Alex Albrecht returns to Analogue Attic Recordings for the label's inaugural release of 2024.

An immersive exploration spanning house, downtempo, and ambient genres, Albrecht guides listeners through a ephemeral sonic journey. Characterised by trademark field recordings and enchanting piano motifs, 'Allambie' also integrates new hardware and synth sounds to Alex's palette.

Featuring electro-acoustic ventures such as 'Railbridge', warm pads breathing in and out, setting a dynamic tone, and then transitioning to the deeper sounds of 'Green Shade'. Sub-bass breaks and a more minor feel that adds complexity to the sonic landscape, 'Allambie' takes you on a journey from the boundary of the forest to its more mysterious, overgrown centre, a sonic narrative that captivates and intrigues. More

Alex Albrecht is a new artist on Mule Musiq.

Melbourne based producer and Label owner of Analog Attic. half of Albrecht la’brooy, they have released two albums on the sub Label of R&S “Apollo”.

We liked his latest album “Campfire Stories” on his Label. It’a a beautiful mixture of New Age, Modern Classical and Electronic Music. It sounds like a Lawrence children.

This new release is a sequel of latest album. Home listening elegant slow House Music. If you like Lawrence or Larry Heard or that kind of style, You will like it.

Hope you enjoy. More

Collecting Orders for Repress!
Alex Albrecht returns to the Analogue Attic imprint this October under his Melquíades guise; delivering a five-track package in the shape of 'Lanterns'.
Albrecht explains "The concept is a continuation of my last release with AAR and aims to take the listener on a journey to a strange place - Falling asleep, it leads one down a rainy, lantern-lit path and into another world.
At the end of the record, the listener is finally awoken by a familiar voice."
All of the compositions are improvised explorations with field recordings at their core as the framework.
'Lanterns Pt. 1 & Pt. 2' lead, easing you into the project with swirling, hazy atmospherics and ethereal piano melodies floating atop rounded subs and soft percussion.
'Neon Canal' follows, bringing the rhythm to the forefront whilst bubbling bell chimes, warm chords and expansive delays ebb and flow within.
Up next is ‘Cockatoo Horizon’ a Balearic tinged cut employing off-kilter organic percussion, soft guitar licks and airy atmospherics before 'Embers ft. James Harbard' strips things back to floaty chords, bumpy drums and jazzy guitar melodies subtly unfolding throughout.
'Federation Bells' then rounds out the release on beatless tip, laid out over six minutes with otherworldly tones, melancholic piano chords and textural More

Alex Albrecht returns to Analogue Attic Recordings for the label's inaugural release of 2024.

An immersive exploration spanning house, downtempo, and ambient genres, Albrecht guides listeners through a ephemeral sonic journey. Characterised by trademark field recordings and enchanting piano motifs, 'Allambie' also integrates new hardware and synth sounds to Alex's palette.

Featuring electro-acoustic ventures such as 'Railbridge', warm pads breathing in and out, setting a dynamic tone, and then transitioning to the deeper sounds of 'Green Shade'. Sub-bass breaks and a more minor feel that adds complexity to the sonic landscape, 'Allambie' takes you on a journey from the boundary of the forest to its more mysterious, overgrown centre, a sonic narrative that captivates and intrigues. More

Analogue Attic presents the second solo release from label co-founder and one half of Albrecht La'Brooy.

6 stunning compositions to soundtrack your half-time break, or to celebrate the big win, 'There's Always Next Year' is a tribute to the misguided hopes and dreams of a sports fan.
Field recordings and commentary from a range of codes weave between silky saxophone lines and piano chords in what is a textbook showcase of the classic Analogue Attic downtempo and early evening sound we've come to know.

Credits:

Leo Yucht on Drums
Greg Carelton on Saxophone
Mastered by Corey Kikos More

Analogue Attic presents Bush Bash, the second album from Carla Oliver's solo ambient project, Badskin.

The album consists of 8 textural meditations, composed with layers of evolving pads and acoustic instrumentation.
Analogue Attic fans will recognise Badskin from appearances on Albrecht La'Brooy and Alex Albrecht records, or from her masterful live performances at their events.

Naarm/Melbourne underground rock enthusiasts will recognise her from bands such as Soda Eaves or Michael Beach. More

Out Moving Windows is a 7 track LP out early October from Sean La'Brooy, co-founder of Australia's Analogue Attic and one half of Albrecht La'Brooy.

Currently based in New York, La'Brooy presents an emotional and contemplative record that leans on acoustic instrumentation, drawing on collaborations with a range of New York and Melbourne based jazz musicians, and a remix from Other Joe.

Those familiar with the nine records released under Albrecht La'Brooy will recognise the expressive piano and synth lines that feature.
Here, the piano Jazz and Improvisation graduate creates space for long-form solos from himself and featuring instrumentalists.

True to what we expect from the ever-maturing Analogue Attic, this is a listening album; orchestrated pads with dance-leaning rhythms meet piano chords, guitar and brass melodies.
Arranged with the idea of the contemplative state experienced during a solo commute, as the name Out Moving Windows alludes to.

Featuring:
Fernando Ferrarone - Trumpet (NYC)
Kalia Vandever - Trombome (NYC)
Oliver Paterson - Guitar (Melbourne) More

Collecting Orders for Repress!
Alex Albrecht returns to the Analogue Attic imprint this October under his Melquíades guise; delivering a five-track package in the shape of 'Lanterns'.
Albrecht explains "The concept is a continuation of my last release with AAR and aims to take the listener on a journey to a strange place - Falling asleep, it leads one down a rainy, lantern-lit path and into another world.
At the end of the record, the listener is finally awoken by a familiar voice."
All of the compositions are improvised explorations with field recordings at their core as the framework.
'Lanterns Pt. 1 & Pt. 2' lead, easing you into the project with swirling, hazy atmospherics and ethereal piano melodies floating atop rounded subs and soft percussion.
'Neon Canal' follows, bringing the rhythm to the forefront whilst bubbling bell chimes, warm chords and expansive delays ebb and flow within.
Up next is ‘Cockatoo Horizon’ a Balearic tinged cut employing off-kilter organic percussion, soft guitar licks and airy atmospherics before 'Embers ft. James Harbard' strips things back to floaty chords, bumpy drums and jazzy guitar melodies subtly unfolding throughout.
'Federation Bells' then rounds out the release on beatless tip, laid out over six minutes with otherworldly tones, melancholic piano chords and textural More

“‘A La Sala,’ I used to scream it around my house when I was a little girl, to get everybody in the living room; to get my family together. That’s kind of what recording the new album felt like. Emotionally there was a desire to get back to square-one between the three of us, to where we came from–in sonics and in feeling. Let’s get back there.” - Laura Lee Ochoa

The title makes it clear. A La Sala (“To the Room” in Spanish), the fourth studio album by Khruangbin, is an exercise in returning in order to go further, and do so on your own terms. It extends the air of mystery and sanctity that’s key to how bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson, Jr. and guitarist Mark “Marko” Speer approach music. Yet if 2020’s Mordechai, the last studio album Khruangbin made without collaborators, was a party record whose ensuing post-lockdown tour enhanced the band’s musical reputation far and wide, A La Sala is the measured morning after. It’s a gorgeously airy album made only in the company of the group’s longtime engineer Steve Christensen, with minimal overdubs. It is a porthole onto the bounties powering Khruangbin’s vision, a reimagining and refueling for the long haul ahead. A La Sala scales Khruangbin down to scale up, a creative strategy with the future in mind.

It is also a response to the unique moment Khruangbin finds itself in now: following a decade spent cultivating extraordinary music paths, beginning a year when they'll perform for more people, in more iconic spaces, staging a live show that pushes a creative envelope peculiar to them alone. (Look for the band at major festivals and venues near you.) 2024 feels like both marker and pivot, cementing Khruangbin’s stature as a commercially and critically successful group that continues to be guided by creative possibilities.

Such crossroads are familiar for iconic artists throughout the rock era — your Dylans, Stevies and Bowies, up thru turn-of-the-century Radiohead, all have navigated these straits. On A La Sala, Khruangbin also pulls exploration inward, spurning the din of the crowd’s expectations, mapping a personal direction home. The trio’s collective musical DNA and the years spent constructing it in Houston’s local-meets-global cultural stew ensure the band carries on sounding like no one but itself. A La Sala may in fact be Khruangbin’s purest distillation. A cascade of crisp melodies still emanates from Marko’s reverb-heavy electric, dancing gently around Laura Lee’s minimalist almost-dub bass triangles, while DJ’s drums serve as the tightened-up pocket and unwavering dance-floor on which all this movement takes place.

Where prior album-by-album growth seemed to point the narratives towards music’s polyglot edges, such inquiries now sound like known intimacies. What once seemed like sonic invocations — spaghetti-western film scores, found-sounds, dancing moments more living room than rooftop disco — are ingrained characteristics. This is who they are! And there’s a freshness to the instrumental interactivity on A La Sala that’s less concerned with getting further out than going deeper in. That depth is not about therapeutic self-reflection, but a profound desire to celebrate the world’s external wonders.
A La Sala invites intimate intercontinental partying. The first single is, after all, called “A Love International.” “Pon Pón” holds the band’s table at the West African discotheque; yet the joy now moves to the corner left of the dancefloor, where the back-and-forth between Laura Lee’s bass, DJ’s hi-hat, and Marko’s tuneful rhythm scratches, is a marvel of knowing head-nods. There’s “Hold Me Up (Thank You),” a familial sweetness in its spare lyrics, feeding off the rhythm section’s sturdy funk shuffle, and a chorus on which Marko’s guitar evokes both sides of the Atlantic in confident unshowy rhythms. They’re on “Todavía Viva” too, next to DJ’s noir-soul rim-shots, synth strings and a pregnant pause that is Laura Lee’s favorite moment on the album, the mood kin to the band’s glorious live interpretations of G-funk fantasias. And the rocked-up miniature, “Juegos y Nubes,” demonstrates Khruangbin’s Houston-born superpower to culture-mix, a dancing mood less concerned with worldly glamor than communal grooving.

“I read something long ago, attributed to Miles Davis. He said, ‘When they play fast, you play slow. When they play slow, you play fast.’ And it's definitely how I've approached looking at music: Don't follow the trends. And if the trend is this, then do something else.” - Marko

From the get-go, Khruangbin’s journey has been emphatically its own: a sound and visual representation with few precedents, ignoring pop expectations, relying only on internal inspirations, and a multitude of visions. It’s a mindset of penetrating the self, connecting to the surrounding world, modeling your own life experiences. This ethos is threaded throughout A La Sala, audible in the album’s form and function. (It’s even visible in the vinyl version’s physical package, which will be released as a set of seven distinctive covers and color-sets — more on which in a sec.)

The building blocks for the album’s 12 songs were jigsaw pieces found in Khruangbin’s creative past. Having stockpiled ideas originally set down as off-the-cuff recordings (voice-memos made at sound-checks, on long voyages, as absentminded epiphanies), they began fitting those pieces together in the studio. Which parts were apt? Which could be massaged and stretched out? Which inspired new sections or rhythms or musical interactions? Once more, Khruangbin’s familial DNA kicked in. Layer-by-layer, the intimate work, rework and re-rework bore new fruit. They also brought back a strategy once foundational to their records: seeding an album with field recordings.

Some results fold directly into A La Sala’s down-home feel. “Three From Two” and “May Ninth” are wistful mid-tempo numbers, with guitar melodies that reside somewhere between Bakersfield and by-the-riverside, cues that, for all its borderless inclusivity, another core Khruangbin value is being steeped in American roots. And in the landscape that music comes from. Like all albums prior to Mordechai, Marko made sure environmental sounds — natural and man-made — appeared as textures. (At times philosophically: the group recorded while cricket chirps played in their headphones, presumably for terroir.) It’s how A La Sala achieves such interconnected set-and-setting-ness.

Other results are more metaphorical, especially in Khruangbin’s flirtation with ambient spaces. The dramatically beatless “Farolim de Felgueiras” and “Caja de la Sala” both feature only Marko’s unmistakable guitar dueting with Laura Lee’s Moog, lightly layered with sounds of shoes on stone steps, and cicadas in an open field. The closing “Les Petits Gris” more fully reduces and fleshes out the ambiance, with a piano and a simple single-note bass pattern, Marko’s plaintive spare guitar echoing the melody of a ballerina-turning music box. It feels an apt way of ending — as a passing of this particular moment, preparation for the next one, soon-come.

Even the seven different covers that adorn A La Sala’s various vinyl editions offer a throughline from the music into Khruangbin’s current frame. Designed by the band using Marko’s multitude of travelog photos, they are windows from the band’s living room onto a set of daydreams, scenes of impossible skies, external glances illuminating what is going on inside. These are also directly related to David Black’s images of DJ, Laura Lee and Marko which accompany A La Sala, and to Khruangbin’s live staging reinvention. It’s all about looking out and looking back, in order to better look ahead.

“All the little moments you capture. You don't see how impactful they are until you hear what eventually comes of them. A lot of those scraps end up being the thing — and you don't realize it until it's ‘The Thing.’” - DJ
credits
releases April 5, 2024

Produced by Mark Speer & Steve Christensen
Written, Arranged & Performed by Khruangbin
Art Direction: Tiny Frees
Mixing: Steve Christensen
Mastering: Chris Longwood More

Note: limited edition picture disc

A cult 12? EP from 1987 by legendary Japanese erotic actress Kaoru Kuroki, repressed for the first time on sexy picture disc vinyl.

A total of 4 tunes, including “???? (The Age Of Innocence)”; a strange synth-pop track based on an Okinawan folk song, “A Love Note For You”; an erotic poetry reading she wrote herself, “?????? (Birth From Time)”; a killer techno-pop track that could work as a hidden gem for DJs and ???? (Chinatown Love) ???; an erotic serenade dedicated to Chinatown.

Picture disc in the colorful cover.

Licensed by TEICHIKU RECORDS CO.,LTD; original master tapes. More

In the early 1980s, a particular alchemy between new musical technologies and significant social, cultural, and political transformations in Ghana gave rise to a new style of highlife. Drum machines and synthesisers appeared alongside lilting guitar lines and punchy horns, and the emerging Ghanaian diaspora began incorporating US disco and boogie, R&B, European new wave, and Caribbean zouk and soca into their music.

This style soundtracked the birth of a new, proud Ghanaian identity and captured the idiosyncrasies of a rapidly changing postcolonial society, marked by increased migration and wider access to global sounds and modern technology.

More than 20 years after the release of the heavy funk and Afrobeat-focused Ghana Soundz compilations, and following the success of 2009’s Ghana Special: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Ghanaian Blues 1968-1981, Soundway is now shining the spotlight on the multifaceted, diasporic sounds of the ‘80s on new compilation Ghana Special - Volume 2, a collection of 18 burger highlife, electronic afrobeat, and reggae tracks.

Though Ghanaian to its very core, burger highlife emerged mostly outside of Ghana and just as the sun was setting on the country’s musical golden age. In the 1960s and 1970s cities such as Accra, Tema, Takoradi, and Cape Coast were home to thriving music scenes, and the loud horn sections of the big highlife bands, or the simpler, socially conscious palm wine music ruled the dance halls, locals drinkeries, and airwaves.

Back then music represented a powerful force, and an artist’s endorsement or dissent could make or break a politician. Perhaps to curb this power, the incoming military regime-imposed curfews and substantial import taxes on musical instruments in the early 1980s. These measures, coupled with a profound economic downturn and shifting musical preferences that saw DJs replacing large live bands, served as the final blow to Ghana's once-thriving music scene.

Musicians left Ghana in droves, scattering across West Africa, Europe, and North America. Thanks in part to its more permissive migration policies Germany became the heart of this scene, and the movement in fact takes its name from “Bürger”, the German for “citizen”. Less confined by genres than back in Ghana, artists in the diaspora were quick to engage with the different styles, working disco, boogie, and funk into their highlife melodies. Access to state-of-the-art studios and modern musical technologies also gave birth to all sorts of mutations: burger highlife in fact is less defined by one particular sound, than by the experimental approach and global outlook of its artists.

Tracks such as Ernest Honny’s experimental cut “New Dance” are an example of just how far artists strayed from original highlife arrangements. Honny, who started his career as a keyboard player with Dr K Gyasi’s band The Noble Kings, had moved to Benin in the 1980s, where he experimented with synthesisers and drum machines at one of Cotonou’s top studios. Similarly, Nan Mayen’s “Mumude” is a slick, 80’s pop track which was recorded in Germany, with only a slight echo of highlife in its opening Fanti lyrics.
This generation of artists found inspiration in sounds that transcended geographical boundaries: singer and guitarist Nana Budjei, who was originally from central Ghana but had moved to the UK in the 1980s, says that his radiant, sun-drenched 1988 track “Asobrachie” is “influenced by reggae maestros Bob Marley and Alpha Blondy, and traditional Akan folklore music”; on “Jigi Jigi”, the Kumasi-born, Sweden transplant Delips Apo draws on soca, latin, and zouk influences.

Throughout the 1980s Ghanaian artists kept producing increasingly innovative and experimental hybrids, winning over new audiences abroad. Though back in Ghana the new sound was initially met with disapproval by purists, it slowly became a symbol of a new, worldly and modern Ghanaian identity. The creativity and open mindedness that characterised burger highlife have gone on to shape the evolution of Ghanaian music since, giving artists the freedom to explore new global sounds while preserving a proudly Ghanaian soul. Ghana Special - Volume 2 stands as a vibrant tribute to the lasting legacy of this groundbreaking musical era. More

Transversales Disques proudly presents Alain Goraguer Rare Soundtracks & Lost Tapes.
French composer Alain Goraguer who first made a name for himself as a sideman and arranger for Serge Gainsbourg wrote very few soundtracks, but amongst them, the legendary La Planète Sauvage (1973) is an absolute staple of France’s essential music.

During that same period of time, Goraguer wrote two rare and beautiful scores using the same masterclass arrangements. On L’Affaire Dominici (1975), Alain Goraguer creates a theme of great melodic clarity from a palette of breathy flutes, clavinet D6 baroque textures, wah-wah guitars and slow-paced drums that clearly reminds La Planete Sauvage’s atmosphere. The same can be said about the score of Au delà de la peur (1975) with its descending clavinet melody, twanging bass riff, funky drums and flashes of bended electric guitars. This record also includes never before released tracks found in the vaults of French national radio: beautiful and timeless orchestral compositions recorded at Studio 105, Maison de la radio.

REMASTERED FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES

A1 - L’affaire Dominici
A2 - Enquête
A3 - Thème principal
A4 - Procès
A5 - Thème guitare
A6 - Thème orchestre
A7 - Générique
B1 - Un homme traqué
B2 - Au-delà de la peur
B3 - Nostalgie d’un amour imaginaire
B4 - Rêverie
B5 - Recherche nostalgique More

Warp present the the first three full length offerings from Autechre; Incunabula, Amber & Tri Repetae. Having been unavailable on vinyl since 2001, these recordings reveal the geometry of the duo's early transcripts from post-acid house electronica through sparse, hypnotic ambience and into the b-boy flavour that characterised their mid-nineties excavations of jungle, industrial and hip-hop.

Amber, the second full-length from Autechre and considered by many to be their ambient opus (though we imagine they wouldn't call it that!) having been out of print on vinyl since 2001. Amber contains eleven tracks of sparse Ae minimalist machine modules that blur the boundaries between isolationist electronica and richly vivid techno soundscapes. Considered by many fans to be the most crucial recording from the group, it contains some of their most immersive soundscapes to date. Steering away from the post-hardcore dynamics that shone through on Incunabula, Amber moves further away from anything resembling 'techno' and moved into more territories of abstract ambience. These eleven crystal-like cubes of sound came together to produce some of the most mind-bendingly hypnotic sounds to be committed to wax during the 90's. Placing Ae up in the ranks of legendary composers such as Steve Reich and Manuel Gottsching as well as their Artificial Intelligence contemporaries with whom they were crafting the building blocks of the future.There is something uniquely immersive about Amber, it's almost as if as you are playing it the sounds are fading away before they even begin, when played from the start you can lose a lot of time within the endless gradients that adorn its cover, before the sounds just seemingly, disappear.

Spec: 2LP in paper inners in gatefold sleeve with postcard size download card More