Primarily recorded at my home studio in South London, Carrying Colour studio in Freetown, my old studio in Rotherhithe Old Police Station, and Casa Mahler in Spoleto. Recorded on different pianos, including an upright in Freetown that had lost the felt of its hammers due to the humidity creating a harpsichord-like sound as the raw wood struck the strings. Other prominent instruments featured are Moog Grandmother, double bass, electric guitar and Juno-G. Part of the piano recordings on 'Up' and 'Drift' were composed and recorded through April 2021, whilst I was an artist in residence at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios, Spoleto, for the 'Mahler, The Song of the Earth' project in partnership with Mahler Foundation. During the residency, I was studying and creating work in response to the life and work of Gustav Mahler, in particular 'Das Lied Von Der Erde' (The Song of the Earth) — a vast song cycle engaging with nature, forgiveness, friendship, and mortality themes. While making this record, I wanted to explore what the natural environment means personally. I went on many trips into nature to engage with plant life and natural materials. These included everyday strolls around South London, walks with my mum in the hills surrounding Bath (Up), hikes through Freetown, the hills of Spoleto, up line in Ghana and nature sanctuaries in Sierra Leone (Wood). I found incredible examples of nature in all of these contexts, which I felt personally close to. I made field recordings with my phone or Zoom recorder, documenting various birds, insects, monkeys, bats, plants, trees, stones and so on, which are all on the record.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

After being out of print for several years, Duval Timothy’s phenomenal ‘Brown Loop’ has finally been reissued. Recorded in New York in the winter months of 2016, this brand-new edition features a slightly adjusted track listing. The release date is 2nd of October 2020, which happens to be the multidisciplinary artist’s birthday. Duval has asked me to write a few words about his record. I often find myself listening to Duval’s music when travelling. On an aeroplane for example, where the comforting piano pieces are set starkly against the sound of the world passing by, the constant engine humming, air conditioning running. Or when I’m walking through a city I’ve not been to before, the music blending into the continuous noise of cars and motorbikes, anchoring me when I find myself in unknown surroundings. Grounding me, one note at a time, in contrast to a city that does the exact opposite. Duval’s compositions bring a sense of comfort where there is detachment. It’s the soundtrack for an immigrant (such as myself), alienated from wherever he came, but someone who also doesn’t fully belong to the place he set off to. I heard Duval describe the music of Brown Loop as ascending a mountain, and after you reached the top you come down to the other end. Through rhythmic repetitive patterns, the music builds. Within the pieces, melodies stray away from the theme, into unknown territories, but always find their way back to a comfortable home. Most elaborately this happens on my favourite piece, ?Hairs. The patterns and melodies on pieces such as ?Through The Night and (recently added to the vinyl version) ?G are stripped down to their very essence. It is not just jazz, it’s pure hip hop, as the hooks are reminiscent of the shards of melancholy legends like Dilla, Pete Rock and Havoc used in their best work. In terms of repetition, the music is also very techno. And like in all good techno, the patterns (perhaps contrary to popular belief) ooze humanity and emotion. But most of all Duval’s Brown Loop is a very personal record. it takes courage to expose your inner self like that in the most minimal of compositions. But once you find the right notes, the right pattern, music is the most beautiful thing in the world

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

SON’ was recorded in London and Freetown between 2019-21. Inspired by the pair’s shared love of choral music, it began as an experiment to explore playing with the voice in more creative ways, using layered vocals as an instrument following piano harmony, arrangement and sampling. The project started in London with the title track and became a story about a world in which we hide our true ‘colours’ in order to fit in. A mother tells her son that he needs to fit in to survive before realising that she is following the same tropes passed on to her as a child. Following this realisation she encourages her son to protect his dreams and not to listen to anybody telling him he can’t be whatever he chooses. Rosie joined Duval for a week in Freetown in February 2020 where they wrote the rest of the project, bringing friends Daniel Koroma, Kandeh Bangura, Valentine Coker, Chino Greene and Tom Herbert in for musical contributions; “We were interested in bringing our surroundings into the recordings; leaving doors open, recording in different spaces and locations, inviting the listener to experience the life that was going on around us whilst capturing the process”.


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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

Smcl Smcl with cktrl — a wonderful piece which calls on the listener to play both records at the same time to hear the music or play them separately and hear different versions. Duval is strengthening us, encouraging us to feel comfortable with discomfort, with incompleteness, with the hard-to-understand. This is a beautiful thing.

Track List:

Vinyl 1. A Side - Pianos, Synths, Vocals & Sub Bass.

Vinyl 2. A Side - Saxophone, Clarinet, Double Bass, Harmonica & Keyboard Bells.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

Where We're Calling From
The Liminal Zone: Reflections on Duval Timothy’s Sen Am
Lamin Fofana

Sen Am is an enduring and tender album, rich and beguiling and generous in a quiet way. Over the last few years, I find myself returning to it, listening and absorbing, reflecting on the voices and working through the multiple layers of feelings and themes it announces with confidence and equanimity. Notions of care and contradiction, expressions of joy and desire and the underlying feeling of unease and turmoil; there is an urgent appeal to the listener for generosity, to strengthen our capacity to hear multiple voices simultaneously, to exist in multiple places at once.

Duval Timothy’s music was dropped into our world from another realm sometime in the spring of 2017. We received the call and we answered it. The rhythm and spirit was transmitted via London’s NTS Radio on the Do!! You!!! Breakfast Show with Charlie Bones and a short while later we were listening to the first vinyl edition of Sen Am in our living room in Berlin. The record got a lot of plays (at home and at some shows, before and after performances). It was like sunlight filtering through a cracked window and remaining there for a moment, dancing. Blue music emanating from a liminal zone, an in-between space, somewhere on the outskirts of Freetown, or rural Sierra Leone, or the outer edges of South London, or Bath, UK, or some undisclosed orbit, unfixed location. The music is soaked in diasporic experiences. It refuses to settle but still invites us to enter and stay awhile in that zone, where multiple forms exist (all) together with jazz, hip-hop, various strands of expressive electronics and experimental music all breathing together and moving around. It is a portal to a place of possibilities, a space for building and repairing possible and lost connections. But life in that liminal zone is precarious; it is life under duress; under pressure – not merely the pressure to produce a presentable, categorizable, and salable body of work, but the pressure that compels us to experiment and create new concepts and things that will help us imagine a different existence, a way out of the turbulence.

Freetown is a marvellous and sometimes sad place. It is one of those unmistakable locations inscribed diasporic memory; a place that touches you, a place that holds you and demands you bear witness: witness to pain, poverty, joy and desire. You remember the voices and the eyes of people even in momentary encounters. In Sen Am, you hear not only Duval’s recollections and sounds of Freetown, you hear family and friendship, people coming together and forming bonds, creating surrogate families. Forging community wherever you go is a practice, and community is at the core of this music. It’s in all the voices, from Emmerson and 6pac to Aminata and Aruna. It opens up a space for Black voices, for Sierra Leonean voices, and those voices extend through the succeeding projects, the 2 Sim EP and the album Help, and all that radiates from Duval’s Carrying Colour imprint.

Thank you for the invitation to write about the album Sen Am, on the occasion of its re-release which also coincides with the release of the exquisite double 7” Sm?l Sm?l with cktrl — a wonderful piece which calls on the listener to play both records at the same time to hear the music or play them separately and hear different versions. Duval is strengthening us, encouraging us to feel comfortable with discomfort, with incompleteness, with the hard-to-understand. This is a beautiful thing.



Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

Released in August 2020 to much acclaim, as well as receiving many accolades as one of the best albums of 2020, Duval Timothy present Help (2021 edition).

This new and limited edition will be released independently by Duval Timothy’s Carrying Colour label, fashion brand and shop. It comes on 2 x 140g milky clear vinyl, with new 2 x 12" square posters and shrink-wrapped.

Help was recorded in London and Los Angeles, and reveals the artists' experience traversing the meshes of the music industry, mental health, YouTube self-help videos, and the healing he discovered through friendship and collaboration. Co-produced by Rodaidh McDonald (King Krule, The XX) and Marta Salogni (Bjork), with collaborations from Lil Silva, Melanie Faye, Vegyn, Desta Haile, Mr Mitch, Dave Okumo, and Twin Shadow amongst others.

Duval Timothy is a multidisciplinary artist, whose practise is centred around colour and involves the use of music, photography, textiles, painting, sculpture, design, cooking and video. In between delivering a celebrated cookbook for Penguin Books, and an interactive installation at Tate Modern Turbine Hall, Duval makes music, which is sampled by the likes of Solange and Loyle Carner and collaborates frequetly with cktrl, Vegyn, Kwes, and Mr Mitch.



Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

Smcl Smcl with cktrl — a wonderful piece which calls on the listener to play both records at the same time to hear the music or play them separately and hear different versions. Duval is strengthening us, encouraging us to feel comfortable with discomfort, with incompleteness, with the hard-to-understand. This is a beautiful thing.

Track List:

Vinyl 1. A Side - Pianos, Synths, Vocals & Sub Bass.

Vinyl 2. A Side - Saxophone, Clarinet, Double Bass, Harmonica & Keyboard Bells.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

Primarily recorded at my home studio in South London, Carrying Colour studio in Freetown, my old studio in Rotherhithe Old Police Station, and Casa Mahler in Spoleto. Recorded on different pianos, including an upright in Freetown that had lost the felt of its hammers due to the humidity creating a harpsichord-like sound as the raw wood struck the strings. Other prominent instruments featured are Moog Grandmother, double bass, electric guitar and Juno-G. Part of the piano recordings on 'Up' and 'Drift' were composed and recorded through April 2021, whilst I was an artist in residence at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios, Spoleto, for the 'Mahler, The Song of the Earth' project in partnership with Mahler Foundation. During the residency, I was studying and creating work in response to the life and work of Gustav Mahler, in particular 'Das Lied Von Der Erde' (The Song of the Earth) — a vast song cycle engaging with nature, forgiveness, friendship, and mortality themes. While making this record, I wanted to explore what the natural environment means personally. I went on many trips into nature to engage with plant life and natural materials. These included everyday strolls around South London, walks with my mum in the hills surrounding Bath (Up), hikes through Freetown, the hills of Spoleto, up line in Ghana and nature sanctuaries in Sierra Leone (Wood). I found incredible examples of nature in all of these contexts, which I felt personally close to. I made field recordings with my phone or Zoom recorder, documenting various birds, insects, monkeys, bats, plants, trees, stones and so on, which are all on the record.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

Where We're Calling From
The Liminal Zone: Reflections on Duval Timothy’s Sen Am
Lamin Fofana

Sen Am is an enduring and tender album, rich and beguiling and generous in a quiet way. Over the last few years, I find myself returning to it, listening and absorbing, reflecting on the voices and working through the multiple layers of feelings and themes it announces with confidence and equanimity. Notions of care and contradiction, expressions of joy and desire and the underlying feeling of unease and turmoil; there is an urgent appeal to the listener for generosity, to strengthen our capacity to hear multiple voices simultaneously, to exist in multiple places at once.

Duval Timothy’s music was dropped into our world from another realm sometime in the spring of 2017. We received the call and we answered it. The rhythm and spirit was transmitted via London’s NTS Radio on the Do!! You!!! Breakfast Show with Charlie Bones and a short while later we were listening to the first vinyl edition of Sen Am in our living room in Berlin. The record got a lot of plays (at home and at some shows, before and after performances). It was like sunlight filtering through a cracked window and remaining there for a moment, dancing. Blue music emanating from a liminal zone, an in-between space, somewhere on the outskirts of Freetown, or rural Sierra Leone, or the outer edges of South London, or Bath, UK, or some undisclosed orbit, unfixed location. The music is soaked in diasporic experiences. It refuses to settle but still invites us to enter and stay awhile in that zone, where multiple forms exist (all) together with jazz, hip-hop, various strands of expressive electronics and experimental music all breathing together and moving around. It is a portal to a place of possibilities, a space for building and repairing possible and lost connections. But life in that liminal zone is precarious; it is life under duress; under pressure – not merely the pressure to produce a presentable, categorizable, and salable body of work, but the pressure that compels us to experiment and create new concepts and things that will help us imagine a different existence, a way out of the turbulence.

Freetown is a marvellous and sometimes sad place. It is one of those unmistakable locations inscribed diasporic memory; a place that touches you, a place that holds you and demands you bear witness: witness to pain, poverty, joy and desire. You remember the voices and the eyes of people even in momentary encounters. In Sen Am, you hear not only Duval’s recollections and sounds of Freetown, you hear family and friendship, people coming together and forming bonds, creating surrogate families. Forging community wherever you go is a practice, and community is at the core of this music. It’s in all the voices, from Emmerson and 6pac to Aminata and Aruna. It opens up a space for Black voices, for Sierra Leonean voices, and those voices extend through the succeeding projects, the 2 Sim EP and the album Help, and all that radiates from Duval’s Carrying Colour imprint.

Thank you for the invitation to write about the album Sen Am, on the occasion of its re-release which also coincides with the release of the exquisite double 7” Sm?l Sm?l with cktrl — a wonderful piece which calls on the listener to play both records at the same time to hear the music or play them separately and hear different versions. Duval is strengthening us, encouraging us to feel comfortable with discomfort, with incompleteness, with the hard-to-understand. This is a beautiful thing.



Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

After being out of print for several years, Duval Timothy’s phenomenal ‘Brown Loop’ has finally been reissued. Recorded in New York in the winter months of 2016, this brand-new edition features a slightly adjusted track listing. The release date is 2nd of October 2020, which happens to be the multidisciplinary artist’s birthday. Duval has asked me to write a few words about his record. I often find myself listening to Duval’s music when travelling. On an aeroplane for example, where the comforting piano pieces are set starkly against the sound of the world passing by, the constant engine humming, air conditioning running. Or when I’m walking through a city I’ve not been to before, the music blending into the continuous noise of cars and motorbikes, anchoring me when I find myself in unknown surroundings. Grounding me, one note at a time, in contrast to a city that does the exact opposite. Duval’s compositions bring a sense of comfort where there is detachment. It’s the soundtrack for an immigrant (such as myself), alienated from wherever he came, but someone who also doesn’t fully belong to the place he set off to. I heard Duval describe the music of Brown Loop as ascending a mountain, and after you reached the top you come down to the other end. Through rhythmic repetitive patterns, the music builds. Within the pieces, melodies stray away from the theme, into unknown territories, but always find their way back to a comfortable home. Most elaborately this happens on my favourite piece, ?Hairs. The patterns and melodies on pieces such as ?Through The Night and (recently added to the vinyl version) ?G are stripped down to their very essence. It is not just jazz, it’s pure hip hop, as the hooks are reminiscent of the shards of melancholy legends like Dilla, Pete Rock and Havoc used in their best work. In terms of repetition, the music is also very techno. And like in all good techno, the patterns (perhaps contrary to popular belief) ooze humanity and emotion. But most of all Duval’s Brown Loop is a very personal record. it takes courage to expose your inner self like that in the most minimal of compositions. But once you find the right notes, the right pattern, music is the most beautiful thing in the world

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

Released in August 2020 to much acclaim, as well as receiving many accolades as one of the best albums of 2020, Duval Timothy present Help (2021 edition).

This new and limited edition will be released independently by Duval Timothy’s Carrying Colour label, fashion brand and shop. It comes on 2 x 140g milky clear vinyl, with new 2 x 12" square posters and shrink-wrapped.

Help was recorded in London and Los Angeles, and reveals the artists' experience traversing the meshes of the music industry, mental health, YouTube self-help videos, and the healing he discovered through friendship and collaboration. Co-produced by Rodaidh McDonald (King Krule, The XX) and Marta Salogni (Bjork), with collaborations from Lil Silva, Melanie Faye, Vegyn, Desta Haile, Mr Mitch, Dave Okumo, and Twin Shadow amongst others.

Duval Timothy is a multidisciplinary artist, whose practise is centred around colour and involves the use of music, photography, textiles, painting, sculpture, design, cooking and video. In between delivering a celebrated cookbook for Penguin Books, and an interactive installation at Tate Modern Turbine Hall, Duval makes music, which is sampled by the likes of Solange and Loyle Carner and collaborates frequetly with cktrl, Vegyn, Kwes, and Mr Mitch.



Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

Originally released in 1987 on a private cassette - this is the first vinyl release of the absolute gem. Comes with obi strip.

Masahiro Sugaya is a Japanese composer with a prolific career in music for film, television, and the performing arts. Renowned for crafting soundscapes that invite deep contemplation, his music blends synthesizers, field recordings, and traditional Japanese instruments, achieving a delicate balance between minimalism, ambient, and folk influences.

In addition to his experimental compositions, Sugaya has been a pivotal figure in Japanese television and cinema. He collaborated with NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, creating soundtracks for documentaries and educational programs that explored both the everyday and the extraordinary. His ability to translate emotions and landscapes into sound has made him stand out in projects that connect the visual and the musical.

In cinema, Sugaya worked as an arranger for GONTITI, the iconic Japanese guitar duo, and contributed to soundtracks for renowned directors such as Hirokazu Koreeda. His work captures the stillness and subtleties of everyday life, resonating deeply with audiences.

The Pocket of Fever, originally conceived in 1987 as a soundtrack for Pappa Tarahumara’s avant-garde dance company, merges traditional Japanese elements with modern compositional techniques, reflecting the fluid and dreamlike choreography. The album shifts between nostalgia, as in Green of the Future, and the poetic hypnosis of Conversation with the Wind. These pieces invite the listener to explore deeply evocative and intimate sonic landscapes.

Now available for the first time on vinyl, this album was originally released solely on cassette and has been carefully remastered to preserve its delicate textures and vibrant sound. Presented in a limited edition, The Pocket of Fever remains essential for fans of ambient and experimental music. Inspired by figures such as Hiroshi Yoshimura, Midori Takada, and Brian Eno, this timeless masterpiece invites introspection and the appreciation of its serene beauty.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore

First Word Records is proud to bring you 'The Making of Silk', the brand new album from Allysha Joy. Allysha Joy is a deeply-expressive singer, songwriter, producer & keys player hailing from Naarm (Melbourne), known for both her solo work and as front woman for 30/70. A uniquely-talented artist, her husky soulful voice, formidable Fender Rhodes prowess and raw poeticism has garnered legions of attentive fans the world over. As an integral performer in the modern day jazz-soul scene, previous support has included selectors Gilles Peterson & Jamz Supernova (BBC 6 Music), Jamie Cullum (BBC Radio 2), China Moses (Jazz FM) & Laurent Garnier (PBB France), along with stations such as NTS, Lot Radio, KEXP & KCRW, and publications including OkayPlayer, Dazed and The Vinyl Factory. Along with a recent foray into the USA market with a string of successful shows, Allysha Joy has performed alongside acts such as Snarky Puppy, PJ Morton, The Teskey Brothers, Kokoroko and Children of Zeus, to name a few.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.netMore