Suche:yär

From weaving thought-provoking poetics to channeling the spirit of vintage West Coast gangsta rap, acclaimed Los Angeles emcee Blu is a dynamic musical presence, forever evolving and defying expectations. Supremely talented producer and musician Shafiq Husayn has a similarly diverse skill set, with a storied history as a member of Sa-Ra Creative Partners and solo production credits for top artists across the musical spectrum, from Erykah Badu to Ice-T to Anderson .Paak to Jurassic 5 and many more. After linking up for the mixtape The Blueprint back in 2018, Blu and Shafiq Husayn are reuniting for the new album Out Of The Blue, elevating their collaboration to a new level. “The Blueprint was just me rhyming over some of Shafiq's beats that I found online,” Blu explains. “This time we were actually in the studio together. We’ve been working together since 2008, but this is our first official album.” Awash in Shafiq’s dense sonic architecture, Out Of The Blue showcases the intricacy of Blu’s spiritual street talk while simultaneously delivering a series of bass-heavy L.A. anthems. Entirely produced by Shafiq Husayn, the collection features guest appearances by MED, Exile, Chuuwee, Thurz, Speed Walton, Jimetta Rose, and Freestyle Fellowship members Myka 9 and Self Jupiter. “Out Of The Blue is my G-Funk album,” Blu explains. “Big brother Shafiq gave us a master class in production. We just in here being funky and having fun.”

Introducing "Azerbaijani Gitara vol. 2" by Rəhman Məmmədli, the eagerly awaited sequel to Bongo Joe’s acclaimed debut featuring Rüstəm Quliyev. Born from the vibrant streets of Baku, Azerbaijani gitara culture has evolved into a mesmerizing fusion of indigenous traditions and global influences. From the oil boom era to Soviet rule, musicians have embraced the electric guitar as a symbol of cultural expression.

Rəhman Məmmədli, a legend in his own right, revolutionized the sound with his innovative techniques and impassioned performances. Drawing inspiration from mugham music, Məmmədli's compositions resonate with soul-stirring melodies and electrifying solos.

Join us as we honor the pioneers of Azerbaijani gitara culture while celebrating the continued evolution of this rich musical tradition. "Azerbaijani Gitara vol. 2" promises to captivate listeners with its depth, diversity, and unbridled passion, inviting you on a journey through the heart and soul of Azerbaijan's musical heritage.

Two years in the making, 25-year-old Angelica Garcia's album Cha Cha Palace is the result of an artist's need to SAY SOMETHING. The second song on the record, "Jícama" might only be a minute and 25 seconds in its entirety, but the message spans generations and is one that resonates deeply for Garcia with her Mexican and Salvadoran roots. Singing/shouting, "I see you, but you don't see me Jímaca, Jímaca, Guava Tree_I've been trying to tell ya, but you just don't see, like you I was born in this country," Garcia tells the reality for millions of Americans unapologetically and with passion.That feeling of being between places is something Garcia knows well having been raised between multigenerational, multicultural, homes with step-parents and half-siblings. Additionally, she made the journey from the West Coast to the East Coast and back again multiple times before finally settling down in Richmond, Virginia.She fondly recalls Mexican ranchera music always playing throughout her childhood. Ranchera was ingrained within the maternal side of her family with her Mother, Grandmother, Uncle & Aunt constantly singing the traditional music throughout the home of her Grandparents.Like Mitski, Lorde, Billie Eilish, and Rosalía, Garcia isn't afraid to tear pages out of her diary and express emotions that might be difficult and oftentimes daunting to share given today's social and political environment. Like her peers, she joins a new chapter of musicians who are connecting with their audiences on a level that lives outside the reaches of technology, trends, and social media, the daily experience of feeling torn between saying something and doing something, for being a voice and speaking with your voice, of being Latina while being American. And it's humanity and honesty that audiences are looking for and will find in spades throughout each note of Cha Cha Palace.

An’archives presents the latest album by Japanese free saxophonist and vocalist Harutaka Mochizuki, Doppelgänger ga boku wo. Since the early 2000s, Harutaka has quietly, yet steadily, released a string of solo and collaborative releases that have allowed multiple perspectives on one of the most singular voices in modern music. In collaboration, he seems to prefer the duo format, and digging through his discography, you’ll find releases where he pairs with Tomoyuki Aoki (of Up-Tight), Michel Henritzi, and Hideaki Kondo. But Harutaka’s solo performances, with their lyricism and physicality, are where the magic truly happens.

If earlier albums, like Solo Document 2004 (Bishop, 2005) and Pas (no label, 2014), were raw documentations of solo alto saxophone performances, in recent years, Harutaka’s solo albums have become more complex, more mystifying. Most significantly, they’ve become more personal; there are few musicians extant whose albums feel quite so much like diaristic interventions, and Harutaka’s music now is deeply moving in its intimacy. Developing that thread of revelation, Doppelgänger ga boku wo offers a still richer exploration of many facets of Harutaka’s artistry.

The two double-tracked alto saxophone performances here feel consummate, with Harutaka shadowing himself, exploring the possibilities of the multiple self: Doppelgänger is me, indeed. The playing here is rich with affect, but still exploratory, voiced with rigour and intent. Two short pieces for keyboard and voice (about Giacometti and Genêt, respectively) are fragile miniatures, with clusters of chords, and passing phrases, wrapping around Harutaka’s untutored but lovely singing.

The ‘karaoke’ performance that closes the album, of “Woman ‘W no higeki’ yori”, speaks to the iterative aspects of Harutaka’s music. A cover of the Hiroki Yakushimaru song, the theme to Shinichirō Sawai’s 1984 film W’s Tragedy, he’s returned to this song several times, and here, his delivery perfectly captures the spirit of what Michel Henritzi, in his typically beautiful liner notes, evocatively details as “one of those sad love songs that accompany lonely sake drinkers in smoky night bars, sharing their spleen.”

Gorgeous, human, heartrending - Doppelgänger ga boku wo is Harutaka Mochizuki in element and in spirit.

Cassette!

ora’s most innovative modern exponent bathes in communion with a re-imagined classical guitar, unveiling a new and previously unsuspected musical universe. In a meeting between instruments, not traditions, these maestros emerge from quite different and distant musical worlds. Ballaké Sissoko’s kora tradition and lineage traverse the once powerful West African empire known as Kaabu. South African Derek Gripper’s roots are in European classical guitar but infused with a unique jeli music mastery that takes guitar’s modern history in a captivating new direction.

But we are not hearing these traditions in dialogue: these masters meet on the sonic groundings of the kora, instrument of the griots, resonant vessel of the sacred and profane, sound carrier of history and wisdom. Through two decades of commitment and study, it is to this terrain that Gripper brings his guitar to meet its multi-stringed cousin.

The two men do not share a spoken language, but if it is true that music speaks universally, then they were already involved in profound dialogue long before they met for the series of London concerts which yielded this recording session – a session which matches deep communion with sparkling improvisation, which pushes a living tradition into brand new sonic spaces, and opens a live and direct channel of communication between kora and guitar. In the complex web of theme and variations spun by Sissoko’s twenty-two strings and Gripper’s six, a new African string theory is elaborated.

“Musically we tested each other,” says Sissoko, explaining that the most magical aspect of their encounters are spontaneity. “We have the mastery of our instruments, the technique and a good ear. Derek is very curious, that’s very important.”

“He’s just such a good listener,” says Gripper about Sissoko. “It’s not what he plays, it’s how he plays it. He’s an amazing interpreter, the prime master of timbre.”

Recording by Taylor Pollock at Platoon Studios, London.
Mixed, edited and produced by Derek Gripper.
Mastered by Murray Anderson at Milestone Studios, Cape Town.
Produced for vinyl by Chris Albertyn and Matt Temple at Matsuli Music.
Mastered for vinyl and lacquers cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery, London.
Vinyl pressed at Pallas GmbH, Germany.
Sleeve notes by Francis Gooding, French translation by Paulo Goncalves.
Cover design by Toby Attwell at Twoshoes, Cape Town.

The Lovely Eggs will release Nothing/Everything - the lead single from their forthcoming album “Eggsistentialism” on Friday April 26th on Egg Records. Their third collaboration with Grammy Award winning producer Dave Fridmann, “Nothing/Everything” will be released on ltd edition bright yellow 7” vinyl with more out of this world art-work by illustrator Casey Raymond. Nothing/Everything is a wistful, stark, magnificent seven minute psychedelic epic. It’s The Lovely Eggs as you’ve never heard them before. “Nothing/Everything is the Yin/Yang of life,” explains Holly. “There’s hope and despair, patience and frustration, birth and death, the mundane and the extraordinary. It’s the magnificence of “Being” walking hand in hand alongside life’s daily grind. This song is simply what is. It’s not looking forward or back. It’s us now. It’s uplifting and it’s tragic. It is probably the longest and most meaningful song we’ve ever written and recorded. It’s our magnum opus about life.” With the full 7 minute and two second version on the A side, the B gives you the radio edit.

The original beat of "Battlecry," the opening theme of the anime "Samurai Champloo," known as "The Other Side of Phase," will be released.

The song was included on the compilation CD "Listening is Believing" released by Libyus Music, the label from which the albums "metaphorical music"

and "modal soul" were released. In physical form, it was distributed only on CD.

After a long time, "Rainyway Back Home" from "spiritual state" and "Horizon" from "modal soul" were recorded and released on analogue vinyl!

The cover was designed by Meguru Yamaguchi, a Japanese artist based in New York, adding vivid colour and dynamism to the music.

Two legendary figures of the Greek and international music scene, Floros Floridis and SavinaYannatou join their breaths in this new release on vinyl by To Pikap Records, entitled Blink. In the album’s seven tracks-movements, the two musicians expand the time it takes for the eye to blink. Avant-garde and improvisation, modernism and tradition seek to describe, but ultimately limit, this melodrama of existence, the libretto of which is written in the langue that may have been first heard in Pangea.

Blink departs from the ground on which records like the Residents’ Eskimo sprouted, but moves on by removing the horizon points and the conventions they carry, in order to board the next Voyager that will travel to the stars. Two experienced breaths that generate sound without rules become -through reeds and mouth- vehicles of the language of newborns deconstructing the conventions of human communication. The fragility of existence becomes -like the birdsong- lullaby and dirge, hymn and incantation. The instinctive manages to express the unspeakable in this abstract and ultimately tender work that does not conclude but remains open to the timeless movement of a prehistoric future.

"Keady & Vallins" is an all-too-familiar story of potential left unfulfilled -- glorious pop music shunted by the impetuous thrums of a music industry stricken by decadence and a preference for high turnover and rigorous proprietorship.

A tour with the Bee Gees by Vallins and help from Robert Stigwood resulted in a deal with Polydor .

After a pair of singles produced by a young, upstart (now hugely important head of Universal Music Group) Lucian Grange achieved moderate success in France, an album was next: taped by Keady and Vallins during downtime from other sessions. They pulled world class talent from the studio, from the pub down the street from the studio, while also (temporarily) pilfering instruments from the shop below the studio (price tags still affixed) -- to create a striking blend of sepia-toned soft pop / yacht rock and pop disco-lite.

2024 Repress!

Limited 10 year anniversary repress. In May 2014, Icelandic producer Yagya released his fifth album, Sleepygirls, across three slabs of vinyl on Dutch label Delsin. It's a deep, spacious and dubbed out affair that stays locked at a pleasingly sedentary tempo throughout. Since 2002 the definitive member of the Thule Musik collective has been crafting lush electronic albums under his Yagya alias and always manages to find pure bliss and beauty and his simple, nature inspired soundscapes. "I wanted to create an album that's atmospheric, repetitive, and easy to listen to over and over again," says the man himself. "Something that works well in the background (e.g. when concentrating on work), as well as up close in a big sound system. I also wanted to learn how to make my music sound better than before, since I'm a huge sound-nerd, so that was a part of the goal for me personally." The album is a fine fusion of tropes from Yagya's earlier albums, features jazz instrumentalists that improvise beautiful melodies over monotonic, almost drone-like, techno beats and also uses live recordings of Japanese vocals, saxophone and guitar to counter the repetitiveness of the rhythms. Right from the rolling bliss of the opener, you're suspended in a womb like pillow of sound that is soft, warm and serenely beautiful. As tracks roll on, the pace stays the same but themes vary from upright and summery to more elongated and insular. This is natural, organic dub that is a delight and a pleasure to listen to. The vinyl versions of each track have been specially mixed with random LFOs, sonic quirks and unique fingerprints making them the subtly different to the CD version, but overall this is a brain soothing and mind melting album that can soundtrack lazy days, long summer afternoons and warm winter evenings in equal style.

Who said rock'n'roll is dead?! Maybe Dr Frankenstein's made a rock 'n' roll monster cuz it sure seems alive to me. We introduce to you the debut LP of MARTIN SAVAGE AND THE JIGGERZ! All three gentlemen in this power trio have a solid background in the rock 'n' roll business which we won't bore you with here. The band has already released a slew of solid 7" records which we won't bore you with here either. Get on the internet ya lazy sods! Anyway, back to this here album: recorded by Ed Deegan at the esteemed Gizzard Recording Studio up in Fish Island, East London, on magnetic tape it delivers 12 solid senders of pure heart-on-the-sleeve rock 'n' roll action! From the blastin' drumroll of opener 'Between the Lines', a staple in the band's live set, via punk ballad anthem 'Down the Line' leading up to another live favourite called 'Boomerang'. There are covers of should-have-been-legends with bad-ass names like the Backstabbers or the Stripes. There are songs about shitty jobs, troublesome relationships, life on the high and life on the low. It's got everything you need really. Whether ya dig Boston 1976, Medway 1986 or Memphis 1996 there's something for you here. You can call it punk, pub rock, garage, glam or any other label you like but we just call it good ole rock 'n' roll. Hope ya dig!

The current lineup of New Haven's long running Mountain Movers (guitarist/vocalist Dan Greene, bassist Rick Omonte, guitarist Kr yssi Battalene, & drummer Ross Menze) have been playing together for over a decade now, making their recorded debut on a slew of singles released from 2011-2013, but it wasn't until 2015's "Death Magic" (released on New Haven label Safety Meeting) that the potential of that iteration of the group became clear; Mountain Movers are a force of nature. The camaraderie & sensitivity to each others playing has only grown over time, cr ystallizing on the group's trio of albums for Trouble In Mind; 2017's eponymous "Mountain Movers" served as a reintroduction of the group to a larger audience, while 2018's "Pink Skies" raged like a group confident in its strengths, and 2020's prescient "World What World" - written & recorded before the world shut down - slightly shifted focus away from the jams & back toward the weight of guitarist/songwriter Dan Greene's poetic tales of magical realism. The band's ninth album "Walking After Dark" finds a happy medium between both aspects of the band's strengths; Greene's lyrical compositions and the group's long-form improvised jams. To those that are tuned in, that feeling of communion is evident in the Movers' playing. The members swap & cycle effortlessly through instruments without missing a beat, utilizing the downtime of lockdown to write & record every jam in their practice space. Those piles of tapes would eventually get edited & sequenced into "Walking After Dark", a tour-de-force double-album that balances fried, stony brilliance with outré excursions of experimental serenity. Consider the opening track "Bodega On My Mind" that ambles in like a road-worn traveller, its lysergic folk strums peppered with acidic lead lines from Battalene's Telecaster, eventually giving way to "The Sun Shines On The Moon, where the group's sizzling guitars are buoyed by Omonte's pillowy bass & Menze's percussion. From there on out, tracks like "Factory Dream" give the listener a taste of The Movers' modus operandi here; a mixture of (more) traditional song craft interspersed between long-form, improvised pieces of modern psychedelia. The group shuffles through instruments; synths, drum machines, auto-harp, various forms of percussion (and whatever else was laying around) as well as the trad guitar/bass/drums configuration to craft a suite of songs that - while not necessarily similar in composition - feel unified in their overall sonic scope. Tracks like the 14-minute "Reclamation Yard", whose deep-space electronic pulse is juxtaposed against side C opener "See The City "s persistent acoustic strum that showcase similar ideas of the `spirituality ' of losing ones self in repetition, but executed differently. In many ways "Walking After Dark"s duality feels like a merger of "On The Beach"-era Neil Young & the collective freak-outs of Amon Düül, taking inspiration in the `incorporeality ' of free music and lacing it with Greene's hazy, haunting lyricism and is an exciting step forward for a band that's already a few steps ahead. "Walking After Dark" is released on black double-vinyl in a full color gatefold jacket & includes an insert with artwork & lyrics by member Dan Greene.

KYORYU by Last Dinosaurs, released 24 May 2024, includes the following tracks: "Self-Serving Human Being", "14 Occasions", "Elton", "Yin and Yang" and more.

This version of KYORYU comes as a 1xLP.

Set sail with the third installment of Numero's ode to regional radio surveys. Broadcasting 44 minutes of uninterrupted yacht, easy-glide, AOR, and blue-eyed disco that'll rock your boat. These 13 selections are anchored in the deep blue waters of the American private press_a life preserver for any BBQ, birthday party, or bris. Let W3NG be the sonic wind at your back.

Die Tokioter Band und Afrobayashi-Pioniere Ajate sind mit ihrem dritten Album zurück: Erleben Sie die explosive Begegnung von Afro-Groove und traditioneller japanischer Ohayashi-Musik! Die Band mit ihren explosiven Liveauftritten singt über die Kraft menschlicher Verbindungen, die Kraft des Zusammenseins und Zusammenlebens, die Freude am Teilen und die Schönheit des Lebens. Ajates Musik ist ein grossartiges Beispiel dafür, wie Sounds in die zeitgenössische Musik migrieren können. Mit ihrer neuen LP "Dala Toni" beweisen Ajate einmal mehr, dass sie an der Spitze globaler Musik "made in Japan" stehen.

With Lucifer, Kompakt presents an album of rare beauty from two masters of modern music. A family affair, it’s a collaboration between the Italian father-and-son duo of Luciano Michelini and Lorenzo Dada, whose combined histories bring to Lucifer a depth of experience alongside clarity of vision and a finely tuned, neatly developed combined compositional voice. A lovely, beguiling suite of music that combines the electronic and the acoustic, the urban and the pastoral, its gorgeous night-eye vision and tender melancholy sits neatly within the Kompakt universe, while offering the curious listener some rich new perspectives.

There is already plenty to know both artists by. Lorenzo Dada creates across multiple fields – a techno producer and DJ who has already worked with the likes of Jay Haze, Fete, Leo Benassi, and Der, he’s released a small clutch of stylish, smartly designed EPs, and a solo album, Second Life (2018). His complementary background in classical music and composition informs his ensemble project, Tears Of Blue (who appear on Lucifer), where Dada paints with neo-classical tones for a quartet of violin, viola, cello and grand piano, supplemented by electronics for live performance.

Luciano Michelini’s history is yet richer. He may be best known, to many, for his piece “Frolic”, the theme to Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm series; it was also sampled by Snoop Dogg for 2022’s “Crip Ya Enthusiasm”. But there’s much more to Michelini’s story. A successful soundtrack composer, Michelini both studied and taught at the Conservatoro di Santa Cecilia, and worked for RCA from the sixties to the eighties; his soundtracks from this period are gorgeous examples of the form, particularly his work for Il Decamerone Nero (1972), L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce (1979), and the devastatingly gorgeous Dimensione Donna (1977).

In the eighties, Michelini and his wife Anna Gutling founded the Electronic Music Division studio and academy in Rome, which is where the majority of Lucifer was recorded. Dada reflects on the experience: “We never worked together before, so it was all new for both of us,” with Michelini adding, “I truly love this experience with my son. He’s a talented pianist and composer. I am not very familiar with electronic music nowadays, but we did it fluently.” There’s certainly a familial energy at play through Lucifer, and you can hear how Dada and Michelini, through exploration and experiment, find a shared language, balancing Dada’s tendency toward minimalism, and Michelini’s composerly voice.

Lucifer flows as a suite that interweaves electronic music with acoustic instruments: the lonely sigh of saxophone; Michelini’s lush, verdant piano; the weeping strings of Tears Of Blue (recorded at the studio of Michelini’s friend, the late Maestro, Ennio Morricone). These multiple voices are located within the electronic sighs and swarms from Dada’s kit; there are moments of propulsion, and passages of lambent drift, where the album revels in its tonal sweetness. If it flows so effortlessly, that’s because Lucifer was designed that way, as a suite or a sonata of sorts.

And the title? Dada reflects, “Lucifer was an angel who decided not to be one anymore. The miracle of life is that we can decide what we want to be, even if we are born as angels or vice versa.” This feels somehow apposite: there’s certainly something of the transformative, and the transportive, in Lucifer, a unique family collaboration of rare poetry and sensitivity, where two generations meet in the modern crucible that is the electronic music studio.