MUSIC

Harold Mckinney, a keyboardist who has played on many 'TRIBE' recordings masterpieces and has been a staple of the label, has released his only leader album in 1974, which has been newly remastered and reissued to the latest specifications. VINYL recorded "Ode To Africa (single version)" and "Jelly Loa" as 7" singles at the same time. VINYL is a special limited edition 2LP+7inch set that includes "Ode To Africa (single version) / Jelly Loa" recorded as a 7" single at the same time, as a 7" BONUS DISC!

These recordings were made in Bombay in 1968 by Bengt Berger (Bitter Funeral Beer Band) during a stay with Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, who was primarily responsible for the revival of the Rudra Veena as a solo concert instrument. His home in the suburb of Chembur was at the time the magical haunt of a plethora of fantastic musicians, including Ritwik Sanyal and K. Sridhar, who took part in the session. In perfect and stern Duphrad vocal style, these two Raga lead us to different atmospheres and perceptions : Malkauns is the contemplative state of the evening, of the abandonment of the senses before the breaking of the silence in the night; Miyan Ki Todi is the first breath of the morning, the gentle awakening of the limbs before a puja. The two Dagar brothers, Mohiuddin on the Rudra and Fariduddin on the chant, complement each other, become ocean and fire, stillness and storm, in an intimate and tight dialogue of exploration and expressive subtlety, in which the purity of an Indian summer becomes the highest symbol of beauty and freedom of spirit. Originally released on CD by Country & Eastern.

An amazing Krautrock / nature hybrid masterwork. Warm washes of synthesizer, tribal war drums and drones galore all mixed with the sounds of the rainforest, crickets, frogs, even flies - Osmose was originally released in 1978 and found minimalist composer Ariel Kalma using all manner of keyboards, saxophone, harmonium, delays, effects, even circular breathing, to compose gorgeously minimal, softly spacey slow drifting ambient soundscapes, which were then mixed with the sounds of the rainforest (recorded by Richard Tinti).It's a single LP reissue of the double album of 1978.

150 copies made available for international distribution, limited LP edition including an insert with drawings, score and notes. Over the past two years, Lorenzo Abattoir's work has focused on researching various breathing and amplification techniques to create a sort of non-verbal language through which to express the sounds of an 'inhuman' being. A key element of his work is the relationship between spiritual practices and unusual methods of audio processing, mainly focusing on the use of microphones as a medium for the amplification of an act. He explores the boundaries between sound and noise using breathing techniques, bodily sounds and different kinds of amplified objects as instruments to structures his performances. The first act of this transformation took place in "Disincarnazione" (CD, Flag Day Records, 2023); the artist frees himself from his own corporeal state and the cultural structures sedimented over millennia of evolution to explore the sonic possibilities of the animal body as a medium and instrument of his work. Continuing to explore these possibilities in "Second Act" (cassette, Vice de Forme, 2023) and then "Third Act" (cassette, Titania Tapes, 2023), Lorenzo Abattoir's new work succeeds in giving shape to this creature. The artist assumes the form of this new beast, delineating its field of action and incorporating movement into his practice. With "Mess (akt IV)", the fourth act of his research issued now on LP by Planam, Abattoir consecrates a new being in a state of sonic confusion, no longer human but not entirely beast, taking its first steps in his sonic and performative universe. The amplification delivers to the listener the sonic image of a hybrid primate amidst the entirety of the noises of its body, from breaths to movements, in a non-place that allows us to explore the depths of the animal body. All the material of "Mess (akt IV)" was recorded at Nub Project Space, Pistoia Italy.

Alga Marghen very proudly presents Opus 17, a major turning-point in the sonic oeuvre of Eliane Radigue. Finished in 1970, it was the last work composed with feedback materials. From that experimental period, Opus 17 preserves a plastic character: a music made of rough sonic phenomena, at once harsh and granular, possessing a quality of materiality and tactility. Its vibrations structure the air surrounding the listener with densities, thicknesses, indeed with palpable movement. Her compositions are frames which let us hear these phenomena, open frameworks from the sonic installations of her Endless Musics and here reinserted in the five scenes making up Opus 17. In 1970, in her studio of very rudimentary means, she developed a completely unique body of work centered on sounds produced by feedback. Opus 17 has the quality of showing off the sum of the achieved techniques and methods. Eliane Radigue's music has never been rooted in ideas but in practice, the intimate experience of things in the wild which she has known how to tame. This dialog both intense and poetic which she keeps up with the solid matter of sound finds a remarkable concretization in Opus 17. It is to be underlined that with Opus 17 Eliane Radigue inaugurates a technique of composition which will be her footprint, her trademark: imperceptible transformations. For that she has developed a technique of meticulous mixings, based on the slow passage from one section to the next. Imperceptible all during the piece, we pass, ceaselessly and without noticing the changes, from one frequency flux to another. Time is suspended, smoothed out, stretched. It is this technique which Eliane Radigue will be essentially using for all the electronic works to come and which she will never cease to refine and render always more subtle. Opus 17 is the great panoramic voyage through material sound, its electronic phenomena detailed as if in a microscope. As Rhys Chatham recalls: "Eliane Radigue (...) had just moved to New York and had the idea of acquiring an analog modular synthesizer, which is why she worked at NYU in order to try out the possibilities of the Buchla 100 series which we had there. One day, while gossiping, she invited me to her loft, which was just on the corner. She had me listen to a piece composed in France; the piece called 'Opus 17'. (...) What I heard changed to course of my life as a composer. (...) That piece, impressive source of inspiration, gave the impression of being in a grand cathedral, both for the sensation of immensity of being in such a large cathedral, as for the effect of being so close to God." Opus 17 was created at the artistic center of Verderonne on May 23, 1970, for the Fête en blanc (i.e. White Festival) organized by the visual artists Antoni Miralda, Joan Rabascall, Dorothée Selz and Jaume Xifra. Previously unreleased,

フィンランド電子音楽界の生ける伝説であり、Mika Vainioらと共にPan Sonicでも活躍した実験的作家、Ilpo Väisänenによる2022年の12インチ作品をストック。今この時間も繰り広げられ続けている、無視できない殺戮と破壊に対する、鎮静と鎮魂が込められた、力強く瞑想的な、漆黒のポスト・インダストリアル作品。版元は、「自由と独立のために戦うすべての人々に捧げる」ウクライナの新しいレーベルであり、MuslimgauzeやMerzbow、Noémi Büchiの作品も発表している 〈I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free〉。Noel Summervilleによるマスタリング＆カッティング仕様と盤質も万全。

「この侵略には依然として反対だ。夏は最高だが、一部の人にとってはそうではないのだ。ロシアはウクライナで残忍な戦争を続け、民間人を爆撃し、民間人を殺害し、都市や村を意図的に破壊している。

戦争は続いており、ロシアの戦略はそれを長引かせ、西側諸国がいつかすべてを忘れるようにすることである。プーチンは、エネルギーと食料を武器として使い、我々の団結を破壊しようとしている。

現在、ヨーロッパで大量虐殺が起きていることを指摘したい。ちくしょう、今ここにあると。忘れるな！」
- Ilpo Väisänen

‘2 Sim’ is a phrase the references mobile phones with two sim cards to describe people of mixed heritage, dual nationality or multiple residences. After being called a 2 Sim in conversation with a stranger whilst on a walk through Freetown (a recording of this moment features on the record), Duval began to explore what the 2 Sim experience is in contemporary West-Africa. 2 Sim was created from 2 months of field recordings and interviews with family, friends and peers in Freetown Sierra Leone. These site specific recordings are collaged with solo piano recordings and production recorded in Sierra Leone and the UK. The EP is accompanied by a short film/ music video of the same name which Duval shot and Directed whilst making the record. 2 Sim EP is the second release from Carrying Colour which follows on from 2017’s ‘Sen Am’

WRWTFWW Records is proud to announce the highly anticipated official reissue of holy grail album MKWAJU by acclaimed Japanese percussionist Midori Takada’s MKWAJU ensemble, sourced from the original masters and available in two versions: a vinyl LP cut at Emil Berliner Studios (formerly the in-house recording department of Deutsche Grammophon) and a digipack CD.

Originally recorded in February and March 1981 and released by fabled Japanese avant-garde label Better Days (home of Ryuichi Sakamato’s debut album, Yasuaki Shimizu’s Kakashi, Colored Music self-titled LP and many more) MKWAJU is the fruit of the collaboration between Takada’s crew and world-famous composer/musical director Joe Hisaishi, the man behind most of of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli anime soundtracks and over 100 other films scores, including Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine, Hana-Bi, and Kikujiro. The ensemble’s transcendental wonder is, in fact, the first-ever Midori Takada album and the first-ever Joe Hisaishi-produced album. Historic.

Led by Midori Takada on marimba, gong, vibraphone, and tom tom, MKWAJU is an inventive and riveting take on Eastern and Western minimalist traditions, African rhythms, and early electronica. Drawing from its jazz-rooted polyrhythmic improvisations in the most inventive ways, the album covers a wide spectrum of sounds, from colorful dance floor-ready percussion pieces that stand somewhere between proto-techno and experimental synth-pop, to cinematic ambient landscapes and ethereal drone delicacies. The feverishly sought-after full-length is a stepping-stone in Midori Takada’s career and an all-around pioneering album.

Alongside Takada and Hisaishi (who not only produced the album but also played synthesizers), personnel on MKWAJU includes famed Japanese musicians Yoji Sadanari and Hideki Matsutake of KI-Motion fame, Junko Arase (heard on Satoshi Ashikawa’s legendary Still Way - Wave Notation 2), and Pecker (whose stacked resume boasts collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Jun Fukamachi).

Descending out of the southern night sky through a turbulent cloud of dreams, memory, longing and psychedelia, Saigon Soul Revival’s second full length album — Mối Lương Duyên — represents the latest act in the group’s resuscitation of the raw, heavy and subversive sounds of 1960s and 70s Saigon. Roughly translated to “destiny”, Mối Lương Duyên is a journey through eight original compositions and three soul-stirring reinterpretations of Saigonese nhạc vàng or golden music: the soundtrack to a Saigon once thought lost to history and amnesia. Driven by Western influences rock, bolero, soul, jazz and the rich heritage of Vietnamese ballads, Mối Lương Duyên delivers a seamless blend of genres and traditional instrumentation (Đàn Tranh, Đàn Bầu & Đàn Nguyệt) with themes from across time and space. Nguyễn Anh Minh's seductive vocals glide through this multi-stylistic tapestry of sound, going beyond the universal concepts of love and heartbreak to explore how destiny can be forged through individual experiences... or as she puts it in her own words: "Anything and anyone that comes into your life, every occurrence, whatever comes and whatever goes. It all happens as it is meant to. Whatever you have to face, whoever you love or lose - we must accept it. We can’t choose our physical body, family, happiness or misery, our place in the world, in the universe...but we have the power to embrace and welcome our destiny. In Vietnamese "Mối Lương Duyên" means destiny but it doesn't only refer to love. It can mean many things, for example: How we all came together to form this band." In this way - by being part of the unfolding story - the album also attempts to musically connect the past with Vietnam's evolving future. And the fact that Saigon Soul Revival seems to succeed in this is perhaps also the reason why the song ĐÁM CƯỚI NHÀ EM will be featured in the upcoming HBO Mini-Serie „The Symphatizer“ (directed by Par Chan-Wook (Oldboy) / Robert Downey Junior producer and actor), which is based on the novel of the same name (Pulitzer Prize 2016) by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Vocal Shades And Tones is a miraculous leftfield library classic from the genius mind of celebrated UK composer/singer/vocal arranger Barbara Moore. It's a heavenly groove-based blend of jazz, Latin, soft-psych, folk-funk and gospel soul. Recorded for the legendary Music De Wolfe in 1972, it's an audacious start-to-finish listen, as dizzying as it is dazzling. It's a perfect snapshot of a musical era, supported by Moore's glorious vocal arrangements. Widely regarded among collectors, DJs, and lounge/easy-listening acolytes as an absolute essential it is viewed as the holy grail by many production music heads, rarely appearing for sale and disappearing in a flash when it does. Indeed, originals now go for over £300 and it's easy to see why. Just one of the reasons why this fresh Be With reissue, part of a wider De Wolfe reissue campaign, is so utterly crucial. Racing out the gate, the driving "Hot Heels" is a bright, sophisticated scat groove which sounds Brazilian, richly produced as if coming by the hand of Arthur Verocai. Yes, *that* good. It's followed by "It's Gospel" which is, er, a wonderfully slow and deeply soulful gospel treasure. The appropriately monikered "Steam Heat" is a darker, breathy gem, one for salacious crates and one of the record's most infamous tracks. "Fly Away" is pastoral West Coast soft rock, very much in conversation with John Cameron and Keith Mansfield's epochal KPM recording, Voices In Harmony. "His Name Was" is a stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks Beach Boys accapella church-organ stunner, whilst "Swing Over" is another carefree, richly produced sun-dappled smasher. The gentle Bossa and sunshine soul of the aptly-titled "Touch Of Warmth" closes out a virtually perfect A-Side. The B-Side opens with the easy grace and dramatic build of "Voice Force Nine". The jaunty "Very Fine Fellow" may be the only track to slightly grate so we advise heading to the slower, moody "Shades-Tones", eminently more compelling with sparkling, hypnotic piano throughout, underpinning the gorgeous wordless vocals. Just beautiful. It was sampled by Redman for his Method Man-featuring "Do What Ya Feel" on the great Muddy Waters. We're back in Brazilian territory with the cool, uptempo "I'm Feather" before swooning to the warm, relaxed "Drifting", another total highlight which was famously sampled by Koushik on his legendary remix of Madvillain's "America's Most Blunted (Doom's Verse)". The penultimate track, "Take Off" is a bright, organ lounge groove before this remarkable set is rounded out by the beaty "Fly Paradise". It's so so good, it sounds like Rotary Connection fronted by The Mamas & the Papas. As noted in a recent Guardian article on Moore's life, "there is a plushness and electricity in the tight vocal harmonies that spring out, sung with the precision of cathedral choristers decades before Auto-Tune." Amen. In the 1960s, Barbara Moore was a member of Top of the Pops’ resident vocal-harmony group, The Ladybirds and sang backing vocals for Dusty Springfield’s TV show. Her own outfit, the Barbara Moore Singers, were regulars on TOTP, singing with Jimi Hendrix when he performed "Hey Joe" live in Lime Grove Studios. An important detail for Moore was the shepherd’s pie she bought Hendrix when she found him alone, looking emaciated, near the BBC canteen. By 1970, she was working as a session singer for De Wolfe and, by 1972, was composing her own tracks for De Wolfe and working within their tight creative strictures. Each short track had to evoke an obvious mood and theme, with no significant key or tempo changes. Her response, this very album, managed to stay between the lines while cohering as an overarching artistic masterpiece. The audio for Vocal Shades And Tones has been carefully remastered by Be With regular Simon Francis, ensuring this release sounds better than ever. Cicely Balston's expert skills have made sure nothing is lost in the cut whilst the records have been pressed to the highest possible standard at Record Industry in Holland. The original, iconic sleeve has been restored here at Be With HQ as the finishing touch to this long overdue re-issue.

Sweet And Nice is the vital debut album from Jamaica’s undisputed first lady of song Marcia Griffiths. It's reggae at its most soulful. Slinking through a tight ten tracks of R&B and pop-sourced material, it became an instant best seller. 45 years after its initial release the LP is available again on vinyl, now as a double LP, with an extra record collecting 14 rare tracks.

Everything’s been remastered of course, including the original LP, so Sweet And Nice now sounds even sweeter, and even nicer.

Both noted for strikingly forward-thinking bodies of solo work dating back to the 1990s, the duo of Andrew Pekler & Giuseppe Ielasi - collaborators for the better part of a decade - reemerge with 'Palimpsests’, their first outing with Shelter Press. Built from deconstructed layers of texture, tone, and arrhythmic percussiveness, the album’s 2 sides distill 6 years of work into 9 splintered, airy reimaginings of minimalism - each surprising, creatively rigorous, and startlingly beautiful - that rest at the outer reaches of contemporary electroacoustic practice and musique concrète. Based in Berlin and Milan respectively, Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi have individually carved singular paths across numerous disciplines within experimental music for more than 20 years, each deploying sampling, synthesis, and acoustic sources to weave their own, distinct worlds of sonorous abstraction. Brought together by years of friendship and a shared devotion to layered texture and complex, fractured structure, the pair first joined their creative energies in 2013, a collaboration that culminated as the LP, ‘Holiday For Sampler’, issued by Planam. 'Palimpsests’, the duo’s second outing, draws its material from a series of improvisations made by the Pekler and Ielasi in Milan during 2015. Over the ensuing six years, those recordings would undergo various transformations - cut, reworked, sampled, and added to by each artist, working at geographic distance between Berlin, Kyoto and Monza - before culminating, like the album’s title suggests, as a unique manifestation of musical palimpsest; “an object reused and altered, while still bearing visible traces of its earlier form”. With each of the album’s compositions nodding toward a city with which Pekler and Ielasi hold biographical connections, 'Palimpsests’ constructs sound as poetic metaphor; a series of ghosts - traces of memory, image, and action - cut and reassembled, in cycling permutations, before been set into action at a glacial pace with layered, transparent forms. Defined by remarkable restraint and pointillistic precision, across the album’s two sides Pekler and Ielasi weave the fractured remnants of their sessions - reduced to glitches and warbling fragments of texture and tonality - into pulsing expanses of spatial ambiance that defy imagism, blur the boundaries between the synthetic and organic - reducing their sources to a series of unknowns - recast the boundaries of electroacoustic practice on markedly singular terms. Shelter Press is thrilled to present 'Palimpsests’, another brilliant outing from the duo of Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies on black vinyl, with artworks on printed inner and outer sleeves by Traianos Pakioufakis.

Faitiche is delighted to release a short version of the radio play Zwischen (German for ‘between’). Devised and produced by Jan Jelinek for German public broadcaster SWR2, Zwischen brings together twelve sound poetry collages using interview answers by public figures. Each collage consists of the brief moments between the spoken words: silences, pauses for breath and hesitations in which the interviewees utter non-semantic sound particles. These voice collages also control a synthesizer, creating electronic sounds that overlay and merge with the voices to make twelve acoustic structures. We all know the speaker’s fate: you falter, you mispronounce, there are breaks, silences and false starts. This results in delays, a language noise compared by Roland Barthes to the knocks made by a malfunctioning motor. Such gaps can be disconcerting, standing as they do for a failure of the speaker’s rhetorical skills. But what happens when they become a constitutive, poetic factor? Zwischen consists of twelve answers to twelve questions. The answers were all recorded in interview situations. From the speech of the interviewees – all eloquent public figures – the pauses are extracted and edited together. The result is a series of sound collages of silence. But this silence is deceptive, as it is only meaning that falls silent. What remains audible is an archaic body language: modes of breathing, planning phases, seething word particles in search of sense that can break out into onomatopoeic tumult or drift off into sonorous noise. In a further step, each of the twelve collages controls a modular synthesizer via its amplitude and frequency. Supposedly defective speech acts conduct synthetic sounds and the speakers regain their composure – not via the spoken word, but through sound. The opening questions in the various interviews are answered by: Alice Schwarzer, John Cage, Hubert Fichte, Slavoj Žižek, Joseph Beuys, Lady Gaga, Ernst Jandl, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Marcel Duchamp, Friederike Mayröcker, Yoko Ono and Max Ernst.

Available for the first time on vinyl, Brainfeeder releases a wonderful new deluxe edition of Austin’s 2011 album on February 9th, 2024. “Endless Planets” was, and remains, a landmark album in the Brainfeeder catalog, marking the label’s first foray into jazz. It pre-dated his friend Thundercat’s debut album “The Golden Age of Apocalypse” by a few months and Kamasi Washington’s “The Epic” by four years. A truly prodigious talent on the piano, Austin effortlessly combined inquisitive futurism with incredible musicianship and a healthy respect for the heritage of jazz, and in this way it is an exemplary Brainfeeder record.

“I don't think art can or should be classified into earthly conventions. True art defies categorization and transcends boundaries and shouldn't be looked at through a lens of ‘earthly’ or ‘not earthly.’ If you let it wash over you and carry you away, that experience may not feel like anything you've ever experienced here on Earth. It can be the doorway into an infinitude of worlds.”
– Austin Peralta

The new edition features four previously unreleased tracks including a live version of ‘DMT Song’ from FlyLo’s 2012 album “Until the Quiet Comes” that Austin co-wrote. Recorded at the legendary BBC Maida Vale Studios in London in July 2011, Austin led an all-star British band comprising Richard Spaven (drums), Tom Mason (bass), Jason Yarde (alto sax), Heidi Vogel (vocals), and Jason Swinscoe of The Cinematic Orchestra (electronics).

On “Endless Planets” Austin recorded with the late Zane Musa (alto sax), Ben Wendel (tenor and soprano), Hamilton Price (bass) and Zach Harmon (drums). He also relied on longtime friend and associate Strangeloop for electronic manipulation throughout the set and ends the album with a scintillating collaboration with The Cinematic Orchestra and singer Heidi Vogel, “Epilogue: Renaissance Bubbles.”

The “Endless Planets” artwork is by Strangeloop, reworked for this new deluxe vinyl edition by Adam Stover and Sean Preston. Creative direction by JC Caldwell. The black vinyl gatefold 2LP features spot gloss detailing, printed inner sleeves and will be released on February 9th, 2024 via Brainfeeder Records. 

Renowned jazz and funk trumpeter Sefi Zisling presents his third album ‘The Librarian’, blending classic elements with psychedelic funk, soul, and spiritual jazz. ‘The Librarian’ is dedicated to all things close to Sefi’s heart. Featuring the single “Brothers” and a cover of Mal Waldron’s “All Alone”, he pays homage to his musical inspirations, his wife, friends, and Eyad, a Palestinian whose story moved Sefi.

"This album was made as an ode to the people I love, and I would like to dedicate this album to them." - Sefi Zisling

The cover art is a painting by the late Walid Abu Shakra, a member of the Abu Shakra family who have collectively played a pivotal role in the Palestinian-Israeli art scene and are respected worldwide. Walid aimed to highlight the expropriation of Palestinian land by the Israeli state and centred his artistic career on safeguarding a disappearing landscape through his monochromatic etchings. When attending an exhibit, Sefi was drawn to the views from his childhood, particularly Walid’s portrayal in acrylic, with 70s geometric forms with bright colours. After exchanging numbers with the family and working with designer Paul H.Um, the piece was transformed into the cover art for ‘The Librarian’.

“I chose this title because I am this librarian. That is how I consume and enjoy music, the way I remember and catalogue in my mind… all the way to my vinyl collection. So this tune and the whole album are full of references and memory “postcards” from my library of things I love to listen to and play.” Sefi explains.

The LP opens with “The Librarian”, from which the album takes its namesake, and draws inspiration from Bennie Maupin’s enchanting album 'The Jewel in the Lotus'. Sefi was experimenting with writing a piece that contained contrasting parts, which is carried through the juxtaposing delicacy of the floating melodies over a dense, free-form background. Continuing the personal theme, “Layla” takes the listener on a journey through infinite and ever-changing scenery. The “full, rich and lively” instrumentation is a reflection of Sefi’s wife through his eyes. “No doubt I’m a lucky man,” he adds.

“Song for Eyad” is dedicated to a beautiful and innocent soul, Eyad al-Hallaq, a 31-year-old autistic Palestinian from East Jerusalem. On May 20th, 2020, while walking with his teacher to his daycare centre for individuals with special needs, Eyad encountered an IDF checkpoint. As Eyad became panicked and fled in his confusion, a border police officer opened fire. In one of the last images captured of Eyad, he is seen holding a succulent plant, which is used as a symbol on the back of the LP, commemorating his tragic loss. The song serves as a reminder for us to conduct ourselves with humanity and love.

A friend for life, Zack is “a music lover in the highest form,” Sefi explains. Zack played a huge part in Sefi’s journey as an artist, with endless recommendations and teachings. DJing together frequently, Sefi wanted to show thanks for his support with “Fortune Song (For Zack)” which shares their love of Yusef Lateef and musical ballads.

Yusef Lateef's influence is present throughout the album, inspiring Sefi to depart from his usual ensemble-driven style and embrace a jazz-infused intimacy reminiscent of Lateef's quintet recordings. With a smaller band, Zisling crafts a warmer, more personal atmosphere rooted in traditional jazz instrumentation like upright bass and piano, with the funkier, electronic-leaning exception of "Brothers". Recorded live in 2021 with his quartet Noam Havkin, Tom Bollig, Omri Shani, and trombonist Yair Slutzki, ‘The Librarian’ epitomises Zisling's evolution as a composer and performer, showcasing his most personal work yet. 

In 1980, Les Rallizes Dénudés welcomed another guitarist, Fujio Yamaguchi (The Dynamites/Murahachibu/Teardrops), as a member. Although it was only for a short period of time (until March of the following year), the performance by the lineup with Yamaguchi left a strong, yet unique impression for the Rallies, and excited many fans.
The performance at Shibuya Attic on October 29, one of their only seven shows, is now available in its entirety in the best sound quality in existence.
The tight rhythm section in the background and the two guitars clashing and intertwining with each other create a space that is blacker than jet blackness, and it has now been brought back to life with overwhelming vividness.
I am Darkness” - ‘Ice Flame’ (*The order of the songs was changed on the LP, with the first song on the A-side and the first song on the B-side), which lasted over 30 minutes, is definitely one of the most notable performances in Raleys' entire career.
The jacket features an unpublished photo taken by Uji Akira.

In 1980, Les Rallizes Dénudés welcomed another guitarist, Fujio Yamaguchi (The Dynamites/Murahachibu/Teardrops), as a member. Although it was only for a short period of time (until March of the following year), the performance by the lineup with Yamaguchi left a strong, yet unique impression for the Rallies, and excited many fans.
The performance at Shibuya Attic on October 29, one of their only seven shows, is now available in its entirety in the best sound quality in existence.
The tight rhythm section in the background and the two guitars clashing and intertwining with each other create a space that is blacker than jet blackness, and it has now been brought back to life with overwhelming vividness.
I am Darkness” - ‘Ice Flame’ (*The order of the songs was changed on the LP, with the first song on the A-side and the first song on the B-side), which lasted over 30 minutes, is definitely one of the most notable performances in Raleys' entire career.
The jacket features an unpublished photo taken by Uji Akira.

The work by an up-and-coming producer who made his major debut with Nippon Columbia's album "Mystic Islands Dub" in November 2023, exploring the possibilities of Okinawan folk songs and dub!

He gained attention with his work ``Shima DUB'' (2013), which was based on an old song from his roots in Ryukyu, and has released two 7-inch works to date, ``Oshima Yango-bushi'' and ``Sulukill Kuichar.'' The album “Mystic Islands Dub” was also completed immediately. Harikuyamaku is currently one of the most popular dub producers and is highly trusted as an engineer for Okinawa-based artists such as Yukino Inamine and Ododoafrobeat. This album contains 5 psychedelic to trancey dance tracks that are truly ``kachashi (stirring)'', where high-speed swirling sanshin meets deep electronic & dub.

“The semi-classical drums/sax/piano trio Mammal Hands mutate into a high-volume rave act” The Guardian Mammal Hands are pleased to announce the release of their highly anticipated fourth album ‘Captured Spirits’, released 11th September via Manchester tastemaker record label, Gondwana Records. Consisting of saxophonist Jordan Smart, pianist Nick Smart and drummer and tabla player Jesse Barrett, the trio have forged a growing reputation for their hypnotic fusion of jazz and electronica and have recieved glowing recommendations from the likes of The Guardian and Gilles Peterson. Drawing on their love of electronic, contemporary classical, world, folk and jazz music, Mammal Hands take in influences including Pharoah Sanders, Gétachèw Mekurya, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Sirishkumar Manji. Forming in Norwich in 2012, brothers Nick and Jordan along with Jesse, developed their distinctive and polished sound with their meteoric live shows and release of three critically acclaimed albums: ‘Animalia’ (2014), ‘Floa’ (2016) and ‘Shadow Work (2017). Landmark live performances have included shows at The Roundhouse London, the main stage at Field Day Festival, La Cigale Paris, Montreal Jazz Festival, Hamburg Elb Jazz, Athens Technopolis and Unit Tokyo. Teaming up once again with trusted producer George Atkins (Wiley, The Courteeners) at 80 Hertz Studios in Manchester, ‘Captured Spirits’ explores themes including existence and displacement. “The name has multiple readings but was first inspired by something Jordan was reading about past experiences of ancestors being caught and coded into our DNA and having an effect on who you are today. This ties in with themes that we have touched on before relative to identity and the collective unconscious (‘Shadow Work’). It also toys with the idea of feeling contained/trapped and the need to break out of something and also the idea of people being spirits that are "captured" in a body”, says Nick. Opening with the melodic rhythmic patterns of ‘Ithaca’, the tempo picks up with the mesmerising ‘Chaser’, as heavy percussion and Nick’s frenetic keys draw the listener deep into Mammal Hand’s distinctive soundsphere. North Indian influences dictate the meditative ‘Versus Shapes’ with Jesse’s transcendental tabla playing taking centre stage while the dark and moody ‘Spiral Stair’ relies on a multitude of colliding and intersecting shapes and sounds. All three members of the band contribute equally to the writing process: one that favours the creation of a powerful group dynamic over individual solos. “I think with this record, there was a strong and renewed sense of collective enjoyment and appreciation for the process and each other's contributions. After a long period of touring and a slow build up to the actual recording sessions we were able to mull over ideas for long periods, build on lessons from the past and pull our playing connection to an even deeper place. Realising each other's visions for the whole and clearly understanding how they intersect”, says Jesse. That vision is also realised by longtime collaborator and artist Daniel Halsall who designed the artwork for ‘Captured Spirits’. His strong instinctive feel for the band’s visual world is a key component to understanding the music. “Our work with Dan over such a long period of time now has become integral to the bands aesthetic and he always seems to grasp the themes and ideas that we send for each album and distills them into something striking and engaging that really complements the music. This is really important with instrumental music, as we need to be able to convey our ideas without being too literal or definitive and give the listeners space for imagination and to take their own journey when they listen to the music and look at the artwork”, says Jordan. Elsewhere across ‘Captured Spirits’, ‘Riddle’ and ‘Rhizome’ are rich in texture and heavy on groove and both compositions showcase a complex, emotional range and demonstrate three like-minded musicians with a dazzling understanding of jazz, electronica and cinematic rhythms. “Music has the capacity to fill so many spaces in our lives, as I think fundamentally it is a more direct form of communication than even language. In this way it can be refuge, it can be social, it can be revelatory, it can be memory, it can be what we need at a given point in time”, says Jordan. The high intensity of the trio’s live shows is recreated with the spiritual jazz-influenced ‘Into Sparks’ as Jordan’s sax exhibits an unrestrained energy and freedom but it’s left to ‘Little One’ to bring down the curtain on arguably their most accomplished album to date, a soothing, breezy gift to Jesse’s new daughter.

ダウンビート経由のディープ・ハウス/チルアウト・エレクトロニクス秀逸作！〈Tax Free〉を主宰するベルリンのダウンビート/ブレイクス名手Max Graefによる最新アルバム『Natural Element』が、Space GhostやNu Genea、Zopelarらの作品も知られるダウンビート/モダン・ファンクの一大聖地〈Tartelet Records〉からアナログ・リリース。低音重視の空想と繊細なダンスフロアの冒険をテーマとしたジャンルを超えたリスニング・トリップ。今回は、煌めく才能と伝染的なその魅力的なサウンドを、バックルームのビーンバッグに心地よく収まったサイケデリックで夢見心地のジャムへと落とし込んだものとなっています。

One of Poland’s most innovative and singular electronic producers, Hatti Vatti, lands on Belgian giant R&S Records with a new instrumental album filled with unparalleled and experimental jazz electronica. Having released three other full-length albums, most recently 2017’s ‘Szum’, Hatti Vatti aka Piotr Kaliński returns with the breathtaking freeform sounds of ‘Zeit’. Featuring Rafał Dutkiewicz on drums, Paweł Stachowiak on bass and Piotr Chęcki on saxophone, the nine-track long player brings together a collection of eclectic compositions that defies genre classifications, with echoes of the Japanese ambient scene, krautrock, jazz and dubby UK-bass. Prepare to be dazzled with this collection of absorbing and left of centre productions from the label that brought the likes of Aphex Twin, James Blake and Gabriels to international acclaim.

When the world's chatter is hushed to a whisper and emptiness replaces clutter, time falls away completely, exposing a vast, open canvas for the imagination fill with reflection, contemplation and abstraction. On their first collaborative album, released via Caterina Barbieri's light-years label, Grand River and Abul Mogard gaze longingly into the abyss, capturing atemporality, splendour and tranquility with confident, impressionistic sonic strokes. Dynamic and poignant, 'In uno spazio immenso' balances on a knife-edge between booming, operatic grandeur and soft-focus simplicity, casting as much light on the subtle outlines and illusory rhythms as it does its dense, almost overpowering textures. Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli, aka Grand River, has been evolving her unique musical language since she released 'Crescente' on Donato Dozzy and Neel's Spazio Disponibile imprint in 2017. A trained linguist, she uses her instrumentation and advanced processes to challenge cultural perceptions, portraying emotions and moods rather than fixed, visual images. Abul Mogard meanwhile is just one of veteran Italian producer Guido Zen's many aliases, and over a series of acclaimed albums for labels like Ecstatic, Houndstooth and VCO, he's muddled fiction with stark reality, shaking kosmische synth fantasies into post-industrial ambience and blissful shoegaze memories. Working together, Portioli and Zen find unity in intensity, freezing their discrete concepts and techniques into a glacial emotional expanse. On opening track 'Dissolvi', they peer out hand-in-hand over a colossal, reverberant landscape, conducting booming basses, evaporating voices and brassy synthetic swells that pick out the formidable topography. Beatless but not without rhythm, the composition moves at its own pace, twisting time and form to suggest the duo's obliquely hypnagogic narrative. And with each action, there's inevitably a reaction: 'Frantumi di luce' is a hushed refraction that simmers with intrigue, decorating its subtle, flickering pulse and dazzling rays of thoughtful ambience, while 'Altrove, lontano' transports listeners into a different locale entirely, cloistering its meditative mood with angelic choral echoes and evocative strings. The album's most devastating track, 'Archi' is an apex of sorts, a collision of widescreen electroid oscillations and overdriven drones that careens into a grinding industrial beat, and 'Sulle barcane' is its serene inverse, a breathy exhalation fashioned from cryptic environmental recordings, static washes and weightless pads. But 'In uno spazio immenso' isn't a story about Portioli and Zen, exactly, it's an invitation to listen to an inner voice that's different for each listener. Space is whatever we want it to be, and how we decide to fill it is a choice that's dependent on the depth of the imagination.

Shoukichi Kina, who was born in Koza City (now Okinawa City) in 1948, grew up listening to the sound of sanshin played by his father, Shoei, a master of Okinawan music. While in senior high school, Shoukichi Kina composed “Hai Sai Ojisan,” which later became one of the greatest hit tunes ever to originate in Okinawa. After he entered university in Okinawa in 1966, Shoukichi Kina formed Champloose and, finding it difficult to take his studies seriously, devoted much of his time to music, eventually leaving school entirely. It was around this time that various stories began to emerge — some true, some not quite — of his being a kind of nocturnal “King of Koza,” that he managed the folk music club Mikado, and that he made quite a lot of money as a dealer in a gambling casino. In any case, perhaps because his first efforts at forming a band were not too successful, it wasn’t until ten years later, in 1976, that he reformed the band around his father’s folk music group. It was from then that the distinctive “Champloose Sound” began to emerge — a unique combination of rock and Okinawan folk that was exactly right for those times, and these times, too. Before long, the “sound” found avid listeners among musicians and fans on the Japanese main islands, and such was its power that an album was quickly planned and, in 1977, recorded (at the Mikado, as it happened.) That album, Shoukichi Kina and Champloose, today considered a seminal chapter in the annals of Japanese rock, received overwhelming public attention, particularly as Makoto Yano, Akiko Yano and other famed musical innovators participated in the sessions as guests. Thanks to its nearly instant popularity — and to some adroit timing — the first Champloose concert outside Okinawa, in December 1977, was also a crowning success, with round after round of standing ovations from the sell-out crowd at Tokyo’s Nakano Sun Plaza. The second Champloose album, Blood Line, released in 1980, was not as quick in coming. But the wait was worth it, for the sessions, recorded in Hawaii with guests including Ry Cooder, Haruomi Hosono, and Makoto Kubota resulted in numbers such as “Jing Jing” (which rose to the Number Two spot on the British disco charts), “Hana…” which was sung by Tomoko Kina, covered by many others and is now a standard in Thailand, and other memorable cuts. The third and fourth albums, Matsuri, recorded in 1982 in collaboration with Makoto Yano, and Celebration Live, a live album released in 1983, did not disappoint the many fans Champloose had gathered during these busy and fruitful years. Unfortunately, those fans had to wait another seven years for the next album. Again the wait paid off: in August 1990, a 32-track digital recording machine was “imported” into Okinawa for the sole purpose of capturing the latest Champloose sound — a sound that by then had evolved and expanded to include, in addition to contemporary rock and Okinawan folk, a number of other musical factors ranging from reggae to jazz to Ainu melodies and more. Furthermore, both as a symbol of the wide scope of the group’s musical concepts and as a tribute to the inspiration they had received from Shoukichi Kina’s father, the latter also participated in the recordings. After the release of that fifth album, fittingly called Nirai Kanai — Paradise, the group returned to active performance, and from May 1991, began work on their sixth and latest album, Earth Spirit. Five of the 11 numbers on Earth Spirit are traditional Okinawan songs, and while such music normally has no choruses, Kina — joined by his fellow band members and by some outstanding guests from the fertile ethno-pop world of Paris — managed to weave some in, along with (not surprisingly) the irresistible flavors of Africa and the Caribbean as well.

Church Andrews and Matt Davies weave intricate patterns from Fibonacci sequences on new mini-album, Yucca. Producer and composer Church Andrews (aka Kirk Barley) and drummer Matt Davies return to explore the outer limits of rhythm on a six-track suite that is at once angular and fluid, natural and systematic. Drawn to the restrictions of working solely with one synth and live drums, the pair found creativity in limitation, developing a compositional dialogue between the sonic timbres of Kirk’s productions and Matt’s percussive practice. Evoking the primitive yet complex form of the plant from which it takes its name, Yucca features tracks that are built around rhythmic ratios of the Fibonacci sequence. Mirroring spiral patterns exhibited in nature, each track evolves like a cellular structure of its own, from the livewire syntax of ‘Chirp’ and the deconstructed ebb and flow of ‘Ferns’, to the mini-album’s title track, where crisp grooves flit between modulated electronics like fireflies. “I’ve always been inspired by music that is complex without sounding complex,” Matt explains. He maintains a sense of bounce amid the intricate phrasing and cites drummers Roy Haynes and his grandson Marcus Gilmore as inspirations, alongside sabar drummers from Senegal and Mridangam drumming of South India. With a shared background in hip-hop and the swung beats of J Dilla and Flying Lotus, Kirk Barley and Matt Davies were also inspired by the minimalism of Terry Riley and the sparse palette of dub techno. Written and recorded in Lewisham in the spring and summer of 2023, Yucca follows the release of Axis in 2022, with the duo having also performed at festivals such as Rewire and Waking Life, and recorded live sessions for FACT magazine and Worldwide FM. The third release on Yorkshire-based Odda Recordings, following Kirk Barley’s Marionette and Flaer’s Preludes, Yucca confirms the label’s reputation for championing music on the unstable ground between the organic and the synthetic.