MUSIC

The singular musical spirit Joseph Deenmamode aka Mo Kolours presents an exciting new body of work. A catalog of critically acclaimed records, including his self-titled debut (2014), ‘Texture Like Like Sun’ (2015), 2018 album ‘Inner Symbols’ and three companion EPs, established Deenmamode as a prodigious musician and vocalist. Pitchfork extolled his “hypnotic, tribal-infused dance grooves”, DJ Mag appreciated the “colourful celebration of soundsystem culture”, and Resident Advisor advocated that “no one sounds quite like Mo Kolours”. Musical analogies were drawn by The Guardian as “The best album Curtis Mayfield never made with A Tribe Called Quest and Lee Perry” and Mojo as “like Marvin Gaye produced by J Dilla”. Five years ago, Deenmamode moved to the Japanese countryside. Far away from familiarity, he contemplated his place and further questioned his identity. “I had none of my ‘own’ people around. I had time to really find what makes me tick musically. Japan has helped me go back to those subconscious leanings, really go deep, and reflect the aspects that make up my story”. The tracks on ‘Original Flow’ have been constructed from sessions, improvisations and soundbites captured around the world during this time; collecting contributions from musicians including Deenamode’s brothers Reginald Omas Mamode and Jeen Bassa plus Andrew Ashong, Charles Bullen, Dwaye Kilvington, Eddie Hick, Stefan Asanovic, Myele Manzanza, Ross Hughes, and Tom Dreissler. Deenamode says “I’m proud of this album’s creative process. Coming from a tradition of scouring through hours of records, I wanted to create my own samples, to find that perfect loop that no other producer could put their hands on. I decided to invite a group of friends and acquaintances, who also happen to be incredible musicians, to a studio in Crystal Palace to improvise based on some loose ideas I had. We spent all day, and recorded everything”. ‘Original Flow’ is an album of UK street-soul nouveau, future indigenous jazz fusion, Rasta Segga, Nyahbinghi jazz, Malagasy Hebrew hip hop. While retaining a spirit of exploration and improvisation, it sees Deenmamode grow and flex beyond beat tape brevity, expanding composition and stretching his musical muscle to play live with other musicians. Themes of empowerment, overcoming adversity, and mental liberation coexist with notes from ancient history, futurism, and science, as well as musings on family and togetherness. ‘Magik Momentum’ springs from a discussion that features at the start of the song, an inspiring mentor answering a question from Deenmamode about improvisation and what role it plays in life when planning and manifesting the future. ‘Rockets to Mars’ questions the lack of care for the billions of people with nothing, while governments plan to explore space. “This sparked a comparison in my mind to a Sonny Okuson song that I would reference when performing. Okuson’s song talked of the lack of resources in many communities in the world, while governments go to the moon”. He says the music behind ‘The News These Days’ is “possibly my favourite on the album”. Looped like he would a late sixty jazz-fusion sample, there was nothing added and the track was complete within a matter of minutes. “It was the first and best moment from the entire Crystal Palace session”, he adds. The album’s contrasting title track with minimal instrumentation played solo by Deenamode. While frustratingly searching for gems in past recordings, he thought in a burst of ego, “I don’t need no-one else to make a dope beat!” picked up his ravanne, (the traditional frame drum of his fathers home-land of Mauritius), pressed record, and started to play. He says, “In my thoughts were the rhythms of the Nubians in Upper-Egypt and Sudan, the swing of the huge drums played by Mauritanian women, of-course the Sega beat of Mauritius, and the ever inspiring beat of James Yancey”. Driven by UK broken beat, Cuban congas, Nigerian and Mauritian inflections, ‘Love Vibration’ follows the concept that all emotions carry a vibratory frequency and pays homage to the frequency of creation and the power of love. The two part ‘Tatamaka’ tells of the history of Deenmamode’s ancestors, the maroons of Mauritius. “We are people who managed to run from our oppressors and find refuge in a corner of the island called ‘Le Morne’ where they could not reach us. One bloody day they came in numbers to re-capture, to revenge. Many of us chose to jump to our deaths, rather than be taken back into subjugation. The poem by Creole Richard Sedley Assonne says; “there were hundreds of them, but my people, the maroons chose the kiss of death over the chains of slavery”. Tatamaka was the name of a famed maroon leader who was murdered for claiming his, and our people’s freedom. The song is the imagined journey of escape and freedom by an ancestor of the maroons of Le Morne”. Born in the west midlands and raised on the traditional sega music of his father’s Indian Ocean homeland of Mauritius alongside records by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Santana and Michael Jackson; his influences expanded with late 90s jungle and drum and bass nights in Bristol, experiments at art college in Camberwell, and the rich culture of Peckham, “at the time we called it the Afro Quarters of London” says Deenmamode, adding hip hop, dub, soul and soundsystem styles to his individual sound. He explains, “I love drum music, from hand-drums to 808s. I love music from the ancient past, heritage music, indigenous music, traditional music passed down from the beginning of time. Music from the body, hand claps, grunts and foot stomps. Music with audible depth, busy, bustling, highly charged. Music from the soul, the music from beyond. I love music from the islands and the mountains. The music of the streets, hustle music, alleyway beats. Club music”. He describes the creative process as thinking in images. “The visual world and the world of sound seem to intermingle in my thought process. When I play the drum with my eyes closed, a world of imagery dances and moves with beat. Improvised drumming feels like I am listening to what I want to hear, rather than trying to play what I want to hear. Following the rhythm and finding new pathways to walk within the patterns is what I experience. In this way I often feel I am just a listener, instead of the player”.

Holy Tongue are a trio composed of Valentina Magaletti, Al Wootton and Susumu Mukai. Accomplished musicians in their own right, they combined to create psychedelic, free-form, high energy, spiritual dub-dance music across a trilogy of critically acclaimed EPs and their debut album Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare. Their high energy live performances invoke the experimental dub of On-U-Sound, the frenetic rhythms of 23 Skidoo, Liquid Liquid and ESG, and the spiritual energy of free jazz. The trio’s dynamic collaboration extends in their meeting with Shackleton, one of the most original and critically lauded voices in electronic music. Shackleton has moved from the depths of the early 2000s dubstep underground to a diverse range of international collaborations and commissions over the last two decades. After honing his hypnotic beats on the cult UK record label Skull Disco, his unique rhythmic touch is now heard on some of the most adventurous and progressive projects that have emerged from the European dance scene in recent years. Shackleton’s work explores conceptual and spiritual themes with an emotional depth beyond most artists working in European dance music today, and his visions of inner space, apocalypse and dread are more timely than ever before. This record was conceived after Holy Tongue and Shackleton shared a festival line up in Sweden. Holy Tongue were initially keen to get Shackleton to remix one of their existing tracks but they soon decided to have a project together and work on some fresh new music, allowing Shackleton to do something more creative with it in the studio. Thus Holy Tongue recorded a collection of raw material in the studio and sent it to Shackleton. The result is far more than the sum of its parts. A psychedelic, ritualistic, dub trip, oscillating between the maximal and the minimal, the internal and the external, the micro and the macro, ecstasy and agony, all the tumbling psychic joy of now.

On September 1, 1978, the musical trio Codona graced the stage in Willisau, Switzerland, just before their eponymous debut on ECM. This Swiss FM broadcast immortalised their performance, featuring Collin Walcott on sitar, Don Cherry on trumpet, and Nana Vasconcelos on percussion. Together, they spun a mesmerising tapestry of sound. The opening piece, 'New Light,' spans 16 minutes and evokes pure joy with its enchanting melodies and rhythmic intricacies. Codona's magical encounter showcases the seamless interplay of three masterful musicians and this record captures a moment of musical transcendence that continues to resonate to this day.

French lifeguard and sonic artist Roméo Poirier’s long sold out debut tape finally gets a vinyl reissue. Plage Arrière is a deep sea meditation on a constellation of Greek beaches across three islands. Trumpets, echo-clicks and Harold Budd-esque shimmer piano whirl together on these sand-caked missives, tumbled and re-engineered by their surroundings like seaglass. Plage evokes the sub-aqeaous ambitions of Jürgen Müller, or Jan Jelinek inspecting a coral reef. The album has been remastered for vinyl by Sam Annand of Esk. Building on its original artwork, the vinyl edition features new photography by Roméo himself. Released alongside our friends SWIMS.

Nicolas Gaunin, the moniker of Italian experimental electronic musician Nicola Sanguin, returns with his latest full-length “Wormhole”. This record bridges the gap between naturalistic polyrhythms and more expansive, cosmic technologies. Contrasted to his previous rain-soaked “Hulahula Kāne” LP, “Wormhole” has even more emphasis on unusual rhythms; propulsive and abstracted yet immediate. The sonic palette is diversified as well, incorporating synthetic real-world timbres alongside crisp and more contemporary textures. The warped and weirdo experience of “Wormhole” is singularly Gaunin, like teleporting between an untouched rain forest and the inside of a super computer.

'Teratai Åkande' explores electronic techniques transforming sounds, melodies, and rhythms from balinese gamelan. It's an interaction and synthesis of acoustic and electronic expressions, exploring an imagined territory between two otherwise separate cultural worlds. On 'Teratai Åkande' the Copenhagen-based producer and electronic musician Anton Friisgaard travels new paths, as he explores gamelan music from his own artistic perspective in close collaboration with Balinese musicians, afliated with Ubud’s acclaimed Gamelan scene. After experiencing a concert with the Gamelan ensemble 'Gamelan Salukat' at Roskilde Festival in 2018, Friisgaard became inspired to contact Dewa Alit from the ensemble. With the aim of bringing forth a unique expression through the meeting of two distinct musical traditions, Friisgaard traveled to Ubud, Bali to record, compose and improvise in close collaboration with artists from the esteemed Gamelan scene in Ubud. The result is 'Teratai Åkande', which features Pande Made Gangga Sentana, I Nyoman Suwida, Dewa Badukz, Suryana Putra and Pande Made Gangga of Gamelan Salukat. Anton Friisgaard (fka Hviledag) is an electronic producer and musician based in Copenhagen. Known primarily for his experimental work with tape loops and ambient soundscapes, he’s become an established figure both in the Danish music scene as well as internationally.

Banabila returns with a second LP release on Knekelhuis. The renowned Dutch producer is up there among the stars when it comes to ambient music and the so-called ‘fourth world’ legacy. On this eleven-track album, we witness soul-wrenching, kraut-tinted, and early-yet-modernist electronics. Coming from his heart, these imaginative recordings center around otherworldly voices – fictional characters chanting in a made-up language, imbued with a captivating spirit, transcending linguistic barriers. Through remarkable complexity and technique, 'Unspeakable Visions' is full of sonic textures, together evoking a layered, emotional arc. While the track 'Rattles' still references the artist's first album on Knekelhuis, 'Echo Transformations', the style of most other tracks departs towards an intriguing new mix of both pop-infused songs and gloomy abstraction, balancing between a sense of anticipation and desolation. (Luke Cohlen, May 2024)

Hiroshima-based artist Meitei announces the reissue of Kwaidan on the 5th anniversary of his groundbreaking debut album. A collaboration between 2 labels – KITCHEN. LABEL (Kofū I & II) and Evening Chants (Kwaidan), the reissue sees the highly anticipated special 5th Anniversary Edition of Kwaidan with two previously unreleased bonus tracks. This will be released on long-out-of-print vinyl format in a new color variant, with an 8-panel insert and the first-ever CD version.

In 2018, Meitei shook the ambient world with the release of his debut album Kwaidan, a transposition of Japanese folklore into intricate compositions, capturing what he would coin as the “lost Japanese mood”. The album almost instantly received critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, where it was included in their Best Experimental Albums of 2018, Bandcamp, calling it “different from some of the ambient music that has been coming from Japan in recent years”, The Wire and more.

Kwaidan (怪談) is a style of Japanese ghost stories. Meitei took it as a challenge of his skill as a musician to transpose the folklore into intricate compositions, capturing this lost “Japanese mood”. “The shocking elements in the horror have become a staple. It functions as entertainment. But I felt the mood and ambiance from Kwaidan is starting to wither – while the darkness is scary, the beauty is in the curious spirit,” explains Meitei.

Koizumi Yakumo is an important figure in the Japanese literary world, known for his legends and ghost stories. He left the world, leaving a masterpiece called Kwaidan, heavily inspiring Meitei’s album direction. Sazanami, Curio, Shoji and Mushiro are seen as a nod and tribute to his work. Other influences include manga author Mizuki Shigeru, who drove the sound for Touba and Jizo, intended to be a homage soundtrack for his manga Gegege no Kitarō. As an old-fashioned man, Meitei also draws from the legendary Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. With this very eclectic mix of influences, the album Kwaidan possesses a prominent horror element, comedy, sentimentality and sorrow. He compares the ambiance as one would visually with wet moss, shrouded in mist.

“Music is an important human communication tool. Expressing a mood that is almost impossible to translate into language perfectly is interesting.” While most of the above might stem from influential Japanese art, Meitei was also attracted to the new wave of lo-fi hip hop, which he tried to weave into his music subtly. Something as easy as the wrong placement of a kick and snare on a track can divert the track away from the Kwaidan mood. Yet, Meitei found a delicate balance, resulting in a gorgeously crafted album.


Meitei releases Kwaidan 5th Anniversary Edition on 21 July 2023 via KITCHEN. LABEL and Evening Chants. Available on 180g smoke haze variant LP, CD and digital formats (LP arriving in Q3, 2023), This record is mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12k Mastering in New York. 

As one chapter closes, another opens. Following the passing of group member J.Derwort in 2019, Hanyo van Oosterom’s legacy work brings about the next evolution of the Chi project: Son of Chi. AI-25 sees subtle developments in the sound and expansion of tonal vocabulary, whilst retaining the organic instrumentation and rapturous dreamtime narratives. Flourishes of piano float elegantly with poise, and long-drawn flutes breathe life into the shifting landscape. Shadows play in the thick vegetal overgrowth, the air is heavy with the scent of age-old evocations. Speakers drift in and out of undulating reverie, forgotten transmissions from the repository of consciousness. Against the wide backdrop of the harsh and wild unknown, a feeling of peace resides within. Night and day gradually collapse into one another, as loops of lapping textures glisten quietly with mystical beauty.

Hailing from Hiroshima, Meitei, unveils the final chapter of his transformative Kofū trilogy. “Kofū III” marks the apex of a musical journey that began in 2020, unraveling an introspective exploration of the artist's psyche while delving deep into the essence of Japanese culture. This latest release invites listeners into the innermost sanctums of Meitei's existence — a passage filled with serenity, self-discovery, and the triumphant conquest of personal demons.

Meitei's journey has been deeply intertwined with his surroundings. His move from bustling Kyoto to the tranquil rural town of Onomichi in Hiroshima wasn't just a change of location but a profound shift in his life. Navigating through the ebbs and flows of mental well-being, Meitei found solace in the quiet, low-key energy of Onomichi, where he began creating his distinctive brand of "ambient" music dedicated to resurrecting ‘lost Japanese moods’.

"Kofū III" is not just a collection of songs; it's a window into Meitei's mind, where he reflects on ‘the Japanese mental landscape,’ as experienced during the period of his return to his hometown. This album stands as a testament to Meitei's evolution, from his tentative inner quest to a state of deep healing.

"Kofū” and its precursor, "Kwaidan,” germinated in the solitude of Onomichi, embodying the mysterious, vanishing essence of Japan that Meitei unearthed in the shadows of his hometown. With "Kofū III," this exploration reaches its zenith, weaving musical landscapes that transcend temporal bounds. Each track vividly paints bygone eras and vignettes, all while drawing on the rich tapestry of Japanese literature and mindscapes.

Meitei introduces listeners to the tranquil Hiroshima countryside in 'Reimei,' while 'Hiroshima' reflects upon the city's transformation. It explores Meitei's intricate relationship with the city and contemplates the ever-changing visage of contemporary Japanese progress.

Within the sonic fabric of "Kofū III," "Shisei" brings listeners to Japan's past, when tattoos bore the name "Shisei." Fueled by Junichiro Tanizaki's "Shisei" narratives, the song paints a sensual tale of a tattooed man adorning a woman with a spider tattoo.

Meitei's authenticity shines through in "Kofū III," where complex emotions metamorphose into a kaleidoscopic fusion of lo-fi bliss. In "Yume-jūya," Meitei recounts a peculiar dream and the lingering anxiety it left behind. Also, inspired by the famous Japanese writer Soseki Natsume's "Yume-jūya," Meitei's interpretation offers his own perspective on this comical and bizarre tale.

"Edogawa Ranpo" stands as a mind-bending loop track that pays homage to the genius of the lesser-known Japanese author Edogawa Ranpo, a pioneer of the mysterious and bizarre. This experimental piece melds folklore, electronic rapture, and distortion, echoing Meitei's fascination with Ranpo's work since his elementary school days.

At the core of "Kofū III" lies "Heiwa," originally titled "1945," encapsulating Meitei's profound reflection on peace education in his hometown and the weighty significance of acknowledging historical tragedies. Its renaming as "Peace" symbolizes his personal odyssey towards understanding and reconciliation.

As Meitei concludes his Kofū trilogy, global listeners are invited to embark on this voyage to unearth the hidden treasures of Japanese culture and the depths of the human soul. "Kofū III" is a meditation on the intangible threads that bind us to our past - a portal to Japan's veiled history, capturing the essence of Japan's elusive spirit through the enigmatic landscapes of Meitei's inner terrains.

"Kofū III" is slated for release on December 1, 2023, in 180g LP, CD, and digital formats via KITCHEN. LABEL. Both LP and CD format are presented in a debossed sleeve with obi strip and include an accompanying 32-page booklet. This album is mastered by Chihei Hatakeyama in Tokyo, Japan. 

2023 marks the tenth year of Music From Memory; a decade of groundbreaking archival releases, cross-generational collaborations and long-standing creative partnerships with our ever-expanding community of artists. To celebrate this milestone, earlier this year we asked our roster of artists to submit a piece of music for an anniversary compilation. As submissions gradually came in, we were blown away by what we received and slowly began to piece them together into what was to become “10”. Featuring work from artists who were present during the formation of the label, such as Gigi Masin, Joan Bibiloni and Michal Turtle, as well as artists like The Zenmenn, RAMZi and Dea, who have helped the label expand over subsequent years, “10” serves as a natural bookmark of where we are musically, whilst simultaneously reflecting on the label's rich musical past. In keeping with the Music From Memory ethos, the music of “10” spans both time and space, with submissions ranging from Vito Ricci's 'Da Hamptons' (1985) to Yu Su & J. Wilson's 'Mitti Atar' (2023). It crosses the globe, with a total of 10 countries represented across 17 tracks. The final result is an immersive musical compilation that flows perfectly from start to finish. Tragically, during the last few weeks of finalising MFM066, label co-owner Jamie Tiller passed away in a sudden accident. “10” was always intended to be a way to reflect on the journey of Music From Memory. The fact that it is now also one of the last releases that the team all worked on together adds a whole other level of reflection and makes it all the more special.

Music From Memory is excited to introduce the self-titled debut album of Habitat Ensemble, a new musical collective headed up by musician Marius Houschyar. The collective originates deep in the south of the Czech Republic, on the border with Austria, amongst the idyllic hills and fields of a village called Maříž, where a summer school of outsiders and creatives have been gathering since the 1990s. Enriching each other through intercultural exchange, summer school participants have created a unique gathering of artistic expression and interdisciplinary research. Originally grown out of the idea of translating the unique energy of the community and its environment into a musical journey where each member makes their own individual contribution, during the summer of August 2022, Habitat Ensemble became an exciting vehicle for connection and co-creation. Whether it be musical experimentation, composition, poetry, song or dance, Habitat Ensemble, having started as a series of multidisciplinary workshops, slowly developed into a unique musical recording. The album serves to conjure the unique nature, community, experimentation surrounding the school and the collective’s search for harmony across all of these, both musical and spiritual. MFM065 will be released in LP and digital format, comes with artwork by David McFarline, and is expected to release in November 2023.

Music Promenade (1964–1969), 20’29


Electroacoustic Music
World premiere for the Théâtre de la musique, March 16, 1970
« Hétéro-Concert »
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Permanent version for four stand-alone tape recorders. A series of colliding realistic sounds and sonic images. Whilst walking, a man is struck by the violence of his surroundings.
 Nature has disappeared in a whirlwind of warfare and industry in the midst of which he encounters a dying folklore and a lost young girl.

The "Installation" version is used to sonify a place in which walkers are free to choose their musical itinerary.

Unheimlich Schön (1971), 15’40


Musique concrète made in 1971 in the studios of the Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden.
Voice: Ilse Mengel.

“How does a young woman breathe when thinking about something else ?”
To be listened to at a low volume.

Both noted for strikingly forward-thinking bodies of solo work dating back to the 1990s, the duo of Andrew Pekler & Giuseppe Ielasi - collaborators for the better part of a decade - reemerge with 'Palimpsests’, their first outing with Shelter Press. Built from deconstructed layers of texture, tone, and arrhythmic percussiveness, the album’s 2 sides distill 6 years of work into 9 splintered, airy reimaginings of minimalism - each surprising, creatively rigorous, and startlingly beautiful - that rest at the outer reaches of contemporary electroacoustic practice and musique concrète. Based in Berlin and Milan respectively, Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi have individually carved singular paths across numerous disciplines within experimental music for more than 20 years, each deploying sampling, synthesis, and acoustic sources to weave their own, distinct worlds of sonorous abstraction. Brought together by years of friendship and a shared devotion to layered texture and complex, fractured structure, the pair first joined their creative energies in 2013, a collaboration that culminated as the LP, ‘Holiday For Sampler’, issued by Planam. 'Palimpsests’, the duo’s second outing, draws its material from a series of improvisations made by the Pekler and Ielasi in Milan during 2015. Over the ensuing six years, those recordings would undergo various transformations - cut, reworked, sampled, and added to by each artist, working at geographic distance between Berlin, Kyoto and Monza - before culminating, like the album’s title suggests, as a unique manifestation of musical palimpsest; “an object reused and altered, while still bearing visible traces of its earlier form”. With each of the album’s compositions nodding toward a city with which Pekler and Ielasi hold biographical connections, 'Palimpsests’ constructs sound as poetic metaphor; a series of ghosts - traces of memory, image, and action - cut and reassembled, in cycling permutations, before been set into action at a glacial pace with layered, transparent forms. Defined by remarkable restraint and pointillistic precision, across the album’s two sides Pekler and Ielasi weave the fractured remnants of their sessions - reduced to glitches and warbling fragments of texture and tonality - into pulsing expanses of spatial ambiance that defy imagism, blur the boundaries between the synthetic and organic - reducing their sources to a series of unknowns - recast the boundaries of electroacoustic practice on markedly singular terms. Shelter Press is thrilled to present 'Palimpsests’, another brilliant outing from the duo of Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies on black vinyl, with artworks on printed inner and outer sleeves by Traianos Pakioufakis.

When words trail off at the beginning of claire rousay’s “everything perfect is already here,” ornate instrumentation is waiting to fill a void left by the breakdown of language. Yet it becomes clear as we trace rousay’s collaged sonic pathway that breakdown, of meaning and also of melody, is also a place to rest. everything perfect… is made up of two extended compositions that cycle between familiarity and unknowing. There are seemingly infinite ways to feel in response to these pieces of music, which shift tone across their languid duration, earnest like a familiar song but unbound from the emotional didacticisms of lyrical voice and pop form. rousay builds a fluid landscape around the acoustic contributions of Alex Cunningham (violin), Mari Maurice (electronics and violin), Marilu Donovan (harp), and Theodore Cale Schafer (piano), whose respective melodies weave gently in and out, sometimes steady, sometimes aching, sometimes receding altogether in deference to less overtly musical sounds. That is, percussive texture in the form of unvarnished samples and field recordings: the rattle and rustle and the stops and starts of life unfurling, voices sharing memories nearly out of reach, doors closing, wind against a microphone. Everything comes from somewhere in particular, possessing the veneer of the diaristic, but sound’s provenance is secondary here and so these details become tangled and fused. On this release I hear such details not as individual ornaments or stories but the collective architecture of the greater composition. It’s an architecture that is not quite formed and thus full of openings out to the world unfolding. “The world unfolding,” that’s a kind way of saying change, movement, loss, transformation. Things rousay here indexes, not without shards of desire or pain, still somehow what I hear is coarse peace in the in-between. These two pieces sweep you away and then bring you to earth, but which is which, anyway? Where am I now? What is different outside of me? What is different inside of me? Um. I think. everything is perfect is already here, like the answers to these questions, is loose and beautiful in surprising ways. The music guides a certain experience of the world around. In claire’s music there is this marriage—not just a pairing or juxtaposition but an interrelationship, an eventual confusion—of song/texture, narrative/abstraction, figure/ground. Everything comes from somewhere in particular but not just the voices, the field recordings, the what is being said or meant, what matters is “the where you are now.” There are so many ways of anchoring oneself in the present, some have to do with fantasy or storytelling and some with accepting what is. These two compositions find peace between these modes. They sweep you away and then bring you to earth, but which is which, anyway? Their mode of feeling is inquisitive. Where am I now? What has changed outside of me? What has changed inside of me? The music, like the answers to these questions, is loose and beautiful in surprising ways.

MESTIZX is Bolivian-born singer and multi-medium performer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and renowned Chicago expat jazz drummer Frank Rosaly's debut album as co-composers, arrangers and musicians. Partners in both marriage and art, the Amsterdam-based Ferragutti and Rosaly dove into the sounds of their respective ancestral roots in Bolivia, Brazil, and Puerto Rico to create a deeply personal meditation on decolonization and the defiant power of ritual and protest. They chose the title MESTIZX – a non-gendered version of the sometimes slurred Spanish colonial word for a “mixed person” - as a means of both challenging and embracing the liminality of their identities and artistic practices. Rosaly says: “I grew up quite Puerto Rican in my home, but was taught to mask it outside my home. I wasn’t allowed to speak Spanish, so the drums eventually became my language, secretly tying together my own feeling of connection to mi tierra. This record is the first time I actively give voice to the nuance within myself, allowing me to take ownership of this in-between, which is what this album communicates for me… There is this unusual place that exists between these two cultures, of which I am both. There is a complex story in that sliver of in-betweenness, worthy of giving voice to all of us that live in-between.” Ferragutti adds: “My personal understanding is one that stems from being placed in between lineages that carry the colonizer and colonized, the oppressor and oppressed, the demon and the angel… thus by definition is tied to post-colonial social constructs which we as Bolivians have to step in, like a 500 year novel that goes on and on… We have access to many memories and traditions, but not really, because we don’t fully belong to any of those… This makes us feel we're in a constant state of being the “visitors” and “outsiders.” On one hand, we are never truly part of one lineage. On the other hand, it makes us a travelers of worlds, storytellers in between multiple languages, cultures, and worldviews. We chose MESTIZX for this work as an act of recognizing the mixed state of being as a difficult and yet powerful one.” The album was produced and recorded primarily at International Anthem Studios in Chicago, where Ferragutti and Rosaly were joined by a community of musicians and beloved friends including Matt Lux, Avreeayl Ra, Ben LaMar Gay, Daniel Villarreal, Bill MacKay, Rob Frye, and Mikel Patrick Avery, with addditional contributions from Chris Doyle, Guilherme Granado, Viktor Le Givens and Fredy Velásquez. The music creatively infuses Latin rhythmic patterns and oblong swing from pre-and post-colonial Latin America into a collision of avant jazz, art punk, Chicago post-rock, bomba, plena, cumbia, Andean, minimal, electronica, and folk. A wholly original but undeniably universal sound – both of-the-moment and alluringly futuristic - MESTIZX contains points of reference and resonance for fans of Juana Molina, Café Tacvba, Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln, Liquid Liquid, Arto Lindsay, As Mercenarias, The Ex, Tortoise, Tom Zé, Elza Soares, La Mecanica Popular... It’s a vast, vibrant and encompassing spectrum of sounds, but at its core MESTIZX is a lucidly conscious collection of auto-biographical statements from Ferragutti & Rosaly on the deeply personalized effects of colonialism on geography, history, and identity. Despite its heavy subject matter, however, MESTIZX finds a lifeline in communal, celebratory, soul-bearing and movement-inducing music.

To get a good handle on ‘Aslope’ look no further than the intricate ‘Scattered sprinkle, no turn’, a 12+ minute collage of moonlit organ vamps, stifled voices and disembodied, robotic poems. Heaving from smeary abstraction to penetrable drama almost imperceptibly, featherlight rhythms are cut short by uncanny voices: “stop, turning, a page,” like some rogue navigation assistant, slicing into ticking clocks and xerox noise. It’s like listening to a film without access to the visuals - all the foley sound remains (car blinkers, trains passing, conversations) and we’re left puzzling over what may or may not be happening. The only context provided is from Nika Son herself, who says that although the album doesn’t have a consistent theme, the link is that each piece is inspired by the night’s “capability to shift our perception and memory”. It comes off like a crepuscular sketchbook of ideas and themes that coalesce into a bumpy, endlessly rewarding sonic landscape. Son’s more bite-sized compositions are just as mind-altering. ‘Trinsar Gobble’ is one of the record’s more twitchy tracks, replete with thrumming, inhuman polyrhythms that skitter around booming thuds, French voices and oscillating, filtered synths. It’s music that defies simple categorisation - Son doesn’t tie herself to any particular type of identifiable expression or another. The music sounds as if it’s evolved outside expected contemporary influences: there are no knowing nods to early electronic innovators. Rather, Son follow her own nose, using the sonic characteristics of each element to draw us into an elusive personal narrative. On ‘It’s just a cucumber’, environmental recordings are edited just enough to enhance the illusion, before voices curl and decompress into rousing bass womps and unmetered rhythms prickle around punkish shouts. The use of voices is omnipresent throughout, even when they’re not there, they sound close: on ‘La nuit tombe’, they’re muffled behind echoing footsteps and creepy synth wails, and on ‘Gelbes Feld’, incomprehensible chatter envelopes cricket chirps and b-movie arpeggios. Many artists have tried to map out the dreamworld using sound, but Nika Son manages to make music that genuinely feels in-between worlds, capturing those seconds before vivid memories slip away from the mind’s eye.

Automatic Writing compiles three early Robert Ashley works from 1967-79 -- some of his most experimental works. Composed in recorded form over a period of five years, "Automatic Writing", originally issued on Lovely Music in 1979, is the result of Robert Ashley's fascination with involuntary speech. He recorded and analyzed the repeated lines of his own mantra and extracted four musical characters. The result is a quiet, early form of ambient music. The piece rather famously formed the basis for Nurse With Wound's A Missing Sense (1997). Steven Stapleton's commentary on the recording: "A Missing Sense was originally conceived as a private tape to accompany my taking of LSD. When in that particular state, Robert Ashley's 'Automatic Writing' was the only music I could actually experience without feeling claustrophobic and paranoid. We played it endlessly; it seemed to become part of the room, perfectly blending with the late night city ambiance and the 'breathing' of the building." The piece features the voices of Ashley and Mimi Johnson, with electronics and Polymoog backing, with a switching circuit designed and built by Paul DeMarinis. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and "She Was A Visitor" are excerpts from an opera entitled "That Morning Thing", composed in 1966-67 as a result of Ashley's impulse to express something about the suicides of three friends. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon", originally issued in 1968, is a woman's description of a sexual experience. Ashley attempts "to demonstrate the dichotomy between the rational-whatever can be explained in words-and its opposite-which is not irrational or a-rational, but which cannot be explained in words." The lead voice performed by Cynthia Liddell, the processed back-up chorus, the recurring bell tone, and the pervading tape hiss, create an unsettling mood. "She Was a Visitor" was originally issued on the electronic compilation Extended Voices in 1967. It is another form of description, intended to be understood as a form of rumor. The chorus is divided into groups, each headed by a leader. A lone speaker repeats the title sentence throughout. The separate phonemes of this sentence are picked up freely by the group leaders and are relayed to the group members, who sustain them softly and for the duration of one natural breath. The time lag produces a staggered, chant-like effect, with the sounds moving outward from the nearest performer to the farthest. Booklet notes by Robert Ashley.

ヴェイパーウェイヴ史上に残る伝説的名作が待望の再来！当初ジャンルの標榜したアイロニカルなコンセプトが自分たちのジャンルの氾濫に溺れ、2012年に一度ジャンルの死を宣言されたVaporwave。それ以降の流れの中で現れた世代の作家として最大の特異点的人物であり、今も熱狂的なファンを増やし続けるオハイオ発のレジェンド、ドリームパンクのパイオニア、t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者が、〈Dream Catalogue〉や〈Orange Milk Records〉〈AMDISCS〉などから作品を発表してきた実験的作家Nmeshと共に全盛期の〈Dream Catalogue〉から2015年に発表したスプリット・アルバムにして、同ジャンルのクラシック『ロストエデンへのパス』が待望の3LP化再発！テレパシー能力者関連の作品としても『現実を超えて』や『アンタラ通信』『星間性交』などといったこのジャンルの古典的名作と並んで断トツに評価の高いマスターピースが遂にアナログ・リリース。「ロ​ス​ト​エ​デ​ン​」と表題に冠されている通り、その後のHKEとの2814『新しい日の誕生』が頭をよぎる、東洋的異都憧憬の入り混じったサイバーパンク的な混沌とした世界観、シュルレアリスム、亜熱帯的な湿度と民族的な繰り返しのリズムが織り合い、孤独で鎮静的な孤高の雰囲気を作り上げています。

A floating drift toward a mysterious reality, between Nature and Cosmos, poised between sleep and wakefulness, temporal co-presences and impossible spatial ubiquities. In this phantasmagorical saga, inspired by TV science-fiction as well as 60s and 70s horror movies, Nicola Giunta/Lay Llamas creates a miraculous balance between original inserts and retrievals of freely chosen fragments from old audio documentaries on vinyl, perfecting the art of sound collage in an absolutely psychedelic way. Nonlinear dream textures become labyrinths of sudden openings, empty rooms, interstellar platforms, narrating voices from other worlds or ghostly churches from beyond the grave. A piercing electronica of cosmic synths, dense with the mists and dusts of distant times, past and future at the same time, where lysergic percussions merge with echoes of flutes vibrating in endless tropical forests and natures. Until the final awakening, in the reality of the first light of dawn. Originally released on cassette by Miracle Pond.

In November 2022 world-renowned kora player Ballaké Sissoko and acclaimed guitarist Derek Gripper spend just three hours recording a wordless album together. The kora and guitar in the hands of masters - a session where New Ancient Strings meets One Night On Earth. “Musically we tested each other,” says Sissoko, explaining that the most magical aspect of their initial encounter was the spontaneity of the whole thing. “We have the mastery of our instruments, the technique and a good ear. Derek is very curious, that’s very important.” “He’s just such a good listener,” says Gripper about Sissoko. “It’s not what he plays, it’s how he plays it. He’s an amazing interpreter, the prime master of timbre.” “It’s a remarkable album,” says Lucy Duran, professor of Music at SOAS. “It’s the furthest away that Ballaké has gone from his own idiom and it’s brilliant – not world music, it’s in a totally different realm, entering new territory”

 

From Pacific City Discs, to you the listener, this summer, a DJ mix of fantasy and splash-energy is coming to you in a small edition of vinyl. Fantasy writer/recording artist, Francesco Cavaliere, while visiting his seaside childhood vacation location, was extended an impromptu invitation, to DJ an 80s swimming club. He had this to say about his experience: “I was at Shangri-La and a boy and girl from the bathhouse in silver swimsuits and sand-colored streaks waved me over with a drink and asked me if I would like to DJ the next day during my lesson on the beach at Tana del Pirata! I then and there I laughed but then I accepted (I had nothing at home just my mp3 player and a Nokia with music inside) The next day there was a little wind on the beach and the umbrellas swayed to the left. From the heat they could catch fire, white flames, instead the sea was rough and that wind with very long wrists cheered us up, blowing gaseous clouds in our faces. Perfect for the day ahead. After the first few pieces, I began to see that a group of kids jumped into the adjacent pool trying flips bombs and candle dives. Someone at the bar was playing Altered Beast .. so sipping a drink with ice I imagined DJ werewolf repeating catchy pieces while a kite half cobra half skyscraper inflated above us.” This Impromptu Disc is fresh now, for you to frolic with this summer, while entertaining a daydream in the midst of entering a body of water while witnessing an apparition in the sky.

Bristol multi-instrumentalist, producer and nature freak Will Yates offers a new record from his Memotone alias, an expansive, hypothetical revue titled How Was Your Life? Launching from terrains recognizable to fans of Will’s extensive, restless discography, How Was Your Life? packs up his penchant for baroque druid folk, homespun electronics and weightless woodwinds and explodes them into glistening, fractal star dust. Instigated by the purchase of an antiquated Y2K era guitar synthesizer, the record was produced over the first half of 2022, in a large part the result of in-studio improvisation. Where Will’s previous releases under various guises have often been conceived by conceptual frameworks, HWYL? was carved by equipment that offered both possibilities and parameters that Will relished and explored to the nth degree. The Roland GR33 not only provided sublime guitar sounds but also empowered the guitar to convincingly mimic fretless bass, tabla and a vast percussive array, also summoning an artillery of uniquely outre atmospheres over the course of the record. The resulting concoction sounds familiar yet subtly, unshakeably otherworldly, shaping up as perhaps the most honed, energized and beatific Memotone album to date. Paradise Drips gently lifts off with wobbly guitar, randomized sequences and unidentifiable percussive elements situating us somewhere in an unearthly realm, before Open World zaps the serotonin receptors and gushes with ecstatic warmth, it’s quietly insistent soft disco shuffle and levitational fretless driving towards a totally blissed and very soft “drop”. Forest Zone sees Memotone deep in the green, with a loose, propulsive groove and dancing flutes stumbling into a medieval ritual in the clearing halfway through, and Glow In The Dark deftly bounces between spacey ambience and an undulating no wave vamp. Carved By The Moon is a delightfully melted classical cut, while Canteen Sandwich offers the record’s most explicitly nod to modernity in the form of a nimble drum workout with samurai synths and melodic percussion that heaves towards a genuine peak. Lonehead immediately backs right off, viscerally melancholic clarinet and bubbling fx making for the records most hefty introspective moment, before Walking Backwards simmers all the way down on an wistful arpeggio, rooting back in earthly reality with charmed rhythms and jazzy tunings. Catharsis complete, Memotone is onto the next incarnation. Will Yates has been making music as Memotone since 2010, releasing music on labels like Black Acre, Disktopia and Accidental Meetings, also releasing music as O.G. Jigg and Half Nelson. He’s worked as a producer, session musician and live performer on a broad spectrum of projects, and recently provided source sounds that made up Batu’s “Opal” on Timedance.

Greville returns to Mad Habitat, accompanied by the Lonely Voices. This incorporeal chorus gives voice to the tribulations of ''Blue Dreams'' and the interplanetary serenade of ''Sun, Moon, Stars''. This record takes Greville's keen interpretation of natural sonics and considered sound sculpting into the realm of cosmic synth-pop, recalling luminaries like Sheila Chandra's Monsoon or the fourth-world exotica-pop or Water Melon Group. Digi-dub basslines add a weight to the celestial melodies and jalatharangam-esque percussion. It’s a transportive suite of songs and an insightful reflection of Greville’s evolution as an artist; showcasing how his world-building makes room for a myriad of voices.