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For this volume, Sydney duo Andy Rantzen and Jochen Gutsch team up with Brisbane-based Lawrence English to create a new trio work, themed around the ideas, life, and personality of a German philosopher, poet and thinker, Arthur Schopenhauer. Based on Rantzen’s spoken words and English’s haunting sine waves, Gutsch structured the piece by adding piano, trumpets, wailing guitar, and thumping percussion, arranged as the original composition “On the Completion of My Master Work”. On the flip side of the tape, comes the reimagined version of the title piece. Both pieces appear as reflections to each other, maybe challenging each other, making conversations and questioning each existence.

Black Truffle is pleased to present Realejo, the first vinyl release from Brazilian sound artist and composer Manuel Pessoa de Lima. Having composed works for diverse contexts including cinema, contemporary dance, theatre and television, Lima’s live appearances often take the form of self-reflexive lecture performances that combine electro-acoustic sound, red light, video and spoken text, moving unpredictably from the hilarious to the distressing.

Realejo consists of two side-long pieces of highly idiosyncratic electro-acoustic collage, beginning with recordings Lima made of himself playing the organ in the Schloss Solitude Chapel in Stuttgart. Exploring the peculiarities of the instrument’s mechanics, Lima made hours of recordings with the organ stops half-way open, moving from haunting gliding tones to oddly tuned fair-ground melodies reminiscent of the record’s namesake realejo, a hand-cranked organ traditionally found in Brazil as the musical accompaniment to the work of fortune-telling parrots.

To these organ sounds, Lima added recordings of a security guard made in São Paulo: ‘Just before coming to Stuttgart, I started making field recordings of a security guard in São Paulo. It's something pretty common in residential areas: they sit in a chair with a whistle, and use that to signal when people arrive, leave or pass by in the street. This particular security guard, Miguel Viana, works on the same street my parents live, and where I had my childhood, and he has worked there since I was a small child. He has watched the street at night, from 8PM to 6AM, every single day, except Sundays, for over 30 years’.

The poignant sounds of the security guard’s whistles punctuate Lima’s electro-acoustic environment, which also includes raw digital synthesis, recordings of his friends’ infant child, audio lifted from Youtube, and, on the LP’s second side, elements taken from an earlier work, ‘36 English to Portuguese Lessons’. Finely chiselled from dozens of hours of source material into a detail-rich, mercurial structure, Realejo is alternately jarring and seductive, introducing listeners to a young composer with a powerfully individual voice.

Limited Edition, Picture Disc

‘’In this 24-minute composition, released here in its original name for the first time, Yassin encapsulates and condenses the aural and sonic landscapes experienced by those who bore witness to the war. In the 1980s, while the Lebanese Civil War, which ravaged the country between 1975 and 1990, was raging, television but particularly transistor radios were the only means through which people heard the news during interminable periods of power cuts or waiting in basement shelters.

The audio material was collected by Yassin on his regular trips to the dispersed and neglected archives of militias and political parties, radio and TV stations, and record shops across Lebanon. Built from over 300 hours of material, Yassin has woven together a composition using political speeches; radio and television commercials; news flashes and jingles; local 80s pop music; dubbed Japanese anime songs; propaganda, resistance, and revolutionary party songs; snippets from Ziad Rahbani plays and many more.

The recordings in CW Tapes are the sonic equivalents of Proust’s madeleines to any individual who was old enough to remember the war and its immediate aftermath; they effortlessly conjure the collective memory of children, teenagers and adults alike. Commercials, songs and speeches collide and intertwine as if Yassin had plugged a radio tuner into his mind, sounding out a deeply personal sonic terrain that echoes the hidden sonic memories of his contemporaries in which sounds ebb and flow as if they were heard in a dream (or nightmare).

Beside the diversity of its sounds, what is most striking in this record is the minute attention to the musicality of the different recordings Yassin uses, whether they are propaganda pieces, vocal patterns or news jingles. What you hear in the beginning of the CW Tapes, for example, is Raed Yassin’s fascination for the different political and musical figures that populated the Lebanese media landscape across the 1980s.
In this bewildering introduction, he highlights the absurdity of the war by lacing together a political speech given by Bachir Gemayel (a senior member of the right-wing Christian Phalange party and the founder and commander of the Lebanese Forces militia during the early years of the Lebanese Civil War who was killed in 1982 when he was elected president) with a frivolous and upbeat pop song by Lebanese pop singer Sammy Clark whose tunes are heard at different moments in the piece. The composition unfurls an array of overlapping tonalities and textures as well as a glossolalia made of processed voices that inhabited the archaic technologies of the time.

Words become increasingly indecipherable as the piece progresses, with a beautiful passage in which Yassin isolates sighs and breaths — as if to mark moments of respite during the war— until another commercial or pop song is blasted at full volume again. We can also hear what has become a staple in Yassin’s other musical projects, which is the sporadic inclusion of him singing or whistling over songs. In his continuous efforts to mine and work through the sonic archives of Lebanon’s recent past, the CW Tapes is possibly Yassin’s most personal output to date.‘’

Rayya Badran, Beirut, January 2019

The terrific opening salvo of this thrilling prospect of a label, imprint of the eleven-strong, Bristol-based collective.

Intensely intimate, dread ruminations about racism, being and the UK — rooted in the dub poetry of LKJ and Mutubaruka — in tense, widescreen settings by Amos Childs, out of Jabu and O$VMV$M, and Sam Kidel, moonlighting from The Death Of Rave.

Hotly recommended.

Silver vinyl

Weaving an intricately detailed tapestry of meditative, spiritual jazz and dream electronics, Maxwell Sterling’s astonishing second album ‘Laced With Rumour: Loud-Speaker Of Truth’ blooms in the gaps between Don Cherry, Talk Talk and Kara-Lis Coverdale, gently coaxing us into a trancelike reverie where the real and artificial morph into one pulsing organism.
Originating as a multi-channel installation commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary in 2018, the four extended pieces here were recorded at home in Morecambe Bay and then subsequently placed in a room alongside works by Moki Cherry (spouse of Don, mother of Neneh and Eagle-Eye Cherry), Penny Slinger, and a collection of static musical instruments the piece was intended to complement. As a follow-up to Sterling’s 2017 cult hit ‘Hollywood Medieval’ for The Death of Rave, ‘Laced With Rumour’ works with notably more fluid and gently psychoactive structuring that takes in seemingly disparate influences - from Roman mythology to Nottingham’s Lace industry - that results in a sprawling but intimate world of sound, characterised by aetheric arrangements that effectively elide the disciplines of spiritual jazz, chamber music, and art installation into something altogether new.
Much like Kara-Lis Coverdale’s converging interests in traditional vs hyper-modern, acoustic vs artificial and synthetic modes of sound, Sterling’s work here is fluid and unorthodox, but rooted in a deep understanding of convention which he proceeds to bend and re-shape at will. The album opens with a slowly contemplative and almost solemn drift between ‘Laced’, which features samples of Don Cherry weft into its tingling fray of electro-acoustic timbres, alongside the breezy chamber strokes of ‘With Rumour’, the hallucinogenic qualities of ‘Loud-Speaker’, and the darker revelation ‘Of Truth’, which concludes with a transition from mired murk to tones that channel Maxwell’s refined cinematic nous.
One of those albums that seems impossible to fully absorb in one sitting, listening to ‘Laced With Rumour...’ takes you from a swirl of brushed cymbals into harpsichord shimmers, passages of solo piano brushing up against the deepest subs - like a more bruised and flipped Sakamoto + Alva Noto collab, to Arthur Russell’s ‘World Of Echo’ slowly descending into synthesised madness. It’s a rich and stunning meditation for our time.

Part I (Disc 1)

The Taiwanese artist Yutie Lee covers six Chinese folk songs about Flowers.
Tuberosa, Rose, Jasmine, Plum Blossom, Orchids & Chamomile all are odes to the beauty of the plant. The flower also being a metaphor for something we are desperately longing for, but can never quite get. However you may want to interpret the songs, they are all telling a story of something pure and indestructible. In the end nature will prevail?
Romantic thoughts created in a time long before the current state of the world.
By artificially mutating her voice, Yutie Lee successfully manages to transfer the songs into 2020s arguably much more complex, dystopian reality. She does this not without a bow to the past, prevailing something of the original songs sweet essence, even adding a layer of humour… in the end leaving the listener with a feeling of good hope.

Part II (Disc 2-3)

To complete the package Yutie Lee’s versions have been remixed by, Alva Noto, Bell Towers, Laura Groves, Oceanic and Suzanne Kraft.

Ionisation is the first LP by Italian poet Adriano Spatola. Born in Yugoslavia in 1941, by the age of 23 he became a major force in the Italian avant-garde. “Towards Total Poetry,” Spatola’s critical study on the state of modern poetry, spells out his position: “to become a total medium, to escape all limitations to include theater, photography, music, painting, typography, cinematographic techniques, and every other aspect of culture, in a utopian ambition to return to origins.” Graphic poetry (cut-up zeroglyphs), volatile and beautiful prose (particularly his books The Porthole and Majakovskiiiiiiij), and of course sound poetry, represented here for the first time. Spatola was the editor of many underground publications: Baobab (a legendary audio-cassette magazine), Tam Tam, and Edition Geiger. Each of his pursuits spread the margins of the format, all done with a relentless, piercing curatorial eye.

Spatola has dark, drunken wit in spades. In his sound poems, an even more saturated persona is conjured. A desperate humor sneers through this LP, a humor that has surrendered to the severe joke of life long ago - lashing out on syllables and ingrown word games. Particularly, his classic “Aviation/Aviateur” (akin to his “Seduction/Seducteur,” & “Violacion/Violateur” etc.). Read by lesser performers, these pieces would falter and float by in the trough, though Spatola’s bull-like confidence tears through. “Poker Foundation” features the poet hysterically singing “the play of the words” over a classical radio piece, mocking and squawking against the string swells. Steve Lacy plays scissors, knife, and saxophone on “Hommage à Eric Satie,” a piece originally recorded for the luxurious Cramps LP boxset Futura. Collaborators Gian Paolo Roffi and Paul Vangelisti are also featured across the collection.

The LP concludes with the titular work “Ionisation,” recorded just days before his premature death in 1988. Feeling his sinking health, his belly in the quicksand, he prefaces the piece, “a funeral march for my body.” He proceeds to scrape and pound the microphone on his chest, face, and clothing. This thick pumping of Adriano’s torso rapping across the speakers abruptly stops after two minutes. A piercing moment.

I was born the day after Adriano died, which has some poetic meaning to me, naturally. I am indebted to him, his sickly sweet manner. The opportunity to publish these largely unknown sound works is an honor which brings a warmth to my torso. Much appreciation goes to Giovanni Fontana (poet and dear friend of Adriano), who helped produce this edition with me. “Every single word has been a tempest of gestures.“

Sean McCann, January 2020

For many, the first traces of the Raudive Tapes were in William Burroughs fictions and articles. The fact is, these mysterious magnetic tapes, which capture the voices of the dead, and were recorded by the baltic scientist Konstantin Raudive, are not a fiction but a reality (we are not here to judge their scientific objectivity ). These tapes, as rare as Lovecraft's Necronomicon, are now in our archives.

What we can find in this record ?

1 - Two introductions by Konstantin Raudive and a large session of exemples from his archives (July 1965).
2 - Nive extracts from the Gerhard Stempnik experiments - musician of the Berlin Philharmonic and close friend of Raudive (tapes from 1980).
3 - A Raudive celebration including unpublished material by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, David Toop, Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Calla and Carl Michael von Hausswolff.
They have all composed an exclusive piece of music based on the Raudive material. It goes from a close examination of the material itself to a more
evocative mood.

Who was Doctor Raudive ?

Dr. Konstantin Raudive, a student of Carl Jung, was a Latvian psychologist who taught at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, before devoting the last ten years of his life to electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). He published in his book Breakthrough in 1971.His early collaborator F.Jurgenson, whom he met by the very beginning of 1965, awakened Dr. Raudive's interest in EVP research. Raudive spent endless hours for the thorough study of Jurgenson's books ('Voices from Space', 1964 and 'Radio-Link with the Dead', 1967). From an overwhelming database (ranging about 72000 samples!), Raudive's mother seems to be statistically the most frequently reported contact personality. She usually addressed her son in the Latgalian dialect.

Multidisciplinary Portuguese artists Calhau! return in 2020 with a new album and their first release on Discrepant.

It’s quite possible you’ve never heard about them. They’re not that famous in Portugal or anywhere. Calhau! is formed by couple Alves von Calhau and Marta von Calhau, not their real names, but they’re their real names in the artistic reality Calhau! have been working in the last 15 years. But now that you’ve read their name, you must dig in. They’re one of a kind.

They’re not musicians, painters, illustrators, sculptures, visual artists or performers. They’re all the above but without manifesting their work specifically in any of them. While listening to “Tau Tau” – or any of their other releases – that translates quite well: their sound is quite visual, the voices translate into movement and the arbitrary use of sounds reveal a strong sensibility to the architecture of aesthetic.

“Tau Tau” manifests the voice element in Calhau!’s music as their main element. It’s been present in previous releases, but it’s the centerpiece here. All the words/phrases you hear are wordplays, with Portuguese words and their sounds, but also associations and co- relations. It’s done with purpose and meaning, it’s tailored work that carries meaning and – like in “BÓFIACULT” – a social critique.

The sounds and how Marta plays with her voice expose some other areas of work in Calhau!’s domain, like their continued interest in Portuguese folk traditions, not just with music/sound but also with objects. Objects that, ultimately, you can listen in “Tau Tau”. If you’re a fan of both our “Antologia De Música Atípica Portuguesa” compilations (they’ve of contributed with one track for our first volume “O Trabalho”), you’ll find “Tau Tau” as a good complement of how 21st century musicians understand and recreate Portuguese folklore.

“Creating collages of avant-garde ambience using instruments from the many corners of the earth, along with tape loops and samples, Finis Africae created a fourth world sound that was both exotic and mysterious.” – Andy Thomas

First vinyl edition ever of this lost experimental Spanish essential album. A delicate work that absorbs specific aspects of different music – minimalism, tribal sounds, new age, ambient, spoken word – to create its particular universe.

With an absolutely contemplative recording climate, the poems and their sound environments explore the deepest self of the poet and singer from Extremadura, Pablo Guerrero. The work combines memories of childhood through the valleys of his native village, Esparragosa de Lares, with the evolution of life to reach the contemplative state in adulthood. A score written in a collaboration with two old friends, Juan A. Arteche Gual andJuan C. Fdez Puerta (Finis Africae), who weave a beautiful tapestry of electronic sounds so that the deep and serious voice of the poet shells all the images that his ode encloses.

The recording, through fourteen poems, breathes an aroma of maturity, balance and total freedom. Maturity and balance with minimal arrangements, small gestures surrounded by abundant silences. Total freedom with instruments of the most varied, without restrictions or complexes: samplers, synthesizers and field recordings mixed with rattles, self-arches of the Appalachian Mountains, zithers, saxes made with reeds, conches, shortwave radios, plastic pipes, Hindu harmoniums … beauty can arise from any element and all these minimal arrangements come together to create the perfect ambience that sublimates the poem.

Completed in the spring of 1996, the recording was moving in no man’s land until the end of 1999 saw the light in book format of poems, accompanied by a CD. A co-edition of Música sin-Fin ( Juan A. Arteche own label) and Cicón ediciones (a small Extremaduran editorial) that, when released in book format, went unnoticed. Abstrakce records aims to recover this masterpiece of experimental Spanish music, contributing its bit to place the album where it deserves. Therefore, a very careful edition is presented, with a folder printed in letterpress with lead types, accompanied by an extensive booklet in both English and Spanish containing liner notes, lyrics, an interview with Juan F. Puerta and a text by Juan A. Arteche about of the recording of the record.

Pablo Guerrero: Recitation, gong, seeds, guitar, choirs, synthesizer and wind claimer.

Juan Alberto Arteche Gual: Marine Saxos, corrugated pvc pipes, jellyfish keys, carillon, tambourines, tar drums, zithers, tanpura, recited, choirs, accordion, tapes, computer composition, shortwave radio, legüero drum, hindu harmonium, Tibetan bells and sharpener pan flutes .

Juan Carlos Fdez. Puerta: Samplers, cowbells, autoharp, bells, guitar and keyboards.

Remastered at Sountess Studio in 2018 by Pablo Peiró

About the authors:

José Pablo Guerrero Cabanillas was born in Esparragosa de Lares in 1946. During the 60s he was a well-known singer who already used a poetic and sober style in his lyrics but also involved in political protest. Initially influenced by American folk, over the years he became more interested in African rhythms and other cultures, as well as more avant-garde sounds such as minimalism, ambient and experimental electronic music. He collaborated with musicians and basic groups of Spanish experimentation such as Juan Alberto Arteche, Luis Delgado (Mecánica Popular), Orquesta de las nubes, Suso Saiz… of all these collaborations in experimental key perhaps the best known is “Un hombre oscuro “with Suso Saiz, theme that opens the Music From Memory compilation by the Spanish guitarist edited in 2016.

Finis Africae was a Spanish band of avantgarde ambient music, formed in 1982. Captained by Juan Alberto Arteche, various musicians linked to folk, new age and experimental music as Luis Delgado, Javier Bergia, Javier Paxariño, Markus Breuss and Juan Carlos Fernández Puerta where involved. The group takes its name from Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, in which Finis Africae is a secret area in the library of a monastery, in which books are hidden that the librarian considers dangerous for the Christian faith. It has recently been the subject of several reissues by the Japanese label EM records.

The newly founded label Yalanci brings you its first release from the series of deceptive music.

This debuting EP gracefully portrays a universe of atmospheric, bass-driven compositions, conveying a sense of spatial charm in its reverb-drenched sequences. Forming an alliance between dark and beautiful, the sinister vocals that are pronouncing poetry in Azerbaijani language, blend in a percussive conversation with the rustles, chirps and whispers that create a flavorsome sense of both gemlike lucidity and perpetual movement. The pensive hypnotic ambiance of some pieces in this EP is tastefully assembled together with machine-like percussive dynamics of others. This spiritually charged release allures into an exploration of darkness and light, emptiness and fullness; luring you forward but seeming to take you back. You don't know what you don't know.

Silver Vinyl

Woe are King Midas Sound on ’Solitude’, their crushingly desolate new album, auspiciously cued for a Valentine’s Day release on Shapednoise’s Cosmo Rhythmatic label. A meditation on loss, narrated by Roger Robisnon and produced by Kevin Martin (The Bug), ’Solitude’ sees KMS gut out their sound following the bittersweet shoegaze-dub blooms of their ‘Edition1’ 2015 collaboration with Fennesz, resulting in a starkly noirish elegy to extinguished romance and love in the endtimes

Combining the grown-up, confessional vulnerability of Robinson’s lyrics and dreader-than-dread delivery with the most stripped back arrangements in Kevin Martin’s entire catalogue, the duo drill deep into emotional sufferation with simultaneously suffocating yet somehow beautiful results. Over the course of 12 songs, they glacially limn a coming-to-terms with a loss that has been enforced or unexpected, and ultimately arrive at the starkest conclusions with cinematic effect.

’Solitude’ pushes King Midas Sound’s pessimism to heart-rinsing degrees. Staging Robinson in a series of vantablack scenes veiled by smoky, minimal synth-lighting, the poet processes irrational and incessant feelings of rejection and loneliness. From the aching desolation of ‘You Disappear’ to the unflinching realisations of ‘X’, the ache imparted by Robinson’s lyrics is only amplified by his quiet stoicism, while Kevin Martin finds power in a sense of deferred gratification and his embrace of negative space.

The effect is nothing less than transfixing in the physicality of Robinson’s descriptions and the detached nature of Martin’s sferic electronics on ‘In The Night’, while pangs of lush optimism lend an exquisite contrast to the desiccated riddim and gloom of ‘Alone’, and the sylvan keys in their sensuous reverie, ’Her Body’.

‘Solitude’ is a more than worthy follow-up to King Midas Sound’s two albums for Hyperdub and their collaboration with Fennesz for Ninja Tune. It’s bound to reset what you know about KMS, and become a go-to album for anyone going thru conscious uncoupling, domestic strife, or meditating on love in the age of info overload.

En Avant La Zizique ! Records & Music Maker Relief Foundation present a brand new collaboration: Grotto Session. The Music Maker Relief Foundation, is non-governmental organization. It was founded to preserve the musical traditions of the South by directly supporting the musicians who make it, ensuring their voices will not be silenced by poverty and time. Music Maker will give future generations access to their heritage through documentation and performance programs that build knowledge and appreciation of America’s musical traditions. Original blues & gospel from Music Maker 's archives, Grotto Session illustrates the true sound of the deep south re-imaginated by three young musicians to celebrate the 25th birthday's foundation. Only released as digital files til now, EALZ! Records have been chosen by MMRF to produce an exclusive physical album.
An inspired, electric & groovy transgenerational project featuring: Captain 'Luke, Cora Fluker, John Dee Holman, Essie Mae Brooks, Rufus McKenzie and more... Gatefold cover, 12inch vinyl, including a 16-pages booklet with complete liner notes, rare & exclusive Tim Duffy's photographs (Recorded in North Carolina, crafted in Paris, pressed in Normandy, limited edition)

Yes, at last! Kinky keyboard porn! Whisper porn! Vinyl Porn! And all at the same time.! And what an ASMR treat we have for you here.
Recordings of 12 incredible bespoke mechanical keyboards made and recorded by the master of this modern art, Taeha Types. Yes, this is actual typing sounds on amazing future/retro/cutting edge keyboards. Every track different. Every keyboard different. Listen and weep - Or sleep - Or something ... An INCREDIBLE & UNIQUE listening experience. The first mechanical keyboard album EVER !!!

For the last few years a small scene has been growing. The mechanical keyboard scene. It’s now quite a big scene actually.
It makes total sense as most of us use keyboards everyday, so why not have an amazing keyboard to use instead of the total crap one you have. I mean just look down. It’s shit isn’t it. So, some people worked out that things could be improved - A lot. - So they started to make incredible, kinky keyboards, using both old and new tech: and the possibilities and options in construction are endless.

There are key cap options (GMK ABS, PBT etc etc), spring options (Cherry MX, Pandas, Alps etc etc) and even backplate options (steel, aluminum, copper etc etc), and of course case options too. And all these options make a big or little difference. And once made these keyboards are carefully lubricated spring by spring to give them that little extra smoothness and “ping”.

The results are beautiful, fetishistic, futuristic in an odd retro style, and they sound AMAZING when they are typed on. This is classic ASMR / whisper porn, the gentle click and rattle of carefully lubed springy keyboards make the hairs on the back of your neck rise. Either that or they gently woo you into a peaceful, sublime state. This is a classic and groundbreaking new Trunk album for our modern stressful times.

The recordings on this album are the first ever release of mechanical keyboard sounds. They are from a selection of (enhanced) keyboards from the 80s, 90s and now. They were recorded by the master maker of the modern mechanical keyboard, Nathan from Taeha Types.
He has a large following on Instagram, YouTube (videos of his hands typing on his keyboards hit 10K in just a couple of days after upload), and he now has over half a million views on his Twitch channel where he constructs keyboards live.

Sleevenotes on the album have been put together by Jonny Trunk and Stu London (AKA Futurecrime) from the London mechanical Keyboard scene. He knows what the fuck he is talking about. And you might not understand it, but you can catch up real quick - like I did.

- Album mastered by Jon Brooks, who also really understand these
sounds. And if you don’t, don’t worry - lots of others will.

The avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was a titan of post-War experimental classical music. Born in the small cheesemaking town of Montrbrison in central France in 1925, Boulez studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the composer and organist Charles Messiaen and received private tuition from pianist Andrée Vaurabourg; after moving to the Marais district in 1945, he briefly studied with Schoenberg disciple, René Leibowitz, and further influence came from immersion in Balinese gamelan, Japanese classical music and African drumming, among other sources. Earning money by playing an early electronic keyboard called the ondes Martenot on theatre productions, Boulez soon became music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company (led by actor/direction Jean-Louis Barrault and his actor wife, Madeleine Renaud), leading to tours of Belgium, Switzerland, Britain and both North and South America. American composer John Cage became an ally, though they subsequently clashed over Cage’s commitment to the role of chance in his compositions, paving the way for an intense and lasting friendship with the German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, who arrived in Paris in 1952 to study with Messiaen. In July of that year, the pair attended the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, leading to contact with Italian composer Luciano Berio and other noteworthy figures. Then, in 1954, with backing from Barrault and Renaud, Boulez began staging a series of concerts of experimental music at the Petit Marigny theatre, titled Le Domaine musical. The pieces collected on this album are all taken from performances staged for the 1957 Domaine musical season, beginning with Berio’s “Serenata I,” conducted by Boulez, which debuted in Paris in March of that year; arranged for flute and fourteen instruments, Berio said that the idea behind the piece was for the solo flute to be confronted by continuously interchanging elements, rather than mere accompaniments or oppositions. Boulez’s own “Sonatine,” composed in 1946 for flute and piano, is a 12-tone piece that evidences Messiaen’s influence, with shades of Asian classical music in places; then, Stockhausen’s monumental “Zeitmasze” or “Time Measures,” a serial composition for five woodwinds, played in different combinations of tempos and speed, was partly inspired by Webern’s principles of homogenous and harmonic textures. Finally, Messiaen’s 1949 work “Cantéyodjayâ,” delivered by pianist Yvonne Loriod, takes it shape from the classical Hindu rhythms of ancient India, as with much of the composer’s oeuvre.

Pregnant Void returns with another of their deeply involving and thought-provoking albums, this time from Berlin based sound designer and live-performer Francesco Devincenti.

Devincenti has been making music all of his life and quickly established himself back home in Northern Italy. To further his talents he headed to Berlin to study at the S.A.E. Institute and soon went on to a job at Analogcut mastering studio. As such he is a sound design wizard with an exceptional ear for detail and someone who can get real meaning and soul of out the machines he often solders together himself. He is part of a couple of live hardware duos - MORK and TDV - and always fuses ambient, techno, distorted grooves, jungle beats and dub moods into his immersive recordings.

This new album draws on ten years of life experiences and uses music as a way of telling his own autobiographical story. "With the album I try to explain what I have inside in a way I cannot using only simple verbal communication: those moments of Brutal Reality where you lose something very important and cannot fully express yourself." Though always obsessed with finding his own musical voice, Devincenti is also inspired by studio masters like King Tubby, Adrian Sherwood and Mark Ernestus. His experimental music follows no existing path and is made on modular systems that result in unpredictable and unconventional ambience and rhythms. A number of collaborations add more flavours to this most rich and rewarding album, including friend Hi.Mo, label boss Simone Gatto and vocalist Alice Lobo.

Brutal Reality is filled with truly freeform electronic music - sounds without borders, but with very real narrative and an absorbing sense of emotion that makes it a moving listen in more ways than one.

Demon Records goes on a journey through time and space to the world of the Mighty Boosh. This is the classic BBC Radio 4 comedy that launched the careers of writers and leads Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt. The series made it’s vinyl debut as a strictly
limited coloured edition for Record Store Day 2019 and is now reissued on three black 180g heavy-weight vinyl. Housed in a gatefold sleeve with original artwork by Noel Fielding and sleeve notes by Julian Barrett, Noel Fielding, Rich Fulcher & producer, Danny Wallace. Written by: Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding First Broadcast: BBC Radio 4, 16th October 2001

4 underwater trippers extracted from another planet featuring Konsistent, Second Life, Jack Patern & Andy Rantzen.

A machine mirage. A hallucinogenic haze. Where Moogs mimic animal noise. Sine waves and tribal toms send jungle signals. A twilight chorus in a forest of sound. Its deep, deep, blue canopy lit by shooting stars. Third eye lightening. Wildlife roar, and temple gong drone. A bubbling skunk Funk swamp where New Age meets Nuova Neapolitan Fusion. Tubular vibrations give rise to flights of birds. Bongos back Belleville, Michigan, relics. Bottomless bass exudes womb-like warmth. Drums dance in Nyabinghi ceremony, while gurus question God`s plan, and your place in it. Discuss the search for freedom, through spirituality, and drugs. Conclude that 'Freedom without balance is destruction'. This Cosmic chatter intro-ing beatless calm. A float on primordial ooze with John C. Lilly. States altered. Trance taking hold. Time a mere construct. Snake charmer melodies sing and tempt, hypnotic like Kaa. Shimmy to percussive sambas. Percussion hits resonate. Metallic gamelan smashing through Digidub. Ancestors calling through echo. Fragments ping-ponging, colliding. Into an eternal infinite. A post-Singularity fourth world. A post-Human Eden. Mechanized. Paradise reborn.

Harrga on Avon Terror Corps -
Coincidentally also coming from a bilingual (Arabic/French) place, Harrga's debut recording projects you through nightmarish feelings of exile in a sonic exhumation of the current Migration Crisis. Also featuring guest vocals from Moor Mother, ATC002 is here and it's as fierce as they come. Proper contemporary industrial, kicking & screaming, full of life-force.

news piece for FACT Mag here

Oh f*ck, this LONG awaited burner from Manchester-based socio-political underground vocal force Michael O’Neill is here, FINALLY

“Essentially, we’re dealing with problems here. Let’s call it the 0800-FUCKPUNK-helpline, Michael O’Neill is on the other side of the speaker and needs you to know, as the ‘proper’ press text aptly puts it below, and as Mr. Huxley already warned, we’re all taking too much of that fucking soma!
Well here’s your undiluted antidote. 100% honest, 100% direct, 100% no bullshit – take the hit, Micheal O’Neill is here with a wake up call for us all. The album is called ‘The Binary Order’ but you can also just call it a slam in the face to all weakhearts and vampires, because this is political power punk poetry… That’s four P’s: one for each knuckle.”

“Chewed up and spat out, targeted and watched.”
Surplus labour piles up in concrete reservations. The veneer of democracy is fading fast. Confusion reigns. Our subjection to the economy’s ravenous death drive is eased and obscured by Silicon Valley soma, street drugs and the media’s trivialising babble. Pop music’s part of the distraction, of course, but it doesn’t have to be.

‘Binary Order’ is the debut album from Michael O’Neill, a child of Irish immigrants born and raised in North Manchester. A polemic on culture, class and society, ‘The Binary Order’ is fiercely political and musically infectious.

“I’ve had enough of this avant-garde shit”

O’Neill can rant like a Mancunian Mark Stewart when it suits him, but he’s a fine storyteller too. Privileged social butterflies, desperate addicts, vapid pop stars, and frazzled info-workers pass by in vivid character sketches. Lead track ‘One Rule’ is an anthem for the dispossessed millions – the clear-eyed urgency of its chorus contrasts bitterly with samples of a royal correspondent, fawning abjectly.

Produced by Sam Weaver (Hungryghost / Charles Hayward) with O’Neill, and additional input from electro-acoustic composer Danny Saul (‘Beowulf’ / ‘The Last Kingdom’), the album’s visionary production combines hip-hop swagger with clattering dub and cleansing acid. Its surgical hooks, unflinching lyrics and moments of sonic chaos are pacey and possessed of an irresistible narrative flow, you’ll be lucky to hear anything as bracing in 2019, or beyond.

"has pretty much been a ‘those who know, know’ sorta figure, but word of mouth isn’t enough for an album this good." - The Quietus

Released on the occasion of Thomas Baldischwyler's booth in the collaboration section at ART COLOGNE 2019.Through a Soundcloud mix by London Crew Front Left Life, Baldischwyler was pointed to the mysterious Laton 12" VI AUX by the Austrian project FON (Formation ohne Namen) which was released in 1997. The project consisted of Johann Groiss und Manfred Söllner, but it was mainly Söllner who was responsible for the production. Baldischwyler got in contact with Söllner in 2018 when he stayed in Vienna and asked him if he could release some of his recent productions, for the second time - after 20 years - on vinyl. While reading a documentation about the SS division "Feldherrenhalle" burning some of the most important works of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (Especially "Schubert at the piano" from 1899) on the last day (May 8th, 1945) of the second world war in the Austrian manor house Immendorf, with this idea, Baldischwyler started to make the artwork and Söllner selected the tracks which are now in the "hidden" grooves beside the recording of a 1969 workshop for fire safety in California, USA.

Venerable avant-garde composer John Duncan follows his prized cycle of cover versions ‘Bitter
Earth’ [2016] with ‘Conventional Wisdom’; a truly beguiling new suite of original, stony avant-blooz
songs produced in collaboration with iDEAL boss Joachim Nordwall, and marking another high
point in both of their catalogues After coming out as a vocalist to memorably striking effect in
2016, Duncan compounds the effect with ‘Conventional Wisdom’, placing his original lyrics in stark
arrangements ranging from shortwave radio-streaked dark ambient settings and Mika Vainio-
esque isolationism, to deathly dubs driven by Nordwall’s rugged rhythms in a style that heavily
recalls Jay Glass Dubs’ recent ‘Epitaph’ LP.
An original and close associate of LAFMS co-founder Tom Recchion, and collaborator with
everyone from Chris & Cosey to Asmus Tietchens, Merzbow and Andrew Mckenzie (The Hafler
Trio), Duncan is well versed in the art of f*cking with music. Doing so since the ‘70s, it’s only in
recent years that more “typical” song structures have crept into his style with most transfixing
effect, gathering the attention of many who previously weren’t necessarily exposed to his music.
Whether stemming from a perverse pleasure in twisting popular music, or a matter of changing
with age (dude is 65), we’re just not sure, but either way Duncan is now coming out with some of
the most broadly appealing, yet incomparable work in his 50 year-wide catalogue.
Aided by Joachim Nordwall, the pair convene a set of songs every bit as fascinating, eerie as
the cover image of a birdcage mask bound in barbed wire. The title track emphasises the stark
mystery with nothing more than meditative vocals, gamelan strikes and daubs of shortwave,
before ‘Hard Swallow’ catches him huskily channelling Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at a spooky distance,
while the disembodied dub tropes of ’Soft Eyes’ come uncannily close to aspects of Jay Glass Dubs,
and ‘Say No’ says it in the bluntest, most bluesy terms. The most desiccated, strung-out material
however is saved for the B-side, with the sferic resonance and stereo-strafing vocal of ‘The Joke’
planing out into the cracked hush of ‘The Beautiful Attempt’, before he and Nordwall effectively
duet in the finale ‘The Red Hot Alternative’, where Nordwall also supplies pranging percussion and
Coil-esque synth abstraction.

For the first release in Feeding Tube’s Unknown Province series — a run of records dedicated to exploring little known nooks of the Canadian underground, curated by Alex Moskos — we are delighted to bring you the first vinyl reissue of the 1968 zoner masterpiece by poet Bill Bissett and his fellow Vancouver freaks.

We have always been shocked this LP was not included on the NWW list, but Canadian releases often seem to exist in their own universe, so we suppose that’s the “explanation.” Because, in a list of any free-form freakouts, Awake in th’ Red Desert would surely have a high place. Bissett was a sound/concrete poet of high repute when this was recorded, and he was also something akin to the king of the Vancouver underground scene. The original album was issued by Jim Brown’s See/Hear label, which Brown founded as an adjunct to his Talon Books imprint.

Backed by a band of interesting musicians (a few of whom went on to straighter afterlives), Bissett created an insane mass of sound, comparable to what Mayo Thompson’s Red Crayola was doing in Texas around the same time, laced with heavy Fugs overtones. Pure freaked sonics, created while stoned, for an audience that was similarly blasted, and was willing to decode what was going on using the very best acid logic available.

Hard for me to describe how much I love this album. And I will attest that this version sounds better than any other available version ever has or could. It is jacked.

Nice detailed liner notes by Alex Moskos set the scene as well as anyone ever will, and if you don’t feel your teeth wiggling while this plays, I suggest you may never feel that particular feeling. In your life.

Bill Bissett is still going today, and we heartily suggest that anyone who digs this album runs out and tries to nail down one or another of his wonderful books before the sun sets.

–Byron Coley, 2019

Woe are King Midas Sound on ’Solitude’, their crushingly desolate new album, auspiciously cued for a Valentine’s Day release on Shapednoise’s Cosmo Rhythmatic label. A meditation on loss, narrated by Roger Robisnon and produced by Kevin Martin (The Bug), ’Solitude’ sees KMS gut out their sound following the bittersweet shoegaze-dub blooms of their ‘Edition1’ 2015 collaboration with Fennesz, resulting in a starkly noirish elegy to extinguished romance and love in the endtimes

Combining the grown-up, confessional vulnerability of Robinson’s lyrics and dreader-than-dread delivery with the most stripped back arrangements in Kevin Martin’s entire catalogue, the duo drill deep into emotional sufferation with simultaneously suffocating yet somehow beautiful results. Over the course of 12 songs, they glacially limn a coming-to-terms with a loss that has been enforced or unexpected, and ultimately arrive at the starkest conclusions with cinematic effect.

’Solitude’ pushes King Midas Sound’s pessimism to heart-rinsing degrees. Staging Robinson in a series of vantablack scenes veiled by smoky, minimal synth-lighting, the poet processes irrational and incessant feelings of rejection and loneliness. From the aching desolation of ‘You Disappear’ to the unflinching realisations of ‘X’, the ache imparted by Robinson’s lyrics is only amplified by his quiet stoicism, while Kevin Martin finds power in a sense of deferred gratification and his embrace of negative space.

The effect is nothing less than transfixing in the physicality of Robinson’s descriptions and the detached nature of Martin’s sferic electronics on ‘In The Night’, while pangs of lush optimism lend an exquisite contrast to the desiccated riddim and gloom of ‘Alone’, and the sylvan keys in their sensuous reverie, ’Her Body’.

‘Solitude’ is a more than worthy follow-up to King Midas Sound’s two albums for Hyperdub and their collaboration with Fennesz for Ninja Tune. It’s bound to reset what you know about KMS, and become a go-to album for anyone going thru conscious uncoupling, domestic strife, or meditating on love in the age of info overload.

Although his albums are full of the same qualities as those of many other star saxophonists / flautists playing spiritual jazz, Frenchman Michel Roques is often classed as a "supporting artist" or a "musicians' musician", forever in the background, and often left out of the reference books. Adding to this lack of recognition is the fact that he was seriously under-recorded: five albums as leader in a career of almost twenty years does not amount to much!

Thankfully, in 1972, Pierre Barouh, boss of Saravah records made up for the injustice by offering him the opportunity to record ''Chorus'' in studio, providing a continuity with the equally brilliant ''Safari'' made four years earlier. An ambitious work, ''Chorus'' owes much to the unusual 'augmented' rhythm section, the inner structure of which is none other than that used in the Parisian trio of pianist Mal Waldron at the end of the 1960s: namely Patrice Caratini on bass (completed by the cello of the amazing Jean-Charles Capon) and Franco Manzecchi on drums (seconded by the percussion of Humberto Canto). Another notable singularity is that Michel Roques had the excellent idea of excluding the piano, traditionally employed in this kind of context. This didn't prevent ''Chorus' from being played on French TV in 1973 with a piano replacing the cello, and a different voice reciting the beat-style poems of Nicole Roques, that of actor Jacques Degor, occasional collaborator with Jef Gilson but far less convincing than Bachir Touré, wisely chosen for this recording for his style inherited from Afro-American preachers and capable of holding his own with the wild improvisations.

In its own way, ''Chorus'' is one of the key albums mixing free jazz and spoken word 'à la française'. It is also a militant concept album which has lost nothing of its political force.

First ever vinyl reissue - 500 copies - Gatefold sleeve - obi strip - Licensed from Saravah

I'VE SEEN, Oku Onuora's new album is slated to be released February 22, 2019 on the Swiss based Fruits Records label. The album was produced by Dr. T and Fruits Records.

Oku Onuora, Dub Poet extraordinaire is known for his hard hitting socio-political commentaries fussed with potent musical accompaniment is at it again. This new album alternates between a cappella poems and poems fussed with powerful riddims performed in the purest Jamaican tradition by the musicians of The 18th Parallel, to which is added Doctor's T modern electronic touch.

In 2013 after withdrawal for over a decade from the poetry/music scene, Oku signaled that his re-emergency was in full effect with the release of A MOVEMENT; featuring Monthly Alexander, Sly and Robbie, Audrey Hall, Jawara. This was followed up by the vinyl single release YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW in 2015. Then there was a reissue of the seminal REFLECTION IN RED in 2016 and in 2018 came the reissue of the compilation album I A TELL DUBWIZE... & OTHERWISE.

February 22, 2019 is the launch date for the Word/music missile I'VE SEEN. Be prepared for a word, music fallout that has never before been heard. This album will delight both specialists and genre enthusiasts.

JAZZ DUO. New full length album by Wojciech Bakowski out now on DUNNO Recordings.

DUNNO: How was 'Jazz Duo' created

Wojciech Bakowski: It was made at home with an old equipment. I really do not like to develop in this regard.There are a lot of recordings from stock, more than on 'Telegaz'. Generally, I like working with some foreign style and mix it with my stuff, preferably on the principle of
incompatibility of the atmosphere. This has been my method for a long time. Combining contradictory emotions is not just about knocking the listener out of their senses, it's also supposed to create some kind of harmony. I listen to stock on my web browser while playing or listening to my recordings. Sometimes I mix only stocks with one another. This is how the song is made, to which I add my own thing. Later, I adjust the text, sometimes I also play out live instruments, such as bass.

'A Thousand Strands' is the debut long-player from The Dandelion Set, a new collaboration between Glyn 'Bigga' Bush (Lightning Head, Rockers Hi Fi) and PK Chown (James Beige, Mr Liquorice). The album travels back to their formative years in the mid 1970s, with sleevenotes, lyrics and vocals by cult writer Alan Moore (V For Vendetta, Watchmen) and passes through a cavalcade of musical landmarks en route to the present day.

Words and Music is a rare and sought-after album by artist Tom Phillips (b. 1937). Fueled by painting, opera, and concrete poetry, this LP was originally published by the king, Hansjörg Mayer, in 1975 (this LP has never been repressed).

Most are familiar with Tom Phillips' "After Raphael" painting used on the cover of Brian Eno's Another Green World LP, along with the television series he made with director Peter Greenaway, A TV Dante (1990). However, Tom's crowning achievement is his art-book A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel. A reworked version of the obscure book, A Human Document, by W.H. Mallock, each page laboriously painted and collaged over. Spools of text are re-discovered from the original book, stitching together a new story surrounding the protagonist, Toge. Six editions have been published from between 1970 and 2017, each with different texts and paintings imagined. Phillips' work has the air of forlorn fantasy to it ... a designed romance.

The first side of Words and Music contains four chamber works grown from impressionistic and graphic scores. A lovely flavor of British experimental composition à la Cornelius Cardew (with whom Phillips collaborated in the Scratch Orchestra). Tom's music incorporates touchstones of visual art: in his Irma opera, a band of voice colors wash over slides of chamber melodies; in "Ornamentik," (commissioned by Stuart Dempster) acoustic and electronic instruments are played as extended shapes along a piece of paper. The piano piece "Lesbia Waltz" augments sheet music, cut-up measure by measure, placed and replaced.

The second side of the LP holds readings from his famed book, A Humument. Recited by Tom, whose chestnut voice perfectly carries the stanzas of bizarre, romantic poetry. Dancing between discoveries and meanings with gentle blood and ink soaking on each word.

The very first studio radio recordings of Jacques Brel performing in three of the most mythical French cabarets : Chez Geneviève , Chez Gilles and l'Échelle de Jacob, between 1954 and 1956.

In the early 60's in France, Léo Ferré leaves the cabaret's stage where he used to perform for the music-hall scene where he keeps singing the Paris of lovers, night owls and misfits.

Helge Schneider Braucht Keine Große Einführung: Helge Ist Jazzmusiker Und Versteht Es Wie Kaum Ein(e)andere(r), Diesen - way Of Making Music Heimlich In Seine Auftritte Einzuführen. Helge Hat Viel Zu Tun Und Kaum Privatleben. Wenn Er Mal Zeit Hat, Sind Seine Hobbies Holzhacken. Er Fliegt Nicht Und Hat Vor Sieben Jahren Aufgehört Mit Dem Rauchen. Sein Klavierspiel Ist Ein Produkt Seiner Mittlerweile Fast Fünfzigjahrelang Dauernden Täglichen Übe-stunden. Er Geht Demnächst Zum Zahnarzt. Der Zahnarzt Hat Interesse An Ihn. Termine, Termine, Termine, Das Hat Helge Schneider Nicht So Gerne, Aber Er Muss Ja.

1993 Erschien Sein Unvergleichliches Erfolgsalbum - es Gibt Reis, Baby - Inklusive Hits Wie - katzeklo Und - telefonmann . 25 Jahre Später Gibt Es Nun Endlich Die Chance Diese Titel Auf Vinyl Zu Hören. Doppelvinyl! So Richtig Im Klappcover! Zum Anhören! Für Fans Und Faninnen! Wenn Das Mal Nicht Schön Ist.

In time for the new Absolutely Fabulous feature length
movie, coming out July 1st
, Demon Records are proud
to present a limited edition Picture Disc of 2 classic Ab
Fab episodes licensed from BBC Worldwide.

The inaugural release on ninih sees yeyeh001 Spinvis & Vinkenoog reworked and reinterpreted by today's artists of tomorrow. Spinvis & Vinkenoog collaborate one more time to bring you one of life's most important lessons: LEEF MET PLEZIER!
Once you think you've learned your lesson Max Abysmal makes you second-guess yourself on Spiegel. The flip sees Sapphire Slows defying the laws of gravity with a completely new bass heavy Mamamiamarihuana. Lastly Oceanic finishes things off in fashion proving all the naysayers wrong with his remarkable version of Ja!

Butterflies is a 12' EP compilation (1983-2016) by the Amsterdam based label Top Tape (founded 1986). On this release of 500 copies on yellow vinyl you find old and new work, old and young artists, like the talented Parrish Smith. There is also a great Restauration by Dunkeltier. The album has been remastered with care by Rude 66.

Flowing energies and social pressure, high expectations and pathetic fails, driving rhythms and cheerless inertia, so-called integration but effective exclusion; these are some of the opposite poles reeled out of the debut full-length delivery of Glass Knot (Lasse Bjørck Volkmann aka Metalized Man, and Nicolai Vesterkær Krog aka Misantrop) on Foul-Up. 'Present Tense', is a multi-level sonic object whose large-scale reach only equals the profoundness of the tale of love and hate it discreetly tells - in between the lines. Laying down a hot-blooded mixture of warped industrial rhythms, chopped-up breaks, off-kilter drones and hi-NRG anti- techno with a strong punk attitude, the seven tracks blaze their trail away from expectations and norms.

A1. Present Tense 1
A2. Present Tense 2
A3. Present Tense 3
A4. Present Tense 4
B1. Present Tense 5
B2. Present Tense 6
B3. Present Tense 7

Right on the heels of their Ahead Of Two Thoughts LP released earlier this year, A Casual Assembly is the latest offering from Melbourne's EXEK. The EP coalesces around a stirring theme for synthesizer, trumpet and bass, bringing together reference points to Laurie Spiegel, Jah Wobble and The Velvet Underground's "The Gift."

Frontman Albert Wolski's disembodied narration - at times reminiscent of Samuel Beckett or Robert Ashley - unfolds over a series of dark vignettes set in a dystopian near-future. Autotune has been banned, secret police patrol the redoubts of the wealthy, and world beaches have been cleared of their sand for the construction of enormous urban prisons. As these events turn more fraught and absurd, Wolski reveals just how much is gained through EXEK's stripped-down arrangements and dreamlike tones.

A Casual Assembly echoes like the lost soundtrack to a Kubrick or Jarman film. Recommended for fans of Normil Hawaiians, Jenny Hval and Harmonia.

First up is Carola Baer's The Story of Valery, which is comprised of music from a one-off demo cassette found in a thrift store. Beautiful personal & emotionally resonant drum computer mantras in the key of Dead Can Dance, The Cocteau Twins and classic 4AD.
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The discovery of a cassette of Carola Baer's early 90s private home recordings was like finding a needle in a haystack. Made as a one-off mixtape of newly recorded songs, and given to a long-since
forgotten recipient, this cassette was found in 2017 at a Goodwill "bins" location in Portland, Oregon. These chaotic, by-the-pound thrift stores contain 1000's of unsorted items in constant flux, which are only available for the public to buy for a limited time before they are discarded. The prospect that this obscure relic would be rescued from its untimely fate is nothing short of a miracle. As this tape was the only one in existence, with no back up versions of many of the songs, it's more than likely that this
music would have been lost forever.

The Story of Valerie is made up of songs culled from that cassette, with a few additional tracks from the time, and is the first time Carola Baer's solo material has been heard by the public. The intense emotion of the music is brought upon by the primary themes of the album: the cruelty of humanity, isolated life as a British immigrant in the US, and the pain of doomed relationships. Despite being inspired by classic 4AD acts like Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins, Baer's home recordings have a sound and style that is uniquely her own. Many of the tracks feel like musical exorcisms, with Baer's spine tingling voice soaring above minimal arrangements for Yamaha DX-7 and Casio CZ-101 synthesizers. Like finding a stranger's diary, the listener is granted access to music that is emotionally
raw and deeply personal.