Search:bruised skies

THUGWIDOW & Bruised Skies land on Hooversound with a new EP

“music for everybody, to think to, to dance to.”

The 12th release on the Hooversound imprint sees THUGWIDOW and Bruised Skies come together for ‘Blimey’ (HOO12), cultivating an evolving new sound: a dark and deep soundscape - ready to immerse, whether on the dance floor or at home. The release also features two remixes from Denham Audio and Response which will be available on the digital version only.

THUGWIDOW is the ambient jungle project of Alex Lowther-Harris, who’s sound is a formation of tastes, otherworldly guidance and obligation, evolving organically from nothing more than an adolescent love rebirthed in a new millennium.

Bruised Skies (Matthew Heywood) creates layered, visual music that captures a melancholic isolated landscape, oceans of sound lapping against shores; guiding the listener. With previous releases on Blank Editions, Intervention and Astral Black his solo music is a cross between season 3 of Twin Peaks and John Carpenter’s experimental scores; beautifully dark, bleak and isolated in its journey throughout.

THUGWIDOW (Circadian Rhythms / Tar) is an artist that creates 'modern jungle with a sense of atmosphere and space that alludes most of his peers' (Resident Advisor), Bruised Skies (Pure Life Records / Blank Editions) creates ambience that captures a hyper-real landscape. Here on 'Requiem For a Sesh', the pairs first collaborative record, these two worlds collide to bring the listener an offering of strobe-laden 4x4, disfigured break beats, low slung sqaure waves and euphoria inducing top lines.

EP opener 'Epic Questing' is arguably the most dance-floor refined offering from either artist - sliced vocal chops and hard hitting kick drums tip the hat to classic 90's house anthems before heavily chopped jungle breaks and compressed 808's splinter around your ear drums like it's 3am at Unit 18 and the lighting technician is coming up riding the lazer fader. The ecstasy-laced piano melodies of title track 'Requiem For A Sesh' sounds like the sonic fruits of children raised on Olvie's 'You're not alone' and early XL Recordings 12"s. Elsewhere, 'Void Release' is a peak time 6-minute cataclysm of heavily sliced jungle breaks and jittering basslines, whilst EP closer 'Infinite Bass' feels like the clock winding down on the end of a night that we wish could go on forever.

Bruised Skies has recently been receiving radio support from Murlo, Lee Gamble & Francis Redman. Whilst THUGWIDOW's recent releases have received support from Team Sesh, Amy Becker & Whities as well as glistening reviews on The Quietus, & Resident Advisor.

The first release of 2023 on SHERELLE and NAINA’s Hooversound imprint comes from London based DJ, producer and AV artist, Drumskull.

Drumskull is the moniker of Joel Harrison, started during lockdown in 2020. His debut album, ‘Interlocked’ garnered support from the likes of Addison Groove, Ahadadream, Doc Scott as well as receiving radio support from Tom Ravenscroft on BBC Radio 6 and Avalon Emerson on her BBC Radio 1 Residency.

In joining the Hooversound family, he again showcases his style of meshing jungle, footwork with deep house and breaks across two tracks. 'Muscle Memory’ also features two huge remixes from Nottingham’s Lone and LMajor - both making debuts on the label.

The EP wraps up a busy year for Hooversound who also put out releases by RAVETRX, Prayer, Thugwidow and Bruised Skies as well as remixes from Response and Denham Audio. Since launching in 2020, Hooversound has become a go to label that pushes the bass continuum, being championed globally by Resident Advisor, Crack Magazine, FACT, Groove, Mixmag and more.

London producer SusTrapperazzi has been busy making a name for himself with productions for the likes of frequent-collaborator Novelist (inclding the pairs latest track 'Mercy'), K-Trap, BXKS & Tiny Boost, viral production videos, live sets alongside D Double E, not to mention his EP for German label Illan Tape. Here, SusTrapperazzi lands on London label Astral Black with 6-essential instrumentals in the form of his 'Rationale' EP.

The sample at the top of EP opener 'Gospel Trappin' asserts the listener to "Listen to this!" before the prolific producer flips an anthemic gospel sample into a mesmorising trap instrumental. Elsehwhere on 'What's Wrong' - the producer stitches a a triumphant new jack swing sample together into a Houston-inspired pop ballad. Meanwhile on tracks like 'Through To You' & 'Gold Rain' Sus sits well and truly in his bag, fusing together all the elements of his sound into expertly crafter 808 laced trap instrumentals.

SusTrapperazzi's 'Rationale' EP kicks off the labels 10 year anniversary which is set to see a string of releases ncluding a EP's from Jossy Mitsu (Rinse FM), Bruised Skies (Hoover Sounds) & NigelThreeTimes (Fractal Fantasy) as well as sample warper Eahwee's follow up to his 'Solitude' LP & a collaborative LP from prolific producer Samuel Organ & folk crooner LAUCAN.

500 copies on limited purple vinyl

By The Sea come from the lineage of firework pop, bursts of colour and squeeze-your-hand intense love aligned with grey skies & work things.
Recall the first time you heard The Chills’ ‘Pink Frost’ or Television Personalities’ How I Learned To Live The Bomb’?
That’s the encounter.

Liam Power formed By The Sea in 2011, the band’s debut single Waltz Away coming out on The Great Pop Supplement label that year. In November 2012 the band released their self-titled album through Dell’Orso and GPS. The NME noted how there was “a beautifully bruised element to this Wirral act’s debut from the subdued, morbid production to Liam Power’s heroically battle-weary vocals”.

They have also often been tagged for their kitchen-sink dramas though they’re more akin to something like ‘Wish You Were Here’, both funny and dark without being maudlin. There’s an end of pier melancholy to By The Sea records though, something more than a scribble of sentiment on a souvenir postcard.

For their second LP ‘Endless Days, Crystal Skies the band turned over production duties to their friend Bill Ryder-Jones (formerly of The Coral) and released that bounty of melodic pop in 2014. It’s a partnership they have retained for the new third album ‘Heaven Knows Magnolia’ released on limited purple vinyl, CD and digital formats on October 21st. The song

Rickard Jäverlings music can deservedly be described as playful and searching but for that sake not fumbling or too loose around the edges. On Album 4, the second album release from Jäverling on Höga Nord Rekords, he dwells more in dub than on his prior album release, and Jäverlings skillful songwriting is carried smoothly by the soft and fluffy production: the rhythm section sounds as if resting upon a sun warm bed of moss and elements flows in and out of the production like a freshly rippling stream of water deep in the summer forest. Echoes shoots through the pines, the hills and the valleys and makes the album a premium dub experience which dominates large parts of the album.

Aside the obvious references to nature that comes in mind listening to Jäverlings music, this album is more than a romantic view on the Swedish wilderness. It flirts, like all quality dub from the seventies and eighties with science fiction and space with broad synthesizer sweeps and delay drenched clouds like imploding and exploding stars somewhere in the outskirts of the Milky way, spreading dust over the Swedish forest. On the final three tracks, Ganjaman_72 takes the album out of the galaxy with spaced out-remixes on some of the songs.

With his feet steadily grounded in jamaican music tradition whit a non sentimental and curious view on production, Rickard Jäverling have together with Johan Holmegård (Dungen, Goran Kajfes), Andreas Söderström (ASS, Goran Kajfes) och Ganjaman_72 created the natural follow up to Album 3.