MUSIC

Unfettered harsh noise from the legendary Japanese noise artist Masami Akita aka Merzbow. Tirelessly churning layers of distortion are punctuated across two tracks with glistening, jagged feedback and thrashing pulsations that lash at the ears and utterly invigorate the senses.

Immense tramplers and jigs by the whirling percussive dervish of Valentina Magaletti (Moin), João Pais Filipe (HHY & The Macumbas) & Leon Marks’ (Hey Colossus) aka CZN - huge RIYL Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force, Shackleton, Bernd Friedmann, Uwalmassa, Don't DJ, Photek. On their 2nd mission for TTT after 2021’s ‘Luxury Variations’, CZN come hungry for the ‘floor in all five parts of ‘Station to Station to Station’. While the title is a nod to Bowie, the EP has fuck all to do with him, and everything to do with untangling creaky limbs and showing nuff options for the aerobic mystics and polyrhythm-metered DJs. The battery of Magaletti, Filipe and Marks make a wickedly disciplined racket from drums, drums, and more drums, sealed in place with sparing dabs of triggered synth and FX. ‘Compliance Crew’ gathers their energies in a pendulous mid-tempo swirl, congas and wraithlike vocies dubbed to the rafters, before ‘Lawn Thug’ more explicitly references West African traditions, notably the tussle of Mbalax, in its pugilistic call and response, and ‘Year of the Rat’ ramps it on the slow/fast bent with rattling drums corkscrewing at angles over rudest South London subs and pads like a lost Horsepower x Hatcha fantasy. The cosmic whorl of ‘Born to Snap’ is perhaps best compared with the proggier urges of Shackleton and Bernd Friedmann, leading to a the EP’s straightest, hypnotic, 15 minute highlight of rolling linearity recalling Shackleton’s remix of Villalobos or Ron Trent deep house.

Sometimes, Mitski says, it feels like life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” Mitski says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have, after I die, so that I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will continue to shine that love long after she’s gone. Listening to it, that’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land. Love is always radical, which means that it always disrupts, which means that it always takes work to receive it. This land, which already feels inhospitable to so many of its inhabitants, is about to feel hopelessly torn and tossed again – at times, devoid of love. This album offers the anodyne. “This is my most American album,” Mitski says about her seventh record, and the music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. But “maybe it’s beyond witnessing,” she says. At times, it feels like the album is an exercise in negative capability – a fearless embodiment and absorption of the pain of other bodies. When I ask her what the album would look like, if it were a person, she says it would be someone middle-aged and exhausted, perhaps someone having a midlife crisis. But through the daily indignity and exhaustion, something enormous and ecstatic is calling out. In this album, which is sonically Mitski’s most expansive, epic, and wise, the songs seem to be introducing wounds and then actively healing them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like the light from a distant star. Mitski wrote these songs in little bursts over the past few years, and they feel informed by moments of noticing – noticing a sound that’s out of place, a building that groans in decay, an opinion that splits a room, a feeling that can’t be contained in a body. It was recorded at both the Bomb Shelter in East Nashville and the Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles. The album incorporates an orchestra arranged and conducted by Drew Erickson, as well as a full choir of 17 people - 12 in LA and 5 in Nashville - arranged by Mitski. And for the first time, it felt important to Mitski to have a band recording live together in the studio, to create this new sublime sound. Working with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland, the album has a wide-range of references, from Ennio Morricone’s bombastic Spaghetti Western scores to Carter Burwell’s tundra-filling Fargo soundtrack, from the breathy intimacy of Arthur Russell to the strident aliveness of Scott Walker or Igor Stravinsky, from the jubilation of Caetano Veloso to the twangy longing of Faron Young. From the first track, the album introduces and then heals a wound. “Bug Like an Angel” finds the divine in the ordinary, in the boozy drowning of sorrow. The narrator sings from the strange comfort of rock bottom: “sometimes a drink feels like family.” And suddenly, that choir of angels sings: “FAMILY!” This first track introduces a cosmic paradox: “The wrath of the devil was also given him by God.” This is an album in which dark and light exist in the same gesture, the same broken prayer. Like the Buddha inviting the demon Mara in for tea, The Land embraces brutal, daily pain — the necessary toll of transcendent love. In “Buffalo Replaced,” the wail of a freight train replaces the vibrations of the long-gone stampeding buffalo. Here, hope itself is personified, anthropomorphized into a sleeping creature, and our narrator wonders if life would be easier without her. But then, as though in response, “Heaven” offers a beautiful moment of passion, preserved like a fossil in time even though the “dark awaits us all around the corner.” This oasis is aggressively interrupted by “I Don’t Like My Mind,” a song from the perspective of someone in extraordinary pain. They are begging to keep their job, while actively keeping terrible traumatic memories at bay. Without their employment, these memories might take over, consuming them as relentlessly as the cake that they ate one “inconvenient Christmas.” The toggling between hope and despair in these four songs is masterful — the good, the bad, and the ugly in America’s backyard. This mythology continues to deepen with the stunning “The Deal,” in which someone is so burdened by their soul that they beg for it to be taken from them. Soon, the singer’s soul is revealed to be a bird perched on a streetlight. In a coup of songwriting, the narration does not switch into the newly-souled bird’s voice. No, we stay with the soulless “I.” The bird calls down: “You’re a cage without me. / Your pain is eased but you’ll never be free.” This song reinforces the album’s tug-of-war between the intoxication of love and the pain of isolation. Close on its heels is “My Love Mine All Mine,” an instant classic and the beating heart of the album, wherein the singer imagines their love shining down on the earth from the moon, long after the speaker is gone. “It’s just witness-less me,” she sings on “The Frost,” which suddenly takes us from the anticipation of loss right into the aching loneliness of it. On the subject of witnessing, Mitski says: “I’ve always been the person on the outside watching. And I’ve also done that with myself... outside of myself, witnessing myself, watching myself.” She thinks that she might have adopted this habit as a condition of being a woman of color, and that it’s led to the occasional post-apocalyptic fantasy of being the only person left in the world. We talked about Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, in which a man is profoundly alone, with only an archive of old tapes to keep him company. He remembers the seismic event of an old sexual encounter, but now it’s: “Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.” The Land repeatedly offers that same hypothesis. Without love, is there anyone here? After the alien lift of “Star” comes the album’s showdown. “I’m Your Man” feels as inevitable, bloody, and haunting as a Sergio Leone duel scene. The “Man” in the title isn’t some fella proclaiming devotion, Mitski says, but rather the man inside her head, the haunting patriarch who treats her like a dog and can destroy her at whim. Despite his confidence and swagger, he is tracked down by a pack of hounds — who have unionized in the name of catharsis. After this violent reckoning, a Fowler’s Toad calls out in what sounds like a human scream. The night settles into silence. The earth might be uninhabited. We glide into the liberating closer, “I Love Me After You,” in which someone is truly alone but truly free. King of all the land. “I don’t have a self,” Mitski observes. “I have a million selves, and they’re all me, and I inhabit them, and they all live inside me.” Loving all of these selves does not yield the easy burst of a pop song. It’s the “long, complex, deep love, that you can never get to the end of, that’s always evolving, like a person. And there’s just no end to it. It feels like space travel.” The album is full of the ache of the grown- up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It’s a tiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything, and everyone, is crying out, screaming in pain, arching towards love. Maybe this is what our best artists do: take a spaceship into the furthest reaches of pain, in order to bring back the elixir that we already had inside us. The unknowable known of love. “You have to go to both worlds all the time,” Mitski says, by which she means the mysterious world of making and the brutal world of living. This album is an act of hyperlocal space travel. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning us and then rejecting us. To love this place — this earth, this America, this body — takes active work. It might be impossible. The best things are.

Duster is made up of two members, C. Amber and E. Parton, with occasional help from their friends on drums and recording duties. Stratosphere is mainly recorded at their home on four track. At times, they sound like Pavement and other times like Seely with higher pitched male vocals. Stratosphere demonstrates their guitar-based focus, riding on the flow of duel picking guitar melodies. With many guitars switching dynamic roles and riding on tunings, Duster sounds a bit like early Sonic Youth. Bass and drums act as the bottom, while guitars playfully find their melody by feeding off one another, throwing notes back and forth. The four-track recording element brings a wonderful space warmth or humidity to Stratosphere, which keeps you flying in the air or floating in space. A hard task with a four-track recording is the recording of the vocals. For atmospheric affect, it works. The voice provides texture to the plucking guitars, but no lyrics are understood. They act as instruments. Along with guitars and vocals, many great manipulations with tape noise as background effects exist on Stratosphere. "Echo Bravo" is definitely the highlight of the record. A long build of noise and whiny guitars rev up the track with a steady drum machine beat creating stress and tension. When is it going to give? Then, it finally busts. Distorted guitars in a heavy breakdown find their cues. Vocals appear 2:45 seconds in to deliver a depressing calming element in the lazy delivery. The record may be a bit long for some listeners, clocking in at 53 minutes. Stratosphere is best listened to at different times; tracks may be isolated or the record can be divided in parts. Duster are at their finest when they play with dynamics. Many tunes have a loud and a soft part, but they are never predictable. The transition is always interesting or takes you by surprise. ~ Francis Arres

Say She She, the soulful female-led trio, stand rock solid on their discodelic duty with their boundary breaking sophomore album Silver. The three strong voices of Piya Malik (El Michels Affair staple feature, and former backing singer for Chicano Batman), Sabrina Mileo Cunningham and Nya Gazelle Brown front the band. Following the NYC siren song, the trio was pulled from their respective cities — Piya from London, Nya from DC, and Sabrina from NYC — to Manhattan’s downtown dance floors, through the Lower East Side floorboards, and up to the rooftops of Harlem, where their friendship was formed on one momentous, kismet eve. Silver was entirely written and recorded live to tape at Killion Sound studio in North Hollywood earlier this year and produced by Sergio Rios (of Orgone). While these analog recording techniques help root Say She She’s sound in a bedrock of tonal warmth that only tape can achieve, it is also their process of cutting the track in the moment and capturing the magic of communal creativity that has seen their sound described as “a glorious overload of joyful elation and spiritual elevation” (MOJO) and “infused with the wonky post-disco spirit of early '80s NYC” (The Guardian). Musical inspirations include Rotary Connection, Asha Puthli, Liquid Liquid, Grace Jones and Tom Tom Club. Ultimately, Silver oozes with quirk and adventure and embraces the multifaceted nature of what it means to be a modern femme. Say She She fully embrace their role as beauticians, actively reminding people of the inherent beauty in the world. They skillfully employ double entendres and humor to encourage open dialogue and fearlessly address important matters that demand attention.

Holy Hour delves into the intricate theme of romantic obsession and addiction, artfully intertwining emotions and experiences to create a captivating narrative. The writer portrays the subject of their affection as the center of their universe, elevating them to the status of a metaphorical religion. With each track, the album invites listeners to explore the complexities of love, desire, and the profound impact it has on the human psyche.

DIY pop master from Saitama, JAPAN. love psychedelic pop/anime/dreamy pop

Next up in Veyl's ever-evolving and diverse catalog comes of an experimental sonic experience from Llimbs. The project of Hagen Ebejer, he began making music in the early 2000's and started Llimbs in 2016, which allowed him to officially release music and perform live, making his debut at Berlin's legendary Tresor. Now he arrives on Veyl with Midnight Amber, an 8-track album which fully realizes the Llimbs sound and vision. Inspired by dark and experimental sounds, Midnight Amber is a tour de force of genre-bending compositions, conjured using downtempo and dreamlike sounds which explore both the organic and digital. The result is an undefinable affair which is both haunting and infectious at once. 'Unfold' commences the album with a soft yet powerful piece of melodic melancholy, inviting the listener through the gates and into the world of Llimbs. 'Divergent' picks things up with a ritual work of stirring chants which leads us to the evocative chords on 'Origin'. Finishing off side A is 'Absent', a slow burning rhythmic piece which encapsulates the listener, creating an almost nostalgic atmosphere for a time unknown. 'Phase' begins the B side with cinematic flair, creating a palpable tension which then evaporates into the ether. 'Eclipse' returns to a familiar dreamworld, traversing the skies which feel both familiar yet mysterious before 'Fragment' dives deeper into a hidden universe of emotion, fusing ancient works with modern technology. Concluding the album is 'Midnight', a perfect end to a journey which exists at the intersection of the natural and mechanical, reality and surreality, marking a tremendous finale which can only lead to a new beginning.

Sam Hall’s new album as ghost orchard, ‘rainbow music’, is a collage of patience and meditation. The record was written in two halves, between the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2021, and is filled with nuances as quietly imperceptible as the seasons, or the profound movement of time, where one day looking back you realize your whole spirit has shifted. Where 2019’s critically revered ‘bunny’ was a love letter to a romantic relationship, ‘rainbow music’ documents the culmination of Hall’s first personal experience with loss in several forms. At the end of 2020, his longterm childhood pet passed away, and with it the last continuing threads of familiarity between being a kid and adulthood. Still based in the Grand Rapids, Michigan town he’d grown up in, the static ease of familiar living seemed to be coming apart at the seams, as friends moved on to bigger cities, relationships shapeshifted and in a short period of time, another kitten he’d adopted passed away prematurely, leaving Hall to question the trajectory in which he himself was headed. Recorded in the house that Hall currently lives in, ‘rainbow music’ is a timestamp of this environment. A myriad of shows used to take place at the residence, and the space still reverberates with the residual echoes of people as they pass though. Hall remains fascinated with the remnants of things left behind, and his home is replete with furniture and miscellaneous objects that reflect the core of his compositions: sonic maximalism paired with attention to detail. His music feels steeped in this place he has painstakingly decorated, where, much like the songs of ‘rainbow music,’ each individual object provides its own history and underlying connectedness to part of a greater collection. Bristling with the familiarity of being a stranger in someone else’s living quarters, amidst all their belongings and hoarded treasures, the album’s linear qualities remain rough around the edges, like gradually filling in the color of someone you’re just getting to know. “I love creating rooms,” Hall emphasizes, and this record “feels more inside of me than anything.” The oldest (and only proper love song), “soot,” was the first song to come after a period of static creativity, and effectively opened a floodgate that inspired him to finish half of ‘rainbow music’ in the forthcoming two months. Each track weighs with its own impact, as Hall grapples with endings and beginnings side by side, a rebirth that Hall equates to be as cathartic as crying. Many came about in a sudden stream of consciousness: the bare-boned structures of “rest” were recorded entirely in a day, and was an immediate reaction to his pet’s death and a way to process those feelings. More upbeat “maisy” and glitch-filled “cut” also came together tangentially to one another. “I feel more secure in my relationship to music,” Hall muses. With his previous work, “I was trying different things on, but ‘rainbow music’ feels more certain: this is me for better for worse at this period of time.” There’s a push and pull across the eleven songs, a sort of immediacy that’s made even more effective by Hall’s retrospective reflection. “comfort (rainbow)” was written in half prior to most of the grief that would alter Hall’s life, and was completed months later by the tuner who fixed the upright piano in his house. Produced almost entirely by Hall, the only further collaborator was Bennett Littlejohn (who has also contributed to Hovvdy and Katy Kirby’s projects), and these specific touches are integral to the cohesive footprint of ‘rainbow music’s miniature universes. Hall has previously described his work as “memory storage”, and in a way ‘rainbow music’ functions as an hourglass measuring out spoonfuls of both the past and future. An oscillating palette of instruments flit between acoustic guitar, piano and even fluttering drum and bass, where synths patter like barely discernible heartbeats and vocals feel more like an instrument than decipherable words. Hall has never released the lyrics to his music, but throughout the album’s insular quality sometimes you can hear smidges of the outside world from far away; a call and return echoed by repetition where meaning is sketched out in a dreamscape and a subtle darkness always surrounds the fringes. Like “songs in the key of life,” the title ‘rainbow music’ refers to the myriad of colors and qualities within Hall that are refracted throughout. It’s a symbolization of hope and the aftermath, the flickering light at the end of the tunnel (or “when a rainbow shows up after a big storm”). “Wish I could have fun anymore,” Hall ruminates on “dancing”, as well as confessing he “wish he made more upbeat bangers.” But reality packs more of a punch, and this collection of songs sees him finally be at peace with the current state of affairs. Relatable to anyone who has contemplated what it means to settle down, or even just catch your breath in an era where anguish is commonplace, the release of ‘rainbow music’ is a happy ending in its own right, a marker of survival that remains close to the bone.

The collaboration between Klara Lewis and Nik Colk Void somehow seemed inevitable. Both artists having seen their releases published by Editions Mego, individually carving out idiosyncratic voices in the worlds of extreme, abstract electronic music. With Full-On, Lewis and Void explore and assimilate the very edge of their individual practice where a unique collaborative interface allows two voices to combine and morph into a third voice. Lewis and Void play ping pong with the conversation of sounds, generating ideas and bouncing them off each other, simultaneously encouraging the other to go further with their ideas opening up an opportunity to engage with previously unexplored terrain. Guitars, synths, euro rack modular systems, voice, sampling and outboard processing are folded in a playful unification with a propensity to tease, explore and extract new ideas and shapes, sometimes brutal, sometimes playful. Trust was also a compositional tool allowing instinct to freely move on any aspect of the sound and space. This sound/feeling/instinct/association let this wild and wonderful material grow organically into something new. The result of this exploratory interplay are 17 intense miniatures reveling in the process of unadulterated experimentation and whimsical interplay, not just between the humans, but the machines themselves. United in an endless series of sonic U-turns, this daring duo intertwine pop and noise whilst also bringing together visions of tender techno and forthright ambient. The various zones manifest from all this reveals vocals shifting in mysterious ways, dust drenched beats churning limpidly and devilish string loops navigating a disorientating domain. The experience of listening to Full-On is to be confronted with a range of ideas resulting in a platter of emotions. A place where beauty and the beast collide with the impulsive and outright weird. What a wonderful world.

Innervzm II, a companion to 2022’s Innervzm, is a sprawling, meditative collection from Los Angeles-based producer, drummer, and sound architect, Raays. The EP’s title derives from a conversation between Raays and Leaving labelmate Deantoni Parks regarding “archeology of self” as a creative methodology. Innervzm, as a concept, connotes the kind of soul work that necessarily precedes and renders outward action possible, meaningful, and effective. The Innervzm II EP blends musique concréte, field recordings, and improvisational synthesis, documenting Raays’ methodical, ritualistic, and materially grounded approach to composition. Each of the EP’s six tracks was seeded by a discrete instance of deep listening (of the Pauline Oliveros variety) in environments ranging from Raays’ own backyard of Ernest Debs Pond to the thundery night time forestscapes of Michoacán. If regarded sincerely as the ever-present music of this world, how might a listener interpret the spatial and melodic interplay of, say, birdsong and the distant hum of traffic? And how might that same listener respond, musically? Innervzm II provides one such example: a keen spirit, intermittently (generally for no more than ten minutes at a time) tuning into the sonic chaos, deciphering the elements (for it is only ever really seemingly chaos), then immediately distilling this experience into song. Aided by an hourglass (as much a talisman as an actual timekeeper), and abiding by a sort of “first thought / best thought” approach to completing a track in a single sitting, Innervzm II constitutes a snapshot of an artist in an especially fruitful and transitory period of exploration. As a self-described “optimistic futurist,” the tapestry Raays weaves is indeed soothing and consoling, deftly melding the organic and the analog. A persistent albeit oscillating flutter on “Beneath Your Surface” suggests the slow-motion beating of a hummingbird’s wings. The subtle warble hidden within the EP’s opener, “Equiinox” conjures the rainbow artifacts of a VHS sunrise. Though “textural message” is the title of track five, these pieces might very well all be considered textural messages, replete as they are in soil and static, dredged (lovingly) from some place just beyond the frame of knowing. Innervzm (dubbed “Full of vibrant life” by New Age luminary Laraaji) will be paired with Innervzm II for a joint physical cassette release in June, and Raays will soon join longtime experimental/ambient luminary, The Album Leaf, as an opener and drummer on a global tour. Which is all to say, Raays is diligently tending the garden, to our collective benefit.

Ambient, hip-hop, abstract, jazz, dub, electric sounds.... TALKIE'S MOOD SOUND TRACK#1", a cassette tape work created by DJ KENSEI and Jusanga's sessions, is now available. TALKIE" is a bi-monthly event held at Brooklyn Brewery's flagship store "B" on the basement floor of K5 in Nihonbashi Kabuto-cho, Tokyo, titled Cinematic Art Salon. VIDEOGRAM) are in charge of the visuals, and the brewery's space is designed to entertain the crowds. TALKIE'S MOOD SOUND TRACK#1" will be released with the support of cassette tape label Tastee T Production. The sound sources included in the album are selected and edited from the session recordings by DJ KENSEI + Jusangga played at the event. We hope you will enjoy "TALKIE'S MOOD SOUND TRACK #1" as a complete piece of work as well as feeling the atmosphere of the event.

Lionmilk, the primary solo project of Los Angeles musician/composer/producer, Moki Kawaguchi, for some time now, operates in an explicitly therapeutic mode. 2021’s I Hope You Are Well was originally self-released during the onset of the pandemic as a limited run of home-dubbed cassettes, which Kawaguchi hand-delivered to loved ones’ mailboxes in a sort of guerrilla care campaign—a modest attempt to mitigate the sudden, profound alienation that prevailed during those early lockdown months. When Lionmilk and Leaving Records later collaborated on an official release for I Hope You Are Well, this once humble project’s impact grew exponentially, with countless fans (old and new alike) granted access to the warmth and beauty of Lionmilk’s inner circle. Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222, out March 17, 2023 on Leaving, presents the listener with yet another opportunity for deep cosmic healing. When discussing Lionmilk, Kawaguchi regularly foregrounds the absolute necessity of music-making as a form of self-care. First and foremost, he produces sounds and songs that provide him with some modicum of solace — “music to feel less whack to.” One gets the sense that he’d be doing exactly what he’s doing (exactly the way he’s doing it) even if he was the last man on earth. But he isn’t. And, in fact, one of Lionmilk’s primary concerns—evident across track titles, as well as the sung and spoken words that dot his releases—is community, or more specifically, what it means to exist and act in his community. Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222 ventures deeper into the paradoxes explored to great effect on I Hope You Are Well. How might we transmit our solitudes via music and to what extent? What does a shared solitude sound and feel like? And, in the context of this transaction, what novel relationships arise between the recording artist and the listener? The record begins with a radio transmission from the depths of Lionmilk’s celestial innerspace— “Hello. Is anybody out there? This is Lionmilk speaking, and you are tuned into the Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222. Standby. We are commencing broadcast” — a retro sci-fi movie motif that recurs throughout Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222’s 26 tracks. But space travel here functions more-so as a metaphor for deep soul work, for journeying inward, through the vast unknowns of one’s own consciousness. What follows is an intimate, diaristic song suite, grounded in the struggle to keep our hearts alive and open amidst an onslaught of daily indignities. Tracks like “daily i dream,” “lover’s theme,” and “hopeful i can change,” function as brief, instrumental meditations on those moments when hope suddenly, inexplicably eclipses despair. The soulful standout “treat yourself like a friend” contains perhaps the lyrical apotheosis of Lionmilk’s current iteration: “...I get up / to pee and drink water / treating myself a little bit softer / you do your best / today will be better / I’ll do my best / I’ll do my best / I promise.” Composed of loops, sketches, improvizations, and voice memos recorded directly to a single cassette tape, Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222 flutters, warbles, and lilts along seamlessly — an hour-long, lo-fi and jazzy paean to compassion, while clearly indebted to the ambient idiom, nevertheless constitutes some of the most politically engaged and energizing music yet from Lionmilk.

"i didn’t really get into Zelda until the quarantine of 2020. i was living alone at the time just me and the kitty. after 3-4 months i didn’t know when i was going to touch another human again and feeling really down. Breath Of The Wild was a much needed escape and became a sanctuary of sorts. it still is. the title “Six Arrows For Naydra” is a reference to a side-quest where Link paraglides down a snowy mountain alongside an ice dragon named Naydra while shooting these malice eyeballs off of her which eventually heals her illness. the first time i had this experience it felt like a fever dream."

Los Angeles-based Fabiano Do Nascimento is a multi-string guitarist and songwriter who melds the traditional idioms of his native Brazil (i.e., samba, choro) with the more contemporary and experimental strains of jazz, pop, and electronic music. Das Nuvens (“The Clouds”), out July 21, 2023 on Leaving Records, is a crisp, frequently blissful, and deceptively groove-oriented showcase from a consummate musician — a rich and varied collection of songs, all of which seem to prioritize, and thrive in, the soft and intentional spaces between notes. Raised in Rio and São Paulo before eventually relocating to Southern California as a teenager, Nascimento’s approach to guitar and songcraft is informed by an adolescence enmeshed in Brazil’s exceptionally fertile musical environs. His induction into this lineage was organic. With the encouragement and attention of a musical family, a young Nascimento learned to read music, play the piano, and dabbled with the flute before picking up guitar at age 10. His affinity for the guitar was immediate, decisive, and clear. The instrument further catalyzed his decades-long journey into the annals of Brazilian classical music. Das Nuvens constitutes the free-form, exploratory work of a musician who, having mastered a distinct musical language, seeks to apply his skill towards broader, more experimental modes of expression. Fittingly, track one — built around a contemplative, pointillistic refrain— is titled “Babel,” a reference to the legend of man’s attempt to build a tower to heaven, and how God thwarted this alleged act of hubris by shattering man’s shared language, sowing chaos and confusion. Though a stern parable on its face, it is a myth that enshrines our world’s dizzying array of languages (of modes of being), and the subsequent beauty of cultural exchange through art. In this regard, it is a fitting opening statement for an album that collapses and collages not only contemporary and classical Brazilian and pop idioms, but also the diverse range of indigenous music that Nascimento has encountered and studied in his travels as a touring musician. Recorded in Nascimento’s home studio with his longtime friend and collaborator, Daniel Santiago (who also designed the album’s art), Das Nuvens evokes windswept vistas (the plaintive “Thrdwrld” lands like Morricone gently flirting with trap), and the lush Latin American forests of Nascimento’s youth (“Aurora” in particular), while simultaneously foregrounding music’s ineffable and universally-felt capacity to sooth and inspire.

Across 8 concise vignettes, Chantal Michelle alchemizes acoustic instrumentation with a spectrum of layered feedback and field sounds, depicting fractured beauty amongst a precarious reality. Michelle’s work is characterized by intoxicating juxtaposition and enriched with an array of source material to construct immersive narrative. Much of the work here was recorded during her time in New York City, perhaps a pre-requisite to the heightened tension at play. Opening with lucid choral vocals, a mysteriously seductive anaesthesia disseminates before evaporating into surging feedback, vocals dissolving as quickly as they appeared. It’s this oscillation between states that permeates throughout the work. Whether it’s the esoteric rumbling of acoustic drones, or the radiant fusion of distorted chords amongst the warming sounds of tropical atmospheres, moments of serenity are conjured up in a space so bliss that their endings incite an immediate nostalgia. Fleeting melodies are pierced by shattering cries of feedback; gossamer tones engulfed in saturated noise. Amongst the instrumentation, buzzing field sounds tremor with hyperreal peculiarity and hallucinations shape noise into sounds of the familiar; the rumbling of an overheard aeroplane or the whirring of distant grasshoppers. Similarly, recurring motifs elicit a false sense of security in their subliminal familiarity, soon exposed as echoes, a reverberation of what was left behind. At the approaching climax, the blissful onset anaesthesia has worn off, interrupted by a powerful chorus of deep, gothic synthesis that fuels post-apocalyptic fever dreams, an unnerving and mesmerising symphony. The unresolved tension leaves us in a state of delirium, questioning if the tranquillity we experienced was ever really there. Michelle was immersed in Fleur Jaeggy’s 'The Water Statues' whilst recording, and its imprint is woven into the sonic fabric of 'Broken to Echoes'; a sublime liminal dream-state, pervaded by haunting visions. It’s a view of the world captured from inside the enclosure of a cell membrane. Through translucent mesh, we see the billowing tension of our surroundings, protected only by the most delicate walls.

Growing up in Minnesota, life constantly took multi-instrumentalist and producer Lutalo Jones back and forth across the Mississippi River, through the beating heart of the Twin Cities, from their home in Minneapolis to school in St Paul. In 2021 Lutalo and their partner moved east, to settle among the green peaks of Vermont, having taken ownership of an area of land with the intention of building a small community for themselves. The aim is to accomplish a long-held dream: to live life differently, to invest in and create something tangible that can be passed on to future generations. The to-and-fro of that early life has been replaced by something altogether more steady, a burning desire to not get so caught up in the intensity of the world.It's this overwhelming potency of modernity that ripples through Lutalo's musical work. Their six-song debut EP, Once Now, Then Again, bristles with tension, despite the open laidback nature of the performance. The new EP – which follows a few well-received singles in 2021 and a run of live shows alongside Adrianne Lenker – spans both of Lutalo's contrasting worlds, the songwriting beginning in the Twin Cities before being finished in the serene surroundings of Vermont, and both environments leave their mark on Lutalo's rich and absorbing sound.For now, Lutalo's world consists of new pastures and new beginnings, the search for brightness in spite of all the dark. They remain optimistic in attitude, and steadfast in their belief that change can only happen when you believe in a better future. "At the same point you also have to recognize that this is also your time to be alive," Lutalo says, "and to try to find beauty in those moments and focus on the smaller details: to watch the water trickle down the stream, to see the ice as it melts from the rooftops."

Kelly made you a mixtape. It’s an eclectic mix of ideas, recorded and produced at Transistor Sound Studio in Marin County, California. “I want to share what I’ve been working on,” Kelly explained. “It’s not a proper album, and it doesn’t have the same vibe all throughout. It’s a collection of different ideas, which is how I used to share the music I loved with my friends.” About half of the songs represent his influence directly from hip-hop, crate digging, record collecting and the art of sampling. The original beat-driven drums and looping melodies provide the backdrop for future emcees to record over. “When I first decided that I wanted to make my own music, it was with drum machines and samplers,” Kelly shared. “I’ve always been inspired by the sounds on hip-hop records. That’s where my musical aspirations began.” Fans of Kelly’s previous work know that he’s capable of creating the kind of classic records that are often the subject of sampling. The mixtape contains a few new original tunes, instrumental versions of his known b-sides Trouble and It’s Not That Easy, and a soul stirring acoustic version of Impressions of You, which was originally released on Kelly’s debut LP The Tales People Tell in 2019. Kelly is working with Colemine Records to release the mixtape exclusively on cassette. “Owning a physical copy of a song and using a specific piece of equipment to hear it – that was a huge part of my musical upbringing. This is a selection of different songs on a tape. It’s how I want people to experience it.”

A mixtape pulling together extracts from soundsystem tapes out of Manchester's storied street soul scene of the late 1980s to mid-1990s. Featuring DIY cassette recordings of sounds such as Broadway, Stereo Dan & Soul Control playing live at dances and blues parties in south & central Manchester from 1988 through to 1996.

Malcolm Pardon Live at Capela Imaculada do Seminário Menor (The New Black) Documenting his captivating performance for Semibreve Festival, Malcolm Pardon presents a live EP and accompanying film featuring songs from his 2021 album, Hello Death. Semibreve is amongst the highest regarded experimental festivals in the world. Taking place in Braga, Portugal every October since 2011, the event has a strong focus on ambient and classical approaches to electronic music presented in astounding settings. Malcolm Pardon was invited to perform at the 2022 edition, on a Saturday afternoon in the unique 20th Century Catholic architecture of the Capela Imaculada do Seminário Menor. With an upright piano, a loop pedal and a small set of synths, Pardon delivered pensive, plaintive renditions of compositions from Hello Death which seemed to draw from the solemn surroundings and rise to the expectation of a musically engaged, attentive audience. On ‘Unsettled Beginnings’, the undulating loops of Pardon’s piano work unfurl with patience over time before teasing energetic crescendos, while the electronics provide subtle embellishments around the edges. Elsewhere the grainy tension of ‘Blood In Water’s opening or the evocative climax of ‘Silent Rumble’ see the synths taking precedence as Pardon explores the wilder edges of his sound. At all times, the music moves with poise and poignancy, truly a product of the moment in which it is played. Music from Pardon’s performance will be released on The New Black as a five-track EP in digital and cassette editions, while a full high-definition concert film hosted by Semibreve Festival will also be available to watch online.

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

The new quickly, quickly EP finds Portland, Oregon’s Graham Jonson back in his home studio, engrossed in ‘60s psychedelic soul music, imagining some bygone era where it was all about the drum sounds and tape decay. He calls it Easy Listening; the songs are short and inviting, modest yet loaded with ideas. Each started with the drum part, a loose grid for Jonson to paint his idiosyncratic psych-pop across, again playing nearly every instrument. The set follows his 2021 LP, The Long And The Short of It, the 22-year-old musician’s debut on Ghostly International, a coming-of-age jump from the chill beats-oriented corners of the internet to a full-fledged songwriting project with hi-fi sophistication. The moment culminated with Pitchfork’s Rising profile, “quickly, quickly’s Technicolor Pop Bursts Beyond the Algorithm,” and kickstarted the formation of his 6-piece live band for a run of exploratory shows along the west coast. But as the tangible demands for his music pulled him outward and some growing pains in his personal life ensued, Jonson focused his energy back inside; to the comforts of home recording, filling his space with more gear and sessions with friends. Maybe a bit of a droll title for a hard time, Easy Listening briefly pauses for air, offering five of his breeziest basement jams for public enjoyment. That basement is home to racks of synthesizers and an array of drum machines, guitars, bongos, xylophones, and the like. One notable addition to the Easy Listening setup was the Teac reel-to-reel tape machine he found on eBay and hooked up to Ableton. “I used it frequently to add color/texture to the project by running individual instruments through and warping the tape with my finger. After I had finished all the songs, I ran the full mix of every song in a row through the tape to add one more layer of low-fidelity weirdness.” “Colors” opens the portal to Jonson’s retro-tinged dream world; a symphonic section pulls the curtain back to reveal a drum kit spattering rapid fills as the bassline grooves deeply between organ shimmers and hazy hums. The din of what sounds like a ‘60s church service appears here and throughout the collection; the words are blurred by decades of tape mold, adding to an overall hypnotic, disorienting feel. “Satellite,” one of Jonson’s funkiest and catchiest tracks to date, is either a love letter to technology or a tongue-in-cheek song about surveillance. The jazzy percussion taps from the get-go as he peppers clever lines to his subject in the sky, at one point losing his wallet (evoking the comedic tone of Thundercat’s “Captain Stupido”), before riding out on a squealing synth solo. The campy, softly psychedelic “Falling Apart Without You” is in the vein of Stereolab. It started out as a fictional breakup song but ultimately became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The only cut from the EP that Jonson and his band have played live so far, it’s easy to picture it translating on stage; the lovesick singer flanked by a tight ensemble on keys, bass, and drums. Next, he slows it down for “Photobook,” the first half is an organ-led ballad for self-improvement — “I think I can, think I can…” Jonson trails off into a rhythmic reverie. We end on the wistful, soulful “Natural Form,” featuring The Long And The Short of It collaborator Elliot Cleverdon on strings. “I can’t say goodbye,” are Jonson’s parting words; it’s a sweet outro, some healing for him, and for us as fans, it’s a lovely place to leave quickly, quickly for now.