Captured Tracks have the album you've all been waiting for. Mac Demarco's 'This Old Dog' is finally upon us and for long-term fans or new listeners alike, it's a treat. Starting with the warming tribute, 'My Old Man' which begins rich with woody CR78 percussion and sumptuous acoustic guitar, soon to break into Demarco's unmistakeable vocal drawl. As the chorus grows from the tapestry of sound, the warmth of the reticent synth swells surrounds the stero image in a comforting blanket of organic haze. It's indicative of Demarco's earlier work, but more confidently approached, brilliantly minimal still but undeniably rich in it's simplicity. 

'Baby You're Out' grows from a more off-centred rhythmic approach but undergoes a shuffling transformation to swoon into the folky redux of the main choral refrain, it's an approach that could be jarring but in the capable sonwriting hands of the man himself, it predictably goes by without a hitch. Speaking of transformations, Mac seems to undergo a tranformation himself from shuffled syncopator into sleazy lounge singer in the oozingly laid-back 80's synth sizzle of 'For The First Time'. Decending digital pads and simmering DX7 tines coalesce into a melting-pot of reverb and polyester garments. 

There are pieces here like 'Sister' that really display the no-frills talent that has endeared us all to him for so long, comprising of hazy pitch-shifted guitar sitting right back in the mix while heartbreaking lyrics swim ever so briefly around the wistful plucking. 'Dreams From Yesterday' oozes with crackling tubes and hazy summer dreams to counteract the minimal aura of it's precident. And so it continues, from warm and full-bodied to cold and reticent, there isn't a bad moment here, only different emotions conveyed through a variety of techniques, and every one of them perfectly executed. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: "Mac DeMarco must be some kind of joke act, right?" Has this thought ever crossed your mind? I came across it in a festival review and I felt for the poor guy who just didn't seem to get what Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV (I'll give you a moment to let that settle in...) is all about. If you can relate but somehow feel intrigued, 'This Old Dog' is your perfect entryway into the wacky world of Mac DeMarco. It seems like everyone's favourite sleaze man is trying to show us that he has grown up, without having lost an inch of his quirkiness. It is okay to be vulnerable sometimes, the songs about his troubled relationship with his father seem to confess, just don't bury your head in the sand. 'This Old Dog' is stripped back, simpler and therefore easier to digest than his previous outings. It's dreamy and reflective but always light-hearted, and will leave you with a warm, fuzzy feeling in your chest. Careful, though, you might feel like you're floating on a cloud.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Old Man
2. This Old Dog
3. Baby You’re Out
4. For The First Time
5. One Another
6. Still Beating
7. Sister
8. Dreams From Yesterday
9. A Wolf Who Wears Sheeps Clothes
10. One More Love Song
11. On The Level
12. Moonlight On The River
13. Watching Him Fade Away

Following on from the release of his first album in 10 years in 2022, the expansive ‘Fear Of Programming’, Berlin techno icon Marcel Dettmann today returns to announce a brand new EP, ‘Electric Drive’. His first release via fabric Originals, the flagship label from global club entity fabric.

A full-bodied cut of driving, digitised techno, ‘Electric Drive’ thrives on intensity from the outset. Pairing a hypnotic yet truly dynamic synth centrepiece with a hard-hitting, no nonsense percussive line, the track strips Dettmann’s signature sound to its raw elements - presenting an incendiary DJ tool that can ignite the potency of any set by force.

After spanning a host of genres within ‘Fear Of Programming’, Marcel Dettmann’s ‘Electric Drive’ finds one of techno’s most revered names returning to pure dancefloor ferocity. A glimpse of things to come, the project’s title track ensures that those tuned in to the more dynamic sounds of Berlin techno are satiated with a new soundtrack for late nights and early mornings from one of the sound’s most inventive artists.

The four track EP promises to build on the foundations of a classic sound of techno, taking a no holds barred approach to powerful, explosive electronic music.

TRACK LISTING

Electric Drive
Mission
No Return
Relink

“Dettmann II” is a sequel in a true sense, the album marks a return to the spirit of his debut, but things feel less tense this time around. Dettmann brings his recent experimental outlook and applies it to the album template, creating a record that lives and breathes with a naturalism rare for a techno album. Expertly paced, “Dettmann II” impresses especially with its carefully rising narrative. As the album barrels into action with the particulate grit of “Throb” and “Ductil”, Dettmann is in fine style. Each tune’s central theme is a bit more out there than usual, from the sheet metal racket of “Lightworks” to the house-hinting chorus of “Soar”, which is every bit as majestic as its title implies. He offers up some top-notch ambient material as well, like the trippy “Shiver”, or the ominous “Outback”, which features contributions from Levon Vincent.

Dettmann also reaches for a rare collaboration on his second album. Kindred spirit Emika lends her spectral gasps to “Seduction”, which stays stunningly antiseptic even as it weaves her voice into its wire framework. With “Dettmann II”’s stretch of tracks “Radar” and “Corridor”, the album finally takes flight into full-on club mania, fist-pumping career-high material with all the subtlety of his old work molded up into a spiky banger.

“Aim”, which ends the record in lofty fashion, hints at a new direction for Dettmann, uncharacteristically melodic and even uplifting. Co-produced by René Pawlowitz, it bears the Shed touch but keeps it firmly in Dettmann’s finely-honed world. The first track written for the album and the one that initiated the album sessions in the first place, it carefully hints at new directions while keeping its glance firmly in Dettmann’s established history - which you could say for the album as a whole, gently moving towards new horizons but always keeping in mind what made Dettmann’s past music so great in the first place.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Dettmann calls time on summer, speeding winter along with a majestic record for the long nights ahead. Rigid percussion is paired with shimmering melody as he takes a small step away from the brutal minimalism of his first album.

TRACK LISTING

01. Arise
02. Throb
03. Ductil
04. Shiver
05. Lightworks
06. Soar
07. Outback
08. Seduction Feat. Emika
09. Radar
10. Corridor
11. Stranger
12. Aim

After releasing his Soul Makossa in 1972, Manu Dibango recorded that same year a musical monster both strange and majestic: Africadelic. Africadelic is a pure groovy pearl echoing James Brown or Isaac Hayes, who mixes Afro-Soul, Funk and Jazz, all against a background of Latin percussions nuanced by Rock guitars and a Soul organ

TRACK LISTING

A1. Soul Fiesta
A2. Africadelic
A3. The Panther
A4. African Battle
A5. Black Beauty
A6. African Carnival
B1. Moving Waves
B2. Afro Soul
B3. Oriental Sunset
B4. Monkey Beat
B5. Wa Wa
B6. Percussion Storm
B7. Soul Fiesta Remix

African Voodoo, Manu Dibango’s rare and unknown treasure !

1971 : Manu Dibango records the precious album African Voodoo in line with its twin Africadelic. Twelve masterful Afro Soul, Jazz, Funk or Latin nuggets without a ripple for more than fifty years, which are taking us deeply into Manu Dibango’s brilliant dicography.

The authentic material composing African Voodoo, modestly qualified by the maestro as « a bit spicy mood music », was promised to another destiny before representing one of the most emblematic albums of Manu Dibango’s discography.

Recorded in 1971 at Mondiaphone label studio, this album was not meant for sales. It followed a request of Afro-Urban sounds dedicated to French TV and radio shows seeking atmospheric background music.

Barely entered the studio, the eight musicians recorded it all in three days, without having planned anything !

« It was up to you to play what was coming through your mind, to broaden your imagination ! » entrusted Manu to Jacques Denis in 2008.

The one we call today « The Old Lion » did not take up this challenge lightly, or chose his musicians by chance ! The cream of the time formed his Afro-French-Carribean band :

Yvan Julien (Trumpet), Slim Pezin (Guitar), Jacques Bolognesi (Trombone), François Jeanneau (Saxophone), Lucien Dobat (Drums), Emile Boza (Percussions), Manfred (Bass Guitar), and Manu at Vibraphone, Marimba, Saxophone, Organ and Piano.

The same band who played by his side since 1967, in particular in the Television show « Pulsations », in which Manu conducted his very own orchestra. He was moreover the first musician to manage his regular orchestra on TV !

And the result of these recordings was mind boggling !
The freshness of the sound and groove emanating from it are undeniable, and straightaway place this album like a standard of the genre while listening to the first notes !
The very rhythmic Groovy Flute generously opens the album with its solar and constant flute melody. Our ears then savor an African Pop Session with a heavy and imposing rhythmic, or a Ba-Kuba with a slow and mesmerizing tempo. More rhythmic and percussive tunes like the wild Wilderness reminding us Isaac Hayes shaft, or the swinging Soul Saxes Meeting, one more time show the ingenuity of the composer and the extreme variety of styles he was able to play. The African and Latin tones are almost omnipresent all along the disc. Jungle Riders and its electric guitar and flute solos - as melting as jazzy - supported by Coconut and its very Caribbean rhythmic, or the transcendent Walking to Waza, bear witness.

As sublime as surprising, African Voodoo perfectly illustrated the « Afro Somethin’ » invented by the maestro during a time interview with Rolling Stone Magazine. Barely published, these words were then used by all medias. Simple description, and undoubtedly efficient, of the genres crossing Manu Dibango embodies through his music and his universal speech ; a REAL word citizen for whom music has no color.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Groovy Flute
2. Soul Saxes Meeting
3. African Pop Session
4. Walking To Waza
5. Out Of Score
6. Ba-Kuba
SIDE B
1. Zoom 2000
2. Aphrodite Shake
3. Wilderness
4. Jungle Riders
5. Iron Wood
6. Coconut

Released in 1982, the album "Waka Juju" marks a return to Afrosound. We hear titles like "Douala Serenade" or "Ma Marie", a tribute to his wife. "Waka juju" is an ode to juju, the traditional Yoruba music that has become Nigeria's most popular style. Emmanuel N'Djoké Dibango (born 12 December 1933) is a Cameroonian musician and song-writer who plays saxophone and vibraphone. He developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. He is best known for his 1972 single "Soul Makossa".

TRACK LISTING

A1. Waka Juju
A2. Douala Serenade
A3. Africa Boogie
B1. Mouna Pola
B2. Ma Marie
B3. Manga-bolo

McKinley Dixon calls the late Toni Morrison the greatest rapper of all time; and the way he tackles topics like survival, violence, and religion within the expansive landscape of the Black experience, evokes her novels. It is from the title of Morrison‘s Beloved trilogy where he finds the title of his new album with City Slang Records out June 2: Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? Musically his household was defined by “artists whose first name was Mary,” including Mary J. Blige and gospel duo Mary Mary. Discovering Outkast was formative for Dixon, deepening his love for hip-hop while he also grew curious about the more theatrical rock of groups of the day, bands like My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco that his Maryland friends introduced him to.

“Those groups also helped me with my sense of longing, since their music reflected a sense of longing,” he says. Eventually he channeled these competing influences into a debut EP he released in 2013. With time, his music became his primary means of self-expression, whether discussing Blackness or his own relationship with healing. Across his next releases, his style evolved and his confidence grew, especially when it came to live instrumentation.

His 2021 debut album For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her was a game changer, as Dixon set his sights on heartache and grief. “I was making these really dense and chaotic songs, stuffing whatever thought I had into five and a half minutes,” Dixon says of that project. Beloved! Paradise! Jazz?! is an attempt at channeling different impulses. Sometimes rough and other times delicate, this record is a journey into is a journey into the psyche of McKinley Dixon, with all of the of the attendant peaks and valleys.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hanif Reads Toni (Feat. Hanif)
2. Sun, I Rise (feat. Angélica Garcia)
3. Mezzanine Tippin' (Feat. Teller Bank$, Alfred.)
4. Run, Run, Run
5. Live! From The Kitchen Table (Feat. Ghais Guevara)
6. Tyler, Forever
7. Dedicated To Tar Feather (Feat. Anjimile)
8. The Story So Far (Interlude)
9. The Story So Far (Feat. Seline Haze)
10. Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (Feat. Ms. Jaylin Brown)

Richmond, Virginia-based artist McKinley Dixon has always used his music as a tool for healing, exploring, and unpacking the Black experience in order to create stories for others like him. For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her, Dixon’s debut album on Spacebomb, is the culmination of a journey where heartbreak and introspection challenged him to adapt new ways of communicating physically and mentally, as well as across time and space. The language accessibility aspect of this project draws right back to communication and connecting,”

Dixon explains. “I think about the messaging, and how this can be a way for another Black person, someone who looks like me, to listen to this and process the past. Everything I've learned about communication for this album culminates with this bigger question about time. Is time linear when you’re still healing and processing? Westerners look at time travel as something to conquer or control—it's a colonizer mindset. That’s ignoring how time travel can be done through stories and non-verbal communication, and doesn't acknowledge how close indigenous people are to the land and the connections groups have because they’ve existed somewhere for so long. Storytelling is time travel, it's taking the listener to that place. Quick time travel. Magic.” Never relying solely on beats, Dixon taps into a hybrid of jazz and rap, pulling in an array of piercing strings, soulful horns, percussion, and angelic vocalists throughout the album—plus features by Micah James, Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon, Pink Siifu, and more. Jazz instrumentals add a level of uncertainty, with the sounds and shifts evoking a lot of emotion and vulnerability.

It’s an energy he describes as “Pre-Kendrick Lamar To Pimp A Butterfly,” the era when rap adopted more live instrumentation. The best way to sum up this album is: I was sad, I was mad, and now I’m alive,” Dixon explains. “These things I talk about on the record have had harmful and brilliant effects on my timeline, and have forced me to be cognizant of the fact that living is complex. Rap has allowed me the language to communicate, and be someone who can communicate with people from all over. Knowing how far I’ve come, I think people will find trust in the message I’m sending.”

TRACK LISTING

1 Chain Sooo Heavy
2 Never Will Know
3 Bless The Child
4 Make A Poet Black
5 Protective Styles
6 Swangin’
7 Brown Shoulders
8 B.B.N.E
9 Grown Man Voice
10 Mama’s Home
11 Twist My Hair

Former Mind & Matter bandmates James “Jimmy Jam” Harris and Michael Dixon teamed up for 1978’s gospel-boogie banger “You’re All I Need” b/w “You’re Everything” on the private Mad label.

TRACK LISTING

A. You’re Everything
B. You’re All I Need

Very groovy Latin Jazz from the amazing Mike Dogliotti featuring two Funky Afro-Uruguayan versions of big 1970's Jazz Funk Fusion hits in "Hagalo" originally by New York/Panama crossover group Mandrill and a stomping version of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters Classic "Chameleon", both cuts full of Funk Grooves and Afro-Latin Percussion. Never before released on a 45 single this is a Jazz Room Release that is going to fly out of the stores and into DJ record boxes.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hagalo
2. Camaleon

Mike Donovan has seen his share of the world, making records and playing shows all over the past 20 years with, chronologically, The Ropers, Yikes, The Hospitals, Sic Alps, Ty Segall, The Peacers and most recently, himself.

In June of 2017 Mike led The Peacers’ sophomore effort, ‘Introducing The Crimsmen’, into the world. In 2018 his own sophomore solo release, ‘How To Get Your Record Played In Shops’, hit down (in shops - it worked!). Now a third long player in the timeframe arrives, as Mike whisks us away to his remote ‘Exurbian Quonset’.  ‘Exurbian Quonset’ sticks up like a fork in the road - it was drawn together as Mike prepared to be the last man from the old gang to leave SF, where he broke so many rules and new ground, working as a driver, a trimmer and a craftsman, cementing bricks into the foundation of the new centurion West Coast rock and roll movement from his place alongside Thee Oh Sees over the past decade. It’s dedicated to the woman who married him and taught him both words in the title of the album - exurbian and quonset - and who he’ll whisk away with to somewhere just like the title.

‘Exurbian Quonset’ is a pure solo record - Mike created everything in the place, from voices and guitars to keys and space. It is pure pop music as well, as it has been played in dark, wet corners (and on the safety of cold, dry turntables) for the past half-century. Abstract-, post-, deconstuct- and autodestruct are as much a part of Mike’s songs and singing as the melodic evocations of personal moods and private memories, dreams and fantasy, a Proustian matrix, stamped into antic untameter.

After a burst of Velvet clatter and noise, clamour, balladry and cavernous shimmying to open the record, the skies clear and birds appear, as if to signal a new season. Side two displays his deep propers, moving from the uncompromising Lennonist collage, ‘Wot Do Rich People Do All Day’ to the cheerful McCartneyisms of ‘B.O.C. Rate Applied’ to the Harrisonseque despondence of ‘Nowhere Descender’, creating corroded ‘White Album’-esque fx in our mind without ever leaving his own backyard - or cleaning it up. The mood is only extended with the acid-burnt instrumental ‘Zone Dome’ and the farewell ditty ‘My System’, ringing down the curtain in definitively (Mike) Donovanesque fashion. Where will we find him next?

TRACK LISTING

Digital Dan
Iwata-Wise
Wadsworth March
Hate Mail Writer
Stone
Wot Do Rich People Do
All Day?
B.O.C. Rate Applied
Nowhere Descender
Zone Dome
My System

This EP is available on 12” with matte laminate finish artwork and comes with a digital download coupon. It is also available to buy digitally.

“Astoundingly beautiful” - Mary Anne Hobbs, 6Music

“A masterfully crafted soundtrack of a film that has never been made” - Sounds Of A Tired City

“There are emotional waters to be carried away upon with this record, and I float off with them gladly” - Echoes & Dust

Matt Dunkley is a leading orchestrator, arranger and conductor. He has worked on over 130 films, including ‘Black Swan’, ‘Inception’ and ‘Moulin Rouge!’.

On top of his work in film Matt has worked on projects with numerous recording artists such as Massive Attack, Patti Smith, Badly Drawn Boy, Elliott Smith and Nick Cave.

Matt Dunkley is a leading orchestrator, arranger and conductor. He has worked on over 130 films, including ‘Black Swan’, ‘Inception’ and ‘Moulin Rouge!’.

On top of his work in film Matt has worked on projects with numerous recording artists such as Massive Attack, Patti Smith, Badly Drawn Boy, Elliott Smith and Nick Cave.

Matt has now decided to turn his hand to writing albums of his own. ‘Six Cycles’ is his enchanting debut. The album is rich with luscious strings recorded with a 12 piece orchestra.

The album is dense with lavish filmic soundscapes - grand in its nature but packed with nuances you discover after further listening.

For fans of Clint Mansell, Hans Zimmer, Thomas Newman.

An artist who needs no introduction, Mike Dunn returns to the legendary NYC label Nu Groove with a four-track vinyl release that brings together disparate influences from the master’s encyclopaedic knowledge of genre and style.

What results are productions that are at once timeless, a quality that can only be achieved through the lived experiences of a four-decade career. Title track ‘Git’cha House On, Baby’ is a late 80s freestyle throwback, with hard synth lines running the show, while ‘Don’t Pay Me No Mind’ is a metropolitan anthem led by a solid piano groove.

Additionally, the vinyl features two tracks from Dunn’s ‘Rock Ya Body (Deepa)’; the lead, an effortlessly cool deliverance of pure, unadulterated house, and ‘Let’cha Love Fall Down On Me’ which swells and flows with addictive ease. Elevating all four compositions are the producer’s signature vocals, immediately arresting and suitable for all genres. Dunn’s status as an innovator was earned through creating and influencing the scenes we know and love today, and this new delivery of originals further cements his status as a 100% house master.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Mike Dunn on Nu Groove! Yessiree! Loving this Nu Groove renaissance. The esteemed Chicagoan injecting the NYC label with some grit and bump in his own unique style - an of course featuring his own inimitable vocals. This is the dog bollox!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Git'cha House On, Baby (MD Main MixX)
A2. Don't Pay Me No Mind
B1. Rock Ya Body (Deepa)
B2. Let'cha Love Fall Down (On Me)

Lee Jeffries has been digging deep on the debut release of Sonic Wax Records new label Disco Edits.

Based on the super rare £1000 album track "Lady", Matt & Lee take it to the next level with their 'Disco Dust' mix for the main house rooms and the Defected /  Glitterbox crowd with big production and diva vocals.

Then rising jazz-disco-house star Opolopo gets deep and dirty on a moody disco vibe that pulsates though your body delivering stylish grooves, more diva vox and thick, quality production. Both sides already gaining support from Opolopo, Kenny Dope, Bobby & Steve, Wade Teo etc etc. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: The unstoppable Opolopo is rarely out of the racks at the moment, and the stems of "Lady" are in safe hands with the Hungarian producer. The Disco Dust duo also do the track plenty of justice, taking it straight to the more housey dancefloors.

TRACK LISTING

A. Lady (Opolopo Remix)
B. Lady (Disco Dust Mix) 

Second quick fire instalment from Sonic Wax. Kicking off with the A side "Rocking Me In Your Arms" is a proper uplifting, disco-house banger with driving piano chords, disco bass and slamming drums. Landing somewhere between Shir Khan and Chez Damier. 

Flipping it over you have a galvanized boogie squelcher that's mastered fat as f**k and decorated with modern production flurries. Excellent dynamics moving from verse to chorus and back again; this one should have the disco / boogie crowd rushing up to the booth for a track ID.

Promising stuff indeed from this fledging label. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Matt Early & Lee Jeffries follow up their label debut with another quick fire disco-house-boogie romp.

TRACK LISTING

A. Rocking Me In Your Arms 
B. Knowledge & Love 

Holy Orders/Edible 5ft Smiths frontman goes not-quite-solo with a little help from some celestial friends. ‘Stairgazing’ is the debut solo album from former Edible 5ft Smiths leader Matt Edible. Hull cult favourites Edible 5ft Smiths made one and a half of the greatest undiscovered albums of the noughties before burning up in a small blaze of glory, leaving broken hearts scattered in their wake. Since then Matt has fronted awesomely heavy & twisted rock combo The Holy Orders, all the while building up a collection of distinctly different songs of his own, more akin to a continuation of the Edibles catalogue.

Those songs seemed set to languish in the vault until, prompted by the mundanity of life and an encounter with mortality, Matt decided they needed to be fully realised and so sought out an old friend, producer and Edibles super-fan Joe Bennett (Dreaming Spires, Co-pilgrim, Goldrush, Saint Etienne). Before long a plan was hatched to cut the record at Farm Music Studios in Oxfordshire, with drummer Mike Monaghan (Willie J Healey, Ralfe Band, Gaz Coombes) and Co-pilgrim main man Mike Gale on board.

The record itself is a swooning psychedelic pop beauty: Matt’s distinctive vocal acrobatics are introduced on soaring opener “Jumping Houses” and alternative christmas hit “Advent Beard”. “Nightclubbing” is the greatest tongue-in-cheek stadium anthem Noel Gallagher never wrote, and album climax “The Healing” ebbs and flows from Bowie-esque prog piano balladry into full-on cinematic post-rock explosion.

TRACK LISTING

1. Jumping Houses
2. Advent Beard
3. Stairgazing
4. Don’t Stay
5. Nightclubbing
6. Astronauts
7. The Healing
8. (Lullaby) 

'Happening Right Now' feature in Shindig (March 2021) Legendary New York author and musician joins Andalusian troubadours for a startling record of gospel, rhythm and futuristic punk folk blues. A powerful statement of love and protest Get ready for an adult dose of Old Testament gospel, smoldering songs of freedom, salvation, and lots of love - hollering and deep country crooning, twisted blues, plantation tunings, African percussion, and outer-space spirituals - this is a new breed of rhythm and roots music, a sonic manifesto for these crazy times!

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliantly energetic and varied coalition of clashing folk-punk, frenetic distorted 12-bar and galloping Americana. It's an intoxicating and rich juxtaposition of chaos and beauty, and a must-listen for anyone who likes the more esoteric ends of any of the above.

Hey Mr Ferryman is Mark Eitzel's tenth solo album, his first in three years, and the first full studio album recorded entirely in London. It was made at 355 Studios with Mercury Prize winner Bernard Butler (Suede, McAlmont & Butler). Butler produced and played all of the electric guitar, bass, and keyboard parts on the album. Hey Mr Ferryman features the vivid melodies long associated with Eitzel's former band American Music Club as well as Butler's distinctive guitar that serves to complement Eitzel's expressive vocals. Of that voice, Pitchfork once wrote: "If Leonard Cohen's voice is a story about the passage of time and Levon Helm's is a story about losing what is most precious to you, Eitzel's is about the circuitous roads we take in search of ourselves." Mark Eitzel has released over 15 albums of original material with American Music Club and as a solo artist. The Guardian has called him "America's greatest living lyricist," and Rolling Stone once gave him their Songwriter of the Year award.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Eitzel goes from the serene to the triumphant between one song to the next, the brilliant balladry of 'In My Role As Professional Singer And Ham' and the easy listening morose indie charms of 'An Answer' providing a soaring and stripped-back counterfoil to the more rocking pieces like the brilliant 'Mr Humphries'. A brilliantly balanced, and eminently listenable delight. Brilliant.

"Howling Songs" is the magnificent third and last part to the 'songs trilogy'. This is a very haunted and personal piece of music which is the testimony of a unique talent where moving melodies follow other moving melodies balancing between ballad songs and folk music, madness and reason, revolt and despair. "Howling Songs" sympathizes with the surrounding world; it is a definitive observation in which one can feel, throughout the songs, an outraged sensitivity which is the signature of the artist. It is all the more sensitive that Matt's voice is sometimes present without any chorus in the background, bringing to the whole both confidence and unquestionable heat. "Howling Songs" is, without a doubt, the most introspective album by Matt Elliott and the one which carries best his musical personality. Fans of Nick Drake, Yann Tiersen, Crippled black phoenix, Wovenhand will enjoy Elliott's powerful songwriting and outraged sensitivity.

On the ninth solo album from the French-based British musician behind Third Eye Foundation, it is near impossible not to draw comparisons to the late great bard Leonard Cohen. Elliott's accomplished Spanish infused guitar craft further adds to the resemblance.

Although it remains rooted in darkness, Elliott's approach to folk is also rich with a sense of warmth folk, embellished with gorgeous classical arrangements of composer David Chalmin, Gaspar Claus' cello, and Jeff Hallam's bass.

Of course, one could file Matt Elliott in one genre or another. While "Folk" appears to be the general consensus, the Englishman would be more in line with a long runningtradition of lamentation songs that can be found on every single continent. Whether it is Greek rebetic songs, Portuguese Fado, Delta Blues, Balkan fanfares, Yiddish melancholy and Cape Verdean Saudade, you can hear it all in Matt Elliott's music.

Those are the songs of an uprooted and stateless artist, a true musical storyteller who's voice had never felt so free, rough and sincere. Like not other, on "The End Of Days", Matt Elliot sings the infinitely small space that lies in-between intense joy and absolute sorrow, sitting on a fence at the border that separates the unspeakable and what is shared.

TRACK LISTING

The End Of Days
January's Song
Song Of Consolation
Healing A Wound Will Often Begin With A Bruise
Flower For Bea
Unresolved

Jeri-Jeri is the collaboration between the renowned Berlin based producer Mark Ernestus and a griot clan of Sabar drummers from Kaolack in Senegal, led by Bkane Seck, along with guest Mbalax musicians and vocalists - including mainstays of the bands of Baaba Maal, Youssou N'Dour and other top Senegalese artists.

Aficionados of cutting edge world music and underground dance will have noted Ernestus's remixes of Afrobeat legend Tony Allen and Kinshasa rockers Konono No 1, and his co-compilation (with Honest jon's) of the critically acclaimed Shangaan Electro showcase. On the quiet though, he has become increasingly hooked on Mbalax wih its hyper-vivid Sabar and talking-drum workouts, and ultra-repetative. sick, sequencer-like Marimba synths. In early 2011 he travelled to Senegaland the Gambia in search of original recordings. Through an unlikely set of coincidences, he ended up working in the legendary Dkar studio former known as Xippi, with more than twenty of the findest musicians in the country.

'800% Ndagga' and 'Ndagga Versions' present the results on two albums, splitting vocals and instrumentals; a masterful style of Mbalax, heady and hard groving, with high complex, fiercely succinct poly-rhythms; an ancient-futuristic music, mesmeric but sharp as nails, super charged with drama.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lignou Mome
2. Casamance Version
3. Leumbeul
4. Sama Yaye Version
5. Xale Rhythm
6. Gawlo Version
7. Dub Dafa Nekh
8. Walo
9. Bamba Version

This latest release from German legend Mark Ernestus sees the Basic Channel man head deeper into the mother continent, further embracing Mblalax derived, spiritual rhythms and immersive dubspace. Hypnotic and otherworldly "Lamb Ji" puts you under its spell from the off, filling a carnernous soundscape with echoed vocals and occasional guitar while the Nder, Saba and Tama tesselate into an irresistible polyrhythm. Imbued with the typically exquisitive Ernestus sound design, "Lamb Ji" totally overwhelms your senses and transports you directly to the spirit realm. In case there was any doubt that the power lies in the ancient hide of those drums, Mark flips the riddim into dub mode on the B-side, rounding off another essential release.

TRACK LISTING

A. Lamb Ji (feat. Mbene Diatta Seck)
B. Lamb Rhythm

Matt Espy is an American drummer and percussionist. Born in Dayton, Ohio, he spent his youth playing every genre of music he could find, playing out in clubs starting at age 14 and launching his touring career at 18. He moved to Chicago in 1996 and continued his journey playing rock, avant-garde, jazz, and performance art pieces. He’s played drums for a number of groups and charismatic individuals, including Atombombpocketknife, Duke Special and The Mountain Goats. Over the past decade, he’s found his home with Dead Rider, also on Drag City.

‘Hawksworth’ is Matt’s first solo adventure. In the field of solo drumming albums, it’s an avian psychedelic percussion trip all of its own. A dialogue between birds, electronics, and drums, ‘Hawksworth’ operates along precise degrees in the vastness that exists between the diverse poles of Terry Riley and Martin Denny. It captures one particularly memorable morning walk from long ago, a time immemorial in Matt’s life. In this new musical rendering, that fateful morning is ridden with wormholes throughout the piece, like hyperspace links that travel to motifs from his 30-plus years music career with every step along the way.

The inspiration for the album came to Matt all at once a couple of years back. It was early pandemic times, and the world outside his home felt drained of people, which brought the sounds of the world without people to his attention. It took a while for the impact of that to settle in. One day, while, naturally, listening to music, he heard a pop song employing the barking of a dog as percussion, and sat up with a start. Was it real, or? Like a bolt from the blue, the sonic and the visual design for ‘Hawksworth’ came whole cloth, completely evident to him in that moment. It was done, and all it needed now was to be executed.

Matt started with the birds, locating a variety of hi-definition free source samples of their song. He chopped and scattered them into a new state of nature, collapsing the hemispheres and the regions within, to allow the birds of all nations the freedom to flock together. Once the editing work was done, drumming to this sound was almost simple compared to that process. He brought forward some licks - perennials - and other things worked up over time that had or hadn’t found a place with the different bands he’d been in, with room allowed for improvisation. And for Matt, drums were the only way to fly.

Working at the studio of Dead Rider frontman Todd Rittmann, Matt found his happy place. ‘Hawksworth’ comments upon a life in music as a space where the firmament is ever vaulting above our head, and Matt uses the world we too often take for granted - the one we live in - as a means to get back to the sky.

TRACK LISTING

Robin Throated Sparrow
Loon
Dexlark
Grey Winged Blackbird
Thrushwren

The by-now seminal Is It Balearic label welcomes long-time Balearic boss Max Essa for another superbly horizontal offering that will take you to the beach no matter where you are. He is a regular on this label who has been serving up top tunes and compiling superb collections like 2016's 10-Year Anniversary comp for ages, and the quality levels never dip. This fresh four-tracker traverses gently breaking synth waves, undulating dubby undercurrents and gloriously sun-kissed synth work all in a soothing and meditative style.

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: Paradise music from Max Essa on the evergreen Is It Balearic. Urging us out of a our winter hibernation and tantalizing us with brighter time ahead.

TRACK LISTING

1. Belgian Caravan
2. Moonlight Contribution
3. Dry Plains Parade
4. Southern Edges

'I'm not here to change your mind about Dusty Springfield or Shostakovich or Tupac Shakur or synthpop. I'm here to change your mind about your mind.' There are countless books on music with much analysis given to musicians, bands, eras and/or genres. But rarely does a book delve into what's going on inside us when we listen.

Michel Faber explores two big questions: how we listen to music and why we listen to music. To answer these he considers biology, age, illness, the notion of 'cool', commerce, the dichotomy between 'good' and 'bad' taste and, through extensive interviews with musicians, unlocks some surprising answers. From the award-winning author of The Crimson Petal and the White and Under the Skin, this curious and celebratory book reflects Michel Faber's lifelong obsession with music of all kinds.

Listen will change your relationship with the heard world.

‘Negative Capability ’ is Marianne Faithfull’s 21st album and the most emotionally powerful of her 54-year recording career. Facing down arthritis and bolstered by collaborators including Warren Ellis, Nick Cave, Rob Ellis, Ed Harcourt and Mark Lanegan, ‘Negative Capability’ is charged with brutal honesty and autobiographical reflection as she addresses losing old friends, her loneliness living in her adopted city of Paris, and love.

Driven by her supernatural reinterpretative skills, florid lyricism, battle against the pain she lives with, and realised with her stellar group of musicians, ‘Negative Capability’ is Marianne’s unflinchingly honest and relentlessly beautiful late-life masterpiece. The stark emotional heft, exquisitely framed by ornately sensitive musical backdrops can only be likened to the late-life works by Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen.

Recorded at La Frette studio on the outskirts of Paris, ‘Negative Capability’ is inexorably overshadowed by grief at losing close friends from the ‘60s such as Anita Pallenberg, Martin Stone and Cream album designer Martin Sharp. It’s produced by both Rob Ellis – the PJ Harvey producer who’s been Marianne’s collaborator for five years -and Warren Ellis from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Warren’s violin blesses songs such as ‘Misunderstanding’ and ‘Born To Live’ – her intensely moving eulogy to departed lifelong friend Anita - with the stark but lustrous autumnal beauty that makes the album

The first single ‘The Gypsy Fairie Queen’ – inspired by Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ – was co-written with Nick Cave and features his vocals and piano playing.

TRACK LISTING

Misunderstanding
The Gypsy Faerie Queen
As Tears Go By
In My Own Particular Way
Born To Live
Witches Song
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
They Come At Night
Don’t Go
No Moon In Paris
Loneliest Person (deluxe)
No Moon In Paris (radio Edit) (deluxe)
They Come At Night (alt Version) (deluxe)

Marco Faraone reworks an Italian dance classic, as Prezioso feat. Marvin ‘Emergency 911’ gets a modern-day techno remake. Faraone was just 12-year-old when ‘Emergency 911’ was released in 2000 on Time Records, the track sparking an early love for dance music, before he’d go on to discover house and techno in his mid-teens. One listen to Faraone’s modern day remake and there’s no surprise it got the seal of approval from the legendary Time Records (and countless I.D hunting ravers). This is punchy and powerful techno that utilises the famous sample to thrilling effect. A very large record indeed! The anticipation for this palpable. Two stars of techno’s new skool – Eli Brown & Layton Giordani – link for their debut collaboration, ‘When I Push’, utilising a sample from OFFAIAH’s ‘Push Pull’. A thrilling highlight of Drumcode’s ADE Awakenings event when Eli Brown joined the crew for the first time at Gashouder, ‘When I Push’, is shaping to be an early contender for techno track of 2024. The cut follows Brown’s stunning ‘RIDE OR DIE’ with HI-LO and a string of standout releases led by ‘Be The One’ which has an incredible 41M plays on Spotify, reinforcing his powerhouse status. Likewise, Giordani has enjoyed another impressive 12 months, with both ‘Life Moves Fast’ and ‘Phantom’, his two beloved releases of 2023 sitting at 1.6M and 2.5M streams respectively, while he recently fulfilled a childhood dream by playing b2b with Adam Beyer at Gashouder. ‘When I Push’ immediately captures listeners with a seductive vox - ‘When I push, I feel good / when I pull, I feel good’, taken from OFFAIAH electrifying 2018 hit on Defected ‘Push Pull’, which rubs shoulders with a striking bassline for a high-impact effect. Amidst the pulsating bass stabs, the track builds to a dizzying crescendo, before dropping down into a pumping dancefloor workout in the final stanza. An exhilarating dancefloor anthem, fit for stadium raves and dark sweaty clubs alike.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Emergency
B1. When I Push

Italian DJ / producer Marco Faraone returns to Rekids with ‘Any Good Vibe?’

Tuscany-born, Barcelona-based Marco Faraone runs the UNCAGE label and event series, where he showcases the breadth and depth of his tastes. Returning to Radio Slave’s Rekids imprint after multiple appearances on the label, ‘Any Good Vibe?’ sees Faraone bring another potent EP of slamming techno.

Leading the A-side is the title cut, with yelping vocals and flaming percussion all adding to the wild energy of the track. The superb 'Ego Kills' follows, with swinging drums, chord stabs, and dubbed-out stylings that suit it to sweaty back rooms. Rounding out the release is 'Ghana', a heavy techno groove layered up with plenty of percussion, urgent synth sounds, and a vocal that adds unease to the intense atmosphere.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Fist-pumping, strobe-lit techno here for the big aircraft hangers of Sonar or Awakenings. Rush-friendly throughout with a stomping, carnal energy.

TRACK LISTING

A. Any Good Vibe? 
B1. Ego Kills 
B2. Ghana 

Orig released in 1978 and unavailable on vinyl since then, "Vampires Stole My Lunch Money", is regarded as one of the best albums by Mick Farren (the Deviants). Featuring guest appearances from Wilko Johnson, Chrissie Hynde, Sonja Kristina and more.

As powerful as rock gets this punk influenced album also includes r&b jams and features an impressive roster of musicians.

Maxwell Farrington & Le SuperHomard cultivate a certain taste for subtly arranged compositions and pop songs that feel both timeless and current. And beyond this elegance, beyond their solar songs, even beyond Maxwell's majestic voice, we can deeply feel that music is above all a story of meeting and sharing.

Since the time of our early talks with the duo, we've known one thing for sure: their first album "Once" had a misleading title. There was never any question of quickly closing the deal, of getting close to the top and packing up. "Our time alone, our finest hours are spent" sings Maxwell Farrington on the opening, and we don't believe a word of it. Recorded last fall while on tour, "I Had It All" offers 6 new treasures, 6 new proofs of our musicians' dazzling talent, an achievement even more remarkable considering the disc's short format.

Released back in April 2021 "Once" sealed the meeting between Maxwell Farrington (musician, crooner, Australia jack-of-all-trades living in Binic) & the SuperHomard (Christophe Vaillant: orchestration, arrangements, production). Acclaimed by critics, widely praised by the public, this first opus allowed the band to play (in quintet form) at various festivals (Villette Sonique, La Route du Rock, Hop Pop Pop, etc.) and through- out France.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Had It All
2. Two Hopeful Lovers
3. Burning
4. Donna
5. Change Direction
6. Il Cacciatore

Released in early 2019 on the Spanish label Elefant Records, "Meadow Lane Park" was the debut album by Avignon-based Christophe Vaillant under his new entity, Le SuperHomard. Undoubtedly dreamlike and enchanting, hailed by critics both in France and abroad, and by Paul Weller (who invited the group on his entire European tour), the musician laid the groundwork for a new artistic direction. Originally from Brisbane, Maxwell Farrington left Australia in 2013, travelling to the United Kingdom and then France. After Marseille and Toulouse, he moved to Saint-Brieuc and took part in the formation of Dewaere, a noise quartet bathed in 90s influences. Maxwell's vocals bring a poppier and warmer touch. Christophe and Maxwell met during a joint concert at La Boule Noire, on the MaMA Festival in 2019. During his band's sound check, the Australian performed an a capella version of a song by American composer Burt Bacharach. This lead to an engaging conversation between the two musicians, who discussed their common passion for Lee Hazlewood, Scott Walker and Frank Sinatra. We find this elegance again reiterated throughout these compositions – in the orchestral pop, the subtle arrangements, the velvet singing voice. "Once" is a four- handed collaboration. Recording began in February 2020, ending within a short distance of the New Year. "Once" is a journey, both near and far, where everyone will find a safe haven.

TRACK LISTING

1. We, Us The Pharaohs
2. North Pole
3. Free Again
4. Lights & Seasons
5. Love
6. La Mesa Motel (Feat. Max Meser)
7. Good Start
8. Oysters
9. Hips
10. Happening Again
11. Big Ben (Feat. Evelyn Ida Morris)
12. Tonight

'Please, Wait...', their sophomore album, emerges from a profound collaborative evolution, contrasting with Once, which was crafted remotely during the lockdown. This album is steeped in shared experiences from two years of touring, showcasing a symbiotic musical evolution between Maxwell and Christophe. Please, Wait...is a journey into the realm of the senses, an invitation to a dreamscape where listeners are free to find their own meaning. This record is a testament to beauty and modern hedonism, crafted by artists who live and breathe the epicurean ethos.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Wistful hazy melodies, psychedelic twists and theatrical vocal work all mix together into a lovely distillation of influences. Lounge, melancholic rock and grand orchestral melodies all slotted together perfectly.

TRACK LISTING

The Boat
The Nimbostratus Jig
Plat Du Jour
Backgammon
Hexagon
Galbulus
Begging's Not My Business
Catch 42
Topinambur
Postprandial Promenade (feat. Nadine Khouri)
Stirred But Not Shaken

Marcel Fengler can look back upon a very productive year as an artist. There was the “Frantic EP“ on Ostgut Ton, followed by DIN (a joint project with Efdemin) whose compositions formed one third of the “MASSE“ CD and ballet and then arguably his most creative and intense project to date: the release of his debut solo album “Fokus“. For the remix EP accompanying this release Dave Clarke, Aubrey, The Exaltics and The Traveller were invited to place their focus on some chosen tracks.

Dave Clarke opens the 12“ with his remix of “Sky Pushing“, the forceful but tender character of the original track is overturned into deep distortion and systematically lead towards gentle chaos, the steady drive of this rework leaves no room for pause as it propels the energies set free.

The break techno of The Exaltics, whipped up with nervous bass and smoky drums, serves as one of the groovier additions to this EP. The massive beats that follow the break lift the track to another level and when the mellow vocals of “Mayria“ set in, things fall into place in perfect combination.

On the other side Aubrey redefines “Trespass“. The absorbing arrangement combines unpredictable use of hi-hats and synths from the original with a dark and classic pumping beat and inspired flanger effects to diffuse the tension and create a balanced mix.

The final remix by The Traveller is also the greatest surprise, the track lures you in with a soft intro but soon develops into an old school techno stomper, the heavy kick and percussion is complemented by the reoccurring melody from “Jaz“ inviting you to immerse yourself in the sound.

Hyperdub launch new sub-label Flatlines for the release of ‘On Vanishing Land’, an audio-essay by Justin Barton and the late Mark Fisher. ‘On Vanishing Land’ evokes a walk along the Suffolk coastline in 2006, from Felixstowe container port ("a nerve ganglion of capitalism") to the Anglo-Saxon burial ground at Sutton Hoo. A walk under immense skies, through zones of deep time, and within sunlit, liminal terrains, into the eerie. Everywhere there are charged atmospheres, shadowy incursions, enigmatic departures. A derelict radar base, coastal heathland, drifting thistledown, towers of overgrown shipping containers - music haunted by wider levels of reality, narrations about rarely visited zones and potentials, voices of dreams and stories.

This music includes newly-composed tracks by John Foxx, Gazelle Twin, Baron Mordant, Raime, Pete Wiseman, Farmers of Vega, Skjolbrot, Eerie Anglia, Ekoplekz and Dolly Dolly. Alongside these are glimpsed views toward M.R.James’s ‘Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad’ (1904), Joan Lindsay’s ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ (1967), and Brian Eno’s ‘On Land’ (1982). Beyond the surface of the day something becomes visible, a way forward, an escape-path from capitalist reality. ‘On Vanishing Land’ is about following the lines of terrains and dreams. It is about a micropolitics of escape, of disappearance. A micropolitics of waking the faculties. ‘On Vanishing Land’ was initially part of an exhibition commissioned by The Otolith Collective and The Showroom in London, and after ‘londonunderlondon’ (2005) it was the second audio-work collaboration by Justin Barton and Mark Fisher. 

Third Album is the Constellation debut from Montréal-based multi-disciplinary artist and musician/composer Markus Lake, an active force in the city’s DIY music community who’s been releasing synthetic audio works under the Markus Floats moniker over the past decade – alongside playing bass in wide range of punk, post-punk, experimental and Afrofuturist outfits (including Elle Barbara’s Black Space) and co-founding the local indie music space Drones Club. With a background in Jazz Performance and Electroacoustic Studies, Lake’s solo work is also guided by a painterly sensibility, and informed by a variety of conceptual interests: non-linear narrative composition; sonic simulacra and naturalizing the digital; poptimism vs avant-gardism; the attentive/ceremonial possibilities of 21st century ‘music for speakers’ (and headphones) in a culture of bombast, nostalgia, and immediate gratification.

The music of Markus Floats might best be described as idiosyncratic aural Abstract Expressionism, where melodic gestures, sequenced pulses, atonal clusters and granulated textures are arranged like shapes and strokes of timbral hue and depth. Using primarily in-the-box midi instruments, along with a handful of samples and field recordings, Third Album is through-composed and atypically but unfailingly expressive – like ruminative action painting in sound. Synthetic notes and chords extrapolate in transitory semi-improvised harmonic and melodic themes, often 3 referencing organ sounds of alternately liturgical and souljazz resonance.

The album combines a sort of incantatory, exploratory, desecrated dark lounge with more formal touchstones of electronic composition, where arpeggiators surface and recede amidst shifting drones, distortions and dissonances. The result is a highly original, succinct and lucid set of syntheticelectronic tracks that defies genre: brimming with ideas but not overworked; methodical and discreet but not unassuming or underplayed; deeply integrated in its own ineffable, evocative chronicle of colour, shape and space. Third Album is a wonderfully distinctive work of leftfield electronic composition and the most distilled music Markus Floats has recorded to date. (In concert, each Floats live performance is specific and unique: he combines his soundscapes with carefully selected spoken word recordings from the black literary canon.)

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Markus Floats has all of the brittle electronics and terse atmospherics you'd expect from a CST records release, but goes much further into hypnotic, abstract sound design. Synth slowly blip, with lfo's gradually changing the character and key of the slowly delivered output. It's entrancing and exciting, and a really rewarding listen.

TRACK LISTING

01 Forward
02 And Forward
03 Again
04 Always
05 Moving
06 Forward Always

The Montréal-based avant-garde electronic composer/producer follows up his acclaimed Third Album, rallying players from local improv group Egyptian Cotton Arkestra to add new electroacoustic materiality to his abstract soul.

The follow-up to his acclaimed Constellation debut Third Album released in lockdown spring 2020, Markus Floats returns with Fourth Album, pushing the Montréal-based artist’s distinct abstract electronic compositions into newly evocative terrain (while preserving his record- titling literalism). Faced with another couple of years spent unexpectedly, though not unfamiliarly, secluded and studio-bound, working on both paintings and music, Floats emerged by the end of 2022 with a set of tracks “about 60% finished” and a determined desire to throw off the shackles of distancing and isolation. “I had always thought about Markus Floats as a solo project but I am wrong about that. Fourth Album is about asking for help, inviting in, and making a home. It’s about trust, exploration, and the effort of letting go.”

Sharing his in-progress recordings with a trio of close friends and collaborators from the powerhouse free music ensemble Egyptian Cotton Arkestra, each of these players then spent a day improvising to the tracks at Montréal’s Hotel2Tango studio. With violin by Ari Swan, saxophone and mbira by James Goddard, and guitar and drums by Lucas Huang, Floats stitched their extemporized instruments back into his compositional process. The result is a fluid, lustrous, dynamic expansion of his sound and structure that continues to strike the ineffable balance of abstraction and soulfulness rightly highlighted and celebrated in the critical response to Third Album. Fourth Album sustains much of that previous work’s enchanting equanimity, while inviting a bit more restlessness, accident and grit, with the incorporation of acoustic instruments and improvisation melding Floats’ own background in Electroacoustic Studies and Jazz Performance more than ever before.

Signature avant-electronic explorations of arpeggiated and timbral transformation, subtle shifts in harmonic consonance and dissonance, and a through-composed praxis that draws coterminously upon free jazz, musique concrète and modern Minimalism, all continue to shape Fourth Album to great effect. But an additional palette of sonic and gestural raw material is now also decidedly “out-of-the-box”, charting a wider range of gestures, textures and temporalities. Fourth Album complexifies and intensifies across its 12 tracks, thematizing dualities and introducing new elements of play and accident, even a sort of looseness here and there, as it conjures communal expressivity within shorter, still scrupulous formal structures. Fourth Album also for the first time includes spoken word as a recorded element, previously only (and always) a feature of Markus Floats live performances. The album’s final track samples the poet and activist Fred Moten, closing with these words: “What we’ve been trying to figure out how to get to is how we are when we get together to try to figure it out.” This koan of socially-engaged process and creation/advancement of meaning through praxis and immanence reflects the unique fusion of intangible materiality and affective sensibility at work in Markus Floats music, unfolding in new depths and currents with Fourth Album.

TRACK LISTING

Introduction
Death
Free Wifi
AS ABOVE
Interlude
Death (pt.2)
Mdhvn
SO BELOW
Heaven Is Each Other
Second Introduction
Wands
C (Featuring The Voice Of Fred Moten)

Mark Fosson has been playing music for nearly 50 years now. ‘Solo Guitar’ is the fifth album released under his name in all that time, which gives an insight into the nature of his music; when it is time for Mark to commit to something underneath his fingers, regardless of whether that is after two years, ten or twenty, that’s what’s right.

‘Solo Guitar’ sees Mark continuing to use his chops and enthusiasm to wander musically, drawing up pieces of sparkling, nimble fingerstyle with an eclectic vision. As the title implies, this time Mark is focused on the austerity of the guitar, plain and simple, to bring out the music. Whether on six- or twelve-string, his sure touch is transported by crystal-clear recordings that belie their down-home origins, as they catch the contours of every string as it is pressed, bent and struck - a full-bodied sound projecting soulful dips down into bass strings and shimmering upper register runs with equal power. The air around these performances is coloured with curving waves of steel-stringed beauty and the pungency of freewheeling wit and recollection.

The songs are from all over the place: The bristling, fluent action around the neck on ‘Still Ain’t Got No Home’ - a song he wrote when returning east from his long sojourn in California - evokes a traveling energy, motoring down the road in a way that never really ends. This is one of Mark’s favourites of all that he’s written and it is clear why: the golden, eternal promise of the guitar is ebulliently, transcendently delivered.

Mark Fosson’s ‘Solo Guitar’ is a masterful work, the kind it takes a lifetime to assemble.

Retro French songs by a iconic muse from Paris. Cover by Pierre & Gilles. What Edie Sedgwick and Nico were to Andy Warhol's Factory, Marie France was to Le Palace in Paris. From the early seventies in Saint-Germain-des-Pres she was a muse, fascinating artists, from Marguerite Duras to Serge Gainsbourg. Her impersonation of Marilyn Monroe at Jean-Marie Riviere's Alcazar gave her a first taste of fame. She then made some appearances on film, Andre Techine's "Barocco" remaining her most treasured memory. Music always was the love of her life. She recorded an album with rock band Bijou (Gainsbourg backing band in the late seventies) and another one with former Taxi Girl members Daniel Darc and Mirwais (yes, Madonna's collaborator). She also was invited to perform a duet with Marc Almond, who later wrote a couple of songs for her. Her first effort was a punk single in 1977 on Romantik Records, "Dereglee". Some thirty years later, she reunited with the man who wrote that first song, Belgian songwriter Jacques Duvall, known for his work with Jane Birkin, Etienne Daho and others including Sparks and The Runaways. The man in charge with the project was another mad man from Belgium, Benjamin Schoos. 

Undone at 31 is Martin Frawley’s solo debut Martin Frawley is co-leader of Melbourne Australia’s Twerps, formed in 2008 & shortly thereafter named Best New Band in Australia via Uncut Magazine. Named for the year in his life when the bottom fell out following a long-term romantic partnership, Melbourne’s Martin Frawley (Twerps) sequenced Undone at 31 chronologically to emphasize his journey. He took time off from drinking after mistakes and missteps in his Australian pubs, as chronicled on “End of the Bar,” an early standout that’s equal parts Velvet Underground cool and outlaw country.

While visiting Brooklyn during that period, Frawley found a collaborator in Stewart Bronaugh (Angel Olsen, Lionlimb) who, as he says, “gave me confidence and strength when I needed it the most,” and after bonding over albums by John Cale, Anna Domino, and Frank Ocean, “knew where I needed to take the music.” Those familiar with Frawley’s time as co-leader of Twerps will take comfort in hearing his deceptively simple songwriting is still intact, but the big reveal here is how new instrumentation and influences seamlessly expand Frawley’s playground. It might take several listens for one to realize Frawley is singing “Something About Me” over just violin, Moog, and a Graceland-esque bassline, or to appreciate the PB+J pairing of Fender Rhodes and lap steel on “Where the Heart Is,” which serves as Undone at 31’s twist ending.

Frawley’s album does not shy away from morbid musings and raw emotions that come with a breakup, and like Shoot Out the Lights or Sea Change, Undone at 31’s tunefulness and exploration combined are what elevate the music above the melancholy subject matter. You don’t need an album (or its bio, for that matter) to tell you change is inevitable. But with Undone at 31, our new protagonist summons the courage and perspective to unpack and share his experience in the hopes that in spurring himself to carry on, he inspires his listeners as well. Because as Martin writes, “That’s what you want, right? To learn. I felt up, down, scared, and now I’m really scared of what I have made and what people will think, but I’d rather that than any other feeling.” 

TRACK LISTING

1. You Want Me?
2. End Of The Bar 
3. What’s On Your Mind
4. Just Like The Rest
5. Smoke In Your House
6. Chain Reaction
7. You Can’t Win
8. Something About Me
9. Lo And Behold
10. Come Home
11. Where The Heart Is

For fans of: Twerps, Courtney Barnett, Dick Diver, The Go-Betweens, Cate Le Bon, Tim Presley, Yo La Tengo.

“Workin’ all day, trying to forget about the old me.” Like most of us, Martin Frawley is busy trying to work himself out. He lives alongside the long shadow of his late dad, musician and songwriter Maurice Frawley, a cultural icon of the Australian underground and collaborator of Paul Kelly, Tex Perkins and Mick Thomas.

Most of Martin’s 20s were spent writing and playing songs in locally beloved Melbourne band Twerps – a collection of pals who were on the forefront of the city’s jangle pop renaissance. A few albums, US tours and band rotations under its belt, Twerps split up in 2018 and Martin turned his compass towards a solo project. His first album, Undone at 31 (2019), was a bit of a reckoning; a wild ride through the wreckage of both a band and longterm romantic break up. His new album The Wannabe is a personal, cheeky and, at times, self-depreiciating collection of songs unpacking the reality of finding his way as an adult without his dad around, and ultimately falling back in love with life, music and someone new.

Martin and his band – friends Dan Luscombe (The Drones), Steph Hughes (Boomgates, Dick Diver), Nik Imfeld (Tyrannaman) and Dan Kelly had heaps of fun recording The Wannabe in Melbourne. The title track is a particularly spicy take on an entertainment industry that seems to give more shits about marketing than music. The album is a bit of an emotional tour, from anger and derision, through to comedy, through to deep and honest love. It’s positive with a lot of sadness. Not unlike Martin himself.

As well as the guitar, Martin had some fun playing the piano on this record. The technical term is ‘multiinstrumentalist’ but Martin’s more of a musical explorer of sorts. No one is exactly sure how these things work if Martin was born into music or if it was born into him, but it doesn’t really matter. Music is what he loves. It’s what he does. It’s not about the industry or about success not anymore. It’s about the freedom of creating songs on his own terms, and trying to let go of the feeling he has something to prove: to his dad, to his critics, and to himself. And while he’s not sure he’ll ever fully shake that feeling, he’s at least relaxing and having a bit of fun doing it.

Like his dad, Martin has a reputation as a ‘musician’s musician’. He hosts a pretty sporadic podcast Dive For Your Memory, where he has fast and loose chats with musicians while doing a deep dive into their musical inspirations and canon. He and his fiancé Lauren also make wine under the label El’More Wines, named after the farm and small town where his dad grew up. It’s all come a bit full circle, really.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Is Gonna Change Your Mind
2. The Wannabe
3. My Heart Beats
4. Lola
5. Heart In Hand
6. 5th Of The 5th
7. Assumptions
8. Slip Away
9. I Wish Everyone Would Love Me
10. Given Everything

Bird Ambience brings several fresh changes for the artist. Until now, Fujita would separate his acoustic solo recordings from the electronic dub under his El Fog alias and experimental improvisations with contemporaries such as Jan Jelinek, Bird Ambience sees him unite all of these different sides to his work for the first time, into one singular vision. He also makes a lateral leap from his signature instrument the vibraphone, on which he created his acclaimed triptych Stories (2012), Apologues (2015) and Book of Life (2018), to the marimba, which takes centre stage on his new album alongside drums, percussion, synths, effectors and tape recorder.

“The way of playing the marimba is similar to the vibraphone, so it was kind of a natural development for me and easier to start with, yet it sounds very different”, explains Masayoshi. “The marimba bars are made with wood and it has a wider range than the vibraphone, which gives me a bigger sound palette with more possibilities. I play the instrument with bows and mallets, and sometimes manipulate it with effects.”

Bird Ambience also marks his liberation from fastidious preparation for past solo releases to new endeavours in improvisation. “I prioritised trying to capture the wonder which happens during those occasional magic improv moments. Sometimes the mic-ing and placement of instruments was pretty rough; things weren’t perfect and everything was done quickly, but it turned out as the final recording. Overall when I

couldn’t decide between two takes, I told myself to go with the first”, Masayoshi recalls.



Arranged with a perfect Kanso-like balance, the unhurried pace of Bird Ambience allows each sound and phrase enough time to be mindfully absorbed and savoured. This subtle but affective work carries ethereal remnants of Midori Takada’s minimalism, the static atmospheres of Mika Vainio, To Rococo Rot’s organics and the bucolic electronics of Minotaur Shock. Fujita vaporises contemporary and classical, ambient and dismantled dub, controlled noise and fragments of jazz into an atmospheric, static mist, which he skilfully coerces into new forms.

After 13 years in Berlin, Masayoshi recently relocated to a new home and studio in the rural Japanese mountain village of Kami-cho, Hyogo, following his life-long dream of creating music in nature. Even though the album was entirely recorded in Germany before he left, it has this palpable sense of reverie found in the natural world. From there we can only imagine the kind of impact his new life in rural West Japan will have on future works.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bird Ambience
2. Thunder
3. Anakreon
4. Cumulonimbus Dream
5. Gaia
6. Noise Marimba Tape
7. Morocco
8. Miyama No Kitsune
9. Nord Ambient
10. Stellar
11. Pons
12. Fabric

Following on from his acclaimed works Stories and Apologues, Berlin-based composer and vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita will release his new album Book of Life, the third instalment in a trilogy of solo vibraphone recordings, on July 27th via Erased Tapes. Stories, the first in the series and Masayoshi’s debut under his own name, will be re-issued by Erased Tapes at the same time.

With Book of Life Masayoshi continues his mission in bringing the vibraphone — a relatively new invention in the history of instruments often kept in the background in orchestras and jazz outfits — into the spotlight. Having trained as a drummer, Masayoshi began experimenting with the vibraphone, preparing its bars with kitchen foil or beads, playing it with the cello bow such as in Fog or using the other end of the mallets to create a more ambient texture of sound, as with the title track. Focussing on the vibraphone in this way sets Masayoshi apart, dedicating his artistic life to celebrating this fascinating and often underappreciated instrument and making his take on ambient and modern compositional styles a unique one.

“I think the vibraphone is capable of more interesting and beautiful sounds that haven’t been heard before. It’s quite a new instrument but it’s often played in a similar way. I feel that there is a lot more to explore with this exciting instrument.”

Book of Life sees Masayoshi expand on his compositional skills, bringing in more orchestral elements such as strings, brass and even a choir to interact with the vibraphone. And not just any choir — members of this chorus include musical friends Peter Broderick, Hatis Noit, David Allred and Shards who featured on Nils Frahm’s latest album All Melody. The instruments come to represent characters in Masayoshi’s stories, hinted at in each accompanying text contained in the album booklet, which Masayoshi recites at his live performances. They set the scene for each piece, for example “the choir in Misty Avalanche is meant to resemble the blizzard, while the vibraphone is the bird hovering above,” he explains.

The title track however, was unusual from the start; “Book Of Life is very different to my other songs. It was about humans, whereas the other songs are all about animals and nature. And it was improvised initially, whereas normally my songs are composed and planned. This one was free. I scratched the vibraphone bar as if I was writing something. An image connected in my mind: these two people meeting and sharing their lives. This image was the book of life.”

The upbeat lead single It’s Magical features two cellos and a flute as extensions of the vibraphone; “like a man who’s put artificial wings on his arms to attempt to fly like a bird, before an airplane was invented,” says Masayoshi. A different version of the song, called Spaceship Magical, also appears on the Erased Tapes 10th anniversary box set 1+1=X. “Like most of my songs, It’s Magical started from one simple phrase that I’d played again and again. But at one point I had two very different versions; one acoustic with orchestral arrangement, whilst the other had distorted guitars with electronic bass that perfectly suited the collaborative nature of the label residency when Robert invited me to participate.”

His new album arrives at a time of renewed interest for percussive, ambient music following the reissue of minimalist composer Midori Takada’s seminal album Through The Looking Glass last year and compounded by the comeback of Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose cinematic compositions parallel Masayoshi’s storytelling soundscapes. BBC Radio 3 confirmed this renaissance of Japanese music and culture, dedicating their recent Night Blossoms season to new experimental artists, including fellow Erased Tapes vocal performer Hatis Noit. Masayoshi previously released two albums under his alias El Fog that touched on the vibraphone but appeared mostly in a supporting role, accompanying his intricate electronic production. Much like his instrument, he has often been a collaborator as opposed to a front man — his sympathetic musicianship complimenting a variety of creative outputs. Most frequently with the adventurous German producer Jan Jelinek. Their most recent offering Schaum displays a dialogue between the two that makes it hard to tell just where Fujita’s vibraphone ends and Jelinek’s whirring loops begin. Another fruitful partnership was the
experimental Needle Six piece, a BBC Radio 3 recording of an improvised session with UK electronic artist Guy Andrews for Late Junction. The mesmeric and compelling 30-minute piece was released for Record Store Day in 2016. In addition his label peer and fellow Berlin resident Nils Frahm mastered Stories, providing a fitting symmetry to its re-issue on Erased Tapes now.

TRACK LISTING

1. Snowy Night Tale
2. Fog
3. It's Magical
4. Old Automation
5. Book Of Life
6. Harp
7. Mountain Deer
8. Sadness
9. Misty Avalanche
10. Cloud Of Light

Ahead of the release of his new album Book Of Life, Erased Tapes will re-issue Stories, the first in a trilogy of vibraphone solo albums by Berlin-based composer Masayoshi Fujita. This quietly exquisite album is like a book of illustrations, evoking scenes of natural beauty and poetic poignancy that combines climactic crescendos laced with electronic detail and luxurious melody. Stories is the beginning of Masayoshi’s mission in bringing the vibraphone — a relatively new invention in the history of instruments often kept in the background in orchestras and jazz outfits — into the spotlight. Having trained as a drummer, Masayoshi began experimenting with the vibraphone, preparing its bars with kitchen foil or beads, playing it with the cello bow or using the other end of the mallets to create a more ambient texture of sound. Focussing on the vibraphone in this way sets Masayoshi apart, dedicating his artistic life to celebrating this fascinating and often under appreciated instrument and making his take on ambient and modern compositional styles a unique one.

TRACK LISTING

1. Deers
2. Snow Storm
3. Cloud
4. Story Of Forest
5. Story Of Waterfall I. & II.
6. Swan And Morning Dews
7. River
8. Memories Of The Wind

Masayoshi Fujita, the Berlin-based Japanese vibraphone player, also known under his alias el fog came to the attention of label founder Robert Raths a few years ago. Not only because the vibraphone is an intriguing instrument, but also the way Masayoshi treats his instrument and draws ethereal and layered sounds, is what truly attracted him to Masayoshi’s work.

Having released more ambient-based/electronic recordings of the vibraphone under el fog, Masa became more interested in the sound of the vibraphone itself. He started to compose acoustic pieces and released the first solo album under his real name, titled ‘Stories’, in early 2013. ‘Apologues’ sees Masayoshi for the first time use an array of instruments besides his lead instrument – such as the violin, cello, flute, clarinet, French horn, accordion, piano and snare drum played by friends, but arranged by Masa himself.

“My idea was to let those instruments express their own images or atmospheres that each instruments have by nature, or have been given in their history, and not treating them just as accompaniments of the vibraphone. Also, it was new for me to compose a song as a whole. As I wrote the vibraphone part first, I tried to hear other sounds in my head and tried to leave enough room for them and sometimes play only fundamental parts on the vibes.”

In addition to the mallets, Masayoshi often plays the vibraphone with a violin or cello bow, like on ‘Tears of Unicorn’ and ‘Knight and Spirit of Lake’. He would also place bead strings on the vibraphone bars to create an ambient shimmer that can be heard on songs like ‘Moonlight’ and ‘Swallow Flies High in the May Sky’. The latter was composed to let the clarinet express its characteristics and tell its story, whilst the vibraphone takes a supporting role. “The clarinet sounds very warm and soft and very ‘spring’ to me”, says Masa.

Inspired by “the silence and deepness of the fog, the mountains and the gravity within”, his music has a very unique atmosphere and often creates images in the listener. ‘Requiem’, which Masayoshi composed for French horn, to him evokes “images of mountains, fields and the far away”. The song ‘Tears of Unicorn’ was inspired by a painting which features in Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli animation ‘Kiki's Delivery Service’, drawn by a woman that lives in the forest.

“With this album the main idea was to evoke images, atmospheres, sceneries and stories in the listener, the images that have accumulated in myself. At the same time it was an exploration of the unexplored beauty of the vibraphone, and also a pursuit of the charm of the instrumentation and the music itself. Erased Tapes releases a lot of great stuff and naturally became my favourite label of late. And I thought it would fit well to my music.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: Maximum Vibraphone right here. Who'd of thought you could say so much with just a load of metal blocks and some spinning resonator tubes. Fujita shows us how.

Minoru "Hoodoo" Fushimi's most wanted and impossible to find first album Thanatos Of Funk is finally reissued for the first time ever, in collaboration with Fushimi himself. Thanatos Of Funk is a milestone in Japan's underground music and electro funk/early hip hop history. Entirely self-produced, designed and distributed in 1985 by Fushimi, a high-school teacher by day and music experimenter by night, Thanatos Of Funk is a love-letter to counter-culture, DIY, drum machines and synthesizers blent with some killer shamisen and guitar playing. This is truly unique music. The LP, re-mastered and cut at the Timmion Cutting Lab, comes with the original hand-written comic by Fushimi, with English translations. Essential!

TRACK LISTING

1. Thanatopsis
2. In Praise Of Mitochondria
3. Shinzō-San
4. It Isn't Because Of Hemoglobin
5. Hensachi-Sama
6. Foxy Lady
7. Gal's Blues
8. Panda Steak
9. Disco Thesis
10. Dompan (Private Funk)

Black Twig Picker and Pelt member Mike Gangloff self released the fantastic Poplar Hollow in an edition of only 200 copies earlier this year, and upon seeing it sneak out we instantly got excited to hear it with the potential for a vinyl edition. And hell, what we heard we loved, and are real pleased to drop it on glorious vinyl for the masses! Poplar Hollow perfectly blends his other projects together, merging experimental sounds with traditional American folk and roots music. Comprising of Mike performing vocal/banjo/violin duties, he brings a new eclectic and at times psychedelic vibe to much of this record. Poplar Hollow is a record unlike any I have heard recently, Gangloff is a truly individual force in the American scene, and this record further cements that status.

Pressed in an edition of 500 copies on 180 gram vinyl including a download of the album. Packaged in a sleeve featuring the inimitable eye popping art of Jake Blanchard.

Goldrush went on a brief tour bringing their trailerpark club idea, which had originated in a dank cellar in Oxford, to the rest of the country. The idea was that like-minded artists could tour together and even play together onstage. Goldrush invited Mark Gardener who had led Ride in the early nineties to join them. Thanks to their recent best of and BBC sessions Ride were being rediscovered by a new generation and name-checked by many current bands, so Mark was also keen to play some of those songs he hadn't heard for years. During pre-tour rehearsals the artists laid down something, old, and something new, Mark and the band have recorded a special three track EP in just one day, including new track "Snow In Mexico", Goldrush favourite "Out Of Reach" and Ride classic "Dreams Burn Down".

Wow. 1964 was a pretty special year, especially for groovy jazz in Britain. Not only did it see the release of "Moonscape" by the Michael Garrick Trio but also the birth of these fine and exceptionally rare recordings. Modern, jazzy, exotic and progressive, early British jazz rarely sounded so good or beautiful.

In 1964 the Modern British jazz scene was growing, progressing and bursting out in creative musical rashes. Following the release of Moonscape (The UKs rarest British jazz LP), Michael Garrick teamed up with horn legend Shake Keane to cut an EP of modern ideas in a quartet setting called "A Case Of Jazz". It was issued the same year in a run of just 99 copies. At the same time, flugelhorn maestro Shake Keane was working with several arrangers and set ups, one of the results being a peculair (and possibly unreleased) acetate of four cues: two recorded with The Hastings Girls Choir, two in a small but lively and slightly latin combo.

Coming directly from Michael Garrick’s own archive, these exceptionally rare eight cues from 1964 have now been brought together for this unusual and exciting release. Opening with two cues with Keane and the Hastings Girls Choir, the music is etheral and strangely exotic. Moving then through a fine British bossa nova and into the quartet recordings we find the music pleasing, progressive (for 1964), creative and exciting. Also of note is the mighty fine Sun Maiden, which has the kind of classic piano riff and repetitive regal rhythm so sought after by many jazz collectors. These tracks and complete album are worthy additions to the growing archive of classic modern Brtitish period jazz, and feature two major artist flourishing early in their careers.

Originally privately pressed in 1964 as an edition of only 99 copies, "Moonscape" is possibly the rarest, most desirable and certainly most valuable modern British jazz record ever made. As one of the original 10" vinyl copies could set you back up to £2000, Trunk thought it was about time the album had a proper release. Recorded in London, "Moonscape" was pianist Michael Garrick's debut album, a beautiful lunar jazz set. Musically the album has a slightly floaty, drifting sound and represents an early British foray into The New Thing - the free jazz sound of America. Highlights includes include the blissful, melancholic "Sketches Of Israel" and complex 6/8 trip "Man Have You Ever Heard".

Six years before the release of his landmark Mother Earth’s Plantasia LP, composer and arranger Mort Garson met experimental film director Skip Sherwood, who was interested in an electronic score for his new movie, Didn’t You Hear? While not much is known now about the exact nature of their collaboration, we have Garson’s magnificent score as a record of those heady, early days after his lifechanging discovery of the Moog synthesizer. Notable for being one of the earliest screen appearances by a young Gary Busey, Didn’t You Hear? also boasts one of the first-ever all-electronic movie scores. Though the score was first released in 1970, it sounds as adventurous and futuristic today as it must have then. Originally available only in the lobby of the theater at screenings of the movie in Seattle, the soundtrack LP went out of print shortly after the film’s release. It has been a sought-after record for collectors of Mort Garson and early electronic music ever since. Sacred Bones is honored to reissue Didn’t You Hear? as it was meant to be heard, taken from the original master tapes and given a pristine remaster by engineer Josh Bonati.

ABOUT MORT GARSON: Morton S. “Mort” Garson was a Canadian-born composer, arranger, songwriter, and pioneer of electronic music. He is best known for his albums in the 1960s and 1970s that were among the first to feature Moog synthesizers. His bestknown album is Mother Earth’s Plantasia, a 1976 Moog album designed to be played “for plants and the people who love them.” Sacred Bones Records has undertaken the project of giving official, licensed reissues to key releases from Mort Garson’s catalog, with the intention of bringing these bold masterpieces to a 21st century audience.

• Reissue of Mort Garson’s long-out-of-print soundtrack for the 1970 experimental film Didn’t You Hear?
• One of the first-ever all-electronic film scores
• Remastered from the original master tapes
• Silver vinyl limited to 2000 copies

TRACK LISTING

1. Didn’t You Hear? (2:49)
2. No Smoking (1:31)
3. Dream Sequence I (1:20)
4. Dream Sequence II (1:22)
5. Kevin’s Theme (1:18)
6. Sail! Sail! (2:39)
7. Kevin And Paige (5:12)
8. Bamboo City (2:17)
9. Walk To Grange Hall (1:48)
10. Virgil’s Theme (1:25)
11. Walk To The Other Side Of The Island (3:01)
12. Death Talk And Jeep Approach (2:24)
13. Jeep Ride (1:46)
14. Dead Tree (2:01)
15. Didn’t You Hear? (End Title) (1:45)

When Sacred Bones first began their Mort Garson reissue project in 2019 with a proper reissue of Plantasia, the Garson-naissance began in earnest. Soon after, you could hear Mort Garson and his Moogs bubbling up on TV shows, documentaries, podcasts, hip-hop tracks, or anywhere else, the man a cultural phenomenon once more. Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom. Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man’s sound. There’s the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson) alongside some newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is “Zoos of the World,” where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slum- bering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like“Western Dragon,” but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information.

The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson’s soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. But for decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive. So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort’s many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.

Maybe at the time it scanned as crass and opportunistic for Garson to apply his keyboards to subjects like astrological signs, the occult, hippiedom, houseplants, or the moon landing. But more than most other electronic music pioneers of his ilk, Garson foresaw the integration of such electronics into our daily lives, how they would allow us to engage with the world.

TRACK LISTING

1 Zoos Of The World
2 The Big Game Hunters See The Cheetah
3 Western Dragon (Pt 3)
4 Western Dragon (Pt 2)
5 Moon Journey
6 Music For Advertising #6
7 Black Eye (Main Theme)
8 Western Dragon (Pt 1)
9 Music For Advertising #7
10 Captain DJ Disco UFO (Pt II)
11 Three TV IDs
12 Music For Advertising #8
13 Love Is A Garden
14 The D-Bee's Cat Boogie
15 Black Eye (End Credits)

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytum comosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.

The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’s new renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Perfect for playing to plants, pasta and unborn children (Barry reckons you can play it to your cat too), this early electronic masterpiece is amongst the finest Moog records ever recorded. Shut your eyes and you’ll find yourself brushing through the verdant flora of a distant planet, glittering arps and delicate melodies accompanying your every move. Originally given away with any houseplant purchase at LA’s Mother Earth, this unique LP has since become a holy grail for open-minded audiophiles, and we’re eternally indebted to Sacred Bones for such a gorgeous reissue.

TRACK LISTING

(A)
1. Plantasia
2. Symphony For A Spider Plant
3. Baby’s Tears Blues
4. Ode To An African Violet
5. Concerto For Philodendron And Pothos

(B)
1. Rhapsody In Green
2. Swingin' Spathiphyllums
3. You Don't Have To Walk A Begonia
4. A Mellow Mood For Maidenhair 

Mort Garson’s road to cool cultural caché and the sublimity of Plantasia meant a decades’ long journey through an underworld of sophisticated, international, string-laced dreck (i.e., your great-grandparents’ record collection) to arrive at Music from Patch Cord Productions, this set of queasy-listening you now hold.

Music from Patch Cord Productions shows that Garson’s knack was to exist in both worlds, super-commercial and waaay out. He cut delirious minute-long blasts for commercials (as to whether or not they were actually ever aired remains unknown) and spacecraft-hovering études. Were there really account managers out there in the early ’70s that gave the greenlight to these commercial compositions which seemed to anticipate everyone from John Carpenter to Suicide? What were these campaigns actually for, Soylent Green? Regardless, Mort’s jingle work laid the groundwork for the future. As Robert Moog himself noted: “The jingles were important because they domesticated the sound.” Via Garson’s wizardry, the synthesizer transcended novelty to ubiquity and dominance.

Other curios and questions abound. How did Garson’s arrangement work for Arthur Prysock’s satiny body worship album This Is My Beloved transmogrify into the body-snatcher pulses of “This is My Beloved”? Are the two pieces even related? What is the IATA code for the airport of “Realizations of an Aeropolis”? What denomination is the “Cathedral of Pleasure”? If “Son of Blob” sounds like a hallucinatory melted ice cream truck theme, what on earth does Blob’s father sound like? Every sound wrangled out of that Moog by Garson pushes things further and further out.

Of course, these are all questions that may never get answers, as Garson wasn’t the most organized modern day composer, busy as he was conjuring strange new realms with his circuit boards and synths. He worked and wrote right up until his death in 2008, his daughter and Sacred Bones still going through all of the material left behind. He wouldn’t live to see it, but his renaissance was just around the corner, the seeds that had been scattered in record bins around the world suddenly coming to bear fruit. Take a bite!

TRACK LISTING

1. Is He Trying To Tell Us Something? (Instrumental) (3:27)
2. Rhapsody In Green (Alternate Take) (2:05)
3. Baroque No. 2 (2:14)
4. This Is My Beloved (3:05)
5. Music For Advertising #1 (1:02)
6. Music For Advertising #2 (1:03)
7. Music For Advertising #3 (1:06)
8. Killers Of The Wild (1:04)
9. Realizations Of An Aeropolis (2:07)
10. Music For Advertising #4 (1:05)
11. Music For Advertising #5 (0:33)
12. Z - Theme From “Music For Sensuous Lovers” Part I (Instrumental) (3:11)
13. The Blobs - Son Of Blob Theme (2:29)
14. Cathedral Of Pleasure (6:09)
15. Ode To An African Violet (Alternate Take) (3:57)
16. The Time Zone - Space Walker (2:47)
17. Dragonfly (3:20)
18. The Lords Of Percussion - Geisha Girl (4:00)
19. The Electric Blues Society - Our Day Will Come (2:36)

Mary Gauthier (pronounced Go-Shay) is another rare find from the label that discovered Johnny Dowd and her downbeat lyrics are similarly hard hitting, whether they tell of drag queens, execution in Texas, drinking, strippers and inhabitants of the darker side of country: the kind of people Gauthier has been around, those Bohemian spirits that abound on "Drag Queens In Limousines" along with her wry vision and vocal directness.

The follow-up to last year's debut "Drag Queens And Limousines" continues Gauthier's exploration of the seedy side of life on the American underbelly. The female equivilant of Johnny Dowd she peoples her songs with losers on the edge, every day dramas and the universal themes of love and loneliness.

"Here, My Dear" is a wrenching yet beautifully rendered chronicle of the end of Gaye's first marriage to Anna Gordy Gaye. Released in December 1978, the suite was attacked by critics as indulgent and irrelevant, a misstep in a musical career noted for breakthroughs and artistic bravery. With mixed reviews and no hit singles, the album was not a big seller and failed commercially. Yet in the decades since "Here, My Dear" has become recognized as a masterpiece of romantic anguish. It's also one of Marvin's most influential recordings. Hear it in today's young soul singers and in hip hop's confessional raps. Listen to the many producers who obsess over every note. This is a Marvin gem waiting for you to rediscover it.

The weight of a follow-up to 1971's "What's Going On" was lifted from Marvin Gaye's shoulders by the success of his soundtrack to the film Trouble Man, but he was still searching for something to unify his next long player. In 1973 he started working with R&B balladeer-turned-producer Ed Townsend, who gave him the basis of a song about 'the business of getting on with life'. However, inspired by the presence of studio visitor Janis Hunter, destined to become his second wife, Gaye transformed the song into a monument to desire and seduction that ran soul-deep. In this moment Marvin found the focus for the album that had eluded him. If "What's Going On" is a celebration of the spirit, then "Let's Get It On" is all about love, salvation and the pleasures of the flesh.

TRACK LISTING

Let's Get It On 4:44
Please Don't Stay (Once You Go Away) 3:32
If I Should Die Tonight 3:57
Keep Gettin' It On 3:12
Come Get To This 2:40
Distant Lover 4:15
You Sure Love To Ball 4:43
Just To Keep You Satisfied 4:35

As Motown migrated from Detroit to LA, Marvin's follow-up to the spiritual consciousness of "What's Goin' On" was the soundtrack to '72 Blaxploitaion flick "Trouble Man". It's altogether a more streetwise collection of stone cold funk, earthy Curtis-esque falsetto and badass grooves that has seen it plundered by generations of beatdiggers. "'T' Plays it Cool" is one of the best tunes ever made, just ask Jazzy Jeff!!!

TRACK LISTING

Main Theme From Trouble Man Part 2
"T" Plays It Cool
Poor Abbey Walsh
Break In (Police Shoot Big)
Cleo's Apartment
Trouble Man
Theme From Trouble Man
"T" Stands For Trouble
Main Theme From Trouble Man Part 1
Life Is A Gamble
Deep-In-It
Don't Mess With Mister "T"
There Goes Mister "T"

By 1970 Marvin Gaye was already a phenomenally successful singer, with a string of hit singles to his name, making him Motown's number one male performer. However, when he entered the Hitsville studio on June 1st to cut a new single, Marvin hungered for more. All over the world social unrest was prompting political activism and cultural revolution. Yet the Motown hit production line carried on like nothing was happening. Marvin longed to make a statement that would reflect the new reality, so when Al Cleveland and The Four Tops' Obie Benson brought him the framework of a song called "What's Going On", he jumped at the chance to record it. Initially rejected by Motown, the track went on to become a runaway smash, and the label demanded a full length LP to capitalize on sales. Recorded in ten days in March 1971 the "What's Going On" album features co-writing credits from awesome session band the Funk Brothers, as well as brass and string arrangements by David Van De Pitte. The heady mix of percussive-heavy grooves, luxurious fills and Marvin's sweet vocals became an instant classic. Taking in themes like the Vietnam war, poverty, spirituality and green issues, the album seems just as relevant today as it did back at the start of the 70s and deserves the vote as 'greatest album ever' that it often receives.

TRACK LISTING

What's Going On 3:51
What's Happening Brother 2:57
Flyin' High (In The Friendly Sky) 3:40
Save The Children 3:04
God Is Love 2:31
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) 3:05
Right On 7:20
Wholy Holy 3:20
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) 5:16

Is there a better voice in soul? While you desperately struggle to think of someone, I'll wax lyrical about my main man Marvin. Not only did his incredible vocals, charisma (sex appeal) and all round dreaminess help Motown become the soul juggernaut we know and love (though perhaps despite ourselves), he used his position and talent to pursue peace, harmony, love and equality to all people. While also loving drugs and hating taxes. So here we get those 60's soul gems, "What's Going On" masterpieces and more funky moments. A great place to start for the casual fan.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)
Your Precious Love W/ Tammi Terrell
If I Could Build My Whole World Around You W/ Tammi Terrell
That's The Way Love Is
You're All I Need To Get By W/ Tammi Terrell
I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Too Busy Thinking About My Baby
What's Going On

Side Two
Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing W/ Tammi Terrell
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
Trouble Man
Let's Get It On
Distant Lover
Got To Give It Up (Part 1)

Marvin Gaye at his very best! Two classics from Gaye’s esteemed catalogue, ‘I Wanna Be Where You Are’ and ‘I Want You’ with alternative mixes that have never been on 12 inch before. Plucked from the Deluxe Edition of the spellbinding ‘I Want You’ album that was mixed Kevin Reeves & remastered by Ellen Fitton, these two cuts have always called out for loud and proud pressing on either side of a 12.

Up first, ‘I Wanna Be Where You Are’ written by the magical pairing of Leon Ware and Arthur 'T-Boy' Ross with Ware also behind the production controls. An abbreviated cover of Michael Jackson’s hit, it sees Gaye take a brief respite from his usual steamy and sensual swooning to express his love for his family. Jackson would then return the favour, taking influence from Marvin’s 1977 hit ‘Got to Give it Up’ to make ‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’.

Originally a 1:17 minute segue on the album, the Unedited version clocks in at over 6 minutes, turning it from a transitionary passage to a standalone gem. Extending those delectable grooves, building and breaking with a sun-kissed, funk channelling feeling that washes over like a warm wave. With the 7 inch release trading hands for over £75 on Discogs this ain’t one to miss.

On the flip, ‘I Want You’ written by the same duo as the A, with Leon Ware once again on the production and released as part of the same ’76 album. It was an LP that introduced a change in musical styles for Gaye, songs such as this giving him a disco audience thanks to Leon Ware. The Jam-Alternate version leaves Gaye’s vocals till the final section, letting that sweet soaring soundtrack sing to its absolute emotive peak. Sunrise or sunset, this one is not to be used lightly - tears of joy on the dancefloor guaranteed.

TRACK LISTING

A1. I Wanna Be Where You Are (Unedited Mix)
B1. I Want You (Jam - Alternate Mix)

This is the EU version and not the U.S Kevin Grey release…..although the source audio from the EU version is from Kevin Grey’s master, but cut on a different lacquer.

Motown’s “Prince Of Soul,” Marvin Gaye, was already a hit artist for nearly a decade when, in 1971, he reached new heights with his album What's Going On. An immediate landmark recording, it was the first of Gaye's albums to break the top ten of Billboard’s Top LPs, and quickly became Motown's best-selling record. To this day, What's Going On is hailed as one of the greatest albums of all time, earning the number one spot on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2020 list of “The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time.”

In celebration of this groundbreaking album while also marking the 50th anniversary of the title song’s release as a single, UMe will be issuing collections that honor the depth of Gaye's album.

First, Motown/UMe has consolidated several What’s Going On-related releases into one new digital collection, What’s Going On: Deluxe Edition/50th Anniversary This includes the original album, plus 12 bonus tracks featuring each of the LP’s original mono single versions and their B-sides, two of which are different takes – “God Is Love” and “Sad Tomorrows,” an earlier version of “Flying High (in the Friendly Sky)” – while the pre-album single version of “What’s Going On” has no “party” intro and a false fade. Also included is the title song’s earliest mix, initially made as a reference for Motown’s in-house quality control department before horns and strings were added; a dramatic instrumental mix; a “Coffeehouse Mix” by Grammy-winning engineer Russ Elevado that emphasizes the track’s previously buried acoustic guitar, originally available on a Record Store Day exclusive 10” EP for the album’s 45th anniversary in 2016. Also included from that same 2016 release is a “What’s Going On” duet with Motown artist B.J. the Chicago Kid. Other tracks are an early working version of “Symphony,” written by Marvin with Smokey Robinson, in which Marvin sings over and over, “what’s going on?” while the song of the same name sat unreleased; and the instrumental “I Love the Ground You Walk On,” recorded during the same waiting period.

Fifty years later, the influence and meaning behind this legendary record continues to ring true. The single “What’s Going On” originated as a response to police brutality at a protest in Berkeley, CA and coincided with personal tragedy in Gaye's life as well as Gaye’s brother's time fighting in Vietnam. The compounding experiences sparked the poignant plea that became the full-length LP What's Going On. Calling out to a broken country, Gaye searched for reason and hope in a world that felt desperate and senseless; a sentiment that many share now more than ever.

Marvin Gaye continues to hold his place as one of the greatest singers, composers and producers of all time, and in this half a century What's Going On has proven itself to be one of the world's most unforgettable records. 

TRACK LISTING

LP 1:
SIDE 1
What’s Going On 3:53
What’s Happening Brother 2:44
Flyin’ High (In The Friendly Sky) 3:50
Save The Children 4:03
God Is Love 1:42
Mercy Mercy Me 3:13
SIDE 2
Right On 7:32
Wholy Holy 3:08
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) 5:27

LP 2:
SIDE 3
What’s Going On Stripped Version * 3:57
What’s Going On 3:54 Mix 1/no Strings Or Horns
What’s Going On Rhythm & Strings Instrumental Mix 3:50
Symphony Demo Version 2:49
SIDE 4 – Original Mono Single Mixes
What’s Going On 3:54
God Is Love 2:51
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) 2:30
Sad Tomorrows 2:22
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) 2:58
Wholy Holy 3:09

'You’re The Man" is the first-ever planned “lost” Tamla/Motown album from Marvin Gaye. Fifteen of the album’s 17 tracks are on vinyl for the first time and three tracks are newly mixed by Salaam Remi.
The album also includes the rare long LP version of Marvin Gaye’s cancelled Christmas single from ’72, as well as an unreleased vault mix of its instrumental B-side, and new essay by Marvin’s biographer, David Ritz. The release concides with the 60th anniversary of Motown as a label and also Marvin Gaye’s 80th Birthday (April 2).
While the tracks have been issued on various collections and deluxe editions, this is the first time they have been placed in their proper context. In addition to context, "You’re The Man" was the album that was proposed to follow-up the monumental "What’s Going On", and it contains all of Marvin’s solo and non-soundtrack recordings from 1972 (his next two albums in quick succession: "Trouble Man" and "Let’s Get It On").

TRACK LISTING

You're The Man
The World Is Rated X
Piece Of Clay
Where Are We Going?
I'm Gonna Give You Respect
Try It You'll Like It
You Are That Special One
We Can Make It Baby
My Last Chance
Symphony
I'd Give My Life For You
Woman Of The World
Christmas In The City (instrumental)
You're The Man (version 2)
I Wan't To Come Home For Chistmas
I Going Home (Move)
Checking Out (Double Clutch)

‘Mayday’ is the third LP by Montreal-based artist, Myriam Gendron. It follows her earlier, critically acclaimed albums, ‘Not So Deep As A Well’ (2014) and ‘Ma délire - Songs of love, lost & found’ (2021). Myriam began exploring the complex folk traditions of Quebec (and beyond), with ‘Ma délire - Songs of love, lost & found’, which combines traditional and original songs with arrangements that make space for avant-garde musical interludes by such folks as guitarist Bill Nace (Body/Head) and renowned jazz percussionist Chris Corsano.

‘Mayday’ presents an even more syncretic fusion of the elements Myriam uses to create her sound. Most of the songs are original, sung in both English and French, and they blend traditional and avant elements with abandon. She is often accompanied on this album by the guitarist Marisa Anderson and drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White), whose work provides a quietly aggressive sort of free-rock base. Additional players include Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lavoie, Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba.

‘Mayday’ is a thoroughly thrilling effort that manages to create new vistas of sound while maintaining a feel that is both intimate and familiar. The music here certainly possesses a richly serious tone, but Myriam Gendron (like Leonard Cohen) is able to infuse her darkness with a subtle, powerful light that reminds us that even the most pitchblack night is but a transitional state.

TRACK LISTING

1. There Is No East Or West
2. Long Way Home
3. Terres Brûlées
4. Dorothy’s Blues
5. La Luz
6. La Belle Françoise (pour Sylvie)
7. Lully Lullay
8. Look Down That Lonesome Road
9. Quand J’étais Jeune Et Belle
10. Berceuse

Equal parts soft and sorrowful, Myriam Gendron’s stunning Not So Deep As A Well LP became something of a sleeper hit upon its initial release back in 2014. Her debut album shone a warm lamp-light glow upon a curious and captivating new voice in the Quebecois folk world.

Nearly ten years on from its release in her native Canada and America, Not So Deep As A Well gets a European release for the first time this autumn, with a new pressing on the Basin Rock label (Julie Byrne, Aoife Nessa Frances, Trevor Beales, Juni Habel) which features two tracks not included on the original release - ‘Bric-à-brac’ and ‘The Small Hours’ - both written and recorded in the early days of 2014.

Recorded alone in her apartment, with no knowledge of sound engineering, it could almost be a lost artefact, a dust-lined document of a forgotten time and place. Taking the poems of Dorothy Parker, whose work Gendron stumbled upon by chance in a Montreal bookstore, she imbues the words with a graceful, gentle expression, a lingering sense of sorrow always present.

A stark, spellbinding collection, Not So Deep As A Well is raw and unyielding in so many ways we no longer expect to hear. As if sitting in the room with her, Gendron’s voice is cracked and unadorned, quietly forced into a push and pull between the quietude of the songs and the noisy world outside.

TRACK LISTING

1.Threnody
2. Solace
3.The False Friends
4. Ballade Of A Great Weariness
5.Bric-á-brac
6. Recurrence
7. The Red Dress
8. The Last Question
9. Not So Deep As A Well
10.Song Of Perfect Propriety
11. The Small Hours

The third full-length from Margaret Glaspy, Echo The Diamond emerged from a deliberate stripping-away of artifice to reveal life for all its harsh truths and ineffable beauty. Like the precious gem of its title, the result is an object of startling luminosity, one capable of cutting through the most elaborately constructed façades. “This record came from trying to meet life on life’s terms, instead of looking for a happy ending in everything,” says the New York-based musician. “The whole experience of creating it felt like effortless catharsis.”

Produced by Glaspy with co-production from her partner, guitarist/composer Julian Lage, Echo The Diamond expands on the frenetic vitality of her widely acclaimed debut Emotions and Math—a 2016 release The New Yorker hailed as an album “in which pretty songs often turn prickly, enriched by carefully measured infusions of dissonance and grit.” This time around, Glaspy worked with drummer/percussionist David King of The Bad Plus and bassist Chris Morrissey (Andrew Bird, Lucius, Ben Kweller), recording at Reservoir Studios in Manhattan and embracing an intentionally unfussy process that left plenty of room for spontaneity

TRACK LISTING

1. Act Natural
2. Get Back
3. Female Brain
4. Irish Goodbye
5. I Didn’t Think So
6. Memories
7. Turn The Engine
8. Hammer And The Nail
9. My Eyes
10. People Who Talk 

Part of Tele Music Reissue Campaign, 2023 first time reissue, 140g vinyl.

European funk fusion of the highest order, Michel Gonet's Phasing News Volume 1 is the essential companion piece to the venerated Volume 2. It's truly a library treasure that every home must own. As Tele Music themselves said, it contains "tense and mysterious underscores in a range of styles"; whilst we don't disagree, we'd add swaggering, orchestral drama-funk-jazzbreaks. Vital.

Opener "Moon To Light (Number II) - A" is a total wonder. It's incredible, and what a way to begin a record. The percussion is electrifying, complimenting the dark, heavy piano, eerie organ work, electric guitar soling and rhythm section brilliance. Part B is virtually identical but without the electric guitar. The slow "Soul Cathedral (Number II) - A" is an ambient spacey synth gem which is both beatless and drenched in phased organ. Pretty captivating. Part B plays it rather straighter, a church organ continuing the same melody and tempo but with less of the swirling synthy effects.

"Light In The Rains (Number II) - A" sounds like something Diamond D would've sampled in the mid-to-late 90s, conjuring as it does that peculiar, creeping Axelrod-funk, all eerie electric guitar and organ, bass and spacey effects. Part B loses the electric guitar and adds brass.

The swirling, dramatic "Mondial Scoop (Number II)" has that urgent News At Ten feel with its prominent timpani drums whilst "Mecanic Bird Song" is a frenetic, abstract track with disorientating keyboard interplay.

*Total highlight* "Mephisto Jet (Number II) - A" rides a slick, proto-hip-hop beat with melodic, warm Rhodes yet, thrillingly, casually ups the drama with strings and timpanis. It then returns to its more mellow state. Ace. Part B adds acidy, phased percussion to create a more hypnotic, tripped out feel to proceedings. Part C is half as long but, pared back to just drums and Rhodes, it's arguably twice-as-nice.

To close, the shuffling, bell-laced urgent jazz of "Phasing News - A" is another highlight, riding a great bassline and augmented by ace drums, organ and electric guitar. Part B is also great, removing the guitar and doubling down on the head-nod funk.

The audio for Phasing News Volume 1 has been remastered by Be With regular Simon Francis, ensuring this release sounds better than ever. Cicely Balston's expert skills have made sure nothing is lost in the cut whilst the original, iconic Tele Music house sleeve has been restored here at Be With HQ as the finishing touch to this long overdue re-issue.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Moon To Light (Number II) – A 3:22
A2 Moon To Light (Number II) - B 3:30
A3 Soul Cathedral (Number II) - A 3:06
A4 Soul Cathedral (Number II) – B 3:06
A5 Light In The Rains (Number II) - A 1:38
A6 Light In The Rains (Number II) - B1:32
B1 Mondial Scoop (Number II) 2:03
B2 Mecanic Bird Song 2:58
B3 Mephisto Jet (Number II) - A 2:1
B4 Mephisto Jet (Number II) - B2:18
B5 Mephisto Jet (Number II) - C1:0
B6 Phasing News - A 2:01
B7 Phasing News 2:56

Even as I place this record on the turntable it feels like a quasi-religious experience - an artefact containing the essence of a living synth god. The primary songwriter and founder member of Depeche Mode returns with five new solo tracks of expressive modular sounds, futuristic industrial and frazzled ecstasy. 

From the first skewed saw wave and unexpected off beat this sounds a cut above the rest, and "Howler" quickly develops into a dark and moody electronic brooder, all bursts of ECT at a mogadon pace and pent up aggression. Still, darkest before the dawn and all that, and the segue into the heart-swelling techno-pagan motif in the final third is no less than sublime. Gun fingers abound on "Mandrill", a high octane blast of industrial dancehall a la Krikor, The Bug or maybe even Clipping. - get me to the White Hotel pronto! Moving on to the B-side and we go further into the darkness, pushing through the dense, witching hour paranoia of some super slow n low Salon shit - Tolouse Low Trax style. For "Vervet", Martin incorporates a little Mille Plateaux glitch into his sound palette, creating a trippy slow techno pulser perfect for your next K-hole, before signing off with the twilight melody of "Howler's End", a gorgeous reprise of the opening track. 

A truly exceptional work of industrial synthesis. Oh, and the artwork was made by Pockets Warhol, a capuchin monkey based in Canada who paints for charity. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Depeche Mode main man Martin Gore set our presales alight when this new vinyl was announced, and I'm pleased to say it more than lives up to those high expectations. Terse industrial, mechanical dancehall and slow n low Salon tackle abound on this ACE release.

TRACK LISTING

1 Howler
2 Mandrill
3 Capuchin
4 Vervet
5 Howler’s End

The Third Chimpanzee Remixed sees Martin Gore’s recent five-track release reimagined by remixers including Rrose, JakoJako, Kangding Ray and artists from the Mute family including Chris Liebing and ANNA. Martin Gore, one of the founding members and primary songwriter of Depeche Mode, explores euphoric modular sounds and develops his career’s long relationship with electronic music through the primate-themed EP. The Third Chimpanzee follows his eponymous album MG in 2015 and SSSS, his collaboration with Erasure’s Vince Clarke for their VCMG project. The artwork was created by Pockets Warhol, a capuchin monkey based in Canada who paints for charity.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Tough, tense and synth heavy, this set of remixes sees a variety of old and new faces nudge the synth legend into techy dancefloor territories.

TRACK LISTING

Howler (ANNA Remix)
Mandrill (Barker Remix)
Capuchin (Wehbba Remix)
Vervet (JakoJako Remix)
Howler (Kangding Ray Remix)
Howler (The Exaltics Remix)
Mandrill (Rrose Remix)
Capuchin (Jlin Remix)
Vervet (Chris Liebing Remix)
Mandrill (MoReVoX Remix)

In anticipation of the 35th anniversary next year one of electronic music´s most influential recordings, the legendary "E2-E4", from 12.12.1981 gets an official rerelease by Manuel Göttsching on his own Label MG.ART... Carefully overseen by the Master himself.

One of the few records Gottsching released under his own name, "E2-E4" has earned its place as one of the most important, influential electronic records ever released. What sets it apart from music that came before is a steadfast refusal to follow the popular notions of development in melody and harmony. Instead, "E2-E4" continues working through similar territory for close to an hour with an application to trance-state electronics missing from most of the music that preceded it. Though the various components repeat themselves incessantly, it's how they interact and build that determines the sound -- and that's the essence of most electronic dance music, that complex interplay between several repetitive elements. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: On the evening of December 12th, 1981, Manuel Göttsching took to his home studio, hit record and jammed his way through one hour of flawless electronic composition. Minimalist yet expressive, this hypnotic arrangement of circular drum programs, overlapping sequences and dreamy pads completely envelops the listener in pure transcendental beauty. Evolving at its own pace, the piece drifts through a series of mesmeric motifs before bursting into widescreen brilliance at the avian flutter of Manuel’s warm and bright guitar. Recorded live to tape with no overdubs, ‘E2-E4’ is a stunning marriage of inspiration and expression, truly perfect.

TRACK LISTING

Ruhige Nervosität 13:00
Gemäßigter Aufbruch 10:00
... Und Mittelspiel 07:00
Ansatz 06:00
Damen-Eleganza 05:00
Ehrenvoller Kampf 03:00
Hoheit Weicht (nicht Ohne Schwung...) 09:00
... Und Souveränität 03:00
Remis 03:00

Herr Göttsching goes it alone on this 1974 release, for Ash Ra's most groundbreaking work thus far... Using just guitar, echo and a four-track, he creates three shimmering, immersive cosmic guitar soundscapes that'll suck you right in!!! Almost sounds like a synthesiser record until right at the end when he cuts the echo and lets rip! Get your headphones on and BUG OUT.

The late percussionist Milford Graves was one of the most unique artists the world has ever seen. Born in Jamaica, Queens in 1941, he began his career in the early ’60s as a part of New York’s vibrant Latin jazz scene. His focus quickly turned inward, shifting towards a practice that explored the very nature of self. From his work in the New York Art Quartet and collaborations with Albert Ayler, Sonny Sharrock and more to his important contributions during NYC’s loft era—he is, simply put, free jazz royalty. In April 1966, the duo of Graves and pianist Don Pullen played at Yale University. As John Corbett writes in the liner notes, “This performance was something of a turning point for Graves. Until then he had been working in other people’s bands or collective ensembles. He was phenomenally busy. In 1965 alone, he recorded with NYAQ (two LPs), Giuseppi Logan Quartet, Paul Bley Quintet and Lowell Davidson Trio, and he made his first recording released under his own name, Percussion Ensemble. Every one of these is important in its own way, but none of them quite anticipate how radical was the music that he and Pullen would unleash that evening in New Haven.” Originally released on the artists’ own Self-Reliance Program label, this legendary one-night performance would be split into two volumes: In Concert At Yale University and Nommo. While rooted in African rhythms, Graves’ music has its own sense of time. As the drummer stated in a 1966 DownBeat interview, “Time was always there, and the time I see is not the same as what man says time is. It works by impulsion.”

TRACK LISTING

1. P.G. I
2. P.G. II

The late percussionist Milford Graves was one of the most unique artists the world has ever seen. Born in Jamaica, Queens in 1941, he began his career in the early ’60s as a part of New York’s vibrant Latin jazz scene. His focus quickly turned inward, shifting towards a practice that explored the very nature of self. From his work in the New York Art Quartet and collaborations with Albert Ayler, Sonny Sharrock and more to his important contributions during NYC’s loft era—he is, simply put, free jazz royalty. In April 1966, the duo of Graves and pianist Don Pullen played at Yale University. As John Corbett writes in the liner notes, “This performance was something of a turning point for Graves. Until then he had been working in other people’s bands or collective ensembles. He was phenomenally busy. In 1965 alone, he recorded with NYAQ (two LPs), Giuseppi Logan Quartet, Paul Bley Quintet and Lowell Davidson Trio, and he made his first recording released under his own name, Percussion Ensemble. Every one of these is important in its own way, but none of them quite anticipate how radical was the music that he and Pullen would unleash that evening in New Haven.” Originally released on the artists’ own Self-Reliance Program label, this legendary one-night performance would be split into two volumes: In Concert At Yale University and Nommo. While rooted in African rhythms, Graves’ music has its own sense of time. As the drummer stated in a 1966 DownBeat interview, “Time was always there, and the time I see is not the same as what man says time is. It works by impulsion.

TRACK LISTING

1. P.G. III
2. P.G. IV
3. P.G. V

By the early ’70s, Milford Graves had more or less stopped gigging. Having learned his lesson the hard way in multiple[1]night runs like a legendary Slugs’ residency with Albert Ayler, he knew that the level of energy that he put out during a performance would be difficult to sustain over the long haul. A concert was a kind of absolute ritual for him, after which he would be totally spent, emotionally and physically. Graves rarely left anything on the table. Any musical performance was an opportunity to present an amalgamated version of all the things he had learned. He was an innovator and a teacher at his core, and the concert venue was one of his first classroom settings. In March 1976, Verna Gillis invited Graves to perform on WBAI’s Free Music Store radio show. For the date, he chose to present a trio lineup which he had been occasionally playing— featuring two saxophonists who were dedicated to the drummer’s vision. Hugh Glover is almost exclusively known for his work with Graves, while Arthur Doyle would gain exposure later for an obscure record that he made two years later, Alabama Feeling, which would become a highly collectable item among free jazz enthusiasts. Originally released in 1977, Babi remains one of Graves’ most seminal recordings. The music played by the trio was ecstatic. Extreme energy music, buoyant and joyful. It relied on Graves’ new way of approaching the drum kit, in which he had opened up the bottoms of his skin-slackened toms and eliminated the snare. Graves’ art was always unblemished by commercial interests, and this album is its finest mission statement.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ba
2. Bi
3. Bab

Featuring some of today's most influential musicians, Martin Green explores first-hand stories of human migration, some heart-warming, others heartbreaking and features songs and original music by Green with lyrics from Karine Polwart, Anaïs Mitchell, Sandy Wright and Aidan Moffat (Arab Strap).

The musicians featured on the album include Martin Green (Lau) with Adrian Utley (Portishead), Dominic Aitchison (Mogwai), Becky Unthank (The Unthanks), Adam Holmes, John Smith and Aidan Moffat (Arab Strap).

First in a brand-new series of all-time Studio One party bombs which is now available for the first time ever on loud 12”. Marcia Griffiths’ "Feel Like Jumping" is a stone cold classic, one of the best reggae songs ever made.100% essential monster tune that rocks any dancefloor!

TRACK LISTING

1. Marcia Griffiths - Feel Like Jumping
2. Dub Specialist - Feel Like Jumping Part 2

Devotion is a dedicated aural engagement with extremely talented musicians. It reflects a deep spirituality in composition, expression discovery through kaleidoscopic, 21st century jazz. Devotion, Grossmann's debut for Jack White's U.S.based Third Man Records label, continues her musical evolution, arriving at a sound that wears inspirations transparently, but in practice, is markedly original holistic work. It is titled after Grossmann's experience of a natural sense of devotion that arose from her Buddhist meditation practice. She says, "noticing that sounds are dissolving into the vast empty space, the true nature of reality. Just as thoughts are always dissolving into the stillness of our mind, we slowly realize that the essence of our mind is clarity...

TRACK LISTING

1. Absolute Truth
2. Calm
3. Care
4. Knowledge & Wisdom
5. All Heart
6. Devotion
7. Mother Of All

Witness to revolutions in jazz and pop, Margo Guryan earned her place in the songwriting pantheon and then some. That she was largely unknown for decades is not the stuff of crushed dreams, but a result of her own choices and priorities. From humble beginnings to the peaks of her 1968 baroque pop masterpiece Take a Picture and the collected Demos to the recent viral ubiquity of “Why Do I Cry”, Words and Music captures the entirety of Guryan’s career, featuring 16 previously unreleased recordings and a 32-page booklet telling the whole story.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. If I Lose
2. You Promised
3. The Wise Man
4. The Morning After
5. Moon Ride
6. More Understanding Than A Man
7. More Understanding Than A Man (Instrumental)
8. There I Was

Side B
1. Kiss & Tell
2. Half-Way In Love
3. Goodbye July
4. Four Letter Words
5. Hurry On Home
6. I Ought To Stay Away From You
7. I Love
8. Under My Umbrella
9. I Don’t Intend To Spend Christmas Without You

Side C
1. Sunday Morning
2. Thoughts
3. Love Songs
4. Don’t Go Away
5. Take A Picture
6. Sun
7. What Can I Give You
8. Come To Me Slowly

Side D
1. The 8.17 Northbound Success Merry-Go-Round
2. Something’s Wrong With The Morning
3. Think Of Rain
4. Can You Tell
5. Someone I Know
6. Love

Side E
1. Why Do I Cry
2. Spanky And Our Gang
3. Most Of My Life
4. It’s Alright Now
5. Timothy Gone
6. The Hum
7. Please Believe Me
8. Yes I Am

Side F
1. I Think A Lot About You
2. I’d Like To See The BadGuys Win
3. Values
4. California Shake
5. Hold Me Dancin’
6. Shine
7. Goodbye July

Mats Gustafsson is a key character in the modern jazz scene as a world-renowned saxophone player, and has collaborated with countless artists including Sonic Youth, Neneh Cherry, Peter Brötzmann and Merzbow.

Joachim Nordwall has been creating psychedelic electronic music since the late 1980s, and has been in groups such as The Skull Defekts and Alvars Orkester, with work credited alongside Aaron Dilloway, Mika Vainio, Kevin Drumm, Christine Abdelnour and John Duncan.

Nordwall founded and runs the lauded record label iDEAL Recordings, operating at the cutting edge of experimental and electronic music, and hosting festivals, exhibitions, concerts, and club nights.

The duo create a sense of vast, three dimensional auditory expanses. “This is where acoustics and analogue synths meet. It is unique music. Unheard Vibes. Perfect for special venues and good PAs” - Gustafsson and Nordwall.

TRACK LISTING

1.  THERE ARE SOME WORLDS WHERE ALL DREAMS DIE (en Glad Stund)
2.  THE DAY OF DAYS WAS THERE (vardag)
3.  LOVE SHOWS IN HER SMILE: IT IS CONFIDENT (panik)
4. THEIR NEW LIFE WAS THEIR FINAL LIFE (vilse)
5.  BIRDBRAIN (olle ångest)
6.  HIS FINGERS, MOVING IN THE AIR, PRODUCED A SOFT ORGAN-LIKE MUSIC (långtråkigt)
7.  OH, SAID THE STRANGE MIND, YOU WANT ME TO THINK FOR YOU (det Blir Aldrig Bättre)
8.  HER EYES…WERE LIKE COLD FIRES (slut)

Rock provocateur Marika Hackman will release her highly anticipated new album ‘Any Human Friend’ via AMF Records and on Sub Pop in North and South America'.

Any Human Friend’ has been co-produced by David Wrench (Frank Ocean, The xx, Let’s Eat Grandma) and Marika herself, and shows off a sharper and more liberated sound than ever before.

Marika is a ‘Rid of Me’-era PJ Harvey for the inclusive generation: unbounded by musical genre, a preternatural lyricist and tunesmith who isn’t afraid to go there. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliant outing here from Marika Hackman, beautifully marrying the synths and rhythmic drive of 80's pop music with her notoriously superb songwriting prowess, immediately rewarding but develops with every listen. A wonderful change of pace.

Big Sigh brings together the best of Marika’s previous works as an indie musician and adds a new layer of epic sounds and full-bodied production.

Big Sigh is the “hardest record” Marika has ever made. As the title suggest, it is a relief of sorts – of sadness, of stress and lust, but mostly relief.

Co-produced with Sam Petts Davies (Frank Ocean, Radiohead, Red Hot Chilli Peppers) & Charlie Andrew (Alt J, Wolf Alice, London Grammar). Lyrically there’s always romance alongside grief, with elements of vulnerability and feeling trapped.

“This album took a long time to make. It was not easy, and by the time I got to the end of it I was quiet. I wanted to be away from it and let it sit in its own space. Now the dust has settled and I’ve got re-enter the world of Big Sigh, and I’m excited. Stepping into a new world, moving forward, chipping away. Breathe in, breathe out. Big sigh.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'Big Sigh' is the perfect illustration of Hackman's inimitable style developing over time, taking her already considerable storytelling skills to the next level while retaining all of the grace and charm that the more stripped-back pieces are swimming in. A bracing, beautiful adventure from start to finish.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Ground
2. No Caffeine
3. Big Sigh
4. Blood
5. Hanging
6. The Lonely House
7. Vitamins
8. Slime
9. Please Don’t Be So Kind
10. The Yellow Mile

Marika Hackman returns with ‘Covers’, a darkly beautiful, self-produced new album which showcases a more vulnerable side. During the extended lockdown period of the last few months, Marika felt that creating a covers record was a way of exploring new sound ideas and expressing herself without having the pressure of the blank page. She recorded and produced Covers between home and her parents’ house, then got David Wrench to mix it.

TRACK LISTING

You Never Wash Up After Yourself
Phantom Limb
Playground Love
Realiti
Jupiter 4
Pink Light
Between The Bars
Temporary Loan
In Undertow
All Night

Over the course of four albums, Manchester based trumpeter, composer, arranger and band-leader Matthew Halsall has carved out a niche for himself on the UK music scene as one of its brightest talents. His languid, soulful music has won friends from Jamie Cullum and Gilles Peterson to Jazz FM and Mojo as well as an ever-growing international following. His label Gondwana Records is home to GoGo Penguin and his own albums have found Halsall exploring the modal jazz of John and Alice Coltrane, paying tribute to the hard bop of the late '50s and early '60s or most recently on 'Fletcher Moss Park' drawing on Eastern influences in his most personal statement yet. His latest album 'When The World Was One' is something of a companion piece to 'Fletcher Moss Park' (much of the music was written at the same time) but draws more explicitly on Halsall's love of spiritual jazz and Eastern music as well as his own studies in meditation and travels in Japan. Beautifully recorded at Hasall's favourite studio, 80 Hertz in Manchester, and engineered by Brendan Williams and George Atkins it features the recording debut of Halsall's large ensemble, The Gondwana Orchestra, which utilises the exotic flavours of harp, koto and bansuri flute and Eastern scales to create a global palate for Halsall's life-affirming sounds.

The Gondwana Orchestra features long time collaborators Nat Birchall, saxophone, Gavin Barras, bass and Rachael Gladwin, harp as well as Taz Modi on piano. Modi who also plays with Halsall in their more electronic trio shares his passion for spiritual jazz and plays the music with real feeling while the role of the harp here is to bring a touch of 'magical reality' a floating dreaminess that is a vital part of Halsall's elegiac and beautiful music. The drummer Luke Flowers is perhaps best known as part of Cinematic Orchestra, and Halsall describes him as 'one of the best drummers in the world' and hails him for 'playing the music exactly as I heard it in my head', Keiko Kitamura is a Japanese Koto player who is becoming an increasingly important part of the Gondwana Orchestra, her role is similar to Gladwin's in that the koto helps free up the music while also bringing a real sound of the East. Finally, flautist Lisa Mallett brings a love of Indian music to the orchestra, much travelled on the continent she brings all of her knowledge and experience to play offering a unique texture to Halsall's dreamy melodies.

TRACK LISTING

1. When The World Was One
2. A Far Away Place
3. Falling Water
4. Patterns
5. Kiyomizu-Dera
6. Sagano Bamboo Forest
7. Tribute To Alice Coltrane

Manchester based, DJ, bandleader and trumpeter Matthew Halsall is one of the UK's brightest jazz talents. A gifted trumpeter with a beautiful, expressive tone, his music draws on his love of the transcendental, spiritual and modal jazz of Alice and John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, as well as the glories of 60s British jazz.

His third album "On The Go" is a heartfelt love letter to the jazz of the late 50s and early 60s. Inspired by the evocative sounds of Miles Davis' soundtrack to the Louis Malle film "Lift To The Scaffold" and the legendary early 60s recordings of Art Blakey and Max Roach the album is nostalgic but always soulful. However, while Halsall's elegiac music is imbued with a sense of history, the young trumpeter and DJ nevertheless brings a contemporary bounce to his music ensuring that his music breathes with a personality all its own.

The album opens with "Music For A Dancing Mind", the most obvious nod to the work of Blakey and Roach. The beautiful "Song For Charlie" is named for Halsall's grandfather, a key inspiration in his life. Dukkha is a Buddhist term roughly translating to suffering so the title "The End Of Dukkha" is self-explanatory and "Samatha", another Buddhist term, means calm, a perfect title for this elegant tune. "The Journey Home" came to Halsall on the train back to Manchester from London and captures that happy feeling of return.

Over the course of five albums, Manchester based trumpeter, composer, arranger and band-leader Matthew Halsall has carved out a niche for himself on the UK music scene as one of it's brightest talents. His languid, soulful music has won friends from Jamie Cullum and Gilles Peterson to Jazz FM and Mojo as well as an ever-growing international following. His new album 'Into Forever', puts the spotlight on Halsall the composer, arranger and producer. Halsall draws on a diverse range of influences from Alice Coltrane, Dorothy Ashby, Phil Cohran and Leon Thomas to the more contemporary sounds of The Cinematic Orchestra, Max Richter and Nils Frahm to deliver his most complete recording to date. 'Into Forever' features renowned Manchester based soul poet Josephine Oniyama and rising star vocalist Bryony Jarman-Pinto (Werkha) as well as regular collaborators, flautist Lisa Mallett, harpist Rachael Gladwin, koto player Keiko Kitamura, pianist Taz Modi, bassist Gavin Barras and drummer Luke Flowers (The Cinematic Orchestra) and two percussionists Sam Bell and Chris Cruiks. The result is arguably Halsall's finest record, asublime melding of stripped back soulful funk and deep, minimalist, spiritual jazz, that will take you on a journey deep into forever!

Halsall who has been hailed as one of the leading figures of the UK jazz renaissance has never seen himself as part of any one sound or scene: he builds his own sonic universe instead. An Ever Changing View finds him at his most experimental yet, once again expanding his sound and production techniques to create his unique brand of deeply meditative music.

During the album's creation, he was staying in both a beautiful architect’s house with breath-taking sea views and a striking modernist house, where he composed what he saw “like a landscape painting”. In these new environments, Halsall wanted to capture “the feeling of openness and escapism” and to approach making music again from scratch. “I hit the reset button and wanted to have complete musical freedom,” he says. “It was a real exploration of sound.”

It was hearing jazz on the dancefloor as a teenager that first opened up new possibilities in Halsall’s mind and his music has long drawn on his love for the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders and contemporary electronica from the likes of Warp Records and Ninja Tune. An Ever Changing View melds those forms in a way that feels heady and, at times, even otherworldly. One of the album’s starting points was Halsall’s ever-expanding box of percussion, from congas and kalimba to various clusters of seeds, bells and chimes, which he sampled and looped to use as a foundation for the songs – a first for him and his band. Elevating, charming, totally modern jazz tracks jostle with deft warm magic realism; and laid back grooves with hand percussion, deep bass and the gorgeous glisten of the Fender Rhodes meet hip-hop beats. Halsall himself sparkles, illuminating his beautiful tapestries of sound with lithe, glistening elegiac trumpet.

An Ever Changing View comes in a package as striking as the music, with handmade fonts designed by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic and the specially commissioned tapestry by artist Sara Kelly is a stunning and harmonious complement to the record's sound.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: That Matthew Halsall’s music takes as its starting point the meditative end of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane is no accident. His final two years of education were spent at the Maharishi school, where his experience of meditation led to a deeper immersion in Buddhism, a philosophy that permeates and shapes the nature of his work.

This is his ninth solo album, which in itself presents the perennial problem that dogs most artists; how to keep the originality and inspiration that accompany approaching a blank canvas and not disappear into a spiral of ever diminishing returns by clinging too tightly to the only formula they allow themselves to know. While it is true that the flow of his work has remained consistent, the individual components and musicians have not. Almost all of the original members of The Gondwana Orchestra have moved on to the burgeoning London jazz scene, the silver lining to this being their replacements have brought their own influence. Halsall has also an ever increasing collection of percussion instruments to draw on and use as a base for his music - in this case kalimba, glockenspiel and marimba amongst others, over which his serene trumpet soars softly overhead. It’s a testament to Halsall’s willingness to evolve that his music still sounds so fresh. He’s produced an exquisite, peaceful gem, as rich as any of his previous work, overflowing with warmth, intricacy and gentle charm.

On one level the album’s title could refer to the changes in landscape travelling between Northumberland and North Wales, where the album was recorded, But it also nods to the Buddhist concept of impermanence, the idea that it’s a property of the universe that nothing stays the same. An ever changing view.

TRACK LISTING

Tracing Nature
Water Street
An Ever Changing View
Calder Shapes
Mountains, Trees And Seas
Field Of Vision
Jewels
Sunlight Reflection
Natural Movement
Triangles In The Sky

Matthew Halsall announces a limited-edition Vinyl only pressing of Bright Sparkling Light, a luminous three track EP featuring some of his most gorgeous compositions.

Originally conceived as a tour only exclusive, Bright Sparkling Light was recorded alongside, last year’s expansive beguiling long-player An Ever Changing View and draws on the same trademark blend of jazz, electronica, global and spiritual jazz influences. The original pressing sold-out on Matthew’s EU and UK tour last October and November and so many people got in touch with us here at Gondwana asking how they could get a copy that we decided to make a further 2000 copies available for retail and online sales.

The title track is a hypnotic meditation built on one of the lushest loops Halsall has ever created and featuring stellar work from Halsall and flautist Matt Cliffe. Newborough Forest is a brisk, uplifting composition celebrating one of Halsall’s favourite landscapes and the wonderous Tide and the Moon paints a sonic picture of late-night waters and deep mindfulness and features some of Matt Cliffe’s most beautiful tenor playing.

Like An Ever Changing View, Bright Sparkling Light comes in a package as striking as the music, with handmade fonts designed by Ian Anderson and a beautifully realised embossed artwork that offers a perfect compliment to the LP.

Strictly limited and featuring a download code, Bright Sparkling Light will not be re-pressed.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Bright Sparkling Light
A2. Newborough Forest
B1. The Tide And The Moon

Matthew Halsall (born September 11, 1983, in Manchester, England) is a Worldwide Award winning and MOBO nominated trumpeter, composer, producer and DJ. Since 2008, Matthew has released seven critically acclaimed studio recordings and has been a key figure in the rise of a new jazz sound in the UK. In addition to his own releases Halsall has collaborated with many DJs and producers, most notably DJ Shadow and Mr. Scruff, and in 2013 Matthew's music was selected by Bonobo for his Late Night Tales compilation. Halsall is also the founder of Gondwana Records, a genre bending independent record label featuring a wealth defining albums by the likes of Portico Quartet, GoGo Penguin, Hania Rani and Mammal Hands. His own rich music draws on the spiritual-jazz of Alice Coltrane and Phaorah Sanders, contemporary electronica and dance music alongside his travels in Japan, the traditional art and music of which, has left a lasting impression on his compositions.


Sending My Love (2008) and Colour Yes (2009) were his first releases and document Halsall's first great bands featuring the likes of flautist Chip Wickham, saxophonist Nat Birchall, harpist Rachael Gladwin, bassist Gavin Barras and drummer Gaz Hughes. Joyful, life-enhancing albums, drawing on UK jazz and spiritual jazz influences but with a decidedly modern bounce, they introduced Halsall's music to the world gathering support from the likes of Gilles Peterson and Jamie Cullum, Mojo, Straight No Chaser and beyond. But Halsall was never completely happy with how the records were presented and as part of Gondwana Records 10th anniversary decided to revisit the recordings, meticulously remixing and remastering them for vinyl and commissioning new artwork from Ian Anderson, one of his favourite designers. These then are the definitive editions of the records. Sending My Love comes complete with the beautiful bonus track This Time, while Colour Yes features the equally striking It's What We Do and Ai.

"I am very proud of these early recordings. They represent the starting point of my musical journey in Manchester and showcase some of the cities finest musicians such as: Nat Birchall, Chip Wickham, Rachael Gladwin, Adam Fairhall, Gavin Barras and Gaz Hughes. They are also the very first recordings my brother and I decided to release on our record label (Gondwana Records). Listening back they sound full of energy and joy and really reflect how I was feeling at that precise moment. But as much as I loved the music, I was never 100 percent happy with the sound of the mixes and mastering. So I decided to go back to the original tapes to remix and remaster them and present them the way I'd always wanted, and along the way we unearthed a couple extra unreleased tracks, which we decided to include as bonus material. Myself and my brother also decided to bring in Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic to re-imagine the artwork and we are super blown away by the results!" Matthew Halsall, Oct 2019

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: A further look into Matthew Halsall’s previous releases, Colour Yes from 2009 is a mixture of soft piano keys and swaying brass. More uncovered gems please Gondwana Records, this is truly beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

1. Colour Yes
2. Together
3. I've Found Joy
4. Mudita
5. I've Been Here Before
6. Me And You
7. It's What We Do (Bonus Track)
8. Ai (Bonus Track) 

Manchester based trumpeter, composer, arranger and band-leader Matthew Halsall is one of the rising stars of the UK jazz scene. His unique sound was brilliantly described as "Rain-streaked spiritual jazz from Manchester" by the Independent On Sunday and previous albums have found Halsall exploring the modal jazz of John and Alice Coltrane or paying heartfelt tribute to the hard bop of the late 50s and early 60s, but on 'Fletcher Moss Park' he offers his most personal statement yet.

Written and recorded over the last couple of years, 'Fletcher Moss Park' is inspired by one of Manchester's most beautiful places. A rambling, multi-tiered park of walkways and dreamy gardens that offers the contemplative Halsall a place of peace and respite from the city, a meditative space to think and write in. The stillness and beauty of the surroundings have steeped into his beautiful compositions for this album. Elegant and sincere, Halsall's compositions draw on his love of spiritual jazz, modern dance music and even his work with the award-winning Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band earlier this year. Halsall who has recently been exploring his music in a stripped-back, electronica influenced, trio (featuring Taz Modi and Luke Flowers who also appear here) as well as the 12 piece Gondwana Orchestra has always favoured an earthy honestly and direct communication over tricksy arrangements and it is this deceptively simple openness that gives his music such a unique flavour as the young composer and producer seeks to express his feelings and thoughts with his music.

'Fletcher Moss Park' opens with three tracks featuring saxophonist Nat Birchall, harpist Rachael Gladwin and pianist Adam Fairhall alongside bassist Gavin Barras and drummer Gaz Hughes all long running members of Halsall's sextet. The beautiful 'Cherry Blossom' opens with a nod to Alice Coltrane before exploring it's own contemplative trajectory, the title track features a gorgeous opening from harpist Gladwin and one of Halsall's trademark slow but foot tappingly catchy grooves, Mary Emma Louise is an elegant tribute to someone special and features some beautifully wistful playing from the composer. 'Sailing Out To Sea' and 'Wee Lan' offer a change in mood, two short interludes for violin (Holly Simpson and Davinder Singh), cello (Adrianne Wininsky) and double bass (Barras), Halsall chose not to play here feeling that the brief musical sketches caught his intentions perfectly. Finally the album closes with the two most recent compositions, the reposeful 'Sun In September' which features fine work from flautist Lisa Mallett, alongside pianist Taz Modi and drummer Luke Flowers and the uplifting 'Finding My Way', which with its compelling groove and fine drumming from Flowers (best known for his work with Cinematic Orchestra) offers a nod towards Halsall's love of contemporary electronic music as well as a hint of future projects. But as with the writing here you can be sure that wherever Halsall's muse takes him his music will remain heartfelt and life affirming in its elegant directness as he explores his own unique musical terrain that stretches from the bucolic stillness of 'Fletcher Moss Park' to a world far beyond!

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: A favourite of mine from our own local Jazz mastermind. Fletcher Moss Park explores a 50's, 60's sound channeling the likes of Coltrane. As you can imagine this album flows beautifully from beginning to end, almost as good as a stroll through the park itself.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cherry Blossom
2. Fletcher Moss Park
3. Mary Emma Louise
4. Sailing Out To Sea
5. Wee Lan (Little Orchid)
6. The Sun In September
7. Finding My Way

The recordings on Oneness date from Jan, March and September 2008 and were born from a period of experimentation as Halsall first began to explore the music that would provide the inspiration for his spiritual jazz recordings Fletcher Moss Park and When the World Was One. They also offer an intriguing snapshot into the birth of Halsall's Gondwana Orchestra and feature many musicians who would go on to become a key part of Halsall's musical journey, such as harpist Rachel Gladwin, bassist Gavin Barras and saxophonist Nat Birchall. The recordings sat in the Gondwana Records vaults for over a decade before Halsall felt it was the right time to share them. Asked about the recordings Halsall says:

"I've always treasured these recordings and loved how vulnerable, open and free they are, but I just felt they were too subtle and sensitive to release early on in my career, so I held them back until now. I also feel now is the right time to release these before I begin a fresh journey with a new bunch of musicians."

Remarkably, the beautiful compositions heard here were all built around a simple tanpura drone sound. An instrument Halsall heard on Alice Coltrane's 'Journey In Satchidananda' album and then at a later date in a concert featuring Arun Ghosh on clarinet and John Ellis on piano. "I loved the way this instrument created a sort of meditative atmospheric pulse for the musicians to work over and it had this beautiful feeling of togetherness, so after the gig I went out and bought a Raagini Shruti box featuring the tanpura drone and began to practice my trumpet over it and wrote lots of loose themes and melodies".

The sessions that make up Oneness capture Halsall in the process of building a new band, reaching out to various musicians he'd discovered and admired on the Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds music scene. "I really liked this idea of bringing lots of musicians together from different backgrounds and was fascinated with how they would all react to each other and the tanpura drone box seemed to bring everyone together really well, it was kind of like a nice meditative icebreaker exercise for everyone to loosen up, before we got stuck into the more composed tunes I'd created, some of which ended up on the Sending My Love and Colour Yes albums".

The album's title, Oneness, speaks to both Halsall's conviction that the planet should be shared equally with all of its inhabitants. That no human being or other inhabitant deserves to exist more than the other and that we can achieve far more together than against each other. And also importantly to what Halsall was aiming for musically:

"I really believe in Oneness and I've always loved the term 'greater than the sum of its parts'. I could make music on my own and live a fairly isolated antisocial life, but there's something far more rewarding about creating things with others. And for me these sessions document the coming together of lots of different musicians in a wonderfully organic soulful way to make egoless music".

It's a belief that continues to underpin Matthew's music making and a message that the word sorely needs right now as we feel more divided and separated than ever. This then is Oneness, a decade in the making and well worth the wait. Enjoy!

AIRPLAY from Mart Ann Hobbs, Gilles Peterson, Unclassified radio 3, Late Junction etc

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Matthew Halsall’s recordings from 2008 have made it to the surface in this stunningly delicate record, Oneness. From the beginning of his journey, this precious jazz which has been stored for over a decade is a beautiful and pure edition to Halsall’s releases.

TRACK LISTING

1. Life
2. Oneness
3. Stan's Harp
4. Loving Kindness
5. Distant Land
6. Stories From India
7. The Traveller

Composer, trumpeter, producer, DJ and founder of Gondwana Records, Matthew Halsall has always worn many hats. But at the heart of everything that he does Halsall is first and foremost an artist and a musician. A trumpeter whose unflashy, soulful playing radiates a thoughtful beauty and a composer and band-leader who has created his own rich sound world. A sound that draws on the heritage of British jazz, the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, as well as world music and electronica influences, and even modern art and architecture, to create something uniquely his own. A music that is rooted in Northern England but draws on global inspirations.

Salute to the Sun is his first album as a leader since Into Forever (2015) and marks the debut of his new band. A hand-picked ensemble featuring some of Manchester’s finest young musicians: Matt Cliffe flute & saxophone, Maddie Herbert harp, Liviu Gheorghe piano, Alan Taylor drums and Jack McCarthy percussion as well as long-time Halsall collaborator, bassist, Gavin Barras who has been at the heart of Halsall’s bands for over a decade. For Matthew it was important to have a band based locally and able, pre-Covid, to meet and play each week, and who also performed a sold-out monthly basement session at Yes in Manchester. The album draws energy from these sessions and inspiration from themes and ideas that have inspired Halsall through the years (on albums such as Oneness, Fletcher Moss Park and When the World Was One) ideas of ecology, the environment and harmony with nature.

“I feel Salute to the Sun is a positive earthy album. I wanted to create something playful but also quite primitive, earthy and organic that connected to the sounds in nature. I was listening to lush ambient field recordings of tropical environments such as jungles and rainforests and found myself drawn to percussive atmospheric sounds which replicated what I was hearing (bells / shakers / chimes / rain sticks) and I started to experiment with more wooden percussive instruments such as kalimba and marimba”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: After a year in which most of us had plenty of opportunity to reconnect with nature, Manchester’s pre-eminent jazz musician returned with this lush tribute to the living world. ’Salute To The Sun’ is Halsall’s first album as a leader in five years, and finds him fronting a new band cherry picked from the next generation of Mancunian musicians as well as long time collaborator Gavin Barras.

Halsall’s spent much of the last decade reinterpreting spiritual jazz for the 21st century, and there’s been a consistent focus on ecological influences. On ’Salute To The Sun’ however, Halsall looks far beyond Fletcher Moss, instead exploring the humid sounds of the tropics across seven immersive compositions. Placing a greater emphasis on percussion than on previous works, Halsall lets his expressive tone soar over the woody rhythms beneath, the marimba and kalimba adding pitched nuance to the primal drum patterns. This album is as rich, warm and rewarding as the life giving orb which inspired it.

TRACK LISTING

Harmony With Nature
Joyful Spirits Of The Universe
Canopy & Stars
Mindfulness Meditations
Tropical Landscapes
Salute To The Sun
The Energy Of Life

Salute to the Sun: Live at Hallé St Peter's documents a very special concert recorded at the iconic Manchester venue during lockdown.

Released in November 2020, Matthew's Halsall'sSalute to the Sunwas the trumpeter's first album since 2015'sInto Foreverand marked the debut of his new band. A hand-picked ensemble featuring some of Manchester's finest young musicians. The album drew it's energy from the band's weekly sessions and was inspired by Halsall's love of nature. Lush and spiritual it received universal praise, but Halsall and his band were frustrated that they were unable to share their beautiful new sound live with an audience.

On November 25th 2020, Halsall took his band into the iconic Manchester venue,Hallé St Peter's,for a concert recording in aid of the charityMindand was streamed to a global audience in the thousands the concert was also recorded for posterity.

"When we recorded Salute to the Sun, I wanted to create something playful but also quite earthy and organic that connected to the sounds in nature. It seemed to strike a chord with people and I was blown away by the response to the album. Our concert film, recorded at the height of last winter's lockdown was a special moment for us all and I feel that the concert recording captured something beautiful that we wanted to share".

Salute to the Sun: Live at Hallé St Peter's featuresMatthew Halsall– trumpet,Matt Cliffe- flute & saxophone,Maddie Herbert– harp,Gavin Barras– bass,Liviu Gheorghe– piano,Alan Taylor– drums andJack McCarthy- percussion

The recording has been mixed by Matthew Halsall andGeorge Atkinsat80 Hertzand is mastered byPeter BeckmannatTechnology Works. The vinyl was cut at Calyx in Berlin and the album is pressed at Optimal in Germany. It is presented in the form of a limited edition 2LP set with artwork by legendary designerIan AndersonofThe Designers Republic.

Spread over three sides of the vinyl LP for maximum fidelity the fourth side of the LP (side D) features an etching ofDaniel Halsall's now iconic artwork for the album Salute to the Sun and copies are strictly limited with just 3000 available in total. The album will also be available for download and on streaming platforms.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Recorded just over a year ago, Salute to the Sun recording feels momentous for the historic venue and beautiful orchestral works. The concert has been encapsulated in time, featuring a sublime sound from Mathew Halsall as always. Such a joy to listen to.

TRACK LISTING

1. Harmony With Nature (Live At Hallé St Peter's)
2. Joyful Spirits Of The Universe (Live At Hallé St Peter's)
3. Canopy & Stars (Live At Hallé St Peter's)
4. Mindfulness Meditations (Live At Hallé St Peter's)
5. Tropical Landscapes (Live At Hallé St Peter's)
6. Salute To The Sun (Live At Hallé St Peter's)

Matthew Halsall (born September 11, 1983, in Manchester, England) is a Worldwide Award winning and MOBO nominated trumpeter, composer, producer and DJ. Since 2008, Matthew has released seven critically acclaimed studio recordings and has been a key figure in the rise of a new jazz sound in the UK. In addition to his own releases Halsall has collaborated with many DJs and producers, most notably DJ Shadow and Mr. Scruff, and in 2013 Matthew's music was selected by Bonobo for his Late Night Tales compilation. Halsall is also the founder of Gondwana Records, a genre bending independent record label featuring a wealth defining albums by the likes of Portico Quartet, GoGo Penguin, Hania Rani and Mammal Hands. His own rich music draws on the spiritual-jazz of Alice Coltrane and Phaorah Sanders, contemporary electronica and dance music alongside his travels in Japan, the traditional art and music of which, has left a lasting impression on his compositions.


Sending My Love (2008) and Colour Yes (2009) were his first releases and document Halsall's first great bands featuring the likes of flautist Chip Wickham, saxophonist Nat Birchall, harpist Rachael Gladwin, bassist Gavin Barras and drummer Gaz Hughes. Joyful, life-enhancing albums, drawing on UK jazz and spiritual jazz influences but with a decidedly modern bounce, they introduced Halsall's music to the world gathering support from the likes of Gilles Peterson and Jamie Cullum, Mojo, Straight No Chaser and beyond. But Halsall was never completely happy with how the records were presented and as part of Gondwana Records 10th anniversary decided to revisit the recordings, meticulously remixing and remastering them for vinyl and commissioning new artwork from Ian Anderson, one of his favourite designers. These then are the definitive editions of the records. Sending My Love comes complete with the beautiful bonus track This Time, while Colour Yes features the equally striking It's What We Do and Ai.


"I am very proud of these early recordings. They represent the starting point of my musical journey in Manchester and showcase some of the cities finest musicians such as: Nat Birchall, Chip Wickham, Rachael Gladwin, Adam Fairhall, Gavin Barras and Gaz Hughes. They are also the very first recordings my brother and I decided to release on our record label (Gondwana Records). Listening back they sound full of energy and joy and really reflect how I was feeling at that precise moment. But as much as I loved the music, I was never 100 percent happy with the sound of the mixes and mastering. So I decided to go back to the original tapes to remix and remaster them and present them the way I'd always wanted, and along the way we unearthed a couple extra unreleased tracks, which we decided to include as bonus material. Myself and my brother also decided to bring in Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic to re-imagine the artwork and we are super blown away by the results!" Matthew Halsall, Oct 2019

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: The first of Mathew Halsall’s original releases ‘Sending My Love’ is a journey back in time to Halsall’s first beginnings with flourishing jazz notes. With the bonus track ‘This Time’ it’s a remastered treasure!

TRACK LISTING

1. On The Other Side Of The World
2. Reflections
3. Freedom Song
4. Sending My Love
5. Sachi
6. This Time (Bonus Track) 

From the shrapnel of the unlikely collision point where Mancunian post punk royalty collides with sci-fi cinema and art house animation, this obscure diamond in the rough shines a new light on the Northern DIY era providing disc detectives with a whole new punk funk perspective. Recorded in 1976 by Invisible Girls’ Steve Hopkins and Martin Hannett for a truly bizarre stopmotion animation called ‘All Sorts Of Heroes’, this hard edged funk instrumental theme reveals another side to this versatile production team, joining the hidden dots between Hannett’s own discoid experiments with ESG, Gyro, A Certain Ratio and the mythical Afro Express recordings from the same year. Embodying as much in common with 1970’s bass heavy European funk soundtracks by bands like Goblin and Placebo, as the expected parallels with John-Cooper Clarke’s backing tracks or early Happy Mondays, this early 1976 session is the perfect example of Hannett and Hopkins’ under-the-radar artistic commissions working to a storyboard brief in what has now become recognised as a fertile arena for lost filmic funk.

Drawing historic parallels with Leeds based Graeme Miller and Steve Shill’s home recorded DIY soundtracks for ‘The Moomins’ animation and accentuating the connection between Manchester based animation house Cosgrove Hall (‘Dangermouse’ / ‘Chorlton And The Wheelies’) and its employees Bernard Sumner, John Squire and members of Gerry And The Holograms, this lost recording adds kudos to a quirky micro-niche and reveals another dimension to Northern anti-pop’s snarky personality.

Pressed here by Finders Keepers for the first time on vinyl, in close accordance with the wishes of Steve Hopkins himself, this custom-composed track originally appeared on the short film by Rick Megginson and Steve Hughes which was shown at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 1976 where it might have otherwise remained, preserved in an 8mm film box up until now. As relevant today as it was then, this closely recorded, cosmic cartoon, slappy funk theme provided the films backdrop for a workshop montage scene where an aardvarkian spaceman constructs a giant metal face robot which might well leave fans of Madlib and MF Doom fans pondering time travel. Like much of the lost and unreleased projects that stalled on the peripheries of early proto-Madchester, including the disco-pogo music of Spider King, Gerry And The Holograms, The 48 Chairs, Naffi and The Mothmen, this record has been frozen in time waiting for the wider marathon of independent pop to catch up.

This 7” might well be another missing link between your Rabid, Absurd and Factory records, backed with another lesser-known Invisible Girls recording, ‘Scandinavian Wastes’, which has also been begging for its first vinyl outing since its recording in the early 1980s.

TRACK LISTING

All Sorts Of Heroes
Scandanavian Wastes

Having worked for years as side-woman for the likes of Sufjan Stevens, The National and My Brightest Diamond, Marla Hansen returns with her first solo album in twelve years. "Dust" has the weight and wisdom of hand-me-down folk songs, but also sparkles with the confidence and the excitement of an artist with new colours on her palette. The slow-burn of "Dust's" inception can be felt as the album plays. The tracks have weight and wisdom like hand-me-down folk songs, but also sparkle with the confidence and the excitement of an artist with new colours on her palette. Taylor Savvy (Peaches), Knox Chandler (R.E.M.) and Christian Biegai (Antony and the Johnsons) are all present at this banquet - a transatlantic tapestry sewn together by producer Robbie Moore at his Berlin studio complex Impression Recordings.

'Up To The Glass' is a delicate exploration of finding yourself in your twenties against a backdrop of love, self-acceptance and loss. Morgan Harper-Jones explores her emotions through confessional narratives and soaring dream-pop soundscapes on her debut album. Quickly becoming one of the UKs most exciting new voices, featuring four tracks in the global #1 Netflix film 'Love At First Sight' at the end of 2023 at reaching #8 in the global Shazam charts.

“My favourite moments in other people’s songs are where it feels like someone has just reached through the speaker or headphones and grabbed my hand and said: ‘Hey don’t worry, you’re normal – I feel that too.’ I hope above anything else that my songs can be that for someone else too.”

The idea that writing & distilling my own (sometimes overwhelming) emotions and experiences into a 3 minute moment might bring someone some comfort, help someone feel or express something, understand themselves more deeply or just feel like they aren’t alone is really the most important motivation for me to share what I’m writing.” - Morgan Harper-Jones

TRACK LISTING

1. Swimming Upstream
2. Boombox
3. Leaves
4. Alone With You
5. Main Character
6. Forever For Now
7. Lose A Tooth
8. Joshua
9. Little Avalanches
10. 2D
11. Amelia
12. Easy

Matt Hartless is a British-Irish musician performing and recording mainly as a soloist and with his backing band, The Matchstick Ghosts. Writing music and having had lessons in Piano, Trumpet and Violin at an early age; Matt took to music more seriously when having drumming lessons and teaching himself to play the guitar at around fifteen/sixteen. As he went into his A-level years at school, Matt formed his first band, a covers band called 'The Swag' where he sang and played lead guitar with some childhood friends. They only had a few gigs then everyone went their separate ways to university.
Matt became a lot more interested in recording his music after starting a music degree at Salford and forming a few bands with fellow students. The most prominent of these was 'Freed By Mice.' After a few gigs in Salford, Manchester and Sheffield, Matt went home to finish writing and record his first full solo album, 'Our Last Days In The Sun' upon which Freed By Mice guitarist Joe Leonard contributed a solo.
Freed By Mice soon went on hiatus and Matt formed The Matchstick Ghosts to play songs from his album. As his second university year wore on, Matt started to write again, but with a much darker and more experimental sound. In April 2013 Matt released his first single, 'Friend Synthetic' adapted from the Freed By Mice days (but written long before) with a launch gig in Manchester.
Problems with finding a regular bassist meant that the band was often set back and making any progress was difficult, so during May and June, Matt focused again on his solo work and at Salford University's studios recorded the majority of 'Victory,' the second album. He employed a lot more of the university's facilities, especially effects programs and hardware to create an amalgam of man and machine before mixing the whole album with friend and Matchstick Ghosts drummer, Kit Warren.
During the next few months Matt played many small acoustic gigs in and around Manchester with his nylon string guitar and occasionally with piano when there was one to hand. After two gigs in Sheffield, The Matchstick Ghosts finally solved their bassist conundrum, at least for the near future, in Sheffield based Jacob Harrap.
Victory was released on the 4th of October on Matt's label, Weird Affection Records.

Influences:

Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Elbow, The Specials, Streetlight Manifesto, Louis Barabbas, Frederic Chopin, Duke Ellington, Erik Satie, Porcupine Tree, Muse, Dry The River, Joy Division, Gogol Bordello, Hybrid, Jean Michel Jarre.

It has taken 20 years for Mick Harvey to resume his project of translating Serge Gainsbourg’s songs into English and this is the long-awaited continuation (Volume 3) of the series - ‘Delirium Tremens’.

The intervening years have, of course, been full of activity and dozens of releases, including four solo albums and several albums as a member of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and in collaboration with PJ Harvey.

‘Delirium Tremens’ brings us another wide crosssection of Gainsbourg material. From 1976’s ‘The Man With The Cabbage Head’ (L’homme a tete de chou) all the way back to early songs such as ‘Deadly Tedium’ (Ce Mortel Ennui) and ‘Coffee Colour’ (Couleur Cafe) from the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as a selection of five songs from the TV special ‘Anna’ which starred Anna Karina with the female parts here executed with enormous charm by Xanthe Waite, who has been joining Harvey on his recent shows.

The album is rounded out by a beautiful rendering of the late period Jane Birkin duet ‘The Decadance’ (La Decadanse) where Harvey is joined on vocals by his wife Katy Beale.

Mick Harvey is set to release a double collection of his two Serge Gainsbourg albums, ‘Intoxicated Man’ and ‘Pink Elephants’, through Mute.

‘Intoxicated Man’ (1995) and ‘Pink Elephants’ (1997) are Mick Harvey’s interpretations of the songs of legendary singer, songwriter and poet Serge Gainsbourg and are the first major works translating Gainsbourg’s influential work from French to English. The collection will include two unreleased tracks, ‘Dr. Jeckyll’ and ‘Run From Happiness’.

Originally Harvey embarked on the project as a result of his own curiosity about the songs and particularly the lyrics. At the time of the original recordings Gainsbourg was little known outside classic works such as ‘Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus’ (‘I Love You… Nor Do I’), ‘Lemon Incest’, ‘Harley Davidson’, ‘Initials B.B.’ and ‘Bonnie & Clyde’. On this collection these classic works are presented alongside some of Gainsbourg’s lesser known compositions.

The vocal parts originally sung by Gainsbourg’s muses Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot and daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg are here sung by longtime collaborator Anita Lane. Guests on the albums include Bertrand Burgalat, Warren Ellis and David McClymont.

The reissues follow Mick Harvey’s 2013 album, ‘FOUR (Acts Of Love)’, which was the former Bad Seed and PJ Harvey collaborator’s sixth solo studio album, and the follow up to 2011’s ‘Sketches From The Book Of The Dead’.