quête:stereo underground

Repress

Songs ’94-’98 is a smart selection of material from The Cat’s Miaow, an Australian indie-pop group that gifted their decade with some of its finest songs. Released on World Of Echo, the album draws from the group’s string of excellent seven-inch singles, a small clutch of compilation contributions, and features one previously unreleased song, “I Take It That We’re Through”, recorded in 1998. Part of the burgeoning international pop underground of the nineties, The Cat’s Miaow’s legend has only built over subsequent decades, as more people discover this most quixotic and curious of groups: a recent appearance on A Colourful Storm’s compilation of Australian indie-pop, I Won’t Have To Think About You, is testament to their enduring influence. In part emulating the selection of tracks on the 1997 CD-only compilation, Songs For Girls To Sing, Songs ’94-’98 is also the group’s first ever full-length 12” vinyl collection. The Cat’s Miaow started out in 1992 as a home-recording duo, Bart Cummings (guitar, bass, vocals) and Andrew Withycombe (bass, guitar) taking time out from duties with Girl Of The World and The Ampersands (respectively), knocking out songs on Withycombe’s four-track. Soon joined by Kerrie Bolton (vocals) and Cam Smith (drums), the quartet spent the next five years quietly, slowly working away in the suburbs of Melbourne, recording gem after gem of independent pop. Like many of their Australian precursors or peers – The Particles, Even As We Speak, The Cannanes – The Cat’s Miaow were more successful overseas, a sadly typical phenomenon within the Australian musical landscape. The Cat’s Miaow were always worldly and stylish, anyway, each seven-inch single a refined artifact, each song a peaceable jewel. You could hear some relationships with other music – someone (if not everyone) in The Cat’s Miaow was a Galaxie 500 fan; there’s a minimalism to the playing and melodies that recalls Young Marble Giants, Marine Girls, Beat Happening – but the spirit in these songs is endearingly individualised, the result of a hermetic vision, an ideal of what a simple, unadorned pop song could be. They had a winning way with simplicity, songs like “Autumn”, “Crying” and “I Can’t Sleep Thinking You Hate Me” passing by in the blink of a moistened eye, and when they stretched out, as on “Firefly”, you can hear hints of the drifting ambience they’d perfect in their other band, Hydroplane. It’s not much of a surprise that The Cat’s Miaow found a receptive audience, and no small amount of support, from the networked communities of indie-pop labels and fanatics that developed in the nineties – they released records on imprints like Drive-In, Darla, Bus Stop and Quiddity, shared a flexi-disc with Stereolab, and appeared on countless compilations over the years. But they also understood the importance of the local: their first few cassettes reached the world’s mail routes via Wayne Davidson’s legendary Melbourne tape label, Toytown; they turned up on a split single with Davidson’s group, Stinky Fire Engine; they appeared on a tribute cassette for one of Australia’s finest, The Sugargliders, and indeed that’s Josh Meadows of said group playing wah guitar on “Stay”. The Cat’s Miaow also rarely played live – one launch gig, for the Munch video compilation, and a few parties – which is a great way to maintain mystique. Cosmopolitan yet homely, dedicated to their craft, The Cat’s Miaow always felt a little like a group moving in slow motion, using that pace and focus fully to embrace the art of the perfectly stated pop song – every element in place, no flash and no fuss, no excess, just the core of the thing. Few managed to tease such fierce poetry from such understated, elegant means. From Australia or anywhere.

A holy grail for fans of French boogie, early hip hop, Arabic funk and Balearic bops,"Ettika" has been seriously sought after since Vidal Benjamin found it in the 1€ bin back in 2006. Teasing the ears of the underground via Vidal's 'Balearic Nightmare' mix for Noncollective, copies of the original were soon snapped up completely, and the later adopters were sated by a Blackdisco edit from Alexis Le-Tan (himself gifted Vidal's second copy), which is now also rare as hen's teeth. The fervour for the track is easy to understand. Underpinned by an endlessly buoyant bass groove, chanted female vocals dart out the speakers like a post- modern mantra while synth vamps flare in stuttering stereo.

Middle-Eastern motifs add an air of mystery, but this truly belongs in a dance floor utopia. That the track was the product of a 'back-to-work' scheme aimed at unemployed immigrant youth in Rouen only adds to the appeal. Led by teacher Bernard Guégan, a quartet of students delivered lyrics in French and Arabic inspired by their rejection letters, serving a little social commentary and a lot of funk. If you're mad on Ahmed Fakroun and Shams Dinn, or even those folks in the Bush of Ghosts, then this is a must have for you.

Archeology isn't just about excavation, there should be interpretation too, and in this case it comes from Italian duo Hear & Now and Leeds' The Veteran Delinquents. The former furnish the 12" with two radical takes, the dreamy downtempo stroll of their French Remix - all unhurried percussion, Gilmour-riffing and coastal élan - and the peaktime pump of their Arab Remix, which transports the original vocal into a land of desert new beat and Balearic trance with a little space left for some frazzled fretwork. If you've followed their work with Claremont you know the quality on show.

The Veteran Delinquents, the collaborative vehicle of Leeds stalwarts Craig Christon and Tim Hutton, condense a lifetime of club experiences into their remix, establishing the infectious groove of the original before subverting with chugging bass and winking acid, all augmented with their own slick synth work. The original was an all time classic at Craig's Joe's Bakery nights way back when, and this new interpretation is both respectful and revolutionary.

Sonor Music Editions presents this restored issue of Maestro Sandro Brugnolini's Overground. This elusive masterpiece in library music captures the most impressive work, alongside Underground (1970), of the Italian composer and alto sax player.

Sandro Brugnolini was a prominent member of the Modern Jazz Gang, a famous Italian jazz group, during the 1950s and 60s, which also included Amedeo Tommasi, Cicci Santucci, and Enzo Scoppa. The group was active from 1956 to 1965 and produced some remarkable albums such as Miles Before And After (1960) and the original soundtrack from Gli Arcangeli (1962), which featured the renowned American jazz singer, Helen Merrill. Subsequently, he recorded many of the genre's most iconic releases, including Feelings (1974), albeit uncredited, and ventured into Psychedelic Lounge Funk and Progressive Jazz Beat tunes.

Overground was released on Sincro Edizioni Musicali in 1970 as the soundtrack to Enrico Moscatelli and Mario Rigoni's documentary Persuasione, commissioned by Ente Provinciale Per Il Turismo Di Trento, a local tourism board in Italy, with music composed by Sandro Brugnolini and Luigi Malatesta featuring some of the best musicians in Italy at the time like Angelo Baroncini and Silvano Chimento on guitars, Giorgio Carnini on piano and organ, Enzo Restuccia on drums, and Giovanni Tommaso on bass and effects. The music spans from underground Psychedelic Prog. Rock with swirling organs, trippy effects, and distorted fuzz guitars to sophisticated Lounge grooves with Avant-garde orchestrations.

The music has been transferred and remastered from the original master tapes. It has been lacquer cut in stereo by Jukka Sarapää at Timmion Cutting and packed in a thick cardboard sleeve featuring a fully restored painting by Umberto Mastroianni licensed by Centro Studi dell’Opera di Umberto Mastroianni

A holy grail for fans of French boogie, early hip hop, Arabic funk and Balearic bops,"Ettika" has been seriously sought after since Vidal Benjamin found it in the 1€ bin back in 2006. Teasing the ears of the underground via Vidal's 'Balearic Nightmare' mix for Noncollective, copies of the original were soon snapped up completely, and the later adopters were sated by a Blackdisco edit from Alexis Le-Tan (himself gifted Vidal's second copy), which is now also rare as hen's teeth. The fervour for the track is easy to understand. Underpinned by an endlessly buoyant bass groove, chanted female vocals dart out the speakers like a post- modern mantra while synth vamps flare in stuttering stereo.

Middle-Eastern motifs add an air of mystery, but this truly belongs in a dance floor utopia. That the track was the product of a 'back-to-work' scheme aimed at unemployed immigrant youth in Rouen only adds to the appeal. Led by teacher Bernard Guégan, a quartet of students delivered lyrics in French and Arabic inspired by their rejection letters, serving a little social commentary and a lot of funk. If you're mad on Ahmed Fakroun and Shams Dinn, or even those folks in the Bush of Ghosts, then this is a must have for you.

Archeology isn't just about excavation, there should be interpretation too, and in this case it comes from Italian duo Hear & Now and Leeds' The Veteran Delinquents. The former furnish the 12" with two radical takes, the dreamy downtempo stroll of their French Remix - all unhurried percussion, Gilmour-riffing and coastal élan - and the peaktime pump of their Arab Remix, which transports the original vocal into a land of desert new beat and Balearic trance with a little space left for some frazzled fretwork. If you've followed their work with Claremont you know the quality on show.

The Veteran Delinquents, the collaborative vehicle of Leeds stalwarts Craig Christon and Tim Hutton, condense a lifetime of club experiences into their remix, establishing the infectious groove of the original before subverting with chugging bass and winking acid, all augmented with their own slick synth work. The original was an all time classic at Craig's Joe's Bakery nights way back when, and this new interpretation is both respectful and revolutionary.

About 20 years ago, Carlos Giffoni quickly made a name for himself both as a noise guitarist and a laptop noisician upon arriving in New York (via Florida and Venezuela). His expertly curated annual No Fun Festival, as well as his No Fun label, further solidified him as a key figure in the international noise scene. The festival's success proved the formula for experimental and improvised music fests could work with the noise underground as well, but it also capitalized on the faster rate of connections being made between geographically disparate artists as a result of the (still relatively nascent) internet. Back then Carlos would play his laptop like a pinball machine, in contrast to the static stage presence of most laptop performers, and his solo music, like many others' at that time, expressed a less dark and dour vision of the implications of harsh noise. By the close of the 2000s, he had stopped doing the festival, switched gears musically to playing the lighter No Fun Acid sets, and moved to LA. Now he has re-emerged in a big way with Dream Walker, his first full-length since 2018's Vain (and only his second since 2010). Inspired by the masterful performances and diffusions he heard at the February 2023 GRM electronic music festival in Paris, particularly sets by old friends Lasse Marhaug, Jim O'Rourke, and Eiko Ishibashi, he began conceptualizing new music of his own in response, turning to synthesizers and other hardware to produce a work more firmly in the tradition of European electronic music than anything else he's done. Intended as a late night listen that evokes the edge of consciousness, with Carlos getting as close as possible to a trance state during the actual recording and mixing, each of the eleven tracks transition into one another rather than being standalone discrete pieces, forming two side-long suites that proceed like stages of a dream. Unabashedly tonal and repetitive, the glistening opener "Now Dream," the droning "Sleep Walker," and the closing triptych of "Lost in Descanso," "Sunrise," and "The Hidden Path" occupy a power electronics-ambient nexus that feels spiritually close to the Mego label. Elsewhere, "Ticking Clock" is reminiscent of Stereolab's non-easy listening vintage electronic side, while the two-part arpeggiated "Euphoria" recalls early Oneohtrix Point Never (which Carlos released on No Fun). The contrast between "One Breath"'s crackling opening and its remarkably fluid and soaring sustained synthesized chords is a distillation of the album's lingering tension between electronics' ability to project mechanical rupture as well as the organic and the infinite _or "walking between dreams," as Carlos himself puts it. Produced by Lasse Marhaug (who also mastered Carlos' first solo album, Welcome Home, back in 2005), released by Stephen O'Malley (who I remember DJing at the No Fun fest), with cover art and photos by personal friends, Carlos considers the album a family affair. But Dream Walker most of all heralds a maturation of the artist, and stands as a record that exists out of pure desire, rather than obligation or force of habit; a statement of reconnecting with music not by merely revisiting it, but by building on what's come before, both in his own work and in the music he loves. -Alan Licht, New York, December 2023

Steve Wynn and Kendra Smith founded The Dream Syndicate in 1981 and the band was a mainstay of the Paisley Underground movement. Reformed in 2012 by Steve Wynn, the band is still touring and recording.

The LA Times says the Dream Syndicate “rocked with the highest degree of unbridled passion and conviction”.

“The Dream Syndicate’s How Did We Find Ourselves Here?” documentary and companion soundtrack, “Live Through the Past, Darkly” will be available on CD or LP and includes a DVD of the recent documentary How Did We Find Ourselves Here

The documentary includes Chris Robinson, Stephen McCarthy, Ryan Adams, Chris Cacavas, Chris D., David Fricke, Russ Tolman, Tim Devine, Tom Gracyk, Pat Thomas, Karen Schoemer, Kari Pearson, Scott McCaughey, Sandy Pearlman, Dan Stuart and Howe Gelb.

Lo-fi, low budget, and low key, The American Analog Set's suite of hypnotic, neo-psychedelic, Texas sloth-kraut LPs appeared briefly on Austin's Emperor Jones label and slunk quietly into the sprawling indie underground as the old millennium crested. Gathered here are "The Fun Of Watching Fireworks", "From Our Living Room To Yours", and "The Golden Band" albums, garnished with period b-sides, outtakes, and demos. Remastered from the original analog tapes,this early-career spanning 5xLP box includes lyrics, photos, and ephemera from the before times.

Lo-fi, low budget, and low key, The American Analog Set's suite of hypnotic, neo-psychedelic, Texas sloth-kraut LPs appeared briefly on Austin's Emperor Jones label and slunk quietly into the sprawling indie underground as the old millennium crested. Gathered here are "The Fun Of Watching Fireworks", "From Our Living Room To Yours", and "The Golden Band" albums, garnished with period b-sides, outtakes, and demos. Remastered from the original analog tapes,this early-career spanning 5xLP box includes lyrics, photos, and ephemera from the before times.

In the corner of your vision, there’s a daydream on a mission” says Russell Edling in the beginning of “Park (Rye)”. Humming vibrations crescendo around the words floating inthe air and a listener may visualize a flower growing in fast motion, or a dog running backwards, lava flowing, children jumping rope in the evening sun. Suddenly these visions plumet and new frenetic images appear as drums, percussion, and full accompaniment burst into space. The band has arrived, a theme recurrent in Golden Apples’ new record, Bananasugarfire.

A listener might hear echoes of the Velvet Underground, Stereolab, Stone Roses, Yo La Tengo, but there is more going on than just a studied homage to indie rock’s progenitors. The themes of doubt and bewilderment found on previous albums are still present, but they are thrown into a kaleidoscope with beams of positivity, hope, and optimism.

‘Life And Death - The Five Chandeliers Of The Funereal Exorcisms’ pulls back the veil unto a nocturnal scene populated by shadows, embers burning coldly in the underworld. Marina Zispin is your guide, siren and protector both. Marina Zispin is the negative space between musicians Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid. Love And Death is the duo’s debut release, five chandeliers of melancholic, vibrant synth pop twinkling in the inky blackness. Both originally hailing from the North East of England and forming a musical partnership before lockdown, Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid initially worked remotely. Having relocated to South London and Newcastle respectively, Marina Zispin was born in earnest after the duo could begin writing and practising in the same space. Bianca Scout is a celebrated musician and dancer with a number of solo and collaborative works in her discographywhile Martyn Reid is a mainstay of the UK noise and power electronics scene, most recently with solo project Depletion. Marina Zispin largely eschews both Scout’s deconstructed approach to song and Reid’s focus on visceral, noise- based productions; the result is a new entity, the underground pop star that exists only in darkened dreams. Marina Zispin, then, is an avatar cajoled, nurtured and directed by Scout and Reid. Analogue electronics redolent of the early 80s Cold Wave and Synth Pop era form the base of the Zispin worldview, with Bianca Scout donning the Marina disguise, embodying the character over five songs of swooning drama, playful melodic interplays and tear-stained, doe-eyed sentiment. Flowers In The Sea opens with an austere 4/4 beat and hypnotic synth parts before Scout/Zispin floats in across the lagoon. Scout’s vocal tone is an instant winner, sweet like honey pouring down over the cold, robotic productions and stereo-panned synth work. We can almost see the petals drift into the horizon before being pulled under by the artist’s sadness. Ski Resort bursts out with a Jacno-inspired bassline and backing that could have been buried in a French disco in 1982 (think Stereo or Linear Movement) before Scout’s narrative details frivolousness and regret before a magical shift for the final coda into major key. Backworth Gold Club closes Side A, a mysterious rigid beat and minor chord synth arpeggios swimming in space, floating and obscure. On Side B, Hymn carries the tone on, church-like synths holding down the pattern for Zispin/Scout to float above in a flowing gown of reverb. The marriage of Reid’s cold musical backbone and Scout’s effortless vocal and co- production is in full flow here, the vocals at times rising to the rafters of this nocturnal place of worship, at other points they’re fuzzy samples cutting in and drifting out or sung with an extreme autotune, abstract and perfect in the moment. Surprise Party is the most straightforward pop bullet, Scout/Zispin’s vocal peering out more from the fog, perhaps revealing more than usual: vulnerability, maybe, the wandering muse of the artists behind the veil or just another layer of mystery behind the enigma? Marina Zispin’s Life & Death - The Five Chandeliers Of The Funereal Exorcisms ends as it began, scintillating in obscurity, leaving everything unanswered but open.

Woods are in bloom again, inviting you to disappear into a new spectrum of colors and sounds and dreams on Perennial. Formed in Brooklyn in 2004, Woods have matured into a true independent institution, above and below the root, reliably emerging every few years with new music that grows towards the latest sky. Operating the Woodsist label since 2006 and curating the beloved homespun Woodsist Festival for the musical universe they’ve built, Perennial is the sound of a band on the edge of their 20th anniversary and still finding bold new ways to sound like (and challenge) themselves. Perennial grew from a bed of guitar/keyboard/drum loops by Woods head-in-chief Jeremy Earl, a form of winter night meditation that evolved into an unexplored mode of collaborative songwriting. With Earl’s starting points, he and bandmates Jarvis Taveniere and John Andrews convened, first at Earl’s house in New York, then at Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California, site of sessions for 2020’s Strange To Explain. With a view of the sparkling Pacific and tape rolling, they began to build, jamming over the loops, switching instruments, and developing a few dozen building blocks. The album’s resulting 11 songs, 4 of them instrumental, are in the classic Woods mode--shimmering, familiar, fractionally unsettling--but with the half-invisible infinity boxes of Earl’s loops burbling beneath each like a mysterious underground source. From source to seed to bloom, each loop unfolds into something unpredictable, from the jeweled pop of the aching “Little Black Flowers” to the ecstatic starlit freak-beat of “Another Side.” They are blossomings both far-out and comforting, like the Mellotronic cloud-hopping of “Between the Past,” or sometimes just plain comforting, like the widescreen snowglobe fantasia of the instrumental “White Winter Melody,” touched by Connor Gallaher’s pedal steel. Woods have long used the studio as a place of songwriting, naming 2007’s At Rear House after their shared dwelling and recording space. But Perennial also carries with it an even longer view of Woods. Emerging from the process alongside the music was Earl’s reflection that “perennial plants and flowers are nature’s loops,” an idea rolling under the album’s lyrics like the loops themselves. It certainly applies to the band, too, who have quietly tended to a long, committed project of being a band in the weird-ass 21st century, both individually and communally. Though separated by coasts, the communal sprit carries through Earl, Taveniere, and Andrews’ collaboration, a living embodiment of the freedoms rediscovered every time a new collectively created piece of music emerges. For nearly two decades, Woods have survived subgenres, anchored in the fertile soil below hashtags like lo-fi and freak-folk and psychedelic and indie, and built a shared history that’s something to marvel at. As the flagship band for Woodsist, they’ve accumulated a striking extended family of collaborators (and Woods alum) that have made the label one of the most dependable imprints in the kaleidoscopic low-key underground. It’s a glow that’s transferred whole to the blissed-out Woodsist Fests held in Accord, New York in recent years, which have folded in a wide range of diverse sounds, from the the jazz cosmoverse of the Sun Ra Arkestra and adventurous legends Yo La Tengo, to a hard-to-even-count family tree of contemporaries, like Kevin Morby (who served a few tours of duty as Woods bassist) and Kurt Vile (who released his 2009 debut on Woodsist), a living community in sound. Perennial carries all of this, shaped by decades, but made in the moment, and here right now. The smell of the flowers doesn’t remain, but sometimes the flowers do. Jesse Jarnow Recorded and mixed by Jarvis Taveniere at Panoramic House in Stinson Beach, CA with additional recording at The Ship in Los Angeles, CA and Cottekill Bird Sanctuary in Stone Ridge, NY. Produced by Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earl. Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering in Portland, OR. Jeremy Earl - vocals, guitars, drums, percussion, sk-5, mellotron, vibraphone, autoharp, loops Jarvis Taveniere - guitar, bass, upright bass, hammond, vocals John Andrews - piano, organs, mellotron, drums, vocals Connor Gallaher - Pedal Steel Kyle Forester - sax, wurlitzer

Woods are in bloom again, inviting you to disappear into a new spectrum of colors and sounds and dreams on Perennial. Formed in Brooklyn in 2004, Woods have matured into a true independent institution, above and below the root, reliably emerging every few years with new music that grows towards the latest sky. Operating the Woodsist label since 2006 and curating the beloved homespun Woodsist Festival for the musical universe they’ve built, Perennial is the sound of a band on the edge of their 20th anniversary and still finding bold new ways to sound like (and challenge) themselves. Perennial grew from a bed of guitar/keyboard/drum loops by Woods head-in-chief Jeremy Earl, a form of winter night meditation that evolved into an unexplored mode of collaborative songwriting. With Earl’s starting points, he and bandmates Jarvis Taveniere and John Andrews convened, first at Earl’s house in New York, then at Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California, site of sessions for 2020’s Strange To Explain. With a view of the sparkling Pacific and tape rolling, they began to build, jamming over the loops, switching instruments, and developing a few dozen building blocks. The album’s resulting 11 songs, 4 of them instrumental, are in the classic Woods mode--shimmering, familiar, fractionally unsettling--but with the half-invisible infinity boxes of Earl’s loops burbling beneath each like a mysterious underground source. From source to seed to bloom, each loop unfolds into something unpredictable, from the jeweled pop of the aching “Little Black Flowers” to the ecstatic starlit freak-beat of “Another Side.” They are blossomings both far-out and comforting, like the Mellotronic cloud-hopping of “Between the Past,” or sometimes just plain comforting, like the widescreen snowglobe fantasia of the instrumental “White Winter Melody,” touched by Connor Gallaher’s pedal steel. Woods have long used the studio as a place of songwriting, naming 2007’s At Rear House after their shared dwelling and recording space. But Perennial also carries with it an even longer view of Woods. Emerging from the process alongside the music was Earl’s reflection that “perennial plants and flowers are nature’s loops,” an idea rolling under the album’s lyrics like the loops themselves. It certainly applies to the band, too, who have quietly tended to a long, committed project of being a band in the weird-ass 21st century, both individually and communally. Though separated by coasts, the communal sprit carries through Earl, Taveniere, and Andrews’ collaboration, a living embodiment of the freedoms rediscovered every time a new collectively created piece of music emerges. For nearly two decades, Woods have survived subgenres, anchored in the fertile soil below hashtags like lo-fi and freak-folk and psychedelic and indie, and built a shared history that’s something to marvel at. As the flagship band for Woodsist, they’ve accumulated a striking extended family of collaborators (and Woods alum) that have made the label one of the most dependable imprints in the kaleidoscopic low-key underground. It’s a glow that’s transferred whole to the blissed-out Woodsist Fests held in Accord, New York in recent years, which have folded in a wide range of diverse sounds, from the the jazz cosmoverse of the Sun Ra Arkestra and adventurous legends Yo La Tengo, to a hard-to-even-count family tree of contemporaries, like Kevin Morby (who served a few tours of duty as Woods bassist) and Kurt Vile (who released his 2009 debut on Woodsist), a living community in sound. Perennial carries all of this, shaped by decades, but made in the moment, and here right now. The smell of the flowers doesn’t remain, but sometimes the flowers do. Jesse Jarnow Recorded and mixed by Jarvis Taveniere at Panoramic House in Stinson Beach, CA with additional recording at The Ship in Los Angeles, CA and Cottekill Bird Sanctuary in Stone Ridge, NY. Produced by Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earl. Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering in Portland, OR. Jeremy Earl - vocals, guitars, drums, percussion, sk-5, mellotron, vibraphone, autoharp, loops Jarvis Taveniere - guitar, bass, upright bass, hammond, vocals John Andrews - piano, organs, mellotron, drums, vocals Connor Gallaher - Pedal Steel Kyle Forester - sax, wurlitzer

Black Truffle is pleased to announce The Leisure Principle, a new solo LP from London-based bassist and sound artist Otto Willberg. A key player in the London underground, Willberg is often heard on acoustic and electric bass in free improv settings and bands with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort. But nothing Willberg has committed to wax so far prepares a listener for The Leisure Principle, six unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass. On the opening ‘Reap What Thou Sow’, a single-note bass harmonica loop pulses along underneath a roaming bass solo, the side-chained envelope filtering (where the dynamic behaviour of the bass determines the filter for both bass and harmonica) fusing the two instruments into a single stream of burbling shifts in resonance. After several minutes of patient exploration of this low-end landscape, the music suddenly opens up in widescreen with the entrance of Sam Andreae’s graceful melodica chords, spreading out across the stereo field. From this epic opener, each of the remaining pieces goes on to explore a slightly different aspect of the terrain. On ‘Shadow Came into the Eyes as Earth Turned on its Axis’, a similarly buoyant harmonica bass line provides the foundation, but this time playing a soulful descending riff, its almost R&B feel abstracted and half-obscured by the filtering. On ‘Mollusk’, echoed bass arpeggios skitter between elegiac chords somewhat reminiscent of the opening of John Abercrombie’s ‘Timeless’, before settling into a hypnotic groove. On the record’s second half, Willberg pushes further into the possibilities of his idiosyncratic instrumentation. On ‘Wetter’, bass and harmonica come together into a monstrous, growling jaw harp; on ‘Had we but world enough and more time’, the subtly shifting pulsating patterns start to feel almost like a kind of evaporated, drum-less dub techno until an eruption of wheezing bass harmonica gives the piece a comically folkish turn. Willberg’s melodically inventive and virtuosic bass performance calls to mind any number of fusion touchstones, from Jaco Pastorius to Mark Egan’s singing tone in the early Pat Metheny Group—even Anthony Jackson’s work with Steve Kahn. But with its radically reduced instrumentation, The Leisure Principle is also an exercise in minimalism, and the absence of percussion gives even its funkiest moments a strangely abstracted quality. At times, its uncanny blend of the abstruse and the immediate suggests the fried pop experiments of David Rosenboom or the skewed but deeply musical DIY of 80s underground groups like De Fabriek. Both easy on the ear and profoundly strange, The Leisure Principle proudly takes its place among the most eccentric offerings on the Black Truffle menu.

Alternative rock, or abbreviated to just simply alternative, first came to present in the early ‘70s as independent underground music and gradually developed into the ‘90s as a reaction to the mainstream pop music from that era. Alternative music was represented by bands who were signed to independent labels, but major labels also picked up on the trend, which led to commercial success in the international music charts. The 2LP 90’s Alternative Collected highlights songs by bands such as Faith No More, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Kula Shaker, Eels, R.E.M., Oasis, Live, Soundgarden, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Smash Mouth, and many others

Selected Songs 1997-2003 compiles some of the finest moments in the recording history of Hydroplane, the Melbourne-based indie-pop three-piece that operated alongside The Cat’s Miaow through the second half of the nineties. It’s the third release in what feels, now, like a loosely planned series by World Of Echo, documenting the music made by this group of friends in Melbourne sharehouses (The Cat’s Miaow’s Songs ’94-’98, 2022), or in the case of The Shapiros (Gone By Fall, 2023), while traversing the International Pop Underground.

Hydroplane would be familiar to anyone already following these breadcrumb trails – Andrew Withycombe, Bart Cummings and Kerrie Bolton were the group’s core, all members of The Cat’s Miaow. With Cat’s Miaow drummer Cameron Smith itinerant, having moved to London, the trio used this opportunity to expand their music. It’s a subtle, but important shift. If The Cat’s Miaow was about the perfect, minimalist, two-minute pop song, Hydroplane’s music was far more open-ended, embracing the loops and drones, sampled house-y shuffle beats, the burbling of a Roland Jupiter-4 synth, all of which the trio joined, effortlessly, to their endless capacity for moving, elegant melodicism.

They may have only planned to release one seven-inch single, but the sound Hydroplane created was so bewitching, so compelling, that the project’s lifespan ran for around half a decade, and they ended up releasing three albums, including a self-titled debut recently reissued by Efficient Space, and seven singles. There are all kinds of compelling things happening in the music compiled here – the hazy repetition of the gentler side of Krautrock is in here, somewhere, which also suggests Stereolab at their most intimate and disarmed; the gently drifting guitars, gauzy and oneiric, set the songs adrift and floating, each one lost in its own imagined, distracted world. Songs like “The Love You Bring” set indistinct tonal floats across dance rhythms, in a way not quite heard since My Bloody Valentine’s “Instrumental” – but with the added gift of Bolton’s gorgeous voice.

This loose coalition with dance music, and the quiet experimentalism at the heart of Hydroplane, also gestures towards peers like Hood, Acetate Zero and Other People’s Children, and releases on renegade labels like Wurlitzer Jukebox and Enraptured. Like those groups and labels, The Cat’s Miaow were reconciling independent pop music’s past – sweet melody and melancholy, chiming and droning guitars – with the futures promised by DIY electronics and nascent digitalia, the interface of indie and IDM that led to some of the underground’s most blissful, texturally swoonsome music. All that is here, but also, the poise of the melodies is pure Cat’s Miaow, though, with Bolton’s voice sailing, pacifically, over some of the most pared-down, gorgeous music made during their decade.

It was a time, too, when such music could make waves – “We Crossed The Atlantic”, one of their early singles, was picked up by John Peel, who played it repeatedly on his legendary radio show, the song reaching #13 on his 1997 Festive 50. That the song itself was a cover of a tune by 1960s Australian beatnik-pop-poet Pip Proud felt even more perfect – a group of outsiders paying tribute to another outsider, played on the radio one of the few broadcasters brave and human enough to take a chance on this music. But it was a time where everything was up for grabs, and genres were flowing into each other: folk songs went drone; indie re-discovered noise; ambient pop floated, again, out onto the dancefloor. And while they may have been sequestered away in Melbourne, Australia, Hydroplane felt core to that scene, a quietly driving force.

Compiling material from across their brief but mercurial career, this double album perfectly captures the magic and mystery of Hydroplane’s dreamlike, perfect pop songs.

Following his critically acclaimed debut studio album Frank, Fly Anakin
returns with new offering Skinemaxxx
Produced entirely by Foisey - fellow member of Richmond rap collective Mutant
Academy - with features from founding Mutant Academician Big Kahuna Og and
frequent collaborators Pink Siifu, ANKHLEJOHN and London- based vocalist
Demae.
"After dropping one of 2022's best rap albums, Fly Anakin goes two-for-two in his
Skinemaxxx campaign with another high voltage performance" - Okayplayer
The physical formats feature mind- boggling packaging design by Commission
Studio and illustrations by River Cousin. The vinyl includes a cutout TV screen
cover and pull out 2- channel lenticular that allows fans to reenact the channel
switch moment that inspired the project.
"Features dreamy production reminiscent of the golden era of hip- hop. Anakin
flows effortlessly over the beats, with a flow that's both aggressive and somehow
calming ... an exciting new album from one of the best rappers in the
underground." - HotNewHipHop
Fly Anakin is a rapper from Richmond, Virginia, described by Madlib as "one of the
illest MCs". He's previously collaborated with Freddie Gibbs and Redveiland is cofounder of the Richmond rap collective Mutant Academy.
Press support so far from HotNewHipHop, The FADER ('Song You Need'),
HYPEBEAST, Stereogum, Clash, Okayplayer, Consequence & Brooklyn Vegan.
UK radio highlights include Benji B on BBC Radio 1/ 1Xtra and Tom Ravenscroft &
Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC 6Music

Yo! Boombox is the new instalment of Soul Jazz Records’ Boombox series on the early days of hip-hop on vinyl and features some of the many innovative underground first-wave of early rap and disco rap records made in the USA in the period 1979-83.

The album includes the first releases of seminal groups such as Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five and The Funky Four Plus One More through to a host of rarities and little-known obscurities such as the Carver Area High School band’s ‘Get Live 83’, an awesome record made at a Chicago high school.


The album is released as a deluxe triple LP complete with 3x full inner sleeves of extensive sleeve notes, exclusive photography and original label artwork. There is also a very-limited one-pressing only special deluxe version that comes with an extra bonus super-rare 7” single of ‘Magic’s Rap’ by Magic’s Trick, aka ex-marine Magic Fraga, a record that was only ever available on US military bases!


Yo! Boombox also features the stunning photography of Sophie Bramly, one of a very select group of photographers (alongside Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, and Joe Conzo) who were allowed full access to document the exciting early days of hip-hop in New York.
These first exuberant wave of innocent, upbeat, party-on-the-block rap records were the first to try and create the sounds heard in community centres, block parties and street jams that first took place in the Bronx in the mid-1970s. Where the first DJs – Flash, Kool Herc and Bambaataa – were back-spinning, mixing and scratching together now classic breakbeat records like The Incredible Bongo Band’s Apache or Babe Ruth’s The Mexican, these first pre-sampling rap records were all made using live bands, often replaying then current disco tunes.

As Chic’s ‘Good Times’ was to ‘Rappers’ Delight’, the songs here feature then-current dancefloor hits such as the Tom Tom Club’s ‘Genius of Love’, Cheryl Lynn’s ‘To Be Real’, MFSB’s ‘Love Is the Message’ while MCs rapped over the top, creating a unique new sound. In fact, the links between disco and rap date back earlier to the ‘party style’ MCing of figures such as the legendary DJ Hollywood or radio DJs like Frankie Crocker.

This new Soul Jazz Records collection
celebrates these first old-school rap
records, bringing together rare, classic
and obscure tracks released in the
early days of rap.

Marcos Díaz has been part of Buenos Aires underground for many years, being in projects like Bosques and making solo music under the pseudonym Entidad Animada (animated entity). Under this project, Marcos has explored sounds that involve a mix of feedback/distortion through synthesizers, guitars and drum machines that hint at the influence of Stereolab, Spacemen 3, and mid-nineties shoegaze. However, there are also ambient soundscapes with a slight rubbed of the ritualistic psychedelia of the Popol Vuh. The display of colours in his music comes together in the midst of a playful, relaxed and optimistic environment that is simultaneously melancholic. Because of the nature of those pieces, but also because in Entidad Animada there is also space for collage sounds that blend randomly with textures of a primitive analog sound, which inevitably causes a paradox between what is alive and what is inert. And it is because Entidad Animada is precisely that, a spectrum or a vision, a ghost. And these sounds are proof of his existence.

Pruebas de existencia (proofs of existence) is a collection of recordings that Marcos has made in recent years and that we have selected for this album, his first work on Umor Rex. A couple of these pieces were only released digitally, while the others have been on ltd cassette editions through Fuego Amigo Discos in Argentina. Pruebas de existencia is an Umor Rex compilation and remastered edition.

Guitar, sampler, synthesizer, organ, bass, drums & electronic beats, vocals, recording and mixing by Entidad Animada in Buenos Aires. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio, NY. Cover photography Natch Tablescape (1979) by Langdon Clay. Layout by Daniel Castrejón, Mexico City.

Funkadelic have created an enduring legacy, and the power of their impact is visceral in Detroit. Their records not only played with genre, but possessed a diabolical sense of humour that led to music domination by the late 70s with Parliament, Funkadelic, Parlet, Bootsy's Rubber Band and the Brides Of Funkenstein all releasing albums the same year for two years in a row.

The music itself is beyond stereotype, but equally huge is that they were a black band not allowing themselves to be limited by anyone else's notions of who they could be, having a massive impact on the next generation of Detroit music, Detroit Techno.

But more than just Techno, it is a freedom of thinking that extends beyond boxes, so we included all sorts of today's generation of Detroit musicians and producers to show the wide range of music that was Funkadelic and how these ideas are still contemporary, they endure and inspire.

Runhild Gammelsæter and Lasse Marhaug are two Norwegian musicians/sound artists. Both started in the early 1990s music underground and have worked in many constellations with a wide range of collaborators.

Despite knowing each other for a long time, Gammelsæter and Marhaug’s first collaborative work was the “Quantum Entanglement” LP in 2014. The album ignited a collective spark that both wanted to pursue further. Still, other commitments got in the way, and the project lay dormant until Stephen O’Malley, and Greg Anderson invited them to open for Sunn O))) for a special gig in the St. James Church of Culture in Oslo in the autumn of 2019. The two gathered for a long series of rehearsals, and after the successful performance, it was clear that it was time to start working on new compositions and recordings. That process initiated in late 2019 and continued to early 2021, encompassing before and after the world went through the lockdown. The result of this long development to be heard accumulated upon their new album “Higgs Boson” on Ideologic Organ Music.

Throughout the profound process of creating “Higgs Boson”, Gammelsæter and Marhaug drew inspiration from various subjects and artists. For Marhaug, it was concepts informed by the structuralist experimental cinema of Japanese directors Takashi Ito and Toshio Matsumoto, futurist worlds of French comic book artists Philippe Druillet and Jean Moebius Giraud, landscape photography of Fay Godwin, Kåre Kivijärvi, and Tamiko Nishimura, amongst others.

It became a metaphysical juxtaposition involving Gammelsaeter’s research and lyrical ideas based on several seemingly unrelated principles. A process of association inspired by “the Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse. The discovery of the Higgs Boson as a confirmation of the physical universe. The work of Ernst Schrödinger on the uncertainty principle. The four forces of physics. The Force. Helplessness under armed forces - as the war sailors in World War II. The influence of magic as expressed in tarot.

Gammelsæter experiments with a boundary involving the thresholds amongst various states of focus and legibility by forensic experimentation with techniques such as exclusive expression of consonants, syllabic repetition, retrograde text vocalisations and multi-lingual layering. Her vocal inspirational sources include Sidsel Endresen, Diamanda Galas, Natacha Atlas, the choral works of Rachmaninov, and the bands Carcass and Grave.

Two worlds coming together, making the music special. Mixing hard facts with science fiction helps create a kaleidoscopic cross point between the complex realities of the past and a possible future.

“Quantum Entanglement” featured two long-form pieces centred around a prepared piano and layered voice, while “Higgs Boson” developed a much more elaborate and ambitious compositional work. Across eight parts, the two artists brought a broad palette of instrumentation and sound. Electronic and acoustic, objects and field recordings, and pipe organ define the structures of which the centre is Gammelsæter’s magnificent voice. She has become known for her legendary voice, with her vast and unique range of inflective techniques and affective colour through her 30 years creating music. In the mix, Lasse approached the instrumental elements like landscapes, then Runhild’s vocals as characters that inhabit those worlds. Often, Gammelsæter multiple characters fused with the landscape. Make them occupy space, sometimes blend into it, sometimes dominate it. Constructing and setting visual guidelines helps set focus and open possibilities.

As an album, “Higgs Boson” is direct and focused, drawing on song structures. Within these tracks are vast strata of sound, an immersive multi-dimensional depth of music. Creating a feeling of depth while working with a flat two-channel stereo format - and how dimensions of texture and distortion can help develop the illusion of a space. The album structure is a story-like arc, a malleable subjective path, set as the album traverses oblique and suggestive areas, opening the concepts for the listener to unpack as they like.

– exclusive consultation with Gammelsæter & Marhaug, edited by Stephen O’Malley, June 2022

Pye Corner Audio releases a new album, Let’s Emerge!, for Sonic Cathedral. It’s his first studio outing for the label following the acclaimed live recording Social Dissonance, which came out earlier this year, and it features Ride guitarist Andy Bell playing on five of its ten tracks. From the first glimpse of the artwork to the first note of the music it’s a marked deviation from Pye Corner Audio’s more traditional shadowy sounds. Whereas his last outing for Ghost Box (2021’s Entangled Routes) was inspired by the underground fungal pathways through which plants communicate, this one is very much above ground, bathed in sunlight and acid-bright psychedelia.

“This is a departure to sunnier climes, but a departure nonetheless,” says Pye Corner Audio, aka Martin Jenkins. “It’s something that I’d been thinking about for a while. I try to tailor my work slightly differently for the various labels that I work with, and this seems to fit nicely with Sonic Cathedral’s ethos.” Designer Marc Jones’ bold and ultra vivid artwork consciously references the likes of LFO, Spacemen 3 and the early output of Stereolab. “I think it mixes together many of my earliest influences,” explains Martin. “I’ve been a long-time fan of Spacemen 3 and Stereolab.

Their moments of repetition and drone have always seeped into what I’ve tried to create.

“I was living in a small apartment and I’d stripped down my studio set-up when I was recording this album. This enabled me to focus on a few key pieces of equipment and explore them fully.” The recordings were fleshed out by Andy Bell, who Martin first met at the Sonic Cathedral 15th birthday party at The Social in London back in 2019 – the same show that became the live album Social Dissonance.

“New alliances were formed and friendships made in that basement in Little Portland Street,” recalls Martin. “When I met Andy, we agreed that we needed to work together in some way. After I’d remixed a few tracks from his album The View From Halfway Down, he kindly repaid the favour.” The end results – mastered in New York by acclaimed engineer Heba Kadry – are incredible, from the first stirrings of opener ‘De-Hibernate’, via the glorious ‘Haze Loops’ and ‘Saturation Point’, the album slowly but surely awakens, blinking and feeling its way into the light. It all culminates in the epic closing track ‘Warmth Of The Sun’ which, with its vocal harmonies and acid breakdown, is seven and a half minutes of pure release.

“That one’s about life’s simple pleasures,” concludes Martin. “The Beach Boys, tremolo guitars, infinite drones, Spacemen 3. Let’s emerge from this darkened era and feel the ‘Warmth Of The Sun’. “The last few years have seen huge changes, both personally and in a wider perspective. The album title is a reaction to this, a collective (tentative) sigh of relief. Here’s to new beginnings and a sense of hope.”

Following this year’s hugely successful UK No. 1 album
‘As The Love Continues’ entering the US Billboard Chart
at No. 9, Mogwai went on to be nominated for this year’s
Mercury Music Prize. Now they reissue their 90’s EPs on
vinyl for the first time in over 20 years through Chemikal
Underground.
 Each EP was originally released in limited numbers
between 1997 and 1999 and quickly sold out. Although
packaged as the CD and download compilation album
‘EP+6’, this is the first time ‘4 Satin’, ‘No Education = No
Future (Fuck the Curfew)’ and ‘E.P.’ have been available
on vinyl since the initial pressings.
 A beautiful triple vinyl reissue of the three EPs originally
released in the 1990s, presented in their original artwork
inside a 7mm wide spine outer sleeve.
 ‘4 Satin’: Curacao vinyl, originally released in 1997.
 ‘No Education = No Future (Fuck the Curfew)’: Clear
vinyl, originally released in 1998.
 ‘E.P.’: Sun yellow vinyl, originally released in 1999.
 “I’m incredibly proud of these EPs,” says guitarist and
singer Stuart Braithwaite. “I think they’re interesting as
we were experimenting with so many things back then.
A lot of what we tried out on those records are things
that went on to define us.”
 A long time in the pipeline, Mogwai’s ‘e.p. x 3’ is both an
illuminating document for fans who came to the group in
more recent years and an essential purchase for
collectors of the group’s music on vinyl.

"Formed in 1967 as a psychedelic electronic duo featuring Dan Taylor on drums and Simeon on a homemade synthesizer consisting of 12 oscillators (and an assortment of sound filters, telegraph keys, radio parts, lab gear and a variety of second hand electronic junk), Silver Apples quickly gained a reputation as New York's leading underground musical expression. Their pulsating rhythmic beats with the use of electronics laid the groundwork for what would become 'Krautrock'. Silver Apples was released in 1968 and still remains an innovative and revolutionary album. Their highly influential sound has influenced countless bands from Stereolab, Beastie Boys, Blur and more. 'Silver Apples... a beautiful and mysterious artifact.' - New York Times.



Sales points
- New 24 bit /96 kHz transfer taken from the original master tapes.



- Limited Blue Sky Colored Vinyl



- First Reissue from Original Tapes



- Currently Touring in the US and Europe



- 'Oscillations' featured in Pitchforks Top 200 songs from the 60's.

"Just Valance being Valance, I'm no underground glitch legend or pioneer as I never cared for a title, just an individual who puts sounds together and embraces the outcome whether it's light or dark. Capturing emotions from complex patterns. I don't betray myself. Not for status. Not for power. Not for money. Not to fit into a stereotype. Not to look a certain way. Not for approval as patience and sacrifice is required to build anything.

Some aspects of the world are getting uglier every day and every ray of hope is vital to tilt the balance."
- Valance Drakes

 On ‘Phantom Rhythm’, Gong Gong Gong’s raucous debut, the
minimalist Beijing duo created a drummer-less sound that was
more than the sum of its parts, inspired by back-porch blues,
Sahelian guitar music, New York no-wave, Cantonese lion
dance percussion and, seemingly most incongruously, techno.
 With ‘Phantom Rhythm Remixed’, Gong Gong Gong bring to life
a concept they’ve planned since the release of their acclaimed
first album, curating their favourite China-connected electronic
music producers to remix ‘Phantom Rhythm’ in its entirety.
 The globe-spanning collaboration features Yu Su (Vancouver /
Kaifeng), Zaliva-D, Simon Frank, Howie Lee (Beijing), Mong
Tong, Scattered Purgatory (Taipei), Knopha (Xiamen), Wu
Zhuoling (Chengdu), Angel Wei (Copenhagen) and P.E.
(Brooklyn).
 The album traces a common thread, organically expanding the
palette of Gong Gong Gong into ambient club tracks, thumping
dance music, cinematic soundscapes and doomy, bit-crushed
psych.
 Gong Gong Gong are the duo of Tom Ng and Joshua Frank.
Formed in 2015 in Beijing, China, they make music from the
sparest of means: one guitar and one bass, interweaving riffs to
create forward-charging, drumerless grooves. Their inspirations
extend from Bo Diddley to African and Southeast Asian folk
music, psychedelic drone and the structures of electronic music.
 “A couple of misfits and a brash bouquet of sound” - Pitchfork
 “Spare and savage” - The New Yorker
 “String-focused, hypnotic, spitfire tracks” - Stereogum
 “A rare kind of intimacy you don’t often find with driving,
ramshackle funk” - Loud And Quiet
 “Depending on your ear, the Beijing-based guitar-and-bass duo
could sound like The Feelies’ stuttering post-punk, Bo Diddley’s
rock and roll boogie or Tinariwen’s droning desert blues” - NPR

A musical omnibus, ‘The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now’ is the
first widely distributed Lily Konigsberg physical release, as well as
the first vinyl treatment for EPs ‘Good Time Now’ and ‘4 Picture
Tear’.
The collection loosely parallels the melancholic narrative behind
the latter, where a mental break triggered Konigsberg’s
depersonalized sense of her past self. Of the ‘4 Picture Tear’ EP
Konigsberg says, “I would look at this photo booth picture I took
with Matt Norman and cry because I thought I was looking at the
person I used to be in that picture and that that person was gone.”
In retrospect, these EPs feel like distinctive vignettes of
Konigsberg’s progression as a songwriter, each version of her
past self-tethered by an invisible thread to the present through
musical alliances and fervent introspection.
‘Owe Me’, a song Konigsberg never felt fit on any of her previous
releases, now serves as an opening curtain call. “Thank you all for
coming to my show,” Konigsberg says to an invisible audience’s
applause, “If you didn’t know, now you certainly know.” It’s a
transportive moment that combines Konigsberg’s patient steps into
the underground pop limelight with her exceptional ability to
connect with a diverse and talented cohort of creatives.
One third of egalitarian art-punk outfit Palberta, the Brooklyn-born
and-based Lily Konigsberg has occupied her time with music since
her early childhood. “Basically I was born and immediately started
wanting to be a rock star,” she says.
“Even before she became a fixture of the New York underground,
Lily Konigsberg was staking out her place in local music.” -
Pitchfork (Rising Artist, 2020)
“A crisp, catchy, and concise bit of 90s-indebted indie rock” -
Stereogum
“The freewheeling, flitting melodies underline the precision of
Konigsberg’s songwriting: She knows what she wants to say and
she is methodical about how much to reveal.” - Pitchfork
“Warm and direct but tough to grasp, untraceable” - Tiny Mix
Tapes

Ryley Walker currently resides in New York City. But his latest LP is a Chicago record in spirit. The masterful Course In Fable, the songwriter’s fi@h solo effort,
draws from the deep well of that city’s ferCle 1990s scene, when bands like Tortoise, The Sea and Cake and Gastr del Sol were reshaping the underground,
mixing and matching indie rock, jazz, prog and beyond.
Walker spent his formaCve years in Chicago, absorbing those heady sounds and finding ways to make them his own. Even though he emerged at first in folkrock
troubadour mode, it makes sense that he’s arrived at this point; each LP has grown more intricate and assured, his influences disClling into something
original and unusual. To put it simply: Course In Fable is Walker’s best record yet, full of acCve imaginaCon and endless possibiliCes.
Last October, Ryley went straight to one of the primary architects of the Chicago sound to make the LP. John McEn:re, Course In Fable’s producer/engineer/
mixer, can rightly be called a legend for his work with Tortoise, Stereolab, The Red Krayola, Jim O’Rourke and countless others over a prolific career that now
spans more than three decades. Seeing his name in an album’s liners is preVy much a trademark of quality.
Another Windy City exile, McEnCre is based on the west coast these days, working out of the Portland, OR studio he’s dubbed Soma West. On the seven songs
here, he delivers the signature shimmering and prisCne sonics he’s become known for over the years. But McEnCre was also inCmately involved with Course
In Fable’s overall creaCve process. “I told him to take the mixes and have at it,” Walker says.
The result is a rich, immersive affair — a headphones record if ever there was one. Course In Fable’s songs are twisty, labyrinthine things, stuffed full of ideas
(Walker half-jokingly calls it his “prog record”). But no maVer how complex it gets, the album is never overwhelmingly busy. Wiry guitars melt into gorgeous
string secCons (arranged by Douglas Jenkins of the Portland Cello Project). Tricky Cme signatures abound but feel as natural as can be. Melodies o@en dri@ in
unexpected direcCons but remain downright hummable. Like Walker’s beloved Genesis, the pop element is never too far from the surface even when shit
gets weird. (And speaking of weird, Ryley says that in addiCon to Genesis, much of the album’s inspiraCon comes from “Australian extreme scooter riders on
YouTube and balding gear heads on Craigslist.” Go figure.)
To help put together these various puzzle pieces, Ryley assembled a band made up of several longCme collaborators. Bill MacKay (another Chicago mainstay)
and Walker have made two excellent instrumental duo records of interlocking guitars and warm give-and-take — a rapport very much in evidence
throughout Course In Fable. The freakishly talented drummer Ryan Jewell has performed with Walker for years now in a variety of seangs, from
straighborward song-centric sets to blown-out improv extravaganzas. Bassist Andrew ScoJ Young (Tiger Hatchery, Health&Beauty) has logged many miles on
tour with Walker; he and Jewell are frequently astonishing, a buoyant-but-always-locked-in rhythm secCon, able to navigate someCmes dizzying turnarounds
with apparent ease. Listening to the interplay between Walker and these musicians and you might be fooled into thinking they’d spent a year roadtesCng
Course In Fable’s songs. But it all came together relaCvely fast, thanks to demos, rehearsals and the kind of musical empathy that comes from years of
playing together.
Beneath the wondrous interplay, you’ll find some of Walker’s most personal – if sCll typically crypCc — lyrics, hinCng at some of the trials the songwriter has
been dealing with in recent years. Balanced with necessary doses of dark humor and oddball poetry, Course In Fable feels most of all like a life-affirming
record, fresh air in the lungs, sun on your skin. “Fuck me, I’m alive,” Ryley sings at one point, a moment of both disbelief and pure joy.
Walker has released his albums on a who’s-who of independent labels over the past decade — Tompkins Square, Dead Oceans, Thrill Jockey and Drag City
among them. This Cme around, he’s doing it DIY-style, puang Course In Fable out on his own Husky Pants imprint. You’re in good hands. This is an album that
sounds great (mastered by Greg Calbi), looks great (artwork by Jenny Nelson and design by Michael Vallera). It probably even smells great. Whether you’ve
been onboard since the beginning or are new to the Ryley Walker universe, you’re in for a treat.

2x Grammy nominated band Gojira have announced details of their long-awaited new album, FORTITUDE, which will be released April 30th via Roadrunner Records and have released the forthcoming album’s first single, “Born For One Thing”. FORTITUDE stands is Gojira’s first album in five years and the follow-up to 2016’s Grammy nominated LP MAGMA.

Recorded and Produced by Joe Duplantier at Silver Cord Studio - Gojira’s Ridgewood, Queens, headquarters – and mixed by Andy Wallace (Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine), FORTITUDE is a collection of songs urging humanity to imagine a new world—and then make it happen. The band initially laid the foundation for FORTITUDE last year with the surprise release of the 2020 single “Another World.” NPR hailed the track as “an apocalyptic banger,” while STEREOGUM declared, “Gojira are one of this century’s most important underground metal institutions.” Voted by fans as the #1 release on REVOLVER’s “5 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021,” FORTITUDE continues Gojira’s career-long tradition of harnessing their music as a vehicle for environmental activism with songs like “Amazonia” and “The Chant” not only surveying critical cases, but also catalyzing listeners to take action.

On 2016’s MAGMA, Gojira found strength—and crossover success—through a singular commitment to self-reflection. The intensely personal record, penned in memory of the Duplantier brothers' late mother, was a painful significant turning point for the French group. The album earned the band two GRAMMY nominations - ‘Best Metal Performance’ and ‘Best Rock Album,’ and upon release, MAGMA took the #1 spot on BILLBOARD’s ‘Hard Rock Albums’ chart, a first for a French band. MAGMA also asserted itself as one of the most acclaimed albums of 2016, earning METAL HAMMER’s coveted “Album of the Year” title while also landing on ROLLING STONE’s “Top 20 Metal Albums of 2016,”

 At the start of 2020, before the world turned to ash, several US publications began running glowing reviews of ‘Speed Kills’, the breakneck debut album from Chubby & The Gang, a West London punk troupe comprised of members of various bands associated with The New Wave of British Hardcore, among them Violent Reaction, Abolition, Big Cheese and more.

 At the time, the band - helmed by local electrician Charlie Manning - had developed a cult following in the UK, largely rooted in the cross-pollinating nature of the punk scene, select shows including dates with Sheer Mag and an impending, lastminute US run with Royal Hounds.

 ‘Speed Kills’, produced by Jonah Falco of Fucked Up, would go on to be called “the best punk-pop LP in recent memory” by Paste Magazine, a debut that “comes alive with liberating energy” in an 8.0 review from Pitchfork and full of “massive barroom gang choruses, power chords at breakneck tempos,
rock spelled R-A-W-K and visceral gratification” as Stereogum put it. Impressive going for a band at the time with no publicist, no big budget label backing and no industry clout, per se, beyond increasingly fervent underground support.

 Following the quietly blossoming success of ‘Speed Kills’, Chubby & The Gang now find a new home on Partisan Records (IDLES, Fontaines D.C., Laura Marling, Fela Kuti) who have reissued the album in remastered form with the unreleased cut ‘Union Dues’ included to boot and with new music on the horizon.

COLOR VINYL LP

Indie Retail Exclusive *Cosmic Moment* Color Vinyl LP Multidisciplinary abstractivist Rob Mazurek has made an indelible impact on creative music over the past 30 years. Emerging from the musical nexus of the 1990s Chicago scene, he's written more than 400 compositions and is featured on more than 70 recordings (including International Anthem's very first, IARC0001, Alternate Moon Cycles). He's led many ensembles - including the Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet & Orchestra), Isotope 217 (alongside members of Tortoise), Pharoah and the Underground (feat. Pharoah Sanders), and a duo with Jeff Parker. He's been on the cover of WIRE Magazine twice and is well-known as one of the prime 21st century progenitors of "The Chicago Sound."

What exactly happened in the Italian underground / post punk scene 30 years ago, is not entirely clear. Therefore, this collection of 13 incredible tunes helps track down the feeling and focuses on the blurry images of a period that was mixing influences from the UK/USA scenes with a more national' approach to new music developments. The damage began in 1977 when a series of urban / suburban musical agitators, whether skilled or complete amateurs, decided to embrace instruments as weapons for a war against sonic stereotypes. Here's the result: a multiform sonic attack that marks the history of a movement that may have remained local in most cases but whose echo reflected the amazing creativity of a generation.

Pilo returns to BNR in 2020 with the “A.R.E.A.” EP. Since his first release for the label in 2013 at a very young age, each subsequent record could be seen as a milestone of growth - the “A.R.E.A. EP” feels confident, produced with consummate skill, focusing on the LA-producers strongest themes and devices. This is not, however, the sort of “maturity” that sees things get boring, more restrained. Pilo’s drum is the beat of LA’s unhinged underground techno scene - they don’t do boring - and this drum is always banging.

A-side examples: “Acid by Mouth.” A stuttered kick and a gated, uncanny valley voice form the backbone for increasing layers of texture and percussion. It’s a rollercoaster, as viscerally satisfying on the way up as on the way down. Pilo’s production journey has been increasingly cinematic, and you can see the songs here - “Acid by Mouth” is suited for a Gaspar Noe nightclub scene, and you love to hear it as long as no one gets murdered. “Ruhig” is tribal, made for spaces with 4 story high ceilings and sparse but blinding flashes of light. You can hear steel beams buckling under pressure, a breath too close behind you. The workers of the factory in fit of madness started raving to the sounds of their own machines. They’ve been dancing, without pause, for years now.

The B-side opens with “Exit the Artificial.” Headbanging broken beat kick, aggressive Skinny Puppy snares, ghost voices in hallucinatory bursts too short to confirm to be real. The draw-distance of the stereo spread seems infinite - listen at the very edges and a whole other (ominous) world is taking place. The ghosts mock you in gated laughs by the end. “Adapt Tactics” leads you out - low tempo, hissy percussion, haunted again at the fringe. Things break down, reduced to grain - brain short-circuits, “will I feel like this forever?” It’s a warning - turn back, there’s nothing for you out there. You embrace the madness, and start Pilo’s “A.R.E.A.” EP again from the beginning.

ALTA’s debut release, 'Reasons' is the product of many long nights making music together in a back room at Hannah and Julius’ Brunswick home. It was self-recorded over 10 months, from January 2018 to November 2018, using midnight sessions, tape delay effects and a literal room full of wall to wall synths to carve out a world all their very own. "It's a collection of songs written together in our home studio - No cowriters or anything, just us two experimenting making the music,” says the band.

The album was later mixed by Seekae’s George Nicholas in Sydney and mastered by Grammy-winning engineer Chris Gehringer at Sterling Sound (Rihanna, Janelle Monae, Chvrches).

Thematically, the album’s title alludes to the sense of complacency that often sets in when people start making excuses for themselves.
“It’s this internal thing,” Julius explains, ‘always coming up with reasons why things did or didn’t happen, or reasons why someone else did something. Often it’s self-preservation but it’s also bullshit.”

‘Push’ follows on from previous singles ‘Figured Out’, ‘Back On It’ and ‘Twisted’, which have just under 2 million streams on Spotify since their release and are receiving global attention, with spins on BBC Radio 1 and praise from the likes of The Line of Best Fit and CLASH.

At streaming, ALTA have seen huge support locally and internationally, with their 2019 releases featuring in Spotify’s New Music Fridays, Indie Arrivals, The Local List, Just Chill, Front Left, New Dance Beats and The Office Stereo, plus Best Of The Week on Apple Music.

Melbourne fans will witness ALTA performing tracks from Reasons for the first time ever at Northcote Social Club on Saturday 5 October. Tickets are on sale now via Northcote Social Club’s website.

Reasons is an intricate and emotional body of work that will see ALTA step out from Melbourne’s underground scene, and into the international limelight. Pre-order your copy today.

“Bandiera Di Carta” represents the ongoing collaboration between instrument builder and composer Pierre Bastien and the
London based experimental duo Tomaga (Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen).
Bastien has been called a “mad musical scientist with a celebrity following” by The Guardian (UK) having collaborated with the
likes of filmmaker Pierrick Sorin, fashion designer Issey Miyake, singer and composer Robert Wyatt as well as Aphex Twin,
who released three of his albums on his label Rephlex.
Tomaga have made more than a dozen records since forming in 2014, pursuing a path of fearless experimentation and sonic
brinksmanship that has won them fans and plaudits from far and wide, including Thurston Moore, with whom they collaborated
on the CAN Project with Malcolm Mooney, Deb Goodge and others in 2017, as well as Wire, Silver Apples and Stereolab, with
whom they toured extensively in summer 2019.
The artistic collaboration between Pierre and Tomaga began with two commissions: from Fructose Festival in Dunkirk and the
revered underground festival Supersonic in Birmingham UK. Recording initially at a studio in the industrial port of Dunkirk, the
uneasy bond between borders and states seems to have been a theoretical motor to the collaborative sessions, as well as the
bleak landscape of the seaport frontier. This inspiration found further manifestation in the cover image for ‘Bandiera Di Carta’.
Resembling a white paper flag, it is, in fact, a photograph of Bastien’s paper and air sound machine installed on stage at
Teatro Carignano in Turin as part of the trio’s performance there. This charged, ambivalent image of a blank flag evokes the
transcendence of the national, a prescient visual motif that meditates on the contemporary uncertainty around notions of
national identity and borders but perhaps also a ‘carte blanche’ for the artists involved, in which they can deviate from the
confines of their usual practice into new and strange territories.
For each piece, Bastien’s unique sonic style: by turns his kinetic mechanoid motors, capriciously arrhythmic pipes, or the
peculiar susurrus of paper, creates a world in which Tomaga introduce their musical palette. Magaletti’s percussion anchors
these sometimes chaotic forces into beguiling syncopations, with Relleen’s synthesizer and organ work creating harmonic
counterpoints and interruptive provocations, to which Bastien responds with lyrical turns on prepared trumpet, rubber band, tin
foil and bass ocarina.
The results are curiously evocative of free jazz by the likes of Sun Ra or Art Ensemble of Chicago paired with the percussive
sound worlds of artists like Francis Bebey or Muslimgauze along with unique and sometimes bizarrely exotic tonal landscapes
of composers like Catherine Christer Hennix, Carl Stone, or Egisto Macchi. All three musicians seem to find space to bloom in
ways that are markedly different from their individual work and the resulting album is a strikingly original and powerfully bold
affirmation of what can happen when venturing beyond the normal in pursuit of the other.All tracks written & produced by Tomaga (Tom Relleen & Valentina Magaletti) & Pierre Bastien.
Mixed and mastered by Rashad Becker.

Two Modular Synth Live acts come together on this split EP to form a non-compromising Techno four-tracker.

French live act Porteix delivers two big room tracks with slightly electro-leaning drums on top of a bold kickdrum fundament.

Austrian modular-head Anml Mthr is deep into the acid game and let's his 303 speak with some serious distortion work. His relentless pattern repeat and modulation over time lets you truely get into one of the initial ideas of Berlin's underground sound from the 90s, ment to escape reality and leave out unecessary changes, stereo tricks and decoration.

Fresh from releases on his own Polymath Records, as well as Natura Sonoris and Sodai, that have seen support from the likes of Maceo Plex, Bicep, and ANNA; UK producer Third Son debuts on Dusky's 17 Steps imprint with the 'Machine Love' EP.

The synth laden 4 tracker utilises electro, acid, techno and breakbeat influences to provide a rugged and bold reflection of the current clubbing landscape; one that is set to melt underground dance-floors this autumn.

'Machine Love's squelchy synths and gritty percussion build towards a chopped and skewed finale, that has proved a ferocious piece of club artillery in Dusky's sets this summer.

Next up is 'Bloodsport', a dance floor primed roller that consists of dusty breaks, squealing atmospherics and a meandering baseline. 'I Hear Laurel' follows, a cosmic alliance of ghostly vocals and hard hitting distorted synths that feels like meditative ode to rave music of the past. Closing the EP is 'Ambiturner', stacked with syncopated drums and twisting synths that scatter across the stereo stacks.

D-Leria returns to the scene more than a year after debuting on Berlin-based label Delirio, releasing a collection of work produced between 2014 and 2018; ten tracks which mark a new beginning for this young Italian producer, sweeping between heavy ambient excursions to hypnotic/ tribal techno, modernized and polished off in his own way.'Driving to Nowhere' is the summation of an extended journey; a year-long hiatus due to unforeseen health concerns allowed time to meditate and consider his past experiences in Italy's various underground electronic music scenes, and the potential directions inspired by thriving Berlin.
From 2014 to 2017 he released several EP's, each developing upon this new style, until joining the young label Delirio as both a musician and a manager. With Delirio he has hosted artists such as Stanislav Tolkackev, Roberto Bosco, Plaster, Retina.it and more, with a unique agenda to record precisely produced music live, instead of laboring in the studio to achieve over-polished audio. His first album inaugurates the beginning of the new DLP catalog, which will be dedicated to LPs, albums and other projects released on 12-inch vinyl. Through these 10 tracks D-Leria experiments with various production methods, as in 'Makumba' where he precisely combines the kick drum with a tight bass line in a 12-step sequence, making the track fluid and never predictable. 'Reborn' is an even more ambitious undertaking, initially recorded on tape before being sent back to the mixer via Hi Fi stereo, D-Leria modulated the cassette coil with a bic pen to create a unique 'detune' effect. 'From the Ground' and 'Driving to Nowhere', both made through the same setup, combine tribal voices and moans, combining an ethereal ambience with drums and analog percussion, connecting the rhythm directly to the soul. The opening track 'Libero' is dedicated to himself, while 'Her Smile' and 'Uragano' are both dedicated to the person that was closest to him in his last period of stop and realization of the album, where he expresses his most deep moments in the first, and more difficult in the second.
Just like in most of the EP already released on Delirio, Giuseppe Tillieci aka Neel took care of the mastering of the tracks, while the artist has taken care of the smallest details from the production, to the mixing, to the graphics and also to the titles of the tracks, which refer to personal thoughts and events that happened during this long journey to nowhere.

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

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