Simon Joyner - (2019) Pocket Moon LP

 

Grapefruit Records – GY9-4

“‘Singer-songwriter’ is a frustratingly confining term; to truly understand exactly just how confining, look no further than the recorded works of Simon Joyner, an artist whose work consistently transcends the narrow parameters of genre classifications and record shop bin cards. Though his music has always honored, reckoned with—wrestled with—the tradition set forth by his songwriting forebears (Cohen, Van Zandt, Ochs, Dylan, Reed to name a few), Joyner can always be counted on to defy expectations; as a lyricist, melodicist, and arranger, Joyner likes to keep us on our toes. “For his new album Pocket Moon, Joyner opted to engage in a risky artistic challenge. Instead of leaning on his fertile pool of Omaha musicians (the amorphous Ghosts band), he asked friend and frequent collaborator Michael Krassner to assemble unknown players on his behalf specifically for this recording. He then traveled from his home base to Krassner’s ‘7-Track Shack’ studio in Phoenix to record the album, abandoning the literal and figurative comfort zone of old habits and home field advantage. Simultaneously sparser and more immediate than 2017’s obliquely topical Step Into The Earthquake, Pocket Moon is instantly one of Joyner’s finest albums since his redoubtable 2012 double album masterpiece, Ghosts, or to some ears the excellent, sonic 180 he managed with his follow-up, Grass, Branch & Bone. Krassner’s wrecking crew is sturdy, versatile, and complementary. Utilizing a wide range of instruments and textures, the band contributes additional nuance to each of the ragged, sublime songs here. The result is another song cycle stylistically unified, dynamic and rich.”

Dadamah - (2020) This Is Not A Dream LP

 

Grapefruit Records  – GY10-1

This Is Not a Dream is a double album collection of every song released by the legendary Dunedin, New Zealand quartet Dadamah, including the This is Not a Dream LP, and their three 7” singles and one unique compilation track. Grapefruit’s release is a thirteen song collection with the full album on one LP and all the 7” and compilation tracks on the other. Inspired by the Kranky label’s CD compilation of Dadamah’s existing catalog in 1994, this vinyl version includes two additional songs from a posthumously released 7” and it’s been sequenced and designed by the band. Before Dadamah, Peter Stapleton played in The Terminals, Vacuum and The Victor Dimisich Band as well as The Pin Group with guitarist Roy Montgomery. Singer Kim Pieters and organ/synth player Janine Stagg had never been in a band before Dadamah.

Dadamah only played live three times, devoting their efforts to four-track recording. Nevertheless, word managed to get out about the band and they were asked to contribute to the 1991 Drag City single “I Hear the Devil Calling Me” which featured twelve songs hovering around one minute each by a who’s who of the then current New Zealand underground music scene. They released their only album in 1992. Jay Hinman (currently of Dynamite Hemorrhage) noted Dadamah's solitary place in the NZ underground in his Superdope fanzine:

"Dead C. might blare and scrape, the Terminals might twist and wind, but Dadamah positively shimmer with beautifully earthy lo-fi Velvets/Ubu sound."

Limited edition singles on the Seattle-based Majora label followed the LP, earning Dadamah praise as "one of the most overwhelmingly great exponents of layer-shifting drone-on master-rock" in the Forced Exposure catalog. Roy Montgomery's soaring droning guitars were offset by Janine Stagg's stabbing organ and gurgling moog synths, and Kim Pieter's vocals ebbed and flowed, somehow evoking Patti Smith, Ian Curtis, and David Thomas simultaneously.

"Synth woosh, organ-wheez, possessed femme voice over, cavernous man-voice under, guitar and drums punch through... into where? Your dreams friend, if you let 'em."

------------------------------

After Dadamah, Roy Montgomery went on to form Dissolve and Hash Jar Tempo as well as maintaining his eclectic solo career which continues to feature intense collaborations like those found in Dadamah (find other Roy Montgomery titles on Grapefruit). Peter Stapleton and Kim Pieters formed Flies Inside the Sun and Peter continued his work with The Terminals and his independent label Metonymic which released tons of experimental and underground New Zealand music through 2009.

75 Dollar Bill Little Big Band - (2020) Live At Tubby's 2xLP

 

Grapefruit Records  – GY10-3

NYC’s 75 Dollar Bill began its prolific career in 2012, after percussionist Rick Brown – a veteran of the indie underground (Fish & Roses, Run On, V-Effect) – and noise scene guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Che Chen – connected via MySpace. Since that initial jam session, when Brown began experimenting with his signature plywood crate drum rhythms, they have released 3 LPs and a clutch of self-released cassette and digital releases. Last year’s 2xLP I Was Real received serious critical acclaim – The Wire calling it 2019’s Album of the Year.

On their first live album, Live at Tubby’s, 75 Dollar Bill assembled a unique “little big band” [Sue Garner on bass, Cheryl Kingan on sax, Steve Maing on guitar, Jim Pugliese on percussion and Karen Waltuch on viola] for the small Kingston, NY club show. Recorded on the last day of their spring tour, the record puts a new perspective on themes from their body of work: a little more intimacy, a little more freedom, a little more controlled chaos. Brown’s idiosyncratic rhythms are all the more hypnotizing in Tubby’s cozy setting, and Chen’s furious guitar work cuts and hums with sounds seemingly only attainable on stage. It's an album both challenging and immediate. The expanded 75 Dollar Bill's affinity for improvisation and the avant-garde even leads to a rousing take on the Ornette Coleman classic, 'Friends and Neighbors' that feels right at home in their own repertoire. The listener can't help but feel present and part of the communal joy and catharsis being shared here in this room. This performance at Tubby’s turned out not only to be the last show of their tour, but the last show possible as the pandemic hit. Originally offered as a digital-only release on 75 Dollar Bill’s Bandcamp, Live at Tubby’s now documents a highlight and closure of sorts; this kind of musical improvisation and community interaction being on hold for the foreseeable future. The double LP on Grapefruit will have to tide us over until it can all happen again.

"75 Dollar Bill has always been a duo of Che Chen and myself, but many of our most satisfying and just plain fun experiences have involved some (or almost all) of our great crew of friend musicians who've worked with us for years and who play on our studio recordings, like 2019's I Was Real (Thin Wrist/Glitterbeat). Live at Tubby's presents a couple of sets recorded just as Spring and the coronavirus were arriving on the scene. We didn't plan for this as a “Little Big Band” concert, but we took advantage of timing and geography - as well as the fact that “everybody knows how to play WZN #3” - and sent out a call for any who could make it to come to Kingston, NY for the night's blowout, the last gig of a short tour we'd done as a duo. The material comes from I Was Real and its predecessor Wood, Metal, Plastic, Pattern, Rhythm, Rock plus a cover of the great and inspiring Ornette Coleman's song “Friends and Neighbors.” Hopefully, you'll agree it turned out pretty good – at the very least, it should be obvious that we had a good time! We sure do miss playing music with our friends and for our neighbors."- Rick Brown

VA - (2017) Milk Of The Tree, An Anthology Of Female Vocal Folk And Singer Songwriters (1966-73) 3xCD

 

Grapefruit Records – CRSEGBOX039

Notwithstanding one or two isolated exceptions, it wasn’t until the mid-Sixties that independent female voices really began to be heard within the music industry. The feminist movement naturally coincided with the first signs of genuine musical emancipation. In North America, Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie emerged through the folk clubs, coffee-houses and college campuses to inspire a generation of wannabe female singers and musicians with their strong, independent mentality and social compassion, while the British scene’s combination of folk song revival and the Beatles-led pop explosion saw record company deals for a new generation of pop-folkies including Marianne Faithfull, Dana Gillespie and Vashti Bunyan.

Within a year or two, the burgeoning counter-culture saw the arrival of psychedelia and folk-rock as the likes of Pentangle and (in the US) the Linda Ronstadt-fronted Stone Poneys emerged from the clubs and into the charts. But in America at least, burnout soon set in, and the era’s excesses duly gave way to a quieter, more reflective musical and lyrical style. The LA rock and folk communities decamped to Laurel Canyon, in the Hollywood Hills region of the Santa Monica Mountains, to chill out in bucolic, soul-searching introspection. With Sixties stalwart Jackie DeShannon’s 1968 album Laurel Canyon leading the way, workers from the hit song factories of the publishing companies joined the dyed-in-the-wool folkies in a new movement of singer/songwriters that reached its zenith in 1971 with the release of seminal albums like Joni Mitchell’s Blue and Brill Building refugee Carole King’s multimillion-selling Tapestry.

In the last two or three years of the decade, the demarcation lines in British music had become similarly blurred, with amplified rock bands becoming attracted to the more pastoral strains of the folk idiom, and traditional folk club performers developing an affinity with the underground. Folk clubs evolved into Arts Labs, and the burgeoning college/university circuit provided equal opportunity for heavy rock bands, electric folk-rock acts and the introspective acoustic singer/songwriter. Suddenly, the scene was awash with female performers looking to become the British answer to Joni Mitchell, a huge influence on the scene ever since exiled American record producer Joe Boyd had circulated Joni’s songs amongst British musicians in late 1967. Mitchell quickly became established amongst aspirant performers as the singer/songwriter template.

Over the course of four hours and sixty tracks, Milk Of The Tree focuses on the music made in the late Sixties and early Seventies in both Britain and North America by either female solo artists or acts with featured female vocalists. Along the way, we encounter San Franciscan psychedelia, LA folk rock, Swinging London pop-folk, electric folk, progressive folk and even folk club folk as well as (of course) a plethora of singer- songwriters (including various ladies of the Canyon) from the movement’s golden age.

As well as featuring most of the leading figures from both sides of the Atlantic, Milk Of The Tree includes many performers who received little attention at the time but who now have a cult reputation amongst collectors. A significant number of tracks were unreleased at the time, while the set also includes the first-ever appearance by pioneering female rock duo Emily Muff, two American girls who were based in England during the period in question but failed to land a recording contract.

VA - (2021) Peephole In My Brain - The British Progressive Pop Sound Of 1971 3xCD

 

Grapefruit Records – CRSEG076T

Cherry Red's archival Grapefruit imprint has been on a roll in recent years with delightfully thorough multi-disc anthologies celebrating a parade of different U.K. psych, garage, and folk pocket scenes from the 1960s and '70s. Ranging from more-expansive celebrations like Strangers in the Room: Journey Through the British Folk Rock Scene 1967-1973 to hyper-specific moments in time like A Slight Disturbance in My Mind: The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds of 1966, Grapefruit's mission as intrepid rock musicologists always feels like a labor of love. Falling in line with the latter of the two aforementioned sets is another calendar-year time capsule, Peephole in My Brain: British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1971. Framed in the collection's extensive booklet as a sort of bubbling-up year in U.K. rock, Peephole's 71 tracks chart a dazzling array of forward-thinking acts as they helped merge the underground scene with pop's mainstream.

Morteza Mahjubi - (2021) Selected Improvisations from Golha, Pt. I

 

Death Is Not The End – DEATH48

A collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965...

Morteza Mahjubi (1900-1965) was a Iranian pianist & composer who developed a unique tuning system for the piano which enabled the instrument to be played in all the different modes and dastgahs of traditional Persian art music. Known as Piano-ye Sonnati, this technique allowed Mahjubi to express the unique ornamental and monophonic nature of Persian classical music on this western instrument - mimicking the tar, setar & santur and extracting sounds from the piano which are still unprecedented to this day.

An active performer and composer from a young age, Mahjubi made his most notable mark as key contributor and soloist for the Golha (Flowers of Persian Song and Poetry) radio programmes. These seminal broadcasts platformed an encyclopaedic wealth of traditional Persian classical music and poetry on Iranian national radio between 1956 until the revolution in 1979.

Presented here is a collection of Morteza Mahjubi's stunningly virtuosic improvised pieces broadcast on Golha between the programme's inception until Mahjubi's death in 1965 - mostly solo, though at times peppered with tombak, violin & some segments of poetry.

The vast collection of Golha radio programmes was put together thanks to the incredible work of Jane Lewisohn & the Golha Project as part of the British Library's Endangered Archives programme, comprising 1,578 radio programs consisting of approximately 847 hours of broadcasts.

Γιώργος Κατσαρός - George Katsaros: Greek Blues in America, Vol. 1

 

Death Is Not The End – 022

Death Is Not The End present a two-part collection centred on two emigrant Greek artists recorded in New York during the 1920s and 1930s.

'Greek Blues in America' explores the recordings of George Katsaros and Kostas Dousas, who mainly recorded solo, accompanying themselves on guitar in a unique finger-picking style. This, along with the sub-cultural subject matter of the rebetiko, reflects somewhat of a cross-continental echo of the American blues - captured in the USA following a wave of immigration from Greece and Asia Minor, just as the new demand for regional and ethnographic music in the recording industry was beginning.

Kostas Dousas - (2018) Greek Blues in America, Vol. 2

 

Death Is Not The End – 023 Death Is Not The End present a two-part collection centred on two emigrant Greek artists recorded in New York during the 1920s and 1930s. 'Greek Blues in America' explores the recordings of George Katsaros and Kostas Dousas, who mainly recorded solo, accompanying themselves on guitar in a unique finger-picking style. This, along with the sub-cultural subject matter of the rebetiko, reflects somewhat of a cross-continental echo of the American blues - captured in the USA following a wave of immigration from Greece and Asia Minor, just as the new demand for regional and ethnographic music in the recording industry was beginning.

Various Artists - (2020) The Sun Is Setting On The World

 

Death Is Not The End – 33

Apocalyptic rebetika recordings from the 1930s through to late '50s. Songs of sorrow, poverty, loss and the general end of this god forsaken planet.

Various - Earthdom: 2020​, The Battle Continues Vol​.​1

 

HELL Communications – none

Compilation albums to support the live venue Earthdom in Shinokubo, Tokyo, Japan which has been closed since March to help prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.

A total of 110 compilation tracks from various bands are to be released in June 2020 featuring familiar songs, newly recorded ones and otherwise unreleased material.

The "2020, The Battle Continues" project is run by a group of volunteer artists associated with Eartthdom called "HELL Communications".

All sales, go back to the house (excluding expenses).

Lee "Scratch" Perry & the Spacewave - (2021) Dubz Of The Root

 Megawave Records – MEGW0522

Pioneer of the dub culture, magician, inventor, alchemist of the sound, so many qualifiers that can be attributed without difficulty to Lee « Scratch » Perry – but is it still necessary to introduce him ?

Following his career which debut in the 1950s in Kingston Jamaica, his influence quickly spread internationally, setting himself apart from all other artists, thanks to his innovations and his revolutionary aspect, both on a musical and personal level.

He releases in this year 2021 a new album entitled Dubz of the Root, oscillating between a return to the roots of the Jamaican dub – as in the totally revisited tracks « Stir It Up (In the Pot) Dub » or « Punky Reggae Party Dub » (which he originally produced at the time of the Wailers in 1977) – and particular sound experiments where the rhythm becomes a ground of experimentation.

« Speak Easy On A Quiet Moonless Night Dub », which almost closes the album, shows Lee Perry‘s need to persevere in a direction of the strange, the particular ; a kind of free jazz of the dub which allows the renewal of the genre. As always, the sound elaboration and the studio arrangements are meticulously worked here, creating this particularly captivating atmosphere proper to the artist. The Upsetters works here with musicians of great quality recorded in Jamaica and in the United States, offering us a wide range of instruments and sound effects which give body to the album while making account of its particularity. Therefore, it is sufficient to hear his voice on the rhythmic lines to immediately recognize him.

Lee « Scratch » Perry plays with trends, defying, twisting and modulating them to create a substance of his own, capable of delivering his messages of spirituality and his own ideals about the human condition in our society. As he himself suggests, he is a provocateur, both in his musical intelligence and in his attitude. Humor and wordplay are an integral part of his artistic creations, giving a special place to language – in a musical field where it can unfortunately often be excluded – underlining his ability to carry an awake look, sometimes cynical, on the world that surrounds him.

een roots reggae, dub and underground – so desired in our current musical field – is enough on its own to captivate the attention. If one does not appreciate this work, if the strangeness and dissonance are too disturbing for some listeners, it will be impossible to deny the musical astonishment it provides. Perry offers us here a true, intimate and intelligent creation whose undeniable quality honors a sound universe which, as always, remains so singular.

This new album, which brings a subtle balance between roots reggae, dub and underground – so desired in our current musical field – is enough on its own to captivate the attention. If one does not appreciate this work, if the strangeness and dissonance are too disturbing for some listeners, it will be impossible to deny the musical astonishment it provides. Perry offers us here a true, intimate and intelligent creation whose undeniable quality honors a sound universe which, as always, remains so singular.

Various Artists - (2021) Essiebons Special 1973 - 1984 -- Ghana Music Power House

 

Analog Africa – AACD 093

Dick Essilfie-Bondzie was all ready for his 90th birthday party when the Covid pandemic hit. The legendary producer, businessman and founder of Ghana’s mighty Essiebons label had invited all his family and friends to the event and it was the disappointment at having to postpone that prompted Analog Africa founder Samy Ben Redjeb to propose a new compilation celebrating his contributions to the world of West African music.

For most of the 1970s Essilfie-Bondzie’s Dix and Essiebons labels were synonymous with the best in modern highlife, and his roster was a who’s-who of highlife legends. C.K. Mann, Gyedu Blay Ambolley, Kofi Papa Yankson, Ernest Honny, Rob ‘Roy’ Raindorf and Ebo Taylor all released some of their greatest music under the Essiebons banner.

Essiebons Special features a selection of obscure workouts from some of the label’s heaviest hitters. But in the course of digitising his vast archive of master tapes, Essilfie-Bondzie found a number of Afrobeat and Instrumental maszterpieces tracks from the label’s mid-70s golden age that, for one reason or another, had never been released. Those songs are included here for the first time.

Sadly Essilfie-Bondzie passed away before the compilation was finished. But his legacy lives on in the extraordinary music that he gave to the world in his lifetime.

Various Artists - (2021) Is It Really Goodbye? More Ryūkōka Recordings, 1929-1938

 

Death Is Not The End – DEATH050

A further volume of Ryūkōka recordings, covering the end of the 1920s though to the late 1930s, supplementing the recent Longing for the Shadow collection...

Emerging during the early stages of the recording industry in Japan, the Ryūkōka style adopted western classical, blues & jazz elements into traditional and classical Japanese music.

Is It Really Goodbye? further collects pre-war Ryūkōka records which capture the hauntingly unique sound of a cultural merging that was starting to reflect itself via popular song, ahead of the widespread influence of western pop music during post-war US occupation.

Tracklist

1. Fumiko Yotsuya – Let's Dance the Tango (03:07)

2. Kiyoshi Utsumi & Asami Kuji – A Wandering Journey (03:23)

3. Kusunoki Shigeo – White Camellia Song (03:20)

4. Michiyakko – Oh, That's It (02:52)

5. Nakano Rhythm Boys – Kazuhisa Yamadera (03:14)

6. Noriko Awaya – Blues for Farewell (03:27)

7. Kouta Katsutaro – Kanaka's Daughter (03:13)

8. Sato Chiyako – Tokyo March (02:37)

9. Wantanabe Hamako – I'll Forget It (03:13)

10. Dick Mine – Yukari's Song (03:21)

11. Fujiyama Ichiro – Recollection (03:37)

12. Kouta Katsutaro & Shigeo Kusunoki – Tairiku Bushi (03:18)

13. Issei Mishima – Over the Kuroshio (03:07)

14. Fumiko Yotsuya – The Izu Dancer (Dancer's Song) (03:03)

15. Hanko Kagurazaka & Toshiro Oumi – Hatsukoi Nikki (03:04)

16. Akasaka Koume – Is It Really Goodbye? (03:20)

Total length: 51:16

Various Artists - (2021) Wounds of Love: Khmer Oldies, Vol. 1

 

Death Is Not The End – DEATH047

From the late 1950s onwards a music scene developed around Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, inspired by the prevalence of imported early rock & pop records arriving in the country from US & UK and also chanson and bolero records from France & Latin America. This collection documents some of these early home-grown slow rock, pop & rnb 45 recordings from the early 60s, prior to the further embrace of US psych & garage rock-orientated sounds in the mid 60s and into the Vietnam war era.

Various Artists - (2021) Wounds of Love: Khmer Oldies, Vol. 2

 

Death Is Not The End – DEATH049

A second volume of late 50s and early 60s Cambodian slow rock, pop and R&B tracks...

From the late 1950s onwards a music scene developed around Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, inspired by the prevalence of imported rock & pop records arriving in the country from US & UK and also chanson and bolero records from France & Latin America. This collection documents some of these early home-grown slow rock, pop & rnb 45 recordings from the early 60s, prior to the further embrace of US psych & garage rock-orientated sounds in the mid 60s and into the Vietnam war era.

Tracklist

1. Chhun Vanna – Lone River (02:59)

2. Sieng Dy – Missing Couple (02:56)

3. Sinn Sisamouth & Keo Setha – Night to Meet Face to Face (03:10)

4. Im Song Soem & Huoy Meas – Looking at the Moon (02:31)

5. Mao Sareth – Love Hard (04:03)

6. Chin Sakon & Chhun Vanna – Word of Promise (05:00)

7. Huoy Meas – Sekong Night (02:44)

8. Ros Serey Sothea – I've Had My Heart Broken (03:43)

9. Chhun Vanna & Im Song Soem – Rose Garden (02:33)

10. Sinn Sisamouth & Mao Sareth – The Night Is Soft (03:00)

11. Pen Ran – Night at the Seaside (02:56)

12. Rina & Chea Savoeun – Market Break (04:06)

13. Sinn Sisamouth – The Letter Sent to You (02:51)

14. In Yeng – Ivory River (04:50)

Total length: 47:22

Wailing Souls - (2004) Wailing Souls At Channel One (7's, 12's And Versions) CD

 

Pressure Sounds – PSCD 42

Pressure Sounds is geared towards recovering Jamaican roots rarities and Wailing Souls at Channel One fits that bill. There is a lot of high-quality music here, but it's better for collectors and completists nosing around the fringes for Wailing Souls' alternates and oddities than initiates looking to get core essentials.

Only ten of the 16 tracks actually feature the Souls, here featuring the four-man incarnation, including ex-Black Uhuru singer Garth Dennis, so a liking for the Revolutionaries dub versions that appears back-to-backed with several vocal tracks doesn't hurt. It's not that hard, since this is the Revolutionaries in their militant rockers prime, and roots reggae just doesn't get much more prime than that. The Souls rank as a classic vocal group, but their harmonies are fairly understated and in a certain sense, are overshadowed by many backing tracks here. More mysterious at first is why Dillinger's "Natty BSc" is included but turns out it's a riddim thing. The song and its dub boast the same track as the preceding "Things and Time," where the Souls lock down into an infectious groove with loping bassline and horns countering the cutting lead vocal. It's excellent, the first single they cut for Channel One, a huge hit, an adaptation of the earlier song "Back Out With It" the group re-recorded as "Back Out" using the new rhythm track that's also included here along with its accompanying dub version. Got all that?

It means five of the 16 tracks work off the same track -- good thing it's a good one and that Jamaican music-making can be so dub-elastic. The Souls' harmonies dominate "Back Out" more than the horns that drive "Things and Time," but the Dillinger track is sparer and more riddim-section driven with skank guitar and organ dubwised in and out. It dispenses with horns, whereas the Revolutionaries' dub version resurrects them for opening fanfares before going totally skeletal. Just in case you were wondering.

Elsewhere, "War" is serious militant rocking, with plenty of dubbed-out organ, huge echoing snare shots, and deejay Ranking Trevor fitting perfectly in the 12" mix. The "Jah Jah Give Us Life to Live" 12" serves up breaking lead vocals over whooping basslines (sorta like if "Dock of the Bay" was Montego Bay) and unusual, arresting piano trills plus a very spare, atmospheric dub section anchored by bass and echoed-out percussion clatter. "Fire a Mus Mus Tail" is a nice mid-tempo reggae, based on Jamaican folk proverb and "Back Biter aka Back Slider" hits very solid groove time. "Lawless Society" has an almost underwater snare sound (a syndrum test? Mid-'70s sonica electronica barrage? Who knows?) but the dub may be more interesting with its horn and bass anchor and loose percussion. "Very Well" closes very strong with ragged horns, staccato Morse-code organ fills, and full harmonies on an African repatriation theme.

At Channel One is a decidedly odd duck. The Wailing Souls don't imprint their personality on the music that strongly, but there are many very strong performances here. The liner notes span the group's entire career but largely skate over the track specifics and general Jamaican context for these tracks, rare for a Pressure Sounds release. Maybe the best guideline would be that it's probably an essential disc if you have any good reason to believe this specialized take on the Wailing Souls might be, but not if you have your doubts.

Ekin Fil - (2017) Inflame CS

 

Helen Scarsdale Agency – HMS044

Currently in a crucial phase of her oeuvre, Istanbul’s Ekin Fil presents the results of her first soundtrack commission with Inflame, a 30 minute collection of evocative, murky electronic cues reflecting the paranoia of Ceylan Özgün Özçelik’s psychological thriller.

Rather than her signature, reverrb-laden guitar and glossolalic vox, Ekin uses a palette of synths, electronics and drum machines to convey a tense and claustrophobic sound, where severed voices float thru minor key melodies and slow, epileptic hallucinations, sometimes prodded with skeletal electro rhythms, at other left to linger uncomfortably in crepuscular mid-air with curt resolutions.

Ekin Fil - (2017) Ghosts Inside LP

 

Helen Scarsdale Agency – HMS042

Istanbul’s forlorn shoegaze spirit Ekin Fil returns to haunt our waking life with Ghosts Inside, the 2nd late night bloom in her fruitful relationship with San Francisco’s Helen Scarsdale Agency after Being Near [2016].

It arguably contains the most assured bedroom pop songwriting and elusive, shadow-chasing production to be found in her cultishly admired catalogue of the past decade, and, just like the work of comparable artist, Grouper, maintains an ever crucial temporal and metaphysical bridge between the original ethereal craft of Cranes, Cocteau Twins and Slowdive and the modern day for those who need it.

It would take some kind of glossolalic deciphering device to work out what Ekin is singing, but that’s really not the point, as her gauzy lilt conveys something practically, literally ineffable that transcends prosaic meaning and works with a plasmic, osmotic effect that really gets in the pores, perfusing your system with an efficacy worthy of the album’s title. In Ekin’s hand, or at her feet, an array of guitar pedals becomes her scrying diffusion prism, sublimating her sylvan piano, guitar, and vocals into something that by-passes language and deals instead in pure, yet elusive emotion.

While maybe not immediately apparent, this heavily introspective sound stems from the current socio-political upheaval Ekin and people of her generation are experiencing in Turkey right now, and we could say across the Middle East in general. It could therefore be heard as a numbing salve for “psychic distress, heartache and depression”, as the label puts it, perhaps offering a middle-distance focus that penetrates all the crap and finds a mutual, meditative point of audition and perception familiar to anyone sensitive to those issues, both within the region and far beyond. Which is probably why we’re just as rapt, here in a drizzly Manchester summer as the guys at her label in San Fran and, soon enough, other listeners across the globe.

There’s no doubt that Ghosts Inside is a masterful album, Ekin Fil’s definitive opus, no less.

There’s no doubt that Ghosts Inside is a masterful album, Ekin Fil’s definitive opus, no less.

Ekin Fil - (2018) Maps LP

 

Helen Scarsdale Agency – HMS 048

Ekin Fil revels in negative ecstasy on her 4th haunting for the sympathetic ears at Helen Scarsdale Agency. Make sure to check for the Sarah Davachi-like spectre of ‘On The Move’ and the billowing glossolalia of ‘Nocturnal Arc’ for her most shivering sensations, and clock the closing number ‘At Dawn’ for a surprising new electronic angle to her sound recalling the most opiated Alessandro Cortini works

“Ekin Fil continues her quietly complex dream-pop oeuvre on Maps. For many years now, this Istanbul musician has been writing mysterious and haunting songs, rich in heavy-reverb effects and an introspective torpor. With each successive album, her songwriting has blossomed through broader instrumentation and more intricate melodic phrasing, though the somber atmospherics and ghostly manifestations remain a judicious constant. Minor-key, tear-stained notes of piano, organ, and guitar veer along elliptical orbits as a soft-whisper lilt of Ekin's voice narrates more by emotive decree than by literary couplet.

Maps addresses the distance and dislocation of the self from the bustling center of Istanbul, where Ekin FIl (neé Ekin Üzeltüzenci) had once called her home. Having spent her first winter on a relatively quiet island in the Sea of Marmara (while still in the greater metropolitan umbrella of Istanbul), Maps is "lonely, different, kind of isolated," according to Ekin, who also noted that the island had "too much silence around. There is no other choice but to concentrate, I guess." Her poetics of silence on her previous recordings had been noted as an antidote or a dream capsule of sound in response to Istanbul's cauldron of politics, culture, and philosophy that has been boiling almost since the beginning of civilization. Maps bends that maritime silence into wind-swept smudges that complement her already spacious compositions.

The saddest songs of The Durutti Column excised of rhythm and those few plunges into sorrow by Harold Budd make for apt comparisons to Maps, in addition to the drone-on classics of Grouper, Slowdive, and Sarah Davachi. “

Ekin Fil - (2019) You, Only CS

 

VAKNAR – VAK13

On the new dual cassette release You, Only, both piano and voice emerge with more clarity only to crawl deeper into the soft gauze of the noise floor. On “Other Others” they are joined by the vibrato of vintage organ, and on “You, Only”, they are overtaken by a collage of field recordings and glistering synth whorls. The two long tracks of the second tape (“Scar” and “Incident Light”) reveal Üzeltüzenci slipping deeper into a more esoteric and piecemeal compositional style. Her simple, textured melodies give way to abstract forms forms that stretch and refract against a horizon line of eerie silence. Ekin Fil’s penchant for burying sounds in drones reverb and self-effacing static make these gasps of open space all the more striking. These are moments of perforation and permeability - places where the thin line between nothing and something has worn away completely.

Ekin Fil - (2020) Coda LP

 

Helen Scarsdale Agency – HMS054

In recent years, the Turkish drone-pop composer Ekin Fil (born Ekin Üzeltüzenci) has been refining her talents in the realm of the film score. Since her first recordings that were published by Root Strata and Students of Decay, she has always exhibited a preternatural ability to express the saddest of emotions through sound. Once channeled through the lens of a gauzy shoegazing smear of guitars and voice, she has peeling away layers of her ephemeral songs to reveal their emotional core. That compositional process that works so well for her award winning film scores informs the soft-focus tenebrous pieces of her 2020 album Coda. It’s true that any number of these pieces on this album could announce the finale to an emotionally draining movie, but Ekin sculpts the entire album as a whole, dissolving one perfectly tempered piano motif, an impressionist ambient plume or a sibilant vocal melody into another. Just at the threshold of perception, she occasionally invokes cascades of distant noise that easily can be interpreted as the ominous premonitions for natural disasters - incoming storms, earthquakes, or tidal waves. This subtle disquiet amidst the introspective melancholy furthers the emotional weightiness of Coda. Her somber, blissful compositions have considerable gravity of their own in the constellation of Grouper, Felicia Atkinson, and Harold Budd.

Ekin Fil - (2021) Feelings

 

A Sunken Mall – none

Turkish ambient shoegaze reductionist Ekin Fil recovers from the anxiety of 2020 with a foggy set of introverted folk and melancholy cinematic piano. RIYL Grouper, Deaf Center, William Basinski.

Following an impressive run of releases for Helen Scarsdale Agency and Students of Decay, Ekin Fil's latest album is an exercise in emotional catharsis. Her soft vocals are the album's anchor, and add a beam of optimistic humanity through the thick fog of doom. On 'Little One', he voice cuts through piano and sounds like a lost Cocteau Twins demo, while on 'Infinite Space', it's almost reduced to a ghostly whisper, struggling to be heard beneath the sound of rain.

The album's most successful moment is the title track, a collaboration with Bulgarian artist Krāllār. Here, Fil's voice is blown out into psychedelic harmonic prisms that swirl through slow-moving frozen soundscapes. The piano is still there, but re-sculpted into warped icicles - it's disarmingly beautiful.

Aidan Baker & Ekin Fil - (2020) The Dark Well CD

 

Torn Light Records – ART 01

"The Dark Well" contains four new compositions from the collaborative debut of Ekin Fil and Aidan Baker that spill out in a slow cascade of organ, guitar, and voice. In the works for over a year, the duo have created a soundscape saturated with swells that hum and hiss but ultimately pacify instead of crash.

Various Artists - (2018) Wound 2xLP

 

Carbon Records – CR239

Continuing the tradition of its milestone-marking compilations, Carbon is using the occasion of its 25th year to bring together an impressive roster of guitar-based artists. Showcasing the use of guitar in its many forms, this compilation consists of some of the most exciting new and established purveyors of Americana, psych, free-improv, rock, and experimental sounds.

Artists:

Alexander

Bill MacKay

Bill Nace

Brett Naucke

Bruce Russell

Campbell Kneale

Curanderos

Daniel Bachman

Eric Hardiman

James Plotkin

Joe+N

Jon Collin

Kryssi Battalene

Loren Connors

Michael Morley

Mike Shiflet

Morning Scales The Mountain

Rat Bastard

Rob Noyes

Ryley Walker

Tashi Dorji

Wendy Eisenberg

William Parker - (2021) Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World 10xCD

 

Centering Records – 1020–1029 / 1.58GB

William Parker is one of the most recorded bassists in jazz history, a celebrated, wide-ranging composer, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, poet, essayist, and painter. Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World comprises ten unissued albums written and recorded for various soloists and ensembles between 2017 and 2019 -- he doesn't always appear -- including seven for vocalists.

The music is not limited to jazz: There are excursions into classical, soul, free improv, blues, global sounds, and more. Blue Limelight features vocalist Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez fronting a piano quartet with two drummers, chamber strings, and oboe. The music ranges from crystalline ballads ("Listen,") to bumping R&B ("Cosmic Funk"), gospelized soul ("A Great Day to Be Dead"), and syncopated jazz recitatives (Recall"). Child of Sound contains 14 songs for piano performed solo by Eri Yamamoto. They showcase Parker's love of simple melody.

"Baldwin," the opening track on The Majesty of Jah, features James Baldwin's disembodied voice alongside Jalalu Kalvert Nelson's muted trumpet and sonic effects. Ellen Christi lends her voice to the strolling jazz-cum-reggae of the title track to the vanguard scatting in "Freedom" and the provocative spiritual drift of "Sun Song."

The experimental fourth disc Cheops is performed by vocalist Kyoko Kitamura and a group consisting of vibes, tuba, soprano sax, drums, and bass. It ranges across classical, world, and freely improvised terrain. Harlem Speaks, fronted by Fay Victor, engages bop, swing, and blues with Parker and Hamid Drake as her accompanists. Mexico consists of four long vanguard works, performed by an international ensemble of artists/activists fronted by Mexican vocalist Jean Carla Rodea.

Seven of its songs are titled for Italian directors, reflecting Parker's long obsession with cinema and film composition, extending the medium he exercised on his contemporary score for Alphaville did. The final two discs are instrumental. They include The Fastest Train wherein Parker and trio play dozens of wind, reed, and percussion instruments between them in spacious improvisational pieces. Manzanar comprises abstract folk suites played by string quartets, with reeds, winds, and percussion. Parker plays ethnic flutes and a khaen mouth organ, while saxophonist Daniel Carter guests on the provocative closing suite "Being Native."

Two enclosed booklets contain liner notes from Parker, interview fragments and beautiful art, as well as lyrics. Each disc is unique, intimate, revelatory. Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World offers proof that Parker's vast, edifying sound universe seeks nothing less than to decode the world with beauty, inspiration, revolutionary lyricism, and spiritual aspiration, without pretension or artifice

Worth - (2019) Black Medicine CS

 

Wonderland Media, LLC – WM012

Worth - (2020) Heroin Vampires CDr

 

Nefarious Activities – NF43

The Offset: Spectacles - (2020) 2010-02-02 燥眠夜 Zoomin' Night 2xCS

Rose Mansion Analog – RMA-008

Compressed, self contained, and brazenly unique, each song by the Offset: Spectacles hits like a short, sharp shock. Percussive guitar and organ scrape at the surface of the left eardrum, and the bass hits like a combination of a synthesizer and a bongo. Get ready to be hectored by the ghosts of Cantonese poets and the Kowloon King. Sure as you can draw a straight line from The Offsets’ birthplace in Hong Kong to the site of their self-imposed exile in Beijing, there’s a connection between their music and the Velvet Underground, just somewhere along the 24 hour train ride things got muddled. Oscillator solos are reinterpreted for guitar, Bo Diddley blues get played drum-less, with only phantom rhythm for company. Songs like “Bodies’ Descendents” and “Snags” may bring to mind the endless empty highway, but the only possibility here is a brief sprint on an overpass above the midnight lights of a rotting port. Today, no escape is possible from a(ny) city, so the Offsets simply claim ownership, pushing back against at the neon signs, TV’s, and computers with a seductive spectacle of their own.

 

Wince - (2019) Shame CD

 

White Centipede Noise – WCN035

Jeph Jerman - (2019) Arcane Facture CD

 

White Centipede Noise – WCN038

Star - (2020) Last Vestige Of Malehood CS

 

White Centipede Noise – WCN051

Kjostad - (2020) Red Iron Knife CD

 

White Centipede Noise – WCN054

Altar Of Flies - (2020) Work Ethics CD

 

White Centipede Noise – WCN060

Paranoid Time - (2016) Rat Life CS

 

White Centipede Noise – none

Savage Gospel - (2020) ST CD

 

	White Centipede Noise – WCN053

Aaron Dilloway /Jeph Jerman - (2021) Casual Collisions CD

 

White Centipede Noise – WCN063

Casual Collisions is a collaborative album by two of the most prominent voices in experimental sound, Aaron Dilloway and Jeph Jerman. Recorded in 2013 and originally self-released on CDR by Jerman in a small edition, New Forces and White Centipede Noise are pleased to make these recordings widely available for the first time. Across four tracks the unique voices of these artists meld seamlessly together. Jerman’s tactile, physical sounds are wrapped up in Dilloway’s magnetic wizardry. Damaged electronics and hissing tapes form the canvas on which objects crunch, grind, and clatter. Temporality blurs as field recordings, loops, and live acoustic sounds meld together in sonic alchemy.

Two masters in perfect sync. Remastered by BJ Nilsen, packaged in a full color 6-panel digipack.

Sewer Election - (2020) Blizzard Amplification 2xCD

 

White Centipede Noise – WCN050

"Originally released as a private edition 6 cassettes box, instantly sold out * Sewer Election at their finest. Double-CD reissue of the six-tape-box. Improvised harsh electronics & feedback. Recorded & mixed at Studio Malign early 2020. "Sewer Election is a name to be held in the highest regard. While initially hooking audiences on one of the most hard-hitting takes on harsh noise available, he also proved to be the master of an unsettling and emotive tape music style which has come to be widely imitated. Naturally, the moments when these two concepts converge are considered to be nothing short of utter perfection. “Blizzard Amplification” is no different in quality from past releases, but focuses on a third speed at which Johansson can dominantly take the wheel.  The tracks which encompass these two discs are some of the most chaotic sounds you could imagine being wrangled, an unrelenting blast of energy which can only properly be compared to the most revered recordings of the 90s. Although sourced from improvisations, Sewer Election’s signature control and consideration are present throughout every moment. High-pitched oscillating tones and feedback ride along the crust of a more familiar static and rumble, all while coming across as fully intentional. The compositional strength of these recordings is unexpected given their categorically raw nature; you’d think amongst hours of material there would be unwanted sounds or lacking moments, but there just aren’t. Instead, you find a slab of harsh noise crafted by someone who has lived deep within the appreciation and practice of such for decades. This is essential listening for any fan of Dan’s work, a clear example of getting the goddamn job done."  Deutsche Asphalt

Arv & Miljö - (2012) Göteborg CS

 

Arv & Miljö Self-released – none

Arv & Miljö - (2018) Svensk Sommar I Stilla Frid LP

 

Omlott – MLR023

The 7 compositions on Svensk Sommar I Stilla Frid further explores the home- brewed, on-thin-ice ambient hinted at on a few recent Arv & Miljö recordings. Mainly inspired by Anna Själv Tredje and perhaps the lesser sides of Ralph Lundsten and such, this is the Gothenburgian outsider synth album no one certainly ever asked for.

Arv & Miljö - (2016) ST CS

Team Boro Tapes – none 

Arv & Miljö - (2020) Raelianerna CS

 

Arv & Miljö Self-released – none

Arv & Miljö - (2020) Element CDr

 

Förfall – 06