Cerca:human nature

Following the compass of an entrancing debut, Flore Laurentienne's Volume II presents another palette of rich orchestral sound, where changing forces of water inspire metaphorical markers that navigate passages of life and loss. Mathieu David Gagnon resumes his voyage into environment and emotion with Volume II, drawing inspiration from the rivers and rugged wilderness of the composer's native Quebec. In his return as Flore Laurentienne - the namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora - Gagnon assembles vivid melodic motifs and delicate modulation with a vast string ensemble to emulate the tides of human experience. Listeners of Volume I will recognise Gagnon's signature approach towards reworking and reframing an emblematic melody or concept across a series of works in Volume II, a process he likens to that of a painter creating multiple sketches of the same view. Continued from the first album, the enigmatic "Fleuve" series is conjured to evoke the multiple personalities of the great St. Lawrence River, and the "Navigation" works ("III" and "IV") wade through dappled progressions and expansive streams of string, the latter of which harbors the gentle meanderings of improvised clarinet. In the world of Flore Laurentienne, complexity emerges from simplicity as the composer roams familiar environments in constant flux. Gagnon extracts beauty through repetition and constraint, utilizing the writing style of counterpoint for which one of his greatest musical inspirations, Johann Sebastian Bach, is renowned. The lilting waves of "Canon" possess the eponymous formation of melodic 'leader and follower' motif, and magnify the softness of the album's eighteen string musicians into a force of full euphoric resonance. In Volume II, Gagnon continues his expansion of classical composition archetypes to meet a new realm of sonic romanticism. Thematic conventions of wandering the pastoral sublime become altered into glimmering refractions, relaying the emotional and kinetic power of natural energies. Volume II forms an estuary where streams of auditory microcosm reach a horizon of dynamic contrast, and reflect the parallel tenors of nature and humankind.

Wildly creative free-form songwriter Rachael Dadd is set to release
her brand new studio album, ‘Kaleidoscope’, via Memphis Industries.
The album follows 2019’s ‘Flux’, which was released to much
acclaim, and was the album she was touring when the pandemic
struck. Like so many people disconnected from their communities and
struggling through the lockdowns, Rachael Dadd turned inwards,
seeking escape through music and connection through songwriting,
and her hope is that when people listen to ‘Kaleidoscope’, “they will
feel held and find space to breathe, grieve and celebrate.”
“This album is a lot more honest and personal than ‘Flux’” she shares,
“but I feel the songs are universal as they are largely rooted in truth
and love. If I had to pick a favourite album it would be this one
because of the magical rekindling of human connection when me and
my band got back in a room together again. All that magic went into
these songs.”
Co-produced “intuitively, boldly, and playfully” by Rachael and Rob
Pemberton (The Staves, Emily Barker, Maja Lena), ‘Kaleidoscope’
includes musical collaborators such as Maja Lena (Low Chimes),
longtime collaborator Emma Gatrill (Willy Mason), Alex Heane (bass),
Charlotte West (synths), Alex Garden (strings) and ‘Flux’ producer
Marcus Hamblett (Villagers, James Holden, The Staves), giving the
record “just the right colour combination, just the right pattern of
shapes, plenty of space where needed and finally landing in a sound
world that feels fresh and open and true,” reflects Rachael.
Japanese aesthetics absorbed from her time spent living there are
subconsciously woven into Rachael’s songs. “I first stepped foot in
Tokyo in 2008, sparked by the adventure of such a rich and different
culture and later on I lived on a small island and experienced an
appealing and balanced way of life: the aesthetics, the art and the
traditions,” she recalls. “There was a lot of caring for each other, a lot
of gentleness, and a lot of simple living in harmony with nature. Japan
left its cultural mark on me and is now part of my inner world and I’m
sure this comes out with the words and music I write.”
“But overall,” Rachael explains, “this is an album of homecoming and
reconnecting to my own truth, to my community here, to the earthy
land that I love and to the sky that I know.”

Criminal Heart is not just another album from another Singer-Songwriter
According to Beth Nielsen-Chapman, "This is what killer songwriting sounds like"
Legendary guitarist Robben Ford describes it as "Absolutely beautiful."And Chris
Difford reckons it's the work of a "Fantastic and special singer-songwriter."This is
a 'coming of age' album from Hollie Rogers, who remains, by choice, completely
independent. Known already for the candid, confessional nature of her songs and
for live performances that make audiences laugh and cry, Hollie refers to the
album, which has been 5 years in the making, as her "baby." She says, "I'm not
having a human one. I'm proud to have nurtured this one instead; it's got a great
personality and there's absolutely no poop."
The album is the most impressive showcase to date of Hollie's songwriting
prowess, with each song framing insight into a cohesive story; one that reveals
itself more and more with each and every line of lyric. Love, lust and selfdiscovery are some of the key themes tightly bound together throughout, as an
added maturity reveals itself in the record's strong melodies, satisfying harmonic
structures, and hooky choruses. (Try listening to 'Sinner' or 'Love' without them
becoming earworms.)
Criminal Heart was produced at Masterlink Studios, Surrey - with a cast list of A
Grade players in the shape of Masterlink's House Band. Their CV's run like a
'who's who of music' - think Elton John to Herbie Hancock - and, much to Hollie's
particular delight… The Spice Girls. She admits, "Much as I may profess my
influences to be exclusively the likes of Joan Armatrading and Joni Mitchell, I
can't deny there's probably a smidge of Spicefluence hidden in there somewhere.
Girl Power!"
But spice aside; this is no 90s pop record. Indeed, US guitar legend Robben Ford
and UK chart- topper Jamie Lawson make guest appearances, as does a track
produced by 4- time Grammy- Nominated James McMillan. All serving to add
some particularly tasteful icing to a not- inconsiderable cake. (Or more likely, a
pasty - since Hollie is from Penzance, Cornwall. It's no coincidence that her name
rhymes with a famous Pirate Ship.)

"After embarking on her solo journey with the release of her enchanting first solo album, Tales From Six Feet Under (2021), former Delain frontwoman and songwriter CHARLOTTE WESSELS is now about to unveil her second full length album in two years, Tales From Six Feet Under Vol II, to be released on October 7, 2022 via Napalm Records. As on its predecessor, instruments and vocals were performed or programmed and produced by Wessels herself in her very own Six Feet Under Studio, fueled by her tight-knit Patreon community. On that platform, she releases a new song every month, and Tales Vol. II is a collection of the second year of this endeavor. On the new album, Wessels’ styles range from melancholic alt pop to synth-infused rock and connects atmospheric elements with harder sounds, crossing genre boundaries with ease. The album sets off with the captivating synth-flavored track “Venus Rising”, luring into CHARLOTTE WESSELS’ world of sound, immediately showcasing the multifaceted nature of her music as it’s followed by “Human To Ruin”. The song starts with a sweet melody that breaks into a propelling metal track, where calmer parts alter with powerful break outs. Wessels releases her power on other commanding tracks like “The Phantom Touch” and “Good Dog”, while on “The Final Roadtrip”, she presents the full range of her vocal prowess atop carefully balanced electronic beats and indie soundscapes. Her softer, poetic side is shown on the intimate “Against All Odds” – a gentle ballad featuring calm vocals and an acoustic guitar strummed delicately by Timo Somers. “Toxic” comes with an obscure, captivating whispering sound that turns into a strong sonic wall, as the album then fades out with the honest atmospheric gems “I Forget” with cello performance by Elianne Anemaat and “Utopia”. This eclectic wealth of songs proves Wessels’ exceptional ability to express the most sincere feelings and emotions within her art and her distinct intuition for the combination of seemingly different genres. Tales From Six Feet Under Vol II is an enchanting portent of CHARLOTTE WESSELS’ further multifaceted endeavors."

A huge, booming sound prevails across these ten songs, riddled with hooks and accessible in its own odd way: you might catch shards of WIPERS,INSTITUTE"Philadelphia death rock/dungeon punk band Poison Ruïn consolidate their two EPs into one ten-song, self-titled album. Brained, fleshed, and recorded by Mac Kennedy, this effort is one of a personal nature. The sonic nature of the album has a human looseness, apparent like a cassette tape warbling from being wound and rewound. At times the songs sound thin and brittle, as though they are breaking apart simply by being played. The lyrics walk the same path and describe a world of cosmic horrors and environmental disaster. With their soft, eerie, medieval-hall introductions, each song transports the listener to a world of runes and swords, but staves off dorkiness with the relevance of a chewy post-punk center. Rife with sweetly stark guitar hooks and drums that flail like a death march, this self-titled LP gives off black metal at first glance. On further inspection, there is a gradation of inspirations ranging from pond-hopping blues guitar solos, heavy-handed punk drumming, gothic ambiance, and progressive song structures."

TRACKLIST: 1.Carrion 2.Crucifix 3.Demon Wind 4.Sacorsanct 5.Fog of War 6.Paladin's Wrath 7.Doppelganger 8.Morning Star 9.Exiles/ Hell Hounds

Joke Lanz and Sudden Infant once again return in their razor-sharp trio setting whereby the absurdist nature that Joke’s work is already cut with is reconfigured in a gnarled and beefy punk-fucked contorted rock setting. Short bursts of angular flex are heavily propelled by depth-charge rhythms, wry lyrical musings on modern living, and sensibilities hatched from years of experience in the worlds of sound art, abstract music, industrialised junk-noise and related areas have manifested in the perfect follow up to 2018’s Buddhist Nihilism album on Harbinger Sound. Aided by Christian Weber on bass and Alexandre Babel on drums, Joke lays on a battery of electronics, loops, field recordings and samples to complement mostly semi-spoken vocals that appear like they’ve been swept from the overflowing gutters of a shopping centre into a huge ball of malaise that can only be laughed at as world leaders look on perplexed. Exactly as the title suggests, 'Lunatic Asylum' depicts a world in absolute disarray as the seams binding it together slowly fall apart to reveal jesters whose best attempts to glue everything back in place are built on bigger lies more transparent than ever. Meanwhile, citizens of the developed world turn on each other for the stupidest of reasons or grow fatter with their descent into an ignorance nourished by half-baked cultural nuggets pre-packaged and sold as great and awe-inspiring work. And everything has to be recorded, photographed and shared as brain cells are decimated by false ideals, propaganda, exaggerated lifestyles and a huge tub of popcorn swimming in indiscernible yellow gloop. Such are the snapshots that resonate as Lunatic Asylum takes some well-aimed swipes at the human condition of the 21st Century. Featuring a fantastic guest appearance by Franz Treichler (The Young Gods) on ' Il y a des Enfants', each of the 12 songs that constitute Lunatic Asylum are bold, heavy, playful and rife with surprising twists and turns Joke’s mostly English splatter-poetry helps guide into a space that’s about as accessible as the outer reaches of rock can get. In a perfect world, this is the stuff even daytime airwaves should be pregnant with but, since the world is presently tripping over its own feet more so than ever, we will have to suffice with wherever this can nudge with the help of Fourth Dimension Records. One day, hopefully, more will catch up. The CD version of Lunatic Asylum features two exclusive bonus tracks. It was released in April 2022. TRACKLIST 1/Good Morning! 2/Head 3/I Ghore Es Gloeggli 4/Mood Swings 5/Damage Control 6/Happiness to Go 7/Pain is a Pain 8/Il y a des Enfants 9/The Lived Body 10/Ah-Ah-Ah 1921 11/Mika the Dog 12/Tuba Manifesto

Garden Gaia is a part of Pantha du Prince’s ongoing exploration into the theme of ‘humans as nature’, a theme previously explored on his records Elements of Light (recorded with The Bell Laboratory) and 2020’s Conference of Trees.

Pantha du Prince on Garden Gaia: “There are scientists who say that we humans are ocean that’s been folded together. My music is about raising consciousness, about describing the reality of life and the lost paradise through the means of music. It’s about entering a free space and developing a maximum degree of openness and sensitivity to our bodies – to our mental states and the atmosphere that surrounds us. It’s about mindfulness and a high level of awareness towards what’s happening around and within us. I’ve poured all of these experiences into Garden Gaia as music. And that’s to be taken in the literal sense of ‘pouring,’ since we belong to a flowing process on this planet. A tree also flows into the air, just as it’s connected to other trees beneath the ground through currents of communication. Our lungs flow into our bodies. And as embryos, we were flowing beings. The question is: to what extent can we adult humans continue to flow?”

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'

Quandary is a work of electronic music that wants to balance between opposites - nature and technology, human agency and artificial thinking, ritual and machinery. That’s how quandaries emerge, as an impossible choice between two extremes. But music isn’t binary thinking and allows the exploration of obscure connections. Underground, a growing mycelium intersects and communicates with a fiber optic backbone: on the surface, the curtains open, and the quandary may begin to dissolve.

Produced in Berlin between 2019 and 2021, the album originates from open jams, which were then deconstructed through heavy editing - and finally recomposed, sometimes challenging the original spirit.

Bob Meanza's oblique approach to music production encompasses the creative textures of guitarist Alex Baboian, and is enriched by the vocal appearances of Bianca Guitton. A small orchestra of three that already implies roots in Germany, Italy, USA, Armenia and France - each musician carrying him/herself the «quandary» of having at least two homes. But again, this unexpected network can bring precious fruits to the surface.

Vessels promise an escape from responsibilities towards the landscape, they facilitate our avoidance of conscientiously feeling our attachment to the mainland. The visual nothingness of deep water and clean horizons fools the brain and delivers a treacherous feeling of independence.

We ignore the truths expressed by landscapes, so we mould them into urban projects for our strange desires. We clean up the irrationalities by which nature constructs itself. Then we look up to the skies, where the abstractions we have to draw in our minds should reside and inspire us.

We peer into the various shades of blue above the waters, the emptiness guarantees possibilities of our abstractions becoming realities. The apathetic stare into neat, straight horizons transforms our ancestral landscape into dirt and danger, when looking back to it.

To be on a ship under quarantine, is an upside down experience, for the promised escape has turned into a forced paralysis. The Lima flag (? - ? ?, in morse code), presented on the outer sleeve of this record, indirectly demands of all passengers to stay aboard and contemplate their escape from the land they now desire to return to.

These four piano pieces could be considered as a classical sonata (allegroadagio-scherzo-rondo). In a recital they are accompanied by four video pieces by artist Karl Van Welden. We picked the videos out of his extensive archive, choosing images intuitively while listening to the piano music. The theme of ships relating to quarantine thus came unannounced but of course, we were in the middle of the pandemic at the time.

Solastalgia was already waiting as a title for the new album before march 2020. I first came across the word in Underland, a book by Robert Macfarlane (2019). He defines the word as "The unhappiness of people whose landscapes are being transformed about them by forces beyond their control". These forces and this unhappiness are, I believe, what constitutes the modern human. Solastalgia, about the music We haven't found them yet, the words to talk to each other about the worrying signs of climate change. Feeling worried when walking on autumn leaves in the beginning of August should be completely normal. But how do we communicate about it? We don't want to be just the next hysterical doomer.

With this music I try to focus on the climate pain itself, gently inviting the listener to investigate their latent feelings of unease and growing concerns about the environment. As in real life, we circumvent the real issues because they are just too big, there are no words, no expressions yet.

This album tries, in four different attempts, to carve out a path towards communicating about a deeper pain that eventually will connect us all. My general method is to start with a comforting melody, full of fake nostalgia, which, after changing gear to autodestruct mode, morphs into a painful question mark.

The first part sets off with an idyllic melody, accompanied by repeated notes, as a far, muted echo of an alarm. The melody starts to explain itself painfully into a dissonant whirlwind in the high register, sounding not unlike Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit bravura. In the second piece a warm Beatles like melody (And I love her) gets confronted with the weird hippie mantra of a later Lennon song War is over, if you want it. Sentences get reduced to syllables and result in lonely notes that crash and shiver under the burden of too much meaning. Like Shostakovich's latest work, the Sonata for viola and piano.

The descending melody of Bach's Erbarme dich, Mein Gott is echoed in the upper and lower voicings of the third piece, juxtaposed to a typical, threatening Ennio Morricone Western dotted rhythm accompaniment. This rhythm eventually evolves into citing the 1972 Captain Beefheart early ecological warning song Blabber and Smoke (there's a big pane/pain in your window, it's gonna hang you all,... dangle you all). Towards the middle of the piece, the music explodes and the three layers get dispersed all over the keyboard in a virtuosic maelstrom towards another painful question mark. The bitter answer is going back to business with a barely noticeable citation of the first notes of the RZA's Liquid Swords album.

The final piece is some kind of mantra, the same 7/4 pulse all throughout the piece. The dampers of all A's and B's on the keyboard are released by the middle pedal, thus sustaining an ever present resonance. Melodic cells alternate in shifting quantifications with small, bell like percussive cluster playing. While composing this piece an image crept up: walking out of the church on Sunday morning, tolling bells enthusiastically moderating the churchgoers' small talk in the local dialect. Apparently I have tried to evoke this kind of conversation, but injecting it with fictitious alarming conversation topics, the contemporary.

Frederik Croene (August '22)

Gazelle Twin, Lali Puna, This Mortal Coil, Slow Walkers, Atlas Sound, Bowery Electric, Broadcast Press Release: Snakeskin is an album of visionary electronic dream pop, shapeshifting above ambient and industrial undercurrents. It is moody, unsettling, luminous – the culmination of a decade of collaboration and friendship between Lebanese producer/musician/ engineer Fadi Tabbal and singer-songwriter Julia Sabra from Beirut-based indie trio Postcards. The duo began working on Snakeskin in the aftermath of the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, which killed at least 218 people, injured 7,000, and left over 300,000 people homeless. Indeed, Julia's home was destroyed by the explosion and her partner and bandmate Pascal badly injured. The first song that they wrote together afterwards was 'Roots', which closes out the album and was composed for the Ruptured-curated series The Drone Sessions in the fall of 2020. Snakeskin utilizes tape loops, synthesizers, vocals, and drum machines, combining Julia’s pop-inspired melodies and choral roots (an echo from her religious upbringing) with Fadi’s affinity for minimalism and musique concrète. The album seamlessly incorporates the melancholy electro-pop of 'All The Birds', the quiet menace of 'In Our Garden' (long-lost treasures, ancient lies / another buried paradise), and the beat-driven 'Signs'. The title track sums up their frame of mind, beginning as a lullaby and evolving into a glittering tapestry of distortion and feedback. As the artists write, Snakeskin is a product of "the disappearance of life as we know it, and with it the decay of nature and living creatures. There is no rebirth, no renewal. It’s about what it means to feel at home in such a place." Some tracks were also inspired by events happening in the surrounding region, such as the invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan and the Palestinian uprising of May 2021 in Sheikh Jarrah - both events shedding light on relationships to home and land across the wider region. That such compelling art can emerge from unceasing tragedy may be the ultimate testament to human resilience and the pursuit of freedom and justice. "The moon speaks in tongues we can't discern / A plastic dove hangs from a cypress branch / Haven't you heard? / Nothing grows here anymore / The air is burnt / Nothing grows..." Highlights: – This is the second volume in the Corrosion Series, a collaborative effort by Beacon Sound and Ruptured, and the sixth collaboration between the two labels. – Fadi used samples of Julia's voice on his fifth solo album Subject to Potential Errors and Distortions (2020, Beacon Sound/Ruptured) – The Tunefork Studios team, led by Fadi, administered the Beirut Musician's Fund after the port explosion, as covered by Pitchfork, NME, and the Financial Times. – Julia's band Postcards released their third full-length album After The Fire, Before The End on Berlin label T3 Records in 2021 and are currently touring Europe. Credits: All music composed, performed and produced by Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal between November 2020 and December 2022. Lyrics by Julia Sabra. Drum samples by Pascal Semerdjian. Recorded by Fadi Tabbal, mixed by Sary Moussa and Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios, Beirut. Cover photo by Lujain Jo. Design by Josette 'ZOoz' Khalil. Mastered by Rashad Becker. Bios: Julia Sabra is a Lebanese musician, songwriter and composer. She co-founded acclaimed Lebanese dream-pop outfit Postcards in 2013 and is the band’s multi-instrumentalist, lead singer and lyricist. Postcards have released two EPs (2013, 2015) and three albums (2018, 2020, 2021) and have been regularly touring Europe and the Middle East since 2015. She has been the manager of Tunefork Studios since 2017. Lebanese musician, producer, and sound engineer Fadi Tabbal’s work consist of minimalist pieces ranging from ambient and electronic to drone and contemporary classical. He has released six solo albums and has collaborated with various musicians, artists and filmmakers through the years. Often referred to as “the hardest-working person in Lebanon’s alternative music scene”, Tabbal established Tunefork Studios, a collective of producers, engineers and musicians, which has helped shape Beirut's contemporary music scene since 2006.

"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.

A legendary indie audio artist blurring his lifelong attachments, from spontaneous composition (in the late 70's with John Zorn) to experimental rock (with Bongwater and other bands in the 80's) alongside his recent inquiries into the intricacies of ambient-folk songcraft (with his most recent solo LP, "And The Wind Blew It All Away"), Kramer continues to explore the possibilities of shaping naturally occuring aural landscapes into intoxicatingly affecting music. Sound and language - not just melody and ambient textures - has been his raw material for decades. He nowjuggles them more deftly than ever on his newest ambient opus. In the ten compositions that comprise this new LP, mournful at times yet mysteriouslylife-affirming and generous in their scope, Kramer sees films where there arenone, and composes his accompanying ambient soundtracks in a state of interrupted grace. Words, text, complete screenplays, character arcs, shooting scripts and storyboards swirl through his head as he puts his imagery to sound, and the results evoke a world in which moths, drawn to the bright flickering lightsof Cinema and the low humming lights of Dreams, in Kramer's own words, "...might never die". The LP's nature reveals an interior dialogue between musician and choice. Each piece represents Kramer's encounter with the blank canvas of silence that greets him as a composer. Embracing sounds as objects and instruments of Truth, the end result of his process is as much about what is absent and what has been removed or edited away than what is left in its wake as artifacts of emotion. These pieces are the Spring frost of lost imaginings, vanitas to broken connections, visions nearly unrecordable by the human eye. Kramer envisions a music that functions to stoptime, as an event that always plays in the present and never needs a past to give it a reference point. It is music that communicates in the most intimate way possible, as intricately and as deeply as the way it blossoms and shifts and evades categorizationwhen exposed to thin air. Drawn toward the light of a multitude of influences, we hear echoes of the feverishly frozen dreams of composers Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, Brian Eno and Arvo Part, melting alongside the surreal cinemas of David Lynch and The Brothers Quay, all parts converging to evoke a time and place that does not exist outside of the mind's eye of the listener. These ten works are fluid adventures in fathomless landscapes, emotions distilled and offered as a paintless painting without a physical home. Each individual composition is an offering to a future memory, a chalice to be filled with the listener's own reactions to them. As a whole, the ten pieces form an image of ten circling planets in an expanding galaxy that colors itself anew with each subsequent listen. Movement, grace, and Peace.

A partner album to the previous Miles release "Decoy," this album released in 1985 is also produced by Miles and loaded with the synths of Robert Irving. This LP has some surprising new looks at pop tunes by Micheal Jackson and Cyndi Lauper and also features the return of John McLaughlin on guitar, and a guest performance from Sting. This is the final installment of the prolific and brilliant collaboration between Miles and Columbia Records. Also featured on this album are Al Foster, Kenny Garret, and Daryl Jones.

New album from South London producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Wu-Lu.

Leader of the punk-rap awakening, Wu-Lu pulls inspiration from personal hardship and the underrepresented on his latest for Warp entitled 'LOGGERHEAD'. Miles Romans-Hopcraft based his artistic moniker on the Amharic word for water, “wu-ha”. True to his fluid sound and nature, he decided to change it to something that felt more liquid. He ended up with Wu-Lu, a name he has been using since 2015. His first record GINGA opened the floodgates to a career that would take him to various places, people, and genres. From breaking bones at skateparks as a teenager, to DJing as one of the original members of Touching Bass, and eventually getting signed to Warp in 2021.

As an artist, Wu-Lu seems concerned with feeling and communicating the full spectrum of human emotion. Throughout his varied discography, he touches on disparate themes and sounds, straddling a divide between blissed-out beats and grungy guitar dirges, and often mixing both into one amorphous, unclassifiable sound of his own.

On ‘'LOGGERHEAD'’, Wu-Lu hones his unique sound. On ‘Take Stage’, a despondent spoken word intro opens with sombre strings and underlying bows dragged delicately across them. Then the lights flicker to life on ‘Night Pill’, and the mosh pit with them - the bassline approaches like a hungry shark and the guitars snarl with a homemade 90s grunge energy. This grunge drawl and punk spirit is peppered with dry old-school drum sounds of classic hip-hop, with laid-back beat-oriented tracks are spread amongst those with intermittent growls, scratches, and shrieks. Sonic elements are constantly rearranged and juxtaposed throughout the album, like on ‘South’ where the fluctuating pitch of squealing guitars and screaming vocals is contrasted with the steady flow of Lex Amor.

Listening through the album you are constantly greeted with about-turns, and through the element of surprise and deft use of contrast 'LOGGERHEAD' sits at an exciting point in Wu-Lu’s genre-defying artistry.

Smokey Vinyl

Dynamic Reflection proudly presents a new vinyl release on their Limited Series (vinyl only) from a Saint Petersburg-based producer Aleksei Nikitin, better known as Nocow. In true Nocow's fashion, the album encapsulates an array of intertwined genres that goes beyond techno and results in a refreshing take on techno music.

Ambient drones, tribal undertones, UK garage influences and 90's aesthetics are among some of the impressions we've gotten from the project. On "ILES" he shows such a diverse spectrum of electronic music sub-genres is something that comes naturally for the artist, who is known for his versatility in music production. In the words of Nocow himself, this allows him to express his ideas to a higher degree of freedom.

The music on "ILES" serves as a language of subconscious that simultaneously brings out thoughtful reverie and the feeling of saudade. It is an emotional experience that connects the sense of nature's mysticism with the notion of human self, which allows for the listener's inner dialogue in a moment of reflection.

Nocow's music solidified him as a prominent artist within the contemporary techno scene and his new album is yet another proof of it. We are fascinated by the project and feel certain you will be mesmerized by the sonic world of "ILES" as well. We hope you enjoy this as much as we do.

Love,

Paul & Dave

Shrouded in mystery, abstracted by endearment and drenched in tone,
bigLOVE are set to make their presence known to the wider world on May
27 with their debut album, titled Crusaders of Joy, via Church Road
Records.Across the anonymous project’s four song inaugural release,
bigLOVE marries atmospheric sludge and themes of eternally
unconditional devotion in the name of all that is to be cherished in this
waking world of ours
bigLOVE establishes their vision of the genre on highlight tracks Harnessing the
Nectar from the Queen Bee and At One With - with both songs wielding Thouesque lead guitar lines and all the sonic weight of Alice In Chains’ doomier cuts.
Vocally, bigLOVE counterbalances the saccharine nature of their melodies with
corrosive and hymnal omnipotence.In an effort to eliminate unnecessary selfscrutiny and create instinctively, bigLOVE recorded Crusaders of Joy as it was
being written - with the release's final takes being recorded moments after each
part was finalised in the writing. Recorded between 2019 and 2020 before being
mastered by UK audio savant Lewis Johns at The Ranch, Crusaders of Joy
possesses a preternatural warmth in it’s production that beguiles as well as
engulfs. The debut full length is adroitly tied together thematically by Maria
Nemm’s (Holy Fawn, Slow Crush, Anthetic) album cover photography, adding
another dimension to bigLOVE’s enigma of obscurity and ubiquity.In the context
of the modern age paradox of instantaneous connection and spiritual disconnect,
Crusaders of Joy triumphs in it’s harnessing of love as philosophy, as it
spiritualizes sludge and doom metal’s sonic weight to transcendental heights.
Across the vast ocean of time, love remains at the core of all it is to be human.

"Animist Pools" was released July 1, 2016 in a cassette limited edition on Human Pitch records. Originally released as "Hippies Wearing Muzzles", pseudonym of Lee Evans. "A shifting center in a stream of rippling analog tones, the music of Hippies Wearing Muzzles is orchestrated to transfix, echoing sounds heard in nature with modular synthesizers and the powerful element of chance. Evoking the Fourth World Music of Jon Hassel or the kosmische innovations of Cluster, Animist Pools marks its composer, Lee Evans’ first full-length release for Human Pitch. Accompanied its popping, glyphic art design and video, the project’s hypnotic aptitude is heightened to full-effect. Citing his background in painting as a chief influence on his musical approach and thought process, Evans composes with a strong sense of space––each sound an event in a slowly expanding landscape, zooming out to reveal a world of scale in which depth and contrast take precedent over rhythm and melody. Embracing the generative compositional nature of working with the modular synthesizer, Evans himself is the final filter through which all sounds pass. The boundary between programmed repetition and human choice is subtle, but detectable, highlighting Evans’ careful, nuanced guidance of his auto-compositions. The result is ultimately an improvised structure––a living, breathing, musical creature, acting on a mixture of impulse and memory. Animist Pools is a functional body of music for everyday human applications, with the implied invitation to tune out and back in at one’s discretion. The cleanly organized musical space of Animist Pools encourages a tidying up of the mind. On a psychoacoustic level it is one, breathing life into the dusty corners of one’s headspace. Animist Pools is an immersive, meditative, and therapeutic experience."

'Hallival' is the long awaited debut album from Leeds based folk singer
and songwriter Iona Lane, Having found herself fascinated by folklore
and folk stories from across the UK 'Hallival' is inspired by natural
landscapes, scientific discoveries, equality, human relationships and the
supernatural, all tied together by a strong sense of place and a love for
being in wild places - creating something truly special.The name 'Hallival'
is taken after one of the mountains on the Isle of Rum, which inspired the
writing for the opening track 'Western Tidal Swell'
Karine Polwart and Julie Fowlis, amongst others, selected 'Western Tidal Swell' to
win Feis Rois'/NatureScots' In Tune With Nature competition in 2020.With Andy
Bell on production, Iona and her band ventured to Watercolour Music (Ardgour,
Highlands) for a week of recording in April 2020. The studio was chosen due to
it's stunning location - every day the team woke up to herds of deers guarding the
studio, ever changing weather and phenomenal views over to Ben Nevis 'Hallival'.
The lead single from the album 'Humankind', featuring Jenny Sturgeon on
backing vocals, was written from the depths of the Lake District in Wasdale just
before the first lockdown. Being the closing track on the album, it reflects on how
important humans are to each other and the kindness that we can bring
particularly whilst feeling isolated, a feeling that we all know too well after the
past couple of years.
'Schiehallion' was written after discovering the Schiehallion Experiment that was
carried out in 1774. During the experiment scientists from the Royal Society used
the shape and location of Schiehallion to calculate the mass of the Earth for the
first time. After a summer of calculations on the hill, the scientists and locals had
a party in a nearby bothy. The fiddler got so drunk that they burnt their violin and
the bothy to the ground. 'Schiehallion' features Lauren MacColl on fiddle and
Rachel Newton on harp.
Stemmed from being read 'Stone Girl Bone Girl, The Life of Mary Anning' by
Laurence Ann Holt as a child, Iona's song 'Mary Anning' focuses on the life of the
groundbreaking paleontologist who lived and worked in Lyme Regis in the 1800s.
Mary made vast contributions to the scientific world, however, due to her being a
woman she was unable to present her findings and would often end up selling
them to her male colleagues. Up until very recently Mary Anning has had little
credit for her work.
Having studied under the tuition of Nancy Kerr, Jim Moray and Stuart McCallum,
Iona has been praised throughout the scene for her delicate yet powerful vocals,
which have captivated audiences up and down the country.
Iona was chosen by Karine Polwart to receive the Taran Guitars Young Players
Bursary 2020. Since receiving the bursary luthier Rory Dowling, of Taran Guitars,
has designed and built a bespoke instrument for Iona's music.

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.

Historical power metal force CIVIL WAR enter their fourth battle with Invaders! Swedish historical modern power metal outfit CIVIL WAR fly the flags of international strife once again with their brand new, fourth album, Invaders, set for release on June 17, 2022 via Napalm Records. The band founded by former members of Sabaton returns with 10 new wartime anthems detailing harrowing stories of sorrow and tales of turbulent triumph from around the globe, as well as human nature itself. Invaders marks the band’s first album with masterful frontman Kelly Sundown Carpenter and formidable shredder Thobbe Englund (ex-Sabaton), and grips with riveting accounts ranging from Viking invasions and the greed of powerful nations to legendary Native American battles and magical Arthurian fantasy – all amid a profusion of enthrallingly dynamic vocals, epic soundscapes and impressive, technical instrumentals. The album starts off with the captivating “Oblivion”, inviting the listener into an apocalyptic world with its exotic, menacing sound, strong vocals and heavy guitar riffs. Packed with epic symphonic power, Invaders continues with the war anthem “Dead Man’s Glory”, telling a story of Irish resistance – fighting to preserve their way of life against a Viking invasion. The album rages on with the retelling of a legendary Native American victory at the Battle of the Wabash on the fast-paced “Invaders” and then settles into the pulsating, atmospheric “Heart of Darkness” before arriving at “Andersonville” – recounting the horrors of Confederate prisoner-of-war camp Andersonville Prison through the letters of a Union soldier to his wife. This song soars as a massive power ballad with heart-rending symphonics, choirs and emotive vocals. “Battle of Life” delivers the grand finale of Invaders as a pummeling, fiery power metal pinnacle, summoning listeners of all walks of life to persevere and call on inner strength in times of trouble. In keeping with the album’s Native American theme, the Western-inspired heavy metal battle cry “Custer’s Last Stand” sees its 10th anniversary re-recording and re-release as a bonus track, entrancing the listener with Carpenter’s passionate vocal delivery, searing guitar harmonics, keyboard fanfares and tribal drums. With Invaders, CIVIL WAR prove they’ve once again etched a position all their own in the annals of modern power and heavy metal while proving their deft storytelling skill and knack for engaging lyricism. Invaders is a must-listen! .

"The past 5 years we have taken our music all over the world: Europe, Asia, Africa besides our homeland Denmark, and even though we cannot speak with many of the people we meet, our music is a universal language that transcends borders. The meetings we have had (and continue to have) all over inspire us to create new music. But of course we are the composers of the music, so this is our representation of those meetings.

Our 3rd album is called AFROTROPISM. Tropism is a biological phenomenon that indicates growth of a plant in response to the environment; so when you see a plant turning for the sunlight, this is tropism. In other words, this is not so much about the plant's roots but more about how it reacts when it touches the air, feels sunlight or rain - in other words the outside world. So AFROTROPISM refers to the fact that we are drawn towards the African traditions, but we are "growing" our own music.

On our first two albums we have recorded extensively with African musicians, and AFROTROPISM is centered around The KutiMangoes (TKM) as a band. We are developing our artistic direction by going more in depth with how we can mix our inspirations with our own musical heritage. Our musical mission is (and has always been) to mix cultures and create our own sound.

With our background in jazz music, TKM counts virtuoso instrumentalists with a heartfelt intent and sound innovators with our horns, effect pedals, synthesizers, drums and percussion from all over the world. AFROTROPISM is a further and deeper development of our trademark bold sound that experiments with synthesizers, soundscapes and a bit of electronic effects without losing it's focus on groove, melody, atmosphere and musicianship."

The KutiMangoes, July 2019


About each track:

STRETCH TOWARDS THE SUN
This track opens up with a synthesizer groove that is inspired by the polyrhythmic grooves played by the balafon (a predecessor of the piano) from West Africa. Our rolling sequence could not be played on the balafon because of the key changes, but the basic idea comes from that instrument. Quick and light, we wanted to write a song where you can feel the sun coming out and feel the energy it's rays give. The combination of the programmed groove, the horn-arrangement, the huge percussion section and the live instruments makes for a sound that we have not heard before, and it illustrates what this album is all about (and what the track's title refers to): that we stretch towards the things that give us energy – and that although our roots are in Denmark, when we encounter a musical tradition as rich as in West Africa, it changes us and our music.

A SNAKE IS JUST A STRING
The first time we saw Mali-bluesman extraordinaire Vieux Farka Touré on stage was just after we had played at a huge festival in Burkina Faso, and we almost literally caught on fire. Their groove was so strong and insistent that we were mesmerized, and it inspired us to come up with the opening guitar part of this song. Basically a bluesy tune with some unusual chord changes and a crazy synthesizer solo by Johannes Buhl Andresen reminiscent of that fuzzy guitar-sound we love so much in the Mali blues. The title is an homage to the Nigerian writer Chinua Acheba, who in his masterpiece novel "Things Fall Apart" tells that in the village during the night, to ward off the fear of darkness, people would call dangerous animals by a different name: don't be afraid, a snake is just a string.

KEEP YOU SAFE
It is a basic human necessity to have a place where you can feel safe. But there are far too many people in our world that fear for their safety, their livelihood, their children, their relatives – and this is surely not a feeling that helps us to flourish as humans. With this song we are saying that we all need to make it a priority to help our fellow humans to feel safe. And of course, if our song can offer a feeling of safety and comfort for a short time to those who listen, we are truly thankful.

MONEY IS THE CURSE
This track is directly inspired by Fela Kuti's ability to create music that is both physical and political. Dance music with a serious message about our times. For the solo part we wanted a more melancholy, pensive feel (than the full-on baritone-trombone melody) and also wanted to experiment with some choppy, stuttering effects to make the horns sound desperate. Money is the curse because it can become the objective of our life; money is the curse because it changes the relationships we have with our fellow humans. Money is the curse.

THORNS TO FRUIT
This melody is inspired by the scales and developments of a traditional Bambara folk-song. We love the way these melodies constantly evolve with small developments and changes. We felt like an accompaniment that is really dry, sparse and earthy would fit well and then made a contrasting solo part. As a group we are interested in how to develop our improvisations together and create sonic landscapes that evoke a distinctive atmosphere – so here, we have no soloist, but a collection of synthesizer parts, saxophone lines and guitar-sounds that together create a dreamy and lush ambience.

SAND TO SOIL
We started out with a short ngoni riff played by our good friend and master musician Aboubacar Konaté. We then sampled it, built soundscapes and our own both meditative and pumping groove around it. We created a melody with both melancholy and joy, with afterthought and impulse and then the brilliant Aske Drasbæk added an emotive and blistering saxophone solo. The title refers to the contrasts in our humanism. As part of our human nature, we have a dark side that drives us (and each other) towards destruction – making the fertile soil into barren sand. The title is an encouragement to emphasize the opposite movement in our nature: to create life and help it flourish. We keep ourselves human by insisting that we must never forget this side of our nature no matter how tough, tiresome or trying it might be. Let's keep our focus on the light, the warmth, the positive energy – that can turn the cold stone into fertile ground.

After his contribution to the label’s 2nd Anniversary compilation, Justin K. Broadrick returns to KR3 with a 6-track solo EP as JK FLESH. One of the most legendary names in the British alternative music scene, with a career spanning three decades with various projects such as Godflesh, JK Flesh, Jesu, ZONAL and more, Broadrick has always been able to push the emotional boundaries that lie within us through sonic violence, and yet he strikes once again with this new release. VENEER OF TOLERANCE – is pure electronic power, brain-scratching metal techno. The album opens its dark doors with a rough intro; a driving speech that Justin himself proclaims to be a manifesto on the irregularity and unpredictability of life. From then onwards, the whole album assumes the appearance of a running horse. Heavy bass lines with raw resonances feel like an approaching earthquake… A brutal cerebral assault!

"bit by bit" is the first full-length release from Toronto-based singer-songwriter Evan J Cartwright. This self produced album from the go-to drummer/collaborator (The Weather Station, U.S. Girls, Brodie West) presents a highly singular songwriting vision that combines existential lyrics with masterful musicianship. Steeped in jazz melodicism, Cartwright’s trumpet-like phrasing mixed with contemporary composition presents an eclectic art song performed by an artist that could perhaps be best described as a post-modern Chet Baker. Deep poetic observations on love and time paint an affecting picture of an artist reflecting on life’s universal truths. Visual in nature, "bit by bit" places its audience within a world of musical leitmotifs extracted from field recordings of bells and birdsong. Collected during years of touring, these sounds evoke extant spaces beyond that which the music inhabits. The use of this source material in its unaltered form evokes the feeling of a technicolour European film at one moment and then, as the extrapolated melodies are meticulously translated into electronic tone bank sequences, a modernist setting the next. One carillon melody is used as the basis for a wealth of the album’s musical material before its origin is finally revealed by the chiming of bells in the last seconds of the album. The result is a fragment of space between the constructed world of the musical compositions and the candid world of documentation, inviting the listener to ponder whether those two worlds are distinct or whether the songs and music are not simply “field recordings” themselves. Throughout "bit by bit" Cartwright drops staggering revelations hiding in plain prose that often involve the contemplation of time. In I Don’t Know he states “if I only trusted time / then I would wish it all away” and nearing the album’s end he opens impossibly blue with the phrase “the impossible truth of time”, playfully inserting a pregnant pause before the word time. A drummer’s fixation, to be certain, the album’s recurring theme of time is eclipsed only by Cartwright’s contemplation of human relationships. Here he elaborates on some of the album’s subjects: “Many of the lyrics circle, and try to give a name to the illegible space between human beings. “i DON’t know” celebrates the fact that we will never truly understand what love is. Its message is one of assurance. It says that we can never really touch love, and that is ok. “and you’ve got nobuddy” refers to life’s great tragedy: that we are unable to read each others’ experiences, and in reaction to this, we separate ourselves.” The entirety of "bit by bit" is a continuous work. There is seldom a clear demarcation of where one piece ends and another begins and when this does occur, it is done crudely, as if someone is flipping through a series of broadcasted channels. At times words are sliced right out of their lines and replaced by pure tones. This is both a comical interpretation of censorship and a reminder that there are things in life that will forever remain unseen and illegible. In fact, this statement lies at the centre of the LP and although hidden beauty does reveal itself through repeated listenings, "bit by bit’s" eccentric world remains just out of reach — an imaginary second story room viewed from a crowded city street.

Zov Zov, a musical project formed by London-based duo Oliver Ho and Tommy Gillard, create a raw soundscape that is very appropriate for the era we are currently living in. The human race depends on destruction, the annihilation of our fellow man and the devastation of our environment, peace and coexistence is just a condition we experience between one war and the next. Songs of Blood And Earth is an EP based on experimentation and the development of intense textures. Blessed Are The Killers opens the A-side of the album with a minimalist first sequence involving only a kind of deep bursts and a tinkling sound that can remind us of hunger queues and the isolation suffered when the aggressor force sweeps over a vast territory. Musically, however, the track intensifies with heart-wrenching textures that hover above a haunting and disturbing vocal. On the next cut, The Maim, a constantly interrupting rhythmic structure reigns, which gives the feeling that at some point it will have a proper continuity, however, and although that continuity never comes, these pauses perfectly define the main idea which is that of the splitting of one or more body parts. The B-side of the EP is entirely religious in nature. Amen 2.5 is an updated version of the atrocities committed in the name of religion, a harsh sonic tale, in which a crushing roar subdues the listener to the point of collapsing his or her capacity for reasoning. The Holy Murder takes a more sinister turn, this time there is an incessant dominance with an unstoppable base that advances without changing its tempo or its form, in which everything that is built on it ends up yielding to its grandeur and ferocity. Godess Of The Hunt, the last track of the album, denotes an enormous cruelty, represented by the terrified screams of the victims who succumb to its exterminating atmosphere.

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.’

Light Green Marbled Vinyl
Naarm/Melbourne 4-piece screensaver is back with a double A-side 7-inch single just 6-months after delivering their 10-track debut album Expressions of Interest on Upset the Rhythm (UK) and Heavy Machinery (AU) to positive international response.
See praise for the record on Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, KEXP, and Post Trash. The album has also been a regular feature on Henry Rollin’s KCRW Santa Monica radio show.
The band return with two distinctly different tracks that extend upon the blend of post-punk, new wave and synth-punk on their debut.
Side A, Clean Current is a burst of high-energy: nervy guitars and groovy bass underpinned with krautrock drums and cosmic synth noise, overlayed with delay heavy vocals. Repeats is the flipside of the coin, a moody post-punk stomper, led by gritty sawtooth synth, chorus-soaked guitar, textural percussion and soaring vocals. Lyrically Clean Current spits out retorts aimed at the engulfing nature of anxiety whilst Repeats critiques the repetition of modern life, languishing human existence.

New album from South London producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Wu-Lu.

Leader of the punk-rap awakening, Wu-Lu pulls inspiration from personal hardship and the underrepresented on his latest for Warp entitled 'LOGGERHEAD'. Miles Romans-Hopcraft based his artistic moniker on the Amharic word for water, “wu-ha”. True to his fluid sound and nature, he decided to change it to something that felt more liquid. He ended up with Wu-Lu, a name he has been using since 2015. His first record GINGA opened the floodgates to a career that would take him to various places, people, and genres. From breaking bones at skateparks as a teenager, to DJing as one of the original members of Touching Bass, and eventually getting signed to Warp in 2021.

As an artist, Wu-Lu seems concerned with feeling and communicating the full spectrum of human emotion. Throughout his varied discography, he touches on disparate themes and sounds, straddling a divide between blissed-out beats and grungy guitar dirges, and often mixing both into one amorphous, unclassifiable sound of his own.

On ‘'LOGGERHEAD'’, Wu-Lu hones his unique sound. On ‘Take Stage’, a despondent spoken word intro opens with sombre strings and underlying bows dragged delicately across them. Then the lights flicker to life on ‘Night Pill’, and the mosh pit with them - the bassline approaches like a hungry shark and the guitars snarl with a homemade 90s grunge energy. This grunge drawl and punk spirit is peppered with dry old-school drum sounds of classic hip-hop, with laid-back beat-oriented tracks are spread amongst those with intermittent growls, scratches, and shrieks. Sonic elements are constantly rearranged and juxtaposed throughout the album, like on ‘South’ where the fluctuating pitch of squealing guitars and screaming vocals is contrasted with the steady flow of Lex Amor.

Listening through the album you are constantly greeted with about-turns, and through the element of surprise and deft use of contrast 'LOGGERHEAD' sits at an exciting point in Wu-Lu’s genre-defying artistry.

"The follow-up to 2019’s critically acclaimed Mint Condition—hailed by Rolling Stone as a “gorgeous reflection on finding peace amid upheaval”—True North took shape from a deeply collaborative process between Spence and producer Jordan Lehning (Rodney Crowell, Andrew Combs). The album features 12 brand new songs written or co-written by Spence that explore the full spectrum of the human experience: love, growth, grief, and the endless complexities of human nature.
"

Originally written by João Bosco and Aldir Blanc and released on Bosco's 1976 album Galos De Briga, "O Ronco da Cuica" is a samba/MPB masterpiece. In the song, the cuíca roars: roars in anger, roars from hunger and is told to stop, but it cannot - "it's a man thing" explains Bosco in the lyrics. Personifying the instrument in this way, "O Ronco da Cuica" points to something quite profound about the nature of human suffering and our primitive need for expression. On this brilliant reimagining, renowned bassist Dudu Lima teamed up with Joao Bosco himself, as well as Azymuth drummer Ivan 'Mamão' Conti, pianist Dudu Viana and percussionist Marcos Suzano. Ironically, this version contains no cuíca, instead it takes a more stripped back instrumentation, exploring the deep jazz potential of this roaring samba classic, to stunning effect. On the B-side is a beautiful duet between Dudu Lima and João Bosco: acoustic guitar and vocals, and fretless bass - together they take on "Imcompatibilidade De Gênios", also from Bosco's 1976 Galos De Briga album.

Clear Vinyl

Written and conceived by Stephan Crasneanscki, ‘LOVOTIC’ is a concept album by Soundwalk Collective, composed in collaboration with lauded actress and singer/songwriter Charlotte Gainsbourg. Featuring veteran techno stalwart AtomTM, rising singer/composer/performance artist Lyra Pramuk, celebrated actor Willem Dafoe, and writer/philosopher Paul B. Preciado, the album is released by the new Berlin-based Analogue Foundation.

Inspired by a relatively new field of research that seeks to explore and develop the possibilities of sexual and emotional relationships – and even love – between humans and robots, ‘LOVOTIC’ interrogates the impulses, ideas, and needs underlying this phenomenon. The project ventures into a future where sex, intimacy and desire are reformulated through the connection of humans, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

In an age of such hybrid entanglement with the machine, human identity requires the construction of new forms of intimacy, gender, and sexuality. At present, however, such technologies are primarily used to produce programs of limited sexual iterations that do not question the preformatted categories of gender and sexual orientation. In contrast, on ‘LOVOTIC’, Soundwalk Collective ask whether the future of sex and sexuality could instead be an exponentially expanding kaleidoscope. Where does the impulse of preference come from? What sets of words from our vocabulary can be communicated to the AI mind to generate a new identity for desire? Could the machine be another technology that brings us closer together?

Sonically ‘LOVOTIC’ is unidentifiable, artificial, and genuinely futuristic, occupying an amorphous androgynous netherworld at the borderlands between biotic and android. Traditional musical signposts are virtually non-existent, instead offering a mercurial, formless sound which mirrors the flourishing of gender fluidity it suggests could be on the horizon.

The production tangibly evokes the odd, rubbery textures of faux flesh, the slick virtual glide or glitchy mishaps of software, and the sleek shine of hardware. Gleaming sound design creates shard-like surfaces redolent of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Glass’, the slippery stretched sonics Gabor Lazar, and the unsettling dark ambience of TOWERS and Hallmark ‘87.

At turns intimate and inviting, with whispering-in-your-ears ASMR vocals evoking blissful, heightened sexual states, within ‘LOVOTIC’ there’s optimism, but also unease; As well as the positive, it implies the negative ramifications of technology. At points a synthetic siren’s call appears to lure the listener to a darker place, with audio malfunctions suggesting dystopian science. Voices morph from gentle to distorted – a glitch in the system causing the mask to slip, like virtual lizards – ‘They Live’ or ‘V’ (?), for the metaverse age.

Here, Charlotte Gainsbourg invokes a being of unknown identity – an artificial eve, the oracle and the portal – speaking from an unspecified time in the future. The voices of AtomTM, Lyra Pramuk and Willem Dafoe weave in and out of Charlotte’s, often overlapping, merging into one another, expressing the entity of a being that’s ephemeral and in constant flux, oscillating between the natural and artificial. The record’s other bonafide singer, Lyra Pramuk’s delivery alternates between spoken word, operatics and partially- unintelligible language.

A multi-media project, ‘LOVOTIC’ also features the work of writer, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado – a leading thinker in the study of gender and body politics. Paul contributes a post-apocalyptic, quasi scientific and fictional text, which adds further fantasy, artistic and intellectual depth, augmenting the listener’s experience. Like all the best Sci Fi, his words seem prescient, describing what could become a likely reality in the future. Paul performs his written texts on the opening and closing tracks of the album; ‘The Age Of Mutation’ (in Spanish) and ‘Primate Love’ (in English).

Soundwalk Collective is an experimental sound collective helmed by Stephan Crasneanscki in collaboration with Simone Merli, which operates in a continuously rotating constellation of sound artists and musicians. The Collective’s approach to composition combines anthropology, ethnography, non-linear narrative, psycho- geography, the observation of nature, and explorations in recording and synthesis.

Micheal “Eyedea” Larsen and Gregory “DJ Abilities” Keltgen first met in the mid-90s and soon began a working relationship that would play a prominent role in the burgeoning Indie-Rap movement of the time. After numerous successes across nearly every notable MC or DJ battle of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, including HBO’s Blaze Battle, the Rocksteady Anniversary, Scribble Jam, the DMC’s and more, they had already cemented their legacies both as individuals in the battle scene and as the dynamic duo, Eyedea & Abilities, for their live performances and showmanship. However, determined not to be dismissed as one-dimensional, they set out to prove they were to be taken just as seriously at writing and recording. Together, they developed a near symbiotic creative union that produced three albums—First Born; E&A; and By The Throat—before Eyedea tragically passed away in 2010, at the age of 28.

The release of their debut album, First Born, had revealed their talents to be much more versatile and expansive than previously expected. The boastful arrogance and punchlines that had become synonymous with battling were notably scarce on the album. Eyedea chose to tackle subjects that were more conceptual and philosophical in nature, focusing on matters of reality and altered states of perception while pushing his urgent, dense delivery into darker, more abstract terrain. Meanwhile, DJ Abilities was able to craft worlds of depth and emotion, pairing hauntingly suspenseful beats with meticulous turntablism. The resulting album was rich in ambition, ideas and humanity. First Born came at the forefront of an exciting new era of underground hip-hop, delivering messages that emphasized questions over answers, ambiguity over certainty, and self-expression over exploitation, to an audience that was eager to expand their horizons beyond the commercial programming and clichés of the time.

Cassandra Jenkins' An Overview on Phenomenal Nature emerged from the blue earlier this year. With pandemic unknowns and political upheaval leaving most at frayed ends, the New York-born musician’s assuring voice and expansive fresh take on songwriting created a much needed reflective space for listeners worldwide. As 2021 comes to a close, Jenkins revisits those flowing textures and refrains with (An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature, a collection of previously unreleased sonic sketches, initial run-throughs, demos, and sound recordings from the cutting room floor that provided the scaffolding for what became one of this year’s most critically acclaimed albums.

When Jenkins visited Josh Kaufman’s studio this summer, they opened up their original sessions to uncover the ideas that were shed in the creative process. The new collection, (An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature, isn’t merely a retrospective; it acts as a clear-eyed addendum as well as a compelling origin story, coming to life as a subconscious companion to the original album.

First takes of “New Bikini” and “Hailey” are born from opposite starting points; while “New Bikini” began as an airy alto meander, “Hailey”’s origins lie in an upbeat dance track. On “Crosshairs (Interlude),” Jenkins’ pitched vocal delivers a straight monotone, recasting the format as poetry with music highlighting her words, and “Ambiguous Norway (Instrumental)” lifts the ambient nature of the mournful song into glimmering waves. The demo version of “Michelangelo” contains alternate lyrics “I’m Michelangelo, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,” a lost contrast to the later verse where Jenkins’ likens herself to the sculptor. On “Hard Drive (Security Guard),” we join Jenkins as she listens to a passionate museum guard whose promised “overview” of the exhibit on view builds into a monologue of observations on art, politics, feminism and the human condition. This candid interaction evolved into the cornerstone and title of Jenkins’ album.

Before they decided to make an album together, Jenkins brought Kaufman a song called “American Spirits.”The dusky ballad takes us to the Texas plains via a voicemail from the payphone of a county jail (“Miss Cassandra”). Cassandra sings, “Time here burns through the sunsets / Like you and a pack of American Spirits” over warm instrumentation with a vocal delivery that reinforces Jenkins’ unwavering tenderness towards her subjects.

(An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature bookends Cassandra Jenkins' musical output this year with nuance, coloring in the corners, and giving us another window into her ever-expanding world of chance encounters, experiences, and sonic textures. They glimmer like the sun’s changing patterns on the wall as a new day gets going.

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”.

“I like it when music builds itself up in an organic fashion,” says Duncan Marquiss. “When it just seems to emerge and almost writes itself.”
This natural, intuitive and free flowing approach is evident all across the debut solo album from the multi-disciplinary artist. From tender yet sweeping acoustic moments to experimental electronic guitar manipulations, the album feels like a ceaselessly sprawling exploration of texture and tone. Despite veering into what sounds like electronic ambient soundscapes, the entire album is rooted in the guitars. “I enjoy trying to stretch the guitar as an instrument,” says Marquiss. “That reflects my playing style, always trying to make the guitar sound different, or create non-guitar like sounds.”
Marrying earthy, textural acoustic instrumentals that feel rooted in open landscapes, with those that capture the pulse and hum of a populated metropolis (Marquiss resides in Glasgow). The album was recorded in Aberdeenshire in Marquiss’ parents' garage. “Apart from the wind and the swallows nesting in the eaves there’s not many distractions around,” he says. This is a solo record that goes right to the very essence of Marquiss as an artist. The expansive yet intimate sounds he’s created here stem from the same peaceful isolation of where it all began.
There’s a cosmic touch tracing back to 1970s Germany (Michael Rother solo, Cluster, Harmonia, Popul Vuh soundtracks) that infiltrates much of the album, alongside some of its more pastoral textures, with Marquiss citing a wide range of listening habits. These include Bruce Langhorne's The Hired Hand, Jim O Rouke's Bad Timing, Arthur Russell and Laurie Spiegel.
Despite containing no lyrics, the album feels rooted in narrative and development. As the album unfolds the acoustic guitar becomes more prominent over the electric, almost as if nature is slowly taking back and growing over abandoned human-made structures. A record that, despite being experimental in tone and essence, retains a very human and natural touch throughout.

The Nonesuch debut of Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra), LIFE ON EARTH, is a departure for the Bronx-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter. Its eleven new “nature punk” tracks on the theme of survival are music for a world in flux – songs about thriving, not just surviving, while disaster is happening. Hurray for the Riff Raff tours North America this spring, beginning March 19 in Atlanta and continuing through April 20 in Nashville, with stops in Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, among others. International tour dates will be announced shortly.

For her eighth full-length album, Segarra (they/she) drew inspiration from The Clash, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Bad Bunny, and the author of Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown. Recorded during the pandemic, Life on Earth was produced by Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Bon Iver, Kevin Morby).

Life on Earth’s first single, ‘RHODODENDRON’, is about “finding rebellion in plant life. Being called by the natural world and seeing the life that surrounds you in a way you never have. A mind expansion. A psychedelic trip. A spiritual breakthrough. Learning to adapt, and being open to the wisdom of your landscape. Being called to fix things in your own backyard, your own community,” says Segarra.

Of the ‘Rhododendron’ video, which was directed by New Orleans-based artist Lucia Honey, Segarra says: “It is really far out and fun. I got this bodysuit that just looks like the inside of the human body. It looks like you’re skinless. It’s in a scene where I’m playing to an audience of plants. Just really absurd, but I put that suit on and I was like man, this feels really good. It feels like, ‘This is who I am. Let’s just take the skin off.’

“It reminds me a little bit of Kids in the Hall,” they continue. “With this ‘Rhododendron’ shoot, something clicked in me where I was like, ‘All I have to do is be myself.’ I had been thinking that I had to be something bigger than myself. I felt like I was just never quite making the mark and then something clicked where I was like, ‘I just gotta be me. I could do that. I could show up and be me. And if people don’t like it, then I don’t know what to fucking tell them.’ It was like a brain shift of, ‘Oh, this can be fun. It doesn’t have to be suffering.’ With so many videos and photo shoots before, it really felt like suffering. I felt so uncomfortable being perceived. I didn’t know who I was.”

Honey adds: “We wanted to create something surreal, playful, and saturated that indulged heavily in the aesthetic of the early ‘90s. Alynda and I had many overlapping visual and philosophical references which sparked the initial collaboration. We wanted to make this video an homage to Gregg Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse trilogy but as a nature documentary crossover. I came across Araki’s work as a queer teenager, and he’s always been a big inspiration. Sex, blood, punk rock, camp, etc.

“We live in a moment where the future is bleaker and more unknown than ever, so there becomes a deep comfort in nostalgia and reliving the past. Through our talks, I realised Alynda’s new album touches on many of these same subjects, but perhaps in reverse; running from a past that is always haunting you. Shifting into a more refined self/identity through confronting one’s trauma and baggage. It was easy to reach collaborative synergy for this video project because we’re both interested in tackling similar issues.”

Alynda Segarra was born and raised in the Bronx, which they left at the age of seventeen, running away from everything and everyone they knew, hopping freight trains or hitchhiking across the country in the company of a band of street urchins. Segarra moved to New Orleans in 2007 and formed two bands: Dead Man’s Street Orchestra and Hurray for the Riff Raff. In 2015, Segarra decamped to Nashville, then to New York, to make her most recent album, 2016’s critically praised The Navigator, an ambitious and fully realized concept album that was her quest to reclaim her Puerto Rican identity. Segarra’s previous records as Hurray for the Riff Raff are Crossing the Rubicon (EP, 2007), It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You (2008), Young Blood Blues (2010), Hurray for the Riff Raff (2011), Look Out Mama (2012), My Dearest Darkest Neighbor (2013), and Small Town Heroes (2014).

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

"When I was approached to participate in Monsterland I was immediately attracted to the idea of working on a series where horror, science fiction and gore could converge. I had never done music for a project like this before and the sole idea of venturing into some new playground immediately sparked my interest. And just after reading the first two episodes I realized I had to get involved in the project.

Several things connected with me deeply. I found in the stories elements that reminded me of the “magical realism” that I grew up with in Latin America through writers like Horacio Quiroga and Gabriel García Márquez. Also, the idea of tapping into a landscape in which fear and horror have a metaphysical quality connected to the psyche of the characters appealed to me.

Working with Juan Luquí was key in making this score. His capacity to deeply understand my vision and his masterful skills add another dimension to Monsterland. A land of monsters so human in nature, that in many instances seemed extremely and frighteningly familiar."

Composed by Gustavo Santaolalla
Artwork by Matt Ryan Tobin
Manufactured in Czech Republic