Buscar:the sprawl

Coke Bottle Clear Vinyl. A trio of Kansas City soul sweepers, from the sprawling midwest burg's storied Cavern, Damon, and Forte concerns. Bump and the Soul Stompers' 1970 sweet soul double sider "I Can Remember" was a tail pipe-dragging, low rider classic in the making, had it ever been released. A few years later Jerald "Bump" Scott took his new group to Cavern's subterranean confines to cut the group harmony masterpiece "Living In The Past," but remained unissued prior to Numero's discovery of the Cavern tapes. As disco was cresting at the top of the next decade, Sharon Revoal tracked her James Brown meets James Bond stepper "Reaching For Our Star"_ the last 45 released on Marva Whitney's peerless Forte label.

London based songwriter Louis Gardner offers his first mixtape, released via Goldsmiths University imprint NX Records. On For The Open Room, Gardner spirals artfully through outsider jazz, pop, folk and noise, landing sprawled in a territory all his own.

Tangled riffs and strange structures form the terrain for intimate, un-rugged vocals to float above. Starting life like brisk journal entries or misshapen doodles in digital fuzz, Gardner's stories bloom with stop-start tension, oscillating between tender and guttural, crude and complex.

For the open room captures a flow state of ideas, traces and associations - from the bubbling jazz congruence of "It's Hard", to plucked maximalist fragility on "Ten Zithers". Wrapping up with "Body Left in the Snow", Louis reveals mightily undulating piano chops - leaving us to wonder what else is withheld, and what might appear next.

Recommended for fans of Jandek, Mount Eerie, Arthur Russell.

Reaching For Our Star b/w Run Between The Raindrops (While My Teardrops Fall). A trio of Kansas City soul sweepers, from the sprawling mid west burg's storied Cavern, Damon, and Forte concerns. Bump and the Soul Stompers' 1970 sweet soul double sider "I C an Remember" was a tail pipe-dragging, low rider classic in the making, had it ever been released. A few years later Jerald "Bump" Scott took his new group to Cavern's subterrane an confines to cut the group harmony masterpiece "Living In The Past," but remained unissued prior to Numero's discovery of the Cavern tapes. As disco was cresting at the top of the next decade, Sharon Revoal tracked her James Brown meets James Bond stepper "Reaching For Our Star"_ the last 45 released on Marva Whitney's peerless Fortelabel.

Reaching For Our Star b/w Run Between The Raindrops (While My Teardrops Fall). Semi Opaque Natural VINYL. A trio of Kansas City soul sweepers, from the sprawling mid west burg's storied Cavern, Damon, and Forte concerns. Bump and the Soul Stompers' 1970 sweet soul double sider "I C an Remember" was a tail pipe-dragging, low rider classic in the making, had it ever been released. A few years later Jerald "Bump" Scott took his new group to Cavern's subterrane an confines to cut the group harmony masterpiece "Living In The Past," but remained unissued prior to Numero's discovery of the Cavern tapes. As disco was cresting at the top of the next decade, Sharon Revoal tracked her James Brown meets James Bond stepper "Reaching For Our Star"_ the last 45 released on Marva Whitney's peerless Fortelabel.

Ltd Silver Vinyl, DL card. From a long-forgotten trunk; two extended jams, twin slabs, circa 1989. Continuing Fire Records' series of classic remastered albums from Royal Trux, 'Hand Of Glory' is released on silver vinyl. This bad-ass black, white and blue magic is a kind of Burial Dub_ or so preached the sleeve of 'Hand Of Glory' on its original release in 2002. Legend has it, the two sides of this 40-minute gem were recorded between 1985 and 1989. The resultant mountain of creativity from where they hail were inevitably left under a scuzzy sofa as life and a career that ebbed and flowed over nine albums. Royal Trux became an inspirational tipping point for everyone from Pavement & Sonic Youth to the Black Keys, Kurt Cobain, The Avalanches & Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor. "I urge and encourage you to enter the harmolodic multiverse of their music." Alexis Taylor, Hot Chip. 'Hand Of Glory' is not like their other albums but then again none of their albums are alike, it's a two-faced masterpiece. Side one's 'Domo Des Burros'/'Two Sticks' is on par with Beefheart's sprawling 'Trout Mask Replica'. It plays out in 19 minutes, sounding like it was laid down on Warhol's sofa in The Factory; like Dylan's sprawling 'Desolation Row' with, background squalls, interruptions and both Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema's overlayed stream of consciousness peeping through a multi-layered backdrop. It's just staggering. "Royal Trux were nothing if not fearless." Pitchfork. Side two's 'The Boxing Story', a loose homage to William Burroughs, moulds and morphs from tape to tape, a multi-speed soundtrack, while the dynamic duo press pause, guitars ring, occasional melodic lines arrive and evaporate. Lou Reed's pastoral 'Metal Machine Music' could perhaps be recognized as an older and perhaps less challenging sibling. A two-sided masterpiece featuring two wayward pieces of creative genius.

The two separate double vinyl sets are now available that correlate to the triple CD released earlier this year. TMTCH stumbled into existence onstage at the Alternative Country Festival, Electric Ballroom, Camden on Easter Sunday in 1984; after a long afternoon busking and drinking in a Hammersmith subway. They knew three chords and a hundred songs all of which sounded a bit the same, a frenzied skiffle that was exciting to jump around and drink snakebite to. If they thought about longevity at all, a lifespan of 40 days seemed most likely. It's forty years later and they are still running. Since those early days, and without much of a game plan other than always stepping onward, TMTCH have released around 20 albums plus many side projects, bootlegs, curios and an unknown number of T shirts. They've toured constantly, whether in dingy pub backrooms or Grand Ballrooms and Festival Stages. From Cairo to Reykjavik and all points in between, the TMTCH roadshow has shambled and thrilled through the decades, always passionate, always literate, occasionally dishevelled. Forty years of recording has spawned a vast back catalogue, well represented here by songs from each album, style and era; a tapestry of human stories and vibrant characters. So there are the fast sprints like early folk hoedown 'Ironmasters', the frantic shanty 'Raising Hell' and the amphetamine punk blues of 'Going Back to Coventry'. Then there are the waltzing folk ballads, from their impassioned version of the anti war standard 'Green Fields Of France' to the bitter regret of 'The Bells' and the righteous testimony of 'Our Day'. Elsewhere there are anthems galore; 'The Crest' a swirling gaelic chant, 'Rosettes', a fast marching assault of drums, fiddles and mandolins; historical epics such as 'Ghosts Of Cable Street', 'Shirt of Blue' and 'The Colours'; romantic ballads like the wistful 'Parted From You' and 'Island in The Rain'. All the eras are here; from the wiry lo fi of the first album, through the eighties into full blown MTV ready multi trackers with vast charging drums; the initial simplicity of their recipe deepening and darkening. And then on through the nineties, noughties and tens; always the double pronged vocals drifting between harmony and unison, always the celtic, folk and country tones vying for attention, the emotive fiddle, the top end mandolin above the thundering rhythm section. On through bouffant hair, spiky hair, dyed hair, thin hair and hats; on through Grunge, Baggy, Madchester, Rave, Britpop. On through the Miner's Strike, Poll Tax, New Labour, Iraq and Brexit. On through marriage, children, loss and revival. Forty years at the working end of rock and roll is a feat achieved by very few bands. It requires tremendous chemistry, a deep catalogue; both panoramic and miniature, a vital and irrepressible energy, all of which is on resplendent display in this sprawling 3 disc compilation. But most of all it requires an intense resilience, something that TMTCH possess in spades. Forty years on the run; was ever a band so aptly named?

Computer Future is the sprawling and ambitious third album by amorphous Brisbane, Australia garage rock outfit Velociraptor! The 14-song opus is the best recorded capture yet of everything that makes the ‘Raptors so beloved, a stream of addictively catchy rockers characterised by stupidly infectious melodies, an overabundance of earworm hooks, guitars aplenty plus of course their trademark gang vocals and harmonies. The shadowy cabal behind Velociraptor have returned from a spell away from the spotlight with renewed vigour and focus, more committed to and appreciative of their combined talents and chemistry than their younger selves, who were perhaps more about concerned about chasing good times rather than long ones. These days there are more cooks in the ‘Raptors kitchen than before but that’s only allowed them to expand the palette of the Computer Future menu without compromising on quality. Their distinctively melodic take on the garage rock form is still entirely evident, only it’s now augmented by quirkily compelling sonic detours into psych and new wave realms, the band all the while sounding wholly like themselves and nobody but themselves (apart from perhaps the Devo-indebted title tracks). In their halcyon days Velociraptor were a force to be reckoned with, an amorphous collective sometimes up to 12 members strong - many of them wielding guitars of some description - who partied hard and played even harder, attacking their live shows with unbridled glee and genuine gusto. They toured Europe/UK, and staged with bands the calibre of Black Lips, New York Dolls, OFF!, Radio Birdman and Violent Soho. The unparalleled camaraderie of their renowned live blitzes - plus sheer size of the band - at times threatened to overshadow the genuine strength of their songwriting and recorded output, but now with Computer Future those concerns are firmly in the past!

Mysterious, multifaceted collective i Häxa have unveiled their epic self-titled, full length debut; a ground-breaking conceptual double album shaped by a collision of ancient gods and bleeding-edge technology_ Released as four distinct Parts over the course of the year, `i Häxa' now comes together as a singular vision that weaves together genre-defiant soundscapes, abstract cinema and ancient meteorological mythologies from singer-songwriter and visual artist Rebecca Need-Menear (also of electronic alt-rock duo Anavae) and forward-thinking producer Peter Miles (Architects, Dodie, Fizz). i Häxa is a ritualistic dissection of the world as we know it, a forceful separation of the monotony of modernity from the rites and rituals that for centuries formed the foundations for who we are, how we came to be and where we claim to belong. Disjointed fragments of time collide. Two sides, one of logic and one of chaos, seeking unity and balance through an expression of freedom. This is i Häxa. Whilst the album is composed of four distinct movements, each consisting of four distinct tracks themselves; pulling them apart into easily digestible, standalone singles isn't an easy feat and, as is now clear from the project's sprawling cyclic nature, was never the intention. In an age of fast fun and instant gratification, the ties that bind these works together are intended to transcend tracklisting. With aural, visual and lyrical themes freely intertwining, i Häxa is something to be consumed whole; just as it will, in time, consume you. Charting an existential journey to the very depths of what makes us who we are, with every dark corner illuminated in glitched out, discordant glory; i Häxa is a project years in the making that draws simultaneously from rituals for old gods and the modern day deification of data. i Häxa is both heartwarming and horrifying; i Häxa is ancient history and hyper-real; i Häxa is everybody and no one at all. Check out if you like Radiohead, Julie Christmas, Agnes Obel, Bjork, Fever Ray, Massive Attack, Dead Can Dance, Emma Ruth Rundle, Jenny Hval, Cult of Luna, Eivor, Zola Jesus, Marissa Nadler, Soft Moon

Blue vinyl repress

With a voice of pure gold and a startling sensitivity for heartfelt pop songwriting, on No Reino Dos Afetos (In the Realm of Affections), Berle firmly embraces earnestness, through starry-eyed Brazilian love songs, ambient vignettes, warm, home-cooked beats and gentle strokes of MPB genius.

Maceió, the capital of Brazil’s Alagoas state on its sprawling east-coast, is home to pastel coloured colonial houses, white sand beaches and a brilliant young composer, poet and multi-instrumentalist named Bruno Berle.

With a voice of pure gold and a startling sensitivity for heartfelt pop songwriting, on No Reino Dos Afetos (In the Realm of Affections), Berle firmly embraces earnestness, through starry-eyed Brazilian love songs, ambient vignettes, warm, home-cooked beats and gentle strokes of MPB genius.

“It’s an album that was built from my desire to find beauty”, Berle explains - his simple, graceful words mirroring the graceful simplicity in his music. But amongst the simplicity, the compositions, arrangements and productions on No Reino Dos Afetos tingle with nuance and detail.

On the contemporary R&B inspired lead single “Quero Dizer” - produced by Berle and longtime friend and collaborator Batata Boy - the swirling, lo-fi, kalimba and guitar-fronted beat is turned into a feel-good hit by the ingenuity of Berle’s honey-soaked vocal melody.

Powerfully intimate, “O Nome Do Meu Amor” (My Love’s Name) is a guaranteed tearjerker, with Berle’s stunning voice soaring over gently plucked acoustic guitar and the textural flutter of soft movement, as if we hear him writing the song in the moment.

Drawing upon a close-knit, collaborative scene of Maceió artists and musicians, (of which Berle and Batata Boy are vital members), Berle also recorded some of his friends songs on the album, including João Menezes’ “Até Meu Violao”, the album’s beautifully laid back sunshine soul opener, which has all the charm of early-70s João Donato.

Having cut his teeth in soft-rock group Troco em Bala, and more recently finding himself embedded in both Rio and Sao Paulo’s contemporary music scenes - collaborating with the likes of Ana Frango Eletrico, who took the photo for the album cover - No Reino Dos Afetos is as musically diverse as Bruno himself. It’s hazy indie rock (“É Preciso Ter Amor”), calming ambient and field recording (“Virginia Talk”) as well as Berle’s own take on West African High Life (“Som Nyame”).

Instantly recognisable as a truly special artist, Berle’s character fills every corner of the sound, which is unsurprising considering he played most of the instruments.

Electro bass cyperpunks from down under, Assembler Code & Jensen Interceptor, team up again for "NRG LVLS" on TRUST. Four heavy-duty tracks might overclock neural interfaces with drilling synths, twitchy funk and high-pressure electro rhythms. Welcome to the Sprawl...

As we approach the threshold leading us back to the Black Lodge on our transformative 8th journey, we are escorted through and beyond the mystical portal by the vigorous and fierce forces of Sneaker. Portrait in House is a collection of 3 resonant works, which are unified into a singular vision within its uncanny language that is rooted deeply in the foundations of Jak, New Beat, EBM, and Wave. Existing inside the liminal spaces of where light meets dark, we are presented with a documentation of dissonance and harmony. We begin our voyage with Jihad, a sluggish and slogging piece that unforgivingly drags us through the grime and the dirt in a ritualistic fashion that would have the ghost of Georges Bataille dancing in circles. Voices call out and howl into the dark as the drum patterns of the 707 rhythmically grasps onto its anarchic components. In the dark, we can see the light beyond the known universe. In the words of Sneaker "The name is not our message, but a document of an evident, traditional concept in (y)our world." As we find ourselves sprawled out on the ground following the 1st sonic stanza, a menacing voice bellows and warns that this is a Sax Track. Referencing Chicago icon Lil Louis, this work juxtaposes classical elements of house music together with the bare knuckled spirit of Jak. A magical spell led by disharmonious Portasound FM keys in conversation with a teetering sub bass, where at its core, this plus this, equals something that is uniquely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. A number fit for any uncanny ritual that will fall under the night sky. Bringing our cosmic procession to a close we pick up the pace with a commanding number titled, Dance On, a no holds barred work that will possess your soul in the name of Jak. Flangers wail unforgivingly alongside a pulsating 101, as samples of the human voice are chopped up and arranged into a conversation that hypnotically calls for our bodies to be transformed into soft machines, while powered by ceremonious motions that are generated from the liberating process of ritual movement. We command you to dance! Words by Justin Aulis Long

Ltd Double Silver Vinyl, Monochrome edition artwork, DL card. Originally released in 1990, Royal Trux’s ‘Twin Infinitives’ is being re-issued in all its (yet to be translated) alien glory, by Fire Records. A dismantled overture that sprawls out over two records, an avant-garde masterpiece that was the spark for Drag City Records and generations of new sound seeking musicians. Hailed in the same immortal breath as Beefheart’s ‘Trout Mask Replica’, the Velvets’ at their frenzied peak and Ornette Coleman at his most avant-garde, the duo of Pussy Galore’s Neil "Michael" Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema recorded ‘Twin Infinitives’ while imbibing all kinds of mind-altering substances to create an inadvertent blueprint for what the duo was building with Moogs, guitars and melodicas to name a few ingredients. It is the legendary second album from the masters of the genre mashup - long before “genre mashups” even existed. Arguably, the term “mashup” was coined to describe what Trux, as they subconsciously scrolled through the radio stations of their lives. The album’s chaotic sound and offbeat construction laid the foundations for a string of Royal Trux albums that spiralled between genres, tunings, and noise. Through the 90s they would re-invent the rock ‘n’ roll ethic, straddle alien surf music, re-align boogie rock, not to mention 80s hair metal, and confound critics by their wildly meandering and courageous rites of passage. Remastered as part of a career spanning catalogue deal with Fire Records. The infamous and influential duo of Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty will be delving into the archive with a comprehensive reissue series, unearthing the vaults and revisiting what made them such a compelling benchmark for their contemporaries and imitators. Reawakening their prolific output within a new monochrome vinyl series covering 1988-1993, they begin with their seminal deconstructed rock masterpiece Twin Infinitives. “Sounding like a subway ride inside a television inside an earthquake inside the end of the world and a pounding death rhythm of apocalyptic now.” Pitchfork. Track List: Disc One: A1 Solid Gold Tooth A2 Ice Cream A3 Jet Pet A4 RTX-USA A5 Kool Down Wheels B1 Chances Are The Comets In Our Future B2 Yin Jim Versus The Vomit Creature B3 Osiris Disc Two. C1 (Edge Of The) Ape Oven D1 Florida Avenue Theme D2 Lick My Boots D3 Glitterbust D4 Funky Son D5 Ratcreeps D6 New York Avenue Bridge

From Cape Town to Cairo, and now to fans, stages and screens around the world, PJ Morton shares his newest album, fully made in the motherland. Cape Town to Cairo is a collection of songs that he created in 30 days throughout 4 countries in Africa — South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Egypt. Described as the best trip of his life, this transformative journey began as just the seed of an idea last fall, but instantly grew into his most sonically-sprawling and immediately-inspired record to date. With no music, lyrics or preconceptions, he stepped foot onto the continent with two thoughts: a wild dream to write and record his next LP in less than a month, and a mission to immerse himself in as many different cultures, stories and communities as he could.

Surrounded by featured collaborators like Fireboy DML, Mádé Kuti, Asa, Ndabo Zulu, and Soweto Spiritual Singers, as well as additional producers including P.Priime and The Cavemen., his own live band and local musicians, PJ Morton used music as his common language. Always his greatest way of communicating, he expressed his feelings and experiences of Africa through songs he and others were forming together on the spot, side-by-side in different studios, cities and towns for the very first time. None of the tracks were written before he arrived or after he left, and the arrangements showcase both the countries’ native genres as well as the innate, stylistic instincts that have made Morton a 5x GRAMMY-winner and 20x GRAMMY-nominee, whether it be his soul, R&B and gospel roots, or the pop prowess he has further honed as a member of Maroon 5.

“When you’ve been in music as long as I have, you’re constantly looking for inspiration,” says PJ Morton. “And you’re looking for the things that made you want to do it in the first place. I’ve made albums every type of way you can think, so I wanted to try something I hadn’t done before. As a Black American who had never been to South or West Africa, I knew there was something there waiting for me. So I put a little pressure on myself to make a full record in a month, but I also said, ‘If I’m gonna go to Africa, I want to see Africa.’ We made music, but we also formed connections. We made new friends, and this is just the start.”

ESSENCE adds, "This trip is not just a physical move, it's a spiritual return…The soul of Africa pulses through every note he plays and every word he sings,” and VIBE adds that “the multi-faceted artist is fully embracing a new phase in his life.” Cape Town to Cairo marks PJ Morton’s first album since 2022’s Watch The Sun, which featured collaborations with Stevie Wonder, Nas, JoJo, Wale, Jill Scott, Alex Isley and more. Since then, Morton has become the first Black composer to write an original song for a Disney attraction, having just finished making the music for Tiana's Bayou Adventure, opening on June 28th, 2024 at Disney World and Fall 2024 at Disneyland. He also won his latest GRAMMY earlier this year, worked with Samara Joy on “Why I’m Here” for Regina King’s Netflix film Shirley, and landed a cover of his song “Don’t Let Go” as the soundtrack to Apple’s iPhone 15 commercial.

PJ Morton recently returned from headlining his debut shows in Asia, New Zealand and Australia, and announced an extensive Cape Town to Cairo Tour for North America summer and fall 2024. Following iconic performances at New Orleans Jazz Fest, The Kennedy Center, Roots Picnic and Newport Jazz Fest, Morton will embark on a run of more than 25 dates across the country, including New York City’s Beacon Theatre, Chicago’s Chicago Theatre, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Los Angeles’ The Wiltern, and dozens of others.

On the heels of his headline tour and Maroon 5’s Las Vegas residency, PJ Morton will publish a life-spanning new book titled Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. The memoir sees him recounting and reflecting upon a trailblazing path that continues to defy expectations and straddle the tensions of music and faith, race and culture, expression and identity. As the son of two pastors and gospel artists, Morton grew up grounded by the sound of the Church, but soon found himself drawn to R&B, pop and soul, writing songs that the industry, his family and community struggled to understand. In the face of mounting pressure, rejection and constant miscategorization, he committed himself to a steadfast path of independence: making music on his own terms, launching his own record label, joining one of the biggest bands in the world while staying true to his New Orleans roots. The risks he took paid off, and through his transformation from preacher's kid to the busiest man in showbiz – performing everywhere from his local congregation to the Super Bowl, collaborating with everyone from his father to Stevie Wonder, Erykah Badu, Jon Batiste and Lil Wayne – he hopes to encourage readers and listeners to overcome obstacles as they seek their dreams.

Black Vinyl. In Rumi's poem A Great Wagon he writes of a place of total acceptance. "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there," It is a boundless, liminal space where we can release the judgments we make and carry of ourselves, and the comparisons to others. When we think of this field, there is a sense of tranquility that only comes when we are undisturbed by the shadow self and see existence as neither bright nor dim, white nor black. But as lead singer Greg Bertens explains, arriving there is a whole different story. "This is a poem I've returned to over the years, and I love the idea of this place, but getting there is life's journey." Bertens adds "I think the longing for and elusiveness of this field is a recurring theme in our music." Field is enveloped by themes of regret, disconnection and frustration but with the space to understand that these feelings are a natural part of the struggle between reconciling the inner and outer self. The Los Angeles/San Francisco-based group have been indie shoegaze stalwarts since their formation in 2001. After two decades and a handful of line-up changes, their extensive discography presents a dynamically textural, lush psychedelic rock that has featured guest appearances by members of Pavement, My Bloody Valentine, and Snow Patrol, among others. 2021's LP We Weren't Here (Sonic Ritual) was hailed for its dense instrumental blanket, where unrelenting hi-hats and heavy kicks exist alongside dreamy drone guitar. This propulsive nature permeates Field, as members Bertens, Noël Brydebell (vocals), Nyles Lannon (guitar), Jason Ruck (synths), Justin LaBo (bass), and Adam Wade (drums) produce a kaleidoscopic sonic landscape. Patient, sprawling instrumentation builds a foundation in which Bertens' themes of endurance, perseverance and clarity can bloom with a considered poise. As a lyricist who writes in response to the instrumental arrangements, rather than a focus on a specific theme or person, Field is a testament to Film School's ability to create in the moment, and to showcase the magic that stems from when we are truly present. With over two decades in the industry, Field cements Film School as a distinct, dominant force in the shoegaze scene. Soaked in an emotionally open, imaginative atmosphere, the album is both singular and expansive, and leaves the door open for a constantly evolving interpretation. Film School have never confined themselves to the rigidity of specifics, and it's on Field that they urge us to look beyond the binary of certainty, and to take a second look.

'In `All This and So Much More' Tasha is an artist flung open. For Tasha, the last few years have been propulsive, dynamic, bursting at the seams. They've included painful encounters with grief; a sudden break up; new flirtation; new hair; the glitter of world travel and not least, a role in Tony-nominated Broadway musical `Illinoise' which adapts Sufjan Steven's `Illinois' for the stage. If `Tell Me What You Miss The Most' was an introspective meditation on love with a few moments of glancing toward what's next, `All this and So Much More' is Tasha turned outward, flourishing, telling us what it's like to take life by the chin and look it in the eye. Take, for example "Eric Song." This was the first song to be written on the album, penned while Tasha grappled with the sudden, tragic death of Eric Littman, the co-producer of her last album. Though the instrumentation is a familiar 3/4 guitar strum, lulling us into a comforting waltz, Tasha's voice is breathy with grief, adding depth and dimension to the hushed sound. "No, I'm not alone after all / You must be near / Facing this soaring sprawl," she sings, transforming the experience of loss into a talisman of love and courage meant to help usher in a new self. Said a different way, `All This and So Much More' is a full-throated ode to all of the ups and downs of becoming. In the opening track, "Pretend," when Tasha sings about "feelings outgrowing this little life," we get the sense, both lyrically and sonically, of someone in the throes of growth. This is an album crafted with a big, ambitious sound (in part, thanks to the production of Gregory Uhlmann)_cinematic droning, orchestral woodwinds, dazzling arrays of jangling guitar, all lining up to capture a sweeping moment in Tasha's life. Written over the course of 2022 and 2023, right on the cusp of Tasha being cast in Illinoise, the songs in this album invoke friendship, heart ache, flirtation, doubt. From the social anxiety of "Party" ("Do they think I'm funny? / Did they like my jokes last night?") to the questing for meaning in "So Much More," Tasha brings us along on a journey of finding out that the person you wanted to be was inside of yourself, just waiting to bloom all along. She sums it up neatly in her final track, "Love's Changing," charging us with a brilliant, sweeping vision of the future, singing: "Suddenly the world is bigger than it ever felt before / Feel the weight of my future sinking in / See the joy I'm running toward." In `All This and So Much More,' Tasha asks us to consider abundance in its truest form. Our lives, a deluge of possible experience if only we will surrender to it, all the way from the citric ache of heartbreak to the chest bloom of new adventure.

'In `All This and So Much More' Tasha is an artist flung open. For Tasha, the last few years have been propulsive, dynamic, bursting at the seams. They've included painful encounters with grief; a sudden break up; new flirtation; new hair; the glitter of world travel and not least, a role in Tony-nominated Broadway musical `Illinoise' which adapts Sufjan Steven's `Illinois' for the stage. If `Tell Me What You Miss The Most' was an introspective meditation on love with a few moments of glancing toward what's next, `All this and So Much More' is Tasha turned outward, flourishing, telling us what it's like to take life by the chin and look it in the eye. Take, for example "Eric Song." This was the first song to be written on the album, penned while Tasha grappled with the sudden, tragic death of Eric Littman, the co-producer of her last album. Though the instrumentation is a familiar 3/4 guitar strum, lulling us into a comforting waltz, Tasha's voice is breathy with grief, adding depth and dimension to the hushed sound. "No, I'm not alone after all / You must be near / Facing this soaring sprawl," she sings, transforming the experience of loss into a talisman of love and courage meant to help usher in a new self. Said a different way, `All This and So Much More' is a full-throated ode to all of the ups and downs of becoming. In the opening track, "Pretend," when Tasha sings about "feelings outgrowing this little life," we get the sense, both lyrically and sonically, of someone in the throes of growth. This is an album crafted with a big, ambitious sound (in part, thanks to the production of Gregory Uhlmann)_cinematic droning, orchestral woodwinds, dazzling arrays of jangling guitar, all lining up to capture a sweeping moment in Tasha's life. Written over the course of 2022 and 2023, right on the cusp of Tasha being cast in Illinoise, the songs in this album invoke friendship, heart ache, flirtation, doubt. From the social anxiety of "Party" ("Do they think I'm funny? / Did they like my jokes last night?") to the questing for meaning in "So Much More," Tasha brings us along on a journey of finding out that the person you wanted to be was inside of yourself, just waiting to bloom all along. She sums it up neatly in her final track, "Love's Changing," charging us with a brilliant, sweeping vision of the future, singing: "Suddenly the world is bigger than it ever felt before / Feel the weight of my future sinking in / See the joy I'm running toward." In `All This and So Much More,' Tasha asks us to consider abundance in its truest form. Our lives, a deluge of possible experience if only we will surrender to it, all the way from the citric ache of heartbreak to the chest bloom of new adventure.

"Kal Marks have never made a record as personal as Wasteland Baby. Though Carl Shane, the band’s vocalist-guitarist, has made a career off of exploring blunt, uncomfortable truths through song, with Wasteland Baby, he steered Kal Marks toward something utterly new. Shane looked inward to stare down a fear that had long plagued him: What would it look like to have a child in a world that looks like this? “The album was driven by the fears I’m having about being a father,” says Shane. “The initial spark was this fear, and I thought that maybe if I could express it, I could overcome it.”

What started out with this simple premise slowly grew into a sprawling, borderline-concept record. It’s no surprise, then, that Kal Marks went deeper and darker than ever before when writing Wasteland Baby. Though, in order to reach that final product, it required the band—bassist-vocalist John Russell, drummer Adam Berkowitz, and guitarist-vocalist Christina Puerto, who is also Shane’s partner—to interrogate every decision they made with exacting detail. ”We were really all on the same page in that we wanted to make something really, really special and that was going to require us putting a lot of ego aside and just trying to serve the songs as best as possible.”

“In an ideal world, Kal Marks will go on forever. But it may be the end of a chapter for a while. I don’t want it to be the end, but there was an element running through the album that maybe could be the end,” says Shane. No matter what the future holds, Wasteland Baby is an emphatic reminder to brush off the things that keep you from truly living and venture into the unknown."

On August 16, Toronto-based musician and producer David Psutka aka ACT! (fka Egyptrixx / Anamai / Ceramic TL) will release his latest project ‘Face to Face, Day by Day’ for his own Halocline Trance imprint.

This is is Psutka’s third album proper as ACT! following the release of the “sonic mixtape” ‘Universalist’ in 2018 and the augmented reality soundtrack ‘Grey Matter AR’ in 2021; a series of Snapchat filters created by artist Karen Vanderborght and soundtracked by ACT! which explored the poetic and existential potential of AR and social media.

“Aesthetic accidents in the periphery of the ‘work’ can be the message. In 2018, at an Egyptrixx concert at Bagni Misteriosi de Teatro Franco Parenti - a gorgeous, sprawling outdoor pool theatre in Milan - I had a clarifying moment. Gigs around then had mostly been in pummelling, dark music venues, so I wasn't prepared for this expansive space (and the thoughtful work of the organisers who had layered sheets of plastic film on the pool to parallel eco-materialist themes from a previous album). It was the midday soundcheck that struck me most - brittle digital sounds from the set echoed off the colonial Milanese facades and ricocheted down the Via Carlo Botta, pinging off buildings in the distance and clashing with the noise of traffic, tourists and whatever else. It was a strange, collisionist moment, and a reminder that my essential approach to music is, above all, a preoccupation with the materiality of sound. 

Everything on Face to Face, Day by Day began as an improvisation. Openness to accidents and the emotional complexity that comes from centering them in composition has become important to my work, and helps the music go beyond the possibility of what is playable, imaginable. I also wanted to channel adventurous solo pop records of the 1970’s and 80’s, like Yasuaki Shimizu, Jon + Vangelis and Stevie Wonder. These came from an interesting era in commercial music as studio production techniques became increasingly formalised as compositional devices, like AMS RMX16 percussion sounds and early digital stereo effects. 

Like many musicians, I’ve been travelling and performing less since the pandemic and as a result, have wanted studio sessions to feel more collaborative and improvisational. There were great writing and recording sessions for this album. Vox, synth, sax and guitar jams - much of what ended up on the record isn’t edited much, if at all. I jammed a sm57 into Colin Fisher’s sax bell and created feedback loops using various preamps and distortion units. The clunky sounds were sampled and used as percussion elements. I also had a great synth jam session with Jeremy Greenspan at Barton Building Studio in Hamilton, which was recorded by filmmaker Liz Adler. 

I’ve had a few months to sit with this album and see clear throughlines connecting it to previous projects. There are aspects of the experiential and structuralist sound design ideas from the EGYPTRIXX records; and also some arrangement tricks borrowed from ANAMAI - specifically, the use of interruptionist sound events. Perhaps most of all, it feels connected to the Ceramic TL + Ipek Gorgun record ‘Perfect Lung’ and its splattered take on musical complexity. “ (David Psutka)

In addition to ACT!, Psutka has released music with numerous projects including Anamai, Egyptrixx and Ceramic TL, he has collaborated widely with artists such as Junior Boys, Ipek Gorgun, and Kuedo as well as Jessy Lanza (2016) and an official remix for Massive Attack’s ‘Hymn of the Big Wheel (2012). The contributions on this album, from Robin Dann and Ben Gunning, reflect the deeply collaborative nature of the Halocline Trance label and the Toronto creative scene more broadly.

Many of Psutka’s releases have received critical acclaim from media outlets such as Pitchfork, Exclaim, The Quietus and Resident Advisor. As a live performer, he has toured extensively including performing at Sonar Festival, Roskilde, Mutek, MOMA PS1 Warm-UP and CTM Festival. He’s also presented sound installations at various institutions such as Galeria Civica Commune di Modena, and Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

In 2015, Psutka launched Halocline Trance as a home for his various sound projects, events and collaborations. Now a creative collective and label, it has grown to include a diverse array of artists including Casey MQ, Xuan Ye, Myst Milano, Colin Fisher and others. The label is described as “genre-agnostic” and conceptually open, supporting work across a wide spectrum of creative fields including soundtrack recording, AR design and traditional artist albums. Their impeccable roster also includes, theorist/improviser Eldritch Priest, and AR/VR artist Karen Vanderborght. In recent years, Halocline Trance has established itself as a platform that facilitates many of Canada’s most exciting creative music projects. Many of the releases have received critical acclaim from outlets including Pitchfork, Exclaim, Bandcamp and Resident Advisor.

Returning from time apart to a world forever changed, dread-fuelled duo A SWARM OF THE SUN bring with them their fourth studio album, `An Empire'; its brooding, yet beautiful, melancholic narrative arc allows the band to dig ever deeper into desolation whilst a newfound lyrical focus adds a tenderness that is both harrowing and heartwarming at once. With the early bones of forthcoming `An Empire' tabled by events beyond their control in 2019, Erik and Jakob came together years later and scrapped them in favour of creating something entirely new; something distinctly different to break the cycle, defy categorisation and reflect the uncomfortable uncertainties of the times we now live in. The result is astounding; continuing the thread of narrative composition seen on `The Woods', `An Empire' is a six-track tale told in four distinct movements that are nothing short of devastating, from plaintive piano ballads to raw, full-band fury. For instance, taken from the album's third side, lead single `The Burning Wall' embodies this sprawling compositional feat perfectly, with the painfully frank opening couplet of "I know I fail you / I know that I run" establishing a gripping narrative trajectory backed by a simmering, impatient pulse that slowly and inevitably rises to an inescapable crescendo of cymbal chaos and wall-of-sound guitar drone. Elsewhere, 18-minute epic `The Pyre' represents Side B of `An Empire' with the confessional intimacy of a waltz-time ballad; the raw, wavering emotion of Jakob's words accompanied only by a haunting, lilting piano refrain before it too is consumed by the bittersweet might of post-rock euphoria to leave only embers of the apocalyptic lyrics in its wake_ `An Empire' marks a significant evolution of A Swarm of the Sun's already indelible post-metal sound. With increasingly bleak times forcing the band to reassess their relationship with creativity and suffering, this new body of work captures all the anthemic, intimate highs and crushing, debilitating lows of modern life on a knife edge.

Returning from time apart to a world forever changed, dread-fuelled duo A SWARM OF THE SUN bring with them their fourth studio album, `An Empire'; its brooding, yet beautiful, melancholic narrative arc allows the band to dig ever deeper into desolation whilst a newfound lyrical focus adds a tenderness that is both harrowing and heartwarming at once. With the early bones of forthcoming `An Empire' tabled by events beyond their control in 2019, Erik and Jakob came together years later and scrapped them in favour of creating something entirely new; something distinctly different to break the cycle, defy categorisation and reflect the uncomfortable uncertainties of the times we now live in. The result is astounding; continuing the thread of narrative composition seen on `The Woods', `An Empire' is a six-track tale told in four distinct movements that are nothing short of devastating, from plaintive piano ballads to raw, full-band fury. For instance, taken from the album's third side, lead single `The Burning Wall' embodies this sprawling compositional feat perfectly, with the painfully frank opening couplet of "I know I fail you / I know that I run" establishing a gripping narrative trajectory backed by a simmering, impatient pulse that slowly and inevitably rises to an inescapable crescendo of cymbal chaos and wall-of-sound guitar drone. Elsewhere, 18-minute epic `The Pyre' represents Side B of `An Empire' with the confessional intimacy of a waltz-time ballad; the raw, wavering emotion of Jakob's words accompanied only by a haunting, lilting piano refrain before it too is consumed by the bittersweet might of post-rock euphoria to leave only embers of the apocalyptic lyrics in its wake_ `An Empire' marks a significant evolution of A Swarm of the Sun's already indelible post-metal sound. With increasingly bleak times forcing the band to reassess their relationship with creativity and suffering, this new body of work captures all the anthemic, intimate highs and crushing, debilitating lows of modern life on a knife edge.

Dawson’s latest offering, The Tinnitus Chorus, is an album of wide-eyed collaborations. He is joined by an inspired cast of revered friends and kindred strangers including Suso Saiz, M. Sage (Fuubutsushi), Eli Winter, K. Freund, (Trouble Books / Lemon Quartet), Dasom Baek, Lina Langendorf (Langendorf United), Vumbi Dekula, Jairus Sharif, Yutaka Hirasaka, and his bandmates in Peace Flag Ensemble. The collection is bookended by two pieces with Michael Grigoni. From birdsong and decaying tape to Western sprawl, each of Dawson’s previous solo records have moved in a singular direction but here he approaches things through a kaleidoscopic lens. While his weathered ambient sketches serve as a through line, they are woven with all manner of instrumentation from clarinet and modular synth to steel guitars and flugelhorn. Improvised Congolese guitar nuzzles next to American experimental folk. Handmade electronics give way to spiritual sax. M. Sage contributes something referred to as a “mystic music box”. The result is a strange and beautiful journey that feels lost between genres and yet wholly unified. Dawson reflects on the genesis of album with a smirk and a shrug. He has been marred by ear troubles in recent years and had been struggling to complete an album of solo material. The clicks, ringing tones, and hiss in his ears had been drowning out the ringing tones, clicks, and hiss in his studio. When he reached out to We Are Busy Bodies to provide an update on the record he was met with an unsuspecting proposal that perhaps he shift focus to an album of collaborations. The truth is he had been ruminating on the idea for years and the nudge from WABB proved to be the motivation he needed to shelve his insecurities and invite artists he admires to join him for The Tinnitus Chorus.

Hejira is the eighth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, released in 1976 on Asylum Records. Its material was written during a period of frequent travel in late 1975 and early 1976, and reflects Mitchell's experiences on the road during that time. It is characterized by lyrically dense, sprawling songs and musical backing by several jazz-oriented instrumentalists, most prominently fretless bass player Jaco Pastorius, guitarist Larry Carlton, and drummer John Guerin.

Having gathered up praise from Mary Anne Hobbs, Cerys Matthews, Jamie Cullum, Gilles Peterson, Huey Morgan, The Guardian, Jazzwise and more, for his lauded ‘Crisis & Opportunity’, drummer and composer Myele Manzanza returns with the fourth instalment of his series, titled ‘Meditations’.

On ‘Meditations’, we see Myele revert to a purely acoustic line-up, channeling a focused and razor-sharp return to his Jazz roots. Showcasing an incredible level of musicianship between three musicians at the top of their game - including Matthew Sheens (Ross McHenry, John Patitucci) on piano and Matt Penman (Joshua Redman, Sfjazz Collective) on double bass - the trio exchange motifs over the length of 7 tracks.

Opening proceedings with frenetic rhythmic improvisation, complimented by melancholic and cinematic layers of sound, ‘Crayford’s Room’ is a tribute to Myele’s musical mentor back in New Zealand. Remembering his time as a student in Wellington, Myele shows his deep connection to his origins, manifesting itself as lament on ‘Winter’ and ‘Homesick’. Introducing hypnotic, contemplative melodies take centre stage on ‘Something Old Something New’ (the first single to be released from the project)’ It maintains a sense of tension and intrigue throughout, and intensity rises to a crescendo sending sonic particles sprawling into space.

Intuitive, darker and deeply contemplative, Myele shares his innermost thoughts on ‘Crisis and Opportunities Vol.4 - Meditations’. He divulges:

‘The personal angst and existential frustration I was going through across 2020 - 2022 I believe is well reflected here. The album is deeply informed by the musicianship and sound of my trio, Matthew Sheens on piano and Matt Penman on double bass. Knowing that musicians of their calibre were going to be involved gave me licence to go further in my writing, deploying odd time signatures, sharing the melody roles across the piano and the bass, and delving deeper into the nuances of what the acoustic piano / bass / drums trio can do. The compositions present a challenge even to the best musicians, and I knew that it was essential to have a team on this level to really move the music beyond an academic exercise and draw out the emotion and colour from the material.’

UNSURPASSED SPACIOUSNESS, IMAGING, AND TRANSPARENCY: MASTERED FROM THE ORIGINAL TAPES, MUSIC EMERGES WITH NEW DETAILS AND TONES
1/2" / 30 IPS analogue master - Plangent Processed - to DXD to analogue console to lathe

Love Over Gold is all about contrast, tension, and crafty composition. Dire Straits' fourth album finds the band continuing to evolve by welcoming increasingly bold arrangements and exploring moody variations. Parts edgy and sharp, and part seductive and relaxed, the five lengthy songs on Love Over Gold sprawl out like a long, winding road cutting through a pastoral landscape. The addition of a new rhythm guitarist, Hal Lindes, encourages deeper atmospheric interplay while the presence of engineer Neil Dorfsman – his first appearance in what would be a long string of collaborations with Mark Knopfler – ensures stunning sonic properties that now come to life like never before.

Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed at RTI, Mobile Fidelity's 180g 45RPM 2LP version of Love Over Gold teems with superb balances, front-to-back soundstages, and crystalline purity. The dead-quiet surfaces and extra-wide grooves bring forward previously obscured details, extra information, and mastering-studio-quality transients. The distinctive textures of a host of instruments – marimbas, acoustic and electric guitars, vibes, synthesizers – further enhance the ambitiousness of the 1982 album.

On this audiophile pressing, everything Knopfler does seemingly turn to gold. Gearheads will hear the unique characteristics afforded by his use of a Mesa Boogie Mark II guitar amplifier (soon again employed on Brothers in Arms) and carefully chosen selection of Schecter Stratocasters, 1937 National steel guitar, and Ovation six- and twelve-string models. Reference-level separation and lifelike imaging place Knopfler and company in your room, while tube-like warmth, spaciousness, and airiness causes the music to breathe anew. This LP will be in your rotation for months.

It doesn't take long to realize Love Over Gold is like no other Dire Straits album – and a staunch proclamation of independence from a band that continued to take longer creative strides with each successive project. Fearlessly extending over metaphoric hills, valleys, and plains for nearly 14-and-a-half minutes, the opening "Telegraph Road" is a guitar hero's dream and exhilarating showcase for Lindes' give-and-take capabilities. In tandem with keyboardist Alan Clark, Lindes provides the ideal foil for not only Knopfler but the long-time rhythm section of bassist John Illsley and drummer Pick Withers.

Taking its time to arrive at destinations, the quintet paints evocative musical and lyrical portraits steeped in patience, drama, and, often times, sadness. Desolate emotions colour the sweeping "Telegraph Road" and barren "Private Investigations," which finds Knopfler in the role of a tired private eye contemplating the emptiness and scars of his profession. Vocally, the Dire Straits leader remains in top form throughout, his whiskey-coated rasp conveying romantic ache, ongoing frustration, and what Rolling Stone beautifully deemed "wracking schizophrenia between the heart and the heartless, the loving and the pain."

Called Dire Straits' prog-rock statement, Love Over Gold is a classic that defies labelling and avoids ageing.

THE SINISTER DEBUT ALBUM OF PURE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL
FEELING,FEATURING MEMBERS OF AURA NOIR, OBLITERATION &
CONDOR."Underground metal the way it should sound returns to
Kolbotn!" - Fenriz (Darkthrone)From the depths of Norway looms a new
rising beast of hate & misanthropy in the form of Avmakt
Featuring the duo of Kristian Valbo & Christoffer Brathen - known for their work
with such acts as Aura Noir, Obliteration & Condor - their debut album, 'The
Satanic Inversion of....', is a grim & revelatory offering. Primitive in a way that
captures the early magic of Kolbotn's metal kings, Darkthrone, as well as the stark
chaos of early-era Bathory along with their very own distinguishable stamp on the
genre, 'The Satanic Inversion of....' is a masterclass of real Black Metal feeling,
wrapped up in a hypnotic frenzy of ice-cold riffing.
Though both members had played in bands covering different genres since their
early teenage years, Black Metal had always been one of the most important as a
vehicle for an honesty & fierceness that resonated deeply within the duo, without
the need for extravagant clothing or pretentious concepts. And so Avmakt itself
was born as the vessel for channelling this stripped-down raw feeling.
Formed in 2020 & with their one & only demo release gaining traction in the
underground, the Norwegians quickly came to the attention of Darkthrone's Fenriz
& Peaceville Records & Avmakt was swiftly included on Peaceville's Black Metal
Compilation, 'Dark Side Of The Sacred Star' which launched at the end of 2022.
Avmakt itself means "powerlessness", the sense of being overwhelmed & not
able to have any influence - without choice, voice, or hope. And so, it is from far
down in this psychological abyss that Avmakt's ideas & expressions manifest
with the completion of their debut studio release; 6 sprawling epic tracks
recorded with the assistance of Arild Torp, also of Obliteration & encapsulating
such themes as emptiness, desolation & alienation in a powerful display of
sinister, uninhibited Black Metal.

More than two years after the release of 'Impressões de Outra Ilha', Discrepant's head honcho returns home under his birth name with the appropriately titled 'Exotic Immensity'. Conjured from the seeds of an exhibition of dioramas at Le Bon Accueil in Rennes, this double LP feels quietly epic in scope, a sprawling travelogue through imagined scenarios and what if possibilities. Discarding the more rough around the edges collages of previous works under a myriad of aliases - Discogs it, if you will -, Cardoso's approach here is more meticulously composed, with seamless transitions within his own personal soundworld giving way to this hallucinated landscape of field recordings, subtle electronic tweaks, cascading patterns, queasy ambiences and kösmiche-like synth harmonies.

Perfectly embodied in Evan Crankshaw's cut up poem, filled with occult and sci-fi references such as Agrippa's Book of the Occult, William Blake's Book of Urizen, Dr. Moreau or 50's pop-science books, the music on 'Exotic Immensity' transverses time and cartography in a deeply personal matter, from the cricket-like textures and reverse loops of 'Réplica(s)' until the closing moments with the touching chord progression and mangled voices of 'Pó Nuno'. In-between, the foghorn meets bass clarinet melody of 'Ossos' recalls the unassuming but essential harmonic patterns of Laurence Crane, surrounded by an almost percussive sheet of field recordings that drift into the gliding synth tones of 'Desumanização (I & II)' until tape orchestral swells carry us into the aether. 'Aquário Novo Mundo' brims in an undisplaced cartography, from electronic marimba stabs to synth choirs, the call of the loom to labyrinthine keyboard harmonies and underwater radiance. Are we still here? Somewhere? The muffled looped rhythmic sequence of 'Imagem/Miragem', cut by the glow of cascading synths doesn't offer a reply. Nor does it need to.

'Exotic Immensity' exists on the perpetual outside. Blessed be Cardoso for showing us a way in.

Sara May grew up on a dirt road just outside a small Ontario town known for its Honda plant and Potato Festival. Over the course of ten indie-leaning, alt-country tracks on 'Legacy', her latest album as Falcon Jane, she expounds on that origin story through the great archetypes of country music: the drinker, the vagabond, the absent father. She presents these characters with a clarity and empathy that feels almost transgressive-a loving touch that crosses our rural / urban divides. But these are Sara's stories too: her rural childhood, her move to Toronto, her current home in the working class town of Shelburne, and her life on the road. She comes by it honest. And the transformation on 'Legacy' isn't just lyrical. Alongside producer José Contreras (By Divine Right), Falcon Jane refine their sound-pushing toward folk and country like contemporaries Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen. May's voice, the one constant from 2015's 'Alive n Well' EP, through the dream pop of her 2018 debut album 'Feelin' Freaky', to the sprawling indie rock of 2020's 'Faith', is more powerful here, sitting atop the warm, Nashville-leaning production. The result is both striking and blindingly obvious: Sara May has found her way back home.

Sara May grew up on a dirt road just outside a small Ontario town known for its Honda plant and Potato Festival. Over the course of ten indie-leaning, alt-country tracks on 'Legacy', her latest album as Falcon Jane, she expounds on that origin story through the great archetypes of country music: the drinker, the vagabond, the absent father. She presents these characters with a clarity and empathy that feels almost transgressive-a loving touch that crosses our rural / urban divides. But these are Sara's stories too: her rural childhood, her move to Toronto, her current home in the working class town of Shelburne, and her life on the road. She comes by it honest. And the transformation on 'Legacy' isn't just lyrical. Alongside producer José Contreras (By Divine Right), Falcon Jane refine their sound-pushing toward folk and country like contemporaries Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen. May's voice, the one constant from 2015's 'Alive n Well' EP, through the dream pop of her 2018 debut album 'Feelin' Freaky', to the sprawling indie rock of 2020's 'Faith', is more powerful here, sitting atop the warm, Nashville-leaning production. The result is both striking and blindingly obvious: Sara May has found her way back home.

Motion picture soundtrack to the critically acclaimed 2023 black comedy starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi and Rosamund Pike. Includes the huge resurgent hits Murder on the Dancefloor by Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Perfect (Exceeder) by Mason vs Princess Superstar.

Saltburn is the 2023 black comedy psychological thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Emerald Fennell. The film stars a student (Barry Keoghan) at Oxford University, who finds himself drawn into the world of a charming and aristocratic classmate (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to his eccentric family’s sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten. The film became one of the most-streamed films upon its streaming release on Amazon Prime Video in December 2023. It received critical acclaim and several accolades, including nominations for two Golden Globe Awards and five BAFTA Awards.

Debut standalone VHF album by the Elkhorn duo of Drew Gardner and Jesse Sheppard, a tight set of six studio recordings in a variety of moods and featuring a lot of new sound textures. Elkhorn’s prolific stream of releases since 2016 has highlighted their mastery of sprawling long-form, acoustic-driven hypno-jams, with an emphasis on live performance (including on their collaboration with Pelt’s Mike Gangloff on the Shackamaxon Concert album). The Red Valley is a more layered and composed-sounding set, with the duo overdubbing extensively on top of their own dual guitars. Leading off the LP, “Crystal Hummingbird” features one of their signature minor-modal vamps, with layers of fuzz bass, zither, and frame drum providing weight and psychedelic density. “Gray Salt Trail” continues the vibe, with thick fuzz vibraphone supplementing the cinematic palate, leading into the spare side-closer “Black Wind Of Kayenta,” where Sheppard plays electric 12-string and Gardner solos on acoustic guitar. Side two starts with “Road to Chaco Canyon,” a brooding duet that builds momentum with Gardner’s insistent frame drum cadence, dropping down into the quiet string pool of “Inside Spider Rock” (featuring Fern Knight’s Jesse Sparhawk on gloriously swirling lever harp) and the graceful finale “Jackrabbit Hops.”

Crack Cloud has always been something beyond a rock band: both profound and grand, vaporous and elusive. The first iteration of Crack Cloud was formed nearly a decade ago as a proxy-rehab outlet on the fringes of Calgary. Over time, two EPs and accompanying visual pieces were produced out of the residence known as Red Mile. By 2017, several members had relocated to Vancouver, working out of harm reduction centers and low-barrier shelters. Sobriety, self-reformation and the idealism of their work further formed an ethos for Crack Cloud. It was during these years that the band produced their astounding 2020 album Pain Olympics. At once, their vision became expansive, cinematic. Now, Red Mile is a bit of a homecoming. Members have returned to Calgary. But Calgary/home has become a liminal space, a place of flux. After a decade of personal and collective growth, what does home even mean? Red Mile is, for them, something like samsara: a return and a rebirth. Red Mile's sound breathes expansive energy into the circuitous, street bound sonics of Crack Cloud's prior material. Fizzling synths intertwine with chiming pianos. Songs layer like Russian nesting dolls; one may find a Ramones chorus set within a desolate Western prog soundtrack only to watch it erupt into a joyous anthem. Real-ass guitars _ alternately lilting, scuzzy and soaring _ ring out across wide sun-bleached spaces. In 2024, the cumulative effect is (in rock instrumentation terms) naturalistic. Any whiff of embalmed nostalgia is absent. Even the close of the album - a winding, almost Jerry Garcia guitar noodle that leads us out of Red Mile - is delivered without sentimentality. Principal songwriter Zach Choy's lyrics are cutting but merciful, with a sharp self-awareness that never slides into self-satisfaction. Crack Cloud as artists are critical _ and ultimately as forgiving _ of themselves as they are the melting world around them. The songs balance an easy charm and cathartic power: affirming life without denying death. Recorded predominantly between the outskirts of Joshua Tree California, and Calgary, Alberta, this record is informed by a bittersweet mélange of old and new. The sprawling, novelistic structures of their previous albums are condensed and sharpened, while maintaining their refusal to delve into superficiality. Through playful melodies and elliptical guitar soliloquy, they deliver a final product of exceptional depth and distinctly unprecious warmth. Crack Cloud have produced a mature, vital work that interrogates the platitudes of the rock-n-roll lifestyle, but ultimately exalts its sacredness. Red Mile's de facto thesis statement "The Medium" is itself a rock song meditation: an ode to the form and its practitioners. This genre that _ typical, repeatable, corporatized as it can be _ somehow still has the power to help us live through life. We see the dusty sentiment of "I love rock and roll" exhumed, taken apart, and stitched back together. It's a song guided by faith _ if the medium helps us proclaim our love today, it's worth protecting from derision tomorrow. We live in an era where music seems to love hitting its head against the wall. Crack Cloud's Red Mile is the sound _ the feeling! _ of the bricks giving way.

Crack Cloud has always been something beyond a rock band: both profound and grand, vaporous and elusive. The first iteration of Crack Cloud was formed nearly a decade ago as a proxy-rehab outlet on the fringes of Calgary. Over time, two EPs and accompanying visual pieces were produced out of the residence known as Red Mile. By 2017, several members had relocated to Vancouver, working out of harm reduction centers and low-barrier shelters. Sobriety, self-reformation and the idealism of their work further formed an ethos for Crack Cloud. It was during these years that the band produced their astounding 2020 album Pain Olympics. At once, their vision became expansive, cinematic. Now, Red Mile is a bit of a homecoming. Members have returned to Calgary. But Calgary/home has become a liminal space, a place of flux. After a decade of personal and collective growth, what does home even mean? Red Mile is, for them, something like samsara: a return and a rebirth. Red Mile's sound breathes expansive energy into the circuitous, street bound sonics of Crack Cloud's prior material. Fizzling synths intertwine with chiming pianos. Songs layer like Russian nesting dolls; one may find a Ramones chorus set within a desolate Western prog soundtrack only to watch it erupt into a joyous anthem. Real-ass guitars _ alternately lilting, scuzzy and soaring _ ring out across wide sun-bleached spaces. In 2024, the cumulative effect is (in rock instrumentation terms) naturalistic. Any whiff of embalmed nostalgia is absent. Even the close of the album - a winding, almost Jerry Garcia guitar noodle that leads us out of Red Mile - is delivered without sentimentality. Principal songwriter Zach Choy's lyrics are cutting but merciful, with a sharp self-awareness that never slides into self-satisfaction. Crack Cloud as artists are critical _ and ultimately as forgiving _ of themselves as they are the melting world around them. The songs balance an easy charm and cathartic power: affirming life without denying death. Recorded predominantly between the outskirts of Joshua Tree California, and Calgary, Alberta, this record is informed by a bittersweet mélange of old and new. The sprawling, novelistic structures of their previous albums are condensed and sharpened, while maintaining their refusal to delve into superficiality. Through playful melodies and elliptical guitar soliloquy, they deliver a final product of exceptional depth and distinctly unprecious warmth. Crack Cloud have produced a mature, vital work that interrogates the platitudes of the rock-n-roll lifestyle, but ultimately exalts its sacredness. Red Mile's de facto thesis statement "The Medium" is itself a rock song meditation: an ode to the form and its practitioners. This genre that _ typical, repeatable, corporatized as it can be _ somehow still has the power to help us live through life. We see the dusty sentiment of "I love rock and roll" exhumed, taken apart, and stitched back together. It's a song guided by faith _ if the medium helps us proclaim our love today, it's worth protecting from derision tomorrow. We live in an era where music seems to love hitting its head against the wall. Crack Cloud's Red Mile is the sound _ the feeling! _ of the bricks giving way.

Slip this delirious disc out of the lime/slime green sleeve and you're up close and personal with the new chapter in the TD saga.
A dance floor triptych of such seismic scale that the crew spent two years trying to wrangle the tracks on wax, finally finding a plant with the power to press them up.

Sprawling across the A-side is the devastating 'Doner Summer', an instrumental extension of some lost Munich disco masquerading as an Anatolian excursion. Ditching the vocals and cutting the kase, the crew lay down a galloping groove topped with Turkish licks and disco strings, take us into the psychedelic swirl of a tumbling drum breakdown before hitting the big red button marked banger for a searing second half. Firing up the hardware, TD blast this one further into the Phuture, dropping technoid sequences, nagging 303 and Cowley-style FX fuckery for a full on club assault.

In the alternate B-side universe, Hans Zimmer lost his dread note and Denis Villeneuve was forced to turn to Talking Drums for the Dune soundtrack. They obliged with the sci-fi rai of 'Chaba Ranks', reshaping an Algerian OG with a dancehall kick, off beat vamps and star-crossed synths, then letting loose with a heavy bass tone.
|In time honoured fashion, the team also drop a dub version, cutting out the vocals and focussing on those additional elements for the wildly cosmic 'Chaba Skanks'.

Now who's getting the spice in?

Limited Press - Numbered Insert - Drum Fun Guaranteed !

Belgian progressive post-hardcore quintet Hippotraktor have announced their second full-length album, `Stasis'. The combination of impressionistic songwriting ambitions and powerful, narrative-charged lyrics proved to be a perfest match for the band so far. Operating at the intersection of Meshuggah's relentless, polyrhythmic pounding and Gojira's colossal atmospheric weight, Hippotraktor have expanded upon their already distinctive sound by introducing De Graef's vocals that bring with them an intriguing new dedication to musical storytelling. "Stasis tells a story of human nature," explains lead vocalist Stefan De Graef about the album's narrative. "As the protagonist enters a new world in which he is confronted with other humans for the first time, he acquaints himself with their customs and ethics, discovering generosity and empathy, but also greed, jealousy and hatred." Taken from the Greek for `stoppage', `Stasis' sees Hippotraktor doing anything but stagnating. Hippotraktor chart intricate melodies and sprawling riffs as a map showing how humanity has come of age in a chaotic world of its own making. Deftly unveiling tender truths whilst tenderly shrouding the violent majesty at its core, `Stasis' is a fitting soundtrack to life in a world that's hurtling towards a stand still.

Enjoy The Toons Records in conjunction with WaterTower Records, WB Games & DC Comics proudly presents Best of Batman: Arkham Knight, Music by Nick Arundel and David Buckley.

Curated by the games' composer, Nick Arundel, Best of Batman: Arkham Knight consists of 15 tracks from the 2015 video game. Each record comes housed in a 350gsm jacket with black inner sleeves and black flood printing inside the sleeve. Included with each record is a 12" x 24" foldout insert, featuring a collage of the game's main characters on one side, with a grand scale view of Arkham City on the other.

Best of Batman: Arkham Knight is a limited edition pressing.

Enjoy The Toons Records in conjunction with WaterTower Records, WB Games & DC Comics proudly presents Best of Batman: Arkham Knight, Music by Nick Arundel and David Buckley.

Curated by the games' composer, Nick Arundel, Best of Batman: Arkham Knight consists of 15 tracks from the 2015 video game. Each record comes housed in a 350gsm jacket with black inner sleeves and black flood printing inside the sleeve. Included with each record is a 12" x 24" foldout insert, featuring a collage of the game's main characters on one side, with a grand scale view of Arkham City on the other.

Best of Batman: Arkham Knight is a limited edition pressing.

Scoring the lives of small-time players, pimps, junkies, and prostitutes lurking around his simultaneously blessed and cursed existence, Wee mastermind Norman Whiteside lived in an entirely different Columbus than Capsoul's Bill Moss or Prix's Clem Price. Alternating between Stevie Wonder's dreamy soul and Sly Stone's druggy groove, You Can Fly On My Aeroplane bypasses Whiteside's everyday gritty street life reality, focusing instead on the airy sounds of fantasy and masquerade. Smooth, sexy, and synthy, You Can Fly On My Aeroplane is a peerless and sprawling psychedelic soul concept album and a sure'fire panty soaker to boot.

Outrageous white label manoeuvres from Manchester mates AR & BS, transporting a Yacht legend to the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Psychedelic sprawl, robo-drama, AOR emotion - this disc's got it all !

AR extends, expands and excels on his A-side epic, delivering a dance floor journey which moves from weirdo wonk to the hands-in-the-air heaven in a transformative ten minutes. The loose and lysergic groove of the intro builds into a How Shroom Is Now wall of sound, takes a detour into heavy hip hop headnod and settles into vocal sincerity, all before dropping that HUGE chorus. Festival tested and club ready - everyone say Armen!

On the flipside, we catch up with Stockport staple BS, who puts down the Pet Nat, swaps the grape vape for a gary and gets stuck into a serious slice of cosmic chug.

Slo-mo and sleazy, this arpeggiator heavy heater sees a crooning 80's vocal surf a mechanical groove purpose made for backwards dancers and eyeball lickers. The combination of wild emoting and synthetic drama is pretty much everything, but just wait for that breakdown.

Double A-side coz you gotta double drop your GARIES!

Jacken Elswyth is a London-based folk musician, banjo player, and instrument builder. At Fargrounds is her third solo album, her first for the Wrong Speed label and the latest in a rich catalogue that repositions the spectral, vulnerable sound of the banjo away from its familiar role as signifier of the past and onto lands brave, new and unexplored. “The living wood is imbued with qualities that require engagement and understanding. Working with cherry, oak or walnut involves naming it an equal partner. The parallel, synchronous transformations of wood into instrument, of growing tree into resonating sound, musical tradition into musical flourishing, lie at the heart of Jacken Elswyth’s practices both as an instrument builder and as a creative musician. One might consider her primarily as a worker in wood, but whose craft and fields of expression are absorbed by those transitional and interim processes that manifest change. The traditional tunes included here have been cultivated and maintained by generations of players and collectors, pruned, grafted, and shaped over time. However, in this setting, their long-established forms seem to morph and shift. They audibly accrue unique qualities, blossoming and swelling into new modes of being, bright-stepping arrangements unfolding with a liveliness hinting at practices of ritual and community. Meanwhile, other pieces, creative cornerstones of this collection, appear fluid, partially formed. They suggest not the cultivation of new growth from established stock, but instead the actions of something on the verge of taking form. Working with raw elements of melodic and tonal abstraction, they illuminate the process of emergence and evolution. In this context, the title At Fargrounds is telling. It suggests a point set at some distance from any centre of human concerns, a liminal space in which the cultivated world encounters the world of other living things in their living state. Here, the innate strangeness of the maintained environment–vast lawns, sculpted hedges, vacant playing fields–encounters sprawling vistas of driftwood, dense thickets of brambles, stony hillsides. Across a full century-and-a-quarter, long-standing rural and pastoral musical traditions, at some distance from their origins, have been preserved, nurtured and re-shaped under the folk revival. Placed here, these artefacts now sit in alignment with unvarnished documents featuring the raw elements of sound-making. Their working-together is achieved through a universally-applied interest in musical growth and development. The juxtaposition and combination of these elements gives evidence of new, emerging approaches to community and social music: familiar, known, yet charged with an alien vitality”–CWK Joynes. “...she knows how to knit atmospheres, and does so to especially powerful effect during Scene 4b’s three minutes of stunning bowed banjo, yearning with longing and dread, while showing off her talent, curiosity and range”–Jude Rogers review of Six Static Scenes (Guardian Folk Album Of The Month July 2022) "Jacken is an emotive player with high technical ability. Further, she builds banjos and other instruments, and that intimate knowledge of the bones and fibres holding everything together means that her playing has very few cracks" - Foxy Digitalis

Originally released in 1990, Royal Trux's 'Twin Infinitives' is being re-issued in all its (yet to be translated) alien glory, by Fire Records. A dismantled overture that sprawls out over two records, an avant-garde masterpiece that was the spark for Drag City Records and generations of new sound seeking musicians. Hailed in the same immortal breath as Beefheart's 'Trout Mask Replica', the Velvets' at their frenzied peak and Ornette Coleman at his most avant-garde, the duo of Pussy Galore's Neil "Michael" Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema recorded 'Twin Infinitives' while imbibing all kinds of mind-altering substances to create an inadvertent blueprint for what the duo was building with moog's, guitars and melodicas to name a few ingredients. It is the legendary second album from the masters of the genre mashup - long before "genre mashups" even existed. Arguably, the term "mashup" was coined to describe what Trux, as they subconsciously scrolled through the radio stations of their lives. The album's chaotic sound and offbeat construction laid the foundations for a string of Royal Trux albums that spiralled between genres, tunings, and noise. Through the 90s they would re-invent the rock 'n' roll ethic, straddle alien surf music, re-align boogie rock, not to mention 80s hair metal, and confound critics by their wildly meandering and courageous rites of passage. Remastered as part of a career spanning catalogue deal with Fire Records. The infamous and influential duo of Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty will be delving into the archive with a comprehensive reissue series, unearthing the vaults and revisiting what made them such a compelling benchmark for their contemporaries and imitators. Reawakening their prolific output within a new monochrome vinyl series covering 1988-1993, they begin with their seminal deconstructed rock masterpiece Twin Infinitives. "Sounding like a subway ride inside a television inside an earthquake inside the end of the world and a pounding death rhythm of apocalyptic now." Pitchfork Ltd Double Silver Vinyl, Monochrome edition artwork, DL card.

"A sprawling patchwork of the artist’s dreams and fears, Parannoul’s third album After the Magic explores the enigmatic solo artist’s life in the wake of his second album’s overnight success.

Expanding on the shoegaze-shaded emo that made Parannoul’s To See the Next Part of the Dream so beloved by lo-fi and indie rock fans alike, After the Magic sees the anonymous auteur striving to write a follow-up as worthy of acclaim as the last.

Across the album’s ten songs, Parannoul plunges yet deeper into his diverse pool of influences, coming back to the surface with a record that captures and extends the magic of its predecessor. Unexpected flashes of orchestral ambient and glitched-out electronica meld seamlessly with Parannoul’s signature passages of noisy, distortion-laden shoegaze, offering a real time glimpse into the maturation of one of indie rock’s most exciting artists.

In the artist’s own words, “This album is not what you expected, but what I always wanted.”"

Reality Hacked Part 1 sees the long-awaited vinyl release of the Matthew Dear, Perel and Jonny Rock remixes of Mirage. Taken from Lost Souls Of Saturn’s album ‘Reality’, released on their Holoverse Research Labs imprint, the original tracks saw Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa teaming with vocalist Adam Ohr (aka Addy Weitzman of Footprintz and The Beat Escape) for a cosmic synth-pop anthem.

The first 12” collects together the irresistible house remix from Perel (DFA / Kompakt), Jonny Rock’s chugging rework by Jonny Rock, and the gloriously twisted sprawling take from Matthew Dear.

Remastered vinyl of the original album which came out on CD only in 2005. Limited to 200 copies on classic black vinyl. This is an album that’s as alive as any could be. Indeed, far from sounding like the last desperate set of half-baked ideas from a once vital band (hello Oasis?) Artists Cannibals Poets Thieves is more like a debut album from a bunch of teenage upstarts: free from cynicism, fired with worldly wonder and chock full of ideas. This is certainly a different outfit from that of 1998, when they first wowed us (via John Peel, naturally) with the utterly essential sprawling noise that was The Things We Make. Long since stripped down by a series of resignations from a five strong collective to a taut three piece featuring founding members Chris Olley, James Flower and Chris Davis, the music has simplified considerably. Gone are the soundscapes of old, and in their place we have a series of sharp basslines, swirling keyboards, cutting guitar lines and the passionate hollering of frontman Olley. Opener All I Really Want From You Is Love is a perfect introduction to proceedings – a truly wonderfully distorted slab of indie rock, recalling early Jesus And Mary Chain in both its fuzz and, crucially, its wonderfully crafted tune. Next, Nowhere To Go But Home sounds like New Order if they’d emerged from Detroit in 1966. Tonight (I Wanna Make It Out) follows likewise with the best bassline Peter Hook never plucked. Throughout, Six By Seven manage to sound so natural, so refreshing free of the flab and introspection that a band on its last legs would usually succumb to. And whilst the momentum is momentarily lost as the drum machine makes an appearance to fashion the Suicide-esque trawl of Stara Paris Rescued Me, it’s not long before Just Get It Down muscles things back on course with a whispered Olley diatribe perched on top of more raw cacophony, before we reach the bitter end via the Depeche Mode-on-smack You Know I Feel Alright Now. Tracklisting:

Belgian progressive post-hardcore quintet Hippotraktor have announced their second full-length album, `Stasis'. The combination of impressionistic songwriting ambitions and powerful, narrative-charged lyrics proved to be a perfest match for the band so far. Operating at the intersection of Meshuggah's relentless, polyrhythmic pounding and Gojira's colossal atmospheric weight, Hippotraktor have expanded upon their already distinctive sound by introducing De Graef's vocals that bring with them an intriguing new dedication to musical storytelling. "Stasis tells a story of human nature," explains lead vocalist Stefan De Graef about the album's narrative. "As the protagonist enters a new world in which he is confronted with other humans for the first time, he acquaints himself with their customs and ethics, discovering generosity and empathy, but also greed, jealousy and hatred." Taken from the Greek for `stoppage', `Stasis' sees Hippotraktor doing anything but stagnating. Hippotraktor chart intricate melodies and sprawling riffs as a map showing how humanity has come of age in a chaotic world of its own making. Deftly unveiling tender truths whilst tenderly shrouding the violent majesty at its core, `Stasis' is a fitting soundtrack to life in a world that's hurtling towards a stand still.

In The Pit returns, again with four tracks from label boss Seb
Jay hailing from Adelaid e/Tarndanya, Australia. Two years
on from the inaugural release, Seb Jay draws his newest
works from the local scene's expansion beyond clubs & into
Adelaide's House & Techno landscape of thriving bar culture,
sprawling inner city parklands parties & warehouse shows.
All four tracks are re§ective of Adelaide's willingness to
venture into discerningly fresh, yet richly familiar dance §oor
territories & are particularly inspired by his own infamous
'Snake Pit' parties, with their distinctly diverse crowds &
literally folkloric stature. This is for the city we love & the
dancers willing to explore the realms of their new urban
arena.

Tangential Music is pleased to present the new album from veteran Spanish DJ and producer, Dj Toner (aka Antonio Herrera). Alongside his co-writer/arranger Daniel Molina and with guests that include the legendary Blue Note Records innovator Erik Truffaz and Grammy winning flautist and saxophonist Jorge Pardo, he has created a 10 track collection of slow-burning instrumentals that straddle the worlds of hip hop, jazz and electronica.

With a personal, precision tooled approach to his craft, the Andalusian has offered up an album of finely modelled downbeat moods.

At first glance, ‘Out Side’ is made up of recognisably superior hip hop instrumentals but if you listen carefully, and with patience, one can hear a craftsman at work. A wooden box is just a box until you look closer. The hidden joints, the perfect lining up of the grain, the years of artisanal graft and laser-focussed attention to detail that go into making something that has nothing present, that doesn’t deserve to be there. This is how Dj Toner operates.

The two singles that preempt the album’s release reveal different sides of his craft. ‘Camina’ struts with tough intentions. Soundtrack-y in an exploitation police drama manner, the get-out-of-my-way drum break and tension-filled chords suggest the bad cop, Erik Truffaz’s piercing lyrical trumpet lines, the good. The Afro-jazz horns led second release ‘Surprise’ is an altogether more playful, sunbaked affair. Sensual and slow-burning, there’s still an edge but it’s too hot to quarrel.

Dj Toner’s minimalist attitude to creation is shared with his co-composer Molina - an individual’s contribution may be cut to the bone, leaving just its aura or tone. The echo of a piano, a single blast of tuneful wind from a flute, a perfectly positioned drum hit.

Since the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA began applying his beatmaking prowess to movie soundtracks, the hip hop instrumental has been acknowledged as something to listen to, as much as being used as a DJ tool or backing for an MC. Dj Toner’s instrumentals can, therefore, be seen as soundtracks. Soundtracks to his life and craft, vignettes of his environment in both the urban sprawl and the wider and slower spaces of “el campo”.

The sweet-tempered jazz-blues of ‘La Rimosa’ is a gentle welcome to the album. A simple, laid back groove with the most romantic of piano hooks that one could imagine Common dropping rhymes on. You’re kept on your toes with the odd purposeful moment of discordant interruption but the tender heart of the composition is never far away.

‘O’Beat’ hints at John Coltrane with the sparse but full-sounding upright bass before a head-snap break leads into a curious piano groove, a vintage organ swirls into a psychedelic fractal, whilst the bluesy female vocal snippets add the spice, that zing in the Granadan gazpacho.

The flamenco guitar driven ‘Flama’ is an excellent example of intricate sample placement and musicality. Old school (school yard) scratch interludes, sweet piano hooks, a minimalist but knife sharp flute contribution from Jorge Pardo, and the crunchiest of drums taking us for an intriguing walk round the corner.

We’ve mentioned them before but it’s on ‘Sweetband’ that we can feel that Wu-Tang dread hanging off its shoulders. A brooding orchestral number with powerful horns and a cavernous piano hit. The title of the piece is in stark contrast to the dark shadows of the tune.

Erik Truffaz returns in fine form on the super lethargic jazz-funk-hop of ‘The Day’. His instantly identifiable muted trumpet sound paints dazzling colours over the more earthy tones of the filtered down keys as a rubbery upright bass keeps the forward momentum. Dj Toner’s ‘Blessed Are The Weird People’ album, was rated in Jazz Magazine as one of the 20 jazz albums of 2021, so he isn’t some dilettante when it comes to playing with the complex hues of jazz but he does like to strip it to its bare essentials.

‘Fanega’ sees a gorgeous flute contribution from Jorge Pardo. An eerie boom-bap groove with sprinkles of electronic pulses and washed out chords is the canvas on which the award-winning multi-instrumentalist evokes the heat shimmer of the savannah.


‘Esperanza’ translates as ‘hope’ in English and this lovely slow, swinging jazzy groove really does provoke feelings of positivity and belief. Sublime vibraphone and another stunning trumpet offering from Erik Truffaz, take us on a journey of warm days and possibilities, the shuffling drums and sweet chord patterns are nicely finished off by a tranquil horn chorus towards its unhurried end.

‘Under Beat’ ends on a beefy boom-bap groove with a liquid funk bassline, elegant synth strings and old school scratching. Again, there’s that undisputable soundtrack edge, action and motion, the smell of the city.

There you have it, 10 tracks that go beyond the surface, deep into the dedicated craft of Dj Toner. Decades of experience and collaboration purified and refined into beat-heavy emotions, listen closely or crank it up, it’s down to you!

Yes' 90125 was a departure from their progressive style but it introduced the band to a new generation of fans, reaching No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and No. 16 on the U.K. albums chart. The 1983 album remains their best-selling album with more than 3 million copies sold in the U.S. "Cinema" earned the group a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, while "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" was the band's first and only single to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Named for its Atco catalog number, 90125, the album — the band's 11th studio effort — it was born out of the band's self-reinvention. Begun as Cinema, a new band by Chris Squire and Alan White, the project grew to include the slick production of Trevor Horn, the new blood (and distinctly '80s guitar sound) of Trevor Rabin, and eventually the trademark vocals of returning founder Jon Anderson. His late entry insured that Rabin and Horn had a heavy influence on the sound. The album also marked the return of prodigal keyboardist Tony Kaye, whose crisp synth work on "Changes" marked the band's definitive break with its art rock roots.

"Owner Of A Lonely Heart" was a huge crossover hit, and its orchestral break has been relentlessly sampled by rappers ever since. The vocal harmonies of "Leave It" and the beautifully sprawling "Hearts" are additional high points,

90125 is a significant and well-regarded album in the Yes discography.

Analogue Productions is proud to offer the definitive reissue deluxe 180-gram 45 RPM 2LP of 90125. For Yes fans, this is a can't-miss addition to your album collection.

FREQ Records is the record label accompanying the manga "FREQ," created by Nicola Kazimir, illustrated by goodnewsforbadguys, and written by the legendary Dai Sato, who has written scripts for Ergo Proxy, Eureka Seven, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, among many others.

The setting of Freq's lore unfolds in a futuristic realm where the influence of sound frequencies governs all aspects of life. In this world, everything from traffic and AR visuals to electricity, warfare, and of course, music, is orchestrated through the manipulation and extraction of sound frequencies. The narrative unfolds within the sprawling expanse of Rephlex, a vast city featuring diverse districts, factions, and social classes.

FREQ001, called Super FREQ, is composed by none other than Machine Girl, known for their breakcore-inspired sonic adventures and highly energetic live shows. For this EP, we might get a compositional glimpse of how Machine Girl will sound in the future.

Placenta is the fourth collection of broadly imaginative and highly collaborative Carlos Niño & Friends music released on International Anthem since 2021. But perhaps more notably for the zeitgeist of today, it is the first new music to be released by Carlos Niño & Friends following the November 2023 release of André 3000’s New Blue Sun – an album which Carlos produced alongside André, while co-writing, performing, and co-mixing every song. The announcement of Placenta also comes while Carlos is in the middle of tours with André to support New Blue Sun, where Carlos wields an immense presence as music director, bandleader, and percussionist, and performs alongside many of the same musicians that are present on his recent & Friends albums, including this new one.

Placenta is announced on the 1st solar return of Moss Niño, of whom Carlos and his partner Annelise are Earth parents. Their experience of pregnancy, labor and delivery were all profoundly impactful for Carlos. Becoming a father again (a whole 25 years after the birth of Azul Niño, who has become a regular artistic collaborator for Carlos) he felt total Inspiration for this set of recordings, and hence it is perhaps the most conceptually-grounded Carlos Niño & Friends album we've yet to present–fully connected to the spirit of family, birth, and "how we get here."

In Niño’s words, Placenta is “dedicated to Mothers, Children, Babies, Aunties, Doulas, Midwives, Birthworkers...,” and a short list of track titles includes: "Love to all Doulas!," "Some Rest for the Midwives," "Real Vital Organs," and "Generous Pelvis." The centerpiece of the album, the sprawling "Placenta, Nourishment, New Home, The Galaxy," is an unbelievably vivid immersion in the sonic architecture of Niño's memory-scape...like being present in his energy field...or being present in a birthing room, or maybe even being born yourself. And it just might be the most powerful, unique piece of music Niño has ever created.

Featured artists on Placenta, in order of their entry on the album, include: Nate Mercereau, Jamire Williams, Sam Gendel, Jamael Dean, Dexter Story, Brandon Eugene Owens, Maia, André 3000, Jesse Peterson, Ariel Kalma, Surya Botofasina, Annelise, Haize Hawke, Aaron Shaw, Devin Daniels, Tiffany de Leon, Michael Bolger, Michael Alvidrez, Moss, Iasos, Photay, Deantoni Parks, Adam Rudolph, Andres Renteria, and Cavana Lee.

Tillla is 19 year old prodigal piano player Mateo Davis, a graduate of Purcell (Tirzah, Mica Levi, Jacob Collier) & a polymath musician, producer & mixer.

Third Person is Tillla's debut EP, a 13 track sprawling opus the then-18-yr-old made alone in his bedroom on a modular synth and dodgy copy of Ableton. The musicianship, depth and technical creativity in this record really is something that should be noted.

For more than twenty years, Ka Baird has explored the outer dimensions of sound through performance. Extending far beyond their roots in the psychedelic folk movement of the early aughts, Ka is known for their raw, boundary pushing solo performances that bridge experimental sound, performance art, and ritual. Their tool set in the live arena includes extended voice and microphone techniques, electronics, flute and piano. Bearings follows their 2017 debut Sapropelic Pycnic and Respires, their acclaimed 2019 album.

Initially conceived as a twenty minute composition and presentation commissioned by Lampo in Chicago in the spring of 2022, Ka first explored the concept of “bearings” through a series of intimate performances where they shifted guises between magician, shaman, clown, and athlete, all enduring ongoing states of groundlessness through a physically demanding performance that entailed both play and struggle. This piece, in tandem with the heaviness of caring for a dying parent during the subsequent year, laid the groundwork for Bearings, with the album’s final narrative structure revealing itself in the months after their mother’s death the following September.

Enlisting a cast of contributors including Andrew Bernstein (alto saxophone), Max Eilbacher (flute processing, electronics), Greg Fox (percussion), gabby fluke-mogul (violin), Henry Fraser (contrabass), Joanna Mattrey (viola), John McCowen (contra clarinet), Camilla Padgitt-Coles (bowls, waterphone) Troy Schafer (strings), Chris Williams (trumpet), Nate Wooley (trumpet), and their beloved cat, Nisa (purrs) to create a collective hum and thrum, Ka and company create sprawling minimalist densities, punctuated by abrupt starts and stops, complex harmonics and textures, percussive flourishes, and a single, cyclical lyrical phrase: “Here. Disappear. Poof!”

Ka considers the album to be a deviant nod to a song cycle, throughout which certain motifs are repeated in different configurations. In the album’s sonic lexicon, a trumpet blast signifies a birth or death, or a distant string motif denotes a memory. Bearings is a durational work of profound abstraction and focus, within which sonorous elements, structure, and meaning reach a single, unified form. This amounts to nothing short of a creative high-water mark for one of the most dynamic and uncompromising artists working in the landscape of music today.

Tulsa, Oklahoma's Unwed Sailor have been on a tear over the past few years. Following a quiet phase through much of the 2010s, they reëmerged with the aptly titled Heavy Age (2019), and two more full-lengths, Truth Or Consequences (2021) and Mute The Charm (2023), that chart a remarkable evolution of their bass-led, pop-leaning post rock. On Underwater Over There - their ninth LP overall - a current of 80s goth and jangle-pop runs beneath a litany of memorable hooks and compositional left turns, creating a propulsive and intricate world of sound. The band worked collectively on all elements of mixing and production to craft a meticulously layered environment, while maintaining an air of spontaneity and experimentation across the set. Early standout, "Final Feather", drifts through varying landscapes of airiness and haze on a high-neck bass hook, while the hum of voices adds a contrast of angelic comfort. Bearing influence from New Order and The Cure in particular, its balance of gravitas and shimmer is the result of founding member Johnathon Ford's intuitive writing method: the lead bass line comes first, followed by supporting melodies, drums, guitars, keys, and final detailing. "Dusty" is a prime example of this process, as Ford's powerful, low-end groove anchors a full-spectrum array of guitars, bells, and arpeggiations along with Matt Putman's energetic drum section. Its fluid pacing provides a perfect establishing shot, with shifting moods that gather into a coda guided by David Swatzell's harmonized, glittering guitar riffs - a sunrise after a moonless night. In quick succession, "Blue Tangier" widens the aperture with a pounding percussive refrain, vibrant bass tone and an unforgettable, fuzzed-out melodic motif. Sprawling centerpiece, "Junko", is a loose callback to 2003's The Marionette and The Music Box, its deliberate stride and interwoven melodies evoking the hands of a mechanical clock, and the anticipation of something long-awaited but nebulous. It drifts effortlessly from innocence to intrigue, expands into a mesmerizing howl, and vanishes abruptly into mist. While honoring their forebears in winks and nods, Unwed Sailor remain totally inimitable in their approach and style, twenty-five years into an acclaimed career. The band's clear vision for Underwater Over There has yielded some of their most indelible work, and their inventive, passionate approach gives a strong sense of plenty more beyond the horizon.

Saltburn is the 2023 black comedy psychological thriller film
written, directed, and co-produced by Emerald Fennell. The film stars a student (Barry Keoghan) at Oxford University, who finds himself drawn into the world of a charming and aristocratic classmate (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to his eccentric family’s sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten.

The film became one of the most-streamed films upon its streaming release on Amazon Prime Video in December 2023. It received critical acclaim and several accolades, including nominations for two Golden Globe Awards and five BAFTA Awards.
The music was created by Anthony Willis, who previously scored Fennell’s Promising Young Woman among others. Saltburn is available as a limited edition on white & black marbled vinyl and includes an insert.

An edit-reissue of this gargantuan double cassette released back in 2014 under the Typhonian Highlife moniker, 'H.R. Giger's Studiolo' finds netherworld voyagerSpencer Clark at a particularlybeguiling conjunction of his labyrinthine-esque soundworld. With complete disregard for linear timelines and trajectories, 'H.R. Giger's Studiolo' finds both inspiration in the swiss master's vision and the Cenobite iconographypreviously exploredby Clark on Fourth World Magazine's 'Pinhead in Fantasia'. The CD Head Cenobite picture adorning the cover makes the connection more than apparent.

A sprawling, two and half hour excursion on the tape version, here properly edited down to the wax container, the first two volumes of 'H.R. Giger's Studiolo' are some of Clark's most mystifying recordings. A baroque odyssey through an hermetic maze of alien voices, warping sound effects, oneiric keyboards and a quasi-orchestral sense of space and dynamics, 'H.R. Giger's Studiolo' feels like an hallucinatory fever dream still unlike everything else, either from before or after. Time doesn't apply here, anyway.

Mastered by Rashad Becker
Artwork by Spencer Clark

Blue Bendy are kicking off 2024 with news of their highly anticipated debut album ‘So Medieval’ which is being released via state51 on 12 April. Alongside this big announcement the band are sharing the latest new track from the record, ‘Come On Baby, Dig!’, and dates for their UK tour including their largest headline show to date at The Garage in London on 9 May and a special Album Launch Show in the band’s hometown of Scunthorpe to celebrate the release.

‘So Medieval’ captures all the musical foibles, idiosyncrasies and departures from the norm which Blue Bendy have displayed across their previous releases. Expressing their sound over the course of a full record for the first time, ‘So Medieval’ is an explosive mix of genre, atmosphere and emotions. The end result is something rare for a new band: a debut album which is as experimental as it is confident and assured, as tender as it is visceral, as quiet as it is loud, as bloody as it is teary.

Released 25th January, new single ‘Come On Baby, Dig!’ follows on from previously released album tracks ‘Cloudy’ and ‘Mr. Bubblegum’. Simmering down the tempo and darkening the mood, the track stacks forlorn lyrics against an assortment of riffs, tones and textures. The music video, directed by Michael Julings, depicts an unnamed character locked in an existential battle with an immovable black fridge. Starring Laura Schuller, a performance artist recently cast in the Marina Abramović retrospective at the RA, the video also features the band coming together to conjure supernatural powers at the video's climax.

Singer and lyricist Arthur Nolan explains that “Dig is dedicated to an old flame and a city break. I was eat pray loving, digging around for some culture in the wake of breaking up. The wheels came off the trip quickly, and now I won’t go back to Bologna, I’m banned.”

Building on the momentum of their 2022 EP ‘Motorbike’ Blue Bendy are stretching out into vast new sonic terrain. Their following two singles ‘Mr Bubblegum’ - a joyously intricate piece of experimental guitar pop - and the frenetic, propulsive yet incredibly deft sprawl of ‘Cloudy’, saw the band reach new heights creatively. Of the former, The Guardian enthused: “indie is riddled with addled, verbose frontmen right now, but none so rapturous as Blue Bendy’s Arthur Nolan: here he dances all over splayed post-rock and micro-cataclysms.”

Having toured as main support for Squid and Cola as well as playing packed out tents at festivals like End Of The Road and Green Man, Blue Bendy have struck a balance between being obviously skilled musicians, writing complex, layered, overlapping and ambitious compositions, while also utilising space, breadth, and restraint. Their music is bursting with dynamism, exploring push-pull dynamics that results in something ceaselessly unpredictable.

One of the greatest, heaviest, and most sought-after guitar records from 1970s West Africa, available on vinyl for the first time in over a decade!!!

Bamako, Mali, 1973: Rail Band, the official orchestra of the Malian state railway, drops their self-titled LP. It’s a relentlessly soulful and hypnotic blend of American funk, jazz horns, and Afro-Cuban music, reflected through centuries-old Mandé tradition and blasted at top volume by some of the continent’s greatest artists.

Led by legendary trumpet and saxman Tidiani Koné and held aloft by the intricate web of Djelimady Tounkara’s rumbling, reverb-soaked guitar, Rail Band’s sprawling compositions embody West African storytelling traditions while exulting in the technology and modernity of a newly independent Mali. Vocalists Salif Keita and Mory Kanté, two heroes of African music who would achieve global fame as soloists, are endlessly emotive, oscillating between silky ballads and funk screams. The band’s sound is filled out by layers of percussion, rolling guitars, and melodic horns filtered through the Caribbean.

Starting in 1970, Rail Band played five nights a week, from 2 pm til the early hours, at the Buffet Hotel de la Gare. Their audience was an international array of businessmen, young partiers, and people of the Bamako night. The band was incredibly versatile, switching genres, rhythms, and styles to meet their crowd. It was a volatile mix, one that would fall apart soon after these recordings were made, with Salif Keita’s departure to start the rival Les Ambassadeurs. Though Rail Band continued in many distinguished forms, the eight songs on this album reveal one of the greatest bands to ever exist, at the height of their creative powers.

On “Duga”, a composition dating back to the 13th century and passed on through oral tradition by the jelis (griots), the Rail Band replace balafon with the interplay of Cheick Tidiane’s speaker-rattling bass and Alfred Coulibaly’s tasteful organ. “Marabayasa,” with its iconic sax intro and Mory Kanté channeling James Brown, is a deep-cut favorite of DJs around the world. Part of a long and regal lineage of Malian guitar orchestras initially tasked with translating the region’s traditional music to modern instrumentation, Rail Band morphed and reenvisioned those traditions with a style and energy that has never been matched.

As Sonny Falls, Ryan Ensley makes rollicking and resonant rock songs that feel like self-contained journeys. The Chicago bandleader combines breezy, timeless songwriting with a bracing emotional potency that sneaks up on you. There are ample power pop hooks, driving riffs, and a consistently tasteful sensibility in these tunes that he’s been honing across four sprawling albums. His latest, Sonny Falls, feels like a new era for Ensley: not for any drastic sonic reinvention but for the fact that he took his time and didn’t rush himself for the first time in his career. The resulting 11 tracks on this album are his most cohesive, engaging, and immediate yet: a testament to Ensley’s patience and maturity as a songwriter.

A quietly influential figure among electronic and experimental circles since the late 90s, Berlin based sound artist Hanno Leichtmann has been developing a sprawling and idiosyncratic vision both as a creator and curator.

With a keen sense for charting new territories, Leichtmann's work spawns a multitude of languages that go from deli-cate ambient excursions to techno explorations or abstract sceneries on numerous sound installations, releases on such esteemed labels like Entr'acte or The Tapeworm and collaborations with artists like Valerio Tricoli or Jan Jelinek. A reflection of his keen sense of discovery.

Centered around the Villa Aurora Organ, an intriguing and mostly unknown instrument built in 1928/29 by the Artcraft Organ Company in Santa Monica, California, 'Outerlands' presents a deeply personal approach to the instrument's particular properties, very much in line with Discrepant's ethos. Consisting of a pipe organ, a wall mounted marimba and a two octave tubular bells/chimes ensemble, remotely controllable by MIDI, the Villa Aurora Organ's rich palette of sounds is translated into 12 short tracks capable of conveying the mesmerising spirits of minimalism, exotica and de-votional music.

Starting with the ecstatic sound of the pipe organ, 'Lucero' sets up the hypnotic mood for 'Outerland's excursions through moments of spiralling repetition - 'Tramonto' -, blissful contemplation - 'Sunset' or 'Notteargenta' - or underly-ing tension - ‘Coperto’. 'Espera' amps up the unease, with queasy organ tones lurking beneath marimba harmonic motifs that wouldn't sound out of of place on some survival horror movie, while 'Miramar' or 'Revello' bring an uncanny sense of familiarity through its repetitive melodies.

Drifting seamlessly through a variety of moods that somehow feel connected - the outerlands are within you, if you allow yourself to let go.

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce a major archival release from legendary American composer and live electronics innovator Richard Teitelbaum, centred around his soundtrack for Suzan Pitt’s cult 1978 animation Asparagus. Best known to some listeners for introducing Europe to the Moog synthesizer as a founding member of Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome, Teitelbaum’s extensive and radically experimental body of work includes collaborative recordings with master improvisers like Anthony Braxton, Andrew Cyrille and George Lewis, intercultural experiments combining electronics with non-Western instruments such as the shakuhachi, works for computer controlled piano, and large-scale multi-media operas. Recorded at York University, Toronto in 1975–1976, ‘Asparagus (European Version)’ sprawls across both sides of the first LP. Discovered by composer Matt Sargent in Teitelbaum’s tape archive, this is a previously unheard major work for Moog modular and Polymoog synthesizers, unique in Teitelbaum’s oeuvre for its lushness and gently melodic quality. The music unfolds slowly, submerging lyrical melodies and burbling arpeggios into uneasy, glacially shifting harmonic swells, the luscious texture thickened with subtle changes of modulation and phase, calling up the shifting layers of Costin Miereanu’s classic Derives or the kosmische Musik tradition more than any academic synthesizer exercise. Teitelbaum incorporated much of this material into his soundtrack for Suzan Pitt’s Asparagus, which receives its first official release here. Asparagus, famously paired with David Lynch’s Eraserhead for a two-year run of midnight screenings at New York’s Waverly Theatre, uses hand-drawn and stop animation to unfurl an oneiric succession of images, beginning with a sequence in which the female protagonist defecates two stalks of asparagus, which multiply and float out of the toilet bowl to form the letters of the title. Teitelbaum’s soundtrack interweaves delicate drifting tones from the ‘European Version’ with contributions from Steve Lacy and Steve Potts on saxophones, George Lewis on trombone and Takehisa Kosugi on violin. Edited closely to the film, even without images the soundtrack proposes a surreal journey through floating synth tones, squealing horns, propulsive arpeggios, distant chatter, and an old-timey waltz. The final side of the set presents a new realisation of Teitelbaum’s text score ‘Threshold Music’, performed at a memorial concert at Roulette, New York in 2022 by Leila Bourreuil (cello), Alvin Curran (sampler and objects), Daniel Fishkin (daxophone), Miguel Frasconi (glass objects) and Matt Sargent (lap steel). The piece asks musicians to match their instrumental volume to that of the sounds of the environment in which they play, sometimes with the addition of recorded environmental sounds, reinforcing frequencies they encounter in listening deeply to their surroundings. Here the players use a field recording taken at Teitelbaum’s home in Bearsville, New York, their long tones and shimmering, glassy textures delicately emerging from the white noise of the location recording. Released with the full approval of both Richard Teitelbaum and Suzan Pitt’s estates, Asparagus is illustrated with striking images from Pitt’s film and accompanied by detailed liner notes by Francis Plagne. These previously unheard pieces shed new light on the work of a key composer in the American experimental tradition, offering up some of Teitelbaum’s most beautiful and engaging music.

“This record breathes a second life into these songs,” says Alejandro Escovedo of Echo Dancing, the Americana pioneer’s new album where he reconceptualizes the songs of his storied career. The variety of songs range from his short-lived rock quartet Buick MacKane, rarities from his ‘80s alt-country outfit The True Believers, to the celebrated songs of his solo discography from his debut album all the way to his most recent sprawling masterpiece, The Crossing. Highlights include a reimagined trip-hop-funk hybrid of Escovedo’s “Castanets” (retitled here as “Castañuelas''), a blistering version of “Bury Me” that finds that songwriter now older than the characters he was singing about, as well as songs co-written with trailblazers such as Chuck Prophet, Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and J. Steven Soles. At age 73, Escovedo continues to reshape his ever-changing sound and experiment with the boundaries of Americana music. The 2xLP vinyl edition of Echo Dancing is pressed on gold vinyl and arrives in a gatefold jacket.

Echo Dancing by Alejandro Escovedo, released 29 March 2024, includes the following tracks: "Bury Me", "Too Many Tears", "Outside Your Door", "Thought I’d Let You Know" and more.

This version of Echo Dancing comes as a 1xCD.

400 copies purple wax! Fold Out Poster, remastered & remixed by Eroc Welcome to the definitive Vortex. The LP you're holding has been on a journey, and no, not just shipping. Mouth's second after 2009's Rhizome, Vortex was mostly recorded in 2011 and 2012 over five sessions in a small space where the band rehearsed. Material was pieced together intermittently over a period of 11 months with Chris Koller handling guitar, keys and bass and Nick Mavridis on drums. That's where it started. Two construction projects: the studio and a recording that would help define the course of the band in classic and melodic progressive rock, happening almost simultaneously in a creative meta-narrative that could easily stand as analog for the depth of pieces like "Into the Light" or the sprawling "Vortex" itself, which opens the record (new and old editions) in an encompassing display of impulse and fluidity Through experiments in atmosphere like "March of the Cyclopes" and toward the finish of "Epilogue," Mouth married sounds that in other contexts would come up disparate, like finding a hidden magnetism between two north poles. Most of the Vortex songs were created on the spot in the studio.There would be no way to know it at the time, but this process would result in a collection of songs with a broad range, within as well as between the component tracks. "Parade" taps Sly Stone on the shoulder and asks if he wants to party (he does), while the penultimate "Soon After_" resonates with its smoky, mellow-jazz vibe. "Vortex" itself happens over six movements and was put together across different sessions, while "Epilogue" happened in a day. Dissatisfaction with the original mix - and when an album has as much put into its arrangements as Vortex, that balance matters - would lead Mouth to offer Out of the Vortex in 2020 as a collection of alternate versions of pieces like "Mountain" and "Parade," as well as the unreleased "Ready" and "Homagotago's Paddle Boat Trip," the latter an apparent successor to a cut from Floating. But sometimes a thing nestles itself into the back of your head and just won't leave, and Mouth's pursuit of a finished Vortex would lead them into the studio again. Koller handled the remix himself in Oct. 2023, and in addition to helming the new master, krautrock legend Eroc (who drummed in Grobschnitt) brought a gong to mark the beginning of "March of the Cyclopes." Like a lot of the finer touches on this Vortex, be it a hashed-out stretch in the title-track built on a drum/bass jam or just pulling the vocals and Hammond down a bit in "Epilogue," the result is a stylistic flourishing that was there all along throughout the journey and now can finally shine as the band intended. - JJ Koczan / Dec. 2023

LA/Joshua Tree based Sugar Candy Mountain deliver carefully built psychedelic odes in the style of Jacco Gardner and Tame Impala. Their breakout album 666 feels like something unearthed from a box of records found in your dad's garage, glowing wistfully with vintage inspired tones, rambling organs, fuzzed out guitars, shimmering keys and sprawling drums. Ash Reiter's woolly voice croons with the icy warmth of Francoise Hardy, while Will Halsey's tender Lennon-esque vocals uncoil with easy languor. Recorded with Jason Quever of Papercuts, the bands sophomore album sits comfortably between 60's Laurel Canyon bliss and more modern production of Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips/Tame Impala). 666 is the band's first record after deciding to retire Ash Reiter's eponymous solo project to focus solely on Sugar Candy Mountain. With this shift Ash became more heavily invested in writing for the project. On 666 the band moves away from the grandiose production of their previous album, Mystic Hits, on which some songs featured over two hundred instrument tracks. The majority of basic tracking was done on Jason Quever's 16 track Ampex tape machine through a Neve console, and completed at the bands home studio. Under Quever's guiding hand, production on 666 is significantly simplified, favoring featuring strong melodies over the wildly playful orchestrations of Mystic Hits. Quever is also significantly featured on the record as a player, with his influence distinctly coloring the album.

Prolific outsider artist Andrew G. Thomson - aka AyGeeTee - brings his unique sonic language to Kit Records, with a frenetic peep into a sprawling archive of unreleased work.

About You mutates through elastic synthesis, torporific loops, dislocated percussion and the splattered voices of AyGeeTee's backing group, The Actress Pets.

What begins life as a dervish of repurposed instrumental fragments ('Today's W'), ghosts into mantric pop irreverence ('Troubled Dinghy'), burnished orbits of guitar ('Sweetness One') and shuddering avant rap atmospheres ('Raiders').

Recommended if you like Carl Stone, Odd Nosdam, Shit and Shine.

About You is pressed to a very limited run of 50 tapes, with artwork by Andrew.

What the listener might encounter on this album goes all the way down to the sound of a neuron transmitting pain, beatitude or any one of the countless senses and impressions we feel on any one day of life. N E U R O is the debut album by CURA MACHINES, a new project by Daniel Lea whose tracks are at once scientific in their capturing of the morphing of body cells as well as the larger expanses of a poetic filmscape of the contemporary metropolis.

The name CURA MACHINES comes from a sign Lea saw on a trip to Ancona, Italy at an abandoned hospital: Prima E Dopo La Cura (Before and after the cure). The sound in between, of what was lost or found, transmuted in the heavily manipulated and pulsating synthesisers, is the restoration here. With a physically visceral mix by Ben Frost and soaring re-amped bass textures from Yair Elazar Glotman, the album is lush with trans-morphing apeggia that shudder, quack and soar into ashen sparks.

Back in the turn of the 20th century the poet Rilke posited that the suture patterns of fused skull plates could potentially be played by the then-new technology of the gramophone, with each of us having our own personal tonal source code or anthem etched onto our skulls. And with a track like 'Suture' we have such an embodied sound: the close-up exhumation of the neural brain casing, stitched and sewn together in fleeting pulses of whisper and alarm.
The individual is exposed and isolated, but not without the promise of succour.

Or one also has the soundtrack to the loneliness of a morose private eye – a pulp novel set in a future time of neurosis or washed out euphoric beauty. It is here in tracks such as 'Terminal Zone' or 'Inversion Layers', music that is blinking in celluloid frames. The plot could easily be a sci-fi, paranoid tale of brain emulation, transhumanist crimes against humanity itself. After all this is Lea's soundtrack to Los Angeles, the city of angels that has been captured in countless movies: the racing tracking shot of the 2nd Street Tunnel at night, the freeways spreading out in a glorious sprawl of lit up veins and arteries. The last track 'Zosa' marks out the boundary line that delineates between day and night, when the lunar strains wane, the tides subside and the city comes to life.

Atlanta's original Eccentric Soul labels, Jesse Jones' Tragar & N ote concerns captured critical regional R&B, soul, and funk from 1968-1976. Compiling 34 tracks and sprawled across two LPs, this 15 year anniversary deluxe edition appears on vinyl for the first time. Featuring rareas- hens-teeth 45s by Eula Cooper, Tee Fletcher, Richard Cook, Frankie & Robert, Tokay Lewis, Nathan Wilkes, Chuck Wilder, Bill Wright, Sonia Ross, Sandy Gaye, Four Tracks, Young Divines, and several others we can't fit on a h ype sticker.

Hotlanta Orange Marble Color Vinyl.
Atlanta's original Eccentric Soul labels, Jesse Jones' Tragar & N ote concerns captured critical regional R&B, soul, and funk from 1968-1976. Compiling 34 tracks and sprawled across two LPs, this 15 year anniversary deluxe edition appears on vinyl for the first time. Featuring rareas- hens-teeth 45s by Eula Cooper, Tee Fletcher, Richard Cook, Frankie & Robert, Tokay Lewis, Nathan Wilkes, Chuck Wilder, Bill Wright, Sonia Ross, Sandy Gaye, Four Tracks, Young Divines, and several others we can't fit on a h ype sticker.

Remastered and first ever vinyl and CD release When it came time to create "What I like to do," GRÓA took advantage of the prolonged standstill of lockdown and spent months on end in a friend’s studio, slowly building up an elaborate sonic world that unequivocally captures the joyful ferocity of their live show. To achieve the album’s glorious unpredictability, the band allowed themselves an even greater level of freedom in the writing and recording process. “All our songs are made in such different ways,” says Fríða. “Sometimes they come from us jamming in the garage, but other times we’ll sit down and draw a song on paper and then try to put the images to music. Another thing we love to do is switch instruments—when I hear Karó play the bass, for example, it gives me new ideas because she looks at the bass in a completely different way than I do. We’re always trying to find a new angle on what we’re creating.” Encompassing everything from the gorgeously ominous sprawl of “Ég skal bíða eftir þér” (“I will wait for you”) to the hypnotically loopy harmonies of “Grannypants,” What I like to do also marks the first GRÓA release to feature one of Karó self-built instruments. “For the last album I made a waterphone, which is a metal instrument that you pour water into and then play with a bow,” explains Karó, who’s currently studying new media compositions at university.

Car Therapy Sessions is an EP of new and re-imagined songs by Faye Webster recorded at Spacebomb Studios with a 24 piece orchestra. The orchestra was headed by Trey Pollard who was responsible for both conducting and arranging, and Drew Vandenburg produced and mixed the EP. Car Therapy Sessions will be available on vinyl in the fall and is available to pre-order on April 13th. "I have a vivid memory of walking around London in 2018 listening to a mix of Jonny, which I had just written. I remember thinking "I want to perform this song with an orchestra". I truly have had my heart set on it since then, always talking about it and figuring out how or when to make it happen," says Webster. On the EP, Webster reimagines three songs from her critically acclaimed 2021 release I Know I'm Funny haha and 2019's Atlanta Millionaires Club. The songs "Kind Of", "Sometimes" and "Cheers" take on a cinematic and glimmering new sheen. In addition to the title track -"Car Therapy" - she also shares a sprawling and emotional work - "Suite: Jonny" - which combines fan-favorites "Jonny" and "Jonny (Reprise)." The two songs originally appeared on the Atlanta Millionaire's Club tracklist, two different views on the same narrative. Here they're presented together. It's remarkable how beautifully Webster's work can take on this orchestral treatment. Like Cole Porter, or Judy Garland - her delicate and emotional delivery packs a gut punch when dramatized by the EP's robust arrangements.

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

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

Special tour only numbered 3 cd package. (Albums Inc: Joan Of All / Get Well Soon / Sarabeth Tucek) #33 MOJO AOTY 2023 #28 UNCUT AOTY 2023 Sarabeth Tucek emerges from a decade-long hibernation with a new double-album Joan of All under the new moniker SBT – a longtime nickname given to her by the many musicians she has worked with throughout her career. After retreating from the fevered pace of the record business to concentrate on other creative endeavors, Sarabeth began to piece together the music that would eventually become her most ambitious, personal project yet – the sprawling double-album Joan Of All, which will be released world-wide on 19th May 2023 via her own freshly-minted imprint Ocean Omen. Sarabeth Tucek officially broke onto the music scene 2003 performing a series of spellbinding duets with Bill Callahan on the acclaimed Smog album Supper. This was swiftly followed by a memorable appearance in the prize-winning Brian Jonestown Massacre documentary DiG! Sarabeth also contributed material to their 2005 EP release, We Are the Radio. One of Sarabeth's compositions covered by the band on that EP, "Seer," would later be retitled and released in 2006 as Tucek's debut single, "Something for You”, which became Steve Lamacq’s Single Of The Week on BBC Radio 6 Music. Her self-titled debut album produced by Luther Russell and Ethan Johns hit stores the following year and garnered rave reviews in the press, leading her to supporting Bob Dylan and unfaltering support at the BBC. In 2011, Sarabeth followed up her extraordinary debut with a raw, uncompromising album entitled Get Well Soon, praised as an unflinching meditation on the subject of grief. This release made many year-end lists and the title track was featured on the first season of HBO’s Girls.

An F-bomb saturated hip-hop call & response club cut...from Sun Ra?! While the most renown track in this omniversal opus is the atomic expletive-filled repartee 'Nuclear War,' there is so much more to this dark mysterious journey through the mind of Sun Ra. The sprawling, suite-like 20-minute title track sustains a lyrical edge in spite of an open framework and textures, which encourage sonorities to surface and emerge from the band as if there was no human intention behind them. In opposition to 'Nuclear War,' Ra's organ playing here was built less on bombast and sonic terror than it is on whispers, stutters, shivers, and swells. Fireside Chat offers a wide stylistic array, as was the artist's intent, reflecting his eclectic, seemingly irreconcilable approach to compositional extremes. With Sun Ra you get everything... except predictability. First ever reissue of this iconic album!

A Fireside Chat With Lucifer by Sun Ra, released 2 February 2024, includes the following tracks: "Makeup" and more.

This version of A Fireside Chat With Lucifer comes as a 1xLP.

The vinyl is pressed as a yellow disc.

Theme Ltd. is back with its fourth wave of exclusive releases, this time on one-sided 7” vinyl. Allow these tracks to guide you through their diverse production as they blend genres and tone to provide insight into their fresh production technique.

‘Everywhere’ positions the listener in a gentle mood for love. Snares snap and mix with a slightly discordant, far piano as lyrics and chords bounce off each other at a steady tempo. We are apprehended by the doleful vocals that invite us to gaze with an ‘illuminated stare’, and as we diffuse into the end of the song, a cool-aired beat breakdown leaves us in media res. A sprawl of love left everywhere. Great !

FAZI are a post-punk band based in the ancient Chinese city of Xi'an. However, there is much more to their story than meets the eye_ With five immersive full-length records and a brief stint on peak-time commercial TV already establishing the four-piece at the forefront of a truly pioneering wave of alternative music in China, the Euro-pean re-release of their latest offering, `Folding Story', represents an incredible new beginning for a band who have already spent years honing their craft - transforming timeless traditions of love, life and death into a perpetual dance of fre- netic, krautrock energy and sprawling, shoegaze panoramas. Fittingly, `Folding Story' is itself a cyclic experience of rebirth, renewal and a return to origin. Album opener `Invisible Water' is a contemplative start as frontman Peng Liu's yearning vocals reach out across synthesisers reminiscent of sonar and the hypnotic lapping of water on an un- known shore. Described by Peng as an "artistic conception of amniotic fluid in the mother's body", this motif returns at the end of the album's final track, `Way to Atman', this time as a gentle tide washing away the ash of a spent funeral pyre. Just as the album and its protagonist is born at the beginning and dies at the end, by deliberately opening and closing `Folding Story' with the sounds of water, Fazi invite listeners to flow through the record on a never ending loop, to listen to a story without pause, one that rises from a whisper to a roar only to subside as quickly as it arrived. First released in 2022 on pioneering Chinese record label Space Circle, `Folding Story' is a collection of 10 tracks that serve as stories themselves as well as part of a universal narrative in constant flow. A phenomenal accomplishment, its forthcoming re-release in Europe via Pelagic Records will ensure that Fazi continue to blow as many minds and ruffle as many feathers as possible. Gatefold sleeve, silver offset ink, printed on special all-black cardboard. FFO Joy Division, Suicide, Savages, Cabaret Voltaire, Iceage, Gilla Band, Fontän

Dutch lute player and composer Jozef Van Wissem's new album The Night Dwells in the Day out 19th January 2024. “It's like a part of my body,” says Jozef Van Wissem of the relationship he has to his chosen instrument, the lute. “The complexity of it is what keeps me going because you can always find something new.” The ability to constantly extract something different and explore fresh terrain is evident throughout Van Wissem’s sprawling back catalogue and up to his latest album, ‘The Night Dwells in the Day’. Over the years he’s released countless solo albums stretching into double figures, there’s been collaborations with Jim Jarmusch and Tilda Swinton, award-winning computer game soundtracks, along with award-winning film soundtracks, from Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive to Pierre Creton’s 2023 film A Prince. Since studying the lute in New York with Patrick O'Brien in the 1990s, Van Wissem has gone on to create works equally as rooted in classical Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music, as contemporary sounds spanning drones, electronics and field recordings. Throw in some of his formative influences from the no wave and industrial scenes, alongside a dedicated approach to minimalism and this has resulted in Van Wissem producing distinct and singular work whose sound is often a marriage of opposites; meditative and intense, forward thinking but with a sense of the arcane. The Quietus has called him “probably the most famous lutenist in the world”. The genesis for his latest album began during lockdown in Warsaw, where Van Wissem splits his time between Rotterdam. “The Call of the Deathbird” was the first song he wrote from the album and is the first to be shared, along with an accompanying video today. Over a hypnotic yet beautifully fluid and plucked melody - captures scenes of deserted streets, death and the intense isolation that gripped us all. One of the relatively rare tracks that Van Wissem sings on - along with some stirring and enveloping guest vocals from Hilary Woods (who will tour with Van Wissem later this year – details below) - his towering voice circles above the music much like the swooping deathbird he sings of. Normally Van Wissem writes all the music for one album within a confined period but this one song from a few years ago stuck around and took on a new lease of life and so joined a bunch of freshly written songs for the album. While one song written during, and about, the pandemic came to be the album’s centerpiece, the rest of the album grapples with the world as it moved on and all the dualism and dichotomies that followed. “It has to do with darkness and light,” Van Wissem says of the album. “The title can mean different things to people but sometimes people say that if I play a happy piece of music that it still sounds sad. So this is why I came up with that title.”

Andy Sharrocks started writing songs in 1976. He found a vehicle for these songs with punk band Accident On The East Lancs. This started out as a covers band, but Andy soon became frustrated when the other members wanted to stay that way. The band disintegrated but Andy retained the name, forming a new cutting edge four piece playing his songs. He financed their first single in 1979 on his own label Roach Records. This was a double A side as one of the sides was a ditty called We Want It Legalised. The other side was a Bo Diddley kind of groove called Tell Me What Ya Mean, which Record Collector magazine recently said sounded like a song The Strokes should cover. This line up fell apart when immediate success failed to arrive, but Andy formed another band out of the ashes of local band Wilful Damage, and the guitarist out of the original covers band. They recorded and released on Roach Records another double A sided single in 1981 as well as an album released on cassette tape on Cargo Records. The singles now exchange hands on the collectors market for over seventy pounds, the album has been rereleased on vinyl twice, once on a German label, and once on UK’s OZIT/MORPHEUS Records which came with a bonus live album The singles have been released on many punk compilations and We Want It Legalised is about to be released on a new Manchester punk compilation on Cherry Red Records. They played many free festivals including Deeply Vale three times, and did many great supports including The Fall, Tractor, Here And Now and Crass. Andy left the band in 1982 for personal reasons, and had a one single deal with I Believe In Love on the Vibes and Vibes record label in 1985. Refusing to compromise and do covers, Andy found it impossible to make a living doing his own material which was now primarily Americana, after discovering alt.country through Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett in 1985. He went on the road as a tour manager, which is where he met Hilly Briggs, who went on to produce Andy’s first solo album in 2004 called Walking In Familiar Footsteps, which featured ex Rolling Stones Guitarist Mick Taylor, Bluesband and Manfreds frontman Paul Jones and Bobby Vee’s sons Jeff and Tommy on drums and bass respectively. Andy was now living in London and was gigging regularly on his own or with a revolving circle of musicians going under the collective title of Andy Sharrocks & The Smokin’ Jackets. He played over five hundred gigs all over London and the UK. He also did many supports for Mick Taylor, Buddy Whittington, Steve Gibbons, The Strawbs, Curved Air, and supported John Mayall on a UK nationwide tour, and played the Jazz Café in Camden twice with John. He also played The Hells Angels Bulldog Bash three times, The Skegness Rock n Blues Festival, The Herelbeke Blues festival in Belgium and The Colne Blues Festival. In 2009 he released another album called Dirt with The Smokin’ Jackets, which came out to great critical acclaim. Andy is now releasing a triple album of truly magnificent UK Americana, called Country Rock n Roll n Durty Blues. Press Quotes : "Country Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Durty Blues is a sprawling album of original rock and blues which takes you from Muddy Waters to modern Americana" – Nigel Carr, Louder Than War // "Good honest earthy rock ‘n’ roll done the old fashioned way with passion and aplomb" – Mark Radcliffe, BBC // "Country Rock ‘n’ Roll effortlessly lives up to its title … and more" – Pete Feenstra, Get Ready To Rock // "As a listener it really is bloody good fun - Briticana, Americana with a very English voice

plastic death - the second album by glass beach - is a follow-up record almost five years in the making. The band's 2019 debut, aptly titled the first glass beach album , has over the years grown a cult fanbase for its unflinching depiction of queer life as mediated through social media, its oversized ambition, and its scrappy yet adventurous production. And while it took some time to arrive, plastic death sounds like the logical expansion of all the things that made their first album so special. Years and years of relentless writing, tinkering demos, cancelled tours and a few lockdowns only strengthen the chaotic core of what makes glass beach' s maximalist approach work so well. Frontperson and primary songwriter J McClendon is joined by lead guitarist Layne Smith, bassist Jonas Newhouse and drummer William White to create something adventurous on each song. Trumpet, trombone, violin, and even marimba dance and bloom alongside the band's own creative and dextrous instrumentation - a stunning, transformative creation that pulls from indie rock, jazz, prog, hardcore, metal, experimental, and beyond. Songs like lead single "the CIA," are examples of the band's ambitious writing. It's a dark, dancy, post-punk/jazz hybrid, a coordinated, breathless braid of synth and saturated guitar. Tension and confusion explode into a brutal modern metal climax to close the track, flickering with glitchy production zaps and razor-sharp stops. The artwork of plastic death is similarly rich with detail, resulting in a bioluminescent, fully-realized double album depicting sprawling scenes where moments of neon brightness shine momentarily in a dark undersea - a metaphor for the moments of optimism and catharsis glass beach provide on these songs. "This album is the Pacific garbage patch: cultural trash strewn together seemingly by accident, standing in stark juxtaposition to each other ," says McClendon. plastic death is a complete, uncompromising, playful work of art; every corner and crevice of the record's 13 tracks, each arrangement and timbre and texture, is alive with intention and possibility.

plastic death - the second album by glass beach - is a follow-up record almost five years in the making. The band's 2019 debut, aptly titled the first glass beach album , has over the years grown a cult fanbase for its unflinching depiction of queer life as mediated through social media, its oversized ambition, and its scrappy yet adventurous production. And while it took some time to arrive, plastic death sounds like the logical expansion of all the things that made their first album so special. Years and years of relentless writing, tinkering demos, cancelled tours and a few lockdowns only strengthen the chaotic core of what makes glass beach' s maximalist approach work so well. Frontperson and primary songwriter J McClendon is joined by lead guitarist Layne Smith, bassist Jonas Newhouse and drummer William White to create something adventurous on each song. Trumpet, trombone, violin, and even marimba dance and bloom alongside the band's own creative and dextrous instrumentation - a stunning, transformative creation that pulls from indie rock, jazz, prog, hardcore, metal, experimental, and beyond. Songs like lead single "the CIA," are examples of the band's ambitious writing. It's a dark, dancy, post-punk/jazz hybrid, a coordinated, breathless braid of synth and saturated guitar. Tension and confusion explode into a brutal modern metal climax to close the track, flickering with glitchy production zaps and razor-sharp stops. The artwork of plastic death is similarly rich with detail, resulting in a bioluminescent, fully-realized double album depicting sprawling scenes where moments of neon brightness shine momentarily in a dark undersea - a metaphor for the moments of optimism and catharsis glass beach provide on these songs. "This album is the Pacific garbage patch: cultural trash strewn together seemingly by accident, standing in stark juxtaposition to each other ," says McClendon. plastic death is a complete, uncompromising, playful work of art; every corner and crevice of the record's 13 tracks, each arrangement and timbre and texture, is alive with intention and possibility.

Car Therapy Sessions is an EP of new and re-imagined songs by Faye Webster recorded at Spacebomb Studios with a 24 piece orchestra. The orchestra was headed by Trey Pollard who was responsible for both conducting and arranging, and Drew Vandenburg produced and mixed the EP. Car Therapy Sessions will be available on vinyl in the fall and is available to pre-order on April 13th. "I have a vivid memory of walking around London in 2018 listening to a mix of Jonny, which I had just written. I remember thinking "I want to perform this song with an orchestra". I truly have had my heart set on it since then, always talking about it and figuring out how or when to make it happen," says Webster. On the EP, Webster reimagines three songs from her critically acclaimed 2021 release I Know I'm Funny haha and 2019's Atlanta Millionaires Club. The songs "Kind Of", "Sometimes" and "Cheers" take on a cinematic and glimmering new sheen. In addition to the title track -"Car Therapy" - she also shares a sprawling and emotional work - "Suite: Jonny" - which combines fan-favorites "Jonny" and "Jonny (Reprise)." The two songs originally appeared on the Atlanta Millionaire's Club tracklist, two different views on the same narrative. Here they're presented together. It's remarkable how beautifully Webster's work can take on this orchestral treatment. Like Cole Porter, or Judy Garland - her delicate and emotional delivery packs a gut punch when dramatized by the EP's robust arrangements.

Producer / composer / multi-instrumentalist Angel Marcloid records music under the moniker Fire-Toolz. Though Marcloid’s output emerges in a litany of aliases and projects — from the jazz fusion / new age of Nonlocal Forecast to the vaporous nostalgia of MindSpring Memories — the Fire-Toolz catalog remains the central focus of the prolific artist’s musical universe and a home for Marcloid’s most ambitious work.

"I am upset because I see something that is not there.", the fifth Fire-Toolz album to join the Hausu Mountain catalog since 2017, follows 2021’s sprawling double-album Eternal Home and 2022’s self-released EP I will not use the body’s eyes today. I am upset… offers listeners a prismatic cross-section of juxtaposed genres and compositional contortions to explore, maintaining Fire-Toolz’s signature density and complexity while tightening the scope of Marcloid’s experimentation into the project’s most focused song cycle to date.

Perhaps more than any previous Fire-Toolz album, I am upset... presents some form of pop music, carried in Marcloid’s passages of clean vocals, in the bright synth tones that animate its tracks, in the yearning saxophone lines that pour into view and whisk the narrative onto a new path. The format of a one-person “band” carries a different weight in a landscape of solo artists crafting modernist productions that don’t allude in the slightest to various twentieth-century rock-related traditions. Fire-Toolz exists on both sides of this divide. The music of Fire-Toolz draws energy on a moment-to-moment basis from the constant fluctuation between seemingly disparate styles, yet Marcloid repeatedly pulls off the impossible feat of making chaotic deviations and improbable jump-cuts between ideas sound holistic, as if such compositional gambits were already logical to begin with. Bursts of harsh textural noise cut into drifts of new age synth bliss, while screamo verses bookend passages of hyper-technical jazz fusion.

Northern Minimalism 3, the latest album from Mat Handley performing as Pulselovers, is a deeply personal “love letter to South Yorkshire, or at least to Doncaster and Sheffield”, not just the urban environment but the region’s post-punk and electronic-pop legacies.

Inspired by the concept of spreading a project over multiple formats taken from Virgin Prunes’ ‘A New Form of Beauty’, this is the first full album in Pulselovers’ on-going ‘Northern Minimalism’ series following a 7” and 10” release on other labels over the past few years.

Taking a different approach than the rurally-inspired ‘Cotswold Stone’ album, ‘Northern Minimalism 3’ delivers a sprawling, genre-hopping release that is less focused on melody but explores suburban drones and industrial rhythms.

“The term “Northern Minimalism” was coined by Simon Berkovitz of Sensory Leakage, who released my “Live at Doncaster College” tape in 2020,” adds Handley.

“I loved the description and wanted to use it to pay tribute to the early electronic and post-punk sounds I was listening to in the first two or three years of the 1980s, particularly The Human League (mk1), Cabaret Voltaire, John McGeoch (Magazine) and Eric Random.”

Seven suites of deep and sprawling sonic meditations built around ‘call and response’ improv sessions between Randy Raine-Reusch and Michael Red.

Slow and tempered recordings of Asian flutes, African harps, temple gongs and a myriad of obscure instruments from Randy Raine-Reusch's deep collection mutate and ebb into swirling gossamers of tone. Sonic incantations stretched and magnified further by Red's Sends. An otherworldly play between light and shadow worlds; at times idyllic and light-filled, at times dark and eerie– all engrossing. Dream-reality reconciliations weave between the spectral world of Michael Red's sound processes and the direct physicality of Raine-Reusch's playing. The tension across the pieces builds between the live playing and processing techniques, dutifully revealing a growing familiarity with collective transcendence through sound (bigger than the sum of its parts). Real-time interactive dream music.

Initially realized over the course of a few days in Randy’s instrument museum in Vancouver BC December, 2014 'ERAS' is made up of processed, and sometimes multi tracked, improvisations between Randy and Michael. Through these sessions Randy would choose instruments he sensed possibilities within, and Michael then revealed and sculpted these possibilities. Both resonating, sensing sonic structures, environmental nuances, and further worlds in each other’s art, all within the moment. Being present for each other, they acted on instinct, trusting a first thought, trusting each other; committing, responding to that commitment, then mutating and letting go. Always moving forward, synthesizing and letting the living moment lead the way.

The recordings were left to distill and mature for many years before the composers felt it was ready. With minimal judicious edits and a very light dusting of FXs, both careful to preserve the direct and intuitive process that permeates the recording, ERAS now emerges.

This record is massive and amazing. Nowhere To Go But Up is Guided By Voices’ third album of 2023 (and thirtyninth overall) and is a sprawling, wild adventure. With virtually no choruses and just two repeated lyrics in forty minutes, GBV is audacious and unafraid. One of the most fully realized works that Guided By Voices has created, Nowhere To Go But Up showcases an expert rock band at the top of their game. The band is on a roll and unstoppable. Following their monumental 40th Anniversary Celebration in Dayton, Ohio, GBV begins their fifth decade with a bang!

Tape

Vestigios, Aeondelit’s second full length record after recently releasing an EP of shifting club music influenced by postmodern philosopher Leotard on Tel Aviv’s Sadan records, tells a lucid, captivating story of heritage, transformation, vulnerability and healing. It will be released via Berlin-based art platform and record label Unguarded as a digital and tape release with an artwork created by Petra Hermanova, and will be accompanied by limited textile pieces by Diane Esnault. Aeondelit’s music is strongly influenced by the rocky surrounding of his hometown Manizales and fuses electronic sensibilities, ambient streams and avant-percussive rhythms that build his sound identity. Aeondelit's evocative music has previously been released via the Insurgentes imprint, Vienna-based Ashida Park and was recently featured on the 'Unguarded 2 – Entangled' compilation. Cortés describes the meaning of Vestigios as such: “The memories of past generations: the lives that burn within me, are the pillars of who I am. They constitute longings and traps, sin and strength, the temple that breaks down and rebuilds. The different dimensions of consciousness converge in the mind, which constantly tells us who we are, synthesizing and projecting our contradictions. The pain that comes with getting in touch with our vulnerabilities opens the doors to healing through confrontation. This lays the foundation for a more honest relationship with our past, present and future. 'Vestigios' is the bridge between the temporal and the eternal, the crystallized remnant of pain caused by transformation and recognition of the convulsive underworld of our psyche.” Aeondelit, birth name Sergio Cortés, is a Colombian music producer who explores themes related to technology and human condition in sound. He focuses on the creative use of sample manipulation techniques and digital sound synthesis to deepen the idea of a dialogue between computer and human, and how both influence each other. Deep in Colombia's Andes, surrounded by big mountains and the sacred Nevado del Ruiz, Aeondelit has been forging his own sound identity, exploring the intersection points between sparkly experimental club music and melodic ambient electronic. His first release Editing Destiny on the Colombian label Insurgentes was well received by the public and DJs, named one of the best albums of 2020 on Mixmag. His last release on Sadan Records, Anima Minima, was reviewed and premiered on platforms like DJ Mag, THE BRVTALIST and Orb Mag. He is also the co-founder of the independent record label Nvrclose, where his debut album as Æon Series: Dualidad, was released. About Unguarded: Unguarded is a Berlin based experimental electronic music label and art platform. In 2020 long-term collaborators Tim Roth aka Sin Maldita aka 1k Flowers and Phillipp Hülsenbeck founded Unguarded to foster forward thinking artists with a focus on exploring cross-disciplinary collaboration and embarking on sonic adventures. Unguarded was founded in a time of turmoil and uncertainty for artists and music, trying to keep personal connections alive through shared personal and collective experiences between doom and destruction and glistening hope. Amongst their own contributions, Hülsenbeck and Roth gather a collection of genre-defying works by longtime collaborators as well as artists they bonded with in recent years. Their releases constantly escape from definition but through entangling their unique artistic marks, this diversity remains absorbing and compelling throughout their sprawling sonic miasmas. Combining earth-shattering club cuts, equally elegant and bouncy, Unguarded contributes to and connects the experimental music scene in and outside of Berlin. We invite the curious to a deep, tense but rewarding experience.