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The first LP reissue of "Indigo Dreams", a masterpiece album released in 1995 by Steve Shehan, a percussionist based in France since the 1970's.
"This album was inspired by a night when I fell asleep and dreamed of The Indigo Night, a novel by Satyajit Ray," -Steve Shehan 

The album was inspired by a dream I had one night when I fell asleep and dreamt of The Indigo Night, a novel by Satyajit Ray. In the dream I was in the world of the novel, living and tending an indigo plantation. The dream was so intense that I decided then and there to make an album dedicated to Satyajit Ray. I was also strongly influenced by Satyajit Ray's 1958 film The Music Room.

The album was also created in collaboration with a number of guest musicians, who traveled around the world for sessions and were sometimes invited to the studio in Paris, where the band is based. Compared to "Arrows," the songs are shorter, and it was a challenge for me to achieve the same depth of expression in that length of time," says Steve. The environmental sounds recorded in the Amazon, the U.S., Canada, and France are another element of the album. I hope that you will lose yourself in these tones and travel with me through the world of dreams.

In 1997 and 1998, the late great Japanese composer, producer, and DJ Susumu Yokota released two of the most eclectic albums of his decades-long career, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace. Recorded under his Stevia alias for Tokyo Techno pioneer DJ Miku’s Newstage Records/NS-COM, they were Yokota-san’s homage to the foundational days of club music in Japan. This year, Glossy Mistakes are proud to present the first official vinyl editions of Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, originally released on CD during the golden days of the format. Packaged in reimagined cover artwork created by the celebrated Japanese visual artist Masaho Anotani, these two albums perfectly capture the diversity at the heart of Yokota-san’s oeuvre. Across Fruits of The Room, he takes us on an expansive odyssey through his personal visions for deep house, street soul, jungle/drum & bass, digital dub and the slipstream moments between genres. A totally inspired dancefloor exploration. When Yokota-san wrote and produced the music on Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace in 1997, he was reflecting on the broader culture that surrounded dance music in Japan in the early to mid-nineties. It was an era when the psychedelic culture of late sixties America, the afterglow of UK acid house/rave, the new age movement and cyberpunk dovetailed together. Within DJ Miku and Yokota-san’s social circles, the thinking of Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs electrified the air. By 1996, the moment, brilliant and blinding as it was, was over. “We all felt that the rave scene fizzled out,” DJ Miku says. As he puts it, there was a collective feeling around him that it had all become too much. From the calm that followed, DJ Miku, Yokota-san and their open-eared peers made the decision to switch tracks and start from scratch. DJ Miku believes that with his Stevia releases, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, Yokota-san wanted to express the sweet and sour nature of the passing of those wild early days and his wish for true peace. “At the time, we saw eye-to-eye, with an implicit understanding of each other,” he explains. “Even now, twenty-five years later, I am confident it was like that.”

Innervisions is the sixteenth studio album by American singer, songwriter and musician Stevie Wonder, released August 3, 1973, on the Tamla label for Motown Records, a landmark recording of his "classic period". It is also regarded as Wonder's transition from Little Stevie Wonder and romantic ballads to a more musically mature, conscious and grown-up artist. With Wonder being the first major artist to experiment with the revolutionary TONTO (The Original New Timbral Orchestra) synth, developed by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, and the ARP synthesizer on a large scale, Innervisions became hugely influential on the subsequent future of commercial soul and black music.

Released shortly after Wonder completed his 1972 tour with the Rolling Stones, and peaking at #3 in the US, it is the second release in what is widely regarded as his classic period, a period in which Wonder broke completely with the Motown sound and philosophy. Despite the strong initial disapproval of label execs, Wonder forged ahead and was rewarded with phenomenal success, forcing Motown to grant him complete artistic freedom over his work and proving to the music industry that R&B artists could find widespread appeal with rock audiences. Featuring #1 pop and R&B hit, “Superstition”. Track listing – Side A: 1. You Are the Sunshine of My Life 2. Maybe Your Baby 3. You and I (We Can Conquer the World) 4. Tuesday Heartbreak 5. Youve Got It Bad Girl Side B: 1. Superstition 2. Big Brother 3. Blame It on the Sun 4. Lookin for Another Pure Love 5. I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever.

The second of two EM Records 12-inch vinyl-only "tribute releases" in support of the Kuzoku film "Bangkok Nites", this time by rap group stillichimiya, local heroes in their Yamanashi homeland. Based on samples from Dao Bandon's biggest hit, the classic luk thung Isan tune "Man on a Water Buffalo" [EM1131CD/LP], the tracks here, including a remix by Compuma, are a grittier, real-world counterpart to the dreamy first release in the series.

TRACKS:

Side A
Bangkok Nights

Side B
1. Bangkok Nights (COMPUMA Remix)
2. Bangkok Nights (Instrumental)

As a grade-schooler listening to the radio in his dad’s car, Stimulator Jones thought Prince was singing “round spiritual ring” on the hook of “Raspberry Beret.” The adult Stimulator Jones, aka Sam Lunsford, now knows all the lyrics to “Raspberry Beret” – and can play the song on virtually any instrument, from bass to sitar – but when the time came to title his new album, he decided to name it after that misheard lyric. Round Spiritual Ring shows a more personal and vulnerable side than Stimulator’s debut Exotic Worlds and Masterful Treasures, with lyrics that touch on his struggles with depression and chronic pain. But Sam is an optimist at heart, and his album’s overarching message is that love and connection are the forces that will ultimately save us. Round Spiritual Ring also symbolizes the connectedness of everything, what Sam calls “repetitive forces in the world” – think DNA, the planets, or vinyl records.

A new avatar on 3XL, someone you may or may not have encountered before on the experiences / west mineral axis, tending to the inner life with a lush fantasy of sound-bathing beatdown and mossy atmospherics somewhere between Ulla x Malibu x Headz-era Mo Wax. ‘Earth FF’ yields a delicate bouquet of synaesthetic ambience designed to sooth yr frayed nerves. The album transposes a flickering vibe to inner sanctums, painting an organically detailed vista that hinges around late ‘90s/early ‘00s illbient/trip hop atmospherics referencing classic Mo Wax / Headz, and melting out into a sanguine bbblisss enhanced by a patina of field recordings. Distinguished by a tender grasp of tongue-tip thizz and lysergic nuance, the 10 tracks fan out in pruned designs between pads and whispered vox reminding us of Kenji Kawai or Nozomu Matsumoto on ‘Evil Day’, via the silvery contrails of ‘Beacon’, the eyrie illbient of ‘Root Loop’, to purest writhing-in-the-floatation tank kiss-off on ’Sunn’ replete with ASMR gynoid vocals on a Perila x Ulla x Malibu tip. With no sharp edges to snag your tumescent skin, it’s all low-lit neon, palm trees gently swaying in the breeze, eyes-rolling in the early-hours, blissed sorta gear.

A note from Hasegawa... The first LP by the Taj Mahal Travellers was recorded at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo on July 15, 1972, which became the title of the work and was released the same year by CBS Sony Records. A live performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of this album was held on July 15, 2022. The only original members of the Taj Mahal Travellers who attended were myself and Seiji Nagai. This is because two of the six members passed away, two are religiously active and they can not play music according to their belief, and the last one has lost touch with us. Therefore, young musicians were recruited to perform with us. This performance was a spark of improvisation that broke 50 years of my silence. Let me recall a little about the day of the concert. The venue was a live house called Forestlimit Hatagaya, about 20 minutes by car from Shibuya. In the pouring rain, we ended up entering a narrow alley from where it was impossible to reach the place by car, so after unloading my instruments, we had to head back to a wider road and find another route. The venue was small and located on the basement floor. Among performers and stuff members we were more than 10 people, and including the audience, in total about 60 people gathered on that day. Indeed, the place felt packed like a crowded train in Tokyo. Many of the performers were meeting each other for the first time, and not only the audience but the participating musicians themselves could not imagine what the performance would be like. For this live performance, I asked my friends to perform stone, shadow, bamboo, and gorilla.

Before he became better known as Porn Sword Tobacco (PST), Swedish producer Henrik Jonsson released two albums under the name of Stress Assassin. Like his later oeuvre, the tunes are spacious, cinematic and multi-layered, influenced by the likes of Harold Budd and Tangerine Dream, but for this project there is additional guidance from Lee Perry and Moritz von Oswald.

Released on vinyl for the first time, Within the Office of Eye and Ear’s smoked-out ambience and blissful beats are permeated with melodic bass and cinematic space. Found sounds, floating voices and intermittent pops ripple amongst the sweet harmonies, lush atmospheres and pulsating basslines, creating a captivating other-worldly dreamspace.

As Henrik explains: “Made often at night in an attic in Gothenburg, it’s music I did in a world far away from today: the music was, and is, about not running along with a stress-y society soaked in TV, media and materialism, out of touch with the calm beauty this world gives us”

He certainly succeeded as Within the Office of Eye and Ear offers the ultimate stress assassination.

”音割れ”への憧憬のこもった新興ジャンル「HexD」周辺も巻き込みながら、昨今、加速度的に勢いを増すブレイクコア/ドラムンベースの世界から飛び出した、ドイツの要注目プロデューサーStrxwberrymilk。自身がホームとしているUKのネットレーベルであり、昨今のブレイクコア作家たちの新たな爆心地となっている〈FOCUSONTHE〉から11月に発表した最新カセット作品『Eloise』の最終在庫をストック！Roy ↨とNaffyがそれぞれ一曲ずつフィーチャリング参加。ジャージークラブやブレイクビーツ、ディープ・ハウスからの影響も色濃い、ダンサブルにして軽やかであり、重厚なアトモスフェリック・ドラムンベースの秀作！版元完売につき再入荷はございませんので、この機会をお見逃しなく。

Stuart Dempster created Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel in the same cistern where the legendary Deep Listening album was recorded. Reverberating with powerful, deep tones, this double LP is intended as a companion to the acclaimed Oliveros/Dempster/Panaiotis album Deep Listening. Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel is one of the deepest drone albums ever recorded. Nine trombones, didjeridu and Tibetan bells fill the massive two million gallon cistern with dense sonic reverberations that are both haunting and healing. Packaged in a heavy duty paper sleeve printed with metallic gold ink to match the Deep Listening design.

The mid-2000s underground stir surrounding Studio, the project of Swedish musicians Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg, feels nearly lost to time. West Coast, their seminal 2006 debut, captured a faraway romanticism of Balearic brushed up against Krautrock, disco, dub, and afro-beat, with pop lyricism lifted from new wave, all made modern by two art school grads in Gothenburg. First pressed in a small vinyl-only run via their own Information label, the album has been notably absent from most streaming services, and the internet’s record of its initial impact is all but fossilized from a bygone blog era, while its sound is simply untraceable to any one moment in music. Presented with a minimalist black circle LP design, the set possessed an uncanny escapist sensibility, underscored by track titles like “Life’s A Beach!” but otherwise entirely on the suggestion of that sound, imagined, displaced, and subconsciously amalgamated. Some called it “the missing link between The Cure and Lindstrøm,” Pitchfork heard Durutti Column and Can, as the duo’s story became swept up in a loosely developing scene — adjacent first to the label Service (Jens Lekman, The Whitest Boy Alive) and later Sincerely Yours (The Tough Alliance, jj) — and a precursor to the 2010s boom at the axis of electronic and psychedelic music guided by indie greats like Caribou, Four Tet, and Darkside. Featuring six free-flowed tracks that glide between hypnotic instrumental terrain and anthemic pop architecture, West Coast succeeded in its premise, a trance-inducing, deja vu-like destination instantly identifiable and endlessly replayable. By late 2007, following its expanded CD repackaging as Yearbook 1, the songs were staples of year-end lists, including best album write-ups by Pitchfork, FACT Magazine, and Rough Trade. While Lissvik and Hägg kept busy, Studio’s proper follow-up never came, thus adding to West Coast’s strange allure and legacy. In 2025, the record sees renewed appreciation, remastered and reissued by Ghostly International. West Coast took shape throughout much of Studio's existence. The earliest recordings trace back to sessions held at Lissvik’s art school and Hägg’s rehearsal space between 2001 and 2004. During this period, Lissvik co-founded the Service label, creating a platform to release music, produce T-shirts, and host events. Service organized large parties, and the art school served as both a club venue and office, in a style reminiscent of Factory Records and Haçienda. Aside from their three initial 7-inch releases on Service, they kept most of their music to themselves for several years. Hägg remembers, "All these recordings were just piled up and we dusted them off and started to deconstruct and assemble them in a more drawn-out fashion." In 2005, they left Service, flirted with breaking up, and then revisited material and wrote two new songs at Hägg's Ferry Terminal Studio and Lissvik's N.47 studio, which he jokingly dubbed the "Beach Ball of Death sessions" due to the slow processing strain put on his Power Mac G4. Hägg continues, "I had started a disco club night with a friend and we went deep down the rabbit holes of Balearics, space rock, and strange leftfield dancefloor stuff. This probably seeped into Studio's output. Around the same time, with Dan slowing drums down to half tempo, finishing ‘No Comply’ and creating ‘Radio Edit’, the B-side of Studio's first 12", a West Coast blueprint was born.” Soon songs were finalized and sequenced from countless sketches and layers, and the titles clicked into place after being kicked around for a while. The title for the pulsing, guitar-driven “Self Service” was inspired by Lissvik’s visit to the office of the Paris fashion magazine and chosen to mark their newfound independence. Thematically, a larger vision emerged. “Somehow, I knew I wanted to make a conceptual record that, although only imaginary at that point, could represent or define how our city sounded,” says Lissvik. “I was totally immersed in a word bubble and was really struggling with lyrics for one of our potential instrumentals. While walking back to the studio one day after a lunch break, ‘West Coast’ appeared in my mind. I ran back to the studio, wrote down the lyrics for ‘West Side,’ and suddenly ‘Life’s A Beach!,’ ‘Indo’ and the rest of the potential instrumentals all made sense.” Sonically, the set represented years of developing taste as well. In the same breadth, they cite DJ Screw, J Dilla, and Joy Division, along with early ‘80s European live DJ sets from the likes of Beppe Loda, DJ Mozart, and Baldelli as reference points. “The anything-goes mentality was very encouraging and was a big cornerstone to the Studio sound,” says Hägg. “But there’s so much more to the picture, we were not that young then and had lots of musical baggage in our suitcases, the new thing was that we finally let it all come through, not bound by any borders that was often the case with music identity in Sweden during the ‘90s.” West Coast is defined by its swing, an ability to lock into loops and beat-grids while still prioritizing looseness and genuine surprises across long passages with layers constantly appearing and fading from the mix. Songs can momentarily fall out of step or change course, like 10 minutes into the hazy opener “Out There” when the bass line suddenly dips back beat for 4 bars and then returns on the beat, giving way for a dubbed-out breakdown and ascendent finish. Or take the 13-minute “Life’s A Beach!” which eases into a soft, tide-changing crescendo just before the 9-minute mark, returning anew on an optimistic bass line as the guitar gets moody above the shimmering wash. Hägg says, “It always transcended very well live, like an implosion. It’s a very tricky song to play, due to strange rounds so it’s such a relief when one gets there, probably what you hear is a big sigh.” In the afterglow of the record’s 2007 reception, as their oft-mentioned un-Google-able name and Myspace page made rounds and West Coast was cemented as “one of the finest pieces of electronic music you ́ll hear this year,” per The Guardian, Studio receded from view, clouded behind a mountain of remix requests (including belter for Kylie Minogue and Stockholm’s Shout Out Louds) and label bureaucracy. But both artists, now well into respective careers beyond Studio, have come to peace with West Coast as their most enduring effort together. Lissvik adds, “It serves as a good reminder for me to keep to that decision and promise and to continue exploring and growing.”

The mid-2000s underground stir surrounding Studio, the project of Swedish musicians Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg, feels nearly lost to time. West Coast, their seminal 2006 debut, captured a faraway romanticism of Balearic brushed up against Krautrock, disco, dub, and afro-beat, with pop lyricism lifted from new wave, all made modern by two art school grads in Gothenburg. First pressed in a small vinyl-only run via their own Information label, the album has been notably absent from most streaming services, and the internet’s record of its initial impact is all but fossilized from a bygone blog era, while its sound is simply untraceable to any one moment in music. Presented with a minimalist black circle LP design, the set possessed an uncanny escapist sensibility, underscored by track titles like “Life’s A Beach!” but otherwise entirely on the suggestion of that sound, imagined, displaced, and subconsciously amalgamated. Some called it “the missing link between The Cure and Lindstrøm,” Pitchfork heard Durutti Column and Can, as the duo’s story became swept up in a loosely developing scene — adjacent first to the label Service (Jens Lekman, The Whitest Boy Alive) and later Sincerely Yours (The Tough Alliance, jj) — and a precursor to the 2010s boom at the axis of electronic and psychedelic music guided by indie greats like Caribou, Four Tet, and Darkside. Featuring six free-flowed tracks that glide between hypnotic instrumental terrain and anthemic pop architecture, West Coast succeeded in its premise, a trance-inducing, deja vu-like destination instantly identifiable and endlessly replayable. By late 2007, following its expanded CD repackaging as Yearbook 1, the songs were staples of year-end lists, including best album write-ups by Pitchfork, FACT Magazine, and Rough Trade. While Lissvik and Hägg kept busy, Studio’s proper follow-up never came, thus adding to West Coast’s strange allure and legacy. In 2025, the record sees renewed appreciation, remastered and reissued by Ghostly International. West Coast took shape throughout much of Studio's existence. The earliest recordings trace back to sessions held at Lissvik’s art school and Hägg’s rehearsal space between 2001 and 2004. During this period, Lissvik co-founded the Service label, creating a platform to release music, produce T-shirts, and host events. Service organized large parties, and the art school served as both a club venue and office, in a style reminiscent of Factory Records and Haçienda. Aside from their three initial 7-inch releases on Service, they kept most of their music to themselves for several years. Hägg remembers, "All these recordings were just piled up and we dusted them off and started to deconstruct and assemble them in a more drawn-out fashion." In 2005, they left Service, flirted with breaking up, and then revisited material and wrote two new songs at Hägg's Ferry Terminal Studio and Lissvik's N.47 studio, which he jokingly dubbed the "Beach Ball of Death sessions" due to the slow processing strain put on his Power Mac G4. Hägg continues, "I had started a disco club night with a friend and we went deep down the rabbit holes of Balearics, space rock, and strange leftfield dancefloor stuff. This probably seeped into Studio's output. Around the same time, with Dan slowing drums down to half tempo, finishing ‘No Comply’ and creating ‘Radio Edit’, the B-side of Studio's first 12", a West Coast blueprint was born.” Soon songs were finalized and sequenced from countless sketches and layers, and the titles clicked into place after being kicked around for a while. The title for the pulsing, guitar-driven “Self Service” was inspired by Lissvik’s visit to the office of the Paris fashion magazine and chosen to mark their newfound independence. Thematically, a larger vision emerged. “Somehow, I knew I wanted to make a conceptual record that, although only imaginary at that point, could represent or define how our city sounded,” says Lissvik. “I was totally immersed in a word bubble and was really struggling with lyrics for one of our potential instrumentals. While walking back to the studio one day after a lunch break, ‘West Coast’ appeared in my mind. I ran back to the studio, wrote down the lyrics for ‘West Side,’ and suddenly ‘Life’s A Beach!,’ ‘Indo’ and the rest of the potential instrumentals all made sense.” Sonically, the set represented years of developing taste as well. In the same breadth, they cite DJ Screw, J Dilla, and Joy Division, along with early ‘80s European live DJ sets from the likes of Beppe Loda, DJ Mozart, and Baldelli as reference points. “The anything-goes mentality was very encouraging and was a big cornerstone to the Studio sound,” says Hägg. “But there’s so much more to the picture, we were not that young then and had lots of musical baggage in our suitcases, the new thing was that we finally let it all come through, not bound by any borders that was often the case with music identity in Sweden during the ‘90s.” West Coast is defined by its swing, an ability to lock into loops and beat-grids while still prioritizing looseness and genuine surprises across long passages with layers constantly appearing and fading from the mix. Songs can momentarily fall out of step or change course, like 10 minutes into the hazy opener “Out There” when the bass line suddenly dips back beat for 4 bars and then returns on the beat, giving way for a dubbed-out breakdown and ascendent finish. Or take the 13-minute “Life’s A Beach!” which eases into a soft, tide-changing crescendo just before the 9-minute mark, returning anew on an optimistic bass line as the guitar gets moody above the shimmering wash. Hägg says, “It always transcended very well live, like an implosion. It’s a very tricky song to play, due to strange rounds so it’s such a relief when one gets there, probably what you hear is a big sigh.” In the afterglow of the record’s 2007 reception, as their oft-mentioned un-Google-able name and Myspace page made rounds and West Coast was cemented as “one of the finest pieces of electronic music you ́ll hear this year,” per The Guardian, Studio receded from view, clouded behind a mountain of remix requests (including belter for Kylie Minogue and Stockholm’s Shout Out Louds) and label bureaucracy. But both artists, now well into respective careers beyond Studio, have come to peace with West Coast as their most enduring effort together. Lissvik adds, “It serves as a good reminder for me to keep to that decision and promise and to continue exploring and growing.”

An all-star project featuring Cadejo, pianist Seok-chul Yoon, saxophonist Oki Kim, and vibraphonist Mothervibes, all active in the Korean jazz scene! Analog recordings using vintage equipment recreate the Korean jazz sound of the time. This is a great album not only for the Korean jazz scene, but also for library music and frontier psychedelic music lovers!

The tape Wildlife & it’s Results by Sue Fishbein, reissued by Counter Culture Chronicles, captures a collage-based soundpiece from early 1980s San Francisco. A key figure in the mail art network, Fishbein constructs an aural patchwork where found sound, irony, and cultural debris converge into a sharp yet playful critique of everyday noise.

Counter Culture Chronicles unveils Wildlife & it’s Results, a rare sound collage by Sue Fishbein, recorded in the early 1980s when San Francisco’s underground scenes provided fertile ground for cross-disciplinary exchange. Best known as a central force in the mail art network, Fishbein used sound as another medium of correspondence—fragmented, suggestive, and defiantly anti-hierarchical.

In this piece, wildlife is less a subject than a metaphor for unruly activity: snatches of found recordings, cut-up voices, urban din, and unexpected silences intertwine in a restless composition. The results are both humorous and disorienting, echoing the anarchic spirit of mail art’s international dialogues. By treating sound as fungible material, Fishbein extends her cut-and-paste aesthetic into the aural domain, challenging notions of authorship and form.

Wildlife & it’s Results carries the immediacy of a cassette-era experiment yet resonates today as a prescient reflection on media saturation, excess, and play. More document than performance, more collage than composition, the work encapsulates Fishbein’s singular ability to twist fragments into a sonic correspondence that remains vital, unruly, and fiercely independent.

Modern Obscure Music turns to Japan for inspiration. Suemori debuts on the Barcelona based imprint with an album of striking textures and sounds. From the first track, you can feel the influence of the Far East in both the melodies and rhythms created by Suemori. The music is complemented by Mayte Nicole Esteban’s impressive artwork. Suemori’s real name is Yoshinobu Hoshina. He previously recorded as Hoshina Anniversary. Under this alias, Hoshina released music on labels such as Boysnoize Records and ESP Institute. As Suemori he released the Maebashi album earlier in 2021 on Elena Colombi’s Osàre! Editions imprint. Tawamure is an album of richly textured compositions. Pianos and electronics are equally important. Some tracks are beatless and others have an unorthodox approach to percussion. We begin with the playful yet sombre pianos and strings of Mou Aenaindesune もう会えないんですね. Honshin 本心 has a magical beauty and Konton 混沌 Chaos is as chaotic as you would expect. There is so much to explore on this wonderful album from Suemori.

Expanded edition of Sufjan Stevens 2015 LP, celebrating its 10 year anniversary.

"A decade after its release, Carrie & Lowell continues to resonate as one of Sufjan Stevens’ most personal and beloved albums—“a fall-down gorgeous and emotionally devastating masterpiece” (The Guardian). To mark the anniversary, Asthmatic Kitty Records presents Carrie & Lowell –10th Anniversary Edition, featuring seven never-before-released demos that offer a rare window into the album’s creation. With updated cover art, a beautifully designed 40-page booklet and new essay reflecting on the album by Sufjan, this special edition celebrates and expands the legacy of one of his most cherished works. Arriving on May 30, 2025, this anniversary edition is a must-listen for fans and newcomers alike, inviting listeners to experience the music’s evolution and reflect on the raw emotional landscapes that influenced its creation."

In "Carrie and Lowell," Sufjan Stevens is a child again or, more specifically, the child character in the family of man drama that often but not always centers on the story of love given, or love forsaken, but isn't that the same thing to the poet? That the love Stevens sings about having left or given or been born to--thank you, Carrie--is a perceptible wound not only on the singer's throat, but his sleeve: he wears love's incomprehensibility, and the deep incomprehensibility of being a son, like a backing vocal on "Carrie and Lowell," which is also filled with colors, hearts, trees, conclusions, and beginnings, all adding up to the kind of intimacy that caught my eye the morning I sat in the diner waiting for the sun to get stronger as I saw intimacy pass by while going about it's business, like something sung and felt by Sufjan Stevens on his new beautiful solitary and rich record filled with faith and disbelief and the resurrection of trust and dreams. - HILTON ALS

It may be tempting to reduce Convocations into a longform ambient anomaly within Sufjan Stevens’ vast catalogue. It is, however, neither an anomaly nor entirely ambient. This is not a side project. From his numerous dance scores for New York City Ballet to instrumental albums such as Enjoy Your Rabbit, Aporia, and The BQE, Stevens spends at least half his working life making largely instrumental music, as he has for decades. And though the first ten pieces, dubbed “Meditations,” unfurl as gorgeous states of reflective new-age grace, this is by no means an ambient enterprise. Stevens invokes the lessons of Morton Subotnick, Maryanne Amacher, Christian Fennesz, Brian Eno, and Wolfgang Voigt here. As musically erudite as it is emotionally experienced, Convocations can be dissonant, vertiginous, rhythmic, repetitive, urgent, or calm—that is, all the things we undergo when we inevitably live through loss, isolation, and anxiety. Indeed, Convocations moves like a two-and-a-half-hour requiem mass for our present times of difficulty, its 49 tracks allowing for all these feelings to be felt. The album is divided into five sonic cycles, each replicating a different stage of mourning. Convocations occasionally soothes and sometimes hurts; when it’s done, you’re left with a renewed sense of wonder for being here at all. In fact, Stevens made Convocations in response to (and as an homage to) the life and death of his biological father, who died in September last year, two days following the release of The Ascension. It is, then, ultimately an album about loss, and an album that reflects a year in which we have all lost so much. One could easily compare this project to Stevens’ album Carrie & Lowell, which he wrote following his mother’s death. But this is something entirely different. A new time, a new season, a new life lost, a new reckoning, a new kind of isolation, grief, despair, frustration, confusion, and the search for happiness and hope for the future. This is not a personal record, but a universal one. Convocations is built on a shared experience that seeks to be honest about how complicated grief can be in these difficult times—the pain, the anxiety, the unknown, the absolute joy of memory. This is also an album made in lockdown, when we were all cloistered in whatever space we had. So long as the science and statistics hold, Convocations arrives just as we begin to emerge from a year whose losses we will calculate for a lifetime. It is, then, right on time, as we begin to process our grief and try to carry on with it. —Grayson Haver Currin

Both versions were recorded around 2014: “Fourth of July (April Base Version)” was recorded in Eau Claire, WI at Justin Vernon’s April Base studio, and “Fourth of July (DUMBO Version)” was recorded in Sufjan’s old studio in Brooklyn, NY. The original version of “Fourth of July” appeared on Sufjan’s 2015 album, Carrie & Lowell. As is (and was) his custom, Sufjan would often rework different versions of his songs while recording an album, and “Fourth of July” was no exception. (Other versions & remixes of the song were released on “The Greatest Gift” mixtape and on the “Exploding Whale” 7” single.) These two latest versions were recently found on old harddrives. The refrain of the song, “We’re all gonna die,” invokes a meditation on human mortality and fragility, even as it acts as an anchor of stoic hope. Its solemnity invites listeners to feel comfort, connection — even joy — wrought from great pain and loss. The song has recently had a resurgence with listeners — which may speak to a deep national grief and sense of loss. A limited run physical 7" in red will be released in December 2022, which marks the 10-year anniversary of Carrie’s death.

Over the course of his career, Sufjan Stevens has blurred distinctions between the major and the minor, between the details that color our existence and the big events that frame our lives. He has turned historical footnotes of States into kaleidoscopic pop, and rendered the immeasurable grief of loss with intimacy and grace.His new album Javelin — Sufjan's first solo album of songs since 2020's The Ascension and his first in full solo singer-songwriter mode since 2015's Carrie & Lowell — bridges all these approaches. Sufjan uses the quietness of a solitary confession to ask universal questions in songs we can share communally. Accompanying the CD and LP formats of the album is a 48-page book of art and essays. With a series of meticulous collages, cut-up catalog fantasies, puff-paint word clouds, and iterative color fields, Sufjan builds order from seeming chaos and vice versa. And toward the middle of it all are 10 short essays by Sufjan, another window into the process that informed Javelin.

Multi-instrumentalist Sufjan Stevens made a couple of records that slipped under the radar before his third, the astoundingly lush post-rock concept album GREETINGS FROM MICHIGAN, gained him critical attention and cult status. Seemingly bent on not repeating himself, Stevens scales down MICHIGAN's grandeur to a minimalist palette for SEVEN SWANS. Where the previous album was instrumentally comparable to Tortoise or Stereolab, SEVEN SWANS is practically lo-fi, based around simply strummed acoustic guitars, banjo, organ, and hushed vocals. It's more akin to laconic Americana troubadours like Will Oldham and Iron & Wine, though no amount of sonic slimming-down can disguise Stevens's knack for crafty arrangements and accessibly quirky songs. Like-minded spirit Daniel Smith of the Danielson Family produced, and other Family members provide accompaniment that's considerably more structured than their own free-wheeling recordings.

Composer, multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens' Reflections, a studio recording of his score for the ballet by choreographer Justin Peck, performed by pianists Timo Andres and Conor Hanick. "Reflections was originally commissioned by Houston Ballet to accompany choreography by Peck and premiered March 21, 2019. Written for two pianos and eleven dancers, Reflections smarks the sixth collaboration between Stevens and Peck, following Year of the Rabbit (2012); Everywhere We Go (2014); In the Countenance of Kings (2016); The Decalogue (2017); and Principia (2019). Reflections is characteristic Stevens: dynamic, melodic, memorable, emotionally resonant and playful (one track is titled “And I Shall Come To You Like A Stormtrooper in Drag Serving Imperial Realness”). It is about “energy, light and duality,” Stevens says. “I’m constantly thinking about bodies moving through space when I’m writing for ballet — that is what has informed this music, first and foremost.” "

Composer, multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens' Reflections, a studio recording of his score for the ballet by choreographer Justin Peck, performed by pianists Timo Andres and Conor Hanick. "Reflections was originally commissioned by Houston Ballet to accompany choreography by Peck and premiered March 21, 2019. Written for two pianos and eleven dancers, Reflections smarks the sixth collaboration between Stevens and Peck, following Year of the Rabbit (2012); Everywhere We Go (2014); In the Countenance of Kings (2016); The Decalogue (2017); and Principia (2019). Reflections is characteristic Stevens: dynamic, melodic, memorable, emotionally resonant and playful (one track is titled “And I Shall Come To You Like A Stormtrooper in Drag Serving Imperial Realness”). It is about “energy, light and duality,” Stevens says. “I’m constantly thinking about bodies moving through space when I’m writing for ballet — that is what has informed this music, first and foremost.” "