Suche:the aa sessions

The band that modernised Zimbabwean music, and by doing so revolutionised the music industry in their country. Available for the first time on vinyl (180 gramms) with gatefold cover, and now all tracks fully remastered !

In 1972, the country of Rhodesia – as Zimbabwe was then known – was in the middle of a long-simmering struggle for independence from British colonial rule.
In the hotels and nightclubs of the capital, bands could make a living playing a mix of Afro-Rock, Cha-Cha-Cha and Congolese Rumba. But as the desire for independence grew stronger, a number of Zimbabwean musicians began to look to their own culture for inspiration. They began to emulate the staccato sound and looping melodies of the mbira (thumb piano) on their electric guitars, and to replicate the insistent shaker rhythms on the hi-hat; they also started to sing in the Shona language and to add overtly political messages to their lyrics (safe in the knowledge that the predominantly white minority government wouldn’t understand them).
From this collision of electric instruments and indigenous traditions, a new style of Zimbabwean popular music – later known as Chimurenga, from the Shona word for ‘struggle’ – was born.

And there were few bands more essential to the development of this music than the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band. The band came into being when a young trumpet player named Daram Karanga offered to assemble a group to entertain the workers at a copper mine in the town of Mhangura.

The original line-up – which included legendary singer Thomas Mapfumo, who would bring the sounds of Chimurenga to the world in the early 1980s with his band the Blacks Unlimited, and Joshua Hlomayi, one of the pioneers of mbira- style guitar – started out playing the Rumba and Afro-Rock styles popular in the capital. Although this was a hit with the white owners of the mine, the workers greeted it with indifference. But when they started adding electric arrangements of traditional Shona music to their repertoire, the audience went wild.

With the addition of “Zim” sounds to their arsenal, the HCR Band became unstoppable. Their reputation spread quickly and, in 1974, they were invited to the capital to compete in a national music contest organised by the South-African Teal label. Not only did they win the competition, but they also attracted the attention of famed producer Crispen Matema, who quickly organised their first recording sessions.
On their first day at Jameson House studios, they recorded half a dozen songs, including “Ngoma Yarira” and “Murembo”, two singles that would alter the course of Zimbabwean popular music.
During the next five years, the band would relocate from their small mining town to the capital city, go through numerous line-up changes and pay a few more visits to the recording studio, without ever losing the raucous urgency that had transformed them from popular entertainers into titans of Zimbabwean culture.

From Mille Plateaux to Leaf, Staubgold and Raster-Noton, ~scape, or on his own label Ripatti, the Finnish artist Sasu Ripatti aka Vladislav Delay has been exploring various iterations of the dub culture vs. electronica, since 1997. His sonic crafts and unique signature sound has been sought after by an eclectic range of bands and artists, ranging from Massive Attack, Hauschka, Black Dice, Autopoieses, Animal Collective or AGF.

Somewhere between the old-school electronica culture, the soundscaping, the experimental paths of Lee Perry and Adrian Sherwood, ghostly clubbing anthems, minimalism, pop, jazz, without being, influenced, Vladislav Delay is building a drifting and coherent sound enigma.

Vladislav Delay met Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (the most prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production duo) thanks to a series of jam sessions. Trumpet player Nils-Petter Molvaer had been asked by the Jamaicans to join them and he invited Delay alongside guitar player Eivind Aarset to tag along, which eventually turned into the Nordub project.

The result of these jam sessions turned into an album, mixed and mostly produced by Vladislav Delay, released on the label Okeh. It was also followed by an extensive series of live dates. This one-shot reunion was the beginning of another story: a trio composed by Delay, Dunbar and Shakespeare.

In January 2019, Vladislav Delay went to Kingston and spent some days at The Anchor studios, to record drums and bass with S&R, some voice takes and a series of atmospheric field recordings. Back to Finland, Delay started to experiment with this precious material, mixing and overdubbing, in the comfort and quiet of his studio, based on the island of Hailuoto, Baltic Sea, Northern Finland, giving another feeling to the Jamaican trip.

This became a tribute to the 'dub spirit', but in a very personal way, far beyond any influence or "the obvious". 500-PUSH-UP is two worlds collapsing, merging, also showing some intriguing approach of the Jamaican groove, used as a filigree, like the echo or the ghost of reggae, converging and conversing with a post-industrial and experimental approach. To file beside experiments - for instance - such as Lee Perry's 'Scientist Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires' or the On U-Sound productions.

In 1976, seven Cabo Verdean musicians going by the name Voz Di Sanicolau gathered in a small recording studio in Rotterdam where they laid down an album of fearsome coladeira songs inspired by the music of their home island of Sao Nicolau.

The album took only a few days to record, which may explain the unexpected urgency that fires each track. Treble-soaked electric guitar lines snake back and forth through percussion-and-cavaquinho driven rhythms rooted in the sound of the islands established by the previous generation of Cabo Verdean emigres; subtle keyboards wash through the background, and the vocals, traded between Joana Do Rosario and To-Ze, alternately push the music forward and soar above it. The resulting album is both deeply felt and fiercely executed, and in its grooves one hears the sound of some of the finest Cabo Verdean musicians of their era locked in complete unity of purpose.

It should have been the beginning of something extraordinary; but the pressures of making ends meet forced the musicians back to their day jobs, and Voz Di Sanicolau vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving their lone album, Fundo de Mare Palinha, as sole proof of their existence. Forty-four years later the album sounds as fresh as it did the day it was recorded. It is unknown if dutch sound engineer Frans Rolland, who oversaw the recordings, knew he was helping to make history: during these sessions, Joana Do Rosario, whose majestic vocals were crucial to the sound of Voz Di Sanicolau, became the first Cabo Verdean woman ever to appear on a long playing record.

Succeeding last year’s collaborative single ‘Feel My Butterfly’ which saw Chicago house DJ/producer Parris Mitchell and Siberian producer-singer-songwriter Nina Kraviz go head to head via Riva Starr’s Snatch! Raw and Dance Mania, February 21st sees the two labels combine once more for a special, two-sided remix package of the stellar ghetto house track featuring reworks from the likes of Jamie Jones, Dance System, DJ Deeon, Radio Slave and DJ Slugo.

‘Feel My Butterfly’ stemmed from Nina Kraviz’s trip to Chicago where she met with Dance Mania’s label crew including their influential selector, Parris Mitchell. The track was birthed from a bout of rare collaborative studio sessions and is their first official release together - their only previous encounter being in 2014 when Kraviz remixed Mitchell’s ‘The Track Stars’, on Berlin-based label Deep Moves.

Assembling a handful of some of the most prominent names in modern dance music, Snatch! Raw teams up with Dance Mania once again to now present a comprehensive remix package of the duo’s acid-laden, dancefloor-ready masterpiece. Providing a touching tribute to the late influential American house artist and Wallshaker Music founder, Aaron Carl, the illustrious Welsh house DJ/producer Jamie Jones kicks things off by inflaming the track’s heavy bass and percussion by adding his own laser-style synths and atmospherics.

Reinforcing ‘Feel My Butterfly’ with helpings of meatier, old school house rhythm, the second remix sees London’s Dance System team up with Chicago house pioneer DJ Deeon to provide the track with some well-placed elevated pace and precision. On side B, the British-born Berlin-based DJ, Radio Slave takes more a of stripped back approach by opting to just few vocal snippets from the original and setting them to a tougher techno-infused aesthetic, whilst on the final rework, Chicago’s ghetto house spinner DJ Slugo redefines Kraviz’s hypnotic vocal lead.

LP IN STOUGHTON JACKET, PRINTED INNERS, OBI STRIP WITH FOUR OF SAMANTHA KEELY SMITH'S INCREDIBLE CONSCIOUSNESS MEMORY LANDSCAPES GRACING THE ALBUM SLEEVE.

The Pyroclasts album is the result of a daily practice which was regularly performed each morning, or evening during the two week Life Metal sessions at Electrical Audio during July 2018, when all of the days musical participants would gather and work through a 12 minute improvised modal drone at the start and or end of the day’s work. The piece performed was timed with a stopwatch and tracked to two inch tape, it was an exercise and a chance to dig into a deep opening or closing of the days session in a deep musical way with all of the participants. To connect/reconnect, liberate the creative mind a bit and greet each other and the space through the practice of sound immersion. The players across the four pieces of Pyroclasts are Tim Midyett, T.O.S., Hildur Guðnadóttir, and as always Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson.

The music on Pyroclasts is inextricably woven to Life Metal. It exists on the very same tape reels, was explicitly recorded by Steve Albini. The brightness and vividity of that glorious session glares through these four tracks, the precision and radiance, prismatic lustrousness of the saturation, the elemental sculptural shapes, the abstract renderings. It is a sister, or perhaps a shadow album. Or perhaps the now apparent miasma or aether. But it also exists in a form of a pause, a time space which exist in between and around the compositional structures of Sunn O)))’s titanic works. 

For the listener or recipient/participant there are deep rewards within the patience of pulling down the walls and letting the music feel, and feel the music. To be immersed will reveal great detail and colour, clarify image, encourage a depth of focus and stillness which may lead to a quite profound experience. Sitting inside the space of time. A deep form of elementalism, even atomism, and connection with presence moment, time and reality.

Sunn O))) would invite their audience to consider these points of perception when experiencing and listening to Pyroclasts. Sunn O))) would also invite and encourage the audience to use Pyroclasts as a lens to review and reexperience the complexity of the Life Metal album, and even to interrupt its sequence with Pyroclasts. This elaboration can bring the astute listener both abyssal, hallowed rewards.

Pyroclasts was recorded and mixed by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio on two inch tape July 2018, and mastered by Matt Colton through all analogue AAA process at Metropolis July 2019.

Stephen & Greg would like to dedicate this album to the memories of Ron Guardipee, Kerstin Daley & Scott Walker.

Ism opens audaciously with the spiritual mic-check “You Are Free To Choose,” a track that features bassist Junius Paul alongside Vincent Davis (drums), Justin Dillard (piano), and Corey Wilkes (horns). This is by no accident. In many ways, “You Are Free To Choose” captures the spirit of Junius Paul’s artistic roots. Corey, Justin, and Vincent were among the multigenerational cadre of Chicago musicians present when Junius chose to follow his own path of creative discovery at the storied Velvet Lounge on the South Side of the city in 2002.

Though he began learning his craft playing in church, Junius’s creative voice really developed during jam sessions at clubs like The Velvet alongside members of the AACM. It was iron sharpening iron, the most natural form of knowledge transfer. He explained The Velvet’s vibe in 2018: “It’s like in Africa.... If you had this society of diviners or medicine people, or you know, sages… The Velvet stuff is not secret; but there are certain aspects of it… if you weren’t there, you weren’t there.” The Velvet Lounge closed in 2010. But, of course, the spirit of the Velvet Lounge is not dead. “Tune No. 6,” recorded live at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago, is a sweet interlude here to remind us that jazz is alive, bristling with what’s yet to come.

As Junius pushes forward as a creative musician, he is careful to carry with him the spirit and the knowledge he’s gathered from those who have come before him. He is very literally a bridge between generations of the Chicago vanguard, currently playing in a handful of combos with Makaya McCraven (who produced several of the tracks on Ism) as well as a few of Roscoe Mitchell’s working groups – most notably the Art Ensemble of Chicago – in addition to fronting his own band.

After a triplet of solo 12"s, all courtesy of label main man Rupert Marnie, Hamburg-based imprint The Press Group are set to break 2018 in with the multi-flavoured TPG004 - a versatile debut VA that offers a fine close up on the label's whole cast of operating forces with some choice contributions from TPG's core tetrad including Youthman(29), Ten Letu, DJ Dodo and Marnie himself. Mind your backs!

Shape-shifting yet coherent as a whole, this collective effort puts together a swinging confluence of sounds and aesthetics - clearly aimed at the dancefloor but equally poised for laid-back chill sessions. First release on the label to reunite the entire crew, TPG004 mashes up a wide-spanning array of grooves and tempi in exploded view, giving full vent to each artist's idiosyncratic universe whilst establishing a hyper-modern sound ID, both infectiously funky and undeniably potent.

Casting its net far and wide: from the pared-down astronautical breakbeat of Youthman's 'Aemilia' to DJ Dodo's breezy jacking jazz-footwork hybrid 'The Machine' via Rupert Marnie's lithe ganjah-smelling shuffler 'Health' and Ten Letu's muscle-flexing acid roller 'Ah, You Shot Me!', it's a feast of feelgood beats that you're invited to, neatly connecting the dots between the guys' shared love for video game soundtracks, liquid dubstep, heavy jungle breaks, minimal house and further daydreaming, hazy harmonics to drape yourself into.