quête:amp

11th album by the one-of-a-kind collective: psychedelia and free form jazz (not jazz) trigger a sophisticated excursion into weird textures with drastic turns. Dislocated dense music full of secret connections!

Kammerflimmer Kollektief – "Schemen"

Before reason prevails, invoked by those who want everything to remain as it is, Kammerflimmer Kollektief disrupts the established supply chains of sound. It seeks more interesting ways to assemble them. Trusting in this, because of the fact that every sound that still comes out of a guitar, a bass, a harmonium, drums and electronic devices has already been taken into the common mangle of meaning anyway. Enough of all that. Here, nothing is explained. Here we speak in schemes. Polished and jerky.

The images that Kammerflimmer Kollektief conjures up therefore happen not in the focus of consciousness, but rather in its outer realms. In those to which one does not give one's full attention at the moment, but which are nevertheless perceived. For example, when a leaf falls from the ground back up to the tree in the corner of your eye, and for an instant you think this is possible, before you realize it was a small bird flying into the tree; it is in just such irritating moments between perception and realization that the art of the Kollektief also unfolds. On "Schemen", familiar fragments float gently around their core – a Fender Rhodes tone, a bass figure, a guitar motif, a masterful drum shuffle, a moment of icy stasis borrowed from the harmonium playing of Christa 'Nico' Päffgen. Triggering brief associations, they slowly rush off in other directions through free jazz-informed editing work, whereupon such zones can also arise in which perception has a few tricks ready and earlier experience suddenly breaks into the now in a completely different way. Half suspected, half seen.

Half-music like Can from Cologne – also masters of improvised editing – sometimes produced a few decades ago in their in-between moments. The first minutes of "Future Days" for example, which fade in gently, sketch a barely graspable figure emerging from all directions of the room. Kammerflimmer Kollektief also engages in similarly open moments of development. Loosely, it eludes the first formative impressions, keeping itself ready for moments that do not follow any logic of appointment. This looseness in handling makes Kammerflimmer Kollektief so fluidly audible, even when dissonant peaks and free playing arise. What Karlheinz Stockhausen is to Can's understanding of composition, the recordings of The Cocoon are to Kammerflimmer Kollektief. The Cocoon, a meeting of garage psychedelics from the Hannover area with free jazzers from the Galaxie Dream Band, whose album "While The Recording Engineer Sleeps", recorded in 1985 in unguarded moments, operates in a very similar way with decentralized perceptual ambivalences and only appeared more or less secretly four years later on Wilhelm Reich Schallspeicher. Other traces of "Schemen" lead to the debut album of Quicksilver Messenger Service. The guitars of Gary Duncan and John Cipollina, which refer to themselves in an unforced manner, are instructions to let go. They don't want to be traced in every note as a solo, but they give their music a sense that the essential takes place off center, in the mutual and intuitive gift of loving attentions. Consciousness-free.

Loving turns like the little guitar phrase that, like a kind of leitmotif, is repeatedly ghosting more or less unchanged through all of the Kammerflimmer Kollektief albums. A Coricidin induced, very catchy slide idea filtered out of ancient Æther, which – who knows – maybe even centuries ago found its way from somewhere to America – the old, the eerie – and from there wafted on through the ages to southern Germany, to a smoky studio in the Upper Rhine lowlands. A memory of which even the memory no longer knows what it once reminded. Unsaid, then forgotten.

In Kammerflimmer Kollektief you will also find a friend of slowly building, unhurried music, which probably would have been appreciated by the old Franz Mesmer, who 200 years ago, after tranquilizing treatments, sometimes used to play for his patients ambient melodies on the enormous glass harmonica. However, in order not to surrender completely to the flow of one's own life energy, as Mesmer had in mind with his therapies, Kammerflimmer Kollektief occasionally adds hectic tensions, gently embraced by the droning of a sine wave generator, as if a trance could briefly refesh. This old analog sine wave generator is new in the Kammerflimmer assortment of sounds. So, the art of the Kollektief likes to dock occasionally in modern times, yet with the past in mind. Mental states begin to flicker between imagination and certainty, between culture-bound art expression and coincidences: A cawing and scraping can always just be a cawing and scraping with Kammerflimmer Kollektief, the way Andy Warhol's mushroom eater just eats a mushroom.

Heike Aumüller's cover works, which illustrate all the Kammerflimmer Kollektief albums, additionally act as amplifiers of unexplained refractions. Her style consists of eye-corner art that remains so, even when looked at directly. Her shots remain disquieting because they do not jolt themselves into a reassuring order, even in retrospect. Rather than evading the fear that arises when looking at them by trying to impose some irrational rhyme or reason, that fear must simply be endured. This strategy of endurance is equally applicable to the music. The trick is to let parts be parts without compulsively seeking delusional patterns that lull us into a false sense of security and in doing so, possibly delude ourselves. In this context, freedom means not having to anxiously attach a fantasized superior meaning to everything. "Schemen" has an conspiracy disintegrating effect.


b A2 Zweites Kapitel (ruckartig) [feat. Heike Aumüller]

Super limited special edition sleeve. Scuba ft. Amp Fiddler. If I Dub

Over the course of a 19-year career, Marshall Watson has released all manner of musical treats for a similarly wide array of labels, yet it’s the effortless beauty of his downtempo works – and particularly his ambient and Balearic excursions – that have often left a lasting impression.

It certainly caught the attention of NuNorthern Soul founder Phil Cooper, who brought the West Coast producer to the label in the summer of 2021. That EP, Sunsets on Larkin Parts 1 & 2, was undeniably special. The same can be said about his belated return to the label, Foothills, an EP packed to the rafters with slow-burn melodies, sustained chords, becalmed textures and gently unwinding grooves.

Watson’s distinctive take on Balearic naturally comes to the fore on EP opener ‘High Desert’, a soft-focus delight where languid electric guitars, starry electric piano lines, echoing chords and gently pulsing electronics stretch out across a shuffling groove. While tailor-made for watching the sun set off his beloved Pacific Coast – and over the Mediterranean Sea – ‘High Desert’ offers a dose of hazy sonic sunshine that can brighten up even the greyest of days.

Fittingly, the accompanying remix comes from long-time friends of the label Seahawks, whose textured, layered and atmospheric productions similarly blur boundaries between Balearic, ambient, pitched-down dancefloor grooves and glassy-eyed psychedelia. Employing opaque, shape-shifting pads, effects-laden guitars, subtle spoken word snippets and yearning, almost melancholic chords – all atop a crunchy, head-nodding beat and toasty bassline – the duo deliver a remix that’s as emotive and sonically stunning as Watson’s original mix.

The EP’s three other tracks amply demonstrate the subtle variety within Watson’s downtempo output. Vocalist Julie Childe makes her mark on ‘Sweet Sounds’, a brilliant blend of warming deep house and laidback Balearic nu-disco that sports subtle hints to his work as one half of synthwave duo Causeway, while ‘Open Sky’ brilliantly wraps undulating TB-303 acid lines and echoing Spanish guitars around a hypnotic, locked-in dancefloor groove.

Then there’s ‘The Landscape’, a deliciously saucer-eyed slab of breakbeat-powered, TB-303-sporting genius that evokes the immersive, early morning waviness of the ambient house era, the beach party psychedelia of San Francisco’s free party movement, and the bleeping wonder of turn-of-the-90s UK dance music. Like the rest of the EP, it’s an enveloping, head-soothing and mind-expanding treat.





e B2 High Desert Seahawks High Sky Remix

Swedish drone alchemist Mats Erlandsson is sitting in a fictional room on ‘Gyttjans Topografi’, imagining a virtual chamber orchestra using zithers, tapes, double bass, harmonium, organ, and various synthesisers to draft a treatise on alternative tuning and non-normative harmonic structures. Transcendent material.

“The music on this recording is performed by a kind of fictitious chamber ensemble situated in an imaginary room outlined by textures that alternate between gestural foreground and passive landscape. The three pieces contained within this release are tied together by sharing similar harmonic material and instrumentation and could ideally be perceived as parts of one long performance stretching through the two sides of the record. The textural room in which this musical performance operates is unreliable, unstable, constantly shifting in size and activity from sparse and open to dense and claustrophobic. Inside this non-euclidean performance space a chamber ensemble made up of zithers expanded through analog tape transposition, harmonium and organ, double bass, digital FM, feedback-convolution and Serge modular synthesizer perform a music made from justly tuned intervals arranged in a way that blurs the distinction between traditional minor and major tonal harmony in favour of harmonic progression within an essentially modal framework.

‘Oxidationstabell för Hytta A’ unfolds the harmonic material slowly in three sections where individual lines move independently initiated by the attack of the zither while the textural properties of the room shifts and shimmers. ‘Törnar’ forms a dense harmonic counterpoint where lines built from the same intervallic relationships gradually shift the balance from one spectral focal point to the next while the textural-spatial elements move under pressure and permeate the harmonic layers. The double bass heard on this piece was performed by Yair Elazar Glotman.

The whole of Side B is made up of one piece - ‘Sänka’, using a series of chords made from harmonic inversions of a single set of intervals as an anchor, or synchronisation point, for voices gliding towards, or away, from their designated goal as parts of the harmonic structure of the piece. In addition to the harmonic and textural layers previously present, a third percussive voice is present here whose rhythmic material is intimately tied to the intervallic relationships present throughout the record.

The material used to make these pieces included non-harmonic sounds and contaminated field-recordings that have gone through a sort of feedback process between digital and analog, or acoustic, processing where the recordings were edited, processed and re-amplified and recorded again in acoustic spaces to shape their character and imprint acoustic identities on the recordings. The tonal instruments were treated in a process analogous to this - harmonic material built from recordings and digitally generated synthesis recorded, transcribed, rearranged and overdubbed again with additional electronic or acoustic instruments to form a composite electroacoustic instrumental sound.

Mats Erlandsson is a composer and musician, part of the vibrantly reemerging field of drone music in Stockholm, Sweden, associated with practices characterised by the extensive use of sustained sound. Erlandsson presents his work both as a solo artist and in collaborations, most notably together with Yair Elazar Glotman and Maria W Horn.

Soave Records dusts off the psych/synth album by Doctor Steven T. Birchall recorded in 1973 in Indiana, U.S.A. with the following equipment: VCS-3 (The Putney) by EMS, Ampex MM-1000 16 trk, dbx noise reduction, SpectrasSonics Console, Studer A80 Recorder, Eventide Clockworks, Instant Phaser, Cooper Time Cube, EMT Reverb. The absolutely penetrating high tones of the opening track 'Music Of The Spheres' announce us that we are on board, passengers in the hands, or perhaps better to say in the mind, of Birchall who aims to go beyond those "normal" boundaries that we call reality. It is a new world of music that still amazes after half a century. A higher stage of truth projected into the cosmos. Cover art by Earl. E. Hokens.

"The Concert" is the first discographic collaboration between percussionist Alexandre Babel and visual artist Latifa Echakhch. The record is intimately linked to the eponymous exhibition presented at the Swiss Pavilion during the 59th Venice Art Bienniale.

For her exhibition in the Swiss Pavilion, Latifa Echakhch created an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allowed the visitor a complete perception of time and of his own body. What is the origin of rhythm? How does the body perceive time? How does the mind rearrange it? Can we substitute one perception for another, the visual for the sound? Can fragments of memory go back in time and recreate a different story?

Her proposal entered a dialogue with the building around it, designed by Bruno Giacometti. The artist revisited its architectural programme as well as the prototypical progression of these exhibition spaces, originally defined for the display of classical art. She appropriated the entirety of the spaces, simultaneously exploring continuity, movement and sequence. Their relationship to light, and the different sounds that emerge from them. Yet the exhibition was entirely silent and the musical composition "The Concert" functions as its sound rendering, by following a similar path.

This one-sided vinyl is a complementary and inseparable partner piece to the exhibition and its eponymous catalogue, the latter having been published in April 2022 by Sternberg Press. The music features field recordings made at the Swiss Pavilion itself as well as pre-recorded percussion sounds and significant contributions by the Berlin-based musicians Jon Heilbronn, Rebecca Lenton, Theo Nabicht, Nikolaus Schlierf.

The record, available only after the closing of Latifa Echakhch’s exhibition offers a concluding phase to the project. The resonance of its sensory score. It reactivates the experience of the physical journey of the installation, without imposing itself as a transcription or an illustration. Through texture, temporality and its totality, the record stands as a resonance of the rhythms that have structured the pavilion, the harmonies that have composed it and the sounds that have inhabited it.

Latifa Echakhch Lives and works in Vevey, Switzerland. She graduated from the École nationale supérieure d’arts in Cergy-Pontoise and the École nationale des beaux-arts in Lyon. Galleries representing her include kamel mennour (Paris and London), kaufmann repetto (Milan and New York), Dvir Gallery (Tel Aviv/Brussels) and Pace (New York). She took part in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale Arte in 2011 and was awarded the prix Marcel-Duchamp in 2013 and the Zurich Art Prize in 2015. Through her interdisciplinary installations, Latifa Echakhch is recognized for the fine balance between forcefulness and fragility of her visual language, inserting surrealist and conceptual elements, and her use of symbols that–in her own words–are both "political and poetic".

Alexandre Babel Lives and works in Berlin. He is a drummer, composer, and curator. His projects redefine the boundaries of musical convention, confounding listener expectations in the conquest of new contexts. Babel has been the artistic director of the contemporary percussion group Eklekto 2013–2022. In 2020, the monographic Festival Les Amplitudes in La Chaux-de-Fonds focused on Babel’s compositional and curatorial work. He is a laureate of the Swiss Music Prize from the Federal Office of Culture 2021.

Repress!

Using an old door, 17 strings, chopsticks and combining them with phasers, echo units and amplification, the new device was to become his signature sound, mixing Irish folk influences with Asian and North African sounds in a mesmerising and soulful new way that brought him to the attention of the leading improvisers of his day - Alice Coltrane, Ravi Shankar, Don Cherry and more.

A logical follow up to AllChival's recent reissue of Stano's debut LP, Michael O'Shea's self titled LP was originally released on Wire's Dome Imprint in 1982.

The background to the album is as interesting and inspiring as the artist who created it - born in Northern Ireland but raised in the Republic, O'Shea was keen to travel and escape the troubles of his home.

Wandering throughout Europe and the Middle East, O'Shea found himself living and working as a relief aid in Bangladesh in the mid Seventies where he learned to play sitar while recovering from a bout of hepatitis. A later period spent busking in France accompanied on zelochord by Algerian musician Kris Hosylan Harp led to O'Shea's idea of combining both instruments as a homebuilt instrument - Mo Chara (Irish for "My Friend").

He later described the process on the back of the LP himself saying:

"Having sold my sitar in Germany and being desperate for money to travel to Turkey, I conceived of the idea of combining both sitar and zelochord. The first Mo Cara was born, taken from the middle of a door, which was rescued from a skip in Munchen"

A combination of dulcimer, zelochord and sitar, O Shea would play it with a pair of chopsticks, striking the strings softly using Irish folk rhythms mixed with the rich, nostalgic sounds of of the many Asian artists he'd encountered on his travels.

It was a pan cultural sound standing at an unusual crossroads of folk, traditional, rock, progressive, jazz, electronic and post-punk worlds without hesitation.

Perfecting the instrument on the streets, there were further spells spent busking in the underground stations and cafes of London's West End and Covent Garden during the heady days of the 1970s when they were full of eccentric street entertainers, jazz improvisers and musical pioneers.

His work with Rick Wakeman never saw the light of day but O'Shea's contact with the world of post-punk London ensured his name would live on.

Introduced to Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis via cartoonist Tom Johnston, O'Shea eventually acquiesced to an open invite to record at their studio. Turning up unannounced in the summer of 1981 the LP was recorded in a day in the legendary Blackwing Studios and released on Dome the year after.

The first side features the fifteen minute masterpiece "No Journeys End" with the B side featuring more input from Wire in processing the Mo Chara sound.

Lewis himself said years later of the forgotten masterpiece: 'I always said it was the best job we ever did.'

After an aborted LP with The The's Matt Johnson the following year, O'Shea quietly disappeared from the formal recording world and his brief but unique contribution to the music world came to a sad end in 1991 when O'Shea was struck by a post van and died a few days later in hospital in London.

This repress on All City's AllChival imprint has been remastered and reissued with the approval of both Dome and his surviving siblings.

We’re still harvesting the fruits of those past days in seclusion, the cabin fever induced creative outbursts, ideas that would probably have never surfaced without these enforced trips to our inner minds. Lockdown transcendence.

“Don’t Cry” by Italo-Brazilian DJ producer Stephan Barnem and Futuristant is another impressive testament of those days. Secluded in Stephan’s studio in Northern Italy, the duo subconsciously conjured the spirits of one of their mutual favorite bands, Depeche Mode and created a fierce, boombappy Neo New Wave smasher contrived to send rays of hope into the darkest corners of this mad world. We had to add a gratuitous beatless version to the EP that amplifies the cinematic depth and healing potency of this song.

If “Don’t Cry” echoes the dark brooding euphoria of Depeche Mode’s “Music For The Masses” era, the flipside cut “Elysium” harks back to the synthwave happy days of their debut “Speak & Spell”. It’s a wonderfully careless track that’s bringing a dearly needed breeze of fresh air to today’s discerning dancefloors.

Boys don’t cry for me Argentina. Save your tears for another day.

Wir ernten immer noch die Früchte jener vergangenen Tage in Abgeschiedenheit, der vom Lagerkoller verursachten kreativen Ausbrüche, Ideen, die ohne diese erzwungenen Reisen in unser Inneres wahrscheinlich nie entstanden wären. Lockdown-Transzendenz.

„Don’t Cry“ des italo-brasilianischen DJ-Produzenten Stephan Barnem und Futuristant ist ein weiteres beeindruckendes Zeugnis jener Tage. In der Abgeschiedenheit von Stephans Studio in Norditalien, beschwor das Duo unbewusst die Geister einer ihrer gemeinsamen Lieblingsbands, Depeche Mode, herauf und schuf einen wilden, boombappigen Neo-New-Wave-Smasher, der Licht in die dunkelsten Ecken dieser verrückten Welt senden wird. Wir mussten der EP eine Beatless-Version von “Don’t Cry” hinzufügen, die die filmische Tiefe und heilende Kraft dieses Songs noch verstärkt.

Wenn „Don’t Cry“ die dunkle, grüblerische Euphorie von Depeche Modes „Music For The Masses“-Ära widerspiegelt, erinnert der Flipside-Cut „Elysium“ an die Happy Synthwave-Tage ihres Debüts „Speak & Spell“. Es ist ein wunderbar sorgloser Track, der den dringend benötigten frischen Wind auf die anspruchsvollen Tanzflächen von heute bringt.

Boys don’t cry for me Argentina. Save your tears for another day.

The transcendental ambiance of the Kāthā cassette continues its amphibian metamorphosis. Adapting to its new terrestrial reality.

Cerebral elements spread through the spine of Kusuma’s double offering towards Nic Ford’s ‘Cyberd’ layering percussive realms with a delicate balance of obscurity and enlightenment. Bolstering into the raw energy of a scared rainforest at dawn.

On the flip side, Konduku stays fearless on Khun Fluff’s ‘Daw’ with his signature style of ominous drum patterns, fluttering low-ends. Goosebump-inducing textures across the grid - keeping the feline’s voice and meditative presence reverberating throughout.

Cosmic veteran, Higher Intelligence Agency, transforms Temple Rat’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” through his trademark synthetic modulations into a spellbinding B2 dream.

Damage and Their Slices” is a collaborative album NVST and Theo Muller, in which they invite the listeners to a deep dive into an esoteric universe where dark magic meets political revolt.

The Swiss artist NVST shouts, preaches, stirs up and questions the consciences of his audience with a deluge of words about this sick society, the capitalist infection and the abuse of power. In tune with this mantra of georgeorwellian rhetoric, the music by Frenchman Théo Muller turns the malaise of the content into form: paranormal psychedelia, arcane dub, industrial ectoplasms, esoteric ambient and paranormal drones. In short: a friction of electronic sounds that Kraftwerk, years ago, unwittingly defined as metal on metal. Live, this call to action to necromancy and revolution takes on an amphibious, organic, almost cathartic and revealing form.

There's no denying the power of the drum. It's primal, it cuts across borders and most importantly, it makes you want to move. Ghetto Kumbé don't just understand that_they celebrate it, and it's why the tambor was at the heart of the Bogotá-based trio's 2020 self-titled debut album. Rooted in mysticism and the Afro-Caribbean rhythms they'd grown up with all their lives, the critically acclaimed LP thrillingly updated the traditional Latin template, folding in elements of modern hip-hop, house and bass music while also delivering a transportive Afro-futurist vision. On Clubbing Remixes, that vision has been further amplified, as Ghetto Kumbé_who were already one of Colombia's most prominent alternative acts_have now gone fully global; enlisting an all-star roster of artists from four different continents, they've put together a fresh version of their debut album that's been specifically geared to the world's diverse slate of dancefloors. As the title implies, the new LP is meant for the club, which is why Ghetto Kumbé have turned to Latin music heavyweights like Trooko_a multiple Grammy winner whose resume includes work with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Residente_and Monte (a.k.a. Bomba Estéreo founder Simón Mejía), along with top-shelf DJs like Nickodemus and Uproot Andy, two NYC artists who've spent decades championing Afro-Latin rhythms. True to the LP's global spirit, the record also includes reworks from batida maestro DJ Firmeza, fellow Afro-Portuguese outfit Studio Bros and Parisian house groovers Les Enfants Sauvages, plus genre-blurring remixes from sonically adventurous Colombians Montoya (himself another ZZK artist) and Cero39. Even the artwork on Clubbing Remixes is a remix, as Ghetto Kumbé have tapped Uganda's Denzel Muhumuza to transform the cover of their debut album into a new, explicitly Afro-futuristic illustration. Depicting a strong Black face and glowing neon fauna beneath a sparkling moonlit sky, the fantastical image speaks to both the ritual magic and Afro-indebted heritage of Ghetto Kumbé's music, and thanks to Clubbing Remixes, the group's passionate, drum-fueled sounds will soon be blasting out of sound systems around the globe.

Extra Muros is an annual itinerant artistic residency initiated in 2017. The third edition was co-organised during the winter 2021-2022 by the FLEE art collective in collaboration with the Music Department of the Museum of Ethnography, Geneva (MEG). Five artists participated in this residency including: Prins Emanuel, Nabihah Iqbal, Jaakko Eino Kalevi, Cosmic Neman, and Maria Spivak.The residency was held at the MEG in two phases. The first part of the residency and encounter represented an opportunity for the artists to explore the museum’s archives, collections, and exhibition spaces. The second phase was dedicated to the composition and production of original musical content in an ephemeral studio set up in the auditorium of the Genevan institution.

In this context, the pieces presented in this album were all conceived during this residency. Having never worked together, the five artists and musicians, each with their own distinct musical path, discovered a variety of sound resources at the Museum. These included eleven traditional instruments from the African continent, Asia and Oceania from the MEG collections, as well as synthetisers, audio effects units, amplifiers and several other vintage emblematic analog electronic devices from the collection of the Swiss Museum and Center for Electronic Music Instruments (SMEM) in Fribourg. In addition, recordings of traditional music from the five continents belonging to the museum’s International Archive of Folk Music (IAFM) were also made available to the artists.

In pairs, the residency’s participants were able to combine their respective creative worlds with the museum’s historical instruments as well as sound archives. This compilation is the result of this rich dialogue.

Calisthenics is the first album by Institute for Certified Nomadic Illicit Sonic Practices (ICNISP), the Berlin-based duo of Brazilian musicians Marina Cyrino (flute) and Matthias Koole (el.guitar).

With a mixture of electronic and acoustic sound sources, objects and preparations, inside amplification and no-input mixing, the duo leads guitar and flute towards a common hybrid terrain. Sound perspectives are shifted, instrumental identities are displaced. The piccolo can function as a noise generator and a percussion instrument, the guitar can sound like a bird, the alto flute can be played by an external balloon that moans. Partly inspired by drawings of the Handbook of Calisthenics and Gymnastics: A Complete Drill- book with Music to Accompany the Exercises by J. Watson, first published in 1864, ICNISP came up with a series of musical exercises to stay healthy and fit during the several lockdowns over the past few years. In a playful way, the title Calisthenics also translates an agitation present in many of the duo's energetic playing modes.

On Side A, Calisthenics comprises 7 tracks - or exercises - of different lengths, with a focus on specific instrumental materials or preparations. Side B consists of one track in which a larger form unfurls, with elements of the exercises concatenated into a Full Arch.

No cuts or overdubs.
Marina Cyrino - Amplified Piccolo and Alto Flute.
Matthias Koole - Electric Guitar.
Recorded and mixed by Rabih Beaini at Morphine Raum in Berlin.
Mastered by Paulo Dantas in Rio de Janeiro.
Cover art by Sara Lambranho.

With nothing more than a Gibson Les Paul slung over his shoulder, a warm amp turned all the way up, and a hot microphone on and ready, Jared James Nichols churns out the kind of rock that rips, roars and rolls without filter or apology. The Wisconsin-born and Nashville-based singer, songwriter and guitarist delivers a one-two punch of gritty vocals straight from the gut and incendiary fret fireworks. After earning widespread acclaim from the likes of American Songwriter, Guitar, Guitar World, Relix and more, tallying millions of streams, and packing houses at countless shows, he showcases every side of himself on his 2023 self-titled third full-length offering.

Liturgy transcends the traditional parameters of what constitutes a rock band. Founded by Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, Liturgy is a part of a shared discipline of composition, art, and philosophy that thrives on exploring the spaces between. Liturgy"s signature use of rhythmic complexity and repetition are exponentially amplified to maximalist proportions on 93696. Along with guitarist Mario Miron, bassist Tia Vincent-Clark, and drummer Leo Didkovsky, Hunt-Hendrix utilizes Liturgy"s past ruminations on burst beats and circuitous phrases as colors to paint rich murals that overwhelm and invigorate the senses. 93696 is the purest synthesis of the diversity of Liturgy, a sprawling and monumental double album exploring religion, cosmic love, the feminine, and metamorphosis while manifesting the ecstatic with breathtaking grandeur. Liturgy is the project of Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, whose yearning, energetic "transcendental black metal" exists in the space between metal, art music and sacred ritual. Its current lineup features Mario Miron (guitar), Tia Vincent-Clark (bass) and Leo Didkovsky (drums).

Liturgy transcends the traditional parameters of what constitutes a rock band. Founded by Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, Liturgy is a part of a shared discipline of composition, art, and philosophy that thrives on exploring the spaces between. Liturgy"s signature use of rhythmic complexity and repetition are exponentially amplified to maximalist proportions on 93696. Along with guitarist Mario Miron, bassist Tia Vincent-Clark, and drummer Leo Didkovsky, Hunt-Hendrix utilizes Liturgy"s past ruminations on burst beats and circuitous phrases as colors to paint rich murals that overwhelm and invigorate the senses. 93696 is the purest synthesis of the diversity of Liturgy, a sprawling and monumental double album exploring religion, cosmic love, the feminine, and metamorphosis while manifesting the ecstatic with breathtaking grandeur. Liturgy is the project of Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, whose yearning, energetic "transcendental black metal" exists in the space between metal, art music and sacred ritual. Its current lineup features Mario Miron (guitar), Tia Vincent-Clark (bass) and Leo Didkovsky (drums).

This second collection of edits from Italy's matter-of-fact Edits Collection label offers another quarter of superbly feel-good disco sounds. 'Slow Luv' has lush strings and plenty of Philly vibes, while 'Stranger Beat' layers up the jumbled percussion, sliding hi-hats and funky bass. Flip it over for 'Xpress Yourself' which is sure to weave its way into your soul with its hip-shaking groove and more funky bass frets than you know what to do with. 'Xpress Yourbeats' is a more raw and drum focused sound for amping up those energy levels on the floor.

The quintet set their sights beyond formulaic confines with their most introspective, uplifting, vital release to date - their first full-length in five years, 2023’s aptly titled The Awakening. The album shines as a massive and diverse offering mixing symphonic, melodic and power metal styles, yielding some of the heaviest tracks in KAMELOT’s history. KAMELOT is one of few bands in the symphonic genre to fully embrace the dark, but of course, there can be no light without it. Inspiring, engaging lyrical themes of determination, strength, overcoming personal battles and growth are abound on The Awakening, provoked by extreme societal shifts and the overwhelming realization that we have such a brief time to be true to ourselves and live life to its fullest. With crystal clear modern production helmed by the band and longtime producer Sascha Paeth, plus mastering by Jacob Hansen of Hansen Studios, KAMELOT’s score-like 13th studio album is accented by guest contributions - from genre star Melissa Bonny (Ad Infinitum), to renowned instrumentalists like violinist Florian Janoske and Grammy nominated, soundtrack-featured cellist Tina Guo. KAMELOT’s intense brand of ultramodern gothic and symphonic theatricality is amplified further and with more emotionality than ever on this inspiring, anticipated addition to the KAMELOT legacy.

After several years of intense performance activity, the Italian sound artist and
vocalist SARA PERSICO releases her debut EP "Boundary", to be followed by a full album.


Born and raised in Naples, Berlin-based sound artist / vocalist SARA PERSICO cut her teeth
experimenting on the fringes of Naples' fiery underground experimental/noise scene, developing a
technique that would integrate her voice with analogue electronics, field recordings, and samples.
PERSICO holds a BA from the Conservatory of Napoli and a Master's Degree from the
Conservatory of Bologna and gained several residencies and scholarships like Temp Studio,
Lisbon (2018), Amplify Berlin (2021), Sonoscopia, Porto (2022), Sardegna Teatro - V2 Unstable,
Argentiera (2022). She presented her work in festival and events like Ballroom Blitz Beirut, CTM
Festival, Ortigia Sound System Festival/Bosco Colto, Codex Club, Documenta Fifteen, Dancity
Festival, Radical DB, Life Libertas Festival, among others.


As improviser and performer, she has collaborated with a wide spectrum of artists, joining EVELYN
SAYLOR's vocal ensemble for CATERINA BARBIERI's acclaimed "light-years" show at Rewire
Festival and London's Southbank Centre, and worked on projects alongside THE EX's ANDY
MOOR, TONY ELIEH (KARKHANA), LUDWIG WANDINGER, DIRAR KALASH, ELVIN BRANDHI,
RECORDAT, and many others.

She's also a fearless DJ who's able to straddle vastly different worlds, offering just as much
attention to abstract electronic sounds as she does bass-heavy club music, noise, and vocal
experiments. She is currently a resident on Bethlehem's Radio Alhara.

All this energy and experience radiates from her solo debut "Boundary": PERSICO's expressive
vocals play a central role, but her command of precisely sculpted electronic textures and dynamic
rhythmic structures is just as crucial to the overall experience.
Deconstructed beats, experimental voice, harmonic music, distorted rhythms craft a dense
introspective work that explores intimately the boundaries of the self. Identity rupture as a survival
technique, a voice-research climax with an unconventional approach - multi-faceted ideas melt in a
heavy-aesthetical 6 track solo EP that brings together different styles like noise and clubby sounds.

Back In Stock!

American West Coast pioneering rave royalty Doc Martin teams up with Boston bred DJ hero Charlie Soul Clap for a power packed extra dance floor friendly new release. Enter the Freaks Of The Valley! Aptly named after a weekend of music production in Sherman Oaks (aka home of Cobra Kai, lol) at Doc's former home studio, this release ranges from the ironic '2 Degenerates & A Drum Machine' house slammer to the amped up and saturated 'Always Have Acid', with a bonus version for ya Booty, IYKYA!

Green Marbled Vinyl


Following up to his maiden transmission for the label, "Cosmic Silence", issued a year ago, Italian producer Alessandro Cozzolino AKA Cioz resurfaces on Stil vor Talent with his longed-for debut album "Supermassive Whole" - a ten-track cosmic odyssey in sound percolating staple elements of Cioz's palette of choice, from otherworldly techno to Latin-inflected house, via the obvious injection of kosmische and electronica soundscaping.

The lead single "Wachaka" - recorded in collaboration with Cape Town producer Ryan Murgatroyd, exemplifies Cozzolino's electrifying approach to a T. An inch-perfectly balanced mix of Afro-infused polyrhythmic bravura and seesawing synth moves, the track swells with a blazing fire at heart that keeps on sprawling infectiously with each and every bar. Trading the linear buildup for most sensuous levels of syncopation, "Me Monkey" serves up a warmer kind of funk, perfect for getting snug and cozy before an avalanche of seesawing chords up the ante towards space-opera-esque amplitude. All in elusive sinuosity and processed machine talk, "Harakat" dwells the confines of wonky house templates and polyamorous EBM, while "I Always Wanted To..." goes the slo-burning, counterclockwise route, primed for languid moments in the alcove.

"B1" is perhaps the most spitting avatar of the Italian whiz's hybrid rolling-and-pounding rhythmic style, nicely embodying both its quirky, hip-swaying and fanfare-like percussive aspects. The ecstatically bouncy "Do It The Way You Feel" showcases Cioz's more rousing, floor-friendly facet with a killer combo of hi-octane electro dynamics, pop-rock motif'd hooks and slashing breaks taking the controls. The mood also happens to be melancholic at times, such as on the beautifully understated "Is This Real", which bridges the gap betwixt piano-house déjà-vu - here tweaked to distinctively soul-wrenching effect, and a prog buildup glossed under a thick sauce of FX, similar to that of "Sudpol Birgit"'s inflating saturation in the post-prod treatment. Somewhat brushed with balearic shades in mind, "Pace e Amore" follows a more classic curve, slowly veering off onto ambient-laced territories, while "Lost in Space" evokes a certain idea of gravity-defying plenitude through that ever intuitive and subtly arranged collage of tender wistfulness and endless attraction towards the groove, which defines Cozzolino's phraseology so fittingly.

Rare Groove Collection Explore the fusion of world music with soul, funk and disco through the Rare Groove Collection. With this new volume, discover unique groove tracks straight from Jamaica! Fully remastered original versions African RARE GROOVE A journey at the heart of Nigerian afrobeat from Orlando Julius to the ethnojazz of Alemayèhu Eshèté passing by the High-life of the Ghanaian Ebo Taylor...

The inception of 49North marks the beginning of a brand new era for Duncan Forbes; who most emphatically made his mark on the WW scene as one half of legendary duo - Spooky - alongside Charlie May; releasing a string of landmark singles and albums over 3 decades, not to mention timeless remix / production work for International heavyweights like Depeche Mode, M83, Sasha, William Orbit, Mr.G and Apparat.
A1: ‘Burning Bright As Magnesium’
“Heading up this second ‘Distilled & Amplified’, 12” sampler is one of Duncan’s most leg-sweeping, curveball originals to date - 'Burning Bright As Magnesium'... a super tripped-out, Techno head-spinner; powered by an eerie, almost spectral kind of funk.
B1: ‘In The Mansion Of The Gods’ (Mr G’s ‘Home Alone’ Remix)
“And on the flip, we see Duncan’s second ever solo release - 'In The Mansion Of The Gods' - get the rework treatment from close friend Mr G, and his unrivalled brand of analogue magic. And if you haven't heard the Phoenix G man go full-throttle before - you're in for a barn-storming treat.”

If you find the time, please come and stay a while in abracadabra’s beautiful neighbourhood; a magically wonky wonderland where strangers leave as friends to a block party soundtrack as eclectic as it is infectious. The California duo’s album shapes & colors is a dazzling collage of psych-fuelled synthscapes and contemporary Baroque-pop of anti-capitalist movements and escapism, precisely pieced around their own working lives in a blue-collar town.
In the heart of Oakland’s industrial Jingletown above a former auto-repair shop in what was once a mechanics’ break room where poker rounds ensued, Hannah Skelton (Vocals, Synthesizers) and Chris Niles, (Bass, Synthesizers) constructed the angular 80s-tinged anthems (think John Hughes montages to Talking Heads) of their new album, to positively offset the pandemic’s amplification of dysfunctional society. “It reflects our current reality: a huge mess that is systematically broken but isn’t entirely lost,” Hannah tells. “We’re inviting listeners to conjure up every drop of hope and willpower left inside them, pour that into the giant vat of anger and frustration bubbling inside us all, and with this potion collectively enact the necessary change to bring love and light into this dark space.”
When Covid forced Hannah from her salon in San Francisco to become a backyard mobile hairdresser, what she saw inspired them both and the lyrical foundations for their new record. “I’d drive to mansions and people would complain about how hard the pandemic had been next to their swimming pool and tennis courts.” First meeting after the album’s co-producer Jason Kick (Mild High Club, Sonny and the Sunsets) recruited the pair for a Halloween band covering Eurythmics’ art-rock debut ‘In The Garden,’ the pair hit it off and shapes & colors is a product of the years that followed. It combines Chris’ own rhythmic demos following years on the road touring and opening for Amon Tobin, Matthew Dear and Generationals in Maus Haus with Hannah’s lyrical musings honed from project Cassiopeia, so even when topics are as heavy as the beats, they’re met with luminously positive arrangements of hope and warmth.
The by-product of a psychedelic New Year’s Eve escaping a monotonous 2020 reality, the title track itself captures fireworks over East Oakland as viewed from the pair’s couch whilst listening to Mort Garson’s Plantasia for 6 hours straight. The daydream collage of ‘inyo county’ is “a little souvenir taking me back into the bottled-up essence of a slow lazy morning, waking up in bed far from home,” Hannah tells recalling those enforced stay-at-home days. “It fell out of me because I was craving that blissful flavour.” Meanwhile ‘dawn of the age of aquarius’s new parallel reality evolved from a happy accident when their demos had reset to a drone which Jason reworked into a Laurie Anderson-esque breathy vocoder effect. Even bloops and beeps from a forgotten recording session at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum in Emeryville can be heard, where the pair used Mini Moog, Fairlight EMI and ARP 2600 to arrange their sound into shapes whilst distortion and dirt from mixing on 1979 Neve 5313 Console added to the recordings’ color.
Casting a brighter rainbow still, in all its pastel-hued glory, Hannah, also illustrated a self-portrait of the band for the album artwork. “It reflects our makeshift recording studio to encapsulate all aspects of that time and space,” she shares of their abode where, over an intense two-week period and fuelled by the aroma of fermenting vino from the winery below, their single chord, bass and drum-heavy, groove-first momentum took them on an unexpected journey whilst the next-door couple would fire pizzas in their yard and a grandfather across the road would sweep the street clean. “We’d drink coffee and start the day, consistently working, without interruption,” Chris tells of finding their flow. “The loft is a cool space with skylights, tall ceilings and no shared walls so we could be as loud as we wanted to be.”
Just as well. Diving into decades of electronica and crunchy sound effects, field recordings and animal sounds, blended with an infectious Latin influence, shapes & colors is bolstered by live percussionists Greg Poneris (drums), K. Dylan Edrich (Vocals, Percussion: congas, bongos, chimes, cow bells and wood blocks, tone drum and tri-tone whistle) and Tom Smith (Guitar, Synthesizers, Vocals).
NIMBY crews grab those earplugs now. abracadabra is your new noisy neighbour, and there’s no turning this party down.

Jens Brands has created a large number of installations, musical performances and Interactive Media works. He uses the concepts of parallel activities rather then ideas of fusion. The pieces presented on this recording focus on sonic events related to electronic music (such as intense volumes and dynamics, white noise, square or sine waves) but stay entirely acoustic.

On a live performance of »Ratchets«, the sounds are generated with the idea of a physical, sculptural, yet invisible presence. It might happen that the body of a person moving around in the audience has more impact on the sound then the variations produced by instruments themselves.

"I was always interested in the idea of making acoustic music that has the quality of electronic music," muses Dortmund based musician and visual artist Jens Brand. "Electronic music is fantastic, but I don't like speakers very much."

Take his performance entitled »Motors And Styrofoam«. Pieces of glistening white styrofoam fitted with small motors hang from the ceiling above the audience's heads, squatting balefully in mid-air like lopsided clouds. Acting as a resonator, the styrofoam amplifies the whirr of the motors, which builds up into a loud, persistent drone overlaid with overtones.

Equally uncompromising is »Ratchets«, which deploys a number of football rattles, those small wooden devices originally used by hunters. The ratchets are set in motion by motors whose speed and direction are controlled by a computer: they click busily away, producing a dense, enveloping sound reminiscent of heavy rainfall. In performance, the sound of the ratchets is spellbinding in its rawness and intensity, attaining impressive volumes as it interacts with the features of the space.

Budget Cuts is honored to present the debut EP from New York’s finest, Alien D. In a commanding vinyl debut, Alien D conjures new worlds on D’s World which boldly traverses the territories of breakbeat, techno, and Baltimore club. Deep subs, slowed breaks, and Hazy stabs. In the eternal words of Alien D: “Another World is Possible”

Daniel Creahan is an artist whose musical output takes many different forms. Creahan formed the noise group Mind Dynamics and went on to release solo material under the moniker Stress on Embalming lately and Bootleg Tapes. The Alien D moniker emerged in 2018 with a focus on amphibious textures. Most recently, Creahan co-created DeKalb Works with and releases a stunning album for Where to Now? In 2020. Creahan is a central figure in the New York underground scene as both an artist and co-founder of Sweat Equity records.

"D's World tones down hard-hitting dance floor cuts with dazed melodies, balancing older sounds with the new” - Padideh Aghanoury (Resident Advisor)

"Hard to pick a fave, between Berger's Breaks, Conga Dance and Magnet Dance, I love the melody of Magnet Dance and the overall mood and groove of the record" - Louise Chen (NTS, Rinse France)

"magnet dance for me" - Posthuman (Balkin Vinyl, I Love Acid)

"Dope EP!" - Santiago Salazar (UR, Dublab)

After 6 years and 7 volumes, the Tramp Records crew invites you to join them on yet another enlightening journey into soulful Jazz, Folk and Funk from the 1970s.

This 8th volume contains nineteen Jazz, Soul and Folk nuggets from between the late 1960s and the late 1970s. One of the many highlights is the opening track by Bobby Cole which is most likely one of the finest independently produced vocal jazz recordings ever put on wax. So true. Oscar Brown Jr. and Mark Murphy sends its regards. But that's just the beginning. Praise Poems Vol.8 covers a wide selection of genres, from big band jazz (Helmut Pistor's Big Rock Jazz Band and Germany's own Ladykiller) to psych-pop (Portraits in Sound, Harve and Charee and Allison & Shaffer), from folk-rock (Flash, Garndarf and the incredible Fang Buzbee) to AOR (The Menagerie and Penn Central), completing the set with a handful of melancholic folk beauties, most notably Hans Hass Jr.'s mind-blowing "Welche Farbe hat der Wind".

Very few compilation series' release as many as eight volumes and those that get that far often start to run out of quality music or meander too far from their original artistic direction. That certainly is not the case with the "Praise Poems" series which leaps from strength-to-strength as our team of compilers and researchers continue to unearth lost and often overlooked music from an era long gone. Many of these records were released in small quantities as private pressings or by small regional labels. Obviously, those labels neither had the budget, expertise, nor options to promote their releases in a sweeping way. Therefore the majority of these artists failed to find the wider audience their music so richly deserved.

Impatiently returning to the golden age of Ecuadorian musica national, this second round of retrievals is more of a selectors’ affair: less reverent, more free-flowing, with more twists and turns. There is no let-up in musical quality, maintaining the same judicious, heart-piercing balance between emotional desolation and dignified endurance, the same bitter-sweet play between affective excess and musical sublimity.

This time around, the woman steal the show. Laura and Mercedes Suasti were child stars, with an exclusive Radio Quito contract. Unlike nearly all the men here, they lived long and prospered: Mercedes died last year, at the age of 93. Gladys Viera and Olga Gutierrez both came to Ecuador from Argentina. To start, Gladys plugged the scandalous new Monokini swimwear; Olga performed for visiting British royalty in 1962. Olga was glamorous but tough. She would make little of the amputation of one of her legs: ‘I don’t sing with my leg.’ She is accompanied on our opener by quintessentially reeling, sultry musica national: haunted-house organ, twinkling xylophone, Guillermo Rodriguez’ heart-plucking guitar-playing, and lilting, dance-to-keep-from-crying double-bass. ‘Sometimes I think that you will leave me with no memories,’ she sings, ‘that you hold only disappointments in store for me… In the future your love will search me out, full of regret. By then it will be too late, there will be no consolation, only disappointment awaiting you.’

Other highlights include the two contributions of Orquesta Nacional: Ponchito Al Hombro, like an off-the-wall forerunner of the Love Unlimited Orchestra, beamed into the tropics from an unknowable time and space; and the tone poem Atahualpa, a mystical yumbo invoking Quito’s most ancient inhabitants, the Kichwa. Also the tremulous, gypsy-flavoured violin-playing of Raul Emiliani, who arrived in Quito from Italy, suffering PTSD from the Second World War; the inscrutable, sardonic experimentalism of organist Lucho Munoz; and the mooing and whistling of Toro Barroso — school of Lee Perry — in which a muddy bull dashes home to his darling chola, fearless, full of desire.

Lavishly presented, with a full-size, full-colour booklet, with transporting art-work and expert notes. Luminous sound, by way of Abbey Road, D&M and Pallas.

One amp. One mic. One person. Countless hooks. That’s the Dazy formula. Since first releasing the single Bright Lights b/w Accelerate in August 2020, Dazy mastermind James Goodson has been writing, recording, and releasing new music like a man on the hunt to find the best pop hook, and he won’t stop until he’s put all of them into his songs. Show- casing a unique set of influences, Dazy’s sound marries thumping drum machine beats, blasts of feeding back guitar, and sugar-sweet hooks into something that sounds like God- flesh covering Oasis—or maybe the other way around. With lean songwriting that recalls Teenage Fanclub but a home-re- corded production style better suited for Big Black, Goodson builds a constant churn of abrasive, consuming noise and then makes it catchier than anyone else would ever dare to.

Ross Gentry takes charge of the first Ceremony of Seasons release and the music on it has been specifically written to "be paired with Sink into Seclusion, a Mendocino grown, amphora aged, skin contact Sauvignon Blanc wine." Though it might go well with wine, it works just as well on its own as a pastoral, subtly shifting ambient album with delicate pianos unfolding over sustained chords. Moods fluctuate from cathartic and dreamy on the opener to a little more unsettled and tense on 'A Shadow Decade.' How so ever you enjoy this record it is one that makes a lasting impact.

Infinite Machine is proving again it's a label that refuses to sonically sit still. Having released everything from code-based compositions to bass-heavy techno in 2022, the imprint is readying the release of the black metal-tinged Ehkta by BOLT RUIN later this month. A musician whose work has been described as 'apocalyptic' more than once, on this new mini-album, the Belgian producer blends field recordings, twisted samples and rave signifiers with an eerie tonality born out of his nocturnal production sessions and time spent absorbing the silence of his studio garden.

Bridging the gap from his previous record to this one, 'Sktone' is a cinematic opener that unfolds like a bad dream in slow motion. Warped samples of Bulgarian choirs glide over synths wired in closed-circuit loops which feed back on themselves, degrading for infinity. Texture and space is added via field recordings of waves crashing over the ruins of Brighton West Pier. This track exemplifies the unexpected influence BOLT RUIN took from the wildlife he witnessed in the garden of his urban studio when working on Ehkta. Adapting to the material at their disposal, weasels and blackbirds create nests from organic waste and human trash - an astute metaphor for the Belgian producer's compositional approach.

Next up, BOLT RUIN drives up the tempo with the rave-ready 'Nehng', where a frenzy of trance arpeggios and frantic drum programming builds and intensifies over its 5-minute duration. Inspired by Yves Klein's 'Leap Into a Void', 'Nehng' definitely evokes that bodily rush of freefalling into the unknown. 'Nehng''s driving rhythm is switched out for the brooding 'Tzarhk' - an ode to the soundtracks of B-movies composed on a vintage Roland SH-2 (a prominent character of the Stranger Things soundtrack). BOLT RUIN runs thick, syrupy synth slabs and punishing drum patterns through a rain-soaked limiter the producer found lying on the street by chance.

Another master-class in self-destructive arrangements comes in the form of 'Rfohmdrá' as delicate pianos and synth tones atrophy through daisy chained pedals which erode the signal. Valgeir Sigurðsson's mastering skills shines through here, taking BOLT RUIN's sci-fi-meets-metal sonics and amping them up to a scale on par with the Björk or Ben Frost records he's previously worked on.

Conceived of as the mirror reflection of the LP's opener, 'Maevr' pushes the approach of 'Sktone' to an even more nightmarish extreme. Embracing chance, the clattering layers of beats are sampled of a knocked mic on a window as BOLT RUIN attempted to capture a recording of rain from his studio. A happy and very effective accident for the foreboding mood of the track!

BOLT RUIN rounds off Ehkta with 'Ekztamnh'; an ode to that specific sensation of entering through a corridor to a rave and hearing the rumble of a soundsystem from afar. Snarling melodies are run through a reverse granular delay effect which fragments the signal, reverses it and plays them back in irregular order; much like the shattered memories of a late night in a warehouse.

A musical magpie who finds inspiration in the most unlikely of sources, Ehkta is a restless exploration of salvage-punk aesthetics where doom-laden black metal melodies, amen breaks and an experimental approach to sound design sit in an irregular and uneven musical apocalypse. For fans of Blanck Mass or Caterina Barbieri - this is a must-listen material from a fresh producer establishing himself with a singular musical voice.

Following up last year's orchestral album opus “Overtones For The Omniverse", Mocky has been releasing a number of upbeat and uplifting instrumental tracks and now collects them as "Goosebumps Per Minute, Volume 1" on classic vinyl and digital. Putting his vocals and songwriting to the side for this project, Mocky employs harps, horns, and 70’s analogue synths to provide a funky soundtrack that spreads a little of that California sunshine in the listeners direction. Built around Mocky's signature basslines and ensemble vocal arrangements that include his son Telly and his daughter Lulu, all recorded to his vintage ampex tape machine, Mocky did away with the normal metronomic BPM calculations in modern production and instead measured his music in "GPM" (the tempo at which music transmits Goosebumps) - and on top of a multitude of summery bass, drums & strings perfection, Vicky Farewell drops a blistering Rhodes solo on "Flutter" and Carlos Niño lends a percussive hand on the sublime "Iridescence”. Todd M. Simon handles the horn duties, and Liza Wallace infuses the dance tracks with live harp which recalls the floating approach of Alice Coltrane. Titles like "Refractions", "Wavelengths" or "Conduction" are hinting at a scientific approach to creating the conditions for "Goosebumps Per Minute" - his own calculus for the timing of how and when to hit and strum the things in his studio to make it raw & funky.

The songs were also inspired by his time hanging out at the Goldline bar in LA’s Highland Park. “Throughout the pandemic it was the one place I could go and sit outside and hear incredible music as I listened to my friend DJ Phonecalls playing from the Goldline's vinyl collection. He would be dropping these uplifting funk and disco cuts - and at the end of the night I would go home to my studio and make a track and upload it to my Bandcamp and the streaming services immediately … It reminded me of my time in Tokyo's vinyl bars so "Goosebumps Per Minute" owes a lot to that inspiring culture as well“.

About Mocky:
Performer, producer, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Dominic "Mocky" Salole came to prominence in the Berlin electronic scene of the mid 2000s, releasing three acclaimed solo albums and co-writing and producing classics like Jamie Lidell's "Multiply" and Feist's "The Reminder". In 2009, his music took a jazz-inflected turn to the acoustic with the release of "Saskamodie" and in 2011 Mocky relocated to Los Angeles, where he quickly established himself as a co-writer with uncommon credentials collaborating with L.A.’s brightest breakthrough artists like Kelela, Joey Dosik, Vulfpeck or Moses Sumney. Mocky channeled those new creative energies into his fifth full length album "Key Change" and four digital mixtapes/EPs "The Moxtapes" Vol. IIV. After co-producing and co-writing Feist's "Pleasure" and Kelela's "Take Me Apart", in 2018 Mocky released two albums: "Music Save Me (One More Time)" and "A Day At United", an instrumental jazz album, recorded in a single day. In 2019 Mocky delved into soundtrack work by collaborating with legendary Anime director Shinichiro Watanabe on the first two seasons of the breakthrough show “Carole and Tuesday” (Netflix) for which he won Best Score at the Anime Awards. In 2020 he started a new Single series with 2 releases featuring the portugese singer Liliana Andrade and in 2021 he released his orchestral album "Overtones For The Omniverse" and started a series of funky instrumentals under "Goosebumps Per Minute".

Tresa Leigh is the reflection of St. Simons Island, Georgia teenager Teresa Laxamanna (né Leggett).

Wooed by a classifieds listing to audition for Philly funk and soul imprint Lyndell Records, the aspiring 15 year old dragged her father, guitar, fender amplifier and microphone to perform her convincingly mature folk tales of first time heartbreak. Winning the support of label owner Walter L Rayfield, the fresh recruit cut two originals in a makeshift motel studio on the neighbouring Jekyll Island, backed by a band of unhurried session players. The 1970 recording yielded her debut 45, pairing I Remember’s endearing juvenile jangle with the heartsick Ghost Riders cornerstone Until Then.

After a car accident prevented Mr. Rayfield from fulfilling his release plans, an unswayed Tresa responded to Great World Of Sound’s newspaper advert, baiting the prospect of gold records, major label connections and sales of a million copies. With family and friends crowdfunding the $1,200 that the company required to produce a follow-up 7”, she jetted to Nashville, recording a slicker, emotionally elevated update on Until Then, and the symphonic slow dancer I Miss You. In another unfortunate career misfire, the dubious label failed to deliver on any of their promises, with the artist volunteering the only surviving copy for restoration.

Collating all four recordings, this brief anthology immortalises the innocent small town dreams of a genuine original, inadvertently echoing the likes of Nora Guthrie, Bonnie Dobson and Patti Whipp.

Nada is Bérurier Noir's first 45t EP, released in 1983, originally on vinyl, shared with the band Guernica. 6 punk-psychiatric, aggressive and cold tracks. All in a black and white sleeve, with a terribly disturbing illustration signed by François (singer).

"A delirious rhythm box, relentless guitars, impeccable lyrics, voices from hell, all in a sordid and unhealthy climate, puking as you wish. They walk in the forest, for sure, but their forest is made of concrete, psychiatric hospitals and torture rooms. They're getting uglier and uglier, it's true, but their ugliness is like their music, cold, dark and totally derisory. At last, a dirty record in which one can wallow with pleasure.

In Cauda Venenum n°7 - 1983



The band's name alone evokes the epic of alternative rock: rebellious and committed.

Born by mistake on a February evening in 1983, Bérurier Noir soon found itself the driving force behind a vast "Youth Movement", determined to take control of its life in the face of a society that was ultra conservative at the time. Times have hardly changed.

From the first self-produced records distributed by hand to the creation of self-managed labels, from concerts in squats and wild appearances in demonstrations, on the street or in the metro to endless tours, from interviews given to fanzines and free radio stations to unclassifiable appearances in the mainstream media, Bérurier Noir has waged the most exciting war of independence in the history of French rock, with only a microphone, a guitar, a drum machine, a few red noses and patched-up theatre masks.

The last finger of honour of this turbulent and irrecoverable raia, François, Loran and their "Troupeau d'Rock" commit hara-kiri, at the peak of their glory, during three last concerts in the heart of Paris in November 1989.

Forty years after its birth, Bérurier Noir's work still resonates, whether in demonstrations or free parties, nourishing the hopes of those who wish to overthrow this world to build a truly libertarian, united and fraternal society.

The label Archives de la Zone Mondiale reminds those who missed this unprecedented adventure, 8 discographic parts of the group Bérurier Noir in the form of reissues on particularly original colour vinyls (crown finish), in a limited series and distributed throughout the year.

Renoir Of The Toys is a deep dive into the world of Youri Kun, the nom de plume of Japanese guitarist, singer and songwriter Hiroshi Nar. It follows a similar compilation, Unheld Ball, released in 2022 on Japanese label Inundow; like that album, Renoir Of The Toys draws from the rich catalogue of outsider psych-garage and rock recorded by Youri Kun over the past two decades. Deeply wired into the history of Japanese underground music, Nar was a founding member of legendary ‘70s outfit Datetenryu, and a member of both Brain Police (Zuno Keisatsu) and Les Ralllizes Dénudés (Hadaka No Rallizes), appearing on the latter’s ’77 Live.

After going to ground during the 1980s, Nar started making music with Niplets in the mid-90s, and releasing music at a prolific pace in 2000 – an excellent run of (sometimes archival) CD-Rs on the Hello Goodbye Studio label, both solo, and with his groups Molls, Niplets and Port Cuss; an album on P.S.F. by Jokers, where he was joined by fellow Rallizes member Yokai Takahashi, and drummer Toshiaki Ishizuka (Brain Police, Vajra, Cinorama, etc.); and sixteen albums (and counting) as Youri Kun, for labels Gyunne Cassette, Inundow, and Hören. He’s also fallen in with the Acid Mothers Temple crowd, guesting on a few of their albums, and recording a live set with Kawabata Makoto’s Nishinihon trio.

All Nar’s music shares a deceptive primitivism; it moves with the simplicity of the best 1960s garage punk, but its edges are blurred and stretched, allowing for all kinds of weird, elliptical, and psychedelic moves to happen in its margins. His guitar playing on songs like “Kakunin” (from 2011’s Yamaimo Boogie) shimmies and slurs magnificently; “Kurokami”, from 2012’s Su, has clanking six strings scrawling over loose, spaced-out synth; there are clunky psychobilly moves (“Oshiro no Ninjya”), spirited rave-ups for rattling organ and sputtering guitar (“Totsugeki”), and some lovely, drowsy, melancholy moments (“Sora”).

The constant throughout is Nar’s blues-blurred, drawling voice, as unique a tool as the non-idiomatic speak-sing styles of solo Syd Barrett, Jad Fair, or Dave E. McManus. There are also three Les Rallizes Dénudés covers here, where Nar locates the pop genius at the heart of songs like “Shiroi Yoru” and amplifies this with his simple garage-reverential take on things. Renoir Of The Toys is yet more evidence that Hiroshi Nar was, and is, one of Japan’s musical visionaries, a lonesome voice dedicated to a singular, streamlined vision, one that’s in eternal pursuit of the joy and kicks at the heart of rock’n’roll, and a reminder of what a great, unpretentious rock’n’roller truly should be.