MUSIC

Under the production moniker of Material Things, 12th Isle co-founder Stewart Brown unveils a part debut album part compendium of musical collaborations spanning from 2015-2020. Some recordings began as long, one-take improvisations (How's Life, Peckham) spliced together and revisited years later. Others were based upon chance opportunities to record with musicians operating a long way from the parameters of 12th Isle. Cult private-press loner folk guitarist Bob Theil, whose 1982 album So Far counts as one of the Scottish greats of the era, is at the heart of 'Westway'. Synth and guitar fragments recorded by the pair in Stewart's family home one summer form a low-key conclusion to the collection, whilst London based percussionist Pike Ogilvy brings an array of drum sounds and natural percussion to 'No Direction'. Regular 12th Isle affiliate Vague Imaginaires also features heavily, contributing synth work on Grenoble and his own extended digi bonus remix of 'How's Life'. As a collection, the 8 tracks show a studious, concise vision and combine influences from minimalism, concrete and avant-garde jazz and techno yet also embrace friendship, experimentation and curiosity whilst capturing 5 years of the artists own personal life. Some of the tracks have been circulating in various versions for a number of years now, with DJ support from Bake, Ivan Smagghe, Optimo, Lena Willikens, Huntley & Palmers, Orpheu The Wizard and, of course, 12th Isle.

Total Annihilation Beach is the latest collection from Caveman LSD, one of the handful of monikers of Special Guest DJ / uon / sometimes just shy. Their releases under this name have always had the character of sonic transmissions – crushed sine-waves hurtling out of a wormhole, remote pirate radio bandwidths, whale-song picked up on radar, and so on. Here, the signal seems to come from a place whose remoteness is not defined by distance, but adjacency: these are alternate reality bops. What does it sound like? Kind of solarpunk, but dirty; not at all an artifact from a hopeless culture. Percussion at the forefront; warm timbres and tones – never have I heard this producer play with tabla and tambourine loops as they do in “Lost Hours,” the opening track of the EP. The buildup holds tension and dynamics tight, with a vocoder-smoothed moan – sampled from the caveman’s own voice, on the low – alternating between two notes; when the beat decompresses for the first time two and a half minutes in, one hears the amorphous and cavernous pads we know so well from shy. “Bottle Service Angels” picks up with another acoustic drum loop, and a clap entering 18 seconds in swings the rest of the track into your hips – there’s even an alternate percussion interlude sandwiched in the middle. The drums are turned over by a distorted and delayed wave, almost like a cop siren, which finds an answer in the track’s final seconds: we hear them blaring, but distantly (the demo version of this track, from spring 2020, was called “ACAB Beat”). The B side begins with a textured, heaving slab of ambience: “The Sun Will Sink Into the Ocean.” It is perhaps the sun one sees setting over “Total Annihilation Beach” – a phrase that came to shy while tripping on LSD in San Francisco, which felt to them like a post-apocalyptic haven for the rich. Seems on point. There is a machinic repetition to the track, but also sweeping curtains of sound that move like mist. But what comes at nightfall? Not cops, not raiders nor bottle service angels – nothing, actually. Just a void into which one lobs praise. “H6 Remix” adapts a Mesopotamian hymn to the divine wife of a moon deity, dated to 1400 BCE; the strings of the sampled oud playing it out are rich and trail beautifully with reverb. Caveman LSD’s gesture of remixing such a song reads sincere – the reality we inhabit is likely just as brutal as the one to which these transmissions belong; however, in both, honor exists. Love follows.

Guatemalan label Identidata present Sacratávica, the very first collected survey of Joaquín Orellana's compositions. With a career spanning over 50 years of activity across contemporary art, performance, theater, and sound art, Orellana is a highly singular figure in Guatamalan culture. Most of his music was created using an orchestra of his self-built instruments, also known as Útiles Sonoros. Sitting at the border of sculpture, sound installation and musical instrument, these Útiles Sonoros, which he's been building and developing since the late '60s, are at the center of his artistic activity. Aside the obvious formal aspect, his compositions also have a strong political message, while being deeply rooted in Guatemalan history, folklore, and various identities, both indigenous and modern. Playful opener "Híbrido a presión" was one of the first of his compositions to be performed entirely using the Útiles Sonoros. "Ramajes"(1984), initially titled "Evocación profunda y ramajes de una marimba" , tracks the many incarnations of the marimba across history, before reaching its final form as one of Orellana's instruments by combining vibrational percussion with melody and poetry fragments. The title track, "Sacratávica", represents one of the most ambitious and emotionally charged pieces from the album. An expansive 22-minute composition mixing textures that mimics field recordings and multi-layered vocal melodies culminating in choral catharsis, "Sacratávica" deals in baroque maximalism without ever feeling cluttered. Dubbed "Las voces del Rio Negro", the piece references the massacres that took place in Coban during a period where the army massacred numerous towns, throwing the bodies in the nearby Rio Negro (the Black River). Final track, "Fantoidea", a glistening, metallic ambient improvisation, was a reimagining of Disney's Fantasia using Paul Dukas's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" as inspiration. Despite his work being presented in numerous exhibitions and concerts in various prestigious museums and theaters across the world, very few quality recordings exist to date. The only previously available recordings so far or either of very poor quality or did not receive enough attention. For the people behind Identidata, it has been a long and arduous process to put together these pieces. Trying to offer a panoramic view of Orellana's work, the curators have selected pieces ranging from different decades and artistic periods. Sacratávica is a portrait of a singular artist whose work speaks not only to his culture, but carries strong aesthetic sensibilities that resonate universally.

“Timeless minimalistic approach to composition braced by repetition and playfulness. Alberto’s music reflects calm, focus and intimacy. Ethereal and atmospheric, his pieces operate within the digital as well as the analogue realm in equal measures. Sampling, Midi sequencing and field recordings are the instrumentation used in these 15 songs recorded on a four track reel to reel tape. Highest possible recommendation for fans of Suso Saiz, Jon Hassel, Eno or Harold Budd” “Haizetxe” which stands for wind house, is the first ever record consisting of unreleased material recorded between mid 80’s and 90’s by musician Alberto Lizarralde in Zaldibia, Basque Country. One of the founders of the first school of Improvisational jazz and contemporary music (Jazzle) established in San Sebastián in the early 1990s,Alberto is a well-known figure among Basque musicians but not so much amongst the general public. In his professional curriculum we find the direction of the Plaza Festival, the Zirrara record company, his work as a producer, editor (editions 3e argitalpenak), the direction of the audiovisual installation JA Artzeren Unibertsoa, the arrangements and composition for the Iparraguirre 7 project, etc...And even so, he has managed to stay away from the spotlight. In all this time he was composing and recording music, but the right circumstances never arose for its release.Thus, it has remained stored in a drawer all these years. Finally the music of Alberto Lizarralde sees the light on Hegoa label in a limited run of 300 LPs.

Ylia—aka Susana Hernández—had a remarkably productive 2020. In addition to releasing her debut album, Dulce Rendición, on Barcelona’s Paralaxe Editions, she penned compilation tracks for Lapsus Records, Hivern Discs, and Super Utu/Stars on Earth. But professional success can be deceiving: The following year was, personally speaking, terrible. Her grandfather died. Her father died. Her cat died. And she ended a relationship. “That’s a lot of things all at once, no?” she says. Her second album, Ame Agaru, is not necessarily a record of that year, but it is, she says, a response to those life events—a record of grief. The new album is clearly a continuation of the ambient investigations of Ylia’s debut, but it differs in key ways. Where Dulce Rendición was exploratory and faintly cosmic, Ame Agaru—a Japanese phrase meaning, roughly, “the rain lifts”— captures a melancholy sense of stillness. And where her debut was largely electronic, on the new album, Ylia has folded in a number of acoustic elements, even when they are not recognizable as such. Her partner, Alejandro Lévar, lends fingerpicked acoustic guitar to the glowing dronescapes of “Todos los Cuerpos”; multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Tete Leal adds flutes, clarinet, and soprano saxophone to “Ame Agari”—or “after the rain”—which opens the album with a moment of contemplative calm, the kind that follows an extended deluge. One track, the dub techno-influenced “Flowers in June,” grew out of Ylia’s live sets, but the rest are the fruit of improvisational sessions at home in Málaga, five minutes from the beach—jamming and then refining, searching for the ideal expression of a feeling as it was first captured. Searching for the spontaneity behind the stillness. In places, Ylia even incorporates piano, an instrument she has played since she was 10, yet has never included on one of her recordings before. For the most part on Ame Agaru, she seeks ways to fuse piano with synthesizers and electronic processes. But on the closing track, “El Único Adiós Posible,” she leaves us alone with the instrument in all its stark, unadorned beauty. It is a profoundly moving conclusion to an album defined by its economy of means and purity of expression: a cycle of life counted out in the passage of storm clouds and clearing skies.

For their third release San Francisco based Indian duo Baalti bring the heat and delve into what they say is their most personally authentic release to date, disclosing the record reflects the various club sounds they’ve been enjoying and discovering over the past year. The five track EP which they’ve titled ‘Better Together’, stays true to their signature sampling of nostalgic South Asian flavours derived from classic Indian, Pakistani, and Bangaldeshi music but on this occasion fused with a backdrop of breaks and euphoric club music which perfectly aligns with Seb Wildblood’s All My Thoughts imprint to which the EP will be released on. The duo have kept a consistent emotive element to the music throughout the EP combined with the leftfield dance- floor sounds they’ve been vouching for more recently. About the release which will be their biggest yet, Baalti go on to explain: ‘With this record, we wanted to lean into clubbier energy that’s been inspiring, enriching and energizing us. We’re trying to connect where we come from to where we are right now, bringing sounds we grew up with to dance- floors and spaces we’re part of today. It’s our most sincere and complete expression yet, and we’ve tried to capture all of the feelings we had from a year of touring, living with our bffs, being in love, finding amazing communities through music, and getting more connected with each other as a duo.’ – Baalti

For a legacy filled with legendary performances, the Grateful Dead Live at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on August 13th 1975 stands out. The band only played 4 shows during that entire year! (Remarkable for a band that toured non-stop for decades) and at their August 13th show, they rolled multi-track tape (which allowed for the band decades later to properly mix the show). Because the Great American Music Hall holds less than 1,000 people (another unique thing about this show), it was an invitation only performance in which the band debuted their recent studio album Blues For Allah in a live setting. Although One From The Vault has been available on CD nearly continuously since 1991, the vinyl version was only available for less than a year (and in Europe only) in the early 1990’s. This deluxe vinyl reissue marks the first time this legendary show has been available anywhere in over 20 years and the first time in America.

Once the dust had settled after a musically and politically turbulent era that was 1960s America, there emerged a new musical movement, one that united the singer-songwriter with the folk-rock sensibilities developing at the time: A beautiful, fragile form of American folk music exploring the more sentimental parts of human experience. Flight was formed in 1971 in the Michigan town of Grayling by Phil Stancil and Doug Slater. The two teenagers, with no formal musical training, sat down for a year to explore a shared sense of vulnerability, and a newfound freedom in expressing an emotional openness rarely seen in young American men at the time. What resulted was an 8-track LP, recorded over two days in two separate studios. Aside from a limited 45 pressing of 50 copies of the two singles, I’m Coming Home would wait for a full half-century to be released. This music recently uncovered and restored, provides a unique glimpse into the world that was 1971 America: a time when young men felt emboldened to abandon machismo and explore the feelings of heartbreak, longing, alienation, and love in music. Enjoy I’m Coming Home by Flight.

Light in the Attic’s Pacific Breeze series has supplied the world’s growing legions of Japanese music fans with an expertly curated selection of the most sought-after City Pop recordings—the mesmerizing and nebulous genre of Japanese bubble-era music of the ‘70s-’80s that encompasses AOR, R&B, jazz fusion, funk, boogie and disco. These familiar sounds are spun through the unique lens of optimistic, cosmopolitan fantasy colored by Japan’s affluence at the time. Much of the music has previously been nearly impossible to acquire outside of Japan and continues to captivate listeners with its unique blend of groove-laden escapism, even birthing wholly new genres such as Vaporwave. Pacific Breeze 3: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1975-1987 marks the latest chapter in the famed series and features holy grails plus under-the-radar rarities. The collection bursts at the seams to reveal some of the greatest Japanese tracks ever laid to tape, pushing towards the edge of City Pop to reveal glimmers of the next waves of styles to spring forth from the country’s creative minds. The appearance of Pizzicato Five hint at the emergence of Shibuya-kei while the influence of hip hop and electro as an emerging global trend are also evident here through the prevalence of heavier programmed drum beats on tracks such as “Heartbeat” by Miho Fujiwara. This volume of Pacific Breeze, like its predecessors, is a female-forward offering with many tracks being voiced by women who would become household names in Japan as actresses and pop idols. Their songs here subvert the norm and brim with an innovative spirit that shatters gender roles in favor of sonic transcendence. Techno-pop classics from Susan, Miharu Koshi and Chiemi Manabe sit alongside sublime funk from Atsuko Nina and Naomi Akimoto while Teresa Noda slides into the mix with a sultry reggae jam. The genre span is stretched wider with hypnotic jazz fusion by Parachute and Hiroyuki Namba, a synthesizer fantasy from Osamu Shoji, and magnetic pop by Makoto Matsushita and Chu Kosaka. Although not front and center, the visionary members of Yellow Magic Orchestra are still very present on Pacific Breeze 3, with Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yukihiro Takahashi taking up producer and musician roles on many of these tracks. Pacific Breeze 3 serves up a captivating musical journey that adds an essential chapter to the iconic compilation series.

Explore the Duster universe on the far superior 45RPM format. This deluxe triple 7” box contains Duster’s first single—1997’s Transmission Flux (including “Stars Will Fall” & “Orbitron”), 1998’s Apex, Trance-Like (featuring “Four Hours”), plus Stratosphere’s painfully absent “Echo, Bravo” and the lost 2002 outtake “What You’re Doing To Me.” Housed in replica sleeves and placed in a sturdy two-piece box, Moods, Modes also contains a Duster-branded hanky for those who like to accessorize.

After Belgian electro-samba wunderkinds Antena split at the end of 1985, singer Isabelle Antena immediately shed her cold wave crown for a sophisticated pop princess tiara. On 1986’s Martin Hayles-produced En Cavale, echos of Madonna and city pop abound, with a lipstick stain of L80s Euro dance and spilled cosmopolitan’s worth of bossa nova stirred in for good measure. This elegant second chapter of a French pop diva has been expanded to include Antena’s shelved Island Records demo, adjacent B-sides and rarities, plus an expansive essay and previously unpublished photographs.

new age album that draws as much from ethno-groove, Chicago house, and G-funk, as it does from primitive percussion and ’80s library music. Relaxing, gentle, and warm, the 10-song ambient suite was made for a multidisciplinary modern dance performance described as “Neo-Paganism, Pop Divas, YouTube, Yoga, and Death Metal side by side in a live performance that searches for transcendence in the most unlikely places.”

In the late 1970s, a peculiar sound began bubbling up from the land of 10,000 lakes. Buried beneath 50 solid inches of annual snow, Minneapolis made a Sound quite different than what the pop world foresaw. It issued forth as a slick, black, technologically advanced fusion, poised to storm the charts. Never known for sizable African-American populations, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in fact harbored a tight-knit community of musicians working feverishly through the late ’70s and early ’80s toward a radical manipulation of American dance music, coating futuristic funk with the glamorous sheen of guitar rock. Synthetic ebony and ivory met electricity, with sexed-up results sent shockingly across the pop heavens like violet lightning.

Since the appearance of his cult breakthrough debut Tuli Banyo released on Hakuna Kulala in 2018, Ugandan conscious rapper and MC, Ecko Bazz has challenged perceptions of East Africa's burgeoning rap scene. His style is hard to categorize blending elements of grime, dancehall and US hip-hop and twisting politicized lyrics in Luganda that explore violence, religion, drug abuse or the poverty in the Ugandan slums. This personality anchors his debut album Mmaso, an explosive call to action that balances his manic presence with production from MC Yallah collaborator Debmaster, Kenyan club futurist Slikback, Berlin-based Japanese beatmaker DJ Die Soon and the inimitable DJ Scotch Rolex. Mmaso is driven by Ecko Bazz's kinetic performance on the mic. Anyone that's had the privilege of seeing him live will know what to expect, and his unadulterated flow is immediately focused on the grinding title track. The rapper alternates freely between sober truths and hyperactive screams, flipping between intensity from verse to verse. On Lwaky?, an anxious Debmaster beat underpins Bazz's visceral hedonism bending his rhymes in double and half-time and wrenching his voice gymnastically over 808 booms and claps. There's a pause for breath on the more intimate Mugulu e'yo or the relatively restrained Empungo Mubanga where Slikback provides a breathy and minimal midnight trap rumble to couch the rapper's surreal exuberance. With DJ Die Soon's Bikuba, Bazz mimics the bouncy lead synth to command a presence that refuses to let you forget that, even at his most claustrophobic, he makes music that lives at the club. That's never more evident than on Nkoowola, a standout that made it to Nyege Nyege - Soundcloud Music for the Eagles compilation. Bright, powerful and charged with rebellious energy that resonates through East Africa and beyond.

The first-ever official vinyl edition, completely remastered by Josh Bonati. The turn of the millennium ushered in an apex visionary phase for English esoteric duo Coil. Relocating from the city to the coastal quiet of Weston-super-Mare freed them to follow even more fringe obsessions, fully untethered from peer influence. During a single six-month stretch in 2000 they released the devious underworld sequel to Music To Play In The Dark, arcane drone summit Queens Of The Circulating Library, and a malevolent hour-long synthesizer exorcism prophetically titled Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil. This latter work remains one of the group’s most miasmic and mind-expanding creations, on par with Time Machines – a sustained divination of shuddering, psychoactive noise, rippling with the motion sickness of an all-seeing eye. Thighpaulsandra characterizes the album as “an exercise in brutality,” born from a thorny patch of his Serge modular unit that Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson found entrancing. Processing this sliver of electronics into a ravaged labyrinth was a trial and error process, aided by Christopherson’s visual sense of sound, stretching and manipulating it for maximum spatial disorientating. Frequencies nauseously crawl across the stereo field, burrowing into the ear like a sinister brainwashing experiment. An outlier / centerpiece is the 13-minute alien tribalist sea shanty, “I Am The Green Child,” guided by John Balance’s sung-spoken free verse concerning vengeance, oblivion, and insanity, culminating in the memorable refrain, “We're swimming in a sea of occidental vomit.” But the rest of the record seethes in unhinged instrumental chaos, divided into 18 micro-movements of a composition called “Tunnel Of Goats.” Intended to scramble the functionality of a CD player’s shuffle mode, the piece throbs, thrashes, and flatlines in compressed frenzies of twisted synthesis, at the threshold of some bottomless purgatory, forbidding and unknown.

Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark.

Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”

What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey.

The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”

Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" packaging. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra. 
credits

- An electrifying, previously unreleased studio album from the late South African genius of jazz, recorded in 2003 
- The first new material by the artist to have emerged in nearly two decades 
- Liner notes by Blue Note recording artist Nduduzo Makhathini, and by music educator and poet Eugene Skeef, producer of the original session 
- Photographs by Siphiwe Mhlambi, Rashid Lombard and Cedric Nunn 
- Fully licensed, 180g 3-sided double-vinyl edition of 500 copies, presented as the first release on Tapestry Works, plus digital release 

‘A divine summary of his life story’ – Nduduzo Makhathini 

Self-taught multi-instrumentalist and composer Bhekumuzi Hyacinth Mseleku (1955-2008), known as Bheki Mseleku, is widely considered to have been the most richly gifted South African jazz musician of his generation. Born in Durban, he moved to Johannesburg in the mid-1970s and played with groups including Spirits Rejoice, The Drive and Philip Tabane’s Malombo. In 1980, he left apartheid South Africa for exile in Europe, travelling with his close friend Eugene Skeef. (A percussionist, educator, poet and former close comrade of Steve Biko, Skeef originally produced the Beyond The Stars session, and contributes liner notes to this release.) 

Bheki spent six difficult years in Stockholm before moving to London. After a triumphant debut at Ronnie Scott’s, in 1992 he would release his now classic debut album Celebration for World Circuit, before signing with Verve. He would go on to achieve worldwide recognition, recording and touring with jazz luminaries including Elvin Jones, Pharoah Sanders, Joe Henderson and Abbey Lincoln. 

Throughout his life, Bheki struggled with both his physical and mental health. He was, as Eugene Skeef puts it, ‘a conduit for the healing energy of music to flow into the world’, a gift that came at a cost. At the start of the new century, Bheki returned to live in South Africa, but just a few years later he found himself in compound difficulties: life at home had proved too hard, and he was not well. He had also lost his imported Steinway upright piano in an unwise business deal and had not been able to play. In 2003, Skeef helped him return to London, where they hoped to realign his health and rekindle his career. Through his work with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Skeef arranged for Bheki to have access to the Steinway concert grand pianos held at Henry Wood Hall. After Bheki had spent a few weeks recuperating, Skeef booked a studio session at Gateway Studios. 

Beyond The Stars was the result: a stunning, solo piano suite which condenses Mseleku’s visionary overstanding of South African music into a flowing, pulsing statement in six parts. With jazzwise echoes of marabi, amahubo, maskanda and Nguni song forms binding it to the deep music of Mseleku’s Zulu heritage, Beyond The Stars provides what Blue Note recording artist Nduduzo Makhathini describes in his liner notes as ‘a divine summary’ of Bheki’s life story: ‘a sonic pilgrimage from the beautiful and organic landscapes of Durban, to the vibrant energy of London and ultimately toward the inner dimensions of one’s being.’ 

But releasing the album proved impossible at the time, and so the session has remained unheard. Bheki sadly passed on in 2008, without having released a new album for five years; almost two decades have now passed since any new music by him has emerged. Working with Eugene Skeef, Tapestry Works is proud to break the silence with a first issue for Bheki Mseleku’s visionary masterpiece, Beyond The Stars.

The other great Hal Singer album from his years on the French scene – and a record that we'd say is even better than his legendary Paris Soul Food set! Although Singer is often most associated with an older style of swing-based jazz, he's working here in a loose, free mode that's got plenty of 70s soulful touches – often funky at the best moments, but even more importantly openly rhythmic – with a progressively soulful style that's really outta site! The group features Art Taylor on drums, plus an assortment of European players led by Siegried Kessler – who plays some great piano and flute on the album, and also handled the arrangements. The album features Singer's wonderful tune "Malcolm X" – the kind of a track that we'd rank right up there with some of the most righteous soul jazz groovers of the time. Other highlights include the modal "Pour Stephane", the jagged "Blues For Hal", and the groovy "It's My Thing".

Deadstock, the first collaboration between German electro heavyweights Burnt Friedman and Mohammad Reza Mortazavi released on Nonplace. Extremely minimalistic. The sound design is restrained, percussive, and beautifully constructed. This is an artistic and stoic work of human-powered techno, with a definite surge of heat in the midst of dynamic tranquility.

Les Rallizes Dénudés, an album full of live performances at CLUB CITTA' in 1993 will be released as a 3-disc analog record!

After releasing three original albums in 1991, Les Rallizes Dénudés resumed their live performances in 1993, making their appearance in front of fans for the first time since 1988. Following the return live at the Baus Theater on February 13, the performance at CLUB CITTA 'held four days later on the 17th became one of the most notable performances in Les Rallizes Dénudés's history and is still legendary. It is said that the tremendous volume of the guitar, which surpassed the loud volume he had played in the past, shook the door of the venue, and the audience evacuated to the lobby.
The performance, which showed an amazing performance that shook all the senses of the audience, was recorded in its entirety with an 8-channel digital recorder.
In this work, based on the multi-track sound source that has been secretly stored for nearly 30 years, Makoto Kubota's soulful mixing, which has been reconstructed with the sound source recorded at the venue, is the result of the "something that surpasses the roaring sound" that resounded that night. ” is reproduced as an album work. You can experience the rally's sound that has never been heard before.

The members on the day were Takashi Mizutani (Vo, G), Katsuhiko Ishii (G), Yokai Takahashi (B), and Yukimichi Noma (Dr).
The jacket artwork features photographs taken by Takehiko Nakafuji.
Includes liner notes by Shinya Matsuyama.

■ Recorded songs:
Side A
1. The Night, Assassin's Night
2. Memory is Far Away

Side B
1. Deeper Than the Night
2. Eternally Now

Side C
1. White Awakening_1993
2. Bird Calls in the Dusk

Side D
1. Darkness Returns 2

Side E
1. The Last One_1993(Part 1)

Side F
1. The Last One_1993(Part 2)

“Unlike much of my work recently, it is not a ‘concept album’ and is without any collaborators. I just wanted to focus on my core sound really but without any of the genre tropes that may have been present the last time I made a solo album. I had hoped that the album could work on multiple levels. In that respect, it is intended as a psychedelic album as much as anything. You can listen to it in a more meditative way without getting distracted by the details. I suppose that is why the frequency spectrum is more similar to my earlier work, but there is a lot going on under the surface and it can be quite demanding if you are paying attention as there are odd time signatures and dissonant elements in there too. Light and shadow I guess. I am hoping that it may be the kind of album that people play at the end of an excessive night, like after a club being back home with some friends, sleep deprivation and whatever else kicking in together with the music helping to launch your mind into space! I am also hoping though that it will be interesting enough to stand up in the cold sober light of day as ‘just good engaging music’. It is quite foggy and scuzzy in feel and I am using a lot of filtering and reverb to get this. I think the vocal samples are an attempt to offset this, to bring a bit of light to the murkiness. I also wanted the vocal aspects to reflect influences or things I could closely identify with for the most part, so there are a few hints at British folk songs in amongst the music, albeit rather ghostly and not directly recognisable. But anyway, all this is much more a question of feel, rather than a signifier in this respect. I like the haunting, melancholic aspects of these songs I suppose. I am putting it out on my own label, Woe To The Septic Heart! I just felt it was time for that. It is a bad time for pressing records but conversely, Bandcamp has proved to be useful in showing you do not need to have the backing of an established label. I think I can do something independently and hope that it will still reach the public.” — Shackleton

The spirit of ghetto tech looms large over this full length offering from duo Hi Tech, surfacing on Omar S' FXHE label. That said, the usual straight forward pumped up booty bouncing beats that the genre flaunts are left well behind by an eclectic and well constructed trip across the rhythmic spectrum. 'Milf Milo' is one of the more regular sounding jams, riding a relatively conventional house/garage production, but elsewhere elements of trap, hip-hop, techno, footwork and electro all influence the genuinely innovative and original frameworks. Even better, the cleverness of the arrangements doesn't lessen the alarmingly thuggish timestretched and over-autotuned vocals, giving us the best of both worlds.

The lifeblood of Basic Channel and Chain Reaction. West Mineral Ltd. has been expanding the horizons of current dub ambient music by nurturing labels such as Motion Ward, Experiences Ltd. and Daisart. Huerco S is one of the most prominent cult icons of the contemporary electronic music scene, and this is his latest album under the name Pendant. It was written just a week after "Make Me Know You Sweet", a milestone masterpiece of current dub ambient music. Surreal, trippy, alien soundscapes.

The late 90’s was a busy time for Tokyo’s underground electronic scene for those in the know, but precious few releases ever matriculated outside its inner circles. The Shi-Ra-Nui label in particular hosted some of the most forward-thinking music of the era, including Jigen 1998 LP Blood's Finality / 狂雲求敗. Ostensibly drum and bass, Blood’s Finality dips into free jazz, Musique Concrète, and all out noise in its pursuit of artistic expression. Now widely available for the very first time on vinyl via ^ ^ (Double Circumflex), this historic piece of Japanese music history provides a key puzzle piece to a fertile time in experimental music.