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Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II continues Black Truffle’s documentation of the late work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, who sadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. Like the first volume of the series, the two works recorded here were written for The Ever Present Orchestra, an ensemble founded in Zürich in 2016 to perform Lucier’s work exclusively. At the core of the music Lucier wrote for the ensemble is the electric guitar, an instrument he began to explore in 2013. Played with e-bows, in these works electric lap steel guitars take on roles akin to the slow sweep pure wave oscillators heard in many of Lucier’s works since the early 1980s. This strikingly elegant pair of compositions would serve as an ideal introduction to Lucier’s late music for a listener as yet unfamiliar with its graceful exploration of beating patterns and other acoustic phenomenon.

The two pieces have quite different characters, exemplifying Lucier’s ability to harvest a remarkable range of musical results from closely related compositional procedures and concerns. In Arrigoni Bridge (2019), Lucier uses a technique familiar from earlier works such as Still Lives (1995), where sine waves traced the shapes of household objects. Here, three lap steel electric guitars (played by Oren Ambarchi, Bernhard Rietbrock, and Jan Thoben) follow the form of the Arrigoni Bridge that connects Middletown and Portland, Connecticut. The bridge’s two enormous steel arcs become slowly sweeping pitches, alongside which alto saxophone (Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos), violin (Rebecca Thies) and cello (Lucy Railton) sustain long tones, creating a variety of audible beating patterns depending on their distance from or proximity to the guitars. With its stately pacing, warm middle register tones, and rich timbral variety in the sustaining instruments, Arrigoni Bridge is a beautiful example of compositional reduction producing immersive results. Flips (2020), on the other hand, is more austere. Scored for two lap steel electric guitars (Rietbock and Thoben), double bass (Ross Wightman) and glockenspiel (Trevor Saint), the two acoustic instruments played with bows, the piece zooms in on the range of a major second (two semitones). The two guitars sweep in opposite directions within the range, crossing every four minutes; the double bass and glockenspiel sustain long tones, producing beats of different speeds determined by their distance from the guitar tones. This limitation of the tonal range means the music is often dissonant and forces the phenomenon of audible beating to the surface, resulting in a paradoxical music composed entirely of long tones yet alive with pulsating rhythm. Exemplifying Lucier’s ability to uncover near-infinite complexity within seemingly simple materials, Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II is a fitting tribute to one of the major figures of the experimental music tradition and a testament to the continuing power of his work.

New Shadows peaks into corners where interior and exterior worlds collide, where miniscule revelations can be found in the darkness of ourselves and our community: lost children, unheard prayers, bugs, money, depression, romantic relationships, regret, and Zoom funerals, all become a lens for self-reflection.

The production (by Don Cento and JDD) is modeled after DeCicca's favorite early 80's albums (Lindsey Buckingham's Law & Order, ZZ Top's Afterburner, Robert Palmer's Clues, Lou Reed's New Sensations,) while the songs' architectures and pathos lean more towards Warren Zevon, Townes Van Zandt, and John Prine - all these record- makers and songwriters are embedded in DeCicca's DNA, having seen them, and in some cases met them after gigs, when his brain was still developing between the ages of 13-19 years old.

The virtual collaborators are the musicians whose kept him company while isolated in his rural town, Bulverde, TX: Brian Harnetty's Many Hands, Rosali's No Medium, Irreversible Entanglements' Who Sent You?, James Brandon Lewis's Jessup Wagon, Jeff Parker's JP's Myspace Beats and Suite for Max Brown, and the Los Lobos discography.

New Shadows isn't so much about DeCicca's new discoveries, as it is the penumbrous reminder of what's always been there.

Originally released on white vinyl for Record Store Day 2021, this much sought after soundtrack is now available on a limited run of Transparent Red Vinyl.
2020 saw the release of the critically acclaimed “Audrey”, a documentary film taking an intimate look at Audrey Hepburn’s life with access to never-before-seen footage from her family’s personal collection and produced by the multi award-winning team behind “McQueen” and “Churchill”.
The soundtrack was composed by Alex Somers, an American composer and producer who has written and collaborated on soundtracks including “We Bought A Zoo”, “How To Train Your Dragon Trilogy”, “Aloha”, “The Circle”, “Captain Fantastic”, “Shia LaBeouf's Honey Boy” and Taylor Swift's Netflix original documentary “Miss Americana”. His work was first noticed in 2009 with Riceboy Sleeps, his ambient album collaboration with partner Jónsi (Sigur Rós). Following “Riceboy Sleeps”, Alex co-produced Jónsi’s 2010 debut solo album “Go”. He then opened his own recording studio in Reykjavík where he co-produced and mixed Sigur Rós’ 2013 album “Valtari”, and continued to collaborate with artists Jónsi, Julianna Barwick, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Gyða Valtýsdóttir, Damien Rice, Amiina, Sin Fang, Briana Marela.

Another dream coming true! One of Giuliano Sorgini's finest and most sought-after titles is finally available as an official LP reissue – the first ever – remastered from the original tapes.

Originally released in 1971on the small library music imprint FAMA, which operated as a sub-label of RCA Italy, the record contains the original music written for Scappo per cantare, a small, pseudo-psychedelic 'musicarello' (musical comedy film) broadcast on RAI television and starring, among others, Italian singers Gianni Morandi and Mauro Lusini.

The only credited album artist is Sorgini, but it's impossible not to perceive, in this record, the hand of his close friend and colleague Alessandro Alessandroni.

This should not come as a surprise. In the early 70s, the two composers and multi-instrumentalists had a fruitful collaboration that saw them, under the monikers Braen (Alessandroni) and Raskovich (Sorgini), produce an abundance of works together, most of which have now gained the recognition they deserve. These include, among others, two 7" singles from their band The Pawnshop, three records in the series Alle sorgenti delle civiltà (Folkmusic), the crime/noir library albums Quarta pagina (Usignolo) and Inchiesta giudiziaria (Octopus Records), as well as the LP Tempo Libero (Panda Records), which was released shortly after the record presented here and in some ways drew rhythmic inspiration from it.

While their collaboration remained unacknowledged on the original release of Scappo per cantare (this was not uncommon at the time, especially in the field of library music), the record sounds perfectly in line with other works composed by Alessandroni in the early 70s, such as Complesso Gisteri's Mostra Collettiva (co-written with Oronzo De Filippi), or even a landmark album like Spontaneous, where Sorgini contributed to a handful of tracks.

So, yes, the sheer beauty of Scappo per cantare is the result of an incredible synergy between two heavyweights of Italian library music! Airy and sweeping melodies à la Zoo Folle, psychedelia à la Under Pompelmo, and various percussion instruments played by Sorgini seamlessly blend and fuse with elements and touches provided by Alessandroni.

More specifically, we find Alessandroni's signature, melancholy whistle in "Desolazione"; the peaceful and dreamy sound of his 12-string guitar in "Scogliere" and "Con Amore"; the trademark harmonies of his vocal ensemble Cantori Moderni in the last two tracks mentioned and in "Per cantare"; and his ingenious use of distortion on his Fender Stratocaster in the suspenseful transitions "Concentrazione" and "Fantocci", as well as in the frantic/hypnotic hippie numbers "Mordente" and "Fendente" (as a side note, it is worth remembering that Alessandroni experimented extensively with distortion in the rock-infused album Underground, co-written with De Filippi and released in 1971 under the moniker Braen's Machine, probably a reference to British psychedelic band Soft Machine).

The creative relationship between Sorgini and Alessandroni was so symbiotic that it would be useless to try to identify in more detail their respective contributions to the sound of Scappo per cantare. The alchemy between these two musical geniuses is the key to the album's exquisitely Italian mixture of cheerful lounge, sweet psychedelia and smooth easy listening.

To do justice to the quality of the music, this remastered reissue is enriched by a new artwork by Eric Adrian Lee, who drew inspiration from the psychedelic visual culture of the period in which the album was written and recorded.

In a world seemingly gone crazy a bit of good old common sense is as necessary as a simple cup of black coffee.” A random quote out of the ether but one that could define the sound, the style and craftmanship of The Irrational Library. Based on a foundation of groove set forth by Mishal Zeera on the bass guitar and Lars van der Weiden on drums; this sets the locomotive in motion for the guitar and baritone sax of Tom de Haan to build upon. A sonic sound that continues to search in between the lines, to reach where most musician dare not to dwell. A musical landscape so familiar yet fresh and new for these times. And
always waiting and watching, ready to jump that train are the poetic and socially zoomed in words of Joshua Baumgarten.

UK drummer and sound artist Cameron Graham dances between EDM, joyous calypso colour, cellular Glassian minimalism, and hyperrealist AI on debut album Becoming a Beach Angel, evoking a SNES world of blissful vibrancy.

Creating his dizzying, dayglo MIDI explorations with drumkit triggers, UK musician Cameron Graham conjures a multitude of soundworlds from dense compositional structures. The music of debut album Becoming a Beach Angel touches on neon, videogame digitisation, the finessed, mechanical precision of IDM, even the rhythmic intensity of gamelan, whilst retaining a thrilling and wholly singular energy. The record is an electrifying experience, full of colour.

Becoming a Beach Angel flips and trips through headspinning, hyperspeed effervescence, like an entire rave condensed into a moment. Instantly joyful, its textures - formed in wavetable synthesis triggered by live-performed percussion pads - thread and bob through hyperreal abstract space, millisecond snippets of organ chords and steel pans zooming like stars in a galaxy rocketed past at

lightspeed. “It’s about grabbing and holding a close person going through depression or self-doubt, taking them out the door,” Cameron explains. “Dance music for that moment you need only to find a way to move forward.”

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Tender Membranes, the label’s first release from Swedish-Finnish sound artist and electro-acoustic composer Marja Ahti. Active for a decade in the Finnish underground music scene, in recent years Ahti has developed a distinctive approach to patiently unfolding electro-acoustic constructions, documented on a string of solo releases and collaborative projects with Judith Hamann and her husband Niko-Matti Ahti. Working with concrete and instrumental sounds, field recordings, and electronics, Ahti favours neither disjunctive collage nor monolithic consistency; rather, her work is composed of organically unfolding sequences of details and textures, which, as she says, ‘can stretch out or cut fast as long as they have a sense of inner stillness’, a sense that she connects to moments of heightened attention in everyday life. Tender Membranes consists of four lengthy pieces, partly inspired by the image of the senses and mind as membranes allowing for the passage between inner and outer spaces, sensation and its causes, creating a world. Ahti’s unhurried pacing encourages this sense of listening as an opening or surrender to sound, which can often create the impression that the listener is moving through a space zooming in on details. The opening Shrine (Aether) exemplifies this aspect of Ahti’s approach: a bell clears the air with a single long tone, followed by the ambience of outdoor spaces, crackling electronics, an archival recording of a horsefly on a windowpane. Dozens of these moments, varying in length, density, and intensity, move past the listener’s attention, momentarily brought into focus then slipping away. Like those of the masters of the French musique concrète tradition, Ahti’s sounds are not often recognisable, though they might suggest proximity or distance, open environments or closed spaces, the urban or rural, day or night. In Ahti’s work, we do not encounter spectacular metamorphoses à la Parmegiani but rather a state of ambiguity where the listener is often unsure what is organic and what is inorganic, where the careful productions of the synthesizer might end and sounds discovered in the environment begin. What Ahti calls her ‘poetic way of experiencing and organising the familiar and the unfamiliar’ is sustained throughout Tender Membranes, but each piece has its own character. On Dust / Light, human presence is more overt, as what appear to be whispers, singing, and distant speech thread between high frequencies, untraceable drips and pops, and metallic shimmers. In all this there is a melody that you can sing and to which you may dance makes more prominent use of musical instruments, gaining a sombre beauty from half-buried piano chords and organ tones. On the closing Oh Fragrant Witness, a delicate cloud of subtly bending pitches is repeatedly disrupted by a resounding, almost ominous mass of low tones, at once a strange detour from much of what has gone before and an almost classical finale. Arriving in a sleeve reproducing contemporary Finnish photographer Sini Pelkki’s fragmented visions of the everyday, Tender Membranes is a balm to reawaken tired ears.

The latest EP from Drab Majesty marks the start of a stirring new chapter in the band's majestic legacy. Written during a 2021 retreat to the remote coastal Oregon town of Yachats, Deb Demure leaned into the neo- psychedelic resonance of a uniquely bowl - shaped 12 -string Ovation acoustic/electric guitar. After early morning hikes in the rain, Deb would record ambient guitar experiments the rest of the day, tapping into "flow states," letting the sound lead the way. These sessions were then refined or recreated, and later elevated further with key collaborations by Rachel Goswell (Slowdive), Justin Meldal Johnson (Beck, M83, Air), and Ben Greenberg (Uniform, Circular Ruin Studio). An Object In Motion is true to its title, capturing the chrysalis moment of an artist evolving, reborn and untet hered, silhouetted against an open horizon. "Cape Perpetua" kicks off the collection's divergent palette: sparkling acoustic fingerpicking refracted through delay, equal parts raga and reverie. Melodies and moods congeal and dissipate, at the threshold of rustic American primitivism, brooding neo-folk, and pastoral melancholia. "The Skin And The Glove" deploys jangle to different effect baggy, soaring, grey skied kaleidoscopic pop in the spirit of Stone Roses, Primal Scream, and The Glove. Rachel Goswell lends her iconic freefall voice to The Cure - esque ballad, "Vanity," infusing poetic gravity to the doomed refrain: "If the valve breaks / then the earth quakes / and history finds a way / to put you in your place." "Yield To Force", the closing track of the EP, may be the most anomalous offering of the set. A 15 minute instrumental odyssey of cyclical strings, ominous slide guitar, and simmering synthesizer, the piece sways and spirals like a long zoom into distant storm clouds. Demure finesses the guitar with a restless but regal grandeur, unfolding a panorama of peaks, shadows, and plateaus. It's music both intuitive and prophetic, tracing the slow swing of pendulums across an endless plain. Taken as a whole, An Object In Motion presents a showcase of potential futures from Drab's evolving domain, their sound poised to bloom at the precipice of transformation.

Die japanische Band CHAI verzauberte die Welt 2017 mit ihrem Debütalbum PINK, einer Sammlung von Songs, die ihren einzigartigen, verspielten Pop vorstellten. Das enthusiastisch-feministische Nachfolgealbum PUNK wurde von der Musikpresse und anderen Künstlern hoch gelobt. Das führte zu WINK, das CHAI per Remote-Zoom-Sessions aufnahmen - eine Einschränkung, die sich als Stärke erwies, da MANA (Leadgesang und Tasten), KANA (Gitarre), YUNA (Schlagzeug) und YUUKI (Bass und Texte) mit Künstler*innen im Ausland zusammenarbeiten konnten, um ein Werk zu schaffen, das in ihrer internationalen Gemeinschaft Katharsis fand. Im Gegensatz zu WINK kehren CHAI auf ihrem neuen, selbstbetitelten Album zu ihren Wurzeln zurück und lassen sich von ihrem japanischen Erbe und der Musik, mit der sie aufgewachsen sind, inspirieren. "Alles, was sich in den Texten widerspiegelt, drückt unsere Erfahrungen als japanische Frauen aus", sagt MANA. CHAIs Ethos ist das der Inklusion, und die erste Ssingle "We The Female!" - die live aufgenommen wurde, um die krawalligen Auftritte der Band zu würdigen - lädt die Zuhörer zu dieser Mission ein. Während ihrer Tourneen nach der Pandemie, bei denen sie vor riesigen Menschenmengen in Städten wie Santiago, Buenos Aires und Sao Paulo auftraten, wurde CHAI klar, dass sie sich ein globales Publikum erschlossen hatten. CHAI schrieben das neue Album unterwegs und fanden zwischen den Auftritten im Stones Throw Studio in L.A., in der Ometusco Sound Machine in Mexico City und in der Grand Street in New York Zeit für die Aufnahmen. Als sie erkannten, dass ihre befreiende, ermächtigende Botschaft auch für Menschen außerhalb Japans gilt, überlegten CHAI, welche Facetten ihrer Erziehung beim Publikum außerhalb ihres Heimatlandes Anklang finden könnten. Auf CHAI schöpft die Band direkt aus dem City-Pop, einem in Tokio entstandenen Sound, der in den 70er und 80er Jahren populär war. City-Pop war eine japanische Interpretation westlicher Lounge-Musik, die Anleihen bei Jazz, Boogie, Funk und Yacht-Rock machte, um einen Sound zu kreieren, der sich zwischen zwei Kulturen bewegte. Während der City-Pop in letzter Zeit über TikTok und YouTube ein US-Publikum gefunden hat, sind CHAI mit diesem Genre aufgewachsen. Für die Produktion griffen sie auf ihren früheren Mitarbeiter Ryu Takahashi zurück, der ihre Vorliebe für City Pop, Eurobeat und die Melodien von J-Pop-Künstlern wie Maria Takeuchi teilte. "Sie wollten sich mit ihrer japanischen Identität auseinandersetzen, nicht im traditionellen Sinne, sondern auf diese gefilterte westliche Art", sagt Takahashi. Die Arbeit in gut ausgestatteten Studios ermöglichte es ihnen, mit einer Ästhetik zu experimentieren, die auf einem CHAI-Album noch nicht zu hören war.

Die japanische Band CHAI verzauberte die Welt 2017 mit ihrem Debütalbum PINK, einer Sammlung von Songs, die ihren einzigartigen, verspielten Pop vorstellten. Das enthusiastisch-feministische Nachfolgealbum PUNK wurde von der Musikpresse und anderen Künstlern hoch gelobt. Das führte zu WINK, das CHAI per Remote-Zoom-Sessions aufnahmen - eine Einschränkung, die sich als Stärke erwies, da MANA (Leadgesang und Tasten), KANA (Gitarre), YUNA (Schlagzeug) und YUUKI (Bass und Texte) mit Künstler*innen im Ausland zusammenarbeiten konnten, um ein Werk zu schaffen, das in ihrer internationalen Gemeinschaft Katharsis fand. Im Gegensatz zu WINK kehren CHAI auf ihrem neuen, selbstbetitelten Album zu ihren Wurzeln zurück und lassen sich von ihrem japanischen Erbe und der Musik, mit der sie aufgewachsen sind, inspirieren. "Alles, was sich in den Texten widerspiegelt, drückt unsere Erfahrungen als japanische Frauen aus", sagt MANA. CHAIs Ethos ist das der Inklusion, und die erste Ssingle "We The Female!" - die live aufgenommen wurde, um die krawalligen Auftritte der Band zu würdigen - lädt die Zuhörer zu dieser Mission ein. Während ihrer Tourneen nach der Pandemie, bei denen sie vor riesigen Menschenmengen in Städten wie Santiago, Buenos Aires und Sao Paulo auftraten, wurde CHAI klar, dass sie sich ein globales Publikum erschlossen hatten. CHAI schrieben das neue Album unterwegs und fanden zwischen den Auftritten im Stones Throw Studio in L.A., in der Ometusco Sound Machine in Mexico City und in der Grand Street in New York Zeit für die Aufnahmen. Als sie erkannten, dass ihre befreiende, ermächtigende Botschaft auch für Menschen außerhalb Japans gilt, überlegten CHAI, welche Facetten ihrer Erziehung beim Publikum außerhalb ihres Heimatlandes Anklang finden könnten. Auf CHAI schöpft die Band direkt aus dem City-Pop, einem in Tokio entstandenen Sound, der in den 70er und 80er Jahren populär war. City-Pop war eine japanische Interpretation westlicher Lounge-Musik, die Anleihen bei Jazz, Boogie, Funk und Yacht-Rock machte, um einen Sound zu kreieren, der sich zwischen zwei Kulturen bewegte. Während der City-Pop in letzter Zeit über TikTok und YouTube ein US-Publikum gefunden hat, sind CHAI mit diesem Genre aufgewachsen. Für die Produktion griffen sie auf ihren früheren Mitarbeiter Ryu Takahashi zurück, der ihre Vorliebe für City Pop, Eurobeat und die Melodien von J-Pop-Künstlern wie Maria Takeuchi teilte. "Sie wollten sich mit ihrer japanischen Identität auseinandersetzen, nicht im traditionellen Sinne, sondern auf diese gefilterte westliche Art", sagt Takahashi. Die Arbeit in gut ausgestatteten Studios ermöglichte es ihnen, mit einer Ästhetik zu experimentieren, die auf einem CHAI-Album noch nicht zu hören war.

The sessions with Walla (Death Cab for Cutie, Tegan and Sara, Foxing) struck the perfect balance between preparation and experimentation, injecting new life into the band's style of soft- hearted Midwestern indie rock with an ever so subtle Americana twist. The solidified Ratboys lineup stretched and expanded their vision in the studio, adding unexpected elements and instruments like rototoms, talkboxes, and fiddles. The result is Ratboys' most sonically diverse record, shifting wildly from track to track. It flexes everything from fuzzy power pop choruses on "Crossed That Line" and "It's Alive!" to a warm country twang on "Morning Zoo" to mournful folk on the titular track. After more than ten years and four studio albums, The Window finally captures Ratboys as they were always meant to be heard--expansive while still intimate, audacious while still tender--the
sound of four friends operating as a single, cohesive unit.

The sessions with Walla (Death Cab for Cutie, Tegan and Sara, Foxing) struck the perfect balance between preparation and experimentation, injecting new life into the band's style of soft- hearted Midwestern indie rock with an ever so subtle Americana twist. The solidified Ratboys lineup stretched and expanded their vision in the studio, adding unexpected elements and instruments like rototoms, talkboxes, and fiddles. The result is Ratboys' most sonically diverse record, shifting wildly from track to track. It flexes everything from fuzzy power pop choruses on "Crossed That Line" and "It's Alive!" to a warm country twang on "Morning Zoo" to mournful folk on the titular track. After more than ten years and four studio albums, The Window finally captures Ratboys as they were always meant to be heard--expansive while still intimate, audacious while still tender--the
sound of four friends operating as a single, cohesive unit.

In 1972, a foursome of design students set out to make a record. This was, in many ways, a strictly creative endeavor. The quartet — composed of Dave Pescod, Alan Lewis, Phil Rawle, and Ted Rockley — were all trained, not as musicians, but as creatives. Art school heavyweights, the four were well-versed in the methodology of intentional experimentation, in the delicate balance of pushing the limits without completely unmooring oneself from a guiding creative intention. Emboldened by a high-brow familiarity with thoughtful experimentation and all the non-conviction of non-musicians, Bowes Road Band’s stint in the world of popular music yielded a record that is as much mind-melting as it is a direct product of its time. Their sprawling LP “Back in the HCA” embodies the exigence “art for art’s sake,” but it is for art’s sake that this record, however off the deep end it seems to travel (hear: “Doctor, Doctor”), remains a unified, and stunning, body of work. The LP’s do-ityourself garage rock noisemaking meets highfalutin creative processes. “Back in the HCA” is warbling psychedelic freakout (“Two Fingers,” “Doctor, Doctor”), Donovan-esque English countryside folk stylings (“Inside My Head,” “Goodbye to Rosie”), and avant-garde jazz improvisions (“Grass is Grass,” “Tomorrow’s Truth”) in one luminous release.

Originally an 9-track LP, Jakarta, Uno Loop, and Bowes Road Band decided to mine the six most cohesive tracks for the reissue, though the extras may be released somewhere down the line. Cohesion efforts aside, “Back in the HCA” stands alone in its singular conception of a genre-bending continuum — it evades definition. That said, the LP can easily be situated in the sonic environment in which it was conceived. By the end of the 60s, England was crawling with blues-based rock outfits that were starting to venture into prog rock territory. You can hear this popular dint cast over the folkier side of the LP. But Bowes Road Band was armed with their non-musicianship: they existed completely liberated from the motivating yet ultimately paralyzing lust for stardom. Enjoying this liberation, Bowes Road Band was utterly free to make noise. This freedom meant drawn out sax interludes amidst sweetly folk stylings (“Grass is Grass”) and Shaggs-like fuzzed-out freakouts that spiral into a void (Doctor, Doctor). This freedom also meant straight-forward tuneful cuts like “Goodbye Rosie” that conspicuously introduce heavily distorted auto-organ accompaniment mid-track amidst poignant lyricism. Bowes Road Band crafts a unified sound and then cracks it open.

With a completely off-the-radar status, Bowes Road Band could only press 50 copies of the record — 10 for each of them and 10 for the school. The band’s lifespan was to end there, or so they thought. “Back in the HCA” was the accidental fruit of a Berlin flea market treasure hunt by Jannis Stürtz, DJ and co-founder of Habibi Funk and Jakarta Records. After finding and sharing the LP with a few colleagues, Stürtz managed to get in touch with the band, get ahold of the master tapes collecting dust in Ted Rockley’s attic, and start the reissuing process. The record is still adorned with its original cover art designed by Alan Pescod, both reminiscent of bygone school days and the Zoom calls of yesterday — in short, reunion. Its re-discovery was happenstance and ought to be listened to as such. That is, “Back in the HCA” was not made to be listened to on a broad scale, or, at least, was not made with this goal in mind; it is neither in its time nor of its time. Of course, the group explicitly cites the folk tunes of the English countryside, the distorted rock groups that reigned during the record’s conception, and the fringes of psychedelic music that only the uber-underground might recognize (e.g., “Dreaming of Alice”). Yet still with these obvious influences, “Back in the HCA” always existed beyond the domain of both traditional musicianship and conventional commodification. Bowes Road Band’s DIY musicality beams through in technicolor across “Back in the HCA.” The vinyl includes an 8-page booklet detailing the albums creation and interviews with the band.

Lead single “Grass is Grass,” out July 14 along with album pre-order, encapsulates the record’s range: the track unfurls into a sprawling sax-driven trip following a sundrenched, Donovan-esque intro w/ lyrics “naively about parks and gardens, not marijuana!” The keyed-down folk cut “Goodbye to Rosie” is single 2 and elevates stripped-down acoustics with golden tinges, out August 4th. Focus track “Tomorrow’s Truth” constructs the fuzzed-out underbelly of acid folk. Listen for echoes of late Beatles, Mark Fry, and Donovan (if they were armed by an unshakabele willful naiveté). Like Sgt. Pepper’s on a shoestring budget—take a trip to the underground with LP “Back in the HCA,” available everywhere physically and digitally on September 1st via Jakarta Records and Uno Loop.

Besides online promotion from label profiles, the album will be further promoted by external agencies within the UK and US.

The anticipation is there in Elizabeth Stokes’ solo guitar riff under the opening lines of “I’m Not Getting Excited”: a frenetic, driving force daring a packed Auckland Town Hall to do exactly the opposite of what the track title suggests.

As the opener of The Beths’ Auckland, New Zealand, 2020 expands to include the full band, the crowd screeches and bellows. It’s a collective exhalation, in one of the few countries where live music is still possible.

The album title, and film of the same name, deliberately include the date and location, lead guitarist Jonathan Pearce says. “That’s the sensational part of what we actually did.” In a mid-pandemic world, playing to a heaving, enraptured home crowd feels miraculous.

In March 2020, everything seemed on track for another huge year for The Beths. Home after an 18-month northern hemisphere tour, they had just finished recording sophomore album Jump Rope Gazers and were primed for more extensive touring. But within days, New Zealand’s lockdown split the band between three separate houses. All touring was cancelled.

“It was existentially bad,” Stokes says. As well as worrying about economic survival, they lost something crucial to the band’s identity: live performance. “It's a huge part of how we see ourselves... What does it mean, if we can't play live?”

The band found an outlet through live-streaming, returning to the do-it-yourself mentality of their early days to connect with a global audience. The album and film have their genesis in that urge to share the now-rare experience of a live show, as widely as possible.

The fuzzy-round-the-edges live-streams pointed the way aesthetically. Native birds, wonkily crafted by the band from tissue paper and wire, festoon the venue’s cavernous ceiling while house plants soften and disguise the imposing pipes of an organ. The presence of the film crew isn’t disguised: much of the camerawork is handheld; full of fast zooms and pans.

With much of the material still fresh, the band was less focused on re-invention than playing “a good, fast rock show”, Pearce says. The tempo is up on crowd favourites “Whatever” and “Future Me Hates Me” (released as a live single on its third anniversary) as both band and audience feed off the mutual energy in the room.

Certain songs have taken on special resonance post-Covid. Pearce has found “Out Of Sight”, a tender rumination on long-distance relationships, hits particularly hard with live audiences.

Album closer “River Run” visibly brings Stokes to tears as a mix of achievement and relief kicks in. “You can finally relax at that point … You play the last note, breathe out a sigh and look up - and you’re in a giant room full of people happy and smiling.”

The latest EP from Drab Majesty marks the start of a stirring new chapter in the band's majestic legacy. Written during a 2021 retreat to the remote coastal Oregon town of Yachats, Deb Demure leaned into the neo- psychedelic resonance of a uniquely bowl - shaped 12 -string Ovation acoustic/electric guitar. After early morning hikes in the rain, Deb would record ambient guitar experiments the rest of the day, tapping into "flow states," letting the sound lead the way. These sessions were then refined or recreated, and later elevated further with key collaborations by Rachel Goswell (Slowdive), Justin Meldal Johnson (Beck, M83, Air), and Ben Greenberg (Uniform, Circular Ruin Studio). An Object In Motion is true to its title, capturing the chrysalis moment of an artist evolving, reborn and untet hered, silhouetted against an open horizon. "Cape Perpetua" kicks off the collection's divergent palette: sparkling acoustic fingerpicking refracted through delay, equal parts raga and reverie. Melodies and moods congeal and dissipate, at the threshold of rustic American primitivism, brooding neo-folk, and pastoral melancholia. "The Skin And The Glove" deploys jangle to different effect baggy, soaring, grey skied kaleidoscopic pop in the spirit of Stone Roses, Primal Scream, and The Glove. Rachel Goswell lends her iconic freefall voice to The Cure - esque ballad, "Vanity," infusing poetic gravity to the doomed refrain: "If the valve breaks / then the earth quakes / and history finds a way / to put you in your place." "Yield To Force", the closing track of the EP, may be the most anomalous offering of the set. A 15 minute instrumental odyssey of cyclical strings, ominous slide guitar, and simmering synthesizer, the piece sways and spirals like a long zoom into distant storm clouds. Demure finesses the guitar with a restless but regal grandeur, unfolding a panorama of peaks, shadows, and plateaus. It's music both intuitive and prophetic, tracing the slow swing of pendulums across an endless plain. Taken as a whole, An Object In Motion presents a showcase of potential futures from Drab's evolving domain, their sound poised to bloom at the precipice of transformation.

As Wreckless Eric he needs little introduction - he wrote and recorded the classic Whole Wide World and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it"s been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. Eric"s version featured in the 2022 Expedia / Superbowl / Ewan MacGregor travel ad, and the Cage The Elephant version is the new theme tune for the podcast Smartless. This new album, Leisureland, marks a return to his more ramshackle world of recording - guitars and temperamentally unpredictable analogue keyboards, beat-boxes and loops in conjunction with a real drummer, Sam Shepherd, who he met in a local coffee shop in Catskill, New York. He was delighted to find that Sam lived around the corner and could easily drop by to put drums on newly recorded tracks. The recording methodology may have been Contemporary American but the subject matter is almost entirely British. It also contains more instrumentals than any of his previous albums.

As Wreckless Eric he needs little introduction - he wrote and recorded the classic Whole Wide World and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it"s been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. Eric"s version featured in the 2022 Expedia / Superbowl / Ewan MacGregor travel ad, and the Cage The Elephant version is the new theme tune for the podcast Smartless. This new album, Leisureland, marks a return to his more ramshackle world of recording - guitars and temperamentally unpredictable analogue keyboards, beat-boxes and loops in conjunction with a real drummer, Sam Shepherd, who he met in a local coffee shop in Catskill, New York. He was delighted to find that Sam lived around the corner and could easily drop by to put drums on newly recorded tracks. The recording methodology may have been Contemporary American but the subject matter is almost entirely British. It also contains more instrumentals than any of his previous albums.

The electric eels were the first punk band, full stop. They may not have “started” the genre, but they were the first to tick all the boxes. The eels rejected every 1970s rock convention—professionalism, virtuosity, subject matter, image. Dave E.’s caustic vocals, complete with an aggressive lisp and a head full of snot, would become de rigeur a few years after the group disbanded. Meanwhile, the songs’ focus on car crashes, suicide, neuroses, and generally hating people were as far out of the mainstream as possible. The two eels tracks that do approach the subject of romance couch it in terms of not really caring that much about it (“Jaguar Ride”) or placing it in the context of a grisly murder (“Silver Daggers”). Also consider John Morton’s signature guitar sound, a nails-on-chalkboard tone with brutally free soloing inspired more by Albert Ayler than the blues or aspirations to technical facility. Ditto Dave E.’s clarinet playing and affection for lawnmowers and vacuums during live performance. They were notoriously violent not only among themselves, but towards audiences, police, and anyone unfortunate enough to be around them when things went south. Then of course there are the leather jackets, the clothing festooned with rat traps or safety pins. And no bass player, why bother. There is simply no other “proto” band to have had all these pieces in place circa 1973- 1975. Yet it is a mistake to consider the eels exclusively in such a context. Yes, the eels could and did shock anyone who encountered them, but they also had great songs. While both Dave and John were visionary writers, they also had rhythm guitarist Brian McMahon, a melody and riff machine who wrote many of the band’s signature songs. And they were no one-trick pony. Although much of the band’s material is appropriately high-energy, there is also the downer eels—morbid, harmonically risky, and in full existential crisis. Although it’s not a focus of this compilation, the eels also had a penchant for completely free improvisation. Over the last forty plus years, there have been several electric eels compilations. Spin Age Blasters is quite simply the best one ever assembled, every single key track is here in its best version, properly mastered by John Golden, and sequenced with an eye towards both flow between tracks as well as individation between sides. A true monster of an album.

Bush Tetras have made punk music at the fringes for over four decades. Flashes of reggae, bursts of noise, guitars that rattle, shake and snake, born out of a gutter behind CBGBs. Over the years they have respawned time and time again, contorting their sound, tweaking the vision, remaining singular and indispensable. In the late 2010s the group-Pat Place, Cynthia Sley, and Dee Pop-reformed again, releasing an EP, Take the Fall, in 2018. It was their first offering of new music in over a decade. A few years later in, 2021, they released a career spanning box set called Rhythm and Paranoia. The New York Times called the box set an artifact that "proves for decades that Bush Tetras continued to evolve in surprising yet intuitive directions." Around the same time, the band began working on a full length record, writing sessions during the pandemic over Zoom. Right before the release of the box set, beloved drummer Dee Pop passed away. Determined to complete the record to honor his memory, the Tetras went into the studio to finish what they'd started, once the timing was right. They brought in a new drummer, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, who also served as producer. Enter They Live in My Head. The band's 3rd official LP (a misleading fact when viewed along - side a catalog as expansive as it is influential), They Live in My Head is a collection of songs that sometimes reflect on the past and sometimes reckon with our current reality. From "Ghosts of People," on which Pat Place's legendary guitar meanders through closed doors and portals, to the scorching "2020 Vision," a matter- of-fact call to arms to get on the streets and get something done, the album addresses new and old, in both abstract and specific terms. But whether they're looking forward or backward, Bush Tetras have always been a political band, a band that calls out all kinds of bullshit. And, in that sense, They Live in My Head is absolutely no exception.

Bush Tetras have made punk music at the fringes for over four decades. Flashes of reggae, bursts of noise, guitars that rattle, shake and snake, born out of a gutter behind CBGBs. Over the years they have respawned time and time again, contorting their sound, tweaking the vision, remaining singular and indispensable. In the late 2010s the group-Pat Place, Cynthia Sley, and Dee Pop-reformed again, releasing an EP, Take the Fall, in 2018. It was their first offering of new music in over a decade. A few years later in, 2021, they released a career spanning box set called Rhythm and Paranoia. The New York Times called the box set an artifact that "proves for decades that Bush Tetras continued to evolve in surprising yet intuitive directions." Around the same time, the band began working on a full length record, writing sessions during the pandemic over Zoom. Right before the release of the box set, beloved drummer Dee Pop passed away. Determined to complete the record to honor his memory, the Tetras went into the studio to finish what they'd started, once the timing was right. They brought in a new drummer, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, who also served as producer. Enter They Live in My Head. The band's 3rd official LP (a misleading fact when viewed along - side a catalog as expansive as it is influential), They Live in My Head is a collection of songs that sometimes reflect on the past and sometimes reckon with our current reality. From "Ghosts of People," on which Pat Place's legendary guitar meanders through closed doors and portals, to the scorching "2020 Vision," a matter- of-fact call to arms to get on the streets and get something done, the album addresses new and old, in both abstract and specific terms. But whether they're looking forward or backward, Bush Tetras have always been a political band, a band that calls out all kinds of bullshit. And, in that sense, They Live in My Head is absolutely no exception.