Buscar:mad work

Forty years ago, on July 8th and 9th in 1981, a group formed by the splintering of some of Bristol’s essential post punk bands, entered the hallowed studio at Berry Street in London to record their debut single. What would emerge was not only an exuberant post funk classic on the A-side, but also a wildly influential dub workout on the flipside, whose reverberations can still be heard today. Both songs have proven essential in very different ways.

A focal point for the unique punk-funk that was coming together in Bristol as the bridge from the 70s to the 80s arrived, Maximum Joy was formed by Glaxo Babies multi-instrumentalist Tony Wrafter and 18 year old vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Janine Rainforth. Soon they drafted in additional Glaxo Babies in the form of drummer Charlie Llewellin and bassist Dan Catsis, along with guitarist John Waddington, fresh from The Pop Group. The group set about making a one-of-a-kind mix of funk, punk, pop, jazz, dub, soul, afrobeat and reggae; creating a brilliant charge of danceable tunes wrapped around elastic basslines and complex percussion, punctuated by melodic horns and stabs of guitar, all of it highlighting Rainforth’s naturally enthusiastic vocal style.

Bursting at the seams, “Stretch” feels like it can barely be contained within the studio walls. Rainforth delivers a vocal performance that can only be found within the freedom of someone recording their first ever single. I’m not lying when I say there isn’t another song that sounds quite like it. The group’s love of funk is evident on “Stretch”, but the heavy influence of dub and reggae from their surroundings shapes the moody skitter of “Silent Street”. Here, the sing song vocals seem to drift across the heavy late night air. The two songs are wildly different, yet both could only have come from this key collection of players. Paired with the likes of The Pop Group, The Slits, The Raincoats and the On-U-Sound collective, Maximum Joy still stands out as a unique voice in the movement.

Y Records head Dick O’Dell would join the sessions and give the release a warm home in the UK while legendary 99 Records in New York took on the US release since Maximum Joy made perfect sense being equal parts ESG and Liquid Liquid. This 12” has been a staple for DJ’s in the know since day one.

The Madness, originally released in May 1988, is the only album recorded by Suggs, Chas Smash, Chrissy Boy and Lee Thompson of Madness. Calling themselves “The Madness”, the group explored a new direction without Mike Barson, Woody and Mark Bedford. The result was an album bathed in all the new technology the late 1980s had to offer, and features some of this incarnation of Madness’ most experimental work.

Lead vocals were shared between Suggs and Chas Smash, while all members of the group contributed music and lyrics. The album also features a host of other musicians including Steve Nieve (Elvis Costello & The Attractions) on keyboards and The Specials’ Jerry Dammers on piano.

Although short-lived, this version of Madness marked a significant detour from the original band’s trajectory and preceded one of the most extraordinary music comebacks ever witnessed, when the whole band reformed in 1992 for two sold-out “Madstock” shows in London’s Finsbury Park. The fans’ excitement led to a legendary mini-earthquake, and ‘Madstock’ would prove that no members of Madness ever truly leave the band.

This LP reissue is pressed on 180g black vinyl and features brand new liner notes by Chrissy Boy, Chas Smash and Lee Thompson.

No Sun is the fifth studio album by singer, songwriter, producer and scholar
Ramona Gonzalez PKA Nite Jewel.
After the critical acclaim of Real High (2017), Gonzalez began her PhD in Musicology at UCLA in 2018. At the same time, her twelve year marriage and creative partnership with Grammy Award-winning producer Cole M.G.N. dissolved,
leaving her homeless and adrift. Though in a state of grief, her studies renewed
her focus.
Working with only a Moog sequencer and keyboard, Gonzalez improvised
along to rhythmic grooves while singing in hushed undertones, which she then
meticulously produced into a collection of intimate off-pop masterpieces. No
Sun manifests a future out of songs of sorrow, as a part of Gonzalez’s quest to
reclaim her subjectivity.
Occupying a liminal space between Arthur Russell’s whispered intimacies, Tirzah’s R&B poeticism, and Kraftwerk’s rigid electronics, No Sun traverses new
soundscapes through the eyes of an uncompromising female auteur.

10 tracks of beautiful Hip Hop music produced by Vienna Producer Mez & French producer 20Syl.

"We made this album after running into each other on tour in Brazil then again in France. We kept talking about needing to do a project together then eventually met up on my homies farm in Southern Oregon in the U.S. and made this record. Being in the same space and recording in the age of sending verses back and forth seemed a bit crazy in a sense but we really wanted to catch a real vibe of 2 mc’s in sync and where a real moment and connection was captured. We spent 7 days eating bomb food, living, laughing, writing, recording, and just vibing.

We asked for beats from a bunch of folks but ended up feeling the overall vibes of Mez, a Vienna based producer who I previously worked with on my solo material and whose beats just hit us and Rita as the perfect instrumentation to the album we wanted to create. The incredibly talented homie 20Syl (Hocus Pocus, C2C, AllttA) who I also had worked with before and who Rita collaborated with on his group's (C2C) album came in with 2 joints to round it out. We also got some amazing features from our folks Destani Wolf, Wes Restless, and the ever dope Georgia Anne Muldrow."

LP Vinyl include two exclusive remixes by Moar & Mossy P

2024 Restock

Space Afrika follow last year's heartbreaking x perception-bending mixtape "hybtwibt?" with an anxious patchwork of drill bass, reflective musique concrete and after-hours surrealism >> singular deep headspace exploration to file alongside Mark Leckey, Perila, Burial or Klein.

Assembled to accompany a short film from Manchester-born visual artist, poet and filmmaker Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh, Joshua Inyang and Joshua Tarelle’s newest is a cinematic audit of identity and ancestry. In the film, Sanoh works hard to visually illustrate an honest and vulnerable picture of her soul. Inyang and Tarelle respond by doing the same with sound, collaging disparate elements together in a way that should be familiar to anyone who heard "hybtwibt?" or their jawdropping RA mix from earlier this year.

Warped field recordings, overdriven rhythmic pressure, syrupy pads and disorienting vocals are cut and pasted over each other, generating a living, breathing study of the duo's Northern working class Black British reality. Unlike the duo's acclaimed "Somewhere Decent To Live" full-length, elements mutate and transform: mushy noise bends into street sounds, haunted vocals into echoing drill melancholia and muffled howls into shattered digital remnants.

The main event is the full 10-minute soundtrack, that's layered with Sanoh's disorienting and deeply personal poetry and echoes Mark Leckey's recent "In This Lingering Twilight Sparkle". Then the EP is bumped up with three sketches from the same sessions, two of which never made it to the final mixdown. 'Version 3' is a particular highlight, pasting heartbreaking piano and blowtorched vocal loops over winding drill bass > sounds like Burial remixing Unknown T into pure syrup.

a 1. Untitled (To Describe You) OST feat. Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh 10:50

a 1 | Untitled (To Describe You) OST feat. Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh 10 50

Rakoon, a free spirit from the French electro-dub scene, known for his heavy weighted basslines in concert, comes back this year with his new album "Something Precious".

Since his first hit "Healing Dub" viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube, the producer has pursued his quest for an ever more hybrid and unique sound, combining synths and samples from travels, within pop structures with electronic features. "Something Precious" is a true synthesis of the eagerness of his first works and the power of his previous album, and confirms an even more electronic turn in the artist's career. It’s a bundle of energy carried by bewitching melodies; the travel journal of an enthusiastic musician, strewn with samples collected on the road.

“The musical guideline of this album first came one day when I got out of my studio after working on a track, feeling some kind of ecstasy that I hadn’t felt for years. Something that I used to feel almost every time I made music back when it wasn’t my job, but that had changed afterwards. It was like finding something really precious you thought you had lost forever…” says Rakoon about the genesis of this new album.

Whether it be with the intoxicating sample of "Hoi An" brought back from a trip to Vietnam or the galvanizing synths of "Chapters", a hit cut for the dancefloor, Rakoon treats his early fans to new gems true to his carefully refined recipe. But he also doesn't hesitate to venture into more electronic territories, like on the devastating "The Great Big Elephant", with its catchy sample and its synth’s nods to trance. Or even to surprise, with the use of vocoder on "Rituals" for instance.

"Something Precious" is the result of a significant sound research and an in-depth work on emotions. Its magnificent cover is signed by the English illustrator Miles Tewson, and it can be listened to like a diary that Rakoon shares with generosity and dedication with those who follow him, on and off the stage.

one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden is the name of the second album by Canadian songwriter Alexandra Levy, publicly known by the moniker Ada Lea. On one hand, it’s a collection of walking-paced, cathartic pop/folk songs, on the other it’s a

book of heart-twisting, rear-view stories of city life. Ada Lea has followed up the creative, indie-rock songcraft of her debut what we say in private with surprising arrangements and new perspectives. The album is set in Montreal and each song exists as a dot on a personal history map of the city where Levy grew up. Due on September 24th from Saddle Creek and Next Door Records in Canada, the physical record will be released alongside a map of song locations and a songbook with chords and lyrics, inspired by Levy’s love of real book standards.

Levy penned and demoed this batch of songs in an artist residency in Banff, Alberta. After sorting and editing she made her way to Los Angeles to record with producer/engineer Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers) who had previously worked on 2020’s woman, here E.P. After a long walk to the studio each morning, Levy spent her session days diving into the arrangements, playfully letting everything fall in place with complete trust for her collaborators. She notes “Marshall’s expertise and experience with drumming and songwriting was the perfect blend for what the songs needed. He was able to support me in a harmonic, lyrical, and rhythmic sense.” Other contributors that left a notable fingerprint on the soundscape include drummer Tasy Hudson, guitarist Harrison Whitford (of Phoebe Bridgers band), and mixing engineer Burke Reid (Courtney Barnett). Many songs came together with a blend of studio tracks and elements from the pre-recorded demos.

The resulting sounds range from classic, soft-rock beauty to intimate finger-picked folk passages and night-drive art-pop. And the textures are frequently surprising due to the collage of lo-fi and hi-fi sounds that tastefully decorate the album without ever clouding the heart-center of the song. Tracks like “damn” and “oranges” feel timeless with their AM gold groove and 70’s studio sheen, while songs like “my love 4 u is real '', “salt spring” and “can’t stop me from dying” sound completely modern in their use of electronics, sound effects, and pitched vocals. In their subtle, sonic variety, all of the album’s songs flow together with ease into one big, romantic dream for Levy’s silken vocals to float above.

Inspired by personal experience, daydreams, and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, the lyrics of one hand... center storytelling on a bigger scale. The experience and emotions of a year are communicated through Levy’s vignettes of city life. Her prose is centered in its setting of the St Denis area of Montreal as it draws up memories from local haunts like Fameux, La Rockette, and Quai des Brumes in rearview reverie. Levy creates a balance through the album’s year by splitting her songs evenly into four seasons. Opening track “damn”, as a song of winter, kicks off the narrative with the events of a cursed New Year’s Eve party. Immediately this timeline becomes jumbled into a Proustian haziness. The listener is then led through the heat-stricken, brain fog of Summer song, “can’t stop me from dying” and then into the autumnal romanticism of “oranges” before returning back to New Year’s on “partner,” which Levy describes as “a woozy late-night taxi blues reflection on moments when timing can be so right, yet so wrong…”. These collected stories as a whole chart the unavoidable growth that comes with experience. “All is forgiven in time. All is forgotten in time. And when the music stopped, I heard an answer” (from “my love 4 u is real”).

Whether to consider these songs fiction or memoir remains unknown. On one hand, Levy says “Why would I try to write a story that’s not my own? What good would that do?” but on the other hand, she is quick to note the ways that language fails to describe reality, and how difficult this makes it to tell an actually true story. The poetic misuse of the word “sewing” in the album’s title serves as a nod to the limitations words provide. What does it mean to sew the garden? And how can we appreciate its carefully knit blooms when the rearview mirror is so full of car exhaust?

one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden is the name of the second album by Canadian songwriter Alexandra Levy, publicly known by the moniker Ada Lea. On one hand, it’s a collection of walking-paced, cathartic pop/folk songs, on the other it’s a

book of heart-twisting, rear-view stories of city life. Ada Lea has followed up the creative, indie-rock songcraft of her debut what we say in private with surprising arrangements and new perspectives. The album is set in Montreal and each song exists as a dot on a personal history map of the city where Levy grew up. Due on September 24th from Saddle Creek and Next Door Records in Canada, the physical record will be released alongside a map of song locations and a songbook with chords and lyrics, inspired by Levy’s love of real book standards.

Levy penned and demoed this batch of songs in an artist residency in Banff, Alberta. After sorting and editing she made her way to Los Angeles to record with producer/engineer Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers) who had previously worked on 2020’s woman, here E.P. After a long walk to the studio each morning, Levy spent her session days diving into the arrangements, playfully letting everything fall in place with complete trust for her collaborators. She notes “Marshall’s expertise and experience with drumming and songwriting was the perfect blend for what the songs needed. He was able to support me in a harmonic, lyrical, and rhythmic sense.” Other contributors that left a notable fingerprint on the soundscape include drummer Tasy Hudson, guitarist Harrison Whitford (of Phoebe Bridgers band), and mixing engineer Burke Reid (Courtney Barnett). Many songs came together with a blend of studio tracks and elements from the pre-recorded demos.

The resulting sounds range from classic, soft-rock beauty to intimate finger-picked folk passages and night-drive art-pop. And the textures are frequently surprising due to the collage of lo-fi and hi-fi sounds that tastefully decorate the album without ever clouding the heart-center of the song. Tracks like “damn” and “oranges” feel timeless with their AM gold groove and 70’s studio sheen, while songs like “my love 4 u is real '', “salt spring” and “can’t stop me from dying” sound completely modern in their use of electronics, sound effects, and pitched vocals. In their subtle, sonic variety, all of the album’s songs flow together with ease into one big, romantic dream for Levy’s silken vocals to float above.

Inspired by personal experience, daydreams, and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, the lyrics of one hand... center storytelling on a bigger scale. The experience and emotions of a year are communicated through Levy’s vignettes of city life. Her prose is centered in its setting of the St Denis area of Montreal as it draws up memories from local haunts like Fameux, La Rockette, and Quai des Brumes in rearview reverie. Levy creates a balance through the album’s year by splitting her songs evenly into four seasons. Opening track “damn”, as a song of winter, kicks off the narrative with the events of a cursed New Year’s Eve party. Immediately this timeline becomes jumbled into a Proustian haziness. The listener is then led through the heat-stricken, brain fog of Summer song, “can’t stop me from dying” and then into the autumnal romanticism of “oranges” before returning back to New Year’s on “partner,” which Levy describes as “a woozy late-night taxi blues reflection on moments when timing can be so right, yet so wrong…”. These collected stories as a whole chart the unavoidable growth that comes with experience. “All is forgiven in time. All is forgotten in time. And when the music stopped, I heard an answer” (from “my love 4 u is real”).

Whether to consider these songs fiction or memoir remains unknown. On one hand, Levy says “Why would I try to write a story that’s not my own? What good would that do?” but on the other hand, she is quick to note the ways that language fails to describe reality, and how difficult this makes it to tell an actually true story. The poetic misuse of the word “sewing” in the album’s title serves as a nod to the limitations words provide. What does it mean to sew the garden? And how can we appreciate its carefully knit blooms when the rearview mirror is so full of car exhaust?

Effortlessly hopscotching between vintage acid and 80s Rn’B, insouciant Francophone pop and twinkling electro house, Lou Hayter has delivered something at once utterly unique and defiantly timeless with her much anticipated debut solo LP, released on Skint Records. It has been a long time coming for London native Hayter, who first made her mark professionally as keyboardist for New Young Pony Club, one of THE bands at the epicentre of the white hot day-glo nu rave scene alongside the likes of the Klaxons and Test Icicles in 2006. But, to fully place her debut album in context, it is necessary to rewind a little bit – to the very beginning in fact, with Hayter growing up on a diet of Bowie, Prince, Human League and Jellybean-era Madonna while concomitantly learning classical piano from the age of five. The flames of this deliciously varied musical palette were further stoked by trips to record shops in Soho with her brother (Soul Jazz was a particular obsession), but it was while studying in Cambridge that the match was well and truly struck – she used her student grant to buy a set of Technics and started putting on club nights, before moving to London and working at Trevor Jackson’s seminal Output Recordings, placing Hayter smack bang in the middle of all the action, with disco punk fever hitting full force and bands like the Rapture and LCD Soundsystem first breaking out.

The hugely successful, Mercury-nominated New Young Pony Club followed shortly after, but it’s through her subsequent output that she started to distil and refine her idiosyncratic tastes. And certainly, you can hear hints of both the New Sins, the 80’s New Wave duo she formed with Nick Phillips, and Tomorrow’s World, the swooning Gallic pop act she fronts alongside Air’s JB Dunckel, in her remarkable debut. Full to bursting with evocative electro-soul love letters to her home town of London alongside addictive disco torch ballads, it’s like Kylie meeting Mr Fingers or, Jam & Lewis producing Jane Birkin – something beautiful and melancholic yet sharply modern and new. From the warm, woozy, lysergic harmonies of opener “Cherry on Top”, which sound like a beloved old cassette unravelling, to the fizzy, infectious “Cold Feet”, which calls to mind Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam at their most heartworn, taken in toto the album perfectly nails the essence of gorgeously nostalgic synth-pop with a twist; crisp, stylish and sophisticated music which heralds the next chapter of Lou Hayter quite nicely, actually. Her retro-futuristic results will give 2021 the pop fix it so desperately needs.

Light Blue Vinyl

**Tracks 'Sixth Sequence' and 'Tenth Sequence' are bonus tracks & exclusive to the vinyl release only.** limited transparent green vinyl LP

Past Inside The Present is pleased to announce 'Wave Variations' which is a new mini-album by veteran ambient producer Dennis Huddleston AKA 36.

36 has often enjoyed exploring self-imposed restrictions, as it forces him to be creative, while allowing an inherently coherent sound between the different compositions. All the arrangements on Wave Variations use a limited pallete of mostly synth-based sounds, with particular focus on keys and melodies. Each track directly influenced the next one.

Dennis has kept almost every track around three minutes in length. He states, 'I feel like a lot of ambient music (including my own) is often unnecessarily long and these small vignettes work as a nice counter to that. Don't expect long build-ups or over-extended crescendos; These are short tracks that take you straight to Elysium and then dissolve into the ether.'

He further explains the output of Wave Variations, 'Ocean tides inspired the album. I think we've all felt that sense of longing and wonder while standing at the beach, staring at the waves and gazing into the endless horizon. I think it's something that transcends all generations of people. Like the waves, these tracks leave as quickly as they arrive. I feel it's one of the most minimal records I have made, with far fewer individual sound sources at my disposal. It keeps me on my toes and forces me to deeply explore the instruments I have available to me.'

This stripped-back sound gives the album a hypnotic quality to it. Like much of Dennis' work, there is a delicate balance between melancholic melodies and rich textures, resulting in an understated yet deeply exhilarating sound. Fans of emotional, melodic ambient music should find plenty to enjoy.

Born in Brixton, a child of the Windrush Generation, Letts’ slippery and unorthodox career is somewhat hard to define, without taking a few detours around London, New York and Jamaica. He began his working life managing the dauntingly hip Acme Attractions on Chelsea’s Kings Road, where he made a mark with his attitude, dress and, especially, the pounding dub reggae that vibrated the shop’s walls. His first gig as a DJ at the short-lived Roxy in Neal Street, became mythical for turning a generation of punks on to reggae. They in turn hipped him to their DIY ethos resulting in his reinvention as a filmmaker. This led to a shed-load of music videos (Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Clash, Bob Marley) not

to mention documentaries on the likes of Gil Scott-Heron, George Clinton and Sun Ra.



In the ’80s, he was part of Mick Jones’ new venture, Big Audio Dynamite and his innovative use of samples were a core part of their sound. Listeners of his weekly 6 Music radio show are taken on a musical safari that moves seamlessly between time, space and genre. It’s not called Culture Clash Radio for nothing. So this latest bulletin from Letts HQ is merely one angle of a multifaceted personality, his take on the JA tradition of the cover version.



The history of Caribbean music owes a debt to R&B as many of the early island releases were cover versions of US 45s. Ska’s breakthrough commercially, Millie Small’s ‘My Boy Lollipop’, was originally recorded by Barbie Gaye in ’50s New York. Cover versions became quite a thing in Jamaica and Don, following in that tradition, has dug deep with a selection of interesting dubbed out covers including thirteen exclusives.



“A disciple of sound system, raised on reggae n’ bass culture my go to sound was dub. Besides being spacious and sonically adventurous at the same time, its most appealing aspect was the space it left to put yourself ‘in the mix’ underpinned by Jamaica’s gift to the world - bass. But that’s only half the story as the duality of my existence meant I was also checking what the Caucasian crew were up to not to mention the explosion of black music coming in from the States. That’s why this version excursion crosses time space and genre, from The Beach Boys to The Beatles, Nina Simone to Marvin Gaye, The Bee Gees to Kool & The Gang, The Clash to Joy Division and beyond. You’d think it impossible to draw a line between ‘em but not in my world. Fortunately, the ‘cover version’ has played an integral part in the evolution of Jamaican music and dub covers were just a natural extension.”



There’s a diverse mix of classic and new, with legendary figures like John Holt, The Tamlins and Cornell Campbell, mixed in with British veterans Mad Professor and the irrepressible Dennis Bovell, while (relatively) young striplings Kiko Bun, Emily Capell and Prince Fatty deliver the goods, with laidback Texan groovers Khruangbin also offering an exclusive bass heavy-delight.



The song choices are diverse, from French dubsters’ OBF’s renditions of ‘Sixteen Tons’, the miners’ paean popularised by Tennessee Ernie Ford in the 1950s, to Ash Walker’s refix of Omar’s ‘There’s Nothing Like This’ and ‘All I Do Is Think About You’, immortalised by the ill-fated Tammi Terrell and preserved here by Quantic (the latter two both exclusives). Being a Rebel Dread compilation, there’s a cover (by Wrongtom Meets The Rockers) of The Clash’s ‘Lost In The Supermarket’ while Don’s exclusive, naturally, is a rendition of Big Audio Dynamite’s debut hit, ‘E = MC2’.



“Truth be told I’ve wanted to work with the Late Night Tales crew from the get go. We’re talking nearly two decades such was the allure of their musical aesthetic typified by curators like Nightmares on Wax, The Flaming Lips, MGMT, Trentemoller, Khruangbin and countless others. Now being as old as rock n’ roll (born in ‘56) and having nearly 20 years of Culture Clash Radio under my belt I figured I was tooled up to musically juggle with the best of ‘em. But I wanted to carve out a space that was distinctly my own - something that reflected my musical journey and the culture clash that’s made me the man I am today.”

A Mountain Of One are set to return to the musical landscape with their brand new track “Custard’s Last Stand”, released 30th July through new label AMORE via Above Board distribution. It is the first new piece of music the band have released in over a decade.

”Custard’s Last Stand” shows the band, made up of musical soulmates Mo Morris and Zeben Jameson, have lost nothing in the past decade. Recorded over Skype during the coronavirus pandemic, with Mo now in Bali and Zeben in west London, it is a shimmering, modern classic, experimental but accessible, melodic and adventurous. As ever, it is utterly unique, made in a musical universe all of their own.

“Custard’s Last Stand” EP is out 27th August, and will come with an incredible Denis Bovell Dub Remix, as well as another new track “Stars, Planets, Dust, Me”. The full EP package will come with a dub remix from musical pioneer Dennis Bovell.

The forthcoming album will be released this autumn. The whole project has been mastered then remixed for a forthcoming album by the legendary Ricardo Villalobos.

When they first started performing, they quickly became one of the most-acclaimed bands out there, with the likes of i-D, Sunday Times Culture, Pitchfork, NME and more raving about them and their inspired and original approach, led by Mo and Zeben’s almost telepathic understanding.

Sold-out shows and awesome reviews followed with “Collected Works” and “Institute of Joy”, two phenomenal records that have stood the test of time, criss-crossing folk, jazz, dance, rock and psychedelia.

A Mountain Of One have collaborated to create a coming together of music and virtual reality. With NYX VX, the band have developed a virtual world, one that will help provide inspired opportunities for artists looking to identify, connect and engage with audiences on multiple levels. This is the first stage of a new world that people will be building out and inhabiting, as venue for performances, home for musical and visual archives, space for play and exploration. Welcome to 'Stars, Planets, Dust, Me'.

Far Out Recordings presents the peerless and criminally undervalued Quartin catalogue, beginning with the reissue of Jose Mauro’s forgotten masterpiece Obnoxius. Over the course of the 60s, Roberto Quartin released more than 20 albums in Brazil on his label Forma, by artists including the likes of Eumir Deodato and Quateto Em Cy. Selling the rights of Forma to Polygram in 1969, Quartin struck out for pastures new at the dawn of the 1970s with the launch of his self-titled label. Significant works and high-water marks for Brazilian music overall followed in that decade’s first year, with Victor Assis Brasil Plays Antonio Carlos Jobim and the aforementioned Obnoxius. These singular gems in Brazilian music, difficult to categorise yet compellingly haunting, have for too long gone unheard.

Today, very little is known about Jose Mauro and as a result those searching for some kind of insight on the man behind the music must attempt to glean what they can from the music itself. One rumour claims he died in a car accident shortly before the album’s release, a fact that could have lent his brief musical career a touch of mythology were it not for how scant the details concerning any other aspects of his life are. The political turmoil from which the album emerged is significant also; recorded during an era of oppressive state censorship, the album, like all the Quartin catalogue, is the result of steadfast defiance in the face of a crushing military dictatorship. While many musicians of the era fled the country, preferring their prospects in the affluent, liberated USA, rebellious, young musicians like Mauro chose to stay and reflect their anger at the authorities through thinly veiled protest songs such as the stirring ‘Apocalipse’. Herein lies the basis for a more dramatic theory; that Mauro was in fact abducted by the military! Whatever the truth, the mystery remains unsolved, and all that remains is his bewitching music, all of which is composed by Mauro and Ana Maria Bahiana. Production on the record was cancelled after Mauro’s death and it was never sold commercially until its rerelease decades later. What appeal does Mauro’s music hold to today’s listeners, forty-something years removed from its conception? Simply put, there is very little else that sounds much like it all. Take the title track of ‘Obnoxius’. A wholly singular piece of music, blending string-drenched melancholia with orchestral pomp, sunny psychedelic strumming with propulsive percussion, topped off with Mauro’s yearning vocals. The result is indicative of Mauro’s unique blend of sounds from Latin Jazz and samba to psychedelic folk and baroque orchestration.

Today, Obnoxius retains its strange, otherworldly appeal – A firm favourite amongst a small circle of deep diggers including Madlib, Gilles Peterson, Floating Points. Jose Mauro’s mournful and melancholic vocals create a dark, brooding atmosphere that stands in contrast to the usual joyfulness and high-spirited rhythm of the more prominent Brazilian music of the era. Despite this air of foreboding, Mauro’s confident baritones, chord patterns and sumptuous arrangements have the ability to induce in the listener an almost trance-like state of ecstasy. Mauro’s long hidden masterpiece, a complex and uniquely stunning work is being offered the chance to be heard by the wider audience it has always deserved. A second Jose Mauro release, A Viagem Des Horas, compiling more incredible tracks unreleased in Mauro’s lifetime, will follow, alongside other unreleased jewels from the Quartin catalogue, from the likes of Piri and Victor Assis Brasil…

'The Works and Days: The Black Sections' is a sound collage album that emerged out of the production material of the film, The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin). The film — winner of the Encounters Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2020 Berlinale — is the second feature of C.W. Winter & Anders Edström. It is an eight-hour fiction shot for a total of twenty-seven weeks, over a period of fourteen months, in a village population forty-seven in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It is a geographic description of the work and non-work of a farmer. A portrait, over five seasons, of a family, of a terrain, of a sound space, and of a duration. The film was named one of the Ten Best Films of the Year by critics at: Artforum, Cargo, Cinema Scope, Desistfilm, Filo, La Internacional Cinéfila, Mubi, Nobody, Senses of Cinema, and Sight & Sound.

The film is accompanied by this LP, TheWorks and Days: The Black Sections, by C.W. Winter, and the photo book, Shiotani, by Anders Edström. The album features musical excerpts from Tim Berne & Bill Frisell, Tony Conrad, Graham Lambkin, Mary Jane Leach, Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Folke Rabe, Éliane Radigue, and Akio Suzuki. Producing, editing, and recordings by C.W. Winter. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.

Winter & Edström’s first feature, The Anchorage, won a Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival and won the Douglas E. Edwards Independent/Experimental Film/Video Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. It was named one of the Ten Best Films of the Year by critics at Cinema Scope, Film Comment, Senses of Cinema, Variety, and Indie Wire and was named Best First Film of the Year by The New York Times. Their first film, a documentary short called One Plus One 2 was made in collaboration with the late British guitarist, Derek Bailey. Their film/video work has shown at such venues as the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Centre national de la photographie (Paris), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Fotomuseum Winterthur, NRW-Forum (Düsseldorf), the Harvard Film Archive, Anthology Film Archives, the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), Centre de cultura contemporània de Barcelona, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and the National Museum of Modern Art (Kyoto).

C.W. Winter was born in California. In 2020, he completed his DPhil in Art Practice & Theory at The Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford. He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts where he studied closely under Thom Andersen, James Benning, and Allan Sekula. His writing has appeared in Cinema Scope, Moving Image Source, Purple, and Too Much. He lives in the United Kingdom where he is currently a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art and a Lecturer at the University of Oxford.

Side A excerpts:
“Thursday, May 5, 1977 & Friday, May 6, 1977: Part 4” Performed by Tony Conrad. Used by arrangement with The Tony Conrad Estate
“Sethwork” Performed by Phill Niblock. Used by arrangement with Phill Niblock
“What?? (Second Version)” Performed by Folke Rabe. Used by arrangement with the Folke Rabe Estate
“Pipe Dreams” Performed by Mary Jane Leach. Used by arrangement with Mary Jane Leach
“What?? (Second Version)” Performed by Folke Rabe. Used by arrangement with the Folke Rabe Estate
“2011” Performed by Tim Berne & Bill Frisell. Written by Tim Berne. Published by Party Time Music BMI. Recording courtesy of Minor Music Records/Screwgun Records

Side B excerpts:
“Ceremoniolose” Recorded by Graham Lambkin. Used by arrangement with Graham Lambkin
“Kugiuchi” Performed by Akio Suzuki. Recorded live for TheWorks and Days Used by arrangement with Akio Suzuki
“Music on a Long Thin Wire (Side A)” Performed by Alvin Lucier. Used by arrangement with Alvin Lucier
“A Third Trombone” Performed by Phill Niblock. Used by arrangement with Phill Niblock
“Triptych: Part 1” Performed by Éliane Radigue. Used by arrangement with Éliane Radigue

‘K Bay’, out on Domino Recordings, is the first new solo
material from Matthew E. White in six years.
Matthew E. White describes the album as a “love affair
with music.” It’s a record thrillingly engaged with an
eclectic range of contemporary and 20th Century popular
music. The daring production mines and foregrounds longsimmering but previously veiled influences from the realms
of hip-hop, electronic pop and dancehall but all filtered
through White’s self-described outsider perspective.
‘K Bay’ is an homage to Kensington Bay, his home studio
where he records his personal projects and is his
sanctuary of creativity (White’s second studio,
Spacebomb, is where he works on collaborative projects
and has recorded and produced records by Foxygen,
Natalie Prass and Flo Morrissey).
More than love, romance, or self-reliance, this is the
animating ideal of ‘K Bay’ - that we can forever strive for
something better, no matter how flawed or blessed we
have already been. A decade ago, Matthew E. White made
a classic beauty no one expected; on ‘K Bay’, he has
made a masterpiece by harnessing what he’s learned from
that community and life itself in entirely unexpected,
electrifying, and reaffirming ways.

Spirits Having Fun records are ones made from and for shows and spaces—arrangements rooted in a deeply collaborative process, that come to life through intuitive and locked-in live improvisation. Following their 2019 debut Auto-Portrait, Two finds the New York and Chicago based four-piece continuing to challenge ideas of what a rock band can be, pulling apart their musical experiences and reimagining them as kinetic compositions, equally studied but palpably organic.

Two is constructed around gut feelings and strong grooves, elastic rhythms and playful pacing. Its twelve songs expand, contract, and make sharp turns between melodies under singer-guitarist Katie McShane’s meditative lyrics. “Broken Cloud,” which was also released last year on a compilation in support of Chicago Community Jail Support, offers a glimpse into her reflections on the natural world: "A city grew out of the ground / to a mountain it's only a blur."

True to its name, the internal logic of the band is also just a lot of fun, built on trust and deep-rooted musical relationships. Before there was Spirits Having Fun, McShane, bassist Jesse Heasly, guitarist-vocalist Andrew Clinkman, and drummer Phil Sudderberg had performed together in various arrangements over the years. McShane, Heasly and Clinkman met in a specific corner of the Boston underground in 2013, a time when a scene had coalesced around students from local music conservatories frequently collaborating with punk bands and noise artists, exchanging ideas and warping musical worldviews. Heasly and Clinkman played together in Cowboy Band, making mutant, free jazz-inspired takes on old country tunes. When Clinkman moved to Chicago, Heasly and McShane played in experimental groups like EKP and Listening Woman; in Chicago, Clinkman met Sudderberg playing in projects like jazz scene fixture Ken Vandermark’s high-powered band Marker.

Spirits first came together as an attempt at a long-distance collaboration among friends in 2016, driven by the simple feeling of missing each other; they’d meet up for marathon weekends here and there to practice, playing small loops through dive bars and art spaces around the Midwest—just enough for McShane and Heasly to afford plane tickets back home. Being split between Chicago and New York forced the project into a deliberate pace. “We tried to take it slow and let it be what it was,” said McShane. That sense of patience unexpectedly prepared them for March of 2020, when their planned tours and the release of Two were indefinitely delayed.

Two was mostly recorded in the summer of 2019 with the help of omnipresent Chicago engineer Dave Vettraino and DPCD’s Alec Watson, whose contributions on organ, synths, and piano are laced throughout the record. The album reflects a synthesis of solitary and communal songwriting processes—each song drawing on fragments written by individuals, which McShane threaded together and shaped through her distinct compositional lens, making the songs whole before returning to them to the band to mature collectively. When composing, McShane writes first on the keyboard before adapting parts for guitars played by herself and Clinkman. Their dueling approaches to guitar are complementary: McShane, being a newer guitarist, brings a freshness to the project (“I'm just discovering the whole time,” she says) while Clinkman has been playing since childhood.

“There's a lot more collaboration on this record,” says Clinkman, “in terms of all of us letting stuff bloom a little bit more.” The record’s first single, “Hold The Phone” is a good example of this process—it started with a playful intro riff from Clinkman, a melody and bridge added by McShane, a wobbly outro groove added by Heasly, which Sudderberg brought to life. Another single, the dynamic “See a Sky,” written primarily by Heasly, underscores the rhythm section chemistry at play across the record, the song ebbing and flowing around Heasly and Sudderberg’s eclectic percussive palettes.

“Entropy Transfer Partners” is the only song on the record with lyrics by Clinkman, and the album’s most politically direct—a call for solidarity in the face of systemic failures, an acknowledgment of the shared material devastation caused by our country’s ongoing healthcare and housing crises: “These are not things we're experiencing individually. We struggle through them collectively. And we could actually declare, all of us, that it doesn't have to be this way, and fight and organize to ameliorate some of those conditions.” (“We won't work to create the shit you monetize, to run our lives,” they sing.)

From front to back, Two is an absorbing listen simply for its impressive range. But as the members explain themselves, the complexity of the record is about more than its intricate riffs, or how often they count out an odd time signature, but how they reject the notion of boxing the songs in, letting the melodies take on lives of their own. “Making music that feels alive is important to us,” says Clinkman. “Music feels most powerful to me when it deepens our sensation of feeling alive and connected to other humans. It’s so easy to feel worn down and isolated; that your life’s value is fixed to your productivity at your job, or the things that you have or don’t have. Making music that feels joyful and fun seems like one effective antidote to that feeling.”

Could the missing link between Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler be the Michel Portal of 1970? After having worked alongside François Tusques defending a free jazz “made in France”, we find him here, heading up an international quintet of which each member is on fire: John Surman, Barre Phillips, Stu Martin and Jean-Pierre Drouet. The quintet had full leeway to break out the free-form in long ambient tracks to compose this Alors!!! which leaves listeners with just one word to say: More!

Do we still need to present Michel Portal?... Clarinetist destined for the classical and contemporary world after his passage in the Paris Conservatory, he decided to try his hand at jazz, with an incendiary flamboyance! After his first experience with André Hodeir and Pierre Michelot, he would break all the codes with François Tusques (Free Jazz, in 1965) before starting the emblematic Michel Portal Unit. It is the Portal of those years that Alors!!! offers us the chance to listen to again.

“There are periods of insolence”, the musician declared and the year 1970 was one all on its own. Heading up an impetuous international troupe, a quintet consisting of John Surman (saxophones, bass clarinet), Barre Phillips (double-bass), Stu Martin (drums) and Jean-Pierre Drouet (percussion), Portal moves from alto sax to clarinet in the compositions shared with his partners.

From the off, the group sparks an explosion with the sound of “OO Bam Ba Deep” battered by the horns and percussion. Next up is the fabulous free jazz of “Yes, Oh Yes, You Wonderous Sun Kissed Maiden!” and the fantastic disjointed march of “Ça Boom?” which shakes up the musicians every which way. The quintet imagined that listeners would need to catch their breath, and thoughtfully added: “Billie the Kid” and “Undercurrent”, marvelous moments of ambient mystery.

Audacious from beginning to end, including the sleeve – the bird-man and his quintet brain designed by Avoine, –, the album is a fabulous object, to which the label Futura gave wings at the time. And as it is being reissued today there is just one word to use: the French translation of the title, So!!!

MIEKO SHIMIZU is a London based Japanese singer, songwriter, composer
and producer. She first erupted onto the scene as Apache 61, fusing layers
of cross-woven breaks and battling shards of sub-bass within stateless
melodies drawn from the fringes of the avant-garde.
Mieko has produced scores for contemporary dance company Phoenix Dance
Theatre as well as the Ballet ‘The Red Balloon’ at the Royal Opera House’s
Linbury Theatre. She was made an ‘Emerging Artist in Residence’ at London’s
Southbank Centre where she collaborated with the London Philharmonic Orchestra on her own compositions.
ROAD OF SHELLS was originally released back in 1990 and now being released
for the very first time on vinyl. Recored at Wold Studios in London, the record
features an array of talented musicians from Claude Deppa on trumpet and
guitar from Dominique Brethes. ‘Blue Dancer’ and ‘In The Garden’ features
Mieko’s brother Yasuaki Shimizu on saxophone.
20 years on from Road Of Shells original release date the record has now has
be released for the very first time on Vinyl in Japan and available in the UK
and worldwide.
Mieko has worked with David Cunningham from The Flying Lizards, Robert
Lippok of To Rococo Rot and re-mixed the likes of Coldcut. Haruomi Hosono
of the cult electro-pop act ‘Yellow Magic Orchestra’, signed Mieko to his label
‘Daisy World’.
Mieko has performed at Sonar, alongside Kraftwerk and supported Massive
Attack at their Melt Down Festival.

Atlanta’s The Masamune presents his debut 12″ release on Ohm Resistance – 4 absolute dancefloor controllers, with a special guest appearance from DJ Hidden on remix duties. This self-titled EP is aimed squarely at the next generation of Drum & Bass DJs and listeners, competing for the top step on the production podium. A direct representation of the storied Drum & Bass history of the label, The Masamune wires together his signature traditional symphonic strings and orchestral elements with the hardest hitting modern dancefloor sound. His beats range from half time punishers, in his signature Neuro-hop style, to running and rolling steppers, with a strong hip hop/b-boy influence appearing throughout his produdctions. According to The Masamune: “This project was made almost specifically to serve as a prelude to the full length LP I’m currently writing for Ohm Resistance.” The EP showcases the numerous talents of the artist, as well as crucial amplifications from his collaborators. Including Jakob Klug on artwork (previously work includes Black Sun Empire and The Outside Agency) and The Netherland’s legendary DJ Hidden, who has remixed the closing track – Doomslayer. The Masamune comments: “I consider DJ Hidden a pioneer and an early influence of mine. He was gracious enough to lend his talents on the remix of my 2018 track “Doomslayer”. The Masamune is a multi-genre producer, remixer, & live act from Atlanta, GA. A composer and sound designer known for his niche style of blending orchestral elements into the chaotic palettes of hard drums and heavy synths, his tracks explore dark themes and deliver punishing consistency. A top-flight production ethic combines with rich exploration of the dark side of Drum & Bass, his works are an automatic dancefloor uplifter in the hands of skilled DJs. He has released on Harder & Louder, Mindocracy, Smackdown Recordings, and was a participant in the Ohm Resistance 7″ series, as well as an annual contributor to the Perihelion compilation series.




d B2 Doomslayer DJ Hidden Remix

The music that would become Conversation Peace began with a trip to KPM’s London HQ in late January of 2020. I had just finished wrapping up post production on my album Ocean Bridges with Archie Shepp and Raw Poetic. I actually received the invitation during the summer of 2019 during studio sessions for Ocean Bridges and scheduling for the top of 2020 made the most sense. So I packed up a few records and a few drum machines then embarked on my first trip to England. We had a quick meeting about expectations, then it was time to see the archive. As a record collector, I’m very familiar with the legacy of the KPM brand. I had been lucky enough to find a few over the past decade during my digging trips up and down the east coast, but looking at the complete vinyl catalogue was a great privilege. I anxiously began combing through records from morning to night looking for the right sounds. The whole experience was surreal.



Listening to the entire catalogue was a history lesson and the amount of great composers and compositions in the recordings was endless. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t somewhat overwhelming. As a producer looking for textures, inspiration and grooves, the abundance of those things made it extremely difficult to narrow down what I wanted to use. From drums to sound fx to orchestras to small rhythm sections to ambient noises, I heard a wide variety of things and they were all so well produced and recorded. Every instrument you can think of was there! I spent a little over a week capturing sounds knowing that my work was cut out for me when I returned to my home in DC. Once I got home, I got to work. I captured so much, that it took me about a month just to organize all those ideas. Little did I know the world would drastically change in the next month following my return. My flight to and from London would indefinitely be my last time traveling for a while. I worked diligently with the material and took my time making sure I had strong ideas. The history of KPM and the opportunity to collaborate with the prestigious lineage made the stakes very high for me and I knew I needed to deliver a quality product. It’s an honor to be the first artist to release a KPM Crate Diggers title. - Earl Davis (Damu the Fudgemunk)

Over the last few years, NuNorthern Soul has established a number of traditions, most notably annual releases that provide a snapshot of the label’s output while also considering their suitability for certain seasons. Perhaps the most popular is founder Phil Cooper’s Summer Selections series, which each year showcases warm and sunny gems mined from a range of forthcoming releases.

The 2021 edition of the sampler, the third in total, may well be the best yet. Six tracks deep and as subtly varied as you’d expect, the entertaining set features tracks from a mixture of exciting newcomers, experienced producers and long-time members of the NuNorthern Soul family.

To kick things off, Cooper introduces us to Marshall Watson, an American producer who later in the year will release two five-track EPs on the label. ‘A Door To The Sky’, which will feature on the Sunsets On Larkin Part 1 EP, is sumptuously sun-kissed, with delay-laden electric guitar textures and sparkling electronics reclining over a tactile electronic groove.

LOVA’s ‘Echoes of Memories’, the track that follows, recalls the atmospheric, synthesizer-sporting new age Balearica popularised by Quiet Force in the late 1980s. The Italian producer was signed after bringing a USB stick of productions to one of Phil Cooper’s gigs in Ibiza; his Gypsophilia EP will be one to check when it drops later in the year.

Gusk’s ‘Sketch #4 - Anafi Nights’ is seductive and exotic. It’s a crackling and atmospheric musical painting that daubs starry stabs and yearning melodies atop a bubbly, lo-fi drum machine beat. It provides a perfect snapshot of the Greek musician’s Mediterranean Sketches EP, which gathers together home recordings made between 1997 and 2003.

Arguably even more immersive and enveloping is ‘Aqua Blancas Sunrise’ by Tambores En Benirras, the musical project of Cumbrian selector DJ Gripper. A slow-burning delight full of intricate musical flourishes –think drifting female vocalizations, Indian-influenced percussion, twinkling pianos and haunting clarinet motifs the track is one of the many highlights on the Barrow in Furness based producer’s forthcoming debut album for NuNorthern Soul.

To round things off, Cooper has chosen to offer-up cuts from two very experienced artists. George Solar (real name Georg Boskamp) is an Ibiza-based German producer who has been collaborating and releasing music since the late 1980s. ‘Infrared’, his contribution to Summer Selections 3, is a languid and glassy-eyed slab of slow-motion Balearic dub. His Los Ra-yos Del Sol EP will be one to look out for later in the year and is his debut solo release.

The sampler’s final missive fittingly comes from long-time friend of the family B.J Smith, a regular contributor to NuNorthern Soul releases who has reunited with Huw Costin – a vocalist he previously worked with on Smith & Mudd releases for Claremont 56 for a double A side single due later in 2021. ‘Sun When You Come’ is as warming and hazy as you’d expect and features Costin’s emotive, reverb-laden vocals and mazy electric piano solos rising above a suitably horizontal groove. It provides a stunning, sunset-ready conclusion to another superb set of Summer Selections.

Audio premiere for Povratak na Parni Pogon on Monday 24th of May via Music is my sanctury

Video premiere via Clash or Twisted Soul

Airplay - dom servini (soho radio), WYEP Pittsburg (dubmission), WKDU Philadelphia (eavesdrop radio), Jocks & nerds (soho radio), Basic Soul Show, Bondfire Radio NYC + many smaller stations across EU, UK & US

LP review - Mojo, Songlines agreed so far

Key selling points:

Kozmodrum are pioneers of the Croatian nu-jazz scene
Kozmodrum's second albumGravitywon the highest award in Croatia, Porin

Individual members of Kozmodrum as well as Kozmodrum as a collective are acclaimed musicians in the Balkans and have won numerous prestigious awards for their work

Their music is like a DJ set played live - as all the music is played live with 'traditional' instruments by the Kozmodrum ensemble


numerous great reviews, but not many in English - we're looking to introduce the band to UK audiences with this release -- this is one review in english for their album Gravity:https://exclaim.ca/music/article/kozmodrum-gravity
Our PR for this 3rd album by Kozmodrum is done by Francesco Soragna (Jus Like Music) with specific focus on UK market.
BIO:

Kozmodrumhave been pioneering a new approach to electronic music in Croatia, often described by the band as Organic Dance Music. Techno, House and Dub styles intertwine through a continuous set, played by a live band on guitars, drums and keyboards.Simultaneously, the tradition of jazz ensemble performance is stitched into the architecture of music itself.

Kozmodrum have released 2 albums, 'Na Tragu Satelita' in 2016, and 'Gravity' the following year, receiving a Porin Award for the latter (the Croatian Grammy). Individual band members also received numerous awards for their accomplishments and are considered by many to be pioneers in the Croatian nu-jazz scene. Kozmodrum's main influences are Tycho and Elektro Guzzi, as well as Jaga Jazzist with whom they performed live. The band have played numerous festivals and concerts, with Kozmodrum's members performing with Hans Joachim Roedelius, noise/art/sound figure Sunao Inami, as well as jazz masters Reggie Washington, Peter Erskine, David Liebman, Alan Broadbent, David Murray and Saskia Laroo.

Onstage, Kozmodrum is a five-piece ensemble that adds a third dimension to their music, written and produced by the band's founder Janko Novoselić. Using the framework of a DJ set, the compositions are made to be played openly, where the beat is 'looped' until a cue is given to make a change or switch to another part. The pieces are often minimalistic to start with, but evolve over the performance into more complex patterns, harmonies and melodies. With constant shifts between the natural and the artificial, organized and improvised, quiet and loud - Kozmodrum create an unforgettable, mantric performance.

The music that would become Conversation Peace began with a trip to KPM’s London HQ in late January of 2020. I had just finished wrapping up post production on my album Ocean Bridges with Archie Shepp and Raw Poetic. I actually received the invitation during the summer of 2019 during studio sessions for Ocean Bridges and scheduling for the top of 2020 made the most sense. So I packed up a few records and a few drum machines then embarked on my first trip to England. We had a quick meeting about expectations, then it was time to see the archive. As a record collector, I’m very familiar with the legacy of the KPM brand. I had been lucky enough to find a few over the past decade during my digging trips up and down the east coast, but looking at the complete vinyl catalogue was a great privilege. I anxiously began combing through records from morning to night looking for the right sounds. The whole experience was surreal.



Listening to the entire catalogue was a history lesson and the amount of great composers and compositions in the recordings was endless. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t somewhat overwhelming. As a producer looking for textures, inspiration and grooves, the abundance of those things made it extremely difficult to narrow down what I wanted to use. From drums to sound fx to orchestras to small rhythm sections to ambient noises, I heard a wide variety of things and they were all so well produced and recorded. Every instrument you can think of was there! I spent a little over a week capturing sounds knowing that my work was cut out for me when I returned to my home in DC. Once I got home, I got to work. I captured so much, that it took me about a month just to organize all those ideas. Little did I know the world would drastically change in the next month following my return. My flight to and from London would indefinitely be my last time traveling for a while. I worked diligently with the material and took my time making sure I had strong ideas. The history of KPM and the opportunity to collaborate with the prestigious lineage made the stakes very high for me and I knew I needed to deliver a quality product. It’s an honor to be the first artist to release a KPM Crate Diggers title. - Earl Davis (Damu the Fudgemunk)

“This is another new one off the greatest album ever made. It’s called ‘My Kingdom.’” Rock and roll arrogance has never hemmed so close to the truth as this Ian McCulloch introduction to “My Kingdom” during the 1983 A Crystal Day concert special. Not only were Echo & the Bunnymen aware of the instant classic status of their latest LP, but the grand, majestic and fluid nature of Ocean Rain made it clear that the band had indeed set out to make “the greatest album ever made.” Ironically, despite all of their work and focus, this masterpiece sounds like it was simply handed down from the gods. Following the more rock-oriented material on their first albums, the songs on Ocean Rain were a departure. The aim was to make something “conceptual with lush orchestration, but with a twist.” With their success using strings on tracks like “The Back of Love” and “Never Stop” providing confidence, the band employed a 35-piece orchestra for Ocean Rain. Guitarist Will Sergeant would later describe the finished recording as “windswept; dark and stormy.” The Scott Walker / Love inspired string arrangements, unusual instrumentation, inventive recording techniques and McCulloch’s abstract and bewildering mysticism all added to the unique and timeless quality of the album. A statement of purpose by one of the elite bands from the ’80s underground, Ocean Rain includes several of the Echo & the Bunnymen’s most adored recordings and some of the best songs from the era. “The Killing Moon,” “Silver,” “Seven Seas,” “Crystal Days” and the aforementioned “My Kingdom” continue to mesmerize a new generation of post-punk romantics, and the band’s influence can be heard in the grandiose spectacle of groups such as Arcade Fire and British Sea Power.

Eight years deep into their existence, Paris-based Mawimbi are proud to present their debut album Bubbling.
Through their own label and events, the collective have championed up and coming artists who look to fuse african music
with the modern dancefloor. They’ve released records from Lya, Onipa, Afriquoi and James Stewart and brought
established artists and fellow travellers to such as Auntie Flo, Africaine 808, Awesome Tapes From Africa and Esa to
Paris. Now it’s time for the collective to unveil their identity as producers and musicians in their own right.
“Bubbling” refers to the many ideas, encounters and projects that the collective have come into contact with over
the past years. Through their events and their work as label curators and remixers (for artists such as Oumou Sangaré,
Blick Bassy, Cerrone, Onipa), Mawimbi have become known as ambassadors for “afro-electro” - whatever that might
mean - and their debut album buzzes with the contagious energy of the music they love. If you ask Mawimbi, Afro-electro
is about global and local inspiration, from both sides of the Black Atlantic. It’s about paying tribute to the forefathers and
the brothers and sisters in arms across the world. Afrobeat, highlife, South African bubblegum pop, Malian music,
maloya… Bubbling seeks to connect geographically separate but spiritually similar club sounds.
Hence “El Caribe” (feat. Ghetto Kumbé) is half cumbia, half Carribean dancehall, while “Ngana” (feat. Fatim
Kouyaté) has some elements of dub music and “Kakraa” (feat. K.O.G) nods to disco‐infused Ghanaian productions from
the 70s. Despite the influences, this is a record designed for home-listening, a nod to our present circumstances, but also
a deliberate step away from dancefloor. A moment of patience and reflection as much as joy and celebration.`
Above all, Bubbling is a personal record, about unexpected cross-pollinations and the collective’s individual
explorations of these musical territories. Mawimbi's own history is one of coincidences and chance encounters, and so is
“Bubbling”. All the collaborations were born out of the connections made over the last 8 years. A WhatsApp chat with
Zambian artist Mufrika, a spontaneous studio jam with Ghetto Kumbé in a Parisian Basement: these are captured
moments of real, vital connections made.
Like Mawimbi itself, Bubbling is a collage of relationships and shared experiences, shaped by nascent friendships
and musical encounters. It’s a truly DIY document in that sense, the sound of the last eight years of the Mawimbi
adventure: free spirited, passionate, warm and generous.

Swedish Producer Petter Eldh announces his new album “Projekt Drums vol. 1” which embraces his love of heavy beats, psychedelic sounds and musical collaboration. This first volume is made of six diverse tracks from some of the most exciting drummers working on the scene today: Savannah Harris, Eric Harland, Nate Wood, James Maddren, Gard Nilssen and Richard Spaven. The music is hard-hitting and mesmerising, it’s full of complexity and sonority but at the heart are the drums: the beat and groove alongside a kaleidoscope of sounds and effects. The arrangements include a total of sixteen instrumental collaborators comprising Harpists, French horn and marimba players and a plethora of keyboards and unique synths. It’s original and highly engaging. No single listen will do it justice!

When his mother brought Stanley Turrentine’s Salt Song LP back from a trip to Canada, Julien Lourau, then a teenager, was impressed by the scope of the sound and the groove of the saxophone. He was also charmed by the lush arrangements and funky sound of the record, typical of releases on the CTI label. Created by producer Creed Taylor, CTI left an imprint in the minds of 70s jazz fans much like Blue Note did in the 60s, and it even ended up releasing work by artists who started out on this mythical label such as Stanley Turrentine and Freddie Hubbard. The two even shared the same sound engineer, the great Rudy van Gelder.
Yet CTI, though highly prolific during its 15 years of activity, has not benefitted from the same aura as its predecessor. “To breathe life into this album, I listened to a wealth of CTI releases and discovered some I had never heard before. I noticed, oddly, that many of today’s musicians know very little about CTI - a label unfairly considered as minor.”

The choice of tracks was determined by Julien’s personal tastes, always keeping in mind a desire to help people discover them yet focusing on the joy of actually playing them too.

"The album is made up of 9 pieces. Mathieu Débordes got everything down to the nearest note before we even attempted to play them. CTI didn’t hold back in fuelling their compositions with brass and violins, but I erased this aspect and pared things down to a bass, drums and two keyboards."
English drummer Jim Hart, someone Julien worked with during his London years, propels the group - from hard-bop polyrhythms with “drum & bass” inflections to a reworking of classic Red Clay.

Sylvain Daniel on the bass and Arnaud Roulin on the analogue keys are two musicians close to the saxophonist, and that he met when they were students in 1999 while organising a master class at the Conservatoire de Nantes. Since then, they have become his esteemed companions.

The collaboration with young pianist Léo Jassef began on this recording, where he also plays the Prophet 5. The dynamic and overlap of the many keyboards played by Arnaud and Léo bring the record a richness of timbre and harmony that the strings and brass provided on the CTI recordings.
For the final track on the record, Julien called upon his friend of 30 years, guitarist Bojan Z, for a fresh, Gospel take on Love and Peace, a track recorded by Quincy Jones in 1969, which here, is dedicated to Bojan’s recently departed brother.

“When it comes down to it, this album really is as I had imagined it, with, luckily, a few unexpected turns. I created a playlist I then claimed as my own. But in the end, I must admit that I would have loved to have composed some of these tracks.”

Nu-Disco hero HP Vince delivers the goods once again with his new disco house workout ‘Came Here To Party’.

The beat grooves along with its rump shaking funky bass line, soaring strings, hooky brass section and female vocal.

Trademark HP Vince quality assured. Made to play, play to dance.

Taken from the album “High Fashion Dance Music Vol. 5.

In the Company of Serpents traffic in sonic catharsis. Their music inhabits the strange fringes between sludge metal and sprawling spaghetti western scores, constantly striving for visceral power and raw intensity, contrasted with eerie, spare instrumental passages. Founded in Denver, Colorado in 2011 the band quickly managed to establish a name for themselves. Several releases followed in the years to come and In the Company of Serpents managed to impress the masses on stage as well. Late 2019/early 2020 the band started to work on their album ‘Lux’. It turned out to be one of the most impressive Doom/Sludge Metal albums ever recorded. The band self-released the album in limited edition during 2020 but soon afterwards Petrichor noticed their supreme musical qualities and decided to offer the band a chance to release the album worldwide. A deal was made, hands were shaken and you now all have to face the impending doom before you. The music of In the Company of Serpents is so intense it mimics the gravitational pull of a black hole.

Priya Ragu’s story is just as fascinating as her music. She was born and raised in Switzerland following her parents' escape from the Sri Lankan civil war in the early eighties. As she grew older, the Swiss and Sri Lankan cultures began to clash. Although they are now fully supportive of their daughter, Priya’s parents were initially strict, she wasn’t encouraged to listen to Western music or hang out at the mall after school. However, her musical ambitions soon began to take root.

At the age of 16, she performed Alicia Keys’ ‘Fallin’’ to her brother, who insisted she perform at a show he was doing with his rap group. Her father discovered their plans and stopped her from performing, but Priya wasn’t deterred. She instead made her ambitions more covert, sneaking out to jam sessions and open mic nights, before decided to fully pursue her ambitions by moving to America with the help of her friend, the rapper Oddisee. Working remotely with Japhna, the pair created several tracks which would provide the launchpad for where she is today.
‘damnshestamil’ Priya Ragu’s debut mixtape is a result of her highly productive creative partnership with her producer and brother Japhna Gold, featuring all Priya’s singles to date, including the international sensation ‘Chicken Lemon Rice’, ‘Good Love 2.0’, ‘Forgot About’ as well as her most recent single ‘Kamali’ which launched with a BBC Radio 1 ‘first play’ – with Annie Mac, and most recently A-Listed with the BBC Asian Network – showing no signs of slowing down.
Priya has coined the term ‘Raguwavy’ for her vibrant sound which defies standard genre definitions. It signposts the next era of forward-thinking R&B and electro-pop by tapping into the sonic accents of her Sri Lankan roots.
The current single ‘Kamali’ was inspired by a short BAFTA nominated film of the same name. It explores the story of Suganthi a single mother living in a small village in India, who was raised in a culture in which gender roles are clearly structured and as a result she stayed at home until she was old enough to marry. Suffering through abuse– she escaped to create a better future for herself and her daughter – Kamali. Musically and visually Priya connected to the story of Kamali and brought her world to life through song, placing emphasis on the important of motherhood and the circle of life.
As the road to the mixtape approaches - Priya fulfilled a lifetime ambition when she played a sold-out show as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Later Latitude Festival in July, and scheduled to perform at All Points East in August, where she begins to peel back the layers of her first body of work, to a live audience.
She will end the year on a high by embarking upon her long awaited debut UK & European headline tour. Consisting of nine shows spanning six countries, the tour includes a London show at the Jazz Café which is now sold out and will culminate with a homecoming show in Zurich a week later.

Ipek Yolu is the Turkish name for the Silk Road which connected the East and the West. This band does not deal in silk but they connect flavors, smells and sounds from different corners of the globe, connecting the world.

The band merges bass-heavy electro-tinged cumbia grooves, saz riffs and surf guitar into a multicultural melting pot of South American rhythms, Anatolian folk music and 60s psychedelic rock. A unique universe of sound that bridges the tropical jungles and the dusty deserts in a kaleidoscopic blend of music. Ipek Yolu has used 2020 to write their debut album Tropical Anatolia and are ready to hit the venues and festivals.

The members of Ipek Yolu first got together for an improvised jam session during the Aarhus Roots & Hybrid Festival in 2018. The show was set up as a special one-time-only show merging members from the bands Hudna & Junglelyd. The show ended up lasting for almost three hours. It didn’t take them long to discover they were onto something special. If you know any of these bands mentioned you know you’re in for a body-shaking party, characterized by musical curiosity and improvisation.

The three members of Ipek Yolu have all been part of the Danish music scene for several years. The band leader, Orhan Özgür Turan, is a well-known and respected saz player all over Denmark, and has made a name for himself through his efforts in the Anatolian Folk band Hudna. In 2018 he won an award as Global Roots Artist of the year at The Danish World Music Awards. Olaf Brinch and Lasse Aagaard have worked together for many years making high energy cumbia with their band Junglelyd and Afrobeat with their band African Connection. Olaf is also an integral part of the Danish band AddisAbabaBand. In addition, Olaf and Lasse have toured and recorded with great musicians such as CC Yoyo, former drummer of Fela Kuti, in both Ghana and Denmark. All of the past experiences collided to create Ipek Yolu.

The core tenets of Morgan Wright's music have long tested club music's context; the rituals and customs that define it, and how each of those genres change once removed from their traditional settings.
It's a space Morgan Wright feels at home in; one where he's constantly asking questions of the structure club music resides within, and what it means to create a new space for familiar sounds. And over the course of his debut album, Class Tourist, Morgan has found new ways to elevate those same questions - whether by way of intention, or a pandemic-induced coping mechanism.
In Class Tourist, Morgan again borrows from familiar strains of the subgenres which have come to form his musical identity. This time, he fuses sounds of post-punk, IDM and breakbeat, hopeful they converge to form a bastardised rendition of the latter, with "Australiana" at its core.
It's a sound that was made possible by a change to his songwriting approach, after pivoting from a loop-based production style - one which he has applied to a slew of other projects, for the better part of five years - to one which lends itself to a more standardised, contemporary format.

Moving through the record, Morgan toys with musical tropes of contrast with a calculated refinement unheard throughout his previous work. The coalescence of melodic optimism and bleak, mournful soundscapes feature on Class Tourist again, as you would expect. But this time, contemporary structure - with the exception of a few songs - along with the features of label-mate, Purient, and frequent collaborator, ENDL355, breathe new life, and even a new genre, into Morgan's work.

Working his mellow magic on the Growing Bin, Sorcerer entertains your inner child with eight tracks of instrumental west coast pop suitable for dancing, dreaming and surfing a wave or two.
While Basso sat in a Teutonic treehouse, feeding his head with the sounds of the woodland, Dan Judd danced on the sands of San Francisco's Baker Beach. Stretching between them, like the world's longest tin can radio, was the Dream Chimney. This legendary forum, run by Ryan Bishop, better known as The Beat Broker, helped to launch a thousand labels, and the Growing Bin is one of them - all hail the Chim!
Here, Dan, naturally mystic in his Sorcerer guise, satisfies all our sensory needs with a Kinder Surprise of sweet melodies, coastal cool and playful rhythms inspired by his children's earliest responses to music. Following his feelings and avoiding overthinking, he creates open, enticing and accessible cuts; each living and breathing that mellow magic you only get on the West Coast.
'Kids World' kicks into gear with the spheric bass of '2000 Studio', a bouncy embodiment of that spacious San Francisco sound. There's a nod to nu disco but the dreamy dubiness takes the track much deeper, especially as those surf guitars start to detune in the summer heat. The breezy fretwork continues on 'Disco Drums', topping a wriggling groove tailor made for the terrace. Shades of rave refract through a healing crystal at the midpoint, encouraging al fresco dancing from sunrise to sunset. The A3 sees Sorcerer get into the groove of 'Bahia Brothers', rolling that rubberised B-line out of his own Paradise Garage before putting the top down for the carefree Balearic pop of 'Spray Paint.'
The B-side glides into being via the night dubbing grooves of 'Fire Feel', a reverb laden journey though glassy tones, off beat perx and gorgeous chord progressions. Next up, the new wave inspired 'Crunchy' translates Sheffield's daring synth pop into a wide eyed blast of psychedelic house, boosting our mana ahead of the loose limbed and light footed 'First Wave'. Ringing guitars reference Ghanaian highlife, shimmering in the heat haze as Dan funks up the drum kit ready for the broken beat and blissed out energy of sundowning set closer 'Escape Route'.

Keplar re-issues the fourth album 'Chessa' by Dan Abrams' project Shuttle358 on vinyl for the first time. The double LP edition includes 3 previously unreleased tracks from the same recording sessions back in 2004, as well as an extended artwork with unseen photographs by Dan Abrams.

While undoubtedly associated with the microsound and 'clicks & cuts' movement around the turn of the millennium, on 'Chessa' Shuttle358 left behind the classical rhythmic patterns of the genre and shifted further towards warmer territories, meandering between modern digital minimalism and the soft tones of ambient music. Counter to his microsound synthesis approach on Frame (2000), Abrams created Chessa by writing software that manipulated samples from his unreleased songs, guitar pieces, and vintage japanese films sampled from video tape. In particular, a special granulating technique was written and performed at intentionally low sample rates that gave the uniquely fragile, yet dense sound to the album. Over fourteen tracks Abrams arranges slowly evolving sonic entities of unfading elegance. Strayed and hazy melodies pulse and cascade, elongated but brittle harmonies shimmer and disappear, echoing far-off in the rounded corners of the mind. The patient and detailed way Abrams combines the broken with the beautiful in creating organic collages of sound that retain the euphonic essence of a song, makes this piece of work so powerful and timeless, sounding just as relevant today, as it did 17 years ago.

Under modern scrutiny in Abrams latest studio, he refocused the original recordings to emphasize the elements most important to the original vision. The final mastering and vinyl preparation was done in collaboration with Stephan Mathieu, vinyl was cut by LUPO.

From the original press release in 2004 by Taylor Deupree:

Without a doubt Shuttle358 has become one of the most admired artists to emerge from modern electronic music’s sea of musicians. From the humble beginnings of a demo CD in 12k’s mailbox to 4 critically acclaimed CDs, Dan Abrams is, to some, the one credited for bringing a warmth and human touch back into what has often been considered a very cold, sterile genre. It began with 1999’s Optimal.lp (12k1005), a groundbreaking debut release that immediately defined the Shuttle358 sound; a hybridization of the then-emerging “microsound” genre with Eno’s true ambient explorations. In 2000 Abrams outdid himself with Frame (12k1011) by honing his sound design and exploring production techniques at rates that made his “now” quite brief and creating what was to become one of the most sought-after CDs in the 12k catalog.

Chessa is the third release from Abrams’ Shuttle358 moniker on 12k and he continues to do what he does best: attempt to move microsound away from the world of theory and towards absolute real life. Like his photographs, Chessa is music about, and to be listened to in, unexpected places. It is a narrative, a simple slice of life that plays out through the incidental photography of the cover artwork. To achieve this Abrams fuses irregular granular sound particles, like the movements of everyday life, with a deliberate melodic base that captures emotion and simplicity.

Jimmy Tamborello returns with a collection of 10 pop-infused vocal hymns – simultaneously perfect dance floor fillers and lullabies. "Away" is the second of two Dntel albums to be released in 2021 by Morr Music in collaboration with Les Albums Claus. While "The Seas Trees See" showcased Tamborello's more intricate and quiet side, "Away" embraces his love for pop music. A genre which like no other has been resonating the advancements of technology from the very beginning. Songwriting was sequenced and computerized on such a large scale that it would change the sonic aesthetics of the charts forever.

Dntel is a musician who changed pop music forever – and still works in this never-ending labour of love, both effortless and highly focused, constantly tweaking the universe of our musical perception. Whether beatless or uncompromisingly embracing the limelight of collective ecstasy with one of his most remembered tunes "(This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan", his almost forgotten anthem "Don’t Get Your Hopes Up" or his work as James Figurine. "Away" features 10 of these extravaganzas – uniting his audience once more in hope and future-bound optimism.

"I grew up with 80s techno-pop – these influences always come through in my music", Jimmy writes from Los Angeles. For this album, though, "I was thinking more of 80s indie pop or labels like 4AD. It is a mix of those influences along with trying to figure out what elements of my own discography I still connect with. I wanted it to reflect old Dntel records as well as the techno-pop band Figurine I used to be in. I have always considered my music basically being techno-pop, but not referring to pop as popular music – I just like pretty melodies. But with the Dntel moniker, I never had the ambition to produce music for a really big audience.”

It is exactly that looseness in approaching music which makes Tamborello’s style of composing so unique. On "Away" he combines a healthy dose of distortion with the most-sticking melodies, vocals and bitter-sweet lyrics he ever came up with – performing all vocals himself, with the help of technology. "My voice has a limited range. When I applied this vocal processing it seemed to bring out the emotions more. I don’t see it as the same as the more artificial, autotuned style of modern pop music. I think it still sounds like it could be a real person singing, just not me."

Using this technique, Dntel disembodies himself from his own art, welcoming all kinds of interpretations re. his current state as an artist. "Somehow this processed voice feels closer to how I see myself than my normal voice, for better or worse…", he writes. Pop music is a fragile entity, making its kingpins vulnerable. Many emotions reveal a lot of the originator’s personality –this is something one has to be prepared for. On "Away", Jimmy Tamborello finds the perfect way of marrying his unique musical personality with both the demands and possibilities of pop music. Just listen to "Connect" and you’ll know what we’re talking about. A perfect, yet timeless album for less than perfect times.

"Ry Cooder" - Ry Cooder (voc, g, mand, b); Van Dyke Parks (p); Bobby Bruce (v); Chris Ethridge Roy Estrada, Max Bennett (b); John Barbata, Richie Hayward (dr); Milt Holland (dr, perc); Gloria Jones (backing voc)



By the time he was aged 22, Ry Cooder was already a veteran of the music business and in great demand as a studio musician and sideman. Shortly after signing a contract with Warner Music in 1969, he released his first album under his own name, placing his confidence in the musical talent he had developed since being a child and on the rare value of his favourite instrument, the steel guitar.

The present LP that carries his name is a fascinating blend of blues, folk, rock ’n’ roll and pop – a unique mixture, which combines superb songs, virtuosic playing and somewhat bizarre yet imaginative arrangements. For material, Cooder, the son of folklorist parents, dug out ten gems coming from over six decades, right back to the 1920s – by legends such as Woody Guthrie, Blind Blake, Sleepy John Estes and Leadbelly, as well as a more up-to-date Randy Newman composition. As magnificent as his choice might be, it is the exuberant charm of his own instrumental composition "Available Space" that almost steals the show here. Expansive and unbiased, Cooder plays an ironic game made up of wordless irregular phrases, which promise the listener something new and ultimately circle in an infinite loop.

Cooder’s need to prove himself, moderated by his veneration for the past, helps to create a completely original work that will prove rewarding for the adventurous listener.



This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head. More information under pure-analogue

All royalties and mechanical rights have been paid.



Recording: 1970 at various studios by Bob Kovacs, Doug Botnick, Rudy Hill and Jim Lowe

Production: Lenny Waronker and Van Dyke Parks

repress

Mono Junk's cult label DUM Records is back with a new five track Various Artists EP that again packs a vital punch. He appears himself along with some fellow legends of the scene.
First up, Morpholgy is a consistent performer who has continued to serve up quality electro since 2009 and here serves up a hot new piece. 'Vector Plant' is busy and industrial, slick and metallic as it unfolds and burrows deep into your veins. Then comes the A2, Irwin Berg featuring Freestyle Man (aka Finnish Moodmusic boss Sasse aka Klas Lindblad) with a track made in 1995 and never released before. This pair worked together and made a cult electro record for Sähkö Recordigs in 1998 and this one is just as impactful. It is frosty and frazzled, slow motion but high impact and full of distorted lines and heavy drums.

Next is Mr Velcro Fastener who were the first kings of electro to come out of Finland and between 1999 and 2006 were famous all over the world. Their brand new cut 'Almost There' is a deep one that is riddled with bleeping melodies and has smeared chords bringing a sci-fi feel. Then it is Mono Junk's turn to dive into the vaults with an unreleased track from 2005. 'Feeling or Destroy' is a physical number with crashing hits and snaking, gurgling bass that is dark and dystopian. Last of all comes Irwin Berg with Mono Junk as New York City Survivors. Says the DUM boss, Our unreleased track here was made after the New York City Survivors - Static Light CD 2002' and it is a turbo charged track with screwed up grinding bass, icy hi hat rhythms and menace in its grooves.

After the release of ‘Kuarahy’ concurred with the blast of the worldwide pandemic and all the consequences it has generated, WHITE STONES - Martín Mendez’s project (OPETH’s bass player) - are ready to launch their second record.

When WHITE STONES released ‘Kuarahy’ they became the first Spanish band signed to Nuclear Blast Records, cementing their first album as an unprecedented milestone. Now, with ‘Dancing Into Oblivion’, the band returns with a more compact sound, having been hard at work ensuring the utmost attention to every detail for a result that is even better than the first record.

The topics covered on this second album draw on the feelings that Martín himself affirms he has lived through during the lockdown imposed by the covid-19 pandemic. “I started it very calmed in March when »Kuarahy« was released and the lockdown started. I wrote the new record and it just flowed so well. It’s my point of view, of the feelings I had during the lockdown period, in this weird year. I took advantage of the moment and I feel excited about it”, reveals the musician.

The most outstanding musical elements on this new record are the disparate genres that manage to co-exist. There is an element of aggression, that can be seen rearing its head in an instrumental frenzy, as well as soft and delicate intricacies that develop an atmosphere which surrounds the listener. There are distinct dynamics among the songs, with interludes allowing the listening to take a breath and appreciate what they’re hearing.

The writing process of ‘Dancing Into Oblivion’ has been pretty similar to the previous ‘Kuarahy’ but with some clear changes. Martín composed all of the instrumentals for the album but, as he says, “I’ve left sections open to the interpretation of each of the other musicians, both in the drums and in the vocals. Eloi wrote the lyrics this time and we then workshopped them together whilst working out the vocal parts to get the final result in the studio”.

WHITE STONES once again recorded at Farm Of Sounds Studios (Barcelona), owned by their singer Eloi. They were satisfied with the sound of ‘Kuarahy’ and the experience of the recording of that album and the comfort of making everything with their own tools made it all easier. “Everything has been ‘homemade’ because it’s a way of working and a philosophy I like. You have more control and you can better enforce your ideas”, Méndez explains -who also created the cover for ‘Dancing Into Oblivion’ together with Sandra, his partner for many years.

The final mix and mastering of this second album was done by Jaime Gómez Arellano at Orgone Studios (UK) because the band were more than satisfied with the work he did on ‘Kuarahy’ and they wanted to repeat that great experience. Eloi, as the singer and also the guy who recorded the music sent to Orgone Studios, acknowledges “the recording had more experience and a better sound quality because we made better decisions during the pre-production thanks to a higher level of self-awareness of ourselves as a band. Jaime knew us better too, so that simplified the process and in turn helped to make »Dancing Into Oblivion« as good as it can be”.

The line-up has been enhanced with the participation of the multifaceted Joan Carles Marí Tur on drums (who also plays in other bands like FACE THE MAYBE). The guitar solos were the job of Joao Sassetti (who was already a member of the touring line-up of WHITE STONES). Sassetti lives in Portugal and he couldn’t be in the studio in Barcelona, so he recorded his solos and digitally sent them over for integration into the final songs. The recording of the instruments has been more organic and as Boucherie says. “The original sound has been retained as much as posible in each and every element” and it has brought a natural/raw touch for ‘Dancing Into Oblivion’ just as the band had hoped and expected.

Jorja Smith returns to announce a new 8-track project. ‘Be Right Back’ is due May 14th and is the first body of work from Jorja since her 2019 critically-acclaimed, Mercury Prize nominated debut album ‘Lost & Found’, for which she won her second BRIT Award for ‘Best
Female’ and earned herself a nomination for ‘New Artist’ at the GRAMMY Awards.
The project finds Jorja delivering some of the most emotive and imaginative songs of her career. Over string-heavy production, she unveils a collection of songs that are diverse in their range but still extremely cohesive as a body of work - “It’s called be right back because it’s just something I want my fans to have right now, this isn’t an album and these songs wouldn’t have made it. If I needed to make these songs, then someone needs to hear them too.” - Jorja says of the project.
To coincide with the announcement, Jorja is sharing new single ‘Gone.’ Highly anticipated,
Smith states that “There’s something about being able to write about one thing and for it to mean so many different things to others. I love that this song, well any of my songs really, will be interpreted in different ways, depending on the experiences of the people listening.
This one is just me asking why people have to be taken from us.”
‘Gone’ follows in the footsteps of Jorja’s stunning March release ‘Addicted’, which also appears on ‘Be Right Back’, alongside 6 additional unheard tracks including a feature from
rising South London rapper, Shaybo on track 3, ‘Bussdown’.
Over the past three years, Smith has been celebrated unanimously across the world for her evocative song-writing, powerful delivery, pure emotion and unbridled talent as a young woman navigating her way through the world. Smith has graced multiple magazine covers,
performed at awards ceremonies and on late night TV, and sold out shows across the globe, now surpassing over one billion global streams. Her 2019 hit single ‘Be Honest’ featuring Burna Boy has become her biggest song to date at almost 250M streams worldwide. Smith continues to hone her craft and ‘Gone’ serves as a much-anticipated prelude for the release of ‘Be Right Back’ on May 14th.

The magnificent and incomparable Marianne Faithfull has performed five legendary concerts at the Montreux Jazz Festival between 1995 and 2009. Each of these historic concerts were recorded.
Marianne Faithfull’s name is synonymous with the authenticity, artistry and individuality of the festival and this collection is a celebration of her unique talent.

The Montreux Years collection will bring together, for the first time, some of the finest moments from Marianne’s most celebrated performances.

Expertly curated by the Montreux Jazz Festival and BMG, restored and remastered in superlative HD audio; The Montreux Years is released on superior audiophile heavy weight vinyl, MQA quality CD and in HD digital.


Montreux Media Ventures (MMV) in partnership with BMG are working together to produce and release a premium series of albums and activities, curated from the unique Montreux Jazz festival archive; one of the finest music collections in the world. As part of this exciting new joint venture MMV and BMG have commenced work to establish a new series of deluxe artist collections under the new official Montreux Jazz records imprint. These initial collections; The Montreux Years will bring together the most iconic performances from the most significant artists to perform in the festival’s impressive five decade history.

The collaboration is an unprecedented curation project. The most extensive exploration of the official archive in the festival’s history. Expertly curated by the MJF and BMG teams and overseen by Claude Nobs’ partner and president of the Claude Nobs foundation, Thierry Amsallem, who will act as executive producer across the series.

The Montreux Years series is a celebration of Claude’s love of the artists and passion for the festival and are a fitting tribute to his legacy.

The BMG and Montreux Jazz music festival design teams will work in partnership to produce new and authentic creative, faithful to the festival’s reputation for iconic artwork.