Isc Hi-Fi Selects Vinyl, CD & Tape 4 Items

“Live at Sound City” is an instrumental collaboration between bassist Pino Palladino, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/producer Blake Mills, and LA-based saxophonist Sam Gendel. Recorded in one day at the legendary Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, the EP presents new versions of compositions from Palladino & Mills’ Grammy-nominated 2021 album “Notes with Attachments” in an intimate chamber trio setting. Across four tracks, the accomplished trio explores common musical vocabularies, then goes about the work of defamiliarizing them in search of something new, blending the sounds of West African and Cuban music, jazz, R&B, English folk, pop, and beyond.

Pino Palladino is a Grammy Award winning songwriter, producer and bassist who helped create the rhythm-section sound of D’Angelo’s Voodoo and Black Messiah, and over a four-decade career has worked with artists including Keith Richards, Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Nine Inch Nails, Questlove, John Mayer, Paul Simon, Jeff Beck, Herbie Hancock and Adele.

Blake Mills is a two-time Grammy Awards Producer of the Year nominee. He has released four solo albums and produced and recorded with artists such as Alabama Shakes, Fiona Apple, Bob Dylan, John Legend, Perfume Genius, Jim James, Moses Sumney, Laura Marling, Phoebe Bridgers, Cass McCombs, The Killers, Sara Bareilles, Weyes Blood and Randy Newman. His most recent album Mutable Set, released last year, was praised by Pitchfork as “a hushed collection that floats through the subconscious like a tender dream,” and earned their Best New Music title.

Sam Gendel is a musician living in Los Angeles, CA. He is most known for his work with the saxophone, though he is proficient on multiple instruments. His work is diverse and includes collaborations with a wide range of artists including Ry Cooder, Laurie Anderson, Mach-Hommy, Sam Amidon, Perfume Genius, Moses Sumney, Knower, Vampire Weekend, and inc. no world.

Scott Gilmore’s Volume 01, an Analog Synth Gem, Makes Its Vinyl Debut - Pressed at 45rpm for maximum fidelity.

Recorded on a vintage Tascam 388, the LP version of Gilmore’s alluring, easy-going instrumental electronic record arrives in the physical world via In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi Records.

Los Angeles, CA — When the Los Angeles electronic musician and multi-instrumentalist Scott Gilmore recalls the creation of the songs on Volume 01, he describes specific moments of spontaneous inspiration. “I remember sitting at the tape deck, watching the leaves outside the window as they flittered in the sunlight—a moment of stillness that became intertwined with the melody I was recording,” Gilmore recalls, speaking of the track “Song For Cate.”

This sense of simplicity and presence is at the heart of Volume 01, which was recorded entirely on a Tascam 388 using a carefully curated selection of instruments.

Volume 01, an intimate, instinctual album that mixes lo-fi digital rhythms, strummed guitar, and melodic synth layers, is a collection of songs that captures Gilmore’s magnetic fluidity and the spontaneity of his process. Initially released digitally and as a limited edition cassette, Volume 01 is set to be issued on vinyl for the first time by In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi.

The Tascam 388 is a classic mid-1980s analog machine that combines an 8-track reel-to-reel tape recorder with a built-in mixing console. Volume 01 exudes the kind of hazy, nostalgic warmth that only such recorders can provide. For the nine-song album, Gilmore harnessed analog synths including the Arp Odyssey, Yamaha Cs-01, Korg Dw-8000, Hohner Pianet T, Roland TR 606, and Roland SH 101, as well as bamboo alto saxophone, clarinet, electric guitar, and electric bass.

The album is awash in brief, propellant pieces. At just over four minutes, the relatively epic “Horizon Line” is driven by a three-note snare pattern, a two-note cymbal tap, with a humble bass-line serving as the rudder; Gilmore’s improvised keyboard runs move with an intuitive, conversational glee. The pensive "Shade" sounds like it could be a Penguin Cafe Orchestra demo. Closing track “D. Hareem” runs on a wobbly time signature but with an insistent, determined rhythm that belies genre descriptives. “I prefer to not know what I’m making as I compose,” Gilmore says. “It’s when I can’t clearly define what the music is that it’s then something that I want to put out into the world.”

In hindsight, Volume 01 was a portent. After its 2016 cassette release, Gilmore connected with International Feel, the Balearic imprint run by Marc Barrot, to release the sublime Subtle Vertigo. In 2019, Gilmore’s music caught the attention of Marc Hollander, the experimental composer and founding member of Aksak Maboul, which led to a signing with the Belgian label Crammed Discs. That deal enabled the creation of Gilmore’s solo album Two Roomed Motel and Doctor Fluorescent, a retro-futuristic, Vocoder-heavy 2020 collaboration with Eddie Ruscha V, a.k.a. Secret Circuit). Across these projects, Gilmore’s work has been mentioned in the same sentences as Stereolab, Arthur Russell, Woo, Air, R. Stevie Moore, and others, all of whom have combined synths and non-synths to memorable effect.

With the upcoming vinyl release, Volume 01 will set into wax an enduring set of works, offering listeners the chance to experience analog artistry in its most authentic, tangible form. In Sheep’s Clothing Records is honored to bring Gilmore’s work to vinyl.

Daniel Aged (inc., Frank Ocean, Kelela) 2020 self-released solo bass recordings on vinyl for the first time with an exclusive unreleased composition. Released by In Sheep’s Clothing.

Artists Kyoko Takenaka + Tomoki Sanders team with In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi & Pure Person Press to release their breathtaking debut record as Planet Q.

Gatefold Single LP w/ OBI & Insert

To explore and absorb Planet Q, the new record by artists Kyoko Takenaka + Tomoki Sanders, is to become untethered from structural expectations, to reside in a realm where genre vanishes and a profound musical space remains, where the absence of gravity causes curious things to occur.

It’s a spot where handclaps may not move in time, where sonic gurgles of unknown origin offer texture, where a deep, hooky rhythm can propel a groove into the stratosphere.

At various times the tracks move like Dilla pieces, at others like Terry Riley explorations, like Flying Lotus or Milford Graves or Alice Coltrane meditations. But every time you think you’ve got the sound figured out, it hits from another angle. Though a brief missive at 33 minutes, you exit Planet Q as if leaving an utterly alien spot.

Setting: In 2021, during the covid lockdown in America, Takenaka and Sanders were both living in Tokyo without any gigs or work to be found back home. They met at a mutual friend’s cafe in the Higashi-Koenji neighborhood, and the connection was immediate. “The chances of us meeting not only someone else of the diaspora when the borders are closed, but also queer and non-binary, and also a musician? Pretty slim, and pretty fateful,” Takenaka says.

In early 2022, the Omicron variant prompted a new round of isolation. Returning to New York, they united with kindred musicians by going to private jam sessions, but at the time those evenings didn't tap the magic they were seeking. They decided to quarantine and create together. Takenaka was living alone at the time so they invited Sanders to crash there. Says Takenaka, “We made rice, ate natto, meditated and made music for seven days straight.”

That they would create something masterful does seem somehow predestined. Sanders’ late father is the brilliant composer and saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, their mother a life-long music fanatic who nurtured the same. The younger Sanders, who grew up in New York and Tokyo, has been playing music – drums, saxophone, clarinet, piano – and absorbing profound sound since they had baby teeth. Takenaka is a first-generation Nikkei Japanese American actor, butoh dancer and filmmaker who also grew up with music; their father was a jazz pianist, and by age 7 they were already singing at jam sessions in Boston. Planet Q is Takenaka and Sanders’ debut musical collaboration.

That week together in isolation was pretty ritualized. Their aim, Takenaka says, was to create “a really beautiful, secluded safe space for ourselves as qtpoc folx – a planet where we both belong – and to make music as we created the space. Basking in it. Being inside it.”

They quickly fell into a daily routine that commenced with an improvised spoken meditation, tidbits of which made it onto the record. The layout of Takenaka’s apartment – an open kitchen looking out on the living room – afforded them the chance to mix rituals. They prepped meals and sampled parts of the process. Cooking rice, making curry, eating natto – the sounds simmer throughout Planet Q. Dancing and calligraphy also informed the compositions. Takenaka calls it “embodying the process, the textures.”

Tomoki says, “Before Hip hop, in my dad’s age, the saxophone was where the rapper, or the electric guitar spotlighted. It was only $500 to buy a saxophone in the 50’s...now its anywhere from $3000-$10,000. However, we fortunately are in a current time to have a whole studio literally in our laptops – and you can get a $50 midi device from a music store or online. Time of technology has advanced the music, the sound, the production – I’m challenged to reimagine things in ways never been thought before.”

Though each piece has distinct traits, Planet Q feels more like a suite of tracks, a gathering of waveforms that, despite their differences, when woven together create an utterly striking piece. The intention-setting opening piece was born through their improvised morning meditations. Tomoki uses bells their father gifted them.

“‘My Sweet, My Tender, My Loving, Home’ is dedicated to my dad and his metaphysical and galactic sounds, that is grounding,” Tomoki says. “Every intention I put into the style of music or energy comes from him and the ancestors, or god, ‘subconsciously’ – being a continuation of his DNA but in a completely different generation and time; me matching his point of view in spirituality and raising a level of self-consciousness.”

Borders blur. Rhythms lope and gallop. “竹” is a beat-driven rush featuring Takenaka on guitar. When Sanders grabs their tenor saxophone for “Grow,” the result vibes like a funky film-noir soundtrack, with Takenaka reciting the title.

Their tools: bells, electric guitar, piano, shakers, saxophone, African thumb piano, flute, keyboard, drum programming and voice. Most importantly, Planet Q is the sound of two devoted artists committing in full to exploring the mystic, hellbent on mastering the ways that two mortals can, with focus, desire and ancestral guidance, unite in music to create something that transcends the here-and-now.