NEW ARRIVALS

For the exhibition “Flowers in 20th and 21st Century Art“, Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O‘Rourke had created the installation ”Lifetime of a Flower“ in which they set parameters but allowed the process itself to grow uncontrollably. Literally: in the garden of their Japanese house, they planted seeds and filmed the plant growing and thriving throughout the duration of the exhibition. Visitors were able to watch the stream in real time - and they heard a composition in which Ishibashi and O‘Rourke reflected the organic process in sound. The eponymous composition now available on LP, is an enigmatic and sophisticated layering of sounds, melodies and rhythms, noises from everyday life, all of which are repositories of associations, memories and expectations.

Svitlana Okhrimenko (artist name: Svitlana Nianio) is a Ukrainian artist, musician, and signer. She is one of the most prominent representatives of the independent music scene of Kyiv in the late 1980s — early 90s. She has repeatedly recorded and performed in collaboration with other musicians and bands, such as Oleksandr Yurchenko, Sugar White Death (Cukor Bila Smert’), Ivanov Down, GeeNerve & Taran, and Blemish. Svitlana still performs and publishes new recordings today. “Transilvania Smile” is one of the first solo works recorded in 1994. During this time, Svitlana repeatedly visited Germany, where she had the experience of playing in parks and on the streets, gathering contacts of the local art scene. Her cooperation with the international choreographic group Pentamonia, based in Cologne and consisting of several girls who performed in theaters, took part in various performances, and were engaged in music. They met in the 1990s during joint performances with "Sugar-White Death." After that, they corresponded, and the idea of doing something together arose. Svitlana attended several of their performances, which inspired her to write music for a new project, and the band members helped to realize their creative ideas. Later, they started rehearsing together. The name “Transilvania Smile” was invented by the project participants, and it symbolized the mold on the mirror and the reflection of a smiling vampire. However, shortly before the premiere, they changed it to “Firefox”, as the participants actively used flashlights and the play of light and shadows in the scenography. The premiere occurred in the local Urania theater, previously a gallery. Isabel Bartensein directed the choreography, and Svitlana played, sang, and improvised. She said it was an excellent experience for her and the band. Besides Cologne, they also performed in Aachen. Later, Michael Springer offered Svitlana to record this material in his "Phantom" studio. They had already worked together and recorded music for their project (Svitlana Okhrimenko / Phanton). Michael was also interested in the Ukrainian independent scene and participated in the creation of several compilations that featured bands from Kyiv and Kharkiv. Svetlana played the piano and harmonium in the studio and also sang. After the recording, the material was never released in its entirety. Two compositions appeared on the cassette compilation “Shovaisia” (Hide) in 1995, some episodes were re-recorded for the “Kytytsi” album in 1999, but for a long time, the full version of this recording remained practically unknown to listeners and was kept in Svitlana's and Michael’s archives. This album is one of the most personal and insightful works of Svitlana Nianio from the 90s, which you can now get to know in its original form and sound.

Oleksandr Yurchenko (1966—2020) was a Ukrainian musician and illustrator. In 1990s and 2000s he took part in different bands from Kyiv, such as Electricians, Yarn, Blemish, Suphina’s Little Beast etc., and he also collaborated with Svitlana Nianio and Katya Chilly. Yurchenko is one of the brightest representatives of the Ukrainian independent scene in 90s. Meanwhile, he is one of the most mysterious musicians of this era, being a private person, especially in the late 2000s, when Oleksandr had to leave music because of his illness, but he focused on doing book illustrations and graphic works. In 2010s some of his early records were published, and he was asked for an interview, but he refused, suffering from a serious disease at that time. In April 2020, Oleksandr Yurchenko died, leaving behind a great musical legacy. His main work, “Count to 100. Symphony #1,” was documented in August 1994. Oleksandr used strings instrument of his own invention. Yurchenko took the longboard to make the instrument, installed guitar pickups and 4 strings, and played on it with a bow. It was lost in the 2000s, but the musician remembered that it looked like a long zither. The recording session was held by Oleksandr at home, using guitar delay effects, loops, and Oreadna portable cassette recorder. He tuned the instrument in a special tone, improvising on it for 25 minutes. This drone symphony can be compared with the works of such avant-garde composers as Glenn Branca. However, it sounds innovative, especially for Ukrainian music. Despite it, Yurchenko could not publish this work officially in the 90s and made only a few copies for his own friends. At the beginning of the 2000s, he decided to edit the original version of the symphony. Oleksandr tried to restore the recording a bit, using some effects to make the sound more massive and clear. At the end of the work on this project, Yurchenko left this version in his archive but decided to publish the original recording in the late 2010s. “Intro” is the most mysterious recording from Yurchenko’s archive. Nobody could remember where and when it was recorded, so we can assume that it was made at the beginning of the 90s like a sound experiment because it was found on cassette tape with others recordings of the band Yarn. Also, there is a suggestion that it might be a Casio SK-1 sampler and some old Soviet keyboards. Merta Zara was a family project of Yurchenko and his wife, Svitlana Neznal. They had only one home recording session in 1994. Oleksandr was playing an electric cello of his own invention, and Svitlana was playing on mandolin and singing. As a result, they recorded only one track, "Dress," which appeared on the cassette compilation "Skhovaysya" in 1995. Apart from it, they recorded a few instrumental playbacks, which were found on cassette tape in 2021. Yurchenko was a big appreciator and knower of Central Asia’s music, and it influenced his own music, including Merta Zara, where traditional music and his melodist skills are intertwined. Playbacks were recorded in the beginning of 1995. It was also a home session, making instrumental playbacks for the album “Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy” (Know How? Tell Me), recorded in collaboration with Svitlana Nianio. It should be assumed that Oleksandr used the same instrument and effects as he used during the “Count To 100” session. Some of these playbacks survived in his archive, but the rest of them were lost. The first one is an 8 minutes drone composition, which was played on a string instrument with a female voice on the background, and the second is the weird track where whirligig was used as an accompaniment. So, we can consider these recordings not only as playbacks but as Yurchenko’s solo stuff. Solo recordings of Oleksandr Yurchenko, made in 1994—1995, are paying attention, especially in experimenting with sound, searching the new ways of creative freedom, and they give a possibility to learn more about the Ukrainian experimental scene in the 90s.

“I had the honour of remixing all of the Bamboo tapes that J.Derwort ever recorded. Most of my mixes were approved by the master himself during the last days of his life in Oliva, Spain. For ‘Eleven’, I sampled from his last live performance at Jazzcafe Dizzy in Rotterdam on February 11th, 2018. He died on the day of the release of our latest Chi Factory album, ‘The Mantra Recordings’, on February 11th, 2019. We will miss him, life will not be the same. Farewell soul brother!” Words by Hanyo van Oosterom.

Dots written by Atom™. Recorded 1994 at "Sel I/S/C", Frankfurt/M. Under exclusive license from the AtomTM_Audio_Archive.

A year on since the collaborative Mystic AM project in 2022, Rod Modell returns solo to Astral Industries with AI-35. The album - entitled ‘Ghost Lights’ - comes as a gatefold 2x vinyl LP, showcasing the latest epoch of Modell’s signature soundscapes. Spread across four parts, ‘Ghost Lights’ draws out a wide, cinematic sound - with long arching contours, rippling textures and cavernous sound design. Woven with layer upon layer of hidden fragments and supernal transmissions, each chapter takes the listener successively deeper into the twilight zone. Harking to dramatic off-world topographies and interstellar spaces, the work glistens with opulent sound treatment and monumental grandeur. Dense pulsations move with oceanic force, marked by washes of celestial light and subterranean drones. Exercising another side to Rod Modell's typically atmospheric productions, this album comes with an ambitious framework and a more assertive sound. Featuring some of Modell’s most epic storytelling to date, ‘Ghost Lights’ delivers a powerful immersive experience.

Berlin based sound artist Sa Pa delivers AI-33, titled ‘Atmospheric Fragments’. Originally intended as a soundtrack to accompany ten short experimental films as part of a physical exhibition in 2020 curated by Manon Bernard, featuring the videography of Antoine Ronin, Atmospheric Fragments was alternatively premiered online as a digital showroom - with its music performed and recorded both live and independently in 2021. Atmospheric Fragments was conceived as a collaborative audio-visual project, positing the viewer inside a sonic boom of introspective parenthesis and offering a place for internal dialogues under the circumstances of a largely unknown and rapidly changing modern world. Sa Pa’s work presents a fresh sonic reinterpretation of urban landscapes, skylines and modern environments, procuring from its source material a whole new kaleidoscopic world of its own. The record consists of two mixes - ‘Studio’ and ‘Live’ - which demonstrate a deep explorational study of our everyday surroundings, plunging the listener into a realm of heightened sense experience and microscopic detail. Where the ‘Studio’ mix embodies the precision and management of the studio workspace and is more ambient in nature, such intricacies are exchanged for a larger, livelier sound stage and alternative sonic material in the ‘Live’ mix. A nebulous ocean of shifting spaces and effervescent textures, Sa Pa augments and modulates field recordings into a fluid and ever-evolving narrative. Seen through a viewfinder of deep and immersive observation, new transients, momentary artefacts and poetry in motion begin to reveal itself. In a world caught in momentary stasis, Atmospheric Fragments is a forensic inquiry into our perceptive environment, with its augmented lens placing us on the cusp of the ungraspable.

Source of Denial is the second LP from Nihiloxica, the Bugandan techno outfit hailing from Kampala, Uganda. It comes after more than three long years since Kaloli, their acclaimed debut on Crammed Discs.

The album points a (middle) finger at the hostile immigration and freedom of movement policies implemented in the UK, as well as across the world. Fueled by their frustrations with this intentionally convoluted system, the group have produced their most cataclysmic effort to date.

Returning to the Nyege Nyege studio in Kampala where the band recorded their early EPs, the band tracked Source of Denial over an intense month of sessions in early 2022. The cover art is emblazoned with an ultra-metallic new logo, echoing the growing presence of metal influences across the tracklisting, while the hi-vis, official-document styling wryly evokes the bureaucratic nightmare at the heart of the project. Tracks like Asidi and Baganga flirt with the dystopian, mechanical patterns and tonalities of djent godfathers Meshuggah, while the gargantuan synth line of the title track summons the spirit of an 8-string guitar, synthesised palm-mutes and all. This is all effortlessly compounded with the molotov cocktail of Bugandan ngoma (drums) and club sounds the group have become revered for. On tracks like Olutobazzi, Postloya and Trip Chug, the drums themselves are reanimated and manipulated more than ever before, further blurring the line between tradition and techno.

The only spoken words we hear throughout the album, outside of studio outtake Preloya, are computer generated. They speak of application processes, character backgrounds, and accountability, blasted through crackled phone speakers. The effect is a Kafkaesque feedback loop: an avalanche of constant call tones, uncanny British accents and rigorous interrogative questioning. The frustrations are a problem the band, a defiantly global outfit, has faced continuously. A whole UK tour was cancelled in 2022, and recently, a UK show had to be performed with only three members due to problems with a certain conglomerate visa agency who “provide services” for the UK, as well as a growing number of countries.

“We wanted to create the sense of being in the endless, bureaucratic hell-hole of attempting to travel to a foreign country that deems itself superior to where you’re from. We’re focussing on the UK as that’s where we’ve had the most trouble, but the problem goes much, much further. In this system if you have a certain passport or have even visited a certain country then you’re an appropriate subject to be interrogated and insulted time and time again just to prove that you’re worthy to enter, and normally this involves proving you have a good enough reason to want to leave again! The arrogance of it is unbearable. This album was a way to express our disdain towards it... What exactly is the source of your denial? Your passport? Your bank balance? Your skin colour? You’ve paid huge sums of money to be thrown from one profit-driven “service centre” to another, each denying responsibility, each limiting your right to freedom of movement as a human being. Despite some other serious humanitarian shortcomings, Uganda accepts some of the highest numbers of refugees in the world. Meanwhile the UK is trying to send them away to Rwanda. That says it all.” - Nihiloxica

In a musical catalogue as rich and diverse as the one built by John Cale, there’s no such thing as an outlier release. All his albums carry an indelible Cale stamp: whether exploring Beach Boys inspired classic songcraft on his early-1970s albums, trading fuzzed out organ riffs with Terry Riley on Church Of Anthrax, essaying modern classical miniatures on The Academy In Peril, through to the confrontational and gritty Sabotage, the art house film soundtracks for Les Disques Du Crépuscule.

The premise of 1989’s Words For The Dying therefore might sound somewhat bizarre, but the results speak for themselves. The album consists mainly of oral work, read or sung by Cale. It was written in 1982 as a response to the Anglo-Argentinian Falklands War, using poems written by fellow Welshman Dylan Thomas. Originally performed live for Dutch television at the Paradiso in Amsterdam in November 1987, with the studio version finally being laid down partly in the pre-Glasnost USSR, utilising the Orchestra of Symphonic and Popular Music of Gostelradio. As well as “The Falklands Suite”, there are also two orchestral interludes, two other solo piano pieces, "Songs Without Words", and finally "The Soul of Carmen Miranda", featuring Cale’s voice and a minimal electronic backing track. The album was recorded in Moscow, New York, London and Suffolk, England, and was produced by Brian Eno.

Eno and Cale had collaborated numerous times before, appearing on each other’s solo records in the 1970s, releasing a live album alongside Nico and Kevin Ayers, and the year after Words For The Dying came out, they released their one and only co-billed album, the much-loved Wrong Way Up. The process of making Words For The Dying was documented in a monochrome fly-on-the-wall film by Rob Nilsson, capturing the sometimes tense process of bringing Cale’s artistic vision to life. Lou Reed selected the album as one of his 'picks of 1989', and in its retrospective review, Fact Magazine described it as "arguably the last great album John Cale recorded". 

“Music is a very personal thing. How you deal with your music is very closely linked with how you deal with your life. If you misuse your capacities as a musician, you’re misusing your capacities as a human being and you’re taking humanity in the wrong direction”
- Arthur Russell – 03/17/77 Soho Weekly News

“In outer space you can’t take your drums - you take your mind”
- Arthur Russell

In 1986 Arthur Russell was diagnosed with HIV, that same year he released his career-defining masterpiece ‘World of Echo’, the first and only solo album issued during his lifetime.

Arthur had found his voice and a fresh direction with a set of new, transformative material, unlike anything he or anyone else had previously released. His illness ensured that the artistic growth and sense of exploration encapsulated in ‘World of Echo’ would be tragically curtailed. Within six short years Arthur was gone.

Arthur’s final years were filled with a renewed commitment to creativity and unceasing live and recording work. He regularly performed the ‘World of Echo’ material and incorporated several of its compositions in collaborations with choreographers active in New York’s innovative dance community. Arthur worked closely with Diane Madden, Allison Salzinger, Stephanie Woodard and John Bernd, usually playing his cello and effects boxes off stage as the choreographers’ pieces were performed. In 1993 Arthur posthumously received a prestigious Bessie Composer Award for his work in the dance world.

Picture of Bunny Rabbit’ features nine previously unreleased performances from this era compiled from completed masters culled from two unique test pressings, including one, dated 9/15/85 by Arthur, provided by his mother and sister. A further four tracks were discovered in his tape archive. The track listing includes an exceptional and dramatic solo recording of “In The Light of a Miracle” and the enigmatic title instrumental “Picture of Bunny Rabbit”, written especially for a friends pet rabbit. The bulk of the material was recorded with engineer Eric Liljestrand at Battery Sound Studios, New York, which was located directly opposite the World Trade Center and at Arthur’s apartment studio in the East Village. 

Karen y Los Remedios: blending cumbia and existentialism

Behind Karen’s pulsating spectral voice lies vulnerability, contemplation and longing. Chameleon-like foundations explore cumbia in its many forms, crossing the continent with Norteño airs, pitched-down rebajados, psychedelia and even traditional Peruvian music, taking in ballads, Afro-Latin percussion, reggaeton and the more electronic sounds of dream-pop, trip hop and downtempo.

A mystical, motley mixture, the ideal soundscape to fight the voices in your head while you melt on the dancefloor and scare away the ghosts of your past, your body surrendering to the dance.

That’s pretty much Karen y Los Remedios, the project led by Ana Karen G Barajas, an artist and arts and social sciences researcher born in Mexico City and raised in Guanajuato, in the company of Mexico City native Jonathan Muriel (Jiony) and guitarist Guillermo Berbeyer (Z.A.M.P.A.), who after many years on Mexico’s alternative scene decided to get together and bring this existential cumbia project to life.

Composer Ori Barel rolls up the playful aestheticism of ‘90s electronica, taught pointillism of Rock in Opposition, dada collage of Krautrock, and the heavy lushness of Jack Nitzsche arrangements into a seamless sci-fi fantasia.

Now on the cusp of his third solo album, Norwegian saxophonist Bendik Giske knows himself well. With his new, self-titled record, he is in his prime as an artist: confident in his voice and abilities, buoyed by critical acclaim from all corners – including two Norwegian Grammy nominations – and a surge in audiences everywhere. With the intriguing choice of Beatrice Dillon as album producer – clearly the British electronic musician is a fellow traveler in the practice of original aesthetic expression – her influence is immediate and keenly felt. Together, they strip away a layer of melodicism, honing in on pattern and rhythm to bring out a different dimension of his mesmerizing sound. While again working with single-take recordings, no overdubs, only saxophone and his body, gone is the reverberant space and mellifluous glamor. Giske finds the result akin to musical full-frontal nudity – every detail, every huff and puff audible, no obscuring, no aestheticizing. People may look away when it’s not as pretty, but what’s left feels more present and potent. Confrontational, it demands greater attention, but through its physicality – you can hear and feel his body in the music – it takes you to a flow state, somewhere between ecstasy, elation, and spiritual awakening. Intensely human, there’s stark tension there, too – there always will be when fighting for existence and validity – elegantly illustrated by Florian Hetz’s striking photographs of the artist on the covers of the release. In part, Giske is inspired by Judith Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure. As much as he has benefitted from his training and participation in the environment of the jazz conservatory, his path took him far outside its confines. Working these new explorations with his instrument has been a ten-year process of peeling away what he knew ultimately didn’t fit, finding the sonic territory of his lived experience. What emerged were systems that allowed for studies of tempo and proportion, a starting point for an immersive improvisatory approach, mapping years of musical probing. It’s the sound of social emancipation through the meditative pulse and velocity of circular breathing and the dance of the body, especially fingers, tongue, and lips. Giske knows that music can be a powerful tool in bringing people together to find ideas, and the longevity of his project is at its utmost a call for care, togetherness, storytelling, and the ability to gather for a shared cause. In all earnestness, Bendik Giske is a proposal for truthfulness and existence, a space for one to express their most profound self.

soaring wayne phoenix story the earth and sky is the debut album from multi-disciplinary British artist Wayne Phoenix. Originally conceived over a decade ago as one part of an elaborate project encompassing music, film, and performance, story the earth and sky is not only a profoundly personal and vulnerable expression unbound by Phoenix’s exploration of creative potential and mystery, but a bridge beyond the artificial boundaries that separates us from an unfiltered voice found within all.

MM..FOOD, a 2004 concept album "about what you find at a picnic or at a picnic table," released by underground rap's greatest voice MF DOOM on Rhymesayers, is back in analog form! The fifth studio album, which debuted at #17 on Billboard's Independent Albums chart, features guest appearances by Count Bass D, Angelika, 4ize, and Mr. Fantastik.

言わずと知れたスロウコアの大名盤！これは是非聞いておくがいい。自国のソウル、ゴスペル、ファンクにとどまらず、ニューエイジ・ミュージック始祖ヤソスや日本からは原マスミまで、世界各地のオブスキュアなサウンドを掘り起こしてきた米国の大名門〈Numero〉からは、1998年に〈Up Records〉からリリースされたDusterのデビュー・スタジオ・アルバム『Stratosphere』が25周年を記念してアニヴァーサリー・リイシュー。スロウコアの第一波の頂点にたつ一枚であり、子宮の中で聞くべき！暗い空間と閉じた瞼のための音楽にして、パンクの鋸歯状のエッジを持つアンビエント・ミュージック。

激レア化している2018年作が初の再発。ノースカロライナ州アッシュビルを拠点に、フォーク、カントリー、ブルース、そして宇宙的なアメリカン・ロックを見事に溶け合わせるソングライター、Ryan Gustafsonの変名The Dead Tonguesによるアルバム『Unsung Passage』が〈Psychic Hotline〉よりヴァイナル・リイシュー。常に各地を飛び回ってきた冒険家であるグスタフソンが、歌うにふさわしいといえるほどに見てきたものを、その一人称で見つめ直した作品。慌ただしい現代に向けた内省的なアンセムに注ぎ込まれる秀逸な一枚。

Isolated at the rural fringe of Northern California, Bailey’s Nervous Kats took Shasta County by storm in the early '60s. Combining surf, rock n' roll, exotica, and R&B, the Kats were a teenage dream draped in Magnatone amplifiers and crisp white polo tees. Their self-titled—and only—LP came at the dead end of the band’s run, issued on Orville Simmons' one-shot Emma imprint in 1965. The mid-century modern LP of your dreams.

The next installment of our "Eccentric" single LP compilation series, in the same style as our Eccentric Funk and Eccentric Disco releases. A simple digestable run-down of our favorite genre specific tracks.

Titi Bakorta almost didn't make it. Born in and raised in Kinshasa, the Congolese multi-instrumentalist was on his way to Uganda when he fell of the boat as it traversed the mighty Congo River. Unable to swim, Bakorta was saved by a friend who dragged him to the closest city Kisangani, where he was unexpectedly acquainted with local singer Dancer Papalas. Soon they were performing in bands together, traveling across the continents and settling in Tanzania, South Sudan and Dubai - they even appeared in front of General Defao, the beloved Congolese vocalist who fronted legendary soukous bands Grand Zaiko Wawa, Choc Stars and Big Stars. Now based in Kampala, Bakorta offers his own unique take on Congolese pop and folk sounds, weaving traditional elements through a psychedelic lattice of guitar loops, mangled voices and eccentric beatbox rhythms on his debut full-length. He bends woodblock snaps on 'Kop' into stuttered blurs, wailing emotionally over twanging riffs and bizarre, theatrical xylophone twinkles. It's still pop music on some level, but curved around Bakorta's unwieldy personal narrative - there's a sense that everything could unravel at any time but it all hangs together, strengthened by Bakorta's confident, contemporary production smarts. 'Elles Vais' is more airy, with celestial soukous vocals that float above tight, electronic drums. Tangled guitar echoes overlap each other like dense, weaved tapestries, contrasting perfectly with Bakorta's urgent, driving pulse. Occasionally, he transcends completely, like on 'Molende' where his chants and phrases neatly flutter between praise music and contemporary R&B. "Hustling, hustling, hustling, everyday I'm hustling," an angelic voice coos over phased electric guitar plucks and looped, AutoTuned chorals. It makes perfect sense that Bakorta should team up with Metal Preyers' Jesse Hackett on the album's final track, the aptly-titled 'Titis Haunted House'. The two artists share a similar obsession with moonlit, carnivalesque soundscapes, and Hackett's eerie synths provide a suitably eccentric foundation for Bakorta's ghostly wails and fuzzy guitar sounds. This closes an album that's able to flaunt Congolese pop and folk sounds behind a vivid gauze of inventive production and songwriting quirks, introducing one of the country's most innovative talents.

One of the most eccentric characters to emerge from Lisbon's musical underground, Teteu has operated under a variety of shadowy monikers including Qraqmaxter, CiclOFF, and Erre Mente. A gifted visual artist as well as a composer, he's known for developing a philosophical mythology with his drawings, mostly using a ballpoint pen to sketch out elaborate, anime-style projects. Normal Nada is Teteu's most enduring project, and a full eight years after the game-changing ep "Transmutação Cerebral" he has finally assembled his long-awaited debut album. "TRIBAL PROGRESSIVE HEAVY METAL" materializes into Nada's meta-kuduro multiverse, developed from his deep knowledge of African and Portuguese musical forms. Years ago, he was an established archivist and genre historian, sharing archival material, mixes and rips alongside his original tracks, and while his online presence has faded, his rate of production hasn't. His tracks are rooted in Angolan kuduro and tarraxinha structures, but Normal Nada uses this only as a starting point, poetically overlaying and superimposing elements from trap, bass music, heavy metal and ambient sources to tell a story that's personal and unique. Listening to the album is like channel hopping through an interplanetary animated matrix, blasting off from colorful opener 'Beautyful Caos' with its grinding syncopation, crash-landing on the subversive 'Batida Hard Trance 2' that dissolves awkward European dance tropes into industrial-strength Portuguese electronix, and scuttling towards the album's bizarre title track, that juxtaposes crunching, overdriven drones 'n tones with kinetic kuduro rhythms. 'Alive' is even more cacophonous, layering machine-strength orchestral hits over militaristic, rolling 4/4 beats and unsettled subs. Born and raised in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, Normal Nada migrated to Portugal at 13 and was based for many years in Lisbon's San Antonio Dos Cavaleiros housing projects, after previously having lived in the Algarve. Teteu's compositions are a spiked expression of Lisbon's patchwork of batida styles, making a direct link to West Africa's vibrant musical legacy. Now he's returned to Guinea-Bissau and his music reflects this outstretched knowledge and energy, with a 360 degree view of the world's complex assemblage of cultures and conflicts. The album's somber finale is the best representation of his philosophy, a minor-key downtempo slow-burner that could sit comfortably alongside Actress or tarraxinha pioneer DJ Znobia. Called 'Dedicated to the Homeless', it shines flickering neon light on the world's unseen population, searching for hope where too many of us choose to look away.

Canto A Lo Divino is the unique musical expression of the Chilean peasant world - a conversation with the divine nourished by Biblical and other sacred texts. It is communal music, played in packed rooms throughout the night on the 25-string guitarron, its ancient melodies transmitted through the 10-line decima form originating in Spain and found across the Caribbean, South America, and even into the Mississippi Delta. Rooted in the remote Central Valley of Chile at the skirt of the mountains and following the slopes of the major rivers, the Canto tradition has persisted for centuries in the voices of hundreds of men and women who sing of saints, divine images, and angelitos (very young children who have died). The verses are also centered around daily life in the valley - labor and drought, family, animals, and plants. There are countless entonaciones (melodies) that define this region, its communities, and its unique worldview. Mississippi Records is privileged to work with the Museo Campesino En Movimiento and their archive of hundreds of hours of intimate field recordings of the Canto - music rarely, if ever, heard outside of the region.Artwork is provided by another inhabitant of Chile's Central Valley, a baker called Frederico Lohse, who brought divine visions from the Cantos to life, painted on reused flour bags.Canto A Lo Divino celebrates the complexity and solemn, stunning beauty of this nocturnal, communal form of musical devotion.Double vinyl LP comes housed in deluxe gatefold jacket with 8 pages of lyric translations and liner notes about the Canto tradition by researcher Danilo Petrovich.

'Oh Me Oh My' is both elegant and ferocious. It is stirring in one moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal. Lonnie Holley's harrowing youth and young manhood in the Jim Crow South are well-told at this point — his sale into a different home as a child for just a bottle of whiskey; his abuse at the infamous Mount Meigs correctional facility for boys; the destruction of his art environment by the Birmingham airport expansion. But Holley's music is less a performance of pain endured and more a display of perseverance, of relentless hope. Intricately and lovingly produced by LA's Jacknife Lee (The Cure, REM, Modest Mouse), there is both kinetic, shortwave funk that call to mind Brian Eno's 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' and the deep space satellite sounds of Eno's ambient works. But it's a tremendous achievement in sonics all its own.It's also an achievement in the refinement of Holley's impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. On the title track which deals with mutual human understanding", Holley is able to make a profound point as ever in far fewer phrases: "The deeper we go, the more chances there are, for us to understand the oh-me's and understand the oh-my's." Illustrious collaborators like Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Etten, Moor Mother and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver serve as not only as choirs of angels and co-pilots to give Lonnie’s message flight but as proof of Lonnie Holley as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force across the music community.

The world has changed, we shouldn't try and pretend otherwise. While we were shut away in isolation our routines shifted, social patterns evolved, and our hopes and dreams were twisted into cobwebs we're still trying to wipe from our fingers. Ziúr tentatively approached this on her last album Antifate, an ambitious and complex hybrid pop fever dream that looked back to a Medieval escapist fantasy as the scent of revolution seemed to hum in the air. But when restrictions were eased, she found herself staring down a discombobulated society that had trapped itself in a spiral of microwaved nostalgia and detached, narcotic repetition. Eyeroll then is Ziúr's musical panacea, a tincture to wake us from our creative slumber and prompt external connection and reflection. It's a polyphonous hex that demands human interaction, and Ziúr's hand-picked alliance of collaborators - Elvin Brandhi, Abdullah Miniawy, Iceboy Violet, Juliana Huxtable, Ledef, and James Ginzburg - each provide distinct voices that together herald a bewildering sonic epoch. Ziúr's palette had to evolve to match the scope of the project, but it was pure necessity that informed the album's defining tone. Recording mostly at night, Ziúr was conscious of the noise she was making so developed a unique way to record organic percussion. Using a set of rototoms - low profile tunable drums - she scratched, scraped and gently tapped the skins to build up the undulating and unstable rhythmic backdrop for each track. It's the first sound we hear on the opener 'Eyeroll', rattling like lost marbles against Elvin Brandhi's primal croaks and screams. And when Brandhi's twisted articulations form words, Ziúr matches the energy with chaotic thuds and serrated blasts of saturated electronics. "I roll the shittiest cigarette," she squeals like she's about to start a mosh pit at Paris's GRM Studios. Without pause, Abdullah Miniawy takes over on 'Malikan', building on the promise of material with Simo Cell, Carl Gari and HVAD with corrosive trumpet blasts and charged, politically incendiary Arabic vocals. Inspired by pre-Islamic poetry and the Qu'ranic chanters he heard growing up in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, he spins labyrinthine stories that cross between the worlds, breaking down physical and spiritual borders simultaneously. Miniawy's scope is expanded even further on his second collaboration, 'If The City Burns I Will Not Run'. "If it rains and the city drowns," he utters over gaseous electronics, "I will not run away, but I will be anxious for the heart of one close to me." After a supple vocal turn from Manchester's Iceboy Violet on 'Move On' and a surreal interlude from poet- DJ-artist-theorist Juliana Huxtable on '99 Favor Taste', Brandhi returns with two more hyperactive collaborations: ,'Nontrivial Differential' and 'Cut Cut Quote'. On the former she slices into Ziúr's skeletal jazz eruptions, screaming and crooning interchangeably, fluxing between the rap battle and the cabaret. The latter is completely different meanwhile, with Brandhi settling into her role as front-woman and groaning dizzying improvised passages that sound like grunge crossed with psychedelic no-wave. Brandhi's spiky musical history has prepared her well for this collaboration; she's a prolific producer and has been using her voice spontaneously since debuting with father-daughter improv duo Yeah You in the mid 2020s. She's found an ideal foil in Ziúr, a producer who matches her restless energy and willingness to bend formality, and leaves an indelible mark on Eyeroll. But the album's most tender moments are from Ziúr herself, who winds the album down on 'Hasty Revisionism', growling over collapsable beats and cascading strings, and comes to an unexpected conclusion with country coda 'Lacrymaturity'. Its feverish amalgamation of country music and euphoric, experimental electronics might seem incongruous at first, but in context with the rest of the album is the only possible conclusion. With Eyeroll Ziúr is making a firm statement about togetherness, humanity, and the renewal of hope when all seems lost. By bringing together such a wide but philosophically harmonic team of collaborators, she's conducted a body of work that speaks to the creative fringe in no uncertain terms. Now's the time to throw away what you think you know, and build bridges you didn't think you need. Now's the time for action. She may have spent her entire career avoiding the solipsistic trappings of "queer art", but by assembling a communal statement that questions so many normative assumptions about music, politics, and beyond, Ziúr has chanced upon her queerest album yet. Cringe? Eyeroll.