quête:virtua

REISSUE OF THEE HEADCOATS' FINAL ALBUM IN THEIR ORIGINAL INCARNATION! Originally released by Friends Of The Buff Medway Fanciers Association Records in 2000! The final studio release by Thee Headcoats (until last year's Irregularis: The Great Hiatus) gets a long-awaited vinyl reissue! Includes eleven Billy Childish originals plus a cover of Bo Diddley's 'Great Grandfather'! Recorded at May Road & Red Studios. Engineered by Graham Semark. "Thee Headcoats, who put out their first album in 1989, have recorded raw, primordial romps that seem inspired by American Delta blues musicians like Sonny Boy Williamson or the Southern swamp rock of Hasil Adkins, while maintaining a decidedly English sound. They've recorded under a slew of monikers, and issued an amazing discography of full-lengths, EPs, 7"s, and what-have-you for virtually every cool indie label since they formed (including US-based labels like Sub Pop, Get Hip, Sympathy for the Record Industry, and K, among others). Whether he's covering songs with a Bo Diddley beat, garage rock chug, or playing one of his angry young man/dysfunctional family rantings ('The Day I Beat My Father Up', for example), Billy Childish has built up a solid and somewhat rabid fanbase by releasing songs that you wouldn't normally think would attract a huge audience to begin with. However, I Am the Object of Your Desire has the distinction of being the last album by this band, as their prolific leader Billy Childish moved on to a new band; they're called the Buff Medways, which is apparently an ancient and now extinct breed of chicken which had feathered legs. It's also the name of the UK imprint this record was released on. This collection kicks right off with the album-titled track reveling in pure Headcoats fashion: that warm, fuzzy vibrato guitar with Childish's fuzzy, electronically distorted voice (an effect repeated throughout the album); Johnny Johnson's soft, flowing bassline; and Bruce Brand's primeval drums. The group keeps this sort of mid-tempo riffage going for the next couple of tracks. Johnson plays a mean harp on 'Hurt Me (Slight Return)', but things don't really take off until 'In a Dead Man's Suit' and the swaggering, Texas blues 'Chatham Town Welcomes Desperate Men'. The band's punk roots show up in songs like 'An Image of You' and 'Your Crying Means Nothing to Me' while 'Come into My Mind' has a definite Kinks influence. All in all, an excellent album from this soon to be sadly missed band." - Review from 2000 by Bryan Thomas (All Music Guide)

Repress!

Everyone's favourite virtual band with 2 more of their biggest tracks on very limited 7" vinyl.

Datashader emerges from the shadows with a striking breaks- and bass-heavy debut release that challenges the fabric of our digital existence. Replete with a Dopplereffekt remix, it nods to the legacy of revered anonymous acts such as Scopex, Drexciya and Underground Resistance, pushing the boundaries of both electronic music exploration and its conceptual underpinnings. As a critique of the erosion of genuine human connection in the digital age, Datashader delivers a barrage of billowing subs, infectious electro, recontextualized jungle, and techno, serving as a poignant counterbalance to current dance floor-centric norms. It’s a contemporary anti-soundtrack that offers a haunting mirror to the societal costs of technological convenience.
In a world engulfed by the digital realm, where social media platforms thrive and dominate every aspect of our lives, the enigmatic project known as Datashader was founded to reflect on the pervasive erosion of authentic human connection through various virtual realities. Artistically, Datashader seeks to critique the impact of technology on human identity and relationships, breaking with an archetype of digital conformity and expressing a profound disillusionment with the superficiality of online interactions through music. Genuine human connection and art cannot be quantified by likes, comments, or followers but rather thrives in the visceral realm of shared sonic experience and human emotion. This idea is at the core idea of Datashader, whose artistic expression ranges from avant-garde composition and electronic experimentations to art, installation, film and more.
Expressed within the varied contexts of diverse artistic mediums, Datashader explores the concept of “technological gentrification”, which describes the gradual displacement of human interaction by technology. Just as gentrification alters the urban landscape, driving out communities and cultures, digital gentrification transforms the social landscape, replacing genuine connection with curated online personas.
Musically, Datashader’s practice confronts this dystopian reality, highlighting the alarming consequence of people becoming mere nodes in a network, reduced to a collection of data points. This is manifested sonically by a blistering assault of breaks, recontextualized IDM, abstract electronics and otherworldly synthscapes, conceived as the aesthetic counterbalance to much of contemporary electronic music’s dancefloor focus.
Datashader dives deep into genres and influences which stand for a form of sonic resistance: A contemporary anti- soundtrack – a sonic mirror of the price we pay for convenience and instant gratification. A self-image in constant flux. No false technological idols.

Locked Down And Stripped Back Volume Two features home recordings of Wedding Present classics along with a previously unreleased song: 'That Would Only Happen In A Movie'. The first volume in the series came about when David Gedge's annual festival At The Edge Of The Sea went 'virtual' in 2020 and the band recorded semi-acoustic versions of songs to be streamed. An album of the tracks was compiled and released due to popular demand. The same thing happened the following year and so Volume Two features tracks initially recorded for 2021's online festival. There's a bevy of guest stars on this second album! Jon Stewart of Platinum-album-selling Sleeper fame reprises his new role as Wedding Present guitarist but is joined here by some Wedding Present members of old. Peter Solowka, from the band's first line-up appears on 'Nobody's Twisting Your Arm' playing his second instrument, the accordion, while Hit Parade guitarist Paul Dorrington contributes to a re-working of the Top 30 single 'Blue Eyes'. Long-time Wedding Present bass player Terry de Castro returns to infuse the album with her own unique style, while current Wedding Present bass player Melanie Howard takes over the lead vocal duties on a beautiful version of 1986's 'At The Edge Of The Sea'. Last, but certainly not least, Amelia Fletcher - backing vocalist on George Best and Bizarro - also returns to the party! As on the first volume, each musician recorded and filmed their parts at home and, as before, it is fascinating to see how stripped-back arrangements bring out different aspects of these brilliant songs.

Gatefold Sleeve / 180g Vinyl

Returning to the well of Roger Doyle once again, his “Babel” project spans a decade of composition work before its’ initial release in 1999 as a 5CD set. Over 100 pieces and almost 50 collaborators it marks a journey through a virtual tower of Babel with each piece corresponding to a room within an imagined giant tower city. For the 25th Anniversary vinyl edition Doyle has revisited it- remastering it and providing its first vinyl edit - 80 minutes spread across two 180gm LP’s - rounding out the package with extended liner notes and a download code to the full 6 hours.

We’ve previously explored Roger’s Operating Theatre days and the idea for this project came in the early nineteen eighties while Doyle was heavily involved with the experimental theatre group. Working with emerging technologies and across a variety of genres he realised that he would be unlikely to achieve an overarching compositional style. Instead deciding to make a virtue out of the fact that he composed so schizophrenically, he wished to create a musical alphabet out of short abstract sounds with these sounds being analogous to phonemes in speech. With Blade Runner and sci-fi embedded in the zeitgeist of the times he came to the idea of the Tower of Babel as both a futuristic skyscraper and also an embodiment of language.

In the spring of 1990 Babel was finally begun and kept growing until it reached over 6 hours of music and was released in 1999.A large-scale musical structure making use of many technologies and music languages, with each piece of music being thought of as a 'room' or place within an enormous tower city. Each track in the main section corresponds to a virtual sonic architecture. The pieces are divided into two kinds: aural representations of actual spaces like The Dressing Room, The Stairwell and Mr. Brady's Room alongside internalised dream spaces like the Room Of Rhetoric, the Spirit Levels and the Mansard childhood memory room. Listeners can navigate their way differently through this virtual building at each hearing. As a supplement to the Babel Tower KBBL - the fictitious radio station – broadcasts a number of shows. Each has its own style and atmosphere. Collaborating with DJs, actors, writers and singers, KBBL is made to sound like a real radio station with ads, traffic reports and phone-ins.

Examples of the connections within the project can be found via the architecture were the saxophonist in the off-stage dressing room is rehearsing for her solo in the concert-hall (heard in Pagoda Charm) or the room off the stairwell, where the sounds of piano lessons and apartment life can be heard and the apartment where a muffled KBBL can be overheard At a molecular level The Iron Language Alphabet is a sound alphabet containing tiny fragments of sound representing letters or characters of an alien alphabet. This sound alphabet can be heard scattered through other pieces like The Room of Rhetoric, Pagoda Charm and in KBBL in Johnny’s Body at 002. Other molecular scatterings can be found in Cantilena where two songs sung by Operating Theatre’s Elena Lopez in KBBL are exploded and re-arranged to form new entities.

Doyle’s Babel celebrates language - a slight variation on the Biblical morality tale - and musical expression in all its variety.

"As Bill Orcutt’s most mature and exhilarating LP to date, Music for Four Guitars was a slab of undeniable Apollonian beauty. Its approachability and obvious novelty landed it not only on the year- end lists of every key-pushing codger in the underground in 2022, but also on NPR in the form of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, an ensemble assembled to perform this music and featuring Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane Parish in addition to Orcutt. But while their Tiny Desk Concert gave a whiff of the quartet’s easy intimacy, the sterile confines of the virtual recital medium still left a puzzle unsolved: how might these brutally mannered bricks of minimalist counterpoint sound on a stage in front of actual breathing bodies?" "This was the question foremost in my mind when I first saw the quartet in San Francisco a few months before this double live LP was recorded. I was already familiar with the prowess of Eisenberg and Mendoza, two of the most technically intimidating shredders to blast out of the noise/improv underground, and knew Parish as the mastermind behind the epic translation of Orcutt's quartet recordings into a fully notated score. I was ready to be 'blown away'—and I most assuredly was. The quartet navigated Orcutt's jaggedly spiraling right angles into the shining core of the compositions with joyous ease, faithful to the originals in nearly every way (though their tempos were slightly ramped up, Blakey style, to communicate their breathless rush). The renditions were flawless, stellar and inspiring. I had expected nothing less." "Which leads us to this album, Four Guitars Live, recorded in November of 2023 at Le Guess Who? festival during the quartet’s first European tour. The true essence of this set is not simply in its faithfulness to the source compositions, but in the group's easy familiarity (no doubt the result of weeks on the road) and the generosity of their improvisations, both collective and solo. Orcutt, clearly cognizant of both the caliber of his collaborators and the singularity of their voices, has given everyone room to stretch out, and all have delivered some of their most moving passages to date." "One of this record's great thrills for me is imagining a listener, perhaps unfamiliar with the outer limits of contemporary guitar improvisation (or the Tzadik catalog), slammed into catatonia by Mendoza's liquefying lines on Out of the corner of the eye, then revived and healed by the languid, breathy lines of Parish's unaccompanied, spaced-out breakdown of the track's main theme, finally only to be crushed by Eisenberg’s staggering extended solo on Only at dusk (somehow channeling both Eugene Chadbourne and Buck Dharma)." "There's another peak, which begins at the end of side B, in Orcutt's own languid solo, encapsulating the flowing focus of his recent solo LPs, and serving as an introduction to the next side's ensemble tour de force, the psychic heart of the album, On the horizon: its melodic core passing first to Orcutt, launching into a sublime solo turn by Eisenberg, a duo of Parish and Mendoza, before parachuting back into the ensemble for a smashup rendition of Barely visible and Glimpsed while driving (renamed Barely driving) knitted together with an softly bubbling ensemble improvisation. The transfer is orchestrated yet seamless, its tonal form undeniable even in the presence of obvious dissonance." "The breadth of Four Guitars Live gives lie to the false notion that agile, polytonal improv is necessarily without soul, is necessarily inaccessible. Rather, Four Guitars posits a human avant-garde music that the most conservative will recognize as virtuosic and revel in its classic intervals, boiling counterpoint, and precisely- layered facets. Even the rockers in your life might dig it, so why not pass it on?"—Tom Carter

Of the countless accolades and analyses that surround Blue, no point is more significant than the fact that the 1971 Joni Mitchell album continues to become more popular, revered, referenced, and relevant with each passing day. Such vitality is not only extremely singular; it is the ultimate measure of great art and, in the context of Blue, indisputable proof of the record's accessibility, integrity, and timelessness. If the most brilliant and everlasting music seeks to find truths shared by all of humanity, Blue can be said to be universal doctrine.

Sourced from the original analogue master tapes, pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl, and strictly limited to 12,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP box set presents the landmark album with reference-grade detail, tonality, and directness. Marking the first time the beloved LP has received audiophile-quality treatment, it's one of six iconic 1970s Mitchell records Mobile Fidelity is reissuing on definitive-sounding vinyl and SACD sets.

Everything about Blue sounds more intimate, involving, and inescapable on this transparent pressing, which benefits from a virtually non-existent noise floor and superior groove definition. Mitchell's voice, positioned front and center, and primarily accompanied by minimalist acoustic guitar, piano, and dulcimer playing, comes across clearly and prominently. Suspended notes and radiant chords double as question marks, commas, and phrases. The in-the-room presence and spatial dimensionality make absolute the full-range spectrum of introspective emotions — hurt and distress, self-awareness and joy, difficulty and uncertainty, warmth and desire — Mitchell navigates, queries, and contemplates throughout the record. The defencelessness the singer once spoke about is laid bare here like never before.

The packaging of the Blue UD1S set complements its distinguished status. Housed in a deluxe box, both LPs come in special foil-stamped jackets with faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. This UD1S reissue exists as a curatorial artifact for listeners who prize sound quality and production, and who desire to engage themselves in everything involved with the album, including the unforgettable cover photograph of a ruminative Mitchell shot by Tim Considine.

Deemed the third Greatest Album of All Time by Rolling Stone; universally celebrated by critics, fans, artists, and educators; and defined by a spell of disarmingly vulnerable songs that are at once confessional, intense, spare, honest, painful, hopeful, and exquisite, Blue charts love, spiritualism, independence, and loss like no record before or since. Widely considered the album that established the singer-songwriter template, the largely autobiographical LP changed everything shortly after its original release in June 1971. Amazingly, it continues to do so more than five decades later.

An incalculable influence on generations of artists, it stands as the through-line from Carole King, Elton John, James Taylor, Joan Armatrading, and Leonard Cohen to Patti Smith, Carly Simon, Emmylou Harris, and Rosanne Cash to 21st century contemporaries like Brandi Carlile, Taylor Swift, Sharon Van Etten, and Courtney Barnett. Teetering between agony and optimism, it is — to borrow a phrase from Mitchell's eternal "A Case of You" — a bottomless "box of paints."

The beauty of the stripped-down arrangements, intoxicating melodies, and Mitchell's wisdom on Blue didn't go unnoticed. Critical acclaim, coupled with the depth of the material and Mitchell's reputation, propelled the album into the Top 20 in the U.S. and Top 10 in the U.K. Yet while so much pop music diminishes with age, Blue has defied norms and headed in the opposite direction. Its 50th anniversary year witnessed an outpouring of tributes, reflections, and testimonials that helped frame the record's escalating importance and symbolism — apt in an age in which women have become the prominent trailblazers in rock, R&B, and hip-hop.

Perhaps most succinctly, in a 2021 article celebrating the LP, the Los Angeles Times declared: "In 1971, nothing sounded like Joni Mitchell's Blue. 50 years later, it's still a miracle." Nothing, indeed. Yet "miracle" suggests Blue partially owes to a divine agent or inexplicable circumstance. And though Mitchell's bracing conviction and forthright sincerity can appear otherworldly, her musical approach and lyrical storytelling is nothing if not personal and human. What we hear is pure truth — no matter how aching, complicated, or stark.

Much has been written about the circumstances that inspired the songs on Blue: Mitchell's romances; her time overseas; her disdain for celebrity; her lingering sense of loss at having given up her daughter for adoption; her treatment by the very same industry that her music made uncomfortable; her prolonged search for resolution. These situations and experiences pushed Mitchell to question everything — especially big-picture concepts that have always obsessed mankind: fulfilment, autonomy, love, honesty, being.

"I wanna make you feel free," Mitchell sings on the record-opening "All I Want." Mission accomplished. Blue is liberation — and the start of a freedom that continues to impact music, culture, and identity today.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) technique bypasses generational losses inherent to the traditional three-step plating process by removing two steps: the production of father and mother plates, which are created to yield numerous stampers from each lacquer that is cut. For UD1S plating, stampers (also called "converts") are made directly from the lacquers. Since each lacquer yields only one stamper, multiple lacquers need to be cut. Mobile Fidelity's UD1S process produces a final LP with the lowest-possible noise floor. The removal of two steps of the plating process also reveals musical details and dynamics that would otherwise be lost due to the standard multi-step process. With UD1S, every aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the best-sounding vinyl album available today.

Dancefloor fire bombs from Kolt, a DJ and producer thus far mostly operating under the crew name Blacksea Não Maya (with Perigoso and Noronha). This is his first Retirement record. No quotation marks here, Kolt is actually stepping down from a fruitful decade-long career as DJ and producer.

Fat, techno-ish, idiosyncratic big room afro mind melt sounding like no other hyped or non-hyped dance cuts out there. Futuristic and decidedly non-European in structure, this set of 4 tracks carries a more synthetic DNA than previous material, if we exclude his quasi-gothic slow burners in BNM's "Máquina de Vénus" LP. But in "Verdadeiro" Kolt is all virtual open arms and bare chest, appearing to satirize this idea of the megastar DJ. But what comes across is distinctive and alive (consequently deadly on the club sound system), wiping out the floor of any zombie-preset-DJ vibes.

Take "Bateste" as an example: an evil bassline, wtf beeps, a vocal snippet prodding the dancers and a final blissful 30 seconds to ease you out. "Shaman" is the final track, its title just maybe nailing the atmosphere felt by people on the dancefloor. Shamelessly epic and in your face, a simulation of a throwback to a more clichéd clubland but just so left of centre that one can't find a complete correlation to fit the picture. Yes, we all go OMG.

Born from a virtual encounter in lockdown between two Parisian neighbors, the DJ/producer Prosper and saxophonist Le Marabout, “Le Moustache Conspiracy” is a playful and deeply joyous album, pulling freely from the Afro, Funk, Disco, Hip-Hop, Oriental and Electro influences of the two artists. The iconoclastic DJ Romain “Prosper” Coolen, fervent purveyor of no holds barred euphoria on the dance floor, and the versatile saxophonist, composer and jack-of-all-trades Johann “Le Marabout” Guihard offer us a lavish, eclectic, uninhibited, coherent and furiously groovy album!

Warehouse Find!

A true studio visionary and son of Incognito's Jean-Paul 'Bluey' Maunick, Daniel Maunick virtually grew up behind the mixing desk and worked his way through the scenes of drum n' bass, acid-jazz, disco, samba, deep house and beyond. As Far Out's in-house producer his work is a key component in the consistency and transience of the label's sound, with key albums include Azymuth's Fênix, Marcos Valle's Estatica, Sabrina Malheiros' Dreaming and Far Out Monster Disco Orchestra. His latest credit on the catalogue is the next chapter of his Dokta Venom alias, Moodswings.Each track brings you a visceral dancefloor experience both sonically and structurally. Opener 'See the Sun' evokes an elevated, cloudy ether, with each kick drum another step up to the sky. Title track 'Mood Swings' deploys components of broken beat, garage, house, IDM and boogie, but shrouds them into a hazy deepness, like a dream through Maunick's musical memories. Whilst keeping the same intensity, 'I Owe u Something' ups the tempo and swings the mood. Propulsive percussion blurs the acoustic with the electric, glowing synths and anguished vocals formulate this eruptive full-floor belter that lodges somewhere in between early Pepe Bradock and Azymuth.With a solo album from Azymuth drummer Ivan 'Mamao' Conti, a collaboration between Sean Khan and Hermeto Pascoal, along with a long awaited new record from Sabrina Malheiros, 2017 is set to be an exceptional year for Maunick and Mood Swings is an inspired prelude of things to come.

Seven Davis Jr. returns with a new album fresh after releasing the virtual reality infused clubby "Iss Good" EP on Classic Music Company. This album contains a fusion of R&B Hip Hop / Trip Hop / Deep & Soulful House songs. Inspired by the 90s sound and energy with appearances from John Cale, Luke Solomon, Ivan Dorn, Life On Planets, Jon Dixon and more.

In the beginning was a half-truth, the truth was of war and the half-truth was post-war. Fancying the pretensions of its cultural superiority, a continent chose to hide the truth behind ridiculous jargon and the soothing distance of offshored ?????????. Europe wished itself beyond war because it thought the privilege of peace a birthright, just as it refused to understand that post-war was a euphemism for interbellum. Then the truth has set us free.

The delusion was discarded and war was revealed as an inconceivable horror. Almost immediately it turned familiar and virtually comfortable. Novelty songs of drones gutting tanks became a laughing matter and the burning tanks, their crew inside, entertainment. Consequently, a plurality of people started to collectively dream of new stages of the righteous kind of carnage. This happened within weeks.

Our imagination has swollen to the point of loss of consciousness, compounded by the narrative form long in the sways of atrophy. All of this raises the question of to what degree were the years of peace culturally squandered. The art of the previous age prided itself on self-awareness, today we fail to even notice that we no longer recognize ourselves. But we have arrived where we started and our issues were not too complex for expression.

Since no art form generates action, the most appropriate art for a culture on the edge of extinction is one that simulates pain. In these times we shouldn't produce any other music, none but this, intended to prevent our silence from being misinterpreted.

“I like to work with a variety of instruments and set ups,” says Mark Van Hoen, sometimes known as Locust or Autocreation but here working under his own name on the excellent Plan For A Miracle, his first physical release of solo music since 2018’s Invisible Threads. ”Sometimes it’s literally in my studio, with all the hardware electronics available. Sometimes the laptop, using software instruments. Some of the tracks on this record were recorded in the desert (Joshua Tree) using a 4-track tape machine and small modular synthesiser set up. Each track was recorded in different location using different instruments, which accounts for the distinction between each piece. It’s also about my own reaction to my environment, and what’s going on in my life at the time.”

The Croydon-born Van Hoen started musical life in the early 1990s, signing for R&S records in 1993 but developing his own, myriad and distinctive style across a range of releases on Touch, Editions Mego and other labels, using a battery of instruments, including analogue synthesizers and taking a number of different approaches to recording, rather than ploughing a single sonic furrow. He has worked on a number of collaborations, including with Nick Holton and Neil Halstead of Slowdive, under the moniker of Black Hearted Brother - their Stars Are Our Home was released in 2013. “I have known Neil Halstead since 1992,” says Van Hoen. “He shared a house with me for a couple of years, and the music I was making and listening to along with clubs I was attending had an influence particularly on Pygmalion, the final Slowdive album on Creation.”

Each track on Plan For A Miracle does indeed sound like a world unto itself, a mini-environment, a weather condition, an ecosystem created for the moment. It’s a collection of tracks recorded over the past few years, released on Bandcamp - despite his apparent absence, Van Hoen works constantly. Opener “Climates”, in its exquisite limpidity, feels like a homage to Brian Eno, one of his most formative influences in his teen years, commencing with Music For Films, which he bought in 1979. “This Is For Them”, feels like a ghostlike throwback to early drum & bass or electronica, reminiscent of his own, earliest outings. “There have been a number of requests from labels to make some more music like my very early releases on R&S,” says Van Hoen. “This is part of ‘letting go’ and realising that there’s nothing less creative about going back to those styles again.”

“Pencil Of Spheres” is something else again, a magnificent, imaginary glass structure, shimmering, refracting, without visible means of suspension, a thing of impossible beauty. “Electric Lights” evokes an abandoned fairground, its lights still pulsating, its music lingering. “The Underpass”, meanwhile, insofar as it reminds of anything at all, is faintly reminiscent of Cluster or Neu’s! West German ambience, the urban mundane rendered magical, the sodium lights, the whitewashed walls. The reverberant, faintly oriental chimes of “Insight” transport us yet again, burgeoning and intensifying.

The landscapes, the skyscapes rendered on Plan For A Miracle feel unpopulated as a rule - but when he does introduce vocal elements, Van Hoen has a history of doing so to spectacular effect - think of “Real Love” from 1998’s Playing With Time, the seductive intonation of its title recurring throughout like a series of massive holograms, echoing, stuttering, breaking up, surging. Here, there are just the faintest of vocals, barely distinct, disquieting. “There’s been a bit of a game changer in recent times,” explains Van Hoen. “AI software that enables you to extract vocals and instrument parts from virtually any recording. That means sampling individual parts from existing sources is no longer limited to the original mix exposing certain parts soloed. The vocal parts I use are from multiple sources and often pitch shifted altered rhythmically and melodically.“ There’s further vocal chatter on “I Really Do”, proceeding at a faster pace as if giving chase, or being pursued - distant, enigmatic. “The Music”, meanwhile, its beat tolling, lost in its own fog of static, features a curious intonation, like the ghost of a lost Walker Brother.

Sadly, the album’s title is in reference to a personal tragedy on Van Hoen’s part - the loss of his wife. Titles such as “I Won’t Give Up”, which faintly reminds of another Eno masterpiece, Another Green World, in its nautical hurly-bury, or the pastoral strains of “Mrs Who”, heavily clouded with sadness, seem to allude to this. “In fact the record was recorded entirely before she passed away,” says Van Hoen, “most of it before she even became very ill. The title was given to the album when it started to look like she wasn’t going to make it beyond a few months. It was something Osho said - “plan for a miracle” - so it was a statement of hope. Unfortunately it was not to be.” Although the album is non-thematic, non-specific in its atmospheres, sound paintings, elegant structures it most certainly stands as a magnificent monument to Osho’s memory.

-David Stubbs.

repress, yellow viny

When we established Balmat in 2021, neither of us could have imagined that within two years, we’d be putting out an album by one of our musical heroes: Mike Paradinas, aka µ-Ziq. The British producer has been an inspiration to label co-founders Albert Salinas and Philip Sherburne since the 1990s. In fact, his album-length remix project The Auteurs Vs µ-Ziq was one of the very first pieces of electronic music that Philip bought, way back in 1994. To have the opportunity to release his music now feels like a real full-circle moment.

Paradinas, of course, needs no introduction. Under a slew of aliases, chief among them µ-Ziq, the British artist revolutionized leftfield electronic music in the 1990s—coincidentally, this year marks the 30th anniversary of his debut album, Tango N’ Vectif, for his friend and sometime collaborator Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label—and his label Planet Mu has built up a formidable catalog of visionary, forwardlooking records, mapping virtually every corner of the electronic spectrum. With 1977, he turns the clock backward in a sense, and not just with the album’s title: Rooted in classic ambient and electronic sounds, these 15 tracks evoke the anything-goes spirit of the early ’90s, before the tools and tropes had calcified into cut-and-dried styles.

There’s no shortage of familiar sounds on 1977. There are echoes of raves and chillout rooms and transmissions from the fringes of techno; there are detuned synths and glistening reverb tails and, above all, gauzy vox pads, the eerie glue that holds it all together. The title, he says, is meant to invoke a general sense of nostalgia, bookmarking a year in his boyhood when he became more selfaware. More than anything, 1977 sounds like µ-Ziq distilled: Stripped of his signature breakbeats and customary chaos, Paradinas’ first-ever strictly (well, mostly) ambient album presents the essence of his music in a whole new light.

Along the way Paradinas touches on dark-ambient drones (“Marmite”), horror-film themes (“Belt & Carpet”), jungle breaks (“Mesolithic Jungle”), and even house music (“Houzz 13”), which marks the first bona fide dance-floor moment on Balmat to date). Yet the album never—to our ears, anyway— feels expressly retro. Rather, Paradinas plucks timeless sounds out of the ether and gives them a gentle tap, spinning them into unexpected new orbits. At times, 1977 feels like an experience of extended déjà vu: When we first listened to it, we had the sense that we already knew this music. It was as though we had heard it years ago, perhaps on a battered cassette tape lent to us by a friend, and been searching for it ever since. We hope you feel the same.

Sign Libra's third album Hidden Beauty is an intimate voyage through feminine nature, guided by the arts of subtext, musical collage, and mysterious allusions. Elegantly arranged, enigmatic, and mischievous, Hidden Beauty seeks to "release the invisible and bring fragility to the surface." From the rainforests of Closer to the Equator (Sounds of the Dawn, 2016 / Antinote, 2018) to the surreal lunar landscape of Sea to Sea (RVNG Intl., 2020), Agata Melnikova, the Latvian musician behind the Sign Libra symbol, has developed a signature blend of evocative composition with lyricless, ethereal vocalizing. Hidden Beauty attends to a closer space than her first two albums, a playfully layered pastiche of refined references, drawing musical inspiration from the assortment of Erik Satie, the early work of Mylène Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat, and 90s R&B. The first inklings of Hidden Beauty arrived in 2019, with the basic contours of the album sculpted in 2020 and early 2021. Like Sea to Sea, Hidden Beauty was invented as a solitary creative effort, but this time under uniquely hermetic impositions. Tethered to the world only by screen, the artist sought inspiration from an unlikely array of activities: new, unorthodox approaches at composing, learning French, a virtual pedagogical practice, and plenty of jubilant dancing in her flat, sunglasses on, to 90s dance music. Hidden Beauty moves inward from the distant spaciousness of Sea to Sea in favor of a "chamber-like" sound, reflecting the intimate environs of its creation. Balancing the New Age balletic resonance of Closer to the Equator and the cosmic-dancerly tracks of Sea to Sea, Hidden Beauty combines deft, postmodern arrangements with popular, contemporary suggestions. The reverb drenching her previous recordings is sponged up in the songs of Hidden Beauty, giving the exercises contained within a feeling of presence, and closeness. And always Agata's crystalline vocal furnishings, less a lead vocal than a first instrument, the ever-returning counterpoint in a beatific swirl. The other hidden elements of this work are plenty, and perhaps best left concealed for the listener's enjoyment. Or perhaps they are hidden in plain sight and sound, depending on what the puzzle pieces reveal to your imagination. Sign Libra's Hidden Beauty will be released in vinyl, Japanese import CD, and digital editions on November 3, 2023. A portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Coral Guardian, a non-governmental organization working internationally and with local communities to protect coral ecosystems.

19 songs to follow up “Recreation” released in 2020, and shortlisted for rap album of the year by Wordplay Magazine. This record is a showcase of styles, flavours, moods and emotions, directed through and narrated by Mosik Rhymes. Entirely self produced with stellar features from genre defining artists - George Fields, Alecs DeLarge, Grim Sickers and Soul Supreme. Available on a limited run of black
vinyl from Spinning Wheel Music.

In the midst of the pandemic, Enjoy Jazz Festival has developed a musical project whose members will be recruited new every year and then debut at a concert on UNESCO International Jazz Day, April 30. The members come from the jazz scene of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. "We wanted," festival director Rainer Kern stresses, "not only to revitalize the fragile network of outstanding creative minds, but also to rethink it artistically as a rolling system." Two experienced and renowned band leaders, Alexandra Lehmler and Erwin Ditzner, now curate an annually changing ensemble of outstanding artists of the most diverse provenance. As part of a voluntary commitment, the ensemble is to be organized in a sustainable, diverse, and, in three years at the latest, completely gender-equal
and climate-fair manner. Thus, as a commitment to the goals of the "European/Local Green Deal" (and with reference to the jazz standard "On Green Dolphin Street"), the name Green Dolphin Orchestra was created. Another special feature: The renowned Oriental Music Academy Mannheim (OMM), a long-standing partner of the Enjoy Jazz Festival, receives a white card, so that musicians with a migration background or protagonists from other musical cultures are always part of this "orchestra of many" and constantly expand its sound language.

The project has a free improvisation approach with changing personnel. "We actually even thought of drawing lots for the different formats within the band pool," explains saxophonist Alexandra Lehmler. "We decided against it in the case of the first concert and instead put together curated formations." And drummer Erwin Ditzner adds, "In principle, however, this procedure remains an option." It was important to the two of them to also mix the genres represented by the individual musicians in such a way that free space for something truly new could emerge. "We wanted to challenge ourselves," Lehmler sums it up. The only restriction: a time code was assigned to each sub-project. "Each formation was given a time limit, although it was possible to virtually override this limit by spontaneous
reshuffling," says Ditzner, explaining one central of the few rules. "In concrete terms, this meant that after eight minutes, the improvisation in progress was either ended or new musicians simply joined in the ongoing creative process, while others took themselves out of the game."

Alexandra Lehmler summarizes the artistic impact of the ensemble as follows: "We really cross-fertilize each other. In order to push this process even further, we forced ourselves when putting together the ensemble not to fall back on our 'favorite playing partners', i.e. musicians with whom one feels particularly at home. In other words, we consciously wanted to step out of our comfort zone with this project." The present pieces were recorded live in Heidelberg during the ensemble's premiere concert on the occasion of International Jazz Day on April 30, 2022.

Known for his viral video series Sexta dos Crias, Ramon Sucesso is a virtuosic DJ who crushes, reimagines, and rearranges songs to such a degree that the original tracks become virtually unrecognisable. He has turned his controller into a particle accelerator, creating firework-like bursts of classic funk carioca samples, his own productions, mainstream tracks, nonsense TikTok sound bites, and tons of his trademark beat bolha. All contained within an unparalleled, mischievously non-linear rhythmic flow.

‘Ramon’s social network profiles are as outrageously unpredictable as his mixes. He posts interactive emoji games, bountiful fast-food feasts with his family, comments about the Flamengo football team, and videos of him playing FIFA. He has a prolifically restless mind, constantly riffing and improvising; he does whatever it takes to get by, to navigate the reality of life in Brazil and overcome the daunting challenges of the music industry.

‘Sexta dos Crias is the culmination of Ramon’s DJ work. A LP that embodies the newest in funk carioca, a faithful transposition of the bailes to vinyl. Ramon has unpretentiously ushered in a new age of experimentation for the genre – making a daring and unprecedented foray into a territory where extreme and radical sounds abound.’

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!

The long out-of-print sophomore album by the pioneering, creatively restless troupe, Cerberus Shoal, highlights the earliest phase of their transition from experimental hardcore band to transcendent exploratory collective. Originally released in 1996, _And Farewell To Hightide combined the group's unique command of patient anticipation with a significantly expanded musical palette and a refined musicianship. Shedding virtually all obvious references to the frenetic post-hardcore of their eponymous debut album, Hightide saw Cerberus Shoal incorporating elements of Talk Talk, Tortoise, and the early Windham Hill catalog into a sound that was incomparable at the time. Now, more than 20 years later, it's proven astonishingly prescient and truly timeless. Beautifully remastered and finally made available digitally for the first time ever, this expanded deluxe edition includes the Lighthouse In Athens EP recorded during the same era as _And Farewell To Hightide. Finally available on vinyl for the first time ever, _And Farewell To Hightide - Deluxe Expanded Edition is packaged in restored artwork with newly uncovered photos and extensive new liner notes written by the band. The record has been newly mastered for vinyl by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, and pressed onto audiophile-grade vinyl.