MUSIC

“I did this piano/Rhodes recording, played live, without overdubs. I believe your approach to sound could match very well these tracks….”

That’s how Giovanni Di Domenico’s collaboration with Rutger Zuydervelt started, though the first seeds were planted when the duo did a short live improv together in 2019, and Giovanni joining Hydra Ensemble on stage in 2022.

Painting a Picture / Picture a painting is -as the title suggest- an album of two long-form pieces, swapping the working method for each - one takes Giovanni’s recordings and has Rutger processing and adding to it, while the other one started with Rutger creating its foundation (with manipulated sounds of the first piece), and Giovanni building upon it. This resulted in two meandering tracks that are clearly linked, like two sides of the same coin.

The cover, a painting of an empty canvas, is made by Christiaan Kuitwaard. A beautiful and ultimately fitting visual addition to this mysterious release.

"Generative sonic backdrop for bus stations. Designed to enhance space and portray a mod of progressiveness, grandeur, and ethereal calm. A slowly shifting static backdrop designed to enhance modern architecture, rather than compete with it. Sounding as if the structure itself was resonanting. Hovering sound-fields that utilizes sonic phenomena proven to induce states of calm. Can be presented as a multichannel, polyrhythmic installation with different components of the composition emanating form different areas within the structure, and elements constantly shifting in relationship to other elements, creating an organic sonic-tapestry that never repeats the same way. In essence, the soundscape becoming a living organism with unpredictable behavior. Inspired by avant-garde bus station designs such as Domitianus Arquitectura's station in Rio Maior, Portugal; Bluck & Morgen's Busbahnhof Poppenbuttel in Hamburg, Germany; and Metaraum Architect's bus station in Pzorzheim, Germany." - Rod Modell

"Generative sonic backdrop for bus stations. Designed to enhance space and portray a mod of progressiveness, grandeur, and ethereal calm. A slowly shifting static backdrop designed to enhance modern architecture, rather than compete with it. Sounding as if the structure itself was resonanting. Hovering sound-fields that utilizes sonic phenomena proven to induce states of calm. Can be presented as a multichannel, polyrhythmic installation with different components of the composition emanating form different areas within the structure, and elements constantly shifting in relationship to other elements, creating an organic sonic-tapestry that never repeats the same way. In essence, the soundscape becoming a living organism with unpredictable behavior. Inspired by avant-garde bus station designs such as Domitianus Arquitectura's station in Rio Maior, Portugal; Bluck & Morgen's Busbahnhof Poppenbuttel in Hamburg, Germany; and Metaraum Architect's bus station in Pzorzheim, Germany." - Rod Modell

Described by the Wall Street Journal as “one of modern music’s most compelling vocalists,” New York-born and Tamil Nadu-raised singer and multi-instrumentalist ganavya shares an ambitious new album, "Daughter of a Temple", via LEITER. The album follows her performance at SAULT’s acclaimed live debut in London in 2023, where, according to The Guardian, her “voice had a delicate emotive heft that could turn stoics into sobbing wrecks.” Her first single for LEITER, "draw something beautiful," was released earlier this year in July.

For "Daughter of a Temple", ganavya invited over 30 artists from various disciplines to a ritual gathering in Houston. Consequently, the album features numerous contributors, including renowned musicians such as esperanza spalding, Vijay Iyer, Shabaka Hutchings, Immanuel Wilkins, and Peter Sellars. The results—an innovative and deeply moving blend of spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional music—were initially recorded by Ryan Renteria and then further edited and mixed by Nils Frahm at LEITER's studio in Berlin in 2024.

"The debut 2023 disc of narcotised, tranced-out dub from Naarm collective Dregs resurfaces on venerable UK imprint Purely Physical Teeny Tapes, its dense textures and abyssal groove splayed across two sides of wax for wider appreciation among those with an ear for corporeal sludge and blurred sound-system sonics. Centred around the core trio of Sina (vox/synth), Drop Dylan (vox/guitar) & Ossian (production/electronics), this particular session of endless-nite trip-hop finds the group bringing Rip Van Hippy (percussion) into the fold, the revered trance figurehead whose tendrils have also reached into the works of far slung sonic explorers such as Boredoms, Ollie Olsen & Osamu Kitajima. The affinities between the pairing are at once sonically obvious & ripe with potential, both parties sharing an ability to convolve diffuse strands of sound (slow-motion dnb, blasted dub, the luxuriant languor that arises at the meeting point between trip-hop & post- rock) into a jet-black molasses of infinite groove, drowned melodics, and dense hallucination. This self-titled debut is best described as a sensual ooze, smeared & smudged textures riding heavyweight bass pressure & trudging rhythms that dissolve into one another, strung-out siren songs from the gutters of the night. Not a music for the club so much as one born of it, the LP plays out in deeply carnal styles: vox swimming in layers of murk writhing among shadow, the faint murmur of a guitar etching out the suggestion of a melody only to be devoured by un-bottled pressure, endless tremors rattling through a hall of mirrors. A sound to be felt equally in the most heart-melted zones as well as firmly in the cavity of your sternum, in states altered or otherwise; delicate & ethereal, evanescently grimy, and deeply, deeply addictive."

A key work from the golden era of Impulse! Records, Love in Us All is a 1974 masterpiece by spiritual jazz seeker Pharoah Sanders, now reissued on vinyl. As the title suggests, this album is a sonic journey of devotion and transcendence toward the “love within us all.” A powerful balance of mysticism and compassion, chaos and serenity—this is truly music shaped by love and the cosmos. An eternal resonance, more vital now than ever.

Keith Hudson, who temporarily worked as a dentist in the ghettos of Kingston, emigrated to New York City in 1976 and died there prematurely in 1984. He is best known for his work as a producer for artists such as U-Roy, Big Youth, Ken Boothe and Horace Andy and within short order Hudson brought his all-round talent to full fruition. In 1974, he produced two ground-breaking albums. “Pick A Dub” was one of the first official dub albums ever, and is still considered to be one of the greatest moments of Jamaican music. In addition, the unique “Flesh Of My Skin, Blood Of My Blood” became the first concept album in reggae history. Thematically dedicated entirely to black history, this masterpiece captivates with an atmosphere that is as dark as it is deeply spiritual, charged by Hudson’s eccentric vocals. In 1981, he created the dub masterpiece “Playing It Cool, Playing It Right” which he produced with the help of Wackie’s founder and mastermind Lloyd ‘Bullywackie’ Barnes. It remained the only collaboration between the two producers. Hudson decided to release it on his own label Joint International as he has done on his previous releases. The album continues Hudson’s psycho-acoustic journey into the abyss of existence and has the power to overwhelm the listener with the beauty of artistic self-empowerment. “Too Much Formula” sings Hudson, whose voice occasionally recalls Sly Stone, “Darkest Night” answers an echoing background chorus found elsewhere on the track “California”. Hudson’s production techniques are fascinating on this album. We often hear a kind of flashing-whip sound on the snare, which adds dynamics to the whole album. Rarely has a dub record sounded so electrifying, with radical spatial sound spreading out in all directions and rarely has it been as crystal clear, with warm bass and echophonic treatments as contained within these 30 minutes of music. 43 years after its first release and 20 years after its last re-release on the German-British label Basic Replay (Basic Channel/Honest Jon’s), “Playing It Cool, Playing It Right” is now finally available again via Week-End Records, with a newly revised master and a rare interview with Lloyd ‘Bullywackie’ Barnes, talking on the making of this amazing album.

Marewrew (pronounced: Ma-leoo-leoo) is a female vocal group that sings traditional Ainu songs. The music of the long-suppressed people from northern Japan has been a particular focus of the Pingipung output in recent years. Following various re-releases by Umeko Ando, the late grande dame of traditional Ainu music, the spotlight is now on the a cappella music of Marewrew, which by the way means ‘butterfly’ in Ainu. Attentive listeners will recognise the voices, as some of the band have already performed as backing singers on recordings by Umeko Ando. Their a cappella versions of traditional Ainu music shed a whole new light on the fascinating songs that have been passed down through generations exclusively through song. 'Ukouk' means 'round singing', which refers to the form in which Marewrew perform and record. Many of the songs are set as tightly interwoven canons: one starts, the others join in, but slightly out of phase: Almost like dub echoes, except that they are sung and not created in post-production. The short songs sometimes unfold into a wondrous trance ('Sikata Kuykuy', 'Honkaya') that seems to spin round and round - if singing can actually dance, then this is how. Nature sounds and woodpeckers can be heard ('Hawsa’), and there is a funny miniature in which the ladies imitate birdsong ('Takuro'). Things get hypnotic with an evocative song about stranded whales ('Hunpe Yan Na’) or an ode to the Orca as ‘Little Sea God’ (‘Pon Repun Kamuy’). The album culminates in unexpected pop ('Yaykatekara') or cumbia moments ('Kanerenren') with a band line-up including percussions and Oki Kano on the famous Tonkori harp. Marewrew are Rekpo, Hisae and Mayunkiki. Rim-Rim was a member of the group until 2022. Oki Kano is responsible for recording and production. Mayunkiki reflects on the ambivalence of performing traditional music as a contemporary band: "When we first started performing, we all thought we had to perform in an Ainu way. But over time we have become more and more open to new ways of singing. I think if our way of singing is seen as the only, correct way of our tradition, then it won't spread, it's not alive. We like it when it's traditional, but it changes, just like our voices have changed over time.” (Quote from the film 'Marewrew's Voice' by Eiko Soga (2021)) 'Ukouk' is a selection of Marewrew's work from the last 13 years, compiled from CD releases by Pingipung's Andi Otto. Oki Kano has contributed unreleased material and added new versions of the songs which had only been released in Japan. The album has been remastered by Kassian Troyer and is now available on LP for the first time.

Carrying on a string of stunning archival releases from major figures of Indian classical tradition (including releases from members of the Dagar family and Amelia Cuni), Black Truffle is pleased to announce an unheard recording from tabla master Kamalesh Maitra (1924-2005). For over fifty years, Maitra devoted himself to the rare tabla tarang, a set of between ten and sixteen hand drums tuned to the notes of the raga to be performed. While the tabla tarang has its origins in the late 19th century, Maitra was the first to recognise its potential as a solo concert instrument, using the set of tuned drums to perform full-length raags. Seated behind a semi-circular array of drums, Maitra produced stunning waves of melodic improvisation enlivened with the rhythmic invention of a master percussionist. Across his career, Maitra performed in ensembles led by Ravi Shankar, collaborated with George Harrison, and led his own East-West fusion group, the Ragatala Ensemble. However, it is in the solo setting that his remarkable artistry and the otherworldly timbral qualities of the tabla tarang are most strikingly on display. Recorded during the same 1985 Berlin sessions that produced Maitra’s self-released solo LP Tabla Tarang: Ragas on Drums, on Raag Kirwani on Tabla Tarang we are treated to Maitra stretching out for over forty minutes on the late night Raag Kirwani, accompanied by Laura Patchen on tabla and Mila Morgenstern and Marina Kitsos on tanpura. The performance begins with the traditional free-floating exposition section, where Maitra’s spacious melodic improvisation at times almost resembles a plucked string instrument (like the sarod, which Maitra also played). For the listener unaccustomed to the tabla tarang, the sound of these microtonally inflected melodic patterns played on drums has a magic quality. As Maitra begins to imply the rhythmic cycles more strongly, Patchen joins on tabla, beginning half an hour of rhythmic-melodic exploration, where virtuosity sits side by side with delicacy and meditative attention. Accompanied by beautiful archival images and extensive liner notes from Laura Patchen, for many listeners Raag Kirwani on Tabla Tarang will be the perfect introduction to the magical world of Kamalesh Maitra, released to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the master musician’s birth.

In the 90's, Rafael Toral was considered "one of the most talented and innovative guitarists" and was a favorite of the members of Sonic Youth. In 1998, he released his early masterpiece on Perdition Plastics, an experimental label run by Kurt Griesch of Illusion Of Safety (whose roster includes RLW, Kevin Drumm, MIMEO, His Name Is Alive, etc.), and now it's available for the first time in vinyl on Black Truffle, run by Australian mastermind Oren Ambarchi. Recorded at Noise Precision in Lisbon between December 1997 and April 1998, this is probably their fourth album. It is a masterpiece of drone/ambient with a unique sense of emptiness, built around minimal electronics and feedback loops with a melancholic atmosphere. Remastered by Tral himself, with a new design by Lasse Marhaug. In addition to David Toop's liner notes, which were included on the original CD release, the album also includes new liners by David himself.

Get onboard with this explosive encounter of Japanese folk songs and latin rhythms!

"For Japanese people, min'yō is both the closest, and most distant, folk music” explains band-leader Katsumi Tanaka. “We may not feel it in our daily, urban lives, yet the melodies, the style of singing and the rhythm of the taiko drums are engrained in our DNA”.

Initially indifferent to min'yō, a tragic event in recent Japanese history set Tanaka on his current path: “Following the Tohoku earthquake of 2011, I reflected on my life, work and identity. A fan of world music, I began searching for Japanese roots music I could identify with. Discovering mid-late 20th century acts like Hibari Misora, Chiemi Eri and the Tokyo Cuban Boys, I was captivated by their eccentric arrangements and how they mixed min'yō with latin and jazz music.”

Lead singer Freddie Tsukamoto fell for min'yō after hearing a song from his hometown on a TV competition whilst in a restaurant. It was a revelation – until then he had been an aspiring jazz singer yet was uncomfortable singing in English. The restaurateur told him a min'yō teacher was his neighbour and the two connected. Tanaka and Freddie formed Minyo Crusaders in 2011 in Fussa, a city where the US military Yokota Air Base is located, in western Tokyo.

Recruiting other local musicians versed in afro and latin rhythms, they began hosting jam sessions at the Banana House, a building that was previously part of the military base and that used to house US soldiers. The band started recording their music, and their debut album "Echoes Of Japan" was released in 2017. It received huge acclaim in Japan and abroad, and was also released by British label Mais Um in 2019. Several European tours followed, as well as some US and South America gigs.

In this second opus, the Minyo Crusaders take us on a trip to Japanese folk songs fused with latin rhythms. Their unique arrangements breathe new life to classics like Kiso Bushi, Sado Okesa or Soran Bushi, among many other min'yō songs from all over Japan that were originally performed by Japanese fishermen, coal miners and sumo wrestlers hundreds of years ago. The magical groove created here proves once again that the Minyo Crusaders are one of the most dynamic representatives of the current Japanese world music scene. Yoi Yoi, Enjoy!

Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald's dream project Rhythm & Sound, which brought legendary reggae singers into the modern era, released the See Mi Ya remix series in 2006. The highly anticipated 2025 reissue of this masterpiece, remixed by Carl Craig and Basic Channel, is finally here!

Originally released in 1996 as the M series, Vainqueur's outstanding and universal masterpiece of minimal techno has been repressed in 2025 and includes a remix by Maurizio.

Originally released in 1993 as the M series, Vainqueur's outstanding and universal masterpiece of minimal techno has been repressed in 2025 and includes a remix by Maurizio.

unification of techno and dub reggae. An outstanding universal masterpiece of sound dub/minimal techno released in 1994 by German Mark Ernestus & Moritz von Oswald's Basic Channel, repressed in 2025.

unification of techno and dub reggae. An outstanding universal masterpiece of sound dub/minimal techno released in 1995 as M-Series by German Mark Ernestus & Moritz von Oswald's Basic Channel, repressed in 2025.

Derek Bailey’s incredible debut solo showcase is given a necessary, expanded reissue as part of Honest Jon’s reissue series of important releases on Bailey and Evan Parker’s Incus Records. The original LP of finger-flaying improvisations and Bailey’s takes on works by Gavin Bryars and Misha Mengelberg is now augmented by an extra disc of farther improvs, including a solo show at York University in 1972. The late, great guitar pioneer’s Solo Guitar remains pivotal testament to his endeavours in dismantling modern instrumental music and freeing it to more curious routes of expression, much in key - so to speak - with the US free jazz and improvised music which it evolved from. Love it or not, this record remains a totem of late 20th centre musical exploration. “Recorded in 1971, Solo Guitar Volume 1 was Bailey’s first solo album. Its cover is an iconic montage of photos taken in the guitar shop where he worked. He and the photographer piled up the instruments whilst the proprietor was at lunch, with Bailey promptly sacked on his return. The LP was issued in two versions over the years — Incus 2 and 2R — with different groupings of free improvisations paired with Bailey’s performances of notated pieces by his friends Misha Mengelberg, Gavin Bryars and Willem Breuker. All this music is here, plus a superb solo performance at York University in 1972; a welcome shock at the end of an evening of notated music. It’s a striking demonstration of the way Bailey rewrote the language of the guitar with endless inventiveness, intelligence and wit.”

With But remember what you have had, Stephen O’Malley continues and expands his musical approach by transposing it to multiphonic electroacoustic writing and acousmatic listening. Drawing not only on his extensive experience as a composer and live instrumentalist, but also on the countless studio production and mixing sessions he has taken part in the course of his many projects (in solo, with SUNN O))) or KTL, to name but a few), Stephen O’Malley’s work on this new piece is ambitious, engaging in an inspired research that delves into the deep intricacies between polyphony, intonation and timbrality, enhanced by melodic motifs. To do this, O’Malley summons up his own very personal sound universe, constellated with amplified textures, instrumental sustained tones and raw energy, in order to diffract them into wavefronts, waves and blows that weave a complex, rich and fascinating matter. But remember what you have had stands out as an important work in Stephen O’Malley’s repertoire: it brings together the multiplicity of his musical approach in an exemplary way, while laying the foundations and promises for the future of an already extraordinary journey.

Following the release of Drop Nineteens’ first album in 30 years, Hard Light and the re-issue of their 1992 shoegaze masterwork Delaware, we are excited to announce the official release of Drop Nineteens’ 1991. This LP comprises the band’s first two demo sessions which were mailed out via cassette to labels in 1991 finding their way to the UK music press and generating instant buzz and an ensuing feeding frenzy to sign the band. After signing with Caroline Records Drop Nineteens decided to write an entirely new record, Delaware, for their first official release, leaving the songs on 1991 behind, frozen in time. Swells of layered guitars and buried vocal harmonies adorn these tracks, displaying Drop Nineteens when the comparison to their UK contemporaries like Slowdive and Ride were apt. 1991’s songs, recorded with a low fi charm, show an ambitious young band capable of writing songs filled with texture and hooks, on the eve of their breakthrough with Delaware.

Presented together for the first time, American composer John McGuire’s Pulse Music series (1975-1979) blurs the popular narrative that Minimalism was a reaction against Europe’s angular, intellectual, inscrutable high-modernism. McGuire, born in California, studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles and UC Berkeley before going to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Gottfried Michael Koenig. His compositions lock serialism’s warped geometries onto an evenly spaced grid, perfectly preserving serial music’s multi-dimensionality while smoothing its wildest disjunctures and sharpest angles. If serialism is Montreal’s Habitat 67 modular housing complex, McGuire’s Pulse Music compositions are the primary-colored grids of Le Corbusier’s L’Habitation apartment complex — an exuberant expression of the same materials and principles. Every layer of pulses is made distinct through its timbre, register, and tempo. We hear them as a plurality, organized like stars in the sky. Every so often the sky rotates and the stars appear in a different arrangement. Our ear naturally starts to draw connections and, as it sweeps between one layer and another, what was discrete becomes continuous. Pulses become flows; quantitative reality becomes qualitative experience. McGuire’s pulse pieces were realized electronically, in the newly built Studio for Electronic Music at the State University of Cologne and WDR, but Pulse Music II adapted his ideas to an orchestral canvas. Commissioned retrospectively by the composer and radio producer Hans Otte for his Pro Musica Nova festival at Radio Bremen. Alongside the Bremen orchestra, conducted by Klaus Bernbacher, were four pianists—Christoph Delz, Herbert Henck, Deborah Richards, Doris Thomsen—and McGuire himself playing a series of twelve drone-like chords on the organ. The techniques of the electronic Pulse Music pieces required a speed and precision too great for live musicians, so for Pulse Music II McGuire adapted his method to an expanding progression of durations; this had the advantage of being much slower and requiring none of the carefully calibrated tempo changes of Pulse Music I or III. It was still based, says the composer, “on what seemed to me an interesting foray into a completely different kind of time structure. Complex time structures had, by 1975, become a condition for me in two senses: a compositional requirement and maybe an illness.” The present recording was made by Radio Bremen at the work’s first and only performance, and has been held in their archive until now. “108 Pulses” – originally composed a proof-of-concept piece and realized as a single, repeating loop in a 20 minute tableau – is also presented here for the first time.

Andy Jenkins always assumed Nick Sanborn was going to get rid of his guitars, anyway.

In March 2021, Sanborn had mostly finished construction at Betty’s, his studio outpost with partner Amelia Meath in North Carolina’s cozy Piedmont woods. Both busy pieces of their respective but intertwined music scenes in Richmond and Durham, Jenkins and Sanborn had been fans of one another for years but had never formally collaborated. Jenkins had spent the last several years gathering songs for the follow-up to his 2018 solo debut, Sweet Bunch; the new ones were intricately rendered odes to the assorted assurances and anxieties that can come with finding some measure of contentment as you cross into yours 30s. He’d even played them all during two outdoor concerts in Richmond, folks scattered throughout his backyard to listen. Sanborn reckoned that was enough rehearsal. Don’t send demos, he suggested; simply drive the two hours down, and live and work in the studio for two weeks while spring drifted into the South.

As Jenkins rolled through his assembled tracks in Betty’s Studio B, Sanborn listened and allowed his imagination to run wild. Sanborn recalled a conversation with the songwriter Damien Jurado, where he said he’d once arrived at the studio of producer Richard Swift without dispatching anything in advance; that instinctive and improvisational strategy led to Maraqopa, a modern masterpiece. What could Jenkins and Sanborn conjure?

Sanborn flooded Jenkins with ideas—rhythmic shifts, keyboard flourishes, vocal effects—and looked for and listened to his responses. There was the double-time piano, a mistake dropped into “Too Late” they both loved. There was the Vocoder selection during “Emptiness Is,” a choice that allowed the pair to hang so much of the song on bass and drums alone. There was the sequence that bubbles beneath “Leaving Before,” a mirror of the lyrical nervous heart.

When Meath and Flock of Dimes’ Jenn Wasner were palling around the studio, Sanborn asked if they would mind singing on a few tracks. That’s Meath on “Blue Mind,” sweetly trailing Jenkins’ lines about being under love’s spell like she’s offering an incantation, and Wasner rising through the static dawn of “Lovesick.” “Andy wanted someone to make decisions he would never make,” remembers Sanborn. “It was this mining operation we got to do together.”

As the songs steadily cohered, though, Jenkins insisted it was finally time to drop his guitars. “I have never been,” he says now with a little laugh, “a particularly competent guitar player.” But Sanborn loved the idiosyncratic way his strums sat against his voice, so he stalled. He wasn’t much of a guitar player himself, so they’d need to wait for Jenkins’ longtime collaborator, an ace named Alan Parker, to come down from Richmond and replace those parts. When Parker did, he heard the same thing as Sanborn—yes, he was more technically proficient, but his overdubs didn’t have the same personality, the same narrative truth. Jenkins relented, so his guitars stayed, the anchor for most of these 11 tracks.

One notable exception: “Nobody Else,” the album’s brief but brilliant centerpiece, a testament to holding close to the people in your life, of not losing nobody else. It stems from a quiet moment Jenkins and Parker shared in an otherwise-empty studio. Parker (who, in the end, added leads and fills throughout the record) plays a rubber-bridge guitar, while Jenkins’ voice rises and falls like the waves of the maritime scene he limns, his curious voice making melodies from mere air.

It is the exception here, Jenkins stepping away from guitar to lean into an old friendship and render something exquisite in its ache.

Since Always came, in large part, from letting go—of self-perceptions, of expectations, of assumptions. Jenkins found space to trust himself as the guitarist for his own songs. Sanborn stepped into a new kind of production role, dreaming up ideas and filtering through them together. There was, in short, a very adult trust to it all, two fans working in tandem to make something. The process feels of a delightful piece with Since Always, a record where the loss and love, compromise and gain of adulthood come into full view.

Grayson Haver Currin

Ward, Colo.

January 2025

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.

Trances, Jules Reidy’s follow-up to the celebrated World in World (2022), takes place in between states, tracing a kind of restless movement in search of—or is it away from?—a center. The twelve tracks shift between fragment and epic, returning to familiar phrases between forays outward into uncertain expanses. Through its exploration of the cyclical movements of grief and emotional turbulence, Trances produces a sonic world as raw, absorbing, and surprising as anything Reidy has created to date. Trances’ primary instrument is a custom hexaphonic electric guitar tuned in Just Intonation. Reidy’s combination of fingerpicked phrases, open strums, and corrugated processing push on the grammar of guitar-driven experimentalism, locating expressive heft in open-ended harmonics and the odd angles formed by overlapping elements. Chords are slowed and stretched as if to examine their resonance, then overtaken by subterranean motion. The effect is that of oceanic depth, but the rippling that passes between the compositions’ sedimentary layers often takes on a metallic edge. The addition of synthesizers, sampled 12-string guitar, field recordings, and half-submerged autotuned voice further denaturalize the compositions. Reidy’s vocal interjections—their particular linguistic content rendered inaccessible—are based on counting and self-observational techniques for bringing oneself back into the present; at times Reidy’s picking also assumes a mantra-like quality, though ultimately the flow of the composition subsumes both. There is a heavy sense of the strange throughout these songs, which bleed at their edges into a continuous, questioning whole. That Reidy’s compositions here have a tendency to engulf the listener, like a wave or a squall, can be variously comforting and disorienting. Either way, we are fortunate to follow Reidy on such a journey.

From its earliest utterances, experimental music has been particularly disposed to transnational and cross-cultural collaboration. Seeking the answer for a fundamental problem - how to transcend the boundaries of difference, distance, and time - it presents a means to find common ground and communicate through the elemental form of sound. Over the last 5 years, this precisely what the duo of Félicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has achieved, intertwining sublime sonorities across the geographic expanses between their respective homes in France and the United States. Their third album for Shelter Press, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ (‘A winter in the middle of summer’) - the first to have been largely recorded by Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma together in the same space - distills a mesmerizing pallet of acoustic and electronic sources into an open discourse of radically poetic forms, offering glimpses of warmth and intimacy waiting in the post-covid world to come. Both veteran experimentalists with celebrated bodies of solo work behind them - each traversing the challenges of electroacoustic practice in their own singular ways - prior to their first recorded outing in 2016, Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma had only crossed paths in person once, initially meeting in San Fransisco during 2009. The mutual bond formed during that brief encounter flowered into their first LP, ‘Comme Un Seul Narcisse’, followed two years later by 2018’s ‘Limpid As The Solitudes’. Both recorded remotely - sending files back and forth, fortified by conversations on a vast range of subjects - these two albums were guided by impassioned conceptual nods to Guy Debord, Baudelaire, Brion Gysin and Sylvia Plath, while seeking resolutions for the challenges and unique possibilities that working at a distance provoked. Where the triumphs of its predecessors rose from the bridging of disparate moments and divergent spaces, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ culminates as a celebration of closeness, a result of Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma working together in the studio, responsively in real time, for the first time. Recorded in Brooklyn during August of 2019 - a handful of months before the pandemic would impose chasmic distances across the globe - its six discrete works, carefully crafted and finalized over the ensuing year, evolve seamlessly across the album’s two sides, weaving a sprawling tapestry of sonority, within which both artists retaining their own voices and visions, while drawing each other towards uncharted ground. Atkinson likens the recording of ‘Un hiver en plein été’ to have been akin to “a playground”, each artist “hungry for each sound, a bit like the rush in the Louvre in Godard’s Bande à part”, to which Cantu-Ledesma adds that the process seemed to have had “a mind of its own”, with both “along for the ride”. This organic sense of entropy and enthusiasm - a joyous exploration of the unknown - guides the momentum of the album’s evolving arc, as unfolding chasms of ambient space ripple with humanity, life, and fleeting glimpses of the actions that led to its material core. Crafted from deconstructed melodic elements and drifting long-tones - laden with subtle nods to Indian classical ragas and free jazz - searching patterns of speech, textural elements captured within the studio and the outside world, and searching tonal and percussive interventions, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ coheres as a multi-faceted series of electroacoustic dialogues; nesting conversations between two artists working at the juncture of abstraction and narration, field recording and harmony, and the philosophical and phenomenological, in search for the meaning of friendship, and its manifestation in pure sound.