Beats News

Eddie Ruscha makes music with an airbrush. He paints with a theremin. He sees colour where others hear sound. He hears sound where others see colour. He is a synaesthetic synthesist, feeling everything but touching nothing. Secret Circuits. Beats in Space. Cabin in the Sky.

The window is open at the studio. A salty breeze. Light waves across the floor.

Ruscha works with an Iwata Eclipse, which looks like a pipe and sounds like a rocket. Gravity Feed Dual Action. It makes worlds without making contact. He talks of heliography, printing in shadows and writing in sun.

Paint flies and Ruscha has the tape head running. It’s Baldelli or nothing out here. A collage of senses overlapping. He take a jam and runs with it. Or better still, drives with it. Out onto the open freeway. Cassettes again. Escapist fantasies. Fantastic ecstasy.

Ruscha goes in to head out. Is this a journey with no end in mind, or no mind to end? His are sonic quests for unanswered questions. An epiphany for Future Days. The ground shook when he first heard Can.

Ambient oscillations, ritual experimentations. No conventional classification. Alive improvisation.

Ruscha’s colours speak from a prime perspective. They conduct dialogues in shade. Optical poems of Palmy Days. Brushed in Busby’s spirit of synchronicity. Dancing deco diamonds on the water, breaching for a moment, depth perceived, left unspoken.

It’s no surprise that Ruscha likes Rorschach. He is drawn to it, it is drawn to him. Drawn by him.

Down in California, the sun sets into the fold, pressed flat, squeezed out. Rays reflect in all directions. If music is medicine, why add to the dissonance? It’s all about serenity these days. Deep Into the Heart of Love. Seeing symmetry in Clive’s Ives. Hollywood Hotel, HollyWoo are you.

But there is darkness too, he says, in LA’s laughing light of plenty. It is kaleidoscopic. Lucid dreams of a culture crushed at Altamont. Strung out on the esplanade. Waves again, twinkling on the surface, drones of melancholic undertow. Once more to the studio.

Paint runs, tapes fly. Indian ragas and classic trance. Ruscha brings the airbrush to the paper’s edge. The volume goes up. He pulls it away. The volume dies down. A conductor of the astral orchestra. Seeking methodical means to a transcendental end. Organic and synthetic.

Bird of Paradise. Is it science or soul? Fourteen into three-sixty. 25.714285 degrees of the whole.

Eddie Ruscha paints with a theremin. He makes music with an airbrush. A whisper to the touch. Acrylic paint, acoustic guitar, stencils, synths, fine dots and floating drums. In a forest. Outer space. Back to Earth. Contact made.

Cosmic Harmonics.”

Proc Fiskal's second album sees a reorientation of the source elements of his music. Where ‘Insula’ fed off samples of the ramblings of his friends and sounds of his hometown, ‘Siren Spine Sysex’ is laden with an inner voice of sampled Gaelic, Irish and English folk music, contorted and imbued into the futurist body of modern pop; the ghostly anima image of the female folk voice and the lamenting wheeze of the accordion rub against the rush of icey 808s and angles of Grime. Joe Powers’ family history is in folk music, with several of his forebears active in the Scottish Folk revival of the 1960s. It's this cultural baggage - the Caledonian Antisyzygy of the earnest folk tradition he was raised in – alongside the modernist dance music he makes, that brings a personal element to the album. The music of ‘Siren Spine Sysex’ examines dance music as folk music, re-routing them both comparatively, with the wordless emoting of chopped and screwed Gaelic vocals leading to joyous pop songs like ‘8 Mgapixel See Thru Phone’ and 'Leith Tornn Carnal’. Though fast and detailed, ‘Siren Spine Sysex’ feels relaxed and pastoral at times, its edits and drums sensual, swelling, and reactive to the music, its textures influenced by the tinny 16 bit flutes, strings, and wacky scores of gaming soundtracks.

Following their recent solo releases Soniscope (Dauw) and Cells #5 (Important Records), Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Midori Hirano and Tokyo based string experimentalist Atsuko Hatano have teamed up for their first collaborative full-length: Water Ladder. An intense, multilayered continuation of earlier collaborations (Atsuko was featured on Midori’s debut LP back in 2006), the foundation for this new collaborative album was laid when they shared stages in Berlin (Ausland) and Japan in 2019. Working remotely at first, they later recorded parts of the album in Nara’s snoihouse (using omnidirectional polyhedral speakers).

“As we rallied back and forth with our recordings in the process of creating this album, unanticipated fluctuations and irregularities emerged, coming together into a kind of music with a unique resilience and buoyancy that cannot be confined to existing molds. It was as though we had built a Water Ladder to bridge the gap between us,” explains prolific composer and viola player Atsuko Hatano, who’s been busy recording solo and with colleagues such as Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi, Mocky, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Takeo Toyama, and Anzu Suhara (Asa-chang & Junrei).

Kyoto-born, Berlin-based Midori Hirano, who’s also been releasing music under her MimiCof moniker, adds multiple instruments to the ever-changing sonic landscapes of Water Ladder – an album defined by suspenseful and seemingly suspended compositions that often feel like floating in midair, a sensation the musicians compare to “that distinctive feeling you get from riding a high-speed elevator, where you can no longer tell whether you’re going up or down.”

Devoid of birdsong, the late summer air is nevertheless full of buzzing, whirring, hissing sounds on foreboding album opener “Summer Noise,” a cinematic intro with slow-moving piano chords and an ominous build-up over the course of its sprawling eight minutes. Elsewhere, sudden bursts of viola cut through nighttime peace (“Nocturnal Awakening”), followed by “Cotton Sphere” – which makes the sensation of floating in midair complete: harmonies and melodies rise and form to fall apart again, leaving only trails of previously defined space shimmering in their wake…

Whereas the title track truly explodes half-way in, the final “Cascade” brings closure to the electro-acoustic six-track collection: the floating continues, but the interlocking musical planes are no longer ruffled or rippling, no longer torn in many directions at once. Instead, the sonic streams merge and eventually disappear like ephemeral water falls after heavy rain or sudden snowmelt.

“Water cannot retain its form on its own, and can take any shape as effected by external forces. Its movements cannot be captured by eyesight alone: A body of water that appears to be crashing down into a deep, bottomless waterfall could actually be rising up very slowly into midair,” says Atsuko. “This is an invitation for you to cross the ever-transforming Water Ladder built between Midori and myself.”

*limited edition cassete**
Printed see through plastic inner cover inside an orange fluorescent case, with folded paper insert. 20 track compilation.

Inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés canonical text, Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992), the eponymously titled Donne che corrono coi lupi is a dedication to feral feminine energy, connection and sisterhood. In the book, Estés – a psychoanalyst, poet and cantadora, or “keeper of old stories” – draws on Jungian theory to weave an alternative mythology of The Wild Woman archetype. She conjures images of the underworld, rivulets of menstrual blood; a lumpen mass of placenta splattering onto a cave floor. In a mirrored gesture, for Donne che corrono coi lupi, more than twenty artists and producers have come together, giving rise to a primal, mystical compilation destined to entrance and ensnare.

An eerie lullaby, Cucina Povera’s ‘Liikaa liimaa’ recants her trek through Glasgow’s Victorian Necropolis, a gigantic cemetery comprised of elaborate tombs and monuments. Searching for some healing growth during the bleak Scottish winter, she wandered among the graves, coming face to face with an elusive herd of deer. Translating this encounter into sound, Povera’s ethereal vocals glide and glissade, taking on the malleability of melting ice. Another eulogy to animals in the landscape, Kakubo’s ‘Aboyá’ derives from the Brazilian Portuguese word “Aboiar” – a chant utilised by farmers to herd cattle. The sloping beat is interlaid with synthetic horns and Brazilian folk songs, traditional compositions made by marginalised rural communities.

Camille Mandoki and Lucrecia Dalt’s contribution is named after the ancient Greek goddess – Baubo is a fearsome, headless torso, who appears with nipples for eyes and a vulva for a mouth. In Estés’ envisioning, Baubo is a gloriously obscene character who shakes her breasts and tells hilarious dirty jokes. Her nipples are described as “psychic organs,” with the vulva becoming an endless portal to women’s stories and secrets. On the track, developed during a virtual artist residency at the Goethe Institut, Mandoki and Dalt experiment with timbre, creating the uncanny, spectral presence of a third singer. Voices are an essential component throughout Donne che corrono coi lupi, harmonising and unifying, refusing to be silenced. Eva Geist, in her native Italian tongue processed through a multitude of fx pedals, casts spells – incantations to honour the power of female friendship. While label boss Elena Colombi, utilising Ece Özel’s hypnotic reading of the parable of The Red Shoes and Pirinç by Turkish poet Lale Müldür, summons dissociative glossolalia.

In defiance of the punitive rationality that structures the domesticated world, Estés instead holds reverence for intuition – wild impulses generated from one’s body and soul. Bergsonist – whose alias references Bergsonism, a school of philosophical thought which rejects static values in favour of motion and change – records almost all her music live. ‘Speculation’ is an improvised piece, instinctively composed in the heat of the moment.

"Dare, dare, dare ... She/her gets caught staring at the wall, bashing table with brushes, shouting at the clouds filling the red-loud sky. What is left? Just … sound, sound, sound." Percussionist Valentina Magaletti’s ‘Bubble Pain’ seethes like a boiling cauldron, her rapid, heart-fluttering rhythms inflected with bat screeches and canine yelps.

Borusiade – a stalwart figure in Romania’s queer dance community – unleashes ‘Our Hustle,’ the title referring to the urgency of gaining “an equal status in society.” A powerful industrial affair, the track sways with mechanic momentum. Also tuning into cyborg fantasies, Isabella, alone in the midst of the pandemic, conducts a ​​seance with her Elektron Octatrack – ’Cherry Sky’ blends mechanical synth with sticky-sweet lyrics. Formerly known as Inga Copeland, Lolina takes a bath with a drum machine, its waterlogged utterances meandering over her disquieting refrain: “Let me drown in sound.”

Closing off the B-side, ‘Dali's Elephant Caravan Melting Desert’ is a recording of a performance held in a former brothel – perhaps the oldest – in Hudson, New York. Emulating the motion of a train thundering past the building, Deradoorian encapsulates the dynamism of the city, its ghosts and obscured history of labouring sex workers. Reaching climax, the record concludes with Fetter’s ‘Karma’ – a cacophony of raucous punk-noise, exploding into incandescent fragments as sharp as broken glass.

A boundless creative spirit, Australian artist Paul Schütze has worked for over forty years as a musician, photographer, visual artist and perfumer. He has exhibited at institutions such as the Hayward Gallery, the V&A and Madrid’s Arco, held residencies at the Cité des Arts in Paris and has works in collections worldwide. He has collaborated with musicians from Jah Wobble to Toshinori Kondo, from Bill Laswell to David Toop, and worked both as a filmscore composer and music critic in print.

A new, remastered compilation of key works from Schütze’s catalogue, The Second Law, collates music from various periods and albums. Represented here are tracks from 1990’s The Annihilating Angel, an album of blissed-out fourth-world mystery; from the transcendent homage to traditional Indonesian gamelan music The Rapture of Metals (1993); from the ethereal, spiritual, Nino Rota-esque melancholy of 1991’s Regard: Music by Film. It is occasionally dark, industrial and begrimed; occasionally paradisiacal and breathtakingly elegant. There are works of celestial, astronomic grandeur alongside microscopically detailed miniatures. Empty, deserted spaces of man-made abandonment contrast with studies of ornate natural beauty.

Limited

Tout Bleu's second record, Otium, recalls a route where the electronic crosses paths with the acoustic.

This new milestone in Genevan multi-instrumentalist Simone Aubert's (Massicot, Hyperculte) musical field represents a kind of fruitful deceleration. Initially conceived as a solo project in 2018, the act is now an exploration ground for the musicians gathered on Otium : Naomi Mabanda on the cello (Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, Chien Mon Ami) and Luciano Turella on the alto (Irtum Branda) encounter the sampling machines of POL, that could already be found on the first eponymous album Tout Bleu. In Tout Bleu's music, the part-melodic, part-abrasive riffs reminiscent of Massicot are present, and so are the socially engaged, energetic singing of Hyperculte. However, the band, by using acoustic instruments, vocals and electric guitar in an unconventional way, draws an orchestral landscape that sometimes flirts with pop, and where strings merge in polyrythm on low tempo beats.

Something wicked this way comes. Following singles 'Know The Future' b/w 'Digital Warfare' in 2019 and 'Hypersocial' b/w 'Safety Test' in 2020, ESP’s own Patrick Conway has now teamed up with the illustrious Appleblim (of Skull Disco and Apple Pips fame) for a meaty self-titled debut 2xLP under the new collaborative moniker, Trinity Carbon. There is something to be said for art created in the face of global unraveling, while mass transgression and the friction of culture shifting produce poignant commentary, but more often than not, it’s the personal coping mechanisms within our work that have the power to speak directly to the receiver. After a number of sessions resulting in wild imaginative beginnings, it was the untimely passing of Andrew Weatherall and a coming to terms with that loss that moved the two Brits-via-Berlin to herd their roaming sketches into a more narrative statement. In the uphill struggle to retain some sense of individualism, it’s always outsiders like Weatherall whose risks illuminate the roads of creativity less traveled, and when those beacons go dark there is a disorientation felt far and wide. Conway and Blim concede to the internal inquiry, “What would Weatherall do?” bringing to mind the man’s pervading morale, always soldiering onward through mediocrity, as it was undoubtedly an impetus for the duo growing steadfast and chiseling 'Trinity Carbon' into completion. While employing trusted machines in the bass department, they established a warm euphonic home base from which they could stray in a variety of tonal and rhythmic directions without straining a tether to the album’s core. However, as soon as any hint of familiarity may arise, or listeners begin to mentally assign stylistic epithets, the duo boldly change course to remind us that while the banal stay safely defined, it’s the iconoclasts, the outsiders who make us feel.

We are quite pleased to be bringing you this new album of mind-bending, pseudo liturgical and potentially lysergic electro acoustic compositions from Paris based, Belarusian composer Lina Filipovich, entitled "Magnificat". With its dark echoes of early Doctor Who episodes, and it's bent and twisted, industrially tinged and distorted choral decay, it seems at times like an ominous soundtrack to an end of the world sci-fi film. This is the standard vinyl version in an edition of 90 copies.

Stadsbilder ("City Images") is the first collaborative album between Swedish musicians Jakob Lindhagen and Dag Rosenqvist. The composers have both made names for themselves within the contemporary music scene - Jakob as an award-winning film composer with solo music streamed in the millions on digital platforms, and Dag as a highly prolific musician and sound artist,
having over 50 releases over the last 15 years in a vast array of constellations, both solo works and as part of the duo From The Mouth Of The Sun, as well as film composing and music for dance performances. The music on Stadsbilder intertwines layers of organic and electronic sounds, with minimal piano melodies meeting vintage synthesizers, found sounds,harmonium, banjo, kantele, Fender Rhodes and saxophone, as well as cello (played by Sebastian Selke of CEEYS).

Castles in Space is thrilled to present Luke Requena’s debut solo album, “Mirror Stage”. As the Lacanian title suggests, it is a collection of meditations and self-reflection translated into sonic explorations of the space that connects the macrocosm and the microcosm. Inspired largely by Tarkovsky’s film Solaris, the making of Mirror Stage was a musical journey of internal struggle across subconscious landscapes.
Requena is a composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Vancouver, BC. Although his main source of sound is analog synthesizers, he also integrates santur, guitar and organs into his pieces. Drawing influences from artists such as Günter Schickert, early Pink Floyd, and classical Persian music, “Mirror Stage” emits waves of sonic and lush textures while exploring the dark cosmos. It’s a genuinely enthralling work.
Luke has already released a double album, “Nocturnal/Seasonal” with John Jeffrey, drummer of Moon Duo, for the Castles in Space Subscription Library as part of the new age electronic jazz project, Oscilloclast.

In what seems like some sort of cosmic alignment bound to happen, the ever prolific and somewhat elusive Niagara make their way into the Discrepant catalogue with '1807'. Compiling tracks recorded between 2014 and 2018 that appeared scattered among very limited and long out of print self released CDRs, the record feels as much out of time as deeply resonant with these times with no dancefloors. Stripping away most of the beat based approach of early Príncipe releases and Ascender EPs, these 17 vignettes presented in the classic dance maxi 12" format dabble with escapism in a manner that projects them as potential DJ tools for lockdown.

Deeply idiosyncratic, the trio from Loures shows an internal coherence that while not easy to grasp given their mutating creative impulses, weaves each different path into a sonic fiction all their own. Cobbled together from countless hours of jamming on warm spectral synths, field recordings, otherworldly textures or devious drum machines '1807' paints a vivid and dreamlike escape route that goes from the hypnotic arpeggios and rarefied synths of 'Esc8' through the glowing tones and fragmented melodies of 'Egyptiu' and into the malfunctioning swirl of the stark 'Esc 10' or the polluted 4/4 thump and funky guitar line of 'Mapas'. Equally disruptive and inviting.

All tracks composed by Niagara between 2014 – 2018

After a trilogy of spectacular explorations of relentlessly driving rhythms – Sagittarian Domain (2012), Quixotism (2014) and Hubris (2016) – Simian Angel finds Oren Ambarchi renewing his focus on his singular approach to the electric guitar, returning in part to the spacious canvases of classic releases like Grapes from the Estate while also following his muse down previously unexplored byways. Reflecting Ambarchi's profound love of Brazilian music – an aspect of his omnivorous musical appetite not immediately apparent in his own work until now – Simian Angel features the remarkable percussive talents of the legendary Cyro Baptista, a key part of the Downtown scene who has collaborated with everyone from John Zorn and Derek Bailey to Robert Palmer and Herbie Hancock. Like the music of Nana Vasconcelos and Airto Moreira, Simian Angel places Baptista's dexterous and rhythmically nuanced handling of traditional Brazilian percussion instruments into an unexpected musical context. On the first side, 'Palm Sugar Candy', Baptista's spare and halting rhythms wind their way through a landscape of gliding electronic tones, gently rising up and momentarily subsiding until the piece's final minutes leave Ambarchi's guitar unaccompanied. While the rich, swirling harmonics of Ambarchi's guitar performance are familiar to listeners from his previous recordings, the subtly wavering, synthetic guitar tone we hear is quite new, coming across at times like an abstracted, splayed-out take on the 80s guitar-synth work of Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell. Equally new is the harmonic complexity of Ambarchi's playing, which leaves behind the minimalist simplicity of much of his previous work for a constantly-shifting play between lush consonance and uneasy dissonance. Beginning with a beautiful passage of unaccompanied percussion dominated by the berimbau, the side-long title piece carries on the first side's exploration of subtle, non-linear dynamic arcs, taking the form of a gently episodic suite, in which distinctive moments, like a lyrical passage of guitar-triggered piano, unexpectedly arise from intervals of drifting tones like dream images suddenly cohering. In the piece's second half, the piano tones becomes increasingly more clipped and synthetic, scattering themselves into aleatoric melodies that call to mind an imaginary collaboration between Albert Marcoeur and David Behrman, grounded all the while by the pulse of Baptista's percussion. Subtle yet complex, fleeting yet emotionally affecting, Simian Angel is an essential chapter in Ambarchi's restlessly exploratory oeuvre. --- Oren Ambarchi - guitars & whatnot Cyro Baptista - percussion & voice Recorded by Randall Dunn, Joerg Hiller, Iuri Oriente and Oren Ambarchi. Edited by Joerg Hiller and Oren Ambarchi at Choose Studios, Berlin. Mixed by Joe Talia and Oren Ambarchi at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. Executive Producers: Konrad Sprenger & Dick Wolf. Photography by Traianos Pakioufakis. Design by Lasse Marhaug.

Recorded and mixed by Peter Rehberg at Twisted, Wien March 2015-January 2016 Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin, January 2016

Artwork by Tina Frank

Dedicated to Thomas Jerome Newton

Twelve years have passed since Editions Mego boss Peter Rehberg released his last full length release 'Get Off' on the Hapna label. In the interim, along with running the label, Rehberg has embarked on a series of soundtracks for the French artist and choreographer Gisele Vienne. Out of this collaboration the seeds were planted for the prolific KTL, guitar/computer duo with Stephen O Malley.

After a surprise return to live performance in 2015 we are now presented with Pita's new full length document under the banner of Get In.

Get In extends the perennial Pita sound into a paradox of intimidation and beauty. 20150609 teases the juncture between the human and the tool, the improvised and composed and the analogue and digital. Aahn inhabits a field of electronic nebula, simultaneously inviting and alien. Line Angel could be a new form of minimalism for the post internet crowd. S200729 harks to an acid most splintered whilst Mfbk completes proceedings as an ambient drift underscored with classical overtones.

Get in is a beautiful, engaging and unsettling listen. A multi-headed hydra presented as the ultimate dystopian sonic journey.

UUUU are Edvard Graham Lewis, Valentina Magaletti, Matthew Simms & Thighpaulsandra

Recorded and Mixed at Aeriel Studios, Brechfa by Thighpaulsandra

Mastered by Sarah Register

Photography by Antonio Curcetti

UUUU is a new outfit featuring Edvard Graham Lewis, Thighpaulsandra, Matthew Simms and Valentina Magaletti.

Individually these humans have implanted feathers in caps such as Coil, Dome, Wire, Tomaga, etc. Collectively they form UUUU, a powerhouse construction of fierce and free sonic exploration, as liberating as it is frightening, resulting in, the richly rewarding. The artists united present a project of exquisite curiosity and confident chaos where the individual thumbprints mesh into a gloriously muscular frenetic free sonic soup. It's Going All Over The Floor presents itself as a terse meeting between dance, ambient, abstraction and improvisation. The Latent Black Path Of Summons Served proceeds in a tense energy field where random elements bounce around until locking into a fourth world pattern designed to fall into a dense mass of ecstatic noise. Boots with Wings is classic Lewis - a pop tune from the other side of the mind.

UUUU is a schizophrenic seething/soothing masterpiece of a past/present hybrid equally at home in the club, the home and the mind.

Climate of Fear teams up with Vladimir Ivkovic for the eighth edition of its twelve part tape series. Recorded in in the last months of 2019, Vladimir showcases here his indelibly dank and syrupy sound. Gooey rave carnage, IDM turnarounds and flavor for weeks. One of the all time juiciest sets at any Climate party, this tape hits like a dripping mango in an arid desert. Out April 2021.

- clear vinyl repress / comes in original printed glow in the dark sleeve / 180 grams -

Nuron returns to De:tuned for the highly anticipated 2nd chapter of La Source. The sequel is another timeless slice of warm emotive techno with melodically rich sounds, much in the vein of his exceptional comeback EP on the label. "La Source 02" opens with 2 new productions which heal back to a particularly strong mid 90s period influenced by Detroit's blossoming second wave of producers, yet composed with a very peculiar writing style and distinctive depth: the Nuron touch! On the flip, highly experienced producer Kirk Degiorgio applies his As One remix skills to "La Source" from Nuron's debut on De:tuned. Be prepared for a classical journey of pure bliss!

The impeccable Ian Anderson at The Designers Republic created all the graphic work. Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis and pressed on 180 gr vinyl. A separate digital release will also be available at the usual digital shops. Stay tuned!

For it’s inaugural release, label boss Sepehr provides the first electrified soundtrack for Shaytoon records with “Crown Jewel”. Listeners should expect visions of monoliths, obsidian mountains underneath blood-red soaked skies and freaky soundwaves while listening. “Crown Jewel” EP should be listened to while hitchhiking across the country with only a bottle of wine in a knapsack, dreaming of dancing to the drum. Do not go gently

Transversales is very glad to announce the release of Mémoire Magnétique Vol. 2 spanning 1966-1993, revelatory collection of short and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani.
Since the late 50's, Bernard Parmegiani, a major figure of electroacoustic music and a founding member of GRM has created some eighty two concerts music. From the start,
Parmegiani’s work was closely linked to the screen, with dozens of documentaries, films, long features, animation films but also musical pieces for dance, stage or television. If many of his pieces are landmarks in the history of electroacoustic music (De Natura Sonorum, La Roue Ferris…), his application music compositions are strongly embedded in the subconscious landscape of the French public (Stade 2, Roissy Paris Airport…).
The second volume of this compilation allows us to discover some of unreleased rarities from Bernard Parmegiani’s personal archives and unpublished recordings which were composed for the screen or the performing arts.

audioMER. is honoured to announce the release of a new LP; Make Visible the Ghosts with music by Aki Onda (US/JP) and artwork by Paul Clipson (US). This album is the follow-up of Aki Onda’s Cinemage project Lost City—with Loren Connors and Alan Licht—released on audioMER. in 2015.

On Make Visible the Ghosts, New York-based musician Aki Onda composed the soundtrack for the images of the San Francisco experimental filmmaker Paul Clipson, who suddenly passed away on February 3, 2018.

In 2009, Clipson and Onda met at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport for the first time and shared a ride to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where they presented audio-visual works in the same bill. Since then, the two artists – known for their highly personal approach with Super 8, 16mm, cassette Walkman and radio – maintained a close friendship over the next nine years. Their works deal with memory, time, space, and those reflections, and they had a lot to share.

Onda and Clipson completed their collaboration work Make Visible The Ghosts—a combination of vinyl LP of Onda’s music and large-size collage artwork by Clipson—a few months before Clipson’s departure from life. The work is composed of the materials they used for their performance in New York in 2012 and developed over the three years from 2015 to 2017. Onda notes:

“The loss of Paul has left a huge hole in our mind including his friends and collaborators. Paul is no longer here, and this is a chance to remember him and his images that extended and expanded our perception of how the world can be seen and heard.”

Healing Force Project intertwines jazz and electronics to form something truly psychedelic and unique.

Koehler… he has all that stuff… like the cover: He drew the dragon on the back some years ago. Those sounds… somewhat brutal, even dirty, with mean resonances cutting… The rhythms, unfolded with unflinching relentlessness, bashing the same spot over and over and over, that shrouding shimmer of fantastic otherworldliness… it has strange effects, it becomes so tactile…

Grand St., the upcoming release on NYC's Maddjazz Recordings, is a 7-track EP from the duo Pharma - the musical group of long time friends, Sam Katz & Milo McBride. While they’ve spent the past years operating in different musical landscapes, Pharma is their most recent collaboration and features guest performances by rising stars, anaïs + Wati Heru.

At its heart, Grand St. is pop music, but performed through a dusty lens of bittersweet melancholy. The release is offered both in digital formats on all platforms and as a limited 12" Vinyl (100 copies only). The artwork + design was done in collaboration with Phil Wong and Lucas Mascatello.

Formerly a musician, cinematographer and lighting designer with The Residents and a student of “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Philip Perkins issued this astounding release on his own Fun Music label in 1983.

Perkins often worked in topographical realms, crafting environment-enriching soundscapes, albeit on a micro level.
Taking cues from minimalism, environmental field recordings and home-baked ceremonial mantras, King Of The World is a meditation on the lives of three ancient kings who believed themselves to be the ruler of all mankind.

The post-Hassell currents of Fourth World music unavoidably come to mind. King Of The World sits comfortably amongst the backwards-referencing style of more recent producers - but Perkins was a contemporary of the famed trumpeter and he alchemises a DIY spirit and sound art aesthetic into his own unique province of Magic Realism. Off-centre loops of African hand percussion are overlaid with a palette of water trickles, bird calls and mutant Casio synthesizer forming deceptively simple rhythmic and textural collages, always at a level just above subliminal.

Remastered in Brooklyn by Josh Bonati and with new sleeve artwork by the internationally acclaimed book designer Luke Bird.

Two one-man band projects meet together on the very first Global Warming various record : The cold-blooded Scottish sound-ingeneer Sordid Sound System and mysterious Spanish hedonist Sutja Gutierrez. Deeply rock-rooted and drug-infused, this futuristic western soundtrack opens with ‘The Void’, a arid dub jam, heavily hallucinogenic and ‘Meanwhile, When Times Turn Bad’, schizophrenic punk jam both recorded from Sordid Sound System’s redwood forests new studio on Northern California. On the other side, the lone ranger Sutja Gutierrez takes us to a dystopian horse ride into shady woods and grey plains, with ‘Everything Leads To An End’ and 'Beheaded Angels', two sensible journey, blending goofy drums, creepy synths layers, heady weird vocals and binary guitars for a unique and mighty melancholic mood.

Hailing from Oaxaca, Mexico and currently based in Brussels, Vica Pacheco crafts a rich sound world that comes alive in surprising manifold turns. On the heels of Vocamorphosis, her stunning electroacoustic piece commissioned by France Culture where Ferrari-esque divagations venture into the untamed fancies of an imaginary wilderness, her debut record Symplegmata transposes a continuous exploration of unearthed sound narratives into briefer vignettes that, together, allow for a fully-fleshed mythology to unfurl. Departing from the idea of the symplegma - biological fusions, hermaphrodite sexuality, the amalgamation of distinct beings into fully-realized entities - Pacheco synthesizes field recordings and manipulated vocals in order to weld unique micro-sculptures that convey environments as contrasting as they are complementary. The 12 tracks that compose Symplegmata can be interpreted as elements for an alternative science fiction soundtrack or as the leisurely tunes of a parallel civilization from future pasts; either way, the physicality of Pacheco’s sound crafting beckons the kind of immersive melding that, much like the underwater symplegmatic beings of her lore, generate new fusional experiences with each listen.

It was the mid 80s. A musical revolution was already steamrolling throughout the French West Indies when the band Kassav' produced what was to become the sound of the decade. With a now wider use of synthetic and digital tones, the "zouk" wave literally swept away to sea the biguine and cadence from the West Indian musical landscape. While this took place, some musicians chose to make an alternative use of the new techniques brought on by the advent of synthesizers. Musicians like Serge Fabriano.

It was back in 1980 that Serge, a talented young musician from Guadeloupe, while studying for a degree in 'Arts & Informatique' (Computers & Arts Cycle) at the Université De Vincennes near Paris, discovered early computer-generated digital music (MAO in French) thanks to his roommates, who both taught computer-generated graphic arts. In 1982 Fabriano and his Fabriano Unité Zion project recorded, with the help of Alain-Jean Marie, Mario Canonge and Pierre Labor, Cosmik Syndika*, which to this day remains a masterpiece of made-in-Guadeloupe Caribbean jazz.

The following years saw him tour the US and Canada as well as several other countries. By 1986 he was back in Guadeloupe, teaching music in the secondary schools of Point-à -Pître and Sainte-Rose. While doing this, his ongoing passion for the budding MAO led him to kit himself out: the Yamaha CX5M (MSX Music Computer), the Macintosh Plus, the legendary synthesizers DX7 and DX11 and several other early rhythm machines became his new toys.

Him and his partner at the time, Marie-Reine Lamoureux, who was also both a teacher and a musician, as well as a member of the Fabriano Fuzion project, decided to involve their pupils in his electronic musical experimentations. They recorded an album, composed of five tracks deliberately titled Demain, under the name 'Digital Caresse' (the idea behind this was that instead of hitting the percussions to make music, one stroked the computer keyboard to coax a sound). The combination of the children's choir, enchanting wonky flutes, saturated electronic beat and cosmic atmosphere perfectly outline the purity of this rough diamond.

We are not where we live, but the valley we built'
Enjoyment through suffering. Beauty in chaos. African Ghost Valley apply these principles to create their heavy doomsday electronics pulled in from the Black Bunker; a D.I.Y space under a multi-story car-park.Separated from any scene on the surface, the record was put together by European / Canadian duo Childle Grangier and Gabriel Ghebrezghi;a partnership formed in the heat of heavily improvised recording sessions, where the pair would thrash out their versions of power electronics, industrial waste drops and rhythmic dub rumble to the cities homeless.
Keeping these raw fnal cuts away from any studio trickery, the microphone would be left on to archive feld recordings and wayward audio drops, capturing the hum and lifeblood of the 'Bunker and the wheezing lungs of the dense concrete that surrounded them. Titling this work 'Colony', the album is a open-ended and multi-edged tool for AGV to explore, allowing the listener to interpret the work as they see ft, bringing to mind images of corroded space settlements and the darkest recess of human history. You decide.

+ Eindeloostoogfilosoof (locked groove)

Alex Deforce, poet and Brussels bar-culture connoisseur makes his appearance on Lexi Disques, in collaboration with NY-based Charlotte Jacobs and Wiet L (Sagat). The result is a playful mix of spoken word and electronics infused in contemporary flemish poetry and radio practice. Including a 12 page booklet with texts and visuals by Alex.

A child of punk and noise, Pierre G. Desenfant, under the Blackthread monicker, pursues the multiple incantations of an immersive and inner quest, carved from the limbo of his own dreams, cinematographic miniatures where the intimacy of words and spoken word meets the chiseled luxury of analog machines.

In his songs of a new century, Blackthread experiments with the precision of the scalpel, an outstanding storyteller floating on vaporous synthetic mist. Sumptuous magnetic clouds in which balances an emaciated bass, choirs on the horizon, a soul keyboard or a minimal, almost hypnotic beat. We slide between scenes in sequences, carried by the echo of this voice dancing between the murmuring and the sung, hints of Gil-Scott Heron flirt with Pansonic, Coil and Eno-esque ambience.

Written and constructed over three years, his third album The Way You Haunt My Dreams was recorded with urgency in only a few days, with the contribution of sounds from friends Béatrice Morel, Frédéric D. Oberland, Stéphane Pigneul deOiseaux-Tempête, Rémi Dulaurier and the complicity of Johannes Buff (Zombie Zombie, Lee Ranaldo and The Dust, Enablers) in the mix. Contemporary photographer Gaël Bonnefon illustrates the album with his striking silver-toned clichés.
Sparkling with a sensitive bark and piercing directly the heart, Blackthread delivers with The Way You Haunt My Dreams a black and red diamond, addictive hollywood wandering, already blending into the night to haunt dreams in technicolour.

Blackthread is a story of development. Removing the traditional guitars and drums of noise rock in which he made his more conventional apprenticeship, Desenfant has reached a minimalistic formula in finding a new path. Constructed with minimal tools (a bass, analog synthesizers and his voice), his music, after these few years, expresses a plethora of sounds and feelings. Spoken words, whispers and explosions, this disciple of Brian Eno, Silver Apples and Alva Noto writes a beatless techno, rock devoid of guitar, an ambient enhanced with texts of icy beauty.

With The Way You Haunt My Dreams, Blackthread grapples with the tension of a certain genre of dark rock and literary post punk, superimposed in ambient music. Continuing with this sense of mood, Desenfant succeeds with this new album in developing a rare songwriting in experimental synth music. Blackthread is also a story of the voice. Never suffocated by acoustic research, the words of the vocalist give this disc its depth of personality, somewhere between neuroleptic reverie and confrontation with the musician's catharsis.

Electro-Chanteuse und ex-Model Carmen Villain überzeugte 2013 auf ihrem Debütalbum "Sleeper" mit einer Melange aus Royal Trux und frühen Sonic Youth. Auf dem Nachfolger "Infinite Avenue" präsentiert sie interessante Kollaborationen mit House-Produzent Matt Karmil (mehrere Tracks), Noise-Improvisator Helge Sten aka Deathprod ("Quietly") und der norwegischen Ausnahmesängerin Jenny Hval ("Borders"). Das Cover zeigt Hollywood-Ikone und John Cassavetes-Partnerin Gena Rowlands.

« Beauty of the world, chaos of the mind. »

“French music producer Coni presents Transperce, the first record under his project Ce Raid Solitaire.

Inspired by dramatic modern landscapes and haunting memories, the record is an attempt to seek beauty in the midst of a chaotic and saturated present.

Filled with the intensity of chasing rhythms, flicking hi-hats, fierce voices, melancholic pads and wretched distortion, Transperce evokes a state of industrial catharsis to the conscious mind.”

CLUB WINSTON resumes output by way of a double barrelled donk, parallel pressed, ready to go.