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Switzerland's music trailblazer embarks on an exhilarating journey as LOT Records launches its inaugural release with the sensational album, "Slam 1987," presented by the visionary artist Quenum. This album represents a true testament to Quenum's unwavering commitment to his distinct minimalistic style.

With a keen focus on crafting a sonic experience that resonates with the most discerning of audiences, Quenum's years of expertise shine through in each of the album's four classic tracks. Expect a mental, atmospheric, and rhythmically dense exploration, artfully constructed with razor-sharp beats that captivate the senses, taking your auditory senses on an unforgettable voyage.

"Slam 1987" is a sonic masterpiece, pushing the boundaries of experimental and minimal music, featuring mesmerizing drone pads and precision-engineered beats that cut through the air like a knife. This musical gem is further enhanced by a groovy deep tech remix by the talented Argentinian artist, Lucio Agustin. His remix is a versatile gem that seamlessly fits into warm-up sessions and peak-time sets, delivering a bass-driven groove complemented by a tantalizing amen break, infusing a touch of spice that truly delights.

Moreover, "We can do it" and "Recyclade" redefine the frontier of experimental and micro-house, enveloping listeners in an otherworldly, mental, and atmospheric embrace. Their meticulous attention to detail within the rhythmic fabric is a testament to their years of experience, resulting in an auditory adventure that will enrapture music enthusiasts across the globe. "Slam 1987" is not just an album; it's a sonic odyssey that invites you to immerse yourself in the boundless creativity of Quenum. Prepare to embark on a unique and mesmerizing auditory journey that will leave an indelible mark on your musical soul.

Sept duos pour guitar acoustique et piano préparé is the second duo recording from Stephen O'Malley and Anthony Pateras. Their first together, Rêve Noir (2018), took an electro-acoustic scalpel to a 2011 duo concert for electric guitar and piano, using Revox and digital treatments to twist and smear gig documentation into ghostly echoes and fractured drones. Here, in contrast, the music is entirely acoustic and presented as it was performed, without overdubs. Both players’ choices of instruments are notable: this is O'Malley’s most extensive recording on steel string acoustic guitar (playing an instrument whose previous owners include Marissa Nadler and Glenn Jones) and Pateras return to the prepared piano, which he has rarely employed in recent years, after spending much of the first decade of the 21st century exploring its possibilities.

Recorded during O'Malley’s residency at La Becque on Lake Geneva in the summer of 2021, from the first moments of the opening ‘déjà revé’ the music immediately establishes the distinctive landscape of chiming tones and hovering clouds of resonance explored throughout its one-hour running time. Pateras’ preparations create tolling bell-like tones alive with complex overtones, alongside which O'Malley’s open strings and natural harmonics add a sparkling clarity. While Pateras’ music often uses a densely chromatic harmonic language, these duos are remarkable for their modal simplicity. However, the interaction between the pure intervals of O'Malley’s just-intoned strings and the unstable harmonies created by the piano preparations suspends the music in an oneiric state of hazy ambiguity. Without obvious reference to tempo or meter, the music floats in what the composer Ernstalbrecht Stiebler has called a ‘bottomless sound space’, the temporal placement of events determined by bodily rhythms and the performers’ own listening to (and enjoyment of) the sounds being made.

Heard one way, this music can seem striking in its consistency, almost environmental. Attending more carefully, the listener hears the pitch sets and tunings changing throughout the album’s length. Each piece has its own character, subtly distinguished from the others through mood, pacing, and timbre. On ‘déjà voulu’, for instance, O'Malley makes prominent use of slide, the woozy, bending pitches weaving through a series of lush arpeggiated chords from the piano. ‘Déjà senti’, on the other hand, is particularly spare, the gestures spaced out to the extent that they often float in isolation against the background of fading resonance. Much of ‘déjà su’ is built around a slowly pulsing single prepared piano tone, creating an almost ominous tension, whereas the sparkling guitar harmonics and arpeggios of the closing ‘déjà raconté’ have a gently triumphal air. While the music’s calm, rippling surface is immediately entrancing, these seven duos – in the tradition of the best improvised music – also reward close listening, which reveals sonic details and focuses the listener’s attention on how the music unfolds spontaneously from decision to decision, from gesture to gesture.

Recorded during a period when O'Malley and Pateras were grieving the loss of recently departed friends and collaborators, these seven duos possess a reflective, at times almost mournful quality. More importantly, though, they are imbued with other qualities that can arise from personal loss: a clarity that allows one to clear away the inessential, to begin again, to renew one’s faith in friendship and music.

E-Talking crashes onto Love On The Rocks with a 4-track EP that’s weirder, faster and harder than anything Paramida’s ever-evolving imprint has put out to date; pushing the label into new territory that’s simultaneously unexpected and unmistakably true-to-form.

The Berlin-via London-based French producer, one half of the duo & collective Nummer, released his studio debut on AD93 in 2018 and his first album on Going Good in 2021, with productions that are dense, intricate and intoxicating, overflowing with ideas and effortless finesse, qualities all on display on this EP in otherworldly abundance.

The ‘Cosmic Egg’ refers to our modern understanding of the universe as ever-expanding; extrapolated backwards in time, it implies a finite starting-time and a small starting-place, from which the entire cosmos metaphorically hatched.

‘Pads & Frogs’ finds E-Talking in the midst of this process; slowly awakening to find himself up to his eyeballs in a shimmering psychedelic rainforest, awash with swirling pads, lush percussion, tripped-out inter-species vocals and tribal rhythms, building and looping into each other in a joyous dance of life-giving. A cosmic field recording from the incubation of this special egg, recorded somewhere between whatever passes for a rainforest in Berlin and deep, infinite space, sat upon lovingly and diligently by Paramida and Alex while in the process of developing a close friendship with its birth-mother – the three of them keeping it collectively warm and preparing to hatch since early lockdown days.

The time, motherfuckers, is now. After a warm, fuzzy beginning, of course, comes a huge, shattering explosion: ‘Rise Up’ is the EP’s first big leap into new territory, turning up the pace considerably and wasting no time in serving up some seriously pounding cosmic techno, LOTR-style, with some unexpected twists and turns halfway through. It’s all in the switches and details here, and they are so good you will want to literally get naked and lick your speakers for momentary sonic relief.

Unfortunately for you, ‘Life Begins Now’ doesn’t let up, proceeding with the same intensity but a more house sensibility, with layers of percussion and grooves building off each other into a drop which could easily carry the track, but is really just a tease for another twist that sends this one off fully into intricate, exquisite orbit. ‘Neidan’ brings us slowly back to Earth for another slamming house workout with all the hallmarks of a future LOTR classic: sun on the horizon, cosmic energy to infinity, all your friends together on the dance floor. It doesn’t get better than this.

Previously, the universe was thought of as eternally old, with no start and no growth. Boring. This EP exemplifies just how wrong that is: an adrenaline-fuelled salute to the constant creative expansion of the universe, and all the weird beings who inhabit it.

Berlin based OKMACH3 presents a divers and club-oriented sound. The focus is on releases blending genre conventions and challenging listeners while keeping in mind that the night belongs to lovers and dancers alike. Our ¦rst release is also the solo debut of fnctrl and encapsulates the spirit of OKMACH3 perfectly. His sound merges Electro influences with a bass-driven four to the floor production and grooves ranging into Trance. It’s an atmospherically dense and dark Sci-Fi trip attended by an AI contemplating the nature of human interaction.

Special vinyl-edition of the legendary cassette, privately produced and
released by Maurizio Bianchi in November 1980.

he undisputed father of nuclearsurgic sound-degeneration and apocalyptic avantgarde produced one of his most radical and uncompromising works entitled COMPUTERS S.P.A., consisting of dense electronic segments, furious pulsations and harsh waveforms, formed by the KORG MS 20-synthesizer plus machinistic recordings from tape.
Maurizio Bianchi describes his early works as TECHNOISE SOUND coming from; strictly personal feeling, frustration and contradiction.

COMPUTERS S.P.A. is completely idiosyncratic piece of music, conceived with dramatic insistence, emotion; irrationality, hysterical scission, schizophrenic energy and madness.
The two improvisations inspired by computerized music can be defined as FINAL INDUSTRIAL MUSIC (term used by M.B.), the last sensation before the end.


After the "concretistic" beginnings and the synthesis between integral
concretism and artificial synthetism, in the autumn After the "concretistic" beginnings and the synthesis between integral concretism and artificial synthetism, in the autumn of 1980 I arrived at the synthetic court of the purest and most uncompromising electronics and thus the "COMPUTERS S. P. A." project was born, consisting of two improvisations on the Korg MS synthesizer-20, free of ancestral prejudice and freely inspired by computerized music that in the second half of the 70s was gaining ground in the academic schools of experimentation. After more than 40 years, these "technical rehearsals" could seem a playful and carefree exercise, while inste@d they cover a dramatic denunciation of the sounds generated without the basic help of emotion and spontaneity, essential elements of the most genuine and constructive avantgarde music.

Special mention about collage art design method in collaboration with Maurizio Bianchi, Siegmar Fricke and myself. A combination with traditional tecnique of collage, 'xeroxed copy' scan and digital treatment in 'Off-set' quality print. Taken original ideas from early 80's 'mailing trade' music on cassette format.

Ritualistic, tribal industrial double lp from George Kondaktor and George Lemos direct from the mountains of Greece. Open circuit feedback laden electronics featuring drumming from the legendary Igor Cavalera and haunting vocal appearances from cult Greek artists the Vougioukli Sisters. Tense, heavy, dense, soaring soundscapes.

"We entered the shadowy mouth of a new space, descending into a realm that precedes the underworld, the arcane, far from our time. We met beasts that gave us lessons about their language which we started learning without grammar."


'The animal world is a constant in the work of Milan improvisational duo Rosso Polare. If Cani Lenti was guided by the diaphanous birdsong integrated into their sparkling mix of folklore, ambiences and occasional humming, on Bocca D’ombra the themes go darker, textures are harder to pin down and the animal presence takes on new connotations.

Instead of an anonymous, patchworked outdoors we enter a cavernous space that invokes the collective unconscious with bestial and funereal undertones, as the animals take on the role of the psychopomps, ancient guides through the shadow realm.

The album is influenced by Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology, a thinker who sees the constant exchange between the human and natural world as an ongoing dialogue, the two influencing each other, in a series of reverberating loops. This looping is also reflected in their compositions, where improvisations with traditional instruments like electric and acoustic guitars, monophonic synths, horns or flutes meet natural noise-making tools like branches, rocks or nuts that amount to lugubrious, often dissonant textures. Bocca D’ombra is built on a series of whispers, breaths, panting and rustling, creating a feeling of closeness sometimes verging on the claustrophobic, ingeniously set against sounds evoking space – fireworks crackling, crows echoing, church bells reverberating, indistinct cries from a children’s playground.

Distance and repetition are deeply ingrained in their own understanding of sound and their surroundings, becoming the building blocks of their practice. Just like Gregory Bateson in the ‘70s, the duo believes in a more romantic approach to ecology, seeking a porous border between self and environment, human and animal, internal monologue and external ambient hum.

If earlier releases were noisier and denser, Bocca D’ombra is tight and focused - every sound and melody is given room to breathe and develop on its own, enhancing the haunting, otherworldly aspect of the music. The result is heady, intoxicating mix which sublimates chaos into sparkling compositions of contemporary animism.'

G.Teixeira is an artist based in France and someone with a multi-faceted sound. His Almost Silent alias now turns out Undisclosed Fields Vol.1, a first release on Healing Sound Propagandist that takes the form of eight movements and six reworks. It's as dense as ambient gets, frankly, with heartbreaking melodies passing by and disappearing before your ears. Fizzing synth drones are layered up over crepuscular chords and the whole thing has you gazing off into the distance, your eyes glazing over as you happily get absorbed in the subtly shifting sounds, tones and timbres. This, then, is another high class album from both artist and label.

Since Interstellar Space, John Coltrane's posthumously released duo album with Rashied Ali, the combination of sax and drums has received an aura of sublime spiritual ambition. It is where tireless truth seekers come together to aim for something transcendental. Something too big for words. Of course, a lot has happened in the meantime.

The available options - philosophically, stylistically, temperamentally - are endless. Musicians are aware of those historical turning points, yet they also try to add their own twists and interpretations. Some of them succeed. One of reed player Mattias De Craene's many projects - MDC III - is a project involving drums and saxophone. A striking difference: De Craene invited two drummers (Simon Segers, Lennert Jacobs), that have been active in the worlds of jazz, pop, free improvisation and experimental music. They are the ideal foil for De Craene's vision, which seems to exclude no opposites. While the use of a recorder, electronics and percussion steers the music beyond the classic acoustic limitations, the result becomes strikingly rich with contrasts. What is abstract and introspective the first moment can switch - gradually or abruptly - to moments of fierce ecstasy the next.

The music feels free (free from limitations, free to choose its own logic), but also invites. Shifting moods and textures are combined with intricate rhythmical patterns, as the drummers lock together in dense, complex and/or ritualistic grooves. A minimal pulse, accompanied by murmuring hisses of brushes and a serenading sax is contrasted with moments of exuberance. The result is many things at once, but despite these wildly varying colors, sounds, textures, rhythms and moods, they are all linked, part of a generous, iridescent whole.

The trance-inducing trio MDCIII is back. And that equals yet another delicious load of modular drums, wildly processed saxophone sounds, improvisation & pulsating grooves.

After their first EP, MDCIII ft. Sylvie Kreusch, and their subsequent first (internationally) acclaimed album 'Dreamhatcher', the 'double drums' saxophone trio with Mattias De Craene, Simon Segers & Lennert Jacobs is all set to show what angle rock 'n roll can really come from. On their new album 'Drawn In Dusk' (release: end of September via W.E.R.F records) the trio delivers a whole new palette of sounds that are just as mystical, energetic and wild as 'Dreamhatcher'.

MELMAK's new 12" is entitled All Stars: The Rave Years which gives you an idea of what to expect. These are high-tempo, dense and rave ready sounds from the drum & bass vanguard. There is plenty of space out cosmic energy to the exploratory leads of X Termal's 'Tragnal Kozze' then 'What If' (The Doulo Klan edit) is a tightly coiled stepper. Bugger lays down a hyper speed rhythm with drilling bass and slapping hits on 'No Silence Now' and Umbra's 'The Big Dumb' is a real slow-motion churner with textural synths and alien sound designs. All four are ready to get the party going in different ways.

In the early 1990s, a handful of black metal artists were enticed by the possibility of conjuring new fantastical worlds from the deep isolation of their home setups. Rather than the dense metal sound of their existing projects, this new direction would be centred around intimate synth soundscapes: forlorn organs and otherworldly MIDI theatrics.

The music on ASCEND is predominantly from self-produced, self-distributed releases, typically manufactured in small numbers. Though some artists producing this style of music, most notably Mortiis and Burzum, gained wider recognition outside underground circles, it is only in recent years that the sound and its influence has really been appreciated. This is particularly the case with the late Matthew Davis and his recently reappraised Secret Stairways project, whose song ‘Lammas Tide’ (from the 1997 Enchantment of the Ring album) appears on ASCEND. A simple home recording on a Yamaha KX-W392 manages to be both elegant and tortured, ambiguously devotional and recalling latter years Popol Vuh.

This battle between dark and light is a constant thread through ASCEND, with simple minimal synth lines that can be both delicate and menacing. Compilation opener ‘The Dark Dreamquest’ from Italian black metal group Evol is loaded with occult warning, and Finnish act Kadotus 609’s ‘The Summoning Through Crimson’ is languid, twisted and dark. In spite of the darkness, several pieces of the music on ASCEND have formal similarities with the sometimes saccharine new age music that rose to prominence in that era: but to a rougher, darker ends. The closing song from Darkthrone icon (and past NTS radio host) Fenriz, under his Neptune Towers pseudonym, pulls us further out, with ‘To Cold Void Desolation’ — an astral synth project, akin to ’70s kosmische muzik masters Harmonia.

The gentler side can often amplify an uncannily sinister edge, heard in German act Dolch’s ‘Tumulus’, where orc marching horns contrast against delicate rompler harps and softly whispered chanting. It hammers home a deep loneliness and detachment constant throughout ASCEND, made possible by these unusual contrasts, both unsettling and otherworldly.

Fresh from DOTT’s “Puppy Luv EP” and Rudoh’s “Vinland In Space EP”, Jugaar Records is back and this time with a full-length, double-pack vinyl, and digital compilation bringing together friends from Asia and Europe. The record is testament to the healthy place the Asian electronic music landscape finds itself in and those intrepid producers who are willing to explore new scenes and sounds. It's energy-crew from the off - with UK beatmaker Joe Koshin’s “Astro Wax”, a techy electro work-out that conjures images of futuristic cityscapes and dense urban mazes. Up next, Pakistan-born and label co-boss Rudoh maintains the electro vibe with cut-up hip-hop vocals sprinkled on top of a pulsating bassline in his “KOF”. His records are being picked up by global tastemakers from Emerald to Roza Terenzi to DJ Masda. Don’t sleep!

Moving to the B-side, German-born, London mainstay Voigtmann shuffles and deals a steppy drum pattern and intricate synth-work, with a bassline drenched in that particular brand of funk to get the party going even at the most ungodly hour. Observatory resident Nic Ford closes this disk with an ambient excursion that summons spiritual rave voices from the deep laid atop a lilting synth loop. It’s typical of his ambient performances which have gained much notoriety in Vietnam of late.

Opening the second record is Egyptian gem Hassan Abou Alam whose recent outings on Naïve and Banoffee Pies have gained him much and well-deserved attention. Here, his “Gloom” combines twinkling IDM modes with heavy sub bass experiments primed to stop the most idiosyncratic dancefloors in their tracks. Up on C2, the Version, 3024 and Phonica Records graduate Yak adds breaks to the equation. His “Disk Full” brings together a haunting gated synth and razor-sharp beat programming to devastating effect. Melbourne based, Salt Mines Records honcho Shedbug concludes this side with his hopeful “A Lil Piece” whose soaring synth line will hit all the right emotional chords at all the right times.

On the final side Bangkokian Chalo reminds us why he is one of the masters of this increasingly fully formed scene. His Depth Charge is a muggy dub-laden, electro jam capable of rattling the weightiest sound systems in some of the most twisted raves at the end of some of the darkest Sois. The record is completed by New Delhi linchpin and Boxout.fm resident Monophonik, whose techno/electro “Tumbi” journeys out of the night into a euphoric sunrise moment that will be setting the dancefloors alight come festival season.

Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work and this second volume is available in an audiophile quality double LP edition.

Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere.

Opening with airwave drones, Dockstader gradually allows elements to slowly come and go, summoning an ominous atmosphere of ethereal cloud clouds. Malignant placidity continues, giving the feeling of eavesdropping upon late-night audio activity not unlike discovering number stations while sweeping the dials. These sounds pull you in as their density and rhythms come and go.
Backward voices, deep echoing choruses of conversations flowing under the surface, ocean sounds, pulsing electro-rhythms, all seem to be created via the collaging of many hours of source recordings. A masterwork of collage and juxtaposition by an overlooked pioneer of American electronic music.

Artwork by John Brien (Imprec) is inspired by the propagation of shortwave radio signals throughout the earth's atmosphere.

"This return of Dockstader is something to cherish, not just because his output has been so limited and scarce but because what we do have is so intriguing, persuasive and cliche-free; the music of an inspired explorer who trails in nobody's slipstream." The Wire

"One of the great figures of musique concrete composition." Dusted

The Aerial project

I've written before of my interest in shortwave radio, in the notes to the Quatermass CD. Also, in the notes to the Omniphony CD (which has my first "Aerial" mix, "Past Prelude," in it), I mentioned "The Aerial Etudes," which was my working title for what became the three CDs you have. And, at the end of an interview with Chris Cutler (which can be found in the "Unofficial TD Website"), the piece I mentioned I was starting to work on at the time became Aerial.) When I was very young, people got most of their entertainment from radio. They called it "playing the radio," as if it were a musical instrument. That's what I've tried to do in this piece. About this time, a few people encouraged me to look into using a computer for this work.

I'd never used one, but I saw it would allow me to keep my mixes digital - no more transfer losses. So, at the end of 2001, I got a computer and an editing program for it, and spent what seemed a long time learning it. I began selecting mixes and loading them into the computer in late March, 2002. Out of the 580, I selected 90 "best" mixes - eventually reduced to 59, the ones on the CDs. Finally, in assembling the CDs, I followed David Myers' suggestion to allow each piece to flow into the next - making a continuous journey to the end. Tod Dockstader, 14 september 2003

About Tod Dockstader: Dockstader moved to New York in 1958 and became a self-taught sound engineer and sound effects specialist and apprenticed as a recording engineer at Gotham Recording Studios. It was around this time that he started to use his off-work hours to experiment with mixing and manipulating sounds on magnetic tape (musique concrète). By 1960 he had amassed enough material to assemble his first record Eight Electronic Pieces which was released on the Folkways label in 1961 (this would later be used in the soundtrack of Fellini’s Satyricon). The last of the eight pieces was later re-worked into his first stereo piece. In 1961 he applied to use the facilities at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and was denied access by Vladimir Ussachevsky. Ussachevsky’s official reason was the “overstrained” scheduling of the studios, although many suspect that Dockstader’s lack of academic training was a factor in the decision. He continued to create music throughout the first half of the 60s, working principally with tape manipulation effects. His last piece at Gotham was Four Telemetry Tapes in 1965, after which he left to work as an audio-visual designer on the Air Canada Pavillion at Montreal’s Expo ‘67. It was around this time in 1966 that some of Dockstader’s pieces were released on three Owl L.P.s, and his work became known to a larger audience. He achieved modest recognition and radio play alongside the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, and John Cage.

'Water Temple' is the debut album of the Berlin-based group Property. Comprised of Marijn Degenaar (NL) and Vivant de Non (AUS), the group use the theme of hydromancy to straddle the poetics of reverb from a post-punk perspective. The album wanders through dense end-of-world sensations without keeping away from piercing melodic instrumentation. As hazy as 'Water Temple' can get, Property just as easily trade the murky side of their post-punk sound for analogue synthesisers that feel almost celestial. Used to striking effect on 'Water Temple', the chorus-heavy bassline is interwoven with a strident melody that punctures the rhythm and accents the Neue Deutsche Welle energy that the pair play on at certain moments. Similarly, the vocals on 'Water Tempel' flirt with our cracked times from another angle, rendering a remarkable first transmission from this new duo. Foggy synthesisers fill the cavities of every track, though the driving leads ensure the ambience never overtakes the song-structures across the album. This tendency is best captured on the downer-anthem Blood Cube with its sharp drum machine rhythm, just as Clear Boys reprises this rowdy pop edge for a forceful album closer. The burning melancholy of 'Water Temple' is as shadowy as it is enlivening Track list: 1. Empty Leather Spell 2. Diet Of Worms 3. Water Tempel 4. Sea Wall 5. Blood Cube 6. Verbreek d Eed Niet 7. Het Oerslijm 8. Clear Boys

Since his Beat Diary debut (a 12xLP box set comprising 365 beats recorded daily over the course of a year), Julian Sartorius has immersed himself in unique and ambitious projects - trekking the path not travelled to arrive at rhythmic life forms through found objects and prepared instruments. Equally as mighty are his two other escapades, the most recent being Locked Grooves - 112 beats cut as endless loops on vinyl spanning 56 dense 1.8 second compositions per side. Preceding that is his auditory hike into the mountains (Hidden Tracks: Basel - Genève), wading through and playing the landscapes around him like a lithophone.

While Julian’s previous releases focus on innovative and conceptual approaches to realizing an album, his new venture on Marionette (titled Mux) is a culmination of all his efforts thus far to mimic a synthesizer and drum machine. This seemingly impossible feat challenges Julian to experiment and develop a musical language that bridges the gap between organic timbres and electronic music. When listening to Mux, one might simply forget that the seemingly electronic sounds are only constructed organically via hand movements. The common thread in all his works thus far is that the drums are treated as resonant bodies - free to flow and form rhythm and harmony in spacetime.

This is Julian’s second outing for the label, the first being (the long out of print) Sulla Pelle with Valentina Magaletti in 2019. Other collaborations include prolific artists such as Matthew Herbert, Sylvie Courvoisier, Gyda Valtysdottir, Dimlite, Shahzad Ismaily and Dan Carey (Speedy Wunderground).

The official soundtrack of the 2021 'Rumba Rules, New genealogies' documentary movie by Congolese artist Sammy Baloji and Quebec filmmaker David Nadeau-Bernatchez. A deep dive into Kinshasa’s vibrant Rumba scene, including remastered classics by Brigade Sarbati, Werrason, Papa Wemba, Franco & le Tout Puissant O.K. Jazz

Rumba Rules, New genealogies is about contemporary rumba in Kinshasa, but this music has deep historical roots nevertheless. Born in the interstices of the colonial world and thriving during the three decades of the Mobutu era in Zaïre, Congolese rumba has been iconic and popular all over Africa for decades. The roots of Rumba are even deeper, and the many paths it evokes trigger the imagination. The story goes that this music came with the migration of the ‘Kumba’ drum and dance in previous centuries, African slaves having carried it all around the Americas and giving birth to Cuban ’Rumba’, Colombian ‘Kumbia’ and many others. With its varied rhythms, guitars and horns, through LPs and radio stations, Rumba came back to (re)conquer Africa throughout the 20th century, paving the way for new practices. One could say this music is a sort of palimpsest, a memory in itself of Atlantic migrations and histories.

Rumba is nowadays discussed all around the world, igniting many debates among the Congolese diaspora. Being the constant talk of the town sometimes overloads public debate, and many people get tired of this broken record. Thus, over the last decade, enterprising producers have worked hard to promote Kinshasa’s musical diversity and tried to emulate new sounds to reach worldwide attention. But Kin’ locals and urban dwellers will not be fooled : new shoots cannot hide the forest. Despite some difficulties to innovate, despite the pastoralist sermons and the diaspora fighters pushing for concert cancelations, rumba is still at the core of the Congo today. Talented artists such as Fally Ipupa, Ferré Gola, Brigade Sarbati and others are leading the fifth generation, and the religious world has also proven to be a nurturing environment for the cultural and economic dynamism of this music.

Focusing on the music of Brigade Sarbati and his Orchestra, this record offers a deep dive into Kinshasa’s rumba scene. Halfway between professional studios and Zoom H4 field recordings, the rumba herein is about today’s youth: dense, full of energy and breakdowns, insights and name-dropping. The cavacha rhythm, the solo and bass guitar’s playing style, the singing style and numerous dedications all resonate with the history of Rumba. In an era where digital sound is taking over, it is interesting to highlight the instrumental and live performance compositions of this music. Digital technology is indeed used during the recording and mixing phases, but Congolese rumba still relies strongly on instrumental playing. There is all that but also, many other things to hear on this record… It’s time to let it be. A big thanks to Étienne Tron for making it possible: it is on his initiative and through his patience that this album is in your hands today. (David Nadeau-Bernatchez, december 2021)

It might seem tongue-in-cheek on the surface, but the fact that the title of Eldritch Priest's sprawling debut vinyl release, Omphaloskepsis, is the Greek translation for “navel-gazing” unlocks something essential to the Vancouver-based composer and writer's singular outlook.

Perhaps even more telling is the title of Priest's 2013 book Boring Formless Nonsense: Experimental Music and the Aesthetics of Failure (Bloomsbury), whose 300-odd pages read as though you've been dosed with potent hallucinogens. Throughout the text Priest addresses—celebrates, even—the titular elements via various musical examples, including that of his peers. What's so bewildering it is that his descriptions of how boredom, formlessness, and nonsense manifest are laced with the very tactics he's depicting. Passages tie themselves in knots, footnotes engulf the “primary text,” he even deliberately misleads the reader.

The restless stasis of Omphaloskepsis could be regarded as an extension of this book's wayward spirit. Things unfold fairly slowly and consistently but it'd be a stretch to describe it as properly contemplative. Like attempting to meditate with a high fever, any sense of tranquility is constantly derailed as one succumbs to queasy agitation. The piece's foundation is a seemingly endless guitar melody; an organic meander that neither seems to repeat or offer any concessions to narrative directionality. Priest unfurls this rambling cantus firmus in a rich, clean, jazz-like tone, but as it's played, it's repeatedly tangled with snarls of dense digital processing and shadowed by stumbling virtual “band.” These strident interjections blatantly contrast with the guitar, yet they aren't so violent as to offer more than a faint itch of distraction. As such, the distinctive amorphousness that this piece asks us to inhabit for its 54-minute duration leaves a strong impression, but also feels utterly intangible.

In addition to his recorded forays, Priest's disorienting music has also been performed by top-tier interpreters such as the Arditti Quartet, Quatuor Bozzini, Philip Thomas, Anton Lukoszevieze, and Continuum. While living in Toronto he co-founded the collective neither/nor with John Mark Sherlock, which featured a cross section of musician-composers playing each other's work including Eric Chenaux, Doug Tielli, Eric KM Clark, Heather Roche, and Rob Clutton. “Though the name refers specifically to a loosely knit group of composers and performers,” remark's the collective's website “neither/nor is also a sensibility that refuses art’s messianic pretensions and the gaping maw of commercialized society, opting instead for art’s right to be esoteric.” In 2021, when Eric Chenaux and Martin Arnold relaunched their neither/nor-adjacent Rat-drifting imprint, an album by Priest, Many Traceries, was among the first to be released. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Priest was a student at the University of Victoria, a school that's come to be known for fostering such staunch individualists as Arnold, Linda Catlin Smith, Allison Cameron, and Anna Höstman.

As a scholar, Priest writes from a 'pataphysical perspective and deals with topics such as sonic culture, experimental aesthetics and the philosophy of experience. Priest brings these interests to his job as an Associate Professor in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, interests that also inform his work as a member the experimental theory group The Occulture. In addition to Omphaloskepsis, his new book, Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreams and Other Imaginary Refrains,