MUSIC

From 1970s Hawaii on to modern day New Jersey, Don Slepian has enjoyed a reputation as one of new age’s most respected and technologically-advanced synthesists. Slepian’s 1980 landmark Sea of Bliss is frequently cited as one of new age’s greatest albums, and is one of the genre’s most legendary tape-only recordings. Two side-length Alles synthesizer tracks transport listeners to personal paradises for relaxation, rest, focus and reset.

Both a marketing firm and metaphysical mission, Valley of the Sun synthesized style and spirituality to produce an extensive catalog that at once defines and defies new age music. Founder Dick Sutphen worked with tireless devotion to spread a message he believed could change the world for the better. This 18-track overview of VOTS’ fertile 1977-1990 period includes music from Upper Astral, Robert Slap & Steve Powell, David Naegele, David Storrs, Steven Cooper, and Gloria Thomas, a 24-page booklet with extensive liner notes, J-card scans, and a hint of Sedona sand. Subliminal hypnosis likely.

The diminutive Peter Barclay was that guy in early ’90s Oakland, the eccentric with the most style, the most talent, the local magician. This self-taught musical wizard recorded at home and produced two barely-released albums, 1990’s dreamlike Acceptance and 1992’s synth pop What Kind Of World, winning over the few who heard them. But fame outside his small circle was not to be, and Barclay was lost in the late-’90s crest of the AIDS epidemic. Rediscovered for a new generation, this is queer music at its finest… Welcome to the world of Peter Barclay.

Inspired by the infinitely numbered harmonies transmitted by Vista, a benevolent being from a distant dimension, Iasos broke ground for a new age of electronic sound manipulation. His was pioneering work—done from a bohemian boat-slip home office—on some of the first commercially available synthesizers and, on stage, into the kaleidoscopic heart of psychedelic-era concert visuals. As life-affirming and attuned to spirit as Iasos' soul portraits were, prestigious psychology departments heard in them the tones humans hear at the precipice between life and death. Before ambient and New Age were so named and codified, the “Paradise Music” of Iasos (represented here by 13 selections transmitted between 1975 and 1985) brought Earth-transcriptions of a vast and galactic soundhealing to a planet much in need.

The highly anticipated debut LP from Say She She, the all female discodelic soul band that will transport you with their dreamy harmonies, catchy hooks and up tempo grooves! The band's sound is a hat tip to late 70’s girl groups with the three strong female lead voices of Piya Malik (featured in El Michels Affair, and backing singer for Chicano Batman), Nya Gazelle Brown, and Sabrina Cunningham - whose vocals soar through a set doused heavily with funky bass lines, rhythmic wah guitar, melodic synths and lilting bansuri flute lines, bursting into a seamless blend of dreamy harmonies and catchy hooks. A multicultural, multi-instrumental, collaborative melting pot, pulling sounds and styles from all corners of their record collections. The largely self-produced debut album Prism features contributions from Dap Kings Joey Crispiano and Victor Axelrod, Max Shrager (The Shacks), Bardo Martinez (Chicano Batman), Nikhil Yearwadekar (former Antibalas), Andy Bauer (Twin Shadow) and Matty McDermot (NYPMH). For Fans Of: Aasha Puthli, Grace Jones, Minnie Ripperton, The Supremes, Love Apple and Kendra Morris.

Where will you hide when the world around you is closing in? On their latest LP, GFO invites you to close your eyes and take a dive into your subconscious. Strings and horns float around from ear to ear while their three sirens explore themes of isolation, fear of the unknown, and the fabrication of self-image. It’s a soulful psychedelic journey that picks up sonically where “A Song For Paul” left off. The drums are heavier, the arrangements are more intricate, and the vocal harmonies soar over a bed of odd time signature grooves. This is an album that’s meant to be listened to in the dark. So won’t you join them? You’re not scared.....are you?

Born Yallah Gaudencia Mbidde in Kenya and raised in Uganda, MC Yallah has been involved in East Africa's rap scene since 1999. Alternating rhymes in Luganda, Luo, Kiswahili and English, her conscious, poetic and experimental style was slow to creep into Uganda's mainstream. Following a brief but necessary hiatus, she returned to the stage in 2018 with a new lease of life accepting her role as a central component of the Nyege Nyege/Hakuna Kulala family. "Yallah Beibe" is the fiery follow-up to Yallah and Berlin-based producer Debmaster's acclaimed 2019 debut "Kubali". After her tour plans were cut short as COVID-19 broke out in 2020, Yallah returned to Kampala and started work on her sophomore album at Nyege Nyege's villa. The process was more complicated this time around, developing pointedly from an initial back-and-forth with Debmaster and flourishing as beats appeared from Japanese producer Scotch Rolex and Congolese club maestro Chrisman. The finished album is an international patchwork of futuristic cyber-rap experiments fastened together by Yallah's unforgettable personality and elastic flow. More charged than its predecessor, "Yallah Beibe" is an apt soundtrack to a challenging era. Yallah is an experienced and versatile MC and channels her layered understanding of the complicated global cultural landscape into 12 stories that skate through trap, dancehall, club and industrial styles. Her authoritative guiding force is never more evident than on 'No One Seems To Bother', a collaboration with Duma's gravel-voiced singer Lord Spikeheart. Trading bars over Debmaster's slippery, bass-heavy rhythm, Yallah and Spikeheart ink an alternative East African sonic landscape, with activated lyrics ("the world is going under, no-one seems to bother") and rasping, death metal-inspired groans. "Yallah Beibe" is a call to action, a loud siren that's intended to educate the wider world of East Africa's shrouded history and bright future. Yallah's collaboration with rising star Rati Gan 'Bigbung Song' is the best evidence of this, looping Rati's Afro-Caribbean dancefloor flex and Yallah's politicized flow around a twisted bass-heavy beat from Chrisman, joining hands between the DRC, Uganda and the wider diaspora. Tracks like 'Baliwa' and the anthemic 'HERA' meanwhile completely center Yallah's signature lyrical dexterity, playing her tongue twisting raps against Scotch Rolex's pan-global foley-trap splatter. At times, the sounds feel as if they're from their own planet entirely - a fourth world that's rooted in collaboration rather than appropriation. If "Kubali" re-established Yallah as a force to be reckoned with, "Yallah Beibe" cements her status as one of the world's most exciting MCs, both on record and on the stage. There's nobody doing it quite like her.

After branching off from The Royal Jesters in the mid-'60s, Dimas Garza attempted a solo career and reinvented himself as Dimas III. Dimas recorded three singles on the Jesters' own Clown label - all tracked at Abie Epstein's studio off General McMullen in San Antonio, TX. The first was "So Funny" b/w "I Won't Love You Again," which are almost impossible-to-find records. Garza never did manage to break beyond the Bexar County limits but left a rich legacy of recordings behind for lowrider enthusiasts and obsessed collectors alike.

Killer compilation of rare R&B 45-s featuring wild and crazy guitarists. First volume of this series.

Music composed and recorded for the HBO TV series Burden Of Proof, directed by Cynthia Hill. Chuck Johnson’s evocative arrangements utilise a sound palette that includes electronic textures, chamber music and pedal steel guitar to conjure a collection of mood pieces that work both as documentary score, and the most varied and intriguing record that the artist has produced to date.

California-based composer, producer, and musician Chuck Johnson approaches his work with an ear towards finding faults and instabilities that might reveal latent beauty, with a focus on pedal steel guitar, experimental electronics, alternate tuning systems, and composing for film and television. Recordings of his work have been published by VDSQ, Thrill Jockey, Temporary Residence, Kompakt, Ghostly, and Three Lobed, among others. Johnson’s credits as a film composer include scores for the HBO film Private Violence and the popular television series Somewhere South and A Chef's Life.

A unique dialogue between the electronic textures of Saint Abdullah with the live drums of Jason Nazary (Anteloper).

Saint Abdullah consists of Tehran-born brothers Mohammad and Mehdi Mehrabani-Yeganeh, who have been exploring a diverse palette of sounds over their releases to date, including collaborations with Eomac on Nicolas Jaar’s Other People label, and Model Home on Purple Tape Pedigree, as well as their own duo album on Important Records.

Jason Nazary is a drummer and composer from Atlanta and based in Brooklyn. Fascinated by the intersection of acoustic and electronic music, Jason has been a force in New York's creative music scene for over a decade. As well as his own solo work he also co-leads a number of ensembles, among them the dystopian electro noise duo Clebs with singer Emilie Weibel, and until recently Anteloper (International Anthem), an improvising modular beat shredding duo with the much-missed Jaimie Branch.

Billie Holiday's 1956 Carnegie Hall performance, which has been called the best of Billie Holiday's later years, is reprinted on 180g heavyweight vinyl!
A live album containing the 1956 Carnegie Hall performance, which is often called the best of Billie Holiday's later years. The gig was held to promote Billy's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, interspersed with readings by Gilbert Milstein. The original was released in 1961, about two years after Billy died on July 17, 1959 at the age of 44.

Madvillainy without the raps is still a classic, with Madlib taking his place on the cover.

Parisian label boss Florent Hadjinazarian aka Hajj updates ‘90s illbient with contemporary instrumental rap, vaporwave and pop influences in a richly pungent and queasy debut album for YOUTH - tipped if yr into DJ Lostboi, Pan Daijing, Croww, Burial. Bringing on the cold rush, seven tracks, all 3:33 long, Hajj’s sound is among the most distinctive in his field on ‘No Soul, No God, No Devil, No Existence’. Influenced by Marian Dora's 2009 film 'The Angels' Melancholia', the album is perhaps best defined by the stark negative ecstasy of its highlight ‘Drag Me Into the Void’, presenting Hajj as a master of collage-like structure, in possession of a compelling grasp of atmosphere. It stands out from much of the contemporary french music we’re aware of for its oblique rejection of club muscularity in favour of more unusual, weightless pressure and suggestively gestural arrangements. That’s not to say it’s not ripe for certain moments in the club, it just doesn’t give them readily. Beginning like Biosphere doing dankest road rap with DJ Lostboi (anyone checked that Nedarb cut lurking on Æ’s Bandcamp purchase list yet?) in ‘Our Lady of Darkness’, he holds an immaculately dark-but-lush appeal from the K-hole nightmare of ‘Loosing U 4 Ever’ to the cosmic plangency of ‘Vox Tenebrae’, meting out discomfiting intro rap like a fantasy Croww x Ronce in ‘Heaven’s Calamity’, and like Spectre x Pan Daijing in ‘Do U Remember Bein Born’, while his ear for saliva-inducing textures comes to fruition on the voyeuristic vortex of ‘Burning Illusions’, perfectly distilling the cold rush on an original mix of the glorious ‘Drag Me Into the Void’. Sickest thing for a while on YOUTH for our $$.

Elle Andrews & Jon K’s MAL imprint racks up a heavy cross-section of dancehall and downbeat-adjacent styles and patterns by friends and fam, clad in artwork by Yoshi Yubai of the legendary Re Search publications and featuring exclusive cuts from Equiknoxx’ Bobby Blackbird, Joe Cotch, Herron, DJ Ojo, Malvern Brume and more. First of two parts! ’Pressure’ is MAL’s rude resistance to an increasingly tense socio-political climate. Finding strength in collaboration, it organises a phalanx of contemporary club pioneers, programmers, dynamos and disruptors under a clarion call to dance away our worries. Shoulder-to-shoulder, Equiknoxx’s Bobby Blackbird does aerobic mystic dancehall beside the dread tang of London ringleader Joe Cotch, and Manchester g Herron squashes beatdown into acid dub squirm next to Malvern Brume’s haunted warehouse steppers, each intersecting a mutual, autonomous zone of interest oblivious to borders. Bobby Blackbird’s ‘Shanique is 5 Mins Away’ firmly roots the session in naturally mutant Jamaican disciplines key to the label, which delineates most explicitly between the darkside 2-step echo chamber ricochet of DJ Ojo’s ‘Grape Storming’ and Grischerr & Jules’ cranky heave in ‘Jettison’, and the more abstract dubwise suspension of ‘Night Ascent’ by Zaheer Gulamhusein (Xvarr/Waswaas) as The Sigil Oblique. Crudely distorted echoes of nyabinghi and talking drum rituals feature in Malvern Brume’s ‘Ebb’, a brilliantly unexpected follow-up to the supine grog of his ‘Body Traffic’ LP, while closer to the label’s spiritual home in Manchester, Herron keeps it strictly stripped on the brittle, dread acid dub of ‘Reducer’, and Greek/Manc hero Duster Valentine supplies the dadaist antidote to an intensifying hypernormality of logic with the sardonic vignette ‘Cloonies’ that keeps the session open-ended and all of us on tenterhooks for Vol.2.

Having made his mark on these pages over the last few years with appearances as part of Japan’s cult entities Goat and YPY, Koshiro Hino’s turn last year as KAKUHAN took things to a whole other level with an album that felt like some alchemical mix of elements borrowed from Autechre, Photek, Arthur Russell and Mica Levi - a complete stylistic futureshock that worked as well in the club as it did fuelling extended flights of the imagination. For 2023, Hino takes us into a completely different headspace, assembling a cast of 11 players - the mighty Joe Talia and KAKUHAN’s other half Yuki Nakagawa among them - for a suite of untamed field recordings, clanging percussion, brass and synthesis that are about as far removed from the diaristic ambient de jour as you could possibly imagine. Instead, the ensemble conjure vibrant sound ecologies teeming with detail, mirroring the natural world and communal traditions to form shapeshifting, organismic soundworlds. ‘Geist II’ was written for 20 speakers, referencing François Bayle's acousmatic music and David Tudor's electro-acoustic environments. It paints a richly detailed scene of a nocturnal rainforest, replete with avian hoots and a skin-crawling patina of insectoid chatter that moves around the soundfield, stealthily growing in density with a more “musical” presence of super low end drone and drums converging form the peripheries to a ritualistic climax. In the second part, focus shifts to remarkably pure percussion-like tropical rain, invaded by swarms of scuttling and winged invertebrates that give way to a water music-like polymetric slosh, resolving to ringing tones and more mellifluous gestures that hark back to GRM’s most poetic, romantic urges. It’s a deeply psychedelic experience that harmonises tiny electronic fluctuations with bird calls and scraped, resonant drones that phase in-and-out of the mix. It's sound you can practically chew, and another crucial despatch from the contemporary Japanese avant-garde

Yeah the pace with this lot is relentless and the vibes are loose as fuck, this time finding Michael J Blood & Sockethead in duo mode, feeding screwed street soul and emotional jams into the blunted, early-hours. This is actually their debut merger, following trio actions with Rat Heart on a couple of ace ‘True’ volumes in recent years. On ‘Eating Late’ MJB pulls Sockethead away from his wildest inclinations and into a deliriously stoned dimension, where gloopy synths and restless subs tumble in and out of time, ample levels of smudged, nostalgic romance included. Plotted for slow-release thru the night, the album starts with bleary-eyed immersion therapy ‘aaa(a)’ on a sort a tip between classic Move D/Reagenz and some Frictional slow jam, before nimbly proceeding into R&G sampler ‘Try to Keep’ and the delicately jazzy deep house ‘Blown Out’. The tart darkwave of ‘Breathe Properly’ and Sockethead’s peal on ‘Heat Of U’ are perhaps best enjoyed like Wambsgans eating a songbird, napkin over the noggin, while echoes of Gescom’s fractal Disengage flex on ‘Recto-Verso’ and ‘Swamptrix’ give up one of the most satisfying sessions in either artist’s run over the last few years. Collect them all eh?

Tenderly propelling and full of haunting melodies: Studio Mule re-issues Sakura Tsuruta’s so far digital only, self-released debut album “c / o” from november 2022. An evocative first long player by Tokyo based artist, who was trained in classical piano during childhood, played with brass instruments, studied music production, and is today active as a composer, live performer, and versatile dj. With “c / o” she expressed her personal history in a fluid, around 43-minute long light flooded, yet dark-ish musical vision. eight profoundly composed tracks, melding complex rhythms with emotional airs, tripping arpeggios, and ghostly sounds, slightly influenced by some of her fa-vorite artist like björk, holly herndon, or kaitlyn aurelia smith. “c / o is a love letter for the experiences, people, and memories i had in the last two years that i spent producing this album. i also like that the letter “c” looks like an incomplete circle, whereas the letter “o” is a full circle.

Anthony Naples grounds his sound in more elemental and emotional components with expansive effect on a sublime 5th album certain to stoke hearts of Echospace, Ulrich Schnauss, and The Orb. Part responsible in the past decade for bringing a gauzier feel to US club music with his 12”s for Mister Saturday Night Records, TTT, and his Proibito and ANS labels, Naples grasp of loose but insistent house templates were instrumental in reshaping perceptions of the sound toward lo-fi, indie-, and ambient musics alongside peers such as Huerco S. ‘orbs’ , as the title implies, is a logical step farther into lush sentiments of ambient music in the long, glistening contrails of The Orb and their early ‘90s ilk. It smudges cues from new age, dubby, and shoegazing strains of interest into a satisfyingly weightless and slightly grubby trip where one can practically feel finger grease in the grooves and strings and the day’s sun on its neck. The salted soul lope of ’Moto Verse’ and chiming, fuzzed-out keys of ‘Orb Two’ channel Alex Paterson & Thomas Fehlmann via the eternal charms of N.o.W., before it really begins to melt outwards in ‘Morph’ and along proper lines of shoegaze melancholy in the utterly gorgeous, thrumming baseline and mind wipe chords to ’Silas’. Shimmers of Ulrich Schnauss abound on ‘gem’, and leave us heart-in-mouth like Echospace’s precious works with Modern Love on ‘Ackee’, where he takes on a dub-house lilt that carries thru the slow-disco of ‘Scars’ and the album’s most club-ready treat ’Strobe’, before signing off with the perfectly humble yet idyllic tones of ‘Tito’ and ‘Unknow’.

Eeeeeesh, Shinichi Atobe’s sixth album for DDS, another deployment of effortless and entirely inimitable club classics that connect the dots between effervescent dub house, deep techno and swirling beatdown, selected and compiled from a package of new productions sent from Japan with nothing but cryptic track titles for guidance. Love of Plastic - we talking aesthetic here pal? bit like comme de garçons' genius, subversive amplification of synthetics in perfume? Something like Mark Fell’s assertion that “House music is best when it does not aim to copy ‘real’ music”? Impossible to tell - and honestly part of the thrill is in not really fully grasping Atobe’s praxis. What we can say is that with every album there’s a shift - sometimes barely perceptible - in spirit and focus. On this one everything’s gone a bit heavier - bit deeper - once again refracted through Rashad Becker’s mastering prism. You really could be listening to music recorded decades, years or a few weeks ago - we’ll probably never know. But with the simplicity comes a kind of impenetrable code too. That fleeting diva vocal sample 4 minutes into 'Love of plastic 6’ - what’s it doing there? why does it work so well? Perhaps the reason Shinichi’s music resonates with so many is the impregnable sense of optimism buried in his DNA - there’s a breeze of warm air that takes over whenever his music is played, a promise of better days, blue skies, tingling skin, sultry evenings - all that hammy stuff. But also, entirely undeniable. Play this one and tell us you don’t feel it? Spring’s almost in the air.

sound of the drizzle hitting the skylight, summer bonfire at la caillère, chimes in le bono’s cinerary garden, pat patrol’s phone beep beep, a jogger, a tap, patrick’s bees, the oven before cooking the pizza, a regional express train, a hst, a belt sander…

Sacramento, CA duo Blank Gloss’s third album, Cornered, is an exquisite statement of pop ambient starkness, an album that oscillates between lush beauty and spare melancholy. It follows from their 2021 debut for Kompakt, Melt, an album that saw Morgan Fox (piano, synths) and Patrick Hills (guitar) aligned, loosely, with the cosmic pastorale of the ‘ambient Americana’ movement. Cornered feels like a significant step forward, though – by peeling back the layers of their music, they’ve revealed both its restful core and its solemn gravitas. It is unendingly lovely, but with something disquieting at its centre. Cornered was recorded quickly, over two days in December 2020. There’s nothing rushed or haphazard about the album, though; everything has its place, with each sonic element contributing profoundly to these nine miniature dioramas. It signals change, quietly but perceptibly, through the way the duo sculpts their material, building out of loose improvisations that morphed into songs. While there was no plan in mind when Blank Gloss settled into the studio, Fox recalls that “right away we realised that things were sounding and feeling a bit different than any of the sessions we had previously.” That difference can be heard in the increased amount of space Blank Gloss gift to their sound sources. Some of the most moving moments on Cornered come when Fox and Hills strip everything back – see, for example, “Crossing”, which sets pensive piano across a shyly humming drone and quiet arcs of guitar, recalling the driftworks of Roger Eno. Curiously, the album’s distinctive shape and mood develops, at least in part, from a change in instrumentation, with Hills using a MIDI pick-up on his guitar. “This resulted in making things happen a lot quicker,” Fox says. “It also helped create what I think is a bit more sombre, dark feeling to some of the songs.” Elsewhere, on songs like “Salt”, the piano tussles with flecks of guitar, single tones sent out to mingle with the stars, like Morricone at 16 RPM, while Cornered’s centrepiece, the eleven-minute “No Appetite”, lets long arcs of electronic texture breathe and sigh, tangling together in a cat’s cradle of bliss. Throughout, it feels as though the music is blossoming as you hear it, like watching time-lapse footage of flora in bloom. But perhaps the most seductive thing about Cornered is the sense you get, listening, that the music was something unexpected, a visitation. “It almost felt like we weren’t dictating where the music went and how it sounded,” Fox agrees. “We were just there in a room together in December and these sounds were happening, and we were lucky enough to be recording the process.”

Time bends for Imaginary Softwoods, the solo guise of producer, songwriter, and synthesist John Elliott. Though he’s working on new recordings daily, Elliott’s process for the construction of his albums moves at a much different interval, stretching out over months of considerate listening, revision, and waiting patiently for the right combinations and clashes of elemental forces to materialise on their own. The Notional Pastures of Imaginary Softwoods continues Elliott’s practice of zeroing in on what he wants to say with an album over the course of countless sessions that span multiple years, this time paying even more attention to locating the emotional through-line that connects the various pieces. The eleven-piece album vibrates at a low, unbroken cycle through all of its articulations. The bubbling neon dots of “North of Roswell,” double vision stumble of “Mr. Big Volume,” underwater music box trickle of “Portable Void,” and clear headed Arctic daybreak drones of “Diagram of the Universe” are all linked by a gentle, fluid hum. The brief moments of anxiety and long stretches of calm both feed back into the same center of gravity, becoming conjoined reflections of one another as they cycle through. After bending to find this specific universal frequency, time evaporates altogether, and longer zones like the glimmering “Almond Branch” become indistinguishable from Elliott’s signature miniatures, some of which stick around for less than a minute. The Notional Pastures of Imaginary Softwoods is a document of the universe as we comprehend it, designed to vanish as soon as it is felt.

Another lost musical treasure unearthed by the Everland-YU imprint! Seven years have passed since this material landed in our hands and we counted the days since we could give it the justice it deserves. Fully licensed and remastered from original master tapes, this chronologically arranged LP is a collection of previously unreleased radio recordings all of which have one thing in common: the unmistakably original musical ideas and vocal performances of Marin Škrgatić (1950-2014). Marin was a Croatian prog-rock pioneer, who as a result of a series of unfortunate circumstances, did not receive much recognition in the dawn of the Yugoslavian prog-rock era. In their prime, his groups were an active and well-acknowledged underground phenomenon, filling stadiums and music halls all over Yugoslavia. This material represents some of the first attempts to record complex progressive rock arrangements in Yugoslavia – sourcing heavily from local folk music, jazz, and classical influences. Interestingly enough, most of the songs presented here were dismissed as being too progressive at that time - by the largest Yugoslavian record company Jugoton. This gatefold LP includes thus far unpublished photos and detailed liner notes about the evolution of Marin’s groups resulting from interviews with former band members with whom we’ve uncovered some of the mysteries of Yugo-prog-rock’s annals.