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Spells is the debut release by Los Angeles based multi-instrumentalist and composer Nailah Hunter on Leaving Records. Each of the EP’s six tracks represent a spell, a unique sonic place forged by imagination and incantation. Ambient in nature, each spell highlights Hunter’s skills as a composer. “It really started off with me just wanting to kind of reclaim the way that I thought about creating music and then also performing it,” Hunter says. “I was like, okay. I need to get back to the basics of why I like to create and what it does for me … so I set out to make spells, in the sense that each layer is one of the steps in incantation... It became about purpose... the procedure and the ritual, so that when it came to performing it, I wasn’t able to get into my head about it because I was just carrying out these steps. Each track is its own incantation, its own spell, its own world.” Colorful atmospheres permeate Spells, each track offering tranquil, reflective setting. Hunter explains, “Another thing that I always wanted to focus on and through making this project have sort of been able to name is that, I like to create places, songs as locations ...whether there are field recordings [involved] or not.” Opening track “Soil” is accompanied by a poem: “a seed is sown, a song from silence.” Its beautiful harp and angelic voices establish the album’s mode of beautiful stillness. This is followed by “Ruins,” a tranquil soundscape abetted by insect field recordings and a slightly warped, heaven-bound trajectory, described by Hunter as a love spell. “Another thing that’s really important to me about my relationship with music is synesthesia. It’s all very palette based... For the song “Ruins,” it comes on like magenta and clementine.” On the colors present in the single “White Flower, Dark Hill,” Hunter describes “the idea of the purples and navies of the night sky and the way that shadows appear under full moonlight, the different shades of moonlight, and how it always brings out the color white.” Each track’s nuanced production and big, emotional sounds do carry a charged energy, colorful and magnetic. The shifting phases and sustained drones of “Enter” mimic the feeling of approaching and walking through a rift into a fantastical world. The listener is advanced into album highlight “Quiet Light,” which Hunter states captures, “that feeling of being like golden light in a cold still pool of water, this very specific image and feeling that I just love so much.” Spells is a powerful opening statement that uses this musician's innate artistic gifts to promote healing and self awareness. Of the album’s inspirations, she adds, “definitely rune magick and just the idea of creating places of rest … sonic places of rest, places to ponder and consider your feelings. Me making music, it’s always been about healing for me and making myself feel better. If other people listen to it and also feel better, then that is delightful.”
Mark Leckey presents the soundtrack to his autobiographical allegory ‘O’ Magic Power of Bleakness’, a mind sluicing fantasy inspired by folklore and half-remembered tales of teenage life growing up in the Wirral, a personal history woven into screwed 808s, ringtones, sacred chimes, smudged synths and levitating ambience that sounds like nowt else.
Following his seminal, hauntological trips ‘Fiorucci Made me Hardcore’ (2012) and ‘Dream English Kid 1964 - 1999AD’ (2016); the 3-part accompaniment to ‘O' Magic Power Of Bleakness’ captures the Turner Prize-winning artist moving beyond signature collage tekkers to create an entirely original arrangement for his latest audio-visual installation at Tate Britain in 2019 - a life-size replica of a motorway bridge on the M53 on the Wirral, Merseyside. In situ, the soundtrack is a vital component of the installation, livicating its liminal space with a narrative arc that magically turns familiar, popular and folkwise tropes into an occultural tale about provenance and a reminder of the supernatural in the modern world.
Leckey approaches the piece as "an autobiographical allegory” in an attempt to locate the enduring enigma of sub/urban British life with uncanny insight. Alongside his own narration, a plethora of Scouse-kids play out the story of an aspirational kid who escapes the Wirral not to London, but to the faerie realm spoken of in Northern European folklore. When he crashes down to earth, his friends don't understand who, or what, he's become. It ultimately concludes in a symphonic supernatural riot, culminating a sort of metaphysical transformation common to Traditional Ballads and reminding us of the angel/redemption sequence at the end of Lynch’s ‘Fire Walk With Me’.
'O' Magic Power Of Bleakness’ is a well-worn story that's brutally familiar to anyone who's escaped the clutches of one of Britain's forgotten, Tory-scoured battlefields. But Leckey's treatment is transformative; he offsets observed reality with the surreal verve of folklore like a theme park ride thru a Britain the country prefers not to remember, decorated with themes that have been looped around our collective consciousness for thousands of years. Leckey’s art has essentially come to reflect the psyche of a generation, divining the poetic and occult from the seeming banality of British life by tapping into leylines that riddle the concrete landscape to the imagination. Specifically (if allegorically) it’s Leckey’s life in focus but, on the broadest level, the work speaks to the politics of big town parochiality vs. the elusive lure of big city glitter, in a way that’s bound to resonate with many listeners who’ve made that same transition and questioned their place in-between worlds in the process.
1972's Psychonaut, by the Swiss-based Brainticket, is early seventies space rock at its finest. While the band's debut album, 1971's Cottonwoodhill, was a heavily acid-laden affair dominated by droning organ, disturbing vocals and a collection of cacophonic sound effects (causing it to carry a warning label and be banned in several countries) for their second effort, band-founder Joël Vandroogenbroeck brought in a completely new line-up and changed the band's sound dramatically. While Psychonaut still takes listeners into the realm of altered consciousness -- making heavy use of a droning Hammond, sitar, tablas, etc.-- this time the vocals are more melodic and the music itself is more song-oriented. This is by far Brainticket's most accessible album, and perhaps their most timeless. Fully remastered from the original master tapes!
On behalf of re:discovery records, it is with great excitement that we announce the release of the Mysteries of Science compilation. Mysteries of Science aka Dominic Woosey (Neutron 9000) was a fixture of the ambient, ambient house and trance scene in the late 80s until the mid 90's.
These selections have been carefully chosen to show the timeless sound crafting Dominic was capable of with his wide array of sound modules. They range from space music, ambient to a proto-techno and back again. In the vein of Berlin School ambient or Tangerine Dream type sequencing, but made during the post-rave world of the early 1990s during the chill out era. Tracks to search the stars with! All of them are here for the first time on vinyl and were chosen in this order for the best listening experience.
'Virtual Wake' starts off the a side with the opening track from the self titled Mysteries of Science album. Eerie and spacey it welcomes you to the scientific space music Dominic Woosey so much excelled in. 'Technological Womb' is from the 2nd self-titled album and further hones in on the sci-fi ominous journey. 'Diffusion' bridges the album with a fantastic voyage into floating space. Finally on side d has 2 tracks featured on compilations only at the time. 'Chaos Pleasures' & 'Stranger in a Strange Land'. Both show the avante-garde approach Dominic took with this project even including an acid line combined with a violin! Yes, you heard that right! Space music at it's pinnacle in the analog sequencer realm before the true digital age. 5 songs with nearly 60 minutes of beauty. Take a listen!
On behalf of re:discovery records, it is with great excitement that we announce the release of Deep Space Network's 'Big Rooms'. Deep Space Network was a joint project by David Moufang (Move D) & Jonas Grossman and it explored electronic music that wonderfully combined ambient, chill out themes, sci-f techno and IDM. Originally released on David Moufang's Source Records and distributed by Instinct Records in America a year after. Now, 27 years later, finally released on vinyl for the very first time with original artwork with a gatefold cover
New York-based artist Eli Keszler is at the apex of his career. This year alone he’s had a three-month-long solo exhibition (“Blue Skies” at Fuse Arts, Bradford, UK), performed internationally in a duo with Laurel Halo, collaborated with noted Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, taught experimental composition and performance at Camp in the Pyrenees mountains, composed music for Turner Prize–winning visual artist Laure Prouvost, and most recently embarked on a world tour with Oneohtrix Point Never.
“Stadium” is his new album for Shelter Press. As his ninth solo record,“Stadium” reflects his move from South Brooklyn to Manhattan, where he produced the album. The constant blurry motion and ever-changing landscapes of the fast-paced island helped him modify and shape his sound into a new kind of film noir. “After we moved into our East Village apartment,” Keszler explains, “we found a guitar pick on the floor that read ‘Stadium’. We looked at each other at the same time and had the same thought. It could have gone any number of ways.” Indeed, there is a startling amount of expression at play on each track, where intersections of melody, restraint and rhythm are used to challenge the idea of memory, impression and space.
Keszler is often mistaken for an electronic musician, but in fact his sounds are raw and natural, produced by hand live in-situ. His performance with the drumset and acoustic percussion are central to his work. He produces almost impossible textures through self-realized methodologies: cascading melodies, a shadow of voices, and a unique pointillistic materiality. Although playing with the intensity of digitally-created music, his communications are done live with no processing. These haptics are what give “Stadium” its depth and its warmth. In a recent interview for Dazed, collaborator Oneohtrix Point Never comments, “I’ve always described his playing as bacterial. He’s able to parallax into very small, very acute, very specific relationships between percussive textures. It’s beyond just being a drummer—he’s a world-building percussionist.”
In “Stadium,” Keszler uses lived experience to realize the most wide-ranging sound he’s created to date. “Stadium” draws out textures from overlapping geographies (from Shinjuku arcades to city streets and Brutalist architecture) and transforms these travelogue field recordings into starting points for composition. He then builds on these environments to create subliminal spaces for his percussion, keyboards and acoustic instruments. His “world-building” techniques are pushed to new levels with mesmerizing string and brass arrangements. Throughout the album, Keszler’s writing, keyboard playing and scoring operate like a sonic channel that transports the listener into a quaking web.
Perhaps this is the “stadium” referred to in the title: a larger network of sound and bodies moving continually, oscillating and turning in on itself. Keszler has explored these ideas before both in his visual work and sound installations—especially notable on projects such as his massive Manhattan Bridge installation ‘Archway’ or his Boston City Hall work «Northern Stair Projection.» “Stadium” takes these long-running ideas to new depths. “My installations work with massive city spaces for a complex of individuals,” Keszler states. “The recordings on Stadium are inverted. They are landscapes scaled for the singular. Like a mass collecting in one arena, this music compresses city spaces, genre and instrumentalism into an amorphous form. On the record, there are ruptures of information and happenstance. Like a game, it could go any number of ways.”
Radiohead's fourth album "Kid A" and their fifth album "Amnesiac" were recorded at the same time and are regarded as twins. To commemorate the 21st anniversary of the release of "Kid A" and their fifth album "Amnesiac", which was recorded at the same time and can be regarded as a twin work, they have been released as a single 3-CD set "Kid A Mnesia" with unreleased/rare material!
At the time of its release in 2000, Radiohead's innovative fourth album "Kid A" caused controversy with its style that abandoned the guitar rock format and incorporated cutting-edge electronic music from the likes of Aphex Twin and Ooteca.
The band's 2001 album, Amnesiac, was recorded around the same time and became the template for the band's mature sound in recent years, mixing electronics with classic music such as kraut rock, jazz and bluegrass.
This time, 20 years after its release, the band presents 12 songs including B-sides and other versions discovered from the recording sessions, the unreleased song "If You Say the Word," which has been known among core fans but passed down as an urban legend, and the first official release of "Follow Me Around. Kid A Mnesiae", a 3-disc set with 12 bonus discs including the previously unreleased "If You Say the Word" and the first official release of "Follow Me Around", renews the great history of the band.
"Everything in It's Right Place" --- a work that revolutionized the history of music in the 2000s, but took two different trajectories, is now coming together after 20 years. Now they become one.
Sounds from the Great House! Outernational Sounds proudly presents a Nimbus West spirit jazz essential: the Creative Arts Ensemble's classic debut One Step Out. Mastered at 45rpm on double vinyl for enhanced sound, this release features all tracks at full length for the first time on wax.
One of the most sought after and highly regarded titles to have appeared on Tom Albach's celebrated Nimbus West imprint, the Creative Art Ensemble's One Step Out is a timeless work of spiritualised jazz. A true gem from the Los Angeles jazz underground, the album was pianist and composer Kaeef Ruzadun Ali's first recording as leader of the Creative Arts Ensemble, the only large ensemble group that emerged directly from Horace Tapscott's legendary Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra community jazz group.
A Los Angeles native, Kaeef was introduced to the Tapscott circle in the late 1970s. His first experience of the Arkestra's ethos was through PAPA tenorist Michael Session, who took him to the famous 'Great House' at 2412 South Western Ave., LA - a large mansion house which members of the Arkestra had taken over as a space for communal living. Life in the Great House was a continuous stream of music, dance and community events. 'When I walked in there,' recalled Kaeef, 'it was like this whole rush came over me, just from going in the front door...It was like a very, very warm feeling of love. I went and I came out with 'Flashback of Time', and that was my first arrangement.'
Kaeef quickly became a significant contributor of compositions to the Arkestra's songbook - his piece 'New Horizon' would be recorded by Horace Tapscott for the latter's Tapscott Sessions series. But 'Flashback of Time' would eventually appear on One Step Out, played by the new group he had put together from stalwart Arkestra members. Inspired by both Tapscott's example and by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Kaeef had wanted to follow their lead by assembling a larger unit. 'I would like to form a group that would be an extension of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra,' he told Tapscott. The group was to be known as the Creative Arts Ensemble, and One Step Out, released in 1981 by Nimbus West, was their debut.
Featuring seasoned Arkestra regulars including reedsman Dadisi Komolafe, drummer Woody 'Sonship' Theus and altoist Gary Bias, with veterans Henry 'The Skipper' Franklin on bass and George Bohannon on trombone, One Step Out is a key document of the Los Angeles radical jazz underground. Featuring the sanctified vocals of Kaeef's sister, B. J. Crowley, the album is a tour de force of spiritually energised independent jazz music. Community uplift and sacred vision straight from the Great House, back on vinyl for the first time since 1981!
2 x LP in die cut card inner sleeves, in wide spine outer sleeve with thumb cut and embossed cover, postcard sticker insert, download card insert
A1 Acroyear2
A2 777
B1 Rae
B2 Melve
B3 Vose In
B4 Fold4,Wrap5
C1 Under BOAC
C2 Corc
C3 Caliper Remote
D1 Arch Carrier
D2 Drane2
2 x LP in printed inners with spot UV, in wide spine outer with spot UV, download card insert
A1 Cipater
A2 Rettic AC
A3 Tewe
B1 Cichli
B2 Hub
C1 Calbruc
C2 Recury
D1 Pule
D2 Nuane