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We’re all on our own unique emotional road trips. Infinite Avenue happens to be Carmen’s. Here she is, holed up in the Motel Nowheresville, unpacking a suitcase full of stories of guilt, desire, rage, apathy, love and friendship, loneliness, nature, inner demons and other tales of twenty-first century womanhood. Carmen Villain is half-Norwegian and half-Mexican, born in the USA and now living in Oslo, Norway, having moved back after living in London for a few years. She has a lot of stories to tell. Writing, recording and producing alone, Carmen’s intensely personal songs are entirely self-created in her makeshift studio, made up of tapestries of guitar, piano, programmed drums and synths, making the most she could out of her limited gear. Once she had arrived at more than enough tracks for a follow-up album to 2013’s 'Sleeper,' some of them were mixed with experimental house producer Matt Karmil and ‘Quietly’ was treated by noise improviser Helge Sten (aka Deathprod). Taboo-busting Norwegian artist Jenny Hval contributes lyrics and vocals on ‘Borders’, a song especially relevant among today’s tightening frontiers in America and elsewhere. ‘Red Desert’ is titled after the legendary Antonioni movie about a woman’s survival tactics in a surreal industrial landscape full of existential crisis. ‘To me the movie feels like a perfect visual representation of what it can be like to be anxious and uncomfortable in your head sometimes,’ says Carmen. Musically, 'Infinite Avenue' has a similar effect. With 'Infinite Avenue,' Carmen Villain’s songwriting and production skills have taken a major leap forward, and on the final, ethereal ‘Planetarium’ her voice shoots into the stratosphere, riding the comet tail of a Korg bass drone. It’s about acknowledging the immensity of the universe, while remembering that we’ve each got our own private constellation of issues to deal with down here. It’s a typically Villainous contrast of rapture and irony, with a murmured coda recorded as she was falling asleep one night. ‘Everything I write has to be true,’ she says, ‘even if I sometimes find it’s too confessional. Whatever was my truth at that moment.’ The hollow-eyed woman on the cover, that’s Hollywood actress Gena Rowlands, partner of the late director John Cassavetes – a heroine of Carmen’s because of the way her face and body can so brilliantly express psychological states, nervousness, being stressed out, desperation, anxiety, joy without necessarily using words. A freakish dream sequence in 'Love Streams,' where she gambles with the love of her estranged husband and child and desperately tries to make them laugh with a bunch of practical-joke toys, is manic genius – and one of Carmen’s favourite film scenes. Ms Rowlands, by the way, personally approved the use of her image for this project. A famous movie maker once called film ‘truth at 24 frames per second’. With 'Infinite Avenue,' you get an earful of truth at 33 1/3 revs per minute.

Music taken from the Carte Blanche performance "Monument 0.10 : The Living Monument" by Eszter Salamon. This album contains selections from Carmen Villain's score for the two-and-a-half hour performance, most of them edited down from the long-form versions that accompanied the ultra-slow scenes of the performance. These are Carmen Villain's first compositions for dance. Acclaimed Choreographer Eszter Salamon’s dance performance The Living Monument is built on still life, slowness and the presence of the body. In the performance, the theatrical elements are equal and interdependent, and it develops into an installation of sound, movement and figures. Each tableau is bound together by Carmen Villain’s hypnotic score in which the audience is taken on a meditative journey through vibrant tableaus in a dreamlike universe. Carmen Villain's score is a suspension of time where her music is seeking a new form of slow-moving minimalism.

Carmen's new 3 track EP gives a sense of where she might be heading next on her musical journey. On Nutrition, the submerged influence of dub seen in a lot of her earlier work has risen more prominently to the surface. Carmen describes the tracks as "some dub studies born out of my continued fascination with the form. I’m in a period where I just keep going back to experimenting with beats and rhythms". Nutrition is set for release on 25 October 2024 through Smalltown Supersound.

US-born, Norwegian-Mexican artist and producer Carmen Villain's fourth album Only Love From Now On is out February 25th, 2022 on Smalltown Supersound. The culmination of a build-up that began with a turn in sound evident on 2019's Both Lines Will Be Blue, Only Love From Now On presents Villain’s aesthetic blossoming into something unexpected, benevolent in its composure and altogether luxuriant in its sensuality.If her themes are wide, philosophical, and occasionally abstract, the emotional tenor of Hillestad's music is clear and purposeful. Makes sense that her key musical touchstones are dub, ambient, and cosmic jazz – flexible vehicles for tranquil wonder.Listening to Only Love From Now On is simultaneously comforting and alluringly strange. Partly it’s the contributions of guests Arve Henriksen (trumpet, electronics) and Johanna Scheie Orellana (flutes). Partly it’s the fluidity between instruments – such as clarinets – field recordings, the studio, jam, and careful composition. She calls the process a conversation with sound that occurs in her deliberate attempts to experiment with new methods, like granular synthesis, for her music-making.Only Love From Now On is fueled by the sense of scale in feeling small in the face of things so large, the contemplation of how the biggest impact we can have is in the people close to us, the attempt to make sure that impact is a positive one, and the choice to try to focus on love instead of fear. Hillestad describes it as "wishing to maintain a sense of careful optimism for the future, while on the cusp of something unknown."

Carmen Villain returns with the 'Planetarium' EP, the follow-up to her 2013 debut, Sleeper. In the span of the last few solitudinous years, the US-born, half-Norwegian and half-Mexican has honed and nurtured her songwriting and production craft, while still drawing from the gossamer atmospheres of 'Sleeper.' She weaved the hyper-personal songs in peaceful seclusion, creating starry tapestries of field recordings, piano, guitars, programmed drums and synths.

Carol Maia & Jeremy Gustin’s haunting collaborative album is the result of a long distance partnership during which tracks were traded back and forth across thousands of miles, Jeremy working from his home studio in Brooklyn and Carol from hers in Rio De Janeiro. Later they enlisted support from a number of key players in the Rio scene, Frederico Heliodoro, Paulo Emmery, Ricardo Dias Gomes, and from Brooklyn’s musical community, Will Graefe and Ryan Dugre, to shape this understated masterpiece of sophisticated global pop and quiet experimentalism. It's hard to describe what Carol, Jeremy and their guests have achieved on 'it's nice to see a lake in your eyes', a kind of pop music that stands outside of time and is neither Brazilian, American or of any other recognisable place. Maybe it's risen out of the lake they imagined into being? Maybe it's formed like rain in the thousands of miles of air between Rio and New York? Whatever happened was certainly alchemical as you will hear. Carol told me her writing on this record was greatly influenced by her reading of Marcelo Ariel's poetry book "A água veio do sol, disse o breu" so maybe the best thing to do to describe this music is to let you read one of his poems: A luz do ser é como a água também veio do Sol onde todos os planetas querem entrar Dentro do Sol O ser é imóvel como a gratuidade de um êxtase parecido com a respiração Fora do Sol o ser é móvel Tempo eternidade e tempo cronológico (Translation) The light of being is like water it also came from the Sun where all the planets want to enter Within the Sun Being is immobile like the gratuitousness of an ecstasy similar to breathing Outside the Sun Being is mobile Time eternal and chronological time

先鋭的英国のテクノ・プロデューサー、ShiftedこもGuy Brewerが"Carrier"名義で放つ最新作『FATHOM』が、Perko主宰の〈FELT〉よりリリース。ミニマルな構造の中にドラムンベースのリズムを再構築し、金属的な質感と抽象的なサウンドデザインが融合した全4曲を収録。幻覚的な抽象性を帯びたグリッチ・プログラミングと霧のようなアトモスフィアが特徴的な"FATHOM"や粘性のあるベースと点滅するパルスが印象に残る"The Cusp"、有機的なディテールが際立つ"Trooper"など、IDM、実験的テクノ、アブストラクト・エレクトロニカの愛好者にとって、現代的なリズムとサウンドの探求が詰まった一枚！

Mutant steppers techno maverick Carrier caps 2024 with a doublepack of the sought-after first two 12”s issued on his own label - both now trading for twice the price 2nd hand - comprising some of the deadliest, most stripped down twists on club music fundamentals of the decade so far - big one if yr into T++, Photek, Chain Reaction, Burial.

 

 

As Carrier, Guy Brewer has rigorously consolidated his fascinations with technoid dance music physics to proper, cult acclaim. Distilling the rolling pressure of his D&B work as half of Commix with the granite hewn heft of his techno streak as Shifted, and the finely spaced pressure of his sound design that defined his Alexander Lewis and Covered In Sand bits, the project has come to represent the bleeding edge of club music in a way mistakenly thought lost to a previous era. 

 

 

The bloody-minded focus on his thing has resulted in a frankly jaw-dropping new sound that still conveys the increasingly rarer rush of the new that we once felt hearing Photek and Source Direct in the late ‘90s, or in the refined rolige of Autechre and T++/Monolake 12”s in the ‘00s, thru the mutations of 2562 and A Made Up Sound, or Raime’s writhing shapeshifting into the 2010s. Fair to say those lineages were fractured by Covid-enforced dancefloor downtime, but Carrier still holds their principles of obsessively tight, syncopated percussion and subbass rhythm programming and proprioceptive sound design close to heart with diehard, visionary effect.

 

 

From the squashed woodblock drums and dry concrète tone of ‘Into the Habit’ and rugged techno dub  of ’Shading’, thru the tendon-tweak lean of ’Still So’ on the ‘Neither Curve Nor Edge’ 12”, and over to the pressure of his subaquatic shimmy in ‘Coastal’, or lip-bitingly taut 2-step swivel of ’Wood Over Plastic’ on the ‘In Spectra’ 12”; his skeletal rhythm trax dare to dance in lesser heard but wholly vital niches of club music in a way that plays to club needs, not wants. 

 

 

No hyperbole, it’s just 100% deadly if you ask we, and makes the other 99% of dance music producers right now sound like line-dancing copycats in relief of his sound: a painstakingly chiselled pursuit of the dragon that drove UK dance music - particular the ‘hardcore ‘nuum - to thrilling, inspirational degrees from the late ‘80s thru the ‘90s and into the present. After wriggling our socks off to his new live set on The White Hotel’s faithful rig a few weeks ago, we can only confirm he’s the best to do it right now, and this doublepack is fucking unmissable if you follow.

 

 

For the dancers, DJs!

</p><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 274px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=246103884/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://0207carrier.bandcamp.com/album/neither-curve-nor-edge">Neither Curve Nor Edge by Carrier</a></iframe><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 241px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3759117354/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://0207carrier.bandcamp.com/album/in-spectra">In Spectra by Carrier</a></iframe>

With Rhythm Immortal, Carrier — the project of Guy Brewer (formerly of Commix and Shifted) — makes a remarkable full-length debut that expands his intricate rhythmic world into deeper, slower, and more textural terrain.

Since first surfacing with 12”s for FELT and his own label, Carrier has become a touchstone for those drawn to the intersection of precision, space, and pulse. Brewer’s debut album distils the essence of drum & bass, dub techno and electro-acoustic minimalism into eight finely carved movements where every percussive fragment feels alive.

Appearing alongside guest collaborators Voice Actor and Memotone, Brewer navigates between noirish ambience and tightly coiled rhythmic design — from the hovering tension of ‘Offshore’ to the hypnotic sway of ‘A Point Most Crucial’. Tracks such as ‘Outer Shell’ and ‘Wave After Wave’ balance heady abstraction with physical propulsion, creating a sound equally suited to introspection or motion.

Previewed at Berlin Atonal 2025, Rhythm Immortal confirms Carrier as a singular voice in modern electronic music — a producer devoted to rhythm as both structure and spirit.

RIYL: Photek, Rhythm & Sound, Torsten Pröfrock, Burial.

"A growing, single-minded confidence in his thing practically makes time stand still and places us right in the moment and momentum of the music. Crucially, whilst clearly referencing foundational styles, it’s a masterclass in innovation not imitation" - boomkat

Carrier presents Tender Spirits, the third turn on his eponymous series that explores his abstractions at its most sparse and cerebral.

Space maintains great purpose for Guy Brewer, having experimented with this previously for multiple drum-focused missives as Carrier. On his latest release, he treads deeper into the furthest regions of dub deconstruction, with Tender Spirits offering a serene path to the inbetween.

Across 8+ minutes, Light Candles, To Mark The Way moves towards the muted sublime; a gentle half time’d bliss that ebbs and floats across the enveloping mist. Slow Punctures gradually returns to dusk, eerily surveying the hollowed-out remains of its dub architecture with an off-kilter lurch. Carpathian echoes further in stark reduction, a weightless atonal zone anchored by the abstracted pressure suspended within.

Tender Spirits tracks Carrier at exciting new parallels, unfurling his most ascendant and capacious music to date.

Carrier makes his Modern Love debut with a collaboration alongside Equiknoxx leader Gavsborg, blending dub techno precision with stripped-back, bass-heavy steppers. Known for reshaping the intersection of dub and drum & bass, Carrier (Guy Brewer, Shifted et al.) here doubles down on the fundamentals, while Gavsborg’s distinctive vocal presence — previously heard on productions for Busy Signal and Thom Yorke — adds a dark, hypnotic edge. ‘The Fan Dance’ on the A-side is a masterclass in reductionist rhythm: intimate vocals drift across spacious stereo fields, sharp hi-hats, deep subs and spectral detail. The B-side dub pares it back even further, exposing skeletal mechanics that echo early Burial and latter-day T++. Guy Brewer never misses!

A much requested reissue of Cashmere Cat’s classic 2014 LUCKYME® EP, prior to production for Ariana Grande, Bladee, The Kid Laroi, SOPHIE, The Weeknd, Kanye West, FKA Twigs, Travis Scott, Charli XCX, Kehlani, Juice World & many more.

Almost ten years on this record still stands the test of time, every beat and electronic contortion bursting with character. The expressive waves of autotune and electro thump of previous single 'With Me' give way to the stuttering rhythms of 'Pearls' and the feather-light drip of 'Rice Rain'. Title track 'Wedding Bells' is the standout though, sultry voices and shiny, delicate production mixing with the thick low-end of 00s hip hop for infectious results.

One of the most representative works of their career, this album contains 7 tracks recorded at the "best performance" in a hall recording. This is a masterpiece that will remain in the history of Japanese fusion music, and was selected as one of the best albums of 1982 by both ADLIB and JAZZLIFE magazines. Cutting by Bernie Grundman. Repressed on clear green vinyl!

"Ambient Music For A Young Girl", a very good new title, has arrived. This is a masterpiece of ambient music that exudes warm nostalgia and a profound sense of tranquility towards the approaching footsteps of autumn. The latest solo album by Cass., one of Germany's most important new age/ambient artists, is now available from Growing Bin. Beautiful. With the music of the foreground, it is a fascinating experience to rescue oneself from ego. After a year of isolation in the current situation, this album is for many people who are going through introspection. Please listen slowly and deeply.

Black Truffle announces its first release from celebrated London-based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Though her body of mature work stretches back almost twenty years, many listeners were introduced to Miller through the success of her astonishing 2015 Duet for Cello and Orchestra, which sets an imperturbable two-note cello part against a series of increasingly dense orchestrations of an Italian folk melody. Traveller Song/Thanksong, the first release of her music on vinyl, presents a pair of compositions for voice and ensemble that exemplify Miller's gently absurd, strikingly beautiful, and utterly unique work. Like many of Miller's compositions, these pieces originate in existing music. "Traveller Song" (2016/2018) begins from a 1950s song of an anonymous Sicilian cart driver recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, which Miller recorded herself singing along to, going on to then record herself singing to her own layered voices. Heard sometimes alone, sometimes layered, her pre-recorded voice is accompanied by a chamber sextet drawn from London's Plus-Minus Ensemble. "Thanksong" begins from recordings of Miller singing along to the third movement of Beethoven's late quartet in A minor (Op. 132), the "holy song of thanks" the composer wrote to express his gratitude for (temporarily) recovering from illness. Recording herself singing along repeatedly to each of the individual parts of the quartet, Miller created an aural score where each member of the string quartet listens to their own part on headphones, playing by ear. Performed on this recording by Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini, with whom Miller has a decades-long relationship, they are joined by the British soprano Juliet Fraser, who sings material from the Beethoven quartet "as slowly and quietly as possible." Presented in a stylish sleeve adorned with photography by Lasse Marhaug and liner notes by Cassandra Miller, this is a key release from a major contemporary composer whose work challenges and dazzles in equal measure.

In March of 2023 composer, arranger & alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi premiered a commissioned suite of music in front of a sold out crowd at London’s Southbank Centre. She wrote the piece – gratitude – for her flagship large ensemble seed., in a special augmented formation that also featured turntablist NikNak and the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO).

Followers of UK Jazz know Kinoshi from her previous work with seed. (including the Mercury Prize-nominated album Driftglass, released by jazz re:freshed in 2019), or as a former member of Kokoroko. But her compositional résumé also extends deeply into orchestral work for concert hall, contemporary dance, film, visual art, and theatre, with high profile collaborators including London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra. That depth of experience is on full display on gratitude, with the textural and dynamic flexibility of her large ensemble covering musical ground from groove-focused modal melancholia to anthemic brass and string themes. Striking upon first listen and even richer on repeat visits, gratitude scores the soul of contemporary Black London with philharmonic craftwork in the tradition of legendary jazz arrangers like Mary Lou Williams, Oliver Nelson, and Carla Bley.

Similar to those keystone writer-arrangers, here Kinoshi wields the power of a large ensemble to convey nuanced human emotion. “gratitude was written as a means of guiding my own healing,” says Kinoshi. “My mother told me that she keeps a gratitude book where she writes one thing, no matter how big or small, every day that helps to re-focus her mind on practicing gratitude. The examples that she gave were seeing the flowers that she'd recently planted in her garden bloom and a kaleidoscope of butterflies that she saw flitting about a tree in her garden.”

Inspired by her mother’s focus on natural beauty and the meaningful minutiae of everyday life, Kinoshi was driven to work through her own relationship with mental health and to pour that into composition. “I was spending a lot of time on my own, often at my desk writing continuously,” says Kinoshi. “At 3pm everyday, the winter sun would be positioned opposite my window and shine directly onto my face. The task of writing this piece was one of the most difficult I've endured – because of the headspace that I was in at the time – and this would be the one thing in the middle of the day that would bring me a very deep sense of contentment… my first attempt at consciously practicing gratitude for something that I so often take for granted.”

“At this point in my artistic career, highlighting the often overlooked subject of mental health and what it means to move towards creating healthy, positive and introspective practices in regards to both understanding and regulating one's own mental health is of the utmost importance to me.”

Throughout the writing process Kinoshi had the privilege of knowing that her composition would eventually be interpreted by seed. — an ensemble of players she founded in 2016 and whose collective talents she knows through and through. “The binding concept of seed. has always been to have a creative outlet that allows me to express and highlight subject matter important to me alongside musicians that I deeply respect, admire and enjoy spending time with,” explains Kinoshi. “It is the one environment where I feel extremely comfortable being able to experiment with sound authentically. Over the years, it has evolved in the sense that the more comfortable the band members get with interpreting my music, and the more we develop a creative language together, the more honest the music sounds.” That profound musical and personal trust helped make the ensemble a perfect vehicle for a composition augmented by new collaborators — in this case the LCO and NikNak.

Kinoshi and seed. first met turntablist NikNak at the Marsden Jazz Festival in 2019. After spending some time talking politics and sharing jokes it was clear that a creative relationship was possible. “I find that working with formidable artists that I get on well with on a personal level always leads to my best work, and knew as soon as I met NikNak that I wanted to work with them.”

On the genesis of her collaboration with the LCO, Kinoshi says: “I have always wanted to combine seed. with electronics and orchestral elements, as I have always envisioned the band performing multi-disciplinary works. I have long admired the members of the LCO and their way of successfully melding orchestral arrangements and improvisation with more contemporary artists. I was introduced to them via Lexy Morvaridi during his time at the Southbank Centre. It was through his support, creative insight and trust that we were able to make this project happen.” The beauty and harmony of these communal connections plus the depth and deftness of all the musickers involved truly made Kinoshi's dream of this composition a reality.

Running confidently at 21 minutes and 33 seconds (not including the album’s B Side / final track “Smoke in the Sun,” which was recorded separately at Total Refreshment Centre) and going straight for the heart, gratitude is an evolved, emotionally attuned, creatively ambitious and compositionally exquisite philharmonic expression of post-millennial UK jazz. 

In March of 2023 composer, arranger & alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi premiered a commissioned suite of music in front of a sold out crowd at London’s Southbank Centre. She wrote the piece – gratitude – for her flagship large ensemble seed., in a special augmented formation that also featured turntablist NikNak and the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO).

Followers of UK Jazz know Kinoshi from her previous work with seed. (including the Mercury Prize-nominated album Driftglass, released by jazz re:freshed in 2019), or as a former member of Kokoroko. But her compositional résumé also extends deeply into orchestral work for concert hall, contemporary dance, film, visual art, and theatre, with high profile collaborators including London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra. That depth of experience is on full display on gratitude, with the textural and dynamic flexibility of her large ensemble covering musical ground from groove-focused modal melancholia to anthemic brass and string themes. Striking upon first listen and even richer on repeat visits, gratitude scores the soul of contemporary Black London with philharmonic craftwork in the tradition of legendary jazz arrangers like Mary Lou Williams, Oliver Nelson, and Carla Bley.

Similar to those keystone writer-arrangers, here Kinoshi wields the power of a large ensemble to convey nuanced human emotion. “gratitude was written as a means of guiding my own healing,” says Kinoshi. “My mother told me that she keeps a gratitude book where she writes one thing, no matter how big or small, every day that helps to re-focus her mind on practicing gratitude. The examples that she gave were seeing the flowers that she'd recently planted in her garden bloom and a kaleidoscope of butterflies that she saw flitting about a tree in her garden.”

Inspired by her mother’s focus on natural beauty and the meaningful minutiae of everyday life, Kinoshi was driven to work through her own relationship with mental health and to pour that into composition. “I was spending a lot of time on my own, often at my desk writing continuously,” says Kinoshi. “At 3pm everyday, the winter sun would be positioned opposite my window and shine directly onto my face. The task of writing this piece was one of the most difficult I've endured – because of the headspace that I was in at the time – and this would be the one thing in the middle of the day that would bring me a very deep sense of contentment… my first attempt at consciously practicing gratitude for something that I so often take for granted.”

“At this point in my artistic career, highlighting the often overlooked subject of mental health and what it means to move towards creating healthy, positive and introspective practices in regards to both understanding and regulating one's own mental health is of the utmost importance to me.”

Throughout the writing process Kinoshi had the privilege of knowing that her composition would eventually be interpreted by seed. — an ensemble of players she founded in 2016 and whose collective talents she knows through and through. “The binding concept of seed. has always been to have a creative outlet that allows me to express and highlight subject matter important to me alongside musicians that I deeply respect, admire and enjoy spending time with,” explains Kinoshi. “It is the one environment where I feel extremely comfortable being able to experiment with sound authentically. Over the years, it has evolved in the sense that the more comfortable the band members get with interpreting my music, and the more we develop a creative language together, the more honest the music sounds.” That profound musical and personal trust helped make the ensemble a perfect vehicle for a composition augmented by new collaborators — in this case the LCO and NikNak.

Kinoshi and seed. first met turntablist NikNak at the Marsden Jazz Festival in 2019. After spending some time talking politics and sharing jokes it was clear that a creative relationship was possible. “I find that working with formidable artists that I get on well with on a personal level always leads to my best work, and knew as soon as I met NikNak that I wanted to work with them.”

On the genesis of her collaboration with the LCO, Kinoshi says: “I have always wanted to combine seed. with electronics and orchestral elements, as I have always envisioned the band performing multi-disciplinary works. I have long admired the members of the LCO and their way of successfully melding orchestral arrangements and improvisation with more contemporary artists. I was introduced to them via Lexy Morvaridi during his time at the Southbank Centre. It was through his support, creative insight and trust that we were able to make this project happen.” The beauty and harmony of these communal connections plus the depth and deftness of all the musickers involved truly made Kinoshi's dream of this composition a reality.

Running confidently at 21 minutes and 33 seconds (not including the album’s B Side / final track “Smoke in the Sun,” which was recorded separately at Total Refreshment Centre) and going straight for the heart, gratitude is an evolved, emotionally attuned, creatively ambitious and compositionally exquisite philharmonic expression of post-millennial UK jazz. 

Caterina Barbieri & Bendik Giske's At Source resounds music as wellspring, that which is essential and unknowable, and yet utterly primary. It finds two acclaimed composer-musicians building a world together in self-contained collaboration between analogue synthesis and an extended approach to the saxophone that conjures its own universe of sound. It is at once intimate and cosmic, drawing on the challenges and possibilities of their artistic exchange, tearing down technique to access all the expansive possibilities of their sonic meeting point. At Source is a document of the world of sound to be conjured when two artists strive for something together, discovering the expansions and limitations of performance by bodies and machines. It is not an exercise in assimilation, but in productive exchange and creative confrontation. It does not draw on outside energies or influences, but grapples with what there is to find in their respective playing. "It also reflects how natural the collaboration was," says Barbieri, "a meeting at the source which was spontaneous, graceful and natural". Barbieri and Giske first met and were enthralled by one another's performances at Kunsthaus Glarus in 2019, a meeting that spurred conversations on the power of transitions as a compositional force. Giske later contributed a rework of Fantas for Fantas Variations (Editions Mego, 2021), an ambitious undertaking to rescore Barbieri’s work for his saxophone and voice, a challenge Giske had started undertaking two years prior as an ongoing practice of transcription. “The request came as a proof of aligned ideas”, says Giske. Their new collaborative project then started during an artistic residency in Milan’s ICA in 2021, by invitation of swiss artist and curator Jan Vorisek, as the world was emerging from lockdown. This meeting, and the preceding closure of sites for cultural exchange, made their work together 'feel like springtime' says Barbieri. Giske, who was on the brink of releasing his sophomore album, Cracks, then joined Barbieri's light-years tour, which functioned as an inaugural incarnation of her newborn label and platform through a series of multi-artist curated shows with appearances of Lyra Pramuk, Nkisi, MFO, among other artists. Through the tour, they continued to develop material live, and this release, laid down in the studio, is true to that ever-evolving process of creation, where live feedback stays essential to the vitality of this collaborative effort. The tracks are each named with two evocative words that contain the two poles of their sound. Theirs is both abstract and cosmic, in the synth as machine undermined by Barbieri's naturalistic playing, and in Giske's continuous exploration of the symbiosis between his instrument, voice, and body. These binaries, of body and machine, posed various challenges, notably in how the stepped patterns Barbieri uses were near-impossible to translate for Giske's body to perform, and other times where mathematical resolutions were needed to sync their playing. Explains Giske: "It forced me to go to the core of what I am and what I have to offer”. Barbieri says that it "explores the liminality between the machine and the human, and the vulnerability in this process". On 'Intuition, Nimbus', the first track to be written, Giske's playing flutters and rises on Barbieri's synth, like a flock of birds lifted skywards on thermal columns, with clouds of pulsing tones fanning avian wings. 'Alignment, Orbit' settles into a steady torque, Giske's gentle percussions syncing with shifting loops, steadily building energy and conjuring solidity from breath and resistance. The extended 'Impatience, Magma' stretches glowing and languorous, honing in on and picking up a synth melody with whetted edge that cuts through the firmament, populating a broad cosmos of extended tones and replicating patterns in a piece that calls to mind Laurie Spiegel's extended works, and steps into transcendent duet with Giske's saxophone at its most keening and spiritual in tone and movement. 'Persistence, Buds' unfurls gracefully in sensuous sympatico, as saxophone caresses Barbieri's slowly twirling progressions, a tactile and meditative closer. At Source is testament to two divergent practices finding a whole cosmos in which to convene; music is crystalised and made utterly enveloping through the focused and critical work of two musicians working at their peak. The versions here are, temptingly, "just one of many versions" of this abundant source material Giske explains. Like the best collaborations, At Source is more than the sum of its parts – bringing more to the feast than the simple combination of two musicians, promising versions upon versions of the exquisite material captured here.

Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object oriented perception in sound through a focus on minimalism.

Following 2017’s acclaimed 2LP “Patterns of Consciousness”, “Ecstatic Computation” is the new full-length LP by Caterina Barbieri. The album revolves around the creative use of complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based operations to explore the artefacts of human perception and memory processes by ultimately inducing a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. Computation is turned from being a formal, automatic writing technique into a creative, psychedelic practice to generate temporal hallucinations. A state of trance and wonder where the perception of time is distorted and challenged.

Equally nervous and ecstatic, the fast permutation of patterns can create a state where time stands still whilst simultaneously being in motion. Is this propulsive music moving forward or backward? As long as the perception of the present is constantly enhanced and refreshed in an endless sense of loss, re-discovery and the search for self-orientation this question lies mute aside the thrilling and perplexing moment of the matter at hand.

Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object oriented perception in sound through a focus on minimalism.

Following 2017’s acclaimed 2LP “Patterns of Consciousness”, “Ecstatic Computation” is the new full-length LP by Caterina Barbieri. The album revolves around the creative use of complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based operations to explore the artefacts of human perception and memory processes by ultimately inducing a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. Computation is turned from being a formal, automatic writing technique into a creative, psychedelic practice to generate temporal hallucinations. A state of trance and wonder where the perception of time is distorted and challenged.

Equally nervous and ecstatic, the fast permutation of patterns can create a state where time stands still whilst simultaneously being in motion. Is this propulsive music moving forward or backward? As long as the perception of the present is constantly enhanced and refreshed in an endless sense of loss, re-discovery and the search for self-orientation this question lies mute aside the thrilling and perplexing moment of the matter at hand.

Caterina Barbieri is set to release a sister album of her 2019's acclaimed “Ectatic Computation”. “Myuthafoo“ will be out on June 2. Italian composer Caterina Barbieri has spent the best part of a decade breaking apart the rigid structures of electronic music, using advanced, idiosyncratic techniques to build bridges between academic experimental, dance and pop landscapes. Her breakthrough moment came in 2017 with the Important Records-released "Patterns of Consciousness", a confident fusion of analogue synthesis and algorithmic compositional methodology that defined her unique voice. And when she followed it with "Ecstatic Computation" on the legendary Editions Mego label in 2019, wide acclaim ensued, with critics praising its potent fusion of minimalism and trance-inducing synth experimentation. Pitchfork has described her music as "a mind-altering journey" and "a dreamachine for the ears". Since then Barbieri has worked hard to subvert expectations at every turn, offering an eccentric spin on the remix album with "Fantas Variations" - a selection of collaborations and reworks from friends and inspirations like Kali Malone, Jay Mitta, Evelyn Saylor and Kara-Lis Coverdale - and developing a modish articulation on last year's poetic and densely layered "Spirit Exit". Described by NPR as “deeply psychedelic and, by extension, subversive," the album was more than just a selection of tracks; it launched her own light-years label and arrived alongside an ambitious live experience that developed her philosophy in multiple dimensions, bringing in additional voices like Bendik Giske, Nkisi and Lyra Pramuk and bespoke visuals from Marcel Weber and Ruben Spini. "Myuthafoo" was written at the same time as "Ecstatic Computation", which Barbieri regards as a sister album. Both albums are based on creative sequencing processes that playfully unravel Barbieri's deep-rooted interest in time, space, memory and emotion. And since she was set to re-release "Ecstatic Computation" on her own light-years imprint, it made sense to accompany that album with this intimately entangled set of unreleased recordings. At the time, Barbieri had been touring excessively and her process began to shift in response to that nomadic, interactive energy. Using the Orthogonal ER-101 modular sequencer, Barbieri manually programed patterns into the device and fed them into her arsenal of noise generators, trialling different combinations at each show. If an idea worked well in the live environment, she would put it to one side, letting longer pieces breathe and transform as they sprung to life and developed organically. It's a process she relates to her interest in cosmogony, the study of the origins of the universe; her music is rooted in the limitations of a small number of options that branch out into a much larger structure, eventually reaching towards an open-ended cosmos of possibility. From 'Math of You', it's clear that the sounds are grounded in a similar sonic philosophy; blipping synth sequences nudge alongside each other harmonically, disrupting trance's addicting euphoria with filigree polyrhythmic pulses. Like 'Fantas' before it, the track is focused around emotionally affecting repeating phrases, but a closer examination reveals hidden intricacies as these phrases flicker like illusions, dissolving and dissipating as they snake and weave. The album's title track is its most generous and most tender, blunting Barbieri's usually razor-sharp sequences into rubbery möbius strips that twist romantically, bending back on each other. It gazes at the stars from an atemporal vantage point, relying on synapse-popping psychedelic logic as well as established physics. 'Sufyosowirl' meanwhile is rigorous and rhythmic, as melodically charged as pop music and as soaring as Jean-Michel Jarre's lavish stadium electronics. Closing track 'Swirls of You' encases Barbieri's celestial sequences in gaseous vapors, allowing the music to ascend slowly and purposefully until it flickers and fades to nothing. Barbieri's music sounds as if it has a life of its own, endlessly expanding and transmuting until it's able to develop its own rules and gestures. "Myuthafoo" teases an ecosystem where technology and biology are intertwined, and where the past, present and future are part of the same essential narrative.

Caterina Barbieri is set to release a sister album of her 2019's acclaimed “Ectatic Computation”. “Myuthafoo“ will be out on June 2. Italian composer Caterina Barbieri has spent the best part of a decade breaking apart the rigid structures of electronic music, using advanced, idiosyncratic techniques to build bridges between academic experimental, dance and pop landscapes. Her breakthrough moment came in 2017 with the Important Records-released "Patterns of Consciousness", a confident fusion of analogue synthesis and algorithmic compositional methodology that defined her unique voice. And when she followed it with "Ecstatic Computation" on the legendary Editions Mego label in 2019, wide acclaim ensued, with critics praising its potent fusion of minimalism and trance-inducing synth experimentation. Pitchfork has described her music as "a mind-altering journey" and "a dreamachine for the ears". Since then Barbieri has worked hard to subvert expectations at every turn, offering an eccentric spin on the remix album with "Fantas Variations" - a selection of collaborations and reworks from friends and inspirations like Kali Malone, Jay Mitta, Evelyn Saylor and Kara-Lis Coverdale - and developing a modish articulation on last year's poetic and densely layered "Spirit Exit". Described by NPR as “deeply psychedelic and, by extension, subversive," the album was more than just a selection of tracks; it launched her own light-years label and arrived alongside an ambitious live experience that developed her philosophy in multiple dimensions, bringing in additional voices like Bendik Giske, Nkisi and Lyra Pramuk and bespoke visuals from Marcel Weber and Ruben Spini. "Myuthafoo" was written at the same time as "Ecstatic Computation", which Barbieri regards as a sister album. Both albums are based on creative sequencing processes that playfully unravel Barbieri's deep-rooted interest in time, space, memory and emotion. And since she was set to re-release "Ecstatic Computation" on her own light-years imprint, it made sense to accompany that album with this intimately entangled set of unreleased recordings. At the time, Barbieri had been touring excessively and her process began to shift in response to that nomadic, interactive energy. Using the Orthogonal ER-101 modular sequencer, Barbieri manually programed patterns into the device and fed them into her arsenal of noise generators, trialling different combinations at each show. If an idea worked well in the live environment, she would put it to one side, letting longer pieces breathe and transform as they sprung to life and developed organically. It's a process she relates to her interest in cosmogony, the study of the origins of the universe; her music is rooted in the limitations of a small number of options that branch out into a much larger structure, eventually reaching towards an open-ended cosmos of possibility. From 'Math of You', it's clear that the sounds are grounded in a similar sonic philosophy; blipping synth sequences nudge alongside each other harmonically, disrupting trance's addicting euphoria with filigree polyrhythmic pulses. Like 'Fantas' before it, the track is focused around emotionally affecting repeating phrases, but a closer examination reveals hidden intricacies as these phrases flicker like illusions, dissolving and dissipating as they snake and weave. The album's title track is its most generous and most tender, blunting Barbieri's usually razor-sharp sequences into rubbery möbius strips that twist romantically, bending back on each other. It gazes at the stars from an atemporal vantage point, relying on synapse-popping psychedelic logic as well as established physics. 'Sufyosowirl' meanwhile is rigorous and rhythmic, as melodically charged as pop music and as soaring as Jean-Michel Jarre's lavish stadium electronics. Closing track 'Swirls of You' encases Barbieri's celestial sequences in gaseous vapors, allowing the music to ascend slowly and purposefully until it flickers and fades to nothing. Barbieri's music sounds as if it has a life of its own, endlessly expanding and transmuting until it's able to develop its own rules and gestures. "Myuthafoo" teases an ecosystem where technology and biology are intertwined, and where the past, present and future are part of the same essential narrative.

Double-LP version. The musical vortexes of Caterina Barbieri rewire time and space. Listening to the Italian composer and modular synth virtuoso has felt like traveling at light-speed and slow-motion all at once since 2017's breakthrough Patterns Of Consciousness. 2019's acclaimed Ecstatic Computation pushed even further with the lead single "Fantas". Far beyond any new age trope or modern synth trend, her music stands alone in its ecstatic intensity and cataclysmic emotional impact. Marking the debut album on her new label light-years, Barbieri now delivers her most profound work yet -- a journey through inner-space as vast as a universe and as intimate as a heartbeat. Spirit Exit is Caterina Barbieri's time machine, primarily composed with a modular synth rig she thinks of more like a mechanical fortune teller. Whereas previous releases were constructed on lengthy tours, capturing only snapshots of continually evolving works, Spirit Exit represents the producer's first album fully written and recorded in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It was during this extended isolation she found inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time, but united in their strength at cultivating vast internal worlds. St. Teresa D'Avila's foundational 16th century mystical text The Interior Castle, philosopher Rosi Braidotti's posthuman theories and the metaphysical poetry of Emily Dickinson act as thematic anchors throughout Spirit Exit. Spirit Exit crystallizes Barbieri's densely layered, blindingly bright synth arrangements while introducing stunning new elements that feel as if they've always belonged. Strings and guitar flawlessly thread into the composer's web of modular patches, while her revelatory singing voice often cuts right through them. Melodies remain Barbieri's great passion and obsession and on Spirit Exit they grow as large as planets before cracking into atoms. The sweeping "At Your Gamut" perfects the producer's dramatic, slow-burning openers, but in her first ever use of sampling, it later gets crushed, accelerated and unrecognizably transformed into the ghostly hook surging through "Terminal Clock". As the album closes on "The Landscape Listens" -- a song that approaches death with all the gentle grace of Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)".

Double-LP version. The musical vortexes of Caterina Barbieri rewire time and space. Listening to the Italian composer and modular synth virtuoso has felt like traveling at light-speed and slow-motion all at once since 2017's breakthrough Patterns Of Consciousness. 2019's acclaimed Ecstatic Computation pushed even further with the lead single "Fantas". Far beyond any new age trope or modern synth trend, her music stands alone in its ecstatic intensity and cataclysmic emotional impact. Marking the debut album on her new label light-years, Barbieri now delivers her most profound work yet -- a journey through inner-space as vast as a universe and as intimate as a heartbeat. Spirit Exit is Caterina Barbieri's time machine, primarily composed with a modular synth rig she thinks of more like a mechanical fortune teller. Whereas previous releases were constructed on lengthy tours, capturing only snapshots of continually evolving works, Spirit Exit represents the producer's first album fully written and recorded in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It was during this extended isolation she found inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time, but united in their strength at cultivating vast internal worlds. St. Teresa D'Avila's foundational 16th century mystical text The Interior Castle, philosopher Rosi Braidotti's posthuman theories and the metaphysical poetry of Emily Dickinson act as thematic anchors throughout Spirit Exit. Spirit Exit crystallizes Barbieri's densely layered, blindingly bright synth arrangements while introducing stunning new elements that feel as if they've always belonged. Strings and guitar flawlessly thread into the composer's web of modular patches, while her revelatory singing voice often cuts right through them. Melodies remain Barbieri's great passion and obsession and on Spirit Exit they grow as large as planets before cracking into atoms. The sweeping "At Your Gamut" perfects the producer's dramatic, slow-burning openers, but in her first ever use of sampling, it later gets crushed, accelerated and unrecognizably transformed into the ghostly hook surging through "Terminal Clock". As the album closes on "The Landscape Listens" -- a song that approaches death with all the gentle grace of Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)".