Emotional Response Cosmic | Balearic 3 Items

Emotional Response returns with a second volume of its All Trades compilation which is named after its own NTS show. It is just as vast both in terms of style but also the eras it spans with a mix of dub, new wave, slow motion electronics and plenty in between. Tolouse Low Trax kicks off with the filthy dirty and seriously heavy dub glitch of 'Ossia' to provide an early highlight before the likes of Al Wootton get percussive and tribal with 'Altai' and Hlm38 channels some African Head Charge on another devastating dub cut. Later on, London's Good Block brings a little more light and sunshine with their lovely 'Strong Relax.'

You can never really pin down what the excellent Emotional Repose label does and that is exactly the sinking behind the title of its superb All Trades show on NTS. The sheer eclecticism of that show is now reflected in this new two-part compilation, also called All Trades, which offers up little morsels of what they do, something like a sonic tasting menu at a fancy restaurant. There is chugging electronic dub from Apiento & Tepper, industrial clatter from Black Bones, cosmic ambient breakbeat from Paperclip Minimiser and blissed out dub from Yamila & SoFa Elsewhere amongst many more highlights.

Emotional Response celebrates it's 10th Anniversary in repressing a label's long held favourite - Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Alexis Georgopoulos wonderful Fragments Of A Season - coming together perfectly for an album of laconic story-telling and atmospherics.

Over the past decade, Cantu-Ledesma and Georgopoulos have been frequent collaborators. With one another - Jefre's recent ""On The Echoing Green' Mexican Summer), Arp's "The Soft Wave" Smalltown Supersound) and The Alps "Le Voyage" Type) - and with others. Jefre has worked with Grouper aka Liz Harris), filmmaker Paul Clipson and has released music by Harold Budd, Oneohtrix Point Never and Keith Fullerton Whitman on his Root Strata imprint, while Alexis has worked with visual artists Tauba Auerbach and Doug Aitken, scored dance for Merce Cunningham, choreographer Jonah Bokaer and made liminal classical music with Canterbury composer Anthony Moore Frkwys 3 / Rvng Intl.).(Emotional) Especial

In all of their projects, the two have always been masters of atmosphere. Veering between romantic abstraction, filmic ambiguity and suggested narrative, their music draws on personal and collective memory, letting things surface. Fragments Of A Season represents a new and distinct chapter in their ongoing work together, continuing this lineage of understated but resonant work.

Arising from conversations wherein each revealed that they'd been working on tracks with a similar feel in mind, the two quickly realized their songs fit together quite effortlessly. The goal was to do something immediate and spare - most songs simply use an old drum machine and a few chorused guitars, featuring live performances with minimal editing. The result, and indeed the goal of the project, was not to make an album that would simply sounds like what one would expect of the two - there are no modular synths or sequenced basslines, no motorik rhythms or overdriven distortions. Rather, to pursue a tangent of simplicity and clarity.

The result is an album of warmth and cool, sparse but evocative, earthy and luminous, narrative and abstract, taking influence from Les Disques Crepescule and early Cherry Red artists i the duo also cite Eric Rohmer's "A Summer's Tale" and the photography of Luigi Ghirri, whose image graces the cover.

Song titles provide narrative hints. As does New York-based writer Leigh Gallagher's short story enclosed within. Each song finds the story advancing - on the beach ""Marine""); at a discotheque ""Madagascar""); sleeping in the afternoon "Mirror The Sky"). Memory of cobblestone streets and a recent relationship ""Cleo"", "The Streets Are Filled With Rain"). A sense that this temporary idyll will end casts a shadow. Ultimately, for reasons unclear, it does ""Lost Summer"").

There is the sense that a distinct arc has taken place. On some faraway beach, the buildings are white, the skies and sea turquoise. Waves rise and crest. A shaft of light crosses an empty room. A discotheque can be heard in the distance. A mist burns off. Over the course of the ensuing astral summer weeks, an encounter sets the world known previously in relief. Days stretch out and the nights hum.