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Premieres from Data Transmission and Bolting Bits. Early support from Hospital, Huey Morgan, Rupture, Fanu, Rob Luis, Anthony Kasper (Fokuz), Red Rack'em, Bandcamp Weekly, etc.

150 copies pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Picture shows the HF021VFELT edition which comes with 'Nuthin' But a Jungle Thang' die-cut felt sleeve insert (in assorted colours), with Heard and Felt embroidered fabric tag. HF021V edition is the same 180g vinyl without the felt sleeve insert.

With music from Jonny Faith's recent Night Lights EP appearing in Grand Theft Auto and best of 2020 lists including Gilles Peterson's, you might think Jonny would continue to mine his take on hip hop and broken beat. Well, all in good time. He's been ready to enter the jungle for 20 years, and he's not waiting any longer.

Now based in Melbourne, Jonny first got involved in music in Edinburgh as a DJ and turntablist in the 90s, getting hooked on jungle, drum & bass, hip hop and the hybrids of these championed by the Mo'Wax label. Formative experiences included hearing DJ Hype spinning in Newcastle, seeing the Roni Size/Reprazent live show with two drummers and hanging out at cult Edinburgh club night Manga, where residents G-Mac and DJ Kid hosted the likes of Marky, Grooverider and J Majik.

Jonny was keen to start making his own sounds, signing up for an electronic music production course. But it wasn't quite what he was after.

'The course turned out to be more house-oriented,' Jonny recalls. 'Sampling wasn't on the curriculum, and the students weren't allowed to touch the Akai S900, the sampler used in lots of the early jungle classics.'

When Jonny did start releasing his own productions a few years later, he was starting to explore the experimental beat scene around the time Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke (another Scottish turntablist) were starting to make their mark.

Jonny continued to widen his sonic palette, adding elements of dub, jazz, funk, electronica and broken beat, and picking up fans like Radio Nova Paris, KCRW, Vice and Clash Magazine along the way. But he's never been more than one degree of separation from his jungle/D&B roots. He continued to buy and play the music, did the odd D&B remix and snuck sonic elements and techniques into his tracks at various tempos. Over the years his releases have shared labels with the likes of Peshay, Om Unit, Drumagick, Reso, Kid Drama and Danny Scrilla.

Now, more than 20 years after those early experiences in Edinburgh, Jonny unveils his first jungle/D&B EP, On Lock. And it sounds like he's been making this music the whole time. In a way, he has.

The single 'Open My Eyes' bursts out the gate, chopping not only the breaks and the soul for a tune that sounds like Amerie's '1 Thing', or some Just Blaze chipmunk soul, reimagined for the 174 BPM crew. Jonny started this one as a hip hop beat for a live routine on his MPC, but it only really came together when he reframed the groove around a D&B rhythm. Next up, Jonny tries a similar trick on his own boom bap tune 'Stay in Your Lane' from the 'Night Lights' EP. His new Step Off Mix totally recontextualises US MC Lady K's slinky soulful rap and hooks with a tough and funky junglist groove. One for fans of the old Roni Size/Bahamadia collab. 'Create' then spaces things out just a touch, with atmospheric but propulsive drumfunk. Vinyl bonus track 'Nuthin' But a Jungle Thang' layers cascading amen breaks, timestretched vocals and a massive double bass-line over the wah guitars and synth whistling of a G-funk era classic.

With early support for Jonny Faith's take on jungle/D&B coming from Hospital Records, Rupture (Rinse FM) and Fanu (Metalheadz), Jonny is ready to be welcomed (back) into the scene.


b A2: Stay in Your Lane (Jonny Faith Step Off Mix) feat. Lady K

May 28 will see prolific Japanese vibraphonist, multi-percussionist and composer Masayoshi Fujita mark a new sonic direction with his forthcoming album Bird Ambience on Erased Tapes.

Bird Ambience brings several fresh changes for the artist. Until now, Fujita would separate his acoustic solo recordings from the electronic dub under his El Fog alias and experimental improvisations with contemporaries such as Jan Jelinek, Bird Ambience sees him unite all of these different sides to his work for the first time, into one singular vision. He also makes a lateral leap from his signature instrument the vibraphone, on which he created his acclaimed triptych Stories (2012), Apologues (2015) and Book of Life (2018), to the marimba, which takes centre stage on his new album alongside drums, percussion, synths, effectors and tape recorder.

“The way of playing the marimba is similar to the vibraphone, so it was kind of a natural development for me and easier to start with, yet it sounds very different”, explains Masayoshi. “The marimba bars are made with wood and it has a wider range than the vibraphone, which gives me a bigger sound palette with more possibilities. I play the instrument with bows and mallets, and sometimes manipulate it with effects.”

Bird Ambience also marks his liberation from fastidious preparation for past solo releases to new endeavours in improvisation. “I prioritised trying to capture the wonder which happens during those occasional magic improv moments. Sometimes the mic-ing and placement of instruments was pretty rough; things weren’t perfect and everything was done quickly, but it turned out as the final recording. Overall when I
couldn’t decide between two takes, I told myself to go with the first”, Masayoshi recalls.

Arranged with a perfect Kanso-like balance, the unhurried pace of Bird Ambience allows each sound and phrase enough time to be mindfully absorbed and savoured. This subtle but affective work carries ethereal remnants of Midori Takada’s minimalism, the static atmospheres of Mika Vainio, To Rococo Rot’s organics and the bucolic electronics of Minotaur Shock. Fujita vaporises contemporary and classical, ambient and dismantled dub, controlled noise and fragments of jazz into an atmospheric, static mist, which he skilfully coerces into new forms.

After 13 years in Berlin, Masayoshi recently relocated to a new home and studio in the rural Japanese mountain village of Kami-cho, Hyogo, following his life-long dream of creating music in nature. Even though the album was entirely recorded in Germany before he left, it has this palpable sense of reverie found in the natural world. From there we can only imagine the kind of impact his new life in rural West Japan will have on future works.

With Bending the Golden Hour, the third album from Memphis, Tennessee’s Aquarian Blood, husband and wife team J.B. Horrell (Ex-Cult) and Laurel Horrell (formerly of the Nots) continue the gorgeously stripped-down and atmospheric direction set on their critically acclaimed previous effort A Love That Leads to War.

While Aquarian Blood has roots as a chaotic punk rock six-piece, the band shifted gears after two raucous cassette-only releases on ZAP Cassettes, a pair of seven-inches, and 2017’s Last Nite in Paradise, released on Goner Records. After drummer Bill Curry broke his arm, the Horrells redefined

Aquarian Blood, reemerging in early 2018 as the more intimate, mostly acoustic balladeers behind the staccato, fever dream sound of A Love That Leads to War. Like its immediate predecessor, Bending the Golden Hour was recorded at the Horrell's Midtown Memphis home. The band turned over 43 tracks to Goner co-owner Zac Ives, who handpicked 17 songs for the album.

The final result is shimmering and hopeful; as beautiful and sparse as a Rockwell Kent snowscape. Bending the Golden Hour begins ominously with “Channeling,” which sounds like an outtake from Paul Giovanni’s soundtrack to 1973’s pagan nightmare The Wicker Man. Then the band upshifts for “Time in the Rain,” a sweet duet set to a rigid snare beat. From there, Aquarian Blood zigs to country and zags to psychedelic folk, brooding on one song and soothing listeners with the next. And while the music, feel, and experience is different, Aquarian Blood naturally brings to mind some legendary musical partnerships: Richard and Linda Thompson, Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris; not to mention similarly-bent-but-beautiful luminaries like Roy Harper, Pentangle circa 1967 -1973, and Jackson C. Frank.

There’s a big middle ground, like folk-psych, or weirder country music,” he says, reeling off names like Skip Spence and Syd Barrett as stepping stones between the genres of punk and folk.

Inspirations for Bending the Golden Hour come from myriad sources that document the milestones and minutiae in a family’s full life. Some lyrics name a time or a place; others reflect the fleeting moments that elapse unnoticed. “Come Home,” which is sung by J.B. and his daughter Ava, was written the day Ava got her driver’s license. “Ava took the car out by herself afterwards, and I wrote the song immediately—she sang her part when she got home that evening,” J.B. recalls. Whether or not the listener knows the backstory, the song rings sentimental, with subtle, supportive instrumentation that underscores guitar and vocals. The bewitching “Rope and Hair,” on the other hand, is less sketched out, with lyrics that are simply a recitation of the talismen found on a silver sabertooth charm that J.B. purchased for Laurel at a Latin strip mall in southeast Memphis. That’s all to be said. “Sometimes when you know too much about what the song is about, it takes away the magic,” says J.B. “Alabama Daughter,” says Laurel, is about a place where a childhood friend lived called Castleberry Holler. “It was really rural, just a lot of shacks without electricity—the kind of place you didn’t go to unless you were invited,” she says. “Probable Gods” is a hazy reflection on the struggle of such a strange year. “It’s been very cathartic to put all of this into words and not have it live

May 28 will see prolific Japanese vibraphonist, multi-percussionist and composer Masayoshi Fujita mark a new sonic direction with his forthcoming album Bird Ambience on Erased Tapes.

Bird Ambience brings several fresh changes for the artist. Until now, Fujita would separate his acoustic solo recordings from the electronic dub under his El Fog alias and experimental improvisations with contemporaries such as Jan Jelinek, Bird Ambience sees him unite all of these different sides to his work for the first time, into one singular vision. He also makes a lateral leap from his signature instrument the vibraphone, on which he created his acclaimed triptych Stories (2012), Apologues (2015) and Book of Life (2018), to the marimba, which takes centre stage on his new album alongside drums, percussion, synths, effectors and tape recorder.

“The way of playing the marimba is similar to the vibraphone, so it was kind of a natural development for me and easier to start with, yet it sounds very different”, explains Masayoshi. “The marimba bars are made with wood and it has a wider range than the vibraphone, which gives me a bigger sound palette with more possibilities. I play the instrument with bows and mallets, and sometimes manipulate it with effects.”

Bird Ambience also marks his liberation from fastidious preparation for past solo releases to new endeavours in improvisation. “I prioritised trying to capture the wonder which happens during those occasional magic improv moments. Sometimes the mic-ing and placement of instruments was pretty rough; things weren’t perfect and everything was done quickly, but it turned out as the final recording. Overall when I
couldn’t decide between two takes, I told myself to go with the first”, Masayoshi recalls.

Arranged with a perfect Kanso-like balance, the unhurried pace of Bird Ambience allows each sound and phrase enough time to be mindfully absorbed and savoured. This subtle but affective work carries ethereal remnants of Midori Takada’s minimalism, the static atmospheres of Mika Vainio, To Rococo Rot’s organics and the bucolic electronics of Minotaur Shock. Fujita vaporises contemporary and classical, ambient and dismantled dub, controlled noise and fragments of jazz into an atmospheric, static mist, which he skilfully coerces into new forms.

After 13 years in Berlin, Masayoshi recently relocated to a new home and studio in the rural Japanese mountain village of Kami-cho, Hyogo, following his life-long dream of creating music in nature. Even though the album was entirely recorded in Germany before he left, it has this palpable sense of reverie found in the natural world. From there we can only imagine the kind of impact his new life in rural West Japan will have on future works.

The group Magizter formed in Malmö, Sweden in the early 90s, and mainly consisted of former members of the Hungarian industrial band Das Kapital, of which some managed to flee to Sweden from the communist regime before the fall of the Soviet Union.

Gyula Szilagyi, who was the first to make his escape via train through Berlin in 1987, recalls: “it was a few weeks before mandatory military service would begin, and our passports should have been turned over to the authorities”. Risking deportation and prison, he was granted asylum in Sweden after some months in Stockholm.

Szilagyi and the rest of the band were all part of the underground scene in Budapest, of which some had been under surveillance by the secret police since their teens. It was a tight knit community where anti-communist and illegal literature was distributed, and many bands shared mutual members.

The track “Das Kapital” was produced in Malmö in 1993 by Szilagyi and fellow Magizter member Zoltan Lengyel, in a home studio overlooking the Möllevång Square, were Szilagyi had moved after some years working at the glass factory in Orrefors. He had managed to save a few performances by Das Kapital recorded on cassette, of which one served as sample material for the Magizter track; an homage of sorts to a group involuntarily disbanded.

The cassette sampled here was recorded in 1986 during a live concert at the university-affiliated venue Ráday Klub, where Das Kapital performed alongside the British industrial act Left Hand Right Hand (who had formed from the Sheffield band Zahgurim).

On the eve in question, Szilagyi remarks: “we used a guitar that we had made ourselves to resemble a Kalachnikov rifle. During the concert at Ráday Klub the guitar was destroyed using a drill machine. It made a powerful sound effect”

A remix of the remix is offered by Vienna-based Heap, who with his own productions as well as his work with the Neubau label is building a bridge towards the new era of European industrial music.

When most musicians reach a career milestone they take it on tour. Texas, whose debut album turned 30 last year, had bigger ambitions. Rather than simply perform their old songs, the Scots set out to meet their old selves – the wide-eyed kids who made Southside, their two million-selling, Top 3 debut, and the band who bounced back eight years later with the six times platinum White On Blonde.
The vaults at Universal were raided for recording sessions for both albums, stored on tape and DAT and never digitised. Top of Texas’ list was their first, failed attempt at I Don’t Want A Lover, scuppered by Chic bassist Bernard Edwards.
“Just after we signed, we were in the studio with Bernard and Chic’s drummer Tony Thompson,” recalls guitarist Johnny McElhone. “Bernard got coked up and ended up running away to Mexico before Sharleen even started her vocals. But that’s a whole other story.”
Late in 2018, the aborted version was found, alongside several songs recorded during different sessions which didn’t make their debut. The biggest revelation, however, was a 15-strong batch of tracks from the White On Blonde sessions which both Johnny and Sharleen Spiteri had forgotten existed.
“When we made that album, no one in Britain gave a shit about Texas,” says Sharleen. “We were still doing really well in Europe, but here we couldn’t get arrested.
“No one at our label was asking to hear any music or pushing us, so we just kept writing and recording and trying out new stuff until we felt the record was ready. Hence we ended up with a lot more material than usual.”
So good were the songs that Texas initially planned to release them as a ‘lost’ album, possibly to be called Blonde On White. But working with their old recordings inspired them to start writing new songs.
“Tweaking the old stuff was so much fun,” says Sharleen. “It felt like us, now, collaborating with ourselves of 25 years ago. It was amazing to go back there – my voice was so young! – and to hear how much energy and passion we had. We were fighting for our careers at the time, trying to prove that Texas were still relevant.
“Our excitement at finding this treasure trove of songs collided with our excitement from back then and, unplanned, new songs started coming. You could say we were inspired by ourselves, if that didn’t make us sound insanely big-headed.”
Hi, Texas’ tenth album, is the result of that bonkers journey back but has its eyes firmly fixed on the future. The title track and sensational first single aptly fuses the two. A brand new collaboration with Wu Tang Clan, it finds a soulful Sharleen nestled next to boisterous raps from RZA and Ghostface Killah over a cinematic backdrop of lush beats and acoustic guitar.

With a fundamental emphasis on the encouragement of genre hybridization, Evar Records, the Los Angeles-based imprint co-founded by Trickfinger (John Frusciante) and Aura T-09 (Marcia Pinna), continues its momentum with an expansive 9-track collection from Netherlands-based luminary, Limewax.

After making a strong first impression with its 2020 debut offerings, Evar Records has recruited Limewax to carry forward its mission of blurring boundaries and challenging conventions in electronic music. The Ukranian hard drum and bass hero happily obliged, referring to signing with Evar as a breaking point which allowed him, finally, to take full stock of his background in classical and electronic music simultaneously. Although Maxim Anokhin is widely known for his hard-edged breakbeats, releasing on labels such as Tech Itch Recordings, Position Chrome, Freak Recordings, and PRSPCT, the full scope of his artistry shines through on Untitled.

The opening cut, "Porcelaineworm," is a futuristic electro cut recalling IDM classics like AFX's "XMD5A." Of course, the virtuosic drum programming and hectic D&B sound which Limewax has built his reputation upon is here in spades on tracks like "Stay Lackey. Cuts like "Ushio" and "Whay1" are fascinating studies in contrasts—the former balances bludgeoning techno of the Ansome and Perc variety with a resolve that recalls Fennesz's pastoral glitch abstractions. "Whay1," meanwhile, is sub-rattling drum and bass nuanced by cinematic string themes. "Getupa" is an experimental beat track that truly bangs, its layers of texture and field recordings placing Limewax in the company of bleeding-edge acts like SVBKVLT's breakout star Hyph11E. The very next track, "19NB," is a subtle update to the original minimal technical template established by Detroit icons Robert Hood & Jeff Mills.

While most of the album hurtles forward at hard techno and D&B tempos, "Maleisae" is a sensual 70 BPM track mixing ghostly R&B and acid. That spectacular cut heralds Untitled's intricate denouement. The brief "Wernmqbram" effortlessly reconciles a baroque minor-key piano theme with the renegade snares of classic jungle. "Hasan" is a true "closing credits" master stroke, half-time acid giving way to gorgeous IDM-meets-Blade Runner synth leads.

Far from a genre-jumping hodgepodge, Untitled is a remarkably coherent full-length by a virtuosic artist free to explore the entirety of their creative influences. The Tilburg-based artist cites the poets Marina Tsvetaeva and David Whyte as influential on Untitled and also listened to works by 1771-1862 works by organ builders when crafting the album. The end result reveals Limewax as a masterful, diverse artist, capable of any style he pursues. It's a clear indicator of the boundless promise of Evar's core principle—a staunch refusal to put artists in boxes.

Never underestimate the power of a woman with her back to the wall. In March 2020, as Covid blew across the planet, the shutters came down on live venues and recording studios, and the music scene fell suddenly silent, Ghalia Volt faced the same dilemma as every other artist.
What now? The answer was One Woman Band. Having joined with the cream of the US roots scene for two acclaimed albums, 2017’s Let The Demons Out and 2019’s Mississppi Blend, Volt’s rebirth as a solo performer wasn’t a decision made lightly. But if an apprenticeship busking in her native Brussels taught Volt anything, it’s that she already had everything she needed to make magic.
“In March, I started playing on a real drum set,” she recalls.
“Playing a kick, snare and hi-hat plus a tambourine with my two feet, while playing slide/guitar and singing at the same time.” After road-testing the new format at shows across Mississippi, Volt realised that one was the magic number.
In August, she committed to the project, embarking on a month-long Amtrak train trip that became an intensive writing session, the shifting landscapes beyond the window inspiring her pen to scratch as never before. Tracked live in November at Memphis’s legendary Royal Sound Studios, One
Woman Band is Volt’s most lyrically honest and groove-driven material to date.
You can feel the turn of those train wheels in the addictive stomp of songs like
Reap What You Sow, while the rattle-and-shiver slide guitar of Espiritu Papago
evokes the scream of a locomotive whistle.
“Imagine John Lee Hooker on mushrooms, lost in the desert of Arizona, on a hot
summer day,” says Volt. “That’s the vibe of that song.” The Covid-19 pandemic
is an unprecedented chapter of human history, with no clear end in sight.
But Ghalia Volt has given us the soundtrack to better times ahead, and the
songs we’ll still be singing when we meet on the other side. This might be a
One Woman Band - but you’re always welcome to ride shotgun.

Label Text "Dekmantel once again teams up with RE:VIVE, the cultural initiative setup by the The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, to pair modern electronic talent with Dutch archival footage. The third EP in the Scores series sees Interstellar Funk and Italian producer Guenter Råler create innovative, modular soundscapes to the graceful visual arts unearthed from the EYE Filmmuseum archives.

As Interstellar Funk, Olf van Elden uses his production competency to craft a heavenly arpeggiated, synth composition to the amateur aquarium movies by J.L. Clement which are edited for this project by Sjoerd Martens. Filmed in the 1940’s, the video’s turn-of-the-century black-and-white style aquatic footage is reanimated through van Elden’s tacit polyphonic, modular sonic soundtrack. Layering together multiple sequences, van Elden pieces together the music as a whole, to mimic the way in which the film was created.

On the B-Side, Italian abstract artist and Dutch native Guenter Raler concocts a deeply introspective, and perfectly choreographed, ambient soundtrack to a select series of pieced together clips from the Collectie Natuurbeelden, the Institute’s Collection of Natural Images. The music plays against the depiction of multiple biological communities in transition; what is referred to as an ecotone. The title itself not only recalls that of a musical tone, but represents the ever-evolving aspect of life and nature as similar colours, along with movements of animals and plants pass on from one image to the next.

Within their own right, the new scores not only give the age-old films new context and sonic character, but exist as creative works as their own, full of resonance and individualism that highlight the retrospective artists’ voices to their fullest."

Delving into the recent past in order to revisit forward-thinking projects that, owing to the social, musical or outright political climate, struggled to find an audience, Lost Futures returns with a record from Cairo based project, PanSTARRS. An assured and intriguing blend of post-punk and electronics, 'Ghaby Ghaby Ghaby' is the confident and personal work of Youssef Abouzeid, a fixture within Egypt's unique underground music scene.

"At the time, I was actively occupied by arguments on the fusion of culture in creative context, specifically between western and arabic elements." recalls PanSTARRS founder, Youssef Abouzeid. "The goal was to find a point of natural expression within Arabic songwriting that meets electronic guitar music, and put out something seriously inspired by both and easy on my ear."

By far the heaviest release from the PanSTARRS project at the time, 'Ghaby Ghaby Ghaby' immediately establishes a superior sense of rhythm. 'Khally Balak Hatmoot' practises instant hypnosis, Abouzeid's earnest vocals beckoning outsiders forward over a layer of feedback occupied by a ghostly shift, one which breaks to release a crescendo of post-punk guitar. This sense of subtle drama continues on 'Men Gheir Wa7da', demonstrating a skill for songwriting that recalls the uncompromising approach of The Birthday Party or Lydia Lunch.

'Tortit Naml' is driven by skittish, rapid-fire drums and tense guitars, either subverting or confirming it's subtly anthemic status with a dramatic explosion of feedback. 'Sala Ya Khaifa' brings respite, a mellow and earnest slow-burner, the bubbling spoils of the PanSTARRS studio providing a wistful texture drenched in reverb. Finally, '70mar 3ala 7osan' sees Abouzeid give his voice over to those same machines, burying his barbed perspective in contrary analogue bliss.

Half a decade later, Abouzeid's optimism and experimentation are certain to resonate on a scale beyond that of Cairo's defiant underground music scene.

"Working on everything myself, I enjoyed total creative freedom and kept an organic flow of dirt and error, which was key on this record", recalls Abouzeid. "Sometimes vocals were recorded as lyrics came spontaneously, sometimes written on paper and then recorded on first takes, but I always prioritized the moment while keeping the perspective in check."

Red Vinyl

The unmissable, head-twisting debut LP by Cairo’s 1127 returns on red vinyl pressing for those who missed its shockwaves for the first time back in summer 2019, Huge recommendation if you’re into Autechre, Arca, Croww w, Rabit...
Getting right under the skin with its hugely variegated palette of brutalist, rhythmic power electronics and evocative location recordings, ‘Tqaseem Mqamat El Haram 2016-2019’ resembles something like a soundtrack to a Neil Blomkamp flick set it Cario, Egypt, 2050 where stifling heat and pollution means everyone wears
breathing apparatus and hover cars sputter about its dusty sprawl. It’s surely one of the most shocking and transfixing sides from North Africa this side of the debut LPs by 1127’s peers, Myslma and Zuli, and should be prized by anyone with an ear for futurist rhythms and microtonal synths of a modern, Afro-futurist order.
Comprising collaged chunks from 1127’s archive arranged in a seamless, diffracted flow that recalls Autechre as well as the mutant adjuncts in Arca’s &&&& or Croww’s ‘Prosthetics MechaMix’, the results feel as though scraped from the insides of 1127’s skull, capturing and rendering the sounds of Cairo street raves ricocheting
with spasms of gristly noise, strafing into pockets of cutthroat flashcore and dropping out into smoky,
intimate scenes of Arabic dialogue, all threaded together with a distinctive taste for metallic microtonal synthlines and coruscating noise.

Los Angeles-based harpist Mary Lattimore returns with Silver Ladders, the full-length follow-up to acclaimed album Hundreds of Days. Since 2018, Lattimore has toured internationally, released collaborative albums with artists such as Meg Baird and Mac McCaughan, and shared a friends-based remix album featuring artists such as Jónsi and Julianna Barwick. At one of her festival appearances, Lattimore met Slowdive’s Neil Halstead: “A friend introduced us because she knew how big of a fan I was and Neil and I had a little chat... The next day, I just thought maybe he’d be into producing my next record.” He was. Lattimore traditionally records her albums holed up by herself, so the addition of Halstead’s touches as a producer and collaborator leave a profound trace. “I flew on a little plane to Newquay in Cornwall where he lives with his lovely partner Ingrid and their baby. I didn’t know what his studio was like, he’d never recorded a harp, but somehow it really worked

Recorded over nine days at Halstead’s studio stationed on an old airfield, Silver Ladders finds Lattimore exercising command and restraint. Her signature style is refined, the sprawling layers of harp reigned in and accented by flourishes of low end synth and Halstead’s guitar. The music can feel ominous but not by compromising vivid wonder, like oceanic overtones that shift with the tides. This material is colored by specific memories for Lattimore; “Neil has this poster of a surfer in his studio and I’d look at it each day, looking at the sunlight glinting on the dark wave. In these songs I like the contrast between the dark lows and the glittering highs. The gloom and the glimmer, the opposites, a lively surfing town in the winter turned kinda rainy and empty and quiet.”

Lattimore and Halstead reformed three existing demos and improvised the remaining four songs. Among the batch she brought with her, the title track recalls a trip she took to Stari Grad, Croatia on the island of Hvar. “I spent some days there just swimming in the bay, silver ladders right into the sea.” The image stuck with her when she found herself performing at a cliffside wedding overlooking the Pacific. “Before anyone showed up, I had time to set up and play and this song came to me, ‘Silver Ladders (to the sea)’, so I made a little recording on my phone to remember it.” This sketch expanded; a delicately glittering harp melody comes over the horizon, swelling and rolling towards the shore on ebbs of synth and refractory delay.

After two UK #1 albums, 2 million album sales and an array of international acclaim, you might’ve thought you knew what to expect from Royal Blood. Those preconceptions were shattered when they released ‘Trouble’s Coming’ last summer. Hitting a melting pot of fiery rock riffs and danceable beats, they delivered something fresh, unexpected and yet entirely in tune with what they’d forged their reputation with.

The reaction was phenomenal, with highlights including 20 million streams, a premiere as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record and a run on Radio 1’s A-list and earned alternative radio support and media attention across the globe. In short, Royal Blood are primed to be bigger than ever before. That feat is set to be realised when they release their eagerly anticipated third album ‘Typhoons’ on April 30th via Warner Records.

When Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher sat down to talk about making a new album, they knew what they wanted to achieve. It involved a conscious return to their roots, back when they had made music that was influenced by Daft Punk, Justice, and Philippe Zdar of Cassius. It also called for a similar back-to-basics approach to what had made their self-titled debut album so thrilling, visceral and original.

“We sort of stumbled on this sound, and it was immediately fun to play,” recalls Kerr. “That’s what sparked the creativity on the new album, the chasing of that feeling. It’s weird, though - if you think back to ‘Figure it Out’, it kind of contains the embryo of this album. We realised that we didn’t have to completely destroy what we’d created so far; we just had to shift it, change it. On paper, it’s a small reinvention. But when you hear it, it sounds so fresh.”

Those traits pulsate throughout the new single and title track. Kerr’s spiralling bass riff casts an hypnotic allure as it grows in intensity, while his vocals switch at will between a raw rock roar and a soulful falsetto. It’s underpinned by Thatcher’s thundering beats, his taut rhythms infused with groove-laden hi-hats.

After setting the tone with ‘Trouble’s Coming’, the album opens in breathless, take-no-prisoners style with the fierce metallic grooves of ‘Who Needs Friends’ hitting an early visceral peak. Royal Blood further reference their fresh array of influences by deploying vocodered vocals on ‘Million & One’ before dynamically switching between the biggest contrasts of their sound with ‘Limbo’. Already a fan favourite having been a regular during the duo’s 2019 shows, ‘Boilermaker’ lives up to its reputation and is more than matched by ‘Mad Visions’, which evokes a hyper-aggressive Prince. It ends with a final surprise in the shape of the stark piano ballad ‘All We Have Is Now’, a vulnerable and revealing reminder to live in the moment.

That song’s unguarded sentiments gives the album a redemptive finale. Whether directly or allusively, the album focuses on exploring the flipside of success that they’ve experienced. It comes from the realisation that success is much more complicated than it seems and that having the time to regain perspective is a precious commodity which becomes ever more elusive. The situation called for reflection and change, which Kerr addressed in Las Vegas. He downed an espresso martini and declared it to be his last drink, and soon discovered that his new-found sobriety would have a positive impact upon his creativity and life as a whole.

That new approach manifested itself in the duo’s decision to produce the majority of ‘Typhoons’ themselves. ‘Boilermaker’ was produced by Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, the two bands having first connected when Royal Blood supported them on a huge North American tour. Meanwhile, the multiple Grammy Award winner Paul Epworth produced ‘Who Needs Friends’ and contributed additional production to ‘Trouble’s Coming’.

After two UK #1 albums, 2 million album sales and an array of international acclaim, you might’ve thought you knew what to expect from Royal Blood. Those preconceptions were shattered when they released ‘Trouble’s Coming’ last summer. Hitting a melting pot of fiery rock riffs and danceable beats, they delivered something fresh, unexpected and yet entirely in tune with what they’d forged their reputation with.
The reaction was phenomenal, with highlights including 20 million streams, a premiere as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record and a run on Radio 1’s A-list and earned alternative radio support and media attention across the globe. In short, Royal Blood are primed to be bigger than ever before. That feat is set to be realised when they release their eagerly anticipated third album ‘Typhoons’ on April 30th via Warner Records.
When Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher sat down to talk about making a new album, they knew what they wanted to achieve. It involved a conscious return to their roots, back when they had made music that was influenced by Daft Punk, Justice, and Philippe Zdar of Cassius. It also called for a similar back-to-basics approach to what had made their self-titled debut album so thrilling, visceral and original.
“We sort of stumbled on this sound, and it was immediately fun to play,” recalls Kerr. “That’s what sparked the creativity on the new album, the chasing of that feeling. It’s weird, though - if you think back to ‘Figure it Out’, it kind of contains the embryo of this album. We realised that we didn’t have to completely destroy what we’d created so far; we just had to shift it, change it. On paper, it’s a small reinvention. But when you hear it, it sounds so fresh.”

Those traits pulsate throughout the new single and title track. Kerr’s spiralling bass riff casts an hypnotic allure as it grows in intensity, while his vocals switch at will between a raw rock roar and a soulful falsetto. It’s underpinned by Thatcher’s thundering beats, his taut rhythms infused with groove-laden hi-hats.



After setting the tone with ‘Trouble’s Coming’, the album opens in breathless, take-no-prisoners style with the fierce metallic grooves of ‘Who Needs Friends’ hitting an early visceral peak. Royal Blood further reference their fresh array of influences by deploying vocodered vocals on ‘Million & One’ before dynamically switching between the biggest contrasts of their sound with ‘Limbo’. Already a fan favourite having been a regular during the duo’s 2019 shows, ‘Boilermaker’ lives up to its reputation and is more than matched by ‘Mad Visions’, which evokes a hyper-aggressive Prince. It ends with a final surprise in the shape of the stark piano ballad ‘All We Have Is Now’, a vulnerable and revealing reminder to live in the moment.

That song’s unguarded sentiments gives the album a redemptive finale. Whether directly or allusively, the album focuses on exploring the flipside of success that they’ve experienced. It comes from the realisation that success is much more complicated than it seems and that having the time to regain perspective is a precious commodity which becomes ever more elusive. The situation called for reflection and change, which Kerr addressed in Las Vegas. He downed an espresso martini and declared it to be his last drink, and soon discovered that his new-found sobriety would have a positive impact upon his creativity and life as a whole.

That new approach manifested itself in the duo’s decision to produce the majority of ‘Typhoons’ themselves. ‘Boilermaker’ was produced by Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, the two bands having first connected when Royal Blood supported them on a huge North American tour. Meanwhile, the multiple Grammy Award winner Paul Epworth produced ‘Who Needs Friends’ and contributed additional production to ‘Trouble’s Coming’.

Alan Vega’s name is synonymous with unfettered, tireless creativity. Beginning in the late 1950s, when he was a fine art student at Brooklyn College, through his years playing in Suicide, and all the way up until his death in 2016, Vega was constantly creating. That

process naturally led to a wealth of material that didn’t see the light of day immediately when it was recorded, which came to be known as the Vega Vault. Mutator is the first in a series of archival releases from the Vault that will come out on Sacred Bones Records.

Mutator was recorded alongside Vega’s longtime collaborator Liz Lamere at his NYC studio from 1995-1996, and it serves as a document of a particularly fertile time in his creative life. He had 11 full-length solo albums come out during the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s - plus numerous collaborations, and Suicide records A Way of Life and Why Be Blue. Mutator wasn’t shelved intentionally, but Vega’s back-to-thegrindstone M.O. meant that he had moved on to making his next record before this one was finished. Lamere and Vega’s friend and confidante Jared Artaud (The Vacant Lots) rediscovered the raw, unmixed recordings from the Mutator sessions in the Vault in 2019. Soon after, they mixed and produced them into the visionary album that was lurking within those tapes.

“Our primary purpose for going into the studio was to experiment with sound, not to ‘make records,’” Lamere recalls. “I was playing the machines with Alan manipulating sounds. I played riffs while Alan morphed the sounds being channeled through the machines.”

At the time of the Mutator sessions, Vega was massively inspired by what was happening in the streets of New York - not only the hip hop scenes that were exploding throughout the outer boroughs, but also the literal sounds of the streets, the traffic noise and industrial ambience of city living. That influence trickled into the sounds he and Lamere captured in those sessions. That sensibility, paired with Vega’s unmistakable voice and force of personality, is what made it the great album it is now. The final piece was the production job, completed by Lamere and Artaud 25 years after the songs were first captured.

Alan Vega’s name is synonymous with unfettered, tireless creativity. Beginning in the late 1950s, when he was a fine art student at Brooklyn College, through his years playing in Suicide, and all the way up until his death in 2016, Vega was constantly creating. That

process naturally led to a wealth of material that didn’t see the light of day immediately when it was recorded, which came to be known as the Vega Vault. Mutator is the first in a series of archival releases from the Vault that will come out on Sacred Bones Records.

Mutator was recorded alongside Vega’s longtime collaborator Liz Lamere at his NYC studio from 1995-1996, and it serves as a document of a particularly fertile time in his creative life. He had 11 full-length solo albums come out during the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s - plus numerous collaborations, and Suicide records A Way of Life and Why Be Blue. Mutator wasn’t shelved intentionally, but Vega’s back-to-thegrindstone M.O. meant that he had moved on to making his next record before this one was finished. Lamere and Vega’s friend and confidante Jared Artaud (The Vacant Lots) rediscovered the raw, unmixed recordings from the Mutator sessions in the Vault in 2019. Soon after, they mixed and produced them into the visionary album that was lurking within those tapes.

“Our primary purpose for going into the studio was to experiment with sound, not to ‘make records,’” Lamere recalls. “I was playing the machines with Alan manipulating sounds. I played riffs while Alan morphed the sounds being channeled through the machines.”

At the time of the Mutator sessions, Vega was massively inspired by what was happening in the streets of New York - not only the hip hop scenes that were exploding throughout the outer boroughs, but also the literal sounds of the streets, the traffic noise and industrial ambience of city living. That influence trickled into the sounds he and Lamere captured in those sessions. That sensibility, paired with Vega’s unmistakable voice and force of personality, is what made it the great album it is now. The final piece was the production job, completed by Lamere and Artaud 25 years after the songs were first captured.

After NEF's album in 2019, Ici Bientôt is happy to present today the reissue of Comme Au Moulin by Nyssa Musique.

Paris 1985... ‘Extra-European’ Traditions meet Jazz and Minimal Music. An unusual array of instruments turn music into a dialogue. For a unique record ... vivid, full of texture, somewhere between Midori Takada, Don Cherry and Jon Hassell.

Beginning of the eighties, 5 musicians rehearse in a contemporary dance class hall, upstairs from the ‘’New Morning", renowned Music venue in Paris. Nyssa Musique is born. Passionate for a long time about traditional music, like those of the Middle East, India and East Asia, but also about African traditions, they throw a bridge between Jazz and ‘Extra-European’ traditions, resulting in what would be called "Spiritual Jazz" today, a little bit in the style of Don Cherry's Organic Music or Pharoah Sanders. With the notable difference, however, that their creations are strongly infused by contemporary classical and repetitive music, notably Steve Reich's work with whom they share a great interest for the traditional cultures of Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and its gamelans.

In the original group we have Armand Amar, Ballet Music composer and John Boswell. Both specialists of traditional hand percussion which they had been studying for a long time in India and the Middle East, they are also very fond of synthesizers. Three other talented musicians quickly join them: Jean-François Roger, percussionist, marimba and vibraphone specialist, Henri Tournier, multi-flutist and Renaud Garcia-Fons, double bass player, who has a passion for the Middle East and has developed a virtuosic play of the bow, reminding that of Cecil Mc Bee.

Each of them enriches the ensemble with their personality, originality and musical generosity. The rehearsal hall is rapidly invaded by the phenomenal instrumentarium put together by Armand Amar. A great opportunity for the musicians, for the dancers, to have access to an endless choice of instruments, offering infinite possibilities for mixing different colors and timbres. Their sense for being a group and their great capacity for improvising culminates, in 1986, in the composition of their first and only album Comme au Moulin (« As by the windmill"), testimony of years of creating without hidden agenda.

Authentic, free and vibrant, still today, this album has no real equivalent. Even though it recalls the Fourth World current by its combination of traditional instruments with a subtle use of synthesizers, Comme au moulin gives more space to improvisation. It may also recall those of Midori Takada, less the New Age esthetics. An album that should delight as well lovers of "Love Supreme" by John Coltrane, of "Vernal Equinox" by Jon Hassell, as those of Moondog, an artist who, like them, invented a music based on the use of untypical percussions, at the confluence of 'Extra-European' traditions, Jazz and Classical, all together complex and hypnotic.

For Böser Herbst, Thomas Fehlmann returns to the sediment of ages, drawing from a similar lexicon of sounds to that used on 2018’s ‘1929 – Das Jahr Babylon’. Like that album, Böser Herbst was produced as the soundtrack to a documentary made by Volker Heise, ‘Herbst 1929, Schatten Über Babylon’, which offers historical insight to the third season of the television series Babylon Berlin. It adds yet another string to the bow of this most forward-thinking and creative artist, whose history takes in NDW (Palais Schaumburg), techno (3MB) and psychedelic ambience (The Orb), plus a clutch of gorgeous solo albums that explore wide terrain, from the dancefloor through supine home listening to compelling soundtrack work. Fehlmann’s approach here was to ‘capture’ samples of contemporaneous music, “picking up the dirt and dust of original 1920s archive sound and music excerpts and shaping the essence into this selection of tunes,” he recalls. After delivering the material to the editing room, Fehlmann “threw all the pieces up in the air, deliberately lost the overview in consequence, researched the atmospheric thread and assembled it for this album.” That explains the singular nature of the material here, and its ability to sit together so neatly and discretely, as its own entity. For Böser Herbst is a music box of possibilities, shadowed by its historical provenance, but never crudely beholden to it, rather “keeping the references only as a distant nod, a scent.”

It’s certainly an evocative listen, a cornucopia of textural pleasure and sensual, tactile assemblage. The spiralling, psychedelic cycle of “Karnickel” winds its way between the ears like thread to the needle; “Mit Ausblick” immerses the listener in deep, gaseous tones, only to be lifted into the air by the glassy drones of “Umarmt”. “Wunschwechsler” crackles with the unpredictability of weather systems while a guitar-like loop unspools across the horizon. Throughout, you can catch tiny tastes of the source material, but they’re pressed into greater service, Fehlmann using these sources for their evocative capacity and then saturating them with grain and rumble, abstracting outwards. It’s a music of temporal disjuncture and clairvoyant resonance, “speaking with the past – alert, distant and quixotic.”

Für “Böser Herbst“ schürft Thomas Fehlmann tief in den Sedimenten der Zeit und schöpft dabei aus ganz ähnlichen Klangquellen wie auf dem 2018 erschienenen Album “1929 - Das Jahr Babylon“. Auch “Böser Herbst“ wurde als Soundtrack zu der von Volker Heise gedrehten Dokumentation “Herbst 1929, Schatten über Babylon“ produziert, die den historischen Background der dritte Staffel der deutschen Fernsehserie “Babylon Berlin“ beleuchtet und dabei Archivmaterial mit Stimmen unterschiedlichster Zeitzeugen verknüpft. Das neue Album fügt eine weitere Saite zum Bogen dieses überaus voraus denkenden und kreativen Künstlers hinzu, dessen Geschichte NDW (Palais Schaumburg), Techno (3MB) und psychedelischen Ambient (The Orb) umfasst, plus eine Reihe von großartigen Soloalben, die ein weites Terrain erkunden, von der Tanzfläche über entspanntes Hören bis hin zu Soundtracks.

Fehlmanns Herangehensweise auf diesem Album war es, Samples aus jener Zeit "einzufangen", "den Schmutz und Staub der originalen 1920er Archiv-, Sound- und Musikaufnahmen zu sammeln und als Essenz in die einzelnen Tracks einfließen zu lassen", erinnert er sich. Nachdem Fehlmann das Material im Schnittraum abgegeben hatte, "warf er alle Teile in die Luft, verlor dabei absichtlich den Überblick, suchte sich dann einen atmosphärischen roten Faden und setzte alles wieder zusammen." Das erklärt die Einzigartigkeit des vorliegenden Materials und dessen Eigenschaft, sich fein säuberlich und gänzlich unangestrengt zu einer Einheit zusammenzufügen. “Böser Herbst“ ist eine Spieldose voll unbegrenzter musikalischer Möglichkeiten, umspielt von düsteren historischen Quellen ohne darin zu ertrinken – Fehlmann ging es stattdessen darum, "die Referenzen nur wie eine flüchtige Geste, wie eine Ahnung von etwas zu behandeln."

“Böser Herbst“ löst eine Vielzahl an unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen beim Hörer aus, es ist ein wahres Füllhorn an lustvollen Texturen und sinnlicher, taktiler Assemblage. Der spiralförmige, psychedelische Kreisel von "Karnickel" dreht sich in die Ohren wie ein Faden ins Nadelöhr; "Mit Ausblick" lässt den Hörer in tiefe, gasförmige Töne eintauchen, um anschließend von den transparenten Drones von "Umarmt" in die Luft gehoben zu werden. "Wunschwechsler" knistert mit der Unberechenbarkeit eines aufziehenden Unwetters, während sich ein gitarrenartiger Loop am Horizont abzeichnet. Überall kann man winzige Spurenelemente des Ausgangsmaterials erhaschen, aber sie werden in einen größeren Kontext gesetzt; Fehlmann benutzt seine Quellen nur als Mittel zum Zweck, um eine bestimmte Wirkung hervorzurufen, die einzelnen Teilchen werden angereichert mit Struktur und Körper und schließlich abstrahiert wieder ins Außen gesendet. Es ist Musik, an der die Zeit sich bricht und in die Zukunft schaut wie in einen Resonanzraum: Musik, "die mit der Vergangenheit spricht - hellwach, mit aller gebotenen Distanz und voller Rätsel".

“Nothing ever really disappears,” Cassandra Jenkins says. “It just changes shape.” Over the past few years, she’s seen relationships altered, travelled three continents, wandered through museums and parks, and recorded free-associative guided tours of her New York haunts. Her observations capture the humanity and nature around her, as well as thought patterns, memories, and attempts to be present while dealing with pain and loss. With a singular voice, Jenkins siphons these ideas into the ambient folk of her new album.
An Overview on Phenomenal Nature honors flux, detail, and moments of intimacy. Jenkins arrived at engineer Josh Kaufman’s studio with ideas rather than full songs — nevertheless, they finished the album in a week. Jenkins’ voice floats amid sensuous chamber pop arrangements and raw-edged drums, ferrying us through impressionistic portraits of friends and strangers. Her lyrics unfold magical worlds, introducing you to a cast of characters like a local fisherman, a psychic at a birthday party, and driving instructor of a spiritual bent.

Jenkins’ last record, 2017’s Play Till You Win, confirmed the veteran artist’s talent. Evident of Jenkins’ experience growing up in a family band in New York City, the album showcased her meticulous songwriting and musicianship, earning her comparisons to George Harrison and Emmylou Harris. Jenkins has since played in the bands of Eleanor Friedberger, Craig Finn, and Lola Kirke, and rehearsed to tour with Purple Mountains last August before the tour’s cancellation. Her new record departs from her previous work in its openness and flexibility, following her peripatetic lifestyle. “The goal is to be more fluid, to be more like the clouds shifting constantly,” she says. The approach allowed Jenkins to express herself like she never has.

On album opener “Michaelangelo,” before the heavy drum beat and fuzz guitars enter, Jenkins sings quietly “I’m a three-legged dog, working with what I’ve got / and part of me will always be looking for what I lost // there’s a fly around my head, waiting for the day I drop dead.” Phenomenal Nature thrives in this dichotomy between ornate sonics and verbal frankness, a calming guided tour to the edge. Later, on “Crosshairs,” amid lush strings, she sings conversationally: “Empty space is my escape / it runs through me like a river / while time spits in my face.”

“Hard Drive,” the third track and album centerpiece, opens with a voice memo Jenkins recorded at The Met Breuer: a guard muses about Mrinalini Mukherjee’s hybrid textile and sculpture works, which were then on display in a retrospective titled Phenomenal Nature. “When we lose our connection to nature, we lose our spirit, our humanity,” she explains. Stuart Bogie's saxophone & Josh Kaufman's glittering guitar make way for Jenkins' spoken word which constellates scenes from her life, gradually building and blossoming as she recreates a meditation guided by a friend who incants, “One, two, three.”

Sounds of footsteps and bird calls run through the album’s glittering conclusion, “The Ramble.” Meditative and bright, it recalls how Jenkins felt while writing and recording her new material: “Everything else is falling apart, so let’s just enjoy this time,” she said. If Phenomenal Nature has a unifying theme, it’s the power of presence, the joy of walking in a world in constant flux and opening oneself to change.

Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records are proud to present a long awaited reissue of Dead Sea Apes & Black Tempest – The Sun Behind The Sun.
This re-issue is presented in a reflective Mirri Board reflective outer sleeve.
Manchester’s Dead Sea Apes and Godalming’s Black Tempest engage in a mind meld of galactic proportions on this; both band’s first outing on vinyl. Both entities weave together seamlessly as Grey Alphabets recalls Goblin’s giallo soundtracks, whilst Wilder Penfield pulses with post-punk metal-loid Harmonia kraut vibes. Side 2 is given over to the 25+minute Heliopause - a dubby astral meditation, where Oneida meet Tangerine Dream in an elongated Komische drift. For fans of: Harmonia, Oneida,Goblin, Mogwai, Tangerine Dream.

Overcoming all manner of obstacles and finally raising £16,000 via their committed fanbase through Kickstarter, in November 2019 fast rising rockers Mason Hill recorded 11 songs at Riverside Studios in Glasgow, with Scott Taylor later travelling to New York to track his vocals at the legendary Electric Ladyland Studios. Titled in acknowledgement of struggles overcome, the result is Against The Wall, the most hard-hitting and engaging debut album to emerge from the British rock scene in 2020.
From its seductive, inviting opening notes, Against The Wall is an enthralling, spellbinding distillation of everything Mason Hill have learned in their 7 year history. It opens, in dramatic fashion, with the self-explanatory Reborn, climaxing with the lyric, “No more pain, I feel reborn”, a declaration of intent and purpose which sets the tone for what is to follow.

Another lyric encapsulating the defiant resolve of Against The Wall, is the opening line of the stirring, impassioned Hold On. “Wake up, wake up,” Scott Taylor sings. “Did you really think I'd disappear?” That same swagger runs through the album’s gritty title track, an anthemic modern rock masterclass to file alongside the likes of Shinedown and Alter Bridge. Their influence can also be detected in the beautifully bruised climactic epic Where I Belong, where Taylor sings, “I know who I am, and I know where I’ve been” before Bird launches into a stunning solo that recalls Guns N’ Roses legend Slash at his most lyrical.

Overcoming all manner of obstacles and finally raising £16,000 via their committed fanbase through Kickstarter, in November 2019 fast rising rockers Mason Hill recorded 11 songs at Riverside Studios in Glasgow, with Scott Taylor later travelling to New York to track his vocals at the legendary Electric Ladyland Studios. Titled in acknowledgement of struggles overcome, the result is Against The Wall, the most hard-hitting and engaging debut album to emerge from the British rock scene in 2020.
From its seductive, inviting opening notes, Against The Wall is an enthralling, spellbinding distillation of everything Mason Hill have learned in their 7 year history. It opens, in dramatic fashion, with the self-explanatory Reborn, climaxing with the lyric, “No more pain, I feel reborn”, a declaration of intent and purpose which sets the tone for what is to follow.

Another lyric encapsulating the defiant resolve of Against The Wall, is the opening line of the stirring, impassioned Hold On. “Wake up, wake up,” Scott Taylor sings. “Did you really think I'd disappear?” That same swagger runs through the album’s gritty title track, an anthemic modern rock masterclass to file alongside the likes of Shinedown and Alter Bridge. Their influence can also be detected in the beautifully bruised climactic epic Where I Belong, where Taylor sings, “I know who I am, and I know where I’ve been” before Bird launches into a stunning solo that recalls Guns N’ Roses legend Slash at his most lyrical.

Repress in Pink Marbled Vinyl

'Fleischberg' is the 2nd vinyl iteration of Berlin's body focused Fleisch collective, following hot on the heels of last year's highly acclaimed release by Schwefelgelb. This 12' starts with a relentless six and a half minute assault by Australian native and Berlin based Halv Drøm, a fitting vinyl debut for the talented producer. DSX follows up with a finely tuned EBM track tactfully layered with obscure vocal samples and paired with piercing, frenetic drum programming.

The B side starts with a slightly different approach, recalling a more classic techno and electro tone without losing sight of the release's progressive focus; Privacy's catchy 'Work' recalls late 80s Chicago masterpieces without becoming overly nostalgic. Sekunde rounds out the compilation fully with a plodding and minimal piece that would be best appreciated while being blasted driving 300 km/h down a moonlit back road somewhere in the Black Forest.

Nonesuch releases a remastered, special edition of the 2005 record Our New Orleans for the first time on vinyl. The two-LP set, also available digitally, includes five previously unreleased tracks: ‘Do You Know What It Means’, by Davell Crawford; ‘Let's Work Together’, by Buckwheat Zydeco and Ry Cooder; ‘Crescent City Serenade’, by Dr. Michael White; ‘Walking By the River’, by Dr. John; and ‘Do You Know What It Means’, by The Wardell Quezergue Orchestra featuring Donald Harrison.

The $1.5 million raised from the 2005 release went toward providing housing in partnership with low-income musicians and others through the New Orleans Habitat Musicians’ Village, a concept that was developed by New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, working with Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick, Jr. Habitat–built homes in the village now provide musicians and others of modest means the opportunity to buy decent, affordable housing. The centerpiece of the village is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, dedicated to celebrating the music and musicians of New Orleans and to the education and development of homeowners and others who live nearby.

For Our New Orleans, many of the Crescent City’s best-known musicians recorded songs that are integral to their lives and that express their feelings about the city and the trauma of Katrina. The album was made swiftly and simply, over the course of a month, in one-day sessions across the country. Nick Spitzer, host of public radio’s New Orleans–based American Routes, contributed liner notes to the record, as did Pulitzer Prize–winning author Richard Ford, also a Crescent City resident. Other producers who made enormous contributions include Mark Bingham, Ry Cooder, Joel and Adam Dorn, Steve Epstein, Joe Henry, Doug Petty, Matt Sakakeeny, and Hal Willner.

Nonesuch’s parent company – Warner Records, part of the Warner Music Group – donated all production costs for Our New Orleans as part of the Group’s larger efforts on behalf of hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast. Many others involved in creating the album also generously donated their time and services.

Nonesuch President David Bither recalls, “What was most remarkable to me was the immediate response of the musicians. Many were in New Orleans when Katrina struck. Many lost everything they owned including even the musical instruments that are their livelihood. Yet they responded within days to the question of whether they might participate in this project. The emotion and the power of Our New Orleans come both from their anguish and from their incredible generosity.”

And the label’s Chairman Emeritus Bob Hurwitz said, “When we pick up a CD booklet, we usually skip over the page that says, ‘Special thanks to…’, but in the case of Our New Orleans, it is, after the listing of the musician’s names, the most important part of this package. Everyone wanted to help – studios that insisted on contributing free time, caterers, photographers and videographers, instrument rentals, producers, engineers – every step down the line, people gave, not only their profits, but absorbed all of their costs. It was an incredible outpouring of generosity.”

“Our New Orleans is a testament to the power of music to heal and provide a sense of community,” said Marguerite Oestreicher, Executive Director of New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity. “Musicians helped the city heal after Hurricane Katrina, and Musicians’ Village helped them come home. We’re grateful to Nonesuch and everyone who worked on this album. This year has brought new challenges to everyone, but especially to our culture-bearers. This re-release could not be more timely.”

This is Sixties Rock n Roll at its best! A fantastic 2 sider!

A Mod Beat Band playing Rock n Roll is the best way to describe it,,, great Dance floor fillers, both 50s and 60s fans love this record

Without bottle opener

The eighth chapter of the Apparel Wax saga brings with it, as always, a multitude of sounds and suggestions. The masked producer always manages to renew himself, bringing something new and special to each record but always remaining faithful to his musical line. APLWAX008 will be released in January and consists of four tracks: the first is a track with a very marked dynamics and is characterized by a solid rhythm section, a bass line that recalls the UK garage, vocal samples and a beautiful harmonic evolution produced by evolving chords. The second track, A2, winks at Jazz and Soul with a production rich in rhythmic virtuosity, keyboard solos and an almost hypnotic vocal loop while the second side starts with B1, which takes us back to an imaginary dancefloor with a powerful beat and airy disco chords. The EP closes with B2 that softens the tones giving a more intimate, classy and deep end, with references to Funk and R&B. In short, an EP that touches many genres while remaining compact as a whole. Another small masterpiece of production and music selection by Apparel Wax.

Limited edition cloudy clear vinyl. Combining processed recordings of wind and water with analog synthesizers and chamber orchestra, Elori Kramer's The Blue of Distance is an audio dissertation on the role technology plays in our relationships to geography and nature, unspooling into an examination of memory and longing across seven sections that layer filmic minimalism over churning electronic soundbeds. Half of the suite was written in the Adirondack mountains during summer amid lakes, rivers, and moss-laden forest floors, while the other half was conceived on a frozen Lake Superior island in deep winter, creating a subtextual dialogue between the two extreme settings. Kramer, who was born in 1990 and grew up alongside the internet, uses her music to explore nature in the actual and the virtual world, through direct experience and facsimile alike, focussing and blurring the line between the two. "Looking back at my videos of that summer-- which is where the processed audio came from-- I tried to remember what it had felt like to be there," she recalls, "thinking about questions of reality versus imagination; physical versus digital; and the ways in which memory shifts through our minds and technology." The title The Blue of Distance was derived from Rebecca Solnit's book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, referring to the phenomenon of faraway mountains appearing blue due to light particles getting lost over distance. "If we were to go up to the mountains that appear blue from far away, we would see that they weren't actually that color." she says. "This beauty is made possible because of their distance," much in the same way that the splendor of a lush season is only fully realized in the throes of a bleak one, and the joy of an event can only be felt when it has long since been consigned to remembrance. R.I.Y.L Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Josiah Steinbrick, Emily Sprague

Tim Gick's already-warped patchwork editing of the entire Crazy Doberman output thus far turns increasingly glitched out across the splattered quiltwork of a nine track LP on Aguirre. Any coherent sense of time departs early on the A-side; kicked off with the familiar sound of the Dobes' synth throb and Love-cry woodwinds on top of completely fried electric guitar squiggling, all suspended in spiritual foam; then battered to bits on the greasy flat top of the record's b-side.

Ringing modular synth sirens evoke alarmingly huge Southern watersnakes swimming on top of Oconee river. Total trip zone across two sides: brownouts in the sequence of events, dubby fadeouts, and bright jump cuts in space. Teases of cartoon barrlehouse tickling on the keys of a farmhouse piano and tape melt psychedelia. The recording session in Athens, Georgia was a total "CHUGFEST" recalls Frank Hurricane, the Appalachian juggalo folkie king, who joined the session with the Lafayette, Indiana crew. The presence of Hurricane's own "Life is Spiritual" mirth bulworks the record with a muddy, barefoot hippy hopefullness, steadying the log flume through the notcturnal psychic murk toward the holy morning dew. (J. Russ)

When Lindstrom and Prins Thomas get together, expect the unexpected. The Norwegian production duo's third album III is also their first outing together in eleven years, since II from 2009 and as ever, Lindstrom and Prins Thomas have crafted their own unique sonic world between the two of them. This is expansive, luscious electronic music rich with texture and intricacy, patiently revealing every eccentricity while constantly pulling the listener in. Getting lost never sounded so good. Since the release of II, Lindstrom and Prins Thomas have remained more than busy with their respective solo careers, but work on III was taking place behind the scenes the whole time - slow and steady by sending files back and forth. "There's a different process with every album," Thomas explains. "With the first two albums, we had a door between separate rooms in the studio, so I could open my door and play him something. We also toured together a lot after the first album, and after that experience we realized that we work better together at a distance. We're doing our best work by not worrying too much about what the other one of us is doing." Eventually, the bulk of III came together over the last year, as Lindstrom and Prins Thomas teamed up to craft a lush and lovely work that recalls the hazy atmospherics of Air, the loose-fit jazz of Lonnie Liston Smith, and the genreresistant electronic music that both artists have made their name on over the course of their impressive careers. "Our partnership is very democratic "we never turn down each other's ideas. And if it goes wrong, we blame it on the other guy," Thomas says with a laugh. "The tracks that Lindstrom sent me this time were almost like standard house tracks. I already had an idea of what I wanted to do, so I forced those tracks into new shoes and dresses." Above all else, III is a testament to the adventurousness of Lindstrom and Prins Thomas when it comes to soundcraft. Both artists have established separate careers on bodies of work that feature infinite twists and turns, thrilling their audiences with the suggestion of where they've been and where they're about to go. Together, they've crafted what might be their most beguiling and inviting work yet, a jeweled box of electronic music ornately crafted but never losing the sense of playfulness that so many have come to love from them.

Philadelphia’s Another Michael present two new songs arriving this fall on Run For Cover Records. Leadoff track ‘New Music’ builds from a solitary guitar strum into a thoughtful arrangement com-plete with vocalizing in the vein of Bon Iver. B-side track “Boring For The Times” recalls the saccharine indie-pop bliss of artists like Andy Shauf and Whit-ney.

SUMMER OF SEVENTEEN are MONIKA KHOT (NORDRA, ZEN MOTHER), WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA (MAMIFFER), and AARON TURNER. (SUMAC, SPLIT CRANIUM).

Wildfires plagued Washington state during the summer of 2017, their smoke drifting westward toward the Seattle area and toxifying the air. Shortly before that trauma, MONIKA KHOT, WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA, and AARON TURNER had gathered at the latter two musicians' House Of Low Culture studio on idyllic Vashon Island with revered producer RANDALL DUNN. There they cut eight songs that capture the makeshift band's feelings of what COLOCCIA calls "a kind of doomsday lurking in the background." It's as if these highly attuned players had a premonition.

"Summer Of Seventeen" -which was edited and arranged by MONIKA KHOT, who records apocalyptic music solo as NORDRA and plays in the avant-rock band ZEN MOTHER—is a nuanced admixture of these musicians' sounds and a culmination of all of their previous collaborations. COLOCCIA and TURNER have created eldritch folk and chamber rock for over a decade in MAMIFFER while engaging in various solo and group projects that explore their profound spirituality in sound. MENCHE has been a fixture on the abstract composition scene for 31 years and COLLINS is a savvy explorer of drone and ambient forms. Their ephemeral summit meeting has yielded a masterwork for the ages.

A heaven/hell and beauty/beastliness dichotomy pervades the album—as if a titanic struggle was transpiring in that small studio. The fearsome trumpet fanfare that starts "Chorus Of The Innocents" heralds a baleful fate. With a subliminal industrial rhythm bristling beneath the eerie exhalations, the song submerges us in a slow-motion maelstrom, a horror-film facsimile of MILES DAVIS' "Bitches Brew". "Perceived Slight" threads death-metal screams through a stark, suspenseful atmosphere, with austere glints of guitar and beats like fists on a casket lid intensifying the dread.

Angelic chants and celestial drones perfume the air in several of the songs on "Summer Of Seventeen", countered with muted blast beats, serrated hums, jagged glitches, simulacra of grinding gears and lightning. It's as if no good deed goes unpunished. "Spirits Of Redeemer" could be an elegy for the human race while "Cultural Orphan" sounds like a symphony for a malfunctioning factory. The album ends with "Theatre Needs An Audience," a harrowing ballad somewhere between EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and MERZBOW; it's a savage rent in the space-time continuum.

"Thinking about this record now," COLOCCIA recalls, "it seems like we were all sort of anticipating something like this current pandemic happening, although we were thinking about it as fire in the hands of man (literal fire, and also gunfire) that would overturn the normal running of things and reveal the current false beliefs systems holding up most of America."

That grave aura infiltrates "Summer Of Seventeen", However, a hopefulness bubbles beneath the foreboding architecture of sound and noise summoned here. The bunker is the new penthouse.

-Dave Segal, April 2020

In ancient Rome, Consuls held two strategic roles: exercising authority over all the public affairs of the city and accompanying the legions in their military campaigns.

Lykos Records gave this role to Artist Laertes, born Gianluca Meloni. Ambassador of the sound of Rome, Laertes has been one of the pioneers of the deep-techno genre. After establishing in Italy as producer, live performer and mastering engineer, he exported his aesthetics all around the world.

"Titanomachia" is the title of Laertes' new work inspired by Hesiod's Theogony. The artist tells through aggressive and groovy sounds one of the bloodiest wars in Greek mythology, Zeus leading the Olympian gods versus Chronos and the Titans.

"Chaos" throws us into the swirl of battle. The repetitive sound of the synth bass sequence alludes to the sound of spears broken on shields, while pads and strings charge the entire track with tension. The narration continues in a daring succession of loops and hypnotic rhythms, with the second track "The Immortal". Strident bleeps and incessant percussions and rhythmic patterns characterize the progressive crescendo.

The description of the battle changes with Worg, who proposes his version of "Chaos". The story of the battle is entrusted to the evolution of lashing metallic effects that recall the lightning of the father of all Gods.

Psyk closes the chronicle of the epic battle with an adaptation of "The Immortal". The kick recalls war drums that galvanize the troops on battlefields. The artist evokes the heroic spirit with powerful and thunderous sounds.

Svart Records is proud to present the original soundtrack to the supernatural thriller series Requiem! Debuted by BBC One in the UK and NETFLIX globally, psychological horror series Requiem became an instant hit, not least because of it’s haunting, spine-tingling score. Conjured by award-winning composers Dominik Scherrer (The Missing, Ripper Street & Marple), and Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes, Requiem is an eerie landscape of sharp, scraping cello, soothing harps and tense string sections. From the urban uncanny to folk horror, there is a distinct atmosphere in the fresh collaborative dynamic between the British-Swiss decorated grandmaster of unique television series soundtracks Scherrer, and the rising enigma of alt-pop, twice Mercury Music Prize-nominated singer/songwriter Khan. Of their alchemical and otherworldly creative chemistry, composer Dominik Scherrer recalls: “Natasha Khan and I spent some weeks in my studio in Brick Lane, coming up with themes and recording outlandish vocals and terrifying sounds. There is a cheeky element to the show, as well as a genuinely scary one. Together with a pastoral spookiness of the cello and strings themes started to give Requiem its own unique atmosphere. We experimented with deviant playing techniques and unconventional recording approaches, to complete a moody air of retro horror and pastoral spook.” Available for the first time on CD and LP, this highly celebrated “spooksome” score harkens back to the 1970s lo-fi soundtracks from BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop or 1970s horror soundtracks. Winning an Ivor Novello award for the “Best TV Soundtrack” in 2019, Requiem is a one of a kind treasure, now rightfully preserved and beautifully presented on lush vinyl and CD format by Svart Records. “Requiem promises much, not least in way of sound. Nominally just another spooksome BBC tingler – old castle in Wales, birds flying into windows, locked room, pagan symbols, creepy locals – it is rendered a whole cut above by not having the heroine’s every move into peril foreshadowed by dissonant eek-eek string” (The Guardian)

"Secretsundaze continue their quest to uncover amazing new music with the signing of exciting young Dominican artist Boundary. At just 19 years old Boundary aka Josue Suero makes music that is brimming full of ideas and influences that belie his young age. The 'Interlazados' EP is his debut release for a UK label.

Taking cues from his fascination with video game music, his first real gateway to electronic music, the four track EP showcases Boundary's melodic sensibilities and ear for a killer rhythm.ALead track 'Opticamente Avanzando' unwinds over 12 minutes of deep, mesmeric melodic, contemplative electronica with hints of 90's UK rave influences.ACheck the grins when the killer bassline drops half way through!A

The glossy melodies, jazzy motifs and hip-tugging bass of 'OP.AV' and the breakbeat house of 'Interlazados' channel more lo-fi, ambient house influences but all sent through that unique Boundary filter. Finally, the brain-warming, hypnagogic, tempo-changing rhythms of 'Planos de Ausencia Casualidad' could be the EP highlight and recalls the work of Lone and Actress.

You could listen to these tracks and be mistaken for thinking this is an artist who has maybe been lost in the throws of extended Villalobos DJ set or the deep pads of old Sun Electric records, but as an artist who is an outsider to the European dance scene, his inspiration comes from closer to home, as Boundary explains:

"For this EP I was interested to see if i could hit close to the feelings i have when I listen to certain video game music, how I could convey the amazing and deep storytelling in these songs. I really wanted them to feel like a ride/adventure. 'Opticamente Avanzando' ('Optically Advancing' in English) for me is like a venture into a machine that analyses a bunch of electronic music genres and it outputs as many different variations of these genres it can, each with their own little quirk/details, creating something unique in the process."

With previous releases on LA based label, Point Records, and Paris' Third Try label (Axel Boman, SFV Acid) Boundary's emergence represents a promising prospect for the electronic music world and 'Interlazados' another essential release on Secretsundaze."

A dramatic, string-drenched epic, James Ralph Bailey’s Just Me ’N’ You has been a sought-after soul masterpiece for decades. A lush suite of beautiful songs, it was conceived as a concept album; a sophisticated paean to love.

Originally released by MAM Records in 1974, Just Me ’N’ You is a breathtaking jazzy soul album. It’s similar in style to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On - particularly the performances, orchestrations and chord progressions - but dealing with a different universal subject matter. If What’s Going On was about romance instead of politics, it would sound like this.

Fans of Marvin, Leon Ware, Donny Hathaway, Leroy Hutson and Willie Hutch will love this record. Not as well known - this is definitely an underrated gem - the work of James Ralph Bailey is no less mind-blowing. It’s got to be one of the best soul albums of all time.

The original productions were made on a basic home tape machine and enhanced with strings, rhythmic overdubs and a variety of other instrumentation. These are beautiful arrangements of strings and jazzy horns. Rhythm guitars and bouncy bass serve as the groove foundation, congas provide a Latin feel whilst the vibraphone and harmonica add colour. And then of course there’s JR’s voice.

His style recalls Hathaway, with a delivery akin to Marvin at the time. As he scats and sings, accompanying himself in sweet harmonies, there is still a rawness of pain and longing in his voice, the rawness familiar to all deep soul.

As an album, Just Me ’N’ You is no mere collection of songs. The tender, smooth tunes flow perfectly together into a fluid, single artistic statement. This is one where it’s hard to pick out any standouts. You may have heard the soaring title track before, maybe on Gilles Peterson’s Digs America compilation. The opening track “After Hours” sounds as fresh now as it ever was and segues beautifully into the majestic “Heaven On Earth”. Recorded by Hathaway the previous year, Bailey’s original of “Love Love Love” is incredible and arguably the definitive version. The powerful, dreamy, sax-and-harmony-laced “All Strung Out Over You” has echoes of the Chi-Lites, it’s that good. Goosebumps. And we could go on.

Mastered by Simon Francis, cut by Pete Norman and pressed at Record Industry, this Be With edition of Just Me ’N’ You sounds every bit as brilliant as it should. A joyous celebration of love, this album is perfect in every way. If you don’t already own a copy then now is the time.

Walter ‘Junie’ Morrison released his third solo LP, Suzie Super Groupie, in 1976. A slick, smooth and soulful record, it’s a genre-melting tour de force with rich elements of proto-boogie, funk and jazz. In short, this is yet another essential album reissue from Be With.

The sublime “Suzie Thundertussy”, is a favourite of Harvey and Theo, and was brilliantly sampled by Madlib for Kanye West’s “No More Parties In LA”. The track opens with a sinuous synth and combines Junie’s storytelling abilities with an emphatic vocal style and funky arrangements. The powerful bass and sinister chords create an undeniable groove, and the explosive chorus is full of ambition and joy.

“If You Love Him” is a great, mid-tempo soul song. With a swinging jazz-infused middle-eight, it demonstrates Junie was much more than a mercurial funkateer. The laconic groove of “What Am I Gonna Do” recalls “Fresh”-era Sly Stone, whilst the frantic “Super Groupie” showcases his sharp imagination and sense of fun. The lyrics range from humorous to dirty, all fuelled by an infectious groove and tight horn arrangements.

The P-Funk of B-side opener “Surrender” bounces and sparkles, with a strutting Junie backed by great harmony vocals and joyous horns. “Suzie” is a sleek, softer affair albeit with a disco pulse; a beautiful combination of bright, funky horns, fluid basslines and vigorous rhythms. “Stone Face Joe” is another character song, this time one that chugs along on a sweet boogie rhythm.

The winner for us, however, is the closing piece. An extended funk-rock jam, “Spirit” has a heart-rending spoken-word intro and, as a nod to Jimi Hendrix, creates a live concert sound, complete with screaming crowd and fuzzy vocals.

Junie made his name as the lead singer and keyboardist of the Ohio Players. As the mastermind behind “Pain”, “Pleasure”, “Ecstasy”, and the oft-sampled “Funky Worm”, he was beloved by countless musicians, not least Prince. As co-writer of some of Funkadelic’s seminal works - “One Nation Under A Groove”, “(Not Just) Knee Deep” – his standing as one of the structural fathers of funk is undisputed.

In late 2016, Solange’s “A Seat At The Table” featured a track called “Junie”, a tribute to the freedom he created in music. His work continues to be as relavent and inspiring as it was when it was first recorded.

In February 2017, Junie died, aged just 62. With records as mighty as Suzie Super Groupie, his legacy will live forever and Be With is proud to be able to do our bit to make this LP accessible again on vinyl.

HIGHLIGHTS First ever reissue of "Kabwlú", a very hard-to-find album released by Discos Fuentes in 1965. The mysterious Los Picapiedra (which translates as The Flintstones, inspired by the 1960s American cartoon show), was a short-lived studio group with one albumto their name, "Kabwlú", mixing 'folkloric' and 'modern' elements with calculated 'caveman' humor. It is very musically diverse; not only are there the requisite genres that could be found on similar Colombian teenage-oriented groups' records of the time, such as cumbia, gaita, rock, twist and pachanga, but there is also a smattering of surf, doo-wop, Latin jazz, guajira, ska, and calypso. But what makes the whole thing so special is the odd, off-kilter arrangements, spooky tunings, rudimentary clanging percussion, invented 'cave' language, prominent twanging electric guitar and many zany sound effects. Several of Los Picapiedra's songs became very popular in Colombia as well as Venezuela and especially in the 'rebajada' (slowed down) version as played by the 'sonidero' sound system DJs in Mexico, such as "La Hossa". Presented in its original artwork and pressed on 180g vinyl. Part of Vampisoul's reissue series of classic Fuentes LPs. DESCRIPTION While Discos Fuentes was known for recording all sorts of interesting sounds from traditional folkloric Colombian music to the latest popular international styles, every once and a while they would put out a "novelty" record, perhaps to exploit a passing fad, and at times the label would green-light something strange or even outlandish. Many of those left-field releases have their merits and have subsequently become collectors' items over the years. One such case is the mysterious Los Picapiedra (which translates as The Flintstones, no doubt inspired by the 1960s American sitcom cartoon show), a short-lived studio group with one album to their name, "Kabwlú" (an unpronounceable, invented "caveman" term that is also untranslatable, but seems to have been the 'traditional rhythm' of Los Picapiedra's 'homeland'). What is interesting about the record is that it is very musically diverse; not only are there the requisite genres that could be found on similar Colombian teenage-oriented groups' records of the time, such as cumbia, gaita, rock, twist and pachanga, but there is also a smattering of surf, doo-wop, Latin jazz, guajira, ska, and calypso. But what makes the whole thing so special is the odd, off-kilter arrangements, spooky tunings, rudimentary clanging percussion, invented 'cave' language, prominent twanging electric guitar and many zany sound effects. Much like its namesake American cartoon The Flintstones, "Kabwlú" trades in creative anachronism, mixing 'folkloric' and 'modern' elements with calculated 'caveman' humor that works on many different levels. For instance the title tune seems to have been inspired by the pachanga craze and recalls the vibe of Ray Barretto's massive 1962 hit, 'El Watusi', but it has a certain joyful simplicity and rock-solid underpinning that elevates it beyond mere novelty or exploitation - and argues for its timely reissue for today's audience. The band was a studio invention that had no major significance in Medellin's live music activity. However, several of Los Picapiedra's songs were very popular in Colombia as well as Venezuela and especially in the 'rebajada' (slowed down) version as played by the 'sonidero' sound system DJs in Mexico, such as "La Hossa". Pablo E Yglesias (aka DJ Bongohead, Peace & Rhythm) Additional research by Luis Daniel Vega

Recumbent Speech, Ezra Feinberg’s second album, opens with a lament. Named for the Robert Frost poem, “Acquainted with the Night” was written during one of the many devastating spectacles of injustice under our current regime. Repeating flutes and synths beam out of a low-end darkness, reflecting a collective sense of loss and alienation. Rising slowly, thickening with guitars and strings, “Acquainted with the Night” lifts off, and so too does the album from there. The second track, “Letter to my Mind,'' features the dynamic interplay of Feinberg's guitar with the loose and playful drumming of Tortoise's John McEntire, both pushing and pulling atop a looping bass figure. "Palms Up" begins with a lockstep pulse recalling early Terry Riley before jumping into an Ashra-like jam with Afrobeat accents. Side B opens with "Ovation," a tryptic with McEntire on drums which sets a wide lens onto a sweeping landscape, with soaring flutes, wordless vocals, and a hypnotic bassline played on a humming fretless that recalls classic ECM jazz-fusion. The piece plunges into an ambient, interior space before reemerging with a guitar solo fried through an old Space Echo effects processor, conjuring lidded Pompeii-era Pink Floyd. The album's title-track finale, "Recumbent Speech," features the magical pedal steel of Chuck Johnson. Unwinding atop a Balearic analog synth pattern, Feinberg stretches textures of Fender Rhodes and acoustic guitar around Johnson’s lyrical steel, with nods to Japanese ambient legend Hiroshi Yoshimura, as well as Cluster & Eno. Recumbent Speech refers to the possibilities, pleasures, fears, and fantasies that occur the moment the noise dies down, when we are recumbent, in repose but still awake, still speaking, and still aware of ourselves as part of the maddening world. Ezra Feinberg is a guitarist, composer, and psychoanalyst living in Jackson Heights, NY. Feinberg was the founding member of the San Francisco psychedelic rock collective Citay, releasing albums on Important Records and Dead Oceans throughout the 2000s. After relocating to NYC, he issued his first solo record, Pentimento and Others, on his imprint Related States and on cassette on Stimulus Progression in 2018. The release, his first since Citay folded in 2012, earned praise from numerous music outlets including Paste Magazine, The Wire, Stereogum, Vice, and Aquarium Drunkard. In recent years, Feinberg has performed and toured near and far with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Steve Gunn, Alexander Turnquist, Cruel Diagonals, Daniel Carter, Jonas Reinhardt, Christopher Tignor, Kath Bloom, Robbie Lee, High Aura’d, Glasser, Ava Mendoza, Buck Curran, Real Estate, and many others, and has ongoing studio collaborations with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Arp, contributing both guitar and songwriting to the last Arp album Zebra.

Sublime, unique, sexy and peculiar unreleased scores by electronic and jazz pioneer Ron Geesin, made for the sublime, unique, sexy and peculiar films by maverick director Stephen Dwoskin. There. we’ve said it. And if you have not heard of one or either of these two dudes it doesn’t really matter. Geesin made great music and worked with Pink Floyd. Dwoskin made odd films, most of them are in the BFI permanent collection. They are great and a bit strange.
These superb unreleased soundtracks come from a fascinating, progressive and important period in British film history. They represent an intriguing collaboration between the lively Ron Geesin from Scotland and the American Stephen Dwoskin, who both met in London.
Musically they are minimal, charismatic and quite groundbreaking. Here is the story…
HISTORY:
Steve Dwoskin arrived in London in 1964, aged 25, with several 16mm films in his trunk, shot in the cold-water flats of Greenwich Village. He had been on the fringe of the Factory scene, and some of his films starred Beverly Grant, ‘the queen of the underground’. But they had scarcely been seen, and they didn’t have soundtracks. For almost a year they stayed in the trunk, and stayed silent. Then he met Ron Geesin, somewhere around Portobello Road.
‘Slept last night, completely dressed after working over 12 hours on sound tracks at Ron’s,’ wrote Dwoskin in his diary for 29 July 1965. ‘My films are not anywhere near being anything. I need more energy, more concise and positive ideas and less inhibition. And of course space, money and people.’ Dwoskin, who taught and practised graphic design by day, had recently decided to stay in London beyond the term of the Fulbright scholarship that had brought him there.
Ron, living with Frankie in a basement flat in Elgin Crescent – they would marry the next year, with Dwoskin as best man – was about to leave the Original Downtown Syncopators, the trad jazz band he had joined aged seventeen-and-a-half, and was trying to go solo. On stage he would make vigorous use of piano and banjo; at home Frankie had bought him a new kind of instrument – a tape recorder. ‘Soon I had one tape recorder, two tape recorders, three tape recorders.’

Ron, wrote Dwoskin in his unpublished autobiography, ‘loved to record, and to cut and splice the quarter-inch recording tape to make new sounds. This triggered in me the idea of getting back to my films and finishing them’. Soon he was living in a dank basement in Denbigh Road, a few minutes’ walk from Elgin Crescent. Ron’s soundtracks for Dwoskin’ films, recorded in the Geesins’ flat, encompassed Ron’s very eclectic range of styles – madcap piano and fretted banjo as well as tape manipulation.
Aside from Ron’s soundtracks, some of which belong to films that no longer exist (including Pot Boiler), Frankie would act in one of the films that Dwoskin either lost or never finished during these years. He was disabled, having contracted polio as a child, and Ron and Frankie were both carers and collaborators; Ron had met him when he was struggling into his car.
There was no London equivalent to the underground film scene that Dwoskin had known in New York, and his films remained unseen until such a scene began to come into being, in the autumn of 1966. Some of them made their debut at the Mercury Theatre, near Notting Hill Gate, that September. Dwoskin wrote that Alone, starring Zelda Nelson (from Ron Rice’s Chumlum), and Chinese Checkers, with Beverly Grant and Dwoskin’s friend Joan Adler, went over best.
Soon both Dwoskin and Geesin became involved in the nascent London Film-Makers’ Co-op, which put on screenings in Better Books on Charing Cross Road – ‘if you can call them screenings,’ Ron recalls; ‘I’d call it fifteen blokes in various stages of disarray, peering through the smoke’. One or more of the films had been ‘striped’ with magnetic audiotape; with others ‘we had no means of direct syncing to the picture, so he started the film and I started the tape recorder’.
In the same autumn, Dwoskin moved into a flat almost opposite the Geesins on Elgin Crescent. More collaborations followed, including Naissant, on which Gavin Bryars, whom Geesin had met during a stint on the northern club circuit with novelty act Dr Crock and His Crackpots, played double bass.
Around the end of 1967 Geesin released his first solo LP, A Raise of Eyebrows, and Dwoskin won recognition the Fourth Experimental Film Competition, aka EXPRMNTL 4, an occasional film festival staged at Knokke-le-Zoute in Belgium. By now the films had optical soundtracks.
It was only after this that Dwoskin completed his first ‘British’ films, including Me Myself and I, with Barbara Gladstone, an American dancer who had appeared in Barbara Rubin’s Christmas on Earth, and with whom Dwoskin and Geesin had at one point devised a stage show, never produced. For Moment, a single-shot film, Geesin provided his most experimental score yet. At the time of its debut in 1970, Dwoskin and the Geesins were sharing a house in Ladbroke Grove.
By then, Ron was working with Pink Floyd, and soon afterwards he and Frankie moved out to the country, to be replaced by Bryars both in the house and as Dwoskin’s principal collaborator.
Until now these scores have remained part of the Geesin Archive and have never been issued.

Label say : We couldn’t be happier to put this disc out there. Kush’s first time on wax (his Strictly 4 My CDJs series on his Bandcamp site is essential) is four tracks that just relentlessly provide for the DJ in you. Representing the new era of NYC dance music along with artists like AceMoMa and DJ Swisha, mixing footwork and other influences with classic house and techno forms to get busy._

_The whole 12” is lethal stuff that recalls Dance Mania at it’s most melodic and spaced out, or prime-time Boo Williams. “Earth Note” pulls bright synths thru swinging Chi foundations, “Ari Dub” rocks the bells and the bass in Bronx fashion, “Worldly Rhythm” piles UR melodies and techno grandeur on a vicious bassline, and “Reso”
closes things out with a devastating mixer full of blue-hot string work. Relentless and essential. TIP TIP TIP!_