MUSIC

Essential Japanese Ambient / Electronic / Minimalism from MOTOHIKO HAMASE
Co-produced by YOSHIO OJIMA / Featuring SATSUKI SHIBANO
Originally Released in 1988 via NEWSIC / WACOAL ART CENTER
Official Reissue Overseen by the Artist / With Liner Notes
Reissued in Conjunction with Hamase’s Anecdote and Technodrome albums
From the ESPLANADE_SERIES
An Archival Focus on Yoshio Ojima, Satsuki Shibano, and Motohiko Hamase

WRWTFWW Records is excited to announce the official reissue of Motohiko Hamase’s remarkable ambient/environmental/minimalism project #Notes of Forestry, available for the first time since 1988. The album is sourced from original masters and available on vinyl and CD with liner notes from the artist. This marks the third release from the ESPLANADE SERIES which focuses on the works of Yoshio Ojima, Motohiko Hamase and Satsuki Shibano.

One of the most fascinating and peculiar works from the golden era of Japanese ambient, #Notes of Forestry was initially released in 1988 by Newsic, the cult label started by Tokyo’s Wacoal Art Center (also known as Spiral), home, notably, of Yoshio Ojima who co-produced the album. Conceived by Jazz bassist turned experimentalist Motohiko Hamase, the magnum opus offers an enchanting mix of free-form pastoral electronics, otherworldly percussions by Yasunori Yamaguchi, and delightfully allusive piano played by none other than Satsuki Shibano (Sound Process’ Wave Notation 3).

Vibrant, sometimes eerie, and absolutely captivating, #Forestry captures Hamase’s quest for musical freedom, he explains:

"Inside the body of a musician, music is always transcendentally resonating. More than language, music reigns. When creating music overlaps with the moment my body performs, I strive to be as close as possible to the feeling of musical freedom. I feel that this notion lies at
the foundation of this album".

Musical freedom, here, provides an essential escape, extending the path uncovered by pivotal releases such as Midori Takada’s Through The Looking Glass, Satoshi Ashikawa’s Still Way, and Yutaka Hirose’s Nova.

For the second volume of Reflections, Black Decelerant, the duo of Khari Lucas, aka Contour, and Omari Jazz, explore improvisational jazz traditions through contemporary tone and texture, fostering sonic meditations on themes of Black being and nonbeing, life and mourning, expansion and limitation, and the individual and collective. The Black Decelerant collaboration, and intention, creates space for listeners to be still, while providing a basis for a movement beyond “the moment.”

Anne, the second album By Toronto saxophonist and composer Joseph Shabason, is a tonal essay on degenerative illness. Delicately and compassionately woven with interviews of Shabason’s mother from whom the album takes its name, Anne finds its creator navigating a labyrinth of subtle and tragic emotions arising from his mother's struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Across the nine vivid postcards of jazz-laden ambience that comprise the album, Shabason unwraps these difficult themes with great care and focus revealing the unseen aspects of degenerative diseases that force us to re-examine common notions of self, identity, and mortality.

Shabason’s uncanny ability to manoeuvre through such microscopic feelings is mirrored by his capacity to execute a similar tightrope-walk through musical genres. His music occupies a specific space that is as palpable as it is difficult to pin labels to. On Anne’s second track “Deep Dark Divide” rays of effected saxophone shine behind clouds of digital synthesizer that echoes the sound of jazz in the late 80s, but with a Jon Hassell-esque depth of sensibility that consciously subverts the stylistic inoffensiveness of that era. There is detail and idiosyncrasy beneath Shabason’s dawn-of-the-CD-era sheen that elevates the album far beyond a mere aesthetic exercise.

Still, the sounds on Anne are not so experimentally opaque as to stand in the way of the album’s through-line of sincerity and emotionality. When dissonance is employed it is punctual and meaningful, like on album-middler “Fred and Lil” where a six-minute cascade of breathy textures builds suddenly to an agitated growl, only to abruptly give way to Anne Shabason speaking intimately about her relationship to her own parents. Snippets of such conversations see her taking on something like a narrator role across Anne while the sound of her voice itself is sometimes effected to become a musical texture entwined into the fabric of the songs without always being present or audible. The subsequent piece “Toh Koh” then drifts into playful disorientation as a lone female voice echoes the two syllables of the title, recalling the vocal techniques of composer Joan La Barbara, or even the light-hearted mantras of Lucky Dragons. From here the album veers back onto its aesthetic thoroughfare with “November” where Shabason lays muted brass textures atop a wavepool of electric chords provided by none other than the ambient cult-hero Gigi Masin, one of Anne’s many integral collaborators.

The serene tragedy of the album distils itself gracefully into the ironically titled album closer “Treat it Like a Wine Bar” wherein flutters of piano and mournfully whispered woodwinds seem to evaporate particle by delicate particle, leaving the listener with a faint emotional afterglow like a dream upon waking. There is a corollary to be drawn here with what it must be like to feel one’s own mind and body drift away slowly until nothing remains, while the collection of memories and abilities that we use to denote the “self” softens into eternity. On Anne, it is precisely this fragile exchange of tranquillity and anguish that Joseph Shabason has proven his singular ability to articulate. 

Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a pretty perfect triangle, musically and geographically. Based out of Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, the three convened at Sage’s converted barn studio at the foot of the Rockies to diagram their kindred ability to extract grandeur from the most passable of life’s daily details. On his own, saxophonist Joseph Shabason warps late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into tidepools of fourth-worldly sound design that are infinitely more self-aware and emotionally honest than any of their distant reference points. M. Sage, in a parallel sense, blends his skills as an instrumentalist with synthesis and field recordings to create auditory reflections of the natural world that are as whimsical as they are profound. Sitting cozily between these two heartfelt experimentalists is singer Nicholas Krgovich, whose observational slice-of-life poetics paint a relatable face onto his collaborators’ calm expressionism, both guiding and highlighting its deep sense of affect. The resulting album, prosaically titled Shabason, Krgovich, Sage warmly invites sound artist Matthew Sage into the world of wry and melancholy micro-miracles that Shabason and Krgovich established on 2020’s Philadelphia, and 2022’s At Scaramouche. Album opener “Gloria” is a perfectly balanced representation of the trio’s individual abilities. Sage’s slowed and watery zither bleeds in from the edges of the canvas, laying ground for breathy woodwinds and harmonica that pantomime a distant locomotive. Speaking directly to the sonics at play, Krgovich melodically narrates, “Penny, did you hear that train whistle? Theo, did you hear that owl hoo?”. Even from this first moment, the intimate dynamic is so palpable that the listener falls unwittingly into the backstory of Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. “After connecting with Nick and Jos through DMs since 2020, it felt like a fun experience awaited us as potential collaborators,” Sage recounts. “I had built my barn studio, and I think it looked appealing to them to make an adventure out of coming to the Wild West to make music with me.” After spending the majority of a decade immersed in Chicago’s legacy of jazz and experimental electronic music, Matthew Sage moved back to his home state of Colorado to raise a child in a more casually agrarian atmosphere, and to work in the kind of setting that led to his 2023 album for RVNG, Paradise Crick. It was here at the cusp of the Rocky Mountains that the initial push of Shabason, Sage, Krgovich began, in person. Making sense of the trek, Shabason adds “I have realized that making music with people who live very far away is a real possibility. As long as we can get into one space together for a short amount of time, the collaborative magic that is needed to make a record is totally possible.” The three artists’ fingerprints are equally visible across the album. There is soft textural detritus floating freely in the air, punctuated by glassy electric keys and rubberized basslines. The sparseness in the placement of all the elements leaves them subject to ghostly visitations from a whispery saxophone, and a gentle guitar that peers around the corners of Krgovich’s free-verse musings. The album’s midpoint “Don” passes overhead like pollen on the breeze, constantly drifting out and back across pockets of completely empty space. “Old Man Song” turns a rare B-side by Low into an even gentler end-of-life reflection that is sweetened by Krgovich’s falsetto during the track’s wordless chorus. As nebulous as that may seem on paper, the hidden songcraft slowly surfaces over the course of each piece, exemplified by the closing track “Bridget”. There are plenty of other moments of the album that bear discernible rhythms below the fogline, but it’s here that they rise up into a full-on groove under Krgovich’s lyrical fourth wall breaks in which he details everything from Joseph’s studio habits to seeing “Cats” at the theater with his sister. Despite the song’s relative density and pop sensibility, a careful use of space still reigns supreme. On the eleven-minute “Raul”, Krgovich comes close to unintentionally codifying this approach as he sings “The container shrinks, and shrinks again, with every day, the relief that comes from not wanting more...” Truly, the most abundant virtue on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage is patience. The trio interacts without interrupting one another, contently waiting their turns, all locked onto the same distant point on the horizon yet unconcerned with when they might actually arrive. The groundwork laid by Shabason & Krgovich on their previous joint offerings is omnipresent, but it’s amplified by the joy Sage must have felt shepherding them to his idyllic and intimate new homebase. Prior to meeting up with Sage, the pair’s music often dealt with the beauty of The Great Indoors, but their new host and collaborator has smartly refocused their lenses on the small wonders of wilder localzes. Like magic, Shabason, Sage, and Krgovich have not just musically photographed their surroundings, they’ve managed to reproduce them exactly. The sharp open air, the quiet thrill of an escaped routine, the self-reflective thought-loops during a twilit moment at the edge of a field, all of it’s here on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. Through the trio’s skillful ease, the listener is there, too.

Limited number of 400 hosted in silk printed cover. Solar Unity Ensemble’s Upstream explores the elusive nature of music, capturing moments of free improvisation that point beyond the notes themselves. Blending acoustic and electric sounds, the album invites listeners to experience the fluidity and impermanence of sound, reflecting the journey toward the creative source. The album opens with the track “Emergence,” followed by “Mantra,” both on side A. As the needle flips to side B, the journey continues with “Passing Nimbus” and “Shallow Water.” The album deepens with “Didn’t Know We Were Lost,” transitioning into “Mitha pt. 1,” and reaching a climactic moment with “Impact,” before resolving with “Didn’t Know We Were Found.” The album is a collaborative effort between Roope Niemelä, who plays guitar, keyboard, double bass, electric bass, flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, alto saxophone, piano, accordion, and percussion, and Henri Ijäs, who contributes on soprano and tenor saxophone, piano, and percussion. The recording sessions spanned several years, taking place in Jyväskylä, Sastamala, and Tampere between 2019 and 2023. Ijäs and Niemelä jointly mixed the tracks, with the vinyl mastering handled by Ilkka Harjula, while Jarno Alho provided the digital master. The vinyl was manufactured at Puristamo in Helsinki, Finland, with the record covers screen printed at Kalasataman Seripaja, also in Helsinki. The front cover artwork, titled “Quasar 3C273” (cyanotype, 2024), was created by Sami Sänpäkkilä, with cover design by Arsi Keva and photography by Antti Kujala.

This Trio is very Californian, even though Surya is based on the East Coast . . .We swim together in the Pacific Ocean, Vibing, bonding, talking, listening, riding the Waves . . .as often as we can. - Carlos Niño Together these three adventurously creative Musical Artists have played in Portland, Oregon, Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York, London, England, Amsterdam and Zaandam, NL, Köln, Germany, San Diego and Ojai, California, and many times throughout Los Angeles County, since February 2022. They first came together in July 2021 at the Glendale, California Home Recording Studio of Jesse Peterson and Mia Doi Todd. Nate was invited by Carlos to meet Surya and to possibly play. No specific plans were set other than to explore with Surya. (Multi-Reedsman Randal Fisher was also there.) That Session turned out to be Day 1 of what became Surya's debut album Everyone's Children released by Spiritmuse Records on November 4, 2022. Suyra and Nate were both featured extensively on the Carlos Niño & Friends album (I'm just) Chillin', on Fire released by International Anthem on September 15, 2023, though not together on any of the same pieces. The first in-depth representation of the Trio was in collaboration with André 3000 on his album New Blue Sun released by Epic Records on November 17, 2023, where they are featured as co-writers and co-creators of 5 of the 8 album pieces. Niño also Produced that album in collaboration with André. Nate enthusiastically took it upon himself to be the Trio's Archivist and would get to Mixing and playlisting the group's recordings as soon as he received them from Live and Studio recordists. He took the lead on Producing and Mixing this album, Subtle Movements. His unique perspectives, thoughts, feelings and intense heart energy went into telling the story of how these pieces, recorded in different settings, with a wide range of gear, by an array of characters, all flow together. "It is a blessed opportunity and Cosmic Gift to be at the keyboards with Nate and Carlos," Surya gleams. "In appearance, I play a few keyboards at a time: a MIDI controller that I use in tandem with music studio software, my absolute FAVORITE analog sensibility synth Roland SH-201 (although it is digital), and typically another 88key board (the Roland SV-1). If there is a piano available, I will also use that with us for a total of 4 keyboards at my station, (that my cousin Georgia Anne Muldrow has forever deemed “Praise Console no.3”), Surya enthuses. "My instruments and sound are the last thing I consider about this Trio. For me, it is about us as human beings first; as members of our respective families and soul tribes before anything else. I think whatever sound that comes forth is a result of that inner connected soul conversation. That, at least in my view, is the Sound." "I play guitar, guitar synthesizer, and midi-guitar sampler," writes Nate Mercereau of his Instruments on Subtle Movements. "In addition to my main GR300 guitar synthesizer sound, I am sampling the band live as we perform and using the sound . . .It takes many different shapes, but I am often playing something like the sound of Carlos's percussion from 30 seconds earlier in a new key and tempo, or as a chord — or a quick slice of a pad from Surya’s keyboard pitched down into sub frequencies, anything can happen," Nate details. "I live-sample and expand, magnify, permutate, repeat, live-remix, live-edit, and reframe moments of our sound within our sound while it's happening. Worlds Within Worlds and Worlds Upon Worlds, Currents Within Currents. I also use previously recorded and created samples from my library in this context, allowing my guitar to be anything." Nate also offers: "I consider what I do in this trio to be a part of and extension of the greater sound of this group, which is often oceanic (which represents everything to me), waves, it's full communication. Love and support in sonic form. Going beyond together in all ways." Carlos Niño plays everything that you hear in the Aerophone, Drum, Percussion and Plant realms . . . He was the group's "Connector" and its first advocate. Depending on who received and accepted the opportunity to present the Trio their names have appeared in different orders. Hear, on Subtle Movements the order is Alphabetical by last name: Botofasina, Mercereau, Niño

Original deadstrock copy. Japanese Obscure Private Issue New Age gems!

Paradise Cinema is a project led by multi-instrumentalist Jack Wyllie (Portico Quartet/Szun Waves) with contributions from Khadim Mbaye, Tons Sambe and Laurence Pike. The first, eponymous, Paradise Cinema record, released in 2020, was recorded in Dakar and featured the dense rhythms of Mbalax music combining with Wyllie’s textural saxophone and synth playing. New album ‘returning, dream’ was created in London by Wyllie with additional recordings from Dakar and Sydney. While Wyllie’s other projects move between tight-knit electronica, widescreen minimalism and improvised ambient sounds, ‘returning, dream’ contains nods to Jon Hassell, Terry Riley, Don Cherry and Midori Takada as well as more contemporary electronic, ambient and non-western music and even draws inspiration from physics and science fiction.

With her third Gondwana album, ‘Constellation’, Caoilfhionn Rose has come of age as an artist, digging deep to find experimental new ways of expressing her wonder at nature’s beauty, her love of music in all its diversity, and her belief in the restorative powers that both afford in the troubled post-COVID world. The ten tracks on ‘Constellation’ feel rooted in a knowledge of folk, jazz and all the twentieth century’s classic tunesmiths, and yet they seem to create a magical, otherworldly space of her own imagining, blending Caoilfhionn’s core piano with synths, and pitting a live rhythm section and saxophone embellishments against ambient samples and future-facing production techniques. ‘Constellation’ features contributions from Halsall’s rhythm section, drummer Alan Taylor and bassist Gavin Barras, as well as Jordan Smart from Mammal Hands, whose supple sax exquisitely colours the fringes of most of its songs. Also guesting: John Ellis, former member of The Cinematic Orchestra, beatifically tinkling the ivories at the end of ‘Fall Into Place’, and producer Aaron Wood via a raft of ambient samples adding textured loveliness throughout ‘Rainfall’. “I love being open to collaboration,” Rose enthuses, “and the record’s a collage, knitting together all these influences, sounds and players, and just really going for it with the experimentation in the production.”

Released in 1976, Eternity was Alice Coltrane's first album for Warner Bros. after eight wondrous records on Impulse! Combining the drones and textures of India, the gospel and R&B of her Detroit youth and the dissonance of modern classical composition, Coltrane's music in the '70s would become increasingly difficult to categorize. Having moved a few years earlier to California (where she founded the Vedantic Center, an Ashram for spiritual studies), Coltrane stretches out on Eternity – incorporating various musical styles, including a stirring adaptation of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring – and the results are dazzling, both in sonic scope and emotional range Opener "Spiritual Eternal" sways between Alice's exploratory organ and the dramatic swell of lush strings. A meditative solo piece for harp, "Wisdom Eye," precedes the rollicking rhythms of "Los Caballos," which showcases some of her finest soloing. "Om Supreme" is the album's first track to be built around bhajans (Hindu devotional songs). Featuring graceful keyboards backed by an angelic choir, this piece hints at the ecstatic devotional music that she would later make with members of her Ashram. While Coltrane would delve deeper into her spiritual journeys and continue to expand her musical interests on subsequent LPs, Eternity remains a vivid and compelling display of her unique vision, myriad talents and passions.

Once again it's quite difficult to pin down exactly what's going on through Herandu's debut album, Ocher Red, but its a little bit like Metalheadz meets Weather Report out on the Siberian steppes... Herandu are brothers Evgeny and Mikhail Gavrilov from Novosibirsk in Siberia. Mikhail and his brother have played music together since they were very young eventually forming the band FPRF together in the mid 2000's. Eventually the group split as the members dispersed around Russia, but Evgeny and Mikhail continued to make music, Evgeny under the alias Dyad and Mikhail under the name Misha Sultan (some of you may remember his excellent cassette, Roots, which came out on Hive Mind in 2022). Herandu was born in 2022 during several studio sessions they managed to grab whilst both visiting Siberia. They both quickly realised that together they were making music that didn't quite sound like either of their solo projects but which was influenced by the music of their formative years. Their friend Vladimir Luchansky was invited in to add saxophone and the result is an 'urban music' that's as influenced by the gritty cityscapes of '70s TV cop thrillers as it is by 21st Century urbanism. The paintings on the album cover are by Italian artist Mauro Reggio, who kindly allowed us to use his work, and whose paintings seem to convey something of the mood of Herandu...

"Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, keyboard player Lonnie Liston Smith moved to New York in 1963 playing with the likes of Dakota Staton, Al Hibbler, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln and Roland Kirk. He made his first recordings with Kirk and in 1968 entered into a mutually rewarding and instructive partnership with Pharoah Sanders and Leon Thomas. In 1971-2 he toured Europe with saxophonist Gato Barbieri appearing on his 1973 albums “Under Fire” and “Bolivia”. His growing reputation was also burnished by playing Fender Rhodes with Miles Davis electric band.

The second of these Barbieri LPs was released on Bob Thiele’s Flying Dutchman label. Thiele was quick to sign Smith and release Smith’s first album under his own name, “Astral Traveling”. Backed by his Cosmic Echoes band, Smith served up a beautiful spiritual and funky stew on tracks like ‘Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord’, ‘Rejuvenation’, ‘I Mani (Faith)’ and ‘In Search Of Truth’.

Smith went on to record “Expansions” one of the greatest funky jazz albums of all time in 1975 but this debut really paved the way towards that musical milestone."

Drifts and Surfaces is a three-piece set, with each work originating from commissions, and unified by shared themes: the flux between ephemeral movement and everyday stasis, the paradox of extraordinary and mundane beauty, and the ambition and idleness, that defines living in the 21st century. Saxl continues to utilize chamber-music ensemble alongside analog synth and digital experimentation, deeply tuning into textural emotion and the vivid details of small actions. While her 2021 breakthrough LP, The Blue of Distance, processed recordings from the Adirondacks and Lake Superior, Saxl’s source material here comes primarily from live percussion and other instrumentation. The project started in 2018 in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood at the practice space that Saxl’s band shares with the percussion trio Tigue. Later that year, they performed a residency together and captured the piece before the pandemic set in. In 2021, she began a new commission with Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion.Drifts shares its title with Kate Zambreno’s 2020 novel, where the protagonist becomes entranced by the work of Chantal Ackerman, which presents the typically female invisible forms of domestic labor as equally valuable to activities more commonly seen as productive. Saxl posits Drifts in the spirit of that feminist thesis: “It feels like there’s a little lineage here of women exploring this idea and celebrating small action that I hope I am continuing the work of.”The final piece, “Surfaces,” was commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum in conjunction with the Alex Katz retrospective in 2022. The group — comprised of Henry Solomon on baritone saxophone, Robby Bowen on glass marimba, and Saxl — leans into light, ruminative tones inspired by the pioneering painter’s present-minded approach. Katz's work deals with the optical perception of “quick things passing,” like the liminality of dusk when an object's outlines start to become unclear. “The ways in which our perception of things change not because they change but because we change,” explains Saxl. “I wanted to have these really minor changes feel dramatic, to mirror the imagined movement in his paintings.”Stepping back to view “Surfaces” within the set, Saxl finds the stream that runs throughout, the concept of the self as part of something greater. “Katz’s depiction of multiple generations of New York City artists inspired me to think about how there is no individual ‘me’ as an artist without both the artists who came before me and the community of artists I’ve grown alongside. The delineation between us blurs, and I feel as though I am carried on an interwoven surface formed by the community around me. At the same time, I know that eventually, I have to turn inwards and swim out alone.”

This Trio is very Californian, even though Surya is based on the East Coast . . .We swim together in the Pacific Ocean, Vibing, bonding, talking, listening, riding the Waves . . .as often as we can. - Carlos Niño Together these three adventurously creative Musical Artists have played in Portland, Oregon, Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York, London, England, Amsterdam and Zaandam, NL, Köln, Germany, San Diego and Ojai, California, and many times throughout Los Angeles County, since February 2022. They first came together in July 2021 at the Glendale, California Home Recording Studio of Jesse Peterson and Mia Doi Todd. Nate was invited by Carlos to meet Surya and to possibly play. No specific plans were set other than to explore with Surya. (Multi-Reedsman Randal Fisher was also there.) That Session turned out to be Day 1 of what became Surya's debut album Everyone's Children released by Spiritmuse Records on November 4, 2022. Suyra and Nate were both featured extensively on the Carlos Niño & Friends album (I'm just) Chillin', on Fire released by International Anthem on September 15, 2023, though not together on any of the same pieces. The first in-depth representation of the Trio was in collaboration with André 3000 on his album New Blue Sun released by Epic Records on November 17, 2023, where they are featured as co-writers and co-creators of 5 of the 8 album pieces. Niño also Produced that album in collaboration with André. Nate enthusiastically took it upon himself to be the Trio's Archivist and would get to Mixing and playlisting the group's recordings as soon as he received them from Live and Studio recordists. He took the lead on Producing and Mixing this album, Subtle Movements. His unique perspectives, thoughts, feelings and intense heart energy went into telling the story of how these pieces, recorded in different settings, with a wide range of gear, by an array of characters, all flow together. "It is a blessed opportunity and Cosmic Gift to be at the keyboards with Nate and Carlos," Surya gleams. "In appearance, I play a few keyboards at a time: a MIDI controller that I use in tandem with music studio software, my absolute FAVORITE analog sensibility synth Roland SH-201 (although it is digital), and typically another 88key board (the Roland SV-1). If there is a piano available, I will also use that with us for a total of 4 keyboards at my station, (that my cousin Georgia Anne Muldrow has forever deemed “Praise Console no.3”), Surya enthuses. "My instruments and sound are the last thing I consider about this Trio. For me, it is about us as human beings first; as members of our respective families and soul tribes before anything else. I think whatever sound that comes forth is a result of that inner connected soul conversation. That, at least in my view, is the Sound." "I play guitar, guitar synthesizer, and midi-guitar sampler," writes Nate Mercereau of his Instruments on Subtle Movements. "In addition to my main GR300 guitar synthesizer sound, I am sampling the band live as we perform and using the sound . . .It takes many different shapes, but I am often playing something like the sound of Carlos's percussion from 30 seconds earlier in a new key and tempo, or as a chord — or a quick slice of a pad from Surya’s keyboard pitched down into sub frequencies, anything can happen," Nate details. "I live-sample and expand, magnify, permutate, repeat, live-remix, live-edit, and reframe moments of our sound within our sound while it's happening. Worlds Within Worlds and Worlds Upon Worlds, Currents Within Currents. I also use previously recorded and created samples from my library in this context, allowing my guitar to be anything." Nate also offers: "I consider what I do in this trio to be a part of and extension of the greater sound of this group, which is often oceanic (which represents everything to me), waves, it's full communication. Love and support in sonic form. Going beyond together in all ways." Carlos Niño plays everything that you hear in the Aerophone, Drum, Percussion and Plant realms . . . He was the group's "Connector" and its first advocate. Depending on who received and accepted the opportunity to present the Trio their names have appeared in different orders. Hear, on Subtle Movements the order is Alphabetical by last name: Botofasina, Mercereau, Niño

Placenta is the fourth collection of broadly imaginative and highly collaborative Carlos Niño & Friends music released on International Anthem in the last four years. It is also the first new music to be released by Carlos Niño & Friends following the November 2023 release of André 3000’s New Blue Sun – an album which Carlos produced alongside André, while co-writing, co-creating/playing, and co-mixing every song. Placenta is announced on April 11th, 2024, a date chosen because it is the 1st solar return of Moss Niño (a new being in human form, who Carlos and his partner Annelise are Earth parents of). Their experience of pregnancy, labor and delivery were all profoundly impactful for Carlos. Becoming a father again (a whole 24 years after the birth of Azul Niño, who has become a regular artistic collaborator with Carlos) he felt total Inspiration for this set of recordings, and hence it is perhaps the most conceptually-grounded Carlos Niño & Friends album we've yet to present – fully connected to the spirit of family, birth, and "how we get here."

When Carlos Niño is performing with his friends, he is embedded in the present. And from there, it seems like he can see anything: every possible place a song might go, how a sound might evolve, whether or not it will make his listeners and collaborators feel seen and appreciated. He is a maestro of arranging time and space into supportive containers, somehow completely in sync with the moment and beyond all chronology. And over the past couple of years, when the concepts of space and time have dilated and gone sideways for so many of us, Carlos’ attempts to crystallize the moments he and his friends produce and present us with songs ripe with possibility, chance, and the care that radiates naturally among musicians who love and trust one another has felt like an act of profound kindness. In 2020, when the world entered into lockdown, Carlos engaged in his studio in Woodland Hills, CA, where he pored over tapes from past improv sessions. One in particular stuck out, a February 2019 Just Jazz gig with Devin Daniels, Jamael Dean, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and Randy Gloss. On stage that night, he’d been confused and uncomfortable, he didn’t understand his relationship with an audience. “I had a revelation that night,” he says. “What I present in concert is sonic journeying—not a set of songs, or a program, or a performative energy.” Using the Just Jazz tapes as a guide, he mixed and remixed, overdubbed synthesizer and pulled from his extensive battery of percussion instruments. He invited his collaborators—his friends, though we should all be so lucky to have friends as talented as these—to add their own overdubs, then, working the controls, he turned out a collection of songs that seem to have entire worlds encased within them. He worked with a sense of necessity. “The urgency was to share a message,” he says, “that we would get through this.” It’s a feeling that was made manifest across Actual Presence, and is extended in this new version, entitled EXTRA PRESENCE. When I first heard these songs in 2020, I was astounded by how expertly Carlos was able to guide his listeners through a three-dimensional soundscape. It felt miraculous, as if we were getting a new view of free jazz and new age and hip-hop, being brought into the cells of the music to see how all its constituent parts fit together. The implication seemed to be that every moment of every song—not just these songs, but any song—was ripe with possibility, that decisions were being made at every moment, and that because of that, other decisions might be made. Free jazz and free improv are both predicated on this very idea, of course, but where that sense of freedom often yields dissonance and confusion, Actual Presence seemed to suggest that something like spiritual harmony could be reached on the fly, that it was hidden in everything if you were willing to try and find it. What I didn’t hear then, but hear now, is that this sense of harmony wasn’t just coming from Carlos’ remarkable studio skills. It was inherent in the playing itself, and in the way the players relate to one another. There is an emotional coherence to this music, a collective ache at its core that starts with the majesty of Jamael Dean’s piano and runs through even the smallest of instruments. No matter who’s playing on any given track—or when they were playing it—everyone is watching one another, patiently waiting, not moving forward until everyone is ready. That could feel ponderous, but here it feels generous. You expect “Youwillgetthroughthis” to move out its foyer, but the kalimba finds an interesting groove there, so they all gather around to explore it, which gives a deeply tender organ space to open the song in a completely new direction. It’s music as a series of cleansing exhales, as re-grounding, slowing down to move at a speed that allows it to examine itself. As its title suggests, EXTRA PRESENCE gives us another hour of these explorations. The new tracks were all recorded around the time Carlos was working on Actual Presence and its followup, More Energy Fields, Current, and they show that the sense of possibility that first suggested itself in these songs wasn’t a mirage. Rather than simply remixing old tunes, Carlos opens new doors that reveal new rooms. “Youwillgetthroughthis with Koto” isn’t just augmented by a koto; it’s wound up in a new tension that was barely suggested in the original track. “Luis’ Special Shells,” an Actual Presence highlight, dips us into an subaquatic world painted in inky blues and forest greens, the shells themselves the only clear element that remains from the original. Most strikingly, it’s capped by the 23-minute ambient piece “Recurrent Reiki Dreams,” a dramatic extension of the album’s “Mushroomeclipse.” The track’s length, and the lightly undulating silkiness of its textures, makes it feel as though the entire album has been sliding into this primordial space, as if the whole of EXTRA PRESENCE is something like a symphony. Or maybe like all of those views Carlos and his friends have offered have all been different ways of saying this, variations on a way of articulating a feeling that exists here in its purest form. It’s like staring into the object with which this music has been abiding. What I didn’t hear in 2020 but hear now, as the world has changed and continues to, is that the sound of EXTRA PRESENCE is the sound of being ready to face yourself. Or, more precisely, it’s the sound of what happens when everyone pauses what they’re doing and rallies to support a wounded friend. Yes, these songs are technically dazzling, constantly surprising, and expertly constructed. But at its core, EXTRA PRESENCE is about sitting down, being with, trying to draw from a sensation or a mass that’s much bigger than we can understand. Yes, this is mystical language, but this is mystical music. “It is a way of describing the awareness of Eternal Now,” Carlos says.” “It is a way of expressing the consciousness of Being.”

Murmuration Without End is a collection of rhythmic studies by producer, composer, percussionist & multi-instrumentalist Ben Lumsdaine. Whereas the tracks began as meditative synth drones recorded by Lumsdaine when quarantined in the basement studio of his friend’s home, over time they became multi-textural, poly-rhythmic sound worlds as he disrupted the meters and pulses implied by the synths’ inherent modulations with each instrumental layer added. He also enlisted guest musicians to help him achieve this, including saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi (Bon Iver, Bill Callahan), trumpeter John Raymond (S. Carey, Sara Bareilles), and guitarist Drake Ritter (Durand Jones, Diane Coffee). Inspired by the vibrance of Cuban bata rhythms, Lumsdaine set himself to construct music that has a clear pulse but a fairly indiscernible downbeat, and ultimately makes an articulate artistic expression about finding peace within the unknown. The way he achieves this with an uncommon palette is particularly impressive on Murmuration Without End, especially considering that, as a working musician, Lumsdaine’s primary instrument is a traditional drumkit (hear his drumming on albums by Durand Jones, Chris Schlarb, Anna Butterss, and Bex Burch); but in the context of this album, he challenged himself to completely refrain from playing his drums.

Music From Memory are happy to announce the return of Gaussian Curve. Gigi Masin, Jonny Nash and Marco Sterk’s much-loved trio are back for the first time since their 2016 sophomore album 'The Distance', presenting two new tracks entitled 'Winter Sun' and 'Fever Dream'. Both tracks originate from recording sessions that took place in Amsterdam in 2016 for 'The Distance'. Despite not finding a place on the final album and being left as unfinished sketches for six years, the tracks represent an important part of the Gaussian Curve story which the band felt compelled to complete. Coinciding with the decision to perform a handful of live shows in 2022, they finally revisited the sketches, mixing and arranging them with the goal of giving them the full release that they deserve. The trio’s trademark sound hits from first moments of 'Winter Sun'; a lush slow builder with all the classic GC ingredients; Nash’s airy and spacious guitar lines interplay with Masin’s warm rhodes, underpinned by Sterk’s subtle use of electronics and the minimal rhythm of a CR-78 drum machine. On 'Fever Dream', the trio subtly expand their palette; a gently building 303 bass line and 808 rhythm form the foundations of the piece, with Masin’s vocals adding to a slow-burning intensity. Arguably a fuller sound hinting at new areas of exploration for the trio, but unmistakably Gaussian Curve. MFM67 will be released in 12” vinyl and digital format, comes with artwork by Qiu Yang, design by Steele Bonus.

“Trash Can Lamb” is a new solo album from Akron, OH-based multi instrumentalist Keith Freund. For the better part of twenty years, Freund has been producing intimate, shape-shifting music on his own and as part of collaborative projects such as Trouble Books, Lemon Quartet, and Aqueduct Ensemble. Here, he concocts a heady, homespun broth of analog synthesis, bit-reduced sampling, piano, standup bass, saxophone, and location recordings, arriving at a loose and evocative set of songs. Throughout the album, we hear 8-bit experimental delays mangling airy acoustic materials, denaturalizing them into primitive loop structures while retaining their golden-hued, melodic cores. The sputters, hisses, and croaks of handmade electronics nuzzle up to wistful piano and saxophone ruminations; the pure pandemonium of chaotic triangle wave patching and filtered noise settles into the serenity of a backyard dusk full of spring peepers (or maybe they’re crickets…). It’s in the space between the ragtag and rough-hewn and the romantic and yearning that Freund situates these compositions; it’s a peek inside a workshop that sits atop the trees, branches scraping on the windows, bluejays who just won’t knock it off, a table fan spinning slower and slower, its cheap blades covered in dust.

New York-based artist Eli Keszler is at the apex of his career. This year alone he’s had a three-month-long solo exhibition (“Blue Skies” at Fuse Arts, Bradford, UK), performed internationally in a duo with Laurel Halo, collaborated with noted Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, taught experimental composition and performance at Camp in the Pyrenees mountains, composed music for Turner Prize–winning visual artist Laure Prouvost, and most recently embarked on a world tour with Oneohtrix Point Never.

“Stadium” is his new album for Shelter Press. As his ninth solo record,“Stadium” reflects his move from South Brooklyn to Manhattan, where he produced the album. The constant blurry motion and ever-changing landscapes of the fast-paced island helped him modify and shape his sound into a new kind of film noir. “After we moved into our East Village apartment,” Keszler explains, “we found a guitar pick on the floor that read ‘Stadium’. We looked at each other at the same time and had the same thought. It could have gone any number of ways.” Indeed, there is a startling amount of expression at play on each track, where intersections of melody, restraint and rhythm are used to challenge the idea of memory, impression and space.

Keszler is often mistaken for an electronic musician, but in fact his sounds are raw and natural, produced by hand live in-situ. His performance with the drumset and acoustic percussion are central to his work. He produces almost impossible textures through self-realized methodologies: cascading melodies, a shadow of voices, and a unique pointillistic materiality. Although playing with the intensity of digitally-created music, his communications are done live with no processing. These haptics are what give “Stadium” its depth and its warmth. In a recent interview for Dazed, collaborator Oneohtrix Point Never comments, “I’ve always described his playing as bacterial. He’s able to parallax into very small, very acute, very specific relationships between percussive textures. It’s beyond just being a drummer—he’s a world-building percussionist.”

In “Stadium,” Keszler uses lived experience to realize the most wide-ranging sound he’s created to date. “Stadium” draws out textures from overlapping geographies (from Shinjuku arcades to city streets and Brutalist architecture) and transforms these travelogue field recordings into starting points for composition. He then builds on these environments to create subliminal spaces for his percussion, keyboards and acoustic instruments. His “world-building” techniques are pushed to new levels with mesmerizing string and brass arrangements. Throughout the album, Keszler’s writing, keyboard playing and scoring operate like a sonic channel that transports the listener into a quaking web.

Perhaps this is the “stadium” referred to in the title: a larger network of sound and bodies moving continually, oscillating and turning in on itself. Keszler has explored these ideas before both in his visual work and sound installations—especially notable on projects such as his massive Manhattan Bridge installation ‘Archway’ or his Boston City Hall work «Northern Stair Projection.» “Stadium” takes these long-running ideas to new depths. “My installations work with massive city spaces for a complex of individuals,” Keszler states. “The recordings on Stadium are inverted. They are landscapes scaled for the singular. Like a mass collecting in one arena, this music compresses city spaces, genre and instrumentalism into an amorphous form. On the record, there are ruptures of information and happenstance. Like a game, it could go any number of ways.”

Placenta is the fourth collection of broadly imaginative and highly collaborative Carlos Niño & Friends music released on International Anthem in the last four years. It is also the first new music to be released by Carlos Niño & Friends following the November 2023 release of André 3000’s New Blue Sun – an album which Carlos produced alongside André, while co-writing, co-creating/playing, and co-mixing every song. Placenta is announced on April 11th, 2024, a date chosen because it is the 1st solar return of Moss Niño (a new being in human form, who Carlos and his partner Annelise are Earth parents of). Their experience of pregnancy, labor and delivery were all profoundly impactful for Carlos. Becoming a father again (a whole 24 years after the birth of Azul Niño, who has become a regular artistic collaborator with Carlos) he felt total Inspiration for this set of recordings, and hence it is perhaps the most conceptually-grounded Carlos Niño & Friends album we've yet to present – fully connected to the spirit of family, birth, and "how we get here."

On rare occasions, all the stars align. This is how it was when composer-musician and instrument-maker Bex Burch jumped into her car and drove eight hours across Europe to Utrecht in November 2021. “Mostly life isn’t like that,” she says. “We’re here to figure things out and struggle. But occasionally things just fall into place. Sometimes the world is magical.” The car trip began in Berlin, where she was living after a long stint in London, where she’d made her name in the layers that exist between jazz and improvised experimentalism. The journey ended at Le Guess Who? Festival and an invitation from International Anthem’s Alejandro Ayala. Or perhaps it ended in a ground floor studio in Chicago’s South Side with light streaming through a skylight onto her newly-finished wooden xylophone and a stream of musicians selected by International Anthem’s Scottie McNiece and Dave Vettraino. Or maybe, like a wave travelling across the ocean, the travels continued until Bex Burch finally finished editing thirty-two days of exceptionally tender improvised recording sessions into the forty gossamer minutes of this stunning debut solo record, which oscillates between modes of quiet open-heartedness and powerful expression. There is only love and fear is the sound of Bex Burch in communion with some of the finest sonic communicators in International Anthem’s extended family. These include woodwind player Rob Frye, who gave Burch a tour of the Illinois Audubon Society’s Gremel Wildlife Sanctuary the day after she arrived in Chicago. Also Tortoise drummer Dan Bitney and Ben LaMar Gay, who both took Burch through her first few days in the studio, tuning into her communicative harmonics and responding with their own. And double bassist Anna Butterss and violinist Macie Stewart, who participated separately but both became key collaborators in the album’s post-production, accenting their respective string improvisations with additional sounds remotely recorded per Burch’s direction. Everyone on this record is highly skillful, a rare talent, but drawn together by Burch they were invited to inhabit something even more extraordinary: their most open selves, requested only to bring the sounds they liked – or even needed – in the moment of recording. “What has come through in this album,” she says, “is a more domestic style of music: the simplicity of life and sound-making. The word I’m shy to use is ‘feminine’ but it’s true, and I reclaim it in all its power.” She describes her sound as “messy minimalism.” The twelve tracks evoke variously the sweet kind of zoning-in that allows the listener access to their own feelings; the generative meditations of First Thought, Best Thought-era Arthur Russell; Vivaldi or Laurie Anderson – if they’d been ultra-gentle satellite reflections of Chicago’s minimalist and avant-garde music histories. Burch has previously released as part of Boing! with Leafcutter John, and with the critically acclaimed Strut-released Flock with Londoners including Sarathy Korwar and The Comet Is Coming’s Danalogue. She also runs the band and label Vula Viel and has collaborated with artists from Peter Zummo to Dame Evelyn Glennie. This album also welcomes in the sound of the natural world; ‘hip as fuck’ wood pigeons and resonant nightingales recorded in Berlin parks and forests, dreamy waves lilting onto the sand on the Baltic coast of Rügen Island for the unforgettable closing track ‘When Love Begins’ – and some extreme Chi-Town weather. “There was this ignition moment,” she says of ‘You thought you were free’, the carnival-coloured mid-point of the album. “There was a tornado warning, our phones were all going off: ‘go into the basement’.” The players collectively shrugged their shoulders – until siren sound waves began ghosting through the studio walls. “I turned one of the microphones up to catch the thunder and the rain under the skylight,” she says. “I was properly scared, not just because of the storm, but because I was nervous. I was trying to stay open and be conscious of the fact that I didn’t know what to expect – and that doing so means surrender. That knife edge of presence was really intense. We all just played through.” Playing through was possible, at least in part because of a 90-day practice Burch calls Dawn blessings, which also provided some of the ‘heard sounds’ that dance around the music generated during these collaborative recordings. The practice refers to a friend called Dawn, not daybreak, although at least one of the Dawn blessings that ended up on There is only love and fear was recorded when the sun came up. The Dawn blessings required Burch to make one piece of music daily, in answer to the question: ‘what sounds do I like today?’ “My intention was to cultivate this feeling of expansion and magic that I felt when I was invited to the US. The music is already there, and I have to let go and allow myself to be in it. The 90-day practice was to strengthen that muscle. You know if

Flowing water is an essential element of Earthly existence, a living force, a process of nature, a path-making which combines infinite sources mixing imperceptibly into a singular energy. It’s also a potent metaphor. A childlike wonder at flowing water’s presence and power, all the impressions it makes and creative neurons that it fires, happens to be a personality trait shared by Evan Shornstein (aka Photay) and Carlos Niño. The two producers/musical connectors may have grown up and reside a continent and daily realities apart — Photay in the forest serenity of New York’s Hudson Valley, Niño on Los Angeles’s ocean-adjacent west side — yet this magnetic power of fluidity, its sound, its meaning, what it can teach us about art and circulation, mesmerizes them both. Water is the spiritual center of their first album-length collaboration, the vast and deep An Offering — from the visual on the cover, to the first sound you hear on the opening “Prelude,” to the underlying themes and images espoused by the poet-philosopher Iasos on the closing “Existence.” More importantly, the image of water-like flow is a continuous reflection of how these two musicians have come to work together and apart, of the way they made An Offering, and how they’re continuing to create, without a beginning and (hopefully) with no end in sight. An infinite flow of sound, from and to every direction. Some of this work directly reflects the relationship between the two men, and of where/how Photay’s electronic, often-dancefloor-oriented tracks found Niño’s far-reaching world of ambient spirituality and improvised soundscaping. The meeting point is precise: Laraaji, the new age zither legend with whom Niño regularly collaborates, including at a June 2016 show in New York City which Niño played and Shornstein attended. The connection initiated immediately after that performance did not simply find the pair participating in each other’s recording projects — Photay remixing a Niño-produced Laraaji track and involved in Niño & Friends sessions; Carlos showing up on multiple songs of Photay’s 2020 album, Waking Hours, some of which was recorded at Niño’s studio—but in a broad exchange of ideas. Niño long ago established himself as one of Los Angeles’ great musical conduits, constructing environments that facilitate partnerships between far-flung artists, perpetuating the freedom of working in the present, outside expectations, trusting the work’s destination. When the younger Shornstein met Niño, his own creative process was ”almost too precious, and it was always my goal to break out of that.” Adapting Carlos’ pacing and free-flowing strategies — scenarios such as sharing recorded stems, bringing in old recordings to serendipitously fit new tracks, or mixing organic improvisations with stylized, post-produced rhythms — transformed Evan’s perspective. It made him rethink ideas like “finished,” shedding pressurized over-analysis for a process he calls “fluid” and “healthy.” It also made Shornstein reconsider some music they’d recorded but originally left off Waking Hours, “microscopic moments that were more expansive in my mind — there was so much honesty there.” What may not have made sense within the composed, hyper-stylized beauty of Hours, “felt really good” outside that context. Niño, who describes himself as “very album-oriented,” agreed, suggesting they create a unified body of work to match those moments — but not overthink it, make it quick, easy, productive, present. Which is how the re-imagining of pieces of music that became “Change” and “Exist,” sprung Photay and Carlos Niño into collaborating even more closely, and brought An Offering to the world. The sounds they gathered into an intentional, meditative whole, were made together and apart, and sourced from all over. The two producers made connections between new music and recordings they already had: Shornstein found hours of tape featuring solo playing by Upstate New York harpist Mikaela Davis, which became a central adornment on multiple tracks. Niño sent Shornstein a quartet improvisation he made with tenor saxophonist Aaron Shaw, keyboardist Diego Gaeta and synth-guitarist Nate Mercereau, which became the basis of “Honor.” They brought in trusted partners. The atmospheric blowing of LA-based tenor saxophonist Randal Fisher is a focal point throughout, at times processed by Photay’s machines. Photay’s trombone player Nathaneal Ranson, and Niño’s long-standing LA-based collaborator, vocalist Mia Doi Todd, float in-and-out of the mix. When Niño makes a record, another original “new age” legend, Iasos, is bound to be around, and his strong summation on “Existence” are the only words An Offering submits. The healing energy of Peterskill, a short rocky State Park waterway that ebbs through New York’s Ulster County (and across from Shornstein’s home — “a real environmental inspiration”), flows throughout. “Creating with no constructs,” is how Shornstein describes the process of bringing these elements together. “It was just a feeling, which maybe is what music or creating should always be.” Peterskill was also the source for a long extra track/outro when An Offering debuted as a Bandcamp-exclusive cassette in October 2021 — and quickly sold out. (A gorgeous Shornstein-directed film accompanied the release as well.) The notion of this music as “offering” came to life in its immediacy (the tape was released only a month and half after the idea for it was seeded) and in its gift-like nature (you can still get the digital version at a price of your own choosing). Scott McNiece of International Anthem found it, and instantly connected with its natural essence, a sound that accompanies one’s movements through difficult moments, the motion of instinctive change, a way to mark the radical period of our time with incremental alterations. Like flowing water affecting an ancient landscape. International Anthem offered to give An Offering a full vinyl release, which is why you are reading this one-sheet right now. And like any current, the interconnectedness between Photay and Carlos Niño, their symbiotic way of informing and influencing each other’s sounds, continues to naturally move forward and shapeshift. They are working on multiple projects together at the moment, and have already completed More Offerings. Flow on! - Piotr Orlov, August 2022

Svaneborg Kardyb's Tiny Desk (Home) concert was recorded in the countryside of Djursland, Denmark. "You have to drive for a while on a gravel road, and then you come to a lovely old house surrounded by hills and a stream on one side and a very flat landscape on the other, where you can see 10 miles away,". It's this place that inspired Svaneborg Kardyb's second album, Haven (or "garden" in English). "Haven celebrates places we like to be," the duo said. Svaneborg Kardyb is composed of Nikolaj Svaneborg on the Wurlitzer, synthesizer and piano, and Jonas Kardyb on drums and percussion. Their instrumentation set-up is untraditional, with the drums and keys facing each other, a position that they play in on stage just as they do in Kardyb's kitchen and living room on this session. They open up their set with the title track from Haven, which begins with a quiet melody over an effervescent loop. The sound mimics the shimmy of leaves in the breeze.