MUSIC

Acclaimed guitar duo Loren Connors and Alan Licht celebrate their 30-year collaboration with release of their eighth album — At The Top Of The Stairs.Across the decades, their improvisations turned increasingly abstract and atonal, while still maintaining complex, ethereal arrangements. The harmonious blend of Licht's meticulously crafted feedback and harmonic patterns with Connors' ghostly blue tones remains the core sound of this partnership. At The Top Of The Stairs was recorded live in 2018. Across two side-long pieces, the duo ascends slowly, through layers of atmospheric tension punctuated by thunderous waves of Connors' effects.For fifty years, Connors's adaptation of acoustic Delta blues has transmuted into miniature gray scale compositions and howling riffs. His collaborators include Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, and Kim Gordon. Rock/experimental musician Alan Licht was a member of the bands Love Child, Run On, and Lee Ranaldo & the Dust, and has released a range of acclaimed rock and experimental albums. He is an author with books published by Rizzoli, W.W. Norton, Faber & Faber and Blank Forms.

Ethereal dream gloom from a voice so unique they had to create an entirely new genre to contain all four octaves. Mixing classical music with synthesizer and acoustic guitar, Happy Rhodes' "ecto pop" never quite broke outside upstate New York, but that didn't stop gothic-americana queen Marissa Nadler from reinterpreting "Where Do I Go" in 2018. Both the original and cover have been paired here, housed in an elegant black and silver sleeve, with embossed braille lettering for the visually impaired.

Michael Nau is set to release his fifth full length record under Karma Chief Records on 12/8/2023. Since the mid 2000’s, he’s crafted a catalog of thoughtful, reflective songs as the frontman of indie-rock mainstays Cotton Jones, Page France, and Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread. All 11 tracks come together to paint a beautiful picture. The lyrics invoke the listener’s imagination throughout. They’re introspective, but vague and open-ended. The indie rock backdrop shows signs of psych-soul influence with dry and punchy drums, lush synth lines, and tastefully verb-soaked vocal production. Sweeping string arrangements and French horn runs add cinematic motion to the waltz-y “Shiftshaping” (track 4). Slide guitar and a shuffling snare drum add some get-up-and-go to “Painting a Wall” (track 2). Nau’s vocal delivery falls somewhere between crooning to a crowd, telling stories to a loved one, and musing to himself. The singer-songwriter’s relaxed attitude toward making records is discernible in the sound. A while back, veteran producer and engineer Adrien Olsen (The Killers, Lucy Dacus, Fruit Bats), approached him about recording in his Richmond, Virginia-based studio. For the first time in a while, Michael had some sessions on the calendar. He called a few old friends and put together a band. “I didn’t have much of a plan before Adrien reached out, so I wrote some songs specifically for the session,” Michael explained. “I was thinking about what would be fun to play with this specific group of guys." The band consisted of several long-time collaborators and musicians who had participated in Nau’s various recording and touring efforts over the years. “It had been a while since I’d made music in a room with other people,” Michael shared. “We just sort of started playing and didn’t really talk about what was happening.” The combo’s newfound chemistry was a primary source of inspiration and, with the help of Olsen, ultimately led to an album’s-worth of music. Nau and the band spent five days at Montrose Recording and left with a plan to return and finish up a few months later. “After the first session, I took a copy of the recordings with me to overdub a few things at my spot,” Michael shared. While he was working through it, he found a bunch of beautiful moments of jamming in between the takes. “I grabbed a bunch of the pieces and tried to work them in. Then, I dumped the whole thing onto a cassette as one long stream of songs.” With the record mostly complete, the final session at Montrose would consist of some simple overdubs and finishing touches. But somehow, in the months between, he lost the overdubs. “Going into the second session, all I had was the cassette,” Michael explained. The band got back together and performed another batch of songs. At the end of their second session, they had enough music to pick and choose from for the new full-length. “The songs, as they appear on the album, are basically how they were recorded as a live band.” Grab a copy of Accompany on 12/08/2023 and keep an eye out for tour dates in the coming months.

The second part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s. The music included here can probably all be said to have all stemmed from a style that initially took root in the Fanti region of coastal southern Ghana. Fusing local percussion instruments with the introduction of western (most notably Portuguese) guitars that had made their way to the Fanti region of southern Ghana via the Kru seamen of Liberia, who are said to have pioneered the distinctive two-fingered style of playing while sailing the high seas. Mingling amongst the Kru as well as with other sailors and local working-class people during the 1920s & 30s, the guitars infused with the traditional Akan seprewa harp-playing technique, creating a style known as 'odonson' or 'Akan blues' - a rootsy highlife style also commonly referred to as palm wine music, so named after the palm wine bars where the music was commonly performed. Western record companies such as Zonophone, Columbia, Odeon, HMV, and later Decca/EMI's West Africa imprint, released much of the recordings included here - with the earliest inclusions appearing courtesy of George William Aingo, Nicholas De Heer, Edmund Tagoe & Frank Essien, and Jacob Sam's Kumasi Trio (all recorded in London during the late 1920s). The form would become a key element in the popular development of both Ghanaian & Nigerian highlife, as well as the maringa of Sierra Leone, the juju of western Nigeria, and the Congolese "dry" guitar music of central Africa. With thanks to John Collins and the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation.

The first part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s. The music included here can probably all be said to have all stemmed from a style that initially took root in the Fanti region of coastal southern Ghana. Fusing local percussion instruments with the introduction of western (most notably Portuguese) guitars that had made their way to the Fanti region of southern Ghana via the Kru seamen of Liberia, who are said to have pioneered the distinctive two-fingered style of playing while sailing the high seas. Mingling amongst the Kru as well as with other sailors and local working-class people during the 1920s & 30s, the guitars infused with the traditional Akan seprewa harp-playing technique, creating a style known as 'odonson' or 'Akan blues' - a rootsy highlife style also commonly referred to as palm wine music, so named after the palm wine bars where the music was commonly performed. Western record companies such as Zonophone, Columbia, Odeon, HMV, and later Decca/EMI's West Africa imprint, released much of the recordings included here - with the earliest inclusions appearing courtesy of George William Aingo, Nicholas De Heer, Edmund Tagoe & Frank Essien, and Jacob Sam's Kumasi Trio (all recorded in London during the late 1920s). The form would become a key element in the popular development of both Ghanaian & Nigerian highlife, as well as the maringa of Sierra Leone, the juju of western Nigeria, and the Congolese "dry" guitar music of central Africa. With thanks to John Collins and the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation.

Trances, Jules Reidy’s follow-up to the celebrated World in World (2022), takes place in between states, tracing a kind of restless movement in search of—or is it away from?—a center. The twelve tracks shift between fragment and epic, returning to familiar phrases between forays outward into uncertain expanses. Through its exploration of the cyclical movements of grief and emotional turbulence, Trances produces a sonic world as raw, absorbing, and surprising as anything Reidy has created to date. Trances’ primary instrument is a custom hexaphonic electric guitar tuned in Just Intonation. Reidy’s combination of fingerpicked phrases, open strums, and corrugated processing push on the grammar of guitar-driven experimentalism, locating expressive heft in open-ended harmonics and the odd angles formed by overlapping elements. Chords are slowed and stretched as if to examine their resonance, then overtaken by subterranean motion. The effect is that of oceanic depth, but the rippling that passes between the compositions’ sedimentary layers often takes on a metallic edge. The addition of synthesizers, sampled 12-string guitar, field recordings, and half-submerged autotuned voice further denaturalize the compositions. Reidy’s vocal interjections—their particular linguistic content rendered inaccessible—are based on counting and self-observational techniques for bringing oneself back into the present; at times Reidy’s picking also assumes a mantra-like quality, though ultimately the flow of the composition subsumes both. There is a heavy sense of the strange throughout these songs, which bleed at their edges into a continuous, questioning whole. That Reidy’s compositions here have a tendency to engulf the listener, like a wave or a squall, can be variously comforting and disorienting. Either way, we are fortunate to follow Reidy on such a journey.

The debut solo album from Ronnie Lion, one half of Ambient Warrior, is a homage to Spanish Town the capital of St Catherine in Jamaica. As the title suggests the Spanish guitar features heavily from both Ronnie and lead guitarist Sean Wilkinson. The album has a reggae palette at its core with the rhythm section of Ronnie on Bass and Horseman on drums providing a rock solid foundation for the intricate and memorable hooks provided by Sean’s Spanish Guitar. The album’s fusion of Reggae with Bossa Nova & Flamenco Guitar creates another special album that will appeal to fans of Ambient Warrior and beyond. The LP is pressed on heavyweight 180 Gram Vinyl with full sleeve artwork from Bradley Pinkerton.

June McDoom's eponymous debut EP is a collection of songs that collage virtually everything important to her. Growing up in South Florida in a Jamaican household, McDoom was raised around reggae music, which echoed throughout every room of her childhood home. Later, she discovered and nourished her own deep love for folk music and songwriting of the 1960's and 70's. While studying in NYC for a degree in Jazz Performance, her musical palette expanded to include the more intricate influences of jazz and early soul. Realizing that her favorite vintage folk music lacked artists with similar identities as her own, it became increasingly important for McDoom to carve a unique musical space – to push folk music towards a new and different audience.Following the release of her debut single, "The City" – mixed by Gabe Wax (Soccer Mommy, Spoon) – June McDoom was eager to take the reins on the production of her debut EP. Recorded and mixed entirely from home with collaborator Evan Wright, McDoom found herself enthralled with the analog recording process, which began a textural exploration that defines this record. Experimenting with a mixture of vintage analog and modern digital recording, McDoom learned profound new ways to marry the seemingly contrasting genres and style that had individually shaped her.June McDoom's debut EP is steeped in self-discovery, and self-acceptance. Its magic lies in its ability to weave the influences of such seemingly disparate icons as Joan Baez, The Delfonics and Alton Ellis into a new, seamlessly crafted tapestry.

picnic follow up their self-titled debut album with ‘creaky little branch’. 

A love for early 00's electronica guides the listener as it sits somewhere between familiarity and the unknown. However, this isn’t an exercise in nostalgia, instead foreground for the here and now.

With contributions from Alejandra & Aeron, el2, Kindtree, Nico Callaghan, samb_rules, Craig Tattersall (The Humble Bee, Hood, The Boats, etc.), Theodore Cale Schafer and Ultrafog.

Recorded in correspondence throughout a calamitous and uncertain 2020, “Eye of the Sea" is a collaborative record made by Tom James Scott of the United Kingdom and Svitlana Nianio of Ukraine. Active since the late 1980s, Nianio has released a treasure trove of diverse and beguiling music under her own name, as a member of the legendary Ukrainian experimental unit Cukor Bila Smerť, and in collaboration with the late musician and instrument maker Oleksandr Yurchenko. For his part, Scott has steadily published solo recordings since the mid aughts on labels such as Bo’Weavil, Students of Decay, and Where to Now?, and worked often in collaboration with kindred spirits like Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Lujik. “Eye of the Sea” began as a series of intimate, muted piano sketches put to tape by Scott, which Nianio embellished and re-contextualized with voice and instrumentation before returning them to Scott for further overdubbing, editing, and mixing. Listening to these recordings, I’m struck most by their patience, frailty, and beauty. Soft piano lines unspool alongside Nianio’s weightless voice on tracks such as “Slowly Turns the Spring,” which achieves a richly devotional air, and “Lotus,” a piece that all but halts the passage of time as it slowly blooms into expression. But despite their elusive, gauzy palette, there is a startling directness to these recordings that feels unique in the oeuvres of both musicians. Much like Nianio’s wonderful “Lisova Kolekciya,” (reissued by Scott on Skire in 2017) there is the sense that this music, particularly the vocal arrangements, is firmly rooted in some hermetic, primordial tradition. Ultimately, “Eye of the Sea” is a work of romantic, phantasmagoric beauty shot through with morning light; one which draws deeply on 20th century classical, chamber and liturgical musics, and ambient minimalism to arrive at a distinctive voice of its own. - Alex Cobb (Students of Decay/Soda Gong) credits

Bristol’s four-piece outfit Quade announce their debut album, ‘Nacre’, out 17th November via AD93. ‘Nacre’ is the culmination of three years of work from the band, the blueprints of their songwriting and sound firmly established in the sprawling, haunting and yet hopeful record. Traipsing between gothic expansiveness and cosmic psychedelia, the record cannot be pinned down into one recognisable place. By the album’s close, the listener may be left wondering whether it was all a memory or a dream. The recording and production of the record was collaborative, with the band drawing upon the services of Jack Ogbourne and Larry ‘Bruce’ McCarthy - two divergent pillars of Bristol’s music community - for engineering and mixing respectively.

To celebrate the 21st anniversary of Juana Molina’s breakthrough album Segundo (2000), here’s a very special reissue, remastered from the original tapes, and augmented by a rich booklet recounting the eventful start of Juana’s musical career, and containing numerous notes, anecdotes, original drawings and previously unreleased pictures.
Segundo is the album which started Juana Molina’s international trajectory as a musician, and its making was a wild story: after dropping her highly-successful career as a TV comedian, and signing with a major company who got her to record her debut album, Juana set out to find her own direction in music and started working on a new record (aptly titled Segundo). This journey took four years, and included sessions in Argentina and in several houses where she lived on the US West Coast, the involvement of several possible producers and of four successive record labels, who each had their own idea of what Juana should be doing... Juana remained untamed, forged ahead and, during the course of this sometimes complicated process, developed her own method and her own characteristic sound. She writes:
From the moment “Segundo” took shape, I began to walk a path that I have not yet abandoned. That is why it’s so important to me. I feel that this was the seed of everything I have done ever since. I discovered the flair of composing in real time, the charm of discarding the very idea of demos, the grace of documenting these moments of searching and finding. Everything else became dispensable.

In 2000, Juana finally self-released Segundo in Argentina. The album semi-accidentally made its way to Japan where it very spectacularly took off, and was eventually picked up by the Domino label in 2003. The reception of Segundo set Juana Molina on course for starting to perform around the globe, garnering a large, devoted fan base, and going on to record five more extraordinary studio albums (including the widely-acclaimed Halo in 2017) and a live record (ANRMAL, 2020).
All this and much more is narrated in the lovely booklet, which includes notes by several people who were involved in these events (including Bruce Springsteen producer Ron Aniello) and by early adopters such as KCRW DJ Chris Douridas, Domino Recording’s Laurence Bell (who discovered Segundo by chance, in Will Oldham’s car), and David Byrne who, as soon as he heard the album for the first time, invited Juana to open for him on his 2003 US tour. 
 

“…his raw songcraft is terrifyingly effective at communicating the breadth of human emotion… beautiful,damaged,naked and utterly compelling.”- THE WIRE “The quaver in Mr. Banhart's voice is as shaky as his songs' connection to everyday reality...his songs and fragments ponder animals, apparitions, logical leaps and childlike certainties, all with credible eccentricity.”- THE NEW YORK TIMES #2 ALTERNATIVE ALBUM OF 2002 “It's been awhile since an obsessive, naïve, utterly original musical visionary…emerged from a private sanctum into the embrace of the rock cognoscenti. But we've got one now.” -THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

Palto Flats / Putojefe Records present the first ever reissue of the work of American composer Dorothy Carter, master of the hammered dulcimer, zither, and other instruments of the hammer chord zither/psalterium family. A true musical vagabond, Dorothy was born in New York in 1935, though her spiritual pursuit of an expansive musical knowledge would take her to monasteries in Mexico, conservatories in France and London, and the founding of the Central Maine Power Music Company (CMPMC), with new-age/minimalist luminaries such as Constance Demby and Robert Rutman. Dorothy Carter was many things - a virtuoso player, storyteller, historian of Celtic and Appalachian folk music, avid lifelong busker, avant-garde musician, and itinerant troubadour, laying a framework for music that existed both within and outside of standard folk idioms - never better represented than on her 1978 masterwork, Waillee Waillee. Underscored by Bob Rutman’s cavernous bowing of the steel cello, the richness of Waillee Waillee’s sound produces an album unlike any other in her discography. In particular, its two side-ending pieces, “Summer Rhapsody” and “Tree of Life,’’ glide with the shimmering filigree of hammered dulcimer and Dorothy Carter’s ephemeral voice floating over Rutman’s droning buzz of the steel cello. The elements of these two tracks suggest something akin to a transcendental Appalachian raga or whirling cosmic folk music, an effortless combination that serves to add additional substance to the remaining tracks on the album. The title track is one of her most enduring compositions, often performed in stripped down versions throughout her career, and one of her sole recordings featuring a full band, with the contrapuntal interplay of tremulous flute, vibrating steel cello, bass and drums. Lyrically and tonally, her voice would never sound as stirring and refi ned as on this, her most outwardly accessible song. She counted musical colleagues as diverse as Constance Demby, Einstürzende Neubauten and Laraaji, as well as her lifelong artistic partner and friend Bob Rutman, whose imprint is felt throughout the grooves of this record. The master tapes for this recording were fortuitously discovered in Rutman’s Berlin studio, many, many years later. As recounted in Laraaji’s contribution to the liner notes, Dorothy was “someone who really influenced my early zither exploration and vocabulary and inspired my shift toward hammered zither performance and recording,” after encountering him busking on the sidewalk one day in the 1970s. Later, when living in Berlin in the early 1990s, Dorothy would begin work on manuscripts detailing the history of the dulcimer family and providing extensive sheet music, selected material of which is reproduced in the twelve page booklet included with this release. Dorothy would find later success touring and performing in the late 90s with the ensemble Mediæval Bæbes, which she led with British musician Katherine Blake, playing a prominent role on their first four albums.

Mysterious Japanese singer song writer. Originally released 2009.

Mysterious Japanese singer song writer. Originally released 1999.

A reimagined version of Michael Hurley's 2002 masterpiece! Some of the most beautiful recordings of his catalog available on vinyl for the first time. Sweetkorn was originally released on CD only. This version has been remixed to bring Michael's voice and guitar to the forefront. We've also omitted a couple songs from the O.G version and added a completely unheard tune from the session. A masterpiece featuring all time Hurley hits like 'Oh My Stars', 'The Rue Of Ruby Whores', 'The End Of The Road' and 'Got Over It."

Punisher is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, released on June 18, 2020 by Dead Oceans. Bridgers first established herself with her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps, a widely acclaimed indie rock effort. In the years preceding her second album, the California native formed the bands boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center. On Punisher, Bridgers' songwriting is somber and sardonic; deeply personal in nature, it explores topics like dissociation and fragmenting relationships.

This is the debut solo release of Benju maestro, Ustad Noor Bakhsh, from the Makran Coast of Balochistan. The album is named 'Jingul', after a bird that often frequents Noor's house, and whose songs inspired the last track on this release — an original by Noor. The album was recorded live on location, over a memorable sunset on the Shadi Kaur creek, close to Noor's village, near Pasni, Balochistan. Noor plays an Electric Benju, amplified using an old pick up and Phillips amp that he found in a market in Karachi three decades ago. The Benju, is said to have once been a Japanese children's toy called the Taishōgoto. At some point in the 20th century, it was modified and naturalised by Baloch musicians who made it in to a refined folk instrument for themselves. Balochistan straddles the space between modern day Pakistan and Iran but its music, particularly that of Makran, evokes the well documented migrations and seafaring; historical intimacies with Africa, Persia, and Arabia, via the greater Indian Ocean world. It is this world that Noor's music wanders through.

Official reissue of the sophomore album from fabled folk singer-songwriter/actress/writer, and one of the most gorgeous voices of Japanese music, Hako Yamasaki, originally released in 1976 on the legendary Elec Records, one of the first independent labels in the country. Tsunawatari is a perfect follow-up to her classic debut Tobimasu, immortalizing the bitter beauty of heartache with tearful performances and nostalgic empowerment. Hako Yamasaki is considered a pioneer in both the creative boom and the rise of feminism of 1970s Japan. This album is released in conjunction with Tobimasu, also available on WRWTFWW Records. Folk, Alternative, Psychedelic, Soft, Poetic

Wow, it's as if you're being swallowed into another world of beauty, music that is out of this world. A Colourful Storm, a prestigious label based in Melbourne, Australia, has released an important album this year. The latest album by Maxine Funke, a female musician from New Zealand who has been introduced to us several times, and who was also a member of the legendary experimental rock band "$100 Band", is now available. From the sensual, exploratory sounds of "Fairy Baby" and "Homage" to the ghosts of American primitive folk on "Quiet Shore," it's a delicate dreamscape documenting the finest of soundscapes. Drop the needle and you'll instantly fall in love with it. This is New Zealand's most extraordinary voice. I highly recommend this album to all music lovers! Insert included.

Un Día is a hypnotic record, restless, alive with melodies that surface imperceptibly before burrowing into your brain, never to leave. It’s a record informed by an ever shifting and polymorphous sense of groove, rhythms writhing over and inside each other, played out on wood and cymbal and bombo legüero, and woven from electronic glitches. “I noticed rhythm on my previous records was tacit, there but concealed,” explains Molina. “For this record, I aimed to make what was obvious to me obvious to others, to bring it to the front, like a hidden layer in Photoshop.”

This approach informs more than just Un Día’s rhythms. These songs are bright and playful; for all their seeming complexity, the melodies and harmonies of tracks like ‘¿Quien? (Suite)’ lock into place instantly, the gentle and trancelike conversation between coos and sighs and handclaps and murmurs building to nagging, chiming hooks and refrains. And while she has experimented with Ambient and Electronic music – and while those experiments still indelibly colour her approach – Un Dia is a warmly human record, Molina’s voice played to the foreground, gliding dreamily through the tangle tentative rhythm on the blissful eddy of ‘No Llama’, sighing urgently along with the spectral guitars and keyboards of ‘Los Hongos De Marosa’.

The first volume in a survey of a form of Brazilian country music known as música caipira ("hillbilly music") - a stripped-back forerunner to música sertaneja, the Brazilian equivalent to US country & western which in it's contemporary form has come to dominate the domestic music industry in recent decades. This collection covers some of the earliest recordings made by the pioneering folklorist Cornélio Pires at the end of the 1920s, through to records from the 30s, 40s & 50s and the beginning of the 60s. Somewhat rooted in Portuguese troubadour folk traditions, música caipira is typically performed by a duo singing in parallel thirds and sixths, drawing upon a Portuguese-Brazilian style known as moda de viola - with the viola being the viola caipira, a Brazilian-style ten-string guitar that is the core instrument of the music. Born out of the "outback"-style region in north-eastern Brazil, these songs tell stories of pain, love, loss & betrayal - often backed by homemade guitars using invented tunings. Away from the polished pop country & western-stylings of the sertaneja, these recordings could be viewed as the Brazilian equivalent to the roots music of the American dustbowl or Appalachia.

MD Pallavi & Andi Otto first crossed paths on a theatre stage in India ten years ago. They started collaborating instantly and in 2016 MD Pallavi's mesmerizing vocals for the downtempo raga Bangalore Whispers warmed hearts and ears. Their musical relationship flourished with artistic residencies in Bangalore and Hamburg, their respective hometowns, and a concert tour in Japan. The album presents an interwoven pop-aesthetic vision of the two artists with their contrasting musical backgrounds. It ranges from organically woven folktronica to cut-up disco tracks and acoustic ballads. MD Pallavi is a singer, actress, filmmaker and performer from Bangalore, South-India, where she trained in Hindustani music and poetry since childhood. On Songs for Broken Ships, poems in her native tongue Kannada*, one of India's many languages, are performed over Andi’s alluring production, translating the stories into musical narratives. The poems address topics that are as timeless as the music itself. Social equality is touched upon in Bayalu (written by Bontadevi in the 12th century). Artistic struggles - communicated on An Unwritten Word (Gangadhar Chittala, 1865) - are almost prophetic and the surreal, dreamlike scenario of Clockshop (KS Narasimhaswamy,1958) brings you further inside the sonic journey. Andi Otto is a composer, cellist and DJ based in Hamburg, Germany, He is known for his idiosyncratic and unconventional dance music productions on labels such as Multi Culti, Shika Shika and Pingipung (which he co-runs and curates). For this collaborative experience his dubbed out basslines gently interlock with the 7/4 and 5/4 beats to create a backbone for the instrumentation and expressive vocal timbres of MD Pallavi. His sound design combines graceful acoustic recordings, juxtaposed against modern drum machines, computer generated noise and vintage synthesizers.