Suche:ill peach

Here's the thing about ill peach: this band exists because they are too weird to not exist. The seed of ill peach was first planted in the recording studios of New York City where Pat Morrissey and Jess Corazza were working together as professional songwriters, collaborating with artists like Icona Pop, SZA, Weezer, Pharrell, Big Freedia, and others. Then came the day they were offered their own publishing deal. Cool, right? Well, about that: "Everyone kept saying, 'The stuff that you're writing is slightly too left-of-center-weirdo stuff," remembers Morrissey. "Why don't you start your own project?" Thus ill peach, a pop band with a punk streak and a taste for both the rotten and the sweet, with an approach to making music that goes something like: "Do you want to pick up a guitar and do you want to be on this water jug and we'll record it on the iPhone and create some weird drum pattern?" Following a series of well-received EPs on their own Pop Can Records (a record label and artist collective Morrissey and close collaborator Jesse Schuster run with friends), a digital single for Hardly Art's 15th anniversary series, and some colorful music videos that crystallized the band's visual aesthetic along with their sound, ill peach's "weirdo stuff" comes to fruition on first full-length THIS IS NOT AN EXIT: a collection of anthemic songs built out of bright pop and gritty experimental elements (Morrissey names the sculptural use of distortion on the final albums by Low as an inspiration), punctuated with hooky choruses ready to be screamed along to in the safety of your own bedroom or with a bunch of friends at one of ill peach's intense live shows. If ill peach first blossomed in New York, it took quarantine in Los Angeles for the project to ripen. The end of the world turned out to be what ill peach needed to get real with themselves. "It helped us creatively to zone in and removed us from the industry side of things to where we could just be like: this is our new identity, let's jump with both feet." THIS IS NOT AN EXIT's title is a reflection of something Corazza realized during a period of personal and familial crises "I kept walking into buildings and I'd try to exit somewhere and the sign would be like, 'This is not an exit,'" she says. "It just felt like a metaphor for a hopeful thing-don't give up yet." This combination of hope and anxiety is all over THIS IS NOT AN EXIT, reflected in a sonic palette (Alternative! Electronica! Indie! Radio pop! Coldplay!) as eclectic as it is unpretentious. Ultimately, THIS IS NOT AN EXIT is a record about healing, a process often spoken about in New Age-y terms but one that in reality can be really confusing and, yes, weird. But it is the beautiful strangeness of being alive that ill peach capture so well on THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.

Toronto-based producer and DJ Ciel is renowned for a style of dancefloor material that’s as heady as it is visceral. The Xi’an-born artist’s ascendant profile has seen her cutting- edge and club-ready EPs released on UK labels Peach Discs and Coastal Haze, as well as Stateside imprints Spectral Sound and Mister Saturday Night.

As a member of the renowned collective Discwoman and the creator of femme-forward party Work in Progress Ciel’s thoughtful narratives are clear, running in parallel to the perception-altering sounds that are consistently woven deeply into her wide-ranging sets, beloved mixes and inventive collaborations. Now the Parallel Minds label co- founder is crystallising her imaginative and omnivorous sound with her !K7 Records debut, ORLANDO.

Written during her emergence from an uncharacteristic bout of writers’ block, the three original tracks of Orlando chart a return to the musical self, spurred along by a cinephile’s embrace of film, a love of classic literature, and a curiosity for the oddest corners of popular culture. “SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE” might share a name with the episodic series, but is rather a nuanced critique of the modern rite of union, moving through structured chapters, and mirroring the un-static nature of longtime love.Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s radical novel, and its superphysical protagonist, “ORLANDO” considers the cult literary figure who lived from the renaissance to the modern age, and embodies both sides of the sex binary.

The thrown sounds and aural illusions of “EL CALIFA” create the effect of a beckoning, beguiling psychedelic experience. To complete the EP, Ali Berger, Ciel’s recent collaborator on the Jacktone Records’ release Damn Skippy! repurposes the mind-bending flourishes of “El Califa” into a noodly and spacious deep house production, replete with pillowy, gauzy pads.

'Songs and Bodies' is best described as hypnagogic post-rock, an impressionistic blur of dissociated riffs, jazzy rhythms and half-heard voices that casts a beguiling digital silhouette of '90s indie music. The album began as a personal experiment, a question that emerged as Piotr Kurek cast his mind back to the era that birthed bands like Gastr del Sol, Bark Psychosis, Labradford and The Sea and Cake. Curious how this music might sound in today’s cultural climate, he started recording sketches at home on guitar and keyboard, applying the same advanced processing, editing and manipulation techniques that had nourished his last run of albums. Early on, he brought in drummer Mateusz Rychlicki and bassist Wojciech Traczyk, layering their performances into the evolving material. These ideas might have remained in that unvarnished state had Unsound not suggested a live performance of the work in October 2024. Spurred by the invitation, Kurek hardened his resolve, finishing a crumpled, uncanny set of half-songs that extend the chimerical sonic universe of the jazz-inspired 'Smartwoods' and its baroque predecessor 'Peach Blossom'.

Not an exercise in nostalgia, 'Songs and Bodies' is an examination of the '90s and '00s experimental rock canon that isolates its humanity as the world stares down a new technological dawn. At a glance, Kurek's songs are remarkably organic, diaphanous guitar-led meditations embellished with era-specific organ and electric piano vamps, cryptic vocal utterances and dusty drums, but it's all an illusion. Listen a little closer and the wrinkles appear—the robotic, garbled articulations, awkward tempo fluctuations and charming hiccups.

Kurek distills these vulnerabilities and blemishes to present a deeply personal but relatable abstraction of familiar sounds and gestures. It's the closest the composer has come to old-fashioned songwriting, but the end result is the same: an invitation to look beyond the frosted glass of an increasingly digital existence.

Exklusive Vinyl-Sammlung mit Demos, Skizzen und Outtakes vom neuen Album "Season Of The Peach" von Black Lips. Mit einem Feature von King Khan sowie alternativen Versionen und Mixen und exklusiven Songs aus den Sessions. Gleichzeitig mit ihrem richtigem neuen Album "Season Of The Peach" wird die Outtakes-Sammlung "Bebop Armageddon (Detours & Offcuts From Season Of The Peach)" veröffentlicht, ein wildes, limitiertes Kompendium: Demos, alternativen Versionen und klingende Missgeschicke der jüngsten Sessions zum neuen Album, für echte Fans auf Vinyl gebannt. Wenn "Season Of The Peach" eine farbenfrohe Halluzination ist - teils Garagenrock-Fantasie, teils verbranntes Americana-Land - dann ist "Bebop Armageddon" sein zerfetzter, magnetischer Schatten. Diese 14 Tracks nehmen einen orientierungslosen Weg durch dasselbe Terrain und bieten mutierte Skizzen, wunderschöne Trümmer und freakige Umwege, die vor rohem Charme und chaotischer Erfindungsgabe nur so strotzen. Es gibt alternative Mixe (,Kassandra"), Demoversionen (,Judas Pig", ,Zulu Saints") und schwindelerregende Neuinterpretationen wie ,The Illusion Pt. 1 (dream mix)". Das Exklusive ,Colt 44" (mit King Khan) rattert wie ein Güterzug, der zu entgleisen droht, während ,Satan" und ,Back To Kiev" gleichermaßen versengten Psych, Saloon-Gospel und gespenstische Front-Porch-Melodien bieten. Alle Tracks wurden auf Analogband im Sound At Manor Studio von Oakley Munson in den Catskills aufgenommen. Bebop Armageddon fängt den Geist der Sessions in roher, ungekünstelter Form ein. Keine sauberen Linien. Keine Wiederholungen. Kein Glanz. Das ist das Chaos unter der polierten Oberfläche des Mutteralbums - die Black Lips, die sich nicht benehmen wollten. Limitiertes klassisch schwarzes Vinyl (1000 Stück weltweit) mit DLC dabei.

Die Black Lips sind mit einer 40-minütigen Rock'n'Roll-Odyssee quer durch die Genres zurück, bei der Garagenrock auf New-Wave-Pop trifft und verärgerter Country sich die Hand mit epischen Western-Soundtracks gibt. Das 14-Track-Album fängt die Energie und den Geist der frühen Black Lips ein und geht gleichzeitig neue Wege beim Songwriting. Das Album ist ein musikalisches Karussell, eine Trip mit straßengeschundenen Geschichten aus der Schattenseite eines lichtlosen Amerikas. Die Rahmung bildet "The Illusion", pt.I und II: eine Suche nach Hoffnung, Angst und Hass in einer Bar, die immer wieder von einem Gefühl der Resignation durchkreuzt wird: ,you reach for the sky / but it's an illusion". An anderer Stelle spielt sich "Wild One" wie ein Morricone-Taumel durch einen weiteren Tag in der Hölle ab. Ein Mantra für verkatertes, himmelschreiendes Klagelied zum Lob des Wilden im Herzen. "Tippy Tongue" zeigt, wie Black Lips den Soul der 60er-Jahre-Girlgroups aufgreifen, wie Shangri-Las oder Ronettes, die von Jayne/Wayne County infiltriert wurden, und ist eine Hommage an Buddha Records. "Kassandra" hat einen sonntäglichen Gitarrensound, der sich wie The Chocolate Watchband mit Zappa am Gesang durch immer wiederkehrende Salven schlängelt. "Zulu Saints" ist ein beschwingter Country-Hupf, ein Gute-Laune-Stück mit Bravour, gespickt mit Cole in einer ungläubigen Radio-Telefon-Show, der nach schwarzäugigen Erbsen sucht und an den Spielautomaten groß gewinnt. Für die Aufnahmen verschanzten sie sich in der idyllischen Umgebung von Schlagzeuger Oakleys neuem Sound At Manor Studio in den Catskills (das erste Album, das dort aufgenommen wurde, seit Oakley das Studio 2020 baute). In dieser idyllischen Umgebung entzog sich die Band dem Stadtleben und nahm ihre Musik analog auf Band auf - Teil ihres Bestrebens, Spontaneität zu leben und die Energie eines Live-Konzerts der Black Lips auf Platte einzufangen. Gelungen! "Simply masters in their field" NME" - Limitiertes, cremefarbenes Vinyl mit DLC sowie CD im Digisleeve

Toy Tonics Music Berlin presents "Para Mytho Disco". The 2nd "Kapote" album of label founder and creative director Mathias Modica.
Keyboarder, DJ, producer, music nerd, graphic designer, multi-instrumentalist, sub-culture impressario and artist (formerly known as Munk of Gomma records.)

Kapote & Toy Tonics
In the last years Kapote was in the spotlight mainly for building the Toy Tonics label with his friends. Developing a platform for new positive quality dance music with a human touch. Toy Tonics is the opposite of the dark, druggy Techno and Trance sounds of the last years.
The warm inclusive music of Toy Tonics represents a new vibe that a young generation of diverse, stylish and culturally intersted generation of dancers loves now. Kapote's Toy Tonics became the key label for that vibe. (In 2024 Toy Tonics made 150 Toy Tonics events in 18 countries. With more than 150.000 people dancing. 90 millions streams on their music.)
Toy Tonics is more than a music label: It's a audio - visual universe. A community, almost a movement.
Based on a new positive attitude and aesthetic diversity. Mixing musicianship with DJ culture, analogue music with electronic, ideas from the past with sounds from now. To create something new. Connecting dance music with graphic design, art and underground fashion.
Kapote and his gang release vinyl, posters, shirts, art fanzines and make exhibitions and partys.

Toy Tonics started in Berlin as a underground niche project. But now became the key label of the new house, wild style disco and organic dance music scene.
Probably one of Berlin's biggest electronic music phenomena along with Keinemusik and Live from Earth.

It went fast: 2020 Kapote's crew started to make small parties in Berlin's off spaces. The "Toy Tonics Jams". The parties became "talk of the town", and Berlin clubs like Griesmühle and Panorama Bar invited the crew. Then international clubs and festival called. Toy Tonics were invited to SONAR (playing the mainstage with Kaytranada and DJ Tennis), KALA festival, Montreux Jazz festival.
Now TT has a residency at Panorama Bar Berlin and sold out events in Europe leading clubs like Phonox in London, Rex Club in Paris, Tunnel in Milan.
Toy Tonics now is the reference brand of a new generation of music loving dancers. Similar to Gomma records, Kapote's former label (2003 - 2015) that was one of the key labels of the "indie dance" scene of the Y2K years (along with DFA and Output Records).

Kapote created a multi-cultural movement with graphic designers, photographers, illustrators from the Berlin scene.
They publish the Toy Tonics Pocket Poster magazine, posters and design shirts. They organize the Toy Tonics Pop Up Galleries mixing music and art. In underground venues in Berlin and in new gallery spaces and museums around Europe.
Toy Tonics has been invited by Palais de Tokio museum in Paris, Triennale Museum Berlin, Design week Milano to create events.
The new Kapote album
The 12 tracks have a very own style. Based on dance music, but going much further. "Para Mytho Disco' is a futuristic mix of sounds. It's far away from the dark monotone techno and trance music from Kapote's hometown Berlin. Instead, he creates warm friendly atmospheres full of sonic colours and little musical surprises.
Kapote's knowlege of music history and his backround as a jazz piano student and son of classic music composer is clearly inside this music. Before turning into a DJ and electronic music producer he has been playing in bands since he was 13 years old.
The album is full of emotional chord progressions played by Kapote on various keyboards. Sometimes reminding music from the past, without being retro at all. The basslines and melodies are inspired by jazz fusion from the 1970ies. And he programmed syncopated grooves that come from afro-american dance music. There are influences from Japanese electronic music (Yellow Magic Orchestra), from 1980s Synthwave and from 1990s electronica (like Squarepusher and Luke Vibert).

Kapote plays keys, bass, flutes and percussions, he plays synth solos and sings on a few tracks. The complexity of the arrangements makes this music never boring. Lot of melodies and solos that catch the listener. Colourful soundscapes that make you want to listen or dance to this album more, and discover details also after you heard it several times.

Kapote background

Before starting Toy Tonics, Kapote used to run a label called Gomma. He produced four albums under the name Munk and music for other artists.
He produced music with Peaches, Franz Ferdinand founder Nick McCarthy, with New York street art legend The Rammellzee, Italian actress Asia Argento, the first three albums of WhoMadeWho and worked with LCD Soundsystem (listen to "Kick out the chairs", the Munk song with James Murphy )
In those "Gomma days" Kapote aka Munk was also one of the main DJs for VICE magazine parties and made music for art projects and fashion brands (Margiela, Prada, Colette).
In 2015 he stopped Munk and Gomma and started Toy Tonics. He found young producers and helped to develop their sound (Coeo, Cody Currie, Gee Lane, Barbara Boeing, Sam Ruffillo). Later he founded the sublabel Kryptox to release music by Berlin based bands that make new forms of jazz or neo classical sounds.

Under the name Kapote Mathias didnt release much:
Only his Kapote debut album "What it is" (2019) and an EP called "Electric Slide" (2022) and a collabo EP with Italian producer Sam Ruffillo ("Robot Salsa").

An although his Munk and Kapote music was an underground phenomena his music has always been a favourite of many great people from the scene.
Supported by DJs like Harvey, Chromeo, Moodymann, Jennifer Cardini, Gerd Janson, MYD, Andrew Weatherall to Blessed Madonna, Justice and Laurent Garnier… to name just a few.

From 2019 to 2023 Lindsay Reamer worked as a field scientist. With a guitar and a bag of books in tow, she would leave her home in Philadelphia for the postcard scenes of the American landscape to gather data on visitation in National Parks. She counted cars and RVs, surveyed visitors, and made a temporary home for a few weeks at a time wherever she landed. All the while, she collected her own observations like specimens and slowly weaved the songs that would form her debut full-length, `Natural Science.' Recorded throughout 2023 by Lucas Knapp, `Natural Science' paints with a full spectrum. Humor rubs elbows with heartbreak. Acoustic guitars brush up against synthesizers, cradling Reamer as she sings about the American Chestnut tree extinction, employee gossip at a Day's Inn, fishing beside a power plant, turf grass farms, and waking up next to day-old take-out. The indifferent beauty of nature is held up next to the everyday as Reamer does her very best to find clues for navigating the latter by musing upon both. Following the release of her self-produced EP `Lucky' (Dear Life Records) in 2021, Reamer assembled a band with musicians from Philadelphia's vibrant music community and began working her once solo-acoustic songs into full band arrangements. After a brief flirtation with dance music which led to 2022's viral single "Touch Tank," Reamer settled into a sound that lies somewhere in the folkrock-pop matrix, explored with the humor and lightness of songwriters like Sheryl Crow or Melanie. Reamer reflects: "When I heard the songs with the band, I knew it was time to make the record. It felt like something I had been working towards my whole life. I grew up around musicians but I never thought I was good enough to be in a band or even to make my own music. My grandmother Joan gave me voice lessons after school, my mom was an opera singer, and my dad a guitar player. But it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized I could do it. It didn't matter if I could shred on the guitar or something. It was like some illusion shattered." Reamer is a sincere storyteller. The self-doubt and heartbreak expressed in songs like "Spring Song," "Sugar," or "Red Flowers" give way to the triumphant moments of self-acceptance and love in "Lucky," "Necessary," and "Figs and Peaches." `Natural Science' chronicles a path to confidence, an honest reflection of someone with the capacity to hold a deep well of emotion who also makes sure to not take it all too seriously. "Gardens on the land / Castles on the beaches / I trust my hand and / Pluck my figs and peaches," Reamer sings, as she works to reconcile the strange difficulty we have at finding happiness despite the obvious beauty all around us.

Jackson Ryland comes in focused and ecstatic with his first vinyl release under his technoid alias JR2K. Jackson is based in Washington DC as one-half of both Superabundance and Rush Plus. He’s recently released on Peach Discs and Pleasant Life, showcasing his knack for presenting energy as a delicacy. JR2K “Walking Backward” is another illustrious highlight in the savvy DC producer’s already-accomplished underground career. Played on Hör Radio by Kush Jones and supported by Peach, Ciel, Clarisa Kimskii, Ryan Elliott, CMD, Davis Galvin, livwutang, Furtive, Golden Medusa, Lychee, Miley Serious, and Jialing!

The A side opens up whooshy and hard with “ExoGeni Approach”. This illustrates perfectly what I love about Jackson’s style(s)...it sounds like the sickest mid-90s techno track, full of energy and movement while taking in the atmosphere with repose. After the rollercoaster intro, the acidic up-ticks, lush synth layering, and perfectly crunchy closed-hats sink your ass straight through the dance-floor to tumbling free-for-all in the green-screen collage of your daydreams. Wake up…A2 “Call Back” splashes you with a glass of refreshing water…you still got hours at the party, and you’re coming up on some healthE shit…time to get back to that business of dancing your soles and soul away to this driving monorail of euphoric acidic techno. Choo choo choose your own dance destiny, baby!

Opaque pink vinyl LP. For fans of: Tirzah, Caroline Polachek, Erika de Casier, Oklou, Smerz. Between the ages of 2 and 18, Cora Gilroy-Ware lived in a haunted place. On the outside, this small edge of Connecticut coastline was a quintessential New England town. Yet beneath its quaint surface was a netherworld that got steadily darker over the course of those sixteen years. From a serious drug problem to environmental pollution leading to deadly illnesses, frequent suicides and an above average number of fatal accidents, something about this place was cursed. Amid this world Cora was an outsider, someone who preferred pop and RnB to the music of her peers, who mostly subscribed to the dregs of a Deadhead culture that was more nihilistic than utopian. Still, she found herself on weekends drinking in the woods with the rest of them, playing along until it was time to leave. Christmas breaks and summer months were spent across the Atlantic in a completely antithetical environment. In London, the city of her birth, Cora spent her teen years taking the bus home at dawn after raves under the railroad arches, or riding the tube to her cousin’s house in Camden. For a long time, Cora’s life was composed of these two strands—ghostly East Coast suburbia and inner-city London—which she was forced to fold in and out of one another like a two-strand French braid. She quickly learned to adapt and be whoever the particular moment demanded. Her outsider status was intensified by the fact that, being of mixed Afro-Caribbean and European descent, her family didn’t look like the others in Connecticut. In the 2000s, this meant Cora had to contend with a deeply ingrained kind of folk-racism, both conscious and unconsciously expressed. Nobody talked about these things back then, and she internalized a lot of shame. The ability to shape-shift became integral to Cora’s artistic practice. Her survival mechanism at school was to carve out her own worlds through visual art and dance. Music was less of a creative outlet than a way of life, something like a form of religion for her family, who all played instruments and saw music as the form to which all art aspires. She studied violin and learned enough guitar chords to write her first songs. Cora always wanted to be a performer, but, having moved around constantly, craved stability and independence. Eager to make her own way in the world, she began to write about painting and sculpture, which eventually led to time spent working in Naples, Italy and a day job teaching the History of Art at university level. It wasn’t until 2018 that Cora first shared her first songs with the wider world. Having collaborated and played live with Jam City (Jack Latham, who has co-produced each of her releases), she finally embarked on a solo career, which for her felt inevitable, only a matter of time. Following four acclaimed EPs—Toxic Femininity (2018), Lashes in a Landfill (2019), Dreamcatcher (2020) and Maiden No More (2021), this year will see the release of her debut album The Golden Ass. For her artist name she chose, “Fauness”: a play on the Latin faunus, a woodland god with the body of a man and the horns, ears, and legs of a goat. The feminine equivalent—fauness—is a modern invention, made up by rococo sculptors in 18th century France. Cora was drawn to this pseudonym because of its temporal layers and amalgamation of beauty and beast, which, for her, captures something of her complex personal story. an utterly individual voice in underground pop music" - The FADER // "a sparkling sweet pop ride" – NYLON // “It is hard to write a perfect pop song. It’s even harder to make it look as easy as London artist Fauness” - GUARDIAN GUIDE // Tracks 01. Lonely 02. Mystery 03. Peaches 04. Hours 05. Siena 06. Grape & Grain 07. Laura 08. High 09. Cinnamon 10. Girl In The Moon

Chris Imler likes to play drums standing up. He‘s the dandy with the killer offbeat, or, as one major German newspaper once put it, the "Grand Seigneur of the Berlin Underground". He has been making his mark on countless Berlin musical affairs since long before the fall of the Wall, with The Golden Showers, Peaches, Oum Shatt, Driver &Driver, Die Türen, Jens Friebe, to name but a few. He has also been perfoming across Europe as a solo artist for the past decade.

In "Operation Schönheit" (German for "Operation Beauty"), he has recorded his most, well, beautiful album to date. But Benedikt Frey's warm production subverts its own beauty with a multitude of clanking and ingling synth sounds, making the work very much about the cosmetic surgery it performs on itself. It's all in the tradition of the more experimental and electronic side of post-punk in which Imler and his unique groove are rooted. It doesn't take insider knowledge of Berlin's post-punk underground to realise that that Imler groove consists of rhythm that sings, vocals that dance and a look that fits, as illustrated by "Disappoint Me", his latest video: https://youtu.be/YeVJ75ljjB8

Elsewhere - such as in "Movies" - the rhythm sings, less electronically reduced, into the acoustics of an old, high-ceilinged Berlin apartment; metal clatters, a zither trembles and Imler plays with the metronome. Sometimes he moves ahead of time, sometimes trails behind it. He always manages to be in his very own groove, which carries everything along. And this is precisely the essence of the Imler rhythm, which lends itself to being applied to the very rhythm of life: Stretch and compress your time and loop it according to your own groove! Optimise nothing but feel everything! And dance to it! Even when contemplating everyday information overload, as Imler's high-speed mumbling suggests in the hectic yet smooth opening track "Temperature".

But being the ultimate night owl he is, Imler manages to make even the odd bout of paranoia seem like a good thing: like some kind of krauty, groovy B-horror-soundtrack-inflected high-pressure environment, "Whip Me" is a cross between Conrad Schnitzler and Bauhaus. In the title track, whose lyrics were written together with Jens Friebe, he intones: "You want to be something greater / You break your leg / When it heals again / You break it again" and sounds like the most gleeful fatalist you can imagine. Because in his city, one can still lose oneself better than anywhere else - a night easily becomes a whole universe that can be traversed, marvelled at and played with, and one might find one's old self again only when hearing "church bells" and "small birds singing". At least that's how Imler illustrates it in "Emptiness full of stars", and it seems likely that those "stars" are the human companions of the Berlin night in question.

And so once again Imler becomes Berlin's most important cultural ambassador: that scene of the eternally, and somehow successfully, failing creatures of the night, once the envy of the international postmodern bohème, has, despite many claims to the contrary, not been completely "optimised away", and its attitude to life is perfectly summed up in Imler's groove. And, of course, his look. "Schau Hin" (German for "Look!"), he sings in the track of the same name, masterfully dubbed out with the help of Melbourne's Leo James.

Quite right! Look - and listen.

Yours, Johannes von Weizsäcker (The Chap)

Black Truffle is pleased to present Sylva Sylvarum, an epic new work from Ora Clementi, the collaborative project of crys cole and James Rushford. Primarily conceived and recorded over several months together in Melbourne, Sylva Sylvarum is a stunning step forward from the mumbled, creaking sound world of the duo’s debut, Cover You Will Softer Me (Penultimate Press, 2014). From the opening ‘Peach of Immortality’, which takes an unpredictable journey from layers of chiming bells, vocal harmonies and lush synth pads to a desolate landscape of half-animal, half-digital wooshes and cries, it is immediately clear that cole and Rushford are working here with an entirely unique sound palette. Throughout the record’s four sides, we hear a large array of carefully detailed synthesizer sounds (many of them recorded at the remarkable Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio), sparse drum machine hits, wind instruments and field recordings of animals, often with a twistedly late 80s/early 90s flavour that at various points calls up New Age references, Robert Ashley’s later operas or the thinned-out textures of early digital GRM.

Threaded through this distinctive array of sounds are the two musicians’ voices, sometimes singing, sometimes speaking through varying degrees of manipulation. A guiding thread through the pair’s collaboration, beginning with their initial experiments with lip-readings, the presence of these two voices – cole’s crisp and sibilant, Rushford’s rich and low – reinforces the sense that the music is immersed in itself, less performed by two people than occurring between them. On Sylva Sylvarum, these voices first come to the forefront on the third piece, ‘Dialogue Between a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller and a Genoese Sea Captain’, where in unison they intone fragments of a description of an imaginary space taken from a 17th century utopian text. The two voices resurface periodically thereafter, most stunningly in the unexpected turn into cushiony dream pop on ‘Magic Mountain’. At other points, the subtle manipulation of pitch and intonation in the close-miked vocal performances filters the recitations through a fog of abstraction that climaxes with the almost incomprehensible alternating syllables of the side-long closer ‘Forest of Materials’. Like the album’s title, these textual elements are drawn from various literary descriptions of utopias, a theme that also informed the pair’s musical approach. Far from anything dryly illustrative, utopia figures into Sylva Sylvarum as an invitation to inhabit otherworldly spaces that, like the empirical details that proliferate in these literary utopias, are grounded in mundane reality but shot through with the eldritch. Admirably framed by the abstracted digital topographies of Sabrina Ratté’s artwork, the uncanny sweep of the album’s fifteen pieces is expansive enough to take in stretches of crackling austerity, warped microtonal keyboard etudes and moments of stunning beauty, the latter most strikingly when cole and Rushford are joined by Callum G’Froerer on trumpet and Joe O’Connor on trombone for a series of dream-like moments moving from growling overtones to poignant lyricism.

Presented in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with stunning artwork by Sabrina Ratté and pressed on mint green vinyl. Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Berlin.

Pixey grew up in the sleepy but picturesque village Parbold, Lancashire before moving to Liverpool for school and remaining there to this day. Now signed to Chess Club - a label famed for breaking new talent, where recent exciting signings include AlfieTempleman and Phoebe Green, and past successes include Jungle, Wolf Alice and Easy Life - Pixey is making more waves than ever before. ‘Just Move’ drew attention from BBC Radio 1 DJs Jack Saunders (who made Pixey one of his Next Wave artists) and Huw Stephens amongst many other admirers like Radio X’s John Kennedy who added the band to the X-Posure playlist at the station in October. Pixey has also featured as the cover artist of Spotify’s Indie Brandneu (GER) and Peach editorial playlists, and wasamongst the artists named in major annual tips lists, the Dork HYPE List and the NME 100.



New single ‘Electric Dream’ - with its accompanying video by Thomas Davies - combines cavernous drum machines and dreamy pop melodies with a signature dance stomp. Speaking about new single, Pixey explains: “‘Electric Dream’ was originally written as a piano ballad but after finishing the lyrics I felt the song worked as a dance track. I wrote it to make sense ofbeing locked in with nothing to rely on but technology. The verses are all of my anxieties that come with that - like trying to simulate humanity digitally and what kind of a future that would be - but the choruses are about the imperfections of real life that technology and AI can’t give us.”



Debut EP Free To Live In Colour was written, recorded and produced in Pixey’s bedroom in Liverpool - with additional production added by frequent Gorillaz and Jamie T collaborator James Dring - and draws inspiration from genres like hardcore breakbeat and





dream pop. Pixey says: “I wanted a collection of tracks which gave a quick snapshot into me and my brain - where I’m from, where I want to be and what I’m thinking about. I hope people can take something meaningful from it or simply have a dance.”



Pixey first discovered music as a toddler - she remembers not even being able to walk yet but desperate to sing and dance to Queen - before discovering the likes of Kate Bush, Björk, and George Harrison, whose classic songwriting struck a chord with her in her youth. The catalyst for Pixey’s musical coming of age however, was a near fatal viral illness suffered in early 2016 which hospitalised her, she says: “When I thought I was going to die I thought of all the things I wish I’d done and music was the first thing I thought of. As soon as I started recovering I started learning to record and produce.” She taught herself Ableton production software before mastering guitar and eventually drums and bass after her previous (and current) boyfriend(s) left their instruments lying around to prove she could learn it quicker and play it better.



Once able to carve out her own sound, Pixey turned to The Verve, The Prodigy and De La Soul for sonic inspiration, adding: “I particularly like the idea of using samples/making my own riffs sound like samples which was heavily inspired by the De La Soul album 3 Feet High and Rising. Starting out initially though Grimes was a huge catalyst when I realized she wrote, recorded &produced herself.” Her prolific and unusual songwriting style stems from an original riff or beat, with further layers added as she records and produces, and lyrics being added last - the process taking only a day or two.



With Free To Live In Colour and a whole arsenal of further material being readied on her new label home, Chess Club, Pixey is primed for big things in 2021 and beyond.

Onward and upwards - the Belgian dubstep imprint Overdue maintains its super-heated release schedule with full force. With a meticulously curated artist roster and continued support by the likes of Mixmag and other vital institutions, this release yet again perfectly aligns with their vision of subculture sound system music. Spearheaded by a positively prolific artist, their fourth record features Teffa on the controls. Following up on some massive 12" releases on crucial labels such as White Peach Records and Foundation Audio, the up and coming artist furthers his status as a versatile and highly capable producer with three tracks of unadulterated sound system pressure - including a weighty collaboration with Chad Dubz.

Arming the record, "Shell It" heads straight into the matter at hand, precision engineered weaponry clocking in at 140 BPM. Drums like mountains, effortlessly heaving immense amounts of low-end, smoothly embedded on silky pad swells. Fusing old-school elements with the present like few others, the lively arrangement does the rest to keep the crowd aflame without end. Music with an attitude - rewinds assured.

Fasten your seatbelts as the record kicks into overdrive once again with "Sludge" as faint police sirens and reverberate into oblivion only for it to implode into an instant dubstep classic. Driven by its ridiculously effective and minimal instrumentation, the underground unravels itself in sonic form. Spacious pressure wave emissions, especially primed for the dance.

Stepping up to the title track, "Illegal" tops off the 12" most beautifully - packed with Grime and Breaks influences and mesmeric melodies. As unshackled 808's pound away alongside a murderous set of percussions, the electronic soundscape treads through hypnotic harmonies and dance-inducing groove - Teffa signature style at it's finest.