MUSIC
7106 products
“A beautiful conceptual approach that is understandable and appreciated.” - Eric Therer, Jazzmania “But somehow, all pieces are strangely interconnected and cast a sensual, hypnotic rhythmic spell.” Jan Granlie, Salt Peanuts " a soundscape that is quite extraordinary, unconventional and vibrant." - Ivan Rod With Unit of Time, Hans Hulbækmo and Egil Kalman aim to show that we can experience the essence of time through rhythm. How can the perception of time—both for the listener and the performers—be turned completely on its head by rhythm? By zooming in on rhythms from traditional music from around the world, the hyper-focused interplay of free jazz, and the rhythmic structures of just-intoned drone music (which is essentially about resonant intervals built on polyrhythms), these gentlemen create a wholly unique rhythmic universe—a universe where both listeners and performers can lose themselves in a thicket of twisted branches. As you know, Motvind Records is much about filling out our own record collections, and it’s high time for a drum’n’bass record that you can enjoy on the couch at home. Piercing the Veil by William Parker and Hamid Drake is fantastic, but it’s 25 years old... Now, we finally have another album where the groove button is stuck in the "on" position, and creativity overflows. "The rhythm section" has long had a supporting role in rhythmic music like jazz, pop, and rock, often overshadowed by a brash saxophonist, lead guitarist, or singer dominating most of the frequency range. In jazz, much happened early on with drummers like Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, and Warren "Baby" Dodds, as well as bassists like Jimmy Blanton, Charles Mingus, and Scott LaFaro. In folk music traditions with strong rhythmic elements, such as those in Africa and Southeast Asia, these instruments have played a more prominent role in shaping the music. But all too often, especially in Norwegian folk music, these instruments have had a rather static function. In my own record collection, I even have an album where the accompanying musicians aren’t credited—it just says, "Ola Opheim, fiddle w/Rhythm." However, Hans Hulbækmo and Egil Kalman have long been a playful and creative rhythm section, with one foot in free jazz and the other in folk music. They’ve played together in the Marthe Lea Band and other projects, and since last year, they’ve delved into the folk music of Norway and Sweden—all set in an experimental duo format: drums and mouth harp (Hans) meet modular synth and double bass and mouth harp (Egil). They’ve now gone deeper into this, aiming to create an album they can take on tour. Both individually and together, they have explored folk music, jazz, and experimental electronic music. Their projects, such as Hulbækmo & Jacobsen Familieorkester, Skrekk & Guro, Camilla Hole Trio, and Reolô, showcase their diverse musical backgrounds. In this duo project, they draw from rhythmic details in folk music—small elements that form the basis for minimalist compositions full of improvisation. They have composed and improvised most of the material, including a traditional tune from Setesdal, Filleværen. The album is a good old-fashioned musical journey where all the tracks have distinct characteristics yet are strangely interconnected. The music is also highly visual. Once the record has spun through once, it’s tempting to flip it over again—once you get a taste for good music, it’s hard to stop. And they don’t let the groove dictate everything. Some melodies are interpreted more straightforwardly, but the unconventional instruments they use give the music a different kind of depth. Unusual timbres and sonic phenomena emerge, giving the music a hypnotic quality. Both the listener and the musicians themselves can get lost in the groove, immersed in a rhythmic cosmos.
Khadim is a stunning reconfiguration of the Ndagga Rhythm Force sound. The instrumentation is radically pared down. The guitar is gone; the concatenation of sabars; the drum-kit. Each of the four tracks hones in on just one or two drummers; otherwise the sole recorded element is the singing; everything else is programmed. Synths are dialogically locked into the drumming. Tellingly, Ernestus has reached for his beloved Prophet-5, a signature go-to since Basic Channel days, thirty years ago. Texturally, the sound is more dubwise; prickling with effects. There is a new spaciousness, announced at the start by the ambient sounds of Dakar street-life. At the microphone, Mbene Diatta Seck revels in this new openness: mbalax diva, she feelingly turns each of the four songs into a discrete dramatic episode, using different sets of rhetorical techniques. The music throughout is taut, grooving, complex, like before; but more volatile, intuitive and reaching, with turbulent emotional and spiritual expressivity.
Not that Khadim represents any kind of break. Its transformativeness is rooted in the hundreds upon hundreds of hours the Rhythm Force has played together. Nearly a decade has passed since Yermande, the unit’s previous album. Every year throughout that period — barring lockdowns — the group has toured extensively, in Europe, the US, and Japan. With improvisation at the core of its music-making, each performance has been evolutionary, as it turns out heading towards Khadim. “I didn’t want to simply continue with the same formula, says Ernestus. “I preferred to wait for a new approach. Playing live so many times, I wanted to capture some of the energy and freedom of those performances.” Though several members of the touring ensemble sit out this recording — sabar drummers, kit-drummer, synth-player — their presence abides in the structure and swing of the music here.
Lamp Fall is a homage to Cheikh Ibra Fall, founder of the Baye Fall spiritual community. The mosque in the city of Touba is known as Lamp Fall, because the main tower resembles a lantern. Soy duggu Touba, moom guey séen / When you enter Touba, he is the one who greets you. After a swift, incantatory start Mbene sings with reflective seriousness. Her voice swirls with reverb, over a tight, funky, propulsive interplay between synth and drums, threaded with one- two jabs of bass. Cheikh Ibra Fall mi may way, mo diayndiou ré, la mu jëndé ko taalibe… Cheikh Ibra Fall amo morome, aboridial / Cheikh Ibra Fall shows the way forward, he gives us strength, he gathers his disciples… Overflowing with grace, Cheikh Ibra Fall has no equal.
Interwoven with Wolof proverbs, Dieuw Bakhul is a recriminatory song about treachery, lies, and back-biting. Over moody, roiling synths and ominous, lean bass, Mbene throws out fluttering scraps of vocal, as if re-running old conversations in her head. The music shadows her despair to the verge of breakdown, at one moment seemingly so lost in thought and memories, that it threatens to disintegrate. Bayilene di wor seen xarit ak seen an da ndo… Dieuw bakhul, dieuw ñaw na / Stop judging your friends and companions… A lie is no good, a lie is ugly.
Khadim is a show-stopper; currently the centrepiece of Ndagga Rhythm Force live performances. The song is dedicated to Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, aka Khadim, founder of the Mouride Sufi order. Serigne Bamba mi may wayeu / Serigne Bamba is the one who makes me sing. The verses name-check revered members of his family and brotherhood, like Sokhna Diarra, Mame Thierno, and Serigne Bara. Though Islam has been practised in Senegal for a millennium, it wasn’t until the start of the twentieth century that it began to thoroughly permeate ordinary Senegalese society, hand-in-hand with anti-colonialism. The verses here recall Bamba’s banishment by the French to Gabon, and later to Mauritania, in those foundational times. During exile, his captors once introduced a lion to his cell: gaïnde gua waf, dieba lu ci Cheikhoul Khadim / the lion doesn’t budge, it gives itself over to Cheikh Khadim. Deep, surging bass, steady kick-drum, and simple, reverbed chords on the off-beat lend the feel and impetus of steppers reggae. A reed plays snatches of a traditional Baye Fall melody; the dazzling polyrhythmic drumming is by Serigne Mamoune Seck. Mbene compellingly blends percussive vocalese, narrative suspense, exultant praise, introspection, and grievance.
Nimzat is a devotional tribute to Cheikh Sadbou, a contemporary of Bamba, buried in a mausoleum in Nizmat, in southern Mauritania. Way nala, kagne nala… souma danana fata dale / I call upon you and wonder about you… If I am overwhelmed, come to my aid. The town holds special significance for Khadr Sufism. An annual pilgrimage there is conducted to this day. The rhythm is buoyantly funky; the mood is sombre, reined-in, foreboding. Punctuated by peals of thunder, Mbene sings with restrained, intense reverence; huskily confidential, steadfast. Nanu dem ba Nimzat, dé ba sali khina / Let us go to Nimzat, to seal our devotion.
This is a solo percussion work recorded in 1980 and released in 1981 by Masahiko Togashi, one of Japan’s foremost percussionists and drummers. After the accident that left him partially paralyzed, Togashi developed his own techniques and performance methods, using drums, bells, gongs, and a wide range of percussion instruments to capture the unique sound world he envisioned. This album documents that deeply personal sonic exploration.
Dewa Alit, master of radical Balinese gamelan, returns to Black Truffle with Baur Bentur."Genetic (2020) introduced international listeners to the magical sound-world of Alit’s Gamelan Salukat, who perform on instruments tuned to a unique scale derived from modified versions of two traditional Balinese scales. The two pieces heard on Chasing the Phantom (2022) further demonstrated his radical fusion of tradition and experimentation, with passages where unorthodox techniques make the acoustic ensemble resemble glitching electronics. Baur Bentur now highlights another aspect of Alit’s work, presenting pieces composed in 2024 and 2025 where Gamelan Salukat performs alongside virtuoso pianist Sri Hanuraga.Alit’s music is grounded in deep reflection on the tradition of Balinese gamelan and its place in the contemporary world. His title, ‘Baur Bentur’, which translates as ‘mixing and smashing’, points to his embrace of the intercultural mixture of Eastern and Western elements in the search for innovation. Against the calcification of Balinese music into tourist entertainment, Alit poses his searching, experimental work, which celebrates the communal values and performance practices of traditional gamelan while pushing into startling new directions.‘Sukat Tacara’ is a study in layered tempos, meters, and polyrhythms, a constantly shifting dialogue between piano and the instruments of Gamelan Salukat. It begins close to a traditional concerto, pairing a brisk sequence of melodic variations from the piano with a spare but propulsive accompaniment of drums and hanging metallophone tones, punctuated by low gong strikes. The piano builds in volume and density across a rapid succession of fragments, at points recalling George Antheil’s ticking wind-up machinery, though Hanuraga’s jazz background shines through in the fluidity with which he navigates the complexities of the score, where chromatic movement co-exists with bluesy phrases. An abrupt change in the piano to patterns of dense clusters introduces a new episode, during which the metallic instruments of the gamelan enter the foreground. The piece dazzles with its inventive rhythms and dynamics, building to a stunning passage featuring the signature heavy muting technique of the Gamelan Salukat metallophones in kinetic patterns that would be at home on a Príncipe release.The title piece begins at high intensity and rarely lets up, working through bracing unison ensemble melodies and punctuation points where piano and gamelan together seem to become a single, thudding drum. For much of the piece the piano is tightly integrated into the ensemble, the harmonic extensions of the melodic line subsumed into a moving cloud of complex overtones generated by the gamelan instruments. Wildly kinetic on the rhythmic level, the piece swarms with microscopic movements of beating patterns generated by the ‘blend and crush’ of three simultaneous tuning systems: the equal temperament of the piano and the saih cenik (small scale) and saih gede (big scale) used by the gamelan instruments. Accompanied by the composer’s thoughtful liner notes and images of the musicians, Baur Bentur is a stunning next step in Alit’s radical combination of tradition and innovation."
Spiritmuse presents “Pathways & Passages”, the debut album from “Cosmic Vibrations” the LA-based ensemble led by acclaimed jazz vocalist Dwight Trible that defines spiritual jazz in the 21st century. A genre-defying amalgamation of divine vocals, soul-stirring jazz, healing poetry, with a rich tapestry of African, Mesoamerican and indigenous North American percussion and instrumentation, taking you on a cosmic journey of spiritual improvisation and beyond. Cosmic Vibrations is a supergroup of heavyweight musicians with a vast combined experience, an ensemble of 6 souls who approach improvisation full of spirit and without ego. Gathered for this very purpose by Dwight Trible, undoubtedly the most acclaimed and in-demand vocalist currently working in the realms of spiritual jazz, the band has been performing steadily over the last three years, building a reputation in LA and further afield for their electric, mesmerising performances. “Pathways & Passages” presents the first time that their transcendental sound has been recorded and publicly released. A show-stopping performer and artist, Dwight Trible has directed the legendary Horace Tapscott Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, and performed alongside with the likes of Pharoah Sanders, J Dilla, Gary Bartz, Kamasi Washington, Kahil El’Zabar, Madlib, Charles Lloyd, Matthew Halsall, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Soil & “Pimp” Sessions, Mark de Clive-Lowe, and Carlos Niño. There is indeed no one today who better carries on the tradition of legendary jazz vocalists such as Terry Callier, Leon Thomas and Andy Bey, whilst carrying that torch forward and exploring brand new territory. Apart from his rich vocal tones, Trible is also heard on kalimba here. Improvisation forms the core of this record, but the rhythm, the groove is never absent. The poetry led “Nature’s Vision” sets the tone for the record’s journey, but it peaks on the group’s incredible rendition “Motherless Child”. A live favourite of Trible’s, this bluesy take rides heavy on Williams’ bass and enjoys the addition of guest Scott Fraser’s lap steel guitar. With his rich, emotive singing Trible takes full possession of the song. By the time the beautiful closing ballad, “Some Other Time” ends, the album has truly succeeded in transcending the listener from their earthly surroundings. A genre-defying amalgam of divine vocals, intuitive improvisation and deeply spiritual music, on Trible’s voice soars among the nexus of winds & skins from an incredibly talented and “deeply rooted” group in complete brotherly connection with one another. If you are looking for genuine, soul-enriching spiritual jazz today, look no further than “Pathways & Passages”.
Spiritmuse presents “Pathways & Passages”, the debut album from “Cosmic Vibrations” the LA-based ensemble led by acclaimed jazz vocalist Dwight Trible that defines spiritual jazz in the 21st century. A genre-defying amalgamation of divine vocals, soul-stirring jazz, healing poetry, with a rich tapestry of African, Mesoamerican and indigenous North American percussion and instrumentation, taking you on a cosmic journey of spiritual improvisation and beyond. Cosmic Vibrations is a supergroup of heavyweight musicians with a vast combined experience, an ensemble of 6 souls who approach improvisation full of spirit and without ego. Gathered for this very purpose by Dwight Trible, undoubtedly the most acclaimed and in-demand vocalist currently working in the realms of spiritual jazz, the band has been performing steadily over the last three years, building a reputation in LA and further afield for their electric, mesmerising performances. “Pathways & Passages” presents the first time that their transcendental sound has been recorded and publicly released. A show-stopping performer and artist, Dwight Trible has directed the legendary Horace Tapscott Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, and performed alongside with the likes of Pharoah Sanders, J Dilla, Gary Bartz, Kamasi Washington, Kahil El’Zabar, Madlib, Charles Lloyd, Matthew Halsall, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Soil & “Pimp” Sessions, Mark de Clive-Lowe, and Carlos Niño. There is indeed no one today who better carries on the tradition of legendary jazz vocalists such as Terry Callier, Leon Thomas and Andy Bey, whilst carrying that torch forward and exploring brand new territory. Apart from his rich vocal tones, Trible is also heard on kalimba here. Improvisation forms the core of this record, but the rhythm, the groove is never absent. The poetry led “Nature’s Vision” sets the tone for the record’s journey, but it peaks on the group’s incredible rendition “Motherless Child”. A live favourite of Trible’s, this bluesy take rides heavy on Williams’ bass and enjoys the addition of guest Scott Fraser’s lap steel guitar. With his rich, emotive singing Trible takes full possession of the song. By the time the beautiful closing ballad, “Some Other Time” ends, the album has truly succeeded in transcending the listener from their earthly surroundings. A genre-defying amalgam of divine vocals, intuitive improvisation and deeply spiritual music, on Trible’s voice soars among the nexus of winds & skins from an incredibly talented and “deeply rooted” group in complete brotherly connection with one another. If you are looking for genuine, soul-enriching spiritual jazz today, look no further than “Pathways & Passages”.
Known world-round for his classic work with Sergio Mendes and Weather Report, percussionist Dom Um Romao is one of the greatest Brazilian musicians of all time, and this compilation of 1976 recordings for Pablo has him playing in a nice raw groove. The tracks have a beautifully jazzy sound, and feature lots of great Latin players, like Claudio Roditi, Ronnie Cuber, Dom Salvador, and Mauricio Smith. The group's joined by Sivuca, who adds his usual delightful tone to a number of tracks on the album. Titles include "Spring", "Cisco Two", "Piparapara", "Tumbalele", "Escravos De Jo", and "Mistura Fina".
During the last half-decade Joe Westerlund became engrossed in studying the clave, the metric pattern that first defined so much Afro-Cuban and Latin music and then drifted into almost every corner of jazz and rock. What did it mean for an idea to be so flexible, for it to fit so many forms while retaining its own essence? The result is aleap into the unknown for Westerlund: Curiosities from the Shift, a 12-track playground of endlessly interwoven beats and melodies, where Westerlund’s clave enthusiasm collides with his textural experimentalism, where his rhythmic symphony of one shakes hands with friends decorating this space alongside him. The three-piece suite that holds Curiosities’ first half begins with the junkyard percussion and delightful bass splashes that frame “Tem” and ends with the surrealistic boom-bap of thumb pianos and shakers on “Can Tangle.” There is a hard-won joy to these numbers, as if Westerlund is delighting in real time in spotting a potential dead end but finding his own way forward, anyway. Those songs became a kind of working roadmap for the terrain that Westerlund explores across Curiosities, from the call-and-response glory of opener “Nu Male Uno” to the uncanny amorphousness of closer “Felt Like Floating.” All of these songs are defined by an identifiable rhythm, like the loping strut at the center of “Midpoint” and the head-nodding pulse that winds through “Persurverance,” winkingly misspelled to suit his North Carolina-via-Wisconsin pronunciation. But those are springboards for other textures, moods, and notions, like the New Age references—shimmering metallophones, chattering birds, retiring flutes—that circle through “Midpoint” or the dub-indebted delays and gamelan hymns that bubble up through “Persurverance.” This is deeply multivalent music, each number’s propulsive core counterbalanced by a series of surprising choices. Bittersweetness and joy, grief and liberation, sighs and smiles: It all exists here, tangling toward infinity. In the months after the initial sessions were done, Westerlund reached out to friends—Califone’s Tim Rutilli, saxophonist Sam Gendel, trumpeter Trever Hagen, and violinists Libby Rodenbough and Chris Jusell among them. These were his most thoroughly composed and precisely built works ever, but he wanted to hear what happened when his pals responded in real time. They delivered grace, depth, and feeling, with their parts pulling back curtains on hidden recesses of rhythmic worlds. Westerlund readily admits he is surprised by the album’s insistence on groove and meter rather than drifting abstraction. Having lived and worked so long with bands, he assumed he was done functioning within basic meter. These 12 songs fuse so many of Westerlund’s loves into pieces that are endlessly fascinating, using familiar elements to render his adventures into the unknown. Playful but tender, wistful but wondrous, driven by beats but not bound by them, this is Westerlund’s definitive statement so far, the solo drummer record that opens wide to reveal a musical and emotional landscape richer than perhaps even he imagined he might find.
A sonic journey through rhythm and abstraction by the cult Japanese post-rock ensemble goat (jp). Originally composed as the score for Cindy Van Acker’s eponymous dance piece ‘Without References,’ this release expands the group’s radical approach to rhythm and structure into the realm of contemporary performance. Hailing from Osaka and led by Koshiro Hino (YPY, Kakuhan, Boredoms, Mark Fell), goat (jp) has redefined minimalism by prioritizing pure percussive interplay over melody—using guitar, bass, drums, and percussion. Their intricate rhythmic architectures blur the line between mechanical precision and organic fluidity, using harmonics outside standard tonality, muted bass tones, and interlocking drum patterns. The result is a relentless, hypnotic sound—one that pulses like an urban ritual, at once tribal and futuristic. goat (jp) elevates rhythmic composition to an extreme, creating performances that immerse audiences in a trance-like state. Their sonic explorations push the boundaries of instrumental music, making their live shows both physically intense and meticulously controlled. Recognised as one of Japan’s most compelling avant-garde acts, goat (jp) transforms rhythm into pure architecture—an evolving structure of sound that unfolds with unwavering precision and power. goat (jp) recently supported Ryoji Ikeda for a series of major shows in Japan as part of the ‘Ultratronics Japan Tour,’ further reinforcing their prominent role in the contemporary experimental music scene. Recently, goat (jp) has performed at Liquidroom (Tokyo), Rewire Festival (The Hague), Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Gnration (Braga), Centro de Artes Visuais (Coimbra), Galeria Zè Dos Bois (Lisbon), and Creative Center (Osaka). About Cindy Van Acker’s ‘Without References’ : A choreographic exploration of form, duration, and memory, Cindy Van Acker’s ‘Without References’ features scenography by visionary director Romeo Castellucci. The performance creates a space that oscillates between a waiting room, a train station hall, and a mid-century installation. Eleven dancers interpret Van Acker’s stark yet fluid physical language, interacting with goat (jp)’s percussive and purified compositions to create a visceral, immersive experience.
Khadim is a stunning reconfiguration of the Ndagga Rhythm Force sound. The instrumentation is radically pared down. The guitar is gone; the concatenation of sabars; the drum-kit. Each of the four tracks hones in on just one or two drummers; otherwise the sole recorded element is the singing; everything else is programmed. Synths are dialogically locked into the drumming. Tellingly, Ernestus has reached for his beloved Prophet-5, a signature go-to since Basic Channel days, thirty years ago. Texturally, the sound is more dubwise; prickling with effects. There is a new spaciousness, announced at the start by the ambient sounds of Dakar street-life. At the microphone, Mbene Diatta Seck revels in this new openness: mbalax diva, she feelingly turns each of the four songs into a discrete dramatic episode, using different sets of rhetorical techniques. The music throughout is taut, grooving, complex, like before; but more volatile, intuitive and reaching, with turbulent emotional and spiritual expressivity.
Not that Khadim represents any kind of break. Its transformativeness is rooted in the hundreds upon hundreds of hours the Rhythm Force has played together. Nearly a decade has passed since Yermande, the unit’s previous album. Every year throughout that period — barring lockdowns — the group has toured extensively, in Europe, the US, and Japan. With improvisation at the core of its music-making, each performance has been evolutionary, as it turns out heading towards Khadim. “I didn’t want to simply continue with the same formula, says Ernestus. “I preferred to wait for a new approach. Playing live so many times, I wanted to capture some of the energy and freedom of those performances.” Though several members of the touring ensemble sit out this recording — sabar drummers, kit-drummer, synth-player — their presence abides in the structure and swing of the music here.
Lamp Fall is a homage to Cheikh Ibra Fall, founder of the Baye Fall spiritual community. The mosque in the city of Touba is known as Lamp Fall, because the main tower resembles a lantern. Soy duggu Touba, moom guey séen / When you enter Touba, he is the one who greets you. After a swift, incantatory start Mbene sings with reflective seriousness. Her voice swirls with reverb, over a tight, funky, propulsive interplay between synth and drums, threaded with one- two jabs of bass. Cheikh Ibra Fall mi may way, mo diayndiou ré, la mu jëndé ko taalibe… Cheikh Ibra Fall amo morome, aboridial / Cheikh Ibra Fall shows the way forward, he gives us strength, he gathers his disciples… Overflowing with grace, Cheikh Ibra Fall has no equal.
Interwoven with Wolof proverbs, Dieuw Bakhul is a recriminatory song about treachery, lies, and back-biting. Over moody, roiling synths and ominous, lean bass, Mbene throws out fluttering scraps of vocal, as if re-running old conversations in her head. The music shadows her despair to the verge of breakdown, at one moment seemingly so lost in thought and memories, that it threatens to disintegrate. Bayilene di wor seen xarit ak seen an da ndo… Dieuw bakhul, dieuw ñaw na / Stop judging your friends and companions… A lie is no good, a lie is ugly.
Khadim is a show-stopper; currently the centrepiece of Ndagga Rhythm Force live performances. The song is dedicated to Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, aka Khadim, founder of the Mouride Sufi order. Serigne Bamba mi may wayeu / Serigne Bamba is the one who makes me sing. The verses name-check revered members of his family and brotherhood, like Sokhna Diarra, Mame Thierno, and Serigne Bara. Though Islam has been practised in Senegal for a millennium, it wasn’t until the start of the twentieth century that it began to thoroughly permeate ordinary Senegalese society, hand-in-hand with anti-colonialism. The verses here recall Bamba’s banishment by the French to Gabon, and later to Mauritania, in those foundational times. During exile, his captors once introduced a lion to his cell: gaïnde gua waf, dieba lu ci Cheikhoul Khadim / the lion doesn’t budge, it gives itself over to Cheikh Khadim. Deep, surging bass, steady kick-drum, and simple, reverbed chords on the off-beat lend the feel and impetus of steppers reggae. A reed plays snatches of a traditional Baye Fall melody; the dazzling polyrhythmic drumming is by Serigne Mamoune Seck. Mbene compellingly blends percussive vocalese, narrative suspense, exultant praise, introspection, and grievance.
Nimzat is a devotional tribute to Cheikh Sadbou, a contemporary of Bamba, buried in a mausoleum in Nizmat, in southern Mauritania. Way nala, kagne nala… souma danana fata dale / I call upon you and wonder about you… If I am overwhelmed, come to my aid. The town holds special significance for Khadr Sufism. An annual pilgrimage there is conducted to this day. The rhythm is buoyantly funky; the mood is sombre, reined-in, foreboding. Punctuated by peals of thunder, Mbene sings with restrained, intense reverence; huskily confidential, steadfast. Nanu dem ba Nimzat, dé ba sali khina / Let us go to Nimzat, to seal our devotion.
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi returns to Latency with Nexus, a full-length album recorded in Berlin that extends his radical reinvention of Persian percussion. Renowned for pushing the tombak and daf into new territory with unprecedented techniques, Mortazavi now incorporates voice, effects, and electronic treatments into his sound for the first time. These additions deepen, rather than depart from, his lifelong exploration of rhythm and resonance. The record opens with ‘Zendegi’ (‘Life’), built from the chant “Woman, Life, Freedom” as a gesture towards his homeland and beyond. Throughout Nexus, Mortazavi explores connection, transformation, and the unseen forces that shape reality, presenting rhythm as both guide and teacher. The album title itself points to a meeting place where energies, ideas, and times converge, capturing its meditative but exploratory spirit. The cover features artwork by American artist and filmmaker Jordan Belson, whose “visual music” aligns with Mortazavi’s trance-inducing percussion language. His hypnotic live shows have reached the Berlin Philharmonie, Paris Pantheon, and Sydney Opera House, while his rhythmic innovations have earned acclaim across experimental and electronic circles, including collaborations with Burnt Friedman and Mark Fell.
Primordial Mind forms the mysteries and intensity of inner life into eight mandalic instrumentals where Mas Aya and Khôra, artists who share 15 years of music making, orchestrate an inspired, prismatic palette of percussive and melodic sources. Each composition presented stages a vigorous meshwork of colours and textures, contrasting riveting polyrhythms with towering arrangements for flutes, synths, and processed acoustic instruments. Tendencies which the artists trace in their solo practices are amplified, blended, and refracted sublimely in unison, serving as energetic portals to collective awareness. Combining trans-ethnic scaling alongside a heady brew of rhythmic influences and advanced electronic processing, the recordings on this album operate with a tactility that vaults between free jazz, dub, raga, ambient, and ritual music. Assimilated powers of primal drum patterning and psychoactive, ceremonial melodies, invoke fourth world adjacencies with the work of Don Cherry, Jon Hassell, Popol Vuh et al. There is an alchemical, Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu inflection that guides the record’s narrative, formed through dialogue between the artists over lifelong shared interest in spiritual modalities generally and the tantric approaches of the global east in particular. The album title is derived from an unexcelled esoteric work known as the Kalachakra (Wheel of Time or Time Cycles) Tantra and its associated commentary the Ornament of Stainless Light which detail forms of inner and outer transubstantiation within its complex cosmology and metaphysiology. Mas Aya is the moniker of Brandon Miguel Valdivia, acclaimed Nicaraguan-Canadian composer, producer, and musician whose electronic and jazz inspired works creatively interlace Colombian, Cuban, and a wide array of traditional music. Khôra is the name of the occult entity that uses multi-instrumentalist, producer, and writer Matthew Ramolo to pronounce itself. Returning to Marionette following 2024's monumental Gestures of Perception, Primordial Mind reinforces the rigorous and magical approach to creation which defines Khôra’s two decades of sonic output. Brandon and Matthew met back in 2011 and the pair toured around eastern Europe with Toronto band Picastro in 2013, also performing as a duo with Brandon contributing drums to Khôra's opening sets. After a short spate composing and playing in the ensemble Bespoken together, they continued to discover shared inspiration in psych/art rock, jazz, experimental and electronic music, providing a fertile soil for friendship and collaboration resulting in their collaged, field-recorded album Tangled Roots in 2017. Mythic and talismanic, the duo's Marionette debut weaves a luminous tapestry of organic pulses, offering itself as a support for resonant meditation and a motor for lucid action and intuition.
Following June's brilliant 'Rhythm Archives', Holy Tongue's Al Wootton continues his hot streak, landing on Sähkö with half an hour of hazed, immersive rhythmic experiments, tracking from vintage dub(step) to minimal techno and confidently striding thru percussive forms that echo from the Balkans to North Africa. RIYL Shackleton, Azu Tiwaline, Muslimgauze, T++, Deena Abdelwahed.
Ever since he dispatched with the Deadboy moniker a few years back and reached into dubbier, more percussive spaces, Wootton's been figuring out exactly where his dexterous productions fit in.He's been most at home on his own Trule imprint, operating at his own pace and shaping the aesthetics as he goes, and 'Rhythm Archives' felt like a mark in the sand, a record that matched his interest in vintage gear and classic production methods with his dedication to wide-eyed, punkish experimentation. 'CRUX', his first record for legendary Finnish label Sähkö, follows that lead, assembling four long percussive jams that sound as if they've toppled off the timeline - if someone told us it was material rescued from a forgotten reel-to-reel, we'd believe it.
There's an outline of dubstep visible in the background on opener 'Essene' that's enhanced by the Skull Disco-esque sub-undulations and wormhole-splitting tape echoes, but the hollow hand drum runs and hallucinatory effects shuttle the composition into darker, more reflective landscapes. Similarly, the busted drum machine intro of 'Per Incanto' might reference Sähkö royalty Mika Vainio and Hertsi, but the track veers leftwards, muddling the mix with psychedelic African Head Charge-style reverberations and trapped, timestretched string loops. It's gear that's intended for deep, intentional listening; the tracks don't contain too much melodic content by design - Wootton's rhythms are layered and hypnotic, and anything else is there to reinforce the general spirit.
Just check 'Cloister', the EP's low-key stand-out, where the lead line is literally just tuned feedback, placed to disorient even the most abstinent listener, or 'Armen', that distorts its sputtering Bruce Haack-in-dub atmosphere with ghosted groans and faint remnants of a trip-hop undercurrent that never fully reached optimal pressure. If you've ingested all the psilocybin from Shackleton's recent run, this is yr next drop.
The first ever reissue of Juju’s powerful 1973 album for Strata-East, ‘A Message From Mozambique’.
The roots of Juju started in San Francisco after Plunky had met his musical mentor, Zulu musician Ndikho Xaba, helping to form his band Ndikho and The Natives. Three members of The Natives (Plunky, bassist Ken Shabala and vibes / flute player Lon Moshe) then joined Marvin X’s theatrical production The Resurrection Of The Dead, joining local musicians Al-Hammel Rasul (keyboards), Babatunde Lea (percussion) and Jalango Ngoma (timbales).
When the production ended, the six musicians formed Juju. “We had high-energy rehearsals that lasted for hours and, as a band, we became powerful and began gigging around the Bay Area,” remembers Plunky. Although oriented towards Black Nationalism, the band fed off the Bay Area’s culturally diverse communities as Plunky shaped an inclusive worldview based on collective political, social and artistic activities. During this time, the Soledad Brothers case and Angela Davis were prominent and the band supported Professor Davis and the cause.
Juju’s music matched the fire of their activism. “As a band, we blew, pounded and stroked our instruments like there was no tomorrow, like our life’s work was wrapped up in each session. We approached our performances like religious rites and the music mesmerised, informed and awakened people.” The band’s first album, A Message From Mozambique, was intentionally political. While the anti-war movement focused on Vietnam, Juju looked towards wars being waged in South Africa, Angola and Mozambique over issues of white supremacy and control of natural resources. A second album, ‘Chapter Two: Nia’ would follow before the birth of Oneness Of Juju during the mid-‘70s.
This definitive reissue is fully remastered by The Carvery from the original tapes and features original artwork and a new interview with Juju bandleader James “Plunky” Branch.
consciousness through ecstatic dance. Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors were a world unto themselves.
Despite featuring an extraordinary cast of musicians (with credits including Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis, Santana, Stevie Wonder, Milton Nascimento and much more) and selling hundreds of thousands of albums, the music of Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors remains largely unheard beyond their sphere. Conceived as live, improvised soundtracks to Roth’s transcendental dance workshops, musical acclaim was never on the agenda.
Instead, for a passionate dancer and spiritual polyglot like Gabrielle Roth, movement was a means through which to channel a wide spectrum of teaching, from experimental psychology to psychedelic counter-culture. It was from this heady mix that she devised a movement meditation known as 5Rhythms, which came to define her life’s work.
As “guide and catalyst”, Roth would dance to inspire the percussion-led instrumentals that would in turn fuel her 5Rhythms workshops, stimulating a secular form of ecstatic dance with roots in Native American shamanic traditions, Afro-Brazilian Candomblé and Yoruba drumming.
Using anything from a Sioux pony drum to East African kihembe and Japanese Kabuki drums, Gabrielle’s lawyer-turned-drummer husband Robert Ansell set the foundational rhythms for The Mirrors’ recordings, each of which would then feature a rotating cast of friends and professional musicians.
“The secret of everything we’ve done is that we never told anybody what to play,” Robert shares. “Instead of our albums being a musical vision of one person like me or Gabrielle, they were the musical vision of a whole bunch of people.”
At times the recordings have a Middle Eastern flair, at others, West African and spiritual jazz modes come to the fore. Hints of kosmische musik, proto-house and electronic ambience are laced like LSD through the organic rhythmic structures. This was kaleidoscopic ambient music to stir the body and free the mind.
In practice, the task of synthesising these different elements fell to Scott Ansell, Robert’s son and a recording engineer whose credits now include Nile Rogers, Duran Duran, Grace Jones. With meticulous attention to detail he captured and translated the dynamic energy of each drum onto record. Their sessions became legendary, and with access to the best studios in the NYC, The Mirrors sparkled.
Despite being initially overlooked by the burgeoning ‘80s New Age market, which preferred pipes and gongs to The Mirrors’ heavy-grooving drums, Robert Ansell set up Raven Recording to self-release the music, creating a vast sonic archive of sixteen albums over almost forty years.
The breadth of Raven’s catalogue is such that curator Pol Valls had to cut an initial selection of sixty-six tracks down to the eleven featured here. What crystallises is a stunning, mind-altering collection which spans, in Pol’s words, “a variety of genres, styles, and vibes within their catalogue, whether it is emotional, esoteric, spiritual, melancholic, hypnotic, dark, or at times a combination of these elements together.”
Music for immersive and intimate environments, Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors were born from the dance. In the hands of the right DJ, at the right time, in the right place, they might just return there.
A sunrise is a return, yet each day dawns but once. Emergent sounds are born from nothingness and everythingness; the hand touches the drum, breath vibrates the reed, fingers caress the ivory. Echoes of Paleolithic music vibrate into each moment, each musical gesture. Each a return, each a new dawn. — AR
Terrific session just released in 1974 on influential independent Muse. A modal masterpiece verging on spiritual jazz with a series of excellent players: from Richard Davis and Cecil McBee on bass to Ray Mantilla on congas and percussion, through Harold Vick distinctive flute and tenor sax. The major voice on this record belongs to the traps of Joe Chambers. The enormous potency combined with complete authority and tonal clarity that Chambers brings to the drums has made him one of the more distinctive percussive voices in jazz.
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO'S ULTRA RARE FIRST ALBUM UNDER HIS NAME - RECORDED WITH RENOWNED PERCUSSIONIST TOSHI TSUCHITORI FOR ALM RECORDS - REISSUED FOR THE FIRST TIME ON VINYL WITH AUDIO REMASTERED BY HEBA KADRY AND LINER NOTES BY ANDY BETA
Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the first vinyl reissue of Disappointment–Hateruma, the 1976 ALM Records release by percussionist Toshi Tsuchitori and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The album is notable as Sakamoto’s first recording issued under his own name and represents one of the few occasions he explored fully improvised music during the 1970s. It provides a vital document for understanding Sakamoto’s early development as a composer and performer, capturing a period when he was experimenting with ambient soundscapes and textured improvisation. This edition features original artwork, audio remastered by Heba Kadry and new liner notes by Andy Beta.
Ryuichi Sakamoto is widely recognized as one of the most important artists of his generation. At the time of Disappointment–Hateruma, he was still a student at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and active in Shinjuku’s experimental music circles. He was busy contributing to Transonic Magazine, performing with the multimedia group Gakushudan, and working with musicians pushing the boundaries of jazz, free improvisation, and contemporary composition.
on his side, revered Japanese percussionist Toshi Tsuchitori, who had recently returned from New York, brought influences from Milford Graves’ approach to drumming, including African rhythms, ritualized performance, and a holistic approach that combined music, movement, and philosophy. Sakamoto and Tsuchitori had previously played together in Gakushudan, but neither considered those early encounters definitive. As Andy Beta notes in the liner notes, Sakamoto was “trying to break the traditional form of music, to break open the narrow genres of contemporary music,” and this recording captures one of the rare moments when his exploratory piano work met Tsuchitori’s distinct rhythmic language in a studio setting.
The album, originally released in 1976 on producer Yukio Kojima’s influential ALM Records imprint, is structured across four tracks, with the first, "綾 (Aya)," filling the entirety of Side 1, while Side 2 contains three shorter pieces, each exploring different combinations of instruments and sound sources. The recordings employ a wide array of textures, from prepared piano, bells, marimba, and gongs to EMS synthesizer and voice. Together, the tracks create hypnotic, ethereal soundscapes and rich sonic textures that highlight the interplay between Sakamoto’s experimental piano work and Tsuchitori’s percussive expertise.
Remastered by renowned sound engineer Heba Kadry, this new edition highlights the detail, range, and clarity of the original album, making the ultra-rare Disappointment-Hateruma available worldwide for the first time. It stands as a key early document of Sakamoto’s work and situates the recordings within the broader context of his formative years and Tokyo’s mid-1970s cutting-edge music scene.