MUSIC

Jamila Woods has a voice and lyrical sensibility that transcends generations, and so it makes sense to have this lush and layered album that bounces seamlessly from one sonic aesthetic to another. This was the case on 2016's HEAVN, which found Woods hopeful and exploratory, looking along the edges resilience and exhaustion for some measures of joy. Her new album, Legacy! Legacy! is the logical conclusion to that looking. From the airy boom-bap of "Giovanni" to the psychedelic flourishes of "Sonia," the instrument which ties the musical threads together is the ability of Woods to find her pockets in the waves of instrumentation, stretching syllables and vowels over the harmony of noise until each puzzle piece has a home. The whimsical and malleable nature of sonic delights also grants a path for collaborators to flourish: the sparkling flows of Nitty Scott on "Sonia" and Saba on "Basquiat," or the bloom of Nico Segal's horns on "Baldwin." More than just giving the song titles the names of historical black and brown icons of literature, art, and music, Jamila Woods builds a sonic and lyrical monument to the various modes of how these icons tried to push beyond the margins a country had assigned to them. On "Sun Ra," Woods sings "I just gotta get away from this earth, man / this marble was doomed from the start" and that type of dreaming and vision honors not only the legacy of Sun Ra, but the idea that there is a better future, and in it, there will still be black people.  Soul music did not just appear in America, and soul does not just mean music. Rather, soul is what gold can be dug from the depths of ruin, and refashioned by those who have true vision. True soul lives in the pages of a worn novel that no one talks about anymore, or a painting that sits in a gallery for a while but then in an attic forever. Soul is all the things a country tries to force itself into forgetting. Soul is all of those things come back to claim what is theirs. Jamila Woods is a singular soul singer who, in voice, holds the rhetorical demand. The knowing that there is no compromise for someone with vision this endless. That the revolution must take many forms, and it sometimes starts with songs like these. Songs that feel like the sun on your face and the wind pushing flowers against your back while you kick your head to the heavens and laugh at how foolish the world seems.

At the time, being the first of the many semi-official bootlegs and live releases that Swans put out over the years, Feel documents the 1987 European tour for Children of God, recorded quite well on a professional walkman by the band's sound engineer. The track list exclusively focuses on Children material, so the album has much of the same general variety as its parent release, though all of the edges are a little rougher. "Blood and Honey," for example, maintains the synth-string arrangements from the album as well as Jarboe's low, haunting vocals, but the louder instrumental breaks have a stronger power here. In the meantime, already overpowering songs like "New Mind" and "Beautiful Child" rage all that much harder in a live arena, with Gira holding little back, if at all. At the same time, a tune like "Trust Me" maintains the newer Gira's commanding-yet-controlled croon amidst the more textured, elegant arrangement, though he definitely starts to let himself go more towards the end. Naming every highlight would take nearly forever, but special mention has to be made of "Children of God," featuring a fantastic call-and-response vocal tradeoff between Jarboe and Gira while the band brilliantly backs them up, and versions of "Sex God Sex" and especially "Blind Love," which make the album versions seem like gentle walks in the park by comparison. Another definite bonus on Feel is the demonstration of Swans' hitherto hard-to-find sense of humor: "Willy in Ravensburg" is a recording of a PA tape of Willie Nelson with drunken audience response, while a number of tracks near the end document a variety of performance goofs and improvisations, including some muffled but amusing audience banter at points. ~ Ned Raggett

Sleaford Mods are pleased to announce the release of their cover of the Pet Shop Boys’ iconic single “West End Girls”, with all profits from the track going to the homeless charity Shelter.

The Nottingham duo created a version of the 1986 classic between tours for their latest album UK GRIM, and then sought the blessing of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe to put out the track.

Not only did Sleaford Mods’ “West End Girls” meet with the pair’s approval, but the Pet Shops Boys were inspired to remix the cover which will feature as one of the tracks on the limited edition single.

Hifi Sean has also contributed an Acid House meets Hi-NRG remix for the release, while Sleaford Mods’ own Andrew Fearn has added a heady vocoder led mix under his solo guise of Extnddntwrk.

Clearly apparent from their own minimal approach to music, the Pet Shop Boys have always been an important influence for Sleaford Mods, with Chris and Neil’s ability to merge sophisticated electronics and rich character often serving as a lodestar for the partnership between producer Andrew Fearn and front man Jason Williamson.

This esteem for the Pet Shop Boys can be clearly heard on their take on “West End Girls”, although Jason and Andrew have not flinched from creating a version of the song which is truly Sleaford Mods.

If the original is a sophisticated exposé of the heartlessness of 80s Thatcherite Britain while also paying tribute to people’s ability to shine despite living in brutal times, then Sleaford Mods’ have skillfully distressed the shimmering classic with sharp synths and scuffed-up vocals, offering a sense of the resilience now required to survive in our disconnected and dysfunctional days.

“’West End Girls’ is a song that’s very close to my heart, my coming-of-age track in so many ways.” says Andrew Fearn of the original.
Jason Williamson continues, “I’ve been listening to the Pet Shop Boys albums ‘Please’ and ‘Actually’ a lot, the music still fits this landscape so well. When Andrew suggested we cover “West End Girls”, it was important to honour the track’s brilliance. So when Neil and Chris gave the track their blessing, our tiny minds were blown, and when we received their remix… it was almost too much, it was brilliant!”

Neil/Chris added… “Sleaford Mods have brought East End boys back to the West End streets for a great cause and we love their new version.”
Sleaford Mods “West End Girls” cover will be available on a limited edition 12-inch with remixes from the Pet Shop Boys, HiFi Sean and Extnnddntwrk, which can be pre-ordered now ahead of release on 15th December. All tracks will be available to stream from 21st November.

Profits generated by the single are being donated by Sleaford Mods to the charity Shelter, details of their work can be found at www.shelter.org.uk

In the spring of 1977, two young Belgian musicians who call themselves Aksak Maboul (aka Marc Hollander & Vincent Kenis) set out to record an album, "Onze danses pour combattre la migraine", in which they playfully fused and deconstructed all kinds of genres to create their own musical world. Three years later, Hollander founded the Crammed label. Many ingredients came in and out of the Aksak blender : fake jazz, electronics, imaginary African & Balkan music, minimalism... there were even pre-techno aspects such in as Saure Gurke and its characteristic keyboard stab pattern which will mysteriously find its way into many classic Detroit techno tracks some ten years later. Onze Danses became a cult album, and seems retrospectively to have mapped out the way for the various directions which have been explored by Crammed during the next two decades.

To celebrate the 21st anniversary of Juana Molina’s breakthrough album Segundo (2000), here’s a very special reissue, remastered from the original tapes, and augmented by a rich booklet recounting the eventful start of Juana’s musical career, and containing numerous notes, anecdotes, original drawings and previously unreleased pictures.
Segundo is the album which started Juana Molina’s international trajectory as a musician, and its making was a wild story: after dropping her highly-successful career as a TV comedian, and signing with a major company who got her to record her debut album, Juana set out to find her own direction in music and started working on a new record (aptly titled Segundo). This journey took four years, and included sessions in Argentina and in several houses where she lived on the US West Coast, the involvement of several possible producers and of four successive record labels, who each had their own idea of what Juana should be doing... Juana remained untamed, forged ahead and, during the course of this sometimes complicated process, developed her own method and her own characteristic sound. She writes:
From the moment “Segundo” took shape, I began to walk a path that I have not yet abandoned. That is why it’s so important to me. I feel that this was the seed of everything I have done ever since. I discovered the flair of composing in real time, the charm of discarding the very idea of demos, the grace of documenting these moments of searching and finding. Everything else became dispensable.

In 2000, Juana finally self-released Segundo in Argentina. The album semi-accidentally made its way to Japan where it very spectacularly took off, and was eventually picked up by the Domino label in 2003. The reception of Segundo set Juana Molina on course for starting to perform around the globe, garnering a large, devoted fan base, and going on to record five more extraordinary studio albums (including the widely-acclaimed Halo in 2017) and a live record (ANRMAL, 2020).
All this and much more is narrated in the lovely booklet, which includes notes by several people who were involved in these events (including Bruce Springsteen producer Ron Aniello) and by early adopters such as KCRW DJ Chris Douridas, Domino Recording’s Laurence Bell (who discovered Segundo by chance, in Will Oldham’s car), and David Byrne who, as soon as he heard the album for the first time, invited Juana to open for him on his 2003 US tour. 
 

Limited white vinyl specifications. This is the second solo album since the masterpiece "Recomecar" by Tim Bernardes, the vocalist / guitarist of São Paulo's soul / guitar rock band O Terno, who is attracting attention as the bearer of the new generation of Brazilian music. His father is Maurício Pereira, a musician who is also a member of Os Mulheres Negras, which was also recorded in the Brazilian compi "Outro Tempo: Electronic And Contemporary Music From Brazil 1978-1992" of , and his unusual musical sense is the same. Outstanding in the generation. It has been praised by the original Tropicália, Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa and Tom Ze, as well as recent free folk music such as Fleet Foxes and Devendra Banhart from outside Brazil, as well as David Byrne. He also participated in O Terno's 7inch release on in Japan with Shintaro Sakamoto and Devendra Banhart. Love songs, sadness songs, change songs, and inclusive singing voices resonate with emotions and provide healing. Expected work that will be able to enjoy the talent that can be called the flag bearer of this Neutropicaria!

The fifth album from shoegaze giants Slowdive contains the duality of a familiar internal language mixed with the exaltation of new beginnings. everything is alive is transportive, searching and aglow, the work of a classic band continuing to pitch its unmistakable voice to the future. Six years after the group’s monumental self-titled album, everything is alive finds Slowdive—vocalists and guitarists Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead, guitarist Christian Savill, bassist Nick Chaplin, and drummer Simon Scott—locating evermore contours of its immersive, elemental sound. The new record began with Halstead in the role of writer and producer, working on demos at home. Experimenting with modular synths, Halstead originally conceived of everything is alive as a “more minimal electronic record.” Slowdive’s collective decision-making ultimately drew the group back towards their signature reverb-drenched guitars, but that first concept seeped into the compositions. “As a band, when we’re all happy with it, that tends to be the stronger material,” Halstead says. “We’ve always come from slightly different directions, and the best bits are where we all meet in the middle.” The convergence of five unique characters has made the sound. “Slowdive is very much the sum of its parts,” Goswell adds. “Something unquantifiable happens when the five of us come together in a room.” The group’s projected studio sessions for everything is alive, in April 2020, were naturally scrapped, and when the group finally did meet up, six months later, at Courtyard Studio, where they’ve historically recorded, the mood was jubilant. (Finally, they had a proper reason to leave the house.) That was the beginning of a multi-year recording process, which moved from Oxfordshire and into the Wolds of Lincolnshire and back to Neil’s own Cornish studio before extending into February 2022, when the band brought in mixer Shawn Everett (The War On Drugs, SZA, Alvvays) to mix six of the record’s eight tracks. Owing to their deep history, there’s a palpable familial energy to Slowdive in 2023. everything is alive is dedicated to Goswell’s mother and Scott’s father, who both died in 2020. “There were some profound shifts for some of us personally,” Goswell says. Those crossroads are reflected in the many-layered emotional tenor of Slowdive’s music; everything is alive is heavy with experience, but each note is poised, wise, and necessarily pitched to hope. Its unique alchemy subtly embodies both sadness and gratitude, groundedness and uplift. Reflecting on “kisses,” which may be Slowdive’s surest pop moment yet, Halstead said, “It wouldn’t feel right to make a really dark record right now. The album is quite eclectic emotionally, but it does feel hopeful.” everything is alive, is exactly what the title suggests: an exploration into the shimmering nature of life and the universal touch points within it. Spanning psychedelic soundscapes, pulsating 80’s electronic elements and John Cale inspired journeys, the album lands immediately as something made for the future; which figures, as their fanbase has grown younger and younger as time has gone on, and their influence on forward thinking musical artists continues to prevail. For a genre that is often thought of as divisive, and often warrants introspection, here Slowdive show their craft as the masters of it by pushing it outwards, beyond the singular; the end result being a record which feels as emotional and cathartic as it is optimistic.

言わずと知れた大名盤！カナダを代表する世紀のポスト・ロック・バンド"Godspeed You! Black Emperor"が、1998年に名門インディ・レーベル〈Constellation〉より発表した歴史的デビュー・スタジオ・アルバム『Yanqui U.X.O.』がアナログ・リイシュー。アンビエントやドローン、フィールド・レコーディング、室内楽などの要素を、メランコリックにして服喪なアトモスフィアへと落とし込んだ終末的ポスト・ロックの大傑作。

Black Market Brass is proud to present Hox, due out on Colemine Records on September 8, 2023. Their third LP is a new take on afrobeat that combines traditional grooves with heavy, hypnotic, sci-fi sounds that reflect the band’s myriad of influences as record collectors across genres. “We didn’t leave the traditional afro-beat sound behind, but we did allow ourselves to pull from different places with less hesitation.” Shared saxophonist Cole Pulice. Like their previous albums, the 9-piece band recorded Hox live to tape. “The sound and aesthetic of the analog recording process is important for this kind of music,” Pulice explained. “We’re looking to capture lightning in a bottle.” With that, the album features several sections of heavily processed synthesizers, harsh glitches, fuzzed out guitars, and a burning percussion section that pays homage to the traditional drumming cultures of Nigeria and Ghana. The performances are dynamic and confident. The grooves are infectious and hypnotic. BMB has pushed further into musical experimentalism, but at the end of the day, they’re still making dance music. Krautrock, free-jazz, doom metal – the inspirations for Hox stem from all kinds of musical backgrounds, but the sound is far from scattered. It’s a polished, innovative record that’s sure to exceed expectations and keep the listener engaged from start to finish.

An exploration of misplaced desire and all-consuming romantic obsession, told through a series of beautifully constructed leftfield pop songs. La Porte, the second studio album by Charlotte Kouklia aka Charlène Darling, finds the artist and her group building a self-contained musical world via French and English language vocals, and a minimalist backing of guitar, organ, bass and drums.

At times recalling the feminist post-punk of The Raincoats, the avant songcraft of Brigitte Fontaine, or the psychedelic vignettes of Cate Le Bon, in truth Charlène Darling sounds like herself. The arrangements are playfully experimental, dubbed out percussion bubbling over the stripped back instrumentation, or rough tape edits disrupting lush harmonies, but never losing sight of the earworm hooks that make these songs so addictively listenable. Step through the door and walk right in.

Charlotte is one quarter of the band Rose Mercie. After a beguiling series of DIY tape and CD-R releases, her first widely distributed solo album, Saint-Guidon, was released in 2019.

boygenius is Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus
All songs written and performed by boygenius except "Ketchum, ID" by boygenius and Christian Lee Hutson
Bass on this recording by Anna Butterss
Drums on this recording by Elizabeth Goodfellow
Recorded at Sound City, Van Nuys, CA
Engineered by Joseph Lorge
Mixed by Collin Pastore except "Me & My Dog" mixed by Joseph Lorge
Mastered by Heba Kadry at Timeless Mastering
Photo by Lera Pentelute

LIMITED EDITION OF 5000 180 GRAM OPAQUE DARK BLUE VINYLProduced by Brian Paulson at River North Recorders in Chicago and released by Touch and Go Records in April of 1991, the six songs on Spiderland methodically mapped a shadowy new continent of sound. The music is taut, menacing, and haunting; its structure built largely on absence and restraint, on the echoing space between the notes, but punctuated by sudden thrilling blasts of unfettered fury. It is a sound that no one had heard before and that no one will ever forget. The eerie, now-iconic black and white cover photo of the four-band member’s heads breaking the surface of the water was taken by their friend Will Oldham. Spiderland spawned a whole new genre, frequently called Post-Rock, and came to be regarded as one of the most important and influential records of the past thirty years. SLINT broke up shortly before Spiderland was released. Band members went on to play in Tortoise, the Breeders, Palace, The For Carnation, Papa M, Evergreen, Interpol, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

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.

Whatever sense of unity bound a hodgepodge of underground American punk sounds in the 1990s like a Duct-tape wallet began to come unglued by the end of the decade. A couple years into the new millennium and the emo scene that once had enough space for a band as brazen in their fusion of slowcore, jazz, and post-hardcore as Boston’s Karate would barely be reflected in a cookie-cutter style commercialized by major labels and mid-level indies that acted like the majors. The part of punk that overlapped with indie rock would begin a slow ascent from its comfortable home on college radio charts to the soundtrack of American Apparel shops and eventually the Billboard charts. In this strange, stratifying milieu, Karate, a band that seemed to thrive by cleaving to a nether-zone between several sounds that otherwise never touched, delivered an engrossing constantly shifting shot of rock that covered three sides of 12-inch vinyl: Unsolved arrived in 2000. Karate spent much of the ’ 90s wrestling punk aggression and volume into svelte shapes and often condensed what felt like a generation of scuffed-up intensity into whispers. The quiet moments carried much of that unbridled intensity throughout Unsolved —the fuzzy guitar squawk and snatchet of machine-gun drumming on “Sever” aside, things hit a little more sharply the moment the trio pivoted into their subdued jazz melodic interplay on that song. Karate’s transition into indie-rock maturity had become so complete by the time they dropped Unsolved that you could play the coffeehouse soul of “Halo of the Strange” and sultry jazz of “Lived-But-Yet-Named” to an unsuspecting punk and spend an entire evening trying to convince them that, yes, this band had made their bones playing the same DIY circuit made of bands that sounded like they wanted to harm their audience. But few bands other than Karate played like they understood the musical lingua franca of scene godheads such as Fugazi and Unwound, and knew how to make that language evolve, and nearly every song on Unsolved made that clear. If you didn’t get the memo by the end of the elegiac 11-minute closer “This Day Next Year,” which gained an irrepressible power from a plaintive guitar melody cycling through the song’s back half like a yearnsome cry for the divine, you might’ve been better off buying a ticket for Warped Tour and waiting a decade or two to figure it out.

Numero Group boxset providing chapter and verse on American slowcore pioneers Duster. Although short-lived, the trio dealt in uniquely spaced-out post-rock soundscapes over the course of two albums, one EP and a handful of singles and compilation contributions around the turn of the millennium.

Black Market Brass is proud to present Hox, due out on Colemine Records on September 8, 2023. Their third LP is a new take on afrobeat that combines traditional grooves with heavy, hypnotic, sci-fi sounds that reflect the band’s myriad of influences as record collectors across genres. “We didn’t leave the traditional afro-beat sound behind, but we did allow ourselves to pull from different places with less hesitation.” Shared saxophonist Cole Pulice. Like their previous albums, the 9-piece band recorded Hox live to tape. “The sound and aesthetic of the analog recording process is important for this kind of music,” Pulice explained. “We’re looking to capture lightning in a bottle.” With that, the album features several sections of heavily processed synthesizers, harsh glitches, fuzzed out guitars, and a burning percussion section that pays homage to the traditional drumming cultures of Nigeria and Ghana. The performances are dynamic and confident. The grooves are infectious and hypnotic. BMB has pushed further into musical experimentalism, but at the end of the day, they’re still making dance music. Krautrock, free-jazz, doom metal – the inspirations for Hox stem from all kinds of musical backgrounds, but the sound is far from scattered. It’s a polished, innovative record that’s sure to exceed expectations and keep the listener engaged from start to finish.

Beach Fossils’ sophomore album, Clash the Truth, is modern post-punk triumph that’s left a lasting impression on the music scene it was born out of. After releasing their self-titled debut and the beloved EP, What a Pleasure, songwriter, and composer Dustin Payseur began recording dissonant and introspective demos reflecting on his southern upbringing and young adulthood in New York. The tracks that would eventually make up Clash the Truth involved Payseur taking his songwriting in a new direction, employing jagged instrumentals, existential lyrics, and socially conscious subject matter.

...The three albums “Tentai”, “After” and “Tracks” are a sort of hop, skip and jump in the band's trajectory. “Tracks” can also be seen as their third great leap forward, after “Kukangendai 2” and “Palm”. The vocal part is completely gone, and each self-contained track is even more diverse, more abundantly imaginative. Some of them could even be described as "pop" or "danceable". They have clearly entered a new phase.

“Tracks” brings to the fore the undercurrent of Latin flavor (?) in their post-“After” work, and demonstrates the most varied rhythmic patterns ever. The change is undoubtedly led by the drums, but the band's mode change, from making "differences" to making "waves", also comes from the bass and guitar. I'm honestly surprised at their evolution, by how they've come to handle their groove, be it horizontal, vertical or diagonal.

I wouldn't say that it's a new sound for them, however. Tortoise, for instance, also went through similar style changes. But the progress of Kukangendai is based on different motives and mechanisms. One must be the change of musical tastes and preferences of its members. Another, more importantly, is their use of difference and repetition. The gap-making repetition has the potential to generate countless variations of sound effects, so that new music naturally arises from what they've done, not necessarily or primarily under the direct influence of other artists.

Some tracks in the new album may sound, say, somewhat Latin, and seem too foreign to Kukangendai's music thus far. But they don't mean to introduce such a sound in the album or to approach any preexisting genre. They're creating something on their own and it just happens to resemble another. And that's the same as what happened to their style in relation to minimal music, math rock, footwork and so on.

Kukangendai is a band of difference and repetition. They make (or listen to) a difference in repetition and make a new repetition in the difference; they repeat a repetition (with difference) and a difference (with repetition) to yield an unexpected sound and euphony. Difference and repetition is music. “Tracks” mirrors the vibrance, the robustness of the band at this moment in time, and it's the highest achievement possible for these peerless musicians.

― Atsushi Sasaki

ゆっくりと映る影。音楽ディグをテーマに据えた漫画『ディグインザディガー』の作画を手掛けることでも知られるイラストレーター、漫画家、音楽家の駒澤零氏が主宰する東京の音楽レーベル〈KAOMOZI〉のカセット作品群をストック！音楽制作以外にも絵画やファッションショーモデルとしても活動しているエレクトロニック・ミュージック作家の山下憶良 (Okura Yamashita)が23年4月に発表したミニ・アルバム『液晶』のカセット版が登場！『液晶(ディスプレイ』をテーマにしたプライヴェートな内容の一作で、愛らしくも実験的なエレクトロ/アンビエント・ポップを全7曲収録。平沢進ファンにも推薦！

“…this album is very much a product of the current Rio scene (where it was also partly recorded), and it ranks with the best experimental Brazilian rock albums that scene has produced in the last decade” Rod Taylor, Brazil Beat “Personally this has everything for me: finely balanced Brazilian songwriting with an edge of noise.” Andy Cumming, Sounds & Colours “Muito Sol reinforces Ricardo Dias Gomes’ position at the forefront of contemporary Brazilian music.” Joseph Neff, The Vinyl District “Dias toggles effortlessly between melodic gems and more sound-driven excursions…It’s one of my favorite albums of the year” Peter Margasak, Nowhere Street “Gomes is a minimalist at heart, adept at conjuring up intimate worlds from the sparest of gestures” Andy Beta, The Shfl “…a strange beautiful work of skewered pop, and unexpected weirdness” Bob Baker Fish, Cyclic Defrost “…enticingly original music” John Parry, Backseat Mafia “…unveils new, intricate elements with every new play” Ljubinko Zivkovic, Echoes & Dust Hive Mind Records are excited to bring you Muito Sol, the third solo album from Brazilian auteur Ricardo Dias Gomes. The album is a deep, widescreen exploration in classic Brazilian song that brings all the subtlety and delicacy you'd expect from the pioneers of Musica Popular Brasileira coupled with a thoroughly 21st century sensibility and taste for sonic innovation. A respected innovator on the Rio de Janeiro music scene since the mid 90s, Gomes is perhaps best known for his work on the trio of critically-acclaimed albums Caetano Veloso released in the late 00s: Cê (2006), Zii and Zie (2009) and Abraçaço (2012). Playing bass on these modern milestones in post-Tropicalia, and subsequently touring the world with Veloso, inspired Gomes to record his debut album -11 (2015), followed by the mini-album Aa, which featured Arto Lindsay (2018). Muito Sol was recorded between New York, Lisbon & Rio de Janeiro and features a stellar cast of global players such as Jeremy Gustin (drums), Will Graefe (guitars), Ryan Dugre(guitars), Gil Oliveira (percussion), Alex Toth (trumpet), Tiago Queiroz (sax, flute), Jonas Sá (synths), Julian Desprez (guitars), Pedro Sá (guitars) & Shahzad Ismaily (synths); the album is often deceptive in its simplicity and repeated listens reveal layers of intricate instrumentation and arrangement, making listening something like an exciting exercise in excavation. The album was recorded following Gomes' move from Rio to Lisbon and was inspired by the sense of unease that followed the move from a culture of vibrant spontaneity to a more genteel and 'civilised' country. Unlike Gomes' previous solo outings, Muito Sol includes a number of songs that explicitly celebrate Brazil's musical heritage and culture that are based on the Samba Ostinato. The songs, led by Gomes' gentle and dreamy voice, are often reminiscent of classic innovators such as Caetano Veloso, João Bosco or Edu Lobo, though they take unexpected lines of flight into more experimental territory. There is also an element of drone underpinning the whole album which surfaces and takes full charge on Fllux and Transição, before the album is closed by what turns into the molten, distorted piece of raging hardcore, Coração Sulamericano, Ricardo's expression of pride in his Latin American heritage. Muito Sol is a sun drenched dream from start to finish and album to be bathed in.

Fresh from supporting Blur at Wembley, Sleaford Mods return with a EP of six new tracks. Emerging from the same environment that created the duo's Top 3 album UK GRIM, the songs of More UK GRIM share the incisive lyrical vision and forward-thinking electronics that won acclaim for the LP. Tracks including Under The Rules, Old Nottz and Big Pharma not only continue Mods' era of dancefloor dominance, but with insight and wit, outrage and compassion, they critique yet celebrate our turbulent times.

While Duster went into hibernation in the year 2000, Clay Parton’s four-track never stopped rolling. Recorded alone at home over several years, Birds To The Ground is an album of 30-something, post-9/11 malaise. Under his Eiafuawn (Everything Is All Fucked Up And What Not) acronym Parton hides beneath layers of fuzzy and clean guitars, his hesitant, cottony vocal disappear into noise. “I’ll be a ghost, you’ll go out dancing,” he confirms.

Released on Parton’s long-running The Static Cult Label in 2006, the album was ignored upon release, though managed to get a one-time pressing on the Swedish Pillowscars imprint a couple years later. An album’s worth of songs were dribbled out on a few Internet forums but a follow up never materialized. “That sweet studio deal never worked out, and the tape machines are just collecting dust in the garage,” Parton last wrote of the project.

Formed in 1991 by David Callahan (vocals, guitars, samplers), also known for his work with The Wolfhounds, and New York musician Margaret Fiedler (vocals, guitars, samplers), Moonshake, named after Can's work, has released its debut album, Eva Luna, in a deluxe edition remastered from analog 1/2" tape. Moonshake, a band formed in 1991 and named after Can's work, reissues their debut album "Eva Luna" as a deluxe edition on blue vinyl, remastered from analog 1/2" tape!

Though best known for producing seminal albums for some of the world’s most exciting artists (Vince Staples, IDLES, Rico Nasty), on LOUIE Kenny subverts expectations with an almost entirely instrumental artist record that acts as a deeply personal tribute to the artist’s ailing father. Over 17 songs, LOUIE is a hypnotic odyssey of wounded, teardrop soul; a side of Kenny that has not been seen by the world before.