The Quietus Albums Of The Year 2019

Rian Treanor will release his anticipated debut album ‘ATAXIA’ on Planet Mu this March. The striking full-length follows singles for The Death Of Rave and Warp’s Arcola imprint as well as live sets at Boilerroom x Genelec, Nyege Nyege festival, tours in India and various high profile EU shows. The title ‘ATAXIA’ means 'the loss of full control of bodily movements' and relates to Rian's music which is “intended to make people’s bodies move in unpredictable ways.” He adds “the angles in the letters, the phonetics seem to mirror the geometry and idiosyncratic patterns in the music.” Rian explains that components of the tracks were made by generating a series of irregular events and re-structuring them, or by destabilising a pattern that is constant.   When asked how the album compares with his previous releases, he says “My earlier EPs share a similar interest in angular and asymmetrical rhythms that are designed for club sound systems,” adding “they were more improvised, focusing on sequencing and pattern modulation, using standard drum sounds and synthesiser patches. ATAXIA is more focused and stricter, it’s more co-ordinated in terms of the track selection and the rhythmic structures. I spent more time refining the synthesis and sound design, pushing it further than the previous releases.” He expresses an interest in exploring opposites in his music: “fluidity and syncopation,” “systematic and unpredictability,” “reduction and extremity,” “irregular symmetry,” “easy listening and brutal”. There’s clear a conceptual backdrop, but the music itself is not overthought. There’s an immediate joy to much of the album – check out ATAXIA_D3 with its wonderful cut-ups and modulations of the phrase “people don’t understand people.”   The roots of Rian's playful sound are directly linked to his love of the music he grew up with. Coming from Sheffield, you can hear elements of industrial, synth-pop, bleep, extreme computer music and speed garage at play. From Cabaret Voltaire to Warp and beyond; the sound of his city has been, and is, an integral part of his musical development and is still a direct influence.   Last year, he noted in an interview that "I'm not a computer programmer, I'm not an articulate person in that kind of way. I'm a visual artist." Now he elaborates “I meant more that I’m a visual thinker.” Drawing and visual art have been a fundamental part of his life “since I was a child. I got really into graffiti as a teenager and around the same time I got into mixing and these both developed together.” You can sense the mind of a visual artist at work in his music which is also reflected in the artwork he created for this project.    As well as his visual art, installations and multichannel sound works he is involved in numerous collaborations such as with composer Nakul Krishnamurthy exploring the common ground between Indian classical music and electronic music and his work with improv saxophonist Karl D'Silva, plus his time studying with Lupo at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin (who taught him the “importance of reduction”) have all helped shape and push his sound into other unique and adventurous zones. Treanor is developing on different levels and in different forms all at the same time, re-imagining the intersection of club culture, experimental art and computer music, presenting an insightful and compelling musical world of fractured and interlocking components. 

Five years after releasing Return of the Astro-Goth, Yugen Blakrok descends from the vast cosmos and delivers to the world an impressive lesson in style, with her second album Anima Mysterium. Far from the stars but heavy with their radiant wisdom; it’s towards Earth, humanity and the obscurity at its core that the South African rapper directs her incantations. Accompanied by Kanif the Jhatmaster’s beats, Yugen’s flow sows the frontiers of a world where the subconscious frees itself and confronts man with his most hidden secrets. Yugen’s poetry has something Ovidian, depicting her as an agent of Metamorphosis, a reincarnated goddess in terrestrial form calling humanity to itself. “Why in the deepest darkness my soul beams like a lantern Engineered in female form...silent carrier of the force I'm a sandstorm in desert dunes, a shadow with a torch” Land of Gray, Yugen Blakrok The osmosis between Yugen’s words and Kanif’s instrumentals comes across from the first listen. On Return of the Astro-Goth, the astrological ideas covered by the rapper found a perfect canvas in the mix of wind instruments, dub and electronic echoes from the beatmaker. Here, Yugen lays hers flow over instrumentals of rock, jazz and even at times something that sounds close to witch-house. The project, released under French label I.O.T Records, extracts the essential oils from hip-hop as seen by the two artists, whose creative freedom and artistic integrity contrast with the current rigid codes of the genre. At their sides they have rallied to their musical odyssey artists from South Africa and the US, including hip-hop legend Kool Keith himself. //////////// SOS MEDITERRANEE //////////// (UK) Because it goes without saying that every human being has the right to life, I.O.T Records is now a partner of the organization SOS MEDITERRANEE, which comes to the rescue of people trying to reach the European coasts by sea. As a sign of support, for any order on our Bandcamp shop, if you register an amount higher than the displayed price, the surplus will automatically be donated to SOS MEDITERRANEE, to which will be added 1€ (max.) from I.O.T Records. For more information about their actions, visit this website sosmediterranee.com/about-us/ (FR) Parce qu'il va de soi que chaque être humain a droit à la vie, I.O.T Records est désormais partenaire de l'organisation SOS MEDITERRANEE, qui vient en secours aux personnes tentant de rejoindre les côtes européennes par voie maritime. En signe de soutien, lors de toute commande sur notre shop Bandcamp, si vous inscrivez un montant supérieur au prix affiché, l'excédent sera automatiquement reversé à SOS MEDITERRANEE, auquel s'ajoutera un don à hauteur de 1€ (max.) de la part de I.O.T Records. Pour plus d'informations sur leurs actions, visitez ce site www.sosmediterranee.fr

The experimental tendencies of electronic duo Matmos have often led to their off-the-wall album concepts, so it may come as no surprise that the avant-garde act’s 11th record is composed entirely using sounds sourced from plastic. Merging found sound and musique concrete techniques with plastic instruments played live, Matmos explore a bold new synthetic sound palette. The results are unpredictable and often spectacular—\"Breaking Bread\" offers a twisted minimal take on samples from the band Bread\'s vinyl records, while the skittering title track is an upbeat march featuring plastic horns and drums.

Thrill Jockey Records is pleased to announce Plastic Anniversary, the new album by Baltimore-based electronic duo Matmos. Pushing off from the restricted palette of their last album, the critically acclaimed Ultimate Care II, which was composed entirely from the sound of a washing machine, Plastic Anniversary is also derived from a single sound source: plastic. At once hyper-familiar in its omnipresence and deeply inhuman in its measured-in-centuries longevity and endurance, plastic supplies, surrounds and scares. Seemingly negligible, plastic is always ready to hand but also always somewhat suspect, casting toxic shadows onto the everyday. True to form, the band have assembled a promiscuous array of examples of this sturdy-yet-ersatz family of materials: Bakelite dominos, Styrofoam coolers, polyethylene waste containers, PVC panpipes, pinpricks of bubble wrap, silicone gel breast implants and synthetic human fat. Though it has the tight editing chops, pop forms and bizarre sound palette of their early albums such as Quasi-Objects and A Chance to Cut Is A Chance to Cure, Plastic Anniversary has a distinctive sound because of the foregrounding of plastic horns and plastic drums played by human beings. The bounce and snap of the duo’s programmed rhythms are here supplemented by a sweatier and more unruly human element provided by a surprising cast of guest musicians. Members of the horn and drumline sections of the Whitefish Highschool Bulldogs from Whitefish, Montana were recruited by Matmos and persuaded to take part in recording sessions at Snowghost Studios where they played objects sourced from a nearby recycling center, including massive plastic garbage bins. This was later combined with additional plastic percussion performances by Greg Saunier, a drummer known for his hyper-expressive, mercurial playing as a founding member of the band Deerhoof. Taking the concept of “broken beat” literally, “Breaking Bread” is a bouncy digital dancehall number built entirely out of the plucked and twanged fragments of broken vinyl records by the Seventies soft rock group Bread. A mini-suite for plastic container, exercise ball and an amplified DNA kit that recalls both 80s pop and the hectic minimalism of Michael Nyman, “The Crying Pill” stacks frantic patterns of saxophone-like sobs onto deep sub bass stabs that are almost trap. Amplifying squishy synthetic human tissue created by the SynDaver corporation as a substitute for human corpses in medical schools, “Interior with Billiard Balls & Synthetic Fat” pairs squelchy electro made out of gross-out substances with tangy melodic riffs. This odd combination of Cronenbergian body-horror and sunny grooves continues on “Silicone Gel Implant”, a skanking number that works rubbery basslines out of, yes, a breast implant, but by the time the plastic flutes snake into the mix, the source becomes secondary to the trance-like form. Side one closes in a more reflective and somber key, with the title track “Plastic Anniversary”, whose cod-medieval martial drums and horn fanfares recall Matmos’ penchant for anachronism circa “The Civil War” before giving way to a close-mic-ed cascade of plastic poker chips. If side one is playful and poppy, side two is sharper and darker in its implications, and features more live drumming than any other Matmos album. Things kick off with “Thermoplastic Riot Shield” a single-object study built entirely out of the sound of a police riot shield being stroked, rubbed and struck. The resulting sounds are processed into a tense assemblage of harsh noise, deep dub basslines and jarring cuts of silence. On a squeaky loop straight out of a Jacques Tati film, “The Singing Tube” draws out the pinging resonance of a ten foot long PVC pipe played entirely with plastic toilet brushes, and hits a flanged overtone effect not unlike the string compositions of Arnold Dreyblatt. Bristling with whistles and noisemakers and plastic-gloved handclaps, “Collapse of the Fourth Kingdom” bolts a percussive showcase for the high school marching band playing the signature patterns of drumline and Baltimore club onto jarring edits of LEGO bricks clicking into place and weird smears of processed plastic horns. Since plastic was described by its first developers as a “fourth kingdom” beyond animal, vegetable, and mineral, this track heralds the eventual collapse of the political economy that birthed the oceans of garbage that now choke our world. Thinking the dystopian consequences of plastic through to their post-human conclusion, the final track, “Plastisphere” sounds like a field recording of insects and birds and pattering rain and ocean waves, but is in fact a work of digital sleight of hand: every single sound on this track has been artificially constructed out of samples of bubble wrap, Velcro, plastic bags and straws and, tellingly, an emergency stretcher. After a volatile and vibrant suite of poppy plastic electronics, Plastic Anniversary ends in an acknowledgement of the planetary price yet to be paid. Production Details: Plastic Anniversary was pre-mastered by extreme digital sound artist Jeff Carey. Mastered for vinyl by the renowned mastering engineer Rashad Becker. Cover art, which collages high resolution, up-close photographs of the objects used to create the music, is by Ted Mineo, the creator of the cover art for Ultimate Care II. Back cover image by photographer and activist Chris Jordan depicts the plastic contents from the stomach of a Laysan albatross photographed in an atoll near the Pacific Ocean Plastic Gyre. Touring: Matmos will be touring World Wide throughout 2019. Anniversary: Drew and Martin celebrated their 25th while making the album.

The Atlanta band’s eighth full-length finds iconoclastic frontman Bradford Cox and co. shrinking their typically ambient-focused sound, with relatively compact guitar-pop gems alongside haunting, weightless-sounding instrumentals. Featuring contributions from Welsh singer-songwriter Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley of garage-popsters White Fence, *Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?* diverges from the deeply personal themes of previous Deerhunter albums, zeroing in on topics ranging from James Dean (“Plains”) to the tragic murder of British politician Jo Cox (“No One’s Sleeping”)—but the spectral vocals and penchant for left-field sounds are well accounted for, as the album represents the latest strange chapter in one of modern indie rock’s most consistently surprising acts.

Featuring classic 1970s artwork by Sci-Fi god Bruce Pennington, “Hidden History of the Human Race” promises to be both a meditative inquiry on the Mystery & Nature of human consciousness, and a dynamic foray into the realms of progressive, brutal & atmospheric death metal, as revealed by BLOOD INCANTATION. Recorded completely analogue at World Famous Studios in Denver, CO, “Hidden History of the Human Race” expands the sonic cosmos explored on BLOOD INCANTATION’s critically acclaimed debut “Starspawn” (Dark Descent Records) and contains the following new tracks: 1. Slave Species of the Gods - 05:31 2. The Giza Power Plant - 07:06 3. Inner Paths (to Outer Space - 05:38 4. Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul) - 18:05

Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points has announced his new album Crush will be released on 18 October on Ninja Tune. Along with the announcement he has shared new track 'Last Bloom' along with accompanying video by Hamill Industries and announced details of a new live show with dates including London's Printworks, his biggest headline live show to date. The best musical mavericks never sit still for long. They mutate and morph into new shapes, refusing to be boxed in. Floating Points has so many guises that it’s not easy to pin him down. There’s the composer whose 2015 debut album Elaenia was met with rave reviews – including being named Pitchfork’s ‘Best New Music’ and Resident Advisor’s ‘Album of the Year’ – and took him from dancefloors to festival stages worldwide. The curator whose record labels have brought soulful new sounds into the club, and, on his esteemed imprint Melodies International, reinstated old ones. The classicist, the disco guy that makes machine music, the digger always searching for untapped gems to re-release. And then there’s the DJ whose liberal approach to genre saw him once drop a 20-minute instrumental by spiritual saxophonist Pharoah Sanders in Berghain. Fresh from the release earlier this year of his compilation of lambent, analogous ambient and atmospheric music for the esteemed Late Night Tales compilation series, Floating Points’ first album in four years, Crush, twists whatever you think you know about him on its head again. A tempestuous blast of electronic experimentalism whose title alludes to the pressure-cooker of the current environment we find ourselves in. As a result, Shepherd has made some of his heaviest, most propulsive tracks yet, nodding to the UK bass scene he emerged from in the late 2000s, such as the dystopian low-end bounce of previously shared striking lead single ‘LesAlpx’ (Pitchfork’s ‘Best New Track’), but there are also some of his most expressive songs on Crush: his signature melancholia is there in the album’s sublime mellower moments or in the Buchla synthesizer, whose eerie modulation haunts the album. Whereas Elaenia was a five-year process, Crush was made during an intense five-week period, inspired by the invigorating improvisation of his shows supporting The xx in 2017. He had just finished touring with his own live ensemble, culminating in a Coachella appearance, when he suddenly became a one-man band, just him and his trusty Buchla opening up for half an hour every night. He thought what he’d come out with would "be really melodic and slow- building" to suit the mood of the headliners, but what he ended up playing was "some of the most obtuse and aggressive music I've ever made, in front of 20,000 people every night," he says. "It was liberating." His new album feels similarly instantaneous – and vital. It’s the sound of the many sides of Floating Points finally fusing together. It draws from the "explosive" moments during his sets, the moments that usually occur when he throws together unexpected genres, for the very simple reason that he gets excited about wanting to "hear this record, really loud, now!" and then puts the needle on. It’s "just like what happens when you’re at home playing music with your friends and it's going all over the place," he says. Today's newly announced live solo shows capture that energy too, so that the audience can see that what they’re watching isn’t just someone pressing play. Once again Shepherd has teamed up with Hamill Industries, the duo who brought their ground-breaking reactive laser technologies to his previous tours. Their vision is to create a constant dialogue between the music and the visuals. This time their visuals will zoom in on the natural world, where landscapes are responsive to the music and flowers or rainbow swirls of bubbles might move and morph to the kick of the bass drum. What you see on the screen behind Shepherd might "look like a cosmos of colour going on," says Shepherd, "but it’s actually a tiny bubble with a macro lens on it being moved by frequencies by my Buchla," which was also the process by which the LP artwork was made." It means, he adds, "putting a lot of Fairy Liquid on our tour rider".

Channeling humanity's desire for transformation via annihilation, DEBBY FRIDAY returns with her second EP and what she calls a "rock-and-roll revival." With boisterous vocals, industrial flavour and cacophonous production, the sound of 'DEATH DRIVE' is loud and electric; broadcasting a message of grief and salvation. DEBBY FRIDAY's debut ep, 2018's 'BITCHPUNK' received praise from underground and independent outlets, including The Needle Drop and FLOOD Magazine, as well as garnered her admirers such as rap trio clipping. For her followup, the artist dives deeper into punk rock, gospel intonations and heavy noise, showcasing an evolving sound while still retaining a dancefloor accessibility. It is evident that DEBBY FRIDAY intends to meet impending doom full force and head on.

The more music Dave makes, the more out of step his prosaic stage name seems. The richness and daring of his songwriting has already been granted an Ivor Novello Award—for “Question Time,” 2017’s searing address to British politicians—and on his debut album he gets deeper, bolder, and more ambitious. Pitched as excerpts from a year-long course of therapy, these 11 songs show the South Londoner examining the human condition and his own complex wiring. Confession and self-reflection may be nothing new in rap, but they’ve rarely been done with such skill and imagination. Dave’s riveting and poetic at all times, documenting his experience as a young British black man (“Black”) and pulling back the curtain on the realities of fame (“Environment”). With a literary sense of detail and drama, “Lesley”—a cautionary, 11-minute account of abuse and tragedy—is as much a short story as a song: “Touched her destination/Way faster than the cab driver\'s estimation/She put the key in the door/She couldn\'t believe what she see on the floor.” His words are carried by equally stirring music. Strings, harps, and the aching melodies of Dave’s own piano-playing mingle with trap beats and brooding bass in incisive expressions of pain and stress, as well as flashes of optimism and triumph. It may be drawn from an intensely personal place, but *Psychodrama* promises to have a much broader impact, setting dizzying new standards for UK rap.

It was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned —for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date. This sense of privacy maintained throughout is helped by the various landscapes within which Reward took shape: Stinson Beach, LA, and Brooklyn via Cardiff and The Lakes. Recording at Panoramic House [Stinson Beach, CA], a residential studio on a mountain overlooking the ocean, afforded Le Bon the ability to preserve the remoteness she had captured during the writing of Reward in Staveley, Lake District. Over this extended period a cast of trusted and loved musicians joined Le Bon, Khouja and fellow co-producer Josiah Steinbrick — Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) on drums and percussion; Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) on bass and saxophone and longtime collaborators Huw Evans (aka H.Hawkline) and Josh Klinghoffer on guitars — and were added to the album, “one by one, one on one”. The fact that these collaborators have appeared variously on Le Bon’s previous outputs no doubt goes some way to aid the preservation of a signature sound despite a relatively drastic change in approach. Be it on her more minimalist, acoustic-leaning 2009 debut album Me Oh My or critically acclaimed, liquid-riffed 2013 LP Mug Museum as well as 2016s Crab Day, Cate Le Bon’s solo work — and indeed also her production work, such as that carried out on recent Deerhunter album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (4AD, January 2019) — has always resisted pigeonholing, walking the tightrope between krautrock aloofness and heartbreaking tenderness; deadpan served with a twinkle in the eye, a flick of the fringe and a lick of the Telecaster. The multifaceted nature of Le Bon’s art — its ability to take on multiple meanings and hold motivations which are not immediately obvious — is evident right down to the album’s very name. “People hear the word ‘reward’ and they think that it’s a positive word” says Le Bon, “and to me it’s quite a sinister word in that it depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver. I feel like it’s really indicative of the times we’re living in where words are used as slogans, and everything is slowly losing its meaning.” The record, then, signals a scrambling to hold onto meaning; it is a warning against lazy comparisons and face values. It is a sentiment nicely summed up by the furniture-making musician as she advises: “Always keep your hand behind the chisel.”

ALL THE MANY PEOPLS Liner notes by Drew Daniel “Who died by stuffing a chicken with snow?” The astute listener has barely had the time to clock this garbled rendition of Sir Francis Bacon’s death, and with it, the grimly poetic ironies that haunt even the most mundane scientific pursuits, when an even more pressing issue is raised: “How do vampires get boners?” I thought you’d never ask. With manic intensity, caustic wit, and an acute ear for the symptomatic points where linguistic clichés crack open to reveal human fears and longings, Jennifer Walshe has found our culture’s search history, and she is singing its network into vibrant being. When queried about the ingredients from which ALL THE MANY PEOPLS is constructed, Jennifer Walshe offers a list whose voracious breadth of polyglot reference constitutes its own cultural argument: “Lojban, a language constructed entirely according to the rules of predicate logic; the cast of Lohengrin; certain sections from Watt by Samuel Beckett constituting the first examples of process composition; The Public Enemy (1931) starring James Cagney; KRS-One; U.S. and British soldiers making cell-phone videos of themselves blowing things up and uploading the videos to You Tewbe; Even Dwarfs Started Small; Amazonkom message boards about vampire physiology; Dashboard Confessional; sferics; conspiracy theorist Francis E. Dec; detritus from video game voice-overs; Jackie Stallone; August Strindberg’s Inferno; Cymbalta Discontinuation Syndrome; a Hibernian version of “The Signifying Monkey” as response to the 19th century practice of describing/depicting the Irish as “simian”/apes; The Typing of the Dead; cult Irish martial arts film Fatal Deviation; the collective unconscious as evidenced by Googull Autocomplete; Couradge Wolf; 4Tchan” Whether this sounds like a crawling, schizophrenic chaos or like a typical day online depends upon how you spend your time. Confronted by the turbulent intensity of the internet as an immersive manifold of mutually competitive media, all users become bricoleurs, scavenging content from film, literature, video games, social media, philosophy, science fiction, pop music, message boards, and search engine ephemera. Far from succumbing to a blur of non-differentiation which levels down distinctions, in the face of this overplus the online self becomes simultaneously more fluid (open to anything) and more selective (you’ll know it when it you find it): customizing, editing down, prioritizing. There’s another word for this process: composition. At a key point in this one-woman roaratoria, Walshe bursts at breakneck speed into an incantation to the “worldwide computer god Frankenstein containment policy brain bank,” a found fragment of schizophrenic speech which in fact articulates rather precisely the constructivist principles that fashioned ALL THE MANY PEOPLS. The global information ecosystem of the internet (the “worldwide computer god”) is broken into morcellated, dead pieces and fragments and reassembled into an organic body (“Frankenstein”), whose sections are selected according to their expressive intensity and mutually animating rightness of fit (the “containment policy” of composition) and this living body is stored and re-performed by a single, thinking, feeling, art-making human being (the “brain bank” of Jennifer Walshe, composer and performer). Tilting beyond post-modern parlor games in which “high” culture and “low” culture rub shoulders (as if there could be a singular, common parameter with which to negotiate this kind of surplus, as if the top down structures of expertise and gatekeeping were still in place), Walshe’s “brain bank” operates at lightning speed and a high temperature, offering us what, to take up the parlance of Henri Lefebvre, one might term a “rhythmanalysis” of our media day. This striking solo performance draws upon all of the intuitive nuances and micro-adjustments of a highly skilled vocalist, mimic and free improviser, but Walshe marshalls these immanent interpretive archives of body memory and gut level directness in the service of a conceptually ambitious and radically democratic agenda: revealing the way that the social multitude—the “many peopls” of Walshe’s title—constitutes the raw material from which the assemblages that we call selves emerge. Against the backdrop of a world of contemporary music which all too often seems trapped in a sterile endgame of funding-driven citations of arts council agendas and formerly “avant garde” gestures stripped of force, we need Walshe’s fearlessness, speedy metabolism, and critical ear more than ever. The progress bar has loaded. Special thanks to Panos Ghikas & Drew Daniel; Blackie Bouffant, Style Kincaid and An Snag Breac.

A collaboration between Charles Hayward, Laura Cannell, Andre Bosman and Ex Easter Island Head.

From the outset of his fame—or, in his earliest years as an artist, infamy—Tyler, The Creator made no secret of his idolization of Pharrell, citing the work the singer-rapper-producer did as a member of N.E.R.D as one of his biggest musical influences. The impression Skateboard P left on Tyler was palpable from the very beginning, but nowhere is it more prevalent than on his fifth official solo album, *IGOR*. Within it, Tyler is almost completely untethered from the rabble-rousing (and preternaturally gifted) MC he broke out as, instead pushing his singing voice further than ever to sound off on love as a life-altering experience over some synth-heavy backdrops. The revelations here are mostly literal. “I think I’m falling in love/This time I think it\'s for real,” goes the chorus of the pop-funk ditty “I THINK,” while Tyler can be found trying to \"make you love me” on the R&B-tinged “RUNNING OUT OF TIME.” The sludgy “NEW MAGIC WAND” has him begging, “Please don’t leave me now,” and the album’s final song asks, “ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?” but it’s hardly a completely mopey affair. “IGOR\'S THEME,” the aforementioned “I THINK,” and “WHAT\'S GOOD” are some of Tyler’s most danceable songs to date, featuring elements of jazz, funk, and even gospel. *IGOR*\'s guests include Playboi Carti, Charlie Wilson, and Kanye West, whose voices are all distorted ever so slightly to help them fit into Tyler\'s ever-experimental, N.E.R.D-honoring vision of love.

"MY DISCO finally unveil their debut album for Downwards, a brilliant rendering of concrète/industrial styles recorded in the same Berlin studio often frequented by Einstürzende Neubauten, Pan Sonic and Keiji Haino, somehow channelling the spirit of all three. It’s an intensely rich and wildly unexpected trip that takes in the ragged intensity of Suicide alongside gong recordings and a kind of isolationist ambient spirit that resides somewhere between Selected Ambient Works Vol II and Raime. ‘Environment’ finds MY DISCO in the midst of deep synth despair, leaving behind the gnashing guitars in favour of cold metallic percussion and gloomy pads reverberating in derelict, factory-like space. Gutting out the driving, mathy repetition of their prized early work (2010’s Steve Albini-produced ’Young/You’ is a favourite of Karl O’Connor/Regis), the Melbourne-based trio now recall the ungodly offspring of Raime and Swans, operating with an increased appreciation of space, rhythm and tone that will shock even the hardest to please explorers of avant-rock and industrial fault lines. In no uncertain terms its 8 tracks plumb the depths of a foul mood, strafing thru a series of antechamber-like stations like some inelegant beast encumbered with clanking manacles and ankle restraints. Thanks to the visceral, vivid nature of the recording and production, the devil lies in the synaesthetic sonic/visual detail, riddling a mostly wordless narrative that perfectly says it without saying it. Biting down first with the jagged metallic klang and gnawing drones of ‘An Intimate Conflict’, the album continues to fetishise both bleeding-raw and cinematic themes thru the torture chamber ambience of ‘Exercise In Sacrifice’, and the red-lining tone poem ‘Act’, leading into belly of the beast bass growls on ‘Rival Colour’, before the dissonant, keening might of ‘No Permanence’ calves off into a closer to end all closers, with the band’s Cornell Wilczek feeding Buchla Easel tones into the empty tank strikes and fetid atmosphere of ‘Forever’ with a febrile effect worthy of Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement. By any measure, ‘Environment’ is one of Downwards’ most singular albums, and a must-check for disciples of proper, unheimlich sonics. Trust it’ll wipe that art school smirk right off your mug." — Boomkat 2019

On her fifth proper full-length album, Sharon Van Etten pushes beyond vocals-and-guitar indie rock and dives headlong into spooky maximalism. With production help from John Congleton (St. Vincent), she layers haunting drones with heavy, percussive textures, giving songs like “Comeback Kid” and “Seventeen” explosive urgency. Drawing from Nick Cave, Lucinda Williams, and fellow New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen, *Remind Me Tomorrow* is full of electrifying anthems, with Van Etten voicing confessions of reckless, lost, and sentimental characters. The album challenges the popular image of Van Etten as *just* a singer-songwriter and illuminates her significant talent as composer and producer, as an artist making records that feel like a world of their own.

With a slight line up change in the drum department we see RAKTA tighten up their more tense, soundtrack natured developments alongside their more sparse and vulnerable elegance. They consistently manage to create a tripped out creep chamber with room to explore as the aura builds to nightmare crescendos juxtaposed with shaking silences. Simultaneously eerie and serene. With each new release we see more and more of what makes this group so essential in the canon of modern music. Jensen Ward ------- Inicialmente orbitando ao redor do pós-punk, o Rakta foi gradativamente compondo um universo sonoro abstrato e particular. Falha Comum, seu terceiro álbum, consolida esta direção unindo técnicas da música experimental com certos aspectos estruturais da canção para inventar o seu próprio ser em um pequeno manifesto sobre as ruínas do mundo. Ao lado do baterista e percussionista Maurício Takara (que firmou-se na banda após a mudança de Nathalia Viccari para Buenos Aires), Carla Boregas (baixo e eletrônicos) e Paula Rebellato (sintetizador e voz) criam uma atmosfera de transe expansivo. Mas de o que é esse transe? Nas músicas de rave acelerada, as batidas eletrônicas eliminam a rigidez entre corpo e alma, abrindo o indivíduo para ser "possuído por uma selvageria sagrada". Na ambient music, o caminho para o cosmos é uma imersão profunda em um espaço psicoacústico imaginário. Já no dub, o som torna-se incenso, um aroma sagrado que preenche o ambiente e possibilita o estado de desativação total. Ao mesmo tempo em que articula-se com estas três dinâmicas, o ritual cósmico do Rakta tem uma liturgia só sua. A voz fanstasmagórica arrebata e desaparece, como uma alucinação ou miragem. A acumulação dos loops percussivos do baixo e ritmos repetitivos da bateria não evocam o relaxamento meditativo. Ao contrário, há um caos discreto, uma tensão permanente, uma violência sempre à espreita. O mantra raktiano não diz respeito a uma calmaria transcendente, mas à concentração como dispositivo político de ação e transformação — abrir e fechar-se em si. Em “Estrela da Manhã”, somos lembrados: há um labirinto e a guerra está sobre nós. Vemos o mundo acabar pela janela. Mas o que fazer das nossas ruínas? Falha Comum está nesta encruzilhada à procura de modos para revirar os escombros da existência em um mundo cada vez mais sem sentido. Não há respostas. Mas persiste, ao longe, uma esperança inútil e necessária: edificar o espírito sobre essas ruínas. O riso do qual “笑笑” é antes de tudo uma vitória sobre o medo. O fim está no começo e no entanto continua-se. GG Albuquerque

This is for the digital release. To order the LP or CD, go to bit.ly/31v14QN or bit.ly/2TeZdMJ "After two LPs and over half a decade spent toiling in the margins of the American Songbook, Bill Orcutt returns to original composition and the blues with his latest LP, Odds Against Tomorrow. Taking its title from Robert Wise’s 1959 film noir, Odds Against Tomorrow retrofits familiar folk/blues forms to the unique sound of Orcutt’s guitar and the result crackles with a freshness and authority that nostalgic retreads cannot deliver. Odds Against Tomorrow is more than an expansion of the territory charted by Bill Orcutt, his eponymous 2017 studio electric debut, although it’s certainly that. With its nods to existing musics, half- step fluctuations, and near-songwriterly manipulations of tension/release, Odds Against Tomorrow is a rock record — almost. Clearly and simply recorded through a clattering Fender Twin in Orcutt’s living room and lovingly mixed by Bay Area neighbor and pedal-steel savant Chuck Johnson, no one would mistake it for any era’s radio fodder, yet the precision of its technique and the swaying Child-ballad logic of its gentler improvisations comfortably seats it between John Mayall and Richard Thompson in your Ikea Kallax. Three songs (“Odds Against Tomorrow,” “The Writhing Jar,” “Already Old”) are multi-tracked, an innovation that, for guitar buffs familiar with Orcutt’s stripped-down vernacular, jumps out of the grooves like a Les Paul sound-on-sound excursion in 1948, or a Jandek blues rave-up in 1987. Specifically evoking John Lee Hooker’s double-track experiments on 1952’s “Walking the Boogie,” the steady chord vamps of “Odds Against Tomorrow” and “Already Old” form a harmonic turf on which Orcutt solos with lyrical abandon — and while his playing has always earned begrudging respect from any hardened shredders willing to pluck the foam out of their ear canals, even the most strident neck- strangler will steam over his lubricated runs. For the more “contemporary-minded,” “The Writhing Jar”’s crashing overdubs recall the brassy six-string voicings of This Heat or Illitch. With the exception of the unreconstructed Elmore James-isms of “Stray Dog” and the “Layla”-finale-like haze of “All Your Buried Corpses Begin To Speak,” the remaining non-overdubbed tracks dovetail snugly with Orcutt’s previous solo output, reeling gently in a Mazzacane-oid mode (“The Sun and its Horizon,” “The Conversion Experience,” “Judith Reconsidered,” “Man Dies”) or vibing up the standards (“Moon River”). On their own, these tracks would still be an important contribution to Orcutt’s canon. As part of Odds Against Tomorrow’s greater whole, they provide a through line, connecting the idiosyncrasies of Orcutt’s past explorations with the scrambled tropes of his present work. Odds Against Tomorrow challenges contemporary solo guitar practice in a way that simultaneously nullifies hazy dreams of folk purity and establishes a new high-water mark for blues-rock reconstruction. Put simply, in our current era of mannered revisionism, it is a joy to listen to." — TOM CARTER

Where the overdriven dancehall of Kevin Martin’s The Bug is violent and explosive, his King Midas Sound project is more like smoke wafting over the wreckage, thanks to the ethereal vocals of the English-Trinidadian poet Roger Robinson. Over time, their music has become wispier and wispier, and *Solitude* is their most immaterial offering yet—a hazy array of disorienting synth drones overlaid with halting spoken-word meditations on loss and loneliness. Over the course of this intensely private, almost claustrophobic album, Robinson surveys the scorched earth of a failed relationship, intoning his innermost thoughts in a low baritone: reminiscing on his love, ruing their breakup, and jealously following his ex-lover’s every move. The effect is like eavesdropping on the musings of a not-entirely-sympathetic narrator, being pulled into his world almost against our will. It’s a harrowing album, and Martin’s cryogenic dub pulses and nearly beatless streaks of metallic sound offer cold comfort: The long, dark night of the soul was rarely as chilling as this.

French poet and ASMR auteur Félicia Atkinson has frequently fixated on the elusive interwoven relationship between microcosms and macrocosms – how even the quietest creative act ripples outward in unforeseen ways, a whisper with no fixed meaning. Her latest work pursues this notion in a more literal and lasting fashion, as it was crafted while pregnant on tour, in impersonal hotel rooms in foreign cities. She describes it as “a record not about being pregnant but a record made with pregnancy.” Each day and night, finding herself far from home, she asked herself “What am I doing here? How can I connect myself to the world?” The answer gradually revealed itself: “With small gestures: recording my voice, recording birds, a simple melody.” 

In truth there is nothing simple about The Flower & The Vessel. The album’s 11 songs span a vast pantheon of whispering textures, opaque moods, and surreal spoken word, leading the listener through a mirrored hall of beguiling mirages. Atkinson cites a trio of French classical compositions from her childhood as formative influences on this particular collection: Maurice Ravel’s “L'enfant et les sortilèges” (“a scary opera for kids”), Debussy’s “La Mer” (for its union of narration and music) and Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédies” (as an exercise in negative space, irony without cynicism, and “melody with doubt”). There’s certainly a shade of classicism woven within these tracks, however veiled, abstracted, or unorthodox. Melancholic piano motifs repeat then retreat into a radiant frost of shivering frequencies; processed voices recite cut-up poems and interviews over delay-refracted Rhodes and Wurlitzer; iPad gamelan patterns flutter from meditative to melancholic and back again, offset by pointillist patches of delicate software synesthesia.

 Although much of Atkinson’s past discography is shaped by speech and the lyricism of language, The Flower & The Vessel ventures farther into silence, absence, and voiceless wilderness. Among her sources of inspiration were “women who wonder, dream, and create vacant spaces in their art,” as well as Ikebana flower arrangements, which reflect her own relationship with listening: “structure combined with everyday noises, selecting them to make a sparse music bouquet.” Field recordings from Tasmania and the Mojave Desert murmur beneath hushed reverberations of gong, vibraphone, marimba, softly processed into an elegant emptiness, alternately eerie and serene.   Her mode of minimalism has long been one of reduction, riddles, and curation, but here Atkinson’s synergy feels close to apotheosis, emotive but ambivalent, a ceremony of expectation and invisible forces. The 19-minute closing collaboration with SUNN O))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley, “Des Pierres,” is one of the album’s few pieces tracked in a proper studio (Music Unit in Montreuil, France) but it broods and burns with the same subliminal majesty as the rest of The Flower & The Vessel: an ember in amber, seeds planted in shifting sands. Atkinson’s voice flickers like a flame, framed by slabs of shadowy feedback. Her process may be personal is but its impact ripples to the edges of existence: “How does the act of creation connect us, not only to history, but to the cosmic? It’s a process of taking, and then giving back. It makes us belong to the world.”

Chronogram Q&A with Thurston Moore Spirit Counsel is described as representing, among other things, “a period of reflection on spiritual matters.” One might say your music has always had a spiritual element running through it, at times perhaps more pronounced than at other times. Was focusing on that spiritual aspect a conscious intention when you were writing the music for this album, or was it something you’d realized you’d done after the music was written and recorded? How did it evolve and what pulled you in that direction? Writing and playing music has always been, for me personally, an engagement with spiritual life. So you are correct in the saying this is not such a new statement to make. But what distinguishes Spirit Counsel, as a collection of recent writing, is that I approached the presentation as a wordless sonic message of pure tonal/noise expression. The current "leaderships" have taken WORDS and put them to the nefarious activity of despair, divisiveness and degradation. I stripped out words and made the instruments the total sound. Picking up guitars and drums is not something I foresee these politicians having any wherewithall to co-opt. You gravitated toward New York in 1976 because of the early punk scene there and were especially attracted to no wave, the noisier, more avant-garde, and less obviously “rock ’n’ roll” tangent of the scene that Sonic Youth eventually sprang from. What was it about the no wave bands that you found so compelling and inspiring? I suppose I was always attracted to the subversive and the outlier. Seeing images of Lou Reed, Captain Beefheart, Iggy, cross-gender signifying Wayne County and David Bowie resonated a thrill of "otherness" in me. I would see pictures many times before i would hear the actual music. I could only imagine what these artists would sound like and I would seek out the records, an adventurous exposition in the early 1970s. Luckily these records were discounted as they were very unpopular (mostly by the labels who deigned to release them, it seems). I would find surprises like Can's Ege Bamyasi LP or the first Stooges LP in the "cut-out" bins for forty-nine cents! And they were like strange friends that were far more interesting then the kids in school. I loved them and when realizing there were others with this smae experience collecting around places like CBGB I ran there. Of course we all loved Patti, Blondie, Hell et al but when Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Arto Lindsay, Rudolph Grey and the other No Wave musicians, who existed concurrently with the 1976 class of ground zero punk rock, began performing with their bands where any traditional concept of virtuosity was replaced with completely original vision and heart I was struck, though not initially, by it's elemental brilliance. When Sonic Youth came together this was where each of our sensibilities were in tangent with. It’s been pointed out repeatedly how the music Sonic Youth made collectively and via its individual members has altered the course of contemporary music. Do you hear or detect the influence of your art in that of others? Do any especially humbling, flattering, or surprising examples of your music having resonated with other artists come to mind? At some point in the late 1980s and certainly into the 1990s I would hear, or it would be brought to my attention, the playing of bands utilizing inspirations of Sonic Youth. Yes, flattering but always it was via a prism of transferring our approach, where alternate tunings and non-traditional chordings are primary, through more standardized technique. Sometimes I'd be alerted that Radiohead woud have a "Sonic Youth " part in a song, but it was always reigned in with "proper" finesse. I prefer bands who don't necesarilly play by the rules. At all. There came a point where, in criticism, bands would have "Sonic Youth" parts which invariably meant noise and distortion, which I felt to be a simplifying of our output, but I understood. Given Spirit Counsel’s themes of reflection, what do you most hope will be the hallmarks of your legacy as an artist and what do you most hope people in the future get from hearing your music when they discover it? I don't consider legacy so much these days as it only reflects ego and self-importance and, like money, it is essentially worthless. I want to think of the future where we can continue to fight and resist the negative energies that seek power and mechanisms of control over organic life. I want to further explore and exhibit expressions of wonder, joy and collective consciousness where we care for every living thing. This is the only way to make music, as far as i can see.

“Sleepmoss is a romantic eulogy to autumn and winter. A time for peaceful inner reflection, amidst the backdrop of British woodlands, dramatic skies and turbulent storms. Finding peace with mental health and being mindful of the beauty in death and endings.” 'Sleepmoss', the second album from Meemo Comma a.k.a. Brighton-based producer Lara Rix-Martin, is an adventurous, unusual and very contemporary sonic take on the impact of landscape. It’s a kind of storytelling, inspired by the shifting landscapes of her daily walks with her dog on the South Downs. Discussing her under-the-radar debut album 'Ghost on the Stairs' with Aimee Cliff at The Fader in 2017, she noted how she is “drawn to eerie sounds in my work.” This fascination remains on 'Sleepmoss' but the context has changed from the interior and inwards gaze to a much wider, wilder viewpoint. Lara describes her new record as being “about getting lost in the sumptuous divinity of the dark months in Britain. It is in many ways the opposite reflection of 'Ghost on the Stairs' which was about internal processing of sounds, specifically human speech. The last album was almost an exorcism of issues troubling me but this album is about the glory of solitude and the richness of romance that can be found in nature.”  ‘Sleepmoss’ challenges us to rethink our perceptions of the “pastoral” and to look at nature afresh with new eyes. For not only are the landscapes around us an escape: much more lies there, it's this turbulence we need to find peace with, and Sleepmoss grapples with the physicality of the landscape in a fresh and intuitive way. Rix-Martin notes “Musically, we have never truly embraced rugged landscapes in their full glory and I felt this when I thought about the many different composers over the centuries, their work seemed uptight and far too human in scale. For instance Vaughan Williams had unquestionably beautiful moments in The Lark Ascending, but it's too clean, too controlled. I wanted to channel a take on classical music that was hyper-real, focusing on letting the elements speak to us, not the other way around.” A visual influence is J.M.W. Turner - “his work with changing light and storms that are raw and expressive.” and the abstract way in which Turner boldly revealed both horror and beauty (some would say “reality”) is reflected in the sonic approach throughout Sleepmoss.  The album’s timeline starts out with summer's end, and the feeling of the air changing. Within this timeline, Rix-Martin describes the drama of her songs as visual stories. “The sounds around us are totally different depending on the season, I always assumed it was to do with the change in water vapour and heat in the air. Summer is much too high pitched and spiky.”  To pull out a couple of our favourites, the songs 'Night Rain' and 'Murmur' are “the story of predator and prey, death and life, one fortifying the other while a storm rumbles. The next morning the woods are clear birds sing in the breeze from the night’s storm.” ‘Sleepmoss’ captures not only a unique perspective on nature but like nature itself, reflects the shifting times we live in. As Rix-Martin points out, Nature is often seen as “something to be controlled, neatened, conquered.” Sleepmoss interprets and admires nature in all its glory.

Widely acclaimed by fans and critics alike as one of 2019's most adventurous and accomplished albums. “What a fabulously rich listen this record is” – The Quietus “After four decades, Membranes have released their greatest album” 9/10 – Classic Rock “Ambitious and epic…including a full choral backing group along with guest spots from Kirk Brandon, Chris Packham, Shirley Collins and Jordan” 8/10 – Vive Le Rock

The twenty-first century acceleration of culture is such that the mundane everyday increasingly seems to be spinning out of control. Amidst a warp and distortion of reality whereby alienating modes of contact interweave with intimidating power structures. Inhabiting the city thus quickly becomes no less than a constant battle for both time and space. This is the landscape intrepidly explored on ‘Arrow’ - the London-based duo Gum Takes Tooth’s third album and first for Rocket Recordings. Searing and visceral yet suffused by melancholy and elegiac atmosphere, it’s also no less than a manifestation of the subconscious of the band themselves. “I was experiencing a very difficult few years, as was most of the rest of the world - filled with contradictory contrasts of uncertainty, moments of cavernous bleakness shot through with searing revelations, ecstatic truths and joyous hope” reflects Jussi Brighmore of the band. “Basically, becoming a dad in these times, thinking of the present and the future that it’s aiming to construct, has brought all these up, intensely magnified and amplified.” Forming in 2009, the duo of Brightmore and drummer Tom Fug quickly established a unique approach whereby drum-triggered electronics were manipulated to achieve a dynamic, rhythmically driven and flagrantly unclassifiable fury that flirted with both speaker-ripping psych-rock pyrotechnics and synapse-shredding acid house deliverance whilst stubbornly avoiding any of the trappings or clichés of either. Forging their own distinct geometric trajectory through two albums in 2011’s ‘Silent Cenotaph’ and 2014’s ‘Mirrors Fold’, their polyrhythmic sleight-of-hand proved itself as much a strength as their unique take on vocal processing -“current communication demands we fragment ourselves, our voices, through the prism of countless distinct media channels” notes Jussi. “I feel that our approach to voice reflects this” Thus, the band mapped out a landscape in which the influences of Coil, Warp Records, The Knife and Lightning Bolt were alchemically transformed into an innovative and pulverising onslaught. Yet ‘Arrow’, recorded by Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse studio in the capital, marks a new chapter for the band. “It’s been a time of enormous change for all of us given what’s happened over the last few years, to London, the place we live, Maybe it’s a more explicitly personal record for me as a result.” notes Jussi, “Ever more omnipresent and vacuous global tropes cementing economic inequality, nervous amnesia and being as complicit as anyone else in all that.” Thus, the appropriately claustrophobic and intense repetition of ‘No Walls, No AIr’ deals lyrically with London as an ‘entropic ouroboros’ - a city eating itself - whilst the doom-laden and cinematically monochrome ‘A Still Earth’ imagines a dystopian future devoid of humans and entirely populated by self-perpetuating industry. Yet ‘Arrow’ also offers hope for the future, and never more so than on its title-track: “It concerns the small change victories and comforts our culture portions out to us to placate us and prevent action towards change - the lie of self-empowerment and paranoia is the ‘weapon offered as a gift’” elucidates Jussi. “It ends with a call to arms to look inward to find the weapon to overcome this:” “The Arrow’ is so called because it flies in a straight line or arc but it never repeats its structure, or goes back on itself” - and thus, a singularly appropriate metaphor for Gum Takes Tooth themselves. Mavericks to the last, perpetual square-pegs and a band intent on forging onward to break all or any paradigms before them, creating a collection of kinetic anthems to battle everyday oppression - a work of machine-driven mania with its very human heart on its sleeve.

‘Fenella’ is the latest project from Jane Weaver - musical polymath and one of the most respected electronic composers of recent times. Having already released three critically-acclaimed LP’s within the last five years Weaver’s creativity continues to expand ever further into the (modern) kosmos with this reimagined soundtrack to Marcell Jankovics’ cult animation Fehérlófia. Released in 1981, Fehérlófia is a remarkable animation based in ancient folklore with a narrative culled from mythical tales of the Scythans, Huns and Avars. Weaver’s richly emotional and psychedelic music offers a perfect contemporary dialogue with Jankovics’ astonishing visual aesthetic. A mixture of ambient textures, menacing drones and spine-tingling vocals combine to create a lavish soundscape saturated with hypnotic moods and cinematic atmosphere. Weaver’s long-term bandmates Peter Philipson and Raz Ullah decamped to a remote cottage on the Applecross Peninsula in north west Scotland to commence recording on the initial album sessions, making masterful use of synthesizers and heavily processed guitars to create evocative new sound-worlds for Jancovics’ imagery. Further overdubs and vocal manipulations were committed to tape at Eve Studios near Manchester, a haven for vintage analogue recording equipment and the same environment from which ‘The Silver Globe’, ‘Modern Kosmology’ and ‘Loops In The Secret Society’ albums sprung forth. A continuation of the Fire Records re-imagined score series, Fenella’s self-titled release is out 1st November via dinked on limited edition (500 only, individually foil numbered) ‘ink spot’ vinyl and crystal-clear LP.

Warmduscher return. Heavy metals. Disco Peanuts. CCTV in the break room. A little something to get you through the week. There’s enough to go around. Revenge is a dish best served bold. Melt in the mouth disco basslines on a fragrant bed of feedback. Try it with the boom bap tapenade. Here for a good time, not a long time. If you made your way out of Whale City with your faculties intact, this one’s for you. Clams Baker, Lightnin’ Jack Everett, Mr Salt Fingers Lovecraft and The Witherer have been joined by Quicksand on cutting board and cheese wire and commis chef Cheeks on vibes. They’ve been cooking. Michelin stars. The finest ingredients money can buy: Kool Keith and Iggy Pop. Funk, punk, hip-hop and lounge rock. Love is real. Band biographer and revered botanist Dr Alan Goldfarb describes the album as “a sample hole through which to taste another universe. A dramatic warning. A gilded aroma. It is a tale of wanton desire and limitless treachery. A tale of disillusionment – the refusal of exploitation.” If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Album page: www.paradiseofbachelors.com/pob-049 Artist page: www.paradiseofbachelors.com/mega-bog Other online purchase options (physical/download/streaming): smarturl.it/PoB49 Mega Bog is the fluid musical moniker of songwriter Erin Elizabeth Birgy, who has spent the last ten years channeling, capturing, and releasing her unique bouquet of fragrant, sci-fi pop experiments with a handful of bicoastal collaborators. She is joined on her fifth and finest album (and first for PoB) by members of Big Thief, Hand Habits, and iji, who help her spin a manic web of emotions into beautiful, abstract future poems and thrilling genre perversions. * Mega Bog is the fluid musical moniker of songwriter Erin Elizabeth Birgy, a Pacific Northwestern rodeo child with an unmistakable laugh, who was allegedly cursed upon conception. She has spent the last ten years channeling, capturing, and releasing her unique bouquet of fragrant, sci-fi pop experiments with a handful of bicoastal collaborators. Mega Bog has visited a significant portion of the Western world, frequently looping the USA and Europe to sing in tiny art spaces and haunted historical theaters alike. The live concerts are known for their emotional unpredictability. Onstage, Erin’s current mood is amplified, for better or for worse; she is an honest and unflinching performer. The title of Mega Bog’s newest album Dolphine—her fifth, and first for Paradise of Bachelors—is inspired by a myth that suggests that, as humankind evolved from sea creatures, some individuals chose not to leave the water and walk the earth, but rather to stay in the ocean and explore the darkness as dolphins. (The extra ‘e’ was added to take the word out of the everyday, translating it into a potential futuristic dialect.) Dolphine is an album for the swimming human shadow obscured by waves. The songwriting was inspired by Erin’s own swim through a myriad of overwhelming emotions, including the ongoing mourning following the death of her childhood horse companion Rose, her navigation of the feelings and physicality of two abortions, and the hapless and shattering social, political, and environmental turmoil on the planet known as Earth. In October of 2016, Erin took her dark sketches to the Outlier Inn studio in Woodridge, NY, with a passionate crew of deeply bonded musicians. Together, they arranged and executed these eleven dizzy pop songs, live, over a tight seven days. In addition to Birgy (vocals, guitar, piano), the lineup included Meg Duffy (guitar), Matt Bachmann (bass), Derek Baron (drums), James Krivchenia (engineering, percussion, effects), Aaron Otheim (synthesizers, piano), and Ash Rickli (guitar and vocals). Later, Will Murdoch (clarinet, synthesizers) and Zach Burba (synthesizers, bass) offered their own atmospheric overdubs from their home on the West Coast. Over the next year, Erin added to the tapestry with vocal contributions by Nick Hakim and Kalen Remy Walther, upright bass by Benjamin Murphy, textural guitar by Austin Jackson, and saxophone by Jeff Tobias, until she had successfully excavated each cold mystery with proper care and wonder. The completed sound is thick and inviting. Bellowing, breathless vocals, mystical lyrics with the presence of poetry and the intuitive logic of dreams, and promiscuous, sometimes dissonant chord structures swirl together, coalescing into hazy and hypnotic fantasies. The songs of Dolphine are ablaze with jealousy, anger, and sadness as well as the powerful glow that comes from attempting to hold those feelings with care. Inspired by the poetry of Alice Notley, the novels of Ursula K. Le Guin, and the art of Ian Cheng, Birgy spins her manic web of emotions into beautiful, abstract future poems. With each lurid image—a stupid scorpion, an abdomen of small snakes, another picture of milk, foxes bloating up Eastern expressway shoulders—Erin dunks listeners deep into her subconscious, and it’s up to us to surface, buoyant, and paddle through. On album opener “For the Old World,” anguished affection and confusion bloom over lounge-music genre perversions, both ethereal and belligerent. On “Diary of a Rose,” Erin steps through her losses and growths to a continuous groove that crescendoes into melodic chaos and revelation. “Truth in the Wild” (the title is taken from a quote by Ian Cheng) speaks surreal and lonely images over soft percussion, classical guitars, and clarinet, pointing to influences like Joni Mitchell’s jazz period and Laurie Anderson’s 1989 record Strange Angels. “Untitled (with ‘C’)” was written for Philando Castile the day after his murder, and “Fwee Again” works through all of Dolphine’s devotions instrumentally. Ash Rickli wrote and sang the airy outlier “Spit in the Eye of the Fire King,” recorded on the porch of the studio with the wind chimes blowing. Between the album’s recording sessions and its release, Ash’s heart stopped unexpectedly during one of his live shows in Athens, Georgia. He was thirty. The tragedy, devastating to the many people who loved him, permeates the album. Ash sings: I’m never afraid I was born in the dark And I’ll die in the light with a tear in my mouth To extinguish the spark that put light by itself It’s the one thing I could think to do to help At the beginning of the sessions, Ash wrote a radio play based on his playful interpretation of Erin’s tarot reading for herself. Titled Avenging Mind, it was intended as a companion piece to Dolphine. The recording remains unfinished. The following monologue is an excerpt: That which is freely given... Energy passing unseen from my inner eye ... exacting compassion and careful deliberate movements... There! ... That sphere! ... Of course it’s not an ordinary time machine; it’s an incubation chamber. One that exists between planes, floating lucidly on the edge of dreams through the spires of Crystal City and beyond to the mountains. I can feel her forming now ... “Athene” ... Safe from the punishment of endless time and realized in a realm through which all things intersect and seem to dissolve. Dolphine, too, inhabits that realm of realization. + Deluxe LP edition features 140g virgin vinyl; heavy-duty matte board jacket; full-color inner sleeve with lyrics; and high-res Bandcamp download code. + Deluxe clear vinyl LP edition is limited to 700 copies. + CD edition features six-panel gatefold matte board jacket with LP replica art and lyrics. + RIYL: Laurie Anderson, Slapp Happy, Kevin Ayers, Bridget St John, Beefheart, Bowie, Cate Le Bon, Ursula K. Le Guin + For more information: www.paradiseofbachelors.com/pob-049 + Artist page/tour dates/back catalog: www.paradiseofbachelors.com/mega-bog

Matana Roberts returns with the fourth chapter of her extraordinary Coin Coin series — a project that has deservedly garnered the highest praise and widespread critical acclaim for its fierce aesthetic originality and unflinching narrative power. The first three Coin Coin albums, issued from 2011-2015, charted diverse pathways of modern/avant composition — Roberts calls it “panoramic sound quilting”—and ranged sequentially from large band to sextet to solo, unified by Roberts’ archival and often deeply personal research into legacies of the American slave trade and ancestries of American identity/experience. Roberts also emphasizes non-male subjects and thematizes these other-gendered stories with a range of vocal and verbal techniques: singspeak, submerged glossolalic recitation, guttural cathartic howl, operatic voice, gentle lullaby, group chant, and the recuperation of various American folk traditionals and spirituals, whether surfacing in fragmentary fashion or as unabridged set-pieces. The root of this vocality comes from her dedication to the legacy of her main chosen instrument, the alto saxophone. On Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis, Roberts convened a new band, with New Yorkers Hannah Marcus (guitars, fiddle, accordion) and percussionist Ryan Sawyer (Thurston Moore, Nate Wooley, Cass McCombs) joined by Montréal bassist Nicolas Caloia (Ratchet Orchestra) and Montréal-Cairo composer/improviser Sam Shalabi (Land Of Kush, Dwarfs Of East Agouza) on guitar and oud, along with prolific trombonist Steve Swell and vibraphonist Ryan White as special guests. Memphis unspools as a continuous work of 21st century liberation music, oscillating between meditative incantatory explorations, raucous melodic themes, and unbridled free-improv suites, quoting archly and ecstatically from various folk traditions along the way. Led by Roberts’ conduction and unique graphic score practice, her consummate saxophone and clarinet playing, and punctuated by her singing and speaking various texts generated from her own historical research and diaristic writings, Coin Coin Chapter Four is a glorious and spellbinding new instalment in this projected twelve-part Gesamtkunstwerk. Says Roberts: “As an arts adventurer dealing w/ the medium of sound and its many contradictions I am most interested in endurance, perseverance, migration, liberation, libation, improvisation and the many layers of cognitive dissonance therein as it relates to my birth country’s history. I speak memory, I sing an american survival through horn, song, sadness, a sometimes gladness. I stand on the backs of many people, from so many different walks of life and difference, that never had a chance to express themselves as expressively as I have been given the privilege. In these sonic renderings, I celebrate the me, I celebrate the we, in all that it is now, and all that is yet to come or will be... Thanks for listening.” Matana Roberts: alto sax, clarinet, wordspeak, voice Hannah Marcus: electric guitar, nylon string guitar, fiddle, accordion, voice Sam Shalabi: electric guitar, oud, voice Nicolas Caloia: double bass, voice Ryan Sawyer: drumset, vibraphone, jaw harp, bells, voice GUESTS: Steve Swell: trombone, voice Ryan White: vibraphone Thierry Amar: voice Nadia Moss: voice Jessica Moss: voice Recorded at Break Glass studios in Montréal, Québec by Jace Lasek, assisted by Dave Smith Mixed at Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango in Montréal, Québec by Radwan Moumneh Mastered at Greymarket in Montréal, Québec by Harris Newman

In March 2019 Instant Classic will release a second full length album from Alameda 5. A follow up to 2015's acclaimed double lp "Duch tornada" is entitled "Eurodrome" and consists of 10 new tracks ranging from modern krautrock to electronic fusion. "'Duch tornada' was recorded at a time when the quintet started taking shape. That's why I regard that album as a compilation of different ideas rather than a well composed entity. 'Eurodrome' seems to be a better crafted record from a band that knows its way around," says Jakub Ziołek (Zimpel/Ziołek, Stara Rzeka, Innercity Ensemble). One thing "Eurodrome" is not, is a concept album. "Lyrics are more abstract and depressive, much like our times," Ziołek says. "But I'm glad we managed to include some spoken samples from the people we asked strange questions, like for example 'what cuisine you associate with Europe?', 'compare Europe to music or car'. The answers came in different languages: Greek, Catalan, Russian, Vietnamese or Tetum," he adds. Last year saw the release of Alameda 4's debut album "Czarna woda" and one may wonder how (aside from the personnel and the music) those bands differ. "I think that Alameda 4 is more of a live/rehearsal type of band while the quintet benefits more from the recording activities. Quartet is more straight forward and defined in terms of sound and Alameda 5 requires more attention in sound production," explains Ziołek.

The first LP from Scorn since 2010’s Refuse; Start Fires, Cafe Mor is Mick Harris in his happy place. Which just happens to be in studio, demolishing all standards and rules for electronic bass music, and embodying the darkest, deepest sound in dub. Cafe Mor takes risks outside of the conventional Scorn apparatus, and with these risks come substantial rewards. The album is comprised of powerful dub excursions, from the deep dark dank of the front two tracks Elephant and The Lower The Middle Our Bit, and gaining steam towards the ultraviolence of Mugwump Tea Room to Never Let It Be Said to the CRUSHING DEATH KICK of Who Are They Which One. A quick drive under the lights with a lasered out snare on Dulse, then we come across the appearance from Sleaford Mods frontman, Jason Williamson, on the standout track on the LP, “Talk Whiff”. A cruise around the Midlands sighting the Broke Fridge and Tinder Surprise, with an instant classic refrain: “Talk Whiff // I’m a busy person // I’ve had enough of it” Cafe Mor culminates in the all-in-one dub affair SA70, letting rip all the new mixer and FX techniques of Harris’ most recent incarnation of Scorn. The album is the official soundtrack for all smoked out backroom deals, situations and arrangements, cancelling all small tours, and mongoose rhinocharging the bass to level 24.