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On his fourth solo album, much as in Oh! (2020), the French composer, pianist and vocalist follows his ongoing exploration of the crossroads between poetry and songs, piano and synth, old-time verses and contemporary sounds. Inspired by the rhythms, effects and speech patterns of urban music, he also delivers, with a warm and moving voice, the texts of three poetesses from the past.
Since 2013, Ezéchiel Pailhès has been crafting a unique French synth pop. On his first three albums, he switched between songs inspired by poetry, instrumental ballads and electronica with hummed
choruses. This latest record is a collection of eleven new songs, two of which he wrote: "Opaline" and "Ni toi, ni moi" (neither you nor me). The others are adaptations of poems written in the 16th, 18th and
19th centuries by French poetesses Louise Labé (1524-1566), Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786- 1859) and Renée Vivien (1877-1909).
Poetesses from the past...
From classical music to songs, poetry adaptation is an old French tradition. "My universe has always embraced the musicality of this literary genre," the artist recalls. He actually started this project in 2017 with poems and sonnets by William Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda, Victor Hugo and above all Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, who can be heard again on songs such as "Dors-tu?" (Are you sleeping?),
"Élégie" or "L'attente" (The wait). A figure of romanticism, the author left her mark on the early 19th century through the quality of her texts and her formal inventions, particularly praised by Balzac, and
apparently a decisive influence on Verlaine and Baudelaire. "Marceline's poetry is very musical," says Ezéchiel admiringly. "Her use of rhythm and repetition sounds great and takes on a new perspective when set to music. In fact, she wrote some of her texts with singing in mind.”
“Ces longs secrets dont l'amour nous accuse, Viens-tu les rompre en songe à mes genoux ? Dors-tu, ma vie ! ou rêves-tu de moi ?”
“These long secrets for which love accuses us, Do you come to my knees to break them in a dream?
Are you sleeping, my life! or do you dream of me” (“Dors-tu ?”, after “Les pleurs” (the tears), 1833)
Besides her, we find the more famous, and rebellious, Renée Vivien, whose texts inspired three songs, "Regard en arrière" (Looking backwards), "Mélopée" (Melopoeia) and "La fille de la nuit" (The
night girl). Sometimes nicknamed "Sapho 1900", this figure of lesbian culture and, more broadly, of female genius, combined in her work the themes of desire, dreams, melancholy and the relationship with nature.
“Ta forme est un éclair
Ton sourire est l’instant Tu fuis, lorsque l’appel
T’implore, ô mon Désir !”
"Your shape is a spark of lightning
Your smile, the very moment
You flee, when the calling
Begs you, O my Desire!"
(After “Parle-moi, de ta voix pareille à l’eau courante” (Speak to me, with a voice like flowing waters) and “Ta forme est un éclair” (Your shape is a spark of lightning), Renée Vivien, 1901)
Lastly, with "Tant que mes yeux" (As long as my eyes), Ezéchiel was inspired by a 1555 poem by Renaissance poet Louise Labé, whose main topic explored female love, physical and spiritual desire,
and the torments and pains they generate.
" At the start of the project ", Ezéchiel continues, " I was interested in many poets, men and women, past and present, before my selection was narrowed down to these three female authors. Their works,
often written in difficult or secret conditions, express a raging romanticism, a passionate soul, fuelled by desperate and tormented love. I found it interesting, as a man coming from another world and time, to face this otherness, to trade viewpoints. Obviously, I could loudly claim that the album was the result of a concept, that it reflects today's world, and that it allows me to explore the notion of gender,
giving visibility to the work of a few women, while at the same time pairing these ancient texts with a more modern and rhythmic music, and obviously, there is some truth in that. But more than anything, I
wanted to serve the text itself, to express the emotion and connection I felt with these works.”
Today's rhythms and prosody...
Ezéchiel Pailhès combines texts from French literature with electronic music, its effects and rhythms, as well as a form of scansion that echoes rap, R&B or the current fusion between hip hop and pop,
which is part of our musical background and that of younger generations. "I wanted to cross-reference texts from the beginning of the century with this type of music. I wanted to use today’s techniques to tell the tale of different daily lives and experiences.
The album is thus marked by contemporary electronic orchestrations, in which he drops his favourite instrument, the piano, and his digital collage technique to use more extensive synth melodies, enhanced by drum machines, bringing a gentle and bright vibe to the romantic texts. Lastly, we can hear slight digital tones of Auto-Tune, which Ezéchiel uses sparingly and inventively.

Beyond its sophistication, the term "melopoeia" means a "sung declamation", a "recitative song", sometimes interpreted in a monotonous way. On this album, it could also refer to a sense of phrasing, which does not come from rap, but rather from jazz, Ezéchiel's first love. " In the past, I tried to hide my jazz culture, but it naturally came back on this new album, as can be heard, for instance, in Regard en arrière.” With its verses anchored in our literary memory, the following track "Mélopée", perfectly illustrates the album's vision. It manages to transcend eras, mixing past romanticism with a modern
prosody, fuelled by the nonchalance of hip hop and the warm chords of jazz.
“Qu’un hasard guide enfin mon désespoir tranquille
Vers l’eau d’une oasis ou les berges d’une île,
Où je puisse dormir, mon voyage accompli,
Dans la sécurité profonde de l’oubli”
"May chance guide my quiet sorrow, at last
To the water of an oasis, the shores of an island,
Where I may sleep, having traveled my way,
In the safe depths of oblivion".
(After “Sillages” (Trails), René Vivien, 1908)

Nothing is explained in the mysteries around us, but some art touches their soul: last year, Justin Tripp, one half of the US-American impro electronic duo Georgia and London-based electronic artist Zaheer Gulamhusein man behind projects like Waswaas and XVARR -joined forces as STRING. Together they went on a virtual vacation and never came back. As the virtual is fully real due to its virtuality, they created a truly authentic aural hardware journey, hauntingly adventurous, calm, and surprising.
Without defining the scope, STRING tumbled through a dark musical zone that stretched to the horizon, letting the sound shape itself while falling discreet into an appealing abstract space. Hovering clockwise shortly above the ground, they formed impossible geometric musical figures - weightless, fluid clouds, made up of relations between asymmetrical elements. Like in nature, their collaborative work avoids identical characteristics. In an expression of respectful admiration, they softly celebrate the irregularities between their specific genetic musical fingerprints, creating eight light binding clouds of dawn. A meditative musical voyage that transports cosmic particles of idealistic Berlin school ambient right into the heart of their electronic machines. All tunes swing calm but constitutive, dancing around synthesized surfaces that form obsessed flaming orbs of fear and hope, of matter and antimatter.
A shared love for hardware and the ethos of improvisation guided STRING into an experimentation, in which each party aligns closely to the core ideas of co-operative, in-the-moment electronic music, tied across the eight tracks in a sequence.
Finding a home with the highly esteemed Hamburg based label V I S, STRING’s debut “Last Index Of…“ will enter the earth in double vinyl and cassette format, plus tripping on at the digital platforms.
(Text written by Michael Leuffen) the sound shape itself while falling discreet into an appealing abstract space. Hovering clockwise shortly above the ground, they formed impossible geometric musical figures - weightless, fluid clouds, made up of relations between asymmetrical elements. Like in nature, their collaborative work avoids identical characteristics. In an expression of respectful admiration, they softly celebrate the irregularities between their specific genetic musical
fingerprints, creating eight light binding clouds of dawn. A meditative musical voyage that transports cosmic particles of idealistic Berlin school ambient right into the heart of their electronic machines. All tunes swing calm but constitutive, dancing around synthesized surfaces that form obsessed flaming orbs of fear and hope, of
matter and antimatter.
A shared love for hardware and the ethos of improvisation guided STRING into an experimentation, in which each party aligns closely to the core ideas of co-operative, in-the-moment electronic music, tied across the eight tracks in a sequence.
Finding a home with the highly esteemed Hamburg based label V I S, STRING’s debut “Last Index Of…“ will enter the earth in double vinyl and cassette format, plus tripping on at the digital platforms.
(Text written by Michael Leuffen)

Swoontide is being released on 12” Limited Edition x 500 sea green 180GSM colour vinyl this September. Cormorant Tree Oh announces the release of folk horror masterpiece, via Trapped Animal! “Marrying skeletal balalaika and disembodied samples with low-lying synth organ lines and a focal point here – Keane’s arresting vocals, it doubles as one of our favourite Irish tracks of the year thus far.” The Thin Air // Trapped Animal is very excited to announce we will be working with new visual and aural talent, Mary Keane aka Cormorant Tree Oh on her folk horror masterpiece that is Swoontide. The Cave, the first single from Swoontide dropped in June on digitals. Mary says on the track: “This song is a celebration of the form and symbolism of caves. They are portals to another realm, the site of our earliest artistic expression, places of transcendence, the hermit’s refuge. They are colossal gees in the landscape. They are where picnicking lovers go to make mischief on a summer’s day. The cave in question is located in Portrane Co.Dublin.” Swoontide is the distillation of several years of Mary Keane’s life, recorded on her laptop as and when a new song or idea would come along. Mary talks about her process: “I love to stitch in samples from nature as so many of my songs are inspired in some way by the natural world. I’m also drawn to more domestic sounds like my mother’s washing machine or water coming to the boil. I play some unusual instruments throughout the album including balalaika, theremin, psaltery and lots of improvised percussion including bread bins, biscuit tins, stones, and a spiral staircase.” Try taking a walk in the dark with this album, we dare you. Track Listing: 1 Thirty Deer Heads 2 Zip Issues 3 Sphere Of The Sensory 4 Pareidolia 5 Holiday Rigor Mortis 6 Pissing Stones 7 All Of It 8 The Cave 9 We Are Fruiting Bodies

This is a limited edition pressing of 500, 140-gram, black vinyl records in deluxe tip-on “old style” jackets. Exquisitely printed on textured, water color paper. Digital download included. Be Earth Now comprises forty minutes of potent poetic recitation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows from their seminal translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Book of Hours. Channeled in a spiritual fervor in 1899, The Books of Hours remains a profound and highly prescient body of work. Rilke’s poems illuminate paths of embodied mysticism, passionately express ecological grief, and reveal the exquisite expanses of the human heart. The Book of Hours, and now Be Earth Now, offer a poetic map for navigating the heartbreak, rage, and soaring love that so many of us feel in these ecologically urgent and socially emergent times. Rilke’s poems surge with passion and pain for a world that was already teetering toward peril at the turn of the last century, due to the rapid industrialization of Europe, and humankind’s increasing alienation from nature. This work flowed through Rilke in a torrent with sometimes as many as five or six poems arriving in a single day, each self-complete and with no need for later revision. While truly mystical poetry, Rilke’s musings on spirituality overtly critique fundamentalism and organized religion. Instead, Rilke extolls what he finds sacred in the mundane and conjures a sense of wonder for both the more-than-human-world and simply for existence itself. So, who better to give voice to these mystic treasures than Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows? Not only because of their enchanted translations, but also because these women are unquestionably two of our righteous elders. Macy and Barrows have worked diligently for many decades, through art, activism, education, psychology, and spiritual practice, to bring some balance back to this world. The same world that Rilke pleaded with his God to sustain for “just a few more hours,” so that we might have time to mend our relationship with the natural world, to cherish and connect with what is good and real, and to possibly even learn to “be earth now.” A1 Anita Barrows Recites Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book of Hours' B1 Joanna Macy Recites Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book of Hours'

Grey Marbled Vinyl

Clear water hits the surface of a grainy ball. The stream slowly dissolves and flows down the spherical structure until it finally drops on a candle. The flame extinguishes; fragile streaks of smoke ascend until they hit the rough surface of the colossal globe again.
The cover art to Marble Arch, the second long-player of Vienna- and Berlin-based artists Oberst & Buchner, depicts masterly the dramatic juxtapositions the musicians have always been reflecting in their musical outcome.
The massive density of a giant sound wall is contrasted by spacious openness. Fragile sonic details are sparkling out of colossal pitch-black clouds. The songs are filled with gentle warmth and cold roughness, bright digital clarity and deep analogue crackle, ranging in style from pulsating dark-disco over classic pop to experimental ambient.
The duo's two-week artist residency in a 250-year-old house, located in the mystic landscape of the Bavarian woods set this specific mood for the 10-track album which became a mixture of electronic synthesis, organic instrumentals and field recordings. Heavy-weight basslines in combination with bitter-sweet orchestral instrumentation and the minutiae of precise percussion recordings and drum programming are the characteristics that formed the sound of Marble Arch.
Oberst & Buchner's way to deal with tension is in how they compose their song structures as extreme arcs of suspense in a near classical manner. Their intense dynamic arrangements always alternate between rise and explosion or implosion and fall. This way the compositions pick up the motive of creation and destruction throughout the long-player in the same way as the cover-art.
Taken together, all these fragments form the duo`s signature cinematic articulation of dramatic slowed down club music and moments of surprise.

BIO
Oberst & Buchner are two friends and musicians living in Vienna and Berlin. They look back on a mutual musical journey that is as rich in variety as it is more then 15 years long. For one thing, countless high-energy DJ sets in clubs and at festivals all over Europe in recent years have earned them a reputation as a dynamic duo infernale. At the same time, their own productions draw from the full palette of moods and emotions.
Boiled down to the very essence, there's one common denominator running through the duo's musical works: colossally massive elements are masterfully set against a shimmering backdrop of incredibly detailed layers. Each so full of subtle suspense that they feel like the first raindrops before a monstrous thunderstorm. You can literally hear the calm before the storm in every break they build up, then feel the force of the wind in your face when it hits you.
Ranging from pulsating electronica over slow organic sounds derived from both nature and acoustic instruments to deep dance pop ballads, their songs are full of suspense and packed with drama. In their productions, the two friends conjure up soundscapes that are extremely dense and at the same time infinitely open and spacious. Within this framework, they play with stark contrasts of antithetic elements: repetition and improvisation, functionality and emotions, emptiness and overload, clarity and crackling.

"My debut album "Leidenzwang" is the consequence of boundless obsession" apostrophizes Kenji Araki with stoic calm. An obsession in the most positive as well as in the most negative of all senses, involving a wide variety of media. Kenji, in his early 20s, is known to be a digital and interdisciplinary artist from Austria with roots in Japan whose work is primarily influenced by the deconstruction of music and contemporary art.

"Leidenzwang" (in English: Suffering compulsion) is confrontation. Confrontation with the world. Confrontation with oneself. A confrontation that can be productive and cathartic. However, until Kenji Araki was able to get into this pattern of thinking, it was necessary in the process of creation to leave his very own sanctuary which he cultivated over the years. Escapism in the rear-view mirror of the past. "Leidenzwang" as a natural hybrid of passion (probably the most beautiful feeling a creatively active person can experience) and dangerous self-flagellation plus constant unrest. The result and musical core of Kenji Araki's debut album is an experimental, emotional post-club exploration with pop sensibility that deliberately ignores genre boundaries.

12 tracks spread over 50 minutes in fast forward: It starts with the adequate intro "Avant" - a primal scream. Next with "Matter" where Kenji collaborates with Thomas Mertlseder and constructs the sound world of a dark fashion film. Emotional highlights for the vividly vibrating club floor as well as for the digital terminals of Planet Earth delivers "Nabelschnurtanz" with its amalgamation of human sound waves. Followed by "Gel & Gewalt" - a combination of 90s Grunge, IDM and exponential rhythms - the fierce "SINEW" with its distorted double bass recordings and "Monomythz" which is Kenji's interpretation of a club banger with a combination of 2000s Eurodance aesthetic and hypermodern off kilter beats.

A moment to take a breath is offered by the spherical track "Milieu" which was written during an emotional low and thus naturally has a dark note. At position 8 is "lluviácida" - inspired by the "rave scene" observed from afar. Closely followed by the album's title number "Leidenzwang" with its granularized piano melodies while nature sounds can be heard in the background.

The album finale is formed by the polyrhythmic fireworks "Deathless Mess", the piece "Isan 世襲" (in Japanese heritage) which symbolizes the own inner turmoil and at the same time acoustically illustrates the relationship to his origin. And the conclusion is marked by the heartbreaking "Au-Dèla" as the epitome of a closer. Kenji Araki: The time is now.

DARYL HELMS AKA SPACE & HOWARD STEVENS OFFER THEIR NEW GROUP EFFORT.
DNH A HYDRA WORLD.
THE LP SEES THE NATURE SOUNDS RECORDING ARTIST DROPPING HIS ABSTRACT
NEW YORK LYRICISM OVER HYPNOTIC PRODUCTIONS BY THE LONDON BASED PRODUCER.
THE LP SHOWCASES DNH’S FUNK PUNK REGGAE & SOUL INFLUENCES & STANDS PROUD IN THEIR
REVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT & MULTICULTURALISM.
DNH FIRST RECORDED TOGETHER ON THE FIRST WEATHERMEN PROJECT “PARANOID ANDROID”
WITH CAGE & MASAI BEY.
SPACE WOULD GO ON TO FEATURE ON LP’S WITH CAGE, VAST AIRE, CAMUTAO,
CANNIBAL OX….
HOWARD STEVENS WOULD PRODUCE FOR THE LIKES OF MF DOOM, MF GRIMM,
LEWIS PARKER ETC….
THE LP WAS MIXED & MASTERED BY JUICE, ALSO PRODUCING “HYDRA WORLD TRANSMISSION”.
IT ALSO FEATURES A CO-PRODUCTION WITH HIS GREEDY FINGERS BRETHREN SMIMOOZ ON
“MADE IN AMERICA”
THE ALBUM IS AVAILABLE AS SHRINK WRAPPED LP VINYL & DIGITALLY.
THE SINGLE “ANGELS OF GOD” IS AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD & THE VIDEO BY TRYPTA MEDIA
THERE WILL ALSO BE A SUPPORTING VIDEO AFTER RELEASE FOR “ROUND THE WORLD”

Rome’s own disco wizard L.U.C.A. aka Francesco De Bellis is back for his second LP Terra, hot on the heels of his Venus 12” EP earlier this year. In this far-reaching album, the Edizioni Mondo founder explores the deteriorating relationship between Man and Nature, and the dire consequences. The album is split into two themes - part one is Consacrazione (Consecration) and side two is Coscienza (Conscience) - as L.U.C.A. charts a trip through mankind’s psychic universe, and imagines worlds beyond our physical dimension.

The opening composition Cities is an uptempo number that slowly comes into focus, as dreamy drum machines emerge from the urban bustle, before settling into a soulful groove as keyboard, upright bass and guitar figures dance across bright percussion. As it builds up a head of steam, the piece gives way to an ambient, tribal breakdown, which is also echoed in the following song, Drum Talk. This second tune sets up in a fourth world dreamscape of drums, synths, and abstracted echo effects, and is peppered with word fragments from the bush of ghosts. By the time we’ve reached the third track, Congiunzione sounds like travelling at singularity speed, beaming in from a future where human consciousness and gaia can finally dance on a cosmic plain.

Part two of Terra details how revelation of the spirit can guide the mind, as Time Spirals rises out of a drum motif with a nod to classic ragas, as a disembodied voice asks questions on the nature of corporeality. The sound design is just as front and centre as the sitar and fretless bass, and the song gives way to a richly-layered soup that sounds like the vast space between atoms. It’s this shift from composition to ambience that is the dynamic core of Terra, giving L.U.C.A. plenty of space to showcase his next-level audio and arranging skills. Midway through part two, Giallo Assoluto begins with reverb tails and choral voices before expanding in brightness and texture until the audio field is practically levitating your hi-fi speakers, vibrating them with drones, twinkling keys and shards of digital noise. The closing composition Ritorno al Domani is a perfect balance of optimism and mystery. Tension and release collapse in on themselves as waves of ambient pads crescendo and then break over stretched-out sonic turbulence, before reversed synths bring the listener to a closing door, and the end of the journey.

It’s a mind-expanding musical exploration of other worlds and parallel universes which are surely all around us, and in many ways serve to remind us of the marvel that is our own planet.

‘Self Oscillation’ is made up of 5 club-ready psychedelic workouts swaying with natural momentum, from
Ecuadorian superstar Nicola Cruz, who makes his 2nd appearance on London’s Rhythm Section INTL.

The internationally renowned producer, Nicola Cruz, has been instrumental in pioneering the sound of Andean music over the last decade. Born and raised in Ecuador, Nicola has found his own unique way to tap into Latin America’s illustrious musical past to create something utterly contemporary. His previous projects have had the 4 elements running through as major themes: Fire and lava erupted during his sophomore album, Siku, with an Ecuadorian volcano doubling up as a recording space. And now, with his second Rhythm Section release, we are met with sounds of flowing water that Nicola describes as “aqueous explorations”. On this EP, ‘Self Oscillation’, Nicola Cruz fuses experimental production techniques with underwater, bass-heavy constructions. Moods change like the tides; from euphoric highs with acid riffs and latin drum patterns, the music quickly dives to moody submarine basslines and dark, frenetic rhythms.

‘Self Oscillation’ sees Nicola’s production move to new heights as he expertly bridges the gap between natural and mechanical sounds. With the help of iconic 80s and 90s synths and the retro colours of a Roland Space Echo, his newest work is a hybrid of electronic dance music and a synaesthetic image of nature. In the spirit of his previous EP on Rhythm Section INTL, ‘Self Oscillation’ showcases the synergy - or rather ongoing battle between the organic and inorganic, the analog and digital, civilisation confronted and confounded by nature. It’s within this dichotomy that Cruz revels, and manages to say so much, without words.

Trees Speak are back!
Speak’s new album, “Vertigo of Flaws: Emancipation of the Dissonance and Temperaments in
Irrational Waveforms” comes as a double-vinyl edition, single CD and digital release. The limitededition first pressing only of the vinyl includes a bonus 45 enclosed in an 8-page 7”x7” booklet
insert housed within the gatefold sleeve with cover artwork created by Soviet Union propaganda
artist Lazar Markovich Lissitzky in 1911.
Trees Speak are back!
This new release is a vast leap into an ocean of space and sound, a quantum leap into cybernetics, biology, anti-gravity,
time travel, dream speech and transfiguration. A seriously next step release!
Showing no signs of slowing down their rapid creative pace – incredibly this is their fourth album in the space of just over
one year – ‘Vertigo of Flaws’ is a mighty 29 tracks, one and a half hours of music across one double album that is surely
going to be a defining point in their musical career, a giant leap into the sonic unknown, an epic exploration of intensity
and sound.
Alongside their now trademark German krautrock motoric-beat rhythms, angular New York post-punk attitude, tripped-out
60s spy soundtrack, psyche-rock, and 70s synthesizers and vocoders, here you will also hear a new cosmic spacial
awareness (both personal inner space and galactic outer space) and a truly wilful pushing of sonic boundaries - as police
sirens, static noise, alarms, radio signals, avant-garde voices, and orchestral string quartets, all collide to add beautiful
dissonance to uber-powerful, intense, addictive and propulsive rhythms - in the process creating a truly unique
soundscape that Trees Speak have made wholly their own.
If you ever wanted to hear Can, Hawkwind, Destroy All Monsters, Pere Ubu, electric eels, John Cage, Liquid Liquid,
Tangerine Dream, Suicide, Neu!, Laurie Spiegel, Art Ensemble of Chicago, John Barry, Mother Mallard’s Portable
Masterpiece Company, Sun Ra, Stockhausen, John Carpenter, Electro-Acoustic and Musique Concrete and Mars in one
band - then this is it!
Trees Speak are Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz from Tucson, Arizona and their music often draws on the cosmic nighttime magic of Arizona’s natural desert landscapes. ‘Trees Speak’ relates to the idea of future technologies storing
information and data in trees and plants - using them as hard drives - and the idea that Trees communicate collectively.
Special guests from the hyper-creative hub of the Tucson music scene on this release are Gabriel Sullivan, Ben Nisbet, Saul
Millan, Stephani Guilmette, and Davis Jones.
The album Vertigo of Flaws was recorded in Brooklyn, New York, and Tucson, Arizona during the plague of 2021.
Extract from Vertigo of Flaws sleevenotes:
‘As we travel through space and time, avoiding the discarded remains of the industrial period, the
deconstruction of social norms through the expression of art, music, and philosophy guide the human
experience towards the unknown.
All that remains are musical echoes scattered throughout the universe, like ancient vibrations that now
populate the cosmos. These waves now show signs of decay. Melody, beauty, tonality have all but fallen
away as dissonance blossoms. As John Cage wrote in 1937,
“Whereas, in the past, the point of disagreement has been between dissonance and consonance, it will be,
in the immediate future, between noise and so-called musical sounds. New methods will be discovered,
bearing a definite relation to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system and present methods of writing percussion
music and any other methods which are
free from the concept of a fundamental tone”.
Similarly, George Van Tassel claimed the Integratron as capable of
rejuvenation, anti-gravity, and time travel. So, what remains of the
“people”? We have adopted from them our own Zeitgeber: their pulses
now guide our sun, our planets, our earths, and are the new circadian,
diurnal, and ultradian rhythms of the galaxy. Traumsprache, dream
speech, is now the internal language of trees.
Decaying metal and machines liberated the note unto nature’s table,
and we sip the delicious nectar of music once more irrational, elaborate,
violent, vast. The past is the future, musical disintegration its own rebirth.
We are nature, once more the computer of the Universe.’

Your Old Droog is back with the new album, TIME. It features appearances by MF DOOM, Aesop Rock, Mick Jenkins, Elzhi, Blu, and Wiki. As the title indicates, the project is the culmination of years of work. "This is basically my debut album," Droog explains. "Some of this material was recorded back in 2017, but I suppose the universe felt it would make more sense if it was released at another point in the future. Hence the name, TIME." Featuring production by Quelle Chris, 88 Keys, Edan, Mono En Stereo, and more, TIME= was a surprise release on digital outlets, and is now available on vinyl for the first time:

Linda Fredriksson (they/them) shares their debut solo album "Juniper" on We Jazz Records, 29 Oct 2021. Linda (of Mopo and Superposition) has been working on the compositions heard on the album for several years, composing them mostly on guitar, keys and by singing. Only later have they been arranged for the band heard on the album, including Fredriksson on saxes and various instruments, Tuomo Prättälä (of ilmiliekki Quartet) on rhodes, moog and piano, Minna Koivisto on modular synth, moog and OP, Olavi Louhivuori (of Superposition) on drums, and Mikael Saastamoinen (of OK:KO and Superposition) on bass, plus featuring the Swedish artist Matti Bye on piano.

At heart, "Juniper" is a "singer-songwriter album", performed by an instrumental jazz band. The end result is unique, personal, and as Linda themself puts it "quiet and introspective". The first single from the album is "Neon Light and the sky was trans", "a song from the shining streets – the beginning of something new", featuring field recordings of rain falling down behind the window of Linda's Helsinki working space.

It's a fitting introduction to an album full on wonders and carefully crafted secrets ready to be discovered. "Juniper" is a world unto itself, and Fredriksson describes the process as one of isolation and of learning slowly to do new things. After the demo stage, the songs were taken to the full band, but what's on the record often stays true to the minimal nature of the early demos. Linda credits their co-producer Minna Koivisto as a key ally in the process of maintaining the demo sessions' fragile beauty on the actual finished record.

With regards to instrumentation, those who have heard Linda Fredriksson in Mopo and Superposition are likely to be surprised by their credit listing including not only alto and baritone saxophones, plus bass clarinet, but also guitar, Rhythmic8 synths, ambience recordings and drum programming. Linda describes the way of finding new sounds through their beloved old guitar as follows: "It's an old acoustic guitar that has been hit by a car and is literally full of holes, but that makes the sound just perfect for this album and you can hear the instrument on 'Pinetree song' and 'Lempilauluni' (Finnish for 'My Loved Song')."

In fact, Linda began their music-making with guitar and vocals, and the debut of the hole-filled vintage acoustic guitar makes perfect sense here, while also describing the album's immediate sound perhaps better than any other individual instrument used. The influence list for the album name checks the likes of Feist, Neil Young, Susanne Sundfør, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Eric Dolphy and Fever Ray, yet the number one inspiration for Fredriksson prior to making the album was "Carrie and Lowell", the 2017 album by Sufjan Stevens. Different as the albums are in terms of instrumentation and general scope, it's fascinating to draw parallels between them by listening to the quietness and immediacy of the music. "Nana – Tepalle" also relates to the world of "Carrie and Lowell" in being a dedication to a lost family member, Linda's grandmother (she is featured in the digital single artwork).

Throughout the album, Linda plays their saxophones in a way that is serving music first and foremost. The musician's ego, so often at the forefront in jazz, takes a backseat, and the songs themselves remain. Linda thinks as a composer, utilising their instrument where and how necessary, not presenting "chops". "It's sometimes hard to play simple," they say, "but I tried to follow my instinct about what the songs need. The mood rules here, any solos or improvisations happen around that at all times."

"Juniper" can still be heard as a jazz album, but perhaps one reminding that the word doesn't need to mean any one thing in particular. At its best, jazz music is highly personal and "of the moment", both true on "Juniper". The album has been made in two different studios, three homes, two summer cottages and four working spaces. It was recorded with professional studio equipment but also with an iPhone and on a basic built-in laptop speaker. With that, "Juniper" stands as a remarkable musical diary of a creative musician and composer during the early 2020's.

Our Starry Universe returns with it’s first release of 2022, the mesmerizing Mother Oak from Dan Wainwright & Elle Redding. The album is out on 12” vinyl and digital 22nd April.

An Acid House/Cosmic concept album featuring Elle’s spoken word on Dan’s production, Mother Oak is about the life cycle of an oak tree from the perspective of the tree. “As we dreamed up a rough outline of the story, the music was created to personify the seasons and the emotions that were to come through Elle’s words.” Says Dan.

It’s a deep listening experience. The kind of record one should listen to in one sitting on vinyl while you are staring at the lyrics on the back cover. “…it all just fell perfectly into place as Elle typed the story. It all came to life really quickly and was an emotional experience for me to enjoy something so beautiful as her creativity and it’s an honour to have that combined with mine.” Says Dan.

He continues… “We made an album that carries meaning and wisdom and at the same time conveys our wonder, awe and joy that we both experience by being in nature and feeling connected to the forever changing cycles of our planet.”

Dan Wainwright is a prolific producer in the underground with releases on Night Noise, Tici Taci, & Sprechen as well as a seemingly constant slate of releases on his own imprint Oddball Recordings.

Nothing is explained in the mysteries around us, but some art touches their soul: last year, Justin Tripp, one half of the US-American impro electronic duo Georgia and London-based electronic artist Zaheer Gulamhusein man behind projects like Waswaas and XVARR -joined forces as STRING. Together they went on a virtual vacation and never came back. As the virtual is fully real due to its virtuality, they created a truly authentic aural hardware journey, hauntingly adventurous, calm, and surprising.

Without defining the scope, STRING tumbled through a dark musical zone that stretched to the horizon, letting the sound shape itself while falling discreet into an appealing abstract space. Hovering clockwise shortly above the ground, they formed impossible geometric musical figures - weightless, fluid clouds, made up of relations between asymmetrical elements. Like in nature, their collaborative work avoids identical characteristics. In an expression of respectful admiration, they softly celebrate the irregularities between their specific genetic musical fingerprints, creating eight light binding clouds of dawn. A meditative musical voyage that transports cosmic particles of idealistic Berlin school ambient right into the heart of their electronic machines. All tunes swing calm but constitutive, dancing around synthesized surfaces that form obsessed flaming orbs of fear and hope, of matter and antimatter.

A shared love for hardware and the ethos of improvisation guided STRING into an experimentation, in which each party aligns closely to the core ideas of co-operative, in-the-moment electronic music, tied across the eight tracks in a sequence.

Finding a home with the highly esteemed Hamburg based label V I S, STRING’s debut “Last Index Of...“ will enter the earth in double vinyl and cassette format, plus tripping on at the digital platforms.

Fiat Lux is the debut album by Tarta Relena, a Barcelona-based project featuring Marta Torrella and Helena Ros. The group approaches the oral traditions of the Mediterranean from a contemporary perspective using a unique combination of ancient vocal melodies and subtle electronic textures.

Tarta Relena’s inspiration for Fiat Lux comes from historical characters, such as the Virgin Mary and Hildegard of Bingen, and timeless verses that deal with the cyclic nature of the human experience: “E suïcidi i el cant” (1) is an adaptation of a traditional poem by Pashtun women in Afghanistan; “Esta montanya d’enfrente” (3) is a traditional Sephardic song; “Safo” (9) is based on the love poems by Sappho of Lesbos.
Singing in Catalan, Spanish, Greek, Latin, English, and even Sephardi, the language of Hispanic jews, Tarta Relena explore a complex array of Latin cultures through the simplicity of voice. They draw from vocal techniques that range from flamenco to jazz, introducing elements of electronic music to redefine the melodies.
In January 2019, Tarta Relena released their first EP, Ora Pro Nobis: eight a cappella songs with minimal electronics. In April 2020, they released their second EP, Intercede Pro Nobis: a five-song dialogue between voice and electronics.
Fiat Lux expands on past experimentations, moving away from organic harmonies to embrace digital textures and distortions. The musical production of Juan Luis Batalla and Òscar Garrobé is remnant of Holly Herndon or Eartheater.
Tarta Relena have perhaps been best described by Pitchfork in their review of Pack Pro Nobis: “Tarta Relena is a celebration of musical exchange. At a time of rising nationalisms across Europe, Tarta Relena’s songs are a testament both to the porousness of borders and the ideas that unite disparate cultures, running beneath the centuries like a pedal tone”.

THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EXPANDED EDITION OF TIM BOWNESS &
GIANCARLO ERRA'S 2011 ALBUM 'WARM WINTER' - NOW ISSUED AS
MEMORIES OF MACHINES
An expanded & remixed 10th Anniversary version of Tim Bowness & Giancarlo
Erra's 2011 album 'Warm Winter' (now issued as 'Memories Of Machines', the
original project name).
Featuring contributions from Robert Fripp, Peter Hammill, Julianne Regan, Jim
Matheos, Colin Edwin, Huxflux Nettermalm, Peter Chilvers, Aleksei Saks &
members of Nosound & Tim Bowness's live bands, the album contains 10
sweeping & majestic songs (culminating in the epic "At The Centre Of It All").
The 2 disc - CD/DVD-A/V version includes hi-res stereo & 5.1 Surround mixes in
addition to two 2020 recordings - an album outtake & a new version of the
Nosound piece "Someone Starts To Fade Away" - created especially for this
release.
Featuring a 2021 remix from the original tapes by Giancarlo Erra, this new edition
emphasises the textural nature of the music & restores the pieces to their original
arrangements & track lengths (resulting in a different listening experience).
The artwork has also been overhauled for this release by Giancarlo Erra &
Caroline Traitler.

On a balmy Brazilian night in February, 1981, a crowd gathered in Rio de Janeiro's Gávea neighbourhood under the iconic dome of the city's Planetário (Planetarium). Alongside musicians like Helio Delmiro and Milton Nascimento (who were in the audience that night), they were there to see the great "Bruxo" (sorcerer) Hermeto Pascoal live in concert, with his new band formation which would become known simply as "O Grupo" (The Group).

Growing up on a farm in Brazil's northeastern state of Alagoas, Hermeto has always been deeply in tune with, and inspired by nature. In his youth he would make his own flutes to play call and response with the birds and frogs. He would build scrap-metal instruments in his blacksmith grandfather's forge, and sit for hours by the lake listening to the sounds of nature. On the Planetário Da Gávea recordings though, Hermeto is cast as the "sorcerer" or the "cosmic emissary" (as the great Brazilian guitarist Guinga once called him), exhibiting an intuitive sense of harmony and melody beyond that of our own world.

"Tudo e Som" (All is Sound). It's a phrase Hermeto regularly returns to, and it points to the fact that not only can music be made from anything, but also alludes to something much more profound. It's an understanding of the universe as being in a state of constant movement, forever vibrating at the quantum level, like the string of a guitar, or a saxophone's reed. "Tudo e Som" is a declaration of the mystical and spiritual power of sound, as a fundamentally vibrational force.

The series of concerts at the Planetário marked the birth of "O Grupo" which would last with the same line-up (apart from Zé Eduardo Nazário) for the next eleven years. Every member of O Grupo was a phenomenal musician in their own right. It was one of saxophonist/flautist Carlos Malta's first gigs with the group, and the concert unusually featured two drummers, Zé Eduardo Nazário and Marcio Bahia. Nazário, from São Paulo, had played with Hermeto during the mid-70s (as well as with Milton Nascimento, Egberto Gismonti and Toninho Horta, to name a few). Bahia though had just joined the group. Acclaimed keyboard player Jovino Santos Neto was on keyboards, piano and organ, and the great Itiberê Zwarg (who remains in Hermeto's band to this day), played bass. Rounding the group off was the percussionist Pernambuco. During this period (up until the early 90s) the group would rehearse for hours on end, virtually seven days a week, with a total dedication to music and Hermeto's musical vision.

Most of the compositions performed that night at the Planetário had never been recorded before, and many are unique to this album, including the wild 'Homônimo Sintróvio', the exaltant 'Samba Do Belaqua', 'Vou Pra Lá e Pra Cá' and 'Bombardino', which features Hermeto's wonderfully absurd call and response mouthpiece soliloquy. Then there's the stunning 7/4 Samba 'Jegue' which builds with inventive dissonance, before releasing yet another celestially colourful, celebratory refrain. The show also features the first recorded performances of 'Era Pra Ser e Não Foi' and 'Ilza na Feijoada' (inspired by Hermetos' wife Ilza's famed black bean and meat stew), which Hermeto later recorded on his 1984 studio album "Lagoa Da Canoa Município De Arapiraca".

Dubbed by Miles Davis as "one of the most important musicians on the planet", a Hermeto Pascoal live show was (and still is) an experience like no other. Across the recording of the Planetário concert, wild improvisation meets groovy, virtuosic vamping on progressive, extended psychedelic jams. The tracks are generally built around a beautiful, transcendent melody; instantly recognisable as being Hermeto's, and for the most part, the musicians then solo over extended two chord vamps. There's a plethora of powerfully delivered rhythms, wild solos and the performances are punctuated by Hermeto's unpredictable, at times comical sonic antics.

Over forty years since this historic happening, Far Out Recordings is overjoyed to release this magical recording of Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo Live at Planetário Da Gávea, on double vinyl LP, CD and digitally for a February 4th 2022 release.

Cemento Atlantico is the first recording project by the Italian DJ/producer Alessandro “ToffoloMuzik” Zoffoli, conceived between 2020 and 2021, in an orphaned silence from wandering and social sharing due to the lockdown in this Pandemic era. To be released on vinyl, CD and all digital platforms starting from July 29th, 2021 via Bronson Recordings, the album Rotte Interrotte was born from the need to translate the travel experiences of recent years into music: Morocco, Vietnam, Peru, Cambodia, Colombia, India, Guatemala, Myanmar. At the edge of the world. The sound that fills everyday life is often seen as a foregone background, in reality all its connotations can be explored and ordered to create a melody. Without a shadow of a doubt, the threshold of auditory attention rises by being sent, immersed in cultures and countries other than your own. Among those coordinates, Cemento Atlantico has kidnapped fragments, samples and field recordings from nature, history, road and sacred places. Emotions engraved in the mind with occasional recording means, subsequently manipulated through electronics and rhythmic construction creating a truly unique and contemporary sound and of cultural melting-pot. Zoffoli has written and produced the record (then mastered by Giovanni Versari), also taking care of its artwork. Cemento Atlantico’s logo is made up of the initials “C” and “A”: “The letter ‘A’ indicates the first Ocean I crossed, the Atlantic one, while the letter” C “- represented by a crescent Moon, with no political or religious reference – symbolizes rebirth, the growth of a project or the advent of a new life in many ancient and modern cultures“. Trip hop, dubstep and chillout are intertwined with world music and ethnic elements, as if the starting point was Bristol, rather than Cesenatico, and the arrival point was all to be soundtracked, all to be explored. Following the first extract Umm Bulgares, the new singles taken from the album are Beat ’em Bang, Amazonienne, Blade Runner Zero and El congreso de los Fantasmas. More than an album, Rotte Interrotte is a casket of stories set in time with your eyes closed, in the deep belief that through sound you can imagine the world without seeing it.

First Word Records is very pleased to present a brand new full-length album from Sarah Williams White! Emanating from the "hilly fields of Lewisham" in South London, Sarah Williams White is a singer songwriter, multi-

instrumentalist and producer. Her sound is a unique blend of psych-soul, folktronica and experimental synth-pop.

Sarah released her acclaimed debut album 'Of The New World' on First Word in 2015, which was written, produced and performed by Sarah from her home studio, with the assistance of drummer, engineer & husband, Timmy Rickard. Her projects have seen support from the likes of Lauren Laverne, Tom Ravenscroft, Nemone & Chris Hawkins (BBC 6 Music), Jamie Cullum (BBC Radio 2), FIP Radio, Clash & The Guardian, to name a few, and she's toured the UK with Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip and Golden Rules (Lex). There have been additional collaborations with label-mate Quiet Dawn (on the 2021 compilation / EP 'A Family Affair') and with her brother, Paul White - a revered producer in his own right, with credits including Danny Brown and Sudan Archives.

Following a hiatus, Sarah now brings us her sophomore album, 'Unfathomable'. A project that offers up escapism from the mundane, enticing us to connect with our natural planet in this prevalent time, via the eyes of a new mother.

In her words, Sarah states that the album is "about escape. It's about deflating the ego by looking up to the endlessness of outer space, connecting with the greatness of mother nature, and loving how unfathomable the universe and life itself is".

11-tracks in all, including the recent singles 'Nebula', 'Green' and 'Monsters', this opus sees Sarah's buttery lathing of vocals merged with cutting beats and atypical pop sensibilities across the project, again entirely self-produced from home, defining her as one of the UK's most irresistible DIY psych-soul talents.

With a voice reminiscent of Peggy Lee, tapestried harmony akin to Hiatus Kaiyote, beats fit for Little Dragon, and experimental production evocative of Kate Bush, Sarah Williams White's signature genre-defying sound invites us into a world uniquely hers.

'Unfathomable' is released on vinyl and digital in late January 2022.

It was obvious from the first riff on the first song from their very first album: MASS WORSHIP were born fully-fledged, utterly unique and magnificently destructive. Emerging from Scandinavian shadows like an unstoppable, shape-shifting bulldozer, they have swiftly become one of the most praised and talked-about bands in the metal underground. Despite spending a big part of 2020-2021 locked inside, writing and recording new material, MASS WORSHIP did complete a highly successful tour in support of Polish death metal legends Vader. Meanwhile, MASS WORSHIP are primed and ready to unleash their second full-length assault. Due for release in 2022, “Portal Tombs” is a terrifying but electrifying exploration of the gloomy depths of human nature: a monolithic manifestation of the musical force that is MASS WORSHIP. Drawing inspiration from bands such as At The Gates, Mastodon and Meshuggah, MASS WORSHIP could be likened to many bands, but somehow forge their musical identity into something exceptionally distinctive and transcendent, and with enough confidence and conviction to win over even the most orthodox fans of the genre. “Portal Tombs” will once again proclaim MASS WORSHIP’s one-of-a-kind potency with maximum force. A triumph for both style and substance, “Portal Tombs” is the kind of metal record that shatters epochs, audaciously redefining what it means to be heavy. MASS WORSHIP continue to lead the charge for individuality and verve, while still delivering a never-ending tsunami of life-affirming, spine-shattering riffs. Lyrically, too, “Portal Tombs” takes the path less trodden, exploring the dark recesses of humanity’s past, its present and, darkest of all, its future. As we spiral towards an abyss of our own making, MASS WORSHIP’s soundtrack will resonate loudest of all. “Portal Tombs” is available as: Ltd. CD Digipak, Gatefold LP, Digital Album

EELS release their fourteenth studio album, ‘Extreme
Witchcraft’, via PIAS and the band’s own E Works
Records.
 EELS leader Mark Oliver Everett, aka E, co-produced the
record with PJ Harvey producer and guitarist John Parish,
marking the first time the two have recorded together since
2001’s ‘Souljacker’ album.
 EELS have had one of the most consistently acclaimed
careers in music. The ever-changing project of principal
singer / songwriter E (Mark Oliver Everett), EELS have
released 13 studio albums since their 1996 debut,
‘Beautiful Freak’. In 2008, E published his highly acclaimed
book ‘Things the Grandchildren Should Know’ and starred
in the award-winning ‘Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives’
documentary about the search to understand his quantum
physicist father, Hugh Everett III. 2020’s ‘Earth To Dora’
album, received extensive critical praise, and was
described as “their sweetest natured album ever” by The
Independent and awarded four stars in MOJO and NME.
 Deluxe box set features 45rpm 180g translucent yellow
double vinyl LP in heavy cardboard packaging, lenticular
print, custom EELS Ouija board, CD with booklet and an
A5 sticker sheet.
 Single LP format pressed on 180g vinyl with screen printed
poster and digital download.
 Tourdates - March 11 Telegraph Building Belfast, 12 Olympia
Theatre Dublin, 14 Roundhouse London, 15 Albert Hall
Manchester, 16 Barrowland Glasgow, 17 Rock City Nottingham,
18 O2 Guildhall Southampton.

»Infuso Giallo aka Philipp Carbotta originally hails from rural Western Germany, first cut his teeth in the music scene of nearby Cologne and conducts a host of activities in Berlin for a couple of years now – co-running the label Kame House, designing graphics and producing and playing leftfield electronic music. His debut LP Ocular Soda presents an intersection of these activities – self-released, self-designed and of course self-produced. Even before the first synth chords and reverse atmospheres of the two-part opener 'Every Waking Hour' tickle the ear, it is the eye that is drawn to the bright, cut-out style cover art – itself made up of two eyes on the front and what seem to be their rough shapes or discarded counterparts on the back.
To stay within that metaphor, Infuso Giallo's music is indeed of a reflective and calm nature, taking cues from Berlin School, library and New Age musics from roughly the 1970s to the 1990s – steadily repeating and slowly evolving ostinatos, lush digital pads, quirky filtered toplines and electronic percussion that mostly eschews four-four monotony in favor of much more subtle syncopations. Balearic bomb 'The Big Rip' with its big drums and acid bass turns the energy level up a notch while retaining the somnambulistic, lingering quality that makes Ocular Soda such a coherent listening experience – music on the sheath of waking and dreaming, both worlds and their inherent logics freely bleeding into each other. There are moments of great expanse, such as in 'Mole Gaze' – I couldn't help but see myself hovering somewhere in mid-air while the music unfolds as if on a great deserted plane below me. Maybe this is what it sounds like once the mole leaves his tunnels and takes in the sound of the world overground. 'Hello World', indeed, in its multitude of information to eye and ear, in its gently overwhelming quality. The title track 'Ocular Soda' closes the proceedings with a whimsical nod to 1970s botany-centered library music, its brooding chord sequence and sweet lead lines gradually fading in the distance. A fitting ending to an impressive LP of highly evocative, at times sombre and at times blissfully naive pieces that leave me yearning for more.«

Written, recorded & produced by Infuso Giallo in 2020 & 2021 in Berlin. Mixed by Philipp Janzen & Sebastian Blume at Dumbo Studios, Cologne. Mastered by Sam Irl in Vienna. Design by Infuso Giallo.

A variety of ambient and experimental cuts to be found here. A re-release of sorts, all original tracks were done by Enitokwa (Takashi Hasegawa) as rehearsal for a live performance at Tokyo - Batofar Festival in Paris in 2001 and were released on a limited CDR "promo." in 2002. All 8 tracks were recorded and mixed live in one sitting, and have been remastered, given names and pressed on heavy vinyl with a beautiful cover design by Berlin artist Nik Patrick.

The sample sources were largely inspired by records that Takashi listened to in High School - and feature two hugely well known British hands (one of whom have just reformed and have a new album out…), some old Jazz, Bossa Nova and Hawaiian records, as well as samples from ambient legends Deep Forest and Brian Eno. The result is an earthly nostalgic feel with deep moods to match the times we are living in.

The first track ‘Pop’ bursts into life with an etherial presence. ‘Ssab’ and ‘Chinese Girl Goes to Hawaiii’ have a rather filmic quality to them, whilst ‘Resonating’ seems to float over the wreckage of human activity, a post apocalyptic vision of Planet Earth. ‘Liquid Sky’ is a minimal groove which could be a sonic report from an eerie space station, which is itself a remix of Dub Sonic aka Takehito Nakazeto’s ‘Donigma Dub’.

‘Hope on Hop’ will appeal to today’s generation with its Techno and D’n’B influences, and features voices taken from Wim Wender’s ‘Paris Texas’. Track 7, ‘Mingos’ turns Gal Costa’s voice into a soaring atmospheric haze of digital memory, and the track ‘Holy Spiral’ is a combination of this one and ‘Resonating’, an ascendent 12 minute march to the release’s final close.



Takashi Hasegawa is a respected DJ, producer and live performer who plays live electronic and DJ sets regularly today in venues and festivals across Japan. He has been producing house, techno, experimental and ambient music since the 90’s - spending some of that time in the United States, including working in the music scene in the New York, before returning to Japan working as a sound engineer, A&R and producer for the famous Tokyo-based record label Club Yellow. Now based in Osaka-Fukuoka, Takashi’s music is still resonating with fellow music lovers around the world.



Now, 20 years on from its creation, this music is rediscovered and given a wider audience. The sound on ’Re-Promo’ interestingly gives an insight into the music Enitokwa is currently working on - reflecting the cyclical nature of creative output - and represents a slight departure from the swirling delicate ambient textures that you can hear in o.n.s.a and on the intricate and more musical 2069, released in 2017 and 2016 respectively.



Each track has a video accompaniment to be released in various media outlets, the label head Tom Ransom having partnered with diverse artists in Colombia, Denmark, Japan, Poland, France, Britain and China to create a wide range of visual outputs.



The release also sees two digital only remixes, one coming from London and Wigan’s enigmatic Isherwood (Edward Regan), and the other from Mat Fink - a unique DJ and up and coming producer raised in Pittsburgh and Berlin. Watch out for these…



Machines used:



Yamaha SU700

Sequential Circuits Pro One

Roland TR909

Roland TR808,

TC Electric D-Two

MAM RS3

Pedals



Remastering and additional audio treatment by Kabamix (LMD) on Dec.4.2017.

Dedicated to Takehito Nakazato (SONIC PLATE)

As the world circles the abyss at gathering speed, WIEGEDOOD have returned to provide a perfectly vicious soundtrack. Formed in 2014, the Belgian trio have built an unassailable reputation as purveyors of visceral and bleak black metal in its purest and most destructive form. Since unveiling their debut album “De Doden Hebben Het Goed” in 2015, WIEGEDOOD have blazed an unending trail for musical darkness, bolstering their burgeoning notoriety with some of the most apocalyptic live performances in recent memory, and producing two subsequent albums – “De Doden Hebben Het Goed II” and “III”, released in 2017 and 2018 respectively – which hammered home the band’s unique creative powers. Emerging once more, this time from the involuntary solitude of a plague-bound world, WIEGEDOOD are back with their fourth studio album, “There’s Always Blood At The End Of The Road”. A ferocious tour-de-force, born of frustration and the ever-burning flame of hatred for the modern world, the new record marks a significant departure for this most ruthlessly singular of modern metal bands. “Musically I think we’ve made our most uncomfortable record so far. It’s once again faster than anything we’ve done before, and more unforgiving than the whole trilogy combined”, says vocalist/guitarist Levy Seynaeve. “To me, it feels like a soundtrack, for a movie yet to be made. A movie about the filthiest and most disgusting parts of human nature and society, and about the struggle we lead within, trying to overcome the fact we are all made from that same filth.” “There’s Always Blood At The End Of The Road” is available as: Ltd. CD Edition, 2x 180g LP (with etching on side D) that come in a Wide Spined Sleeve and 2 printed Discobags, Digital Album.

For fans of Tall Heights, Sufjan Stevens, & Indie Folk! Steadily building their artistic style and audience for the past seven years, New Jersey based alternative folk band Cold Weather Company carries a diverse sound, rich with harmonies and instrumental builds. The band combines the various writing approaches and influences of its three members, Brian Curry, Jeff Petescia, and Steve Shimchick, to create unique arrangements with intricate layering. Over the past few years, the band has earned over eight million cross-platform digital streams and supported acts such as Tall Heights, Jamestown Revival, and Juke Ross. On their fourth full-length album, Coalescence, Cold Weather Company continues to expand their acoustic-forward, alternative folk sound into new territory. With delicate additions of synths and electronic instruments, as well as a broadened palette of horns, percussion, strings, and harmonies, "Coalescence" explores each song down to its smallest sonic niche. Conceptually, the album revolves around growth by highlighting our capacity to better ourselves and our connections through introspection and reflection. Often occurring cyclically, especially in nature, the idea of growth also inspired the release process for the album which will be split into three parts, each representing a different conceptual facet. "With their spot on songwriting and boisterous melodies, Cold Weather Company is set to follow in the alt-folk leaning sounds of Avett Brothers, Ben Howard George Ezra

*Limited edition of 200 copies, heavy weight vinyl, comes with poster* fmvee joins Queeste with who do u love?, an EP of fractious songs recorded over a tumultuous four-month period in Los Angeles. Having debuted in 2018 with a set of club contortions touching on jungle and 2-step, the US artist returns with a work of intense self-reflection. Lived experiences are transmuted into an amorphous bricolage of pummelling kicks, synthetic textures, and diaristic details, what they describe as an act of "remembrance." Working and living in LA, the "grind" alongside "aspirational partying," and the confrontation of depression during an intense relationship, informs the EP on levels both sonic and thematic. The slippery rhythm and melodic stabs of 'the way you see yourself' embodies a state of flux, also recalling the early experiments of the LA beat scene. Distant jazz drumming fills its peaceful coda before 'everythingUneverKnewUwanted' introduces an echo lifted directly from the artist's life: a trickling courtyard fountain. This first phase of the release finds resolution with 'thewayothersseeyou,' a conceptual mirror to its start, and one which carries a notable shift in tone; gleaming percussion has given way to ominous synths. Despite the EP's personal nature, collaboration is crucial. 'Seed Perfuming (LoLo v665)' is an fmvee original transformed into a cascading breakbeat by New York producer and engineer Loric Sih AKA LoLo, an ecstatic yet familiar form nestled amidst otherwise bruising encounters. 'sobbing' follows, a digital-age ballad of original lyrics exploring dependency: emotional, physical, and otherwise. It's a poignant conclusion to an appropriately hallucinogenic collection, an intoxicating chemistry of love and loneliness co

In 1958 the painter Isson Tanaka (22 July 1908 – 11 September 1977) moved to Amami Ōshima, an island in the Ryukyus. There, in self-chosen isolation, he committed himself exclusively to his art until his sudden passing in 1977. In 2018 Seiha Kurosawa, Kanako Azuma and Hideki Umezawa visited Amami Ōshima to create a video installation about Tanaka’s insular life. The work, entitled “Dokkyaku” (tr. The Lone Visitor), shifts between the texture and materiality of Tanaka’s paintings in relation to the natural world of Amami Ōshima and its people. The video invites viewers to understand—poetically—the artist’s sensitivity to nature and the expressivity of his works.

During his stay on Amami Ōshima, Hideki Umezawa recorded a lot of natural sounds to recreate a sort of simulated ecology of Tanaka’s mind – or: of the painter’s mind. On this long playing record these recordings are blended with electronically generated sounds. Next, Andrew Pekler, who has never actually visited Amami Ōshima, upon hearing Umezawa’s field recordings creates - in the spirit of Isson Tanaka - a complementary dreamscape of the island’s phenomena. Of what could be.

This is a work that doubts between site specific and creative imagination. With sounds echoing between the anecdotic and the imaginary. It is a sensitive and highly stylized interpretation of a world that Isson Tanaka had also carefully studied. A painter at work; a way of seeing. So, after Christophe Piette’s ‘Six Tableaux de Quelpaert’, released by Edições CN in 2019, we again moore an island in the nautical footsteps of a painter. While Piette drew a story through – among other things - recording dialogues at his island home, at the restaurant table, et al. Pekler and Umezawa paint their pictures in a more musical fashion. Where natural sounds evaporate into electronic clouds of imagination.

Hideki Umezawa (b.1986, Gunma) is Japanese artist / composer. He won 1st prize at Luc Ferrari’s international competition – Presque Rien Prize 2015 (France), and the Contemporary Computer Music Concert 2015 (Japan). “Dokkyaku” was originally created for "Fukami – Une plongée dans l'esthétique japonaise", an exhibition at Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris, France as part of ‘Japanismes 2018’.

Andrew Pekler (b. 1973, Samarkand) works with techniques of digital sampling and analog synthesis to re– contextualize found sounds and archival musical materials. In addition to numerous album releases, Pekler has also produced a number of video, installation and web-based works, as well as music for theater, dance, and film.

**LIMITED BLACK VINYL** Rival Consoles returns with a resonant
and explorative soundscape of original
music, composed for renowned
choreographer Alexander Whitley’s
contemporary dance production
Overflow.

Exploring themes of the human and emotional
consequences of life surrounded by data, the piece
echoes the concept of social media, advertising,
marketing companies and political factions
exploiting our data to gain wealth, political
advantage and sow division. Key reading for the
project was based around the contemporary
philosophical work Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism
and New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul
Han.
“The piece opens with Monster which has a kind of
drunken madness to it, highly repetitive to mirror the
repetitive nature of how we as humans engage with
technology such as social media. It’s sometimes
edging towards chaos but yet always returning back
to the same starting point, but eventually giving way
to exhaustion. I wanted to create a bold opening
piece for Overflow,” states West.

I Like features the mapping of data from dancer Tia
Hockey’s personal monologue, which allows chords
to be heard - but only based on the activity of her
voice, drawing attention to things happening behind
the curtain, invisible systems, algorithms.
The album also features the previously released
standalone slice of euphoria, Pulses of Information
— described by UK mag Clash as “typically
entrancing, Pulses of Information seems to
encourage a form of internal dialogue, between our
inner and outer selves.”

Overflow was premiered by the Alexander Whitley
Dance Company in May 2021 at the Sadler’s Wells
in London and is scheduled to tour through theatres
in Europe in spring 2022. The score will be released
by Erased Tapes on limited edition vinyl and CD as
well as digital formats on December 3.

British duo The Boy Least Likely To are not new to Christmas music. It started in 2005 with a charming cover version of ‘Little Donkey’ on a give away CD single, followed three year later by the first Christmas original they recorded, ‘The First Snowflake’, that made it into an episode of Grey's Anatomy. In 2010, the band released the album ‘Christmas Special’, with mostly originals, including the single ‘George And Andrew’, that came with a much watched and liked video. Last year, The Boy Least Likely To released a new Christmas song ‘It Will Still Be Christmas’, that reflected the difficult time the world was going through in 2020. What was still lacking in The Boy Least Likely To Christmas discography was a Christmas 7”. That is now also taken care of, as the band recorded two new Christmas songs for the ninth edition of the Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club. The nostalgic sounding original ‘Two Christmases’ is typical for the somewhat bittersweet nature of many of the duo’s songs, as it is about a recently divorced couple who, for the first time, will celebrate Christmas separately, one after the other, so that their children can celebrate Christmas with both their parents. On the flipside of the record, The Boy Least Likely To rework Shakin’ Stevens number one hit ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ into an uptempo cross between indie pop and western swing. The record comes on white vinyl and is limited to 300 copies.

The Boy Least Like To are composer/multi-instrumentalist Pete Hobbs and lyricist/singer Jof Owen, both originally from Wendover in Buckinghamshire, England, who met at school and began making music together in 2002. They debuted in 2003 with the 'Paper Cuts' 7” on their own label To Young To Die. In 2005 the duo released their first album, 'The Best Party Ever', that made it into Pitchfork's top 50 albums of 2005. Three more albums followed (2009's 'Law Of The Playground', 2010's 'Christmas Special' and 2013's 'The Great Perhaps') and in 2018 the career spanning collection 'The Greatest Hits', including classic tracks like 'Be Gentle With Me' and 'Hugging My Grudge' was released. Their music, once described in Rolling Stone as sounding like what would happen "if all your childhood stuffed animals got together and started a band.” incorporates influences from all over the indie landscape (twee pop, indie country, jangle pop, piano pop) and blends it into something that is unmistakingly To Boy Least Likely To – often joyous and uplifting, sometimes melancholic, with lyrics that reflect our everyday fears and anxieties, as it’s not all sunshine in our lives. In 2021 the band celebrated the slowly opening world by releasing a new digital single, 'Get Into The Summer', a joyous burst of fresh energy, showing that the band’s music is for all seasons

UK label Wisdom Teeth returns with its third long-form offering - Sculpturegardening: a new LP by Mexico City-based artist and producer, Tristan Arp. Incorporating elements of ambient, glitch, microhouse and downtempo, it’s an otherworldly record populated by knotty modular textures, blossoming floral melodies, tight pointillist rhythms and glossy acoustic instrumentation. The record was born from a process of “collaborating with machines”: using modular synthesisers to generate probabilistic melodies and rhythms, with the artist taking on the role of sculptor and curator. Throughout, the boundaries between the organic and digital are playfully blurred: we hear synthesisers played by guitars; emotive and distinctly human melodies generated by modular circuits; digital percussion drummed by hand; and live cello processed with a digital finish. The results sometimes recall Roman Flügel at his most colourful, or Benge’s meandering synth workouts, and even at times echo the dubbed-out cello experiments of Arthur Russell.But really sculpturegardening occupies a sonic world of its own, born from a unique web of happy accidents and incidental arrangements. The record’s bright colours and subtle rhythms make it a fitting follow-up to K-LONE’s 2020 LP Cape Cira and Facta’s 2021 LP Blush, and place it neatly alongside the work of label mates Duckett, Benoit B, Steevio and Iglew.
“With sculpturegardening, my concept was to approach music like gardening. I collaborated with machines inspired by the way a gardener collaborates with the earth. A gardener creates the conditions for the plants to come to life and develop on their own. In a similar way, I created a set of conditions and probabilities for the music to make itself. Who is making the music here? “A sculpture garden to me can be a really beautiful environment of balance between randomness and order––between nature and human interaction. Things that are either extremely organized or completely random tend to not resonate with us. On the other hand, something very interesting happens when a balance between the randomness and organization is struck. I invented this verb sculpturegardening to represent creating with the aim of this balance, and the with the aim of building a world in which each piece is a zone, or a sculpture in a garden.” The record will be twinned with a physical iteration - a sound installation at an exhibition curated by Tristan Arp titled Nada Se Pierde; Todo Se Transforma. The show opens on 9th October in Mexico City at Avant.dev. The physical sculpture garden will be a collaboration with Mexican sculptor Pablo Arellano. The sound installation will centre around a 4-channel audio system that gives voice to different sculptures and allows visitors to create a mix of the sounds depending on their position in the garden.

Behind Bandhagens Musikforening we find Michel Isorinne and Martin Sander. After their debut album on Northern Electronics they are now the protagonists of the 8th physical release on the label One Instrument.

The Swedish duo recorded the beautifully crafted six tracks at Bandhagen Airport in Sweden between 2017 and 2020.

Six tracks each made with one instrument with a clear preference for vintage synthesizers.
We are brought through delicate sonic journeys made with the Roland System 100, a semi-modular synthesizer built between 1975 and 1979, the legendary first digital synthesizer Yamaha DX-7, the Roland SH-101, the Oberheim Matrix 6R and the Waldorf Microwave all four from the beloved 80's.

Bandhagens Musikforening's compositions are a radiant work of quiet minimalism and poetic deliberation. We are brought into an intergalactic hypnotic world where dreams are colored and vivid, where immersive electronics have the ability to create landscapes on your mind board.

ALTER- : A REACTION TO THE ALTERMODERNISM IN SOUND ART
For the Automatisme - Alter- album. I am inspired by how the art historian Nicolas Bourriaud defines the Altermodernism. Bourriaud understands the term "Alter" as a way to mean "other". The altermodernism would be another modernity that is different from the avant-garde modernism and post-modernism. More precisely, this is a new paradigm from the XXIe century with alternative ways to motivate artists to be more radical in art by traveling in the physical and digital world, by cutting the frontiers and by creating other time lines. I apply the "alter" subject to time and to landscape and those, to the rhythmic and the ambient glitch music.

1- THE ALBUM HAS A RHYTHMIC SIDE AND A LANDSCAPE SIDE.
1- a : The rhythmic tracks are named Alter-Rate. That means that I offer other types of rhythms by calculating beats with time rate experimentations. The form of the rhytmic tracks, expresses a course, a wandering, which, in the altermodern life, is not just in a standard 4/4 , or just grid based or non-grid based, but it's in a complex hybrid of all of those.

1- b : The ambient tracks are named Alter-Scape. That means that I offer another type of landScapes by a paused temporality and not by a random time or by the time of the nature. Alter-Scape tracks mimic the saturated globalized soundscapes of the XXIe century.

2- THE GLOBALISED AND SATURATED TIME
For Bourriaud, the artists respond to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expressions and communications1. The Alter- album tracks have saturated rhythms Rates and static ambient soundScapes. The specific context within which we live is the age of globalisation2. In this album, it means that globalised or always evolving rhythm Rates are in constant movements and are also different every time an Alter-Rate track is exported or performed. On the other hand, a globalised landScape is an ambient track with a motionless temporality. In the era of the altermodern, displacement has become a method of depiction3. The movement of the sound in the Alter- album is two sound spaces. The first is the rhythms that make time movement become apparent and the second is an ambient paused or static time that makes possible to feel and to analyze the movement effect of our surroundings.

3- THE CONSTANT TENSION STATE OF ART
For Gilles Deleuze, art is in a constant state of tension, in as much as it oscillates between the poles of chaos and order4. The Alter- album is a tension between chaos and order in rhythmic beat tracks and ambient soundscapes tracks. It is a deterritorialization of the rhythms and the ambiences of today's natural and digital landscapes and it brings them into the computer glitch music format.

By pushing new softwares to their limits, I push at the extreme the software capacity to calculate and to generate sounds. The Alter-Rate tracks are experimentations with time rates and rhythms with the use of probability and artificial intelligence based sequencers. The partition signal starts from a master sequencer that gets into all instruments on a track. Each instrument receives this signal and modulates it with other sequencers that are each programmed differently for every instrument. Finally, all the instruments signals return to a master output that contains a stutter effect. This master channel is sequencing all other channels into one single rhythm. In short, a single rate merges and expands into a vast archipelago of rates and the transformed signal becomes a new single rate. The Alter-Scape tracks are experimentations with midi triggers that give the sensation of a timelessness. Multiple reverb effects are also routed into each other to create soundscapes of continuity. About the type of sounds created in this album, I do experimentations with deep frequency modulation synthesises (FM) on all Alter-Rate and Alter-Scape tracks.

I put a few layers in the tracks to be able to focus on the time space and perception. The tracks are generative and every parameter uses probabilities to be programmed. This is something that was not possible some years ago. The computers are enough powerful to generate that now. I export many times the tracks and i push the computers to their limits by making hard for them to calculate and to generate the tracks with a deep, a pointillist and an extreme software programming. These techniques do different versions every time that I export or perform a track and in my opinion, that opens a fresh and innovative way to do new experimental club music and ambient music. The computer has its own limits too.


Reviews in The Wire, Gonzo, A Closer Listen, Datacide, African Paper, Silent and Sound, and more

“ When I started working on the piece in March of 2020, I had only decided to record it in the way I wanted to. The coronavirus was spreading globally, and the situation was gradually changing into something very serious. With no gigs scheduled and hardly seeing anyone, I felt as if my spirit was in a slightly deeper place than usual during the production. I sat down in front of my equipment as if I were dropping a fishing line into a quiet lake. I kept feeling that something new was lurking beneath the water surface. I was trying to catch that something that seemed to be just out of reach, that floated in and out of sight like a speck of smoke. “ ＿Referenced from: Afterword of 7FO「Ran - Bouten」

2021 brings a new album by Osaka electronic musician / producer 7FO. This work is a departure from the recent global ambient / new age approach, and the unique sound aesthetic created using only hardware equipment is a new frontier of 7FO or a return to his origin. "Ran - Bouten" is a new electronic music album with a poetic sensibility using machines.Discovered by overseas labels such as RVNG intl., Bokeh Versions, and Metron-and with the release that followed EM Records in his hometown Osaka, it's like his personal folk craft that was once quietly played at his own pace. Music has reached listeners around the world. In recent years, he has been touring from a famous performance with Tapes at the Belgian "Meakusma Festival 2019" to a Japan-Korea tour. "Ran - Bouten" was born as a result of facing the sound alone without being asked by anyone to cool down the heat when the steaming and intense experience had settled down. Inside the cool electronic sound like a water bath, you can feel the maker's heart sending hot blood.Peep into the condensed universe of a home-recorded miniature world that looks like an independent production of unknown age. He was alone in a dark room, making full use of KAWAI's 1990 digital and FM synthesizers , tracing the shape of nature and resonating the micro and macro sound worlds. The Rhythm and melody that continues to the Paradise Pure Land, which floats in a dreamy atmosphere, is the true value of 7FO even without his guitar play.Mastering by Makoto Oshiro, which supports everything from home listening to club sound systems. Hiroaki Hidaka designed the jacket to make the image of the sound appear cool and friendly everywhere.

When hearing Anna Gréta at the piano, you become witness to an
astonishingly mature artist, with absolutely profound technique, a
complex understanding of style and harmony and an impressively
wide range of musical expression, who has made an extraordinarily
good name for herself in just a few years on the Scandinavian scene.
Over a period of two years, partly influenced by isolation, the twelve
compositions of ‘Nightjar in the Northern Sky’ emerged, for Anna
Gréta not only as a pianist but also as a singer.
 The album title ‘Nightjar in the Northern Sky’ sets the tone for the
world of the album: A metaphor for the Scandinavian expanse,
tranquility and the close connection between people and nature, a
theme that runs through the songs in many pictures. “Nature is just an
enormous force in life. It is so much bigger than most of the other
things that otherwise seem so significant to us. And it is, in its infinite
facets, perhaps the greatest inspiration for my music. A place where
the noise falls silent and you can feel and hear yourself again,” before
adding: “Recently I have been developing a passion for bird-watching
- something that I reflect on in the title track. When you observe
nature carefully you can experience or see something unique. Sort of
like searching for love. The nightjar is a bird that is rarely seen flying
across the sky in Sweden and has been observed in Iceland less than
five times. I feel that everyone is looking for something unique in their
lives. And that nature can offer that to the ones open to see it.”
 With each of the tracks on the album she creates little, self-contained
worlds that fit into a bigger picture. Light-footed, relaxed, reduced,
concentrated. An art that required a great deal of work and attention
to detail. Together with pop-experienced producer Albert
Finnbogason, Anna Gréta chose the perfect, hand-picked line-up and
sound for each of her extraordinarily refined - harmoniously and
rhythmically - compositions.
 Although always in a coherent framework, Anna took elements from a
very diverse range of musical styles, alternating between jazz
elements and influences from pop music to excerpts from classical
and folk. All these elements create a remarkably multi-layered album,
which at the same time tells a coherent, bigger story.
 CD in 4-page digipack with 12-page booklet.
 180g vinyl with digital download code

In the afterglow of her acclaimed 2020 album Silver Ladders, Los Angeles-based harpist Mary Lattimore returns with a culminating counterpart release, Collected Pieces: 2015- 2020. The limited-edition LP features new and previously unreleased material, Bandcamp-only singles, and other obscurities alongside standouts from her 2017 tape Collected Pieces. Beyond the vinyl compendium, an expanded tracklist on the cassette/digital version brings more of Lattimore's archives together for the first time. Lattimore has described the process of arranging these releases as akin to "opening a box filled with memories," and here that box continues to populate, accessible for both the artist and fans. Evocative material separated by years, framed as a portrait of an instrumental storyteller who rarely pauses, recording and often sharing music as soon as it strikes her. Seemingly in constant forward motion for the last five years since her Ghostly debut, Lattimore glances back for a breath, inviting new chances to live in these fleeting moments and emotions; all the beauty, sorrow, sunshine, and darkness housed within. Opening the cassette version is "Mary, You Were Wrong," which mirrors an author's bout with a broken heart. "It's about how you have to keep on going even if you make some mistakes," she says. The bittersweet refrain cycles throughout, a little brighter every time, slowly, like the way time tends to heal. Unreleased track "Sleeping Deer" came together during Lattimore's artist residency on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. She remembers, "a small deer whose mother I think had been run over by a car would hang out in the yard. I called him Lollipop and would leave vegetable scraps out." Lollipop returned daily to eat, rest, and wait for more. The music this vision inspired is patient and droning, with light plucks giving way to deeper, vibrating tones, permeating with a sense of anticipation. Next is a newer single, "We Wave From Our Boats," which she improvised after walking her neighborhood during the early days of lockdown in 2020, and shared on her Bandcamp. "I would just wave at neighbors I didn't know in a gesture of solidarity and it reminded me of how you're compelled to wave at people on the other boat when you're on a boat yourself, or on a bridge or something. The pull to wave feels very innate and natural." The heart of the track is a somber loop, over top which Lattimore's synth notes ruminate, each a gentle shimmer of optimism in the most anxious and absurd of days. Also recorded in 2020, "What The Living Do" is inspired by Marie Howe's poem of the same name, which reflects on loss through an appreciation for the mundane messiness of being human. The echoed, slow-marching track has a distant feel to it, as if the listener is outside of it, watching life play out as a film. "Princess Nicotine (1909)" scores actual footage, a dream sequence Lattimore imagined for J. Stuart Blackton's surreal silent film Princess Nicotine; or, the Smoke Fairy. She adopted the same approach for "Polly of the Circus," explaining it was the name of one of the old silent films discovered in permafrost in the Yukon featured in the documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time, "the only copy that survived and it kind of warped in the aging process." A trove of pieces are collected here, most recorded in the moment, just Lattimore and her Lyon and Healy Concert Grand Harp, contact mics, and pedals. Like her most affecting work, these songs showcase Lattimore's gifts as an observer, able to shape her craft around emotional frequencies and scenes. Her power as a musician is rooted in how she sees the world: in vivid detail, profoundly empathic, with deep gratitude for nature and nuance.

The Spessart with its presence of extended woodlands is widely known for its legends, ghost stories and fairytales. Thus, the tale of Snow White may have originated in the Spessart heartlands, with the town of Lohr pushing forward a substantial case for being the home and inspiration for the main characters and elements like the magic mirror. Now let us return to innocence: Spessartraeuber Johannes Albert goes beatless for the first time over this 8 tracker. You may hear the rhythm of nature. Crystal clear bell sounds sit next to warm pads, bird song and even his own voice add to the peaceful piece. Heavenly strings approach guilt free piano sounds while blameless digital choirs whistle along. Music for dreams basically. File under New Age. Are you in?

Mannequin Records is elated to present for the first time on vinyl the reissue of Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici’s first video soundtrack, originally released in 1984 as an audiotape in less than one hundred copies. Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici (literally Mundane Mechanical Youth) or GMM was one of the most unclassifiable audiovisual experiences to emerge from Italy in the 1980s. Maurizio Dami a.k.a. Alexander Robotnick, a pivotal member of GMM, was responsible for the group’s music output.

Founded in 1984 by Antonio Glessi and Andrea Zingoni in Florence, GMM was an art collective whose production represents the quintessential expression of postmodern transmedia hybridity. GMM pioneered the genre of computer comics, created video installations, developed “multiple identity” performances, and was involved in fashion, media, and music productions, and later on produced cyberdelic environments, artificial reality projects, and proto-memes.

Alexander Robotnick’s first contribution to GMM was this soundtrack for the group’s eponymous first video, the animated version of a computer comics they coincidentally published on legendary Frigidaire magazine. Restored by Dami and reissued here for the first time by Mannequin Records, the composition was also split into two “suites” and released as an audiotape distributed by Materiali Sonori, also responsible for other releases by both Robotnick and GMM.

Determining in this work is Dami’s adoption of the alphaSyntauri, also known as the first affordable digital synth (priced less than $2000 when it was released in 1980), which was playable through its own software, “alphaPlus,” on the Apple II computer. The same computer was used by Glessi to “draw” the 3-bit strips scripted by Zingoni recounting the joyrides of the Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, three merciless cyborgs in black suit and sunglasses dividing their time between nightclubs, rapes and murders.

As Robotnick, Dami developed an innovative formula of Italo disco that was attractive to the dance floor yet at the same time highlighted the expressive properties of the instruments he used, notably Roland drum machines and Korg synthesizers. For the soundtrack of GMM’s videos and installations, he left aside the danceable synth rhythmics in favor of ambient sounds that produced rarefied atmospheres, psychological tensions, and enhanced states of consciousness.

Dami’s scores for GMM’s artworks could be associated with Italian avant-garde music of the 1970s and 1980s, ranging from composers who adopted electronics flirting with pop and songwriting to minimalist musicians exploring seriality and drones, including Franco Battiato, Roberto Cacciapaglia, Francesco Messina, and Riccardo Sinigaglia. Analogies could also be traced with the playful and humanizing approach to personal computers that characterizes the music output of Marcello Giombini and Doris Norton.

The futuristic escapism of minimal synth and ambient music’s psychological nature is infiltrated by drifting harmonics typical of new age, as if in search of a spiritual dimension of technology. Characteristic of the postmodern ethos of GMM Suite, in line with the humanizing approach to technology that is at the base of GMM’s computer comics, is the melancholic take at speculative dystopias in which human beings would find themselves increasingly trapped into identity crises: a true cyborg’s melodrama.

Fractal City, the latest Cubenx album is a collection of terrestrial jams and arachnean ambient ballads that are particularly apt for urban listening. If its predecessors cracked the musical codes in force and shone by the versatility of their references, this new opus offers its listener an intense and symbolic sound environment.


The raw material of Fractal City was first conceived as a series of sound patches, designed to run in parallel with Canadian digital artist Maotik's installation. Broadcasted in real-time by generative patches reacting to various external and non-human data, those musical excerpts have been rendered in hundreds of nuances and extended over infinite durations. This unusual approach confers to the recording of the finished album's outstanding immersive strength.

Recorded live on a single track over a short period of a few weeks, the nine compositions of Fractal City capture the obsessions of its author for postmodern urban landscapes, and the revelation of new perspectives on the city of Paris.

The opening piece `Ssarg´ seems to hide the figure of the Mexican ambient producer Jorge Reyes. Cubenx built a cocoon of energetic layers, a new home of the mystical kind harmoniously integrated in a flourishing rainforest ecosystem.

`Transect ´refers to the urban development model of the same name, which is based on a division of the city into autonomous "fractal" zones. It also echoes the concept of "metro polarities" which considers the city as a mosaic of social groups. "By cycling in the evening with a friend, we could get away from the city centre to the suburbs of Paris. The contrasts are striking. You move from chic districts to bedroom communities, from industrial zones to improvised caravan camps. But there is a kind of energy in this heterogeneity that pushes you to always pedal further."

A few miles away, it would look like Art and urbanism have tried to level the cultural and social discrepancies of the outskirts of Paris. "Architectural sites like the Arcades of Bofill are splendid. There are completely extravagant projects, which seem to emerge from nowhere."
These buildings with ambitious aesthetics off the beaten tourist track, deteriorate over time and often remain far from the expectations of the local population. A feeling of nostalgic beauty is particularly perceptible on the slowest and most introspective ballads of the album as 'Urban Decay', 'Hagel' or 'Axe Majeur'. The producer leaves nonetheless no room for melancholic emptiness. "Every time, I have the impression that urban culture is taking its rights back and that young people appropriate the places in one way or another."

Just like `Transect', ` Quantified' and `Fractal City' present themselves as mirrors of a daily urban life in constant motion. All three are empowered by an overheated factory, which dispatches hypnotic beats and burst of analogue compressors with a clinical precision and direct them straight away to the reptilian areas of their listener's brains.

The sequencing leaves however space and time to take breath and makes way for aerial sonic excursions of spiritual and enlightened nature. On `Human Dilemma', Cubenx shows some concerns to opening the Pandora's box of transhumanist theories. While a long cosmic wave gives the listener a feeling of perfect fullness, a dizzying guitar distortion cast doubts on long term outlooks. `Smash Other' on the other way alternates gentle dissonances over an ocean of white noise and concludes the album on ethereal note.

With ´Fractal City", Cubenx eludes his irreconcilable love for shoegaze pop song and techno to concentrate exclusively on the production of mutant experimental materials. The result is an uncanny musical object, rich in image and sensation. Cubenx give us a guiding framework, enthralling enough to engage the listener to a tour of town. But he leaves it to the sole listeners to design their own projection of the city.