MUSIC

Ashram Sun is a transcendent journey toward the inner source of Surya Botofasina’s musical being. Returning to the places and spaces of his spiritual and musical upbringing, the keyboardist and vocalist’s second LP for Spiritmuse after 2022’s acclaimed Everyone’s Children delivers an inspiring meditation on the works and message of his mentor, Swamini Turiyasangitananda, better known as Alice Coltrane, and takes us back to his grounding in the Sai Anantam Ashram – a Vedic ashram built and founded by Coltrane in Santa Monica, California, in 1983. By this time, the spiritual jazz colossus had already taken the name Turiyasangitananda, dedicating Her remaining decades living, teaching, and seeking spiritual enlightenment through prayer, meditation and music. Ashram Sun rises in the light of Her spirit. Produced by the prolific Carlos Niño, whose vision has become a pivotal point for contemporary progressive jazz music, Ashram Sun features appearances from musical luminaries, including multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid, Los Angeles saxophonist Randal Fisher, vocalist Mia Doi Todd, as well as collaborations with vocalist MidnightRoba and acclaimed harpist and vocalist Radha Botofasina, among others. The album continues to expand on and conversate with the innovative spiritual-jazz configurations of recent works by Shabaka Hutchings, André 3000 and Carlos Niño —all of which Surya plays on. This evolution follows from his debut album ‘Everyone’s Children’, also produced by Niño, which was one of the earliest offerings of this fresh, spiritual approach. As the keyboardist on André 3000’s New Blue Sun and an integral member of André’s touring group, Surya has already directly brought the legacy of Alice Coltrane/Turiyasangitananda into this rich new current in creative music. The music on Ashram Sun is tuned into these wavelengths, consolidating a new jazz lineage with energies directly from the source. The album blends improvisation in the creative music tradition with washes of cleanly spiritualised keyboard work, atmospheric percussion, and sanctified vocalisation. Key points of reference might be ambient works of maestro Laraaji, the sounds of the Californian New Age movement documented on the seminal I Am The Center collection, and key inspirations of Surya including the music of McCoy Tyner, Jodeci, DJ Quik, Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Robert Glasper, and the multitude of new works that have flowed from the milieu around key collaborators Carlos Niño and Nate Mercereau. And due to Surya’s formation at Sai Anantam Ashram, the divine aspects of the work have a powerful first-hand connection to the sacred musical and spiritual messages of both the expansive earlier music of Turiyasangitananda as Alice Coltrane, including Lord of Lords and Universal Consciousness, and her magnificent late ashram recordings, as recently documented on the collection World Spirituality Classic vol.1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda. As her mentee from his youth, Surya knew Her music intimately, for he was raised from childhood in Sai Anantam, where his mother Radha Botofasina, who plays harp and sings on ‘Your Soul is Perfect (Supreme Uniter)’, was a spiritual student of Turiyasangitananda. His musical, personal and spiritual growth within the Ashram remains the central reference point in his life. ‘The very core of my being resides and has been cultivated at the sacred grounds of Sai Anantam Ashram,’ he says today. ‘Each value, aspect, place, memory, person, quality, feeling, bhajan, Satsang, energetic representation collectively composes this person.’ As the album’s title indicates, he was and is an ‘Ashram Sun’, and the strong feminine presence of Swamini Turiyasangitananda and his mother Radha infuses the album’s ten tracks. In 2018, just over a decade after Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s passing, wildfires in California tragically burned the Sai Anantam Ashram to the ground. The light of the Ashram set in the flames, but Ashram Sun allows it to rise again in energy and music. The cover of the album features Surya on the steps of the fire-cleansed Ashram, a dedication to the place that he still calls ‘home’ and a statement of his devotion to the enspirited sound-message that Turiyasangitananda instilled in him. ‘The Ashram has taught me how to be a father to my unbelievably beautiful son and daughter; brother to the immediate and soul family; human being to the planet, and more,’ he explains. ‘Swamini and the Ashram has taught me that the only place worth going to, is within… I am always going to be an Ashram Sun.’

Ashram Sun is a transcendent journey toward the inner source of Surya Botofasina’s musical being. Returning to the places and spaces of his spiritual and musical upbringing, the keyboardist and vocalist’s second LP for Spiritmuse after 2022’s acclaimed Everyone’s Children delivers an inspiring meditation on the works and message of his mentor, Swamini Turiyasangitananda, better known as Alice Coltrane, and takes us back to his grounding in the Sai Anantam Ashram – a Vedic ashram built and founded by Coltrane in Santa Monica, California, in 1983. By this time, the spiritual jazz colossus had already taken the name Turiyasangitananda, dedicating Her remaining decades living, teaching, and seeking spiritual enlightenment through prayer, meditation and music. Ashram Sun rises in the light of Her spirit. Produced by the prolific Carlos Niño, whose vision has become a pivotal point for contemporary progressive jazz music, Ashram Sun features appearances from musical luminaries, including multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid, Los Angeles saxophonist Randal Fisher, vocalist Mia Doi Todd, as well as collaborations with vocalist MidnightRoba and acclaimed harpist and vocalist Radha Botofasina, among others. The album continues to expand on and conversate with the innovative spiritual-jazz configurations of recent works by Shabaka Hutchings, André 3000 and Carlos Niño —all of which Surya plays on. This evolution follows from his debut album ‘Everyone’s Children’, also produced by Niño, which was one of the earliest offerings of this fresh, spiritual approach. As the keyboardist on André 3000’s New Blue Sun and an integral member of André’s touring group, Surya has already directly brought the legacy of Alice Coltrane/Turiyasangitananda into this rich new current in creative music. The music on Ashram Sun is tuned into these wavelengths, consolidating a new jazz lineage with energies directly from the source. The album blends improvisation in the creative music tradition with washes of cleanly spiritualised keyboard work, atmospheric percussion, and sanctified vocalisation. Key points of reference might be ambient works of maestro Laraaji, the sounds of the Californian New Age movement documented on the seminal I Am The Center collection, and key inspirations of Surya including the music of McCoy Tyner, Jodeci, DJ Quik, Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Robert Glasper, and the multitude of new works that have flowed from the milieu around key collaborators Carlos Niño and Nate Mercereau. And due to Surya’s formation at Sai Anantam Ashram, the divine aspects of the work have a powerful first-hand connection to the sacred musical and spiritual messages of both the expansive earlier music of Turiyasangitananda as Alice Coltrane, including Lord of Lords and Universal Consciousness, and her magnificent late ashram recordings, as recently documented on the collection World Spirituality Classic vol.1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda. As her mentee from his youth, Surya knew Her music intimately, for he was raised from childhood in Sai Anantam, where his mother Radha Botofasina, who plays harp and sings on ‘Your Soul is Perfect (Supreme Uniter)’, was a spiritual student of Turiyasangitananda. His musical, personal and spiritual growth within the Ashram remains the central reference point in his life. ‘The very core of my being resides and has been cultivated at the sacred grounds of Sai Anantam Ashram,’ he says today. ‘Each value, aspect, place, memory, person, quality, feeling, bhajan, Satsang, energetic representation collectively composes this person.’ As the album’s title indicates, he was and is an ‘Ashram Sun’, and the strong feminine presence of Swamini Turiyasangitananda and his mother Radha infuses the album’s ten tracks. In 2018, just over a decade after Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s passing, wildfires in California tragically burned the Sai Anantam Ashram to the ground. The light of the Ashram set in the flames, but Ashram Sun allows it to rise again in energy and music. The cover of the album features Surya on the steps of the fire-cleansed Ashram, a dedication to the place that he still calls ‘home’ and a statement of his devotion to the enspirited sound-message that Turiyasangitananda instilled in him. ‘The Ashram has taught me how to be a father to my unbelievably beautiful son and daughter; brother to the immediate and soul family; human being to the planet, and more,’ he explains. ‘Swamini and the Ashram has taught me that the only place worth going to, is within… I am always going to be an Ashram Sun.’

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.’

*2025 reissue* Ralf and Florian (original German title: Ralf und Florian) is the third studio album by the German electronic band Kraftwerk. It was released in October 1973 and it saw the group moving toward their signature electronic sound. This work introduces greater cleanliness in the sounds and intensifies the use of electronic instrumentation, namely synths (Mini Moog, the EMS AKS and Farfisa), drum machines and, for the first time, a prototype vocoder. The formation thus approaches the stylistic code of the best-known works, starting from Autobahn, the latter considered to be the true debut of Kraftwerk. In 2008, Fact named it among the 20 greatest ambient albums ever made.

Kraftwerk 2 is the second studio album by German electronic band Kraftwerk, entirely written and performed by founding Kraftwerk members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in late 1971 and released in January 1972. Perhaps the least characteristic album of their output, it features no synthesizers, the instrumentation being largely electric guitar, bass guitar, flute and violin. On the second side, the more rock-oriented origins of the group still cling on, mostly without any percussion whatsoever.

My Garden, a collection of songs written, recorded and produced entirely by Kirby, is a pure distillation of his sound — soulful, spiritual, and evocative. Demonstrating perfectly why Kirby is the go-to collaborator for artists ranging from experimental auteurs Bat for Lashes and Connan Mockasin to pop megastars Harry Styles and Kali Uchis, and R&B innovators Solange and Frank Ocean, My Garden is also a testament to the clarity and singularity of Kirby's vision.

Artist, producer, composer, and keyboardist John Carroll Kirby presents Blowout, his new album out June 30th with his latest song “Oropendola.” The record is inspired by a period in Costa Rica spent playing with local musicians while Kirby imagined “failed utopias.”

In 2021, Kirby visited Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica to film an episode of his Kirby’s Gold travelogue series with the Kawe Calypso Band. Here, Kirby wrote the majority of Blowout between the early-morning wake-up calls from the local oropendola birds and psychedelic sunsets. Kirby says, “The oropendola is a very cool bird that lives in a sac-like hanging nest. There was a tree full of them outside where I stayed that woke me up every morning at 5 am, so I had to write a song about them.” The album was finished upon Kirby’s return to Los Angeles with a stripped-down band at 64 Sound Studios.

Blowout sways between the title’s two definitions – a moment of destruction and one big party. While writing the album, Kirby thought of episodes of collective madness or delusion, like Fyre Festival and the Heaven’s Gate cult. The album imagines “a festival where everyone gets beamed up to utopia or heaven instead of starving or dying unfulfilled.” Kirby says, “I’m trying to use imagination in music to create my own myths, and keep things playful and funny and not too sanctimonious.”

Released in 2021, Country Tropics was the first offering from Old Saw. At the time, no one was really certain who was behind the lush and textured arrangements of a soon to be beloved ensemble of New England based musicians. 5 years and 4 albums later, the group announced that their fall 2025 double album, The Wringing Cloth, would be their last. An outpouring of affection and adoration for what the group had accomplished followed, with many noting just how unique a space Old Saw occupied within an increasingly saturated sphere of Americana drone music It’s with great pride and enthusiasm that we announce this 5th year anniversary pressing of Country Tropics to coincide with the group making a U-turn and rather than closing up shop, they are planning their very first live performances slated for later this summer across the northeast US. Country Tropics has been highly in demand over the years and it feels appropriate to give it new life 5 years after its release, featuring deluxe packaging and wider global distribution. ***below album description from initial release*** Devotional music and its devotees all do a bit of "buying in"; that while one's on the ground reality may appear anything but celestial, through this music, one can reach ecstatic space, ecstatic peace. However, devotional music is not solely concerned with a skyward glance - what does it look like to raise up the rust, look upon fractured branches, gaze at the density of a low fog across a field? Instead of us looking up at the land, what if the land was looking back at us? Old Saw brings together a brigade of New England silt sifters to raise up the land not as excavators, but as preparators. Tending and caring for the simple mess that our world discards. Throughout "Country Tropics" four pieces, the crew stretches and bends chords to their resting place before setting forth towards a new one. Fiddle drone, wistful tape loops of pedal steel, pipe organ hums, and clattering bells call us to scenes of observation, a water tower, a mechanical bull rental agency, a back porch, a taxidermy shop, a local church choir, a garden with singing vines, voltage hum of the electric fence on Pulp mill bridge road. The funny thing about devotion is the absence of sight, of source. We place trust in the guide or guides to bring us to a place of seeing, feeling, and hearing. The music on "Country Tropics" calls out to those in search of such places, but also doesn't demand we conjure some fantastical, celestial vision of understanding. Rather, Old Saw points our gaze downward towards the terrafirma unconsidered, and guides our hands into the dirt.

Having studied under Takehisa Kosugi in 1975 and participated in the legendary improvisation group East Bionic Symphonia, Tomonao Koshikawa—now also a member of Marginal Consort and an artist who performs experimental music, jazz, rock, Indian classical music, and even Kanze‑school Noh chanting—presents his second solo work, following his ato.archives debut Footprint

Joshua Abrams’ Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation is the aural manifestation of an art event described as “an in-between space and access point to a pulsating experience that connects body and land.” Like the action of a slow-spiraling coil, the music information here revolves in dappling light, an evolution drawn slowly, magnetically forward, resonating there and back again. Deep-reaching in elemental movement, it leaves traces and echoes in the air—and in our ears, as our own experience evolves. Joshua originally created this music as a 4 channel installation to accompany Lisa Alvarado's Pulse Meridian Foliation exhibition at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles. Written for two violas (both played by James Sanders), harmonium (Lisa), & electronics (Joshua), it was designed to play on a loop throughout the gallery's open hours between April 1 and August 20, 2023. And it did. When playing with Natural Information Society, Joshua’s writing is directed toward the form of the music as uniquely occupied by the group. Here, he wrote in strict dialogue with the exhibit, responding with choices in composition, performance and production on Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation. A key interpretation of the exhibition is voiced by Josh in the hand-off of information between the two violas as they weave together from oppositional points across the sound stage. In mixing the original surround sound down to two channels, Joshua worked toward the small details from left to right, placing former residents of triangulated speaker planes in a congenial spot on our present stereo azimuth—realizing, in the careful growth of this auricular border ecosystem, an essential aspect of the Pulse Meridian Foliation exhibit. Daniela Lieja Quintanar, REDCAT Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Programs, on Pulse Meridian Foliation: A threshold composed of a new immersive mural, a collection of double-sided paintings, a series of photos, and a sound installation. The exhibition explores how memory can be transformed through the body’s relationship to geography and geology, as well as engaging with Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of Nepantl (in-between): "the midway point between the conscious and the unconscious, the place where transformations are enacted." In her exhibit, Pulse Meridian Foliation, Lisa Alvarado inhabits the process of foliation, in which extreme environmental pressures upon rocks evoke a new crystallization and a changed minerality. For Alvarado personally, this is a matrix through which she can consider time and changes, specifically the politics of change, and dialogues that multiply over distinct chapters of history. A way to view her family’s intergenerational memory of “Mexican Repatriation”, a 1930s US policy that pushed millions across the border into Mexico, including many U.S. citizens. The weight of these things shudders through the bones of the music here slowly, almost incalculably. Details come and go, light and shadow flickers as horizontal and vertical planes gently intersect… an ambient space in constant change. Constant MINIMAL change, with the recurrent events and slight returns cascading in slo-mo arcs all around. On Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation, Lisa Alvarado asks, “How does memory transform and live within the body?” and, in collaboration with Joshua Abrams, a transformation is enacted.

Caterina Barbieri & Bendik Giske's At Source resounds music as wellspring, that which is essential and unknowable, and yet utterly primary. It finds two acclaimed composer-musicians building a world together in self-contained collaboration between analogue synthesis and an extended approach to the saxophone that conjures its own universe of sound. It is at once intimate and cosmic, drawing on the challenges and possibilities of their artistic exchange, tearing down technique to access all the expansive possibilities of their sonic meeting point. At Source is a document of the world of sound to be conjured when two artists strive for something together, discovering the expansions and limitations of performance by bodies and machines. It is not an exercise in assimilation, but in productive exchange and creative confrontation. It does not draw on outside energies or influences, but grapples with what there is to find in their respective playing. "It also reflects how natural the collaboration was," says Barbieri, "a meeting at the source which was spontaneous, graceful and natural". Barbieri and Giske first met and were enthralled by one another's performances at Kunsthaus Glarus in 2019, a meeting that spurred conversations on the power of transitions as a compositional force. Giske later contributed a rework of Fantas for Fantas Variations (Editions Mego, 2021), an ambitious undertaking to rescore Barbieri’s work for his saxophone and voice, a challenge Giske had started undertaking two years prior as an ongoing practice of transcription. “The request came as a proof of aligned ideas”, says Giske. Their new collaborative project then started during an artistic residency in Milan’s ICA in 2021, by invitation of swiss artist and curator Jan Vorisek, as the world was emerging from lockdown. This meeting, and the preceding closure of sites for cultural exchange, made their work together 'feel like springtime' says Barbieri. Giske, who was on the brink of releasing his sophomore album, Cracks, then joined Barbieri's light-years tour, which functioned as an inaugural incarnation of her newborn label and platform through a series of multi-artist curated shows with appearances of Lyra Pramuk, Nkisi, MFO, among other artists. Through the tour, they continued to develop material live, and this release, laid down in the studio, is true to that ever-evolving process of creation, where live feedback stays essential to the vitality of this collaborative effort. The tracks are each named with two evocative words that contain the two poles of their sound. Theirs is both abstract and cosmic, in the synth as machine undermined by Barbieri's naturalistic playing, and in Giske's continuous exploration of the symbiosis between his instrument, voice, and body. These binaries, of body and machine, posed various challenges, notably in how the stepped patterns Barbieri uses were near-impossible to translate for Giske's body to perform, and other times where mathematical resolutions were needed to sync their playing. Explains Giske: "It forced me to go to the core of what I am and what I have to offer”. Barbieri says that it "explores the liminality between the machine and the human, and the vulnerability in this process". On 'Intuition, Nimbus', the first track to be written, Giske's playing flutters and rises on Barbieri's synth, like a flock of birds lifted skywards on thermal columns, with clouds of pulsing tones fanning avian wings. 'Alignment, Orbit' settles into a steady torque, Giske's gentle percussions syncing with shifting loops, steadily building energy and conjuring solidity from breath and resistance. The extended 'Impatience, Magma' stretches glowing and languorous, honing in on and picking up a synth melody with whetted edge that cuts through the firmament, populating a broad cosmos of extended tones and replicating patterns in a piece that calls to mind Laurie Spiegel's extended works, and steps into transcendent duet with Giske's saxophone at its most keening and spiritual in tone and movement. 'Persistence, Buds' unfurls gracefully in sensuous sympatico, as saxophone caresses Barbieri's slowly twirling progressions, a tactile and meditative closer. At Source is testament to two divergent practices finding a whole cosmos in which to convene; music is crystalised and made utterly enveloping through the focused and critical work of two musicians working at their peak. The versions here are, temptingly, "just one of many versions" of this abundant source material Giske explains. Like the best collaborations, At Source is more than the sum of its parts – bringing more to the feast than the simple combination of two musicians, promising versions upon versions of the exquisite material captured here.

Strut presents an exclusive new collaboration between UK jazz keyboardist Greg Foat and Venetian ambient / electronic maestro Gigi Masin on ‘Dolphin’. Recorded remotely during 2021-2022 the album took shape in the form of mutual compositions, gradually developed and embellished online. Final recording sessions took place at the majestic Chale Abbey Studios on the Isle Of Wight with Moses Boyd (drums), Tom Herbert (bass) and Siobhan Cosgrove (flute, clarinet) adding elements to several pieces. Tracks include the reflective, wistful single ‘Viento Calido’ and drifting ambient piece ‘Sabena’, a beautiful tribute to Gigi’s wife who sadly passed away during 2022. Greg Foat has recorded prolifically in recent years for Athens Of The North, Jazzman and Strut including acclaimed albums Symphonie Pacifique (2020) and The Mage (2019). Best known for his 1986 ambient masterpiece Wind and as a member of Gaussian Curve, Gigi Masin has enjoyed a revival in recent years through his Calypso album on R&S’s Apollo label and renewed touring. Dolphin represents Greg and Gigi’s first landmark recording collaboration together. “I first heard Gigi’s album Wind in 2016,” remembers Greg. “I was living in Miami and I heard it playing one Summer evening. Since then, it has always been in my mind to be able to record together.” Dolphin is mastered by Mark Ashfield at Cosmic Audio with newly commissioned artwork by Niul Foat. The LP comes as transparent vinyl in a thick card outer sleeve.

Latency presents the first-ever arrangements of iconic Ethiopian composer Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru’s music for piano and strings, honoring her desire to broaden the interpretation of her work beyond the piano.

Led by pianist, composer, and Emahoy’s friend Maya Dunietz, a nine-piece string ensemble performed her compositions during two tribute concerts at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, in April 2024. This album celebrates the centenary of Emahoy’s birth and commemorates the first anniversary of her passing.

The album marks the culmination of a journey that began nearly two decades ago, in 2005. While browsing a London record store, pianist and composer Maya Dunietz and conductor Ilan Volkov discovered a CD by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, released as part of the acclaimed ‘Éthiopiques’ series. Intrigued, they sought out the esteemed musician, eventually locating her in a small monastery in Jerusalem. Their initial meeting blossomed into a deep, lengthy conversation. Emahoy recounted her life in the monastery and the challenges of making music in that setting. They delved into her music, discussing it in great detail. When they asked Emahoy about notation, she invited them to read her notebook, which contained compositions written that very morning. Maya and Ilan played some on the piano. At that moment, Emahoy began to trust them. Before leaving, Maya wrote her phone number in Emahoy’s notebook and invited her to call if she ever wanted or needed anything.

A few years later, the call came: Emahoy invited Maya to the monastery, handing her a couple of wrinkled old Air Ethiopia plastic bags filled with hundreds of her composition manuscripts. She asked Maya to help create a book of her piano compositions, making them accessible to people around the world. Faced with such a monumental undertaking, Maya partnered with the Jerusalem Season of Culture to embark on this ambitious project. This collaboration resulted in the publication of a book of sheet music and a collection of essays in 2013, as well as numerous concerts performed worldwide. These concerts, along with Maya’s work on Emahoy’s music, grew from a deep bond of love and mutual respect between the two women.

During one of their many meetings, Emahoy mentioned her dream of arranging her songs for orchestral instruments. She remarked that it was too late for her, but, with her trademark smile and a wink, suggested: «Maybe you could do it?» For Maya, this tremendous compliment became the catalyst for all the string arrangements she would create for Emahoy’s beautiful music—arrangements now collected in this album after years of collaboration and discussions between Maya and the record label Latency.

This album celebrates the centenary of Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru’s birth and commemorates the first anniversary of her passing. All compositions were recorded during two tribute performances at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, held in April 2024 in her memory.

It's a weird time in the world, but luckily we have Bremer/McCoy's really lovely music to listen to. Natten, which is Danish for “The Night,” takes inspiration from the end of day, that regenerative time under the constellations when our lives look different. Let it be your companion on this Earth, under the stars, as you contemplate this crazy time we’re in.

Utopia is a tale of juxtaposition. On one hand, the music paints an idyllic and dynamic soundscape. Lead single "Højder" springs with bright, twinkling keys - part wurlitzer, part piano - balanced by a warm, sauntering bassline that has the feel of a tango. Others, like "Tusmørke" lean more into the jazz lane, a sultry nighttime tune sizzling with violins and dubbed out keys.

On the other hand, Utopia was by no means made under ideal circumstances. The duo battled constant technical difficulties - exploding reel-to-reel machines, a mixing board that constantly broke down - as if haunted by the malfunctioning gear. On top of that, Bremer was going through a divorce, which made recording a struggle at times.

Nonetheless, Utopia encapsulates what Bremer/McCoy do best: kaleidoscopic instrumental music, touching a multiverse of genre that evokes passion and promotes contemplation from the listener.

Gondwana Records announces ‘Goodbyes’, the debut album from Estonian-born, London-based sound artist and pianist Hanakiv. A deeply beautiful, meditative piano album featuring special guest Alabaster deplume. “This is an album about healing. It is about saying your goodbyes to everything that doesn’t serve you anymore. Each of these songs has a little goodbye in it. So, these are very beautiful and necessary goodbyes”. Hanakiv is a young composer and musician from Estonia (now based in London) who creates meditative piano-based ambient music with elements from classical and electronic music. ‘Goodbyes’ is her debut recording and draws on influences as diverse as Tim Hecker, Björk “Vespertine”, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Arvo Pärt, Erkki-Sven Tüür and Aphex Twin as well as her own cultural heritage. Music has an important part in Estonian culture, especially choir music and its traditions, but Hanakiv also draws on her love of nature – the beautiful Estonian seaside and forests - and on her time in Iceland. However, it was moving to London that gave her the freedom to make her own music: “London gave me the freedom and courage to really be who I am (as a person and musically)” and her heritage and her new home both offer inspiration to Goodbyes, as Hanakiv moves between these two opposite places, a bustling metropolis and a small country full of nature, drawing inspiration from both as she sculpts her own voice. Hanakiv had an unconventional music education – she started studying music at a school for handbells when she was nine and was part of a handbell ensemble for eight years. Starting on piano at the same time she went on to study composition at high school, and later at the Estonian Academy of Music. Eventually switching to electroacoustic composition, she studied in Reykjavik, and did internships in Malmö, and again Reykjavik before moving to London. She grew up in a musical family and her grandmother was a piano teacher and choir conductor. “I would always ask her to take me to her choir rehearsals. I remember sitting under the grand piano, listening to the choir and just being mesmerised by the sounds. She also teaches in a local music school in the south of Estonia with about ten pianos, and I’d spend a lot of time there as well. I believe this was the starting point for me to get to where I am now. The last two pieces on the album (Home II and Home I) are composed in this same music school, so it feels like a full circle. An early influence was Regina Spektor “the first artist who made me really want to play piano” alongside dream pop and Sigur Rós’ as well as Estonian contemporary composers such as Erkki-Sven Tüür and Arvo Pärt. Later her studies took her to Reykjavík: “There is this amazing record shop called 12 Tónar in Reykjavik where you can drink espressos and listen to all their vinyls. I spent quite a lot of time there. There is something about Icelandic music that really excited me (the mixture of contemporary electronic sounds with melancholy, emotionality). This is when I started getting more into electronic music, and experimenting outside of classical music”. Following a year long break from studying and inspired by making an electroacoustic soundtrack for a friend’s abstract video, she was inspired to complete a masters in electroacoustic composition, diving fully into the worlds of sound recording and mixing and focusing on surround sound and how to position and move sounds in space, eventually doing an internship with composer Kent Olofson in Malmö, who works with multi-speaker systems for theatre productions. “I learnt a lot from him and he introduced me to some of my favourite plugins I’ve used a lot on this album as well.” Hanakiv moved to London just as the pandemic hit and found herself trapped, in a big new city, without any network or family and so just concentrated on making music. “I stayed in my room with my basic equipment - keyboard, Korg minilogue, SM 58 and Rode nt1-a microphones, laptop and speakers. I was reading about mixing, and trying out different things and listening to a lot of music to get the sense of the mixes and production and finishing a commission piece for 5.1 multi speaker system at that time so I set up four speakers for quadrophonic surround sound in my room!”. She also found her way back to piano - my instrument – and started practicing again, playing the pieces she used to play, but also just improvising, and this was the beginning of what would become her debut album, ‘Goodbyes’. “I started appreciating everything about music again (even melody!), and everything just came together naturally, and I arrived to a point where I finally found my voice, and I had something that I wanted to say and share. I composed “Meditation I” first and started with “Goodbye”, and all the other pieces are derived from that. Without “Meditation I” there wouldn’t be this album. If you listen closely, “Meditation I” starts where “Goodbye” ends; “Meditation II” is born from “Meditation I”. But it was meeting Fi Roberts, a sound engineer based at the legendary Strongrom Studios in Shoreditch, London in December 2020 that really brought the album into focus. The pair bonded over an interest in prepared piano and a similar approach to production ideas (a balance of not overdoing it, and letting the songs speak for themselves, but being open to explore) and Fi became a friend but also a confidant and eventually co-producer “Fi has a big impact on this record but I don’t know how to really explain that properly. Of course, this album is sonically stunning thanks to her amazing mixes and recording skills, but she also believed in this music so much and it created something very special - that’s difficult to measure with words. She just works with heart, and I really appreciate that” This then is ‘Goodbyes’, the first offering from a major new voice, who offers us a meditative work full of space and tranquillity but also life and friendship and meaning. And we are very proud to welcome her to the Gondwana family.

Remixed and remastered with bonus material and released on vinyl for the first time. Deluxe 2LP editions with artwork re-imagined by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic. "If I could watch any jazz band in the UK, any, I would choose Matthew Halsall's band, just love what he's been doing over the last few years... It's always high level, spiritual jazz music" Gilles Peterson BBC Radio 1 Matthew Halsall (born September 11, 1983, in Manchester, England) is a Worldwide Award winning and MOBO nominated trumpeter, composer, producer and DJ. Since 2008, Matthew has released seven critically acclaimed studio recordings and has been a key figure in the rise of a new jazz sound in the UK. In addition to his own releases Halsall has collaborated with many DJs and producers, most notably DJ Shadow and Mr. Scruff, and in 2013 Matthew’s music was selected by Bonobo for his Late Night Tales compilation. Halsall is also the founder of Gondwana Records, a genre bending independent record label featuring a wealth defining albums by the likes of Portico Quartet, GoGo Penguin, Hania Rani and Mammal Hands. His own rich music draws on the spiritual-jazz of Alice Coltrane and Phaorah Sanders, contemporary electronica and dance music alongside his travels in Japan, the traditional art and music of which, has left a lasting impression on his compositions. Sending My Love (2008) and Colour Yes (2009) were his first releases and document Halsall’s first great bands featuring the likes of flautist Chip Wickham, saxophonist Nat Birchall, harpist Rachael Gladwin, bassist Gavin Barras and drummer Gaz Hughes. Joyful, life-enhancing albums, drawing on UK jazz and spiritual jazz influences but with a decidedly modern bounce, they introduced Halsall’s music to the world gathering support from the likes of Gilles Peterson and Jamie Cullum, Mojo, Straight No Chaser and beyond. But Halsall was never completely happy with how the records were presented and as part of Gondwana Records 10th anniversary decided to revisit the recordings, meticulously remixing and remastering them for vinyl and commissioning new artwork from Ian Anderson, one of his favourite designers. These then are the definitive editions of the records. Sending My Love comes complete with the beautiful bonus track This Time, while Colour Yes features the equally striking It’s What We Do and Ai. “I am very proud of these early recordings. They represent the starting point of my musical journey in Manchester and showcase some of the cities finest musicians such as: Nat Birchall, Chip Wickham, Rachael Gladwin, Adam Fairhall, Gavin Barras and Gaz Hughes. They are also the very first recordings my brother and I decided to release on our record label (Gondwana Records). Listening back they sound full of energy and joy and really reflect how I was feeling at that precise moment. But as much as I loved the music, I was never 100 percent happy with the sound of the mixes and mastering. So I decided to go back to the original tapes to remix and remaster them and present them the way I'd always wanted, and along the way we unearthed a couple extra unreleased tracks, which we decided to include as bonus material. Myself and my brother also decided to bring in Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic to re-imagine the artwork and we are super blown away by the results!" — Matthew Halsall, Oct 2019

Northern Irish musician and producer David Cunningham, known for releasing two electro-punk albums on Virgin in the New Wave era and having a worldwide hit single "Money" as The Flying Lizards. The first solo album "Grey Scale" released in 1976 is the first analog reissue from the prestigious . This work was sent out as the first release from his own label , which sent out This Heat and General Strike. From avant-garde musicians such as Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman with whom he has performed live, to improvisers such as Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and David Toop, Cunningham draws influences from a wide variety of fields. At the time, he was a student at the Kent Institute of Art & Design in Kent. , a work that created an infinitely changing palette of sounds. A suite of minimal etudes that does not belong to any genre, with an attractive sound collage and free tones.

"Of all the releases on Italy's legendary Cramps Records, Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina's seminal LP from 1979 has long remained among the most beloved. Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo not only introduced the world to the work of two gifted composers, but also is notable for being produced by electronic pioneer Franco Battiato. A sister album to Prati Bagnati would be Giusto Pio's breathtaking Motore Immobile, likewise graced with the maestro's gentle hand around the same time. Lovisoni and Messina are both central figures within the Italian avant-garde. Part of a generation of artists who contributed to a radical rethinking of musical practices and composition, they reveal Minimalism as it's rarely known: delicate melodies, subtle harmonic interplay, incorporating diverse creative traditions and slowly giving way to an ever-expanding open space. Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo's meditative title track, inspired by René Daumal's surrealist novel Le Mont Analogue, features Messina on synthesizer and Michele Fedrigotti's impressionistic piano, while on Lovisoni's 'Hula Om' and 'Amon Ra,' solo harp, crystal glasses and Juri Camisasca's radiant vocal drones further ascend into the stratosphere. Skirting the outer edges of ambient, new age and experimental music, Prati Bagnati has a transformative beauty unlike anything else. Superior Viaduct's edition reproduces the original sleeve design and is recommended for fans of Jon Hassell, Luciano Cilio and Popol Vuh."

Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire, England in 1943. His first musical forays were as a jazz bassist working in the early 1960s with improvisors Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Bryars later worked with composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia and collaborated with Brian Eno on his famed Obscure imprint. The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars' first major composition, was inspired by the tragic event of the British passenger liner's cross-Atlantic maiden voyage. Bryars eloquently reconstructs the passengers' experience – at once forlorn and eerily calming – through assemblages of understated strings and indeterminate elements. A core principle of the piece is that the ship's band continued to play as the vessel went down. One of the most sublime works in the modern classical canon, Titanic remains Bryars' magnum opus. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the album's second sidelong track, is based on a tape loop of a London street singer captured in the early 1970s. Featuring Derek Bailey, Michael Nyman and John White, Bryars' composition gradually builds around the cripplingly poignant voice until its emotional force is almost too much to bear. It's no surprise that Jesus' Blood is known as Tom Waits' all-time favorite piece of music. Produced by Brian Eno in 1975 as the inaugural release on Obscure, The Sinking of the Titanic draws the listener in to a majestic world. While these exquisite, hymn-like recordings have not changed in nearly 50 years, their deeply personal nature and the audience's attention to their subtlety have only strengthened over time.

Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire, England in 1943. His first musical forays were as a jazz bassist working in the early 1960s with improvisors Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Bryars later worked with composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia and collaborated with Brian Eno on his famed Obscure imprint. The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars' first major composition, was inspired by the tragic event of the British passenger liner's cross-Atlantic maiden voyage. Bryars eloquently reconstructs the passengers' experience – at once forlorn and eerily calming – through assemblages of understated strings and indeterminate elements. A core principle of the piece is that the ship's band continued to play as the vessel went down. One of the most sublime works in the modern classical canon, Titanic remains Bryars' magnum opus. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the album's second sidelong track, is based on a tape loop of a London street singer captured in the early 1970s. Featuring Derek Bailey, Michael Nyman and John White, Bryars' composition gradually builds around the cripplingly poignant voice until its emotional force is almost too much to bear. It's no surprise that Jesus' Blood is known as Tom Waits' all-time favorite piece of music. Produced by Brian Eno in 1975 as the inaugural release on Obscure, The Sinking of the Titanic draws the listener in to a majestic world. While these exquisite, hymn-like recordings have not changed in nearly 50 years, their deeply personal nature and the audience's attention to their subtlety have only strengthened over time.

Since 2010, Adam Keith's solo project Cube has been supplying a steady run of records and cassettes that capture songwriterly fixations and frustrations in a dextrous style of wounded electronics. Though Cube has been the centrepiece of his activity for some years, he's all the while remained active in collaborations, playing in bands such as SPF and Mansion to name just a few. Rounding off a decade of dialogues and agitations, Alter now presents Keith's third LP under the moniker of Cube, 'Drug of Choice' Based in New York, though managing a functional transience that takes in California too, Keith's latest iteration as Cube launches a panoramic set of sonic touchstones into a gristly and hypnotic orbit. Seismic drum machine parts partition an album that layers industrial-tipped takes on digi-dub with roaming guitar lines, piano vignettes, and breakbeat theatrics. For all the abrasiveness and rhythmic allusions that Keith employs, his use of voices alongside lush manipulations of errant samples and atmospheres tempers the commotion, delivering something that feels as much focused on artful constructions of private experiences as it does the cathartic qualities of noise.

For five decades, Harold Budd stood on the forefront of the West Coast avant-garde. Born in Los Angeles, he studied with Schoenberg-pupil Gerald Strang and began teaching at CalArts in 1970. While searching for his own voice, he was influenced as much by abstract expressionist painters as by John Cage and Morton Feldman. In his work, Budd brought delicate, slowing-moving melodies to the foreground – creating a new musical language based on "eternally pretty music" and smooth surfaces. In the early '70s, Budd started an extended cycle of compositions that would comprise The Pavilion Of Dreams. For Budd, the album was a signpost for a new direction in thinking about music: "The Pavilion Of Dreams erased my past. I consider that to be the birth of myself as a serious artist. It was like my Magna Carta." Produced by Brian Eno in 1978, The Pavilion Of Dreams stands toe-to-toe with another minimalist masterpiece also released that year, Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians. Budd's gorgeous pieces reveal a lightness of touch that draws the listener in, while sublime voices float in and out as if in a recurring dream. Featuring saxophonist Marion Brown and multi-instrumentalists Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman, The Pavilion Of Dreams remains a master class in exquisite timbre and shimmering texture. The Pavilion Of Dreams was both the final release on Eno's Obscure imprint and a transition point towards his seminal ambient series. This first-time reissue is recommended for fans of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jon Hassell and Mark Hollis.

After a two-decade interlude, Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like "Sound Mind Sound Body" and "Wave Field" (both reissued by Drag City in recent years), Toral has never been one to rest on his laurels repeating his past glories. In the early years of the 21st century, Toral laid the guitar aside, along with the focus on extended tones that had defined much of his music until that point. He began his ‘Space Program’, a thirteen-year investigation of the performance possibilities of an ever-expanding set of custom electronic instruments, played with a fluid phrasing and rhythmic flexibility inspired by jazz. Dedicated to honing his skills on these idiosyncratic instruments, Toral has performed with them extensively both solo and in many collaborations, including in his Space Quartet, where his mini-amplifier feedback integrates seamlessly into the frontline of a classic post-free jazz quartet rounded out with saxophone, double bass, and drums. Since 2017, Toral’s work has been entering a new phase, often still centred around the arsenal of self-built instruments developed in the Space Program, but with a renewed interest in the long tones and almost static textures of his earlier work; he has also, after more than a decade, returned to the electric guitar. Spectral Evolution is undoubtedly Toral’s most sophisticated work to date, bringing together seemingly incompatible threads from his entire career into a powerful new synthesis, both wildly experimental and emotionally affecting. The record begins with a brief ‘Intro’ that sets the stage for the unique sound world explored throughout the remainder of its duration: over sparkling clean guitar figures, Toral stages a duet between two streams of modulated feedback, seeming less electronic than like mutant takes on a muted trumpet and an ocarina. This segues seamlessly into the stunning ‘Changes’, where a dense array of Space instruments solo with wild abandon over a thick carpet of slowly moving chords, growing increasingly chaotic over the course of eight minutes yet always fastened to the lush harmonic foundation. On these and many other moments on the record, Toral manages the almost miraculous feat of having his self-built electronic instruments (which in the past he had seen as ‘inadequate to play any music based on the Western system’) play in tune. In an unexpected sidestep away from any of his previous work, the chord changes that underpin many of the episodes on Spectral Evolution are derived from classic jazz harmony, including takes on the archetypal Gershwin ‘Rhythm changes’ and Ellington-Strayhorn’s ‘Take the “A” Train’, albeit slowed to such an extent that each chord becomes a kind of environment in its own right. Threading together twelve distinct episodes into a flowing whole, "Spectral Evolution" alternates moments of airy instrumental interplay with dense sonic mass, breaking up the pieces based on chord changes with ambient ‘Spaces’. At points reduced to almost a whisper, at other moments Toral’s electronics wail, squelch, and squeak like David Tudor’s live-electronic rainforest. Similarly, his use of the guitar encompasses an enormous dynamic and textural range, from chiming chords to expansive drones, from crystal clarity to fuzzy grit: on the beautiful ‘Your Goodbye’, his filtered, distorted soloing recalls Loren Connors in its emotive depth and wandering melodic sensibility. The product of three years of experimentation and recording, and synthesizing the insights of more than thirty years of musical research, "Spectral Evolution" is the quintessential album of guitar music from Rafael Toral.