MUSIC

In the late '70s, three do-right women from Cleveland forged a brief partnership with Ohio's everything man, Lou Ragland. Unlike the prefabricated singing combos of the day, Lily Pearson, Annette Warren, and Avetta Henry swapped lead duties as situation demanded. When a Ragland-centric publicity stunt preempted a concert appearance, Love Apple disintegrated, abandoning this rehearsal tape within the lo-fi confines of Thomas Boddie's cherished Eastside studio. Devoid of bass, the sparse instrumentation (only Lou on guitar and piano and Hot Chocolate's Tony Roberson on drums) accentuates each vocalist's aptitude, showcasing some of Ragland's finest songwriting in the process. During any given take, Ragland can be heard calling audibles, directing his singers to repeat a passage, or lending his own sweet tenor to the vocal mix. Never intended for release, Love Apple's six-song sketch is the perfect companion to I Travel Alone, bringing Ragland's unique musical vision into sharper focus.

»Tropic of Capricorn« is the second album by Lawrence English and Werner Dafeldecker. Based on field recordings made by the prolific Room40 owner that were subtly but decisively altered with electroacoustic techniques through the Austria born improv legend, these two long-form pieces blur the lines between acoustic ecology and aesthetic interventions, concrete local sound worlds and boundary-defying art. They put a focus on our relationship with nature as listeners as much as they call into question where nature ends and human perception begins. They are deeply confusing, disorienting perhaps, in the most beautiful ways. English recorded the material that form the basis of the duo’s Hallow Ground debut on two different field trips. One led him from the Western coast to the Pilbara region in the North of the country called Australia, the other to the central desert into the lands of the Arrernte people. »These are vast spaces, and in some respects they shun contemporary ideas of civilisation which seek not to listen to the country,« says English. When recording the soundscapes, the artist put a focus on the residues of failed colonial aspirations. »The buildings and objects that remain from the failed cattle pastures and other endeavours create uneasy sound worlds of their own,« he says of the regions that are also places of extraction, especially the heavily mined Pilbara. »There is a distant drone of industry in even the most remote of places; an unsettled sense of heavy breath on the land.« He brought home a document of natural reclamation in time. The rich source material was then given to Dafeldecker. Spatialising the recordings with transducers applied to different surfaces such as wood, stretched animal skin, glass, or metal surfaces and also re-recording parts of the recordings, he created discrete events that were inserted into, or rather enmeshed with English’s recordings. You’ll hear plenty of birdsong, insect noises and the sound of rain during these 39 minutes; the sounds of a life you can tap into if you tune into your environment. But there are also other things, things that are impossible to categorise even after repeated listens and that call into question whether or not those were really birds, insects, or the sound of rain in the first place. What »Tropic of Capricorn« invites its listeners to listen beyond the preconceived notions of how nature is supposed to be represented in sound and to instead embrace the immediacy of the sensation.

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"

2023 RSD item. The mysterious electronic musician Ooyamada Daisanmyaku has arrived at music as "efficacy" in his third album. "Zolpidem", a sound-wave sleeping pill that Ooyamada Daisanmyaku himself prepared to help him fall asleep. A mysterious work that coexists with calmness and disquiet, which makes you want to describe it as "Eric Satie, an insomniac who suffers from the Caretaker-like nightmare." Completely limited production.

The cassette tape of this work released in 2022 from the label landscape plan sponsored by Taika, a two-person rock band that continues to release works with a Fourth World sensibility, sold out in a blink of an eye, and since then, ele-king vol. 30 Selected as one of the 50 must-listen albums of electronic music in the 2020s.

Like Eric Satie, who suffers from insomnia, was haunted by a care-taker-like nightmare and twisted it. contains

The binding, designed by Mr. Y Inoue, the central figure of the rock band kumagusu, which is active mainly in Tokyo, gives the work a texture like the white outer skin of a pill, and makes you want to take it out every night and take it. It will induce an addiction to such "Zolpidem".

Released in 2000 by the UK rock band, Radiohead, Radiohead's 4th album has been described as "the last masterpiece of the 20th century in music history."
A controversial work, an innovative work that shifted to electronica sound rather than approaching Aphex Twin and Autechre. Includes "Everything in its Right Place", "Idiotech" and others.

Kelly Moran has steadfastly established himself as a standard-bearer of contemporary music, challenging the classical school of piano with modern and experimental approaches; in 2018, he joined Oneohtrix Point Never's touring ensemble and has performed live with FKA Twigs. In the classical realm, she has composed for Margaret Leng Tan, while also performing with artists such as Kelsey Lu and Yves Tumor. Her latest album, "Moves in the Field," was released on March 29, 2012 on Warp Records! This album contains 10 duets that explore the inhuman and impossible realm of piano playing, experimenting with the Yamaha Disklavier automatic piano, which Moran plays in real time while the Disklavier plays ultra-fast arpeggios and chords that require more than 10 fingers, accompanying motifs that transcend the physical limits of the piano. Mixing and recording was done by Dan Bora, known as the sound engineer for Philip Glass, and mastered by Joshua Eustis of Tel Aviv.

Largely recognized as their breakthrough album, Khanate was confident enough by the two-song, forty-minute Capture & Release (2005) to peel back its layers of thick mossy drone and reveal the minimalist underpinnings, a change either interpreted as maturity or an implied threat. "It's a grim, avant-garde exercise in tension and paranoia. Dense, leaden drones fill up the spaces between O'Malley's sparse, deeply sustained guitar chords.Vocalist Alan Dubin's anguished vocals seem to convey the tortures of the damned as if there were not a shred of hope left for existence in this world. Capture & Release is not dissimilar to black metal in how it so violently conveys such a bleak and ultra-nihilistic world outlook. But while the standard tempo on a black metal album typically strays into the triple digits in terms of beats per minute, Khanate's plodding pace keeps the BPM soundly within the single-digit range.

The instrumental post rock, dream pop ambience of Unwed Sailor has been guided by the vision of Johnathon Ford (Pedro the Lion/Roadside Monument) Since starting the band in Seattle in 1998, Ford has combined these elements along with shoegaze, ambient, & film music to create the unique sound and vision of Unwed Sailor.

SKYLLUMINA represents a new evolution of London-based, Italian-born composer, bassist, and vocalist Ruth Goller. Goller is known for her bass and vocal work with Alabaster DePlume, whose music she elevates in live contexts with her genre-less improvisational intuition. She's also known for work with Bex Burch's Vula Viel, whose DIY label released Goller's solo debut Skylla in 2021. And she is known to creative musicians far and wide, with an incredibly diverse CV that includes performance and recording with Shabaka Hutchings, Rokia Traore, Melt Yourself Down, Sam Amidon, Damon Albarn, and many more. Expanding on the wholly original sound Goller established with her solo work on Skylla – i.e. compositions of detuned bass under a spectra of soprano voices she arranged and overdubbed herself – SKYLLUMINA complicates matters as she augments every piece with a different drummer. “As a bass-player, I love playing with drummers and I decided to focus on my close connection to that instrument and to the amazing people I met in my life who play it,” says Goller. Her accompanists on the album include International Anthem labelmates Bex Burch, Tom Skinner, and Frank Rosaly, as well as prolific British player Sebastian Rochford and longtime Vula Viel collaborator Jim Hart. But more importantly: this music is an immersive hyperfocus for Goller and her patently distinct, singular compositional vision. SKYLLUMINA, despite its highly conceptual origins, is heavy with human emotion. Its dark washes of melody and contrapuntal percussion could fit easily into a mixtape with indie downbeat / ennui royalty like Grouper or Low, while also being right at home next a Cage-Tudor prepared piano piece. And the piercing, sibilant ice age siren song heard in Goller's powerfully feminine vocal arrangements find her in an otherworld only occasionally inhabited by the likes of Björk and The Knife. Goller says: “This record is deep insight into my soul and my recent life. It’s coming through a meteor storm and grasping the first light... out of a very unexpected tumultuous time... there are feelings of grief, loss, hope, purest of love, connection to my home, death, and new configurations... as well as self-discovery.”

‘Funeral For Justice’ is the new album by Mdou Moctar. Recorded at the close of two years spent touring the globe following the release of 2021 breakout ‘Afrique Victime,’ it captures the Nigerien quartet in ferocious form. The music is louder, faster, and more wild. The guitar solos are feedback-scorched and the lyrics are passionately political. Nothing is held back or toned down.

With a strong interest in geology and biology, Takahashi started imagining the landscape and life of the Earth in prehistoric times based on fossils and illustrated books, later used as inspiration for his compositions. At first sight, these images make it easy to envision the ecosystems and environments of prehistoric Earth as so distinct from those of today that they could almost be seen as different planets. Living through the pandemic, when Takahashi first started composing the songs, made him rethink his initial thoughts. “The Palaeozoic era was a time of extinction, of prosperity and decline. When I think ab out these facts from geology, they are quite spectacular. But I felt that this cycle is still happening today, b ut on a different scale. If you think about the time before Covid-19, people were very active and free to move around. It was with this in mind that I set about writing the music, imagining what it would be like to overcome the social upheaval of Covid-19." It's the similarities between his initial analogy and the new pandemic reality that ultimately formed the main context for Paleozoic. This led Takahashi to make an album which sonically reflected the sequence of Paleozoic: starting from a time when life flourished in the sea ,before the arrival of life on land, to the gradual arrival of plants and insects on land and the end of an era due to change. In order to create a more vivid representation of the life force and grandeur of nature, Takahashi decided to forgo his signature lo-fi production style of using GarageBand on his Iphone. For this, he enlisted the help of sound engineer, producer and Atoris bandmate Kohei Oyamada with the mix and arrangements, resulting in a highly evocative, expansive sound palette. “With his techno sensibility and sound engineering skills, he was able to bring me closer to the sound I've been chasing, which is full of mystery, life and images of a wild and simple time. This record is the first step in my work with him and the foundation for further progress." The result is a fascinating journey through imaginary landscapes infused with great dramatic affect and an acute sense for details across sweeping drones and electronic glistens.

The musical partnership of Joseph Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich orbits around a shared center of earnestness, slice-of-life poeticism, and the subtle everyday banality that becomes beautiful, even absurd, under their slight redirection. Where 2020’s Philadelphia placed domestic interiors under a microscope, documenting the indoor minutiae society was forced to examine mid-pandemic, At Scaramouche steps out into the sunlight squinting groggily and happily at the new day ahead-- and particularly the night that follows. One evening after a recording session and some aimless ambling that included a visit to the house where the 1974 movie “Black Christmas” was filmed, Krgovich and fellow vocalist Chris A. Cummings found themselves misplaced at the Toronto restaurant from which At Scaramouche takes its name, gawking with amusement at its concocted air of luxury. “The layout hinted at its MCM glory, and there was a panoramic view of the city,” Krgovich illustrates, “but it was full mid 2000s, dated Sex In The City re-run decor, ‘opulence’ for rich people with bad taste. I loved it! Chris loved it!”. On At Scaramouche, Krgovich and Shabason demonstrate a mutually uncanny ability to transmute this kind of cultural wariness into amused majesty, poking fun and bowing in reverence all at once. Their spotless smooth-jazz tonality, lyrical literalism, and even cover artist Jake Longstreth’s humorously sober depiction of an actual old Taco Bell building all point to the duo’s low-key-gonzo subversion of Adult Contemporary tropes into something unexpectedly transcendent. The first glassy keyboard hits of “Soli” indicate this sentiment before Krgovich even steps forward as the album’s host, and when he does, he immediately gets to work setting the scene of a weary parking lot stroll on a cool, street-lit evening after work-- just one of so many unremarkable moments that become utopic under Krgovich’s poetic care. “Clocking out at five PM, don’t give it another thought, feel the evening coming in,” he sings. “When it’s dark before supper, and the rain on the house… happy for no reason.” Glimmering pianos and brushy percussion calmly converse with fretless bass as a diffuse light spreads across this little world that’s being created. But where the duo’s previous effort Philadelphia would’ve camped permanently in the stillness, At Scaramouche lunges into the upbeat stroller “In the Middle of the Day”. Though no less exemplary of the album’s quiet everyday magic, it sets a brisker pace with its head-nodding drum break and coolly interjecting bassline. Other moments on the album reiterate the spryness, like the nearly-erratic “Soli II”, and the lively pop centerpiece “I Am So Happy With My Little Dog”. On the latter, Krgovich leads a tight-knit ensemble that comes as close to krautrock here as they ever might, where a driving drumbeat politely urges the elements forward; trumpet harmonies, chanting vocals, and bubbling synths, all crowned by a chorus-laden, perfectly askew solo from guitarist Thom Gill . “This record was very much a band effort. Me and Nick were at the helm but we called on the amazing crew of musicians that I play with here in Toronto to really help flesh things out,” Shabason emphasizes. “The last record was a real exercise in minimalism and quietness, and to me this record feels much more robust, and occasionally bombastic by comparison.” Joseph Shabason grew up in small-town Ontario, throwing punk and emo shows in garages and church basements as an alternative to “playing hockey or doing drugs,” as he states it. At the same time Nicholas Krgovich was 4,000 kilometers away in Vancouver, BC living the kind of suburban life that can, by necessity, imbue someone with romanticism toward the things downtown-dwellers might not bat an eye at, like the fluorescent glow of commercial lighting after-hours, or the overlooked poignancy of a rundown strip mall, and all the many thousands of tiny commonplace miracles that At Scaramouche is made of. “Childhood McDonald’s gone, there used to be some woods there,” Krgovich hums prosaically over a bed of soft drum machine and Dorothea Paas’s soft supporting vocals. “The cemetery was small,” he elaborates while noticing just how farz and how fast the past has receded, “now the high rises around the mall that aren’t done yet…” Where much nostalgia can slip down the slopes into something melancholy that puts the past on an impossible pedestal, album-ender “Drinks at Scaramouche” proves that Krgovich is just as in love with the present, allowing history and future to bring out the sacred in one another. “Finding all the little blips, in-betweens, now with deepening meaning,” he sings, “what little light goes slow, heartening to know that nothing really goes away.” Like so much that Shabason & Krgovich put their fingerprints on, At Scaramouche presents a familiar palette with just enough inflected weirdness to prompt double takes, turning folk art into outsider art with an almost imperceptible sleight of hand.

Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a pretty perfect triangle, musically and geographically. Based out of Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, the three convened at Sage’s converted barn studio at the foot of the Rockies to diagram their kindred ability to extract grandeur from the most passable of life’s daily details. On his own, saxophonist Joseph Shabason warps late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into tidepools of fourth-worldly sound design that are infinitely more self-aware and emotionally honest than any of their distant reference points. M. Sage, in a parallel sense, blends his skills as an instrumentalist with synthesis and field recordings to create auditory reflections of the natural world that are as whimsical as they are profound. Sitting cozily between these two heartfelt experimentalists is singer Nicholas Krgovich, whose observational slice-of-life poetics paint a relatable face onto his collaborators’ calm expressionism, both guiding and highlighting its deep sense of affect. The resulting album, prosaically titled Shabason, Krgovich, Sage warmly invites sound artist Matthew Sage into the world of wry and melancholy micro-miracles that Shabason and Krgovich established on 2020’s Philadelphia, and 2022’s At Scaramouche. Album opener “Gloria” is a perfectly balanced representation of the trio’s individual abilities. Sage’s slowed and watery zither bleeds in from the edges of the canvas, laying ground for breathy woodwinds and harmonica that pantomime a distant locomotive. Speaking directly to the sonics at play, Krgovich melodically narrates, “Penny, did you hear that train whistle? Theo, did you hear that owl hoo?”. Even from this first moment, the intimate dynamic is so palpable that the listener falls unwittingly into the backstory of Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. “After connecting with Nick and Jos through DMs since 2020, it felt like a fun experience awaited us as potential collaborators,” Sage recounts. “I had built my barn studio, and I think it looked appealing to them to make an adventure out of coming to the Wild West to make music with me.” After spending the majority of a decade immersed in Chicago’s legacy of jazz and experimental electronic music, Matthew Sage moved back to his home state of Colorado to raise a child in a more casually agrarian atmosphere, and to work in the kind of setting that led to his 2023 album for RVNG, Paradise Crick. It was here at the cusp of the Rocky Mountains that the initial push of Shabason, Sage, Krgovich began, in person. Making sense of the trek, Shabason adds “I have realized that making music with people who live very far away is a real possibility. As long as we can get into one space together for a short amount of time, the collaborative magic that is needed to make a record is totally possible.” The three artists’ fingerprints are equally visible across the album. There is soft textural detritus floating freely in the air, punctuated by glassy electric keys and rubberized basslines. The sparseness in the placement of all the elements leaves them subject to ghostly visitations from a whispery saxophone, and a gentle guitar that peers around the corners of Krgovich’s free-verse musings. The album’s midpoint “Don” passes overhead like pollen on the breeze, constantly drifting out and back across pockets of completely empty space. “Old Man Song” turns a rare B-side by Low into an even gentler end-of-life reflection that is sweetened by Krgovich’s falsetto during the track’s wordless chorus. As nebulous as that may seem on paper, the hidden songcraft slowly surfaces over the course of each piece, exemplified by the closing track “Bridget”. There are plenty of other moments of the album that bear discernible rhythms below the fogline, but it’s here that they rise up into a full-on groove under Krgovich’s lyrical fourth wall breaks in which he details everything from Joseph’s studio habits to seeing “Cats” at the theater with his sister. Despite the song’s relative density and pop sensibility, a careful use of space still reigns supreme. On the eleven-minute “Raul”, Krgovich comes close to unintentionally codifying this approach as he sings “The container shrinks, and shrinks again, with every day, the relief that comes from not wanting more...” Truly, the most abundant virtue on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage is patience. The trio interacts without interrupting one another, contently waiting their turns, all locked onto the same distant point on the horizon yet unconcerned with when they might actually arrive. The groundwork laid by Shabason & Krgovich on their previous joint offerings is omnipresent, but it’s amplified by the joy Sage must have felt shepherding them to his idyllic and intimate new homebase. Prior to meeting up with Sage, the pair’s music often dealt with the beauty of The Great Indoors, but their new host and collaborator has smartly refocused their lenses on the small wonders of wilder localzes. Like magic, Shabason, Sage, and Krgovich have not just musically photographed their surroundings, they’ve managed to reproduce them exactly. The sharp open air, the quiet thrill of an escaped routine, the self-reflective thought-loops during a twilit moment at the edge of a field, all of it’s here on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. Through the trio’s skillful ease, the listener is there, too.

Recorded in a little bedroom studio out in Durham, North Carolina, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn's debut LP as Sylvan Esso arrived in 2014 at the juncture of pop and experimental. Even now, years later, the LP remains an urgent and fitting introduction to a push-and-pull that would go on to inform the duo's sound – a thoughtful headiness that also wants you to get out on the dance floor. A blend of analog and digital, Meath and Sanborn were two unexpected puzzle pieces fitting together with singular ease, producing a ten-track LP that was both minimalist and shimmering, with dark undulations rippling beneath the synthy-surface and crystalline quality of Meath's voice.Before all of the international touring and festival headlining and critical acclaim and Grammy nominations, Sylvan Esso was just a shot-in-the dark of musical chemistry gone right. The original album bio for the self-titled presciently sets the stage for the thesis that has gone on to guide Meath and Sanborn’s writing since then: "a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance" arriving as "a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don’t suffer the longstanding complications of that term." And so, even as the band continues to evolve and becomes amorphous, there’s still that argument about what pop can be at its core. This is just the beginning of that conversation captured on tape.In honor of the record's ten year anniversary, North Carolina-based indie label Psychic Hotline will release a deluxe reissue, complete with previously unreleased material. Featuring essential singles "Coffee", "Hey Mami,” and "H.S.K.T.", the expanded edition also includes remixes from J Rocc, Rick Wade, Helado Negro, Dntel, and more. The deluxe 2LP package sports an all-over foil inversion of the original album's iconic foil "SE" logo.

A crate staple for any lover of feminine funk, Beehive Breaks gathers 15 sultry singles from across the Numero-verse. From Sandy Gaye's Cruella-synched "Watch The Dog That Brings The Bone" to James Brown's soul sister #1 Marva Whitney, teenage girl gangs The Trinikas and Promise, Miami's queen of soul Betty Wright, plus a previously unissued belter from Chicago's Sonics Band, Beehive Breaks picks up where sister funk left off.

Driven by lust-fueled limerence and drifting far from conformity, Butterflies Don't Go Away captures Majesty Crush's transient, yet subversive mark on the landscape of American shoegaze to come. Tracked between 1991-1995, the quartet reimagined the collapse of the American rust belt as a late-night, nail biting fever dream/revenge fantasy. This deluxe 2xLP compiles their Love 15 album, singles, EPs, and rarities, all remastered from the original tapes, with thorough annotation and visual documentation in a 24-page booklet. An immortal transcendence if there ever was one.

Loitering on the same Berkeley streets that birthed Green Day, Operation Ivy, and Crimpshrine, Pot Valiant (AKA Vagrants) developed their own style of Gilmangaze in the early-’90s. Compiled here are the band’s Lookout and Sunny Sindicut 7"s, Transaudio LP, comp tracks, and three previously unissued songs. Remastered from the original tapes, this 2xLP package is housed in a tip-on gatefold sleeve and includes a 20 page booklet crammed with notes, flyers, and photos of this staple of outsider emo.

Following on the somnambulant heels of When I See The Sun, our massive, near-complete Codeine overview, comes What About The Lonely?, an eight-track LP recorded at the group’s live zenith. Captured direct from the mixing board at a stop on Codeine’s November 1993 swing through the Midwest, opening for Mazzy Star, this document finds Stephen Immerwahr, John Engle, and Doug Scharin running through their hits at Chicago’s notorious Lounge Ax for a crowd of chatty “120 Minutes” fans. Gastr Del Sol’s David Grubbs adds his guitar to two songs, slinking on and off the 24-inch stage with little fanfare, but leaving his signature indelibly on the performance.

This recorded autobiography of Catherine Howe, age 20, briefly appeared in 1971. Too young for memoirs, most artists have barely established any sort of musical competence by the age of legal adulthood, let alone compositions matching the maturity and complexity of Howe’s. What A Beautiful Place, however, is a prodigious effort wrought from the melancholy ruminations of post-adolescence. The album’s twelve songs unfold like a classic bildungsroman, beginning in the smoke-stained industrial county of Yorkshire, transformed by the electrified creative landscape of mid-century London, and retiring to the warm pastoral bliss of the county of Dorset on England’s southern coast. Produced by noted jazz pianist Bobby Scott, the LP—oft-mistaken for a concept album—was available for only a month in the summer of 1971, disappearing after Reflection Records’ shuttering in 1971.

Bullion is Nathan Jenkins, an enduring cult figure of electronic music. A producer and songwriter quietly to be found connecting artists, genre and UK subculture. His credits range from Carly Rae Jepsen, Ben Howard, Nilüfer Yanya and Avalon Emerson's breakout album & The Charm to records for Westerman and Joviale.Bullion's celebrated solo releases, meanwhile, have run parallel on Young, The Trilogy Tapes, Jagjaguwar and his own DEEK Recordings. It's a creative red-thread Bullion ties together on his surprise new album, Affection - a warm, occasionally off-kilter and beautifully realised pop record that’s bold enough to step from behind-the-scenes and show affection in public. Affection started life upon Nathan's move back to London from Lisbon, where he relocated in 2018. Back then, the comfort of the crowd suited him: self-confessedly passive and faltering by nature, the opportunity to exist somewhere without any personal history proved liberating. Returning home, Nathan increasingly found himself reflecting on his place in the world, seeking affection in place of cynicism. Bullion's music has always been difficult to pin down, but entirely distinctive - and on Affection, its rich pleasures are in hearing how this uncompromising approach is strengthened, in part, by softening. The album wonders-aloud about the meaning of intimacy, in relationship to others and the self. Masculinity and other contemporary concerns are punctuated by old-world charms, found in the ‘hat stands and watches' of World_train. Influences stretch from morning swims to adolescent fears and a book of poems his Dad wrote as a young man, in songs that are tender if not always true of Nathan himself. Affection ultimately asks how we understand people, but in being more vulnerable at least attempts to care a little less about what they think, too. Taking your own advice is integral to Bullion's latest album, where Nathan applies what he’s encouraged fellow artists to do in the studio for years: be open to adventure. Affection steps into a more emotionally-present, often playful space, with collaborators Carly Rae Jepsen and Charlotte Adigéry gracing songs that prioritise feeling over fixed meaning. Rare, for instance, emerged during sessions for Jepsen’s recent album in Toronto: high energy turning coy to express something 'deep in the heart'. World_train, meanwhile, is an eccentric and brilliantly odd angle on Bullion's love of pop, its locomotive power summoning a lost past amidst the uncertainties of the everyday. 'I can hardly understand what it takes to be a real man', Bullion sings. '... and nobody can', Adigéry confirms. Still, connections - missed, imagined, or still possible - cocoon much of Affection, with Panda Bear collaboration A City’s Never emerging after Noah and Nathan lived in Lisbon at the same time but never actually met. For Bullion, the willingness to allow others into his songwriting process is as much about opening up the world of the album as it is about bettering the work and the person. In blurring the observational with the introspective, Affection's avant-pop touch abandons categorisation. The albums lyrics are as unguarded and devotional as they are inquisitive of alternative ways of being, signing off with 'being still is hard to do'. Nathan has mastered his sound, but life - in its expectations, contradictions, impulses and desires - remains impossible to control. Affection is an unassumingly powerful pursuit of a more compassionate form of confidence, in which Bullion cements his place in the present-day by entirely surrendering to the future.

In the chaos of our every day, it can be difficult to find time for pause. Knee-jerk reactions have become the norm, while the instantaneous fog clouding our culture urges us to move along, to step away from the present moment. Mexico City-based songwriter and instrumentalist Estrella del Sol wanted to craft a space where there is finally room to breathe, and time to arrange the patchwork of our reality. On new album Figura de Cristal, she encourages fragility, and celebrates the delicacy of our ever-evolving selves. Estrella del Sol is known for her work in shoegaze band Mint Field, hailed for their tender exploration of sentimentality and grief. While Mint Field propel their themes with oozing, amplified guitars and commanding vocals, del Sol’s solo work blossoms in a quieter, more electronic space. “I wanted to experiment more with my vocals and mainly synth sounds, always trying to find a different sound,” she explains. The result is a patient and nurturing collection of songs that remind us of the importance in taking our time. Her first solo album, Un espacio de lo imaginario, released in 2020 and recorded in the first two months of the pandemic, introduced del Sol’s ethereal side. Expansive vocal dynamics dance carefully through gentle melodic structures, showcasing the intimacy of del Sol’s solo arrangements. Figura de Cristal builds upon this intimacy, adding a blanket of subdued yet glittering drones, haunting electric guitars and celestial vocal textures. It was written, recorded and produced entirely by Estrella del Sol at her home in Mexico City, with cello contributions by experimental composer and personal friend Mabe Fratti and mixed by Mint Field bassist Sebastian Neyra. The album includes field recordings of Estrella del Sol’s surroundings, namely her neighborhood in Mexico City. By including these miniature portraits of her reality, Figura de Cristal acts as a kaleidoscopic interrogation into what it means to be alive, and how others figure into the images we create for ourselves. By using the recordings, del Sol says “the album could feel familiar to my reality at that particular moment.” Enmeshing them into the album’s ambient arrangements, Figura de Cristal threads together the familiar and the fantastical. It’s a reminder of the coexistence of multiple realities. When making the LP, Estrella del Sol wanted to create a soundtrack that could replicate the calming notion of a sunset-stroked evening, or the pink tones of a quiet morning. The title track, “Figura de Cristal,” replicates the grace of these moments, teaching us to lend ourselves that same grace and gentleness, even during the most difficult days. “This album became a reminder to me that I have to take care of myself and that If I don't, I can break like a crystal figure,” she explains. “I have to learn to empathize with myself and the people surrounding me. That everyone's perspective of reality is different and there's no true answer.” Figura de Cristal is an album about curiosity, and the merit in embracing our vulnerabilities. There is not one single reality, or experience, but instead an infinite range of truths. Through improvisational techniques and dynamically droney sonic textures, Estrella del Sol asserts the joy in following your instincts, rather than following the rules. Figura de Cristal rids itself of rigid structure or certain form, bending to a liminal space that declares joy in the unknown, and an exhale in the unfamiliar.。

“I first composed this music for myself as an adjunct to meditation, Tai Chi, and bodywork, and as music to play in the background of life, to replace the everyday cacophony with new and ordered sounds of an unpredictable nature. New sounds freed from preconception. …over time, friends who heard the music asked if I could make them copies. I then wrote two more pieces with the same intent: to relax the body, mind, and spirit and facilitate meditation.” - Lou Reed Lou Reed’s final solo album, Hudson River Wind Meditations, is one of his most personal musical works, combining Reed's love of creating drone music with his passion for Tai Chi, yoga and meditation. The album's ambient soundscapes have been described as a counterpoint to his intense Metal Machine Music album—but they are similar outliers in Reed's 40+ year exploration of drone music and feedback harmonics. It's for a certain time and place of mind. The album has been remastered by the GRAMMY®-nominated engineer John Baldwin with vinyl pressed at Record Technology Inc. (RTI). The Double LP and CD releases are designed by GRAMMY®-winning artist, Masaki Koike and feature new liner notes by renowned Yoga instructor and author, Eddie Stern, who guided Reed’s practice for years. Also included in the physical editions is a fascinating conversation between author/journalist Jonathan Cott (Rolling Stone, The New Yorker) and Reed’s wife, artist Laurie Anderson, who discusses the album, as well as her husband’s devotion to Tai Chi – one of the album’s primary inspirations. Hudson River Wind Meditations marks the latest release in LITA’s Lou Reed Archival Series. Launched in 2022 in tandem with the late artist’s 80th birthday, the ongoing series has celebrated one of America’s most influential songwriters through such acclaimed collections as Words & Music, May 1965 featuring many of Reed’s earliest (and previously-unreleased) recordings, including the earliest-known versions of “I’m Waiting for the Man” and “Pale Blue Eyes.”

Barely known outside of his home country during his lifetime, the late Japanese ambient music pioneer Hiroshi Yoshimura has seen his global stature rise steadily in the past few years. The 2017 reissue of his lauded debut, Music For Nine Post Cards, along with a slow building cult internet following has helped ignite a renaissance in his acclaimed body of work, much of which has never been released outside of Japan. Known for his sound design and environmental music, Yoshimura worked on a number of commissions following the 1982 release of Music For Nine Post Cards, including works for museums, galleries, public spaces, TV shows, video art, fashion shows, and even a cosmetics company. Originally released in 1986, GREEN is one of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s most well-loved recordings and a favorite of the artist himself. Recorded over the winter of 1985-86 at Yoshimura’s home studio, the compositions unfold at an unhurried pace, a stark contrast to the busy city life of Tokyo. As Yoshimura explained in the original liner notes, the album title in the context of this body of work is not meant to be seen as a color, but is rather used to convey “the comfortable scenery of the natural cycle known as GREEN”—which perfectly encapsulates the soothing and warm sounds contained on the album, although it was created utilizing Yamaha FM synthesizers, known for their crisp digital tones. This edition marks the first reissue of the highly sought-after and impossible to find album. It features the original mix preferred by Yoshimura himself, previously available only on the initial Japanese vinyl release (a limited edition remixed version of the album, with added sound effects, was released on CD in the US). Additionally, this release is the first in our ongoing series, WATER COPY, focusing on the works of Hiroshi Yoshimura.

Experiments In Psychoacoustics, Timbre & Minimalism: 2011-2021

Late Music and Disciples are pleased to present the first and second volumes in an archival series of selected electronic and acoustic works by Sarah Davachi, all previously unreleased in the vinyl format. Featuring (way) back catalogue material from various CDs, cassettes, and EPs; singles and original film scores; as well as miscellaneous live and studio recordings.

“Something for everyone”