Search:the beautiful south

Sometimes it only takes a short getaway to the beach at the beginning of a new romance to open your heart to the wonders of the universe. On this record CV Vision taps into the ebb and flow of the sea, the cycle of coastal processes, and repositions the library sounds he’s mastered so well somewhere on the other side of the bay.

White noise washes like gentle waves up against analog synths and acoustic guitars, while the full spectrum of holiday possibilities are reflected: Surf’s Up (Let’s Trip) captures that roadtrip excitement, albeit with some psychedelic twist. But it’s not all sunshine - CV Vision makes sure to show the grey clouds too, with the sweet melancholy of Rainy Days.

Somewhere between dune rides and underwater dives, camp fires and sunsets, CV Vision captures a weekend at the beach in song. After a short moment of reflection (and some hallucinatory assistance), he wrote the lyrics and pieced the record together in the following weeks, to create what you see and hear now.

Instrumental interludes brush up against ballads and field recordings, to paint a wonderfully rich audio postcard from deep within CV Vision’s heart.

Kamai Music is growing quickly into one of the most interesting labels in the down and mid-tempo genre. After a successful debut compilation, the young Berlin label hits back with 'Fana'. A three track EP produced by Ulises. The Argentinian multi-instrumentalist merges in a very unique way his own South American roots with driving grooves and unexpected chords, colours and moods througout all tracks. Ali Kuru and Zigan Aldi join this release with two beautiful remixes. Last but not least Kamai celebrates with 'Fana' also their first vinyl release - including a digital bonustrack (redeem for whole EP via bandcamp) !

Vega Records proudly presents "Mercy Of Time," a breathtaking new collaboration between Grammy Award-winning producer, DJ, and songwriter Louie Vega and acclaimed South African composer, singer, songwriter, and multidisciplinary artist Msaki.

Widely regarded as one of Africa's most powerful and influential musical voices, Msaki has earned international recognition through her award-winning solo work and celebrated collaborations with Black Coffee, Sun-El Musician, and Prince Kaybee, including the multi-platinum anthem "Fetch Your Life." A South African Music Award winner, recipient of the prestigious 2022 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music, and Basadi in Music Songwriter of the Year, Msaki's artistry has resonated with audiences around the world. Her songwriting and vocal contributions to Black Coffee's Grammy Award-winning album further cemented her place among the continent's most revered contemporary artists.

Born from a creative meeting of musical minds, "Mercy Of Time" brings together the extraordinary talents of Msaki, Louie Vega, and renowned Cuban pianist, composer, and producer Axel Tosca. Written by Msaki, with music composed by Louie Vega and Axel Tosca, the song is elevated by the unmistakable rhythmic touch of internationally respected producer and dj Manoo, whose infectious drums provide the heartbeat of the record.

At its core, "Mercy Of Time" is a deeply moving and uplifting composition that blends deep songwriting, rich musicianship, and powerful rhythms into a timeless musical journey. Msaki's evocative lyrics and captivating vocal performance intertwine seamlessly with Axel Tosca's virtuoso musicianship and Louie Vega's signature production style, creating a sound that transcends borders, cultures, and genres.

Rooted in soul and infused with African Electronic and global influences, "Mercy Of Time" speaks to resilience, hope, healing, and the wisdom that comes with life's journey. The song beautifully captures the spirit of collaboration between artists from different corners of the world, united by a shared commitment to authenticity, artistry, and musical excellence.

With all forces combined, "Mercy Of Time" is poised to resonate with audiences across dance floors, airwaves, and listening spaces worldwide. A powerful fusion of soulful expression, world-class musicianship, and timeless rhythm, the release stands as a testament to the creative magic that happens when visionary artists come together.

¡Hola amigos! ¡Dieciséis guarniciones de chile picante, peyote loco y tequila helado! ¡Hermoso!
If there's one thing I'm good at it's finding records. It doesn't matter where in the world I am, I find records, the best records, the rarest records. And always in Mint condition. I have a knack for it. One place I like to hunt for records is South of the Border, in Mexico. You can find great records there, way out in those pequeños pueblos del desierto. Another great thing you can find is cactus.
Mexico is famous for cactus. You got your Ariocarpus, your Turbinicarpus, your Mammillaria. You got cactus of all kinds, big and small. Little ones like Eplithelantha, psychedelic ones like the peyote Lophophora, and rare ones like Aztekium. But my favourite is Mammillaria humboldtii. Now this one is very hard to find. The villagers over in Hidalgo know where it is, and they go high up in the mountains to look for it.

Now these guys, they take their time. But when they come down from those mountains, they bring back the most beautiful specimens. I really mean it, they're beautiful. They're like clumps of fluffy white golf balls, and they have these cute little pink flowers. Beautiful I tell ya. I pay precio alto for a good specimen of Mammillaria humboldtii.

Ancient Infinity Orchestra return with their third album, It’s Always About Liberation, a new record that deepens the vision of their acclaimed recent work while moving into darker, more searching emotional territory.

Conceived as a partner to It’s Always About Love, this new body of work shares its predecessor’s generosity and spiritual openness, but carries a different charge. Where the previous album focused on healing and warmth, It’s Always About Liberation is largely animated by struggle, perseverance and the desire for transformation while still offering a path to betterment. It is music made in full awareness of a fractured world, yet unwilling to surrender to it.

Like It’s Always About Love the album title draws inspiration from words spoken by Moor Mother during their 2024 We Out Here festival performance that deeply affected bandleader Ozzy Moysey: “It’s always about love / It’s always about liberation.” Those twin ideas became a framework for the two albums Ancient Infinity Orchestra were creating. If one album explored love as repair, this one explores liberation as movement, continually striving toward freedom, clarity and deeper connection.
The 16-member ensemble is led by double bassist and composer Ozzy, with a distinctive line-up that explains their sound better than any artificial genre divisions: two double basses, harp, saxophones, clarinets, violin, viola, cello, oboe, flutes, mandolin, congas, piano, drum kit, with bells, shakers and other percussion instruments scattered on the floor of live sets and recording sessions, ready for members to use whenever the spirit takes them.

This orchestration, and the overlap between membership and friendship, gives Ancient Infinity Orchestra a sound that is at once expansive and intimate, earthy, and cosmic, constantly shifting yet grounded in shared intention. The attention to intention and the inviting sonic world connects the music to artists ranging from Alabaster dePlume to Gondwana label boss Matthew Halsall.
Gradually, the Orchestra became a grounding force in the emerging jazz scene in Leeds, bringing together individuals from different musical backgrounds co-founding the Café Oto-inspired Limpet Club or co-hosting the monthly Sonic Plunge (‘a platform for adventurous experimentation’) and co-founding the Leeds Improvisers Orchestra. Additionally, the ensemble acted as a bridge between musicians in Brighton and Leeds, after Ozzy spent a stint back on the south coast between 2020 and 2022.

Their debut, River of Light, was a vibrant celebration of togetherness recorded in three days and released on Gondwana in 2023. A Maida Vale session for Jamie Cullum’s BBC Radio 2 show brought them to a broader audience, as did bookings at North Sea Jazz Festival and Gretchen, Berlin. Since then, Ancient Infinity Orchestra has become a by-word for music that could be framed as ‘spiritual jazz’. Whilst Ozzy avoids the phrase when describing his music, he’s crystal clear that his heroes are associated with those words – citing Art Ensemble of Chicago, Pharoah Saunders, Coltrane (Alice and John), and Don Cherry as major influences.

Across trance-like meditations, rising grooves, moments of grief and collective uplift, It’s Always About Liberation speaks to the battle within the mind as much as the inequalities of the wider world. It acknowledges the darkness but lets connection and creativity have the last word Ancient Infinity Orchestra is a gathering of voices, traditions, and energies converging into something timeless. Their music is a journey inward and outward, always reaching toward the universal.

'Where the Smoke Goes captures the conscious and unconscious of Johnny Coley in duet between 2020-2024 AD. Alabama-born, Marseille-based artist Turner Williams Jr. wraps a selection of his dear friend Johnny’s penultimate compositions in arresting tone poems.
'The music buzzes and hums with distant trains, trembling strings, and lapping water, haloing our protagonist in a humid glow as he considers whether horses can live to 70 years old, cigarettes potent enough to knock you on your ass, and orchids facing the wrath of winter storms.
'This work began in the first Covid spring, as Johnny's advancing multiple sclerosis gave way to a permanent domestic confinement and a final period of prolific creativity. Johnny braved the toxic gales of social media to share his thriving poetry and visual art practice and to keep in touch with friends like Turner, who had recently moved abroad. For the first time, Johnny recorded himself, sending Turner fresh poems, day and night.
'Taking cues from late era Coil and the operas of Robert Ashley, Turner approached these recordings both as language and pure sound, arranging accompanying mosaics that emerge as much from Johnny’s unseen text as his mercurial drawl. Tracks draw from Turner’s solo practice as well as sessions including Henry Birdsey of Old Saw, members of the French underground (Manoir Molle, Loto Retina, Mona Assayag) and close Birmingham collaborators (Jasper Lee, Jimmy Griffin, Ladonna Smith). The voice is parsed and played as an instrument and each poem becomes a score.
'There is Johnny’s poetry and Johnny’s voice. These are two independent yet interwoven instruments. For Turner, Johnny's vocabulary, cadence, and timbre carry all of the contradictions that he writes about. His work is a dialogue of rich contradictions. "He plays with Southern American vernacular speech in his poetry while embodying it with his speech, creating a zone of emotional frisson. He loved combining opposites. Rough yet soft was one of his favourite descriptors", Turner recalls, "That was Johnny. ” Upon hearing the completed record, Johnny likened it to "a beautiful wood box, that when you open it there are fabrics shot through with silk threads and sharp fall woods smells - supporting and decorating the poems that fall out of them. ”
'This record captures something unconscious, atmospheric, and gives it unexpected materiality. Smoke that you can feel like grass under your feet. Stars that you can touch like a lover. Meeting for the final time in the summer or 2025, the time for words had passed so they just held hands and listened to the album opener Stargazer in silence as Johnny drifted off to sleep.'

The second Jai Alai album takes its name from a track on Winners (1979) by New York band Kleeer, who evolved from Pipeline via The Universal Robot Band before becoming a major force on the soul and boogie scene; their full-length “Open Your Mind” is simply sublime.

Two originally unreleased tracks will delight completists of Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick. Aretha co-produced “The Boy From Bombay” with Quincy Jones — perhaps a little too quirky at the time — while Warwick’s Ashford & Simpson-produced “Someone Else Gets The Price” has all the hallmarks of a missed hit.

Philadelphia’s Pieces Of A Dream, discovered by Grover Washington Jr., were fêted across Europe throughout the 80s. Their Elektra album Imagine This (1983) yielded the wonderfully moody “It’s Time For Love”. Further mining of the Elektra vaults yields a highly collectable Phat Phili Mix of Teddy’s “Believe In Love”, alongside a jewel from Leon Ware’s Rockin’ You Eternally (1981). I was lucky to know this genius, still underappreciated as a master of sensuous soul; “Got To Be Loved” ranks among his finest.

There’s not enough space here to fully cover Gerald Levert’s “What About Me”, but my liner notes to the Jai Alai release JAR14 “Top Of My Head” detail just how talented he was — and this is further proof.

The two least-known artists make a strong impression. Andy Bey’s “I Know This Love Can’t Be Wrong” recalls Jon Lucien at his best, while Phajja — a promising Warner Bros. signing in 1997 — disappeared after just two albums; their Cutfather & Joe production here is as polished as The Emotions.
By the time Etta James recorded “Evening Of Love”, she was four decades into her career, delivering this beautiful ballad with total assurance. Truly epic Southern soul.

Lance Ferguson (The Bamboos, Menagerie, Rare Groove Spectrum) presents his lush Exotica inspired 2016 album on LP for the first time in a limited edition deluxe gatefold sunset swirl coloured vinyl edition, with each pressing having a unique pattern.

For fans of Air, Martin Denny & DJ Shadow.

'The Double Sunrise' is a re-imagining of Exotica seen through Ferguson’s own lens, which includes Pop and Hip Hop elements plus samplers, synths and drum machines thrown into the mix. That combination of beats and lush cinematics owes as much to Exotica pioneer Martin Denny as it does to Air and DJ Shadow.

Guest vocalists include Melanie Pain (Nouvelle Vague), who brings a sweet Francoise Hardy and Jane Birkin influence to her songs, and Australian singer Meg Washington. As well as her own successful career, Bamboos fans would know Washington from her vocals from “The Wilhelm Scream” and “King Of The Rodeo”, as well as “Beautiful Trash” from the 2011 Lanu album ‘Her 12 Faces’.

Ferguson's own instrumentals are also gems of lush, nostalgic delight.

Reviews for ‘The Double Sunrise’

“Even with the clear influence of South Pacific exotica, this second LP is still typical Ferguson: tight, snappy and doused in retro airs.” - Rolling Stone Magazine

“Bamboos supremo Lance Ferguson uses South Seas exotica as a jumping-off point for a record that deftly crosses datelines. Giddy effervescent soundscapes such as “Tiny Dots” sit back to back with breakbeat grooves like “Nightmarchers””. The Age

“This is one of those summer albums you will return to every year. Stunning.” The Daily Telegraph

“The concept for The Double Sunrise is very specific, but it's executed brilliantly...It's one of those records that evokes a place and a feeling that most of us only ever dream about.” - Double J Radio (Feature Album)

Some words from Nat about the music – “For this recording I composed some songs using more “exotic” (for want of a better word) modes,
which I have always meant to explore in more depth but never really got around to very much. The first song for instance, Red, Gold & Green, uses an Ethiopian scale.
The title comes from the colours of the Ethiopian flag, which is also symbolic in Rastafari so has a kind of double meaning, like a lot of my songs.The title track, Path of Enlightenment, uses several modes,
starting in a major key then moving to the Phrygian mode, then to a minor key. The piano solo is in a 28 bar minor blues form. Menat is based on a mode of the Byzantine scale,
I’m not sure if it has a particular name or not. Amenhotep was the name of several Egyptian pharaohs,
Amenhotep IV being the original given name of Akhenaten.When I was writing this song it put me in mind of my song, Akhenaten, simply because they are both in 5/4 time,
so I decided to give this one a pharaonic name too. Spheshile is a Zulu word (and sometimes name) that means “beautiful gift”, the title was suggested by a friend from South Africa.
All this means nothing of course if the music doesn’t tell a story, I think the unfamiliar modes allowed us to speak of interesting things that may not have come to us otherwise.
Finally, I chose to use the quartet format for this recording because it occurred to me that it tends to make for a more cohesive group sound, and it had been a while since we recorded this way.”

Jimpster delivered some great releases in 2023, most notably his Natural Child collab EP with Crackazat as well as his Tribute EP featuring South African vocalist Mavhungu and including heavy Osunlade remixes. He also produced some of his best remixes to date including Thakzin’s Don’t Let Me See, Blaze’s Wonderland and Detroit Rising’s Rocket Love.

It’s always a good day to announce a new Jimpster EP on Freerange and with two captivating originals plus a stunning Atjazz remix you’re in for a treat! You’re My Ecstasy sets the tone with Jimpster’s trademark deep Rhodes pads, punchy bassline and shuffling classic house drum groove. He once again manages to strike a great balance between soulful, musical, warm and just a touch moody.

Next up we have The Passion which builds a deep and jazzy mood around a 4 bar piano progression whilst the sampled interviewee gives his insight into how he maintains his passion for music. London based trumpet player KingCrowney adds some lovely horn parts, emphasising the jazz feel to compliment the spoken word.

Atjazz gets well and truly stuck in on his remix of The Passion. Reportedly completed in just two studio sessions the hardest working man in deep house (as Jimpster calls him) brings his well-loved deft touch introducing an beautifully syncopated bassline and classic Atjazz drums making for a clubby interpretation for the deep, discerning dance floors.

Random Color ReVINYL Edition. Never has a Songs: Ohia album's process been so integral to its overall feel as is the case with DIDN'T IT RAIN, the band's sixth proper full-length. The album, like the working class South Philadelphia neighborhood in which it was birthed, has a real used goods kinda feel to it. Engineer Edan Cohen employed what some may consider "old-fashioned" recording techniques -- the entire album was recorded live with no overdubs, the full band playing in one room with the players always within arms' reach of one another; singers Jason Molina, Jennie Benford and Jim Krewson (the latter two of Jim & Jennie And The Pinetops) sharing microphones singing live together, sometimes sitting in chairs, sometimes standing. The result is a sound which resembles the warmth and personality of the classic Muscle Shoals Sound recordings of the early- to mid-70s: Willie Nelson's PHASES & STAGES, the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses", and others by Aretha Franklin, Boz Scaggs, Bob Seger, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Wilson Pickett.Inspired by the Mahalia Jackson song of the same name, the title track is a beautiful song about the shifting tides of life and the old cycle of "a lot of shit going down before shit clears up". It's a damn fine place to start an album that seems in no hurry whatsoever to make a universal statement, instead perfectly content to walk its own path toward resolution. And damn if Songs: Ohia principal songwriter Jason Molina hasn't gone and created a record that is even more intensely personal and healing than any of his previous works. Neil Young had his AFTER THE GOLDRUSH, this is Molina's DIDN'T IT RAIN. Indeed, this is the album with which Molina really leaves his mark as a serious songwriter and artist. On 1999's genre-bending Ghost Tropic full-length, Songs: Ohia made it clear that it could make a cohesive album that took its listener on a journey from front to back. Its dislocated feel set a haunting tone, and its largely instrumental and drone-like quality was the process of the Ohia eluding itself and its own tendencies, searching for the underside of its roots freshly yanked. With DIDN'T IT RAIN, Molina & Co. return to the beauty of the song form and offer up a startlingly soulful and introspective song cycle in which Molina -- accepting a comfortable degree of anonymity amongst the other players -- meditates on what it means to feel rooted again (in the city of Chicago, where he's called home for the past three years), sounding more sturdy at his core than ever.

暗く湿った夏の夜、小さなボートはあてもなくさまよう。不穏さと美しさが同居するこの海は自分自身のようでもあり遠く離れたどこかのようでもあった。

Shinichi Koboyashi’s music as Bot1500 has such a beautiful signature to it. Using the layers and language of ambient IDM, artfully arranged pads & chords and crisp vectored breaks, he’s been creating a beautiful and highly individual sound.

The Black Sea, His first album since 2022’s Surreal on AD93’s sister label Lith Dolina, spaces things out more and focuses inward with a palette of minimalism and increased emotional resonance. It’s been a focus for Shinichi across his self-published studio work in the last few years.

The album’s tracks feel increasingly rooted in the principles and logic of dub. Utilising more space, more silence, and more focus on the simplicity and elegance of the composition folded into radiant arrangements of melody, snare, shade and echo.

The sea is both an inner landscape and a geographic image that hangs over the record’s mood. A dark humid summer night, like that on Japanese coasts. A small boat sails aimlessly. An eerie tone, but with a glimpse of beauty. The water is melancholic, enveloping, and endless.

Each track is written at 140bpm save for last track “White Flocks” at 120, for the image of heading south to close out.

This new album compiles several songs made in the years following Black To Comm's classic "Alphabet 1968" album. Originally released on the seminal Type label in 2009 (and to be reissued on Cellule 75 this year) "Alphabet 1968" combined the sound of vintage shellac and vinyl loops with broken electronics and field recordings, the press release mentioning disparate influences "ranging from Moondog to Basic Channel by way of Bernard Herrmann". In a beautiful one-page review in The Wire magazine (later reprinted in his book Ghosts Of My Life) Mark Fisher compared Richter's music to JF Sebastian’s miniature automata in Blade Runner ("with their bizarre mixture of the clockwork and the computerised, the antique and the ultramodern, the playful and the sinister"), ETA Hoffmann's inventor-magicians and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's 1886 tale of Thomas Edison's (fictitious) construction of an artificial human.

Now titled "Coh Bâle" (inspired by a strange dream) these recordings were supposed to become a follow-up to said album but for reasons unknown it never materialized and the album seemed forever lost. At the time Richter started to dive deeper into several strains of (so-called) world music aka the folk music of Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe as well as liturgical and medieval music, the Kraut-Electronica of Harmonia and several certain Mediterranean experimentalists from the 1980's who started to merge their mostly electronic and field recording based compositions with traditional musics from all over the world by way of new sampling technology.

Many of the songs for the album were recorded while travelling and at various residencies around Europe: a detuned piano in a Thessaloniki basement (Richter played at a children's birthday party there), vintage synthesizers in the GRM studios in Paris, decaying acoustic instruments found in an old Black Forest mansion, childrens' voices at a workshop in Karlsruhe's ZKM Institute; then mixed on headphones in the ICE trains running between these places and his hometown Hamburg.

"Coh Bâle" is taking inspirations from old Nonesuch Explorer and Ocora LP's, Crammed Records, 80s Mediterranean Ambient (Nuno Canavarro, Roberto Musci) combined with the DIY spirit of Deux Filles and Flaming Tunes and the playfulness of Asa Chang & Junray. The songs are both mysterious and transparent, intricate and frugal, vibrant and patient. One of the album's unexpected climaxes is a gorgeous (artificial) berimbau version of the Welsh traditional "Iechyd o Gylch".

No two songs feature the same instrumentation and many acoustic sources (pianos, flutes, wood percussion, viola, tablas, autoharp) were disassembled and later coalesced into new configurations or used as virtual instruments; later combined with samples, field recordings, electronics and (on a few tracks) autotuned vocals reminding of recent works by the likes of Claire Rousay or More Eaze.

We had to wait for a worldwide pandemic for Richter to dig deep into the vaults and finally bring these recordings to light. This is the 2nd release from his archives after the "Diode, Triode" LP which presented Musique Concrète/Acousmatic recordings made at INA/GRM and ZKM. Another massive Double-CD (MM∞XX Vol. 1 & 2) was released last year featuring collaborations with 33 artists such as Andrew Pekler, Richard Youngs, Eric Chenaux, Maja Ratkje, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh of Jerusalem In my Heart, GRM boss François Bonnet (Kassel Jaeger), Felix Kubin, Timo van Luijk (In Camera, Af Ursin), Luke Fowler and many others, showing Richter's versatility and his willingness to reinvent himself for every new release.

Marc Richter is widely known under his Black To Comm moniker, having released (at least) 12 albums under this alias in the last 20 years. He is currently signed to the Thrill Jockey label. Richter composes soundtracks for film and has worked with visual artists such as Mike Kelley and Ho Tzu Nyen. He also records as Jemh Circs and Mouchoir Étanche for his own Cellule 75 label (named in tribute to the late Luc Ferrari).

Reissue of South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim's classic 1986 LP Water From An Ancient Well on magenta coloured vinyl It features the pianist/ composer with a very strong septet, including such superior musicians as tenor saxophonist Ricky Ford , altoist Carlos Ward , baritonist Charles Davis, and trombonist Dick Griffin who are heard at their most creative and emotional on these eight Ibrahim originals. Many of the songs (particularly "Mandela," "Song for Sathima," "Water From an Ancient Well," and the beautiful "The Wedding") are among Abdullah Ibrahim's finest compositions

They Came Like Swallows is the first album-length collaboration between Thurston Moore and Kramer (now officially Bonner Kramer), two giants of alternative/ experimental music. The accomplishments and influence of these two artists in the world of independent music cannot be overstated and the result of their artistic union is a startlingly cohesive statement that burns through landscapes of primitive outsider rock, avant-garde composition, progressive ambient and further locales boldly and beautifully unnamable. “Kramer and I reconnected in Miami, Florida, a few years back, many many years after each of us had departed NYC on separate life adventures. It was only a matter of time before Kramer and I started making plans to record together and with his irrepressible due diligence he quickly set up a mobile recording contraption in the pad I was decamped in, the Florida sunshine flowing through the palm leaves, lithe lizards skittering across the windowsills, and we just went for it.

Kramer had the idea to cover a Joy Division tune, a left turn from the improvisations we had been tracking, though wholly in keeping with both our sensibilities of light and dark unifying in transcendent songwriting, both of us devotees of 'the song' as well as 'the freedom.’ What transpired is They Came Like Swallows, a session we immediately felt should exist as a prayer to the war-torn souls of the families of Palestine continually decimated by the brutality of genocide. We agreed beyond words to offer our music as a sonic activism and as a beneficent energy. This album is our duo exchange for human dignity, it is our soul music for any semblance of a peaceful planet.” ~ Thurston Moore “For the first time in our nearly 45 years of friendship, we had identical time windows open to make a record together,” recounts Kramer. After all this time not a moment is wasted as the duo immediately taps into the heightened core of improvisational tension across these seven offerings. Volcanic opener “Urn Burial” notches a similar historic union (John Cale and Terry Riley) to meet the circumstances of the moment, with swirling mists of organ and pounding toms over guitar that thickens the atmosphere with jagged, grimy dissonance.

Solemn strings open the second track, “The Redness In The West,” with Kramer’s cello and viola in dueling bow beneath the high tension drive and sustain of Thurston’s electric guitar, tapping out a Morse code of tension that mounts endlessly into a fog of inevitable war by the end. Moore and Kramer’s sense of experimentalism is in free and full grandeur throughout They Came Like Swallows, though the duo keep a strong and constant sideways eye on melody, composition and architecture, to the ends that any strict lines between song and improvisation are blurred beyond qualification.

As if to punctuate this point, Swallows closes with a nightwork cover of Joy Division’s “Insight,” a doleful coda that breathes out with a solemn inner grace under Thurston’s instantly stylistically recognizable guitar melodies as they weave into he and Kramer’s unison voices. As the lone vocal piece and only traditional ‘song’ form on the album, “Insight” is unique to this set and as a closing statement draws connective lines back to the kind of dynamic, electrified melodicism that wove deep, melancholy patterns into the untamed fire of Sonic Youth’s Sister and Daydream Nation. In the album’s final moments, the two voices repeat the lyric “I’m not afraid anymore” as mantra, underscoring the heavy, unsettled themes and methods that preceded it. Kramer describes the creative process of They Came Like Swallows: “I had composed and recorded a few pieces at my home studio over the course of a couple weeks. Thurston was spending the winter in South Florida, so I flew down and spent a few days recording his guitar parts in his home there. Watching him spontaneously compose his parts was pretty astonishing, to say the least. Once we'd finished working on those pieces, we began improvising and following wherever the music pointed us, and another few pieces were born. We got straight to it, without anything driving us other than the joy of finally working together.

My personal goal was to remain present and catch as many surprises as I could from Thurston's guitar work, and there were plenty during those few days. We had a fucking blast.” Thurston’s contributions here will be readily familiar to any acolytes of his other works, the through-line between his inspired playing, cradled in Kramer’s meticulous, solid arrangements. “If I had to make this record again, I'd do it all exactly the same way,” Kramer says. “It’s like jazz, you don't think about it. You just do it. It was miraculous, and you don't fuck with a miracle.”

They Came Like Swallows is the first album-length collaboration between Thurston Moore and Kramer (now officially Bonner Kramer), two giants of alternative/ experimental music. The accomplishments and influence of these two artists in the world of independent music cannot be overstated and the result of their artistic union is a startlingly cohesive statement that burns through landscapes of primitive outsider rock, avant-garde composition, progressive ambient and further locales boldly and beautifully unnamable. “Kramer and I reconnected in Miami, Florida, a few years back, many many years after each of us had departed NYC on separate life adventures. It was only a matter of time before Kramer and I started making plans to record together and with his irrepressible due diligence he quickly set up a mobile recording contraption in the pad I was decamped in, the Florida sunshine flowing through the palm leaves, lithe lizards skittering across the windowsills, and we just went for it.

Kramer had the idea to cover a Joy Division tune, a left turn from the improvisations we had been tracking, though wholly in keeping with both our sensibilities of light and dark unifying in transcendent songwriting, both of us devotees of 'the song' as well as 'the freedom.’ What transpired is They Came Like Swallows, a session we immediately felt should exist as a prayer to the war-torn souls of the families of Palestine continually decimated by the brutality of genocide. We agreed beyond words to offer our music as a sonic activism and as a beneficent energy. This album is our duo exchange for human dignity, it is our soul music for any semblance of a peaceful planet.” ~ Thurston Moore “For the first time in our nearly 45 years of friendship, we had identical time windows open to make a record together,” recounts Kramer. After all this time not a moment is wasted as the duo immediately taps into the heightened core of improvisational tension across these seven offerings. Volcanic opener “Urn Burial” notches a similar historic union (John Cale and Terry Riley) to meet the circumstances of the moment, with swirling mists of organ and pounding toms over guitar that thickens the atmosphere with jagged, grimy dissonance.

Solemn strings open the second track, “The Redness In The West,” with Kramer’s cello and viola in dueling bow beneath the high tension drive and sustain of Thurston’s electric guitar, tapping out a Morse code of tension that mounts endlessly into a fog of inevitable war by the end. Moore and Kramer’s sense of experimentalism is in free and full grandeur throughout They Came Like Swallows, though the duo keep a strong and constant sideways eye on melody, composition and architecture, to the ends that any strict lines between song and improvisation are blurred beyond qualification.

As if to punctuate this point, Swallows closes with a nightwork cover of Joy Division’s “Insight,” a doleful coda that breathes out with a solemn inner grace under Thurston’s instantly stylistically recognizable guitar melodies as they weave into he and Kramer’s unison voices. As the lone vocal piece and only traditional ‘song’ form on the album, “Insight” is unique to this set and as a closing statement draws connective lines back to the kind of dynamic, electrified melodicism that wove deep, melancholy patterns into the untamed fire of Sonic Youth’s Sister and Daydream Nation. In the album’s final moments, the two voices repeat the lyric “I’m not afraid anymore” as mantra, underscoring the heavy, unsettled themes and methods that preceded it. Kramer describes the creative process of They Came Like Swallows: “I had composed and recorded a few pieces at my home studio over the course of a couple weeks. Thurston was spending the winter in South Florida, so I flew down and spent a few days recording his guitar parts in his home there. Watching him spontaneously compose his parts was pretty astonishing, to say the least. Once we'd finished working on those pieces, we began improvising and following wherever the music pointed us, and another few pieces were born. We got straight to it, without anything driving us other than the joy of finally working together.

My personal goal was to remain present and catch as many surprises as I could from Thurston's guitar work, and there were plenty during those few days. We had a fucking blast.” Thurston’s contributions here will be readily familiar to any acolytes of his other works, the through-line between his inspired playing, cradled in Kramer’s meticulous, solid arrangements. “If I had to make this record again, I'd do it all exactly the same way,” Kramer says. “It’s like jazz, you don't think about it. You just do it. It was miraculous, and you don't fuck with a miracle.”

Cathartic avant-rock, literate DIY folk & experimental composition exploring displacement, love, climate change, belonging & the places we call home - RIYL Jim O’Rourke, Richard Youngs, This Heat, Richard Dawson, Flying Nun. ‘Real Home’ is the new album by the Manchester-born, London-based artist Kiran Leonard. His sixth album proper (not including innumerable tour-only CD-Rs and short-run cassettes), since his precocious debut in 2013, ‘Real Home’ finds Leonard invigorated by inspiration and experience, making passionate, literate, and mercurial music that explores displacement, love, memory, climate change, connections to home and more. Encompassing songs recorded after moving to South London, ‘Real Home’ reflects on ideas of belonging and domesticity through folkloric, stream-of-consciousness songwriting. Across nine tracks, Leonard traces lived impressions of the household and the city, expressing sentiments of dislocation, alienation and stasis, but contentment too. Infusing the avant-rock effervescence, terraced dynamics and visionary lyricism of his music with what he defines as a greater sense of openness, Leonard is as versatile, fervent and imaginative as ever on ‘Real Home’, yet his music is somehow more intimate, affecting, and acutely expressive. Shaped by dual considerations of simplicity and formalism, ‘Real Home’ is by turns beautiful, allusive, and ruminative, an album on which Leonard considers what his songs have resembled in the past and what they mean now. In recent years, Leonard has crafted eloquent chamber music inspired by the likes of James Joyce and Clarice Lispector (‘Derevaun Seraun’), responded to contemporary politics and communication breakdown in the digital age (‘Western Culture’), and compiled solo works and ensemble recordings for a longform ode to Jonas Mekas and to one of Leonard’s enduring themes; home (‘Trespass On Foot’). On ‘Real Home’, Leonard reiterates this abiding thematic focus yet ascends to new, different heights, in music of cathartic delicacy and dissonance where all the myriad dimensions of his work to date seem to crystallize. There are sinuous songs about struggle and defying the pace of city life through drift and diversion (‘Pass Between Houses’), stirring songs of intense feeling and crescendo, described as a form of speculative detective fiction (‘Theatre for Change’). There are touching solo piano ballads (the title track), symbolic contentions with carbon capture and climate change (‘Utopia of Bog’), modes of experimental minimalism (‘Void Attentive’), and other profuse feats of compositional range, embroidered with wild tendrils of narrative and lyrical depth. A record to pore over, and get lost in. Exemplifying the vast aesthetic scope of Leonard’s music, lead single ‘My Love, Let’s Take The Stage Tonight’ is inspired by country lodestar Hank Williams, Russian poetry and a late period love poem by William Carlos Williams. Yet for Leonard, the song signals a sense of accessible materiality, and is the product of a more linear approach to writing songs: “My imitation of the great Hank Williams, in spirit if not in substance…This is one of the best efforts on Real Home at a song-as-object. Looking at it now I realise I was trying to write a song that made itself known as a song to the listener, and I wonder whether that’s crucial if you want a song to transcend its context. And that this is either accomplished through a total openness – by being inviting, by laying the tricks of the song out plain to see, as Williams and his many ghostwriters did so well – or by adopting a knowing aloofness, positioning oneself against the listener but letting it be known that that’s what it’s doing. In this song I try both, but mostly the former: as in, I wanted to write a song where every line follows on from the next.” Imbuing the endlessly elaborate and inventive qualities of his music with a newfound streak of candid, clear-cut melodicism, Leonard has reached a special place in his artistry, on a record that feels familial, and expresses closeness. Assembled with affiliates including Lauren Auder, Otto Willberg, Jasper Llewellyn (caroline), Tom Hardwick-Allan (Shovel Dance Collective), Magda McLean (caroline, The Umlauts), Alex Mckenzie (caroline, Shovel Dance Collective), Isabelle Thorn (Dear Laika) & more, the recording process had a significant influence on the subject matter of ‘Real Home’, in sessions defined by close-knit camaraderie and artistic eccentricity: “The theme of the home obviously recurs throughout the record; the album was mostly recorded in domestic spaces with friends, and the name of the album is Real Home. I like the qualifier ‘real’, like you’re getting past the cloak of the word and towards the thing-itself…also nearly all the percussion in this record was recorded on items from my dad’s shed (jam jars, sandpaper, blocks of wood, etc). Real home record!” ‘Real Home’, like anything by Kiran Leonard, is a record of dazzling multiplicity. Yet it’s a companionable prospect with a central premise; a collection of songs where listeners old and new can find a home. An album led by a scene; of Leonard standing at the threshold, ready to welcome you inside. “Exceptional songs that linger” - The Guardian // “An autodidact of amazing talent & energy” – Pitchfork // “A ridiculous amount of talent…confrontational, celebratory, provocative or perverse – he manages all of these emotions & more” - The Quietus /

MEMORIALS jump off the waterslides and head above the clouds with their stunning second album proper, 'All Clouds Bring Not Rain'. The duo of Verity Susman and Matthew Simms (formerly of Electrelane and WIRE) locked themselves away in a studio in a barn secluded deep in the woods in southwestern France and re-emerged with a beautiful, unusual record that is both melodic and unconventional. For such an ambitious album it's striking that it was written, performed, recorded and mixed solely by the two of them. Sounding like an unearthed classic, MEMORIALS twist their influences into their own unmistakable sound. Imagine Nico singing with Can produced by David Axelrod and you're somewhere in the right ballpark. The record draws inspiration from a wide range of music including folk, dub, post punk, experimental tape music, 60s soul, garage rock, 70s spiritual jazz and Canterbury prog. Verity's distinctive, unadorned singing is a focal point of the record, moving from tender to wild. Her vocal melodies quickly become earworms, providing the tuneful heart around which the songs' more unorthodox elements are arranged, which is where Matthew's unconventional approach to recording and production comes to the fore. With their adventurous arrangements, classic songwriting skills and innovative production techniques, MEMORIALS have created another mesmerising listen that's accomplished and compelling in its unique approach yet remains dizzyingly immersive - just like their acclaimed live shows. "Exciting and unpredictable" The Guardian "Everything you'd expect from a duo adept in the strange and esoteric, while also in thrall to pop music's melodic bent." The Quietus "Stunning, kaleidoscopic tunes" Electronic Sound "Engagingly eclectic" UNCUT "Divinely tuneful yet confrontational" The Wire "Kaleidoscopic art-pop and adventurous psych-rock with an immersive, experimental aura." KEXP.

YonYon's commemorative 1st album ‘Grace’ shines with new brilliance through analog sound－the long-awaited LP release!
This album features 14 tracks in total, including 7 popular songs from the album “Grace”, plus 7 remixes.
Guest artists include KIRINJI, SIRUP, South Korea's leading R&B singer-songwriter/producer SUMIN, PEAVIS, and other artists resonating across generations
and styles. Sound production features top-tier creators active globally, including ☆Taku Takahashi (m-flo), Chaki Zulu, grooveman Spot, and South Korea's
rising producer Slom. The album effortlessly crosses genre and language boundaries, weaving diverse musical elements into a rich soundscape.

Formed in Southend in the late 90’s, Beatglider’s tale is a familiar one taking in early acclaim only for momentum and promise to be dashed by major label statis and indifference.

After the release of the debut long-player, ‘40 Days Of Summer’, in 1999 the band signed to Sony subsidiary Lakota and decamped to LA to record its follow-up, ‘Dreaming Of Roads’, an album that was never to see the light of day.

And now, over 20 years later, ‘Dreaming Of Roads’ eventually gets a deserved release on 28th February via the Arlen label. A beautiful 11-track understated delight which musically falls somewhere between the likes of Elliott Smith, Grandaddy, Yo La Tengo and Sparklehorse, the album has not only stood the test of time, but arguably sounds as fresh as ever in 2026.
The tracklisting of the album - recorded in Los Angeles at the famed Sound City studios - is as follows:

The dreamy harmonising of Everything But The Girl. The propulsive urgency of The Strokes. The lilting folk-pop of The Coral. The introspective songcraft of Belle and Sebastian. The bittersweet, lyrical side-eyes of The Beautiful South. Vona Vella have all these elements and so many more, all weaving together to form a contemporary sound both gossamer delicate and fiercely robust. Since their eponymous debut album in 2023 (released on Strap Originals, Pete Doherty’s label), the seed of their signature sound – wistful indie-pop harmonies, exquisitely blended male/female vocals – has not so much grown as erupted through the dream-pop meadow into a towering, flowering beanstalk.

Today, with their second album Carnival, the former indie-pop duo have spectacularly evolved into a dynamic five-piece band, with key musical contributions from the musicians they’ve so successfully toured with over the last two years, drummer Jake Bott (who they’ve known since they were 17), bassist Claud J Melton (who they found on TikTok through a search for a female bassist), and guitarist Dexter Howell (a friend of a friend). As a five-piece, their innate pop sensibilities are now newly bolstered by a confident, thrilling propulsion, izzy and Dan, still the main songwriters and vocalists, are thrilled with the sound, where the possibilities are endless. Vona Vella may be names after two flowers, but there’s nothing twee happening here.

cLOUDDEAD's debut album, compiling six 10" EPs that appeared between 2000-2001, is aurally dense and obscured. A sprawling mass of miniature beat-suites and Dadaist lyrics, this strange and beautiful 3xLP would influence a myriad of sub-genres (cloud rap, hauntology, lo-fi hip-hop, etc.) in the two decades since its initial release.

Only the three members of cLOUDDEAD – Why?, Doseone and Odd Nosdam – can speak to the group's origins, but in the context of underground hip-hop towards the end of the 20th century, their arrival makes perfect sense. Cincinnati had a vital scene; home to Scribble Jam, an annual confluence of MCs, DJs, B-boys and graffiti artists. While the trio soon relocated to the Bay Area where they co-founded the Anticon collective, their Midwestern roots – in ramshackle basements of off-campus hovels, as the "cerberus of Southern Ohio" – would remain the atomic heart of their early recordings.

As Chris Martins writes in the liner notes, "The only reason we know their names today is because of how loudly and curiously they aired their insularity. They rewrote the entire world as they knew it through their own fucked perspective, and when those mysterious 10-inches started popping up in record shops, it wasn't just a puzzle to investigate: there seemed to be a whole cosmology hidden in those grooves."

Each side of the album represents one of those elusive 10-inches, each embodying a universe unto itself. Opening salvo "Apt. A" and "And All You Can Do Is Laugh" are perhaps most emblematic of the cLOUDDEAD experience. Why? and Dose create a new language through boundless non-sequiturs, sing-song non-choruses and call-and-response hooks, while Nosdam's dexterous production shifts from crackling ambience of Flying Saucer Attack to tight Ohio Players drum breaks and oblique film samples.

Taken all together, cLOUDDEAD is an original interpretation of hip-hop in the surreal Y2K glow – a bizarre meeting point between William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and MF DOOM's Operation: Doomsday. All it took was a Dr. Sample SP-202, Tascam cassette eight-track and cheap RadioShack mic. There's truly nothing like it.

This edition has been faithfully restored by Nosdam. European exclusive version comes on clear vinyl, incl. fold-out poster and liner notes insert.

'In 2023, sound artist and composer Weston Olencki toured across the American South. Beginning in their hometown in South Carolina, they snaked a circuitous path from the mountains of West Virginia to the banks of the Mississippi River. As the miles accumulated, so did the initial seeds of new work.
'Instruments and artifacts they acquired hitched a ride in the backseat, while songs and sounds filled their portable recorder: water in its various states, the familiar insectoid buzz of those summer nights, trains cutting through the landscape, the traditional music that lived alongside the communities that kept it. Olencki took it all in, and over time, found ways that these experiences coalesced into a bramble-like perspective of time, where past, present, and future intersect in ways both barbed and beautiful.
'Broadsides, Olencki’s newest solo full-length is the multilayered result of this journey. The album follows their landmark release Old Time Music from 2022, which presented radical interpretations of traditional tunes from Appalachia and throughout the South alongside original compositions that drew significantly on archival recordings. On Broadsides, Olencki rejects delineations between the unmoored avant-garde and the rootedness of one’s cultural heritage, revealing their porous and intertwined nature. “My mother was a quilter. Her mother before that,” they write in the album’s liner notes. “Quilting, like music, is a practice of embedding knowledge and remembrance into the very core of the thing you are making. It’s not just about the materials, but how they’re reassembled, recontextualized, stitched, woven to form new patterns - the minutiae of craft holding significance to those looking to find it. Stories woven from stories, never told the same way twice.”
'Like all great road trips, Broadsides unfolds slowly and continuously, with moments of dramatic reverie punctuating the endless melt of highway in the rearview. We’re immediately confronted by the uncanniness of revisiting old haunts, as Southern storms break through the initial churn of the freight locomotives of Alabama. Olencki’s interpretation of the bluegrass standard “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” captures the euphoria of melancholy in motion. The permutational plucks of banjo are bounced around the frame by a computer, its pitches determined within algorithmic sequences and transcriptions of classic three-finger licks. The tonalities of old-time are smeared and stretched until all that’s audible is the insistence that Heaven might be real.
'In the album’s second half, “Omie Wise,” a murder ballad made famous by Doc Watson, follows an interlude recorded on the river in North Carolina in which the titular character’s body was laid. Ghostly echoes of a dozen other renditions float through the substrata as Tongue Depressor’s Henry Birdsey accompanies them on the pedal steel guitar. The album’s central composition, “all my father’s clocks,” is a profound meditation on entropy and impermanence. The sound of their father’s extensive clock collection ticks away as Olencki pulls a bow across the length of an autoharp sourced from a rural strip mall. The instrument was left as detuned as it was found, the resonance of its deep bass drone and clanging high-end the result of years of neglect and the warping effects of Southern humidity.
'Historically, broadsides were an early form of broadcasting, an often- musicalized telling of current news pasted in the public square. The name was later taken up by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen in the 1960s, whose Broadside magazine published songs and social commentary when American folk music resurfaced as an urgent way of communicating the multifaceted politics of its time.
'Olencki borrows the phrase to recall both this old form of songmaking and that later prominent reexamination of traditional music’s role in modern life, but also to draw attention to the fragmented and machine- mediated way heritage is diffused in this very different, but no less pivotal, moment.
'As a sanitized past is used as justification for current violence and domination, we can turn to these artifacts to better understand the history of ourselves, but only if they are consciously pushed to evolve. Broadsides represents one personal, striking vision of what far-flung futurisms could be respun from = these high, lonesome sounds: a reflection of the unbridled joy and deep sorrow inherent to living together through time, and a desire to push further into the untold and unknown.'

Lofi-surf producer Shimon Hoshino presents the pre-release single "Nagisa" as a 7-inch vinyl, featuring one of South London’s most promising artists, edbl.

The track combines Shimon Hoshino’s beautiful piano melodies and slow-tempo lofi beats with edbl’s soulful, mellow guitar, creating a gentle wave-like groove that rises
and falls like the shore. The laid-back sound feels comforting, wrapping the listener in a musical embrace that stretches endlessly like the sea.

Another track, "Pages in the Breeze" was inspired by Shimon Hoshino’s home base in the Shonan area, particularly the multi-use commercial complex Shonan T-SITE,
which supports local life while proposing new lifestyles. The track captures the warmth of turning book pages and the gentle flow of everyday moments, resulting in a
soothing sonic experience.

The artwork and design are by UNCUTS, a graffiti artist active on the Chilly Source label.

In 1991, Chris Whitley made his debut with the beautiful album Living with the Law, which immediately showcased his brilliant songwriting and unique guitar playing. Blending blues, roots and folk, the debut was positively received by critics and aficionados of these more traditional genres. Growing up, Whitley listened to Southern radio, which played artists such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. His career started by playing with artists like Arto Lindsay and Michael Beinhorn. Interestingly, Whitley lived in Belgium for a short time in the 1980s, where he started his career playing guitar for 2 Belgen and Nacht und Nebel. In the 1990s, he started his solo career at Kingsway Studio in New Orleans, owned by none other than Daniel Lanois. The result was an album characterized by the use of traditional instruments such as the slide guitar and banjo. All of this is accompanied by his splendidly timbred voice and honest lyrics exploring themes such as freedom, desire and human struggle. Sadly Chris Whitley passed away in 2005, but his influence on contemporary songwriters and blues artists remains strong. a_Living with the Law is available as a 35th anniversary edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on gold coloured vinyl and includes an insert.

KEG announce new EP Girders set for release September 2nd on Alcopop! Records/BMG. The band also share the frenzied and whip-smart new single Kids. The band, who have been hotly tipped across the board for 2022, will also play their debut UK headline tour plus festivals which include Green Man, End Of The Road, Latitude and more. Kids strides into the deep lineage of British art-punk songwriting that is both self-referencing and outward-facing - while being consistently innovative. Few singles manage to take aim at both the restaurant chain Itsu and the comedian Michael McIntyre, but KEG somehow pull it off.

Following a widely successful debut single release Heyshaw in the summer of 2021, KEG saw major support from publications such as NME, DIY, Dork, So Young, Clash etc. Leading into their debut EP Assembly, released October 2021, KEG toured with contemporaries such as Squid and Talk Show.

KEG are a seven piece. Albert (vocals), Joel (bass) & Will (synth) grew up together around the seaside Yorkshire town of Bridlington; and like many artists growing up in removed quarters of the country, they shared a yearning to leave. Spreading to different parts of the country after leaving school, they found their bandmates in their respective cities and found one another once again on the southern shores of Brighton.
Frank (guitar), whose background resides mostly in hip-hop, afforded a unique pulse with a guitar sound which is manic, discordant but firm. Jules (guitar) whose songwriting sensibilities come from a love of cadence and craft of beautiful soul ballads, imbued the band with his structured sense of composition. Both Charlie (trombone & shell) and Johnny (drums) come from classically trained Jazz backgrounds.
The announcement will receive digital marketing support and will launch with new tour dates announced (below) with pre-order for presale access available.

Sometimes, the most beautiful stories begin simply between friends, over laughter, late nights and shared music. That’s how the collaboration between Oscar and the Wolf and Roméo Elvis was born. What started as an unexpected jam session after dinner soon evolved into something much greater: a modern-day Romeo and Juliet where two distinct worlds, North and South, pop and rap, light and shadow, meet and merge effortlessly.

Their first collaboration, “Ceiling”, captures that magic: the perfect balance between intimacy and grandeur, where contrast becomes harmony. Premiered live before 100,000 people during Belgium’s National Day celebrations, the single immediately resonated, becoming a radio hit and surpassing one million streams within weeks.

Now, the duo present JARDIN, an eight-track EP arriving this December. Here, Oscar and the Wolf and Roméo Elvis push each other beyond their comfort zones, exploring new sonic landscapes and blending their unique identities into one sound. From the pulsating energy of “Crocodila” and “Je M’en Balec”, to the tender alternative rock ballad “Lose My Baby”, and the groove-driven “Chargé (Monet)” or the club-ready “Bon Sense”, JARDIN unfolds like a living garden, a vibrant space where every track blossoms into something new.

To celebrate the release, the duo will perform together for the first time on December 15 and 16 at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. Both shows sold out within hours, a testament to the excitement surrounding this groundbreaking collaboration.

With JARDIN, Oscar and the Wolf and Roméo Elvis don’t just unite genres and languages; they build a bridge between regions, emotions and artistic worlds, a celebration of sound, connection and friendship.

Elations Recordings presents "Tairen", an evocative cello recording marking the debut solo release of Melbourne/Naarm-based cellist LEM (Lauren Meath). This deeply personal work is an impressionistic reflection on place, memory and self at the intersection of classical technique and folk sensibility; expanding Meath's lateral, avant garde approach to sound with piano and textural percussion, resulting in a work that unintentionally falls into the post-minimalist tradition.

Conceived as a single piece across five movements and recorded between 2022 and 2024, "Tairen" reflects on memories of a formative place and period for Meath. Each movement scores part of an imagined landscape, mirroring the cliffs and expansive southern ocean of the coastal Otway ranges, remembered and reinterpreted. While tied to a place and time, ultimately "Tairen" is an exploration and expression of self.

Each piece explores this landscape, retaining its own identity while unified by recurring themes, moods and motifs. Meath emphasises restriction in her approach, creating subtly shifting layers of slowly evolving cello lines with expressive unstructured free playing bursting out. In all but one movement ("Bird"), cello is performed in a single take, utilising joined looping pedals on a semi acoustic cello from luthier Paul Davies. Equal parts meditative and expressive, uplifting and melancholic, the instrument becomes a proxy for the human voice creating a work that is intensely beautiful.

While Meath has a background in classical and pop, LEM has always been a more interior, personal project on the boundaries of minimalism and folk; in the past only as a live project featuring only herself, taking a lateral approach to sound through bow, harmonics and voice. While built on this foundation, "Tairen" expands Meath's typically minimal live approach with piano ("Sky") and additional textural percussion. Produced and engineered by James Tom and Danny Smith and with additional percussion from Dylan Lieberman. Mixed and mastered by Cam Parkin.

South London's restless pulse runs through British-Bengali musician Tara Lily's latest collaboration with the enigmatic King Krule. On 'Quiet Nights (Early Takes)', the pair craft shadowy soundscapes where hazy jazz chords and warped synths blur into something raw and hypnotic. The standout track, "Tropical Storm," described as a "lucid dream playing in our minds again and again" captures flashes of early Archy Marshall chaos, refracted through Tara's sleek and sleepy vocals, over a bed of guitar pedals, synths and DIY beats. Talking about the project Tara says: "'Quiet Nights' are some of the early sketches from a deadly quiet and beautiful period of time. For myself it was a time of stripping back, dropping down into the ground and channelling something raw and real."

Moving freely through time and space via experimental DIY recordings since 2009, Joasihno return with their fourth album "Spots".

“Find your spot in the shade,” a truly laid-back and incredibly soft-spoken MC once advised, yet in a world that seems to get shadier every day, it’s probably time to finally get out and face the sun. Southern German experimental pop duo Joasihno – initial solo founder Cico Beck (The Notwist, Aloa Input, Spirit Fest) and drummer/composer Nico Sierig (Instrument, Fehler Kuti) – seem to know exactly when it’s time to shine. Idiosyncratic genre tweakers since day one, they have been operating at their own pace, mostly staying in their own shady corner. Yet, almost a decade after their most recent “Meshes” (an album that came with a whole legion of tiny music robots), it’s high time for them to take over more corners, to reclaim even more spots between lo-fi and sci-fi, retro electronica and contemporary classic. Drawing upon influences as varied as Reich, Riley, and Ryuichi, múm, Meek, and Moondog, while also nodding to other experimental twosomes (e.g. The Books), the duo’s fourth full-length “Spots” is set to arrive via Alien Transistor in late 2025.

Leaving soulless automation and all things artificial to others, Joasihno launch the latest record on “2 Squares” that feel like a peaceful, almost bucolic version of retro space age: lights blink ever so softly as easy-going bass tones point at today’s introspective flight arc. Electronic shapes align and things lift off – with a majestic 8-bit sunrise soon appearing right in front of us. Whereas playful title song “Spots” is a miniature Rube Goldberg kind of device, with quirky plucked strings and glitches setting off more and more contraption layers, “Crackleboom” is uncharted energy, an open landscape, an expanding bonfire that leads to a long-forgotten piano, all dust-covered in some kind of saloon. Space might be only noise to others, here, it’s foreboding screeches (“Dizzle Whistle”) that make room for A-side center piece “Forest Lights”: a steady beat that lures us to a clearance in the woods. Things break and shatter in the distance, but this spot right here is for hypnosis, dancing, sylvan spirits. And yeah, it’s surprisingly hot down here in the undergrowth…

Opening side B with a fun banger that takes the unhinged dancing to the playground – “Characa Orb.” feels like French kids on swings going crazy, a tipsy, tongue-in-cheek electro blow-out between Oizo and Orbis Tertius –, things get even more cinematic throughout the second half. Even the cheapest, lo-fiest gear is sufficient to make “The Slow Hour” glow like true, timeless pop royalty. In fact, the very same pop spirits roam and celebrate freely in the chirpy coves of mesmerizing “Detune Lagoon” – more hand-crafted sci-fi/lo-fi loops you’ll only find after facing the ghosts of Lynch or Sakamoto on those night-time trails under the “Deep Moon”. It’s all DIY spots, spots that leave room to dream or dangle, drape yourself over or dive into. Returning to the leafy bower on a melancholy post rock tip, we eventually learn that “Death Is Real” – and so we’re left with a laterna magica that turns and turns and turns. It’s a beautiful spot where light and shadows keep on dancing, just like they’ve always done, ever since the dawn of this madcap universe.

Amazing Things is an album about death which isn't morose, slow, or quiet. A year ago Darren lost a friend to cancer. Amazing Things is an album about death which isn't morose, slow, or quiet. Instead, it is packed with joyful, melodic guitars and some of Darren's prettiest tunes. It is sometimes very sad, but also heartfelt, loving, and rewarding. Darren recorded the album almost entirely solo and this time he has dug deep into his primary instrument, the electric guitar, creating a sound that is rich in tone and texture. Darren Hayman is a British songwriter best known for his work with late 90s band Hefner, but has since made more than 20 albums dealing with astronauts, the English Civil War, William Morris, Lidos, and Thankful Villages. He lives in South London with his dog.

First Word Records are very proud to bring you 'Ghouls', the 6th studio album from Bastien Keb.

Through the reflective and introspective multi-mood journey of its 19-tracks, this album spans psychedelic-chamber-funk, warped anti-ballads, cinematic instrumentals, Ethio-jazz & ethereal ambience.

Part soundtrack, part beat-tape, part memoir, this is a dreamlike soundscape sewn together from half-forgotten memories & late night breakdowns.

Entirely sample-free, this album is full to the brim with musical experimentation, with Keb's compulsion to make all the individual pieces of music independently; combining strings, harps, saxophones, theremins, clarinets, flutes and trumpets.

He signals to the fuzzy, nostalgic nebulous of mid '90s skate videos, as well as harking back to the scores & moods of movies like The French Connection, Taxi Driver, The Warriors and La Haine. There are whispers of sounds in the air from jazz clubs, street preachers & Turkish restaurants.

Keb describes the sonic experience of this album simply as this… "You're half awake, and half asleep, but you're warm…"

For this 19-track opus, Keb is joined extensively by Malik Ameer Crumpler; a poet, composer, editor and professor based in Paris, who's been involved in numerous albums while writing for various forms of experimental media.

A multi-instrumentalist originally from the Midlands, Bastien Keb (aka Sebastian Jones) previously released his highly-acclaimed album '22.02.85' on First Word back in 2017; this new album being a very welcome return to the Worldwide Award-winning UK independent label.

His music has been widely supported across BBC Radio in the past by DJs including Gilles Peterson, Huey Morgan, Huw Stephens, Jamie Cullum, Lauren Laverne, Mary Anne Hobbs, Nemone and Tom Ravenscroft. This is in addition to glowing press reviews from the likes of Pitchfork, The Guardian and The Line Of Best Fit.

He's built up a steady fanbase through his extensive catalogue over the years, with material for labels like Def Pressé, Gearbox, One-Handed Music and most recently for Shabaka Hutchings' Native Rebel Recordings imprint, on a collaborative project with South London's Confucius MC (Speakers Corner Quartet).

Keb concludes "this record is for anyone feeling lost in a world that seems to have lost itself without knowing it. It's for the people who know that the world is missing the beauty of the lights in the distance, whilst being distracted by new shoes and flashy phones..."

'Ghouls' is due to be released on vinyl & digital worldwide, November 14th 2025.

Acclaimed electronic musicians, producers and sound architects Max Cooper and Rob Clouth team up for a new collaborative EP; a dark, playful four-track dive into ambient, breakbeat and techno’s subconscious flow, featuring a standout vocal performance from South London rapper FLOHIO.

Recorded over a series of spontaneous London sessions, “8 Billion Realities” channels years of creative exchange between two of the genre’s most quietly innovative artists and is a result of a decision between the longtime friends to refrain from conceptual overthinking in favour of instinct and joy.

As long-time admirers of each other’s audio/visual work, Cooper and Clouth collaborated in London together after both emerging from intense, idea-heavy album cycles. What followed was a series of exploratory sessions, half-improvised, half-built around half-formed thoughts.

The result is a club-ready EP that feels alive and human: imperfect and hypnotically rich.

“Rob Clouth has been one of my favourite electronic music producers since I first heard his work in 2011,” says Cooper. “His work is more full of ideas and structure than anyone else.” “We were both coming from extensive conceptual studio albums and both in the mood for simplifying things and having some fun with the music, so that’s what we did”.

For Clouth, no stranger to Max Coopers Mesh label having previously released an array of EP’s plus his 2020 debut album “Zero Point” this record marks a new chapter, both creatively and personally.“Something pretty new for me is collaborating,” he says. “You kind of have to when to stop, because if you develop an idea all the way to its endpoint, the other person has nowhere to jump in.”

The first “A Moment Set Aside” began as a break from another idea, a live, unplanned improvisation based around arps and ambience. “The track was written in about as long as it took to play it,” says Cooper. “It was pulled from a 1 hour recording session, more or less as you hear it… the energy and excitement grew as the unplanned moment bore some magic.”

“The lesson being that sometimes it’s helpful to set aside a moment without forcing results, and let the subconscious have something to say.” What followed was darker, heavier. “Asymptote” is detuned techno. Subversive and euphoric in its descent. “We found a sort of brain mangling, half consonant, half wandering detuned techno pulse, which we started chatting about being a sort of pit of spiralling body parts we were falling into,” says Cooper. “It was a lot of fun to work on and let loose with bigger kicks than I usually ever get to unleash.”

Then came “8 Billion Realities”, featuring a standout rap performance from FLOHIO; an emerging figure in the UK grime and rap scene. The track was inspired by conversations about algorithmic echo chambers and hyper-personalised online worlds. Frantic, direct, and South London to the core, FLOHIO brings this tension to life. Her sharp, intense flow cuts through distortion and rhythm, landing the track somewhere between chaos and control instantly making it one of the most striking moments in either artist’s catalogue. “A different reality for all 8 billion of us,” says Cooper. “We weren’t sure if it would work… but there was something about the energy of the percussive idea and the story which felt like it might fit.” “Then FLOHIO had a play with it and straight off the bat absolutely killed it, not just with the lyrics and energy, but the harmonising too, it was a beautiful process.”

The final piece on the EP “Candeleda” originated from Clouth’s solo experiments with a live rig made entirely of vocals and keys, using his self-developed “cheatbox” system. “He put forward a beautiful stumbling melodic sequence which we bounced back and forth adding harmonies and synth layers,” says Cooper. “It rounds off a collection covering some of the breadth of music that we both love.”

Phylipe Nunes Araújo's songs are as rich and varied as the diverse landscapes they were written in. The hills of Pernambuco, the lagoons of Alagoas, and the beaches of Bahia are all woven into his stripped-back, folk-inspired Brazilian songwriting. As part of a wider movement of musicians originating from Brazil's Northeast, Phylipe sees the process of music-making as the search for beauty itself.

Collaborating with fellow Northeastern artists Bruno Berle, Batata Boy and Nyron Higor among others, Phylipe's debut album represents the latest flowering of this exceptionally talented community's creative search.

The Northeast holds an almost sacred importance in Brazil's collective cultural imagination. The region bore witness to the brutal histories of Portuguese colonization and the African slave trade, while simultaneously amalgamating the diverse cultures, religions and traditions of those who have called it home. Countless Brazilian music greats - Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Hermeto Pascoal, Djavan and Luiz Gonzaga - have emerged from this vast cultural melting pot.

Born in Caruaru, Pernambuco state, and raised in the city of Santa Cruz do Capibaribe (famed for its textiles industry), Phylipe describes his music simply as "Brazilian music from the Agreste of Pernambuco". His masterful compositions thread together regional rhythm, folk poetry and sophisticated harmony.

Phylipe's musical foundations were laid in youth, listening to the local elders rehearsing their forrós, attending São João street parties in front of his house and watching the Junina Quadrilhas dance through his neighborhood. At street fairs he would read the Literatura de Cordel (handcrafted pamphlets of Brazilian folk literature), and watch the rhyme battles between cantadores, violeiros, and repentistas, who improvise verses on daily life, social commentary and philosophy. This tradition of Northeastern folk poetry proved particularly formative for Phylipe as a lyricist. "I always try to write things as simply as possible. I believe that beauty must be easily understood. If I can facilitate the path to the message, there's no reason not to. It's something I learned from the traditional poetry here: it's more beautiful if everyone understands."

At the age of 11, Phylipe first got access to the internet. As he explains: "Still in adolescence I was also able to discover things like The Beatles and Nick Drake - I started to get to know music from the rest of the world and later to correlate that with my local musical experiences." Rich with extended chords and artful dissonances, it's clear from his compositions that jazz and bossa nova also took hold, but he's quick to eschew stereotypes. "Inevitably, people associate a Brazilian musician playing a nylon-string guitar with bossa nova..." "But the foundation is another story," he asserts, "It's the Northeast."

On the guitar Phylipe experiments with the binary rhythms inherent in traditional Northeastern music. Coco, frevo, maracatu and baião are recontextualised, placed alongside Brazilian popular music (MPB), gentle lullabies and stunning ballads. "In these 10 songs, I am experimenting with making pop music on a nylon-string guitar with my foundation in the Northeastern songbook."

The contemporary musical community which Phylipe belongs to developed initially in Pernambuco's neighbouring state Alagoas. Phylipe lived in its capital Maceió for three years, where he built friendships and musical bonds with Bruno Berle and Batata Boy who together produced his album. Bruno also sings in unison with Phylipe on the duet "Valise", a song Phylipe wrote aged just 15.

In recent years, Phylipe, Bruno and Batata have migrated south to São Paulo, where the majority of the album was recorded. Other collaborators on the album include Alici, who provides vocals for the ebb and flow of "Temperim", Nyron Higor who plays drums on lead single "Asa" and the sweet indie moment "Ziz"", bassist Meno Del Picchia who plays on the mystical baião "Bixin" and the propulsive "Subindo a Ladeira", and Raphael Coelho who joins Bruno and Batata on percussion for "Santa Cruz", Phylipe's hypnotically powerful portrait of his hometown.

Unlike anything we have heard from her before, Okkyung Lee returns to Shelter Press with "Just Like Any Other Day: Background Music For Your Mundane Activities", a deeply intimate body of recordings at the juncture of ambient music, minimalism, and the baroque, that stands as radical intervention with what experimental music can be, and the place that organisations of sound occupy in our lives. For more than two decades, Okkyung Lee has stood at the forefront of the most radical trajectories of experimental music: a virtuosic cellist and improviser, renowned for her creative rigour and emotive depth. Particularly noteworthy for her range, dexterity, and adaptability, over the last five years Lee's output has revealed unexpected shifts and developments that move far afield from the realms of free improvisation for which she is most well known. 2020's "Yeo - Neun", a heart-wrenching, ambient chamber work - drawing inspiration from the Korean popular music of her youth - was issued by Shelter Press to great critical response, followed closely by "Teum (The Silvery Slit)" - one of a series engrossing electroacoustic works created at Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris - on Portraits GRM, and then "Na-Reul" in 2021, regarded by Lee as a closing statement of more than two decades living in New York, which set the precedent of her allowing her emotions to fully occupy the forefront of the music for the first time. Marking her return to Shelter press, "Just Like Any Other Day": Background Music For Your Mundane Activities", encounters Lee upturning the apple cart once again, weaving a profoundly intimate artistic statement on completely unexpected terms. Like its three aforementioned predecessors, "Just Like Any Other Day" belongs to broadening shift in Lee's approach to composing that roughly aligns with her return to her native South Korea, having lived in the United States since her late teens. Infused with a deep reengagement with her own culture and relationship to memory, it is equally a response to those critical challenges and questions provoked by significant life change. Worked on in isolation, and continuously returned to, over the course of four years, the album's nine pieces began with a simple recognition that experimental music is not always what we imagine it to be. It is a practice and a pursuit - a music for which, at its inception, the outcome is unknown - rather than an idiom defined by certain syntaxes, approaches, and qualities of structure and sound. From this departure point, Lee began to inquire after the utility of music itself: what is it for, what does it do, and what place does it (or can it) occupy in our lives? This solitary and durational journey, each composition gradually moving through different phases and evolutions over years, led Lee toward uncharted ground: a music that is not only playful, introspective, and seductive, but also intended to provoke a relationship to experimental music beyond its normative expectations. Rather active or deep listening, it pursues passive listening. Rather than a grand statement, it is discreet. Rather than virtuosity, it embraces the elegant and direct. Even more strikingly, for the first time, the music of "Just Like Any Other Day" encounters Lee leaving the cello entirely behind. Created at home on keyboard, computer, and an inexpensive cassette recorder, "Just Like Any Other Day" presents a remarkable form of ambient music - organisations of sound that become their own environment, to be occupied - intended, as the album's subheading infers, as Background Music For Your Mundane Activities. An expansion of the creative pathways opened by the Korean pop imbued compositions of Yeo - Neun, aspects of electronic process explored by "Teum (The Silvery Slit)", and the emotive foregrounding of "Na-Reul", each of the pieces presented across the two sides of "Just Like Any Other Day" implies something far greater than the limits of its own temporarily: a mood, provocations of memory and place, mirrors for the solitude within which it was made, and palpable emotion lingering just out of grasp. For Lee, each of the album's compositions could be continued or looped for an indeterminate duration: straddling a ground between the minimal and the baroque, enveloping the listener in endless cycles of appreciating, repetitive and rhythmical notes, flirting with the melodic and implying a disembodied imagism that borders on the profound. Remarkably beautiful and direct, Okkyung Lee's "Just Like Any Other Day: Background Music For Your Mundane Activities" - issued by Shelter Press on vinyl - represents a radical reconfiguration of experiential music, stripped to its bare essence in defiance of the widely presumed aesthetic signifiers. Unlike anything we've heard from her before, this immersive body of intimate recordings not only reveals new dimensions of Lee's striking range as an artist, but also of how we might regard and occupy music itself: an ambience to lived and felt like a second skin.

Incredibly deep and beautiful release! Fans of Omakase or Berg Audio watch out!

For our Arepas001, we are plating up some heat - straight from South America.

Erwin serving some tasty Arepas with Infinite Fries on the side. Heavy, soulful, and made to move you.

Cool it down with a swirl of blueberry cream - Yummy! Finish strong: Aguardiente with lime, your liquid encore. No skips, no fillers. Just pure flavor. Beats & Treats.

Emerging from the shadows of a small apartment in Chicago’s South Side Pilsen neighborhood in 1999, Winterlight was produced and mixed by Daniel Thompson over the course of three years, from 1999 to 2002. It’s an intimate and evocative album that captures a pivotal chapter in Thompson’s life and echoes the spirit of a formative era in the underground music scene.
Thompson’s journey began in the heat of Houston, Texas, where his love for sound quickly became an obsession. By the late ’90s, he was among the first DJs in Houston to champion the sound of Chicago house, often driving long distances from Texas to Chicago in search of records, inspiration, and connection. These trips—equal parts pilgrimage and education—eventually led him to relocate to Chicago, where his artistic vision would fully take shape. Winterlight is the direct result of that move. Crafted over several years, the album embodies a raw, hands-on approach to production, built from analog synths, outboard gear, and hours of meticulous layering. Thompson leaned on tools like the Kurzweil K2000, SE-1, Juno-106, and classic processors such as the DP4 and TC Electronic units, shaping each track with
care and intention.
Blending atmospheric textures with hypnotic rhythm and subtle experimental flourishes, Winterlight captures the sound of an artist deeply engaged with his tools and surroundings. His extensive vinyl collection—over 3,000 records—served as both palette and inspiration, with carefully chosen samples lending further depth and narrative to the music. Now set for release across all digital platforms and as a limited double 12" vinyl edition through Berlin’s Word & Sound, Winterlight invites listeners into a soundscape that is both immersive and personal. More than just an album, it is a sonic document of a moment in time—rich in tone, memory, and intent. For those willing to listen deeply, Winterlight offers a rare window into the underground spirit of the early 2000s and the inner world of a producer finding his voice.

"Astral Americana hymns hovering somewhere between the dirt and the stars" Pitchfork

"Mood music for moments of solitude, best experienced without distraction" The Times

"Overwhelmingly effective and ravishingly beautiful" The Wire

American Dust is an ode to the beauty of the American Southwest, where vast desert landscapes hold stories both stark and tender. Eve Adams’ characteristic folk noir weaves a vivid tapestry of love, sacrifice and quiet revelation, conjuring images of dust storms, stray dogs and far off trains.

The high desert of California is a vast and confounding place. Equally inspiring as it is punishing, it’s a landscape that carries magic in its deep dark nights, holding stories both tender and stark in the coarse layer of dust that settles upon everything. It’s long been a source of inspiration for musicians, writers, and painters, each of them adding to the same current, carried forward over time, through hope and hardship and the passing years.

Somewhere out there in that broad and boundless landscape, Eve Adams has been living her own desert life, quietly writing the follow-up to 2021’s Metal Bird LP. Where that album sang of liminal space, the dream-like turbulence of Hollywood’s golden age, American Dust is far more rooted in traditional storytelling; a eulogy for the American Dream channeled through that sweeping part of the country that holds such power and mystery. Slipping into different and varied costumes throughout its ten songs, it finds Eve not just observing the people around her but stepping into their shoes and peeling back the layers of their quiet lives.

Adams writes from within. A few years ago she moved out there, to “the middle of nowhere”, finding a slowness that didn’t exist in the city, and she knows only too well about the mystical nature of the land and those who live within it. Weaving together themes of grit and romance, American Dust holds its focus on the bittersweet poetry of lives lived in solitude, most notably the women who sustain life at the center of it all. “There’s something very radical about domestic life,” Adams says of this thread. “So many women live their entire lives behind closed doors, completely in the shadows. Within those lives is such sacrifice, devotion, and love. I wanted to honor that: the poetry in the mundane, the longing in the repetition. The way love survives boredom and dust and time.”

Eve is joined on American Dust by Canadian musician Bryce Cloghesy, aka Military Genius of Crack Cloud, who plays throughout and also helped produce the album. Musically bold and vivid, it’s an ambitious and detailed stride forward from what’s come before, the scope of the LP’s narrative reflected in the radiant sweep of the playing. On top of gentle piano and guitar, gorgeous strings drift through the album, lending the songs a woozy sense of romanticism; a collaboration with Gamaliel Traynor (Cello) and Caroline’s Oliver Hamilton (Violin).

For all the drama that’s coiled around these songs, it’s the recurring notion of love and hope fighting against everything that holds true throughout American Dust. Musically it’s lush and vibrant, intimate and cinematic side by side, and always bursting with warmth. But it’s what it holds in its weary bones that elevates it to something truly special, something more than just a collection of songs penned in the heart of the desert. The characters it speaks of, and from, feel shadowed but wholly real, like they’re bursting to share their stories that have remained hidden for years and years and they allow Eve Adams to grow as a songwriter right in front of our eyes.

“The same swirling dust that clung to the covered wagons of my ancestors as they crossed the Great American Desert is the same dust my great-great-grandmother swept off her porch during the Dust Bowl of 1936 in Oklahoma, is the same dust that blows in through the cracks in my windows here in the desert, carrying stories from a time long gone,” Eve says, reflecting on the personal narrative that runs through her new album.

“It’s not just dust—it’s American Dust, the kind that settles into the bones of a family and never leaves. I think about that dust as a symbol of the passage of time. I hope this album will be part of that same current, carrying forward for the next generations of my family to find. I’ve been lucky enough to have journals and poetry from my ancestors that documents their lives during times of pure hope and pure hardship. I’d like to think of this album as a contribution to that family history.”