MUSIC

The Swedish quartet Goran Kajfeš Tropiques share their new music We Jazz Records on May 3rd. Tell Us, an album consisting of three long pieces composed by the group, is "slow music" to the bone, a deep body of work utilising the language of jazz as its core mode of communication but echoing way beyond. The quartet is expanded with strings, adding wings to the music and helping it lift off the ground in a personal, highly engaging manner. The Tropiques quartet consists of Goran Kajfeš (trumpet, synthesizer), Alexander Zethson (piano, organ, synthesizer), Johan Berthling (acoustic bass) and Johan Holmegard (drums) – each a key member in the Swedish creative music scene, with experience from groups such as Dungen, Ghosted, Fire!, Gard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra, Oddjob, plus many more, including Goran Kajfeš's own Suptropic Arkestra. Their music, groove based and connected to the tradition of "minimalism" has at times been called "hypno-jazz". Tropiques initially came together in 2011 when Kajfeš was commissioned to compose and perform music to a performance by the Swedish modern dance company Vindhäxor. Since then, the group has evolved in its own ways and independently from, yet informed by, their origins. That is, the experience of creating music together with a strong sense of movement. All three compositions on Tell Us expand on what the Tropiques have done before, building around their signature style and its spacey texture and rooting the musical narrative in strong melody, rolling groove and their collective limitless urge for sonic exploration. As the opener "Unity In Diversity" goes to show, Tropiques's compositions are like flowers opening slowly, each element and layer growing out of what has come before, in a constantly surprising manner. This music, then, becomes the perfect antidote for the quick-fix eye candy rolling down your smartphone screen. This music will take its time, but it'll also create new dimensions with each second as it unfolds. RIYL: Alice Coltrane, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Pharoah Sanders, Laraaji, "Crescent" era John Coltrane, Swedish psychedelic music, "Kosmische Musik"

Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones join We Jazz Records for their third LP New Monuments, to be released on March 15th. Amirtha Kidambi has long affirmed that the role of sound in the act of protest is pivotal. In the summer of 2020, the Brooklyn-based vocalist and composer was immersed in mass demonstrations across New York City in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, organizing bands to counter the violent presence of militarized police. “Without venues, we played in the streets, with DIY concerts popping up under bridges, in tunnels, using generators, extension cords run out of storefronts and galleries, bringing the sound of experimental and revolutionary music to a larger public,” Kidambi recalls. For an artist and activist who once cultivated community at defunct outer-borough spaces such as Death By Audio and The Silent Barn, these protests became a place to publicly amplify the underground. “We gained tools and tactics, we have understood the power of collectivity, that same power that I feel as an improvising musician, where hierarchies are eliminated and individuals come together to assert their voices communally.” That subversive spirit of collective dismantlement and reassemblage serves as the catalyst for the longform cuts that comprise New Monuments, Kidambi’s third full-length recording with her band Elder Ones. As their leader writes in its accompanying liner notes, the title summons the “tearing down of old colonial and racist monuments and vestiges of power… in order to build new ones to the martyrs of struggle.” Tracked at Figure 8 Studios above Prospect Park, the album is the work of an artist concerned with numerous interconnected sites of global conflict: among them, the farmers’ protests over agricultural reforms in India, the evolution of the Iranian women’s rights movement following the death of Mahsa Amini, and the continuous crescendoing call for Palestinian liberation. This time, the Elder Ones collective consists of bassist Eva Lawitts, saxophonist Matt Nelson, cellist Lester St. Louis and drummer Jason Nazary—all four of whom contribute their share of electronic textures and electroacoustic treatments. As a document of dissent, these four compositions give proof that improvisation is instrumental in the realm of resistance. Kidambi’s voice hovers over a scorched sonic landscape equally informed by Black American liberation music, the devotional fluidity of Carnatic classical, and the unleashing of an inner scream listeners might associate with hardcore punk and harsh noise. New Monuments pays homage to “all those who tirelessly organize and resist against insurmountable headwinds”. To be sure, the propulsive presence of repetition, mantra, and call-and-response patterns instantly elicit a protest at its peak, and what remains is an ensemble ecology that fluctuates between consonance and collision. Upon pressing play on the three-part opener “Third Space”, the disruption is as palpable as ripples in water: a synthesizer shimmers against a tremulous cello before Kidambi’s cavernous voice makes its bold entrance center stage. By the time the band storms in, her reverb-drenched long tones evolve into an eruption of short-winded shouts and squalls. Above the bellows of her harmonium, a refrain evoking exile emerges: “you don’t belong here / they don’t belong here / we don’t belong here”. The quintet then locks into a polyrhythmic pulse that conjures up the ghosts of free jazz past and present; throughout its runtime, there are flashes of Albert Ayler’s love cry, Don Cherry’s eternal rhythms, and the fortissimo fearlessness of Kidambi’s late friend and collaborator jaimie branch, to whom the album is partly dedicated. ‘Third Space’ is the first track extracted from the album. It was written in response to the Atlanta spa mass shooting in 2021, where a white man targeted and killed Asian women. That year saw a sharp rise in anti-Asian hate, highlighting the complexity of the Asian experience in the United States and the need for solidarity between Asian, Black Americans and other marginalized groups amidst the Racial Justice movement. Often rendered invisible in the black/white paradigm, the Asian and South Asian experience exists in the contradictions of the myth of the “model minority”, the emasculation of its men, the exoticizing and subjugation of its women through an Orientalist gaze, and the dehumanization of its diaspora through American Imperialist wars. The term “third space” comes from Indian-British theorist Homi Bhabha, a space of identification which opens up in the collision of colonial power and one’s native culture, forming a complex third stream in diaspora and globalization. As bandleader, Kidambi takes an organizer’s approach to composition and improvisation by providing ample space for collective interplay; what the listener is left with is a music without detritus, as disparate as the lived experiences the artist is invested in. “In order to achieve liberation,

Berlin-based Swedish tenor saxophonist Otis Sandsjö returns with his third album Y-OTIS TRE on We Jazz Records, February 23. Y-OTIS TRE finds Sandsjö in close collaboration with his long-time working partner and friend, bassist/producer Petter Eldh, and Dan Nicholls, the keyboardist of the Y-OTIS live band and a solo artist on his own right. Composed by the three and produced by Eldh & Sandsjö, Y-OTIS TRE lives up to its name ("tre" means three in Swedish) and stands strong in the continuum of layer-caked liquid jazz, a staple of the Eldh/Sandsjö production duo lauded for their string of releases as Y-OTIS and Koma Saxo. While recognisable in form, Y-OTIS TRE adds new dimensions to what has come before. Borne out of hours of tripped-out studio jams by Sandsjö & Eldh, Y-OTIS TRE feels natural, neon, 3D, at times laser sharp, at times gooey like jelly, and at all times ripe with ideas that would make albums on their own. Golden riffs are taken, twisted, thrown away, then recycled, and always evolving. Perhaps evolution is key here, as Y-OTIS reuses and cross-refers its own ideas but never exactly repeats. The music has a mixtape-like DNA, and it seems to be breeding and multiplying at each beat. In color terms, Y-OTIS TRE is more RGB than CMYK – that is, it might appear unrealistically bright and full of tones not found in the natural world. But when you listen to the music closely, you'll likely find it acoustic to the bone. There's no illusion: hearing the band live tells you what Y-OTIS is all about. It's a live band turned studio tool, morphed back into a live band. Or something like that anyway. Putting a tag onto this music feels a bit like trying to hold a very colorful, somewhat thick liquid substance on the palm of your hand. You can see it, feel it, but never fully pinpoint just what's it made of. But it works, so best just to enjoy the ride.

Placenta is the fourth collection of broadly imaginative and highly collaborative Carlos Niño & Friends music released on International Anthem in the last four years. It is also the first new music to be released by Carlos Niño & Friends following the November 2023 release of André 3000’s New Blue Sun – an album which Carlos produced alongside André, while co-writing, co-creating/playing, and co-mixing every song. Placenta is announced on April 11th, 2024, a date chosen because it is the 1st solar return of Moss Niño (a new being in human form, who Carlos and his partner Annelise are Earth parents of). Their experience of pregnancy, labor and delivery were all profoundly impactful for Carlos. Becoming a father again (a whole 24 years after the birth of Azul Niño, who has become a regular artistic collaborator with Carlos) he felt total Inspiration for this set of recordings, and hence it is perhaps the most conceptually-grounded Carlos Niño & Friends album we've yet to present – fully connected to the spirit of family, birth, and "how we get here."

Placenta is the fourth collection of broadly imaginative and highly collaborative Carlos Niño & Friends music released on International Anthem in the last four years. It is also the first new music to be released by Carlos Niño & Friends following the November 2023 release of André 3000’s New Blue Sun – an album which Carlos produced alongside André, while co-writing, co-creating/playing, and co-mixing every song. Placenta is announced on April 11th, 2024, a date chosen because it is the 1st solar return of Moss Niño (a new being in human form, who Carlos and his partner Annelise are Earth parents of). Their experience of pregnancy, labor and delivery were all profoundly impactful for Carlos. Becoming a father again (a whole 24 years after the birth of Azul Niño, who has become a regular artistic collaborator with Carlos) he felt total Inspiration for this set of recordings, and hence it is perhaps the most conceptually-grounded Carlos Niño & Friends album we've yet to present – fully connected to the spirit of family, birth, and "how we get here."

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

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

In July of 2022, just one month before jaimie branch’s death sent shockwaves around the world, the trumpet player and composer was in Chicago at International Anthem studios putting finishing touches on an album. It was a suite of music she had composed and then recorded with her flagship ensemble, Fly or Die, over the course of a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. In her wake, the album was near complete, with only mixing tweaks, final titles, and artwork to be fully realized. In the months following, her family (led by sister Kate Branch), her band (Jason Ajemian, Lester St. Louis, and Chad Taylor), and her collaborators at IARC banded together to gather memories, texts, emails, photographs, artwork and fragments belonging to jaimie to light the path forward. The goal was always to do what jaimie would have done. Packaged in stunning artwork by John Herndon, Damon Locks, and branch herself, Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) is jaimie’s final album with her Fly or Die quartet. From the album's liner notes, written by jaimie's Fly or Die bandmates: “jaimie never had small ideas. She always thought big. The minute you told her she couldn’t do something, or that something would be too difficult to accomplish, the more determined and focused she became. And this album is big. Far bigger and more demanding — for us, and for you — than any other Fly or Die record. For this, jaimie wanted to play with longer forms, more modulations, more noise, more singing, and as always, grooves and melodies. She was a dynamic melodicist. jaimie wanted this album to be lush, grand and full of life, just as she was. Every time we take a listen, we feel the deep imprint of her all over the music, and we see all of us making it together.”

In July of 2022, just one month before jaimie branch’s death sent shockwaves around the world, the trumpet player and composer was in Chicago at International Anthem studios putting finishing touches on an album. It was a suite of music she had composed and then recorded with her flagship ensemble, Fly or Die, over the course of a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. In her wake, the album was near complete, with only mixing tweaks, final titles, and artwork to be fully realized. In the months following, her family (led by sister Kate Branch), her band (Jason Ajemian, Lester St. Louis, and Chad Taylor), and her collaborators at IARC banded together to gather memories, texts, emails, photographs, artwork and fragments belonging to jaimie to light the path forward. The goal was always to do what jaimie would have done. Packaged in stunning artwork by John Herndon, Damon Locks, and branch herself, Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) is jaimie’s final album with her Fly or Die quartet. From the album's liner notes, written by jaimie's Fly or Die bandmates: “jaimie never had small ideas. She always thought big. The minute you told her she couldn’t do something, or that something would be too difficult to accomplish, the more determined and focused she became. And this album is big. Far bigger and more demanding — for us, and for you — than any other Fly or Die record. For this, jaimie wanted to play with longer forms, more modulations, more noise, more singing, and as always, grooves and melodies. She was a dynamic melodicist. jaimie wanted this album to be lush, grand and full of life, just as she was. Every time we take a listen, we feel the deep imprint of her all over the music, and we see all of us making it together.”

With her third Gondwana album, ‘Constellation’, Caoilfhionn Rose has come of age as an artist, digging deep to find experimental new ways of expressing her wonder at nature’s beauty, her love of music in all its diversity, and her belief in the restorative powers that both afford in the troubled post-COVID world. The ten tracks on ‘Constellation’ feel rooted in a knowledge of folk, jazz and all the twentieth century’s classic tunesmiths, and yet they seem to create a magical, otherworldly space of her own imagining, blending Caoilfhionn’s core piano with synths, and pitting a live rhythm section and saxophone embellishments against ambient samples and future-facing production techniques. ‘Constellation’ features contributions from Halsall’s rhythm section, drummer Alan Taylor and bassist Gavin Barras, as well as Jordan Smart from Mammal Hands, whose supple sax exquisitely colours the fringes of most of its songs. Also guesting: John Ellis, former member of The Cinematic Orchestra, beatifically tinkling the ivories at the end of ‘Fall Into Place’, and producer Aaron Wood via a raft of ambient samples adding textured loveliness throughout ‘Rainfall’. “I love being open to collaboration,” Rose enthuses, “and the record’s a collage, knitting together all these influences, sounds and players, and just really going for it with the experimentation in the production.”

“The semi-classical drums/sax/piano trio Mammal Hands mutate into a high-volume rave act” The Guardian Mammal Hands are pleased to announce the release of their highly anticipated fourth album ‘Captured Spirits’, released 11th September via Manchester tastemaker record label, Gondwana Records. Consisting of saxophonist Jordan Smart, pianist Nick Smart and drummer and tabla player Jesse Barrett, the trio have forged a growing reputation for their hypnotic fusion of jazz and electronica and have recieved glowing recommendations from the likes of The Guardian and Gilles Peterson. Drawing on their love of electronic, contemporary classical, world, folk and jazz music, Mammal Hands take in influences including Pharoah Sanders, Gétachèw Mekurya, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Sirishkumar Manji. Forming in Norwich in 2012, brothers Nick and Jordan along with Jesse, developed their distinctive and polished sound with their meteoric live shows and release of three critically acclaimed albums: ‘Animalia’ (2014), ‘Floa’ (2016) and ‘Shadow Work (2017). Landmark live performances have included shows at The Roundhouse London, the main stage at Field Day Festival, La Cigale Paris, Montreal Jazz Festival, Hamburg Elb Jazz, Athens Technopolis and Unit Tokyo. Teaming up once again with trusted producer George Atkins (Wiley, The Courteeners) at 80 Hertz Studios in Manchester, ‘Captured Spirits’ explores themes including existence and displacement. “The name has multiple readings but was first inspired by something Jordan was reading about past experiences of ancestors being caught and coded into our DNA and having an effect on who you are today. This ties in with themes that we have touched on before relative to identity and the collective unconscious (‘Shadow Work’). It also toys with the idea of feeling contained/trapped and the need to break out of something and also the idea of people being spirits that are "captured" in a body”, says Nick. Opening with the melodic rhythmic patterns of ‘Ithaca’, the tempo picks up with the mesmerising ‘Chaser’, as heavy percussion and Nick’s frenetic keys draw the listener deep into Mammal Hand’s distinctive soundsphere. North Indian influences dictate the meditative ‘Versus Shapes’ with Jesse’s transcendental tabla playing taking centre stage while the dark and moody ‘Spiral Stair’ relies on a multitude of colliding and intersecting shapes and sounds. All three members of the band contribute equally to the writing process: one that favours the creation of a powerful group dynamic over individual solos. “I think with this record, there was a strong and renewed sense of collective enjoyment and appreciation for the process and each other's contributions. After a long period of touring and a slow build up to the actual recording sessions we were able to mull over ideas for long periods, build on lessons from the past and pull our playing connection to an even deeper place. Realising each other's visions for the whole and clearly understanding how they intersect”, says Jesse. That vision is also realised by longtime collaborator and artist Daniel Halsall who designed the artwork for ‘Captured Spirits’. His strong instinctive feel for the band’s visual world is a key component to understanding the music. “Our work with Dan over such a long period of time now has become integral to the bands aesthetic and he always seems to grasp the themes and ideas that we send for each album and distills them into something striking and engaging that really complements the music. This is really important with instrumental music, as we need to be able to convey our ideas without being too literal or definitive and give the listeners space for imagination and to take their own journey when they listen to the music and look at the artwork”, says Jordan. Elsewhere across ‘Captured Spirits’, ‘Riddle’ and ‘Rhizome’ are rich in texture and heavy on groove and both compositions showcase a complex, emotional range and demonstrate three like-minded musicians with a dazzling understanding of jazz, electronica and cinematic rhythms. “Music has the capacity to fill so many spaces in our lives, as I think fundamentally it is a more direct form of communication than even language. In this way it can be refuge, it can be social, it can be revelatory, it can be memory, it can be what we need at a given point in time”, says Jordan. The high intensity of the trio’s live shows is recreated with the spiritual jazz-influenced ‘Into Sparks’ as Jordan’s sax exhibits an unrestrained energy and freedom but it’s left to ‘Little One’ to bring down the curtain on arguably their most accomplished album to date, a soothing, breezy gift to Jesse’s new daughter.

Captivating, ethereal and majestic, Mammal Hands unleash their third album, Shadow Work: drawing on spiritual jazz, north Indian, folk and classical music to create something inimitably their own. Recorded at 80 Hertz Studios in Manchester, it is the result of 18 months of intensive touring and mammoth writing sessions. The energy from their exhilarating live performances has fed into the writing process and yet there is a quiet reflective side to this album, giving it an expanded emotional range that draws the listener deep into Mammal Hand’s sound world.

Folk-minimalists announce vinyl issue for breakthrough album, Animalia. "The semi-classical drums/sax/piano trio Mammal Hands mutate into a high-volume rave act" The Guardian Captivating, ethereal and majestic, Mammal Hands (saxophonist Jordan Smart, pianist Nick Smart and drummer and percussionist Jesse Barrett) has carved out a refreshingly original sound from adisparatearray of influences: drawing on spiritual jazz, north Indian, folk and classical music to create something inimitably their own. Hailing from Norwich, one of Britain's most isolated and most easterly cities, they have forged their own path away from the musical mainstream and their unique sound grew out of long improvised rehearsals. All three members contribute equally to the writing process: one that favours the creation of a powerful group dynamic over individual solos. Their recordsare entrancing and beautiful affairs,while their hypnotic live shows have seen them hailed as one of the most exciting bands in Europe as they push their unique line-up to the outer limits of its possibilities. Over the course of three albums, Animalia, Floa and Shadow Work they have built a committed following and established themselves as one of the finest live bands in Europe. But while Floa and Shadow Work were both issued on vinyl this is the first time that Animalia has been committed to wax. Produced by Matthew Halsall and recorded at 80 Hertz Studio, in Manchester, and engineered by George Atkins, Animalia features the band breakthrough hits Mansions of Million Years, a slow building tune that takes it's name from Egyptian mythology and draws the listener into the band's distinctive sound world. And the gorgeous hooky Kandaiki which makes stunning use of looped melodies in different time signatures, creating a wonderful interplay between the parts. Other highlights include Snow Bough a short, melancholic, but moving, ambient composition, the Irish folk music inspired Spinning the Wheel, which also features drum beats inspired by chopped up electronic drum patterns and hip hop instrumentals. The jaunty Bustle and delightful Inuit Party and Street Sweeper. Finally the album closes with Tiny Crumb, which explores melodic ideas inspired by Alice Coltrane and Joe Henderson and builds in intensity from a quiet start to a powerful collective improvisation and heavily features Jesse's Tabla.

FYEAR is a power octet led by composer Jason Sharp and poet/writer Kaie Kellough, fusing spoken word voices with genre-bending compositions for electronics, two drummers, processed saxophone, pedal steel and violins. FYEAR melds drone, modern chamber, out-jazz, ambient metal, post-hardcore, avant-rock and electroacoustic maximalism in an integrated work the opposite of collage or pastiche; it always sounds like a wholly unified ensemble/aesthetic. Kellough’s poetic materiality conveys acute political-existential themes and plays elemental, cut-up instrumental/semiotic roles. Sharp and Kellough have collaborated on wordsound projects for over a decade, performing widely at avant-garde festivals across Canada, developing a symbiotic relationship where spoken text knits into the very fabric of instrumentation and composition. FYEAR has been emerging from these ongoing processes and performances since 2016, with the intensive interaction of two vocalists, and texts that anxiously interrogate our present and future capitalist polycrisis. The vision of a larger instrumental ensemble began to consolidate in 2018-2019 as Sharp continued writing arrangements and developing the music in tandem with Kellough’s refinement of the spoken word arc. This debut album by FYEAR documents its resulting signature 40-minute multi-movement work, which was fully realized in 2020 and has been performed several times over the past three years. The ensemble’s first performance was commissioned during pandemic lockdown by Jazzahead! Festival (Bremen DE), recorded in an empty Montréal venue, and premiered as a broadcast in April 2021 (subsequently rebroadcast by several festivals in Europe, Britain and Canada that year). The group’s proper live debut on 11 September 2021 at Send + Receive (Winnipeg CA) was roundly hailed as a festival highlight, with rapturous receptions following at live performances during the 2022 Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival (Montréal CA) and the 2023 Moers Festival in Germany. FYEAR is an undeniably gripping and singular live experience of electroacoustic, semiotic, musical and political substance. The album captures the balance of widescreen dynamic intensity and unflinchingly urgent grittiness of the work, further contextualized by extensive printed artwork culled from FYEAR’s live visual projections (by acclaimed graphic artist Kevin Yuen Kit Lo). Jason Sharp has released three solo albums on Constellation and has appeared on records by artists as diverse as Roscoe Mitchell, Matana Roberts, Nadah El Shazly, Ratchet Orchestra, Sam Shalabi’s Land Of Kush and Elisapie. Kaie Kellough has been a sound performer for two decades; his poetry and short story writing have been nominated for multiple awards and have won the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Other FYEAR members have credits that include Mingus Big Band, Aaron Parks, Lhasa, Bell Orchestre, Patrick Watson, and various award-winning film soundtrack works.

For the first time, The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble’s seminal album "Mr. Machine" is being re-issued on coloured vinyl. This is a record that put them alongside names as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, but with considerably more groove. More than anything, Daniel, Jan and Paul are keen that the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble are not written off as a curiosity: “Often people focus a lot on this whole "cross-over" aspect,” says Brauer. “We wish people would simply notice we have good chords, melodies etc. and take the music as it is. Because we make it the way we feel, and not for other, let's say purely conceptual reasons. Some only seem interested in how it’s made. Some reviewers perceive us as minimal techno, some as modern classical, some as nu jazz and so on. But we don’t divide the world into techno and non-techno.”

In March of 2023 composer, arranger & alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi premiered a commissioned suite of music in front of a sold out crowd at London’s Southbank Centre. She wrote the piece – gratitude – for her flagship large ensemble seed., in a special augmented formation that also featured turntablist NikNak and the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO).

Followers of UK Jazz know Kinoshi from her previous work with seed. (including the Mercury Prize-nominated album Driftglass, released by jazz re:freshed in 2019), or as a former member of Kokoroko. But her compositional résumé also extends deeply into orchestral work for concert hall, contemporary dance, film, visual art, and theatre, with high profile collaborators including London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra. That depth of experience is on full display on gratitude, with the textural and dynamic flexibility of her large ensemble covering musical ground from groove-focused modal melancholia to anthemic brass and string themes. Striking upon first listen and even richer on repeat visits, gratitude scores the soul of contemporary Black London with philharmonic craftwork in the tradition of legendary jazz arrangers like Mary Lou Williams, Oliver Nelson, and Carla Bley.

Similar to those keystone writer-arrangers, here Kinoshi wields the power of a large ensemble to convey nuanced human emotion. “gratitude was written as a means of guiding my own healing,” says Kinoshi. “My mother told me that she keeps a gratitude book where she writes one thing, no matter how big or small, every day that helps to re-focus her mind on practicing gratitude. The examples that she gave were seeing the flowers that she'd recently planted in her garden bloom and a kaleidoscope of butterflies that she saw flitting about a tree in her garden.”

Inspired by her mother’s focus on natural beauty and the meaningful minutiae of everyday life, Kinoshi was driven to work through her own relationship with mental health and to pour that into composition. “I was spending a lot of time on my own, often at my desk writing continuously,” says Kinoshi. “At 3pm everyday, the winter sun would be positioned opposite my window and shine directly onto my face. The task of writing this piece was one of the most difficult I've endured – because of the headspace that I was in at the time – and this would be the one thing in the middle of the day that would bring me a very deep sense of contentment… my first attempt at consciously practicing gratitude for something that I so often take for granted.”

“At this point in my artistic career, highlighting the often overlooked subject of mental health and what it means to move towards creating healthy, positive and introspective practices in regards to both understanding and regulating one's own mental health is of the utmost importance to me.”

Throughout the writing process Kinoshi had the privilege of knowing that her composition would eventually be interpreted by seed. — an ensemble of players she founded in 2016 and whose collective talents she knows through and through. “The binding concept of seed. has always been to have a creative outlet that allows me to express and highlight subject matter important to me alongside musicians that I deeply respect, admire and enjoy spending time with,” explains Kinoshi. “It is the one environment where I feel extremely comfortable being able to experiment with sound authentically. Over the years, it has evolved in the sense that the more comfortable the band members get with interpreting my music, and the more we develop a creative language together, the more honest the music sounds.” That profound musical and personal trust helped make the ensemble a perfect vehicle for a composition augmented by new collaborators — in this case the LCO and NikNak.

Kinoshi and seed. first met turntablist NikNak at the Marsden Jazz Festival in 2019. After spending some time talking politics and sharing jokes it was clear that a creative relationship was possible. “I find that working with formidable artists that I get on well with on a personal level always leads to my best work, and knew as soon as I met NikNak that I wanted to work with them.”

On the genesis of her collaboration with the LCO, Kinoshi says: “I have always wanted to combine seed. with electronics and orchestral elements, as I have always envisioned the band performing multi-disciplinary works. I have long admired the members of the LCO and their way of successfully melding orchestral arrangements and improvisation with more contemporary artists. I was introduced to them via Lexy Morvaridi during his time at the Southbank Centre. It was through his support, creative insight and trust that we were able to make this project happen.” The beauty and harmony of these communal connections plus the depth and deftness of all the musickers involved truly made Kinoshi's dream of this composition a reality.

Running confidently at 21 minutes and 33 seconds (not including the album’s B Side / final track “Smoke in the Sun,” which was recorded separately at Total Refreshment Centre) and going straight for the heart, gratitude is an evolved, emotionally attuned, creatively ambitious and compositionally exquisite philharmonic expression of post-millennial UK jazz. 

Liner Notes by Thandi Ntuli:

I travelled to Los Angeles and the USA for the first time in 2019. Although I had not met Carlos in person, we connected via Instagram where he saw a video of me playing a piano motif (titled ‘The One’ in this sequence) that he really liked and expressed a wish to record. This was around 2017. We tried a few times to get me over to Los Angeles, but the timing was always off. Through a performance organised by a creative collective called The Nonsemble at The Ford Theatre we finally got the opportunity to meet, play together and subsequently go into studio to record some improvisations as he guided the recording process.

Having been aware of some of his work – in particular his collaborative projects as Carlos Niño & Friends, as well as with his friend and long-time collaborator, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson – I knew that, with Carlos as producer, the artistic direction of the album would likely take me to a place I’d never considered going. A fact that had me both curious and terrified (as one tends to be when stepping into the unknown) Lol!

Initially keen to record the song that he had seen/heard me play on Instagram, our performance a few days before the session drew him to the song Rainbow off my sophomore album, Exiled (2018). On that zen-like California afternoon in Andy Kravitz’s cozy studio in Venice Beach, he encouraged me to play around with various iterations of Rainbow. “Try it this way”, “How about adding that?”, “Can you breathe into the mic?”, “What if you focus on the last section?”, and many other explorations that eventually went through a few cuts, edits, yays and nays to become this body of work. Rainbow Revisited was birthed through that session, another session a couple of days later, and a series of many small synchronicities that led up to that moment.

A particularly special moment for me was when he invited me to play something from home, which lent itself to me recording a song originally written by my grandfather that we often sing when at family gatherings. The song is called Nomayoyo.

So much has happened since that session in late 2019. Many changes in our personal and collective universes. Losses and gains, births and transitions into the next life, Mother Nature’s ever-constant cycles reminding me that through all the chaos there remains, just beneath, this perfect order in Her ebb and flow. And most importantly, reminding me to feel for Her and to listen.

She speaks!

If Rainbow in my initial birthing of it, expressed a discontent with what we have accepted as freedom in South Africa and, possibly, around the world, I’d like to think that Rainbow Revisited is some kind of a response. Where the idea of ‘the rainbow nation’, with all the baggage it carried, had hijacked the innocence and mystical nature of a rainbow, I now reclaim its meaning through going back, going inward, healing, and rebuilding with the hope of a less heart-breaking and more fulfilling tomorrow.

Lihlanzekile! 

Flowing water is an essential element of Earthly existence, a living force, a process of nature, a path-making which combines infinite sources mixing imperceptibly into a singular energy. It’s also a potent metaphor. A childlike wonder at flowing water’s presence and power, all the impressions it makes and creative neurons that it fires, happens to be a personality trait shared by Evan Shornstein (aka Photay) and Carlos Niño. The two producers/musical connectors may have grown up and reside a continent and daily realities apart — Photay in the forest serenity of New York’s Hudson Valley, Niño on Los Angeles’s ocean-adjacent west side — yet this magnetic power of fluidity, its sound, its meaning, what it can teach us about art and circulation, mesmerizes them both. Water is the spiritual center of their first album-length collaboration, the vast and deep An Offering — from the visual on the cover, to the first sound you hear on the opening “Prelude,” to the underlying themes and images espoused by the poet-philosopher Iasos on the closing “Existence.” More importantly, the image of water-like flow is a continuous reflection of how these two musicians have come to work together and apart, of the way they made An Offering, and how they’re continuing to create, without a beginning and (hopefully) with no end in sight. An infinite flow of sound, from and to every direction. Some of this work directly reflects the relationship between the two men, and of where/how Photay’s electronic, often-dancefloor-oriented tracks found Niño’s far-reaching world of ambient spirituality and improvised soundscaping. The meeting point is precise: Laraaji, the new age zither legend with whom Niño regularly collaborates, including at a June 2016 show in New York City which Niño played and Shornstein attended. The connection initiated immediately after that performance did not simply find the pair participating in each other’s recording projects — Photay remixing a Niño-produced Laraaji track and involved in Niño & Friends sessions; Carlos showing up on multiple songs of Photay’s 2020 album, Waking Hours, some of which was recorded at Niño’s studio—but in a broad exchange of ideas. Niño long ago established himself as one of Los Angeles’ great musical conduits, constructing environments that facilitate partnerships between far-flung artists, perpetuating the freedom of working in the present, outside expectations, trusting the work’s destination. When the younger Shornstein met Niño, his own creative process was ”almost too precious, and it was always my goal to break out of that.” Adapting Carlos’ pacing and free-flowing strategies — scenarios such as sharing recorded stems, bringing in old recordings to serendipitously fit new tracks, or mixing organic improvisations with stylized, post-produced rhythms — transformed Evan’s perspective. It made him rethink ideas like “finished,” shedding pressurized over-analysis for a process he calls “fluid” and “healthy.” It also made Shornstein reconsider some music they’d recorded but originally left off Waking Hours, “microscopic moments that were more expansive in my mind — there was so much honesty there.” What may not have made sense within the composed, hyper-stylized beauty of Hours, “felt really good” outside that context. Niño, who describes himself as “very album-oriented,” agreed, suggesting they create a unified body of work to match those moments — but not overthink it, make it quick, easy, productive, present. Which is how the re-imagining of pieces of music that became “Change” and “Exist,” sprung Photay and Carlos Niño into collaborating even more closely, and brought An Offering to the world. The sounds they gathered into an intentional, meditative whole, were made together and apart, and sourced from all over. The two producers made connections between new music and recordings they already had: Shornstein found hours of tape featuring solo playing by Upstate New York harpist Mikaela Davis, which became a central adornment on multiple tracks. Niño sent Shornstein a quartet improvisation he made with tenor saxophonist Aaron Shaw, keyboardist Diego Gaeta and synth-guitarist Nate Mercereau, which became the basis of “Honor.” They brought in trusted partners. The atmospheric blowing of LA-based tenor saxophonist Randal Fisher is a focal point throughout, at times processed by Photay’s machines. Photay’s trombone player Nathaneal Ranson, and Niño’s long-standing LA-based collaborator, vocalist Mia Doi Todd, float in-and-out of the mix. When Niño makes a record, another original “new age” legend, Iasos, is bound to be around, and his strong summation on “Existence” are the only words An Offering submits. The healing energy of Peterskill, a short rocky State Park waterway that ebbs through New York’s Ulster County (and across from Shornstein’s home — “a real environmental inspiration”), flows throughout. “Creating with no constructs,” is how Shornstein describes the process of bringing these elements together. “It was just a feeling, which maybe is what music or creating should always be.” Peterskill was also the source for a long extra track/outro when An Offering debuted as a Bandcamp-exclusive cassette in October 2021 — and quickly sold out. (A gorgeous Shornstein-directed film accompanied the release as well.) The notion of this music as “offering” came to life in its immediacy (the tape was released only a month and half after the idea for it was seeded) and in its gift-like nature (you can still get the digital version at a price of your own choosing). Scott McNiece of International Anthem found it, and instantly connected with its natural essence, a sound that accompanies one’s movements through difficult moments, the motion of instinctive change, a way to mark the radical period of our time with incremental alterations. Like flowing water affecting an ancient landscape. International Anthem offered to give An Offering a full vinyl release, which is why you are reading this one-sheet right now. And like any current, the interconnectedness between Photay and Carlos Niño, their symbiotic way of informing and influencing each other’s sounds, continues to naturally move forward and shapeshift. They are working on multiple projects together at the moment, and have already completed More Offerings. Flow on! - Piotr Orlov, August 2022

Riding the ripples of their debut single “Escalator” (which BBC’s Gilles Peterson called “a winner,” and Supreme Standards’ Tina Edwards likened to “Radiohead on a Jazz trip”), Chicago collective Resavoir return with their first full length effort. The self-titled album presents a juicy suite of elegantly-orchestrated lo-fi jazz instrumentals germinated from home recording experiments by the group’s producer/arranger Will Miller.

Applying a compositional approach attributable to his experience producing hip-hop beats as much as his studies at Oberlin Conservatory, Miller built melodic sketches on foundations of samples & loops before bringing pieces to the group for collective development. After integrating recordings of the full band into his home-produced impressions (not unlike IARC predecessors Jeff Parker and Makaya McCraven), he over-dubbed another dozen friends into the mix (including Brandee Younger, Sen Morimoto, Carter Lang, Knox Fortune and Macie Stewart) before finalizing the arrangements.

In Miller’s modest editing room, Resavoir grew from experiment into epic opus recalling the lush, psychedelic soul jazz orchestrations of David Axelrod & Charles Stepney… but in the sampled-laden style of Yesterday’s New Quintet, Broadcast, or Thundercat, with a lyrical affinity for minimalism & texturalism, like trumpeter/composers Jon Hassell & Justin Walter.

Notes by Anton Spice:

Resavoir - the collaborative project led by Chicago producer/composer Will Miller - presents their second self-titled album. The new 'Resavoir' is a subtly radiant symphony interweaving modern-day soul-jazz with bedroom beats, synth serenades and twilight sonatas. It represents Miller’s most assured and refined work to date.

Imagined, instigated and produced by Miller, who ties the diverse sounds into an expansive, coherent whole, 'Resavoir' features a wide and vibrant cast of collaborators, including Elton Aura, Whitney, Akenya, Matt Gold, Eddie Burns, Lane Beckstrom, Jeremy Cunningham, Irvin Pierce, Macie Stewart, Peter Manheim and more.

Rooted in the collaborative spirit of the early 2010s indie hip-hop scene, Miller cut loose from his training at Oberlin jazz conservatory, taking a compositional assignment to write a tune about a reservoir as his cue to explore a beats and RnB-inspired sound that could function as a literal reservoir of music to draw from. Running his trumpet through MIDI keyboards, experimenting with samplers, drum machines and synths, he began to build a sound that could seamlessly collaborate with MCs, vocalists and instrumentalists.

“With Resavoir, it’s been more about unlearning those stigmas and traumas of going through the very rigid system of learning music and coming back to making something that is going to make me feel good and reflects how I'm feeling in the moment,” Miller explains.

A longtime member of indie band Whitney, and having subsequently worked with the likes of Mac Miller, ASAP Rocky, Chance The Rapper, Lil Wayne and SZA - for whom he produced “Blind” from her 2022 album SOS which spent 10 weeks at #1 on the Billboard 100 chart - the Resavoir project allowed Miller to take these experiences into his own work - creating a sound that is deft yet deep, compositionally complex, yet finely tuned to the timbres of emotion that color life’s quieter moments.

Initially developed as a group project, Miller released his debut self-titled Resavoir album in 2019. Described by Pitchfork as “a complex, soulful album which celebrates interconnectedness,” the album received widespread critical acclaim. However, Miller’s concept for Resavoir continued to evolve as the pandemic forced everyone back onto themselves, this deep well of music now offering a return to the fundamentals of his approach. He explains: “Resavoir is a compositional practice, a place, a feeling, and a reflection of the community I have around me.”

Renting a studio in the old Hammond B3 organ factory on Chicago’s NW side, Miller went back to basics, organizing open air jam sessions in the side lot of his Logan Square apartment building that would form the basis of two shimmering tracks – “Midday” and “First Light” – years before this new album came into view. As Miller remembers: “Both recordings came from the first time any of us had played music with anyone else since the onset of the pandemic so there was quite a tangible energy and emotion in the air. Folks from the neighborhood were stopping by to drop off 6-packs of beer and listen.”

Written over three years beginning in April 2020, the new 'Resavoir' saw Miller challenge himself to experiment with what he calls the “medicinal” daily practice of music making. Born out of a process of introversion and mindfulness, the eleven effervescent songs that ultimately made the cut are testament to Miller expanding on his breezy and melodic signature to showcase a bold new sonic direction - a beat-oriented but compositionally complex, lush and cinematic soul-jazz sound.

First single "Inside Minds" channels a João Gilberto-meets-MF DOOM whimsey – stripped back, spontaneous yet orchestrated. Capturing the moment of discovery, other tracks like "Sunset" are like vignettes of Miller’s process - music as an exercise in letting go, embracing the organic imperfections of their creation.

Discussing his approach to the work, Miller says: "a single chord change has the power to completely divert my entire day and provide me with a feeling of peace and wonder. Those are the best moments when creating music, the moments of transformation and healing. The feeling of this new album to me is meditative, peaceful, serene, quiet, introspective, intentional, patient, calm, awe-filled and loving. If I was truly writing to how I was feeling in the moment I think it would sound a lot different. So I wanted to speak to the transformational power of music.” 

Nearly 48 hours of live improvised performance recorded at 1 venue over 12 months and 28 shows - culled, cut, rendered, and remixed into 19 potent pieces of organic beat music.

Trumpeter, bandleader and composer Matthew Halsall announces landmark new album An Ever Changing View, an expansive, immaculately conceived project which presents Halsall’s signature blend of jazz, electronica, global and spiritual jazz influences. An Ever Changing View will be released on September 8th on Gondwana Records (the label Halsall founded 15 years ago) ahead of a landmark show at The Royal Albert Hall in London on September 21st and UK and EU tour dates. Halsall who has been hailed as one of the leading figures of the UK jazz renaissance has never seen himself as part of any one sound or scene: he builds his own sonic universe instead. An Ever Changing View finds him at his most experimental yet, once again expanding his sound and production techniques to create his unique brand of deeply meditative music. During the album's creation, he was staying in both a beautiful architect’s house with breath-taking sea views and a striking modernist house, where he composed what he saw “like a landscape painting”. In these new environments, Halsall wanted to capture “the feeling of openness and escapism” and to approach making music again from scratch. “I hit the reset button and wanted to have complete musical freedom,” he says. “It was a real exploration of sound.” An Ever Changing View comes in a package as striking as the music, with handmade fonts designed by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic and the specially commissioned tapestry by artist Sara Kelly is a stunning and harmonious complement to the record's sound.

Mammal Hands fifth album ‘Gift from the Trees’ offers a fresh perspective on the unique trio’s singular music. The first to be recorded in a residential studio, the band enjoyed the opportunity to go late into the night searching for a deeper, more organic experience, closer to both their writing process but also their trance-like live performances. While some of the music was pre-composed and had even been performed live, the band also enjoyed the opportunity to improvise ideas in the studio. There was also a conscious decision to move away from the sound and ambiance of the recording studio, with the band opting to engineer the record with their go-to live engineer Benjamin Capp before mixing the sessions with Greg Freeman in Berlin. The idea was to try and capture more of the energy of the band’s captivating shows. The Welsh environment outside the studio doors seeped into the music presented on Gift from the Trees, with two recording sessions (one in winter and one in the spring) bringing different moods: one bleak and wintery, the other more hopeful and bright – an energy that permeates through tracks such as Kernel and Dimu.

Svaneborg Kardyb are Nikolaj Svaneborg - Wurlitzer, Juno, piano and Jonas Kardyb - drums, percussion a multi award winning duo from Denmark, where they won two "grammys" at the Danish Music Awards Jazz 2019: New artist of the year and Composer of the year. 
Drawing on Danish folk music and Scandinavian jazz influences, including Nils Frahm, Esbjörn Svennson and Jan Johansson's landmark recording Jazz På Svenska, their music is an exquisite and joyful melding of beautiful melodies, delicate minimalism, catchy grooves, subtle electronica vibes, Nordic atmospheres and organic interplay, all underwritten by the sheer joy of playing together. "We started in the earliest of mornings over the blackest of coffee, sometimes even without talking, just music. Immediately we felt a connection between our personal style of playing and the compositions emerged like out of nowhere. The vibe from these early sessions is still the backbone of our little band". Svaneborg Kardyb hail from Aalborg, in Jutland, in the north of Denmark where they first met in 2013 and discussed the possibility of creating a duo over late night talks. Six years went by as they both explored other projects before they eventually realised the idea of making music together. Like their new label mates, Vega Trails, Svaneborg Kardyb are a duo, a format that gives them a lot of space to occupy - or leave blank. "We enjoy the simplicity and focus it gives to the interplay. We come from very different musical backgrounds; Nikolaj from Scandinavian jazz, and Jonas from Roots, blues and folk, so the music is a sum of our personal contributions and doesn't thrive to be anything else than that. It's quite unique for us to have this shared musical tongue and friendship". Their music is intentionally simple at first glance, but evolves and unfolds through listening over time, with plenty of room for exploration, reflection and improvisation. Their aim is to create music that is as honest and intimate as possible "with melodies and rhythms so strong that we are left as only the messengers". And their fast-developing music chemistry allowed them to give little thought to what their musical influences were. Giving their music a captivating charm. "We explored whatever sounds and musical structures our duality gave birth to and through long jam-sessions we found small seeds of ideas that turned into tunes. Danish traditional songs, community singing and hymns are a big inspiration too. Both the tonal language, the lyrical melodies and the way generations can gather around the music, is something that is close to our hearts". Over Tage (over roofs) is their third album, following Knob (2019) and Haven (2020) and marks their debut for Gondwana Records a label noted for working with artists such as Mammal Hands, Portico Quartet and GoGo Penguin whose music, like that of Svaneborg Kardyb delights in exploring the fertile spaces between genres. For the duo it is their most serious and thoughtful record to date. "It may be our strongest and most honest record so far. Doubts and uncertainty were kind of the foundation for the sounds of the album but there is also hope and lots of uplifting moments and we're very pleased with how it came out." And it is that mixture of elevation and thoughtfulness, honesty and intimacy that makes the music of Svaneborg Kardyb so special and Over Tage such a joy to listen to. The world awaits.