MUSIC

Limited edition silver 2LP Vinyl in printed inner sleeve in custom origami fold out outer sleeve, packed in printed poly bag

The feeling that Anastasia Coope's music transmits seems to emanate from a precipice beyond the material world, like a void or memory pressing up against the veil. It’s exacting and enveloping, but unmoored in space and time: ghostly, spectral, far-out folk. Darning Woman, her debut album, feels like a dispatch from another past. Akin to lullabies or nursery rhymes, its minimal folk instrumentation contorts into something staccato and strange led by Coope's expressive, stratified vocals. In spite of the suggestion of antiquity that runs through Darning Woman, 21-year-old, Brooklyn-based Coope is very much a contemporary artist. Born to an English father and American mother (whose original Martin acoustic she uses to compose), she was raised in the New York village of Cold Spring. The lonely landscapes and small towns of the Hudson Valley populate her songwriting, setting wintry backdrops against the acrobatics of her voice. Her experience making this record was a largely insular one, too; she began recording music while staying at a relative’s empty home in Beacon, NY, experimenting with recording software in an empty living room, singing directly into the open space. Until that point, Coope had only thought of herself as a visual artist, not a musician– but it felt right immediately. Throughout the next year, she worked to invent the lush, sweeping universe conveyed here. Her voice is the core of this work - emotive, oscillating between shadowy effervescence and something more guttural, building atop itself. Coope spent months teaching herself to sing in a new way, through hocketing and layering her voice, constructing choirs of herself. These songs often start from a chorus or phrase that gets stuck in Coope’s head and bloom into chaotic, fractured earworms. There’s a slew of past cultural touchstones that inform her approach to music making – the avant-garde art rock of the ‘80s; Trish Keenan or Su Tissue or Brigitte Fontaine; medieval choruses; church choirs; contemporary folk; romantic close harmonies groups of the ‘50s; Meara O'Reilly’s Hockets for Two Voices. But rather than the sonics of those works, Coope was instead moved by the ephemera surrounding them, their songs’ abilities to conjure whole worlds. Here, the lush, romantic opener “He Is On His Way Home, We Don’t Live Together” is the portal into Coope’s universe. It teeters in, disquieted, a choral slowburn building into something between hysteria and euphoria, with a slinking piano and a jarring electric guitar line closing out the din. On later songs, like “Sounds of a Giddy Woman,” the auditory illusions became tactile as she composed: “I was able to envision a room of things happening, rather than me just building something,” Coope says. “The record was me starting to think spatially about music.” Coope’s songwriting revolves around intuition and aesthetics, rather than precise lyrical storytelling; she has a striking ability to invoke a sense of movement with her makeshift mantras. The word “woman” appears repeatedly throughout the album’s song titles, but for Coope, that was an unconscious motif. “The word ‘woman’ was having a physical idea of what my songs were trying to represent through this idea of a muse or an idol or an icon,” she says. “It was a mix of the idea of being maternal, of housekeeping, and then also the idea of a character, a star.” The title track serves as a skeleton key for the entire record; “Darning Woman” is a hyperphysical sing-song, a literal instruction to darn and repair, the wane and waxing repetitions that make up a life. It’s the umbrella under which the rest of the songs live. Decisive in its fervor, it loops around nesting: mending, cleaning, housework – collecting, building, and decorating – the hands-on, tangible aspects of at-home life. These songs are built from that, and mantras plucked from the ether or poems and fragments of overheard conversations jotted down, transformed into an entity unknown. Like Coope’s paintings, drawings, and mixed media artworks, which occasionally feature among the imagery in her album and single materials, her songwriting yields an esoteric distance. It’s the feeling of the work pushing back on you, holding you at arms’ length. It invites you to see, to feel, rather than know – but for all that’s arcane here, Darning Woman is rooted deeply in the things we can touch. --Libby Webster

The final album in Pastor T.L. Barrett’s 1970s four-part suite of gospel funk LPs, Do Not Pass Me By finds the fiery preacher getting spaced out on God’s love. Accompanied by his Youth For Christ Choir, the eight-song record is buoyed by the seven-minute opus “Father Stretch My Hands,” later sampled by Kanye West on 2016’s The Life of Pablo.

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".

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

‘Reflections’ is the new EP from GRAMMY-nominated LA-trio Moonchild aka Amber Navran, Andris Mattson, & Max Bryk. Inspired by the band’s iconic Tiny Desk performance (now on 4.9 million views), the ‘Reflections’ project sees the band reimagine and revisit old songs, including some of the trio’s biggest hits. An essential collection for all Moonchild fans, ‘Reflections’ is available on black and limited edition mint vinyl and CD.

Talking about the new acoustic re-imaginings, Max Bryk from the West Coast trio adds: “Reflections, an EP covering our older songs, naturally shows some of our growth as musicians over the last 10 years. Amber’s vocals, in particular, are a fantastic example of that. A more subtle example of growth is our musical maturity and restraint. Leaving space for the music to breathe. I think that’s the main reason we created this new project, and we are excited to share Reflections with our fans.”

“Back To Me” sees the band go back to the beginning, highlighting a cult favourite from their debut ‘Be Free’ released in 2012. The new reimagining of “Back To Me” demonstrates how the band have refined their sound with every release over the past decade while still keeping their jazz-inflected soul and groove-heavy production, that introduced the band to the world, to their core.

Elsewhere on the EP is a spacious revisioning of “Money”, taken from Moonchild’s striking 2019 album ‘Little Ghost’. “Money (Acoustic)” acts as both the centrepiece and catalyst for the wider ‘Reflections’ project, as singer, producer, and woodwind player Amber Navran explains: “We loved the combination of the acoustic setup and the horn arrangements we had been playing at our live shows. We have so much fun rearranging the songs for the live show, so we were excited to capture it on this recording. The spacious, broken-down feel also leaves more room for the breathiness of my vocals to come through."

Moonchild have been teasing fans, drip-feeding versions from the project and from across their varied catalogue, including “The Truth (Acoustic)” taken from the band’s highly acclaimed 2014 sophomore album ‘Please Rewind’, as well as “Run Away (Acoustic)” and “The List (Acoustic)” from their renowned 2017 album ‘Voyager’, now considered a modern classic in the neo-soul genre scene. “The List (Acoustic)” was paired with a video directed and edited by the talented Phil Beaudreau (who’s also a phenomenal musician and producer in his own right). The music video acts as a visual postcard to a decade of Moonchild touring as a band, "In brainstorming, Amber came up with the idea of playing around with that old vintage U.S. National Park poster-style animation”, Andris adds. The band have just finished their second US ‘Starfruit’ tour in April, heading to new cities around the country due to the success of ‘Starfruit’.

All the acoustic releases showcase Moonchild’s appreciation for new instrumentation, the influence of their live shows, and their constantly developing creative perspectives. The series of acoustic songs follow Moonchild’s fifth studio album ‘Starfruit’ which was nominated for Best Progressive R&B Album at the 2023 65th Annual GRAMMY Awards. 

What is time? Documented here are phone voice memo recordings that range from 2015-2020, re-aligned, chopped up and spliced together. All of us reside in our individually projected reality, but when these individual inner rhythms come into contact with one another, a bigger "time clock" appears. If we can learn to see the world without the constant self surveillance, a new pattern and perception comes into view. And what splendid beauty it is. Dedicated to all the young gods out there.

The extraordinary debut album from percussionist, drummer and producer Sarathy Korwar – “Day To Day” – fuses traditional folk music of the Sidi community in India (combining East African, Sufi and Indian influences) with jazz and electronics. It’s a collaborative release by Ninja Tune with The Steve Reid Foundation – a charitable trust established by Brownswood / Gilles Peterson with the dual objective of helping musicians in crisis and also supporting emerging talent. Sarathy is an alumnus of the Foundation’s development program, mentored by Four Tet, Emanative, Floating Points, Koreless and Gilles Peterson – all trustees of the foundation.

“Sarathy instantly caught my attention when he said he wanted to make an album that embraced both Indian folk music and jazz - two worlds that have had a big influence on me. His album succeeds in bringing these things together in an elegant way, but it’s his own style and ideas that come through the most in the music. Refreshingly different, this is a deep and powerful listening experience.” Four Tet

The Steve Reid Foundation commemorates the life and legacy of legendary percussionist/drummer Steve Reid. It is fitting that Sarathy’s album follows the lineage and spirit of Reid who himself left New York and took on a spiritual pilgrimage through Africa in the mid-1960s. For three years he journeyed through West Africa, playing with people along the way, including Fela Kuti, Guy Warren and Randy Weston. The musical roots and routes of the Black Atlantic have been discussed and documented extensively, but Sarathy is highlighting a different dispersal of people in the other direction, from East Africa to India. The Sidis travelled to India from Africa as merchants, sailors, indentured servants and mercenaries from as far back as 628 AD and have settled in India ever since.

Conceived on an extended trip to rural Gujarat, followed by sessions at Dawn Studios in Pune, Sarathy made field recordings of The Sidi Troupe of Ratanpur whose vocals and percussion form the backbone of “Day To Day”. The troupe features five drummers – their polyrhythms reflect their African heritage, in contrast to traditional Indian drummers who play in unison. Likewise, the Malunga bows (there are only 4 or 5 players in India) bear a striking resemblance to those found in Africa.

“The record is about how we individually and collectively live from day to day. The everyday rituals and tasks that bind us together, it’s a celebration of the trivial and mundane,” explains Sarathy. The colourful handmade rag quilts that the Sidis make using everyday fabrics serve as a perfect metaphor for the record: “The Sidi women make these amazing collages of colour using everyday rags,” he says. “That’s how I see this album”.

Born in the US, Sarathy Korwar grew up in Ahmedabad and Chennai in India. He began playing tabla aged 10 but was also drawn to the American music that he heard on the radio and that leaked through the doorway of his local jazz music shop, Ahmad Jamal and John Coltrane were early discoveries. At 17, Sarathy moved to Pune to study for a degree in Environmental Science, but instead dedicated his time to music: practicing tabla under the tutelage of Rajeev Devasthali, translating his skills to the Western drumkit and playing as a session musician. Finishing his studies, Sarathy began to think about pursuing a career in music and moved to London, where he trained as a classical tabla player under the guidance of Sanju Sahai and graduated with a MMus in Performance from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) focusing on the adaptation of Indian classical rhythmic material to non-Indian percussion instruments.

Working the angles in London’s jazz scene, Sarathy connected with Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming), Cara Stacey (Kit Records) and played with clarinettist Arun Ghosh. He was, however, itching to create under his own name and he started researching and formulating the concept for “Day To Day” and planning a trip to India to record the Sidis. It was late in 2014 when Sarathy heard about the Steve Reid Foundation. He applied with a three-minute video explaining his vision for the record and was accepted onto the project to be mentored by the foundation’s patrons: Four Tet, Floating Points, Gilles Peterson, Koreless and Emanative (aka Nick Woodmansey who mixed the album).

Gathered here are The Fun Of Watching Fireworks, From Our Living Room To Yours, and The Golden Band albums, garnished with period b-sides, outtakes, and demos. Remastered from the original analog tapes, this early-career spanning 5xLP box includes lyrics, photos, and ephemera from the before times.

Hold on to your mind! Led by Belfast-born phenom David Lewis, Andwella made three LPs circa 1970 for London's Reflection label, redolent with Cream-y rock workouts, soaring post-Sgt. Pepper psych experimentation, and earthbound laments The Band might've dreamt up at Big Pink. Barely heard back then, they now conjure a popular rock fantasia to challenge the most expertly composed and orchestrated songs of the era. This deluxe set includes meticulous reproductions of the band’s 3-LP discography, plus an ephemera-packed booklet detailing Lewis's brief moment as a downbeat songwriting visionary at the height of his powers.

Sometimes you have to move backwards to move forwards. Just ask punk cultural commentators BODEGA, whose new album sees them carve a new future from fuzz-soaked, consumerism-skewering shards of their past.Our Brand Could Be YR Life is BODEGA's first album release through Chrysalis Records. "It's something we've been wanting to do for years," guitarist and vocalist Ben Hozie explains of Our Brand Could Be Yr Life – a collection of catchy indie-rock ruminations on the slow-creep of corporate-think into youth culture, first written eight years ago.Our Brand Could Be YR Life's 15 tracks explore indie-rock subgenres, self-critique and everything in between. "I think it's our best- sounding record to date," says Hozie, "It's got dance-punk. There's some shoegaze on there. There's slacker rock on there. There's psychedelic rock on there. R.E.M, too. We wanted to be another band in a long stream of missionaries, proselytising a certain type of rock subculture."

From its founding in the late 14th century, the kingdom of Buganda has been celebrated through sound and nurtured a rich musical tradition in its royal court. Coming from across the kingdom, musicians would take turns in the palace to sound drums, xylophones, flutes, lyres, and more to praise and honour the existence of the kingship. In recent years however, the tradition has been more difficult to maintain, especially since 1966 where there was a violent attack on the palace that abruptly abolished the kingdom and during which royal musicians fled or were killed. And while the kingdom was re-established in 1993 as a cultural institution, many of the remaining musicians had since chosen to sideline their skills to deal with the issues of their day to day lives, the practice of the royal tradition waning in popularity, especially with younger listeners and players. But all is not lost. Scattered across the kingdom, a motivated team of older veterans and attentive young players are still keeping the tradition alive. Offering a transversal glimpse into the past and the present, "Buganda Royal Music Revival" collects recordings made in between the late 1940s and 1966 illustrating the older generation’s skills, and presents them alongside recent recordings featuring old and young musicians who still carry on this musical tradition, some even performing for the current king, Muwenda Mutebi II. The later were made during the shooting of the 2019 documentary “Buganda Royal Music Revival” that presents through a film what this album conveys through sounds: a packed dive into a century-old tradition. The music displayed here is diverse and vibrant, presenting a variety of styles and highlighting instruments that illustrate the depth and sophistication that stemmed from the royal court experience of Buganda. As a starter, the album opens with 'Mujaguzo'. Often translated as ‘The Drums of the Kingship’, the mujaguzo is a crucial ensemble for the cultural tradition, made from drums collected by the kingdom throughout its long history and numbering around 100 drums (historical records suggest there were at some point over 300). They are the vitality of the kingship packaged into sound. From here, we're introduced deeper to an array of instruments and textures, like the buzzing Bugandan lyre (endongo) by contemporary royal player Albert Bisaso Ssempeke, the resonant akadinda xylophone with its 21 large wooden keys, Temutewo Mukasa's restless praise sung with his harp (ennanga), the hand-made gourd trumpet (amakondere), the entenga "drum-chime" and its core set of 12 drums tuned like the amadinda xylophone, or the tightly intertwined melodies of the flutes ensemble (abalere). With the music, the hissing and swishing sounds of old tapes reminds at times the listener of the long process, from the original recording to its archival digitization, that allows the talent of past musicians to still vibrate nowadays. This rousing selection of music and moods is a unique and all too rare exploration of sounds that celebrates the common history of generations of musicians, and the question remains open as to how this rich cultural tradition will shape and be shaped by the upcoming Bugandan future, and what engagement it will trigger among audiences within, but also beyond, the kingdom of Buganda.

Everybody’s still talking about the good ol’ days! A rough and rugged collection of ol’ dirty classics that have inspired swarms of killer beats. A head nod to the sounds of Shaolin, the thirteen chambers of Shanghai’d Soul have moved lyrical chefs and production geniuses alike to compose some of their most ominous hip-hop. Gods and Earths alike will appreciate the raw funk and smoother-than-a-Lexus soul that come together like Voltron on this special compilation. As sampled by Phantogram, Common, Kanye West, Talib Kweli, Kendrick Lamar, Wale, Vince Staples, DJ Khaled, Pusha-T, Meek Mill, Ghostface Killah, Mac Miller, Kid Cudi, RJD2, Curren$y, Pretty Lights, Jurassic 5, Big Grams, and Run The Jewels.

Ghost Funk Orchestra are a mystery. Plain and simple. Dirty, soulful production, verbed and fuzzed out guitars, mysterious vocals that feel like a lost score to a Quentin Tarantino film. The brainchild of one-man producer/musician/arranger Seth Applebaum, GFO is forging new territory and blurring the line between soul and psychedelic. We are uber-proud to present their first full-length effort for our Karma Chief label imprint. This is just the tip of the iceberg for this group, already well into producing their follow up LP, this is a group we truly believe will become a prolific force in the modern psychedelic scene.

The recording date of this solo outing by pianist Bill Evans has been listed as both September 1968 and December 1969; the latter seems the more logical entry. This is Evans' final Verve album. He plays five long solos (including a fourteen-and-a-half -minute exploration of "Never Let Me Go"). The repertoire includes "Here's That Rainy Day," "A Time for Love," "Midnight Mood," and "On a Clear Day." This set is recommended to Bill Evans completists who already have many of his other recordings.

The ethereal melody fluttering in the strong groove. This is the quintessential and culmination of new hard music that pursues the possibilities of the big band sound.

Since the release of "Perspective" in 1969, New Hard, led by Toshiyuki Miyama, one of Japan's leading big band musicians, has been exploring new horizons in big band jazz with its cutting-edge sound. This work "Niou to Hato" is one of the representative works of New Hard released in 1972. Kozaburo Yamaki wrote and arranged all of the music, and deeply pursued one of his long-standing themes, "Japan. The elaborate and multi-layered arrangements and performances express Japanese customs, traditions, and scenes. The melodies are profound and dynamic, with an ethereal Japanese sentiment. The songs are full of deep flavor and great stimulation, led by the strong groove of "Seijinshiki" (Coming of Age Ceremony). This is the true essence of new hard music at its best.
text by Yusuke Ogawa (universounds/Deep Jazz Reality)

The Smile’s new album Wall Of Eyes is the follow up to the band’s 2022 debut LP A Light For Attracting Attention, which received critical acclaim from the likes of The Guardian, Pitchfork, The Observer, The Needle Drop, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, Uncut and MOJO, and more.

The Smile played a series of brilliantly received live shows in the US and Mexico in June and July of this year and released “Bending Hectic” from the new album in June, having initially debuted the song at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2022.