MUSIC

Sounds like a daydream, pale performances and beautiful singing voices. A faint and ephemeral album, as if Bill Evans met acid pop. The disc guide book "Bound for Everywhere" published in 2003 was a book that introduced basic records, but there was a CD-only chapter at the end, where I introduced this masterpiece "Ninth Elegy". And the impact of this album was so great that I had vocalist Fuminosuke participate in my album and live performances. Even now, the impact remains the same. In the age of fast fashion, this kind of discourse may not suit you, but I believe that good things will still be great no matter how many years pass, and they will definitely be recognized somewhere. Finally, finally analog. I will send it to everyone, including those who have been waiting for it, and those who are new to me. Pale acoustics, performances and arrangements with as few notes as possible, androgynous vocals, psychedelic, acid and alternative pops. I listened to it carefully for the mastering after a long time, but it was a wonderful album that transcended time as usual. In order not to make it too nostalgic, I gave the mastering a little bit of modern feeling. -- First on Vinyl Label Curator, Calm

Tosca, the Viennese masters of deluxe soundscapes and sensual rhythms, are back with their most magical and mesmerising album yet. Multi-instrumentalists Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber have been friends since their Vienna schooldays. Richard later became half of the globally acclaimed DJ-producer duo Kruder and Dorfmeister, while Rupert worked in piano composition and sound-art installation. No Hassle is Tosca’s fifth studio album, and their most beautiful musical statement so far. A luxurious tapestry of analogue and digital sounds, submerged samples and live instruments, it evolves and expands into an hour-long ambient symphony. The title reflects not only the duo’s laidback approach to making music but their whole philosophy of life. No Hassle is all about contemplation and concentration. While recent Tosca releases like J.A.C. (2005) and the remix collection Souvenirs (2006) were a move towards classic song structures and club-friendly grooves, their latest is a much more introspective journey into inner space. It was conceived as a single seamless sea of sound, deeply layered with liquid rhythms and tidal melodies. Warm and enveloping, each leisurely track flows gently into the next, a musical ocean moving in slow motion. This is an album to plunge deeply into and get lost inside. Tosca, the Viennese masters of deluxe soundscapes and sensual rhythms, are back with their most magical and mesmerising album yet. Multi-instrumentalists Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber have been friends since their Vienna schooldays. Richard later became half of the globally acclaimed DJ-producer duo Kruder and Dorfmeister, while Rupert worked in piano composition and sound-art installation. No Hassle is Tosca’s fifth studio album, and their most beautiful musical statement so far. A luxurious tapestry of analogue and digital sounds, submerged samples and live instruments, it evolves and expands into an hour-long ambient symphony. The title reflects not only the duo’s laidback approach to making music but their whole philosophy of life. No Hassle is all about contemplation and concentration. While recent Tosca releases like J.A.C. (2005) and the remix collection Souvenirs (2006) were a move towards classic song structures and club-friendly grooves, their latest is a much more introspective journey into inner space. It was conceived as a single seamless sea of sound, deeply layered with liquid rhythms and tidal melodies. Warm and enveloping, each leisurely track flows gently into the next, a musical ocean moving in slow motion. This is an album to plunge deeply into and get lost inside. Tosca, the Viennese masters of deluxe soundscapes and sensual rhythms, are back with their most magical and mesmerising album yet. Multi-instrumentalists Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber have been friends since their Vienna schooldays. Richard later became half of the globally acclaimed DJ-producer duo Kruder and Dorfmeister, while Rupert worked in piano composition and sound-art installation. No Hassle is Tosca’s fifth studio album, and their most beautiful musical statement so far. A luxurious tapestry of analogue and digital sounds, submerged samples and live instruments, it evolves and expands into an hour-long ambient symphony. The title reflects not only the duo’s laidback approach to making music but their whole philosophy of life. No Hassle is all about contemplation and concentration. While recent Tosca releases like J.A.C. (2005) and the remix collection Souvenirs (2006) were a move towards classic song structures and club-friendly grooves, their latest is a much more introspective journey into inner space. It was conceived as a single seamless sea of sound, deeply layered with liquid rhythms and tidal melodies. Warm and enveloping, each leisurely track flows gently into the next, a musical ocean moving in slow motion. This is an album to plunge deeply into and get lost inside.

What is time? Documented here are phone voice memo recordings that range from 2015-2020, re-aligned, chopped up and spliced together. All of us reside in our individually projected reality, but when these individual inner rhythms come into contact with one another, a bigger "time clock" appears. If we can learn to see the world without the constant self surveillance, a new pattern and perception comes into view. And what splendid beauty it is. Dedicated to all the young gods out there.

Daisaku Kume - Violent Cop (Original Soundtrack) Vinyl LP: Limited Edition of 500! Official Reissue / Remastered / 45 rpm Original Soundtrack from 1989’s Japanese crime/drama movie Violent Cop (その男、凶暴につき) composed by Daisaku Kume (久米大作) (keyboardist late 70s fusion bands T-Square and Prism), with superb Erik Satie re-interpretations, melancholic smooth jazz, and modern Western atmospherics. First film directed by (and starring) the one and only (Beat) Takeshi Kitano (北野 武) (Sonatine, Hana-Bi, Kikujiro, Battle Royale, Johnny Mnemonic, Ghost in the Shell)

Gathered here are The Fun Of Watching Fireworks, From Our Living Room To Yours, and The Golden Band albums, garnished with period b-sides, outtakes, and demos. Remastered from the original analog tapes, this early-career spanning 5xLP box includes lyrics, photos, and ephemera from the before times.

Carmen Villain returns with the 'Planetarium' EP, the follow-up to her 2013 debut, Sleeper. In the span of the last few solitudinous years, the US-born, half-Norwegian and half-Mexican has honed and nurtured her songwriting and production craft, while still drawing from the gossamer atmospheres of 'Sleeper.' She weaved the hyper-personal songs in peaceful seclusion, creating starry tapestries of field recordings, piano, guitars, programmed drums and synths.

Originally released on CD in 2009, Engaged Touches has been expanded from the original recordings for a 3LP edition, spanning 5 sides of vinyl, and a 3CD edition of the same expanded version, as well as the original single disc version. All have been remastered by Stephan Mathieu for this special limited edition.

Matti Bye is a Swedish composer and pianist with an illustrious catalogue spanning two decades, with numerous soundtracks and releases on Kning Disk, Rotor Records, Tona Serenad and Time Released Sound. He has previously appeared on Northen Electronics via compilations, but Between Darkness and White Snow is his first album for the label. The creation involved playing a 1926 Steinway Grand Piano through his EMS Synthi A. It was recorded onto tape with a vintage Swiss Nagra IV S tape machine giving it a wonderful warm analogue fidelity. We get four shadowy, soul-stirring, brittle ambient pieces traversing light and dark which are a pleasure to get lost inside during the small hours.

Acclaimed guitar duo Loren Connors and Alan Licht celebrate their 30-year collaboration with release of their eighth album — At The Top Of The Stairs.Across the decades, their improvisations turned increasingly abstract and atonal, while still maintaining complex, ethereal arrangements. The harmonious blend of Licht's meticulously crafted feedback and harmonic patterns with Connors' ghostly blue tones remains the core sound of this partnership. At The Top Of The Stairs was recorded live in 2018. Across two side-long pieces, the duo ascends slowly, through layers of atmospheric tension punctuated by thunderous waves of Connors' effects.For fifty years, Connors's adaptation of acoustic Delta blues has transmuted into miniature gray scale compositions and howling riffs. His collaborators include Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, and Kim Gordon. Rock/experimental musician Alan Licht was a member of the bands Love Child, Run On, and Lee Ranaldo & the Dust, and has released a range of acclaimed rock and experimental albums. He is an author with books published by Rizzoli, W.W. Norton, Faber & Faber and Blank Forms.

Recorded in 2007 and 2008, Cursory Asperses was created with cassette tape recordings of water sounds from various rivers, streams, lakes, beaches, and pools, combined with direct to tape instrument recordings from synthesizers, an organ, cello, piano, and bowed instruments. Instead of traditionally mixing these, at the time we were interested in software, using free Mac OS Classic programs such as Audiosculpt and Soundhack. Before we had a DAW, before VSTs, we used non-realtime convolution processing through software, using the water recordings as an impulse for the instrument sounds. The instrument sounds were "arranged" (by adding silence before, during, or after) in layered, visual swathes, to create an audio interpretation of the movement of water and waves, slowly evolving and shifting, for a meditation on deep and focused listening. Opposed to passivity, where sounds become lost in distant tones and layers upon layers are misinterpreted as single, meaningless tones. Or, it's just as meaningless as the passing of water, the flow of rivers - the crashes of sparkling ocean waves, all those sounds that we recognize. The tones are unpolished, left in their fuzzy form, with the high noise crushed into the deep. Behind the swells, and under the depths is a longing, or a lack thereof. It's passing by, no different than it was years 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.

Ghastly and hallucinatory – Last Liasse is a sign of the times, alternative pop record by Helen Island. Within this debut album, the artist captures the saccharine gaze of digital escapism through characteristic filtered high notes, cut-up genres, and processed vocals. Providing a comprehensive overview of Helen Island’s self-distributed initiatives, with the ethos of the Parisian Simple Music Experience collective, the twelve tracks set a solid musical score that resonates with the age to come.

Twin readings from Joy Division's post-punk gospels, on 7" for the first time. Codeine's 1994 take on "Atmosphere" were the New York slowcore band's final recorded moments, a glum, if not melodic, take on the Salford quartet's requiem to solitude. On the flip, Dallas' Bedhead tackle the opener for Unknown Pleasures, reimagining "Disorder" as jangly indie rock. Housed in an elegant black and silver sleeve, with embossed braille lettering for the visually impaired.

Six Organs of Admittance takes listeners through an extended narcoleptic journey on Sleep Tones, an all-electronic double album of new ambient work. Mastered by VDSQ labelmate Chuck Johnson, Sleep Tones was made with a specific effect in mind. These new sounds from the Six Organs universe represent an essential creative shift from one of the great guitarists of the 21st century, showcasing his ever-evolving palate. An antidote to modern overload, Sleep Tones provides a welcome stasis. In its physical manifestation, each side of Sleep Tones ends with a locked groove in case of dream state, with no fear of a needle sliding outside the set mood. These sounds lull through speakers and headphones, creating ideal conditions for consciousness drift. All sounds by Ben Chasny. Mastered by Chuck Johnson. Astro and Sky Photography by Joram Young. Design by SEEN Studios. Gatefold edition with spot UV Gloss; pressed to high quality vinyl at RTI.

Official reissue of the sophomore album from fabled folk singer-songwriter/actress/writer, and one of the most gorgeous voices of Japanese music, Hako Yamasaki, originally released in 1976 on the legendary Elec Records, one of the first independent labels in the country. Tsunawatari is a perfect follow-up to her classic debut Tobimasu, immortalizing the bitter beauty of heartache with tearful performances and nostalgic empowerment. Hako Yamasaki is considered a pioneer in both the creative boom and the rise of feminism of 1970s Japan. This album is released in conjunction with Tobimasu, also available on WRWTFWW Records. Folk, Alternative, Psychedelic, Soft, Poetic

"As a discarded record collection of notorious Cafe Extase crossed their path, Left Bank constructed their own warped version of club music. The era was acid-jazz, p-funk and rare groove, the records covered in thick layers of mold and dust. Recorded a few streets from where the action once took place, Kelder Extase forms a musical resurrection of a basement that has disappeared."

Fans of Coltrane will certainly dig this historical 1970s spiritual jazz album from Argentina which left an everlasting imprint in the local jazz scene. From the eerie "Blues para un cosmonauta" —which could easily fit in the Twin Peaks soundtrack—, to the majestic "Líneas Torcidas" or the mid-tempo groove of "Mi amigo Tarzán", new landscapes in jazz are explored without hiding, at moments, the musicians' bebop pedigree. Venturing into uncharted dimensions, the album breaks with traditionalism and combines jazz and new electronic instruments into a contemporary concept that is both cosmic and sensual, a sound where timbre and space play a crucial role. Here, no track sounds like the other. The charismatic, multifaceted saxophone player Horacio "Chivo" Borraro is joined here most notably by Fernando Gelbard —who pioneered electronic keyboards and analog synths in Argentina, playing here Fender Rhodes and Minimoog— and Brazilian musician Stenio Mendes —who plays the 12-string craviola and contributes two tracks. Jorge González on bass and Néstor Astarita on drums —both part of Gato Barbieri's rhythm section in the early 60s— and Chino Rossi —responsible for much of the unusual percussion and special effects that give the album its unprejudiced aura— complete the line-up of Blues para un Cosmonauta.

Music From Memory is pleased to present the new LP by Krefeld-born, Berlin-based artist Philipp Otterbach entitled 'The Dahlem Diaries'. Recorded in a little-visited corner of the German capital, 'The Dahlem Diaries' is a convergence of ideas, sketches and tracks, both old and new, most of which were produced between 2020-2022. Whilst eerie atmospheres, electronics and drums have played a pivotal role in Philipp’s earlier releases, his latest is a rather more introspective affair, in which the guitar takes a leading role. A role Otterbach uses to quietly bring light and hope to his music. Speaking about his writing process, Philipp explains that, based around his original compositions, “Friends were nice enough to contribute additional parts on their instruments which I then reworked, put together and re-contextualized. The recordings encapsulate a very specific moment in time, one that would have sounded perhaps very different the day before or after.” Combined with a strong use of effects and field recordings, 'The Dahlem Diaries' feels somewhat like a scene or fragment from a story, in which the narrative remains undefined. It is a playful album that is something of a blurred underwater adventure, sounding as bright as it is hazy, even psychedelic at times, yet with an almost melancholic positivity. In Philipp’s own words: “It could be an album about friendship and being at one with myself, whilst at the same time bringing a certain seriousness to my music, but not necessarily to myself; there is also a playful humour hidden in there. ” MFM063 will appear in LP and digital format, comes with artwork by David McFarline, and is expected to release July 23rd. Purchases via the official Music From Memory Bandcamp page include two exclusive digital only bonus tracks.

Los Angeles-based saxophonist Sam Gendel ends 2023 with a remarkable run of releases, this time in collaboration with Ugnė Uma to bring us the mind-boggling Tam tikri objektai erdvėje (Lithuanian for Some Particular Objects in Space). Each track on the album is simply titled as a letter from the word "Saturn", and is conceptually cosmic, touching on both inner and outer space. Through improvisation they conjure a genuinely alien soundworld from strange musical instruments, sampling their own music and electronics. Incredibly far-out hybrid forms echo the peculiar mutant images on the cover art. Sam Gendel and Ugnė Uma's Tam Tikri Objektai Erdvėje album sketches a layered, melismatic and intertextual view on what both performers define as a lightness of being. Ugnė Uma's musical stance is influenced by experimental poetry and Lithuania's 20th century underground music scene - jazz and folk, resulting from the liberation of the country's independence movements. Sam Gendel, from Los Angeles, is a saxophonist and producer, proficient on more instruments than the saxophone alone, whose recorded work both solo and collaborative has brought him acclaim as a vital new voice in modern jazz and beyond. Tam Tikri Objektai Erdvėje is Lithuanian and translates as Some Particular Objects in Space. The six tracks on the album stand for every letter of the word Saturn. They sketch out a sound palette both fragile and full of forward momentum. With hints of improv, sampling their own recorded work and sounds of a childhood's Yamaha Portasound PSS-290 synth into abstractions of pop and r&b, some of these tracks reach an almost balearic feel, the more contemplative end of it. With lyrics delving into cosmic phenomena, Tam Tikri Objektai Erdvėje is an album about space, whether cosmic or inward or the one in between. It easily surpasses the sum of its influences and the materials and tactics used to produce it.

Far Out Recordings presents the new album from Brazilian guitarist and composer Fabiano do Nascimento: Mundo Solo. Recorded at his home studio in Los Angeles (2020) the album is fundamentally the sound of a man alone with his instruments. Utilizing a variety of guitars, including six, seven, and 1ten strings, Oktav guitar and electric baritone guitar, alongside a host of pedals and synthesizers, Fabiano tracked imagined landscapes with expressive, expansive improvisations, which tend toward the more ambient and atmospheric reaches of his recent output. Adopting Hermeto Pascoal's concept of "Universal Music," a rejection of nationalistic tendencies in order to express all of one's musical influences all at once, Fabiano avoided leaning too heavily on any particular musical language, without denying his own musical roots. After studying classical piano as a child, the Rio de Janeiro native discovered the guitar at aged ten. Studying under his late uncle, Lucio Nascimento, he eventually left Brazil for LA, where he soon became an in-demand player for his distinct and authentic sound. He has since released seven albums under his own name and collaborated with renowned Brazilian artists including Arthur Verocai and Airto Moreira, as well as experimental US saxophonist Sam Gendel. Mundo Solo (Do Nascimento's eighth), was recorded in one take per track, with occasional overdubs and a few appearances from collaborators and friends Julien Canthelm (drums on "Etude 1"), Ajurinã Zwarg, (percussion on "CPMV") and Gabe Noel (bass on "Curumim"). Fabiano Do Nascimento's consummate mastery of his instrument has afforded him a freedom of expression few can claim. Blending the emotional with the elemental, Mundo Solo is a stunning snapshot of solitude and the beauty which can blossom within it.

All songs originally written by J & reinterpreted by the 'J and the woolen stars' Emile Frankel, Rosy Angela Murphy & Nico Callaghan. Artwork by J Pictures by Bernard Caleo Mastered by Shy

Originally released in 1983 through Apollon Music industrial corp’s alty sublabel, Mule Musiq sub-label Studio Mule presents the first official digital reissue of Shinsuke Honda 本多信介’s rare silence = サイレンス (夕映え) album. recorded as part of alty’s resort mind music series, Honda-san’s contemplative guitar instrumentals tint the air with nostalgia, longing and a gentle sadness at the impermanence of all things, transporting the listener to an eternal sunset of the mind. A masterful guitarist and composer with a well-listened ear, Honda-San grew up in Hiroshima during the middle years of the 20th century, eventually making his way to Tokyo in the early 1970s, where he spent several years as a member of the pioneering japanese language folk-rock group Hachimitsu Pie. after they disbanded, Honda-San spent some time in Japan’s jazz and experimental rock scenes before turning his hand to film and television soundtrack work in 1978. Five years later, as new age and kankyō ongaku (environmental music) became commercial record label concerns, alty offered him a record deal. over silence = サイレンス (夕映え)’s eight songs, Honda-San collapsed time and space, effortlessly integrating his sepia-toned memories of the rock instrumentals of his childhood with his adult love of jazz, minimalism, electric blues and soundtrack composition. Although Honda-San went on to have an accomplished career in soundtrack work, along the way scoring the japanese films Target of Lust (1979), Koichiro Uno's shell competition (1980) and Moonlight Whispers (1999), and working on the theme music for the Fuji tv travel program Kazemakase Shin Shokoku Manyuuki, his early work spent decades languishing in obscurity, until it was rediscovered in recent years by record diggers like Tsunaki Kadowaki (sad disco) and Diego Olivas (fond/sound). Forty years on, Mule Musiq and Studio Mule are very pleased to be able to contribute to the critical re-evaluation of Shinsuke Honda 本多信介’s silence = サイレンス (夕映え) album as an essential desert island disc for lovers of ecm contemporary jazz, steel-string blues and balearic guitar bliss.

After wrapping the tracklist for Local Downriver Revival, we knew there was a smaller second record buried in the mountains of tape rescued from Felton Williams’ Ecorse, Michigan, basement. Born at the tail-end of a Depression that darkened the entire United States, Shirley Ann Lee took her talent as a singer and pianist from a grim, overcrowded house in Toledo, Ohio, to a glamorous, gospel-fueled adolescence on the road and in Nashville. It wasn’t until her return to Toledo after a disastrous marriage in Los Angeles that, for the first time in almost two decades of public performances, she found the urge to praise God with her own words. As the Revival label’s lone “star,” Shirley Ann Lee was afforded dozens of opportunities to record her songs, but only six sides managed to trickle out on 45 between 1967 and 1969. Using Revival’s aborted Shirley Ann Lee Radio Hour program as our guide, we’ve taken the best of her proper studio recordings, in-the-moment sketches, out-of-tune piano demos, and rehearsals with young kids talking in the background and created the Shirley Ann Lee album that never was. A one-LP revival of an unheralded gospel giant that is sure to convert the non-believers.

Celebrating 25 years since its release, ‘Time Was GIGANTIC… When we were kids’, the seminal 1998 album by The Durutti Column is released on vinyl for the first time, and reissued on CD. The band and lead member Vini Reilly were one of the first signings to Antony Wilson’s Factory Records, and ‘Time Was GIGANTIC…’ was the final Factory Records release for The Durutti Column and the last release for the label before it closed. Formats are double heavyweight vinyl and digipak CD. Both formats are re-mastered and feature 5 bonus tracks: It’s Your Life, Babe - Kiss of Def - In the City - New Order Tribute - Drinking Song (version) . The new edition features extensive liner notes by Factory Records and band expert James Nice, and the original artwork has been revisited by the original designers 8VO (Mark Holt and Hamish Muir).The band (and in particular the guitar playing of Vini) has developed a cult following over the past 40 years with fans of the band including Brian Eno, John Frusciante (who called Vini “the best guitarist in the world”, The Avalanches, The Chromatics, Jonny Marr and John Cooper Clarke to name a few.