Dub No Frontiers is inspired by and features female vocalists that Adrian Sherwood and the On-U Sound label knew from the UK or had met while travelling around the world. Many of the singers said they felt the dub and reggae arena was a bit of a male preserve and a little intimidating even, so Sherwood decided to invite artistes to perform a song of their choice, all in non-English on his rhythm tracks. Vocalists include Likkle Mai (singing in Japanese), Rita Morar (Hindi), Kerieva (Romani), Neyssatou (Arabic) & Yehaiyahan (Chinese).

The album is dedicated to the memory of both Ariane ‘Ari Up’ Forster and Lincoln Valentine ‘Style’ Scott with whom the project started.

Peter Harris’s cover painting of Afeni Shakur Davis sets the visual tone of the record and both the LP and CD come with a 12-page booklet featuring more of his paintings of inspiring women from the world of literature, politics, law, civil rights and medicine, such as Claudia Jones, Flo Kennedy, Barbara Jordan, Claudette Colvin and Mary Seacole.

TRACK LISTING

1. Yehaiyahan — Love Hurts [3:11]
2. Likkle Mai — Haste Makes Waste [4:12]
3. Rita Morar — Meri Awaaz Suno (Hear My Voice) [3:15]
4. In Temi Oyedele — I Dupe (Thanks Giving) [4:21]
5. Neyssatou — War [4:15]
6. Maria Wenda — Okama Werek Halok [3:42]
7. Kerieva — Chavale [3:52]
8. JaGodDa — Krysztalowy Aniol (Crystal Angel) [3:57]
9. Saba Tewelde — Semarulay Daqey [2:36]
10. Nadya Ostroff DR.NO — Little Cosmonaut [4:31]

Portico Quartet have defied categorisation over the course of six studio albums. From their 2007 Mercury Music Prize nominated breakthrough ‘Knee-Deep in the North Sea’ through to the longform minimalist inspired ‘Terrain’ and recent electronic driven album ‘Monument’. The band’s precisely sculpted ideas combine human touch with electronic efficiency, delivering acclaimed widescreen minimalism. The third, self-titled, album from Portico Quartet was originally released on 30 January 2012 and saw the band embracing new sonic territories.

This 10th anniversary re-release sees the album newly remastered for vinyl and cut across three sides (the fourth is an etching) by John Davis at Metropolis, with silver foiled sleeve designs and a 12-page 12” booklet of black and white photography from the recording period. There’s a choice of either black or colour vinyl, both with silver foiled sleeve designs and a 12-page 12” booklet of black and white photography from the recording period.

Also included in the vinyl formats is a hi-res download code for the full album and additional contemporaneous EP tracks, currently unavailable elsewhere.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Window Seat 3:18
Ruins 5:34
Spinner 4:38
Side B
Rubidium 8:44
Export For Hot Climates 1:08
Laker Boo 7:51
Side C
Steepless 3:57
4096 Colours 4:35
City Of Glass 6:36
Trace 1:53
Side D
Etching

The album has been Half-Speed Remastered and cut to lacquers at 33RPM, across 2x heavyweight black vinyl LPs, to deliver maximum dynamic range in the sound.

Vinyl cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, mastered by Tony Cousins at Metropolis. The album is true to the original LP design with a wide-spine jacket and printed inner sleeves, but now utilises colour photographs from The Last Temptation of Christ film. All images are newly re-scanned.

The album comes with a download card with a choice of digital download (Hi-Res 24bit or 16bit).

Passion – Music for The Last Temptation of Christ was released a year after Martin Scorsese’s controversy-laden film first hit the big screen in 1988. Passion tends to be regarded as a work in its own right rather than just being a movie soundtrack. It features additional music to that which was included in the film; this extra material was the result of Peter continuing to record and to resolve “unfinished ideas”. Built on a foundation of Middle Eastern and North African rhythms and melodies, Passion is unsurprisingly Peter’s most spiritual work, no more so than when the alternately ascending voices of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Youssou N’Dour and Peter himself interweave on the title track. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Youssou N’Dour are far from the only notable guests; the cross-continental gathering of musicians also includes Senegalese griot Baaba Maal, jazz drummer Bill Cobham and avant-garde trumpeter Jon Hassell among many others.

TRACK LISTING

LP 1
A1 The Feeling Begins
A2 Gethsemane
A3 Of These, Hope
A4 Lazarus Raised
A5 Of These, Hope - Reprise
A6 In Doubt
A7 A Different Drum
B1 Zaar
B2 Troubled
B3 Open
B4 Before Night Falls
B5 With This Love

LP 2
C1 Sandstorm
C2 Stigmata
C3 Passion
C4 With This Love – Choir
D1 Wall Of Breath
D2 The Promise Of Shadows
D3 Disturbed
D4 It Is Accomplished
D5 Bread And Wine

The album has been Half-Speed Remastered and cut to lacquers at 33RPM, on 1x heavyweight black LP, to deliver maximum dynamic range in the sound.

Vinyl cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, mastered by Tony Cousins at Metropolis. The album is true to the original LP design, but all images are newly re-scanned.

The album comes with a download card with a choice of digital download (Hi-Res 24bit or 16bit)

Recorded in 1984, and originally released in March 1985, Birdy marks the first occasion that Peter worked with French-Canadian producer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Lanois who went onto co-produce both Peter’s So and US albums. The soundtrack to the Alan Parker movie of the same name – the tale of a Vietnam vet who harbours Icarus-like ambitions to fly – it finds Peter flexing his creative muscles free of any commercial pressures and has a number of tracks build out of elements of existing tracks from Peter’s third and fourth solo albums.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
A1 At Night
A2 Floating Dogs
A3 Quiet And Alone
A4 Close Up (from Family Snapshot)
A5 Slow Water
A6 Dressing The Wound
SIDE B
B1 Birdy's Flight (from Not One Of Us)
B2 Slow Marimbas
B3 The Heat (from The Rhythm Of The Heat)
B4 Sketchpad With Trumpet And Voice
B5 Under Lock And Key (from Wallflower)
B6 Powerhouse At The Foot Of The Mountain (from San Jacinto)

There are pieces of music that seek to tell us deeper stories. Others harness the talents of the players at their disposal in adventurous ways. Then there are the rare, generous works that make us think back to our roots as human beings and to our shared beginnings in the universe, that lift us in their melodies, rhythms and textures, that carry us with them.

The Unfolding is all of these things. An extraordinary eight-part collaboration between composer Hannah Peel (Mercury Prize and Emmy nominee) and Paraorchestra, it was made over three years in precious morsels of time around a global pandemic. These circumstances – unexpected when the collaboration began – add weight to its explorations in sound about who we are, where we came from, and who we could all be. The Unfolding also explores Paraorchestra’s progressive idea of what an orchestra should be, mixing analogue, digital and assistive instruments with a unique ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians to make magic happen, and accessible to all.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Surpassing the meditative shimmer and oscillating beauty of last years' 'Fir Wave' was never going to be easy, but this is the most strikingly beautiful piece of work I think she's ever done. Choral and otherworldly, but imbued with a levity and optimistic glimmer that Peel does so well. Mindblowing.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. The Universe Before Matter [10:58]
A2. Wild Animal [3:55]
Side B
B1. Passage [5:22]
B2. The Unfolding [5:47]
Side C
C1. If After Weeks Of Early Sun [4:16]
C2. Perhaps It Made Us Happy For A Minute [4:17]
C3. We Are Part Mineral [6:06]
Side D
D1. Part Cloud [10:31]
D2. The Unfolding Credits Instrumental Version [02:19] *vinyl Exclusive Not On CD*
D3. The Unfolding Credits [02:19]

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

Bokanté - founded by Michael League (Snarky Puppy) - is a truly global band, with players from five countries and four continents. Metropol Orkest is part jazz big band, part symphony orchestra, helmed by English conductor Jules Buckley. The message is laced throughout new album ‘What Heat’… and it is urgent. Injustice is raging all around.

For fans of Snarky Puppy, Oumou Sangaré, Buena Vista Social Club, Les Amazones d’Afrique, Anjelique Kidjo, Ghost-Note, Bill Laurence, Afro jazz.

TRACK LISTING

All The Way Home
Fanm
Lè An Gadé-w En Zyé
Réparasyons
Bòd Lanmè Pa Lwen
Don’t Do It
Chambre à Échos
La Maison En Feu

Portico Quartet still sound like nothing you ever heard before. The Mercury nominated East London based outfit’s unique music has expanded to embrace new sonic territories. Drawing on the inspiration of electronica, ambient, classical and dance music as they take their strange, beautiful, cinematic, future music to exciting new vistas where the inspiration of Burial, Mount Kimbie and Flying Lotus rubs shoulders with the textures of Arve Henriksen and Bon Iver and echoes of Steve Reich and Max Richter. But all underpinned by a shared joy in collective music making as the band push their inimitable music into the future.

Produced by the band themselves and brilliantly engineered by Greg Freeman at the Fish Market studios and Real World, Portico Quartet’s eponymous third album is the sound of a band that refuses to stand still. But there are no shortcuts here, the music is played live, not pre-recorded, and the hard won collective empathy that is at the heart of their sound remains their primary touchstone. Full of mystery and drama Portico Quartet still take the listener on an unparalleled journey but where their previous album Isla was the sound of a band looking inwards, Portico Quartet find the band looking defiantly into the future.