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It's impossible to think about 'dub' without thinking about the late Osbourne Ruddock - the great King Tubby, the singular most creative human being of the great many who've plied their trade behind a mixing desk in the name of reggae since the early 1970s. Dub may well have existed before Tubbs raised its profile to almost unimaginable heights, and it has continued to exist in the 21 years since he was senselessly slain in 1989.

The early days of the man affectionately known to his peers as Tubbs' are chronicled in some detail in the notes to this LP's predecessor and companion volume, not unreasonably titled "King Tubby's Classics Chapter 1". It's unlikely that anyone who buys Volume 2 will not already have Volume 1, but for the few who don't it's only fair that we start the note with a short précis of the early life and career of the boy born to be 'King ...

When dubwise music really started to come into its own in the early to mid 70s, it made overnight stars of backroom boys who had hitherto worked behind a mixing desk to serve those who were beginning to hoist reggae to an international stardom that it had long deserved, but that it had only achieved on short and non-sustained bursts until Chris Blackwell decided to throw a lot of promotion and money at the work of Bob Marley and his fellow Wailers in 1972. Of those men, there was no bigger star than the late Osbourne Ruddock, the great King Tubby’s and the man who, from a tiny home-made studio in the Waterhouse district of Kingston, Jamaica, did more than most to reposition the boundaries that production and mixing of Jamaican recordings.

Dynamic Sounds upgraded to 16-track recording in 1972 and King Tubby purchased, again with the help of a deal brokered by Bunny Lee, the old 4-track equipment and the MCI console from their Studio B. The four tracks now gave him a far wider scope to work with, and he began to create a new musical form where the bass and drum parts were brought up while the faders allowed Tubby to ease the vocal and rhythm in and out of the mix. It was only a matter of time before Tubby's dub plate experiments began to make it onto vinyl and the first-ever King Tubby album releases would feature a collection of his mixes to a selection of Strikers' rhythms. So please sit back and enjoy this historic set of sounds. These releases were the first to carry the name of King Tubby and the first to credit the great musicians that contributed so much to the rhythms that made these albums possible.

Incredible collection of rare King Tubby VS. Scientist tracks. These were some of the last ‘classical’ dub works created before dancehall ultimately mutated into a technologically-driven sound that largely did away with organic instruments and although these works already point in that direction, they still sound entirely fresh today because of the superb musicianship of the Roots Radics and the guiding hand of Jah Thomas in the producer’s chair, as well as Scientist and his cohorts, working their dub magic at King Tubby’s studio. Extensive liner notes by David Katz.

Kink Gong is back with his unique take and re-interpretation of the music he’s been recording and documenting for years in the South East Asian highlands. Zomia Vol.1 takes the conceptual idea of ZOMIA, proposed by James C Scott in The Art of Not Being Governed, an Anarchist History of Upland South East Asia, to construct its very own mythological soundscape inspired by a semi-utopic region where state rules don’t apply. Zomia might be (almost) gone but Kink Gong is keen keep its spirit alive by releasing a series of albums celebrating the region’s quasi mythological features. ‘’Zomia is an idea, a concept that, not so long ago, there were two very distinct worlds in southeast Asia, the valley VS highland/hinterland, the civilisation VS the primitive, paddy rice VS slash and burn agriculture, Buddhism VS Animism, fixed territory VS movement/migration, written system VS oral culture, the state VS anarchy, property VS squat, controlled population VS autonomy, bricks VS bamboo and wood and, at my level museumified traditional mainstream music VS real emotions/songs of devastated lives and/or gongs ceremonies with buffalo sacrifices, extreme heat in the valleys VS shade in the jungle. I could go on and on but let’s not forget that ZOMIA is disappearing fast, if not altogether already. How many of the people I’ve recorded are still alive? As you might know, before composing new music from my own ZOMIAN experience (from 2001 to 2014 in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and China) I had to find those musicians, be able to communicate with them, record them as good as I could with very limited finances and gradually release a collection of 160 CDrs. It is very important for me to make sure you to listen to the fantastic original recordings before or after you’ve listened to this experimental reconstruction I called ZOMIA! Expect more volumes to come, this is my biggest source of inspiration, and the reason why I’ve been involved for years in constructing a mythological experimental musical ZOMIAN soundscape.’’ Laurent Jeanneau, Berlin 2020

"When asked what were my early influences in music, I get reminded of my teenage years in Parisian suburbs, simultaneously discovering from public libraries two important French record labels: OCORA and GRM. Then the roots of my interest in traditional music and electro-acoustic experiments grew into doing it myself, recording ethnic minorities of the zomian plateau of south-east Asia and composing a soundscape around it. This is what is happening here."

— Laurent Jeanneau aka KINK GONG

Kink Gong works with what is unknown to him, as an artist who’s attracted by beauty and strangeness.
Like a stranger, he has been deeply curious about recording ethnic minority music isolated from dominating cultures within South-east Asia, thus working with musicians taking part in specific cultural communities to make almost 200 albums.
Like an artist, he has been leaning towards strange marriages, building on these raw materials. They are lived moments that combine space, people and music, as if they were blocks made out of the same material.

Kinzua debut a ritualistic, zonked outernational ambience, downbeat and cyberpunk bliss on Vladimir Ivkovic’s Offen Music - RIYL Morphosis, To Rococo Rot, CS + Kreme, Black Zone Myth Chant. Formed by Lucas Brell in Berlin and Leipzig’s Marvin Unde (Qnete), Kinzua emerge from the German club undergrowth with hypnotic slants of brownfield-pastoral electronica and meter-messing motorik pulses on their first release ‘None of the Above’. Smeared over a double LP, the hour-long album pitchbends with a properly lysergic quality as it executes its functions between the folksy crackle of ‘First Chapter’ and the grungy, viscous, post-D&B rolige of ‘Breath’. Rhythmic prompts ranging from klassic kosmiche to ‘90s UK armchair music and contemporary dembow dancehall underline Kinzua’s lines of melodic thought and dream-textured electronics in swirling permutations that feel in-the-moment but ever rolling towards an uncertain horizon. Kinzua act as spirit guides for the mind expanding new generation of trippers, with effortlessly oily grooves and keen attention to detail that suspend a sense of disbelief and mesmerise to their method. Seductive oddities such as ‘Domestic Affair’ follow to Detlef Weinrich-esque electro on ‘Elevator Moving Flor’ and ‘Heidi Peter’ echoes original Harmonia from a bleaker perspective, while supremely groggy drone in ‘Surface’ gives way to arid dancehall abstraction on ‘Sahara’, and ‘Gobi’ slopes off on a crooked outernational tip to a highlight of Laila Sakini-like scenes in ‘The Dancing Smoke’ starring vox by GiGi FM reciting from Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs de Mal’.

The killer 1981’s Nigerian funk boogie disco and reggae by Kio Amachree repressed for the first time.

Never released outside South Africa since its original release in 1974, Outernational Sounds presents one of the most sought-after international jazz exclusives ever to appear on South Africa's famous Gallo imprint: the funky, spiritual and outward bound Habiba. Limited, fully licensed vinyl reissue of a lost modal classic by renowned pianist Kirk Lightsey and Black Jazz stalwart Rudolph Johnson. As the archives of South Africa's premier record labels steadily give up the treasures that were hidden in the darkness of the apartheid era, the incredible heritage of South African jazz is gradually finding an international audience. And while most of the laurels are naturally for South Africa's own overlooked musicians, the South African discography contains a few sparkling, nearly unknown jazz sessions by visiting players. Habiba is the greatest of them -- a raw, impassioned set led by bop pianist Kirk Lightsey, who had been a regular sideman for Chet Baker and Sonny Stitt, and saxophonist Rudolph Johnson, a key player at the storied West Coast indie Black Jazz. Visits to the apartheid state by respected Black musicians were hardly a common occurrence during apartheid's darkest years -- so how did a crew of crack American jazz players end up in the Gallo studios? The story starts with the now almost forgotten crooner, Lovelace Watkins. Sometimes billed as "the Black Sinatra", the Detroit-born Watkins sang standards, show tunes and ballroom classics on the Las Vegas circuit. In his 1970s heyday he was a huge star in the UK and in southern Africa, where he toured regularly. In 1974 he hired a jazz big band to accompany him on a tour of South Africa -- and among their number were Lightsey and Johnson, as well as Mastersounds bassist Monk Montgomery, West Coast trombonist Al Hall Jr., and Marshall Royal, musical director of the Count Basie band. The tour was a huge success, and during downtime from performing, members of Watkin's group independently record no fewer than three albums. Two of these LPs appeared on the IRC label, billed as the Mallory-Hall Band -- the third, on the more prestigious Gallo, was Habiba. Three tracks deep, the album is a heavy-duty excursion into post-Coltrane spiritual modernism, ranging from the modal, cerebral intensity of the side-long title track "Habiba", to the downhome breakbeat groove of "There It Is", and the dark glitter of minor key waltz "Fresh Air". Long one of the most desired global jazz LPs, and never before available outside South Africa, Habiba is a forgotten masterpiece of its era.

Kit Sebastian – composed of K. Martin and Merve Erdem – announce their new album ‘New Internationale’, set for release 27th September on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder record label, and unveil lead single “Metropolis”.

Speaking on “Metropolis”, Kit Sebastian says “The hook of this track was influenced by how many famous Azerbaijani’s musicians (like Vagif Mustafazadeh or Rafig Babayev) approach their melodies, but played over a more western funk groove. We use the familiar Italian analog synth found in a junkyard and a mock-choir to create a choral texture. It ends with a samba section, with two drum kits, horn section and string section partially fed through an analog synth to process it.”

Lyrically, “Metropolis” portrays the immigrant experience, highlighting the pressures and disillusionments of trying to find control, meaning, and a sense of belonging in a seemingly indifferent and foreign world, all while grappling with the compromises between pursuing art as a profession and seeking stability. It is about projecting one's hopes and desires onto a new city, the naive sense of freedom this brings, and the inevitable disillusionment and desolation that follow.

‘New Internationale’—their musically irrepressible and emotionally sophisticated third album, and their debut for Brainfeeder—is deliberate in a way Kit Sebastian has never really been. They wrote most of it on the road, energised by the sounds they discovered as they magpied instruments during their travels—Turkish clarinet, santour, oud, gangsa, zither, harpsichord, and on and on. They cut most of the tracks in London during brief breaks, longtime drummer Theo Guttenplan and double bassist David Richardson joining a panoply of horn, string, and percussion players. And during a year off from the road, where K. and Merve could concentrate on making sure the pieces moved together, they decamped to the French countryside for two weeks, leaving the distractions and moodiness of home. They captured vocals for 14 songs there in only half that time. Both Kit Sebastian’s busy touring schedule and subsequent break from it allowed Merve to step fully into these songs and their ever-shifting shapes, her confidence and versatility rising in tandem.

But rather than sounding stitched together from these assorted scenes, ‘New Internationale’ is a riveting synthesis of the sounds and styles that have long tantalised Kit Sebastian—French pop and Anatolian psych, vintage Tropicália and early rock ’n’ roll, with breezes of soul and prog blowing through the open windows of the pair’s collective imagination. 

2021年に〈Companion〉より登場したオーストラリア・メルボルン出身のインディ・ポップ/エクスペリメンタル・アーティスト、Kae Tama KitzlerによるプロジェクトKiTAがオランダ・アムステルダムの先鋭的レーベルであり、Maoupa MazzocchettiやSmersh、Zaliva-Dといった面々をそのカタログに擁する〈Knekelhuis〉からデビュー・アルバム『Ceramic』を発表。夢見心地で瑞々しい空気と温かくも儚げな幻想に揺れ、遠く未来へと眼差すチルアウト・アンビエント/エレクトロニクスを全3曲収録。気持ちいいいです。Wouter Brandenburgによるマスタリング仕様と盤質も万全となっています。

Curious, eccentric pop experiments, steeped in the melody of the Far Eastern tradition. Strange, hypnotic incantation and another winner on The Trilogy Tapes!

Kentish town siblings Kitty, Daisy and Lewis have rightfully earned themselves a reputation for being a group of highly talented and original masters of transcendent rock n’ roll. They have cast their distinct musical spell over listeners and critics alike with a sound that whilst deeply rooted in the past hurtles towards an interminable and effervescent future.

The collaboration between Klara Lewis and Nik Colk Void somehow seemed inevitable. Both artists having seen their releases published by Editions Mego, individually carving out idiosyncratic voices in the worlds of extreme, abstract electronic music. With Full-On, Lewis and Void explore and assimilate the very edge of their individual practice where a unique collaborative interface allows two voices to combine and morph into a third voice. Lewis and Void play ping pong with the conversation of sounds, generating ideas and bouncing them off each other, simultaneously encouraging the other to go further with their ideas opening up an opportunity to engage with previously unexplored terrain. Guitars, synths, euro rack modular systems, voice, sampling and outboard processing are folded in a playful unification with a propensity to tease, explore and extract new ideas and shapes, sometimes brutal, sometimes playful. Trust was also a compositional tool allowing instinct to freely move on any aspect of the sound and space. This sound/feeling/instinct/association let this wild and wonderful material grow organically into something new. The result of this exploratory interplay are 17 intense miniatures reveling in the process of unadulterated experimentation and whimsical interplay, not just between the humans, but the machines themselves. United in an endless series of sonic U-turns, this daring duo intertwine pop and noise whilst also bringing together visions of tender techno and forthright ambient. The various zones manifest from all this reveals vocals shifting in mysterious ways, dust drenched beats churning limpidly and devilish string loops navigating a disorientating domain. The experience of listening to Full-On is to be confronted with a range of ideas resulting in a platter of emotions. A place where beauty and the beast collide with the impulsive and outright weird. What a wonderful world.

The collaboration between Klara Lewis and Nik Colk Void somehow seemed inevitable. Both artists having seen their releases published by Editions Mego, individually carving out idiosyncratic voices in the worlds of extreme, abstract electronic music. With Full-On, Lewis and Void explore and assimilate the very edge of their individual practice where a unique collaborative interface allows two voices to combine and morph into a third voice. Lewis and Void play ping pong with the conversation of sounds, generating ideas and bouncing them off each other, simultaneously encouraging the other to go further with their ideas opening up an opportunity to engage with previously unexplored terrain. Guitars, synths, euro rack modular systems, voice, sampling and outboard processing are folded in a playful unification with a propensity to tease, explore and extract new ideas and shapes, sometimes brutal, sometimes playful. Trust was also a compositional tool allowing instinct to freely move on any aspect of the sound and space. This sound/feeling/instinct/association let this wild and wonderful material grow organically into something new. The result of this exploratory interplay are 17 intense miniatures reveling in the process of unadulterated experimentation and whimsical interplay, not just between the humans, but the machines themselves. United in an endless series of sonic U-turns, this daring duo intertwine pop and noise whilst also bringing together visions of tender techno and forthright ambient. The various zones manifest from all this reveals vocals shifting in mysterious ways, dust drenched beats churning limpidly and devilish string loops navigating a disorientating domain. The experience of listening to Full-On is to be confronted with a range of ideas resulting in a platter of emotions. A place where beauty and the beast collide with the impulsive and outright weird. What a wonderful world.

Klara Lewis and Yuki Tsuji's collaboration builds on Tsuji's singular guitar playing and Lewis's resolutely explorative soundscapes. Salt Water is their debut album. Klara Lewis is a sound sculptor and loop finder. She has spent the last decade creating albums equally tender and brutal for Editions Mego as well as in collaborations with Nik Colk Void, Peder Mannerfelt and now Yuki Tsujii. Lewis has presented her audiovisual work at festivals such as Sonar, Mutek, Dark Mofo and Atonal. Yuki Tsujii is a guitarist from Japan-via-London, now based in Stockholm. In the last 15 years, as a member of Bo Ningen, Tsujii has performed extensively across the world in festivals such as Coachella, Glastonbury, and Yoko Ono’s Meltdown and collaborated with artists across different disciplines such as Faust, Lydia Lunch, Keiji Haino, Alexander McQueen and Juergen Teller.

Klara Lewis’ latest offering is undoubtedly a heartfelt tribute to her friend, mentor and former label boss, Peter Rehberg. The opening track Thankful resides as a direct tribute to the track recorded under his PITA moniker, the timeless ‘Track 3’. A track of which the impact has been vast and deep, still rattling the walls of the now enormous worldwide experimental electronic scene. Countless new youth carve and project wildly distorted melodic digital matter which all falls back with a knowing or unknowing wink back to this original ground zero monster. Klara’s take on this is one that resides as a tribute to Rehberg with a cascading emotional melody gradually succumbing to a euphoric digital abyss. Thankful also comes across as a farewell gesture to her deceased friend with its beautiful, almost funerale tone. The abrupt ending is not only a method Rehberg would have relished but also a signifier of a life suddenly cut short. Lewis was 21 when her first album Ett was released by Editions Mego in 2014. Now at 31 years of age Editions Mego is very proud to present Thankful, a profoundly mature and emotional peak in Lewis’ career thus far. The track Ukulele 1 is another tender tribute within an album made by a human, utilising contemporary technology with absolute sincerity, surprise twists and sublime emotion. The sound of the instrument in the title gently loops and deconstructs in a recording replete with the sound of the room it is recorded in. A human element appears at exactly the point an increasingly inhuman approach is becoming the forced raison d'etre today. Top! One of Peter’s many repeated phrases was the word ‘top’. One he used at any occasion to agree with a vast array of subjects. With this musical tribute to Rehberg’s favourite phrase, Lewis conjures a short blast of mutant acid techno which shrivels and thrives as much as it lives and dies. Following Top we have the reflective and deeply moving 4U. No words. Just sounds. As it was. And lives on. Ukulele 2 sits at the end, as an epilogue of sorts, fashioning itself as an ouroboros with the return of the initial methodology of the previous track Thankful (track 3 tribute). This time around the sublime melody of the previous Ukulele 1 plays out in returnal as it is gently swarmed by all manner of digital play. Thankful is an emotionally considered and precise homage to the methodology and spirit of Peter Rehberg. A new work which inhabits the spirit for what this was written for and the general guise devised with the launch of the original MEGO label many moons ago.

Six years have passed since Swiss-based duo Klaus Johann Grobe’s last long player “Du bist so symmetrisch” (2018) and you’ll hear they’ve come a long way. “Io tu il loro”, their fourth album for Chicago-based Trouble In Mind Records was written over two weeks in a cabin at the very end of a remote Swiss valley, where - pretty much at the same place - Klaus Johann Grobe came up with their whole debut full-length “Im Sinne der Zeit” album in 2014. What started out as simply making music again quickly turned into seriously making a new album. Once decided, the whole thing was finished rather quickly and recorded once again at David Langhard’s Dala Studio at the end of 2022. “Io tu il loro” is a record that cannot be done by endlessly fiddling around with hundreds of ideas and sounds. All it needed was a real break (Dani and Sevi didn’t work on any Grobe-related stuff until they met up in the mountains in 2022). It’s an album with a blurry vision and soft limitations. You can somehow feel them looking back on all their work forgivingly and then moving on to what felt right. So here we are with nine tracks full of embracing warmth, so melancholicly welcoming you don’t know if you want to smile or cry. Some might call it timeless, some might call it dad-rock... well, it certainly isn’t disco for the masses, it’s more like, “If I can’t make myself dance after four beers, I can as well go home.” So, no disco? No syncopated synths? No German? No reverb? Where’s The Grobe? Take your time, you’ll notice Klaus Johann Grobe aren’t gone, they just took a turn before driving yet into another unknown.

The second Be With foray into the archives of revered German library institution Selected Sound is one of our favourites, Sound Inventions from Klaus Weiss Rhythm And Sounds, originally released in 1979. From the notoriously strong mind of Niagara drummer / library-funk overlord Klaus Weiss, Sound Inventions is loaded with tripped out studio funk-freakery, mad samples and swaggering abstract funk grooves. From dramatic deep disco with dark Italo/Moroder leanings to heavy German funk breaks, this is absolutely sensational. Absolute synth-and-string-drenched magic. This re-issue of Sound Inventions has been mastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis from audio from the original tapes. Richard Robinson has handled reproducing the glossy metallic (iconic) original Selected Sound sleeve. Essential.

After his participation in a masterpiece such as Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra, in the early 1980s Klaus Wiese produced a series of seminal works in the field of ambient-drone and healing music. The first of these, Baraka, was released on tape by Acquamarin in 1981, and already contained all the aspects of his future research into the mysticism of sound. Wiese shares the path with other German explorers such as Hamel, Fricke, Micus or Deuter, but he focuses his attention on the most essential nature of sounds, on their acoustic purity, which is always infinite spiral, vortex of frequencies and cosmic bath. It takes only a few means (zither, tampoura, cybals, singing bowls) to reach the absolute through vibration. Like the archaic mood of a great universal harmony, the sound suggests a complete state of otherworldly meditation, an enveloping cloud of peace in the eternity of the present. The musician is only the one who distributes and directs the thickenings of ethereal matter, microtonal agglomerates, cascades of celestial harmonics and emotional floods, petals and stems of devotion.

German ambient musician.He was briefly a member of the krautrock band Popol Vuh in the early 1970s where he played on the albums Hosianna Mantra and Seligpreisung. *300 copies limited edition.* Member of the krautrock band Popol Vuh in the early 1970s – Voice, Zither, Tambura, Harmonium, Singing Bowls – Klaus Wiese (1942 – 2009) was a veteran e-musician, minimalist, and multi-instrumentalist. A master of the Tibetan singing bowl, he created an extensive series of album releases using them. Wiese also used the human voice, the zither, Persian stringed instruments, chimes, and other exotic instruments in his music. Wiese is considered by some as one of the great ambient or space music artists alongside Robert Rich, Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, Constance Demby, and Jonn Serrie. His musical style is much more appropriately compared to the organic soundscapes of drone and dark ambient music, such as Oöphoi, Alio Die, Mathias Grassow, and Tau Ceti. In the 1990s he founded the Nono Orchestra to play the giant sheetmetal instruments of Robert Rutman. Wiese is known also for his collaborations with Al Gromer Khan, Mathias Grassow, Oöphoi, Tau Ceti, Saam Schlamminger, and Ted de Jong. He collaborated with Deuter on his Silence is the Answer album in 1980 and East of the Full Moon in 2005.

Nigerian-born, London-based experimental artist Klein, whose work has appeared in Hyperdub, NON, and Curl, will release his 2023 album "STAR IN THE HOOD" on Parkwuud Entertainment. The album is an analog release from Parkwuud Entertainment. The album is a dizzying 55-minute romp through labyrinthine, anti-ambient, gray-haired basement noise, from dark-ritual vocal manipulations to shimmering R&B, auto-piano sketches, and psychedelic concretions. Mastered by Amir Shoat, the cult engineer behind Hype Williams.

Artists really do move about don't they? Sage Redman (aka Klein Zage) has zig-zagged from Seattle to London then back to upstate New York. This reinvention of living quarters is reflected in her music which is an ever changing dollop of left-field dream -pop which is particularly heavy on the synths. Lyrically it discusses the mundane - routines and realities that we deal with day to day. Where a dog comes into it I have yet to work out. Forget what you know about Klein Zage. Her mundanely poetic spoken-word meets outsider-house has reached it’s final form – and it’s almost nothing to do with dance music at all. Existing in the intersections of alt-pop, trip-hop and shoegaze, the Seattle born, NY based artist has created an evocative collection of songs that balance existential longing with pop sensibility to create a deeply reflective album that elevates the everyday into the celestial. Each track revels in a sort of serene, catatonic beauty – quietly psychedelic and decidedly cinematic –the album evokes a certain kind of contemplative disassociation. This feeling is echoed on the cover, where we witness Klein Zage frozen, deep in thought - statuesque – pondering life and her environment in a state akin to an out of body experience: This is the precise feeling listening to the album imparts No stranger to South East London, having previously been based there in the past for a few years, Klein Zage – real name Sage Redman - lands on Rhythm Section INTL with “ Feed the Dog” – part observational realism, part cry for help, part love letter to London. Klein Zage established herself with previous releases on her own label, Orphan, which she runs with long term collaborator Joey G ii. Her previous work fuses electronic sounds with spoken social commentaries about themes of the city, femininity, and the hospitality industry. The keen eye and the sharp wit prevails, but the final product feels like a total reinvention for Klein Zage in terms of sound and delivery. Written between Seattle, a remote Washington fjord called Hood Canal, and London, her music covers a lot of ground – sonically speaking. The compositions – whilst clearly evoking dream pop, are fortified with flashes of deconstructed club acoustics that add a contemporary weight to the production. ‘Feed The Dog’ may sound like a transformation of the former Klein Zage sound, but infact this is the music she’s always been making. Her career-long ambitions have come to fruition with these songs, and now seems like a perfect time for people to hear them. In her own words, Sage says the album “is about the mundane, the routines that tether you to reality, caring for a living breathing being that needs you. Defending the ones you love”. These themes, apart from being a literal ode to her dog Steves, provide a metaphor for a defining moment in Klein’s career as a musician and lyricist. The intro, ‘Sand’, opens with the sounds of water, taken from field recordings of the Hood Canal fjord. Sonic atmospheres build up with haunting yet hopeful harmonies and long sustained electronic brass and string notes. We are left with the comforting sounds of high tide in the song’s closing moments, signifying the coming and going of care and attention, attachment and release. Zage repeats the incantation, “I’ve convinced myself that this is it”. Hope confronts despair in the album opener. Is this a turning point or breaking point? The ambiguity persists through the album with lines like “ I am trying to feel”, “ Do I still exist”... This is existentialism at it’s most raw and vulnerable, but the door is always left open… On ‘Bored With You’, Sage flips the conventional love song on its head, hitting back against the sensational depictions of love. She’s happy to just sit in “augmented silence”, free of unattainable expectations. This song uncovers a crucial truth about romance over the top of swirling synths and lofi drum sounds. We are made aware of the things that exist physically in front of us, rather than an unreal dream of expectation. The title track is an intricate anthem of life’s mundane joys and comforts and the emotional exchanges of care-giving, full of left field dreaminess and glittering colours. Distant, shoegazey guitar chords, provided by Joey G ii, swell back and forth with eerie electric piano notes. Sage says herself, the project is also about the “tendency to take a back seat in my life - metaphorically feeding the dog while forgetting to feed myself”. As the project closes we are met with a heartfelt ode to the borough of Lewisham, South East London. A place that is close to Sage and her friends as she sings a lullaby to the ones she’s left behind over metitative synth plucks. This emotional reach back in time hints at some unfinished business from Klein Zage in London, with ‘Feed The Dog’ providing a full-circle moment. Much like Sage’s metamorphic role as an artist, the overall sound of this record waltzes seamlessly between low tempo pop, filled with rich instrumentation and chorus-soaked guitars, to moving grungy anthems bursting with 80s-inspired energy. Her lyrics provide a poetic remedy to the challenges of everyday life by championing the things we might miss if we are not looking.