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Danielle Boutet’s P »Pièces« is a mysterious artifact of Quebecois marginalia, self-released in 1985. Moving from languid ennui to high drama, »Pièces« is a dreamy gestalt, an album that borders Chanson, spoken-word, jazz noir, and minimalism, conjured from the chasm between acoustic and electronic realms. »Pièces« allows us a window into the highly intimate songcraft and compositional skill of an artist who longed to linger not in the public eye, but in relation with others and the world around her.

Born in Quebec City, Boutet studied music at the University of Montreal, where she focused on composition and percussion, before becoming involved in Montreal’s feminist and lesbian art scene. Primarily written, performed, and recorded by Boutet, with voice, guitar work, and technical assistance by Sylvie Gagnon, Pièces was created during a paradigm shift in home recording. Originally composed for the piano, Boutet and Gagnon utilized a consumer-friendly Tascam 4-track Portastudio and versatile Yamaha DX-7, alongside guitar, bass, marimba, and the human voice, to expand and contemporize the original composition’s scope.

Inspired by prog rock and British poet and musician Anne Clark, »Pièces« translates Boutet’s influence by moving between sunny, wistful fairytale and dark, wintry dirge. Filled with longing marimba, vertiginous, startling synth pads, and folk guitar, each track on Pièces offers a wholly unique proposition. Some are modal and rife with the ethereal psychological tension of a sci-fi soundtrack, while others are more like entering a smoke-laced lounge, the entertainer embodying seduction.

With the sprechgesang of artists like Serge Gainsbourg, there is an intense intimacy to Boutet’s delivery, sometimes as if she is performing for an audience of one. As one lyric goes, translated to English from French: “Like holograms/ Images from a world/ That inhales souls/ And exudes drama.” Another song contains an excerpt from The Tao of Physics: “The eastern sages specify clearly that they do not identify an ordinary void, but rather, a void having an infinite creative potential.”

To English-language audiences, the album’s title, »Pièces«, might seem to simply refer to the eleven different pieces. The title can also, of course, refer to parts of a larger whole, but Boutet is keen to point out that there is also another meaning: In French, a pièce is a room. On the cover of the original cassette, Boutet is seen sitting on a chair, alone in an empty apartment, a cable snaking at her feet. Listening to »Pièces« is like entering eleven different rooms: whether a study encased in shadow, a greenhouse left to wither in an eternal frost, or a divine nave.

Boutet sold a few dozen copies around Montreal, a scene mostly occupied by the new wave explosion de rigueur, but the inclusion of Pièces in the 1987 issue of Ladyslipper—the North Carolina-based mail order catalog that championed women musicians of all calibers and careers—led to more exposure throughout North America. “In the catalog,” Boutet says, “they included it in the New Age section, but I was, and still am, aware that this album is relatively unclassifiable.”

Boutet would release one more album, titled Musiques Urbaines, before getting pulled in the direction of interdisciplinary art and theory. “Although I never stopped making music, I lost all interest in public diffusion or performance,” Boutet says. Despite her departure from performance and publicly releasing music, she left behind a strange and enthralling document of Montreal’s 1980s feminist fringe, an aural document of the historic moment when self-recorded music and its practical potential became a prismatic reality.

Danielle Boutet’s Pièces arrives February 16, 2024 as part of uncommon¢ (“uncommon sense”), an open-ended, serialized endeavor from Freedom to Spend that provides new meaning for rarefied recordings from music’s outermost fringe.

Originally released as a hand-numbered CD on New Year's Eve of 2004, Last Light captures Tor Lundvall 's hushed songcraft at its most ghostly and grayscale, stripped bare like branches bracing for winter. Initially conceived of as "a piano album with sparse electronics" (with the working title November), Lundvall's palette steadily expanded, incorporating synthesizer, samples, bass, metronomes, and his signature spectral vocals. A journal entry from the spring of 2002 proved formative to his evolving vision: "I remember watching the blueish-grey light shimmering outside and hearing distant sounds echoing far away, eventually sinking into silence and stillness." The album's 12 tracks are steeped in this sense of autumnal transience, of bearing witness to what fades. The music moves in whispered swells, between dirge, drift, and devotional. Synths chime like slow-tolling bells; percussion shuffles and shivers, icy and isolated; bass traces a low-lidded plod - it's a mode both austere and seductive, lulling the listener into its landscapes of deepening dusk. Lyrically, Lundvall's language skews observational and depressive ("through lace curtains / grey light falls / dark clouds gather / in my soul" ), with each song like a gauzy glimpse into a different tableau framing winter's descent: rust - colored leaves, frozen ponds, cold crescent moons. Lundvall has long considered Last Light a "personal favorite" in his discography, and it's easy to hear why. In texture, finesse, and pacing, it vividly evokes the rare mood of fragile, frosty pastoral noir depicted in his iconic oil paintings. His is an art of the half-seen and half-remembered, of fleeting figures, shapes and shadows, and gathering darkness. Of all that disappears, and the ghosts that never leave: "So I wait / as the years / slowly drain the magic and the light / and the girl / I never loved / haunts me through the dark roads of my life."

ME LOST ME led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent announces a new album RPG via Upset The Rhythm on 7th July, and is touring across the UK including support dates with Pigs x7. RPG (recorded in Blank Studios with Sam Grant of Pigs x7) is ME LOST ME’s fourth outing as a collective, having transitioned from an ambitious solo project in 2017, Jayne now regularly collaborating with acclaimed North-East jazz musicians Faye MacCalman and John Pope.
ME LOST ME delights in experimenting with songwriting and storytelling, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully weave together disparate genres, drawing influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music. Hauntological in part, RPG is concerned with tales and with time - are we running out of it? Does insomnia cause a time loop? Do the pressures of masculinity prevent progress? Jayne Dent asks these questions and more on RPG, her homage to worldbuilding and the story as an artform, calling back to those oral traditions around a campfire, as well as modern day video games - bringing folk music into the present day as she does so.
ME LOST ME presents sound reaching in opposite directions, straddling time towards the archaic and timeless traditions of folktales, and towards the possible and potential futures of pastoral Britain and the world at large. Part speculation, part reminiscence, what results on the new album RPG is music that sounds ultimately displaced and yet omnipresent, adjacent to a hapless Vonnegut hero whose life is scattered throughout time and history, but full of wonder and curiosity rather than fear.
On track “The Oldest Trees Hold The Earth”, we see time stretched out between the branches of impossibly old beings in the woods. This track was co-written in Aarhus, Denmark with fellow Newcastle folk musician (with Danish heritage) Ditte Elly. The pair wordlessly passed a sheet of paper between each other to write the lyrics, inspired by Højbjerg and Mosegård, the woods they were sitting in. “How long should I wait/Before the moss grows?/On my skin, on my outstretched arms,” the lyrics are sung in a round, the close harmonies delicate and detailed.

A central thesis of this album is the joy of creation, something which is paid homage to in the album’s final track, “Science And Art” (Not because we need it to last/just because we needed to make it - so we invented the words/this language). It is also reflected in the definition that Jayne gives for “folk” itself. She comments, “To me, folk is quite an expansive idea. I think of it as creative work that's often made ad-hoc, with things that are at hand and more often than not it's born of a DIY ethos. It is songs and stories of the people, as in the traditional sense, but also creative coding, game design etc. Whatever outlet someone has for their creative expression could be described as folk. It's the things we make because humans need to make things, and the stories we tell about ourselves and the world around us.”
Crucially, on latest album RPG, Dent expands her songwriting and looks towards the unreal locations of worldbuilding in video games for inspiration. She comments, “I think the main similarity is the importance of a song's setting/environment to inform its narrative and textures, I'm often most inspired when out walking in the natural landscape, in cities and travelling to places I've never been before - the environment I'm in really impacts the work I make. While writing this album, however, I found myself inspired by imaginary landscapes, those in video games, paintings, etc. I was writing stories into these unreal locations instead. Even the songs inspired by real places, like The Oldest Trees Hold the Earth, have a very surreal quality to them in the songs, like they're being warped and turned into something not of this world. I think that's the main difference for me in terms of the thematic content and inspiration behind this album - I've been getting more and more interested in balancing surreal and fantastical environmental elements with ordinary and everyday settings.”
RPG upends the concept of the eternal return - we may be in the midst of inevitable repetition, but we tell stories whilst awaiting the passage of time.
"Being familiar with, and a fan of Jayne's earlier work, it was great to get the opportunity to work with her on the production of her new record. I had in mind a sense of what the record might be, but what came of the sessions, led by the vision Jayne had for the record, totally exceeded my expectations. As far as albums go, it has a breadth of writing and a sonic depth that made it a truly brilliant record. Having Jayne join us on a leg of the Pigs x7 tour in April is going to be ace. The creative nature, the sincerity and bold strokes of ME LOST ME put it in that space outside of any genre pigeonholes, and between our two sets I imagine the audience is going to have a proper sonic bath..."
Sam Grant, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, 2023
“The music of Me Lost Me is beguiling, idiosyncratic and cinematic - or should that be video-game-omatic? This suite of songscapes often hits the sweet spot between ancient and modern with its masterful blend of stark folk, neon electronic burbling and unusual arrangements. Jayne's singing is refreshingly straightforward and nuanced - it's exquisite! - and perfectly punctures the nebulae of synths and brass which billow around the old wooden frames of the songs. Whilst listening I had images in my mind of what Northumberland might look like through the eyes of Simon Stalenhag - foggy moors, a robot looking across the sea to Lindisfarne, twinkling lights on metal towers.... that sort of thing. It's a really great album.”
Richard Dawson, 2023

Die-cut sleeve. In the fall of 2013 Bry Webb was putting the finishing touches on his second album Free Will. Released on May 20th 2014, Bry, with his newly assembled band The Providers, spent the following few years traversing North America playing clubs, festivals and storied stages such as Toronto’s Massey Hall. Nothing new for an artist who had spent the aughts in a constant state of motion with Constantines, a band who on average had performed one of every three nights on a stage somewhere in the world. In fact, running in parallel to Bry’s solo touring schedule was a reunion with his former Constantines’ bandmates to once again present their incendiary live show and celebrate the 11th anniversary reissue of the band’s Shine A Light. It is what happened as the decade wound down that seemed out of character for an artist who had spent close to 20 years immersed in the studio and on the stage: the music stopped altogether. Bry explains his feelings at that time, “I lost the musical plot about 5 years ago and stopped playing music entirely, sold instruments and recording equipment, and committed myself to the idea that I was absolutely done”. Webb dedicated himself to his ongoing work in community radio, months turned to years and musical life seemed to be all but gone from view. Now in an unexpected turnaround 10 years on from the recording of his last studio album, there is not only a return to the stage for Bry but also a new record. Primarily composed in a season of upheaval, Run With Me contains some of Bry’s rawest sentiments. Fresh and painfully present there is an immediacy one can hear as emotional walls collapse in real time. Bry explains the context of the album’s creation: “In early 2023 my personal life exploded. In the process of dealing with that, I started writing music again and started recording at home. Advised that I needed to figure out how to ask for, and accept, help from other people, I sent early recordings of songs to friends from twenty-five years of music making - many folks I hadn’t connected with in years - and asked if they’d contribute anything to the songs. People came through in ways that overwhelmed me to the point that I cried when I wrote out the list of players for the liner notes. I felt incredibly cared for. From Andy Magoffin, who recorded the first Constantines album in 1999, to members of the Cons, to my nieces Addy and Ella playing drums, and a doppler recording of my daughter’s heartbeat, the record is a document of my creative life, and the people who made it possible to make music again.” If the cover of Run With Me looks familiar, it is with full intent. The album’s technicolor marbling and die cut text serve to signal the inclusion of the album in a trilogy started with Bry’s first record Provider. Just as that album starts with the track Asa, this new one introduces itself with the instrumental Webb. The trilogy is now completed with his daughter's first, middle and last names represented as the first tracks on each of the three albums. While the LP’s package signals its place in the collection, and tracks such as Older Than The Dirt and What I Do revisit their predecessor’s familiar sonic starkness, Run With Me is the outlier of the trio. A number of new tracks forego the quietude of Provider and Free Will, clearly recalling the rallying rhythms of Constantines’ anthems. Thunder Bay (instrumental backing courtesy of The Harbourcoats circa 2009), with its insistent kick drum and wall of electrics, support one of Webb’s most indelible melodies, and the not so subtly psychedelic Modern Mind reveal an expansion of Webb’s palette. Perhaps the furthest afield is the contextual centerpiece of the album, Goodbye, where we not only hear a joyful voice that lay dormant for years, but hear it reclaim its power. Backed by Constantines’ Will Kidman, Doug MacGregor and Dallas Wehrle, Bry belts out “I’m through with all the rage, now watch the light pour out of me.” As with all of Bry’s work, Run With Me’s lyrics take their time to settle in. Songs of self-examination, reconfigured love ballads, and songs for those who work to help others. Songs of singing abound. It’s there in Older Than The Dirt’s second verse: "Logic to the last intention, logic in the way we kept holding on forever, singing as the floor- was swept”, ten thousand birds sing a warning song in Thunder Bay and again in Goodbye’s telling of a cathartic return to one’s true self with its celebration of those “Who sing - sing all joy - all joy of language, in a single word”. Joining Bry in singing Run With Me’s songs of “death, transition and hope,” are kindred spirits Jennifer Castle, Julie Doiron, Daniel Romano and Steph Yates. All of these singers elevate the album’s healing sentiments and help express the album’s central plea; a prayer of sorts wrapped in the traditional Scottish Gaelic melody of She Is Here’s second verse: “Let the sun rise in the morning and any witness bring. Let all the blooming cosmos teach us to sing”.

Gombloh’s forgotten masterpiece

What if you have Brian Wilson and Bruce Springsteen rolled into one? And what if he came of age as an poor buskers in in Surabaya, Indonesia, but then summoned enough strength to record six albums that flew in the face of everyone in the country’s rock scene back in the early 1980s?

Genius, be they Brian Wilson or Soedjarwoto “Soemarsono” Gombloh, don’t conform to rules written for us mere mortals. They have their own way of doing things and in the case of Gombloh, writing music, conducting recording session and spending cash from his music, must be conducted on his own terms and his terms only. Studio time was expensive back in the early 1980s, yet Gombloh could be three-hour late for his session, and while engineers, session musicians and producers were jittery about the prospect of another botched session, Gombloh took his time for a nap before the recording begun.

Yet, some of his greatest works came into being in the wake of this napping session. Recording session for Sekar Mayang is no exception, despite the fact there’s foreboding sense of doom with Gombloh being unsure about the possibility of selling enough units to help his label break even. This is, after all, this is his last record with his band Lemon Tree’s. No one knew that Gombloh was operating with all his cylinders running and what came out of this Indra Record session, in the waning days of 1980, were some of the best compositions ever committed to magnetic tapes (to wax, if now you’re holding this on vinyl).

This is Gombloh at the peak of his creative genius. You can argue that his debut album Nadia & Atmospheer (what’s with the spelling mistake?) is the most sprawling and complex album (both sonically and thematically), but Sekar Mayang certainly had the best songs and I can make the argument that this album’s 10 songs are strong contenders for biggest hits in blues, country, psychedelic rock charts. “Prahoro & Prahoro” is one of those impossible song which appears to have sprung from a bottomless well of inspiration, encompassing King Crimson’s sprawling epic, Deep Purple’s deepest blues and Genesis’ most progressive tendencies. Or “Sekaring Jagat”, which begins as Lennon-McCartney lullaby before launching a thousand ships traveling to the end of the rainbow with children choir singing heavenly melodies backed by droning harpsichord and synclavier, while a buzzing Hammond B3 tightly locks with Gombloh’s guitar strumming.

For many of his fans, Gombloh is known as generous man of the people. A Robin Hood type if you please. He spent his royalty checks to buy foods for beggars and buskers and dish out some more to buy undergarments for Surabaya’s prostitutes. In Sekar Mayang, Gombloh went full Springsteen mode in “Mitra Becakan,” a social commentary that cut so deep you can end up with tears in your eyes and lump in your throat (even if you don’t understand any of its Javanese language lyrics). This is one the most devastating social commentary ever recorded for a pop song, and even if you discount the greatness of its musical composition, you chalk this up as a great social-realism poetry. His years of hanging out with pedicab drivers, street vendors and street-bound prostitutes certainly gave him enough insight into their (in)human condition.

Yet, a record this stellar was largely forgotten. First, this record was a flop upon its release in 1981. Indra Records reportedly only did one pressing on cassette tape and be done with it. For those who were lucky enough to have come across one of songs from this album on the radio were likely growing up in East Java, where Gombloh had a massive cult following early in the 1980s. Nothing was heard from this record again.

There were only a handful of cassette tapes from the first pressing found on second-hand market and I recently stumbled upon one online with a price tag of Rp 50 million (US$3,500). It’s no longer available now.

In Sekar Mayang, Gombloh harbours an obsession for a long-lost utopia, Java’s distant past, where farmers have their barn full of rice and corn, where blacksmith working around the clock making tools and children singing and dancing in their seminaries. Or the fact that he opens the song with stanza from Serat Weddhatama, arguably the most monumental poem in neo-classic Javanese literature, could be his pledge of allegiance. The question for him is should a modern-day Indonesia, rife with poverty, corruption and environmental degradation not be an anathema to that utopia?

In the end, you don’t need to be someone fluent in Javanese to enjoy this majestic record. And if this record turns out to be the last in Elevation Records catalogue and we shut down this label tomorrow, we will be very happy. Mission accomplished!

A tech company's "senior spirit guide" finally comes to the defense of the "financially unsuccessful" Vincent van Gogh; wonders of the natural world are reimagined as "muster points for brainstorming innovators"; the "artificial char lines" on fast-food burgers are cited as if signs of the apocalypse. For the better part of three decades, Aesop Rock has used the syntax of the moment to pinpoint the fault lines in that moment's supposedly solid foundation. With his tenth album, Integrated Tech Solutions, Aes wields insidious corporatespeak as a tool to pry that parasitic worldview away from the parts of life that truly matter. A concept album about an organization offering "lifestyle- and industry-specific applications designed to curate a desired multi-experience," Integrated Tech Solutions picks apart the charlatan language that hears app inventors put themselves on continuums starting with cavemen and continuing through da Vinci. On "Mindful Solutionism," the wheel evolves seamlessly into modern agriculture - and then into atomic bombs, Agent Orange, cigarettes, and surveillance cameras. In a rare moment of transparency, the engineers Aes give voice to sum up this spiral in just a few words: "We cannot be trusted with the stuff that we come up with." Appropriately, the album sounds like the past and future at once. Largely self-produced, Integrated Tech Solutions catches Aes at his leanest and most innovative, leveraging "SolutionismÖs careening bounce against the wistful "By the River" or the slow creep of "Salt and Pepper Squid." The effect is a record that sounds itself like an organism growing, mutating, hurtling toward profitability - and then destruction. As fans have come to expect, Aes is cuttingly funny and slyly profound at once, whether recounting a childhood restaurant run-in with Mr. T ("100 Feet Tall") or quipping, on "Pigeonometry," that "white dove is a pigeon - you motherfuckers is bigots." At the same time, Integrated Tech Solutions is working on another parallel project: tracing the sprawl of modernity and cutting directly to its core. "I've been doing laps of the lost worlds," he raps on "All City Nerve Map," sounding at once wearied and reinvigorated. "I can draw a map to the raw nerve."

Originally released as a hand-numbered CD on New Year's Eve of 2004, Last Light captures Tor Lundvall 's hushed songcraft at its most ghostly and grayscale, stripped bare like branches bracing for winter. Initially conceived of as "a piano album with sparse electronics" (with the working title November), Lundvall's palette steadily expanded, incorporating synthesizer, samples, bass, metronomes, and his signature spectral vocals. A journal entry from the spring of 2002 proved formative to his evolving vision: "I remember watching the blueish-grey light shimmering outside and hearing distant sounds echoing far away, eventually sinking into silence and stillness." The album's 12 tracks are steeped in this sense of autumnal transience, of bearing witness to what fades. The music moves in whispered swells, between dirge, drift, and devotional. Synths chime like slow-tolling bells; percussion shuffles and shivers, icy and isolated; bass traces a low-lidded plod - it's a mode both austere and seductive, lulling the listener into its landscapes of deepening dusk. Lyrically, Lundvall's language skews observational and depressive ("through lace curtains / grey light falls / dark clouds gather / in my soul" ), with each song like a gauzy glimpse into a different tableau framing winter's descent: rust - colored leaves, frozen ponds, cold crescent moons. Lundvall has long considered Last Light a "personal favorite" in his discography, and it's easy to hear why. In texture, finesse, and pacing, it vividly evokes the rare mood of fragile, frosty pastoral noir depicted in his iconic oil paintings. His is an art of the half-seen and half-remembered, of fleeting figures, shapes and shadows, and gathering darkness. Of all that disappears, and the ghosts that never leave: "So I wait / as the years / slowly drain the magic and the light / and the girl / I never loved / haunts me through the dark roads of my life."

A tech company's "senior spirit guide" finally comes to the defense of the "financially unsuccessful" Vincent van Gogh; wonders of the natural world are reimagined as "muster points for brainstorming innovators"; the "artificial char lines" on fast-food burgers are cited as if signs of the apocalypse. For the better part of three decades, Aesop Rock has used the syntax of the moment to pinpoint the fault lines in that moment's supposedly solid foundation. With his tenth album, Integrated Tech Solutions, Aes wields insidious corporatespeak as a tool to pry that parasitic worldview away from the parts of life that truly matter.



A concept album about an organization offering "lifestyle- and industry-specific applications designed to curate a desired multi-experience," Integrated Tech Solutions picks apart the charlatan language that hears app inventors put themselves on continuums starting with cavemen and continuing through da Vinci. On "Mindful Solutionism," the wheel evolves seamlessly into modern agriculture—and then into atomic bombs, Agent Orange, cigarettes, and surveillance cameras. In a rare moment of transparency, the engineers Aes give voice to sum up this spiral in just a few words: "We cannot be trusted with the stuff that we come up with."



Appropriately, the album sounds like the past and future at once. Largely self-produced, Integrated Tech Solutions catches Aes at his leanest and most innovative, leveraging "Solutionism"'s careening bounce against the wistful "By the River" or the slow creep of "Salt and Pepper Squid." The effect is a record that sounds itself like an organism growing, mutating, hurtling toward profitability-and then destruction. As fans have come to expect, Aes is cuttingly funny and slyly profound at once, whether recounting a childhood restaurant run-in with Mr. T ("100 Feet Tall") or quipping, on "Pigeonome- try," that "white dove is a pigeon-you motherfuckers is bigots." At the same time, Integrated Tech Solutions is working on another parallel project: tracing the sprawl of modernity and cutting directly to its core. "I've been doing laps of the lost worlds," he raps on "All City Nerve Map," sounding at once wearied and reinvigorated. "I can draw a map to the raw nerve."






[f] Kyanite Toothpick [feat. Hanni El Khatib]




[k] Bermuda [feat. Lealani Teano]


[n] Forward Compatibility Engine [feat. Rob Sonic]



[r] Black Snow [feat. Nikki Jean]

Rico Friebe is back with the album "Faces Meet" after his recent debut "Word Value" and delivers his personal "deer in the headlight"-moment. What once appeared sparely uncertain and questioning, equalling the fragile try to overcome a state of darkness and forsakenness, now forms into a frenzy of confrontational flashes on "Faces Meet".

Like reflecting on the uncertainties presented on "Word Value", "Faces Meet" reveals some genuinely harrowing findings, creating a wholesome musical moment in time that might never happen like this again.
Besides the uncompromising statements as to find in the opener "Look At Me", refined perceptions in "Nowhere To Run" or "Fifty-One", open-hearted calls in "Do More" and "Let Go", Rico's pivotal confrontation with the irrevocable truth and emotional dissection peaks in his heartbreaking story on "The Best Talk" which marks the crucial lynchpin of the whole album.

Like faces (and therefore people) are constantly meeting everywhere, being faced with the decision how honest and open to meet at all, "Faces Meet" happens to be an even more involved metaphor about surrendering to your true inner self in a mirror-like situation.
Deeply rooted in the seeds of his debut album "Word Value", Rico follows a highly natural and severely plain musical language while implementing new and further ideas and elements throughout his sonic landscape.

"Faces Meet" is an album of insight and self-awareness and the inevitably necessary foundation for his third double LP and magnum opus "Anthems For A Lost Generation" (set to be released in Spring 2024), accelerating a lately unstoppable story into unforeseeable pathways.

Rico Friebe is back with the album "Faces Meet" after his recent debut "Word Value" and delivers his personal "deer in the headlight"-moment. What once appeared sparely uncertain and questioning, equalling the fragile try to overcome a state of darkness and forsakenness, now forms into a frenzy of confrontational flashes on "Faces Meet".

Like reflecting on the uncertainties presented on "Word Value", "Faces Meet" reveals some genuinely harrowing findings, creating a wholesome musical moment in time that might never happen like this again.
Besides the uncompromising statements as to find in the opener "Look At Me", refined perceptions in "Nowhere To Run" or "Fifty-One", open-hearted calls in "Do More" and "Let Go", Rico's pivotal confrontation with the irrevocable truth and emotional dissection peaks in his heartbreaking story on "The Best Talk" which marks the crucial lynchpin of the whole album.

Like faces (and therefore people) are constantly meeting everywhere, being faced with the decision how honest and open to meet at all, "Faces Meet" happens to be an even more involved metaphor about surrendering to your true inner self in a mirror-like situation.
Deeply rooted in the seeds of his debut album "Word Value", Rico follows a highly natural and severely plain musical language while implementing new and further ideas and elements throughout his sonic landscape.

"Faces Meet" is an album of insight and self-awareness and the inevitably necessary foundation for his third double LP and magnum opus "Anthems For A Lost Generation" (set to be released in Spring 2024), accelerating a lately unstoppable story into unforeseeable pathways.

Rico Friebe is back with the album "Faces Meet" after his recent debut "Word Value" and delivers his personal "deer in the headlight"-moment. What once appeared sparely uncertain and questioning, equalling the fragile try to overcome a state of darkness and forsakenness, now forms into a frenzy of confrontational flashes on "Faces Meet".

Like reflecting on the uncertainties presented on "Word Value", "Faces Meet" reveals some genuinely harrowing findings, creating a wholesome musical moment in time that might never happen like this again.
Besides the uncompromising statements as to find in the opener "Look At Me", refined perceptions in "Nowhere To Run" or "Fifty-One", open-hearted calls in "Do More" and "Let Go", Rico's pivotal confrontation with the irrevocable truth and emotional dissection peaks in his heartbreaking story on "The Best Talk" which marks the crucial lynchpin of the whole album.

Like faces (and therefore people) are constantly meeting everywhere, being faced with the decision how honest and open to meet at all, "Faces Meet" happens to be an even more involved metaphor about surrendering to your true inner self in a mirror-like situation.
Deeply rooted in the seeds of his debut album "Word Value", Rico follows a highly natural and severely plain musical language while implementing new and further ideas and elements throughout his sonic landscape.

"Faces Meet" is an album of insight and self-awareness and the inevitably necessary foundation for his third double LP and magnum opus "Anthems For A Lost Generation" (set to be released in Spring 2024), accelerating a lately unstoppable story into unforeseeable pathways.

A pungent ooze emanates from the subway. As a sticky drum machine sequence rolls out like thick dark fog, ice cold synth swirls rise from the depths.

Since the debut album Europe By Night, one of the main references associated with Henrik Stelzer and his Metro Riders project has been that of cinema, and particularly the European genre films of the 1980s. With its seedy subject matters manifesting both in visual style and music, the vibe of that era has crystallized over time. Passed down to us from deteriorating video cassettes, it became an invaluable key to decoding our present day reality.

And this is true for this album as well; Stelzer does not hide the fact that he builds heavily on that vibe; referencing it through track titles and utilizing a particular recording setup consisting of a Fostex and a reel to reel in order to achieve and recreate the feeling of those soundtracks — as heard on magnetic tape rather than vinyl.

The motion picture soundtrack as an arbitrary genre definition becomes, in the hands of Stelzer, a pair of X-ray specs for him to envision a kind of music that deals in grains and contrasts rath- er than hooks and choruses. And like Roddy Piper in John Carpenter's 1988 film They Live, he hands those glasses over for us to see the true face of our times.

On Lost In Reality Metro Riders maps out an emotional geography of the cities at night, wherein the cinematic haze becomes a tool by which we can view the cities with new eyes. Not steering away from the darker alleys nor the harsh realities of modern day politics masquerading as progress. Yet escapism, in the end, seems the only viable option. But not as an endgame, but rather a stepping stone for building a new vocabulary for an utopian language.

A.R. Kive collates the three most astonishing works from that most miraculous of duos - A.R. Kane - comprising the ‘Up Home’ EP from 1988 that signified the band’s dawning realisation of their own powers and possibilities, their legendary debut LP ‘sixty nine’ (1988) and its kaleidoscopic, prophetic double-LP follow up ‘i’ (1989).

In founder-member Rudy Tambala’s new remastering, the music on these pivotal transmissions from the birth of dream pop, have been reinvigorated and re-infused with a new power, a new depth and intimacy, a new height and immensity. Vivid, timeless and yet always timely whenever they’re recalled, these records still force any listener to realise that despite the habits of retrospective myth-making and the
safe neutering effects of ‘genre’, thirty years have in no way dimmed how resistant and dissident to critical habits of categorisation A.R. Kane always were. Never quite ‘avant-pop’ or ‘shoegaze’ or ‘post-rock’ or any of those sobriquets designed to file and categorise, A.R. Kive is a reminder that those genres had to be coined, had to be invented precisely to contain the astonishing sound of A.R. Kane, because
previous formulations couldn’t come close to their sui generis sound and suggestiveness. This is music that pointed towards futures which a whole generation of artists and sonic explorers would map out. Now beautifully repackaged, remastered and fleshed out with extensive sleeve notes and accompanying materials, ‘A.R. Kive’ reveals that 35 years on it’s still a struggle to defuse the revolutionary and inspirational possibility of A.R. Kane’s music.

A.R. Kane were formed in 1986 by Rudy Tambala and Alex Ayuli, two second-generation immigrants who grew up together in Stratford, East London. From the off the pair were outsiders in the culturally mixed (cockney/Irish/West Indian/Asian) milieu of the East End, with Alex and Rudy’s folks first generation immigrants from Nigeria and Malawi, respectively. The two of them quickly developed and fostered an innate and near-telepathic mutual understanding forged in musical, literary and artistic exploration. Like a lot of second-generation immigrants, they were ferocious autodidacts in all kinds of areas, especially around music and literature. Diving deep into the music of afro-futurist luminaries such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Lee Perry and
Hendrix, as well as devouring the explorations of lysergic noise and feedback from contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers, they also thoroughly immersed themselves in the alternate literary realities of sci-fi and ancient history (the fascination with the arcane that gave the band their name), all to feed their voracious cultural thirsts and intellectual curiosity.

It was seeing the Cocteau Twins performing on Channel 4 show the Tube that spurred A.R. Kane into being - “They had no drummer. They used tapes and technology and Liz Fraser looked completely otherworldly with those big eyes. And the noise coming out of Robin’s guitar! That was the ‘Fuck! We could do that! We could express ourselves like that!’ moment”, recalls Tambala - and through a mix of
confidence, chutzpah, ad hoc almost-mythical live shows and sheer innocent will the duo debuted with the astonishing ‘When You’re Sad’ single for One Little Indian in 1986. Immediately dubbed a ‘black Jesus & Mary Chain’ by a press unsure of WHERE to put a black band clearly immersed in feedback and noise, what was immediately apparent for listeners was just how much more was going on here - a
tapping of dub’s stealth and guile, a resonant umbilicus back to fusion and jazz, the music less a conjuration of past highs than a re-summoning of lost spirits.
The run of singles and EPs that followed picked up increasingly rapt reviews in the press, but it was the ‘Up Home EP’ released in 1988 on their new home, Rough Trade that really suggested something immense was about to break. Simon Reynolds noted the EP was: Their most concentrated slab of iridescent awesomeness and a true pinnacle of an era that abounded with astounding landmarks of guitar-reinvention, A.R. Kane at their most elixir-like.

If anything, the remastered ‘Up Home’ that forms the first part of ‘A.R. Kive’ is even more dazzling, even more startling than it was when it first emerged, and listening now you again wonder not just about how many bands christened ‘shoegaze’ tried to emulate it, but how all of them fell so far short of its lambent, pellucid wonder. This remains intrinsically experimental music but with none of the frowning orthodoxy those words imply. A.R. Kane, thanks to that second generation auto-didacticism were always supremely aware about the interstices of music and magic, but at the same time gloriously free in the way they explored that connection within their own sound, fascinated always with the creation of ‘perfect mistakes’ and the possibilities inherent in informed play.

‘sixty nine’ the group’s debut LP that emerged in 1988 had
critics and listeners struggling to fit language around A.R. Kane’s sound. As a title it was telling - the year of ‘Bitches Brew’, the year of ‘In A Silent Way’, the erotic möbius between two lovers - and as originally coined by the band themselves, ‘dream pop’ (before it became a free-floating signifier of vague import) was entirely apposite for the music A.R. Kane were making. Crafted in a dark small basement studio in which Tambala recalls the duo had “complete freedom - We wanted to go as far out as we could, and in doing so we discovered the point where it stops being music”. There was an irresistibly dreamy, somnambulant, sensual and almost surreal flow to ‘sixty nine’s sound, but also real darkness/dankness, the ruptures of the primordial and the reverberations of the subconscious, within the grooves of remarkable songs like ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Crazy Blue’. Alex’s plangent vocals floated and surged amidst exquisite peals of refracted feedback but crucially there was BASS here, lugubrious and funky and full of dread, sonic pleasure and sonic disturbance crushed together to make music with a center so deep it felt subcutaneous, music constructed from both the accidental and the deliberate, generous enough to dance with both serendipity and chaos. ‘sixty nine’ remains - especially in this remastered iteration - ravishing, revolutionary.

The final part of this ‘A.R. Kive’ contains 1989’s astonishing double-LP ‘i’ which followed up on ‘sixty nine’s promise and saw the duo fully unleash their experimental pop sensibilities over 26 tracks, plunging the A.R. Kane sound into a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic vision of pop experiment and play. Suffused with new digital technologies and combining searingly sweet and danceable pop with perhaps the duo’s strangest and boundary-pushing compositions, the album did exactly what a great double-set should do - indulge the artists sprawling pursuit of their own imaginations but always with a concision and an ear for those moments where pop both transcends and toys with the listeners expectations. Jason Ankeny has noted that “In retrospect, ‘i’ now seems like a crystal ball prophesying virtually every major musical development of the 1990s; from the shimmering techno of ‘A Love from Outer Space’ to the liquid dub of ‘What’s All This Then?’, from the alien drone-pop of ‘Conundrum’ to the sinister shoegazer miasma of ‘Supervixens’ — it’s all here, an underground road map for countless bands to follow.” Perhaps the most overwhelmingly all-encompassing transmission from A.R. Kane, ‘i’ bookended a three year period in which the duo had made some of the most prophetic and revelatory music of the entire decade.

After ‘i’ the duo’s output became more sporadic with Tambala and Ayuli moving in different directions both geographically and musically, with only 1994’s ‘New Clear Child’ a crystalline re-fraction of future and past echoes of jazz, folk and soul, before the duo went their separate ways. Since then, A.R. Kane’s music has endured, not thanks to the usual sepia’d false memories that seem to maintain interest in so much of the musical past, but because those who hear A.R. Kane music and are changed irrevocably, have to share that universe which A.R. Kane opened up, with anyone else who will listen. Far more than other lauded documents of the late 80s it still sounds astonishingly fresh, astonishingly livid and vivid and necessary and NOW.

Stephen Steinbrink discovered a short YouTube video of a street magician who approaches a highschooler walking home in Barstow, California. “Here, let me show you my idea,” he says, as he places a quarter on the kid’s hand. The magician performs some relaxed flourishes, and the coin vanishes. In silence, the kid stares at his hand at the nothing where there once, indisputably, was something, until his wonder finds a single word: “Cool.” The title of Disappearing Coin, the new album from Oakland songwriter Stephen Steinbrink, comes from this short clip. “When I look at it now,” he says, “I relate to the kid, who’s obviously uneasy in his body, and going through the experience of being a teenager in the early 2000s growing up in a bleak desert town like I did. I also relate to the coin, an inanimate disc of possibility. And I relate to the magician, an absurd facilitator of sending what is tactile and concrete into the wispy conceptual realm.” “I’ve watched it probably a hundred times,” he says. “It cracked me up but also blew my mind open the feeling of wonder I experienced watching this video became a guide as I navigated new ways of staying in the realm of what’s both real and magical.” Following the 2018 release of Utopia Teased, Steinbrink completed an apprenticeship in the nearly-lost art of Stained Glass, becoming a glazier at a studio that over three years, fully restored the enormous 90-year-old windows in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. He committed to his Buddhist study, beginning lay monastic training before the process was thwarted by the pandemic. He dove deeper into music production for other artists, engineering two albums by Boy Scouts released on Anti- Records in 2018 and 2021. Steinbrink delighted in the way these pursuits pulled at the thread of ego’s tapestry and decentralized him from his craft, allowing him to embody a new role as a creative caretaker engaging in practices that felt communal and restorative. “As I slowly began writing for myself again, I tried to imbue my new songs with this sense of playfulness and wonder I felt while exploring these other interests.” He says. Feeling unlocked from the pressures of perfection that he often felt in his earlier work, creating Disappearing Coin felt buoyant and healing. “The album feels like an integration of all of my past musical selves zeroing in on the present,” Steinbrink explains, “I felt free to explore new ways of writing, through different perspectives, experimenting with fictional songwriting, visual archetypal language, and total collaboration.” This “total collaboration” was a joyous new venture after years of solo performing and recording. The album can be seen as a 42 minute session of show and tell, the manifestation of Steinbrink repeating the mantra of “Here, let me show you my idea” to himself over and over. Disappearing Coin is at once a welcome return for the veteran Steinbrink and the debut of a totally new artist, one who has found a new path to himself with new goals of openness, curiosity, and self-acceptance. “Recalls the magic pop purity of Arthur Russell...its minimalism manages to feel enlightened and transformative.” PITCHFORK // “Melodic and self-assured. Steinbrink delivers his knotted lyricism with a smooth lilt.

Letta Mbulu was lucky when she emigrated from South Africa, where blacks were troubled and ridiculed by the Apartheid system. She was lucky to rescue a recording deal with A&M records, and even the label's founder, Herb Albert, produced the record, Johnny Mandel did the orchestrations, and Quincy Jones wrote the liner notes. However, it wasn't only luck - Letta Mbulu's talents as a singer are such that they couldn't be overheard. Her husband, Caiphus Semenya, also from South Africa and a musician, helped her throughout. There's Music in the Air from 1976 features songs varying in tempos and moods and languages, and there's a mellow aura of purity and peace, almost innocence, that captures the listener.

ME LOST ME led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent announces a new album RPG via Upset The Rhythm on 7th July, and is touring across the UK including support dates with Pigs x7. RPG (recorded in Blank Studios with Sam Grant of Pigs x7) is ME LOST ME’s fourth outing as a collective, having transitioned from an ambitious solo project in 2017, Jayne now regularly collaborating with acclaimed North-East jazz musicians Faye MacCalman and John Pope.
ME LOST ME delights in experimenting with songwriting and storytelling, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully weave together disparate genres, drawing influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music. Hauntological in part, RPG is concerned with tales and with time - are we running out of it? Does insomnia cause a time loop? Do the pressures of masculinity prevent progress? Jayne Dent asks these questions and more on RPG, her homage to worldbuilding and the story as an artform, calling back to those oral traditions around a campfire, as well as modern day video games - bringing folk music into the present day as she does so.
ME LOST ME presents sound reaching in opposite directions, straddling time towards the archaic and timeless traditions of folktales, and towards the possible and potential futures of pastoral Britain and the world at large. Part speculation, part reminiscence, what results on the new album RPG is music that sounds ultimately displaced and yet omnipresent, adjacent to a hapless Vonnegut hero whose life is scattered throughout time and history, but full of wonder and curiosity rather than fear.
On track “The Oldest Trees Hold The Earth”, we see time stretched out between the branches of impossibly old beings in the woods. This track was co-written in Aarhus, Denmark with fellow Newcastle folk musician (with Danish heritage) Ditte Elly. The pair wordlessly passed a sheet of paper between each other to write the lyrics, inspired by Højbjerg and Mosegård, the woods they were sitting in. “How long should I wait/Before the moss grows?/On my skin, on my outstretched arms,” the lyrics are sung in a round, the close harmonies delicate and detailed.

A central thesis of this album is the joy of creation, something which is paid homage to in the album’s final track, “Science And Art” (Not because we need it to last/just because we needed to make it - so we invented the words/this language). It is also reflected in the definition that Jayne gives for “folk” itself. She comments, “To me, folk is quite an expansive idea. I think of it as creative work that's often made ad-hoc, with things that are at hand and more often than not it's born of a DIY ethos. It is songs and stories of the people, as in the traditional sense, but also creative coding, game design etc. Whatever outlet someone has for their creative expression could be described as folk. It's the things we make because humans need to make things, and the stories we tell about ourselves and the world around us.”
Crucially, on latest album RPG, Dent expands her songwriting and looks towards the unreal locations of worldbuilding in video games for inspiration. She comments, “I think the main similarity is the importance of a song's setting/environment to inform its narrative and textures, I'm often most inspired when out walking in the natural landscape, in cities and travelling to places I've never been before - the environment I'm in really impacts the work I make. While writing this album, however, I found myself inspired by imaginary landscapes, those in video games, paintings, etc. I was writing stories into these unreal locations instead. Even the songs inspired by real places, like The Oldest Trees Hold the Earth, have a very surreal quality to them in the songs, like they're being warped and turned into something not of this world. I think that's the main difference for me in terms of the thematic content and inspiration behind this album - I've been getting more and more interested in balancing surreal and fantastical environmental elements with ordinary and everyday settings.”
RPG upends the concept of the eternal return - we may be in the midst of inevitable repetition, but we tell stories whilst awaiting the passage of time.
"Being familiar with, and a fan of Jayne's earlier work, it was great to get the opportunity to work with her on the production of her new record. I had in mind a sense of what the record might be, but what came of the sessions, led by the vision Jayne had for the record, totally exceeded my expectations. As far as albums go, it has a breadth of writing and a sonic depth that made it a truly brilliant record. Having Jayne join us on a leg of the Pigs x7 tour in April is going to be ace. The creative nature, the sincerity and bold strokes of ME LOST ME put it in that space outside of any genre pigeonholes, and between our two sets I imagine the audience is going to have a proper sonic bath..."
Sam Grant, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, 2023
“The music of Me Lost Me is beguiling, idiosyncratic and cinematic - or should that be video-game-omatic? This suite of songscapes often hits the sweet spot between ancient and modern with its masterful blend of stark folk, neon electronic burbling and unusual arrangements. Jayne's singing is refreshingly straightforward and nuanced - it's exquisite! - and perfectly punctures the nebulae of synths and brass which billow around the old wooden frames of the songs. Whilst listening I had images in my mind of what Northumberland might look like through the eyes of Simon Stalenhag - foggy moors, a robot looking across the sea to Lindisfarne, twinkling lights on metal towers.... that sort of thing. It's a really great album.”
Richard Dawson, 2023

A kind of hush pervades throughout Standards Vol VI, the latest release by The National Jazz Trio of Scotland, the ironically named project helmed by Falkirk’s musical polymath, Bill Wells, that is neither a trio, nor a jazz band. If this collection of ten covers probably comes closest to the latter in its late night renditions of actual standards, the presence of long-term NJToS member and collaborator Aby Vulliamy as the record’s lone vocalist adds to its solitary air. This follows Standards Vol IV (2018), which featured fellow NJToS co-founder Kate Sugden as primary vocalist, while Gerard Black, a member of the group since 2016, took centre stage in similar fashion on Standards Vol V (2019). Wells has long been a fan of Vulliamy, both of her work as a viola player with numerous collaborators, and as a singer.

Vulliamy played viola on Everything’s Getting Older, Wells’ 2011 collaboration with Arab Strap vocalist Aidan Moffat. Wells went on to play melodica on Vulliamy’s solo record, Spin Cycle, released on Karaoke Kalk in 2018. With the intent of producing the saddest heartbreak record ever made, Wells sourced a back catalogue of miniature epics, reinterpreting each tale of everyday yearning to make a canon of melancholy loungecore designed for nights in alone, if not always lonely. Beyond the concept of isolation behind Standards Vol VI, practical concerns added to the affair, with Wells recording backing tracks at home in Glasgow, while Vulliamy added her voice from her home in Yorkshire. The result on Standards Vol VI is a thing of quiet beauty that sees Wells and Vulliamy reimagine a panoply of pop classics in their own aloof sounding image.

Shades of Margo Guryan and Claudine Longet abound in Vulliamy’s delivery over Wells’ woozy, low-slung guitar and piano, with samples culled from a session with Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake. Little electronic percussive clicks and hisses lend things an even more otherworldly air on a record bookended by opener, Donovan’s proto hippy classic, Catch the Wind, and Dixieland miniature, Careless Love. The eight points in between take in a first half led by The Beatles’ normally jaunty We Can Work it Out, flipping the loveable mop-tops’ perky optimism for something more soul searching. This is followed by I Wish You Love, Albert Beach’s English language version of French songwriter Charles Trenet’s evergreen, Que reste-t-il de nos amours. The Bee Gees lost classic, To Love Somebody, is up next, with more impossible to answer questions coming in Why Can’t I?

The latter is a Rodgers and Hart composition that first appeared in the duo’s 1930 Broadway musical, Spring is Here, in which the show’s two heroines commiserate each other over their shared loneliness. Wells stumbled on the song in a tatty Rodgers and Hart songbook, which, like its subjects, had been left on the shelf before he and Vulliamy brought it in from the cold. The second half of Standards Vol VI leads with Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s much covered evocation of a pre dating app era from their 1964 hit musical, Fiddler on the Roof. This is followed by Billy Rose and Dave Dreyer’s showbiz staple (with Al Jolson also taking a credit), Me and My Shadow. While made famous by showbiz double acts ranging from Frank and Sammy to Robbie and Jonathan, here it flies decidedly solo. Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael’s Skylark comes next, a song inspired by Mercer’s yearning for Judy Garland. We hear ya, bub. The most downbeat take on Bacharach and David’s The Look of Love you’re ever likely to hear comes next, ushering in the short farewell of Careless Love, before the lights are turned out forever. Yeah, well. Whatever gets you through the night…

The album Symposium Musicum is developed from field recordings, interviews, and observations collected in the villages of Podolínec, Lomnička, Levočské Vrchy, and Kolačkov - all areas of the eastern and north-eastern Slovakia with significant Romani enclaves. The pieces resulting from these interactions encourage the listener to tune in for a delicate negotiation of language, (audible) gesture, and storytelling.

The collaboration with the local participants appears lighthearted and whimsical on the records, but this seeming easiness is clearly a result of devoted fieldwork planning and committed post-production. The curated compositions represent and emphasize not only performative aspects of the acoustic activities but also point attention to seemingly non-productive aspects of creation, such as silence, hesitation, observation, perception, or waiting.

Sound experiment and preservation is not the only goal of the project. Some of the records capturing acoustic activities in peculiar places but also carry an element of social novelty that accompanied their making - according to the locals in Lomnička, the recording visitors were the first non-Romani persons who spent the night in the village.

In many instances, these recordings explore liminal spaces that have lost their original function (a church ruin or an out-of-business grocery store) and became a lively territory for acoustic exploration and playful reciprocity. For instance, in track 7, "Kavka", local children used crackling leaves as percussion devices.

Such moments betray a high level of engagement in the subtle details of the recorded spaces and their social ecologies. According to the creators, their creative processes involve "a social sound practice" as an attitude towards exploring sound in its social setting.

Symposium Musicum leaves behind many aesthetic conventions of sound capture and what is considered "musical", including the usual notions of a linguistic unit, narrative, memoir, and play. Instead, it engages in a self-reflective questioning of the way we listen to the world around us.

This project invites us to experience places outside the divided sociolinguistic provinces, resulting from multigenerational displacement and neglect of the Romani communities from the explored areas. The result is in many ways revelatory and poetically impactful.

Hania Rani announces "On Giacometti" a tender meditation on the life and art of Alberto Giacometti and family. "On Giacometti" is a collection of beautiful recordings inspired by the renowned artist and family and features some of Rani's most profoundly delicate compositions to date. Invited by film director Susanna Fanzun, to score her forthcoming documentary on the legendary artist Alberto Giacometti, Hania Rani took herself to the Swiss mountains to compose in blissful isolation. As Rani explains eloquently below the compositions are based on improvised melodies, simple harmonies and structures and inspired by the silence of the mountains as Rani returns to her main instrument, the piano. The results are beguilingly reminiscent of her beloved debut album Esja, but with subtle extra layers of synthesiser, and on two tracks cello from friend and long-running collaborator Dobrawa Czocher.

'On Giacometti' is presented as a limited edition LP with bespoke packaging featuring Les Naturals - Chocolat (Gmund) sustainable recycled paperboard made from 100 % recovered paper with Foil Artwork by Łukasz Pałczyński. Plus Double sided printed insert and download code inside.

Hania Rani "On Giacometti":
‘When I was asked to compose a soundtrack for a movie about the family of Giacometti I didn't think twice.

Alberto Giacometti, a Swiss artist, who worked mainly as painter and sculptor has been one of my favourite artists for a long time. His individual style, aesthetics and the character of his creative process is still fascinating to me on many levels, so being able to dive even deeper into his universe, getting to know not only him but also his family was an opportunity that I couldn't miss. Little did I know how far this "yes" will take me - not only mentally and on a creative level but also physically. Thanks to the director of the documentary - Susanna Fanzun and by a stroke of luck and a couple of extra questions I decided to move for a couple of months to the Swiss mountains, not far away from the place where Giacometti was born and where the place he called home was, although he didn't live there. Susanna showed me a place close to her hometown where I could rent a studio and work on the soundtrack but also for my other projects. It was the middle of a winter, the area was full of ice and snow, just like only it can happen still in the mountains. The residency house was located in a valley surrounded by high mountains and the sun in the winter season was not coming up for too long during the day. I remember she told me about it and added "that not everyone is feeling well there, but I hope you will". I did.

Being almost separated from reality, the city and its entertainments, people rushing and everything that usually takes my attention I could fully concentrate on the music and soundtrack, spending most of the day with my own thoughts and having enough space to experiment and be free in a creative process. This soundtrack would probably be a very different thing if composed in a place that I am usually living in. I took this a chance to explore something new about myself as a composer and human being, taking the opposite direction that I would usually choose for myself.

The album "On Giacometti" includes the excerpts from the soundtrack, the most representative tracks and those which became a strong voice itself. Based a lot on improvised melodies, simple harmonies, structures and silence it reminds me of my debut album "Esja" which was partly composed and recorded in another chilly place - Iceland. All these components, both mental and physical, guided me back to my main instrument - piano, which I tried to redefine again with a language of the space that I was working in. The space is usually the key element that gives me the answer about the arrangement or character of the project. Space seems to be the first to appear and music is the invisible power which is changing its angels.’ Living surrounded by mountains makes you change the perspective and understanding of scale as Alberto Giacometti once famously wrote in a letter: It gives an impression that things that are actually far away, like mountains, are close and the other ones that are not so far away, like people, seem small, watched from a distance. You feel like touching the mountain top with your finger could be as easy as touching the tip of your nose. The snow additionally protects the whole area from the noise, each sound lands softly on the ground accompanied by echoes of immeasurable space. Each scratch or whisper is becoming an autonomic entity, opening the gate to the world of ghosts and lost spirits. It's easy to think that time stands still there, while nothing is moving and changing at the first sight. But the ubiquitous ice and snow reveal the passage of time, transforming frozen paysage into the wild stream of water - each day, hour and second. Melting and vanishing, clearing the space from white powder and noise consuming surface. Invisible process for a one night traveller, becomes painfully real for longer time settlers. Time flows with each new wave of sound coming through the river, reminding us that we are part of the cycle, which endlessly repeats itself.

Few emcees can do what Raekwon does. The Chef's ability to manipulate language is unmatched, and his storytelling is peerless. He visited our studio in late 2010 and shared stories of Chicago mobsters, Rza production styles, and what makes a Hip-Hop Legend.

This is the 4th installment of the Closed Sessions 45 series featuring songs recorded during the blog era and lost in the sendspace and z-share ether. "Keep It Politics" was produced by DJ Babu (Beat Junkies / Dilated Peoples) and was originally released on 2012's Closed Sessions Vol. 2.

The duo WILDES from the south of Germany, consisting of Jana Pantha and Jenny Tulipa, presents a musical mix of electro-synth-pop, post-punk and dark disco influences. After the release of their first EP “RAWWR” in 2021, their debut album entitled “KLISCHEE” will be released on 3 February 2023. Released via the Kommando 84 label, the album features 11 songs and a musical re-interpretation of German-language Neue Deutsche Welle sounds. The songs combine spoken word passages in which the singers combine a certain irony with word-playful rhymes. In addition to world-political, social issues, the songs revolve around the complexity of the new romance in love - between cosmos and stereo. The strong and experimentally avant-garde lyrics accompany the danceable pulse of the drum computer, melodic synth waves and the shimmering solos of the lead guitar.

The album “Klischee” begins with an electro-pop track that combines consistent grooves with atmo- spheric sound arrangements and a lead guitar that accompanies our journey to the moon. With the chorus’ high-pitched words, „Konsum - leg mich auf den Moon“ (“Consumption - put me on the Moon”), WILDES dryly yet humorously allude to a society that couldn’t fly “higher”.

The following cheeky song Leger in Schwarz combines impeccable post punk with influences from the NNDW scene. A short love story led by the electronic beat of the synthesizer makes the hearts of the night beat faster. With casual reduction, a guitar riff leads through the song. The guitar solo finally rounds off the plea about the longing for a good flirt.

Italo disco shimmers and pulsates on the driving song Capri. With lyrics like “Pack the boats - Vai a bordo”, Capri is a homage to the tried and tested Italo feeling with a cappucino on the terrazza, or indeed on the yacht with a view of the rocky walls of the island. An electric charge of sequencers and synth tracks acts here as a lightness of being in contrast to the porosity of the rock.

An electrifying electric guitar solo kicks off the fourth track with a mysterious invitation to Steig ein translated, get in. Hypnotised by the lights of the road, dazzled in the side mirror, a clearly repeating rhythm leads into the chorus and through the coming verses. English spoken-word lyrics add to the stoicism of the German language. The song’s great power ends with the line Lost in the dark, holding open the finale of the “Night Drive” encounter.

Digital and stereo on all channels, the distinctly tight and robust rhythm sounds in the song Apparat. A clear and simple synth melody is heard as a contrast and the electric bass gives the balance of the machine at points. Hiddenly, WILDES points here to the superior power that can control human action beyond all limits. A piece as a laudation to all the science fiction novels that play with the switching of the individual parts.

Side One of the vinyl is finalised by a song called La Grande Bellezza that motivates to dance and sing along. The punky pop craft lives through the recurring beat of the rhythm guitar. Here the focus is on the woman in all her facets. The great beauty, una donna, who can do everything as well as wanting everything and nothing...a strong woman who, however, also staggers and wants to jump off the cliff. Clearly and distinctly, the musical accompaniment of the drum machine and the accompanying synth melody reflect hidden parallel worlds and the ambiguity of character - of life? We get a desire for more and turn the round record.

The B side starts with a powerful guitar riff, complemented by a catchy and strong bassline that runs through the song. In this work, WILDES provocatively describes the West’s lust for the much-cov- eted Schwarzes Gold black gold. The song is reminiscent of the works of the band D.A.F. and thus ties in with the electronic punk sound spate.

The driving guitar riff joins in with the reduced synth bass sequence - the electro-pop song with the title Hitze (Heat) came onto the digital music market as the first single from the LP in the summer of 2022. Pulsatingly, the drum computer lets the beats vibrate to the rhythm of heated air. The duo po- etically describes heat with supercooled voices, a clarity in the sky that makes everything flow, that makes the breath dry. The work ends with a melodic synth solo.

Ich lad dich ein, I invite you - we have all said or heard this sentence before. A chance meeting of two people later leads to the altar in love. A far-reaching question that more or less arises in many love relationships at some point “Do you dare?” positions itself in lyrical contrast to the simple ques- tion in the refrain “Do you need sugar?”. WILDES plays with laconic poetry and, full of irony, makes the listeners think about living together. Krautrock contours are skilfully used in this piece. Reduced to the essentials, the chorus immediately sticks in the ear. A cheerful mix of steel drums and infec- tious solo.

Toccami - touch me! We sit on padded leather chairs - “you’re a rocket! Peng Puff Peng” - this song by the band WILDES joins experimental art-punk-pop, electronically with flowing synth waves we take off immediately. Melodically sung, lyrical layers of lyrics dance loosely light and gracefully in the ears of the viewer. The rhythmic beat visualises the feeling of floating in a spaceship. It’s love in the universe - “I love you, my darling” sounds tipsy in the beat-heavy disco refrain.

Hypnotically, WILDES launches into the final song of the entire LP. The title Zone takes us on a journey through time. Inspired by the film Stalker, we find ourselves in a science fiction setting that couldn’t be more present in today’s European events. The musicality of the electric guitar riffs ac- companied by simple new wave drums drives the listener into unknown realms.

Repetition and electronic synth sounds play a compositional role alongside rocking guitar riffs like their forerunners in the NDW scene. Lyrically, each song varies between pop-romantic and politically critical passages. Listeners start pondering about hedonistic life and its consequences. Sometimes it feels like listening to a Tarantino soundtrack in German, other times it feels like listening to an 80s track by a James Bond. Science fiction fantasies and reality add up in dadaistic theatricality to spir- ited synthpunk of the New German Wave from the South. Discoid beats and driving drums in digital are included.

Slovak-Hungarian musician Adela Mede explores the interplay between voice and technology with field recordings. She sings in three languages (Slovak, Hungarian and English). Intimate ambient utterances with themes of spiritual growth accompanied by experimental electronics with a wide scope of influences; from minimalism to folklore. Initially released in early 2022 to universal acclaim on digital and cassette, Night School is extremely excited to share Szabadság on vinyl. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux for vinyl, the clearer format teases out new nuances in the music, revealing a physicality and permanence to Mede’s first masterwork.

"Szabadság is a navigation. This debut by Adela Mede, recorded in her family home on the Slovakian border with Hungary, searches through the personal, familial, cultural, folkloric and geographic of her past and present.

Examining both the vulnerability and determination of her voice - as it leaves the lips, raw, and in the ways it can be transformed with digital processing - the embodied memories of language, of utterance, are explored.

Airy, open sound worlds and tentative strings of improvised naked vocal transform themselves into insistent repetition. Fizzing, sparkling electronics are set against the beautiful grainy depth of field recordings. The locations, these places, are found and lost - home is found and lost - in a dance of fragmented vocal harmonies. Three languages (English, Hungarian, Slovak) weave a song of spring, nature, forgiveness, togetherness and rebirth.

On Labyrinth, Heather Woods Broderick serves as our reflective host, subverting expectations of conventional songcraft with impressionistic language and quietly relentless explorations of the human experience that's at once light and dark, more circular and less linear. "Many of us yearn for stillness and peace, as an escape from the movement all around us," she explains when asked about the themes of the album. "Yet movement is perpetual, happening all the time on some level. It's as wild as the wind, yet eternally predictable in its inevitability. It is linear in part, but infinite in its circuitry. Our lives just punctuate it." Broderick began crafting Labyrinth in March 2020, when most forms of move- ment were brought to a screeching halt. The Maine-born, Los Angeles-based songwriter _ who, in addition to her work as a solo musician, built a life playing and touring with acts such as Sharon Van Etten, Beth Orton, Damien Jurado, and Efterklang _ was suddenly forced off the road for the first time in her career. She used this disruption as an opportunity to pare down her creation process and construct the scaffolding for Labyrinth in her apartment. Employing only the most crucial tools at her disposal, Broderick found herself opening different artistic doors as she focused on sharpening her recording skills, capturing the majority of the album on her own before finishing the remainder with co-producer D. James Goodwin. For all of Broderick's sage lyricism and vocal authority, Labyrinth never provides the listener with any easy answers. If the image of the labyrinth represents the enormity of modern life and the difficulty of navigating it, Heather Woods Broder- ick provides a guide to its endless kinetic wonders _ of being present, aware, and connected despite its disconnects. She describes the texture of its walls, its indifferent rhythms, and the inherent poeticism of feeling lost amid the dead-ends and unexpected turns. At this point in our history, perhaps that's all we need to keep moving.

Grey Vinyl

On Labyrinth, Heather Woods Broderick serves as our reflective host, subverting expectations of conventional songcraft with impressionistic language and quietly relentless explorations of the human experience that's at once light and dark, more circular and less linear. "Many of us yearn for stillness and peace, as an escape from the movement all around us," she explains when asked about the themes of the album. "Yet movement is perpetual, happening all the time on some level. It's as wild as the wind, yet eternally predictable in its inevitability. It is linear in part, but infinite in its circuitry. Our lives just punctuate it." Broderick began crafting Labyrinth in March 2020, when most forms of move- ment were brought to a screeching halt. The Maine-born, Los Angeles-based songwriter _ who, in addition to her work as a solo musician, built a life playing and touring with acts such as Sharon Van Etten, Beth Orton, Damien Jurado, and Efterklang _ was suddenly forced off the road for the first time in her career. She used this disruption as an opportunity to pare down her creation process and construct the scaffolding for Labyrinth in her apartment. Employing only the most crucial tools at her disposal, Broderick found herself opening different artistic doors as she focused on sharpening her recording skills, capturing the majority of the album on her own before finishing the remainder with co-producer D. James Goodwin. For all of Broderick's sage lyricism and vocal authority, Labyrinth never provides the listener with any easy answers. If the image of the labyrinth represents the enormity of modern life and the difficulty of navigating it, Heather Woods Broder- ick provides a guide to its endless kinetic wonders _ of being present, aware, and connected despite its disconnects. She describes the texture of its walls, its indifferent rhythms, and the inherent poeticism of feeling lost amid the dead-ends and unexpected turns. At this point in our history, perhaps that's all we need to keep moving.

Pressing Info: 180g translucent pink vinyl, limited to 250 copies, download card included. Five years on from their 2018 debut album 'Great Vowel Shift', Lviv, Ukraine-based krautrock outfit Sherpa The Tiger are now returning with their second album, 'Ithkuil, via Fuzz Club Records - with 100% of the profits from the release going to the band to help support them during the war. Where their previous work was centred around vintage synths, minimal ambient and neon-lit kraut-disco grooves, 'Ithkuil' sees Sherpa The Tiger explore more expansive and layered structures and compositions - incorporating intricate guitars, flute, arpeggiators and jazzy piano references, alongside an array of other elements that originate from a broad spectrum of past and present music genres. "This album bears the name of 'Ithkuil' for a reason", the band state: "Like the language we borrowed the title from, the sound of the record has a lot of levels, layers, and orchestral nuances. We consider this album and its pieces a single journey. Every track of the LP works as a mandatory stop for contemplation and reflection that happens on the route of the listener." Sherpa The Tiger began working on the new material in 2019 during their EU live shows in support of 'Great Vowel Shift' and chalk the more textured and cinematic results down to a more collaborative approach. "We wanted to rethink the Krautrock heritage explored on our last album and made a clear stylistic shift that was determined by a totally different approach to our music-making. The tunes on 'Great Vowel Shift' were cooked in a sort of live-looping mode with two musicians jamming. This time, with 'Ithkuil', the process of creation was shared among 4 musicians, and that approach had a great impact on the final result." Several years in the making and now released against a backdrop of war and invasion in their home country, 'Sherpa The Tiger' say that 'Ithkuil' acts as a snapshot of pre-war times: "Since the war caught us in the middle of planning the release as opposed to creating the music itself, the album can be perceived as a wistful reminder of the pre-war life that doesn't seem to be coming back. The life we actually experienced but lost any recollection of and which we are desperately trying to bring back through the music created by the other us now dwelling in an absolutely different reality."

2023 Repress

* After three groundbreaking albums over the course of a decade, the internationally acclaimed electronica project Shpongle have returned from what fans feared was the end of the project when 'Nothing Lasts but Nothing is Lost', their third album, was released. Not prepared to leave us hanging, electronic music pioneers Simon Posford and Raja Ram have continued to push the envelope and break boundaries to create yet another sonic masterpiece: the much-awaited fourth Shpongle album, 'Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongleland'.
* There are languages here that Shpongle fans will know and love as much as their previous work, and yet there are some massive leaps forward in terms of production techniques, sonic trickery, structure, and direction compared to all of the previous outings to date. With influences drawn from anywhere from Steve Reich and Mike Oldfield to the Batman movies and beyond, this really is another 'over the top' record in terms of production skills, tonal textures, and original ideas from Shpongle. It is rich in detail and emotion, in worldly and otherworldly samples and inspiration, and in
harmonic and melodic construction.
* Shpongle continues to evolve and inspire and with two sell-out back to back shows at the Roundhouse in London (30th and 31st October) to celebrate the launch, Shpongle prove to be as popular as ever and this album is already in huge demand.

Tears are in the eyes of Xabiib Sharaabi, nicknamed the Somali King of Pop when he entered the stage of Berlin’s HKW. It is a mix of nostalghia, pain and joy. Like many Somalis he had been deprived overnight of both glamour and friends, the war in his homeland had sent him into exile. The glamorous discos and beachfront stages Mogadishu had once been famous for, had disappeared as the city was bombed to the ground. The King of Somali pop found himself stranded in Sweden, others like the members of Dur-Dur Band Int. ended up in London which until today has the largest Somali diaspora in Europe.

In the last decade many early recordings of Somalia’s funk, soul and disco era have been reissued. This record is not a reissue. The Berlin Session – is the first studio album of its kind since the golden days of Mogadishu came to a halt three decades ago. It is the living proof that Somali music is hot, funky and (!) well alive.

The record captures a historic reunion which took place in 2019 in Germany’s capital Berlin. London-based Dur-Dur Band Int. an eight-piece powerhouse of Somali live- music unites with three legendary Somali singers: Xabiib Sharaabi, Faduumina Hilowle and Cabdinur Allaale for a concert at Berlin’s HKW. Fueled with a restored sense of pride, the freshly reunited musicians decided to get together in a Neukölln studio for two amazing days of recording.

Female vocalist Faduumina Hilowle opens the album with an invitation to kickass: “Let’s shake off the dust, boys!” (Inta ka hurguf). Grooving with such a strong accent on the off-beat, any non-Somali listener may think of Reggae. But when you ask the musicians, they tell you: “They took it from us! It’s Dhaanto! It’s our rhythm”. Originating from the Ogaden region (now in neighbouring Ethiopia’s borders), Dhaanto dates back to the era of “clap & chant”. Some say it is an imitation of the camel’s bounce. Xabiib Sharaabi was once nick-named Somalia’s King of Pop for the body language and magnetising voice with which he incorporated the latest global musical trends - even recording two disco albums entirely in English. On the album Xabiib chooses to sing his Somali adaptation of “Lady” originally by Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. Not unlike the Motown Sound of Detroit and Kingston’s Studio One: a small scene of musicians were fueling that new Somali Disco scene in Mogadishu. Cabdinur Allaale, the third vocalist on the album comes from neighbouring Djibouti. In the heydays the leader of then famous Sharaf Band was a frequent visitor, flying back and forth between Mogadishu, Hargeisa, Kismayo & Djibouti entertaining his fans on the Horn of Africa.

Dur-Dur Band Int. ‚The Berlin Session‘ brings the spirit, joy and hope of this era back: In the last decades Somalis stars have lived among us, spread all over the world, it is time to see them step into the limelight again.

Nicolas Sheikholeslami:
In 2015 Berlin-based Nicolas Sheikholeslami became fascinated by Somali music and ended up compiling a mixtape to share his passion. He did not know that his tape Au Revoir, Mogadishu Vol. 1 - Songs From Before The War would spark a massive international interest for Somali music. Soon later Nicolas co-compiled Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa for Ostinato records which got a Grammy-nomination in 2017. Berlin’s venue HKW took notice and asked him to set up a show with a selection of Somali artists from the golden era. This lead to this remarkable reunion. A studio was booked and within 2 days this album was recorded. The Berlin Session captures this emotional moment. In 2021/22 Nicolas Sheikholeslami finally sat down and mixed the recorded material. This record is the living proof that Somali music is hot, funky and well alive.

Antipodean Anomalies 2 is Left Ear Records' most ambitious project to date, a compilation that took over 4 years to license and includes 17 artists across a double LP. AA2 picks up where the first iteration left off, with co-compilers Chris Bonato and& Bridget Small continuing to dig through the music of the geographically isolating and maverick landscapes of Australia and& New Zealand.

As with the first iteration, Left Ear continues its to excavation ofe the music from these vast micro-scenes that evolved out of a number of small community-focused domains, creating their own unique reinterpretation of musical influences from near and far, spanning the years 1980 – 1992.

The compilation scopes an overlooked epoch from Adelaide, presenting acts such as the DNA Lounge, TCH & Will Kuiper. A close-knit community of like-minded mates that made distinctive electronic music together throughout the 80’s, all of which remained unreleased until now. Holbrook Buchanan capture the ambiance of Perth’s heat prodded afternoon’s perfectly with their track Hunger, a breezy 9-minute minimal-jazz jam that includes kalimba, water samples & conga. Furthermore, artists like David Watson & Colin Offord use samplers and handmade instruments to offer a more abrasive and experimental aesthetic.

To round out the compilation, artists such as Jane Stevenson, discovered a 7” at an op-shop and found the needle stuck on the word, ‘Aloha’. Using tape loops, she chose to highlight imperfections rather than hide them and in unison managed to cross boundaries of time; the 60s (album voice) and the 80s (my voice), of location; Hawaii and Australia, and of language; “Aloha and Hi”. This ethos echoes the compilation's vision, to champion artists that implement impromptu creativity, and who have a desire to create regardless of their surroundings and resources. AA2 signs off with the Back to Back Zithers, drawing inspiration from the haiku poems of Basho. To illustrate this, Kari set a Kacapi improvisation to the backdrop of the cicada chorus of summertime in outer Melbourne.

Guiding weary travelers through an enchanting interdimensional odyssey, Work The Peripheral’s debut long player ‘Like Lava’ finds a treasured home on Companion. Building on the foundation of four exceptional self-released EPs, WTP continues his exploration into the world of ambient trance. ‘Like Lava’ unfolds across nine tracks that expand and contract through imagined astral landscapes, showcasing WTP’s deft ability to create deep and absorbing techno trips. Hypnotic in manifold ways, ‘Like Lava’ is a release made for getting lost in. Each track referencing the next, this hour-long journey glides through blissful realms of trance, ambient techno and house - deep basslines, muted breaks and spacious subdued percussion are unified by WTP’s characteristic ubiquitous and sparkling atmospheres.

This is an expert expression of the Companion ethos. By drawing inspiration from the likes of Robert Leiner, Speedy J and Index ID, WTP wields the language of tripped out 90s electronica to allow spellbound listeners the time to contemplate, space to travel and a place to dream.

7" Black Vinyl in Fold-out Concertina Sleeve, 500 copies only. An anachronism in current times where individualism reigns supreme, Teeth Machine are a rare band knitted together through close camaraderie: a collective in the truest sense of the word, whose intricate, improvisational style resolutely resists being reduced to one single contributor. Teeth Machine found its beginnings in the close friendship and musical collaborations of Arthur Bently (saxophonist/lead guitarist) and Gray Rimmer (lead vocals/guitar). Having played together in various other projects since the age of 17 and disaffected with the music industry, the pair’s first furtive experimentations with the music that would later become Teeth Machine took place at a deliberate distance from the Outside world. This early incubation period, and the music made through endless bedroom sessions and demos recorded on laptops and tapes, became the spine of the project, fostering a sound that still retains both a precious intimacy and a large, expansive sonic scope. The band’s lineup as it stands today features long term friends and collaborators Anthony Boatright (Bass), Jamie Staples (Drums), and Ciara Reddy (Vocals/Synth). On their first self-assured, recorded offering to the wider world, Teeth Machine still bear the imprint of their origins, the band’s sound firmly grounded in the ethos of mutually weighted contribution, as well as the closeness cultivated in their early experiences, always retaining an air of uninhibited creativity and adolescent intimacy. ‘Gumball’, their first release on RaRaRok (Wulu, The Goa Express) was self-produced, mixed by Dilip Harris (King Krule, Mount Kimbie). It’s a song that conveys the tension and impossibility of communication and language, even when attempting to connect with those closest to us. Despite this, and however much the track itself bristles with an unmistakable air of friction, the listener gets the strong sense that there has not been a love lost, but rather one renegotiated, even expanded. Speaking about ‘Gumball’, Teeth Machine said: “‘Gumball’ is about the impossibility of talking. It was written during quite a chaotic period, and the lyrics came about after we had a big argument in the kitchen while trying to record a demo at the time - it tracks the madness and intensity of trying to make sense to someone you care about, or to yourself in your head. There’s a kind of antagonistic self help mantra that resonates throughout; it’s about internal and external conflict. It’s angry, but it’s also full of love too

After the relative success of The Bitter Springs' last album, The Odd Shower, Simon Rivers promptly disbanded the long-running group and began recording his first solo album, Like Yer Wounds Too, under the name Poor Performer. As Jim Wirth wrote of a recent Bitter Springs reissue, "Weaving the messy threads of suburban life into dense tapestries, he has something of the Go-Betweens' gift for melody, something of Mark E Smith’s ear for language, something of Vic Godard’s common touch, and almost none of the acclaim that should have been his due." This holds true for Poor Performer's debut album, though the songs seem based around a loose concept of issues dealing with middle-age self-reflection . . . though nothing nearly as navel-gazing as that statement might imply! Rivers: "For as long as I can remember, I've been either making records or planning to make them. But for once, this is a record I didn't really plan to make. The strange circumstances of the Covid lockdown led to its coming together. I'd lost my Dad to a demential-related death, retired from work due to mental stress, and was shielded for seven months . . . I took my banjo, my Dad's Yamaha keyboard and a few of my guitars, and booked a month of studio days at One Cat with the brilliant Jon Clayton at the controls . . . after a week or so of recording backing tracks, Jon said, "I think 57 songs is a bit ambitious, Si", so together made the decisions that shaped this record and its accompanying EP." With 7" 45s now nearly as expensive to make as a full vinyl LP, a decision was made to include likely contenders on a bonus CD EP, which certainly rivals the album in quality and perhaps generally exceeds it in immediacy, but Like Yer Wounds Too is more of a grower than anything yet released by Tiny Global Productions, and one of the releases we're most proud to present to the public. Humour, insight and brilliance abound. Album tracks: Golden London Leaves / Kempton Park / Life U Chose / Hard To Be Happy / Lil' Bro / Sleepy Little Town / No Escape From Me And You / Right As Rain / The Point / Our Souls / The Frog's Tale / Can You Whistle? / Something's Gonna Kill Ya ep tracks: The World Has Had Enough / 2 Hard 2B Happy / For A While / Get Up Them Stairs / Daylight Robbery

Ron Carter and Richard Galliano decided to risk intercontinental
collaboration for the second time after 1990, when they recorded their
acclaimed album "Panamanhattan" in Paris
Here the French accordion master, whose fingers fly over the keyboard with
acrobatic ease and can make the instrument weep in melancholy or rejoice with
joy. There the American bass wonder, whose deeply tuned strings enhance more
than 2,500 (!) recordings and are among the cornerstones of the complete artistic
works of Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, Herbie Hancock, Aretha Franklin,
Roberta Flack and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Two who have already gained hero
status in their own worlds and can actually only lose when they transgress into
each other's terrain. "Believe me, there is nothing more real than to go on stage
with a gambler," Carter raved about the refreshed liaison with his Gallic buddy.
The two rediscovered the once lost central thread in March 2016 at Jazz Week in
Burghausen as a short intermezzo during a joint appearance with the WDR Big
Band. The provisional climax was then the recording made in Theaterstu?bchen
in Kassel on October 29. Galliano recalled: "Before we got going, I said to him:
"Can you believe it? Twenty- seven years have passed, we are still the same and
I'm still playing the same accordion. To which Ron just responded: "And we have
still same fingers!" With these 20 nimble tools, the two protagonists of the
musical joint venture interact without fear of contact. Neither remains in his
accustomed position. Like two intrepid mountaineers, they balance over a
yawning abyss, perform daring maneuvers and clear the way for each other time
and again. The longer the intimate wanderings of subtle nuances and sensitive,
dancing elegance last, the greater the familiarity seems to be. "Richard really
seizes every rhythmic and harmonic chance," the American marveled about his
French partner. And he replies gallantly: "Ron still looks so young, fresh and
elegant like three decades ago. And he is still enthusiastic, straightforward and
comes straight to the point." An often thoughtlessly used image rarely fits better
than on this very special evening: Ron Carter and Richard Galliano create a
universal musical language, whose vocabulary consists of notes. Risk- free
enjoyment

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.

Note price increase and cat number change from last time around. In 1968, Don Cherry had already established himself as one of the leading voices of the avant-garde. Having pioneered free jazz as a member of Ornette Coleman's classic quartet, and with a high profile collaboration with John Coltrane under his belt, the globetrotting jazz trumpeter settled in Sweden with his partner Moki and her daughter Neneh. There, he assembled a group of Swedish musicians and led a series of weekly workshops at the ABF, or Workers' Educational Association, from February to April of 1968, with lessons on extended forms of improvisation including breathing, drones, Turkish rhythms, overtones, silence, natural voices, and Indian scales. That summer, saxophonist and recording engineer Göran Freese who later recorded Don's classic Organic Music Society and Eternal Now LPs invited Don, members of his two working bands, and a Turkish drummer to his summer house in Kummelnäs, just outside of Stockholm, for a series of rehearsals and jam sessions that put the prior months' workshops into practice. Long relegated to the status of a mysterious footnote in Don's sessionography, tapes from this session, as well as one professionally mixed tape intended for release, were recently found in the vaults of the Swedish Jazz Archive, and the lost Summer House Sessions are finally available over fifty years after they were recorded. On July 20, the musicians gathered at Freese's summer house included Bernt Rosengren (tenor saxophone, flutes, clarinet), Tommy Koverhult (tenor saxophone, flutes), Leif Wennerström (drums), and Torbjörn Hultcrantz (bass) from Don's Swedish group; Jacques Thollot (drums) and Kent Carter (bass) from his newly formed international band New York Total Music Company; Bülent Ates (hand drum, drums), who was visiting from Turkey; and Don (pocket trumpet, flutes, percussion) himself. Lacking a common language, the players used music as their common means of communication. In this way, these frenetic and freewheeling sessions anticipate Don's turn to more explicitly pan-ethnic expression, preceding his epochal Eternal Rhythm dates by four months. The octet, comprising musicians from America, France, Sweden, and Turkey, was a perfect vehicle for Don's budding pursuit of "collage music," a concept inspired in part by the shortwave radio on which Don listened to sounds from around the world. Using the collage metaphor, Don eliminated solos and the introduction of tunes, transforming a wealth of melodies, sounds, and rhythms into poetic suites of different moods and changing forms. The Summer House Sessions ensemble joyously layers manifold cultural idioms, traversing the airy peaks and serene valleys of Cherry's earthly vision. In the Swedish Jazz Archive quite a few other recordings from the same day were to be found. Some of the highlights are heard as bonus material on the CD edition of this album. The octet is augmented by producer and saxophone player Gunnar Lindqvist, who led the Swedish free jazz orchestra G.L. Unit on the album Orangutang, and drummer Sune Spångberg, who recorded with Albert Ayler in 1962. The bonus CD also includes a track without Cherry featuring Jacques Thollot joined by five Swedes including Lindqvist, Tommy Koverhult, Sune Spångberg, and others. With liner notes by Magnus Nygren and album art featuring a cover painting by Moki Cherry: Untitled, ca. 1967-68. Track list: 1. Summer House Sessions 2. Summer House Sessions.

Back in 2016, producer Seth Applebaum released two EPs that marked the inauguration of the band Ghost Funk Orchestra. `Night Walker' and `Death Waltz' were conceived as one-man-band, reel-to-reel tape recorded experiments that would bring together elements of all the sounds that Seth most adored at the time: tape-saturated drums, gratuitous spring reverb, surfy guitar, Latin-style percussion, odd time signatures, and Spanish-language female vocals. Initially released only in the digital domain and on a short run of cassette tapes, these two EPs that defined the early era of GFO are now finally available together on a single LP via Colemine Records. The tracks have been lovingly remastered by Doug Krebs. We invite you to take a dive into the humble beginnings of a project that has continued to grow, shape shift, and accrue new and exciting sounds for its sonic palette.

**JAPANESE IMPORT CD NOW AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER FOR 12TH AUG**

Iconic indie folk pop duo from Galaxie 500 return with a dreamy collaboration with atmospheric Japanese guitarist Kurihara.

“With its meditative tempos and enveloping guitar work by Michio Kurihara—‘it’s like this golden net,’ Naomi said of his gorgeous, versatile playing—A Sky Record offers shelter from the squall. If it has the glow of a long-delayed reunion between friends, that’s not accidental: Kurihara hasn’t traveled outside of Japan in some time, so Damon and Naomi hadn’t recorded with him in nearly ten years. When they finally made it back to Japan in November 2019 for a brief tour, they were elated to book some time with Kurihara at the aptly named studio Peace Music.

“In those long stretches of quarantime, the tracks they returned from Japan with had distinct moods but not yet any lyrics. (Kurihara works best when trying to conjure a specific feeling or natural image—after all, he did once make a solo record, Sunset Notes, on which every song was based on a different sunset he’d witnessed...) How to write about the pandemic? How to not write about the pandemic? Naomi first struck upon the appropriate tone when re-reading the journals of one of her favorite abstract painters, Charles Burchfield. She arranged this found language into the lyrics of the iridescent ‘Season Without Time,’ which also became a tribute to a friend that she and Damon had lost in the last year.

“From there, the floodgates opened. The wistful and watery ‘Midnight’ (electrified, towards the end, by the slow screams of a Kurihara solo) conjures Naomi’s nostalgia for youthful summers spent at Jones Beach, while the gentle current of ‘Sailing By’ pays homage to those ritualistic BBC Shipping Forecasts and the waltzing, quintessentially British theme song from which it takes its name.”
—Lindsay Zoladz

Cult South Asian New Wave! Naya Beat is proud to announce its second release, Tere Liye, the highly sought after and impossible to find New Wave album by the unsung pioneers of the British Asian music scene, Pinky Ann Rihal. Remastered for vinyl by multi Grammy-nominated Frank Merritt at The Carvery and available for the first time since its limited 1985 release, the album is as fresh and relevant today as it was 37 years ago.

South Asian New Wave. Four words that you will rarely see together. Pinky Ann Rihal were the brainchild of two London-based Punjabi immigrants and progressive rock musicians – Harry Rihal and Jati Sodhi – at a time in the U.K. when progressive rock musicians were almost exclusively white and Punjabi musicians were almost exclusively making Bhangra. Encouraged by their friend and disco pioneer Biddu (yes, that Biddu!), they cut ‘Tere Liye’ – a one-off Hindi-language New Wave album with producer John Hamilton and vocalists Pinky Rihal (married to Harry) and Anne Barrett (married to John). It is an album that exemplifies the cultural collaboration and musical synthesis of the time. Complementing the rich, cosmic and layered synths and drum programming of Hamilton and the distorted guitars of Rihal and Sodhi are the Hindi lyrics of vocalists Pinky and Anne. The result is an amazing one-of-a-kind South Asian New Wave album. Nothing like it has come out before or since.

Stymied on its original release by bungled distribution, poor marketing and plenty of bad luck, this incredible album seemed destined to be lost to history. With Asian electronic music in the U.K. seeing a rebirth and capturing imaginations around the world,‘Tere Liye’ can finally take its rightful place as one of the pioneering albums of the Asian underground.

This is Naya Beat’s second release in a series of reissues, reworks and remixes, and compilations dedicated to uncovering electronic and dance music from the overlooked ‘80s and ‘90s South Asian music scene. Their first release Naya Beat Volume 1: South Asian Dance and Electronic Music 1983-1992 was named by the Vinyl Factory as the Number 1 reissue of 2021.

O’o share many of the musical characteristics of their ornithological namesake. The Kaua’i O’O produced the most exquisite birdsong before its extinction in Hawaii in the late 1980s. The beauty and character of its voice was delicate and mysterious, tuneful and surprising. You can experience it with just a cursory websearch, a haunting cri de coeur from the last century. If the poor O’O is consigned to history, then life is just beginning for this French duo, based in Spain, who’ve won plaudits and awards already in their short musical lifespan.

O’o are about to release their sublime debut album Touche. This is not an endling, it’s just the beginning: “I found the name on a website of weird English language words, and I loved the way the letters were arranged like a pair of glasses,” says O’o singer Victoria Suter. “Afterwards, I went onto YouTube and started listening to the last bird of its species, calling for a mate that would never come. I thought: ‘Oh my God, that’s so sad’. Then we talked about the name and we thought it could be a nice thing to honour it and keep it alive in some way.”

Suter met her musical partner Mathieu Daubigné at college in Agen, South West France, when the pair were studying music theory in their teens. Victoria moved to Barcelona in 2010; Mathieu followed six years later. Their debut EP, Spells, appeared in 2018 a beautifully crafted patchwork of vocals and samples that is redolent of the uncanny vocalese of Laurie Anderson. The bird makes an appearance at the beginning of the EP: “Sweet tooth beak. Soft melody peak / Oh O’o, go round and round in circles / Looking for a honeydrop, til you vanish, til you drop”.

That sense of profound longing for something lost is carried over to Touche, as well as the same heightened sensory awareness of the world around them. What has developed in spades is the creative process. O’o have blossomed organically, augmenting their pop sensibilities. Avant-garde techniques have been brought to heel as the pair create off-kilter pop music that warms the heart and nourishes the brain. The catalyst that enabled this bold pop transformation came with the song ‘Touche’ itself, a saucy chanson at the heart of the album. Suter’s wry narrative about a botanical femme fatale is inserted into a lithe and skittish song with reggaeton beats and an inviting, balmy atmosphere.

“The song is about a flower which attracts male insects, producing the very same smell as the female of the species,” explains Victoria. “The poor male is fooled by the sex-appeal of this botanical trap, and gets so excited that he exhausts himself and wastes all his other chances of ulterior mating and having any offspring. The flower entices the insect in in mermaid-like fashion, to come nearer and touch her. It’s the hot track!”

‘Touche’ reaches into hitherto unexplored areas of pop, while the rest of the album is accessible in the way that James Blake, Radiohead or Kate Bush are accessible, and it always challenges, in a way that pop isn’t supposed to. Suter writes playful, poignant, observational songs that tell stories as well as tell us something about ourselves. Songs like ‘Dorica Castra’ are built upon the voice as an instrument, centrifugal and layered from its core.

Complimentary to this method is Daubigné, who brings startling innovation with found sounds, samples and clever vocal manipulations—creating unique, otherworldly sonic flourishes. A guitar whirs like a musical spinning top on ‘Spin’, created in Ableton; an Ondes Martenot appears to make a guest appearance on the title track, though it’s the ingenuity of the Prophet 8 synthesiser. “I’ll often say to Mathieu, ‘what’s that?’” says Suter, He’ll reply, ‘that’s your voice’.”

O’o found their own voice when they won a competition held by the legendary festival organisers Primavera Sound. Victoria entered the band into a competition she saw on Instagram, sending off rough demos on the final day of entry, thinking little more about it other than the fact Mathieu might be annoyed. Soon they would have to build a live set from scratch and figure out how to present their music for the first time. At stake was seventy hours of recording time at Aclam studios, used by Rosalía and Kendrick Lamar, and for the winner a coveted spot at the festival. A pool of 350 acts were whittled down, and then O’o triumphed at a Battle of the Band style face off.

The O’O might be extinct, but O’o the band have learned how to fly. Just watch them go.

Strictly limited to 10,000 numbered copies, pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl at RTI, and mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's ultra-hi-fi UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP collector's edition enhances the blockbuster work for today – and the ages to come. Surpassing the sonics of any prior version, it peels away any remaining limitations to provide a transparent, lively, ultra-nuanced presentation of a record that won six Grammy Awards – including prizes for Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Song. The expanse and depth of the soundstage, fullness of tones, natural snap and extension of the guitar strings, realistic rise and decay of individual notes, and roll of Clapton's vocals all attain demonstration-grade levels.

Housed in a deluxe box, the UD1S Unplugged pressing features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording and the reissue's premium quality. No expense has been spared. Aurally and visually, this UD1S reissue exists as a curatorial artifact meant to be preserved, touched, and examined. It is made for discerning listeners that prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in the art – and everything involved with the album, from the images to the finishes.

Truly, everything about Unplugged matters. Having sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. and more than 26 million copies worldwide, the 1992 work resonates with listeners of all generations and speaks a universal language. Recorded for MTV before a very small audience on January 16, 1992, the 14-track set became the signpost for future acoustic-based endeavours that witnessed artists of all stripes re-examining their catalogues and, in many instances, as Clapton does here, placing familiar originals in fresh contexts and unveiling spirited versions of cover material. Needless to say, Clapton's session turned MTV's series into can't-miss programming for which the likes of Rod Stewart, Tony Bennett, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and more would soon participate.

Kicking off his performance with a spirited instrumental to establish the mood, Clapton immediately wades into the style that originally caught his attention as a British teenager in the early 1960s: American blues. Backed by a superb band that includes guitarist Andy Fairweather Low, pianist Chuck Leavell, bassist Nathan East, and drummer Steve Ferrone, Slowhand delivers a rhythmic, toe-tapping rendition of Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me" that announces he's come to reconnect with his muse. What follows over the course of nearly the next hour stirs the heart, shakes the soul, moves the mind, and invigorates the senses.

Of course, there's no talking about Unplugged without keying in on "Tears in Heaven," the striking ballad Clapton penned about the death of his four-year-old son. More emotional, direct, spare, and healing than the studio version released a year prior, it crackles with an intimacy, maturity, poignancy, honesty, sweetness, and integrity that inform the entire concert. Indeed, how Clapton frames other favorites here – transforming "Layla" into a relaxed, comfortable stroll and ruminating on the seasoned ripples flowing throughout "Old Love," for example – indicate both a creative rebirth and gleeful acceptance of the next phase of his career.

And that very direction (two of Clapton's next three albums would be all-blues projects) is what really makes Unplugged so indispensable. Equivalent in mastery if not in volume to the output that earned him his "God" nickname, interpretations of Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues" (complete with kazoo!), Big Bill Broonzy's "Hey Hey," Robert Johnson's "Walkin' Blues" and "Malted Milk," and Muddy Waters' "Rollin' & Tumblin'" showcase a learned professor in his element and all the wheels turning.

In every regard, Clapton's Unplugged session was appointment listening when it came out in August 1992. With the arrival of MoFi's UD1S pressing, that sensation is more urgent than before.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior

Instead of utilizing the industry-standard three-step lacquer process, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's new UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss. While three-step processing is designed for optimum yield and efficiency, UD1S is created for the ultimate in sound quality. Just as Mobile Fidelity pioneered the UHQR (Ultra High-Quality Record) with JVC in the 1980s, UD1S again represents another state-of-the-art advance in the record-manufacturing process. MFSL engineers begin with the original master tapes and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. These lacquers are used to create a very fragile, pristine UD1S stamper called a "convert." Delicate "converts" are then formed into the actual record stampers, producing a final product that literally and figuratively brings you closer to the music. By skipping the additional steps of pulling another positive and an additional negative, as done in the three-step process used in standard pressings, UD1S produces a final LP with the lowest noise floor possible today. The removal of the additional two steps of generational loss in the plating process reveals tremendous amounts of extra musical detail and dynamics, which are otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. The exclusive nature of these very limited pressings guarantees that every UD1S pressing serves as an immaculate replica of the lacquer sourced directly from the original master tape. Every conceivable aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the most perfect record album available today.

MoFi SuperVinyl

Developed by NEOTECH and RTI, MoFi SuperVinyl is the most exacting-to-specification vinyl compound ever devised. Analog lovers have never seen (or heard) anything like it. Extraordinarily expensive and extremely painstaking to produce, the special proprietary compound addresses two specific areas of improvement: noise floor reduction and enhanced groove definition. The vinyl composition features a new carbonless dye (hold the disc up to the light and see) and produces the world's quietest surfaces. This high-definition formula also allows for the creation of cleaner grooves that are indistinguishable from the original lacquer. MoFi SuperVinyl provides the closest approximation of what the label's engineers hear in the mastering lab.



SACD



Mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's numbered hybrid SACD enhances the blockbuster work for today – and the ages to come. Peeling away remaining sonic limitations to provide a transparent, lively, ultra-nuanced presentation of a record that won six Grammy Awards (including prizes for Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Song), it places Clapton and company in your room. The expanse and depth of the soundstage, fullness of tones, natural snap and extension of the guitar strings, realistic rise and decay of individual notes, and roll of Clapton's vocals all attain demonstration-grade levels. A perennial audiophile favourite, Unplugged now tosses its hat into the ring as a demonstration disc.

Muddy Monk was revealed alongside Parisian artists Myth Syzer, Ichon and Bonnie Banane on 'Le Code'. From his native Switzerland, he imposes a fine, synthetic universe that plays a major role in the renewal of French-language song. The journey began in 2018 with 'Longue Ride', a cathartic first album that he describes as 'a kind of therapy' and that was unanimously acclaimed by the critics. In 2020, he returns with 'Ultra Tape', a mixtape which, with the benefit of hindsight, is the first step towards his second album. We discover a more raw universe. Darker too. A superb launching pad for his second album.

With Ultra Dramatic Kid, Muddy Monk delivers a radical new piece, a bubble of just over thirty minutes in which he manages to work his magic and make us dance on the edge of his emotions. As if everything could change in an instant towards happiness or chaos. An electric album and a sublime dive into his universe, which draws equally from Daft Punk, Rage Against The Machine and Travis Scott. A project that takes the form of a global experience, both auditory and visual, since almost all the tracks on the tracklisting have been put into images by Felix de Givry, the whole forming a short film to be discovered with the release of the project. In the end, Ultra Dramatic Kid is an uncompromising album in which it is a pleasure to get lost. An album that further establishes the Swiss artist as one of the artists capable of redefining the contours of French-speaking music for many years to come.