Search:son of philip

Moon Diagrams is the solo recording project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses John Archuleta. Two years after his acclaimed debut album Lifetime Of Love, Archuleta returns with Trappy Bats, a mini-LP that interweaves three brilliant new Moon Diagrams tracks with radiant reworks from Shigeto, Angel Deradoorian and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Trappy Bats was largely recorded in a single night as a means to process the intense intersection of Archuleta’s social, political and personal hysteria. Having been arrested for an unremembered missed court date, Archuleta spent 24 hours in a holding cell, offering ample time to reflect on his life, the current state of the nation (the jail televisions were showing a constant feed of the then-active Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville) and the other inmates. Upon being released the next day, Archuleta found himself suffering from a bout of insomnia and feeling the need to process everything through music. Here, Archuleta is in his freest and most grateful state, channelling the turmoil and confusion he was experiencing into an unencumbered fit of creativity. It’s pure, unadulterated escapism with an even more callous palette of sounds than before, clearly split between two moods. On what you might call the ‘up’ side, the title track could be the sonic spawn of Not Waving and Terrence Dixon: a snarling mix of percussive clatter and washes of orchestral tones coalesce into a pulsating groove across its almost 12-minute runtime, the underlying ’80s aesthetic making it feel like a turbo-charged Shep Pettibone remix of New Order, looped to infinity. Detroit electronica don Shigeto goes even further and implodes the track into a kaleidoscope of bone-jarring, viscerally giddy dance music. Over on the ‘down’ side, ‘Wipeout’ is a slow-motion waltz of dusty piano and clattering percussion loops that coolly stumble along with the woozy, nocturnal flare of The Caretaker or Philip Jeck. The haunted reverie ventures even deeper with a beatifically electrified ambient re-imagination by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Daisychain’ goes almost completely off the grid, offering up a sweetly submerged slab of constantly evolving murkiness in the vein of Demdike Stare or a dosed Andy Stott. The sweet shuffle levitates even higher with a celestial re-interpretation by sonic visionary Angel Deradoorian, formerly of the Dirty Projectors. The end result is an extended traipse through Saturday evening fever-dream techno, Sunday morning cigarette jazz-pop and every blank thought in between.

Razen celebrate their 10 yr anniversary with “Ayîk Adhîsta Adhîsta Ayîk”, an album that takes a paragraph from CG Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections as a reference point to set off a journey that goes from light to dark, from day to night, from life to death, and back.

As much a reflection of primal imagery and rituals of knowledge as a way of coming to terms with anxieties about the chaos of the night, the album concerns itself with the question: who - or what - are we in the moments before (re-)birth, before waking up, in the state inbetween darkness and light?
On “Ayîk Adhîsta Adhîsta Ayîk”, the wind instruments and organ stabs of band leaders Kim Delcour and Brecht Ameel are expanded with Pieter Lenaerts’ five string double bass and sarangi, Jean-Philippe Poncin’s bass clarinet and chalumeau, and Paul Garriau’s hurdy gurdy.

The album sees the group explore new straight-to-the-gut emotional territory, while simultaneously showcasing Razen’s intuitive, continuous investigation of the acoustic properties and resonant possibilities of churches and chapels in the countryside around Brussels; after “Remote Hologram” (2014) and “ The Xvoto Reels” (2017), this time the St Agatha Church (St.-Agatha-Berchem) functions as the conduit for Razen’s acoustic sound jolts.

With the past ten years entirely devoted to the search for archetypical timbres and connotations by improvising on Early Music instruments, it’s no wonder that the world of Razen would one day collide with the world of CG Jung and take his writing as an inspiration.

A sonic hex tour de force from this unique ensemble, “Ayîk Adhîsta Adhîsta Ayîk” is a present-day, nocturnal emitter of the Coleridge quote that opens Jung’s Memories:
‘He looked at his own soul with a Telescope. What seemed all irregular he saw and shewed to be beautiful Constellations and he added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds’.

After years of mythology, misinterpretation and procrastination Nurse With Wound’s Steven Stapleton finally chooses Finders Keepers Records as the ideal collaborators to release “the right tracks” from his uber-legendary psych/prog/punk peculiarity shopping list known as The Nurse With Wound List, commencing with a French specific Volume One of this authentically titled Strain Crack Break series. Featuring some Finders Keepers’ regulars amongst galactic Gallic rarities (previously presumed to be imaginary red herrings) this deluxe double vinyl dossier demystifies some of the essential French feee jazz and Parisian prog inclusions from the alphabetical “dedication” inventory as printed the anti-bands 1979 industrial milestone debut.

When Steven Stapleton, Heman Pathak and John Fothergill’s anti-band Nurse With Wound decided to include an alphabetical dedication to all their favourite bands on the back of their inaugural LP the notion of creating a future record dealers’ trophy list couldn’t have been further from their minds. By adding a list of untravelled European mythical musicians and noise makers to their own debut release of unchartered industrial art rock they were merely providing a suggestive support system of existing potential likeminded bands, establishing safety in numbers should anyone require sonic subtitles for Nurse With Wound’s own mutant musical language. Luckily for them, the record landed in record shops in the midst of 1979’s memorable summer of abject apathy and its sound became a hit amongst disillusioned agit-pop pickers and artsy post-punks, thus playing a key role in the bourgeoning “Industrial” genre that ensued. On the most part, however, the list , like most instruction manuals, remained unreadable, syntactic and suspiciously sarcastic... As potential “real musicians” Nurse WIth Wound became an Industrial music fan’s household name, but in contrast many of the names on The Nurse With Wound List were considered to be imaginary musicians, made-up bands or booby traps for hacks and smart-arses. It took a while for the rest of the record collecting community to catch on or finally catch u

Since then, many of the rare, obscure and unpronounceable genre-free records on The Nurse With Wound List have slowly found their own feet and stumbled in to the homes of open-minded outernational vinyl junkies, D’s and sample hungry producers, self-propelled and judged on their own merit, mostly without consultation of the enigmatic NWW map. But, to the inspective competitive collector’s chagrin, one resounding fact recurs, NWW got there first! Via vinyl vacations, on cheap flights and Interrail tickets, buying bargain bin LPs on a shoestring while oblivious to the pending pension worthy price tags after their 40 year vintage, Stapleton and Fothergill, even if you’ve never heard of them, were at the bottom of the pit before “digging” became paydirt. And NOW at huge international record fairs that occur in massive exhibition halls (or within the confines of your one-touch palm pilot) amongst jive talk acronyms such as SS, PP, BIN, DNAP and BCWHES the coded letters NWW have begun to appear on stickers in the corner of original copies of the same premium progressive records accompanied by a customary 50% price hike to titillate/coerce the initiated as dealers extort the taught. Like “psych” “PINA” or “Krautrock” did before, “NWW” has become a buzzword and in the passed decades since its first publication The List has been mythologised, misunderstood and misconstrued. It’s also been overlooked, overestimated and under-appreciated in equal measures, but with a growing interest it has also come to represent a maligned genre in itself, something that all members of the original line-up would have deemed sacrilegious. Bolstered by the subtitle “Categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden,” all bands on the inventory (many chosen on the strength of just one track alone) were chosen for their genre-defying qualities... A check-list for the unchart

Forty years after Nurse With Wound’s first record, Finders Keepers Records, in close collaboration with Steve Stapleton remind fans of THIS kind of “lost” music, that there once existed a feint path which was worn away decades before major label pop property developers built over this psychedelic underground. As long-running fans and liberators of some of the same records, arriving at the same axis from different-but-the-same planets, Finders Keepers and Nurse WIth Wound finally sing from the same hymn sheet resulting in a collaborative attempt to officially, authentically and legally compile the best tracks from the list, succeeding where many overzealous nerds have deferred (or simply, got the wrong end of the stick). Naturally our lavish metallic gatefold double vinyl compendium would only scratch the surface of this DIY dossier of elongated punk-prog peculiarities hence out decision to release volume one in a series which, in accordance with Steve’s wishes, focusses exclusively on individual tracks of French origin, the country that unsurprisingly hosted the highest content of bands on the list. Comprising of musique concrète, free jazz, Rock In Opposition, Zeuhl School space rock, macabre ballet music, lo-fi sci-fi, and classic horror literature inspired prog, this first volume of the series entitled Strain Crack And Break throws us in at the deep end, where the Seine meets the in-sane, introducing the space cadets that found Mars in Marseilles.

Like the Swedish flat-pack record shelves that attempt to house the vast amounts of vintage vinyl that goes into a multi-volume compilation like this, its time to prepare your own musical penchants and preconceived ideas about DIY music and hear them slowly strain, crack and b

Philippe Cam is the Thomas Pynchon of the electronic music world. Little is known about him and only a couple of pictures have been put online since he emerged on this planet to write his first and only album18 years ago. We know he worked as a sailor and that’s it. If you dig deeper you might find out that he worked as a DJ in the beginning of the 90ies in Brussels and began to study electronic music there and also began to write music for theaters and ballets.

The American distributor Forced Exposure once wrote that about him: „Philipe Cam is a star in his own field. He is among the few people who have succeeded to write hypnotic dance music without a conventional beat still conveying a thrilling, dramatic feel. Cam has developed an accurate, intense and complex formula of modulation-techno. Starting with music similar to Pan Sonic in 1996, his music turned towards a more elegant form of minimal music. Abstract soundtracks lead to an organic form of music, which was equally influenced by modern techno as Wolfgang Voigt's Studio 1/Gas or Basic Channel/Maurizio. Cam's music corresponds heavily to the Cologne scene, where his music is appreciated and played throughout the clubs by the likes of Michael Mayer, Tobias Thomas and various other DJs as well as experimental djs from the A-musik corner.“

So what’s new with his music? Basically the art of filtering is still his passion. Maybe he can be less associated with techno and the themes of his new tracks emerge in a more distinctive pattern? Well that’s hard to say, we would comment the energy of his early techno days in Brussels have returned here in a fierce way with some oft he tracks. The rhythmic movements are classy and stick with you. Whereas other tracks look for a distinctive relaxation of some kind.

We are releasing the album as a double clear vinyl with cover art by Yvette Klein who also designed the cover for his Philippe Cam’s album 18 years ago. Graphics for "Rotterdam" come from Cologne designer Daniela Thiel. We also would like to thank the cultural department of Cologne for supporting us to finance the album and to see the artistic value in this piece of minimalism.

The album kicks off with the mellow and soothing "Cocoa Beach". A Gentle beat that moves like bodies swaying in the hot summer sun. The clock moves a step forward and then a step backward as evolution takes a rest.

"Manga" feels like an acceleration to the moon, the contemplative moments come in spurts and hide in the intervals of the chords which are on the loose. Philippe Cam is the most energetic person in the world when it comes to core activity, this is head banging stuff for the ambient lounge.

"Short Summer" is a heavy and violent recognition. As intensive as it is it knows when to stop and disappear. In the ear and brain of the listeners it leaves an indisputable echo which lingers on for minutes. We suggest not to make a pause but jump directly into "Vermillions Sands".

What can be said about into "Vermillions Sands"? Be prepared some Terry Riley might lure around the corner to offer you some oranges on a silver plate, but don’t eat them. This is luring and beautiful at the same time. Maybe the best ambient track ever written and yet who can ever venture to say that without making a fool of himself. "Vermillions Sands" comes in waves and they could be longer we think.

"Rotterdam" the home of Philippe Cam for a long time but not anymore. He moved away. So that changes the perspective. But when was the track written? "Rotterdam" seems mechanical and rusty and spooky and divided. This arrangement is very different to all the other tracks so far and is almost dub in style but way more fractured. A steady stop and go emerges. But the longer it runs the better it gets. At minute 6 the brain resets itself and tries to grasp what has happened so far, reconstruction as a result of its own phantasmic imagination and hardly true at all, wonderful. Applause included!

Here comes "Bis", a short episode of a track and before we can comment on it, it is already over.

"The Game" is a mule of a track. It has a quiet stubborn sequence that bites and kicks you in the back without any change in near sight. We can hear a voice whispering, which sounds like a miniature vocoder featuring the voice of a child calling out - never stopping. This is treadmill to some extend but starts to breathe towards the middle of the track and slowly changes perspective. In fact there are some changes taking place here which go beyond a sound design that works heavily on the stereo image. Stick with it and the experience will be a great one.

"Ultimate Fly For Halloway" somehow orchestrates how you might feel after you climbed a 8000 meter high mountain and reached the top. A rejoicing off a special kind. Lava for the ears. No cheerleader murder plot sorry.

"Last Track" is a perfect example of a true minimalistic pice of music that manages to make contact with other genres and does this with elegance, determination and a lot of soul.

key selling points: The key selling point is the fact that Philippe Cam once was referred to as one of the main protagonists of the minimal music scene along with Wolfgang Voigt's Studio 1/Gas and Basic Channel/Maurizio. A true artist with a vision which is very rare.

Philippe Cam has picked up the sound he was famous for but has developed it further without selling out to any genre and expectation that rules our daily business.

Exactly this is the strength of the album to create a vivid world of impressions by using instruments in a whole different way than all software developers would suggest.

"Rotterdam" is a piece of art that can set off a firework when you listen to it and it owes nothing to anyone.

The Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist Joyce Silveira Moreno was born and raised in the middle of Copacabana, a short beach stroll from the epicentre of the bossa nova universe.
Her father was a Dane that had settled in Brazil, but she was raised by her mother and step-father in a typical Portuguese-Brazilian household. Since her older brother was friendly with
leading lights of the bossa nova movement such as Roberto Menescal and Eumir Deodato, she was steeped in the form at an early age and witnessed its key evolution first-hand. At the
age of 16 in 1964, she was taken to the studio by Menescal to contribute to the coveted debut album by the mythical group Sambacana, assembled to record the work of composer Pacífico
Mascarenhas when the meagre budget would not allow the vocalists he preferred. Knowing that a full-time career in music was certainly not guaranteed, she began studying journalism
in 1967, shortly before her controversial song “Me Disseram” reached the finals of Rio’s second International Song Competition. The following year, her self-titled debut album was
released by Philips, produced by Armando Pittigliani, with orchestration by Dorival Caymmi and arrangements by Gaya; along with her own compositions, the album also featured songs
by her rising-star friends, including Caetano Veloso and Marcos Valle.

Factory Benelux is proud to present a deluxe 5 disc vinyl box set edition of Always Now, the debut album by cult Factory Records group Section 25, produced by legendary sonic architect Martin Hannett and sleeved by Peter Saville.
All tracks are newly re-mastered from the original quarter-inch tapes. The first 1000 copies of the box set are pressed in coloured vinyl: disc 1 (black); disc 2 (clear); disc 3 (yellow); disc 4 (red); disc 5 (silver). The outer case in printed in PMS 123 with spot varnish.
The 16 page booklet features unseen images by noted photographer Philippe Carly and texts by founder members Larry and Vin Cassidy. Also included is the first ever interview with guitarist Paul Wiggin, whose sudden departure in late 1981 saw Tony Wilson try (and fail) to recruit pre-Smiths teenager Johnny Marr as replacement.
Recorded as a trio at Pink Floyd’s Britannia Row studio in London in January 1981, Always Now combined austere post-punk rhythm and noise with elements of Can, Krautrock and modern psychedelia. Key tracks include Friendly Fires, Dirty Disco and New Horizon, along with C.P. (a collaboration with Hannett) and Hit (extensively sampled by Kanye West for the track F.M.L. on his 2016 album The Life of Pablo).
Disc 2 gathers together several non-album singles from 1980 and 1981, including Charnel Ground, Je Veux Ton Amour and debut EP Girls Don’t Count – the latter produced by mentors Rob Gretton and Ian Curtis (of Joy Division).
Disc 3 offers a complete live show professionally recorded at Groningen (Netherlands) on 26 October 1980, as part of a Factory package tour.
Disc 4 is part-improvised second studio album The Key of Dreams, recorded and produced by the band themselves a few months after Always Now, and released by Factory Benelux in June 1982.
Disc 5 consists of further experimental material recorded in 1981 and self-released on a cassette called Illuminus Illumina. This final disc closes with an extended (and previously unreleased) live encore jam recorded with all four members of New Order at Reading University on 8 May 1981.
“One of the best albums Britain's second city has unleashed” (Uncut);
“In 1980 their bass-driven mantras were thoughtlessly dismissed as second-rate Joy Division, but hindsight judges them more kindly. The wind-dried skeins of their blasted guitar harmonics and skimped electronics gauntly cling to the songs’ skeletal frames. With telltale titles like Babies in the Bardo their Buddhist interests hang heavy over these early stirrings. But, combining a bass-led drone with a characteristic groaning vocal, Charnel Ground succinctly pins down Section 25's pre-disco appeal” (The Wire)

incl. Download Code

Untameable Anatolian feline fuzzy folk funk finally uncaged. A spontaneous Turkish-Norwegian-Dutch expedition, where seafaring jazz cats entangled with fugitive roadies and Tee-Set mods, makes the story of Durul Gence’s highly anticipated/ill-fated Asia Minor Mission group the stuff of lost-rock legend and remains one of Turkish music’s great “what ifs?” The black cat is finally out of the bag...

Having forged a celebrity status as one of Turkey’s premier percussionists and bandleaders, Durul Gence assembled the underground fusion group known as Asia Minor Mission (AMM) in early 1972 (with Irfan Sumer, Oguz Durukan and Ugur Dikmen) while trying to escape the constant daze of paparazzi camera flashes that followed him across Turkey. During a far-fetched post-gig brainstorm the group pondered relocating to Norway (based on fact that none of them had ever visited the country) when a local seaman who claimed to have recording studio connections in Oslo overheard them. Enlisting the roadie services of a streetwise Istanbul taxi driver friend on the run from the police AMM took the plunge, accepting the sailor’s offer of passage on his next sailing.
In these new idyllic surroundings, the same region that played host to fellow Turkish percussionist Okay Temiz, Durul found the peace he desired discovering a muse in Norway’s welcoming creative climate. Much like Barıs Manço and Mogollar in France, Cem Karaca and Gökçen Kaynatan in Germany, Gence’s relationship with Norway rekindled a passion for composition in ways he couldn’t have imagined in his homeland, opening doors thought previously unreachable. As a potential prodigal son for Anadolu pop Durul joined a wider pop-cultural diaspora alongside electronic pioneer Ilhan Mimaroglu, Tülay German (aka Tuly Sand) Kardasllar’s “Alex” Wiska (collaborator with Krautrockers Can) and Maffy Falay from the band Sevda.
Despite a blooming fan base and original repertoire the Nordic dream was not to be and after two years without a studio session, AMM called it quits during a tour of Holland after which Durukan and Dikmen went home to join Cem Karaca’s band Dervisan - Dikmen’s keyboards feature on Finders Keepers releases by Turkish singer Selda (FKR011). Retreating to the city of Delft to ponder his next move, Durul met Peter Tetteroo, former vocalist from successful Dutch psych-pop combo Tee-Set, who also found himself in a lonely boat after the demise of his long-running group. As an AMM fan, Tetteroo suggested they record two Gence penned AMM demos for Dutch Philips signed exotic songbird Sasi Naz at Peter’s home studio. A session was hastily arranged and a talented, yet unconfirmed, guitarist was enlisted. Durul maintains it was the work of Ferry Lever from Tee-Set/After Tea, something Ferry has denied, and with Tetteroo having died in 2002 the question remains. Upon entering the humble studio Durul stumbled upon a skeletal drum kit. Lacking hi-hat, toms or even a snare he cobbled together a bongo and a tambourine and set to work. Together, under the watchful eye of Tetteroo, the pair jammed stripped back versions of the AMM live staples Black Cat and Boo Song, with an added freak factor otherwise missing from their jazzier approach. Laid down in just 30 minutes, with Gence’s accomplished guide vocals and fuzzy overdubs, the rudimentary but professional recordings never made it to Philips execs and the tapes returned to Turkey under Durul’s arm as one of only two documented AMM recordings (the other being a live performance in Oslo’s Hennie-Onstad Art Centre in May 1973).
Unintended for commercial release, curiouser and curiouser, Finders Keepers proudly present these previously unheard tracks sourced directly from original tapes, which stand as a testament to the inimitable talent of Gence and the only studio document of the mythical AMM Turk jazz funk troubadours, representing a pop-psych Hollandaise holiday postcard which has taken five decades to be delivered. 45 revolutions later... The cat’s got the cream.

Cosmo Vitelli hasn’t slept since 1973. Instead, he’s replaced slumber with the tireless exploration of electronic music, sharing his finds as an accomplished DJ and label manager as well as an esteemed producer, with heaps of records, remixes and edits under his belt. With his upcoming two-part LP on Malka Tuti, Cosmo brings forward his more diverse and somehow mature musical side, combining elements of post-punk, krautrock, electronica and pop on this first of 2 four-track records. The songs on the LP transcend style and genre. They manage to hold and playfully sustain an idea that echoes throughout them all - a musical “saying” as well as a personal life experience, and they reflect Cosmo’s prolific studio work of the past 2 years since he moved to Berlin. On the opening song A Brand New City he collaborates with longtime friend Julienne Dessagne (aka Fantastic Twins). Dessagne's vocals cut through the quirky and addictive percussion groove and synth sequence, leading to a a strong emotional melancholic melodic catharsis. On the following two songs Groupe Surdose & Die Alraune we find Cosmo collaborating with Sebastian Lee Philipp (of Die Wilde Jagd fame) to show his more post-rock/krautrock side. Groupe Surdose is an instant classic slow burning dance floor Krautrock tune while in Die Alruane we find poetic German lyrics sung by Lee-Philipp on top of organic grooves, guitars and an epic Saxophone line that together create a distinctive highlight for the record. The closing track Kuldip is the curve ball of them all, sealing the first part of his album with a Mediterranean mid tempo dance tune for the selectors and the middle-eastern inspired electro aficionados.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Far Out Recordings proudly presents two albums of previously unheard Azymuth demo recordings from 1973-75

Since their debut album release in 1975, Azymuth have risen to rank alongside the world’s greatest jazz, funk and fusion artists. As young men in Rio de Janeiro, they stood out for both their exceptional talent as musicians, and their wild rock ‘n’ roll antics in the predominantly middle-class worlds of bossa nova and jazz. Their signature ‘Samba Doido’ (crazy samba) sound ruptured the tried and tested musical structures of the day, resulting in what can only be described as an electric, psychedelic, samba jazz-funk hybrid.

Before they became Azymuth, José Roberto Bertrami (keyboards), Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti (drums), Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ariovaldo Contesini (percussion) played backing band to just about every major artist in Brazil. Bertrami was also contracted as an arranger and songwriter at some the biggest labels of the era: Polydor, Philips, Som Livre, and EMI being just a few. Azymuth’s name can be found on record sleeves by the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, Ana Mazzotti and countless others. But at the dawn of the seventies, fascinated by developments in improvisational music - from jazz in the US, to progressive rock in the UK and of course samba, bossa and tropicália on home turf - the energetic young group were inspired and ready to move forward. Any spare moment in which they weren’t in sessions and writing music for other artists, they would be carving out their own sound.

These previously unheard recordings took place between 1973-75 at Bertrami’s home studio in the Laranjeiras district of Rio de Janeiro. At the time of recording, there was nothing in Brazil, less the world that sounded anything like them, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that when Bertrami presented his demos to the record companies he had been working for, he was turned away, and told in effect that the music was ‘wrong’.

One of the demos ‘Manhã’ would be picked up by Som Livre and Azymuth released their seminal debut album in 1975. Throughout the late seventies and eighties, the group released a series of now classic albums for Milestone Records, before taking an indefinite hiatus to pursue their individual careers.

When English producers Joe Davis and Roc Hunter arrived in Brazil in 1994 to record the first Azymuth album in over a decade, Bertrami dug out the demos which had sat virtually untouched for over twenty years. Joe recalls how he was “blown away by the freedom and intensity of the music, as well as the genius of the ideas musically.” Beginning a long and fruitful relationship, ‘Prefacio’ would be the first track Azymuth recorded for Far Out Recordings and was released on the Carnival album (1996).
Along with ‘Manhã’ and ‘Prefacio’, only a handful of these demos were ever professionally recorded and released, making this the first opportunity to hear many of these early Azymuth compositions in their raw, original form.

On every track the frenetic energy in the studio is palpable, giving the recordings a beautifully personal feel and a sense of the phenomenally creative vision Bertrami, Malheiros and Conti were realising at the time. Fifty years on, Azymuth’s earliest recorded music retains an ineffable, futuristic quality, standing amongst their most captivating and moving work.

Credits:

Keyboards: José Roberto Bertrami (Mini Moog Series One, Arp Omni, Arp 2600, Arp Solina Strings, Fender Rhodes 88, Hammond B3 with box speaker, Clavinet with Wah Wah)
Drums: Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti
Bass: Alex Malheiros
Percussion: Ariovaldo Contesini
Produced by Azymuth and Jose Roberto Bertrami
Recorded at José Roberto Bertrami’s home studio in Laranjeiras, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil between 1973–1975.
Issue and project co-ordinator: Joe Davis
Tape transfers by Roc Hunter (thanks to Simon Hitner)
Mastered by Daniel Maunick at the Sugar Shack, Lanark, Scotland
Mastered by Frank at Carvery Cuts
All tracks published by Far Out Music Publishing/Westbury Music LTD

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Far Out Recordings proudly presents two albums of previously unheard Azymuth demo recordings from 1973-75

Since their debut album release in 1975, Azymuth have risen to rank alongside the world’s greatest jazz, funk and fusion artists. As young men in Rio de Janeiro, they stood out for both their exceptional talent as musicians, and their wild rock ‘n’ roll antics in the predominantly middle-class worlds of bossa nova and jazz. Their signature ‘Samba Doido’ (crazy samba) sound ruptured the tried and tested musical structures of the day, resulting in what can only be described as an electric, psychedelic, samba jazz-funk hybrid.

Before they became Azymuth, José Roberto Bertrami (keyboards), Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti (drums), Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ariovaldo Contesini (percussion) played backing band to just about every major artist in Brazil. Bertrami was also contracted as an arranger and songwriter at some the biggest labels of the era: Polydor, Philips, Som Livre, and EMI being just a few. Azymuth’s name can be found on record sleeves by the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, Ana Mazzotti and countless others. But at the dawn of the seventies, fascinated by developments in improvisational music - from jazz in the US, to progressive rock in the UK and of course samba, bossa and tropicália on home turf - the energetic young group were inspired and ready to move forward. Any spare moment in which they weren’t in sessions and writing music for other artists, they would be carving out their own sound.

These previously unheard recordings took place between 1973-75 at Bertrami’s home studio in the Laranjeiras district of Rio de Janeiro. At the time of recording, there was nothing in Brazil, less the world that sounded anything like them, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that when Bertrami presented his demos to the record companies he had been working for, he was turned away, and told in effect that the music was ‘wrong’.

One of the demos ‘Manhã’ would be picked up by Som Livre and Azymuth released their seminal debut album in 1975. Throughout the late seventies and eighties, the group released a series of now classic albums for Milestone Records, before taking an indefinite hiatus to pursue their individual careers.

When English producers Joe Davis and Roc Hunter arrived in Brazil in 1994 to record the first Azymuth album in over a decade, Bertrami dug out the demos which had sat virtually untouched for over twenty years. Joe recalls how he was “blown away by the freedom and intensity of the music, as well as the genius of the ideas musically.” Beginning a long and fruitful relationship, ‘Prefacio’ would be the first track Azymuth recorded for Far Out Recordings and was released on the Carnival album (1996).
Along with ‘Manhã’ and ‘Prefacio’, only a handful of these demos were ever professionally recorded and released, making this the first opportunity to hear many of these early Azymuth compositions in their raw, original form.

On every track the frenetic energy in the studio is palpable, giving the recordings a beautifully personal feel and a sense of the phenomenally creative vision Bertrami, Malheiros and Conti were realising at the time. Fifty years on, Azymuth’s earliest recorded music retains an ineffable, futuristic quality, standing amongst their most captivating and moving work.

Credits:

Keyboards: José Roberto Bertrami (Mini Moog Series One, Arp Omni, Arp 2600, Arp Solina Strings, Fender Rhodes 88, Hammond B3 with box speaker, Clavinet with Wah Wah)
Drums: Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti
Bass: Alex Malheiros
Percussion: Ariovaldo Contesini
Produced by Azymuth and Jose Roberto Bertrami
Recorded at José Roberto Bertrami’s home studio in Laranjeiras, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil between 1973–1975.
Issue and project co-ordinator: Joe Davis
Tape transfers by Roc Hunter (thanks to Simon Hitner)
Mastered by Daniel Maunick at the Sugar Shack, Lanark, Scotland
Mastered by Frank at Carvery Cuts
All tracks published by Far Out Music Publishing/Westbury Music LTD

Following the release of their short film 'The Awakening' and its accompanying single, Lost Souls Of Saturn share the first remix in 9 years by revered musician James Holden. Over thirteen minutes of crisp, stratospheric elegance, Holden’s rework is both slightly mad and simultaneously blissful – like a trance-state reached through frenzied, spiritual ritual.

“I believe in serendipity: if the universe presents you with something that seems right, you should go with it”, says Holden. “When this record hit my desk was one of those moments. Recently I'd been thinking a lot about rave utopias, the pan-global fantasy painted by the early days of Future Sound Of London etc, and listening to LSOS's Jodorowskian ceremonials I felt like they'd caught the same winds. And so, although I thought I'd finished doing remixes for this lifetime, here it is; some kind of dream of a memory of a rave, the spookiness of the original slightly eclipsed by my warm feelings about Seth's good energy!”

The original version of ‘The Awakening’ begins as a serene ambient spacecast, before an ancient alien rite of tribal frenzy starts to emerge through the phosphorescent stardust – sonically somewhere between Demdike Stare and classic Orb, by way of Don Cherry.
Primarily LSOS are Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa, plus further opaque participants congregating to combine music, imagery and storytelling into an inextricably linked whole, all wrapped-up in a philosophy of their own making.
Attempting something creatively that’s above-and-beyond, LSOS explore new ways to open doors of perception and challenge the reality vs. simulation paradigm, whilst capturing the spirit of Philip K. Dick, Sun Ra and the KLF within their music, live experiences and films.
These spiritual, psychoactive aural vibrations resonate for a long distance, all the way back to something deeper and more enchanting than the prosaicism of modern life:
“We have been sent synchronistic signs from a metaphysical plane. We are the glitch-seekers, exposing the Holes In The Holoverse. We are Lost Souls Of Saturn.”

From the artist:

"pootek" - Paul (Solpara) and I laid down the majority of this track one November night in Berlin. We lived in the same dorm in university nearly 10 years ago and bonded over weird electronic music. We hadn't seen each other in a while and had never made music together. We got so rowdy making this my neighbour who I had never seen before came up to complain we were being too loud.

"whendialupbecomeform" - I was thinking a lot about dial-up modems, especially after I heard a Lana Del Rey song that featured that sort of sound in the background, whether intentionally or not. I woke up in the middle of the night and laid down the main arrangement in a couple of hours. I later added some vocals, random sounds from freesound.org, and what might be described as "dreamy pads."

"dosheepdreamofandroidelectrics" - I don't think the song has much to do with Philip K. Dick. I wanted to make something that someone could introspectively zone out to, maybe under the influence of a plant, either at home or at the club.

White Shadows In The South Seas is the title of a book written in 1919 by Frederick O'Brien as part of a trilogy he wrote based on his experiences living in the Pacific islands in the early part of the 20th century. His book was taken as the starting point for a film to be directed, initially, by Robert Flaherty (famous at the time for his groundbreaking documentary / fiction film Nanook Of The North) with W.S.Van Dyke as his support. The film, ultimately, apart from the title, had little to do with O'Brien's book and Flaherty left the film after a few months leaving Van Dyke to finish it.

I purchased O'Brien's book, along with many others, from Basement Books, a secondhand bookstore in Melbourne/Australia. Part of my 'Islomania' and on going fascination with all things Pacific. When I discovered there was a 1929 silent film based on the book I sought it out and started to present it as part of my 'Live Music/Silent films' repertoire. Tabu by Frederick Murnau, which coincidently also had Flaherty as co-director originally, was the first film I ever wrote / improvised a score for and presented as a live film/music performance. My repertoire extends to over 23 films now.

My eclectic and diverse musical and artistic interests extend into 'Hawaiian', 'Exotica', 'Ambient' and 'Electronic' Music. I have produced several volumes of so called 'Electronic, Ambient, Exotica' on CD and Vinyl, including Kiribati, Globe Notes, Rayon Hula ( on Vinyl, CD and digital format ) and most recently, New Globe Note on Vinyl and White Shadows In The South Seas on CD.
White Shadows In The South Seas features some of the music presented in my live screenings of the 1929 silent film.

The film is the story of Dr. Matthew Lloyd, an alcoholic doctor who is disgusted by the exploitation by white people of the natives on a Polynesian island. The natives dive for pearls, however, numerous accidents occur and one diver dies. In anger, Dr. Lloyd punches Sebastian, the employer. As revenge and to prevent further interruption of his activities, he tricks Dr. Lloyd onto a ship with a diseased crew (thinking they are ill) and his men rough him up and send the ship off into a storm. Dr. Lloyd survives and is washed ashore on an island where none of the natives have ever seen a white man before. Lloyd is rescued and ultimately falls in love with the chief's daughter, who is Taboo, hence Lloyd is prevented from pursuing his love for her. An incident occurs and a young boy is thought to have drowned but Lloyd is able to revive him, earning him points and permission with the chief's daughter. Lloyd begins to realise that the local islanders have no sense of the value of the black pearls which grow in abundance around their island and he starts to dive for them and collect them. One morning the white man Sebastian unexpectedly turns up on a scooner and starts to offer the islanders trade for their pearls. Llloyd tries to interrupt the encounter and is shot and dies. His wife and the islanders morn for his dead body and, symbolically, the passing of a way of life.

Mike Cooper plays - Electric and acoustic lap steel guitars / electronics / Zoom Sampletrack / Kaos Pad / Casio SK1 / Korg Drum Machine / Self Made Instruments.

It also features field recordings made on Pulau Ubin by Mike Cooper during a month as Artist In Residence for The Artist Village / Singapore.

I would like to acknowledge and thank Lawrence English (Room40 Records) for his assistance and encouragement with the original recordings and the CD version of White Shadows In The South Seas.

All music written and played by Mike Cooper PRS/MCPS - except Po Mahina (trad. Arr. Cooper) and Hilo Hanakahi (trad. Arr. Cooper)

Recorded and Mixed at the Steelworks in Rome 2012/2013.

A White Shadow In The South Seas
In February 2014 'A White Shadow In The South Seas' was the title of an audio-visual installation I made at the Teatro In Scatola in Rome, Italy, presented as part of a series of sound installations titled 'Visitazioni' produced by Proposte Sonore.

The essay below, as well as our collection of Hawaiian shirts, Exotica and Hawaiian vinyl records, was an inspiration for this installation.

'..the transformation and reconstitution of the souvenir commodity as an indigenous ethnic art form and a scarce relic of Hawai'i's romanticized past...' from - Clothing and Textile Reasearch Journal - From Kitsch to Chic by Marcia A. Morgado.

And....
Michael Thompson's Rubbish Theory (1979)
' ...a critical aspect of Western culture is the pre-disposition to see objects in terms of two overt categories: the transient and the durable. Objects identified as transient have finite life spans and lose value over time, whereas those identified as durable have infinite lives and over time increae in value....category assignments are arbitrary, but once assigned a category membership determines relative value. Fashion apparel-by defenition-is assigned to the transient category; paintings commonly are designated durables....how is it that transient objects.. ( e.g. Hawaiian shirts and vinyl records ) ..sometimes become durables.

Objects assigned to the rubbish category are largely invisible, have no value and, ideally, no life span. Fashion for example, no longer worn and relegated to the back of the wardrobe has fallen into the covert rubbish category. But rubbish can be rescued and transformed. Thompson says ' What I believe happens is a transient object gradually declining in value and in expected life span may slide across into rubbish. Here it exists in a timeless and valueless limbo where it has a chance to be re-discovered and be successfully transformed to a durable. Such transferes are radical: objects gradually slide from transcience to rubbish, but the transformation from rubbish to durable involves an all-or-nothing leap across two boundaries, that separating the worthless from the valuable and that between the covert and the overt. Things drift into obscurity but they leap into prominence.

The delightful consequence of this hypothesis is that in order to study the social control of value we must study rubbish.

The rubbish-to-durable transformation is accompanied by the development of highly specialized knowledge derived from the discovery of subtle variations and complex details that went unnoticed in the objects transient stage. The discoveries initiate renewed interest in the object and its market value begins to climb. As prices soar beyond the reach of ordinary people, the object becomes available only in high priced collectors' markets. Furthermore, as market values rise, the aesthetic value of the object undergoes a reassessment as well, and it becomes increasingly apparent that the objects intrinsic beauty has been overlooked. Ultimately the object is re -assigned as a durable and becomes recognized as a timeless classic.

Exotica, Ambience and Pacificism - A dialogue with Mike Cooper & Professor Philip Hayward Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor of Research Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia.

This collection brings together rarities from well-known artists like Abstract Truth, Suck, Otis Waygood, Freedom's Children, John & Philipa Cooper, McCully Workshop and Hawk, as well as lesser known acts like Buzzard, The Fireflies, The Idiots, Tidal Wave, and The Invaders. Although the South African rock movement of the late sixties and early seventies was not a major commercial success, its participants heralded an exciting new age in South African rock and started a movement aimed at changing the musical tastes of fans in a spectacular way. Stadium concerts became the vehicle for feeding the youth with heavier rock sounds, and behind studio glass were producers like Clive Calder, Billy Forrest, Graham Beggs and Selwyn Miller who acted as change agents to transform conventional pop into heavier 4 to 5 minute songs. The movement's struggle for recognition through airplay remained unanswered and only the true fans of rock knew about their existence. Licensed by the Fresh Music label in South Africa and available on vinyl for the first time, complete with insert and liner notes.

The Brothers Jonathan And Ferdinand Bockelmann Aka Glaskin ... The kellerkinder' Who Are Taking Care Of The schall Im Schilf' & back To The Woods Festival' Form Together The Duo Glaskin. In Recent Months, A Lot Has Happened To Them, They Have E.g. With Esacpe Velocity Released Her Debut Ep And Another 2 More On Hotflush. tymewriter' Is Carried By A Broken Beat Over Which Gloomy Surfaces Overlap. Just Fat !!

Simon D And Pluto Produce Together As Preset. With club Sub' They Deliver A Dirty Techno-breakbeat Board That Does Not Look The Same. Techno Smasher !!

Blitz Resident & Lighthouse Festival Booker Leo Küchler Aka vince' Made His Vinyl Debut With namechanger'. He Does Justice To His Style As A Dj With This Housig-playful Number In Each Case.

Phillip Von Bergmann Is Rote Sonne Resident And Firmly In The Circle Of Friends Of Ilian Tape, Maurice Paloni Runs The Label Alden. The Result Of Their Collaboration Is A Breaker Club Track, Perfect For Building Tension.

Beautiful contemporary African music. Deep percussion with great guitar playing and vocal chants on top. Driving basslines all over the album. Spiritual feel! Tip
.
Son of the legendary Dr Philip Nchipi Tabane and heir to the malombo sound that he originated and pioneered in the early 1960s, Thabang Tabane has been touring the world playing with his father's band and other South African luminaries (such as Thandiswa Mazwai, Madala Kunene and Mabi Thobejane) since he was 8 years old.

Emerging into his own with his debut solo album, Matjale, this energetic percussionist carves a driving, joyous and worldly version of the malombo genre that takes in his continental travels. The album brims with ambition and an appetite for life. Employing brisk tempos, nimble basslines and intersecting polyrhythms, Thabang crafts songs cognisant of the hardships of life, but chooses to deliver them with an irrepressible optimism.

Expanding parameters of what is essentially an artform patented by his father, Thabang and his cohorts seem unburdened by pedigree, infusing the sound with a modern sensibility. His reverence for the vibrational resonance and drive of the bass guitar, not to mention his explosive bursts of hand drumming, gives the album an undeniable, cathartic exuberance.

Producer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter and vocalist Devonté Hynes returns with his fourth album as Blood Orange, Negro Swan, released on Domino on August 24, 2018.

Raised in England, Hynes started out as a teenage punk in the UK band Test Icicles before releasing two orchestral acoustic pop records as Lightspeed Champion. In 2011, he released Coastal Grooves, the first of three solo albums under the moniker Blood Orange. His last album, Freetown Sound, was released to critical acclaim in 2016, and saw Hynes defined as one of the foremost musical voices of his time, receiving comparisons to the likes of Kendrick Lamar and D'Angelo for his own searing and soothing personal document of life as a black man in America. He has collaborated with Solange Knowles, Skepta, fka twigs, Carly Rae Jepsen, A$AP Rocky, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Blondie, and many other artists, and was recently one of four artists invited to the Kennedy Center to perform alongside Philip Glass. In addition to his production work, he scored the film Palo Alto, directed by Gia Coppola.

Negro Swan was written and produced by Hynes. Says Hynes:

'My newest album is an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color. A reach back into childhood and modern traumas, and the things we do to get through it all. The underlying thread through each piece on the album is the idea of HOPE, and the lights we can try to turn on within ourselves with a hopefully positive outcome of helping others out of their darkness.'

Following a greatest hits compilation in the late 90s the Human League signed to the Papillon label. The line-up
of Philip Oakey, Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall recorded the 'Secrets' album, with keyboard player Neil
Sutton, who co-wrote most of the songs with Oakey, and programmer David Beevers providing the trademark
Human League sound.
The album's release in 2001 was preceded by the single 'All I Ever Wanted', but both the single and album lost
promotion and sales when Papillon ran into financial difficulties and was closed shortly after the album's release.
This 2LP edition features the original album over the first three sides, while the newly-added fourth side
features a non-album B-side, along with one rare remix each of 'All I Ever Wanted', 'You'll Be Sorry' and
'Love Me Madly'.
Housed in a gatefold sleeve, the inner sleeves features all the lyrics.

The keeping of pets marks humans' attempt at taking possession of a part of reality that is not at his disposal. Dressing a piece of the real that lives according to entirely non-human rules and which only in the saddest case does not resist the discipline of the human symbolic order vehemently and in a sustained matter, is a violent act of protection. Because in the non-place of the real, all that which we are helpless in the face of looms: the non-logical and the nameless, the violence and the noise, yet also the unrestrained and unfiltered desire.The innocuous figure of the pet marks a gateway to an investigation of these eerie milieus, while electronic dance music lends itself to this investigation in an outstanding way. This constellation marks the subject of Column's 'Pets II.'

Column is the name of Cologne based renaissance man Jan Philipp Janzen, who, as chief emissary of Cologne's pop internationalism, has been playing the field in various functions for Von Spar, Cologne Tapes, Urlaub in Polen, Owen Pallett, Scout Niblett or The Field, and who has also, in one way or another, been involved in most relevant records coming out of Cologne for the past number of years. After his excellent solo debut 'Pets I' (Areal, 2016), Janzen presents another extraordinary record in 'Pets II,' perfectly complemented by another ghostly oil work of Burkhard Mönnich on the cover.Sonically, 'Pets II' marks a clear development for Column. In its exploration of the thresholds of the real, it sets two points of focus, corresponding with the split in sides A and B.

Side A, on which Janzen teams up with long-time friend myr. (PNN), explores the uncanny as a fissure of the symbolic order, and the subsequent breaking in of the real. It opens with two peaktime rockets that have their wooden, nether-regional groove narrated by grim, down-pitched vocals. The ethereal remix by Leibniz (hundert) seems to be observing the situation from a hiding place, and is the side's clandestine and no less dark closer.

Side B, for which Janzen invited studiomate Marvin Horsch (Dorfjungs/Beats in Space) along, delivers two swaying synthesizer workouts, the second of which, 'Molly and Swerve,' is directed firmly at the dancefloor again. What is at stake here is the transition between a free, undirected jouissance of the real and a more ordered becoming-lust. Here, as in Map.ache's (Kann/Giegling/Altin Village) remix which closes out 'Pets II,' it becomes clear what connections dance music can foster between a free, impersonal desire and the sphere of interpersonal wanting, but also the losses that are negotiated in it. Above all, however, it becomes evident what a courageous daring project 'Pets II' is in all of its conceptual and aesthetic determination; with Von Spar's standout 'Garzweiler' 12' (Altin Village & Mine, 2017), it documents a New Cologne Realism.

Swinging Flavors is BACK! After releasing material from names such as Simon Off aka Sun People, Moresounds, DJ Madd, Ticklish, Sully, Addison Groove, Itoa and Lynch Kingsley our 7' vinyl series devoted to Bass Culture and dancefloor vibes is back again with the the Sixth One aka BMRSF006. After having a Japan vs USA Chicago Footwork sound clash with DJ Fulltono and DJ Earl's 'Tribal Dancer', now it's time for an atlantic connection - in the name of Bass Music obviously.
On the A Side you'll find Sinistarr's '55555': the Detroit bass producer - with a 10yrs experience in sound design and recently appeared with an astonishing work on legendary dBridge label Exit Records - gives us a pure example of his sonic craziness with a minimal-but-high-impact work, with chopped vocal samples, magic flutes and heavy basses.On the B Side '55555' gets a full treatment by Philip D. Kick: Cosmic Bridge honcho Jim Coles - well known in the worldwide bass scene as Om Unit - surprisingly comes back with his iconic footwork moniker giving to the original vibes a more accentuate rave touch, with hyper speed drum patterns, amen breaks and piano notes.

Only those who read all the credits on record liner notes will know the full details: Areski is of course Brigitte Fontaine's partner in life, but also her creative alter ego, and the composer of the music of most of her songs. Even though it was his wife Brigitte and not him who wrote the lyrics, Areski is a poet in his own right. Furthermore, he is polyvalent: composing, arranging, singing, improvising, playing every possible instrument and even acting! Areski, to sum up, is the perfect mix of the tradition of Munir Bashir with the European sophistication' of someone like Jean-Claude Vannier, one foot permanently in Versailles (where he was born) and the maghreb. Areski, is left bank French songs without the stylistic effects, revised and updated through contact with arab-andalusian music. He is a Living Theatre style happening with a dose of cosmic free jazz, surrealist poetry viewed through the prism of Kabyle culture... All that and a lot more!

Areski honed his talent observing the stars of traditional chaâbi, testing it out in bars and dives before meeting, during military service, the singer Jacques Higelin with whom he would record his first cult album, and who would present him to his wife-to-be, Brigitte Fontaine. Between 1969 and 1980, with her, Areski would contribute an essential chapter to French underground music including classics such as Comme à la radio (with the Art Ensemble of Chicago), Je ne connais pas cet homme, L'Incendie, Le Bonheur and Vous et nous. For all that, Areski has never really tried to have a career under his own name, in spite of the wonderful Un Beau matin first published in 1970, and which it is high time to de (re)discover (better late than never). Those already in the know will not be surprised to see, especially, Jean-Charles Capon, author of the inspired L'Univers-solitude, Brigitte Fontaine of course, or Daniel Vallancien, author of a no-less inspired duo with saxophonist Philippe Maté. All contributing to an acerbic poetic universe, concerned but never militant, and open to worldwide influences long before they became a fashion.

Inspired, poetic, in a word essential: Un Beau Matin is one of the best albums of the French underground produced by Pierre Barouh on his label Saravah, alongside those by Maurice Lemaître, Catharsis, Claude Yvans, Mahjun, Barney Wilen, Cohelmec Ensemble et Michel Roques.

Raga Abhogi
1) Alap
2) Jod
3) Jhala

Raga Vardhani
4) Alap
5) Jod
6) Jhala

Zia Mohiuddin Dagar : rudra veena
Annie Penta : tanpura

Concert recorded at the home of Shantha and Niranjan B. Benegal, Seattle, Washington 9 March 1986.
Recorded by Niranjan Benegal. Files obtained from Jeff Lewis.
Mastered & Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering 1117 & 0318.

Liner notes by Renaud Brizard, edited by Stephen O'Malley & Ian Christe.
Front and back cover photos by unknown.
Interior photography by Niranjan B. Benegal, Dan Neuman & unknown, Seattle 1978-1980. .

Around ten years ago, deep into a cozy and hazy night following a concert with my sound brothers Daniel O'Sullivan and Kristoffer Rygg in London (as Æthenor), they graciously introduced me to a recording of rudra veena (a kind of noble deeper bass relative to the sitar, in a way) as performed by dhrupad master Zia Mohiuddin Dagar.

Dhrupad, for those who do not know, is a branch of Hindustani classical music said to "show the raga in its clearest and purest form". It's pacing concentrates heavily on the slow, contemplative alap section and works with specific microtonal gestures and deep characteristics of resonance ... in short I was hooked on this new (to me) and ancient form of music from the first listen, and feel that a more or less continual listening & reviewing of Zia Mohiuddin Dagar's recordings in the years that followed have influenced my own approach to music quite heavily (if, albeit, indirectly).

In early 2015 I was able to make contact with Zia Mohiuddin Dagar's son Bahauddin and some of his American students/disciples, primarily Jeff Lewis. Over time we developed a friendly and educational exchange, access a massive archive of recordings and developed these two paired titles for my label. It's been a long path to arrive at actually releasing them but also probably in many ways one of the most significant releases I've worked on. And I'm proud to be able to reveal these to date unreleased archival recordings of one of the masters of dhrupad, Z. M. Dagar, to the public for the first time.

Zia Mohiuddin Dagar was the nineteenth generation in a family tradition known as Dagar gharana, a rich lineage which continued and performed the musical form of dhrupad (Bahauddin Dagar continues the lineage as a master rudra veena dhrupad player of note today). Initially, dhrupad was a rigorous, austere, devotional genre that was sung in Hindu temples. But between the 16th and the 18th centuries, it became the preeminent genre in royal courts in North and Central India, and the Dagar gharana developed and continued publicly following the eventual loss of court patronage for dhrupad in the 19th century. The French ethnomusicologist Renaud Brizard covers the story of Zia Mohiuddin Dagar's life and teaching (a long story also in Seattle, my hometown!), the Dagar family and gharana, the rudra veena and more topics in an extensive set of liner notes in this release.

Ragas Abhogi & Vardhani were recorded in a private house concert in Seattle at the home of the Benegals in March 1986 (the week before the accompanying release SOMA029 Raga Yaman was recorded). The Benegals were friends (& Shantha Benegal was also a student) of Dagarsahib who sometimes hosted Hindustani music concerts in their home. It's a rare glimpse of a more intimate, personal and perhaps different kind of performance considering the form of dhrupad.

-Stephen O'Malley, March 2018, Paris, France

Stephen O'Malley would like to especially thank Bahauddin Dagar, Jeff Lewis & Jody Stecher for their enthusiasm, cooperation, patience, insight & advice toward developing these editions. Thank you also to Laurel Sercombe & John Vallier from the University of Washington Ethnomusicology Archives, Shantha Benegal, Philippe Bruguière, Dan Neuman, Ira Landgarten, Renaud Brizard, Ian Christe, Peter Rehberg, Rashad Becker, Daniel O'Sullivan & Kristoffer Rygg, all for their direct or indirect cooperation, assistance & patience.

Black To Comm's Marc Richter returns under his Jemh Circs guise for a 2nd album of sonic abstractions. In contrast to Black To Comm's analogue tape and vinyl based sound, in Jemh Circs he works with digital sources by primarily sampling modern Pop Music (and various other oddities) on YouTube (et al.) and sending chunks of it through a variety of arcane transformations and mutations.Using similar esoteric methods as on his 2016 debut album but with very different results the record deconstructs the hypermodern sound of Pop Music with a Post Punk attitude, energy and primitivism. Richter's combining disparate elements that shouldn't really work together but somehow all the chaos is making strange sense creating a collection of oddly diverging sonic vignettes with a surreal and anarchic spirit. This is music deeply rooted in the present but still difficult to pinpoint to a certain year or style."(untitled) Kingdom" converts a seemingly one-dimensional concept into a complex puzzle of ideas, sounds and narratives, completely assimilating the original sources and transforming them into novel entities with an unexpected melodic and rhythmic quality.Some press clips for previous releases:The overall effect is quite remarkable. Each track is like a hologram of pop music itself, a tiny part that reflects the whole. You almost feel that you could open them out and re-create entire popular music cultures. We'll be grateful for that when the next solar storm fries all of our hard drives. (Ian Sherred / The Sound Projector) In that way Jemh Circs is a record about process - not just how Richter loops and distorts and mutates his samples, but how the sounds of pop music create a particular sonic signature, one that gets more interesting the farther they're pulled from their original context. (Marc Masters / The Out Door) Recycling random audio off YouTube, Jemh Circs' process couldn't be less sentimental, but the results turn out to be sneakily emotive. (Philip Sherburne / Pitchfork)

- 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
- FEATURING SUN GODDESS', JUNGLE STRUT', LIVING FOR THE CITY' AND MORE

Ramsey Lewis is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist and composer born 1935, Chicago. He has recorded over 80 albums and played with artists like Max Roach, jazz-singer Nancy Wilson and performs with his own trio.

The album Sun Goddess was a soul jazz-funk album, recorded in 1974 and was produced by Maurice White, Teo Macero (who had produced albums by Miles Davis) and Ramsey Lewis himself. The opening track Sun Goddess' was composed, by Earth, Wind & Fire member Maurice White and featured Philip Bailey on vocals. Living For The City' was composed by Stevie Wonder, arranged by Ramsey Lewis and Jungle Strut' is a jazz track melting funk and R&B.

Sun Goddess was Ramsey Lewis' biggest success of the decade reaching #1 on the Billboard Black Albums chart, #12 in the Pop chart and has been certified gold, it also featured most of the key players of Earth, Wind & Fire.

It's already been 5 years since the last Zombie Zombie album 'Rituels d'un Nouveau Monde', after which the group explored other territories by signing 2 film scores, namely 'Loubia Hamra' by Narimane Mari and 'Irréprochable' by Sébastien Marnier, as well as creating the music accompanying a contemporary circus show called 'Slow Futur' created by Martin Palisse and Elsa Guérin. Wouldn't these beautiful parentheses make you want to return to the sources After 10 years at Versatile Records, 2017 also marks the decade anniversary of the release of their first album 'A Land for Renegades' in 2007, at the time considered to be one of the 10 best albums of the year according to Rough Trade.
'Livity' - Zombie Zombie's latest opus seems to plunge us deep into science fiction, with a cover designed by the mythic cartoonist Philippe Druillet, who is also the founder of the cult Métal Hurlant comic series. The title of the album is somewhat misleading, as one could mistakenly think of a certain dub record made at
the famous Island Records Compass Point studio in the Bahamas. For the uninitiated 'Livity' or 'Life force' is actually a Rastafarian spiritual concept based on the idea that an energy exists within, and flows through, all people and all living things. The record was recorded last winter in Paris, in a very short time frame. 7 tracks played live in 7 days, by Etienne Jaumet (synthesizers / rhythm box / metallophone / sax), Cosmic Neman (drums / vocals / sound effects), and Dr. Schonberg (percussion / electronics / trumpet), recorded at the Red Bull Studios by Thibaut Javoy and Jerome Caron, 2 very competent engineers. To keep it in the family, the album was then mixed by another member of the Versatile stable, the mysterious and legendary DJ/producer I:Cube, done in the label's Victor Studio.
On this album the principles that are dear to the group rest being respected, still as far away as always from the standards of 'radio play', A living kind of music, composed of long instrumental moments recorded with analog synthesizers and drum machines, accompanied by drums and percussion. But I:Cube's touch may bring the unique energy that one may find at Zombie Zombie's concerts; on certain cuts like title track 'Livity' that the group recorded in Laos, a wild combination of 808 kick drums and bewitching jungle sounds that sound quite unlike anything else out there, and especially on 'Hippocampe', which gives the impression of hearing an old school hip hop rhythm with the power of a metal band who have replaced their guitars with an army of synthesizers: we recommend you listen to this particular track in a convertible while speeding down the highway.
As with all of Zombie Zombie's music the cinematic component is still strong, on titles like 'Ils existent..' 'Acera' which was originally composed for ciné-concerts accompanying the films of Jean Painlevé et Maurice Pialat. The energy of the beginning is still very present, as is - of course - the kraut inspiration. But it's also an album that takes new directions and sonic risks, like on 'Looose', which brings to mind the Art Ensemble of Chicago, or the groove of James Chance in New York in the early 1980's, featuring the free sax solos of Etienne Jaumet and Dr. Schonberg on the trumpet. The group also offers some slower and calmer titles, like 'Heavy Meditation' as well as exploring more experimental tracks in the line of French 70's groups such as Lard Free or Richard Pinhas, for example on the bonus track 'Black Moon'.
Please - Take your time, and enjoy listening!

SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION X 300 WITH BONUS 7 :
Limited special edition with the 7" containing the track "Lune noire", in 2 parts - one per side.
It's already been 5 years since the last Zombie Zombie album 'Rituels d'un Nouveau Monde', after which the group explored other territories by signing 2 film scores, namely 'Loubia Hamra' by Narimane Mari and 'Irréprochable' by Sébastien Marnier, as well as creating the music accompanying a contemporary circus show called 'Slow Futur' created by Martin Palisse and Elsa Guérin. Wouldn't these beautiful parentheses make you want to return to the sources After 10 years at Versatile Records, 2017 also marks the decade anniversary of the release of their first album 'A Land for Renegades' in 2007, at the time considered to be one of the 10 best albums of the year according to Rough Trade.
'Livity' - Zombie Zombie's latest opus seems to plunge us deep into science fiction, with a cover designed by the mythic cartoonist Philippe Druillet, who is also the founder of the cult Métal Hurlant comic series. The title of the album is somewhat misleading, as one could mistakenly think of a certain dub record made at
the famous Island Records Compass Point studio in the Bahamas. For the uninitiated 'Livity' or 'Life force' is actually a Rastafarian spiritual concept based on the idea that an energy exists within, and flows through, all people and all living things. The record was recorded last winter in Paris, in a very short time frame. 7 tracks played live in 7 days, by Etienne Jaumet (synthesizers / rhythm box / metallophone / sax), Cosmic Neman (drums / vocals / sound effects), and Dr. Schonberg (percussion / electronics / trumpet), recorded at the Red Bull Studios by Thibaut Javoy and Jerome Caron, 2 very competent engineers. To keep it in the family, the album was then mixed by another member of the Versatile stable, the mysterious and legendary DJ/producer I:Cube, done in the label's Victor Studio.
On this album the principles that are dear to the group rest being respected, still as far away as always from the standards of 'radio play', A living kind of music, composed of long instrumental moments recorded with analog synthesizers and drum machines, accompanied by drums and percussion. But I:Cube's touch may bring the unique energy that one may find at Zombie Zombie's concerts; on certain cuts like title track 'Livity' that the group recorded in Laos, a wild combination of 808 kick drums and bewitching jungle sounds that sound quite unlike anything else out there, and especially on 'Hippocampe', which gives the impression of hearing an old school hip hop rhythm with the power of a metal band who have replaced their guitars with an army of synthesizers: we recommend you listen to this particular track in a convertible while speeding down the highway.
As with all of Zombie Zombie's music the cinematic component is still strong, on titles like 'Ils existent..' 'Acera' which was originally composed for ciné-concerts accompanying the films of Jean Painlevé et Maurice Pialat. The energy of the beginning is still very present, as is - of course - the kraut inspiration. But it's also an album that takes new directions and sonic risks, like on 'Looose', which brings to mind the Art Ensemble of Chicago, or the groove of James Chance in New York in the early 1980's, featuring the free sax solos of Etienne Jaumet and Dr. Schonberg on the trumpet. The group also offers some slower and calmer titles, like 'Heavy Meditation' as well as exploring more experimental tracks in the line of French 70's groups such as Lard Free or Richard Pinhas, for example on the bonus track 'Black Moon'.
Please - Take your time, and enjoy listening!

Pittsburgh-born Phillip Ballou's earliest years were spent in the gospel field, after he moved to New York City in the '70s, he teamed up with Bennie Diggs and Arthur Freeman, founding members of The New York Community Choir and singer Arnold McCuller to form the group Revelation. The quartet recorded for RSO Records, scoring some R&B success in the US with tracks like Get Ready For This' and You To Me Are Everything,' touring the Bee Gees among others. Phillip also sang on albums by NYCC recorded for RCA Records and continued with Revelation until 1982.Frequently hired for sessions in and around New York, Phillip teamed up with UK soul music journalist David Nathan (who he'd met in 1974 during Nathan's first US visit) and John Simmons, formerly a member of The Reflections, another New York vocal group to write a series of songs for his own proposed solo record deal. Although a contract did not materialize, one of the songs - Ain't Nothing Like The Love' - got some interest from famed Philadelphia producer Thom Bell who presented it to The O'Jays. Ultimately, the tune was turned down by Kenny Gamble and John Simmons, by then musical director for Stephanie Mills, recorded his own version for a small independent label in 1981.Phillip continued his own musical journey, touring and recording with James Taylor and Todd Rundgren. In addition, Phillip's name graced recordings by George Benson, Billy Ocean, Kashif, Nona Hendryx, Jonathan Butler, Teddy Pendergrass and Melba Moore, in 1981, he began recording with Luther Vandross and became a part of Luther's touring band for many years, as well as singing on productions by Luther on Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and others, continuing his association with him until Luther's 2003 stroke. Phillip returned to his gospel roots in 2004 as Minister of Music at a Brooklyn church and passed away in March 2005, aged 55. Thanks to renewed interest in the John Simmons' 1981 recording on YouTube, David Nathan has uncovered several tracks from the 1978 and 1979 he did with Phillip and John including Phillip Ballou's original version of Ain't Nothing Like The Love,' gaining its first ever worldwide release as a 7' single on Nefer Records in association with Super Disco Edits

This record is meant to be enjoyed like a seascape. It offers a Mediterranean journey, one that Ulysses, Aeneas, and Jason with his Argonauts charted first and Valencian artist, Pep Llopis, retraced and retread — from the islands of Menorca to Santorini. All of his experiences are aboard this vessel of sound: no format in mind, no course but the chasm within self. While Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes materializes at this moment as an album, another object suits Pep's project: Lewis Carroll's Map of the Ocean' from his The Hunting of the Snark. It's a simple illustration: the thin outline of a blank rectangle that represents the sea with no trace of land. Carroll offers this empty space as an object that all can understand, a container for possibility. Likewise, Poiemusia offers a musical language that any listener can understand. Untethered to the meaning of words, one is set adrift and free in minimalist sound and traditional music. Llopis, who often composed for dance, originally wrote Poiemusia for a performance at the Poiemusia festival (the Greek contraction of poetry and music). Peer composers, Carles Santos and Wim Mertens, also participated in the festival, which took place over several days at the Teatro Princesa in Valencia. Llopis paired his newly formed avant-garde compositions with the poems of fellow Valencian, Salvador Jàfer.

In the studio presentation of Poiemusia, voices softly converse, only to evaporate. The poetry is incanted by the poet himself. Jàfer enunciates at the verge of song, drawing dimension from his Mediterranean travels. He is accompanied by Montse Anfruns' vaporous voice. She extends the roll of her r's and the hiss of each s as if casting a spell of Salacia. Pep bathes their conversational performance in slight delays and reverb, allowing their voices to dissolve into an ocean of sound.

Llopis was influenced by minimal American composers like Steve Reich and La Monte Young. He embraces the melodic sides of these masters in the winds of El Vell Rei De La Serp' and the tender piano on Nits de cristall.' You will find yourself submerged in tonality on tracks like Jardins Aquàtics' and La Nau Dels Argonautes' which have a kinship to Philip Glass or Daniel Lentz. Each piece extends from 5 to almost 14 minutes. The music gently laps against listening skin— sometimes placid, sometimes shimmering. Ripples of sound swell and quicken. Flutes like schools of fish. The spray of chimes. Taught strings break like the shore. Tingling, undulating synths. The record cover acts as a map, tracing the forms of the original art and providing the poems in Catalana and Spanish. Once bathed in these sounds one will emerge like Carroll's map: a perfect and absolute blank.' Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonaute emerges in vinyl and digital formats on May 19, 2017 through Freedom To Spend.

You take a trio of the fnest traditonal griot musicians from Mali and put them in a studio with Western music's most revolutonary string quartet - and the resultng album is one of the most richly rewarding musical collaboratons you are likely to encounter.
Together the Kronos Quartet and Trio Da Kali have created an album that is rich in texture, hauntngly melodic and strikingly inventve as violins, viola and cello combine with balafon, ngoni and the powerful female voice of Hawa 'Kassé Mady'
Diabaté in transcendental style. David Harrington, who founded the Kronos Quartet in 1973, describes the album as one of the most beautful Kronos has done in forty years.' All three Da Kali members come from hereditary musical families, Balafon
player and musical director Lassana Diabaté was a long-tme member of Toumani Diabaté's Symmetric Orchestra and has recorded with Salif Keita, Taj Mahal and many others. A musician of great subtlety and inventon he has honed a virtuoso
two-balafon technique to perfecton. Bass ngoni player Mamadou Kouyaté is the eldest son of the instrument's greatest exponent, Bassekou Kouyaté and he holds down the groove in his father's band 'Ngoni Ba'. Singer Hawa 'Kassé Mady' Diabaté
is the daughter of Mali's greatest traditonal singer, Kassé Mady Diabaté, and the power, range and phrasing of her voice led David Harrington to compare her to the late queen of American gospel, Mahalia Jackson.
Kronos Quartet have earned an enviable reputaton collaboratng with contemporary composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Laurie Anderson and with world music icons from Argentnian tango hero Astor Piazzola to Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle.

Underground Jazz, Street Funk & The Roots Of Rap 1968-79. Soul Jazz Records' new release 'Soul of a Nation: Afro-Centric Visions in the Age of Black Power' is released in conjunction with a major worldwide art exhibition, Soul of A Nation: Art in the The Age of Black Power which takes place at the Tate Modern, London, UK (July-Oct 2017) and The Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA.

The album shows how the ideals of the civil rights movement, black power and black nationalism influenced the evolvement of radical African-American music in the United States of America in the intensely political and revolutionary period at the end of the 1960s following the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the rise of the Black Panther party.

Featuring groundbreaking artists such as Gil Scott-Heron, Roy Ayers, Don Cherry, Oneness of Juju, Sarah Webster Fabio, Horace Tapscott, Phil Ranelin and many others, Soul of A Nation shows how political themes led to the rise of 'conscious' black music as new afro-centric styles combined the musical radicalism and spirituality of John Coltrane and radical avant-garde jazz music alongside the intense funk and soul of James Brown and Aretha Franklin and the urban poetry and proto-rap of the streets.

The Soul of a Nation exhibition draws on the links between Black art forms - art, music, poetry - and how they came together during the civil rights and black power era as part of the wider black arts movement across the United States.

Iconic African-Amercian revolutionary figures such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Angela Davis, John Coltrane, Muhammad Ali all appear in the radical artworks of Barkley L. Hendricks, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Lorraine O'Grady and Betye Saar.
A selection of original radical jazz record sleeves artworks which appear in Soul Jazz Records' earlier groundbreaking Freedom, Rhythm and Sound - Revolutionary Jazz Original Cover Art book will also be on show at the Tate, London throughout the exhibition. The Freedom, Rhythm and Sound book is also newly back-in-print in conjunction with this major exhibition and the release of the Soul of a Nation album.

Stuart Baker (founder of Soul Jazz Records) will appear on the panel of Jazz for Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power discussion at the gallery as part of the show. Soul of a Nation comes with extensive sleeve-notes and exclusive photography in a large 36-page outsize booklet and slipcase. Double gatefold vinyl album edition comes with full colour inners + bonus download code and includes full sleeve-notes/photography.

A stunning version of Steve Reich's masterpiece of musical minimalism Music for 18 Musicians' (1974-1976) performed live at Tokyo Opera House in 2008 by The Modern Ensemble and Synergy Vocals featuring the composer as guest performer.

In the 1960s, with Terry Riley and Philip Glass, Reich gave pulse back to experimental music, he discovered tape-based techniques of looping and phasing using recordings of fragments of speech, and then molecules of musical material.

(...)When Steve Reich released Music for 18 Musicians (ECM, 1978), it was a consolidation and major leap forward in the pulse-based music that the minimalist progenitor had been exploring on earlier compositions including Four Organs' (1969), a piece that relied on nothing more than a six-note chord, yet was a near flat-out sonic assault. 18 Musicians was an altogether more complex and sophisticated work, with a broader textural palette based largely on tuned percussion—piano, vibraphone, marimba and xylophone—but also working with maracas, voice, strings, and clarinets to create a sweeping, hour-plus long suite that was hypnotic, melodic, and eminently accessible. With the mathematical precision by which its eleven sections and wrapping Pulses' develop, it's a demanding suite to play (...)"

New fully remastered re-release of Soul Jazz Records’ ‘The World of Arthur Russell’, the seminal collection of Arthur Russell’s essential music is being released on limited-edition heavy deluxe triple vinyl and deluxe CD edition.

This album brings together some of Russell’s best-loved and most accessible works including his wide-ranging music both solo and in groups including Dinosaur L (the essential ‘Go Bang’), Loose Joints (the equally classic ‘Is It All Over My Face’) as well as rarities such as the 7” only ‘Pop Your Funk’, Indian Ocean’s ‘Schoolbell/Treehouse’, Lola’s ‘Wax The Van’ and more.

Arthur Russell’s music effortlessly crossed musical boundaries making it timeless. His dance music credentials are faultless and this collection features mixes from Larry Levan, Françcois Kervorkian and Walter Gibbons. Similarly, his song-writing, musicality and performance skills are equally cherished as composer Philip Glass wrote, ‘this was a guy who could sit down with a cello and sing with it in a way that no one on earth has ever done before or will do again.’

When Soul Jazz Records’ The World of Arthur Russell first came out in 2003, Russell’s music had slipped into near obscurity. Nearly 15 years later there are over a dozen releases of his music, reissues of his original albums and more. ‘The World of Arthur Russell’ is the classic first collection of his work available once more.

“Arthur Russell fused the avant-garde with disco and sounds like nothing else on earth.” The GUARDIAN

“Russell is the great enigma of the New York music scene” THE WIRE

“Simply one of the best compilations of this or any year.” RECORD COLLECTOR

After his manifold debut in 2009, followed by a second album "True Life / In Flames" with focus on the grand piano, Dial Records is pleased to announce Christian Naujoks's third solo album WAVE, a dedication to one of the artist's essential instruments: the electric guitar.
Inspired by The Durutti Collumn, John Fahey, Vincent Gallo, Azalia Snail and David Grubbs, and many others, Christian Naujoks breaks the boundaries between songwriting and minimalism, folk music and contemporary art. The recordings at Electric Avenue Studios were accompanied by engineering master Tobias Levin, known for his works on Kreidler, Faust, Felix Kubin, Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, just to name a few. With WAVE Naujoks and Levin created a sound-seductive state of the art production, ten post-minimalist guitar pieces with an appearance of the artist's signature piano style on two of the songs.
Christian Naujoks recently worked on productions with his band Sky Walking (with RVDS and Lawrence) and released a piano tape on Martin Hossbach's imprint. After a series of concerts at Berlin's Berghain and HAU, the Golden Pudel Club in Hamburg, performances and collaborations around the globe including Israel, Mexico, Vietnam and the Philippines, he returned back to his studio in Hamburg in 2015 where the WAVE started.

This is France in the Mitterrand years: fashions fleet as fast as governments. In the early eighties, the happy-go-lucky gather the nectar of each and every new release.
Believing in a bright future for videotex, and loosened up by the sexy talks broadcasted on the budding pirate radios, the new generation dreams of dance floors and holiday clubs. French Boogie, which preserves the spirit of these years of boodle and bunkum, is the ideal soundtrack to their dreams.

What the web now refers to as French Boogie is some synthetic funk reflecting the spirit of those days when nothing was impossible, or so it seemed. Its syncopated flow heralded the dawning of French rap. Often considered as some kind of post-disco, inspired as much by black music as by new wave, this carefree pop music with bawdy lyrics indulged in simple pleasures: holidays, swank and sun were recurrent themes. Totally in tune with its time, it incidentally glorified luxury, success, and a certain consumerism embodied, for instance, in Bernard Tapie.

In popular clubs such as La Main Bleue in Montreuil, or L'Echappatoire in Clichy-sous-Bois - where Micky Milan could be seen behind the decks - an enthusiastic audience discovered this new sonic wave, influenced as much by French pop as by Sugar Hill Gang or Kurtis Blow. The artists who first launched the movement engaged in it wholeheartedly, but as often the case with new music trends in France, humour and casualness quickly became a decoy to impose a new style. This explosive mixture, in which startling and typically Frenchy French lyrics go along New-York-style tunes, is sometimes reminiscent of the kinky comedies directed by Max Pécas or Claude Zidi. On this prolific scene, partly originating from the Jewish community, everybody was looking for success, trying to hit the jackpot with what was to hand. Famous media personalities, one-hit wonders or John Does in quest of fame, all had a go at French Boogie - more or less successfully. Apart from « Vacances j'oublie tout » by Elégance, « Un fait divers et rien de plus » by Le Club, or « Chacun fait ce qui lui plaît » by Chagrin d'amour (produced by Patrick Bruel), very few songs became hits: the story of funk in France is that of a half-baked robbery.

In this myriad of new musicians, the very young François Feldman and Phil Barney pioneered a fresh and hybrid style. Other well-known artists like Gérard Blanc from Martin Circus (Attaché Case), Richard de Bordeaux (Ich), or Jean-Pierre Massiera (Anisette, Pirate Scratch Band, Mandrake, Scratch Man...) added an eccentric touch to this sound-wave, making it often entertaining, and sometimes showy.

Capture d'écran 2015-10-26 à 12.55.43Singers like Agathe (the author of 'La Fourmi' and of the hit song 'Je ne veux pas rentrer chez moi seule') were far more than just window dressing. They even tried to give an ironic and subversive twist to this rather harmless genre. The very vindictive rebel Gérard Vincent shared in this spirit, but as a whole, French Boogie became associated with nonchalance and sauciness. Thus, Stéphane Collaro, Gérard Jugnot, Alain Gillot Pétré and other TV clowns would clumsily contribute to this French variation on funky sounds. In a few but intense years, French Boogie gave all the tips to party with style.

If some hits made it possible for the happy few to get a real house under truly exotic palm trees, the wave actually ebbed away very quickly, leaving quite a few musicians stranded on the shore. Whether they were sincerely motivated, or simply opportunistic, they had failed. In 1984, French Boogie was already breathless, and got merged with other genres: on the one hand, rap and breakdance adapted its flow to a more urban world, especially with Sydney's show, H.I.P.H.O.P, and Dee Nasty's broadcasts on Radio Nova; on the other, italo, new beat and house began to rule over dance floors, even more strongly asserting the will to develop music for clubs.

Squeezed in between the age of disco and that of modern electronic music, French Boogie was a transitional phase, but it remains an amazingly refreshing testimony to the intermingling of pop and underground cultures. The genre was hastily categorized as anecdotal in spite of its pioneering synthetic groove and matchless bass lines. An attentive ear will discover the poetry of the ephemeral beyond the eccentricities of the genre, as well as a certain unexpected avant-gardism. At the origin of major music trends, always cheerful and catchy, French Boogie is what you need to party.

hile it may seem as though it's been a quiet year in the studio for Brooklyn-based DJ/Producer Greg Schappert (aka Donor), his first full-length album entitled Against All on Chicago-based Prosthetic Pressings, will prove otherwise.

This 10-track release is a tour de force of formidable intensity and suspense and Donor wastes no time creating an ethereal realm right from the start. By taking a deep dive into a dystopian world full of distant transmission like voices, expressed through field recordings taken in and around New York City, Donor successfully paints a picture of what could be his unsettling vision of the future. While it may be difficult to explain how this album progresses throughout, there is something below the surface tying everything together, leaving us with a feeling of despair in that the world does not end how it is likely to be perceived through this beautiful or haunting, yet sophisticated, soundtrack. Alien invasions, civil war, post apocalyptic mayhem, call it what you will, Donor sets the stage for an unsettling vision of the not so distant future that can be heard in his thought provoking debut LP.

Donor's time spent overseas living in countries like Spain and Japan, his love for Birmingham Industrial Techno and early Dutch and Detroit Electro, combined with his upbringing on John Carpenter films, have all contributed to Donor creating his unique, yet recognizable sound.
Feedback:
Audio Injection / Droid Recordings
Yeah my boy Greg getting down! Great album!!
Leonard Posso / Thema
Hands down one of the best bodies of work to date from Greg aka Donor! SOLID PACKAGE! Many of these will get played throughout the night! Big Ups Donor and PP!
Vidal / Droid Recordings
nice sounds
Ergin Karabulut / FAZE Magazin
ok
DJ Nori / Posivision
cool dark essence.
Paul Clarke / Dj Mag
Not exactly heartwarming but lots of good stuff if you like it bleak.....
Mark EG / Core Magazine, Tilllate Magazine
IP Test
Nerk / V-Records / De:Bug
dark & minimal (in a good way)
Exberliner
!
Frank Hilpert / Freshguide (5x Regional A5 Mag) , Freshguide BLN, Freshguide MDL, erwischt.org/
Big - Review to follow.
Berlin Mitte Institut / Berlin Mitte Institut
More IDM than techno. Some interesting tracks on this album.
David Marcia / Phuturelabs, Phuturelabs
Good stuff. Considering for review and radio play.
Bleed / De:Bug
considering for review
Benoît Carretier / Tsugi
solid one tx
Pawel Gzyl / Nowamuzyk
killer1
Laurent Diouf / MCD magazine / WTM radio show
another wtm's playlist is coming soon...;)
Alland Byallo / Nightlight Music, Bad Animal, Pokerflat
Fantastic album. Deep, dark, nasty. Pure mood (and some seriously heavy BOOM).
Solomun
Hello, i am downloading and pre checking all promos for Solomun. I will give you a personal feedback if he plays and supports this release. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
Solenoid / Graphene / Belief System
wikked album of deep ritualistic techno ...
Electric Indigo
cool tracks here. station a14, ip test and own exile are my favorites after first listen. thank you!
Corin Arnold / BLN FM
sounding good, support!
RADIO CAMPUS BESANCON / THE VINYL GUERILLA
not really for me ... DJ Gaogao
Riyaz Khan / Diversions on chry105.5fm
like the shifting tensions and brooding atmospheres throughout!
Fabian Birke / WOMR College Radio / BLN.FM
For radio play, thanks
Andrew Grant (Circo Loco)
Own Excile is very good
Slam / Soma Records
cool album thanx
Sebastian Roya (Connaisseur)
Bomb! nice job!
Matthias Springer / Diametral / Chillkyway
great release, brainsqueezing!
DJ Hyperactive
good tune on here man
Patrick Bateman (Tic Tac Toe / Connect Four)
Hands On, Calling, Menace Is Mine & In Your Place are the ones for me. As always full quality from Donor!
Jonas Kopp / Curle, Deeply Rooted House
Will check properly , thanks.
HalfStereo
Dark moods is what i like...
Angel Molina ( Sonar / Tresor )
LOVE this dark & hypnotic release. Tracks like 'Menace Is Mine', 'Station A14', 'Counter' or 'Fault Is Found' are absolutely fantastic. thanks!!!
Scuba (Hotflush)
thanks. downloading for scuba!
Bryan Zentz / Minus / Thoughtless / Portlandia
I am miserably late on this—but really like it on quick listen. In Your Place and Us For Them are awesome. Looking forward to listening all the way through. Thanks!
Pär Grindvik / Little White Earbuds
thanks
Dr Hoffmann / Blind Spot
Great release, digging most of the tunes. thanks
Philip Downey / Swoon / pastlessonfuturetheories blog
Like Calling, IP Test, Us for Thenm, Fault, could try some on radio.
Tim Thaler / Bln.fm
downloading
Lukasz (Nermal) Napora / Audioriver Festival, Radio 4 Poland
great stuff. eager to listen to it from wavs
Vito Camaretta / Chain D.L.K
Interesting sonorities
Noah Pred / Thoughtless Music
Stark business worthy of a deeper listen.
2000 And One (100% Pure, Intacto) / 100% Pure
Oh yes perfect intermezzo stuff :)
Alexi Delano / AD ltd, Plus 8
Will have a proper listen.
Echologist (Steadfast) / Third Ear, Echocord
really liking this. fresh beats and trippy hypnotic vibes. look forward to spending time with this.
john1 / Bedrock
downloading
James Zabiela / Renaissance
In Your Place is nice in a bleak way.
Marcel Dettmann / MDR, Ostgut Ton
thx
Richie Hawtin / Minus, Richie Hawtin
downloaded for r hawtin
The Advent / Tresor
fantastic.. pure techno here.. Donor - Station A14 Donor - IP Test
Andrew Weatherhall / Rotters Golf Club
Downloading obo Andrew Weatherall
Noice Podcast Series
very nice Techno...
Samuli Kemppi / Prologue
Great album. Donor in top shape. Full support!
Lee Holman
Good album of deep dark sounds. Especially like Station A14. Thank you!
Benna Schneider / Harry Klein
some nice tunes here ,that I´ll play out surely
Douglas Fugazi / Medellinstyle
Yeah! Sounds really good. Thanks!
Plastic Lounge @ Freies Radio Freudenstadt
good tecno,playing
Kyle Geiger / Drumcode
Really like Space Station!
Paul Ritch
thx a lot for the promo
Dave Angel / Apollo, Rotation Records, Polydor/Love, OuterRythum, React Records, Island
Thanks! Will let you know if supporting.
Luciano Esse / Safari Electronique, Out-Er, Leftroom, Material Series
Great sounds, but I couldn't use them in set! Thanks anyway!
Arnaud Le Texier / Affin, Bass Culture, Cocoon, Children Of Tomorrow, Syncrophone.
Some inspiring tracks on this album! Thx
Henning Lösch / Radio Dreyeckland Freiburg
last exit Brooklyn...:-)
Roko (Sub.fm/B.O.M.B.)
OH shit this is good!!
Sigha / Immerse / Hotflush / Avian
loving this, many thanks
Jerzy Przezdziecki / Recognition Records, Boshke Beats Records
raw and mental. i like.
Alex Tolstey / Triangle Eyes/Boshke Beats Records
ho ho! review to follow
Alan Fitzpatrick
epic! love this.!

Sascha Kloeber & Partina Records... a secret hint for superb produced
songs in highest quality with a lots of feelings and musical emotions.
From deep to nice. Be careful with "Nights of the Sun" - it turns into a
surprise by a heavy synthesizer sound.
Limited white colored Vinyl with a special mastering: much more
dynamic and smoother sound than the digital release.

Early support by: Pig&Dan (Cocoon), Max Cooper (Traum), Laurent Garnier, Patrick Kunkel (Cocoon), Tim Green (Get Physical, Cocoon), Microtraum (Traum), Beatamines (Keno), André Kraml (Dirt Crew, Trapez), Homebase (Beatwax, Playhouse), Broombeck (Terminal M), Anderson Noise, Philipp Wolgast (Kompass Musik), Oscar Barila (Bondage Music), Martin Dacar, Turm 3 (Seenplatte) and more