MUSIC

PPU's first long-play LP highlights some of the early beginnings of one of our favorite producers, UKU KUUT. Written and recorded at UKU's home studio in Los Angeles and Stockholm between 1982 & 1989. Some tracks co-written with Maryn E. Coote, famous jazz vocalist who had her beginnings in 1960s Soviet Union. "That's my MOM" recalls UKU, "I remember when I was little, sitting under the mixing board at her sessions". Growing up in studios, UKU's love of music production began early, and over the years he has amassed a vast collection of domestic and soviet electronic gear. In true PPU style this LP is a mix of UKU KUUT's raw cassette demos, forgotten masters and unreleased magic.

Cosmic synth. Polyphonic analog synthesizers and drum machines interpret ancient Saharan folk ballads in an imagined science fiction future. A proposed relaxation guide, sonically lying somewhere between ambient library music and minimal wave. Recorded in Niger and France in the late 1980s and never before released.

"CAPTAIN ENTROPY (a participation journey for elementary and high-school people~-through the soul of space-ship earth--from principles of thermodynamics to folks like the American eagle) Created and totally performed by BRUCE HAACK." - from Original Liner Notes An electro-surrealist musical journey from the mind of Bruce Haack “The Captain” - capturing his inventive genius musically in tandem with tapping into the voice of his inner child, innovative story songs inspired by Bruce Haack’s diverse musical interests and a love of Science and explorations of the Natural World, songs to excite the imaginations of listeners, both young and old. Remastered by Kramer in 2023. The digital download contains an additional 20 minutes of previously unreleased bonus material; 3 never-before-heard songs from the lower depths of the Haack Archives. This LP was originally released in 1974 on Dimension 5 - the Artist’s own label. This new reissue LP will be a hand-numbered limited edition pressing of 555 on Black Vinyl and an unlimited pressing on Clear Vinyl. A free digital download card including three additional tracks is included with each LP.

The first two minutes of Sun June's third album, Bad Dream Jaguar, is a reverie - Laura Colwell's voice floats above a slow-burn, sparse synth, conjuring a tipsy loneliness, a hazy recollection, a disco ball spinning at the end of the night for an empty dance floor. Sun June's music often feels like a shared memory – the details so close to the edge of a song that you can touch them. And as an Austin-based project, their music has also always felt strangely and specifically Texan – unhurried, long drives across an impossible expanse of openness, refractions shimmering off the pavement in the heat. But on Bad Dream Jaguar, Sun June is unmoored. The backdrop of Texas is replaced by longing, by distance, by transience, and a quiet fear. The only sense of certainty comes from the murky past. It's a dispatch from aging, when you’re in the strange in-between of yourself: there's a clear image of the person you once were and the places you inhabited, generational curses and our families, but the future feels vast, unclear – and the present can't help but slip through your fingers.There's a mix of hi-fi and lo-fi; some songs, like "Texas," which the band had to learn at a breakneck pace ahead of their recording session, was recorded on a first take, live in the room, while "Eager" and "Easy Violence" feature early vocal takes from Colwell, the final songs built atop the demos. The latter track details staying up all night, being a menace to society, falling into bad patterns, but is followed by "John Prine," a drumless, piano-based ballad, a mash of pedal steel manipulated to sound closer to synths.Sun June's records have always been deceptively airy sounding in the face of melancholia, belying its densely textured foundation in a sense of ease. The layers on Bad Dream Jaguar don't tangle but they float, sheaths of divergent and luminescent sonics hanging together as the sun goes down, darkness seeping in. The record exists in the chasm between giving up and going all-in. And a flicker of quiet confidence powering through, a small hopeful glow at its core.

ノース・マイアミ・ビーチを拠点に活動した知られざる10代のガールズ・ロック・バンドであり、男性的な影響を全く排した60年代の多文化主義的なサウンドを展開していたThe Bellesによる激レア音源が我らが〈Numero〉からアナログ再発！ヴァン・モリスンも参加した名バンドThemの”Gloria”を男女入れ替えでアレンジした唯一のシングルである”Melvin”と、ガレージの少女たちの純粋な表現が詰まった”Come Back”を収録。

Real people music recorded at a Quaker Boarding school in the mid-'70s. Mixing soft psych, vocal jazz, and sunshine soul, Shira Small and her high school music teacher Lars Clutterham created a peerless artifact of outsider magic. Imagination, wonder, the existential dread of Vietnam and math class and getting caught smoking weed in Nixon's America… it's all here. Is your life alright?

The tenth volume of Numero's elaborately packaged Cabinet of Curiosities series, L80s finds the group exploring the far-flung corners of the global downtempo underground. This 12-song mix tape weaves icy hot coldwave, Sausalito seafood jazz, Glaswegian goth, makeshift Madonna, Sade spoofs, and Brat Pack balearic into a high-waisted, party-ready pair of danceable denim.

In the late 1980s, as techno and house made its way around Europe, mutating as it hopped from city to city, one young DJ from Curacao made a mistake that would inspire a brand new sound. While he was performing at Den Haag's Club Voltage, DJ Moortje accidentally dropped a dancehall track at 45RPM rather than 33, and let it play out. Thirsty for a hi-NRG sound, the crowd loved the squeaky vocals and rapid beat, and bubbling (or bubbling house) was born. For the next couple of decades, bubbling was a crucial part of Holland's Afro-diasporic club landscape. And as a new generation of wide-eyed young DJs and producers began to take the reins, it evolved accordingly. In the late-2000s, Den Haag-based teenage prodigy Guillermo Schuurman followed in the footsteps of his uncle DJ Chippie (one of the genre's co-founders) and cousins DJ Daycard, DJ Master-D, Stiko Jnr and DJ Justme, and began performing and writing beats. Using Fruityloops, he fused familiar bubbling rhythms with rap and R&B samples, trance synths and electro house wobbles, and his tracks quickly became a regular fixture on the Dutch circuit. "Bubbling Inside" is a collection of Schuurman's most essential cuts from the era (2007-2009), with a couple of newer productions added for context. Crafted solely for the dance, most of these tracks were never properly released and have been painstakingly hunted down and collected by the Nyege Nyege Tapes together with Sascha Roth from Pantropical in Rotterdam and De Schuurman himself. Hearing them together highlights just how forward thinking the young producer was, steering a Dutch institution into the future. 2008's 'First One' is a proto-Berghain belter, with booming bass-heavy kicks underpinning the kind of cheeky melodies that remain the calling card of the genre. 'Pier Je Bil!!' ratchets up the tempo, twisting bubbling's syncopated dancehall kicks into a rapid-fire club clatter and decorating them with steel-pan melodies. Elsewhere, 2019's 'Domina' shows how Schuurman's production style has developed as he mutates trap percussion, dubstep bass and eerie synth textures, while retaining the DNA of bubbling. "Bubbling Inside" is a testament to the evolution of the bubbling genre, as witnessed by one of its most visionary producers.

This is an official release from the prestigious [Mississippi Records] of a compiled compilation of material from the 70's by Abner Jay (1921 - 1993), an American multi-instrumentalist from Georgia and a lone one-man band and outsider bluesman. This is another solo band style, with one man playing drums, banjo, vocals and harmonica. The name of the song is "Cocaine," and it's a slow, country-style performance with a heavy dose of poison. His voice is very convincing, perhaps because of his checkered, haphazard, and reckless life. This is a bluesman!

A reimagined version of Michael Hurley's 2002 masterpiece! Some of the most beautiful recordings of his catalog available on vinyl for the first time. Sweetkorn was originally released on CD only. This version has been remixed to bring Michael's voice and guitar to the forefront. We've also omitted a couple songs from the O.G version and added a completely unheard tune from the session. A masterpiece featuring all time Hurley hits like 'Oh My Stars', 'The Rue Of Ruby Whores', 'The End Of The Road' and 'Got Over It."

On her expansive new album Water Made Us, Chicago musician and poet Jamila Woods shines anew as she asks the question, what does it mean to fully surrender into love? Across Water Made Us, Jamila embraces new genres, playful melodies, and hypnotizing wordplay, as she wades through the exhilarating tumult of love’s wreckage and refuge. While 2017’s HEAVN saw Jamila celebrating her community within a lineage of Black feminist movement organizing, and 2019’s Legacy! Legacy! reframed her life’s experiences through the storied personas of iconic Black and brown artists, Water Made Us is self-revelatory in an entirely new way. The upcoming album reveals a new side of Jamila never fully shared with her previous work, making this her most personal album yet. Coming out of her Legacy! Legacy! touring schedule and into 2020’s Covid-19 quarantine, Jamila wanted to challenge herself to write as many songs as possible, and spent several months in a state of deep creativity and self-reflection. But despite giving herself this freedom to write without worry, she still yearned for a story to tie her disparate songs together, a clear message to hold in the distance as a guiding light. Early songs “Bugs” and “Thermostat” revealed a simmering common thread: love, relationships, and the hard lessons learned in their wake. Journaling, therapy, and frequent consultations with a trusted astrologer all began to reflect Jamila’s own patterns in love and intimacy back to her. “I was able to understand these little things about myself and say ‘Okay, I want to write about every one of these feelings that I always return to, or patterns that I notice, and give language to them.’” After being connected with LA-based producer McClenney, the album’s story began to take shape, and the two worked together building each song from scratch across 2021 and 2022, first virtually, and then in-person at McClenney’s Haven Studios in LA. The albums sequence was then carefully and cleverly designed to echo the different stages of a relationship: the early days of easy compromising, flirtatiousness, and fun; the careful negotiation through moments of conflict or hurt; the grieving of something lost; and the tender realization at the end of it all that the person who is gone never really leaves, but stays with you as you find yourself ready to try again, refreshed and reassured. But it’s not just Jamila’s turn inward that makes Water Made Us a forceful and captivating reemergence. This album invites us to relinquish any preconceived notions we may have built about what kind of artist Jamila is, with a widespread range of infectious, resplendent production styles. The albums sprawling 17 tracks span everything from autotuned R&B on “Send A Dove”, to gentle acoustic folk rock on the heart wrenching “Wolfsheep”, and bubbly dreampop on dance anthem “Boomerang”. Across Water Made Us, Jamila admits unflinchingly to her mistakes and uncertainties. Twinkling percussive track “Tiny Garden” chronicles Jamila’s effort to prove her commitment to someone, despite the ways she struggles to make it clear. “I’m falling hard for you but I know I don’t show it” she sings over bouncy percussion. Spoken word interlude “I Miss All My Exes” is a solemn and aching ode to the most perfect moments spent with a lifetime of lovers. Each tender shared memory, inside joke, and bestowal of care is kept carefully bound and sealed in Jamila’s heart, even after the relationship has faded into the past. By album finisher “Headfirst”, Jamila seems to accept her own imperfections with gentle grace over a steady groove of shimmering guitar and thumping bass. With every new turn, the door to Jamila’s heart is blown open, revealing her both at her strongest and most vulnerable. But she never navigates love’s depths alone. In what now feels like a familiar staple to her work, Water Made Us is adorned with personal voice memos from those closest to Jamila during her time of deep reflection – Fatimah Asghar, Indya Moore, Krista Franklin, Jasminfire, and the particularly charming Great Uncle Quentin all make appearances. The family affair is rounded out with features from friends and fellow Chicago natives Saba and Peter CottonTale, and the NY-based singer and producer duendita. Every visiting voice serves as an anchor, reminding both Jamila and her audience that the place and people we come from can be a steady source of strength and guidance through our darkest moments of uncertainty. The album’s title is taken from a line in “Good News” where Jamila sings with comforting reassurance, “The good news is water always runs back where it came from/The good news is water made us.” The line is a reference to a Toni Morrison quote from a talk given at the New York Public Library in 1996. “You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places,” Morrison says. “To make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. "Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” It’s this sentiment – of memory, place, and returning – that acts as a pillar for the album’s arc. “That idea that we’re all born, just babies, just happy,” Jamila says. “That’s always in us, that perfect contentment with just being. And so no matter what bad days we have, we’re on a set course back to that. We can just surrender and get out of the way of that.” Water Made Us reminds us that at its best love is a warm, still ocean. Deep, mystifying, and endless in its wonder. And at its worst love can be a riptide that takes us so far away from ourselves we can hardly find our way back, hardly even remember how to swim. And yet Jamila surrenders to this surf — every wave and undertow – because maybe even the most painful endings can in fact be an invitation that calls her back home, back to shore, back to herself.

The expansive American experience Lonnie Holley quilts together across his astounding new album, MITH, is both multitudinous and finely detailed. Holley’s self-taught piano improvisations and stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach have only gained purpose and power since he introduced the musical side of his art in 2012 with Just Before Music, followed by 2013’s Keeping a Record of It. But whereas his previous material seemed to dwell in the Eternal-Internal, MITH lives very much in our world — the one of concrete and tears; of dirt and blood; of injustice and hope. Across these songs, in an impressionistic poetry all his own, Holley touches on Black Lives Matter (“I’m a Suspect”), Standing Rock (“Copying the Rock”) and contemporary American politics (“I Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America”). A storyteller of the highest order, he commands a personal and universal mythology in his songs of which few songwriters are capable — names like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joanna Newsom and Gil Scott-Heron come to mind. MITH was recorded over five years in locations such as Porto, Portugal; Cottage Grove, Oregon; New York City and Holley’s adopted hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. These 10 songs feature contributions from fellow cosmic musician Laraaji, jazz duo Nelson Patton, visionary producer Richard Swift, saxophonist Sam Gendel and producer/musician Shahzad Ismaily.

Bamanya is responsible for building Africa's first DIY modular synthesizer, a huge wall of home-made modules and FX units that he dubbed, fittingly, The Afrorack. His reason for embarking on this difficult project was simple: as he began to investigate the world of modular synthesizers, he realized it would be difficult to acquire the technology in Uganda. Not only were there relatively few retailers across the whole of Africa, but the modules were often prohibitively expensive. After quick search online, Bamanya realized he could easily download circuit diagrams and buy the required parts locally, so he taught himself electronics and constructed a CV-controlled system that's been evolving ever since. "The Afrorack" is Bamanya's debut album and displays the producer's untethered creativity and restless energy. He's all too aware that these modules were developed with European and American musical styles in mind, so developed his own musical methodology and language to coax the system into suiting his needs. His starting points are often abstractions of acid and techno, but Bamanya curves East African rhythms and different scales into these familiar structures, splintering them into fractal shards. "I believe Africa is at that point where people are getting new tools which were not available to them, and then experimenting with them in a different context, because Africa has its own traditional music," he told Pan African Music back in 2019. This attitude is most evident on 'African Drum Machine', where Bamanya uses a Euclidean rhythm sequencer to divide his CV signals into complex algorithmic patterns that mimic the polyrhythmic structures that exist in many East African musical forms. If you're not listening closely it might sound like 4/4 techno, but focus your attention and you'll hear different layers of drums and jagged oscillators bouncing between each other creating hypnotic new rhythms. Bamanya takes a similar approach on 'Why Serious', fuzzing dubby basslines and plasticky percussive sounds into a frenetic hybrid of abstract electronics and fwd-thinking East African club sounds. At times, Bamanya's meditative, bass-heavy compositions echo the psychedelic sounds of Shackleton or Adrian Sherwood's African Head Charge, particularly on tracks like 'Inspired' and 'Last Modular'. With lysergic tonal shifts and precision-engineered drums, both tracks sound defiantly metallic, but sculpted by a producer who's always completely in control as he introduces risky eccentricities like feline groans and videogame blips. And on less beat-heavy tracks like 'Osc' and 'Rev', Bamanya makes a conscious nod to the history of modular music, approaching the kosmische universe of Popol Vuh, Klaus Schulze and Emeralds, augmenting it with East Africa's idiosyncratic rhythmic intensity. "The Afrorack" is the beginning of a conversation that's been long overdue.

Holy Hive released two full length albums and one EP in the short span of 3 years and then they decided to disband. In 2019, while recording their debut album world renown harpist Mary Lattimore was in NY. They got together in the studio on a whim and wound up recording their Harping EP in a few days. They followed that up with their 2020 full length debut Float Back To You which became an instant cult classic and defined their unique “Folk Soul” sound. Frontman Paul Spring’s tender falsetto and maverick guitar playing over Homer Steinweiss’ incomparable drumming and production proved to be a match made in heaven and created a sound that piqued the ears and charmed the hearts of all those who heard it. By the time they started recording their sophomore album COVID, commitments, and life started taking their toll on the band. Spring and Steinweiss took their sound and pushed it way forward on their eponymous 2nd album keeping the anchor of their sound they established while exploring where else they could take it. Unbeknownst to the public by the time that record was released the band was done and had moved on to other things individually. While fans will undoubtedly not like this news, we will all have the timeless music they made while together, and, prolific they certainly were… Big Crown Vaults Vol. 3 : Holy Hive digs into the treasure trove of unreleased recordings and pulls some that never saw their way to vinyl and in all honesty, this is not even half of what is in there. These recordings were made during their two album sessions largely, some were recorded before they even signed to Big Crown. The compilation kicks off with the tune that started it all on the label, their smashing cover of The Invincibles “This Is My Story” that was previously only on a 7”. “Love It Is Not Love”, “Middle Of The Night”, “Celeste”, and their cover of “Kingdom Of The Sun” all feature guest vocals by Shanny of The Shacks who had started playing bass with them at their live shows and sitting in on a lot of the recording sessions. “The Shame” features Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes on bass and El Michels Affair on flute, the latter also plays on “A Perfect Space”. At one point in time the would turn the live show over to Paul Spring who would perform the Irish folk tune “Red Is The Rose” in a traditional style with just him singing and playing acoustic guitar and then launch into their rendition of the song that is on Float Back To You. That stripped down version is featured here on Vaults Vol. 3. The comp finishes poetically with “End Of Time” and it is unlikely that we will ever release the rest of what is sitting in the vault. On behalf of ourselves and all the fans we’d like to take this time to thank Holy Hive for the gorgeous music they made together. We will continue to enjoy it forever. Of course as individuals everyone involved from the core members to the people who lent their talents to certain songs continue to make music. Find them, follow them, enjoy their music.

What is Buck?
Buck is a state of mind, a way of life, a demeanor that gets you through the good times and the bad. If you ask Brainstory, It is also the energy that permeates their debut album.
Kevin, Tony, and Eric are a trio of brothers bounded by blood, fate, and a small town with nothing to do. Their story begins in the long lost lands of the San Bernardino Valley, in the twilight zone known as Rialto, California: An arid wasteland of boredom and empty lots. Through punk rock and skateboarding they found temporary liberation from the local monotony. However, it wouldn’t be long before a hunger for more led them to explore musical realms beyond that of the hardcore punk they admired. After stints at music school and steady disappointment trying to navigate their local jazz scene they moved to Los Angeles and Brainstory was born.
Through a introduction from Chicano Batman’s bassist, Brainstory caught the ears of Big Crown head honchos Danny Akalepse and Leon Michels. Shortly thereafter they were on their way to Queens, to record at The Legendary Diamond Mine with Michels at the helm. An instant chemistry yielded 10 songs in 10 days and now Brainstory has gifted the world with one hell of an introduction to all things Buck. Highlights include the sublime slow burner, “Dead End” which was the A-side to their first 45 on Big Crown that sold out in a matter of days. With Kevin’s sublime falsetto floating atop Tony and Eric’s unflappable and unmistakable backbeat, this tune has become a favorite with the ballad heads, the low-riders, and the slowie collectors. “Breathe” showcases another side of their sound taking a page out of the Shuggie Otis playbook and flipping the script with some stoned out west coast swag. Kev and Tony’s father, Big Tone, an accomplished performer himself, steps in on “Peter Pan” to sing lead vocals over a chorus of friends and family. Bassist extraordinaire, Tony, takes over lead vocal duties on “Sorry”, a smoked out, G Funk groove that is just waiting to be sampled.
These guys have come a long way from their self released EPs and opening tours with Chicano Batman. Their musical growth is undeniable, and taking their California sunshine vibes and mixing them with Michels’ NYC aesthetic has proven to be an amazing combination. It’s a debut record that pulls influences from so many genres seamlessly it’s hard to nail down. Call it Funk, call it Rock, call it Soul, but over here at Big Crown HQ, we’ve decided to call it BUCK. 

Sister Rosetta Tharpe is often referred to as "the godmother of rock and roll" for her pioneering guitar technique, use of distortion/reverb, and a 1963 UK tour with Muddy Waters that has been cited as a huge influence by Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, and Jeff Beck. Though she reached more widespread notoriety across the world in the '50s and '60s thanks to the folk/blues revival and her beloved status among UK blues and rock musicians, it's her early recordings from the late '30s and early-mid '40s that are the most brilliant, visceral, and emotional of her career. This excellent collection compiles 18 of those amazing gospel and R&B sides into one place. Essential.

Originally released on the tiny Sonet label, Live Ankara captures Don Cherry's concert at the American embassy in Turkey on November 23, 1969. Cherry performs with an entirely Turkish rhythm section that includes drummer Okay Temiz, bassist Selcuk Sun, and percussionist/tenor saxophonist Irfan Sumer. The repertoire balances original Cherry themes with Turkish folk melodies arranged by Turkish jazz trumpeter Maffy Falay; there are also a couple of Ornette Coleman themes and a take on Pharoah Sanders' "The Creator Has a Master Plan." Nothing is really explored for too long; the music is played as two continuous suites, and they usually shift to new material fairly quickly (only three of the 15 tracks are significantly longer than three minutes). The ensemble has a pretty sparse sound, with Cherry the sole lead voice (on trumpet, piano, flute, and trumpetzurna) for much of the concert. All of this serves to emphasize the melodicism of Cherry's playing here, and the Turkish material sits pretty comfortably alongside the jazz compositions. It's not quite essential, but it is very intriguing, and Cherry's more devoted fans will find it more than worth their time. [Live Ankara was reissued in full as part of the two-disc set The Sonet Recordings.] ~ Steve Huey

Wave is the fifth studio album by Brazilian jazz musician Antônio Carlos Jobim, released in 1967 on A&M Records. Recorded in the US with mostly American musicians, it peaked at number 114 on the Billboard 200 chart,[1] as well as number 5 on the Jazz Albums chart. Wave includes an ensemble of elite jazz musicians, including trombonists Urbie Green and Jimmy Cleveland, flautist Jerome Richardson, and bassist Ron Carter. Prolific jazz album cover photographer Pete Turner created the psychedelic solarized cover picture of a giraffe.

- Limited edition black 7" vinyl in paper inner sleeve in 3mm spine sleeve
- 500 copies worldwide
- Released 26th January 2024

Stuart Howard, a.k.a. Lapalux, the UK artist from Brainfeeder who is signed by Flying Lotus, has released the long-awaited reissue of his debut album "Nostalchic" from 2013! The album, which means "refined nostalgia," beautifully blends his beloved R&B and soul with elements of house and hip-hop, and is finished with Lapalux's trademark inebriating swing and deep textures for a poignant and emotional 12-track album. The opening track, "Tape Intro," tells the story. As the opening track, "Tape Intro," tells us, Lapalux is a keen experimenter with cassette tape, looping and layering sounds in the warm format of tape to create textures that are haunting, beautiful, fragile, somehow familiar, and alien at the same time. It is possible. Finally, a masterpiece that will continue to shine brilliantly as a monumental work for the beat generation with a taste for electronica, chillwave, and ambient R&B is finally back!

Ulla returns with ‘Foam’, a surprise new album unlocking variants of ambient pop and looped jazz/dub styles coiled inside a glitched matrix that reminds us of Huerco S’ ‘Plonk’ as well as Ekkehard Ehlers fractal treatments and those incredible, smudged and disneyfied edits of Celine Dion released earlier this year by elusive outfit Romance. It’s an absorbing, quietly significant album for 3XL, on its most substantial release to date. Responsible for one of contemporary ambient’s finest breadcrumb trails in recent years, Ulla leads on from an acclaimed run of albums toward a more filigree style on ‘Foam’. Deploying fragmented morsels resembling glass-cast confectionary with a burbling vernacular, these ephemeral new works dissolve into a supine, shoe-gauzy and jazzed bliss that’s best compared with Jan Jelinek’s efforts in this dream-staged arena, the subs x piano minimalism of Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto’s revered collabs, as well as the memory-frothed echo of claire rousay and Co La’s fractal baubles. Aye, it’s a sound close to our hearts and one weft with a certain sort of magic that sparkles on the nerves and imagination with delicacy. Intending it to “feel like a keychain”, the album follows a logic that’s almost algorithmic with its haphazard mutations, but which ultimately displays a more human pulse on pieces like ‘foam angel’, weaving forlorn brass around jazz samples and Ulla’s disjointed voice murmuring unintelligibly like some cyborg liz frazer speaking into the sublime. Effusive solo keys and strings cascade like petals on ‘song’, where familiar leitmotifs become wind-dispersed like seeds. We’re snagged on the bittersweet tang of ‘popping out’, and the unexpected dance between marina’s jazz guitar lilt and the aerosoul thizz on ‘sad face’, while the tongue-tip sensitivities of ‘blush’, and ‘for your love’ sound like Rihanna produced by a Systemisch-era Oval. As tangled and complex as it is filled with improbable ohrwurms, ‘Foam’ is unlike anything we’ve heard from Ulla before, and it just might be the weirdest ambient/pop dislocation of the year so far.

After the experience of Camizole, Dominique Grimaud began a new (and different) adventure in 1979 with Monique Alba. Alongside Gilbert Artman (Urban Sax), Guigou Chenevier (Etron Fou Leloublan), Jean-Pierre Grasset (Verto) and Cyril Lefebvre (Maajun), Vidéo-Aventures is composed of instrumentals capable of reconciliating Captain Beefheart, Henry Cow, Suicide and… John Barry. All with the backing of Rock In Opposition, which enabled this Musiques pour Garçons et Filles to become known worldwide. “Let us enter your hearts”: is the request made by Vidéo-Aventures, and how can we refuse? Especially as Musiques pour garçons et filles, recorded by Dominique Grimaud and Monique Alba fifty years ago along with handpicked colleagues, is as fresh as ever. 1979: having improvised a huge amount (and how!) with Camizole, Grimaud tried his hand at composition and studio recording with Alba. Their first instrument was the AKS synthetiser, with which the duo recorded the instrumental tracks that were then offered to their comrades Guigou Chenevier (Etron Fou Leloublan), Gilbert Artman (Lard Free, Urban Sax), Jean-Pierre Grasset (Verto) and Cyril Lefebvre (Maajun). At the end of the year, they all came into the studio for a week to record the eight tracks of this mini album that Chris Cutler would issue a few months later on his label, Recommended. In France it was the beginning of the agitation around Rock In Opposition, to such a point that Musiques pour Garçons et Filles would rise to second place in the NME independent Charts. And this is hardly surprising… For these instrumental miniatures (here with the bonus of rare archives, some of which are previously unpublished) are uncontrollable: electronics augmented by lap-steel guitar (“Tina”), cunning pop (“Zazou sur la piste”), mechanic sound (“Une vie moderne”), street piano (« French Kiss »), disturbing atmospheres (“La ballade des cardiaques”) or something like a TV theme tune capable of adjusting all the colours (“Telstar”)… With such promising ingredients, why stop Vidéo-Aventures from entering?

After delivering one of this decade’s early classic LPs, Naarm’s brilliantly incomparable CS + Kreme morph into modal jazz electronic mutations on a deadly cool but restless new album exploring the fissures of Detroit beatdown, early ‘00s electronica, contemporary midnight jazz and ambient rituals, featuring contributions from Bridget St John and James Rushford. Adored around these parts since their 2016 debut 12” with Total Stasis, Conrad Standish & Sam Karmel’s duo really dominated our listening lives during the pandemic with ’Snoopy’, a heady elision of downbeat styles that crossed borders between lysergic Coil rites and illbient trip hop with a snug intimacy and emotive grip that rewarded deeper with every listen. One of their last live shows before the pandemic was held at The White Hotel in Salford, where the formative, physical experience of performing their music on a finely tuned sound system stuck with the duo as they caught one of the last flights back to Australia, where they endured one of the harshest lockdown protocols in the world; not allowed to travel more than 5 miles from home, and only for limited amounts of time. During lockdown the residual glow of the preceding months buoyed their spirits and prompted a new slant on CS + Kreme music, urging them to get deeper into it, with melody taking more of a backseat to texture and groove as the recordings manifested a more built-in, metaphoric and circular, organic quality that feels very much in-the-present, but also gently dissociative, evoking the interstitial states of mind of natural highs and nostalgic reminiscence ‘Orange’ arrives as the ideal sibling to ’Snoopy’, blessed with a touch-sensitive emotional intelligence and sensuality that oozes therapeutic vibes. The swirling energies of their first LP here feel settled into a quietly profound psychedelic experience, with longer track lengths allowing their feelings to grow and slosh over the senses with a groggier suspension of disbelief from the snaking rustle of ‘Baseline’ thru the extraordinary 20 minute depths of oily ambient invocation to ‘Storms Rips Banana Tree’ featuring James Rushford on portative organ, Wurlitzer and harpsichord. The spirit of Arthur Russell's "World of Echo" looms over 'Shred', as moody, viscous strings roll over reduced, machine-gun drum machine patterns and deranged lite-jazz electric piano. Any links the mind makes are inevitably blotted into surreal shapes almost immediately; just as you think you have an idea of where the track's coming from, bizarre vocals and unsettling flute blasts wrench you into a different locale. Even on the relatively austere 'Voice of the Spider', what starts as a baroque minimal techno slowly mutates into glassy FM modernism, with vocal chants and delirious, curvaceous instrumentation that plays like Kemetrix and Detroit Escalator Company on a dank one. If there's one element that lashes each disparate composition together, it's CS + Kreme's use of voices. On each track there's inevitably a wordless breathiness that roots us in the duo's sonic philosophy; their instrumentals might flutter between vastly different forms of expression, but their transient principles are moored by the most human expression of all. The whisper turns into a murmur (sung by legend Bridget St John) on 'Would You Like a Vampire', and lyrics form a near-song, sounding like Hood's rainy electro-indie variations supplanted into CS + Kreme's psychedelic headspace. It's as close as the duo get to pop, and they follow it by embarking on the album's most uncompromising moment, a 20-minute finale that lurches from transcendent ritual drone into jerky electronics, freeform doom jazz and growling basement noise. If you've made it this far then you've been initiated into Standish and Karmel's musical coterie, and this final mutated gesture feels like a gift from the duo to their most dedicated listeners.

Mohammad Reza Mortazavi (Tombak) & Burnt Friedman (electronics, synth.) release their second EP “YEK 2”.
Equipped with one drum only and laser-pattern–electronics, Mortazavi and Friedman produce delicate, yet archaic, trance–inducing, transnational dance music with“…hints of dust and grain… “. (Freq)

Mortazavi and Friedman move hands and faders according to odd cyclical rhythms with incredible accuracy. The extreme dynamic range and rhythmic congruency of drum and electronics merge both, Mortazavi`s and Friedman’s repertoire entirely.
Complete in [YEK], resisting cultural notions of folklore and territory.