MUSIC

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

1982, Brussels: The former au pair for Rick Wakeman of Yes and two of her teenage friends are at the doorstep of Les Disques Du Crepuscule, ready to cut an album with Gilles Martin. Living on busking wages and next door to Tuxedomoon, their work results in a contemporary bossanova record that would provide a missing link between Antonio Carlos Jobim and Kraftwerk. Camino Del Sol was issued and promptly forgotten, with Isabelle Antena moving toward jazz in Asia and the others returning to France. Twenty years later, it was findable only as a VG+ LP with a sticker price of $4.99. Intrigued by the striking cover’s sunlit patio furniture emptiness basking in the south of France, we scooped up Camino Del Sol and grouped the extant Antena recordings from that exceptional period by session. Our definitive 2LP reissue of the original five-song mini-LP adds the group’s first 12” (a cover of Jobim’s “Girl From Ipanema,” naturally), the Seaside Weekend 12”, compilation tracks, and two previously unissued cuts, recasting this short-lived combo’s forward-thinking milemarker as a modern-day masterstroke.

Hailu Mergia is a one-man band. In 1985, master accordionist and veteran bandleader, arranger and keyboardist released the Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument cassette. In a nostalgic effort to bring back the vintage accordion sound of his youth, Hailu gave Ethiopian music a sonic makeover. He was already celebrated for his work with the groundbreaking Addis Ababa ethio-jazz and funk outfit Walias Band. With imagination and a visionary sense of the self-contained possibilities of modern music, he captured the popular sounds of the past using the modern tools of the day. Hailu Mergia weaves Moog and DX7 synthesizers, Rhodes electric piano and rhythm machine into the rich harmonic layering of his accordion, creating hauntingly psychedelic, elegantly arranged instrumentals. These tunes draw from famous traditional and modern Ethiopian songs, as Hailu brilliantly matches lush Amhara, Tigrinya and Oromo melodies with otherworldly flavors soaked in jazz and blues, synthesizing a futuristic landscape. He balances Ethiopian music's signature melodic shape with beautiful analog synth touches, floating upon clouds of hypnotically minimal rhythm tracks. Hailu Mergia was born in Debre Birhan, Showa Province, Ethiopia in 1938 (1946 in the European calendar) to parents Tewabech Ezineh and Mergia Lulessa, who were of Amhara and Oromo ancestry, respectively. His mother took him to Aynemisa, close to Addis, where he grew up from age 3 until he was 10 when they moved to the capital Addis Ababa. Hailu went to Shimelis Habte high school but dropped out before graduating. In 1952 (1960 in European calendar), he joined the army music department as a boy scout to support his mother. Mergia stayed in the army almost two years, learning how to read and write music. After Hailu left the army, he started singing in small bars as a freelance musician. He joined various pick-up bands, touring across the Ethiopian provinces as a singer and accordion player for almost a year. After the group broke up, he started performing in nightclubs like Addis Ababa, Patrice Lumumba, Asegedech Alamrew, Sombrero, Zula Club and others. At Zula Club he and his mates formed Walias Band and did something no other band in Ethiopian nightclub history had done: they started buying their own musical instruments. Until then the club owners were supplying the instruments and had the power to fire musicians at will. For the first time ever Walias Band signed a contract with the owner of Venus Club as a group thereby protecting themselves from club owners. Mergia and Walias Band went on to do gigs at hotels like Wabi Shebele and the Hilton. After playing almost eight years at the Hilton Hotel, Mergia and Walias Band came to the United States and toured widely in 1982-1983. Afterwards, some of of the band stayed in America while others went back to Addis. That was a heartbreaking time for the band. They considered themselves a family, and they knew they had broken new ground in the history of Addis nightclub musicians. They had helped make the Ashantis Band from Kenya famous in Addis. They were the first private band who played for state dinners at the palace for the Derg government (twice). And, they were the first private band to tour the USA. After the break-up of Walias Band, Mergia settled in the States and formed Zula Band with Moges Habte and Tamiru Ayele, playing in different restaurants and touring in the States and Europe. At that time, Mergia made a one-man band recording with accordion for the first time, mixing in Rhodes electric piano, Moog synthesizer and a rhythm machine. That was 1985. This recording was inspired by the early memories of his first instrument, the accordion. After the break-up of Zula Band in 1992, he quit performing and ran Soukous Club for seven years with his partners Moges and Tamiru. Nowadays he's making his living as a self-employed taxi driver at Dulles International Airport while continuing to record his music and practice as often as possible. The reissue of this recording brings back a moment when Ethiopian music was shifting from acoustic-based performances to recordings using more and more synthesized elements. While the results of that shift have their critics Hailu Mergia's initial experiments with solo instrumental music based on Ethiopian folk and popular music captures a singular feeling dripping in ambiance and very human emotional energy.

Originally released in 1991, PT House’s debut album ‘Big World’ signaled the arrival of a young Soweto rapper named Nelson Mohale (later better known as Dr House) on South Africa’s early house and kwaito scene. Teaming up with producer Danny Bridgens — an up-and-coming studio hand and session guitarist for the likes of Yvonne Chaka Chaka and Margino, also releasing as The Stone and Leroy Stone — the pair drew influence from US & UK hip-house contemporaries but were determined to give their sound a local flavour, as well as a positive vibe that looked forward to a brighter future. PT House’s four-track debut was a bold statement that still holds up today, reissued for the first time on Afrosynth Records.

Panasonic tracks remixed by Zoviet France and Muslimgauze

Coby Sey is a highly rated experimental musician, producer, vocalist and DJ from Lewisham, South London. Sey is known for recording lo-fi piano instrumentals and leftfield club music. However, debut album ‘Conduit’ sees him creating slow, soulful grooves underpinned by heavy bass, and topped by vocals which moves between speech and rap. The production retains the fuzzy lo-fi quality.

The first in a series of mini compilations exploring instrumental Dub versions of sought after and long out of print titles from the world of Reggae, Disco, Boogie and House. Many of these versions still contain vocals, snippets here and there drenched in delay or reverb, a style you’ll recognise from many of the Jura Soundsystem edits on the label. The late Glen Adams & Finesse open proceedings with their Island Disco cover of Marvin Gaye’s classic, followed on the A2 by a super rare UK Boogie/Brit Funk mix of Tippa Irie’s ‘Panic’ (shouts to Tippa for personally helping to push through the license) and the A side closes with the 80’s leaning ‘Yes I Do’ from Belgium’s Special Occasion. The first half of the B side comes from Carol Williams with the Special Club Dub mix of ‘Can’t Get Away’, originally a one sided promo only 10” from 1983 complete with spoken word intro from Carol thanking New York’s Metro DJs for their support of the song. The LP closes with a Jura Soundsystem Dubby Edit of La Palace De Beaute’s ‘Sin’ pulling back on the vocal and going heavy on the delay.

All My People (self-released on 1 March 2019 and distributed by Rush Hour)

Kyle ShepherdやShane Cooperも参加。南アフリカの重鎮ジャズ・トリオとスイスのリード＆ブラス界の大物2人組が出会うとこうなる！10年以上に渡り、コンテンポラリー・アフリカン・ヨーロピアン・ジャズの革新な勢力としての評判を築いてきたSkyjackによる3作目となる2024年度最新作『Light Cycle』が〈AS-SHAMS〉より満を持して登場！ディープなグルーヴとスリリングなライディング、前衛的な実験性を軸に、ステージでもスタジオでも大活躍する彼らのメンバー全員の作曲をフィーチャーした作品。サイエンス・フィクションの冒険でもあり、センチメンタルな旅でもある本作は、広大な宇宙のサウンドスケープと、記憶や民間伝承の確かな土台を調和させた野心的で完成度の高い逸品に仕上がっています。

Recorded & mixed at Ariwa Sound Studio, Peckham Published by Ariwa Music. Track A2 "Fast Forward Into Dub": was used as a sample in the song "Blue Room" by The Orb.

Bristol multi-instrumentalist, producer and nature freak Will Yates offers a new record from his Memotone alias, an expansive, hypothetical revue titled How Was Your Life? Launching from terrains recognizable to fans of Will’s extensive, restless discography, How Was Your Life? packs up his penchant for baroque druid folk, homespun electronics and weightless woodwinds and explodes them into glistening, fractal star dust. Instigated by the purchase of an antiquated Y2K era guitar synthesizer, the record was produced over the first half of 2022, in a large part the result of in-studio improvisation. Where Will’s previous releases under various guises have often been conceived by conceptual frameworks, HWYL? was carved by equipment that offered both possibilities and parameters that Will relished and explored to the nth degree. The Roland GR33 not only provided sublime guitar sounds but also empowered the guitar to convincingly mimic fretless bass, tabla and a vast percussive array, also summoning an artillery of uniquely outre atmospheres over the course of the record. The resulting concoction sounds familiar yet subtly, unshakeably otherworldly, shaping up as perhaps the most honed, energized and beatific Memotone album to date. Paradise Drips gently lifts off with wobbly guitar, randomized sequences and unidentifiable percussive elements situating us somewhere in an unearthly realm, before Open World zaps the serotonin receptors and gushes with ecstatic warmth, it’s quietly insistent soft disco shuffle and levitational fretless driving towards a totally blissed and very soft “drop”. Forest Zone sees Memotone deep in the green, with a loose, propulsive groove and dancing flutes stumbling into a medieval ritual in the clearing halfway through, and Glow In The Dark deftly bounces between spacey ambience and an undulating no wave vamp. Carved By The Moon is a delightfully melted classical cut, while Canteen Sandwich offers the record’s most explicitly nod to modernity in the form of a nimble drum workout with samurai synths and melodic percussion that heaves towards a genuine peak. Lonehead immediately backs right off, viscerally melancholic clarinet and bubbling fx making for the records most hefty introspective moment, before Walking Backwards simmers all the way down on an wistful arpeggio, rooting back in earthly reality with charmed rhythms and jazzy tunings. Catharsis complete, Memotone is onto the next incarnation. Will Yates has been making music as Memotone since 2010, releasing music on labels like Black Acre, Disktopia and Accidental Meetings, also releasing music as O.G. Jigg and Half Nelson. He’s worked as a producer, session musician and live performer on a broad spectrum of projects, and recently provided source sounds that made up Batu’s “Opal” on Timedance.

"A brittle metronome in a delirious tension landscape, WOMEN'S HOUR are a Glasgow based experimental post-punk duo featuring Contort Yourself head honcho Murray CY and artist Jenny Wicks. Creating noise, harmony and disquiet washed in synth and repetitive guitar, rough beats and distorted vocals, WOMEN'S HOUR are constantly trying to embrace the shouting in their heads." On this, their debut release, a 12 track lp, a true to form jagged 80s post-punk affair, the two piece bring to life the day to day in the grim North through their music. One can almost feel the chill coming from the brittle window panes of the dank drafty flats, filled with asbestos paint, busted heaters, and no hot water flowing for who knows how long. Desperate, urgent, coming close to falling apart, yet pulling it together to make it through to the next song...this is as "British" as it gets (yes we know Scotland is its own thing guys, don't shoot) The sun hasn't shown its face for many months, wind blows through the deserted streets, change jingles around in your pocket, a hungry dog barks. This is the music of Women's Hour. Limited to 300 copies, one time pressing. Includes insert and art by Jenny Wicks of Women's Hour.

Meaning ‘Hi’ in Uruguayan slang, Opa are a South American jazz-funk phenomenon. Fusing Uruguay’s native Candombe rhythms with North American jazz and pop music, Opa’s space-age synthesizers, boisterous grooves and compositional magic expressed a distinctive Afro-Uruguayan voice within the global jazz vernacular: a voice which remains as vital and unique today as when it was recorded, almost half a century ago. Having migrated to New York from Montevideo in the early seventies, Opa were heard playing in a nightclub by renowned producer and label owner Larry Rosen. At Holly Place Studios between July and August 1975, Rosen oversaw Opa’s first recordings using a four track TEAC 3340. The album would become home to some of Opa’s hardest hitting funk jams, with moments of songwriting wonderment and soulful pop and rock progressions combining with the jazz-funk fusion Opa would become known for. Mysteriously (for reasons unknown to the band), Opa’s debut was shelved and remained so until the mid-1990s. But the Back Home recordings were used as demos, gaining Opa a record deal with Milestone Records and the subsequent release of two cult-favourite albums: Goldenwings (1976) and Magic Time (1977). Opa would also collaborate with North American titans including bassist Ron Carter, producer Creed Taylor and Brazilian icons Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Hermeto Pascoal and Milton Nascimento. In more recent years Opa’s music has found new audiences after being sampled by Captain Murphy (aka Flying Lotus) and Madlib. For fans of Azymuth, Weather Report, Cortex and The Headhunters.

A key document of the late ’70s experimental music scene in Kansai, Japan, R.N.A. Organism’s R.N.A.O Meets P.O.P.O (first released by legendary Osaka label Vanity Records in 1980) is a hallucinatory trip of dubby bass, churning guitars, sputtering rhythm boxes, twisted vocals and unidentifiable sound effects. With the vinyl out of print for decades now, Mesh-Key is honored to present this deluxe, fully authorized reissue, sourced from the miraculously well-preserved, original reel-to-reel tapes. Carefully remastered by Stephan Mathieu, this album has never sounded better.

Sangre Voss returns with the idiosyncratic ‘Brogkl EP’ this March, marking five years of Third Place. In the five years since his debut ‘Dance Class’ 12” on Will Hofbauer’s Third Place in 2019, London-via-Devon producer Sangre Voss has continued to melt minds and confuse dancefloors with his singular, head-turning productions. Having featured on Rhythm Section and Fabric Records, he’s also appeared on The Wire’s Below The Radar compilation series and on labels Control Freak, International Extraterrestrial Music, and more. Here though, the label’s main gun returns with four curious and brilliant productions. ‘Smyyre Myyrgu’ leads with folky strings and stabs as chunky percussion and mystical pads unfurl throughout. ‘Ersatz Terrasse’ is a floaty slow-fast affair, sliding through bright keys, skippy drums, and otherworldly effects. On the flip, ‘density of aha’ sees trippy, sluggish vocals and punchy drums combine, forming a bedrock for twisted, randomised synths. The title track ‘Brogkl’ turns up the heat with wonky leads, heavy low end, and wild guitar-like twangs to close out the record, ending another essential offering from the thrilling and always unique musical mind of Sangre Voss.

Having been part of the family for quite some time now, Lauren Bush aka re:ni joins the Timedance roster with an incredibly potent quartet of Techno infused bass-bin weaponry. « BeautySick » sees re:ni plunging into a world of intoxicating serpentine grooves. Spectral vocal slabs chime like echoes of a distant hallucinatory trance, while industrial drumworks find a mesmerizing counterpoint in eerie dubwise atmospheres. These four compositions not only showcase re:ni's sonic evolution but also explore the transient moments where darkness converges with light. They stand as a testament to the sonic prowess of one or favorite dancefloor sorceress. Picture Hajime Sorayama’s ‘Sexy Robot’ in front of an unreasonably large stack of speakers at a dimly lit sound-system dance; this is the soundtrack.

This self-titled LP marks the fifth release of Scottish artist Murray Collier’s Dip Friso project, his longest running alias and the solitary vanguard of his own Real Landscape imprint. Across the six tracks he delivers another collection of warped percussive loops, heavily manipulated guitar work and psychedelic sound experiments that drift between popular music forms ('I’ll Get to Hiding') and whittled down takes on electric blues and shoegaze ('Another Country’). The former features the instantly recognisable croon of Still House Plants vocalist Jess HK embellishing a backdrop of tape loop alchemy, an inspired pairing given the shared history of Glasgow dwelling. ‘Thin Ayrshire’ (written with Hannan Jones) treads a similar path with Collier’s own beyond-unrecognisable voice featuring, broken suddenly by a brief flash of 12th Isle’s Loris S. Sarid & Innis Chonnel’s ‘Spalted Water Portal’ thanks to a recycled tape spool. ‘A Sorry Business’ takes on avant-jazz inspired puddle skronk, a stunted casio bleep propelling forward guitar dirge and cymbal crashes, whilst Australian minimal wave heroes The Systematics are paid homage via a farewell cover of their track ‘Midnight on Balancing Day’ (here ‘Midnight’). All in, the album sees the project incorporating more instrumentation and a full use of vocalists, leaning less heavily on gauzy sample collage styles and providing a more introspective look at the hazy, dubwise world Collier has been building for the past half a decade." Fergus Clark

The latest by Chicago trio Purelink unspools an alchemical suite of fractal ambient, dusted dub tech, and interstitial electronica, born from a spirit of unity and flux: “All hands on the mixer, forever finding the sound.” Since forming in 2020, Tommy Paslaski (aka Concave Reflection), Ben Paulson (aka kindtree), and Akeem Asani (aka Millia) have convened regularly in a shared studio to workshop, swap samples, and hone their collective muse via “the endless possibilities of a laptop,” seeking “something different than we would make on our own.” Distilled from extended compositions prepared and performed across 2022 in Chicago, Kansas City, New York, and Los Angeles, Signs captures their chemistry at its most liquid and immaterial, mapped in mutating systems of glitch, glass, rhythm, and space. It’s music alternately subdued and subterranean, elevated and remote, attuned to the flickering sentience of outer spheres.

After more than 6 years of silence, Abschaum is finally back with a new album, and it was about time because this new opus is sublime!! ‘Shamanic’ Chris (Abschaum’s mastermind), made alone this magnificent piece of Folk, Ambient, Kraut music, that he carefully recorded in the mountains of Jura, experimenting with his guitar and a little electronic set-up, composing beautiful melodies and singing French lyrics with powerful voice to bring us to another level of harmonies, the all merged with special atmospheres that are not without remembering Eno or Froese sometimes. In our opinion, this record could easily been recognise as a timeless masterpiece in the future.

Here is the debut, self-titled album from a.s.o., singer/songwriter Alia Seror-O’Neill, and producer Lewie Day. ‘a.s.o.’ is a thematic consolidation of the previous three singles and an impressive artistic progression. Day and Seror-O’Neill show they’ve mastered the format of the radio-friendly pop song and found how to subvert it completely. Across eleven songs, they have built a rich and compelling body of work. We know where we are now, emotionally complex, trip-hop torch songs for club freaks. But the palette has broadened to encompass ethereal dream pop à la Cocteau Twins, slow-burning AOR-soul, and dubwise stylings. As a result, ‘a.s.o.’ is a satisfyingly coherent listen but never a musical monoculture. Variously there are nods toward Julee Cruise, Fleetwood Mac, and the uneasy listening of Portishead. It’s an album that wears its influences lightly, is never weighed down by them, and always sure of its own identity. It’s anchored by Alia’s unique voice. Her words speak of restraint and release, taking us from the elegiac to the euphoric. This elegantly crafted, perfect pop music sounds like it has had enough of your shit. And Day’s music is the perfect foil; deep, slightly menacing, restrained, and powerful. The album has a cinematic texture, as with David Lynch; the seemingly familiar becomes uncanny and strange the closer we look. a.s.o. take our emotions for a joyride before leaving us floating in space. ‘a.s.o.’ is a journey; by its end, we all are changed.

Two new songs from Khotin ideal for soundtracking slow dewy mornings.

First vinyl edition of the album Rhetorical Islands, originally released by Giuseppe Ielasi in 2012 as a limited-edition CD on his Senufo Editions label, with recordings made in 2011 as a commission for l’Audible Festival, Paris. The album’s ten tracks have neither titles nor accompanying text, standing for themselves as what Ielasi himself has called “isolated sound worlds”. They are nonetheless unparalleled in their plasticity, acoustic events with a rare degree of tangibility. Ielasi evokes physical objects, some of which seem to have been constructed out of paper and cardboard, others based on a mechanics of elastic materials. Of course these objects are hallucinations, and precisely because Ielasi constructs them so masterfully there’s no need for any further information. Here’s to everyone creating their very own sculptures while listening to Rhetorical Islands! The front and back cover features 0.058, a work on paper by the artists Thomas & Renée Rapedius. They make sculptures whose form and artistic inspiration are defined by their materials. Like Ielasi’s acoustic islands, their impact derives from self-referentiality, resulting in paradoxical objects that embody both a detailed material study and a potential for free association.

With some excitement the space and the material interact to produce vibrations, which we hear. Separately, yPLO prepared some sounds in advance of a performance based on the components of a speculative drum kit ob TRU was performed and recorded live on 6/8/18 at Cafe OTO. During this live performance yPLO used amplified mylar, floor tom bass drum, mixers, audio recordings and microphones. The recordings were mixed and edited into 8 discrete tracks. ---- yPLO (Paul Abbott & Michael Speers) is a project about imaginary drums and rhythms, using acoustic percussion and synthetic sounds. Michael Speers is a musician from Northern Ireland who works with various sound materials — using drums, computer, microphones, feedback — in performance, installation and composition. Other collaborators include John Wall, Louise Le Du, Olan Monk, Niklas Adam, Lee Fraser and Seijiro Murayama. Paul Abbott is a writer, sound and performance artist. He has played at venues and festivals internationally and was a resident at Cafe OTO. He completed a PhD at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Florian Hecker and Nikki Moran, and is currently undertaking research at Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp. He is also the co-founder and editor of Cesura//Acceso, a journal for music, politics and poetics.

“Plastic Love” often comes to mind as the quintessential example of City-Pop, originally written and produced by Japanese power couple Tatsuro Yamashita and Mariya Takeuchi in 1984. Later in 1991 it was covered with new Cantonese lyrics by Anita Mui, and now, over 3 decades later, the pursuit to give this song new aesthetics continues with yet another cover with Anita Mui’s Cantonese lyrics but with a completely different feel. What could be interpreted as relatively raw production methods is turned into a refreshing take on this classic Japanese 80’s anthem. Originally recorded during golden age of Japanese technology with a highly polished sound, Xiaolin gives it a new twist with a rougher edge established by the drum machines and saturated bass echoing video game soundtracks from a bygone era, beautifully juxtaposed with her dreamy vocals. Also included, a karaoke instrumental version on the B-side.