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Hardly anyone outside Ethiopia seems to know Hailu Mergia & The Walias Band “Tezeta” exists. Within Ethiopia this tape has been impossible to find for decades. That’s about to change with this release, which makes available this epochal recording on LP, CD and Digital formats for the first time. From their genesis as members of the Venus club in-house band in the early 70s, Hailu Mergia and the Walias Band were at the forefront of the musical revolution during an era where modern instruments and foreign styles superseded the traditional fare to become the staple sound of Ethiopia. No one would argue that the Walias were the trailblazing powerhouse of modern Ethiopian music. They were the first band to form independently without affiliation to a theatre house, a club or a hotel; unprecedented and risky as they had to raise all funding for expenses by themselves including buying equipment. They were the first to release full instrumental albums, considered to be commercially unviable at the time. They opened their own recording studio, with band members Melake Gebre and Mahmoud Aman doubling as technical buffs during sessions. They were also the first independent band to tour abroad. In short, they were the pioneers every band tried to emulate; some more successfully than others. Odds are, any Ethiopian over the age of 35 who had access to TV or radio by the early 90s, will instantly recognize the sound of Walias. What is not a given is, how many would actually identify the band itself. Barely a day went by without hearing the Walias either in the background on radio or as an accompaniment to various programs on TV. This Tezeta album is the band’s second recording, released in 1975. Sourced by Awesome Tapes From Africa and expertly remastered by Jessica Thompson, its unique and funky renditions of standards and popular songs of the day are so quintessentially Walias, flavorful and evocative. Hailu’s melodic organ, unashamedly front and center in every track, makes even the complex pieces accessible. Profoundly engaging; it’s an immersive trip down memory lane for those of us getting reacquainted with it, while also an enthralling and gratifying experience for fresh ears. (text by Tessema Tadele)
Awa Poulo is a singer of Peulh origin from Dilly commune, Mali, near the border with Mauritania. Largely pastoral and often nomadic, Peulh- (or Fula-)speaking peoples are found from Senegal to Ethiopia but predominate in the Sahel region of West Africa. Awesome Tapes From Africa is proud to release Poulo’s newest recording of highly virtuosic folk-pop, fresh from the studio, broadcasting her vision of Peulh music beyond the grazing grounds and central markets of her remote home region in southwestern Mali.
It’s not very common to find a female singer performing publicly among the Peulh. But Poulo’s mother’s co-wife is Inna Baba Coulibaly, who is a celebrated singer most Malian music fans know. Coulibaly herself was brought into music by forces outside her control when a regional music contest required an entry from her village and she was chosen to be a singer. So, set in motion by a surprising series of events, young Poulo’s entree into the music world was auspicious as she gained popularity across the region. After several locally released tapes and CDs, this record is Poulo’s first internationally-distributed record.
On Poulo Warali, she and her band combine the hallmarks of Peulh music―warm flute floating over cross-rhythmic n’goni (lute) riffs and resonant calabash gourd hand percussion―with broader Malian sounds like lightly-distorted guitar and a heavier, rollicking inertia. Shape-shifting layers of rhythm and woody overtones match Poulo’s commanding voice in a jocular yet deliberate dance.
This is a relatively rare example of Malian Peulh music played in a modern, cosmopolitan context, reflecting the mixed society of Dilly, where Bambara, Soninke and Peulh-speaking people live among each other.
Poulo’s conscious lyrics about community concerns speak to the distinctive identity of her broadly-flung people. While Peulh represents less than 10% of Mali’s melting pot of languages, the dynamic music here powerfully resonates well beyond the linguistic borders.
Superb, revered version-excursion in the grand tradition of Tempo Explosion. Willie Williams kicks off imperiously, on a classic Rhythm & Sound rhythm adroitly evoking Niney’s way with horns. Sugar and Tikkiman take a turn, besides Berlin faces like Cotton and Rod Of Iron. No one puts a foot wrong. More than twenty years ago now, this LP was cut ‘hot’, for maximum dynamic range, and deadly bass. With all copies since then derived from the same cut, many turntable set-ups may experience slight skipping at moments, especially during side 2. In addition, there are very occasional, scattered pops and crackles; for vinyl lovers nothing out-of-the-ordinary.
True to form, Andrea Borghi works directly with VHS tapes and the apparatus that plays them, manipulating the exposed mechanisms with the care and curiosity of a dedicated scientist. Drawing from these manual manipulations, Borghi's experiments combine mechanical sounds with mangled tape samples to inspire a mechanised nostalgia inseparably hybridised with human trace. Unlike others who work with old film, he resists the eerie to focus on the intricate crunch and buzz, an electro-acoustic soundscape tangentially related to the field recordings. By highlighting the precise moment that recorded media becomes perceived, a restless, shifting mass of both familiar and unrecognisable sounds results in a unique form of otic chiaroscuro. The result is a complication of inside and outside sounds: distant, gesturing snippets of semi-remembered, half-imagined films compete with TV cathode burn, tracking stutters, mechanical interference, and vérité whirrs and clicks that could only come from that original reproducer of dreams, the VHS player. With Palsecam Borghi gives dignity to an often maligned format, in an engaging mélange that represents the recovery of an object discarded as an objet d'art. Composed & recorded by Andrea Borghi. VHS recorder, contact microphones, computer. APO 17 | Published by Aposiopèse. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Cut By Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin Andrea Borghi (1974 Pietrasanta, Lucca) is a sound artist and electro-acoustic composer. His work focuses on the relationship between sound and matter. His practice is based on oriented and multidisciplinary research processes, and includes sculptural objects, installations, obsolete media and electronics. In the series named “Discomateria” he resorts to the use of glass, resin, metal and, more recently, marble as primary substrate for the production of sounds with a growing body of graphic/sculptural works. Tactility is something he has been exploring in his music over the course of his entire career, creating organic auditory experiences for the listeners.
Mala Fama is a Kichwa sound artist from Ibarra, Ecuador. His work is a testament to inhabiting—and creating—multiple worlds at once, while being rooted in Indigenous pride and power. Jichushka is a Kichwa word translating to “Lonely/Abandoned,” marking grief as a pathway to liberation. The 11-track album features the cultural specificities of northern Ecuador's Indigenous communities while also traversing boundless electronic experimentation, and was mastered by Nicola Cruz. Lead single "Mortaja II" is a retextured adaptation of Kichwa funeral music, accompanied by a music video (release date October 21st) that reflects the track’s sacred circularity through movement and land-based ritual. The video was shot in Ibarra, Ecuador by directors Rony Albuja and Hilda Males. Mala Fama wrote and recorded the album between 2016-2022, through ongoing home studio sessions that facilitated close collaboration with a network of artists of musical lineages from the Andean region such as marimba, vallenato, and cumbia– including Afro-Ecuadorian group Duo Anjoa, vocalist Catalina Ortiz hailing from coastal Esmeraldas, Ibarra-based multi-instrumentalist Luis Lema, and Quixosis, a leader of Quito’s underground vanguard. The majority of Jichushka was composed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting a complete revision of a previously-written album to mirror unexpected shifts, and new beginnings. The album is world-making through peaceful, ambient compositions as much as heavy sequencing, inviting melancholic remembrances of times and spaces that no longer exist, but that make way for creation.
Most of us can agree that music is not a competition. However, the National Championship for Norwegian Folk Music and Dance (Landskappleiken) has been an important annual event since it´s inception in 1896. In 2025, the jury deemed Helga Myhr to be Norway’s finest Hardanger fiddle player, after performing tunes from her native valley Hallingdal. Since she released her solo debut “Natten veller seg ut” in 2019, Myhr has established herself as a flexible musician; at home in contemporary and improvised settings (Dei Kjenslevare, duo with Tanja Orning or in collaboration with Mats Gustafsson), as well as in a myriad of different expressions rooted in various Norwegian traditions. “Slåttespel” offers the first possibility of hearing Myhr exclusively playing traditional tunes from Hallingdal; the music she grew up playing, and that she has been working with for all her musical life.
Egyptian oud player and composer Aly Eissa has become a key figure in Cairo’s experimental music scene, performing solo and as part of The Handover. Mentored by composer Abdo Dagher and oud master Hazem Shahin, Eissa draws on Egyptian classical and folk traditions for ‘Eggshells’. The expansive title piece occupies much of the album and features Eissa alone on oud, before moving into ‘Sukr At-taganni’, where his playing accompanies a recitation of poetry by thirteenth-century Arab poet Baha’ al-Din Zuhayr. Virtuosic, intricate and remarkably intimate.
“Ruins are the style of our future cities, future cities are themselves ruins.” - Izosaki Arata A Note From Lawrence English Nostalgia is not an ideology, though in this moment, we could be mistaken for thinking it might be just that. Over the past years, the idea of nostalgia has been filtered through various political and technological lenses and has become a tool used for forgetting, rather than remembering. Instead of embracing histories’ complexities and inconsistencies, this version of nostalgia seeks only singular recollection. This contemporary phenomenon of nostalgia has become a methodology at best, and a weapon at worst, used to erode the past and project forward a collapsed and unimaginably sanitised version of things, places, and ways of being from former times. It’s this projection that sees it playing a mounting role in a social pathology associated with reducing the imagined possibilities of future. The Rest Is My Ghost is a record that interrogates the manifestations of this reductive futuring and celebrates those that have tried (and failed), and those who continue to push back against decayed and revisionist positions. It’s a record that considers the weaponisation of nostalgia for the purposes of cloaking possible futures. In recent times, I’ve proposed a term for this weaponised use of nostalgia, something I have called Acid Nostalgia. I offer it as a shorthand to describe the de-contouring of the future through a corrosive fixation on a flatten rendering of the preceding times. It is, in part, a certain type of lazy cultural scripting where tropes of the past are presented in the absolute, as empty pictorials; photocopies without any original from which to draw actual meaning, or useful detail. Acid Nostalgia describes an increasingly common political projection of nostalgia that exists without any subjective connection to the memory surrounding and contained within it. Like acid poured onto a surface, this use of nostalgia seeks to erodes and smooth out the complexity and texture of lived connection and longing, which has until recently guided contemplations of nostalgia. Acid Nostalgia instead erases the texture of histories and de-contours the past, and in doing so dematerialises the horizon of possibility, which by its very nature marks the beginning point for any (and all) imaginable futures. Acid Nostalgia is a dreamless screen, where uncertainty, restlessness and aspiration are subjected to corrosion, breaking down and neutralising the wellspring of futures which are birthed from within the ambiguously charged, complex and at times chaotic atmospheres of the present. The Rest Is My Ghost is not however some universal reading of these things and happenings. Rather it draws its breath from a very personal pathway carved through my own fraught experiences of nostalgia and framed through a disparate collage of chance encounters, situations, places and provocations. It takes oblique notes from civic and architectural references such as Japan’s Metabolist movement, Hong Kong’s ‘one line sky’ and Los Angeles’s vanished Sodium Vapour lights. It interpolates texts – factual and fictional – by authors such as Franco Berardi, Kate Crawford, JG Ballard, Katsuhiro Otomo, Mark Fisher and Alexei Yurchak who have each so wonderfully sought to rupture the familiarity of now, and push us towards other ways of imaging ourselves, our surroundings and our very ways of being in this world. I also owe a debt of thanks to Adam Curtis in helping launch what has become this edition. It was his provocation, in a conversation we shared about an overwhelming and profound sense of uncertainty around being able to predict the immediate future and how to respond to that, which sparked the earliest inklings of this edition. The Rest Is My Ghost is ultimately a record about the promise of constructions and connections to come, material, social and political. It's a record that accepts the fragility of failure as a source of ultimate potential, and a position from which the deepest freedom of imagination might be sought and summoned forth to conjure even the most unimaginable, (but) possible futures.
Somewhere in the Wind is the third record that Loren Connors and I have made together. Of the three, it’s the first that consists exclusively of electric guitar duos and it’s the first that was recorded live. To me it feels very much like a live record; this music happened in crowded rooms in Brooklyn on two dates in 2025 and there’s an urgency to connect with others and a pleasure in doing so that can be heard on both of these tracks. On the first of our duo records (Arborvitae, 2003) I primarily play piano, and on the second (Evening Air, 2024) we switch off on piano and guitar. Both of those albums bespeak the privacy of the recording studio, where time is suspended and one can explore the quietest of sounds. By contrast, Somewhere in the Wind is the noisiest, most raucous and most free of our duo records. It’s the sound of us taking it to the stage. I became a fan of Loren’s playing from the moment that I first heard it, after happening upon a beat-up copy of In Pittsburgh circa 1992 in a used bin in the Dr. Wax record store in Chicago where my then-bandmate Bundy K. Brown worked. Everyone has taken a chance on a record because it looked interesting and wouldn’t set you back too much. In that regard In Pittsburgh was the find of a lifetime. I had just switched from playing in a postpunk power trio (Bastro) to making mostly drummerless respect-your-neighbors music (Gastr del Sol), and Loren’s pacing and touch and his lovely, unaffected compositions had me from the first listen. Not long after that, Jim O’Rourke and I reissued In Pittsburgh on our Dexter’s Cigar label, and I fondly remember first meeting Loren in New York’s Grand Central Station—so glamorous for this country mouse—and taking the train upstate with him where he shared a bill with Gastr del Sol. During soundcheck, Jim, Loren, and I played together for a bit and Loren’s approach to the instrument was something that one could instantly sink into, the kind of situation where there are no mistakes. I still feel that when we play together.
*Warehouse find!* In Italy, the genre of documentary film has represented a particularly fertile field for a critical review of the musical contribution to cinema at least since as early as the 1950s. The Italian public television RAI used to broadcast disturbing paranoiac dramas, weird documentaries on the bottom of the sea and indigestible so-called “educational” movies. ESP was a television series produced by Rai in 1973, directed by Daniele D'Anza, and aired from Sunday, May 27 1973 to Sunday, June 17, 1973 on the National Program. It was centered around Extra Sensory perception and paranormal psychic phenomena, and the music was made our beloved Maestro and personal hero Egisto Macchi. Compositions are often spooky and tense, with dark instrumentation and a wonderful ear for an odd tuning or unusual phrasing. There is no doubt that Macchi’s musical contribution is one of the most significant in the panorama of Italian documentary production, in both qualitative and quantita- tive terms. It would nevertheless be arduous to trace a complete picture of his activity in this field, for this would involve discussing several films which no longer exist and, according to records drawn up by Macchi himself, the number of his documentary film scores is well over a thousand. Egisto Macchi, often remembered as a member of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, the historic Italian improvising collective (that also included Franco Evangelisti and Ennio Morricone, among others), was a major figure within the contemporary music field from the fifties to the eighties. The life path of Egisto Macchi seemed to be devoted to the multiplicity of aesthetic choices and musical expressions. While tracing his life and work, one notices an interesting duality based both on a very inclusive approach towards all kind of expressive needs and full control of the level of communication.
In the final month of 2024, Meitei arrived in Beppu, a city long steeped in vapor, myth, and mineral memory. Invited to create onsen ambient music commemorating Beppu’s 100th anniversary, he immersed himself in the city’s geothermal psychogeography, where sound rises from the ground and time clings to mist.
Known for his Lost Japan (Shitsu-nihon) works, which channel forgotten eras into flickering auditory relics, Meitei took residence in the warehouse of Yamada Bessou, a century-old inn perched by the bay. Over two weeks, he listened intently to steam, to stone, to the atmosphere itself. The resulting work, Sen’nyū, traces the inner spirit of onsen culture. Like water finding its path, the music emerged with quiet inevitability, shaped by Meitei’s synesthetic sensibility and deep attunement to place.
Equipped with a microphone, he wandered Beppu’s sacred sites: Takegawara Onsen, Bouzu Jigoku, Hebin-yu, and the private baths of Yamada Bessou. There, he captured the breath of the springs, bubbling mud, hissing vents, wind against bamboo, and the murmurs of daily visitors. These field recordings became the sonic bedrock of Sen’nyū, an act of deep listening that attempts to render even the rising mist and shifting heat into sound.
Unfolding as a single, continuous piece, Sen’nyū drifts like fog through sulfur and stone. It traverses the veiled madness of Bouzu Jigoku, the spectral resonance of Yamada Bessou’s inner bath, and the hushed voices of Takegawara Onsen. It is a gesture of quiet reverence, for water’s patience, the land’s memory, and the hands that have bathed here for generations.
Where Meitei’s earlier works conveyed his personal impression of a fading Japan, Sen’nyū is grounded in tactile presence, music not imagined but encountered. Here, his practice moves closer to the spirit of kankyō ongaku, environmental music born from place, shaped by it, and inseparable from it.
As part of the project, Meitei conceived a two-day public sound installation inside Takegawara Onsen, culminating in a live performance. Bathers soaked in mineral-rich waters while submerged in sound, an embodied ritual of place, body, and listening.
Sen’nyū marks Meitei’s first full-length work centered entirely on onsen and opens a new chapter of his Lost Japan project under the expanded title 失日本百景 (One Hundred Lost Views of Japan), a series exploring extant sites of longing still quietly breathing within contemporary life. The album will be accompanied by Meitei’s first photo book, a visual document of his time in Beppu. A new layer is added to the world he has, until now, built only through sound.
Sen’nyū continues Meitei’s devotion to Japan as subject, while opening new terrain: both ritual and remembrance, an immersion into the mineral soul of Beppu.
In Arc, Yorkshire-born artist Kirk Barley explores alternative tunings and off-grid sequencing to shape fluid rhythmic and melodic systems that unfold into rich harmonic forms. Kirk’s fourth album under his own name and debut for Marionette continues his exploration of just intonation through a sparse but finely detailed palette of organic atmospheres, metallic shimmer and off-kilter rhythms. Across the record, glassy pads, gamelan metallophones, clarinet and guitar dissolve into fluid, dreamlike forms, suggesting vast coastal landscapes, charged air and the stillness that follows turbulence. Drawing on the feel of sample-based hip-hop, the minimalism of Terry Riley and Jon Hassell, as well as dub techno and post-rock, Kirk brings together a range of influences in a sound that feels both intimate and expansive. After first hearing Terry Riley’s Shri Camel as a teenager, he became captivated by just intonation and microtuning, inspirations that have shaped his work ever since, from his earliest Bambooman releases to the present solo works and as Church Andrews & Matt Davies. Arc is his first record to be fully rooted in alternative tunings from start to finish. Longtime friend and collaborator Matt Davies appears on Ion, Sundry, Ecstatic and Fret (Haar), where his finely detailed, ASMR-like muted percussion deepens the dialogue between tactile acoustic sound and Kirk’s luminous electronic palette.
Straight to the point: Indian classical music is, and will always be, the most complete music in the world. There is Indian classical music that suits all seasons, all times of day, all moods, and all emotions. Holmlia, on the southern side of Oslo, is honored to host one of the most skilled performers of Indian classical music in Europe: Sudeshna Bhattacharya. Sudeshna began learning the art of playing the sarod from her father, Sri Krishna Mohan Bhattacharya, who himself was a student of Pandit Radhika Mohan Maitra. She grew up in a home where Indian classical music was deeply rooted, and at the age of four, she started playing. Her grandfather had studied with Ustad Ameer Khan Sarodia from the Senia Vinkaar Gharana, a name and lineage that left a strong imprint on her musical heritage. At the age of eight, Sudeshna began formal training under the renowned master Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. In 2003, she was invited by the French Ministry of Culture to France, where she spent a decade giving concerts both domestically and internationally, conducting courses and workshops, recording music, and participating in cultural celebrations and events. In 2013, Sudeshna moved to Norway, where she has lectured master’s students at the Norwegian Academy of Music and continued her life’s work as a performer, composer, teacher, and recording artist. She plays the sarod. The finest instrument there is?! The sarod, which together with the sitar stands as one of the most revered and well-known carriers of sound in Hindustani tonality, has a unique essence. Unlike the sitar, whose frets guide notes with strict discipline, the sarod embodies naked freedom – a fretless form requiring masterful handling with the left hand. When playing the sarod, the strings are struck with a plectrum made of coconut shell, a touch of nature's own design. Notes are created as the player presses their nails against a cold, gleaming steel fingerboard with remarkable precision. In this humble interplay between hand, nail, and string lies a profound breath, a tone reflecting the eternal itself. Joining her on this album is Mosin Kawa. He was born in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, on May 3, 1992. At the age of three, he began learning tabla under the guidance of his father, Ustad Shabbir Ahmed. While continuing to learn from his father, Mosin also sought inspiration and new compositions from great masters such as Ustad Munshi Ahmed, Ustad Hidayat Khan, and Ustad Yusuf Khan. At the age of eight, Mosin performed at the Saptak Festival in Ahmedabad with a qawwali group. From then on, he began performing as a tabla soloist across different parts of India. At 18, Mosin travelled to Paris, France, with his older brother Shahid Hussain Kawa, an accomplished santoor player. Together, they performed music across several European countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Italy, spreading the musical heritage of Rajasthan to wider circles. About the title: As Sudeshna says: Mohini is the feminine version of Krishna and symbolizes feminine strength – not in war, but in peace, love, and harmony. This goddess could definitely step forward a bit more in the times ahead, thank you very much! Or, she is already present; one just needs to read a book or two or watch an informational film to realize that there’s much to learn from her and the various gods worshipped around the world. They are often on to something, and there’s no reason not to emulate them! Isn’t it strange that (at least in the Western world), it’s entirely acceptable to “look up to” athletes, actors, and capitalists, while many feel embarrassed to acknowledge a spiritually sound character or two? But yes, Indian music is and will remain the best. Indian classical music, this ancient source of resonant wisdom and spiritual beauty, has two branches that each, in their own way, embrace the mystical in the human spirit: Hindustani and Carnatic music. Sudeshna, this art’s faithful steward, enters the Hindustani tradition with a spirit so profound and an interpretation so masterful that it feels as if the music itself speaks through her as its vessel. Hindustani music is an art form that aims to reach the heart's roots, a painting of the nine primary emotions – the states of being that shape our lives: the burning fire of erotic love, the radiant joy of undisturbed happiness, the depth of empathy that brings solace to another, the power that rises like a spring flood of energy, heroism breaking through like a star in the night, fear rushing through one’s core, disgust pulling one away from what repels, awe lifting the soul towards the divine, and harmony, the gentle sense of everything in its rightful place. Each of these resonant tones acts as a medicine for the body and mind, reflecting the cosmos itself in every note and interval. In Hindustani music, notes belong to their proper time slots. Each piece, each raga, is tied to a certain time of day or a season. Like the morning light reflecting in the dew or the autumn wind sweeping over leaf-heavy hills, music must follow nature's rhythms to be whole. Before the mighty strikes of percussion enter, each raga opens with a long and exploratory alap, where the notes search outward like roots seeking water – a journey into the soul’s deepest darkness and brightest clarity. And even more beautiful, even deeper, is the play of the 22 microtones – the small, airy rising and falling tones that reveal a world beyond the West’s familiar scales, a wholeness that opens the door to a different, eternal tonal universe. Hindustani music is not just a listening experience; it is a revelation – a humble prayer, a step toward the heavens, and a resonance between earth and eternity. May more open their eyes and ears to this wondrous, deepening art!
Zulu Guitar's Pioneering Tricksters
But for this compilation of rescued songs masterfully restored from rare 78 rpm shellacs, few could imagine the diversely beautiful roots of Zulu Guitar Music emerging during the period 1950 – 1965. Story-tellers and master musicians appropriate outlaw personae, re-purpose country and western, Hawaiian and other styles, to stretch and challenge our notion of “the Zulu guitar”.
Twenty-five songs (18 on vinyl) plunge us into the depths of the migrant experience. Translations in the liner notes offer us glimpses of pugnacity, melancholy and heartache, all coloured by the paternalism that circumscribed the singers’ apartheid-dominated lives.
The early mbaqanga undertow in many of the songs subverts the wanderlust of Country and Western music into a fugitivity burdened by nostalgia. Something irretrievable has been lost, prompting a blending of ideas and cultures to make sense through thankless acts of musical divination. Inadvertently they have been thrust into the role of the antihero, where outwitting competition for lovers is as important as evading the Black Jacks (apartheid’s municipal cops) and their informants.
Considering the politically repressive period that this music emerges from, we can surmise that the specificity in the storytelling went a long way towards evading censure. But even when words are absent, there is a narrative arc suggested by the musical expression.
With most of the master tapes wilfully destroyed or lost, modern transcription and restoration techniques from the original shellac discs present the original sound most likely more clearly than ever heard before.
At the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum crazy colleague of Albert Ayler. In 1968, the saxophonist and flutist recorded his first album under his own name: It’s Not Up To Us. The following year he came to Paris in the wake of… Sunny Murray. He would come back to France in 1971 (again with Murray) and in 1973 (without Murray for a change). This is when he met Jef Gilson, the pianist and producer who encouraged him to record under his own name again. On Palm Records (Gilson’s label), he would release four albums: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement and Funny Funky Rib Crib. “Funny Funky Rib Crib” is an unforgettable recording (made up of several sessions dating from the middle of 1974) of creative jazz overwhelmed by funk and soul. If Lancaster had already made successful albums in the same genre – notably New Horizons, under the name Sounds Of Liberation which he co-led with Khan Jamal –, this one is an homage to James Brown and Sammy Davis enjoying the company of a host of guests including François Tusques (electric piano), Clint Jackson III (trumpet), François Nyombo (guitar), Joseph Traindl (trombone)… Funny Funky Rib Crib’s cover is a three-quarter profile portrait of the saxophonist (who can also be heard on flute, piano and even vocals), however, on the record, it is the whole group, inspired and frenetic, that tests the melodies of “Just Test”, “Dogtown” or “Rib Crib” – the two versions of which display leader Lancaster’s art of nuance. On both sides of the album, the group also moves into a calmer groove, infused by blues and soul, “Work And Pray” and “Loving Kindness” are meditative tracks where listeners can lay back and relax before asking for more: Funny Funky Rib Crib!!!
Ignatz, the long-running project of Belgian musician Bram Devens, has spent two decades refining a distinctive approach to songcraft—built on repetition, subtle shifts, and an ear for the uncanny. Across a steady stream of releases on labels including (K-RAA-K)³, Ultra Eczema and Fonal, his work remains instantly recognisable while continually evolving. I Don’t Know marks a striking departure. Following earlier recordings centred on guitar, Devens turns to piano, uncovering a new, more skeletal language. The instrument first entered his orbit in the mid-2010s, when he inherited a family piano and began exploring its possibilities as a self-taught player. Recorded at home in Landen, these pieces feel sparse and unsettled, carrying a raw intimacy that sets them apart from his previous work. The result is a haunted, deeply personal album that reframes Ignatz’s sound without losing its core identity.
Available for the first time since original release in 1980, and never previously issued outside of Australia, Outernational Sounds proudly presents one of the most compelling and funky documents of Australian jazz – the self-titled debut LP by Melbourne-based improvising fusion unit Pyramid, featuring the exploratory, fully-improvised jazz-fusion gem ‘Universal Suite’. Originally released on Bill Hawtin’s Melbourne-based independent label East (Elwood Audio Services Transcription) in 1980, Pyramid by Pyramid is one of the under-the-radar treasures of Australian jazz. Formed in the late 1970s, the quartet consisted of composer and pianist David Hirschfelder, drummer David Jones, electric bassist and composer Roger McLachlan and trumpeter Bob Venier. McLachlan and Venier had recorded with the cream of the Aussie jazz scene, with Venier holding down a spot as of one of Australia’s most highly rated trumpeters. Drummer Jones brought an irrepressible command of polyrythm and expertise in complex time signatures, while it was keyboardist and main composer Hirschfelder that marshalled the group into a major force. All four were brilliant improvising musicians and in Pyramid they shone, pushing a blend of tight playing, collective improvisation, and far-sighted composing. The group played widely in Australia and overseas in Europe, capping their time together with a legendary turn at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1983. “There was always a beautiful balance of improvisation and structure within our music,” recalled David Jones. “It did feel like we were tapping into something universal and yet something uniquely our own.” Lead composer David Hirschfelder recalls that the band had “astounding levels of rhythmic chemistry, spontaniety and telepathic interconnectivity… Fully extemporised works, such as the ‘Universal Suite’, were different every time, evolving dynamically, unpredictably.” Pyramid perfectly captures these qualities. The album opens with the floating ‘Song for Bobby’, a downtempo gem with the heartbeat aura of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Butterfly’; ‘Orchestral Excerpts (From The Symphony Of Life)’, ‘In The Basement’ and ‘City of Stone’ are high-grade fusion jams with one eye on Weather Report and Return to Forever, the other on the organic Australian sound of Alan Lee and John Sangster. The album closes out with the completely improvised ‘Universal Suite’, a 17-minute excursion which begins with a cinematic opening reminiscent of electric Miles at his most introspective before taking flight on passages of hard-driving Latin percussion, shimmering fusion and gritty funk. Slick, cultured and in close dialogue with the most advanced sounds of the era, Pyramid documents one of Australia’s great fusion bands at the height of their powers, brought to you by Outernational Sounds! Fully licensed by Outernational Sounds. Distributed by Honest Jons. Interviews by Harv-inder Singh Nagi. Artwork by Sandy Ellis. Words and photos by PYRAMID Mastered at Dubplates & Mastering. 180g Vinyl Manufactured at Pallas. MCPS Registered.
For Takuro Okada, this marks his first physical release since *Konoma*, which received high praise from media outlets and listeners both in Japan and abroad. This work was created for the campaign promoting the new “MT2” footwear line designed by TOKYO DESIGN STUDIO New Balance. The campaign video is available on New Balance T-HOUSE’s owned media platform. Side A, “Still Water,” features Shouei Ikeda (flute) and is composed of a minimalist ensemble that strips the arrangement down to the bare essentials while incorporating elements of folk and Afro-music. Recorded based on improvised performances and captured on analog tape, the track evokes the subtle fluctuations of sound and rich spaces reminiscent of a still water’s surface. Side B, “Dohman Sehman,” takes the mood of vintage funk as its starting point while weaving in a melodic sensibility and folkloric resonance reminiscent of Japanese folk songs and kayōkyoku. Featuring up-and-coming musicians such as Kei Matsumaru (alto sax), Mei Katsumaru (tenor sax), Yuma Koda (Wurlitzer / Farfisa), Yuka Konishi (bass), and Hayate Ebihara (drums), this track is marked by a powerful groove created by a spatial mix reminiscent of dub techniques and a robust rhythm section. With “Still Water,” which is imbued with serene stillness, and “Dohman Sehman,” which contains a powerful groove, these two contrasting tracks showcase the breadth of Takuro Okada’s creative evolution since *Konoma*.
A masterpiece by Masahiko Togashi, Masayuki Takayanagi, Motoki Takagi, and Motoharu Yoshizawa—some of the most important artists in the history of Japanese free jazz. Takayanagi’s guitar, which makes effective use of feedback techniques; Takagi’s dynamic tenor saxophone and corn pipe (a type of vertical flute); Yoshizawa’s string sounds, which are so free they seem almost effortless; and Togashi’s intelligent drumming, which combines precision with power—all come together to create a landmark album that truly heralds the dawn of a new era!
Akira Kosemura’s Polaroid Piano is a record that is very close to my heart. In fact, it is Akira’s work that was one of the drivers for Someone Good, one of the Room40 sibling labels, to be founded. Polaroid Piano marks the beginning of what would later become known as felt piano music, an approach to the piano which was picked up by numerous artists across subsequent years. It captures an essential and intimate rendering of the piano at close proximity, but it does more than that, it allows the piano to breathe within the places around it. Structurally, the record is a collection of piano-led vignettes. Each piece is a microcosm of lived in music, which is porous, and opens themselves outward, inviting a sense of time and ’the present’ to seep into the music. They feel instantly intimate and evocative, melodies imprinted with the world around them. In some of the recordings a siren calls out from beyond the immediate acoustic space of the studio, whilst in others birds seep in and the rustling of Akira’s clothing folds into the music itself. When we first discussed the recording, Akira had invited me to offer some sounds that might act as a leaping off point for the compositions. I collected a series of field recordings which were offered as simple and suggestive prompts, and as a means of imagining ‘other’ environments which might be simultaneously in orbit of the places Akira was recording in. Some of those field recordings are captured in the record, like a memory being recounted at a distance of time. Polaroid Piano is a unique record for many reasons. One is it manages to manifest an acoustic transcription of that ‘momentary' quality of its photographic namesake. The pieces are auditory snapshots and reflect a certain quality of harmonic light and timbral exposure that is unquestionably tethered to the aesthetics of the polaroid format. It is a record that celebrates the body of the instrument as a sound source and invites us to be proximate to the resonation, and the living qualities of sound, that make music so utterly profound, and gratifying.
In May 1984 I appeared at a German festival called Pro
Musica Nova, organized by Radio Bremen. I then travelled to
Berlin by car with Rolf Langebertels, the owner of Galerie
Giannozzo who had driven to Bremen to hear me perform. I still
remember very vividly the experience of passing through the
checkpoint to enter West Berlin, a city that floated like an island
in the middle of the still socialist GDR. I had previously visited
Berlin in 1982 to perform at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien at an event
that Rolf had organized. This time too Rolf had organized a
concert for me at the Technische Universitat. Playing off the title
of the piece (“Study Time”) I had performed at Pro Musica
Nova, I titled the piece for this concert “Zeitstudie”.
I owe Rolf a great deal of gratitude, as it was him who
encouraged me by releasing my very first cassette tape,
“Zeitstudie von Akio Suzuki”. In recent years it has become
difficult for me to carry heavy instruments around with me, and
I have started to do simpler performances with objects
assembled on site. So it feels wonderful to have the sound of
the battery of instruments I used back then to be returned to the
light of day.
On “Zeitstudie von A.S.” I used an ANALAPOS, the echo
instrument I invented in 1970, and the Suzuki-type glass
harmonica that I created in 1975. The ANALAPOS resembles the
tin-can telephone that children used to play with: two metal
cans, open at one end and connected by a coil spring. You
play it by stretching out the spring horizonally and then
projecting your voice into the open end of one of the
cylinders. The second piece features a variation, where I
would suspend several ANALAPOS vertically and play them like
a percussion instrument.
The Suzuki-type glass harmonica is in a simpler form than the
pre-existing glass harmonica, and consists of five long glass
tubes of varying diameters suspended horizontally in a metal
frame. As well as rubbing the tubes with wet hands, I developed
my own style of playing it using sticks. Once when I was
practicing with it in the Netherlands, outside the window I was
surprised to hear a bird imitating my sounds. However, later I
discovered that the bird always sang that way, and as a token
of my regret for having ever doubted it, I borrowed the bird’s
Dutch name, De Koolmees, and I s till use it for my instrument.
Recently, as I listened back to the cassette of “Zeitstudie von
A.S.”, one of Hiromi Miyakita’s drawings was lying in front of me.
There was a sympathetic resonance between the sounds and the
drawing, so I decided to use it on the cover. This is a joyful music.
After the acclaimed Bar Mediterraneo, Massimo Di Lena and Lucio Aquilina return with a new album that broadens the scope of their sound even further, sailing beyond the Pillars of Hercules into a constellation of gravity-defying creative freedom. People Of The Moon is not an imagined cosmic species, but a dimension within us all. Deeply personal yet universally shared. An alternative way of thinking that lays dormant until we find the courage to untether it, helping us experience life more fully. It is that precious sphere of the soul that slips away from everyday life. A form of self-expression free from the social pressures that weigh on each, at every latitude on the planet. Under the moonlight, these songs trace anxieties and aspirations, guided by the international language of groove and rhythmic motion, articulated in Neapolitan, Arabic, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. It speaks with equal clarity through the Afro-Cuban influences of Celavì (“That’s Life”), with its circular rhythmic energy, and through the Anatolian zurna of Ma Tu Che Bbuò (“What Do You Want?” in Neapolitan), moving from highlife guitars to the mandolins that have become a Nu Genea signature. New idioms and rhythms, filtered through an Italian perspective. The first single Sciallà (“Go Away” in Neapolitan), released in the summer of 2025, already hinted at what was taking shape in the Nu Genea workshop - a radiant guide to embracing difficulty and finding relief in dance. Not so much an escape, but a form of catharsis. Looking up at the giant mirror ball orbiting above us, we catch a glimpse of our best selves reflected back, and appreciate that the People Of The Moon invoked in the title track are more familiar than we first realised. There’s a kind of resilience in these voices that isn’t loud or triumphant, but persistent and rooted in the simple act of continuing. The imagery of high-speed motion is central to Onenon (“On and On”), where British singer and multi-instrumentalist Tom Misch helps conjure a Mediterranean brit-funk reminiscent of Pino D’Angiò’s basslines. The voice in Acelera (“Speed Up” in Spanish) summons the strength to chase the moon as if it were an unattainable ideal, in this Andalusian-tinged track featuring María José Llergo, who also lends her voice to Celavì. Both tracks are among the more languorous arrangements, with flamenco palmas introducing an original fusion into the Nu Genea groove. With its driving momentum, Puleza (“Clean Up” in Neapolitan) recalls the spirit of Nuova Napoli, albeit with vintage synth textures and wild, unrestrained delays. The track’s protagonist, performed by Fabiana Martone, is another of our lunar dwellers. Yet even when it leans into forward motion, People Of The Moon doesn’t pulse at a frantic pace, moving instead through shifting states of speed, orbit, and suspension. In fact, the Levantine bossa nova Shway Shway (“Slowly, Slowly” in Arabic), sung by Celinatique, captures the orbital motion of the entire record. Not exactly slow, but measured. Rich in color, and marked by a rhythmic complexity that was also heard on the duo’s rare access to foundational afrobeat on The Tony Allen Experiments. All the while, the album remains deeply attuned to melody - a Nu Genea hallmark - as heard in the effervescent hook of Carè (“Falling” in Neapolitan). In the lunar microgravity of these ten tracks, falling and flying become interchangeable with dancing as ways of following the beat, suspended yet compelled to move. That compulsion is also invoked by Brazilian percussionist Gabriel Prado, making his vocal debut on Ondas Do Mar (“Waves Of The Sea” in Portuguese). The pull of the waves, a constant interplay of motion and return, steady as a lunar phase, is impossible to resist. One might as well lean into the blue, not to dissolve but to rebuild. “Você vai ver que dentro de nós / vai rolar”: you’ll see that something will happen within us.
Japan’s distinctive punk and new wave scene emerged with the arrival of the “Tokyo Rockers” movement in 1978, led by musicians who had come of age within the underground rock culture of the 1970s. As that scene faded, these artists — energised by the shock of London and New York punk scenes — launched a last, defiant charge that crystallised as "Tokyo Rockers". From the beginning, many "Tokyo Rockers" musicians were deeply drawn to reggae. They listened voraciously to reggae records, especially dub, and even when they were not performing reggae outright, dub-informed ideas permeated their sound. Throughout the evolution from punk to new wave, reggae was absorbed naturally by the musicians at the center of the scene. Yet the connection between these genres was rarely acknowledged in Japan’s music media. In this sense, the creation of this compilation marks a truly groundbreaking moment as it may well offer a new lens through which to view the history of Japanese rock. "Japanese New Wave On Dub" takes a deep dive into the relatively unsung heroes of this culturally unique moment throughout it's first 5 years of maturation. 12 tracks that will embellish the record collection of any true music lover, a beautifully documented piece of niche Japanese underground culture from the firs half of the 80's, faithfully put together by Yuzo Iwata.