With a steely sound matching fathoms-deep echo chambers with metallic textures and precision drums, Sciama arrives on Samurai Music to press into the inspiring hinterland between techno and drum & bass.
Sciama is the production alias for Michael Watters, a producer who since 2019 has carved out a formidable reputation across a stellar run of releases on ASC's Auxiliary label. While his music references UK bass, transcendental techno and industrial, the end result is a taut, focused journey through fractured, weighty rhythms and vast, ranging atmospherics tilted towards the darkness.
Between Veils is testament to Watters' refined production, steeped in intensely detailed and layered sound design in constant fluid motion, whether locked to the grid or shifting across the surface of the track like grayscale snow drifts. Noise becomes a subtle tool in his hands, capable of delicacy as much as abrasion, and discord evokes a haunting beauty if you listen past the clangorous overtones he elicits from his pads.
For all the writhing, artful sonics, there is still ample weight in the Sciama sound to hold court over a sound system. 'Figures In Mist' rests on a constant half time cycle underpinned by monolithic bass pulses and 'Ghost Trail' finds deadly energy in the faintest flicker of double-time hats above the slow march of a 4/4 kick clocking around 85BPM. Restraint is paramount, even in the fuller rhythm section that drives 'Anima Trace', creating tension through what isn't sequenced as much as what is. 'Veil Of Mirrors' has an especially punchy kick propelling the cavernous echos and ripples that shape out yet another vivid soundscape, but at all times Watters keeps a tight grip on his arrangement to keep the energy simmering just below boiling point.
Moving well beyond the boundaries of any specific genre, Between Veils winds upas a strong, independent statement on the meeting point between broad influences and clear intentions - a formidable addition to Samurai Music's explorations beyond drum & bass and Sciama's steadily evolving, singular style.
Suche:veils
- Asphodels
- O Fortune Teller
- The Ladder
- The Dream Of Life
- Mortal Wound
- The Sum
- Melancholy Moon
- Concrete After Rain
- A Land Beyond
Asphodels, the seventh studio album from The Veils, was recorded live to tape over five days at Roundhead Studios in Aotearoa New Zealand, in the spring of 2023. The album takes its name from the Ancient Greek flower of the Underworld, and lyrically, Andrews draws more from the great poets than he does from the well of more traditional rock and roll songwriters. Asphodels will be released on 24-01-2025 by V2 (World) and Banished From The Universe (New Zealand)
The rawness of The Veils' Nux Vomica can be enjoyed to a degree never heard before, with Ba Da Bing's limited edition pressing of the records with the original mixes by Nick Rainey left intact.
Originally released in 2006, The Veils sophomore album Nux Vomica was praised for its “Herculean intensity” by The Guardian, and called “a heady blast of gothic psychodrama” by The Observer, while Pitchfork praised leader Finn Andrews’ “magnetic, outsize persona.” Long out of print, the vinyl version was resuscitated by Music on Vinyl in 2017 and quickly sold out. Now, The Veils present the definitive version of their most heralded album to date, which dusts off the original mixes by legendary producer Nick Launay (Public Image Limited, The Birthday Party, INXS and Midnight Oil) and offers them to fans here for the first time. Taken from the original two-inch analog tape reels, each song was carefully remastered by Alex Wharton at Abbey Road Studios in London.
Nux Vomica was the first of many creative reinventions for Andrews, who at 22 had already released an album on Rough Trade, moved from New Zealand to London to form a band, then back to New Zealand where he once again started the band anew. The creative progression is clear in Andrews’ incisive lyricism and knack for hell-fire dramatics. From the positively mirthful “Advice for Young Mothers to Be” to the simmering ominousness of “Nux Vomica,” from the ornate spectacle of “Calliope!” to the Grand Guignol of “Jesus for the Jugular”, Nux Vomica is a remarkably accomplished album for a musician so young who was facing the pressures of British musical stardom.
All intentions to release this dark and raw set of recordings were dashed upon submission to Rough Trade for approval, who didn't like the results. They hired mixing engineer Bill Price to adjust the sound and add additional instrumentation. Launey’s mixes were shelved and forgotten about, while the album nonetheless went on to be a critical highpoint for the band and is much loved to this day.
To celebrate the release of The Veils’ massive new double album, …And Out Of The Void Came Love, Ba Da Bing is issuing a limited-to-1200-LPs simultaneous run of Nux Vomica in a form you have never heard it before. The brilliance of Andrews’ talents come through all the more clear in this version, which strips his songs to the core and allows the holes to show. Here’s where the seeds of a lifelong artistic talent really began to first take root.
- A1: Time
- A2: No Limit Of Stars
- A3: Undertow
- A4: Bullfighter (Hand Of God) (Hand Of God)
- B1: The World Of Invisible Things
- B2: Epoch
- B3: Diamonds & Coal
- B4: Rings Of Saturn
- C1: Made From Love With Far To Go
- C2: The Pearl (Part Ii)
- C3: Someday My Love Will Come
- C4: The Day I Meet My Murderer
- D1: Between The Ocean & The Storm
- D2: I've Been Waiting
- D3: Cradle Song
It’s been seven strange years since The Veils’ last studio album Total Depravity, and Finn Andrews has a new double LP to show for it. "...And Out Of The Void Came Love" is the result of this tumultuous period of injury, isolation and new life...
Following the release of Total Depravity, Andrews released a solo album and began a worldwide tour. One night, while lashing out at a particularly intense moment on piano, he broke his wrist on stage. “It sounds wild and Jerry Lee Lewis-esque, but it was an absolute fucking nightmare,” Andrews says. He played on and finished the rest of the tour, but it wasn’t until he got it examined much later that he realized what a bad move that was. “The scaphoid bone in my wrist had died, which I didn’t know was possible. My sister said that at least it was a really ‘on brand’ injury for me.”
Finn’s convalescence meant a lengthy hiatus from touring, so he did what he does best and stayed at home and wrote songs. “I was in a cast and couldn’t use my right hand. I sang the melody lines, then recorded the right hand piano part, then the left hand part. It might have been an interesting, avant-garde process if it wasn’t also just profoundly annoying.”
Just when his hand had healed sufficiently for him to play again, The Veils found themselves in need of a new record label but Finn set about starting to make a new record regardless. Producer Tom Healy invited Finn to his small studio underneath the old Crystal Palace ballroom in Mount Eden, and they listened through the legions of songs he had amassed throughout the previous year.
“Tom was incredibly patient, it was a really laborious process - I brought a lot of junk down there and we had to sift through it all to try and find the parts worth saving.”
Following another two years of intermittent recording between lockdowns, Finn’s wife became pregnant, and yet more songs started coming.
By the time the songs had been recorded, it was clear that arranging the album into two halves best suited such varied material - but the meaning of the songs as a whole still eluded Andrews. “Then my daughter was born, and suddenly the whole record made sense to me,” he says. The music was telling a story, and somewhat strangely for The Veils, it seemed to have a happy ending.
The result of all these years of questioning, confinement and precarious uncertainty is the magnificent new double album from The Veils … And Out Of The Void Came Love. It is an album intended to be listened to in two sittings with a short break in the middle, or as Andrews instructs: “Make a coffee or smoke a cigarette – but don’t mow the lawn or go to the movies or something, that takes too long.”
Composer Victoria Kelly’s soaring string arrangements play an integral role in bringing the songs to life, as do musicians Cass Basil (bass), Dan Raishbrook (lap steel, guitar), Liam Gerrard (piano), Joseph McCallum (drums) the NZTrio and special guests the Smoke Fairies on backing vocals.
“Refreshingly passionate… Andrews rages with a Herculean intensity.” The Guardian
“Horse-whipped, lightning-crash clamor… magnetic.” Pitchfork
“One of the finest songwriters of his generation.” Drowned in Sound
Veils Of Transformation 1972 - 1980 is a collection of the earliest works of Gregory Kramer, one of the 20th century masters of textural electronic music. This collection is available on CD and cassette with liner notes from Gregory Kramer and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, who first brought this fascinating work to the attention of Important Records.
“Greg is one of the pioneers of electronic music and these pieces are unique opportunities to discover how intricate and dynamic early synthesizers are.” Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
Kramer developed a musical language focused on continuous transformation of timbre, yielding a continuity of attention. This musical language, formed of timbral change, is a compelling aesthetic in its own right and a source of meditative experience. The four works on this album share a deep sense of order derived not from organizing pitches or rhythms, but from the evolution of timbre itself.
Gregory Kramer (b. 1952) is a pioneering electronic composer, inventor, researcher, teacher and author. In 1975 he co-founded Electronic Musicmobile, a synthesizer ensemble later renamed Electronic Musicmobile, a series of synthesizer concerts in New York from which he formed the Electronic Art Ensemble, a highly regarded all electronic quartet. His work extended to developing synthesizers and related equipment. Kramer also co-founded the not-for-profit arts organization Harvestworks in New York City. He is recognized as the founding figure of the intensely cross-disciplinary field of data sonification. Since 1980, Kramer teaches Buddhist meditation.
The four compositions collected here each represent Kramer’s unique approaches:
The structure of Meditations on 32 Parts of the Body (1978) is derived from the means of its production. Recording 5 people chanting an ancient meditation text, then layering to gradually achieve more than one million voices. The layering was all done using analogue tape recorders. The decomposition of the sound reflects the anomalies of tape machines out of sync, and the build up of artifacts from the audio tape itself, such as uneven response curves and tape hiss, are all engaged as musical materials.
Role (1972) was generated using one complex patch on a large hybrid Buchla 200/100 system. Emerging from a zeitgeist that valued pure synthesis as a combined artistic and technological research. At the time this piece was realized its as exceedingly difficult to produce electronic sounds that were internally complex.
Blue Wave (1980) is built on Kramer’s timbral development technique Veils Of Transformation which allows for disparate timbres to be woven into a continuously developing sound.
Monologue (1977) is a virtuosic performance of a massive patch on a Buchla/Electron Farm hybrid electronic instrument. Built into the patch is a pathway for continuous transformation of voice and voltage-controlled synthesizer. The blunt, raw and sometimes harsh sounds of this piece reflect an attitude prominent among composers that music can, or even should, be difficult, contrary to what’s already been done and, by all means, new.
- A1: Bone Blossom Green
- A2: Jelly
- A3: Esoteric Hex
- A4: Circled Omens
- A5: Elevator
- A6: Follow Me
- A7: A Tether
- A8: Eyes
- A9: Fuzzy 95
- A10: The Turnspit
Philadelphia, US, noisemakers The Mary Veils return with new album Esoteric Hex, their first full-length as a band. Mixed by Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, The War on Drugs etc) and Cory Hanson (Wand, Ty Segall etc), Esoteric Hex is a scintillating ten-track exercise in punk-inflected garage rock rooted deeply in the intersection between riffery and melody, taking its cues the classic punk of New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders and The Dickies, as well as more contemporary influences like Osees and Hot Snakes. The record is out on Sweden's PNKSLM Recordings (ShitKid, Les Big Byrd, Holy etc.)
ICONYC continues its curatorial stride with "Unfold", a four-track offering from Cologne-based trio Diode Eins.
Including a collaboration with the inimitable Paul Brenning, "Unfold" tears down walls in favor of raw expression in a state-of-the-art EP that finds Julien Hecker, Jerome Tiaden, and Jannis Klimpel presenting a studied yet emotive exploration of post-club aesthetics, balancing rhythmic heft with experimental nuance.
- A1: Theme Of Laura Ii
- A2: White Noise (Actual Noise)
- A3: What Lurks In The Forest
- A4: The Girl Behind The Gate
- A5: Ordinary Vanity’s Solitude
- A6: Arcane Disconsolation
- A7: Wistful Refrain
- B1: Promise Of The Forgotten
- B2: Beneath The Null Moon
- B3: Lament Of Heavens Night
- B4: Shadows Of The Lover’s Tree
- B5: Veil Of Forgotten Dreams
- C1: Angel’s Thanatos & Celestial Peaper
- C2: Phantasmagoria
- C3: The Cry Of The Nurse
- C4: Shadow Of My Past
- C5: The Day Of Night Shadows
- C6: Magdalene’s Elusive Lament
- C7: Lady Of The Door Finding Key
- C8: Echoes Of Silence
- C9: Cryptic Echoes
- C10: Nocturnal Reverie
- D1: The Infinite Heartbeat
- D2: Ethereal Dichotomy
- D5: Arcane Confinement
- D6: Cinderella Music Box
- D7: Eldritch Enchantment
- D8: Theme Of Laura (Repetition)
- D9: Overdose Delusion (Existence & Truth)
- E1: Anam Cara
- E2: Eddie’s Sweet Sorrow
- E3: Ephemeral Despondence
- E4: After Daddy
- E5: Desolate Reverberations
- E6: The Moment Our Paths Entwined
- E7: Manic Delirium
- E8: Savage Requiem
- E9: Transcendental Bonds
- E10: Transitory Melancholy
- F1: Obfuscate
- F2: Lake Of Enchantment
- F3: Savage Crusade
- F4: Abyssal Cell
- F5: Nocturnal Epiphany
- F6: Anathema Of Temporal Veils
- F7: Abstract Daddy Appear
- F8: Twin Pyramid
- F9: Unhinged Betrayal
- G1: Chthonic Symphony
- G2: The Enchanted Abyss
- D3: Madcap Descent
- G3: The Enchanted Abyss Part Ii
- G4: Delirium’s Embrace
- G5: Serendipity
- G6: The Reverse Will (Unseen Paths)
- G7: Surreptitious Whispers
- H1: Ontological Quandary
- H2: Socratic Ignorance
- H3: Ephemeral Solipsism
- H4: Ethereal Alleyways
- H5: Chimeric Obfuscation
- H6: Serpentine Shadows
- H7: Promise (Pragma Version)
- I1: Love Psalm Of Eternal Devotion
- I2: Laura Plays The Piano (2024)
- I3: Umbra Vel
- I4: Esoteric Woe
- I5: Tenebrous Anguish
- J1: Metaphysical Inquiry
- J2: Sepulchral Solitude
- J3: Enigmatic Despondency
- J4: Colossal Despair
- J5: Veiled Melancholia
- J6: True (2024)
- J7: James Find Eddie In Prison
- J8: Unhinged Realms
- K1: The Haunting Mirage
- D4: Desolate Heart
- K2: Nocturnal Mirage
- K3: Days Gone By
- K4: Eclipsed Affliction
- K5: Abstract Torment
- K6: Veiled Perdition
- K7: Ethereal Melancholia
- L1: Glimmering Void
- L2: Murmurs In The Gloom
- L3: Inscrutable Lamentation
- L4: Ineffable Lament
- L5: The Monolithic Doors Start To Awaken
- L6: Betrayal’s Reverie
- L7: Tenebrous Enigma
- L8: Tears Of Magdalene
- L9: Theme Of Laura (Laura’s Emotions)
LP 2x12"[42,82 €]
Konami Digital Entertainment und Laced Records tauchen in den Nebel, um den fesselnden und eindringlichen Soundtrack von SILENT HILL 2 (2024) auf Vinyl zu bringen.
Diese 6-LP-Box enthält den kompletten Soundtrack, der vom langjährigen Komponisten der Serie, Akira Yamaoka, komponiert und sorgfältig arrangiert wurde. Besonderes Augenmerk wurde auch auf die Verpackung gelegt, die Gedanken des Komponisten in einem Buch mit Linernotes enthält.
Yamaoka hat den Soundtrack für das von der Kritik gefeierte Remake von Bloober Team komplett überarbeitet. Brandneue, neu eingespielte Cues für SILENT HILL 2 aus dem Jahr 2024 fangen die unheimliche Atmosphäre der titelgebenden Stadt perfekt ein, indem sie Elemente von Trip-Hop und Industrial Rock mit düsterer Atmosphäre und Musique Concrète verbinden. Für Fans der beliebten Survival-Horror-Serie ist der neue Soundtrack vertraut und neu zugleich.
Der Score führt Yamaokas unnachahmliches Sounddesign und seine ätherischen Arrangements zu neuen Höhen und zeigt seine kreative Entwicklung seit der Veröffentlichung des Originalspiels im Jahr 2001. Die Musik geht über die funktionale Rolle eines Videospiel-Scores hinaus und ist sowohl ein wesentlicher Bestandteil der Atmosphäre der SILENT HILL-Spiele als auch ein eigenständiges Werk, das eine Reise durch die dunklen Tiefen der menschlichen Psyche unternimmt.
We all remember with mixed feelings the past two years of domestic isolation: a temporary anomaly in which the world had to adjust to a new routine, a new rhythm. In these daunting yet precious circumstances, Italian producer Markeno has found his rhythm back, dusting off old records and re-approaching his past musical love affairs that he believed to be long forgotten. Here, in the fertile limbo that connects past and future, “Dock lown (exploring)” is born: a 3-tracker release with a chameleonic nature and an undeniable groove, in which Markeno is able to tactfully combine different genres such as indie, post-rock, African mu- sic, electro and funk.
In the contemporary music scene, overly saturated with catchy melodies and seductive lyrics, it is refreshing to encounter a composition like “Fase 01”, which starts from a purely percussive structure. Just when the ear is settled and well inserted into the tangle of drums, here comes the melodic twist, no less than at the fourth minute, injecting an unexpected groove and chalking out the contours of a track with multiple personalities: a little esoteric, a little synth-wave, quirky and badass. The temperature rises with “Zona Ros- sa”, in which the electro hint sketched in “Fase 01” becomes more pronounced, opening the doors to a dense psychedelic scenario. A shamanic loop accompanies the electric bass and escorts us through the smoke of the bonfire, veils swayed by the wind and colored lights that sparkle in the night. The ritualistic humming of ‘’Zona Rossa”’ is still hearable, floating in the rarefied atmosphere, while the last track “Limbo” makes its entrance and confirms once again the poliedric but congruous essence of this release, whose percussive attitude lures you in and whose hypnotic and groovy body makes you stay. At least for one more dance.
Sara Berton
Haunted from Italy are back with their first album since 2018 and their wonderfully slow and mournful
doom is better than ever. Their songs will embrace you and sweep you away
All those creatures, standing there, making time. Fury eyes, golden dust on artificial fog. Dancing on glass, repetitive poems, looping long after the last loop looped away. Oriental acid, frenzied samples, low hanging film noir suspense. This is DALO. Or not. She is many. Dry maniac downbeat is her craft. Or dark-ish pop-not-pop. There is dub, trance, techno, too. She is known for releases on labels like ESP Institute, WARNING, or Tresor. She is part of bands like Init. She played them all, those clubs, that matter, and those that matter more. Live. Alone. As an artist. With a band. Here she comes with her first album. On the R.i.O. sphere. Her homebase. A trusted zone for experimentation. She brings “Duster”. Seven tunes twisted in different dreams. Fast, slow, veiled, enchanted, haunting trenchant. She sings. These songs. To dance. For a different, stripped-back trance. DALO. Her record longs for a stage. Exporting grace, face to face. A work like a mirror. Hypnotizing. A psychedelic portrait of a performer. Nuanced industrial veils ceremonial journey music. Claps, Jungle. Desolate vocal snippets. A whirlwind of words. All those chords, hanging there, kick drum time. Fury eyes, golden horns amid acid fog. Dancing on glass, cyclic synth-lines. DALO. Duster. A-round-and-a-around. Circulating the ritual.
Accepting the darkness can be a liberating experience. Realising, and struggling with just who we are and what world we live in requires it. By further complicating the fractured sense of beauty found on his droning 2022 release, ‘I dreamt we found a way’, Bristol-based composer, Rob Winstone creates a language that encapsulates the lifelong reach for our own personal heavens, along with the darkness and fear on which those foundations are built.
Winstone’s instrumental palette continues to reach out far from behind his keyboards, however the sound of ‘sifting through heaven’ is stripped back and pared down, putting melody front and centre. 'postcards and loose tea', a love song written for Winstone’s partner during a period coming to terms with health difficulties had previously self-released with heavy spectral and granular manipulation from the artist. Here Winstone re-presents the original: “the stripped back recording I made in my old damp and cold studio that was in a building that has since been demolished”. It reflects the composer’s own journey, doing away with veils and histrionics, and embracing emotional bliss wherever it can be found, warts and all. Even the rumbling dark ambience of ’hospital corridor’ - where distant chimings, groans, and droplets synthesized from field recordings made nervously in a hospital waiting for test results coalesce - harbours a sacred-seeming beauty and aseptic warmth within its very bleak sense of dread.
There’s no better way to describe Winstone’s method than ‘sifting through heaven’. The hymnal organ chords, sketched out acoustic guitar phrases, scattering drum thuds, and meditative field recordings may flit between tenebrous to incandescent, but his focus is always on the embrace of love; “a view of life that embraces positive growth, yet doesn't deny immense suffering,” as he puts it. The album is bookended by two of Winstone’s most outright peaceful moments, summarising his core message: 'in spite of it all...' '...love finds a way'.
Debut solo album from guitar player of Calicos. The result is a record that balances melancholy and raw intensity, where vulnerability is never far from power.Aäron Koch's voice cuts straight through, while the band builds a sound that feels both timeless and urgent, echoing The Veils, My Morning Jacket and Strand of Oaks.
For years, Aäron Koch was the guitarist in other people's bands. Writing intricate riffs and odd time signatures came naturally, but the thought of writing a simple song, a verse, a chorus, a melody that could stand on its own, felt out of reach. He tried and failed, discarded demos, and pushed himself through the humbling exercise of writing "bad songs" just to learn the craft.
'For Once', his debut album (out via Unday Records), is the unexpected outcome of that long struggle. What began as an exercise became a set of songs that refused to stay in the drawer. Months after recording rough sketches, Koch listened back and realized they weren't throwaways after all. With a small heart, he shared them with friends, musicians from bands like Calicos, Uma Chine and Tin Fingers, who immediately heard their potential and joined the project.
The result is a record that balances melancholy and raw intensity, where vulnerability is never far from power. Koch's voice cuts straight through, while the band builds a sound that feels both timeless and urgent, echoing The Veils, My Morning Jacket and Strand of Oaks.
"This music is about weaknesses and vulnerability," Koch says. "Autobiographical really, something I only realized once the album took shape."
That honesty struck a chord. In 2024, after only a handful of shows, Aäron Koch reached the finals of Humo's Rock Rally and was invited to open for Belle & Sebastian at a sold-out Ancienne Belgique. Now 'For Once' shows why: it's the sound of someone learning to write songs the hard way, and discovering in the process that he has something entirely his own to say.
- 1: Black Veils Of Melancholy
- 2: When My Mind Is Not Alive
- 3: Ice In The Sun
- 4: Elizabeth Dreams
- 5: Gentleman Joe's Sidewalk Café
- 6: Paradise Flat
- 1: Technicolor Dreams
- 2: Spicks And Specks
- 3: Sheila
- 4: Sunny Cellophane Skies
- 5: Green Tambourine
- 6: Pictures Of Matchstick Men
In South London members Alan Lancaster (bass) and Francis Rossi (guitar) were the original members and founders of Status Quo. _x000d__x000a_Formerly known as The Spectres and later renamed to Traffic or Traffic Jam they settled for Status Quo as their band name in 1967. _x000d__x000a_The following years they were joined by John Coghlan (drums), Roy Lynes (keyboard) and Rick Parfitt (guitar)._x000d__x000a_Status Quo’s first hit record "Pictures of Matchstick Men" was released in 1968 .The single reached #7 in the UK, and remains the band's only major hit single in the US, where it reached #12. Their debut Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo soon followed. It features several covers, including "Green Tambourine" by The Lemon Pipers and "Spicks and Specks” by The Bee Gees. _x000d__x000a_Another highlight from the album is their second single, "Ice in the Sun." Even if this is not the most representative album from Status Quo, it is a good psychedelic pop exercise ._x000d__x000a__x000d__x000a_Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo is now available as a numbered limited edition of 1000 copies on turquoise coloured vinyl_x0009_
- Raised On Graves
- Strings Of Red
- Clean
- No Good Things
- Alt Vi Kan Ge Ar Upp
- Copper + Dirt
- Through Veils Of Glass And Silica
Blodsträngen, the third from Gothenburg's inimitable fourpiece Blessings, begins and ends in the same space: the safety and familiarity of their rehearsal room. In between these moments however, the album knows no boundaries; it rampages through your inner sanctum, upending everything it can, razing everything you hold dear and drawing on the walls whilst panting, drooling and muttering to itself in strange tongues_ Blodsträngen is Blessings fine-tuning their deliberately dissonant sound whilst simultaneously casting their net wide for ever more left-field, experimental influences; a disparate collection of idiosyncrasies that the band somehow manage to pull into something cohesive, captivating and empowering. The band leave the messages and meanings behind their music open to interpretation as a means of sharing this attitude of openness with their audience because, when all is said and done, all that matters is all playing disgustingly loud music together in a room. FOR FANS OF Unsane, Breach, Young Widows, Black Flag, Trap Them, Converge, Old Man Gloom, At The Drive In, Swans, The Jesus Lizard
Die Deluxe-Version von Pierce The Veils The Jaws of Life enthält zwei zusätzliche Tracks, darunter ihre Coverversion von Radioheads „Karma Police“ und einen brandneuen Track, „Kiss Me Now“, der ursprünglich als B-Seite aufgenommen wurde. Das 36-seitige Booklet enthält nie zuvor gesehene Fotos der Band, auf und abseits der Bühne während der letzten zwei Jahre, die einige ihrer schönsten Momente zeigen.
- Crude Soil 04:08
- Myriads 05:12
- Lifelike (Feat. Midwife) 04:38
- Veils 05:48
- Sun Unseen 04:49
- Lowercase Letters 05:32
- Infinities 05:31
- Burnt Siennas 05:31
On "Not Around But Through", Portland-based experimental musician and tape wizard Amulets
navigates the process of acceptance and the tumultuous journey of looking within. Over the course of 8 tracks he explores the emotional path of moving through rather than circumventing, in the process soundtracking a purposeful desire to face trauma and vulnerability.
Infusing his trademark ambient soundscapes with ambitious blends of post-hardcore, emo, and metal, "Not Around But Through" connects the dots between personal and social dislocation, leaving us with a taste of the fragmented and fallen future we are all steeling ourselves for. Traversing a landscape that varies from gentle and meandering to explosive and cathartic, Amulets uses cinematic tension and relentless attention to detail to construct his sonic apparitions. On "Lifelike" he collaborates with Midwife, incorporating Madeline Johnston's voice into a song that pulsates with post-shoegaze transcendent energy.
Amulets is the solo project of Portland-based audio + visual artist Randall Taylor. Amulets employs handmade cassette tape loops and live processed guitar loops to create live, lush soundscapes and immersive drones. Through the recontextualisation of cassettes, sampling, field recording, and looping, these long-form compositions blur the genres of ambient, drone, noise, and electronic music.
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is a 1977 double album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. Her ninth album, it is unusual for its experimental style, expanding even further on the jazz-influenced sound of Mitchell's previous recordings. Mitchell has stated that, close to completing her contract with Asylum Records, she allowed this album to be looser than anything she had done previously.
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter was released in December 1977 to mixed reviews. It reached No. 25 on the Billboard charts and attained gold record status within three months.
High Roller Records, picture vinyl, ltd 500, handnumbered, deluxe plastic bag, cardboard insert, Restored Roadster master! Transfer by Marcus Mossmann at PHONGRAPHIC ARTIFACTS, mastering by Patrick W. Engel at TEMPLE OF DISHARMONY in March 2020. Cutting by SST Germany!
Ultravillage is a collective and burgeoning community of new age music devotees, private press fanatics and underground ambient, minimal and progressive electronic aficionados. T
Mark Griffey, the man behind Ultravillage, has recently made the venture into releasing albums, with the intention of reissuing forgotten personal masterpieces of 1980s and 90s private press synth culture on new label Mid-Air Museum. MM’s first vinyl record release is a collaboration with Scottish reissue label chOOn!!.
Together, they present Accidental Music 1987-1991 by Charles Esposito, a career retrospective of the experimental composer from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The cinematic and the sacred swirl around on Accidental Music, which gives new life to intriguing self-released tapes that Esposito put out in the 1980s and 90s. Heard by few on its original release, the music featured on this compilation ranges from Palace of Lights percussive sonics to an almost minimal techno palette, a meeting of pop and twisted electronics with the hypnotic immediacy of ancient ritual.
Accidental Music 1987-1991 develops a series of resonant harmonic spaces, by adding layers of instruments and played objects. Rather than work as acoustic maps of specific locations, these pieces eddy and gather into positive physical presences. But Esposito’s real strength lies in creating depth of field. The foreground might be dominated by glassy chimes or resonant prayer bowl-like timbres, but beyond it a series of sonic veils seems to recede towards murky imperceptibility. There’s also a kind of surreal decorum at play, passages that sound like an immaculately laid dinner table being shaken by an earth tremor while the tinkling complaints of the silver, glass and muffling linen are scrupulously recorded.
Available for the first time on vinyl, Accidental Music 1987-1991 by Charles Esposito is an exploration into
many inner worlds and dreamscapes, an analogue mirage of avant-garde gems. Produced in cooperation with the artist for Mid-Air Museum and chOOn!!.
Mastered for vinyl and digital and featuring liner notes from Mark Griffey.
New Zealand indie trifecta Mermaidens, are set to make a resounding splash in the music scene yet again with the announcement of their fourth self-titled album and release of the project's first single ‘I like to be alone’. The trio, comprising of Gussie Larkin (guitar/vocals), Lily West (bass/vocals), and Abe Hollingsworth (drums), has been on an impressive journey of musical excellence, boasting three critically acclaimed albums, international tours, and a slew of accolades to their name. With a sound that is both bold and adventurous, Mermaidens' music is a testament to their unwavering creativity and relentless work ethic. Their upcoming self-titled album, a product of the band's tireless efforts between 2019 - 2022, promises to be a captivating sonic journey, delving into themes of self-awareness, introspection, long-term love, and even channelling political anger and frustration. Recorded mainly at Surgery Studios in Wellington, with the engineering prowess of Lee Prebble and produced by Samuel Flynn-Scott of The Phoenix Foundation fame, the album also saw the band stepping up their production game with Gussie and Lily working their magic with Protools in their DIY home studios, showcasing their growth and versatility as artists. “Working with Sam has really been a round-trip in our creativity,” as Lily explains, “we grew up listening to Sam’s early records and here we are getting the inside scoop on how to make that kind of magic. Listening to Pegasus today still transports me to a time when I listened to music on a Walkman. In the best possible way - sometimes it felt like we’d added an evil genius to the mix, we’d be working on a song and he’d come in like a mad scientist with fresh ideas to try.” To give fans a taste of the upcoming album's brilliance, Mermaidens have released new single 'I like to be alone.' The song has been part of the band's live repertoire for a while and explores the fulfilling contentment of being alone and the struggle to convey this sentiment to a partner. Its relatable lyrics capture the essence of cherishing solitude while navigating the complexities of human connections. Gussie's candid and honest approach to self-discovery is complemented by the song's, Michel Gondry inspired video, as Gussie explains: “The giant jean pocket and denim world were created by Hannah Webster, a textile designer and illustrator based in Wellington. Hannah took all the wild ideas for props and made them come true! I’m still in awe of how she managed to sew a 6x6 metre backdrop for the denim world out of whatever scraps she could find. The video captures our playfulness and sense of humour, and is a hint of what’s to come for the rest of the music videos. I love the way the story wraps up with the three of us together, literally playing “in the pocket”. Mermaidens' self-titled album will be released on Friday 3 November 2023 and is available for pre-order now. UK listeners will be able to pick up an exclusive Rough Trade vinyl pressing in transparent red, along with an A3 poster and jumbo bumper sticker. Having released their last two albums through iconic local label Flying Nun, Mermaidens will be released independently. Creative control is an important pillar for the band, who are hands on in every facet of their projects. Mermaidens gather their community close via their hugely popular multi-city boutique festival Mermgrown, hosting peers including Womb, Hans Pucket, Vera Ellen (Girl Friday) and Kōtiro from 2021 onwards. They've been invited to share the stage with Death Cab For Cutie, Sleater-Kinney, Gang of Four, Parquet Courts, Lorde and The Veils, and have toured extensively in Europe, the UK, and Australia.
- 1: Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire
- 2: Like Veils Said Lorraine
- 3: Medley: Bony Moronie/Summertime Blues/You Never Can Tell - With James Taylor
- 4: You Turn Me On I’m A Radio - With Neil Young & The Stray Gators
- 5: See You Sometime (Early Version With Bass & Drums)
- 1: This Flight Tonight
- 2: Electricity
- 3: Lesson In Survival
- 4: Blue
- 5: Banquet
- 6: Intro To For The Roses
- 7: For The Roses
- 1: Intro To Judgement Of The Moon And Stars (Ludwig’s Tune)
- 2: Judgement Of The Moon And Stars (Ludwig’s Tune)
- 3: Blonde In The Bleachers (Alternate Guitar Mix)
- 4: Barangrill (Guitar/Vocal Mix)
- 5: Sunrise Raga
- 6: Twisted (Early Alternate Version)
- 1: Piano Suite
- A. Down To You
- B. Court And Spark
- C. Car On A Hill
- D. Down To You
- 2: Help Me
- 3: Trouble Child (Early Alternate Take)
- 4: Car On A Hill (Early Alternate Take)
- 5: Bonderia
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Free Man In Paris – With Tom Scott & The L.a. Express
- 3: The Same Situation – With Tom Scott & The L.a. Express
- 4: Just Like This Train – With Tom Scott & The L.a. Express
- 6: Jericho
- 7: Woman Of Heart And Mind
- 1: In France They Kiss On Main Street
- 2: Edith And The Kingpin
- 3: Don’t Interrupt The Sorrow
- 4: Harry’s House
- 1: The Jungle Line (Guitar/Alternate Vocal)
- 2: Shades Of Scarlet Conquering (Alternate Version)
- 3: The Boho Dance (Alternate Version)
- 4: Dreamland (Early Alternate Band Version)
- 1: Raised On Robbery – With Neil Young & The Santa Monica Flyers
- 2: People’s Parties (Early Alternate Take)
Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975) is the latest entry in Rhino’s ongoing, GRAMMY-winning series exploring the vast untapped archives of rare Joni Mitchell recordings — a project guided inti-mately by Mitchell’s own vision and personal touch. Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975) will be available as a 4 LP with an accompanying book featuring photos and a conversation about this period between Joni Mitchell and longtime friend Cameron Crowe.
The collection begins with an early cut of “Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire,” one of two songs (along with “For The Roses”) test-driven during a visit to a Graham Nash David Crosby recording session at Wally Heider’s in Hol-lywood.
From there, listeners are treated to early demos and alternate versions from sessions from For The Roses, Court & Spark, and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns; historic live show recordings, including the entirety of Mitch-ell’s triumphant 1972 return to Carnegie Hall and a definitive gig with her Court And Spark backing band Tom Scott & the L.A. Express; and tracks from sessions cut alongside James Taylor, Graham Nash, and Neil Young.
q 5. Sunrise Raga [3:41]
Die 10 Tracks von Primal Prayer, die erstmals 2004 unter dem Pseudonym 'Phynix' veröffentlicht wurden, sind eine wilde, kreative Fusion aus Jazz, World Music, Dance und klassischen Einflüssen. Klanglich ist das Album nahezu unvergleichlich, ein lebensbejahendes Bekenntnis zu den vielen Wegen, die wir Menschen beschreiten, um unsere Herzen und Leben füreinander zu öffnen.
Passion Pit, the brainchild of Michael Angelakos, release their second album Gossamer. The electronic, multi-layered pop songs are brilliant for any fan of Friendly Fires, Purity Ring and MGMT! “On Gossamer there is more of a dichotomy between the lyrics and the music. You hear my lyrics more precisely which is something I was ready for. The lyrics on this album have a lot to say about what the last two years of my life have been troubled with.” - Angelakos
Das kommende Jahr 2023 wird das letzte Kapitel in der langen Geschichte der legendären deutschen Thrash-Metal-Band HOLY MOSES markieren, das mit dem kommenden neuen Studioalbum "Invisible Queen" und einer letzten Reihe von Live-Shows gefeiert wird.
"Ich bin im Dezember 1981 zu Holy Moses gestoßen und das hat den Weg, den ich in meinem Leben gehen sollte, grundlegend verändert. Unser erstes Album im Jahr 1986 hieß "Queen Of Siam" und nun, um die Sache abzurunden, wird mein letztes Album mit Holy Moses im
Jahr 2023 den Titel "Invisible Queen" tragen", verrät Sängerin Sabina Classen und ergänzt: "Nach 42 ereignisreichen Jahren und nach so vielen großartigen Alben, fantastischen Shows und unglaublichen
Erlebnissen ist die Zeit gekommen, das letzte Kapitel von Holy Moses zu schreiben. Und wir freuen uns, dass dies über Fireflash Records mit der Veröffentlichung unseres 12. Studioalbums "Invisible Queen" geschieht."
Das kommende Jahr 2023 wird das letzte Kapitel in der langen Geschichte der legendären deutschen Thrash-Metal-Band HOLY MOSES markieren, das mit dem kommenden neuen Studioalbum "Invisible Queen" und einer letzten Reihe von Live-Shows gefeiert wird.
"Ich bin im Dezember 1981 zu Holy Moses gestoßen und das hat den Weg, den ich in meinem Leben gehen sollte, grundlegend verändert. Unser erstes Album im Jahr 1986 hieß "Queen Of Siam" und nun, um die Sache abzurunden, wird mein letztes Album mit Holy Moses im
Jahr 2023 den Titel "Invisible Queen" tragen", verrät Sängerin Sabina Classen und ergänzt: "Nach 42 ereignisreichen Jahren und nach so vielen großartigen Alben, fantastischen Shows und unglaublichen
Erlebnissen ist die Zeit gekommen, das letzte Kapitel von Holy Moses zu schreiben. Und wir freuen uns, dass dies über Fireflash Records mit der Veröffentlichung unseres 12. Studioalbums "Invisible Queen" geschieht."
Eva Louise Goodman’s Nighttime project locates itself on a musical tree planted on the British Isles, perched atop the branch of folk leaning into sixties rock. Her upstate New York environs don’t stray far from that image. With tempered percussion, floating mellotron, and singing that evokes Bleecker & MacDougal on a fervent Saturday afternoon, her new album Keeper Is The Heart reaches deep into the essence of musicians such as Vashti Bunyan, Sibylle Baier and Pentangle, breaking down the decades into a sound thoroughly and bizarrely modern.
Through her years performing with Mutual Benefit, Goodman fell in love with life on the road and the collaborative energy of a band. In this third Nighttime album, she channels these experiences into her own music. The creative journey from writing to recording to mixing drove her deeper into a sense of self while expanding her sound. In the process, she put aside lo-fi origins and challenged herself to achieve the same intimacy with a bigger production.
Like most paths of self-discovery, the journey started with displacement. In October 2019, Goodman set out to record the album on her own, while cat-sitting at a friend’s empty Brooklyn apartment. Rather than recording, she was drawn to the overgrown garden, where she spent her days listening to music and reading old journals. Charlie Megira, The Incredible String Band and Roy Montgomery invoked the spirit of the album, as she realized that a new, more collaborative approach would be necessary to bring the songs to life.
In March 2021, after a pandemic year immersed in sound experimentation and writing, she entered the upstate New York studio of recording engineer Rick Spataro (Florist). Together, Spataro and Goodman dove into creating the album, recording one song a day, letting the spark and excitement of spontaneity be their guide. “I've always been fascinated with ‘automatic’ arts,” Goodman says, “where things are created intuitively and without premeditation, from the subconscious.” In this light, they worked with abandon–pushing through the heaviness of songs written years earlier with the same energy as songs which were not yet fully developed. Taking chances, improvising, they sought to strip away pretense, and elude perfectionism at all cost.
Among their experiments, the duo manipulated tape speeds–slowing or speeding up different instrument tracks, imbuing passages with altered perspectives. Improvisation was the key in track five, ‘The Way,’ a song about “the magical act of carving out a path through life, amidst all possibility.” After a long day of recording, the song was feeling heavy and uninspired. As night fell, Spataro picked up the Stratocaster and, in one take, laid down a rolling, roiling guitar line that defined the track.
This spirit of surrender weaves through the album. “Break free from time, and sink in the pool of the mind,” begins ‘Garden of Delight’, an energetic highlight, propelled by 60’s-era organ and Jefferson Airplane-esque vocals. The song was accidentally deleted after the first day of recording. By luck or fate, the one surviving file captured the song’s loose and free-wheeling essence. Inspired, Goodman encouraged her circle of collaborators to work similarly: “I gave everyone trust and total freedom to contribute as they felt called to, encouraging an intuitive approach of simply improvising, playing through the song a few times and then sending over the results.” Synth, cello, violin, saxophone and flute all appear, but often in unconventional ways.
Keeper Is the Heart reflects Goodman’s process towards greater creative freedom. The first words she sings: “Lift the veil of all of this hate/To see the fear at its base.” Her last lines: “We’ll follow the fates across the great expanse of time/To the source of the light within our mind.” In between is a work of art awash in personal awakenings that revel in the freedom of intuition, the lifting of veils, and the beauty of transformation. As Goodman states, “What is it you find when you look inward to see beyond, past your fears, to your heart's true desires?”
Delia Derbyshire's work at the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop in the 60's was recognised initially for her realisation of the now iconic Doctor Who Theme which was written for the show by Ron Grainer. More recently though, she has been celebrated for her own compositions and experiments at what was then the cutting edge of electronic music. The AA side, Blue Veils and Golden Sands, was written for a TV documentary in 1967, a composition in which she used her own voice and a handy green BBC lampshade: "I analysed the sound into all of its partials and frequencies, and took the 12 strongest, and reconstructed the sound on the workshop's famous 12 oscillators to give a whooshing sound. So the camels rode off into the sunset with my voice in their hooves and a green lampshade on their backs."
On the A side is The Delian Mode, which was used as incidental music during The Sky At Night in 1969, finding critical acclaim in Gramophone Magazine's review of the album BBC RADIOPHONIC MUSIC (often known as The Pink Album), in September of the same year: "… Blue Veils and Delian Mode are probably the finest music here. It may be no accident that the latter is reminiscent of the beginning of Xenakis's OrientOccident for Delia Derbyshire follows the analytical approach of the more sustained electronic compositions. If her best pieces seem the most imaginative here—and they are—it is because she more fully explores the implications of her material."
Since releasing their first album There Is a Bomb in Gilead in 2012, the
road-worn Birmingham, Alabama band has built a reputation as being
what NPR calls 'punks revved up by the hot-damn hallelujah of Southern
rock' who carry on 'the Friday-night custom of burning down the house,' a
raw live sound that they captured with Texas punk producer Tim Kerr on
studio albums Dereconstructed (2014) and Youth Detention (2017)
before recording a full-on live album at their favorite hometown dive, Live
at the Nick (2019)
While the Glory Fires have spent a decade propagating what the New York Times
calls 'pandemonium with a conscience,' they've long talked about wanting to
make a classic record'not a transparent document of their playing live with the
occasional embellishment'but a record. So, that's what they did. They contacted
Athens, Georgia's David Barbe, whose work with the Drive-By Truckers, Sugar, Son
Volt, Vic Chesnutt and countless other artists has earned him a legendary
reputation amongst Southern independent rockers, and they agreed to set about
bringing this vision to fruition. While tackling such lofty political, historical and
philosophical concepts, the album is also the band's most intimate, vulnerable
and spiritual to date. The perspective is both outward- and inward-facing, Bains
never taking on the persona or experience of others, but rather writing about the
way his own limited experience and perspective of the band's place can lift the
veils of false narratives, and uncover 'piles of winding stories' through time. In an
age characterized by individualism, and at a time when the past seems to be the
sole domain of the status quo, Old-Time Folks illustrates the deep, thick, tangled
roots of liberation, collectivism, mutuality and solidarity in the Deep South, and
where they are flowering and bringing forth fruit today.Packaging: CD Old- Style
Stoughton-Tip on Jacket
»Sull’Accordo Mimetico (On the Mimetic Chord)« dates back to the end of the 80’s. It was commissioned by the artistic director of the ParcoScenico Festival, held in Treviso, Italy. Since the area where artists and the public gathered after the Festival was located to a very busy street, Marco asked me for a sound installation that could work as some sort of a defensive barrier for the street noise. I suggested that my work, rather than hiding the noise, should aim to harmonize the disturbances coming from the street within musical structures and forms, without burdening or saturating too much the acoustic spectrum of the place. In this way, I thought about sonic veils, consisting of repetitive – but also light and discreet – harmonic-rhythmic structures. Since the Festival took place in a beautiful centenary park, I also integrated the music with natural sounds and animal calls, always as an attempt to bridge these sound events and the other materials that made up the composition. The human voice constitutes a central element in this musique d'ameublement project, as a constant source of memory of places and times – here with many references to traditional music for children.
A pearl of ambient electro-acoustic mimimalism with field recordings components in which the nostalgia of Maestro Tiziano Popoli shines through in painting landscapes that slowly change to be seen with the ears. Nocturnal, emblematic, Lynchian.
Empty surrounds all of me. It’s a poignant line from the third album by Blackwater Holylight that encapsulates the search for self when suddenly everything has changed. There’s a theme of processing vast personal trauma throughout Silence/Motion that eloquently — both lyrically and musically — and simultaneously embodies the crushing emptiness, sorrow, strength and rebuilding of recovering from personal devastation.
“There was so much grief both in the world and interpersonally during the process of creating Silence/Motion,” says vocalist/bassist Allison “Sunny” Faris. “The four of us gave one another more space to be ourselves, to experiment with each other’s ideas and to be gentle with one another more than we ever have before. So, we knew this tenderness would manifest in extremely honest arrangements, and I think that you can hear that throughout the record.”
Curiously, considering the dark times in which it was created, this is the band’s most melodic and catchy music so far. Blackwater Holylight, as the name suggests, is all about contrasts: It’s a fluid convergence of sound that’s heavy, psychedelic, melodic, terrifying and beautiful all at once. And, Silence/Motion finds the band honing those contrasts, letting ideas and moods fully develop from song to song, rather than filling every song with a full range of their capabilities. It allows the band to go fully prog-rock here, and simply stay hushed and intimate there. There’s a new confidence to the band in how seamlessly they wield their stylistic amalgam.
“Writing this album was extraordinarily difficult emotionally, however it did come to fruition fairly quickly,” Faris says. “In the past, the theme of vulnerability has always been a big player and it definitely showed up full force while writing this album.”
Blackwater Holylight recorded the album as a four piece: Faris on vocals and guitar (on “Silence/Motion”, “MDIII”, “Around You” and “Every Corner”) and bass for the remainder, Sarah McKenna on synths, Mikayla Mayhew on guitar (and bass when Faris plays guitar) and drummer Eliese Dorsay. New second guitarist Erika Osterhout will perform the songs with them live. For Silence/Motion the band chose to work with a producer for the first time, bringing in A.L.N. (of Mizmor, Hell) to produce, along with recording engineer Dylan White — who also helmed their previous album Veils of Winter (2019) — at Odessa Recording Studio in Portland, OR. Guest vocals on album opener “Delusional” are by Bryan Funck (Thou.) Mike Paparo (Inter Arma) and A.LN. (Mizmor, Hell) lend guest vocals to album closer “Every Corner.”
Silence/Motion opens softly with interwoven folky single note guitars over an ominous sounding drone for the first minute, akin to moments from Pink Floyd’s Echoes. Suddenly an irresistibly head-nodding, groovy droptuned riff kicks in with the drums and it’s a full on blackened rocker with soaring synths and Funck’s witchy whispers over the top. “Who The Hell,” the track quoted above, takes proceedings into a Krautrock direction, centered around McKenna’s arpeggiated synth loop and Dorsay’s tom-tom triplets, while 16-note guitar strums add tension as Faris wearily sings, “So tell me who the hell would want to live this way — so afraid/ To feel this void, to dwell in it… I can’t describe this pain I wear/ It suffocates and you left it here.” It’s an incredibly powerful 6 minutes. The title track delivers the 1-2-3 punch of the album’s brilliant opening trilogy. It starts with lightly plucked acoustic guitar, plaintive piano chords and Faris’ voice gliding so softly it sounds more like a Mellotron. The song builds slowly toward crescendo, led by a swinging tom pattern, that abruptly switches back to a heavier version of the opening melody.“Silence/Motion” is about digesting and healing from sexual assault. As Faris explains, “It is an ode to the juxtaposition of feeling paralyzingly blank and and like your entire life is moving through you simultaneously.” Elsewhere, Black Metal guitars collide with dreamlike melodies. “Around You” brandishes a hopeful, hummable synth melody and shimmering shoegaze guitars like throwing down a gauntlet. In the end, it becomes undeniably clear just how completely into their own Blackwater Holylight has come.
“The analogy is that with our first record (Blackwater Holylight, 2018) we were getting into to the car and buckling up,” Faris says. “The second (Veils of Winter, 2019) we were turning the car on, and with this third we have kicked into drive toward our destination. Our destination is a bit mysterious and has the ability to change from day to day, but we’re on our way.”
Empty surrounds all of me. It’s a poignant line from the third album by Blackwater Holylight that encapsulates the search for self when suddenly everything has changed. There’s a theme of processing vast personal trauma throughout Silence/Motion that eloquently — both lyrically and musically — and simultaneously embodies the crushing emptiness, sorrow, strength and rebuilding of recovering from personal devastation.
“There was so much grief both in the world and interpersonally during the process of creating Silence/Motion,” says vocalist/bassist Allison “Sunny” Faris. “The four of us gave one another more space to be ourselves, to experiment with each other’s ideas and to be gentle with one another more than we ever have before. So, we knew this tenderness would manifest in extremely honest arrangements, and I think that you can hear that throughout the record.”
Curiously, considering the dark times in which it was created, this is the band’s most melodic and catchy music so far. Blackwater Holylight, as the name suggests, is all about contrasts: It’s a fluid convergence of sound that’s heavy, psychedelic, melodic, terrifying and beautiful all at once. And, Silence/Motion finds the band honing those contrasts, letting ideas and moods fully develop from song to song, rather than filling every song with a full range of their capabilities. It allows the band to go fully prog-rock here, and simply stay hushed and intimate there. There’s a new confidence to the band in how seamlessly they wield their stylistic amalgam.
“Writing this album was extraordinarily difficult emotionally, however it did come to fruition fairly quickly,” Faris says. “In the past, the theme of vulnerability has always been a big player and it definitely showed up full force while writing this album.”
Blackwater Holylight recorded the album as a four piece: Faris on vocals and guitar (on “Silence/Motion”, “MDIII”, “Around You” and “Every Corner”) and bass for the remainder, Sarah McKenna on synths, Mikayla Mayhew on guitar (and bass when Faris plays guitar) and drummer Eliese Dorsay. New second guitarist Erika Osterhout will perform the songs with them live. For Silence/Motion the band chose to work with a producer for the first time, bringing in A.L.N. (of Mizmor, Hell) to produce, along with recording engineer Dylan White — who also helmed their previous album Veils of Winter (2019) — at Odessa Recording Studio in Portland, OR. Guest vocals on album opener “Delusional” are by Bryan Funck (Thou.) Mike Paparo (Inter Arma) and A.LN. (Mizmor, Hell) lend guest vocals to album closer “Every Corner.”
Silence/Motion opens softly with interwoven folky single note guitars over an ominous sounding drone for the first minute, akin to moments from Pink Floyd’s Echoes. Suddenly an irresistibly head-nodding, groovy droptuned riff kicks in with the drums and it’s a full on blackened rocker with soaring synths and Funck’s witchy whispers over the top. “Who The Hell,” the track quoted above, takes proceedings into a Krautrock direction, centered around McKenna’s arpeggiated synth loop and Dorsay’s tom-tom triplets, while 16-note guitar strums add tension as Faris wearily sings, “So tell me who the hell would want to live this way — so afraid/ To feel this void, to dwell in it… I can’t describe this pain I wear/ It suffocates and you left it here.” It’s an incredibly powerful 6 minutes. The title track delivers the 1-2-3 punch of the album’s brilliant opening trilogy. It starts with lightly plucked acoustic guitar, plaintive piano chords and Faris’ voice gliding so softly it sounds more like a Mellotron. The song builds slowly toward crescendo, led by a swinging tom pattern, that abruptly switches back to a heavier version of the opening melody.“Silence/Motion” is about digesting and healing from sexual assault. As Faris explains, “It is an ode to the juxtaposition of feeling paralyzingly blank and and like your entire life is moving through you simultaneously.” Elsewhere, Black Metal guitars collide with dreamlike melodies. “Around You” brandishes a hopeful, hummable synth melody and shimmering shoegaze guitars like throwing down a gauntlet. In the end, it becomes undeniably clear just how completely into their own Blackwater Holylight has come.
“The analogy is that with our first record (Blackwater Holylight, 2018) we were getting into to the car and buckling up,” Faris says. “The second (Veils of Winter, 2019) we were turning the car on, and with this third we have kicked into drive toward our destination. Our destination is a bit mysterious and has the ability to change from day to day, but we’re on our way.”
Tonnon produced the album with longtime collaborator, and The Beths’ guitarist and producer, Jonathan Pearce. Tonnon wrote the bulk of the songs during an extensive period of touring after the release of Successor - a period where Tonnon performed with Nadia Reid in Europe, The Veils in the USA, and The Chills, The Phoenix Foundation and Don McGlashan in New Zealand. The pair workshopped songs between tours, often recording new parts as the live versions developed.
Tonnon and Pearce recorded between 2017 and 2020, and in that time, Tonnon’s practise evolved heavily. He incorporated new technology into his set, including the Wellington-designed Synthstrom Deluge, which allowed him to adapt his set for new performance environments;Art Galleries, Museums, even New Zealand Fashion Week. He took that technology further when he collaborated with the Otago Museum on the immersive show for Planetariums, A Synthesized Universe, which travelled to Arts Festivals around New Zealand in 2019.
Creating a music video for ‘Old Images,’ which explored a lost passenger train network, Tonnon came to the idea for a new experience-based show called Rail Land. It took audiences on railways to reach distant community halls around Aotearoa. The show saw Tonnon combine historical research and spoken word narrative, with the immersive lighting and musical technology he developed for A Synthesized Universe. In March, Rail Land finished a three-night run at Auckland Arts Festival, cementing Tonnon’s move to the concept show.
Over time, Tonnon and Pearce’s production moved further from the traditional rhythm sections that powered songs like Successor’s ‘Water Underground.’ In their place came off kilter electronic rhythms, like the beat in ‘Two Free Hands,’ and textures that blur lines between organic and synthesized sound. Guitars are set against synthesizers, and drums against drum machines in ‘Entertainment’ and ‘Peacetime Orders,’ which Tonnon also used in his soundtrack for RNZ’s 80s spy-themed podcast The Service. In ‘Leave Love Out Of This,’ a ballad starts with a piano and a string quartet, but ends in a wall of electronic sound.
The constant has been Tonnon’s lyrics. Whether singing about evolution and the future of work in ‘Two Free Hands,’ the television industry in ‘Entertainment,’ or environmental disaster and regulatory failure in ‘Mataura Paper Mill,’ Tonnon has followed a distinct approach to subject matter, description and phrasing that have seen him longlisted for the APRA Silver Scroll three times.
Tonnon’s explorations of local government and civic infrastructure in his work - an unusual preoccupation for a songwriter, have taken new meaning in his adopted home of Whanganui, where last year, he was elected by councillors as Whanganui District Council’s representative for public transport.
After Tonnon moved to Whanganui, and Pearce toured almost constantly after the success of The Beths’ first album, the pair conducted their collaboration over distance, but with key sessions at Pearce’s Karangahape Road studio, including drums and bass with long time band members Stuart Harwood and David Flyger, a string quartet led by Charmian Keay and arranged by Matthew Bodman, and additional drums with The Beths’ Tristan Deck.
As Leave Love Out Of This is released, Tonnon and Pearce find themselves in very different places to where they started, working on Auckland’s Karangahape Road, close to the venues like Wine Cellar and Whammy Bar where they regularly performed. Back in New Zealand since Covid, Pearce has had to adjust to being in one of Aotearoa’s best-known bands, while Tonnon, when not working on conceptual shows, wrestles with how to restore civic infrastructure to a post industrial city in the regions.
Created over a life-altering period of, Leave Love Out Of This is the culmination of years of experimentation and development - with new technology, new sounds, and new ways of creating, and performing music.
Beggars Arkive announce vinyl reissues for all five Peter
Murphy solo releases on Beggars Banquet, plus the release of
a brand-new rarities album titled ‘The Last And Only Star’. Each
album is pressed on coloured vinyl. The albums will be released
in three batches of two.
Peter’s third solo album saw him break wide open with his
biggest hit, ‘Cuts You Up’, which is often included in lists of the
greatest alternative singles. Propelling him into mainstream
stardom, ‘Deep’ also had two additional fantastic charting
singles - ‘The Line Between the Devil’s Teeth (And That Which
Cannot Be Repeat)’, ‘Cuts You Up’ and ‘A Strange Kind Of
Love’. Again produced by Simon Rogers, the critically
acclaimed album is still a fan favourite. Pressed on clear vinyl.
The fourth Peter Murphy album, ‘Holy Smoke’, contained the
single ‘The Sweetest Drop’, which made it onto the modern rock
charts. It was an elegant follow up to ‘Deep’ with crisp
production by Mike Thorne. As written in the original press
release for the album, “You can’t pin down ‘Holy Smoke’, it curls
and eddies in white and blue swirls, drawing a series of patterns
on the brain, but just when an image begins to come into focus,
the music mutates into something hypnotically new.” Pressed
on smoky vinyl.
Peter Murphy’s solo career began in 1986 with the release of
‘Should The World Fail To Fall Apart’ and continues to this day.
In addition to his work as the frontman of the legendary and
ground breaking Bauhaus, he has released ten solo albums, in
addition to several live releases. Over the last few years, he
staged several multi-night residencies where he performed a
different album each night. He also recently reunited with his
Bauhaus bandmates for shows.
In this, his inaugural release, LAW334 welcomes the listener to his musical language through four tracks.
Arco and Wire Hangers are two synth dominated techno cuts that bookend a more experimental offering in Veils; an abstracted exercise in audio processing bassoon samples. In the closing track Panspermia, Choronzon takes the wheel to LAW334's engines in an ecstatic trance through a distorted desert landscape.








































