MUSIC

Gendel on C-Melody Saxofone and Wilkes on Fender P-Bass arrangements of selected material and original compositions a document of specific variations in instrumentation, sound, and repertoire, with a focus on melody, execution of arrangement, and total freedom The Doober follows the release of Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar (2018) and Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar More Songs (2021).

Uncleared is the name of my new 29-track instrumental beat-tape. In a more “back-to-basics” approach to beat-making, this tape began as a creative exercise for myself to return to the music that made me who I am. Around Q3/Q4 of 2023 I had read about a “one 4-bar loop a day” regimen to keep output flowing, and this practice was entirely effective in churning-out beats during self-imposed down-time for music making amidst my record label/family balance lifestyle. It was then that I had set a goal to produce & release 40 new beats by the time I turned 40. I found an almost entirely sample-based production flow in Ableton referencing an ongoing list I kept of material to sample & chop as the foundation for the track, culling from the timeless All The Breaks folder for the drums, and finishing the track with a synth bass-line that I’d quickly dial-in & play by hand using Teebs' old M-Audio midi keyboard controller that I am somehow still borrowing and cherish. Most of these beats are under 10 stems in any given project - drastically different in comparison to my projects in the past (Outmind, In My World, Time Flying Beats et al) where stems would be consistently breaching 50+. Furthermore relating to the title, I was recently served an uncleared sample notice from a bigger label entity. It’s the first time this has happened so I suppose we’ve been lucky, and it’s honestly the first time I’ve reconsidered casually releasing this type of material - particularly on major streaming platforms. I’m not sure what lies ahead for sample-based music culture - but i'm hopeful it will be able to sustain and evolve as we attempt to emphasize the reclamation of the spaces on the internet where this music can be safely & responsibly shared, supported, and appreciated. During the last few weeks leading-up to release, artist neighbor / bestie Aaron Raays would come over to my backyard studio shed at night to listen to the developing material and provide me with trusted feedback notes. I have a habit of whip-testing music obsessively in my 2010 Prius driving around Los Angeles, and at the Leaving offices on the Mobius Acoustics system there. These check-ins were crucial in seeing this one through. Only 29 beats made the cut, but I had a lot of fun making these, and I’m having even more fun performing them.

Minneapolis-born saxophonist Cole Pulice, acclaimed for the ambient jazz masterpiece To Live & Die In Space & Time, returns with a long-awaited new album on the spiritually rooted West Coast label Leaving Records. Celestial echoes of modern classical, glacial drones of profound stillness, and a radiant landscape where spiritual jazz and ambient music interweave—this is music that dissolves into the air, where even silence feels sonorous. Pulice’s horn traces ripples that linger long after the notes fade, offering a meditative expanse of emotion, memory, and time. A deeply introspective and prayerful work that resonates with the space between sound and silence.

A must-have for fans of Japanese environmental music such as Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa and Yutaka Hirose! Organic new age music that is swallowed by the beauty of nature that sways gracefully! Leaving Records is proud to present the debut EP by Green-House, a project by local artist Olive Ardizon. "The six tracks are based on the concept of "communication between plant life and the people who grow it. Based on field recordings that capture the sounds of water and the voices and movements of plants and animals in nature, this is a superb new age/ambient work that breathes an aesthetic synth sound that encompasses the beauty and serenity of the pull that is common in Japanese environmental music. Artwork by Michael Flanagan.

A live album by The Growth Eternal, the Tulsa-born, LA-based master of alternative R&B, arrives via the spiritual stronghold of the independent scene, Leaving Records. Infused with the sacred spirit of gospel, the deep wisdom of Black music, and the improvisational freedom of modern jazz, the album weaves these threads into a refined and intimate sonic tapestry. It resonates like the echo of a celebration reaching your bedroom—experimental soul music that balances warmth and grandeur. As the title suggests, the recording emanates the atmosphere of a private, heartfelt space, quietly glowing with presence.

California’s Nico Georis has always straddled (or, rather, negotiated) multiple dimensions. As a child, Georis flitted between the rigors of classical training and DIY experimentation—studying under a disciple of Franz Lizst (a mentorship that would enshrine the piano as his primary instrument), then squirreling away to the basement of his childhood home, strewn as it was with his father’s instruments and home-audio equipment, to play and record freely. Despite his evident virtuosity as a trained pianist, Georis has, across numerous projects, stints, incarnations, and chapters, persisted in this gentle and exploratory approach to music-making. Foregoing the pursuit of technical mastery and acclaim within the confines of the contemporary classical world, he has dedicated his talents to songcraft, broadly-defined — channeling unseen (or inaugurating altogether new) worlds through melody and repetition. Conceived after an isolating, five-year struggle with a severe case of Lyme disease, Cloud Suites (out June 9th on Leaving Records) documents Georis’s initial return to experimental ambient keyboard compositions. Conceptually, there is little ambiguity here: the songs—the “suites”—are clouds, or, rather, reflections of clouds, each named after a particular formation. Track titles range from the meteorologically specific to the expressive: “Cumuloids,” “Sundog,” and “Soft Yellow Gazers.” Georis composed the suites in real-time, peering out the windows of his Big Sur cabin-home/recording studio (dubbed The Sky Shed), responding improvisationally to render specific clouds as music—in effect to pluck them from the sky. Georis has referred to this process as a kind of musical game, and, indeed, its end product conveys the recurring and joyful revelations of play. But for a project born of levity and improvisation, Cloud Suites’ path to realization has been winding—harrowing, even. Over three years in the making, the recording process was beset by all manner of technological and environmental setbacks, ranging from broken equipment to a mudslide that tore through the Sky Shed. Nevertheless, even as other projects saw fruition (see 2022’s beautifully elegiac Desert Mirror) the Cloud Suites continued to gestate. When circumstances finally aligned, Georis entered the studio with a rag-tag collection of tape recordings. Performing over these Cloud demos, Georis would eventually weave these initial recordings into finished tracks, an analogue collage/cut-up approach recalling his childhood basement experiments, and his long-time affinity for Dub. Morphing seamlessly across eleven tracks, Cloud Suites functions wonderfully as a record (that is to say, as a discrete release—a standalone musical artifact), but one also senses the limitlessness of the project. Having stumbled, largely by accident, upon this inviting dimension (at once bracingly psychedelic and achingly nostalgic), Georis may not wish to close the door behind him. Or maybe it isn’t his door to close.

California-based keyboardist and composer Nico Georis, known for his ambient works created with biofeedback devices and intended “for plants,” returns with a luminous new album via Leaving Records, the spiritual heart of the West Coast’s independent scene. Delving deep into celestial realms of modern classical and new age, this album radiates with grace and compassion. Gently resonant piano tones, softly undulating synth layers, and reverberations that dissolve into space—each sound arrives as a prayer, a blessing, or the ripple of a memory devoted to someone unseen. A profound sense of calm and care pervades throughout, as if tending to the quiet growth of plants or listening closely to the cosmic order itself. A radiant and healing work of meditative beauty.

California and New York aren't the only US cities to have pioneered underground hip-hop over the years. Back in the nineties, southern states such as Memphis, Tennessee were also hotbeds for the fast evolving musical phenomenon. As we push on into the second millenium; from the swathes of short-run, tape-only releases that came out in the 1990's, some are at last being cut to vinyl. Shawty Pimp and the Big Pimpin' Productions crew were brought to international ears in 2014 when his album 'Comin' Real Wit It' was pressed to vinyl and sold out in the blink of an eye. Gyptology Records (a new Europe-based Hip-Hop and Egyptian Archaology styled re-issue label) now present a vinyl pressing of the 1995 sequel; 'Still Comin' Real'. Here are eleven original, raw rap cuts, remastered and restored with love. Available June 2018 for the first time in the format that never goes out of style. Vinyl only for now and in one short-run only, no represses. Produced with the full consent and participation of the artists.

A compilation of DEEP gospel from the 1960's and 1970's. all culled from the vaults of DJ Jumbo and Pyramid Records. This is the real stuff - all guitar forward ballads that address existential issues. As healing a record as there ever could be. Cover art by the great Lonnie Holley!

Becoming Peter Ivers tells the story of the late Peter Ivers, a virtuosic songwriter and musician whose antics bridged not just 60s counterculture and New Wave music but also film, theater, and music television. Written and recorded in Los Angeles in the mid-to-late-1970s, Becoming Peter Ivers raises the curtain on this mischievous master of ceremonies, who, harmonica in hand, rarely missed a chance to light up an audience. Since his untimely death in 1983, Ivers¡Ç short but storied life has been the subject of much research and remembrance. Becoming Peter Ivers is the most expansive effort yet to collect his archival recordings. ¡ÈDemos are often better than records,¡É Ivers wrote. ¡ÈMore energy, more soul, more guts.¡É The statement anticipates the appearance of Becoming Peter Ivers, which was assembled from a trove of demo cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes that Ivers recorded variously at his home in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, and Hollywood studios for a pair of major label albums in 1974 and 1976. While the two commercially released albums feature the resources of session musicians and state-of-the-art studio detail, Becoming Peter Ivers highlights the private moments of Ivers¡Ç musical energy, frequently pared down to piano, drum machine, harmonica, and Peter¡Çs ageless voice. Though technically not Ivers¡Ç debut album (in 1969 Epic Records released Knight Of The Blue Communion, Peter¡Çs psychedelic jazz odyssey of sorts), Terminal Love was the A&R brainchild of music legend Van Dyke Parks. Already a masterful harmonica player (respectively mentored by blues legend Little Walter and jazz bassist Buell Neidlinger while he was a student at Harvard in the late 60s), Ivers wove his harp melodies through the sensuously colored but unconventionally arranged pop compositions of Terminal Love and its self-titled follow up, which, like the New York Dolls at the same time, explored the libidinous, ironic, and artful possibilities of the rock template. A studious artist, Ivers recorded hundreds of writing and rehearsal sessions onto reel-toreel and cassette tapes, but notes were either scarcely kept or have since been lost. RVNG Intl. collaborated with Ivers¡Ç longtime friend and supporter Steven Martin, as well as his lifelong companion Lucy Fisher, to tell an intimate story of Peter¡Çs creative journey through this untold music. The collection includes tracks that recurred in Ivers¡Ç ouvre over the years; ¡ÈAlpha Centauri,¡É ¡ÈEighteen And Dreaming,¡É ¡ÈMiraculous Weekend.¡É And, of course, ¡ÈIn Heaven¡É – the song co-written with David Lynch and commissioned by the filmmaker to be featured in a now-iconic scene of Eraserhead. An accomplished Yogi by the late 70s, Ivers was as spiritual as he was playful. Accentuated by his cherubic face and compact height, Ivers¡Ç vitality and curiosity became a part of his poetic sensibility, a quality that also characterizes his singing voice. Fisher remembers Ivers calling his days holed up in the studio as ¡Èsnowy days,¡É as if he had been cut from school and let free to roam on his own. ¡ÈNo one knows what Peter Ivers does on a snowy day,¡É he would say. In 1980, Ivers became involved with the Los Angeles-area public access show New Wave Theatre, serving as its host and paternal misfit. Ivers would introduce a new generation of groups like Fear, Dead Kennedys, and Suburban Lawns while playing a kind-of ¡Èstraight¡É man, deliberately baiting the punks with square questions and frocked fashion. His signature question to guests was delivered deadpan: ¡ÈWhat is the meaning of life?¡É Ivers died, tragically, the victim of a violent homicide in 1983 that remains unsolved. A shock to his community, his death all but fazed the LAPD, who treated the investigation with less than minimum care. A labor of love that took RVNG Intl. over five years to complete, Becoming Peter Ivers re-frames Peter¡Çs music as the centerpiece of his captivating story, concentrating on the work he made during his numerous retreats into art, or, as he put it, during his snowy days.

Country, township jazz, and pop hits from the height of Zambia’s freedom movement.Vocalist, guitarist, and bandleader Alick Nkhata moved effortlessly between lonesome country slide, big band pop, and air-tight vocal harmonies, all with roots in Bemba and other African traditional songs and rhythms. It’s a dizzying, inclusive, expansive blend from an artist and music archivist who became the voice of his nation’s fight for freedom. The lyrics and music represent the times - lonesome country laments like “Nafwaya Fwaya” and “Fosta Kayi” drift along the railways to urban centers and copper mines. “Nalikwebele Sonka (I Told You Sonka)”, sung in “deep-Bemba” pairs honey-soaked yodels with a warning about the downward spiral of unemployment in townships, while Mayo Na Bwalya’ (Mother of Bwalya) is a mother’s plea to a traditional songbird for guidance of her wayward son. Songs like “Shalapo,” “Kalindawalo Na Mfumwa,” and his biggest hit, “Imbote,” infuse piano, big band horns, and even early electronic instruments into stunning syncretic pop masterpieces. Despite Nkhata’s role in Zambian independence and his influence on future generations of African artists, this LP is the first time his music is being reissued on vinyl. We’re honored to work closely with Alick Nkhata’s family, as well as with collectors around the world who provided some of the rare recordings. Music archivist, researcher, and NTS host Jamal Khadar wrote in-depth liner notes spanning the history of Zambian independence, and noted Zambian author and translator Ellen Banda-Aaku provides careful and deeply researched lyric translations. On high-quality black vinyl with deluxe 12-page booklet with unpublished photos, lyrics, translations, and liner notes written by NTS radio host Jamal Khadar.

Majestic Fantasies, debut album from the duo Space Ghost & Teddy Bryant, is the second release on Space Ghost’s new record label, Peace World Records. Produced by Space Ghost, with Teddy Bryant’s powerful vocals at the forefront, this new album sees the two artists effortlessly blend their shared influences from the late '80s and early '90s.

Over three years in the making, in Majestic Fantasies Space Ghost & Teddy Bryant look to the past for inspiration as they explore genres, techniques, and moods. Across the record, Bryant’s vocals shine as he demonstrates a strong ability to create memorable nostalgic hooks and catchy backing harmonies. Similarly, Ghost displays his knack for dissecting vintage production tropes and breathing life into them in a modern context.

Filled with underground, soulful gems, Majestic Fantasies draws deeply from the duo's passion for R&B, UK Street Soul, New Jack Swing, House, and G-Funk. Their 10-track LP freely blends these genres, paying homage to song writers like Teddy Riley, Jam & Lewis, Carl McIntosh, and DeVante Swing. On the album you’ll find tracks like “Some Things Last Forever” which explore New Jack Swing drum patterns and vocal hooks. Additionally the record holds dancefloor-ready House tracks including “Majestic Fantasies”’ and “Unconditional” which sit side by side with heartfelt ballads such as “Cheer Me Up,” and “Ultimate Love.”

Although the two have never met in person, Space Ghost and Teddy Bryant still find a way to connect through their music. Throughout the album, they demonstrate a mutual understanding of the sound they like to produce together: tasteful and playful love songs that feel positive and optimistic, bringing classic songwriting styles from the past into the modern music landscape.

Prolific Geordie acid and braindance producer Daniel Pringle aka The Jaffa Kid showcases a spectrum of mutating styles shared with Mike Paradinas, RDJ, Jega, Luke Slater or Plaid

　

Behind 100s of releases since he really got going in the 2020s, The Jaffa Kid’s prodigious output is here parsed for a carousel of flavours that prove his strength in diversity and a restless work rate generating quality results. Like the best braindancers he balances club needs and tropes with something tripper, headier in his melodic and harmonic arrangements, which favour piquant, microtonal tunings and psychoacoustic space over straightforward conventions.

Like the touchstones of µ-Ziq or AFX and their ilk, TJK expresses a certain strangeness of coming from this island in his reading of electronica as contemporary folk, and braindance as its wyrdest facet, modally fusing and acknowledging the input of successive waves of influence on these shores. There’s a wickedly eyrie electronic soul at play across the LP from the likes of his Gescom or BoC-esque pads and whirring breaks on ‘IOAM’, and hits of Plaid’s syncopated intricacies on ‘Colobia’, with fast-fwd Rephlex/Planet Mu rave in ‘241’ and jega-esque ‘Infinite Chasers’, saving highlights to the sounds of a ticklish robot in ‘Night Unfolding’ and a smart braindance update on modern D&B frameworks in ‘Extol II.’

Noisy, surreal and uncompromisingly idiosyncratic, The Shadow Ring's 1997-released 'Hold Onto I.D.' is a perennially misunderstood rust spot in their discography, marked by Graham Lambkin's choked free-form poetry and Tim Goss's eerie Radiophonic oscillations.

Squeezed between '96's 'Wax-Work Echoes', founder members Lambkin and Darren Harris's first album with keyboard player Goss, and '99's dark, concept-driven double album 'Lighthouse', it's easy to understand why 'Hold Onto I.D.' is one of The Shadow Ring's most overlooked full-lengths. Listening now, it falls perfectly into place; if they were playing fast and loose with the possibilities on 'Wax-Work...' and exploring new territory with 'Lighthouse', this is the point where Lambkin, Harris and Goss were able to take stock, augmenting the Bolan-goes-Jandek crankiness of 'City Lights' and its snotty follow-up 'Put the Music in its Coffin' with frazzled, hot-wired electronics and isolationist, paranoiac reflections. "You've got to learn the difference between sweat and dew," Harris deadpans on opener 'Watch the Water'. "You've got black lakes forming on your floor, and the dusty brown rug from decades or so ago becomes hot spot for shrimp and nautical foe."

Lambkin's muculent tales of small-town boredom ink a rough outline of Folkestone, the somnolent coastal town where the band lived, contrasting literal decay with asphyxiating cultural emptiness. On previous records, The Shadow Ring had sounded as if they were delivering their own discrete reading of British rock, but the music falls away from the figurative even further here. The gunky, detuned riffs are there just to prop up the stern, psycho-satirical lyrics (guitars would disappear completely by 'Lighthouse'), and any rhythms have become little more than side-room ambient clatter. It's Goss's piercing, terror-stricken monosynth keens that take pride of place, forming an uncomfortable bed of anxious electronics that buzzes beneath the entire record. Lambkin and Harris break and bend their acoustic instruments as if they're speaking to the synth sounds from a similar vantage points, like forgotten remnants of British folk history.

A disheveled piano is tapped at furtively on 'Wash What You Eat', and dissonant chords crack awkwardly from a cheap acoustic guitar; Goss's swirling, pitchy warbles sound as if they've been pulled from a Quatermass re-run and copy-pasted with cheap cassette. And it's the fact that we're served this inner vision of humdrum British surrealism - a no-hope fantasized hi-culture/lo-culture melt fueled by tapes, fanzines and overdue library books - that makes it so enduringly good. Lambkin, Harris and Goss weren't pretentiously trying to affix their images onto concepts earmarked for the elite, they were working in their own damp, festering cinematic universe and presenting it warts 'n all. It's fucking timeless.

Originally conceived as a compilation of outtakes and live recordings from The Shadow Ring’s 1995 stateside tour, Wax-Work Echoes takes its name from the first line of “Put the Music in Its Coffin,” the title track of the group’s breakthrough release. Lambkin abandons the bits-and-bobs approach, advancing the Shadow Ring concept with entirely original material that builds on the unit’s self-mythologizing lyrics, celebrates the clicking of horse hooves, ponders on the sociability of rats and mice, and warns of the dangers of poultry. The first Shadow Ring album to officially include Tim Goss in the main lineup, Wax-Work Echoes reveals the group in its final and lasting form, awash in the outer bounds of atmospheric exploration, with Lambkin’s familiar wry and morbid lyricism and the stripped-down angularity of amateurishly detuned guitars fully intact. While Klaus Canterbury and Tony Clark seem all but forgotten, and the shrugged off S. Fritz is listed on the liner notes as performing only “when required,” Lambkin did solicit contributions from outside the inner circle. A bit of “Mambo Twist,” lifted from a tape of unreleased Vitamin B12 material sent to Lambkin by Alasdair Willis, found its way into “V.E.R.M.I.N.,” while an extended epistle contribution from Richard Youngs (and, technically, Brian Lavelle) would be employed in the second half of “Catching Sight/Of Passing Things.”

Released on CD in 1996 for Bruce Russell’s newly minted Corpus Hermeticum, Wax-Work Echoes was recorded concurrently with intense rehearsal periods, in anticipation of the forthcoming “Rose Watson Tour,” and was supported by a celebratory fanzine media blitz. The album seemingly absorbs the frenetic excess of the band’s transatlantic travels; Wax-Work Echoes channels the trio’s wilder instincts into an unresolved catharsis, not yet free of frustration or restlessness. Out of print for almost three decades and available here for the first time ever on long-playing disc, Wax-Work Echoes is a classic from the outer eddies of The Shadow Ring’s sound, a must-have for any aficionado’s collection: “A window slides, glass slips from frame / And canvas carcass breathes again.”

Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, The Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning in 2023 with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre–Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions has been conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group. Wax-Work Echoes and Hold Onto I.D. are the latest releases in a multiyear reissue effort that includes several LPs, a comprehensive CD box set, and a nearly five-hundred-page book.

"First vinyl reissue of this Indian classical masterpiece recorded by Shrimati Kalyani Roy in the late 1960s. Undoubtedly one of the most talented sitar players in the history of the instrument. She is considered as one the finest female players in a field that was dominated by her male counterparts. On these recordings, a two-volume set, she is accompanied by Manick Das (tabla) and Namita Chatterjee (tambura). Recorded in Japan on September 20th, 1974. Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (V 2011LP) come as two separate LPs."

Frighteningly young Tennessee-born free jazz prodigy Zoh Amba follows collaborations with Chris Corsano, Bill Orcutt, William Parker and Matthew Shipp with a blistered debut solo set for Smalltown Supersound. RIYL Peter Brötzmann, Albery Ayler or David Murray.

Since 2022, Amba's released a frightening amount of music, including solo albums for Tzadik and 577 Records, and various live oddities, experiments and ensemble efforts - not bad for a San Francisco Conservatory of Music dropout. Of course, there's more to the story than that; after dropping out, Amba took private lessons from legendary saxophonist Murray, who seems to have guided her spirit. And Amba doesn't just play the horn, she's well-known for flipping between instruments during her live shows, often playing the sax with one hand while she plays piano with the other.

She takes it a little slower on 'Sun', leaving some of the work to her her Sun Quartet (Lex Korten on piano, Caroline Morton on bass and Miguel Marcel Russell on drums), who just about match her energy. Dedicating her performance to the creator - Amba is a practicing Hindu - and to the late, great Peter Brötzmann, she captures the unplaceable energy of classic free jazz. It's easy to hear why she was so quickly courted by John Zorn and Bill Orcutt. Over eight short tracks, Amba shows us her personality as a horn player (and a guitarist on the celestial 'Champa Flower'), and lets her emotions pour out on the long final jam, 'In Heart', bending her notes through Korten's jagged piano hits.

Froid Dub continues to explore its synth-lined slowed down digi-dub cave flooded with waves of echoes and acid bleeps. Bass lines and flanged delays sail over deep waters, seemingly barely disturbed by the minimal pump of the synth-wave vibe.

フィラデルフィア・ソウルの名門〈Salsoul〉より、Ron Hardyによる伝説のリエディットが正規復刻。ディスコ〜ハウスを越境して愛され続けるFirst Choiceのクラシック「Let No Man Put Asunder」を、シカゴ・ハウスの先駆者Ron Hardyがよりフロア志向に再構築！ミニマルなループとグルーヴの増幅によって、原曲のエモーショナルなソウルが陶酔的なダンス・ナラティヴへと変貌。ディスコ史とハウスの系譜を繋ぐ重要盤です。〈Salsoul〉による正規12インチ復刻。

The Dubplate series comes to the label’s spiritual home of Hackney, the stomping ground of the Douglas “Dougie” Waldrop and his Conscious Sounds label with the spin off Dub meets Funk project, the music of the Dub Specialists are presented with extended re-edits by label owners Piers Harrison and Stuart “Chuggy” Leath, alongside rising DJ star Millie McKee and studio boffin Matt Bruce (Vanity Project). Formed in 1989, the Conscious Sounds label and Conscious Music studio have been mainstays on the UK Digital Roots scene to this day, working with the likes Bush Chemists, Johan Dan, Kenny Knots and Pablo Gad. The Dub Specialists was a project created by Dougie to put aside studio sessions and explore a new interest in samplers, working with friend Chris Petter (Love Grocer) and his interest in Jazz and Funk. Using the Atari 1040 running Cubase, with a Soundcraft mixer, drum loops and Reggae basslines were played over Funk samples and layered with Petter’s chords to create a series of short tracks for DJ play. Releasing 3 albums between 1995 and 1999 on the sub label Crispy Music, they have more recently been gaining cult status. The tracks chosen all come from the first and increasingly sought after LP, Dub To Dub Break To Break and have been extended, stretched, looped and dubbed by the label family to form a club friendly EP. From the dance floor jams of Dub De Funk and Funkin’ Dub to the deeper Movin Ya and Murderous Style this is a unique fusion of Funk and Digidub that fits perfectly the ideals of the Dubplate Series.

Civilistjävel! returns with Brödföda, the successor to 2022’s Järnnätter and his fourth release for FELT. The record features collaborations with Laila Sakini, Mayssa Jallad, Thommy Wahlström, ELDON, and Withdrawn. Tomas Bodén is a revered figure of the aural murk, known primarily for his work as Civilistjävel. It’s an alias that has spawned a catalogue of self-released peculiarities, featuring music that scorns traditional form, instead opting for unfussed symphonies of ice-hued minimalism; soft murmurs that emanate from his studio in the High Coast of Sweden. On Brödföda, his latest album for Fergus Jones’s FELT imprint, subtle new developments in mood prevail. Across its 75 minutes, Civilistjävel! unveils a breadth of emotions that on previous releases seemed distant. He also invites collaborators on record for the first time: Beirut-based singer Mayssa Jallad mournfully croons on “IV”, “VIII” hosts Coldlight’s ELDON & Withdrawn for an abstracted session of dub-hop murk, Laila Sakini offers a hallucinogenic monologue amidst melodica, sticks & bells playing on “IX”, and Thommy Wahlström floats scant acid dub stylings on “VI”. These additions and developments bring a forlorn intimacy to the music, and suggest an ambition that few artists of his ilk strive for. FELT’s (un)reliable cast of audio ghouls routinely summon the odd, with Civilistjävel! often its primary culprit; Brödföda gently modifies this path to pursue some of his and the label’s most quaintly beautiful music yet.

Guangzhou-based producer and DJ COLA REN released her debut LP, 'Hailu' in June 2023, a fulsome ambient, balearic, and downtempo brew with a gorgeous sense of melody and spirituality that offers a soothing escape. To celebrate the release, we have invited 8 talented musicians to the enchanting realm of ‘Hailu'. This remix compilation serves as a metaphorical exploration akin to the "Chakras," symbolizing the diverse energy centers within the human body. Through the collective reinterpretation of Hailu's original composition by 8 musicians, each imbuing it with unique hues and symbols, the remix reflects varied spiritual essences and elemental qualities.

Notes by Anton Spice:

Resavoir - the collaborative project led by Chicago producer/composer Will Miller - presents their second self-titled album. The new 'Resavoir' is a subtly radiant symphony interweaving modern-day soul-jazz with bedroom beats, synth serenades and twilight sonatas. It represents Miller’s most assured and refined work to date.

Imagined, instigated and produced by Miller, who ties the diverse sounds into an expansive, coherent whole, 'Resavoir' features a wide and vibrant cast of collaborators, including Elton Aura, Whitney, Akenya, Matt Gold, Eddie Burns, Lane Beckstrom, Jeremy Cunningham, Irvin Pierce, Macie Stewart, Peter Manheim and more.

Rooted in the collaborative spirit of the early 2010s indie hip-hop scene, Miller cut loose from his training at Oberlin jazz conservatory, taking a compositional assignment to write a tune about a reservoir as his cue to explore a beats and RnB-inspired sound that could function as a literal reservoir of music to draw from. Running his trumpet through MIDI keyboards, experimenting with samplers, drum machines and synths, he began to build a sound that could seamlessly collaborate with MCs, vocalists and instrumentalists.

“With Resavoir, it’s been more about unlearning those stigmas and traumas of going through the very rigid system of learning music and coming back to making something that is going to make me feel good and reflects how I'm feeling in the moment,” Miller explains.

A longtime member of indie band Whitney, and having subsequently worked with the likes of Mac Miller, ASAP Rocky, Chance The Rapper, Lil Wayne and SZA - for whom he produced “Blind” from her 2022 album SOS which spent 10 weeks at #1 on the Billboard 100 chart - the Resavoir project allowed Miller to take these experiences into his own work - creating a sound that is deft yet deep, compositionally complex, yet finely tuned to the timbres of emotion that color life’s quieter moments.

Initially developed as a group project, Miller released his debut self-titled Resavoir album in 2019. Described by Pitchfork as “a complex, soulful album which celebrates interconnectedness,” the album received widespread critical acclaim. However, Miller’s concept for Resavoir continued to evolve as the pandemic forced everyone back onto themselves, this deep well of music now offering a return to the fundamentals of his approach. He explains: “Resavoir is a compositional practice, a place, a feeling, and a reflection of the community I have around me.”

Renting a studio in the old Hammond B3 organ factory on Chicago’s NW side, Miller went back to basics, organizing open air jam sessions in the side lot of his Logan Square apartment building that would form the basis of two shimmering tracks – “Midday” and “First Light” – years before this new album came into view. As Miller remembers: “Both recordings came from the first time any of us had played music with anyone else since the onset of the pandemic so there was quite a tangible energy and emotion in the air. Folks from the neighborhood were stopping by to drop off 6-packs of beer and listen.”

Written over three years beginning in April 2020, the new 'Resavoir' saw Miller challenge himself to experiment with what he calls the “medicinal” daily practice of music making. Born out of a process of introversion and mindfulness, the eleven effervescent songs that ultimately made the cut are testament to Miller expanding on his breezy and melodic signature to showcase a bold new sonic direction - a beat-oriented but compositionally complex, lush and cinematic soul-jazz sound.

First single "Inside Minds" channels a João Gilberto-meets-MF DOOM whimsey – stripped back, spontaneous yet orchestrated. Capturing the moment of discovery, other tracks like "Sunset" are like vignettes of Miller’s process - music as an exercise in letting go, embracing the organic imperfections of their creation.

Discussing his approach to the work, Miller says: "a single chord change has the power to completely divert my entire day and provide me with a feeling of peace and wonder. Those are the best moments when creating music, the moments of transformation and healing. The feeling of this new album to me is meditative, peaceful, serene, quiet, introspective, intentional, patient, calm, awe-filled and loving. If I was truly writing to how I was feeling in the moment I think it would sound a lot different. So I wanted to speak to the transformational power of music.” 

On October 15th and 16th, 2020, drummer Daniel Villarreal was joined by guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butterss for two afternoons of recording in the backyard of Chicali Outpost in Los Angeles. For all three musicians, it was the first ensemble recording session they’d done in-person since the pandemic locked the world down just seven months prior. Some choice moments from these sessions made it onto Villarreal’s critically-acclaimed 2022 album Panamá 77, but most of the music remained unreleased. Lados B is a deep dive into the high-level spontaneous music made by Villarreal, Parker, and Butterss across those two days in 2020. Villarreal is heard leading the group through various rhythmic modes and structures for improvisation – flow as informed by the Latin funk of Fania Records as it is by the otherworldly humanity trance of Brain Records – while Parker and Butterss draw on their extensive experience playing free together (as heard on Parker's recently-released Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, and the LA side of Makaya McCraven's 2018 LP Universal Beings) to build harmonic buoys for their spontaneous melodicism. The result is a beautifully vivid illustration of context, creativity, and collective composition from a particularly rich moment in history.