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JD Twitch loves Cumbia. The more out there it is the better and Crees Que Soy Sexy is pretty far out. It had been a secret track in his DJ sets, that has caused people to freak out, for many, many years.

Ten years ago he did an edit of it but always felt he could have made it better; it is not often one gets second chances, but here is a second chance to do it again! Everyone knows the Rod Stewart version of this song but of course Jorge Ben came up with that melody originally and Rod then used it, only for it to return to South America with this cover version. It feels like the true ownership of this song belongs to South America and we in Europe are just borrowing it.

"Music gives us the illusion that time is not time, but space. It is then that the music transforms from process to object, which I find a very interesting thought; a materialisation of the sound process. Sound is matter." - Noémi Büchi

Noémi Büchi's debut album 'Matter' captures the tension between growth and decay, consonance and dissonance, mirroring Büchi's own catharsis through music. Her most personal material to date, 'Matter' is an opus of refined, sculpted beauty, one that aims to blur the distinction between ephemerality and physicality. Inspired by late romantic classical music and early 20th century contemporary music, 'Matter' is driven by the compositional methodologies of Igor Stravinsky, Alexander Skrjabin, Gustav Mahler and György Ligeti to modern sound forms, adapting and expanding upon their ideas in an awe-inspiring exploration of cutting-edge potency and tactility.

Büchi structures the electronic works that constitute 'Matter' in movements, stratifying myriad instrumental parts like the constituent sections of an orchestra. During her work on the album, Büchi engaged in extensive research, obsessively studying specific chords and progressions, and searching for transcendent intonations with resonant properties; complexions of sound with the ability to connect with the listener's body. Transforming our inner worlds into zones of suspension and levitation, Büchi exposes the listener to intoxicating slipstreams of sound. Prominent voices ascend, tectonic disturbances threaten the foundations, perception and sensation becomes subject to elemental countercurrents and inversions. 'Matter' illustrates the fraught pursuit of momentary equilibrium, and makes the fragility of euphoria tangible.

Composer & sound artist Noémi Büchi creates electronic, symphonic maximalism. Her music is defined by delicate electronic-orchestral forms and textural rhythms. She strives for a combination of harmonic and dissonant sonorities, to evoke both intellectual and emotional euphoria. Büchi has appeared on the Light of Other Days and Visible Dinner labels, and is now an affiliate of -OUS, releasing 'Hyle' her debut EP on the label in spring 2022. As well as her solo output, Noémi Büchi is currently working with Feldermelder on their collaborative project Musique Infinie. Their debut album will also be released via -OUS in the near future.

BODYXVIII delivers his debut release on Southern Lights in the form of the “Fields” EP, straddling the fringes of ambient, experimental and linear techno. The A-side features the pulsating waves of “An Ocean of Signals” and the hypnotic and undulating atmosphere of “Swiss Army Knife in The Wet Grass”. The B-side features “Umbra”, carrying an understated energy and tension and closing with the menacing ambience of “Clearing (Clandestine I)”.

100% GALCHER was by all accounts a game-changer when it landed in 2013 as an hour of original music from a relatively unknown producer ushered in by the beloved mix series Blowing Up The Workshop. Galcher Lustwerk's signature sound — a smoky stream-of-consciousness baritone shadow-boxing with beats, informed by funk, rap, rhythm, and blues — felt like an epiphany, impossibly hypnotic and complete. Resident Advisor writes, "100% GALCHER laid out a louche, lysergic and resolutely black take on deep house." Pitchfork remembers the music's immediate impact: "It's the sort of gem you felt inclined to pass around” — and by year-end list time, word-of-mouth intensified. It was Resident Advisor and Juno's mix of the year, and earned a top-ten placement in FACT Magazine's albums list, as well as Philip Sherburne's personal rundown for Spin." Since then, select songs from 100% GALCHER have seen small-run pressings, while the album has lived primarily on SoundCloud and YouTube as a low-key cult legend. The gateway into Lustwerk's now well-established catalog, known for its reliability as a late-night listen and its prophetic vision for the near future of underground dance music. RA would later name it a mix of the decade, citing its influence and imagination: “Original in every sense — unknown, unheard and unbelievably good.” In late 2022, marking ten years since he first recorded the material, Lustwerk returns to Ghostly International to release 100% GALCHER as a remastered limited-edition double LP.

Lustwerk is a product of the Midwest. Growing up in Cleveland, he'd tape over his parents’ cassettes and spend hours at his family computer recording loops and designing artwork for the jewel cases of burned CDs. In high school, he turned to Ableton Live and absorbed every electronic music magazine he could find at the local Borders Books store. In excerpts from the 100% GALCHER liner notes, Lustwerk looks back: "My dad drove me to this shop on the westside Bent Crayon, where I would get anything the blogs told you to get + whatever the clerk recommended. CDs stayed in their packaging, there was always an overflow of vinyl stacked on the floor. I was too shy to listen to anything before buying."

As a college student at RISD, he played in noise bands, plugged into Providence's DIY scene via Myspace, and started DJing weeknights at bars downtown. There he connected with Young Male and DJ Richard, who would go on to found White Material Records and offer their third release to Galcher Lustwerk, an alias realized via CAPTCHA test, a perfect artifact of its internet age. By 2012, Lustwerk had drifted to New York City and settled into a graphic design job, quickly growing disenfranchised by office culture. "Some days I felt like a token, other days I felt invisible." At night, he and his friends were carving out their own space

MILK GREY VINYL

100% GALCHER was by all accounts a game-changer when it landed in 2013 as an hour of original music from a relatively unknown producer ushered in by the beloved mix series Blowing Up The Workshop. Galcher Lustwerk's signature sound _ a smoky stream-of-consciousness baritone shadow-boxing with beats, informed by funk, rap, rhythm, and blues _ felt like an epiphany, impossibly hypnotic and complete. Resident Advisor writes, "100% GALCHER laid out a louche, lysergic and resolutely black take on deep house." Pitchfork remembers the music's immediate impact: "It's the sort of gem you felt inclined to pass around" _ and by year-end list time, word-of-mouth intensified. It was Resident Advisor and Juno's mix of the year, and earned a top-ten placement in FACT Magazine's albums list, as well as Philip Sherburne's personal rundown for Spin." Since then, select songs from 100% GALCHER have seen small-run pressings, while the album has lived primarily on SoundCloud and YouTube as a low-key cult legend. The gateway into Lustwerk's now well-established catalog, known for its reliability as a late-night listen and its prophetic vision for the near future of underground dance music. RA would later name it a mix of the decade, citing its influence and imagination: "Original in every sense _ unknown, unheard and unbelievably good." In late 2022, marking ten years since he first recorded the material, Lustwerk returns to Ghostly International to release 100% GALCHER as a remastered limited-edition double LP. Lustwerk is a product of the Midwest. Growing up in Cleveland, he'd tape over his parents' cassettes and spend hours at his family computer recording loops and designing artwork for the jewel cases of burned CDs. In high school, he turned to Ableton Live and absorbed every electronic music magazine he could find at the local Borders Books store. As a college student at RISD, he played in noise bands, plugged into Providence's DIY scene via Myspace, and started DJing weeknights at bars downtown. There he connected with Young Male and DJ Richard, who would go on to found White Material Records and offer their third release to Galcher Lustwerk, an alias realized via CAPTCHA test, a perfect artifact of its internet age. By 2012, Lustwerk had drifted to New York City and settled into a graphic design job, quickly growing disenfranchised by office culture. "Some days I felt like a token, other days I felt invisible." At night, he and his friends were carving out their own space, throwing parties in small basements, office buildings, and off-beat karaoke bars in Manhattan, influenced by series such as Mr. Sunday in Gowanus and The Bunker at Public Assembly. The lifestyle started to bleed into Lustwerk's musical vision. He remembers the night it clicked in Providence, partying and listening to tunes with Morgan Louis and Alvin Aronson. He went back to New York and pieced together his bedroom setup: a Dave Smith Tempest drum machine, a Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer, and a TEAC cassette recorder. Early snippets went straight to SoundCloud, where Lustwerk tested the crowd. Comments and messages offered instant feedback. One DM proved to be the greenlight: from Matthew Kent, an invitation to his burgeoning mix series Blowing Up The Workshop. 100% GALCHER traveled fast and far. A phenomenon he could only enjoy for a short period before discovering that nearly all the masters of the tracks got wiped by water damage to his computer. "The only copies were now on the 192kbs mp3 mix I sent Matt." Until now, after Lustwerk revived the lost tracks and handed them to Josh Bonati for remastering. "The original mix was never mastered so I hope older fans can find something new here." Hearing the enhanced set for the first time delineated by tracklist reveals this was a proper album all along. Sly synth interludes (all titled "Stem") clear the air for raspy house anthems like "Fifty" and "Parlay," the set's original breakout. Themes present across Lustwerk's catalog first materialize in this iconic run _ the link between the meditative state of Midwest driving and the solitary comedowns of nightlife. Lust- werk, the narrator, is an elusive character, a secret agent of the club, embodied by the hooks: "One minute I'm on / next minute I'm gone," he reminds us on cult-favor- ite "Put On." These narcotic, one-line refrains stick with you; look no further than the original YouTube upload of "Kaint" to know that fans can't let these phrases go. While recorded alone, 100% GALCHER was a collective moment. A decade later, Lustwerk sees the legacy as shared: "Making music can be an alienating experience, especially for DJs who travel a lot, it's all super isolating. It's easy to express lone- liness in the music itself, but when it comes down to getting things done, putting music out, you def should go on that journey w other people, friends, or maybe just a group of people online, build things with your friends then they can build to help you."

In hugo, there’s a central question that Loyle Carner keeps coming back to: “I’m young, Black, successful and have a platform - but where do I go next?” The answer is explored in this epic scream of a third album. With urgent delivery and gloriously widescreen production, Carner confronts both the deeply personal (“You can’t hate the roots of a tree, and not hate the tree. So how can I hate my father without hating me?) and the highly political (“I told the black man he didn’t understand I reached the white man he wouldn’t take my hand”). Cinematic in scale and scope, hugo is both a rallying war cry for a generation forged in fire and a study of the personal internal conflict that drives the rest of the album - as a mixed-race Black man, as an artist, as a father and as a son. With Mercury and Brits nominations, NME Awards and appearances in global brand campaigns (Nike, YSL, Timberland), Carner has undoubtedly had a meteoric rise to the top, culminating with his second album Not Waving, But Drowning charting at number 3 in the UK albums chart in 2019. However, hugo sees Carner taking a sharp detour from his previous work, putting it down to lockdown and the “hedonistic side of career being stripped away. There were no shows, no backstage, no festivals, no photoshoots”. By continuing to write in these tumultuous times with a renewed clarity and sense of artistic freedom, Carner reached deeper beneath the surface than he ever had before. The result is his most cathartic and ambitious record yet, a coruscating journey into the heart of what it means to be alive in these tumultuous times, and one which looks set to neatly cement his position as one of the most potent and vital young talents around today. Working alongside renowned producer kwes. (Solange, Kelela, Nao), Carner leaves no stone unturned on this album, in both its sound and its stories. In a 10-track album that moves from gorgeous neo-soul moments to thundering hip hop, with immediate, infectious bangers and sampled interludes from non musicians (mixed-race Guyanese poet John Agard and youth activist and politician Athian Akec) Carner shifts seamlessly from micro to macro, confronting everything from strained relationships with family to the societal tears caused by class stratification. It also lays bare bruises in his personal life that he has never revealed before – often in painful, deeply uncomfortable ways, focusing on Carner's experience of becoming a father in the context of growing up without contact with his biological father. With the song “Polyfilla”, against the backdrop of a warm melodic beat, Carner explores his desire to “break the chains in the cycle” of dysfunctional Black fatherhood, commenting on the narrative of fatherhood in the genre, and saying a key part of the process was realising that his father “grew up in a world where nobody showed him how to love or nurture”. The follow up track “A Lasting Place” is an exploration of the MC’s failure and inability to be perfect in this mission. The album closer is a powerful statement of love and forgiveness; with his signature lyrical dexterity, Carner declares his relentless commitment to his son and sees forgiving his father as a key part of this. The song closes with an emotional ending of Carner telling his dad “still I’m lucky yo that we talk”. There’s a striking duality of hugo’s bold, multilayered tracks and its often starkly intimate and tender lyricism, and that dichotomy is deliberate - it is a message for young Black men, but really, anyone, who is listening. Cognizant of the immense pain and fear and confusion that we are faced with everyday, Carner has thrown down the gauntlet, defying us not to rise above the fray, wake up each day and be ambitious. Ambitious in building strong personal relationships. Ambitious in our pursuit of our goals. Ambitious in never refusing to back down against injustice. Rejecting the title of leader, Loyle Carner sees himself “as holding up a mirror”, and that clearly translates into the album's universal messages.

‘Runner is a calmly luminous orchestral piece with the pulsating, propulsive
rhythms that animate much of Mr. Reich’s music.’ – New York Times

‘Reich interweaves the two groups to create a dense textural tapestry that sounds like his most native orchestral thinking to date. A beautiful and dramatically charged masterpiece.' – San Francisco Chronicle

Nonesuch Records releases the first recordings of Steve Reich’s Runner (2016) and Music for Ensemble and Orchestra (2018), performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by Susanna Mälkki.

Reich says Runner is written “for a large ensemble of winds, percussion, pianos, and strings. While the tempo remains more or less constant, there are five movements, played without pause, that are based on different note durations. First, even sixteenths, then irregularly accented eighths, then a very slowed-down version of the standard bell pattern from Ghana in quarters, fourth a return to the irregularly accented eighths, and finally a return to the sixteenths but now played as pulses by the winds for as long as a breath will comfortably sustain them. The title was suggested by the rapid opening and my awareness that, like a runner, I would have to pace the piece to reach a successful conclusion.”

“Music for Ensemble and Orchestra is an extension of the Baroque concerto grosso where there is more than one soloist,” the composer continues. “Here there are twenty soloists – all regular members of the orchestra, including the first stand strings and winds, as well as two vibraphones and two pianos. The piece is in five movements, though the tempo never changes, only the note value of the constant pulse in the pianos. Thus, an arch form: sixteenths, eighths, quarters, eighths, sixteenths. Music for Ensemble and Orchestra is modeled on my Runner, which has the same five movement form.”

Nonesuch has recorded every new piece of music by Steve Reich since 1985, beginning with The Desert Music and continuing through 2018’s Pulse/Quartet, resulting in 22 albums and the two box sets Phases in 2006 and Works: 1965-1995 in 1997. Most recently, the label released his Reich/Richter, performed by Ensemble intercontemporain and conducted by George Jackson, in June 2022. The Times said, ‘What a delight to be able to focus on the music, delivered here with a clever mix of pinprick precision and reverberant haze by 14 members of Ensemble Intercontemporain. The more intently you listen, the more subtleties emerge among the shifting, criss-crossing textures and phrases, sometimes coloured with gentle melancholy but decisively upbeat by the end. Reich/Richter is an ear-tickling tonic and a happy companion to Reich’s newly published book, Conversations.’ Nonesuch will put out a collection of Reich’s complete works in 2023.

Reich released a book earlier this year, Conversations, that includes dialogues with past collaborators, fellow composers, musicians, and visual artists who have been influenced by his work, including: David Lang, Brian Eno, Richard Serra, Michael Gordon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Russell Hartenberger, Robert Hurwitz, Stephen Sondheim, Jonny Greenwood, David Harrington, Elizabeth Lim-Dutton, David Robertson, Micaela Haslam, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Julia Wolfe, Nico Muhly, Beryl Korot, Colin Currie, and Brad Lubman. The Wall Street Journal called the book ‘a testament to the influence of an idea – one that triggered a cultural turning point,’ and the New York Times said, ‘The joy of the book is to hear artists from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds rhapsodizing about their relationship to Reich’s music and how it influenced their own creative processes.’

Steve Reich has been called ‘America’s greatest living composer’ (Village Voice), ‘the most original musical thinker of our time’ (New Yorker), and ‘among the great composers of the century’ (New York Times). His music has influenced composers and mainstream musicians all over the world. Music for 18 Musicians and Different Trains have earned him two Grammy Awards, and in 2009, his Double Sextet won the Pulitzer Prize. Reich’s documentary video opera works – The Cave and Three Tales, done in collaboration with video artist Beryl Korot – have been performed on four continents. His recent work Quartet, for percussionist Colin Currie, sold out two consecutive concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London shortly after tens of thousands at the Glastonbury Festival heard Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) perform Electric Counterpoint followed by the London Sinfonietta performing his Music for 18 Musicians.

In 2012, Reich was awarded the Gold Medal in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has additionally received the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo, the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, the BBVA Award in Madrid, and the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. He has been named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Royal College of Music in London, The Juilliard School, and the Liszt Academy in Budapest, among others. ‘There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them,’ states the Guardian.

Redefining what an orchestra can be, the Los Angeles Philharmonic (LA Phil) is as vibrant as Los Angeles, one of the world's most open and dynamic cities. Led by Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, this internationally renowned orchestra harnesses the transformative power of live music to build community, foster intellectual and artistic growth, and nurture the creative spirit. This is the third recent recording by the orchestra on the label; the others were the Louis Andriessen pieces The only one and Theatre of the World. Additionally, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s recordings of The Gospel According to the Other Mary and Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?, with Yuja Wang, released on Deutsche Grammophon, are included in this year’s John Adams Collected Works boxed set. Nonesuch also released an LA Phil recording of Adams‘ Naïve and Sentimental Music in 2002.

Susanna Mälkki is sought-after at the highest level by symphony orchestras and opera houses worldwide. About to embark on her final season as Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, she concludes a seven-year tenure with a distinctive dynamism and imaginative flair to her programming. In addition to a full season in Finland, she will lead the Helsinki orchestra on tour to the prestigious Lucerne and Edinburgh festivals, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and Washington’s Kennedy Centre this season.

“A rather gorgeous and engrossing collection, that borrows stealthily from a rich history of sound effect and soundtrack to build a tender poem to the night time.” - CLASH
“The plan was to make twenty 90-second tracks designed as TV themes,” says Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat, of the initial thought behind his new instrumental album as Nyx Nótt “But it wasn't a satisfying listen, it was too gimmicky and silly.”
So instead, Moffat decided to stretch the idea out, plunge deeper, and expand the music into full tracks, “making some of them quite long and dramatic, with the odd swift turn here and there.” In fleshing these tracks out into more fully realised songs he began sourcing samples from professional TV and film music libraries. “The focus then turned to making a proper album out of these modern library sounds,” he says. “I decided to stick with the Themes From title and named the tracks after the sorts of shows they made me think of when I listened back.”
The result is a record that explores genre themes such as: ‘Thriller, ‘Porno’, ‘Caper’ and Swashbuckler’, and acts as an audio equivalent of channel hopping through a unique TV station programmed by Moffat. “I still wasn't sure about all this until I did the album cover, which brought it all together,” he says, of the artwork that places an old smashed TV unit front and centre with a woman perched on top. “It has echoes of old TV compilations but is pretty cheeky and slightly sexy in that old 70s compilation style. I wanted this one to look a bit more fun than the last one, as well as hopefully sound a bit more fun too.”
Aside from being a fun experience, it is also a stirring and immersive listen, one that allows the listener to imagine their own accompanying visual scenarios to each musical theme. The opening ‘Docudrama’ marries a gently creeping beat with strings that glide from tense to sweeping, while ‘Porno’ is all seedy smoky jazz that feels plucked right out of Travis Bickle’s late night trips to porn cinemas in Taxi Driver.
Touches of jazz pop up in other places too, on ‘Hardboiled’ this merges with subtle pulses and gargles of electronics that build to a rousing crescendo of horns and bleeps, and on ‘Caper’ there’s a vivacious full jazz band skip to the lively swinging rhythms. “There's a few more jazzy elements here,” Moffat says. “Although I'm not quite sure where that came from. Although, like everyone else, I've had plenty of time to be introspective recently, so I decided the next Nyx Nótt album should be more upbeat and encourage some occasional foot-tapping.”
However, what becomes apparent, the longer you spend in the world of Themes From, is how singular and unique the tone of each composition is. “Each track has its own individual feel,” says Moffat. “The idea was to sound like a different composer and band throughout.” It’s a stylistic leap that continues Nyx Nótt’s trajectory as one that shares no direct link to Moffat’s other projects. “I approach them in completely different ways and with a different purpose in mind,” says Moffat. “I don't think Nyx has ever heard of Arab Strap, and certainly doesn't own any of their albums.” It’s also a notable shift from the debut album under this moniker, and suitably given the theme, Moffat has created a visual comparison between these two sonic worlds. “If the first Nyx Nótt album was like looking out on dark prairies before dawn, this is more like a walk through a neon Soho after a few cocktails.”

First solo release from Melbourne pop-rock singer/songwriter SIMON JULIFF Produced by Joel Silbersher (GOD / Hoss) and released on the newly revived Australian label Dog Meat Records Much-loved Melbourne rock 'n' roll label Dog Meat Records returns with first solo release from former singer/guitarist/songwriter of The Roys and God / Hoss / Powder Monkeys associate, Simon Juliff The first new Dog Meat release in over a quarter of a century is the new single “Stars”, taken from the forthcoming album of the same name, from reticent Melbourne pop-rock singer/songwriter Simon Juliff. Juliff, who was singer/guitarist/songwriter for Melbourne band The Roys in the ‘00s, was a friend of many of the ‘90s Melbourne bands on Dog Meat and nearly a Dog Meat signing with his first band The Evil Dead. Produced by long-time friend Joel Silbersher (God, Hoss, Tendrils etc) and featuring backing from members of Hoss and Kim Salmon & the Surrealists, “Stars” – both the new single and the forthcoming album - combines brightly dappled glimmers of classic pop-rock melodicism with a darkened, frazzled vibe.

Jazzrausch Bigband has more or less invented a new art form,
techno jazz, and has become well-known for performances of it. But
the band also has another, different story to tell. It has invented its
own tradition of hitting the road and touring at the end of each year
with a programme consisting of Christmas music, and has been doing
this ever since the band first emerged eight years ago. Bandleader
and founder Roman Sladek explains: “Whereas our regular projects -
the most recent album, ‘Emergenz’, is a good example - are all about
working through a specific theme and finding new ways to reinvent
ourselves, our Christmas thing is something we do for one reason
alone: to have fun. It was our very first programme, we still love it, and
we’re still nurturing, developing and growing it. Being able to devote
one month a year entirely to the big band tradition is something we’re
all really passionate about.”
Some bands might have been tempted just to throw together an
album of Christmas chestnuts any old how, but the Jazzrausch way of
doing things is not like that at all. Unlike any other album by the band,
for the first time we hear purely instrumental music. Furthermore,
Kuhn has taken ten classic Christmas songs - each one of them
rarely heard in jazz, and tunes which can often come across as a bit
staid in their original settings - from ‘Tochter Zion, freue dich# to
‘Adeste fideles’ or ‘Ihr Kinderlein, kommet’. The title track, ‘Alle Jahre
wieder!’ (based on the 1830s carol to music by Silcher which is very
familiar to children and adults in the German-speaking world) appears
here in completely new orchestral garb.
Sometimes the listener will recognise the kind of swing typical of
Glenn Miller. At other moments it is the incomparable big band
elegance of, say, Artie Shaw. ‘Es wird scho glei dumpa’ (an Austrian
carol) is given the full extra high pressure Tijuana brass treatment.
‘Maria durch ein’ Dornwald ging’ gets the touch of the Thad Jones /
Mel Lewis Orchestra after a Henry Mancini-like intro, and ‘Ich steh’ an
deiner Krippe hier’ recalls more of the great swing heritage.
Once again Jazzrausch Bigband has succeeded in a way that only
very few in the jazz field can, notwithstanding the openness of the
genre: they have brought young and old together, tradition and
revolution, the familiar and the new. Which is why it feels so
completely natural and right that they should continue to do this
‘again every year’, as the album title tells them: ‘Alle Jahre wieder’.

Joan Reggae Drummer, based in the region of Catalonia in Spain, is a great lover of Jamaican music, at a very young age he began to be so passionate about drums that he created his first musical projects, among them, the band that was a turning point was The Pepper Pots. With 6 albums already released and several tours in Europe, UK, Japan, USA & Czech Republic , Joan has opened for internationally artists such as Jimmy Cliff, Kymani Marley, Laurel Aitken, Derrick Morgan, Ticken Jahfakoli or The Pioneers among others. He performed at major festivals such as Summerjam Reggae Festival (Germany), Rototom Sunsplash (Italy), Primavera Sound (BCN), Rock For People (Czech Republic) or SXSW (Austin, USA).

Joan as a drummer has also worked with a lot of top international soul artists such as Curtis Mayfield's legendary band The Impressions, Eli "Paperboy" Reed, Maxine Brown, Binky Griptite from Daptone Records that has been in bands such as Antibalas, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, The Dap-Kings or The Mellomatics.

In 2020, after a time of musical hiatus due to the Covid, he began his more personal adventure, creating his own channel dedicated solely and exclusively to the world of drums in Reggae and Dub. Currently his Instagram channel has more than 34.000 followers and the content published has so much repercussion.

First this major collaboration last year with Aston Barrett Jr for a special tribute to his uncle , Carlton Barrett (Bob Marley), one of Joan's favorite drummer. And at last all this work led him to record his first debut EP "DUB Explosion" on the label Two Flames Records, a real explosion of DUB, where the common thread of the songs are drums.

JRD "DUB Explosion" is a performance in the form of an EP, consisting of 4 instrumental Dub tracks with a totally different concept than what we are used to, since the songs were created from the drum beats.

Great musicians from different countries have participated in this EP: Guitar - Arturo Landaeta (Venezuela), Bass - Elie El Ossais (Australia), Keyboards - Ireneu Grosset (Spain), Nyahbinghi Drums - Maurici Bongo (Brazil), Trombone and Trumpet - Pablo Martín (Catalonia), Tenor sax - Tomy Muñoz (Catalonia), Bass - Miliu Llorach (Catalonia), Flute - Lluís Doménech (England), Bass - Joshua Jones (Jamaica), Keteh & Triangle - Aurel Cade (France), Trumpet - Glenn Holdaway (United States).

Finally, the production, mixing and dub was done by the musician and producer Ireneu Grosset, in the analogue studio of Dr. Dubwiser. It was quite an experience as the studio has a team very similar to what Jamaican producers had in the golden age of Reggae in the 70's.

Alga Marghen presents the last chapter from the Feedback Works documentation series, a brand-new LP including "In Memoriam-Ostinato" and "Danse des Dakinis", two previous unreleased tracks by Eliane Radigue. Among the works of fixed duration from the feedback period, "In Memoriam-Ostinato" is the link between "Jouet Electronique" (ALGA 029LP) and "Opus 17" (ALGA 045LP), and allows you to understand the evolution of her approach. "In Memoriam-Ostinato" is a game of mirroring symbols which glide into a non-measured, bent and elastic, temporality. Eliane Radigue's working method and her aesthetic direction are evident in this work from 1969: her very own unique temporal space of sonic experiences. Even though it bears the same name as the third part of "Adnos III", "Danse des Dakinis" is a peculiar work in Eliane's oeuvre. Conceived in a short time, with all kind of tapes from the composer's past work, it fluently shows a kaleidoscopic vision of Radigue's sensibility for sound. In 1998 she put together a curious self-portrait in sound. There is a feedback ostinato conceived around 1969 and which refers to "In Memoriam-Ostinato" and "Opus 17". All through "Danse des Dakinis" you plunge into the sound of a creek recorded at Mills College campus that brings you back to the field-recordings from the beginning of the 1960s, made on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Such elements construct "Elemental1" (ALGA 029LP) as well. There are also some discreet interventions on the ARP 2500 synthesizer. It is indeed a peculiar work, which doesn't have the same features of her other compositions, especially at that time of her compositional path. There is an explanation for the composer producing this kind of sound material in 1998, and not limited to the sound waves of the ARP synthesizer. Invited to a workshop at Mills College in 1998, Eliane Radigue could not load herself down with her bulky instrument on such a trip. So, she left with just a few tapes taken from her own collection, drawn from different periods, and composed "Danse des Dakinis" with those old elements. There is tension in this composition, a certain wildness, an unpredictability of elements, those which are recognized as fundamental elements, which give structure to the universe. "Dance des Dakinis" is an intimate and wild symphony, alive and unpredictable, which is to be the next-to-last gesture of the composer before completely stopping her work with electronics.

»Follower« is Abrahams’ 6th album for Room 40 and showcases his continuing interest in the ambiguous spaces between music and noise; tonality and atonality; rhythm and texture. All four tracks have piano as a key factor: in one instance, high-pitched and atonal; in another, emotive yet distant as if projected on to a screen. Follower presents the listener with a sound world of colourful juxtapositions, rich orchestration and organically open forms.

On the opening track, bass piano meanders through a wilderness of de-tuned bells and organ swells; a strange sort of festival. Low frequency sighs evenly punctuate, like a pump or a heartbeat. It’s a procession that takes it time as it wanders the terrain, brought to a close with transcendent distortion. On track 2, muscular modal piano surfs among waves of percussion and analogue synthesisers. A buffeting travel.

16 track compilation of 1980s classics.
Formed in Scotland in 1979, APB were a post-punk trio blending edgy
guitars with funk and new wave sounds
The band had many early 80s alternative radio and rock dance club hits including
‘Shoot You Down’, ‘Rainy Day’ and ‘Palace Filled With Love’.
New York-based Link Records originally issued ‘Something To Believe In’ in 1985,
and the ten- song title was perceived at the time to be APB's debut album
although it was actually a compilation drawn from the band's previous eight
independent singles. The band's 1981 debut single ‘Chain Reaction’ is now added
as a bonus track to the vinyl release, while that song and an additional five tracks
will appear on the expanded edition CD. ‘Danceability’ will appear in its original
mix on the vinyl LP, while the CD will feature the song in its extended ‘Danceability
Parts 1 & 2’ form.
"When I bought the second APB single, 'Shoot You Down'. I was blown away by
the pure energy and sparse funk groove that drove the record." said Matt Pinfield,
former host of MTV's 120 Minutes. "Over the course of the next few years, I saw
the band live about 15 times. They would always pack clubs in New York, New
Jersey, and Long Island -- anywhere they received airplay." In 2018's Beastie Boy
Book, band member Adam "Ad-Rock" Horowitz referred to ‘Shoot You Down’ as a
"punk dance-floor classic."
In 2022, APB remains an active touring band, which includes original members
Slater, Roberts and Cheyne. Over the decades, APB's sparse, rhythmic sound has
influenced everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Franz Ferdinand. A new
generation is primed to make their acquaintance.

Quoth is the brainchild of Alex Egan (Utter) and Mike Smaczylo (Half Edge). Singular in focus, this newly minted (sub)label harnesses the pair’s diverse and expansive tastes in weird and hallucinatory sonics, aimed squarely at the dancefloor. We're very proud to present ‘Barney’s Maze’, a four-track EP of twisted techno, drawing influence from IDM, bass, and older strains of textural music.

‘Barney’s Maze’ is the work of Nottingham producer Coralie (aka Steven Randall). It fell on our ears strangely dislocated from time and place. Its sound world is utterly modern, technical and weird; mangled sonics slip deftly out of reach of easy categorisation. But the spirits evoked feel ancient, spectral resonances of a psychedelic continuum older than memory.

Haunting voices predominate: human, not too human, but captured and distorted by technology, cut from any source of context and voided of meaning. The sonic spaces conjured here are cavernous; great cathedral-like structures resonating with the collapsed centuries of digital time. Broken techno rhythms roll echoing in an artificial void with synthetic voices, raised to synthetic heavens. Strains of the sacred glimmer within a form that’s entirely profane, the most human of constructs.

It’s a stunning EP - moody, atmospheric and gorgeous, each track a world unto itself, but fully primed for the dance. We recommend it wholeheartedly.

Coralie tells us it’s dedicated to his dog.

Available on hand stamped vinyl, limited to 200 copies (including insert), and digital formats. Mastered by Beau Thomas at Ten Eight Seven.

Blue Vinyl

2019 saw Firescope release a seminal album, The Lonely Machine by Britain’s John Shima. The world has become a very different place since then. The pandemic, economic turmoil and global crises prevail. It is amidst such uncertainty that Shima returns with a new collection to combat the savagery of our times, enter Empty Lands.

Dauby basslines and silken strings introduce “Component”, saturated snares giving ballast as Shima’s signature style immediately comes to the fore. A throbbing kick and orbiting notes are peppered with hi-hats for “Neglected”, a sonorous stratum synergising beautifully. Shima is a student of techno. His appreciation and knowledge of the sound is central to the album as he composes within the traditions of the UK and US canon while exploring new plains. The influence of “bleep” is woven into the tapestry of pieces like “Depart” and “Mettle” with the minimalism of the 90s genre reimagined through new textures. “Sayaka” flows with a different current. Rhythms are understated, lapping against undulating keys as dawn rises. Harmony and melody are cornerstones of record, the gentle ebbs and flows of key and drum merging. Inspiration arises from home as well. The steady pulse and metallic tang of “Projection” recalling the industry of Sheffield and the pioneering electronics that sprouted from that rust red earth.

Track titles, and the album name itself, suggest periods of challenge and difficulty. “Paralysis”, “Desolate”, “Empty Lands”. Words that conjure certain feelings and responses. Shima’s music is a counterbalance to these emotions. Positive compositions of subtle shifts, complementary percussion and welcoming warmth acting as a tonic to the negativity that swirls; the ten audio works on offer acting as a balm to soothe the soul in these troubled time

Originally released in 2004, El Ten Eleven’s self-titled LP has been embraced by fans of many genres - from math rock, to jazz, to lo-fi hip-hop. The duo's sound is sharply evocative in mood and feeling, yet simultaneously abstract and meditative. Back in print on Gold Vinyl. Brimming with breezy melodies, breakneck percussion, & electronic flourishes. Back in print, on Gold Vinyl. 181.8 k Spotify Listeners, 7.5 Million Streams. Recommended If You Like: Do Make Say Think, Explosions in the Sky, Ratatat, The Album Leaf, Mogwai, Positive/uplifting instrumental loopage ‘n riffage. Track Listing: My Only Swerving / Sorry About Your Irony / Lorge / 1969 Central Nervous Piston / Thinking Loudly / Fanshawe / Connie / Bye Mom

2022 Repress

After a few nice but largely unnoticed 12"s for lower-profile labels, Dürerstuben is ready to make a serious maneuver, and Pampa is pleased to provide them with the proper platform. The Sheets of Rane EP is the Berliner duo's most sophisticated statement yet, imbuing cold programmed sounds with a glowing human touch and a penchant for melody. A1 'Gscheids Planet' unfolds with a deceptive intro, click-clackety downtempo stomps and crunchy snares beneath a tender vocoder coo, just when some muted guitar plucks crescendo into a burst of robo-synths. Although three minutes have passed, only now does the song reveal its true nature, a summery tune with rich synths that billow in the wind. Then, as its title indicates, 'Haeckles Kosmos' further explores Dürerstuben's fascination with the unlimits of outer space. This star system in particular has a very tropical flair, punctuated with bouncy parallel fifths straight out of the Italo Orient. In between movements, the duo makes some brief non sequiturs into piano balladry, the kind that force a smile (and a record deal) out of DJ Koze. Finally, venturing even further into jacking territory, 'Freiherr in der Wall' hinges upon syncopated, sometimes faltering beatbox rhythms, a swaggering bassline and fluttering arpeggiation. Coupled with hand-played chords, this is a prime example of how Dürerstuben can tame the beast machine and let irregularities be strengths. If you can get down with Metro Area, Zapp, Tensnake, and yes, even Survivor, then pick this one up.

In celebration of legendary prog-rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s 50th anniversary, BMG are releasing ‘Black Moon’ as a limited edition Picture Disc vinyl.

Formed in 1970, Emerson, Lake & Palmer were torchbearers of the progressive rock sound and one of rock’s first super-groups. The world-conquering, stadium-filling prog giants helped to broaden the audience for the genre from hundreds of thousands into tens of millions and were one the most commercially successful rock bands of the 1970s.

Their first 7 album releases all made the U.K. albums chart top 10 and U.S. top 20. Black Moon is ELP’s eighth studio album. It was released in 1992 when the band re-formed after 14 years, having split-up after their previous album, ‘Love Beach’ in 1978, and represents a real return to form.

The music is a stripped-down, amped-up, more mainstream rock format, though in many places retaining the feel of their 70s prog epics. Expertly re-mastered in 2017 by celebrated rock studio engineer Andy Pearce.

Thomas Newman became the ninth composer in the James Bond series history. His score for Skyfall won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. In 2013, it became one of two Bond scores to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score. The other to be nominated was the score from The Spy Who Loved Me. Skyfall does not contain the title song performed by Adele.

Skyfall (2012) is the twenty-third spy film in the James Bond film series. It features Daniel Craig in his third performance as James Bond, and Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva, the film's villain. The movie was directed by Sam Mendes. The story centres on Bond investigating an attack on MI6. The attack is part of a plot by former MI6 agent Raoul Silva to humiliate, discredit and kill M as revenge against her for betraying him. The film sees the return of two recurring characters to the series after an absence of two films: Q, played by Ben Whishaw, and Moneypenny, played by Naomie Harris. Skyfall is the last film of the series for Judi Dench, who played M, a role that she had played in the previous six films.

The limited edition of Skyfall of 1.500 individually numbered copies is pressed on coloured (transparent & black mixed) vinyl. The package includes a big poster, a 4-page insert and 2 printed innersleeves. Both innersleeves have one hole in the middle to show James Bond on the labels. Don't forget to check the secret service inscriptions on the run out grooves.

Y Bülbül is back on the controls accompanied by Yumurta, a percussionist from Istanbul. Pingipung introduced the London based artist in 2020 with his psychedelic, synth-laden debut “Fever”.

“Not One, Not Two” is based on a one-way transmission of improvised drum recordings from an industrial estate in Maslak, Istanbul to another one in Tottenham, London, where Y Bülbül laid down fragmented layers of bass, synths, guitars and field recordings over Yumurta’s singular drum takes. The result is a free-form deep listening album for fans of dub, ambient and kosmische music, where the groove and harmonies are mystically interwoven, yet somehow manage to stay on the brink of collapse. Although the sessions were non concurrent and scattered over two continents, the collaboration evokes scenes of a telepathic communion where individual perspectives, circumstances and stories are exchanged between the two.

Resembling Moondog, Holy Tongue or Luis Paniagua in the sense that they favor the raw over the polished, holistic presence over conceptual perfection and questions over answers, the duo’s focus on bare sounds and repetition guides the listener throughout the album. The ride cymbal opening the minimalistic “I’m This”, for instance, briskly disarms the listener who might have been looking for more traditional songwriting or production clues. There are plenty of immediately rewarding moments too in “Not One, Not Two,” like the organic acid bassline in “Maurin Quina”, the euphoric drum fills of “Big K” and the intoxicating groove of the hypnotic vibe-setter “Jah Oto”.

Bülbül is Turkish for a singing bird while Yumurta simply means egg. Which one is first? Who is to follow? It’s this enigmatic entanglement between the two artists which creates the lurking tension, emphasized by the Zen Kōan-like title. The beauty in this album is a peculiar one, and it certainly is a rabbit hole too. Dissonance is fluid as everything moves, and whenever two sounds collide, a third one emerges.

»Hallway Waverider« is Mikko Singh’s second album for Morr Music under his Haleiwa moniker. Blending the washed-out aesthetics of dream pop with a lo-fi take on modern psychedelia, it is a fuzzy record in more than one sense. The ten songs see the multi-instrumentalist explore the sonic idiosyncrasies of analogue recording equipment while also expressing a self-assured statement by a musician who has carved out a niche for himself and feels perfectly at home in it. “This record is like me telling my teenage self that I am OK,” says Singh. “Back then, I was recording my song ideas on cassette players but held the belief that music should be recorded in an expensive studio with expensive gear in order to be real.” As it turns out however, Singh had been right from the start, having come full circle as an established artist some twenty years later.

After exploring the affordances of vintage equipment for 2019’s »Cloud Formations« LP, Singh worked with a Tascam 244 4-track cassette recorder and Tascam 388 8-track reel-to-reel recorder to transform the sounds of his vintage synthesizers, bass, the occasional guitar part, and drums supplied by Svante Karlsson for »Hallway Waverider«. By experimenting extensively with the machines’ unique sonic qualities and constantly reworking the pieces in regards to their sound signature over the course of two years, Singh has found the perfect equilibrium of electronic music and lo-fi aesthetics while navigating with ease through styles like driving surf rock, gritty garage punk and ethereal dream pop. On his new record, he seamlessly integrates these influences into anthemic yet soothing songs.

The title of the album refers to Singh’s halcyon days as a teenager spent listening to punk music and—in wintertime—skateboarding in his own bedroom. The lyrics refer to surfing as a nod to both his own experiences with riding the waves and the music genre that has provided him with inspiration throughout his career as a prolific recording artist with three solo albums under his belt. However, surfing primarily serves as a metaphor for something bigger. “It’s about things in life that are important to me; things that make me feel good and soothe the mind,” he explains. It comes as no surprise then that »Hallway Waverider« is also dedicated to a key figure in his life. “The album is an ode to my mother who passed away in 2015,” says the artist. “She made it possible for me to have a good childhood and to be able to do what I love.”

This sense of closure and being at peace with himself is also expressed in lyrics like "A sea stroll. Going slower. Feeling featherlight,” expressing a calm that perfectly mirrors the music’s steady grooves and welcoming overall feeling. Starting with the upbeat »River Park/ Sleeping Pill«; to the almost ambient, synthesizer-heavy »A Bottomless Pit«; or short, punk-inspired and bassline-driven outbursts like »Watered Down« or »Halulu Lake«; to the blissful title track that closes the album, Singh opens up a whole panorama of different moods across a broad variety of musical styles. They are connected by that rare thing: a unique musical vision expressed by an instantly recognisable sonic signature.

"Live in Paris" - Nathan Davis, (sax); Georges Arvanitas (p, org); Jack Diéval (p); Jacky Samson, Jacques Hess (b); Franco Manzecchi, Charles Saudrais (dr)

Style is not a given. Not many musicians reach the level of artistic personality where you can unmistakably recognize them. It takes character, roots, honesty, soulfulness. Nathan Davis had style.

His tone on tenor was unique. So was his soprano sound and his distinctive approach to flute. His musical world was equally original and knew no boundaries.

This concert in Paris is audible proof that as a performer, his fluid phrasing, distinct articulation, booming bottom register, growls and shrieks were fuelled by tremendous drive and furious invention - the man was on fire!

These live sessions demonstrate the limitless invention of Nathan’s solos. Holding no punches, weaving signature phrases, shouts and riffs into his solos, he was a fierce and fervid performer. With a sort of hollow resonance at the heart of his reedy and warm sound, Nathan Davis was a highly original artist, from an era when having a distinct sound on your instrument was the grail of jazz artistry. Harold Land, Jimmy Heath, John Gilmore, Paul Gonsalves, Charlie Rouse, George Coleman, Booker Ervin, Clifford Jordan ... Jazz is made of such giants and Nathan Davis was one of them.

For Dizzy everything starts and ends with laughter. In the meantime, all paths are possible. That of melancholy, of dance or of political commitment... Dizzy is everywhere at once, always elusive, he is this explorer who, after having been one of the founders of Bebop in the 40's, will never stop experimenting, surprising and pushing back the borders. Proud of his Afro-American heritage, he knew like no other how to confront it with other cultural horizons such as Latin America or Cuba. On 25 August 1973 Dizzy Gillespie came to the Dutch public in Laren. True to form, he introduced his musicians in a mischievous and generous mood and then launched thunderously into a Caribbean tempo that lasted 19 minutes! Then, in a deep voice, Dizzy evokes his friend Martin Luther King. He dedicates "Brother K" to him, a tender ballad punctuated by flashes of storm and anger. As a conclusion Dizzy invokes his roots: "The Blues", where he abandons his trumpet to unleash the full force and warmth of his voice. The musicians withdraw to a surprisingly light theme. We leave as we arrive, on tiptoe. However, we leave with a certainty: "Yes Dizzy, you made it".

Dizzie Gillespie, Trumpet and Vocals
Mike Longo, Piano
Alexander Gafa, Guitar
Earl May, Bass
Mickey Roker, Drums
Guest Artist : Jon Faddis, Trumpet on tracks 9 and 10

Recorded at the Singer Concert Hall

Laren Jazz Festival, 25.VIII.1973

STEREO ℗ 1973 VARA

Remastered by ℗ & © 2017 FONDAMENTA

Made and printed in Germany

Almost an anti-Christmas song, the Soul Duo’s “Just A Sad Xmas” doesn’t exactly evoke the festive spirit of the season. Comprised of ‘Tidewater’s queen of soul Ida Sands and former Anglos tenor Joe Webster, the duo issued just two singles on Noah Bigg’s Shiptown label. Just in time for the holidays, Numero has repressed this maudlin yuletide burner and packaged the red, white, and green splattered 45s in a rigid cardboard sleeve for easy wrapping.

The journey from trauma to healing and understanding inspired Andrew Oda’s beautiful new album: »Back To The Body«. More delicate and plaintive than his previous work, but no less adventurous in its broad palette of synthetic and acoustic sounds, this music is the topography of a descent into the wisdom of the body, “as frightening and unsafe as it may feel” as the composer puts it. A sweet piano, a gently plucked guitar, and a mournful cello sit alongside garbled synth melodies, rustling field recordings, and sweeping cosmic backdrops throughout, a mimic of the counterintuitive harmony of sensations that meet the traumatised body.

Earwiggle returns with a new 11-track (2x12") compilation for its 30th release, featuring The Mover, Heidi Sabertooth, Kerrie, Surit, Arjun Vagale, Pyran, Keepsakes, Ingen, Slave To Society, Duran Duran Duran and Dublin Terror Squad. Conceived during the pandemic, "Music For The Wilted Generation" is a tense exploration through dark minimal, industrial and club techno sounds, that culminates with some of the fiercest material to appear on the label yet.

Both LPs pressed 45RPM in gatefold jacket+ white paper sleeves + LP3 insert for full album download. Yellow vinyl is for Indies only. It might be too soon to declare In Prism the best Polvo record ever…but it might be okay by the time you’re done reading this. ...Only at this point in life would Polvo be so assured, so casually stormy and intensely calm, graceful and free with their power without setting aside anything that made them the rock artists they were during their first, unblemished run. There is not a thing on In Prism that they aren’t doing better than before: the sidewinder guitars and the mighty roar and the moody atmospheres and the psychedelic explosiveness; the writing, the singing, the words you can understand, the ones you can’t. Polvo spent 1990–98 giving voice to a chorus of discrete rock & roll ideas that really hadn’t been heard before. And while there was nothing wrong before, it’s now so much more right—perhaps because after ten years none of the peripheral stuff matters anymore. Now is for Polvo, and Polvo is for now. In Prism is the best Polvo record even before you get to the majestic “A Link in the Chain,” serene and tempestuous like few other things you’ll hear. The album was recorded with Brian Paulson and Polvo has never sounded better. Don’t you agree? Mike Wolf, NYC (2009). Side A 1. Right the Relation 2. D.C. Trails Side B 3. Beggar’s Bowl 4. City Birds Side C 5. Lucía 6. Dream Residue/Work Side D 7. The Pedlar 8. A Link in the Chain

'Breakfast in New Orleans Dinner in Timbuktu' is Bruce Cockburn's 1999
album written to encourage his fans to look forward to the new century,
while learning from the past
It contains a travelogue in the album's lyrics, both to familiar places of home and
family as well as social imperatives from visits to developing countries. Through
it all is Cockburn's reflections on the dynamics between men and women and
spiritual mysticism. Musically the album features the vocals of three women who
appear throughout the album. Jonell Mosser sings on two songs, including the hit
single "Last Night of the World"; Margo Timmins of Cowboy Junkies on the sultry
"Mango" and a cover of the Fats Domino nugget "Blueberry Hill", and most
significantly for the album's consistency, Lucinda Williams appears on four tracks.
Her standout track is "Isn't That What Friends Are For", a tender song of friendship
is made more poignant by Williams' ability to convey deep emotion.
Bruce Cockburn has written more than 400 songs on 35 albums over a career
spanning 50 years, of which 23 have received gold or platinum certification. He
has sold more than nine-million copies worldwide, is a member of the Canadian
Songwriter Hall of Fame, and is the winner of 13 Juno Awards from more than 30
nominations. His world-wide hits include "Wondering Where The Lions Are",
"Lovers In a Dangerous Time", "If A Tree Falls" and "If I Had A Rocket Launcher".

180 gram vinyl LP of Freddie's 1979 album with extensive sleeve notes
Produced by: Winston 'Niney The Observer' Holness
Recorded, Voiced & Mixed at: Channel One ecording Studio, 29 Maxfield
Avenue, Kingston 13
Engineers: Anthony 'Crucial Bunny'/'Bunny Tom Tom' Graham & Lancelot
'Maxie' McKenzie
Musicians:
Drums: Max 'Feelgood' Edwards & Leroy 'Horse Mouth' Wallace
Bass Guitar: George 'Fully' Fullwood
Lead Guitar: Earl 'Chinna' Smith
Lead Guitar & Rhythm Guitar: Albert Valentine 'Tony' Chin & Eric 'Bingy
Bunny' Lamont
Keyboards: Jamaba Johnson & Keith Sterling
Tenor Saxophone: Enroy 'Hot Train' Grant
Trumpet: Arnold 'Willie' Brackenridge & Donald Vidan-Greaves
Percussion: Herman 'Bongo Herman' Davis & 'Brooksy'
Advertising in Black Echoes and Record Collector

On her Signature Sounds debut Til It's Gone, Ali McGuirk delivers a sublime set of songs that pairs her trademark soul sound with rootsy turns and raw rock n' roll detours McGuirk co-produced Til It's Gone with Jonah Tolchin (a star singer-songwriter in his own right) and a set of session legends: Little Feat guitarist/mandolinist Fred Tackett, organist Larry Goldings (James Taylor, Norah Jones), singer Valerie Pinkston (Ray Charles, Luther Vandross), percussionist Lenny Castro (Stevie Nicks, Stevie Wonder). They provided the astounding chops, but the true magic of the album comes from McGuirk's singular voice as both singer and songwriter. The nine tracks run from intimate introspection to wider meditations on oppression and justice, from tough r&b and tender soul to big rock guitar and twangy folk. And McGuirk's voice bold, buttery, spellbinding " carries each song to the next til they're gone.

Für Fans von Entombed, Edge Of Sanity, Bloodbath, Invocator.
Es ist offiziell. Die Pause von Maceration ist vorbei und die dänische Death Metal Band wird ihr neues Album "It Never Ends..." veröffentlichen.
am 25. November mit der Death Metal Legende Dan Swanö - Edge Of Sanity, Bloodbath etc. - als Vokalist. Dies geschieht 30 Jahre nach der Ver-
öffentlichung ihres ersten und bisher einzigen Studioalbums. Die dänische Band spielte eine Schlüsselrolle in der lokalen Death Metal-Szene und
gehörte zu den Pionieren des Stils in Dänemark. Ihr Album "A Serenade Of Agony", auf dem auch Dan Swanö am Gesang und Mitglieder der
Pioniere Invocator zu hören sind, ebnete den Weg für eine ganze Generation dänischer Death-Metal-Bands, die folgen sollten.
Die Band spielte bereits auf wichtigen Festivals in Dänemark wie Metal Magic und Death Coast. Und sie haben immer noch Zeit, ein neues Album
zu schreiben und aufzunehmen. Auf diesem Album, das im Herbst über Emanzipation erscheinen wird, bei denen Maceration gerade einen Plattenvertrag unterschrieben hat, ist Dan Swanö (ex-Edge Of Sanity, Bloodbath) wieder als Session-Sänger dabei, genau wie auf dem Debütalbum,
und auch als Produzent. Das Album wurde von Dan Swanö in seinem eigenen Unisound-Studio gemischt und gemastert, wo er auch die Vocals
aufgenommen hat.

Für Fans von Entombed, Edge Of Sanity, Bloodbath, Invocator.
Es ist offiziell. Die Pause von Maceration ist vorbei und die dänische Death Metal Band wird ihr neues Album "It Never Ends..." veröffentlichen.
am 25. November mit der Death Metal Legende Dan Swanö - Edge Of Sanity, Bloodbath etc. - als Vokalist. Dies geschieht 30 Jahre nach der Ver-
öffentlichung ihres ersten und bisher einzigen Studioalbums. Die dänische Band spielte eine Schlüsselrolle in der lokalen Death Metal-Szene und
gehörte zu den Pionieren des Stils in Dänemark. Ihr Album "A Serenade Of Agony", auf dem auch Dan Swanö am Gesang und Mitglieder der
Pioniere Invocator zu hören sind, ebnete den Weg für eine ganze Generation dänischer Death-Metal-Bands, die folgen sollten.
Die Band spielte bereits auf wichtigen Festivals in Dänemark wie Metal Magic und Death Coast. Und sie haben immer noch Zeit, ein neues Album
zu schreiben und aufzunehmen. Auf diesem Album, das im Herbst über Emanzipation erscheinen wird, bei denen Maceration gerade einen Plattenvertrag unterschrieben hat, ist Dan Swanö (ex-Edge Of Sanity, Bloodbath) wieder als Session-Sänger dabei, genau wie auf dem Debütalbum,
und auch als Produzent. Das Album wurde von Dan Swanö in seinem eigenen Unisound-Studio gemischt und gemastert, wo er auch die Vocals
aufgenommen hat.

After 31 years, the Serious Beats compilation era comes to an end. The very last edition, Serious Beats 100, arrives as 3 Vinyl Box Sets (including 5 vinyls per box).

Some of the most legendary club tracks of the past decades have made the cut, and are now bundled into a true collector's item for everyone who's heart is beating to the rhythm of house music.

Lotus Eater is a duo consisting of Luca Mortellaro (Lucy) and Seth Horvitz (Rrose), techno artists just as comfortable operating in the uncharted area of experimental music who have gained a cult following, both influencing and challenging the direction of contemporary electronic music.

Eschewing the typical instrumentation of techno but still inhabiting its archetypes, Lotus Eater uses synthesised sound and feedback as fundamental sources to generate both textural and percussive elements. A sense of tension and weight emerge from sources that cannot be easily pinpointed. Each release forms a complex narrative from a paradoxically simple and restrained set of sound sources.
Officially formed in 2017, Lotus Eater came to life through several collaborations over a number of years, and finally blossomed with the release of its critically acclaimed debut album "Desatura," which Lotus Eater toured live in 2018 - 2019.

2022 sees the release of the second Lotus Eater album "Plasma" and a new audiovisual live project to accompany it. "Plasma" unfolds with exacting precision by exhibiting a point of focus and expanding on it. It uses a single, throbbing pulse to generate a constellation of sounds and rhythms that form around it like a volcanic eruption in slow motion. Playing with our sense of time and weight, "Plasma" feels simultaneously slow and urgent, spacious and immense. Lotus Eater zooms into the infinite abyss and finds not just light, but fire at the end of the tunnel. Will we be saved, or will we burn?

Repressed !

Early February 2011: Decided to make an album inspired by the Japanese post-war economic miracle. While searching for more information I found an old photo of the Mihama nuclear plant. The fact that this futuristic-looking plant was situated in such a beautiful spot so close to the sea made me curious. Are they safe when it comes to earthquakes and tsunamis? Further reading revealed that many of these plants are situated in earthquake-prone areas, some of them are even located next to shores that had been hit in the past by tsunamis. A photo of Mihama made me narrow down my focus only to Japanese nuclear plants. I wanted to make a soundtrack to some of them, concentrating on the architecture, design and localizations, but also questioning the potential radiation danger (a cooling system being destroyed by a landslide or earthquake, etc). As the head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the plants were so well designed that "such a situation is practically impossible." The album was finished on February 13th. On March 17th I received the following message from a FB friend: "Geir, some time ago you asked people for a photo of a Japanese nuclear powerplant. Is this going to be the sleeve of your new coming album? But more importantly: how did you actually predict the future?"


“N-Plants is a master craftsman's reaffirmation of a fundamental but lapsed tenet of electronic ambient: You set up a conversation between the machines, and then you step out of the way.”

Brian Howe — Pitchfork

Special 10th Anniversary Edition In Brown Card Artboard Sleeve With Additional Lyric Print Insert

Slowdive singer and songwriter’s third solo album, which was originally released in November 2012. It is a stunning record and one which, upon its release, underlined the claims that Neil was one of the finest and most underrated British songwriters of recent times. It’s also a very special release in the Sonic Cathedral catalogue; the shoegaze label licensed the record from Jack Johnson’s Brushfire imprint for the UK and Europe and it was the start of a relationship that also gave us the Black Hearted Brother album in 2013 and, ultimately, brought about the reformation of Slowdive in 2014. But Palindrome Hunches is a very different beast. Both stately and understated, this moody and mesmerising collection of peculiarly British folk songs was made with the Band of Hope, a Wallingford, Oxfordshire based collective consisting of Ben Smith (violin), Drew Milloy (double bass), Paul Whitty (piano) and Tom Crook (guitar). Together with producer Nick Holton, banjo player Kevin Wells and backing singer Aimee Craddock, they recorded the album to tape over a few weekends in the music room of their local junior school. “At first we were going to record in a studio, but everything seemed too clean,” said Neil at the time. “We just went through the songs and recorded them live without very much rehearsal. We wanted to be spontaneous and simple and to keep the little mistakes that sneaked in.” This goes a long way to explaining the album’s humanity and intimacy, and also why it has had a quiet life of its own over the past decade, gradually growing in stature alongside Neil’s more high-profile activities with Slowdive; copies of the 2012 original and even the 2017 repress currently fetch up to triple figures on Discogs. The stunning opener ‘Digging Shelters’ was used to devastating effect in the posthumously released James Gandolfini movie Enough Said – a fitting home for a song that rubs shoulders here with ruminations about love and loss such as ‘Tied To You’ and ‘Spin The Bottle’ and, on ‘Wittgenstein’s Arm’, an Austrian pianist who had his right arm amputated in World War I and lost three of his brothers to suicide. The wordplay of the title track is almost light-hearted in comparison; “I wanted to write a song that was the same forwards and backwards, but it didn’t quite work out,” explained Neil, adding that he also chose ‘Palindrome Hunches’ for the album’s title because “I like the idea of things being reversible”. A couple years later, by reforming his old band, he proved that. And now, ten years on, it’s the perfect time to rewind to this understated, underrated classic. Side A 1 Digging Shelters 2 Bad Drugs and Minor Chords 3 Wittgenstein’s Arm 4 Spin The Bottle 5 Tied to You Side B 1 Love Is a Beast 2 Palindrome Hunches 3 Full Moon Rising 4 Sandy 5 Hey Daydreamer 6 Loose Change. Praise for Palindrome Hunches on its original release: ““Nope, it ain’t shoegaze as it's been codified and re-codified. But why be disappointed in someone following his muse to a logical conclusion when that path was always the one he walked on?” – Pitchfork An exquisite set of dark folk music” – The Times “Draws from the same understated, reflective well as John Martyn” – MOJO “‘Tied To You’ doesn’t merely evoke Nick Drake but withstands the comparison – evidence of the songs’ quality” – Financial Times “Halstead’s songs breathe the sort of honesty and goodness that’s harder and harder to find in the iTunes age” – The Independent “Given the chance, they could be songs that continue to enchant for many years to come” – The Line Of Best Fit

4 Cuts Placed In "A First Quarter", the companion piece to Solos, is the sonic result of a collaboration with artist Lawrence Weiner. As Landry remembers, “I was working for Keith Sonnier at Castelli Gallery and met Lawrence. He asked ‘can you make a video for me?’ So we did "To and Fro..." At some point he was working on "A First Quarter" (1973) and wanted me to do the music. I said ‘I already have the music.’ He said ‘what do you mean?’ I had recorded several pieces with Kurt Munkcasi and walked around the set playing the music on a boom box.”

The set features one solo each by Landry and contrabassist Rusty Gilder, a duo for the tenor saxophones of Landry and Richard Peck, and an ensemble piece for Landry, Peck, Gilder, trumpeter Robert Prado, and drummer David Lee, Jr. Starting the record off is “Requiem for Some,” inspired by Gil Evans’ long, placid tones. The anchor is Lee’s dry cymbal attack and fancy footwork, dancing around overlapping and recombining horns, chords held just shy of splintering. “4th Register” is a grainy delayed solo tenor piece, presaging “Kitchen Solos” from Fifteen Saxophones by several years. “Piece for So” was, according to Landry, “a chance to give Rusty a solo”. Mostly known as an ensemble bassist, Gilder bounced between Lafayette, Charlotte, and New York, leaving a slim recorded legacy. Here, he stretches out for twelve minutes and change – with keen upper register detail and meaty up-tempo walk, he could have been mentioned in the same breath as players like Dave Holland and Barre Phillips. The closing “Duo Vivace” finds Landry and Peck sparring on tenors, the latter holding a melodic line while Landry leans into explosive glossolalia, until both become birds in flight.

There are only a few figures in music whose work influences and
shapes a genre as a whole. This is undoubtedly true of the Swede
Esbjörn Svensson. With his trio e.s.t., the pianist and composer
wowed audiences beyond age and genre affiliations. And his
influence on jazz as a whole reverberates to this day and already
within the second and third generation of musicians worldwide.
‘HOME.S.’ is Esbjörn Svensson’s only solo album and the sheer
existence of such a recording and its completely unexpected
discovery over a decade after its creation are nothing less than a
sensation: Since the early 1990s, Svensson focused almost his entire
creative energy and recording activities on his work with e.s.t.. Thus,
these new recordings are not only the first, but practically the only
ones that show Svensson in a setting other than that of the trio:
Intimate, concentrated and completely one with himself. The
recordings for ‘HOME.S.’ were made only a few weeks before
Esbjörn Svensson’s sudden death on June 14, 2008. Svensson
recorded the music in his Swedish home.
For almost ten years afterwards, the album rested untouched in his
wife Eva Svensson’s personal archive. Here, she tells the story
behind the discovery of the album and the music: “After Esbjörn’s
passing, I made sure all the contents of his computer were saved to
backup hard drives. And then I basically left them untouched for the
next ten years. At the point where I eventually felt ready to look into
the material, I soon realised that there was something I wanted to
look into.
“I took the hard drive and went to Gothenburg to meet with Åke
Linton, the sound engineer who had worked on all e.s.t. albums as
well as on their live shows. He was also the one who had helped me
to save the material from Esbjörn’s computer in the first place. So he
probably already knew that there was something hidden in there. But
nobody had listened to it.
“We went to his studio. And we pressed the start button. Then there
was a total silence and we couldn't speak for the entire time the music
was playing. After it finished, at first we were not able to say anything,
because we were both so touched and surprised that it was all there,
and that it was so beautiful. The tracks seemed to follow one another
like pearls on a string. After we just had sat there for a while we
agreed: This is really good. Musically, but also from a sound
perspective.”

Sunking is the experimental sights and sounds of Seattle natives Bobby Granfelt & Antoine Martel, an outlet for the duo whose music is "steeped in funk, fusion, and the dreamier end of the rock spectrum," said Seattle"s The Stranger. The Stranger also went on to say that "this city needs more groups like sunking, who flit among genres such as hip-hop, jazz, and shoegaze rock while messing with the DNAs of each style they address." Both Granfelt and Martel are also members of High Pulp, a jazz collective that draws influences from punk rock, shoegaze, hip-hop, and electronic music. Also signed to ANTI-, their album "Pursuit of Ends" came out in April of this year. "High Pulp blend old-school bebop with contemporary soul and electronica vibes, as though someone convinced the ghost of Duke Ellington to reinterpret a Chemical Brothers album," said the A.V. Club.

The period of 1967 – 1968 when Rocksteady was in full flow, would also be a turning point for Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee, when he became a producer in his own right. Many of the great tunes during this eventful year came out of his stable and initially saw the light of day on his own imprint label ‘Lee’s’. This album has been assembled from some of those fine tunes and tells the story of reggae in what was a stellar time for both reggae and Mr Bunny Lee.

Edward ‘Bunny’ Lee later to become known as ‘Striker’ (b.23rd August 1941) got his introduction to the music business around 1962 when his future brother in law singer Derrick Morgan introduced Bunny to producer Duke Reid, who gave him a job as record plugger for his Treasure Isle label. 1966 saw Bunny Lee move on to working for producer Ken Lack who ran his own label Caltone. Bunny’s first credit as a producer was released on the label when he produced ‘Lloyd Jackson and the Groovers’ with a tune called ‘Listen To The Music’.

As we stated earlier by 1967 Bunny Lee was leading the way and his vast stable of singers, were producing hit after hit for him. Many of those artists are featured on this compilation. The Sensations ‘Long Time Me No See You Girl’, the Uniques that featured the great Slim Smith are here on some of their greatest cuts ‘Love and Devotion’ and ‘The Beatitude’, ‘Girls Like Dirt’. ‘My Conversation’ a song that would be a big hit for the Uniques would also go on to be of the most covered songs and redone over rhythms, in the history of reggae music. The great singer Pat Kelly features on ‘Somebody’s Baby’ and ‘Little Boy Blue’ all massive hits, when originally released. Bunny’s love of Jazz and the brass sections would also shine through with some of Jamaica’s finest musicians featured here with the excellent tenor sax work of Val Bennett which gave us our album title track ‘Jumping With Mr Lee’ and ‘Jumping With Val’. The Alto sax work of Lester Sterling are featured on the timeless cut ‘Bangerang’ and ‘Tribute To Scratch’. The big sound of Trombonist ‘Vin Gordon’ features on ‘Sounds and Soul’. Not forgetting the previously mentioned King of Ska Derrick Morgan on ‘Hold Your Jack’. A song that in a few years’ time would provide the backbone for Mr Max Romeo’s cross over and controversial hit ‘Wet Dream’. So yes, a fine collection of tracks from the great producer Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee. Sit back and enjoy the reggae music of 1967-1968 with of the best sounds in town.Sit back and enjoy…..

Felix Laband’s The Soft White Hand is the masterwork of an artist who expresses himself through musical and artistic collage acting together to reinterpret his sources and to express significant elements of his own personal story.

Released by Munich-based Compost Records, the 14-track album is Laband’s first full-length offering since the critically acclaimed Deaf Safari in 2015. It is heralded by the single “Derek and Me”, and is being pressed on vinyl for distribution globally.

In The Soft White Hand Laband works with source materials that will be familiar to those who know his previous four records – Thin Shoes in June (2001), 4/4 Down the Stairs (2002), Dark Days Exit (2005) and especially Deaf Safari which reached deep into the South Africa scene and its political culture to inspire its vocal and music sampling. However, the disengagement he felt from his homeland during his latest album’s creation – an abiding sense of untethered-ness to place and space, exquisitely rendered in tracks like “Death of a Migrant” – is perceptible in Laband’s desire to illuminate instead aspects of his own life.

“For this album, my source material became almost autobiographical as opposed to African statements I’ve worked with previously,” says the artist. “I have sampled a lot from documentaries from the 80s crack epidemic in impoverished African American communities and believe my work speaks unapologetically for the lost and marginalised, for those who are the forgotten casualties of the war on drugs. In the past, I have had my issues with substance abuse, and I know first-hand about the nightmares and fears, what it feels like to be isolated and abandoned.”

Few artists have managed to air these intimate aspects of their life so luminously as Laband does in tracks like “5 Seconds Ago”, “They Call Me Shorty” and in the strange and meditative “Dreams of Loneliness”. “I’ve been building this weird, autobiographical story using other people talking. It’s kind of humorous but it is also sad and beautiful,” says Laband.

Yet, as in all of Laband’s recorded output, the delineations between emotions are never starkly drawn and The Soft White Hand is also shot through with beauty. Nature appears in recordings made in his garden in the intimate early morning hours, whether as in the calls of the Hadada Ibis and other birdsong in “Prelude” or of the vertical-tail-cocking bird in “Derek and Me”. The last is a wonderful track with Derek Gripper, the South African experimental classical guitarist of international renown, whose 2020 song “Fanta and Felix” imagines a meeting between Fanta Sacko and Laband.

Laband’s eloquence in reinterpreting classical composers such as Beethoven in “We Know Major Tom’s a Junkie” is another thrilling aspect of the new record. “I’ve been properly exploring classical music on this album,” explains Laband, “taking melodies from classical compositions and reinterpreting them”. A fresh quality comes to his work through this sonic adventuring: the tender manipulation of the mundaneness of the computer’s AI voice to reimagine and reinvent iconic lyrics and melodies in strange and unexpected configurations.

The Soft White Hand is Laband’s most cohesive body of work to date. Yet it remains, in its sheer artistic scope, impossible to describe fully. Darkness abuts the gossamer light. A song that summons the sunrise and all the hope of a new day could also be about the final dipping down of the sun that portends a troubled night ahead. Interludes are invitations to expand outwards or shift inwards. Mistakes and “weird fuckups” in the sound are cherished as convincing statements against what Laband calls the “grossness” of perfect sound in modern music.

For this world-leading electronic artist, the boundaries are unfixed. He is inspired by the German Dada artist, Hannah Höch, who memorably declared: “I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.” His music consequently reflects a primal artistic impulse that is also visible in Laband’s considerable visual art output as seen recently in several solo exhibitions such as that held in the No End Gallery in Johannesburg in 2019 and in the works he produced during his 2018 Nirox Foundation Artists Residency. “My music is always about collage, as is my art,’’ he affirms. “Everything I do is collage. It is a medium I find very interesting because you are taking history and distorting it and changing its meaning and turning it upside down and back to front.” In her book Recollections of My Non-Existence, Rebecca Solnit calls collage “literally a border art”; it is “an art of what happens when two things confront each other or spill onto each other”.

With The Soft White Hand, Laband is confirming his singular ability to achieve this in both art and music, melting the divisions between the two creative disciplines until they become one. He is also affirming his belief that an album of music should be more than a collection of unrelated tracks, but should unfold a fully integrated, cohesive story as in the song cycles of the great classical composers. In doing so, he claims his position as one of the most significant artists working today.

Artist Statement – Felix Laband – August 2022

When the Khmer Rouge took their captives for processing, they identified their class enemies by looking at their hands. If they were sunburned, rough and calloused, they were those of a peasant, a proletarian to be spared. But if they were soft and white, then they were those of a city-dweller, an intellectual or bourgeois, an adversary to be liquidated.

In calling this album The Soft White Hand, I was reflecting on the Cambodian genocide and how it resonates in contemporary South Africa. The apartheid era is over, and gone with it is white political domination. Yet economic and social privilege is still held in soft white hands. But those who grasp it know just how tenuous is their hold, how it singles them out, and my music reflects their subconscious fears, the stress and guilt of clinging on to what others envy and desire.

The soft white hand of the title suggests to me a further image, one that relates to all of postcolonial Africa. In my mind’s eye, I see the soft, duplicitous handshake of the smooth representatives of the superpowers making deals and promising gifts that benefit only them, and not their African dupes.
Yet, soaring above the wailing of sirens sampled from the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, my music is also about love gained and passion lost. It is about the tender caress of a soft white hand that conducts you into a place of dreams to be enfolded by nocturnal melodies.

RIGHTFUL RULER returns the legendary Jamaican vocalist Earl 16 to the center stage of international roots reggae music. This four song showcase style ep demonstrates that matching an A-class veteran singer/ songwriter with the sounds of the Zion I Kings (ZIK) production team serves to revitalize the musical forces long associated with the classic reggae tradition- roots, reality, and culture!

Earl 16's career now spans five decades and is marked by hits and highlights throughout. HIs Jamaican recordings from the cornerstone studios (Studio One, Black Ark, Channel One) are still sought after gems from the golden age. But, unlike many of his peers, Earl 16 successfully adopted the changing sounds and styles of reggae in the U.K.(where he resides) and collaborated with top producers like Mad Professor and Nick Mannaseh. He has remained current into the new millennium with "Release The Pressure", a notable vocal to LeftField's breakthrough drum & bass hit.

The all star lineup of musicians on RIGHTFUL RULER is anchored by drums provided by ace producer and multi-instrumentalist Roberto Sanchez (A-Lone Productions). Keyboards by Pau "Nattykeyz" Dangla Valls and trumpet by Patrick "Aba Ariginal" Tenyue complement the rhythmic foundations set by ZIK core players David "JAH David" Goldfine (bass) and Laurent "Tippy I" Alfred (rhythm guitar, piano, organ). Sheldon Bernard's flute and Errol "Blacksteel" Nicholson's background vocals are heard on the title track and lead guitars by David Prout and Andrew "Moon" Bain appear on "Find A Way", a feature with the dynamic toasting of Mr. Williamz. All dub mixes are done by JAH David with cover art by Ato K.D. Roberts .

Re-mastered from the original master tapes.
180 gr vinyl pressed by Optimal in Germany using the Metal Mothers from Pallas.

Facsimile reissue using the original photo by Jean-Pierre Leloir.
Double insert using an original color photo by JP Leloir.
Each record has been visually checked to prevent defects.

Recorded October 22, 1958, Olympia hall, Paris.
Original LP issue: Brunswick 87 903.

“They’d been living in Europe for months. They’d appeared in Cannes and at Knokke (…) yet the only thing missing was the consecration that a great concert in Paris would bring. They won that last battle with astounding brio, in front of an audience of connoisseurs. There were many there who thought modern jazz had never been so well- served in Paris.” (Jazz Magazine). Hard bop had arrived! Hallelujah! On its first French appearance, in July ‘58 at the Cannes Festival – the first and only Cannes jazz festival – the Donald Byrd Quintet had brought the house down. Yet four of its five members were relatively unknown in France… The French knew that the leader had replaced Kenny Dorham in the Jazz Messengers, that Doug Watkins was the Messengers’ bassist, and that pianist Walter Davis Jr. was still only 18 when he’d played with Charlie Parker. As for Art Taylor, even if his name meant something to fans, it was still difficult for people to have a more precise idea of his musical qualities. Only Bobby Jaspar was well-known to Paris audiences, and the tour marked the return of the prodigal son, the musician who’d decided, after setting the Club St. Germain on fire, to try his luck in the States early in 1956 – J.J. Johnson had hired him, and then Miles Davis (for a short spell) before Donald Byrd brought him into the group he was taking to Europe. This new tour would climax at the Olympia theatre during one of the “Jazz Wednesdays” that were organised there, ever since the Jazz At Carnegie Hall” tour – Zoot Sims, JJ. Johnson, Lee Konitz, Phineas Newborn – had inaugurated the series a little earlier. Byrd and his band took pains not to disappoint a Paris audience they knew to be particularly fickle, and they astutely varied the public’s pleasures throughout the evening. The complicity that united the rhythm section – Walter Davis Jr., Doug Watkins and Art Taylor – was much in evidence on Ray’s Idea; mistrusting the traps of the spectacular at all costs, Donald Byrd, producing brilliant inventions on the trumpet, took the lion’s share of the honours on a theme that was then much in fashion, Dear Old Stockholm, adapted from a Swedish traditional song; on Flute Blues, Bobby Jaspar proved he was still a specialist on that instrument, and Paul’s Pal showed that, on tenor, the playing of Sonny Rollins hadn’t gone unnoticed. It must be said that it didn’t have much effect on the discreet lyricism underlying the choruses he played during his “St. Germain” period. The Olympia spectators weren’t sparing in their applause for the five musicians. How else could they have reacted, faced with the fire the band showed during a tune like The Blues Walk? It wouldn’t take much for us to applaud, too, even if it is fifty-five years later…
Text – Alain Tercinet

Re-mastered from the original master tapes.
180 gr vinyl pressed by Optimal in Germany using the Metal Mothers from Pallas.

Facsimile reissue using the original photo by Jean-Pierre Leloir.
Double insert using an original color photo by JP Leloir.
Each record has been visually checked to prevent defects.

In its October ‘58 issue, the title carried by Jazz Hot magazine was: »Revelation at the Chat Qui Pêche. The spirit of jazz (which some thought was dying) is sparkling with life in the Donald Byrd Quintet.« And indeed, on its first appearance at the Cannes Festival in July (the Jazz Festival, not the other one), the Donald Byrd Quintet brought the house down. Its members were hardly the Who’s Who of jazz, however. People vaguely knew that the leader had replaced Kenny Dorham in the Jazz Messengers, that Doug Watkins had played bass with them, and that pianist Walter Davis Jr. had been with Charlie Parker before he was 19. As for Art Taylor, if he’d already enjoyed a career longer than that of his colleagues, it hadn’t yet brought him recognition beyond a small circle of cognoscenti. Only Bobby Jaspar – who’d shone at the Club St. Germain – was famous with the Parisian audience. At the beginning of 1956, he’d decided to try his luck in the United States; J.J. Johnson had hired him, and then Miles Davis (for a brief spell) before Donald Byrd brought him into his own group. After appearing in Cannes (in the sun) and Knokke-le-Zoute (a much smaller audience) for almost three months, the Donald Byrd Quintet settled down for the autumn in one of the capital’s top jazz spots, the Chat Qui Pêche on the Rue de la Huchette. »In that tiny room,« wrote Frank Ténot, »where the owner used to bump into the soloists by accident when she was serving her customers, the music they played was hot, and always surprising.« To crown a tour that had been extremely satisfying for everyone, a concert at the Olympia theatre was organised (there were gigs there called “Jazz Wednesdays”). Byrd and Co. took things very seriously, even though they preserved the relaxed approach that their (relatively) long association now permitted: "La Marseillaise", and "And The Angels Sing" are both present in the introduction to Parisian Thoroughfare played by the two horns. The latter then went on to imitate other horns, those of the cars on 52nd Street ... However, when it came to "Stardust", it was with all the seriousness in the world, almost in meditation in fact, that Donald Byrd improvised over the backing provided by just Walter Davis Jr. and Doug Watkins. Bobby Jaspar, of course, was marvellous. If he showed a marked obedience to Sonny Rollins, he still preserved, intact, the virtues of sobriety that prevented him falling into the trap of serving up torrents of notes in pieces taken at a rapid tempo ("At This Time", for example). During the exchanges on "Formidable", you’d be forgiven for saying that he gets the better of Donald Byrd. As for the complicity that reigned between the members of the rhythm section, it gave the formation a homogenous character that was very rare in a quintet. One can’t thank François Postif enough for taking the risk to release this concert at the time. Now, almost half a century later, one

Over the better half of a decade, Time is Away, the London-based duo of Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney, have made tender and heartfelt transmissions through countless mixes, sound works and radio. Exploring deeply human themes of memory, persistence and resistance using an assemblage of source material, the duo's unique mode of storytelling culminates in Ballads, a new suite of songs and, significantly, their first officially licensed compilation.

From the opening notes of Horvitz Morris Previte Trio's jazz romanticism to Gilles Chabenat and Frédéric Paris's lively reimagined standard, the haunting vocal seance of Tanto Pressanto and the mesmerising swirls of The Unthanks, Yuko Kono and Rachel Bonch-Bruevich, the spirit of Ballads roams through generations of affectionate songwriting and conjures images both candid and surreal. The voice of poet and longtime collaborator Christina Petrie appears briefly and contemplates the "sighs and replies… the space between verses" of the Ballad, its beauty, its place in our lives. What is the Ballad but a reflection of our soul? "Perhaps I'll wander in search of it", she bittersweetly concedes.

At the suite's cusp is an alternate version of David Lang's 'Just (After Song of Songs)', a thirteen-minute meditation on devotion which featured in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth (2015). The track's universal themes of faith and desire radiate throughout and elucidate Time is Away's peerlessly precise yet gossamer touch.

White Vinyl

Technological agitation. Narcissism fatigue. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest release, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. The celestial-influenced folk album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, and The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019's best.) While Titanic Rising was an observation of doom to come, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about being in the thick of it: a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos. "We're in a fully functional shit show," Mering says. "My heart is a glow stick that's been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness." And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow opens with the wistful, winsome "It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody," a song about the interconnectivity of all beings, despite the fraying of society around us. "I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper-isolation kept coming up," Mering says. "Our culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal." Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like "Grapevine" chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge "God Turn Me into a Flower" serves as allegory about our collective hubris. "The Worst Is Done" is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody. "Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order," she says. "These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment."

Technological agitation. Narcissism fatigue. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest release, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. The celestial-influenced folk album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, and The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019's best.) While Titanic Rising was an observation of doom to come, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about being in the thick of it: a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos. "We're in a fully functional shit show," Mering says. "My heart is a glow stick that's been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness." And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow opens with the wistful, winsome "It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody," a song about the interconnectivity of all beings, despite the fraying of society around us. "I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper-isolation kept coming up," Mering says. "Our culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal." Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like "Grapevine" chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge "God Turn Me into a Flower" serves as allegory about our collective hubris. "The Worst Is Done" is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody. "Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order," she says. "These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment."

Dickie Landry & Lawrence Weiner's Having Been Built on Sand was conceived as a vinyl edition and released by the Rüdiger Schöttle gallery in Munich with sleeve design by Weiner. The piece consists of eight untitled tracks. Lawrence Weiner, Tina Girouard, and Britta Le Va recite text with Dickie Landry’s woodwinds, all recorded in the natural reverb of Robert Rauschenberg’s studio, a former mission and chapel in Lower Manhattan. Layering Girouard in English, Le Va in German, and Weiner in English and German blocks of related or physically proximal texts repeat, invert, and intersect with Landry’s music as a constant. The layers of text and sound have meanings that fluctuate in complexity and scope, and like much of Weiner’s work, beyond mere facts.

The first piece is a trio for Landry’s keening tenor, repeating winnowed but breathy lines that contrast with and buoy Le Va’s clear, husky phrases, building in intensity as Weiner, in English, offers statements that are caught just off mic. The third cut adds Girouard, and one can hear woven parallels in the two women’s voices, cadences, and pitches, with Weiner’s cutting inflection dancing amid them. Landry’s bass clarinet is rich in its warble, full and gentle with woody footfalls that demarcate shapes through the chorus. Vocal rhythmic cycles, wordless in nature, are the energy that courses through the fourth song, urgent and sweaty as Weiner recites statements of political position in the Middle Ages, Le Va declaiming alongside in German. On soprano saxophone for the fifth tune, Landry pierces and darts in a bright manner in a private dialogue with himself, echoing Steve Lacy as female voices nearly bury one

GREY & BLACK SWIRL VINYL
Public Memory is a blend of damaged and dubbed out percussion, unfurling synths and sparse sampling all strung together by producer Robert Toher's spectral tenor. The project's sophomore LP, Demolition follows 2017's Veil of Counsel EP and 2016's Wuthering Drum LP with cinematic fortitude.While Public Memory's prominent krautrock and triphop rhythms are represented here, Demolition explores a greater range of tempos and an expanse of alien emotions with layers of electronic drums, live drums, Korg synths and samples from nature. Themes of rebirth and reflection imbue the album's atmosphere, rich in tape delay, spring reverb, and textures that conjure a sci fi and supernatural narrative.Toher's adept use of space and tension articulates the world of Demolition as eerie, emotive, and above all, narcotic.Each track is an existential procession. "Turning out the lights on your illusion," Toher sings to close the album, accepting that change is an inescapable condition of being.

TELE MUSIC is a label of Éditions Musicales Sforzando now owned by BMG Production Music. It is entirely devoted to the music library, that is to say, music for sound illustration used in audiovisual productions. Created in 1966 by Roger Tokarz,
just before advertising was allowed on French television, Editions Sforzando specialized from the outset in sound illustration for radio and television.
This collection, soberly entitled “Volume 2”, is the sequel to “Volume 1”, produced with equal care, passion and fervour by Lord Funk & DJ L.C. In the mid-90s, Tele Music vinyl was sold at ridiculously low prices. Often disparaged by collectors and record shops, considered by some as lift music or vulgarly called “music by the meter”, the music store was only of interest to fans of instrumental music! But in the 2000's, it had a second life and saw its prices soar on Discogs, thanks to sampling and digging in Hip-Hop mainly. This advent of the library is an era that Lord Funk, curator of this compilation, experienced when he brought several music library collections to New York City (NYC) to his A1 Records stronghold in 1997.
In this 2nd volume, Lord Funk & DJ L.C. have chosen a range of music from 1969 to 1983, from psychedelic jazz to electro funk via rnb, soul and jazz-funk. Most of the titles in this collection were recorded in the magic place that was the famous CBE recording studio set up by Georges Chatelain, Janine Bisson and Bernard Estardy. Bernard, nicknamed the giant, was a sound genius and a mixing perfectionist. Georges Chatelain was an electronic engineer. Together, they brought a sound,
a colour, a trademark. Bernard Estardy was also considered as one of the greatest French sound engineers and an energetic organist for Nino Ferrer or Nancy Holloway. We warmly thank Julie Estardy for her total and unreserved involvement in these reissue and compilation projects.
The combination of all these prodigies has given TELE MUSIC a phenomenal and unique sound colour in the service of a sound repertoire that is now part of the French heritage.

Limited Clear Vinyl edition, 300 copies! This is Lee Morgan’s second release as a leader. At the time of the recording (1956) Morgan was just 18 and he was already shining like a mature soloist and solid band leader. Another attracting point in this set is that the most of the tracks are composed by the great Benny Golson. A beautiful hard swinging bop session featuring Hank Mobley on tenor, Horace Silver on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Charlie Persip on drums – plus the obscure Kenny Rodgers on alto sax. Originally released on Blue Note in 1957 this album stands as a strong early piece in Lee Morgan discography

Side A: 1. Whisper Not - 2. Latin Hangover - 3. His Sister
Side B: 1. Slightly Hep - 2. Where Am I - 3. D’s Fink

Limited Clear Vinyl edition, 500 copies! Originally released in 1961 by Prestige/New Jazz label, “Straight Ahead” marks the last Dolphy’s appearance
within a series of fortunate collaborations with saxophonist Oliver Nelson. This is a great modern jazz album taking shape from a quintet studio
session (all first takes) engineered and supervised by master Rudy Van Gelder and featuring: Oliver Nelson - alto and tenor saxes, clarinet - Eric
Dolphy - alto sax, bass clarinet, flute - Richard Wyands – piano - George Duvivier - double bass and Roy Haynes on drums. A serious bunch of jazz
stylists all caught in fine form and concentration. Needless to add that the Nelson-Dolphy sax tandem shines throughout the whole album while
Duvivier and Haynes inject their angular yet hard swinging groove. The track list consists of five Nelson’s originals plus Milt Jackson’s “Ralph’s new
blues”

Self-recorded indie experimentalist from the Pacific Northwest. For fans of Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You. Features Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. In 2019, Drowse’s Kyle Bates set out to produce a self-recorded new album. Marked by moving across state lines, long-distance relationships, and deaths in the family, the following years proved to be metamorphic. Now, three years later, he’s emerged with Wane Into It, continuing a distinctly Pacific Northwestern tradition of self-recording indie experimentalists (Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You). One of the most impactful moments came during the looming passing of a family member. With death expected, the choice was made to conduct a bizarre “living-wake” gathering—with the soon-to-be1deceased in attendance. Shortly after, Bates found himself disturbed, preoccupied with the abstraction of memory. The experience led him to reassess the tool one uses to curate our selective memories: the internet. The internet, which creeped into even more aspects of life during the pandemic, serves as our self-made digital link to the past. Its uncaring presence layered over humbling thoughts of death and his own childhood memories of the Oregon Coast as he worked on Wane Into It; life’s hyperreal texture sank into the recordings as he felt his body age and wane. Big sounds were captured in bedrooms, hallways, practice spaces, forests, and on highways throughout West Coast vibraphones chime over black metal guitars, a mellotron drones under degraded samples, violins splinter against granular field recordings. In the process of documenting these aural moments Bates completed an MFA at Mills College, coloring the album with shades of avant electronic and minimalist composition (Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Maryanne Amacher, Sarah Davachi etc…). To realize this scope Drowse collaborated with Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. Bates’s songwriting and production have never been more lucid; sounds flicker as he sings with fragile intensity. The record, Drowse’s third for The Flenser, impressionistically distills loss, distance, mystery, prescription drugs, the preservation of memory via recording, and ambient anxiety through its titular act: to Wane Into It, to disappear awaiting the next moon phase, water returning to sea before reemerging as a wave. Track Listing: 1. Untrue In Headphones 2. Mystery Pt. 2 3. (Ashes Over The Pacific Northwest) 4. Wane Into It 5. Telepresence 6. Gabapentin 7. Blue Light Glow 8. Three Faces (Cyanoacrylate) 9. Ten Year Hangover / Deconstructed Mystery

Self-recorded indie experimentalist from the Pacific Northwest. For fans of Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You. Features Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. In 2019, Drowse’s Kyle Bates set out to produce a self-recorded new album. Marked by moving across state lines, long-distance relationships, and deaths in the family, the following years proved to be metamorphic. Now, three years later, he’s emerged with Wane Into It, continuing a distinctly Pacific Northwestern tradition of self-recording indie experimentalists (Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You). One of the most impactful moments came during the looming passing of a family member. With death expected, the choice was made to conduct a bizarre “living-wake” gathering—with the soon-to-be1deceased in attendance. Shortly after, Bates found himself disturbed, preoccupied with the abstraction of memory. The experience led him to reassess the tool one uses to curate our selective memories: the internet. The internet, which creeped into even more aspects of life during the pandemic, serves as our self-made digital link to the past. Its uncaring presence layered over humbling thoughts of death and his own childhood memories of the Oregon Coast as he worked on Wane Into It; life’s hyperreal texture sank into the recordings as he felt his body age and wane. Big sounds were captured in bedrooms, hallways, practice spaces, forests, and on highways throughout West Coast vibraphones chime over black metal guitars, a mellotron drones under degraded samples, violins splinter against granular field recordings. In the process of documenting these aural moments Bates completed an MFA at Mills College, coloring the album with shades of avant electronic and minimalist composition (Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Maryanne Amacher, Sarah Davachi etc…). To realize this scope Drowse collaborated with Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. Bates’s songwriting and production have never been more lucid; sounds flicker as he sings with fragile intensity. The record, Drowse’s third for The Flenser, impressionistically distills loss, distance, mystery, prescription drugs, the preservation of memory via recording, and ambient anxiety through its titular act: to Wane Into It, to disappear awaiting the next moon phase, water returning to sea before reemerging as a wave. Track Listing: 1. Untrue In Headphones 2. Mystery Pt. 2 3. (Ashes Over The Pacific Northwest) 4. Wane Into It 5. Telepresence 6. Gabapentin 7. Blue Light Glow 8. Three Faces (Cyanoacrylate) 9. Ten Year Hangover / Deconstructed Mystery

New Orleans songwriter Steph Green's debut album, 'Thanks For That',
draws from a wide array of influences to create songs that are
unpredictable, harsh, sentimental, vulnerable, and funny
The album is a kaleidoscope of loud, distorted guitars, moody and romantic
country- noir, sunny beach- pop and shuffling folk- rock that will make you both
laugh and feel the good kind of crappy. In Green's strange and illuminated world,
weeping steel guitars meet atmospheric synths, and velvet harmonies croon
beneath the wry humor and heartbreak of a voice positioned as both winking
jester and eternal outsider. Green is equally as versatile a singer as she is a
songwriter; alternately tender, gritty, sweet, stoic, and emotive. The album was
recorded to tape in New Orleans with Green producing in collaboration with
engineer/ co- producer Duff Thompson. It features a rotating cast of fellow
musician/songwriters, including Thompson, Sam Doores (The Deslondes, Hurray
for the Riff Raff), and Nick Shoulders.

Miet, the solo project of musician Suzy LeVoid, was born out of a form of absolute urgency, to make music at all costs Self- taught, when she started playing bass in 2013, the desire to compose and perform on stage quickly led her to create this one-woman band, where the bass
and the voice are the foundations of a raw, sincere, skin-deep music.Only backed
by a looper, she writes and performs alone, and quickly made her way onto the
French stages, appearing alongside Jeanne Added or Shannon Wright.
Although she's always alone on stage or in the studio, Miet expresses how much
the discovery of otherness nourishes her creation, to the point of having chosen
for this second album, still in English, a title in German 'Auslander'. For the
Nantes-based singer, this term means the magic of an unexplained but familiar
word. This "foreigner", or more exactly this "other", seems to take on the
appearance of a character that we learn to discover throughout the ten tracks of
the album.
Suzy LeVoid's newest offering is full of her unique signature sound : abrasive
rock, a deeply personal blend of sound loops, hypnotic rhythms and powerful
distorted bass lines. Strongly inspired by the work of Walt Whitman, Miet, like the
American poet, subtly uses repetition to give a hypnotic character to her lyrics.
This feeling of hypnosis is largely accentuated by the sequence of sound loops,
creating a perception of an infinite cycle and thus giving birth to an almost
mystical atmosphere.

Nikki Lane's remarkably dazzling third album Highway Queen, sees the
young Nashville rebel emerge as one of country and rock's most gifted
songwriters.Produced by Lane and fellow singer-songwriter Jonathan
Tyler, and recorded in Denton, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee, Highway
Queen is an emotional tour-de-force
Blending potent lyrics, unbridled blues guitars and vintage Sixties country- pop
swagger, Lane's new music will resonate as easily with Black Keys and Lana Del
Rey fans as those of Neil Young and Tom Petty. Highway Queen starts with the
whiskey-soaked restlessness of € 700,000 Rednecks, a rowdy call to action, and
ends on the profoundly raw Forever Lasts Forever, where Lane belts freely,
mourning a failed marriage, the lighter shade of skin left behind from her wedding
ring. Lane's journey to heartbreak takes exquisite turns. Companion is pure Everly
Brothers' dreaminess ( I would spend a lifetime/ Playing catch you if I can ).
Elsewhere, she goes on a Vegas bender on the rollicking Jackpot, fights last-call
blues ( € Foolish Heart ) and tosses off brazen one- liners at a backroom piano
( Big Mouth ). Lane, a Greenville, South Carolina native, is a unique songwriter
who didn't take the traditional country artist path. Her backwoods roots are
undercut by her chosen career as a fashion entrepreneur (she's the owner of
vintage clothing boutique High Class Hillbilly) who has lived " and been
heartbroken in " Los Angeles, New York and Nashville. So it's no surprise that her
music seamlessly crosses musical genres with lyrics steeped in the doomed
perseverance only a true dark horse romantic knows. Lane's rapid rise in music is
thanks to the fervent critical acclaim of her debut record Walk of Shame and
2014's Dan Auerbach-produced All Or Nothin'. Pressed on Blue Jean Color vinyl.

Having first met in 1991, music photographer STEVE GULLICK and JAMES JOHNSTON, founder of Gallon Drunk, began blurring the boundaries between audio and visual in 2004 when they formed their own band, '...bender'. They’ve maintained the habit ever since, with Gullick subsequently founding Tenebrous Liar and Johnston pursuing a career, alongside his work with PJ Harvey and a tenure in Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, as an acclaimed visual artist and painter.After working together on an art show in late 2019, the idea of making music again immediately resurfaced. Without any firm strategy, Johnston and Gullick began recording, unprompted, drawing upon a shared love of noise, folk, and classical. This became the album ‘We Travel Time’, a compelling and mysterious record that bravely embraced beautiful piano, voice, violin, and guitar to create a drifting haze, forging an imagined soundtrack which offers echoes of Big Star, Nico, Lee Hazlewood and Palace Brothers alongside the haunting influence of contemporary minimal classical. Due for release this coming November 18th via God Unknown Records, Johnston and Gullick have returned to their craft to create a stunning new selection of songs and moods, brought together for the album ‘Everybody’s Sunset’. Recorded at their homes throughout 2021 and 2022, the ten songs on this new album take the fragile intimacy and agenda-free approach of its predecessor and go out even further into the fringes of tone and feeling. Utilising a vast selection of instruments between them (violin, organ, guitar, banjo, autoharp, harmonica, piano, synthesisers….), ‘Everybody’s Sunset’ ebbs and flows, bringing different instruments and signals to the fore as the album progresses. a bold, adventurous musical trip that finds Johnston and Gullick’s musical bond grow ever deeper and closer. Tune in and watch the Sunset glow. All songs written, arranged and recorded by James Johnston and Steve Gullick James Johnston: Violin, voice, organ, piano, guitar, banjo, autoharp. Steve Gullick: Voice, guitar, piano, organ, harmonica, harmonium. 1. The Moon & The Stars 2. Shimmer 3. Fear of Everything 4. Save Our Souls 5. Ice Moon 6. The Town That Couldn't Sleep 7. Medieval Death Song 8. Greater Silence 9. Who I Who 10. Everybody's Sunset

Genre : Pop / Cinema / French Chanson. "De l'amour mais quelle drôle d'idée" is definitely the music album of an actress. Result of her collaboration with the french composer & singer Léonard Lasry who composed and produced entirely this album, it features 10 songs specially created to be performed as cinéma scenes on pop melodies with luxury arrangements. The poetry of the lyrics written by Elisa Point talks about intimacy with tenderness, melancholy with at some points several sarcastic touches. The album ends by "Via Condotti" performed as a duet with Léonard Lasry, already released last spring, and been the starting point of this surprising and enchanting album. Tracklist : 1. Magnifique N'est-Ce Pas 2. Ne Fais Pas Attention À Mon Amour 3. Non Je Ne Vois Pas Qui Vous Êtes 4. Je Ne Suis Pas Celle Que Tu Crois 5. De L'amour Mais Quelle Drôle D'idée 6. C'est Écrit Là Dans Nos Yeux 7. Roulette Russe 8. Assez Voyagé 9. Qui Vous Envoie ? 10. Via Condotti

Sofia Nøt from the project IAmNøt is a DJ and a producer from Bratislava/Slovakia, who just released her debut album “Changes”.
The album stems from the sounds of electronic dance music of the 90s and describes Sofia’s battle with gender identity. The music video for the track “Changes” won a prize at an international festival in Košice and participated in a prestigious ‘London Music Video Festival. In this video, Sofia kills her “old self” with an axe.

Since 2019 IAmNøt has posted her singles online. Many are also accompanied by story-driven music videos from director Simon Seriš. The music style comprises many genres, including breakbeat, techno, and synth-wave.
In the past three years, Sofia played DJ’s sets filled with breakbeats and 4/4 rhythms across the Czech Republic and Slovakia. You could see her, for example, at the Brutal Assault festival this summer.
Sofia’s debut album “Changes” was released on 9th September and is now available on all major digital platforms and a 12” LP vinyl record.

All tracks were written, produced & recorded by Sofia Nøt

except ‘Estrogen’: written by Sofia Nøt & Pkrek and

‘2020’ contains a guitar by Jakub Spiszak

Twisted and irreverent, The Rabbits combined ear-splitting guitar shrapnel with one of punk’s greatest-ever snot-nosed vocalists. With hints of PIL or Chrome, but beamed in from a parallel dimension and filtered through the warped lens of visionary loner Syoichi Miyazawa. First-ever vinyl release, fully remastered from the band’s original early ’80s cassette releases, and housed in a sturdy tip-on sleeve. Includes a double-sided, printed insert. Edition of 500

Singer-songwriter Syoichi Miyazawa’s tale is a confounding one.

He grew up in a small town in Yamagata Prefecture (in northern Japan), loved Dylan and The Beatles, and had very little exposure to, or interest in, underground music. And yet, shortly after 24-year-old Miyazawa arrived in Tokyo in 1978, he began performing solo shows at tiny clubs in the city, singing and playing guitar. His performances quicky devolved from brisk acoustic jaunts to lengthy, heavy dirges sung in a snot-nosed wail over a blown-out electric guitar detuned to produce a kind of sonic sludge.

At one of his earliest gigs, a mutual friend introduced him to Endo Michiro, who would soon become the legendary front man of Japanese punk icons The Stalin. It turned out Miyazawa and Endo had attended Yamagata University at the same time just a few years earlier, but hadn’t known each other at school. In Tokyo, they became fast friends, moved into the same apartment building, and for years were inseparable. Endo played guitar and drums on Miyazawa’s debut release, the “Christ Was Born in a Stable” flexi disc. But while Endo was social and outgoing, Miyazawa preferred to be alone, avoiding concerts unless he was performing.

Despite these antisocial tendencies, Miyazawa came to despise playing solo. In 1982, an eccentric high school student named Chika introduced herself at one of Miyazawa’s gigs, and Miyazawa asked if she’d play bass. She agreed and drafted two of her friends to play second guitar and drums. The Rabbits were born.

Miyazawa wrote the tunes, and had a clear vision for the group, but struggled to get the sound he wanted from the other members. His second guitarist was more of a fusion player, and Miyazawa took great pains to get him to tone down the shredding. The group quickly went through multiple line-up changes. Frustrated with the sound of their first proper recording (self-released as the “X1(x)” cassette), Miyazawa spent a full year mixing their second cassette, “Winter Songs,” on his own.

The hard work paid off — the sound of “Winter Songs” is striking, and unlike anything the band’s peers produced. There’s liberal use of delay on the vocals, giving the music a psychedelic feel, but the guitars are caustic, cutting through the mix like metal shrapnel. The rhythm section seems on the verge of teetering out of control throughout, an overdriven and pummeling current below abrasive slabs of guitar and vocals. Even at their most aggressive, though, The Rabbits had strong pop sensibilities, complete with cooing backing vocals and the occasional harmonica solo. Miyazawa delivers his borderline nonsensical lyrics with equal amounts of menace and gaiety, consistently riding that fine line as only a natural oddball can. At times, the band sounds like a distant cousin of PiL, Chrome or The Homosexuals, but beamed in from a parallel dimension and filtered through Miyazawa’s warped lens.

Although The Rabbits briskly sold all 500 copies of the "Winter Songs" tape, live audiences at the time seemed dumbfounded by the group, and would stare at them in silence. After two years together, The Rabbits called it quits in 1984.

When asked if any of the many legendary groups (Les Rallizes Desnudes, G.I.S.M., etc.) he shared stages with left an impression, Miyazawa recently revealed that he always left the venue as soon as he finished performing, so he never caught any of the other bands…

All of which is to say —

The Rabbits are one of the great punk bands of the early ’80s, but their leader had no interest in the punk scene and always thought he was making “normal” music. They rubbed shoulders with a slew of notable groups of the era, and their singer was best friends with arguably the most famous Japanese punk of all time, but Miyazawa shunned fraternization and purposefully distanced himself from his peers.

Could this be why so few underground music fans are familiar with the group, even in Japan? Why they seem to have been written out of the official history of Japanese punk? One can never know for sure, but Mesh-Key hopes to remedy this travesty by offering this compilation, the first-ever official LP by The Rabbits, to a new generation of punk and psychedelic music connoisseurs.
credits

With I was born by the sea, Richie Culver brings to a close a period of intense introspection and emotional reckoning with a debut album that serves as both an optimistic statement of intent and a final glance back at the painful places it explores. Following recent work with Blackhaine and Pavel Milyakov, I was born by the sea picks up where Culver’s EP for Italian label Superpang, Post Traumatic Fantasy, leaves off, painting an unabashed portrait of contemporary malaise, detailing a life lived behind closed doors, pinned under the crushing weight of austerity, sapped of the strength to do anything other than gaze out to sea and all the grey possibilities it represents. Where Post Traumatic Fantasy saw Culver returning to his hometown of Hull after a period spent entangled in London’s relentless sprawl, his first full length project reaches further back to his formative years working in a caravan factory and going to raves in and among Hull’s outskirts. Unspooling like a fever dream, I was born by the sea is the anxious clutter of a racing mind spoken clearly, a stark reflection on how it feels to have too many ideas and too much time to act on them.

Though unquestionably a snapshot of a time of significant difficulty, Culver reflects on this period with tender empathy and pitch-black humour, stitching together unflinching observations from England’s neglected corners, ‘there’s more mobility scooter repair shops and bookies than there are bookshops,’ and devastating vignettes of everyday struggle, ‘tears on the tin foil’, with surreal depictions of industrial grit, ‘skimming stones in a small pond by the slaughterhouse’. His DIY approach to production stretches the rough sinew that connects these fragments of memory, a process he describes as using a paired back collection of synths and drum machines to the best of his ability, ‘but to the least of their capabilities,’ wringing out visceral sound with self-taught urgency. During the album’s most impressionistic passages it’s as though Culver has transposed past internal turmoil into powerfully resonant noise, the Sisyphean sonics of ‘Create A Lifestyle Around Your Problems’, which evokes in its concrète clatter and MRI machine barrage the sound of making the same mistake again and again, or the stuttered jumble of ‘Its Hard To Get To Know You,’ its garbled vocal modulation and frayed edges of distortion channeling the paranoia of somebody listening to muffled voices through thin plaster, climbing the walls of their bedroom with the curtains closed, a nervous breakdown in stereo.

In counterpoint to this glides the ever-present spirit of the dance floor, which haunts the record from the moment it is invoked in its first few seconds. Opening onto a sea wall of bright synthesis, the stuttering vocals and bass tone chops of ‘Nervous Energy’ dump us directly into post rave ecstasy, the echoing cry of a voice amplified by loudspeaker carrying the loose energy and surge of crowds moving in darkness. The incessant, dead phone line beep of ‘Pigeon Flesh’ builds to a pulse that suddenly swells into an anxious technoid surge, shapeshifting at lysergic speed into head shrinking audio hallucinations, a descent into the void of the present via machine music hypnosis. Even ‘Its Hard To Get To Know You’ summons the ego death drive of hardcore techno within its scorched textures, flickering indiscernibly between attritional noise and frazzled hardware stomp. Paying homage to both the parties of his youth and a countless succession of Sundays spent offering himself up within Berghain’s hallowed architecture, Culver’s experiments in addressing his formative relationship with rave provide an energetic glimpse at where he might take his sound next.

Between spikes of propulsive energy and grim mood pieces Culver returns to suspended passages of aching, glacial drift, the cold swell of the North Sea, accompanied by some of his heaviest testimonials. The gauzy ebb of ‘Daytime TV,’ its tumbling loops reminiscent of boats bobbing off a distant shore, sees the artist at his most checked out, slumped in front of his television, seven days a week. ‘I used to dream of doing something,’ he admits, ‘anything to get out of this town.’ ‘Love Like An Abscess’ pairs swirling currents of ambient shimmer with violent images of baseball bats lying next to beds and blood-stained mattresses, next to which Culver pleads in a desperate mumble, ‘let our love grow, like a broken abscess.’ Yet it’s with the album’s final word and title track that Culver reveals a glimmer of cautious optimism, a parting gesture of exposition and closure. ‘I knew I had to get away,’ he asserts, ‘so I did and I never looked back.’ What follows builds from a low throb, the flutter of a tiny heartbeat, to a resonant glow, embellished with unfurling synthetic burbles, oil rigs sparkling in the distance, golden light spilling across the sea. In reckoning with the place he had to escape, Richie Culver is now free to look towards the promise of something new, something hopeful.

new pressing on red & black swirl vinyl. RIYL: New Order, Drab Majesty, The KVB, Black Marble, The Soft Moon. Layering synths, guitars, electronic percussion and live drums, Houses of Heaven fuses early industrial and techno rhythms with the melodicism of shoegaze and a heavy dose of dub-influenced effects on their first full-length album titled 'Silent Places.' Written against the backdrop of the Northern California wildfires, ever-growing tent cities and the continued rise of empty luxury housing in the Bay Area, the album explores the intimate experiences that transpire within the chaotic confines of modern living. Opener "Sleep" basks in the tension surrounding the album's inception with blown-out kick drums, claustrophobic verses, and deteriorating vocal effects. Sharp arpeggiated synths and woozy strings neutralize the track's subterranean anxiety with texture and sensuality. Produced by Matia Simovich (Inhalt) and with engineering credits that include Monte Vallier (Weekend) and John McEntire (Tortoise), it's a potent introduction to the muscular sound design underpinning the album. Booming taiko drums sound the beginning of "Dissolve the Floor," the album's most club-ready track. A pulsing arpeggio gives the song its industrial heartbeat while disintegrating tape delay throws menace into the hazy atmosphere. The undulating techno beat breaks and repairs itself with seductive and satisfying timing. "In Soft Confusion" doesn't stray from the album's obsidian narrative as it envisions and ponders the aftermath of human extinction. Sonically speaking, though, it's the album's most uptempo offering with Tecon's supremely infectious chorus vocal hook and Beck's dizzying guitar riffs. The intricate electronic drum programming is elevated by Ott's live drumming, which lends a refreshingly human touch to the potentially icy, and often mechanical, sonic territory of synthdriven music. Adding density to the album's shadowy allure are the unusual sounds and vintage outboard effects that Tecon and Simovich impressively maneuver into the album's tonal palette. Great care has been taken to finesse familiar pop structures with an inventive edge. It's this mindfulness of past and present that is sure to secure Silent Places as a standout album in the new decade. Also Available From Houses Of Heaven: Remnant 12" EP

limited silver vinyl LP with obi-strip

With a string of soundtrack credits as long as your proverbial arm, it's no surprise Yellow Magic Orchestra man Ryuichi Sakamoto was top of the list when it came to scoring this "sumptuous romantic melodrama" from director Ann Hui. This is his first score for a Chinese film, however, and he pulls out the emotional stops to betray the tense, tumultuous stirrings going on beneath the surface of tight lipped manners and suppressed feelings. Many of the themes are explored through simple piano playing before returning in the form of complex string arrangements, a clever trick that proves Sakamoto was worthy of his Best Original Film Score prize at the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards for this work.

Having torn up raves for well over a decade, the Detroit duo Rickers and Ted Krisko AKA Ataxia present their debut longplayer ‘Out Of Step’. Featuring guest spots from close peers DJ Minx, Andrés and Mr Joshooa, they twist house, techno, electro, breakbeat and rave into revitalized new shapes; embellished with a touch of soul, funk and hip hop. With backgrounds in hardcore and punk, Ataxia’s debut is suffused with that energy, attitude, and approach; this is raw, lean and unashamedly no-nonsense dance floor tackle that goes straight for the jugular. Heavily analogue, the album experiments with tape saturation, which harks back to the duo’s formative years in bands, recording demos to cassettes. These straight-up, in-the-red tracks give preference to overdriven drum machines, rather than generic polished sheen, but conversely, it’s all deceptively well-crafted too; ‘Out Of Step’ is a standout record that’s big in character, bringing to mind the renegade spirit of Underground Resistance, and the bombastic brilliance of The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers.

Defiantly optimistic despite the state of the world, a “life is good” vocal sample meets minor chords sliding over 808 hats on the exemplary house/techno pumper ‘Detroit Gospel’, before a lighter moment on the album, but no less impactful with its hefty low-end thump, is ‘Pine Island’ featuring Motor City hero Andrés. Together they cook up a Motown-inspired house cut awash with horn swells and backup singers, bouncing to wide swung funk bass, in classic 313 style. ‘Language’ turns the club on its head – busting out one of the most distinct basslines in recent times, and bristling with buzzy, undulating chords, whilst ‘Maxia’ features influential Detroit royalty DJ Minx. Inspired by her classic ‘A Walk In The Park’, with a fat distorted kick and stealthy bass groove, this is low-slung, stripped-back, heads-down coolness. The high-tech funk of ‘Spit In Your Percolator’, is laser-guided in its efficiency, with a strobe-like, increasingly intensifying energy, peppered with clever, tripped up vocal chops. With the next cut, conveyor belt noises and fast churning low-end gives way to a dubbed-out breakdown, on the deep breakbeat roller ‘98 Degrees’. Charged with a blistering, rave intensity, ‘Number Streets’, is a futuristic distorted techno workout that booms through the subs, whilst ‘The Formulator’ mixes filtered snippets, abstract synth noises and melodic bleeps with a bassline echoing Paperclip People’s ‘The Floor’. Closer to the UK definition of hardcore, combining 4/4 and breakbeat, ‘The Pusher’ evokes the spirit of late 80s orbital raves, adding a natty keys solo, and deadly bass used sparingly, for even deadlier effect. ‘Feels Like’ sees Rickers and Ted team up their studiomate and fellow TV Lounge resident and club booker, Mister Joshooa. Inspired by Photek but also almost UKG in style, this breakbeat session is stamped with MJ’s signature chopped vocals and intricate rhythmic interplay. The bubbling, wobbly loose swing of ‘WM’ is constructed around a classic chopped-up MTV cribs sample, with a filtered vocal creating a far out psychedelic effect – all of which is propelled apace by a huge bruising LFO. The LP concludes in fine style with ‘Dance The Bridge’, where bouncy beats and wigged-out keys meet bright, gently uplifting synth chords that bring a clear-skied mood; ending the record as it began, on an optimistic note.

‘Out Of Step’ marks another chapter in the ongoing relationship between Life and Death co-founder DJ Tennis and Ataxia. Their connection goes back to the earliest days of the label, where they played gigs together on some of Tennis’ initial visits to Detroit. It’s a friendship that’s blossomed organically over the last decade through their shared love of punk and hardcore, and led to the fruition of one of Ataxia’s most compelling projects to date. Labels to release Ataxia’s output include legendary Detroit techno imprints Planet E and KMS, plus the seminal American house label Nervous Records. Their catalogue also includes music for Visionquest, Leftroom, 20/20 Vision and Seth Troxler’s Play It Say It.

Johannes Auvinen (Tin Man) and Max Ravitz (Patricia), two devotees in the cult of the TB-303, return to Acid Test with the Celestial Body Music series, a follow up to their 2020 LP Powers Of Ten.

Recorded in Ravitz’s studio in Asheville, NC, Celestial Body Music once again showcases the pair’s penchant for raw yet emotive dance music. With Auvinen’s signature TB-303 programming and Ravitz’s typical melancholic flair, the duo’s styles merge seamlessly over the course of 8 tracks that harken back to the heyday of American techno and house. Following on from Powers of Ten, the pair continue to fix their eyes firmly on the stars, as Celestial Body Music’s song titles conjure visions of listening to Dance Mania 12”s on the ISS. With a tonal palette that features the well-trodden sounds of classic analog hardware like the TR-808, TR-909, TB-303, and SH-101, Ociya demonstrate their ability to breathe new life into these old instruments through thoughtful programming, arrangement, and mixing. This is made all the more significant when considering every song was recorded live to 2-track with no editing over the course of a few days. Sweet and savory both, the new material strikes a perfect balance between emotive sensibility and dance floor appeal.

Johannes Auvinen (Tin Man) and Max Ravitz (Patricia), two devotees in the cult of the TB-303, return to Acid Test with the Celestial Body Music series, a follow up to their 2020 LP Powers Of Ten.

Recorded in Ravitz’s studio in Asheville, NC, Celestial Body Music once again showcases the pair’s penchant for raw yet emotive dance music. With Auvinen’s signature TB-303 programming and Ravitz’s typical melancholic flair, the duo’s styles merge seamlessly over the course of 8 tracks that harken back to the heyday of American techno and house. Following on from Powers of Ten, the pair continue to fix their eyes firmly on the stars, as Celestial Body Music’s song titles conjure visions of listening to Dance Mania 12”s on the ISS. With a tonal palette that features the well-trodden sounds of classic analog hardware like the TR-808, TR-909, TB-303, and SH-101, Ociya demonstrate their ability to breathe new life into these old instruments through thoughtful programming, arrangement, and mixing. This is made all the more significant when considering every song was recorded live to 2-track with no editing over the course of a few days. Sweet and savory both, the new material strikes a perfect balance between emotive sensibility and dance floor appeal.

Dropkick Murphys veröffentlichen ein Album, das anders sein wird, als alles, für das die Bostoner Punkband bisher bekannt ist: Sie vertonen Woody Guthries Worte auf 'This Machine Still Kills Fascists'. Das Album wird am 30. September über PIAS/Dummy Luck Music (das bandeigene Label) auf CD erscheinen und am 11. November auf Vinyl.

In den 10 Songs auf 'This Machine Still Kills Fascists' übersetzen Dropkick Murphys Woody Guthries ewige Sticheleien gegen das Leben - viele davon aus den 1940er und 50er Jahren - in die Gegenwart, wobei die daraus resultierende Musik unheimlich relevant für die heutige Welt ist. Und das alles ohne ihr übliches Arsenal an E-Gitarren. Tatsächlich wurde kein einziger Verstärker verwendet, sondern DKM nutzten ihre ganze Kraft, um Woodys Texte zum Leben zu erwecken.

Dropkick Murphys veröffentlichen ein Album, das anders sein wird, als alles, für das die Bostoner Punkband bisher bekannt ist: Sie vertonen Woody Guthries Worte auf 'This Machine Still Kills Fascists'. Das Album wird am 30. September über PIAS/Dummy Luck Music (das bandeigene Label) auf CD erscheinen und am 11. November auf Vinyl.

In den 10 Songs auf 'This Machine Still Kills Fascists' übersetzen Dropkick Murphys Woody Guthries ewige Sticheleien gegen das Leben - viele davon aus den 1940er und 50er Jahren - in die Gegenwart, wobei die daraus resultierende Musik unheimlich relevant für die heutige Welt ist. Und das alles ohne ihr übliches Arsenal an E-Gitarren. Tatsächlich wurde kein einziger Verstärker verwendet, sondern DKM nutzten ihre ganze Kraft, um Woodys Texte zum Leben zu erwecken.

Mit mehreren Milliarden Streams auf seinem Konto ist Maluma ein herausragender Künstler der Latin-Szene auf der ganzen Welt. Endlich veröffentlicht Maluma seine 6 Studioalben auf Vinyl!

cheerbleederz are so excited to share their debut album this year and
Alcopop! Records are too!
As the band explains: "It feels like a long time coming, as we started working on it
in lockdown in 2020, writing, rehearsing, and recording in the pockets of time
when we could. It further bonded us at a time where being creative and having a
collective output became more important than ever. These are our favourite batch
of songs yet - full of character, hope, energy, misery, introspection and rage, we
wanted to write complex songs that reflected our complex selves!"
"Tender, fastidiously-crafted indie...feels like Phoebe Bridgers, but a little more
hoppy" - Get Alternative
"Earnest and deeply full of integral substance...will leave you yearning for more" -
Noizze 8/10
"cheerbleederz are a vision of mutual respect, support and friendship" - Girl Gang
Leeds
"A perfect amalgam of punkier and poppier moments" - For The Rabbits
"Our new favourite band" - LOUD WOMEN
"Splendid" - God Is In The TV Zine
"Superb" - CLASH

Collaboration between Broken English Club and Autumns exploring dub, post-punk atmospheres and political unrest. Debut EP is a bold and eclectic taster of this duo. Vacant Heads is the duo of Christian Donaghey (Autumns) and Oliver Ho (Broken English Club). Anyone familiar with their work, or underground electronic music in the last two decades, probably needs no further introduction. Having worked together (Autumns' album ‘Shortly After Nothing’ was released on Oliver’s ‘Death and Leisure’ label) and shared stages over the years. Vacant Heads was borne from a desire to collaborate on tracks and form a live unit.
Their debut self-titled EP is a bold taster of where Vacant Heads are at and where Vacant Heads are headed. These four tracks reek of a brutal and busted city - after-hours prowls with fuck all to do and nowhere to go. In “Crawling Up The Pisser”, Ho’s world-weary treatise on consumerism drools over the nag, nag, nag of the tightest and tautest post-punk electronics. “Heavy Rain Dub” is a ten-minute low-end cruiser. A deep, Digi-dub riddim underpins clarinet squalls, jaw harp twang and screwed vocals that feel like a nocturnal trip into Chris Morris’ ‘Blue Jam’…On Side B, “Street Toucher’s” rowdy snare hits, new wave synths and trademark distorted howl from Donagheyhint at the potential ferocity of their upcoming live shows. “Swan Dive” rounds off the EP - slowing down the tempo and pulling influence from the renegade sound of Adrian Sherwood’s revered production work with the likes of Tackhead and Keith LeBlanc. The heaviest breakbeats meet industrial churn and clipped vocal samples. Vacant Heads. Nothing up top. Pure body music.

The Netherland’s De Ambassade have dropped the ‘De’ and are now known as Ambassade. Optimo Music is extremely happy to be working with them and will be releasing their second album in 2023. Ahead of that is this glorious 2 track 12” featuring music that took our breath away when we first heard it. Both tracks are exclusive to this release.

We asked Ambassade to tell us a bit about the tracks…

“These 2 songs were born after a collaboration with Naama Freedman. She’s an artist from Amsterdam and former member of Ambassade. She brought a couple sketches to the studio and we came out with these 2 songs.

The lyrics on ‘Young Birds’ come from an old traditional English folk song from around 1903. It has been re-arranged a couple times throughout the years by multiple artists. The song reflects our development in sound and arrangement with extended synthesiser parts, less conventional song-writing. Also, us singing in English is a new path.

The pulsing song ‘Palette’ is a perfect combination of sequence and extended legato vocal parts. It creates a tense atmosphere which builds up to the very end.”

Strut present the first ever compilation of Balka Sound, bringing together their influential 1980s recordings, Hailing from Congo-Brazzaville and led by revered vocalist and ngonfi player, Nkibi “Lusialala” Albert, Balka Sound created their own unique musical world, re-imagining traditional Congolese Balka rhythms with electric guitars, electric bass and drums, alongside the traditional 5-string ngonfi.

Nkibi Albert had risen to fame in 1972 with his solo hit ‘Ah Lusialala’ and Balka Sound was created to bring the sound of Balka, a folk style from the Beembe people, to modern life and an international audience. With its roots in slavery and colonialism rumba was dominating the music scene in Congo while the philosophy of Balka Sound was to find its inspiration directly in local country life, to associate the modern and the traditional and to revive folk traditions that were dying. Founder member Henri Nsika Nkaya explains, “it was intended to be an update, a unification and an internationalisation of Congolese cultures.”

In 1979, during a festival organised by the Centre Culturel Français, the band won a recording deal to release their first album: Le 1er son du Balka, Lusialala et ses amis, recorded in just one take. Their success led to a second LP, Tu Kine Balka, recorded in Kinshasa in 1982. A third album in 1984, Afro Musik Creation, featured a more modern studio production sound. Their songs drew from traditional folk tales and parables, life lessons and the damage caused by rural exodus to the cities. By 1985, Balka Sound were working full-time with residencies at Chez Tantine Clara in Brazzaville, a well-known tourist venue, and the Frantel Cosmos Hotel.

In 1991, political tensions were rising in the country; civil disobedience and threats of a military coup were followed by a civil war from 1993 to 1994. The band eventually regrouped and were invited to perform in 1996 at the Palais des Congrès for the Fête National. Unfortunately, on the first day of new fighting in 1997, Balka Sound’s studio was looted and the band were forced to finally disperse.

This first compilation of the band’s music is curated and annotated by Makila Nsika Nkaya in conjunction with Balka Sound and has been fully remastered by The Carvery.

The third studio release from the There’s Something About Mary star Produced by Beserkley Records founder Matthew King Kauffman and pop-legend and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Famer, Kenny Lagun. Available CD & LP, with an exclusive green colored variant for Independent retail Jonathan Richman’s intended Beserkley catalog is available again. His true releases, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers and Rock ‘n’ Roll With The Modern Lovers are back, as originally intended, on CD and LP with exclusive coloured variants for Independent retail. Enter Back In Your Life. While credited to Jonathan and the Modern Lovers (which now included Andy Paley – Brian Wilson, Chris Isaak, NRBQ, John Wesley Harding), the release was Jonathan, accompanied on about half of the material by the Lovers. It followed the 'Live' record” Another musician on the record, and co-producer, was Kenny Laguna, whose work with Buddah Records (The Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Lemon Pipers,) plus Tommy James & The Shondells, Crazy Elephant, Bow Wow Wow, and Joan Jett. Laguna was a perfect person to put Jonathan’s sound where it needed to go. Featuring the Richman staples, “Abdul And Cleopatra,” “Affection,” and the title track, Back In Your Life signals the ending of his Beserkley tenure, but with much more to come . . .

Issued by Leo Fegin's visionary record label in 1993, this refreshed and revised reissue collection of Hungarian composer Tibor Szemző's chamber pieces with spoken text – composed at 1980s for the legendary GROUP 180 – is unlike anything else of its kind.

No one has survived life. Everyone has died from it so far. Man must realize that He is responsible for His own life and fate and must insist upon this responsibility beyond all limits. And since Man has dissociated Himself from the sphere of irrationality, He has no way of getting in touch with death, or of establishing control over it. How we achieve the final result is merely of secondary importance. If the vision is clear to everyone, there is no need at all to look back. In a time of complete mental disturbance, only one chance remains to us: crystal-clear thinking. This leads us back to total mental disturbance, which everyone has died from so far. (Pavel Havliček – Miklós Erdély – Tibor Hajas)

Text and Music | Language and Speech | Sound and Music

The common basis of the three works by Tibor Szemző heard on this album is the inalienable relationship to text – as an a priori principle. Text and music: the formal attributes of significance, intentions, and levels of meaning inherent in verbal communication as it is transformed into audible code. Language and speech: the structural level of communication, where it becomes purposeful expression, acoustic statements of variable modality. Vocalization as sublimation. Sound and music: By becoming an auditory signal, communication is deprived of its sense and reduced to musical articulation and abstraction.

Skullbase Fracture: Shards of reality – senseless, disconnected fragments of recorded “living speech” – simultaneously disintegrate and merge to create meaning through the musical process, while it is degraded and stylized to represent a single layer of the ambient noise one would hear in a hospitality setting.

Optimistic Lecture: The theses – like a practical, everyday user’s manual to cognitive tendencies and aims as they apply to the entirety of existence – convey their meaning through simplified rhythmic speech, galvanized into commands. As a counterpoint to recited prayers, they comprise a uniform soundscape.

The Sex Appeal of Death: The head-on simplicity of communication creates such extremely reductive musical interrelations that they cannibalize themselves in a necessary and inevitable fashion. And, in this manner, the text as well

Jon Neufeld and Martha Scanlan's unique alchemy on stage began ten
years ago when they first played Portland's Indie Roots festival Pickathon
together - It was an immediate friendship and musical connection that
has only deepened with time and years spent touring festivals and
venues across the country, the sense of adventure and improvisation in
the music becoming more fluid and expansive with each show, each
passing mile
In January 2020, when so much began to shift and live shows ground to a halt,
what began as a loose plan to work on a new record seemed to become a
musical journey of it's own, a necessary sort of refuge. They began passing
songs and ideas back and forth from their respective homes/studios; Martha in
Western Montana and Jon in Portland Oregon, often in the early hours before the
world was awake, often waiting to listen to the track until tape was rolling, almost
as though the improvisational live interaction onstage was occurring over time
and space, in slow motion. The result is a continuing collaborative project in
motion, an unfolding story. Welcome to the first mile-post, "Last Stars First Light"

In 2016 lutenist Sofie Vanden Eynde put her instrument aside for nine
months in order to recover from a severe burnout
Five years later, she felt the need to look back. Would it be possible, she
wondered, to use the intense, shared concentration between musician and
listener to convey sensations of over- stimulation, contrast, excess, stagnation,
emptiness, beauty and movement? Would it be possible to articulate the inner
reality of a burnout musically: to make a burnout audible, tangible,
understandable and, who knows, avoidable? The result is Vanishing Point /
Verdwijntijd, an autobiographical recital, a musical narrative, a journey:
somewhere between fragile comfort and cautious happiness. Writer Annemarie
Peeters drew on her interviews with Sofie to write a text that reflects the three
phases of a burnout. The run- up, the phase of total stagnation during, and the
cautious way out. Three colours, three seasons, three ways of being. Lurking
beneath Sofie's personal story are experiences that many will recognize: the
craving for efficiency, the sudden faltering, the unfamiliar and at the same time
disconcerting sense of emptiness, and the tentative search for a new balance.
But also the questions Sofie asked herself – about the connection between her
own little story and the big world that surrounds her – evoke wide recognition. Is
burnout a personal failure or a social symptom?
Sofie went in search of pieces from the solo lute repertoire that she intuitively
associated with the various phases of the text. This resulted in a recital with a
surprising palette of colours, styles and atmospheres. At times she chose the
rich, powerful sound of the theorbo. At others she chose the fragile, hushed
sound of the Renaissance lute. The Prelude by the French baroque composer
Robert de Visee combines phrases full of grandeur with breathing pauses filled
with intimate doubt. The music of John Dowland draws on the typically English
penchant for melancholy. In the fantasias and ricercars of Francesco da Milano, it
is not only the bright colours of the Italian Renaissance that resound, but also the
constant search for a new beginning. Luis de Narvaez's Cancion del emperador is
an arrangement for lute of the famous chanson Mille Regretz by Josquin Desprez,
a song that emanates serene regret for everything that is not. And in Robert de
Visee's Chaconne the same chord sequence revolves around its own axis. Hope,
tenderness, revolt and acceptance each step to the fore in turn.
At Sofie's request, Vladimir Gorlinsky created a new composition, one which
reflects the state of mind in the middle of a burnout. Vanishing Point balances on
the edge of total emptiness, a stagnation that at times is hard to bear. Vanishing
Point starts out from this stagnation to explore the different facets of burnout:
resistance and acceptance, fear and hope, stagnation and movement, absolute
solitude and the desire to interact again with the surrounding world. Vanishing
Point / Verdwijntijd can be listened to in different ways: not only as a lute recital,
but also as a radio play with voice, lute and soundscapes. Annemarie Peeters'
text was recorded by actress Katelijne Damen (NL) and voice artist Caroline
Daish (EN). Vladimir Gorlinsky created soundscapes based on the sounds of the
lute, which were magnified as if under a microscope. The soundscapes weave
themselves between the text and the lute music. Jo Thielemans created the
sound design and provided the live electronics.

The musician Roberto Enrique "Tito" Chicoma forged one of the most solid and constant career paths in Peruvian music. Self-taught, he started playing tenor saxophone in his father's orchestra, also playing the trumpet, piano or trombone when the occasion arose. In 1959, at the age of 23, Tito moved to Lima, where he soon joined ensembles such as the Koki Palacios and Armando Boza orchestras, which took him abroad for the first time on tour. A recognized musician in his own right, Tito would later decide to form his own orchestra, which was soon hired by América Televisión, starring on programs such as "El Show de Juan Silva", where he accompanied international artists that visited Lima. In 1966, Tito made his first record under his own name on the MAG label, performing two cumbias by the Colombian group Los Teen Agers. The praise the single received led to the recording of his first LP, "El ritmo de moda", where he continued to compile Colombian songs. At the end of 1967, he dedicated his new LP project to recording two fashionable rhythms at the time: cumbias y boogaloos. The Colombian cumbia became popular in Peru from 1964 onwards, when local orchestras like those of Andrés de Colbert, Mario Cavagnaro, Eulogio Molina and Lucho Macedo recorded cumbia hits, then the genre soared when groups like Los Pacharacos and Los Demonios del Mantaro mixed it with Andean music.

Desumanos' fresh mixture of guitar driven melodies is as evocative as it is playful. This instrumental project is made up of a dream-team of Brazilian producers and musicians. Kassin, on bass, was member of The +2's band and co-produced Gilles Peterson's Brazilian project Sonzeira, featuring legendary artists such as Elza Soares, Naná Vasconcelos, Wilson Das Neves_ While Liminha, on guitar, is a former member of Os Mutantes. His signature sound is heavily influenced by classic instrumental surf music, but tropical rhythms are also dropped in the mix. The band is completed with Felipe and Manoel Cordeiro (on guitar), one of the lambada originators, and Stephane San Juan (drums), currently playing with David Byrne. Across the tracklist of this Desumanos debut album we can find a unique combination of musical styles that are all filtered through the sieve of instrumental surf music without losing their roots anchored in tropical sounds such as cumbia, African rhythms and, of course, popular genres from Brazil such as forró or lambada. Ten original songs in which the guitar is the undisputed protagonist and the tropical atmosphere emanates through each note.

LPC1 is on limited Ultra-Clear vinyl. A well is a stone-encircled place of depth, keeping an abundance of water for survival. “Well” is also a phrase for pause, for transition in language. Our tears can well up and bubble over. To define ourselves as “well” is the most basic term of goodness. What’s on the other side of the well? Inside the tunnel of change, or this life, we can either feel intimidated by the darkness of uncertainty, or excited by the possibility of nourishment. Songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Jess Shoman wonders, “what the hell,” why don’t we go for the excess of love we deserve? Tenci’s album A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing becomes a gathering and collection of well-like vessels – cups, puddles, fists – to hold tight to this love and newfound joy. A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing is Tenci’s second album, coming after their 2020 debut My Heart Is An Open Field, which introduced Jess Shoman’s music explorations to the world. Shoman admits that their first album dealt with letting go of painful life experiences, resulting in emptiness. In this recent collection of wiser years and distance from that former grief, Tenci carries an opposite feeling, a celebration of self-rejuvenation. A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing shows Shoman steering their inventive music further and wilder, spilling over with 12 fable-like songs. In a combination of milk, coins, glass, water, and light, each song forms a spell to “fill my heart back up,” Shoman says, “by reframing complex feelings by turning my head sideways and seeing them in a different way.”

LPC1 is on limited Ultra-Clear vinyl. A well is a stone-encircled place of depth, keeping an abundance of water for survival. “Well” is also a phrase for pause, for transition in language. Our tears can well up and bubble over. To define ourselves as “well” is the most basic term of goodness. What’s on the other side of the well? Inside the tunnel of change, or this life, we can either feel intimidated by the darkness of uncertainty, or excited by the possibility of nourishment. Songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Jess Shoman wonders, “what the hell,” why don’t we go for the excess of love we deserve? Tenci’s album A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing becomes a gathering and collection of well-like vessels – cups, puddles, fists – to hold tight to this love and newfound joy. A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing is Tenci’s second album, coming after their 2020 debut My Heart Is An Open Field, which introduced Jess Shoman’s music explorations to the world. Shoman admits that their first album dealt with letting go of painful life experiences, resulting in emptiness. In this recent collection of wiser years and distance from that former grief, Tenci carries an opposite feeling, a celebration of self-rejuvenation. A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing shows Shoman steering their inventive music further and wilder, spilling over with 12 fable-like songs. In a combination of milk, coins, glass, water, and light, each song forms a spell to “fill my heart back up,” Shoman says, “by reframing complex feelings by turning my head sideways and seeing them in a different way.”