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Since the release of Solo Piano II, Chilly Gonzales composed the best-selling
book of easy piano pieces Re-Introduction Etudes, produced and released Octave
Minds, the piano-meets-electronica album with Boys Noize and, most
importantly, devoted himself to finding a modern take on chamber music.
The result is "Chambers", an album for piano and string quartet (and a few
surprises along the way). Inspired by the deepening relationship with Hamburg's
Kaiser Quartett, the album re-imagines Romantic-era chamber music as today's
addictive pop. Gestures from rap, ambient, easy listening and the avant-garde co- exist as always in Chilly Gonzales’ musical universe - this time with strings
attached.
Known equally for his intimate piano touch as for his showmanship, "Gonzo"
aims to be a man of his time, approaching the piano with classical and jazz
training but with the attitude of a rapper.
Chilly Gonzales holds the Guinness world record for the longest solo concert at
over 27 hours. He performs and writes songs with Jarvis Cocker, Feist and Drake,
among others. In 2014 he won a Grammy for his collaboration on Daft Punk’s
Best Album of the Year. With "Never Stop", Chilly Gonzales composed a global
hit for the inaugural Apple iPad campaign.

The long-awaited first analog release of the second album, a masterpiece released in 2012!

This ambitious album was produced and arranged by Kei Kono, a producer who has worked with Hikaru Utada and many other artists and bands, and was created with simplicity in mind.

The entire album was created from a demo of an acoustic guitar playing, and each sound was added on the spot to complete the work. The nine songs on this must-hear disc are highly acclaimed as a masterpiece, and the songs stand out for their soothing, faintly contoured vocals.

Arising at the forefront of contemporary underground pop, Chicago-based duo GRÜN WASSER shapes the course of minimal electronic music and blurs the boundaries of art, songwriting and performance on their latest full-length Not Ok with Things out October 4, 2019. Vocalist Keely Dowd and producer Essej Pollock artfully bend and reconfigure popular trends in dance music into unconventionally catchy songs and a powerful live show. Their unique mix of hardware, software and sampling coalesce into irresistible rhythms and driving sequences that fuse perfectly with Dowd’s distinctive alto voice, forming music that is as instantly appealing as it is fascinating. With lyrics inspired by personal struggles and social inequality, GRÜN WASSER raises the bar on innovation in modern pop as they arrive on the national stage with Not Ok with Things.

As longtime friends, Dowd and Pollock formed GRÜN WASSER in 2015 out of the rich cultural hub of Chicago. Both had backgrounds in punk and electronic music and together crafted a dynamic live act that fit within a variety of niche genres and scenes. Amidst the hype of GRÜN WASSER’s first album Nein/9 in 2016, Dowd’s alluring stage persona blossomed, while offstage her personal life began to unravel due to alcoholism and resulting depression. Nevertheless, the two began touring the country while writing new material and by late 2017, Dowd was able to get sober just ahead of their self-released follow-up album. On 2018’s Predator/Prey, Dowd candidly spoke out against hyper-masculinity and challenged misogynistic cultural norms. The lyrics of her songs became woven into the live performance, with Dowd often venturing into the crowd and confronting audience members with an intensely honest portrayal of feminine empowerment. Perfectly paired, Pollock’s thumping, experimental beats complement Dowd’s hypnotic vocals and gripping stage presence, making GRÜN WASSER a potent combination of pop and art.

On Not Ok with Things, Dowd deconstructs her alcoholism and protests the gross imbalance of gender roles. This complex mixture of emotions provides a palpable overcast to Pollock’s cold bass lines and brooding synth tones. The lyrics on songs like “Translator” and “Tried Spitting at The Sun” depict a turbulent mind bracing the ups and downs of relapse and recovery, while “Worm” and “Gray/Grey” grapple with the social casualties of addiction. The heavy subject matter is delivered within organic arrangements that often deviate from a typical verse-chorus format, representing the revolving tides of raw emotional expression. GRÜN WASSER’s use of textural samples gives an environmental context, enhancing the composition and revealing influences from hip-hop, house and industrial music. Pollock’s abstract percussion techniques incorporate real-world sounds with high-hat rolls and thick sub bass, adding a gritty undertone to their polished sound design. Swells of backing vocals add highlights of nuanced melody that swirl in and around Pollock’s dense synthwork and precise drum programming. Not Ok with Things is a bold exposition and an inspiring symbol of female resilience in the modern world, giving GRÜN WASSER’s work dimensions beyond the audible.

GRÜN WASSER fully realizes their singular talent on Not Ok with Things, crafting meaningful pop music with unmistakable passion and evocative style.

Mikko Singh has been living different musical lives from the start. With »Cloud Formations«, his third album under the Haleiwa moniker, Singh eschews the guitar-dominated sound of his first two LPs for lush but grainy texturality. Inspired by bands and songwriters like Animal Collective, Real Estate and the late Jay Reatard, »Cloud Formations« is a hopeful record whose experimental approach to rock music calls to mind the experimental pop of Morr Music label mates like Sequoyah Tiger or even Stereolab’s motorik-driven post-rock. It’s a fusion of fuzzed-out sounds, washed-out sentiments and far-out songwriting - perhaps the only shoegaze record you can actually take along to the beach.

Warp presents Take Me Apart, the debut album from contemporary R&B’s icon-in-the-making, Kelela. The long-awaited opus arrives at the tail end of an extended tour with The xx and scene-stealing guest spots on recent albums from longtime ally Solange, Warp’s gonzo rap star Danny Brown and most recently on Humanz from Gorillaz.

Having debuted in 2013 on Fade To Mind with the Cut 4 Me mixtape which saw a raft of the Fade & Night Slugs crews pushing forward a wealth of sublime instrumentals for Kelela to bring to life, catching the ear of everyone from Björk and Hudson Mohawke to Grimes and Arca. Quickly following this with a fire 12 Melba's Call with Bok Bok, her cutting-edge credentials were firmly set in stone. This set her up for her new partnership with Warp, debuting with the jaw dropping collision of soaring songcraft and experimental electronics of the Hallucinogen EP.

Kelela has enlisted a wealth of her contemporaries to craft out an album that shows both the classic appeal and futuristic possibilities of R&B music. Each track exudes a sense of excited exploration that makes Kelela's music stand head and shoulders above the glut of online static. The innovative sonics flow effortlessly around her voice, giving the strong impression that countless hours and many feelings have gone into the crafting of each piece, the whole set being absolutely sculpted to perfection for when it flows from speakers and into your mind.

The debut full- length album from Lafawndah, ANCESTOR BOY, releasing on 22nd March 2019 via her own label imprint CONCORDIA, is a bracing statement of intent, heralding an artist unbound in scope, scale, and intensity. It simply must be heard. The debut full- length album from Lafawndah, ANCESTOR BOY, releasing on 22nd March 2019 via her own label imprint CONCORDIA, is a bracing statement of intent, heralding an artist unbound in scope, scale, and intensity. Having in her prior self-titled and TAN EPs upturned geography, in ANCESTOR BOY Lafawndah digs deep to unravel geology, mining emotions of the deep pastand future. The album's physicality is elemental; its memory, mineral. It is a becoming- of- age story for a people yet to come, created out of a need to find the others. In the middle of the album's sonic and lyrical onslaught is the desire to share the uncertainties of growing up when you don't belong anywhere. Crafted with the aid of fellow travelers Nick Weiss, ADR, and L-Vis 1990, ANCESTOR BOY's maximalism- it's overflow of detail, of feeling, of ideas-serves to amplify a frequent lyrical motif: the sensation that one body, one lifetime, isn't big enough for what you're feeling. The record is pregnant with memories shared across more than one mind, recalling the storytelling antagonisms of Nina Simone at her most strident and unpredictable. Inresponse, the rhythmic aggressions of her music have grown even more determined and psychedelic, drawing a line in fire between Jimmy Jam's turnt industrialism on Control and the furious unease of Red Mecca-era Cabaret Voltaire. With a palate equal parts chrome and dirt, ice and depth, Lafawndah's finesse with song architecture imbues the LP with an uncanny addictiveness: anthems loaded with trap doors. ANCESTOR BOY imagines a pop music that is neither imperial nor local, but a freedom of movement; a residue, perhaps, from the album's nomadic creation between Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, London, and Paris.

Turning the mirror on herself, Marie Davidson arrives on Ninja Tune with Working Class Woman”, an album that is sure to be heralded as one of the most self-reflective recordings yet from the Montreal-based producer.

Building on the dancefloor-minded trajectory of her breakthrough LP Adieux Au Dancefloor, released via Veronica Vasicka's Cititrax imprint circa 2016. With “Working Class Woman”, Marie Davidson proves that once again that she can roll acidic new beat basslines and sleek, sexdrops tekno laced with sharp-edged vox like no one else. This super strong selection is sure to take pride of place within the collections and listening habits of anyone into DFA and Regis, Not Waving (with whom she recently collaborated) SOPHIE and GAIKA.

Working Class Woman reshapes Marie Davidson's sharp-edged Italo Disco, proto-industrial and electro influences into new modes of cyberpunk coldwave control, proof that looking inward can project a more expansive vision out into the world.

Otis Stacks, three syllables. A name and a first name that recall a mythical singer as much as the Memphis music label that got him to it’s days of glory. A name that evokes him in particular and soul music in general.
Behind a name that sounds familiar are Elias Wallace and Justmike, two men united to become one: Otis Stacks. In truth, the optimized version of a work started long ago, when Justmike was producing the Danish hip-hop sound of Dafuniks and decided to get in touch with Elias after hearing his voice on a friend’s tune. He first wanted him to lay his voice on a chorus, then a verse, and ended letting him take over the lyrics of “All I Want”, the song that would later bring Dafuniks on air and around Europe. After traveling miles and miles across the ocean and the seas separating California from Denmark, Elias undeniably became a member of the group.
As gigs went on, stages after stages, Justmike got inspired by Elias’s voice and presence. Thus, the idea of a duo collaboration between the two men geminated and grew in his mind. As the evidence of their getting along, “Fashion Drunk” became the first tune to infiltrate Nova and FIP radio playlists, as its music video reached 8 million views. This now obvious complicity as extended in the form of an album, also called Fashion Drunk, released by Underdogs Records. With this French stopover, the line between California and Denmark is now completed. The result is an artistic fusion in which Justmike has plugged his instruments to the machines he uses to compose, letting Elias in charge of the lyrics and singing. Here, the soul music is printed as a guideline in an organic and digital composite matter. In an ethereal and aerial production that perches its arrangements in the air of the mix or buries them in its bases, letting electro music spread on a groove punched with black and white keys. Each element intervenes with discretion to let Elias stories be related with elegance. Frustrated, disappointed or aborted love stories.

Shawn Mendes is a Canadian singer-songwriter. He attracted a following in 2013, when he began posting song covers on the popular video sharing application Vine. Now he releases his second album “Illuminate“.

UK National Album Day Limited Release.
Blue is the sixth studio album by British band Simply Red. The album includes five cover versions: "Mellow My Mind" from the 1975 Neil Young album Tonight's the Night; two versions of the frequently covered "The Air That I Breathe"; the Gregory Isaacs hit "Night Nurse"; and Dennis Brown’s "Ghetto Girl”.

“This record is a response to how disposable culture has become and how it affects creativity,” Bear said in a press release. “While listening, you might pay attention or ignore—either way that's ok, this is music for a creative mind.”

Features include Abra, Wet. and Instupendo.