They Kept Our Photographs covers a lot of ground. Lyrically, singer-songwriter Julia Sabra delivers her most vivid and visceral work yet. Musically, producer/multi-instrumentalist Fadi Tabbal adds excursions into hyperpop and electronica to the duo's industrial-drone-ambient palette. The pair's enduring friendship translates into a rare kind of synergy, recalling collaborations such as Virginia Astley and Ryuichi Sakamoto's, Broadcast's Trish Keenan and James Cargill's, or Angelo Baladamenti and Julee Cruise's work on Twin Peaks.

Beyond the sonic parallels, Snakeskin's world shares with Twin Peaks an unsettling eerie quality. Angelic celestial beauty enclosing darkness and rot. It's a world where "fairies shimmer" and "church bells make no sound"; "cats breed and die" and "fireworks fall to the sea". It's ethereal and otherworldly, yet deeply grounded in the reality of the duo's life in Beirut. A reality perhaps best illustrated by "Waiting", in which Sabra borrows Etel Adnan's text "To Be In A Time Of War". Tabbal's synths tick like clocks and ring like bells as Sabra monotones enumerations of mundane acts of life during wartime - the automatisms pile up, the words interlace, everything blurs.

Sabra's own words skew more poetic but are still granular and precise, full of visceral and intimate detail: "Hollow-eyed, blind in the sun / My teeth sink into my jaw / My cheeks burn into my tongue/ My fingers dance around the gun".Tabbal's production is positively alive, from the glassy ambience of "In My Life" to the snarling warped drums of "Sunburst". There are surprising pop moments too, like "Homecoming", its auto-tune and highlife-like percussion recalling the experimental pop stylings of Caroline Polachek.

Snakeskin's self-titled debut (2022) had come on the heels of the Beirut port explosion. The city and its people were changed forever. Sabra and Tabbal took a scalpel to its heart and dragged out its content, transmuting the death, the grief, the violence into a stunning piece of music.TKOP carries on that work at a similarly distressing time, as it was written in parallel to the genocide in Gaza and the violence enacted against South Lebanon. And yet the album is lyrically bookended by love songs. In "In My Life", Sabra repeats "I will love", over and over again. In "Anyway", she makes good on that promise: "I fell for you / fell in way too deep". The title's "photographs" read like the archives of a post-apocalyptic world, records of what we've left behind. And what is left but love?

TRACK LISTING

1. In My Life (feat. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal)
2. Is It Over? (feat. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal)
3. Bodies (feat. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal)
4. Homecoming (feat. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal)
5. Waiting (feat. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal)
6. These Times (feat. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal)
7. Sunburst (feat. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal)
8. Anyway (feat. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal)
9. Souvenirs Intimes (feat. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal)

Beijing-based artist/producer Howie Lee interprets Tibetan Buddhist chants on his new album 'At The Drolma Wesel-Ling Monastery', the follow up to 2021's critically acclaimed 'Birdy Island'.

Recorded over two weeks at Drolma Wesel-Ling Monastery in the mountains of north-eastern Tibet, Beijing-based multi-disciplinary artist/producer, Howie Lee combines Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist singing with Kode9-channeling bass/footwork science, glitched-out hyper-rhythms and sampled Chinese-Tibetan instrumentation for his latest album on Mais Um.

Invited to contribute and interpret chant recordings from the sound archive of monastery founder and master, Tuga Rinpoche's self-built recording studio, Howie Lee connects parallels in electronic music, deep meditation and devotional chanting to present eight reconstructed, IDM-warpedVajrayanamantras, journaling the beginnings of his journey into buddhism, and to continue Lee's career-long threading of ancient, cross-generational practice, modern Chinese history and experimental club-futurism.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Mantra Of Guru Rinpoche
A2. Mantra Of Buddha Akshobhya
A3. Mantra Of Manjushri
A4. Mantra Of Vajra Armour
B1. Mantra Of Buddha Amitayus
B2. The Seven Line Prayer To Guru Rinpoche
B3. Hundred-Syllable Mantra Of Vajrasattva
B4. Om Mani Padme Hum

A transatlantic collaboration between five musicians from the UK jazz collective Steam Down (and DoomCannon) plus eight musicians from Colombia's folk, jazz, hip-hop, salsa and electronic scenes and groups such as Ondatropica, Frente Cumbiero and La Perla.

TRACK LISTING

1. Puente Cósmico
2. Goldmine
3. Arroyo
4. Caminito
5. Borrachero
6. Giver Of Light
7. El Tigrillo Mono
8. Reflection

Domenico Lancellotti's SRAMBA reaches back to the roots of samba whilst completely revamping its blueprint, indoctrinating guitar and percussion-led rhythms with analogue synthesisers, courtesy of album producer Ricardo Dias Gomes.

The majority of SRAMBA was recorded over two months in The Cave - Domenico's home studio in Lisbon, the city both Brazilian ex-pats reside in, where the arrival of a couple of Russian-designed synths purchased by Ricardo influenced the direction of their initial experimentation: "Ricardo had these instruments, modular machines" remembers Domenico, "and I had my guitar, some percussion instruments. On the first day we started making sounds and recording them, and songs started to appear, sambas started to appear."

The son of a renowned samba songwriter, at home Domenico would watch his father play and compose. At parties, the adults would hand his father a tamborim (a small tambourine) and ask him to play along. "I grew up inside samba, it's my roots", he says. "For me, everything is samba, I bring it into whatever style of music I am making".

Domenico and Ricardo instantly saw how the synthesisers were not at odds with the sambas they were playing, instead they had a similar sound to its typical percussion instruments (ganza, repinique, surdo, tarol). What's more, they saw a connection with roots samba, the samba that existed before bossa nova and samba jazz came along. This was rhythmic samba, with grooves that could go on ad infinitum. "It's samba de clave, geometrically structured" says Domenico. "It's ostinato samba", adds Ricardo.

"Diga" is a great example of what their proposal is capable of, as what begins as a glitchy machine whirring into action soon turns into a glorious samba in which the gurgles and scratchy beats coming from the analogue equipment only add to the arrangement. Likewise, on "Tá Brabo" it's an aching melody from one of the synths that gives the guitar rhythm its needed counterpoint, and shows how the duo's greatest accomplishment is not in invention alone, but in creating a great samba album. It's an album that can go from the opening track "Ere" with its reverberant bass thud, mantra-like vocals and staccato rhythms to the string-accompanied "Nada Sera de Outra Maneira", a swooning samba that pays tribute to the Brazilian ensemble Tamba Trio, who along with Tom Zé's Estudando O Samba, Domenico names as the biggest influence on their treatment of samba.

Other important reference points are made clear on "Um Abraço No Faust". One of three instrumentals on the album its title riffs off a JoãoGilberto song, "Um Abraço no Bonfá", but whereas JoãoGilberto was giving a hug (um abraço) to bossa nova guitarist Luiz Bonfá, Domenico and Ricardo are giving theirs to the German avant-gardists Faust. "Quem Samba", with its horn section and dramatic melody give a whiff of Domenico's Italian ancestry, while "Descomunal" is devoid of rhythm whatsoever, guest vocalist Tori singing over a bed of electronic drums, cello and swirling synths, that highlights the duo's unwillingness to stick to a particular formula.

Both Domenico Lancellotti and Ricardo Dias Gomes are revered names within Brazilian music over the past 20 years. As a member of the +2's, with Moreno Veloso and Kassin, Domenico released a trio of albums on Luaka Bop in the early 00s that pioneered a new Rio samba sound with elements of funk and psychedelia. With Veloso and Kassin he would later form Orquestra Imperial, a big band intent on reviving ballroom (gafieira) samba, and that has worked with guest vocalists such as Seu Jorge, Elza Soares and Ed Motta. SRAMBA is his fourth solo album. Multi-instrumentalist Ricardo Dias Gomes first came to notice as a member of Caetano Veloso's band Cê which helped reinvigorate Caetano's career with a sound influenced by British new wave. As well as collaborations with Lucas Santtana, Negro Leo and Thiago Nassif, and work with his own group Do Amor, he has released a series of acclaimed solo albums that reveal a restless music-maker.

SRAMBA is a glorious showcase of the duo's style, uniting Domenico's playful lyrics and rhythmic, samba-rooted songs with with Ricardo's assured accompaniment of unorthodox textures and instrumentations. It may be a new language for samba, machine samba (samba de máquina), but as Domenico says, "samba da máquina is samba".

TRACK LISTING

1. Erê
2. Um Abraço No Faust
3. Diga
4. Aterrizar
5. Tá Brabo
6. Mole
7. Nada Será De Outra Maneira
8. Quem Samba (feat. Marcia)
9. Descomunal (feat. Tori)
10. Florescer

On the eve of her 80th birthday, Dona Onete - ‘the grande dame of Amazonian song’ - returns with Rebujo, a love letter to her hometown of Belém, situated deep in the Amazon. Rebujo brims with two music styles born in Belém: carimbós, influenced by African grooves, and bangues, a ska-type rhythm, plus there’s a cumbia, brega (‘romantic’ music) and samba.

Since the release of her 2017 album "Banzeiro", Onete has become a superstar in Brazil – she composed and sung the theme song for one of Brazil’s biggest soap operas (A Força do Querer), been awarded the Brazilian Ordem do Mérito Cultural in recognition for her contribution to Brazilian culture + her video for "No Meio do Pitiu" has an impressive 9.2m views on Youtube.

TRACK LISTING

1. A1. Festa Do Tubarão
2. A2. CarimbóArrepiado
3. A3. MexeMexe
4. A4. VemChamegar
5. A5. Musa Da Babilônia
6. B1. Tambor Do Norte
7. B2. MisturaPai’dégua
8. B3. Fogo NaAldeia
9. B4. 09 AçãoReação
10. B5. 10 Balanço De Açaí
11. Galante Sedutor (CD ONLY)