MUSIC

Stunning compilation of great soul songs. The third in a six part series of compilations following a similar logic as Harry Smith’s Anthology Of American Folk Music – only where Smith covered folk, blues, gospel and old timey, this compilation covers just American soul music recorded between 1960 and 1972. Many deep ballads and a few rockers. Features extensive 12 page liner notes with lots of photo’s as well as a real special bonus insert. Cover has gold foil printing, and the records are housed in classy black sleeves. Super fancy limited edition double LP not to be missed.

Mount Wittenberg Orca is named so because it is about whales, it was inspired by events on Mt. Wittenberg in California, and because it elaborates on David Longstreth's obsession with vocal harmony introduced on Dirty Projectors' 2009 album Bitte Orca. This seven-song, twenty-one minute collection is the first original music the band has recorded since Bitte Orca, and it feels more like a small album than an EP. It is also their most staggering collaboration yet — with the Icelandic artist Björk.

The music — originally written to be performed unamplified in a small Manhattan bookstore — was guided by a conversation between Longstreth and Björk about the small theaters in Italy where opera was born in the 1500s. The recording was informed by the simple, direct feel of early rock & roll recordings from the '50s. The band and Björk rehearsed for three days at the Rare Book Room in Brooklyn, and then recorded the songs as quickly and as live as possible, overdubbing only lead vocals and solos. The result feels like part children's story, part choral music from some strange future.

It's unlike anything else in the Projectors' body of work: Nat Baldwin's bass is massive and lumbering, like the silhouette of some undersea creature. Drums and guitars, so crucial to the songs on Bitte Orca, are all but absent. Instead, it's all about voices — and the voices are astonishing. Longstreth, sharing lead vocal duties with Björk, exudes a limber confidence. The Projectors women Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Haley Dekle sound beautiful and virtuosic. And Björk, seismic and elemental as always, sounds fresh in this new context, singing lead on half the songs.

This record is a triumph for Björk and for Dirty Projectors. It merges the energy and rawness of the band's live shows with the intricate arrangement and delicate beauty of Bitte Orca, and seems to do it effortlessly. Björk abides as a kind of artistic patron saint, sharing the spotlight rather than dominating it. Her mix of sophistication and emotion, of composition and instantaneity, has become the blueprint for a generation of creative musicians — and with Mount Wittenberg Orca, Dirty Projectors prove themselves at the forefront of that generation. 

A cult work that has been talked about for years by some music lovers in Japan is now officially available for the first time! ethereal, mysterious sound.

A performance of the single-note percussion instrument "quire chime" by 12 users of "Yamato Kogen Taiyo no Ie", a support facility for people with disabilities in Yamazoe-mura, Nara Prefecture. The fresh and transparent tones, played one by one and at random, eventually formed a series of beautiful music. I wonder if there has ever been such pure and unadulterated music. This work is the ultimate improvised ambient that penetrates deep into the listener's subconscious.
Chee Shimizu

The artist made a strong debut with the "Coastlines EP" released in the summer of 2018, followed by the "Coastlines EP2" in January 2019 and their first album "Coastlines" in the summer of the same year. Released on the prestigious Be With Records label in the UK, they quickly gained attention in the worldwide chillout Balearic scene and elsewhere, and will release their latest full-length album "Coastlines2" now.

Coastlines' latest album, "Coastlines 2," is finally released, and while maintaining the same concept as the first album, it spins a more precise and beautifully polished magic hour.

Emotional Rescue is delighted to reissue for the first time, the legendary Ernest Ranglin teaming up with Noel Williams aka King Sporty, on this 1983 meeting of reggae guitar legend and Miami disco boogie don that resulted in this highly sought after 6 track mini-LP.

A defining guitarist and composer in the development of Jamaican music, Ranglin leads little introduction. In a career spanning over 50 years, he was involved in the move from mento and calypso to ska and on to reggae, playing on the groundbreaking recording of My Boy Lollipop itself, before going on to work with the likes of the Skatalies, Prince Buster, Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley.

Born in 1932 in Manchester, West Jamaica before moving to Kingston, Ranglin’s self-taught chordal and rhythmic approach blended jazz, mento and reggae with percussive guitar solos. On moving to Florida in 1982, he teamed up with scene king, Williams to present ‘a new style’, mixing the bass heavy boogie disco the producer was famous for with Ranglin’s unique playing.

Featuring a who’s who of the Miami scene including Bobby Caldwell, Timmy Thomas, Betty Wright and Williams himself, the rearranged order starts here with Soft Touch. A retake of Thomas’ TK Disco (and Cosmic) classic Africano, before a skanking remake of the William’s standard, Keep On Dancing and title bomber Be What You Want Be, crown the match of reggae and vocal disco. Also, included is a beautiful take on Anthony Hester’s R&B classic, In The Rain, while the record closes with the choice Papa “Doo” and jammer Why Not. 

Venus Penguin," the 33rd album of 2022, features legendary French guitarist Noël Akchoté, Brazilian Antonio Loureiro and Frederico Heliodoro, who are considered the new Minas generation, and American guitarist Adam Ratner, who is creating a new musical culture with Louis Cole and Sam Gendell.

Mount Analogue," the 35th album by guitarist Shin Sasakubo from Chichibu.

The legendary lost album by Ghia! Street soul / downtempo magic, recorded 1988 to 1991. Distributed by wordandsound.net. Let’s get it straight: "This is" is THE album by Ghia. It catches the band at its peak and features 10 songs, including not only their impeccable hit, "What’s Your Voodoo?" but a full arsenal of yet unheard, timeless, and soulful music without equal. The songs on the album, which were recorded between 1988 and 1991, could be considered forerunners of the downtempo genre, with one foot in the late 1980s street soul direction but sparkling with touches of synth pop and contemporary jazz-funk. Genre limitations aside, all that Ghia ever wanted to do was create music—good music—and you will hear this in the depth of the compositions. When Ghia expanded from the dynamic duo of composers Lutz Boberg and Frank Simon to a trio with singer Lisa Ohm, it was meant to be something special. While Boberg and Simon had worked with different singers before, it was Lisa who set a new benchmark with her clear and powerful voice. Ohm had already been active as a professional musician since the 1970s and was connected with bands from the infamous Schneeball collective. While recording with Ghia at the Cottage studio, she could also be heard as the key background singer on many Georgie Red and George Kochbeck productions. The album starts with "Keep Your House In Disorder," which has yet again become another classic song from the band’s catalog since it was featured as the B-side of the "What’s Your Voodoo?" reissue. The song is about a relationship in which the woman has trouble adapting to her boyfriend's turn in life. He tells her to "keep your house in disorder," meaning don't take things too seriously, don't stand still, and you will do better to take the sideroads in life. "This Is" continues with the downtempo numbers "Crystal Silence" and "Close to You." Both are deep, one-of-a-kind, and previously unissued street soul ballads. On these two tracks, you can still hear the band’s roots in jazz-funk. Hence, as a follower of the band's output may have yet recognized, instrumentals of these two tracks can be found on their first LP, "Curaçao Blue." In fact, "Close to You" was one of the band’s first compositions. Earlier recordings of the song exist with different singers and different vocals, but it wasn’t perfect until Lisa laid down the final version and a choir was added. It’s difficult for us to recall any late-80s soul tune as beautiful and intriguing as this one. The final section, which begins with "so much baby we can say," sounds ahead of its time, reminiscent of mid-90s contemporary R&B. Next up is "Eskimo," an equally brilliant and soulful downtempo composition, but with more focus on synth sounds than the previous tracks. Once more, it showcases the creative lyricism of the song writers, Boberg and Simon, imagining a train ride during a rainy and cold night: "feeling like an Eskimo in an igloo in New York." Eskimo leads to the aforementioned classic, "What’s Your Voodoo?" Originally released in 1991 on the small Mikado label, it was reissued on our label in 2019. We already called this "one of the most wonderful and mystic slow motion synth pop tunes ever recorded"—and we still mean it! Let’s face it: this was done before British bands like Massive Attack, Tricky, and Portishead laid the foundation of trip-hop. Dare we call Ghia’s music "proto trip-hop"? As a special bonus, the digital version of the LP features a previously unreleased mix of the song, which includes added samples; this should clarify how close Ghia actually was to the sound of the mid-'90s. Here it should be mentioned that their unique tone didn’t come out of nowhere. At the time, composer and guitarist Simon was building his own effects processors to generate the sounds he had in mind. The keyboards and guitars on "What’s Your Voodoo?" were passed through a unique, privately built processor. Combined with a deep synth bassline and the exceptional haunting vocals by Lisa Ohm, it gives the track all the magic the title implies. But this isn’t yet where the story ends. "Angel On Your Shoulder" and "L O M E" are two more completely unissued and great tracks from the band's shelved works. Being a bit more uptempo than the rest of the album, they fall between contemporary soul/R&B and synthesized pop music. And of course, another downtempo hit needed to be featured on the album: "You Won’t Sleep on My Pillow." It was the original A-side of their single release in 1991, and since then it has been featured on various compilations. The album concludes with a really strong ballad entitled "I Haven’t Got The Power." Here we hear only pianist and keyboardist Lutz Boberg with Lisa Ohm, without further instrumentation. Basically recorded in a live session, this showcases once more the talent and ingenuity within the Ghia project. Whether you agree or not, "This is" may easily be considered one of the best German late 80s/early 90s soul pop and downtempo albums ever recorded. Cautiously, it may even be submitted as the missing link between mid/late 80s soul by bands such as Sade, and later trip-hop groups like Massive Attack. Let us celebrate Ghia and their music, which had been shelved for more than 30 years but has now finally been released on The Outer Edge.

9ms is the duo of Simon Popp and Florian König. On their wide ranging debut album ‚Pleats‘ the tech-savvy drummers offer grooves from the dubbier realms of World Music and Krautrock - some meditative and light, some thick as wall and steady as a clock. The album was recorded live in a large wooden hall in the Bavarian Alps with only three microphones. Using various infrared and magnetic field sensors, Popp and König were able to translate their movements into control voltage, which they then used to trigger and tweak synthesizers and a myriad of effects. A way for two humans to become one with their mystic machinery.

A late ‘90s neo-noir ambient jungle masterpiece, Christoph De Babalon’s 'If You’re Into It, I’m Out Of It' sounds something like Thomas Köner re-assembling fierce, unrelenting D&B with his frozen gear. Now a quarter of a century old, it still occupies its own distinct notch on the continuum; copied endlessly, never bettered. Christoph De Babalon was a key member of Digital Hardcore, the mutant Berlin-based splinter cell who fused UK rave music with more experimental, Teutonic techno, Ambient and hardedge politics to brutal effect during the mid-late ‘90s. CDB was always somehow on another level to most of his peers and labelmates at DHR, less interested in purely aggy breakbeat energy, his was a sound that also embraced windswept, ice-cold ambient atmospherics and a bleak sort of romance that was at odds with the almost cartoonish “sound terror” aesthetic of the label. For us, ‘If You’re Into It, I’m Out Of It’ really distills a feeling of that era, as the utopian outlook of rave’s early years had given way to something much darker, more maudlin, perhaps symptomatic of an ennui with dance music’s hyper-commercial land grab, a kind of pre-millennial tension. Either way, it provided the perfect soundtrack to ravers who were spending more time developing virtual lives online, or (speaking from experience) who weren’t yet old enough to go raving, but were shelled with media images and 2nd hand impressions of the culture, which had by then morphed into the prevailing trends of garage, trance, and prog house, and was but a ghost of its original, loony self. It’s an album torn between extreme states; on the one hand going harder than the rest in killer rave moves such as the hardcore rattler ‘Dead (Too)’, the epic amen + drone blow-out ‘My Confession’, or the cut-throat beast ‘Water’. But on the other, it gets properly haunting on the remarkable 15 minute opener ‘Opium’, or with the sublime, Gas-like suspension system of ‘Brilliance’, and the funereal, bombed-out bliss of ‘High Life (Theme)’. Christoph De Babalon effectively plotted out terrain that bridged DJ Scud’s rugged jungle breakcore with soundscaping more commonly associated with Thomas Köner or Deathprod, and in the process set the ground for myriad contemporary producers and sounds ranging from Raime and Blackest Ever Black to Demdike, Pessimisst and beyond. ‘If You’re Into It, I’m Out of It’ was, and still is, a deadly statement of intent, with an aesthetic that still strongly resonates and influences today. Classic.

The music on this recording is performed by a kind of fictitious chamber ensemble situated in an imaginary room outlined by textures that alternate between gestural foreground and passive landscape. The three pieces contained within this release are tied together by sharing similar harmonic material and instrumentation and could ideally be perceived as parts of one long performance stretching through the two sides of the record. The textural room in which this musical performance operates is unreliable, unstable, constantly shifting in size and activity from sparse and open to dense and claustrophobic. Inside this non-euclidean performance space a chamber ensemble made up of zithers expanded through analog tape transposition, harmonium and organ, double bass, digital FM, feedback-convolution and Serge modular synthesizer perform a music made from justly tuned intervals arranged in a way that blurs the distinction between traditional minor and major tonal harmony in favor of harmonic progression within an essentially modal framework. In terms of the material used to make these pieces, essentially all non-harmonic sounds are contaminated field-recordings. They have gone through a sort of feedback process between digital and analog, or acoustic, processing where field-recorded material has been edited, processed and re-amplified and recorded again in acoustic spaces that shape the character of the material and imprint acoustic identities on the recordings. The tonal instruments were treated in a process analogous to this - harmonic material built from recordings and digitally generated synthesis was recorded, transcribed, rearranged and overdubbed again with additional electronic or acoustic instruments to form a composite electroacoustic instrumental sound.

Cucina Povera and Ben Vince’s debut full-length collaboration deploys an engrossing suite of noirish nocturnes based around Maria Rossi aka Cucina Povera’s muzzy vocal loops and Ben Vince’s accompaniments on saxophone, synth and piano. Born out of wonder, innocence and creative discovery, it’s the sound of two exploratory collaborators swimming into each other's ideas, from Terry Riley-esque transcendence to late-night sax swirls shrouding Rossi’s distinctive voice in dimly lit psychedelic smoke. London’s abundant waterways and parks provide an oneiric muse for Cucina Povera and Ben Vince’s resounding debut full-length collaboration, an engrossing suite of weightless sax, synth and disklavier-bedded soundscapes that land somewhere between Grouper and Terry Riley. As a newcomer to London, Rossi was caught up in a sort of wondrous reverie - a feeling that seeps through every movement of thia almost hour long album. Vince's plasmic echoes and Rossi's aerial delivery form a poetic union, twisting and painting each sound in pearlescent shades, finding a musical confluence between Rossi's words - fluid, dreamy, hazy ideations - and Vince's shadowy renditions. Rossi's folk roots shine through like cracks of dawn sunlight on 'Sumu Puistossa' ("fog in the park"), reverberating over organ and dream-zone sax; her words tip into muted surrealism thanks to the controlled chaos of Vince's bleak treatments. His grasp of jazz is transfixing: bending sax motifs like ghostly memories of music from another timeline, smudging them into the soundfield. It’s most effective on the title tracx, where sickly, dissonant notes flicker like an almost-extinguished candle alongside motorised furniture music courtesy of a Disklavier. From the Terry Riley-esque transcendence of '∞' to the sacred incantation of long-form closer 'Pikku Muurahaiskeko' ("little anthill"), the pair expose a new layer of creativity with each turn, gradually zooming out from discreet, vulnerable beauty to encompass a gently orchestrated chaos of sustained, sublime tension. Stunning.

After their celestial Arcturian Corridor opened proceedings on Quindi, London-based brothers Clive and Mark Ives are back with a new record. When Woo first began recording at home in the early 70s, Clive and Mark were the embodiment of furtive genius. Since re-emerging in 2013, they’ve released scores of albums, collaborated with Seahawks, and have now struck up a productive relationship with Quindi. On Paradise In Pimlico, you’re hearing a very different sound to the one gently creaked out on early classics like Into The Heart Of Love. This is fulsome, contemporary production rich in detail and artful sound design, but crucially, Clive and Mark’s gorgeously melodic approach remains open and inquisitive, even with the sheen and shimmer of modern studio techniques. Woo sound more confident than ever in their composition, too. The crystalline, fragile tones of ‘Cadenza D’Innocenza’ glide through key changes that spell out an engrossing narrative, while the cascading melodies on ‘Moment To Moment’ pirouette across the space between notes with masterful poise. ‘Paradise In Pimlico’ is an illustrious suite of orchestral composition played out with the lightest touch, framed by the slightest of synthesized fauna and topped off with tender sax and flute. Album closer ‘In Case Love Fails’ takes on a subtly cinematic urgency with its undercurrents of walking bass and the strike of the string section (synthetic or otherwise). There’s space for markedly new approaches, too. The rhythm section on ‘The Motorik Mirror’ clunks and pops with a tactile, high-definition quality which teeters between electronic sculpture and clockwork, organic machination. The deft, lightly-brushed drums coursing through ‘Even More Notes’ see Clive and Mark step into a different mood, celebrating the beat as another fluid, tonally-rich texture in the mix and adding a smoky, jazzy hue to the Woo repertoire. It’s far from a drum-focused exercise though. At every turn, you’re confronted with aching beauty and timbral surprises. If there’s one constant throughout Paradise In Pimlico, it’s the omnipresent chimes. These twinkling drops of light scattered throughout are something of a hallmark of Woo, ensuring the lilting, lullaby-like magic of their music persists whichever direction they head in.

Released for the first time in 2009, ‘utp_’ is the third installment of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s V.I.R.U.S.'s series. It was commissioned for the 400th anniversary of Mannheim, Germany. The flowing 10-section multimedia work derives its shape from a rasterized structure of the southwestern city, founded in 1608. The recording documents the work’s debut performed by Ensemble Modern at the National Theatre in Mannheim. The music embraces the electronic, piano-based palettes, an expanded array of avant-garde chamber instrumentation and natural timbres. It combined the digital visual score created by Carsten Nicolai and Simon Mayer, and lighting design by Nigel Edwards.

Ricardo Villalobos - modular synths, drum machines, keys Samuel Rohrer - drums/percussion, electronics, modular synths, keys The Ricardo Villalobos / Samuel Rohrer partnership has yielded increasingly interesting results over the past few years, with the former’s remixes of the latter’s trio Ambiq being supplemented by further reinterpretations of Rohrer’s solo work and live meetings at selected events like Berlin’s Funkhaus. As should be the case with any strong collaboration, this partnership has been based on mutual challenge rather than compromise, seeing each participant shuttle key technical and emotive aspects of the other’s work to previously unexpected places. Those who have been closely following this relationship will notice a definite sense of continuity between previous outings and the new collaborative release entitled MICROGESTURES. As with those earlier Villalobos / Rohrer pairings, these five new pieces are defined by a special quality of being many things that once: that is to say, depending on the listener’s own level of focus, these can feel very tightly constructed and disciplined, or playful and freely wandering. That the tracks are equally engaging regardless of one’s chosen listening “mode” is a testament to the level of thought put into them; you could almost imagining the creators poring over some elaborate sketched set of architectural blueprints rather than coolly monitoring the usual multi-track editing software. Altogether the music here is firmly a-melodic and percussive, but within these deliberate limitations there is still a greater variety of individual sounds than most would bother with. Each track is its own observatory of micro-gestures clustering together into a dense communicative fog or a sort of robotic sound swarm. Yet while all these tracks are variations on that theme, each one has its own character and, consequently, its own rewards in terms of the exact sectors of the imagination that it activates. Take for example “Cochlea” and its twin “Helix,” on which the magnetizing, busy layers of percussion are tempered with mischievously disruptive blossomings of digital noise, as well as sampled radio communications (which again bring us back to the idea of listeners’ attentiveness changing the meaning of this music - these curious transmissions can either be taken as a purely aesthetic element or as something to be actively decoded). Club-oriented elements are also not absent from this suite, particularly on “Incus” with its traditional sequenced baseline, crisp synthetic trap and hats, and dizzily sliding set of bell-like tones laid on top. Yet this track, too, is powered as much by its restless desire to deviate as by its rhythmic consistency: throughout the eleven-minute running time, a mass of ambiguous and restless machine sounds build a parallel narrative, and will maybe prompt the occasional glance over the shoulder as they seem to be taking on their own life. “Lobule” rounds out the program with the most rhythmically eventful sound set of the five. What this all adds up to is a confident music which builds that quality from its faith in possibilities rather than firm conclusions: it’s an inspiring addition to both the musical landscape and reality in general.

40th Anniversary Edition - newly remastered from the master tapes, with an additional bonus LP of instrumentals and the previously unreleased “Narration Theme.” 

Daytime Viewing (1979-80) is an extended narrative song, based on a casual analysis of daytime television drama and the audience phenomena such programming addresses. The piece explores the use of fantasy as a survival mechanism against loneliness, illustrating the human compulsion to inflate the mundane to mythological proportions. A central female character weaves tales, using threads of personal experience and the idea of TV as friend, as mantra, and as transformational window between imagined spectacle and the pedestrian plane. 

Originally released as a private cassette edition [recorded, 1982; Chez Hum-Boom release, 1983] documenting the collaborative performance piece of the same name by Jacqueline Humbert & David Rosenboom. This heady, thoroughly enjoyable work was first made available on CD and LP in 2013 by Unseen Worlds. Jacqueline Humbert (aka J. Jasmine) is a songwriter of brains and wit on par with Robert Ashley, with whom she's worked extensively. David Rosenboom's complex, harmonic electronic arrangements are accentuated brilliantly by percussion from William Winant. Daytime Viewing can happily be added to a small but significant group of work that, through lesser-known paths, engaged in an equally revelatory reexamination of the Great American Songbook as Minimalism did with 20th Century composition. 

“The Concert” is the first discographic collaboration between percussionist Alexandre Babel and visual artist Latifa Echakhch. The record is intimately linked to the eponymous exhibition presented at the Swiss Pavilion during the 59th Venice Art Bienniale. For her exhibition in the Swiss Pavilion, Latifa Echakhch created an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allowed the visitor a complete perception of time and of his own body. What is the origin of rhythm? How does the body perceive time? How does the mind rearrange it? Can we substitute one perception for another, the visual for the sound? Can fragments of memory go back in time and recreate a different story? Her proposal entered a dialogue with the building around it, designed by Bruno Giacometti. The artist revisited its architectural programme as well as the prototypical progression of these exhibition spaces, originally defined for the display of classical art. She appropriated the entirety of the spaces, simultaneously exploring continuity, movement and sequence. Their relationship to light, and the different sounds that emerge from them. Yet the exhibition was entirely silent and the musical composition “The Concert” functions as its sound rendering, by following a similar path. This one-sided vinyl is a complementary and inseparable partner piece to the exhibition and its eponymous catalogue, the latter having been published in April 2022 by Sternberg Press. The music features field recordings made at the Swiss Pavilion itself as well as pre-recorded percussion sounds and significant contributions by the Berlin-based musicians Jon Heilbronn, Rebecca Lenton, Theo Nabicht, Nikolaus Schlierf. The record, available only after the closing of Latifa Echakhch’s exhibition offers a concluding phase to the project. The resonance of its sensory score. It reactivates the experience of the physical journey of the installation, without imposing itself as a transcription or an illustration. Through texture, temporality and its totality, the record stands as a resonance of the rhythms that have structured the pavilion, the harmonies that have composed it and the sounds that have inhabited it.

Foam On A Wave is proud to present the first international issue of this chameleonic, shapeshifting record, from one of Hungary's most prolific musician and film composers, János Másik. At times it calls to mind 23 Skidoo, Talking Heads and The Pop Group, at others it sits in its own corner of the room. 1989 was a revolutionary year. For many in the West the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the Autumn of Nations; the End of History and the triumph of progress. In Hungary, the year saw the Round Table Talks establish a new multi-party democracy and the effective end of communist rule after 40 years - Rendszerváltás; 'regime change'. It's hard to ignore these cataclysms while listening to Trance Balance. After all, its initial release was on Hungaropop, 'one of the first privately owned, independent labels launched after the liberalization of the market in Warsaw Pact-era Hungary' (we highly recommend delving further into their remarkable catalogue). Is music always an expression of the shifting political landscape? Or does it exist beyond it? These are all questions that percolate as the needle drops. Freud, a ghost from the Dual-Monarchy, runs in streams through the album sleeve. Trance Balance itself is reminiscent of a trip, transporting the individual through a semi-conscious dreamland. Synthesisers woosh and swirl overhead. The percussion is propulsive. Voices take on the guise of characters, guide-like, beckoning. There are Brechtian interludes where the musical fourth wall is punctured. At points, the listener awakes to playful refrains, bohemian folk song and calypso detours. This is a masterwork of musical surrealism - an act of pure intuition - free and honest. A manifesto in all but words. We'll let you decide how much it has to do with politics.

Highly awaited repress of the long sold-out compilation Hearsay I-Land, which encompasses Roland P. Young's 80s foray into synth-pop, dance, funk, soul, and new wave, including the downtempo classic, Ballo-Balla. Includes the I-Land 12" in its entirety, as well as most of the Hearsay Evidence lp.

Origin of the Alimonies is Liturgy’s fifth full-length album and their first to fully integrate Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s vision of total art, or what she calls Perichoresis, with her musical compositions. The music amplifies a dramatic narrative addressing the question of the origin of all things, which itself aesthetically grounds the content of Hunt-Hendrix’s ongoing philosophical YouTube series on her System of Transcendental Qabala. The album is by far Liturgy’s most meticulous and radical statement, pushing their characteristic synthesis between black metal, minimalism, experimental club music, and 19th–century romanticism to new extremes. Exploring microtonality, free improvisation, polymetric structures and Richard Wagner’s ideas of musikdrama and leitmotif, Hunt-Hendrix employs her unique “burst beat” technique to bind together the rhythmic signatures of metal, experimental club and classical music in the service of speech patterns and narrative flow. Featuring the virtuosic playing of bandmates Leo Didkovsky, Tia Vincent-Clark and Bernard Gann, the entire album also includes flute, piano, harp, strings and horns performed by a 8-piece chamber ensemble drawn from New York’s various avant-garde music scenes. Influenced by kabbalah, German Idealism and French post-structuralism, the opera tells the story of a cosmogonical traumatic explosion between OIOION and SIHEYMN, a pair of divine beings whose thwarted love tears a wound from which civilization is generated, producing the Four Alimonies of the intelligible universe and the task of collective emancipation. Outside the narrative frame, the piece is meant to foster productive discord between the modes of attention and political commitments that implicitly accompany its various genres, as well as to hover in the liminal territory between the music industry, the art world and the contemporary philosophy community, reiterating the message of Jesus via William Blake by belonging nowhere, only half-comprehensible within any established framework, puncturing hypocritical ideologies while crying out in the name of love. The album is accompanied by a new, eponymous album-length operatic video written, directed, shot, edited by and starring Hunt-Hendrix, who uses her evolving body, in the wake of her recent gender affirmation as a trans woman, as the medium for the story. credits released November 20, 2020

Folksongs and Ballads by Tia Blake & Her Folk-Group, is more than just a “lost classic”. As clear and honest as can be, Folksongs and Ballads is a magnetic record, a refuge like only Nick Drake, Nico, and a few others have been able to create. A graceful, delicately minimalist approach to classic Appalachian and British folk songs.The perfect balance between melancholy and daydream. Originally released only in France in 1971, Ici Bientôt is very pleased to present the first-ever reissue on vinyl. When she recorded her only album, Tia Blake was nineteen years old and had just arrived in Paris a year and a half beforehand. She spent most of her time at Disco’Thé, a record shop in the Latin Quarter, a free space, peaceful and inspiring, a hub for students as well as the local artistic community. There, Tia would occasionally sing—when she managed to overcome her shyness. Two young guitarists who were passionate fans of folk music and regulars at the shop began to accompany her, forming “Her Folk Group.” One year later, they cut 11 tracks at Pierre Barouh’s Studios Saravah. Folksongs and Ballads is composed of traditional tunes that have been covered many times, but they’re not the best-known folk standards. A collection of stories ranging from the Middle Ages to the 1960s, bringing together sublimely doleful ballads, lamentations for a lost lover, and an unexpected, brilliant version of the road anthem “Plastic Jesus.” Tia Blake's haunting, unaffected voice captivates and comforts us, wrapping us in its cool embrace. Meanwhile, the tasteful, stripped-down, mellow acoustic arrangements provided by the guitarists, reminiscent of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, occasionally supported by a kena flute, have created the space Tia Blake needed to reinvent these traditional songs. Folksongs and Ballads is a timeless record, deep and unique, a longtime companion for repeated listening, in the vein of works by Sibylle Baier, Bridget St. John and Vashti Bunyan.

With Synthetic Hearts, Tubatsi Mpho Moloi, Msaki and Clément Petit issue an invitation to the listener and lover to journey to another place. Here, hearts, experiences, and sounds meet, shift and evolve across an inventive nine track album. Experimental, playful and complex, the project merges voices, instruments and sounds, across geographies and genres, creating sparse, yet lush atmospherics that spin on the universal themes of love. As skilled musical shapeshifters, Synthetic Hearts melds Msaki and Moloi’s folk sensibilities with electronic elements, as Petit teases out distinct textures from his cello across the record. Together, they look inward, in an introspective and conversational project that teases out emotions held within – towards considering what is shared and private in the messiness of our relationships with ourselves and others. On Synthetic Hearts, love, longing, confusion, sorrow, despondency and queries are opened up and negotiated in songs that vibrate with their naked, honest and tender vulnerability.

Previously unreleased extended single mixes.

Felicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Limpid As The Solitudes cuts through sound-making techniques to enter a new zone of sonic revelations. The record recalls the turn-of-the-century Mille Plateaux glitch era, the warmth of La Monte Young's drones, acousmatic non-space recordings made by GRM artists, 4AD's floor-gazing guitar sound, and blissfully diverse field recordings. But, one could equally equate it with entirely different recording sources. Limpid As The Solitudes has a widescreen sound that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Warm, comforting and also unsettling in unpredictable ways. Deliberate yet exploratory, it's a record composed of opposites and contrasts, following historical guidelines yet also throwing them out of the window. To describe the album as ambient would indicate passive engagement with the sound; leave it to play in the background and one could miss a lot of the joy. Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma describe the record as a series of postcards - things and sounds that happen vertically as a slow ascension, vessels communicating in dreams. In this collaborative recording, there is a feeling of "becoming" - a concrete sound turns into a electronic sound that turns into a spiral-like melody which then furls/unfurls at the same time. The album title as well as track titles, are all verses stolen from Sylvia Plath's poems, Atkinson notes, "like dropped pearls from a lost collar." Trying further to capture the record's poetic impulses, it reflects "Empathy to objects and nature's elements, meteorological states, seasons that answer to your heart, granular etchings carved and sustained to create a blurred sentimental landscape. The finale is more optimistic than Plath's poetry. Love and lyricism win, the music soaring from deep water to interstellar galaxies." The cover is another key, an image by Julien Carreyn of a young woman wearing destroyed jeans, playing with bubble wrap. The image is intended to give the viewer an eerie 1990's feeling that echoes the recording and films by Hal Hartley or Wong Kar Wai. Be sure to come back to this record more than once; it's then that it's power will work. Recall the sound of a lover, a garden once walked through, an echo of a record once loved. To be appreciated, "Limpid As The Solitudes" requires immersion as if in a hot spring, letting the sounds float and alter perceptions and memories. Mastered and cut by Helmut Erler at D+M. Printed photographs by Julien Carreyn on glossy inner and outer sleeve.