MUSIC

Moon Glyph Records head Steve Rosborough returns as Omni Gardens with a brand new album entitled “Golden Pear”. The fuzzy, warm and buoyant moog timbres of “Moss King” return but “Golden Pear” is a dreamier and more lush affair; incorporating a wider palette including mellotron flutes, vibraphones, marimbas and self-captured field recordings. A tranquil, pop atmosphere permeates the album as the songs flutter between bleary, unhurried tunes, warbly soundscapes and odes to lazy afternoons. Created for relaxed home listening, this is “Golden Pear”.

Moon Glyph Records head Steve Rosborough returns as Omni Gardens with a brand new album entitled “Golden Pear”. The fuzzy, warm and buoyant moog timbres of “Moss King” return but “Golden Pear” is a dreamier and more lush affair; incorporating a wider palette including mellotron flutes, vibraphones, marimbas and self-captured field recordings. A tranquil, pop atmosphere permeates the album as the songs flutter between bleary, unhurried tunes, warbly soundscapes and odes to lazy afternoons. Created for relaxed home listening, this is “Golden Pear”.

Oval Angle is the moniker of Geran Knol, a Dutch multidisciplinary visual artist and musician based in Antwerp, Belgium. His instrumental electronic music blends mellow and playful tones, characterized by plucky, offbeat sound design and wavering, askew melodies. Geran’s composition process is akin to a sketch on paper, slowly evolving and mutating as elements are added, subtracted, and altered. His debut LP for Moon Glyph, “Figures of Speech”, utilizes circular, melodic repetition found in minimalist compositions and avant-pop songforms. Like Geran’s visual art, it masterfully captures a sense of child-like wonder and wide-eyed naiveté.

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.

It’s not difficult to find beauty in the sounds of nature – ocean waves, birdsong, rainfall – but it's easy to overlook the charm and wonder of everyday anthropogenic sounds. Equal parts reverent and playful, Normal Sounds is built around field recordings of human-made, non-musical sounds: fridge drones, grocery store beeps, car horns. Lia Kohl alternately hallows and mimics them, offering them to the listener in a new light. Using a textural cloud of cello and synthesizers, with a few notable contributions from wind players Ka Baird and Patrick Shiroishi, Kohl brings out beauty in the world’s inane noise. This interest in the mundane is not new to Kohl. Normal Sounds follows a series of pieces – The Ceiling Reposes, Untitled Radio, Variations on a Topography – which use field recordings of AM/FM radio as centerpieces. Her work hones in on unnoticed or under-documented sounds: the things we tend to tune out or hear passively. Many of the field recordings on Normal Sounds are functional, indicating danger (tornado siren, car alarms), fun (ice cream truck) or change (“the seatbelt sign is on”, “please take your receipt”). Others are simply byproducts of machine function: the drone of a fridge or airplane. While they’re sometimes intended to be heard, they’re not intended to be listened to. For Kohl, her treatment of these sounds acts as a practice of attention, or in her words “a practice of trying to be more alive.” Often this practice takes the form of mimicry: harmonizing the already-present frequencies of a tennis court light with cello harmonics, or cheekily pairing car horns with Shiroishi’s saxophone. Sometimes, she augments the soundscape more dramatically, pulling it in a new direction with melodic cello or arpeggiated synths. It’s occasionally unclear whether a sound comes from her or the world around her. She nestles each field recording into a bed of her own sounds, inviting us to listen to the world through her ears.

Free, Dancing . . . is the first release by a new trio with percussionist and producer Carlos Niño, luminary multi-instrumentalist Idris Ackamoor (of The Pyramids) and wizard guitarist, producer Nate Mercereau. They have been playing concerts together in California since June 2022, sharing a unique vibrant sound, findings and energetics...

NTS presents European Primitive Guitar, a compilation of instrumental guitar compositions, mapping out European analogues of the American Primitive Guitar movement, spearheaded by John Fahey in the 1950s. European Primitive Guitar spans works directly influenced by and responding to Fahey’s approach to composition, alongside works by artists that arrived at similar conclusions independently. The music is, at once, both starkly traditional and contemporary. This is no more evident than with the opening song on the compilation, Spanish guitarist Albert Giménez’s 1982 composition Conte Xinès. The song draws on numerous idioms of music - flamenco, jazz, ambient music, and guitar soli - within its shimmering arpeggios, culminating as a decidedly Spanish music that has collected the ephemera of the guitar’s travels before returning home. The compilation also explores wider ideas around experimentalism happening in Europe during the time of this anthology. German composer Hans Reichel not only developed new ways of playing the instrument, but also new ways of building guitars - pushing the boundary of what a guitar could be and how it could sound. Ahead of its full release, listen/download material from Maurizio Angeletti (Italy, 1983), Albert Giménez (Spain, 1982) and Peter Finger (Germany, 1974). The physical release is accompanied by an extended essay from The Hum’s Bradford Bailey.

'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.

2x LP with printed inner sleeves. A strong tip on this one! South-Asian vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and composer Ganavya releases her new studio album “Like the sky I've been too quiet” on Shabaka Hutchings’ Native Rebel Recordings. The album features contributions from artists including Kofi Flexxx, Floating Points, Carlos Niño, Leafcutter John and Mercury-nominated bassist Tom Herbert. Since graduating from Berklee College of Music, UCLA and Harvard, Ganavya has quickly become a much-in-demand artist on the US scene who consistently confounds expectations. Hailed as “among modern music's most compelling vocalists” (Wall Street Journal), “most enchanting” (NPR) and "extraordinary" (DownBeat), Ganavya has worked with an array of luminaries including the likes of Quincy Jones, Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding and on new album "Like the sky I've been too quiet" she presents thirteen compelling tracks which showcase her ethereal voice and numinous energy.

Multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Jesse Peterson is the heart and constant thread of the musical project Turn On The Sunlight. 'You Belong' is the fifth in an ongoing series of records that Peterson has made with a community of his close friends and collaborators, including his beloved wife, Mia Doi Todd, bright Orange laughter luminary Laraaji, experimental and folkloric visionary Luis Pérez Ixoneztli, and his frequent partner in rhyme, percussionist and producer Carlos Niño. The sound here is a perfect mixture of folk, ambient, spiritual jazz and peaceful open space improvisational flow. 'You Belong' was made in the Glendale, California, Home Studio of Peterson and Todd during 2021 and 2022. "The sudden shift in expectations and trajectory that I and many people have experienced in the past couple of years allowed me to access certain feelings and memories from the more distant past that might have been less accessible before, which probably accounts for my sudden urge to reach out to Cavana," recounts Peterson of the album's main featured collaborator Cavana Lee. "Making the album was a helpful way of working through these thoughts and feelings because of the high level of expression that the participating musicians brought to it, like I was being led by their example. ‘You Belong’ is the most collaborative of all the Turn On The Sunlight records," Peterson continues, "in that almost every song features different musicians. It grew out of a variety of collaborations in our home studio and incorporates friends recording themselves in other locations throughout the world, so it felt like the circle was growing as the album grew, which was a nice feeling. Cavana's singing is a new element and it was exciting to hear how her voice brought out the heart of the music." At the center of the 4 key pieces that weave this album together is a truly unique symbiosis between Peterson and Cavana Lee (who met in boarding school in 1992). Lee (the daughter of magical jazz, avant-garde singer Jeanne Lee and multi-instrumentalist, composer, band leader, independent record label pioneer Gunter Hampel) remembers what it was like when she heard from Peterson out of the blue about whether she was open to writing and recording to several of his new pieces. "We were in the middle of the pandemic," recalls Lee, who lives in Berlin, "and the music industry had stopped where it was. As a singer, I suddenly had no access to public venues… I had just given up my singing space because that was forbidden in Germany at that time. Just then Jesse reached out and asked if I was interested… I was very slow in recording because I had very low digital skills at the time… I am quite an analog person. I remember the reaction I had when I heard the piece we now call “You Belong", with Laraaji. It was so full of life’s facets and in touch with Nature, I felt inspired to dedicate my voice in this song to the natural spirit of the Universe (at least how I perceive it). Also inspired by the space journeys of Sun Ra and my own father's improvised compositions, I imagine that this is what the wind, the sun, any of the elements that travel through space and the ethers would say to human beings right now. A message full of Love and Connection at a time where things felt really disconnected and disjointed. I needed this message for myself, I suppose. That’s how that track developed," Lee reflects, "it brought me there." 'You Belong' finds Peterson as the catalyst for and caretaker of advanced togetherness where an array of adventurous musicians and creative artists are featured atop and intertwined with his swirling foundations and welcoming arrangements. In addition to everyone mentioned above, “You Belong” has contributions from gyil master SK Kakraba, saxophonist Randal Fisher, trumpeter Sean Okaguchi, guitarist Fabiano Do Nascimento, keyboardist Surya Botofasina, experimentalist Sam Gendel, bassist Ricardo Dias Gomes, bass clarinetist Pablo Calogero, flautist Aisha Mars, pianist Jamael Dean, drummers Andres Renteria and Efa Etoroma Jr., and his close friends from New York, Mike Wexler and Koen Holtkamp. Produced and mixed by Jesse Peterson,'You Belong' is remarkable and diverse, a cohesive album that sings of Universal Family, Caring, Being, and openness. Lee reveals, “‘You Belong’ is a Love declaration from Nature to us. It is a salve. It is a reminder of what we have forgotten. That forgetfulness is causing collective pain. ‘You Belong’ is an invitation to remember." Peterson concurs, “‘You Belong’ affirms that we can all be our whole beings and are all part of the whole of being. Music is a force that moves through us all, and that feeling can be transmitted through our expression, whether we're consciously aware of it or not, we all belong… we are all involved…”

Portland's finest practitioners of Great Black Music offering to the planet! All Is Sound could not be a more apt title for this. Through saxophone, cello, piano, and flutes The Cosmic Tones Research Trio created a truly beautiful record. All Is Sound breaks new ground. At its heart, it's healing/meditation music, but the Gospel and Blues roots are in there too...as well as hints of forward-looking Spiritual jazz. As sincere a record as you could ever hope for. Music is indeed the healing force of the universe.

The Diskotopia team is excited to announce the debut EP from the new project rush2theUnknown — a pairing of documentary writer and director Nick Dwyer (who helmed the Red Bull Music Academy's Japanese video game music composer documentary Diggin' in the Carts) and producer & musician Devin Abrams (aka Pacific Heights). rush2theUnknown is a project that was born in provincial New Zealand, developed in the hills of Izu Peninsula, Japan, but forged in the fire of potent teenage memories of the future sounds of jungle and drum ’n’ bass that exploded onto dance floors across the urban centres of New Zealand in the mid 90’s. Two old friends, both who played pivotal roles in the development of New Zealand’s own jungle and drum ’n’ bass scenes in the 1990s, estranged for decades, reunited to begin experimenting in an attempt to recapture the feeling of having their heads overwhelmed by sounds they couldn’t quite comprehend as adolescents. They channeled the energy, spirit, and vibes of (specifically) 1995-to-1997 jungle, where the ever-mutating evolution of the sound intersected with the dawning of drum ’n’ bass to create a utopian future vision before the latter genre changed course and moved increasingly darker. By weaving in the influences that the two artists had accumulated over the decades — most notably from ambient, kankyõ ongaku, new age, minimalism, and some of the deepest research into the history of Japanese video game music ever conducted — the pair aimed to discover new terrain from a specific era of dance music that was never fully explored.

Reverberations of Non-Stop Traffic on Redding Road is a duet in ambience by Pan American (Mark K. Nelson) and Kramer. This experimental record is 11 brief sojourns into the dream state, produced by Kramer (of Shimmy-Disc) and co-written with Mark K. Nelson (of Labradford, Anjou).This record is a brotherly and collaborative follow-up to Kramer's 2022 ambient excursions, "Music For Films Edited By Moths".On the making of this collaborative project, Mark K. Nelson said "It was an honor to work with Kramer. That we came out of it with a great friendship and a record that's unique to each of our histories and music that we're proud to share is a privilege and a joy."As Kramer has described, the result of this record is a work that begs listeners, both animal and human, to allow these beautiful landscapes to sing and speak and weep for themselves.Simply put by Kramer, "Please. Forget about words. Just LISTEN."

Minecraft - Volume Alpha is the work of German composer and musician Daniel Rosenfeld. Using C418 as his moniker, Rosenfeld crafted the sweeping soundtrack and vibrant sound design which helped breathe life into Minecraft's voxel-based universe. Fans and critics were universally enamored with his beatless, nuanced electronic pieces upon release. Popular gaming site Kotaku named it among The Best Game Music of 2011, calling the music "remarkably soothing," and The Guardian has compared Rosenfeld's delicate piano and sparse ambient motifs to legendary artists Erik Satie and Brian Eno. In an interview feature with C418, Polygon distilled Volume Alpha to its essence: "It's not bound by the retro aesthetic of Minecraft's graphics. It transcends them. The album is an attempt to uplift the combined game/music experience into the sublime."

Drifts and Surfaces is a three-piece set, with each work originating from commissions, and unified by shared themes: the flux between ephemeral movement and everyday stasis, the paradox of extraordinary and mundane beauty, and the ambition and idleness, that defines living in the 21st century. Saxl continues to utilize chamber-music ensemble alongside analog synth and digital experimentation, deeply tuning into textural emotion and the vivid details of small actions. While her 2021 breakthrough LP, The Blue of Distance, processed recordings from the Adirondacks and Lake Superior, Saxl’s source material here comes primarily from live percussion and other instrumentation. The project started in 2018 in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood at the practice space that Saxl’s band shares with the percussion trio Tigue. Later that year, they performed a residency together and captured the piece before the pandemic set in. In 2021, she began a new commission with Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion.Drifts shares its title with Kate Zambreno’s 2020 novel, where the protagonist becomes entranced by the work of Chantal Ackerman, which presents the typically female invisible forms of domestic labor as equally valuable to activities more commonly seen as productive. Saxl posits Drifts in the spirit of that feminist thesis: “It feels like there’s a little lineage here of women exploring this idea and celebrating small action that I hope I am continuing the work of.”The final piece, “Surfaces,” was commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum in conjunction with the Alex Katz retrospective in 2022. The group — comprised of Henry Solomon on baritone saxophone, Robby Bowen on glass marimba, and Saxl — leans into light, ruminative tones inspired by the pioneering painter’s present-minded approach. Katz's work deals with the optical perception of “quick things passing,” like the liminality of dusk when an object's outlines start to become unclear. “The ways in which our perception of things change not because they change but because we change,” explains Saxl. “I wanted to have these really minor changes feel dramatic, to mirror the imagined movement in his paintings.”Stepping back to view “Surfaces” within the set, Saxl finds the stream that runs throughout, the concept of the self as part of something greater. “Katz’s depiction of multiple generations of New York City artists inspired me to think about how there is no individual ‘me’ as an artist without both the artists who came before me and the community of artists I’ve grown alongside. The delineation between us blurs, and I feel as though I am carried on an interwoven surface formed by the community around me. At the same time, I know that eventually, I have to turn inwards and swim out alone.”

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Emile Mosseri, and Ghostly will be making a donation from today’s Bandcamp Friday sales of their collaborative album, I Could Be Your Dog/I Could Be Your Moon to support reproductive rights via Noise For Now. "His music filled me with the urge to connect with the world," Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith says of Emile Mosseri. She first heard his work while watching the 2019 film The Last Black Man In San Francisco; just minutes in, she paused it to look up who did the score and wrote to him immediately. "I love Emile's ability to create melodies that feel magically scenic and familiar like they are reminding you of the innocence of loving life.” Those talents saw recognition in 2020 with an Oscar nomination for Mosseri’s original score to the film Minari. He was already a fan of Smith’s and became increasingly intrigued by her impressionistic process as they started to talk. "The music feels so spiritual and alive and made from the earth," Mosseri says. "I think of her as the great conductor, summoning musical poetry from her orchestra of machines." I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon, their two-part collaborative album, introduces an uncanny fusion of their sonics. Constructed using synthesizer, piano, electronics, and voice, this soft-focus dream world is lush, evocative, and fleeting. It finds two composers tuning their respective styles inward as an ode to mutual inspiration, a celebration of the human spirit and its will to surrender to the currents of life. Early into their correspondence, Smith and Mosseri realized they were neighbors in Los Angeles and met up for a few hikes. Their conversations led to a musical exchange over email. The exercise became a sketch, the start of their first song together, "Log In Your Fire,” with Mosseri finding flourishes in Smith’s cathartic synth lines to intonate and harmonize alongside. Lyrically, it's a beautiful, open-ended sentiment. "Being a log in someone's fire, to me, means letting go, and surrendering to that feeling," says Mosseri. From there, the pair composed a series of musical foundations, trading files from afar, nurturing the eventual expansion as the remote days of 2020 set in. Smith likens the collaborative experience to the exciting uncertainty of starting a garden, "doing what I can to facilitate growth while enjoying the process of being surprised by what will actually grow." In the summer of 2021, the duo finished work on the sequel, I Could Be Your Moon, expanding their musical language as the first part reached its September release. Songs from these more recent exchanges find them even more synced, forging into percussive and harmonic experiments, leaning further into their “unused musical muscles,” as Smith and Mosseri put it. A unified vocal presence emerged. “As the friendship grew I think we both learned how to support each other more and musically that was communicated through singing together,” adds Smith. Now taken as a full album set, I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon moves fluidly from track to track, panning through textural vignettes. Two roughly 17-minute halves, the set evokes the bittersweet sense of something too bright or rare to last, a short-lived glimpse into a golden hour. "Moon In Your Eye" sends a choral refrain skyward; we stay behind, watching it haze away in the heavens. "Brush" bubbles with Smith's characteristic wonder and curiosity, expressed in a flutter of horn-like sounds, leading into the album's central expression, its titular track. Above pulsing harmonies, in his tender falsetto, Mosseri repeats variations of the mantra, "I don't want to feel / lost anymore /I can’t make you what I am." He says the idea they are reaching for is more abstract and universal, "It could mean I could be your friend / buddy, I could be someone / something else, I could transform, I could be your companion, etc. What I like about it is it could change based on what that means to you, or what the word dog means to you." The orchestral march of 'oohs and ahhs' on "Blink Twice” could register as both triumphant and tragic. "Moonweed," strays closer to the latter, with low and slow piano keys guiding the alien hums of a starlit goodbye. I Could Be Your Moon, the second installment and side B of the record, opens with the striking “Green To You.” Depicting a dream or a need for renewal — to be new in the eyes of another, all excitement of seeing and being seen as imagined, idealized versions of ourselves — the song unveils the duo’s newly fused voice. “I only want to be green to you,” they sing, as an organ phrase swirls underneath. There’s a wistful sense that bleeds into instrumental “Amber” and continues across “Standing In Your Light,” a piano ballad-turned-mini-symphony that traces over feelings of remorse (“I was distracted / overreacted… come to your senses”). “Shim Sham” starts woozily in anticipation before flipping on a drum break, becoming the collection’s energetic apex; their hums dance with the beat, wordless yet undoubtedly expressive. Once introduced, the percussion stays and syncopates for “Golden Cow,” another radiant duet that reads like a playful plea, or a reminder to their creative selves (“slow down / be careful now / you’ve done this one before”). The record ends inside “Radio Replacement,” a swan song in the lineage of somber album outros; lyrically they reflect on past loves and the passage of time, personifying the music (“I would really love to be / your favorite melody / for a while”). There is a dreamy, elemental intention to this music, which Smith and Mosseri say came naturally, as they both embraced intuitive interplay throughout their creative back-and-forth. The stylistic threads of each composer are recognizable yet become more ambiguous as the album progresses, sewn into a singular vision. "I'm so grateful that my musical ideas could dance with hers with some grace and harmony," says Mosseri. Smith adds that this experience helped her "remember that music can be a connecting layer of friendship, especially in a time when the usual ways were out of reach."

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)

Full HD re-creation/restoration of the legendary soundtrack for 1994 Exploration / Action-Adventure / Sci-Fi / Alien video game Super Metroid by Louisiana-based composer and producer Jammin' Sam Miller. Jammin' Sam Miller explains: "Composed by Kenji Yamamoto. Recreated by me. This was made possible by locating the original instrument samples from workstation keyboards and drum machines before they were put into the game and rebuilding the soundtrack from the ground up, applying some modern mixing techniques along the way to lift the veil of 16bit compression and create an updated listening experience." *For fans of Video Games, SNES, Samus Aran, Atmospheric Sounds, Zebes Music*

Guitarist Lee Underwood’s syncretic blend of jazz, folk, and blues was a tremendous force behind Tim Buckley’s genre-stretching late 60s/early 70s music – but his 1988 acoustic guitar opus California Sigh has remained a unsung footnote to his story. Until now! This first time vinyl-edition reveals Lee’s free-floating acoustic moods, with synths and co-production from ambient avatar Steve Roach, as a soulful work of tranquility and transcendence.

"Drag City presents the first official reissue of Dorothy Carter's 1976 album debut, her folk-music exegesis, Troubadour. In her lifetime, Dorothy, a self-made traveling musician and folklorist, brought forth masterful evocations on hammered dulcimer and psaltery from a myriad of times and places. Her music was played, produced and sold outside of that era's mainstream music distribution. Troubadour reissue producer Eric Demby can look back to a childhood spent off the grid: the early '70s in rural Maine, and later on, in Boston -- wherever his freewheeling father brought the family, at one point or another, there too was Dorothy, as she lived and breathed, playing her hammered dulcimer. The early '70s found everyone living up on the farm up in rural Maine; it was here that Rutman, Constance, Dorothy and some others formed Central Maine Power Company, a troupe of almost feral improvisers playing on a combination of self-made and found instruments, with live video feedback to boot. In 1976, Dorothy had been playing music for decades, but had yet to record any of it. That year, she went to Cambridge's Studio B with Rutman and friend Steve Baer at the console. Constance and Sally Hilmer accompanied her. The performances captured there were released later that year as Troubadour. In addition to hammered dulcimer and psaltery, Dorothy played the flute and sang. She chose songs from all over: Appalachian folk tunes, old and ancient psalms and hymns, Scottish, Irish, French and Israeli melodies, with a few of her own songs for good measure. They all flow together effortlessly under Dorothy and friends' hands in a syncretic space that we can identify today as a garden of world musics -- a highly energized, alternately meditative and proselytic recital whose vitality has only burgeoned in the decades since it appeared. As it should be: the music of Dorothy Carter is akin to a portal, linking her with the eternal. This edition of Troubadour reproduces the original album package, adding an insert adorned with additional photos of Dorothy and her collection of instruments, as well as notes from Eric Demby exploring the era -- his childhood -- from a vantage point of some 50 years. This reissue is a long-held family dream come true, and it is dedicated in loving memory to Bob Rutman, Constance Demby, David Demby and Dorothy Carter."

Masahiro Sugaya, a Grammy-nominated composer whose works have been featured in the Japanese ambient compilation "Kankyo Ongaku" by the US label "Light In The Attic," has received remarkable acclaim from overseas in recent years. The world's first reissue and first LP of the stage music "Sea Zoo" (1988), created for a stage performance by Papa Tarahumara, a performing arts group to which Sugaya belonged at the time!

Masahiro Sugaya has been active as a composer since the early 80's, studying under eminent composers such as Shigeaki Saegusa, Joji Yuasa, and Teizo Matsumura, and also worked as an arranger for NHK Educational TV's "Diary of a Junior High School Student" and for the guitar duo "Gonchichi". This album was produced for the stage performance "Sea Zoo" by the performing arts group "Papa Tarahumara," for which he has worked as a composer since 1987, and was released only in CD format at the time. This album was released only in CD format at the time, and its tracks were included in the Grammy-nominated Japanese new age/ambient compilation "Kankyo Ongaku" by the US label Light In The Attic, and the compilation "Horizon Vol. 1" was released by the US label Empire of Signs, which also reissues leading Japanese ambient artists such as Hiroshi Yoshimura and Inoyama Yamaland. Although there have been reissues of single tracks, this is the world's first reissue of an album, and the first release in LP format! The album includes "Grains of Sand from the Sea" (M2), which is a mixture of delicate piano and soft electronic sounds from "Kankyo Ongaku", and "To the End of the World" (M7), which is full of floating feeling with minimalist soft sequences from "Horizon Vol. 1", This is a historical masterpiece that evokes the essence of Japanese ambient music, which has been reevaluated worldwide in recent years!

Uncleared is the name of my new 29-track instrumental beat-tape. In a more “back-to-basics” approach to beat-making, this tape began as a creative exercise for myself to return to the music that made me who I am. Around Q3/Q4 of 2023 I had read about a “one 4-bar loop a day” regimen to keep output flowing, and this practice was entirely effective in churning-out beats during self-imposed down-time for music making amidst my record label/family balance lifestyle. It was then that I had set a goal to produce & release 40 new beats by the time I turned 40. I found an almost entirely sample-based production flow in Ableton referencing an ongoing list I kept of material to sample & chop as the foundation for the track, culling from the timeless All The Breaks folder for the drums, and finishing the track with a synth bass-line that I’d quickly dial-in & play by hand using Teebs' old M-Audio midi keyboard controller that I am somehow still borrowing and cherish. Most of these beats are under 10 stems in any given project - drastically different in comparison to my projects in the past (Outmind, In My World, Time Flying Beats et al) where stems would be consistently breaching 50+. Furthermore relating to the title, I was recently served an uncleared sample notice from a bigger label entity. It’s the first time this has happened so I suppose we’ve been lucky, and it’s honestly the first time I’ve reconsidered casually releasing this type of material - particularly on major streaming platforms. I’m not sure what lies ahead for sample-based music culture - but i'm hopeful it will be able to sustain and evolve as we attempt to emphasize the reclamation of the spaces on the internet where this music can be safely & responsibly shared, supported, and appreciated. During the last few weeks leading-up to release, artist neighbor / bestie Aaron Raays would come over to my backyard studio shed at night to listen to the developing material and provide me with trusted feedback notes. I have a habit of whip-testing music obsessively in my 2010 Prius driving around Los Angeles, and at the Leaving offices on the Mobius Acoustics system there. These check-ins were crucial in seeing this one through. Only 29 beats made the cut, but I had a lot of fun making these, and I’m having even more fun performing them.

Delight, Arushi Jain’s follow-up to 2021’s seminal Under the Lilac Sky, out March 29 2024 on Leaving, carries, at its core, the simple proposition that delight is accessible and that the practice of cultivating it is a necessary endeavor. Weaving together emotions, imagery, and a sense of yearning for beauty, Jain aims to instill belief in the ever-present nature of delight, asserting the need to actively seek it when not readily found. The enhanced perception of this elusive emotion, Jain asserts, comes through extended observation of the present - the longer we look, the more we see - an idea that serves as a guide in her quest for delight. The introduction of cello, classical guitar, marimba, flute, and saxophone plus rich Indian classical vocals, all layered with modular synthesis, expands her sonic vocabulary to a lush textural landscape and signals new areas of creative focus. Jain, for the uninitiated, is a multi-hyphenate artist/musician (composer, vocalist, engineer, modular synthesist) . As has been widely noted, Arushi Jain deploys the sounds and aesthetics of contemporary experimental electronic music to channel, celebrate, iterate upon, and interrogate traditional Indian idioms. Under the Lilac Sky, her first LP (also released on Leaving), constituted an offering of sorts: a six-song suite intended to accompany the listener as they watched the sun’s setting. But while Jain’s last record was concerned with time, space, and our outer environment, Delight is reflective, occasionally approaching the autobiographical—simultaneously a record of an artist’s inward journey, and an invitation/roadmap for the listener to embark on their own search for delight. Each of Delight's nine tracks were inspired by Raga Bageshri (a raga being a melodic framework particular to Indian classical music). Bageshri is said to convey the feeling of waiting to reunite with one’s beloved. It possesses an innate longing, colored by potent fantasies of reunion. “Bageshri embodies the realization that you have unknowingly fallen deeply in love. It triggers within me immense devotion, juxtaposed with a poignant acknowledgement of suffering; for love as immense is often challenging to reciprocate”, Jain writes. “We come into this world alone, and we leave alone. Despite this knowledge, the human capacity for love is without reservation, which I find generous.” She sings of connection to a past and future self, and the creative practice (see the meditation on intimacy, “Our Touching Tongues”), but her longing feels more expansive. The beloved Jain invokes throughout Delight is not a lover, as Bageshri calls for, but delight itself. Stirred by Raag Bageshri during a creative fallow, Jain decamped to Long Island, where she composed and recorded the core of her new album. She assembled a makeshift studio in an empty house on the seaside, a house suffused with light and art and surrounded by wildlife. This ambience has clearly seeped into the album, drenched as it is in the warm sun as it is in the cold October rain. In her self imposed isolation, Jain experimented with vocal compositions, building songs out of short sung phrases. Jain ended her solitary writing by entering a previously unexplored territory of collaboration, working with acoustic instrumentalists to incorporate classical guitar, cello, marimba, flute, and saxophone into her sonic vocabulary. The result is a collection of songs that are often slower and sparer than those featured on Under the Lilac Sky, yet audibly richer, embracing the transcendental potential of repetition and the nuance of sampling live instruments on her synthesizer. Phrases, lyrics, and notes recur, but the feelings they evoke are consistently novel; Delight is diverse and fluid. Each song documents, by Jain’s own account, a tussle with the void, a journey into the unknown. She has opened an unmarked door and returned with small things that bring delight, precious and unexpected; we catch their glimmer in each recording. Indeed, Delight serves as an abject reminder that, through attention, openness, and practice, we are all capable of tapping into this necessary human sensation.

This Trio is very Californian, even though Surya is based on the East Coast . . .We swim together in the Pacific Ocean, Vibing, bonding, talking, listening, riding the Waves . . .as often as we can. - Carlos Niño Together these three adventurously creative Musical Artists have played in Portland, Oregon, Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York, London, England, Amsterdam and Zaandam, NL, Köln, Germany, San Diego and Ojai, California, and many times throughout Los Angeles County, since February 2022. They first came together in July 2021 at the Glendale, California Home Recording Studio of Jesse Peterson and Mia Doi Todd. Nate was invited by Carlos to meet Surya and to possibly play. No specific plans were set other than to explore with Surya. (Multi-Reedsman Randal Fisher was also there.) That Session turned out to be Day 1 of what became Surya's debut album Everyone's Children released by Spiritmuse Records on November 4, 2022. Suyra and Nate were both featured extensively on the Carlos Niño & Friends album (I'm just) Chillin', on Fire released by International Anthem on September 15, 2023, though not together on any of the same pieces. The first in-depth representation of the Trio was in collaboration with André 3000 on his album New Blue Sun released by Epic Records on November 17, 2023, where they are featured as co-writers and co-creators of 5 of the 8 album pieces. Niño also Produced that album in collaboration with André. Nate enthusiastically took it upon himself to be the Trio's Archivist and would get to Mixing and playlisting the group's recordings as soon as he received them from Live and Studio recordists. He took the lead on Producing and Mixing this album, Subtle Movements. His unique perspectives, thoughts, feelings and intense heart energy went into telling the story of how these pieces, recorded in different settings, with a wide range of gear, by an array of characters, all flow together. "It is a blessed opportunity and Cosmic Gift to be at the keyboards with Nate and Carlos," Surya gleams. "In appearance, I play a few keyboards at a time: a MIDI controller that I use in tandem with music studio software, my absolute FAVORITE analog sensibility synth Roland SH-201 (although it is digital), and typically another 88key board (the Roland SV-1). If there is a piano available, I will also use that with us for a total of 4 keyboards at my station, (that my cousin Georgia Anne Muldrow has forever deemed “Praise Console no.3”), Surya enthuses. "My instruments and sound are the last thing I consider about this Trio. For me, it is about us as human beings first; as members of our respective families and soul tribes before anything else. I think whatever sound that comes forth is a result of that inner connected soul conversation. That, at least in my view, is the Sound." "I play guitar, guitar synthesizer, and midi-guitar sampler," writes Nate Mercereau of his Instruments on Subtle Movements. "In addition to my main GR300 guitar synthesizer sound, I am sampling the band live as we perform and using the sound . . .It takes many different shapes, but I am often playing something like the sound of Carlos's percussion from 30 seconds earlier in a new key and tempo, or as a chord — or a quick slice of a pad from Surya’s keyboard pitched down into sub frequencies, anything can happen," Nate details. "I live-sample and expand, magnify, permutate, repeat, live-remix, live-edit, and reframe moments of our sound within our sound while it's happening. Worlds Within Worlds and Worlds Upon Worlds, Currents Within Currents. I also use previously recorded and created samples from my library in this context, allowing my guitar to be anything." Nate also offers: "I consider what I do in this trio to be a part of and extension of the greater sound of this group, which is often oceanic (which represents everything to me), waves, it's full communication. Love and support in sonic form. Going beyond together in all ways." Carlos Niño plays everything that you hear in the Aerophone, Drum, Percussion and Plant realms . . . He was the group's "Connector" and its first advocate. Depending on who received and accepted the opportunity to present the Trio their names have appeared in different orders. Hear, on Subtle Movements the order is Alphabetical by last name: Botofasina, Mercereau, Niño