MUSIC

Los Angeles artist Eddie Ruscha aka Secret Circuit hooks up with Downtown minimalist Peter Zummo for 'Thinking A View'. The duo take listeners to uncharted meridians of the mind through imaginary zones, realized via synthesizers, keyboards, drum machines, vibes, tapes, and clarinet from Ruscha. Meanwhile, Zummo helps paint these psychedelic Fourth World ambient zones utilizing various wind instruments; trombone, cornet, euphonium, and tuba which takes things into a kinda spiritual jazz realm. He also plays conch shell, plastic funnel horn, didgeridoo, and more. Most certainly recommended for fans of Jon Hassell.

Languoria is a collaboration between Denmark’s Sofie Birch and Poland’s Antonina Nowacka. While Birch describes herself as an ambient musician, Nowacka’s primary instrument is her own voice; they share in common a facility for creating complex, layered work. Birch and Nowacka were first brought together by Unsound to perform at Ephemera Festival in Warsaw as part of a durational overnight performance. Entirely improvised, the music already felt coherent, with Nowacka’s voice weaving effortlessly through Birch’s ambient soundscapes and field recordings, indicating an immediate, deep connection, a meeting of kindred spirits. The artists were reunited at Unsound Kraków to perform a morning show at a 19th-century synagogue. Here, the music took clearer shape, and the audience glimpsed the birth of works that would eventually take the form of individual tracks on Languoria. This past winter, the two artists met in Copenhagen to record the album, completing 11 compositions that feel sacred, almost devotional in character. Fusing the melodicism and gentleness of Birch’s sound practice and the abstract, spiritual vocalisations of Nowacka, the album alludes to the wonders of the natural world while also turning its gaze inwards. “When working together, every small decision was very important, and that’s why such simple compositions can hold so much complexity and depth,” Sofie Birch says of their time in Copenhagen together. Contemplative, meditative and awe-inspiring in equal measure, Languoria is a breathtaking collaborative debut. Together, these artists have uncovered a new dimension of their respective practices, creating music that is difficult to categorise, otherworldly, yet strangely comforting.

Both versions were recorded around 2014: “Fourth of July (April Base Version)” was recorded in Eau Claire, WI at Justin Vernon’s April Base studio, and “Fourth of July (DUMBO Version)” was recorded in Sufjan’s old studio in Brooklyn, NY. The original version of “Fourth of July” appeared on Sufjan’s 2015 album, Carrie & Lowell. As is (and was) his custom, Sufjan would often rework different versions of his songs while recording an album, and “Fourth of July” was no exception. (Other versions & remixes of the song were released on “The Greatest Gift” mixtape and on the “Exploding Whale” 7” single.) These two latest versions were recently found on old harddrives. The refrain of the song, “We’re all gonna die,” invokes a meditation on human mortality and fragility, even as it acts as an anchor of stoic hope. Its solemnity invites listeners to feel comfort, connection — even joy — wrought from great pain and loss. The song has recently had a resurgence with listeners — which may speak to a deep national grief and sense of loss. A limited run physical 7" in red will be released in December 2022, which marks the 10-year anniversary of Carrie’s death.

Yara Asmar is a 25 year old multi-instrumentalist, video artist and puppeteer currently living in Beirut with her cat, Mushroom. Hive Mind are thrilled to be working with her and to bring you this wonderful debut album of music she recorded at home on cassettes and a mobile phone over the past few years. On it you'll hear her play a range of instruments including the piano, her grandmother's old accordion which she found in the attic of her grandparent's home in Lebanon, the metallophone, synth, and various deconstructed and disassembled toy pianos and music boxes. You'll also hear her field-recordings of hymns sung in churches around Lebanon which Yara has turned into waltzes. These beautifully melodic works contain recognisable elements of classical music wrapped in layers of tape hiss, synth wash, reverb and delay and disturbed by the metallic percussive sounds of the dissembled music boxes. The atmosphere of melancholy that pervades the album should be familiar to anyone living in the 21st Century.

You’ll Never Get To Heaven (Alice Hansen and Chuck Blazevic aka Slow Attack Ensemble) returns with their fourth release Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train, a collection of ethereal songs that move through the mercurial weather patterns of minimalism and dream pop. The duo named this album after the closing track on Phil Yost’s 1967 release Bent City, inspired by its prescient use of delay processing in elevating spare beatless arrangements into haunting arrays of sonic afterimages — an approach Hansen and Blazevic explore on this outing in their own way, with a few favoured instruments and a Chorus Echo and Revox in hand. The result is a collection of sparse, lightly dub-infused songs and instrumentals, equally icy and wistful, characterized by melodic fretless basslines, spaced-out harmonics, watery piano and marimba, hushed vocals, and tape echo treatments. Stylistically, it’s almost as if the duo was imagining what an early This Mortal Coil demo might have sounded like had Ivo enlisted in lieu of the usual cast, with a pared back L’Empire Des Sons as the session band, and June Hardin or a young Julee Cruise on lead vocals. The album evokes an overcast autumnal evening of cloud-watching, an inner journey witness to an expansive spectrum of moods, from nimbus clouds to shimmering sun showers. RIYL: Broadcast, Weekend’s ‘81 Demos, Chantal Weber, Orquesta de las Nubes, Hydroplane, The Moon and the Melodies, Eberhard Weber.

Discrepant introduces a new series of albums based on the concept of "aquapelago", with gooey compositions from Andrew Pekler, Sugai Ken, Mike Cooper, Yannick Dauby and others. What is it about water that makes it so inspiring for experimental musicians? Discrepant's new series of albums promises to expand on a concept that imagines a deep underwater world. So it makes perfect sense that Japanese composer Sugai Ken - who impressed with 2020's slippery "Tone River" - should start things off with the unsettling 'Boundary', a spoken word piece in English and Japanese leading into Andrew Pekler's predictably balmy 'Shima No Yume', that sounds like being underwater and marooned on a desert island simultaneously. Brussels-based Mexican sound artist Vica Pacheco takes a different approach, splicing together environmental recordings and juxtaposing them with half-speed, haunted brass that sounds as if it's been recorded in an empty swimming pool. Mike Cooper swerves any obvious signals completely, preferring to create a secluded paradise on 'Lamma Island' with gusty field recordings and beachy guitar harmonics. Italian duo Babau bolt together one of our favorite tracks, using idiophones to create a shimmering backdrop that harmonizes with Visible Cloaks' cult "Fairlights, Mallets And Bamboo" mixes.

"The Japanese avant-garde pop band strove to create a “sacred ambiance” on their second album, fusing unconventional arrangements with bouncing volleyballs and an eyes-wide air of wonder." “It’s rare that art-pop matches its extravagance with such alluring modesty. In doing so, Paradise of Replica feels like encountering cinematic spectacles in miniature.” —Joshua Minsoo Kim (Pitchfork, September 30, 2022)

Hydroplane reinstate their formidable 1997 debut of sublime guitar atmospherics, fragile lyricism and droning incidentals with an overdue vinyl and digital reissue. An offshoot of the now-féted The Cat’s Miaow, the trio formed after their drummer decamped to London, charting new territory with tape loops, manipulated samples and a borrowed Jupiter 4 in the wake of Endtroducing. Adopting a handle that Dean Wareham once considered calling Luna, Hydroplane intended to only ever release Excerpts From Forthcoming LP, a single-sided 7” sonic collage, before imploding in mystery. Their label however insisted they deliver their taunted album. From the comfort of a Brunswick flat, they continued to record soaring melodies and restrained song structures to 4-track, sculpting dramatic Radiophonic Workshop cues weighted in reverb and near-perfect dream pop lead by Kerrie Bolton’s empyrean vocals. Bored of industry expectation and largely ignored by local audiences, the reluctant performers followed the way of The Cannanes and formed meaningful overseas alliances by mail and phone, securing releases on Michigan outpost Drive-In and Broadcast launching pad Wurlitzer Jukebox. Championed by John Peel with twenty spins on his converted Radio One slot and even polling in the Festive Fifty of 1997, the humble three-piece still walked to their neighbourhood shops undetected. Previously only available as a US-issued CD, this reminiscent late-night suite establishes Hydroplane as an everlasting ember in Australia’s beloved indie nexus.

“Even my subconscious is self-conscious,” Okay Kaya sings on “Inside Of A Plum”, giving us a sense of the mental state she entered while making SAP, an album she wrote, performed, engineered, and produced alone, sometimes spending weeks at a time without social interaction. This is a concept album about consciousness in which Okay Kaya focuses her trademark combination of abstraction and wit on what happens to her mind unaccompanied, on her tendency to feel less like a human and more like the sticky secretion of a tree. After releasing her Spellemann Award winning album Watch This Liquid Pour Itself in January of 2020, Kaya left her home in New York and moved to Europe to create and show her various interdisciplinary exhibitions. Among others, she made an installation that amplified music made underwater and an interactive sculpture based on Jungian sandplay therapy for children. Between her exhibits, Kaya recorded through lockdowns by herself in the loaned studios of generous friends. SAP first grew from the first single “Spinal Tap” about Kaya wandering in Berlin, tree-touching. “Sap reminds me of the bodily functions I need to remember to do, like sleep. One might say it ‘resinates.’” The album was further inspired by Ketamine Therapy which is discussed in “The Inside Of A Plum.” Kaya explains, “The doctor said this treatment grows literal physical branches in your brain.” As she experimented with ego death, the subject of her song “Jazzercise”, Kaya found herself writing in the voices of fictional characters she’d encountered in other people’s stories. In ‘Jolene From Her Own Perspective,’ she imagines Dolly Parton’s nemesis responding to her song. In ‘Origin Story,’ Kaya writes as a mythical goddess frustrated with her creation myth. In ‘I’ve Spent Forever Planning A Crisis,’ Kaya responds to Cassavetes’ film A Woman Under The Influence writing from the perspective of the story’s children. Okay Kaya’s investigations of mind-body come along with sexy dance beats, unpredictable interlocking synths, delicate soft guitars, and close-to-the-mike R&B whispering. But Kaya likes her falsettos cracking and her soul-inspired hooks careening wildly, a beautiful chaos that somehow fits together. When she returned to New York, Kaya was excited to collaborate again, to get friends to “bless the record.” She invited friends to Gaia Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to sing or play an instrument. Most songs on the album unfold with guest performances from artists as varied as deem spencer, Taja Cheek of L’Rain and Adam Green of The Moldy Peaches. Just as the recording process began with isolation and ended with friends, SAP starts with the internal and leads outside to romance, to lovers who serve as funhouse mirrors, reflecting Kaya back to herself from different angles. In “Pearl Gurl” Kaya harmonizes with her multi-tracked second self and sings her uncertain conclusion: “If love is not the answer, it’s one hell of a question.”

Fine debut album from blue-eyed soul crooner Seán Being, a softly smudged suite of gauzy, subtly autotuned vocal harmonies a la How To Dress Well, Olan Monk or groggy aspects of pigbaby, wreathed with folksy strings and fractured grooves Seán’s succinct bouquet of seven songs, ‘Faux Window’ is a real one for the daydreamers. Its septet of carefully frayed paeans float by in a gentle haze from the ambient spritz of ‘Fake (Window)’ thru introspective thinking-about-thinking liens of thought recalling a lo-fi Laura Groves in ‘On’, to dialled-down R&B in ‘Everything’, whilst ‘Wasting’ shimmers with a knackered folksy lustre akin to pigbaby, and ‘Otherwise’ continues that drafting smudge to more Americana themed strums. The harmonised glossolalia of ’F.T.O.’ calls to mind Elaine Howley via How To Dress Well to these ears, and ‘This Is What I Want’ keens off into hazy middle distance ambient-pop style with shades of more eaze & claire rousay’s pop works.

Human Pitch is proud to welcome Seoul-based duo Salamanda to the label for the release of their third LP ashbalkum - a portal into unseen worlds, enchanting stasis, & laughter in the face of our evolving realities. Across an effervescent 39 minute runtime, ashbalkum provides a spellbinding view into how we interact with the world around us - one where one’s own being, language, & nature itself are all rendered infinitely mutable.

Written during the surrealist landscape of summer 2021 somewhere between a sweet dream & a beautiful nightmare, ashbalkum accesses a playful tranquility that mirrors our tumultuous present - distantly intimate, static & constantly changing, moving while standing still, all the while narrowly evading the pressures of our pre-apocalyptic world looming just overhead. Through their collaborative energy steeped in joy, friendship, & experimentation, Salamanda transports us towards even further surreality - taking their sound to wholly new frontiers  while aiming to just have fun creating together & living presently.

ashbalkum’s namesake stems from symbolic & phonetic reinterpretation - specifically, a Korean phrase for the realization that what you’ve been experiencing as “reality” is actually a dream. The transmutation of this humorous existentialism into new meaning forms the core of ashbalkum - blissfully maneuvering through life, basking in irreverent states of lucidity, & attuning all frequencies to fellow dreamers within the dream.

Do dreams always reflect what we think? Is what we feel within dreams real?

Ultimately, Salamanda don’t seek to answer these questions, so much as revel in the delightful liminality of it all.

“Black Against An Orange Line” is an optimistic meditation. “At times these days I think of the way the sun would seton the farmland around our small house in the autumn. A view of the horizon, the whole entire circle of it,if you turned, the sun setting behind you, the sky in frontbecoming pink and soft, then slightly blue again, as thoughit could not stop going on in its beauty, then the land closestto the setting sun would get dark, almost black against the orangeline of horizon, but if you turn around, the land is stillavailable to the eye with such softness, the few trees, the quiet fields of cover crops already turned, and the sky lingering, lingering, then finally dark”

NEW one from 1/2 of acclaimed duo BLACKWATER... more sooon.. (Mint / New - limited version with screen print) Debut solo album from The Dengie Hundred, one half of London’s Blackwater whose slo-motion synth-pop LP ‘Navigation’ was acclaimed by cult record shops Monorail, All Night Flight and World of Echo, which included it in its review of the best releases of 2021. Named after a clifftop cabin overlooking Whitsand Bay in Cornwall’s ‘forgotten corner’, ‘Brackenbank’ charts the first weeks of a new relationship between long-distance lovers in London and the South West. Desiring vocals move like the tide toward and away from drones and dub-soaked drum machines that recall heart beats, train tracks, the clinks of boat rigs and clunks of ferry chains. Composed of sounds recorded in an unfamiliar landscape of sea and rock and sky, ‘Brackenbank’s’ electronic sonic atmosphere was processed on the lines of the Great Western Railway as The Dengie Hundred travelled back and forth: looking forward; longing after. Kingsand, Cawsand, Eddystone, Firestone – the album’s grid references are both geographical and emotional, offering love songs and instrumentals as pulsing trances from places that can be traced with a finger across the map of The Rame, Cornwall’s ‘most unsung’ peninsula. Brackenbank was mastered by Carim Clasmann, mastered and cut for vinyl by Stefan Betke (aka Pole).

Returning from a self-imposed musical hiatus, Silvia Kastel materialises on YOUTH with a long-incubated follow-up to her 2017 'Air Lows’ album for Blackest Ever Black. It’s an oddly rendered trio of soundscapes somewhere in the vicinity of Madalyn Merkey, Lucy Duncombe or Maja SK Ratkje - beatless - and far from straightforward. Inspired by Toshiya Sukegawa’s Bioçic Music series, which Kastel describes as both calming and eerie, ‘Mantide’ manifests a mix of raw directness and conceptual subtext. Featuring loud birdsong recorded outside her Berlin apartment, Kastel foregrounds her subjects against strafing choral motifs in a way that refuses to inhabit new age environmentalism. It’s all genuinely unsettling - on paper it reads like a calming listen, but instead plays into something much more angsty, and hard to define. On 'Spoons' Kastel takes pointers from electronic music pioneer Carl Stone (who is supposedly working on his own version of the track for future release), as well as "Îles Resonantes", a short documentary about Éliane Radigue. It’s a slowly keening smear of quizzical chords and ribboning tendrils that wrap up into what she intends to “sound and feel like a long goodbye hug…surging and overdriven at times, quiet and soft at others… “ Xantharmony closes the EP on its weirdest flex, constructed entirely out of layered and processed vocal elements. It recalls Lucy Duncombe’s clipped theatric melodrama and Maja Ratkje’s more guttural vocal acrobatics, but follows its own hackle-raising logic, acting more like a cue, or trigger, for sudden and overwhelming feelings of unease. And in our book - that’s high endorsement for continued, closer listening.

Kelz’s debut ‘5am and I Can’t Sleep’ delivers us a frothy dream-pop introduction to the mind of Vietnamese-American producer and multi-instrumentalist Kelly Truong. Written and recorded in the middle of the night in her Orange County, California home, these songs tell a nostalgic yet hopeful story following loss. For kelz, carefully looping beats, tinkering with synthetic waveforms, and interweaving guitar picking serves as a meditation--a mode of processing emotions and the inevitable passing of time. Front and center are her airy vocals, recorded in a whisper so as to not wake people in the other room. Each song folds in on itself like a wave’s undertow, reorienting infectious melodies from tracks previous. When asked about the tracks, kelz reflects on the process as “feeling like running towards something” but not knowing what it is. Escape with kelz on a long night drive with this effervescent electro-pop debut.

For the past 10 years, it has been a sacred place that has expanded the horizon of the underground scene in Copenhagen, Denmark, to the world, and defines one of the current experimental lifelines represented by and . A new catalog of the sacred place , which depicts the shoegaze sound of a new era that is a prestigious and prestigious spectacle of the beauty of nonexistent things, is in stock at once! !! 2022 by CTM, an experimental pop project that is also known as Posh's work with Croatian Amor, Varg² ™, Frederik Valentin & Loke Rahbek, and is a major authority in the Danish music world. The latest album "Babygirl" of the year is released in analog form. Produced by Holger Hartvig, Malthe Fischer and Cæcilie Trier. An ambitious work by gorgeous people such as Ydegirl, Coco O., Johan S. Wieth (Iceage), ML Buch, Jakob Littauer (Yangze), Emil Elg, Claus Haxholm, who were in charge of vocals and instruments. Containing years of recording and composition fragments, this work is positioned as a musical platform that incorporates many voice expressions, relationships and time. An ethereal and avant-garde daydreaming electronic music piece that floats melancholic between light and dark shadows! Mastering specifications by Malthe Fischer.

Beyond The Willow Tree is a hauntingly beautiful anthology of folk songs chronicling the experience of a young black man growing up in the segregated south. A balanced mix of covers and originals, Cleveland Francis’ body of work seamlessly blends deep, soulful vocals with the stripped down acoustic instrumentation of folk. In the late 60’s Francis coined the term “soulfolk”, playing his genre bending music across college campuses and coffee shops while earning a medical degree at William & Mary. These songs serve as a missing link between soul and folk music, suppressed by the harsh political landscape of a music industry heavily influenced by racial stereotypes. “If you were black, you played blues or soul music … I wanted to play folk music,” Cleveland professed. Included in this double LP set is Cleveland Francis’ entire 1970 self released album Follow Me, featuring the original artwork and liner notes printed inside the gatefold. The second LP takes you Beyond The Willow Tree with unreleased demos recorded in 1968 along with one 45 only single recorded in 1970. “These recordings are a look into my soul through a long and lonely journey to understand feelings of my childhood, poverty, racial segregation, bigotry, war, love and hope. It represents my attempt to express and come to terms with all that I have seen and felt as a Black man growing up in America.” – Cleveland Francis

TIZIANO POPOLI - Sull’accordo mimetico
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SV30 / 1st time on LP Limited edition. Side A: 1. Sull’accordo mimetico - Parte 1 (28:00) Side B: 1. Sull’accordo mimetico - Parte 2 (28:00) Total time: 57 minutes Tiziano Popoli: Yamaha Dx7 synth, Korg MS1O-MS50 synth, Akai S900 sampler, tapes, FX.

 Recorded at home on Teac A 3440 4 tracks tape recorder, mixed on Revox 2 tracks. Sull’Accordo Mimetico (On the Mimetic Chord) dates back to the end of the 80’s. It was commissioned by the artistic director of the ParcoScenico Festival, held in Treviso, Italy. Since the area where artists and the public gathered after the Festival was located to a very busy street, Marco asked me for a sound installation that could work as some sort of a defensive barrier for the street noise. I suggested that my work, rather than hiding the noise, should aim to harmonize the disturbances coming from the street within musical structures and forms, without burdening or saturating too much the acoustic spectrum of the place. In this way, I thought about sonic veils, consisting of repetitive – but also light and discreet – harmonic-rhythmic structures. Since the Festival took place in a beautiful centenary park, I also integrated the music with natural sounds and animal calls, always as an attempt to bridge these sound events and the other materials that made up the composition. The human voice constitutes a central element in this musique d'ameublement project, as a constant source of memory of places and times – here with many references to traditional music for children. A pearl of ambient electroacoustic minimalism with field recordings components in which the nostalgia of Maestro Tiziano Popoli shines through in painting landscapes that slowly change to be seen with the ears. Nocturnal, emblematic, Lynchian.

Ethereal, sensual, subtle. Maria de Fátima is that new favourite singer you think you just discovered, but had actually always been there. This Brazilian muse from Tijuca (Rio de Janeiro) has worked and recorded with artists such as Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, Arthur Verocai, Airto Moreira & Flora Purim, Chico Buarque and Lincoln Olivetti amongst many others. We're immensely proud to bring you a deluxe reissue of her only solo album Bahia com H. Recorded in 1981 in Uruguay where Maria had settled with her then husband and synthesizer wizard Hugo Fattoruso (OPA), who also takes on production duties. The album combines Maria's own compositions with her unique takes on some Brazilian classics by Ary Barroso, Denis Brean and Gilberto Gil amongst others, compositions which gain a new significance with Maria's ethereal interpretation and the blended elements of Candombe, in part provided by the all-star line-up of Uruguayan musicians recruited for the recording. First reissue on vinyl format, preserving the original artwork in its gatefold sleeve, with sound sourced from the original analogue tapes, and with a 12-page booklet with photos from Maria's private archive and liner notes by the mighty producer, journalist, Grammy voting member and living jazz encyclopedia Arnaldo DeSouteiro.

Two sheets to the wind, Perishable, not tinned, Two hands the better, Wet weather and feather. Wilson Tanner come to shore with a new album of floating melodies, lightly salted. Throwing electroacoustic conventions overboard, Andrew Wilson (Andras) and John Tanner (Eleventeen Eston) recorded this new work aboard a 1950s riverboat with a resourceful array of weatherproof electronic instruments and a long extension lead. These eight compositions pull in a by-catch of maritime folklore; of Siren and Selkie, Seagull and engine oil slick. A change of course from their debut album 69 (Growing Bin Records, 2016), the ambient temperature drops as II casts out to sea in uncertain weather and returns to the safe harbours of Port Phillip Bay. The seafarers head out to My Gull’s poised optimism. The birds watch but do they listen? By the arrival of Loch and Key, the shoreline has dissolved completely, the boat floating in serene infinity as the rest of the world spins. Conditions soon take a treacherous turn on Killcord Pts I-III - a 12 minute odyssey that battens down the hatches as these sailors eye merciless waves and blinding ocean spray, jointly channelling Berlin-school electronics and sea legs. In the aftermath, the waterlogged bleeps of Idle survey the damage as our parched crew sound the distress signal and ultimately descend into delirium. Known for navigating individual courses as solo musicians, Wilson and Tanner’s collective storytelling is saturated in detail, buoying between tension and harmony. II modestly stands as some of both artists’ most accomplished material.

Portals is an album of minimal electric piano improvisations by UK-based multi-instrumentalist & composer Robert Stillman. Inspired by American ‘new-age’ luminaries like Laraaji, Iasos, and Stephen Halpern, Stillman’s layers of playful, meditative electric piano figures, saturated by warm tape hiss & psychedelic delay effects, are occasionally accompanied by “found sound” field recordings, creating a compelling yet calming listening experience. Portals was recorded at home in Broadstairs, Kent during the winter of 2016-2017 & originally released on cassette in December 2017 by Orindal Records. Three subsequent represses followed, & Portals became the most repressed cassette release in Orindal’s 11 year history. This new vinyl edition, co-released by UK label KIT Records, is remastered by Matt Barnhart & includes bonus track “Portal 8 (The Stranger).” Here’s Robert Stillman’s original statement on the original cassette release of Portals: Portals is an album of multi-tracked improvisations on Fender Rhodes electric piano. The music’s repetitive structure is intended to encourage a state of ‘no-mind’ in the listener, acting as a gateway out of thoughts and into the present moment. Headphones are recommended for the ideal listening experience.

There’s a lived-in quality to the sound of Racine’s Amitiés. Named after the French word for friendship, the Montréal-based Quebecois artist follows an extended time spent indoors to contemplate what it means to be isolated and in one’s own body, while also staying connected. The album is a follow-up of sorts to Quelque chose tombe (“Something Falls”), released in February 2020 and a kind of accidental prophecy for the crisis that was to come. Amitiés disintegrates before your very eyes. Opening with a roughshod iPhone recording of Racine playing his parent’s harmonium, the creaky acoustics of "Mon amour je ne guéris jamais" slowly degrade into digital simulations of dreadful organic beauty. That track and the rest of the LP gives the feeling of an abandoned building; a sense of frayed, earthiness dusted with the wisdom of time. And yet, it’s almost entirely made from simulations. Clipped Native Instruments violin patches punctuate the churning atmospherics of “Arête coincée dans une amygdale”. The lonely gongs and bells of “Grosso” resonate in a gust of synthesised ambient. Vocal plugins and the very occasional YouTube samples of a recorded voice are sped-up, glitched, pitched and scrambled into indecipherability. These vocal apparitions rise and fall into the sonic ether like individual ghosts of human contact. They’re bold and expressive, deeply melancholy and yet full of the potential for joy and an awareness of life’s beauty. It’s in this dearth of social interaction—the heady psychosis of too much solitude—that Amitiés’s tone and mood lies. A score for the numb dissociation from internal chaos and alienation, the album’s sense of acute distress is assuaged only by the small network of collaborators and influences it draws from. Long-time friend and peer Justin Leduc-Frenette (aka Keru Not Ever) contributes drum programming to “Mon amour je ne guéris jamais”. A last-minute reworking of the untitled “Sans titre” by German duo Arigto matches the weight and timbre of Racine’s sooty post-classical soundscapes. Ultimately, Amitiés is a very human response to an inhuman environment. It’s an intimate homage to friends and the mysterious effects of distance, while somehow finding healing in hardship.

"Applying elements of minimalism or electronic music to their compositions, Carcascara's second studio album is deeply rooted in folk, blues or jazz. Borrowing from American primitivism, this acoustic guitar trio based half way between London and Zumaia, stretch the boundaries of tradition with a fluid and developed command of the string instrument. Coming out 14 years after their self-titled debut, highly recommended for fans of Robbie Basho, Steve Reich or John Fahey."

Limited white vinyl reissue with Japanese obi!

The limited white edition of Radiohead's ninth studio album "A Moon Shaped Pool", released in 2016, has been miraculously re-pressed!
The album, including the popular songs "Burn The Witch" and "Daydreaming," deconstructs Radiohead's sound structure, which continues to mature and deepen, and turns a new page with minimalism, contemporary music, and African rhythms.
The release of "True Love Waits," a song that has been long awaited by fans, has finally been completed and made available as a soundtrack, and has been a big hit.
This is your last chance to own a rare limited edition copy of this 2010s art-rock milestone that has been named one of the best of the year and nominated for a Grammy at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards!