MUSIC

The inimitable GYBE returns with another soundtrack for our times. As the heretical anarcho-punk spirit of the title implies, Godspeed harnesses some particularly raw power, spittle and grit across two riveting 20-minute side-length trajectories of noise-drenched widescreen post-rock: inexorable chug blossoms into blown-out twang, as some of the band’s most soaring, searing melodies ricochet and converge amidst violin and bassline counterpoint. Field recordings and roiling semi-improvised passages frame these fervent epics, and two shorter self-contained 6-minute pieces find the band at its most devastatingly beautiful, haunting and elegiac. Poignant atmospherics, noise-drenched orchestration, drone, hypnotic swingtime crescendos, inexorably-layered towers of distorted clarion sound: STATE’S END encapsulates every beloved facet of the band. Twenty-five years on, this new album is as vital, stirring, timely and implacable as any in Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s storied discography. Recorded and mixed by Jace Lasek, the veteran award-winning indie producer (and co-founder of The Besnard Lakes) who works with Godspeed for the first time on this recording.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor (GYBE) returns with its first single LP-length release since the group's earliest days in 1997-99. 'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress' clocks in at a succinct 40:23 and is arguably the most focused and best-sounding recording of the band's career. Following Godspeed's return from a long hiatus at the end of 2010 to begin playing live shows again, and with the hugely acclaimed 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!' release in 2012 marking their first new release in a decade, the group slowly and steadily put the new album together through late 2013 and 2014. This mighty slab of superlative sonics is shot through with all the band's inimitable signposts and touchstones: huge unison riffage, savage noise/drone, oscillating overtones, guitar vs. string counterpoint, inexorable crescendos and scorched-earth transitions. 'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress' finds Godspeed in top form; a sterling celebration of the band's awesome dialectic, where composition, emotion and 'note-choice' is inextricable from an exacting focus on tone, timbre, resonance and the sheer materiality of sound.

After two highly acclaimed early albums, "Seanaly" and "Mellow Dream," and now known by jazz listeners around the world, "A Letter From Slowboat" is his first leader album in 2015, 16 years after his first album.

"The origin of techno. The original crystallization of the artists who created the era as big names, immortal monuments beyond the masterpieces." Limited vinyl version reissued in heavy vinyl. The heavy-duty vinyl version in the original jacket supervised by Ryuichi Sakamoto is available in a completely limited edition.

Minnie Riperton's first album was released in 1971 while she was still a member of Rotary Connection, and was produced by Charles Stepney, who later worked with EW&F and Terry Callier. The album was produced by Charles Stepney, who was also a member of Rotary Connection and later worked on the albums of EW&F and Terry Callier.

THE PLAIN TRUTH=we drifted through it, arguing.every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom.we sat down together and wrote it in one room,and then sat down in a different room, recording.NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody?and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile.the sun setting above beds of ashwhile we sat together, arguing.the old world order barely pretended to care.this new century will be crueler still.war is coming.don’t give up.pick a side.hang on.love.

Suicide Squeeze is thrilled to deliver a reissue of Interloper, the 2020 album from Holy Wave. Interloper sees Holy Wave adding new layers to their lush and mesmerizing songwriting style. Written about the duality between life at home and life on the road, it sees the band expanding on its most esoteric and thought-provoking themes. "I'm Not Living in the Past Anymore" is a mantra about breaking the cycle of the mundane, and "Escapism" is a dream-like meditation. "Interloper" serves as the centerpiece for this self-expanding record, asking, what happens when the world beneath your feet changes so much that you feel like a stranger in your own shoes? The band turns inward to blissed-out moments on album opener "Schmetterling," the saccharine haze of "R&B," and the freak-out catharsis of live favorite "Buddhist Pete." With Interloper Holy Wave weaves together a contemplative tapestry that can serve as a road map for the diffident, a soundtrack to self-realization, or simply an invitation to escape.

Released on Cherry Red in 1981, Threat To Creation spotted the collaboration between two mystical entities : Creation Rebel and New Age Steppers. Forerunners of the british dub scene the two bands shared several members, a who’s who of the On U-Sound school and key figures of the Bristol and London scene. Adrian Sherwood is – obviously – the man behind the desk a craftsman on its own, a character with no borders and one of the most sought after producer of the time. The supergroup is ran by post-punk stalwarts Bruce Smith (The Pop Group) on drums and Keith Levene (PIL) on guitar. Ari Up of The Slits sits on piano and organ, while masters Crucial Tony is both on bass and guitars. Members of African Head Charge – bass player George Oban, Eskimo Fox and Style Scott on drums – are welcomed addition to the line-up. Threat To Creation is still recognizable as an album ahead of its time, a futuristic blend filling the gap between the Jamaican heritage, the so-called (post) industrial revolution and the studio witchery of the whitey man.

Hometown to Come, the second full-length album by Minhwi Lee, is set to be released in November 2023. The eight tracks were written over a period of seven years after Lee's first album and loosely form a single story, contemplating how people who have lost their hometown can return. “What I had imagined from the title, Hometown to Come, was something forever delayed yet constantly approaching; however, upon repeated listens, it takes on a different meaning—a promise of hospitality being realized every day. Even if our places to meet disappear, ‘the song we sing today’ will remain. We will continue to grow, cross paths again, venture far away, and encounter more faces. And when time has passed and you, having forgotten me, ask about my smile or sadness, I will hum ‘the same song,’ cherishing it as a keepsake.” (morceau j. woo, sound designer)

Heavy weight vinyl. Remastered version of “out of noise”, his first solo album with commmons, released in 2009. The album was remastered under his supervision, adding previously unreleased tracks.

Vinyl reissue with 1 bonus track! Yusef Lateef's 1961 Far East masterpiece, 'Eastern Sounds', has an exotic feel. A beautifully modal cover of the masterpiece "Love Theme From Spartacus" from Stanley Kubrick's blockbuster movie "Spartacus". 180g weight vinyl.

It is with great pride Miasmah announces the posthumous release of this double album of the final work by experimental composer Marcus Fjellström, titled The Last Sunset of the Year. Collected by Marcus’ friends and colleagues Erik K. Skodvin and Dave Kajganich, this release brings together music written and produced during Marcus’ tenure as composer for the first season of the AMC anthology series The Terror, which told the story of the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage. That said, THE LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR is, by design, not a soundtrack to the show. Dave Kajganich writes in the album’s liner notes: “Some of the pieces will be familiar to those who know The Terror (though in some cases in different forms), but many other pieces are being made available here for the first time. The selected pieces have a unity unto themselves, and we feel strongly that this release should be taken not as a companion to the show, but as Marcus Fjellström ’s final album, on its own terms. We’ve presented these pieces without titles, except for titling the four movements of the journey they suggest. It is a journey that evokes the mystery, grandeur, and desolation of the Arctic, and articulates the spiritual and existential implications of traveling there. In many ways, THE LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR goes further, and deeper, than the show ever could, presenting a remarkable sonic line from contented exploration, to staggering decline, to death—and even to a final vista beyond death.” Kajganich reached out to begin discussing the idea of this release with Skodvin, back in 2017, after Marcus’ death, but before the series had premiered. In the years since, Dave and Erik have Zoomed and emailed back and forth hundreds of times, studying all seventy-five of the pieces Marcus wrote for the show in all their forms (as many as six or seven versions to a piece), to winnow down a final list of pieces to include. The most difficult phase of the process, Kajganich reveals in the notes, was understanding the best way to sequence the tracks. It required listening to many different track orders and paying close attention to how each order created a slightly different identity for the album through their specific juxtapositions and dynamics. “In a way I can’t fully articulate, it was very much as though Erik and I were having a final, deeply felt and joyous conversation with Marcus himself about the interior lives of these pieces,” Kajganich says. The album’s title comes from a moment in the show when a group of Victorian sailors who are trapped in winter pack ice, suffering dwindling psychological resources and supplies, stand on the deck of one of the doomed ships to watch the sun rise above the horizon for a moment, and then immediately set in the last sunset of the year before six weeks of darkness, an event which, even through the lens of their inevitable coming losses, could still be viewed as something astonishing and beautiful. None of those men could know, nor can we, what waits for us across the line of death, but in The Last Sunset of the Year, Marcus seems to have had a notion.

Neo Gibson records, performs, and produces under the alias 7038634357. Their music is characterized by its formal precision, melodic structure, and an idiosyncratic emotional tenor. Up until this point, it has been primarily self-released on small-batch CD-R’s and performed in intimate settings. Synthesized and recorded entirely on their computer, Neo Seven is their first vinyl record, and perhaps their seventh release depending on where you begin amidst their prolific and fluid output. Within a runtime of just over thirty minutes, Neo Seven contains a spare, beautiful, and raw journey through the artist's emotive, psychologically-charged ambient songwriting. The album’s seven tracks bleed into and out of one another, continually forming and deforming between soundscape, song, and silence. The record opens slowly with Winded, as brief intervals of soft noise, nearly indistinguishable from dust breeding on the turntable, gradually become the ground upon which harmonic form is built. As tones subtly shift across regular lulls of sound, one gets the sense they’re traveling amidst a pulsar in deep space. Neo’s heavily-processed melodies, gated regularly by silence, form the heartbeat of the record, creating an expansive field in which an interior, subjective journey takes place. Square Heart utilizes this motif to rhythmic ends, in what surprisingly develops into an achingly tender pop song, albeit one in which Neo’s robotic, heavily vocoded voice is distant, sullen, and mixed low. As each track explores its own interior logic, complex forms emerge out of simple structures, and layers of oscillations commingle and build upon one another. Rhythmic cuts of compressive texture begin to feel like meteors burning up in the atmosphere or hail upon the windshield. The record begins and ends with Neo’s slowly built-up waves of ambient harmony being cut by grating digital noise. On the final track, Perfect Night, beneath the thrashing, a song-form appears nearly inaudibly. Hidden beneath the noise, Neo’s voice bears a clarity and a softness that is revealed only momentarily, when the noise flitters out cinematically toward the end of the track.

This is a work synonymous with the Aphex Twin, featuring one of the most popular songs of their career, "Girl/Boy Song".

Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the release of Ryuichi Sakamoto's classic LP "Ongaku Zukan”, originally issued in Japan on his own School label in 1984. The reissue will replicate the original Japanese release which offered a bonus 7" EP featuring two bonus tracks "Replica" and "Ma Mère l’Oye". Remastered by Saidera Mastering in Tokyo, the reissue boasts the original gatefold artwork plus an extra 2-page insert with new liner notes by Andy Beta

Glenn Gould's great starting point is now available in Japan in analog form from monaural masters for the first time in 57 years.
Limited Edition] Analog / 180 gram weight vinyl version.
The debut album "Goldberg Variations" was released in January 1956 and made the young Glenn Gould's name known worldwide. The last album released before his death, "Goldberg Variations," was released in September 1982, about a month before Gould's death. This work frames Gould's life like a closing circle, and is indispensable in considering his unique music. When we think of Gould, we think of Goldberg, and vice versa.
The first of a special series of six analog reissues of four different performances of this important work is the debut recording, made over four days in June 1955. It is the most successful classical music album of all time and an icon in recording history. It was cut at Sony Music Nogizaka Studio in Japan, based on high-resolution recordings carefully transferred from the original monaural masters, which were never released out of the gate.

The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by an “old hand” of French free jazz, François Tusques. Free Jazz, was also the name of the recording made by the pianist and other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais) in 1965. But, six years later Tusques had had his fill of free jazz. After having wondered, together with Barney Wilen (Le Nouveau Jazz) or even solo (Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2), if free jazz wasn’t a bit of a dead end, Tusques formed the Inter Communal, an association under the banner of which the different communities of the country would come together and compose, quite simply. If at first the structure was made up of professional musicians from the jazz scene it would rapidly seek out talent in the lively world of the MPF (Musique Populaire Française).{French Popular Music, ndlt} As with L’Inter Communal a few years earlier, Le Musichien follows on from the group of varying musicians that Tusques had conceived as a “people’s jazz workshop”. In 1981, at the then famous Paris address, 28 rue Dunois, the pianist sang with his partner Carlos Andreu an “afro-Catalan tale”. Over a slow bass line (exceptional work from Jean-Jacques Avenel) backed by percussion from Kilikus, saxophones (Sylvain Kassap and Yebga Likoba) and trombone (Ramadolf) which presented a myriad of constellations. The sky has no limits, let’s make the most of it. The following year, at the ‘Tombées de la Nuit’ festival in Rennes, bassist Tanguy Le Doré would weave with Tusques the fabric on which would evolve an explosive “brotherhood of breath”: Bernard Vitet on trumpet, Danièle Dumas and Sylvain Kassap on saxophones, Jean-Louis Le Vallegant and Philippe Le Strat on… bombards. With hints of modal jazz inspired by Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders, the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra is an ecumenical project which speaks to the whole world.

Finally came out! MUST !!!!! The long-awaited analogization of the phantom gem that would have been reissued from our shop if there was no current situation. The original is a masterpiece of German dub techno genius Robert Henke a.k.a. Monolake, which was released on CD only from his own label in 1999, and is the first vinyl reissue from the current dub / ambient prestigious sacred place . Set in the vast Gobi Desert in East Asia, this is a masterpiece of minimal ambient sound, with a vast, profound and nocturnal soundscape. Official reissue under the license specifications of Henke's label . This is recommended as a lifelong product. Don't miss it!!

Berlin based sound artist Sa Pa delivers AI-33, titled ‘Atmospheric Fragments’. Originally intended as a soundtrack to accompany ten short experimental films as part of a physical exhibition in 2020 curated by Manon Bernard, featuring the videography of Antoine Ronin, Atmospheric Fragments was alternatively premiered online as a digital showroom - with its music performed and recorded both live and independently in 2021. Atmospheric Fragments was conceived as a collaborative audio-visual project, positing the viewer inside a sonic boom of introspective parenthesis and offering a place for internal dialogues under the circumstances of a largely unknown and rapidly changing modern world. Sa Pa’s work presents a fresh sonic reinterpretation of urban landscapes, skylines and modern environments, procuring from its source material a whole new kaleidoscopic world of its own. The record consists of two mixes - ‘Studio’ and ‘Live’ - which demonstrate a deep explorational study of our everyday surroundings, plunging the listener into a realm of heightened sense experience and microscopic detail. Where the ‘Studio’ mix embodies the precision and management of the studio workspace and is more ambient in nature, such intricacies are exchanged for a larger, livelier sound stage and alternative sonic material in the ‘Live’ mix. A nebulous ocean of shifting spaces and effervescent textures, Sa Pa augments and modulates field recordings into a fluid and ever-evolving narrative. Seen through a viewfinder of deep and immersive observation, new transients, momentary artefacts and poetry in motion begin to reveal itself. In a world caught in momentary stasis, Atmospheric Fragments is a forensic inquiry into our perceptive environment, with its augmented lens placing us on the cusp of the ungraspable.

AI-32 signals the arrival of ‘The Fifth World Recordings’, by Son of Chi (Hanyo van Oosterom) and long-term collaborator Arthur Flink. A tribute to the late Jon Hassell, who passed away in 2021, the album connects a deep running thread that goes back to the source of Chi project. Carrying on from where Hassell left off, the album takes inspiration and references from his Fourth World music concept and the ancient Hopi tradition of Native America. Illuminating the subliminal space of the arising Fifth World, Son of Chi pays respects to an inimitable force in contemporary music. Hassell’s ‘Dream Theory in Malaya’ forms a touchstone to Hanyo van Oosterom’s musical journey, which soundtracked long, deep and reflective periods living in the cave of the Kallikatsou (Patmos, Greece) back in the early 80s. This period resulted in Hanyo’s track as Chi - ‘Hopi’ - in 1984. Hanyo met Hassell shortly after in 1987 at his “The Surgeon in the Nightsky” concert in Rotterdam - it wasn’t until twenty years later that Hanyo invited him for two magic nights of “Instant Composing Sessions” with the Numoonlab Orchestra (with a host of other artists) at the LantarenVenster, the very same stage where Hassell had performed in 1987 and also where Chi did their first live performance. Dreamful, mysterious, prophetic, the Fifth World Recordings features the quiet yet elaborate sound of Chi awash with rich instrumentation, field recordings, and old stories by the firelight. Sketches were created with drones, loops, and soundscapes, with which Arthur Flink (also a member of the Numoonlab Orchestra) jammed on trumpet. Channelling Hassell’s idiosyncratic style, floating melodies and lyrical improvisations are parsed into the mix, where Hanyo has processed and manipulated the recordings, also referencing Hassell’s exotic scales and unique harmonics. Additionally, the wah Bamboo flute at the closing piece is an homage to the works of Chi co-founder Jacobus Derwort (1952-2019). For this piece Hanyo used his first bamboo flute he made at the cave of the Kallikatsou in 1984. Arthur Flink answers in counterpoint with the wah trumpet, almost like the intuitive communication of the nightbirds...

AI-31 sees the debut release from a new collaboration between Samuel van Dijk (Netherlands) and Rasmus Hedlund (Finland). Both key proponents to the scene in Northern Europe, they come together with mutual understanding and a common vision to sound. Dialog acts as a conversational exchange that sees the interplay of dynamic frequencies, evocative imagery and contemporary sonic art. Spread across four sides, the album as a whole exists as a kind of metaphysical process, eternally growing and contracting — change is the only constant, marked by a continuous progression of sound and space.

Emerging from a thick spiraling haze, is the debut album from Mystic AM – a new project from Rod Modell and label founder Ario Farahani. Conceived as an immersive fictional soundtrack piece, the release tells the story of a traveller, some centuries ago, and the rather intense metaphysical experience he unexpectedly stumbles into whilst taking shelter on a hot desert night at Zein-o-Din Caravanserai, near Yazd in Persia. Dusk envelopes the vast barren landscape as the protagonist enters the ribat, treasures of woven silks, ornaments and exotic spices glint under the flickering oil lamps, swirls of perfumed vapour dance mesmerisingly in the darkness. As the music unfolds the events of the passing day quickly melt away, and the unsuspecting traveller is plunged into an otherworldly dimension. Utilizing an extensive collection of old Iranian records as source material, the album is an intoxicating mise-en-scéne of whispering melodies, undulating rhythms, and atmospheric sound details. Ario began the process, extracting and editing samples from old records acquired during frequent trips to Iran over recent years – during which the mood and flavour of the project began to crystallize. Once handed over to Rod for further processing and arrangement, the album took its final shape – an endless tapestry of sights, sounds, and memories that fade mysteriously into the night’s reverie. Textures seep into one another in washes of colour, and hallmarks of classical Persian sounds filter through – the slow stroll of the daf, scintillating runs of santoor, and solitary lines drifting out of the kamancheh. Bridging the realms of the real and the imaginary, the collaboration signals the first contribution to Mystic AM’s enigmatic concept.

Son of Chi returns to Astral Industries, alongside Spanish artist Clara Brea, for the collaborative release of AI-29. A product of fate, chance experiments, but most of all, sensitive artistry - ’The Wetland Remixes’ exists as a confluence of two kindred musical spirits, a wayfaring epic that draws together a rich archive of ecological field recordings, live instrumentation and higher inspirations.

Ahead of Hanyo’s concert at ‘Avalovara listening club’ (Madrid) at the end of 2019, the curators (Diskoan & Josephine’ Soundscapes) organised a special dinner and arranged the meeting of Clara and Hanyo. As Hanyo recalls, “It was like stereochemistry. There was an instant match and understanding, and basically we decided in a split second to exchange recordings and to collaborate on future live and studio experiments.”

The auspicious meeting of the two ignited a remote exchange of materials and ideas, as the world descended into a series of pandemic-related lockdowns. The first of said recordings included the stems of Clara’s ‘Wetland Project’ - a site-specific audiovisual project originally produced for Eufonic Festival (Spain), using field recordings from the Ebro Delta nature reserve (one of the most threatened regions of climate change on the Iberian peninsula).

From this initial impetus, Hanyo began working on the first sketches of the album back in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Just like their meeting in Madrid, the project developed naturally and spontaneously with extraordinary ease. Later, Hanyo started adding field recordings from the Magic Cave and Wetlands of the ‘Kallikatsou’ (Patmos, Greece) as well as organic and acoustic overdubs, featuring bass, drums, percussion, guitars, oud, piano, hammond organ, wurlitzer, flutes, bells, and mouth harp.

In the distance, the sound of birds peak through the effervescent wash of the wetland soundscapes. The pass of running water flows deeper into a land full of secrets never told. On the strike of dusk, the silhouettes of shapely trunks and foliage melt slowly into the impenetrable darkness. As darkness passes, light emerges, with exquisite moments of tranquility that seemingly emerge from nothingness.

Beneath the shimmering veneer of textures, wildlife and melodies, one may hear the deeper references of ’The Wetland Remixes’. With credit to Clara’s input, for Hanyo the album process became a kind of refuge, and ultimately inspired the return to the core of Abstract Sound - what the Sufis call “Saut-i Sarmad.” Such references allude to the spiritual quality embedded in the music - the autonomous process of self-expression, the great mystery. Hanyo: “An ambience like this cannot be created by routine. There is no blueprint. The music has to find you. It’s like a blessing if it happens. You should not interfere, just observe and be impressed...”

Deep, luscious mind trips as per the classic Chi sound, ‘The Wetland Remixes’ beautifully correlates the interconnecting dots of geography, ecology, and mythology’s forgotten lore. 

Following the arrival of their debut album ‘Alterazione’, LF58 (F.Scorcucchi and G.Tillieci) are back on Astral Industries with a special trove of outer-space explorations. Recorded one evening back in April 2019 as a live performance at Rome’s Brancaleone, the eponymously titled album offers a sprawling journey across the pan-dimensional ether. Spread across six sides of vinyl, the performance includes fully improvised material as well as choice selections from Simone Giudice, Jonas Kopp, Nuel, Birds of Prey, Rapoon, Steve Roach and Adham Shaikh. There is no doubt that the unique energy and circumstances of the evening contribute to a certain atmosphere present in the music. With seemingly no beginning nor end, the session emerges in suspension; an electric ocean of infinite deepness. Gleaming across the patter of galaxies on a wide black backdrop, its myriad vistas are projected like transitioning scenes of an unending story. The gentle tide brings with it specks of cosmic debris and mysterious signals. Soon, quiet drones are overtaken by ripples of solar flare and percussive clamours. Forms melt like liquid, a ball of amorphous plasma pulsating with ecstatic radiance. Prying open universe within universe, ‘Live at Brancaleone’ has a vastness that cannot really be contained.