Suche:paint

Lawrence Hayward knew that he wanted to be a pop star as a teen, and he devised a plan to release ten albums and ten singles over ten years to make that dream come true. A particular and determined individual, he would only be known as Lawrence from that day forward. His hopes for stardom would be pinned on his newly formed band, the succinctly named Felt. Soon signed to Cherry Red Records, Lawrence’s achingly cool vocals and the group’s way with walking melodies were evident on their debut for the label, “Something Sends Me To Sleep.” This compilation collects material from Felt’s Cherry Red period of 1981 to 1985, kicking off with that confident start, assembling numerous high points, and closing with their biggest hit, “Primitive Painters.”

This phase of the band is defined by the songwriting partnership and unique interplay of Lawrence and guitarist Maurice Deebank, with Deebank’s stylish and confident playing the envy of many of their counterparts. He delivers a constant string of shimmering hooks that wrap themselves around and over top of Lawrence’s more traditional beat combo song structures, as if trying to fit four songs worth of ideas into a pre-set radio friendly cutoff time. It works wonderfully as Lawrence always counters with a solid bedrock.

In one of many brushes with the brass ring, in 1984 Felt recorded versions of “Dismantled King Is Off The Throne” and “Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow,” for the newly formed and Warners-backed label Blanco y Negro, in hopes that the band would follow their A+R man Mike Alway to the executive suite. Despite putting forward two of their finest songs, it was not to be. While major label dreams had to remain on the shelf, fans were delighted to be able to hear these beautifully stripped down and more direct versions when this compilation was released a few years later.

By 1985 the Felt roller coaster was something Maurice Deebank was constantly getting on and off of. As Gary Ainge always kept the beat, and Lawrence never lost focus, they were joined by local teen prodigy Martin Duffy on keyboards, filling out the arrangements, and following Deebank’s racing six-string cascades in “The Day The Rain Came Down” you can even hear a tiny hint of the next phase of the band in Duffy’s organ before Maurice swoops to the finish. The newly expanded Felt would then put everything they had into making one of the defining releases of the 80s: “Primitive Painters.”

On her third album, Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli, aka Grand River, asks what guiding forces might be driving, enticing, and affecting us. “All Above” is rooted in her deeply personal philosophy as an artist, blurring the boundaries between electronic music and acoustic music and sculpting familiar ambient forms into personal themes painted with rich emotional colours. Written painstakingly over the last two years, the album is the most ambitious and divergent set of music Portioli has assembled so far, with a wide variety of instrumentation (including voices, strings, organs, guitars, and synthesisers) focused around the piano. She‘s keen to assure listeners that while that instrument isn‘t always heard, it‘s constantly at the forefront of the album, shepherding its emotions and anchoring its mood. It makes sense then that on the opening track ‘Quasicristallo’, the acoustic piano is the first element we hear, recorded closely, so its characteristic rattle and creak can speak as loudly as the familiar tones themselves. When the music blooms into abstraction and processed electronics, it‘s almost imperceptible: reverb mutates into ghostly vapour trails, and distortion forms the keys into another instrument entirely.

“All Above“ follows 2020‘s acclaimed “Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes“ and 2018‘s “Pineapple” released on Donato Dozzy and Neel‘s Spazio Disponibile imprint. Having garnered praise from outlets like Resident Advisor, XLR8R, The Quietus, Inverted Audio, and The Verge, Portioli operates in a unique space within the electronic music scene, straddling the art world and the wider electronic music scene. She‘s developed sound art installations for Rome‘s La Galleria Nazionale and the Terraforma Festival-related Il Pianeta, and has appeared at Barbican, MUTEK, Le Guess Who?, Kraftwerk, and other internationally renowned venues and festivals, often collaborating with Marco Ciceri on A/V presentations. Ciceri also maintains the visual identity of Portioli‘s label One Instrument, a concept imprint that asks artists to create music only using a single device. All this experience is poured into “All Above”, a richly visual album that‘s far more than just an imaginary film score. While on ‘Human’, her piano punctuates a rhythmic synthesised bassline and smudged choirs that can‘t help but trace out the silver screen. The composer is keen to clarify that she doesn‘t think of her music (or sound in general) in visual terms.

Portioli studied as a linguist and used her art to develop an emotional language that‘s not bound by expected cultural constraints. When she adds a different instrument or process, it‘s not to reference a visual cue but to mark a journey through different states of being. Each element embodies a different emotion or mood: the electric guitar represents strength or violence, synthesisers shuttle us into the dream world, and the acoustic instruments highlight intimacy and warmth – even heart. Read like this, the tracks are like meditative poems rather than cinematic vignettes: ‘The World At Number XX’ is seemingly centred around a chugging synthesised arpeggio, but the cosmic, Klaus Schulze-esque pads, strangled guitar and evocative organ tones hint at the open-hearted, literate psychedelia of the 1970s; ‘In The Present As The Future’ meanwhile is breathy and windswept, juxtaposing urgent rhythmic phrases with light, flute-like gusts of harmony.

Dedicated to Editions Mego founder Peter Rehberg, who died suddenly last year, “All Above” demands engagement and refuses to evaporate into the background. The album asks listeners not just to absorb the album as a whole but notice the cracks in the structure and discern the tension they cause. That‘s never more evident than on the closing track ‘Cost What It May’, a piece of music almost jarring when Portioli chops into noisy waves of electric guitar. In the wrong hands, this might sound like a power move – some rock posturing to act as a finale. But Portioli‘s expression is different. She‘s forcing a level of engagement that perceives the negative space as just as necessary as the saturated positive, and what could be more haunting and emotionally resonant than that?

Composed, produced and mixed by Aimée Portioli.
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.
Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin.
Photography by Federico Boccardi.
Design and layout by Riccardo Piovesan.

The title, nature morte, is the French term for still life paintings whose literal translation is "dead nature." BIG|BRAVE color the songs of nature morte with unease, creating an air of beauty in decay, chords suspended in contemplative stillness. Robin Wattie"s experiences structuring lyrics and song forms on The Body & BIG|BRAVE"s Leaving None But Small Birds informed her work on nature morte, creating stories that, like many folk tales, are at once specific and universal. Wattie"s voice manages to be commanding and vulnerable with impressive range and intimacy. Even her gasps carve their way through the tidal crash of Mathieu Ball"s distortion wail and the pummel of Tasy Hudson"s drums. The momentum of nature morte conjures the image of a beast collapsing beneath its own weight before resiliently staggering upright to thunder onward. BIG|BRAVE convey heft from silence as deftly as they do from swaths of feedback and distortion to cathartic ends. "Distortion is key," notes Ball The three members recorded primarily live over the course of a week at Machines with Magnets with Seth Manchester, pushing the potential of their instruments beyond expectations. For each song, the trio"s songwriting and attention to detail deliver its simple but devastating emotional power. Across the album"s six pieces BIG|BRAVE create a tension between immediacy and patience, invoking the essence of disquiet, while conveying anguish through inventive arrangements and nuanced performances. nature morte captures BIG|BRAVE at their heaviest and their mournful fury is at its zenith, an album where each moment is so immense and consuming that it possesses its own gravitational pull.

The title, nature morte, is the French term for still life paintings whose literal translation is "dead nature." BIG|BRAVE color the songs of nature morte with unease, creating an air of beauty in decay, chords suspended in contemplative stillness. Robin Wattie"s experiences structuring lyrics and song forms on The Body & BIG|BRAVE"s Leaving None But Small Birds informed her work on nature morte, creating stories that, like many folk tales, are at once specific and universal. Wattie"s voice manages to be commanding and vulnerable with impressive range and intimacy. Even her gasps carve their way through the tidal crash of Mathieu Ball"s distortion wail and the pummel of Tasy Hudson"s drums. The momentum of nature morte conjures the image of a beast collapsing beneath its own weight before resiliently staggering upright to thunder onward. BIG|BRAVE convey heft from silence as deftly as they do from swaths of feedback and distortion to cathartic ends. "Distortion is key," notes Ball The three members recorded primarily live over the course of a week at Machines with Magnets with Seth Manchester, pushing the potential of their instruments beyond expectations. For each song, the trio"s songwriting and attention to detail deliver its simple but devastating emotional power. Across the album"s six pieces BIG|BRAVE create a tension between immediacy and patience, invoking the essence of disquiet, while conveying anguish through inventive arrangements and nuanced performances. nature morte captures BIG|BRAVE at their heaviest and their mournful fury is at its zenith, an album where each moment is so immense and consuming that it possesses its own gravitational pull.

DOUBLE BLACK LP : 2 x 140 G Black Vinyl , Sleeve & 2 x Heavy Weight Printed Inner with UV Gloss Finish

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

2 x Solid White LP, 5mm spine Sleeve UV Gloss Finish, 2x Heavy Weight Printed Inner Sleeve UV Gloss finish, marketing sticker.

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

160-gram heavyweight Vinyl LP with gatefold jacket displaying the painting series that inspired the music, and the story of Newtok. Newtok is a remote Alaska Native village situated on the Ningliq River, near the west coast of Alaska. Although a very remote and quiet place, Newtok has come face-to-face with climate change. Due to a combination of thawing permafrost, low levels of sea ice, and strong storms, the coastal land of Newtok is eroding dramatically. In 2016, Chicago visual artist Jennifer Cronin embarked on a trip to Newtok to document this changing environment. Upon returning, she spent the next several years developing a series of paintings and screen prints titled Seen and Unseen that captured this eroding landscape. In 2019, Cronin and musical Artist Patrick Mitchell (a/k/a Dusty Patches) began discussing the project after Cronin asked him to perform at the Gallery opening for the series. As a result, Mitchell created this album, Newtok - inspired by Cronin's Seen and Unseen series and the story of Newtok, Alaska. Mitchell is a multi-instrumentalist songwriter and producer from Chicago who has led numerous past projects in the Chicago DIY community including De Triomphe, New Color, and Whiskey Wise. He dove headfirst into synths in 2017 and adopted the electronic alias Dusty Patches. Dusty Patches released his debut project Filthy Four Track Machine: Volumes I & II (2018, Sooper Records), largely made with the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators and OP-1. In 2020, he released Nocturnal Emissions from the Dablatory, his first project fully realized with modular synthesis. In approaching Newtok, Mitchell composed all of the constituent musical elements of the work and then recorded and live mixed the album during a single live performance on modular synthesizer. The album draws heavily on sprawling ambient synths, electric and acoustic post-punk guitar motifs, cryptic vocal sampling, vintage drum machines, and modular patches that often sound like birds or the sea. The subject matter of the album, the complexity of its arrangement, and its execution as a single live recorded performance makes Newtok a unique musical experience. About Newtok, Mitchell says: This record was an exploration of themes. When faced with the immense canvases Jen Cronin produced upon her return from the village of Newtok, one can't help but feel awe. With the sheer size of the works towering above you, you are compelled. There is overwhelming beauty, desolation, a sense of urgency, and a sense that it is, in fact, far too late. These visual themes, and the emotions they evoke, were connected to the sounds and compositions of this record. There is a coldness to the digital soundscape, but organic sounds of nature and humans tether and steer the album through a journey of musical storytelling. Newtok is a journey of musical storytelling about the tragedy of the Anthropocene in the age of climate change. FOR FANS OF: Mother Earth's Plantasia, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Boards of Canada, Bibio

Under the alias The Rodeo, French artist Dorothée has been curating her discography since 2010. An exercise in self-exploration that her fourth album, Arlequine, refines and reveals with the confidence of someone who has cast doubt aside. With these nine baroque, complex and catchy French pop tracks, the singer-songwriter reveals her many faces. Truly multi-faceted, she is as much a performer on stage as she is an artist in real life. She toys with appearances instead of falling victim to them. Backed by a group of loyal virtuoso musicians, Arlequine marries melancholy and melodic clarity, anger and orchestral density, loss and pop idealism, in ambivalent songs with powerful choruses that paint a portrait of "a battle-hardened woman with a smile (...), a woman warrior with makeup" ("Arlequine"): resilient, resolute, reborn. The Rodeo has played all over the world (Europe, USA, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Taïwan) and shared the stage with many artists (Salif Keita, Stereophonics, Villagers, Nada Surf, The Do, Kazu...). She"s involved in the European program Keychange for increased parity in the music industry.

Alt-rap dissident Jam Baxter announces his newest solo venture, Fetch the Poison. Conceived during a state-wide alcohol ban in Mexico, the album is Baxter’s first to be composed in complete sobriety — though his hallucinatory style of storytelling and cast of monstrous characters make a welcome return. Lyrics on Fetch the Poison meld Baxter’s Latin American experience with visions of a grisly alternate dimension: sun, sea and glittering vistas are sullied by hollow-eyed addicts, shady bar tenders and duplicitous lovers. Amongst deft bars, the rapper includes a number of spoken word pieces that echo the prose in his now sold out book Off-Piste. The album also features Blah Records' Nah Eeto & Black Josh, as well as DJ Sammy B-Side and Jehst, alongside Brazil’s NOG, Black Alien and Xamã. Baxter reunites with frequent collaborator Chemo on production — now under the moniker Forest DLG — for much of the album, with appearances from Jack Danz, Dr Zygote, Wundrop (CMPMD) and Midlands' electronic stalwart Lenkemz. Despite its diverse credits, tracks are connected by icy, spaced-out electronics with beats twisted through tape distortion and anchored by chest- rattling bass. Baxter began writing the album in Mexico just before the pandemic began while holed up in the city of San Cristobal De Las Casas, Chiapas, as the world shut down. “All the streets were eerily empty and it was amazing. I had the city to myself,” he says. “Then suddenly there was a state- wide alcohol ban and I could no longer casually sip tequila as I went about my business. I didn’t really have a choice but to write” With no alcohol to fuel him, and San Cristobal largely silent, the rapper says he was surprised to find himself in a deeply creative — and prolific – state. “I took to it amazingly well, and I wrote this whole album in three months of clear-headed bliss in the same apartment. I would sit and write all day, and occasionally walk up a mountain when I got stuck ... or go and feed the stray dogs at the church on top of the hill. It was weirdly the most fun I’d had in years.” Fetch the Poison is Baxter’s seventh solo album.

Historically Fucked is a four way entanglement made to create short, eruptive songs and then set about obliterating them from the inside, like improvising a barrel to encase themselves in and then proceeding to lick their way out of it. It is about playing and laughing at playing, and it is about not doing either of those things sometimes. Sometimes it is to do with talking, howling or grunting, and sometimes it is to do with hitting and rubbing.
Historically Fucked contains four people, who each share the same duties, and whose names in sequence are Otto Willberg, David Birchall, Greta Buitkuté and Alecs Pierce. They are from Manchester and often other places. Guitar, bass, drums and voices keenly jostle amid the group’s frenzy of spontaneous rock throttles. Some of these rampant exercises in avant are collected on ‘The Mule Peasants’ Revolt of 12,067’, the band’s new album, released by Upset The Rhythm on February 3rd. This is the group’s first release since 2018’s mantlepiece staple ‘Aliven Wool’ (Heavy Petting). This is Rock and/or Roll as fertilizer, uncivilised and free, as if one were to imagine what the Plastic Ono Band would’ve hit upon if they had read ‘Riddley Walker’, the sound of an entire timeline of expression put back together back-to-front, misshapen and irradiated.

‘The Mule Peasants’ Revolt of 12,067’ is not mere Sedentary Rock but Blasted Basalt, Frog worshipping cave-funk, harmolodic hullabaloo-wop, a musical game of “badger in the bag”. It is the sound of sacks crammed full of aggregate, a chimerical mind-meld, a seductive din that is to a hound dog in blue suede shoes what a raking of the dorsal fin with a fat marrow pinecone is to a pelican in the midst of being fired from the academy.

‘The Mule Peasants’ Revolt of 12,067’ by Historically Fucked was recorded by Rory Salter, mixed by Otto Willberg and mastered by Mikey Young. The liminally worrisome artwork was painted by John Cobweaver.

“They say these days that History is Fucked. Nothing ever dies but continues to rule the earth as an undead tyrant that cannot accept its own decomposition, look earwardly upon the dance of the proudly dead and decrepit!”

Vymethoxy Redspiders, Leeds 2022

The Rolling Stones legen die ultimative Live Best Of Sammlung vor: ”GRRR Live!”
2012 und 2013 feierten die Rolling Stones ihr goldenes Jubiläum mit der ”50 & Counting”-Tour durch Nordamerika und Europa. Bei dem Konzert am 15.12.2012 im Prudential Centre, New Jersey, begleitete ein unglaubliches Line-up von Gästen die Band auf der Bühne – Lady Gaga, The Black Keys, Bruce Springsteen, Gary Clark Jr, John Mayer & Mick Taylor. Das Konzert erwies sich als eine der bemerkenswertesten Shows in der Geschichte der Band. Nun wurde das Konzert neu bearbeitet und neu abgemischt.

Pauline Marx, formerly of the fantastic duo La Fureur de Vouivre, seems like a being from another time and place; namely, an escaped marauder lurking in the forests of a Bruegel painting and integrating the surreal flora and fauna of a Boschian creation into the scenery and lore of deep Brittany. Her invented mythology is loaded with murky rituals and contorted mantras, backed by the surprising sounds and textures of terrains so earthly and so unreal.

The Devil at the Crossroads

Where do you think you come from? Where do you think you're going? Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate: you, with the noodle to the four winds, who pass the threshold of this disc, you better leave all hope there, and glide in the poisonous footstep of the devil your guide.

Where do you think you come from? The mountain is no longer just the mountain; after your passage, it will no longer even be a mountain. Like the whole landscape, it will have been eaten, sauced by invisible leeches. Your nostalgia for the ground and your thirst to find the source will have only discovered a forest of vain words and foul water. Where do you think you're going? At the crossroads, the world is consumed in the previous future. Only the devil will know how to make you overcome the disgust of traditions, and only the love for the devil will give you enough vim to reach your goal: a village, perhaps, but which belongs to no one, a haven to your excessiveness .

The dark tradition to which this game of ternary trampling belongs, like the rhythm of a heart in tune with the inverted world, has no country and no assigned time. Rather a topology of Eve awakened after a thousand-year sleep, an idiosyncratic and possessed reading of our common humus, made up of stories composted in the limbo of the past, of songs captured in extremis vitae and rebus in the privatized antechambers of death.

What does she tell us about? Of our automobile and in love roamings, of the porosity of the membranes that separate beings and things, of the constant inversion of signs. The seventeen stages of this short journey, where intertwine the throbbing of objects, blown horns and rubbed horsehair, form the map of a country never to be found, ours, where only the voice of an old child and the disgusting devil's poisonous charm can guide us.

Purple Vinyl

London’s abundant waterways and parks provide an oneiric muse for Cucina Povera and Ben Vince’s resounding debut full-length collaboration, an engrossing suite of weightless sax, synth and disklavier-bedded soundscapes that land somewhere between Grouper and Terry Riley.

As a newcomer to London, Rossi was caught up in a sort of wondrous reverie - a feeling that seeps through every movement of thia almost hour long album. Vince's plasmic echoes and Rossi's aerial delivery form a poetic union, twisting and painting each sound in pearlescent shades, finding a musical confluence between Rossi's words - fluid, dreamy, hazy ideations - and Vince's shadowy renditions.

Rossi's folk roots shine through like cracks of dawn sunlight on 'Sumu Puistossa' ("fog in the park"), reverberating over organ and dream-zone sax; her words tip into muted surrealism thanks to the controlled chaos of Vince's bleak treatments. His grasp of jazz is transfixing: bending sax motifs like ghostly memories of music from another timeline, smudging them into the soundfield. It’s most effective on the title tracx, where sickly, dissonant notes flicker like an almost-extinguished candle alongside motorised furniture music courtesy of a Disklavier.

From the Terry Riley-esque transcendence of '∞' to the sacred incantation of long-form closer 'Pikku Muurahaiskeko' ("little anthill"), the pair expose a new layer of creativity with each turn, gradually zooming out from discreet, vulnerable beauty to encompass a gently orchestrated chaos of sustained, sublime tension


[b] 02. [_]

* Comes with an 8 page booklet **

The Dead Mauriacs is the project of French artist Olivier Prieur, "Paravents et miroirs, une cérémonie" is a live soundtrack.

The Dead Mauriacs describe their music as "Exotica Concrete" - their music is composed of field recordings made on a daily basis, as well as a diverse collection of sounds, including piano, Indian harmonium, violin, ukulele, didgeridoo, pieces of wood, glass, paper, and metal plates. The album is a spectacular 40-minute sound collage, assembled by sampling Exotica music represented by musicians and arrangers such as Les Baxter and Arthur Lyman, who were active in the 1950s.

"Exotica is a musical genre or sub-genre that emerged in the 1950s in the United States with musicians and arrangers like Les Baxter or Arthur Lyman. It is an extraordinary music because it is false: bird calls imitate bird songs, you can hear the sound of the waves, it is a Western fantasy, particularly North American, of a world and an imagery that never existed. It is a music associated with mass tourism, mass entertainment, consumerism. Arthur Lyman recorded about 30 records in 10 years in Waikiki. With his band, they played and recorded under a geodesic aluminum dome. The dome belonged to the owner of the hotel he played for every night. They did this at night to avoid noise. It's music that is both profoundly naive and totally flawed. In this, it is seductive and intellectually interesting. It is music that could easily be criticized today, but it is an imaginary in itself, like the Italian film music of the 1960s and 1970s." (Excerpt from the calax's interview)

The Dead Mauriacs are not only involved in music, but also in a wide range of other creative endeavors, including video and painting. He also repsonsible for the artwork of this LP. The inside of the product is also accompanied by an 8-page interview with Mauriacs and compiled his amazing artworks.

The Dead Mauriacs
Paravents et miroirs : une cérémonie / Screens and mirrors: a ceremony

Side A
Courte dérive, une ouverture / Short drift, an opening
Le retour des insectes électriques / The return of the electric insects Les oiseaux étranges / The strange birds Tension, terreur factice / Tension, false terror
Dénouement malais / Malaysian ending
Rituels et vanités 1 / Rituals and vanities 1
Rituels et vanités 2 / Rituals and vanities 2
Italiens dʼHambourg / Italians in Hamburg

Side B
Secrets pour piano / Secrets for piano
La suite Monory, Padoue-Le Caire-Nassau / The Monory Suite, Padua-Cairo-Nassau Hommes à découper / Men to cut out Lassitude moite / Clammy weariness
Le soleil artificiel du pont croisière / The artificial sun on the cruise deck
Pirogues et palmiers, vus de la scène / Pirogues and palm trees, seen from the stage La traversée / The crossing Rideau / Rideau
Fields recordings : Semproniano and Siena, Italy, Figueira, Portugal, Charentes, France. An electrical wire with a frequency shifter gave birth to the insects. Real and fake piano. Everything made with a computer and a midi keyboard.
Music premiered at Hörbar, Hamburg, 28th of December 2017. Music (and video) Olivier Prieur.
Thanks to Thorsten Soltau and all people at Hörbar.
Hello to Felix Kubin & Marie-Pierre Bonniol, Julia & Jan Warnke. Kisses to Hélène.

WRWTFWW Records is proud to announce a brand new album by Irish producer Gareth Quinn Redmond, following his amazing Satoshi Ashikawa-Inspired Laistigh Den Ghleo released in 2019. Umcheol, his ambient-meets-Irish-traditional-music soundscape is available as a limited edition LP (500 copies worldwide) housed in a 350gsm gatefold sleeve with a superb triptych of paintings by Irish artist Conor Campbell. The album comes in digital format as well.
A splendid pairing of Irish folk instruments (harp, tin whistle, fiddle, harmonium) with synthesizers, Umcheol tells the tragic yet beautiful tale of two legendary figures of Irish mythology, Cú Chulainn and
Ferdiad. The 40+ minute ambient narrative is a subtle and touching alliance of past and present, tradition re-contextualized and retold with a modern approach.
Gareth Quinn Redmond explains: "For the longest time, I have desired to blend elements of both ambient and Irish traditional music. Umcheol - Cú Chulainn agus Ferdiad, is the first in a series of works that seeks to coalesce these two palettes of sound. The primary focus of this album was to begin using traditional instruments such as the harp, tin whistle, fiddle and even the harmonium, which in recent times has become commonly used in Irish folk music. By pairing these instruments with synthesizers, I hope to create a soundscape that gives new agency for the stories of my culture to be realized and retold."
Very personal and delicately visceral, Umcheol is a contemplative journey that will resonate with fans of Japanese environmental music, minimalism, folk experimentations, and mythological soundtracks.
Gareth Quinn Redmond’s previous album, Laistigh Den Ghleo, an ode to the work of Satoshi Ashikawa is still available on WRWTFWW Records - perfect time to re-visit!

Composer Valtteri Laurell Pöyhönen presents his Nonet formation on We Jazz Records. Their debut album Tigers Are Better Looking is released 3 Feb and the ensemble features internationally renowned Finnish clarinetist Antti Sarpila, plus a strong cast of Helsinki-based musicians from several of the top Finnish groups.

Based on the writings of British-Caribbean author Jean Rhys (1890–1979), the 6-track album is a melancholy, intimate chamber jazz creation. Laurell's music swings, yet he doesn't stop there, but moves further to paint an original, richly-toned sonic image with the highly potent Nonet.

Laurell states Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis's "Water Babies" and Charles Mingus among the key musical influences of his compositions on this album. Through Rhys's text, Laurell finds a special sense of detachment and melancholy evident in his new material. Antti Sarpila's masterful clarinet provides the icing on the cake, floating high above the clouds of sound.

After Prette (pronounced as ‘pret’ which means fun in Dutch) successfully launched a stage to perform art, it only felt natural to also launch a platform to release art.

Prettemusic is an independent imprint that releases limited vinyl records.

Prettemusic hits the ground running with its first release – a stunning four-track debut EP from head honcho Koperblond. Koperblond (real name Wouter Beek) delivers a mix of Arabic hip-shaking and emotional trance euphoria to evoke intense dance floor ecstasy.

The opening track is ‘Kunti’, an Italo disco destroyer with a bold Bollywood spirit that will lure you in and awaken those hips. Next up is a remake of the brave starter – this new cocktail with hints of the original track has a high-energy zap-crazed feel and a groovy-moving non-stop sound. Two 100% floor fillers, guaranteed to raise the roof of your nearest discotheque!

On the flip side ‘I Want Your Love’ – an emotional love story with a journey through the track that feels like a taste of real love. From happiness and grief to hope and hopelessness, it bursts loudly and with great force. It is a true reminder that love will save the day. Multi-instrumentalist DJ and producer Rose Ringed reinterprets this ode to love using his typical sound palette. The result is a big room banger ready to be served alongside fireworks and CO2 cannons. It is Rose Ringed’s first vinyl outing following releases on his label, Closed Eyes Records, and Solomun’s world-famous Diynamic.

This Prettemusic release comes on exclusive Koperblond-coloured (copper blond in Dutch) vinyl alongside a unique two-front artwork from abstract painter Harry Markusse and fine-art photographer Pieter Bas Bouwman.

‘Living Rooms’ is a full-blooded debut of rich, playful, experimental pop from the artist Fe Salomon – full of unabashedly big songs and sumptuously big sounds. Fe’s soulful and arresting lead vocals weave amongst soaring strings and big band brass sections; clattering percussion and disjunctive rhythms; dirty electro synth and butchered guitar. A collaboration with producer and contemporary classical composer Johnny Parry, ‘Living Rooms’ is a true pop album with a distinct, exuberant and deeply generous sound.

Born in Northampton, Fe moved to London at 18 for a place at Theatre College; but soon left to concentrate on music and songwriting, falling quickly into the Camden music scene, and earning her a prolific career as a singer. Building on her diverse musical background and honing her unusual sonic style, this album has been percolating at the back of Fe’s mind for a long time. The perfect storm of personal and external factors thus created the moment to make it. ‘Living Rooms’ tells stories of multiple lives lived and lost

in the city, of friendships that meant everything and the characters you’ll never meet again, of transience and loneliness, and of getting by and moving on.

At the forefront of the album is an organic and fiercely honest lead vocal performance. However, Fe permits her voice to be twisted and distorted into the fabric of the instrumentation. The un-doctored lead vocals are frequently haunted by angels and demons, created through Fe’s uninhibited willingness to this manipulation, and capturing the more visceral emotions within the expression of the human voice.

‘Living Rooms’ navigates a wide spectrum of sounds and emotions. Take album opener “Polka Dot”, a track that mixes emotive vocals with an avant-garde alt/pop production to conjure a cut as stylish as it is shrouded in shadowy mystique. A track “about mourning innocence, and the darkness that’s picked up along the way, with an ‘up yours’ sarcastic tone, and not wanting to grow old”, it sets the scene for a twisting collection that up-ends expectations at every opportunity.

Elsewhere, the chunky hooks of “Super Human”, the sci-fi/country/big band of “Wired of Caffeine”, or the intimately sung vocals and Vaughan-Williams-esque string sections of “Taxicabs”, all contribute to an album that evolves like a rich and constantly surprising tapestry.

Although the conception of the album was a frenzy of wild experimentation. The album is faithful too, and celebratory of many joyous pop traditions; but searches for ways to reinterpret the familiar. And no less so than on the off-kilter centre-piece “Quintessential England”. Through wry lyricism and vivid imagination, the track paints a lucid, if lonely, depiction of a life lived out in the sticks; one that ultimately arrives at the conclusion that perhaps “the grass isn’t always greener”.

Gifted with the kind of superpowers that have blessed Alison Goldfrapp with her unwavering glam-pop allure and Stevie Nicks with that invincible soul, Fe Salomon’s empowering first release will prove she’s cut from the same cloth and ready to be your newest musical hero.

Gemma Ray takes an unexpected detour from her
acclaimed psych-soul and torch song oeuvre with
a hard-edged experiment in cinematic electronica.
Epic despite its underlying simplicity and groove,
‘Gemma Ray & The Death Bell Gang’ blends the
funereal and the sinister with tenderness and
yearning, with a dash of automaton-pop and a
Dada-esque playfulness for good measure. Front
and centre are Gemma’s trademark stirring voice
and harmonies.
Released on eco-mix and splatter coloured vinyl
formats, with download card and exclusive pull-out
poster by British painter Deryk Thomas (Swans,
Angels of Light).
The record was recorded at Tempelhof Flughafen
in Berlin and features collaborations from sound
designer Ralf Goldkind (Fantastichen Vier, Mona
Mur), lap steel player Kristof Hahn (Swans), and
syncussion by Andy Zammit (Jon Spencer).
Accompanying videos for the singles ‘Come
Oblivion’, ‘Howling’ and ‘Procession’ by animator
Lucy Dyson (Paul McCartney, Beyonce, Courtney
Barnett).

Gemma Ray takes an unexpected detour from her
acclaimed psych-soul and torch song oeuvre with
a hard-edged experiment in cinematic electronica.
Epic despite its underlying simplicity and groove,
‘Gemma Ray & The Death Bell Gang’ blends the
funereal and the sinister with tenderness and
yearning, with a dash of automaton-pop and a
Dada-esque playfulness for good measure. Front
and centre are Gemma’s trademark stirring voice
and harmonies.
Released on eco-mix and splatter coloured vinyl
formats, with download card and exclusive pull-out
poster by British painter Deryk Thomas (Swans,
Angels of Light).
The record was recorded at Tempelhof Flughafen
in Berlin and features collaborations from sound
designer Ralf Goldkind (Fantastichen Vier, Mona
Mur), lap steel player Kristof Hahn (Swans), and
syncussion by Andy Zammit (Jon Spencer).
Accompanying videos for the singles ‘Come
Oblivion’, ‘Howling’ and ‘Procession’ by animator
Lucy Dyson (Paul McCartney, Beyonce, Courtney
Barnett).

"Photographs as Memories" was the British cult band Eyeless in Gaza’s debut album. A truly kaleidoscopic picture dominated by Martyn Bates’s highly expressive vocals and Pete Becker’s peculiar analog synth lines in a jungle of electric guitars, plastic organs, soprano saxophones, percussion, violin, stylophone and tapes. An album which comes as a vivid snapshot from the very dawn of the 80’s.

• Gil Scott-Heron was twenty-one years old when he was signed to Flying Dutchman by Bob Thiele to make an album of his poetry. The resultant “Small Talk at 125th and Lenox” was recorded before a small live audience and, released in 1970, sat perfectly in a world where the Last Poets had just tasted Top 10 success with their debut LP. “Small Talk at 125th and Lenox” opened with a spoken word version of ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ and also featured poems and musical pieces like ‘Omen’, ‘Brother’, ‘Plastic Pattern People’, ‘Paint It Black’ and ‘Everyday’ that reflected on the black community and its condition within America at this time.

• The starkest of these sharp observational pieces from Scott-Heron was ‘Whitey On The Moon’, which recounts the US Government spending billions on landing a rocket on the moon at a time when, “a rat done bit my sister, Nell”.

• Like its follow-up – “Pieces Of A Man” – “Small Talk at 125th and Lenox” is a classic album and we are delighted to serve it up again on vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with the original liner notes.

• With current “Big Talk” of going back to the moon, whilst injustice still prevails for many black people in America, “Small Talk at 125th and Lenox” still conveys a message that resonates today.

The album’s seemingly brief tracklisting belies a work of great beauty and depth, and one which turned into a one-man crusade for singer/guitarist Lars Andersson, intertwining deeply personal stories with his love for the era of Romanticism. “Every time I go to a museum and I’m about to pass through the era of Romanticism I stop in awe,” says Lars of the enduring appeal of the 18th century artistic movement. “Whatever it is – stories, paintings, music – it triggers something deep within me, something profoundly human. It really hits a nerve, and it utterly immerses me to a point where I can’t move.” The album replicates this feeling; a gloriously over-the-top blend of Slowdive and Sigur Rós, mixed with the single-mindedness of Daniel Johnston and the noisiness of Nirvana, it’s as bold and beautiful and every bit as ornate as the art that inspired it. Unlike their acclaimed debut, 2019’s All That Ever Could Have Been, which gradually came into focus with a 15-minute opening track, Picturesque hits home from the very first note of the short and sweet opener, ‘Ballerina’. That’s not to say there aren’t epics here – ‘Metamorphosis’ is essentially a 12-minute suite of three movements; blistering closer ‘The Lot’ is 11 minutes of Swans-inspired heaviness – but everything is much more direct and focused. This isn’t an album to lose yourself in, it’s one to get swept away by. “‘More is more’ was definitely the credo when making this record,” agrees Lars. “A big inspiration were bands like Pond and the way they manage to fill their songs up with stuff to the absolute maximum. While I definitely tried to give the listener some room to breathe at certain points and while, in good old post-rock fashion, it still builds up and breaks down, it relies much more on simple melody and harmony as opposed to noisy experimentation to transport feeling.” Never more so than on the first single, ‘The Golden Age’, which is the album’s centrepiece; a soaring slice of über-shoegaze that is so stunning you can’t take your eyes or ears off it. Like all the songs on the album, it’s based around a fairy-tale from the Romantic era. In this case, it’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen by the German poet, author and philosopher Novalis (other influences are: The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen; The Seven Ravens and Hans in Luck by the Brothers Grimm; Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué and The Golden Pot by E.T.A. Hoffmann), with Lars drawing parallels between the titular character’s mystical and romantic searchings and his own personal quest. This is apt as the album has been an overriding obsession for Lars for the past two-and-a-half years; as well as writing and recording the songs (bandmate Phillip Dornauer played drums), he also mixed and mastered them at his Alpine Audio studio and Picturesque is very much his Brian Wilson or Kevin Shields moment. MOLLY were in the middle of their European tour when Covid hit in early 2020, forcing Lars to retreat back to his home outside Innsbruck and giving him time and space to think about every detail of the record. “Well, I was on a quest I guess,” he admits. “Like everyone, I was stranded at home and at some point I just said to myself, ‘If not now, then when?’ It was an intense process. I’ve worked on music from other bands and artists before but producing and mixing your own music is an utterly different animal. It was probably the most intense thing I’ve ever done, but it was also incredibly rewarding and the feeling of it all coming together piece by piece is incomparable.” The artwork is just as effective. “I think of Radiohead’s OK Computer – what you hear on the record is what you see on the cover,” explains Lars. “We were inspired by what we call ‘wimmelbilder’ hidden pictures in German, a very specific style in art where there are a lot of little things happening. When you see it from further away, it looks organic like a lost painting from the area of Romanticism, but the closer you look the more digital it gets. It’s a nice analogy.” He’s right, it perfectly sums up the conflict between Romanticism and 21st century life. “Romanticism was basically an answer to the Industrial Revolution as well as the social and political norms of the Age Of Enlightenment,” concludes Lars. “Now, we all live in a much more industrialised, materialistic, individualistic and sterile society than any early Romanticist could have ever possibly imagined. Over 200 years later the Romanticists have lost the battle.” With the divine and downright pulchritudinous Picturesque, MOLLY begin the fightback.1.Ballerina 2.Metamorphosis 3.The Golden Age 4.Sunday Kid 5.So To Speak 6.The Lot

Espen Friberg’s solo album debut. Sun Soon is Espen Friberg´s solo album debut, consisting of eleven compositions made up of synthesizer and field recordings. The album is formed as a collage, with compositions patched on a Serge modular synth and field recordings. The patches portray the mood and wandering in mountains and forests – while at the same time meditating on the area of the Norwegian valley Hallingdal´s local history. The collage technique is something Friberg uses in both his musical and visual art. The album is meditative and exploratory, and at the same time playful and immediate. Trucks, trash cans, flowing streams, lemon soda, horses and wandering mountains, find its place between slow melodies, scratching, sinus tones and bass lines. Dissonances and harmonies come together in gliding transitions and abrupt stops, while an electronic willow flute sings and the sun is rising. The recording is done at Leveld Kunstnartun in Ål in Hallingdal, later mixed and produced in collaboration with Jenny Berger Myhre. The project captures the ambiance in the valley around Leveld, through Espen´s experiences in nature, but also from the paintings of Marianne Røthe Arnesen and Gøsta Munsterhjelm. Espen Friberg is known as an artist, designer, illustrator, cartoon creator and musician, and has received numerous awards and stipends for his work. In the beginning of 2000 he was a part of establishing the design studio Yokoland, but later started his own studio. In addition to his visual practice he has built a sound studio consisting of complex synthesizer systems and a variety of obscure electronical instruments and effect processors. He has been a central person in experimental and electronic music in Norway. He started and runs the record company Take It Easy Policy in collaboration with Emil Høgset, and has been a curator for the concert series Rett Ned. Since 2005 he has participated in a long line of sample albums under different artist names, before releasing his first EP under his own name in 2015. After this he has released six different albums with Øivind Olsen, André Borgen and Marianne Røthe Arnesen. Friberg has been active on the concert stage, both as a solo artist and in different collaborations. 1.Lazy cobweb 2.Wandering mountain 3.Gøsta Munsterhjelm 4.Foggy glow 5.Pasture patch 6.Motor sunup 7.Thirteen paintings 8.Marianne Røthe Arnesen 9.Sinuous river (part one) 10.Sinuous river (part two) 11.Orange moss bridge

From over the hills and far away, the cobblers and their boots are here to stay. The sartorial scallywags return with another collection of kaleidoscopic, Italo-tinged party pleasers.

First off the block, London royalty Super Drama team up with homeboy Kayroy for ‘Something New’, a cut of propulsive glitterball synth-funk, with just the right amount of cowbell. Next up, Italy’s Disco Mortale and Futuristant take us for a tour of the dark side, with cyborg vocoders
and cyberpunk arpeggios painting a vivid dreamscape of neon and steel. ‘Until Forever’ flirts the line between sinful and sincere, abandoning you to the rise of the machines, and a dance-off to the death!

Flip that wax and step on the gas because Gabto reunites with collaborator Kauan Marco for the colossally cool ‘Ki Ko Ho’. These brilliant Brazilians have delivered a bonafide gem, complete with drums that hit you in all the right places, and a killer synthesiser solo – brilliant stuff.

For the cherry on top, Marching Machines bring their intoxicating and hypnotic flavour of Belgian chug and psychedelic dark disco to the table with the festival-ready epic ‘Seraphic’ – molto bene! An electrifyingly eclectic and adventurous collection of toe-tappers and hip snappers, made with love and coming soon to a discoteca near you.

Oan Kim, the revelation that transcends jazz. Oan Kim is a French Korean awarded saxophonist, filmmaker and photographer.

As a film director, he recently won awards for his documentary about his father: the famous Korean painter Kim Tschang-Yeul (Silver Horn prize in Poland and the Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award at the DMZ International Festival in Korea).

As a musician, experienced with numerous bands (Film Noir, Chinese Army), it was during lockdown that he composed and recorded his first solo album, ‘Oan Kim & The Dirty Jazz’.

This project immediately got the attention of JeanPhilippe Allard through Artwork Records, a new label created with PIAS.

Oan Kim is a multi-faceted contemporary artist, as comfortable in galleries as in concert halls, who plays a unique music beyond the boundaries of jazz.

Oan Kim has been described in the French media as “The missing link between Portishead and Che Baker.”

Having toured the world and delivered one of the pandemic’s most legendary live streams – including bodybuilders and furniture smashing at the old American embassy in Oslo, Aiming for Enrike started working on new music in 2020. Now ready with their fifth album Empty Airports, the tunes flourish further through atmospheric expressions, into floating, minimalistic, electronic, and ambient soundscapes. Empty Airports was composed and recorded in reflection of the quiet Covid19 life during the patience testing lockdown months of 2020 and 2021. Not only is this the duo's longest album ever, but it's also their first double album. The songs are inspired by and belong somewhere between Thom Yorke, Ashra, Nils Frahm, King Crimson in the 80s, Jon Hopkins and Steve Reich. The cover art for Empty Airports is the finishing touch that elevates the album to a complete piece of art. Thor Merlin's unique artwork is a generatively designed collage consisting of clippings from 19 digital paintings and 10 images created with shader programming in Sakuhin: an open-source program that Merlin also uses for live coding of visuals for Aiming for Enrike. The album cover's individual images will be available NFTs. Guitarist Simen Følstad Nilsen says: "Minimalism, which has always been an important part of our expression, is now cultivated to a much greater extent. When the rush to fulfill musical expectations is abounded, it gives the music more space to become more hypnotic and mesmerizing than before." Empty Airports is another fantastic release from the forward-leaning duo, which justifies that Aiming for Enrike lives entirely in their own universe.

The Murder Capital’s second studio album Gigi’s Recovery, produced by John Congleton, will be released on January 20, 2023 via Human Season Records. The CD will be housed in a printed inner sleeve in a recycled wallet-style jacket. Painting by Peter Doyle and designed by Aidan Cochrane.

Red Vinyl

Adrian Borland and Graham Bailey might be better known as members of legendary post-punk group The Sound, but the two were childhood friends and had been playing together even earlier in The Outsiders, and continued their deep musical rapport as a duo, creating these intense and engaging songs as Second Layer at the same time as their higher profile band output.

Combining their early recordings, including the 1979 Flesh As Property EP and 1980 State Of Emergency EP, Courts Or Wars takes its title from the first song that served as the pair’s introduction to listeners. Right from the beginning you are enveloped in what The Quietus described as, “a monochrome worldview morbidly obsessed with the dehumanizing effect of war, nuclear weapon annihilation, and the fracturing and negation of the self within an increasingly distorted and technologically mediated society.” Where The Sound fit snugly next to Echo And The Bunnymen, Second Layer had far more in common with the pulsing menace of Suicide.

Borland’s familiar vocals and sense of melody hold a connection to his other songwriting, but within these songs he takes far more risks in his guitar work to suit the subject matter. What really drives everything is Bailey’s propulsive bedrock, formed by his homemade pre-drum machine rhythm generators, creating an innovative mechanical approach that somehow inserts a jittery neurotic touch that merges perfectly with his electronic layers driven by the wasp synth, various unique effects boxes or tape loops. Adding in Bailey’s own distinctive bass playing, the results feel personal and experimental, pointed and harsh, while also bracingly accessible and covered in dark manic energy.

Over forty years later, these recordings feel shockingly appropriate. In painting a bleak reality and frightening future, there is real desperate beauty here.

Welcome to the realm of creator and mentor Michael Wadada, the man behind the exotic manoeuvres of Suns of Arqa, one of the most sought after world beat fusion project of the early eighties. His main goal was to increase the vibrations of classical Indian raga with the rhythms of Niyabinghi drumming, epitomized in England by contemporary dub producers. Released in 1980 on Manchester’s own Rock Steady Records, Revenge Of The Mozabites is an essential masterpiece paving the way for future over the border contamination. Deeply informed by cosmic mysticism the album still reverberates with the hidden sounds of earth & soul.

CHRISTIAN DEATH was formed by Rozz Williams in Los Angeles, California in 1979. Williams was eventually joined by guitarist/songwriter Rikk Agnew of ADOLESCENTS, James McGearty on bass and George Belanger on drums. This CHRISTIAN DEATH line-up was responsible for recording the band's iconic 1982 debut, ONLY THEATRE OF PAIN, widely regarded as the #1 American goth album of all-time. This exclusive double-LP version of OTOP commemorates its 40th anniversary- the first disc is the digitally remastered, original version of the album while the second disc is comprised of "Dogs" from HELL COMES TO YOUR HOUSE, four pre-Frontier demos, two studio demos made for a second Frontier Records' LP that never happened and two alternate studio mixes from OTOP. The gatefold LP jacket is printed in its original its black and metallic gold, includes a Colver collage poster and a hardcover copy of the photo book, ONLY THEATRE OF PAIN and all come in a hard slipcase. The oversized 12" x 12" book features rare and never-before-seen photos of CHRISTIAN DEATH as well as new interviews with photographer Edward C. Colver, the surviving band members, Frontier's Lisa Fancher and others. Colver befriended the band and followed them around in late 1981 and early 1982 at more than a dozen concerts as well as photo shoots in Rozz Williams' family home (used on the back cover and insert of ONLY THEATRE OF PAIN) and a session of now famous images at a Pomona CA cemetery. Info: Just as the theatrically-minded LA punk scene was beginning to give rise to such morbidly themed outfits as 45 Grave and the Flesh Eaters, an androgynous teenaged street performer named Rozz Williams (né Roger Painter) founded CHRISTIAN DEATH, one of the most prolific, enduring, and beloved gothic acts of all time. Williams' otherworldly groan can make "Only Theatre of Pain" difficult going for those that aren't the gothic faithful, but the loud/not-too-fast music (courtesy of ex-ADOLESCENTS guitarist Rikk Agnew and the walking-dead rhythm section of bassist James McGearty and drummer George Belanger) is appropriately doom 'n' gloomy, with inventive arrangements and clear sound - thanks to Frontier Records' go-to punk production legend, Thom Wilson- capturing the mood in full B-movie fidelity. The lyrics sacriligiously address horror topics and religion: they're overwrought (the backwards masking of 'Mysterium Iniquitatis' being one clever exception) but easy to overlook in the wash of inspired rock noise. The original lineup's recorded debut is a gem. Artists inspired by CHRISTIAN DEATH include Danzig, Craddle of Filth, Paradise Lost, Korn, Type O Negative, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and Jane's Addiction. Press: "A depraved masterpiece, this was punk rock made poetic, subversive, and gracefully savage."- AV Club "The Gothic album to out-gothic all others" - Melody Maker "Only Theatre of Pain's influence should not be underestimated" - Record Collector Limited availability!

Following the April 2022 reissue of the album Shrimp Boats, We Are Busy
Bodies presents companion titles Plum and Cherry and Deeper in Black
to round out a Lionel Pillay and Basil Mannenberg Coetzee trilogy as part
of the label's As-Shams South African jazz archive series
The connection between these three albums is tight as the 1987 release Shrimp
Boats compiled unreleased recordings from both the 1979 session for Plum and
Cherry and the 1980 session for Deeper in Black. These two rare records have
been carefully remastered from their original tapes and are back in print for the
very first time in over 40 years.Shrimp Boats and Plum and Cherry capture the
extraordinary musical chemistry that existed between pianist Lionel Pillay and
tenor saxophonist Basil Coetzee in the late 1970s. The respective album
showpieces Shrimp Boats and Cherry each occupy an entire side of vinyl with
both exquisite musical journeys clocking in at an epic 25 minutes a piece. While
Shrimp Boats was an instrumental reimagining of the popular 1951 song by
American singer Jo Stafford, Cherry drew inspiration from Abdullah Ibrahim at the
behest of producer Rashid Vally, who wanted to emulate the success of the
famous track that had helped launch his independent As-Shams/The Sun record
label in 1974.
Ibrahim's hit Mannenberg had also featured Basil Coetzee and it was this zeitgeist
South African jazz recording that had given rise to his stage name. Capturing the
grace and vitality of working- class township life on the city fringe, Cherry
channels the type of laid-back Cape groove that Abdullah Ibrahim, recording as
Dollar Brand, introduced to South African jazz in the 1970s. On the flip side, Plum
appears to take its own simple chord change in the same direction before
breaking into a chugging 20-minute romp that verges on proto-electronica and on
which Pillay hangs all manner of savage keyboard riffing and experimentation.
The two distinct flavours of Plum and Cherry make for a well-rounded platter with
an iconic cover featuring the work of abstract expressionist painter and AsShams/The Sun collaborator Hargreaves Ntukwana.

Don"t ask Rozi Plain to explain her spellbinding fifth album Prize. Its ten, magical tracks exist as if in another realm, where feelings matter more than meanings, where thoughts have room to roam and where you can live in the moment for as long as you like. Rozi"s signature, free-floating sound was set with her 2015 breakthrough Friend and cemented with 2019"s globally adored What A Boost ("Like slipping between cotton sheets" was Pitchfork"s description). Prize builds on both, but takes its cues from elsewhere. By a stretch, it"s Rozi"s most upbeat and daring album to date. Electroncia, jazz and saxophone treated to sound like strings, synths and harp all play a part. Economy is key - every sound has an impact out of proportion to its size, every texture pays dividends. Rozi"s bewitching vocals are bolder and brighter than ever before. Male and female backing vocals feel like friends dropping by.

Clear Vinyl

Don"t ask Rozi Plain to explain her spellbinding fifth album Prize. Its ten, magical tracks exist as if in another realm, where feelings matter more than meanings, where thoughts have room to roam and where you can live in the moment for as long as you like. Rozi"s signature, free-floating sound was set with her 2015 breakthrough Friend and cemented with 2019"s globally adored What A Boost ("Like slipping between cotton sheets" was Pitchfork"s description). Prize builds on both, but takes its cues from elsewhere. By a stretch, it"s Rozi"s most upbeat and daring album to date. Electroncia, jazz and saxophone treated to sound like strings, synths and harp all play a part. Economy is key - every sound has an impact out of proportion to its size, every texture pays dividends. Rozi"s bewitching vocals are bolder and brighter than ever before. Male and female backing vocals feel like friends dropping by.

Seit Veröffentlichung einer ersten Single via Soundcloud in 2013 zählt sie in Großbritannien zu den meistbeachteten Newcomern: Holly "Låpsley" Fletcher. Ihre so eigenwillig wie traumwandlerisch arrangierte Musik zwischen Pop und schwebender Elektronik wird von den einschlägigen Gazetten sowie Radio-Stars wie BBC-DJ Zane Lowe über alle Maßen gelobt. Eine Berücksichtigung in der international renommierten "BBC Sound-Poll" ist da ganz folgerichtig. Mit ihrer ebenso verführerischen wie zerbrechlichen Stimme versteht es Låpsley auch live, restlos zu verzaubern - sei es auf der Glastonbury-"BBC Introducing"-Bühne, beim Reeperbahnfestival oder in Clubshows. Nach der 2015er-Single "Hurt Me", die sich in den deutschen Airplaycharts gut platzieren konnte, kommt pünktlich zum Jahresbeginn 2016 auch endlich ihr Debütalbum in die Läden. Produktionshilfe für "Long Way Home" leistete Rodaidh McDonald (Adele, The xx, Damon Albarn, Savages). Zwei Songs wurden mit Paul O'Duffy aufgenommen. Die erste Single-Auskopplung, "Love Is Blind", ist ein weiterer Fingerzeig dafür, dass Låpsleys Debüt eine neue Qualität an Tiefe und Wahrhaftigkeit in den elektronischen Pop einbringt.

French pianist Vanessa Wagner collects solo piano studies of graceful minimalism and rare finesse for new album Mirrored.

Quickly following March 2022’s Study of the Invisible album, Vanessa Wagner returns with a new collection of work that paints in many colours. The application of shadow in Mirrored evokes haunting poignancy; the care and delicateness of its negative space leaves room for undulating melodic motifs to ebb and flow; its bold splashes of luminescence are striking and rich. And while the album collates re-interpretations of works by composers as varied as Philip Glass, Nico Muhly, Moondog, Leo Ferré and Camille Pepin, the potency and effect of the collection as a whole reflects only Vanessa Wagner and the extraordinary breadth of her abilities.

Performing solo, exposed to timbre, tempo and clarity, many of the pieces here - such as “Sea Horses” by (Vanessa’s one-time mentor) Moondog or Philip Glass’ “Etude 4” - demand virtuosic abilities as a performer and interpreter. But in Vanessa Wagner’s hands, they are not only made her own, but made mesmeric and magical by the sensitivity of her touch.

With Stvarno Nestvarno, Ena Cosovic delivers a deeply personal and intoxicating take on dub techno. Soaked in a deep knowledge of its roots and painted with the colors of her own past. As a veteran in the scene and a resident DJ at Copenhagens most prolific club Culture Box she has an intuitive feeling for the dance floor.
Stvarno Nestvarno is ”emotional body music - pulsating rhythms, hypnotic beats laced with catchy hooks.

More than one of Jack's many nicknames, Zagg is also a shout out to her
uncanny ability to select an unanticipated word or musical flourish, her
disarming poetic acumen, her ability to zoom in and out at lightning
speed and spin a phrase into a mantra, or the opposite of a mantra
Each song on this record is its own unique little world, keeping a listener
delightfully off-kilter throughout the entire affair.
Opening track 'FMK' operates likes a sonic thesis statement. For a quiet moment,
Jackie's confessing her recurring mother-in-law dreams and initiating a suddendeath round of Fuck Marry Kill. Then on a dime she somersaults into rocket-pop
posture, ready to cut loose and head to the movies with her best boogie- boy:
'Let's go to the movies and dance a little…you can share my Twizzler…Let's go to
the movies, you can dance at the movies!!!' The charging, industrial pop of 'Get
Out' is augmented with punching strings that are both lovely and foreboding. In
the lithe, Rickie Lee Jones-nodding 'Yesterday's Baby,' a giant foot-shaped cloud
looms in the mouth- shaped sky and Jackie gets microscopic — 'Why don't you
just let it burn out/Toss that glass of wine out/Stamp that Camel Light out/Shut
your mouth up shut up your mouth.' After a few more dances, deep diaphragmatic
breaths, and Blood on the Tracks winking ballads, knock-out marathon track 'Keep
Runner' gives it straight to some Wile E. Coyote tomfool who's out getting his butt
blown up again." The energy of the record, I think, comes from finding out Patti
Smith didn't make Horses until she was 29. Extremely influential Wiki experience.
Oh, and Adam Green, my all- time favorite songwriter and artist, painted me
looking like a doctrinal seer peering into a cartoon mirror for the cover.
Pressed on Transparent Yellow color vinyl.

The story of Del cuarto rojo (From The Red Room) began in March 2020, when the Peruvian composer and percussionist Manongo Mujica received a call notifying him that the visual artist Rafael Hastings, his friend of almost half a century, had passed away. Since then, and in the midst of the pandemic, Manongo Mujica began a personal journey searching for sounds, which has resulted in a new set of pieces that evoke the memory of a friendship. Del cuarto rojo (From The Red Room), subtitled Homenaje sonoro escuchando la pintura de Rafael Hastings (Sound Tribute Listening To Rafael Hastings' Paintings), is Manongo Mujica's new album, and it has also motivated the preparation of a new show by the dancer and choreographer Yvonne von Mollendorff, wife of Hastings. The history of this friendship dates back to 1974, when a young Manongo returned to Lima, after ten years living in London, while young Rafael Hastings and Yvonne von Mollendorff settled in Peru after a long period in Europe. Since then, the collaborations between these artists have been continuous, always marked by an experimental impetus. The attitude of listening to images and painting sounds was more than a metaphor and became a code that identified them and a way of working, where the crossing of disciplines set the tone, both in video works and in unusual visual / conceptual scores, works of dance and experimental music, in the context of a creative effervescence that renewed the arts and music in Lima in the 70s. Del cuarto rojo is an album that integrates many of the musical resources developed by Mujica. It is an amalgam that well sums up his own language: from the creation of environments with extended techniques and objects, to experiments in jazz fusion; from the use of field recordings and sound montages to compositions with string arrangements: everything around the hypnotic pulse of percussion and drums, which oscillate between moments of subtlety and explosive improvisation. The album features the participation of outstanding musicians such as Pauchi Sasaki (violin), José Quezada (cello), Terje Evensen (electronic effects), Jean Pierre Magnet (Saxophone), Cristobal, Daniel and Gabriel Mujica (sons of Manongo Mujica, on percussion, string and wind arrangements). It is published in vinyl LP and includes a full color 12-page booklet with a sample of Rafael Hastings' visual art, which also illustrates the album cover.

With its name indicative of the music's boundary-testing diversity and Southwestern inspiration, On the Border finds the Eagles leaving everything on the table and embracing a harder edge that takes the band out of more relaxed territory and establishes it as a group that knows how – and wants – to rock. Glenn Frey, Don Henley, new member Don Felder, and company immediately announce their intent on the defiant album-opening hit "Already Gone" and never look back, crafting a gem of a record that from start to finish is arguably their most consistent and balanced effort.

Limited to 10,000 numbered copies, pressed on dead-quiet MoFi SuperVinyl at RTI, and mastered from the original analogue master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's ultra-hi-fi UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP collector's edition pays tribute to the record's significance and enhances the experience for generations to come. Playing with reference sonics that elevate an effort revered by audiophiles, it provides a lively, dynamic, transparent, and intimate view of a release whose contemporary importance continues to grow. The opportunity to zero in on the particulars of the Eagles' golden harmonies, distinct vocal timbres, and cohesive interplay has never been better.

Visually, the premium packaging and gorgeous presentation of the UD1S On the Border pressing befit its select status. Housed in a deluxe box, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. No expense has been spared. From every angle, this UD1S reissue exists as a curatorial artefact meant to be preserved, touched, and examined. It is made for discerning listeners that prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in the art – and everything involved with the album, from the iconic Navajo cover painting to the meticulous finishes.

And with On the Border, there's plenty to take in and soak up. Declared by famed critic Robert Christgau as "the Eagles' best album," the 1974 set claims a rich backstory. Initially recorded amid tumultuous sessions with producer Glyn Johns in London shortly after the release of the group's sophomore Desperado set, On the Border took a new turn after the band elected to scrap most of the prior work, return to its native California, and team with producer Bill Szymczyk to give the material less of a smooth, polished sheen and more toughness. Szymczyk also afforded the Eagles more input and freedom in the arrangements, and suggested adding another guitarist to play on "Good Day in Hell." Felder got the call, and so won over the Eagles with his skills, he quickly became the fifth member of the band.

While the late-arriving Felder only plays on one other album cut, "Already Gone," his mates more than prove their muster on the remainder of a double-platinum affair that established the Eagles as a force whose range transcended the calmer country-leaning style it perfected on their first two LPs. Primarily written by Jackson Browne and shelved during the Desperado sessions due to its higher-energy nature, the throttle-twisting "James Dean" ricochets with barbed riffs and rebellious swagger. Listen without limits to how Szymczyk's raw production stamps the song with a leather-and-jeans cool befitting its protagonist. Similarly rugged, the slide-guitar-fueled "Good Day in Hell" boasts its own mean streak. And the funk-laced, boot-stomping title track cautions "don't you tell me 'bout your law and order." Throughout On the Border, the Eagles are in no mood to mess around.

Not that the band skirts sentimental territory. On one of the era's finest covers, the Eagles nail the bittersweet feelings and bring high-definition detail to the vivid scenery of Tom Waits' "Ol' '55," a song the group makes its own. The rustic ballad "My Man" serves as a tribute to the recently deceased Gram Parsons, with singer-guitarist Bernie Leadon taking the lead on the microphone as he pours his heart out to his former Flying Burrito Brothers mate. And when it comes to romance, is it possible to top "Best of My Love"? Graced with Henley's honey-dipped vocals, refined wordless group harmonies, brushed drums, and the gentle strum of acoustic guitars, the Johns-produced cut soared to Number One and set the stage for what would soon be the Eagles' reality: global dominance.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior
Instead of utilizing the industry-standard three-step lacquer process, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's new UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss. While three-step processing is designed for optimum yield and efficiency, UD1S is created for the ultimate in sound quality. Just as Mobile Fidelity pioneered the UHQR (Ultra High-Quality Record) with JVC in the 1980s, UD1S again represents another state-of-the-art advance in the record-manufacturing process. MFSL engineers begin with the original master recordings, painstakingly transfer them to DSD 256, and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. These lacquers are used to create a very fragile, pristine UD1S stamper called a "convert." Delicate "converts" are then formed into the actual record stampers, producing a final product that literally and figuratively brings you closer to the music. By skipping the additional steps of pulling another positive and an additional negative, as done in the three-step process used in standard pressings, UD1S produces a final LP with the lowest noise floor possible today. The removal of the additional two steps of generational loss in the plating process reveals tremendous amounts of extra musical detail and dynamics, which are otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. The exclusive nature of these very limited pressings guarantees that every UD1S pressing serves as an immaculate replica of the lacquer sourced directly from the original master recording. Every conceivable aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the most perfect record album available today.