MUSIC

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!

Jan Steele and Janet Sherbourne gained a reputation for being ambient musicians thanks to their appearance with John Cage on 1976’s Voices And Instruments from Brian Eno’s lofty Obscure series. But in a fascinating catalog spanning more than four decades, these English multi- instrumentalists’ variegated sonic sojourns have proved that label to be far too narrow. In the long-gestating, decades-spanning collection, Distant Saxophones, Steele and Sherbourne flaunt a nuanced vision that encompasses ECM-esque chamber jazz, minimalist modern composition, cinematic soundtracks, and an embryonic, contemplative form of experimental pop. Distant Saxophones—many of whose tracks have been re-recorded and improved from their original incarnations—invites you to lean in and bask in an interiorized zone of revelations. These songs simultaneously freeze time and exist outside of it. Community Library’s anthology is offered in a single LP format with a tracklist more limited than the CD version; the LP’s digital download ticket provides the full music set.

Jan Steele and Janet Sherbourne gained a reputation for being ambient musicians thanks to their appearance with John Cage on 1976’s Voices And Instruments from Brian Eno’s lofty Obscure series. But in a fascinating catalog spanning more than four decades, these English multi- instrumentalists’ variegated sonic sojourns have proved that label to be far too narrow. In the long-gestating, decades-spanning collection, Distant Saxophones, Steele and Sherbourne flaunt a nuanced vision that encompasses ECM-esque chamber jazz, minimalist modern composition, cinematic soundtracks, and an embryonic, contemplative form of experimental pop. Distant Saxophones—many of whose tracks have been re-recorded and improved from their original incarnations—invites you to lean in and bask in an interiorized zone of revelations. These songs simultaneously freeze time and exist outside of it. Community Library’s anthology is offered in a single LP format with a tracklist more limited than the CD version; the LP’s digital download ticket provides the full music set.

Named for a familial forested retreat on Wisconsin’s Shell Lake, Scout Island is the vessel for Jungle Gym audio boss Jared Carrigan’s compact and compelling instrumental guitar vignettes. His latest, Laurentian Voyage, charts a rich trip down river through the North Woods of Minnesota and beyond, a formative landscape of his youth (recently revisited during Covidian isolation). The collection’s 19 tracks flow through twilight psych, sunset jangle, dockside devotionals, and whispering pines soft rock, a gallery of glimpses into scenes and seasons come and gone. Lean guitar figures ripple, riff, refract, and reverberate, framed by filtered drum loops, organ, synth, or bass. The mood softly sways between reverie and reflection but skews more autumnal as it unfolds, a sense of waning warmer days, a paler shade of light, campfires long since lit. Even so, the embers of memory cast their own warmth: faces, cabins, summers, music drifting out across the water. The clarity of fleeting moments, captured in snippets of strings and melody, slicing through choppy waves like the nose of a boat towards distant lightning.

Days and nights, living in the clarity of mind and voice: Radio Hito's pensive compositions get stripped down to the bare elements while still retaining the solemn power of truth. The words of others gain meaning of their own through a contemplatively personal rendition, organized as seven tracks whose simplicity manages to brim with endless poetic possibility. This exclusive live was streamed on the occasion of KRAAK Ullakolla Festival at the legendary Habbo Hotel at the end of December, a couple of days prior to the end of the most iconic internet technology: Adobe Flash Player. Special thanks go to KRAAK & Ullakolla people - Gabriela, Pauwel, Samuli - and Maoupa Mazzochetti.

狂風暴雨，神獸互搏，溫柔的交織 An enchanting "in distance" collaboration between cello noise and percussions, weaving the sound of a harsh and dreamy landscape. 「這張專輯密集地撰寫著高功率的官能性噪音音樂，在藝術家和混音師的努力下抵達『好聽的噪音』的那個境界。」 "This album is a dense collection of high-powered, functional noise music, the artists and the sound engineer have reached that 'euphonious noise' level. " - 空之穴 holeinthesky This is a recording between two friends in Beijing and London during the pandemic, a wonderful long-distance collaboration. After releasing her critically acclaimed debut solo album '卵生 Oviparity' (The Wire's Top 50 of 2020), Sheng Jie 盛潔(a.k.a gogoj) continues to explore her own unconventional path in tandem experimentation with electric cellos and effects, while Shen Jing 沈靜 (a.k.a Shenggy, former drummer of the legendary Beijing punk band 'Hanging on the Box'), who has been in the music scene since the 90s, she started to develop her solo project in the field of industrial music, ambient and analogue synthesizers since 2003, for this record she returns to her role as a drummer, adding also gamelan and various percussion instruments from different parts of the world. A free, chaotic yet tender piece of work is what they deliver. 這是一份疫情期間的創作，分別身處北京和倫敦的兩位好友，心有靈犀完成了這份精彩的遠程合作。在出版了首張個人實體專輯《卵生》並且大獲好評（2020年英國《The Wire》雜誌年底50佳）後，盛潔（a.k.a gogoj）繼續在電子大提琴和效果器的各種串聯調試中探索著自己的非常規演奏道路，而作為90年代就已進入音樂領域的沈靜（a.k.a Shenggy，傳奇朋克樂隊“掛在盒子上”前鼓手），自2003開始就在工業音樂、氛圍、模擬合成器的領域不斷孕育自己的個人計劃，這次她又重拾鼓手的身份，使用鼓、甘美蘭、和其他多種世界不同地區的民間打擊樂器，和盛潔碰撞出了這張自由、狂躁卻又溫柔的作品。

Continuing on from the last album, here's a recommendation. The Tara Clerkin Trio, a Bristol-based unit with Tara Clerkin at the core and various other members, is the latest release from the label division of London's World of Echo record store. Building on the avant-garde musical vision of their previous album, the Tara Clerkin Trio's new album is a slow-burning sublimation of Bristol's signature trip-hop, dub, chamber music, ambient, downtempo, and contemporary jazz into another dimension. This album is an epoch-making fusion of Bristol's outsider pop music and Chicago's experimental jazz.

Andrew Chalk, Ulla Straus, The Caretaker, and NOISE "Tenno" are fused into a daydream ambient picture scroll. Recorded in Melbourne in 2017, the album was re-arranged in Sydney the following year. The devotional silence and disquiet melt together to create another world. A magical drone/ambient classical masterpiece! Cut by Dubplates & Mastering. Limited edition of 300 copies.