RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI – PERIPETEIA (2020)
Over the years, American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri has become ubiquitous within the spheres of ambient, drone and electronic music. Whether it’s through Irisarri’s celestial long-form albums or his lauded audio engineering credentials for countless artists and labels, Irisarri’s consistent dedication to his craft never wavers from the forefront.
While Irisarri’s compositions typically field an array of modern ambient overtones threaded through oceanic symphonies with tape loops, bowed electric guitar and vast washes of overdriven sound, his recent debut album for Dais Records, Peripeteia, portray these common themes giving way to metal and classical influences that emphasizes Irisarri’s melancholic tendencies. These unique overtures, coupled with his signature layering of distortion and bleached-out textures, fabricate an audible environment that would seemingly be at odds with, yet gracefully complement each other. In Irisarri’s own words, “My previous works internalize any exterior forces or circumstances, while trying to make sense of the world. Peripeteia reverses that approach, focusing on the personal in order to tell a wider human story.”
The emotional depth found throughout Peripeteia is impeccably on display with the track, Mellified. A collaboration with Spanish composer Yamila, the choral arrangements bring to mind the sacred music of Arvo Pärt, while her voice combines the Andalusian “Cante jondo” style with medieval modes, almost drowning in layers of octave fuzz distortion and dystopian synths patterns. On Arduous Clarity, the bright arpeggiating melody that churns throughout, offers the initial glimmer of optimism in an otherwise decaying tale of personal turmoil. This encouraging glimpse is short lived however, as the song Refuge/Refuse seemingly plummets into the mourning depths of somber despair. A chorus of voices steadily crawls from its desolate terrain – a sea of broken spirits, eternally resigned to strain and bellow their final lament. Fright and Control, a piece which is equally soul churning, seems to possess a satisfying resolve, as if after years of searching, one’s very salvation has been laid to rest through the acceptance of mortality and the enlightenment in death. Irisarri’s complexity is utilized to a forcible success, slowly pulsing throughout the foreground of his audience, further emphasizing the impending dread of resolve.
May 22, 2020
Lawrence English – Strategies (against conformity)
Leandro Fresco – Vocals on “I Still Have The Sun To Cast A Light”
Orlando Méndez – Guitars, voice on “Refuge/Refuse”
Yamila – Vocals and choral arrangements on “Mellified”
Recorded in Buenos Aires, Brussels, London, New York, and Stockholm during 2018 & 2019.
Mixed at Black Knoll Studio (NY)
Mastered by Heba Kadry
Artwork & Layout by Nathaniel Young
PRISCILLA ERMEL – ORIGENS DA LUZ (MUSIC FROM MEMORY, 2020) – COMPILAÇÃO, 15 MÚSICAS
“Music From Memory is delighted to announce a retrospective of an artist long-loved by the label, Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Priscilla Ermel. Origens Da Luz brings together a selection of recordings drawn from a body of work that was originally recorded between 1986 and 1994.
Priscilla was raised in a musical family in São Paulo and learned the cello and guitar at an early age. She then embarked on a deeply personal musical journey that would travel from origins rooted in Tom Jobim and Chico Buarque to recording the music of the natural world and the communities around her. A film-maker and anthropologist by training, Priscilla is a lifelong student of a universal music. Disillusioned with contemporary European classical music, she spent long periods living with indigenous populations in Brazil, collecting instruments that she would later combine with synthesizers and field recordings. After studying with the renowned Taoist master Liu Pai Lin, she integrated the slow-moving pace of Tai Chi into a music that connects intimately with a multiplicity of cultures at the same time that it unmistakably reflects her Brazilian soul.
Combining sounds drawn from the history of Brazil with her own explorations of analogue sound technology, Priscilla’s music opens up a mystical space, where ancient and modern evolves into a new language. Compiled by John Gómez and released on 2xLP, Origens Da Luz offers a panoramic view of this artist’s unique and mesmerizing sound world.”
February 17, 2020
Fonte: https://music-from-memory.bandcamp.com/album/origens-da-luz
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AGLAIA (2 LPS DE 2017)
Gênero: Ambiente
Lunares Nectare (2017) Compilation
Akupanga (2017) Compilation
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CHINO AMOBI (1 EP, 1 LP)
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CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH – ANCESTRAL RECALL (2019) JAZZ
“All forms of expression in sound are valid, as all people are… this is the mantra of Ancestral Recall.”
Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah sets the tone for his new project – Ancestral Recall – with this powerful statement. In his mission to unify cultural voices and tear down the sonic and social constructs that separate based on race, class, and culture, Adjuah asserts music has historically been disseminated to people with harmony and melody prioritized over rhythm. The value distinction leads to harmful hierarchal sentiments and perpetuates the view that cultures who prioritize harmony and melody are more nuanced and sophisticated than those who prioritize rhythm. It is an inaccurate portrayal.
Ancestral Recall looks to excavate and update hidden histories in sound by displaying a sonic tapestry that illuminates the har-melodic movements found within rhythm, rendering previous contexts baseless, Adjuah explains: “In its inception, Ancestral Recall was built as a map to de-colonialize sound; to challenge previously held misconceptions about some cultures of music; to codify a new folkloric tradition and begin the work of creating a national set of rhythms; rhythms rooted in the synergy between West African, First Nation, African Diaspora/Caribbean rhythms and their marriage to rhythmic templates found in trap music, alt-rock, and other modern forms. It is time we created a sound that dispels singular narratives of entire peoples and looks to finally represent the wealth of narratives found throughout the American experience. One that shows that all forms of expression in sound are valid, as all people are.” The goal is to connect people in one understanding rather than dividing them by definition.
The music of Ancestral Recall focuses the mind. As the ear adjusts to the shifting tapestries of rhythm, Adjuah stands firm in the mix, heralding the histories of rhythm and song. Walking hand-in-hand with listeners through his and their musical histories, clearing the way for a new reading of what all musical futures can become. Ancestral Recall is an album that might easily be misunderstood in its own time, but will certainly be seen as a moment in history that marked a momentous shift in musical and perhaps social understanding.
credits
released March 22, 2019
All songs written by Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah
MUSICIANS
Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah – Trumpet, Adjuah Trumpet, Siren, Sirenette, Reverse Flugelhorn, Percussion*, Synth Percussion, SPDSX, Malletkat, MPC, Keyboards, Synth Bass, Pan African Kit, Drums, Vocals, Sonic Arictexture (All Tracks)
Saul Williams – Vocals (Tracks 2, 3, 12)
Elena Pinderhughes – Flute (Tracks 1, 5, 10)
Logan Richardson – Alto (Track 7 )
Weedie Braimah – Percussion*, Vocals (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 8, 10, 11, 12)
Corey Fonville – Drums, SPDSX, Pan African Kit (Tracks 2, 3, 4, 7, 12)
Lawrence Fields – Piano (Tracks 7, 12)
Kris Funn – Bass (Tracks 4, 7)
Devan Mayfield – Vocals (Track 1)
Chris Turner – Vocals (Track 4)
Mike Larry Draw – Vocals (Track 4)
Themba Mkhatshwa – Percussion (Track 1, 2)
Amadou Kouyate – Percussion (Track 1, 2)
Munir Zakee Richard – Percussion (Track 1, 2)
* [Djembe, Mande Drums, Dundunba, Sangban, Kenkeni, Ewe Drums, Sogo, Atsimevu, Agboba, Kidi, Kaganu,Tambourine, Kalimba, Bata, Congas]
PRODUCTION
Produced by Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah
Executive Producers – Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah and Louis H. Marks
Recorded April 10, 15 – September 6, 20 – December 1, 2 of 2018 by Dave Weingarten at The Champagne Room West
Recorded April 29 and 30 of 2018 by Nick Guttmann at The Parlor, New Orleans, LA
Mixed by Qmillion at Flyin’ Dread Studios, Los Angeles, CA
Mastered by Paul Blakemore, Cleveland, OH
DEAF CENTER (4LPS, 1 EP, 1 SINGLE)
Gêneros: Ambient, Drone
Neon City EP (2004)
Pale Center (2005)
Vintage Well (Single) 2008
Owl Splinters (2011)
Recount (2014)
Low Distance (2019)
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EMPTYSET (2LPS: 2009, 2011)
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EVAN CAMINITI (2 LPS, 2015 E 2017)
Gêneros: Ambient, Electroacoustic, Drone, Dark Ambient, Electronic
Meridian (2015)
Toxic City Music (2017)
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FATIMA AL QADIRI (2 LPS)
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FOREST SWORDS- THE MACHINE AIR OST(LP)
Part art film, part performance piece, ‘The Machine Air’ is a fever dream visual poem and the first film to be both about – and recorded by – flying drones. Created by speculative architect and director Liam Young, it jams together Youtube and Liveleak rips with specially filmed, astonishing aerial shots of Indian textile factories and Bolivian lithium mines – the first time ever captured on camera. Premiered in its original form at BFI London Film Festival, it’s since been screened at the likes of Sonar Festival and Eindhoven Bienniale.
Matthew Barnes’ score, presented here sculpted and edited into 14 individual tracks, echoes the film’s cyberpunk claustrophobia: smeared sci-fi synth and distorted melodies rattle alongside metronomic rhythms and stretched samples, rewiring the hums of flying vehicles into warped and contorted sound design. Intimate piano melody weaves with sub bass, while woozy electronics and strings mirror the fluttering of the machines as they hover skywards, powering up and down.
‘The Machine Air’s soundtrack navigates the tension of this tech in our lives: drones simultaneously used as autonomous killing machines or aid delivery vehicles; surveillance robots or Amazon shopping tools. While Barnes’ previous work has retooled organic and human sounds into modern electronic worlds, here he pushes and pulls the music into beautiful, more dystopian shapes, combining with Young’s visuals to give a chilly glimpse into the near future.
Edition of 300 only, on black vinyl with insert. The sleeve features an image of a police surveillance drone, by Haw Jia Jun.
Produced and mixed by Matthew Barnes in Liverpool and London. Mastered by Denis Blackham (Coil, Cabaret Voltaire, Eurythmics).
The soundtrack follows his acclaimed DJ-Kicks compilation from last year, and Barnes’ recent score for Sundance award winning documentary ‘Ghosts of Sugar Land’.
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GAZELLE TWIN (3 LPS)
Pastoral (2018)
Kingdom Come (2017)
The Entire City (2011)
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HALFTRIBE – FOR THE SUMMER, OR FOREVER LP (2018)
“Laconic haze, ethereal curiosities, nostalgic glimpses and fictional illusions.
Northern Irish Halftribe’s (Ryan Bisset’s) third album and Russian imprint Dronarivm’s fifty-third catalogue entry arrives punctually to soundtrack the coming summer – or eternity, apparently, if you like. It is indeed suitably warm and familiar stuff, going straight for the bliss-out button with dreamy, droning pieces mixing airy synths and calm field recordings.
released May 18, 2018
Mastered by Fraser McGowan”
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JULIANNA BARWICK – THE MAGIC PLACE (2011)
“Julianna Barwick’s Asthmatic Kitty Records debut, The Magic Place, is a nine-piece full-length album of magic and solace, bursting joy and healing tones. Julianna’s mostly-a-capella music is built from her voice multi-tracked through a loop station. There’s more backing instrumentation on this one than on previous albums but it’s the vocals—soaring high in reverb-drenched, wordless harmonies—that matter most here. It’s the layered fragments and pieces that become an intricate pattern through technology; it’s the sound of a rising thing, a big group harmony as a splash of sunlight through a car window, a sound that feels like hope and ascendance and patience and intimacy.
Her inspiration here is the a capella church hymns she grew up singing; the way a roomful of diverse voices can join together to fill up a space. Says Julianna about her church singin’ days, “You could really hear all the layers, harmonies, rounds, the men and the women, the claps… everything. Some of those hymns are so beautiful.”
Like Sigur Rós’s ethereal glossolalia, there’s a very particular joy in listening to Julianna’s music. Free of the constraints of narrative and traceable language, it’s the same joy in giving yourself over to opera in a foreign language, of letting go of your pesky rational mind and allowing the feeling to come through in the voices and performance. The title track is next, a reverb-y beauty queen that soars to Promethean heights and builds its own kind of safe haven in the clouds. Even the gaps between songs are essential to the album’s listening experience—a sigh between stories or silence-as-drone, each second important. The New York Times called the pauses between Julianna’s songs, “the small pleasure of a chance to breathe between the greater pleasures of not wanting to have to.” Meet The Magic Place. It’s a great place to be…”
KANKYŌ ONGAKU: JAPANESE AMBIENT, ENVIRONMENTAL & NEW AGE MUSIC 1980-1990 (LIGHT IN THE ATTIC RECORDS, 2019)
“Light In The Attic’s Japan Archival Series continues with Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990, an unprecedented overview of the country’s vital minimal, ambient, avant-garde, and New Age music – what can collectively be described as kankyō ongaku, or environmental music. The collection features internationally acclaimed artists such as Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Joe Hisaishi, as well as other pioneers like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Yoshio Ojima and Satoshi Ashikawa, who deserve a place alongside the indisputable giants of these genres.
In the 1970s, the concepts of Brian Eno’s “ambient” and Erik Satie’s “furniture music” began to take hold in the minds of artists and musicians around Tokyo. Emerging fields like soundscape design and architectural acoustics opened up new ways in which sound and music could be consumed. For artists like Yoshimura, Ojima and Ashikawa, these ideas became the foundation for their musical works, which were heard not only on records and in live performances, but also within public and private spaces where they intermingled with the sounds and environments of everyday life. The bubble economy of 1980s Japan also had a hand in the advancement of kankyō ongaku. In an attempt to cultivate an image of sophisticated lifestyle, corporations with expendable income bankrolled various art and music initiatives, which opened up new and unorthodox ways in which artists could integrate their avant-garde musical forms into everyday life: in-store music for Muji, promo LP for a Sanyo AC unit, a Seiko watch advert, among others that can be heard in this collection.
Kankyō Ongaku is expertly compiled by Spencer Doran (Visible Cloaks) who, with a series of revelatory mixtapes as well as his label Empire of Signs (Music For Nine Postcards), has been instrumental in shepherding interest in this music outside of Japan. Together with Light In The Attic’s celebrated anthologies I Am The Center and The Microcosm, Kankyō Ongaku helps to broaden our understanding of this quietly profound music, regardless of the environment in which it’s heard.”
KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN (2LPS) PLAYTHROUGHS, LISBON
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KOKOROKO – KOKOROKO (EP, 2019) JAZZ
London has long been a hotbed for experimentation for music from West Africa, and it’s into this global-local story that we can situate London’s newest afrobeat innovators: KOKOROKO. In the 40’s World War Two veteran Ambrose Campbell and his West African Rhythm Brothers, were enticing Soho music lovers with sweet palm wine sounds. The following decade, a young Fela Kuti (and his Koola Lobitos outfit with drummer Tony Allen), would jam with Campbell, and the seeds for his global Afrobeat revolution were sown.
The band’s name is an Orobo – a Nigerian tribe and language – word meaning ‘be strong’. Sonically living up to their name, KOKOROKO are an all star band featuring leading lights from the London jazz community. Powered by seismic horn section (Maurice Grey, saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi, trombonist Richie Seivewright), guitar (Oscar Jerome), keys (Yohan Kebede), drums (Ayo Salawu) and percussion (Onome Edgeworth); Kokoroko are on a mission to fashion new languages using the medium of afrobeat.
“This is not idle music!” says Sheila Maurice-Grey, reflecting on the rich history of sounds that have inspired the band. Whether it’s the social commentary, the political stance of acts like the Black President, or the high power energy of afrobeat nights: the music is teeming with a potent energy the band want to propel forwards, London style. Make no mistake, this is not a band interested in performative tributes or pastiche. For Maurice Grey, part of the drive behind their creative impulse to is ask: “what does this music sound like for my generation?”
“We love this music and want other people to love it the way we do”, shared Edgeworth. Aside of the primacy of love for the music, a subtext of the bands creation was a sense of alienation at London’s thinning pool of afrobeat and highlife nights – particularly of black listeners and players. “We don’t want this music to die”, he added.
Rather than launching straight into writing their own music, since the band’s formation in 2014, they immersed themselves in the sounds of Pat Thomas, Ebo Taylor and others by playing covers to sell out crowds. “I remember speaking with Dele Sosimi about the structure of Fela’s songs – every element plays a part. But, before melody or harmony, there’s rhythm. The rhythmic aspect of the solos from that era is amazing. The West African approach to jazz and improvisation is hip!”, offered Maurice-Grey.
In writing their own music, Edgeworth emphasised how much the KOKOROKO sound is shaped by the capital. “We didn’t want it to sound too clean – that doesn’t really fit into the London sound”, he said. Instead, the band opt for grooves with added grit: “we wanted it to sound rough, like going out and hearing music pushed through speakers or the energy of people dancing at afrobeat parties: its music we’ve seen work on dancefloors”.
Drawing as much from nightlife, the musical influences of West African Pentecostal churches, jazz and Western classical, its both in the middle of and beyond this mix of influences that KOKOROKO’s self titled EP takes shape.
Adwa opens deep-ridge grooves. Drawing from the syncopated funk of Ethio-jazz, it takes its name from the Ethiopian city of the same name. Composed by keyboardist Yohan Kebede, the victorious spirit of the track is a meditation not only on the infamous Battle of Adwa, but of the way societies evolve in the aftermath of conflict.
Ti-de is a soft lullaby taking its cue from a medley of old West African folk melodies. A meditation on remaining present through change, the track is laced with opiating guitar lines, soft percussion and languid vocals that feel at times interchangeable with the grand sway of the horn section.
The jubilant Uman arrives as a “celebration of women, black women in particular,” shares Maurice Grey. “I wrote the tune with my mother in mind”. The track tackles the cultural trope of the ‘black superwoman’ and – similarly to Maurice-Grey’s visual artwork – asks questions about why misrepresentations about black women exist. Ultimately, it’s a redemptive track that makes space for both the unique struggles black women face, and their vulnerability.
Like Ti-de, Absuey Junction takes its lead from Ebo Taylor’s horn led approach, and
showcases the band’s deft hand with palm wine infused ballads. The hit single, first featured on the We Out Here compilation, reached 18 million + views on YouTube. Based on a composition by guitarist Oscar Jerome, the track captures the sunset hum of Gambia’s nocturnal soundscapes, winding horn solos and haunting vocals.
A precursor to their album, “it’s an honest capture” of the band’s progression and a stunning introduction to their sound.
Written by Teju Adeleye.
Tracklist:
1. Adwa
2. Ti-de
3. Uman
4. Abusey Junction
Musicians:
Sheila Maurice-Grey – Trumpet
Cassie Kinoshi – Saxophone
Richie Seivewright Trombone
Oscar Jerome – Guitar
Yohan Kebede – Keys
Mutale Chashi – Bass
Ayo Salawu – Drums
Onome Edgeworth – Percussion
LAURIE SPIEGEL – THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE (1980 – 2012 REISSUE)
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MATANA ROBERTS – COIN COIN CHAPTERS ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR (2011, 2013, 2015, 2019)
Matana Roberts is one of the leading lights of contemporary African-American experimental music, combining her widely recognized gifts as an alto saxophone player and improviser with an intensely engaged re-definition of American Jazz traditions.
Matana’s COIN COIN project is the centerpiece of this engagement and re-definition: a multi-chapter work that combines conceptual scoring (graphic notation, ‘chance’ strategies), storytelling and historical narrative, performative theatre (personae, costume, multi-media), and a deeply considered channeling of personal ancestry and the ‘universal’ experience of Africans in America.
COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens De Couleur Libre is the first official recording of this ambitious and powerful project. We invited Matana to assemble her Montreal group for a live in-studio performance at the Hotel2Tango facility, before a small but capacity audience of about 30 friends and supporters. The performance was stunning, literally bringing audience members to tears, and went to tape beautifully. The full 90-minute performance was then edited down to around 60 minutes.
While it may sound trite, we truly feel this music speaks for itself. It rallies adventurous improv, experimental voice and narrative, a wide array of black folkways, and Matana’s impassioned lead playing to tremendous emotional and conceptual effect.
COIN COIN Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile is the much-anticipated new installment of Matana Roberts’ unique and forward-looking project and it finds Roberts conjuring some of the most nuanced, thoughtful and substantial American liberation music of the 21st century.
Mississippi Moonchile was developed for an intimately woven New York jazz sextet and represents the next leap forward in Roberts’ iconoclastic and complex project of memory and recuperation, where historical and contemporary musical tropes, fragmentary spoken and sung narratives, and Matana’s cascading alto saxophone are supported by prodigiously talented players.
Chapter Two unfolds as a cohesive album-length piece, playing with notions of dignity, rarefaction and restraint. The six players are in a perpetual motion of coalescence and divergence, where melodic themes, occasional ostinato passages, and variously deployed literal voices serve to rally the overriding theme of individual narratives and personal expressions as struggles with, celebrations of and threads within collective history. The contortions of empowerment, pride, shame, suffering, eulogy, empathy, liberation and transcendence are Matana’s raw material in the broadest and most specific senses; she has given this raw material another beautiful and compelling shape in the second chapter of the COIN COIN story.
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, voiceGUESTS:
Steve Swell: trombone, voice
Ryan White: vibraphone
Thierry Amar: voice
Nadia Moss: voice
Jessica Moss: voiceRecorded 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
MATTHEWDAVID (4 LPS) BANDCAMP (2011, 2012, 2014, 2016)
Gêneros: Ambient, Sound Collage, Instrumental Hip Hop, Glitch Hop
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OLIVER COATES – 2 LPS: TOWARDS THE BLESSED ISLANDS E UPSTEPPING (2013, 2016)
released November 25, 2013
OUTRO TEMPO: ELECTRONIC AND CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FROM BRAZIL 1978-1992 (2017) E OUTRO TEMPO II: ELECTRONIC AND CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FROM BRAZIL 1984-1996 (2019)
released March 30, 2017
“It’s raining heavily in São Paulo and the evening has the buzz of people rushing with excited anticipation. An audience of young Brazilians assembles in the fabled Teatro Oficina as musicians from Outro Tempo get ready to perform together for the first time. Backstage, I’m chatting to Mauricio Pereira from Os Mulheres Negras, who says to me: “você é louco… nobody in Brazil could have thought of bringing these musicians together. We all knew each other but belonged to different tribes.” The intimacy of the setting brings into sharp focus just how much of an outsider I am to the history of this music and place. The concert is set to start and I take my seat, wondering about the privileges afforded by my foreign ear.
This compilation takes another dive into the depths of the Brazilian underworld. It brings together music that was made in Brazil in the late 1980s and 1990s but this time rides a different current, drifting away from the rainforest and into the pulsating heart of Brazil’s immense and overpowering cities. There is still a pull towards the environment: in the music of Priscilla Ermel and Jorge Mello, where we can hear the acoustic turning on the technological in songs resonating with nature’s echo. And in Tetê Espíndola and Nelson Angelo’s sculptural sounds, which bubble with a harmony so fluid that it hovers between liquid and matter. Yet it feels most at home in the raw and ardent cities that became hubs for sonic invention for artists like May East and Akira S. Once more, it moves with freedom between different tribes, guided by an intuition that the musicians that come to the surface collectively laid the foundations for a new golden era of Brazilian popular music that would arrive as the world tuned in to the sounds of global electronica.
In the mid 1980s, Brazilian popular music was languishing. Politically, the relaxation of authoritarian rule had seen the shadow of the dictatorship finally lose its hold on Brazilian society. With this, MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) lost its ability to articulate the social consciousness of the era. The music that had once been a vital voice of dissent became the polite face of the new democratic establishment. Bored by innocuous music and frustrated with the mythical status of venerated stars, young musicians from the urban middle classes turned their back on MPB and looked to kickstart a new phase in Brazilian popular music.
The return to civil society set in motion an effervescent period of cultural production. Artists who had come of age during the last years of the dictatorship found themselves reorientating around a newfound sense of permission. This was a critically and culturally informed generation that was eager to rethink the idea of the MPB and move it into unfamiliar territories: alternative performance spaces, DIY modes of production, and collaborations with the art world.
The arrival of independent art scenes in Brazil’s sprawling cities imbued music with new significance. Live shows were commonly hosted at galleries, where groups like electronic duo Dequinha e Zaba explored links with performance art. The polyphony and verbal montage in “Preposições” inject the music with the language of experimental poetry. Meanwhile, Fausto Fawcett used the scaffolding of video-art to support conceptual albums. The mechanical Império dos Sentidos draws inspiration from post-modern tropes to illustrate a vision of a technocratic world order that shimmers like a hologram.
São Paulo provided the ideal backdrop for this wave of creativity to flourish. In this megalopolis, trees, animals, and fruits of all colours share the space with overpasses, street vendors, and cars. Behind the hard edges of its incessant high rises lies an unusual city in which the coexistence of nature and asphalt leads to different realities. An experimental sensibility grew out of its nightclubs, theatres, and universities, which thrived with transgressive vitality. Vibrant post-punk and new wave scenes blossomed, but the city’s sound reached beyond, shuffling promiscuously between pop and avant-garde forms. São Paulo’s music reflected the thrumming energy of the city. Always in flux, it cut together synth-pop, ambient, art rock, and electronic fusion into strange and beguiling forms.
In 1987, R. H. Jackson returned to São Paulo from New York with a 16 channel Tascam mixer and the cultural cachet of coming from New York’s subterranean music scenes. He set up a studio offering affordable mixing for alternative bands. Without support from mainstream labels or media, artists chose to release music autonomously or with independent labels like the influential Baratos Afins. Music was made intuitively using cheap technical equipment, improvising solutions to the limitations of inexpensive consumer electronics. Self-production methods were common and liberated music from corporations but also meant that an abundance of recorded material never saw the light of day. The group Chance, for example, crept out of a ghostly closet only once to release their arresting “Samba do Morro” before being locked away again. Lost to forgotten archives, the shapeless sigh of “Intro-Amazônia” feels like an emission from a faraway planet of secrets and shadows.
A recurring theme in mainstream Brazilian press has been the influence of foreign music on national culture. Brazil has always been protective of its musical heritage and, despite national music consistently outselling international pop since the 1970s, major newspapers have reported endlessly on the troubling cultural invasion of foreign music. A new wave of journalism that did not see the relationship with the outside as one of subjugation emerged in the mid 1980s. Many musicians, like Thomas Pappon of Voluntários da Pátria, doubled up as countercultural writers for opinionated publications like Bizz. Along with the arrival of MTV in Brazil in 1990, Bizz provided a valuable cultural link with the increasingly globalized world. It offered a more nuanced take on the dialogue with the outside that reflected the appeal that foreignness held for readers who found inspiration equally in Talking Heads, Hermeto Pascoal, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
There is a palpable sense of exploration, discovery, and pleasure running through the music in this compilation. A whole world of sounds can be heard tentatively opening up, as well as surprising languages in its songs. Edson Natale’s translucent “Nina Maika” shimmers unexpectedly with the soul of a traditional Bosnian folk song. Natale was introduced to this by Mitar Subotić, a Yugoslavian producer who had relocated to Brazil after falling in love with the country on a UNESCO scholarship. Subotić – or Suba as he became known – had recorded the song previously under his pseudonym Rex Ilusivii and collaborated with Natale on his album, bringing out a magical sonic ambiance in his playing. Suba’s introduction of this unlikely song into the Brazilian songbook takes on symbolic meaning: it marks a new phase in MPB, in which the search for new meaning is concomitant with the unsettling of the ground on which stable notions of Brazilian identity were perched. Indeed, nowhere is the opening to new ideas observed more clearly than in the collaborations with Suba.
Suba’s arrival in São Paulo in 1990 marked a turning point in Brazilian electronic music. Suba was a seasoned producer who brought with him an unprecedented technical sophistication and a unique sensibility. He offered an uninhibited vision of Brazilian music that was not limited by cultural constraints and helped definitively unleash the ideas that São Paulo’s musical community was collectively opening up to. In 1994, Ekatarina Velika’s frontman Milan Mladenović joined Suba in São Paulo to revive a project they had started in Yugoslavia. They enlisted Suba’s closest Brazilian collaborators, including Trio Mocotó’s percussionist João Parahyba, to form Angel’s Breath. The sublime atmospheric arrangement of “Velvet” is born from Suba’s singular ability to make connections. It is music that signifies the desire to break out of isolation and become part of the world.
Suba helped update popular Brazilian music. His subtle electronic reworkings of styles like bossa nova would eventually propel Brazilian music into a phase of unprecedented global popularity. The appeal of Brazilian electronica – epitomized by the biggest selling Brazilian release of all time, Bebel Gilberto’s Suba-produced Tanto Tempo – was the result of an outsider’s thrilling vision of Brazil being absorbed into its soul. Edson Natale’s dedicated his song “Perseguindo o Por do Sol” to Suba, capturing the essence of his imagination in his continual chasing of the Brazilian sunset. This pursuit was tragically interrupted when Suba’s studio caught fire in 1999, taking with it years of recordings as well as his young life.
In “Gersal” the percussionist Júlio Pimentel records himself pounding sesame seeds together with salt in a large pestle and mortar known as a pilão. Like the pilão, this compilation brings together music that has been twisted out of different genetic codes. Individually, tracks offer unpredictable reinventions of Brazilian popular music, and yet each contains the lingering traces of all others. When viewed from one angle, the music remains a recognizable collage of sub-tropical pleasures, a mirror of its times. But viewed from another, it possesses an alien sheen, the sense of an exuberant newness that apprehends how things could be other than how they are. Instead of seeing ends, Outro Tempo sees horizons; broad swathes of worlds that shade off into the distance and finish somewhere that is still out of view.”
released June 11, 2019
Compiled by John Gomez.
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SARAH DAVAHI – BARONS COURT LP (2015)
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SARAH DAVACHI & ARIEL KALMA – INTEMPOREL (2019)
“Sarah and Ariel blend their strong individual personalities in a single trip on the edge of time. Their kosmiche music is pure, magnificent and elegant, an intergalactic hypnosis that seems to tell of distant times, a millenary vortex of a lost Era. In the first phase of departure, the mysterious song of the sax winds in archaic echoes, supported by the electronic inlays of the synth (Arp Odissey). Flowing between space rumbles and astral progressions, we sight high celestial bodies. When the infinite drones of the tampura start, we take part in the night ceremonial, surrounded by the deep harmonium and the Tibetan bell chimes. This music releases a sort of mythological warmth, secret codes of a lost purity, which lets us dwell in the labyrinths of a pyramid or in the sacred space of a cosmic pagoda.”
THE SIGHT BELOW – GLIDER LP (2008)
There’s a beating heart buried in the cold landscape of Glider. A warm and steady pulse invigorates each drone resonating overhead, pulling the listener swiftly through the snowy textures below. By underpinning his melodic guitar wisps with murmuring electronic rhythms, New York-via-Seattle artist and curator Rafael Anton Irisarri brought understated dance music into the realm of ambient on his 2008 debut album as The Sight Below. 10 years later, Glider has been remastered and reissued along with a cassette of eight incredible reworks from Irisarri’s peers.
There’s a separation of elements in these songs that’s almost meteorological in nature. The tendrils of treated guitar in “At First Touch” trail loose patterns in the sky like Aurora Borealis, while they flicker like heat lightning in “Dour” and billow like time-lapse cloud formations in “Life’s Fading Light.” Running along below, nearly obscured by the airborne sounds, is an ever-present beat. Sometimes it’s like the mud-puddle throb in “Without Motion,” or the tiny, insistent hi-hats in “A Fractured Smile.” Each track evolves at a deliberate pace, but as the tones overlap and the rhythms build, time slows until the moment feels all but frozen in suspended animation.
With Glider, The Sight Below created a work of dizzying depth and exquisite melancholy: ambient-techno for dark, brooding nights. This tenth anniversary edition of the album presents an impressive work with new definition and detail, remastered for vinyl at Irisarri’s own Black Knoll Studio in upstate New York. Glider 10: Reworks cassette celebrates the music’s lasting influence with versions produced by ambient-techno pioneers Biosphere and Yagya, Slowdive’s Simon Scott, Pop Ambient veterans Markus Guentner and Leandro Fresco, Swedish techno auteur Acronym, composer Benoît Pioulard, and Spanish drone stalwart Warmth—all of which were expertly mixed and compiled to tape by The Sight Below.
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VÁRIOS ARTISTAS – WE OUT HERE (JAZZ, 2018)
A primer on London’s bright-burning young jazz scene, this new compilation brings together a collection of some of its sharpest talents. A set of nine newly-recorded tracks, We Out Here captures a moment where genre markers matter less than raw, focused energy. Surveying the album’s running order, it could easily serve as a name-checking exercise for some of London’s most-tipped and hardworking bands of the past couple of years. Recorded across three long, fruitful days in a North West London studio, the results speak for themselves: they’re a window into the wide-eyed future of London’s musical underground.
The album bottles up some of the vital ideas emanating from that burgeoning movement. A reflection of how London’s jazz-influenced music has reached outward into new spaces, the sound of the record draws from a wide pool. There’s plenty of crossover between each of the groups, too, speaking to the close-knit circles which make up the scene; shared line-ups reflect the mutual cooperation and DIY spirit which are second-nature.
Ubiquitous, much-lauded saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings is the project’s musical director. His own recent projects span from South Africa-connected, spiritually-minded jazz players Shabaka and the Ancestors to Sons of Kemet, who match diasporically-connected compositions with viscerally-direct live shows. His input ties together a deft, genre-agnostic sensibility that’s shared through all the players on the record.
Nodding to spiritual jazz influences, Maisha’s ‘Inside The Acorn’ is a wandering, explorative rumination, balancing delicate washes of piano and percussion with sharp interplay between flute and bass clarinet. Ezra Collective – whose drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso has toured with Pharaohe Monch – run a tight, Afrobeat-tipped rhythm on ‘Pure Shade’, with the final third changing gear into a melodic, momentous closing stretch.
On Moses Boyd’s ‘The Balance’, the drummer – who co-produced Zara McFarlane’s recent, critically-lauded album, as well as touring with the likes of Sampha – builds a steadily-paced, atmospheric creation, loosening up the rhythm and intensity as it progresses. Theon Cross – who’s part of Hutchings’ Sons of Kemet – starts his track, ‘Brockley’, with the solo, distinctive low rumble of his tuba. Winding and mesmeric, it sees tuba and sax lines winding together in rhythmic and melodic parallels.
Showing a similarly controlled approach, Nubya Garcia’s ‘Once’ is taut and carefully-poised, her tenor sax guiding a carefully-built energy to an explosive conclusion. Shabaka Hutchings’ ‘Black Skin, Black Masks’ is typically difficult-to-define: with an off-kilter, shifting rhythmic backbone, repeated phrases – mirrored between clarinet and bass clarinet – shape the track with an alluring hue.
Triforce’s ‘Walls’ is a performance in two parts: starting with Mansur Brown’s languorous, lyrical guitar, the second half switches up to a low-slung, g-funk-tipped groove. Joe Armon-Jones, whose ludicrous chops on the piano have seen him touring with the likes of Ata Kak, showcases earworm-like, insistent motifs on ‘Go See’, balanced with a playful, improvisatory approach with room for ad-libbing and solos a-plenty. Finally, taking a softer tact than many of the other entries, Kokoroko – whose guitarist Oscar Jerome has been making waves with his solo material – spin a lyrical, steady-paced meditation on ‘Abusey Junction’, matching chanted vocals with gently-played guitar.
VOICES FROM THE LAKE (2 EPS)
Gêneros: Ambient Techno, Dub Techno, Ambient, Minimal Techno
Voices From the Lake – Secondo Tempo EP (2016)
Svreca & Voices From the Lake – Between the Lines EP (2017)
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YANN NOVAK – STILLNESS (LP, 2019)
American interdisciplinary artist and composer Yann Novak returns to 901 Editions with his 4th edition for the label following ‘Blue.Hour’ (2013), ‘Undefined’ (with Richard Chartier, 2013), and ‘Liminality’ (with Fabio Perletta, 2014). His new venture takes the form of a book and CD documenting the history of his series of works ‘Stillness’ (2010–2017) through essays, photographs, and an audio CD.
‘Stillness’ takes its inspiration from the two climates Novak has inhabited: Subtropical in Los Angeles and Oceanic in Seattle. In these works he investigates these climates’ almost static meteorological states and their emotional effect on their inhabitants. Constructed from numerous photographs of the horizon and shortwave radio signal tuned to static in each location, the source material is intended to captures a literal portrait of these climates. These elements are then digitally altered to create an ambiguous abstraction, leaving enough of the source to guide the experience and define the location, but abstract enough to create an immersive environment perfect for contemplation and personal reflection.
The book includes essays by Independent Curator Suzy Halajian and Director of Audience Engagement at The Broad Ed Patuto. In her essay ‘Unbound Time’, Halajian explores how these works ask us to question what can an understanding of time look like when it is not measurable, containable, or even expressible? In Patuto’s essay ‘Stillness at The Broad’, he expands on why ‘Stillness’ was chosen as the first artwork to be exhibited in the renowned Los Angeles museum’s massive third floor gallery. To compliment the essays the book includes photographs documenting three iterations of the work, first in London and then twice in Los Angeles. The Audio CD rounds out the edition with abridged versions of the sound elements from ‘Stillness.Subtropical’ and ‘Stillness.Oceanic’, mastered for home listening by Lawrence English.
Designed: Mote Studio
Essays: Suzy Halajian, Ed Patuto
Editorial: Leah Clancy
Publisher: Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd.
Mastered: Lawrence English at Negative Space
Culture Injection 