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.”

On rare occasions, all the stars align. This is how it was when composer-musician and instrument-maker Bex Burch jumped into her car and drove eight hours across Europe to Utrecht in November 2021. “Mostly life isn’t like that,” she says. “We’re here to figure things out and struggle. But occasionally things just fall into place. Sometimes the world is magical.” The car trip began in Berlin, where she was living after a long stint in London, where she’d made her name in the layers that exist between jazz and improvised experimentalism. The journey ended at Le Guess Who? Festival and an invitation from International Anthem’s Alejandro Ayala. Or perhaps it ended in a ground floor studio in Chicago’s South Side with light streaming through a skylight onto her newly-finished wooden xylophone and a stream of musicians selected by International Anthem’s Scottie McNiece and Dave Vettraino. Or maybe, like a wave travelling across the ocean, the travels continued until Bex Burch finally finished editing thirty-two days of exceptionally tender improvised recording sessions into the forty gossamer minutes of this stunning debut solo record, which oscillates between modes of quiet open-heartedness and powerful expression. There is only love and fear is the sound of Bex Burch in communion with some of the finest sonic communicators in International Anthem’s extended family. These include woodwind player Rob Frye, who gave Burch a tour of the Illinois Audubon Society’s Gremel Wildlife Sanctuary the day after she arrived in Chicago. Also Tortoise drummer Dan Bitney and Ben LaMar Gay, who both took Burch through her first few days in the studio, tuning into her communicative harmonics and responding with their own. And double bassist Anna Butterss and violinist Macie Stewart, who participated separately but both became key collaborators in the album’s post-production, accenting their respective string improvisations with additional sounds remotely recorded per Burch’s direction. Everyone on this record is highly skillful, a rare talent, but drawn together by Burch they were invited to inhabit something even more extraordinary: their most open selves, requested only to bring the sounds they liked – or even needed – in the moment of recording. “What has come through in this album,” she says, “is a more domestic style of music: the simplicity of life and sound-making. The word I’m shy to use is ‘feminine’ but it’s true, and I reclaim it in all its power.” She describes her sound as “messy minimalism.” The twelve tracks evoke variously the sweet kind of zoning-in that allows the listener access to their own feelings; the generative meditations of First Thought, Best Thought-era Arthur Russell; Vivaldi or Laurie Anderson – if they’d been ultra-gentle satellite reflections of Chicago’s minimalist and avant-garde music histories. Burch has previously released as part of Boing! with Leafcutter John, and with the critically acclaimed Strut-released Flock with Londoners including Sarathy Korwar and The Comet Is Coming’s Danalogue. She also runs the band and label Vula Viel and has collaborated with artists from Peter Zummo to Dame Evelyn Glennie. This album also welcomes in the sound of the natural world; ‘hip as fuck’ wood pigeons and resonant nightingales recorded in Berlin parks and forests, dreamy waves lilting onto the sand on the Baltic coast of Rügen Island for the unforgettable closing track ‘When Love Begins’ – and some extreme Chi-Town weather. “There was this ignition moment,” she says of ‘You thought you were free’, the carnival-coloured mid-point of the album. “There was a tornado warning, our phones were all going off: ‘go into the basement’.” The players collectively shrugged their shoulders – until siren sound waves began ghosting through the studio walls. “I turned one of the microphones up to catch the thunder and the rain under the skylight,” she says. “I was properly scared, not just because of the storm, but because I was nervous. I was trying to stay open and be conscious of the fact that I didn’t know what to expect – and that doing so means surrender. That knife edge of presence was really intense. We all just played through.” Playing through was possible, at least in part because of a 90-day practice Burch calls Dawn blessings, which also provided some of the ‘heard sounds’ that dance around the music generated during these collaborative recordings. The practice refers to a friend called Dawn, not daybreak, although at least one of the Dawn blessings that ended up on There is only love and fear was recorded when the sun came up. The Dawn blessings required Burch to make one piece of music daily, in answer to the question: ‘what sounds do I like today?’ “My intention was to cultivate this feeling of expansion and magic that I felt when I was invited to the US. The music is already there, and I have to let go and allow myself to be in it. The 90-day practice was to strengthen that muscle. You know if

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

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.

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.

Svaneborg Kardyb's Tiny Desk (Home) concert was recorded in the countryside of Djursland, Denmark. "You have to drive for a while on a gravel road, and then you come to a lovely old house surrounded by hills and a stream on one side and a very flat landscape on the other, where you can see 10 miles away,". It's this place that inspired Svaneborg Kardyb's second album, Haven (or "garden" in English). "Haven celebrates places we like to be," the duo said. Svaneborg Kardyb is composed of Nikolaj Svaneborg on the Wurlitzer, synthesizer and piano, and Jonas Kardyb on drums and percussion. Their instrumentation set-up is untraditional, with the drums and keys facing each other, a position that they play in on stage just as they do in Kardyb's kitchen and living room on this session. They open up their set with the title track from Haven, which begins with a quiet melody over an effervescent loop. The sound mimics the shimmy of leaves in the breeze.

SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their debut album 'Small Medium Large' began as a collection of long form improvisations recorded during two separate two-night stands at beloved Highland Park, Los Angeles venue ETA. Unfortunately, this major development site for the burgeoning new West Coast jazz & improvised music sound closed its doors permanently at the end of 2023. The venue, perhaps best known outside of LA for Jeff Parker's 2022 album 'Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy', was the perfect location for the start of SML, especially given that both bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson are part of Parker's quartet that held down a regular gig at ETA since the venue's early days (and hence thoroughly documented, heard on Parker's album). 'Small Medium Large' was engineered and recorded in stereo direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales and compiled, arranged, and edited with additional production, recording, and studio composition by SML across their various home studios. While editing, chopping, and rearranging stereo mixed improvisations is hardly a new idea (for a modern and relevant example we can look to Makaya McCraven's output on IARC) these results are a stunning expansion of the Teo Macero / Miles Davis editing concept explored on classics like 'In a Silent Way', 'On The Corner', and 'Get Up With It'. Stylistically though, these recordings have more in common with the proto-trance repetitions of Harmonia, and with Holgar Czukay's re-assembly technique used in his work with Can. Throw in a supremely intuitive utilization of polyrhythmic floating patterns (a la Susumu Yokota), and the result is a truly innovative take on time-clocked electronic rhythms augmented with live instrumentation that never loses that elusive human sway. 'Small Medium Large' is a sublime assemblage of circulatory grooves and textural anomalies, at different moments recalling the synth-laced improvisations of Herbie Hancock's Sextant, the jagged dance punk of Essential Logic, the rhythmic revelry of Fela Kuti, the low-end elasticity of Parliament/Funkadelic, or the glitchy dub techno of Pole. Taken in totality, the album captures a euphoric creative synchronicity between some of today's most exciting musicians.

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"

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.

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! 

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.

Wildflower (Leon Brichard, Tom Skinner, Idris Rahman) continue to explore areas of groove-based improvised jazz on their 2nd album. Taking a slightly freer approach to the writing process, simple but effective melodies and bass motifs are explored to to create fully realised pieces with dynamic extremes that bring a full range of emotion. Recorded over a two day session at Fishmarket Studios in London, the band sounds relaxed and at ease, giving space to explore intricate improvised interplay and dialogue fully whilst at the same time building to fiery powerful climaxes and emotional peaks. Skinner is on fire here whilst Rahman and Brichard trade riffs and push the harmonic and rhythmic boundaries. Rahman’s use of clarinet and bamboo flute plus additional layers of woodwinds, Skinner’s unique approach to stripped-down use of his very personalised kit, and Brichard’s use of both acoustic and electric basses make for a sonic landscape that is both unique and highly approachable. Touching on heavy spiritual vibes whilst taking in dark alternative grooves and delicate folk-like tunes, the overall sound remains instantly accessible.

Over a year since the release of their exhilarating debut Could We Be More, Kokoroko present a new collection of remixes of tracks from their first album. The record brings together a dizzying, globe-spanning array of contemporary music’s most forward-thinking artists, each bringing their own unique identity to the project while maintaining the immersive sound-world of the original. Could We Be More Remixes is due 10th November 2023 via Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings. All the remixers share a common approach with the band, filtering global influences and backgrounds through the lens of their hometown. As a result, each remix explores and stretches the core elements of the debut in different ways. Home-grown London talents Eun and Demae, both associates of the Touching Bass collective that sprouted from the same scene as Kokoroko, turn in a spaced-out version of ‘Tojo’ that manages to be introspective and driving at the same time, reminiscent of some of the best work on Moodymann’s imprints. The talents of Could We Be More’s producer are called upon next. Miles James continues where ‘Something’s Going On’ left off, turning the synth-funk up several notches. To call anaiis’ version of ‘Home’ a remix would almost be an understatement. Anaiis uses the original as a launchpad, her soaring vocals taking the song’s sentiments to dizzying new heights. The toe-tapping Highlife groove of ‘Ewà Inú’ is twisted into a lurching Batida stepper by Vanyfox that skews expectations and stumbles the listener into a blissful trumpet-led ambient outro.This is followed by Washington-native dreamcastmoe’s take on the track. His version defies genre, scattering fragments of the original, soulful vocals and chords over a heavy 808 bass chug. ‘We Give Thanks (KeiyaA Remix)’ sees the Chicago-based multi-hyphenate mining the depths of the sparse skittering cyber-soul elements that were a feature of her own debut. Kokoroko’s organic vocals and instrumentation are tied down to a bedrock of icy drum machines, handclaps and electronics resulting in a scintillating frisson. The final two artists on the record submit remixes along more traditional lines. Ash Lauryn and Stefan Ringer twist and reform the angelic vocals and Afrobeats sentiments of ‘Dide O’ into a driving deep house banger; the floating melodic refrain suspended over a rolling synth bass and propulsive drums. Finally, London producer of the moment Hagan does what he does best. In his hands, ‘War Dance’ transforms into a dark and moody afro-house dance floor weapon. Ominous pads, a monstrous bass-line and hectic percussion combine with the song’s fiery brass culminating into a climactic breakdown built around Sheila Maurice-Grey’s explosive trumpet solo. Could We Be More was an ambitious and expansive album. Stretched out over 15 tracks, Kokoroko’s debut release wove together Afro-beat jam-outs, funk grooves, psychedelic flutters, brass stabs and soaring soul with dub-echo, astral electronics and introverted interludes. All combining to create an immersive experience evoking the band’s multi-faceted notions of home. This is a beautiful sister release to Kokoroko’s Could We Be More. The remixes treat the source material with care but imbue them with a potent energy, strangely reminiscent of seeing the band perform live. This collection follows the album and achieves what few remix albums are able to; creating a headphone listening experience while at the same time drawing out the dance music elements for the club. Could We Be More Remixes is due 10th November 2023 via Brownswood Recordings.

Embark on a soul-stirring voyage with Oriana Ikomo as she unveils "THE HEALING," an EP that encapsulates the profound metamorphosis she has undergone in recent years. This musical journey is an ode to personal empowerment, and Oriana's resilience echoes through each note and lyric. The EP unfolds with a powerful, ethereal introduction where the piano and Oriana's soulful voice are in the center. With a hauntingly beautiful atmosphere, she passionately repeats the mantra, "Be kind to the mothers, the sisters, the brothers, and the sisters," serving as both an affirmation and an important message to the world. Oriana's sonic palette is a rich tapestry of genres, seamlessly weaving together R&B, Gospel, Ambient, Jazz, Electronic, and Pop influences. Her sound throughout the EP is affirmed and robust, reflecting the strength she has discovered within herself. In each track, Oriana showcases her exceptional versatility as an artist. From the heart-wrenching ‘MAMA, LET’S GO’ to the rhythmically charged ‘IMMA PLEASER’, she navigates effortlessly through different musical landscapes. The EP becomes a sonic experience, offering you a diverse and immersive experience. "THE HEALING" is not just an EP; it's a musical expedition that invites you to delve into the depths of Oriana Ikomo's soul. Through her evocative lyrics and dynamic melodies, she invites you to witness the beauty that emerges from personal growth and self-discovery. Join Oriana on this transformative journey as she leaves an indelible mark on the intersection of R&B, Gospel, Ambient, Jazz, Electronic, and Pop, proving that empowerment and artistry go hand in hand.

Written and recorded with the goal of creating a one-movement suite in the least amount of time possible, "Succo di formiche" reflects the archetypal joy of music making, the spontaneous impulses underlying its formation, and a love of the record album form.

London based composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Akusmi announces »Lines«, an exhilarating new collection of works born from the desire to take where the acclaimed debut album »Fleeting Future« left off - in search of new forms. Formed with a sense of urgency and a reductive approach »Lines« is almost entirely comprised of alto saxophone, clarinet and piano with embellishments of ambience and minimal percussive elements. Recorded in full at his home studio in London, Pascal Bideau speaks about the process: »I wanted to go a bit more a bit more horizontal and ambient, work with layers of lines, might they be dotted or straight, and leave them to unfold and see where they would take me.« Akusmi uniquely finds the spaces in between experimental jazz, crossover classical and ambient music.

Feeling like the first shot of sunshine after a long winter, Cousin Kula sound instantly recognisable yet gloriously renewed on their second album ‘Vitamin D’. If their debut album ‘Double Dinners’ was the soundtrack to your heartbreak then this is the sound of falling back in love again. Even the titles of the tracklist - 'Clothes Off', 'Staying With You’, 'Good Feeling' - boldly set the coordinates for this new body of work. From the opening wash of searing synth chords, bouncing bass, wailing guitar lines and flutters of flute, it's abundantly clear this is a feel good album. Label boss Bradley Zero exclaims “I think it’s fair to say that the band have shaken off the collective cobwebs and are ready for a summer of love!”. Singer Elliot Ellison explains “We really wanted this album to be playful and fun, not taking itself too seriously. Be representative of us as a group and the energy we have when just goofing around, for that to be something you feel in the music too. Lyrically it covers many themes but especially steps into “Happy Love Songs”, which feels like a new venture for us”. ‘Vitamin D’ is for the lovers, but also for the dancers. Cousin Kula have expanded their vocabulary but also learnt when to just sit back in the groove. Funk and disco has permeated their psychedelic indie-soul sound and it’s all the better for it. A quintet of virtuosic musicians, flexing when necessary but more often than not stripping it right back and reveling in the pocket. It’s a rare case of perfect thematic and musical synergy. Elliot continues "We explored more instrumentation on this album and stretched previously underused corners of our ability. Will and Elliot play trombone and trumpet on a few tunes, Doug plays flute on the whole album (and strangely, no saxophone!), and there's a whole lot more percussion. It's been fun experimenting with the vocals on this album too, we wanted to really lean into the ‘weird’. Likewise with the vocal harmonies, we wanted to make that feature of our sound even more of a thing on this album, like going a bit more sexy BeeGees on it". Living together, nestled in the sun-drenched hills on the outskirts of Bristol, Cousin Kula released their first full length 'Double Dinners' on Rhythm Section Intl. in 2021. The album received praise from BBC 6 Music, Boiler Room, Clash, Crack, and The Guardian, to name a few, and saw the band tour the UK with Mildlife on top of their own non-stop live escapades. credits

Originally conceived as a tour only exclusive, Bright Sparkling Light was recorded alongside, 2023's expansive beguiling long-player An Ever Changing View and draws on the same trademark blend of jazz, electronica, global and spiritual jazz influences. The original pressing sold-out on Matthew’s EU and UK tour last October and November and so many people got in touch with us here at Gondwana asking how they could get a copy that we decided to make a further 2000 copies available. The title track is a hypnotic meditation built on one of the lushest loops Halsall has ever created and featuring stellar work from Halsall and flautist Matt Cliffe. Newborough Forest is a brisk, uplifting composition celebrating one of Halsall’s favourite landscapes and the wonderous Tide and the Moon paints a sonic picture of late-night waters and deep mindfulness and features some of Matt Cliffe’s most beautiful tenor playing. Like An Ever Changing View, Bright Sparkling Light comes in a package as striking as the music, with handmade fonts designed by Ian Anderson and a beautifully realised embossed artwork that offers a perfect compliment to the LP. Strictly limited and featuring a download code, Bright Sparkling Light will not be re-pressed.

Finnish drummer/Producer Teppo "Teddy Rok" Mäkynen returns with his alias The Stance Brothers. Lauded by the likes of Kenny Dope and Gilles Peterson, Mäkynen's studio creation has been visible on the 7" format during the recent years. Now, Mäkynen is back with a full LP, the project's first in more than 10 years. Duktus is a treasure-trove for everyone into crunchy jazz funk à la Bob James & CTI, but this is no retro exercise. Teddy Rok moves forward in all directions, constantly bringing new elements into his sound, which is more layered and deep than ever before. At the same time, the crunch & the breaks are there when you need them. The basic core of The Stance Brothers is to be solo studio vehicle for Teppo Mäkynen to experiment across a varied instrumentation and musical ideas. After the project's celebrated first album (Ricky-Tick Records, 2007), The Stance Brothers took to the stage as well, creating one of the most beloved live outfits of recent history in the Helsinki scene. Now, after more than 10+ years of time spent in releasing one hard-hitting 7" after the other, The Stance Brothers are back, both on the record and live on stage. Whereas the Stance 7" sides are often dominated by crunchy drums and crystal clear vibraphone melodies, the new album sounds broadens up into a more synth-heavy, "postmodern" realm, taking its space in a form resembling a mixtape. The funk is there, but Mäkynen is sensitive to the fact that an LP is not a 7", and the ideas take their shape accordingly. Guest voices float in and out of the mix, blending in anonymously, true to the low-key spirit of the studio operation. Inspiration: Roy Ayers, Mizell Brothers, Bobby Hutcherson, Cesar Mariano, Patrice Rushen, George Duke, Madlib's Mind Fusion Mixtapes.

On rare occasions, all the stars align. This is how it was when composer-musician and instrument-maker Bex Burch jumped into her car and drove eight hours across Europe to Utrecht in November 2021. “Mostly life isn’t like that,” she says. “We’re here to figure things out and struggle. But occasionally things just fall into place. Sometimes the world is magical.” The car trip began in Berlin, where she was living after a long stint in London, where she’d made her name in the layers that exist between jazz and improvised experimentalism. The journey ended at Le Guess Who? Festival and an invitation from International Anthem’s Alejandro Ayala. Or perhaps it ended in a ground floor studio in Chicago’s South Side with light streaming through a skylight onto her newly-finished wooden xylophone and a stream of musicians selected by International Anthem’s Scottie McNiece and Dave Vettraino. Or maybe, like a wave travelling across the ocean, the travels continued until Bex Burch finally finished editing thirty-two days of exceptionally tender improvised recording sessions into the forty gossamer minutes of this stunning debut solo record, which oscillates between modes of quiet open-heartedness and powerful expression. There is only love and fear is the sound of Bex Burch in communion with some of the finest sonic communicators in International Anthem’s extended family. These include woodwind player Rob Frye, who gave Burch a tour of the Illinois Audubon Society’s Gremel Wildlife Sanctuary the day after she arrived in Chicago. Also Tortoise drummer Dan Bitney and Ben LaMar Gay, who both took Burch through her first few days in the studio, tuning into her communicative harmonics and responding with their own. And double bassist Anna Butterss and violinist Macie Stewart, who participated separately but both became key collaborators in the album’s post-production, accenting their respective string improvisations with additional sounds remotely recorded per Burch’s direction. Everyone on this record is highly skillful, a rare talent, but drawn together by Burch they were invited to inhabit something even more extraordinary: their most open selves, requested only to bring the sounds they liked – or even needed – in the moment of recording. “What has come through in this album,” she says, “is a more domestic style of music: the simplicity of life and sound-making. The word I’m shy to use is ‘feminine’ but it’s true, and I reclaim it in all its power.” She describes her sound as “messy minimalism.” The twelve tracks evoke variously the sweet kind of zoning-in that allows the listener access to their own feelings; the generative meditations of First Thought, Best Thought-era Arthur Russell; Vivaldi or Laurie Anderson – if they’d been ultra-gentle satellite reflections of Chicago’s minimalist and avant-garde music histories. Burch has previously released as part of Boing! with Leafcutter John, and with the critically acclaimed Strut-released Flock with Londoners including Sarathy Korwar and The Comet Is Coming’s Danalogue. She also runs the band and label Vula Viel and has collaborated with artists from Peter Zummo to Dame Evelyn Glennie. This album also welcomes in the sound of the natural world; ‘hip as fuck’ wood pigeons and resonant nightingales recorded in Berlin parks and forests, dreamy waves lilting onto the sand on the Baltic coast of Rügen Island for the unforgettable closing track ‘When Love Begins’ – and some extreme Chi-Town weather. “There was this ignition moment,” she says of ‘You thought you were free’, the carnival-coloured mid-point of the album. “There was a tornado warning, our phones were all going off: ‘go into the basement’.” The players collectively shrugged their shoulders – until siren sound waves began ghosting through the studio walls. “I turned one of the microphones up to catch the thunder and the rain under the skylight,” she says. “I was properly scared, not just because of the storm, but because I was nervous. I was trying to stay open and be conscious of the fact that I didn’t know what to expect – and that doing so means surrender. That knife edge of presence was really intense. We all just played through.” Playing through was possible, at least in part because of a 90-day practice Burch calls Dawn blessings, which also provided some of the ‘heard sounds’ that dance around the music generated during these collaborative recordings. The practice refers to a friend called Dawn, not daybreak, although at least one of the Dawn blessings that ended up on There is only love and fear was recorded when the sun came up. The Dawn blessings required Burch to make one piece of music daily, in answer to the question: ‘what sounds do I like today?’ “My intention was to cultivate this feeling of expansion and magic that I felt when I was invited to the US. The music is already there, and I have to let go and allow myself to be in it. The 90-day practice was to strengthen that muscle. You know if

In August 2022, Australia-based, French born fourth-world music legend Ariel Kalma was invited to participate in BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction series of special collaborations. The program pairs artists who have not previously worked together to create new music cooperatively. Kalma was quick to suggest working with two musicians whom he had never met – International Anthem recording artists Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer, whose critically-acclaimed duo debut 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' had been released just a few months earlier. An invitation was sent to Chiu and Honer, which was received with great enthusiasm, as Chiu had long been a fan of Kalma’s work, even citing him as a major influence on his approach to electronic music composition. The essential structure of the Late Junction collaboration was that the artists would work together to create around twenty minutes of music. They began passing music back and forth, some that Kalma had started, and some that Honer & Chiu had started, with each adding to or editing the track before returning it to the other. The music would only go back and forth a few times before being finalized. After meeting their twenty minute goal for the program (four pieces total), the three musicians were satisfied in what they would present and sent along their work to the producers of Late Junction. However, there was a nagging suspicion that this wasn’t the end of the story. There were several pieces that they had nearly completed but that weren’t sent for inclusion in the radio program, and there were many ideas for refining those pieces that had. With this in mind Kalma, Chiu and Honer agreed that they would continue to work together to try to push the music further. The freshly minted trio felt like there was much more to be said and more work to be done. The Late Junction program was broadcast in September of 2022. Simultaneously, Kalma, Chiu and Honer began expanding upon the music they had started for the purpose of the broadcast, working diligently on the music for several months. After meeting their twenty minute goal for the program (four pieces total), the three musicians were satisfied in what they would present and sent along their work to the producers of Late Junction. However, there was a nagging suspicion that this wasn’t the end of the story. There were several pieces that they had nearly completed but that weren’t sent for inclusion in the radio program, and there were many ideas for refining those pieces that had. With this in mind Kalma, Chiu and Honer agreed that they would continue to work together to try to push the music further. The freshly minted trio felt like there was much more to be said and more work to be done. The Late Junction program was broadcast in September of 2022. Simultaneously, Kalma, Chiu and Honer began expanding upon the music they had started for the purpose of the broadcast, working diligently on the music for several months. Their collective approach to this work was born in improvisation and realized via collage-based editing. The end result brings several distinct musical moments — recorded sometimes decades apart — into conversation with one another, forming new narratives from building blocks of old ones. There are snippets of improvised playing from each musician, edited together with recordings that Kalma had made in the 70s at GRM, and even moments of audio notes — like Kalma explaining his ideas — that would make it into the final mixes. Their collective approach to this work was born in improvisation and realized via collage-based editing. The end result brings several distinct musical moments — recorded sometimes decades apart — into conversation with one another, forming new narratives from building blocks of old ones. There are snippets of improvised playing from each musician, edited together with recordings that Kalma had made in the 70s at GRM, and even moments of audio notes — like Kalma explaining his ideas — that would make it into the final mixes. Ultimately, the collection of music highlights the work of all three musicians, intertwining the contextual immersion heard on Chiu & Honer’s 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' with an intergenerational reverence for (and the undeniable presence of) Kalma’s decades-spanning body of work. It is work that has definitively enshrined him as one of the true, transcendent pioneers and sages of new age and fourth-world music. That reverence is affirmed by the album title chosen by the group — "The Closest Thing to Silence" — which is taken from a quote by Kalma included in a documentary by RVNG Intl (as part of their release of the 2014 compendium/retrospective An Evolutionary Music). Perhaps coincidental, Kalma’s quote was a slight modulation of a legendary ECM Records motto, as he said: “Music is the closest thing to silence.” Ultimately, the collection of music highlights the work of all three musicians, intertwining the contextual immersion heard on Chiu & Honer’s 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' with an intergenerational reverence for (and the undeniable presence of) Kalma’s decades-spanning body of work. It is work that has definitively enshrined him as one of the true, transcendent pioneers and sages of new age and fourth-world music. That reverence is affirmed by the album title chosen by the group — "The Closest Thing to Silence" — which is taken from a quote by Kalma included in a documentary by RVNG Intl (as part of their release of the 2014 compendium/retrospective An Evolutionary Music). Perhaps coincidental, Kalma’s quote was a slight modulation of a legendary ECM Records motto, as he said: “Music is the closest thing to silence.” The Closest Thing To Silence is an album-length collaboration between fourth-world music icon Ariel Kalma and the recording duo Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer, which evolved from a twenty-minute selection pieces they recorded in 2022 for BBC Radio 3’s ‘Late Junction’ program as part of a scheme that places together artists who have never worked together before. Chiu and Honer, who both cite Kalma as a huge influence on their work, beautifully fit into Kalma’s vision.

In August 2022, Australia-based, French born fourth-world music legend Ariel Kalma was invited to participate in BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction series of special collaborations. The program pairs artists who have not previously worked together to create new music cooperatively. Kalma was quick to suggest working with two musicians whom he had never met – International Anthem recording artists Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer, whose critically-acclaimed duo debut 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' had been released just a few months earlier. An invitation was sent to Chiu and Honer, which was received with great enthusiasm, as Chiu had long been a fan of Kalma’s work, even citing him as a major influence on his approach to electronic music composition. The essential structure of the Late Junction collaboration was that the artists would work together to create around twenty minutes of music. They began passing music back and forth, some that Kalma had started, and some that Honer & Chiu had started, with each adding to or editing the track before returning it to the other. The music would only go back and forth a few times before being finalized. After meeting their twenty minute goal for the program (four pieces total), the three musicians were satisfied in what they would present and sent along their work to the producers of Late Junction. However, there was a nagging suspicion that this wasn’t the end of the story. There were several pieces that they had nearly completed but that weren’t sent for inclusion in the radio program, and there were many ideas for refining those pieces that had. With this in mind Kalma, Chiu and Honer agreed that they would continue to work together to try to push the music further. The freshly minted trio felt like there was much more to be said and more work to be done. The Late Junction program was broadcast in September of 2022. Simultaneously, Kalma, Chiu and Honer began expanding upon the music they had started for the purpose of the broadcast, working diligently on the music for several months. After meeting their twenty minute goal for the program (four pieces total), the three musicians were satisfied in what they would present and sent along their work to the producers of Late Junction. However, there was a nagging suspicion that this wasn’t the end of the story. There were several pieces that they had nearly completed but that weren’t sent for inclusion in the radio program, and there were many ideas for refining those pieces that had. With this in mind Kalma, Chiu and Honer agreed that they would continue to work together to try to push the music further. The freshly minted trio felt like there was much more to be said and more work to be done. The Late Junction program was broadcast in September of 2022. Simultaneously, Kalma, Chiu and Honer began expanding upon the music they had started for the purpose of the broadcast, working diligently on the music for several months. Their collective approach to this work was born in improvisation and realized via collage-based editing. The end result brings several distinct musical moments — recorded sometimes decades apart — into conversation with one another, forming new narratives from building blocks of old ones. There are snippets of improvised playing from each musician, edited together with recordings that Kalma had made in the 70s at GRM, and even moments of audio notes — like Kalma explaining his ideas — that would make it into the final mixes. Their collective approach to this work was born in improvisation and realized via collage-based editing. The end result brings several distinct musical moments — recorded sometimes decades apart — into conversation with one another, forming new narratives from building blocks of old ones. There are snippets of improvised playing from each musician, edited together with recordings that Kalma had made in the 70s at GRM, and even moments of audio notes — like Kalma explaining his ideas — that would make it into the final mixes. Ultimately, the collection of music highlights the work of all three musicians, intertwining the contextual immersion heard on Chiu & Honer’s 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' with an intergenerational reverence for (and the undeniable presence of) Kalma’s decades-spanning body of work. It is work that has definitively enshrined him as one of the true, transcendent pioneers and sages of new age and fourth-world music. That reverence is affirmed by the album title chosen by the group — "The Closest Thing to Silence" — which is taken from a quote by Kalma included in a documentary by RVNG Intl (as part of their release of the 2014 compendium/retrospective An Evolutionary Music). Perhaps coincidental, Kalma’s quote was a slight modulation of a legendary ECM Records motto, as he said: “Music is the closest thing to silence.” Ultimately, the collection of music highlights the work of all three musicians, intertwining the contextual immersion heard on Chiu & Honer’s 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' with an intergenerational reverence for (and the undeniable presence of) Kalma’s decades-spanning body of work. It is work that has definitively enshrined him as one of the true, transcendent pioneers and sages of new age and fourth-world music. That reverence is affirmed by the album title chosen by the group — "The Closest Thing to Silence" — which is taken from a quote by Kalma included in a documentary by RVNG Intl (as part of their release of the 2014 compendium/retrospective An Evolutionary Music). Perhaps coincidental, Kalma’s quote was a slight modulation of a legendary ECM Records motto, as he said: “Music is the closest thing to silence.” The Closest Thing To Silence is an album-length collaboration between fourth-world music icon Ariel Kalma and the recording duo Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer, which evolved from a twenty-minute selection pieces they recorded in 2022 for BBC Radio 3’s ‘Late Junction’ program as part of a scheme that places together artists who have never worked together before. Chiu and Honer, who both cite Kalma as a huge influence on their work, beautifully fit into Kalma’s vision.