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First vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s duo with George Lewis. Transferred from the original masters, we discovered that the original Incus LP was cut at the wrong speed - and so, we present the first vinyl issue of the correct masters, or ‘mastas’ as Adam Skeaping, legendary engineer who is also responsible for Six of One and Compatibles, fondly calls them.

Skeaping, always working with the latest in recording technology for the time, has a knack for gaining access to remarkable spaces. Good spaces that were cheap because no one else had discovered them. The Art Workers Guild is a Georgian Hall in Bloomsbury, London, with lofty ceilings and hard wooden floors. It’s the perfect room to exercise an instrument to its full length, to ‘run the full length of the staircase’ in Parker's words. Two bells to ring off the floor and remain in dextrous, airy resonance. Recorded at 30ips on enormous reels, the recording captures all the fine filigree detail so celebrated on Parker’s later ‘Six of One’, though here we are treated to tenor as well as soprano, plus, of course, George Lewis’ trombone. Parker and Lewis first met at Moers festival, Lewis having just played excerpts of Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ with Anthony Braxton. Living in Paris, it wasn’t so hard for a young Parker to invite him for a session on his new imprint, Incus. Though having been part of the Aacm, toured with Count Basie and made records for Black Saint, this would be Lewis’ first foray into British improv, excited by the idea the Bailey and Parker were attempting to open up the notion of improvisation to include “the freshness of the immediate encounter”. Lewis had not long recorded his solo, which mixes lively hints of Ellington and tender lyricism with total experimentation in three part overdubbed trombone. From Saxophone to Trombone veers towards his wilder end of technicality, some of Lewis’ rarer, starker improv - all avant garde burbles and bubbles, breath control and scalar flights. It’s a recording of two young masters, documented beautifully, and released for the first time on vinyl at its intended speed.

Behind this work lays the evolution of our idea of the human, with all that it entails in current times. This is an effort to reflect with compassion and to experience feelings of helplessness through loss. The cognitive volitional duality of being a human in 2016 - Where do we belong?

In a continued disruption to the airwaves following releases from Bondo and Monde UFO, Quindi returns to the Californian noise rock scene-not-scene to dig on the gnarled riffs of Expose. On their new release, the LA outfit double-down on a unique blend of bloated guitar fuzz and grimy analogue synths, and come out with a curiously cosmic kind of kick-ass.
If there was a dreamy, sun-bleached quality to Bondo and Monde UFO, their label mates Expose sound more wrought from sweat-drenched jam sessions under halogen strip lights in grease-stained garages. But the guttural quality of their blown-out guitar tone is matched for vibrancy by the dexterity of their playing, bringing angular free jazz to post hardcore and sludge rock, capped off with the unearthly sonic possibilities of flamboyant synthesis.
This dual-layered wall of sound lends extra weight to the likes of shit-kicking 'Speed Dial', which thunders like a kosmische juggernaut with amped up leads and a dead-eyed vocal condensed into a visceral minute, all with enough time for a dramatic breakdown, synth eruption and a final thrust. Similarly scooped out of the trash compactor, 'Description' rides for longer with one foot pressed firmly on the fuzz pedal, letting the electronics squeal around the punked-up rush of the guitars.
But Expose are not a one-dimensional band constantly thrashing it out. By contrast, 'The Constant' hits a crushing emotional note in its more structured push and pull between delicacy and heaviness, hitting bittersweet notes along the way throughout the peaks and troughs of the arrangement. 'Self Terror' washes languid, discordant guitar strum into swirling FX accompanied by sax from Monde UFO's Ray Monde.
Smart as a whip, sharp as a tack and boiling over with an untameable urgency, Expose make their presence felt in brilliant, bruising form on this particularly fierce addition to the Quindi catalogue.

Dutch multi-instrumentalist Felbm returns with the conceptual album ‘cycli infini’ : a 38-minute composition of metamorphosing tape loops, musical patterns and instrumental sketches. Further exploring the concept is the vinyl release which features the track spread over both sides and cut to the end of each locked groove - creating an essentially never-ending piece that challenges the idea of the traditional listening process. The idea came to fruition by way of a lifelong interest and growing awareness of the cyclical nature of the world around him - be it through observing nature, or the mathematical and mind-bending works of Dutch artist MC Escher, or minimalist composers such as Erik Satie, Laraaji and Melaine Dalibert. “The openness of Laraaji’s and Satie’s music have also been an influence to create a certain softness and feeling of comfort, as I like this piece to be a place you want to revisit”, says Felbm, real name Eelco Topper. While Topper’s previous releases on Soundway Records comprised series of short, individual sketches, on cycli infini the tapestry is sewn seamlessly together using a step-like progression through the circle of fifths, which as the name suggests, brings the listener back to the musical key and soundscape at which they started. Should the full track be on repeat, it begins anew without being noticed. The piece began life with a layer of drone loops using tapes and delay pedals, over which acoustic instruments such as flute, saxophone and bass trumpet would playfully but gently interpret a melody - toying with jazz, ambient, fourth world and percussive sounds. As the music evolves through the key progression, organic elements such as birdsong and wind chimes ground the piece in nature. Says Topper: “the never-ending metamorphosis of matter has always fascinated me, the idea that nothing ever really disappears and everything has already been here… just in different shapes.”

In the Felbm project, Dutch multi-instrumentalist Eelco Topper steps away from his previous synthesiser-laden sounds as Falco Benz, towards a much looser, simpler and sketch-like approach. Picking up a number of acoustic instruments, he began experimenting with a Tascam 4-track tape recorder and allowed these sketches to flourish.
The result is Tape 1 and Tape 2, a two-part project stretching across fifteen tracks - encompassing fluttering piano melodies, subtle jazz drums, rumba rhythms and soothing ambience. The jazz element links back to Topper’s childhood. “I grew up playing drums, switched to playing piano at sixteen and in the meantime I produced hip-hop beats,” he recalls. “I went to study jazz piano at the Utrecht Conservatory, which I finished with pain and effort… I was interested more in electronic and present-day music.”
This mix of being rooted in traditional jazz composition whilst searching for something more contemporary is the perfect encapsulation of these recordings. Tape 1’s jazz roots are palpable and as things move into Tape 2, it takes on a neo-classical, psychedelic soundscape and cinematic quality.

Over the last 5 years the duo of Félicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma have intertwined sublime sonorities across the geographic expanses between their respective homes in France and the United States. Their third album for Shelter Press, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ (‘A winter in the middle of summer’) - the first to have been largely recorded by Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma together in the same space - distills a mesmerizing pallet of acoustic and electronic sources into an open discourse of radically poetic forms, offering glimpses of warmth and intimacy waiting in the post-covid world to come.

Both veteran experimentalists with celebrated bodies of solo work behind them - each traversing the challenges of electroacoustic practice in their own singular ways - prior to their first recorded
outing in 2016, Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma had only crossed paths in person once, initially meeting in San Fransisco during 2009. The mutual bond formed during that brief encounter flowered into their first LP, ‘Comme Un Seul Narcisse’, followed two years later by 2018’s ‘Limpid As The Solitudes’. Both recorded remotely - sending files back and forth, fortified by conversations on a vast range of subjects - these two albums were guided by impassioned
conceptual nods to Guy Debord, Baudelaire, Brion Gysin and Sylvia Plath, while seeking resolutions for the challenges and unique possibilities that working at a distance provoked.

Where the triumphs of its predecessors rose from the bridging of disparate moments and divergent spaces, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ culminates as a celebration of closeness, a result of Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma working together in the studio, responsively in real time, for the first time. Recorded in Brooklyn during August of 2019 - a handful of months before the pandemic would impose chasmic distances across the globe - its six discrete works, carefully crafted and finalized over the ensuing year, evolve seamlessly across the album’s two sides, weaving a sprawling tapestry of sonority, within which both artists retaining their own voices and visions, while drawing each other towards uncharted ground.

Crafted from deconstructed melodic elements and drifting long-tones - laden with subtle nods to Indian classical ragas and free jazz - searching patterns of speech, textural elements captured within the studio and the outside world, and searching tonal and percussive interventions, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ coheres as a multi-faceted series of electroacoustic dialogues; nesting conversations between two artists working at the juncture of abstraction and narration, field recording and harmony, and the philosophical and phenomenological, in search for the meaning of friendship, and its manifestation in pure sound.

Jane Weavers experimental ensemble in collaboration with Peter Philipson and Raz Ullah, Fenella returns with a hallucinogenic excursion into ambient textures and hypnagogic drones on new album ‘The Metallic Index’. Taking further steps into their combined compositional universe with this follow-up to 2019’s acclaimed Fehérlófia album.

Loosely based on a genuine story accounting the short-lived abilities of a young psychic nurse in 1920’s London, Fenella’s niche muse justifies this celebratory return to vinyl but not once does it fall into the supposed tropes of staid hauntological-plunderphonics which repeatedly come to muddy our thirsty streams. Fenella make spirited melodic progressive pop music that pulsates with the same magnetism that fans of Jane Weaver's own The Silver Globe and Modern Kosmology have come to expect and hold closely.

Handcrafted using a generous archive of some of the best vintage equipment in the country (partly recorded at Soundgas studios in Darkest Derbyshire) the sound structures you hear at the heart of this album form the basis for Fenella's best work yet, while the individual spectral vocalisations and ethereal electronics that circle the room capture this trio's return, as peripheral visions, in full-phantasmic bloom.

Vinyl contains ‘Ohne Sonne’ and ’47 Blues’ previously only available on the Japenese CD versions. As well as an new extended version of ‘Happy Audio’ exclusive to this format.

"Endless Summer", originally released in 2001 by Mego, was a breakthrough album for Christian Fennesz. The album which brought his name and music towards the first steps of mainstream recognition. Following on from the more experimental "Hotel Paral.lell" and the Beach Boys homaged "Plays" single "Endless Summer" brought the guitars more to the front, the electronics shimmered more, and the melodies shined more brightly. It went on to be a classic of its time, topping many end of year polls. This new definitive edition is newly mixed by Fennesz resulting in a more open sounding version of the tracks, especially the marimba driven "Caecilia", the hypnotic "Before I Leave", and the towering "Happy Audio". In addition 2 extra titles are included: "Badminton Girl", originally released in 2001 as part of the Split #15 12" with Main on Fat Cat Records (12fat045), now out of print. "Endless", previously unreleased.

An immersive, dystopian, even nightmarish exploration, Fionnlagh’s ‘What Came Before’ drops the listener into an unfolding flashback. Soaring synths over dark, brooding sub tones crescendo in a style that already seems a unique hallmark of the artist, with an immediacy that is as transfixing as it is unsettling. An album to be listened to, to be bravely thrown in front of, and one that stands out boldly amongst its contemporaries. The album’s narrative is one of previous shared experience, shared burden, as a guiding light in dark times. Though a seemingly far stretch from the menacing timbre and haunted frequencies, What Came Before goes further than nostalgia, placing emphasis on the more apparent experience of history’s true nature. Glimpses of light appear at times, but the honesty is laid bare that, for the most part, darkness remains. To construct this echo of the past, Fionnlagh makes use source material, own recordings, synthetic sounds and manipulated external artefacts. ’The Art of Disguise’ presents itself as an impassioned rallying cry, after the album’s bleak and uncertain exposition, while ‘Across the Pacific’ delivers the emotional resolve to be carried through the remainder of the story. Pieces like ’The Villa on the Cliff’ and ’This Storm Will Pass’ continue the thread of enthralling darkness, but with a greater clarity and direction. Nevertheless, the turbulence of the album as a whole could be met with any number of experiences, and what arises will be unique to each listener. His debut album under this alias, and in this genre, Mark Findlay has released numerous techno and drum & bass singles, transposing the darker side of his production into something more cinematic and thoughtful, a bold step backwards in time.

“Twin giant towers of amps grinding out minimal beat bloop, the transient sound molecules smell of burning gear and the floor of the pit—this is organic, electronic music at its finest. Dance? Why not. Freak out? For sure. Brothers from a different mother (Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren) à la two-thirds of Black Dice have come together with this fantastic debut [Flaccid Mojo] for us. These are mean beat vipers, spitting and tumescent on the abattoir floor.“I would call it drug music, but I’m not sure what drugs these humans consume. Stem cell and adrenal gland cocktails I’m guessing. Futuristic and primal it is, beats from the Thunder-Dome, fight music for fuckers. I’ve seen them on two separate occasions blow the power for an entire building. Baller move, boys. Produced perfectly by Chris Coady (look him up to be impressed). This record is a burning car in a field and I love it.“For fans of Black Dice, Container, Whitehouse, Negativland, Ralph Records, minimal beats à la Profan, vintage Japanese noise, Severed Heads, windburn and chapped lips.” —John Dwyer

While Cosmogramma is a monolithic convergence of 20th and 21st century musical forms, high in concept and wide in musical collaboration, Pattern+Grid World pulls the focus back to Steven Ellison and his machines. These machines are speaking (and possibly looking as well, judging by the EP's cover) from the go, as "Clay" introduces itself in a fog of synth and vocoder and gives way to one of the many surprises here, the schizophrenic ping-ponging electro of "Kill Your Co-Workers". Drenched in alternating melodies, it's a synthetic counterpart to the grand string and harp arrangements of Cosmogramma, making acclaimed illustrator Theo Ellsworth's subtly psychedelic cover image of vision-through-noise all the more intimate.

When Flying Lotus records hit their stride, all buttons labeled "pause" and "stop" disappear, and this one is no different. "Pie Face" is led by icy keys that could almost be mistaken for classic grime, before the stoned plastic marching band steps in. "Time Vampires" amazingly lands somewhere between vintage DJ Premier and Lee Hazelwood, while the stripped back bass and drum explorations of "Jurassic Notion/M Theory" are as shamanic and ceremonial as anything you're likely to hear come out of California. If "Camera Day" brings to mind a certain crew of dungeon-dwelling ATLiens, it won't come as much of a surprise that Killer Mike found its syrupy bounce recently inspiring.

Much of the messages surrounding Cosmogramma's release as well as reportage on the world's ever-emerging beat scenes has painted a picture of Flying Lotus as a patriarchal figure blazing the trail for scores of young artists with new conceptual notions of what can be done with a drum machine and a dream. While this notion is certainly not inaccurate, it sometimes overshadows the fact that FlyLo is also an incredibly singular entity. However, as "Physics For Everyone!" stutters to a close, if you listen closely you might just make out the sound of another kid in his room somewhere in the world, anxiously tapping out his first beat.

Elle Andrews & Jon K’s MAL label pushes left with Foql’s new album of polyrhythmic sidewinders and blacklit electronics, edging into crankier spaces on a tense flux somewhere between Raime’s blasted-earth topographies and Anthony Manning’s crystalline FM sequences. Justyna Banaszczyk aka Foql was raised in the post-industrial decay of a city beloved by David Lynch for its abundant, knackered architecture (think ‘Eraserhead’, or run go check his warehouse photo studies). ‘Wehikuł’ translating to ‘Vehicle’, echoes its provenance and dark surreality across eight cuts of intricate post-techno pulses webbed with brooding synths that lend a fine new stripe of influence to MAL’s unpredictable ‘Rebel Music’ agenda, perfectly in step with its off-road vectors. Banaszczyk has been a part of her country’s grassroots underground for many years at this point, making music with a diverse cast of collaborators, co-founding the Oramics Collective and Radio Kapitał, running the Ignorantka space in Łódź, and helming the Pointless Geometry label. She brings this wide-ranging expertise and boundless motivation to her music, charging through her undulating productions with a rare sense of urgency and intensity. Foql patently has a taste for the tang of metallic tones too, coupled with a keen proprioceptive awareness of dubbed-out reverb in wide, vertiginous industrial space that manifests in her ductile, spatialised production. ‘Myrhh’ is a gummy introduction to her distinctive sound, a ruffled clash of bell-like synthesised sequences that harmonise with Anthony Manning’s brilliant (and still underrated) “Islets in Pink Polypropylene”. But Banaszczyk really lets rip with ‘Escapist Dubbbbb Machine’, building up from spliced drum hits into vaporous synth textures and pulsating electronics. Escapist dub is a good descriptor, finding a malleable mid-point that touches Tackhead to Sandwell District without treading into overused “dark” tropes. Her influences coalesce on the album’s title track, adding tense strings to jerky acidic dub, refining the rhythm into a disorientating, convulsive gallop. From here, Banaszczyk’s compositions hover around a similar thematic locale, interpreting her sense of turmoil but driving through it regardless with a relentless sense of purpose. ‘Twój Mózg’ adds fractal synth sequences over rolling loops and paranoid vocal snatches; ‘Shhhshh’ steps into the warehouse, syncopating industrial drums with a voice that’s begging for mental quietude; and ‘Divine Horseman’ dispenses with the rhythm altogether, connecting with Banaszczyk’s DIY noise roots and serrated foghorns over tape-saturated, microtonal rounds. Grim but not suffocating, “Wehikuł” is a flaming torch through inky black territory.

While previous albums, most notably Leland and Minutes of Sleep (2014) as well as two albums released as one half of the duo Aris Kindt (most notably the stellar Swann and Odette from 2017) have relied on singular thematic and narrative drives that were often of a personal, collaborative, or hermetic in nature, Thresholds is an album that aspires to sonic universality and the presentation of a fully formed psychoacoustical world. That being said it is not an “album of ideas”. Inspired by the ecological and political upheavals of the present and the role of speculative thought as an avenue of global transformation Thresholds is the work of a mature artist fully in control of his powers. Both expansive and nuanced the album widens the aperture of the affective possibilities of the electronic assemblage; themes skip from one track to the next, elevating and informing each other in tangible fields of abstract figuration. The titles, while often heady, concisely allude to strategies implicit in the construction and arrangement of the works: Cut Up, within the context of the album, is exactly that. Luck Takes a Step juxtaposes stately synths with just the right touch of playful fluctuation and latent atonality. The title track itself is a knotted mass of uncertainty and propulsive beats the breakdown of which is a nervous series of fits and starts that resonate not just within the track but as the fulcrum of the entire album: the threshold of our Threshold.

Unequal cycles searching for synchronous experiences: On his new album »Pounding«, Frank Bretschneider tells of distance, convergence and congruence in a continuous, ever-changing flow of events. What is often considered to be an unquestionable dogma in club music (for which Bretschneider has provided significant impetus since the 1990s) – the groove – appears precarious, unstable, and in motion. Pulse and accent are volatile encounters and have to be found again and again for short, delightful moments. Music becomes a constant process of negotiation.

In search of new sound spaces, Bretschneider has recently worked a lot with modular synthesizers, both solo (for example on »abtasten_halten«, 2020) and in collaborations, including the project Beispiel together with Jan Jelinek. »Pounding« was created using similar means – conceived in 2020 for the Pochen Biennale in Chemnitz, subsequently developed further and recorded in March and April 2023 on a sample-based modular system. And in fact, Bretschneider is once again exemplarily scanning his own sound material, for example Dub effects that listen to themselves crumbling. But also the human voice, or more precisely: the stuttering of fragments of speech, far in the distance but omnipresent, like a mysterious narration. Aesthetically, the eleven pieces form part of a series of works with a focus on percussion. Bretschneider has already perfected this approach with albums like »Rhythm« (2007) and has been shifting the perspective ever since, for ever new results.

Shifting is the basic principle of »Pounding«. Bretschneider combines elements that are in different aggregate states, changing their relationship to each other and thus ensuring the complex overall movement. He lets one to two-bar loops run against each other and through manipulations, develops a network of rhythms that creates a hypnotic state in the counterplay of repetition and mutation, between clearly recognizable meter and disorientation. There are comparable approaches in aleatoric music. Bretschneider combines them with sounds and patterns that are reminiscent of step sequencer logic and at the same time go far beyond it. The result is relational techno. Never clear, constantly restless and exciting.

Unequal cycles searching for synchronous experiences: On his new album »Pounding«, Frank Bretschneider tells of distance, convergence and congruence in a continuous, ever-changing flow of events. What is often considered to be an unquestionable dogma in club music (for which Bretschneider has provided significant impetus since the 1990s) – the groove – appears precarious, unstable, and in motion. Pulse and accent are volatile encounters and have to be found again and again for short, delightful moments. Music becomes a constant process of negotiation.

In search of new sound spaces, Bretschneider has recently worked a lot with modular synthesizers, both solo (for example on »abtasten_halten«, 2020) and in collaborations, including the project Beispiel together with Jan Jelinek. »Pounding« was created using similar means – conceived in 2020 for the Pochen Biennale in Chemnitz, subsequently developed further and recorded in March and April 2023 on a sample-based modular system. And in fact, Bretschneider is once again exemplarily scanning his own sound material, for example Dub effects that listen to themselves crumbling. But also the human voice, or more precisely: the stuttering of fragments of speech, far in the distance but omnipresent, like a mysterious narration. Aesthetically, the eleven pieces form part of a series of works with a focus on percussion. Bretschneider has already perfected this approach with albums like »Rhythm« (2007) and has been shifting the perspective ever since, for ever new results.

Shifting is the basic principle of »Pounding«. Bretschneider combines elements that are in different aggregate states, changing their relationship to each other and thus ensuring the complex overall movement. He lets one to two-bar loops run against each other and through manipulations, develops a network of rhythms that creates a hypnotic state in the counterplay of repetition and mutation, between clearly recognizable meter and disorientation. There are comparable approaches in aleatoric music. Bretschneider combines them with sounds and patterns that are reminiscent of step sequencer logic and at the same time go far beyond it. The result is relational techno. Never clear, constantly restless and exciting.

Free Range are back with their second outing for Osàre editions. ‘Camry Horses’ is a mesmerising dive into the brutal pop-tinged electronics of the duo, taking the mutant surrealism of their first release on the label a step further. Deliciously droning, Matt Weiner and Ernestas Sadau warp melancholic synth over a stomping-techno pulse in ‘Jet Lag is Calling.’ ‘Thunder God’ predicts transmogrifying weather patterns, while ‘Liquid Latex’ casts a touch of dominatrix energy, all powered by hypnotic dancefloor occultism.

Jardín' is Gabriel Garzón-Montano’s debut album, out January 2017 on Stones Throw Records. Gabriel Garzón-Montano’s formidable skills have come to fruition on his Stones Throw debut. “This album came out of wanting to make music that reminds people how beautiful life is and how delicate their heart is,” he said. “I've always wanted to make music that is healing, comforting, and funky. I named the album 'Jardín' hoping for it to create a space for healing when people put it on.
“A garden is full of life, growth and beauty,” Gabriel said of choosing that unifying image as the title for his new album. “It makes me think of green and white and all the colors as they appear in different flowers.” That vivid spectrum bursts forth on 'Jardín' itself and the album contains references to fruit of all sorts, sour mango, juicy tangerines and sweet peaches.
From the heartache and aching vocals that float over the dusty drums of “Crawl” to the stutter-step thump of “Bombo Fabrika” to the high falsetto he nails on “Octave,” GarzónMontano proves himself to already be one of 2017’s biggest breakout talents.