MUSIC

A sense of optimism infuses Penguin Cafe’s fifth studio album Rain Before Seven… not the braggadocious, overconfident kind, but more a blithe, self-effacing optimism in keeping with the national character. Even when all signs point to the contrary, it operates within the certainty that things are going to be alright. Probably.

The title comes from an old weather proverb with the rhyming prognostication — fine before eleven — hinting at a happy ending, irrespective of the science: “I found it in a book and I'd never heard it before,” says Arthur Jeffes, leader of Penguin Cafe. “It has faintly optimistic overtones and I quite like it. It's fallen out of usage recently but it does describe English weather patterns coming in off the Atlantic.”

From the widescreen reverie of opener ‘Welcome to London’ with its cheeky nod to Morricone to ‘Goldfinch Yodel’, the self-described “Maypole banger” at the denouement, there’s a welcome sense of sanguinity, always with an undercurrent of exotic rhythmic exuberance. Playfulness pervades, with a titular nod to A Matter of Life… from 2011, the last album title that concluded with an ellipsis. That Penguin Cafe debut is the bridge between the legendary Penguin Cafe Orchestra, led by Arthur’s father Simon Jeffes, and the much-loved descendent, led by Arthur.

“Stylistically it's really satisfying to get back to playful rhythms and instruments,” says the younger Jeffes, who kept the group’s debut from 12 years ago in mind when writing the new album. “Certainly when starting out, I became aware that we’d stopped using quite a few of the textures that had been there at the beginning—and it was certainly there in my dad's earlier stuff. So there's a lot of balafon and textures from completely different parts of the world, musically and geographically: ukuleles, cuatros and melodicas that you can hear.”

It’ll become clear when listening to Rain Before Seven… that the themes explored transcend mere weather chat. In a sense, it’s a sonic diary scribbled from below the parapet, waiting for the danger to blow over. Jeffes, like many of us, found himself in lockdown in 2020. COVID-19’s first European destination was Italy, where he and his family were staying at the time in a converted convent in Tuscany, bought some twelve years ago with his mother, the celebrated stone sculptor Emily Young. There might be worse places to be stranded during quarantine than a hilly enclave surrounded by olive trees, though the family were faced with the same sobering fears and uncertainties that much of the world was forced to contend with.

And so titles often refer to personal experience during this period. ‘Galahad’ is a triumphant celebration of Arthur’s beloved dog who died, aged 16, written in an irrepressible 15/8 time signature, and ‘Lamborghini 754’ is named after the 40-year-old tractor he bought for his mother, which he could see from the studio as she traversed the olive grove. Jeffes is the first to admit that he was fortunate to have space to manoeuvre, a luxury that was denied to millions living in cities and towns. Moreover, the plight of city dwellers seemed to eerily coalesce with a vision Arthur’s dad had that would inspire the Penguin Cafe Orchestra into life in the first place.

The story goes like so: back in 1972, Simon Jeffes ate some dodgy fish whilst holidaying in the South of France, which caused him to hallucinate: “As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision,” he said later. “There, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye. In the rooms were people, everyone of them preoccupied…” Jeffes could make out “electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place had been neutralised, made grey and anonymous. The scene was, for me, one of ordered desolation.” The antidote to this premonition of an uncannily familiar future was the freewheeling Penguin Cafe “where your unconscious can just be”.

Simon Jeffes took “a slightly eccentric antiquarian approach” to assembling his music, according to Arthur, repurposing sounds that were unapologetically easy on the ear; a reaction, perhaps, to the earnestness of the post-war serialists, which happened to coincide with the rise of minimalism. “But he loved Boulez,” adds Arthur, “and John Cage too. I think my dad felt that there was a lot of sub-Cage that didn't need to be there.” Classical music dovetailing with pop and East African rhythms might not sound all that remarkable in the internet age (and in advertising, which PCO were never averse to), though in the 1970s they found a home on Brian Eno’s Obscure label, such was the arcane nature of what they were doing. The Penguin Cafe Orchestra wouldn’t remain recherché for long.

“I think his novel approach was to take interesting, weird ideas and do strange things with them,” says Arthur, “but always while keeping an eye on making sure it sounded beautiful and emotionally engaging.” That ethos has been carried into Penguin Cafe. “It’s a commitment that we made when I picked it up again, because we play my dad's music but we also perform new music in the same sound world. That means I’m honour bound to keep an eye on the original thread and make sure we don't start heading off into thrash metal territory.”

Nevertheless, encouraged by co-producer Robert Raths, the rhythmic elements of Rain Before Seven… have never been more to the fore and, at times, even hint at the electronic. ‘Find Your Feet’, for instance, is underpinned with more than just a pulse. Mixed by Tom Chichester-Clark, it brings to the musical melange what Arthur describes as a “near electronic feel”. He adds, excitedly: “There are elements of fun here which we haven't really done with the last three records.” Another ebullient highlight is ‘In Re Budd’, dedicated to the late ambient godfather Harold Budd, who Arthur discovered had died on the day he’d been writing the celebratory ear worm with a deceptively tricky syncopation. Played on an upright piano with some “prepared” felt to accentuate the bounce, Jeffes feels a track with an Afro Cuban Cafe vibe would appeal to Budd’s contrariness.

And then there’s the aforementioned ‘Welcome to London’, which got its name as the world started to open up and people were finally allowed to fly again. Jeffes, who touched down on home soil for the first time in a while, was struck by its cinematic John Barry-esque qualities as he took a taxi into West London from Heathrow with the mise-en-scène of the opulent twilight. The optimism is there, and maybe a little caustic irony too. “Robert [Raths] added a layer of nuance which I think is interesting, because many Londoners are not from London originally. So you pitch up to London as an outsider, and you haven't really found your tribe yet, you get mugged… and then ‘Welcome to London’ takes on a more sarcastic resonance.” 

Madvillainy without the raps is still a classic, with Madlib taking his place on the cover.

Though best known for producing seminal albums for some of the world’s most exciting artists (Vince Staples, IDLES, Rico Nasty), on LOUIE Kenny subverts expectations with an almost entirely instrumental artist record that acts as a deeply personal tribute to the artist’s ailing father. Over 17 songs, LOUIE is a hypnotic odyssey of wounded, teardrop soul; a side of Kenny that has not been seen by the world before.

A 2022 masterpiece by GODSPEED Sound, an up-and-coming artist of "Barber Beats", a subgenre of vaporwave represented by Haircuts for Men and Macroblank, and under the influence of trip-hop, downtempo, and instrumental hip-hop. The EP "ضوء القمر" is a must-see work by the up-and-coming artist who has been working under this name since 2022 and has sent out countless works since!

9ms is the duo of Simon Popp and Florian König. On their wide ranging debut album ‚Pleats‘ the tech-savvy drummers offer grooves from the dubbier realms of World Music and Krautrock - some meditative and light, some thick as wall and steady as a clock. The album was recorded live in a large wooden hall in the Bavarian Alps with only three microphones. Using various infrared and magnetic field sensors, Popp and König were able to translate their movements into control voltage, which they then used to trigger and tweak synthesizers and a myriad of effects. A way for two humans to become one with their mystic machinery.

"I’ve started to work on this album before I knew it. During June 2018 I was in Japan for a month to release my previous album "Cairn" as well as my first solo exhibition of drawings in Tokyo. Everyday on my way to the gallery I passed in front of the same building, its name kept haunting me : Rogue Hill. Back then I was digging for cheap 80’s Japanese CD’s (Balearic, New Age, Ambient,...) in second hand stores. Most of them set the tone of this album and the direction I wanted to follow. I feel there’s a direct connection between these original sources and the sound I pursue by their meditative aspect. Most of the demo songs were done before my daughter’s birth on August 2019 and were finalized since then. Many of the titles refer to this main event and relate to how it changed my position in life : being a link through time by becoming a father."

A Day at United. The name practically says it all. An album recorded in a single day. No rehearsals. No second takes. Just Mocky and friends. Some instruments. Some songs Mocky sketched in the week leading up. Oh yeah, and a recording studio. United Recording, in fact. The legendary independent studio, financed by Sinatra among others. A refuge for artists seeking more control. Or maybe ‘less interference’ is a better way to put it. Because this is not an album about control. It’s about putting certain conditions in place — creative limitations, even — then letting go. Letting the magic happen. Letting the human happen. In an age of computer-led precision, this is an album about the struggle for imperfection.
“I’ve always been inspired by the story of Miles recording Kind Of Blue,” says Mocky, “going into the studio with Coltrane and Bill Evans, bringing melodies jotted on scraps of paper, and making an album in real-time.” Other precedents come to mind, as well. The Art Blakey model, for example. Drummer as composer -bandleader. Not that Mocky, who led the session from his drum kit, compares himself to the jazz greats. He doesn’t even call himself a jazz musician (any more than he calls himself an electronic musician or whatever else). If this is his ‘jazz album’, it’s because of the process that yielded it. There are no solos here — none of that jazz. Think of this as jazz composition.
The process began with a recording date: “I was like, wow, we can get the studio in 10 days? The same studio Sinatra recorded in and the same room where Ray Charles recorded the epoch defining 'I can’t stop loving you'? Ok, let’s see who can make it. So I started calling around. And when someone like Miguel [Atwood-Ferguson] confirmed, I could start writing melodies that reflected, say, his lyrical way of playing.” Mocky composed the songs in his head, mostly while strolling Lulu, his newborn, around Silver Lake. And to ensure a 'classic' quality of the record, Mocky got together with the legendary producer Justin Stanley (Prince, Beck Leonhard Cohen, Paul McCartney) who ended up recording and co-producing the album. Mocky finally ‘heard’ the songs the same time the others did. “When everyone was in position, the charts in front them, the sticks in my hand, it was the first time I actually considered what I was about to do on drums. It was free-styling. Hearing the songs as they were being recorded. Complete real-time.”
Looking back on the origin of the album, Mocky sees it as an extension of his free-flowing Mocky and Friends nights. Picture a revolving cast of collaborators and co-creators, convening on the rooftop of the Ace Hotel in downtown LA, making music in the moment. “I wanted to attain a level of intention that was different from anything I had done on an album before,” Mocky says. “Rather than playing all the instruments, I just drummed and let the ideas filter through this group of artists in real-time. If you multi-track or edit, the intention becomes a conceptual thing, considered and refined. At United, it was about this creative urgency. For me, it was waking up one day and, at the end of it, having an album done. It seemed like such a preposterous idea. Until I just did it.” 

Following up his score for the japanese Netflix Anime series “Carole & Tuesday”, Mocky returns to album mode with his new orchestral opus “Overtones For The Omniverse”. Just days before the first Covid lockdowns, Mocky brought a 16 person orchestra comprising of his usual who’s who of underground talent into LA’s Barefoot Studios (and into the same room where Stevie Wonder recorded “Songs in the Key of Life”) to record a pile of scores he had come up with during his previous year’s sabbatical in Portugal.
The result is a stunning orchestral album recorded in 36 hours in one or two takes straight off the written page. Shunning the “possible perfection” of today's recording techniques, Mocky looked back as a way to find an alternate future.

According to Mocky:
“We had to do it quick with no rehearsal to capture that big open sound of people working together in a room - in all its imperfect glory. In the imperfections you find the humanity. And in today’s tech driven spaces you have to fight to preserve a space for humanity. I felt a deep desire to create a sonic trajectory path for us to follow as we ascend and evolve our understanding of love and what it means to be human. This is the inspiration for „Overtones for the Omniverse“”.

The album runs the gamut from Steve Reich infused minimalism overlaid with Dorothy Ashby style harp runs (“Overtures”) to atonal analogue synth sounds over Martin Denny style percussion (“Bora!”). There's a classic Mocky crooning number that gives a Jim Henson-esque take on the state of “Humans” and the album as a whole captures Mocky's skill of bringing together the joyful energy of a unique cast of LA collaborators. 

Since his Beat Diary debut (a 12xLP box set comprising 365 beats recorded daily over the course of a year), Julian Sartorius has immersed himself in unique and ambitious projects - trekking the path not travelled to arrive at rhythmic life forms through found objects and prepared instruments. Equally as mighty are his two other escapades, the most recent being Locked Grooves - 112 beats cut as endless loops on vinyl spanning 56 dense 1.8 second compositions per side. Preceding that is his auditory hike into the mountains (Hidden Tracks: Basel - Genève), wading through and playing the landscapes around him like a lithophone. While Julian’s previous releases focus on innovative and conceptual approaches to realizing an album, his new venture on Marionette (titled Mux) is a culmination of all his efforts thus far to mimic a synthesizer and drum machine. This impossible feat challenges Julian to experiment and develop a musical language that bridges the gap between organic timbres and electronic music. When listening to Mux, one might simply forget that the seemingly electronic sounds are only constructed organically via hand movements. The common thread in all his works is that the drums are treated as resonant bodies - free to flow and form rhythm and harmony in spacetime. This is Julian’s second outing for the label, the first being (the long out of print) Sulla Pelle with Valentina Magaletti in 2019. Other collaborations include prolific artists such as Matthew Herbert, Sylvie Courvoisier, Gyda Valtysdottir, Dimlite, Shahzad Ismaily and Dan Carey (Speedy Wunderground).

The album TICHAZOMUONA by Dumisani Abraham “Dumi” Maraire was a pioneering effort to promote mbira music. It is a family effort involving his wife Chengeto Linda “Mai Chi” Nemarundwe and their daughter, Chiwoniso “Chi” Maraire. Maraire was a mbira and marimba player, who taught for many years on the west coast of the United States, and was the moving spirit behind the popularity of Shona music in the USA and more widely. Born in 1944 in Chakohwa Village in Mutambara, Eastern Zimbabwe, Dumi began learning music from family members early. In his late teens, he began to pursue music more seriously; in 1966, Dumi went to the Kwanongoma College of Music in Bulawayo and started to learn instruments like the nyunganyunga mbira and the marimba. The nyunganyunga mbira is a 15-Note kalimba (or lamellophone), named after the community from which it originated; thousands of youths learnt traditional songs on this instrument at Kwanongoma. Before colonialism, the mbira was considered sacred; though vital to Shona culture, its importance in traditional ceremonies suffered during and after colonialism. With the arrival of the settlers, many locals converted to Christianity, where the colonialist missionaries preached that mbira music was connected to evil spirits. The rise of pan-Africanism and patriotism in the postcolonial era brought a more tolerant and respectful stance towards musical instruments like the mbira. At independence in 1980, traditional Zimbabwean music, following heavy Rhodesian censorship, began receiving more airtime on radio and television. After independence, artists like Thomas Mapfumo, Zexie Manatsa, Marshall Munhumumwe, Jonah Sithole, and Robson Banda started performing popular guitar music that replicated the mbira’s sound. Dumi and others, including Ephat Mujuru, Beulah Dyoko, Cosmas Magaya and Stella Chiweshe, played traditional mbira music, sometimes accompanied by the ngoma (drum) and hosho (shakers) as well. Dumi is credited with developing the 1–15 number notation used on the nyunganyunga mbira, and notating the song Chemutengure; this song is used to teach mbira learners the technique of playing the instrument. Dumi was a visiting professor in the University of Washington’s ethnomusicology department from 1968 to 1972. Composing in Shona, he specialised in marimba, singing, dancing and drumming. He taught at The Evergreen State College in Olympia in the 1970s, giving private lessons and touring the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia with several marimba groups he founded. After watching a young Linda Nemarundwe perform one of his mbira arrangements at a 1972 workshop in Zimbabwe, Maraire offered to teach her more, and they worked together for the rest of the conference, playing together at a final performance. Dumi eventually married Mai Chi in 1975, and she joined him in Seattle, where he continued teaching and performing Zimbabwean music, while she earned her BA in Early Childhood Education. In 1982, the family returned to Zimbabwe; Mai Chi worked for the Save the Children Fund, while Dumi developed the ethnomusicology programme at the University of Zimbabwe. During this time, in 1986, they recorded the album TICHAZOMUONA, featuring their 10-year-old daughter Chiwoniso on the title track. The entire recording is a masterpiece of traditional mbira playing, combining the intimate with the spiritual to fashion a genre-defining sound. When you pick up a mbira, you feel you are picking up the history of a part of Africa, a complete way of making music, a whole social system of music and religion and history. As such, it can be confusing as to who is, in fact, playing who. In Dumi’s own words: “When a mbira player plays his instrument, he is not playing it for the world. He is not trying to please people, nor is he performing. What he is doing is conversing with a friend. He teaches his friend what to do, and his friend teaches him what to do... To me, a mbira is a lively instrument. It amazes me when I hear all these different things in my way of playing. This is not because I am playing different patterns without knowing what I am doing, but because, as I give the mbira more, I get more from it. So, in simple terms, I can say that the mbira is always in front, giving the materials to the player, and the player follows behind, emphasising these while at the same time asking for more. What more can one say of such an instrument but that it is a friend indeed?” Indeed, this personal relationship with his instrument led Dumi to credit the Nyunganyunga Mbira separately on the original album cover (even while his daughter’s name, Chiwoniso, was slightly misspelt). Four years later, he was back in Seattle, teaching and earning his doctorate in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington. When Dumi finally returned permanently to Zimbabwe in 1990 to take a position at the University of Zimbabwe, Mai Chi remained in the US, making her home in Portland, Oregon, where she developed her renowned love of cooking into a catering business. Mai Chi was a multi-dimensional musician in her own right - vocalist, marimba player, drummer, dancer - who involved herself deeply with the African music community in the Pacific Northwest, sharing her musicality freely and openly until she died in 1997. Dumi himself died in 1999, having inspired thousands to explore Shona culture by providing a vivid example with his own family. Chiwoniso also passed away in 2013 after an inspirational career of her own. The first-ever release of Nyami Nyami Records was the song Zvichapera by Chi, which she recorded a few weeks before she passed; this song was the reason this label was created. Dumi similarly influenced countless musicians. From his years of residence in the US as a visiting musician, Maraire catalysed a network of Americans playing Zimbabwean music across the United States, focused primarily on the West Coast in Oregon, Washington, and California, with other communities in Colorado and New Mexico. During his years spent teaching in Zimbabwe, many important mbira players crossed Dumisani Maraire’s path, and many musicians inspired by him have worked to perform, teach, and spread Zimbabwean music around the world. Several of Dumi’s surviving children have also gone on to be musicians themselves.

Chris Korda is an internationally renowned multimedia artist, whose work spans thirty years and includes electronic music, digital and video art, performance and conceptual art, and culture jamming. Chris pioneered the use of complex polymeter in electronic dance music, and invented a unique MIDI sequencer in order to explore polymeter composition techniques. Chris composes and performs music in a variety of genres, and has released many albums on labels such as Perlon, Mental Groove, and Gigolo Records. Chris also worked as a computer programmer for thirty-five years. Her new album "Passion For Numbers" is one of the very few album in the world entirely composed in complex polymeter, meaning that each pieces of music uses several prime meters simultaneously. A unique way to compose music with a new generation of musical algorithmic, inside which Korda injects the DNA of neo classical, ambient and jazz music. This refreshing album will please you whether you are into complex musical composition, experimental music or just seeking for a beautiful, emotional and accessible musical moment. This is a "In your hearts not the charts" album, as Irdial Discs once said. Pleases read an extract of Chris Korda's letter about Passion For Numbers, included as insert in its entirety in this vinyl release: This is an album of piano music, but I wrote it without a piano. Not having a piano turned out to be constructive, because I had to rely on my brain instead of my fingers, and particularly on my imagination and inner hearing. The album belongs to a category called phase music, and it’s also algorithmic, or more precisely rules-based generative music. I don’t write music in the usual sense of the word “write.” I build kinetic sculptures, and the sculptures generate my music. My sculptures are virtual, meaning they’re invisible machines that exist only as data within my home-grown software. My process is related to the work of a relatively obscure early 20th century artist named Thomas Wilfred. Like me, Wilfred was an engineer-artist, and built machines that generated art from phase shift. My music is in complex polymeter, meaning it’s not just in odd time, but in multiple odd time signatures, and not one odd time signature after another sequentially, but all of them running concurrently. Most music isn’t constructed this way, which is why I needed to develop custom software in order to compose my music. My software is called The Polymeter MIDI Sequencer, and you can easily find it on the Internet. I also use music set theory, change-ringing and gray code, explanations of which can be found in Wikipedia. Chris Korda (extract from "Passion By Numbers" liner notes)

The fifth instalment of Ilian Tape’s Ilian Beat Series finds veteran Dutch producer Kid Sundance providing a fruitful selection of sample heavy hip hop tracks. ‘Neptunes’ opens with metal creaks and groans, eerie yet smooth, meanwhile Rones plays spacey, dreamy synths on ‘Wooden Loft’. The luscious delivery of ‘Ero’ combines the jazz expertise of Shigeto with loops programmed akin to Brainfeeder's Teebs. Tien Seconden feels like a lost beat tape from the 90s, with the warm crackle of Kid Sundance’s weapon of choice the EMU SP1200 coming through in spades, but an unmistakable modern glamour shines through.