MUSIC

Heavy Weight Vinyl. The unbelievably prolific Haruomi Hosono is one of the major architects of modern Japanese pop music. With his encyclopedic knowledge of music and boundless curiosity for new sounds, Hosono has put his unmistakable stamp on hundreds of recordings as a session player, producer, and auteur of his own idiosyncratic musical world. Born and raised in central Tokyo, his adolescent obsession with American pop culture informed his early forays into country music, which he would revisit later in his career. Hosono made his professional debut in 1969 as a member of Apryl Fool, whose heavy psychedelia was somewhat at odds with his influences, which leaned towards the rootsy sounds of Moby Grape and Buffalo Springfield. The latter was one of the main inspirations for his next group, Happy End, whose unique blend of West Coast sounds with Japanese lyrics proved to be highly influential over the course of three albums.

After Happy End’s amicable break up in 1973, Hosono released Hosono House, an intimate slice of Japanese Americana recorded at home with a back-to-basics approach akin to Music from Big Pink or McCartney. While his former band helped pave the way for the rise of “city pop” that reflected upon urban themes and city life, Hosono took a 180 degree turn towards the countryside for his highly-regarded first solo album. Located an hour from Tokyo in Sayama, Saitama Prefecture, the actual Hosono House was one of several American-style houses originally built for the families of troops stationed at the nearby Johnson Air Base, active during the post-war occupation years. By the early ‘70s this small community had become a hub for creative types looking for a break from Tokyo’s hustle and bustle – and cheaper rent. For Hosono, this was as close as he could get to living in America without leaving his home country. With rooms filled to the edges with recording gear, the house became a live-in studio for Hosono and his crack band – soon to become known as the in-demand session group Tin Pan Alley. The songs on Hosono House display the breadth of Hosono’s talents, from the hushed acoustic folk of “Rock-A-Bye My Baby” and the country twang of “Boku Wa Chotto” to the New Orleans funk of “Fuyu Koe” and the unexpected breakbeats in “Bara To Yajuu.” Lauded by artists such as Jim O’Rourke and Devendra Banhart, Hosono House remains a touchstone of the early phase of Hosono’s career.

Hosono’s solo career would take many twists and turns from this point forward, with forays into exotica, electronic, ambient, and techno, culminating in the massive success of techno pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), who made their debut in 1978. Admired by artists ranging from Van Dyke Parks to Mac DeMarco, Hosono continues to forge ahead as he heads into his fifth decade as a musician. With the re-release of his key albums for the first time outside of Japan, his genius will be discovered by a whole new generation of fans around the world.

Weaving between self-built zithers, drones, clarinets, slide guitars and drum machines, ‘Sun Arcs’ presents a unique sound space formed by an inventive approach to acoustic folk and jazz. The starting point of ‘Sun Arcs’ saw Jason travel for a week alone to Andersabo, a cabin set in the Swedish woods just outside of Unnaryd, known also as the music project, festival and residency space which has been run by Dungan since 2016, hosting artists like Sofie Birch, Johan Carøe and Ellen Arkbro. Whilst writing 1-2 pieces per day, a conscious decision was made to leave behind everyday distractions and shut out the outside world to instead focus on the natural passage of time as Dungan recalls: “My only sense of time came from these daily walks out in the woods with my dog, and an awareness of the sun’s path as it moved across the sky each day.” The album’s immersive world unfolds with the opener ‘Dallas’, a musical synthesis of these two disparate spaces (Texas and Denmark), the touchstones of Dungan’s life. A folk-esque single acoustic builds to a flowing arrangement of clarinets, organ and cello drones coupled with percussion. ‘Green-Yellow Field’ chimes in as the first of two solo oriented zither recordings twinned with the dreamlike title track ‘Sun Arcs’, both densely rich as cascading and overlapping harmonic tones resound. ‘Bloom’ emerges with a krautrock psyche before an eruption of cello drones, slide guitar and free-ranging zither playing, ushering in the anticipation of spring. “The title and the feel of the song comes simply from my summers in Sweden – when the plants and insects are opening up everywhere, and there’s this almost too-intense feeling of life outside.” With half of the recordings conceived in Andersabo, Jason returned to Copenhagen to form the album's centre piece ‘Rain Cycle’ which features a tempered Roland drum machine alongside shifting zither improvisations. ‘Writing’ explores the shimmering harp-like qualities of sweeping playing figurations with Dungan mapping out adjusted tuning “zones” on the zither for unconventional but creatively liberating effects. ‘Fur’ captures the feeling of openness and the momentum of time, seeing Dungan perform waves of solo clarinet, often in one takes and embellished with textural drones, a zither solo, and layers of guitar. ‘Wavelength’ the album's closer is fondly inspired by the film works of Michael Snow and Don Cherry’s seminal live album ‘Blue Lake’ (1974), as it builds out from a drone-generated zither chord and features an alto recorder solo. Dungan found a deep connection to Cherry’s stripped back performance ethos, focusing on the core beauty of minimal instrumentation creating a genre-less meeting between folk and jazz. A dialogue is formed between the solo and the bandlike performances, interlinked in a geographical duality with all finding a sense of commonplace as musical sketches of visited landscapes. The bountiful instrumentation ebbs and flows as further layers emerge with Dungan constructing his material by recording and reviewing, adding and subtracting. Musically it portrays a life led by an American person living in Scandinavia, responding to both the local music and landscape while looking back to American influences. Dungan concludes: “Both places feel like “me”, I think on some level the music is always some kind of self-portrait.” ‘Sun Arcs’ depicts the intricate balance of nature’s cycles and the paths outlined by the seasons, from a winter dormancy to a warm sun drenched scene. The album scales new heights and further defines Dungan’s musical narrative, inhabiting a unique space in left-field, improvised and experimental music, bearing his most accomplished compositions to date. A singular and visionary expression, drawing on an array of instruments and sound worlds with a renewed sense of joy and discovery. The album's rich tapestry was mixed by Jeff Zeigler (Laraaji, Mary Lattimore, Kurt Vile / Steve Gunn) and mastered by Stephan Mathieu (Kali Malone, KMRU, Félicia Atkinson).

Kentish town siblings Kitty, Daisy and Lewis have rightfully earned themselves a reputation for being a group of highly talented and original masters of transcendent rock n’ roll. They have cast their distinct musical spell over listeners and critics alike with a sound that whilst deeply rooted in the past hurtles towards an interminable and effervescent future.

Experience the captivating and hypnotic sounds of Joyama no Narazumono – a rare gem of Japan’s 70’s folk scene! A genre-bending album by duo Shigeki Kobayashi and Yasuo Yamada, who drew inspiration from songs by local boatmen and British folk like Fairport Convention and The Albion Band to craft a minimalist, intimate approach to both traditional and original compositions. Locally released in 1979 in an edition of just 100 copies, this highly sought-after album is now available worldwide for the first time. Printed on Stoughton “tip-on” jackets. 300 copies on black vinyl, and 200 on Translucent “Root beer” vinyl.

Born in 1923 in Clarksdale MS, Wade Walton, besides working as barber, was a strong blues guitarist and harp player who toured with minstrel shows in his teens and formed the Kings of Rhythms with Ike Turner in the 40's. Recorded by Rudy Van Gelder in 1962 and originally released by Bluesville Records, "Shake ’em on Down" was his biggest album, a great piece of downhome blues which earned him international attention. People said that no trip to Clarksdale would be complete without a trip to Wade’s Barber Shop (Delta Boogie)

“She can snap a heart like a twig” - Pitchfork “Truly otherworldly music” - Stereogum Chapter is pleased to announce the first ever vinyl reissue of this classic overview of Connecticut songwriting icon Kath Bloom’s 1990s recordings, originally released on CD in 2005. Kath’s musical career began in the late 70s and includes a revered series of collaborations with avant-garde guitarist Loren Connors. Compiled from long out-of-print, self-released cassettes and CD-Rs, Finally was the first release to bring Kath’s solo music to wider attention in the 21st century, and she has since been covered by the likes of Pitchfork, The Wire and Aquarium Drunkard. It includes the exquisite Come Here, as heard in a pivotal scene in Richard Linklater’s beloved 1995 film Before Sunrise. In fact, this reissue features new artwork matching the fictitious LP Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke marvel over in a Viennese record store. The reissue includes five bonus tracks via download card, rescued from a hissy 1987 demo tape. These late 80s versions of Kath’s songs with synth, sax, fretless bass and bongos, including a never before heard version of Come Here, are sublime! Kath’s music was covered by the likes of Bill Callahan, Devendra Banhart, Mark Kozelek, Meg Baird on Chapter’s 2009 tribute album Loving Takes This Course. Covers from this release have also been featured in Paolo Sorrentino film Youth and recent Netflix smash series Sex Education. Still performing across America and the world, Kath is a living legend of fragile folk and heartbreaking songwriting.

Driving is Sam Wilkes’ Indie Rock record. Out October 6th, 2023, it is the first release on Wilkes Records, an imprint borne of the artist’s emergent need to self-release. The songs presented here exist comfortably within the ever-expanding Wilkesian cosmos, characterized as they are by virtuosity, torqued experimentalism, and collaboration with a range of talented musicians. But Driving’s influences, its sincerity, and its allegiance to a certain pop sensibility reflects a departure for an artist who has primarily staked his claim within the experimental jazz idiom. Take the first track, “Folk Home,” which inaugurates the album’s fecundity—a bright, green, humid, summer feel. A swirling, freakout coda of reversed vocals gives way, in no short order, to a caterwaul of flute work that conjures Van Morrison’s (in)famous Astral Weeks sessions. Standing beside Morrison, the usual suspects are all present, if somewhat abstractedly. Dylan, The Dead, Joni, the Fab Four. Wilkes has developed a reputation as an experimental jazz luminary, but his deep affinity for the pop/rock/folk idiom of the latter twentieth century rings clear throughout Driving. More so than any Wilkes release to date, Driving is a collection guided by and dedicated to the man’s attention to songcraft. Written and recorded during a period of rain-damage induced renter’s itinerance (and the attendant desire to produce a kind of therapeutic, self-soothing, home-feeling music), Driving loosely charts the trajectory/experience of “a protagonist,” both Wilkes and not, “who has figured out how to live an enlightened and fulfilled life, but is unable to do so because he thinks about it too much.” This friction is surely relatable — a symptom of our compulsively self-aware present. But Wilkes avoids the obvious pitfalls of public hand-wringing. Rather, Driving’s nine tracks evince a genuine, and mature searching-ness, both sonically and lyrically. The ending refrain of “Own” serves like something close to a thesis— “Letting go // isn’t a concept // it’s an action.” In an attempt to beat back ego, hyper-cogitation, language itself, Wilkes arrives at an axiom that feels so true and familiar, you’d swear you’d heard it one hundred times before. Driving’s final third is, fittingly, its most emotive and cathartic. Tracks seven and eight, “Again, Again” and “And Again,” form a diptych, joined most obviously by the jangling, recursive grooves of guitarist Daryl Johns. Wilkes is said to have encouraged Johns to go “full Lindsey [Buckingham]” (clearly a welcome and resonant prompt), but one also catches stray Knopfler vibes, some intermittent Fripp, and (perhaps more-so in tone than technique) the spirit of DIY prophet and jangling man himself, Martin Newell (the Cleaners from Venus). Wilkes has stated that he finds joy in creating musical environments suitable to the contribution and flourishing of his favorite musicians. Throughout Driving, and in these two tracks especially, he has more than succeeded. The record closes with the titular track: a story-song that, according to Wilkes, poured out of him (melody, composition, and lyrics) in a single sitting. The tale is told plainly, bravely, starkly; a mistake was made, regrets have been had, and all is wrapped up in the recollection of a deeply felt adolescent heartsickness—a time when the narrator was first afire with music and automotive freedom. The song captures the moment when meaning inexplicably falls into place, when a long-nagging memory suddenly assumes narrative form, and the subsequent sense of lightness and unburdening. It is fitting that Driving, a record conceived as a form of self-therapy, should culminate with a sense of humble revelation. That Wilkes is plainly eager to share the vulnerable fruits of this labor constitutes Driving’s joyful offering.

The first entry in Numero’s Margo Guryan series arrives as a limited edition pic sleeve 45. Side A features the previously unreleased 1966 yé-yé inspired burner “I Ought To Stay Away From You ,” paired with her latter day viral smash “Why Do I Cry.”

Chie Mukai & Yonju Miyaoka 'Song of trees' Comes in jewel case, with 8 page booklet and English translation kraft sheet. artwork by Yonju Miyaoka Lyrics translation by Alan Cummings Long notes by Takuya Sakaguchi, Short notes by Alan Cummings and Yu Hirayama. Mix & Mastered by Ippei Suda All lyrics and text has English translation Edition of 500

Dai Sayozoku (大サヨ族) is Sayozoku Septet avant-garde, free music, improvisational ensemble. live at Namba BEARS ,Osaka on 2021 August19th. イエレキルピネン Jere Kilpinen ..Shakuhachi, Drums 向井千惠 Chie Mukai ...Voice, Recorder, Percussions 佐藤史 Fumi Sato ...El-guitar 沼 タカハシシカロ Shicaro Takahashi ...Recorder, Toys, Percussions, Voice 　 染谷藍 Ai Sometani ... Recorder, Toys, Percussions サ 天神さやか Sayaka Tenjin ...Gopichand, Recorder, Percussion, Voice ヨ 宮岡永樹 Yonju Miyaoka ....Recorder, El-guitar, Hichiriki 族 Recorded by Yonju Miyaoka Mastered by Masami Baba Special thanks to Satoru Higashiseto (Forever Records), Naomi Kurimoto (Bears)

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.

Restful Modern Folk Gems !! The long-awaited debut album of Le Ren, a young female musician based in Montreal, Quebec, who emerged from the current Secretly Canadian, is now available. A collage of his youth who gathered more than four years of past experience and found the present meaning, and sewed personal songs about various relationships such as mothers, lovers, friends, etc. like patchwork. A masterpiece that can be said to be the sacred missing link of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. This is the one I want many people to pick up!

激レア化している2018年作が初の再発。ノースカロライナ州アッシュビルを拠点に、フォーク、カントリー、ブルース、そして宇宙的なアメリカン・ロックを見事に溶け合わせるソングライター、Ryan Gustafsonの変名The Dead Tonguesによるアルバム『Unsung Passage』が〈Psychic Hotline〉よりヴァイナル・リイシュー。常に各地を飛び回ってきた冒険家であるグスタフソンが、歌うにふさわしいといえるほどに見てきたものを、その一人称で見つめ直した作品。慌ただしい現代に向けた内省的なアンセムに注ぎ込まれる秀逸な一枚。

The first vinyl release from American artist Sydney Spann, Sending Up A Spiral Of well encapsulates Spann’s body of work thus far. On their music, which reacts to themes of family systems and care work, Sydney writes, “people who have done care work —nannies, sex workers, therapists, nurses— may possess their own musical knowledge, developed over time through particular modes of voicing practiced to achieve a desired outcome in their labor. Attending intimately to these ways of voicing and listening and bringing them into a sound practice could be a way to legitimize a less recognized kind of musical knowledge.” Sending Up A Spiral Of explores this unarticulated expression through sound and song. The titular piece traces Spann within some quixotic woodland, as if beginning inside of some urban fairy-story. Self-soothing singing quivers under dragging branches, peeling cement and other tactile grit. The work drops into a new proximity half-way through as electronic contours overtake the environment. Sine-tones smolder in a pulsating choreography, perhaps reminiscent of Richard Maxfield’s “Night Music” played at half-speed. The second section of the record depicts a series of five smaller portraits, expressed (or disguised) as lullabies. An oceanic humming permeates them. “Possession” and “Purposeful Evening” are the most song-like lullabies, with their verse-chorus repetition and melodic simplicity. Innocuous words “baby” and “honey” are encoded with deeper, often painful connotations. Sydney’s voice and vision for this album is ambitious, cloaked in the strains and contradictions of what love means in the nuclear family. A 16-page artist pamphlet of rubbings, photographs and sheet music accompanies the LP, along with a digital PDF of Spann’s thesis “Sending Up A Spiral Of: A Musical Epistemology Made Through Care Work.”

Hovering somewhere at the intersection of Nirvana and Neil Young, Rex exploded—or drifted, rather—onto the slowcore scene in the mid-1990s. Taking its cue from bands like Codeine, which drummer Doug Scharin was a part of, Rex managed to synthesize the dynamic eruptions of grunge, twinkling guitars of folk, and sprawling string arrangements of chamber pop on its seminal 1996 album, C. In recording C, Scharin, along with bandmates Curtis Harvey and Phil Sprito, created an untamable and uncategorizable beast. The album’s 11 tracks clock in at an hour and 7 minutes, most often winding from folk warbles to distortion-drenched power chords and back. End-to-end, listening to C feels like being granted access to one of the band’s most unfettered jams.

The Endless Coloured Ways is a collection of songs by legendary singer/songwriter, Nick Drake, performed and recorded by over 30 incredible artists from a range of different backgrounds, genres, age groups and audiences. From Fontaines D.C. to Guy Garvey, Aurora to Feist, and Self-Esteem to David Gray, each artist has offered their own incredible take on a timeless classic"Nick Drake was not that concerned with promoting himself as an artist but I think he would have been overjoyed to hear his art promoted by so many vibrant and talented artists such as the ones we approached. Each track is an example of a fellow artist adopting Nick's art as if it was their own, submitting to the song, and the results prove to me that talent can so often win out over mere skill or 'personality'. We are honoured and so grateful to all our friends, old and new, who took part in the making of this set." - Cally Calloman, Bryter Music"Having initially exchanged a list of our favourite artists and realised how much our tastes overlapped, Cally and I set out on this venture with one simple brief - to ask the artists to ignore the original recording of Nick's in terms of arrangement, production and singing style; basically we were asking them to reinvent the song. First of all it was humbling to hear so many similar responses, saying how important Nick's music was to them, and how much they wanted to be part of this project. But as the results came in one by one, we were staggered by the brilliance and invention that each artist had shown. They had done what we asked - they had made the song their own." - Jeremy Lascelles, Chrysalis Records

Demdike Stare reunite with guitarist Jon Collin for a new album of concréte dreamweaving performed on tape, pedals and a homemade Swedish nyckelharpa - a type of keyed fiddle. More psychedelic than either of the trio's previous records, 'Minerals' drops the blues to dive headfirst into the smudged folk wellspring, touching on the pastoral ambience of Andrew Chalk via Loren Connors’ immersive drift and Tongue Depressor's subterranean drone expeditions. With the trio all hailing from the Pennine moorlands just above the manc sprawl, Jon Collin & Demdike Stare’s shared musical expression understandably reflects a parallax purview that follows leylines between lusher nooks of the inner city and windswept, barren landscapes. Never ones to play it straight, the Swedish Nyckelharpa - a sort of hybrid viola/hurdy gurdy - is deployed deep into a mix of oblique soundscaping, seeping into a swirl of field recordings, screwed spoken word and phosphorescent drones pinging with tape delay. Split into two distinct sides, the album opens with a scrape of wood and metal that introduces us to the nyckelharpa. Scratching its surface and strings, Collin reveals its peculiar tonality, while Demdike cut through its dissonant textures. Like ancient campfire rituals recorded to decaying 1/4" tape, the music on ‘Minerals’ feels as if it's in dialog with the past, shuttled into the present by abstract processes. By the side’s third act, resonant gongs billow around pitched wails that eventually collapse into silence. The second side is more spirited, opening with a thumbed kalimba cut through reverberant strings that recall Arthur Russell's iconic echo-drenched recordings. Through elaborate concréte techniques, Collin's ancient fiddle dissolves into a ferric gloop that’s slowly pulled apart like toffee, taking it to a place where you can no longer really tell what you’re listening to or how it was made. In fact, unlike pretty much everything we’ve heard from Demdike before, the material here feels mechanical rather than electronic, making for one of the most impactful, unusual releases in the vast sprawl of their catalogue thus far.

The Endless Coloured Ways is a collection of songs by legendary singer/songwriter, Nick Drake, performed and recorded by over 30 incredible artists from a range of different backgrounds, genres, age groups and audiences. From Fontaines D.C. to Guy Garvey, Aurora to Feist, and Self-Esteem to David Gray, each artist has offered their own incredible take on a timeless classic"Nick Drake was not that concerned with promoting himself as an artist but I think he would have been overjoyed to hear his art promoted by so many vibrant and talented artists such as the ones we approached. Each track is an example of a fellow artist adopting Nick's art as if it was their own, submitting to the song, and the results prove to me that talent can so often win out over mere skill or 'personality'. We are honoured and so grateful to all our friends, old and new, who took part in the making of this set." - Cally Calloman, Bryter Music"Having initially exchanged a list of our favourite artists and realised how much our tastes overlapped, Cally and I set out on this venture with one simple brief - to ask the artists to ignore the original recording of Nick's in terms of arrangement, production and singing style; basically we were asking them to reinvent the song. First of all it was humbling to hear so many similar responses, saying how important Nick's music was to them, and how much they wanted to be part of this project. But as the results came in one by one, we were staggered by the brilliance and invention that each artist had shown. They had done what we asked - they had made the song their own." - Jeremy Lascelles, Chrysalis Records

When he‘s not writing or recording, Baba Stiltz immerses in fearless fiction by the likes of Denis Johnson and Dodie Bellamy; prose where pedestrian details become transcendent in aggregate and the inner lives of marginal characters are examined as though they were kings. A similar thesis runs through „Paid Testimony“, the essential second tape of minimalist guitar music from the FilipinoAmerican-Swedish artist. In recent years, Stiltz has made like Lee Hazelwood‘s Cowboy In Sweden in reverse, making annual pilgrimages from Stockholm to California and reconnecting with his roots via a guitar and a Fostex 4- track. He‘s drawn to the less glamorous corners of the golden state, an observant habitué of unkempt streets and dive bars stretching from LA to Vacaville. It‘s a long stretch from the jetset techno clubs where Baba originally plied his musical trade, but it‘s where he finds characters and ideas worth writing about. The characters on „Paid Testimony“ are on the edge and on the run. Surrounded by flawed men with big schemes since childhood, he extrapolates characters who plot bank heists and order milk and vodka in AM hours, the type of confrontation- prone characters who „say some shit, make everyone uncomfortable and then just split.“ To focus on the rawness of this document would discount the humor and sympathy with which he treats his characters, not to mention the subtly- psychedelic songwriting recalling David Berman, early Smog, the original indie rock minimalist poets. On the final song, Stiltz looks back on the city that raised him, „Stockholm,“ referencing „young professionals carelessly living“ before adding „I can‘t say I‘m not jealous even though I live my life just like they do.“ There‘s an honesty in the small details revealed on „Paid Testimony“, and a defined sense of place, be it Stockholm, Sacramento or some dim barroom across from the Bank Of America. Baba doesn‘t quite fit in anywhere. This outsider quality has often been used as a marketing tool, yet here, it lends a writerly aspect to the proceedings, an unreality to the everyday.

Once the dust had settled after a musically and politically turbulent era that was 1960s America, there emerged a new musical movement, one that united the singer-songwriter with the folk-rock sensibilities developing at the time: A beautiful, fragile form of American folk music exploring the more sentimental parts of human experience. Flight was formed in 1971 in the Michigan town of Grayling by Phil Stancil and Doug Slater. The two teenagers, with no formal musical training, sat down for a year to explore a shared sense of vulnerability, and a newfound freedom in expressing an emotional openness rarely seen in young American men at the time. What resulted was an 8-track LP, recorded over two days in two separate studios. Aside from a limited 45 pressing of 50 copies of the two singles, I’m Coming Home would wait for a full half-century to be released. This music recently uncovered and restored, provides a unique glimpse into the world that was 1971 America: a time when young men felt emboldened to abandon machismo and explore the feelings of heartbreak, longing, alienation, and love in music. Enjoy I’m Coming Home by Flight.

Growing up in Minnesota, life constantly took multi-instrumentalist and producer Lutalo Jones back and forth across the Mississippi River, through the beating heart of the Twin Cities, from their home in Minneapolis to school in St Paul. In 2021 Lutalo and their partner moved east, to settle among the green peaks of Vermont, having taken ownership of an area of land with the intention of building a small community for themselves. The aim is to accomplish a long-held dream: to live life differently, to invest in and create something tangible that can be passed on to future generations. The to-and-fro of that early life has been replaced by something altogether more steady, a burning desire to not get so caught up in the intensity of the world.It's this overwhelming potency of modernity that ripples through Lutalo's musical work. Their six-song debut EP, Once Now, Then Again, bristles with tension, despite the open laidback nature of the performance. The new EP – which follows a few well-received singles in 2021 and a run of live shows alongside Adrianne Lenker – spans both of Lutalo's contrasting worlds, the songwriting beginning in the Twin Cities before being finished in the serene surroundings of Vermont, and both environments leave their mark on Lutalo's rich and absorbing sound.For now, Lutalo's world consists of new pastures and new beginnings, the search for brightness in spite of all the dark. They remain optimistic in attitude, and steadfast in their belief that change can only happen when you believe in a better future. "At the same point you also have to recognize that this is also your time to be alive," Lutalo says, "and to try to find beauty in those moments and focus on the smaller details: to watch the water trickle down the stream, to see the ice as it melts from the rooftops."

RSD 2023 release. One of the most obscure records ever released in Venezuela that was originally distributed in tiny quantities as a promo-only album. A magic blend of protest songwriting, with a strong environmentalist statement, and folky pop with psych ingredients -such as the use of sitar sounds- recorded by the collective of artists Una Luz and El Zigui who was once described as the local Bob Dylan. First time reissue.

AYA Records presents: Humazapas’ debut with 'Sara Mama', homage to the land and Kichwa tradition. The concept of “getting back to your roots” rarely has such a literal meaning, or at the same time such an ancestral meaning, as in the case of the Ecuadorian group Humazapas. Usually in the music industry this concept is used when an artist returns to a past sound, going back to that moment of newness, exploration and ingenuity, perhaps. But not Humazapas. These natives of the Kichwa communities of the Ecuadorian Andes, who have been working on this project for a decade, see “getting back to your roots” as a profound connection with their cultures, language, dance, the rituals that connect them to their deities and, of course, music. Humazapas was formed in 2010, when twelve teenagers from the Kichwa communities of Turuku, San Pedro, Jatun Topo and Anrabí decided to salvage the sounds and ritual dances of the Kichwa communes at the foot of the Tayta Imbabura and Mama Cutakachi volcanoes. The group explores an ancestral exercise translated into the fusion of native musics and contemporary structures, proposing the continuity of the art of the ancestral peoples and nationalities of Ecuador in future generations. Like a sound document, it also ties in dance and the audiovisual arts to translate an experience through the journey of a seed that is born from the earth, sprouts from it and whose fruit has fed, and will continue to feed, generations for centuries. After over a decade of research and interest in returning to ancestral knowledge, the group made up of eight musicians and four dancers, weaving in their discourse the cosmovision of community life with people, nature and the world of the deities, finally release their debut record 'Sara Mama', which translates as “Mother Corn” in English. Corn is one of the sacred grains that conceals knowledge in its crop and the magic of the rituals of raising, nurturing and celebrating life, from preparing the earth to harvesting the dry grains. The record has twelve songs about the relationship between humanity, nature and the world of deities. It varies between traditional rhythms like the churay, which prevails in songs like “Tamiajun”, “Pugyu”, “Adiós Mamita”, “Romero Llullu Sisa”, “Pacho” and “Sara Tipi”, and the saruy in such compositions as “Rosa Kitumba” and “Warmi Razu Chakigupi.” Also present are the bambuco, the danzante, the yumbo, the capishka, all rhythms featuring bass drums, the Kichwa harp, guitars, mandolin, violin, cununo, djembe and high, festive voices to match these celebratory rhythms. The lyrics are in Kichwa, to preserve this language. They speak about the rains that herald the corn growing cycle and the preparation of the earth, such as in album opener “Jatun Mama Pacha,” and also in “Pugyu,” about the water that falls to the heart of the land, from which springs emerge, sacred places that keep life alive during times of drought. Other lyrics are more connected with mysticism, such as “Chichu Burru,” whose ritual sound is used to awaken the gods and spirits represented as mountains, volcanoes and lakes in the province of Imbabura. Their permission is needed to begin the corn growing cycle. This debut record is ultimately a thematic work, whose narrative takes in the cycle of life like those roots that grow to form shoots, leaves and fruits, but also the cycle of death as that space in which life springs forth again, thanks to those beings who have departed and who surrender their energies for the community. Sara Mama was composed, produced, arranged and recorded by Jesús Bonilla at ANTA Records in the Kichwa community of Tutuku. It was mixed by Paul Cotacachi and Esteban Farinango (MalaFama), with collaborations by renowned Ecuadorian artists such as Danilo Arroyo and Matías Alvear. The album was mastered by the celebrated Ecuadorian DJ and producer Nicola Cruz.

She's back with yet another masterpiece album, overflowing with emotions, musical ideas and mysterious atmospheres. With Halo, Juana Molina picks up where she left off with her previous acclaimed album Wed 21, and shows once more that she really is "on an evolutionary journey of her own devising" (Pitchfork), which has brought the "eerie, hypnotic" music on each of her albums "to increasingly haunting heights (Spin).

Halo is Juana Molina's seventh album, it contains twelve songs and was recorded in her home studio outside of Buenos Aires, and at Sonic Ranch Studio in Texas, with contributions by Odin Schwartz & Diego Lopez de Arcaute (who have both been playing live with Juana for a number of years), and Eduardo Bergallo (who has taken part in the mixing of her previous albums), with Deerhoof's John Dieterich making a guest appearance in a couple of tracks.