MUSIC

“Do you dream too?” Tomemitsu’s Martin Roark asks on his sophomore album with Friends of Friends Music out September 20, 2024. The question is also what stemmed from the album title, ‘Dream 2’, a shorthand written in the lyrics. ‘Dream 2’ is quite possibly Tomemitsu’s dreamiest LP, if not his most diverse. It is brimming with both new territory and nods to his past. This record reveals a more buoyant side to accompany his traditionally spaced out productions. Since his 2013 release of ‘m_o_d_e_s’, Tomemitsu has combined calm with chaos to create chilled out nuggets of pop containing an ear for ambience in odes to offbeat artists from genres of all sorts. “Creators like Thelonoius Monk, Joao Gilberto, Daniel Johnston, Brian Eno, Bill Withers, Arthur Russell… they were all immediately inspiring to me. I think I’ve come to appreciate the ‘solo project’ness of tomemitsu without realizing how much i was nodding along to the loneliness of my favorite artists.” says Roark. For ‘Dream 2’, Tomemitsu also added a slew of analog and digital gear, processors and synthesizers, to his private Laveta Loca studio elevating the aural output from his hyper lo-fi origins.

Continuing their exploration of São Tomé and Príncipe with DJ Tom B., Les Disques Bongo Joe proudly announces the release of África Negra Anthology Vol. 2. We've carefully selected and remastered 13 standout tracks for this volume, digitized from studio tapes by their tour manager. The album includes a booklet with updated liner notes and vintage photos of the group. África Negra, established in the early 1970s by Horacio and Emidio Pontes, is São Tomé and Príncipe's most renowned musical group. Their blend of Puxa and Rumba, infused with Leonildo Barros' guitar riffs, Armando Tito's bass lines, and vibrant percussion, gained them recognition beyond the archipelago. This volume offers a glimpse into their musical journey, featuring unreleased sessions from 1979 and 1990, showcasing lead vocalists like João Seria and Sergio Fonseca. Reformed around Leonildo Barros and Antonio Menezes since 2008, the group has released three albums since 2012 and resumed touring in recent years, with João since 2014. Their performances continue to captivate audiences with energetic rhythms, graceful harmonies, socially charged poetry, and distinctive dance moves, supported by their Lisbon-based tour manager, Afonso Simoes (Filho Unico), who facilitated the excavation of these tracks. Since the tragic passing of Joao Seria on May 4, 2023, followed by national funeral honors, 90s lead vocalist Sergio Fonseca has rejoined the group, accompanied by Iju, a renowned younger São Toméan vocalist, delivering an engaging show. Pacheco, known for his devastating bass riffs and unique style of playing, has also returned, having lived in Cape Verde since 1987 and recently resettled in São Tomé. This anthology is dedicated to the memory of General João Seria, Gabriel João, Sep 1, 1949 - May 4, 2023.

Batov Records presents ‘Nijerusalem’, a groundbreaking collaboration between Nigerien synth pioneer Mamman Sani and Berlin-based electronic artist Tropikal Camel. Mamman Sani's electronic organ music, first recorded in 1978, made him a national hero in Niger, led to him writing the Niger’s new national anthem, and has long been cherished by aficionados for its unique blend of traditional Nigerien melodies and synth experimentation. Mamman's music embodies a sense of intimacy, echoing the presence of a solo artist in the room with the listener. This album is the result of a serendipitous meeting at the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda. Both artists shared a residency and studio space, which led to long recording sessions together over the course of two weeks, capturing the organic fusion of Mamman's synth melodies and Tropikal Camel's percussive electronic beats. Despite their divergent backgrounds and ages, Mamman at 73 and Tropikal Camel at 44, they found equilibrium in their collaborative process. ‘Nijerusalem’ pays homage to the warm synth sounds of the 80s while infusing them with an African electronic aesthetic. Mamman's music, rooted in Nigerien folk traditions, finds new life in this sonic exploration, resonating with authenticity and innovation. Both Mamman Sani and Tropikal Camel draw from rich and diverse cultural backgrounds, creating a dialogue of cultural exchange and mutual respect. Mamman's heritage, with roots in the Hausa and Tuareg tribes, intersects with Tropikal Camel’s own North African and Middle Eastern roots and musical interests. In "Nomadic", Mamman Sani captures the vibrant journey of rural nomads through a signature Nigerien swing rhythm. “Sultan Umnaru’s Trip" is a sonic narrative of a tribal leader's expedition during the French colonial era, enriched by North African percussion and live bass, reflecting the intensity of the journey. With its waltz-like cadence, exploring the traditional Touareg rhythm found in countless folk songs across Niger, "Touareg Spaceship” beautifully encapsulates the cultural essence of the Touareg people, offering listeners a captivating glimpse into their musical heritage. In "Fulani UFO", Mamman Sani explores the rich cultural heritage of the Fulani, a prominent tribe in Niger. Here, Assayag infuses a North African rhythm, incorporating the gimbri instrument commonly found in Moroccan Gnawa and Tunisian Stambeli music. These ritualistic musical traditions, brought to North Africa by West African slaves, serve as ecstatic medicine, enriching the sonic landscape of the song. A tribute to the Songhai people, "Sonray Wedding Song" is inspired by a typical song sung at a river bank wedding. Which leads us neatly to “Venusian Lady", a universal ode to love, bridging cultures and origins, with Mamman's heartfelt composition, originally recorded as instrumental 50 years ago, marking its debut in a vocal rendition, sung in both English and Hausa. The urgent "Toil, Sweat & Sun'' intertwines poignant samples with futuristic disco elements, reflecting on the solidarity shown under Niger’s colonial rule. Closing the album, "Nomadic" is transformed into an electronic dub “version”, blending pulsating basslines and reverberating echoes to create a mesmerising sonic landscape. On ‘Nijerusalem’, Mamman Sani and Tropikal Camel's collaboration invite us into their timeless and intimate, minimalist sound world.

Recorded in the early 70's in her home on a reel to reel recording device, the songs on "Colour Green" are intimate portraits of life's sad and fragile beauty.

The duo’s third album of instrumental guitar recordings pushes their sinuous compositions into labyrinthine new shapes, interlocking and interlocutory, supported by a cast of stellar collaborators. Interwoven among the dazzling original pieces is a fascinating array of covers, ranging from traditional Breton dance tunes to a deconstruction of Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance.

At first, Gia Margaret called her new album ‘Romantic Piano’ to be a bit cheeky. Its spare, gentle piano works share more spirit with Erik Satie, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou and the ‘Marginalia’ releases of Masakatsu Takagi than they do with, say, a cozy and candlelit date night. But in that cheekiness lies hidden intention: across the gorgeous set, “Romantic” is suggested in a more classic sense, what the Germans call waldeinsamkeit. Its compositions conjure the sublime themes of the Romantic poets: solitude in nature; nature’s ability to heal and to teach; a sense of contented melancholy. "I wanted to make music that was useful,” says Margaret, vastly understating the power of the record. ‘Romantic Piano’ is curious, calming, patient and incredibly moving — but it doesn’t overstay its welcome for more than a second. Margaret’s debut, ‘There’s Always Glimmer,’ was a lyrical wonder, but when an illness on tour left her unable to sing, she made her ambient album ‘Mia Gargaret’ (another cheeky title!) which revealed a keen intuition for arrangement and composition not fully shown on ‘There’s Always Glimmer’s lyrical songs. ‘Romantic Piano’, too, is almost totally without words. “Writing instrumental music, in general, is a much more joyful process than I find in lyrical songwriting,” she says. “The process ultimately effects my songwriting.” And while Margaret has more songwriterly material on the way, ‘Romantic Piano’ solidifies her as a compositional force. Originally pursuing a degree in composition, Margaret dropped out of music school halfway through. “I really didn’t want to play in an orchestra,” she said of her decision, “I really just wanted to write movie scores. Then, I started to focus more and more on being a songwriter. ‘Romantic Piano’ scratched an old itch.” ‘Romantic Piano’ does indeed touch on a rare feeling in art often only reserved for the cinema — a simultaneous wide-lens awe of existence and the post-language intimate inner monologue of being marooned in these skulls of ours. How very Romantic!

Japanese ambient woven with organic minimal sounds and field recordings.

This marks the fourth vinyl release from Japanese ambient artist Tomotsugu Nakamura. His previous vinyl releases with prominent French ambient label LAAPS and other international labels have consistently sold out. This bold project delves into the fusion of sound and music, employing acoustic elements and analog synthesis within a spatial framework.
The sleeve, inspired by ink painting, is the second work from the up-and-coming art label "teinei," dedicated to producing records that double as art pieces for display. (It will be released simultaneously with Haruhisa Tanaka's Nayuta, the inaugural release from the same label.)

Nara Leão is known as "the muse of bossa nova”. Already as a teenager in the late 1950s, she became friends with several singers and composers who took part in Bossa Nova's musical revolution, including João Gilberto, Vinicius de Moraes, and Antônio Carlos Jobim. By 1963, after singing as an amateur for a few years, she became a professional and toured with Sérgio Mendes. In 1968 she appeared on the album “Tropicália: ou Panis et Circenses” together with artists including Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Os Mutantes and Gal Costa, performing "Lindonéia”, which appears as first track in this album, published in the same year.

Minecraft - Volume Alpha is the work of German composer and musician Daniel Rosenfeld. Using C418 as his moniker, Rosenfeld crafted the sweeping soundtrack and vibrant sound design which helped breathe life into Minecraft's voxel-based universe. Fans and critics were universally enamored with his beatless, nuanced electronic pieces upon release. Popular gaming site Kotaku named it among The Best Game Music of 2011, calling the music "remarkably soothing," and The Guardian has compared Rosenfeld's delicate piano and sparse ambient motifs to legendary artists Erik Satie and Brian Eno. In an interview feature with C418, Polygon distilled Volume Alpha to its essence: "It's not bound by the retro aesthetic of Minecraft's graphics. It transcends them. The album is an attempt to uplift the combined game/music experience into the sublime."

Let the Moon Be a Planet marks the first volume of Reflections, a new series of contemporary collaborations orchestrated by RVNG Intl., and documents an inspired exchange between guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn and pianist and composer David Moore of Bing & Ruth. Conjured by a mutual curiosity, and appreciation, for the respective musician’s work, Let the Moon Be a Planet initially took form over a progression of remote sessions and ultimately harmonized when Gunn and Moore completed the album together in the bucolic surroundings of Hudson, New York. Let the Moon Be a Planet is an invitation to relive the intimate moments shared between two artists finding their way along a single path, and into a world where the most subtle of gestures can ripple for an eternity.

Matching expansive ambience with environmental sound, Chihei Hatakeyama’s new album continues Field Records’ exploration of Japan and the Netherland’s shared approach to water management. As with Sugai Ken’s 2020 album Tone River, a specific project becomes Hatakeyama’s area of focus - in this case the Hachirōgata Lake in Akita Prefecture. Previously the second largest body of water in Japan, the government ordered extensive drainage work of Hachirōgata Lake after the second world war with the help of Dutch engineers Pieter Jansen and Adriaan Volker. After the project was completed in 1977, reclaimed land took up eighty percent of Hachirōgata Lake’s total size. As a result, a new ecosystem was established as plants spread from surrounding areas, bringing with them a wider variety of birds and other wildlife. Hatakeyama’s approach to this unique subject matter took in field recordings from particular locations around the lake - the drainage channels, the Ogata bridge, grassland conservation reserves and other key areas. The aquatic subject matter and sonic material is a natural fit for Hatakeyama’s accomplished sound, which has featured on numerous solo works for labels including Kranky, Room40 and his self-run White Paddy Mountain. From the intimate intricacies of the sampled material to the glacial expanses of droning synthesis and languid guitar, Hatakeyama creates a tangible environment which at once reflects the settings around Hachirōgata Lake, while offering the listener any number of imagined scenes to observe in their mind’s eye.

Guitarist Lee Underwood’s syncretic blend of jazz, folk, and blues was a tremendous force behind Tim Buckley’s genre-stretching late 60s/early 70s music – but his 1988 acoustic guitar opus California Sigh has remained a unsung footnote to his story. Until now! This first time vinyl-edition reveals Lee’s free-floating acoustic moods, with synths and co-production from ambient avatar Steve Roach, as a soulful work of tranquility and transcendence.

Most of this recording was made during a single early evening in Southern California, outdoors, with the San Bernardino Mountains in view. Sam Wilkes played bass guitar, Craig Weinrib played trap drums, and Dylan Day played electric guitar. Eight months after that dusk recording session, the trio reconvened to capture a few more pieces. Wilkes wanted to hear Dylan play a Jobim melody (How Insensitive), Dylan wanted to hear Craig play a funeral march (When I Can Read My Titles Clear), and Craig wanted to play nice and gentle. The resulting record, a document of an initial and seemingly fated musical encounter, conveys the ease and the intensity of the trio’s chemistry. Their shared sonic affinities, while essential to the record’s sound, feel secondary to the integrity, confidence, and mutual regard that suffuse each note and every beat. Atop standards, folk songs, and hymns, Wilkes, Weinrib, and Day unfurl a series of cascading improvisations. Joyful and precise music. Sam Wilkes is from Westport, Connecticut and lives in Los Angeles, California. Craig Weinrib is from New York and lives in New York. Dylan Day is from Fletcher, Vermont and lives in Los Angeles, California.

“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.

Across the last 15 years, Ryan Gustafson of The Dead Tongues has emerged as one of modern folk’s most distinct voices. As idiosyncratic and spectral as the songs have sometimes been, Gustafson has always tied his visions and verses to the kinds of hooks you tuck away like talismans, pulled out in case of emergency. Dust, Unsung Passage, Desert: The Dead Tongues’ albums remain some of the more compelling and curious works in their field on this side of a century. The latest edition to The Dead Tongues’ catalog, the song-centric and magnetic Body of Light and the discursive and wonderfully elliptical I Am a Cloud, is 16 complete tunes split across interweaving and disparate albums. Before heading to Betty’s, Gustafson spent a month at “the Shack,” a primitive and private structure in rural western North Carolina, working on new material and sorting through piles of poems, sticky notes scattered across the windows, and stacks of free writing streams of thought. Most of the songs were written during this time – the exquisite “Daylily,” a warm little gift for his partner, or “I’m a Cloud Now,” a fever dream of song and spoken-word about the toggle between identity and ephemerality. The creative energy was free flowing, deep and explorative, songs somehow coming together in a manner both freakishly fast and patient. In this energy and specific space the groundwork for the album was rooted, springing forth from the thick of the elemental and natural beauty these songs reference. The daylily on the cover of the album was picked from the land the shack is built upon - there’s a connection between the physical natural setting and the creative work itself, intertwined and natural bloom. Gustafson wanted to continue with that explorative energy once he got into the formal studio, allowing it to lead the group of players assembled – the albums feature performances by Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Bon Iver), Mat Davidson (Twain), Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats), Joe Westerlund (Califone, Megafaun), Jeff Ratner (Bing and Ruth), and more. Gustafson wanted to dedicate the studio time to not just recording songs but also making something new, with new improvisations. The results feel at once casual and tremendous, the camaraderie and conversation between the players resulting in pieces that are lived-in but new. “Baby there ain’t no rules here/We can just slide,” Gustafson sings at the start of Body of Light’s opening title track, establishing a collective credo inside this gorgeous anthem about finding sanctuary with someone else. Notice how it seems to nod to flamenco before lifting into electronic abstraction, or how Wasner’s harmonies summon the deepest Southern soul over electric phosphorescence. And then there’s “Dirt for a Dying Sun,” where freight-train harmonica and spectral guitar frame a romantic dust-to-dust realism, where the best we can do is live wildly before we die. The characters on Body of Light are restless, damaged, and beautiful, whether clinging to an underground amid gentrification’s high rises during “Wolves” or holding on to the most intoxicating wisps of love during “Moon Shadow.” The band plays as if they’re just meeting these people for the first time, responding with an admixture of recognition and astonishment. The collected crew takes that approach to the next plane on I Am a Cloud, an intersection of Gustafson’s tone poems and top-tier improvisation. “Formations” is an exquisite instrumental, a soul-jazz dream of horns and bells, bejeweled drones and broken rhythms. Remembering the birthday night he spent alone on an Irish cliff as the Summer solstice neared several years ago, Gustafson narrates “A Bridge” as if he’s peering into his own mind with wonder and surprise. The finale, “Even Here, Even Now,” is a spiral galaxy, with the songs of crickets, the hums of a Shruti box, and the touch of percussion lifting Gustafson’s mantric statement of purpose—to keep moving, to keep singing, no matter what may come. It is a wondrous piece of devotional music that seems to praise sound itself—the gift that can open us up, when we’re no longer sure that can even happen anymore. “Sometimes it’s hard to be anyone anywhere it seems,” Gustafson, his voice as understanding as empathy, sings to start the second verse of “Hard Times, Sore Eyes,” the farewell for Body of Light. That may read like a bummer, a concise and crippling encapsulation of our struggles to make meaning that’s as right as rain. But, really, it’s a permission slip to elide expectation, to try something different. Maybe in the past, Gustafson was seen as the singer-songwriter in a folk-rock band called The Dead Tongues. But when he started to let that go, he found something fascinating, new, and absorbing. Body of Light and I Am A Cloud are brilliant chapters written after Gustafson wondered if he’d closed the book, and they are, in turn, hard to put down.

Minecraft - Volume Alpha is the work of German composer and musician Daniel Rosenfeld. Using C418 as his moniker, Rosenfeld crafted the sweeping soundtrack and vibrant sound design which helped breathe life into Minecraft's voxel-based universe. Fans and critics were universally enamored with his beatless, nuanced electronic pieces upon release. Popular gaming site Kotaku named it among The Best Game Music of 2011, calling the music "remarkably soothing," and The Guardian has compared Rosenfeld's delicate piano and sparse ambient motifs to legendary artists Erik Satie and Brian Eno. In an interview feature with C418, Polygon distilled Volume Alpha to its essence: "It's not bound by the retro aesthetic of Minecraft's graphics. It transcends them. The album is an attempt to uplift the combined game/music experience into the sublime."

At first, Gia Margaret called her new album ‘Romantic Piano’ to be a bit cheeky. Its spare, gentle piano works share more spirit with Erik Satie, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou and the ‘Marginalia’ releases of Masakatsu Takagi than they do with, say, a cozy and candlelit date night. But in that cheekiness lies hidden intention: across the gorgeous set, “Romantic” is suggested in a more classic sense, what the Germans call waldeinsamkeit. Its compositions conjure the sublime themes of the Romantic poets: solitude in nature; nature’s ability to heal and to teach; a sense of contented melancholy. "I wanted to make music that was useful,” says Margaret, vastly understating the power of the record. ‘Romantic Piano’ is curious, calming, patient and incredibly moving — but it doesn’t overstay its welcome for more than a second. Margaret’s debut, ‘There’s Always Glimmer,’ was a lyrical wonder, but when an illness on tour left her unable to sing, she made her ambient album ‘Mia Gargaret’ (another cheeky title!) which revealed a keen intuition for arrangement and composition not fully shown on ‘There’s Always Glimmer’s lyrical songs. ‘Romantic Piano’, too, is almost totally without words. “Writing instrumental music, in general, is a much more joyful process than I find in lyrical songwriting,” she says. “The process ultimately effects my songwriting.” And while Margaret has more songwriterly material on the way, ‘Romantic Piano’ solidifies her as a compositional force. Originally pursuing a degree in composition, Margaret dropped out of music school halfway through. “I really didn’t want to play in an orchestra,” she said of her decision, “I really just wanted to write movie scores. Then, I started to focus more and more on being a songwriter. ‘Romantic Piano’ scratched an old itch.” ‘Romantic Piano’ does indeed touch on a rare feeling in art often only reserved for the cinema — a simultaneous wide-lens awe of existence and the post-language intimate inner monologue of being marooned in these skulls of ours. How very Romantic!

The top ambient captivating listeners in Japan! Prepare for a euphoric ambient masterpiece, cocooned in the comforting embrace of nostalgic guitar layers.

The first vinyl release by Japanese ambient musician Haruhisa Tanaka, who holds the record for the highest number of monthly listeners in the ambient genre on Spotify in Japan and was selected as one of the Best of Ambient X 2023. This euphoric ambient piece features a warm, nostalgic sound created with guitar melodies, environmental sounds, analog tape loops, and old technology.
This ambitious project was crafted entirely in Japan, from dub cutting to pressing. The sleeve, inspired by ink painting, marks the debut release from the up-and-coming art label "teinei," dedicated to producing records that double as art pieces for display.

Lionmilk, the primary solo project of Los Angeles musician/composer/producer, Moki Kawaguchi, for some time now, operates in an explicitly therapeutic mode. 2021’s I Hope You Are Well was originally self-released during the onset of the pandemic as a limited run of home-dubbed cassettes, which Kawaguchi hand-delivered to loved ones’ mailboxes in a sort of guerrilla care campaign—a modest attempt to mitigate the sudden, profound alienation that prevailed during those early lockdown months. When Lionmilk and Leaving Records later collaborated on an official release for I Hope You Are Well, this once humble project’s impact grew exponentially, with countless fans (old and new alike) granted access to the warmth and beauty of Lionmilk’s inner circle. Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222, out March 17, 2023 on Leaving, presents the listener with yet another opportunity for deep cosmic healing. When discussing Lionmilk, Kawaguchi regularly foregrounds the absolute necessity of music-making as a form of self-care. First and foremost, he produces sounds and songs that provide him with some modicum of solace — “music to feel less whack to.” One gets the sense that he’d be doing exactly what he’s doing (exactly the way he’s doing it) even if he was the last man on earth. But he isn’t. And, in fact, one of Lionmilk’s primary concerns—evident across track titles, as well as the sung and spoken words that dot his releases—is community, or more specifically, what it means to exist and act in his community. Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222 ventures deeper into the paradoxes explored to great effect on I Hope You Are Well. How might we transmit our solitudes via music and to what extent? What does a shared solitude sound and feel like? And, in the context of this transaction, what novel relationships arise between the recording artist and the listener? The record begins with a radio transmission from the depths of Lionmilk’s celestial innerspace— “Hello. Is anybody out there? This is Lionmilk speaking, and you are tuned into the Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222. Standby. We are commencing broadcast” — a retro sci-fi movie motif that recurs throughout Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222’s 26 tracks. But space travel here functions more-so as a metaphor for deep soul work, for journeying inward, through the vast unknowns of one’s own consciousness. What follows is an intimate, diaristic song suite, grounded in the struggle to keep our hearts alive and open amidst an onslaught of daily indignities. Tracks like “daily i dream,” “lover’s theme,” and “hopeful i can change,” function as brief, instrumental meditations on those moments when hope suddenly, inexplicably eclipses despair. The soulful standout “treat yourself like a friend” contains perhaps the lyrical apotheosis of Lionmilk’s current iteration: “...I get up / to pee and drink water / treating myself a little bit softer / you do your best / today will be better / I’ll do my best / I’ll do my best / I promise.” Composed of loops, sketches, improvizations, and voice memos recorded directly to a single cassette tape, Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222 flutters, warbles, and lilts along seamlessly — an hour-long, lo-fi and jazzy paean to compassion, while clearly indebted to the ambient idiom, nevertheless constitutes some of the most politically engaged and energizing music yet from Lionmilk.

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.

“A sultry haze of shimmering ambient electronics and sparkling, effects-heavy guitar. Just what the ambient doctor ordered." - Electronic Sound

"Consumed in its entirety Late Spring is a soothing breeze, teleporting you directly to a grassy field in the sunshine – as transfixing as any record released thus far in 2021." - The Vinyl Factory

"The record sounds exactly like what you would expect with a name like Late Spring; it is a meditative, hypnotic look at the human condition and its emotional spectrum, as it attempts to grasp undefinable." - Far Out Magazine

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Japanese musician Chihei Hatakeyama is set to release his new album ‘Late Spring’ on 9th April 2021. An album of a humble nature, ‘Late Spring’ gently unfolds as a shared journeying experience through a series of rich and outstanding encounters.

An extract from the liner notes by Nick Luscombe:

"For an artist who typically works quickly, Hatakeyama considers Late Spring to be one of the more time-intensive records of his career – he started working on it in 2018, and completed it towards the end of 2020. For Late Spring, Hatakeyama re-examined his approach to musical performance, using a new amplifier and microphone set-up to playback and record his guitar and synthesisers. From the cathedral organ-like opener Breaking Dawn with its sub-aqua resonances, to the subtle drift of the closing track Twilight Sea, this record is a masterpiece of dense and beatific melodies. Drawn from evolving synthesised sounds and shimmering slow motion guitars, it combines these with occasional sonic elements that are best described as evoking computer code running through the veins of the machines like artificial blood."

Chihei Hatakeyama is a sound artist, mastering engineer, and record label founder who was born in 1978 and lives in Tokyo. He has performed for years under his given name and also as one half of the electroacoustic duo Opitope alongside Tomoyoshi Date. From his first full-length album ‘Minima Moralia’ (“Excellent” 8.1 Pitchfork) in 2006, through the subsequent 70+ albums that followed, Hatakeyama has created a mighty canon of work. His catalogue is spread across a number of highly-regarded labels, including Kranky, Room40 and his own White Paddy Mountain imprint. His release rate is unquestionably impressive, but what is even more striking is the continual high quality of each alluring album.

A more conceptual Mallsoft work that combines a unique mellowness with a psychedelic, surreal atmosphere, digital psychedelia, and nostalgic sentimentality to create a bittersweet, mysterious worldview.

This album is a collaboration between two slushwave legends.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver is Justin Vernon returning to former haunts with a new spirit. The reprises are there – solitude, quietude, hope and desperation compressed – but always a rhythm arises, a pulse vivified by gratitude and grace notes. The winter, the legend, has faded to just that, and this is the new momentary present. The icicles have dropped, rising up again as grass.