Buscar:performance

Interiors, the title of this new release from Ultramarine, may have a topical resonance for many listeners who have found themselves in involuntary confinement during the past year, but the five tracks on this EP were actually recorded in 2011, and they represent a significant opening out of the duo's evolving musical perspective.

Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond, who had become friends while growing up together in the Essex countryside, formed Ultramarine in 1989. Throughout the 90s their distinctive music, an enticing blending of acoustic with electronic instruments, secured a loyal following and won critical acclaim. Then, throughout the whole of the next decade, Ultramarine lay dormant. Interiors documents their reawakening, with Cooper and Hammond exploring approaches to music-making made possible by recently developed software, designed specifically with live performance in mind.

Four of the five tracks to be heard here were issued digitally last year. But as Paul Hammond has pointed out, "with Ultramarine the whole point is to create an artefact, so the form and the look of the finished product is central." That's an outlook shared passionately by Simon Lewin's label Blackford Hill, and the music now available on this vinyl record is appropriately enhanced with cover art by printmaker Katherine Jones. Her imagery matches the music neatly in its nuanced interplay of solidity and shadow, line and colour, geometric form and organic growth.

Ultramarine returned refreshed in October 2011, bursting back into public awareness with "Find A Way," issued as a 7" single on their own label, Real Soon. Clive Bell, writing in The Wire, extolled its engaging mix of electronic beats with cool vocals and tropical percussion. More generally Bell embraced Ultramarine's thoughtful hybrid electronica as "music you could enjoy at home without feeling your intelligence was being scorned, or that if you were not physically in a club, you were wasting your time."

On Interiors, the roots of that slinky single are laid bare on the purely instrumental track "Find A Way Back." Its two distinct parts stretch out the beats and flaunt those tropical flourishes, shuffling and flexing, vibrant and heady, languid and sultry. This is techno filtered through the fabric of magic realism, an exotically spiced concoction, chilled and ready to be savoured at home.

With the diagrammatic clarity of its punchy thrust and spooling loops "Even When" distils the essence of Cooper and Hammond's way of working with their musical material: layering and shaping, nurturing textures, plaiting rhythms and juggling accents. The cumulative impact is almost sculptural in its physical immediacy and looming presence. In contrast, on "By Return" the duo skew the outcome, projecting a selection of limber figures into dub's auditory hall of mirrors. They are clearly revelling in the reverb, relishing the recoil and decay.

Interiors ultimately opens out onto "Decoy Point (Version)." With its ozone saturated ambience, this closing track evokes marshland and mudflat soundscapes, seabird mews, maritime signals and tidal wash. Cooper and Hammond feel deep attachment to the Essex landscape and, in particular, to the local history and physical features of the Blackwater estuary. Blackford Hill provides an accommodating home for Ultramarine's ongoing project Blackwaterside, which has featured to date a 7" vinyl record plus 28-page booklet, and a photo film with soundtrack. Now, delving into the Ultramarine archive, this welcome incarnation of Interiors offers a fascinating glimpse of the duo finding their bearings, at a vital stage along the way.

2021 repress of Tupperwear’s 2017’s sophomore album, Mokele Mbembe.

Rising from the ashes of legendary underground Tenerife outfit Colectivo Drone are Tupperwear - an organic electronic duo formed by Daniel García (Salétile) and Mladen Kurajica (Gaf) in 1999, Tenerife. Since then, and for the most of 20+ years they have been unleashing electronic waves of sound from the Atlantic island by way of intense live and a series of uncompromising and unclassifiable albums and EPs.

Taking cues from a wide spectrum of electronic music classics, mostly the more pastoral and frantic electronica of Aphex Twin et all circa the late 90’s, whilst at the same time adding their own mischievous and tongue in cheek approach to composition and performance, Tupperwear have for the last 20 years been responsible for some of the most intense live performances the island has seen whilst also taking their anything goes, improvisation first approach all over the world, tis includes virtually all of Europe (east or west), Japan, China, Peru, Colombia, Equador or Mexico, you name it!

In 2017 the local festival and label Keroxen published ‘Mokele Mbembe’, their 2nd LP of twisted electronica which is here repressed to a wider public after the success of their collaboration with São Paulo Underground and Chicago legend Rob Mazurek. (Saturno Mágico, 2021, Keroxen).

Bill Thompson is a sound artist and composer. His work is concerned with various aspects of perception and embodied presence. Using found objects, field recordings, repurposed electronics and digital media, his installations encourage active attention to each moment. He applies this same strategy within his compositions which often include sustained tones, densely layered textures and indeterminate or improvised structures.

Although trained as a guitarist, Thompson has worked primarily with live electronics for 20 years. In 2016, he returned to guitar (by Moog) combined with miscellaneous tabletop devices, found objects, flashing lights and the occasional vibrator.

His work has been released on Ash International, Burning Harpsichord Records, Mikroton Records, State Sanctioned Records, and/Oar, Autumn Leaves, Phonography and several compilations. Notable recent performances and installations include the Venice Biennal (2020/21), Pauline Oliveros Tribute (Café Oto 2018), Intraspect Concert 2018, Edinburgh Fringe (2016-2018), NAWR 2017, Sonic Atlas 2017, Organ Reframed 2016 (Installation), What Remains Festival 2016, Sound Festival 2016.

"Black Earth Tongue" is based on material composed when working on the project Mushroom! with the contemporary dance group In the Making for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2016. Track titles are taken from (mis)translations of Japanese or Latin names for various fungi.

‘The Centre is Everywhere’ is our first album. We created it in rather extraordinary circumstances, at a time when we were all slowly sinking into the banal dystopia of a pandemic-stricken world. Our lives, it felt, had slowed to a crawl. Normally we’re fuelled by our audiences, but touring was off the menu. So, we made this record. For us, it was personal.

In such an uncertain time, we wanted to play music that we loved. We ended up with a set of work written over a 120-year period – weightless and transcendent new music alongside Schoenberg’s anguished fin de siècle storytelling.

Edmund Finnis’ work in particular (the titular ‘The Centre is Everywhere’) is important to us. He’s a friend and a colleague, and it’s been a profound experience for us to live with this piece, to tour it, and to make the first ever recording. Somehow in the writing of it, Edmund seems to have prefigured the lack of certainty that has been one of the defining characteristics of this period. His music spins freely through time and space, wraithlike and beautiful.

Whilst recording both ‘Company’ by Philip Glass and ‘Transfigured Night’ by Arnold Schoenberg, we found ourselves drawn to a pervading sense of wildness and nature. The hypnotic rise and fall of the rhythms and textures in Glass’ quartet (presented here in an arrangement for string orchestra) feel quite separate to industrial, man-made structures and forms. Like Edmund’s work, these short movements feel out of time and cyclical, like eternally repeating tides or moon-phases.

Schoenberg’s masterpiece for string sextet opens on a moonlit forest scene, two lovers venturing through a bare, cold grove. We’ve tried to create a recording that paints the violent contrasts of this piece as vividly as possible, from the claustrophobic confessions that open the work through to the gleaming sound world of the second half. As the piece closes, our wooden, earthbound instruments seem to have been transmuted by the glamour and glow of Schoenberg’s music. We finish amongst the stars.

Headline performance at this summer's BBC Proms at the royal Albert Hall

Bukkha finally lands on LoDubs after over a decade of false starts and missed signals, and it's with a release he seemingly read our minds about wanting: A riddim album featuring some of the best toasting and instrumental performances yet on a release of its kind, rubbing it up with the likes of Dandelion of early Hyperdub renown, Jane Bee (the Ragga Queen of Germany) toasting in unison with fellow Jahtari Alumnus Roger Robinson, and Sarah Tobias, the current keeper of that classic Ska / Rocksteady / Roots Sax tone. Truly a melding pot of Roots-Centric sounds!

DJ Support From: O.B.F, Channel One Soundsystem + more

Fine Place is a new duo comprising Frankie Rose (Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls) and Matthew Hord (Running, Pop. 1280, Brandy). Based in Brooklyn, NYC together they’ve crafted a crystalline full length of nocturnal, electronic pop music that charts a way out the post-global, cyberpunk dystopian environment it was crafted in. Their debut album This New Heaven drenches minimalist song structures in post-industrial washes of sixstring delay and gothic post-punk synths. Presiding over it is the most evocative, emotive vocal performance Frankie
Rose has committed to tape to date.

Following Hord’s relocation from Chicago, the pair wanted to explore new avenues apart from their respective bands or solo projects. “The sound we were going for was an attempt to capture the dystopian feel of New York during a period of desertion by the wealthy. It was produced in a time-frame saturated in both uncertainty and serenity, and the soundscapes we created felt fitting and almost organic as a response to our surroundings. The title also reflects this in an arguably literal, maybe even satirical way.” Sonically, Fine Place references the pioneering mid-to-late 80s pioneers of icy melodrama The Cure and Cocteau Twins, while reflecting both the individuals’; music trajectories thus far. Modular synthesis triggers rhythm boxes and fluttery arps chirp around clanging 808-patterning as Rose’s reverb-laden vocal layering envelops the remaining headroom. The result is massive; a towering, shadowy music that embraces darkness while offering Rose’s bright vocal as chinks of light in the cracks; the production filling the head space of the beholder with preternatural imagery and emotional resonances that are real but not quite defined.

The title song propels forth out of the fog, scintillating with delayed guitar before the reverb-immersed vocal injects the human drama. The chorus constantly teases a big release but holds back creating a taut, dynamic tension. Cover Blind’s slow march makes full use of Rose’s layered vocal sinking and emerging from Hord’s bank of synths. Stand out It’s Your House is pure honey pouring from the speaker on a bank of of arps and near-hymnal vocal layering, a syrupy light offering in the mist. It’s an emotive highlight that only increases as the album progresses; Impressions Of Me is the Lynchian ballad that glides onward into the sunset. The album finishes on a choice re-interpretation of the 1989 track The Party Is Over by Belgian group Adult Fantasies, one of the great over-looked ballads of the era given an almost ecclesiastical makeover by Matthew Hord and Frankie Rose in 2021.

Says Hord: “This record was an incredibly challenging endeavor to make, as I had just come home from a European tour with another music project and wanted to invest into and focus on this collaboration with Frankie. I essentially reimagined how to approach writing basic sequences with the synthesizers I had been rehearsing and performing with for months prior to make something more accessible and pop- like for Frankie to build upon. Frankie is an unsung hero when it comes to mixing, and she was constantly mixing down and processing elements of the tracks to create different atmospheres as we forged forward with every song.”

This New Heaven is an ecstasy of sorts, a half-dream in the border between sleep and daylight.

Northern Soul legend Lorraine Silver recorded Lost Summer Love when she was just 13 years old in August 1965. Whilst not a chart hit on its release, the track did become a massive anthem at the iconic Wigan Casino and was reissued on the Casino Classics label in the late 70s selling in excess of 30,000 copies. However, Lorraine knew nothing of her heroic Northern Soul status until the late 80s.

23 years after the original recording, Lorraine’s husband, agent Barry Collings, was reading Blues & Soul magazine which featured a top ten selection of favourite Northern Soul tracks that included Lost Summer Love. Lorraine called the editor and was flabbergasted to discover it really was her song. Following this, her story was told in a whole
selection of Northern Soul publications. She contacted the original record company PYE and was told that the track had sold some 34,000 copies worldwide and she could claim her royalties!

At around the same time Barry was involved in promoting Northern Soul weekends across the country and Lorraine was able to meet all the DJs who had been playing her record for years.
She was persuaded to get up and do a couple of PA’s of Lost Summer Love much to the delight of the audience who were queueing for autographs.

Since then, Lorraine’s resurrected career has gone from strength to strength, with airplay on BBC Radio 2, performances at Northern Soul events, and an appearance at the Edwin Starr Memorial Concert alongside the likes of Clem Curtis, Geno Washington, and Jaki Graham. In 2011 she was asked to join the line-up of a new touring show ‘The Mod All Star Band’ with artists she herself had idolised in the 60s including Steve Ellis and Chris Farlowe.

Now, at the age of 70, Lorraine continues to perform, record, and release new material in a career that now spans an incredible 57 years. Her brand-new single Fever Raging Out Of Control was produced by legendary Northern Soul DJ Ian Levine who has also produced pop hits for Take That including ‘A Million Love Songs’ and ‘Could It Be Magic’. The final mix of the track was done by Nigel Lowis who has also worked with Burt
Bacharach, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion to name just a few.

And…that original recording of Lost Summer Love, has now become quite the collector’s item, with a recent copy selling on eBay for some £700.00!

For many years now, the comparative of epic has simply been EPICA. Since their formation in 2002 and their quick ascension to stalwarts of symphonic metal noblesse with trailblazing masterpieces “The Divine Conspiracy” (2007) or “Requiem for the Indifferent” (2012), Dutch metal titans only knew one way: Up. Especially with their last three releases “The Quantum Enigma”, “The Holographic Principle” and this years’ “Ωmega”, forming a metaphysical trilogy that’s both alpha and omega of all things symphonic metal, EPICA became rightful monarchs of a genre they themselves helped made become a global phenomenon.

Yet, as every other band, EPICA couldn’t take their latest installment of breathtaking cinematic grandeur to the seven corners of the world as they would have normally done. You know why. Thus, plans have been made and visions fulfilled to produce a once-in-a-lifetime event that couldn’t be further away from yet another streaming show. What EPICA unleashed upon the world on Saturday, June 12th, 2021, was a monument to their music, their career, and their enduring legacy as forebears of a whole genre. Now finally being released on Blu-ray and DVD and various audio formats, “Ωmega Alive” is the EPICA show of your wildest dreams, brought to life by blood, sweat, tears and a healthy dose of megalomania. Think Marvel meeting Cirque de Soleil in a Tim Burton universe.

Celebrating the release of their gargantuan new opus magnum, „Ωmega“, the streaming event saw fans from over a 100 countries flock to the screens to witness a show that has proven to be the defining moment in EPICA‘s concert history. A show that’s nothing short of the band’s most explosive performance to date, brought to life with an enormous production on an ever-evolving stage setting that’s full of visual surprises. For the first time ever, EPICA performed songs like ‘The Skeleton Key’ or the insanely monumental “Kingdom of Heaven Part 3” from “Ωmega”, alongside the band’s most popular songs, rare songs, fan favorites and huge surprises. “What started as a basic idea to do an online release show for “Ωmega” quickly spiraled out of control and became our most ambitious project to date,” creative director and keyboard wizard Coen Janssen says. “As usual, we wanted to push the boundaries, explore the limits, and think outside the box. We found ourselves back in our happy place. This concert film, our ray of light for you in the dark times that we have all been living in.”

For half a year, the band worked tirelessly on a show that’s been setting a new standard for concert films and streaming events. “What we wanted to do was the ultimate EPICA show where we could fulfill every dream we ever had, where there was room for all the ideas, effects and props that are just too big to be taken on tour.” Far from your usual streaming concert, the band developed a trademark feature called a “living backdrop.” Coen explains: “We built another stage right behind our stage where lots of things were going on the whole time. And we meant that very literally,” he laughs. “Every song got something extra, something unique that was fitting its world.”

He can say that again: Elaborate visuals, tailor-made videos and graphic effects, fire, and flames on a Nibelungen level, dancers and actors, artistic performances or fire performers all add to the aura of symbolism and cinematic splendor, setting the stage for a band that can’t be happier to finally bring their new album to life, harmonizing wonderfully and giving their A game for a show to remember. “It was so great finally playing with the band again, actually standing on stage with them. Boy, did we miss this,” Coen emphasizes and adds: “We also built a pretty cool new stage with some fire-breathing snakes and lots of rotating elements. Good thing is, we might also take it on the road when we can finally tour again.”

Until then, “Ωmega Alive” will be a more than efficient remedy against no-concerteritis – for bands, fans, and crew alike who all look back on an extra-long dry spell. Divided into five acts as there are letters in EPICA and “Ωmega”, each part gets a different theme, look, and feel, complemented with references to the history of EPICA, the symbolism of the band and the videos they did. It’s, in short, the best show they ever did, a two-hour spectacle spanning their storied career up to their latest endeavors and graced by Simone Simons’ breathtaking a-cappella rendition of ‘Rivers’ from “Ωmega” complete with choir, easily the most emotional and achingly beautiful moment in their entire career. Frankly, you don’t see this on a normal tour.

What EPICA brought to life here with the help of 75 artists and crew members is a testimony to their burning will to take their band ever higher – even now, in the darkest of times we ever had to endure. Let “Ωmega Alive” be your ray of light as it was theirs, a journey into the heart, body and soul of one of the most passionate and visionary metal bands alive today.

Nach dem immensen Erfolg des ersten Live Albums von CAN (Live in Stuttgart 1975) aus dem Mai 2021 wird die Reihe nun am 3. Dezember 2021 fortgesetzt mit der Veröffentlichung von CAN Live in Brighton 1975 als schicke 3LP auf goldfarbenem Vinyl und als Doppel-CD jeweils im Klappcover mit umfangreichem Booklet.

Can Live in Brighton 1975 ist ein neuer Einblick in CANs einzigartige Live-Performance und auf dieser speziellen Veröffentlichung, die sich über sieben Abschnitte erstreckt, werden die Hörer eingeladen, sich ihrer interstellaren Reise anzuschließen: von einem seltenen und eindrucksvollen Gesangseinlage von Michael Karoli auf Brighton 75 Drei bis hin zu Jaki Liebezeits unglaublichem Drum-Lead, der durch einen Nebel von Publikumslärm auftaucht, um auf Brighton 75 Vier im Mittelpunkt zu stehen, bevor der letzte Track uns in einem unglaublichen Vitamin C - Jam entführt. Die Sleeve Notes für die Veröffentlichung wurden von Can-Biograf, Autor und Herausgeber Rob Young und dem britischen Journalisten Kris Needs geschrieben. Letzterer war zwischen 1973-1977 an mehreren Live-Can-Shows im Friars Club in Aylesbury beteiligt und seine Beschreibung einer dieser Auftritte lautet: 'Like a delirious astral roller coaster, launch-pad a distant speck within minutes as fleeting melodies, vocal lines or rhythms… loomed like iridescent ghosts then evaporated as the spirit took them somewhere else.'
Die Can Live-Serie bündelt das Beste aus den Bootlegger-Aufnahmen. Unter der Aufsicht von Gründungsmitglied Irmin Schmidt und Produzent / Ingenieur Rene Tinner wurden sie mit der Technologie des 21. Jahrhunderts verfeinert, um diese wichtigen historischen Dokumente in den bestmöglichen Qualitätsversionen zu bringen. In den späten 60er Jahren gegründet und etwas mehr als ein Jahrzehnt später aufgelöst, hat CANs beispiellose und kühne Verbindung von hypnotischen Grooves und avantgardistischen Instrumentaltexturen sie zu einer der wichtigsten und innovativsten Bands aller Zeiten gemacht, und diese Alben zeigen eine völlig andere Perspektive der Band. Sie hören vielleicht vertraute Themen, Riffs und Motive, die durch diese Jams auftauchen und plätschern, aber sie sind oft flüchtig erkannte Gesichter in einer wirbelnden Menge. An anderen Stellen werden Sie Musik hören, die es nicht in den offiziellen Albumkanon geschafft hat. In diesen Aufnahmen können Can in noch extremere Bereiche gehen als mit ihrer Studioarbeit: von sanftem Ambient-Drift-Rock bis zu den White-Dwarf-Sonic-Meltdown-Momenten, die sie "Godzillas" nannten. Und selbst wenn sie sich anpassen und dem Rhythmus von Minute zu Minute nachjagen, können Sie die außergewöhnliche musikalische Telepathie hören, die ihre Mitglieder teilten.

American singer songwriter and LGBT Icon LP,
who has more than two billion streams to their
name and a devout global fan following, releases
their highly anticipated sixth album, ‘Churches’, via
PIAS Recordings.
 A 15-song track listing of lush, captivating
creativity, described by LP as such: “This album
feels like a friend. A friend who took me through
one of the most trying times in human history and
a fairly trying time in my own personal history. So
many real stories and realizations that I feel like I
was able to share here.”
 With a run of UK tour dates planned, plus a
performance at London’s Hammersmith Apollo on
25th of January 2022, LP is ready to shake up the
UK with this new record.
 ‘Churches’ features the singles ‘Angels’, ‘Goodbye’
and ‘One Last Time’.
 ‘Churches’ was executive produced by Mike Del
Rio (Kylie Minogue, X Ambassadors, Skylar Grey).

“One of the greatest live bands of their generation”
- Rolling Stone
 My Morning Jacket have become one of the most
vital and reliably thrilling forces in American rock
and roll.
 On ‘Live 2015’, the band’s first live album in 15
years, My Morning Jacket showcase 16 explosive
performances recorded during 2015’s ‘The
Waterfall’ Tour.
 Track list includes fan favourites ‘Victory Dance’,
‘Circuital’, ‘Dondante’, ‘Touch Me I'm Going To
Scream Pt. 2’ and more
White vinyl triple LP in gatefold jacket.

Bumps Per Minute is a full-throttle reinvention of the traditional fairground dodgems, from Mercury Award-shortlisted composer, producer and musician Anna Meredith. The music is part of the DODGE installation, which can be experienced until 22nd August at Somerset House.

For Bumps Per Minute, Meredith has collaborated with BAFTA-winning sound artist Nick Ryan to design a bespoke tracking technology so that every thump, bump and swerve of the 18 dodgems around the track can trigger a separate composition. This results in a kind of ultimate shuffle where high octane music and ideas compete for airtime and each performance is unique. The installation will occur approximately every hour at DODGE through the day/evening.

The idea for Bumps Per Minute came about when the composer was thinking about what might be a more pandemic friendly replacement for the ice rink at Somerset House where she has her studio. The idea grew from there and now this summer DODGE is taking over the main courtyard at Somerset House, featuring a full smorgasbord of Yinka Ilori designs, DJs, food, drink and of course, dodgem rides.

Today, Meredith announces that she will be releasing a special extended cut of her material via Moshi Moshi out on the 15th July 2021. Bumps Per Minute: 18 Studies for Dodgems will feature full-length individual musical identities of all 18 dodgems – each one a bold and distinct musical track in its own right as well an intro and outro track (voiced by comedian Rob Broderick).

The key to both the dodgems themselves and the release is a user ‘driven’ triggering and shuffling of the material. Meredith encourages the listener to ‘take the driving seat’ and jump from one track to another, mirroring the real dodgem ride, shuffling and curating their own listening experience via the virtual interactive dodgems page or their preferred listening platform.

Bumps Per Minute: 18 Studies for Dodgems explodes out of the starting gate with Meredith’s uncategorisable sound and signature energy, combining fairground wildness with a healthy dose of the nostalgic electronics of old school gaming.

 A fascinating thing about jazz is what can arise through force of
circumstance rather than the result of planning. The drummer
scheduled to appear in a trio with Jan Lundgren at the Ystad
Sweden Jazz Festival had to cancel because of the pandemic,
which forced Lundgren to rethink the gig. The pianist - who is
also artistic director of the festival - quickly realised that things
could also work without a drummer. Serendipitously, the name
of Emile Parisien came to his mind... and a new trio was born.
The three musicians had never played together in this
configuration before; so, after a single day of rehearsals, the
band took to the festival’s main stage on 1 August 2020.
 Jan Lundgren is one of those pioneers who gave European jazz
its distinct identity and freed it from American jazz. The Ystadbased pianist combines virtuosity, an acute sense of tonal
colour, awareness of form from European classical music and
his own folk music tradition. For him, to make music where
many different genres coalesce is both inevitable and natural.
 Lars Danielsson’s bass playing is unmistakably melodic and
lyrical. He is one of just a handful of bassists who stand out
both as creative composers and as distinguished band leaders.
Technical brilliance, outstanding musical imagination and an
almost telepathic understanding of his fellow musicians - his
presence is ideal in this trio.
 Soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien found his way into this
band practically out of nowhere. The vivacious Frenchman lives
jazz with body and soul and his honesty and authenticity ring
true in every note he plays. Parisien is a visionary of jazz,
aware of its legacy but always looking forward in an innovative
way.
 This unique performance leaves the listener begging for more.
Having started this new venture so auspiciously, Jan, Lars and
Emile are surely going to want to aim even higher.
 Recorded live in concert by Mattias Dalin (Eurosound AB) at
Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival, August 1, 2020. Mixed by Bo
Savik, Jan Lundgren and Lars Danielsson at Tia Dia Studios,
Mölnlycke, Sweden. Mastered by Bo Savik.

A new expanded reissue of the sold out & extremely limited LP from 2017. Concert recordings spanning the 1950s to the 1980s from opera singer Mary Mazzacane, the mother of guitarist Loren Connors.

“These recordings, no matter how rough the sound quality, capture the essence of the art of bel canto soprano Mary Mazzacane. Born in an Italian American neighborhood (Fairhaven) near Yale, she was one of the first women to graduate from the Yale School of Music. Ms. Mazzacane, who was active on the opera stage from 1947 through the 1970’s, playing leading roles in Madame Butterfly, Tosca, Amahl and the Night Visitors and other works, left no commercial recordings. All we have is a shoebox full of muddy practice sessions and live performance recordings on barely playable cassette tapes, along with a few radio broadcast acetates… Throughout these pieces, her voice has a unique inner warmth and a beautifully clear tone, the closest I know to the pure clarity of bells.” - Loren Connors

Second edition of 250 copies, including 12″x12″ double sided insert of program notes and photos.

A full length collaboration from DUANE PITRE and ELEH. PITRELEH use high resolution analog and digital tools to create music utilizing natural vibrations and harmonics as rhythm and melody. Inspiration is drawn directly from vibrational waves (sound, gravity, water). The electronics, of which both pieces are constructed, are tuned using pure intonation which utilizes the prime numbers: 1-3-5-7. The debut live performance of Pitreleh was recently presented at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn as well as the Museum Of Contemporary Art in Cleveland.

Before relocating to NYC in 2020, Pontchartrain invited colleague Javonntte over to record several songs together at Pontch’s east-side Detroit studio.

The collaboration yielded several songs that blend Pontch’s studio prowess and dramatic sound, with Javonntte’s wide ranging performance skill, and soulful style. “Cirrus”, as the name suggests, is a deeper cloudy synth-heavy house track, previously selected by DJ Holographic for release on Carl Craig’s Detroit Love vol 6 compilation, but get’s an updated mix & master, as well as a seriously heavy remix by fellow motor city deep house honcho, Delano Smith.

“Keep Dancing” features additional vocals by Javonntte in a hard hitting and highly playable “Detroit” version, as well as a completely different version re-mixed and produced in Pontch’s Harlem studio.

Ethan Gold's new double a-side 7'' single from the film The Song Of Sway Lake is a limited edition talisman from a film about characters fixated with the past, and searching for old records in a grand lake house in the Adirondack Park.

The inimitable John Grant sings the haunting, quiet moonlight Lost Record Version, arranged to sound like a small group of musicians in 1939 playing after midnight in a barn. His range as a vocalist brings a pathos and gravity that is timeless, utterly convincing as a 30s performance, filled with emotion and longing.

English sisters trio The Staves sing the brassy daylight Big Band version, arranged as if it were a pop hit of 1947, all brash tight three-part harmonies, reflecting the razzle dazzle arrogance and exhuberance of post-War America. Swing your honey around the dance floor!

Composed & Produced by Ethan Gold. Arrangements by Gina Leishman. Mixed by Flood.

The interdisciplinary collective and record label Liber Null proudly presents its newborn vinyl series, kicking off with two releases “ Vol I & II”, taking eight of the best cuts from it’s Seven Years Anniversary compilation, “Delirium”. The releases showcase unique music from a diverse selection of artists and friends, including tracks from Phase Fatale, Alessandro Adriani, An-i + Unhuman, Zanias, Celldöd and SSSS.

Loyal to the concept of Ritual Magick and with a deeply ideological approach towards darkness and chaos in performance art, the two records complete a cutting-edge journey through mutant soundscapes and electronic body-music, made by the finest producers.

Lailah Reich’s vocal performance is the definition of fineness in execution. Sultry and soulful runs that make your toes curl juxtaposed against pocket production molded around her performance. Lailah’s instrument is subtle yet yearning for the opportunity to illustrate her force in sublime and subtle fashion. It is an honor and privilege to continue the Clairaudience tradition of showcasing the virtuosity of vocal instrumentalists In a nutshell we love what Lailah Reich brings to the mic. Anthony’s discovery of this ingenue remixing her on a project has grown to Lailah being one of his favorite vocalist to record. We Are One is an unconventional and minimalistic approach with haunting chords layered over pocket synth bass creating an abstract and artsy yet groove driven undertone. Certified Sole Therapy from Clairaudience.

A new LP collection of incredible performances by the virtuosa of theremin, Clara Rockmore, accompanied by her sister Nadia Reisenberg on piano.

160 gram vinyl comes in old school tip-on jacket and includes an 8-page full-size booklet of interviews, photos, and insights with Clara Rockmore, Nadia Reisenberg, Robert Moog, and more.

Recorded in 1975 and never before released on vinyl, this compendium features stellar performances of compositions by Bach, Chopin, Schubert, Gershwin and more, and even features a cello ensemble on a few songs!

Some of the finest examples of Clara Rockmore’s unrivaled art - rich with bittersweet moments of air, electricity, human grace and emotional composition all merging into some new thing that is transcendent of time.

Hungry Shells, the seventeenth entry in RVNG Intl.’s intergenerational collaborations series FRKWYS, brings together vocalist, multi- instrumentalist, and sound artist Ka Baird with avant-garde composer and radical performance art pioneer Pekka Airaksinen. Recorded six months before Pekka’s passing, Hungry Shells alchemizes separate but similar spiritualistic practices, canvassing Baird’s voice and synthesizer rituals and Airaksinen’s lysergic sound explorations into startling, surreal landscapes.

Pekka Airaksinen, who left this realm for another in May 2019, is recognized as a pioneering composer both in and outside his native Finland’s fringe art community. A founding member of the late 60s art and music collective The Sperm, Airaksinen discovered Buddhism in the early 1970s, eventually establishing a number of meditation centers around Finland. Throughout his career Airaksinen embraced a degree of obscurity and anonymity that was inspired by his Buddhist learnings, and afforded him complete creative freedom. As he explained, “The less success you have, the more time there is to develop things.”

Ka Baird, who found her musical footing in Chicago playing in Spires That In The Sunset Rise before moving to New York to pursue her solo career, has developed a practice based in forms of active and engaged embodiment. Inspired by Charlemagne Palestine’s Body Music, Baird’s performances explore physical extremes as a catalyst for charged immediacy and presence. “I’m interested in the

places between precision and something unrestrained,” she told The Wire in 2019. Drawing on minimalism’s ecstatic deployment of duration and endurance, her recordings explore the outer limit sounds of her voice and its synthesis with developing music technology.

Airaksinen and Baird convened in Utrecht in the fall of 2018 to write, rehearse, and record Hungry Shells ahead of a performance at the Dutch festival institution Le Guess Who? Sessions took place between contemplative walks along the city’s medieval canals, and, for Airaksinen, lengthy meditations in his hotel room. Early on in the trip, Pekka shared ODO with Ka, a collection of Buddhist parables that he divinely received while meditating. After translating several of these texts from Finnish to English the duo used them as text for the album, and a sort of psychic foundation.

Time fortifies the bonds between us. Since emerging in 2018, Light The Torch have grown stronger in lockstep together as a band and as friends. Through this growth, the Los Angeles, CA trio—Howard Jones vocals, Francesco Artusato [guitar], and Ryan Wombacher [bass]—only enhanced every aspect of their signature sound. Upheld by head-spinning seven-string virtuosity, yet also anchored to skyscraping melodies, the group crafted twelve no-nonsense and no-holds-barred metallic anthems on their 2021 second full-length album, You Will Be The Death of Me [Nuclear Blast].
“The past few years have helped me to become much more personal in my writing,” explains Howard. “Even though I’m kind of a loner, this band became real family. My experiences with Ryan and Fran inside and outside of the band truly bonded us. I think it shows in this album, it truly represents who we are as a group.”

“Every second on this record was thought-out,” adds Fran. “Howard’s performance gives me chills, because it feels so alive. There’s so much emotion in it. I know the guy very well at this point, and our friendship is a big part of Light The Torch.”That friendship cemented over the course of the past three years. The group shot out of the gate as a contender on their full-length debut, Revival. It bowed at #4 on the Billboard US Independent Albums Chart and at #10 on the Hard Rock Albums Chart in addition to receiving acclaim from Revolver, Outburn, and many more. “Calm Before the Storm” racked up a staggering 14.5 million Spotify streams, while “The Safety of Disbelief” remains one of SiriusXM Octane’s all-time most requested songs. They also crisscrossed North America and Europe on tour with the likes of Trivium, Avatar, In Flames, Ice Nine Kills, Killswitch Engage and August Burns Red to name a few.

In late 2019, an idea for the title track “Death of Me” kickstarted the creative process. The guys returned to Sparrow Sound in Glendale, CA to once again work with the production team of Josh Gilbert and Joseph McQueen [Bullet for My Valentine, As I Lay Dying, Suicide Silence].This time around, they also welcomed Whitechapel’s Alex Rudinger on drums. “He’s incredible,” says Fran. “He was exactly what we needed.”Now, they kick down the door for You Will Be The Death of Me with the single “Wilting In The Light.” Howard’s instantly recognizable vocals soar over a sweeping riff and rolling beat before culminating on a massive luminous hook, “Over and over again we struggle. We’re wilting in the light, and we stumble in the dark.”“It has a different vibe and a very interesting riff,” observes Howard. “I love it when listeners can take what they want from a song. This was a special one for us.”

“More Than Dreaming” opens up the record with gut-punching guitar and another knockout hook. Elsewhere, airy keys wrap around chugging distortion on the title track “Death Of Me.” Regarding the latter, the frontman goes on, “Most people have some source of grief in their lives. It’s relatable, and it was appropriate for the song.”After the melodic melancholia of “Come Back To The Quicksand,” Light The Torch recharge the 1987 Terence Trent D’Arby classic “Sign Your Name” as the record’s climax. Shimmering keys bleed into an overpowering verse before it snaps into the immortal chorus beefed up with thick distortion. “Howard stayed at my house with me and my wife for the entire recording of the album,” recalls Fran. “I like to cook, and one night during the first week of pre-production I made everyone dinner. A compilation with ‘Sign Your Name’ started playing, and I thought, ‘I can do a version that would sound awesome!’ Howard knew and loved the song too. For as crazy as it sounded, it worked so well.”
In the end, the bond between Light The Torch burns brighter than ever in the music as they deliver a definitive statement with You Will Be The Death Of Me.

“We wanted to make a fully listenable and fun album that doesn’t let up,” Howard leaves off. “At the same time, we’re showing some heart, passion, and connection. It’s what we’ve always intended to do with this band.”

• Horace Andy is a legendary Jamaican roots reggae singer-songwriter, known for his
distinctive vocal style, hit songs such as ‘Skylarking’, and his acclaimed collaborations with
Massive Attack.
• ‘The King Tubby Tapes’ was first issued on Jet Star Records’ ‘Charm’ imprint. The album
contains selections from Horace Andy’s 1979 album ‘Pure Ranking’ and a second LP of dub
remixes. Includes performances by legendary reggae session musicians such as Robbie
Shakespeare, Carlton “Santa” Davis, Tony Chin and Bernard “Touter” Harvey.
• Demon Records is proud to present the first vinyl reissue of ‘The King Tubby Tapes’, pressed
on 140g black vinyl.

BMG is proud to present a brand-new reissue of Little Girl Blue, which has been justifiably celebrated as a timeless classic. In her essay written specifically for this release, Daphne A. Brooks, author of such acclaimed books as Liner Notes for the Revolution, puts it best when she asserts that Little Girl Blue presents “an astonishingly daring, dazzlingly confident, endlessly adventurous artist with a deep well of formidable instrumentality up her sleeve as well as a wide and robust, rich and varied knowledge of jazz, blues, American songbook, folk and spiritual standards and aesthetics.”

Little Girl Blue’s multi-phased release begins on June 1 with a digital release (on high-definition and standard audio) that coincides with African-American Music Appreciation Month, while August 13 is the date Little Girl Blue comes out globally on “clear blue” 180-gram vinyl, 180-gram black vinyl and CD. Additionally, this reissue boasts a fresh stereo mix done by four-time Grammy winner Michael Graves as well as a vinyl remastering by the renowned Kevin Gray.

Little Girl Blue features two of Simone’s most well-known tracks. Her sensational rendition of “I Love You, Porgy” was a big hit upon release, and was her only song to crack Billboard’s Top 20. Her jaunty performance of “My Baby Just Cares for Me” brought Simone renewed public interest after it was used in a popular 1987 Chanel No. 5 TV commercial.

The Berliners present an unusual live album that is a testimony of strange times: their Phanerozoic concept album performed live in its entirety at a time when no shows were happening anywhere in the world. 3 LPs / 2 CDs plus DVD and access to HD video download and streaming. Phanerozoic I was streamed live from Pier 2, a big hall in the port of Bremen, on March 25, 2021. Phanerozoic II, recorded at "Die Mühle" studio, aired on April 16, 2021 as part of the digital edition of Roadburn Festival, this year abtly named Roadburn Redux. Both shows couldn't have been more different: where the first part boasts with a pompous, mesmerizing lighting production on a big stage, the 2nd part is quite the opposite: intimate, almost cosy, focused on musicianship rather than performance. A stripped down setup in a dark barn, with moody, minimal but not any less efficient lighting. "We wanted to give people 2 totally different experiences", says band leader Robin Staps. "In Bremen, we had the chance to record a proper Ocean live show, the way people know us. We played facing towards the front of the stage, to an invisible crowd, essentially to a huge empty room_ but we knew people were watching, even if we didn't see them. There was the same rush of adrenaline right before going on stage as you get before going on at any big open air festival_ maybe with a little extra anxiety added, because knowing that so many people are watching you without being able to see them yourself was super weird." This release is yet another master class of record packaging from Norwegian artist and long term friend and collaborator, Martin Kvamme: the trifold is made from thick, rough and incredibly fibrous cardboard, adorned with a filigrane copper foil embossing of a bitmapped live fotography from the Bremen event. It contains 3 vinyl records in printed inner sleeves or 2 CDs, plus a DVD and a concert ticket with a streaming and HD video download link to both concerts.

By now you’re probably familiar with our wildly popular Brown Acid series of rare, lost and unreleased proto-metal and stoner rock singles from the 60s-70s. In the endless pursuit of those glorious gems, we often uncover equally brilliant rarities from the late-70s to late-80s Golden Age of Heavy Metal that also just must be heard, but they don’t fit the series’ aesthetic. Scrap Metal, Volume 1 collects some of the greatest unknown and lost Heavy Metal tracks, long buried beneath the avalanche of the era’s classic output.
We all know the old adage that history is told by the winners. But sometimes the losers tell the best stories. And while none of these bands found fame and fortune, this artifact and the volumes to come are testament to the enduring power of heavy music. You can hear the blood, sweat and beers that went into each of these singles. The recordings may be low budget, but the inspiration and talent is immutable. Not only are the amps turned up to 11, the boyish sexual innuendo is cranked to 69. You can hear the convergence of influences — NWOBHM, thrash, glam metal, doom, etc — colliding at once as the era birthed a wellspring of subgenres.
Many of these singles are self-released and were thus limited to a small run of copies. Those that remain are hoarded by collectors and sold for exorbitant amounts. We’ve collected the best of the best for you here. As with Brown Acid, all of these tracks are licensed legitimately and the artists all get paid. Because it’s the right thing to do.
LINER NOTES:
Rapid Tears launch this series with the perfect christening. The Toronto, ON quintet’s 1981 single “Headbang” is such the pinnacle of heavy metal madness that it almost sounds like a spoof. There’s also enough of the rapid-fire sputum that inspired Metallica to bang the head that doesn’t, as such, engage in said practice, to be found on the band’s sole full length Honestly. But “Headbang” is a straightforward glammy anthem for the ages.
Air Raid’s “69 In A 55” may be lyrically so sophomoric that it’s actually pretty clever, but this 1983 Bay Area power metal single is loaded with sleek Judas Priest riffs and interwoven melodies that are downright sublime. The band’s sole release, the 2-song Rock Force 7” features a curious band photo in which 3 band members — dolled up in Crüe makeup and leather — are sexually menacing the lead singer/guitarist tied to a bed. Another low budget highlight is when singer/guitarist Tommy “Thrasher” Merry imitates a delay effect on his vocals as he sings, “tonight!...tonight...night.”
Hades’ “Girls Will Be Girls” has a real demo cassette feel to its vastly uneven mix, but the energy to the performance makes this an undeniable keeper. The long running Paramus, NJ quintet’s 1982 2- song debut 7” titled Deliver Us From Evil features this blistering thrasher dominated by shimmering leads and confident vocals that show why the band went on to near-fame on Metal Blade Records.
Resless don’t need no T to prove that they’ve got “The Power” with this 1984 driving mid-tempo rocker in the vein of Mötley Crüe and Ratt. The River Vale, NJ quartet’s tight crunch wails all over Bon Jovi posers but it’s the band’s unique and subtle deployment of background vocals that gives this rager its staying power.
Pittsburgh, the Steel City, is home to Don Cappa, a band that pays tribute to the burgh, the metal, and the awesomeness of both with “Steel City Metal.” Their lone single, issued in 1987 with only 300 copies released, sounds like the work of some serious steel driving men, with a drummer who might’ve forgotten to wear a hard hat one too many times on the construction site.
The Beast has more of a punk feel to their aggressive “Enemy Ace” track from the 4-song Power Metal EP from 1983 — something like Dr. Know meets D.O.A. But their look, artwork and lyrics all prove that Heavy Metal is where their hearts lie. And this hook filled monster delivers repeated lines like, “I command them all in my lofty realm,” with commendable conviction.
Dead Silence from Denver, Colorado, debuting in 1984 is not to be confused with Dead Silence from Denver, Colorado, who also debuted in 1984. The former a workman’s hard rock bar band, the latter a political peace punk band and neither knowing of the other’s existence throughout their tenure. The pre-internet days were a marvel, indeed.This Dead Silence spits out a slick, Nugent tinged rocker called “Can’t Stop” about life on the road.
The Danger Zone is, by all accounts, not the place to be. And, Hazardous Waste of Boston, MA saw fit to add their two cents on the matter with this 1986 single that combines Van Halen’s flashy musicianship with NWOBHM aggression that sounds so awesome it teeters on itself entering the “Danger Zone.”
Czar’s heavy, doomy “Iron Curtain” single from 1982 hearkens to the sleazy sounds of Saint Vitus and Pentagram with its cranked up DOD Distortion pedal in a Peavey combo amp guitar tone and meaty, barking vocals. The upstate NY quintet only issued this 2-song single, but its driving rhythm, nosedive whammy-bar guitar solos and comparatively mature Cold War subject matter show they had real potential.
Not much is known about Real Steel’s majestic “Viking Queen” from 1987, other than it rocks hard and the 7” 45 sells for upwards of a grand on the collectors market. The Flint, Michigan band recorded at the home studio of local radio personality Bill Lamb, who primarily released Christian Gospel recordings. So, perhaps the band was struck down by a bolt of lightning shortly after this rare single’s release. Whatever the case may be, it’s a must have for fans of classic metal mayhem.

Composer, electronic music innovator, and Pere Ubu's original synthesist Allen Ravenstine returns to Waveshaper Media with the diptych LP (comprised of 1 EP per side) Nautilus / Rue De Poisson Noir, the final two parts in Raventine’s Tyranny of Fiction series. Waveshaper Media first came into contact with Ravenstine when we interviewed him in 2012 for our modular synthesizer documentary I Dream Of Wires.

Nautilus / Rue De Poisson Noir brings together 21 of the prodigious composer’s recent lyrical and abstract compositions collectively comprised of the sounds of analogue and digital synthesizers, alongside traditional acoustic instruments. The first 10 recordings, subtitled Nautilus, are found on Side A of this LP while the second 11, Rue Du Poisson Noir, comprise Side B.

Using a singular blend of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, each track on Nautilus, weaves its own wayward travelogue amidst stray bits of audio verité and wafting musical fragrances—by turns tropical and foreboding. Rue De Poisson Noir takes cues from its fragmentary companion both in palette and approach, slithering between cinematic intrigue, off-brand jazz, avant-garde mischief, and fried electro without ever batting an eye. Together they form a beguiling collection of hyperrealist miniatures that remains strange, restless, inquisitive and — most of all — evocative throughout.

For those in the know, Allen Ravenstine has been one of the most creative synthesizer players of the past forty-plus years. Ravenstine started out in the mid-1970s experimenting in his Cleveland apartment with an analogue EML 200 synthesizer, eventually creating a piece in 1975 that became known as Terminal Drive. While he had no intention of releasing his compositions, word got out about the kind of sounds he was experimenting with, which led to an invitation to join pioneering “avant garage” group Pere Ubu for the recording of the group’s first 45, “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.” He soon joined Pere Ubu full-time, bringing to the band’s sound unpredictable textures, effects, bleeps, squalls, pulsating washes of sound—whatever he felt could enhance the soundscape of the band’s performances and recordings.

By the early 1990s, Ravenstine had grown sick of the road, band infighting and the music industry in general. Deciding a change was needed, he opted to forego music altogether, making his living as an airplane pilot. His music career remained in limbo until 2012, when an interview for the I Dream Of Wires documentary, alongside Robert Wheeler who had succeeded him as Pere Ubu’s synthesist, turned into a recording session for the duo, leading to a series of collaborative releases. As well as having his 1975 Terminal Drive recordings released to great acclaim in 2017, Ravenstine has been prolific in recent years, with Nautilus / Rue De Poisson Noir now marking his 4th solo full-length.

If The Fall truly is a cult band, then Slates both benefits from and reinforces such shrouded obsessions. In presenting these six particular songs as a 10-inch EP, the inherent and attractive difficulty of The Fall's sound is made physical, framing the urgency of their singles from this period (notably How I Wrote 'Elastic Man' and Lie Dream of a Casino Soul) alongside lengthy rumblings normally restricted to long players.

The tumbling and phased "Middle Mass" begins on an incredible high note, segueing into the snake-charm hypnotism of "An Older Lover Etc." "Slates, Slags, Etc." is built on stretched VU-inspired riffing, complete with ace feedback bleed that doubtlessly went on long after fade-out. Ultimately, it's the piercing chimes of guitar and marching drum grind of "Prole Art Threat" that elevates Slates beyond oddity. Truly one of Mark E. Smith's finest, busiest and most enigmatic performances, equally matched by a band at the peak of their powers.

Superior Viaduct's edition is the first time that Slates has been available on vinyl since its initial release in 1981. Liner notes by Brian Turner.

Recorded in May 2008, ‘Live at the Troubadour’ sees Daryl Hall and John Oates return to the legendary Los Angeles venue they first played as a support act in the 70s. Reissued on double CD and released for the first time on triple LP, the set sees the duo delve into their extensive back catalogue, delighting fans with nearly 2 hours of hits reimagined in a stripped back format, laying bare the beauty of their classic songwriting and mastery of their craft as live performers. The recording includes incredible live performances of ‘Maneater’, ‘Out of Touch’, ‘You Make My Dream’ and many more.














[n] e2. I Can't Go for That (No Can Do) [Live at The Troubadour]

On January 27th, 1990, Helmet entered the stage of New York’s equally famous and infamous CBGB’s. What followed was an explosive live show, set during the earliest days of the band’s career. Getting ready to release their debut album “Strap It On” in March that year, Helmet propelled themselves through a staccato-heavy set of tracks that would soon earn them worldwide acclaim in the Punk scene. The first side of this brand-new live album features the CBGB’s set for the first time ever on vinyl and CD, while the second half contains an equally energetic performance, recorded in 1993 at the Big Day Out Festival in Melbourne, Australia. With tracks such as ‘Ironhead’, ‘Better’ and ‘In the Meantime’, the setlist strikes a perfect balance between the band’s hits and hidden gems from their early years. “Live and Rare” is available on 1LP 180g Vinyl as well as a CD Digipak Edition for the first time ever via earMUSIC, to be released worldwide on November 26th, 2021.

Los Romeros transport the listener to the Andalusian region of Spain for an album of Flamenco improvisations and songs. Noted Mexican singer/actress Maria Victoria provides vocals. Recorded at United Recording Studio, Hollywood, December 27–30, 1966. Prior releases have included heavy-handed dynamics processing and added echo. For this issue, the first-generation master tapes are presented as they were recorded, transporting the listener into the room and into a true Flamenco performance by the Royal Family of Spanish Guitar, and Ms. Victoria.

GENRE: Modern Classical, Experimental, Ambient Metal. RIYL: György Ligeti, Sarah Davachi, Stars Of The Lid. 180g LP pressed at Optimal, 350gsm jacket, inner & DL card. Jessica Moss Also Known For Her Tenure In Thee Silver Mt. Zion (2002-2015), Black Ox Orkestar (2002-2007), Recordings By Vic Chesnutt, Carla Bozulich, Arcade Fire, Basia Bulat, Roy Montgomery, Sarah Davachi, Big Brave & More. A phosphene is “the phenomenon of seeing light without light entering the eye.” The title of the heart-rending and resolute new album by composer/violinist Jessica Moss could not be better chosen. Moss is by now a seasoned practitioner of immersive isolation music; across three previously acclaimed solo records of minimal and maximal post-classicism, her acoustic, amplified, and electronically-shifted violin is the raw material for deeply expressive, palpably haunted, wholly committed compositions. But Phosphenes inscribes fleeting halos of refracted ghostly light out of a prevailing darkness with especially plangent determination and intensity. This is the most overtly searching, mournful and inexorable music Moss has made to date. The pieces on Phosphenes exquisitely navigate consonance and dissonance, building patiently from single notes to multiple voicings, harmonic stacks and clusters. These compositions channel themselves like slow-moving water in a dark cave, finding small eddies and catching glints of luminescence from within. Signal processing is kept to a minimum in the three-movement “Contemplation” suite on Side One, where Moss deploys amplification chiefly in the service of activating overtones and pitch-shifts, thickening and widening the sonics, carving out her unique timbral space. Based on a four-note sequence that sets whole tones against one another, “Contemplation” is a bona fide requiem that finds Moss at her most instrumentally naturalistic, measured, and modern. Side Two unfolds in a more foreboding vein: “Let Down” is marked by cavernous octave-dropped arco and pizzicato, providing a gothically-inflected substratum upon which hauntingly wordless vocal invocations and cumulative gyres of violin melody unfurl. “Distortion Harbour” grinds with noisier grit and a more harrowing complexion, highlighting Moss’s ambient-metal sensibility and her distinctive palette of industrial-inflected power electronics a reminder of why she’s also been a go-to player on albums by the likes of Big Brave, Oiseaux-Tempête and Zu in recent years. These two songs also feature upright bass from old friend and former bandmate Thierry Amar (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Black Ox Orkestar). Album closer “Memorizing & Forgetting” is inarguably the most tender and beautiful song in Jessica’s oeuvre: a keening lullabye of sorts, on which she plays piano, violin and guitar, joined by her partner Julius Levy in a lustrous ambient vocal duet. Everyone has been trying to find a way through and out of pandemic, lockdown, social isolation and often darkened hope and for many musicians, the absence of touring, of live performance, live sound, live audiences, and a living. For Moss, it’s also been “like when you press your fists hard against your eyes and eventually there is fireworks.” The light gets in where it can, even or maybe especially as imaginative sensory simulacra (if/when we shut down our screens and are left to our own devices). Phosphenes is a stoic, acutely sensitive, superlative musical statement from Moss

Hedvig Mollestad must surely be one of the hardest working musicians on the Norwegian music scene at the moment, with “Tempest Revisited” being her third album in a mere 18 months, all at a consistently high artistic level. Her first solo album, “Ekhidna” (2020), received a Spellemannpris (Norwegian Grammy), appeared on several jazz and rock best of the year lists and got her into Downbeat´s “25 for the future” selection. “Tempest Revisited” draws lines back to 1998 and the very beginning of Rune Grammofon. This was the year we released “Electric”, the collected electronic works of Arne Nordheim, one of Norway´s greatest composers. It was also the year when parts of “The Tempest”, possibly his most cherished and well-known work, was chosen to be performed at the opening of Parken, the new cultural house in Ålesund, birthplace of Hedvig Mollestad. To celebrate 20 years, the culture house was ready for a new storm, and the first name that came to them was Hedvig, a local artist that was already making waves on the international scene with her power-trio. Hedvig took inspiration from the front of the house, adorned with Nordheim´s score for “The Tempest”, at the same time making a direct connection to the sometime heavy weather conditions of this coastal area in the northwest part of Norway. One could say it´s a big paradox that over all this might be Hedvig´s most lyrical and less aggressive collection of music. On the other hand it´s quite a dynamic record, lots of light and shade and enough sonic parts at work to evoke the elements, the mighty Gran Cassa drum only one of them. The music included here was adapted from the initial performance in 2018 and produced by Hedvig in the studio the following year for this album release. The musicians included are old friends Marte Eberson from the Ekhidna band, Ivar Loe Bjørnstad from her trio and Trond Frønes (Red Kite) on bass as well as three sax players. Yet another triumph in a more than impressive discography.

Trio of Nils Økland, Sigbjørn Apeland and Øyvind Skarbø - apart from the unusual instrumentation of violin or Hardanger fiddle, harmonium and drums, is the empathy displayed by the group as a whole; the hyper-sensitivity with which each individual member appears to respond to the contributions of the others in the pursuit of a collective goal, however obscure or unknowable that goal might be. Such extreme alertness to subtle changes of mood and nuance, and to the evolving sound-world of each, totally improvised, performance is rare in music of any type. 1982 have made it their signature. And because 1982 have so singularly created their own identity and sound, they can do anything they like. Normal conventions of style and genre, format and duration cease to matter: it is all 1982 music, anchored in the strong personalities of the three players and their respect for the primacy of the group as an entity in itself. Thus they can record as a trio - as on the group’s first two albums, ‘1982’ (from 2009) and ‘Pintura’ (their Hubro debut, from 2011) - or with guests, as in the acclaimed '1982 + BJ Cole' (from 2012), and the collaboration with composer Stian Omenås and a quintet of wind players for ‘1982: A/B’ (from 2014). There was also the unique ‘message in a bottle’ intervention of ‘The Bottlemail Project’, begun in 2011, whereby 15 copies of a new recording were ‘distributed’ via USB sticks enclosed in bottles and released into the open sea from Bergen and various worldwide locations. The new album, ‘1982: Chromola’, as well as marking the group's tenth anniversary, represents a return to the essential identity of the trio playing alone, without guests. Recorded at Sandviken church in Bergen on the day following an evening concert, the album uses material from both occasions, engineered once again by Davide Bertolini, who worked on the band’s four previous recordings. As an album it is remarkable for many things, but perhaps most notably for the role of Sigbjorn Apeland, who plays pipe organ on all but one of the seven tracks rather than harmonium, which features only in the closing, seventh, piece.

A unique live performance at Issue Project Room gathered the former Sonic Youth member and artist Kim Gordon and the legendary minimal blues master and artist Loren Connors in 2014.

In December 2014, the Issue Project Room venue in New York City offered the first-time duo with the legendary Brooklyn- based guitarist Loren Connors and the rock icon Kim Gordon. From this almost 1 1⁄2 hour set, Kim and Loren decided to archive their favourite movement on a physical record which is a 12” vinyl now available from the french label Alara.

Through this long improvised session, Kim and Loren do dialogue and browse between installations of deep soundscapes at the limit of drone, and distorted, abrasive sonic attacks wrapped in reverberated harmonics. In this unprecedented exchange between two legends, the languages are as borrowed from one to the other: Kim Gordon plays on the land of the first inventions of Loren in rumbling / growling “unaccompanying” strings pinch, when Loren Connors envelops the entire hall of distorted harmonics that Kim would not have denied in her loudest attacks within her solo or group experiences from decades.

Just through the story of each of the protagonists and thanks to the quality of the recording and the mastering that bring the intensity of this meeting to life as if we were physically attending to the show, this album is a unique opportunity to witness the exceptional meeting between two legends of sonic and experimental music.

Los Romeros transport the listener to the Andalusian region of Spain for an album of Flamenco improvisations and songs. Noted Mexican singer/actress Maria Victoria provides vocals. Recorded at United Recording Studio, Hollywood, December 27–30, 1966. Prior releases have included heavy-handed dynamics processing and added echo. For this issue, the first-generation master tapes are presented as they were recorded, transporting the listener into the room and into a true Flamenco performance by the Royal Family of Spanish Guitar, and Ms. Victoria.

BERTIE MARSHALL is a writer/ performer. He is also an acclaimed memoirist, most well known for his book ‘Berlin Bromley’ (2006) about his transformation from Bertie, an anxious, androgynous, depressed teenager, into Berlin, a teenager who would reject suburban values and become a founding member of punk’s ‘Bromley Contingent’, alongside Siouxsie Sioux, Steven Severin and Billy Idol.

October 29th sees Upset The Rhythm release ‘Exhibit’ by Bertie Marshall, collecting for the first time his songs and spoken word tracks from this fertile period of the 80s-90s.

He’s currently working on ‘Looking: Backwards To Go Forwards’, picking up from where ‘Berlin Bromley’ left off. His other books include the debut novel ‘Psychoboys’ (1997), ‘Nowhere Slow’ (2014), ‘From Sleepwalking to Sleepwalking’ (2016), ‘Wild - re write’ (2017), ‘The Peeler’ (2018) and ‘Pete’s Underpants’ (2019). In 2015 the British Library purchased his writing archive.

From 1980-83, Bertie was the frontman for post-punk boundary-pushers Behaviour Red - they released one single (favourably played by John Peel), did a mini-tour and broke up. At various times Behaviour Red featured Noel Blanden of Normil Hawaiians and fine artist Nicola Tyson. Their sound was characterised by looseness and freedom, boasting at times tribal drumming, streams of vocals, dazed guitars and feedback. Bertie continued sketching out atmospheric compositions afterwards too, walking a tightrope between bewildered pop and gothic folk. Central to everything is Bertie’s commanding voice; heartfelt, impassioned and masterfully leading you through the story.

Bertie became interested in spoken word and performance poetry in the 90s, which then led him into writing and performing in his own plays and devised theatre pieces. He did regular readings and performances in NYC and began writing books inspired by the visceral talents of Acker & Burroughs. Having lived in Berlin, San Francisco, and Brittany, Bertie now lives in London.

No other pairing in the history of Darkwave ever matched the unfettered creativity, resolve, and DIY attitude from the collaboration between the two creative minds that compromise Lebanon Hanover.

The meeting of the Swiss musician Larissa Georgiou, aka Larissa Iceglass and British artist William Maybelline a decade ago in the latter’s hometown of Sunderland in the UK, was a monumental occasion, reverberating throughout the European music scene and even across the Atlantic.

Lebanon Hanover would emerge from the peak of the world-wide minimal wave revival, with their 2011 split 7-inch record with La Fete Triste issued as the catalog debut of Europe’s most ubiquitous Techno-Industrial EBM labels, Aufnahme + Wiedergabe

With Berlin as their new physical home, William and Larissa would soon, however, join the Fabrika Records family. From here, they would go on to release two full-length albums through the Athens based label, starting in early 2012 with their winter debut LP The World Is Getting Colder, and it’s All Hallows Eve follow up Why Not Just Be Solo.

It was Lebanon Hanover’s 2013 third studio outing Tomb for Two that would go on to cement the duo’s legacy, with the album’s single “Gallow Dance” becoming a post-punk anthem for the times, with artwork became the band’s defacto logo. Not only that, the song “Sadness is Rebellion”, also featured on the album, became the band’s official Mantra.

Two years would pass before the release of 2015’s critically acclaimed fourth record, “Besides the Abyss”. In the intervening years, William and Larissa, initially a couple, would find other partners, and relocate to Athens.

Meanwhile, Lebanon Hanover as a live act would expand rapidly in popularity, exceeding capacity during their performances at Wave Gotik Treffen in Leipzig, and performing sold-out shows across Europe and the UK.

With the playful Babes of the 80s maxi-single released in the interim, three years would pass before the next record from Lebanon Hanover, with 2018’s Let Them Be Alien, the band’s fifth studio album.

At the dawn of the global pandemic, where dystopian nightmares that were only ever seen before within the pages of books and flashes of silver screen celluloid, has become a daily reality, a new kind of darkness envelops the world. It was at this Lebanon Hanover returned, sharing a glimmer of hope with the single “The Last Thing,” the duo’s first song from their forthcoming sixth studio album Sci-Fi Sky.

Spanning an epic journey across ten tracks that wander through industrial landscapes, and ascend beyond the atmospheric aether, Sci Fi Sky is Lebanon Hanover’s most cohesive artistic statement to date. With their icy hearts on their sleeves, this is the culmination of a decade’s worth of musical creativity radiating from the minds of both Iceglass and Maybelline, and altogether an otherworldly beacon of hope in a time of sheer darkness.

‘Eighteen Movements’ is a collection of recordings captured at live performances between 2017 – 2019. The record’s rich textures combine ambient, tribal rhythms, field recordings, ritualistic vibes, and a meditative feeling that runs through the entire LP. Đ.K. is in full flight mode, illustrating the project’s aptitude for deep transcendence.

Đ.K. is a DJ, composer & producer based in Paris, France. A versatile and prolific artist, D.K. has cultivated an eclectic body of work in recent years, with acclaimed output on renowned labels including Antinote, Melody As Truth, 12th Isle, Good Morning Tapes, Music From Memory’s Second Circle imprint, and L.I.E.S. (as 45 ACP).

Luminous and mesmeric, D.K.’s work combines finetuned traces of house, synth pop, ambient, balearic, minimalism, and fourth world music, creating energies and soundscapes which aim to invoke elevated forms of consciousness.

Prismatic tones exchange space with devotional drums on ‘Clarity’ and ‘Echo Chamber’, as Đ.K. hits a hypnotic stride somewhere between Jon Hassell, HTRK & a Folkways percussion ensemble. With ‘Full Consciousness’ meditation bells ring out across a progression of gleaming new age emanations, conjuring an entrancing spell. Movements of pulse and ether.

On ‘Mirror’, sonorous, elaborate percussive phrases are interwoven with drifting ambient vapours, while ‘The Other Side’ veers into broad, rolling blasts of dub and Antipodean drone, a cavernous trance evoking the early roots of Ras Michael and Yabby You, pared back to resolute drum sequences and infused with esoteric chimes and sultry synthesis.

The finale of ‘Eighteen Movements’ represents one of Đ.K..’s most ambitious recordings. ‘Awakening’ is an epic tone poem of aqueous, outer planetary resonance that completes this mercurial cycle with a poignant, euphoric fadeout. Chronicled in the moment, alternating between rhythm and repose, momentum and aviation, 'Eighteen Movements' sees Đ.K. voyaging further, into vast, uncharted outskirts of sound. A collection of movements for heightened states and new diversions.

Mastered by Jose Guerrero at Plataforma Continental. Graphic Design by Javi Tortosa.

The rarefied music of Ramuntcho Matta returns to Emotional Rescue with the first ever reissue of his album, 24 hrs. Recorded in 1986 - the same year as his influential Ecoute... - the album finds Matta working in a less playful, more experimental framework but with the same ground breaking results.

Again collaborating with a selection of accomplished players, 24 hrs sees Matta (electronics, guitars, marimba, melodica, sanza, vocals) work again with Cacau de Queiroz (flute and saxaphones) and Elie Meideros (vocals), plus Guillermo Fellove (trumpet), Ahmeed Kawa (tablas) and Polo Lombardo (konks) to deserne 6 pieces as part of a performance of Labyrinth by Joan Baixis' (backing vocals) Teatre de la Castra, Barcelona's acclaimed puppetry and visual troupe.

Centred as before, on Matta's guitar, the approach is playful, inventive, a foundation for a texture of musical aphorisms. Against a background of tabla, the elegance of versatility builds, intertwining the players via moods and textures of various traditions in a unique way that is his signature.

An album to be appreciated as one, this archival offered up additional surprises when the Master tapes were examined and so presented here is a longer form, unreleased version of Before Sunrise, as well as the previously unreleased Ramon (Digital only).