More jak beat from the on-fire Dirty Blends crew. This one's mad as a box of frogs, recalling the crazed genius of Steve Poindextor and early Lil Louis madness. All three tracks revolve around slam dance repetition, primordial jack patterns and pure Chicago spirit. Not for the fainthearted - strictly for the freaks! Recommended and limited. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: There's simply nothing like the Dirty Blends cartel out there at the moment. Revisiting the embryonic spirit of Chicago house music, when it was literally just a drum machine and a sampler, they manage to capture a primitive energy that's more intoxicating than half the other shit out there made with tons more equipment! Essential stuff for fans of Ron Hardy, Jamal Moss, Trax Records, Steve Poindextor, Adonis, Lil Louis etc etc.

TRACK LISTING

A. The Falcon - Sound The Alarm
B1. Grizzly Knuckles - Mad Bell
B2. The Jak - Aftermath

R.I.Y.L. The Lemon Twigs, Foxygen, Richard Swift.
Jonathan Rado was 1/2 of the Jagjaguwar duo Foxygen.

One of the most in-demand producers in indie rock, and one half of Foxygen, Jonathan Rado’s recordings for The Killers, Father John Misty, The Lemon Twigs, Whitney, and Weyes Blood devour the canon, and return something distinctly modern. On For Who The Bell Tolls For, Rado’s first solo release in ten years, the producer unveils a refined version of his signature sound, intricately sculpted by anthemic maximalism and good old-fashioned studio magic.

The album is an exercise in mournful maximalism, transforming the mythos of American pop music into a vibrant meditation on death. The spirit of late producer Richard Swift Rado’s friend and mentor can be found across the collection, imbuing tracks like “Easier” with a tangible sense of loss, and Swift-ian turns of phrase. On other songs, such as the addictive “Don’t Wait Too Long,” Rado paints an arena-ready production with streaks of longing and hopelessness. In many ways, For Who The Bell Tolls For is a musical ode to Swift, nodding to the late producer’s legacy with homespun epics that straddle the line between joy and grief.

Recorded at Electric Lady Studios, New York and Sonora Recorders and Dreamstar II, Los Angeles, the album features appearances by Rado's frequent collaborators, including The Lemon Twigs, Brad Oberhofer, Andrew Sarlo, Jackie Cohen, and Kane Ritchotte. Despite this esteemed lineup and the gargantuan sound of the record, For Who The Bell Tolls For is a solo album at heart. Rado plays the studio like an instrument, his distinct voice present in every nook and cranny of the structure. This presence can be easily detected in every project that the artist touches, but it’s never sounded so honest, so shimmering, or so Rado as it does here.

TRACK LISTING

1. For Who The Bell Tolls For
2. Don’t Wait Too Long
3. Easier
4. Blue Moon
5. Farther Away
6. Walk Away
7. Yer Funeral

Following the reissue of Bell Orchestre's debut album "Recording a Tape the Colour of Light" and their Juno award-winning second album "As Seen Through Windows" Erased Tapes is excited to announce the reissue of the band's original remix EP "Who Designs Nature's How". Bell Orchestre is a collaborative instrumental, Montreal based group who originally formed back in 1999. The first music they created was predominately live scores for contemporary dance performances and theatrical puppet shows. The fusion of Bell Orchestre's wildly divergent musical backgrounds and the energy created from this connection is the catalyst to the group's signature avantgarde sound. “

Who Designs Nature's How” features remixes of select songs from Bell Orchestre's second full-length album “As Seen Through Windows” and has been pressed on vinyl for the first time ever - originally only released on CD and exclusively sold on tour. Besides being pressed on vinyl for the very first time, the record features brand-new cover artwork by Munich-based graphic designer Bernd Kuchenbeiser. The album includes the spellbinding reinterpretation of Water / Light / Shifts courtesy of fellow Canadian electronic producer Tim Hecker.

“Listening to this, 14 years later and having totally forgotten making this one afternoon, was a reminder that things do change. I can hear the old markers of granular synthesis, Nord Modular synth and fake mellotron samples. These are tools left on a past workbench. It has the rough style of probably 5 layers of improvisation stacked against each other, in a way that feels both like home and yet also some distant foreign self.” — Tim Hecker In addition to Tim Hecker's lead single Water / Light / Shifts, The album also features contributions from the late Japanese prodigious composer Susuma Yokota, dub legend Mad Professor, Canadian DJ and producer Kid Koala, as well as long-time friend and collaborator Colin Stetson amongst others. I have some incredible memories from my brief stint as occasionally joining these lovely friends on stages around the world, and I am excited to see this music flitting about once again.

Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell has taken yet another musical detour, this time collaborating with Essex-based duo Masal on an incredible new album of ambient, astral jazz.Tidal Love Numbers is released via Sonic Cathedral on May 19, and is made up of four mesmerising, meandering instrumental tracks that combine Andy’s incredible guitar playing with analogue synths and harp.

Andy’s history in Ride, Oasis and numerous other bands is well-known, and his solo career has also taken off; his most recent album, Flicker, was one of last year’s finest. Masal, meanwhile, came together in Leigh-on-Sea after a chance meeting in a charity shop.Al Johnson has performed and released records as Alien for a number of years now, while Oz Simsek studied classical harp while growing up in Turkey, before joining a jazz band. Since relocating to the UK she has worked with the likes of Viv Albertine and Gazelle Twin. The duo connected over a shared love of electronic and world music and released their debut album Charity Shop in 2020.The collaboration with Andy came about after they supported him at an Andy Bell Space Station gig in Chelmsford during Independent Venue Week at the start of 2022. They got chatting on the night, and bonded over Promises, the collaboration between Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and The London Symphony Orchestra.“After hearing it, I felt there was something in that area for me, if I found the right collaborators,” says Andy, explaining how the hugely acclaimed 2021 release was effectively the starting point for this new project. “So, I was kind of on the lookout from that point. I’ve always loved the sound of harp music – Alice Coltrane and Joanna Newsom are both firm favourites – and so, when I met Oz and Al, it seemed like it could be a good combination.” “The moment Andy mentioned his love of the Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders album, I knew we were thinking along the same lines,” says Oz. “As a lifelong shoegazer, Al already shared a common musical background and direction, but we got chatting over texts and emails and very soon we were exchanging musical ideas.” Andy was inspired by the likes of William Basinski, Harold Budd, Ariel Kalma’s Osmose and Babe, Terror’s Ancient M’ocean, while Masal shared their love for Prince Lasha, Turkish prog and folk, medieval harp music and Guitarrorists, a 1991 compilation of outsider guitar sounds. The end result – sympathetically mastered by Andy’s Ride bandmate Mark Gardener – lands somewhere between Mary Lattimore, psych-folk guitarist Sandy Bull and Spacemen 3’s Dreamweapon, with the four pieces subtly ebbing and flowing from pastoral picking to psychedelic bliss to noisy drones and back again, all punctuated by Oz’s heavenly harp.

Despite their length, the tracks never outstay their welcome, and their stream-of-consciousness titles add to the sense of intrigue.

“I wanted super-long titles like Felt,” explains Andy. “And I wanted to cram into them as much imagery and emotion as possible.”

It worked – this is an incredibly satisfying trip; as focused and vivid as it is fuzzy and vague. It’s time to float away with the Tidal Love Numbers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Murmuration Of Warm Dappled Light On Her Back After Swimming
2. The Slight Unease Of Seeing A Crescent Moon In Blue Midday Sky
3. Tidal Love Conversations In That Familiar Golden Orchard
4. A Pyramid Hidden By Centuries Of Neon Green Undergrowth

Erased Tapes are thrilled to announce the reissue of Bell Orchestre second album As Seen Through Windows out on April 28th.

Bell Orchestre is a collaborative instrumental group based in Montreal. Whose six members come from wildly divergent musical backgrounds, and the unlikely chemistry that results from their collaboration is the very thing that sustains their connection. It’s as if the group as a whole has tapped into a very particular, very distinct energy: like that of an approaching storm. In many ways, Bell Orchestre is the sum of not only its parts but the sum of its influences and inspirations

Expanding further on the foundation that Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light laid, the group refined and tightened their sound on this masterpiece.

Bell Orchestre retreated to Banff Centre in the rocky mountains of Alberta to write the follow-up to their debut album. The title As Seen Through Windows is inspired by the rehearsal space where it was written. The room had two exterior walls entirely made of windows, and with the cinematic view of the mountains they saw occasional herds of elks and deer’s passing by.

The specifics of time and place, the elemental forces at work outside, and those forces that exist inside, all come into play within Bell Orchestre’s musical process. This particular music could be made by no one else at no other time in history.

The album was produced by John McEntire (Stereolab, Jeff Parker), drummer and producer of the legendary Chicago post-rock band Tortoise. McEntire had been the group’s dream producer to work with. “I think I was more starstruck around John McEntire than I’d been around anyone before,” says violinist Sarah Neufeld. McEntire was up for trying anything in the studio, and inspired the band endlessly.

Now looking back at the recording sessions, lap steel guitarist Michael Feuerstack remembers “I don’t know how aware we were of the uniqueness of our bond and the resulting methods of music making, but they are very evident across this recording.”

Following the original release, they went on to tour the world, from festivals and theatres to small venues.

TRACK LISTING

1. Stripes
2. Elephants
3. Icicles / Bicycles
4. Water / Light / Shifts
5. Bucephalus Bouncing Ball
6. As Seen Through Windows
7. The Gaze
8. Dark Lights
9. Air Lines / Land Lines

Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell releases a new compilation album called Strange Loops & Outer Psych on February 10, 2023.

The release marks the end of the campaign for Andy’s second solo album Flicker, which came out to great acclaim in February 2022, and rounds up 16 tracks from his recent run of three EPs (I Am A Strange Loop, The Grounding Process and Untitled Film Stills) that were made up of remixes, acoustic versions and covers of songs that inspired the album.

The new CD release includes four tracks that weren’t included on the original limited-edition vinyl releases. It also includes his fuzzed-up cover of Yoko Ono’s song ‘Listen, The Snow Is Falling’ – which was recently given the official seal of approval when Yoko herself tweeted the video to her 4.5 million followers – and the majestic Maps remix of ‘It Gets Easier’, as heard on Lauren Laverne’s show on BBC Radio 6 Music. There are further remixes by David Holmes, Richard Norris, bdrmm, A Place To Bury Strangers and Claude Cooper, as well as covers of songs by The Kinks, Arthur Russell and Pentangle and five fragile acoustic takes on album tracks.

“Almost a year to the day since I released my second album Flicker, here is a technicolour companion piece that pulls together the tracks from the EPs to colour in the edges of the record,” says Andy. “Influences, stripped down acoustic reworks and remixes by my friends, comrades and heroes all hopefully help the listener see where my head was when I made Flicker, but also it stands up as a decent listen in its own right.”

The CD was mastered in New York by Heba Kadry and is sequenced like a mixtape, which makes for a proper listening experience. “Hatful Of Hollow is my favourite Smiths album, just saying,” explains Andy. “Thanks to everyone who supported my music in 2022, I appreciate you all, see you in 2023.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Collating his three 10 inch releases from last year into a tasty little CD package, with a couple of extra remixes thrown in, 'Strange Loops & Outer Psyche' is the essential companion piece to Bell's fantastic 'Flicker'. With covers, acoustic versions and remixes, this one shouldn't be missed!

TRACK LISTING

1. The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
2. It Gets Easier (Maps Remix)
3. Our Last Night Together (Arthur Russell Cover)
4. The Way Love Used To Be (The Kinks Cover)
5. Something Like Love (Richard Norris Remix)
6. Listen, The Snow Is Falling (Yoko Ono Cover)
7. She Calls The Tune (Acoustic Version)
8. Love Is The Frequency (Acoustic Version)**
9. Light Flight (Pentangle Cover)
10. Lifeline (Acoustic Version)
11. World Of Echo (A Place To Bury Strangers Remix)**
12. Sidewinder (Claude Cooper Remix)**
13. Way Of The World (bdrmm Remix)
14. World Of Echo (Acoustic Version)
15. Something Like Love (Acoustic Version)
16. Something Like Love (Richard Norris Remix – Instrumental)**

Gemma Ray takes an unexpected detour from her acclaimed psych-soul and torch song oeuvre with a hard-edged experiment in cinematic electronica.

Epic despite its underlying simplicity and groove, ‘Gemma Ray & The Death Bell Gang’ blends the funereal and the sinister with tenderness and yearning, with a dash of automaton-pop and a Dada-esque playfulness for good measure. Front and centre are Gemma’s trademark stirring voice and harmonies.

Released on eco-mix and splatter coloured vinyl formats, with download card and exclusive pull-out poster by British painter Deryk Thomas (Swans, Angels of Light).

The record was recorded at Tempelhof Flughafen in Berlin and features collaborations from sound designer Ralf Goldkind (Fantastichen Vier, Mona Mur), lap steel player Kristof Hahn (Swans), and syncussion by Andy Zammit (Jon Spencer).

Accompanying videos for the singles ‘Come Oblivion’, ‘Howling’ and ‘Procession’ by animator Lucy Dyson (Paul McCartney, Beyonce, Courtney Barnett).

TRACK LISTING

No Love
Procession
Be Still
Howling
Come Oblivion
Tempelhof Desert Inn
I Am Not Who I Am
The Point That Tears
All These Things
Blowing Up Rocks

Stripped down versions of tracks from Flicker. “On my debut solo album The View From Halfway Down I did all of my promotion via Zoom and pre-recorded interviews and acoustic sessions,” explains Andy of the EP. “I enjoyed making the acoustic versions and decided to do some more for this album.” “‘Something Like Love’ is the most popular song from Flicker and one of the oldest, starting life in the ’90s. It’s probably the only one that dates back to the Ride era.“The riffs for ‘World Of Echo’ were written while I was on tour with Oasis, at the height of my La’s obsession. It went through a few iterations from then onwards, but never had a final melody until last year.“’She Calls The Tune’ was the first song I wrote after I joined Oasis, ending a period of writers’ block which I had started going through some time in 1999. The very first performance of it was to an audience of Liam Gallagher, Gem Archer and Richard Ashcroft in a Milan hotel room. No pressure! I don’t think I ever saw this as an Oasis song, but I have them to thank for the fact that I was able to write songs again at all.” ‘Lifeline’ was another riff I came up with while on tour with Oasis. I remember being on a UK tour with Shack, and sitting around backstage on acoustics with Mick and John Head jamming around the Simon & Garfunkel version of ‘Scarborough Fair’. The riff for ‘Lifeline’ followed soon after. It was always called ‘Lifeline’ but I never found the right lyric for it until recently.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The Grounding Process has some of the lesser well known (but equally superb) pieces in the Andy Bell canon, being written while on the road and in various cities around the world. Another lovely addition to the discography.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Something Like Love
A2. World Of Echo
B1. She Calls The Tune
B2. Lifeline

Songs that inspired Flicker by Yoko Ono, Pentangle, The Kinks and Arthur Russell. “The idea was that I would be covering songs which helped in some way to colour in the edges of the picture of the influences that make up Flicker,” explains Andy.“The song ‘Jenny Holzer B. Goode’ on the album refers to a few of the female artists from the music and art worlds who I find inspiring, including Yoko Ono, so it felt right to include a cover of ‘Listen, The Snow Is Falling’, my favourite Yoko Ono song. “Pentangle’s ‘Light Flight’ came out in 1970, the year I was born, and I’ve loved it ever since I heard it on the 1997 folk compilation Transatlantic Ticket. “Nat Cramp, the head honcho of Sonic Cathedral, requested that I cover ‘The Way Love Used To Be’. I’d never heard this song despite being a big fan of The Kinks, but it’s lovely and it felt very natural to do a version of. All hail Ray Davies! “Arthur Russell has been a big reference point for all my music away from ‘band world’. There is something impressionistic and open-ended about his records. I guess you could describe the production style I’m trying for on ‘Our Last Night Together’ as ‘World Of Echo meets This Mortal Coil doing Skip Spence’.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A lovely bunch of covers here seeing the light of day from the ever-talented Andy Bell. Yoko Ono gets the cover treatment as well as Pentangle's brilliant 'Light Flight'

TRACK LISTING

A1. Listen, The Snow Is Falling
A2. Light Flight
B1. The Way Love Used To Be
B2. Our Last Night Together

“It was so great to see what came back when I gave these tracks from Flicker to various comrades, friends and heroes to play with,” says Andy. “They’ve given them a new technicolour life.” “David Holmes requested the opening track as he had formed a bit of a connection with it, and what he came up with turns the song into an hallucinogenic beast, taking pride of place here as the opening track but in a whole different way to how Flicker opens. “James Chapman AKA Maps has taken ‘It Gets Easier’ to a bigger, brighter and shinier place, he’s given quite a downbeat track a euphoric and epic sheen. James is an absolute master of electronic production and he’s taken the same care and attention over this remix as he does with his own wonderful music. “I couldn’t put Richard Norris’ lovely widescreen take on ‘Something Like Love’ better than the man himself – in his own words he found the ‘hitherto undiscovered sweet spot between ‘Roscoe’ and ‘Outdoor Miner’’ and he tapped into the melancholy euphoria at the core of the song. “bdrmm’s remix of ‘Way Of The World’ is one for headphones. There are so many great moments to love, all held together by a bassline worthy of Jah Wobble (by way of Andrew Weatherall). Astonishing!”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 'I am a Strange Loop' is the first in the trio of Andy Bell recordings this week, seeing the hugely talented Ride legend Andy Bell reworked by a number of today's most renowned musicians. This time we get ambient legend Richard Norris as well as the brilliant bdrmm, Maps and David Holmes. Ace

TRACK LISTING

A1. The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
A2. It Gets Easier (Maps Remix)
B1. Something Like Love (Richard Norris Remix)
B2. Way Of The World (bdrmm Remix)

For Fans Of: J. Tillman, Phosphorescent, Low, Damien Jurado, Bill Callhan.

“It’s going to be hard to talk about this when it’s done.” So begins A Mold For The Bell, the new album from Colorado singer-songwriter and producer Logan Farmer. What follows that enigmatic lyric is a collection of stark and ambient folk songs, tethered solely by Farmer’s unadorned vocals, acoustic guitar, and moving embellishments from contributors, including saxophonist Joseph Shabason (who also mixed the album) and renowned harpist Mary Lattimore. With the help of Grammy-nominated producer Andrew Berlin (Gregory Alan Isakov), Farmer tracked all of the vocal and guitar parts over two days in the early months of 2021. The tracks were recorded quickly, live in the studio to capture the raw intimacy and immediacy of Farmer’s live performances. The rest of the album’s creation occurred remotely, over texts, phone calls, and emails with Shabason and a handful of other musicians, as wildfires, insurrections and the pandemic raged around them.

“I was working at a bookstore that winter,” Farmer explains, “and I’d walk to my shift every day, obsessing over lyrics and early mixes in a cheap pair of earbuds.” These daily walks would take him past a church, where he’d often stop on the sidewalk and listen to the bells at the top of the hour. “I’ve always loved the sound of church bells, but as the situation worsened, what began as a comfort began to feel ominous, almost threatening.” This experience, along[1]side influences as disparate as Tarkovsky’s film Andrei Rublev and the novels of Olga Tokarczuk, led to a collection of songs that are similarly foreboding, expanding upon the stark and spacious universe of Farmer’s last album (2020’s Still No Mother) to reveal an atmosphere that’s even more oppressively still, like an abandoned Victorian home.

TRACK LISTING

01 Silence Or Swell
02 Cue Sunday Bells
03 Horsehair (feat. Mary Lattimore)
04 Crooked Lines
05 William
06 The Moment
07 Renegade
08 South Vienna

This is a licensed release of the very rare and very much in demand Lu-Lu Bell by The Versatiles. It was initially released in Jamaica in 1969 followed by Amalgamated in the U.K. in 1970. It has never been released on a single since. Only one copy is presently on sale at USD 1200. Beside its rarity and monetary value, this cracking song combines suggestive lyrics with a cheerful call-and-response tune delivered on a frantic rhythm with the chorus strongly reminiscent of Ray Charles’ “What I say”. Rock on! The B-side was originally released as the B side of Lu-Lu Bell on the 1969’s 7inch vinyl single on the Amalgamated label. This song has never been repressed on 7” vinyl until now. This lovely gem is another great example of the popular Rocksteady/Reggae hybrids with its sweet harmonies on top of an infectious Reggae beat. A brilliant B-side and a perfect flip for this killer double sider. Long long time indeed!

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Hens-teeth-rare rocksteady from 1969 Jamaica which shows the early development into reggae. The kinda shit collectors would give their right arm for - never before reissued.

TRACK LISTING

Lu-Lu Bell
Long Long Time

'Flicker’ is the second album from Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell. Written almost as a conversation with his teenage self, it follows the triumphant solo debut that was 2020’s ‘The View From Halfway Down’.

This 18-track double album finds Andy moving towards classic songwriting, notably on the reflective lead single ‘Something Like Love’, the strident harmonies of ‘World of Echo’, the joyous refracted loops of ‘Jenny Holzer B. Goode’ and the fuzz-laden late-’60s balladeering of ‘Love Is The Frequency’. Stylistically, the four sides of ‘Flicker’ take in everything from modern psychedelia to fingerpicked folk, whimsical baroque pop, and Byrdsian 12-string beauty. It’s a breathtaking array and makes it even more abundantly clear that Andy has entered a purple patch in his songwriting, hitting a new velocity in contrast to his initial inhibitions about becoming a solo artist. He gradually overcame these after the passing of David Bowie in 2016, with the Thin White Duke’s bountiful 50 years of music providing inspiration from beyond the grave.

‘Flicker’ is also an apt description for the genesis of the album. At the start of 2021, Andy returned to the stems of the recording sessions he made at Beady Eye and Oasis bandmate Gem Archer’s North London studio and added fuel to the fire, writing melodies and lyrics and turning them into fully formed songs. The same sessions were also the starting point for ‘The View From Halfway Down’ and this album picks up where that one left off, quite literally, with the very first words being “I was halfway down…”. This is the first of several playful, possibly intentional, references to albums and song titles that litter the record like a musical breadcrumb trail.

As much as this is a modern sounding and forward-looking record, it’s also very much about looking back, something that is clear from the first glimpse of the front cover – a previously unseen outtake from Joe Dilworth’s photo sessions for the inner sleeve of Ride’s debut album, ‘Nowhere’.

“When I think about ‘Flicker’, I see it as closure,” explains Andy. “Most literally, on a half-finished project from over six years ago, but also on a much bigger timescale. Some of these songs date back to the ’90s and the cognitive dissonance of writing brand new lyrics over songs that are 20-plus years old makes it feel like it is, almost literally, me exchanging ideas with my younger self.”

This conversation takes place across ‘Flicker’’s 18 tracks. Essentially it advises us to stop worrying about the future and enjoy each day as it comes, embracing the crushing, unpredictable lows of life as much as the almighty highs of being in love. Some of it remains unspoken, taking place sonically rather than verbally: the album has a reflective, meditative feeling throughout, exploring many aspects of mental health, and the beautiful stillness of first single ‘Something Like Love’ could almost be a musical salve to the heartache 19-year-old Andy poured into ‘Vapour Trail’ in 1990.

“The ‘Flicker’ I’m talking about in the lyrics is that flame that makes a person who they are,” explains Andy. “I wanted to find that in myself, so I went back to the teenage me – a technique I learned in therapy and have been doing ever since – and got some advice on how to live and be happy in the 2020s.

“‘The View From Halfway Down’ was about turning 50 in a very weird time of introspection. ‘Flicker’ is about gathering the tools to equip myself mentally for life in 2022 and beyond – post-pandemic, post-Brexit, post-truth.”

TRACK LISTING

1. The Sky Without You
2. It Gets Easier
3. World Of Echo
4. Something Like Love
5. Jenny Holzer B. Goode
6. Way Of The World
7. Riverside
8. We All Fall Down
9. No Getting Out Alive
10. The Looking Glass
11. Love Is The Frequency
12. Gyre And Gimble
13. Lifeline
14. She Calls The Tune
15. Sidewinder
16. When The Lights Go Down
17. This Is Our Year
18. Holiday In The Sun

Bell Towers updates his 2016 masterpiece with a new version for 2021. Originally released on the eponymous album, "Territory" was a sprawling deep house throbber with indecipherable vocal snips and late night, deep set groove.

Fast forward to now and the producer has kept the deepness but added a plethora of percussion to play with plus a a whole array of phazing synthlines and more of that vocal part to bedazzle your senses.

Backed with two new tracks - "Personal High" is a electro-post-punk number with a lo-fi vocal part and jaunty, upbeat rhythm. "Games We Play" sees the producer climax with a multicolored array of electronic goodness, spewing in all directions as the hefty kick and bass combo attempt to keep us anchored to the floor.

Impressive stuff from this well decorated dancefloor veteran. TIP! 

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Territory (2021) (5:43)

Side 2

1. Personal High (3:05)
2. Games We Play (3:52)

Four tracks recorded by Ride guitarist and singer Andy Bell for radio sessions, including a cover of 1990 Mancunian cult classic ‘Perfume’ by Paris Angels.

TRACK LISTING

1. Love Comes In Waves (Acoustic Version)
2. Cherry Cola (Acoustic Version)
3. Skywalker (Acoustic Version)
4. Perfume (Acoustic Version)

Compilation album featuring Pye Corner Audio remixed tracks from 2020’s “the view from halfway down” Andy Bell’s critically acclaimed album + some unreleased acoustic versions. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: In a brilliant twist, Pye Corner Audio reworked a bunch of Andy Bell's tunes for a series of 12's recently, and the results were stellar, this Cd compilation sees all of those singles and b-sides come together for a superb meeting of minds and a wonderfully rewarding listen.

TRACK LISTING

1.Indica (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
2.Skywalker (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
3.Cherry Cola (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
4.Love Comes In Waves (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
5.I Was Alone (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
6.Indica (Pye Corner Audio Remix – GLOK Re-edit)
7.The Commune (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
8.Plastic Bag (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
9.The Commune
10.Plastic Bag
11.Love Comes In Waves (Acoustic Version)
12.Cherry Cola (Acoustic Version)
13.Skywalker (Acoustic Version)
14.Perfume (Acoustic Version)
15.The Commune (Acoustic Version)

The two tracks from Andy Bell’s debut solo single reworked by Pye Corner Audio, with the original tracks remastered by Heba Kadry.

TRACK LISTING

1.The Commune (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
2.Plastic Bag (Pye Corner Audio Remix)
3.The Commune
4.Plastic Bag

Loney dear is the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emil Svanängen’s idiosyncratic musical project where classic song-writing meets complex productions – both wide open and uplifting as well as sensitive and heart breaking…

Recorded by Svanángen with producer Emanuel Lundgren in a mythical studio on western Södermalm in Stockholm, ‘A Lantern and A Bell’ is Loney dear’s second album for Real World, following 2017’s self-titled release.

Maritime themes permeate across ‘A Lantern and A Bell’ - the album arrives bearing artwork depicting the international nautical flag for distress and Emil’s voice is frequently bolstered by diffused water sounds at dark low frequencies and the calls of sea birds. For those who know their Loney dear, the constant references to sea and ships are hardly something new. All that is an important part of my inner life, maybe a romantic dream of adventure, but also a phobia, a danger I cannot help but be drawn to, says Emil; Near where I live, freighters pass by every day and the sounds of their engines get into my head. And further into the music.

Speaking about Emil’s new record - on which he has consulted as a sounding board, label founder Peter Gabriel says; Sad soulful melodies that create space in your head that fill with memories dreams and tenderness. I am very proud that we are working with such a gifted songwriter. When you’re isolating, what better than to be wrapped up in these beautiful imaginative constructions - the work of a master. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Mute / All Things Pass
2. Habibi (A Clear Black Line)
3. Trifles
4. Go Easy On Me Now (Sirens + Emergencies)
5. Last Night / Centurial Procedures (the 1900s)
6. Oppenheimer
7. Darling
8. Interval / Repeat
9. A House And A Fire

Erased Tapes announce Bell Orchestre’s House Music — an immersive ecosystem of an album to be released on March 19, and the first full-length work released by the acclaimed Montreal-based outfit in over a decade. House Music unfolds as one long piece, a recorded-then-sculpted improvisation that vastly expands their work, coalescing classical and electronic instrumentation in the creation of genre-defying musical worlds. After having shared the short film “IX: Nature That’s It That’s All.” — which layered archival visuals of blissed-out crowds at a carnival over one of the later, dreamier sections of House Music — Bell Orchestre presents a video for the one-track album’s most anthemic and explosive segment, “V: Movement”, directed by band member Kaveh Nabatian.

In the album’s liner notes, the group recalls countless moments when, in kinetic moments of improvisation, “a nuanced piece of music would emerge organically, completely formed, without any plan or discussion or rational thought” — and then be lost because it wasn’t recorded. In conceiving a new album, they decided to celebrate the spontaneous and accidental, to centrally situate the act of collaborative, democratic creation in their finished work. With the legacies of improvisation-exploring greats like Talk Talk, The Orb, Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis and the late Ennio Morricone in mind, on House Music, Bell Orchestre captures the impulsive, connective, mysterious poetics of musical invention happening in real-time.


With help from engineer Hans Bernhard, the band wired every corner of Sarah Neufeld’s (Violin, vocals) multi-story rural Vermont house. She and the mini orchestra’s other five members — Pietro Amato: French horn, keyboards, electronics; Michael Feuerstack: Pedal steel guitar, keyboards, vocals; Kaveh Nabatian: Trumpet, gongoma, keyboards, vocals; Richard Reed Parry: Bass, vocals; and Stefan Schneider: Drums — assigned themselves to different rooms. They spent two weeks together in camaraderie, creation, and focused isolation to record their improvised sessions every day, but ultimately structured a 45-minute album out of a one hour-and-a-half long improvisation.

“If you sliced away the front wall of the house and looked in, you’d see the horn section — with so many different things going on — down on the first floor of what would normally be the living/dining room, and it was full chaos with tables and tables of kalimbas and harmonicas and synthesizers and horns. Then you travel up a floor, and there’s me and Richie in an empty, warm sounding wooden bedroom. Mike was on pedal steel in the bathroom, on the same floor as us. And then up the stairs, through the ceiling and in the attic, was Stefan, alone on drums. It’s a big piece of land, and if you went outside to take a break, you’d look over and hear all of this crazy shit coming out of all the different floors, and it filled this valley, and there were lots of rocks so the sound would bounce around. It was spooky and glorious”, describes Sarah.

While edited and trimmed, and occasionally added to, the album itself is in large part the original recording — with the broad structure of its movements kept intact. This single piece of music — written almost entirely as it was being recorded — emerged with no parameters beyond the inclusion of a short harmonic loop Parry had brought in as a starting point, which coheres and propels the album as it moves forward through the birth; vigorous, unrestrained growth; and ultimate slowdown of the musical ecosystem it creates. What the band generated is an album that lays bare the contours of a lived musical moment.

“Most of my favorite recordings have some element of an explorative and accidental feeling within the music, a feeling which reflects the truth of musical minds which are partially super focused on specific musical ideas and partially wandering, exploring the musical world surrounding those ideas,” says Parry. “I think it’s really satisfying as a listener when you can hear a musical mind exploring an idea — not just a musician who has pre-formed an idea and rehearsed it 100 times until it’s totally perfect and ironed out. In this recording, every one of the six of us is simultaneously exploring our own ideas,

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As one of my favourite labels, it's always an exciting time when Erased Tapes put a new one out, and Bell Orchestre sees Arcade Fires' Sarah Neufeld and Owen Pallett percussionish Stefan Schneider team up with a host of others to create this jazzy, downbeat chamber classical gem.

TRACK LISTING

I: Opening
II: House
III: Dark Steel
IV: What You're Thinking
V: Movement
VI: All The Time Sorrow
VII: Colour Fields
VIII: Making Time
IX: Nature That's It That's All.
X: Closing

Melissa Guion’s second offering for Kranky retains the glassy gauze of her debut, 2016’s Precious Systems, but shaded starker and darker, framed by mechanical rhythms and humid industrial moods. She speaks of Sour Cherry Bell as something of a reckoning with her tools of creation: “I was curious to see how far I could go with them, even if that meant reaching the ends of their capacity to do what I wanted. But I never exhausted them and they never exhausted me.”

For Fans Of : Elizabeth Fraser/Julee Cruise/Siouxsie Sioux

Utilizing her trusted combination of instrumentation, Guion tracked the record between her New Orleans home and rehearsal space, capturing chemistries both intimate and expansive. The songs sway between twilit shoegaze, downer ballads, and gothic pop, mapping a delicate palette of electric melancholies, though in retrospect she cites as her primary muse the notion of power: “lost and found, corporeal and cerebral, harnessed and exploited, of one and many, in this reality and the next.” Sour Cherry Bell reverberates beyond the here and now into scenes unseen, worlds unheard. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Lowlight
2. The Steelyard
3. FM Secure
4. Cherry Bell Blacktop
5. Body Optics
6. Quiet Time
7. Simulus
8. Perfect Interference
9. Sourbell
10. Petrechoria 

This is the second 7” released from the album “The Jacknife Lee” by “Jacknife Lee”. I absolutely loved the first two Sneaks albums, I just couldn’t get enough of them and I sent a fan letter to Eva saying if she ever wanted a studio or anything i would love to help out, and so we began working together. She sends ideas and I send her ideas. “Hit The Bell” was one of those. Eva came up with the chorus and then it needed some verses. Haviah Mighty released one of my favorite records last year so I asked her to try something.

Petite Noir’s “Blame Fire” and “Beach” blew me away. We met up in London last summer and came up with “Firewalls” one night. This is one of my favorites on the album.

The record is an ambitious and expansive update of their warm, hypnotic drone-pop encompassing gently pulsing electronics, chiming guitars, minimalist piano, acoustic and synthesised drones, noise, improv and intricate brass and string arrangements, all in the service of the band’s most assured and experimental songwriting yet. Two years in the making it features guest contributions from (amongst others) celebrated singer Ed Dowie, noise group Far Rainbow, fellow space-pop travellers Firestations and the string quartet Iskra Strings. It draws on all aspects of the band’s work so far, from indie guitar pop to ambient atmospherics, via surging rhythms and layered, melancholic vocals. This is the band’s second album (seventh if you count the various remix, side-project and short run CDR and tape releases they have put out over the last few years), and is the official follow up to 2015’s debut Daylight Versions (5* The Guardian). It begins with ‘In Doors And Out Through Windows’, a minimal piano and vibraphone incantation in 7/4, with shades of Dot and Loops-era Stereolab, their summery strum replaced here with twilit, unsettling repetition and melancholy brass swells.


First single ‘Hissing Waves’ is the most pop the band have ever sounded, its skipping Insides-esque electronics and looping verses pulling the listener back to daylight and the disorienting “transparent spaces” of the city. ‘Patience’ (featuring guest vocals by Ed Dowie) is the closest the band come to the sound of ‘Daylight Versions’, cresting on waves of guitars and an insistent synth arpeggio. Elsewhere we find the title track’s pointillist strings (arranged by the band’s saxophonist Daniel Fordham), hypnotic vocal rituals on noise/improv detour ‘Bodies Carried Off By Bees’ (featuring Far Rainbow) and the Yo La Tengo-meet-Section 25 repetitions of ‘An Endless’, its bright guitar arpeggios and billowing synths unfurling across ten minutes of glorious repetition.

Titled after a Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quote (“The world is a bell that is cracked, it clatters but does not ring out clearly”) the album turns its attention away from the coastal obsessions of ‘Daylight Versions’ to more surreal and atmospheric contemplations. The album reaches its end with the fittingly grandiose ‘Paper Boats On Black Ink Lake’. The radio unfriendly (at nearly 20 minutes long) track drifts in on sleepwalk-slow guitars, recalling Earth at their most serene, while Kate Gibson and Melinda Bronstein’s vocals float over a bed of strings that could be Robert Kirby scoring Low’s Secret Name. The World Is A Bell is an album of dense and unhurried songs, rich in sonic detail and ambitious in scope, its music simultaneously intimate and epic. Guitarist and lyricist Matt says, “We wanted to create something that was completely its own thing, that was in no hurry to get anywhere and that contained large expanses for listeners to get lost in. 

TRACK LISTING

01 In Doors And Out Through Windows
02 Hissing Waves
03 Patience
04 Larches Eat Moths
05 The World Is A Bell
06 Bright Seas
07 Bodies Carried Off By Bees
08 An Endless
09 More Than Half Asleep
10 Paper Boats On Black Ink Lake 

Goshen Electric Co. happened both all at once and gradually: an electrifying culmination of Tim Showalter’s nearly two decades long love affair with Jason Molina’s craft and just one half-day in the recording studio with the members of Magnolia Electric Co. Ring The Bell, recorded in one take, roars in with a twinge of psychedelia, thrumming with vibe; Showalter’s wail recalls Molina’s sombre, choir-boy croon but roughened with sandpaper. The prophetic, dystopian darkness of ‘The Gray Tower’ captures the original soaring chorus and delicate melody with the power of a full band. Decades later, the intense, unflinching urgency of Molina’s songwriting endures. “There was such an intimate relationship with his music - it felt a lot deeper than just liking a song,” says Showalter. “You live in these songs.”

TRACK LISTING

The Gray Tower
Ring The Bell

Following on from the success of her critically acclaimed ‘Incitation’ EP, Olga Bell is back with new album ‘Tempo’, released via One Little Indian Records.

“Grand compositional ambitions and a dynamic voice... the arty, adventurous edge of pop” - The New York Times

“For those uninitiated, Bell’s work lies somewhere between an industrial night at Berghain and a cyborg performing at Carnegie Hall.” - Dummy

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Encompassing aspects of outsider-pop, synthwave and electronic soul, 'Tempo' confounds expectations of the singer songwriter. Quirky off-kilter rhythms and textures permeate the whole endeavour , rapidly switching from acid pulse-wave stabs to glitched out snares and clave hits. Like a medley of all the electronic tropes of the last 20 years, but distilled into a cohesive and concise representation of modern electronic music culture. This is a capable and sparkling outing, and at no point feels too far from comfort. Like hopping between ten different parties of ten different varieties, each playing different music, and loving each and every minute.

TRACK LISTING

Power User
Doppio
Randomness
ATA
Regular
Zone
Ritual (ft. Sara Lucas)
Your Life Is A Lie
Stomach It
America

Zac and Louis are back as Zanzibar Chanel, inaugurating the slightly obscene Pig Sweat imprint with the fresh dancefloor pressure of "Killer", unreleased classic "Big Bone Bitch" and a whacked out edit offered by fellow ex-Melbournite Bell Towers. After a hallucinatory snatch of Peppa Pig, our hosts get down to business, working 8-bit sequences into a basement weapon par excellence. The funk of the 'jazz club' is all but forgotton as ZC pay homage to Prescription classics on a cheap and trashy studio set up. Drifting, swelling pads almost to lift us up to the heavens, but the scuzzy aethetic keeps things down low and dirty. Switching to the flip, ZC treat us to the first vinyl outing of their slamming, stomping, voguing classic "Big Bone Bitch". Giving NYC's Ballroom scene and Chi-Town's Dance Mania catalogue a fresh and modern twist, the crew top a squelching b-line and rattling drum groove with some life affirming, sleazy and totally ridiculous lyrics - it's one hell of a party. Bell Towers drops by on the B2 to treat us to his interpretation of their Gok Wan groover, laying down a Fingers Inc-inspired backing before sending those vocals through the chopper - did I mention it was party time?

TRACK LISTING

A1. Killer
B1. Big Bone Bitch
B2. Big Bone Bitch (Bell Towers Edit)

One Little Indian release composer, producer and performer Olga Bell’s ‘Incitation’. The mini album follows Bell’s acclaimed 2014 song cycle and album, ‘Krai’, which was described by The New York Times as, “at once a folkloric study of her homeland and a contemporary exercise in electronic production” and was included in The Quietus’ Albums Of The Year.

Bell’s newest offering is a collection of deeply personal, urgent songs with her voice once more at the helm of her singular production. This time, “a kind of personal violence is the main force at work,” she says of the mini album, “but it’s more of a brawl with fear than something shell-shocked or confessional. The emotional language of Incitation recognizes that while fear can be brutal, even crippling, it is also a necessary force for change and, perhaps most importantly, not a permanent state. Its remedy is simple: action.”

Born in Moscow and raised in Alaska, Bell is now based in Brooklyn where she makes original music, remixes and videos under her own name. She also makes dance music with British musician Tom Vek as half of Nothankyou. From 2011 to 2013 she toured as a vocalist and keyboardist with Dirty Projectors and Chairlift and is currently at work on her third full-length album, set for release in early 2016 on One Little Indian.

A prodigious classical pianist as a child and teenager, Bell graduated from the New England Conservatory before moving to New York City to pursue electronic composition and songwriting. In 2009 composer Osvaldo Golijov and soprano Dawn Upshaw selected Bell for a workshop and concert of new works by contemporary composers at Carnegie Hall. In 2011 she received a Jerome Fund Grant from the American Composers Forum to aid in the completion of her first large-scale composition, ‘Krai’, which was released as an album in 2014 after a sold out premiere at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

TRACK LISTING

Incitation
Rubbernecker
Pounder I
Pounder II
Goalie

Bell Gardens combines the musical visions of Kenneth James Gibson (formerly of Furry Things, now recording as [a]pendics.shuffle, dubLoner and Eight Frozen Modules) and Brian McBride (one half of Stars of the Lid) and began releasing music in 2010, beginning with an EP, Hangups Need Company on Failed Better/Burger Records. Their debut album Full Sundown Assembly (Southern/Burger Records) appeared in 2012 and, now signed to Rocket Girl in the UK, the band are set to release their second, Slow Dawns for Lost Conclusions.

Bell Gardens’ origins began arguably as more of an experiment than the duo’s current ‘experimental’ projects – McBride’s drone- and string-laden ambient symphonies, and Gibson’s ventures in dub and minimalist techno – as they sought to manifest their mutual reverence for folk, psychedelia and chamber pop in a traditional band structure without cannibalising any particular past genre. Bell Gardens’ sound is less reliant on effects and studio trickery than the pairs’ independent guises, laying bare as it does vocals and live instruments with emotional sincerity, and presenting songs imbued with an almost pastoral or gospel simplicity and timelessness.

'Slow Dawns for Lost Conclusions' was again recorded mostly at home studios, but additionally the band made use of a friend’s desert cabin in Wonder Valley, California, and it seems this willingness to retreat from the city has lent an expansiveness to the tracks, in particular the spacious, ceremonial ‘Silent Prayer’ (written in a snowbound mountain cabin in Idyllwild, C.A.) and the crepuscular ‘She’s Stuck in an Endless Loop of Her Decline’ (mapped out under the stars in the desert).

While the addition of strings (contributed by Lauren Chipman of The Rentals and The Section Quartet) and trumpet (Stewart Cole of Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros) provides a double rainbow of tonal textures throughout, the nine tracks of Slow Dawns for Lost Conclusions are united by an understated elegance belying the newly expanded, communal effort in the studio: each instrument earns its place, nothing is overwrought or conspicuous. Moreover, it is McBride and Gibson’s artistry in building stirring soundscapes from the barest of materials in their other guises that lends such assurance and sophistication to these arrangements.

The band is a result of the complimentary cross-pollination of Gibson and McBride’s musical tastes – borne from a late- night conversation between the two that grew wings – and it is the universality of the sentiments and their restrained, reflective approach to writing and recording that allows the music to simultaneously straddle the past and the present. The music avoids pastiche, its pedal steel, sleigh bells and harmonies giving a nod to the ghosts of musical genres past, but never overriding or distracting from the emotional content of the sum of its parts.

The album ends with the glorious ‘Take Us Away’ – one of the first demos Gibson gave McBride when he was on tour with Stars of the Lid – neatly bringing their work to date full circle and exemplifying the band’s mindfulness of their own serendipitous beginnings: the dawning of an auspicious, unique musical force.

Bell Gardens - Take Us Away - ★★★★★★★★★☆ Harmonies alert!! Actually, this is rather lovely. Slow-tempo, just the right side of 'twee' and packed full of strings, as if Air and Midlake had been taking balloon trips over the mid-West and sprinkling good-vibes dust across the land. From L.A. and subconsciously plugged into the '60s dream-pop scene, taking in a little bit of Mercury Rev and Brendan Perry en route, stopping off at Pearls Before Swine and Big Star's house for inspiration, before getting stoned with '70s era Brian Eno and Harold Budd.- Flipside

TRACK LISTING

1. Darker Side Of Sunshine
2. Silent Prayer
3. Sail
4. Joan's Ambulance
5. She's Stuck In The Endless Loop Of Her Decline
6. She Does
7. Trust Lost Trust
8. Avere
9. Take Us Away

Released in 1988, ‘Blue Bell Knoll’ is the Cocteau Twins’ fifth studio album. Delivered after a slightly longer period between records than fans had been used to, this was the first they recorded in their own studio. Freed to now make music how they wanted and with no clock to beat, they rose to the challenge of producing it themselves with real aplomb, introducing a new pop sensibility to their sound, expressed through shorter, ‘hookier’ songs with occasionally intelligible lyrics. Sound On Sound magazine praised the band for showing “an uncanny feel for contemporary sound possibilities without making even the slightest concessions towards the mainstream.”

A beautiful record that showed the band’s continued maturity, it also included one of their most enduring songs, ‘Carolyn’s Fingers’, which was reflected on the album’s cover - a close-up of their friend Carolyn’s hand as shot by Juergen Teller.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Liz Fraser possesses possibly the most sublime voice in the history of contemporary music, and never was it put to more exquisite use than on the peerless 'Carolyn's Fingers, the very high point of a celestial, iridescent sonic daydream.

TRACK LISTING

Blue Bell Knoll 3:25
Athol-Brose 3:00
Carolyn's Fingers 3:08
For Phoebe Still A Baby 3:16
The Itchy Glowbo Blow 3:21
Cico Buff 3:50
Suckling The Mender 3:35
Spooning Good Singing Gum 3:53
A Kissed Out Red Floatboat 4:10
Ella Megalast Burls Forever 3:39

The Bell Peppers are a UK Surf n' Roll 2 piece who have toured with Allah Las, Hooded Fang and Y Niwl. This Cassette release, the first for Manchester label, Captured Cats, features the 4 songs that make up the latest EP, Saved by the Bell Peppers and the 4 that made up the first EP, Cooking with Bell Peppers.

These recordings were made at home, using a four track, looping samples of themselves performing the percussion, and then layering lush melodic surf guitar and peppered vocal interjections on top of it. the results are sweet, raw and satisfying, each song exploring a different microgenre of the 50's and early 60s. From Haunted Diner Do-Wop to Hoedown Rockabilly and Scuzzy RnB.

TRACK LISTING

Track 1A : Drapes N' Squares
Track 2A : The Hoofstomp
Track 3A : Moonlight Heartache
Track 4A: Golf Shack

Track 1B : Rubber Bullets
Track 2B : Monquito's Diner
Track 3B : Bell Pepper Hop
Track 4B : Cry Baby

Over the course of three albums - and as an in-demand remixer of artists ranging from Animal Collective to, most recently, Philip Glass - the Berlin-based musician and producer Pantha Du Prince (Hendrik Weber) has been celebrated for pushing the envelope of electronic music.

His newest effort, ‘Elements Of Light’, a collaborative project with The Bell Laboratory, is doubtless his most ambitious to date: The work is a symphony for electronics, percussion and bell carillon, a three-tonne instrument comprising 50 bronze bells.

The genesis of the project began in Oslo in the summer of 2010, when Weber was having lunch with local curators Mattis With and Håkon Vinnogg and heard, in the distance, one of the concerts played multiple times daily on a bell carillon inside the city hall. Weber was struck by how the frequencies and overtones unfolded unpredictably, influenced one another, and resonated, more or less, throughout the Norwegian capital.

With and Vinnogg suggested he compose for the carillon, which was developed in China 3,500 years ago, during the Shang Dynasty, and made its way to Europe during the Middle Ages. Weber began collaborating with the Norwegian Lars Petter Hagen, who served as arranger and conductor. For the recording, a bell carillon was shipped from Denmark to Germany, where Vegar Sandholt, the same carillonist that Weber had heard during his stay in Oslo, played it.

A separate session, in Oslo, brought together a variety of percussionists, including Weber; Martin Horntveth of Jaga Jazzist, Killl and The National Bank; Erland Dahlen of Nils Petter Molvaer Trio, Susanne Sundfør, Madrugada, Xploding Plastix, and Kaada; the researcher and performer Håkon Stene, who teaches at the Norwegian Academy Of Music; and Heming Valebjørg, of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. They contributed numerous tubular bells, marimba, xylophone, cymbals, chimes, handclaps, finger snaps and other percussion.

The album is a single continuous work, although it has been broken down into five tracks named for elements of light: ‘Wave’, ‘Particle’, ‘Photon’, ‘Spectral Split’ and ‘Quantum’. Sonically, the work is a fusion of electronic music and classical composition, and draws on house and minimalism, jazz and new music, Gamelan and Western sacred music. Influences include John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Steve Reich, LaMonte Young and Moondog.

‘Elements Of Light’ is a natural next step in the Pantha Du Prince oeuvre. Bells figured prominently on his last album, the highly acclaimed ‘Black Noise’, which Rough Trade released in 2010. In a Best New Music review of ‘Black Noise’, Pitchfork said “each track is its own micro sound world with enough rich detail to draw you back for deeper investigation.”