MUSIC

Merzbow is a Japanese noise legend who continues to advocate a thoroughgoing ahincer practice and experiment with alternative expressions that transcend the boundaries of "noise". Recorded and mixed at Munemihouse in 2021, this is the latest release from Merzbow. It's a powerhouse masterpiece, and I can't say enough about it. Don't miss it!

A collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965...

Morteza Mahjubi (1900-1965) was a Iranian pianist & composer who developed a unique tuning system for the piano which enabled the instrument to be played in all the different modes and dastgahs of traditional Persian art music. Known as Piano-ye Sonnati, this technique allowed Mahjubi to express the unique ornamental and monophonic nature of Persian classical music on this western instrument - mimicking the tar, setar & santur and extracting sounds from the piano which are still unprecedented to this day.

An active performer and composer from a young age, Mahjubi made his most notable mark as key contributor and soloist for the Golha (Flowers of Persian Song and Poetry) radio programmes. These seminal broadcasts platformed an encyclopaedic wealth of traditional Persian classical music and poetry on Iranian national radio between 1956 until the revolution in 1979.

Presented here is a collection of Morteza Mahjubi's stunningly virtuosic improvised pieces broadcast on Golha between the programme's inception until Mahjubi's death in 1965 - mostly solo, though at times peppered with tombak, violin & some segments of poetry.

The vast collection of Golha radio programmes was put together thanks to the incredible work of Jane Lewisohn & the Golha Project as part of the British Library's Endangered Archives programme, comprising 1,578 radio programs consisting of approximately 847 hours of broadcasts. 

Gondwana Records sign LA bassist and composer Seth Ford-Young’s Phi-Psonics project and announce a remastered deluxe-edition of The Cradle featuring bonus material Phi-Psonics is a meditative, immersive instrumental group from Los Angeles, led by bassist Seth Ford-Young and featuring Sylvain Carton on woodwinds, Mitchell Yoshida on electric piano, and Josh Collazo on drums. Their deeply soulful music draws on jazz and classical influences together with Ford-Young’s own musical experiences, relationships, and his introduction to spirituality, yoga and philosophy at a young age, to create something uniquely its own. Phi-Psonics’ name and ultimate aim is to find ‘Phi’ – the golden mean – in art, nature and self. Ford-Young explains: “It's a bit of a cliché, but music saved my life many times and instilled in me a belief in the great power of healing through art. It is my hope and intention that this music provides healing to someone somewhere.“ Originally from Washington DC area, Ford-Young moved to California in the early 90s and fell in love with the deep sounds of the upright bass and the music of Charles Mingus, John and Alice Coltrane, and Duke Ellington along with Bach, Chopin, Pärt, and Satie. He immersed himself deeply in music and keen to learn combined intense personal study with collaborations, tours, and recordings with artists such as Tom Waits, Beats Antique, and John Vanderslice. In 2010 he moved from the San-Francisco Bay area to the Los Angeles hills and continued his explorations. But great music is rarely just about music and Ford-Young’s meditative, soulful music draws on more than just the twin wellsprings of jazz and classical music: “My mother was a yoga teacher from the early 70's until recently and taught me yoga and meditation at an early age, my stepfather is an Aikido instructor and student of the teachings of Gurdjieff. Those were all early areas of study that I came back to many times throughout my life. Phi-Psonics has been a project that unapologetically synthesizes some of these ideas into our music”. It’s this mixture of influences, musical and extramusical, that gives the music of Phi-Psonics it’s immersive quality and quiet power. Revealingly the music that would become The Cradle, wasn’t written specifically for an album, originally Ford-Young was just writing down what was coming through. As time went by and the album began to take shape, the world situation seemed to be getting darker and his compositions aim to offer hope as a response to the negative influences that abound today. Remarkably for such a beautiful sounding record, it was recorded at the composer’s home, rather than in a studio, but the relaxed nature of this process gives the music an airy lightness that propels the music to some magical spaces. Originally self-released on vinyl in a limited run just as the world went into lockdown, The Cradle reached Matthew Halsall (founder of Gondwana Records) when he aws looking for music for his Worldwide FM show and he was blown away, hearing a kindred spirit at work. Halsall explains: “Phi-Psonics make beautiful, humble and honest music, it’s not showy, but it has a deep vibe that will elevate your mind and soul if you let it. When we heard The Cradle we reached out and are really super delighted to welcome Seth and his band to our label”. Whereas for Ford Young: “Connecting with Matthew and the Gondwana records family has been a light in the darkness of the last years - to have my music make connections even as we are more isolated.” Ford-Young is currently putting the finishing touches to the second Phi-Psonics record, but aware that only a select few had heard The Cradle, let alone had the chance to buy a copy, and entranced by its deceptive simplicity and elevating energy, Halsall suggested that Gondwana present the album as a remastered ‘deluxe edition’ with an extended running time featuring extra tracks and new artwork from Daniel Halsall. The Cradle starts with First Step, perfectly setting the tone for the whole album, it is a beautiful, soulful slice of musical calm gently propelled by Ford-Young’s resonant bass and elevated by sublime flute and Wurlitzer electric piano solos. The seductive title track The Cradle was written way back in 2011 during a time of great personal change that led the composer to a feeling of newness and nurture. The magical, winsome Desert Ride is inspired by many rides through the grandly cinematic Mojave Desert. You can experience how incredibly full of life it’s harsh landscape is if you slow down to its tempo. The gentle, sublime Mama is a tribute to mothers of all kinds, beautiful and heroic. Drum Talk was largely improvised, Ford-Young and the band agreed on a topic and recorded their conversation. Choosing their notes based on how Josh's drums were tuned. Like Glass is named for the special properties of Glass. Like some music, glass is delicate, yet has structure. The first of the two bonus tracks Still Dancing was written during the early days of 2020 in response to the challenges we all were facing then. It's a reminder that the figurative dance continues and that real dancing is essential. And the second, The Searcher, also written as a response to 2020, is a gently hypnotic song about the introspection and growth that can spring from a difficult situation. This then is The Cradle, a quiet self-contained masterpiece, life-affirming and elevating in equal measure and the first offering from a wonderful new voice in spiritual jazz and the latest members of the global Gondwana Records family.

London-based keyboardist/producer Dan Nicholls (of Y-OTIS) introduces a new album project 'Mattering And Meaning' to be released by We Jazz Records on August 13th. Nicholls' music uses acoustic piano as its key element, transporting the instrument into new territories that sound remarkably natural and organic, whilst displaying a strong kinship with the world of abstract electronic music. The music utilises piano loops and field recordings as its key elements, forming what might be described on the surface as a fascinating ambient jazz record – but at the same time there's so much more at play here on deeper levels. Dan's music sounds at once otherworldly and immensely inviting. After years of unlearning and unravelling the knots of a music college education – moving from a career in jazz, via electronic music, to a heartfelt embrace with rave culture and the feminist and queer theories which have so challenged perspectives across many disciplines on the objectified world and the values of capitalism – Dan Nicholls has spontaneously reimagined his relationship to the piano, that edifice of the decaying foundations of european classical music. Here the emphasis shifts from the Work (as object) to the work (as activity). Recorded with only a mobile phone voice recorder, eschewing the gloss of high fidelity audio to embrace the problematic cyborg appendage of the i-Fone VI-$, these lucidly dreamed tracks, like notes in a journal, find their depth and form through quick experimentation and distillation – layering, stretching and collaging in ways that treat the piano as a textural element in the daily soundscape, spilling into, and going along with, regular activities with no ceremony or established system to the process. For Dan, this is as much a documentation as a therapeutic process, casting aside the dogma and seriousness of much artistic practice whilst embracing joy and improvisation in order to search for deeper narratives. The speculative imaginings of three revolutionary thinkers, Donna Haraway, Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Barad, have profoundly shaped the conception of this album, which also emerged from a deep interest in human relationships to ecstatic practices and communalities which have been so eroded by imperialist/patriarchal/capitalist forces. The title, "Mattering and Meaning", is a meditation on the crumbling habitual delineation and separation of both objects and definitions, including our (ironically) self-destructive human thinking patterns which position us as objective observers, above and over the world rather than inside it, apparently separate from nature and from each other. Like the melodies and themes which permeate these nine sonic tales, inextricable but nevertheless present, our world and our species prove to be more enmeshed, interconnected and interdependent than the dominant rationalism would lead us to believe. This album is a humble gift to the listener, a proposition for inclusion in their own ongoing soundscape, the perpetual activity of listening and awareness.

What Does it Mean to Be American? is the eighth solo album by Margate, UK based composer & multi-instrumentalist Robert Stillman. Performed, recorded & mixed almost entirely by Stillman, the seven tracks on What Does it Mean to Be American? are experimental in the purest sense of the word; Stillman's composition & recording techniques rely heavily on improvisation, which often sends his music in surprising directions. Elements of jazz, drone, funk, blues, psychedelia, new age & chamber music are referenced, often subconsciously, but Stillman's music ultimately defies adherence to any particular genre. Stillman explains: "The musical content of this work is varied, partly due to its having been recorded over a long period of time, and also due to the attitude I brought to curating the work, i.e. removing any sense of filter on the creative impetus. Much of this work was made very quickly and intuitively; the idea was to remove as many barriers as possible between gut-level expressions and the sound result, to essentially dream these tracks directly into existence. "This music, like much of my other recorded output, is the product of a solo studio process that involves extensive layering of multi-track recordings of me playing various instruments (tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, piano and drums)." What Does it Mean to Be American?'s one guest performance comes from Anders Holst (Stillman's collaborator in the Bog Bodies project), who contributes acoustic guitar to the album's closing track, "No Good Old Days." While What Does it Mean to Be American? is a mostly instrumental work (only the opening track, "Cherry Ocean," features Stillman's singing voice), a strong narrative carries through the album, namely Stillman's examination of his nationality. From Stillman: "I was born and raised in America, and identify as an American. However, I have lived in the UK for over a decade, and this has given me the opportunity to consider what being 'American' means outside the day-to-day experience of being American and has created a space for me to consider the concept of American 'identity" as someone no longer living there. In the position of ex-patriot, it is tempting to claim one's favorite trappings of 'American' and disassociate from the rest, but this is unacceptable to me. "Part of growing up into an adult has meant coming to terms with the American Identity in total. In other words, recognising that to selectively claim aspects of American identity is a narcissistic game of illusion. To worship aestheticized, revisionist imaginations of Americanness (read 'Americana') plays a role in this. In this record I wish to share my insight that to 'be' American is to claim everything within that specification: historical, cultural, social, stereotypical, experiential, heroic, villainous. In this model of Americanness, there is nothing 'American' that lives outside of the 'American' identity. In the context of some of the most difficult, embarrassing, uncomfortable years of being American, I feel that doubling down on the identity in total represents a gesture of radical acceptance of reality that opens the space for positive action, be it personal or political, as a corrective to the inertia of denial and delusion. "The music on this album adopts a similar attitude of 'radical acceptance' in the sense that, to as great an extent as I could, I tried not to let 'aesthetics' get in the way of intuition. The process was geared toward letting in musical impulses before I had the chance to critically examine them. The end result is that the music is more varied and technically rough-edged than other work I've made, and the musical languages are more varied. It is a more direct expression of the thoughts, emotions, dreams, and beliefs that are the 'prime movers' of my work." WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AMERICAN? My passport says: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I show it at the border, and they say, “Welcome Home”. I was born in America, and became an American Human Being as I breathed American Air. My American time touches the Deep American Time: the eternal American IS that contains all qualities/ actions/ occurrences, past-present-future. The American Ice Cream Cone reminds me, I must “Eat it All”. I am American, and I can’t buy anyone else’s American. Not with dollars; not with devotion. / / / / / / / / “America, what am I?” “Look at yourself.” “My Image?” “No.” “My question?” “Yes. That is your Birthright.”

Portals is an album of minimal electric piano improvisations by UK-based multi-instrumentalist & composer Robert Stillman. Inspired by American ‘new-age’ luminaries like Laraaji, Iasos, and Stephen Halpern, Stillman’s layers of playful, meditative electric piano figures, saturated by warm tape hiss & psychedelic delay effects, are occasionally accompanied by “found sound” field recordings, creating a compelling yet calming listening experience. Portals was recorded at home in Broadstairs, Kent during the winter of 2016-2017 & originally released on cassette in December 2017 by Orindal Records. Three subsequent represses followed, & Portals became the most repressed cassette release in Orindal’s 11 year history. This new vinyl edition, co-released by UK label KIT Records, is remastered by Matt Barnhart & includes bonus track “Portal 8 (The Stranger).” Here’s Robert Stillman’s original statement on the original cassette release of Portals: Portals is an album of multi-tracked improvisations on Fender Rhodes electric piano. The music’s repetitive structure is intended to encourage a state of ‘no-mind’ in the listener, acting as a gateway out of thoughts and into the present moment. Headphones are recommended for the ideal listening experience.

The best of mellow jazzy soul, inc. Barry White's classic "I'm Gonna Love Yo Just A Little More, Baby" etc. Second album released in 1976.

This unique work was released in 1982 as the final chapter in Brian Eno's Ambient series that began in 1978.

The last album released in 1971 by Rotary Connection, a psychedelic soul group known that Minnie Riperton was a member.

Limited edition colored vinyl! Recorded live in New York in 1978 and 1979. The album is a compilation of Sun Ra's live performances in New York in 1978 and 1979, ranging from glamorous big band performances to sweet and free-form performances. Includes the classic song "Space is The Place". The back cover of the album is also interesting, showing a psychedelic live performance, including a member of the Arkestra wearing a pyramid hat. Eddie Gale plays trumpet on this album.

This is a meditative abstract jazz-funk masterpiece that features the mbira, an ancient traditional instrument of the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe that is originally played in rituals to communicate with spirits. Each song has a serene and mysterious beauty behind it, and with the overtones of the mbira, this album has a beauty like a gemstone that sets it apart from many spiritual jazz albums, an exceptional quality. I highly recommend this album to not only spiritual jazz listeners, but to a wide range of music listeners.

180g vinyl. Recorded live at the Village Vanguard, this set rounded out what became known as an early "full" portrait of Bill Evans by following Sunday at the Village Vanguard with most of the rest of the music he played on June 25, 1961. Very little in the annals of piano-trio jazz ever reached the clarity of execution that Evans made his own with the recordings from this single date. With bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, Evans reached a rapport that sounded whisper-intimate, rolling into gentle cascades and then rhythmically pouncing juts. On the keys, Evans sounds at once completely walled-off and nakedly open as he takes on "My Foolish Heart" and the title melody. The chords are voiced ever so oddly, as are the bass and drums. Coming as it did several months in the wake of the successful first episode in Evans's Vanguard, Waltz for Debby just made it all the more obvious what a wonder the world had in this trio and its leader. --Andrew Bartlett

Deadstock cassette version of the masterful second album, released in 1992, which was hailed by All Music as "the commercial and artistic peak of the ambient house movement" and was #1 on the UK charts at the time. sealed with a small drill hole.

Limited colored vinyl.This 1966 LP by Astatke (billed to Mulatu Astatke & His Ethiopian Quintet) isn't shaded by nearly as much African/Ethiopian influence as his later work, which was recorded between the late '60s and mid-'70s. As the title might lead you to believe, it is indeed more in the Latin soul-jazz bag than the later material, sometimes leaning toward the R&B-informed boogaloo sound of the mid-'60s. On his own compositions and arrangements (which comprise about half the LP), sometimes more exotic and African colors bubble closer to the surface, as on the eerie vibe parts he lays on 'Mascaram Setaba.'" -- Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide.

Masterpieces such as "Earth Rot" and "Song Of Innocence", which were loved by stars such as DJ Shadow, Madlib, and Jurassic 5, and became a treasure trove of sampling sources, names such as Cannonball Adderley, Letta Mbulu, and Lou Rawls. The second "Songs Of Experience" in 1969 by composer and arranger David Axelrod (1933-2017), who is known for his many famous works such as producing artists, is an analog reissue! This is also full of sampling material ... experimental jazz fusion work inspired by the British historical poet William Blake and with that image. Masterpiece numbers such as "Human Abstract" featured by DJ Shadow and "A Divine Image" loved by hip-hop producers such as Lord Finesse and Cypress Hill!

Terry Callier, famous for his spiritual soul trilogy for Cadet in the 70's, released his first album on Prestige in 1968, recorded at the age of 19. The album is a masterpiece of spiritual jazz-folk, with elements of traditional folk under the influence of Bob Dylan, and a jazzy, acoustic performance by two bass players influenced by Coltrane.

Debut album released in 1969 by Nick Drake, who is regarded as a genius singer/songwriter who died young. 180g Vinyl.

Donald Byrd's 1975 album is the culmination of his fusion era, including such hits as "Wind Parade" and "Dominoes". It was one of five albums in a row produced by Larry Mizell, and Bird's second-to-last album at Blue Note, where he had been since 1958.

180g heavy vinyl. The voice of a soul that has gone through loneliness and despair. A masterpiece recorded in 1967, representing the free jazz of Impulse.

Donato Dozzy and Milanese veteran Stefano Ghittoni mint a new series on Dozzy's Mage Circe Musica imprint, channeling Daniele Baldelli's cosmic disco manifesto and exploring screwed rhythms, psychedelic electronix and blunted dub atmospheres. So good - imagine a half-speed Shinichi Atobe or Rrose spliced with GRM-damaged concréte FX and percussion courtesy of Konono No.1. Basically it's peak Dozzy syrup - Tip! Alicia Carrera and Donato Dozzy's Maga Circe Musica label has quickly established itself as an outlet for some of the most impressively tight experimental slop we've heard in ages. Dozzy and Ghittoni's first La Petit plate is no different, using the enduring influence of Northeastern Italian electronic music (think Baldelli and Marco Dionigi) to help transform and repurpose dub techno, folk, ambient music, jazz and global sounds. If Baldelli and Dionigi were best known for pushing disco's tempo down to a crawl, Dozzy and Ghittoni do the same with their wealth of diggers' influences, dipping hollow 4/4 percussion and syncopated hand drums to a chug on 'Sukia' and slowly building an atmosphere with low-slung bass and spooked electronics. Imagine holding down the pitch slider on a Badalamenti score and a Funkadelic 12” playing at the same time, for the gist. On 'Lanquidity' the duo pull in horizontal dub pads and place them against a resinous thud and swirling dub FX, played slower than it should be and somehow operating in the same gloopy zone as Newworldaquarium to emphasise mood and texture over technical trickery. 'Niento’ is even better, using smeared LM1 claps for a sort of assymetric, purple funk played at -8 while taking a fourth world-inspired rhythm and welding it to lysurgic synth drones and nipped kicks - it's a mid-point between vintage bleep techno, cosmic disco and rhythmic psychedelia. 'Le Petit' is over too soon, but gives us plenty to chew on: anyone who enjoys Dozzy's genre-agnostic DJ sets or the fertile area between hazy ambience and half-speed dancefloor zones - this one’s a killer.

There’s a lived-in quality to the sound of Racine’s Amitiés. Named after the French word for friendship, the Montréal-based Quebecois artist follows an extended time spent indoors to contemplate what it means to be isolated and in one’s own body, while also staying connected. The album is a follow-up of sorts to Quelque chose tombe (“Something Falls”), released in February 2020 and a kind of accidental prophecy for the crisis that was to come. Amitiés disintegrates before your very eyes. Opening with a roughshod iPhone recording of Racine playing his parent’s harmonium, the creaky acoustics of "Mon amour je ne guéris jamais" slowly degrade into digital simulations of dreadful organic beauty. That track and the rest of the LP gives the feeling of an abandoned building; a sense of frayed, earthiness dusted with the wisdom of time. And yet, it’s almost entirely made from simulations. Clipped Native Instruments violin patches punctuate the churning atmospherics of “Arête coincée dans une amygdale”. The lonely gongs and bells of “Grosso” resonate in a gust of synthesised ambient. Vocal plugins and the very occasional YouTube samples of a recorded voice are sped-up, glitched, pitched and scrambled into indecipherability. These vocal apparitions rise and fall into the sonic ether like individual ghosts of human contact. They’re bold and expressive, deeply melancholy and yet full of the potential for joy and an awareness of life’s beauty. It’s in this dearth of social interaction—the heady psychosis of too much solitude—that Amitiés’s tone and mood lies. A score for the numb dissociation from internal chaos and alienation, the album’s sense of acute distress is assuaged only by the small network of collaborators and influences it draws from. Long-time friend and peer Justin Leduc-Frenette (aka Keru Not Ever) contributes drum programming to “Mon amour je ne guéris jamais”. A last-minute reworking of the untitled “Sans titre” by German duo Arigto matches the weight and timbre of Racine’s sooty post-classical soundscapes. Ultimately, Amitiés is a very human response to an inhuman environment. It’s an intimate homage to friends and the mysterious effects of distance, while somehow finding healing in hardship.

Like a rediscovered Viking burial ship, Electro Nova compiles near-mythical drone recordings produced in 1998 and described by Helge Sten aka Deathprod as some of the most important music to ever come out of Norway. It's the work of Kåre Dehlie Thorstad and compiles two of the earliest releases on Smalltown Supersound, back when it was basically no more than a bedroom operation. It’s taken over two decades, but finally the label have given the material a first ever proper release on vinyl, complete with mixing and mastering by Deathprod. If you’re into the ice cold swells of anyone from Thomas Köner to Harley Gaber, Biosphere, Kali Malone or, of course, Deathprod - this one's as essential as they come. Kaare Dehlie Thorstad's Elektro Nova produced just two releases during the late ‘90s that have since slipped into drone lore - Trans-Inter-Ference and Elektro Nova/Electro Nova. Admired not only by Deathprod and Joakim Haugland of Smalltown, but also by his contemporaries Lasse Marhaug and Biosphere, his work has evaded pretty much any attention outside of Norway these last two decades. Following a chance meeting with Thorstad at Oslo airport a few years back, Smalltown were prompted to give the recordings a second wind, presenting what is essentially a captivating new release, and crucial addition to the Norsk drone canon. As the story goes, Thorstad was studying photography in the late 90’s in Scotland, but instead of delivering a photo for his final exam he made a record - a double album (2CDs) and a 10” to be precise. That should provide some idea of the textural synaesthetic and landscaping qualities evoked by his music, which he ended up sending to a then-young Smalltown label, who were mostly issuing tapes at the time. With no proper distribution the records largely bypassed wider attention, and become a personal favourite of Smalltown’s Joakim Haugland, as well as avowed fan Helge Sten (Deathprod), who helped render its diaphanous scale in mix down, and Lasse Marhaug who describes them as "two perfect records that deserved much bigger attention”. Between its jaw-dropping opener; the post-apocalyptic vision of its untitled part; and the cinematic white-out of the 10” tracks; Thorstad comes as close as we’ve ever heard to evoking the inhospitable nature and stark beauty of the wild far north. We can hear those landscapes palpably internalised and alchemically transmuted into its coarse grained textural swells and a reverberating multi-dimensionality, variously sustained to extents that evoke an abandonment of the senses, or likewise squashed and isolated to imply the relative anxiety relief of atmospheric flux, where a few degrees temperature rise or a drop in the wind speed can make the difference between life and death. Impressively, Thorstad realised after the release of Elektro Nova and just two live shows that he couldn’t really follow up the work and instead pursued a career as professional cyclist, eventually combining his visual skills to become a pro cycling photographer. In that sense, he’s a bit like composer-turned-tennis coach Harley Gaber, whose almighty ‘The Winds Rise In The North’ (1976) is in some ways richly prescient of this work. Like Gaber, Thorstad can remain safe in the knowledge that his contribution to the drone sphere will endure for the ages, especially with this important, impressive new edition.

Growing up in Brooklyn, Carlos was a reserved adolescent who loved Beethoven and Al Green. As a teenager he sang his diary into a microphone. This project grew to become a critically acclaimed, collaborative touring group, Ava Luna. His early 20s were spent entrenched at the beloved DIY sanctuary, Silent Barn in Bushwick--making a living cutting hair and recording bands in a ramshackle studio inside an unrenovated mechanic’s garage. Since that time, he has cultivated a production career that includes credits from genre-expansive artists like Princess Nokia, Frankie Cosmos, Sneaks, Gustaf, Juan Wauters, and Palehound. Having ceded creative control of his band in favor of a fully democratic process, Carlos now explores his roots in a solo outlet, Carlos Truly. Navigating a multi-cultural family history with tracks largely produced by his real-life brother Tony Seltzer, Carlos sits in a charged, intimate space. His brother’s celebrated underground hip-hop sensibilities mingle securely with Carlos’s pot-smoking nerd energy. His vocals evoke the old soul singers his radio DJ father would spin at home, the irreverence and joy of NYC's DIY scene, and the heady sonic worlds of an imagination shaped by a lifetime in NYC. Out July 1, 2022

Lynn Avery and Cole Pulice return with a new album of piano, synthesizers, tenor sax, wind synths and electronics. Following their excellent previous albums (Iceblink’s "Carpet Cocoon" and Cole Pulice’s "Gloam") the duo moves into otherworldly ambience that straddles acoustic and digital spaces, evoking an uncanny world both strange and familiar. “To Live & Die In Space & Time” began with an improvised set at the 2020 Drone Not Drones festival in Minneapolis that unveiled new worlds of sonic possibilities the duo wanted to reapproach. Lynn and Cole continued exploring this palette of sounds and ideas in the months that followed, a practice that continued as they relocated across the country and settled in their now home of Oakland, California. Lynn and Cole were not initially intending to create an "album" - instead, they were just committed to a regular practice of improvising, recording, forgetting, reapproaching, alchemizing old & new ideas, and allowing material to shapeshift. Eventually, something like an album revealed itself, which Lynn and Cole honed into “To Live & Die in Space & Time.” The sounds of TL&DIS&T are elegant, transportive and vast, like being wrapped in a blanket of stars, finding warmth and comfort in the unknown spaces of transition that don't immediately reveal meaning or purpose. In other words, the constellation of sounds on TL&DIS&T approach floating in "the void" as something less than ominous, perhaps even enchanting.