Buscar:out there wild

Boggiedown Base has been a producer and remixer since debuting as part of Die Reimbanditen in 1993. His CV includes productions for Die Coolen Säue/DCS, Albino, Chaoze One, and Die Deutsche Reimachse. In 2005 he met the Backspin-Magazine-DJ DJ 12 Finger Dan and the two formed a production duo. As Soulbrotha, the two produced mainly for and with American artists such as Sadat X from Brand Nubian, DJ Premier from Gangstarr, Large Professor, Big Shug, Blaq Poet, Masta Ace, Beneficience, Cella Dwellas, El Da Sensei, Kev Brown, Edo G and much more. The two came into contact with the producer Roccwell from Munich by chance. Through the common love for soul samples, hard drums, the clanking of the E-MU SP-1200, dope raps and spectacular cuts, the idea of a collabo-album came up.

"In Good Company" is a celebration of the classic boom bap sound and comes up with top-class feature guests. Among others, the New York cult rapper J-Live was won for the song "Real Reconize Real". Q Ball & Curt Cazal aka QnC from the legendary D&D Studios in New York show on "Classic Position" why they are still relevant after more than 20 years in the game and the Boston MC M-Dot proves on "Toil" why there is a hype around his person. But there are also other top artists on the guest list, such as DJ Eclipse, DJ Riz or KORE. "In Good Company" is to be understood as a homage to the many rap classics of the last three decades and sees itself in their tradition, but always remains modern thanks to the contributions of many young and talented artists such as Wildelux, Duo Pesci, Resolute or Empulse.

With his first release since 2015, Seattle based Indie-folk hero Rocky Votolato returns with Wild Roots, an intimate concept album inspired by and written for his family. Each song a letter dedicated to a specific family member and focused on a special memory or moment in time. After losing his child in December of 2021 in a tragic car accident, the entire album, and especially the song “Becoming Human”, now a posthumous love letter, takes on an even deeper while devastatingly bittersweet meaning. The production on Wild Roots is hushed, handcrafted, and warm — an intimate and personal experience that brings the nature of Votolato’s storytelling to life in very authentic and genuine ways. Produced, engineered, and mixed by Votolato himself, the record is a deliberate construction of his conceptual vision and new phase of his recording career. Additionally, the record features a stellar cast of renowned musicians whose contributions perfectly compliment the delicate nature of these songs — Abby Gundersen (William Fitzsimmons) on piano, string arrangements, and vocal harmonies, James McAllister (Sufjan Stevens, The National) on drums and percussion, Phil Wandscher (Whiskeytown, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter) on electric guitar, and Marcel Gein (Perry O’Parson) on electric guitar. In many ways, Wild Roots is not only a break in silence for Votolato, but the opening of a new chapter — one that feels laser focused on what really matters in life. Whether discovering Votolato for the first time or adding another record to your collection, Wild Roots resonates on the most simple and important human levels — a sharing of experience that encourages us to keep believing in ourselves and in the magic of this life, no matter how harsh and difficult it can be.


Track list: 1. Evergreen 2. 23 Stitches 3. Glory (Broken Dove) 4. There is a Light 5. X1998x 6. Becoming Human 7. Breakwater 8. Little Black Diamond 9. Archangels of Tornados 10. The Great Pontificator 11. The Wildest Horses 12. Little Lupine 13. Bella Rose 14. Southpaw 15. Texas Scorpion (The Outlaw Blues)

Módulo 1000 were not messing around when they made 'Não Fale Com Paredes’. It holds its own, not just as a raw, heavy, experimental “Brazilian” psychedelic rock album, but as a raw, heavy, experimental psychedelic rock album, full-stop!

Formed in Rio de Janeiro in 1969, Módulo 1000 honed their craft as the house band in clubs and resorts in São Paulo where they predominantly covered American artists such as Jimmy Hendrix as well as British giants, Led Zeppelin. After acquiring a taste for fame following the performance of one of their tracks at the Rio International Song Festival, the band focussed their attention on composing original material. Their manager, Marinaldo Guimarães, encouraged the band to explore their experimental and creative sides. This, in parallel with the explosion of experimental music in Brazil, resulted in the band performing alongside heavyweights such as O Têrço; there was a happening in the air.

Módulo 1000 recorded just one album. Released on Top Tape records in 1972, it featured Eduardo Leal on bass, Candido Faria on drums, Daniel Cardone on guitar, violin and vocals, and Luiz Paulo Simas on organ, piano, and vocals. 'Não Fale Com Paredes' was produced by the popular DJ, Ademir Lemos, and came housed in a fold-out cover featuring tripped-out artwork and design by Wander Borges. However, due the uncompromising nature of its wild, heavy psychedelic rock sound, the album was destined not to be played on the radio in Brazil. Rumours suggest that the label didn't understand the album, and as a result, it wasn't promoted or marketed. Thus, like many other underground cult classics, it was lost in the ether, only later to be rediscovered by a new audience at a different time.

One thing is certain, you definitely know when you've heard Módulo 1000. The sound is raw, heavy and at points quite aggressive, more Black Sabbath than Os Mutantes. It floats between psychedelic rock, prog rock, early metal, and dare we say, displays elements of proto-math-rock.

The band’s discography includes a 7" single, as well as their music being featured on several compilations for Odeon Records, additionally they released a 7" single under their alias 'Love Machine' for Top Tape Records. These compositions are included as bonus tracks on the CD version of our reissue.

The elusive SW. returns to Avenue 66 with okALGORYTHM. His third LP for the label is a semi-opaque wandering through the shadowy byways of memory, driven by tough-yet-supple production and his unmistakable, unerringly original voice. Inspired by all night electronic radio shows of the '90s, okALGORYTHM pulses with rich imagination and a sense of purposeful meandering. Speaking in cryptic fragments, the artist hints at elusive reminiscences "back then on the autobahn, to Berlin, with friends" while also noting that some recollections are "of things that didn't happen that way."

To this end, the album drifts from the knotty synth spirals of opener "WHAtADAY" through the tense, technoid tropics of "stepCLASSixMOtor," the brightly melancholic Larry Heard-isms of "TROPyCALLhytsrIA" to the stately skronk of closer "What endingENDs." The rhythmic undergirding never lets up, suggesting a limitless night drive tinted in deep greens and refracted reds. Each of the album's ten tracks comes alive with warm, analog finesse and a palpable atmosphere, though they play out by turns urgent or unhurried, coaxing or inscrutable. Yet throughout, there's a consistently hypnotic quality which draws the listener deeper into the album's unique balancing act.

If listeners are trained to expect throwback anthems every time the '90s are referenced, here they might find a more apt touchstone in the wilder, left-of-center corners of Chicago's foundational epoch. Throughout the album, the spirit of jacking house is absorbed, metabolized and transmuted. Drawing on lineages of taut, nervy synth-and-drum machine workouts, SW. manipulates his hardware with the delicate, considered touch of a painter. Perhaps the memory that lingers longest from that bygone era is the sense of profound possibility that dawns before forms become rigidly calificed and commodified. Either way, adventurous listeners will find that okALGORYTHM blooms with a uniquely affecting grace and SW.'s inimitably obscure loveliness, infused with a somber glow and marked by shimmering, untraceable contours.

Many Worlds Interpretation is a collection of cosmic Americana for electronics, guitar, and percussion culled from Jon Iverson’s extensive home-studio archive. 1984, Los Osos, California. In a small cinderblock cottage, hand-painted with bright psychedelic flora, Jon Iverson created vibrant new worlds. He spent long days and nights immersed in sound, perfecting home recording on his 8-track reel-to-reel, combining his love for kosmische and Berlin School electronics with an infatuation with ethnographic sounds and expansive guitar music. In a duo with fellow sonic traveler Thomas Walters, Iverson released missives from the studio on a self-titled LP released on country legend Guthrie Thomas’ Eagle Records. That release featured
three electro-acoustic compositions (“Naningo”, “River Fen”, and “Fox Tales”) as well as a gathering of guitar duo tapestries. Many Worlds Interpretation re-imagines those interplanetary works alongside several unreleased compositions that also feature synthesizer, guitar, and percussion, creating a re-visioned album which leans into Iverson’s electronic studio wizardry.

All songs have been carefully transferred from analog tape to high resolution digital, retaining their vintage studio warmth, but mixed and mastered for modern ears and audio systems. The album is pressed at 45rpm, further enhancing the audiophile experience.

Artist Statement

I worked in a Harley Davidson parts warehouse in the summer of 1976 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The goal was to save enough money to buy transportation for college and a Teac 4 track 1/4" reel to reel tape machine. By September there was a rusting monkey-vomit green car in the driveway and shiny new Teac with a Sony condenser microphone in the bedroom. At this point I had been playing guitar for a dozen years and like most children of the sixties, dreamed of joining
a band.

Went to college instead to study business.

But all was not lost. 1978-1979 was spent as Weird Al Yankovic's roommate and we recorded and created enough songs to play shows around San Luis Obispo, California, where we were attending college. Many of those recordings have yet to be heard by the public, including the first performances of My Bologna and many other parodies of pop songs of the day. We sent tapes to Dr. Demento, we auditioned for The Gong Show and were barred from playing at the local college after one memorable performance. Wild times.

I, however, was more intent on working on "serious" music, with albums from Vangelis, Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre providing inspiration. DJing at the local college radio station and then public radio outlet provided exposure to an endless stream of obscure albums (Sky Records from Germany was a particular favourite). Most of them would never make it to the air, but my buddies and I would pass them around like exotic treasure.

Fast forward a couple more years and I had picked up a Mini-Moog and eventually a Prophet V synthesizer as well as starting a collection of instruments from around the world. The Teac and synths formed the basis for a growing DIY studio that had taken over a modest-size garage (pictured on the cover) that had been converted into a two room cottage in Los Osos, California.

The Teac was eventually joined by a rented Otari 1/2" 8-track and then finally a vintage MCI JH-100 2" 16-track. The compositions on this album were recorded on these three machines between 1982 and 1989. At some point an Apple II computer with Alpha Syntauri sound card and keyboard were added and then later the first personal computer sampling hardware/software kit, the Decillionix DX-1. The DX-1 forms the rhythm track for “Fox Tales” and the Alpha Syntauri was programmed to create the pulsing synth for “Naningo”. “River Fen” was tracked with both the Alpha Syntauri and the Prophet V.

I knew this music wasn't commercial, but didn't care. It was inspiring working with the first computer-based synths and semi-pro gear. Home studios were still rare in the early 80s until the Tascam Portastudio blew the DIY door wide-open. But I was more interested in sound quality so stuck with reels of tape instead of lower fidelity cassettes.

During the time these songs were recorded, I was also collaborating with my good friend and mandolinist, Tom Walters. “River Fen”, “Naningo” and “Fox Tales”, were solo recordings that also ended up on the first Iverson & Walters album, First Collection. The other four pieces on this new LP were never fully finished or released until now.

— Jon Iverson, September 2022

It’s almost four years since their last opus - two years since the most-recent run
of live shows. Now, Bitchin Bajas return from whatever kind of rare ether they
occupy when they’re at home, bearing the riches of the whole cosmos in their
hands. And strictly OG as well - on cassette only.
 ‘Switched On Ra’ is the outcome of a typical Bajas exercise: pouring some out
for the pioneers that came before (as they’ve done with Bitchitronics and their
participation in the annual Chicago performance of ‘In C’ over the years). It’s a
nice way to get a flow - they play a little of themselves, then some for the
pioneers, then a little more for the band. Before long, they’re playing with the
inspirations twined, as they can only come from within.
 For ‘Switched On Ra’, this meant a deep delve into the song-book of one of their
soul-predecessors, Sun Ra, whose music is literally written in the Bajas DNA.
Digging into this music sounded wild on paper: the drone synth group taking on
the Arkestra harmonies and Ra’s loose grooves? The trick was to get that sense
of rhythm to translate across the spectrum from Ra to Bajas, in a way that
worked for them both.
 Their rearrangements of the tunes went good - up and down the EQ band, they
were finding the round sounds and jagged edges that brought Ra’s music into
their own thing. Then at the last minute, there was another twist - why not pay
tribute to the Queen herself, and think of the arrangements with a Wendy Carlos
vibe? A little side homage? After all, ‘Switched on Bach’ was visionary, bringing
analogue synths from the outside all the way into the mainstream in the late 60s -
and this take on Ra is meant to take him to new ears everywhere.
 Sun Ra of course was his own kind of original keyboard visionary, using electric
keyboards in the late 40s and 50s to fill a role in jazz that had traditionally been
played on acoustic piano only. Once he’d done so, he took his writing in
directions inspired by the electricity, places no one had thought to go before
then.
 Bitchin Bajas have been content to dominate in a microtonal world, usually
without a single chord to be found anywhere. But here, they step up righteously,
their vibe triangulated as they bring Ra’s music forward with some Wendy C
style, making an unexpected space for all to thrive. There’s a real feeling of joy
as these collected signals bounce off the tape and through the speakers into
your space.
 To get this unique colloid exactly right, Bitchin Bajas used nineteen different
keyboards. They abstained from deploying their arsenal of reed and woodwind
instruments: everything had to be on the keys. This meant Yamahas, Rolands,
Korgs, Casios, a MicroMoog and of course their trusty Ace Tone organ. They
even broke out the Crumar DS-2, to have some of Ra’s chosen tone in the mix.
Then Jayve Montgomery added an EWI as a solo voice on a few tunes, just to
get some air-blown signal (and a natural shout out to EWI master Marshall Allen)
in there, after all. It felt like somewhere in the universe, Ra was decreeing it.

2022 limited edition of this Japanese no wave gem from 1982. With extended liner notes and interviews with band members about the recordings of the album, as well as unpublished photographs from 1981 by Jibiki Yuichi.

The Japanese punk rock movement known as Tokyo Rockers began in the summer of 1978. It incubated an independent music culture as well as a host of fascinating, individualistic musicians. One of the more striking units was the male-female duo Maria 023. NON played bass for them, and it was here that she first attracted attention. However, Maria 023 was short-lived, and NON would not reappear until the following year, August 1979, on stage at the legendary concert event "Drive to 80s". Her unbilled performance at the event consisted of several songs for solo bass and vocals, and her combination of intensity and a distinctly female emotionality made a striking impression. In the months that followed, NON continued to play solo and she became a pivotal presence among the female rockers on the scene at the time.

Finally she shifted from solo to group performance, and formed NON BAND. After several member changes, the line-up stabilized into a unique trio with Kinosuke Yamagishi on violin and clarinet, and Mitsuru Tamagaki on drums. It was with this line-up that the group reached a musical peak. At the same time, the Japanese punk and new wave rock scene was moving in a new direction, as a second generation of artists appeared and mushrooming independent labels began to play an increasingly important role. I myself started a label called Telegraph Records in 1981 and worked hard on record releases and building a distribution network.

Since starting the label, I had wanted to release a record by NON BAND. There were many vicissitudes before it could happen, but in February 1982 NON BAND's first album was released as a 10-inch LP on Telegraph Records, the label's fifth release. In the early Japanese indies scene, if a release sold 1000 copies it was counted as a significant success. The NON BAND album went through several repressing and sold 2000 copies. The album was a hit and the band's critical reception and popularity suddenly took off.

The shows that followed the release of the album were given a boost by the addition of two female rockers, the guitarist Kummy and keyboard player Mitsuwa. The group was reaching a real musical peak and everyone expected more great developments, but just six months after the release of the album the group would grind to a halt. Members quit the band one after another, and with no possible replacements to be found, NON herself faded away from the scene.

NON BAND's career in the early Japanese indies scene was thus short-lived. But their sole album was reissued twice on CD, and remained popular with listeners. However, the group's history was to have a second chapter.

NON ended up returning to her hometown, snowy Hirosaki in the far northern prefecture Aomori. There she raised two children and took over the running of the family business, an arts supplies store. Her thoughts turned once again towards music, and in 1999 she took up her bass again and began to sing. She invited two fabulous musicians, Keiji Haino and Tatsuya Yoshida, to Hirosaki, and performed together with them as well as solo. This marked the beginning of a new phase for her, and she played live in Tokyo and released a solo album, "ie". She got back in touch with Yamagishi and Tamagaki and reformed NON BAND. They added Emi Sasaki on accordion and began to play a handful of gigs each year, bringing a mature depth to their undiminished power and dazzling a new generation of fans. In 2012 the group released an album of recent live performances entitled " NON BAND Liven' 2009-2012". I released the album on the newly reanimated Telegraph Records.

NON still lives in the north, in Hirosaki. The city is famous for its summer Neputa festival. The first track on this album, "Duncan Dancin'" is almost a theme song for NON BAND, but its rhythm is taken from the ohayashi music that is performed in this festival, as large floats and troupes of dancers wind their way through the streets. The title refers to the legendary dancer, Isadora Duncan. The image perfectly represents NON herself: Isadora Duncan dancing to the earthy rhythms bubbling up out of the north land.

Nov 9, 2016 Jibiky Yuichi (Telegraph Factory)

In order to achieve a meticulous sound quality the reissue version is cut on 12" vinyl instead of the original 10" format. The original cover artwork has been reproduced and there are liner notes by Jibiky Yuichi with unpublished photos of NON BAND.

2022 marks the 25th anniversary of Suction Records, the Toronto-based electro/IDM label founded in 1997 by two emerging producers, Lowfish (aka Gregory De Rocher) and Solvent (aka Jason Amm), the latter still overseeing the label to this day. The label’s inaugural release was a split Lowfish/Solvent 12”, marking both artists’ debut vinyl appearance.

Gregory and Jason had known each other since high-school, but a deeper friendship was forged during their university years, after Gregory introduced Jason to early Rephlex releases by Aphex Twin and µ-Ziq. Gregory had been making electronic music in his bedroom for more than a decade, but it was those Rephlex releases that ignited Jason’s passion to do the same. After several years of obsessive gear buying, music making, and playing tracks for each other, Lowfish and Solvent had hit their stride, and their demos even attracted the interest of legendary early IDM labels labels Skam (for Lowfish), and Isophlux (for Solvent). But things were slow-moving in those days — letters, faxes, phone calls… nothing was panning out. So that’s when they decided to start their own label, and put out 300 copies of this 12”, suction001.

The label was heavily inspired by contemporary artists like AFX, Autechre, and Panasonic, but on suction001, those influences collided with their ‘80s synth-pop and industrial roots to create something unique. 25 years later, it still sounds fresh, and like nothing else out there. On suction001, 808 drum machines are run through distortion and breakbeats are chopped and mangled, contrasting with melodic OMD-style leads and catchy synth-pop basslines — a sound the label would refer to as ‘distortion pedal new wave.’

Over the past 25 years, Suction’s sound has morphed and evolved, but in recent years has shifted back to it’s original Rephlex-inspired roots. That makes 2022 the perfect year to revisit this wild, 1997 debut, now reissued in a new, expanded edition for it’s 25th anniversary. The reissue adds 2 bonus tracks — a 1999 remix by Detroit electro-punk duo ADULT., along with a previously-unreleased version of Lowfish’s A1 cut, and also features new and improved artwork, including an insert with full label discography.

Limited to 500 copies, and comes with a Bandcamp download card.

Damian Schwartz makes a welcome return to Pulp for his third full-length album, La Sal De Tu Especie. The 11 track record was written over the last three years as a way of coping with some tough experiences and features remixes
from K15 and Gifted & Blessed. It once again finds the Madrid producer serving up the sort of richly musical house that has always stood him apart.

Schwartz has been away for a while but emerged in the early 2000s with an artful take on house music. As a student of jazz, composition and bass, his intricate grooves have always been embellished with real melodic craftsmanship. In the past, they have come on this label, Esperanza and A Harmless Deed which he co-runs with Jose Cabrera. He has put out two albums before now and also works under the Epiphany alias as a producer and live act. He is a real master of his analog machinery and someone who never fails to bring fresh ideas. This superbly adventurous and widescreen new album proves that once again and shows off diverse influences such as 90s broken beat by acts like Hanna and 4 Hero, the early IDM of LFO and Aphex Twin and the Detroit house and electro styles of greats such as Juan Atkins, Teknotika, Marcellus Pittman and Kyle Hall.

It kicks off with Renacido which is a cinematic synth opener that places you into orbit. La Elipa is expansive and jazzy house with cosmic chord work over the tight, punchy kicks and Lopp then gets physical with broken beat drums and funky bass dancing around each other to uplifting effect. The superb Zwei Danke is another masterclass in off-grid beat programming and soulful machine sounds that captures the essence of early Detroit house.

It is remixed by K15, a vital London beatmaker with credits on labels like Eglo and Wild Oats. His version showcases rugged, lo-fi and dusty drums softened by heart-melting chords and angelic vocal coos.

Schwartz's 'Morro Da Urca' is a suspensory ambient interlude that makes way for the crisp electro-funk and starry-eyed pads of 'Rufo,' then 'Meco' cuts loose
with boogie bass and glistening drums and perc that voyage through a whole eco-system of bright, nebulous synths. 'Mika' is another out of this world house composition with majestic leads and pixelated pads that bring warmth and future soul. There is real electricity in the freeform keys and corrugated drums of Coney Island that will ensure any dance floor takes off.

Final remixer Gabriel Reyes-Whittaker aka GB (Gifted & Blessed) is a composer and sound artist whose music is a constant exploration of the bridge between the technological and the ancestral. He flips 'Loop' into an Afro-future jazz dance with infectious percussion and expressive chords that never rest.

La Sal De Tu Especie is a timeless fusion of jazz freedom and house grooves that takes you into a magical new dimension.

Freedom is both an integral and multi-layered topic for improvised music, describing its mechanics, aesthetics, and values and often an underlying political dimension as well. In the case of free jazz specifically, the word carries additional weight given the music's deep connection to the black liberation movement of the 1960's and 70's.

The passionate and unclassifiable work of Calgary-based improviser Jairus Sharif embraces each of these definitions of freedom and others, albeit strictly on its own personal and idiosyncratic terms. Since early 2020, the 34 year-old autodidact has been generating a steady stream of homespun solo recordings that forge unprecedented connections between hip-hop abstraction, cosmic skronk, outsider jazz, and staunch post-punk DIY ethos.

Leading up to the pandemic, Sharif's immersion in spiritual and exploratory jazz had culminated in him deciding to purchase an alto saxophone. Unbeknownst to him this instrument would be a catalyst for him to discover his own ardently individualistic artistic voice.

Prior to that point, he had always been somewhat of a solitary musical traveler. In 2002, he acquired his first instrument—a pair of Technics 1200s — but struggled to find local collaborators that had equal investment in hip hop culture. Ultimately, Sharif picked up the guitar, turning to the resilient local punk community, that had also nurtured both of his mothers some time earlier.

As Black Lives Matter gained momentum in the wake of George Floyd's murder, Sharif was suddenly flooded with an acute awareness of his own identity. It compelled him to zealously plunge headlong into open-ended spontaneous solo creation. Water & Tools, his strange and stirring debut for Toronto's Telephone Explosion Records (home to full-lengths from the likes of Brodie West's Eucalyptus, Mas Aya, and Joseph Shabason), offers a glimpse into this ongoing hermetic journey.

As Sharif dedicated himself to uncovering his own deeper musical truths, he assembled a home studio in his basement, cobbling together a drum kit from bits his bandmate had left at his house pre-pandemic, chaining effects together and outfitting the entire space with microphones. Somewhere between the chaos of child's treehouse and the tidy import of a shrine, this space (pictured on the album's back cover) consecrated his own imagination. He laid it out to maximize access to any and every tool in his arsenal, providing him a freedom to explore that he had never permitted himself to consummate before.

Within this cozy private universe, his recent purchase—the saxophone—assumed new meaning. It furnished a tangible connection to the black radicalism that mobilized free jazz, but also something far more personal. From a technical standpoint, the instrument was completely unfamiliar to him, yet rather than this being a hindrance to Sharif, his inexperience opened fruitful path forward, unencumbered by preconceptions. Resolving to shirk formal training, convention, and build his own understanding of it from scratch, allowed him to access his most raw, fundamental creative impulses. The Saxophone's inseverable bond with breath compounded this effect, echoing revelatory discoveries he had been making about breathing through yoga, research, and psychotherapy. Of course, the parallels with BLM's harrowing rallying cry—“I can't breathe”—were not lost on him either.

Water & Tools is a dense, contradictory statement with a blustery surface that shelters a soulful heart. It's generous music, exuding profound vulnerability—grappling with the loss of one his mothers, Lisa—all the while brimming with electric wide-eyed wonder. Almost every one of the nine pieces seems to carry some semblance of a groove, while remaining completely untethered from pulse. For Sharif, this collection is an expression of newfound lucidity, however for the listener his sonic concoctions act as powerful psychotropics. At points, there's a timelessness that's conveyed through the music's processional, ritualistic tenor, and yet there's an endless amount of wild, futuristic detail waiting to unspool at any given moment. Similarly, while this recording emerges from Sharif's private pilgrimage and personal emancipation, he also leaves room for collaboration. Woven throughout Sharif's one-man-ensemble textures, one finds Maxmilian Turnbull (of Badge Epoque, U.S. Girls, and Cosmic Range infamy) providing sundry keyboards and treatments, as well as his mixing skills.

Whether conjuring effusive psychedelia or plumbing introspective depths, the music that Jairus Sharif produces is singular, visceral, and wondrously unpredictable. Water & Tools sketches a raw, firsthand account of his nascent explorations within his own unbridled imagination.

Alex Chilton’s Feudalist Tarts (1985) found the Big Star/The Box Tops front man re-making himself as a southern fried hipster offering up original tunes like “Stuff” and sly soulful covers “B-A-B’Y” and “Thank You John” while adding a horn section to his road tested rhythm section. Side Two features a number of rare Chilton tracks including “Rubber Room” and “Wild Kingdom.” Chilton had hit rock bottom in his home town of Memphis after 15 years of substance abuse and hard partying. He chose New Orleans as the city where he would re-make himself. One of the benefits was exposure to all the music he would hear down there. He immediately immersed himself in the city’s laid back, stretched out grooves. The covers he chose for this record were songs he heard being played by older musicians around New Orleans. Expanded version includes a side of rare tracks. Out of print on vinyl since 1986. Includes seven original Chilton compositions. Original album release coincided with his most prolific touring schedule since his days in The Box Tops.

Patricia Barber's 6th studio album is a fascinating collection of classic cover songs shaped by her inimitable downtempo intimacy into startlingly affective journeys through the human condition. Working with her band of the time (bassist Michael Arnopol and drummer Adam Cruz, augmented by star turns from guitarist Charlie Hunter, bassist Marc Johnson, and drummer Adam Nussbaum), Barber creates an atmosphere of austere trepidation that allows her long-time engineer Jim Anderson to hang her haunted vocals directly over top. Like all great jazz albums, Nightclub puts the highlighted artist front and center while carving out plenty of space for the supporting players to give emphatic support.

Impex's 1STEP process provides the perfect showcase for Anderson's peerless audio immersions. Nightclub was originally digitally recorded on a Sony 3348 multi-track and mixed through a Neve analog console to both digital and analogue mix-down masters. Bernie Grundman used the analogue mix-down tapes to assemble a new analogue cutting master exclusively for our 1STEP. Coupled with the incredibly detailed VR-900 vinyl formula, there is instrument detailing to spare, a Mariana Trench noise floor, and incredibly-focused low end. There is simply no better way to enjoy Barber's cool renditions of timeless classics than this one (including the exclusive, never-before-released bonus track "Wild Is the Wind"). Limited to 7,500 pressings!

The 1STEP Process:
The Impex 1STEP process relies on short, tightly-controlled runs that require a new lacquer after each 500 pressings. This unforgiving format has the lacquer skipping the regular father-mother process, going right to a single convert and then pressing. Though this dramatically increases mastering and production costs, it also assures each run is more consistent from disc to disc, with less noise, clearer details and deeper bass.

Reducing production complexity to just a single "convert" disc between the lacquer and the press greatly improves groove integrity, diminishes non-fill anomalies and increases signal integrity from the master tape to your system.

Mastered by Bernie Grundman from the Original Mix-Down Analogue Master Tapes
Pressed on VR-900 Super Vinyl for Incredible Detailing, an Epic Soundstage & Near-Silent Surfaces
Exclusive Ultra-Luxe Impex 1STEP Packaging
Deluxe 12-Page Booklet within a Three-Sleeve Monster Pack Jacket
Colour-Matched Slip Case
Never-Before-Released Studio Session Track "Wild Is the Wind"

Several things happened before a warm day when I met the four members of Frankie Cosmos in a Brooklyn studio to begin making their album. Greta Kline spent a few years living with her family and writing a mere 100 songs, turning her empathy anywhere from the navel to the moon, rendering it all warm, close and reflexively humorous. In music, everyone loves a teen sensation, but Kline has never been more fascinating than now, a decade into being one of the most prolific songwriters of her generation. She's lodged in my mind amongst authors, other observational alchemists like Rachel Cusk or Sheila Heti, but she's funnier, which is a charm endemic to musicians. Meanwhile Frankie Cosmos, a rare, dwindling democratic entity called a band, had been on pandemic hiatus with no idea if they'd continue. In the openness of that uncertainty they met up, planning to hang out and play music together for the first time in nearly 500 days. There, whittling down the multitude of music to work with, they created Inner World Peace, a collection of Greta's songs changed and sculpted by their time together. While Kline's musical taste at the time was leaning toward aughts indie rock she'd loved as a teenager, keyboardist Lauren Martin and drummer Luke Pyenson cite "droning, meditation, repetition, clarity and intentionality," as well as "'70s folk and pop" as a reference for how they approached their parts. Bassist/guitarist Alex Bailey says that at the time he referred to it as their "ambient" or "psych" album. Somewhere between those textural elements and Kline's penchant for concise pop, Inner World Peace finds its balance. The first order of business upon setting up camp in Brooklyn's Figure 8 studios was to project giant colorful slides the band had made for each track. Co-producing with Nate Mendelsohn, my Shitty Hits Recording partner, we aimed for FC's aesthetic idiosyncrasies to shine. The mood board for "Magnetic Personality" has a neon green and black checkerboard, a screen capture of the game Street Fighter with "K.O." in fat red letters, and a cover of Mad Magazine that says "Spy Vs. Spy! The Top Secret Files." On tracks like "F.O.O.F." (Freak Out On Friday), "Fragments" and "Aftershook," the group are at their most psychedelic and playful, interjecting fuzz solos, bits of percussion, and other sonically adventurous ear candy. An internal logic strengthens everything, and in their proggiest moments, Frankie Cosmos are simply a one-take band who don't miss. When on Inner World Peace they sound wildly, freshly different, it may just be that they're coming deeper into their own. Inner World Peace excels in passing on the emotions it holds. When in the towering "Empty Head" Kline sings of wanting to let thoughts slide away, her voice is buoyed on a bed of synths and harmonium as tranquility abounds. When her thoughts become hurried and full of desire, so does the band, and she leaps from word to word as if unable to contain them all. As a group, they carry it all deftly, and with constant regard for Kline's point of view. Says Greta, "To me, the album is about perception. It's about the question of "who am I?" and whether or not the answer matters. It's about quantum time, the possibilities of invisible worlds. The album is about finding myself floating in a new context. A teenager again, living with my parents. An adult, choosing to live with my family in an act of love. Time propelled us forward, aged us, and also froze. If you don't leave the house, who are you to the world? Can you take the person you discover there out with you?" - Katie Von Schleicher

Several things happened before a warm day when I met the four members of Frankie Cosmos in a Brooklyn studio to begin making their album. Greta Kline spent a few years living with her family and writing a mere 100 songs, turning her empathy anywhere from the navel to the moon, rendering it all warm, close and reflexively humorous. In music, everyone loves a teen sensation, but Kline has never been more fascinating than now, a decade into being one of the most prolific songwriters of her generation. She's lodged in my mind amongst authors, other observational alchemists like Rachel Cusk or Sheila Heti, but she's funnier, which is a charm endemic to musicians. Meanwhile Frankie Cosmos, a rare, dwindling democratic entity called a band, had been on pandemic hiatus with no idea if they'd continue. In the openness of that uncertainty they met up, planning to hang out and play music together for the first time in nearly 500 days. There, whittling down the multitude of music to work with, they created Inner World Peace, a collection of Greta's songs changed and sculpted by their time together. While Kline's musical taste at the time was leaning toward aughts indie rock she'd loved as a teenager, keyboardist Lauren Martin and drummer Luke Pyenson cite "droning, meditation, repetition, clarity and intentionality," as well as "'70s folk and pop" as a reference for how they approached their parts. Bassist/guitarist Alex Bailey says that at the time he referred to it as their "ambient" or "psych" album. Somewhere between those textural elements and Kline's penchant for concise pop, Inner World Peace finds its balance. The first order of business upon setting up camp in Brooklyn's Figure 8 studios was to project giant colorful slides the band had made for each track. Co-producing with Nate Mendelsohn, my Shitty Hits Recording partner, we aimed for FC's aesthetic idiosyncrasies to shine. The mood board for "Magnetic Personality" has a neon green and black checkerboard, a screen capture of the game Street Fighter with "K.O." in fat red letters, and a cover of Mad Magazine that says "Spy Vs. Spy! The Top Secret Files." On tracks like "F.O.O.F." (Freak Out On Friday), "Fragments" and "Aftershook," the group are at their most psychedelic and playful, interjecting fuzz solos, bits of percussion, and other sonically adventurous ear candy. An internal logic strengthens everything, and in their proggiest moments, Frankie Cosmos are simply a one-take band who don't miss. When on Inner World Peace they sound wildly, freshly different, it may just be that they're coming deeper into their own. Inner World Peace excels in passing on the emotions it holds. When in the towering "Empty Head" Kline sings of wanting to let thoughts slide away, her voice is buoyed on a bed of synths and harmonium as tranquility abounds. When her thoughts become hurried and full of desire, so does the band, and she leaps from word to word as if unable to contain them all. As a group, they carry it all deftly, and with constant regard for Kline's point of view. Says Greta, "To me, the album is about perception. It's about the question of "who am I?" and whether or not the answer matters. It's about quantum time, the possibilities of invisible worlds. The album is about finding myself floating in a new context. A teenager again, living with my parents. An adult, choosing to live with my family in an act of love. Time propelled us forward, aged us, and also froze. If you don't leave the house, who are you to the world? Can you take the person you discover there out with you?" - Katie Von Schleicher

Die lang erwartete erste Wiederveröffentlichung eines Klassikers, dessen (einzige) Originalpressung innerhalb weniger Wochen nach der Veröffentlichung am 15. Oktober 2001 ausverkauft und seitdem nicht mehr erhältlich war.

Vielleicht das dynamischste und abenteuerlichste Album, das die Montrealer Szene der frühen Nullerjahre um Godspeed you black emperor! hervorgebracht hat.

Aufgenommen über einen Zeitraum von fünf Tagen, handelt es sich bei dem beeindruckenden Debütalbum des 13-köpfigen Kollektivs aus Montreal, dem auch Mitglieder von Godspeed you black emperor!, A Silver Mt Zion und Fly Pan Am angehören, laut TimeOut um 'eines der grüblerischsten, dramatischsten, emotionalsten und eindringlichsten Alben, die jemals an deiner Seele gekratzt haben.' Auch Pitchfork zeigte sich beeindruckt und attestierte: 'ein wunderbar einfallsreiches und kraftvolles Album.'

Remastered bei Dubplates & Mastering.

As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…"

Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within."

"I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them.

"Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone."

"People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something.

"That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me."

In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."

=

Born in 1963, the baby boy of nine siblings, Lee Tracy spent his earliest years living amidst the shotgun houses on Nashville's south side. "We was poor, man!" he says, recalling the outhouse his family used for a bathroom and the blocks of ice they kept in the kitchen to chill perishables. "But I actually don't think I really realized I was in poverty until I got grown and started thinking about it." Lee's mom worked at the Holiday Inn; his dad did whatever he had to do, from selling fruit from a horse drawn cart to bootlegging. "We didn't have much," Lee continues, "but my mother and my father got us the things we needed, the clothes on our back." By the end of the decade with the city's urban renewal programs razing entire neighborhoods to accommodate construction of the Interstate, the family moved to Edgehill Projects. Lee remembers music and art as a constant source of inspiration for he and his brothers and sisters – especially after seeing the Jackson 5 perform on Ed Sullivan. "As a small child I just knew that was what I wanted to do."

His older brother Don began musically mentoring him, introducing Lee to a variety of instruments and sounds. "He would never play one particular type of music, like R&B," says Lee. "I was surrounded by jazz, hard rock and roll, easy listening, gospel, reggae, country music; I mean I was a sponge absorbing all of that." Lee taught himself to play drums by beating on cardboard boxes, gaining a rep around the way for his timekeeping, and his singing voice. Emulating his favorites, Earth Wind & Fire and Cameo, he formed groups with other kids with era-evocative band names like Concept and TNT Connection, and emerged as the leader of disciplined rehearsals. "I made them practice," says Lee. "We practiced and practiced and practiced. Because I wanted that perfection." By high school the most accomplished of these bands would take top prize in a prominent local talent show. It was a big moment for Lee, and he felt ready to take things to the next level. But his band-mates had other ideas.

"I don't know what happened," he says, still miffed at the memory. "It must have blew they mind after we won and people started showing notice, because it's like everybody quit! I was like, where the hell did everybody go?" Lee had always made a point of interrogating prospective musicians about their intentions before joining his groups: were they really serious or just looking for a way to pick up girls? Now he understood even more the importance of finding a collaborator just as committed to the music as he was.

=

Isaac Manning had spent much of his life immersed in music and the arts – singing in the church choir with his family on Nashville's north side, writing, painting, dancing, and working various gigs within the entertainment industry. After serving in the armed forces, in the early '70s he ran The Teenage Place, a music and performance venue that catered to the local youth. But he was forced out of town when word of one of his recreational routines created a stir beyond the safe haven of his bohemian circles.

"I was growing marijuana," Isaac explains. "It wasn't no business, I was smoking it myself… I would put marijuana in scrambled eggs, cornbread and stuff." His weed use originated as a form of self-medication to combat severe tooth pain. But when he began sharing it with some of the other young people he hung out with, some of who just so happened to be the kids of Nashville politicians, the cops came calling. "When I got busted," he remembers, "they were talking about how they were gonna get rid of me because they didn't want me saying nothing about they children because of the politics and stuff. So I got my family, took two raggedy cars, and left Nashville and went to Vegas."

Out in the desert, Isaac happened to meet Chubby Checker of "The Twist" fame while the singer was gigging at The Flamingo. Impressed by Isaac's zeal, Checker invited him to go on the road with him as his tour manager/roadie/valet. The experience gave Isaac a window into a part of the entertainment world he'd never encountered – a glimpse of what a true pop act's audience looked like. "Chubby Checker, none of his shows were played for Black folks," he remembers. "All his gigs were done at high-class white people areas." Returning home after a few years with Chubby, Isaac was properly motivated to make it in Music City. He began writing songs and scouting around Nashville for local talent anywhere he could find it with an expressed goal: "Find someone who can deliver your songs the way you want 'em delivered and make people feel what you want them to feel."

One day while walking through Edgehill Projects Isaac heard someone playing the drums in a way that made him stop and take notice. "The music was so tight, just the drums made me feel like, oh I'm-a find this person," he recalls. "So I circled through the projects until I found who it was.

"That's how I met him – Lee Tracy. When I found him and he started singing and stuff, I said, ohhh, this is somebody different."

=

Theirs was a true complementary partnership: young Lee possessed the raw talent, the older Isaac the belief. "He's really the only one besides my brother and my family that really seen the potential in me," says Lee. "He made me see that I could do it."

Isaac long being a night owl, his house also made for a fertile collaborative environment – a space where there always seemed to be a new piece of his visual art on display: paintings, illustrations, and dolls and figures (including an enigmatic cardboard robot). Lee and Issac would hang out together and talk, listen to music, conjure ideas, and smoke the herb Isaac had resumed growing in his yard. "It got to where I could trust him, he could trust me," Isaac says of their bond. They also worked together for hours on drawings, spreading larges rolls of paper on the walls and sketching faces with abstract patterns and imagery: alien-like beings, tri-horned horse heads, inverted Janus-like characters where one visage blurred into the other.

Soon it became apparent that they didn't need other collaborators; self-sufficiency was the natural way forward. At Isaac's behest Lee, already fed up with dealing with band musicians, began playing around with a poly-sonic Yamaha keyboard at the local music store. "It had everything on it – trumpet, bass, drums, organ," remembers Lee. "And that's when I started recording my own stuff."

The technology afforded Lee the flexibility and independence he craved, setting him on a path other bedroom musicians and producers around the world were simultaneously following through the '80s into the early '90s. Saving up money from day jobs, he eventually supplemented the Yamaha Isaac had gotten him with Roland and Casio drum machines and a Moog. Lee was living in an apartment in Hillside at that point caring for his dad, who'd been partially paralyzed since early in life. In the evenings up in his second floor room, the music put him in a zone where he could tune out everything and lose himself in his ideas.

"Oh I loved it," he recalls. "I would really experiment with the instruments and use a lot of different sound effects. I was looking for something nobody else had. I wanted something totally different. And once I found the sound I was looking for, I would just smoke me a good joint and just let it go, hit the record button." More potent a creative stimulant than even Isaac's weed was the holistic flow and spontaneity of recording. Between sessions at Isaac's place and Lee's apartment, their volume of output quickly ballooned.

"We was always recording," says Lee. "That's why we have so much music. Even when I went to Isaac's and we start creating, I get home, my mind is racing, I gotta start creating, creating, creating. I remember there were times when I took a 90-minute tape from front to back and just filled it up."

"We never practiced," says Isaac. "See, that was just so odd about the whole thing. I could relate to him, and tell him about the songs I had ideas for and everything and stuff. And then he would bring it back or whatever, and we'd get together and put it down." Once the taskmaster hell bent on rehearsing, Lee had flipped a full 180. Perfection was no longer an aspiration, but the enemy of inspiration.

"I seen where practicing and practicing got me," says Lee. "A lot of musicians you get to playing and they gotta stop, they have to analyze the music. But while you analyzing you losing a lot of the greatness of what you creating. Stop analyzing what you play, just play! And it'll all take shape."

=

"I hope you understood the beginning of the record because this was invented from a dream I had today… (You tell me, I'll tell you, we'll figure it out together)" – Lee Tracy and Isaac Manning, "Hope You Understand"

Lee lets loose a maniacal cackle when he acknowledges that the material that he and Isaac recorded was by anyone's estimation pretty out there. It's the same laugh that commences "Hope You Understand" – a chaotic transmission that encapsulates the duality at the heart of their music: a stated desire to reach people and a compulsion to go as leftfield as they saw fit.

"We just did it," says Lee. "We cut the music on and cut loose. I don't sit around and write. I do it by listening, get a feeling, play the music, and the lyrics and stuff just come out of me."

The approach proved adaptable to interpreting other artists' material. While recording a cover of Whitney Houston's pop ballad "Saving All My Love For You," Lee played Whitney's version in his headphones as he laid down his own vocals – partially following the lyrics, partially using them as a departure point. The end result is barely recognizable compared with the original, Lee and Isaac having switched up the time signature and reinvented the melody along the way towards morphing a slick mainstream radio standard into something that sounds solely their own.

"I really used that song to get me started," says Lee. "Then I said, well I need something else, something is missing. Something just came over me. That's when I came up with 'Is It What You Want.'"

The song would become the centerpiece of Lee and Isaac's repertoire. Pushed along by a percolating metronomic Rhythm King style beat somewhere between a military march and a samba, "Is It What You Want" finds Lee pleading the sincerity of his commitment to a potential love interest embellished by vocal tics and hiccups subtlely reminiscent of his childhood hero MJ. Absent chord changes, only synth riffs gliding in and out like apparitions, the song achieves a lingering lo-fi power that leaves you feeling like it's still playing, somewhere, even after the fade out.

"I don't know, it's like a real spiritual song," Lee reflects. "But it's not just spiritual. To me the more I listen to it it's like about everything that you do in your everyday life, period. Is it what you want? Do you want a car or you don't want a car? Do you want Jesus or do you want the Devil? It's basically asking you the question. Can't nobody answer the question but you yourself."

In 1989 Lee won a lawsuit stemming from injuries sustained from a fight he'd gotten into. He took part of the settlement money and with Isaac pressed up "Saving All My Love For You" b/w "Is It What You Want" as a 45 single. Isaac christened the label One Chance Records. "Because that's all we wanted," he says with a laugh, "one chance."

Isaac sent the record out to radio stations and major labels, hoping for it to make enough noise to get picked up nationally. But the response he and Lee were hoping for never materialized. According to Isaac the closest the single got to getting played on the radio is when a disk jock from a local station made a highly unusual announcement on air: "The dude said on the radio, 107.5 – 'We are not gonna play 'Is It What You Want.' We cracked up! Wow, that's deep.

"It was a whole racist thing that was going on," he reflects. "So we just looked over and kept on going. That was it. That was about the way it goes… If you were Black and you were living in Nashville and stuff, that's the way you got treated." Isaac already knew as much from all the times he'd brought he and Lee's tapes (even their cache of country music tunes) over to Music Row to try to drum up interest to no avail.

"Isaac, he really worked his ass off," says Lee. "He probably been to every record place down on Music Row." Nashville's famed recording and music business corridor wasn't but a few blocks from where Lee grew up. Close enough, he remembers, for him to ride his bike along its back alleys and stumble upon the occasional random treasure, like a discarded box of harmonicas. Getting in through the front door, however, still felt a world away.

"I just don't think at the time our music fell into a category for them," he concedes. "It was before its time."

=

Lee stopped making music some time in the latter part of the '90s, around the time his mom passed away and life became increasingly tough to manage. "When my mother died I had a nervous breakdown," he says, "So I shut down for a long time. I was in such a sadness frame of mind. That's why nobody seen me. I had just disappeared off the map." He fell out of touch with Isaac, and in an indication of just how bad things had gotten for him, lost track of all the recordings they'd made together. Music became a distant memory.

Fortunately, Isaac kept the faith. In a self-published collection of his poetry – paeans to some of his favorite entertainment and public figures entitled Friends and Dick Clark – he'd written that he believed "music has a life of its own." But his prescience and presence of mind were truly manifested in the fact that he kept an archive of he and Lee's work. As perfectly imperfect as "Is It What You Want" now sounds in a post-Personal Space world, Lee and Isaac's lone official release was in fact just a taste. The bulk of the Is It What You Want album is culled from the pair's essentially unheard home recordings – complete songs, half-realized experiments, Isaac's blue monologues and pronouncements et al – compiled, mixed and programmed in the loose and impulsive creative spirit of their regular get-togethers from decades ago. The rest of us, it seems, may have finally caught up to them.

On the prospect of at long last reaching a wider audience, Isaac says simply, "I been trying for a long time, it feels good." Ever the survivor, he adds, "The only way I know how to make it to the top is to keep climbing. If one leg break on the ladder, hey, you gotta fix it and keep on going… That's where I be at. I'll kill death to make it out there."

For Lee it all feels akin to a personal resurrection: "It's like I was in a tomb and the tomb was opened and I'm back… Man, it feels so great. I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin." Success at this stage of his life, he realizes, probably means something different than what it did back when he was singing and dancing in Isaac's front yard. "What I really mean by 'making it,'" he explains isn't just the music being heard but, "the story being told."

Occasionally Lee will pull up "Is It What You Want" on YouTube on his phone, put on his headphones, and listen. He remembers the first time he heard his recorded voice. How surreal it was, how he thought to himself, "Is that really me?" What would he say to that younger version of himself now?

"I would probably tell myself, hang in there, don't give up. Keep striving for the goal. And everything will work out."

Despite what's printed on the record label, sometimes you do get more than one chance.

The story of this album is a story of love and lust - it's a love letter to rock
music - Your first love being the first time you held that instrument or
lover that would propel you into the next chapter
Your first heartbreak. Your first fear. Your first fuck. There's a constant need to
feed the first because all of that unfinished business fuels the second.
But the truth about the first is that it was there all along. These songs were out
there years ago, playing out their melodies to a closeted, jealous, angry Iowa City
gay boy trying to find his way towards freedom. Decades later, No. 2 grabs those
songs down and punches the idea of a first all open. First Love reintroduces No. 2
to us all, driven by the propulsive lyrics of Neil Gust along with the incomparable
Gilly Hanner on bass and the unparalleled Paul Pulvirenti on drums.
Produced by Joanna Bolme (Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks) and mixed by Gary
Jarman (The Cribs) and Tony Lash (Heatmiser). The album was recorded over 3
years in studios and basements across Portland, OR and finished in a boathouse
in Connecticut during Covid. Special guest Rebecca Cole (The Minders, Wild Flag)
shows up on keyboards here and there.
Racing through queer anthems, noir grooves, and more under and over ground
rock references than a Quentin Tarantino movie, First Love bursts with all the
infectious chemistry that made the band so much fun in the first place.

Wildly creative free-form songwriter Rachael Dadd is set to release
her brand new studio album, ‘Kaleidoscope’, via Memphis Industries.
The album follows 2019’s ‘Flux’, which was released to much
acclaim, and was the album she was touring when the pandemic
struck. Like so many people disconnected from their communities and
struggling through the lockdowns, Rachael Dadd turned inwards,
seeking escape through music and connection through songwriting,
and her hope is that when people listen to ‘Kaleidoscope’, “they will
feel held and find space to breathe, grieve and celebrate.”
“This album is a lot more honest and personal than ‘Flux’” she shares,
“but I feel the songs are universal as they are largely rooted in truth
and love. If I had to pick a favourite album it would be this one
because of the magical rekindling of human connection when me and
my band got back in a room together again. All that magic went into
these songs.”
Co-produced “intuitively, boldly, and playfully” by Rachael and Rob
Pemberton (The Staves, Emily Barker, Maja Lena), ‘Kaleidoscope’
includes musical collaborators such as Maja Lena (Low Chimes),
longtime collaborator Emma Gatrill (Willy Mason), Alex Heane (bass),
Charlotte West (synths), Alex Garden (strings) and ‘Flux’ producer
Marcus Hamblett (Villagers, James Holden, The Staves), giving the
record “just the right colour combination, just the right pattern of
shapes, plenty of space where needed and finally landing in a sound
world that feels fresh and open and true,” reflects Rachael.
Japanese aesthetics absorbed from her time spent living there are
subconsciously woven into Rachael’s songs. “I first stepped foot in
Tokyo in 2008, sparked by the adventure of such a rich and different
culture and later on I lived on a small island and experienced an
appealing and balanced way of life: the aesthetics, the art and the
traditions,” she recalls. “There was a lot of caring for each other, a lot
of gentleness, and a lot of simple living in harmony with nature. Japan
left its cultural mark on me and is now part of my inner world and I’m
sure this comes out with the words and music I write.”
“But overall,” Rachael explains, “this is an album of homecoming and
reconnecting to my own truth, to my community here, to the earthy
land that I love and to the sky that I know.”

The first album of Web Web is very uncut, raw, live and direct. Oracle is the first output of a German Supergroup. Check the musician credits below and you'll get the score. The initial idea was to record a spiritual-jazz type of album, with all its imperfection as far as intonation, sound, influences of tunes... just like from their big jazz-heroes in the 70ies (e.g. Strata East, Black Jazz).

Web Web's idea was to record a jazz jam session while to found and proclaim being a fictive band, a formation, which did not exist, while telling people, it would be a secret jam session recording of the Seventies. The prompt problem they were facing: Oh, we never would be able to play concerts, doing interviews, or placing photos on sleeves or post likeness images online. So they decided to reveal their real identities:

Web Web are: Roberto Di Gioia (Piano, Synth, Percussion), Tony Lakatos (Tenor- and Sopranosaxophone), Christian von Kaphengst (Upright Bass) and Peter Gall (Drums).

Roberto Di Gioia (Mastermind of Web Web): - The four of us set up very close in a big room, so we could hear and feel each other the best way. The music became more intensive, improvisations became more dynamic and it was impulsive .

The album Oracle' was recorded on one day, only first takes were used!

We want to keep the burning spirit and the loose vibe we had during the recording session. And we play concerts the wild and free way we recorded this album. Web Web will be on tour 2018, but playing a few concerts in 2017.
Furthermore, one main decision to blab their real identities was: The second Web Web album is recorded in June (with guests like the famous and unique Gembri-player and multiinstrumentalist and singer Majid Bekkas from Morocco).
Both albums were engineered, recorded and mixed by Jan Krause (Beanfield, Poets Of Rhythm).

Roberto Di Gioia: - Tony was tuning his Soprano too high, and his (overdubbed) tenor way too flat!
My synthesizers were somewhere in between...HA! We exactly had the sound we had in our minds, we had it exactly there were we wanted it: a bit of Sun Ra here, a bit of Horace Tapscott there. On some tunes Tony's soprano just sounds like a trumpet, since due to his weird tuning the soprano develops different frequencies in relation to other instruments.

Oracle' is the first live jazz release on Compost. Produced by Roberto Di Gioia and Michael Reinboth.

Roberto Di Gioia has been working with numerous jazz-legends, such as Woody Shaw, Art Farmer, James Moody, Johnny Griffin, Charlie Rouse, Clifford Jordan, Clark Terry, Roy Ayers, Gregory Porter and many more.

From 1990 to 2008: member Klaus Doldingers Passport. As a pianist he made recordings with Udo Lindenberg (MTV-Unplugged, 2011), Charlie Watts ( Music Of The Rolling Stones , 2005), Console ( Reset The Preset , 2003), The Notwist ( Shrink 1998, Neon Golden , 2002). Since 2007 he is working together with Samon Kawamura and Max Herre as KAHEDI: Max Herre ( Hallo Welt , 2012), Joy Denalane ( Gleisdreieck , 2017), u.v.m...His own group MARSMOBIL (produced by Peter Kruder) will release his fourth studioalbum in winter 2017.

Tony Lakatos originates from the world famous Lakatos-familiy from Budapest, Hungary. His father was a famous violinist, as well as his younger brother Roby. He started playing saxophone when he was 15 years old. Tony studied at the Bela-Bartok-Conservatory in Budapest, and made his degree in 1979. Since then he played on over 350 jazz albums (!!), to name a few: Al Foster, Kirk Lightsey, Randy Brecker, George Mraz, David Witham, Terri Lyne Carrington, Anthony Jackson. Tony was a member of Jasper Van´t Hofs PILI PILI. Since 1993 he is working with the HR Radio-Bigband as a soloist.

Christian von Kaphengst learned the piano at the Peter-Cornelius-Conservatory in Mainz when he was 6 years old. From 1988 to 1995 he studied upright-bass at the - Musikhochschule in Cologne. He was touring with his own Jazzquartett - Cafe du Sport to Pakistan, India, Turkey and West-Africa. Since 1999 he regularly plays with Patti Austin and The New York Voices in Europe. Von Kaphengst played with the greatest musicians, such as Randy Brecker, Nat Adderley, Roy Hargrove, Joe Sample, Charlie Mariano, Katja Ebstein, Xavier Naidoo, Roachford, Yvonne Catterfeld.

Peter Gall won some important German awards already when he was a youngster, like - Jugend Jazzt . He was touring with the famous - Bundesjazzorchester conducted by German jazz legend Peter Herbholzheimer. He studied at the Berlin University Of Fine Arts and at the Jazz Institute Berlin with John Hollenbeck. Gall made a masterclass at the Manhattan School Of Music with John Riley. He has been working with Seamus Blake, Ben Street, Gabriel Rios, Jasmin Tabatabai, Thomas Quasthoff, Peter Fessler.

“I think it’s a mistake to equate ‘perfection’ with flawlessness. To be human is to be perfectly flawed,” Johanna Warren observes while describing the joys of analog recording. Her new LP Lessons for Mutants was tracked live with a band to two inch tape—a revelatory new way of working for Warren. “Tape forces you to commit to a performance, eccentricities and all. The little glitches and anomalies that we’re tempted to ‘correct’ are often what make a thing magical.”

Lessons for Mutants is the prolific songwriter’s sixth solo LP and her second for Wax Nine/Carpark Records. The album’s running theme of metamorphosis (the title of the closing track, “Involvulus,” is Latin for “caterpillar”) reflects major changes in Warren’s personal life: after a decade of relentless touring, as the world was closing its borders, the American multi-instrumentalist unexpectedly found herself quarantining in rural Wales, where she’s now permanently homesteading.

Though tracking for the new album began in New York in 2018 in tandem with the sessions for 2020’s Chaotic Good, the majority of Lessons for Mutants was recorded in the UK surrounded by sheep, cows and a forager’s paradise of wild edible plants—a far cry from the urban jungle of LA that Warren had most recently called home. The body of work that emerged from this dramatic about-face is Warren’s most dynamic to date, shapeshifting seamlessly from searing punk screams to sparkly psych-folk soundscapes, from the bootleg ambivalence of Dylan’s Basement Tapes to cosmic stoner grooves reminiscent of Black Sabbath’s acoustic moments.

“Sometimes I can relate to myself/ I disassociate more than I’d like to, but what can you do?” Warren croons in “Tooth for a Tooth,” a wistful piano ballad that conjures the grainy romance of some smoke-filled 1940s jazz club. This kind of to-the-bone lyrical honesty has always been one of Warren’s strong suits, but these latest reflections are especially unflinching. Being forced to stop touring brought no shortage of self-examination for Warren, who quickly came to view her history on the road as an addiction from which she’s been detoxing. This sentiment dances through opening track “I’d Be Orange,” a drum-driven indie rock number replete with Beatles-esque male backing vocals: “Thirst for power, hunger for fame/ Always was a junkie for pain,” Warren confesses. This exploration of masochistic ambition and artistic martyrdom overflows into grunge anthem “Piscean Lover”: “It’s alright, we’re not ok/ We burn out not to fade away.”

“There’s this unspoken rule in modern music—modern life, really—that everything needs to be Auto-Tuned and ‘on the grid,’” Warren concludes. “This record is an act of resistance against that. There’s beauty and power in our aberrations, if we can embrace them.”

“If you can imagine a late 1960s folk-rock approach allied to a doomy atmosphere with added touches of lo-fi psychedelia, then you’re getting close to the timbre of Finland’s Hexvessel. There are clearly nods towards King Crimson, Black Sabbath, the Beatles, HP Lovecraft and The Doors, but what the band have managed to do is create something that belongs specifically to them.” – Malcolm Dome, Prog Magazine Hexvessel’s fan-favorite album from 2012, No Holier Temple, gets a luxury 10-year anniversary reissue via Svart Records! No Holier Temple was Psychedelic Forest Folk band Hexvessel’s second full-length album, released to critical acclaim, cult status and some of their biggest sales figures to date. The Finnish “mushroom-devouring pixies” follow up to 2011’s critically acclaimed debut album, Dawnbearer, was described by Roadburn Festival as “a passionate, urgent and gorgeously strange musical spell.” Hexvessel’s break-through album No Holier Temple reached new heights for the band with two Emma Gala (Finnish Grammy Awards) nominations. No Holier Tample also won two Femma awards, which is the Alternative Finnish Grammy Awards. Hexvessel played the prestigious Roadburn Festival in The Netherlands for the first time that year in the church venue of Het Patronaat. The festival sold out in 7 minutes. No Holier Temple also landed in the Main Finnish Charts at #20 and in Alternative charts at #7. No Holier Temple fuses the acoustic 70s folk vibe of its predecessor into a more psychedelic, electric, doom-folk sound with Manzarek-like keys, screeching rhythmic Velvet Underground violins, Miles Davis trumpets and hypnotic freakouts. Weaving the uncanny songs together are the narrative vocals of Mat McNerney, who on this album has matured into the bastard child of Burke Shelley, young Jon Anderson and Paul Simon. Inspired by the progressive, spaced-out haze of bands like Amon Düül II, Van Der Graaf Generator and Ultimate Spinach, whose song “Your Head Is Reeling” they cover with religious abandon. Their sound now expands outward from their eerie, signature, ritual-esque intros into a genre-twisting cauldron of otherworldly rock and the late-night, dreamy spoken-word of artists such as Jim Morrison (An American Prayer) and Ken Nordine.

Limited edition picture disc in full colour printed sleeve

Covered In Stars featuring members of Luna, Spacemen 3, Slowdive, Spectrum, Add N To (X), The Vacant Lots, Spiritualized, Slipstream and more.

This is a wonderfully colourful, beautiful fun and powerfully transcendent album by Fuxa, Featuring driving drum machines, gritty fuzz bitten guitars on The Sun Is Shining and Mary, 80's neon midnight post-punk disco grooves on Shadazz and perfectly blissed out floating in space vibes (Help Me Please and Cluster Fuxa). The synths shimmer and elevate, guitars attack and sparkle and the vocals deliver dark romanticism which evoke often David Cronenberg inspired fantasies such as photographs of car crashes, crushes on perfect strangers and unknown futures. 
 - Simon Scott (Slowdive)


Fuxa returns in 2022 with a new album  'Covered In Stars'
 
Eight new songs and several years in the making, of what can best be described as a full on sonic explosion. Mixing space-rock elements, krautrock rhythms, punchy beats and swirling electronic sweeps and beeps that would make for a perfect soundtrack for any warp speed travelling cosmonauts with phasers set to fun!!
 
For the past 25 years Fuxa front man Randall Nieman has no doubt been on a cosmic journey in sound and space. from his early beginnings a part of Detroit locals Windy and Carl as a guitarist/synth player, running and releasing close to 100 releases on his own label Mind Expansion, to later joining Sonic Boom's (Spacemen 3) group Spectrum for close to a decade. Performing the songs that Spacemen taught him touring across North America and Europe as well as recording and releasing several releases with Sonic under the Spectrum moniker. 
Randall has since worked with and released numerous amounts of material with the likes of Martin Rev (Suicide), The Telescopes and Dean and Britta (Luna) to name a few.
 
It is no surprise that Randall would once again build this new album with friends that he became close to over the years musically and there's certainly no shortage of indie royalty star power on this album
 
Produced by Randall Nieman, Richard Formby and Stefan Persson.
Mastered by Simon Scott (Slowdive)
This album features guest appearances from Britta Phillips and Dean Wareham (Luna), Ann Shenton (Add N to (X)), Mark Refoy and Jonny Mattock (Spiritualized, Slipstream), Roger Brogan (Spectrum/Dean Wareham), Jared Artaud (Vacant Lots) and more! Each adding an unmistakable and timeless element that Fuxa's core members have created. 
It would be hard not to notice the sheer aesthetic glory of this release as once again Randall has chosen the amazing James Marsh (most would remember him as the phenomenal artist responsible for all the Talk Talk albums over the years. His artwork is not only featured on the jacket but on both sides of the limited edition picture disc vinyl.
Covered in stars is a celebration of 25 years of music and friendships made along the way. 

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Fuxa! 

"“The New Backwards” was conceived by Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson in 2007, revisiting stray tracks which hadn’t seemed to gel with the material he had chosen for the more somber “Ape of Naples” from 2005, COIL’s initial posthumous release, a sort of requiem and a kiss-goodbye to his then recently deceased partner John Balance.

Significantly different to its sister release, this album collects the brilliantly chaotic and outrageously rhythmic material from the original sessions for the album that was begun as early as 1993 and had originally been conceptualised as the follow-up to “Love’s Secret Domain”. These songs are as diverse and wild as the places they originated from, partly infamously spawned in Sharon Tate’s former home in the Hollywood Hills, the Nine Inch Nails home base in New Orleans and London’s Swanyard, remixed and restructured with the help of long-term friend Danny Hyde in Thailand, this collection has its own unique flow and an atmosphere not found on any other COIL release.

Both “AYOR” and “Backwards” had by the time the album was first released already become favourites in COIL’s manic live performances. Some of the other tracks had only leaked in demo versions and are here presented updated and polished as Christopherson and Hyde intended them to be heard. It is interesting to consider Balance’s vocal contributions, too. Whilst on the albums COIL did release at the time this material was first put aside (“Black Light District” and “ElpH”) his voice is all but absent, his vocal performances and his lyric writing here are arguably more closely indebted to the previous “Love’s Secret Domain” era, especially the epic “Copacaballa” is noteworthy in that respect.
The New Backwards” effectively became the final official COIL studio release of all new material whilst Peter was still alive and is here presented for the first time fully supervised by Danny Hyde, its co-creator.
The stunning cover uses a detail from artist Ian Johnstone’s “Cubic Raven” painting, licensed from the estate of IJ..

It is high time to rediscover this timeless album with the Infinite Fog release boasting eight further tracks of previously unheard material from the same sessions, rough working stages and surprising remixes which will surely delight the dedicated COIL archaeologists, as they shine yet another light on the creative process and on what could have been.

Recorded at Swanyard, London and at Nothing Studios, New Orleans, 1996.
Thanks to everyone there, especially Trent Reznor who made it all possible.
Written & Produced by Coil & Danny Hyde.
Remixed by Peter Christopherson & Danny Hyde, Bangkok 2007.
For that session Coil were: Peter Christopherson, Jhonn Balance & Drew McDowall.
Mastered by Jessica Thompson.
Front artwork by Ian Johnstone.
Artwork licensed from The Estate of Ian Johnstone.
Layout Cold Graves and Oleg Galay."

Los Cotopla Boyz: Millennial Cumbia For The End Of The World. The newest psychedelic space ranger Cumbia band from Bogotá's infamous DIY scene have been sent to earth to save the party! Los Cotopla Boyz make the walls sweat, they set fire to your feet on the dance floor. It all started in Bogotá, which you might say is the tropicanibal venue par excellence, a place that has brought life to acts like Frente Cumbiero, Los Meridian Brothers, Romperayo, Chúpame el dedo, Dub de Gaita, Los Pirañas, Onda trópica and León Pardo, among other eccentricities that have taken the world and stand out not only for their virtuosity but also the connection that lives between that salvaging of traditional folklore and lysergic futurism that expands hypnotically around the world. From this musical hotbed that emerged in the second decade of the new millennium, there is now a new generation to continue the tropicanibal scene, with groups such as La Sonora Mazurén, La Tromba Bacalao, Los Yoryis, El Conjunto Media Luna and, of course, Los Cotopla Boyz, a five-piece that formed in Bogotá in 2018 but inhabit a post-pandemic dystopian multiverse where their mission is to save the party. So their live performances have that illusion of frantic Power Rangers singing about their adventures, as if these were epic chants, except instead of heroic feats they sing with humor about their everyday lives, like the drama “N’sync” about that chat where they leave you on read, or “Me Malviajé con las Ganlletas” about the hallucinogenic experimentation of ingesting cannabis and flipping out. These experiences also lead to songs like the clumsy love lost of “Dama tu Wasap,” the cathartic “Tren de Cotopla” and the ode to excess that is “Raspafiestas,” that moment in your life when the night seems eternal and you only want to go from one party to the next until the world ends. These songs, together with “Plankton (Abanico Sanyo)” and “El Peruanito” are part of Mamarron, Vol. 1, a compilation of seven millennial cannon shots inspired by Los Mirlos, Los Hechizeros Band, Anan, Wendy Sulca, La Sonora Cordobesa, Bad Bunny, Yandel and Los Corraleros de Majagual, tracks laid down on their debut record that saw the light in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic and will be re-released in 2022 by AYA records (ZZK Records imprint.) As well as being pressed on vinyl the album will include the bonus track “El Peruanito” remixed by Colombian producer Santiago Navas and taken from Mamarrón, Vol. 2, their album of remixes by figures such as Frente Cumbiero, Cerrero, Prendida, Sonido Confirmación, DJ Rata Piano and Felipe Orjuela, local producers and musicians with a global scope and vision who expand the raspafiesta universe to the limits of the world. Los Cotopla Boyz are a sweaty, schizophrenic cumbia experience that has been witnessed by emerging Bogotá clubs like Matik-Matik, Boogaloop, El Chamán, Tejo Turmequé, Videoclub and the festival Hermoso Ruido, providing nights of wild abandon to the beat of an outrageous big cumbia sound, a ritual of release giving those present a maximum catharsis that has no compare, not even the most animalistic moves of any metaller shaking his powerful mane. Los Cotopla make the walls sweat, they set fire to your feet on the dancefloor, drawing amorphous moves from their fans on exquisite nights. Tracks SIDE A: 1. Plankton (Abanico Sanyo) 2. El Peruanito 3. Dame tu Wasap 4. N’sync SIDE B: 1. Tren de Cotopla 2. Me Malviaje con Ganlletas 3. Raspafiestas 4. El Peruanito (Santiago Navas Remix)

Here’s artist Max Kuhn on hearing the new Ralph White recordings for the first time: “I was driving a familiar round trip across the high desert when I first put it on. It immediately spoke to me. In the lyrics there's a familiar geography for me, a familiar emotional landscape for all of us. And maybe it was driving an almost 40 year old truck on sun baked & cracked asphalt in July, but it's like you can hear his songs coming apart- the cadence, the rhymes stumbling & defying expectations, consistency but they just keep moving. You have no choice but to go with it. Probably a good lesson for how to live in this era we're in, cracking up but keeping it all running somehow, trying to make something pretty with the time.” Recorded in Austin, Texas in March of 2020, just days before the city and the rest of the world shut down, Ralph White spent two days with producer, Jerry David DeCicca (Will Beeley, Ed Askew) and recording engineer, Don Cento, capturing a raw and wild set of performances. Ralph, having recently converted his van into a mobile living and touring quarters equipped with a wood-burning stove, left Austin, the city where he was born 70 years ago, and retreated to an Arizona commune where he began building a new house in the desert hills to escape the virus and insanity of daily living. Ralph takes us on a journey through his myriad of travels: from Dock Boggs to Syd Barrett to William Faulkner to Stella Chiweshe to Blind Uncle Gaspard…scratching banjo, rasping train whistle hollers, rolling kalimba, rousing accordion, taut shimmers of guitar, caustic fiddle and lyrics - that could have been hidden amongst the dusty inner groove of a lost Harry Smith 78 - weaving in and out of streams of consciousness, time and place. In addition to his solo work, White has recorded or performed with a diverse group of folk and avant-garde musicians: Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Jandek, Jack Rose, Eugene Chadbourne, Michelle Shocked, Sir Richard Bishop, and Michael Hurley. “This is what Ralph White really sounds like. It’s what time passing really sounds like. It’s what a look really feels like. This record is someone touching you all over!” --Bill Callahan “Striking, electrifying acoustic music from an underappreciated legend of the American Southwest. Here, tight song structures meet open, unadorned instrumentation: guitar, banjo, kalimba, accordion, fiddle, and White's elastic voice, unspooling pitches and syllables. White draws listeners in on his terms. Lyrics wind and twist and pull back: "Motel 6, Motel 6, Altoona, Altoona; missing you, missing you so, great big hole in my--..." Brave, beautiful, a high point in White's long career. And this is just Volume 1!” - Eli Winter. "What Ralph White puts on albums and onstage is so mind-boggling and vast, it forces those of us in the description business down a treacherous path." --Darcie Stevens, Austin Chronicle. “White was a member of well-loved punk bluegrass outfit Bad Livers, but his solo work is possessed of a much more lonesome spark, exaggerating the implied drone at the heart of the music of Dock Boggs and The Stanley Brothers…White plays wooden six-string banjo, violin, button accordion and kalimba and his voice has a high, eerie quality to it…extremely psychedelic.” --David Keenan, The Wire Tracklisting: 1. Gun Barrel Polka 2. Misinformation Shuffle 3. El Golfo 4. Something About Dreaming 5. Rye Straw 6. The Stovepipe Blues 7. No Stranger 8. Morning Sickness 9. Lord Franklin

As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…"

Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within."

"I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them.

"Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone."

"People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something.

"That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me."

In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."

=

Born in 1963, the baby boy of nine siblings, Lee Tracy spent his earliest years living amidst the shotgun houses on Nashville's south side. "We was poor, man!" he says, recalling the outhouse his family used for a bathroom and the blocks of ice they kept in the kitchen to chill perishables. "But I actually don't think I really realized I was in poverty until I got grown and started thinking about it." Lee's mom worked at the Holiday Inn; his dad did whatever he had to do, from selling fruit from a horse drawn cart to bootlegging. "We didn't have much," Lee continues, "but my mother and my father got us the things we needed, the clothes on our back." By the end of the decade with the city's urban renewal programs razing entire neighborhoods to accommodate construction of the Interstate, the family moved to Edgehill Projects. Lee remembers music and art as a constant source of inspiration for he and his brothers and sisters – especially after seeing the Jackson 5 perform on Ed Sullivan. "As a small child I just knew that was what I wanted to do."

His older brother Don began musically mentoring him, introducing Lee to a variety of instruments and sounds. "He would never play one particular type of music, like R&B," says Lee. "I was surrounded by jazz, hard rock and roll, easy listening, gospel, reggae, country music; I mean I was a sponge absorbing all of that." Lee taught himself to play drums by beating on cardboard boxes, gaining a rep around the way for his timekeeping, and his singing voice. Emulating his favorites, Earth Wind & Fire and Cameo, he formed groups with other kids with era-evocative band names like Concept and TNT Connection, and emerged as the leader of disciplined rehearsals. "I made them practice," says Lee. "We practiced and practiced and practiced. Because I wanted that perfection." By high school the most accomplished of these bands would take top prize in a prominent local talent show. It was a big moment for Lee, and he felt ready to take things to the next level. But his band-mates had other ideas.

"I don't know what happened," he says, still miffed at the memory. "It must have blew they mind after we won and people started showing notice, because it's like everybody quit! I was like, where the hell did everybody go?" Lee had always made a point of interrogating prospective musicians about their intentions before joining his groups: were they really serious or just looking for a way to pick up girls? Now he understood even more the importance of finding a collaborator just as committed to the music as he was.

=

Isaac Manning had spent much of his life immersed in music and the arts – singing in the church choir with his family on Nashville's north side, writing, painting, dancing, and working various gigs within the entertainment industry. After serving in the armed forces, in the early '70s he ran The Teenage Place, a music and performance venue that catered to the local youth. But he was forced out of town when word of one of his recreational routines created a stir beyond the safe haven of his bohemian circles.

"I was growing marijuana," Isaac explains. "It wasn't no business, I was smoking it myself… I would put marijuana in scrambled eggs, cornbread and stuff." His weed use originated as a form of self-medication to combat severe tooth pain. But when he began sharing it with some of the other young people he hung out with, some of who just so happened to be the kids of Nashville politicians, the cops came calling. "When I got busted," he remembers, "they were talking about how they were gonna get rid of me because they didn't want me saying nothing about they children because of the politics and stuff. So I got my family, took two raggedy cars, and left Nashville and went to Vegas."

Out in the desert, Isaac happened to meet Chubby Checker of "The Twist" fame while the singer was gigging at The Flamingo. Impressed by Isaac's zeal, Checker invited him to go on the road with him as his tour manager/roadie/valet. The experience gave Isaac a window into a part of the entertainment world he'd never encountered – a glimpse of what a true pop act's audience looked like. "Chubby Checker, none of his shows were played for Black folks," he remembers. "All his gigs were done at high-class white people areas." Returning home after a few years with Chubby, Isaac was properly motivated to make it in Music City. He began writing songs and scouting around Nashville for local talent anywhere he could find it with an expressed goal: "Find someone who can deliver your songs the way you want 'em delivered and make people feel what you want them to feel."

One day while walking through Edgehill Projects Isaac heard someone playing the drums in a way that made him stop and take notice. "The music was so tight, just the drums made me feel like, oh I'm-a find this person," he recalls. "So I circled through the projects until I found who it was.

"That's how I met him – Lee Tracy. When I found him and he started singing and stuff, I said, ohhh, this is somebody different."

=

Theirs was a true complementary partnership: young Lee possessed the raw talent, the older Isaac the belief. "He's really the only one besides my brother and my family that really seen the potential in me," says Lee. "He made me see that I could do it."

Isaac long being a night owl, his house also made for a fertile collaborative environment – a space where there always seemed to be a new piece of his visual art on display: paintings, illustrations, and dolls and figures (including an enigmatic cardboard robot). Lee and Issac would hang out together and talk, listen to music, conjure ideas, and smoke the herb Isaac had resumed growing in his yard. "It got to where I could trust him, he could trust me," Isaac says of their bond. They also worked together for hours on drawings, spreading larges rolls of paper on the walls and sketching faces with abstract patterns and imagery: alien-like beings, tri-horned horse heads, inverted Janus-like characters where one visage blurred into the other.

Soon it became apparent that they didn't need other collaborators; self-sufficiency was the natural way forward. At Isaac's behest Lee, already fed up with dealing with band musicians, began playing around with a poly-sonic Yamaha keyboard at the local music store. "It had everything on it – trumpet, bass, drums, organ," remembers Lee. "And that's when I started recording my own stuff."

The technology afforded Lee the flexibility and independence he craved, setting him on a path other bedroom musicians and producers around the world were simultaneously following through the '80s into the early '90s. Saving up money from day jobs, he eventually supplemented the Yamaha Isaac had gotten him with Roland and Casio drum machines and a Moog. Lee was living in an apartment in Hillside at that point caring for his dad, who'd been partially paralyzed since early in life. In the evenings up in his second floor room, the music put him in a zone where he could tune out everything and lose himself in his ideas.

"Oh I loved it," he recalls. "I would really experiment with the instruments and use a lot of different sound effects. I was looking for something nobody else had. I wanted something totally different. And once I found the sound I was looking for, I would just smoke me a good joint and just let it go, hit the record button." More potent a creative stimulant than even Isaac's weed was the holistic flow and spontaneity of recording. Between sessions at Isaac's place and Lee's apartment, their volume of output quickly ballooned.

"We was always recording," says Lee. "That's why we have so much music. Even when I went to Isaac's and we start creating, I get home, my mind is racing, I gotta start creating, creating, creating. I remember there were times when I took a 90-minute tape from front to back and just filled it up."

"We never practiced," says Isaac. "See, that was just so odd about the whole thing. I could relate to him, and tell him about the songs I had ideas for and everything and stuff. And then he would bring it back or whatever, and we'd get together and put it down." Once the taskmaster hell bent on rehearsing, Lee had flipped a full 180. Perfection was no longer an aspiration, but the enemy of inspiration.

"I seen where practicing and practicing got me," says Lee. "A lot of musicians you get to playing and they gotta stop, they have to analyze the music. But while you analyzing you losing a lot of the greatness of what you creating. Stop analyzing what you play, just play! And it'll all take shape."

=

"I hope you understood the beginning of the record because this was invented from a dream I had today… (You tell me, I'll tell you, we'll figure it out together)" – Lee Tracy and Isaac Manning, "Hope You Understand"

Lee lets loose a maniacal cackle when he acknowledges that the material that he and Isaac recorded was by anyone's estimation pretty out there. It's the same laugh that commences "Hope You Understand" – a chaotic transmission that encapsulates the duality at the heart of their music: a stated desire to reach people and a compulsion to go as leftfield as they saw fit.

"We just did it," says Lee. "We cut the music on and cut loose. I don't sit around and write. I do it by listening, get a feeling, play the music, and the lyrics and stuff just come out of me."

The approach proved adaptable to interpreting other artists' material. While recording a cover of Whitney Houston's pop ballad "Saving All My Love For You," Lee played Whitney's version in his headphones as he laid down his own vocals – partially following the lyrics, partially using them as a departure point. The end result is barely recognizable compared with the original, Lee and Isaac having switched up the time signature and reinvented the melody along the way towards morphing a slick mainstream radio standard into something that sounds solely their own.

"I really used that song to get me started," says Lee. "Then I said, well I need something else, something is missing. Something just came over me. That's when I came up with 'Is It What You Want.'"

The song would become the centerpiece of Lee and Isaac's repertoire. Pushed along by a percolating metronomic Rhythm King style beat somewhere between a military march and a samba, "Is It What You Want" finds Lee pleading the sincerity of his commitment to a potential love interest embellished by vocal tics and hiccups subtlely reminiscent of his childhood hero MJ. Absent chord changes, only synth riffs gliding in and out like apparitions, the song achieves a lingering lo-fi power that leaves you feeling like it's still playing, somewhere, even after the fade out.

"I don't know, it's like a real spiritual song," Lee reflects. "But it's not just spiritual. To me the more I listen to it it's like about everything that you do in your everyday life, period. Is it what you want? Do you want a car or you don't want a car? Do you want Jesus or do you want the Devil? It's basically asking you the question. Can't nobody answer the question but you yourself."

In 1989 Lee won a lawsuit stemming from injuries sustained from a fight he'd gotten into. He took part of the settlement money and with Isaac pressed up "Saving All My Love For You" b/w "Is It What You Want" as a 45 single. Isaac christened the label One Chance Records. "Because that's all we wanted," he says with a laugh, "one chance."

Isaac sent the record out to radio stations and major labels, hoping for it to make enough noise to get picked up nationally. But the response he and Lee were hoping for never materialized. According to Isaac the closest the single got to getting played on the radio is when a disk jock from a local station made a highly unusual announcement on air: "The dude said on the radio, 107.5 – 'We are not gonna play 'Is It What You Want.' We cracked up! Wow, that's deep.

"It was a whole racist thing that was going on," he reflects. "So we just looked over and kept on going. That was it. That was about the way it goes… If you were Black and you were living in Nashville and stuff, that's the way you got treated." Isaac already knew as much from all the times he'd brought he and Lee's tapes (even their cache of country music tunes) over to Music Row to try to drum up interest to no avail.

"Isaac, he really worked his ass off," says Lee. "He probably been to every record place down on Music Row." Nashville's famed recording and music business corridor wasn't but a few blocks from where Lee grew up. Close enough, he remembers, for him to ride his bike along its back alleys and stumble upon the occasional random treasure, like a discarded box of harmonicas. Getting in through the front door, however, still felt a world away.

"I just don't think at the time our music fell into a category for them," he concedes. "It was before its time."

=

Lee stopped making music some time in the latter part of the '90s, around the time his mom passed away and life became increasingly tough to manage. "When my mother died I had a nervous breakdown," he says, "So I shut down for a long time. I was in such a sadness frame of mind. That's why nobody seen me. I had just disappeared off the map." He fell out of touch with Isaac, and in an indication of just how bad things had gotten for him, lost track of all the recordings they'd made together. Music became a distant memory.

Fortunately, Isaac kept the faith. In a self-published collection of his poetry – paeans to some of his favorite entertainment and public figures entitled Friends and Dick Clark – he'd written that he believed "music has a life of its own." But his prescience and presence of mind were truly manifested in the fact that he kept an archive of he and Lee's work. As perfectly imperfect as "Is It What You Want" now sounds in a post-Personal Space world, Lee and Isaac's lone official release was in fact just a taste. The bulk of the Is It What You Want album is culled from the pair's essentially unheard home recordings – complete songs, half-realized experiments, Isaac's blue monologues and pronouncements et al – compiled, mixed and programmed in the loose and impulsive creative spirit of their regular get-togethers from decades ago. The rest of us, it seems, may have finally caught up to them.

On the prospect of at long last reaching a wider audience, Isaac says simply, "I been trying for a long time, it feels good." Ever the survivor, he adds, "The only way I know how to make it to the top is to keep climbing. If one leg break on the ladder, hey, you gotta fix it and keep on going… That's where I be at. I'll kill death to make it out there."

For Lee it all feels akin to a personal resurrection: "It's like I was in a tomb and the tomb was opened and I'm back… Man, it feels so great. I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin." Success at this stage of his life, he realizes, probably means something different than what it did back when he was singing and dancing in Isaac's front yard. "What I really mean by 'making it,'" he explains isn't just the music being heard but, "the story being told."

Occasionally Lee will pull up "Is It What You Want" on YouTube on his phone, put on his headphones, and listen. He remembers the first time he heard his recorded voice. How surreal it was, how he thought to himself, "Is that really me?" What would he say to that younger version of himself now?

"I would probably tell myself, hang in there, don't give up. Keep striving for the goal. And everything will work out."

Despite what's printed on the record label, sometimes you do get more than one chance.

An’archives announce the release of Ricshari, the first LP from Japanese free improvising duo MAI MAO. Consisting of Shizuo Uchida of Hasegawa-Shizuo, Albedo Gravitas, Archeus, Kito Muzukumi Rouber, TERROR SHIT, UH, etc. on bass, and Kyosuke Terada, of HUH (who have their own release due on An’archives soon), TERROR SHIT, Bay City Rolaz, Praymate, The Obey Unit, etc. on guitar, they’ve previously released two wild cassettes, Curvature Improvement Plan (Haang Niap, 2020) and Folk Dope Rally (2021), both documenting one-take improvisations from live gigs. Ricshari was recorded by Nobuki Nishiyama in January 2021, and is proof, if any was needed, that this duo is one of the most fiercely unique, out -there units currently extant – in Japan, or anywhere, for that matter.

The music of MAI MAO seems to proceed by opposites and juxtaposition, shifting from frantic, hectic runs of splattering note spray to moments of granular stasis, where Uchida and Terada coax their instruments into and out of deep wells of silence, or rest, temporarily, in a lagoon of fermenting fuzz. Spiralling kinetics are largely the order of the day, though – the opener, “Chew a flying flash prayer”, skitters here and there, guitar and bass jumping over one another in games of leapfrog and Twis ter, finding new ways to perplex and puzzle the listener, and perhaps each other in the process, Uchida and Terada fully committed to the short -circuiting spirit of the moment.

The energy here is hyperactive, but it also speaks of a curious and committed attention to improvisatory responsiveness, one that’s just as likely to fork off into different directions in a split second – it’s real edge-of-the-seat stuff, as though the hands are moving too fast for the mind to follow. That’s all the better, then, to let the gush of genuinely free-thinking, devoted duo improvisation to fly at its most playful and intelligent. File next to the likes of Davey Williams & LaDonna Smith and their TransMuseq companions, or th e wickedly perplexing bass-synth/trombone duets of Dave Dove Paul Duo, and you’ve some idea of what’s going on here, provisionally at least, ‘cos this one’s an enthralling, yet welcoming, head-scratcher of the highest calibre.

Finally it’s here! After many years, the repress arrived. This time how it was supposed to be. With new cover artwork and newly mixed songs. It's a rare but exhilarating occasion when you put on a new LP and are utterly blown away by what you hear. Every now and then, music makes you feel magically alive -- makes you want to jump around, pound your fist in the air, and shout "Oh, yeah!" Listening to Grand Fury, the second major release by Los Angeles quartet the Bellrays, is such an experience. Imagine the Funhouse-era Stooges fronted by a female R&B singer instead of Iggy Pop, and you'll have a vague understanding of what the Bellrays call "maximum rock 'n' soul". Although they've drawn comparisons to the Stooges or the MC5 fronted by Tina Turner, Etta James, or Aretha Franklin, the Bellrays rightly point out that soul was an important element in those Detroit-area punks' sounds. So, in some ways, the Bellrays are just bringing out an element of early punk music that was there all along. Nonetheless, the resulting sound is startlingly unique. Lead singer Lisa Kekaula has also sung jazz, and it's obvious she has technical skill, but she tears into these songs with a venom and passion that is pure rock 'n' roll. Bandmates Tony Fate, Bob Vennum, and Ray Chin provide a raw, blues-edged backing that is loose enough to allow Kekaula considerable room to go wild. And does she ever. With her raucous voice and the aggressive songs penned by guitarist Fate, Kekaula makes you believe she'd sooner spit in your face than look at you. "I'm stuck inside a moment / Can't find my way out / And time keeps draggin' on" she sings on "Fire on the Moon", but the confident way she spits out the words makes you believe she could claw her way out of anything. Likewise, Kekaula's indictment of "Stupid Fuckin' People" is so fierce it's almost scary. When she snarls, "Stupid fuckin' people always get in my way / Want to ruin my piece of the world" you know you'd better get out of her way. The only time this sonic assault slows down is on "Have a Little Faith in Me", a sexy soul number that Janis Joplin would have been proud to sing. While Kekaula's amazing voice and charisma are key to the Bellrays' sound, the rest of the band has to be commended for rocking so hard without drowning out that fierce set of pipes. With all the over-produced pap dominating the airwaves, hearing a band this raw and raucous is a dream come true.

It’s time to testify, brothers & sisters and it’s about time. It’s so about time to put this gem out on vinyl. Properly! It was released twice on small editions before, but – no offense – they both sounded terrible. Now the tapes been re-mastered by Jürgen Hendlmeier and put right on wax, brand new artwork included. In our eyes this is one of the best and most powerful and pure garage rock albums ever. You have to hear it to know what I’m talkin about. GET DOWN – OR GET OUT! …and listen to a fine collection of soulful, rocking collection of raw songs that make you move(, unless you’re dead). With this album the Sideburns became the Finnish leaders of the new wave of Scandinavian Rock’n’Roll (along with the Hellacopters from Sweden, Gleucifer & Turbonegro [both from Norway]). The Hellacopters covered „Ungrounded Confusion“ from this album! This collection of songs is well inspired by bands such as the Sonics or the Wailers. And in the 90s and early 2000s more than ever before, bands everywhere are claiming the MC5 as their primary influence. Most bands, however, don't really get the sound right, or somehow lose the spirit of the music in a '70s rock haze. What makes the Flaming Sideburns feel authentic is that they understand the grooves that make this type of music work, and there's a ton of real enthusiasm behind it all. Songs like "Testify" are obviously inspired by Tyner and Co. but have a fresh energy that makes this old sound worth listening to. The mid-fi production also keeps the music sounding exciting and hot, without getting too heavy. They reach back a little in time to the mid-'60s with covers of the Wailers' "Out Of Our Tree" and the Electras' "Action Woman." Also super rocking is the wild "Jaguar Girls" and the spasm inspiring "Rock N Roll Boogaloo." If you like Detroit-style rock'n'roll with an unpretentious '60s edge to it, the Flaming Sideburns are for you. Track listing: La Bruta; Crashing Down; Close To Disaster; Rock n’ Roll Boogaloo; Testify; Out Of Our Tree; The Witch; Jaguar Girls; Ungrounded Confusion; You Weren’t Using Your Head; Women; Sailin’ Thru Cloud Nine; Sugar Ain’t That Sweet; Action Woman

From the folk punk roots of Carry Me, through the anthemic One Way, Fifteen Years and Top 20 hits Hope Street, Just The One and Beautiful Day - more recent tracks such as Truth Is, The Cholera Well and The Recruiting Sgt show the Levellers' mix of scathing political comment and positive DIY attitude to life hasn't dissipated over the years.

Most exciting of all, there are brand new recordings of the Levellers collaborating with contemporary artists re-working some of their classic material. Imelda May is the Queen of all time on Beautiful Day, while Bellowhead and the legendary Billy Bragg help out on Just The One and Hope Street respectively.

Finally, lifelong Levellers fan Frank Turner joined the band in the studio - breathing new life into Julie - bringing us back full circle for another generation of the disenfranchised to discover the Levellers for the first time.

Rhythm master Klaus Weiss knew he had a good thing going with NIAGARA. The first album was a gathering of every outstanding drummer and percussionist he could get hold of and despite the fact that there were only rhythm instruments featured , it became quite a memorable and unique record. Now for the second album “S.U.B.” he felt he had to go other ways, and recorded with a complete rock outfit plus the one or another brass instrument. ‘S.U.B.’ is definitely worth being traded for 180,00 Euros and more among collectors for a clean original and when the needle hits the groove you will realize why. There is a tightly woven web of rhythms from drums and percussions, as the solid and ever pulsating base with a laid back but really present bass guitar adding more depth and power to the beats and clean rhythm guitars with a nifty wah wah effect for the extra kick. From time to time the guitars fire off a memorable steaming riff on top of the rhythm pulse and the horns answer the call for arms. You really have to look at the backcover to find out that this is a German outfit instead of one of these utterly hot and hip US funk rock cult bands of the time. NIAGARA aka Klaus Weiss waive the vocals so it is an instrumental record you face with ‘S.U.B’, but then this band goes so wild in some of the compositions, that you will be left breathless on your knees by all these simmering performances. Each musician participating in this project is a professional, but they all let the music erupt into a climax of sound you can only achieve, when you put your whole heart and soul into it. A masterpiece of funky and utterly unleashed rock music from the early 70s.

"“The New Backwards” was conceived by Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson in 2007, revisiting stray tracks which hadn’t seemed to gel with the material he had chosen for the more somber “Ape of Naples” from 2005, COIL’s initial posthumous release, a sort of requiem and a kiss-goodbye to his then recently deceased partner John Balance.

Significantly different to its sister release, this album collects the brilliantly chaotic and outrageously rhythmic material from the original sessions for the album that was begun as early as 1993 and had originally been conceptualised as the follow-up to “Love’s Secret Domain”. These songs are as diverse and wild as the places they originated from, partly infamously spawned in Sharon Tate’s former home in the Hollywood Hills, the Nine Inch Nails home base in New Orleans and London’s Swanyard, remixed and restructured with the help of long-term friend Danny Hyde in Thailand, this collection has its own unique flow and an atmosphere not found on any other COIL release.

Both “AYOR” and “Backwards” had by the time the album was first released already become favourites in COIL’s manic live performances. Some of the other tracks had only leaked in demo versions and are here presented updated and polished as Christopherson and Hyde intended them to be heard. It is interesting to consider Balance’s vocal contributions, too. Whilst on the albums COIL did release at the time this material was first put aside (“Black Light District” and “ElpH”) his voice is all but absent, his vocal performances and his lyric writing here are arguably more closely indebted to the previous “Love’s Secret Domain” era, especially the epic “Copacaballa” is noteworthy in that respect.
The New Backwards” effectively became the final official COIL studio release of all new material whilst Peter was still alive and is here presented for the first time fully supervised by Danny Hyde, its co-creator.
The stunning cover uses a detail from artist Ian Johnstone’s “Cubic Raven” painting, licensed from the estate of IJ..

It is high time to rediscover this timeless album with the Infinite Fog release boasting eight further tracks of previously unheard material from the same sessions, rough working stages and surprising remixes which will surely delight the dedicated COIL archaeologists, as they shine yet another light on the creative process and on what could have been.

Recorded at Swanyard, London and at Nothing Studios, New Orleans, 1996.
Thanks to everyone there, especially Trent Reznor who made it all possible.
Written & Produced by Coil & Danny Hyde.
Remixed by Peter Christopherson & Danny Hyde, Bangkok 2007.
For that session Coil were: Peter Christopherson, Jhonn Balance & Drew McDowall.
Mastered by Jessica Thompson.
Front artwork by Ian Johnstone.
Artwork licensed from The Estate of Ian Johnstone.
Layout Cold Graves and Oleg Galay."

"What took you so long?" might be a valid question concerning the ten year gap between Zanshin's new album "In Any Case By Any Chance" and his first album "Rain Are In Clouds".

Of course it is a question that the Viennese musician has asked himself quite startled in his usual self-critical manner, just to realize at a closer look that it has not been a lack of creativity or laziness at least. He used the Zanshin moniker on four EP releases and several remixes, plus a game soundtrack. Not to forget all his output as one half of producer duo Ogris Debris (the album "Constant Spring" from 2016 and roughly two dozen singles and remixes) and the many, partly award-winning audiovisual installations and performances with Leonhard Lass as DEPART (depart.at). Furthermore he has also built two sound installations in 2021, "I Gong" at Elevate Festival and "Cymatic Sands" at Ars Electronica. In addition, Zanshin performs with the Max-Brand-Synthesizer from time to time as part of the compositions by Elisabeth Schimana, and together with label mate Dorian Concept he has also composed and performed the piece "Half Chance/Music for Moogtonium" for this unique instrument, built by Bob Moog himself.

Not spared by certain global developments of recent years, but rather invigorated by exploring his own resilience, Zanshin had a talk with Affine Records Operator Jamal in the beginning of 2021, speaking of future ideas and releases. And what was initially a single release spawned into a whole album in seemingly no time. An old skit ("Polar Polychrome") on the Roland MC-505 groove-box that had never really been forgotten, but was rather waiting patiently somewhere in the back of his mind, suddenly proved to be the initial spark for the album.

The term "Zanshin", roughly translated as un-focussed attention, is in fact more than just a pseudonym but rather a directive in the artists life. Zanshin really likes to go in several directions at once, kind of according to Wittgenstein's claim that "The world is everything that is the case.", to find out where his love for music might lead him this time. He also somehow went back to his roots with this album. Not necessarily in the sense of certain musical influences or genres, because then the album would be even more eclectic than it already is. More like a focus on the core values in the fabrication process of the music itself, the freedom to rather follow the structures and sounds than to shape them in a completely predetermined way. Somebody once called it, "to weave what the music demands."

In this regard, Zanshin often feels more like a sculptor and tries not toadhereto strongly to the rules of specific sub-genres of electronic music. Searching for sounds and designing them is one of the energies that fuels his interest the most, thus at the beginning of a lot of tracks there are small skits and ideas that have the freedom to grow in whatever direction.

Hence this album has no elaborate story to tell, there is no extensive "narrative" or big time "storytelling" at work. "In Any Case By Any Chance" is not a novel but rather a collection of short stories (which are certainly dense and have complex plots nonetheless). The result is a long-player where playful electronica, skillful songwriting, extrovert dance music and symphonic film music enter into a symbiotic relationship. Returning to another Wittgenstein quote, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent", the emotional impact of music is the main focus and the results can be quite solemn at times, but around the corner always lurks the next bone-breaking rhythm pattern and gnarly sound design.

The infamous saying, "writing about music is like dancing about architecture", is another brick in the wall of sound in Zanshin's approach to music. He rarely roots himself in traditions or uses them too overtly, he really likes to agglomerate sounds, to challenge the listeners. It seems like he tries to avoid classification on purpose, because he knows that everyone has their own perception anyway. The only thing that this music demands implicitly is a willingness to listen attentively.

Very dense, at times really heavy and massive, then again airy and playful. "Music for clubs that don't exist.", might be another fitting caption to describe this album, which lasts for a little more than an hour.

The opener "Heatseeker" rushes to a sudden head start with its steel pan extravaganza, tropical vibes meet a bass line drenched in electro funk, and electrified synth stabs support the declaration of love in the lyrics. Kind of Jamie XX meets Electro meets Diva House. The monster that is "Bronteroc Brawl" is up next, a serious test for the speakers and a wild ride with metallic, growling sounds. The aggressive sound design reminds of suspense ridden shark chases, vicious dogs and cunning dinosaurs, in any case a track for people who love a proper bass stomper.

A new approach for the "indie discotheque" brings the emotional roller-coaster "In Gloom" with snappy drums and hypnotic synth motives á la Alessandro Cortini, creating an epic atmosphere together with the multi-layered vocals. A psycho-acoustic treat is position 4, the crisp instrumental "Polar Polychrome", you could even go as far as calling this a Zanshin signature track. Like mentioned before, the roots of this track go back to 2002 and you can hear the unmistakable influence of beat wizards like Photek, a piercing bass line is supported by poly-rhythmic drums, while dense pads try to escape the claustrophobic lockdown mood of winter 2020/21.

Another round of intense pathos waits for the listeners in the ensuing track "In Search Of". Moderat say "Hello", a melancholy piano melody is rushed to a climax by a wild bass arpeggio and forceful drums, the desire for a perfect sunrise at the next after-hour to the max. Initially just an appendix to the preceding track, "Time After Thought" swiftly developed from a mere improvisation to an ambient epic with a croaking alien piano, as if Keith Jarrett were on his way to Alpha Centauri.

Up next is the first single "Because Why", a breakbeat driven, synth-heavy track with winged vocals and a popular film quote. The title refers to the movie "Alphaville" by Jean-Luc Godard, a dystopian science fiction film noir, in which an omniscient computer system named Alpha 60 is ruling society and humans can only say "because" but never "why". As if the gears of a galactic mechanism were spinning into motion sounds "Identity Slices". A raspy chord structure finds its counterbalance in a kind of stumbling, wonky beat, and Zanshin would never deny the huge influence that Autechre's sounds and structures always have had on his music. Micro- and macrocosm meet on the same level and this friction is also a metaphor for questions of identity and self-awareness, without using voices or lyrics.

Off we go into the IDM bubble bath of "Enzyme Enigma", the bass drum is stomping and a fizzy acid-line is twisting in all directions behind rolling dub-techno chords. "Corrosion Creak" is a kind of acoustic degradation process, the rave dogs are finally let loose and everything happens at once, funky synths shred, string sounds wail and then there is this bass that sounds like smashing a rusty metal plate in the junk yard with a vengeance.

Towards the end everything slows down a bit, the beat in "Whatever Words" is Warp school cerebral hop at its best and therefore loads of glittery, creaky sounds swarm out until the synapses are overloaded, cumulating in a mighty bass ending. Last but never least, "Rebus Redux" guides us into the limitless night sky, with long indulgent pads dotted by an aimlessly wandering piano, while a compact net of tamed resonances and meandering sub frequencies unfolds in the background, enticing navel-gazing imagination.

Under The Sun is the follow-up to the astonishing Roots and contains yet more absolutely essential Nucleus material. Originally released on Vertigo in 1974, Under The Sun was never re-pressed and of course those original copies are now very tricky to score. Like all the Nucleus records, it’s aged ridiculously well and this Be With re-issue, re-mastered from the original analogue tapes, shows off just why this deserves to be back in press.

Genius trumpeter and visionary composer Ian Carr was one of the most respected British musicians of his era. He was a true pioneer and saw the potential in fusing the worlds of jazz with rock, just as Miles Davis and The Tony Williams Lifetime did in the US. In late 1969, following the demise of the Rendell-Carr quintet, and tiring of British jazz, Carr assembled the legendary Nucleus. Regarding music as a continuous process, Nucleus refused to “recognise rigid boundaries” and worked on delivering what they saw as a “total musical experience”. We can get behind that.

Under bandleader Carr, Nucleus existed as a fluid line-up of inventive, skilled musicians. This constant evolution and revolution was all part of the continuous musical exploration and discovery that took jazz to new levels. And the music has stayed relevant. To steal a line from a recent review of our re-issue of Roots, when it comes to anything Nucleus “it’s basically already hip-hop”.

Under The Sun opens with the crisp, medium tempo “In Procession”. It’s a typically inventive Carr track with layers of dramatic, riff-led themes and repeating brass blasts. Bryan Spring’s “The Addison Trip” is a moody funk piece, with Kieran White guesting on wordless vocals. Roger Sutton contributes some fine bass guitar on this track, particularly the great solo at around the two minute mark. The excellently-named cool, jazzy ballad “Pastoral Graffiti” paints bucolic pictures with its mellow sonics, plaintive horns and Bob Bertles’ flute.

Sutton’s superb, bass-driven “New Life” brings a different dynamic. Horns, guitar and electric piano swirl over the head-nod bass motif and a killer Ken Shaw guitar solo. A false fade out halfway through brings in a new bass riff that’s picked up by the whole ensemble as Carr wah-wah noodles over the top. It’s full-on. The gorgeous, laidback “A Taste of Sarsaparilla” is exactly that - closing out the first side with a cute blast of what is to come over on the killer flip.

The whole of Under The Sun’s second side is a suite of three “Themes” written by Ian Carr. The uptempo first theme “Sarsaparilla” is comfortably one of Nucleus’ best. What would’ve been a cluttered mess in the hands of most is instead an effortless lesson in clarity and zing. Between Geoff Castle’s electric piano solo, the relentless funky drumming and more wild wah-wah trumpet from Carr, Nucleus show you how it’s done.

The languid groove of second theme “Feast Alfresco” is much more typical of “classic” Nucleus and sounds like something that might’ve been on Roots. A Bertles baritone solo and a guitar solo from Shaw weave around the core, serpentine brass theme.

The darker “Rites of Man”, the third and final theme, is a slow build to a solid bass and electric piano riff, shored up by some tricky brass. Carr takes the theme even further and there’s still plenty of room for soloing from all corners of the Nucleus. As usual, the dynamic Sutton/Spring, bass/drums duo is holding down the rhythm for the rest to jam around.

This Be With edition of Under The Sun has been re-mastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, Simon Francis’ mastering working together with Pete Norman’s cut to weave their usual magic with these wonderful recordings. The bleak, rain-dappled cover matches the melancholic vibe of the record and has been restored as the finishing touch to this long overdue re-issue.

After the 2021 Re-Release of “Schwingungen” (MG.ART612) we proudly announce “Seven Up” as Part 2 of the authorised 50th Anniversary “A.R.T.” Re-Edition Series.
“Seven Up” is the third studio album by Ash Ra Tempel and their only album recorded in collaboration with American Ph.D. in psychology, Dr. Timothy Leary. The Coverart for “Seven Up” was designed by famous Swiss Artist Walter Wegmüller. Recorded in August 1972 at Sinus Studio in Berne, Switzerland, remixed September 1972 at Dierks Studios in Stommeln, Germany. First release in spring 1973 by OHR Musik - the first release on the new sub-label "Kosmische Kuriere", Kat-Nr. KK 58001.
We release “Seven Up” in a Re-Cut carefully overseen by Manuel Göttsching himself, on September 9th 2022, also being Manuel Göttsching´s 70th Birthday. Our Edition features the full original text for the “7 levels of consciousness” by Timothy Leary in English, i.e. “Instruction Manual for Pleasure Panel” plus a previously unreleased glimpse view of the original scripts incl. notes and mark ups as well as partly unreleased photos from the recording session. ->continued on page 2->continued on page 2 As for the music itself we again refer to Julian Cope´s review and remarks from his book "Krautrocksampler” (published by Head Heritage, 1st ed. 1995):
“When the Leary Mob met the Kaiser Gang, the sparks flew ever Up-wards... 7up is a stone classic in every way. Yes, it is unlikely to find Timothy Leary singing lead vocal in a cosmic group, but even weirder that he chose to sing a wild yelping freaked out blues !
Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke had begun their careers in The Steeple Chase Blues Band back in the mid-'60ies, and they quickly felt their way through what Barritt and Leary were aiming for. They reconciled it all as a kind of West Coast chordless psychedelia, where blues riffs sparkle out of nowhere and the sheer weight of synthesizers renders everything with an unreal Pere Ubu/early Roxy Music quality.
The greatness of Ash Ra Tempel burned so brightly on 7Up that there is really nothing else like it. Hartmut Enke and Manuel Gottsching here returned to their riffy roots. It can hardly be called a retro act, though, as the context of music is everything. And with Dierks at the controls, even the New Kids on the Block would have sounded psychedelic.
7Up is like a late night radio show glimpsed through a shattered tuner where all but the most truly dangerous sounds have been allowed to stay, to drift and to dance around the performers.
The result is an extreme gem, a flash of hysterical white lightning, and a pre-punk Technicolour yawn in the grandest of traditions.
In typical Ash Ra Tempel style, the record is divided into two pieces, “Space” and "Time”. Within this, though,
Timothy Leary’s ideas are allowed to free-flow and the two sides are therefore divided into mini-songs all segued together. The highlight of Side 1 is “Power Drive”, a West Coast burn-up that transcends any W.
Coast music I ever did hear. Leary and Barritt present the greatest twin-vocal of all time, coming on like Jagger and Morrison but too caught up in their own maelstrom to be anything less than Heralds of the Punkfuture still five years away.
In chaos it was conceived and in chaos it was recorded. Yet Dieter Dierks, the great Aural Architect of the Cosmic Couriers, turned 7Up into a personal triumph and a Kosmische dream.”

Ash Ra Tempel – “Seven Up”
TIMOTHY LEARY - voice
BRIAN BARRITT - voice
MICKY DUWE - voice & flute
LIZ ELLIOTT - voice
BETTINA HOHLS - voice
PORTIA NKOMO - voice
HARTMUT "HAWK" ENKE - bass, guitar & electronics
MANUEL GÖTTSCHING - guitar & electronics
STEVE A. - organ & electronics
DIETMAR BURMEISTER - drums
TOMMY ENGEL - drums
DIETER DIERKS - synthesizer & Radio Downtown

There is a moment on Sides, the new album from Richmond, Virginia-based duo Lean Year, in which a hospital room floor is filled with white chrysanthemums. This imagery, based on an opiate-induced hallucination experienced by vocalist Emilie Rex's mother as she recovered from surgery, is a perfect encapsulation of the band's second album: dreamlike and beautiful, yet burdened with cold, stark reality. Sides is a harrowing journey through realms of grief and memory, a meditation woven into a tapestry of synth pads, woodwinds, and Rex's instantly recognizable voice. The duo of Rex and Rick Alverson - who also works as a film director (The Mountain, Entertainment, The Comedy) - originally set out to write an album about conflict, but during the writing and recording process, they were confronted with a number of personal tragedies. Alverson lost both of his parents in rapid succession, Rex's mother received a cancer diagnosis, and the couple's beloved family dog, Orca, died. These events transformed the album into an exploration of loss - an attempt at processing the painful, complex, and private emotions that bubble to the surface when confronted with death. "We thought we'd do a concept album called Sides where we could reflect on all of the division in the world, and some in our own families, but then COVID transformed everything / everyone, and we suffered our own specific losses. The record became about loss and grief," Rex explains. "In this way, the title Sides was still appropriate: our individual grief and collective grief, the margins of before and after, the act and feeling of during and enduring. It felt like straddling a threshold between two opposing sides - the moment before conflict and the moment after it passes, life and death, the act of living and the memory of the act. Grief feels like a contention between what you knew and what you now know, and often both feel real and unreal at once." Sides - produced by Alverson alongside Erik Hall (In Tall Buildings) and featuring contributions from Elliot Bergman (Nomo, Wild Belle) and Joseph Shabason (Destroyer, The War on Drugs) - as a distinctly cinematic quality, perhaps due in part to Alverson's other career. Moments of jazz, slowcore, and dirgelike R&B find their way into the sorrowful, ambient suite, lulling the listener into a state of calm while the lyrics speak of ghosts, childhood, and mortality. Despite the gravity of the subject matter, Sides succeeds in mastering a balancing act between pathos and pop. Each song is indelible and haunting, with melodies that have the kind of broad appeal reminiscent of Karen Dalton, Aldous Harding, and FKA twigs.

Eric Dolphy's final studio album is hailed as one of the finest examples of mid-'60s post bop. Its reputation is purely one of backwards significance. Dolphy, having recorded the album in February 1964, was in Europe less than six weeks later and his all-too-brief life ended less than two months after that. Though likely he never held a copy in his hands or heard any critical opinion of it, it marked his last flurry of original compositions and is considered his apex. It is fascinating to consider whether he would had moved past or away from the album in 1965, had he lived.

Though Dolphy should not be considered an avant-garde musician by the term's most common definitions, most interpretations of Out To Lunch have been done by players working squarely in that area. So it is with this album, the most ambitious in its recreation of the five-tune disc (with one original added to the final "Straight Up and Down, extending the piece to almost thirty minutes). All five compositions from the original quintet LP are revisited in the same order, the record sleeve even duplicates the old album jacket, down to the typeface and black-and-blue color scheme, although a photo taken by Daidō Moriyama inside Tokyo's massive (and massively busy) Shinjuku railway station replaces the Dolphy's album's enigmatic "Will Be Back" sign, whose clock hands indicated no conventional time of expected return.

Otomo Yoshihide first came to international prominence in the 1990s as the leader of the experimental rock group Ground Zero, and has since worked in a variety of contexts, ranging from free improvisation to noise, jazz, avant-garde and contemporary classical. The always surprising and sometimes confounding turntablist, sound artist, onkyo improviser and now avant jazzer heading up a 15-piece aggregation of Japanese and European experimentalists. Who better to grapple with Dolphy's legacy -- so idiosyncratic in its day and yet so influential to creative improvisers who followed -- than a musician with his own singular take on how sounds can be organized in the jazz realm over 40 years later and half a world away? In other words don't expect the conventional from Otomo any more than you would from Dolphy himself. That's not to say that recognizable themes ("Hat and Beard," "Out to Lunch," "Straight Up and Down") don't appear, or that individual players -- including Alfred Harth on bass clarinet bursting into the mix and leaping across the instrument's tonal range in a way that recalls the master himself -- don't carry forward echoes from the past in the spirit of a sincere and heartfelt homage.

However, a good deal of the time all bets are off; in addition to the usual brass, reeds, bass, and drums (and of course a bit of vibraphone, here played by Takara Kumiko in far less prominent role than that of Bobby Hutcherson) are such sonic paraphernalia as sine waves, contact mike, no-input mixing board, and, of course, "computer." (Otomo himself plays skronky electric guitar.) From composition to composition and even during episodes within compositions, the band takes radically different approaches. There are blasts of free jazz energy not too far removed from the Peter Brötzmann Tentet, an impression reinforced by the presence of spluttering wildman Mats Gustafsson on baritone sax. Not surprisingly and often in contrast with the Dolphy original, the music is dense and filled to overflowing with sounds -- sometimes due to fundamental reworkings in structure rather than just the larger size of the ensemble. The middle section of "Something Sweet, Something Tender" somewhat belies the original's title with elongated howls and cries from the horns over slo-mo bass, drums, and electronic noise poised somewhere between dirge and drone, and the sudden explosion of punk-ish rock energy in the following "Gazzelloni" is a startling contrast.

At times, the feeling is that of listening to the original Out To Lunch while a séance is going on to contact Dolphy's ghost, with supernatural sounds swirling around the stereo. The effect is disconcerting, as is the post-apocalyptic cloud hanging over the arrangements, but it makes the effort more than an unnecessary tribute album. Instead, Dolphy is transported into the 21st Century and allowed to romp through modern developments in music. An inspiring concept and an album that will stretch the boundaries of anyone who comes into contact with it.

Last time he brought his Emperor Machine project to Leng, via the seductive, call-to-the dancefloor that was ‘Dance Par Amour’, Andrew Meecham had vocalist Severine Mouletin in tow. On this welcome return to the label, Meecham has enlisted the help of another sublime singer: Bom Carrot 봄캐롯, lead vocalist with South Korean punk-pop outfit Tirikilatops.

Although the pair share a mutual friend, who had extolled the virtues of a potential collaboration to Meecham, it was only when Bom Carrot 봄캐롯 reached out on social media that the pair were finally connected. Meecham jumped at the opportunity to kick-start a collaboration, quickly firing over a track he’d been working on. A few months later, her vocals landed in his inbox and the rest, as they say, is history.

The resultant track, ‘춤춰 Chumchwo – Let’s Dance’, may feature many of the aural trademarks of Meecham’s Emperor Machine work – spiralling analogue electronics, vintage synth sounds, effects aplenty and infectious grooves inspired by New York’s no-wave movement of the early 1980s – but is somehow even more thrillingly wild, excitable, and exhilarating than you’d reasonably expect.

A big part of that, of course, is the inspired contributions of Bom Carrot 봄캐롯. Her freewheeling vocals – part sung, part spoken, and part improvised – are energetic, distinctive, and addictive, adding layers of post-punk abandon and a genuine sense of musical freedom. Combined with Meecham’s outrageously unpredictable backing track – there are twists and turns aplenty, as well as surprising percussive and musical touches that seemingly appear and disappear at will – the resultant song is like the unlikely sonic lovechild of Talking Heads, YMO, Pierre Henry and K-Punk.

As you’d expect given his track record of delivering freewheeling instrumental reworks, the vocal version comes backed with an extra-special Emperor Machine ‘Instrumental Dub’ version. Stripped back and percussive, with dropouts and breakdowns aplenty, this is no mere vocal-free take, but rather a reconstructed revision piled high with extra percussion, spacey electronics, echoing vocal snippets, bubbly bass and razor-sharp Tom Tom Club guitar licks –all arranged to rise, fall and rise again around Meecham’s killer groove. As the track’s title suggests: “Let’s Dance!”

Deluxe 180gram vinyl edition comes in a foil-embossed and die-cut cardstock jacket with printed inner sleeve and additional 12x12 art cards featuring the collages of Maciek Szczerbowski. All the art interacts with the die-cut jacket framing. Edition of 300. Rooted in a distinct and immediately identifiable sound_with the cello of Rebecca Foon (Saltland, Set Fire To Flames, Thee Silver Mt Zion) and the marimba of ex-Godspeed You! Black Emperor percussionist Bruce Cawdron at its core_Esmerine has long embroidered emotive chamber works using threads of post-classical, post-rock, Minimalism, neo-Baroque, jazz, pop and a wide array of folk traditions. Multi-instrumentalist Brian Sanderson, who joined the group in 2012, has furthered Esmerine's melodic and ethnomusicological sensibility ever since, expanding the ensemble's palette as its third core member with guitars, ngoni, ekonting, hulusi, brass horns of all sorts, and more. Since 2003, six stately and filmic instrumental albums have inscribed compositional landscapes through epigrammatic miniatures, longform multi-movement chronicles, and all manner of evocative musical prosody between. Marked by an inimitably turbid yet tempered pastoralism, alternately lit by dappled dawn and disquieted dusk, Esmerine's musical narratives balance asceticism and romanticism, melancholy and hope, stillness and wanderlust. Esmerine now shares Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, its seventh full-length album and first in five years. The band surprise-dropped the full album digitally on 06 May 2022, with the CD and Deluxe 180gram LP editions hitting stores on official release date 26 August 2022. Following an acclaimed run of mid-career records on Constellation through the 2010s_the last three of which have all been finalists or winners of Juno Awards for Instrumental Album of the Year and/or Album Packaging of the Year_Esmerine began working on new music at decade's end. Under the auspices of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and a summer 2019 residency at Le Château de Monthelon (an artist commune in France where the band has cherished long-standing spiritual, creative, and personal connections), compositional seeds were planted_and then pandemic rooted everyone in place. In between lockdown waves, at the respective rural Québec homesteads of Cawdron and Foon, longtime co-producer Jace Lasek (The Bernard Lakes) began capturing the band in various stripped-down configurations with spartan remote equipment. More fulsome arrangement and overdub sessions at Foon's converted barn during the summer of 2021 brought the album to full fruition_where a notable increase in the use of acoustic piano also poured forth, with just about every band member having a go. The record also signals the definitive integration of bassist Philippe Charbonneau_having joined Esmerine as a touring member pre-pandemic, he plays throughout the album on upright and electric bass, with turns on piano and synth, as well as sound design contributions via tape echo and other processing. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More grapples with the existential tensions between atmosphere and airlessness, seclusion and claustrophobia, forbearance and coalescence. In many ways it is one of Esmerine's most restrained records. Only a few passages are driven by full percussion. There is palpably less Sturm and Drang or overt crescendos compared to its recent predecessors. The new album roils with a different sort of dynamic intensity, where instrumental densities ebb and flow within an overtonal centre, melding into each other with gauzy timbral warmth, sometimes tracing fleeting tendrils outwards, but always rotating around a saturnine gravitational force. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More is like a dark forest lit by a closely-orbiting opalescent planet; it could be the alternate score to Von Trier's Melancholia or Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

The legendary BORIS celebrate a 30 year career as one of experimental music's most forward-thinking, heavy, and innovative bands with the new album Heavy Rocks (2022). Continuing their series of Heavy Rocks records, BORIS once again channels the classic proto-metal sounds of the 70s into something all new. The album, 10 pulse-pounding tracks, highlight the very trajectory of BORIS and their storied career - from the driving, fuzzed out Rock N' Roll opener "She is Burning", to the punk, raucous "My Name is Blank", BORIS are heavier than ever before. "Question 1" is just kickass - D-beats give way to a doomed, spaced out and heavier-than-anything guitar wailing and feedback, before diving back into their Metal, sending the listener into a complete frenzy. This is unmistakably BORIS, and this is the band at the height of their powers. Elsewhere on the record, a more daring, "out there" side of the band begins to shine on tracks such as the aptly titled "Blah Blah Blah", the industrial "Ghostly Imagination" and the truly wild "Nosferatou". Noisy passages (not unlike prior collaborations with legendary artists like Merzbow,) collide with visceral vocal howls while a relentless, almost Zornian-saxophone shreds harder than any guitar solo ever could. In 2022, BORIS cement what Heavy Rock means to them, and release one of their most captivating records to date.