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Following our 2024 self-titled release, Nick and I were compelled to make another record, expanding on the distinctive sound world we have found as the duo Driftwood. Grounded in the unique instrumentation of two microtonally re-tuned pump organs, alongside clarinets and guitars, the sonic landscape of Driftwood has become a welcoming place for us to inhabit together. The distinctive characteristics of these instruments, as well as the challenge of playing multiple instruments simultaneously, have become a frame we've leaned into more and more, trusting the vitality of their combined resonance to lead us further into uncharted paths of improvisation. For our second album, we wanted to incorporate additional elements from each of our solo practices into our sound: modular synth, effects pedals, electric guitar and contact mic’s (because playing two instruments at the same time wasn’t enough for us!) In ‘Maps’, electronics are subtly worked back into the original improvisations, saturating the live instrumentation with bass undertones and signal processing, pushing the sound into more otherworldly realms. Sometimes the pieces hint toward song-like forms, with repetitive guitar ostinatos lulling the music to the edge of familiarity, while other times the drones and harmonies blur, creating the ground from which glimpses of folk-like melodies surface, as if from a long-forgotten dream.
cobs, an essential figure of avant-garde cinema, and I had over-a-decade-long collaboration. We first performed fo his Nervous Magic Lantern project at the Argos Festival in Brussels in 2007. Before flying to Europe, Ken invited me to the top-floor loft on Chambers Street in TriBeCa, where Ken and his wife, Flo, have lived and worked since 1965, to experience a private screening. He turned on the apparatus and the image flashed onto the screen: geometric patterns — something of a Rorschach inkblot — rotated as if in a whirlpool, and three-dimensional imagery pulsed with strong flicker. What was weird was that the images did not adhere to the surface of the screen. They stood out, almost floating, like holograms. Then, my eyes started catching physical shapes in the depth of the abstract patterns such as faces, hands, the surface of an oil spill, and they appeared and disappeared like ghosts or doppelgängers. “How does Nervous Magic Lantern work?” I asked Ken. The inventor's answer was something unexpected: "I don't know! I dreamed it and found it through experimentations then stuck to it. I'm not that technical." Well, he is an artist who creates a phantasmagoria of mystery; let the neuroscientists explain the mechanism. The self-made apparatus contains a spinning shutter, a light source, and lenses set in a wooden frame. Ken inserts his hand-painted circular slides between the light and lenses and moved them gently with his hands. The lenses enlarged a tiny portion on the slide, while the spinning shutter gave the flicker effect. Compared to Ken's other works, which are often filled with unflinching political criticism, the imagery of Nervous Magic Lantern is patently abstract, and it examines how our brain regulates our perceptions. In Jonas Mekas' Movie Journal, Ken once said, “We’re stepping towards a deeper incline, something challenging our notion of the way things are. Something impossible.” Elsewhere he stated, “Eisenstein said the power of film was to be found between shots. Peter Kubelka seeks it between film frames. I want to get between the eyes, contest the separate halves of the brain. A whole new play of appearances is possible here.” Nervous Magic Lantern offers up this sort of play in stunning hallucinations, strange visions dancing on the screen. Ken's request for my music was to play “sounds of daily life.” He explained that the project “is an escape,” and that he felt “guilty not having any messages or reflecting the real world. By using environmental sounds to surround us,” he continued, “I'd like to be rooted in the real world." Around 2014, I noticed that Ken had a sizable collection of cassette field recordings he had amassed over the last several decades. Street noises in Chinatown, conversations with friends, or any sort of uncategorizable sound around him. I was fascinated and decided to use them as a springboard for composing. One of the unique aspects of Nervous Magic Lantern is that the visual stays abstract while the sound is able to adopt meanings or a narrative sense derived from the quotidian sounds. I wanted to emphasize that point and add almost a sense of documentary. More than that, I simply loved the aural depictions of Ken and Flo’s life. Those also trigger my memories with them. Over the years, during summer time, Ken, Flo, and my wife, Makiko, made a habit of going to their favorite restaurant in Chinatown. Other times, Ken and I had morning coffee at a Puerto Rican restaurant just below their loft. Life and art are inseparable, breaking into one another incessantly. Ken is an artist who always envisioned the impossible. I wanted to see if it's possible to present that vision as something universal, something whole, something running through everyone’s life. A soundtrack for life in the depth of illusion. That is perhaps what this album is. This album was recorded as a soundtrack for Ken Jacobs' Nervous Magic Lantern at Spiral Hall, organized by Sound Live Tokyo, on November 3, 2015. It was probably one of our best performances. Before the performance, Ken explained to me the selected slides he uses and the ordering he employs, so that I would better understand the flow. Some slides are black-and-white and some color. For a given performance, Ken selects 10 slides or so. However, he might play with just one slide for the entire show or change the order — there was plenty of room to improvise. On my side, I also had a structure and the order of tapes, quite independent from Ken's visual. But I made the system easy to extend or shorten, duration-wise, in order to respond to Ken's ordering and mood. Lastly, I wanted to mention Flo's role, as she is deeply involved in Ken's creative process; as he says: “This is a mom-and-pop business.” From the first day of working together, she was always there with us and took care of all practical matters. Ken is a dreamer and thinks and works intuitively. But Flo — an exceptionally beautiful woman in and out — is rooted in the real world. Not just a pragmatist, however, Flo advises Ken on artistic decisions. Ken always asks to hear her thoughts, as I did as well. As film critic and their decades-long friend Amy Taubin once described it, "Florence Jacobs is nothing less than a producer of Ken Jacobs' cinema." What a perfect couple, and it was an extremely joyous journey with them!
On May 28, 1969, four American musicians -- reed/wind players Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, bassist Malachi Favors, and (accompanied by his wife, singer Fontella Bass) trumpeter Lester Bowie -- boarded the ocean liner S.S. United States, bound for Le Havre, France. After landing five days later, they moved on to Paris, where they got to work. On August 22, 1970, in the waning days of their stay overseas, the group, with Bass on vocals, would record their second release for EMI's Pathé Marconi: the movie soundtrack Les Stances à Sophie. The record, an exciting, eminently listenable combination of soul, classical, and jazz strains that survives as the Art Ensemble of Chicago's most stylistically diverse album, has long been admired by a devoted cult. Its durability is largely due to the popularity of its "hit": Over the years, "Theme de Yoyo" has been covered repeatedly, essayed by acts as varied as German funk band the Boogoos (and the offshoot Deep Jazz, both featuring singer Julia Fehenbeger), British nu-jazz combo the Cinematic Orchestra, Polish jazz man Wojtek Mazolewski, Norwegian rockers Motorpsycho, French dance music artist Étienne Jaumet, and London-based remixer, Shall I Bruk It. More than half a century later, "Theme de Yoyo" and Les Stances à Sophie still bring it. Limited-edition LP reissue from play loud! Productions, supplemented with new notes by U.S. music journalist Chris Morris.
Rhythms played by The Aggrovators, including Carlton Barret, Sly Dunbar, Carlton 'Santa' Davis, Robbie Shakespeare, Aston Barrett and Tony Chin.
Arranged, produced, mixed and mastered by Ivan Dubious (April, 2024) __________________________________ A - Ivan Dubious "Flamboyant" AA - Wilbur "Impassive" __________________________________ (c)+(p) Ivan Antezza 2024 __________________________________ nunkirec.bandcamp.com
Swiss powerhouse The 18th Parallel presents another slice of fine modern roots reggae! All Fruits Ripe is a heavyweight showcase album rooted in the foundations of reggae while firmly anchored in the present. Recorded between 2015 and 2025, the project brings together a powerful lineup of Jamaican vocalists — Micah Shemaiah, Keith Rowe (from rocksteady duet Keith & Tex), Rod Taylor, Var (Inna De Yard, Pentateuch), Hezron, and Itral Ites — each representing a different generation of conscious reggae music. The album features six vocal cuts and five dub versions, highlighting both lyrical strength and sound system culture. Carefully mixed by master engineer Roberto Sánchez, All Fruits Ripe stands as a transnational reggae statement: Jamaican voices carried by a European band deeply connected to the roots with a profound respect for the culture that gave birth to reggae and dub. It features legendary guest Jamaican musicians Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace, Scully Simms, Dalton Browne, or Errol ‘Blacksteel’ Nicholson. A mature and carefully crafted release where every track feels essential — like fruit finally ready to be harvested.
Live At Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali sees Grischa Lichtenberger transfigure a forty-minute set into a tactile, visual, and kinetic experience. Industrial clangor, mechanical pulses, and fleeting ambience merge, sculpted with rigor. Issued by Hermit Records as a collector’s vinyl, it stands at the edge between noise, rhythm, and abstraction With Live At Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali, Grischa Lichtenberger distills the art of sound into forty minutes of fiercely organized chaos. Recorded in the unique space of the Pino Pascali Museum in Polignano a Mare and released by Hermit Records, the album is a study in constructive friction—mechanical pulses and ferrous textures recurring, splintering, and coalescing in real time. Lichtenberger's palette draws from the imaginary of Russolo and Brinkmann, yet forges its own path: rhythm and abstraction in an endless handshake, frequency as sculpture, and every crackle a gesture or a mark. This release, limited to a black vinyl edition and including original music and artwork conceived over more than a decade, is purposefully an object as well as a document. No digital footprints, just a testimony pressed in the grooves—an encounter with matter, with noise, with control. Here, listening is not passive; it is as much a process as the performance itself, alive with tension and raw poetics. [Soundohm] An abstract painting with expressionist hues and futurist echoes, a mix between action painting and informal art: this is the first impression from Grischa Lichtenberger's live performance recorded at the Pino Pascali Museum in Polignano a Mare. The artist, based in Berlin, makes the rhythms creak, cuts them with a laser, weaves imaginative harmonic coils, smoothes with electric razors and draws figures with echoes and industrial clangs. Then he uses ferrous materials that, with a precision lathe, are abraded and cause sparks. Suddenly steel springs fall to the ground, generating a cascade effect. In the distance, you can hear the roar of speeding cars and the ringing of bells. Lichtenberger pulps, compresses, dilates, mixes, electrifies, heats up, liquefies: he does all this in just less than forty minutes, treating the sound material with violence, transforming it from time to time, shaping it and succeeding in the arduous task of controlling its effects. It is as if Luigi Russolo, Alva Noto and Thomas Brinkmann were closed in a workshop on the edge of a highway, parodying the famous definition of techno.
Great little record here from Brisbane based Drew Id. "Intersteller Dub" on the A-side is a real corker that combines the driving bass weight of steppers with the spacey atmospherics of dub techno, all tied together with some spectacular Tubby-esque mixing desk prowess. Then flip it over for the the more meditative delights of "Aphid Steppa" which slows the pace and brings in some dreamy guitar and melodic melodies.
Emerging from the European roots scene, conscious singer Congo Lion delivers his long‑awaited full‑length album Silver Dragon. Having moved to Africa in his teens and drawing deep inspiration from legends like Burning Spear and Peter Tosh, he channels sharp social commentary through a classic roots reggae framework. Produced by Karigan, the album blends warm, vintage‑style analog textures with a clean, modern sound. From the title track “Silver Dragon” to songs confronting colonial legacies and cycles of violence, the record is rich in message and spirit, with dub versions on the B‑side adding further depth. A standout contemporary roots release for 2026.
Undisputed grime heavyweight and sublow architect Jon E Cash is spotlighted on an overdue retrospective hustling rare plates back on vinyl for 1st time in decades - utterly essential tackle for UK ‘nuum fiends on the line from jungle to UKG, grime and dubstep. A serious VIP for Sneaker Social Club and the grime scene at large, ’SUBLOW’ scrolls back a quarter century to grime’s earliest days - before it even had a name - when artists such as Jon E Cash, Jammer, and Wiley were reshaping prevailing UKG styles and patterns in their own image, coming out with something rudely altered in translation - or by their technical limitations. While the latter melded Jamaican sound system inspirations of dancehall and jungle into their grimy prototypes, Jon E Cash would bring a ruggeder swerve, carried over from his early ‘90s days as part of the pivotal Britcore hip hop sound with Construction, and prevailing traces of later ’90s R&B and D&B, to his take on the 140bpm framework, with the exaggerated bass levels of his productions, and their bashy drums, bestowing the sound its mantle, SUBLOW, and soon recognised as a whole subgenre in its own right. These are sacred plates for grime, a key part of its DNA, and Sneaker Social Club are doing the Lord’s work by saving you a month’s rent in Zone 3 if you were to pick them up individually. All from the fascinating interzone 2000-2004, when the sound was shaped as an ecology of pirate radio, white labels, and raves, it’s burstign at the seams with legendary gear from the murky steez of ‘Hoods Up’ thru the NSFW intro of his absolute steamer ‘Kettle’, brukking out the digi-dub style horns on ‘War’ and ‘Battle’, or ramping R&B with speedy G pressure on ‘All About the Sex’, not to mention his Timba-turned-horny Terminator turn ’Spanish Fly (V.I.P.).’ If you ask us, it’s one of the hardest reissues/compilations of 2025, bar none, and a strong example of how much perceptions of grime have changed over the decades, from outlaw genre to something to be fetishised, archived, admired as distinguished cultural artefact, rather than feared and legislated against.
Originally recorded and released in 1977 on Sky Records, the first collaborative album by Brian Eno and Cluster was the first ambient record produced in Germany, and is considered the seminal, defining work of the genre. Brian Eno was certainly instrumental in creating and popularizing the concept of "ambient music" -- but it was not his invention alone. The German musicians Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius (Cluster) were brothers in spirit. As so often in music, the idea of ambient was in the air -- both Eno and Cluster experimenting with the form in the 1970s, rendering any debate as to who influenced who redundant. What is certain, is that Brian Eno attended a Cluster concert in Hamburg in 1975, strategically positioning himself in the front row. Sure enough, he was invited on stage to jam with the band and, after the show, the participants arranged to meet up again. They did so two years later at the Old Weserhof in Forst, the domicile of the German duo. Eno and Cluster spent three weeks in Conny Plank's studio, resulting in two albums: Cluster & Eno and After The Heat (1978). In the liner notes, Asmus Tietchens (who also plays on the record along with Can's Holger Czukay) writes: "Clearly, all three musicians inspired each other during their three weeks together without any clash of personalities. Nevertheless, some tracks sound more like Cluster, some more like Eno. So it made perfect sense to collect the tracks with a Cluster flavor on Cluster & Eno." The importance of this record can never be overstated, nor can its elegance of diverse forms be matched. From Indian sitar and tamboura, to synth warbles and airy tributes to Western groove, it is a rare glimpse at what happens when masters meet.
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First chapter of a futuristic dub experiment series by The 18th Parallel. Geneva based collective invites engineer extraordinaire Roberto Sánchez to revisit 10 scorcher riddims from the Fruits Records vault to craft this inventive modern classic. Reminiscent of the greatest dub albums by King Tubby, Scientist, Prince Jammy, or Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.
Fruits Records presents the first volume of a series of dub albums by Swiss collective The 18th Parallel. Following in the tradition of Jamaican producers who revisited their catalogues in dub versions, such as Bunny Lee and his Aggrovators with King Tubby, Junjo Lawes or Linval Thompson teaming up with Roots Radics and Scientist, or Joe Gibbs and his Professionals with Errol Thompson, Fruits Records is launching a series of dub albums produced by the label's studio band, The 18th Parallel, which will invite different sound engineers to (re)mix the tracks throughout the albums: DUB AVALANCHE. This first volume offers a deep dive into the label's catalogue through ten classic or unreleased riddims revisited by Fruits Records' long-time partner, Spanish sound engineer extraordinaire Roberto Sánchez. The instrumentals are brilliantly performed by The 18th Parallel and punctuated by the voices of legendary artists such as The Viceroys, Lone Ranger, Cornell Campbell, and Dennis Walks, who appear fleetingly before disappearing into clouds of echo. Roberto Sánchez performs ten explosive, creative sound deconstructions, playing with stylistic codes to stimulate our memory and offer a timeless sensory experience.
Like the classics of the genre, the cover art evokes a quirky retro-futuristic imaginary space where, breaking with convention, the talent of Mexican artist Melissa Santamaría is expressed through a striking metaphor of a sonic avalanche.
DUB AVALANCHE VOL. 1 is already establishing itself as a future must-have for fans of uncompromising reggae and dub!
Black Editions presents the expanded and definitive edition of White Heaven’s brilliant third album Next to Nothing. Originally released in 1994 by Tokyo’s Noon Disk, the full album was only ever available in a limited vinyl pressing of 250 copies. Since then, it has become one of the most sought-after artifacts of the 90’s Japanese underground and is regarded as a highpoint of Japanese psychedelic rock. Led by vocalist, songwriter and conceptualist You Ishihara, the album finds the group in a phase of refinement. Taking a more intricate and open approach, the music is buoyant and light yet at the same time, nocturnal and introspective. Next to Nothing marks the first time guitarists Michio Kurihara and Soichiro Nakamura appear together on record after having separate turns as lead guitar on the group’s first two albums. The pairing is revelatory as they weave luminous melodic lines, sometimes in parallel, sometimes opening into sustained intricate counterpoint. Bassist Koji Shimura and drummer Ken Ishihara shuffle and swing in parallel with a fluid, sinuous rhythm, while flourishes of synthesizer, mellotron and the introduction of Go Hirano on keyboards and piano deepens the group’s sound with orchestral colors and a soft cinematic haze. Across the album, clear, shimmering guitar tones and gentle chord progressions are layered with bright arpeggiated figures and darker minor-key passages. The songs develop through gradual changes in tone and dynamics as Ishihara's voice reveals a gentle yearning and wistfulness. An extended version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “The Look of Love” serves as the album’s entrancing focal point; Stretching the song’s familiar lounge-pop swagger, the group renders it as a slow-burning, psychedelic meditation crackling with electricity as it drifts into the night. Available for the first time on vinyl in over 30 years and for the first time ever digitally (a truncated four song CD EP was also released in 1994). Remastered and expanded to include a second LP featuring three previously unreleased song versions cut at 45RPM. Presented in a heavy tip-on gatefold with metallic and ink pigment foil stamping, spot colors as well as a gatefold insert. House in a custom vellum wrap with a mirror metallic sticker seal. Lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Mastering, pressed at Record Technology Inc.
This double LP of instrumental Hindustani, Carnatic and folk 78rpm shellac records from India comes with a full color 12-page insert of gramophone record ephemera, shops, labels, manufacturing details and graphics. The LPs feature over 25 artists recorded between 1904 and 1959 playing a panoply of instruments: jalatarang, dilruba, sarod, clarionet, pakhawaj, violin, been, kazoo, shehnai, tabla, sarangi, sitar, vina and more. Artists include Imdad Khan (the first sitarist ever recorded), Ahmedjan Thirkhawa, Bundu Khan, Amir Hussain, Allauddin Khan (who taught Ravi Shankar), and others both forgotten and revered. The Indian classical instrumental tradition is one of incredible proficiency and expressiveness using instruments and techniques created over generations that seem to perfectly and uniquely compliment Indian culture, landscape and tradition. Sympathetic strings resonate inside sitars and sarangis to manifest shimmering reverberant spiritual spaces; horns, reeds and flutes extend the range, volume and melodic inventiveness of the voice; a mind-boggling array of elaborately turned percussion instruments allow for rhythms as complex or as simple as the flowing Ganges river. Classical music in India was perhaps at its height during the 78rpm period as the raj era was ending and the world was globalizing. 2-LP gatefold with 12 page full-color booklet insert - features never reissued recordings and is the long-anticipated follow up to the Indian Talking Machine book/CD (Sublime Frequencies 099), which was also produced by Robert Millis from his collection of 78rpm records and ephemera.
Electrifying heavy sessions recorded in 1997 featuring the classic Mainliner + Musica Transonic lineup of Nanjo Asahito (High Rise), Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mother) and Yoshida Tatsuya (Ruins) driving into new divergently fried terrain(s). Here, Nanjo and co. are on a quest to find new directions, and while the sessions were for an abandoned Mainliner album, a good portion of Solid Static hews more closely to the moment-to-moment deconstructions of Musica Transonic. The propulsive ten-minute opening title track is a lost gem in the canon of Japanese psychedelia and rock and roll -- beginning with one of Mainliner's bludgeoning motor-psycho riffs, it veers off into auratic space, Kawabata's snake-charming guitar weaving around Nanjo's buzz-fire bass and Yoshida's multi-limbed drumming. Musica Transonic's improvised and jazz-informed take on psychedelic rock is writ across the distended rhythms and arcing bass and guitar lines that scrawl across "Prosecutor" and "Topsy Turvy," or the slurry of distorted tone that rolls through "Rot Way." Available for the first time on LP or any physical form aside from a clutch of CDR's sold at a few live dates in the late '90s. Housed in a custom die-cut, "Uni-Pak" style gatefold with metallic ink, spot finishes and matching La Musica inner sleeve.
2026 repress. "Sister Nancy's 'Bam Bam' on the Stallag Riddim is arguably the most licensed dancehall track for advertising and film backgrounds with multiple uses since 2000. The song has also displayed amazing lasting power for club DJs, with its instantly recognizable hooks. This album, originally released in 1982, showcased Sister Nancy for the world on the heels of a hit that has only gotten bigger over the decades. This is the first legitimate re-issue of the album, since the death of producer and techniques label founder, Winston Riley. Demand will be strong for this rare gem."
Blue Abstraction compiles a selection of Jessica Williams’ lost prepared piano recordings. These recordings document the beginning of a vital, solitary phase in her career: a period of intense sonic experimentation that began with physically altering a 6’4” grand piano—creating a new instrument, and from there, creating a new music. The results are breathtaking; from melancholic soundscapes with Satie-esque lyricism to forcefully controlled cacophony, always grounded by the distinct emotional voicing of her melodic lines. Jessica Williams (1948–2022) was a pioneering trans jazz pianist and composer from Baltimore, where she studied at the Peabody Conservatory. Among countless other greats, she gigged with Philly Joe Jones, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Tony Williams, Charlie Rouse, Jackie McLean, Roy Haynes, Charlie Haden, and Bobby Hutcherson, and recorded with Eddie Henderson, Eddie Harris, Leroy Vinnegar, Victor Lewis, and Ray Drummond. She received accolades from piano greats McCoy Tyner and Dave Brubeck. Williams could play anything and knew the standards deeply—expanding from there through her composing and arranging. Her first LP, The Portal of Antrim (Adelphi, 1976), included six solo piano improvisations, four pieces as a trio, and “Plath’s Return,” where she played all the instruments. After finishing her second album—a double LP of solo piano improvisations titled Portraits (Adelphi, 1977)—she moved to San Francisco and became the house pianist at the city’s premiere jazz spot, Keystone Korner. Thelonious Monk was one of Williams’ biggest influences. Her fifth LP, Update (Clean Cuts, 1982), features a take on “Ruby My Dear” and her sixth LP, Nothin’ But the Truth (BlackHawk, 1986), includes “’Round Midnight,” “Ugly Beauty,” and her tribute, “Monk’s Hat.” In a 1997 interview with Terry Gross, she recalled first hearing It’s Monk’s Time (Columbia, 1964): “[It] sounded like he was wearing boxing gloves, because I had heard all this precision piano playing—like Oscar [Peterson]—and this was a totally new thing for me. I grew to love Monk’s music, and I still do, but I had some questions about how he would do certain things.” Monk’s famous maxim—“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes”—opened up something essential for her. In 1985, with a head full of Monk’s dissonant harmonies, Williams began her prepared piano project. She altered the piano by placing vibrating and/or muting elements on top of and between the strings at varying distances across the harp—some sounding like bells or gongs (screws, bolts), others like percussion instruments (clothespins, hairpins, washers, erasers). The effect radically expanded the instrument’s possibilities, sometimes making it sound metallic or ghostly, other times muted, tactile, almost broken. Though pioneered by John Cage—who embraced chance and a sparse, meditative atmosphere—Williams brought an entirely new sensibility to the prepared piano, forging a personal musical language grounded in improvisation, nuanced timbral control, and compositional precision. Even the most dissonant elements land precisely within the parameters of her tonal framework. The resulting beauty and listenability of these works are a testament to Williams’ vision and mastery. The recordings on Blue Abstraction came out of three years of experimentation. She recorded at her own Quanta Studios and at Moon Studios (both in Sacramento), and two live performances at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco, on January 11 and May 10, 1986, as part of the Noe Valley Music Series. For Williams, these recordings were a personal transformation through the musical process. She described them as “temporal arrangements of sound and timbre... my self encoded on a chrome oxide surface [audio tape].” The process of listening back, she said, was “further investigation into my becoming.” The prepared piano gave her a language beyond technique—a direct link between sound, sensation, and the shifting contours of identity. She never returned to the prepared piano but continued to adopt its techniques—for example, emulating a koto on “Toshiko” from Songs for a New Century (Origin, 2008), or depressing multiple keys and reaching into the piano, strumming the strings to create a chord, on her compositions “Soldaji” from Live at Yoshi’s Volume Two (MAXJAZZ, 2005) and “Love and Hate” from Unity (Red and Blue, 2006). Though known for her recordings and live performances—especially of Monk tunes—Williams made some of her most forward-thinking music privately. Describing her childhood connection to the piano, she said, “I hit the notes, and I saw colors.” This immediate, sensorial relationship to sound persisted throughout her career, whether she was playing bebop standards or muting strings with hairpins. The music on this record disappeared for almost four decades. Perhaps the few who encountered it back then couldn’t fully understand what she had made. I’m excited to see what happens this time around. –Kye Potter Los Angeles
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi returns to Latency with Nexus, a full-length album recorded in Berlin that extends his radical reinvention of Persian percussion. Renowned for pushing the tombak and daf into new territory with unprecedented techniques, Mortazavi now incorporates voice, effects, and electronic treatments into his sound for the first time. These additions deepen, rather than depart from, his lifelong exploration of rhythm and resonance. The record opens with ‘Zendegi’ (‘Life’), built from the chant “Woman, Life, Freedom” as a gesture towards his homeland and beyond. Throughout Nexus, Mortazavi explores connection, transformation, and the unseen forces that shape reality, presenting rhythm as both guide and teacher. The album title itself points to a meeting place where energies, ideas, and times converge, capturing its meditative but exploratory spirit. The cover features artwork by American artist and filmmaker Jordan Belson, whose “visual music” aligns with Mortazavi’s trance-inducing percussion language. His hypnotic live shows have reached the Berlin Philharmonie, Paris Pantheon, and Sydney Opera House, while his rhythmic innovations have earned acclaim across experimental and electronic circles, including collaborations with Burnt Friedman and Mark Fell.
アルバムについて In a continuation of his devotional celebration of the dance, Shed arrives on Dekmantel with Rave Echoes — a supple, mesmerising album of angular techno caught between the heat of peak time and the time-blurred hours after the club. Few artists have nailed the intersection of the intellectual, emotional and physical in techno as evocatively as René Pawlowitz. For more than 20 years and across scores of aliases the Frankfurt/Oder-born, Berlin-based trailblazer has pushed a distinctive strain of machine music in thrall to the functional demands of motion without ever sacrificing subtlety, space, intrigue and expression. While his vast catalogue of work touches on many different moods and energies, on his Dekmantel debut Rave Echoes he shrouds eight forthright workouts in a blanket of misty melancholia to evoke the enchanting afterglow of the party. "It's not nostalgic," Pawlowitz explains. "It's about that feeling that remains for a day, a week or even years after celebrating a rave. I still have that feeling for about 30 years now. This record tries to describe it." The vaporous pads that soar over 'Password (Techno Mix)' certainly come charged with a bittersweet sentiment. Meanwhile the rhythmic locomotion comes on like the rumble of the first train back after leaving the club. The insistent bell loop up top rings out like the hook of the last track that rang out over the soundsystem. It's a sensation familiar to anyone who has spent their last drop of energy at the altar of dance, where exhaustion meets with satisfaction and disorientation as you recalibrate back into the real world. This approach — dreamlike atmospherics and rugged propulsion — takes on many guises across Rave Echoes. It's submerged and restrained on 'Loot 25', speckled with sharply sliced breaks on 'Everybody' and scattered across a sparse, steppy soundscape on 'Rave Predator'. Emotive, swooning strings collide with tough, squashed breakstep drums on 'Double Scoop' and 'Taking You Home' thrusts with urgency even as Pawlowitz softens the spiky transients to make space for pure rave romanticism. There is even space for 'Rave Echoes' itself — the last groove before your eyes finally close, as the beat slows to a weighty trip hop roll and the ambience blooms out into a dense blanket across the frequency range. Bursting with the nuanced production, rugged UK-school soundsystem pressure and Berlin-school techno momentum that makes him such a celebrated producer, on Rave Echoes Shed offers a perfect impression of those wild, indescribable sensory overloads that leave their mark on anyone devoted to the dancefloor.
Smerz continue to mark out sui generis wyrd-pop territory on their second proper full-length, this time for the on-fire Escho label, stripping away the club nostalgia and doubling down on oddball R&B harmonies and quirky DIY-cum-downtown NYC production tics - a sort of genius missing link between Astrid Sonne, Cibo Matto and Luscious Jackson.
Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt's earliest gear was a torch in a dark digital corridor, a prophetic look at a hazy pop future that blurred genre boundaries and trampled across the borders between the mainstream and the underground. Needless to say, they set the stage for a sound that's more or less orthodox in 2025 - we see Smerz's shadow on ML Buch's world-beating 'Suntub', or Erika De Casier's bedroom R&B groover 'Still', for example. And their contribution to the canon hasn't gone completely unnoticed; the duo co-produced K-pop girl group NewJeans' impressive 'Get Up' EP in 2023 alongside de Casier, and turned in an edit of Astrid Sonne's 'Say you love me' in 2024. If there's a discernible scene coalescing between Copenhagen, London and Oslo, Smerz are operating somewhere near the center.
So four years after threading supersaw-led trance-pop and rattly footwork-pilled kicks through a lattice of offhand skits and classical interludes on their impressive debut album 'Believer', Stoltenberg and Motzfeldt return to an art-pop landscape that's humming with energy. Fittingly, they reply by setting a new sonic benchmark, pruning their productions considerably and focusing on the bumpy, textural weirdness that often lurked in the distance on prior recordings. The best way to get a handle on this one is to scrub thru the duo's archive of NTS shows (they've been producing weekly bulletins for the best part of a decade), where you might hear Klein, Morton Feldman, Leila, Angelo Badalamenti, Young Thug or Kaskade alongside demos and cuts from like-minded peers such as Clarissa Connelly, Lolina and Peder Mannerfelt.
They're enthusiastic, discerning listeners who can cut away some of the cultural baggage to figure out links between vastly different sounds, and that's exactly the experience 'Big city life' provides. From the first few notes of the title track it's as if we've been dialed into NYC circa 1981, with rubbery microsampled half-riffs that project like they're being coughed out of a malfunctioning Fairlight CMI. Trading schoolyard rhymes back and forth, Smerz sing-rap nonchalantly over jerky MIDI piano and strangulated breaks, imagining a mid-point between day zero trip-hop and Craig Leon's enduringly influential 'Nommos'. And that intermixture of casual amusement and heads-y deep digging nourishes the entire record. There's the whipsmart Stereolab-in-dub vibe of 'But I do', 'Close' with its sad lounge and sensual Chicago lilt, and the lead single 'You got time and I got money', that's a raggy doll stitch-up of Air's 'Sexy Boy' and Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony' covered by Neneh Cherry.
And just like on their debut album, it's Smerz's bijou, ostensibly throwaway moments that fully crystallize their narrative. They understand exactly what draws us back again and again to "classic" albums (and good mixes, actually), and pepper 'Big city life' with elegant, eccentric digressions, like the General MIDI player-piano loosie 'What', and 'Street Style', a stripped-back candlelit ballad that couches the bolshy TR-909-led 'Imagine This', a screwed-n-chopped Mantronix moment that accents their vast knowledge of '80s rap and electro. And if you're missing the old Smerz, they throw us a bone with the Autotune-d trance digression 'Dreams', leading us out of the album with a melancholy reminder that the flicker of the club is still there, somewhere, just distorted into a hypnotic, euphoric outline.
Dream of the Egg is the debut solo album by Tomo Katsurada, known for his work with the Japanese psychedelic band Kikagaku Moyo. This project is a unique fusion of music and visual art, inspired by the Japanese 1920s children's book “Yume No Tamago (Dream of the Egg)”. It reveals a deeply personal journey, reflecting Tomo's dreams and the numerous rebirths experienced in 2024—a year marked by profound new beginnings in every facet of his life. This mini album was driven by a passion for raw and immediate expression. Every song was crafted and recorded with only the materials available to him at the time, embracing an organic and handmade atmosphere. By eschewing rhythm clicks and standard instrumental tunings, a spontaneous sound emerged, capturing the essence of both uncertainty and immediacy. Adding to this distinctive sonic landscape, guest musician Jonny Nash (UK) contributed ethereal guitar sounds on the first and final tracks, enriching the record's dream-like quality.
Strut presents the second studio album from Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express and a firm favourite with Auger aficionados, the “little known masterpiece” A Better Land from 1971. Marking a clear evolution from their more jazz-rock leaning debut, the band shifts into a mellower direction on these tracks, echoing the feel of Befour released in the Trinity's later years. A Better Land embraces warmer, more melodic and understated compositions, primarily written by guitarist Jim Mullen. With its languid and spacious approach, the album brings an grounded message to make the most of the simple pleasures in life with a hopeful, but wary, eye to the future. Musically, Auger brings acoustic guitars, country rock melodies and three-part vocal harmonies into his musical palette. Key tracks include the groove-driven title track ‘A Better Land’, the sparse ‘Dawn of Another Day,’ (sampled by Air and Black Milk among others) while ‘Fill Your Head With Laughter’ returns to Auger's trademark driving Hammond-led sound, akin to early Traffic. The record features the Brian Auger’s unique sound on organ and electric piano, joined by Jim Mullen on guitar, Barry Dean on bass and Robbie McIntosh on drums and percussion, with Auger, Mullen and Dean all contributing vocals. Mullen co-wrote seven of the album’s nine tracks, with additional contributions from Alan Gorrie (later of Average White Band). These songwriters should take immense pride in their work as Auger’s favourite singer of all time, Sarah Vaughan, recognised the quality of these compositions by covering three of them; ‘Trouble’, ‘On “Thinking It Over’, and ‘Tomorrow City’ for her 1972 album A Time in My Life. This new official Strut reissue is curated by Greg Boraman of Impressive Collective in collaboration with Brian and Karma Auger. Fully remastered by Cosmic Audio, it is presented as a high-quality single LP replica edition.