do you have peace? Vinyl, CD & Tape 5 Items

Jabu return with ‘A Soft and
Gatherable Star’, an LP that sees the Bristol-based trio evolve from a uniquely spectral take on hip hop to proffer a singular vision
between cloudy, downered dream-pop, off-kilter ambient, and the warm, low-end throb of sound system culture. This development is
aligned with contemporaries like HTRK, Dean Blunt, Tarquin Manek, YL Hooi and Rat Heart Ensemble, whilst also harkening back to
the likes of AR Kane (with whom they are set to play shows and release a collaborative single), the languorous drift of 'Victorialand' era
Cocteau Twins or The Cure circa ‘Disintegration’. Comprising Jasmine Butt (vocals, guitar), Alex Rendall (vocals, keys) and Amos
Childs (production, bass guitar), the trio’s method may have shifted but the feel remains consistent - slow, spatial, sensuous and gently
melancholic. With a career arc unlike almost any other current guitar outfit, Jabu sit within a strong lineage of off-centre Bristolian
music, and a very British strain of home-spun DIY bands. Self-recorded between Jas and Amos’ home in South Bristol and Amos’
mum’s house in rural North Somerset, the album came together via a process of trial and error - learning to play on borrowed
instruments, using the equipment “wrong”, staying up late recording and slipping into strange, semi-conscious sleep
deprived/inebriated headspaces. Having captured over 50 tracks, they honed in on those they liked most, shaping them further, whilst
carving out space to allow input from people they love and admire - Daniela Dyson’s voice and Will Memotone's clarinet on ‘Ashes
Over Shute Shelve’, Birthmark's synth on ‘Gently Fade’ and ‘Sea Mills’, Rakhi Singh (Manchester Collective) and Sebastian
Gainsborough (Vessel)’s strings and arrangements on ‘All Night’, Josh Horsley’s cello on ‘If I Asked You, You'd Tell Me’, and Lorenzo
Prati’s sax, again on ‘Sea Mills’. The album was mastered by Amir Shoat (HTRK, ML Buch, Dean Blunt, Carla Dal Forno). Influencewise, the guitar-based material recalls the bands Amos listened to when younger, and Jas’ more folk-leaning inspirations. Deep-lying
dub, hip hop and soul influences are also evident in both the way the LP was mixed, and the space ingrained in their subconscious.
Tinged with melancholy, the songs cohere as a set of soliloquies and ruminations on love and tenderness. The album’s title comes
from a poem by Amos’ late father which hangs on his wall and seeped into the record. ‘Ashes Over Shute Shelve’ is formed of lines
from another poem of his. Recited by longtime collaborator Daniela Dyson and with Will Yates (Memotone) playing his mother’s
clarinet, the track was imagined as a conversation between his parents. Geography and location also play a big part in the record, with
several significant places name-checked in songs. Shute Shelve itself is a hill near Amos’ mum’s house, who explains “There’s a tree
at the top with a 360° view of the Mendips, where my dad’s ashes were scattered. We used to go up there when we could first buy
booze from the petrol station down the road, get drunk, light a fire, listen to music from my little battery powered CD player and sleep
out without tents.” Titled after a Bristol suburb near where Amos’ grandparents lived and where Jas would spend time as a teenager,
‘Sea Mills’ references her being abandoned by friends on the Downs while high on mushrooms, stranded and missing the bus back.
‘Kosiše Flower’ references the city in Slovakia where Amos and Jas holidayed shortly after getting together and a flower he gave her,
which she pressed in a book after an argument. ‘Oceanside Spider House’ is a location in Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda:
Majora’s Mask, where someone seeks shelter from the falling moon.

Sweet Company Is The Second Album By Jabu. Where Their First Lp, Sleep Heavy, Was An Unflinching Exploration Of Grief, Dark And Disembodied, Sweet Company's Deep, Sedative Soul Feels Like More Of A Lovers' Outing: Optimistic, Becalmed, Looking Outwards As Well As Inwards, And Longing For The Kind Of Human Connections Where Ego And Self-Consciousness Might Dissolve. It Is Perhaps Also An Exhortation To Love And Accept Yourself, To Recover A Lost Innocence And Peace - That Paradise Which Has Always Been Lost. Released Via Their Own Do You Have Peace? Label, Sweet Company Is On The One Hand A Very Intimate And Private-Sounding Work - The Sound Of Life Played Out In A Room, A Bubble, A Home, A Head. The Rhythms Of Everyday Domesticity: Listening To The Plants, Cars In The Street, Voices Through The Wall_. Going To Work, Not Going To Work, Sleeping Heavy Or Not Sleeping At All. Wavering On The Brink Of A Revelation, Of Something Just Beyond The Material World, While You Wait For The Kettle To Boil. The Core Jabu Trio Of Producer Amos Childs And Vocalists Jasmine Butt And Alex Rendall Is Present And Correct. Sweet Company Has The Exhilarating Sweep And Confidence Of A Collaboration Between People Who Trust And Understand Each Other Implicitly, And, Secure In That Knowledge, Are Able To Give The Absolute Best Of Themselves To Us. As Before, Jasmine's Voice Is A Textural, Painterly Instrument, Layered And Blurred Into Abstraction, Resisting The Limits Of Language; The Songs She Sings On Are Portals Into Vast Internal Landscapes Where The Normal Rules Of Gravity Are Suspended, Every Sound Is Smothered In A Cathedral-Like Resonance, And You're Both Fearful And Hopeful That You Might Never Find Your Way Back Out Again. Alex Takes A More Narrative, Confessional And No Less Engaging Pop Tack: As On The Gauzy, Decelerated 2-Step Of 'Lately', With His Masochistic, Self-Mocking Entreaties To "Be Cruel To Me [_] I Like It When You Make A Fool Of Me". Childs Has A True Hip-Hop Fiend's Ear For A Striking Sample, And How...

Time Cow & Ossia take 2 tracks from Jabu's 2020 album 'Sweet Company' into unfamiliar (and dance floor friendly) territory. Side A sees 'Us Alone' gets transformed by Time Cow from slo-mo tearjerker into syrupy disco wrecker, managing to somehow touch on reference points everywhere from east LA lowrider anthems through 00s garage and all propelled fwd by an eyeball shaking low end pressure. On the flip Ossia takes snatches of the original 'Slow Down' and flashes them in around a 4/4 and a synth melody, fragments of Daniela's vocal floating like a half remembered conversation. Later Rakhi's strings come in but in a more unsettling way than the original, eventually dissolving to a kind of Majora's Mask (in dub) conclusion. All terrain / all weathers - club / bbq / afterparty / late night introspection sessions.

Always + Forever is the first compilation to be released on Do You Have Peace? collecting unreleased tracks from both new and existing artists on the label. Featuring Time Cow, YL Hooi, Teresa Winter, Jonnine, Guest, Static Cleaner Lost Reward, Hermeneia, Zaumne, Birthmark, Silzedrek, Laughter of Saints, Vessel & Rakhi Singh. Originally imagined as a project to link together the dream pop related leanings of a disparate group of artists, as the project grew it became more amorphous but still kept a strange and half awake quality throughout. The pop leanings are still there, although often buried under slabs of reverb, but there are also less heavy lidded bedroom confessionals, as well as DIY chamber pieces and teary eyed instrumental passages. Most of the vocal-led tracks are in the first half of the album, leaving the second section to drift fully into hypnagogic sedative territory. Where vocals do come in they are more like half remembered fragments of dream speech than any kind of traditional narrative. The voices eventually leave us completely, drifting through 3 chamber pieces, reclaiming the classical arrangements of strings / piano / etc from the lofty heights of concert halls and scores to something more intimate and familiar, a box room in a flat, or a bedroom, a memory of lying awake staring at the ceiling and trying to go to sleep again.

Roger Robinson (King Midas Sound, Black Space Quartet) delivers 2 standalone sides of haunted soul over instrumentals from Jabu’s Amos Childs. Described by Roger as an imaginary soundtrack to a long escalator ride downwards to a Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibition - ‘the music that might be playing as you tried your best to avoid everyone else’s eyes’. A bruised take on Muzak, ‘a sadder kind of normal’. Roger’s innate understanding of form and melody manages to somehow pull real ear worm pop hooks out of the lilting backing of ground hum and hiss from the mixing desk, his falsetto bringing to mind everything from early Sade demos through to lovers rock. On the A side Summer sees Roger yearning for warmer days, over an other-worldly drums machine workout before collapsing in on itself in a disco mix / funeral coda outro. On the flip side the instrumental is pared back even further to a crawling slo motion piano and the sound of faders crackling turned to 11, Roger dials the emotions up another notch, channelling ghosts of low rider soul and entering into ice cold slow jam / ballad territory. Essential late winter / early spring listening for lonely late nite laundrette trips and dawn cigarettes in the graveyard.