And the melodies are always there, as on the stunning "Tina Town" and "T.M.T", two of the most successful tracks on an album that holds up remarkably well, and also deserves a closer look at its detours, such as "Taking Shape" or "Tape" at the end of the disc.

Emmanuel Mario returns to Karaoke Kalk with his third album under his Astrobal moniker for the Berlin-based imprint. »L’uomo e la natura« (»Man and Nature«) sees the prolific drummer and producer, who has worked with artists such as Laetitia Sadier and label mate Pink Shabab, take a different musical route than before. The French electronic music composer pays homage to the spirit of library music while also making concessions to different strains of pop and even classical music. With only two of the ten songs putting words to the music, »L’uomo e la natura« is a masterful exercise in the evocation of atmospheres: expressing much while saying very little outright—show, don’t tell.

The album was born out of a desire to push the envelope. »I wanted to make music that was both pop and ambitious in its chord progressions as well as surprising in its construction,« explains the Paris-based artist. Taking inspiration from library music artists such as Alessandro Alessandroni or Bruno Nicolai as well as the more cosmic strains of electronic instrumental music, he strove »to create a soundtrack that would immediately bring to mind outer space.« The first of the three singles released ahead of the full album, »L’abeille pourpre,« captures this spirit with funky rhythms and an overjoyed interplay of different melodies, all tied together by wordless yet terminally catchy vocals.

The second single, »Miami 2064,« traverses through many different moods in its six-minute run-time: Starting off as neo-noir synth-wave piece, it then proceeds to pay its dues to the masters of the cosmic music tradition such as Tangerine Dream or, of course, Jean-Michel Jarre before slowly descending back to Earth with guitars and dreamy synthetic vocals, playfully punctuated by a plethora of wistful melodies. It is the perfect encapsulation of the open-ended approach Mario follows throughout the entire album, taking full creative licence in regards to songwriting and arrangements. »I wanted to surprise myself,« he shrugs. He succeeded.

»L’uomo e la natura« rewards multiple listens not only emotionally, but also intellectually. »I also wanted to talk about politics and ecology, because it’s impossible not to,« Mario notes. Some of the track titles express this more openly than others and the two title tracks sung by Mario and Nina Savary use French and Italian lyrics, respectively. However, as a whole the album leaves things open to interpretation. Does »The End of Capitalism« sound elegiac or triumphant? And what do you actually make of this musical vision of the Floridian metropolis, whose mere existence is threatened by climate change already today, four decades from now? Mario doesn’t necessarily answer these questions—he doesn’t tell, he shows.

HONESTY are not a band in the traditional sense. With four core members - George Mitchell, Matt Peel, Josh Lewis and Imi Marston - and a rotating cast of collaborators which have included musicians and visual artists like Kosi Tydes, Softlizard, Rarelyalways, Florence Shaw and Liam Bailey, the Leeds-based collective emerged as an exercise in doing things differently on a journey towards self-acceptance.

HONESTY’s debut album, ‘U R HERE’ is released on Partisan Records. With influences that range from Mount Kimbie and My Bloody Valentine to Björk and Burial, ‘U R HERE’ represents a renewed sense of creative expression amidst a world that can sometimes seem like it’s crumbling apart.

The songs on ‘U R HERE’ are a fluid, exhilarating, and uniquely introspective take on club music - sonically mapping the psychological impact of the modern age and harnessing the vitality and freedom that comes with new beginnings. ‘U R HERE’, right now, and that is all that matters.

Black LP in a gatefold sleeve with spot gloss finish.

‘Dynamic Movements - Music for Exercise & Relaxation’ is the new album by the Swedish electronic music producer/remix duo of Johan Agebjörn and Mikael Ögren, lovingly released on Ltd. cassette via Lo Recordings.

Back in the 1980’s there was an exercise craze, people wore lycra bodysuits and headbands. All over the world people were making ‘Dynamic Movements’, determined to change the flow, turn their lives around and step into a bright new future. At the same time the New Age movement was blossoming and meditation was the way forward. Meditation and deep relaxation with maybe some crystals and Unicorns, just for fun.

Inspired by these exercise tapes of the 70s/80s and in tribute to those times and movements, Johan and Mikael worked with producers from around the world to create an album of diverse interpretations, bringing us an album of deep sonic nourishment. Sometimes throbbing and at other times gently lapping at your toes, the result is a lavish cassette contrasting ‘music for exercise’ on side A and ‘music for relaxation’ on side B.

Kicking off side one is the duo’s own ‘Dynamo Dance’, a resonant, pulsating slice of electronic pleasure, which gives way to tracks by acclaimed collaborators like the crisp, cruise control groove of Causeway, the dub chug delight of Jarle Brathen and the irrepressible majesty of ‘Lovelock’ (Steve Moore), before Johan and Mikael return with a tribute to the late great Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk.

Side two’s sumptuous drift into a world of soft pads, rippling arpeggios and sultry saxophone (all the saxophone on the album is by the aforementioned Steve Moore) is initiated by Seahawks, with their lysergic ‘Phase Induction’ leading to the extended Cafe Del Mar beach bar ambience of the legendary Fax records maestro Dr Atmo, continuing with the impossibly lush shimmer of Mary Yalex, the gravity defying drift of One Million Eyes and the divine dream world of Patricia Wolf.

Pedro Vian Vian and Maalem Najib Soudani "Mogador": A Fusion of Analog Electronic Music and Traditional Gnawa Sounds
"Mogador" stands as a compelling exploration of the intersection between seemingly irreconcilable musical worlds: the experimental realm of analog electronic music and the deep-rooted tradition of Gnawa. This project is more than just a juxtaposition of styles; it’s a meeting of minds where the ancient and the modern, the analog and the organic, are woven together into a seamless auditory dialogue.

What truly sets "Mogador" apart is the way Pedro Vian’s use of the EMS AKS Synthi and Buchla doesn’t overpower the mix but instead forms a perfect synergy with Maalem Najib Soudani’s qrebeb and guimbiri. Rather than competing, the analog pulses intertwine with the hypnotic lines of the traditional instruments, amplifying the trance-inducing qualities inherent in Gnawa music. The Maalem’s vocals, steeped in history and spirituality, float over layers of synths that feel both ethereal and tangible, crafting a soundscape that is as cinematic as it is visceral.

This is not just a collision of cultures or a superficial fusion exercise. "Mogador" represents a genuine dialogue between two ways of understanding sound and space, where every element—from the syncopated percussion to the serpentine modular waves—contributes to a sonic landscape that is both haunting and profoundly resonant. Here, tradition isn’t a museum piece, and analog electronics aren’t a rootless futurism; instead, they transform each other, creating something greater than the sum of their parts.

Taking our time has become a sort of ESP modus operandi, often proving that when variables are left to cook long enough—relationships, styles, politics, moments in culture—we may collectively yield a more considered result. Once in a 'Blue Moon', we set sights on a record that conducts some strange voodoo, some rare combination of elements that commands our entire being. Entering our atmosphere with a concise 6-track debut, dub technician Brendon Moeller has brought us exactly that. Although we’ve long been admirers Brendon’s work, separated by only a few degrees—he and ESP’s Lovefingers are the same age and shared a decade of salad days in New York City—it took another decade before enough courage was mustered to suggest we actually work together. Our reticence has seen Brendon’s aesthetic and palette evolve over the years, and the label has simultaneously sculpted a tone of its own, but now we’re more than proud to finally marry his highly refined output with our, let’s say, “deliberate” appetite. 'Blue Moon' touches everywhere Brendon has been as an artist—from the obtuse corners of ambient to IDM, dub techno to liquid drones and bass—yet the vocabulary is honed and succinct, relying on a very intentional handful of expressions. This is almost an exercise in restraint, all 6 tracks are delivered from a disciplined and committed point-of-view, but what we find most captivating is the exploration that this allows in terms of depth, texture, fluidity and pacing. There is a complexity hidden in plain sight that begs to be studied, a comfort that allows us to slip inside like a warm bath, an addictive tingling sensation that we must prolong indefinitely. Even as we write this testimonial, the album is going on a fourth repeat and we languish the intervening silence between tracks. This is being under the spell of Brendon’s 'Blue Moon'.

2025 Repress
Our private bandleader, Oscar Mulero, returns strongly to his own label with a complete techno album. This work represents the new edition of the WUBC special series and will be released in both double vinyl and digital formats with an extra son on the zeroes and ones edition.

On this occasion, Oscar focuses on the dance floor unceremoniously, except for the required ambient introduction. Throughout the sound journey that involves the continuous listening to the album, the listener is immersed in a complete experience on the dance floor, with the correct doses of mentalism and physical exercise that are required to develop the activity at the highest level.

As is tradition in Oscar Mulero's productions, there is a strong classical content, which draws on the original sources of Detroit and Birmingham, but seasoned with that dose of sci-fi that only he knows how to administer with this intensity. If you have followed his performances around the world you will have already been able to enjoy some of these exercises that now you can finally add to your collection.

One more piece in the unstoppable discography of one of the fittest exponents of contemporary techno, both on stage and in the studio.

Out of the murky, mystic world of Komodo Kolektif slides the Gamma Knife.

In the corner of a dank, dark mind, a nebulous notion condenses and solidifies, featureless and blind...and from that Komodo Klay a new kreature is hacked, molded and (mal)formed.

“The foundations of some of these pieces were laid almost a decade ago, others more recently. All of them came into being as sketches intended as Komodo Kolektif tracks to develop but for various reasons this didn't happen. The Seven Heavenly Elements was first presented to the group in 2019 but partly through personal differences in musical taste as well as COVID throwing a spanner in the works it was put aside and never worked on collectively. The two Disciple of the Drum 'dubs' are essentially rhythm tracks using the rhythm and percussion of Disciple Of The Drone, also from 2019, stripping away the drone, the gamelan melody and finally, even the bass line, which was initially intended to be the fundamental driving force of at least one of these dubs. In the end neither of these two tracks became anything like the idea that I had in mind, but that's how creativity works sometimes. The vocal parts in Cantation Dub were added most recently, just a few months ago. Fire Dub is just an exercise in me trying to rein in some insane delays and barely managing. The Ghost of Water is an anomaly because many of the fundamental parts are taken from the same jam session recorded in 2015 that led to Djakarta 3001 from the first EP. If you listen closely you'll hear Graeme Miller on guitar (back when guitar was still featured in our weekly jam sessions). I discovered this unedited hour-long jam session on an older hard drive in late 2023 and decided to fashion something from it until what became Ghost of Water materialised: the heavily delayed saron instruments, the jaw harp, the percussion and so on. What makes the track an anomaly is that it is in some ways both the oldest and newest piece of the five. The Seventh Element takes one of the seven elements of The Seven Heavenly Elements (in this case the Mopho synth tuned to the Indonesian pelog scale and ran through the Boss DE-200's depth modulator) to which I then added some gong parts and field recordings from Bali.

Once complete, I realised with an album's worth of material sitting there which was more “Komodo Kolektif” than anything I would normally produce solo, there came the problem of trying to work out what to do with this distinctly Komodo-esque, non-Komodo material. I came up with the idea of releasing it under the name Komodo Kuts...but a part of me felt I'd be cashing in on the Komodo name so ditched that part entirely...but the kuts remained, which seemed appropriate when used alongside my Gamma Knife moniker (which has a long story of its own...in a nutshell I had a benign brain tumour which only 1 in 10,000 people get and which is most frequently removed with a gamma knife (radiation). In medical parlance the device used in this treatment is often shortened to GK machine. I had been using the DJ name GK Machine, which came from my signature GK Mackinnon, since 1994, in other words long before this diagnosis. In the end I had brain surgery in Spain without use of gamma radiation...but the synchronicity of the name connection fascinated me nevertheless. Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways).

Lastly, now that I've sent these tracks out into the world, I feel somewhat liberated and can move on from this fairly niche and specific sound. The gamelan instruments have been returned to Gamelan Naga Mas, from who we'd borrowed them, and the masks hung up. This does not mean that Graeme Miller and I won't work together again in future...I'm sure we will...it just means we won't be tied to working within the constraints of gamelan, synths, percussion and dub that we became known for. So stay tuned...surely something lurks around the corner” GKM, November 2024

The Boysnoize Records catalogue contains more than a decade of milestones in the life of Angeleno DJ and producer PILO. His signatures—a focus on sound design, and a digital crunch evocative of hardware rather than software—are present from the very beginning, but the evolution of Pilo’s skill and sophistication is clear as he stretches from electro to experimental to techno and back again in a slowly oscillating gradient. Yet despite his dozen or so releases in just as many years, G.L.A.M. (dropping November 8th, 2024 from BNR) is Pilo’s first proper album. That the record embraces the cyclical nature of time is apropos; the artist’s journey towards self-actualized mastery always ends with a new beginning.



Over the eight tracks of G.L.A.M., Pilo reaches deep into the dream that first ignited the passion that has driven him since. For a chosen few internet-connected American teens in the aughts, the sounds of European electro (and electroclash) trickled down their ethernet cables and instilled a fantasy of exotic, sartorial, sexually-fluid hedonism that felt a world away from the hard-edged masculinity of the hip-hop and skate cultures dominant at home. Pilo opens G.L.A.M. expressing this idealized fantasy with the track “Superstar DJ,” channeling the tongue-in-cheek self-celebritizing of Miss Kitten and The Hacker’s seminal work. “I’m a superstar, come meet me at the bar,” hiss Pilo’s heavily effected vocals, over a bassline of chopped mentasm synths driven by a swift, club-ready rhythm. The fingerprint of 2000’s electro a la International Deejay Gigolo Records is recognizably present, yet Pilo is too adept, too confident in his studio abilities to let his tracks rely on the retro. A great joy of this album is the future-facing richness of its production, always nodding to its spiritual guide of the past, while constantly breaking new sonic ground.



G.L.A.M. continues with “Girls Rule The World,” its vicious, droning bassline and sticky, titular hook making it the perfect electroclash soundtrack for a revenge plot on an ex-boyfriend. “What you Want” offers an instrumental exercise in “synthesizers are the new guitars,” and Pilo’s FX chops really shine as he warps and distorts his sounds into an undiscovered dimension existing somewhere between both. “Loverboy” enters the more melodic, Legowelt-inspired realm of electro, pushing above and beyond the foundation of analogue minimalism with flourishes of impressive sound design to construct something both climactic and cathartic. Scopa lends her perfect coldwave sprechgesang to titular track “G.L.A.M.,” with Pilo’s vocal processing offering surprises throughout and his FX chains wielded as instruments unto themselves.



On the track “A Slow Thinning Halo,” Pilo might be conjuring the haunting vocal chops and chiptune simplicity of early Crystal Castles, but the whiplash snap of his drums and sizzling production are all his own. “Spend the Night” is G.L.A.M.’s least nostalgic—and most unashamedly pop—offering, with the mic being passed between Sana and DEEVIOUS (previously featured on Pilo and Boys Noize’s 2023 track “Pvssy.”) DEEVIOUS’ sultry singing rides atop the bassline as it hypnotically struts across the floor, while Pilo’s skillful arrangement, deft rhythm programming, and atmospheric control elevate the songcraft into full-spectrum worldbuilding.



As the penultimate track, the contemporaneity of “Spend the Night” serves as transition away from the album’s previous, past-leaning exercises, allowing Pilo to step fully into the future with “One Last Embrace.” The closing track still references aughts sounds, but it borrows so widely and prolifically that Pilo’s reassemblage can only be described as singular. Here, Pilo pushes his engineering into psychoacoustic territory, as the eerie, beautiful melancholy of “One Last Embrace” explodes into a thrashing bassline that warbles like a drowning memory, struggling against the sinking weight of time. Pilo allows it to survive for 16 electrifying, gut-wrenching bars before letting go. In G.L.A.M., as in Pilo’s career, as in life, every ending can only be a new beginning.

Now on our sixth release & going strong, Brooklyn Sway returns with a heady combination of local producers, further-afield figures and scene-setting interludes to get that real Bucktown mood, accompanied by bold new artwork from NYC "Grafstract" muralist Fumero.

After words of wisdom from originator David Morales, St. Xose, patron saint of afterhours, re-rubs his own entry from BKS-01 into an electro flip with a forceful but smooth strut, Nathan Nothing's ephemeral vocals vanishing in spaces between steady bass pulses and broken beats. Those looking for late-night addresses check Noha's 'Madison Street 932', where the PanickPanick! label head proves his local cred with a funky, vocal sample-driven house jam equally at home on its eponymous street corner or somewhere later, darker, and preferably inside.

Label regulars DeWinter & Emma return with 'Unity', the spoken word Spanish vocals interweaving with choppy snare patterns and a room-filling reverberating bass roar that hits paydirt when English vox and a kick hit late in its second half. C&K are local legends Connie & Karina, and while that may not be some punters' first guess for their moniker's meaning, the track is an exercise in restraint and class, jaunty house swathed in dub echoes and hand drums that positively sways when the trombone lead swings in to carry the tune.

With "Morir en otra habitación", Wild Honey delivers a wonderful record full of emotion and warmth. Beautiful pop music that travels through an intimate moment with an unusual and touching naturalness.

It has been just over three years since Guillermo Farré, the singer and multi-instrumentalist behind Wild Honey, released "Ruinas futuras" (2021). Hailed as one of the best albums of that year, that record reflected his recent fatherhood and the exceptional circumstances of the first stage of the pandemic. Now, his new songs are the echo of a difficult and convulsive time after the death of his father.

The result is a mini-album of five songs that swing between fragility, the unexpected and the everyday. It is a snapshot that captures, as Guillermo describes in one of his lyrics, "slow motion avalanches". These are pieces charged with great emotional intensity but also full of light, driven by the expansion and openness of their exquisite arrangements.

"When I try to remember when something happened, I always think of historical events or personal milestones like moving houses, the birth of my children or the records I've made over the years. Recording an album is sort of like taking a photograph of a particular life moment and I've got used to records helping me sort out the time in my head."

"Morir en otra habitación" is the deliberate effort to document the strange and surprising feelings of that period, knowing that over the years these songs will be the easiest way to remember those months. A feverish exercise of describing in songs that journey of extremes where making breakfast for my children, explaining to them what a person's ashes are or playing the game of making a wish upon seeing a shooting star all come together."

In its vinyl edition, the album will include instrumental versions that, without the presence of Guillermo's voice, are close to the soundtracks he has recorded in recent years for film and TV.

Although Wild Honey is a project with a marked personal character, "Morir en otra habitación" has the support of collaborators close to Guillermo. Co-produced with Remate, the album includes contributions from Clara Viñals (Renaldo & Clara), Anna María Biffi, Javier Lorente and José María Rubio. In addition, Sean O'Hagan (The High Llamas) is responsible for the exquisite string arrangements, which recall Scott Walker, Belle & Sebastian or the most delicate Colin Blunstone, and Ali Chant (Aldous Harding, M. Ward, Katy J Pearson) has been in charge of the mixing.

Aesthetically, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat hates to tread water. At the same time, the Baltimore-based two-piece of vocalist Ed Schrader and bassist Devlin Rice won’t force their songs to fit a preconceived style. “The next album’s always gotta be different from the last one. We’re different people from record to record. So, writing authentically to ourselves will always bring our work to a place that we haven’t been to yet,” Rice said. Schrader added, “We’re terrified of turning into AC/DC. We never want to be married to one scene or time or sound. We want to be the Boba Fett of bands! Constantly altering the way in which we make records has been pretty key in that process.”
For Orchestra Hits, the band’s latest, that alteration was welcoming longtime musical comrade Dylan Going into the fold as a co-writer and co-producer. A songwriter in his own right, a guitar sideman for ESMB on their last two tours, and a collaborator with Rice in the noise riffage band Mandate, Going had both a unique vision and an intimate familiarity with the ESMB vibe.
“Dylan came to every show we’ve ever played in New York—no matter how weird it was,” Schrader said. “He’d be standing there ready to move an amp or feed us barbecued cactus after the gig and toss on some Golden Girls so we could decompress. It felt like family as soon as we began working, but I honestly had no idea how damn good he was at tossing out these hooks.”
According to Schrader, the songs “just poured out of us” over the course of a highly caffeinated three-day weekend in a tiny room in Devlin’s house while his cat, Sandy Goose, screamed continually. “It was like three kids hiding from the world to get into some lovely mischief,” they said. The lack of external pressure in the process gives Orchestra Hits an almost paradoxical vibe. For all of the album’s layers, that mix live and sequenced instruments, it never loses the raw energy of a small handful of friends in the same room plugging in, cranking up, and playing until they pass out.
Lyrically, the album finds Schrader, now 45, meditating on experiences in their youth to make sense of the present moment. “We are not into the garden,” Schrader wails on the relentless “Roman Candle,” a song about the sad debacle of Woodstock ’99, and a direct response to Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” a utopian ode to hippie idealism. A 19-year-old Schrader, having snuck into Woodstock ’99 through a hole in the fence, was there the night members of the crowd used candles intended for a vigil for victims of the Columbine High School massacre to set fires all over the grounds. Even before the fires, Schrader remembered feeling disconnected from the music, the nostalgic cash grab, and the meatheads in the crowd. After watching a press tower collapse, they boarded a random shuttle bus and were dropped off near a Denny’s. “It was a far cry from the Garden of Eden,” Schrader said. “That experience defined what I didn’t want to be a part of, and yet America is more like Woodstock ’99 than ever.”
With percolating synthesizer arpeggios, and climbing bass grooves, “IDKS” is the album’s dance-floor slapper. “’IDKS’ is a funny one,” Schrader said. “We already had a pretty satisfying suite of songs when Dylan was packing up to head back to New York, but he missed the train because of a freak snowstorm. Realizing he’d be stuck in town another day, he says to me, ‘Here’s this other weird thing I have.’ It was ‘IDKS.’ The hooks were so good I felt like Homer Simpson at a free donut convention. I just dove right in, and we cranked that baby out in like 20 minutes.”
Lyrically, “IDKS” is a letter from the true self to public-facing self. “It’s an angry song,” Schrader said. “Because the public-facing self is always looking for an easy escape, but it forces the true self into a cage. I honestly thought my lyrics were corny and was about to change them, but Dylan was digging it just the way it was. So that’s what you hear.”
With the soaring “Daylight Commander,” the band went against all of their musty-basement-bred instincts. “I went full High School Musical with the vocals,” Schrader said. “At first it felt almost embarrassing, but I remember reading somewhere that Bowie recommended always floating a little bit above your comfort zone, and that’s what we did here.” The song is part exercise in absurdity and part pop Trojan horse. “If ever we had a ‘Shiny Happy People’ moment, I guess this is it,” Schrader said.

"There was a bird Matthew Ehler had seen in his backyard before, but he’d never really stopped to look at it.

A red-headed woodpecker, a strange-looking bird. After years of more self-destructive escapes from everyone’s respective demons and traumas, Ehler started to embrace the stillness of birdwatching. “It was something to occupy my mind,” he explains. His new hobby wouldn’t just lend Cliffdiver’s sophomore album its title, but signal a spiritual overhaul rippling through the band.

The origins of Cliffdiver go all the way back to 2017. By 2021, the line-up had settled into Ehler on guitar, Joey Duffy and Briana Wright on vocals, Gilbert Erickson on guitar, Tyler Rogers on bass, Eliot Cooper on drums, and Dony Nickels on sax. All of them veterans of Tulsa’s vibrant and interconnected music scene, they kicked up steam fast — over a host of EPs, singles, and their debut album, Exercise Your Demons , they went from DIY shows to selling out Tulsa’s famed Cain’s Ballroom.

Still, Birdwatching feels like the work of a whole different band: an album specifically grappling with abandoning cyclical behaviors and addictions that no longer serve you. It’s pop-punk maturing into grown-ass adult travails. Birdwatching is a very real take on life: Things get better, but they also get worse again, and better again, and worse again, and nobody will ever have it all figured out. In each snapshot, Cliffdiver offers a companion for those ups and downs.

Produced by Brett Romnes (Hot Mulligan, Mom Jeans, Dogleg)

“Cliffdiver is a set of splayed ribs, a whole lot of heart, and someone you can turn to when the lights refuse to turn on” —NPR Music"

Having gathered up praise from Mary Anne Hobbs, Cerys Matthews, Jamie Cullum, Gilles Peterson, Huey Morgan, The Guardian, Jazzwise and more, for his lauded ‘Crisis & Opportunity’, drummer and composer Myele Manzanza returns with the fourth instalment of his series, titled ‘Meditations’.

On ‘Meditations’, we see Myele revert to a purely acoustic line-up, channeling a focused and razor-sharp return to his Jazz roots. Showcasing an incredible level of musicianship between three musicians at the top of their game - including Matthew Sheens (Ross McHenry, John Patitucci) on piano and Matt Penman (Joshua Redman, Sfjazz Collective) on double bass - the trio exchange motifs over the length of 7 tracks.

Opening proceedings with frenetic rhythmic improvisation, complimented by melancholic and cinematic layers of sound, ‘Crayford’s Room’ is a tribute to Myele’s musical mentor back in New Zealand. Remembering his time as a student in Wellington, Myele shows his deep connection to his origins, manifesting itself as lament on ‘Winter’ and ‘Homesick’. Introducing hypnotic, contemplative melodies take centre stage on ‘Something Old Something New’ (the first single to be released from the project)’ It maintains a sense of tension and intrigue throughout, and intensity rises to a crescendo sending sonic particles sprawling into space.

Intuitive, darker and deeply contemplative, Myele shares his innermost thoughts on ‘Crisis and Opportunities Vol.4 - Meditations’. He divulges:

‘The personal angst and existential frustration I was going through across 2020 - 2022 I believe is well reflected here. The album is deeply informed by the musicianship and sound of my trio, Matthew Sheens on piano and Matt Penman on double bass. Knowing that musicians of their calibre were going to be involved gave me licence to go further in my writing, deploying odd time signatures, sharing the melody roles across the piano and the bass, and delving deeper into the nuances of what the acoustic piano / bass / drums trio can do. The compositions present a challenge even to the best musicians, and I knew that it was essential to have a team on this level to really move the music beyond an academic exercise and draw out the emotion and colour from the material.’

goat (JP) are renowned for two albums released in 2013 and 2015 that took Kraftwerk’s man-machine concept back to its roots with swingeing, inch-tight drums, bass and guitar patterns that needed to be heard to be believed. For their long-in-the-making new album ‘Joy In Fear’, band leader Koshiro Hino (YPY, KAKUHAN) describes the process as “90 percent pain” - and we can well believe it - few other records we can think of transmute DAW-composed rhythmic precision into such an expressive instrumental performance. It really is a feat of determination, skill and execution that seems to defy human dexterity.

Make no mistake - an academic exercise it ain’t - in the most visceral sense, goat (JP) make BODY music, for dancing, flailing, for losing yourself in completely. As usual, Hino plays guitar, backed by bassist Atsumi Tagami, while Akihiko Ando joins on saxophone, while Takafumi Okada and Rai Tateishi step in to handle percussion, with the latter moonlighting on flute. Every sound is sculpted into a fragment of cadence: guitar and bass prangs alternately echo and dance between the drums, and Ando's sax is mutated into a respiratory slobber of guttural smacks and phantom breaths.

In some respects, it's tempting to label it jazz, but the kind of jazz that Miles Davis spearheaded on the game-changing 'On The Corner', the blueprint for so much post-punk, electronic music and avant rock. goat (JP) take that raw alloy and sharpen it like a blade, mangling the template with the knotty metrics of Autechre or Ryoji Ikeda. The accuracy is galvanic; it's almost impossible to comprehend each player keeping a mental note of the mathematical time signatures, and yet they floss them out with trills and icy stutters that seem to evaporate around the thick, taiko-like thuds.

They practically get our teeth gnashing with the bruxist rictus chatter of ‘III I IIII III’ , before ‘Cold Heat’ introduces subtly harmonised, new aspects to their sound with slivers of Hassellian flute and ringing overtones of their percussion, while the winding sensuality of ‘Warped’ slips down very nicely. Their links to OG no-wavers like Glenn Branca & Wharton Tiers’ Theoretical Girls - is manifest in the 8 mins of chipping stop/start pulse and parry to ‘Modal Flower’, while a total left turn into Mark Fell-meets-Ligeti-esque messed up metronomics in ‘GMF’ ties it off with a properly beguiling flourish.

Writing music for film and theatre has always been a big part of Hania Rani's musical world. It is also a part of the creative process that can be tantalisingly out of reach for listeners, either the project doesn't come to fruition or the music simply isn't available away from the film or play. From early collaborations with friends, to last year's two scores for full length films (xAbo: Father Boniecki directed by Aleksandra Potoczek and I Never Cry directed by Piotr Domalewski') Rani has been involved in many such projects, each representing an important step in her artistic development and life as a composer and artist:

"Composing for motion picture or theatre is for me a very different kind of work than writing for my own projects. Firstly, I need to collaborate with somebody else who sees the world through the lense of their own art and craft. That's why these kinds of encounters can be so exciting - they are a promise of creating something very new, as a result of creative work of so many people from all walks of life. Secondly, I feel that music in film is an invisible character, a missing emotion that creates a special atmosphere and sensation. It doesn't illustrate, it completes the work of art. I think it is an extremely sensitive matter that rejects banal associations and easy solutions. I feel like composing for film works like an exercise for my imagination."

It is the nature of these collaborations though, that sometimes the composers own preferred compositions don't make the final cut. This is where Music for Film and Theatre comes in as it allows Rani to present a selection of her own personal favourite pieces composed for film and plays. Pieces that made it to the final cut and pieces that were rejected by the director or the producer. Bringing the music together as an album offers a chance for Rani to share her music with her listeners on her own terms and a chance for her fans to hear a different side of her art.

"I put them in one place, as a collection of precious objects that were kept for years in a drawer. Some of them were composed a couple years ago, some are the result of recent research. I am very happy to finally be able to present them as a separate project."

Rani is of course grateful to all of the directors who have entrusted her to create music for their projects, but she professes especially warm feelings for the pieces composed for her first 'real' theatre play, Pradziady, directed by Michał Zdunik. The title comes from 'Dziady' a term in Slavic folklore for the spirits of the ancestors and a collection of pre-Christian rites, rituals and customs that were dedicated to them. The essence of these rituals was the 'communion of the living with the dead', namely, the establishment of relationships with the souls of the ancestors. "I felt this story needed extremely dark and fragile music, and at the same time a sound that could express the mixture of the two worlds - the living and the dead. I decided to compose part of the soundtrack with a string quartet but including two cellos, viola and only one violin. We recorded in a little house, completely built from wood, mostly from Finnish pine. I always felt this space has a very special, warm and natural acoustics - especially when it is combined with string instruments. The track composed for this theatre play is called Ghosts but actually didn't finally make it to the performance, although I like it so much that I thought it would perfectly fit



this compilation". Other highlights include the enchanting Soleil Pâle written for a collaboration with director Neels Castillon, and improvising dancers Alt Take, the beautiful melancholy of In Between (from the film score for xAbo: Father Boniecki) and the magical bliss of The Beach (from I Never Cry) and together they create a beautiful offering from an artist whose every note is worth hearing, but for whom the journey is just beginning:

"I am very happy to see that many artists consider my music as the right soundtrack for their works, because film music was always a huge inspiration for any of my compositions. I find there a lot of life and real emotions, but also a feeling of freedom. Freedom from my own thinking patterns and prejudices. I also believe strongly in collaboration between people, I always feel this is the way to create something really new, based on a mixture of different ways of thinking, feeling, expressing."

This then is Hania Rani, Music for Film and Theatre – enjoy!

Year is 2020, in the middle of the pandemic outbreak, “En el fin del mundo, hasta el fin del mundo” (In the end of the world, until the end of the world) is the first production of the Chilean label EMA Records, including local and international artists, active in different musical fields (improv, post rock, electronica, ambient, etc).

The structure and artist selection of “En el fin del mundo, hasta el fin del mundo” has the intention of capturing/expressing the Chilean geography from a soundscape perspective, related to the country's remote geophysical location, submerged in a new gloomy reality, the pandemics. This little exercise was somehow the starting point for each artist to develop their tracks, without any particular disclaimer or artistic restriction. All tracks on the compilation have been previously unreleased by each project, then first came out digitally and now - finally - on vinyl.

The complete compilation (21 tracks) will be released on 3 separate vinyl albums. The first LP is featuring tracks by Pita, Abul Mogard, Pan American and others.

Pål Waaktaar-Savoy has explained that much of the atmosphere and the lyrical themes of Savoy’s seventh album “Under” are drawn from his move with his fellow songwriter and wife Lauren Savoy to Los Angeles, where they found themselves surrounded by loneliness.

Waaktaar-Savoy is one of the most prolific and impressive songwriters of the twentieth century and beyond, and having been working at the very top of the music industry for as long as he has, it is no surprise that the record is well-crafted. The production is good, with careful arrangements and instrumentation. Every instrument’s voice is given room and there is space in the mix. Only occasionally does this slip over into over-production, as with the treated strings on the opening track “Lonely Surfer” or the treatment of Lauren’s vocals, which sound overly processed.

It is also true that the record exhibits a fair measure of melancholy. The chords and melody lines are dark in places, and there is a hint of sadness in the lyrics, many of which have a retrospective quality, describing moments in the past. However, beyond this, the understated feel of the record is just that – understated. Many of songs feel a few RPM too slow and the delivery of the vocal lines too underplayed to give them any emotional authority. At times, it also seems like the arrangement has to step in to bolster the songwriting or lyrics, by filling space with strings or brass, or the counterpoint of the instrumentation on “Camden Palace Chronicles” which distracts from some fairly mediocre words. It is important to emphasise that this is a joint songwriting exercise for Pål and Lauren, so we should not compare the output to the work of a-ha, but still, the themes lean in the direction of suburban banality, far from Pål’s more oblique or allegorical writing.

There are other moments of real quality beyond the production and arrangement. The title track has an excellent Bowie-esque chorus (and there are echoes of his work and sound throughout, along with Beatles and Beck), “The Life and Times of a Wannabe” has some first-rate guitar work on it, edgy riffs and some good textures. Likewise, “Coming Down”, which also exemplifies Frode Unneland’s drumming on the record, which is generally prominent in the mix, and with good reason, as it carries the record along well.

Compilation of (mainly instrumental) music from 1960-80s Estonian animated films. Comes with 8-page full-colour booklet in Estonian with texts by Andreas Trossek and Berk Vaher.
Musically all over the place, as you'd expect.

Note: The animated films of this LP can be watched online at kohilarecords.eu/ark

In the mid1970s, when Tallinnfilm animation studios recruited a youthful bunch of skilled artists and cartoonists, interesting things started to happen. Contemporary themes and ironic depictions of domestic life were introduced into Estonian animation – as well as pop-art aesthetics and even psychedelic imagery. Also, composers found their chance to exercise something beyond the routine standards of pop and academic music, to try their hand at the edges of orchestral sonic palette and electronic soundscapes.

Suddenly, pop art merged pop music, and electric guitars, Rhodes pianos and synthesizers were telling tales of a better future that still hasn’t fully arrived today.

Pål Waaktaar-Savoy has explained that much of the atmosphere and the lyrical themes of Savoy’s seventh album “Under” are drawn from his move with his fellow songwriter and wife Lauren Savoy to Los Angeles, where they found themselves surrounded by loneliness.

Waaktaar-Savoy is one of the most prolific and impressive songwriters of the twentieth century and beyond, and having been working at the very top of the music industry for as long as he has, it is no surprise that the record is well-crafted. The production is good, with careful arrangements and instrumentation. Every instrument’s voice is given room and there is space in the mix. Only occasionally does this slip over into over-production, as with the treated strings on the opening track “Lonely Surfer” or the treatment of Lauren’s vocals, which sound overly processed.

It is also true that the record exhibits a fair measure of melancholy. The chords and melody lines are dark in places, and there is a hint of sadness in the lyrics, many of which have a retrospective quality, describing moments in the past. However, beyond this, the understated feel of the record is just that – understated. Many of songs feel a few RPM too slow and the delivery of the vocal lines too underplayed to give them any emotional authority. At times, it also seems like the arrangement has to step in to bolster the songwriting or lyrics, by filling space with strings or brass, or the counterpoint of the instrumentation on “Camden Palace Chronicles” which distracts from some fairly mediocre words. It is important to emphasise that this is a joint songwriting exercise for Pål and Lauren, so we should not compare the output to the work of a-ha, but still, the themes lean in the direction of suburban banality, far from Pål’s more oblique or allegorical writing.

There are other moments of real quality beyond the production and arrangement. The title track has an excellent Bowie-esque chorus (and there are echoes of his work and sound throughout, along with Beatles and Beck), “The Life and Times of a Wannabe” has some first-rate guitar work on it, edgy riffs and some good textures. Likewise, “Coming Down”, which also exemplifies Frode Unneland’s drumming on the record, which is generally prominent in the mix, and with good reason, as it carries the record along well.

Pål Waaktaar-Savoy has explained that much of the atmosphere and the lyrical themes of Savoy’s seventh album “Under” are drawn from his move with his fellow songwriter and wife Lauren Savoy to Los Angeles, where they found themselves surrounded by loneliness.

Waaktaar-Savoy is one of the most prolific and impressive songwriters of the twentieth century and beyond, and having been working at the very top of the music industry for as long as he has, it is no surprise that the record is well-crafted. The production is good, with careful arrangements and instrumentation. Every instrument’s voice is given room and there is space in the mix. Only occasionally does this slip over into over-production, as with the treated strings on the opening track “Lonely Surfer” or the treatment of Lauren’s vocals, which sound overly processed.

It is also true that the record exhibits a fair measure of melancholy. The chords and melody lines are dark in places, and there is a hint of sadness in the lyrics, many of which have a retrospective quality, describing moments in the past. However, beyond this, the understated feel of the record is just that – understated. Many of songs feel a few RPM too slow and the delivery of the vocal lines too underplayed to give them any emotional authority. At times, it also seems like the arrangement has to step in to bolster the songwriting or lyrics, by filling space with strings or brass, or the counterpoint of the instrumentation on “Camden Palace Chronicles” which distracts from some fairly mediocre words. It is important to emphasise that this is a joint songwriting exercise for Pål and Lauren, so we should not compare the output to the work of a-ha, but still, the themes lean in the direction of suburban banality, far from Pål’s more oblique or allegorical writing.

There are other moments of real quality beyond the production and arrangement. The title track has an excellent Bowie-esque chorus (and there are echoes of his work and sound throughout, along with Beatles and Beck), “The Life and Times of a Wannabe” has some first-rate guitar work on it, edgy riffs and some good textures. Likewise, “Coming Down”, which also exemplifies Frode Unneland’s drumming on the record, which is generally prominent in the mix, and with good reason, as it carries the record along well.

Deluxe 180g vinyl. Art Edition LP includes set of six 12”x12” art cards.



The follow-up to Kee Avil's acclaimed 2022 debut Crease: "A stunning debut" (The Quietus); "A whiplash style of uninhibited exploration" (The Wire); "Kee Avil's debut is a force" (Foxy Digitalis); "A work of Frankensteinian wonder" (Electronic Sound); "A tightly coiled, finely wrought vision of avant-pop" (Exclaim); "A debut of fiendish creativity" (Bandcamp Album Of The Day / Albums Of The Year) Kee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of The Year along the way. Its intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge take on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin. A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs. With Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much rawer sound. She calls it folk… and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences. There's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements - guitar, electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front. Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. "We're shaped by many versions of ourselves," says Avil. "I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could have been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that through time. Seeing the future, the past." Spine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months - a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: "This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch." In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts. Sometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really are. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic, it hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much time in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar bends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There is something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's own feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most important things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next step forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on its own, a bracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in being human. - jj skolnik

Limited black vinyl. Full colour sleeve with unseen pics of Ron Geesin in his studio doing maths stuff on the back.
Wow! So you’re telling me Ron Geesin made this kooky electro groovy score to a really progressive maths educational programme on Central TV in 1980 and it’s musically anarchic and amazing and it’s never been issued before? Until now. Wow again!!!! And there’s 30 tracks!!! Trunk Records we love you...
Basic Maths was the second educational TV Series for the Midlands-based ITV station for which I composed, played and recorded all music and noises. The first series, also for budding mathematicians in the 7-10 age group, was Leapfrog in 1978 produced by ATV (Associated Television): Basic Maths was for the newly-formed Central Television, the work spanning 1980-1981; both series were of twenty-eight parts.
The most worthy idea for both of these series was to project mathematics into life by means mainly of non-verbal sound and vision, with both animated and live action films, linked by two presenters, Fred Harris and Mary Waterhouse. In my role as Media Composer, I had had quite enough of voice overs, therefore music well under, so this fairly radical educational approach at the time encouraged my creative juices to run unhindered. Of course the sound had to do something with the picture and not just use it as a carrier for peacock display. It had to duet, play with and explain the visual content using novel and engaging techniques, so this involved the usual and sometimes intricate mathematical calculations which constantly exercised my already reasonable school maths.