Repress!

Straight in the wake of their eponymous debut LP released on the label back in 2016, Weval return to Kompakt this year with their sophomore album, 'The Weight', breaking their pop-mellow, nostalgia-friendly facet further out in the open as they arrive "at this place again were everything felt spontaneous, new and exciting, like we had in the beginning". Orbiting around that ever luminous yet wistful melodic halo that surrounds their music, this second full-length effort sweeps an extra-wide and languidly woven palette of emotions and moods, making for a uniquely ambitious and generously coloured mosaic of sound. If the recording sessions "often started grumpy and emotionless" by Harm and Merijn's own admission, the pair was "surprised by the joy it gave us, which can be compared to the emotions we felt back in the first days of making music together"; subsequently reconnecting with that fresh, naïve feeling of "absolute creative freedom" they were after. The album is also the fruit of a whole new working process for them - more playful and unpredictable - which saw them switch from "guitars lying around to piano, onto our own synths and the most cheap quirky toys synths you can imagine", and involved "recording all of our own samples, voice and almost every instrument out of the box - which for us was a totally new way of working". "We've always wanted a narrative for the album, and finding the right order perhaps took the most effort" they explain; "we felt anxious, felt insanely positive, felt heartbroken again, felt in love again, and there was death, and even suicide around us. It was quite chaotic. As a whole, 'The Weight' breathes with that transformative richness, free of limits and rules, except perhaps to "do quick and not think too much". Amidst this collection of songs and instrumentals that live by Weval's singularly positive take on music - one that can "lift you up, and make you feel hopeful without being necessarily straight out 'happy'" as they define it, the title-track and lead single stays true to the duo's dynamic approach, putting on a fine balance of floor and dream inducing adaptability that sound engineer David Wrench (Frank Ocean, The XX, FKA Twigs, Caribou… etc.) subtly made palpable. There's heavy showers of funk drops pouring from endless bars of thunderstorm clouds and laid-back riffs beating a restrained poolside-party kind of pulse, but also sensual vocals rising from beneath the sheets and rueful polaroid-filtered ambiences to soundtrack all possible moments in life - from the most euphoric to those when music seems the only viable healing potion. More on the post-KLF, BoC-inflected electronica side of things, 'Are You Even Real' takes its listener for a round-trip across the star-studded dome and beyond, before songs like 'Someday' and 'Same Little Thing' head back down to a state of pulsating, earthly organicity, tense and mercurial as get. An arpeggiated slice of piano-strewn kosmische, 'Heaven' is another invitation to an epic-scale odyssey from the inner-spheres into the distant fringes of the outer-world. Weightless and airy, yet texturally dense and widely magnetic overall, Weval second LP is a synthesis of the duo's multi-angle take on electronics: blissed-out, heartening and infinitely free. More

Repress!

* A legendary yet long lost crown jewel from the early 80s Japanese Electronic and Jazz Rock scene
* new powerful master, much appreciated by the artist
* 2LP in UV-glossy laminated gatefold sleeve with OBI
* includes A1 Poster 60x60cm and lyric sheet
* vinyl comes in Japanese Katta innersleeves

Mariah was a Japanese outfit in the field of art pop, way back in the very late 70s and early 80s with 5 albums up their score from 1980 to 1983. The album from 1979 entitled as “Mariah” was actually made before the band Mariah was formed, and was released as a solo album by Yasuaki Shimizu. The album at hand is the fifth and for the time being last album in this row, released as a double vinyl back in 1983. Original copies, that are at least in very good condition, are hard to find. The brand new reissue on Everland, unlike the original and the first vinyl reissue from 2015, comes housed in a thick and artfully designed gatefold sleeve with OBI, which finally does justice to the progressive spirit of the music you will find here.

The musical basement of Utakata No Hibi is a fusion of dreamy synthesizer pop and haunting new wave music, that could be found all around the globe back in 1983. In the vein of TEARS FOR FEARS or more adventurous DAVID BOWIE stuff, with a touch of KRAFTWERK or even BRIAN ENO here and there, but all this gets spiced up with an atmosphere of Japanese traditionalism, with a few bits and pieces from the old music from this Far East island, which sounds so magic to us Westeners. The progressive, wacky art pop of this project was led by the popular Japanese composer and musician Yasuaki Shimizu, a relentlessly exploratory saxophonist who even dared to rework Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites for saxophone.

As brilliant as this man is, the music on „Utakata No Hibi“ turns out to be. And the master himself approved and much appreciated the brandnew remastering of this album by assisting a highly professional team of sound engineers who dusted off the ancient tape reels. For certain the record sounds and feels 80s through and through, electronic to the very rhythmical bone of each song sugar coated with catchy melodies that resemble Japanese classic and Enka music, which is a kind of folksy pop music. The listener gets directly drawn into a feverish dream of steaming Far Eastern cities and their darkest and most depraved corners where you find everything cheap in sleazy bars and unlighted backyards and alleys. The next moment he strolls through a beautiful Japanese park surrounded by a sea of blossoms. This change in mood and style you will experience in the sparsely instrumented tune „Shisen“, which indeed comes closest to classic Japanese folk tunes without any too catchy and pop oriented melodies. But we certainly find these harmonies allover the album. Some tunes even feel like ancient BEACH BOYS compositions and Brian Wilson creations played by a then contemporary electronic pop act and sung in Japanese.

An amazingly colorful album with songs that are based on solid substance rather than cheap pop structures. This is music for the bold listeners and music lovers and this awesome reissue should quickly find it’s way into the record collections of 80s synth and art pop aficionadoes.

Yasuaki Shimizu did what he wanted with MARIAH, pushed the borders of popular music further than anybody would have thought. Listen to a track like „Shonen“ with a repetitive rhythm pattern that hypnotizes you and somehow silky melodylines by saxophone and synth piano upon which a female voice sings in a very spiritual way. Praising pop or whatever this can be called, it is sheer magic put in music. I wonder if this would have made it into the charts back then, but you never know. It is a piece of musical art that shall be listened to. More