Suche:rendered

**LP FORMAT IS VERY LIMITED - PLEASE BE AWARE THAT UNFORTUNATELY THERE MAY BE CUTS TO ORDERS**

For Los Angeles' The Black Queen, the depths of isolation and loss have always functioned as a gateway to being born anew. Much has transpired since the band released their cold, cutting debut album Fever Daydream (a record that Revolver described as 'a haunting exploration of the darker side of pop music'). But throughout it all, the trio of Greg Puciato (former frontman of the now-defunct The Dillinger Escape Plan), Joshua Eustis (of Telefon Tel Aviv, Puscifer, and Nine Inch Nails), and Steven Alexander (a tech member for Nine Inch Nails, Ke$ha, and A Perfect Circle) have emerged as triumphant and intense as ever, documenting their journey via the synth-streaked industrial anthems of their sophomore release, Infinite Games.Formed in 2011 after a chance meeting between Puciato and Eustis backstage at a Dillinger show in which they both realized they were huge fansof each other's work, The Black Queen became a labor of love for its members to explore sounds and emotions that they couldn't quite fit into their full-time projects. Injecting a pained, twilit edge into slick new-wave tracks as fit for the dance floor as they are for some imagined dystopian skyline, the trio have managed to channel their scattered, eclectic influences into a surprisingly cohesive vision. 'We've got a pretty weird cross section,' Puciato says of the band's musical chemistry. 'We can go out for food and listen to Power Trip on the way there, then Baltimore club music on the way back, and then talk about how killer Maxwell's Embrya album was, and then get sidetracked and talk about the Celeste video game soundtrack, then all have to be quiet so that we can grab a voice recording of some weird sounding radio interference. It's all over the place and unusually far reaching,and there's a lot of passion for discovery.'After releasing their 2016 debut album Fever Daydream to critical acclaim however, the trio underwent several major upheavals that cast the project in a completely new light. Puciato's main project The Dillinger Escape Plan disbanded. Chris Cornell of Soundgarden killed himself while Puciato was on tour with him. Eustis put out music under his beloved Telefon Tel Aviv monikerfor the first time since his former bandmate Charles Cooper died in 2009. Thetrio's storage space was robbed. Puciato suffered a relapse into crippling anxiety and paranoia. Once again, in the face of tragedy, The Black Queen had to rebuild everything from the ground up.The first step was acquiring a new studio space, which immensely helped the band get back into the rhythm of freely collaborating with one another, and experimenting with sounds for as long (and as loud) as they wanted. The resulting album, Infinite Games, marks a massive leap forward for The Black Queen. Not only are the band's icy R&B instincts more sharply pronounced; they've also rendered their morbid electronics in more lush detail than ever before, filling out the corners of their songs with chilling ambient passages
that create a wide-screen backdrop for Puciato's eerie, tortured vocals. 'I think this album is actually hookier, but more insidious in that it reveals itself over time,' Puciato says about Infinite Games. His choice of words says something about the album's creeping, pitch-black approach to pop music.With this release, the group have also announced a new undertaking in the form of their new label, Federal Prisoner. Resisting the more marketing-centricapproach that feels standard at this point for the record label game, the goal of Federal Prisoner is to provide an outlet for projects that emerge naturally from The Black Queen's own creative endeavors and collaborations with otherartists. In a way, Federal Prisoner solidifies TBQ's commitment to creating music on their own terms, following the same organic sense of inspiration that led them to forming in the first place. As Puciato puts it, 'It's just an expression of passion and individualism in a way that opens more doors for us to create and to own what we create with minimal compromise. It's as much an act of refusal as it is a statement of intent.'Infinite Games, the second album from experimental Los Angeles synth-pop trio The Black Queen, comes out on September 28th

Unreleased album from 1981, a collaborative project by David Behrman, Paul DeMarinis, Fern Friedman, Terri Hanlon and Anne Klingensmith recorded at Mills College in 1981.

Previously known only to cognoscenti through an obscure self-released three-track 7”, this is the first publication of the complete album, an outrageous confection that mixes art-song and theatrical monologue with live electronics. Starting life as a performance art piece described by the artists as ‘Western Performance Noir’, the record centres on a series of texts written by Friedman and Hanlon in which female narrators comically embody a series of iconic roles (The Recording Artist, The Former Movie Star, and The Rancher). Other lyrical themes include recurring references to the notorious cannibal pioneers, the Donner Party, an ironic take on Japanophilia, and the luscious “Archetypal Unitized Seminar,” a satirical poke at self-help culture, whose lyrics are rendered in Indian raga style to the accompaniment of electronic glissandi and toy noisemakers. Delivered by Friedman, Hanlon, Klingensmith and special guest Maggi Payne in forms ranging from spoken monologue to Country & Western waltz, the texts are accompanied by instrumental and electronic contributions by Behrman and DeMarinis. Musically, She’s More Wild is truly unique, demonstrating these two pioneers of live-electronic performance adapting their signature processes to something approaching a ‘pop’ format: we hear the gliding, frequency-sensitive electronics familiar from Behrman’s classic On the Other Ocean and the mutant hacked Speak n’ Spell heard on DeMarinis’ Songs Without Throats propelled by drum machines and twisted into song forms. Perhaps comparable only to the David Rosenboom and Jacqueline Humbert’s contemporaneous Daytime Viewing in its interweaving of performance art tactics, high-tech electronics and pop sensibilities, She’s More Wild is an essential document, both immediately gratifying and ultimately thought provoking.

Another win for the Glowing Pin as Müller & Wandt drop a fresh new age groover on a killer club dub tip. Elsewhere Phazer Boys, Suzanne Kraft, Philipp Otterbach and River Yarra remix the pscht out of their favourite tracks from ‘Instrumentalmusik..’. Expect Goan hits, cosmic trips, loved up rave and chilled out wave on this flawless five tracker.

Growing Bin becomes Glowing Pin for the most anticipated rematch of the century. Back at the beginning of 2018, Wolf Müller and Niklas Wandt went head to head for a box office smash, throwing a high school percussion tray, wall of hardware and voodoo skull into the ring for the tribal trip of ‘Instrumentalmusik Von Der Mitte Der World’. Now the multi-instrumental duo face off once again, but this time it’s a royal rumble with Phazer Boys, Suzanne Kraft, Phillip Otterbach and River Yarra all bringing the noise to the Glowing Pin.

Müller and Wandt dominate the action on the A1, playing loose with sampler vox, serene pads and future primitive rhythms on the unreleased ‘Fun Dub’ of the also unreleased ‘Dub Dub’. Imagine Ferris Bueller’s trampoline tumble trading Chicago to the Weissenhof and you’ll sense the mood of this New Age groove. Germany’s number one party dudes, those freaky Phazer Boys take a break from dropping killer Candomblé cuts to reach for the lasers on the A2, taking ‘Ahu’ to another dimension. Dripping in neon body paint and armed with fire poi, the Düsseldorf duo power up progressive house sequences, didgeridoo bass and thumping tribal house percussion for a wall-shaking, speaker-breaking remix.

The B1 belongs to synth whiz Suzanne Kraft who revels in glistening, gliding glory on an expansive remix of ‘Auflösung’. Sleek, serene and futuristic, the track shimmers like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, free from inequality and rendered with the 5D(ub?) majesty of a DMT breakthrough.
B2 hears Salon associate and serious talent Philipp Otterbach take over on a stripped back and psychedelic post punk dub of ‘Expedition’. Angular bass by Süne Große and a stuttering rhythm underpin astral flourishes and the hazy vocals of Lucas Croon before the African elements begin to move to the forefront.
Last man standing is Australian outlier River Yarra, who leads us into the Krautback with a chugging dub of ‘Weltraumsandalen’. Lent a lysergic sparkle by a percolating one-note bassline, this slow motion stunner masters perpetual motion amid the eerie echoes of the bush, organic percussion and electronic animal cries fading into the night. Let the pins glow again.

Patrick Ryder

“The combined forces of Frederik Valentin & Loke Rahbek first found a way into the world in 2017 with the album 'Buy Corals Online'. Together they now present 'Elephant', an eight-track album that composes an inquisitive space with it's parts.

The economy of movement across Rahbek and Valentin's new collaborative album makes for a gentle transmission of its abstract intimacies. This presence, which we caught glimpses of on their previous work 'Buy Corals Online', is shaped by the delicate interplay between acoustic instrumentation and synthetically rendered sounds. Hauntingly melodic at times, the album feels like a suite of uncanny lullabies that grant access to realities that can only be found in dreams.

Rahbek and Valentin are always leading us somewhere and showing us something—one piece of the scene at a time, coming and going with different parts of a puzzle that eventually settles into a complete form. And through all this we perceive an inviting restlessness on their behalf, encouraging us to stray further and further into the private space of 'Elephant'. Valentin is perhaps best known for his work in the exquisite atypical pop group Kyo, though his widereaching music and videography practices covertly underpin his flagship projects.

Most recently, Valentin has been working with Yung Lean as both producer on his 'Nectar' album as Jonatan Leandoer127 as well as on their commission for Sweden's Cullberg Ballet. As Croatian Amor, Rahbek has made similar forays into unworldly pop and his work with Christian Stadsgaard as Damien Dubrovnik has been as critical as their cofounding of Posh Isolation.

Modest interventions from processed field-recordings and semi-erupting synths invite you to zoom in enough to hear the human hand. An attention to listening, to how sounds cradle the small movements and gestures that naturally accompany the playing of guitar, piano, and viola, is acutely developed by Rahbek and Valentin.

It's in this way that 'Elephant' persuades us that even small stories unfurl into the most intricate and tremendous of sagas"

21-year-old New Zealand musician Arjuna Oakes's debut EP,
The Watcher, is a showcase of his ability as a singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and producer, and a testament to his depth of engagement with music. The first two tracks on the EP fit neatly
within the jazz-infused soul music landscape he is quickly becoming part of, but the latter half of the EP is far harder to categorise.

Featuring instrumentation from some of New Zealand’s most exciting young jazz musicians, The Watcher explores a wide variety of themes and musical ideas, with Arjuna’s charismatic soul vocals and robust sonic palette serving as a connective thread. From big social issues to personal relationships and internal self-discoveries, across The Watcher, Arjuna takes his cue from the title track and exploration of mass surveillance, and it’s relevance within our everyday lives.

This watcher theme continues throughout the rest of the EP, with the stories told rendered as if being observed by an outside force. Decorated by cinematic soundscapes, hypnotic grooves, creative improvisation and catchy melodies, Arjuna's debut is a test palette for his future projects, one that makes his enthusiasm to develop and explore themes and style in song abundantly clear.

Klein's offbeat singular vision continues to defy classification. Her acclaimed, self-released records – Lagata, Only and CC – along with Tommy for Hyperdub and her theatre musical Care, have allowed glimpses into Klein's uniquely spirally perspective on vocal abstraction, disarming experimentalism and pop culture wonderment. Yet these chapters have also served as masks to conceal the artist's own personal crises of self-belief, misrepresentation and belonging.

An 18-month writing process led to her new album Lifetime. It's an unexpectedly literal body of work which Klein compares to "giving someone your diary." Lifetime embraces the inevitable cycles of existence, phasing through moments of brutality, vulnerability, estrangement and unexpected fortitude. Lifetime embraces the inevitable cycles of existence, phasing through moments of brutality, vulnerability, estrangement and unexpected fortitude. Every sound in Lifetime is intentional, every influence—from 'King of Gospel Music' composer James Cleveland, to early 18th century tonalities in the b side, the work of 'race film' pioneer Spencer Williams, the residue of the religious experience is deeply personal. The 12 songs of the album are pieced together like a puzzle; seamless transitions connect each of its compositions in a reverse chronology, while every chord from every song is echoed someplace else.

What's been hinted at in Klein's live performances is now realised in full for Lifetime. Less vocal work allows her to be even more expressive, and in eschewing a tendency towards brief, truncated sketches, each song serves as its own long conversational piece, committed to realities of a lived experience. The artist who once grappled with self-doubt has set about breaking the cycle of insecurity for others like her, while mindfully chipping away at the conventions of classical music.

Like its artwork, Lifetime addresses intersecting life cycles: the inner and outer selves, hypermodernity versus history, living nightmares and dream states, while seeking the light and darkness in both. Part 1 opens with unmistakable Klein flourishes on the title track. Gusty pads, anxious, frayed-edge static arcs, and craters of deep negative space, all of which melt down to the clean slate of "Claim It," which is a tribute to embracing one's own blessings. "Listen And See As They Take" and "Silent" form their own microcosm, as the sound of crackling kindling burns backwards into imposing structures of distorted strings and disembodied marching drums, before returning to heat and ash again. "For What Worth", in collaboration with sound artist and saxophonist Matana Roberts, explores the kinship between two artists whose shared exploration of lineage leads them both toward uncharacteristically sweet clarity.

Part 2 is further steeped in black expressive styles of the past. "Enough is enough" links the Lifetime narrative to the broader diasporic black experience, inhabiting every chamber of a harmonica with ghostly notes of the present and past, as fragmented gospel chords reflect spiritual bonds between self and the divine. "We Are Almost There" begins the journey with nothing but the looped structures of multitude of voices. The drums and dischord of "Never Will I Disobey" wordlessly create the conditions for "Honour," a near 10-minute composition where crossed boundaries and crossed wires are exposed in real time, and sharp expressions of hurtfulness, accountability and corrupted expectations are rendered beautiful in representational form, via sustained synth tones which hum, jab and flit in natural disharmony. The interlude "Camelot Is Coming" draws on the choir tradition to prelude the spoken word recounts the cycles of trauma and death that form "99." Lifetime closes with the dystopian swirl of "Protect My Blood" a composition which details an excruciating rift, before blooming into serenity as it draws to a close.

Klein's Lifetime is laid bare, from the end to the beginning, and cycled over again. From her place within her family, to their place within her, to viewing the fragility of culture through the lens of memory. It's a lifetime, an embodiment of young livelihood, and an end as much it is a beginning.

"In his solo work and as a member of Nine Inch Nails, Alessandro Cortini's music casts the listener into an intricately rendered vortex of emotive dynamics,where he expertly maximises the boundaries of contemporary electronic music. His new album, 'Volume Massimo,' combines his fondness for melody with the rigour of experimental practice. Follows on from 2017's universally acclaimed album ‘Avanti. 8 tracks of deftly arranged synthesizers saturated with sonic artefacts and luscious pop sensibilities.
+ Includes download code."

FPO (onesheet currently in development):

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The digitally remastered release of JAK3's Moonlight Radiation is a menagerie of cyberpunk mutations arising out of the Memphis revival rap movement. The album's big, blown-out sound might have seemed an incidental result of an analog recording process in its original cassette release. Now, rendered in digital clarity, listeners can better perceive how JAK3 sculpts varying degrees of panic, aggression and resolve very intentionally through the hard mix of industrial noise, inventive beats, flush synths and recordings from a slew of rappers including Freddie Dredd (Toronto), Apoc Krysis (Memphis), and fellow Waistdeep Clique members Agnarkea and Calsutmoran.

The short format of Moonlight Radiation's 16 tracks allows JAK3 to cover a lot of ground, and even within a single track he keeps one guessing. Track 2, "2FAKE," goes from an atmospheric burn, to a slow drive with the snappy flow of Moistbread, and then abruptly crashes back into an oozing vortex of synths. The penultimate interlude "Return from Hyperspace" sounds like one is being forced through a hellish modem, only to land in a haunted and abandoned transmitter for the closing track, "This Night Will Never End."

Between, those tracks, one gets a tour of the wild possibilities that could come next from this producer and the sounds emerging from the Memphis chopped-and-screwed scene. In a milieu that is retreading the past, the mutants of Moonlight Radiation may seem to be arriving a little prematurely. But you can't stop evolution when the field is so wide, and young producers like JAK3 are moving fast.

“Ta Da” is the debut full length from J. McFarlane Reality Guest, the collective name for the trio headed by the eponymous McFarlane. As a member of the group Twerps, McFarlane has traversed guitar-centric, melodic pop music for some years while honing a highly unique, personal musical language. Ta Da is the first recorded unveiling of McFarlane’s affecting, oblique songwriting panache. Originally released in her native Australia on Hobbies Galore, Ta Da will be released worldwide by Night School in June 2019.

Wheezing into view with a troubled reed instrument set against a s of whoozy synth lines, Human Tissue Act is a foggy curtain the listener is invited to peel back. The dissonant notes are left to dance entwined, with clarinet heralding a Harry Partch-esque mallet percussion interlude. It’s a mood. With no resolution in sight, an audience dragged closer into uncertainty is suddenly drenched with the light of inter-weaving wah wah synth and saxophone. I Am A Toy introduces us to McFarlane’s vocal, an effortless and matter-of-fact, accented statement that quietly takes the reins. While McFarlane’s previous work in Twerps might reference 80s UK and antipodean guitar pop, Ta Da showcases a different influences immersed in psychedelic music and synths. It’s a brilliant, deft concoction swimming in Young Marble Giants-type minimalism washed with bare pop and harmony similar to Kevin Ayers making sense of a Melbourne suburb full of faces half-recognised in the blanching sun.

What Has He Bought begins with a Casio-keyboard rhythm pattern, palm-muted guitars and immaculately enunciated vocal give way to a burnt melodica part that elevates the spirits. Simple patterns repeated, like a well-tempered pop song that does what it needs to do and no more, build into the sound of summer leaking orange juice. They’re moments of joy, layered on top of each other like a melting cake. Do You Like What I’m Sayin’ recalls Marine Girls covering a classic ‘66 Garage nugget, organ lines fighting funk with guitar chords played just behind the percussion. “In a talking world, meanings are the same. Words want to hold on to the people they contain. Do you like what I’m sayin’?” We’re in a Beckett play perhaps, obtuse absurdities rendered pretty. Alien Ceremony is a heart-melter, given a melancholic timbre by bowed double bass it’s a tragi-comic piece that almost reeks of Robert Wyatt at his mid-whimsical twisting a fugue completely out of shape. Beneath the layers of harmony and twinkling instrumentation you sense there’s a genuine sadness somewhere even if it remains veiled.

Through out Ta Da, McFarlane plays with counterpoint and contrast to sometimes delirious effect. On Your Torturer, a simple, upbeat chord progression is hard panned, underpinning a flute solo which seems out of place, hence making it completely in place on this warmly surreal album. My Enemy is a slowly swinging eulogy to a failed relationship punctuated by analogue synth burbles, with our protagonist simply asking, in the aftermath, “can we be nice?” Here McFarlane’s vocal is straight forward, lyrically conversational but still not completely in focus, a surreal kitchen sink drama filtered through a dream where everything is in the wrong place. It’s a fine precursor to Heartburn, which similarly borrows BBC Radiophonic Workshop-style noise synths and the use of space to carve up the simple “You Will Make My Heart Burn” line. At this point, the listener has been in such close proximity to McFarlane’s show, the reality guest in a performance where they’re the sole audience member, that when Where Are You My Love rises on the horizon as a sleepy, psychedelic send off it’s uplifting. The vocal drifts away into the sunset, simple and direct. It leaves the listener slightly confused, perhaps, but grateful for the gentle surprise.

AX Sounds join us from parts unknown...

A beautiful simplicity, a foundational allegiance to the House blueprint, but rendered in a sonic spectrum that's entirely futuristic.
These hypnotic workouts suggest an efficiency of intent that's impossible to resist at high or low volume.

This is trance dance baby, but without the tie-dye

Anoyo ('the world over there') draws from the same sessions with members of Tokyo Gakuso which led to the 2018 work Konoyo, but rendered starker, solemn, and stripped back, with more of a naturalist tint. Hecker's processing here moves in veiled ways, soft refractions and whispered shrouds woven within improvisational sessions of traditional gagaku interplay, evoking a sense of vaulted space, temples at dawn, shredded silk fluttering in the rafters.
This is boldly barren music, skeletal and sculptural, shaped from wood, wind, strings, and mist. Modern yet ancient, delicate and desolate, Anoyo inverts its predecessor to compellingly conjure a parallel world of illusion, solitude, and eternal return.

Transcendence was not only Alice Coltrane's last studio album for Warner Bros., it would also be her last studio work for nearly three decades. While Eternity and Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana followed the composer's muse through an exciting range of musical styles and influences, Transcendence is perhaps the most fully realized of the three LPs, synthesizing the best elements of each into a monumental whole.

Side one consists of intimate compositions with Alice's pointillist harp enhanced by intricate string arrangements. At times, the emotional climaxes in "Radhe Shyam" and the title track sound like the score to an epic film. This would be the closest Coltrane ever came to chamber music, yet rendered with her uniquely spiritual tint.

Side two moves into celestial territory with uplifting chants, light handclaps and bluesy organ. These call-and-response chants, featuring members from her Ashram, completely embody both African-American gospel and Hindu devotional traditions, an uncanny fusion that is transformed through Alice's pure spirit.

What runs through the album's two musical halves is a powerful sense of devotion and discovery. At this point in her life, Coltrane was on a journey toward truth through sound, and Transcendence gives the listener a front row seat to this quest.

Tracks from Aural Imbalance's Propagation Of Light album versioned and rendered for wax.

Just Breathe gets spotlighted on the A-side with two remixes. First up, Maps Of Hyperspace grafts his brand of dubby ambience to Simon's instrumentation for trippy chill house goodness. Off Land strips back the beats and ups the ambient bandwidth on his version to close out the side.

The B-side kicks off with Soul Solution, one of Mr. Huxtable's trademark lusicous atmospheric house tracks. Adriano Mirabile brings his techy production stylest o the desk on Fall Of Stars to wrap things.

Matthew Dear is a shapeshifter, oscillating seamlessly between DJ, dance-music producer, and experimental pop auteur. He is a founding artist on both Ghostly International and its danceoor offshoot, Spectral Sound. He writes, produces, and mixes all of his work. He straddles multiple musical worlds and belongs to none, now nearly 20 years into his kaleidoscopic career, with ve albums and two dozen EPs plus millions of miles in the rearview of his biography.

Bunny is the name of Matthew Dear's fth album. His rst since 2012, it bounces into plain sight preceded by two slyly different singles in 2017: the moody, urgent "Modanil Blues' and the buoyant, blithe, Tegan and Sara-featuring 'Bad Ones.' Bunny follows both modes, among others, parading down a rabbit hole of unhinged phrasings, dreams, and interludes. It saunters in the shadows; it stands brightly in the moonlight. Bunny is a dual vision of avant-pop; an artistic reckoning from a 21st-century polymath; persona splintered, paradox paraphrased, a riddle rendered.

Produced by Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak. LP is on coloured coke bottle green vinyl + inclues download code and 12x12' lyric sheet/ liner note insert.

Madeline will be on tour throughout the UK and Europe this Autumn.

'Building from understated beauty to dense guitar theatrics. It reminds me of Chicago circa '93 as remembered in a dream — a little bit of Liz Phair 'Exile In Guyville' - rendered in soft-focus with the graceful confidence of a young master. ' STEREOGUM

In January of 2018, five months after the release of her debut album Night Night at the First Landing, Madeline Kenney traveled from Oakland, California to the woods outside of Durham, North Carolina to record her sophomore album with a new collaborator, Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner.

The choice was a conscious decision to explore new methodology in writing, recording, production and even genre. Perfect Shapes sees Kenney leaping headfirst into fresh and adventurous territory, largely eschewing conventional rock structures in favor of theme and melody. Its ten songs are full of surprises big and small - from vibrant synth lines to taut bass figures and subtly modulated vocals - that instead of feeling fussed over, reveal Kenney's penchant for elegant and abstract composition.

Kenney's 2017 debut, Night Night at the First Landing, was a guitar-centric rock album, produced by friend and collaborator Chaz Bear of Toro Y Moi, Perfect Shapes leans on the foundational pieces of Night Night - fuzzed-out guitar tones, coy wordplay and Kenney's notably strong voice - but with an unconventional approach that allows them to bloom, reincarnated. Perfect Shapes marks Wasner's first foray into producing another artist's work and is permeated by the pair's collaborative spirit. Both Wasner and Kenney play multiple instruments on the record, and engineered the session alongside Kenney's touring percussionist, Camille Lewis.

An eagerness to explore and experiment is apparent from start to finish, as Kenney and Wasner weave endless sonic curve balls into the arrangements. From the delightfully warped percussion on opening track 'Overhead' to the burbling synths on the R&B-tinted 'The Flavor of the Fruit Tree' and the left-field trumpet solo in 'Your Art,' these rich and inventive ideas echo Yo La Tengo's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mentality, as well as the surging soundscapes of Tame Impala and Wye Oak at their most impressionistic. Lead single "Cut Me Off" is a surprise of its own - the most pop-forward song Kenney has written yet. 'Bad Idea,' finds her balancing fragility as foil; later, 'I Went Home' manages to evoke both frustration and affection in a single breath.

The complex and open-ended questions that lay at the core of Perfect Shapes mark Kenney's arrival into a hard-hitting reflective space: How do you love another when it hurts to do so What is the physical limit to which one can carry the emotions of others How does a modern female artist reckon with the expectations demanded of her femininity Yet for all the notes of doubt and fear that Kenney raises, she delivers each song with confidence and poise, grounded by the pointedly laid and surging soundscape.

Kenney has always had a penchant for curiosity and experimentation. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, she began studying classical piano and dance in kindergarten, and grew to believe her future lay in modern dance choreography. Not one to be tied to a singular pursuit, however, Kenney took a hard left in college, studying Interpersonal Neurobiology and supporting herself with a career in baking. Music remained a constant however, and after moving to the Bay Area in 2013, Kenney quickly found footing in the supportive arts community in Oakland. There, she met and began collaborating with Chaz Bear (Toro Y Moi), which led to the production of her Signals EP and later her debut album, Night Night at the First Landing. Both releases were received with great critical acclaim, and saw Kenney exploring the sounds within her self-proclaimed twang-haze genre, defined by cathartic fuzz breakdowns and lyrical sensitivity.

Second instalment of Mecanica Records compilation focused to obscure techno/EBM/electro. A selection of new and unreleased tracks by six projects from different latitudes. The opening track is a collaboration between Dmitry Distant (Latvia) and Gestalt (Russia) with a dark electro tune that works perfect as warm-up. Deep Pill (USA) offers a versatile technoid tune and Blac Kolor (Germany) closes the A side with a hard and hypnotic piece. Viktor Kalima (Finland) opens the B side with a body music attack, followed by Santiago (USA) with four minutes of pure psychosis and dementia, and Rendered, the duo formed by Daniel Myer (Germany) and Clément Perez (France), closes this sonic trip with a strong and massive cut that will leave you attached to a never ending loop in your head.

Manchester's OURTIME MUSIC return with something of a electronic masterpiece ! After a 14 year hiatus, Salford's elusive cosmic composer returns to his Sonic Insomniac guise with a debut LP of the finest underwater electro & crisply rendered electronica As always, super limited !!

"It was the most beautiful summer of my life."

Memories — places, vacancies, allusions — are fundamental characters in Mary Lattimore's evocative craft. Inside her music, wordless narratives, indenite travelogues, and braided events skew into something enchantingly new. The Los Angeles-based harpist recorded her breakout 2016 album, At The Dam, during stops along a road trip across America, letting the serene landscapes of Joshua Tree and Marfa, Texas color her compositions. In 2017, she presented Collected Pieces, a tape compiling sounds from her past life in Philadelphia: odes to the east coast, burning motels, and beach town convenience stores. In 2018, from a restorative station — a redwood barn, nestled in the hills above San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge — emanates Hundreds of Days, her second full-length LP with Ghostly International. The record sojourns between silences and speech, between microcosmic daily scenes and macrocosmic universal understandings, between being alien in promising new places and feeling torn from old native havens. It's an expansive new chapter in Lattimore's story, and an expression of mystied gratitude. A study in how ordinary components helix together to create an extraordinary world.

Awarded a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Lattimore spent two summer months living with 15 fellow artists — writers, playwrights, musicians, poets, painters, activists, curators — in a cluster of old Victorian military buildings on the Northern Pacic Coast. Days offered solitude, Lattimore set up in a spacious barn, able to arrange her instruments at will. Nights welcomed new perspectives. "Hanging out with a lot of accomplished artists with poetic ways of looking at the world was really inspiring. My heart was in a bit of a tangle after leaving Philadelphia. I was holding onto things instead of moving forward. My time there was a nostalgia detox, a way to press reset in a healthy way. Also breathing in the freshest air in America, straight off of the ocean, felt good."

Throughout the shifting locales there is one consistent companion Lattimore engages: a 47-string Lyon and Healy harp. The instrument wires directly into her psyche. Pitchfork's Marc Masters posits, "she can practically talk through it at this point, she's created a language." The space and stillness of the Headlands afforded Lattimore freedom to her expand her vocabulary, to stretch out and experiment with layers of keyboard, guitar, theremin, and grand piano. Lattimore's voice sweeps beneath the plucks and washes of opener It Feels Like Floating,' enraptured by the winding current, and reappearing in the second minute of the immense "Never Saw Him Again." The track elevates towards a shimmering apex of static and percussion before organ drone yields to signature halcyon utters. As with much of Lattimore's work, the track titles are telling, "Baltic Birch" is a somber windswept march that sways gracefully out of step, a remembrance of a recent trip to Latvia where she was struck by the abandoned resort towns along the Baltic Sea. Hello From The Edge of The Earth' is an earnest reection of Lattimore's love of the natural world, recognizing the thresholds of varying terrains.

The album's fth track borrows its name from Lattimore's favorite line in Denis Johnson's short story Emergency' from Jesus' Son. A character, lost in a blizzard, reassesses a disjointed universe, a clash between curtains of snow and angels descending out of a brilliant blue summer: it isn't an apocalypse, it is a drive-in movie, with stars hovering above the lot, off the screen, in the throes of the Midwestern storm. This mix-up is disorienting and existentially tragic, Lattimore's darkly strummed piece is a melancholic parallel, mimicking Johnson's elegant suture attaching two remarkably discontinuous spaces.

Micro-revelations, not quite as bright as torn skies but nonetheless enlightening, were everyday occurrences during Lattimore's residency. Living small days with small tasks — feeling little dramas within the arcadian universe of a national park — rendered her the sense that disjointed spaces can be interconnected no matter the enormity that divides them. It's in this elastic scale of perception that something as simultaneously simple and intricate as Hundreds of Days can ourish.

- Second solo album for Ghostly, past releases on Thrill Jockey
- Recently toured w/ Sharon Van Etten, Jarvis Cocker, Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, Julia Holter, Iceage
- Mary Lattimore has been featured on Pitchfork, NPR, The Wire Magazine, and more

Osaka based producer 7FO. Having previously released a cassette on RVNG International, and a 7'' single on Bokeh Versions in 2017, this is the Japanese producer's debut full length vinyl release. The tracks, recorded between 2012 and 2017, have been tweaked, remastered and recorded to vinyl for the first time.
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The mysterious figure recorded the tracks at home, processing guitar sounds, using a sampler, synthesizer and junk equipment. Following in the footsteps of the ambient giants of his native lands, 7FO's music continues this illustrious heritage whilst offering something fresh, modern and beautifully rendered. He describes his own sound as 'gorgeous sustained tones and dreamlike oscillations that drift through the inorganic/electronic world reverberating through our subconscious creating sonic fables in our minds'.

The 12'' comes with artwork designed by label head & visual artist Jack Hardwicke. To accompany the release Greek filmmaker George Kountouras, who also collaborated on the artwork, has directed a gorgeous video for the title track 'Moment'.

Vibraphone Records continues to deepen its contemporary repertoire by inviting Andrew Soul into the fold with a vocal contribution from house music legend Robert Owens. "Slipping Into Darkness" is a beautifully rendered deep house gem with expressive piano work, rubbery bass synth tones, but in some ways the minimalism of Vincent Floyd's remix gives Owens' vocals a chance to take centre stage. "As You Are" is a crooked, broken beat exploration on the fringes of deep house, and Owens' voice sounds resplendent in the more experimental surroundings before Nick Anthony Simoncino comes on board with a 90s flavoured, darkside remix of the highest order.

»island people« is a new band project consisting of mastering engineer conor dalton, grammy award winning producer david donaldson, and musician and DJ graeme reedie. on their first self- titled record, they present their collaborative work that evolved over the past three years.
being based in different cities, namely berlin and glasgow, files had to be exchanged back and forth between the three band members in order to create tracks. for their delicate sound structures, field recordings and other sound sources were heavily processed and rendered unrecognizable. layer after layer, the tracks came into being quiet naturally, not only reflecting their continuous way of working, but also incorporating their different and individual backgrounds: 'during the whole creation of the album, we never realized our actions were quickly leading us into forming »island people«, we were too busy having fun, making music and sharing ideas.'
the result of their collaboration is a timeless music that is as open as a natural phenomenon, developing a certain feeling of euphoria over time. all in all, »island people« is a pure listening record in the best tradition of ambient.

Never before reissued, this legendary 1968 EMI recording is a revered Indian jazz rarity, a collectors' holy grail. Raga Jazz Style is an original Indian excursion into Indo-jazz fusion. A one-away recording from the almost unknown Bombay jazz scene, it is among the few jazz LPs to hail from the subcontinent.Closely contemporary with the UK-based explorations of Amancio D'Silva, John Mayer and Joe Harriott, Raga Jazz Style takes the melodic, scale-based raga system of Indian classical music and marries it with a swinging jazz rhythm section assembled by Bollywood's most highly acclaimed musical directors, the soundtrack composing duo Shankar Singh and Jaikishan Panchal.Singh and Panchal were a dominant force in Hindi film music from the late 1940s onwards. Shankar had been trained in classical tabla, while Jaikishan was an expert harmonium player. They worked together on well over a hundred films, and their innovative compositions and orchestral scoring revolutionised the music of the nascent Bollywood industry. Central to their sound was regular collaborator Sebastian D'Souza. From 1952 onwards, D'Souza would work on every Shankar Jaikishan soundtrack, eventually becoming Bollywood's most coveted musical arranger.
Originally from Goa, D'Souza had cut his teeth in the dance-band era, arranging and playing with his uncle's jazz bands in Lahore and Quetta. After Partition, he had moved to Bombay to follow the reliable work provided by the film industry, where Goan musicians had become the mainstay of Bollywood's film studio orchestras. Goans were also the core of Bombay's thriving dance-hall and hotel-based jazz scene, with artists including saxophonist Braz Gonsalves, guitarist Amancio D'Silva and trumpeter Chic Chocolate all working in the city during the post-war years.
The team assembled for Raga Jazz Style were drawn from this inventive and forward-thinking milieu. Pianist Lucilla Pacheco, saxophonist Manohari Singh and guitarist Anibal Castro were all fixtures on the Bombay jazz circuit, while drummer Leslie Godinho is reputed to have taught Joe Morello the 5/4 'Take Five' beat when they jammed together during Dave Brubeck's State Department tour of India. To this jazz backbone was added the sitar of Ustad Rais Khan, scion of long line of classical instrumentalists, and nephew of the renowned sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan. Bombay's jazz modernists had been experimenting with the fusion of ragas and jazz since the 1950s, long before American or British jazz musicians had tuned in to Indian classical music. But very little of this exciting scene was ever captured on record. Raga Jazz Style offers a rare chance to hear the innovative sounds of the Indian jazz scene, as peerless composers Shankar Jaikishan and arranging supremo D'Souza join with veteran Bombay jazzers to explore classical themes in a jazz setting — eleven ragas to a swinging beat!This is a highly impressive inaugural salvo by Outernational Sounds, using original masters and beautifully rendered facsimile artwork, with 180g vinyl pressed at Pallas, in Germany.

Visible Cloaks' Reassemblage is a collection of delicately rendered passages of silence and sound that invokes - and invites - consciousness. The foundation of the duo's second album is gently poured upon the ground their musical predecessors explored, using the materials of chance operations, MIDI translation,' and other generative principles that favor inclusive musical environments over the narrowly constrained.

In 2010, Spencer Doran, one part of Visible Cloaks alongside Ryan Carlile, prepared the first volume of Fairlights, Mallets, and Bamboo, a mixtape indicated by Doran as an investigation into fourth-world undercurrents in Japanese ambient and pop music, years 1980 - 1986.' These mixes contextualized the outré orbit of Yellow Magic Orchestra-related solo projects and their abstract, radiant forays as forever futuristic modes of music.

Reassemblage evokes similar musical futures celebrated on the Fairlights mixes, but does so observantly rather than reverently. The title Reassemblage, for example, is taken from a film essay by Trinh T. Minh-ha, which explores the impossibility of ascribing meaning to ethnographic images. The author aims to speak nearby' rather than speak about.' In other words, to embrace lapses of understanding, and realize that the impulse to map direct meaning across a cultural gap often results in further disconnect.

In an effort to speak nearby' rather than speak about,' Visible Cloaks filters and forms source material to become young again. Often the duo strip tonal elements of their specificity or randomize melodies so they become stirring and lucid. Essential patterns emerge, conscious experience heightens. In these moments, the musical language of Reassemblage finds unlimited resonance and presents a path to uninhabited realities.

The origin of this language could be described as translingual or polyglottal, working within the eastern / western feedback loop of influence, Fourth World ambiguity, and the universality of human emotion. Incorporating an international array of virtual instruments to advance the idea of panglobalism through digital simulation, tones and colors cohere into a living, breathing pool of sensorial experience in Visible Cloaks' environs.

Beyond embracing the fluidity of worldly musical influences, Visible Cloaks works fluently between mediums. The contribution of stalwart digital and installation artist Brenna Murphy's dream dimensions to Reassemblage's cover artwork and surrounding videos extends the album's exploration of global headspace into a visual, visceral reality.

dedicated to promote young and evolving artists and to present musical diamonds in the rough, raster-noton is curating the unun series which name refers to the chemical elements 111-119. »unalloyed, unlicensed, all night!« is jesse osborne-lanthier's first release on raster-noton, and the ninth and final release of this series.jesse osborne-lanthier is a berlin / montreal based, canadian electronic music producer and multidisciplinary artist. his erratic research process incorporates the urgency of dance music and conceptual electronics by disassembling their grammar and acting through it. refusing to follow the etiquette of a particular musical genre, he explores many creative practices in order to generate clashes of mood, expectation and technique.
»unalloyed, unlicensed, all night!« was recorded by osborne-lanthier a mere two hours before a live set in paris. its specific purpose was to generate a response from the audience, to stimulate their bodies through sound. the toolbox for this task was stocked with automatic call-and-response music tropes drawn from EDM, big-room house, trance, and online production tutorials. between the producer's idiosyncratic by-the-numbers process and the rushed nature of the composition, the final product is rendered unpredictable; each signifier transforms into a distorted ghost of itself. this allows for unexpected responses to manifest on the dance floor as well as in the listener's space of existence.

Kepler. makes the second contribution to Silencio's catalog with "Planetary Systems I".
With refined ethereal elements rendered from what is surely an eerie origin, "186f", is truly engaging. This track is fueled with a seductive synth heralded by haunting vocals that effectively whisper over its steady, punchy bass line. Meandering in the background is the type of idiophone sound one would associate with a hand-percussion triangle instrument. Its particular effect provides a complex, rolling rhythm that vibrates in a beautiful tone until its objective has been achieved.

On the B-side "452b" is a great track to open up a set with, gentle yet still energetic in how it introduces itself to the audience. It begins with a series of echoing sounds that rise and dive throughout, seemingly reflected off the surface of one's subconscious, in a satisfying manner. Accompanied by a deep pulsating bass line that accents its driving drums, this track will set the tone time and time again.
Imagine the dawning of a realization formed from an inspiring event in nature. The second track, "Luzon", features a laid back tropical tempo and samples that feel transported from a lush, rhythmic rainforest. Kepler expresses this vision within the confines of a catchy groove, utilizing subtle bird sounds and rattles that resonate over layers of atmospheric synth. This is emotional music meant to move a crowd or manufacture a sincere moment of clarity.

SHADELEAF reaches out to the tribes and comes home with a serious crop to see us through !

For their debut V.A selection 'Please Come Correct' Thatmanmonkz has pulled in some serious talent from the fringes of forward-thinking House

Ny*Ak fires the opening beatdown salvo,'U Don't Understand', and cooks up another of those loose, low riding, sample heavy and heady jams, reminiscent of Berlin via early Sound Signature that made last year's EP for Intimate Friends via Rush Hour such an essential!

Next up Cape Town's Jumping Back Slash, who's been making some serious music, fusing elements of S.A House with Kwaito and, well pretty much anything else he can throw into the mix to move your assets.
'Bloodlines' however could just as easily have emanated from 8 Mile, a captivating piece of pure, crisply rendered machine soul back lit with township chants and emotive chords.

Mr 'monkz himself handles B1, and to say this guy's on a roll would be something of an understatement!
Much like Graef and Co, 'imgettintiredofyou' is Deep House that dines out on a diet of Hip Hop, dirty hertz in the low registers and deftly manipulated sample work throughout - killer stuff!

Finally our truly global selection winds up in Moscow as another hotly tipped up-and-comer Lay-Far gives us 'Many-Sided'.
Fans of last year's excellent EP on Fifty Fathoms Deep will know what to expect. Again, a loosely pieced together cut, hinting at West London vibes,and shot through with creative sampling and an undeniable ear for melody and groove that really shines.

Some DJ's should be given medals of honour for their impeccable services rendered on the decks and prolific careers.

GASome DJ's should be given medals of honour for their impeccable services rendered on the decks and prolific careers.

GANEZ Aka THE TERRIBLE is definitely one of those DJs. The Box is a Super Banging techno EP !

The melt of the pure boostable Hardtechno style and a classic ravy sound... Enjoy !