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AD 93

James K

Friend

    James K follows up on AD 93 with her third album, 'Friend'. The oneiric fogs of James K lifting into vision have stirred and shaped the landscape of contemporary music since her first release. It is not hyperbole to say that K has consistently beta-launched sounds and perspectives that have rippled across many mediums for years, defining a way that is both singular in vision and marked by collaboration and shared dreaming. Known for her polychromatic hypersensitivity, K’s hauntological dream pop is making ‘music that slows the anxious heart while holding a mirror to {the} deep-rooted angst we prefer to leave unspoken.’

    An opening of the portal, 'Friend' is the culmination of a decade of K’s work; the gates of which gleam like a slow drip of melodic infusion, at once a remedy and an inquiry. Friend encapsulates a lifelong praxis of intuitive music making, delivering a more precise and controlled sound, with versions of songs shifting into focus like recovered memories. Feeling her way through textures, a return to, and a melding of, the voice and technical mastery, these soundscapes lay down a framework over time that traces the history of her practice. James K has been a cosmic point of the aesthetic underground across the world, as a vocalist, producer, artist and collaborator. Her breathy, lilting vocals have floated across some of the past year’s best music. Expanding and ethereal, they make you feel like the call is coming from inside the house.

    You can trace touch points across her lengthy catalogue, spanning from the foundational urgency of 2013’s debut 'Rum' EP, to the prismatic elasticity of PET (She Rocks!/Dial), to the strange-faced, visceral and, at times, sepulchral intoxication of Random Girl (Incienso), from the universal ecstasy of trip-hop lullaby ‘Scorpio’ (AD 93). To this day, her transmutative career has led K to amass a bouquet of collaborations with artists like Heith, Moin, Fergus Jones + Huerco S., Priori, Yves Tumor, Drew McDowall, LEYA, and others.

    Friend is K’s return to the core; with a vault of hard lessons and inimitable love to draw from. Based in New York where she was born and has lived most of her life, there is a constant evolution of the city which she embodies sonically, like the growth, decay and push, pull of relationships and spaces. At the crux of these crossroads is the homespun and ever-evolving DIY rave culture which continues to embody and cycle through lives of its own. This ecology spans across geographical lines and remains the touchstone and core of the james K vocation: the backbone and infrastructure from which her distinctive command of interwoven guitar and electronic arrangements ultimately coalesces. Grafting fragments of the real and the surreal is the provenance she draws from in her thoughtful and emotive international performances including Dekmantel, Sustain Release, Mutek, iii Points, and more.

    TRACK LISTING

    1. Days Go By
    2. Blinkmoth (July Mix)
    3. Doom Bikini
    4. Idea.2
    5. N’Balmed
    6. Rider
    7. On God
    8. Peel
    9. Lude (Unwind)
    10. Play
    11. Lung Slide
    12. Hypersoft Lovejinx Junkdream
    13. Collapse (Falling Forward Blissfully All The Time)

    Valentina Magaletti & YPY

    Kansai Bruises

      Drummer, percussionist and composer Valentina Magaletti (Moin, Holy Tongue, Vanishing Twin) has combined forces with musician, producer and composer YPY (aka Koshiro Hino of Goat) for their LP, Kansai Bruises, which will be out via AD 93 August 1st. Listen to their first single ‘Her Own Reflection’ alongside the announcement on July 9th.

      The pair crash through Osaka’s neon-lit streets with abrasive drums and handcrafted Japanese electronics that hit like pavement against skin. This is bliss carved from bruises—hope and fear tangled in metallic percussion while dreams of pesto float through sake-soaked alleyways.

      TRACK LISTING

      A1. One Hour Visa
      A2. Kansai Bruises
      A3. Float
      A4. Lantern Lit Run
      B1. Her Own Reflection
      B2. Silhouette
      B3. Interlude For Fog Days
      B4. Pesto

      Biosphere

      The Way Of Time

        Biosphere’s album 'The Way Of Time' takes loose inspiration from Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ novel The Time Of Man, sampling Joan Lorring’s voice from the 1951 radio play adaptation of the novel. Biosphere’s signature ambient loops, soothing arctic synths and melodies combine with Lorring’s sweet, wistful and deep-south wonderings to create a record that is both deeply human and searching.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. TIME OF MAN
        2. THE WAY OF TIME
        /3. LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD
        4. ALL STARS HAVE NAMES
        5. THE OLD WAY WAS GONE
        6. THE WAY OF TIME (ON AND ON)

        Moin

        Belly Up

          Going belly up, guess it’s always a possibility.

          Following the release of their acclaimed 'You Never End' LP, Moin return with their latest EP - 'Belly Up'.

          5 sonic soundscapes that drift from minimal ambience to percussive post rock.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. SEE
          2. I’M REALLY FLAGGING (OR I TRUSTED U)
          3. YOU LEAVE ME BREATHLESS
          4. X.U.Y.
          5. I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO LOOK
          6. THE DAY

          Light-Space Modulator

          The Rising Wave

            'The Rising Wave' marks the debut collaboration between singer-songwriter Marlene Ribeiro (of psychedelic band GNOD) and electronic producer Shackleton under the name Light Space Modulator.

            Ribeiro’s ethereal voice—part singing, part incantation—feels both distant and intimate, humming just behind the horizon. Her experimental soundscapes flow like a streamlined river, intertwining seamlessly with Shackleton’s deep, textural production and intricate percussion. Shackleton’s percussive production ebbs and swells, conjuring a hypnotic, trippedout atmosphere. At 'The Rising Wave’s core lies a sense of intention, a cleansing ritual designed to shift perception and inspire transformation.


            TRACK LISTING

            1. SECRETS KEPT
            2. BURNING WITHIN
            3. HER NAME
            4. I DREAMED OF A LOVER
            5. ONDA / DO YOU BELIEVE?
            6. THESE THINGS
            7. THE LONG BURIED HOPE
            8. THE LAST TIME

            LICE

            Third Time At The Beach

              Formed in Bristol, 4-piece LICE have become one of UK experimental rock’s most inventive and ambitious outliers. Their second album ‘Third Time At The Beach’ – a three-part epic exploring our struggle to better understand the world around us – arrives via AD 93. Darting between minimalism, rock, techno and more, it sends us hurtling us through time and space: featuring a cast of astronauts, cavemen and dinosaurs.

              This follows LICE’s internationally acclaimed debut album ‘WASTELAND: What Ails Our People Is Clear’ (2021). Praised as “exciting, alive, packed with musical ideas” by Financial Times and “a welcome lease of life for British avant-rock that plays with expectation at every turn” by CRACK, it also gained radio support across BBC 6Music, BBC Radio 1 and KEXP. The album led LICE to perform at major festivals including Reading & Leeds, Green Man and End Of The Road, embark on an extensive EU tour supporting Sleaford Mods, and tour across the UK & EU.

              ‘Third Time At The Beach’’s concept is expressed through three movements. The first (‘Unscrewed’, ‘White Tubes’, ‘Red Fibres’) presents the child being introduced to the world, hammered into shape through prevailing culture, and realising they have reached adulthood with a blinkered understanding of the world. The second (‘To The Basket’, ‘Wrapped In A Sheet’, ‘Scenes From The Desert’, ‘Mown In Circles’) is a disorientating, alien sequence: reevaluating fundamental concepts including money, time, nationhood and language. In the third (‘Fatigued, Confused’, ‘Third Time At The Beach’, ‘The Dance’), the individual embraces these new ideas – granting them a changed understanding of the world, and more agency in the path they take through it.

              Everything is always changing in ‘Third Time At The Beach’. The album shifts from lush piano balladry to crushing industrial, and from swampy avant-garde compositions to triumphant rock freakouts. Employing vocal manipulation and field recordings, as well as cutting together studio recordings and home demos, the band produces a spatially elastic, collage-like effect. The album, like the ideas being reached within it, presents a work-in-progress. Lyrically, the record employs a scattershot style to present the experience of learning (or ‘unlearning’). The listener visits ancient civilisations, the Industrial Revolution, outer space and the land of the dinosaurs: encountering mediaeval farmers, silver miners, cavemen, Napoleon and Satan.

              Speaking on the record, the band say: “This album’s about trying to understand the world and everything in it: history, science and the way we explain it all to each other. It’s a celebration of feeling confused or intimidated by the processes that shape our lives.”

              Of the album’s muscular, agitated lead single ‘Red Fibres’, LICE explain: “This song is about realising you’ve reached adulthood with a blinkered understanding of the world, and feeling confused and frustrated. After visiting some key moments in the history of language, science and the human eye, we arrive at a campsite: where two shipwreck survivors are about to have a fight.”


              STAFF COMMENTS

              Barry says: The UK has a bit of a burgeoning avant-rock scene at the moment, and Lice are (for me) the most immediately appealing of the whole bunch. We get the weird noises and syncopated industrial scree of Black Midi or the hardcore thump of Fat Dog, but with a keen sense of melody and most importantly, songs that flow beautifully, weirdness or no.

              TRACK LISTING

              Side A:
              A1. Unscrewed
              A2. White Tubes
              A3. Red Fibres
              A4. To The Basket
              A5. Wrapped In A Sheet

              Side B:
              B1. Scenes From The Desert
              B2. Mown In Circles
              B3. Fatigued, Confused
              B4. Third Time At The Beach
              B5. The Dance

              Moin

              You Never End

                ‘You Never End’ is the third album from Moin, a London trio made up of Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead (Raime / Blackest Ever Black) as well as long time collaborator and percussionist visionary Valentina Magaletti. Its title alone expresses the teetering and shifting nature of both the album and band. This record marks the Moin’s shift into a new phase with vocal collaborations across the album from Olan Monk, james K, Coby Sey and Sophia Al-Maria.

                The album’s collaborators all have voices that are alluring in their own right whilst hard to pin down: from james K’s ethereal, reverb drenched vocals, Coby Sey’s words that bounce and echo across London’s concrete streets and Olan Monk’s emotive songwriting, while artist Sophie Al-Maria’s voice and thoughts are known to stretch across her multidisciplinary practice as an artist, filmmaker and writer. The unique mystique of each collaborator is maintained throughout the record while simultaneously opening Moin up to new possibilities, in a gentle shifting alchemy.

                Continuing their enigmatic re-configuring of the traditional band, Moin use a mix of conventional and unique production and compositional techniques. Subtly re-framing the current conversation about what band in 2024 needs to be, Moin walk the line between what's reassuringly familiar and what's unsettling and inquisitive. ‘You Never End’ is a more sensitive record in sentiment, it re-contextualises grunge, shoegaze and indie rock with a weirdly comforting melancholy while still sounding direct and alive.

                Showing Moin at their most accessible, the vocal collaborations bring the most articulate moments and lucid emotion while still remaining uniquely within Moin's established world. Alongside this, the record fine tunes the elements of electronic production that have always been a feature of the band's unique sound in a deeply subtle way. Elements are simpler and more direct, offering robust functional support as well as textural and emotional resonance. Together they show the potential for both practices to intertwine.

                ‘You Never End’ is both produced and mixed by Tom and Joe, demonstrating the extended range of control the pair have over the band's sound, and their ability to truly hold together Moin’s intricate world.


                STAFF COMMENTS

                Liam says: This new one from Moin is an absolute must! Bursting with proper interesting mathy and angular textures, the atmosphere on this thing is mega! For fans of Slint, Sonic Youth or anything slowcore/no-wavey, you need to get all over this!

                TRACK LISTING

                Side A
                A1. Guess It's Wrecked Feat. Olan Monk
                A2. Cubby
                A3. Family Way Feat. Sophia Al-Maria
                A4. What If You Didn't Need A Reason Feat. James K
                A5. Lift You Feat. Sophia Al-Maria
                A6. It's Messy Coping

                Side B
                B1. We Know What Gives Feat. Coby Sey
                B2. C’Mon Dive
                B3. Anything But Sopo
                B4. Happy In The Wrong Way
                B5. Just Married

                Moin

                Paste - 2024 Reissue

                  ‘Paste’ is the second album by Moin, released on the October 2022 via AD 93.

                  The follow up to their well-received debut album ‘Moot!’, the record draws influences from alternative guitar music in its many forms, using electronic manipulations and sampling techniques to redefine it's context, not settling on any one style but moving through them in search of new connections.

                  By exploring these relationships, Moin delivers another collage of the known and unknown, punctuated by words that are just out of reach.


                  TRACK LISTING

                  A1. Foot Wrong
                  A2. Melon
                  A3. Yep Yep
                  A4. Forgetting Is Like Syrup
                  A5. In A Tizzy
                  B1. Knuckle
                  B2. Hung Up
                  B3. Life Choices
                  B4. Sink - Moin

                  Moin

                  Moot! - 2024 Reissue

                    Moin is a three-piece group consisting of Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead of Raime alongside longtime collaborator Valentina Magaletti of Tomaga, Shit & Shine & CZN. Released on AD93, Moot marks a creative left turn for the label and a pared-down studio approach for the artists involved. According to Moin, “the record was made as an experiment really, it felt like the right time to play on the fringes of this kind of music. The priority was to be direct at first and then change the edges perhaps. Make something to experience rather than something as a spectacle.”

                    Made using traditional live recording techniques with some sparingly applied sampling and post-processing in the studio afterwards, it’s a heady interpretation of the mist between post-punk, hardcore and down-tuned US stoner rock. There’s flashes of Slint in the hollow locked in percussion and ominous bass interludes, there's elements of the various influential projects of Justin Broadrick, Steve Albini or even Kevin Shields with the warm distortion across tracks like 'It's Never Goodbye' and the rhythmic complexity in the tightly wound, menacing time signatures.

                    A no-frills rediscovery of the music which informed their youth, Moot! is the culmination of 3 visionaries stripping things back to the essential elements. A visceral and timeless experience that's highly recommended.


                    TRACK LISTING

                    A1. No To Gods, No To Sunsets
                    A2. Crappy Dreams Count
                    A3. Don'T Make Me Wait
                    A4. Right Is Alright, Wrong Is To Belong
                    B1. Lungs
                    B2. I Can'T Help But Melt
                    B3. An Utter Stink
                    B4. It'S Never Goodbye


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