MUSIC

Merzbow came roaring onto the Tokyo scene in 1979. To this day, the project remains one of the most prolific and aggressively forward-thinking acts in experimental music. Initially a duo of Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani, before settling as the moniker of Akita alone, the project took its name from German artist Kurt Schwitters' pre-war architectural assemblage, The Cathedral of Erotic Misery or Merzbau, and quickly set out to challenge entrenched notions of what music could be. Embracing technology and the machine, even in its earliest iterations, Merzbow broke boundaries and pushed toward new territories of the extreme, arriving at an unadulterated manifestation of sonic expression that has continued across the last 44 years, setting the pace for the entire genre of noise along the way. When it comes to Japanese noise, few projects have pushed boundaries or risen to a more iconic status than Merzbow. The mutant child of punk and experimental music, the project’s blistering sounds - as singular and wild as they are unique - are among the movement’s most important, definitive statements, continuously laying the groundwork for countless artists who have followed in its wake. Cloud Cock OO Grand marks a new era for Merzbow, the first of many CDs that will go in the direction we’d see in the ’90s. It is also the first time that this seminal document from Merzbow’s '90s period has ever appeared on vinyl. Composed and performed on synthesizers, metal devices, noise electronics and string instruments, all recorded at extreme volumes, Cloud Cock OO Grand’s five tracks present an enthralling sonic assault, deeply driven by the presence of electronic sounds, played against the sparse interjections of Akita’s heavily processed strings, that push toward new territories of the extreme, while subtly nodding toward historical gestures from the early years of the avant-garde. On the double vinyl, the tracks are not only remastered by Merzbow, but are recontextualized and open up a new sense of his studio experimentation at the time. Cloud Cock OO Grand is a stunning feat of remarkable importance within the genre of noise, delivering this long unavailable masterstroke back into our hands, while further illuminating the project’s crucial work from the 1990s. This is an absolute must for the indoctrinated Merbow fan as much as those just entering this incredible world.

SONG 08

Merzbow (Masami Akita), the seminal Japanese noise project since 1979, remains one of the most influential and prolific figures in modern electronic composition. Originally a limited CD-only release on Waystyx in 2005, ‘Scene’ is now available on vinyl for the first time with remastering by Masami Akita and an exclusive bonus track from the original recording session. Scene is revered by fans as one of Merzbow’s best surrealist works from the mid-2000s ‘laptop era’. The intro track, Part 1, immediately grabs listeners with hysteric carnival music. The ascending parts then warp into hallucinatory passages with rhythmic drum patterns, metalworks, echoing bird calls, and eerie wind chimes tinkling atonally in the gossamer moon. Ultimately, Scene is a vital part of Merzbow’s ever-evolving experimentations with analog and digital manipulations. Limited to 300 copies, the long unavailable Scene is officially back in our hands.

“Things fade into obscurity when a populace has no interest” - Meitei / 冥丁

Meitei considers himself an old soul, often preoccupied with the customs and rituals of the past. Recently Meitei lost his beloved 99-year-old grandmother, a woman who he considered to be one of the last remaining people to have experience and understanding of traditional Japanese ambience. His music and art is driven by a desire to cast light on an era and aesthetic that he believes is drifting out of the collective Japanese consciousness with each passing generation, what he calls "the lost Japanese mood". He chose to dedicate Komachi to his late Grandmother.

“I want to revive the soul of Japan that still sleeps in the darkness” - Meitei / 冥丁

Haunting and delicate, distant and timeless, Komachi is awash with white noise, complex field recordings and the hypnotic sounds of flowing water. Though confidently contemporary, like a bucolic J-Dilla, Komachi’s lineage can be traced back to the floating worlds of Ukiyo-e and Gagaku via the prism of 80s Japanese ambient pioneers, and 90s pastoral sample-based artists such as Susumu Yokota and Nobukazu Takemura.

Composed as individual sonic dioramas, each of the twelve tracks have been crafted to not only evoke feelings of nostalgia but to also explore the dichotomy of ancient and new in modern Japanese society. This pervasive narrative runs throughout, calling to mind the work of authors Yasunari Kawabata and Natsume Soseki, as well as the films of Yasujirō Ozu and Hayao Miyazaki, artists similarly fascinated by the reflective tranquillity that permeated traditional Japanese domestic life.

The limited vinyl release, produced in collaboration with label and distributor Séance Centre, includes a super limited special edition complete with beautiful twelve-page booklet featuring a number of prints in the Ukiyo-e style, a traditional style of woodblock print that dates back to 17th century Japan. The images were chosen by Meitei to showcase the old style Japanese sentiments that form a core inspiration to his musical output. 
 

A selection of private press 45s featuring Nate Young, John Olson, Alex Moskos, Gretchen Gonzales, Aaron Dilloway & Raven Chacon. These collaborations between the core Wolf Eyes crew and friends was originally self-released as a series of super-limited 7” hand painted box sets, but now the core ‘hits’ have been compiled by Disciples for wider consumption. 

Wolf Eyes' history with collaboration goes back almost 26 years. From the first Wolf Eyes w/Spykes concert that led to Olson joining the band to Smegma, Braxton, Richard Pinhas, Merzbow, Marshall Allen, and many more. Wolf Eyes has continued expanding musical ideas through collaboration and Difficult Messages is the first compilation of this practice. 

Many of the bands on 'Difficult Messages' exist inside an assemblage of a mail art tradition. Most of the music was made remotely and this allowed for deeper exploration into styles that might have been too uncomfortable to attempt face to face. Short Hands finds Nate Young, and Alex Moskos exchanging bass and guitar fragments with Olson’s reeds and tones overtop sculpted into odd rock songs. Wolf Raven touches on harsh electronics and pushes forward into postmodern ideas of composition. Time Designers is a duo of Alex Moskos and Nate Young using hacked drum machines and a 'design' approach to organizing sound. U Eye finds Olson and Young alongside longtime collaborators Gretchen Gonzales and Aaron Dilloway for a scrape and tape session recorded by Warren Defever. Stare Case is Olson and Young in a non-Wolf duo. Perhaps the only 'rules following' project these two have EVER had. The collection of audio tracks could be looked at as an exquisite corpse: a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. With this method over thirty tracks and four hundred paintings were created. 

"Minimalism meets rave pentatonics"
★★★★ – The Guardian - Experimental Contemporary Album of the Month

"A fiercely focused electro-acoustic masterclass, full of life-affirming zeal." ★★★★ – MOJO

"Akusmi crafts an often-jubilant, forward-thinking sound from a vocabulary of past futures" – The Quietus

"Delightful pointillist songs from this London artist where sound appears in short tonal bursts to create musical constellations." – New and Notable, Bandcamp

Akusmi is the new project moniker of French-born, London based composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Pascal Bideau, who signs to the new Tonal Union imprint for the release of his album ‘Fleeting Future.’ With its hallucinatory, genre-defying blend of minimalism, cosmic jazz and Fourth World influences, and in its quest for optimism in the face of unknown and limitless possibility. ‘Fleeting Future’ stands apart as an inventive and inspirational debut.

The creation of the album’s richly colourful and multi-layered sound world was originally inspired by Bideau’s journey to Indonesia, where he immersed himself in traditional Gamelan and gong music. Many of the themes, motifs and melodies on ‘Fleeting Future’ seed from the ‘Slendro’ scale, one of the essential tuning systems used in Gamelan. However it is not musical scales, but scales as in the size or extent of things that most fascinates Bideau, specifically he explains; “the compelling way things dramatically change when you shift from any given scale to another.”

The album connects directly to nature and the wider world in its evocation of perceptive shifts and transitions from microscopic to macro scale, as evidenced by the opening title track ‘Fleeting Future’, on which a simple dotted saxophone line morphs and billows into synths, brass and strings, indicating the musical voyage that lies ahead. Like the start of a journey or adventure it is full of anticipation, its arborescent growth conveying the optimism of the unknown and of limitless possibility. The album centrepiece ‘Neo Tokyo’ is a vibrating, ebullient mass of colliding elements which feels like zooming in to the electron level, as it teeters on the edge of chaos. The title is a reference to Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, a dizzying work of art set in a sprawling futuristic metropolis.

‘Yurikamome’, meanwhile, is an imaginary soundtrack inspired by Bideau’s yearning to visit Japan which he fuels by watching Youtube videos of drives and rides through Japanese landscapes and cities. “It’s amazing” he adds, “that we have the ability to access almost anywhere in the world and see what it’s like, that people document it and upload it. It’s never going to be any replacement for the real thing, but with places that really touch you, it works.” The track is named after a Japanese monorail train line which rides from Shinbashi to Toyosu, a last journey that feels like a new beginning.


‘Fleeting Future’ was composed and recorded by Bideau between 2017 and 2019 in his North London studio and features additional contributions recorded in Berlin by Florian Juncker (trombone), Ruth Velten (saxophone) and regular collaborator Daniel Brandt of Brandt Brauer Frick (drums / electronic percussion). Having been living through uncertain times, one thing that keeps spiralling into the unknown is the future, about which Bideau leaves us with a final thought:

“The future is fascinating: It is constantly readjusting to new events. I feel we left a linear approach to the future to enter an arborescent one where all the data and information we have about what could happen is exponentially ever-growing. Following a branch might allow you to glimpse into what it may become, but the evolution of the whole picture might very well render the prediction totally obsolete, and even meaningless. In that sense, there is not one future but innumerable ones all cancelling each other. That’s what makes it fleeting.”

‘Fleeting Future’ will be the first release on the new London/Berlin based Tonal Union imprint, founded by Art director and curator Adam Heron.

Akusmi — ‘Fleeting Future’ is released on Tonal Union Records on June 24th 

A sense of optimism infuses Penguin Cafe’s fifth studio album Rain Before Seven… not the braggadocious, overconfident kind, but more a blithe, self-effacing optimism in keeping with the national character. Even when all signs point to the contrary, it operates within the certainty that things are going to be alright. Probably.

The title comes from an old weather proverb with the rhyming prognostication — fine before eleven — hinting at a happy ending, irrespective of the science: “I found it in a book and I'd never heard it before,” says Arthur Jeffes, leader of Penguin Cafe. “It has faintly optimistic overtones and I quite like it. It's fallen out of usage recently but it does describe English weather patterns coming in off the Atlantic.”

From the widescreen reverie of opener ‘Welcome to London’ with its cheeky nod to Morricone to ‘Goldfinch Yodel’, the self-described “Maypole banger” at the denouement, there’s a welcome sense of sanguinity, always with an undercurrent of exotic rhythmic exuberance. Playfulness pervades, with a titular nod to A Matter of Life… from 2011, the last album title that concluded with an ellipsis. That Penguin Cafe debut is the bridge between the legendary Penguin Cafe Orchestra, led by Arthur’s father Simon Jeffes, and the much-loved descendent, led by Arthur.

“Stylistically it's really satisfying to get back to playful rhythms and instruments,” says the younger Jeffes, who kept the group’s debut from 12 years ago in mind when writing the new album. “Certainly when starting out, I became aware that we’d stopped using quite a few of the textures that had been there at the beginning—and it was certainly there in my dad's earlier stuff. So there's a lot of balafon and textures from completely different parts of the world, musically and geographically: ukuleles, cuatros and melodicas that you can hear.”

It’ll become clear when listening to Rain Before Seven… that the themes explored transcend mere weather chat. In a sense, it’s a sonic diary scribbled from below the parapet, waiting for the danger to blow over. Jeffes, like many of us, found himself in lockdown in 2020. COVID-19’s first European destination was Italy, where he and his family were staying at the time in a converted convent in Tuscany, bought some twelve years ago with his mother, the celebrated stone sculptor Emily Young. There might be worse places to be stranded during quarantine than a hilly enclave surrounded by olive trees, though the family were faced with the same sobering fears and uncertainties that much of the world was forced to contend with.

And so titles often refer to personal experience during this period. ‘Galahad’ is a triumphant celebration of Arthur’s beloved dog who died, aged 16, written in an irrepressible 15/8 time signature, and ‘Lamborghini 754’ is named after the 40-year-old tractor he bought for his mother, which he could see from the studio as she traversed the olive grove. Jeffes is the first to admit that he was fortunate to have space to manoeuvre, a luxury that was denied to millions living in cities and towns. Moreover, the plight of city dwellers seemed to eerily coalesce with a vision Arthur’s dad had that would inspire the Penguin Cafe Orchestra into life in the first place.

The story goes like so: back in 1972, Simon Jeffes ate some dodgy fish whilst holidaying in the South of France, which caused him to hallucinate: “As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision,” he said later. “There, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye. In the rooms were people, everyone of them preoccupied…” Jeffes could make out “electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place had been neutralised, made grey and anonymous. The scene was, for me, one of ordered desolation.” The antidote to this premonition of an uncannily familiar future was the freewheeling Penguin Cafe “where your unconscious can just be”.

Simon Jeffes took “a slightly eccentric antiquarian approach” to assembling his music, according to Arthur, repurposing sounds that were unapologetically easy on the ear; a reaction, perhaps, to the earnestness of the post-war serialists, which happened to coincide with the rise of minimalism. “But he loved Boulez,” adds Arthur, “and John Cage too. I think my dad felt that there was a lot of sub-Cage that didn't need to be there.” Classical music dovetailing with pop and East African rhythms might not sound all that remarkable in the internet age (and in advertising, which PCO were never averse to), though in the 1970s they found a home on Brian Eno’s Obscure label, such was the arcane nature of what they were doing. The Penguin Cafe Orchestra wouldn’t remain recherché for long.

“I think his novel approach was to take interesting, weird ideas and do strange things with them,” says Arthur, “but always while keeping an eye on making sure it sounded beautiful and emotionally engaging.” That ethos has been carried into Penguin Cafe. “It’s a commitment that we made when I picked it up again, because we play my dad's music but we also perform new music in the same sound world. That means I’m honour bound to keep an eye on the original thread and make sure we don't start heading off into thrash metal territory.”

Nevertheless, encouraged by co-producer Robert Raths, the rhythmic elements of Rain Before Seven… have never been more to the fore and, at times, even hint at the electronic. ‘Find Your Feet’, for instance, is underpinned with more than just a pulse. Mixed by Tom Chichester-Clark, it brings to the musical melange what Arthur describes as a “near electronic feel”. He adds, excitedly: “There are elements of fun here which we haven't really done with the last three records.” Another ebullient highlight is ‘In Re Budd’, dedicated to the late ambient godfather Harold Budd, who Arthur discovered had died on the day he’d been writing the celebratory ear worm with a deceptively tricky syncopation. Played on an upright piano with some “prepared” felt to accentuate the bounce, Jeffes feels a track with an Afro Cuban Cafe vibe would appeal to Budd’s contrariness.

And then there’s the aforementioned ‘Welcome to London’, which got its name as the world started to open up and people were finally allowed to fly again. Jeffes, who touched down on home soil for the first time in a while, was struck by its cinematic John Barry-esque qualities as he took a taxi into West London from Heathrow with the mise-en-scène of the opulent twilight. The optimism is there, and maybe a little caustic irony too. “Robert [Raths] added a layer of nuance which I think is interesting, because many Londoners are not from London originally. So you pitch up to London as an outsider, and you haven't really found your tribe yet, you get mugged… and then ‘Welcome to London’ takes on a more sarcastic resonance.” 

南アフリカの知られざるオブスキュア・グルーヴを掘り起こす〈Umsakazo Records〉から最新物件が登場です。「ソウェトの不滅のビート」と呼ばれたジャンル「ムバカンガ」の代表格であるMahlathini & the Mahotella Queensが88年から89年にかけて行った英国ツアーで残された音源たちがレコード化！長い間伝説のギグとして語り継がれてきた各地での画期的なコンサートの音源から選りすぐられた全16曲を収録したライブ・アルバム！新たに発見されたカセットレコーディングからリマスタリング仕様で収録。まさに彼らが南アフリカで最も偉大な音楽の輸出品であることを間違いなく証明したコンサートの記録となっています。

A series of pivotal music projects during the early 1980s led to an explosion of authentic South African sounds sweeping the Western world. Among those projects were collaborative albums such as Malcolm McLaren’s “Duck Rock” (1983), Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s “Zulu Rock” (1984) and Paul Simon’s “Graceland” (1986); and reissues and compilations of essential African recordings on the UK-based Earthworks Records label, headed up by white South African expatriates Jumbo Vanrenan and Trevor Herman. The common denominator linking these releases was the genre that Earthworks famously referred to as “The Indestructible Beat of Soweto” – mbaqanga music. It was therefore inevitable that the foremost exponents of that genre, Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, would achieve international stardom before the decade ended. Their international ‘discovery’ was actually the latest chapter in a collective career that had already spanned some 30 years. In June 1988, Mahlathini and the Queens made their first visit to the United Kingdom. Hoping to ride the crest of a wave, concert promoters conceived a package show named after the seminal 1985 Earthworks compilation, “The Indestructible Beat of Soweto”. This would give British audiences a revealing insight into African music as never before – in addition to the headline performers were Philip Tabane and Malombo, Nothembi Mkhwebane and her backing chorus The Siblings, Sipho Mchunu, accordion player Mzwandile David and acrobatic dancer Lucas ‘Rubber Boy’ Kau. The rapturous reception led to an invitation back to the UK in November for further Indestructible Beat concerts. It was off the back of these shows that Mahlathini and the Queens – the undoubtable standouts of Indestructible Beat – undertook their first standalone tour of the UK in early 1989. Their stage act rarely dipped below excellent. Dressed in their original attire as young Zulu girls – but with red izicholo on their heads to signify they were now grown women – Nobesuthu Shawe, Hilda Tloubatla and Mildred Mangxola would fly onto the stage to the strains of “Awuthule Kancane” (Be a bit quieter), heralding the start of a very special evening of music and dance. The formidable Mahlathini, billed as “The Lion of Soweto”, emerged from the stage wings with both arms raised in the air for the start of the next number, “Re Ya Dumedisa” (We greet you all). The humble and soft-spoken performer always lived up to the expectations set by his billing – his roaring introduction to “Lilizela Mlilizeli” (Ululate/applaud) audible proof of the more extroverted alter ego he metamorphosed into on stage. Numbers like “Uyavutha Umlilo” (Music inferno), “Jive Makgona”, “Thokozile” (a girl’s name) and “Melodi Ya Lla” (There‘s a sound ringing out) were used primarily as vehicles for the Queens’ trademark mgqashiyo choreography, punctuated with whistles, hand claps and chants of “yebo!” (“yes!”) and “thatha!” (“take it!”). Mahlathini prowled around the stage imitating the ladies or simply stood aside, clapping and allowing them to take the spotlight. “Duduzile” (a girl’s name), however, was where the great groaner came alive, contorting, convulsing and leaping through an exaggerated Zulu dance routine. Then in “Nina Majuba” (Fly away, you doves) and “Sengikhala Ngiyabaleka” (I‘m crying and running away), the foursome competed in a magnificent display of showstopping, uninhibited jive, bringing the show to a close and the audience clamouring for an encore. The Indestructible Beat of Soweto shows have long since passed into gig legend. None of those landmark concerts were ever made commercially available. Now, some 30 years later, Umsakazo Records proudly presents Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens’ entire Indestructible Beat set of 16 songs, handpicked from a number of different UK venues and all remastered from newly discovered cassette recordings. These were made at the mixing desk by David Barton, a photographer and music fanatic who travelled with the performers as they descended on unsuspecting audiences across the UK. “Music Inferno: The Indestructible Beat Tour 1988-89” shines the spotlight once more on a truly joyous and frenetic concert experience, one that without question established Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens as forever one of South Africa’s greatest musical exports.

The third part of Ideologic Organ Music’s trilogy of field recordings of sacred flute music from Papua New Guinea, recorded by Ragnar Johnson and Jessica Mayer in the 1970s. A book titled “A Papua New Guinea Journey” consisting of RagnarJohnson’s account of the circumstances behind the recordings will be published simultaneously with this music release.

“The recording of a male initiation ceremony with sacred flutes, bullroarers and ‘crying baby’ leaves was only possible after fifteen months residence during anthropological research. From the same Ommura villages in the Eastern Highlands there are bamboo jews harps, yam fertility flutes and singing. Nama (‘bird’) sacred flutes were recorded in a Gahuku Gama village in the town of Goroka. There are Mo-mo bamboo resonating tubes and singing from the Finisterre Range of Madang. From the Ramu Coast region of Madang there are: Waudang flutes, garamut slit gongs and singing from Manam Island, Maner flutes from Awar village and Siam and Guna flutes and garamuts from Nubia Sissimungum Village. These previously unreleased recordings were made in 1976 and 1979.”
–Ragnar Johnson, London 2021

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Ragnar Johnson's liner notes for the release

This music comes from the Eastern Highlands and Madang provinces of Papua New Guinea. The recordings of the Ommura Iyavati male initiation ceremony, the different bamboo jews harps, yam fertility flutes and singing were the result of fifteen months residence for anthropological research 1975- 1976 and a one month return in 1979. The Iyavati male initiation ceremony with its spirit cries of bamboo transverse blown and water flutes, bullroarers and ‘crying baby’ leaves was recorded at night outside the men’s house with the sounds of instruction and singing from inside the men’s house audible in the background. Nama ‘bird’ transverse blown paired bamboo flutes were recorded in a Gahuku Gama village inside the town of Goroka in the Eastern Highlands. The Mo-mo resonating tubes and singing were recorded at Damaindeh Bau on the Markham Valley edge of the Finisterre Range. The other Madang recordings of long paired bamboo flutes and garamut wooden slit gongs come from the Ramu coast region. There are Waudang flutes, garamuts and singing from Manam Island, Maner flutes from Awar and Siam and Guna flutes and garamuts from Nubia Sissimungum.

The Ommura lived in the Yonura villages of Samura, Sonura and Moussouri which were next to the Obura Patrol Post and in the neigbouring villages of Kurunumbaira and Asara. The1975 Government Census listed a population of 1,140 inhabitants of whom 437 lived in Yonura. The Ommura, the collective name for the inhabitants of these villages, spoke a dialect classified as Southern Tairora. The Obura Patrol Post, established in 1965, was 32 miles from the town of Kainantu in the Dogara Census Division of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The altitude was 4,000 to 5,300 feet on the valley floors and up to 8,000 feet on the mountain ridges. The arrival of steel tools, traded along the Markham Valley, into what was previously a stone age technology, preceded the establishment of the patrol post by about fifteen years. The first government patrol to reach the Ommura area was in the early 1950s and the area was regularly patrolled by the 1960s. Inter-village warfare was endemic.

The Ommura were slash and burn cultivators growing sweet potatoes, yams, taro, bananas, sugar cane, various beans, pit-pit, maize, squashes and greens. Arabica coffee was introduced as a cash crop in the early 1970s and young men were sent as plantation labourers to New Ireland.

Every Ommura patri-lineage (okyera) had a mountain demarcating a traditional area of lineage residence and a mythical lineage ancestor (uri). Ommura social life revolved around the staging of various kinds of ceremonies. There were fertility ceremonies to promote the growth of yams, sweet potatoes and pigs. Major events in individuals lives were marked by the enactment of the life cycle ceremonies of birth, male or female initiation, marriage and death. All Ommura ceremonies involved payment of some kind varying in amount from large payments between lineage groups for life cycle ceremonies consisting of traditional valuables, earth oven cooked pig meat and food, and money to small payments of food.

The Ommura practised three types of curing ceremony; Ua-ha in which the illness was chased away by armed men, Vu-ha in which the afflicted were fed a mixture of pork and medicinal herbs and their illnesses were transferred into a device made of sugar cane and washed away by flowing water and Asochia where diviners chewed hallucinogenic tree bark (Galbulimima Belgraveana) to see the cause of the illness and then treat it.

The Ommura performed the following male and female initiations: Nihi Rara the piercing of the nasal septum for male and female children; Kam Karura performed in the women’s house for girls, Ummara and Iyavati performed in the men’s house for boys and the male and female pre-marriage ceremonies performed respectively in the men’s house and woman’s house.
These initiations were enacted to discipline youth into their respective male and female roles with bleeding the nose and beatings with taroah stinging nettles to promote heath. Male and female initiates were instructed to practice the same food taboos and were educated by means of gender specific secret stories and songs. Burlesque mimes of the opposite sex occurred in both and at the end the initiates were decorated in new clothes, ornaments and paint. A feast of pig meat and vegetables had to be given by the father at the end of an initiation ceremony together with a payment to the eldest mother’s brother for his participation.

Nose bleeding was performed to remove the dangerous accumulation of blood that became lodged inside the bridge of the nose at conception in the womb. To strengthen the penis young males had the urethra of the penis bled sometime between the final stage of male initiation and marriage. During the Iyavati initiation the male initiates were beaten with taroah stinging nettles, secret taroah songs were sung and exaggerated mimes of aggressive male sexual behaviour involving the use of taroah were enacted with much chanting of the male ’Wo-Wo’ war cry. Initiates were told what acts and foods were forbidden to them and given instructions regarding permissible sexual relations and their duties to assist their relatives and future wife. Iyavati initiates wore a pair of pigs tusks points upwards through a hole in the nasal septum.

Marriage was centred around the bride price which was given to the wife’s father by the husband, his paternal kin, mother’s brother and relatives. During the marriage ceremony, grooms were warned about the disastrous consequences of contact with female menstrual pollution and brides were warned not to poison a husband in this way.
Peace was made between enemy villages by an exchange of cooked pigs in a ceremony called Obu. A death compensation ‘head’ payment
in traditional valuables or a woman in marriage was the only act that eliminated the need for a payback killing in retribution for a death in war. Inter-village trade was carried out between two individuals rather than groups from different villages, frequently with partners from the lower altitude Bush Markham villages. 

"A New Guinea Journey" is Dr. Ragnar Johnson's 289 page manuscript concerning his ethnomusicology research in Papua New Guinea during the 1970s. Ideologic Organ has released three double LP/double CD titles of recordings from these extensive, immersive and assimilated research trips. This is the definitive writing on the topic.

The long-awaited repress of the recording of the shōmyō of Gut Temple, which was a place for tantra (practice to realize enlightenment) from the prestigious French folk music label OCORA! !!
In the early 1970s, before hundreds of thousands of Tibetans were forced into exile, about 100 monks at Gut Temple went into exile in India. Originally, it is a shōmyō that seems not to be released to the outside world, but due to the sense of crisis that the tradition may be erased, they began to perform many guest performances and recordings abroad after that. .. This recording is the earliest live recording made in Paris in 1975.
The sound of bells, the ascetic Tibetan horn, the drums being beaten, the thick bass that you can't think of as a human being, and the overtones that make you feel cosmic are layered, but at first glance, it's a harsh sound world. As I listened to it as if I was meditating deeply, all the extra things gradually disappeared, and eventually it appeared as a harmony, and it was a ridiculous content that led to a kind of trance state! Immersion intensity and depth are different! !!
Of course, I would like people who listen to traditional recordings in various places and those who are exploring music to listen to it, but I also want people who like dark unbind / drone, industrial, etc. to listen to it once. .. With Japanese commentary

Disc 1
"Secret Rally" or "Secret Single" Tantra / Excerpt from the Abhisheka in the ritual of Yamantaka, where the wrath of the Bodhisattva Manjushri appears / Excerpt from the ritual of dedication, Rapune

Disc 2
Daikokuten / Golden Libation / Auspicious Prayer

22/12/2017 GUILIN SYNTHETIC DAYDREAM 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream is a perceptual trap. Inspired by an experience of intense perceptive disorientation while crossing a market in China, Eve Aboulkheir reinstantiates, in the field of sounds, the swirling and anamorphic universe of thwarted perceptions, surrounding multitudes and shifted sensations. She thus constructs a dreamlike and artificial universe, suspended and hyperactive, which is both an electronic vortex sucking us in and a mechanical ballet developing its arabesques around us, caught and fascinated by these volutes of sound that fracture like a kaleidoscope in which our eyes-ears are immersed. 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream approaches the musical form in the most direct way possible, i.e. through its effects and its empire on our sensorium. 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream est un piège à perception. S’inspirant justement d’une expérience de désorientation perceptive intense lors de la traversée d’un marché, en Chine, Eve Aboulkheir réinstancie, dans le champ sonore, l’univers tourbillonnant et anamorphique des perceptions déjouées, des multitudes environnantes, des sensations décalibrées. Elle construit ainsi un univers onirique et artificiel, suspendu et hyperactif, à la fois vortex électronique nous aspirant et ballet mécanique développant ses arabesques autour de nous, piégés et fascinés par ces volutes de sons qui se fractalisent comme un kaléidoscope dans lequel sont plongés nos yeux-oreilles. 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream aborde la forme musicale de la manière la plus directe qui soit, c’est-à-dire à travers ses effets et son empire sur notre sensorium. — HOW TO AVOID ANTS Using concrète techniques to collect, transform and assemble sounds of various origins (sounds of tree branches, leaves, but also guitars or synthesizers), Lasse Marhaug elaborates a dense and subterranean work, which unfolds through the multiple dimensions induced by the great diversity of its sound material. There is a labyrinthine feeling in this work, a feeling that is better understood when the inspiration for the title of the piece How to avoid ants is revealed, a very practical and then poetic undertaking, that of avoiding the anthills lining the path to the forest camp in the kindergarten to which his little girl, who was then frightened of insects, was going. It is such an activity of circumvention, diversion and byways that Lasse Marhaug uses to create an exploratory and evasive music. Utilisant les techniques concrètes pour collecter, transformer et assembler des sons d’origines variés (sons de branches, de feuillages, mais aussi de guitares ou de synthétiseurs), Lasse Marhaug élabore une œuvre dense et souterraine, qui se déploie au travers des multiples dimensions induites par la grande diversité du matériau sonore. Il y a un sentiment labyrinthique dans cette œuvre, sentiment qu’on comprend mieux lorsque se dévoile l’inspiration du titre de la pièce How to avoid ants, entreprise très pratique et devenue poétique, celle d’éviter les fourmilières jalonnant le chemin vers le camp forestier du jardin d’enfant dans lequel se rendait sa petite fille, alors effrayée par les insectes. C’est une telle activité de contournement, de déroute et de chemins de traverse qu’emprunte Lasse Marhaug pour créer une musique exploratoire et évasive. — François J. Bonnet, March 2023

For more than a decade, Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke, and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto have been coming together in various combinations - duos, trios, and larger ensembles - slowly becoming one of the most noteworthy, understated collaborations in the landscape of experimental sound. In 2015, the trio recorded a brilliant LP entitled “Delivery Health” ‎for Silent Water, laying the groundwork for an enduring project that adopted that album’s title as its name, debuting properly in 2017 with the stunner “Hard Off”. Over the years since, we’ve encountered Di Domenico, O'Rourke, and Yamamoto playing together in Bonjintan, their project with Akira Sakata, and in further collaborations with Eiko Ishibashi and Joe Talia, not to mention O'Rourke and Di Domenico’s prolific work as a duo. A bit more than five years on from “Hard Off”, Delivery Health finally return with “SuperDeluxe!”, a stunning new double LP on Holidays Records. Comprising roughly four years of early activity from the trio that rests at a fascinating juncture of electroacoustic composition, free improvisation, and noise, it’s easily among the most engaging and intoxicating efforts we’ve yet to hear from one of the most dynamic bands working today. Even by the standards of experimental music - international and cross-cultural in its make-up - the collaborations of Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke, and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto have always seemed to defy the challenges of geography, coming together with surprising regularity between Europe and Japan. The three represent a remarkable joining of distinct artistic talent and creative vision, the like of which rarely occur. Like its predecessors, “SuperDeluxe!” rides a beautiful line between striking singular creative ambition and accomplishment, and simply feeling like a free-wheeling conversation between friends who have relinquished their egos and presumptions out of a deep sense of mutual respect. Ironically, as forward thinking as it feels, the album is a kind of retrospective rewind, comprising five live documents recorded, of course, at the legendary SuperDeluxe! in Tokyo between 2012 and 2016 across its four sides. Taking us deep into the very beginnings and previously unheard activities (at least for those who were there on these nights) of Di Domenico, O'Rourke, and Yamamoto, the trio weaves a knotted tapestry unfurling as sheets of sound, that sidesteps signifiers and the expectations that one might have of each of these artists on their own. Ranging from brisling ambient passages drawing on latent melodic flirtations, heavy jams on guitar, drums, electronics, and keyboards, and outright, full throttle noise, each moment represents a visionary excursion into the depths of experimental, improvised sound, revealing a shocking sense of real-time dexterity from each player, as much as the collective whole experiments in improvised sound. Absolutely thrilling from start to finish - not that we’d expect anything less from three masters of their art forms - “SuperDeluxe!” is an immersion into the joys of music making, collaboration, and ultimately listening. It’s an album that traverses a startling and unexpected range, new worlds emerge and evolve from within the fog - rippling textural ambiance, harsh interlocking atonality, subtle and delicate interplay - without losing a moment of coherency. Issued by Holidays as a beautiful produced double LP, this is contemporary improvised music at its absolute best.

Second outing from Jaeger and O’Rourke following the release Wakes on Cerulean on Editions Mego in 2017. Covering a vast terrain with delicacy and poise this new release unveils a spectral showcase for all manner of deep abstraction. The first side positions itself somewhere between stoned komische synth and more nuanced electroacoustic tactics, all weighted by a melancholic undertow. The second side builds on the tension of the former as an undulating drone teases all variety of matter to rise and fall amongst the foreign space it inhabits. The effect creates an enormous sense of deep space before subsiding into a smaller more anxious flickering world. All manner of machines fold into play; digital machines, industrial and analogue machines. The seemingly random yet ordered nature of events is reminiscent of the behaviour of the natural world providing this machine driven release a convincing organic feel. Whether invoking mirrors, distant galaxies or a pond of frogs it is a delightful challenge to focus and locate what is nature and what is nurture. To play this loud is to immerse oneself in a fascinating journey which carries the listener through an array of dizzying emotional states.

all music by G. Di Domenico (SIAE/SABAM) E. Ishibashi (Jasrac/Space Shower Network) J. O’Rourke (Field Code Music/BMI) J. TaliA (APRA) T. Yamamoto recorded in studio W (Brussels) Atelier Eiko, Steamroom Completamente TAZ (Tokyo) Good Mixture (Berlin) mixed by Jim O’Rourke at Steamroom (side A & B) Joe Talia at Good Mixture (side C) Tatsuhisa Yamamoto at Completamente TAZ (side D) mastering & cut by Frédéric Alstadt AT Ångström MASTERING, Brussels Cover photo by François Moret «Between Deauville and La Rochelle» Courtesy Of Spazio Nobile Gallery, Brussels Graphics & layout by Cedric D’hondt

Delivering the long overdue follow up to their brilliant 2015 outing, Arco, the duo of Giovanni Di Domenico and Jim O’Rourke return to Die Schachtel with Immanent in Nervous Activity. Understated and elegant – enlisting the contributions of Eiko Ishibashi and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto – across the album’s two sides Di Domenico and O’Rourke slow time, deftly weaving tension into restrained sheets of tonality, texture, and harmonic dissonance, producing a startlingly beautiful intervention with the temperaments of experimental sound practice that shifts the borders of electroacoustic music and high minimalism. Issued on vinyl in a limited deluxe edition of 400 copies, housed in a sleeve with an original artwork by Bruno Stucchi/dinamomilano and complete with a large format poster, Die Schachtel is thrilled to deliver another defining statement by one of the most exciting partnerships in the contemporary landscape of adventurous sound. While less than a decade apart in age and equally diverse in the range of practices they have embraced over the course of their respective careers, Giovanni Di Domenico and Jim O’Rourke each represent the creative high points and ambitions of two very different generations. Initially emerging in Chicago during the late ‘80s and based in Japan since the mid-2000s, for more than three decades O'Rourke has carved a relentless path through the field of experimental sound, creating a body of work - hundreds of albums deep - that refuses any form of stasis and obligation to genre or idiom. He is an artist driven by a singular quest, his endless curiosity driving him to constantly forge into uncharted, visionary realms. Italian born and Brussels based, since his appearance on the scene during late ‘90s and early 2000s, Giovanni Di Domenico has constructed a striking solo practice that bridges numerous forms of improvised and electroacoustic music, all the while rigorously working within various ensembles - Abschattungen, AufHeben, Bonjintan, Cement Shoes, etc. - and intimate collaborations with Akira Sakata, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Chris Corsano, Joe Talia, and others. Di Domenico and O’Rourke have retained a regular and fruitful working partnership over the last decade, collaborating within the groups Bonjintan and Delivery Health, as well as a handful of jointly billed ensembles, but their 2015 LP, Arco - an investigation into waiting and patience as means toward musical form - was the first to encounter them as a duo, and marked an unquestionable high point within this collaborative body of work. Seven years on, their latest outing, Immanent in Nervous Activity, picks up where its predecessor left off; a second chapter informed by the territories of creative exploration that each has traversed since. Immanent in Nervous Activity rides the razor’s edge between bristling electroacoustic wizardry and the constrained structures and harmonic interplay most often encountered within musical minimalism. Begun in a studio not far from O’Rourke’s home in Japan with Di Domenico simultaneously playing piano and Rhodes organ, as the sessions gathered steam - O’Rourke’s deft hand processing and delivering electric interventions - the duo was joined intermittently by Eiko Ishibashi on flute and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto on snare drum, radically expanding the pallet of sound sources at their disposal. In its final form, produced via a rigorous and lengthy process of mixing, Immanent in Nervous Activity operates in two movements. The first rests largely in acoustic realm, with Di Domenico’s fluidly percussive piano and organ lines offering structure and harmony to the delicate textural interventions of Ishibashi, Yamamoto, and O’Rourke. Together they collectively weave a hypnotic tapestry of tonality and texture that inexplicably bridges the challenges of avant-gardism with the pure pleasure of pop. The second movement - constructed by O’Rourke from the material generated by the sessions - shatters form to an elemental and sprawling state, slowly distilling the remnants into an otherworldly, sonorous ooze that fully departs the earthy zones for pure, electroacoustic abstraction. Over the glacial evolution of its side-long duration, tension builds as material sources and the presence of each artist’s hands draw in and out of focus, droning and abrading within a vast expanse of pointillistic nature that renders itself subservient to the sweeping force of the whole, seemingly rethinking the terms and possibilities of electroacoustic music in real time. Joining the conversant vision of two of the most striking voices within the field of contemporary sound, Immanent in Nervous Activity is issued by Die Schachtel in a very limited edition of 400 copies on high quality black vinyl, sleeve printed in Italy in deep black and metallic silver on extra matt white heavy cardboard, including a black/silver limited "zepelin" 30x90cm poster, original artwork + design by Bruno Stucchi/dinamomilano.

The new wave jazz album left in 1987 is the first analog reissue.

Under the sound production by Masanori Sasaji (ex. Mariah), the leftfield-avant-jazz work ('87) that was recorded has been reissued for the first time by reproducing the artwork of the time as much as possible!
Starting with the mysterious opening "Door" reminiscent of Mariah's "Door of the Heart", Avanwave "Meteorite Rain" with vivid organ riffs, and third-world bossa fusion "ASTRUD" with gentle bleak scat. Includes all 10 songs that mix experiments and standards.

Tracklist:
SIDE A
01. Door
02. Crazy 'bout The Boy
03. The Dangerous
04. Astrud
05. Meteor rain

SIDE B
01. My Cup Is Empty
02. Angel In The Night
03. Jumping Without Thinking
04. Jellyfish
05. Temptation

180g Half Speed Mastered LP in heavy sleeve with OBI. Cat was recorded in October 1975 at at Nippon Columbia Studio, while Hiroshi Suzuki was visiting his home country of Japan after moving to Las Vegas in 1971 to play with Buddy Rich and perfect his craft. Back on his old stomping grounds, the man known as Neko (Cat) immediately reunited with his dear friends for an epic two day session of groove magic. The chemistry was still intact. The skills and style had grown. 

The result, Cat, is a smooth masterpiece, a deep and soulful affair where stunning trombone solos by Hiroshi Suzuki flirt with Takeru Muraoka’s heavenly saxophone and the sensual rhythm section of Hiromasa Suzuki (keyboards), Kunimitsu Inaba (bass), and Akira Ishikawa (drums). 

Celebrated in jazz collectors circles, in the lofi beat scene, and among music diggers around the world, Cat has become one of the most sought-after Japanese jazz albums of all time and, much like Ryo Fukui’s Scenery, has fascinated old and young generations alike. 

Amid massive global paradigm shifts Dave Hartley (aka Nightlands) became a father twice over and left his native Philadelphia for Asheville, where the pace of daily life is slower and it's easier to maintain a zoomed-out perspective on modern life. From the newfound refuge of a studio he built using the bones of a barn attached to his hundred-something-year-old house in the mountains, Hartley has tailored a collection of well-crafted pop rock, pointedly titled Moonshine. Guided by some of the harmonic sensibilities that have helped make The War on Drugs a force in modern music, Moonshine combines immaculate-yet-dense vocal stacks and billowy clouds of effected keyboards with classic songcraft, revealing previously unseen acreage in the unfurling dreamscape that is Nightlands. The surrealistic album art by Austin-based illustrator Jaime Zuverza depicts an archway opening to the stars over the surface of an idyllic sea flanked by both moon and sun. Similarly, Moonshine reveals portals within portals leading to ever deeper places in Hartley's vocal-centered labyrinth. Hartley lays out the narrative of Moonshine on its masterfully sparse opener, "Looking Up." "Take your family to the mountains," he sings, "Hide them safely; pray for mercy, and easy fictions..." Throughout the album, there are plenty of buoyant high moods where the pitter-patter of drum machine and humming digital organ hints at Hartley's low-key tropicalia streak, but lyrics such as these anchor the dreaminess in real-world sorrow and resignation. Nowhere are these sentiments more apparent than on the title track, a nearly acapella recitation of "America the Beautiful" that poignantly hovers over a mirage of soft keyboards before dovetailing into Hartley's own words about the hypocrisy of the American dream. "This was never intended to be an overtly political record" he admits. "I have so many friends who are able to process the frustration of current events gracefully or with wisdom or in a nuanced way, but I often find myself just consumed with anger about it all. I decided to just let that come out, and it manifested itself lyrically." Moonshine's wide-eyed, utopian instrumental backdrops provide sharp contrast to Hartley's lyrics, which sting even harder within the sweetness. "With You" follows with full-on pop romanticism, as a rolling synth bass line and a decelerated drum machine ground the breezy arrangement. The track departs after an accumulation of warbling keyboard textures give way to "Blue Wave," an angelic instrumental vignette that deepens the mood while allowing the listener to reflect on Moonshine's earlier chapters. The slowly anthemic "No Kiss for the Lonely" takes poetic aim at xenophobia beneath a canopy of chiming bells, kalimba-like textures, glassy vocoded passages, and a massive chorus derived almost entirely from Hartley's own voice, exemplifying the nucleus of his creative process. "I spend ninety percent of my studio time building these vocal stacks with sort of endless vocal layering and lots of speeding up and slowing down of the track, overdubbing at different speeds and with different microphones," Hartley details, "and I really perfected that, I think, on this record." In terms of instrumentation, Hartley pared things down as much as possible, choosing to allocate all of Moonshine's density to his vocal harmonies, the layers of which number in the hundreds on some songs. "People sometimes ask me what's in my vocal effects chain, gear wise" he muses, "but honestly it's just a matter of having put in thousands of hours obsessing over the blend of these stacks, honing the craft." Even in light of the album's vocal emphasis, Hartley's history as a bassist brilliantly beams through Moonshine, giving effortless and sprightly movement to songs like "Down Here," which also features an extended section of saxophone lent by his Western Vinyl labelmate, Joseph Shabason. In addition to Shabason, the album hosts a short list of remote collaborators including four of Hartley's bandmates from The War on Drugs, Robbie Bennet, Anthony Lamarca, Eliza Hardy Jones, and Charlie Hall, as well as exotica virtuoso Frank Locrasto (Cass McCombs, Fruit Bats), and producer Adam McDaniel (Avey Tare, Angel Olsen). Hartley was forced to keep the guest list small out of the necessity of pandemic isolation, coupled with his move to a smaller city, all of which challenged him to do most of the album's heavy lifting right down to the mixing duties, resulting in the most independent effort of his career. By that measure, Moonshine is also the clearest image yet of Dave Hartley as a person and creator.

Lucrecia Dalt channels sensory echoes of growing up in Colombia on her new album ¡Ay!, where the sound and syncopation of tropical music encounter adventurous impulse, lush instrumentation, and metaphysical sci-fi meditations in an exclamation of liminal delight. In sound and spirit, ¡Ay! is a heliacal exploration of native place and environmental tuning, where Dalt reverses the spell of temporal containment. Through the spiraling tendencies of time and topography, Lucrecia has arrived where she began. CD edition includes lyrics and an essay by Miguel Prado in Spanish and English.

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.

From 1970s Hawaii on to modern day New Jersey, Don Slepian has enjoyed a reputation as one of new age’s most respected and technologically-advanced synthesists. Slepian’s 1980 landmark Sea of Bliss is frequently cited as one of new age’s greatest albums, and is one of the genre’s most legendary tape-only recordings. Two side-length Alles synthesizer tracks transport listeners to personal paradises for relaxation, rest, focus and reset.

Both a marketing firm and metaphysical mission, Valley of the Sun synthesized style and spirituality to produce an extensive catalog that at once defines and defies new age music. Founder Dick Sutphen worked with tireless devotion to spread a message he believed could change the world for the better. This 18-track overview of VOTS’ fertile 1977-1990 period includes music from Upper Astral, Robert Slap & Steve Powell, David Naegele, David Storrs, Steven Cooper, and Gloria Thomas, a 24-page booklet with extensive liner notes, J-card scans, and a hint of Sedona sand. Subliminal hypnosis likely.