Electronic / Experimental

Brooklyn's illbient cult Sensational meets Kyoto's composer unbuilt.

A more conceptual Mallsoft work that combines a unique mellowness with a psychedelic, surreal atmosphere, digital psychedelia, and nostalgic sentimentality to create a bittersweet, mysterious worldview.

Great 2017 album by New York legends, 식료품groceries, who have supported the development of vaporwave while traversing subgenres such as Mallsoft and Utopian Virtual.

Volume 8 in the ongoing FRKWYS series on RVNG Intl. is a double album-length collaboration between Blues Control and Laraaji.

Following the "fodder first" tradition of previous FRKWYS installments, Vol. 8 was birthed over e-mail dialogue between RVNG and Russ Waterhouse and Lea Cho of Blues Control. Blues Control's evolved output gracefully arcs with influence and innovation that gleams electronic, New Age, and hard rock terrains. Laraaji's name came up early in that conversation and felt intrinsic to Waterhouse and Cho's own musical calling.

After learning various instruments in his formative years and studying composition at Howard University, Laraaji eventually found his musical conduit in an electronically-modified zither. Laraaji's 1979 album Celestial Vibration (recorded as Edward Larry Gordon) places the stringed instrument at the forefront on two side-length excursions in rhythmic ambiance. The 1980 album Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, produced by Brian Eno for his ambient record series, further documented Laraaji's zither explorations alongside Eno's soundscaping. Laraaji continues to pursue music both in its recorded form and as a healing tool.

Blues Control and Laraaji convened at Black Dirt Studio in upstate New York on December 9th, 2010. Over the course of a single studio day, the three musicians (accompanied on certain jams by Laraaji's "musical friend" Arji Cakouros) improvised on several themes, providing nearly four hours of material and the basis for FRKWYS Vol. 8. After meticulous note taking, sharing, and rough edits among Blues Control and Laraaji, the album was fully fleshed out.

Without context, it's hard to imagine that these musicians never creatively collaborated before this juncture. The dynamic breadth (and breath) of the album feels both effortless and epic, a line usually straddled only after years of playing together. It's clear a cosmic force is at play, and that this playfulness is the creative mediator of the music.

Mshukai is an improvisation group that revolves around Imao Takuma, known as a contemporary artist and percussionist Pedal.The group performs in unconventional spaces such as baseball fields or inside closets, responding playfully to the environment. This tape documents their performance in the headwaters of a river in Koga, Shiga Prefecture, where they brought equipment and played around a campfire. Additionally, recordings capture their studio session in Kanazawa, where they listened to the above recorded performance while playing with Imao's studio doors open. They also recorded a performance where Imao and Pedal interacted across a road, simulating a dialogue. This project serves as the debut album for Mshukai.

Masami Tada (Marginal Consort) started his career by joining the legendary improvisational group GAP in the 1970s, and since the 1980s, he has continuously embraced improvisation while expanding his creative expression into installations, photography, and more. In recent years, Masami Tada has been capturing Mount Koubou, visible from his home in Kanagawa Prefecture, in photographs every day and sharing them on Instagram, continuing his practice of daily acts of creation. This work features recordings of his actual climb up Mount Koubou, during which Tada brought electronic devices, amps, and percussion instruments. These instruments created sounds in rhythm with the climbing process, and the recordings also capture Tada's improvised performances atop Mount Koubou, including interactions with birds, airplanes, and other elements encountered during his performance.

The Expanding Universe is the 1980 debut album by composer and computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. The original album is reissued here as a massively expanded 3LP or 2CD set, containing all four original album tracks plus an additional 15 tracks from the same period, nearly all previously unreleased and many making their first appearance on vinyl in this brand new 2018 edition. Since this album's first reissue in 2012, it has gone on to be widely established as a classic of electronic, ambient, and 20th century classical music. Some of the well-loved works included in this set are "Patchwork", the "Appalachian Grove" series, "East River Dawn" and "Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds", which was included on the Golden Record launched on board the Voyager spacecraft. The pieces comprising The Expanding Universe combine slowly evolving textures with the emotional richness of intricate counterpoint, harmony, and complex rhythms (John Fahey and J. S. Bach are both cited as major influences in the original cover's notes), all built of electronic sounds using the GROOVE system at Bell Laboratories during the 1970s. The 3LP vinyl edition was cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering, Berlin.

Actress’ tenth studio album, the celestial and expansive Statik, is released June 7th via Smalltown Supersound. The collaboration between Darren Cunningham and the esteemed Oslo-based purveyors of elevated sonics evolved organically following Actress’ remix of a Carmen Villain cut for the 12” of her Only Love From Now On LP. In this vein, the entire Statik project, from conception through creation and release, has been blessed with an almost unnatural ease. For Actress, who wrote the majority of his subtly majestic new record in an extensive flow state, the project serves as a cohesive testament to artistic liberation. Resultantly, Cunningham’s new album is imbued with a sense of freedom. And of stillness. The kind of stillness within artistic motion that arises via the deepest states of flow. Once ‘inside’ the Statik experience, listeners may well find themselves newly calm and meditative. Of course, those well-versed in Actress’s works are well-travelled when it comes to fantastical flights of the mind. Transportive sonics that spark inner-voyages – whether through nocturnal cityscapes, or far above and beyond, through Saturn’s rings and past Pluto’s moons – are prime Cunningham terrain. Yet while Statik is unmistakably an Actress LP, it’s also distinctly aquatic and subtly primordial, and so offers his audience novel elemental atmospheres to flow through. Listening closely, influential visions of aqueous realms, such as the mythic Atlantis, and evocations of ancient ceremonies as well as flying birds (and, perhaps, humans) may reveal themselves. No matter if Statik inspires you to soar above or below the horizon, Actress and Smalltown Supersound promise you a safe and transcendent journey.

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."

The third part of Ideologic Organ Music’s trilogy of field recordings of sacred flute music from Papua New Guinea, recorded by Ragnar Johnson and Jessica Mayer in the 1970s. A book titled “A Papua New Guinea Journey” consisting of RagnarJohnson’s account of the circumstances behind the recordings will be published simultaneously with this music release.

“The recording of a male initiation ceremony with sacred flutes, bullroarers and ‘crying baby’ leaves was only possible after fifteen months residence during anthropological research. From the same Ommura villages in the Eastern Highlands there are bamboo jews harps, yam fertility flutes and singing. Nama (‘bird’) sacred flutes were recorded in a Gahuku Gama village in the town of Goroka. There are Mo-mo bamboo resonating tubes and singing from the Finisterre Range of Madang. From the Ramu Coast region of Madang there are: Waudang flutes, garamut slit gongs and singing from Manam Island, Maner flutes from Awar village and Siam and Guna flutes and garamuts from Nubia Sissimungum Village. These previously unreleased recordings were made in 1976 and 1979.”
–Ragnar Johnson, London 2021

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Ragnar Johnson's liner notes for the release

This music comes from the Eastern Highlands and Madang provinces of Papua New Guinea. The recordings of the Ommura Iyavati male initiation ceremony, the different bamboo jews harps, yam fertility flutes and singing were the result of fifteen months residence for anthropological research 1975- 1976 and a one month return in 1979. The Iyavati male initiation ceremony with its spirit cries of bamboo transverse blown and water flutes, bullroarers and ‘crying baby’ leaves was recorded at night outside the men’s house with the sounds of instruction and singing from inside the men’s house audible in the background. Nama ‘bird’ transverse blown paired bamboo flutes were recorded in a Gahuku Gama village inside the town of Goroka in the Eastern Highlands. The Mo-mo resonating tubes and singing were recorded at Damaindeh Bau on the Markham Valley edge of the Finisterre Range. The other Madang recordings of long paired bamboo flutes and garamut wooden slit gongs come from the Ramu coast region. There are Waudang flutes, garamuts and singing from Manam Island, Maner flutes from Awar and Siam and Guna flutes and garamuts from Nubia Sissimungum.

The Ommura lived in the Yonura villages of Samura, Sonura and Moussouri which were next to the Obura Patrol Post and in the neigbouring villages of Kurunumbaira and Asara. The1975 Government Census listed a population of 1,140 inhabitants of whom 437 lived in Yonura. The Ommura, the collective name for the inhabitants of these villages, spoke a dialect classified as Southern Tairora. The Obura Patrol Post, established in 1965, was 32 miles from the town of Kainantu in the Dogara Census Division of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The altitude was 4,000 to 5,300 feet on the valley floors and up to 8,000 feet on the mountain ridges. The arrival of steel tools, traded along the Markham Valley, into what was previously a stone age technology, preceded the establishment of the patrol post by about fifteen years. The first government patrol to reach the Ommura area was in the early 1950s and the area was regularly patrolled by the 1960s. Inter-village warfare was endemic.

The Ommura were slash and burn cultivators growing sweet potatoes, yams, taro, bananas, sugar cane, various beans, pit-pit, maize, squashes and greens. Arabica coffee was introduced as a cash crop in the early 1970s and young men were sent as plantation labourers to New Ireland.

Every Ommura patri-lineage (okyera) had a mountain demarcating a traditional area of lineage residence and a mythical lineage ancestor (uri). Ommura social life revolved around the staging of various kinds of ceremonies. There were fertility ceremonies to promote the growth of yams, sweet potatoes and pigs. Major events in individuals lives were marked by the enactment of the life cycle ceremonies of birth, male or female initiation, marriage and death. All Ommura ceremonies involved payment of some kind varying in amount from large payments between lineage groups for life cycle ceremonies consisting of traditional valuables, earth oven cooked pig meat and food, and money to small payments of food.

The Ommura practised three types of curing ceremony; Ua-ha in which the illness was chased away by armed men, Vu-ha in which the afflicted were fed a mixture of pork and medicinal herbs and their illnesses were transferred into a device made of sugar cane and washed away by flowing water and Asochia where diviners chewed hallucinogenic tree bark (Galbulimima Belgraveana) to see the cause of the illness and then treat it.

The Ommura performed the following male and female initiations: Nihi Rara the piercing of the nasal septum for male and female children; Kam Karura performed in the women’s house for girls, Ummara and Iyavati performed in the men’s house for boys and the male and female pre-marriage ceremonies performed respectively in the men’s house and woman’s house.
These initiations were enacted to discipline youth into their respective male and female roles with bleeding the nose and beatings with taroah stinging nettles to promote heath. Male and female initiates were instructed to practice the same food taboos and were educated by means of gender specific secret stories and songs. Burlesque mimes of the opposite sex occurred in both and at the end the initiates were decorated in new clothes, ornaments and paint. A feast of pig meat and vegetables had to be given by the father at the end of an initiation ceremony together with a payment to the eldest mother’s brother for his participation.

Nose bleeding was performed to remove the dangerous accumulation of blood that became lodged inside the bridge of the nose at conception in the womb. To strengthen the penis young males had the urethra of the penis bled sometime between the final stage of male initiation and marriage. During the Iyavati initiation the male initiates were beaten with taroah stinging nettles, secret taroah songs were sung and exaggerated mimes of aggressive male sexual behaviour involving the use of taroah were enacted with much chanting of the male ’Wo-Wo’ war cry. Initiates were told what acts and foods were forbidden to them and given instructions regarding permissible sexual relations and their duties to assist their relatives and future wife. Iyavati initiates wore a pair of pigs tusks points upwards through a hole in the nasal septum.

Marriage was centred around the bride price which was given to the wife’s father by the husband, his paternal kin, mother’s brother and relatives. During the marriage ceremony, grooms were warned about the disastrous consequences of contact with female menstrual pollution and brides were warned not to poison a husband in this way.
Peace was made between enemy villages by an exchange of cooked pigs in a ceremony called Obu. A death compensation ‘head’ payment
in traditional valuables or a woman in marriage was the only act that eliminated the need for a payback killing in retribution for a death in war. Inter-village trade was carried out between two individuals rather than groups from different villages, frequently with partners from the lower altitude Bush Markham villages. 

Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives (Plantasia, Ataraxia, Lucifer) have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom. Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man’s sound. There’s the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson), some previously unreleased and newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is “Zoos of the World,” where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slumbering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like “Western Dragon,” but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information. The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson’s soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. For decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive. So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort’s many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.

Special Alert: A worldwide team-up worth its weight in black gold. Numero Group x Star Creature x Another Taste link up for a seriously HOT collabo. Despite the warning in the song title, blistered fingers and melted gig bags are being reported worldwide. Maxx Traxx’s “Don’t Touch It” has become a certified grail in recent years with its synth-heavy jazz-funk/boogie crossover sound. Rotterdam’s Another Taste has been pounding the scene with a slew of similarly-styled, contemporarily-grailed releases under various aliases across the Space Grapes label. Here the group adds some extra analog flavor plus its trademark “vintage-or-modern?” seasoning for a peak-hour floor-filling rendition of the Chicago classic. For the first time on 12” and cut at 45, Another Taste’s cover plus the Maxx Traxx original get to stretch out properly on the supreme giant disco format. Star Creature x Numero Group are rounding out a boogie bombardment of a year with heavy releases across LP, 45 and Compilations (Chicago Boogie Vol 3, Eccentric Boogie, Magic Touch 45s, Lucky Rosenbloom 45). With the recent deluxe double-dose grail 2xLP reissue of Maxx Traxx & Third Rail’s debut albums alongside extensive liner notes and unearthed photos, the Windy City natives tapped Netherlands' Space Grapes crew to inquire about a viral hit circulating IG from the label’s dominant disco act, Another Taste. After seeing the band perform the song live, we knew it would be a perfect addition to our resurfacing of the Maxx Traxx / Third Rail catalog and really help cement their legacy and influence. Another Taste is the top modern band doing this sound, both live and on record and the perfect current peer to highlight one of the best dance tunes of the era from Chicago’s best underground club band on the opposite end of the DJ-culture era. Another Taste: Known for famous YouTube comments such as; “Shbengg!”, “C’Maaaan!”, “Straight Fire”, and “This is Space Boogie”. Another Taste is the amalgamation, the realization of four brains, hearts and big souls coming together to vibe. They stay firmly grounded and in gratitude to the many music streams that influenced them. Is it boogie? Is it 70’s funk? Obscure disco? Or an ode to Burgess? It’s neither and it’s all. Indefinable yet universal. Being responsible for several releases on the Space Grapes imprint (Mad Honey, GALXTC, Jambonne), Another Taste reinvents itself with every release but remains true to the familiar. And the familiar being that which makes us hit the floor and bop heads for more. Maxx Traxx: There was one irrepressible Chicago club act that refused to be replaced by any DJ’s sound system. Maxx Traxx (and Third Rail before them) were a scene unto themselves in the early 80s, happening live on-stage five-plus nights a week somewhere in the 312. Their two LPs, both recorded in 1982, are like catching a bullet train, a sheer energy ride almost too explosive to be captured by studio tape. And yet these two stone classics would remain unanswered by a city as it moved determinedly toward the motorik sound of house. Hop the turnstile and move with this complete document of Chicago’s last great club band told in detailed text, newly revealed photos, and complete studio recordings painstakingly remastered.

A brief EP released mainly as an attack on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Live by Yo Rep is an interesting if hard-to-find relic of Three 6 Mafia's early years. Its release followed that of Mystic Stylez, and a couple group members get solo showcases: Koopsta Knicca and Killa Klan Kaze. There's nothing all that essential here, granted, but Live by Yo Rep is nonetheless a worthwhile novelty for fans of this era of the group. ~ Jason Birchmeier

Moritz von Oswald's latest solo album is his most startling, time-bending material since the Basic Channel days, a collaboration with a 16-voice choir that refracts techno and choral music into dizzying psychedelic traces, exploiting mind-altering xenharmonic synth tones, Ligeti-like operatic phrases and abyssal kicks with a veteran's cunning. We've been knocked sideways by this one - trans-dimensional afters music at its absolute best. We realise that there's been a lot of electronic music released recently saddled with these buzzwords. Choirs, unusual tunings, deconstructions of early music - elements almost mandatory for artists eyeing the lucrative Euro festival circuit. But to our mind that's what makes von Oswald's latest all the more astonishing. He's stepped in with an album that's so definitive, it reminds us just how foundational and game-changing his early material was, and how less can so often amount to more. Opening track 'Silencio' is a dazzling proof of concept that winds lilting, oddly-tuned synth tones around the barest percussion. There are no vocals on this one, instead the traces of early Detroit techno hang heavy around its frayed edges. Working like a scientist with the stereo field, von Oswald introduces familiar elements into the mix in unexpected places. Wormy,cascading synth tones are met by driving whirrs, and the kickdrum sounds so submerged that it's almost an illusion. When he does introduce noisier sounds, they color the track like drybrushed highlights, and he saves the best until the final moments, energising the mood with monumental Millsian stabs that reference the past without retreading churned mud. It sets us up for the album's biggest tonal shift, when Oswald presents the choir on 'Luminoso'. He's worked extensively with ensembles in the last few years, his own - the constantly-shifting Moritz von Oswald Trio - the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Kyrgyz ensemble Ordo Sakhna, and the experience has furnished him with the ability to treat the choir with just the right amount of reverence and distance. Here, the Berlin singers' voices swirl into ghosted tones, nestling beneath a layer of mixing desk noise that feels like von Oswald's little wink to the camera, an acknowledgement of past glories. Moritz also provides a more abstracted rework of the track (along with three other versions of the choral compositions) that deepens the narrative. Losing the vocals completely, this take references the original's framework while adding impalpable, off-grid beats and cottony, rumbling textures that pirouette between the speakers. The synths and voices meet somewhere in the middle on 'Infinito', and von Oswald's remix shuttles them further into outer space, fogging them into spectral impressions and building a lithe rhythm over the top that hiccups and stutters with poise and momentum. 'Colpo' is even more impressive, offsetting the suggestive chorals with mechanical oscillations and thunderous sub bass tones. Like the earliest Detroit experiments, it's material that positions electronic music as a way to speculate about the past's relationship with the future. Von Oswald has formulated a minimalist masterpiece that interrogates not just technology, but the conceptual technologies of cultural invention. It's a highly rewarding, engrossing listen, certain to become a classic for the most adventurous after-hours listeners.

Ash Ra Tempel's fourth LP marked something of a pause, a recap, especially after the surprising Seven Up (which featured Timothy Leary as a guest). The temporary return of Klaus Schulze also greatly contributes to this feeling of summation. The album features two side-long pieces that represent literally two sides of the band, the Krautrock and space music incarnations. "Freak 'n' Roll" is a 19-minute hard-hitting jam, with Schulze bashing away behind the drums and Manuel Gottsching churning some mean guitar riffs while Harmut Enke ploughs heavy basslines. The track is actually an excerpt from a longer improvisation and begins with a fade in that throws the listener in the middle of an already heated session. Long but hardly long-winded, this track deserves a place alongside Can's "You Do Right" and Faust's "Krautrock": it has the drive, the psychedelic appeal, and the creativity of what epitomized the Krautrock style in the minds of young Englishmen and Americans for a while. The 24-minute "Jenseits" sees Schulze at the Synthi A and the organ, weaving dreamy drones and uplifting chords for Gottsching to doodle over. Enke's lines are not always as relevant as one would wish, and Rosi Mueller's soft-spoken narration seems to get in the way during the first few minutes -- in short, this is not Ash Ra Tempel at their ethereal best, but it's still a fine exercise in late-night musical dreaming that will appeal to fans of Phaedra-era Tangerine Dream while not misrepresenting that aspect of the group's work. And put together, those two pieces make a very fine introduction to the first few years of Ash Ra Tempel. ~ Francois Couture

Searchlight Moonbeam is the new narrative compilation from Time Is Away (Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney) whose eponymous monthly NTS Radio shows, tinctured fusions of fugitive sounds and reverie-inducing archival speech, have won them an ardent following. It follows from the London-based duo’s Ballads, a remarkable driftwerk released on A Colourful Storm in 2022. 
 Searchlight Moonbeam is an autumnal dreamscape, intimate and vespertine, pensive and irresolute. An imagined community where differences drop off and resonances emerge – between Maher Shalal Hash Baz affiliates Kasumi Trio, Taiwanese score composer Chen Ming Chang whose ‘Rainwater’ (written for Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 1986 film Dust In The Wind) is exquisitely heartbroken, and the plangent improvisations of self-taught French pianist Delphine Dora. 
 Revelations are frequent: the bedsit isolationism of Bo Harwood and John Cassavetes’ ‘No One Around to Hear It’ (from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie); the narked minimalism of Klang (an early 2000s band formed by ex-Elastica guitarist and featuring prize-winning experimental novelist Isabel Waidner on bass); the etude-grooves and echoic wobble of below-the-radar French avant-gardists Omertà ; the beautiful, plaintively dubby ‘Is It You?’ by Slapp Happy; a psych-tinged reimagining of PiL’s ‘Poptones’ by Simon Fisher Turner (one half of Deux Filles, and here, recording for él as The King of Luxembourg) that's as perverse as the cover of Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats. 
 Searchlight Moonbeam is the musical analog of an Italo Calvino novel or a medieval fable. Associative, intuitive, borderless. Emotional and mysterious. Endowed with the tactility of Braille. A private language that is both unknowable and understood. It is a record of the seasons, for the seasons. 2023 marks the tenth anniversary of Time Is Away’s first broadcast. Featuring an evocative essay by writer Jeremy Atherton Lin and disarming cover art by Penny Davenport, Searchlight Moonbeam showcases Rollo and Tierney’s still-unrivalled talent for gloaming melodies, disques du crépuscule and ensorcelled storytelling.

LP (red vinyl) & 7" (one-sided blue vinyl). Limited vinyl edition of 300 copies.

牧歌的ニューエイジ・フォーク大傑作『Pentimento and others』を残した人物であり、サンフランシスコ拠点のフォークロック・バンド、Citayのメンバーとしても知られるニューヨークを拠点とするギタリスト/作曲家のEzra Feinbergによる最新アルバム『Soft Power』が〈Tonal Union〉からアナログ・リリース。当店お馴染みの名ハーピストMary Lattimoreに、シューゲイズ・ドローン/アンビエント名手Jefre Cantu-Ledesma、マルチ奏者のRobbie Leeといった面々と共に精巧に作り上げた親密でゆとりのある珠玉のアンビエント・フォーク作品！限定300部。

'Imerro' is a collection of song odes to both heat and desire, closely felt. Its title literally presented itself to Diab from a random page contained in a poem by Ezra Pound found in the book ‘The Imagist Poem’. Searching for its meaning, Diab discovered that Imerro is “a Greek word for ‘desire for, I desire you’, yet nothing could substantiate its truth. “It made sense, almost like it had chosen me. An obscure word for Desire, one that might not even exist, or is so ancient that nobody really remembers it meaning anything. It's just a sound, like an album.” Imerro finds Caton at his most expressive and free-spirited. Inviting the music to find him, almost by osmosis, foregoing any preconceptions of playing any instrument he is unfamiliar with or regrets not learning during adolescence. This is music for wide screens: the result is an undeniably evocative, moving and mysterious voyage. Imerro was recorded in late July and August of 2021 at Risque Disque Studio in Cedar, BC, during the summer’s unprecedented second “heat dome”, which saw temperatures soaring to over 40 degrees. Recorded with regular collaborator and engineer Jonathan Paul Stewart, the pair journeyed by boat to the studio to a place with minimal distraction with a plan of “simple ecstatic improvisation.” Diab explains: “I wanted to place myself in a space for creation with little thematic pretence, with the belief that music ‘shows its face’ as you move along. I would pick up an instrument, whether I had experience playing it or not, and make a sound. If it wanted to be played, it would play.” ‘Ourselves At Least’, the rhythmic album opener gracefully leaps and bounds with a human-like metronome at its core, capturing a rush of elatedness felt by Diab over the course of its late night creation. ‘Lunar Barge’ bursts into life with tone-bending bow strikes that glide across Diab’s guitar towards a climatic peak before the track drops into an electronic/acoustic trance. Inspired in part by the rhythmical works of Huun-Huur-Tu and the animated cello play remindful of Arthur Russell. “Lunar Barge is a track for a dry, hot night in the forest (which it quite literally was.). I roamed around the floors of the studio picking up any instrument standing out in the moment, and tried to see if it had anything to say.” ‘The Excuse of Fiction’ sees Diab return to free-flowing guitar play, the chosen instrument of his youth. He loops layers to form an ethereal backbone before plucking further melodies from the air on top. The result is a cinematic guitar-laden expanse brimming with optimism and nostalgia. The title references a quote by Zizek: “We need the excuse of a fiction to stage what we really are.” Themes of remembrance, yearning and desire pervade the album's 9-tracks with a palpable presence as we reach ‘Quatsino Sound’, named after an inlet on Northern Vancouver Island where Diab grew up. It features hoopoe birdcalls which were sampled from a found cassette tape of African sounds before being randomized until it became rhythmic, then embellished with synth lines, bass drops, and bowed layovers. The album centres around the nocturnal ‘Crypsis’ with Diab sleepily playing notes on a switched-off Wurlitzer before dampened piano chords, bow scrapes, and noisy glitches reverberate. ‘Erratum’ erupts with untamed force from a war cry of screaming saxophone layers reminiscent of Colin Stetson. Its visceral thirst and energy seem to be a response to the heat of the night and Diab’s urge to play the instrument he loved but had yet learnt. ‘Tiny Umbrellas’, an improvised pass of banjo, bowed guitar and ethereal modular synths breathes a contemplative pause before ‘Surge Savard’ chimes in. This whirlwind closer started life as a longform jam under the influence of psychedelics; its modular synth, air organ, guitar and sax lines were initially improvised with final touches made at Watch Yer Head studio.

Cult Japanese Reggae/ Cosmic Dub LP. Featuring an all star line up including: Sly & Robbie, Augustus Pablo, Minako Yoshida + core members of Soul Syndicate and The Wailers. Direct reissue of this 1980 original.

Following its release in the winter of 2018, "Landmarks", a collaboration between veteran ambient artists Celer and Forest Management, initially drew quiet accolades and a steadfast listenership that has since swelled to unimagined proportions (~20 Mil. streams), resonating with listeners perhaps now more than ever and cementing its status as an experimental classic. Inspired by Paul Theroux's novel "The Mosquito Coast" and Peter Weir's 1986 film adaptation of that book, "Landmarks" sets out 14 tracks in a "stunning hour of music" (The Quietus) that creates a "general sense of foreboding, critique of romantic retreat into individualism and colonialism" (A Closer Listen). The album is now offered on vinyl for the first time (originally out on cassette tape), newly remastered by Stephan Mathieu to enhance the depth and richness of this oneiric soundscape. Both Americans, Celer (Will Long) resides in Tokyo, Japan and Forest Management (John Daniel) in Chicago, USA. "Landmarks" was born of their months-long collaboration, trading music back and forth and reshaping each other's work using a series of patches, tape looping, and electronic manipulation. As a throughline in each piece we hear their distinct voices and cultural contexts blend to unique, often otherworldly effect, conjuring a dreamlike tension that refuses easy resolution. We are hooked by a mood that captured listeners back in 2018 and continues to hold us today in the context of current events, related disquietudes, and a nostalgic longing for solutions that may be more imaginary than real.

Duval Timothy's latest album Help, his most ambitious work to date, sees him collaborate with co-producer Rodaidh McDonald (King Krule, The XX) and Marta Salogni (Bjork), with collaborations from Lil Silva, Melanie Faye, Vegyn, Desta Haile, Mr Mitch, Dave Okumo, and Twin Shadow amongst others. Recorded in London and Los Angeles, it reveals the artists' experience traversing the meshes of the music industry, mental health, YouTube self-help videos, and the healing he discovered through friendship and collaboration. Duval Timothy is a multidisciplinary artist, whose practise is centred around colour and involves the use of music, photography, textiles, painting, sculpture, design, cooking and video. In between delivering a celebrated cookbook for Penguin Books, and an interactive installation at Tate Modern Turbine Hall, Duval makes music, which is sampled by the likes of Solange and Loyle Carner.

Digging deep into the legendary Igloo Records catalog, Holidays Records returns with the first ever vinyl reissue of the imprint's sixth outing, the Belgian composer Henry Krutzen’s astounding 1981 LP, “Silances”. An entirely singular gesture at the borders of sound poetry, musique concrète, and radical electroacoustic practice that draws upon disparate elements of drone, jazz, minimalism, ecstatic tribalism, and various traditions of music from across the globe, decades on from its original release it remains as striking, unique, challenging, and compelling as it did upon its release. * Deluxe edition in screen printed cover + insert * Since their founding during the early years of the new millennium, the Italian imprint, Holidays Records, has stood at the vanguard of forward-thinking sound, building a carefully curated catalog of releases that collectively build context and conversation across numerous avenues of exploration - contemporary and historical sitting side by side - within the wider field of experimental and improvised music. Every step of the way, they’ve seemed to step up the game. Their latest, the first reissue of the Belgian composer Henry Krutzen’s astounding 1981 LP, “Silances”, takes a deep dive into the legendary Igloo Records catalog. Once described by Keith Fullerton Whitman as being “nestled somewhere between Ghédalia Tazartès' mutant Sound Poetry, Anton Bruhin's acoustic / Alphorn drones”, drawing on a palette of vocals, hand percussion, piano, harmonica, saxophone, synthesizer, it’s a truly engrossing immersion into spaciously bristling sonority that remains as radical more than forty years down the road, as it did the day it was released. Issued in a very limited vinyl edition, beautifully reproducing the original sleeve, accompanied by Krutzen’s original liner notes, this is one for the heads that can’t be passed by. Henry Krutzen is a relatively shadowy figure in the history of experimental sound. Between the early '80s and the 2010s, there are only a handful of albums that bear his name, and little to no information about how they come to be. A multi-instrumentalist and composer who studied percussion, saxophone, and harmony in various schools and jazz clinics across Belgium, over the years he played in a diverse range of musical projects across the idioms of jazz, new wave, heavy metal, experimental, chanson française, world music and progressive rock, before relocating to Brazil during the early 2000s. Had he disappeared completely and done nothing else, “Silances”, his lone 1981 LP for Igloo Records - the Belgian imprint founded in 1978 by Daniel Sotiaux to “promote diversity, allowing expressions of more marginal music to be heard and supported in a musical context that lives under the threat of standardization” - would have ensured his legend. Sitting alongside astounding and remarkably unique albums by Leo Küpper, Jacques Bekaert, Henri Chopin, Arthur Pétronio, André Stordeur, and numerous others, in the label’s early catalog, it’s a truly stunning piece of work. Reflecting back in a note that Krutzen penned in 2022 when he was contacted for the reissue of “Silances”, Krutzen recalls: “Since I was 16, I had been experimenting with concrete music with a technician friend and we used all a teenager’s room could offer to make sounds into music: faucets, glasses of water, metal springs on ladders, objects of any kind… I had hours of recordings I pitched to Daniel [Sotiaux, of Igloo Records], to see if he was interested in making an album. I also had other ideas I wanted to be able to develop. What a joy when he accepted to work on the project! So I got to work. First, I set up a vocal improvisation quartet, and we spent long afternoons rehearsing using input I provided… We went into the studio and recorded almost two hours of improvisation, from which I then chose the best moments for the final product”. The resulting nine compositions, when viewed as a cohesive whole, unfold as an endlessly surprising journey into a diverse means of expression, incorporating elements of concrete poetry, phonetical vocal utterance, musique concrète, drone, nods to jazz, minimalism, ecstatic tribalism, and various traditional musics from across the globe, creating a fascinating counterpoint to the roughly concurrent DIY experiments of projects like Nurse With Wound, Current 93, and Organum. While radically open and experimental, one of the most striking aspects of “Silances” is how undeniably tight and considered it is, appearing as though each structure and chosen elements is exactly as it should be, and for which there would have been no other option. From the vocal squawks and ambient detritus of “Des Voix” or the incredibly constrained minimal beats and clangs of “La Machine” - a piece through the consideration of Deleuze and Guattari’s desiring-machines - and the droning harmonics of “Froid”, which incorporate excerpts of Krutzen’s teenage experiments in concrete music with records

Hemann Damen is a Dutch artist and language designer who, among other things, has created visual poems, performance works and "verbosonies" -- a genre that Damen developed where vocalized morphomic elements are assembled in different ways. In his works, he has been exploring "kinetic language" and the spatial aspects of language. Damen's manifesto Semiotic Theatre states that his work "places itself outside official literature and wants to fascinate, shock or activate people by combining and replacing writing and articulation with extra-linguistic signs and techniques like pictures, drawings, graphics, photos, montages, collages, de-collages, projects, objects, light, darkness, signals, symbols, gestures, happenings, noise, silence, smells, tastes, situations, states, properties, streets, landscapes, etc." The first side of this LP presents five verbosonies recorded between 1966 and 1970. The second side presents three phonographies recorded between 1967 and 1973. Hermann Damen was also the founder and editor of the AH! Magazine, a magazine for "verbal plasticism." Somehow parallel in contents with the legendary Revue OU, Damen's AH! occasionally also included vinyl records and represented an ante-litteram multi-media. This edition includes eleven inserts. Because of its specific contents, this edition was issued in a limited run of just 220 copies.