MUSIC

The rhythm ensemble "goat," formed by Osaka-based musician Koshiro Hino a.k.a. YPY, has released its third album "Joy In Fear," its first in eight years!
This is the new album by "goat," which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The album is released on Hino's own label, NAKID. Artwork is by Tomoo Gokita, recording by Fumiaki Nishikawa, and mastering by Rashad Becker. Each instrument is constantly pursuing and playing with an irregular groove involving polyrhythms, irregular time signatures, and syncopation. The gongs and flutes (flutes) give the album a new bewitching quality that makes it different from its predecessor. The seven tracks also show a unique approach to minimalism/tribalism.

Tidal Perspectives is an album by Giovanni Di Domenico, Pak Yan Lau, and John Also Bennett. Recorded across a single afternoon in Brussels, Belgium, the album’s four parts are a rippling alchemy of processed Rhodes piano, sizzling ceramics, and liquified bass flute, a rare meeting of three unique voices from the contemporary music landscape that manages to flow with the effortless inevitability of the oceanic tides. Giovanni Di Domenico, an accomplished composer and prolific collaborator who has released albums with Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Akira Sakata, among many others, initiated the collaboration with Bennett after the two met at a record fair in Saint-Gilles, Belgium and bonded over a shared inquisitiveness for unconventional sonic combinations. Along with Pak Yan Lau, a Belgian-born sound artist and improviser who has developed her own rich and unique sonic footprint, the trio entered the studio with little, if any, discussion beforehand, jumping right into playing without preconceived structures. The resulting recordings had a depth of sound and emotional resonance surprising even them, with finished pieces emerging from single live takes and minor edits. Bennett, known for his solo work as well as his collaborations with Christina Vantzou as CV & JAB, gives us here a taste of his bass flute in free flowing form. Unconstricted by concept, joyfully and lazily bouncing off the melodic shimmers of Di Domenico’s Rhodes, Bennett uses his flute’s pitch information to trigger long tones that emerge like rays of light piercing through low hanging clouds - moments of clarity among a clicking world of sonic stimuli. Meanwhile, Lau’s crackling and sometimes dissonant contributions on prepared piano, live hydrophone, and custom ceramic sound objects balance out the triangle, adding a sense of microcosmic intrigue that allows the music to seamlessly ebb and flow between moments of comfort and foggy uncertainty. The album’s title track and climax, the eighteen minute “Tidal Perspectives”, drifts in with some kind of clarity, Lau’s glinting tonal waves edging in just beyond the horizon lines drawn by Di Domenico’s Rhodes and Bennett’s bass flute. But like the tidal flows of the Atlantic that inspired its title, just as you begin to perceive what’s happening, the currents have already taken you out to sea.

After releasing Undefined, Kazufumi Kodama and Babe Roots, the 4th release from a Japanese experimental dub label newdubhall welcomes the ever-evolving pioneer of minimal dub and dub techno Deadbeat, a solo project of Scott Monteith hailing from Canada. Side A 'Things Fall Apart' will feature a beatless dub ambient which shares a perspective of free jazz and 'Adieu Chez Cherie,’ an absolute knockdown four on the floor dub techno on the flip side. Though simple, both sides are layered with complexity, let yourself experience the profundity of newdubhall with this masterpiece.

Kindred the shop and radio station based in London mint a new in-house label, headed up by one of the store's founders, Scar. Up first is station regular, Alicia, with a 60 min hazy trip through dubwise ambient & downtempo niceness, really cracking listen this one. Limited edition c60 cassette.

This album continues their sonic exploration, blending acoustic and electronic elements seamlessly. Divided into three distinct chapters, “Triptyques” offers a wordless narrative, guiding listeners through intricate melodies, innovative percussion, and daring experimental sounds. Each chapter stands as a unique piece, yet together they form a cohesive, mesmerizing narrative, showcasing spëcht’s evolution and artistic vision.

The founders of Cukor Bila Smert’ (Ukrainian: Цукор – Біла Смерть, English: Sugar – White Death) band were Svitlana Okhrimenko (a.k.a. Svitlana Nianio), Oleksandr Kohanovs’kyi, and Tamila Mazur, who studied at the Reinhold Glier Kyiv Academy of Music in 1984-1988. In the summer of 1988, they got acquainted with Eugene Taran, a young guitarist and artist. He joined the band and also became the ideologist of Sugar – White Death. Moreover, Eugene coined the name for the band: the irony towards the Yellow Press. The musicians gathered at Kohanovs’kyi’s house, where they spent their free time not only playing music but also listening to and discussing new records and thinking about the conception of their new project. For two years, the band recorded a few home-made albums, such as “Rhododendrons Coral Aspides” in 1988 (which is considered lost), where Kostyantyn Dovzhenko took part as a guitarist and sound engineer. He also replaced Taran during the recording session because Eugene was passing an exam at that time. The band also recorded another album – “Lilies and Amaralises,” in 1989, which is also considered lost. Eugene remembers that the band made a lot of recordings but did not pay so much attention to them. Sugar – White Death played live occasionally but spent more time creating their own sound, which was named by Oleksii Dekhtyar (a founder of “Ivanov Down”) as a “sugar calypso sound.” At that time, the music was mostly created by Oleksandr Kohanovs’kyi, and the lyrics were written by Svitlana Okhrimenko and Eugene Taran. In February 1990, a quartet came to the Scientists House Studio in Kyiv, where they had one studio session only, recorded by Valerii Papchenko. Musicians played live for about one take. This session was represented on the “Mannered Music” compilation by several blocks – “Venus with Long Neck,” “The New Sissies,” and “Rhododendrons Coral Aspides,” which was shortened to “Rhododendrons” on the cassette (two songs from which – “Summer Will Not Come” and “The Great Hen-Yuan’ River,” dedicated to Grigorii Khoroshylov, the sinologist from Kyiv). The compilation cover design was created by Eugene Taran. Later, this tape got to Vlodek Nakonechnyj, the founder of Koka Records, a young Polish label, who released “Mannered Music” on cassettes and made efforts to invite Sugar – White Death to play several gigs in Poland. In November 1990, Sugar – White Death played their last gig as a quartet in Kharkiv. They were invited by Sergii Myasoyedov, who curated the art association “Nova Scena” (The New Scene). The band played selected tracks from the albums “The New Sissies” and “The Shellfishes in Gold Wrappers” (the last one is also considered lost). Due to Sergii Myasoyedov's efforts, the performance was documented: he saved a lot of photos and fragments of soundboard recordings on reel-to-reel tape. Later, Oleksandr Kohanovs’kyi and Tamila Mazur left Sugar – White Death: Oleksandr founded his own project Pan Kifared, and Tamila became a bass player of Shake Hi-Fi (whose co-founder was Eugene Taran). Sugar became a duo of Svitlana and Eugene. They started to focus on their next work: “Antinoy Is Leaving” in late 1990. In 1992, they were also invited by Sergii Myasoyedov for a studio session in Kharkiv, where due to the efforts of Oleksandr Vakulenko, Sugar recorded the new album called “All Secrets Of A Poem”. Some tracks from the work (“Dead Ceremony,” “Vienna Is Sleeping,” and “Untitled”) were released on their next and last album, “Selo” (“The Village”). The rest compositions were published as a part of the compilation for the first time. In the autumn of 1992, the musicians went to Poland, where Vlodek Nakonech- nyj, who wanted Sugar to come to a “real” studio, organized their last recording session. Although the journey’s beginning was unsuccessful (Eugene’s guitar was taken away by a customs officer when crossing the border), the musicians worked fast during the session at the Arek Waś studio at Marki on an 8-track reel-to-reel machine. Boleslav Blazhchyk took part as a cellist, playing the parts created by Svitlana. The album was completed in three days – the musicians spent two days recording and one-day mixing, mostly done by Eugene Taran. In 1993, this work was released as “Selo” (“The Village”) album on cassette tapes by Koka Records (remastered by Tadeusz Sudnik). Later, Sugar – White Death was disbanded.

claire rousay is a singular artist, known for challenging conventions in experimental and ambient music forms. rousay masterfully incorporates textural found sounds, sumptuous drones and candid field recordings into music that celebrates the beauty in life’s banalities. Her music is curatorial and granular in detail, deftly shaped into emotionally affecting pieces. sentiment is a meditation of the poignant emotional terrains of loneliness, nostalgia, sentimentality, guilt, and sex. The album’s narrative arc is guided by delicate musical gestures and artistic vulnerability, audaciously synthesizing disparate and unexpected influences. rousay crafted the songs in various homes, bedrooms, hotels, and other private places, the feeling of time and energy spent alone radiating from each passage. The album is a collection of heart-rending, incisive pop songs that explore universal feelings with subtlety and remarkable vision. rousay’s vocals and guitar take center stage on sentiment. Her intimate, diaristic lyrics contrast with her mechanical-inflected vocal effects, emphasizing a powerful desire for connection, a deep yearning and a lingering sense of separation. The spare guitar playing and laconic tempo both drive the songs and exude a sense of resignation. Her delicate mastery of nuance draws on her explorative musical past that she, with sincerity and admiration, seamlessly interweaves into her adventurous textures and distinctive compositions. “I want to belong to the worlds and communities I look up to. Same as someone using a Fender guitar or dressing like Kurt Cobain. Emulate your heroes,” says rousay. From a sprawling math-rock duo, to an array of emo-inflected rock outfits to a hired hand in evangelical worship bands, rousay worked as a percussionist for over a decade before shifting her focus to the solo collage work she’s known for. sentiment folds those experiences into her compositions. rousay explains, “As the drummer in an evangelical rock band, it’s your job, with the singers, to manipulate the crowd. You start building on the drums and you know it’s one bigger chorus and then we’re out and you can see the tears, people just start crying. I still feel a version of that when playing my own shows now.” The album balances the poetic soul of her influences with a documentarian heart, rousay capturing moments of her life while living alone in houses across the country, learning to play guitar, and reconnecting with pop music. “I have been on a quest to communicate my feelings and ideas as clearly as possible lately. Pop seemed like the way to do that this time,” says rousay. The confessional nature of sampled fragments of conversation give her pieces a specificity and sense of intimacy that is both immediate and curious. rousay’s innate ability to conjure pure feeling from sound derives from her delightful embrace of pop forms, the vulnerability found in field recordings, minimalistic arrangements and innovative sound choices. The resulting songs of sentiment are as anthemic as they are breathtakingly personal. sentiment is blissfully, achingly melancholic, and an undeniably sensual listening experience.

When KMRU accessed the sound archive of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, it catalysed an auditory response in the form of the album Temporary Stored. The album listened back to listen forward – to reckon with the collective inheritance of colonial (sound) archives. Temporary Stored II serves as an artistic and curatorial extension of the original album, inviting other artists to lend their critical ear to museum archives holding recordings of African songs, traditions and practices. With KMRU, Aho Ssan, Lamin Fofana, Nyokabi Kariũki and Jessica Ekomane draw upon their listening experiences as global contemporaries navigating a world in flux – ecologically, economically, and politically. Each artist brings a selection of sonic fragments out of dormancy, channelling (in)audible traces into a contemporary cultural and political paradigm. Temporary Stored II sensitively responds to historical archives whose sounds have been restored and made more accessible through digitalisation, despite still being the copyrighted property of European institutions. It develops an emergent language to engage with the vocal, rhythmic and syllabic intelligence rooted in these sonic repertoires, grounded in reimagination of sonic records as seeds for a sounding future. Listening back to these recordings is one way to recover the loss of listening traditions, orality and modes of transmission. In these sonic mediations, Lamin Fofana, KMRU, Jessica Ekomane, Nyokabi Kariũki and Aho Ssan account for the archives with care and criticality. Inscribed in this album are “black waveforms as rebellious enthusiasms”, which in the words of Katherine McKittrick “affirm, through cognitive schemas, modes of being human that refuse antiblackness while restructuring our existing system of knowledge.” The album asks us to listen to colonial pasts and imagine the sound of our epistemological futures. It is a sonic retort; a playback to history and its colonial processes of extraction and accumulation. Temporary Stored II is a reminder that the labour of listening back is a continuous process of reassessing what has been lost, captured and refused.

On textstar+ Jan Jelinek brings together the material from the CMYK series, four EPs he released between 1999 and 2002 under the pseudonym farben (the German word for both colours and paints), on a vinyl double LP for the first time. The selection of tracks has been remastered from the original tapes, joined by two additional pieces that appeared on compilations during the same period. - A Polaroid. Still life with tangled leads and consumer electronics, late twentieth century. Black and various shades of dirty white are the dominant non-colours. The image’s spatial depth remains diffuse, the links between its elements speculative. A note stuck to the wall (a legend, perhaps, or an all-explaining blueprint in text form?) is impossible to decipher. You can’t see what connects the picture’s signs. You have to hear it. farben says: Every sound is a text. A bearer of meaning in search of a reader. Hoping the ideas inscribed in its autonomous existence will be understood as intended. While its beauty lies precisely in misunderstanding, in reading the coded message a new way every time. A thousand colours of sound, a thousand different ways to hear, to see, to understand. On textstar+ Jan Jelinek brings together the material from the CMYK series, four EPs he released between 1999 and 2002 under the pseudonym farben (the German word for both colours and paints), on a vinyl double LP for the first time. The selection of tracks has been remastered from the original tapes, joined by two additional pieces that appeared on compilations during the same period. Another new element is the Polaroid, showing the origins of a world: Jelinek’s home studio in Berlin at the time. farben says: Move your body! The project has its roots in Jelinek’s love of house as a reductionist vision of soul. Of four to the floor as a proposition that can be accessed anywhere. Of electronic dance music as a realm of possibility that can be continually expanded. farben was written as contemporary house music. As a text about excitement and euphoria. The arrangements were made directly while recording to DAT, on a twelve-channel mixing desk. Several track titles suggest a link to live concerts, coupled with the context of machine music and bedroom recording. Others affirm pop music’s most extravagant stock phrases about various states of love. Jelinek produced the tracks with the aim of making music for dancefloors. An idea that failed very productively. In the locations to which it was originally addressed, the project barely figured. But people did listen, and they listened all the more closely to this music that opened up new acoustic and associative scope for house. farben is the opposite of genre: a music spawning new terms (clicks & cuts, micro-house) that never manage to fully capture it. farben says: Signifiers. The four CMYK EPs are designed as a network of references that cannot be missed but that can also never be precisely deciphered. The vectors of sound, word and image point to Isaac Hayes and Ornette Coleman, to Detroit and the first generation of the Red Army Faction, to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. So multifarious that they are distorted to the point of recognition. Overall we hear sonic docufictions whose appealing vagueness derives precisely from this oscillation between clarity and ambiguity, which is also the source of their poetry: the lyricism of the pure circulation of signs. The artwork is based on photographs of former Red Army Faction members, broken down into the four colours of the CMYK model. The motifs dissolve into individual dots of a single colour, so close to the faces that their expressions are only hinted at. Taken together, the individual colours compose a new whole out of fragmentary material, defying definition and thus maintaining their vibrancy. The same occurs on the level of sound. The sampler Jelinek used for these tracks had to be fed with floppy disks, imposing a memory limit of 1.44 megabytes per audio quotation from soul or jazz records. As a necessary consequence of this, the individual references, like the dots of colour, are dissolved into details and abstractions. They appear as splinters that recombine in new ways to create new meanings. The joy of collapsing metaphors. farben says: New departures. Even two decades after its original release, textstar+ does not come across as an epitaph to the modern era. Instead, it appears as a euphoric affirmation of the utopias of the twentieth century, translated into new sound texts via the aesthetic strategies of abstraction, collage, networking and speculation. 1.44 megabytes of history, one thousand signifiers, one album. From “Live ...” to “... Love”.

SG is none other than Andrew Pekler returning to faitiche with an album of sentimental guitar escapism. For Lovers Only / Rain Suite features ten tracks made using only an electric guitar and a handful of effects pedals (plus some additional recordings of rain) and finds Pekler once again attempting to reconicile his tendencies towards kitsch, experimentation and minimalism. 

What does Pekler's pseudonym SG stand for? Sentimental Guitar? Sound Gallery? Shy Guy? Sad Gnosis? Saudade Glamour? Soft Goth? We don't know, but we asked notorious Chicago romantic Sam Prekop for his take on the album – his reply: It’s a wonder where the rivers go and far, how fast or slow. Just seconds to remember, who can forget, when you are lost. I think to recount every step, in both hands, eyes open, the clouds unfold, one two three. Every other step, just as well. Where the moss is soft, you know strong. How many hours, days? I could have been careful, did I forget? Never mind. Waking up, in these arms, where the rivers go, slow. One two three, one two three.

版元完売。Theo Fabunmi Stonn (404 Eros) & Jon Phonics (Astral Black)の2名が主宰しているロンドンの気鋭レーベルであり、Lunch Money LifeやVanessa Bedoretといった面々による先鋭的な作品を送り出してきた〈Scenic Route〉のショーケース的コンピ盤をストック。レフトフィールドでサイケデリックなテイスト抜群のドリーム・ポップやインディ・フォーク、オルタナティヴR&Bを中心に、知られざる現行の地下アクトたちを一挙20組紹介した意欲的な1本！

Originally released on tape in 2019, 'Big Room' helped establish Philly's Ulla Straus as one of the key figures in the post-"bblisss" wave of nu-ambient practitioners. Interchangeably glacial, gaseous and liquid, it's a rare downtempo tome that never shies away from sensuality and raw, messy emotionality. Gorgeous material: essential listening for anyone into Jake Muir, Perila, Shuttle358, Oval, Pendant or Space Afrika. 'Big Room' is a technically advanced record that never dangles its prowess in your face. Ulla's sound sculpting is remarkable, but the key to 'Big Room' is not her processing skill, it's her open-hearted emotional honesty. And if contemporary ambient and experimental music has been pocked by the Instagrammable nostalgia drip and hacky tacked-on PR narratives, 'Big Room' succeeds because it offers us a clear, demarcated alternative. Ulla doesn't need to shoehorn in a grandstanding press release or video footage of an elaborate modular setup to get our attention, the music does all the heavy lifting, drawing us in with clouded bathhouse textures and soft-focus dub rhythms, chiseled digital hiccups and levitational synthesizer loops. From the opening tones of 'Nana', with its sloshing pads and subtle glitches, to the dislocated wind chimes and blurry electronics of 'House', there's a resounding faded texture to Ulla's music that helps set a picture perfect mood. 'Big Room' is an album to lose yerself in - Ulla's able to dial in an aesthetic that goes beyond the surface level, piercing not just the production elements but the writing itself. Using relatively few elements, she's able to bridge the gaps between dub techno ('Net'), Mille Plateaux-esque processed glitch ('Past'), glowing Eno-influenced ambient ('Billow') and breathtaking arpeggio-led kosmische sounds ('Sister'), linking each track with her diaristic subtlety and careful choice of processes. In a forest of withered ambient mediocrity, 'Big Room' is a lonely, pristine evergreen - we just can't recommend it enough.

For fans of Sean McCann's Recital works to Yusaku Arai ”a two”. Collabolation album of ambient master Ulla & Japanese Experimental musician Ultrafog.

'Apodelia' is Hotspring's second solo release on Mood Hut, and is partly a further exploration of song forms, studio techniques and instrumentation explored on 2020’s 'Obit for Sunshade'. 'Apodelia' explores lifting into revealing; scouring fidelities, playing with emotion, and improvising by night.

The KLF's 1990's great album that created ”Chill Out” zone and grew up ambient techno.

Invisible Inc once again presents another incredible full-length album from the talented Double Geography. Following on from 2020's “The Indoor Gardener”, the new LP “Open Water” is bathed in a similar blissful atmosphere. Double Geography aka Duncan Thornley (one half of Weird Weather and studio engineer at MAP Studios), following the success of his debut album now presents his second album for Invisible Inc. Leaning towards the label's more ambient and laidback output, the album is themed around water, transience and escape and sounds as unshackled and free-flowing as you'd expect...you can almost feel the breeze in the air and the sun on your skin. There is a noticeable progression in the music from his previous releases, this time featuring several additional musicians to compliment Thornley's electronics with live instrumentation...adding a complexity and depth to each of these compositions and an overall 'organic' quality that makes these new pieces sound like quite a departure from the first album. Fretless bass, clarinet and saxophone decorate the music with refrains and melodies that have been enchanting our imagination even in their absence since first hearing them.

Balmat began our journey in 2021 with the release of Luke Sanger’s Languid Gongue. Now, three years later, we turn an important corner as the Norfolk musician rejoins us with Dew Point Harmonics, the first repeat appearance on the label. Sanger’s new album feels like a natural extension of his inaugural record for Balmat: It’s a bewitching collection of esoteric synth sketches that slips unpredictably between consonant repetition, poignant melodies, and gnarled bursts of noise that catch in the ear like burrs in hiking socks. That natural metaphor is perhaps not accidental. Despite having been composed on Sanger’s diverse array of hardware and self-written software, many of the tracks were first conceived while Sanger was hiking in a particularly wild and isolated section of the Norfolk coast. The field recording that opens the album, on “6am Beach Walk,” was taken on one of his many early-morning walks there, in which he and his dog might go for miles without seeing another soul. The album’s title was inspired by the overnight condensation covering the long marram grass in the dunes, glistening in the early light (and drenching everything coming in contact with it) before evaporating in the morning sun. Indeed, the concept of dew point—the temperature at which water vapor condenses into a liquid—feels like the perfect metaphor for Sanger’s music, in which foggy ambience is distilled into glistening quicksilver orbs, transient spheres of perfection eventually absorbed back into the atmosphere. A shapeshifting collection of richly detailed and deeply expressive electronic miniatures, Dew Point Harmonics is both a testament to the mysteries of transformation and an invitation to get lost in the wilderness of your own imagination.

Fresh transmissions from the sacred Temple of 5 Gate... This time it's 8 new tracks from London producer Xterea. TIP! Limited run of CDs…complete with download code.

blueblue is the latest full-length from multi-instrumentalist and all-around vibe wizard, Sam Gendel. The record, out October 14 via Leaving Records, is a concise, tightly wound song suite whose 14 tracks each correspond to a pattern within sashiko, a traditional style of Japanese embroidery. This conceit remains playfully ambiguous — to what extent, if at all, is Kagome (籠目, woven bamboo) meant to evoke the pattern of the same name, for example? But there is an intuitive sense, throughout blueblue, that Gendel has, in this instance, narrowed his focus. To say that blueblue feels richly textural might be a little on-the-nose, thematically, but alas…it does. There is an intimacy, a humility, and a strength at play here that typifies the work of a master craftsman. Only an artist could make it sound so effortless. A Los Angeleno by way of Central CA, Gendel is by now an institution. Across a dizzying slate of solo releases and collaborations, he has amassed a reputation for not only virtuosic musicianship (primarily as a saxophonist, though the songs that would become blueblue were all initially composed on guitar), but also for his mercurial and prolific output — a corpus of work, which, while obviously indebted to jazz and hip hop (and the farther flung, experimental corners of both) is, in a word, unpindownable. In this regard, Leaving Records, with its cri-de-cœur of “All Genre,” is a natural home for Gendel. The bulk of blueblue was recorded in isolation in a makeshift studio built in a cabin floating atop a tributary of Oregon’s Columbia River. Having sketched out a set of guitar melodies, Gendel recorded the album in five-or-so weeks, during which time he became well-acquainted with the river’s tidal rise and fall. This organic rhythm, which daily lifted the house to meet the horizon, later setting it down gently upon the riverbed, permeates the record. There are pops and groans and artifacts, and, in Tate-jima (縦縞, vertical stripes)—one of blueblue’s more plaintive tracks—even the faint lapping of water. Equally essential to the feel of blueblue is Craig Weinrib’s kit work. Gendel and Weinrib collaborated long-distance during Gendel’s time in Oregon, with Gendel sending Weinrib half-finished songs, and giving him carte-blanche to record percussion. The end result is a relaxed, confident exchange between two clearly simpatico musicians, particularly evident in Weinrib’s gorgeously attentive brush technique. blueblue is a conceptually sound, mesmerizing, evocative, and sonically idiosyncratic LP. In keeping with its name, blueblue functions as Gendel’s color study, conveying, through repetition and deviation, his devotion to a certain mood — unnamable, but certainly noirish, nostalgic, quasi-psychedelic, and existing in some permanent twilight. Real ones know, and for those who don’t yet, blueblue is an accessible and intoxicating entry-point into Gendel's ever-expanding catalog.

how it thrills us, the bird's clear cry...
any cry that was always there.
children, playing in the open air,
children already go crying by
real cries. cry chance in. through crevasses
in that same space whereinto, as dreaming
men into dreams, the pure bird-cry passes
they drive their splintering wedge of screaming.
where are we? freer and freer, we gyre
only half up, kites breaking
loose, with our frills of laughter flaking
away in the wind. make the criers a choir,
singing god! that resurgently waking
may bear on its waters the head and the lyre.

The seven compositions on this album, written between 2022 and 2024, form a conceptual suite and an observance of the mental dances that we construct to understand acts of passage; the ways that we commune and memorialize and carry symbols back into the world beyond representation.

To this end, THE HEAD AS FORM'D IN THE CRIER'S CHOIR engages two references to the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus: Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, a collection of poems from 1922, and Claudio Monteverdi’s l’Orfeo, an early baroque opera from 1607. The myth of Orpheus tells the story of a musician who, grief stricken by the passing of his wife, Eurydice, descends to Hades to persuade the deity of the dead for her return. Along the way, Orpheus seduces those who would block his passage with the deeply lamenting music he conjures from his lyre. Hades agrees but with one condition: Orpheus is not to turn around and look at Eurydice until the pair once again breach the world of the living. Not surprisingly, as they approach the surface, Orpheus grows anxious and turns around to confirm Eurydice’s presence behind him, therein sending her back to the underworld forever. As the story goes, Orpheus then sings for death to take him away; with his wish finally granted by a group of maenads, Orpheus’ detached head and his lyre float down the river, continuing their mournful song.

For many years, I sought to largely separate my studio practice from my live performance practice, with the awareness that the unique limitations and possibilities of each domain were almost sacred to their individual characters. THE HEAD AS FORM'D IN THE CRIER'S CHOIR is a supplement of sorts to TWO SISTERS (2022) and ANTIPHONALS (2021), which were attempts to begin bridging this gap between the fixed electroacoustic pieces that emerge in the studio context and the somewhat open and slow-paced chamber writing that I do, in which each performance presents a new structure and in which each iteration offers the path to a new composition and deeper meaning. I am, as always, greatly indebted to the talented and incredibly sensitive musicians who appear on this album, many of whom are regular interpreters of my music: Andrew McIntosh (viola, Los Angeles), Mattie Barbier (trombone, Los Angeles), Lisa McGee (mezzo-soprano, Los Angeles), Pierre-Yves Martel (viola da gamba, Montréal), Eyvind Kang (viola d’amore, Los Angeles), and Rebecca Lane (bass flute, Berlin), Sam Dunscombe (bass clarinet, Berlin), Michiko Ogawa (bass clarinet, Berlin), M.O. Abbott (trombone, Berlin), and Weston Olencki (trombone, Berlin) of the Harmonic Space Orchestra (Winds). For my part, I again return to my favourite keyboard instruments on this album: Mellotron (in particular, the brass and woodwind samples that I so adore), electric organ (the Korg CX-3), synthesizer (the Prophet 5 and Korg PS-3100, which are both extremely useful in their tuning capabilities), and, of course, pipe organ.

There are four pipe organs featured on this album: a mechanical-action instrument built by Tamburini in 1968, located in the Basilica di Santa Maria dei Servi of Bologna, Italy; an electric-action instrument built by Veikko Virtanen in 1969, located in the Temppeliaukio Church of Helsinki, Finland; a meantone mechanical-action instrument built by John Brombaugh in 1981, located at Oberlin College’s Fairchild Chapel in Oberlin, Ohio, USA; and, a mechanical-action instrument built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1864, located in the Église du Gesù of Toulouse, France. The organ pieces on THE HEAD AS FORM'D IN THE CRIER'S CHOIR focus more heavily on the instruments’ pedals as well as the textural variations made possible by the mechanical tracker actions that most possess. The Brombaugh organ at Oberlin College offered a particularly meaningful compositional opportunity both in its use of the meantone temperament that was typical of the early seventeenth-century organ designs it’s based on, and in its use of split accidental keys, which accommodate for the lack of enharmonic equivalence in an extended meantone system. ‘Possente Spirto’ is a loose conceptual reference to the aria ‘Possente spirto, e formidabil nume’ in l’Orfeo. As in Monteverdi’s version, my piece also emphasizes the use of strings and brass and observes a particular order in which they enter and exit, and also incorporates a sort of continuo framework. I depart from there to focus on a slow-moving chord progression and its variations in voicing, inspired by renaissance concepts of harmony as a vertical structure, set within a standard quarter-comma meantone temperament. The piece employs the same structure that I use in most of my chamber writing, where each iteration of a performance is slightly different, calling on players to respond in real time and engage in a more direct form of listening. Several different colours of interval are heard throughout: the typical meantone minor third of 310 cents, the wolf minor third of 269 cents, the wolf fifth of 738 cents, and finally the standard meantone major third of 386 cents, which is one of a few intervals that this tuning system shares with just intonation. As with essentially all of THE HEAD AS FORM'D IN THE CRIER'S CHOIR, this piece is also quite variable in duration. ‘Trio for a Ground’ continues this feeling of partitioned instrumentation, with the organ providing the continuo throughout and the choir handing off to a duo of strings. In this recording, I chose to work with baroque strings – the viola da gamba and the viola d’amore, the latter of which incorporates a set of sympathetic strings that exist entirely for resonance. ‘Res Sub Rosa’ was composed specifically for a wind quintet formation of Berlin’s Harmonic Space Orchestra, and employs a system of septimal just intonation as well as a similarly variable structure that allows the players some discretion in how the piece is shaped at any given moment and which encourages different harmonic and acoustic encounters in each performance. ‘Constants’ functions as an electronic counterpoint to ‘Res Sub Rosa’, substituting human decisions with the natural interruption and decay cycles of sound-on-sound tape delay to achieve a similar sense of pacing and unpredictability.

- Sarah Davachi, 2024

Civilistjävel! returns with Brödföda, the successor to 2022’s Järnnätter and his fourth release for FELT. The record features collaborations with Laila Sakini, Mayssa Jallad, Thommy Wahlström, ELDON, and Withdrawn. Tomas Bodén is a revered figure of the aural murk, known primarily for his work as Civilistjävel. It’s an alias that has spawned a catalogue of self-released peculiarities, featuring music that scorns traditional form, instead opting for unfussed symphonies of ice-hued minimalism; soft murmurs that emanate from his studio in the High Coast of Sweden. On Brödföda, his latest album for Fergus Jones’s FELT imprint, subtle new developments in mood prevail. Across its 75 minutes, Civilistjävel! unveils a breadth of emotions that on previous releases seemed distant. He also invites collaborators on record for the first time: Beirut-based singer Mayssa Jallad mournfully croons on “IV”, “VIII” hosts Coldlight’s ELDON & Withdrawn for an abstracted session of dub-hop murk, Laila Sakini offers a hallucinogenic monologue amidst melodica, sticks & bells playing on “IX”, and Thommy Wahlström floats scant acid dub stylings on “VI”. These additions and developments bring a forlorn intimacy to the music, and suggest an ambition that few artists of his ilk strive for. FELT’s (un)reliable cast of audio ghouls routinely summon the odd, with Civilistjävel! often its primary culprit; Brödföda gently modifies this path to pursue some of his and the label’s most quaintly beautiful music yet.

Music From Memory is thrilled to introduce Dead Sound, the collaborative project of Marco Sterk (aka Young Marco) and Berlin-based pop-auteur John Moods. Both artists are no strangers to the label; Sterk forms one third of the trio Gaussian Curve, while Moods released the 2022 album ‘Hidden Gem’ with The Zenmenn. Their collaboration was both planned and spontaneous; Sterk initially reached out in 2022 expressing his desire to work with Moods. The pair finally got together in 2024 to produce ‘Into The Void’, an album that burst into life over the course of a few creatively charged days in each other’s company. Moods’ dream-like, emotionally charged music wears its heart on its sleeve; its very human vulnerability makes it a perfect match for Sterk’s strong sense of melody and textural sonic visions. ‘Into The Void’ carries these psychedelic traits in its DNA, but they exist layered deep amongst the shadows. Painting on a wide canvas that effortlessly skips between genres, the pair weave anything that inspires them into a truly unique tapestry; a bold attempt to touch at the beyond. Exploring the space between perception (level of the mind) and the nature of the universe (actual level of reality) seems traditionally like an impossible task. But there’s gotta be a time and a space for the profound and this album invites the listener to go deep, letting go of concepts such as love and opening oneself up to one’s own authentic journey. This transformative force of healing is a central theme of ‘Into The Void’, a path that is lined with light and darkness in equal measure. But, as Moods says, “do not skip the darkness, let that door open and swallow you. And maybe you’ll find, it's not as dark as you perceived at first."

ICCHĀ, meaning 'desire', is a project that started in 2023 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Spearheaded and conceptualized by Miet Warlop and musically enhanced by Micha Volders, the work "Chant For Hope" was collaboratively realized with seven native performers and premiered at the opening of the Dhaka Art Summit. This monumental living sculpture involved casting hundreds of Bengali words in plaster, fostering a dynamic interplay between performers, public space, and participation while delving into the relationship between humans and language. The performance made words extremely tangible, sometimes leading to unexpected chaos and Impromptu slogans. Working together in Dhaka towards a shared goal was a profound experience for everybody involved, albeit one punctuated by cultural contrasts and unexpected challenges that ultimately infused the project with palpable energy and a sense of collective purpose. Recordings were carefully curated into a persuasive album that still carries the inherent structure and heart of chant for hope. The musical cadence and rich heritage of the Bengali language provide the foundation for a captivating soundworld, with angular drumming and vocals that oscillate in mantra-like repetitions. A powerful and uncompromising journey featuring the performances of slam poet Shayer Noor, the energetic Muhammad Shanto, and the Chittagonian-spirited Tanny Das Gupta as protagonists while navigating through the vibrant frenzy of Dhaka.

Light in the Attic Records proudly presents Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996—the first comprehensive collection of Ukrainian music recorded prior to, and immediately following, the USSR’s collapse. From subtly dissenting Soviet-era singles to DIY recordings from Kyiv’s vibrant underground scene, the compilation chronicles the development of Ukraine’s rich musical landscape through rare folk, rock, jazz, and electronic recordings. “This record is a labor of love and a long time coming,” says label owner Matt Sullivan. Over the course of the last five years, Sullivan, alongside producers David Mas ("DBGO”), Mark “Frosty” McNeill, and Ukrainian label Shukai Records worked tirelessly to compile a carefully curated, chronological playlist. But behind the scenes, ongoing war & politics would shape the evolution of the tracklist, which originally featured both Ukrainian and Russian artists. “We found ourselves in the midst of a larger political issue; what began as a broader overview of a sonically underrepresented region suddenly became quite the controversial project,” Sullivan continues, “so we decided to pivot and focus only on Ukrainian music. There were times when it felt impossible to bring this project to fruition, so to be sharing it with the world today is truly humbling and long overdue.” Guiding listeners through the physical editions of the album are insightful liner notes and track-by-track details by Vitalii “Bard” Bardetskyi—a Kyiv-based filmmaker, DJ, and writer. The 2xLP is housed in a beautiful gatefold package showcasing Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko’s beloved and iconic folk paintings. The vinyl edition features a 20-page booklet with artist photos & liner notes in both English and Ukrainian, pressed on Clear Blue Sky & Sunflower Yellow wax; the CD edition features bonus content housed in a deluxe, 64-page hardbound book. Light in the Attic will donate a portion of proceeds directly to Livyj Bereh, a Kyiv-based volunteer group working to rebuild in the regions affected by ongoing war in Ukraine. “Music has always pulled Ukrainians out of the abyss,” writes Vitalii “Bard” Bardetskyi in his liner notes for Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996. “When there is no hope for the future, there is still music. At such moments, the whole nation resonates under a groove. Music, breaking through the concrete of various colonial systems, is an incredible, often illogical, way to preserve dignity.” While the songs collected in Even the Forest Hums were recorded during periods of immense societal and political upheaval—and certainly reflect the resilience of the Ukrainian people—they are rooted in the universal spirit of exploration: from post-war teenagers seeking fresh rhythms and artists experimenting with DIY recording technologies to an entire nation being introduced to decades-worth of previously-embargoed albums. Yet, until now, it has been nearly impossible for anyone outside Ukraine to explore the country’s flourishing music scene for themselves. Much of this can be attributed to Soviet-era restrictions. Music, much like any other commodity, was tightly controlled before the fall of communism. “Only state-authorized performers who had gone through hellish rounds of the permit system could record at the few monopolistic, state-run studios,” explains Bardetskyi. While many of these compositions were released and performed to mass audiences, however, they weren’t necessarily what they seemed. “Some of the artists managed, even under difficult ideological circumstances, to build a whole aesthetic platform which was essentially anti-Soviet.” Bands could slide under the radar by changing the lyrics of rock songs to reflect Soviet ideals or by performing traditional folk music with subtle outside influences. “This resulted in a whole scene that combined central-eastern Ukrainian vocal polyphony, Carpathian rhythms, and overseas grooves,” writes Bardetskyi, who refers to this era of music as “Mustache Funk.” Examples featured in Even the Forest Hums... include 1971’s “Bunny” by Kobza. While the folk-rock group was known for their polyphonic vocals, this particular composition is an instrumental waltz, which blends elements of traditional Ukrainian music with progressive rock, British beat, and jazz-rock. Another example of “Mustache Funk” comes from the latter half of the decade, with the Caribbean-influenced “Remembrance” by Vodohrai. While the group—which included some of the best jazz musicians in the country—had a multitude of traditional hits, inspired jams like this one could, for a lucky few, occasionally be heard live. While the 70s proved to be a golden age for Ukrainian music (complete with pop stars, large-scale tours, and legions of adoring fans), the excitement was short-lived. “The Soviet system finally understood that funkified beats quite strongly contradict[ed] [its] principles,” notes Bardetskyi, who adds that by the 80s, “The once prolific scene was almost completely colonized, appropriated, and largely Russified; the state radio and TV waves were occupied by banal VIAs and cheezy schlager singers.” With tighter restrictions, however, came the rise of the underground. While the decade leading up to Ukraine’s independence was marked by great turmoil—including the political reform of Perestroika in the USSR and the Chernobyl disaster—it also marked a time of incredible creativity. Mirroring global trends, the first half of the decade found many composers and producers experimenting with electronic music. Among them was Vadym Khrapachov, whose scores have appeared in over 100 films. His moody, Moroder-esque “Dance” (written for Roman Balaian’s iconic 1983 film, Flights in Dreams and Reality) is notable in that it was recorded on the USSR’s only existing British EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer. Producer Kyrylo Stetsenko, meanwhile, was reimagining traditional songs for the dancefloor. Among them is 1980’s “Play, the Violin, Play,” by Ukrainian pop star Tetiana Kocherhina. Stetsenko, who produced the album for Kocherhina, created a hypnotic remix of the folk tune that was fit for a disco. Stetsenko is also featured here with 1987’s “Oh, how, how?,” in which he transforms a melancholic ballad by Natalia Gura into a synth-forward, breakbeat jam. As the fall of communism approached, the scene continued to diversify—particularly as music from around the world became increasingly available. Kyiv, in particular, became an epicenter of creativity. In the early days, bands like Krok offered a preview of what was to come. Described by Bardetskyi as “The first real Kyiv supergroup,” Krok was led by guitarist Volodymyr Khodzytskyi and featured musicians from local Beat bands. In addition to backing the biggest pop acts of the day, the versatile collective explored a spectrum of styles in their own recordings, including fusion and electro-funk. They are represented here with the mellow “Breath of Night Kyiv.” By the late 80s, Kyiv “was buzzing like a beehive,” recalls Bardetskyi. “It was a period of very active socialization and exchange of musical information and ideas; local musicians evolved with supersonic speed, absorbing decades of the world's musical background and transforming it into their sound.” While rock bands comprised much of this era’s first wave, artists continued to expand their repertoire as new influences pervaded the scene. The global rise of DIY recording technology and electronic instrumentation, meanwhile, also contributed to the growing sonic landscape. Highlights from this period include the avant-garde improvisations of violinist Valentina Goncharova. Recordings like 1989’s “Silence” were created by a series of layered tracks and custom pickups. Similarly, composer Iury Lech paints a warm ambient soundscape with 1990’s “Barreras.” On the other end of the spectrum is the industrial “90” by Radiodelo (the project of Ivan Moskalenko—aka DJ Derbastler), which combines frenetic drum machine beats and haunting, reverb-soaked instrumentation. Post-punk was also thriving, with acts like Yarn (a large, loosely based collective) dominating the scene. “The interests of [Yarn’s] members extended all the way to medieval chamber music, which would clearly be noticeable in ‘Viella,’” writes Bardetskyi. The track features two of Yarn’s co-founding members: multi-instrumentalist and graphic designer Oleksander Yurchenko (who became a significant figure in modern Ukrainian music) and Ivan Moskalenko. Yurchenko is also represented here as part of Omi, a parallel project by the chart-topping electronic group, Blemish. 1994’s dramatic “Transference” (which features contributions by legendary Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and American singer-songwriter Diamanda Galas) serves up horror-movie-soundtrack vibes, particularly with the addition of eerie vocalizations. Cukor Bila Smert’ (which translates to “Sugar White Death”) were also major players in the Kyiv underground. Interestingly, Bardetskyi notes, “In the reality of the general dominance of post-punk, the aesthetic message of Cukor Bila Smert’ was countercultural to the countercultural process itself.” For their contribution to the compilation, the experimental quartet provides 1995’s “Cool, Shining.” In the years following Ukraine’s independence, Kyiv’s underground scene continued to flourish, particularly as Western trends became more accessible and Ukrainians found themselves at the forefront of their own cultural output. While the country’s music would largely evolve in new directions throughout the 90s, the final entry on Even the Forest Hums... provides a glimpse at what the future held. The album closes with 1996’s “Lion,” by Belarusian transplant German Popov, whose project, Marble Sleeves, was “one of the few Kyiv formations that tried to master jungle/drum-n-bass,” per Bardetskyi. Though this compilation only scratches the surface of Ukraine’s vast and diverse music scene, Even the Forest Hums offers an in-depth overview of a significant period in the country’s cultural history and unites a number of influential figures in the same collection for the first time. As Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Schegel writes in the foreword, “This is our Ukrainian treasure. It is impossible to lose and impossible to win.”