MUSIC

Out of print. The first vocal album released in 1999 from .

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

In 1987, RAFAEL TORAL began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless—almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, Drag City is reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal’s AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour’s listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, “AE 1” was recorded, and for this edition, “AER 7 E” was rerecorded and the material for “AE 2” was recorded for the first time ever—all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere.

In 1987, RAFAEL TORAL began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless—almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, Drag City is reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal’s AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour’s listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, “AE 1” was recorded, and for this edition, “AER 7 E” was rerecorded and the material for “AE 2” was recorded for the first time ever—all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere.

A sequel to last year's sublime 'Spectral Evolution', 'Traveling Light' is a suite of weightless, uncannily beautiful jazz standards, transformed into orchestral drones and electronic chirps by Toral and his virtual band. It's flawless material that draws a clear line from Billie Holiday through Clara Rockmore, Fripp & Eno and Alvin Lucier to MBV and Gastr del Sol and beyond. Unmissable gear, from one of the scene's unassailable legends. Culture never emerges from a vacuum. It accumulates and evolves, building on what occurred before and gleaning influence from what happened nearby; the more cultural threads converge, the more complex, nuanced and developed the resulting braids become. Toral acknowledged this fact quite brazenly on last year's 'Spectral Evolution', bringing over a decade of impenetrable off-world experimentation to a halt and shoving his bare hands into the creative soil that inspired iconic tomes like 1995's 'Loveless'-inspired masterpiece 'Wave Field' and the meditative Éliane Radigue-cum-Rhys Chatham 'Violence of Discovery And Calm of Acceptance'. Taking a dip in the pool of concepts that eddy underneath rock music's labyrinth of caverns, he referenced Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, turning vintage progressions into idiosyncratic contemporary gestures. And on 'Traveling Light' that basic theme is expanded again; here, Toral takes six recognizable early 20th century standards and applies a very similar treatment, augmenting them with additional "canonical jazz sounds" from clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, flügelhorn player Yaw Tembe and flautist Clara Saleiro. Playing guitar and bass with his self-built ensemble of electronic devices (that includes a modified theremin), Toral lets his influences float even closer to the surface here, picking out familiar jazz and exotica flourishes, early electronic echoes and organ-esque polyphonic sustained tones that stretch across hundreds of years of musical history. On opener 'Easy Living', a Ralph Rainger composition from 1937 that's been recorded by Billie Holiday, Bill Evans and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others, the original chord sequence is slackened by Toral's sustained guitar tones and sine waves, but not blurred completely into impressions. This time around we're treated to more tangible shapes: Toral's cheeky, expertly rendered riffs, horizontal exotica-inspired rhythmelodic chimes, intimate woodwind breaths that pull us back to the '30s and squealing pitches that can't help but remind us of Clara Rockmore's Robert Moog-produced milestone 'The Art of the Theremin'. It feels like being chucked in the American cultural petri dish while new organisms mutate around you - everything's recognisable somehow but novel, peculiar. Lovingly valve saturated strums, bent by Toral's whammy, introduce 'Body and Soul' (a 1930 standard that's best known for being recorded by Frank Sinatra) before they're met by alien chirps from his arsenal of generators. But it's the willowy harmonies that buoy this one, echoing the haunted choral drones that prop up centuries of European sacred music. Toral's very specific with his references; when Amado's tenor moans whisper around the dense polyphonic hums, there's a tacit acknowledgement of the enduring influence of African American spirituals and gospel on folk, blues, jazz, country, rock 'n roll and R&B. The album's most affecting segment comes at the conclusion though, with 'My Funny Valentine' and 'God Bless the Child', easily two of the most conspicuous compositions of the era. On both, Toral hovers between clarity and abstraction, overlaying bone-dry fingerpicked improvisations on the former that scrape over Chicago's musical timeline, from "hot jazz" to post-rock, and finishing the album with Fennesz-like distortions that crack and dissolve into Saleiro's levitational flute tones. It's astonishing stuff, honestly - maybe not as immediately startling as 'Spectral Evolution', but refined, polished and concentrated in every way. You're unlikely to find a more moving set this year, that's for sure.

Wave Field, released in 1995, was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O'Rourke, who issued the disc in the US on dexter's cigar) as a synthesis of disparate elements — a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Eno blend together. Here, the clangorous potential of the guitar was emphasized, giving a metallic edge to the two extended pieces and "radio edit" coda. The jacket paid subtle tribute to My Bloody Valentine, which, along with the radio edit, suggested a harmony between musical directions as wildly disparate as minimalist experimental and rock. Today, such a paradoxical intent is more widely considered as a part of the artist's purview.

Riding the rails down to the past and back to the future, Eiko considers the unknown lives that her own family has lived, set to expansive pop travelogues evoking the work of pioneers like Joni and Scott Walker, while pushing further, always further....

Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin share a fascination with rhythm and the myriad of ways it can subdivide within the beat. Using aspects of jazz, world and experimental musics, each tune settles into a deep groove, digging itself via continuous minimal adjustments into an ever-deeper, eternal groove.

Quickly following on from last year's 'Ghosted II', the third Reichian kraut-jazz session from Oren Ambarchi and his long-time collaborators loosens the screws a little, inviting in Americana, dream pop and blues influences and zeroing in on the tiny details.

Ambarchi, bassist Johan Berthling and percussionist Andreas Werliin are familiar with each other at this stage to fully let rip. 'Ghosted III' is their third recorded set in four years, and although they're still led by the jazz-taught instincts that guided their subtle, minimalist-inspired folk-jazz-rock debut, they've unclenched their muscles and let rip this time around. There's a new-found, liberating slackness to opener (and lead single) 'Yek', where Ambarchi daubs his chiming guitar notes over Werliin's jerky rhythms and Berthling's unraveled bassline. Catching the desert dust at first, it hardens into a Tangerine Dream-cum-Philip Glass nu-new age shimmer before it comes to a close. And 'Do' pulls back the bluster even further, reducing Weliin's drums to a faint patter, and filling the gaps with Ambarchi's cosmic pad-like guitars. After the 'TNT'-era Tortoise in dub Leslie-powered euphoria of 'Seh', the trio get back into the groove with 'Chahar', pulling Ambarchi's fictile notes into an orbit of ratcheting drums and repeating bass plucks that concludes with a splatter of xenharmonic guitar tones.

They venture into Americana territory on the long, plodding 'Panj', padding the low end with Ambarchi's swirling organ-esque tones that transform into concertina-ing zaps, and the best is saved for last - 'Shesh' is a dream-pop/post-rock melter that's among the best tracks Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin have recorded, falling somewhere between Labradford and Talk Talk. Gorgeous.

Nearly twenty-five years after disbanding, Gastr del Sol have unpacked their archive, stringing together an alternative view to their genre-melting 1993-1998 run. This assembly of previously uncollected studio recordings and beautifully captured unreleased live performances forms a spacious ode to the flux that was their métier; a further set of reinventions that continue to alter the manner in which we hear music, and literally everything else!

Nearly twenty-five years after disbanding, Gastr del Sol have unpacked their archive, stringing together an alternative view to their genre-melting 1993-1998 run. This assembly of previously uncollected studio recordings and beautifully captured unreleased live performances forms a spacious ode to the flux that was their métier; a further set of reinventions that continue to alter the manner in which we hear music, and literally everything else!

O'Rourke does Ishibashi! This Imitiation is her western bow, plus also a progressive sci-fi pop album featuring the best playing on any albums released in Japan in 2012. New music, no matter in what year you hear it!

Gastr Del Sol emerged from the remains of Bastro in 1992 with the brooding, mostly drumless album, ‘The Serpentine Similar’. This represented an unlikely evolution from the fury of Bastro, but evolution was only getting started - and ‘unlikely’ was one of the ongoing principles in Gastr Del Sol’s approach. Before the sessions for the second album, Bundy Brown left the group and David Grubbs asked Jim O’Rourke to come play. 1994’s ‘Crookt, Crackt Or Fly’ tangled the clean lines of the original band in the writing, playing and editing of the music. This was all very fascinating, but it wasn’t until the five songs of ‘Mirror Repair’ that the compelling space of Gastr Del Sol could be fully perceived. ‘Mirror Repair’ was rife with guitar interplay, but Gastr coloured the palette with piano, drums and a sudden and rattling variety of woodwinds, all evoking the obsessive pull of a deep-seeded conviction, an insistent image that one cannot forget in a dense atmosphere with riffs patterning over each other and fading into landscape. The quieting of Gastr Del Sol had been dialling down since the start; here the silences were as essential a part of the sound as the sound was. In a fast five song mini album, length and depth were impossibly extended as part of the many moods of Gastr Del Sol. Albert Oehlen’s cover art provided a perfect counterpart to the sounds within, providing also a shout out to The Red Krayola, where David and Albert met during their mutual involvement with Mayo Thompson. The best in this vein was yet to come - but with ‘Mirror Repair’, Gastr had made something definitive. Now, the bold sounds of nearly twenty years ago are back in the groove, freshly cut for 21st ears to hear. You need ‘Mirror Repair’.

"Nuno Canavarro's Plux Quba hails from three decades in the past, yet the simple profile of its abstract/ambient/cutup collage makes it a record that sits quite comfortably in our IDM-informed future. In 1988, Plux Quba was a primal dark horse in the world of pants-forward electronic music -- an obscurity issued with little explanation from the laid-back west coast of Europe: Portugal, of all places! -- though the casual listener could hardly know that from an examination of the LP jacket. The vanguard of electronics in late-80s Europe was being pushed by organizations like Nurse With Wound, The Hafler Trio, HNAS -- and yet, when Christoph Heemann came across this recording, it struck his ears and the ears of fellow listeners like nothing before. Plux Quba was handed around between the principles of the early '90s A-Musik scene: Jan St. Werner, C-Schulz, Frank Dommert, Georg Odijk, plus interested fellow travelers like Jim O'Rourke, to the intense curiosity of all. To ears that were already saturated with all things kraut, the dark corners of prog and the frontline of experimental and improvised music, it proved elusive. Not simply in how it sounded and how that sound was achieved, but in where it was coming from -- like later Robert Ashley at times; certain stretches of melody recalled some of Eno's ambient pieces -- but mostly, it was a completely alien soundscape! And who was it? Was the band called Plux Quba? The record? The label? These sorts of mysteries are at the heart of records that require close listening and re-listening. As it was absorbed, it grew to be an influence on the Köln sound -- Mouse On Mars, Lithops, and Heemann's many and varied projects -- as well as O'Rourke, Fennesz and many others. Music and sound of this nature have for many years been made available by bands like Autechre, labels like Mille Plateaux -- but for the first ten years of its existence, Plux Quba was rarely heard. O'Rourke reissued it as the first record on his Moikai label in 1998, and it had a good run through around 2005 before the last of the print parts were filled. It's been almost a decade since Plux Quba was available, which is way too long considering that we live in an era where it is necessary to have an LP of this on hand for your contemporary listening distractions. And so, Drag City has stepped in to reissue the Moikai reissue of Nuno Canavarro's classic Plux Quba."

A shining star in Mika Vainio’s dense microcosm returns to vinyl - and for our money it’s the most transcendent record in his revered catalogue, unfurling through an hour of disarmingly melodic romance and astral projection that never fails to bring a tear to our eye. First presented on CD in 2005 under Vainio’s Ø alias, ‘Kantamoinen’ became something of a sleeper gem, cultishly adored for its concerted embrace of extended melody and narrative tone within an ambient context, which made it stand out from his preceding decade of ascetic noise brutalism and minimal techno. Our first encounter, back at our Pelicanneck shop, left us utterly smitten with its soundtrack-like qualities, eventually prompting us to issue it on vinyl for the first time via our Editions label in 2016. Sadly, Mika passed the following year, which only made the material more precious as a lone, curious artefact in his deeply influential body of work. It now returns in this new edition, ready to flip preconceptions with a new generation of listeners through its exquisite carousel of tear-jerking soundscpaes where the artist’s most intimate, distinctive spirits endure. Dedicated to Mika’s grandma, Laina Vainio (1913-1991), and adorned with a cover image of her garden in Artjärvi, Finland, the 16-part 2LP is the closest you’ll get to a type of nostalgia in Mika’s catalogue. Whilst recorded 1999-2004 at an early crest of his game-changing work with Pan Sonic, the album clearly manifests a quieter space for Mika to emote far more nuanced feels, from the wide-eyed vastness of ‘Galaxy’ to a breathtaking ‘Sound Picture’, transitioning from Hans-Ulrich Obrist’s snippet of Oskar Sala into icy bliss, and the rosy warmth of a ‘Summerland’ clearly dedicated to his nan’s garden. The rest is better defined as ephemeral snapshots adding up to a broader picture, like a mind’s eye filling gaps in the memory from illusive vapours and sensations, generating all-time gems in the steepled choral synth voice of ‘In Wind’, or a sense of magic realism in the swaying organ of ‘Antenna-ant’, with the blooz folk wheeze of closer ‘To Home’ that could feasibly score the most haunting moments of a Bela Tarr flick.

Brazil’s premiere guess-again specialists Lugar Alto have been threatening to unleash this one for a while and here it finally is; compiled by the goat GG Albuquerque and mixed by label enigma Akira Umeda, “My Life is a Movie and In It I Am the Villain” is a compendium of signature DJ drops and idents used in soundsystems from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo going back to the 1980's and right up to the present day - a genuinely synapse-popping madness that maps the constant evolution of the most vibrant and forward-facing soundsystem cultures of our time... If you've spent any time with Brazilian funk, you'll know the sonorous intros - always larger-than-life, tongue-in-cheek, fluoro-flavoured - almost as important as the songs themselves. You don't have to understand Portuguese to get the message, either; the cacophony of pitch-wonked vocal stims, familiar samples, pop culture references and cheapo effects is borderless in its appeal, a core component of contemporary funk that's just as important as the syncopated tamborzão beat itself. We've copped tracks that are entirely reliant on the "carimbos" (literally "stamps") and "vinhetas" (intros) so we were hoping someone would put together something like this. And Lugar Alto - the Brazilian imprint responsible for releasing those essential DJ Ramon Successo LPs and that shocking Djalma Corrêa anthology - have taken the most impressive approach imaginable, tasking fount of all knowledge and journalist GG Albuquerque (last seen putting together that sick MÉDIO GRAVE tape for Nyege Nyege Tapes) with compiling something from a genuine street's-eye perspective. The mix tells a non-linear, multi-dimensional story of Brazilian sound system culture, using DJ drops, stage calls, adverts, cheeky samples and explosive intros made between the 1980s and 2025. It takes us from the point where local sounds collided with funk, freestyle, electro and Miami bass in the wake of 'Planet Rock’ to the moment the scene eventually evolved into the splintered landscape of bruxaria, ritmado, brega and other sounds that we can interface with today via TikTok and Insta. It's a dense, fittingly psychedelic and suitably impertinent mosaic of references, in-jokes and mind-tickling sonics that's seemingly without beginning or end, a time-fluxing braindump of laugh tracks and aborted rhythmic snaps that's best compared to being airlifted into a Rio street party after being shot with medical-grade ketamine. Within a matter of seconds we get John Williams' 'Star Wars' intro followed by a Portuguese Darth Vader voice and a barrage of buzzing "tuin" effects - and it just gets madder and more frenetic from there. A sort of heatsick parallel narrative to decades of British pirate radio culture, 'Minha Vida...' Is an incredible artefact of a movement that defies easy categorisation, a multi-coloured collage of sounds, humour and idiosyncratic energy that's driven the sound since the very beginning. You can take the boom-cha-cha boom-cha-cha beat, but you can't even begin to mimic the sheer gusto.

Space Afrika follow last year's heartbreaking x perception-bending mixtape "hybtwibt?" with an anxious patchwork of drill bass, reflective musique concrete and after-hours surrealism >> singular deep headspace exploration to file alongside Mark Leckey, Perila, Burial or Klein. Assembled to accompany a short film from Manchester-born visual artist, poet and filmmaker Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh, Joshua Inyang and Joshua Tarelle’s newest is a cinematic audit of identity and ancestry. In the film, Sanoh works hard to visually illustrate an honest and vulnerable picture of her soul. Inyang and Tarelle respond by doing the same with sound, collaging disparate elements together in a way that should be familiar to anyone who heard "hybtwibt?" or their jawdropping RA mix from earlier this year. Warped field recordings, overdriven rhythmic pressure, syrupy pads and disorienting vocals are cut and pasted over each other, generating a living, breathing study of the duo's Northern working class Black British reality. Unlike the duo's acclaimed "Somewhere Decent To Live" full-length, elements mutate and transform: mushy noise bends into street sounds, haunted vocals into echoing drill melancholia and muffled howls into shattered digital remnants. The main event is the full 10-minute soundtrack, that's layered with Sanoh's disorienting and deeply personal poetry and echoes Mark Leckey's recent "In This Lingering Twilight Sparkle". Then the EP is bumped up with three sketches from the same sessions, two of which never made it to the final mixdown. 'Version 3' is a particular highlight, pasting heartbreaking piano and blowtorched vocal loops over winding drill bass > sounds like Burial remixing Unknown T into pure syrup.

Noise titan Anthony Di Franco (Ramleh, JFK) returns to his perennially influential and long dormant AX project for the first time since 1997's 'Astronomy', pitching into pure, beat-less feedback/amp-worship on a crushing and expansive new album of manacled, atonal guitar + synth + FX slowly edged into oblivion. Big boned, highly recommended listening FFO Kevin Drumm, Stephen O’Malley, Kevin Richard Martin, Mika Vainio, E.A.R. Di Franco was just 21 when he started the AX project in 1993. He'd been a member of Matthew Bower's influential noise rock band Skullflower since he was 16 and was their full-time bassist by that point, playing on classic sides like 'IIIrd Gatekeeper' and 'Obsidian Shaking Codex' before being tapped by Gary Mundy to join Ramleh. The idea for AX was to create music without drums that was just as heavy as the extreme noise and sludgy rock that surrounded Di Franco at the time. And so, using a cheap 4-track, an arsenal of guitars and a few synths and effects to strip out the rhythm and focus solely on the weight of the sound, the project produced three albums - 'AX II', 'Nova Feedback' and 'Astronomy' - records that have remained cult touchstones for dedicated drone fanatics ever since. One year since the mighty, psyched-out return of Ramleh with ‘Hyper Vigilance’, Di Franco appears clearly gassed on a new energy in ‘Vulcanalia’, wherein he revives the alias with the benefit of lessons learned since that last album three decades ago. For the duration, he touches scorched grass in his most elemental guise, sustaining combustible harmonic overtones and biting-point distortion thickened with re-thought production techniques, from mic placements to amp sorcery and FX, factored by obsessive, extramusical cues from Roman mythology and religion. The results live up to his intention - to plunge users in the midst of the lushest tempest - in order to overwhelm himself and us. Nothing exceeds quite like excess, and this one delivers in glacial spades. Numbed drones grow in shivering intensity to a vision-blurring electromagnetic stormfield on ‘Elagebal’, culminating in a keeling, blackened wave that never breaks, whereas ‘Jupiter Best and Greatest’ allows for more harmonic colour in the sustained density of his synths and axe, rising and dashing souls on distant noumenal, isolationist shores. ‘Aedes Saturnus’ evokes a necessary lull in the storm, dialling everything down to a sort of still water depth and dread that builds from below, boiling waters that turn to caustic treacle one the 12 minute titular closing, set to immure the senses in a style of doom wrangling that hears the influence of his Ramleh and Skullflower works which also fed into E.A.R., SoMa, and Kevin Richard Martin, returning home to roost.

'Persistent Repetition Of Phrases' success comes from the attention it pays to the function of 'the loop', not only as a narrative ordering system in modern music, but as a means by which the brain itself recalls and interprets information; it's as old as recorded sound itself, but in this context the repetition of small shards of auditory information becomes an elegy to fading memory and the worn-out synapses of old age. The track titles offer signposts through Kirby's labyrinth of faulty remembrances, pointing their way towards the peculiarities dictating the manner by which the mind stores and attempts to recover information.

アルバムについて Kassel Jaeger (aka François J. Bonnet) returns to Shelter Press after Swamps / Things, Shifted in Dreams, and the recent reissue of the classic Zauberberg, co-composed with Akira Rabelais and Stephan Mathieu. With this major new album, entitled Sub Re, Bonnet continues his long exploration of the musical possibilities of sound, extending the concrete approach developed at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, the historic and essential Parisian studio that Bonnet has been directing since 2018. Sub re, in Latin, can mean “under the thing, under the substance, under the matter.” It's precisely this direct approach to music, drawing on the extraction of raw sound material, that forms the basis of this album. Under the matter thus signals the concrete aspect of music, but not the concrete that is transfigured, becoming vapor and form, the substrate of an idea. Rather, it signals the concrete beneath the concrete, in the immanence of sounds, in their becoming, as a driving force, like a tide, like a vault of imperious and powerful matter. To achieve this, Bonnet draws on a multitude of sound sources (acoustic, electronic, natural or artificial, created on purpose or found by chance) and a multitude of contexts and occasions to give them form. The movement, a shell, a bell, a spell, for example, was heard for the first time during a concert organized in Venice in connection with Latifa Echakhch's contribution to the Swiss Pavilion at the 2022 Art Biennale, while the last movement on the record, signalmirror, concluded a piece presented at the first Sound Biennale in Sion (Switzerland) in 2023. These elements, formed and detached from their original context of appearance, of the places and people who made them possible and listened to them, contribute to a complex layering of climates and sonic worlds and help create a contrasting album, where density and tenuity coexist in a succession of moving waves, sometimes laden with memories, sometimes filled with regrets, always set in motion by their own morphology. Sub Re also refers to a chapter in Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, a key passage in which the main character, faced with a colossal task, finds himself alone in the middle of the sea, beneath a gigantic shipwreck caught in the jaws of an isolated reef, surrounded by water, currents, and winds, alone to face the impossible. It is indeed beneath the surface that actions arise, decisions are made, and intuition guides us.

アルバムについて Kassel Jaeger (aka François J. Bonnet) returns to Shelter Press after Swamps / Things, Shifted in Dreams, and the recent reissue of the classic Zauberberg, co-composed with Akira Rabelais and Stephan Mathieu. With this major new album, entitled Sub Re, Bonnet continues his long exploration of the musical possibilities of sound, extending the concrete approach developed at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, the historic and essential Parisian studio that Bonnet has been directing since 2018. Sub re, in Latin, can mean “under the thing, under the substance, under the matter.” It's precisely this direct approach to music, drawing on the extraction of raw sound material, that forms the basis of this album. Under the matter thus signals the concrete aspect of music, but not the concrete that is transfigured, becoming vapor and form, the substrate of an idea. Rather, it signals the concrete beneath the concrete, in the immanence of sounds, in their becoming, as a driving force, like a tide, like a vault of imperious and powerful matter. To achieve this, Bonnet draws on a multitude of sound sources (acoustic, electronic, natural or artificial, created on purpose or found by chance) and a multitude of contexts and occasions to give them form. The movement, a shell, a bell, a spell, for example, was heard for the first time during a concert organized in Venice in connection with Latifa Echakhch's contribution to the Swiss Pavilion at the 2022 Art Biennale, while the last movement on the record, signalmirror, concluded a piece presented at the first Sound Biennale in Sion (Switzerland) in 2023. These elements, formed and detached from their original context of appearance, of the places and people who made them possible and listened to them, contribute to a complex layering of climates and sonic worlds and help create a contrasting album, where density and tenuity coexist in a succession of moving waves, sometimes laden with memories, sometimes filled with regrets, always set in motion by their own morphology. Sub Re also refers to a chapter in Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, a key passage in which the main character, faced with a colossal task, finds himself alone in the middle of the sea, beneath a gigantic shipwreck caught in the jaws of an isolated reef, surrounded by water, currents, and winds, alone to face the impossible. It is indeed beneath the surface that actions arise, decisions are made, and intuition guides us.

Keigo Tatsumi, also known as the bassist of Never Young Beach, a central figure in the Japanese indie rock scene, has released his first solo work, "AT US," on cassette. This original soundtrack was produced after he was in charge of the music for photographer Tomohiro Takeshita's photo exhibition "Across the United States." Drummer/percussionist Kazuhiko Masumura, known as a former member of "Mori wa Ikiteiru," participated as a percussionist. Takuro Okada, also of "Mori wa Ikiteiru," was in charge of mixing/mastering, making this a work with perfect backup!

It all started in 2018 when experimental musician Raquel Bell released a solo record and was invited by Mike Watt to be interviewed on his radio show - The Watt From Pedro Show. Raquel and Jared Marshall (Primary Mystical Experience) just happened to be in Los Angeles at the time. It was the early days of Galecstasy on the road, and they were somewhat living out of the tour van. Raquel and Jared played experimental music and free jazz together after both of them had played in bands and as solo musicians for many years. Raquel asked Mike Watt if they could do his radio show in person at his house, worried that they might not find a good internet connection while bopping from place to place in the tour van. Watt said yes! Galecstasy then drove out to Watt’s hometown of San Pedro, home of the largest port in North America and the birthplace of The Minutemen.

All three musicians sat on Watt’s carpeted living room floor surrounded by incredible records and mementos of music history. Before the live interview began, Watt reached over and held up D. Boon’s guitar and handed it to Raquel. Tears filled her eyes as she strummed, feeling the presence of one of her musical heroes. The Minutemen had influenced most every musician that came across their sound and had immortalized their lead singer, D. Boon as well as their now legendary bassist, Mike Watt. It was in this context that the three of them, Bell, Marshall, and Watt, got to know each other on-air.

Soon after this, in early 2019, Watt brought his Secondmen Trio to play Galecstasy’s music residency at The Grand Star Jazz Club in historic Chinatown, Los Angeles. It was an appropriate second meeting place as the plaza at Sun Mun Way had been the scene of some of the first punk and jazz music in Los Angeles many years before. After the show the three of them agreed to get together again and make a record some day.

They set the date for April 2020 for Watt to travel to Galecstasy’s recording studio in Joshua Tree, California. Nobody knew at the time that the pandemic was coming! Naturally everyone was quite disappointed that the recording had to be rescheduled. But it simply meant that when it did happen it was going to be truly special.

The day finally came In June 2022 and Watt and Galecstasy went into the studio. Primary Mystical Experience had spent time in preparation deciding on which microphones to use, where to place the mics and amps, which compressors, everything was perfectly set in anticipation of the recording session. Raquel Bell had been concocting which synthesizer sounds she wanted for the leads, making detailed notes and settings. The idea was to play completely free - no direction - no bandleader - no songs - nothing decided in advance - just to play in one room together for the first time and see what each musician would bring to the sound. The result of this experimental session is what you hear on “Wattzotica”. Very late that same night the three of them listened back to what they had recorded and a celebration under the desert night sky ensued.

The next morning Raquel awoke and discovered a young rattle snake in a perfect coil taking a nap a few feet away from Watt in the doorway. In that moment she knew that the record was going to be a success. They performed live as a trio for the first time out in the desert at the old Firehouse Outpost later that night.

The music from the recording session was then cut into tracks and mixed by drummer/producer Primary Mystical Experience. Once the record was finally ready it was mastered by Grammy-nominated Joe Lambert Mastering in New York City.

Hiding Places is a collaborative album from Brooklyn-based rapper billy woods and Los Angeles beat scene veteran Kenny Segal, set for release by Backwoodz Studioz on March 29, 2019. On its face, it seems an unlikely pairing; woods—who moonlights as ½ of dissonant rap duo Armand Hammer—is a chaotic force, the warped relic of an NY indie-rap wave that never happened. Meanwhile, Segal has been in L.A. for twenty years; from paying dues with Project Blowed to pushing the culture forward with Busdriver and Milo. All the while, his soulful, dreamlike production precariously tethered to earth by the right drums or rumbling bass. But look closer and it makes more sense. After all, Segal lent his production to a couple of songs on Paraffin, Armand Hammer’s critically-acclaimed opus, and the two veterans have more than a few shared collaborators: Open Mike Eagle, ELUCID, and Hemlock Ernst amongst them. Hiding Places finds both artists deep in the labyrinth. Segal’s lush soundscapes have a new edge, woods’ writing is, paradoxically, at its most direct. Hiding Places is a child’s game: funny and cruel, as brutal as a fairy tale. The album features contributions from both artists’ well of collaborators with ELUCID, Self-Jupiter, and MOTHERMARY making appearances.