Last year Sacred Bones released the groundbreaking album Sounds of the Unborn which was made by using biosonic MIDI technology to translate Luca Yupanqui’s in utero movements into sound. With the help of her parents, Psychic Ills bassist Elizabeth Hart and Lee Scratch Perry collaborator Iván Diaz Mathé, Luca’s prenatal essence was captured in audio. They designed a ritual, a kind of joint meditation for the three of them, with the MIDI devices hooked to Elizabeth’s stomach, transcribing its vibrations into Iván’s synthesizers. They let the free-form meditations flow without much interference, just falling deeper into trance and feeling the unity. After five hour-long sessions, the shape of an album began to emerge. Elizabeth and Iván then edited and mixed the results of the sessions, respecting the sounds as they were produced, trying to intervene as little as possible, allowing Luca’s message to exist in its raw form.

The album received widespread attention and was featured in NPR, The Guardian and Audiofemme among others. Conversations is an album featuring remixes by some of contemporary music’s most visionary participants including electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani, new age legend Laraaji, fan favorites Peaking Lights and up and coming star Nialah Hunter, among others. These remixes bring new and vibrant musicality to the richly dimensional and moving sounds created with the original release.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1. V2.2 (Suzanne Ciani Remix)
A2. V3.2 (Peaking Lights Remix)
A3. V4.2 (Hiro Kone Remix)
A4. V3.1 (Nailah Hunter Remix)
SIDE B
B1. V2.1 (Dallas Acid Remix)
B2. V5 (Dean Hurley Remix)
B3. V1 (Morita Vargas Remix)
B4. V4.1 (Laraaji Remix)

The Magic Movement celebrate their 25th release with a wonderful selection of late night, tropical house from the Berlin based Coss & Luca Musto. Atmospheric jams that instantly transport you to star lit skies and red glowing neons, it comes with an equally hedonistic remix from label boss Noema. 

Coss has been a mainstay at Berlin's Kater Blau club for some time now and has just released an EP on the club's in-house imprint Kiosk ID as well as an EP for his own Metanoia label. Italian rooted but Germany-based Luca Musto returns to the Magic Movement here following his 2018 "Parabel" EP and has since gone on to release further material with Cologne's Feines Tier and Laut & Luise in recent years.

Here joining forces with the "Remind Me Tomorrow" EP the two artists deliver more of their distinctive tripped-out, dropped tempo club sound. "Broken Promises" leads the way via dreamy dubbed out textures, gnarly bass tones, twinkling chimes and airy arpeggios atop a galloping drum groove.

Title cut "Remind Me Tomorrow" follows and brings modulating resonant synth lines into the forefront alongside elongated subs, cinematic pads, and circling sequences while Luca also stirs in his own rap/spoken word hip house style vocals.

The third original "Concept Zero" follows next and lays down psychedelic guitars, choppy stabs, murky bass swells and dynamic delays before Noema rounds out the release with his take on "Remind Me Tomorrow", flipping the switch to raw, crunchy drums and spoken word vocal chants amongst the original's chuggy arps and dreamy melodic elements.

All tracks have this lush patina and crisp production that's gonna sound splendidly 3D on the high end festival rigs and nightclub systems. You'll be hearing a lot of this one over Summer months me thinks... 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Highly crafted, transportive music with tons of character and a unique, stylish identity. Shadow lurking nocturnal dance music with hi-def production. Mega.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Broken Promises
A2. Remind Santa (feat. Natalia Clavier)
B1. Concept Zero
B2. Remind Me Tomorrow (Noema's Resistance Rave Remix)

Luca Yupanqui was not yet born when she recorded her debut album. The music on the aptly titled Sounds of the Unborn out April 2 on Sacred Bones, is the expression of life in its cosmic state — pre-mind, pre-speculation, pre-influence, and pre-human. It is the first album created by a person while they were still inside the womb, the expression of a soul that hasn’t yet seen the light of day nor taken a single breath of air. It is a message that comes from a different realm, a sublayer of our existence.

Sounds of the Unborn was made with biosonic MIDI technology, which translated Luca’s in utero movements into sound. With the help of her parents, Psychic Ills bassist Elizabeth Hart and Lee Scratch Perry collaborator Iván Diaz Mathé, Luca’s prenatal essence was captured in audio. They designed a ritual, a kind of joint meditation for the three of them, with the MIDI devices hooked to Elizabeth’s stomach, transcribing its vibrations into Iván’s synthesizers. They let the free-form meditations flow without much interference, just falling deeper into trance and feeling the unity. After five hour-long sessions, the shape of an album began to emerge.

Elizabeth and Iván then edited and mixed the results of the sessions, respecting the sounds as they were produced, trying to intervene as little as possible, allowing Luca’s message to exist in its raw form.

This cosmic soul summoning created new sounds, striking into uncharted territory for Elizabeth and Iván as musicians. A new language was being created, a new form of communication. It was a music without intellect or intentionality behind it, with no preconception or attempt to create any specific sound or melody. Every note on Sounds of the Unborn occurred naturally.

It is human nature to wonder what life is like inside another human being’s consciousness. How does it feel? What does it sound like? All these questions became stronger and more important to Elizabeth and Iván while they were waiting for Luca to come into the world. At a certain point the questions turned into, What would she say if she could speak? How would she react to the outer world? And ultimately, What kind of music would she play if she was able to? This album is an attempt to answer those questions.

Elizabeth and Iván mixed the album in 2020. Luca, now an infant, sat in the studio with them while they worked. Her awareness of what was happening was astounding. She would open her eyes wide and stare at her parents, seemingly recognizing her own sounds from the womb, knowing that they were revisiting those rituals that made them come together as one. Those mixing sessions were technically the first time Luca had heard her own music, but her reaction made it clear that that wasn’t really the case — she had already lived it.

TRACK LISTING

1. V5
2.V4.3 Pt.2
3.V2.1
4.V2.2
5.V3.2
6.V4.2
7.V4.1
8.V1
9.V3.1
10.V4.3 Pt.1

The music of Alex Maas has always mesmerised. Now, on his soul-baring solo debut Luca, the Texan and Black Angel's singer journey is taking an equally hypnotic detour along the wild trails of his indigenous homestead. Driven by the force of nature, each phase of life is celebrated through songs of love, hope, human connection whilst navigating perils of modern society and tentatively facing the darkness. 

TRACK LISTING

1 Slip Into
2 The Light That Will End Us
3 Special
4 Been Struggling
5 500 Dreams
6 What Would I Tell Your Mother
7 All Day
8 Shines Like The Sun (Madeline's Melody)
9 American Conquest
10 The City

Suspiria consists of 25 original compositions written by Thom specifically for Luca Guadagnino reimagining of the 1977 Dario Argento horror classic. The album is a mix of instrumental score work, interstitial pieces and interludes, and more traditional song structures featuring Thom’s vocals such as “Unmade”, “Has Ended” and “Suspirium,” the album's first single featuring the melodic theme that recurs throughout the film and its score.

As scoring a horror film presented Thom with altogether new challenges and opportunities, Suspiria stands apart from any of his other work. Piano/vocal ballads, Krautrock-esque modular synth work inspired by the film’s Berlin 1977 setting, multilayered vocals, and melodies that convey terror, longing and melancholy combine to create a chaotic yet cohesive musical spell.

Suspiria was written and arranged by Thom Yorke, recorded and produced by Thom and Sam Petts-Davies. The album also features the London Contemporary Orchestra and Choir, Noah Yorke on drums on “Has Ended” and “Volk,” and Pasha Mansurov on solo flute on “Suspirium.”

TRACK LISTING

A Storm That Took Everything
The Hooks
Suspirium
Belongings Thrown In A River
Has Ended
Klemperer Walks
Open Again
Sabbath Incantation
The Inevitable Pull
Olga’s Destruction (Volk Tape)
The Conjuring Of Anke
A Light Green
Unmade
The Jumps
Volk
The Universe Is Indifferent
The Balance Of Things
A Soft Hand Across Your Face
Suspirium Finale
A Choir Of One
Synthesizer Speaks
The Room Of Compartments
An Audition
Voiceless Terror
The Epilogue

We tend to think of Alchemy as some kind of black magic, but its roots are far more of this world, the origins of it found in medieval times, its aim simply to purify, mature, and perfect certain objects. It’s also the title of Luca Nieri’s brand new album, a spellbinding collection of instrumental music, a skewed homage to Nieri’s favourite film soundtracks of the 60s and 70s, and the follow-up to 2017’s self-titled effort, which was lauded by Rough Trade as a record which “exists in a cosmos, textured and beautifully melancholy.”

Informed by the notion of alchemy, and inspired by the desire to create moods without words, Nieri began to explore the idea of Cymatics, a process in which different patterns are created by the vibration of an object’s surface. Suitably, the resulting album is something both peculiar and indistinct. Once more recorded at home, the twelve tracks on Alechmy bristle with energy and intrigue, old sounds woven together in new ways to create something decidedly unique.

With simple numbers rather than song titles, Nieri’s latest work will take on a unique life of its own for each and every listener; the subtle unraveling of the songs not just tying themselves to the world around us but forging new pathways, new images and landscapes, as they roll subtly forward, beautifully detailed and expansive.

From subtle weaves of guitar, meandering and starkly atmospheric, and fragile piano pieces, to the more brightly-coloured and varied compositions that showcase an assembly of various instruments, including bass, drums, harpsichord, Alchemy utilises intricate production methods, elevating the whole record in to some kind of psychedelic dream-state, a labyrinthine journey of sound.

At once both elegant and complex, Alchemy is as a unique piece of work as we’ve come to expect from Nieri, via his previous work with The Monk’s Kitchen and his subsequent solo work.

TRACK LISTING

1. 1
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4 (Windmills Of Your Mind)
5. 5
6. 6
7. 7
8. 8
9. 9
10. 10
11. 11
12. 12

“Cinematic feasts of dramatic strings and cascading pianos that will satisfy fans of Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds” The Ransom Note.

That certainly seems the case as the crushing emptiness of "Her Dreams" slowly emerges into the sonic space. Old school veterans Richard Dorfmeister and Stefan Obermaier are on hand to remix the track - transforming it into a epically mournful piano piece, galvanized with droning electronics and rumbling sub oscillators. "Screaming Silence" is touched up by Howie B who does a sterling job of organizing all the elements into a dreamy, crisp, high definition soundscape. Drifting synth parts meeting frenetic percussion and detailed low end perfectly, a blissed-out electro-disco missiv for the up-all-weekend dreamers. Check! 

TRACK LISTING

A - Her Dreams (Richard Dorfmeister & Stefan Obermaier Remix)
B - Screaming Silence (Howie B Retouch)