MUSIC

Fire of God’s Love is the legendary 1973 album by Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor—a sincere, soulful, and unconsciously psychedelic song sequence devoted to self-reflection and awakening the spirit within. A collection of original folk spirituals written by and channelled through O’Connor with guitar, electric organ, drum machine and her angelic voice, the album was recorded and mixed in an astonishingly futuristic fashion by fellow nun and recording engineer Sister Marimil Lobregat. This edition from Freedom To Spend is the first authorized reissue of this holy grail since 1976; the album restored and remastered with love from the best available sources by Jessica Thompson.

Fire of God’s Love is the legendary 1973 album by Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor—a sincere, soulful, and unconsciously psychedelic song sequence devoted to self-reflection and awakening the spirit within. A collection of original folk spirituals written by and channelled through O’Connor with guitar, electric organ, drum machine and her angelic voice, the album was recorded and mixed in an astonishingly futuristic fashion by fellow nun and recording engineer Sister Marimil Lobregat. This edition from Freedom To Spend is the first authorized reissue of this holy grail since 1976; the album restored and remastered with love from the best available sources by Jessica Thompson.

Written and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, Back to the Woodlands is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album Neighborhoods. A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, Back to the Woodlands offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind. Working closely with his estate to maintain his original vision, Freedom to Spend has restored and remastered this never before released, lost masterpiece by Ernest Hood from the original tapes. Ernest Hood’s Back to the Woodlands will be issued on vinyl, as well as on CD in combination with its contemporary Where the Woods Begin, with new liner notes by Michael Klausman.

For Greg Mendez, reflection doesnüft mean a static image in a mirror, or even a face he recognizes. Itüfs more a kaleidoscopic mirage, where paths taken shapeshift with the prospect of paths untread, and the subconscious merges with the intentional. On his self-titled new album, the Philadelphia-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist investigates the shaky camera of memory, striving to carve out a collage that points to a truth. But there isnüft a regimented actuality here; instead, Mendez highlights the merit in many truths, and many lives, and how even the hardest truths can still contain some humor. While this is technically Mendezüfs third full-length album, his back catalog boasts an extensive range of EPs and live recordings. Heüfs a prolific and thoughtful songwriter, understanding the joy in impulse, and shying away from the clinical sheen of overproduction. 2017üfs ügüP/ _(c)_ /üPüh and 2020üfs Cherry Hell garnered acclaim for their quiet, lo-fi urgency, exploring themes of addiction and heartbreak with an intentional, authentic haze, and itüfs this approach that has solidified Mendez as a staple in the DIY community for years. Greg Mendez was written in fragments, some stretching across more than a decade, with Mendez reworking old ideas and arrangements, and others blossoming much more recently. The weight of time..and perhaps the anxiety in running out of it..clouds the album, as Mendez prods at some painful experiences from his childhood and early adulthood. The common thread connecting the characters is their evident imperfections, and the various degrees of damage they cause, both knowingly and unknowingly. But where do we draw the line between a good person and a bad person? For Mendez, itüfs never been that easy. Greg Mendez is an intimate dialogue between the chapters weüfve experienced, and how they can inform the reality we perceive. Itüfs a reminder that we are constantly shifting, ever-changing selves and that if we ruminate too long, we may find ourselves stuck in the seriousness of it all. Here, Mendez allows us to take the time to notice what happens outside of the framework we may have built for ourselves, and the beauty that can occur when we finally do.

Mei Semones’ sweetly evocative blend of jazz, bossa nova and math-y indie rock is not only a way for her to find solace in her favorite genres, but is an intuitive means of catharsis. “Blending everything that I like together and trying to make something new – that's what feels most natural to me,” says the 23-year-old Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and guitarist. “It’s what feels most true to who I am as an artist.” ‘Tsukino’, Mei’s debut, self-released EP, is being released physically for the first time ever on Bayonet Records! The EP will be released by itself on CD & Tape formats, and will be included in a vinyl pressing on the B-side of Semones’ landmark EP, ‘Kebutomushi’! Plinking guitar tones and asymmetrical time signatures exemplify Semones’ forays into angular indie rock more now than ever before. Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Semones began playing music at a young age, starting out on piano at age four before moving to electric guitar at age eleven. After playing jazz guitar in high school, she went on to study guitar performance with a jazz focus at Berklee College of Music. College is where she met her current bandmates, including string players Noah Leong and Claudius Agrippa, whose respective viola and violin add softness and multidimensionality to Mei’s intricate guitar work. After releasing a slew of singles and an EP in 2022, coinciding with her move to New York City, Mei and her band have since gone on to collaborate with post-bossa balladeer John Roseboro and embark on their first-ever tour with the melodic rock outfit Raavi. Semones chronicles infatuation, devotion, and vulnerability in her songs, complete with sweeping strings, virtuosic guitar-playing and heartfelt lyrics sung in both English and Japanese, that have all become part of her sonic trademark: ornately catchy, genre-fusing compositions serving as the backdrop to tender lyrics touching on the universalities of human emotion.

From Melbourne, Australia, singer-songwriter Ruth Parker releases her album, Otherwise Occupied, featuring a rich tapestry of acoustic instruments like guitar, ukulele, accordion, bouzouki, cello, and mandolin, all woven together with her delicate and intimate vocals. The sound, which carefully preserves quiet space, places the album squarely within the indie-folk and singer-songwriter lineage. However, its lush textures and mellow resonance also give it a dream-folk quality, resonating with listeners and allowing them to relive moments of introspection and subtle emotional shifts. Rather than focusing on grand gestures, it's an album that rewards those who lean in to appreciate its finer nuances, wrapping you in a gentle and profound sense of depth.

We are excited to present to the world the debut solo album by Lily Mullen. A songwriter / poet in her early 20s, residing in Northwest Oregon. Lily was born with Down Syndrome and is a fierce advocate for disability justice and other underrepresented voices. This album has a playful and magical quality - like found in the self-contained worlds of the Raincoats or the Slits. There are both rockers and ballads - with echoes of the Velvet Underground and Modern Lovers. Folky and poetic songs à la Patti Smith, Nico or Neil Young. Songs that vocally AND musically evoke Mark E Smith and The Fall. Of course, those are all just reference points! Lily’s voice is unique and original and forging new and beautiful artistic territory. Clever wordplay, cosmic themes, surrealist poetry, heart on sleeve laments, tearjerkers - this album has it all. Recorded at Sonic Lodge in Eugene, Oregon by Justin Higgins. Musical contributions from Chris Gunn (Lavender Flu), Miranda Soileau-Pratt (Spatulas), Scott Simmons (Lavender Flu), Kate Williams and Justin Higgins. Be wild. Be free. Experience Lily!

It began somewhere between sleep and memory. After first meeting in dreams, in Brussels and Berlin, on landscapes that felt strangely close to Vilnius, Marija Rasa aka emer and Ugnė Uma leisurely rewrote those visions into songs. What followed became a collection of moments suspended in idle summers, familiar faces, gentle motions, skin touched by golden sun. These songs wander through closeness and distance, tracing the delicate emotional shifts between us, who almost understand each other completely. ‘you and me’ lives in the space where magical realism meets everyday intimacy: honey-colored evenings, recurring thoughts, and the slow surrender to things unfolding on their own.

Even in these most turbulent of times, dub musician and fatigued onlooker Elijah Minnelli remains an inexplicable stalwart on the lower rungs of the Breadminster County Council.

His latest record ‘Clams As A Main Meal’ continues his astute siphoning of council funds, this time with help from the Breadminster Board of Abstinence. As a further mark of respect, the original head of the Board, Dr. K'houldoux, graces the cover art in his infamous ‘Looming Moon of Desire’ guise.*

As fine a backdrop as any for Minneli’s off-brand dub experiments, and ‘Clams…’ is the truest representation of his varied wheelhouse yet…

We find vocal appearances from dub goliath Dennis Bovell and Welsh-language singer Carwyn Ellis. A pair of tracks which build on 2024’s acclaimed ‘Perpetual Musket’, a collection of folk songs reworked alongside reggae vocalists, released by FatCat Records. It garnered glowing reviews, with nods from The Guardian and The Quietus concluding with prominent appearances on their respective yearly round-up lists.

Elsewhere, the album finds Minnelli in a more experimental mode, all wheezing contraptions and cockeyed bass, creaking with the weight of creation, a satisfying tactility laid seam-side up.

As well as ‘Perpetual Musket’, the new album follows years of sold out 7" singles, handmade and self-released. Online, the tracks have amassed global streams numbering in the millions. His tracks have found play across an eclectic range of radio mixes and dance floors, most notably the likes of Andrew Weatherall, Batu, Optimo and Zakia Sewell (BBC6Music).

It is perhaps worth mentioning that this everbuilding interest in his work is at great odds with the growing suspicions amongst his fellow townsfolk, who see his Breadminster County Council Music Initiative as nothing more than an empty cash-grab.

*For further reading on the Breadminster Board of Abstinence, please see below.

Further Reading on the Breadminster Board of Abstinence

In the late 70s, Breadminster was awash with the last vestiges of the hippy era. Though the flared silhouette of the lower leg remained, the utopian ideals that had once flowed merrily around the youth's shaded ankles had begun to wane. LSD and free love had led to a sharp spike in population and a generation of children raised by air-headed psychonauts unprepared for the bleary-eyed strictures of parenthood.

Aware of the crisis, the County Council entrusted Dr. Paulinque K'houldoux to spearhead a pushback, and it was his pro-abstinence movement - a mixture of education initiatives and radical renutrition campaigns - that came to impact Breadminster's census deep into the new millennium.

Being a pseudo-archipelago Breadminster has fundamentally limited resources, however deep-seated ties to distant coastal villages meant that oysters were a regular part of the local diet. K'houldoux pinpointed this as a factor in the town's overpopulation, and believed that simply replacing these with clams (a “lesser mollusk”) would help lower the erotic urges of the people. It was his “anti-aphrodesia” movement that first championed the idea of “Clams As A Main Meal,” and the slogan “Consider Abstinence” carried the message yet further.

The Breadminster Board of Abstinence soon became involved in all cultural happenings in the area, with K'houldoux MCing at prominent festivals and performances, sometimes dressed as the “Looming Moon of Desire” - an idea of his relating to the tide, seafood, menstrual cycles, and his privately held celestial predilections.

It was in 1981 that it was revealed Dr. K'houldoux had never fully qualified as a doctor and was seeking exile in Breadminster due to a series of botched bracelet heists in which he had previously been involved. K'houldoux was subsequently extradited to Basingstoke, where he served 3 of a 12-year sentence, owing to the lunar-oriented prisoner health campaigns he helped implement.

It has been a strange twist of bureaucratic fate that the Breadminster Board of Abstinence has never stopped receiving public funding, despite its lack of clear utility. And while its roots are tied to a rose-tinted past, the Board continues to sponsor cultural events and projects to this day.

An extract from: Eugeniq Schooner's article in Sydney Parishioner: “Clams, Breadminster and Countercultural Abstinence Trends” (2008)

Clube da Esquina 2 is a 1978 album by Brazilian singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento. The album serves as a continuation to the Clube da Esquina album and retained the collective approach, stylistic diversity, and experimental elements of its predecessor, spread across two LPs. Musically, the album reflects the Brazil’s social contradictions, exploring themes of hope and despair, beauty and hardship, and the tension between historical trauma and uncertain futures. The album featured a broader range of collaborators, including Brazilian artists like Elis Regina, Chico Barque, and Lo Borges.

Superior Viaduct and our new artist label, W.25TH, are proud to continue to be the home for Cindy Lee with the physical release of the celebrated album Diamond Jubilee. Universally praised, shortlisted for the 2024 Polaris Music Prize, and already hailed by Pitchfork as the 3rd best album of the 2020s, anticipation and conversation around the record has been high. Cindy Lee is the performance and songwriting vehicle of Patrick Flegel (who previously fronted influential indie group Women). Over several albums, Flegel has combined delicate melodies and sheer beauty with moments of experimentation. With Diamond Jubilee, Flegel's undeniable songcraft comes to the foreground, embracing a more instant connection and accessibility. Timeless tales of love and longing, surrounded by sticky hooks, take the listener on an unforgettable journey.

Superior Viaduct and our new artist label, W.25TH, are proud to continue to be the home for Cindy Lee with the physical release of the celebrated album Diamond Jubilee. Universally praised, shortlisted for the 2024 Polaris Music Prize, and already hailed by Pitchfork as the 3rd best album of the 2020s, anticipation and conversation around the record has been high. Cindy Lee is the performance and songwriting vehicle of Patrick Flegel (who previously fronted influential indie group Women). Over several albums, Flegel has combined delicate melodies and sheer beauty with moments of experimentation. With Diamond Jubilee, Flegel's undeniable songcraft comes to the foreground, embracing a more instant connection and accessibility. Timeless tales of love and longing, surrounded by sticky hooks, take the listener on an unforgettable journey.

The first vocal album released in 1999. Jim is doing for himself what he's more than generously done for other so-called musical talents. Everybody wants a little pop in their lives and the O'Rourke is no exception. There is no way to listen to Eureka without hearing the eccentricity, the progressive musical textures, the utter lack of anything like pop music, but at the same time it's magnificent in scale, pleasant to listen to, catchy and even reminiscent of other records you might actually have heard on The Casey Casem Show. If Bad Timing was regarded as a crossroads of O'Rourkian interests, Eureka is a six-lane clover-leaf junction of singer-songwriter traditions, production styles of the 70s, confusion and contradiction as well as the riveting sound of the artist putting all his cards on the table.

On Beacon Hill: at twilight we find Anthony Moore, roots winding backwards to the halcyon days of Slapp Happy and the ‘70s progressive art rock scene, at guitar and piano. With the atmospheres and accompaniments of AKA & Friends, he breathes infernal new life into songs from his six decades of multivarious music making. This new delivery system is unto a séance, a communal incantation, twining Anthony’s avant and pop traditions together in a darkly radiant coil of folky chamber music; a rope to lower the listener through cobwebs and murk, unveiling new life beneath Anthony’s mad old lines.

It is new life that we will need if we hope to reoccupy this cursed earth.

AKA are Anthony Moore, Keith Rodway and Amanda Thompson. A pagan family of sound worshipers hailing from that unholiest of all places: Hastings UK, home of Crowley and Turing. Like their sinister forbears in that infamous tradition, this latest trinity shares a passion for subverting pattern and number, factoring unlikely permutations arising from sea and horizon, greensward, the southerly aspect, and the planisphere as half-world. Their equatorial shore speaks of a planet of water and earth, fire and air. AKA’s humble tools of choice for this endeavor are guitar, piano, organ, synthesizer and vocals.

The Friends of AKA are Tullis Rennie, trombone and electronics; Olie Brice, double bass; Richard Moore, violin; and Haydn Ackerley, guitar. They too navigate the shoreline of the south coast, haunt the same taverns and regularly play together in whatever combinations fit the bill.

Leaving the drums (and their drummer) at home to realize anew these dream-laden songs, AKA & Friends ensure that the notes fall around the beat and not on it, so as to define the pulse with absence. As such, time is liberated, prised free from the merciless clock; a rhythm of waves, passing through a steady-state universe of no beginnings and no endings. Discontinuities are dissolved, all is transition.

On Beacon Hill: Anthony Moore with AKA & Friends manifest a sensuous post-devastation lounge act, seeking to re-invoke natural orders by naming — rather than cursing — the darkness in its many guises. Like final-phase Johnny Cash on a lost episode of Twin Peaks, Anthony’s innate gravitas is a light through the surreal landscape, as the players combine themselves again and again, their efforts rising and falling in shared space. Their gothic jazz orchestra carves delicately through Anthony’s songs, releasing the melodies and the melancholy to drift upward, like smoke against a sooty and scorched backdrop.

On Beacon Hill: fantastic, prophetic journeys, dry eyed but deeply affected, through the shadow depths of Anthony Moore’s mirror. As we listen, we gravitate and journey alongside fellow refugees in solidarity and solitude alike.

Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the release of one of Japan's most coveted albums of the 70s, "Mangekyou" by singer-songwriter Yoshiko Sai. Produced in 1975 by Master musician Yuji Ohno, the album features Yoshiko Sai's superbly crafted songs and crystal clear voice over Ohno's lush, funky sound and breezy arrangements. A strong buzz has been growing around the album over the years and original copies now change hands for large sums of money. This is the first time "Mangekyou" is available outside of Japan, featuring remastered audio, original artwork and a 4 page insert including new liner notes by Paul Bowler.

A double-LP vinyl edition of *Adan no Kaze*—Ichiko Aoba’s seventh original album, originally released in December 2020—has been confirmed for release. Conceived as a "soundtrack for a fictional film," this album has been highly anticipated on vinyl by fans both in Japan and abroad. Collaborating with musician Taro Umebayashi on composition and arrangement, Aoba moves beyond her signature classical guitar-and-voice style; the album features rich, intricate soundscapes—incorporating chamber music ensembles and classical influences—that transport the listener into the world of a make-believe movie. By blending Umebayashi’s profound interpretation with Aoba’s storytelling, the work achieves a new level of artistic expression and deep musical resonance. It is a vibrant, colorful soundtrack comprising 14 tracks.

Sometimes, Mitski says, it feels like life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” Mitski says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have, after I die, so that I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will continue to shine that love long after she’s gone. Listening to it, that’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land. Love is always radical, which means that it always disrupts, which means that it always takes work to receive it. This land, which already feels inhospitable to so many of its inhabitants, is about to feel hopelessly torn and tossed again – at times, devoid of love. This album offers the anodyne. “This is my most American album,” Mitski says about her seventh record, and the music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. But “maybe it’s beyond witnessing,” she says. At times, it feels like the album is an exercise in negative capability – a fearless embodiment and absorption of the pain of other bodies. When I ask her what the album would look like, if it were a person, she says it would be someone middle-aged and exhausted, perhaps someone having a midlife crisis. But through the daily indignity and exhaustion, something enormous and ecstatic is calling out. In this album, which is sonically Mitski’s most expansive, epic, and wise, the songs seem to be introducing wounds and then actively healing them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like the light from a distant star. Mitski wrote these songs in little bursts over the past few years, and they feel informed by moments of noticing – noticing a sound that’s out of place, a building that groans in decay, an opinion that splits a room, a feeling that can’t be contained in a body. It was recorded at both the Bomb Shelter in East Nashville and the Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles. The album incorporates an orchestra arranged and conducted by Drew Erickson, as well as a full choir of 17 people - 12 in LA and 5 in Nashville - arranged by Mitski. And for the first time, it felt important to Mitski to have a band recording live together in the studio, to create this new sublime sound. Working with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland, the album has a wide-range of references, from Ennio Morricone’s bombastic Spaghetti Western scores to Carter Burwell’s tundra-filling Fargo soundtrack, from the breathy intimacy of Arthur Russell to the strident aliveness of Scott Walker or Igor Stravinsky, from the jubilation of Caetano Veloso to the twangy longing of Faron Young. From the first track, the album introduces and then heals a wound. “Bug Like an Angel” finds the divine in the ordinary, in the boozy drowning of sorrow. The narrator sings from the strange comfort of rock bottom: “sometimes a drink feels like family.” And suddenly, that choir of angels sings: “FAMILY!” This first track introduces a cosmic paradox: “The wrath of the devil was also given him by God.” This is an album in which dark and light exist in the same gesture, the same broken prayer. Like the Buddha inviting the demon Mara in for tea, The Land embraces brutal, daily pain — the necessary toll of transcendent love. In “Buffalo Replaced,” the wail of a freight train replaces the vibrations of the long-gone stampeding buffalo. Here, hope itself is personified, anthropomorphized into a sleeping creature, and our narrator wonders if life would be easier without her. But then, as though in response, “Heaven” offers a beautiful moment of passion, preserved like a fossil in time even though the “dark awaits us all around the corner.” This oasis is aggressively interrupted by “I Don’t Like My Mind,” a song from the perspective of someone in extraordinary pain. They are begging to keep their job, while actively keeping terrible traumatic memories at bay. Without their employment, these memories might take over, consuming them as relentlessly as the cake that they ate one “inconvenient Christmas.” The toggling between hope and despair in these four songs is masterful — the good, the bad, and the ugly in America’s backyard. This mythology continues to deepen with the stunning “The Deal,” in which someone is so burdened by their soul that they beg for it to be taken from them. Soon, the singer’s soul is revealed to be a bird perched on a streetlight. In a coup of songwriting, the narration does not switch into the newly-souled bird’s voice. No, we stay with the soulless “I.” The bird calls down: “You’re a cage without me. / Your pain is eased but you’ll never be free.” This song reinforces the album’s tug-of-war between the intoxication of love and the pain of isolation. Close on its heels is “My Love Mine All Mine,” an instant classic and the beating heart of the album, wherein the singer imagines their love shining down on the earth from the moon, long after the speaker is gone. “It’s just witness-less me,” she sings on “The Frost,” which suddenly takes us from the anticipation of loss right into the aching loneliness of it. On the subject of witnessing, Mitski says: “I’ve always been the person on the outside watching. And I’ve also done that with myself... outside of myself, witnessing myself, watching myself.” She thinks that she might have adopted this habit as a condition of being a woman of color, and that it’s led to the occasional post-apocalyptic fantasy of being the only person left in the world. We talked about Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, in which a man is profoundly alone, with only an archive of old tapes to keep him company. He remembers the seismic event of an old sexual encounter, but now it’s: “Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.” The Land repeatedly offers that same hypothesis. Without love, is there anyone here? After the alien lift of “Star” comes the album’s showdown. “I’m Your Man” feels as inevitable, bloody, and haunting as a Sergio Leone duel scene. The “Man” in the title isn’t some fella proclaiming devotion, Mitski says, but rather the man inside her head, the haunting patriarch who treats her like a dog and can destroy her at whim. Despite his confidence and swagger, he is tracked down by a pack of hounds — who have unionized in the name of catharsis. After this violent reckoning, a Fowler’s Toad calls out in what sounds like a human scream. The night settles into silence. The earth might be uninhabited. We glide into the liberating closer, “I Love Me After You,” in which someone is truly alone but truly free. King of all the land. “I don’t have a self,” Mitski observes. “I have a million selves, and they’re all me, and I inhabit them, and they all live inside me.” Loving all of these selves does not yield the easy burst of a pop song. It’s the “long, complex, deep love, that you can never get to the end of, that’s always evolving, like a person. And there’s just no end to it. It feels like space travel.” The album is full of the ache of the grown- up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It’s a tiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything, and everyone, is crying out, screaming in pain, arching towards love. Maybe this is what our best artists do: take a spaceship into the furthest reaches of pain, in order to bring back the elixir that we already had inside us. The unknowable known of love. “You have to go to both worlds all the time,” Mitski says, by which she means the mysterious world of making and the brutal world of living. This album is an act of hyperlocal space travel. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning us and then rejecting us. To love this place — this earth, this America, this body — takes active work. It might be impossible. The best things are.

New from Escho - 'Pusher' OST composer Peter Schneidermann (aka Peter Peter) taps his mates Majke Voss and Ice Age's Elias Rønnenfelt for his proper Bleeder debut, covering Lydia Lunch's 'Boy/Girl' and Fifty Foot Hose's 'If Not This Time' in the process. Schneidermann is a familiar face on the Copenhagen scene, working closely with Nicolas Winding Refn on the 'Valhalla Rising' score as well as the scores for each of the 'Pusher' films. And he's been a member of the Escho family for years, so it was surely only a matter of time until he collaborated with Rønnenfelt. The band rush for the '90s on 'Marble Station', layering wall-of-sound guitars with deadpan vocals, while on 'Here Comes the Dead', they sound more like Black Country heroes Slade. The band's version of 'Boy/Girl' is stronger, led by rattling hi-hats and sleazy, Suicide-style guitars and they show off their range with their surprisingly tender version of 'If Not This Time'. It's all a bit knowing, sure, but it's Copenhagen, innit.

Side A:北京ダック
Side B:ブラックピーナッツ

SideA：絹街道
SideB：ハニー・ムーン

Originally self-released in 2023, Stella Kola, the debut album from Beverly Ketch (Jow Jow, Weeping Bong Band) and Robert Thomas (Sunburned Hand of the Man, Dalthom). "Given the pair’s respective roots—and the presence of collaborators drawn from across the Northeast experimental underground—one might expect “a brutal blast of acid swirl.” Instead, what emerges is something far more unexpected. The album is “steeped, not in noise and dissonance, but in the fragrant, captivating folk of Linda Perhacs, Judee Sill, Karen Dalton, and Bridget St John.” From the opening moments, especially on “Rosa,” the record reveals its core sensibility: “a ballad that digs deep into the psychedelic-folk tradition until it takes root in a freshly sporous permaculture.” What follows is a set of songs that feel both carefully assembled and organically grown—delicate structures held together by a wide circle of contributing musicians, including Wednesday Knudsen (flute), P.G. Six (harp, guitars, keys), Gary War (synth), Jen Gellineau (viola, violin), Willie Lane, L. Gray, and others. Rather than functioning as studio additions, these collaborators form a genuine collective presence. “The family affair feeds into the album’s charms,” and the feeling is unmistakably communal. Like many of the ‘60s folk records it echoes, Stella Kola carries “the feeling of community and camaraderie” at its core, shaping a warmth that runs through the entire release. The album’s emotional palette leans toward a quiet, persistent melancholy: “the best records from that era also carried with them an inherent sadness and Stella Kola’s songs wash over the listener with a beautiful woe.” Its sound edges into the terrain of Fairport Convention and Pentangle, with references to “Beggar’s, Kings, Dark Damsels, and Tarot,” yet never settles into revivalism. Instead, Ketch and Thomas extend the tradition outward, refracting it through their own distinctly American, underground language."

"[...] jazz singers like this rarely sound so unpretentious, original and free." - The New York Times / Best Jazz Albums of 2023 "An elegant and powerful twist on traditional Mongolian music" - Ammar Kalia / Guardian "These songs sound so inventive, so free, yet so grounded — and if they end up calming your mind, the aim wasn’t to numb it, but to open it. " - Chris Richards / The Washington Post / Best Album of 2023 "Well, this is just plain enchanting. Marked by smooth transitions from gentle playfulness to sweet heartbreak, Enkhjargal Erkhembayar’s delivery would be right at home in an electronic downtempo recording or any late night jazz club where moonlight is a natural stage effect." - Dave Sumner / Bandcamp Daily Enji begins her third album with a stark reminder of her own humanity. “I am Ulaan,” she utters plainly in her native language of Mongolian, referring to a nickname affectionately given to her by her family. “I have to remember who I am,” she says, explaining her choice of a spoken monologue. “It empowers me.” Throughout Ulaan, Enji continues to find new ways to bring out those affirming expressions of herself. Drawing on the elegant blend of jazz and traditional Mongolian song on her previous album Ursgal, she leans into her strengths while breaking into bold new directions. With trusted collaborators Paul Brändle on guitar and Munguntovch Tsolmonbayar on bass at her side once again, she expands the band to include Mariá Portugal on drums and Joana Queiroz on clarinet—and her creative process expands along with it. “They have such deep feelings and such deep love of music,” Enji says of the group. As a result of these new partnerships, the compositions have opened up, bringing in lusher textures, more rhythm, and more interplay between musicians. Enji pushes her voice to new heights, too, effervescently fluttering over each track and moving in perfect lockstep with her band. Songs bubble up from spontaneous moments of inspiration. With “Zuud,” the imagery came to Enji in a melancholic dream. On “Uzegdel,” she evokes the feeling of a breathtaking view she saw from the window of an early Autumn flight on her way home to Mongolia. “Vogl” comes from her experience visiting the peaceful village of the same name, tracing the shape of the natural vista with her vocals. In some cases, she described these scenes to the band and worked out the feeling together. In others, the songs crystallized from reading out the lyrics. “I find my mother tongue in Mongolian is such a rhythmical language,” Enji explains. “So the melody just came out.” As Enji continues her journey of self-discovery, she continues to grow and adapt into new roles. With Ulaan, she bares more of her heart than we’ve seen from her yet, but she’s still got more to give—as a vocalist, a bandleader, and most importantly, as a storyteller. - shy thompson

On her second album Ursgal Mongolian singer Enji creates a unique blend of Jazz and Folk with the traditions of Mongolian song. Currently based in Munich, her lyrics tell personal stories about unbearable distances, the oddness of being on earth and the simple truths in life. She’s accompanied by Paul Brändle on guitar and Munguntovch Tsolmonbayar on double bass. Born in Ulaanbaatar, Enji grew up in a yurt to a working-class family. Having always been drawn to music, dance and literature, she initially wanted to become a music teacher with little ambitions to compose or be on stage. A program by the local Goethe Institute sparked her passion for Jazz and eventually led her to become a performing artist. Inspired by the music of Carmen McRae, Ella Fitzgerald and Nancy Wilson, Enji started writing songs of her own, cherishing this newfound means of expression. Ursgal is the first record featuring her original compositions.

A humanity-reminding suite of miracle moments, Someone Like Me unites a geographically unbound cast of real people in pursuit of a meaningful connection. Taping their lived experience in economic studios in quiet English counties, Pacific Northwest woodland retreats and the big city bustle of Sydney and Los Angeles, these kindred spirits rendered sheer beauty in the process. Custom pressed folk songs of love, loss and the lord saviour. Illuminating minor works from seasoned players such as former Syndicate Of Sound chart-topper Sharkey and late-era Canned Heat lynchpin James Thornbury, the collection simultaneously honours the fleeting amateurism of hobby musicians. With their one shot at tangible vinyl, freshman Lynne Ann Kingan realised her loose bubblegum rocker on campus time, while U.S. Navy recruit Fred Potts cut his unconditionally serene ballad remotely stationed on a Spanish naval base. Spartan production continues to reign with Jon Betmead’s hair-raising gospel, howling into infinite space, and Goldrust’s stripped back garden hymn. Throughout the hour-long reflection, faith has an intermittent yet revelatory presence, most overtly with the divine choral soul of Seventh-day Adventist quartet Remnant. More subtly, Gary Ramey and Jim Kennedy both turned to song in their spiritual quests, offering their all to a universal power. An irrefutable compilation cornerstone, the National Office For Black Catholics showcased Charles Murphy’s lionhearted account of the Black experience at a 1971 concert. Five years earlier, high school seniors The Superwomen would use their hauntingly angelic harmonies to address racial inequity with a breathless take on ‘Lowlands’. Reaching the furthest corners, Someone Like Me secures the inaugural licence of three homespun masterpieces. Discovered by fluke in the digital haystacks of Youtube and Soundcloud, Jim Huxley’s bedroom pop earworm melds peacefully into Charlie Webster’s synthesized reverie. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s John Agostino introduces us to the bizarre world of tax scam records, with the artist only now learning that his tender psych-folk demos were leaked via a 1977 bootleg. Compiled and lovingly restored by armchair digger Mikey Young (Eddy Current Suppression Ring/The Green Child), Someone Like Me pays due service to seventeen rarefied journals of truth and devotion. Adorned with visual artist Chris Fallon’s figure and flora dream extractions, the uniting songbook is further detailed by expansive track-by-track liner notes and a foreword from San Franciscan poet Rod Roland.