MUSIC

Novisad’s second album Seleya, originally released by Tomlab in 2001, is reissued by Keplar with a previously unheard bonus track from 2004 and a fresh cut by LUPO. Produced by Kristian Peters, these thirteen loop-based miniatures evoke a sense of early-2000s digital experimentation—crafted with the rudimentary tools, quirks and limitations of pre-Ableton software and repurposed equipment. Aliased tones, subtle dissonances and quietly colliding loops form a delicate, melancholic atmosphere that’s both intimate and exploratory. Untethered from convention, Seleya documents a moment of sonic curiosity and invention, where imperfection and unpredictability add emotional depth to its fragile beauty.

Following releases on Sähkö Recordings and The Trilogy Tapes, "Fever of the World" is the Soda Gong debut by Memotone, the nom de plume of UK-based multi-instrumentalist Will Yates. As a collection, it is both intimate and expansive, like the feeling of gathering one's thoughts before setting off on a long journey or committing to an irrevocable course of action. Throughout, Yates' talents as both player and sound designer are on full display, as are the sonic signatures that have come to characterize the Memotone catalog: low-lit, ECM-inflected noir; evasive and evolving loop-based accretions; and mellifluous mosaics of keys, guitar, reeds, and percussion. It is patient and focused music, built around production techniques and compositional ideas that have been perfected both in studio and in live performance over a period of several years. "Catherine, On Fire" sets the scene, one of two languid, longform selections, and develops slowly from a spare, harmonic-laden guitar loop into a bed of rippling textural ambience and woozy clarinet filigree. Later, "The Bus" and "When the Bakery Has What You Want and It's Cheap" conjure images of rain-streaked windows, fanciful baked confections, and grey skies broken finally by sunlight. Warm, generous, and comfortable in its own skin, this is music that reminds us that when it feels easy to resign ourselves to world weariness, we should pause for a moment and listen to the rustle of the leaves. The wind knows not to linger.

A new age lightness of being guides NNF alum Baptiste Martin to gently optimistic ambient, H-pop and glitching electronica styled results on a debut for Stroom, inseparable from its back story, regaled by the label below:

""I was admitted to Son Llàtzer Hospital in Mallorca on October 1, 2024, following a psychotic shock”.

This could well have been the opening sentence of a confessional novel but it’s not. It’s the first line of an email, which landed in my mailbox seemingly out of nowhere. The words were written by Baptiste Martin, the composer behind Les Halles.

In his letter, sent as a pdf document, Baptiste offered his friends a concise but striking report on his whereabouts from the past months. In brief, Baptiste was lost, found, lost and found again, yet seemingly forever confined to the walls of his cerebral interior. The letter describes a loss of grip and self-control, like a baby water turtle trying to hoist his way out of the fish tank by scratching the glass walls, without any result.

Baptiste is a musician and not a writer. His opening line is thus followed by an album, not a novel. This is the album. Yet, ‘Original Spirit’ doesn’t tell the story of his psychotic shock as a linear nonfiction, it offers a vague resolution to all the mischief in life: the hope for the existence of an original spirit, untainted despite all that might happen during the course of a life.

The album provokes images of what I would perceive as indeed an original spirit of oneself: an abstract nothingness breezing through landscapes of colours, searching for places beyond the boundaries of what we call freedom in the material world. A stream of sound, nostalgic to a time that never existed, a mystical loophole that we know isn’t there yet still crave for. In short: the sound of an uncannily serene feeling beyond hope."

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

For their third album on Bongo Joe, Madalitso Band takes a new direction.

After two records capturing the raw intensity of their live performances, the Malawian duo ventures for the first time into the possibilities of the studio — without ever compromising their signature style or energy.

Armed with their handmade babatone, a guitar, and their interwoven voices, Yobu and Yosefe craft a sound at the crossroads of banjo music, kwela, gospel, and African folk. An acoustic trance that’s both minimal and vibrant, deeply rooted in tradition yet undeniably fresh and contemporary. On Ma Gitala, they add new textures: layered vocals, playful percussion, melodic surprises, and guests from their close and family circles.

Always guided by instinct, the band reveals a more intimate and narrative side of their universe — full of memories, spontaneity, and close-knit complicity. An album that captures the joy and creativity of two artists who turned the street into a stage, and the stage into a playground.

Cult-beloved experimental producer Michael J. Blood, hailing from North Manchester, returns with the second collaborative album alongside the elusive act samizdat, released on his own label BLOOD. Bathed in a sense of unease, this work weaves hypnotic loops, noise-fringed textures, and low-end pulses into a shape-shifting soundscape that blurs the boundaries between post-industrial abstraction and deconstructed R&B. A masterful blend of intimacy and abstraction, it’s a record that sinks deep into the psyche—perfect for solitary, late-night listening.

A shimmering gem of guitar ambient where pastoral warmth meets oneiric drift. The latest album by Manchester-born, London-based ambient duo Celestial arrives via Ecstatic, one of the UK’s most vital labels in the current experimental landscape. Evoking the vast, open landscapes of the American Midwest, the album blends wide-sky scale with the hushed intimacy of listening to grass grow. Threads of Americana gently intertwine with mist-like soundscapes, crafting a dreamstate of drowsiness, nostalgia, solitude, and quiet celebration. A masterwork of ambient guitar work that captures both distance and tenderness in equal measure.

ルーマニア出身、フランスを拠点を拠点に活動した前衛的作曲家／音楽学者であり、〈Cramps Records〉の名シリーズ〈Nova Musicha〉にも傑作を残すCostin Miereanu。現在のミニマル～ニューエイジ再評価文脈においても密かに注目されるべき存在である同氏が自身のレーベルである〈Poly-Art〉に76年から82年にかけて残した幻の作品群が6枚組CDボックスセットとして〈Metaphon〉から奇跡の再登場！ジャーマン・エレクトロニクスを想起させるような外宇宙的憧憬を、現代音楽やミニマル・ミュージックの文脈でより親密かつ天上的に独自解釈した、幽玄なコズミック・ミニマル・アンビエントが満載。本当に素晴らしい逸品です。名匠Stephan Mathieuによるオリジナル・テープからリマスタリング仕様。28ページに及ぶブックレットが付属。この機会を絶対にお見逃し無く！

</p><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 373px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1786378255/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://armlock.bandcamp.com/album/trust">Trust by Armlock</a></iframe><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 373px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1786378255/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://armlock.bandcamp.com/album/trust">Trust by Armlock</a></iframe>

Dunya, the title of Mustafa’s masterfully crafted and breathtakingly tender full-length debut, roughly translates from Arabic to “the world in all its flaws.” It’s a lofty subject for a young songwriter, but as with every theme at the heart of the Sudanese-Canadian artist’s work—from religious devotion to childhood trauma, gang violence to romantic intimacy—he approaches it through a personal lens. Blending genres and moods, weaving novelistic details into instantly memorable folk songs, he has crafted a record that feels like a series of personal breakthroughs, arriving one after the other. The first thing that strikes you about Mustafa’s music has always been his writing: a simple, piercing tone that can make any story feel as raw and earnest as the words to a love song. With a hushed delivery that can silence his surroundings, Mustafa evolved swiftly from a child prodigy reciting poems throughout his native Toronto to a behind-the-scenes pop songwriting force. On Dunya, he becomes a full-on auteur in his own right. “I’m trying to preserve and celebrate the ordinary life in the hood,” Mustafa notes of his lyrical inspiration. Exploring his upbringing and trajectory onward, these songs are equally disarming in their simplicity and multilayered in their emotional breadth. Featuring appearances from collaborators such as Aaron Dessner, Rosalía, Clairo, Nicolas Jaar, and more, alongside Mustafa’s longtime creative partner Simon Hessmann, the music reveals a confident, distinctive voice that’s never sounded more poised for the masses. Even when it sounds like he’s taking on the world, Mustafa is speaking only for himself: a story that he knows is just getting started.

〈Sonoris〉や〈Room40〉〈Erstwhile Records〉などからの作品でも高い人気を誇るフランス出身の電子音響作家eRikmが、〈Kora〉から放つ最新作。自宅録音によるアコースティック素材、重層的なベース、内面から漏れるような声。それらが私的で緩やかな時間感覚のなかに溶け合い、静かなる祈りの音響空間を形成していく様子が大変美しい傑作アンビエント盤！憧憬、満足、そして名づけえぬ「Soft Wish」を音にした淡く深いひととき。抽象と親密さの間を漂う特別な一枚です。

Artwork by Nicola Tirabasso and Alison Fielding
Thanks to Jack Colleran, Henry Earnest, Finn Carraher Mc Donald, Margie Jean Lewis, Róisin Berkley, Luka Seifert, Diego Herrera, and Olan Monk
Recorded in Conamara and Dublin between 2021 and 2023.

On the outskirts of the Parisian sprawl, we drift through the evening hush, our steps tracing the edges of a world half-lit. The air crackles—charged, restless. Somewhere, we hear the city hums, a distant, roaring tide. And there is this stranger, curious, starry-eyed, looking at us. We stop, tilt our heads together, a faint smile : « I scream, you scream ! Everyday is a new *silence* It was all paradoxical Fullness in the crisis Silence is priceless »

The idea of putting together songs like impressions of a feeling rather than a collection of recordings from a certain decade or style or genre was at the heart of a discussion I had with Norman in 2019. It was a warm July day on the Riviera. I had just finished putting together the sound system for our first and only festival. “It should paint a picture”...

We began a work of compiling. Norm would send tracks and we would try to situate them on the spectrum of a large “carte postale” encompassing in one corner the kitsch resort balneaire, in the other the sail boat in a Caribbean creek, with sandy beaches and glimmering waves in between. With the certainty that the French only seem to possess in matters of taste (my wife Emma is the same), Norm would go: “ah ca c’est 100% Blue Wave” or not at all.

Shortly after, I was introduced by Norm to Charles. The two had been exchanging on references for a while and they had agreed to work together. I was over the moon of course. Our souls had been sucked to Club Meduse shortly prior, and was an inspiration for our aspirations.

The timeline here gets blurry. I lost a bunch of money in the Lebanese crisis and the local economy melted down. Covid hit. The second edition of Pocket of Light Cote d’Azur got cancelled. Movements restrained. Lovers separated. And then the Beirut Port Explosion happened.

I won’t meander long in self pity, but at this very moment in time, the beach seemed so far away, like a forgotten paid reservation at my dream holiday destination. It took me a while to shake that feeling off. Sometimes it still catches me.

We convened to meet in Dusseldorf. We had a party at the Paradise Now. The next day, we had cold tea and cake. Charles walked us through a part of his collection. Every record like a layover on the way to where I left off in my head.

At this moment, seeing Norm and Charles moving to the sound, I remembered that we were up to something golden.

A couple years later here we are. I am thankful for the patience of my collaborators and thrilled to present to you this volume of Transcoastal.

A reminder to keep sailing on that capricious sea despite the weather. Not too far off after the horizon, a gentle vision of paradise awaits.

We went out of our ways, we hope you go out of yours.

Love, light and sand in your shoes,

Mario

Vinyl-only for the time being.

Billed as a sequel to 2022's '7.37/2.11', 'The air outside...' diffuses its predecessor's ambiguous synthscapes with loose-limbed slowcore improvisations, prioritising vulnerability and falibility. RIYL Laila Sakini, Grouper, Bianca Scout or Ulla.

If Perila's immense, immersive double album 'Intrinsic Rhythm' was too much to swallow in one sitting, this one's a little more digestible. The prolific Berlin-based assembled 'The air outside...' from sessions recorded between 2021 and 2023, but they play remarkably coherently, revealing a more fragile, serendipitous side of her personality. Made mostly using guitar and voice, it's music that's not overthought or overproduced, as if we're getting a direct line into Perila's reality - even the title betrays its unpretentious approach. On opener 'Over Me', Perila loops reversed guitar notes, picking out a rough, detuned bassline and barely singing. Her faded voice mouthes out a wordless, improvised lullaby descends into a well, reverberating as she stumbles across the notes. Not ambient exactly, it's more like evaporated, decelerated post-rock - day zero Grouper crossed with Bark Psychosis.

And that description holds on 'Barefeeter', even when Perila switches to piano, playing unsteady, muted phrases as the room rattles around her. A song begins to materialize as she sings textured coos, but never completely emerges. 'Gooshy' is more surprising still, playing out like Jandek with dissonant strums that quiver around dissociated vocal expressions, and on 'Fossil', she uses the same philosophy without resorting to live instrumentation, disrupting oozed pads and whisper-singing over the horizontal soundscape.

Sept duos pour guitar acoustique et piano préparé is the second duo recording from Stephen O’Malley and Anthony Pateras. Their first together, Rêve Noir (2018), took an electro-acoustic scalpel to a 2011 duo concert for electric guitar and piano, using Revox and digital treatments to twist and smear gig documentation into ghostly echoes and fractured drones. Here, in contrast, the music is entirely acoustic and presented as it was performed, without overdubs. Both players’ choices of instruments are notable: this is O’Malley’s most extensive recording on steel string acoustic guitar (playing an instrument whose previous owners include Marissa Nadler and Glenn Jones) and Pateras return to the prepared piano, which he has rarely employed in recent years, after spending much of the first decade of the 21st century exploring its possibilities. Recorded during O’Malley’s residency at La Becque on Lake Geneva in the summer of 2021, from the first moments of the opening ‘déjà revé’ the music immediately establishes the distinctive landscape of chiming tones and hovering clouds of resonance explored throughout its one-hour running time. Pateras’ preparations create tolling bell-like tones alive with complex overtones, alongside which O’Malley’s open strings and natural harmonics add a sparkling clarity. While Pateras’ music often uses a densely chromatic harmonic language, these duos are remarkable for their modal simplicity. However, the interaction between the pure intervals of O’Malley’s just-intoned strings and the unstable harmonies created by the piano preparations suspends the music in an oneiric state of hazy ambiguity. Without obvious reference to tempo or meter, the music floats in what the composer Ernstalbrecht Stiebler has called a ‘bottomless sound space’, the temporal placement of events determined by bodily rhythms and the performers’ own listening to (and enjoyment of) the sounds being made. Heard one way, this music can seem striking in its consistency, almost environmental. Attending more carefully, the listener hears the pitch sets and tunings changing throughout the album’s length. Each piece has its own character, subtly distinguished from the others through mood, pacing, and timbre. On ‘déjà voulu’, for instance, O’Malley makes prominent use of slide, the woozy, bending pitches weaving through a series of lush arpeggiated chords from the piano. ‘Déjà senti’, on the other hand, is particularly spare, the gestures spaced out to the extent that they often float in isolation against the background of fading resonance. Much of ‘déjà su’ is built around a slowly pulsing single prepared piano tone, creating an almost ominous tension, whereas the sparkling guitar harmonics and arpeggios of the closing ‘déjà raconté’ have a gently triumphal air. While the music’s calm, rippling surface is immediately entrancing, these seven duos – in the tradition of the best improvised music – also reward close listening, which reveals sonic details and focuses the listener’s attention on how the music unfolds spontaneously from decision to decision, from gesture to gesture. Recorded during a period when O’Malley and Pateras were grieving the loss of recently departed friends and collaborators, these seven duos possess a reflective, at times almost mournful quality. More importantly, though, they are imbued with other qualities that can arise from personal loss: a clarity that allows one to clear away the inessential, to begin again, to renew one’s faith in friendship and music. — Out now on a limited 2xLPs with an etching on fourth side housed in printed heavyweight inner and outer sleeves. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, Artwork by María Jesús Valenzuela Vittini, Design by Bartolomé Sanson.

Opening the window, I look at the light, it connects me to something more vast. Felicia Atkinson’s music always puts the listener somewhere in particular. There are two categories of place that are important to Image Language: the house and the landscape. Inside and outside, different ways of orienting a body towards the world. They are in dialogue, insofar as in the places Atkinson made this record—Leman Lake, during a residency at La Becque in Switzerland, and at her home on the wild coast of Normandy—the landscape is what is waiting for you when you leave the house, and vice-versa. Each threatens—or is it offers, kindly, even promises?—to dissolve the other. Recognizing the normalization of home studios these days, she revisited twentieth-century women artists who variously chose, and were chosen by, their homes as a place to work: the desert retreats of Agnes Martin and Georgia O’Keefe, the life and death of Sylvia Plath. Building a record is like building a house: a structure in which one can encounter oneself, each room a song with its own function in the project of everyday life. At times listening to Image Langage is immediate, something like visiting a house by the sea, sharing the same ground, being invited to witness Atkinson’s acts of seeing, hearing, and reading in a sonic double of the places they occurred. In an aching moment of clarity in “The Lake is Speaking,” a pair of voices emerge out of the primordial murk of piano and organ, accompanying the listener to the edge of a reflective pool that makes a mirror of the cosmos. “I open my feet to fresh dirt, and the wet grass. I hold your hand. You hold his hand. In the distance without any distance. The comets, the stars.” At other times, listening to Image Language is more like being in a theater, the composition a tangle of flickering forms and media that illuminate as best they can the darkness from which we experience it. On “Pieces of Sylvia,” a noirish orchestra drones and clatters beneath and around a montage of vocal images, stretching the listener across time, space, subjectivities. Atkinson says that Image Language is like the fake title of a fake Godard film. There is indeed something cinematic about Atkinson’s work—not cinematic in the sense that it sounds like the score for someone else’s film, but cinematic in the sense that it produces its own images and language and narratives, a kind of deliberate, dimensional world-building in sound. Image Langage is built from instruments recorded as if field recordings, sound-images of instruments conjured from a keyboard, instruments Atkinson treats like characters, what she calls “a fantasy of an orchestra that doesn’t exist.” And then, speaking of Godard, there are the monologues, operating as both experimental-cinematic device and a literary style of narration. Voice can be a writerly anchor or a wisp of a textural presence. Atkinson’s capacious and slippery speech plunges into and out of the compositional depths, shifting shapes, channeling the voices of any number of beings, subjectivities, or elements of her surroundings—not unlike her midi keyboard, able to speak as a vast array of instruments. Image Langage is an environmental record, in the vastest sense of the world. It is about getting lost in places imagined and real; it registers, too, the dizzying feeling of moving between such sites. It puts forth a concept of self that is hopelessly entangled with the rest of the world, born of both the ache of distance and the warmth of proximity. — Thea Ballard, 02.2022

Mesh-Key is thrilled to announce a deluxe, expanded reissue of Moon Beams by Tokyo visionaries, Tsuki No Wa. Originally released on CD by Japan's Soundscape label in 2003, Moon Beams is a bonafide opus -- a masterful mix of jazz, latin, folk and electroacoustic, topped with bandleader Fuminosuke's soaring, spectral vocals. Bassist Takuyuki Moriya was also a member of Ghost, and drummer Yuta Suganuma is a long-time member of the Shintaro Sakamoto band. The quartet's third album in as many years, Moon Beams found Tsuki No Wa taking a gigantic leap forward in both compositional sophistication and sonic experimentation. Beautifully recorded in a (since demolished) Meiji-era ballet studio, and featuring guest performances from such underground luminaries as Yoshihide Otomo and Ami Yoshida, this timeless, ambitious work sounds just as spellbinding today as it did a couple decades ago. Our reissue features an updated mix from the band and brand new album art with unseen photos of the group in their heyday. The vinyl (2LP, mastered by Josh Bonati and pressed at RTI) comes in a full-color, double panel gatefold jacket with eye-popping gold foil lettering.

★ With obi ★ Gary Marks ‘ Gathering’ is exactly what you would call a miracle. Self-produced in 1974 and engineered at Vitra Sonic Recording Studios in New York, the album introduced the crispy talent of the guitarist/pianist and producer. A genuine blend of folksy harmonies and jazzy arrangements, the record could have been possibly the missing link between Tim Buckley ‘Starsailor’ and some early seventies Impulse ! Session. Now it’s about time to get a hold of this masterpiece

”Gathering includes guitar legend John Scofield, the amazing jazz pianist Michael Cochrane, and one the of the top vibraphonists in the world, David Samuels. But at the time none of them were known to the general public. In fact, Gathering was the recording debut for all of us.” (from Gary Marks liner notes) 

The Softies, comprised of Rose Melberg and Jen Sbragia, embody timeless themes of friendship and self-discovery through their minimalist pop soundworld. Since their formation in 1994, they've created uncluttered and fearlessly vulnerable music, contrasting with prevailing trends. The Bed I Made, The Softies’ first new studio album in 24 years, showcases growth while reflecting on life's complexities with lyrics drawn from real experiences. Despite individual pursuits and personal losses, Melberg and Sbragia reunite, channeling grief and rejuvenation into an album that captures the essence of their enduring friendship and offers hope and renewal amid life's challenges. Through their perfectly-paired harmonies and telepathic playing, they navigate the present, past, and future, offering a poignant continuation of their musical legacy, resonating like time spent with an old friend who knows you best.

The first vocal album by beloved Ethiopian nun, composer, and pianist Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru - profound and deeply moving home cassette recordings made amidst political upheaval and turmoil. These are songs of wisdom, loss, mourning, and exile, sung directly into a boombox and accompanied by Emahoy’s unmistakable piano. Though written and recorded while still living at her family’s home in Addis Ababa, Emahoy sings of the heartache of leaving her beloved Ethiopia, a reflection on the 1974 revolution and ensuing Red Terror in her homeland, and a presentiment of her future exile in Jerusalem. In the 21st century, Emahoy has become known worldwide for her utterly unique melodic and rhythmic style. Commonly misinterpreted as “jazzy” or “honky tonk,” Emahoy’s music actually comes from a deep engagement with the Western classical tradition, mixed with her background in Ethiopian traditional and Orthodox music. These songs, recorded between 1977-1985, are different from anything previously released by the artist. Rich with the sound of birds outside the window, the creak of the piano bench, the thump of Emahoy’s finger on the record button, they create a sense of place, of being near the artist while she records. Emahoy’s lyrics, sung in Amharic, are poetic and heavy with the weight of exile. “When I looked out / past the clouds / I couldn’t see my country’s sky / Have I really gone so far?” she asks in “Is It Sunny or Cloudy in the Land You Live?” Her vocals are delicate and heartfelt, tracing the melodic contours of her piano on songs like “Where Is the Highway of Thought?” “Tenkou! Why Feel Sorry?,” a career highlight that closes out her self-titled Mississippi album (MRP-099), is revisited here with vocals. Originally composed for her niece, Tenkou, the lyrics clarify the song title we’ve wondered about for so many years. “Don’t cry / Childhood won’t come back / Let it go with love.” Emahoy dreamt of releasing this music to a larger audience before her passing in March of 2023. We are proud to release this music, in collaboration with her family, now, in what would have been her 100th year. LP comes with a 16-page booklet full-color booklet. Gold cover first edition, pressed in both black and gold vinyl editions.

The latest album by Melbourne, Australia-based experimental unit CS + Kreme, "The Butterfly Drinks The Tears Of The Tortoise", will be released on vinyl by the renowned London label, The Trilogy Tapes, run by Will Bankhead!

After a limited self-release in 2022, Extravision, the deeply therapeutic musico-psychonautic offering from experimental guitarist Guy Blakeslee has received the Leaving Records “all genre” re-release treatment, with the understanding that more listeners should hear with this vulnerable and graceful document. The record is, in a word, a balm. Like a window flung open on a sweltering day, Extravision occasions the sudden awareness of space, of calm, of context, of possibility. The record also catalogs a musician’s search for meaning and healing in the wake of catastrophe. Since its initial run, Blakeslee has been bracingly open about Extravision’s genesis. On March 13th, 2020, while walking across the street, Blakeslee was struck by a car. Upon regaining consciousness the following day, the hospitalized Blakeslee found both the outer world and his inner world suddenly transformed. As lockdowns took effect, it was immediately clear that the brain injuries Blakeslee sustained had not only affected his vision but altered his very consciousness and would inevitably affect his music-making. From Los Angeles, to Virginia, to Baltimore, he pursued physical and spiritual recovery with music as his primary medicine. Sitting for hours at the piano, the man for whom guitar had always been the primary instrument now intuited the riddles and patterns laid out neatly before him in black and white. Armed with beginner’s mind and a cassette 4-track, Blakeslee began to experiment with wordless, impressionistic songcraft. Extravision is the transcendent result, an hour-plus compendium of humble and fiery dalliances with the musical and psychical unknown—a record from a lifelong musician rediscovering the joys and vexations of learning. Throughout Extravision, the guitar exists as both specter and reference. A majority of the album’s tracks notably do not feature any discernible guitar—the songs functioning as emotive, drone-based exercises in texture and duration. And yet, one never doubts the extent to which Blakeslee’s practice has been (and continues to be) informed by a uniquely American folk guitar idiom. We are, with Blakeslee as our guide, gladly charting the vast and newest horizons of so-called “American Primitive” music, now often referred to as “Cosmic American.” And when Blakeslee’s interdimensional guitar does eventually emerge — see the album’s fittingly final title track, “Extravision”— the sweetness, not untinged by loss, is palpable. Blakeslee has stated that his goal, with Extravision, is to induce in the listener a trance-like state, to inaugurate the conditions under which time might function “differently.” To be sure, the drones and gentle recurrent phrases that comprise much of Extravision are a welcome antidote to the now commonly felt acceleration of time. But it is the experience that Blakeslee is transmitting with and through and beyond these musical gestures—the experience of non-linear time, of total time-loss, of starting again, of retracing one’s steps and rerouting one’s journey—that challenges and rewards us.

Downtempo, Folk, Pop … Just a little over two years since the release of his debut album Opening the Door, Jack re-emgerges with a new full length album. On Blue Desert, the Australian-born Vancouver-based multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter and producer wades deeper into the stylistically prismatic pool of his own creation.