Cerca:phenomenon

Meaning ‘Hi’ in Uruguayan slang, Opa are a South American jazz-funk phenomenon. Fusing Uruguay’s native Candombe rhythms with North American jazz and pop music, Opa’s space-age synthesizers, boisterous grooves and compositional magic expressed a distinctive Afro-Uruguayan voice within the global jazz vernacular: a voice which remains as vital and unique today as when it was recorded, almost half a century ago.

Having migrated to New York from Montevideo in the early seventies, Opa were heard playing in a nightclub by renowned producer and label owner Larry Rosen. At Holly Place Studios between July and August 1975, Rosen oversaw Opa’s first recordings using a four track TEAC 3340. The album would become home to some of Opa’s hardest hitting funk jams, with moments of songwriting wonderment and soulful pop and rock progressions combining with the jazz-funk fusion Opa would become known for.

Mysteriously (for reasons unknown to the band), Opa’s debut was shelved and remained so until the mid-1990s. But the Back Home recordings were used as demos, gaining Opa a record deal with Milestone Records and the subsequent release of two cult-favourite albums: Goldenwings (1976) and Magic Time (1977).

Opa would also collaborate with North American titans including bassist Ron Carter, producer Creed Taylor and Brazilian icons Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Hermeto Pascoal and Milton Nascimento. In more recent years Opa’s music has found new audiences after being sampled by Captain Murphy (aka Flying Lotus) and Madlib.

For fans of Azymuth, Weather Report, Cortex and The Headhunters, Opa’s Back Home will be released on Vinyl LP and CD on the 8th March 2024 via Far Out Recordings

After discovering Ayo, Grace, Imany and Faada Freddy, the Think Zik! label has set its sights on talented New Zealand band Ha The Unclear.
With their debut album 'A Kingdom In A Cul-De-Sac', the foursome wreak havoc with an astonishingly punk insouciance and sensitive intelligence.
From Auckland, New Zealand, come four restless and immediately seductive boys. immediately seductive, with a tankful of turbulent, deep songs and an already flattering tank and an already flattering reputation as a live phenomenon that will soon spread its spread its sparks to this side of the world. Their sound, still in its infancy, is deeply rooted in a certain New Zealand pop-folk tradition.

Clear Vinyl

Since her re-discovery in 2013 via cult favourite The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits, The Space Lady’s mission of galactic peace and celestial harmony has grown into a world-wide underground phenomenon. Recorded in 1990, The Space Lady’s original repertoire is a parallel universe greatest hits: songs familiar are transmogrified into shimmering bliss while new compositions amplify the message. The Space Lady’s Other Hits, released on April 20th for Record Store Day 2024, constitutes the songs recorded by Susan “The Space Lady” Dietrich Schneider as part of that repertoire that never made the original Greatest Hits, save for a limited bonus CD on the first CD pressing. Remastered by Mikey Love for vinyl, The Space Lady’s Other Hits completes the picture.

The Space Lady began her odyssey on the streets of Boston in the late 70s, then San Francisco ten years later, playing versions of contemporary pop music with an accordion and dressed flamboyantly. Following the theft and destruction of her accordion , The Space Lady invested in a then-new Casio keyboard, complete with a phase shifter, delay pedal and headset mic, birthing an otherworldly new dimension to popular song that has captured the imaginations of the underground and its leading exponents ever since.

The Space Lady’s Other Hits were recorded as they were played on the street, live, one-take, with Schneider playing, singing and simultaneously manipulating the various effects. Beginning with Elvis Presley’s iconic All Shook Up, the walking bassline underpinning the vocal, phasing in and out of this dimension, providing a fragile, extraterrestrial shadow to Presley’s original lust-driven performance. Slapback Boomerang is an original composition, written by Schneider’s then-husband Joel Dunsany a Rock ’n’ Roll pounder that could have been performed by The Cramps, its tale of relationship turmoil changed into a meditation on the nature of echo and feedback. There are moments where Schneider performs vocal caesuras, swimming in delay and phase for the pleasure of it, a pantomime drama performance that rings out. Closing Side B, Puttin’ On The Ritz is Irving Berlin’s 20s smash hit manipulated into a sombre ballad with its latent class struggle narrative brought to the fore.

A staple of The Space Lady’s performances to this day, Golden Earring’s 70s global hit Radar Love retains something of the original’s driving gallop but in The Space Lady’s telling it is shorn of the tight-trousered, taut machismo. The Space Lady coos and reaches up into the heavens away from the road, the phaser waves drenching the composition with transcendence.
Schneider’s falsetto performances in the choruses do nothing but lift the spirits ever-arching upwards. Next, The Space Lady emasculated Jim Morrison’s performance in The Doors’ 20th Century Fox. Faithfully playing Ray Manzarek’s keyboard parts on her Casio, Schneider disintegrates Morrison’s lust into waves of echo and delay, creating a Dubbed out version of the song, sounding eroded and decayed in all its ghostly glory. Pioneering Rock ’n’ Roll outfit Pete & The Pirates’ 1960 hot Shakin’ All Over, something of a response to Elvis’ All Shook Up, is blown out in warm fuzz and the celestial hug of The Space Lady’s
spirit.

Swedish synth-pop phenomenon Kite's second 7 inch since signing with Dais in 2023 finds the duo of Nicklas Stenemo and Christian Hutchinson Berg swinging for new heights of romantic desolation and baroque grandeur. They describe the A Side, "Losing," as a "six-minute empty call for emotional response." Stately piano and anguished voice reverberate in a vaulted hall, before gradually building into a widescreen anthem of synths, drums, and soaring vocals decrying the steady deadening of life and love: "It's deadly quiet in your old heart / Are you there? / I see dark skies on the rise / And daylight shows no remorse / And I realize it is my life / But It's losing all meaning." Swedish dark music icons Anna von Hausswolff and Henric de la Cour join the chorus as the song cascades towards an ominous horizon. The B Side, "Glassy Eyes," showcases Kite's mastery of somber, sweeping balladry. Hushed church organ elevates and anchors Stenemo's devastated confessional, swaying between resilience and defeat. The band describes the song as a reckoning with "the privileged and existential anxiety of drifting through life dispassionately," contrasted with "the yearning to connect profoundly with others and a desire for experiences that stir the soul before facing one's final moments." Like a hymn, the emotion thickens as it deepens, approaching both darkness and divinity: "Deep as I go, nothing to find / Oh catatonia, I won't cry / Nothing can grow, everything dies / Behind my glassy eyes."

Swedish synth-pop phenomenon Kite's second 7 inch since signing with Dais in 2023 finds the duo of Nicklas Stenemo and Christian Hutchinson Berg swinging for new heights of romantic desolation and baroque grandeur. They describe the A Side, "Losing," as a "six-minute empty call for emotional response." Stately piano and anguished voice reverberate in a vaulted hall, before gradually building into a widescreen anthem of synths, drums, and soaring vocals decrying the steady deadening of life and love: "It's deadly quiet in your old heart / Are you there? / I see dark skies on the rise / And daylight shows no remorse / And I realize it is my life / But It's losing all meaning." Swedish dark music icons Anna von Hausswolff and Henric de la Cour join the chorus as the song cascades towards an ominous horizon. The B Side, "Glassy Eyes," showcases Kite's mastery of somber, sweeping balladry. Hushed church organ elevates and anchors Stenemo's devastated confessional, swaying between resilience and defeat. The band describes the song as a reckoning with "the privileged and existential anxiety of drifting through life dispassionately," contrasted with "the yearning to connect profoundly with others and a desire for experiences that stir the soul before facing one's final moments." Like a hymn, the emotion thickens as it deepens, approaching both darkness and divinity: "Deep as I go, nothing to find / Oh catatonia, I won't cry / Nothing can grow, everything dies / Behind my glassy eyes."

Empires rise and fall every day in the human heart, and riding these cycles--stories with no beginning or end, only transformation--churns us through the reckless, ridiculous, rueful, redemptive. A founding member of Lake Street Dive and writer of some of their most enduring songs, Iowa-born and Brooklyn-based Bridget Kearney is known for writing smart, unexpected lyrics and melodies built for a heart-baring dance or an introspective drive. Kearney writes music as if filtered through a camera lens. Her stories, steeped in nostalgia and joy, construct a bittersweet framework around the memories that make us human, and shape who we are. As the absurdity of life abounds, Kearney can hold these fragile snapshots and rolling reruns with evident notes of levity, and compassion for a past self. On her new album Comeback Kid, produced by Dan Molad (Lucius, Buck Meek), there are reminders to cherish the moments that make up the collage of what we see in the mirror, but to also plant our feet firmly in the present, for those are the times that will come to form the future. The tracks hop through time, from the relentless, obsessive romanticization of the past, to unrestrained lust for a different future, all inherit the spirit of resilience needed for any move forward, whether it's to dive back in, walk away, or wrestle with the memory itself. In moments, our Comeback Kid wishes to encase a night in amber to revive it at will, like the old man in Jurassic Park, but ultimately is hip to the bittersweet truth that it will never be the same when you return. Kearney began making Comeback Kid back in 2021, in between her work with Lake Street Dive, and a new position as a songwriting teacher at Princeton University. During the process of Comeback Kid, Kearney took inspiration from her Princeton students, as well as her peers when she embarked on a song-a-day workshop. As she found herself surrounded by the thoughts and processes of others, she was able to pinpoint what it is about songwriting that she truly cherishes: namely, the textures and flourishes that come to form the mood of each creation. Comeback Kid is soaked in vintage synths, Kearney's soughing vocals and delicate-yet-driving percussion that ushers in a bright and serene tenor. "If you're driving, baby I wanna go," she soothes on opener "If You're Driving," welcoming us to the LP with windows down, eyes closed, air rushing through our fingers. It's a celebration of staying in the moment, of saying "yes," even though you know it won't last forever. With references to real psychological games, like Rorschach tests and the phenomenon of Ironic Process Theory, they help build the theme of the mind bending nature of obsession, memory, and perspective. Just like the acrobatic brain games we play in relationships, Kearney plays with language and references, with multiple meanings of "comebacks and coming back," and nods that run the gamut from Samuel Barber's mid-20th century masterpiece Adagio for Strings to Jerry Seinfeld's late-20th century masterpiece Seinfeld. The single "Security Camera" captures the carefree liminal space of reminiscence, as Kearney collects those significant, special moments of a past love. There is no animosity or even sorrow here but rather a warm, propulsive rush of gratitude and awe. "You have these really wonderful, blissful times in your life that are fleeting," she explains. "It's an attempt to keep loving the moments in your past, to carry them with you." These moments are carried with care throughout Comeback Kid, but with an eye on the farcicality of simply existing. Kearney is both sincere and silly, somber yet spirited, expertly gathering the iridescent spectrum of what it means to be alive.

Revision of new beats on the horizon
Every 20 years or so, certain musical movements come full circle. Young musicians are inspired by genres dating back two decades, channelling them through their modern sensibility. The legendary J Dilla’s Donuts album was released in 2006 and instantly marked a starting point for the work of musicians worldwide, laying the foundations especially for the beat scene in Los Angeles. A whole young generation of musicians brought up on the new, instrumental and abstract hip-hop has carried jazz into a new era. The four London-based musicians who make up Uniri have gone one step further by abandoning the idea of a jazz band and "bedroom production" in favour of collective composing, creating a new look at the new-beat aesthetics, framing it as a road novel set in an unspecified time and space.

Uniri translates as ‘one unified dream’ and is the key driving motto of the project conceived by Chiminyo (Cykada, Maisha), the band's founder and head honcho. The project materialised in his private studio, where he invited fellow jazz musicians Amane Tsuganami (Jorja Smith, Maisha), Al Macsween (Nubya Garcia, Gary Bartz, Kefaya) and Luke Wynter (Nubyan Twist, Golden Mean) to spontaneously compose together. Hence, despite this being the band's first album, it wouldn't be right to call them rookies. The result of Uniri's collaborative work is the psychedelic, rhythmic album Infinite Reflections, packed with cosmic and warm synths, which neatly balances hip-hop beat and jazz composition. It's safe to say this music is even more appealing when played live, although it's equally suited to the club dancefloor.

UK Jazz has become a permanent fixture in the London landscape, but also across Europe and the US. Today, the musicians who shape the new wave of jazz are drawing on more and more genres, reducing solo improvisation for the benefit of composition and increasingly drawing on influences from the beat scene. Among such formations are the British NOK Cultural Ensemble, the Polish Błoto, the Belgian ECHT!, and the Dutch Comité Hypnotisé. Uniri is part of this emerging yet already international trend, creating an entirely fresh aesthetic that echoes artists such as Flying Lotus, Samiyam, Dorian Concept, Ras G and Nosaj Things oriented around the Californian 'new beats generation' scene.

The title Infinite Reflections alludes to a phenomenon observable on the open sea or during intercontinental flights. Gazing at the horizon blurs the boundary between the ocean and the sky, forming an infinite palette of blue shades. This inspiration sparked an elusive musical narrative, navigating between a sea voyage and an astral journey, destination unknown.

My art investigates the rich area of resonance and I engage in dialogue influenced by past works, current concerns and new directions. Works attempt to immerse the senses bringing to the fore natural phenomenon. I believe that sound can heal and that the conscious investigation of harmonic tunings, acoustic resonance as well as social relationships can yield powerful experiences. One of my objectives as an artist is to expose natural phenomena. I am interested in the physical aspects of sound and have developed a sensibility that focuses heavily on Resonance. Vibration is at the core of my experience of Resonance. I am moved by natural resonances that exist around us all. My own work strives to develop and nurture Resonances by negotiating sensitive relationships among a number of what I identify as critical ingredients for psychedelic phenomena: resonant bodies exciting harmonic energy creating diverse waves, beating and phase patterns diffused spatially with full dynamic range and a deep attention to the body and how it engages with the environment.

Skylax Records Proudly Presents the Arrival of Riccardo Teri A.k.a. Quasar, Hailing Straight From Firenze, Italy! Introducing "Tyrrhenian Dream" - an Enchanting Vinyl Ep That Embraces the Captivating Spirit of Early '90s Italian Dream House. This 12-Inch Masterpiece Showcases Four Mesmerizing Tracks: "Tyrrhenian Dream," a Melodic Opus That Transports You to Heavenly Realms; "Joyful Town," a Vibrant and Uplifting Anthem That Resonates With Pure Bliss; "Velathri Pipers," a Hypnotic Groove Pulsating With Irresistible Rhythms; and "Aithalia," a Dreamlike Exploration of Ethereal Melodies. Immerse Yourself in Quasar's Musical Wizardry as He Pays Homage to the Timeless Allure of Italy's Euphoric Dream House Legacy. Let Your Turntable Transport You Back in Time With "Tyrrhenian Dream," Embarking on a Sonic Journey That Captures the Very Essence of That Golden Era. It Stands as a Testament to the Unparalleled Charm and Magic of Italy's Dream House Phenomenon, Unlocking a World of Sonic Enchantment....

Fado music’s fastest-rising stars, Portuguese singer Sara Correia’s acclaimed third album Liberdade is a triumph. Sara arrives in 2023 with the status of a phenomenon: she has travelled the world to great acclaim, nominated for a Latin Grammy along with her appearances as a judge on the hugely popular Portuguese version of reality singing competition The Voice. Sara Correia’s smoky and passionate voice captures love and power, sadness and joy, the city of Lisbon and the Portuguese soul. Inhabiting the space between traditional, dark Fado and its modern, lighter incarnation, her mellifluous toplines are influenced by French chanson.

M. Ward returns with a stunning new album, More Rain, for release on Merge Records on March 4, 2016. Ward has released a string of acclaimed solo albums over the past several years, along with five LPs with Zooey Deschanel as She & Him and a 2009 collaborative album with My Morning Jacket's Jim James and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis under the moniker Monsters of Folk. In addition to his celebrated work as a musician, Ward is an accomplished producer, handling those duties for such luminaries as Mavis Staples, Jenny Lewis, and Carlos Forster as well as his own musical projects.This album, Ward's eighth solo affair, finds the artist picking up the tempo and volume a bit from his previous release, 2012's A Wasteland Companion. Where that record introspectively looked in from the outside, More Rain finds Ward on the inside, gazing out. Begun four years ago and imagined initially as a DIY doo-wop album that would feature Ward experimenting with layering his own voice, it soon branched out in different directions, a move that he credits largely to his collaborators here who include R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, Neko Case, k.d. lang, The Secret Sisters, and Joey Spampinato of NRBQ. The result is a collection of upbeat, sonically ambitious yet canonically familiar songs that both propel Ward's reach and satisfy longtime fans.



a [MORE RAIN]

[a] [MORE RAIN]

Never Sleep charity tape series continues with a legendary recording from the world famous Mary Anne Hobbs stage at Sonar Festival.

UK phenomenon Joker encapsulates the era perfectly with his signature "Purple" sound and Dubstep sonics. A rowdy late night work out of his own productions, a rare dub from Skream, Bristolian funk from Gemmy and classic Mala.

Hosted by an enthralled Gaslamp Killer and beautifully captures the feeling of the infamous stage. Timeless, cutting edge and a slight hint of nostalgia for any Sonar Festival aficionados.

All proceeds go to Bristol based charity “The Cause" who help young locals in the creative arts.

He's back - again! Years after the end of the Heisei era, the big G came back to film in 1999 with the first of a new era: GODZILLA 2000: MILLENNIUM. Directed by Takao Okawara (GODZILLA VS. DESTOROYAH), a new look Godzilla is still harassing Tokyo, with the Godzilla Prediction Network out there trying to figure out where he'll show up next. To make matters worse, the government's Crisis Control Intelligence care more about firing missiles, but everything changes when they discover a mysterious meteor has a UFO inside. All of this results in Orga, a kaiju made from Godzilla's DNA, and of course it's up to the Big G to kick its ass back to space. Scoring GODZILLA 2000 was Takayuki Hattori, who had previously composed 1994's GODZILLA VS. SPACEGODZILLA. Hattori's music is very much about mood; the composer brings a sense of lyricism to proceedings, but of course, he also knows how to get us excited for Godzilla's appearances. Hattori does that with a spectacular new theme for the Big G that perfectly captures the creature's grandeur and immense power. There's also a fantastic piece for the UFO that has a wonderfully primevil beat, and of course, Akira Ifukube's classic theme for Godzilla returns in a big way. A perfect start to the Millennium era! (Charlie Brigden)



Artwork by Matt Ryan Tobin

2X 140gram Eco-Vinyl

What I can say about TORRES is I think the music comes from a convicted place. Not convicted meaning a person is narrowly and foolishly committed to an ideal, or unshakably convinced of themselves, or a zealot, or stubborn. I mean dedicated, I mean: If TORRES' music gets weird, gets brainy, gets funny, gets defiant, provokes, deliberately scandalizes, employs the crass to undermine the austere, courts lofty philosophical truth-it's all done with the conviction of an artist with the (essential) belief in the worth of their task. I think you can hear it in the songs, someone reaching, leaning over the boundary between known and not, probing the almighty. After a decade and six studio albums and however many one-offs and tours and articles read and conversations had, the parts of this pursuit I've been able to observe are all marked by a dedication to creation that treats the act-ongoing-with as much preciousness as the evidence of the act that is left in a record. The modes of being are different: heartbroken, broke, furious (right- and unrighteously), awestruck by love, compelled by desire. sometimes resigned to death, sometimes fascinated by and reverent of the future. Sometimes viscerally present, other times suspended in heady awareness, poised on a fulcrum of observation and participation in the phenomenon that aliveness is. The tools are the same: instruments that growl and shriek and moan, a lyrical voice shouting, swooning, chuckling, snarling as the moment commands. TORRES' music-making is conducted in a melodic vocabulary unique to itself-methods, equipment, circumstances shifting around the impulse to affirm the self within the world, to make art that bears all these little artifacts of the divine and of the real and show it to people and know it is valuable. I think that's what Mackenzie's music does. And I think it's just incredibly good music to listen to. -Julien Baker TORRES is the pseudonym of Mackenzie Scott. She was born January 23, 1991, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her wife Jenna, stepson Silas, and puppy Sylvia. She has been releasing albums and performing as TORRES since 2013. What an enormous room is TORRES' sixth studio album (her third with Merge). It was recorded in September and October 2022 at Stadium Heights Sound in Durham, North Carolina. It was engineered by Ryan Pickett, produced by Mackenzie Scott and Sarah Jaffe, mixed by TJ Allen in Bristol, UK, and mastered by Heba Kadry in NYC. The album contains 10 songs. Mackenzie wrote all of them. Sarah played bass guitar, synths, drums, organ, and piano. Mackenzie sang vocals, played guitar, bass, synths, organ, piano, and programmed drums. Additional synth bass, tambourine, and shakers were played by TJ Allen.

What I can say about TORRES is I think the music comes from a convicted place. Not convicted meaning a person is narrowly and foolishly committed to an ideal, or unshakably convinced of themselves, or a zealot, or stubborn. I mean dedicated, I mean: If TORRES' music gets weird, gets brainy, gets funny, gets defiant, provokes, deliberately scandalizes, employs the crass to undermine the austere, courts lofty philosophical truth-it's all done with the conviction of an artist with the (essential) belief in the worth of their task. I think you can hear it in the songs, someone reaching, leaning over the boundary between known and not, probing the almighty. After a decade and six studio albums and however many one-offs and tours and articles read and conversations had, the parts of this pursuit I've been able to observe are all marked by a dedication to creation that treats the act-ongoing-with as much preciousness as the evidence of the act that is left in a record. The modes of being are different: heartbroken, broke, furious (right- and unrighteously), awestruck by love, compelled by desire. sometimes resigned to death, sometimes fascinated by and reverent of the future. Sometimes viscerally present, other times suspended in heady awareness, poised on a fulcrum of observation and participation in the phenomenon that aliveness is. The tools are the same: instruments that growl and shriek and moan, a lyrical voice shouting, swooning, chuckling, snarling as the moment commands. TORRES' music-making is conducted in a melodic vocabulary unique to itself-methods, equipment, circumstances shifting around the impulse to affirm the self within the world, to make art that bears all these little artifacts of the divine and of the real and show it to people and know it is valuable. I think that's what Mackenzie's music does. And I think it's just incredibly good music to listen to. -Julien Baker TORRES is the pseudonym of Mackenzie Scott. She was born January 23, 1991, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her wife Jenna, stepson Silas, and puppy Sylvia. She has been releasing albums and performing as TORRES since 2013. What an enormous room is TORRES' sixth studio album (her third with Merge). It was recorded in September and October 2022 at Stadium Heights Sound in Durham, North Carolina. It was engineered by Ryan Pickett, produced by Mackenzie Scott and Sarah Jaffe, mixed by TJ Allen in Bristol, UK, and mastered by Heba Kadry in NYC. The album contains 10 songs. Mackenzie wrote all of them. Sarah played bass guitar, synths, drums, organ, and piano. Mackenzie sang vocals, played guitar, bass, synths, organ, piano, and programmed drums. Additional synth bass, tambourine, and shakers were played by TJ Allen.

tapetopia 004 The Leipzig band Neu Rot represented a singular phenomenon within the alternative music reservoir of the GDR. As with so many bands that cultivated a more sophisticated sound in the late 80s, Neu Rot’s beginnings had been in punk rock. But, with a remarkable rigour against itself, the band steadily worked its way towards post-rock. This thorough process came to fruition in 1988 with the production of the tape “Halt An”. It had been preceded by the band’s struggle for its very own means and their technical feasibility. Neu Rot’s pilgrimage to its own centre was not unimpeded. The band’s name was perceived by the GDR’s cultural watchdogs as an erratic chain of associations between the suspicious word “Neu” and the ideological signal colour red. The band was legal, but its lyrics were deemed illegal. The edition of “Halt An” was somewhere between over fifty and under one hundred copies. Jörg Stein (voc, g, casio sk-1, yamaha ps-2) Karsten Maaß (bg, voc) Anke Mehlhorn (vl, casio sk-1) Henrik Eiler (dr, voc, casio sk-1) Produced by Mike Stolle & Jörg Stein Lyrics by Jörg Stein, except „Sometimes“ and for „Die Schlange“ by Christoph Wielepp Tape artwork by Daniel Schörnig Tape cover photos by Daniel Schörnig Published by Henryk Gericke Liner notes by Henryk Gericke Remastered by Black Flag Mastering/ Friedemann Kootz © Music by Neu Rot except „Sometimes“ (traditional) recorded Oktober 1988, Leipzig Thanks to: Mike Stolle, Adrian Neumann, Nikolaus Michael, Horst Pfaff, Andreas Berger, Christoph Wielepp, Daniel Schörnig and to the unknown roommate Lachmund Christian Andersen, Michael Barthel, Sarah Baumann, Ralph Gabriel, Ronald Galenza, Jakob Geisler, Ulrike Geisler, Gerd Gericke, Elke Grabinski, Gabriele Herzog, Egmont Hesse, Sabine Jansen, Siegfried Männer, Bettina Matten-Gericke, Christian Morin, Frank Siewert, Philipp Strobel, Christoph Tannert, Stefan Widdess, Margarete Wohlan In memory of Michael Pfaff.

Flee new issue tries to document a Caucasian musical phenomenon mixing criminal songs, Adygean culture & post-soviet society; and features original recordings of traditional songs, and contemporary reinterpretations by a selected line-up of electronic-esque producers: Emmanuelle Parrenin & Colin Johnco, Misha Sultan, Zongamin, Minami Deutsch, Valentina Goncharova, Simone Aubert, Ben Wheeler...

Ulyap is a village in the Caucasus, where one can find an enormous number of accordion and harmonica players. "Ulyap Songs: Beyond Circassian Tradition" represents an attempt to document ancient bards' chants and their entanglement with popular rural heritage as well as post-Soviet culture during modern times, through a critical prism.

This publication reflects on a music phenomenon involving talented female and male musicians, performing in lively (and sometimes festive) social dynamics. It does so by revealing important songs of the repertoire on the one hand, inviting original artists to experiment with Ulyap songs on the other.
Built around an important work of documentation on this genre mixing criminal songs, Adygean culture and lyrics related to post-Soviet society, the book and record (available separately or as part of a bundle) include essays, archive and contemporary photographs as well as three art commissions questioning this original phenomenon from various point of views. Written in English and Russian, the book encompasses a dozen contributions.

Musically, the double LP conists of rare and unpublished archives as well as recordings made by FLEE, Ored recordings and Nikita Rasskazov over the last years in various locations of the Caucasus. These original celebration and drinking songs performed by group of professional and amateur musicians alike have been used as a creative fabric by sonic sound artists and musicians.

Flee new issue tries to document a Caucasian musical phenomenon mixing criminal songs, Adygean culture & post-soviet society; and features original recordings of traditional songs, and contemporary reinterpretations by a selected line-up of electronic-esque producers: Emmanuelle Parrenin & Colin Johnco, Misha Sultan, Zongamin, Minami Deutsch, Valentina Goncharova, Simone Aubert, Ben Wheeler...

Ulyap is a village in the Caucasus, where one can find an enormous number of accordion and harmonica players. "Ulyap Songs: Beyond Circassian Tradition" represents an attempt to document ancient bards' chants and their entanglement with popular rural heritage as well as post-Soviet culture during modern times, through a critical prism.

This publication reflects on a music phenomenon involving talented female and male musicians, performing in lively (and sometimes festive) social dynamics. It does so by revealing important songs of the repertoire on the one hand, inviting original artists to experiment with Ulyap songs on the other.
Built around an important work of documentation on this genre mixing criminal songs, Adygean culture and lyrics related to post-Soviet society, the book and record (available separately or as part of a bundle) include essays, archive and contemporary photographs as well as three art commissions questioning this original phenomenon from various point of views. Written in English and Russian, the book encompasses a dozen contributions.

Musically, the double LP conists of rare and unpublished archives as well as recordings made by FLEE, Ored recordings and Nikita Rasskazov over the last years in various locations of the Caucasus. These original celebration and drinking songs performed by group of professional and amateur musicians alike have been used as a creative fabric by sonic sound artists and musicians.

Out of print for quite a few years now, this album is a stunning power-pop gem recorded at a time when this kind of girl group pairing with punk rock was unusual.b This is one of the most iconic albums released on Greg Shaw's Bomp! Records. It now includes bonus tracks on top! Definitely stood the test of time. Check out the titles, these young ladies were wearing their collective hearts on those sleeves of theirs. This kind of girl group pairing with punk rock was unusual at the time and it provided a much-needed antidote to the male dominated skinny tie brigade. Nikki looked like Pam Dawber (Mindy from Mork and Mindy) and sounded like Clare Grogan (of Altered Images) what was not to be instantly smitten by. Born and bred in Detroit, Miss Corvette reportedly ran away from home at age 16 because her mother refused to allow her to attend an MC5 show. Greg Shaw wrote the following in the liner notes to the 20th Anniversary label compilation, Destination Bomp! "Nikki was a tireless worker. Like some coalminer's daughter, she'd travel around the country with her band. Playing 200 shows a year. She knew everybody and was a lot of fun to hang out with so, I figured that if all her friends bought the record... so I signed her. The girl had style and attitude galore plus, she had master guitarist/songwriter and former Romantic Peter James. One of Detroit's most savvy cats." The lady herself kindly supplied the following summary. "We went to LA and signed with Bomp in maybe 1979 but Greg wasn't sure what to do with us. We did the Honey Bop single with Ronny Weiser at Rollin Rock and a couple songs with the Kessel Brothers. We started something with Kim Fowley that did not work out. They kept trying different producers until we finally decided to go back to Detroit and do the album on our own. We didn't have a lot of experience but we knew what we wanted and Detroit was part of that so we recorded the album and had a blast doing it. Peter wanted us to be poppier and I wanted to be more punk. We sort of met in the middle with what I've always called Bubblegum Punk. I can't believe it's been 43 years since this came out and there are still kids discovering it and people who grew up with it that still listen to it. I constantly hear from people all different ages, all over the world about how much they love it album and that really means so, so much to me!" Hear the phenomenon for yourself.

"I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping."
Nina Simone

Straight off the streets, Hip-Hop burst onto the scene, leaving no one indifferent, igniting a cultural revolution that would shape generations to come. Now, in celebration of its 50-year anniversary, Art That Kills proudly presents HHCOMP01.

HHCOMP01 aims to capture the freshness and innocence of a genre in the midst of defining itself. As the world embraced this new phenomenon, it was a time of raw creativity and unbridled expression.

With a selection of seven fantastic tracks stepped out of the underground, HHCOMP01 is a window into the origins of a genre that has resonated with countless hearts and minds.

Melanie Martinez’s debut album “Cry Baby” has remarkably kept growing in stature since its 2015 release, now approaching its high-water mark of 1 BILLION global audio streams for the second consecutive year. The RIAA recently re-certified the record at 2x platinum, in large part due to TikTok trending moments for several of the album’s tracks. These trending moments, occurring over the course of 2020-1, most notably included the digital bonus cut “Play Date,” which became a TikTok phenomenon and is now Melanie’s most popular song with over 700M streams.
On this expanded deluxe edition, “Play Date” and 2 additional digital bonus tracks (“Teddy Bear” and “Cake”) are – for the first time – added to the original, standard vinyl album. These songs were only previously available on vinyl on the now out-of-print, limited edition Extra Clutter EP from 2016.
With an expanded booklet featuring 3 new illustrations for the 3 bonus tracks, this deluxe edition will be the one, primary Cry Baby vinyl product moving forward.

St. Virus is a Covid-themed album born in Covid times. It processes the pandemic phenomenon from the aspect of the individual and sometimes of the pandemic itself on a philosophical level.

The opening track, "Isolation", takes the listener on a journey plagued by the sense of loneliness created by isolation. The ever-present melancholy slowly deepens into an overflowing anxiety without release. The eponymous "St. Virus" is a piece that considers the relationship between man and nature and the viruses that appear in it. They work in their own expected and, upon consideration, very honest way. Are we humans honest like this? Are human beings on some level similar to a virus? “Inherently Destructive” presents the idea of the unsustainability of the current situation. The events around us are fundamentally destructive for the individual person, for society and for the culture it carries. St. Virus is a personal soundtrack through Covid times. Record featuring artists are Tapani Rinne, Wimme Saari and Ville Kuukka.

1STEP Process 180g 45rpm Double LP Pressed on VR900-Supreme Vinyl!
Mastered From The Original Analogue Master Tapes by Bernie Grundman!
Super-Luxe "Monster Pak" Jacket with a Rich 36-Page Booklet & Striking Outer Slipcase!

New lacquers cut for every 500 pressings!

Strictly Limited To 7,500 Numbered Pressings!

There have been more than 40 U.S. releases (and hundreds more worldwide) of Stan Getz's cultural touchstone album and for good reason: few recordings better capture the breezy warmth and easy-going sophistication of Brazilian bossa nova for an American jazz audience. Fewer recordings can replicate the you-are-there presence and flawlessly tight studio acoustics. Only Getz/Gilberto has Billboard Top-10-charting singles like "The Girl from Ipanema." When Impex Records jumps into this densely-populated fray with our own production, we need to bring maximum value and prestige to it. Challenge accepted. We worked directly with Stan's wife Monica Getz and their son Nicolaus to create the most authentic, best-presented Getz/Gilberto ever.

Exclusive to Impex's 1STEP Getz/Gilberto includes an insightful new interview/essay by Charles Granata featuring Monica reminiscences of the making of this record, the subsequent cultural phenomenon, and Stan's battles with some pretty heavy demons. Also unique to this release are two bonus tracks: an alternate mono 7" mix of "The Girl from Ipanema" (without the added echo, thank you very much) and a live recording of "Corcovado" from Carnegie Hall. Finally, the large-format, 36-page booklet features dozens of rare photos, the original album notes, and a fascinating personal remembrance from Monica Getz herself, celebrating her late husband's work and an inside look at Stan's family life while making the record!

Using the original analog master tapes and no computers at all, Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering sought to keep the sense of space and tone on the master tape intact without unnecessary embellishment. Impex 1STEPs get you closer to the source, not the ideal.

We know you have many choices when it comes to enjoying this singular album. The Impex 1STEP of Getz/Gilberto cuts above all other releases with added-value content that takes you deeper into Stan Getz's life and process in a way never previously possible.

The 1STEP Process:



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

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

Features:



The only release of this fundamental jazz classic crafted with the full participation of the Getz family, including never-before-seen photos and notes from Monica and Nick Getz
Exclusive new interview essay about Getz's life and the recording of the album by noted producer and historian Charles L. Granata
Exclusive ultra-luxe Impex 1STEP packaging featuring a deluxe 36-page booklet within a heavy-stock two-sleeve Monster Pack jacket and striking colour-matched slip case
Two all-analogue bonus tracks: an alternate mono 7" mix of "The Girl from Ipanema" and a live recording of "Corcovado" from Carnegie Hall
Limited to 7,500 copies

Official soundtrack to the video game Grendizer, Feast of the Wolves, composed by Marcin Przybylowicz and Magda Urbańska.

Get ready for an unforgettable adventure with Grendizer, the famous giant robot. This action-adventure game, adapted from the cult anime series, will plunge you into the world of its creator, Go Nagai, and give you the chance to pilot the most powerful of robots and fight the forces of evil.

Grendizer is a cult manga created by Go Nagai in 1975. This sci-fi masterpiece revolutionised the mecha genre by introducing giant robots in epic battles. The captivating story plunges us into a futuristic universe where the hero, Actarus, pilots the powerful robot Grendizer to protect the Earth from alien invaders.

As soon as it was published, "Grendizer" was a phenomenal success. The visual impact of the detailed drawings and spectacular battle scenes contributed to the general craze. The manga quickly became a veritable social phenomenon, generating spin-off products, animated adaptations and a devoted fan base.

The career of composer Marcin Przybylowicz is marked by his exceptional talent and memorable contribution to the video game industry. Przybylowicz has brought his musical creativity to many projects, but it is his collaboration with CD Projeckt on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 that has earned him worldwide recognition!

One of the very first compositions by Bruno Sanchioni (Age of Love, BBE), released in 88 just at the beginning of the New Beat phenomenon that marked the history of Belgian music.



Along with Confetti's and Amnesia, it was one of the most popular tracks of its time and marked the start of a long and promising career for Bruno Sanchioni. Just 2 years later, he composed the original bassline for the legendary track "Age of Love", which, thanks to Jam & Spoon's remix, was to stamp the electronic music scene for several generations. Based on video clash created by the visionary Lil'Louis, the original slow tempo was enhanced by the highly recognisable vocal "The Story" and a simple but highly effective melody. It was already remixed 10 years later by Viper, with a rhythmic pattern once again inspired by the Chicago pioneers.



25 years on, this track still evokes emotion and still inspires a good number of artists to want to touch it up, and for the track's 35th anniversary it seemed appropriate to pay it a vibrant tribute by offering several remixes split into two different vinyl projects. In a faster, more acid-influenced style, the first project features a remix by DJHS, Manu Kenton and Furax, emblematic artists from the north of France, and is completed by Viper's excellent 98 remix for those who haven't heard it yet. DJHS is behind the legendary acid track 'Spokesman', Manu Kenton is one of the flagship artists of the 'Ghoststyle' label and Furax is behind 'Big Orgus'.

Russia's mellow music phenomenon Mikhail Khvasko aka A Vision Of Panorama teams up with lovely Japanese vocalist Eiko Hara for one of the smoothest yet danceable tunes of 2023.

Singer, songwriter and author Ali Sethi had been entranced by Jaar's music long before they began collaborating. He'd absorbed the sounds over a number of years, listening casually and taking in their subtleties in bars and rooftop parties across Lahore and London. "It felt familiar to me, that sense of adventure you have when you hear his music, like a tale that teases you and plays with your expectations as it unfolds," says Sethi. "In that sense it resembled the leisurely improvised ghazals and qawwalis I grew up hearing in Pakistan." So when the two were finally introduced by Indian visual artist Somnath Bhatt, a regular Jaar collaborator who also handled the album's artwork, Sethi was well prepared. He began to sketch out voice notes using loops snipped from Jaar's acclaimed 2020 album 'Telas', improvising vocalizations and seductive Urdu poems over Jaar's weightless, time-bending productions. Jaar was astonished by the result; "It was what 'Telas' had been missing," he explains.

Improvisation has been important to the Chilean artist for many years. Before he had even started making electronic music, Jaar jammed on accordion with friends on the street in New York City. It's at the core of his practice, "a moment in time," in his own words. 'Intiha', the opening track on the album, is the first they finished together, and positions Sethi's evocative phrases over Jaar's faded, metallic percussion. It's a perfect proof of concept, re- imagining the world of 'Telas' and augmenting it with a sense of ancestral melancholy and giddy euphoria that's truly transformational.
Sethi is best known globally for his attempts to revive the ghazal, an ancient poetic form that was taken by Sufi mystics from the Arab world to Persia and throughout the Indian subcontinent, where it captivated the royal court. It's been unfashionable in the last few decades, a mannered style associated with decadence, and Sethi offers it a new lease of life through his playfully revisionist covers and renditions. (His most popular single 'Pasoori' is a global phenomenon, one of the most Googled songs of 2022, with hundreds of millions of listeners tuning into its timeless message of forbidden love.) Sethi updates the ghazal form by using his years of training in raga music, lifting metaphors that reflect his journey as an out-of- place queer kid in Pakistan who became a US citizen and now lives in New York City.

2023 Repress
Moon in Earthlight describes the phenomenon one can see in the first few days after a New Moon, when the slim crescent of the moon is completed into a full circle by a faint light that is not lit by sunlight but by the light reflected from Earth. It is also the apt title for the first album from an artist whose first love was astronomy. After 6 EPs over the course of 5 years, Wolfgang Tillmans now releases his first album, Moon in Earthlight, a singularly plural 53-minute piece comprised of 19 tracks.
Opening with more that connects us than divides us, 'Celloloop / More That Connects Us', a looped cello sets out a discursive path for a bright keyed melody to flirt with while the sounds of the organ and synthesizer build their supporting roles, all along a bouncing four-to-the-floor beat punctuated with bright electronic chimes and the rhythmic tempo of a shaker. The invitation is hard to resist as a yearning voice opens up to let us know he's left his "place in security." And, "you're shining … All the way down to this glittering place … you're shining." Where voices and laughter are then overheard in the background of another field recording sounding water dripping from a 'Rain Gutter' later caught by the soft, warm rhythmic bounce between two synth notes on 'Fourth Floor' where chime-like and percussive timbres resonate from the metal tine keys of the kalimba creating a meditative acuity, which Tillmans peppers with arpeggiated synth riffs.
A composition of multiplicities, Tillmans' album debut is a collage of sounds, field recordings, words, studio jam sessions and live recordings, voice, soundscapes, and instrumentation scored with audible space to breathe along the way. Keeping pace, the first 'Kardio Loop' is a vocal callisthenics contemplating 'the possibility of a happy life' and/or the propositional properties of its semantic constructions backed by the recording of a heartbeat from a cardiogram. This movement is gradually accompanied by a set of orchestral synth pads that build to a crescendo before the soft, twirling melody of 'Stonerella' carries us along a carousel-like melodic, pop, instrumental timed in the percussive clapping of pebbles.
Not knowing where one leaves off and the other begins is part of this album's enigma, as we move in and out of these aural spaces choreographed with the slightest, open hand, where we can float through 'Don't Kill It by Naming It' before dancing along 'Insanely Alive' all the while contemplating the inherent, fragile complexities of language and being.
This enigma also stems from the raw vulnerability of Tillmans' voice. Whether lyrically playful or introspective, it is always giving: intimately unfolding as in the surprising take on Simon & Garfunkel's 'El Condor Pasa' or shapeshifting in 'Can't Escape into Space' or fully naked as raw material expression in 'Kantine' and 'Ocean Walk'.
Whether it's Tillmans voice or voices overheard, a field recording or a pop synth melody, these sounds defy track listings, audibly held together as one of many in an aural space that becomes a reflective cycle that develops over the course of the album. The accumulative effect of which (reminiscent of the artist's installations), drives the singularity of each of the album's elements into a complete, unconsolidated whole. Like a phenomenon that marks time, Moon in Earthlight is the shadow and the reflection, fifty-three minutes in time.

A new 2023 pressing of LOWRIDERS's comeback album Refractions comes in merged bone-magenta coloured vinyl! EU festival dates in 2023 announced! The progenitors of Swedish desert-rock return with their astonishing new record of fuzz-heavy stoner rock bliss! The new album from the progenitors of the Swedish desert rock scene, Lowrider's previous album is a milestone in the global stoner rock underground, soundalikes to Kyuss or Fu Man-Chu, Lowrider manage to add impressive songwriting qualities to their works. Before Monolord, Graveyard, Greenleaf, and Truckfighters, one band stood at the dawn of Sweden's Kyuss-inspired desert rock movement. With their groundbreaking debut EP and seminal "Ode to Io" album, LOWRIDER spawned thousands of imitators. Now, at long last, the progenitors return with blistering new album "Refractions," delivering on their mythic status as founders of a worldwide phenomenon. 'Lowrider's 'Ode to Io' is an absolute landmark. It is essential. Quite possibly the best desert-style rock record not to come from the actual Californian desert.' _ JJ Koczan / The Obelisk 'Thunderous riff-rides like 'Caravan' and 'Saguaro' cannot be denied, and quite honestly leave a much more lasting impression than most anything issued by the likes of Nebula and even Fu Manchu.' _ Ed Rivadavia / All Music Guide 'Ode to Io is desert-rock in its purest and heaviest form. Almost the whole album is indeed explosive, fuzzy and straight to the point... the best definition of stoner-rock you could get.' _ Nuno / Sputnik Music Lowrider paved the way for a whole generation of European fuzz rockers... there was Kyuss in the US, and there was Lowrider here.' _ Beeho / The Heavy Chronicles

Back in the 1990s video games were still largely seen as nerdy: fun, sure, but basically a guilty pleasure that you’d soon grow out of. The release in 1995 of wipE'out'', a lightning-fast, razor-sharp, futuristic racing game that helped to launch the PlayStation in Europe and North America, changed all that. This was a game that looked and sounded both adult and cool, the kind of game you would put on display in your living room, rather than hide away under your bed. Key to this was the fact that wipE'out'' borrowed unashamedly from the clubbing experience and electronic music, in a way that put it at the heart of progressive mid 90s culture. It soon became a phenomenon.

wipE'out'' looked sensational, with Sheffield agency The Designers Republic - known for their work with Warp - creating the visuals, packaging and manual for the game, drawing heavily on the bright colours and excitable geometric shapes of the rave and club flyers of the early 90s.

wipE'out'' also sounded like a new rave dream. The European version of the game included music from The Chemical Brothers, Leftfield and Orbital, the kind of fashionable game syncs that were almost unheard of at the time. Equally striking was the game’s original music, which came from Welsh musician Tim Wright, aka CoLD SToRAGE, by this point already a veteran in the video games world, having worked on the music for Amiga titles such as Lemmings and Shadow of the Beast 2. His music for wipE'out'' was, if anything, even more extreme than the big-name syncs, mixing the accelerated beats of drum & bass with the pure synth rush of trance to make music that sounded as breathlessly exciting as playing the game felt.

These tracks were burned into the brains of millions of gamers; the soundtrack to a generation of late-night anti-gravity racing, as the sun gingerly rose beyond the curtains. But they haven’t, perhaps, quite got the respect they deserve, something that this release will address. In 2023, video game music is finally getting its dues; here, remastered and repackaged –and also remixed by cutting edge producers such as Kode9, μ-Ziq, Brainwaltzera, Simo Cell, Wordcolour, James Shinra, Surgeons Girl and Dattassette– are some of the most important, thrilling, innovative and most fun songs ever committed to game release.

A viral phenomenon reissued. After 23 million YouTube views, multitudes of tattoos, dozens of cover versions, eight sold-out 7" pressings, comes this NINTH vinyl version.àSpread by word of mouth, click of mouse and without radio play.àThe entrancing romantic love song (murder ballad?) with guest vocalist Sparky Phillips of Demented Are Go counterpointing HME's Emanuela Hutter, hits the sweet spot for obsessive lovers“

The Hillbilly Moon Explosion continue with their gigging schedule across Europe this fall and plan a new album next year.àThe band - two Englishmen, a Frenchman and a Swiss/Italian chanteuse - reside in Switzerland and are one of the classiest exponents of rockabilly alive today, subtly mixing in swing, ska, country, Europop and more without compromising their roots.àTheir widely-sourced rock"n"roll is exciting and enduring; this song is a proven earworm and a worldwide infatuation

Repress!

Wallace has been something of a behind the scenes phenomenon. Having just two official releases at the time of writing, alongside a few white-labels on his own ‘Tartan’ imprint - The man known as Wallace has somehow worked his way into the record bags of the worlds biggest DJ’s: Gilles Peterson, Hunee, Moxie, Ruf Dug, Gideon and beyond.

It’s only a matter of time before the wider dance music community catches on - and I wouldn’t be surprised if - by the time this record hits the shelves - WALLACE- MANIA is in full effect. An artist like this only comes along once in a blue moon.

Wallace has been quietly perfecting his craft for the last decade, and has a deep understanding of club dynamics that can’t be taught. Bradley Zero himself has been playing 4/5 Wallace tracks per set within
the last year alone! Luckily for you, the secret is out, and we, for one - cannot wait!

The Blowback is the new album by Emily Wolfe. Emily wrote or co-wrote most of the tracks with bassist Evan Nicholson. Produced by Emily Wolfe Engineered by Matt Gerhard (Spoon, Tennis, Future Islands) Mixed by Cian Riordan (St. Vincent, Sleater-Kinney, Paul McCartney, Lana Del Rey) Mastered by Chris Gehringer - Sterling Sound Emily Wolfe asserts her talent as a dynamic vocalist, sharp songwriter, and an accomplished guitarist and producer. She delivers a brand of rock ‘n’ roll that’s raw and relevant, anchored by emotionally charged lyrics and a powerhouse stage presence. This young and impassioned artist has amassed millions of streams and garnered widespread acclaim from The Wall Street Journal, MTV, Guitar Player, PASTE, American Songwriter as well as her hometown paper, the Austin-American Statesman and many others. Recognized as a force on the instrument, Emily has collaborated with Epiphone/Gibson Guitars on two signature Sheraton models which is a rarity for an artist that isn't yet selling out stadiums. After quietly emerging as a phenomenon, Emily projects her voice like never before on her third full-length album, which she produced

Repress!

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytumcomosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.

The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’snew renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

In the late 1960s, Antonio Infantino linked his name to the Beat world and to italian performance and gestural music circles (Bussotti, Chiari, Curran). A poet and singer, a tireless devotee of the musical traditions of Southern Italy, he focuses his research mainly on the mysterious phenomenon of Tarantismo, a cultural syndrome of hysterical type found in the Mediterranean air and made famous by the studies of Ernesto De Martino. With his group, Infantino twists and reinvents the traditional repertoire of Basilicata, creating an entirely new and original songbook. The music reflects the states of Trance induced by the bite of the spider tarantula, with obsessive and hypnotic rhythms characteristic of the incandescent blood of the peasant world. A deep and universal human sound, it also takes its cues from Dylan's folk revolution and the frenetic drums of North Africa.

Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II continues Black Truffle’s documentation of the late work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, who sadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. Like the first volume of the series, the two works recorded here were written for The Ever Present Orchestra, an ensemble founded in Zürich in 2016 to perform Lucier’s work exclusively. At the core of the music Lucier wrote for the ensemble is the electric guitar, an instrument he began to explore in 2013. Played with e-bows, in these works electric lap steel guitars take on roles akin to the slow sweep pure wave oscillators heard in many of Lucier’s works since the early 1980s. This strikingly elegant pair of compositions would serve as an ideal introduction to Lucier’s late music for a listener as yet unfamiliar with its graceful exploration of beating patterns and other acoustic phenomenon.

The two pieces have quite different characters, exemplifying Lucier’s ability to harvest a remarkable range of musical results from closely related compositional procedures and concerns. In Arrigoni Bridge (2019), Lucier uses a technique familiar from earlier works such as Still Lives (1995), where sine waves traced the shapes of household objects. Here, three lap steel electric guitars (played by Oren Ambarchi, Bernhard Rietbrock, and Jan Thoben) follow the form of the Arrigoni Bridge that connects Middletown and Portland, Connecticut. The bridge’s two enormous steel arcs become slowly sweeping pitches, alongside which alto saxophone (Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos), violin (Rebecca Thies) and cello (Lucy Railton) sustain long tones, creating a variety of audible beating patterns depending on their distance from or proximity to the guitars. With its stately pacing, warm middle register tones, and rich timbral variety in the sustaining instruments, Arrigoni Bridge is a beautiful example of compositional reduction producing immersive results. Flips (2020), on the other hand, is more austere. Scored for two lap steel electric guitars (Rietbock and Thoben), double bass (Ross Wightman) and glockenspiel (Trevor Saint), the two acoustic instruments played with bows, the piece zooms in on the range of a major second (two semitones). The two guitars sweep in opposite directions within the range, crossing every four minutes; the double bass and glockenspiel sustain long tones, producing beats of different speeds determined by their distance from the guitar tones. This limitation of the tonal range means the music is often dissonant and forces the phenomenon of audible beating to the surface, resulting in a paradoxical music composed entirely of long tones yet alive with pulsating rhythm. Exemplifying Lucier’s ability to uncover near-infinite complexity within seemingly simple materials, Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II is a fitting tribute to one of the major figures of the experimental music tradition and a testament to the continuing power of his work.

Basel based experimental techno producer and amenthia label coowner Agonis steps up on Midgar. The release is inspired by the
astronomical phenomenon of gamma rays, the most energetic form of
electromagnetic radiation. Gamma ray bursts are associated with the
core collapse of massive stars leading to the formation of a black hole
or a neutron star, which releases a tremendous amount of energy,
outshining entire galaxies for brief seconds.

The story of the invention of the term, 'deepfunk' is probably only known among fans and practitioners of this niche-genre. In short, it all started in the 1990s when DJs like Keb Darge, Mark 'Snowboy' Cotgrove and others began spinning obscure and feral Funk 45 RPM singles from local American bands, ostensibly generating another sub-category branch off of the mighty Northern Soul tree. The dance-club phenomenon inevitably spilled over to contemporary groups on the funk scene which immediately tried to record their music the way their idols did. The 'rare groove' and 'acid jazz' movements had run their course and there was a concerted effort to reinstate primitive idiomatic styles and techniques into the music, most notably by 90s funk collective The Poets of Rhythm. As more years passed by the number of bands steadily increased (although in tiny numbers, compared to the mainstream market). Almost every country had a representative with the majority of them coming from the United Kingdom. The deepfunk sound was still a niche, however a very few bands made it onto the mainstream charts, most notably Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings.

At the height of the retro-soul movement a questionable development took place. As more bands arrived on the scene, the production became more and more polished and pop-ish. Some of that squeaky-clean tidiness began to creep into the recordings, encouraged in part by the signature sounds of the digital recording technology available at that time. Some bands even tried to jump onto the possibility of promoting their music as 'deepfunk' although they were actually playing slick, funky pop music. This way some people who thought they were listening to raw, energetic funk actually felt quite ambushed when hit with real deepfunk. In fact, a certain percentage of funk music produced within the past 20 years does not deserve to be described as 'deepfunk' at all. Fortunately there were (and are) some pleasant exceptions which did not just imitate but actually rendered amazing funk music just like some of the finest funk combos of the 1960s and 70s.

One of those creative minds is without a doubt Joel Ricci aka Lucky Brown. Originally from Seattle, Washington, USA, he has enriched the deepfunk community since the mid-2000s with his stellar abilities. He is not only an amazing musician playing multiple instruments, but also a brilliant composer, arranger, and producer too. But for us here at Tramp he is much more, a close friend and remarkable human being. Whenever we were struggling, whether with the label or in private life, Joel and his musical work helped us to overcome everything and to keep going our path.

So here we are in 2023. The songs you are listening to right now are the complete Space Dream collection, split into two parts, representing the two living-room recording sessions from which his 2011 Tramp Records debut was compiled. Each fully remastered album contains unreleased material and comes with brand new, beautifully reimagined artwork by Ricci himself, housed in an authentic 1960s tip-on cover. A first class product from a first class musician for the discerning funk enthusiast.