MUSIC

The latest cassette release from Tokyo‑based electronic musician and painter Akhira Sano. Evoking the stillness of late‑night hours and the lingering echoes of memory, it’s a work whose delicate details reveal themselves more and more with each listen.

"Moondog's jovial H'art Songs was the first release not to incorporate his name in the title, but the record that forever proved his genius. A rare vocal album recorded by Moondog when he was in his sixties, these ten art songs blur the boundaries between classical and pop music. Moondog called this series of art songs 'H'art songs' -- Hardin's art songs. The musical content is on a higher level than most popular music, but has an appeal to a wide range of tastes, from the pop to the classical listener. This collection of piano pop songs written and recorded in 1977 made Moondogs' stunningly eclectic discography even more chaotic musically, it also featured some of his most mesmerizing wordplay. Telling tales that can be interpreted as metaphors for how to live -- sometimes political, sometimes autobiographical, sometimes nature loving - they are always intriguingly poetic, and helped push this album to the very top of all Moondog's releases."

A leading figure in the current ambient/experimental scene, Portland-based Patricia Wolf delivers her second release on Balmat with a soundtrack for a documentary set in Iceland. Centered around the UDO Super 6 synthesizer, and incorporating guitar, mallet percussion, and field recordings, it carefully maps the intersections of landscape and memory. Avoiding overtly dramatic swells, its sustained layers shift subtly, allowing traces of childhood recollections and Nordic folklore to emerge with quiet beauty. A work where Wolf’s meticulous sound design and lyrical sensibility converge, standing as a defining statement in her career.

Ambre Ciel is a composer and singer who hails from Montreal, Canada and is a purveyor of dreamy, expansive, spacious music that draws influence from contemporary classical influenced artists, as well as the impressionist world and American minimalists.

Ambre who sings in both English and her native French, hails from a family of singers and artists, “I started my journey learning violin at six and began experimenting with pedal effects and looping melodies later on”. University followed with a focus on composition and recording. “That’s when I started exploring composing and songwriting more deeply—both the world of sounds in itself and songs built mostly with layers of violin and voice. It was also during this time that I returned to my ‘first’ instrument, the piano, which opened more harmonic possibilities.”

Her debut album still, there is the sea, represents a beginning, a first and imperfect attempt to create this other world that was living in her mind. She has crafted a beautifully refined album making a lot of space for strings arrangements and other acoustic instruments, as well as her own beautiful voice.

An antidote for chaotic times, this collection of ambient pieces gathers the masters of the genre for a journey designed for calm, clarity and consciousness. All corners of the New Age genre are explored here with a spoken word intro from Jaroslav Kovaracek, host of long running ambient radio program “Dreamtime” that aired in Australia from the early 80s into the mid 90s.

Chihei Hatakeyama: electric guitar and sound effects

Shun Ishiwaka: drums and percussion, piano on ‘M6’

Cecilia Bignall: Cello on ‘M3’

Composed by Chihei Hatakeyama and Shun Ishiwaka

‘M3’ composed by Chihei Hatakeyama, Shun Ishiwaka and Cecilia Bignall

Recorded in sessions spanning eighteen months, Magnificent Little Dudes Vol.1 is full of obscure beats and samples, ethereal droning synth lines, and drumming that lifts and drive the record into new territory. The duo are also joined by Japanese guest vocal performer Hatis Noit (Erased Tapes) in the penultimate track “M4”, which his released today as the first single.

“M4” perfectly exemplifies the album’s atmospheric and subtly intricate makeup, combining

mellifluous guitar lines with memory-evoking, slaloming electronics, while Ishiwaka’s drums ruminate in the background of the track and Noit’s otherworldly vocals add an element of wistful drama.

Speaking on the recording process, Hatakeyama says “No overdubbing was done. I like the 70's style of recording and wanted to give it an old-time jazz feel.” Speaking about his influences when writing the album, he goes on to say “It may not sound like much, but it's free jazz, spiritual jazz. I love Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra. Conceptually, we didn’t prepare anything in advance, but chose to take inspiration from the place, the studio, the venue, the weather, the temperature of the day, and so on – the album is full of short improvisations. I love Les Rallizes Dénudés, Keiji Haino, and My Bloody Valentine as well, so that's where a lot the guitar-based influence comes from”

Sweeping ambient from Colorado's Matthew Sage.

"Tender / Wading finds Matthew Sage, aka M. Sage, in the foothills and pastures of Colorado, writing, recording, and returning to a patch of his homeland and identity, one act of sympathetic care informing the next. Constructed primarily on piano and clarinet, and then embellished with guitar, modular synthesizer, percussion, and field recordings captured around the perimeter of his home, the album is a sweeping, serene vision of vitality, radical softness, and the reassuring sense of coming home, even if home has changed. Since the early 2010s, Sage has assembled an idiosyncratic catalog of music that sprawls in various sound directions, manifesting with releases on Geographic North, Orange Milk, and Moon Glyph, and garnering both critical attention and a loyal listenership present for each new turn. In 2023, Sage debuted on RVNG Intl. with Paradise Crick, which coincided with his ongoing output within the improvisatory ambient jazz quartet, Fuubutsushi, and he now delivers his next solo endeavor and direction. Tender / Wading follows Sage’s return to Colorado after nearly a decade in Chicago, now nurturing a couple acres of neglected space with his young family thirty miles outside his hometown. In a holistic contrast to Crick’s synthetic sound-world, Sage renders art from the act of stewarding new growth, questioning constructs of domestic life, and understanding the footsteps of his former self through the dirt-smeared, sweat-fogged lens of the present. The yield is his most autobiographical material to date, marked by time and changes in perception and meaningful details from Sage’s psychic search."

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."

“It’s time. Africa, it’s time. It’s time that Africa changes. It’s time our leaders change. Everything that happens in Africa is extraordinary. We have everything: water, earth, sun, fields of oil, gas. We have all this in Africa, but Africa is still poor. It’s time we change our way of thinking. It’s time for Africans to take their destiny into their own hands. If not, others will take it.” This is the message instrumental guitarist Tidiane Thiam hopes to convey with his new solo album, Africa Yontii, a Pulaar title that translates to “Africa, It's Time.” To a casual listener, Thiam’s bold statement starkly contrasts with his melodic playing. But a closer listen to Thiam’s expressive playing reveals a thoughtful voice that stands out from the crop of contemporary guitarists. “What I should be singing (with words) I’m instead saying with my guitar,” he says. Hailing from the sleepy fishing Senegalese fishing town of Podor, home of the great Baaba Maal, Thiam taught himself guitar by playing along to late-night radio broadcasts of Manding music. He soon developed his style, often reworking Pulaar folk themes into his compositions. On Africa Yontii, Thiam’s third album for Sahel Sounds, he teamed up with hip-hop beat maker Ndiaye Moctar from studio M.N. Records to provide accompaniment, integrating unexpected elements such as field recordings and electronic sounds. In the liner notes for Africa Yontii, Thiam voices his concerns about the lack of opportunities for Africa’s youth and the lonely road that can come with leaving behind loved ones in the hope of a better life. He also sprinkles in a philosophical query about the eroding state of the world alongside two more hopeful, traditional offerings in the form of wedding and river songs. Despite the sometimes heavy subject matter, Thiam’s love for his homeland and heritage shines through. Tidiane Thiam's Africa Yontii reclaims the maligned “world music” genre within a sonic space that has long been dominated by others telling the story. As the title suggests - It’s time!

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.

A shimmering gem of guitar ambient where pastoral warmth meets oneiric drift. The latest album by Manchester-born, London-based ambient duo Celestial arrives via Ecstatic, one of the UK’s most vital labels in the current experimental landscape. Evoking the vast, open landscapes of the American Midwest, the album blends wide-sky scale with the hushed intimacy of listening to grass grow. Threads of Americana gently intertwine with mist-like soundscapes, crafting a dreamstate of drowsiness, nostalgia, solitude, and quiet celebration. A masterwork of ambient guitar work that captures both distance and tenderness in equal measure.

Plant music recordings of a creosote bush near Death Valley, CA.

"Wafting audio incense from the desert wastes of the Eastern Sierra. Music for reading, dreaming and dissociating."
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 208px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=683590967/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://nicogeoris.bandcamp.com/album/plant-music-vol-2-creosote">Plant Music Vol 2 // Creosote by Nico Georis</a></iframe>

Shirley Shirley Shirley is Nico Georis' latest release, an otherworldly document of his experiments in plant music. For several years Nico has been using midi technology to connect a variety of flora to analog synthesizers, letting their biodata create music that is unlike anything I have ever heard. The results are strange and breathtaking. Ultimately it's the closest thing I've found to an organic expression of John Cage's notion of indeterminacy. But unlike Cage's music, Shirley is existentially gorgeous. It stands in the same category as music by Laraaji, Roedelius or Steve Roach. It is available as a download or on limited double vinyl.

- Psychic Arts
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2448452603/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://nicogeoris.bandcamp.com/album/plant-music-vol-1-shirley-shirley-shirley">Plant Music Vol 1 - Shirley Shirley Shirley! by Nico Georis</a></iframe>

Welsh musician Aisha Vaughan presents The Gate. It is upon us to renew the deep-cut, heavy-weighted melancholy of Celtic New Age for 2024. New Age music from the Celtic/British Isles crossed over into the mainstream in the late 80s - notably with Enya (and her band Clannad), the perhaps now lesser-known instrumental Celtic harp music of Patrick Ball, and the slew of now mostly forgotten various artist compilations that saturated the New Age CD and cassette music market in the early 90s.

The Gate earnestly gives reverence to the landscape that she calls home (as cinematically portrayed consistently in Vaughan’s self-shot videos via her social media). Now living in converted barn in mid-Wales, Vaughan writes and records her music to red kites and eagles hunting in the mountains outside her windows. The notably welcomed layers of ASMR sound design and computer music production supplement the main instrument here - her voice - woven within campfire crackle, wind chime, cricket, bird, harp, flute, synthesizer pad & sfx, and new moon wolf howl to channel celestial guides conjured from her remote homeland.

Using composition as catharsis stemming from a traumatic upbringing where music was banned in her childhood household, and the inherent occult history that surrounds the art form, Vaughan does not shy away from precisely stewarding this particular - often still-overlooked - musical tradition through her generation’s ambient lens.
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 373px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2366097953/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://aishavaughan.bandcamp.com/album/the-gate">The Gate by Aisha Vaughan</a></iframe>

*edition of 100 3CS bundles
*full-color printed slip-case housing
tape1: Vol.1 - Shirley, Shirley Shirley! (runtime 73min)
tape2: Vol.2 - Creosote (runtime 30min)
tape3: Vol.3 - The Golden Teachers (runtime 34min)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 340px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2614175823/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://nicogeoris.bandcamp.com/album/plant-music-vol-3-the-golden-teachers">Plant Music Vol.3 - The Golden Teachers by Nico Georis</a></iframe>

In the fall of 2022, celebrated UK chill-out institution Seahawks landed in Los Angeles for the first time in their 15-year history, with plans to record a sweeping new age downtempo “exploration of visionary California.” Instead, they immediately fell ill with flu (Fowler collapsed next to a taco truck; 911 was called), and were bedridden for the better part of a week. Upon recovering, they resituated at the synthesizer sanctuary of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Kranky, Leech), channeling their post-sickness psychedelia into one of the band’s lushest and most elevated creations to date: Time Enough For Love. Inspired by the “groove and mood” of Harry Nilsson demos, as well as its wider 70’s wavelength – Rhodes, Wurlitzer, wood paneling – Seahawks transposed their classic post-rave ambient exotica onto a warm and woozy Golden State palette. Buoyed by the liquid touch of English maestro Kenny Dickenson on keys, the results rank high among the duo’s smoothest and most multi-sensory voyages. “Sail Across The Moon” delivers on its title, a simmering, phaser-smeared cruise through the beauty of the night. “Messengers” echoes the cosmic lounge of Air’s Moon Safari, shuffling, weightless, and ethereal, while “Falling Deep” reaches for the stars, pure cascading bliss, the ecstatic moment writ large. The album skews steadily more astral as it progresses, drifting towards jazzy, galactic outer reaches. “Like A Grain Of Sand” opens with a spoken sample by the celebrated late American poet Rachel Sherwood (“The children watch, breathless / with the birds / They feel an emanation / from this shuddering place”), before taking flight on a Balearic trip through island house, PM Dawn gold dust, upright bass meditation, and kaleidoscopic light. A remix of the title track by Chicago trio Purelink closes the record in a suitably subdued and skittery state of mind. Time Enough For Love radiates color, complexity, and positivity, infused by the “life enhancing” nature of the band's time in Los Angeles – sunsets, sound systems, and sativa, framed by coastlines and cloudbanks, the city’s mystic sprawl glittering beneath purple dusk.

No other solo American guitarist this century has impacted that fecund scene quite like William Tyler. After crucial stints in Silver Jews and Lambchop, this adopted son of Nashville emerged at the dawn of the last decade with a string of inquisitive albums that paired the measure of his country rearing and classical enthusiasm with his ardor for post-modern experimentation, field recordings and static drifts folded beneath exquisite melodies. Tyler dug Chet Atkins and Gavin Bryars, electroacoustic abstraction and endless boogie. His productive little enclave of instrumental music has increasingly followed such catholic tastes, not only ushering new sounds and textures into the form but also critical new voices and perspectives.And on the brilliant, bracing, and inexorably beautiful Time Indefinite, Tyler’s first solo album in five years, he steps at last into the widening gyre he helped create. The guitar serves as a starting point for an album that will make you reconsider not only Tyler but also the possibilities and reach of an entire field. A vortex of noise and harmony, ghosts and dreams, anguish and hope, Time Indefinite is not a great guitar record. It is a stunning record—a masterpiece of our collectively anxious time, really—by a great guitarist.In early 2020, as the world teetered at the edge of unrests still unimagined, Tyler left Los Angeles for Nashville, where he’d lived most of his life after his parents left Mississippi. Most of his gear (and, for what it’s worth, all of his records) stayed in California, awaiting what he presumed would be a rather rapid return. It, of course, wasn’t. So as Tyler dealt with the depression, nerves, and questions of those endlessly tense times, he began recording little ideas and themes with his phone and a cassette deck, resigning himself to the distortion inherent in those devices.Tyler was in early talks to make a record with Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, and some of these bits felt like test cases for what they might do together. As that collaboration crept in other directions (as heard on last year’s staggering “Darkness, Darkness” single, with more to come), Tyler magpied other sounds. He soon asked longtime friend and producer Jake Davis to help stitch them together and perhaps clean up those imperfections. (Eventually, back in Los Angeles, Alex Somers stepped in to provide the finishing touches.) Davis and Tyler opted to go the other way: embrace the hiss and wobble and, in the end, unintentionally make a record that reflected those times and these—uneasy, damaged, honest.From the start, Tyler’s music has pulled from the past, drawing old notions and conventions into the revealing light of now. In November 2020, on a family trip to Jackson, Miss., to clean out his late grandfather’s downtown office, Tyler spotted an old tape machine, still sealed among the flotsam. He took it back to Nashville, back to Davis, and they began using it to create tape loops that conjured the vertiginous feeling of that unknown moment.Time Indefinite begins with a sampled shard from that antique, as harsh as Merzbow processing the sound of a washing machine. It is a lurid, worrying signal flare: I am here, and things are hard, but I am trying. The piece unfurls like a haunted house still inhabited by real, living people, trying to make do when the world around them seems to be saying don’t. Not 10 minutes later, at the start of “Concern,” Tyler slips into a melody as gorgeous as anything he’s ever found, strings and steel rising like the sun beneath his simple folk waltz. It is a hand on a shoulder, a radiant bit of music that answers: I am here, and things are hard, but we are trying.This seesaw of struggle and survival defines these nine songs and 50 minutes, a map of anguish and belief and the trails that link them. “Electric Lake” is an ecstatic drone that summons La Monte Young to this century, but there is pain beneath its glow. “Howling” is an absolute wonder, its gentle guitar lope and choir of echoing horns and keys recalling the glory days of Windham Hill. But the background actually does howl, latent worry simply waiting to roar back to life. It doesn’t during the supple “Anima Hotel,” but you know it won’t be long now, because it never is—on this album as in real life. “This is a mental illness record,” Tyler will tell you without shame, as open in life and speech as he is on tape. “It’s music about losing your mind but not wanting to, about trying to come back.” He doesn’t, however, need to tell you that; you can feel it, probably even recognize it from your own experience.Too, Tyler’s albums have been nests of non-musical references and influences, as he has pivoted between spirituality and philosophy and summoned the landscapes and legends of the greater American imagination. Time Indefinite is no different, especially in the way it conjures the deeply personal films of Ross McElwee. In the mid-’80s, he began to make a movie about Sherman’s march through the South, but it spiraled into a tangled history about family, loss, and what we do when our best instincts surrender to the worst things we can imagine. (The record is a nod to this idea, of time’s relentless push and our place in, beneath, and beside it.) It is no great revelation that the lives we lead shape the work we make, whether or not we intend that to be the case. In these songs, you can hear Tyler, like McElwee, wrestle with incoming demons out loud—addiction, middle age, loneliness, neurosis. All of our struggles are different, but we are united at least in having them. Time Indefinite is the soundtrack that Tyler’s create.“Held,” the ninth and final track, seems to sigh through a grin as it begins, a welcome reprieve from the plangent drone of its predecessor. It is the benediction at the close of all these goddamned chaotic blues. For what it’s worth, that is Tyler in a nutshell, someone will who smile sheepishly and offer a perfectly silly joke even as he tells you the hardest things about himself. But by the end, that grin blooms into a full smile, Tyler beaming through an acoustic waltz that is a perfect bit of unadulterated beauty. Yes, the machines and strings still whirr in the background, a true-to-life reminder of omnipresent menace. Not right now, Tyler seems to be saying. Instead, the message is clear: I am here, and things are hard and wonderful, and I am still here.

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.

Official reissue supervised by the artist Sourced from the original masters A rare and sought-after item among collectors and enthusiasts of early Japanese electronic music Never released on vinyl before Club is a stunning and timeless collection of avant-garde electronica, proto-techno, mecha-ambient, and ear-pleasing experimentations from the master behind Music for Spiral and producer of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Pier & Loft, Motohiko Hamase’s #Notes of Forestry, and Satsuki Shibano's iconic Rendez-Vous Experience the roots of Japanese electronica

Recorded onto a Tascam 388. The following instruments were used: Arp Odyssey, Yamaha CS-01, Korg DW-8000, Hohner Pianet T, Roland TR 606, Roland SH 101, Bamboo Alto Saxophone, Clarinet, Electric Guitar, and Electric Bass.

Welsh musician Aisha Vaughan presents The Gate. It is upon us to renew the deep-cut, heavy-weighted melancholy of Celtic New Age for 2024. New Age music from the Celtic/British Isles crossed over into the mainstream in the late 80s - notably with Enya (and her band Clannad), the perhaps now lesser-known instrumental Celtic harp music of Patrick Ball, and the slew of now mostly forgotten various artist compilations that saturated the New Age CD and cassette music market in the early 90s.

The Gate earnestly gives reverence to the landscape that she calls home (as cinematically portrayed consistently in Vaughan’s self-shot videos via her social media). Now living in converted barn in mid-Wales, Vaughan writes and records her music to red kites and eagles hunting in the mountains outside her windows. The notably welcomed layers of ASMR sound design and computer music production supplement the main instrument here - her voice - woven within campfire crackle, wind chime, cricket, bird, harp, flute, synthesizer pad & sfx, and new moon wolf howl to channel celestial guides conjured from her remote homeland.

Using composition as catharsis stemming from a traumatic upbringing where music was banned in her childhood household, and the inherent occult history that surrounds the art form, Vaughan does not shy away from precisely stewarding this particular - often still-overlooked - musical tradition through her generation’s ambient lens.
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 373px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2366097953/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://aishavaughan.bandcamp.com/album/the-gate">The Gate by Aisha Vaughan</a></iframe>

いざ、第4の扉へ。自国のソウル、ゴスペル、ファンクにとどまらず、ニューエイジ・ミュージック始祖ヤソスや日本からは原マスミまで、世界各地のオブスキュアなサウンドを掘り起こしてきた米国の大名門であり、コンピに定評のある〈Numero〉から新物件！ニューエイジ・ミュージック始祖の1人IasosやLaraaji、Joanna Brouk、Don Slepian、Master Wilburn Burchetteといったレジェンドが残した傑作曲を一挙特集した、「Private Issue New Age (PINA)」の世界への、新たな入門盤的コンピレーション・アルバム『Bliss Out For Days』が登場！シアトルの〈Light in the Attic〉が手掛けた自主盤ニューエイジ・コンピ金字塔『I Am The Center』と是非セットで聴きたい内容！静かに漂う弦楽器や、くすんだ録音の、しかし美しいピアノがアンビエンスの宇宙として広がる、極上の逸品！オールドスタイルなチップオンジャケット仕様。32ページのブックレットが付属。

Awesome Tapes From Africa the label began over 10 years ago with the reissue of Nahawa Doumbia’s Vol. 3. The recording kicked off a successful run of classic and new recordings from artists across Africa, being made available for the first time in the international marketplace. ATFA makes it possible for artists to expand their fanbases and revenues streams with legally licensed recordings and a 50/50 profit split. For its 50th release, ATFA presents iconic Malian singer Nahawa Doumbia’s beloved Vol. 2. Released on LP in 1982 and unavailable outside Mali until now, Vol. 2 is an intimate yet powerful document of the early efforts of one of Mali’s most enduring voices. Four decades of worldwide acclaim later, Doumbia is still touring the world blowing minds with her achingly emphatic singing backed by her partner guitarist N’gou Bagayoko. Vol. 2 is stark in its instrumentation—simply featuring voice and acoustic guitar—but massive in its sonic impact. Painstakingly extracted and remastered from LP by longtime ATFA audio engineer collaborator Jessica Thompson, this is the first time this recording has been cleaned-up for wider release. The master recording no longer exists and the original was pressed at relatively inferior quality, heightening the difficulty of presenting Vol. 2 with clarified audio. The historic recording was worth the effort. Doumbia’s voice soars above Bagayoko’s guitar as she lays out her plaintive approach to expressing relevant topics of the day. The room sound could be considered the third instrument as its shape and sonic affect is vibrantly apparent throughout. And the simplicity of this recording only enhances the immediacy of these four songs. As a bookend to both Doumbia’s long career and ATFA’s growing catalog, Vol. 2 is a grand yet unpretentious encapsulation of the energy behind this decade-long collaboration between artist and label.