Private Release

Monday, February 6, 2017

FKA Twigs - (2013) FKA Twigs 12''

This release, a second four-track EP following her 2012 debut, triggers a dual feeling of being buried in her suffering and a sense of relief that her music provides an outlet for it all. Comparisons to trip-hop have come quickly in twigs' short career, most of them justified. Twigs is only in her mid 20s, but EP2 is the sound of someone who has lived a lifetime in their own head, and is now letting it spill out publicly in its oddly open-yet-guarded way. There's a sense of watching her grow in public, too.

Olymphia - (2015) Music For A Dance Performance LP

Posh Isolation ‎– 155

Olymphia is the shared work of Kristian Emdal and Loke Rahbek and their first LP finds them in an electro-acoustic blur between rhythmical work, music concrete and modular and string based drones. 'Music for a Dance Performance' was recorded over two years between Copenhagen’s Mayhem and Stockholm’s EMS studios.
'Music for a Dance Performance' shows Olymphia parting with their former figure of intense physical music and moving towards a more refined yet no less intense expression. A triumphant mutation of audio media, like going from athletics to dance. Dance demands a degree of service higher than any other performing arts or sport. In sport the signs of effort are not concealed. On the contrary, making an effort visible is part of the display - people expect it. Dance is quite different. Actions within the dance performance should seem effortless and enact being both completely in the body, whilst at the same time transcending it.
With Olymphia’s debut album, Emdal and Rahbek are portraying a not yet executed dance performance through five pieces of seemingly effortless dialogue. 'Music For a Dance Performance' is ultimately an ode to the potential of dance.

Croatian Amor - (2014) Mermaids Of Jadransko / Vagina Sword LP

Looking at the LP itself, it overall looks very simple and to the point. The front has two women along with the album title and the back has a picture of 1 EURO along with the track listing and credits (Croatian Amor is 1989). There is nothing inside aside from the record.

Side A starts with multiple field recording sounds on track 1, "Mermaids of Jadransko." Sounds as running water splashing on the bottom of the sink and some crunching metal sounds. At 1:43, synths squeeze its way into the mix that sound very somber. A minute or two has a recording of a woman explaining what happens when "she doesn't get fucked". I remember stopping what I was doing at this point to let everything sink in. The song builds and builds until the 6 minute mark where its nothing but synths.

"Blue Skin" is the shortest but most haunting track on the album. The synths remind me of an old NES dungeon theme. There seems to be rustling sounds as well. I couldn't tell you what this could actually interpret.

"Weapons Of Paradise" starts with some noisy tape loops and warm synths in the background. The synths begin to get louder and there feedback jumps into your earbuds (or mine) to snap you out of your daydream this record can so easily put you in. This continues until the track fades out.

"Song of the Mermaids" is a much more uplifting track with the poppy synths. I want to say there are sounds of waves in this track. Some other recordings of a man's voice too.

Side B starts with a brooding "Comecon Dancer". Low end synths until something smashes and brings more textures to the ears. Around the minute mark there are indiscernible sounds such as drum rolls and what would be a woman whimpering. Synths come in saturating the entire track with some vocals in the background. The track ends with nothing but feedback.

"Liberation (Vagina Sword)" sounds like someone sitting outside with a tape recording in their lap while the sound of a monotonous drum beat comes in. More field recordings key in and so do the synths. The music goes perfectly with the title.

"Truth (The World Grew With Every Hill They Passed)" sounds like something straight out of an old grainy foreign film. One of the catchiest synth progressions on the entire album. Feedback and other effects accentuate this track as well.

The final track "Begin (Twin Sex)" starts with what sounds like an interview with a woman talking about a relationship. A lot of clanging sounds fall into place along with warm keys. A perfect ending that will put you at rest until the song is over.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Rick James - (1981) Street Songs LP

Rick James (born James Ambrose Johnson, Jr; February 1, 1948 - August 6, 2004) was an American funk and soul musician from Buffalo New York, who worked as a singer, keyboardist, bassist, record producer, arranger, and composer during his long career. One of the most popular artists on the Motown label during the late 1970s and early 1980s, James was famous for his wild brand of funk music and his trademark cornrow braids. As time went on, James was given the unofficial title The King of Punk-Funk.

Eric Dolphy - (1964) Out To Lunch! LP

Out To Lunch is probably multi-instrumentalist Dolphy’s most adventurous album, combining as it does some established bop references with well-articulated atonal attack, staged over a large experimental canvas.

Not for the faint-hearted, Out to Lunch is a bible for the avant-garde and the goatee-stroking set. Along with fellow innovator Ornette Colman (and of course Coltrane) Dolphy created the foundation of the avant-garde, a lethal riposte to the predictability of swing. But significantly, it is not free-fall: more a musical bungee-jump, with its attendant adrenaline rush. No matter how far-out Dolphy gets, the solos contain a controlled experiment in danger, and a safe return to earth. Still to come, those players who believed every song should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, just not necessarily in that order. Or just only a middle.

Dolphy was spontaneous innovator who leapt from idea to idea at great speed, rather than harmonic development over a stable rhythmic line. The bass clarinet is a perfect tool for sonic attack, marking out a change from the familiar tones of the alto. This is going to be different. With three horns, he uses every available tonal range .He also emulates ‘nature’ sounds, including included imitating birds and others gathered from nature. Squawking indeed, but squawking with intent. The birds are free, it’s us that live in a musical cage.

Most notable is the absence of a piano, and its role as an accompanist. Dolphy has no need of an accompanist, his quintet of five original voices, young guns, all walk tall. The most uneasy of those voices was Hubbard. It’s Hubbard who tries to bring things back within bounds, with fanfares and slower counterpoints to Dolphy’s impassioned solos, pulling the tune back towards bop. He was never going to wear the mantle of avant-garde trumpet, which was passed to Don Cherry.

Four months after Out To Lunch Dolphy died in Berlin, only days past his thirty-sixth birthday, it is said, as a result of mis-management of a diabetic coma, an undiagnosed medical condition of Dolphy, mistaken for a drug overdose. In a tribute to Dolphy, Mingus said: Usually, when a man dies, you remember—or you say you remember—only the good things about him. With Eric, that’s all you could remember.

Count Basie And His Orchestra - (1967) Basie's Best! A Collection Of Immortal Performances LP

The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16 to 18 piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era. The band survived the late-forties decline in big band popularity and went on to produce notable collaborations with singers such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald in the fifties and sixties.

Varg - (2015) Star Alliance 6xCS

Over the last few years, Varg has manifested himself, not only as one of the most productive new voices in European electronic and techno music - with countless releases and projects - but also as one of the most interesting of the lot. Completely free from any concern of genre notions towards his music, he moves freely between fields and does this in such a fluent way that it is hard to think of anyone that matches him. With the music on this mammoth box of six tapes, it is clearer than ever before that Varg - while being an extremely talented techno producer, at the same time is much more than that. The music that makes up Star Alliance has tracks of underwater acid standing next to heavy industrial rhythms, piercing abstract modular synth work, beautiful soundscapes, piano pieces and field recordings. And while the techniques, qualities and styles differ with almost every track, they stand perfectly together and shape a beautiful narrative.

Thematically Star Alliance deals with movement. The heavy melancholia that is present throughout the entire 100 minutes of the release, reminds us that when traveling to any destination, we will have to leave somewhere else behind.

Star Alliance that takes its name from a point system between airline companies has a sort of sad restlessness about it. Wherever we are traveling to, it is clear that we won't be there for long; the people are faceless and the cities nameless, The airports, night clubs and company blur, but Hilton always looks like Hilton and ecstasy is called ecstasy everywhere.

Posh Isolation 160

200 copies

Man Is The Bastard: Bastard Noise - (2015) Our Earth's Blood Part V 7''

Collaboration release with the highest level Japanese sound artists of modern time. 500 copies only on "starburst" vinyl. Includes a "pocket sleeve" and double sided insert with all the lyrics!