MUSIC

What does hell look like? The introduction of Toy Machine skateboard's seminal 1996 video Welcome to Hell with its pulsing overlay of the Stars and Stripes on top footage of police officers, businessmen, and fast food service workers, would appear to paint hell as the mirage of American exceptionalism. A thick, centuries-spanning unreality that may not outwardly trade in fire and brimstone, but if you turn your nose to the wind, you'll smell sulphur.What comes after that scene, born of — or despite — those apparent depictions of damnation, would become a cultural touchstone: skateboarding performed at the highest level, composed and displayed in a fashion that would influence and endear audiences for decades to come. Welcome to Hell features a unique and progressive patchwork of skateboarders, most of which would become icons in their world, and helped redefine what the modern skateboarding video could be.A young Joseph Shabason felt that impact. The acclaimed musician hit rewind on his VHS copy of Welcome to Hell hundreds of times in his youth, each watch as thrilling as the last. That invigorating, improvisational, full-body experience of skateboarding is one that Shabason likens to jazz, where a shared language exists between the wheels and woodwinds. The way the skateboarder and musician command that language is what distinguishes them, adding definition to the mercurial concept of "style." This connection becomes most apparent in collaboration; ensembles of skaters and musicians are a noisy, creative bunch. Reflecting on this relationship and the Toy Machine classic would ultimately lead Shabason to wonder: what does hell sound like?The answer was a concept album that, like his previous records, lives in the personal. One that, much like skateboarding itself, would push him to try something new: rescoring Welcome to Hell. The video's original soundtrack served as a musical awakening for many — an active, aggressive mix of songs from bands like The Misfits, Black Sabbath, and Sonic Youth. Here, you'll find that recontextualized, softened, yet no less energizing. Over the album's ten songs, Shabason plays with the angular and ambient, exploring large group melodies that move forward with the on-screen action, shifting the mood in subtle and substantial ways that reframe our understanding of this culture-defining skate video and the skateboarders in it.In Shabason's "Hell," quintessential "East Coast powerhouse," Mike Maldonado is backed by a sharp, driving modal composition that calls back to 1970s Miles Davis, the melodic sensibilities of Azimuth, and stands as a fascinating complement to Maldonado's hard-charging on-board approach. The debut of Elissa Steamer, a pioneer decades ahead of her time, is given fresh spirit with an off-kilter funk. Brian Anderson, whose virtuosic section was originally guided by a dour Pink Floyd track, now flies across the screen in jazzy fits and starts, punctuated by the joyous wail of Shabason's saxophone. Nowhere does the fluid and improvisational intersection of skateboarding and jazz meet and swell than with Donny Barley. His easy, instinctual cool flecked with tinkling synths and bass lines that echo the natural power of Barley’s abilities.Shabason then creates what could be rightly considered an audio portrait of Ed Templeton. The celebrated visual artist, photographer, and founder of Toy Machine cuts a distinct profile, which Shabason distills with a throbbing, slanted rhythm and an eerie layering of feedback and pressuring keys. The "curtains" section in Welcome to Hell belongs to Jamie Thomas, whose career-defining performance here would set the stage for a decades-spanning career and a level of influence in skateboarding that is still felt today. Shabason meets Thomas' epic with a commanding, angular rhythm that builds and flows with the momentum of his skateboarding. Airy group melodies mingle with a wonked-out vibraphone and tight percussion that lets loose in florid bursts before devolving into a finishing sequence of muscular improvisation — a fittingly bold interpretation of the work of one of skateboarding's most daring practitioners.Finally, as if ending with his thesis statement, the last song of Shabason's Welcome to Hell is a calming vocal harmony that lies atop the video's infamous "bail section." A horrific collection of skateboarders falling and twisting themselves into agonizing, unnatural shapes — a Hieronymous Bosch captured on VHS. It's the culmination of the unexpected made whole. Shabason's album a provocative reimagining that instills a new sense of awe in the 27-year-old classic, prompting the question first posed by the original: what if hell was a place you wanted to return to again and again?

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytum comosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.
The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’s new renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

-Andy Beta 

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. 

Human Remains follows Creatures of the Deep and Black Sarabande as the final installment of a trilogy of piano based recordings by Robert Haigh for Unseen Worlds. The trilogy marks the end of the late era of solo albums by Haigh before he steps away from music production. The title, Human Remains, was initially based on a painting of the same name by Haigh that is suggestive of an ancient structure resolute in the wake of overwhelming forces. As a metaphor for our current times, it could be interpreted as human frailty in the face of nature’s unyielding dominion. Conversely, it could represent the persistence of human spirit and resourcefulness in the midst of catastrophe and upheaval. The album opens with 'Beginner’s Mind' – a semi-improvised motif develops into an impressionistic refrain. This is followed by "Twilight Flowers" and "Waltz On Treated Wire" – intimate, monochrome piano portraits. Later tracks such as "Lost Albion" and "Signs Of Life" build on skeletal piano motifs with subtle electronic washes, textures and field sounds. The album ends with the elegiac "On Terminus Hill" where a stately piano refrain explores a series of sparse harmonic variations evoking a sense of closure.

Human Remains follows Creatures of the Deep and Black Sarabande as the final installment of a trilogy of piano based recordings by Robert Haigh for Unseen Worlds. The trilogy marks the end of the late era of solo albums by Haigh before he steps away from music production. The title, Human Remains, was initially based on a painting of the same name by Haigh that is suggestive of an ancient structure resolute in the wake of overwhelming forces. As a metaphor for our current times, it could be interpreted as human frailty in the face of nature’s unyielding dominion. Conversely, it could represent the persistence of human spirit and resourcefulness in the midst of catastrophe and upheaval. The album opens with 'Beginner’s Mind' – a semi-improvised motif develops into an impressionistic refrain. This is followed by "Twilight Flowers" and "Waltz On Treated Wire" – intimate, monochrome piano portraits. Later tracks such as "Lost Albion" and "Signs Of Life" build on skeletal piano motifs with subtle electronic washes, textures and field sounds. The album ends with the elegiac "On Terminus Hill" where a stately piano refrain explores a series of sparse harmonic variations evoking a sense of closure.

“How to begin? No beginning... never ending reverberation,” Antoine Beuger writes in the accompanying notes to Leo Svirsky’s River Without Banks. Dedicated to his first piano teacher Irena Orlov, River Without Banks is a mesmerizing, emotional collection of pieces that are simultaneously complex and fluid. The title River Without Banks comes from a chapter of musicologist Genrikh “Henry” Orlov’s profound work Tree of Music. In said chapter, Orlov traces the history of sacred music from the Western and Eastern tradition and how the forms (of the chant, raga etc.) sought to eliminate the division between the physical and the spiritual--the bank and the river.

Arranged for two pianos with accompaniment from strings, trumpet, and electronics, this is Svirsky’s first piece to approach the history of the piano and the possibilities of the recording studio, and his deepest dive yet into exploring the instability of listening and its transformation of musical semantics and affect. Like Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas project, Svirsky overlays romantic musical gestures to create a lush unfamiliarity. No sooner than each track begins the next moment unfurls beneath it, cascading time and blurring perception of past and present.

Akin to a multidimensional Rzewski thematic interpretation, Svirsky’s music defies genre-classification or classical ideology while its virtuosity clearly stems from somewhere from within disciplined traditions. Continuously revisiting, revising, and renewing its emotional core, River Without Banks is less an album of songs than songs of a singular, unlocatable album. Performed by the composer with assistance from Britton Powell, Max Eilbacher, Leila Bordreuil, Tim Byrnes, and recorded by Al Carlson.

A new album of piano driven ambient music from British composer Robert Haigh. Following in the path of his albums for the Japanese Siren label, Creatures of the Deep is an underground vantage of a meeting between the musical worlds of Harold Budd and Erik Satie. With a storied musical career that has ranged widely in style ― from his industrial-avant-garde works on Nurse With Wound’s United Diaries label as SEMA to his legendary ambient drum and bass records as Omni Trio on Moving Shadow ― Robert Haigh's work occupies a space between music and mystery. With Creatures of the Deep, Haigh is at the peak of his powers. Among noir, minimal, neo-classical landscapes are robust scatterings of bright reflection and a musical expression that is subtle and elusive yet uniquely Haigh’s in its voice and masterful execution. The closer we examine, the more is revealed, and the less is defined.

An archaeological sound source from the famous label Unseen World, which continues to send obscure electronic music. An early collection of early recordings by Carl Stone, an American composer who studied under Morton Subotnick and is a professor at Chukyo University, and a master of sampling and cut-up collage.
This work consists of 6 unreleased songs from the 70's and 80's and 7 songs of "Shing Kee" excerpted from the work "Mom's" released by New Albion in 1992. "Shing Kee" (1986), which is a sampling of Schubert's "Bodhi" sung by Akiko Yano, has a great sense of ambience for sustained sounds, and Seth Graham and Kara-Lis Coverdale are also surprised by the timeless three-dimensional electronic sound. , "Shibucho" (1984) and "Dong Il Jang" (1982) are also ambitious works in which cut-ups were attempted using sampling methods. Our Rashad Becker is in charge of mastering. An avant-garde electronics masterpiece that unfortunately demonstrated a strange soundscape like melting modern architecture. Even if I listen to it now, it doesn't feel old at all. Recommended for a wide range of people from DJ material to new age to ambient drone lovers. A gatefold specification & booklet & DL code limited track is also included.

Time and duration are core themes in the work of both William Basinski and Janek Schaefer, and this long-distance collaboration took a suitably long gestation of eight years from start to finish. In that time, our collective perception of time has at times become disorienting. “ . . . on reflection ” remodels that instability as an exquisite work of art – one that is unmoored by time or space. Limitation breeds creativity, revealed as an expression of minimalism and close focus. Deploying a delicate piano passage from their collective archive, Basinski and Schaefer weave and reweave in numerous ways, forging an iridescent flurry of flickering melodies. The sounds of various birds heard from late night windows on tour can occasionally be heard throughout, ricocheting off mirrored facades, reflecting on themselves as they continually reshape their own environments with song. “ . . . on reflection ” looks backwards, a bustling revelry of positive emotions heard through the aging mirrors of memory. It is a celebratory meditation where sound shimmers through time like the light of the sea’s waves glistening as it folds and unfolds upon itself. Created 2014-2022 between L.A. & London. Mixed at Narnia, Walton-on-Thames.

14 short melancholy tape-loops from the early eighties. Remastered and now available on conventional pressed CD in Trim-Pak (previously available as a very limited CDR. "Melancholia is probably the best Basinski's record until now, even if this is hard for me to say given my love for each one of his releases. Contrarily to his 'continuing' projects such as Disintegration Loops and Water Music, this is a sort of a sketch album, made of short pieces all created with tape loops and some synthetic wave here and there. This music is so beautifully delicate and sad in its auto-reflective moods, it stands right there with everything ranging from the usual suspects in the 'ambient' field, to a distorted damp ghost of Claude Debussy or Maurice Ravel put into a time machine. Just ravishing as you can imagine, William's almost suffocated loops celebrate the burial of any enthusiastic thought, to make room to the most difficult introspection -- the one growing you in a hurry and leaving you alone, observing from a safe distance. This beauty is for any human being who's not afraid to understand life's happenings -- maybe the hard way, but who cares?" --Massimo Ricci, touchingextremes.org.

Honour’s debut album is a ligament stretching from Lagos to London and to New York, curling across the diaspora and brushing the darker hues of blues, hip-hop, free jazz, ambient, gospel with Christian mythology and Yoruba folklore. As cinematic as it is painterly, Àlàáfíà is a meditation on themes of life, death and love that pulls inspiration from the poetic profundity of God, remembered dreams, unexpected casual conversations, field recordings, literature, ephemera, and personal archives. The result is an impressionistic vision in Black and Blur that both exhausts and implicates language and that sublimates boundaries between everywhere and nowhere; history and the present; the individual and the universal.

Previously issued on three rare cassette-only editions, Joanna Brouk’s 1980 sophomore album The Space Between has finally been given spacious LP quarters. The side-long title track, performed by Brouk’s Mills College instructor and sometime-lover Bill Maraldo is among the deepest and most distinctive pieces in the new age canon, while side B’s three cuts expand the theme in hypnotic new directions.

Vision Songs Vol. 1 (1984) is the LARAAJI album like no other, located at the intersection of new age and gospel. It is both his outlier and magnum opus, the feel-good DIY tape of the century.Discovered busking in Washington Square Park by Brian Eno in the late 70s, engagement with the eternal flow has led Laraaji to, seemingly by magic, emerge as the most beloved avatar of the unstoppable new age music revival of recent years.Now Vision Songs rewrites Laraaji's musical history. Vision Songs is literally a revelation -- of a master songwriter whose unbelievably catchy best compositions such as "We Shall Be Lifted", "All Of A Sudden", and "Is This Clear?" belong in any great American songbook.Casio synth jams recorded at spiritual retreat guest rooms and a tiny bedroom on the Upper West Side, lysergically-spectacular anthems for a continually arriving new moment, "channeled," as Laraaji states in the album's eloquent liner notes, "from the sky," previously available in an edition of 100 cassettes sold at yoga retreats and on the streets of New York City, Vision Songs is humbly offered on vinyl, CD, and streaming for the very first time.

Studying under Robert Ashley and Terry Riley at the fabled Mills College Center For Contemporary Music before graduating into the margins of the '70s bay area new music scene, Ms. Brouk blazed her own trail well outside of the musical establishment to create uncompromising electronic and acoustic work of sleek beauty and primal power. Describing herself as less a composer than a channel, she took her cues from the frequencies of the natural world and the talents of collaborators like Maggi Payne and Bill Maraldo. Hearing Music collects for the first time the deepest cuts from her beguiling and rare cassette releases and her archive of previously unreleased recordings.

The first vocal album by beloved Ethiopian nun, composer, and pianist Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru - profound and deeply moving home cassette recordings made amidst political upheaval and turmoil. These are songs of wisdom, loss, mourning, and exile, sung directly into a boombox and accompanied by Emahoy’s unmistakable piano. Though written and recorded while still living at her family’s home in Addis Ababa, Emahoy sings of the heartache of leaving her beloved Ethiopia, a reflection on the 1974 revolution and ensuing Red Terror in her homeland, and a presentiment of her future exile in Jerusalem. In the 21st century, Emahoy has become known worldwide for her utterly unique melodic and rhythmic style. Commonly misinterpreted as “jazzy” or “honky tonk,” Emahoy’s music actually comes from a deep engagement with the Western classical tradition, mixed with her background in Ethiopian traditional and Orthodox music. These songs, recorded between 1977-1985, are different from anything previously released by the artist. Rich with the sound of birds outside the window, the creak of the piano bench, the thump of Emahoy’s finger on the record button, they create a sense of place, of being near the artist while she records. Emahoy’s lyrics, sung in Amharic, are poetic and heavy with the weight of exile. “When I looked out / past the clouds / I couldn’t see my country’s sky / Have I really gone so far?” she asks in “Is It Sunny or Cloudy in the Land You Live?” Her vocals are delicate and heartfelt, tracing the melodic contours of her piano on songs like “Where Is the Highway of Thought?” “Tenkou! Why Feel Sorry?,” a career highlight that closes out her self-titled Mississippi album (MRP-099), is revisited here with vocals. Originally composed for her niece, Tenkou, the lyrics clarify the song title we’ve wondered about for so many years. “Don’t cry / Childhood won’t come back / Let it go with love.” Emahoy dreamt of releasing this music to a larger audience before her passing in March of 2023. We are proud to release this music, in collaboration with her family, now, in what would have been her 100th year. LP comes with a 16-page booklet full-color booklet. Gold cover first edition, pressed in both black and gold vinyl editions.

12月上旬再入荷。ドイツのミュージシャン/作曲家のDaniel Rosenfeldが変名C418にて製作した傑作！物理世界とピクセル化された世界の両方で響くサウンドを描き上げた『マインクラフト』のオリジナルサウンドトラック盤『Minecraft Volume Beta』が〈Ghostly International〉からアナログ・リプレス。前作『Alpha』には未収録の楽曲だけでなく、ゲーム内では使用されたなかった楽曲も収録したC418自身のオリジナル・アルバム的一枚！牧歌的で穏やかなサウンドスケープに仕立てられた前作と比してよりダークで内省的な側面もクローズアップされた魅惑のアンビエント/エレクトロニック・ミュージックが収められています。

His latest work is already here! Inspired by the global anti-racist protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the mixtape "hybtwibt?" was released in 2020 as a fundraiser against racism in the UK. Where To Now?" was featured on Pitchfork and Bandcamp as one of the "best ambient albums of the year. Space Afrika (Joshua Inyang & Joshua Tarelle) is an experimental duo based in Manchester, UK, who have been featured on various cutting-edge labels such as Where To Now? Their new album is out now on the prestigious Dais label. Liquefying garage, jungle, grime, and even dream pop into a glittering trail of pulses and pads, they've boiled down the music of Dean Blunt, DJ Spooky, the Cocteau Twins, and Klein into a candlelit narrative.

His latest work is already here! Inspired by the global anti-racist protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the mixtape "hybtwibt?" was released in 2020 as a fundraiser against racism in the UK. Where To Now?" was featured on Pitchfork and Bandcamp as one of the "best ambient albums of the year. Space Afrika (Joshua Inyang & Joshua Tarelle) is an experimental duo based in Manchester, UK, who have been featured on various cutting-edge labels such as Where To Now? Their new album is out now on the prestigious Dais label. Liquefying garage, jungle, grime, and even dream pop into a glittering trail of pulses and pads, they've boiled down the music of Dean Blunt, DJ Spooky, the Cocteau Twins, and Klein into a candlelit narrative.

Pharoah Sanders recorded the songs that comprise Thembi in the winter of ’70/’71, in between sessions with Alice Coltrane that would eventually become her masterpiece Journey In Satchidananda LP. The same compelling spirituality that embued Coltrane’s masterpiece with a mood of stately calm and grace pervades Thembi. ‘On Thembi, that was the first time that I ever touched a Fender Rhodes electric piano. We got to the studio in California — Cecil McBee had to unpack his bass, the drummer had to set up his drums, Pharoah had to unpack all of his horns. Everybody had something to do, but the piano was just sitting there waiting. I saw this instrument sitting in the corner and I asked the engineer, 'What is that?' He said, 'That's a Fender Rhodes electric piano.' I didn't have anything to do, so I started messing with it, checking some of the buttons to see what I could do with different sounds. All of a sudden I started writing a song and everybody ran over and said, 'What is that?' And I said, 'I don't know, I'm just messing around.' Pharoah said, 'Man, we gotta record that. Whatcha gonna call it?' I'd been studying astral projections and it sounded like we were floating through space so I said let's call it 'Astral Traveling.' That's how I got introduced to the electric piano.’

A Day of the Sun is a spiritual jazz masterpiece full of poetry by two geniuses of the Japanese musical scene. Masahiko Togashi and Isao Suzuki, pivotal figures in jazz with a unique talent and sensitivity that transcends conventional jazz forms and styles. In addition to being skilled performers they demonstrate extraordinary compositional talent that transcends their sensibilities and wisdom of more conventional jazz. They are together a wonderful combination of techniques, but without the eyes and ears of these two artists, the mutual understanding, friendship and cooperation that only certain artists are able to recreate together, would never have given rise to this music. The album is based on Togashi's drums/percussion and Suzuki's bass, with occasional changes to cello and piano/synths, and is skillfully performed by just the two of them, creating a unique worldview; a performance that far exceeds expectations. The mystical melodies of the East, earthy percussion, and the sensibilities of the two intertwine to create a unique groove, resulting in a universal masterpiece that will never fade away and connects with today's sound makers and DJs. Top sound quality from original master tapes. Includes 4-sided insert with a very interesting interview at the time with the two musicians regarding the record.

Edward Artemiev's re-recording of his score to Andrei Tarkovsky's classic 1972 film Солярис (Solaris), reissued on 180-gram vinyl. When Artemiev recorded this score in Moscow in 1989 and '90, there was no legitimately available releases of the original soundtrack. Artemiev chose to fill that void himself with this recording, released on Torso Kino in the Netherlands as part of a 1990 double-LP set also containing re-recordings of Artemiev's scores to Зеркало (Mirror) (1975) and Сталкер (Stalker) (1979). This set is now long out of print, and Mirumir is pleased to present the collection on two separate LP releases, remastered, with new artwork, and officially licensed by the artist himself.

Robert Haigh made his trilogy of piano solo albums (‘Notes and Crossings’, ‘Anonymous Lights’, and ‘Strange and Secret Things’) during 2009-2011 and ‘The Silence of Ghosts’ in 2015 for Siren Records. The tracks for each of these releases were carefully selected with consideration for the flow and development of the project. Inevitably, for various reasons, some tracks did not fit a particular album and they have remained unreleased regardless of their quality. 

The original plan of the “Tempus Fugit” release was, as the subtitle suggests, to collect and assemble rare and unreleased tracks into an album. However, in the process of his compiling the tracks, Robert noticed that the project was developing into an album that had a flow and narrative of its own. Considering the structure and progression of the album, Robert carefully curated ten pieces from his recording archives (including three tracks left over from the Unseen Worlds period) and arranged them to make the best sequence selection.

As a result, “Tempus Fugit” has grown into a unique album with its own sense of flow, though none of the tracks were recorded with the aim of making this particular album. “Tempus Fugit” will be a parting gift to those who have followed his works while at the same time, a useful selection as “young person's guide to Robert Haigh” to those who have yet to open the door of his music. 

The album opens with ’Slow Water.’ A distant and plaintive piano melody evolves with ghostly harmonies through a reverb soaked landscape. ’The Wind Blows Black’ is an improvisation on a theme where discordant piano figures tumble over fragile descending chords. ‘Sub Rosa’ and ‘Broken Bones’ are Haigh at his most melodic, conjuring up the feel of tracks such as ‘Clear Water’ and ‘Portrait with Shadow’.’ In A Space’ slightly predates the first Siren release and wouldn’t be out of place on an early Budd and Eno album. The album closes with the ghostly ‘Tesselate Air’, a slow-moving ambient trip across a misty and shadowy terrain, slowly fading to silence. And the silence is significant as Robert is insistent that there will be no more releases after this.

Written and produced by Robert Haigh. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering. Sleeve artwork by Robert Haigh. Additional design by Saul Haigh.
 

Robert Haigh, long known as Omni Trio, is a veteran electronic and “ambient drum and bass” innovator. Strange and Secret Things, however, is solo piano. Now, when someone sits down at the piano and plays slowly and pensively, it is easy (and usually lazy) to immediately draw comparisons with Erik Satie, and “Revenant (Prelude)” and “Secret Codes (Prelude)” are in fact reminiscent. A nod, perhaps. Otherwise, Haigh’s seventeen miniatures are hardly strange and if they possess some secret, he seems more than willing to share it with us. He plays a crisp and clear piano, deliberate and intimate. 

On this final entry to a trilogy, voltage is mainly used to run the recording equipment, with the rare wisp of a whit of a scent of electronics—a dragonfly following him “Across the River,” a shimmer quietly underlining “Dark House,” synthesizer arabesques decorating “Piano with Generative Tones” and what sounds like a violin (but could be a female soprano) sampled and played backward on the closing “Requiem.” Whether circular or linear, these tuneful, minimal melodies are truly precious pieces, black-and-white snapshots only just beginning to yellow and curl at the edges. 

Housed in the sturdy, handmade mini-LP packaging which has become the distinguished and distinguishing hallmark of Siren, Andrew Chalk’s Faraway Press’ Japanese sister label.