MUSIC

Legendary Jamaican MC Prince Far I's compilation reissued as a 2LP set for Record Store Day!
The compilation "Cry Tuff Chants On U", a collection of tracks by the late legendary Jamaican MC Prince Far I with his On-U Sound house bands Creation Rebel and Singers And Players in the early 1980s, is being reissued on Record Store Day! The limited RSD edition 2LP set includes the cassette released in 2021, as well as another version and two deep cuts that are a must have for true dub/reggae heads!
Prince Far I was a legend of roots reggae both as a producer and in his highly individualistic DJ style while holding the microphone. The album, "Psalms For I," featured his rugged voice singing bible verses over heavy rhythms. Tragically, Prince Far I was killed by gunfire in Jamaica in 1983, but his influence lives on to this day in the recordings of Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound label.

fully remastered from the original tapes** A mysterious sound aurora on the magical paths of the infinite universe of percussion, originally released in 1985 and then almost completley lost. Moon On The Water were a trio of percussionists based in Italy - David Searcy and Jonathan Scully, both American tympani players in the Scala Philarmonic Orchestra, with the legendary Italian jazz drummer Tiziano Tononi, who worked with everyone from Roberto Musci, to Muhal Richard Abrams, Pierre Favre (who later joined the group), Andrew Cyrille, Barre Phillips, and Steve Lacy. Drawing on a diversity of experience, joined collectively by a unified love of rhythm and sound, they assembled a percussion record of the highest order - an unclassifiable work which should be legendary, and leaves you confounded that it’s not.

Within the history of efforts dedicated to percussion, Moon On The Water’s debut stands apart. A singular work, made remarkable by the diversity and range of its sonorities and structures. The scope of its ambition is startling. Utilizing the full intellect, experience, and talent of its creators, it employs field recording against a stunning array of instrumentation - seemingly everything from which rhythm and resonant tone could be drawn. The result renders a remarkable effect. From the delicate pulse of nature, deep resonances and carefully placed tone, intricate structures and tempos as slow as they go, across its movements the album rewrites how composition for percussion should be understood, before giving way to consuming and ecstatic rhythms which reference the Brazilian tradition of Batucada, various trance and ritual traditions of Africa, and drum solos from Free Jazz and Rock. This is as good as percussion records get. A lost marvel - accessible while distinctly avant-garde. The throbbing pulse of creative joy, distilled onto two sides of wax.

Ecstatic elements of Japan ambient minimalism dialogue with contemporary music solutions (Varèse, Ligeti), in the stream of a harmonious fusion of ancient and modern. It’s a propitiatory ceremony of supernatural things that open portals of blissfulness, tribal and shamanic darkness, timeless jungles. Between amazon fires and African safaris, we float in the Asian rivers of meditation, lost in water games, echoes of caves and rocks in the night, synergies of frogs, birds, snakes, marimbas, chimes, gongs, and tubular woods.

The album also includes one of the sickest percussion jam we’ve heard from 1980’s Italy: the mystically-named In the Land of the Boo - Bam. Exploring a wide range of percussions, from mallet instruments to drums, the band tightly builds a hypnotic jam with a strong Mediterranean feeling, maybe partly provided by the «Tullio de Piscopo-esque» drumming pattern. As the song goes by, the vibe gets more and more shamanic, often changing directions before climaxing in an epic final. True uplifting trance music!

De Leon returns to Mana, following their 2018 LP, offering a suite of new material that adds further waypoints to the map of their cryptic soundworld, deepening and expanding the direction of travel they began within the Aught collective. The dual legacies of Javanese gamelan and minimalist composition remain clear touchstones on this second, untitled album, which employs architectures of repetition and microtonality and evokes the musical heritage of the Bay Area whilst folding in the arid landscapes of Tucson, Arizona, where its compositions were conceived in part. Featuring a broad vocabulary of source material, notably Daniel Schmidt’s gamelan at Mills College and the spherical gongs on the album’s cover, combined with a homespun collection of prepared instruments and faint vapours of synthesis, De Leon crafts a distinct signature sound that evades alignment with conventions of academic composition and contemporary electronica but nods to both as it carves out its unique direction of travel. This album inscribes itself into a tradition of works that enable listeners to perceive deeper valences of time and psychedelic aesthetics of scale. Percussion and metallophones fluctuate within the virtual space of the recording and the sounds avoid stasis, rather undulating restlessly or flickering in and out of perception in a manner consistent with the mercurial sensibilities of their early De Leon recordings.

Lamin Fofana has been killing it over the past few years with ace records on Hundebiss, Avian, Peak Oil and The Trilogy Tapes to name but a few. Here he unites with The Doudou Ndiaye Rose Family (check their Twenty​-​One Sabar Rhythms), respectfully and sensitively applying his electronic magic to the mesmerizing mbalax drumming, taking things even further into cosmic realms - somewhere between Mark Ernestus Ndagga project, T++, Jon Hassell and Popol Vuh.

The folk arts of Japan, including music, are an ever-evolving wonderland. Riyo Mountains, a Tokyo-based folk song research/DJ duo, is actively documenting the folk music of various regions in Japan; here they present the fifth in their series of musical documents on EM Records. This particular release focuses on the thunderous drums and powerful vocal phrases of the singular Nanyatoyara dance and song, featured at summer festivals in the northern prefectures of Iwate and Aomori, places with long winters that engender joyous summer celebrations. Nanyatoyara has been a part of local summer festivals in this region for hundreds of years, always evolving. The recordings here, with versions from 2002, 2015 and 2023, featuring impassioned and enthusiastic residents young and old, illustrate the gradual changes which occur over time, all the while adhering to the core and soul of the dance. The pounding, insistent drums and the call-and-response vocals generate a propulsive, irresistible momentum, a jubilant celebration of life and the bounty of summer. Available on CD and DL; the CD version includes a 20-page booklet featuring English liner notes with translations of the lyrics. Here comes the summer!

Riyo Mountains:
Japanese folk song DJ duo formed by Takehiko Satō and Takumi Saitō. They are resident DJs at the renowned party "Soi48". They produce the Japanese folk song mix-CD series entitled "Riyo Mountains Mix" and also direct and supervise the reissue series of Japanese folk music on EM Records, including the releases "Yumi-kagura", "Sakai Ishinage Odori", "Kizaki Ondo" and "Osharaku".They have appeared as DJs at many events/radio programs including NHK, NTS (London) and Japanese traditional festivals.

An utterly unique guitar/bass/drums triad: the guitar sounds like anything but a guitar; bass and drums simultaneously insistent and relaxed. Telephathic group-think opens a window to fresh fields of fusion: funk-jazz heads, polyrhythmic skeletons, ambient pastorals, post-kraut drones and shimmering soundtrack reveries. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere, marked by subtle, shifting dynamics playing out in an open sound field.

The long-awaited debut album of Daniel Villarreal, a drummer and DJ from Panama who lives in Chicago and is known to many for his work with Dos Santos, Wild Belle, The Los Sundowns and more. It's a debut worldwide, but it's been widely known in Chicago's music scene for a long time, and almost every night on the bustling 18th Avenue of his hometown Pilsen, at least one place has been loved enough to see his DJ. person. This work collaborates with Chicago, including Bardo Martinez (Chicano Batman), Jeff Parker (Tortoise), Marta Sofia Honer (Adrian Younge), Anna Butterss (Jenny Lewis), Aquiles Navarro (Irreversible Entanglements). A masterpiece of instrumental funk that has been recorded in several places in Los Angeles and is based on jazz but psychedelicly fused with Latin rhythms! Led by the mysterious gong of the opening song "Bella Vista", the synth sound of William Onyeabor style is intense "Uncanny" to the labyrinth where you can't get out of it. Various styles of works such as "In / On" and "Patria" dedicated to the organist Avelino Munoz in his native Panama are a masterpiece! Recommended for fans such as and !

Written and produced by

Manfredas Bajelis

and

Marijus Aleksa

from Lithuania.

Driving Vladimir Tarasov influensedpercussionist jazzfunk.

A really tremendous album from the legendary Gil Scott-Heron – and a set that stands as one of his greatest statements from the 70s! The record is a wonderful example of Gil's work in two different styles – sweet mellow jazzy soul, and harder heavier protest poetry – the latter from his roots as a writer in touch with the streets, and the former part of a brilliant new direction that he was taking on the Flying Dutchman label. Side one features classic jazzy tracks recorded with Brian Jackson – like "Free Will", "The Middle Of Your Days", "Speed Kills", and "Did You Hear What They Said?". Side two moves over to a much sparer sound – and has Gil reciting some of his poetry with very heavy percussion, and a very righteous approach. The wisdom and knowledge of those pieces is a perfect example of the kinds of issues that were haunting black America in the early 70s – especially on the tracks "No Knock", "The King Alfred Plan", and "Sex Education: Ghetto Style".

Elders is the debut release from Ensemble Nist-Nah, a nine-piece percussion group led by Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie. The diverse group of French musicians that make up Ensemble Nist-Nah – whose collective experience encompasses traditional Gamelan performance, contemporary composition, noise, jazz, and everything in between – perform on drum kits, traditional and junk percussion, and a complete set of Javanese Gamelan instruments. Though building on the foundations of Guthrie’s solo work with Gamelan instruments (Nist-Nah, BT057) and primarily performing his compositions, Ensemble Nist-Nah is a collective endeavour, propelled by a breathtaking enthusiasm that has seen the ensemble manage to rehearse, perform, and even tour Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. From the first seconds of opening track ‘Geni / Tirta’, it becomes immediately obvious that this is no dry academic exercise or exotic indulgence. Rapid arpeggiated figures are propelled by manically busy kit drumming while slow-motion melodic lines float above. After a series of abrupt tempo changes and fragmented unison passages that crossbreed the rhythmic intensity of the Balinese Kecak with the joyride of an Ornette Coleman head, the music slows to a monumental groove, equal parts Javanese court music and Dark Magus. Another sequence of thrilling divagations leads us to the unexpected guest appearance of acclaimed vocalist Jessica Kenney, who elaborates a haunting Javanese Bedhaya across a spacious backdrop of massive gong hits, shimmering cymbals, rustling bells, and gritty textures. The remaining pieces that make up Elders explore a dizzying variety of approaches, from the shifting rapid-fire muted textures of ‘Overtime’ to the ghostly bowed tones and ominous swells of the title piece (developed from a track on Guthrie’s solo Nist-Nah release), which gradually builds into waves of shuddering low resonance and asynchronous percussive clicks like a haunted clock mechanism. On the aptly titled ‘Rollin’, virtuosic twin drum kits criss-cross errant metallophone patterns in propulsive polyrhythms, while ‘Planeker’ manages to achieve a bizarrely effective fusion of Harry Partch and Autechre. Arriving bedecked in beautiful monochrome images of gongs drawn by ensemble member Charles Dubois, Elders is a feast for the ears: music that burrows deep into timbral and rhythmic possibility while possessing an intoxicating physicality and revelling in the joy of collective performance.

This is long overdue. I mean, looooooonnnnnng overdue. A solo album by Jim [White]. The trap kit -- so straightforward, so mysterious. What's inside those things? Air and light -- from which century? Which continent? Which planet? Depending on how and when you hit them it can be a vibration sent through a prehistoric breath, particles of Saturn's atmosphere, the dead, wet leaves you walked through on the way to the first day of school. These are the memories of the drums on this record. Infinite and personal. Editing each other as they muscle to the front or soft shoe to the shadow. Cymbals can override/cancel everything out -- wipe your memory clear or make the memory clearer. Drums are the instrument where you can feel the presence of the player the most -- the full body -- and sense the thoughts of the player the most. The instrument with the most choices to be made sends out the most brainwaves. A bouquet of brainwaves is on this LP. Jim oversees it all, surveys from the lost place we're in, the void -- the drumless song. We trust. We trust, Jim. His big green eyes search for the right tool (mallet, brush, etc), eyes that search you like you're a song he wants to join, wants to see if he can add to or understand. Before humans, drums were playing -- these drums. 'Genesis' was a solo drum piece. After humans, these drums, this album. Someone -- the last man -- is out in a spaceship at the edge of space. He plays a single chord on a synth to set time free from its bind and then lets go. This album sets time free, lets it frolic, lets it graze, lets it remember. This is a record of thoughts, memories, surgery. A deft surgical operation you may not even realize is happening as it's happening but you're back on your feet when it's over. Memories refreshed. Did you really even listen to it?

African Head Charge return to On-U Sound with their first new album in twelve years. Titled A Trip To Bolgatanga, the recordings are led by founder member Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, with close friend and co-conspirator Adrian Sherwood once again at the controls. A Trip to Bolgatanga is a stunning return, bringing together the talents of two masters who, after a hiatus, have created a rich album brimming with ideas and executed with finesse.

A Trip To Bolgatanga is a musical journey to Bonjo’s current hometown in north Ghana. A psychedelic travelogue across the landscape featuring their trademark hand percussion and group chanting augmented with rumbling bass, mutated horns, dubbed out effects, wild wah-wah, haunted voodoo dancehall, synthetic swells, disco congas, tumbling layers of electronic effects, blues-inflected woodwind, and funky organ. As with every On-U Sound production, each repeated listen reveals fresh detail, and its power won’t be really understood until heard on a big system, when it’ll reduce all competition to rubble.

Mohammad Reza Mortazavi (Tombak) & Burnt Friedman (electronics, synth.) release their second EP “YEK 2”.
Equipped with one drum only and laser-pattern–electronics, Mortazavi and Friedman produce delicate, yet archaic, trance–inducing, transnational dance music with“…hints of dust and grain… “. (Freq)

Mortazavi and Friedman move hands and faders according to odd cyclical rhythms with incredible accuracy. The extreme dynamic range and rhythmic congruency of drum and electronics merge both, Mortazavi`s and Friedman’s repertoire entirely.
Complete in [YEK], resisting cultural notions of folklore and territory.

LuckyMe present the new album from New York based percussionist and composer Eli Keszler Previously releasing music on Empty Editions, ESP Disk, PAN as well as ‘Stadium’ on Shelter Press – Boomkat’s 2018 Album Of The Year A frequent collaborator to Oneohtrix Point Never, Laurel Halo and Rashad Becker Keszler’s work has shown at The Lincoln Centre, MoMA PS1, MIT List and The Barbican.

Keszler’s latest solo venture offers up a latticework of melodic percussion, drum set, and electro-acoustic instrumentation, built upon fragments of American abstraction, ancient scales, industrial percussion, and jazz-age film noir to achieve its feeling of imperial decay. Keszler’s instrumental performances are framed by panoramic recordings of New York City and the Odyssey Cave, along with other on-location audio from his global travels, defining an expansive music that takes on hyperreal forms difficult to describe outside of the loss and wonderment that defines our age.

The Scandal of Time' bookends a prolific period of experimentation for Sam Shackleton and follows a raft of collaborations (with Wacław Zimpel, Heather Leigh and Scotch Rolex this year alone) with what amounts to his first new solo album since 2021’s ‘Departing Like Rivers’. It might also be his most advanced, forward-facing work in years. Shackleton's been edging away from the dancefloor for about a decade now, exploring alternative tuning systems, modern classical sounds and non-Western rhythms. 'The Scandal of Time' works not just as a précis but a daring leap forward, mixing ghosted, traditional; German folk songs with heart-piercing basslines, xenharmonic percussion and open-ended drones, on what promises to be his last solo release for a while. The eerie, hauntological world Shackleton has created here is a testament to his years of work on experimental bass music's fringes. He's managed to shepherd us through so many disparate musical styles that have here been finally sutured into a single, startling vessel.

TRIO SR9 is composed of French classical percussionists (Paul Changarnier, Nicolas Cousin and Alexandre Esperet) from the Conservatoire de Lyon. They play orchestral percussions such as marimba but also plenty unique "second-hand" objects collected in a breaker's yard (crystal glasses, metals, etc).

Their Déjà vu project was created after an encounter with French composer and arranger Clément Ducol. Together they decided to embark on a project which would see them taking on pop hits of the kind that are produced in mega studios on the other side of the Atlantic and dazzle with a thousand lights and special effects. They wanted to make pop without machines, guitars, bass or synths. 100% Acoustic.

This interest in global hits by the likes of Rihanna, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Lana Del Rey, Franck Ocean or Pharrell Williams might come as a surprise to some, but it’s basically pretty logical for these three conservatoire-educated mavericks, who are all well aware of the fact that many classical themes were adapted from popular dance tunes that have been long-forgotten.

They have invited talented singers such as Blick Bassy, Camille, Camélia Jordana, Malik Djoudi and Sandra Nkaké to cover those global hits.
All have inspired the music with their own particular energy, tenderness, the grain of their voice and their craziness, and a thousand other nuances that play their part in that troubling sensation that English speakers express using the French term déjà vu. 

Black Market Brass is proud to present Hox, due out on Colemine Records on September 8, 2023. Their third LP is a new take on afrobeat that combines traditional grooves with heavy, hypnotic, sci-fi sounds that reflect the band’s myriad of influences as record collectors across genres. “We didn’t leave the traditional afro-beat sound behind, but we did allow ourselves to pull from different places with less hesitation.” Shared saxophonist Cole Pulice. Like their previous albums, the 9-piece band recorded Hox live to tape. “The sound and aesthetic of the analog recording process is important for this kind of music,” Pulice explained. “We’re looking to capture lightning in a bottle.” With that, the album features several sections of heavily processed synthesizers, harsh glitches, fuzzed out guitars, and a burning percussion section that pays homage to the traditional drumming cultures of Nigeria and Ghana. The performances are dynamic and confident. The grooves are infectious and hypnotic. BMB has pushed further into musical experimentalism, but at the end of the day, they’re still making dance music. Krautrock, free-jazz, doom metal – the inspirations for Hox stem from all kinds of musical backgrounds, but the sound is far from scattered. It’s a polished, innovative record that’s sure to exceed expectations and keep the listener engaged from start to finish.

We’re glad to be back with the second instalment of our new series of DJ and Artist curated 12” mini compilations: Melodies Record Club. Ben UFO is up next for volume two, following Four Tet’s selection a few months back. Available early October in loud 12” format and digitally. Here we have two tracks which have been staples in Ben’s DJ sets at different times, but neither were originally produced with a club setting in mind, which is why they’ve never been available in this format before. On one side, we have “Drums” from Laurie Spiegel’s 1980 experimental electronics album “The Expanding Universe”, a collection of tracks produced between 1974 and 1976 using a computer playing the actual sounds by controlling analog synthesis equipment under control of the GROOVE hybrid system developed by Max Matthews and F.R. Moore at Bell Labs. Drums is a percussive seven minute computer generated workout inspired by Laurie’s interest in African and Indian musics, and which brings to mind the most far out kosmiche music of the period to modern day techno. A connection Ben has tried to make explicit by including it in his first BBC essential mix back in 2013. On the flip we have a track by Olof Dreijer from the Swedish band the Knife who’s work you might also be familiar with under the moniker Oni Ayhun. Back in 2009 his artist friend Adnan Yildiz curated an exhibition called “THERE IS NO AUDIENCE” in Montethermoso, dedicated to public imagination. Adnan commissioned a single piece from Olof called “Echoes from Mamori”, that played on loop during the exhibition and was subsequently released only on CD. A contemporary piece more clearly indebted to house music, Olof built the track around arpeggios generated using sounds of frogs he recorded in the Amazon and birds around Berlin, fed into a sampler. Ben’s instalment is out early October in loud 12” format and digitally (stream & download), first press comes with a folded A2 insert with words from and about the Artists. Graphic design by Atelier ChoqueLeGoff, illustration and animation by Nevil Bernard and for the audiophiles out there, remastered and cut at half speed by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios!

Black Market Brass is proud to present Hox, due out on Colemine Records on September 8, 2023. Their third LP is a new take on afrobeat that combines traditional grooves with heavy, hypnotic, sci-fi sounds that reflect the band’s myriad of influences as record collectors across genres. “We didn’t leave the traditional afro-beat sound behind, but we did allow ourselves to pull from different places with less hesitation.” Shared saxophonist Cole Pulice. Like their previous albums, the 9-piece band recorded Hox live to tape. “The sound and aesthetic of the analog recording process is important for this kind of music,” Pulice explained. “We’re looking to capture lightning in a bottle.” With that, the album features several sections of heavily processed synthesizers, harsh glitches, fuzzed out guitars, and a burning percussion section that pays homage to the traditional drumming cultures of Nigeria and Ghana. The performances are dynamic and confident. The grooves are infectious and hypnotic. BMB has pushed further into musical experimentalism, but at the end of the day, they’re still making dance music. Krautrock, free-jazz, doom metal – the inspirations for Hox stem from all kinds of musical backgrounds, but the sound is far from scattered. It’s a polished, innovative record that’s sure to exceed expectations and keep the listener engaged from start to finish.

The first LP reissue of "Indigo Dreams", a masterpiece album released in 1995 by Steve Shehan, a percussionist based in France since the 1970's.
"This album was inspired by a night when I fell asleep and dreamed of The Indigo Night, a novel by Satyajit Ray," -Steve Shehan 

The album was inspired by a dream I had one night when I fell asleep and dreamt of The Indigo Night, a novel by Satyajit Ray. In the dream I was in the world of the novel, living and tending an indigo plantation. The dream was so intense that I decided then and there to make an album dedicated to Satyajit Ray. I was also strongly influenced by Satyajit Ray's 1958 film The Music Room.

The album was also created in collaboration with a number of guest musicians, who traveled around the world for sessions and were sometimes invited to the studio in Paris, where the band is based. Compared to "Arrows," the songs are shorter, and it was a challenge for me to achieve the same depth of expression in that length of time," says Steve. The environmental sounds recorded in the Amazon, the U.S., Canada, and France are another element of the album. I hope that you will lose yourself in these tones and travel with me through the world of dreams.

Since 2018 João Pais Filipe (on drums) and Burnt Friedman (electronics/synth) investigate into automatic pattern–composition rooted in doubling and halving; the unimpeachable laws of motion. The offer of freedom can be seen as a way to get in touch with necessity. On „Mechanics Of Waving“ the attempt is made to succumb to such a mode of action, the drilling of a method, not through individual cunning or displayed musicianship. Through constant practise Friedman & Pais discover the principles of rhythmic phenomena while dis–associating the music from cultural idioms. Inspired by rare infrasound–ratios ranging from 11 to 23, Nonplace releases the results of a 4 years long operation.

Ritmiche Italiane transports the listeners through an anomaly in the fabric of musical space-time, connecting the distant past with the modern era and the plains of a lost continent with the cities of the Italian peninsula. The artists featured in the compilation strongly believed in the absence of barriers and conventions between genres, fully able to effortlessly put together West-African influences, World music, Jazz and crime movie soundtracks to achieve a boundless, meditative and hypnotic kind of music that still feels relevant today.

Tapping the driftwood, tapping the surface of the water, everything on earth becomes his instrument.
In 1990, NEWSIC, a leading Japanese environmental music label, released a work by a rare percussionist
The work released by the rare percussionist is now on LP record for the first time.

Listening to Mr. Ochi's Natural Sonic reminds me of the days when I used to go to the studio of St. GIGA (satellite music broadcasting station), which was then located in Jingumae.
There, this album was secretly played day after day.
After more than 30 years, "Chikyu no Chikugo" was finally released to the world.
- Yoshiro Ojima (Composer / Music Producer)

Yoshiro Ochi is a percussionist who has been active in a wide variety of fields, including composing and performing music for the Issey Miyake Collection from 1984 to 1990, producing music for TV and radio, participating in live performances by GONTITI and other artists, and conducting workshops.
He has collected colorful living tones by traveling, playing drums, and tapping on natural objects he encounters. They blend gently with computer sounds and repeat pleasant resonance.
A magical massage of sound and rhythm.
Following "Motohiko Hamase - Tree Scale," one of the most popular titles on the "NEWSIC" label, this long-awaited analog record pressing is now available!

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Composed and performed by Valentina Magaletti Recorded by Thomas Poli at Impersonal Studio - February 5th and 6th 2021 (Rennes - FR) Mixed and edited by Leon Marks and Valentina Magaletti at Abbey Road (London - UK) Mastered by Brice Kartmann (Tours - FR) Published by Mute Song.