MUSIC

Superior Viaduct and our new artist label, W.25TH, are proud to continue to be the home for Cindy Lee with the physical release of the celebrated album Diamond Jubilee. Universally praised, shortlisted for the 2024 Polaris Music Prize, and already hailed by Pitchfork as the 3rd best album of the 2020s, anticipation and conversation around the record has been high. Cindy Lee is the performance and songwriting vehicle of Patrick Flegel (who previously fronted influential indie group Women). Over several albums, Flegel has combined delicate melodies and sheer beauty with moments of experimentation. With Diamond Jubilee, Flegel's undeniable songcraft comes to the foreground, embracing a more instant connection and accessibility. Timeless tales of love and longing, surrounded by sticky hooks, take the listener on an unforgettable journey.

Compiled by Richard Bishop from dozens of tapes, this archival 2xLP features the band's rare EP, most of the Majora LP and 11 previously unheard tracks.

"Difficult as it may be to imagine, there was a time when Sun City Girls did not exist. Prior to the Bishop brothers teaming up with drummer/shaman Charlie Gocher to form SCG's classic trio lineup, there were various ad-hoc assemblages of local Phoenix-area freaks and weirdos – groups which existed only long enough to play a single gig, open mic or house party before disbanding without a trace. Hatched from this milieu was Paris 1942, a short-lived band formed by guitarist Jesse Srogoncik that included Alan Bishop, Richard Bishop and former Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker.

"Paris 1942 would play only four shows in as many months, but between April and August of 1982, the band would gather several times a week in Tucker's living room, where the group feverishly wrote and rehearsed with a kind of quotidian discipline. While P42 didn't release anything during their brief tenure, a 7" EP and LP (both self-titled) surreptitiously surfaced on the Majora label in the mid to late '90s. Until now, those two titles – as well as an appearance on Placebo's Amuck comp in late '82 – would be the only documented evidence that this improbable, serendipitous and magnificent band ever existed.

"While those expecting P42's music to sound like a tantalizing combination of Sun City Girls' iconoclastic hoodoo havoc and the Velvets' primal drug-chug certainly won't be disappointed, Paris 1942 more often than not transcends even these nearly impossible expectations. Srogoncik's songs, in particular, are a revelation, displaying as much in common with the exuberant raunch of The Gun Club and the chapbook punk of Peter Laughner as they do any of the more obvious touchstones.

"The group's foresight to document and capture this meeting of musical minds – a meeting as unlikely as it was short-lived – provides a missing link between the Velvets and the Voidoids, between the Dead Boys and the Dead C, between ESP-Disk' and DNA. Far more than a historical curiosity, Paris 1942 provides a fresh perspective on an embryonic and sadly vanishing US underground. It is music that blinks at the past and anticipates a thousand possible futures."

Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire, England in 1943. His first musical forays were as a jazz bassist working in the early 1960s with improvisors Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Bryars later worked with composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia and collaborated with Brian Eno on his famed Obscure imprint. The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars' first major composition, was inspired by the tragic event of the British passenger liner's cross-Atlantic maiden voyage. Bryars eloquently reconstructs the passengers' experience – at once forlorn and eerily calming – through assemblages of understated strings and indeterminate elements. A core principle of the piece is that the ship's band continued to play as the vessel went down. One of the most sublime works in the modern classical canon, Titanic remains Bryars' magnum opus. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the album's second sidelong track, is based on a tape loop of a London street singer captured in the early 1970s. Featuring Derek Bailey, Michael Nyman and John White, Bryars' composition gradually builds around the cripplingly poignant voice until its emotional force is almost too much to bear. It's no surprise that Jesus' Blood is known as Tom Waits' all-time favorite piece of music. Produced by Brian Eno in 1975 as the inaugural release on Obscure, The Sinking of the Titanic draws the listener in to a majestic world. While these exquisite, hymn-like recordings have not changed in nearly 50 years, their deeply personal nature and the audience's attention to their subtlety have only strengthened over time.

Philosopher, musician and anti-art activist, Henry Flynt has long foregone the academicism often associated with “serious music” in favor of a uniquely intuitive, emotional approach to composition. In the 1960s and 1970s he was a part of NYC’s vibrant avant-garde scene, studying with Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath and developing his own proprietary technique on violin. You Are My Everlovin’, Flynt’s first published musical work, finds the composer in peak form at a lower Manhattan loft in late spring 1981. Featuring solo electric violin and pre-recorded tambura, this sinuous performance elegantly brings together disparate vernaculars—Southern blues, modal jazz, Appalachian fiddle, North Indian raga—into a new and bracing whole. As Flynt writes in the liner notes, “The electric violin timbre is crucial; it allows me to crush the diverse styles into a unity. I imagined the genre as open, radiant improvisation…an open plain that could absorb anything.” Incorporating themes and melodic phrases from his earlier work, Everlovin’ becomes Flynt’s own Gesamtkunstwerk—a work that is at once rooted in and liberated by the drone, revealing the profound mutability and utter singularity of this American iconoclast.

Experiments In Psychoacoustics, Timbre & Minimalism: 2011-2021

Late Music and Disciples are pleased to present the first and second volumes in an archival series of selected electronic and acoustic works by Sarah Davachi, all previously unreleased in the vinyl format. Featuring (way) back catalogue material from various CDs, cassettes, and EPs; singles and original film scores; as well as miscellaneous live and studio recordings.

“Something for everyone”

In 1987, RAFAEL TORAL began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless—almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, Drag City is reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal’s AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour’s listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, “AE 1” was recorded, and for this edition, “AER 7 E” was rerecorded and the material for “AE 2” was recorded for the first time ever—all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere.

A sequel to last year's sublime 'Spectral Evolution', 'Traveling Light' is a suite of weightless, uncannily beautiful jazz standards, transformed into orchestral drones and electronic chirps by Toral and his virtual band. It's flawless material that draws a clear line from Billie Holiday through Clara Rockmore, Fripp & Eno and Alvin Lucier to MBV and Gastr del Sol and beyond. Unmissable gear, from one of the scene's unassailable legends. Culture never emerges from a vacuum. It accumulates and evolves, building on what occurred before and gleaning influence from what happened nearby; the more cultural threads converge, the more complex, nuanced and developed the resulting braids become. Toral acknowledged this fact quite brazenly on last year's 'Spectral Evolution', bringing over a decade of impenetrable off-world experimentation to a halt and shoving his bare hands into the creative soil that inspired iconic tomes like 1995's 'Loveless'-inspired masterpiece 'Wave Field' and the meditative Éliane Radigue-cum-Rhys Chatham 'Violence of Discovery And Calm of Acceptance'. Taking a dip in the pool of concepts that eddy underneath rock music's labyrinth of caverns, he referenced Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, turning vintage progressions into idiosyncratic contemporary gestures. And on 'Traveling Light' that basic theme is expanded again; here, Toral takes six recognizable early 20th century standards and applies a very similar treatment, augmenting them with additional "canonical jazz sounds" from clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, flügelhorn player Yaw Tembe and flautist Clara Saleiro. Playing guitar and bass with his self-built ensemble of electronic devices (that includes a modified theremin), Toral lets his influences float even closer to the surface here, picking out familiar jazz and exotica flourishes, early electronic echoes and organ-esque polyphonic sustained tones that stretch across hundreds of years of musical history. On opener 'Easy Living', a Ralph Rainger composition from 1937 that's been recorded by Billie Holiday, Bill Evans and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others, the original chord sequence is slackened by Toral's sustained guitar tones and sine waves, but not blurred completely into impressions. This time around we're treated to more tangible shapes: Toral's cheeky, expertly rendered riffs, horizontal exotica-inspired rhythmelodic chimes, intimate woodwind breaths that pull us back to the '30s and squealing pitches that can't help but remind us of Clara Rockmore's Robert Moog-produced milestone 'The Art of the Theremin'. It feels like being chucked in the American cultural petri dish while new organisms mutate around you - everything's recognisable somehow but novel, peculiar. Lovingly valve saturated strums, bent by Toral's whammy, introduce 'Body and Soul' (a 1930 standard that's best known for being recorded by Frank Sinatra) before they're met by alien chirps from his arsenal of generators. But it's the willowy harmonies that buoy this one, echoing the haunted choral drones that prop up centuries of European sacred music. Toral's very specific with his references; when Amado's tenor moans whisper around the dense polyphonic hums, there's a tacit acknowledgement of the enduring influence of African American spirituals and gospel on folk, blues, jazz, country, rock 'n roll and R&B. The album's most affecting segment comes at the conclusion though, with 'My Funny Valentine' and 'God Bless the Child', easily two of the most conspicuous compositions of the era. On both, Toral hovers between clarity and abstraction, overlaying bone-dry fingerpicked improvisations on the former that scrape over Chicago's musical timeline, from "hot jazz" to post-rock, and finishing the album with Fennesz-like distortions that crack and dissolve into Saleiro's levitational flute tones. It's astonishing stuff, honestly - maybe not as immediately startling as 'Spectral Evolution', but refined, polished and concentrated in every way. You're unlikely to find a more moving set this year, that's for sure.

Nearly twenty-five years after disbanding, Gastr del Sol have unpacked their archive, stringing together an alternative view to their genre-melting 1993-1998 run. This assembly of previously uncollected studio recordings and beautifully captured unreleased live performances forms a spacious ode to the flux that was their métier; a further set of reinventions that continue to alter the manner in which we hear music, and literally everything else!

Robert Haigh made his trilogy of piano solo albums (‘Notes and Crossings’, ‘Anonymous Lights’, and ‘Strange and Secret Things’) during 2009-2011 and ‘The Silence of Ghosts’ in 2015 for Siren Records. The tracks for each of these releases were carefully selected with consideration for the flow and development of the project. Inevitably, for various reasons, some tracks did not fit a particular album and they have remained unreleased regardless of their quality. 

The original plan of the “Tempus Fugit” release was, as the subtitle suggests, to collect and assemble rare and unreleased tracks into an album. However, in the process of his compiling the tracks, Robert noticed that the project was developing into an album that had a flow and narrative of its own. Considering the structure and progression of the album, Robert carefully curated ten pieces from his recording archives (including three tracks left over from the Unseen Worlds period) and arranged them to make the best sequence selection.

As a result, “Tempus Fugit” has grown into a unique album with its own sense of flow, though none of the tracks were recorded with the aim of making this particular album. “Tempus Fugit” will be a parting gift to those who have followed his works while at the same time, a useful selection as “young person's guide to Robert Haigh” to those who have yet to open the door of his music. 

The album opens with ’Slow Water.’ A distant and plaintive piano melody evolves with ghostly harmonies through a reverb soaked landscape. ’The Wind Blows Black’ is an improvisation on a theme where discordant piano figures tumble over fragile descending chords. ‘Sub Rosa’ and ‘Broken Bones’ are Haigh at his most melodic, conjuring up the feel of tracks such as ‘Clear Water’ and ‘Portrait with Shadow’.’ In A Space’ slightly predates the first Siren release and wouldn’t be out of place on an early Budd and Eno album. The album closes with the ghostly ‘Tesselate Air’, a slow-moving ambient trip across a misty and shadowy terrain, slowly fading to silence. And the silence is significant as Robert is insistent that there will be no more releases after this.

Written and produced by Robert Haigh. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering. Sleeve artwork by Robert Haigh. Additional design by Saul Haigh.
 

Organum ‘RAVEN’ CD, which was released by Siren Records in 2018 was the last piece that Jackman released under the name Organum. He changed the name Organum to Organum Electronics in 2019 and has released five volumes of the albums on Siren Records since then. ‘SEKIHI OIDORI’ is a development of the quiet nature of earlier Organum works and Jackman decided to release the album under his own name because of a very personal essence. ‘SEKIHI OIDORI’ is composed of low-key church organ drones, airy tanpura sounds, occasional church bell chimes and chirping birds. It is the most minimal, the most quiet and the most powerful composition Jackman has ever created. The drones continue uninterrupted and you may feel little change in partial listening, but you’ll appreciate the increasing internal dynamic energy that Jackman infused with mindful listening. ‘SEKIHI OIDORI’ means ‘Stone Tomb Old Bird’ in English translation but the piece is neither an elegy nor a lamentation.

Robert Haigh, long known as Omni Trio, is a veteran electronic and “ambient drum and bass” innovator. Strange and Secret Things, however, is solo piano. Now, when someone sits down at the piano and plays slowly and pensively, it is easy (and usually lazy) to immediately draw comparisons with Erik Satie, and “Revenant (Prelude)” and “Secret Codes (Prelude)” are in fact reminiscent. A nod, perhaps. Otherwise, Haigh’s seventeen miniatures are hardly strange and if they possess some secret, he seems more than willing to share it with us. He plays a crisp and clear piano, deliberate and intimate. 

On this final entry to a trilogy, voltage is mainly used to run the recording equipment, with the rare wisp of a whit of a scent of electronics—a dragonfly following him “Across the River,” a shimmer quietly underlining “Dark House,” synthesizer arabesques decorating “Piano with Generative Tones” and what sounds like a violin (but could be a female soprano) sampled and played backward on the closing “Requiem.” Whether circular or linear, these tuneful, minimal melodies are truly precious pieces, black-and-white snapshots only just beginning to yellow and curl at the edges. 

Housed in the sturdy, handmade mini-LP packaging which has become the distinguished and distinguishing hallmark of Siren, Andrew Chalk’s Faraway Press’ Japanese sister label. 

Robert Haigh continues on in his post-Omni Trio musical world, releasing a type of contemporary classical/ambient music that is piano-based and bridges the worlds of Aphex Twin (in the Richard James’ quieter moments), Max Richter, Eno and Chilly Gonzales. These, as with the instrumental pieces on recent-enough Haigh album, the gorgeous Darkling Streams, feel all at once like demo-versions and finished pieces; the writer sitting down at the keys and shaking loose a few ideas. Stopping to find them as close to fully formed as they’ll ever be – art that’s never finished, simply discarded. 

These pieces hint as nostalgia and quiet moments of contemplation, they, once again, feel like they’ve come from the school of film composition – more so than from any techno/drum’n’bass world (where Haigh, of course, has operated so successfully). 

These are soft sketches. We listen in, almost eavesdropping, catching just the bit in the middle – longer intros or outros could change any one of these pieces into an album-length work, but these snapshots still seem correctly bound together. 

It’s quietly powerful stuff. 

Shadowy musical figures, breathing spaces within the notes, the slightest feeling of unease trickling in and around these moments that – mostly – frame up a type of tranquillity, create a calm, a balm, a day-spa soundtrack with depth, warmth and intrigue. 

Once again Haigh has offered up the very best from his soul for the wee small hours, for those moments after first waking or to guide you as you slip off into a strange and wonderful dreamland. 

The Weather Channel is the new instrumental album from Bad Brains bassist Darryl Jenifer. It follows his 2010 solo debut, In Search of Black Judas. The record features a venerable lineup of heavy-hitters from the jazz world, including the likes of John Medeski, Ben Perowsky, Jack DeJohnette, and Karl Berger, among others. The tracklist includes nine new compositions, as well as new interpretations of two Bad Brains classics.

Time and duration are core themes in the work of both William Basinski and Janek Schaefer, and this long-distance collaboration took a suitably long gestation of eight years from start to finish. In that time, our collective perception of time has at times become disorienting. “ . . . on reflection ” remodels that instability as an exquisite work of art – one that is unmoored by time or space. Limitation breeds creativity, revealed as an expression of minimalism and close focus. Deploying a delicate piano passage from their collective archive, Basinski and Schaefer weave and reweave in numerous ways, forging an iridescent flurry of flickering melodies. The sounds of various birds heard from late night windows on tour can occasionally be heard throughout, ricocheting off mirrored facades, reflecting on themselves as they continually reshape their own environments with song. “ . . . on reflection ” looks backwards, a bustling revelry of positive emotions heard through the aging mirrors of memory. It is a celebratory meditation where sound shimmers through time like the light of the sea’s waves glistening as it folds and unfolds upon itself. Created 2014-2022 between L.A. & London. Mixed at Narnia, Walton-on-Thames.

Ellen Arkbro’s fourth album, Nightclouds, collects five improvisations for solo organ, recorded across Central Europe in 2023–24.

"Nightclouds is more unabashedly Romantic and introspective than her previous efforts, though it remains firmly rooted in the rigor and precision that have come to define Arkbro’s concept. Extending her previous explorations of spatialized harmony, tactility, and texture,

Arkbro draws equally on sacred music, ECM–style jazz, and downtown minimalism, conjuring a cool intimacy and tone. Her decelerationist chordal improvisations envelop the listener in dirge-like washes, while her close miking reveals the rough haptic grain of the reeds, bringing the listener both inside and outside the sound. Evoking Kjell Johnsen and Jan Garbarek’s duets, or La Monte Young and Tony Conrad’s take on Euringer and Harmer’s cowboy song “Oh Bury Me Not,” Nightclouds channels spiritual pathos through a rigorously restrained architecture.

Following up on last year’s Sounds While Waiting (W.25TH, 2024), a selection of stereo mixes documenting Arkbro’s spatial organ installations, Nightclouds shifts direction, focusing on instant composition and improvisation. Elegant, simple chordal scaffolds support rich, ever-shifting textures; listening closely necessitates surrender to sustained irresolution. Bookending a collection of short pieces are two variations on the titular composition, “Nightclouds,” which is a sly nod to British jazz guitarist Allan Holdsworth: The first take slows down and stretches out a continuously modulated harmonic progression, while the short closing version simply loops three chords. Situated between these tracks are “Still Life” and “Chordalities,” two short works recorded at the Temple de La-Tour-de-Peilz in Vevey, Switzerland. The second half of the album is given to “Morningclouds,” a sprawling work recorded in the reconstructed Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church) in Berlin. Arkbro’s concise musical vocabulary and formal architecture evoke a sense of emotional ambivalence, simultaneously uplifting and mournful, guiding the listener through a spectrum of feeling with a cool and distant beauty. Nightclouds stands as a profound statement in Arkbro’s evolving body of work, at once introspective and expansive, the album reaffirms her singular ability to transform harmonic simplicity into deeply affecting sonic landscapes, inviting listeners into a space of contemplation and emotional depth.

Big Crown Records is proud to present the sophomore full-length from Les Imprimés, Fading Forward. Spearheaded by self-taught multi-instrumentalist and producer Morten Martens, the album explores mortality, escapism, and a myriad of experiences associated with love.

Martens made a tremendous impression with his highly acclaimed 2023 debut Rêverie and has since cultivated a diehard fanbase whose demographics are as wide-ranging as the influences that shape his music. He mixes tones from ’60s and ’70s soul with arrangement nods to doo-wop records, takes drum energy from hip-hop, and covers the whole thing with vocal stylings drawn from ’90s and 2000s alternative. But it is Martens’ lyrics, emotion, and delivery that truly bring everything together and help him stand out from his peers. There’s an infectiousness and pop sensibility in the writing, executed with the utmost class and taste, giving Les Imprimés the rare quality of immediate attraction that only deepens with repeat listens.

Hailing from Kristiansand, Norway, Martens plays nearly every instrument on Fading Forward, produces and arranges the album, and of course sings. “It’s soul music, but I don’t exactly have the soul voice,” Morten explains humbly. “But I do it my own way, in a way that’s mine.”

Album opener “You & I” is Morten’s homage to his partner, who sticks it out “through the chaos and the blunders” with him. Punchy drums and cascading pianos make this one a proper two-stepper and an anthem for those lucky enough to find someone who understands them and helps them through the parts of life where they need it most. “Again & Again” slows the pace and deals with the heavier side of love and life, as Martens professes his resilience through the mishaps, heartbreak, and letdowns of love affairs gone wrong. “Untainted Love” brings the sweet side of new love center stage with a tune that plays on the title of the Gloria Jones classic. “Get Lost” leans into the metaphysical with an invitation to leave reality behind and spend time with Les Imprimés, where there’s room to dream. “Only Love” is built over a gritty drum break, with a chorus that is simple yet profound, and an arrangement that gives it the energy of a mantra. The album turns to the dancefloor on “With You,” an uptempo, uplifting tune about a fleeting encounter that leaves you pining for more. Martens longs for her, but joyfully—as if simply remembering that such a connection is possible is exactly what he needed. Martens is joined by guest vocalist Ama Li on “Miss the Days,” a slow-burning ballad that reckons back to simpler times when love felt easier. Fading Forward closes on a wholly somber note with “Paradise,” a tune that wishes freedom and peace to a friend who passed away.

In the small town of Kristiansand, Norway, there is a huge talent who spent much of his life laying low and playing in the background. Signing to New York’s Big Crown Records inspired Morten Martens to begin sharing his own music. The response to his debut Rêverie pushed him out of the studio and onto the stage, serving as inspiration to push his artistry to new heights—heights that are fully realized on Fading Forward.

*300 copies limited edition* A sporangium (from Ancient Greek sporá 'seed' and angeîon 'vessel') is an enclosure in which spores are formed. It can be composed of a single cell or can be multicellular. Virtually all plants, fungi, and many other groups form sporangia at some point in their life cycle. Sporangia can produce spores by mitosis, but in land plants and many fungi, sporangia produce genetically distinct haploid spores by meiosis.

Sporangium is brand new "merzsoniks"! Equipments used by Masami: handmade instruments / contact microphones / various fuzz / distortion / glitch pedals / synthesizer... And many other soft & hard-ware to be discovered...

A collection of short-form compositions by shakuhachi player Lenzan Kudo, rooted in Zen spirit. In contrast to his long-form work “Noneness,” each track on this album spans approximately 2 to 5 minutes, distilling intense focus and spiritual depth into concise musical expressions. Utilizing the breath and overtones of the shakuhachi, the pieces incorporate ambient spatial processing, remaining grounded in the instrument’s traditional sonic world while embracing a contemporary resonance.

“Noneness” is a work by shakuhachi player Lenzan Kudo, featuring reinterpretations of traditional honkyoku and long-form improvisations rooted in Zen philosophy. Recorded in Hakone, Kanagawa, the album incorporates natural sounds and reverberations, maximizing the breath and spatial resonance of the shakuhachi. The title “Noneness” signifies ‘emptiness’ or ‘void,’ capturing traces of personal spiritual practice and dialogue with nature. The credits include acknowledgments to Ryuichi Sakamoto and Zen master Nanrei Yokota, with a written comment from Yokota also included. Transcending the boundaries of ethno, jazz, and ambient music, the album carries both spiritual and cultural depth.

Khadim is a stunning reconfiguration of the Ndagga Rhythm Force sound. The instrumentation is radically pared down. The guitar is gone; the concatenation of sabars; the drum-kit. Each of the four tracks hones in on just one or two drummers; otherwise the sole recorded element is the singing; everything else is programmed. Synths are dialogically locked into the drumming. Tellingly, Ernestus has reached for his beloved Prophet-5, a signature go-to since Basic Channel days, thirty years ago. Texturally, the sound is more dubwise; prickling with effects. There is a new spaciousness, announced at the start by the ambient sounds of Dakar street-life. At the microphone, Mbene Diatta Seck revels in this new openness: mbalax diva, she feelingly turns each of the four songs into a discrete dramatic episode, using different sets of rhetorical techniques. The music throughout is taut, grooving, complex, like before; but more volatile, intuitive and reaching, with turbulent emotional and spiritual expressivity.

Not that Khadim represents any kind of break. Its transformativeness is rooted in the hundreds upon hundreds of hours the Rhythm Force has played together. Nearly a decade has passed since Yermande, the unit’s previous album. Every year throughout that period — barring lockdowns — the group has toured extensively, in Europe, the US, and Japan. With improvisation at the core of its music-making, each performance has been evolutionary, as it turns out heading towards Khadim. “I didn’t want to simply continue with the same formula, says Ernestus. “I preferred to wait for a new approach. Playing live so many times, I wanted to capture some of the energy and freedom of those performances.” Though several members of the touring ensemble sit out this recording — sabar drummers, kit-drummer, synth-player — their presence abides in the structure and swing of the music here.

Lamp Fall is a homage to Cheikh Ibra Fall, founder of the Baye Fall spiritual community. The mosque in the city of Touba is known as Lamp Fall, because the main tower resembles a lantern. Soy duggu Touba, moom guey séen / When you enter Touba, he is the one who greets you. After a swift, incantatory start Mbene sings with reflective seriousness. Her voice swirls with reverb, over a tight, funky, propulsive interplay between synth and drums, threaded with one- two jabs of bass. Cheikh Ibra Fall mi may way, mo diayndiou ré, la mu jëndé ko taalibe… Cheikh Ibra Fall amo morome, aboridial / Cheikh Ibra Fall shows the way forward, he gives us strength, he gathers his disciples… Overflowing with grace, Cheikh Ibra Fall has no equal.

Interwoven with Wolof proverbs, Dieuw Bakhul is a recriminatory song about treachery, lies, and back-biting. Over moody, roiling synths and ominous, lean bass, Mbene throws out fluttering scraps of vocal, as if re-running old conversations in her head. The music shadows her despair to the verge of breakdown, at one moment seemingly so lost in thought and memories, that it threatens to disintegrate. Bayilene di wor seen xarit ak seen an da ndo… Dieuw bakhul, dieuw ñaw na / Stop judging your friends and companions… A lie is no good, a lie is ugly.

Khadim is a show-stopper; currently the centrepiece of Ndagga Rhythm Force live performances. The song is dedicated to Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, aka Khadim, founder of the Mouride Sufi order. Serigne Bamba mi may wayeu / Serigne Bamba is the one who makes me sing. The verses name-check revered members of his family and brotherhood, like Sokhna Diarra, Mame Thierno, and Serigne Bara. Though Islam has been practised in Senegal for a millennium, it wasn’t until the start of the twentieth century that it began to thoroughly permeate ordinary Senegalese society, hand-in-hand with anti-colonialism. The verses here recall Bamba’s banishment by the French to Gabon, and later to Mauritania, in those foundational times. During exile, his captors once introduced a lion to his cell: gaïnde gua waf, dieba lu ci Cheikhoul Khadim / the lion doesn’t budge, it gives itself over to Cheikh Khadim. Deep, surging bass, steady kick-drum, and simple, reverbed chords on the off-beat lend the feel and impetus of steppers reggae. A reed plays snatches of a traditional Baye Fall melody; the dazzling polyrhythmic drumming is by Serigne Mamoune Seck. Mbene compellingly blends percussive vocalese, narrative suspense, exultant praise, introspection, and grievance.

Nimzat is a devotional tribute to Cheikh Sadbou, a contemporary of Bamba, buried in a mausoleum in Nizmat, in southern Mauritania. Way nala, kagne nala… souma danana fata dale / I call upon you and wonder about you… If I am overwhelmed, come to my aid. The town holds special significance for Khadr Sufism. An annual pilgrimage there is conducted to this day. The rhythm is buoyantly funky; the mood is sombre, reined-in, foreboding. Punctuated by peals of thunder, Mbene sings with restrained, intense reverence; huskily confidential, steadfast. Nanu dem ba Nimzat, dé ba sali khina / Let us go to Nimzat, to seal our devotion.

Meditations best seller! A Japanese talent who attracts attention from all over the world. Commissioned work for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanagawa. Hiroshi Yoshimura, a composer who has made significant contributions mainly in the fields of environmental music design and contemporary art, released his last album in 2003, a collection of music for the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Contemporary Art in Hayama and Kamakura. The album contains four pieces for the opening and closing of the museums in Hayama and Kamakura respectively, and two "special versions" that incorporate waves and human voices. The tones blend casually into the art space. The wind blows over the hills overlooking the ocean. A time when the sun is slowly setting. The gentle and tranquil ambient sounds depict various scenes seen from the museum.

Influenced by the minimal music of the 60s and 70s, baroque music, and experimentation in studio environments, Canadian artist Sarah Davachi creates music using a variety of sounds including analog synthesizers, piano, electronic organ, pipe/reed organ, vocals, tape samplers, and orchestral music. Sarah Davachi, a Canadian artist who creates music with a variety of sounds, including piano, electronic organ, pipe/lead organ, vocals, tape sampler, and orchestral music, has released her latest album "Two Sisters" on her Late Music label. The album features a chamber ensemble and a pipe organ solo. A variety of instruments are used, including carillon (a keyboard instrument composed of very large cast-iron bells), chorus, string quartet, bass woodwinds, trombone quartet, and sine tones and electronic drones. The pipe organ is a 1742 Italian tracker organ, now located in the deserts of the American Southwest, and contains the sounds of a very rare pipe organ.

'Music for a Bellowing Room' is a collaborative durational work by musician Sarah Davachi and filmmaker Dicky Bahto, both based in Los Angeles.

With a performance/running time of three hours, 'Music for a Bellowing Room' is an exercise in resolution, inviting the audience to shift their concentration and perception through gradual changes in sound and image. This piece was originally commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and received its premiere performance in September 2023.

Intergalactic Music Is Of the Outer Darkness It is rhythm against rhythm in kind dispersion It is harmony against harmony in endless coordination It is melody against melody in vital enlightenment (Excerpt from The Outer Darkness by Sun Ra) From Detroit’s techno resistance to Berlin’s elastic minimalism, Lusaka’s ancestral futurism to Chicago’s house communion, When There Is No Sun is a global recording project, uniting visionary electronic music producers to reimagine the universe of Sun Ra. One of the most radical musical pioneers of the 20th century, Sun Ra used jazz, electronics, poetry, and performance to expand the possibilities of sound, identity, and imagination. Commissioned by Omni Sound and curated by Ricardo Villalobos, the series brings together Underground Resistance, Chez Damier & Ben Vedren, Calibre, A Guy Called Gerald, She Spells Doom, Barış K, and Ricardo Villalobos himself. Drawing from Omni Sound’s recordings of Living Sky by the Sun Ra Arkestra and My Words Are Music, a spoken-word album of Sun Ra’s poetry, the producers pull fragments of sound and text into their own creative orbits, passing through the portal that Sun Ra opened into a realm where the impossible is possible. Invocations by Saul Williams, Anthony Joseph, Mahogany L. Browne, Abiodun Oyewole, Tunde Adebimpe, and Tara Middleton turn rhyme into rhythm and resistance into revelation. Rooted in deep reverence for Sun Ra’s legacy, yet reaching forward as a living, generative force, When There Is No Sun is not a tribute but a continuum, balancing the pulse of electronic music with the spirit of experimentation, embodying Sun Ra’s promise that ‘there are other worlds’ if you are willing to see them.