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2024 Repress

Cool - gelassen - überraschend: Volume 15 dieser superlativen Serie wurde wieder von Compost’s Mentor Michael Reinboth zusammengestellt. Das pralle Paket birgt 21 Tracks, davon 8 exklusive unveröffentlichte Delikatessen und gibt es als 4-LP / 2xCD. Viel Vergnügen.

Die exklusiven Tracks kommen von: Area (schätze, man kennt seine brillianten Innervisions Veröffentlichungen), Arnau Obiols & KAYYAK (schwer von Gilles Peterson gefeatured, ihre EP “Chang‘an” war in seiner 2021 top 5 Liste), Ron Deacon (gehört zur Workshop-Crew mit Move D, Even Tuell and Kassem Mosse), Class Compliance, oh man was für ein Hammer Track, Mille & Hirsch (Operatoren des feinen Polish Records - Labels), All Is Well (dahinter steckt natürlich Fred Everything), Ben Sturm (ein neues Talent aus Leipzig’s viraler Underground Szene) und Oliver Kieser (bestens bekannt als Teil von Kieser & Velten mit einigen Platten auf G-Stone).

Gut, schön, wie immer, fast alle Tracks sind wunderbare Hybride, perfekt für jedes eklektische Set, aber auch für den entspannten Genuss von Wein, Bier, härterem oder grünem Zeug. Vielleicht besonders zu erwähnen wäre der Esa Williams Remix von Bantu Clan Vs Sarabi and Kevin Yost’s Original Mix von “Another World”, die gab es so in den Versionen bisher nicht auf Vinyl.

Diverse Magazine haben die Future Sounds Of Jazz als eine der besten Compilation - Serien aller Zeiten gewählt. Wir sind geschmeichelt. Mit dem Start der Reihe 1995 wurde das Genre Future Jazz quasi aus der Taufe gehoben, unetabliert.

Translucent red LP housed in a beautiful gold mirror-board sleeve with large Thundercat logo hologram sticker and gold holofoil detail. Includes two bonus tracks: ‘$200 TB’ and ‘Daylight (Reprise)

Vinyl only (no digital) 2021 Black Friday release

If indeed "you blows who you is," as Louis Armstrong once famously said, then Stephen Bruner's bass is a mainline to the soul of a man whose DNA was transcribed from the stars onto staff paper. His Flying Lotus-produced debut, The Golden Age of Apocalypse, offers both stone-cold skill and uncanny astrality, picking up where the pair left off on 2010's Cosmogramma and further distilling the jazz current running through that landmark Lotus release. A longtime contributor to others' albums, Bruner, aka Thundercat, is accompanied by an impressive cast ranging from Erykah Badu to members of Sa-Ra and J*DaVeY, to pianist Austin Peralta and his own Grammy-winning brother, drummer Ronald Bruner, Jr. Still, the end result is unmistakably a Thundercat record -- a lush and magical document combining classic jazz fusion, futurist electronic strains and timeless musical seeking.

Spanning a cosmic stew of players, locations and times, The Golden Age of Apocalypse was years in the making. . There's the ebullient "Daylight," a soft whirl of bluesy piano, New Age synth, snapping beats and warm bass. There's "Walkin'," an upbeat soul strutter powered by Bruner's digitally distorted plucks. There are raw, improvised numbers like "Jamboree" and virtuosic bass pileups like "Fleer Ultra." One of the album's most stunning moments arrives with a spacious cover of George Duke's "For Love I Come," a taut beauty spangled with crystalline harp and keys. Bringing this string of divinely unexpected moments to a moody and cinematic close is "Return to the Journey." There, Bruner sings, "Time will pass us by," but listeners needn't worry. Inside of this space, time really isn't a thing.

In 2022, the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert could once again take place in front of an audience. However, 2G-plus rules and an FFP2 mask requirement applied throughout the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde building in Vienna. Standing room was not offered this year and the number of seats in the Golden Hall was limited to 1,000.

Daniel Barenboim performed with the Vienna Philharmonic as a young pianist as early as 1965, and he has also conducted them since 1989. He already took the podium at the tradition-steeped New Year's Concert in 2009 and 2014. Barenboim's engagements as head of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden and the Staatskapelle Berlin, as founder and director of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and as a pianist show him to be a true musical citizen of the world. As such, he is also an exceptionally good fit for Vienna's world-class orchestra and the message of the New Year's Concert: hope, friendship and peace for the whole world.

At the start of the new year, the Vienna Philharmonic once again presented a cheerful, upbeat and contemplative program of symphonic waltzes, polkas and marches by the Strauss dynasty and its contemporaries. The 2022 program showed a clear reference to the fantastic and fairytale-like. In addition to the phoenix, a siren and an indeterminate number of brownies and nymphs, there was also Johann Strauss' waltz "One Thousand and One Nights".

Six pieces had their premiere at a New Year's concert in 2022. The "Phoenix March", the Polka mazur "The Siren" and the Polka française "Nymph Polka" were performed by Josef Strauss. Eduard Strauss was represented with the quick polka "Kleine Chronik", Carl Michael Ziehrer with the waltz "Nachtschwärmer" and Joseph Hellmesberger with the character piece "Heinzelmännchen" among the repertoire novelties.

There is the 50th anniversary of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention to celebrate in 2022, which Austria also joined 30 years ago. In the intermission film of the concert, the twelve Austrian World Heritage sites showed themselves from their best side. Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, on the World Heritage List since 1996, was also the setting for the ballet interlude with ten dancers from the Vienna State Ballet to the waltz "One Thousand and One Nights." The second performance was created at the Spanish Riding School, which has been designated as a UNESCO Intangible World Heritage Site since 2015. Eight magnificent Lipizzaner stallions and their riders demonstrated the high school of classical horsemanship to Josef Strauss's "Nymph Polka".

The phoenix, a very special bird from ancient Greek mythology, burns at the end of its life cycle, only to rise again from its ashes. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra paid tribute to it twice. The concert began with the "Phoenix March", followed by the waltz "Phoenix Swing". Such a concert opening - with a march and a waltz - should be a sign. It is to be hoped that a rebirth and renewal in the new year can really take place.

Nach den Erfolgssingles 'Strange Nights' und 'Cara Keeps Running' veröffentlicht der in Deutschland ansässige Synthwave-Produzent MORPHOICE sein Debütalbum 'Vinyl City', eine Liebeserklärung an die von Blade Runner inspirierte Cyberpunk-Kultur und die Musik der 80er - mit Syst3m Glitch, Clint Alford und Mayah Camara on vocals, Jesse Molloy (The Midnight) am Saxofon und dem deutschen Multiinstrumentalisten Tim Eden. Gemastert in den Londoner Abbey Road Studios, ist das Album ein Lebenstraum des Künstlers, ein neues Kapitel seiner persönlichen und musikalischen Entwicklung, das tiefe Freundschaften und Vertrauen unter den Mitwirkenden entstehen lassen hat. MORPHOICE taucht tief in die 80er-Retro-Nostalgie und in kybernetische Zukunftsvisionen ein, eingehüllt in rosa-lila Neonlicht. LP auf 180g Clear Vinyl mit blau-violettem Splatter.

It's debut time!

Making his first appearance on wax is Manchester's hottest property, Approach Release. When he isn't creating cross-genre chaos behind the decks, this genial gee mans the tram, so you gotta know he's comfortable at the controls.
In addition to a clean drivers license, the man is in possession of some seriously deep crates and this three-tracker sees him pick out a few obscurities in serious need of some scalpel.

The A side serves up the swooning space disco of 'Krypton Factor', a mid-tempo trip into the mirror ball nebula which pairs sweet female vox and dramatic sax with malfunctioning electronics and chest height bass riffs. File it under set opener, sci-fi frother and future anthem!

Over on the B side, A.R. indulges in a little beatific boogie via 'Coma', an outer national excursion building from bubbling bass and classy keys into the eventual heart-swelling vocal, an arms aloft moment if ever we've heard one.
We've been dropping this anywhere there's a CDJ and are just as happy as you lot to have it on wax. Approach Release makes it three hits out of three on the B2, as a slept-on slice of synth-pop Francais gets a necessary extension and leaves its lame chorus on the cutting room floor. Tune in for taut drum machines, playful melodies and a chic vocal.

100% Drum Fun Guaranteed.

Hypernatural, comprises of Dan Whitford, better known as one of the pillars of Melbourne heavyweights Cut Copy, Mirko Vogel, the engineer extraordinaire who has recorded for Modular and Room40, and Mike Gamwell, also known as Knightlife, who’s racked up several releases on Cut Copy’s own Cutters Records. You could say their roots are in Melbourne, Australia, but it seems unfair to pinpoint the trio to any specific location.

That’s because their sound lies somewhere deep in misty forests, or half-remembered dreams and subconscious wells of ancestral emotion. The transformative power of these 7 tracks was no accident however. The music was pieced together during two trips - one to the remote Swedish coast and another to the Scottish highlands. The three producers used a set of guidelines that allowed each of them to compose and arrange tracks separately yet collectively, like a connected Oblique Strategy. They took inspiration from the stark beauty of their natural surroundings, which had a huge effect on the music they were making.

The resulting tracks inhabit a world of their own, full of shimmering arpeggios and drifting pads, taut drums and sound effects. The opening track Longboat cruises into view with white noise washes and galley master rhythms, conjuring Old Norse battleships and a sense of sailing the open sea, destination unknown. The single Stormfront is a depth-charged deep house burner, bristling with atmospheric energy and rolling like thunder. With its cascading synth arpeggios and weighty drops, it swells like moody clouds on the horizon and releases tension like the first rain of a summer storm.

Hypernatural particularly succeeds in its world-building, and there’s a cohesion to the tracks despite their many differences in tempo and style. Spirit Walk joins marimbas with modular pulses, as well as slide guitar and snappy shakers, to bring out some Ry Cooder swagger. Unknown Caller taps into the phone line at the speed of 5G, sending breakbeats down the wire on a cold calling mission to recruit ravers for the next after hours. But there are also tracks nodding to blissed-out comedowns and daydreams. Both Changing Tides and New Dawn slow down time to an introspective moment, a catch of the breath, the witness to a beautiful moment. Album closer Valley harks back to classic rave-era ambient, an avalanche of optimism down a majestic mountainside.

Hypernatural evokes panoramic vistas and serene countryside, and you could certainly imagine it soundtracking a hike along coastal hills, or a field at a festival. But it also resides beyond the pastoral, finding a home in airport departure lounges and autobahn service stations, until it eventually settles down inside us - even without the headphones on.

Stormfront
Hypernatural’s single Stormfront is a depth-charged house-tempo burner, bristling with atmospheric energy and rolling like thunder. With its cascading synth arpeggios, raindance incantation and weighty drops, it swells like moody clouds on the horizon, and releases tension like the first rain of a summer storm.

Nicfit are a four-piece punk band from Nagoya, Japan. Comprising Hiromi on vocals, Charley on guitar, KenKen on bass and Kuwayama on drums the group are by turns melodic and menacing. Nicfit are a nervous itch, incessant and impossible to predict. They flip between head-down tumbles of hardcore bounce and freaked feedback clamber with glee, sounding as casual as a slap in the face.
Formed in 2009 after Charley relocated from San Diego to explore the Japanese punk underbelly, Nicfit bonded through a mutual appreciation of Essential Logic, Magazine, Black Flag and Wire. They quickly recorded a demo and started opening for groups like DMBQ, Thee Oh Sees, Total Control and Wimps. To date the band have released a debut 7” EP, a split cassette with Pinprick Punishment and most recently shared a 7” with their comrades M.A.Z.E. too. Now they’ve gathered a spiky new batch of hyperactive songs together into their enthralling debut LP entitled ‘Fuse’, which Upset The Rhythm will release this December.

‘Fuse’ is a flexing treat of a debut album, packed with browbeaten stomp, taut breakouts, guitars that sound more akin to warning sirens and an astute railing vocal delivery. ‘Fuse’ was recorded, mixed and mastered at the Geru Studio in Toyota City with the help of Shigeru Matsui at the board. These ten original blasts of song, and one cover of the Urinals (‘Ack, ack, ack’) are as pummelsome as they are keen to race against the clock. Total life-affirming trample, with pointed metallic moments and glammy undercurrents that forever soar out of the sprawl.

Lee Gamble completes his ‘Flush Real Pharynx 2019-2021’ album cycle with ‘A Million Pieces Of You’, the third EP of a triptych written in a time when the subjective experience of overload came to a halt, giving way to an overbearing sense of loss, burnout and a desperate need for hope. These seven tracks feel more reflective, more human than the two preceeding EPs; the serpentine dopplers and seductive supercar engines of ‘In A Paraventral Scale’, and imploding motion sculptures of ‘Exhaust’. A deepfake of Lee’s voice appears from the chaotic slow-mo crash of ‘Balloon Lossy’, timidly telling of “garbled… good news”. The uncanny spectre of deep fakes, AI and deep learning models give way to the melancholic loneliness of the solo piano in ‘Empty Middle Seat’. Then glimmering, golden pads on ‘Hyperpassive’ slowly crawl into the hopeful, bright arpeggiations of ‘Balloon Copy’. ‘A Million Pieces Of You’ is a ride through a part-synthetic, part-modelled, part-imitation, part-taught, part-human, part1hopeful, part-reflective and paradoxically affirmative space – an involuntarily fitting finale to an album originally conceived in a world different to the one we now inhabit.

Recommended if you like: Com Truise, Toro Y Moi, Tycho, Tourist. British Columbia producer Jamison Isaak didn’t anticipate an adulthood of globe-trotting songcraft, but teenage exposure to iconic French house music videos cast a spell on him that still holds: “I knew then this is what I wanted to do'’ Catalyzed by synthetic sights and sounds from oceans away, he patiently taught himself primitive software and recording programs, reverse engineering the heady, swooning horizons of the dance music that had permanently bewitched him. A decade later, having amassed an expansive discography of soft-focus synth pop and romantic electronic a crisscrossing the planet many times in the process the subtext of his project’s journey rings clear: “Teen Daze is dream fulfillment'’ Enter Interior. An ode to electric futures glimpsed in ecstatic heights, from bedrooms to big rooms, it’s an album of first loves refracted through prisms of wisdom, wounds, and wonder. Filter house and flashing lights; soft acid and vaporous neon; bumping clubs in spiral towers: “Like what the teenagers in Akira might be listening to'’ Collaborative cameos by multi-instrumentalist Joseph Shabason (on sublime fantasia opener “Last Time In This Place”) and vocalist Cecile Believe (on the glitch-glamorous anthem “2AM (Real Love)”) evocatively expand the record’s palette but otherwise Interior is Izaak’s love letter to his own artistic awakening, to the paradigm shifts inherent in youthful discovery and remote dreaming — your world exploded, your life forever changed. Years of devotion and divergence have honed his craft radically; tracks like “Nite Rune “Nowhere and“Translation”are among the most supreme bangers in the entire Teen Daze canon, a delirious fusion of textural finesse and emotional transcendence. It’s music of skylines, escape, and sensual energy, forever cresting through nights that never end.

Fine Place is a new duo comprising Frankie Rose (Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls) and Matthew Hord (Running, Pop. 1280, Brandy). Based in Brooklyn, NYC together they’ve crafted a crystalline full length of nocturnal, electronic pop music that charts a way out the post-global, cyberpunk dystopian environment it was crafted in. Their debut album This New Heaven drenches minimalist song structures in post-industrial washes of sixstring delay and gothic post-punk synths. Presiding over it is the most evocative, emotive vocal performance Frankie
Rose has committed to tape to date.

Following Hord’s relocation from Chicago, the pair wanted to explore new avenues apart from their respective bands or solo projects. “The sound we were going for was an attempt to capture the dystopian feel of New York during a period of desertion by the wealthy. It was produced in a time-frame saturated in both uncertainty and serenity, and the soundscapes we created felt fitting and almost organic as a response to our surroundings. The title also reflects this in an arguably literal, maybe even satirical way.” Sonically, Fine Place references the pioneering mid-to-late 80s pioneers of icy melodrama The Cure and Cocteau Twins, while reflecting both the individuals’; music trajectories thus far. Modular synthesis triggers rhythm boxes and fluttery arps chirp around clanging 808-patterning as Rose’s reverb-laden vocal layering envelops the remaining headroom. The result is massive; a towering, shadowy music that embraces darkness while offering Rose’s bright vocal as chinks of light in the cracks; the production filling the head space of the beholder with preternatural imagery and emotional resonances that are real but not quite defined.

The title song propels forth out of the fog, scintillating with delayed guitar before the reverb-immersed vocal injects the human drama. The chorus constantly teases a big release but holds back creating a taut, dynamic tension. Cover Blind’s slow march makes full use of Rose’s layered vocal sinking and emerging from Hord’s bank of synths. Stand out It’s Your House is pure honey pouring from the speaker on a bank of of arps and near-hymnal vocal layering, a syrupy light offering in the mist. It’s an emotive highlight that only increases as the album progresses; Impressions Of Me is the Lynchian ballad that glides onward into the sunset. The album finishes on a choice re-interpretation of the 1989 track The Party Is Over by Belgian group Adult Fantasies, one of the great over-looked ballads of the era given an almost ecclesiastical makeover by Matthew Hord and Frankie Rose in 2021.

Says Hord: “This record was an incredibly challenging endeavor to make, as I had just come home from a European tour with another music project and wanted to invest into and focus on this collaboration with Frankie. I essentially reimagined how to approach writing basic sequences with the synthesizers I had been rehearsing and performing with for months prior to make something more accessible and pop- like for Frankie to build upon. Frankie is an unsung hero when it comes to mixing, and she was constantly mixing down and processing elements of the tracks to create different atmospheres as we forged forward with every song.”

This New Heaven is an ecstasy of sorts, a half-dream in the border between sleep and daylight.

Deepfunk / soul super rarity flipped with one of the best deep soul sides ever recorded, the family had some great images so we opted for a picture sleeve on this one, 400 copies only. forget about finding an O.G. Researched by our man, Brian Sears

Papa Bear And His Cubs were the brainchild of Eddie Disnute Sr., aka Papa Bear. A native resident of Hampton, Arkansas. Eddie started his music career in gospel then transitioned into secular music after moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1963. While living in Milwaukee with his wife and children, Eddie played with a group called the Fenders but eventually decided to start a group of his own with his kids aptly named Papa Bear And His Cubs.

Eddie Sr., a naturally gifted musician, taught his children how to play music. Creativity is a part of the Disnute DNA and before long Eddie's cubs were perfecting chops of their own. Papa Bear And His Cubs started performing together around the late 1960s. Although a few memorable gigs came their way, Wisconsin proved to be too cold for the Disnutes so they made their way back to Hampton, Arkansas.

The family continued to perform in Arkansas then made another move to Houston, Texas where they hoped to break into the music scene down south. They lived there for nearly three years and even recorded at SugarHill Studios, yet nothing materialized and the recordings remain a mystery to this day. For their final move, the Disnutes returned home to Hampton after Eddie's wife Christine (aka Mother Goose) received word that her father was ill.

In 1975 the group recorded their only vinyl record at Sam Griffith's home recording studio in Camden, Arkansas. Disnute Sr. recalls it only taking "one night, and one take" for both "Sweetest Thing On This Side Of Heaven" and "You're So Fine" to be born. Both songs have an entrancing quality that is inescapable and will surely resonate with listeners for years to come.

The group continued to perform until the early 1980s, at which point the cubs were bears themselves, who decided to go their own separate ways. When thinking back to their prime days, one thing will always remain clear in Eddie Sr.'s memory, "we could play, all it took was a countdown of 1, 2 ,3, 4 and we're gone".

20 YEARS OF MUSIC FOR MARCEL ODENBACH

Richard Ojijo’s music for the films of german video artist Marcel Odenbach not only underscores and accentuates the imagery and motion, but also serves to propel the narrative too. The compositions are auditory distillations of the visual and create a synergy between music and image that draws the observer ever deeper.

With Odenbach’s and Ojijo’s collaboration now entering its 3rd decade, Ojijo was recently inspired to revisit and remix some of the themes contained within the extensive body of work.

— Matt Karmil, Aug 2021

Die Musik von Richard Ojijo für die Videoarbeiten des Künstlers Marcel Odenbach sind eindrucksvolle Beispiele dafür, wie Klänge Filmbilder nicht nur untermalen oder deren Wirkung atmosphärisch verdichten können, sondern neben dem Visuellen ein gleichberechtigtes Eigenleben entwickeln, das auf das Gesamterlebnis des Films zurückwirkt: plötzlich auftauchende innere Bilder oder Assoziationen, die das Gesehene mit noch größerer Komplexität und Mehrdeutigkeit versorgen.

Wenn sich etwa in „Innerer Sicherheit“ oder „In stillen Teichen lauern Krokodile“ sphärische Flächen und Soundeffekte ausbreiten, erinnert dies zuweilen an elektronische Stimmungen der späten 90er Jahre, obwohl die Thematiken der Filme in gänzlich andere Richtungen weisen. Dabei wird nie der Spannungsbogen der filmischen Dramaturgie vernachlässigt. Vielmehr kommt es zum Wechselspiel von dienender und freier Funktion, in dem die Musik nicht nur ihre schöne, sondern – den Themen der Filme angemessene – beunruhigende Wirkung ausbreiten kann. So tauchen wie aus dem Nichts Stimmen auf oder Geräusche, etwa von Stiefeln in „Beweis zu nichts“, die parallele Narrationen auf die Audiospur legen, um die zum Teil bedrohliche Wirkung der Bilder zu verstärken und womöglich Bereiche des Unterbewussten zu berühren.

Die Zusammenarbeit von Ojijo und Odenbach dauert mittlerweile über 20 Jahre an. Ojijo hat nun seine Arbeiten für die Filme Odenbachs neu zusammengestellt und neu gemischt. Die Platte erscheint im Herbst 2021 aus Anlass der großen Odenbach-Retrospektive im Düsseldorfer K21-Museum. Dort werden auch sieben Videoarbeiten zu sehen sein, von denen fünf in Zusammenarbeit mit Richard Ojijo entstanden sind.

— Michael Kerkmann, Aug 2021

With Companion, Otto A Totland completes his album trilogy of personal, sparse piano compositions, following in the footsteps of 2014's Pinô and 2017's The Lost.

As a self-taught pianist, Otto further determines himself as a timeless composer who follows nothing but his own gut and heart. The outcome is something so pure it’s hard to not be affected. The development of his pieces over the years has grown into something so himself that it's almost immediately recognisable. With Companion he has matured in his own craft, and the various pieces here feel confident and absolutely beautiful in a way that sees the end of the trilogy as a warm, empathic document for the times.

As with the previous two albums, Companion was again recorded at Nils Frahm's Berlin studio for optimal warmth and space, Pinô and The Lost at his previous Durton Studio while Companion at the historic Studio 3 at Funkhaus. All three records are released by Sonic Pieces in hand-crafted limited edition covers as a statement showing that craftmanship and humanity still exists in this world constantly moving towards the exact opposite.

This quote by Norwegian philosopher Guttorm Fløistad seems an appropriate connection to both Otto's music and the way we are all heading : “The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on you better speed up. That is the message of today … In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There we will find real renewal.” With this in mind, Companion is exactly what it's title sets out to be. A friend that can follow and comfort in both good or bad times.

Available on vinyl for the first time in decades, the recording that birthed a label: Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, with Rafael Kubelik conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - the release which led Howard Taubman, chief music critic of The New York Times to write, "One feels one is listening to the living presence of the orchestra".. Incredible detail and fidelity, recorded with a single Neumann U-47 microphone in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, April 24, 1953.

Available on vinyl for the first time in decades, the recording that birthed a label: Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, with Rafael Kubelik conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - the release which led Howard Taubman, chief music critic of The New York Times to write, "One feels one is listening to the living presence of the orchestra".. Incredible detail and fidelity, recorded with a single Neumann U-47 microphone in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, April 24, 1953.

Red Vinyl

nown for her delicate compositions, soaked in dream-like surrealism, Icelandic musician Sóley has attracted a huge following since launching her solo career back in 2010. Her 2012 single ‘Pretty Face’ went on to generate an enormous amount of buzz, and quickly became a viral sensation. Now, with three solo LPs under her belt, Sóley is preparing to debut a completely new sound via the release of her new concept album, Mother Melancholia, on October 22nd.

Described by the artist as "Nosferatu meets Thelma and Louise in a vampire church under the watchful eye of David Lynch", Mother Melancholia is the soundtrack to the end of the world as we know it. As a self-confessed news addict, Sóley became obsessed with the idea that the world is ending. Having surrounded herself with real-life stories of global warming and patriarchal politics she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going to die. This feeling was so all encompassing that it sparked the idea for a new project. Could there be a soundtrack for the last days of humans on earth? How would that sound?

“I read books about possible dystopian worlds and started writing poems about irrational and in love characters who live in gray and cold imaginary loneliness. In each other’s burning arms. Walking in circles with no way out” she explains. “After all, the album reflects our life here and now. Our life and reality is a kind of dystopian world.”

Whilst writing the album, which serves as a tongue-in-cheek eulogy to our planet, Sóley began reading about ecofeminism, a branch of feminism which uses the concept of gender to analyse the relationship between humans and the natural world. Ecofeminism emphasizes that both women and nature must be respected but also separated. Since the beginning of time, the natural world has been synonymous with female identity, phrases like Mother Nature are commonplace. “The patriarchy views women as volatile and hysterical. Earth and women are either our saviours or our destroyers,” explains Sóley. “It’s so easy to abuse the earth, like the patriarchy has abused women since the dawn of time, then ask for forgiveness afterwards and promise they´ll never do it again”.

The new album sees Sóley move away from the indie-pop of her previous releases. She began by experimenting with writing songs on the accordion, allowing her a new sense of freedom in her writing. The process allowed her to broaden her horizons even further and experiment with a whole range of new and exciting sounds. “I bought myself a theremin as I was really excited about the unpitched sound and there is no perfect pitch during the end of days,” she laughs. “I also bought a mellotron, my first moog and a cello and taught myself how to play each of them. All of these new instruments are particularly suitable for the kinds of aesthetic inconveniences which I have learned to embrace.”

Album opener ‘Sunrise Skulls’, one of the most cinematic moments on the album, was inspired by the Me Too and SlutWalk movements and tells the story of a group of women who rise up and fight the patriarchy. ‘Blows Up’, a track that would be at home on any horror soundtrack, is a sarcastic love letter from the Earth to humans. Standout track ‘Desert’ is an incredibly moving song dedicated to the next generation. “It’s about the guilt you feel, as a mother, for having children and leaving them on the frontline. My daughter, for example, will take over this inevitable war” explains Sóley.

In true soundtrack style, the album flows through the end of the world in chronological order, closing with the Earth’s final moments. ‘Sundown’ is a dark piano ballad detailing human kind’s final day on Earth. “And everyday, I dig my own grave, and as I dive in you´ll hold my hand” she sings, over twinkling piano and swirling synths. We then hear the world end on ‘XXX’, a dark and swirling soundscape that swells before fading to silence. On ‘Elegía’ the silence then turns to the sound of the ocean, as we hear the Earth, like a woman finally free from a violent relationship, healing on her own.

Mother Melancholia is the mark of an artist confidently striding into more experimental territory. With a lengthy and successful career behind her, Sóley felt compelled to try something new and express the real her. The music might be shrouded in darkness but it’s a move that fills her with joy and freedom. “I hope that people not only enjoy the new sound, but also that Mother Melancholia might raise some questions in people, particularly women,” she says. “I’m under no illusions that this album will change the world but I hope that people can connect with the idea”.

“The Death Of Meaning” is the translated rendering of the new Gnod album’s title, and this also reflects its creation. As Paddy Shine of Gnod notes: “I think the title sums it up well because this album was coming together at a time when confusion was king for us all - still is. I think we can all relate to that. This record is a really strange beast because of the big change that happened between mixing and recording. I think the title really does sum up the vibe of ‘What the Fuck’? Maybe we should have called it that! ”Wielding the taut, stripped-down and bludgeoning sound that had evolved on 2017’s ‘Just Say No The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine’ and 2018’s ‘Chapel Perilous’, Gnod initially recorded the tracks for ‘La Mort Du Sens’ around the Christmas period of 2019. Nonetheless, the arrival of the pandemic took the record on another course, adding to a turbulent and cathartic vitality that electrifies the likes of the caustic Melvins-in-hell assault of ‘Pink Champagne Blues’ and the post-punk angularity of ‘The Whip And The Tongue’ with a fearsome elemental charge Masters of an approach which manages to be both unmistakeable and unpredictable. Gnod are now well established as prophets of the dispossessed. ‘La Mort Du Sens’ is no less than another relentlessly invigorating stop off on their wild ride to who knows where. “Got No Obvious Destination, innit”