MUSIC

Rio Arriba is the sophomore album from Chancha Via Circuito, who molds local South American rhythms into global artistry. Rio Arriba bubbles up from the Andes like percussive lava, seething as it is soothing. Layers of drums play out like water and earth battling heat - heat brought by Chancha Via Circuito. Chancha has forged a path from his town outside the urban sprawl of Buenos Aires in the east of Argentina up across the border with Bolivia and into the Northern hemisphere where he's bringing new fans to native drum traditions. In his first release, Rodante, Chancha took cumbia into uncharted territory retrofitting the Latin rhythm for a worldly audience. With Rio Arriba, South American folklore takes the reins and, under Chancha’s steady hand, obscure backwoods rhythms take on a top shelf lifestyle as folklore hits the club. Cumbia made Chancha’s first album Rodante a stand out, Rio Arriba takes his sound primal, rooted in rhythm, but worldwide in scope. With recent remixes of The Ruby Suns (Sub Pop) and Gotan Project (Ya Basta/XL Recordings), Chancha proves his production can cross continents and pollinate. Rio Arriba annihilates the obvious - it's a fresh breeze from the city of good air flooding the urban habitat, sending you dancing upstream.

Composer Ori Barel rolls up the playful aestheticism of ‘90s electronica, taught pointillism of Rock in Opposition, dada collage of Krautrock, and the heavy lushness of Jack Nitzsche arrangements into a seamless sci-fi fantasia.

Wau Wau Collectif’s second album, Mariage, is instilled with a newfound sense of purpose. Expanding upon the inspirational themes of their acclaimed 2021 debut, Yaral Sa Doom (Educate The Young), this long distance collaboration from musicians in Senegal and Sweden’s Karl Jonas Winqvist is an even more stylistically expansive affair. Joyful children’s songs collide with fuzzy guitar solos and thumping hip-hop beats. Shimmering synths lift off from the plunky percussion of the balafon and versatile sounds of the 22-string kora. Familiar voices from the first album return with more explicitly political lyrics, while the music feels both rhythmically dense and sonically weightless, flowing from one spellbinding moment to the 6 next. For Mariage, band members from each country were inspired to include a wider array of instrumental flourishes unique to their cross-continental collaboration. “Yay Balma” revolves around the cycling riffs of Jango Diabaté’s xalam guitar, as this song’s fuzzy tones and soaring sax solos open side two with a bang. “Pitchi Goubidi” provides a stark contrast, with the kora played like a harp and Gilbert Badji’s gravelly lyrics about “the bird of the night” disappearing into dubbed-out chamber pop. Winqvist’s Omnichord hovers back into focus on “Yonou Natangue,” a free-floating jam that maintains the messages of Wau Wau Collectif’s debut, promoting youth education to address the social issues facing contemporary Senegal: “Peace is the better wealth / The way to wander.”

Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music. Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim are each, respectively, among the most noteworthy and groundbreaking figures to have emerged from Australia’s thriving experimental music scene. Ambarchi and Avenaim first encountered Abrahams when seeing the Necks - the project that has served as the primary vehicle for his singular approach to the piano since its founding in 1987 - together during the late 1980s, not long after having met in Sydney’s underground music community. The pair’s collaborations date back more than 35 years, criss-crossing Ambarchi’s pioneering solo and ensemble work for guitar and Avenaim’s visionary efforts for SARPS (Semi Automated Robotic Percussion System), robotic and kinetic extensions to his drum kit. In 2004, fate brought the three together in a trio performance at the What Is Music? Festival, the annual touring showcase of experimental music founded and run by Ambarchi and Avenaim between 1994-2012. For the nearly two decades since, Abrahams, Ambarchi, and Avenaim have intermittently reformed in exclusively live contexts, in Australia and abroad, cultivating and refining the fertile ground first tilled in that early meeting. Placelessness is the first album to present this remarkable trio’s efforts in recorded form. Placelessness is the joining of three highly individualised streams, working in perfect harmony; the point at which friendship, mutual respect, and decades of creative exploration produce a singular spectrum of sound. Featuring Abrahams on piano, Ambarchi on guitar, and Avenaim on drums, the album’s two sides draw on each artist’s enduring dedication to long-form composition. Its two pieces, Placelessness I and Placelessness II, initially began as a single, 40 minute work, before being divided and reworked into distinct, complimentary gestures for the corresponding sides of the LP. Beginning with restrained clusters of reverberant piano tones, Placelessness I progresses at an almost glacial pace, with Abrahams’ interventions increasing met by sparse responses, darting within vast ambiences, on guitar and percussion by Ambarchi and Avenaim. Remarkably conversational within its convergences of tonal, rhythmic, and textural abstraction, over the work’s duration a progressive sense of tension unfurls and contracts, refusing release, as each of the ensemble’s members contribute to an increasingly tangled sense of density at its resolve. While an entirely autonomous work, Placelessness II rapidly realises a distillation of the energy hinted at across the length of its predecessor. Following a luring passage of harmonious calm, Abrahams’ launches into shimmering lines of repeating arpeggios, complimented at each escalation of tempo by Avenaim’s machine gun fire percussion work and Ambarchi’s masterful delivery of tonality and texture, as the trio collectively generate dense sheets of pointillistic ambience within which individual identity is almost lost, before slowly unspooling into unexpected abstractions and dissonances that deftly intervene with the work’s inner logic and calm. What could easily be termed a maximalist take on Minimalism, Placelessness is a masterstroke of contemporary, real time composition, that blurs the boundaries between ambient music, experimentalism, free improvisation, and machine music. Drawing on Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim’s decades of respective solo and collaborative practice, and the culmination of nearly twenty years of working together as a trio, it’s two durational pieces - Placelessness I and Placelessness II - take form with a startling sense of effortlessness and grace, neither shying away from explicit beauty or rigorously tension within their forms.

Having each followed their own distinct trajectory of exploration for decades - interweaving rigorous experimentalism with transcultural conversations - and building upon roughly 20 years working as a duo, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang return with Azure, their third full-length with Ideologic Organ. Among their most riveting outings to date, comprising five new compositions recorded in Seattle during the spring of 2022, this remarkable body of sonority culminates in a singular gesture of contemporary minimalism that slowly unfolds across the album’s length. Emerging from the Pacific Northwest, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang have retained a strong presence within the context of North American experimental music since the mid 1990s, each producing some of the most grippingly original music to have appeared over the subsequent years. Kenney is a vocalist and composer internationally regarded for her spellbinding timbres and her in-depth study of oral traditions. Her work takes the form of sound installations, talismanic scores, music for film, electronics, and choir. She released the groundbreaking experimental gamelan album Atria (Sige) in 2015, and has collaborated with Lori Goldston, Holland Andrews, Niloufar Shiri, Tashi Wada, Alvin Lucier, Sarah Davachi, Melati Suryodarmo, Ensemble Nist-Nah, Sunn O))), and numerous others. Kang, a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger, works across genre and discipline, bringing subtlety, fluidity, and emotional intensity to each of his varied projects. In addition to creating a striking body of solo works that has traced its way across the last two and half decades - most recently including Sonic Gnostic (Aspen Edities, 2021) and Ajaeng Ajaeng (Ideologic Organ, 2020) - he has played on albums by Bill Frisell, Joe McPhee, Sun City Girls, Ikue Mori, Laurie Anderson, Blonde Redhead, William Hooker, Animal Collective, and numerous others. Since beginning to work together as a duo in the early 2000s, Kang and Kenney have collaborated on sound installations, music for orchestra, choir, and mixed ensembles in addition to releasing numerous widely acclaimed full-lengths: Aestuarium (2005), The Face Of The Earth (2012), Live In Iceland (2013), At Temple Gate (2014), Reverse Tree (2016), Seva (2017), The Cypress Dance (2020). A hypnotic return to the duo’s unique expression of “unison music", Azure is among Kenney and Kang’s most pared-down efforts in more than a decade. Its five compositions are underscored by allusions to the natural world and drifting temporalities, producing a profound calm that rises in arcs of tonal color. The album’s opener, Eclipse, is a composition built around the phrase “eclipse…inside the eclipse”, drawn from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s book, Dictee. Leaving aching silences between each utterance - Kenney’s sparse vocal interventions enmeshed with Kang’s delicate viola d’amore tones - the piece’s collective elements produce a remarkable tension bubbling within its spacious calm. The title track, Azure, takes its name from a pun on the Persian "az u" or "from her/him/them”, and is a meditation on the closing rhymes of ghazal 413 from the Divan of Hafez, such as mâh az u, râh az u, and âh az u, “the moon from them, the path from them, the sighs from them”. Imbued with sorrow and release, across the piece Kenney’s vocals and Kang’s viola d’amore weave and dance against a shruti drone, calling forth echoes of lost moments in far off worlds. This is followed by three pieces that incorporate traces of wide-ranging techniques into their forms. Ocean is an experiment with different intensities of pulsation, with inspiration from ring modulation’s use of two simultaneous frequencies, which assemble an enveloping expanse of intoxicating harmonics and vibrato. For Forest Floor, Kenney’s long-tone vocalizations play on the meanings of ‘tan’ or body, and ‘nur’ or light, and the town names of ‘Chegel’ and ‘Khotan’ from ghazal 327 from the Divan of Hafez. Dancing at the boundaries of sorrow and joy, her voice, paced in perfect harmony to Kang’s viola, seems to propose alternate realities of what ecstatic music might be. The album’s final piece draws upon Glenna Cole Allee’s book, Hanford Reach, incorporating photographs and words spoken within by interviewees living or working in the tribal territories of Wanapum, Yakama, Cayuse, Umatilla, Nez Perce, and many others on or near the Hanford Nuclear Site in the state of Washington. Among the album’s most dynamic and powerful efforts - drones and pizzicato tones playing counterpoint to Kenney’s soaring vocals - the duo, inexplicably, imbues strong impressions of that landscape. As Suzanne Kite states in the album’s liner notes, with each of Azure’s discrete expressions Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang “ask our ears to hold/stop/wait/listen closely to the edges of knowability, while the world continues around our sounding bodies… [they] draw our ears so closely that if we are not careful, the listener’s breath

Having each followed their own distinct trajectory of exploration for decades - interweaving rigorous experimentalism with transcultural conversations - and building upon roughly 20 years working as a duo, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang return with Azure, their third full-length with Ideologic Organ. Among their most riveting outings to date, comprising five new compositions recorded in Seattle during the spring of 2022, this remarkable body of sonority culminates in a singular gesture of contemporary minimalism that slowly unfolds across the album’s length. Emerging from the Pacific Northwest, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang have retained a strong presence within the context of North American experimental music since the mid 1990s, each producing some of the most grippingly original music to have appeared over the subsequent years. Kenney is a vocalist and composer internationally regarded for her spellbinding timbres and her in-depth study of oral traditions. Her work takes the form of sound installations, talismanic scores, music for film, electronics, and choir. She released the groundbreaking experimental gamelan album Atria (Sige) in 2015, and has collaborated with Lori Goldston, Holland Andrews, Niloufar Shiri, Tashi Wada, Alvin Lucier, Sarah Davachi, Melati Suryodarmo, Ensemble Nist-Nah, Sunn O))), and numerous others. Kang, a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger, works across genre and discipline, bringing subtlety, fluidity, and emotional intensity to each of his varied projects. In addition to creating a striking body of solo works that has traced its way across the last two and half decades - most recently including Sonic Gnostic (Aspen Edities, 2021) and Ajaeng Ajaeng (Ideologic Organ, 2020) - he has played on albums by Bill Frisell, Joe McPhee, Sun City Girls, Ikue Mori, Laurie Anderson, Blonde Redhead, William Hooker, Animal Collective, and numerous others. Since beginning to work together as a duo in the early 2000s, Kang and Kenney have collaborated on sound installations, music for orchestra, choir, and mixed ensembles in addition to releasing numerous widely acclaimed full-lengths: Aestuarium (2005), The Face Of The Earth (2012), Live In Iceland (2013), At Temple Gate (2014), Reverse Tree (2016), Seva (2017), The Cypress Dance (2020). A hypnotic return to the duo’s unique expression of “unison music", Azure is among Kenney and Kang’s most pared-down efforts in more than a decade. Its five compositions are underscored by allusions to the natural world and drifting temporalities, producing a profound calm that rises in arcs of tonal color. The album’s opener, Eclipse, is a composition built around the phrase “eclipse…inside the eclipse”, drawn from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s book, Dictee. Leaving aching silences between each utterance - Kenney’s sparse vocal interventions enmeshed with Kang’s delicate viola d’amore tones - the piece’s collective elements produce a remarkable tension bubbling within its spacious calm. The title track, Azure, takes its name from a pun on the Persian "az u" or "from her/him/them”, and is a meditation on the closing rhymes of ghazal 413 from the Divan of Hafez, such as mâh az u, râh az u, and âh az u, “the moon from them, the path from them, the sighs from them”. Imbued with sorrow and release, across the piece Kenney’s vocals and Kang’s viola d’amore weave and dance against a shruti drone, calling forth echoes of lost moments in far off worlds. This is followed by three pieces that incorporate traces of wide-ranging techniques into their forms. Ocean is an experiment with different intensities of pulsation, with inspiration from ring modulation’s use of two simultaneous frequencies, which assemble an enveloping expanse of intoxicating harmonics and vibrato. For Forest Floor, Kenney’s long-tone vocalizations play on the meanings of ‘tan’ or body, and ‘nur’ or light, and the town names of ‘Chegel’ and ‘Khotan’ from ghazal 327 from the Divan of Hafez. Dancing at the boundaries of sorrow and joy, her voice, paced in perfect harmony to Kang’s viola, seems to propose alternate realities of what ecstatic music might be. The album’s final piece draws upon Glenna Cole Allee’s book, Hanford Reach, incorporating photographs and words spoken within by interviewees living or working in the tribal territories of Wanapum, Yakama, Cayuse, Umatilla, Nez Perce, and many others on or near the Hanford Nuclear Site in the state of Washington. Among the album’s most dynamic and powerful efforts - drones and pizzicato tones playing counterpoint to Kenney’s soaring vocals - the duo, inexplicably, imbues strong impressions of that landscape. As Suzanne Kite states in the album’s liner notes, with each of Azure’s discrete expressions Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang “ask our ears to hold/stop/wait/listen closely to the edges of knowability, while the world continues around our sounding bodies… [they] draw our ears so closely that if we are not careful, the listener’s breath

‘i,i’ is Bon Iver’s most expansive, joyful and generous album to date. If 'For Emma, Forever Ago’ was the crisp, heart-strung isolation of a northern Winter; ‘Bon Iver’ the rise and whirr of burgeoning Spring; and '22, A Million', a blistering, "crazy energy" Summer record, ‘i,i’ completes the cycle: a fall record; Autumn-colored, ruminative, steeped. The autumn of Bon Iver is a celebration of self acceptance and gratitude, bolstered by community and delivering the bounty of an infinite American music.The sales and accolades are well-known - multiple Gold albums, multiple Grammys, chart-topping collaborations and festival headlines. But even more significantly, with each release Bon Iver quietly shifts the state of modern music. From the boundaries of folk, to the rules of autotune, to production work for others, Bon Iver’s fingerprint finds its way across the mainstream every time. Vernon has always been a master collaborator, and on ‘i,i’ that desire becomes maximal, with guests ranging from Moses Sumney and Bruce Hornsby to Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Here, the music - and band, and themes, and creative space - are bigger than ever.

One of the first artists from outside of Africa to sign to Hakuna Kulala, WULFFLUW XCIV brings his borderless productions to the label's ongoing Whitelabel series following a slew of dancefloor agitations from T5UMT5UMU, Menzi & Scratchclart, and others. "Toxica EP" builds on the mutant fusion of 2020's acclaimed "Ngoma Injection", stripping back the woozy psychedelia and chromium ambience and replacing it with pure soundsystem pressure. 'Take a Ride' bends acid techno machinery around rubbery East African rhythms, anchoring block party hedonism with a 4/4 bump that wouldn't be out of place in Kreuzberg and vocal shakes straight from São Paulo. But this isn't a mindless mashup of aesthetics, its a conversation with the world's fringe agitators, using stylistic and rhythmic strokes to highlight commonality, not exclusivity.Hakuna Kulala's own Chrisman appears on 'Tetemeka', and the two producers adapt the syrupy tarraxinha inversions the Congolese engineer perfected on last year's "Makila" full-length. Low, resonant gqom atmospheres underpin the entire track, but WULFFLUW XCIV's squeaky toy synths prevent it from slipping into darkness. Elsewhere 'Kluck' distorts the timeline completely, wedging flute-led Latin American tribal sounds into a riddim vs. trap superstructure, and 'Exp' sublimes speed dembow into delirious trance and minimal techno vapors. The boundaries between dance subgenres are slowly dissolving, and WULFFLUW XCIV's digital-era intermixture sounds like the cyberpunk carnival we're all desperately in need of.

The fifth album from shoegaze giants Slowdive contains the duality of a familiar internal language mixed with the exaltation of new beginnings. everything is alive is transportive, searching and aglow, the work of a classic band continuing to pitch its unmistakable voice to the future. Six years after the group’s monumental self-titled album, everything is alive finds Slowdive—vocalists and guitarists Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead, guitarist Christian Savill, bassist Nick Chaplin, and drummer Simon Scott—locating evermore contours of its immersive, elemental sound. The new record began with Halstead in the role of writer and producer, working on demos at home. Experimenting with modular synths, Halstead originally conceived of everything is alive as a “more minimal electronic record.” Slowdive’s collective decision-making ultimately drew the group back towards their signature reverb-drenched guitars, but that first concept seeped into the compositions. “As a band, when we’re all happy with it, that tends to be the stronger material,” Halstead says. “We’ve always come from slightly different directions, and the best bits are where we all meet in the middle.” The convergence of five unique characters has made the sound. “Slowdive is very much the sum of its parts,” Goswell adds. “Something unquantifiable happens when the five of us come together in a room.” The group’s projected studio sessions for everything is alive, in April 2020, were naturally scrapped, and when the group finally did meet up, six months later, at Courtyard Studio, where they’ve historically recorded, the mood was jubilant. (Finally, they had a proper reason to leave the house.) That was the beginning of a multi-year recording process, which moved from Oxfordshire and into the Wolds of Lincolnshire and back to Neil’s own Cornish studio before extending into February 2022, when the band brought in mixer Shawn Everett (The War On Drugs, SZA, Alvvays) to mix six of the record’s eight tracks. Owing to their deep history, there’s a palpable familial energy to Slowdive in 2023. everything is alive is dedicated to Goswell’s mother and Scott’s father, who both died in 2020. “There were some profound shifts for some of us personally,” Goswell says. Those crossroads are reflected in the many-layered emotional tenor of Slowdive’s music; everything is alive is heavy with experience, but each note is poised, wise, and necessarily pitched to hope. Its unique alchemy subtly embodies both sadness and gratitude, groundedness and uplift. Reflecting on “kisses,” which may be Slowdive’s surest pop moment yet, Halstead said, “It wouldn’t feel right to make a really dark record right now. The album is quite eclectic emotionally, but it does feel hopeful.” everything is alive, is exactly what the title suggests: an exploration into the shimmering nature of life and the universal touch points within it. Spanning psychedelic soundscapes, pulsating 80’s electronic elements and John Cale inspired journeys, the album lands immediately as something made for the future; which figures, as their fanbase has grown younger and younger as time has gone on, and their influence on forward thinking musical artists continues to prevail. For a genre that is often thought of as divisive, and often warrants introspection, here Slowdive show their craft as the masters of it by pushing it outwards, beyond the singular; the end result being a record which feels as emotional and cathartic as it is optimistic.

Black Market Brass is proud to present Hox, due out on Colemine Records on September 8, 2023. Their third LP is a new take on afrobeat that combines traditional grooves with heavy, hypnotic, sci-fi sounds that reflect the band’s myriad of influences as record collectors across genres. “We didn’t leave the traditional afro-beat sound behind, but we did allow ourselves to pull from different places with less hesitation.” Shared saxophonist Cole Pulice. Like their previous albums, the 9-piece band recorded Hox live to tape. “The sound and aesthetic of the analog recording process is important for this kind of music,” Pulice explained. “We’re looking to capture lightning in a bottle.” With that, the album features several sections of heavily processed synthesizers, harsh glitches, fuzzed out guitars, and a burning percussion section that pays homage to the traditional drumming cultures of Nigeria and Ghana. The performances are dynamic and confident. The grooves are infectious and hypnotic. BMB has pushed further into musical experimentalism, but at the end of the day, they’re still making dance music. Krautrock, free-jazz, doom metal – the inspirations for Hox stem from all kinds of musical backgrounds, but the sound is far from scattered. It’s a polished, innovative record that’s sure to exceed expectations and keep the listener engaged from start to finish.

This is first reissue ever Che-Shizu ライヴ集１（Steeple & Globe） www.discogs.com/release/1239264-シェシズ-ライブ集１1986-1988 With Download Code Chie Mukai Takuya Nishimura Yoshio Kuge Tori Kudo Masami Shinoda Yuriko Mukoujima Wataru Okuma Shinya Kimura Designed by Toyohiro Okazaki Remastered by Yasushi Utsunomiya Liner Notes by Shinji Shibayama Translate by Alan Cummings Limited Edition to 100.

Recorded as a live jam it's similar to The KLF’s Chill Out fused with Yokota’s unmistakable sound palette and Castle’s gift for storytelling. Initially CD only. Originally released in 95’ via CD on the seminal U.S ambient label, Silent, Numinous Island is the result of live jam sessions between Yokota and Castle. Several original tracks were recorded to DAT tape and then mixed to create a long form audio travelogue to an otherworldly destination. The result is something similar to the KLF’s Chill Out paired with Yokota’s unmistakable sound palette and Castle’s gift for storytelling. The vinyl edition has been faithfully edited by David Fogarty for uninterrupted hi–fidelity vinyl playback, maintaining the original track sequencing and energy of the CD version.

Music From Memory is pleased to present the new LP by Krefeld-born, Berlin-based artist Philipp Otterbach entitled 'The Dahlem Diaries'. Recorded in a little-visited corner of the German capital, 'The Dahlem Diaries' is a convergence of ideas, sketches and tracks, both old and new, most of which were produced between 2020-2022. Whilst eerie atmospheres, electronics and drums have played a pivotal role in Philipp’s earlier releases, his latest is a rather more introspective affair, in which the guitar takes a leading role. A role Otterbach uses to quietly bring light and hope to his music. Speaking about his writing process, Philipp explains that, based around his original compositions, “Friends were nice enough to contribute additional parts on their instruments which I then reworked, put together and re-contextualized. The recordings encapsulate a very specific moment in time, one that would have sounded perhaps very different the day before or after.” Combined with a strong use of effects and field recordings, 'The Dahlem Diaries' feels somewhat like a scene or fragment from a story, in which the narrative remains undefined. It is a playful album that is something of a blurred underwater adventure, sounding as bright as it is hazy, even psychedelic at times, yet with an almost melancholic positivity. In Philipp’s own words: “It could be an album about friendship and being at one with myself, whilst at the same time bringing a certain seriousness to my music, but not necessarily to myself; there is also a playful humour hidden in there. ” MFM063 will appear in LP and digital format, comes with artwork by David McFarline, and is expected to release July 23rd. Purchases via the official Music From Memory Bandcamp page include two exclusive digital only bonus tracks.

"Pulso is about sexual desire, my desire. Me as the subject, not only the object of it. I sing my pleasure and daydreams, because it's my body and my imagination, so I know what I like to feel." Sonically inspired by reggaeton, a genre that is personally nostalgic and reminiscent of times spent at parties listening to the imported genre as a teenager in her home country, Spain. Clara! works with producers who don’t usually dabble in the genre - SKY H1, Pearson Sound and Low Jack - in order to mix their own, unique universes with it.

Los Angeles-based saxophonist Sam Gendel ends 2023 with a remarkable run of releases, this time in collaboration with Ugnė Uma to bring us the mind-boggling Tam tikri objektai erdvėje (Lithuanian for Some Particular Objects in Space). Each track on the album is simply titled as a letter from the word "Saturn", and is conceptually cosmic, touching on both inner and outer space. Through improvisation they conjure a genuinely alien soundworld from strange musical instruments, sampling their own music and electronics. Incredibly far-out hybrid forms echo the peculiar mutant images on the cover art. Sam Gendel and Ugnė Uma's Tam Tikri Objektai Erdvėje album sketches a layered, melismatic and intertextual view on what both performers define as a lightness of being. Ugnė Uma's musical stance is influenced by experimental poetry and Lithuania's 20th century underground music scene - jazz and folk, resulting from the liberation of the country's independence movements. Sam Gendel, from Los Angeles, is a saxophonist and producer, proficient on more instruments than the saxophone alone, whose recorded work both solo and collaborative has brought him acclaim as a vital new voice in modern jazz and beyond. Tam Tikri Objektai Erdvėje is Lithuanian and translates as Some Particular Objects in Space. The six tracks on the album stand for every letter of the word Saturn. They sketch out a sound palette both fragile and full of forward momentum. With hints of improv, sampling their own recorded work and sounds of a childhood's Yamaha Portasound PSS-290 synth into abstractions of pop and r&b, some of these tracks reach an almost balearic feel, the more contemplative end of it. With lyrics delving into cosmic phenomena, Tam Tikri Objektai Erdvėje is an album about space, whether cosmic or inward or the one in between. It easily surpasses the sum of its influences and the materials and tactics used to produce it.

An exploration of misplaced desire and all-consuming romantic obsession, told through a series of beautifully constructed leftfield pop songs. La Porte, the second studio album by Charlotte Kouklia aka Charlène Darling, finds the artist and her group building a self-contained musical world via French and English language vocals, and a minimalist backing of guitar, organ, bass and drums.

At times recalling the feminist post-punk of The Raincoats, the avant songcraft of Brigitte Fontaine, or the psychedelic vignettes of Cate Le Bon, in truth Charlène Darling sounds like herself. The arrangements are playfully experimental, dubbed out percussion bubbling over the stripped back instrumentation, or rough tape edits disrupting lush harmonies, but never losing sight of the earworm hooks that make these songs so addictively listenable. Step through the door and walk right in.

Charlotte is one quarter of the band Rose Mercie. After a beguiling series of DIY tape and CD-R releases, her first widely distributed solo album, Saint-Guidon, was released in 2019.

In 2021 Nijs and Smolders started a series of free improvisations. Each came from a different background (see bio’s) and wanted to explore musical horizons that they were not used to. As a next step they decided to record an album of composed tracks. The experimental platform shifted from long improv sessions to composition and structure, with the work of Delaere as a source of inspiration. The material of his work, the unevenness, the detail of pigments clashing, superimposing on the canvas served as a metaphor and inspiration for sonic canvases that they constructed. The result has become a record full of surprises. Rhythm, drone, dynamics, timbre, notes, tones, all have been thrown in the tumble dryer and during the process many times led the two musicians towards an outcome they couldn’t have possibly foreseen. But here we are. Our own experience is that the music works best when it’s played loud. Crank up the level of your amp and dive into these 35 minutes of colorful sounds.

Moritz von Oswald's latest solo album is his most startling, time-bending material since the Basic Channel days, a collaboration with a 16-voice choir that refracts techno and choral music into dizzying psychedelic traces, exploiting mind-altering xenharmonic synth tones, Ligeti-like operatic phrases and abyssal kicks with a veteran's cunning. We've been knocked sideways by this one - trans-dimensional afters music at its absolute best. We realise that there's been a lot of electronic music released recently saddled with these buzzwords. Choirs, unusual tunings, deconstructions of early music - elements almost mandatory for artists eyeing the lucrative Euro festival circuit. But to our mind that's what makes von Oswald's latest all the more astonishing. He's stepped in with an album that's so definitive, it reminds us just how foundational and game-changing his early material was, and how less can so often amount to more. Opening track 'Silencio' is a dazzling proof of concept that winds lilting, oddly-tuned synth tones around the barest percussion. There are no vocals on this one, instead the traces of early Detroit techno hang heavy around its frayed edges. Working like a scientist with the stereo field, von Oswald introduces familiar elements into the mix in unexpected places. Wormy,cascading synth tones are met by driving whirrs, and the kickdrum sounds so submerged that it's almost an illusion. When he does introduce noisier sounds, they color the track like drybrushed highlights, and he saves the best until the final moments, energising the mood with monumental Millsian stabs that reference the past without retreading churned mud. It sets us up for the album's biggest tonal shift, when Oswald presents the choir on 'Luminoso'. He's worked extensively with ensembles in the last few years, his own - the constantly-shifting Moritz von Oswald Trio - the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Kyrgyz ensemble Ordo Sakhna, and the experience has furnished him with the ability to treat the choir with just the right amount of reverence and distance. Here, the Berlin singers' voices swirl into ghosted tones, nestling beneath a layer of mixing desk noise that feels like von Oswald's little wink to the camera, an acknowledgement of past glories. Moritz also provides a more abstracted rework of the track (along with three other versions of the choral compositions) that deepens the narrative. Losing the vocals completely, this take references the original's framework while adding impalpable, off-grid beats and cottony, rumbling textures that pirouette between the speakers. The synths and voices meet somewhere in the middle on 'Infinito', and von Oswald's remix shuttles them further into outer space, fogging them into spectral impressions and building a lithe rhythm over the top that hiccups and stutters with poise and momentum. 'Colpo' is even more impressive, offsetting the suggestive chorals with mechanical oscillations and thunderous sub bass tones. Like the earliest Detroit experiments, it's material that positions electronic music as a way to speculate about the past's relationship with the future. Von Oswald has formulated a minimalist masterpiece that interrogates not just technology, but the conceptual technologies of cultural invention. It's a highly rewarding, engrossing listen, certain to become a classic for the most adventurous after-hours listeners.

A 96 Minute Mix of all unreleased music by 21 contemporary artists. Featuring Molinaro, Carlos Niño & Friends, K15, Greg Beato, Legowelt, Afrikan Sciences, Hieroglyphic Being, Julion De’Angelo, 2000Black and many more. A journey through sounds, spheres, moods and dynamics dedicated to the unity and empowerment of the independent artists. Mixed, Cassette only, NO DIGITAL 'Love this sound' is where we find comfort in our favourite songs. Yet so much more can be enjoyed once one takes the journey of music exploration. This is something that does not come natural to most, but fortunately, Sassy J puts in the long hours to curate many musical trips. Expeditions in the boundless world sonically connected by years of music evolution, or the immediate arrival as though linked by sonic wormholes. A lust for musical growth fuels Sassy's quest for the identical but opposite, similar yet contrasting, energised and chilled sound that all fit perfectly together. Sassy J's eclectic selection taps into the sub conscience emotions music can reach. Is it meant to guide, provoke thought, bring happiness or ponder on misfortune whatever it does it all happens here at Patchwork. The popular echo chamber preaches to its own choir, whilst freedom of sound forces one to question if they will ever really know all what music can possibly be.

Follow-up to 2010’s acclaimed EP Addis-Abeba, Mercato is the debut album by Swiss band Imperial Tiger Orchestra, the finest connoisseurs and grooviest performers of Ethiopian music from the Golden Age. Raphaël Anker, trumpet player from Geneva, one day decides to gather musicians for a live performance revisiting the golden age of Ethiopian music. It's 2007, and the experience is so memorable that the one shot happening becomes a band: Imperial Tiger Orchestra. Consisting of members with very diverse backgrounds (free jazz, noise experimentations, contemporary music, twisted pop…) the Orchestra tests the grounds with an EP and a 7" breaking the boundaries of genres followed by a trip to Addis-Abeba where they perform with local luminaries and learn about the large diversity of Ethiopian music. A life-changing experience which brings them back to the studio for their debut album: Mercato. Overseen with flair by Ethiopian music expert Jeoren Visse, Mercato is a mesmerizing re-interpretation of Ethiopian music's golden age mixed with the digitalized themes that appeared in the 80s and filtered through the eclectic influences of the Orchestra. It's a fascinating retro-futuristic piece of music, close yet totally different from the songs that inspired the band. It's progressive Ethiopian rock! Whether saluting Mahmoud Ahmed on "Lale Lale", re-interpretating the classic wedding theme "Shinet", or taking Martha Ashagani's "Zoma" to new heights, the Orchestra always does it with its unique vision while honoring the Ethiopian originals. Thunderous rhythms and feverish hooks, down tempo moments and fast paced epiphanies, electronic sounds and ambient nirvanas, Mercato explores multiples paths and never loses its warm groove. A winter Mercato sure to bring fire to stages this summer!

As Young Druid, John T. Gast distills his most endearing Midi-eval energies into a suite of LED candle-lit fugues and funky Myrdas, making a sterling follow-up to his UVA_roots_and_destruction mixtape for Richard Sides’ Bus and the INNA BABALON tape in 2016, which was also self-issued on his 5 Gate Temple label. Concocted from a bank of recordings alchemised on one box and a two-track recorder, Young Druid follows 12 ley-lines of investigation with findings equally applicable to occult soirees and the downtime of amateur archaeologists and tyrannical trap lords alike; conjuring a haul of exquisitely ornate, glyphic hooks, gilded dub grooves and smoked-out chamber themes of a supremely rarified yet earthly air. They bear a striking resemblance to the bright, poised baroque MIDI orchestrations of Coil as much as King Tubby’s classic digi dubs, splitting the fine difference between K. Leimer’s new age experiments and Roland Young’s mystiphonic experiments or even Wiley and Geneeus’ early grime etudes; essentially divining an obscure, arcane and meditative sense of spirituality that transcends time and place with a broad appeal to armchair and headphone-dwelling mystics of all stripes. If you need any prompts, check the creamy luft of Young Druid for a start, then the cross-eyed invocation of Fugue and the Jammer-meets-kenji Kawai stepper, Myrda, and Blue’s exquisite trip hop pallor and you should have a good measure of the variety and consistency of mood and vibe therein. Strongly recommended.

Gurum Triads is a transatlantic guitar & drum duet album that explores multiple techniques (none of which involve playing guitar). London musician Dane Law uses a Max/MSP contraption of his own invention, which allows him to improvise in real time using samples of his acoustic guitar. Wisconsin-based producer/drummer Chants contributed cassette tapes of his drums & percussion to this process, and then took the resulting recordings and added additional layers of live drumming and self-sampled beats. The focus was never on the process itself but on the feeling and interplay of tactile textures, and on memories of shared post-rock touchstones. Recorded between January 2022 - February 2023.

Palestre is a study of higher-dimensional spaces and altered states of consciousness. It explores parallel dimensions and temporal anomalies from a perspective that blends mythology, modern physics, ADHD, transcendental music and club culture. Sciogli Assurdi was recorded between art galleries, clubs, squats, and folkloric festivities in 2018.