Hyperglyph is the first new album in 11 years from composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor’s long-running Chicago Underground Duo project. Mazurek and Taylor have played music together in a multitude of formations over nearly three decades, including their ongoing partnership in Mazurek’s large-format-skyward-expressionism vehicle Exploding Star Orchestra, in the expanded Chicago Underground Trio, Quartet and Orchestra (all with guitarist Jeff Parker), as well as a plethora of other assemblages. The early albums by the Duo have proven to be embryonic blueprints for the avant-jazz / electronic / indie rock hybridizing of the time, making them majorly important moments in the articulation of the “jazz” dimensionality of the then-burgeoning "post rock" sound. That sound, of course, was being transmitted far and wide due to the success of these groups as well as the Mazurek/Parker project Isotope 217, and the Chicago Underground’s frequently-intersecting collaborators in Tortoise. Just as most of the still-working projects born of that era have evolved, reconfigured, and grown, the Chicago Underground Duo has undergone a number of musical moltings, with the project always in the background of disparate individual aural investigations. The concurrent personal evolutions of Mazurek and Taylor as the Duo project drops off and picks back up makes it a true reflection of their own lives and friendship. Available Friday August 15th, 2025.
Track listing
1 Click Song
2 Hyperglyph
3 Rhythm Cloth
4 Contents of Your Heavenly Body
5 The Gathering
6 Plymouth
7 Hemiunu
8 Egyptian Suite / Part 1: The Architect
9 Egyptian Suite / Part 2: Triangulation of Light
10 Egyptian Suite / Part 3: Architectronics of Time
11 Succulent Amber
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Track listing
1 Click Song
2 Hyperglyph
3 Rhythm Cloth
4 Contents of Your Heavenly Body
5 The Gathering
6 Plymouth
7 Hemiunu
8 Egyptian Suite / Part 1: The Architect
9 Egyptian Suite / Part 2: Triangulation of Light
10 Egyptian Suite / Part 3: Architectronics of Time
11 Succulent Amber
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
More records from Chicago Underground Duo
Hyperglyph is the first new album in 11 years from composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor’s long-running Chicago Underground Duo project. Mazurek and Taylor have played music together in a multitude of formations over nearly three decades, including their ongoing partnership in Mazurek’s large-format-skyward-expressionism vehicle Exploding Star Orchestra, in the expanded Chicago Underground Trio, Quartet and Orchestra (all with guitarist Jeff Parker), as well as a plethora of other assemblages. The early albums by the Duo have proven to be embryonic blueprints for the avant-jazz / electronic / indie rock hybridizing of the time, making them majorly important moments in the articulation of the “jazz” dimensionality of the then-burgeoning "post rock" sound. That sound, of course, was being transmitted far and wide due to the success of these groups as well as the Mazurek/Parker project Isotope 217, and the Chicago Underground’s frequently-intersecting collaborators in Tortoise. Just as most of the still-working projects born of that era have evolved, reconfigured, and grown, the Chicago Underground Duo has undergone a number of musical moltings, with the project always in the background of disparate individual aural investigations. The concurrent personal evolutions of Mazurek and Taylor as the Duo project drops off and picks back up makes it a true reflection of their own lives and friendship. Available Friday August 15th, 2025.
Track listing
1 Click Song
2 Hyperglyph
3 Rhythm Cloth
4 Contents of Your Heavenly Body
5 The Gathering
6 Plymouth
7 Hemiunu
8 Egyptian Suite / Part 1: The Architect
9 Egyptian Suite / Part 2: Triangulation of Light
10 Egyptian Suite / Part 3: Architectronics of Time
11 Succulent Amber
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Track listing
1 Click Song
2 Hyperglyph
3 Rhythm Cloth
4 Contents of Your Heavenly Body
5 The Gathering
6 Plymouth
7 Hemiunu
8 Egyptian Suite / Part 1: The Architect
9 Egyptian Suite / Part 2: Triangulation of Light
10 Egyptian Suite / Part 3: Architectronics of Time
11 Succulent Amber
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
More records from International Anthem
Over the course of 2025 IARC will be celebrating their eleventh year of existence by revisiting some of the most celebrated (and hard to find) entries in their decade of releases. These LP packages will be presented with new liner notes, new insert booklets, and the fresh 2025 redesign of their iconic obi and dome logo. They will also be at a price point intended to help make it easier for stores to stock and sell these essential pieces of their catalog.
TRACKLIST
Side A
1. Visit Croatia
2. What’s Missing
3. Song of the Foundling
4. Whisky Story Time
5. Not Now Jesus
6. If You’re Sure You Want To
Side B
7. The Lucky Ones (feat. Danalogue)
8. Why, Buzzardman Why
9. Not My Ask
10. Turpentine
11. I Hope
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
TRACKLIST
Side A
1. Visit Croatia
2. What’s Missing
3. Song of the Foundling
4. Whisky Story Time
5. Not Now Jesus
6. If You’re Sure You Want To
Side B
7. The Lucky Ones (feat. Danalogue)
8. Why, Buzzardman Why
9. Not My Ask
10. Turpentine
11. I Hope
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Over the course of 2025 IARC will be celebrating their eleventh year of existence by revisiting some of the most celebrated (and hard to find) entries in their decade of releases. These LP packages will be presented with new liner notes, new insert booklets, and the fresh 2025 redesign of their iconic obi and dome logo. They will also be at a price point intended to help make it easier for stores to stock and sell these essential pieces of their catalog.
TRACKLIST
Side A
1. Visit Croatia
2. What’s Missing
3. Song of the Foundling
4. Whisky Story Time
5. Not Now Jesus
6. If You’re Sure You Want To
Side B
7. The Lucky Ones (feat. Danalogue)
8. Why, Buzzardman Why
9. Not My Ask
10. Turpentine
11. I Hope
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
TRACKLIST
Side A
1. Visit Croatia
2. What’s Missing
3. Song of the Foundling
4. Whisky Story Time
5. Not Now Jesus
6. If You’re Sure You Want To
Side B
7. The Lucky Ones (feat. Danalogue)
8. Why, Buzzardman Why
9. Not My Ask
10. Turpentine
11. I Hope
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Over the course of 2025 IARC will be celebrating their eleventh year of existence by revisiting some of the most celebrated (and hard to find) entries in their decade of releases. These LP packages will be presented with new liner notes, new insert booklets, and the fresh 2025 redesign of their iconic obi and dome logo. They will also be at a price point intended to help make it easier for stores to stock and sell these essential pieces of their catalog.
TRACKLIST
Side A
1. Birds of Paradise
2. Prayer for Amerikkka Pt. 1 & 2
3. Lesterlude
4. Twenty-Three N Me, Jupiter Redux
5. Whales
Side B
1. Simple Silver Surfer
2. Bird Dogs of Paradise
3. Nuevo Roquero Estéreo
4. Love Song (for Assholes & Clowns)
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
TRACKLIST
Side A
1. Birds of Paradise
2. Prayer for Amerikkka Pt. 1 & 2
3. Lesterlude
4. Twenty-Three N Me, Jupiter Redux
5. Whales
Side B
1. Simple Silver Surfer
2. Bird Dogs of Paradise
3. Nuevo Roquero Estéreo
4. Love Song (for Assholes & Clowns)
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their second album, How You Been, finds the supergroup of prolific composer/producers pushing ever further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their debut Small Medium Large, which was lauded as “awe-inspiring” by Glide, “exuberant” by the Los Angeles Times, and “an exciting milestone” by Pitchfork.
How You Been represents a breakthrough in the musical language of the group. This new work was crafted via extensive post-production of recorded improvisations from a handful of shows in a similar fashion to their debut, but whereas Small Medium Large was constructed from analog tapes of the band’s very first (and very modest) shows at bygone Highland Park LA venue ETA, How You Been was built with a far higher level of self-awareness and a far deeper pool of source material.
As SML has evolved and spread out in space-time, their fluencies, both as an improvising unit in performance and as a production team in the studio, have sharpened. At inception the band inspired disparate but distinctive artist comparisons like Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, and electric Miles Davis, as well as assorted genre touchpoints like Afrobeat, kosmiche, proto-techno and new-jazz. With How You Been their work manages to both collapse and explode such derivatives, displaying a new, high resolution version of SML, fully-flowered into a new strain of sound, bound to incite its own copycats in due time.
“SML might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter.” - Pitchfork
It’s important to note that SML’s sound wasn’t created in a vacuum. The band is part of an extensive community of creative musicians who collaborate in a multitude of ways, and that community has proven to be essential to a growing family tree of innovative, genre-expanding music. Los Angeles in the 2020s is a musical Petri dish in the same way that Cologne & Dusseldorf were for the birth of Krautrock; Canterbury for progressive rock in late-60s; NYC for No Wave & the Downtown sound in the late 70s and 80s; Chicago for genreless, Tortoise-adjacent sounds in the 90s. The musicians of SML represent the core of a new school within the Los Angeles jazz and improvised music scene that seems to breed infinitely overlapping combinations, including Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio, Anna Butterss’s own band (as heard on 2024’s Mighty Vertebrate), and various other solo and ensemble projects encompassing every single member of the SML, respectively. Available Friday November 7th, 2025.
Listen: listen.k7.com/e29444dd-0fd1-4859-91d1-6ff8d0730dd0
Tracklist:
1.1Gutteral Utterance
1.2Chicago Four
1.3Taking out the Trash
1.4Plankton
1.5Chicago Three
1.6Daves
1.7Old Mytth
1.8Stepping In / The Loop
1.9Brood Board SHROOM
1.10Odd Evens
1.11How You Been
1.12Moving Walkway
1.13Mouth Words
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
How You Been represents a breakthrough in the musical language of the group. This new work was crafted via extensive post-production of recorded improvisations from a handful of shows in a similar fashion to their debut, but whereas Small Medium Large was constructed from analog tapes of the band’s very first (and very modest) shows at bygone Highland Park LA venue ETA, How You Been was built with a far higher level of self-awareness and a far deeper pool of source material.
As SML has evolved and spread out in space-time, their fluencies, both as an improvising unit in performance and as a production team in the studio, have sharpened. At inception the band inspired disparate but distinctive artist comparisons like Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, and electric Miles Davis, as well as assorted genre touchpoints like Afrobeat, kosmiche, proto-techno and new-jazz. With How You Been their work manages to both collapse and explode such derivatives, displaying a new, high resolution version of SML, fully-flowered into a new strain of sound, bound to incite its own copycats in due time.
“SML might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter.” - Pitchfork
It’s important to note that SML’s sound wasn’t created in a vacuum. The band is part of an extensive community of creative musicians who collaborate in a multitude of ways, and that community has proven to be essential to a growing family tree of innovative, genre-expanding music. Los Angeles in the 2020s is a musical Petri dish in the same way that Cologne & Dusseldorf were for the birth of Krautrock; Canterbury for progressive rock in late-60s; NYC for No Wave & the Downtown sound in the late 70s and 80s; Chicago for genreless, Tortoise-adjacent sounds in the 90s. The musicians of SML represent the core of a new school within the Los Angeles jazz and improvised music scene that seems to breed infinitely overlapping combinations, including Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio, Anna Butterss’s own band (as heard on 2024’s Mighty Vertebrate), and various other solo and ensemble projects encompassing every single member of the SML, respectively. Available Friday November 7th, 2025.
Listen: listen.k7.com/e29444dd-0fd1-4859-91d1-6ff8d0730dd0
Tracklist:
1.1Gutteral Utterance
1.2Chicago Four
1.3Taking out the Trash
1.4Plankton
1.5Chicago Three
1.6Daves
1.7Old Mytth
1.8Stepping In / The Loop
1.9Brood Board SHROOM
1.10Odd Evens
1.11How You Been
1.12Moving Walkway
1.13Mouth Words
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
col. 1LP Plankton
SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their second album, How You Been, finds the supergroup of prolific composer/producers pushing ever further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their debut Small Medium Large, which was lauded as “awe-inspiring” by Glide, “exuberant” by the Los Angeles Times, and “an exciting milestone” by Pitchfork.
How You Been represents a breakthrough in the musical language of the group. This new work was crafted via extensive post-production of recorded improvisations from a handful of shows in a similar fashion to their debut, but whereas Small Medium Large was constructed from analog tapes of the band’s very first (and very modest) shows at bygone Highland Park LA venue ETA, How You Been was built with a far higher level of self-awareness and a far deeper pool of source material.
As SML has evolved and spread out in space-time, their fluencies, both as an improvising unit in performance and as a production team in the studio, have sharpened. At inception the band inspired disparate but distinctive artist comparisons like Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, and electric Miles Davis, as well as assorted genre touchpoints like Afrobeat, kosmiche, proto-techno and new-jazz. With How You Been their work manages to both collapse and explode such derivatives, displaying a new, high resolution version of SML, fully-flowered into a new strain of sound, bound to incite its own copycats in due time.
“SML might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter.” - Pitchfork
It’s important to note that SML’s sound wasn’t created in a vacuum. The band is part of an extensive community of creative musicians who collaborate in a multitude of ways, and that community has proven to be essential to a growing family tree of innovative, genre-expanding music. Los Angeles in the 2020s is a musical Petri dish in the same way that Cologne & Dusseldorf were for the birth of Krautrock; Canterbury for progressive rock in late-60s; NYC for No Wave & the Downtown sound in the late 70s and 80s; Chicago for genreless, Tortoise-adjacent sounds in the 90s. The musicians of SML represent the core of a new school within the Los Angeles jazz and improvised music scene that seems to breed infinitely overlapping combinations, including Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio, Anna Butterss’s own band (as heard on 2024’s Mighty Vertebrate), and various other solo and ensemble projects encompassing every single member of the SML, respectively. Available Friday November 7th, 2025.
Listen: listen.k7.com/e29444dd-0fd1-4859-91d1-6ff8d0730dd0
Tracklist:
1.1Gutteral Utterance
1.2Chicago Four
1.3Taking out the Trash
1.4Plankton
1.5Chicago Three
1.6Daves
1.7Old Mytth
1.8Stepping In / The Loop
1.9Brood Board SHROOM
1.10Odd Evens
1.11How You Been
1.12Moving Walkway
1.13Mouth Words
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their second album, How You Been, finds the supergroup of prolific composer/producers pushing ever further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their debut Small Medium Large, which was lauded as “awe-inspiring” by Glide, “exuberant” by the Los Angeles Times, and “an exciting milestone” by Pitchfork.
How You Been represents a breakthrough in the musical language of the group. This new work was crafted via extensive post-production of recorded improvisations from a handful of shows in a similar fashion to their debut, but whereas Small Medium Large was constructed from analog tapes of the band’s very first (and very modest) shows at bygone Highland Park LA venue ETA, How You Been was built with a far higher level of self-awareness and a far deeper pool of source material.
As SML has evolved and spread out in space-time, their fluencies, both as an improvising unit in performance and as a production team in the studio, have sharpened. At inception the band inspired disparate but distinctive artist comparisons like Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, and electric Miles Davis, as well as assorted genre touchpoints like Afrobeat, kosmiche, proto-techno and new-jazz. With How You Been their work manages to both collapse and explode such derivatives, displaying a new, high resolution version of SML, fully-flowered into a new strain of sound, bound to incite its own copycats in due time.
“SML might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter.” - Pitchfork
It’s important to note that SML’s sound wasn’t created in a vacuum. The band is part of an extensive community of creative musicians who collaborate in a multitude of ways, and that community has proven to be essential to a growing family tree of innovative, genre-expanding music. Los Angeles in the 2020s is a musical Petri dish in the same way that Cologne & Dusseldorf were for the birth of Krautrock; Canterbury for progressive rock in late-60s; NYC for No Wave & the Downtown sound in the late 70s and 80s; Chicago for genreless, Tortoise-adjacent sounds in the 90s. The musicians of SML represent the core of a new school within the Los Angeles jazz and improvised music scene that seems to breed infinitely overlapping combinations, including Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio, Anna Butterss’s own band (as heard on 2024’s Mighty Vertebrate), and various other solo and ensemble projects encompassing every single member of the SML, respectively. Available Friday November 7th, 2025.
Listen: listen.k7.com/e29444dd-0fd1-4859-91d1-6ff8d0730dd0
Tracklist:
1.1Gutteral Utterance
1.2Chicago Four
1.3Taking out the Trash
1.4Plankton
1.5Chicago Three
1.6Daves
1.7Old Mytth
1.8Stepping In / The Loop
1.9Brood Board SHROOM
1.10Odd Evens
1.11How You Been
1.12Moving Walkway
1.13Mouth Words
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Digipak
SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their second album, How You Been, finds the supergroup of prolific composer/producers pushing ever further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their debut Small Medium Large, which was lauded as “awe-inspiring” by Glide, “exuberant” by the Los Angeles Times, and “an exciting milestone” by Pitchfork.
How You Been represents a breakthrough in the musical language of the group. This new work was crafted via extensive post-production of recorded improvisations from a handful of shows in a similar fashion to their debut, but whereas Small Medium Large was constructed from analog tapes of the band’s very first (and very modest) shows at bygone Highland Park LA venue ETA, How You Been was built with a far higher level of self-awareness and a far deeper pool of source material.
As SML has evolved and spread out in space-time, their fluencies, both as an improvising unit in performance and as a production team in the studio, have sharpened. At inception the band inspired disparate but distinctive artist comparisons like Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, and electric Miles Davis, as well as assorted genre touchpoints like Afrobeat, kosmiche, proto-techno and new-jazz. With How You Been their work manages to both collapse and explode such derivatives, displaying a new, high resolution version of SML, fully-flowered into a new strain of sound, bound to incite its own copycats in due time.
“SML might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter.” - Pitchfork
It’s important to note that SML’s sound wasn’t created in a vacuum. The band is part of an extensive community of creative musicians who collaborate in a multitude of ways, and that community has proven to be essential to a growing family tree of innovative, genre-expanding music. Los Angeles in the 2020s is a musical Petri dish in the same way that Cologne & Dusseldorf were for the birth of Krautrock; Canterbury for progressive rock in late-60s; NYC for No Wave & the Downtown sound in the late 70s and 80s; Chicago for genreless, Tortoise-adjacent sounds in the 90s. The musicians of SML represent the core of a new school within the Los Angeles jazz and improvised music scene that seems to breed infinitely overlapping combinations, including Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio, Anna Butterss’s own band (as heard on 2024’s Mighty Vertebrate), and various other solo and ensemble projects encompassing every single member of the SML, respectively. Available Friday November 7th, 2025.
Listen: listen.k7.com/e29444dd-0fd1-4859-91d1-6ff8d0730dd0
Tracklist:
1.1Gutteral Utterance
1.2Chicago Four
1.3Taking out the Trash
1.4Plankton
1.5Chicago Three
1.6Daves
1.7Old Mytth
1.8Stepping In / The Loop
1.9Brood Board SHROOM
1.10Odd Evens
1.11How You Been
1.12Moving Walkway
1.13Mouth Words
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their second album, How You Been, finds the supergroup of prolific composer/producers pushing ever further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their debut Small Medium Large, which was lauded as “awe-inspiring” by Glide, “exuberant” by the Los Angeles Times, and “an exciting milestone” by Pitchfork.
How You Been represents a breakthrough in the musical language of the group. This new work was crafted via extensive post-production of recorded improvisations from a handful of shows in a similar fashion to their debut, but whereas Small Medium Large was constructed from analog tapes of the band’s very first (and very modest) shows at bygone Highland Park LA venue ETA, How You Been was built with a far higher level of self-awareness and a far deeper pool of source material.
As SML has evolved and spread out in space-time, their fluencies, both as an improvising unit in performance and as a production team in the studio, have sharpened. At inception the band inspired disparate but distinctive artist comparisons like Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, and electric Miles Davis, as well as assorted genre touchpoints like Afrobeat, kosmiche, proto-techno and new-jazz. With How You Been their work manages to both collapse and explode such derivatives, displaying a new, high resolution version of SML, fully-flowered into a new strain of sound, bound to incite its own copycats in due time.
“SML might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter.” - Pitchfork
It’s important to note that SML’s sound wasn’t created in a vacuum. The band is part of an extensive community of creative musicians who collaborate in a multitude of ways, and that community has proven to be essential to a growing family tree of innovative, genre-expanding music. Los Angeles in the 2020s is a musical Petri dish in the same way that Cologne & Dusseldorf were for the birth of Krautrock; Canterbury for progressive rock in late-60s; NYC for No Wave & the Downtown sound in the late 70s and 80s; Chicago for genreless, Tortoise-adjacent sounds in the 90s. The musicians of SML represent the core of a new school within the Los Angeles jazz and improvised music scene that seems to breed infinitely overlapping combinations, including Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio, Anna Butterss’s own band (as heard on 2024’s Mighty Vertebrate), and various other solo and ensemble projects encompassing every single member of the SML, respectively. Available Friday November 7th, 2025.
Listen: listen.k7.com/e29444dd-0fd1-4859-91d1-6ff8d0730dd0
Tracklist:
1.1Gutteral Utterance
1.2Chicago Four
1.3Taking out the Trash
1.4Plankton
1.5Chicago Three
1.6Daves
1.7Old Mytth
1.8Stepping In / The Loop
1.9Brood Board SHROOM
1.10Odd Evens
1.11How You Been
1.12Moving Walkway
1.13Mouth Words
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
With Touch, the Tortoise band members — Jeff Parker, Dan Bitney, Douglas McCombs, John Herndon, and John McEntire — harness their collectivist songwriting approach, a slightly anarchistic but resolutely egalitarian process where ideas triumph over ego towards an abstracted muscularity.
Recorded between the three cities — Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago — Touch is the result of an intentional effort by these five musicians to reconnect, recenter, and reinvigorate their sound for what is perhaps the group’s most diverse release to date.
Tracklisting:
1 Vexations
2 Layered Presence
3 Works and Days
4 Elka
5 Promenade À Deux
6 Axial Seamount
7 A Title Comes
8 Rated OG
9 Oganesson
10 Night Gang
Listen: https://listen.k7.com/a8e7bf74-0b1d-46a3-aa70-5ae6f5cf72a6
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Recorded between the three cities — Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago — Touch is the result of an intentional effort by these five musicians to reconnect, recenter, and reinvigorate their sound for what is perhaps the group’s most diverse release to date.
Tracklisting:
1 Vexations
2 Layered Presence
3 Works and Days
4 Elka
5 Promenade À Deux
6 Axial Seamount
7 A Title Comes
8 Rated OG
9 Oganesson
10 Night Gang
Listen: https://listen.k7.com/a8e7bf74-0b1d-46a3-aa70-5ae6f5cf72a6
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
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Germany
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The title of Tom Skinner’s first release under his own name is a reference to cellist Abdul Wadud’s ultra-rare 1978 solo album By Myself, which Skinner listened to repeatedly during lockdown. Wadud’s album was privately pressed on his own label, Bisharra, and whilst Skinner’s title uses the more conventional spelling of this common Arabic name, they both have the same intention or meaning: it translates as ‘good news’, or ‘the bringer of good news’.
Voices of Bishara began life when Tom Skinner asked some musician friends to join him for a Played Twice session at London’s Brilliant Corners. The regular event had a simple format: play a classic album in full through their audiophile system and then have an elite ensemble improvise their response. The night in question focused on drummer Tony Williams’ 1964 Blue Note album Life Time and the music he and his friends conjured up was so special that it inspired Skinner to write an album’s-worth of phenomenal new music based on the work of Wadud, with a process inspired by this group-reimagining of Life Time.
The result is a tight, hypnotic and unique 31-minutes of music. Voices of Bishara is sculpted around timeless and deeply emotional music that contains masses of movement and exceptional harmonic depth and texture. It sweeps and soars through soundworlds, rich in musicality and always anchored by the deep doubling of cello and bass. It also, of course, contains Skinner’s percussive magic.
“We’re individual voices, coming together collectively,” says Skinner. “The idea was that we could collectively bring something more positive to the table. It’s the start of something.”
Tom Skinner and Voices of Bishara: bringers of good news.
Tracklist
1.1Bishara
1.2Red 2
1.3The Journey
1.4The Day After Tomorrow
1.5Voices (of the Past)
1.6Quiet as It's Kept
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Voices of Bishara began life when Tom Skinner asked some musician friends to join him for a Played Twice session at London’s Brilliant Corners. The regular event had a simple format: play a classic album in full through their audiophile system and then have an elite ensemble improvise their response. The night in question focused on drummer Tony Williams’ 1964 Blue Note album Life Time and the music he and his friends conjured up was so special that it inspired Skinner to write an album’s-worth of phenomenal new music based on the work of Wadud, with a process inspired by this group-reimagining of Life Time.
The result is a tight, hypnotic and unique 31-minutes of music. Voices of Bishara is sculpted around timeless and deeply emotional music that contains masses of movement and exceptional harmonic depth and texture. It sweeps and soars through soundworlds, rich in musicality and always anchored by the deep doubling of cello and bass. It also, of course, contains Skinner’s percussive magic.
“We’re individual voices, coming together collectively,” says Skinner. “The idea was that we could collectively bring something more positive to the table. It’s the start of something.”
Tom Skinner and Voices of Bishara: bringers of good news.
Tracklist
1.1Bishara
1.2Red 2
1.3The Journey
1.4The Day After Tomorrow
1.5Voices (of the Past)
1.6Quiet as It's Kept
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Tracklisting
1 Sound then Words
2 We would lift our Voice...
3 We are calling out in this moment…
4 The Water is Rising / as we surpass the firing squad…
5 We have work to do... (speaking after the concert)
Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople is the first collaborative
album from poet/vocalist Saul Williams and percussionist/producer Carlos Niño.
The album was recorded live underneath black oak and walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024.
The performance, which was organized by Noah Klein of Living Earth on the grounds of longstanding conservationist organization TreePeople, was the first of its kind for Williams and Niño, who have been friends since the late 1990s.
For the occasion, Niño assembled and directed an ensemble of frequent collaborators including Nate Mercereau (Guitar Synthesizer, Live Sampling with Midi Guitar, Sample Sources), Aaron Shaw (Flute, Soprano Saxophone with Pedals, Tenor Saxophone), Andres Renteria (Bells, Congas, Egyptian Rattle Drum, Hand Drums, Percussion), Maia (Flute, Vibraphone, Voice), Francesca Heart (Computer, Conch Shell, Sound Design), and Kamasi Washington (Tenor Saxophone). Available Friday September 19th, 2025.
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1 Sound then Words
2 We would lift our Voice...
3 We are calling out in this moment…
4 The Water is Rising / as we surpass the firing squad…
5 We have work to do... (speaking after the concert)
Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople is the first collaborative
album from poet/vocalist Saul Williams and percussionist/producer Carlos Niño.
The album was recorded live underneath black oak and walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024.
The performance, which was organized by Noah Klein of Living Earth on the grounds of longstanding conservationist organization TreePeople, was the first of its kind for Williams and Niño, who have been friends since the late 1990s.
For the occasion, Niño assembled and directed an ensemble of frequent collaborators including Nate Mercereau (Guitar Synthesizer, Live Sampling with Midi Guitar, Sample Sources), Aaron Shaw (Flute, Soprano Saxophone with Pedals, Tenor Saxophone), Andres Renteria (Bells, Congas, Egyptian Rattle Drum, Hand Drums, Percussion), Maia (Flute, Vibraphone, Voice), Francesca Heart (Computer, Conch Shell, Sound Design), and Kamasi Washington (Tenor Saxophone). Available Friday September 19th, 2025.
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2LP Green splatter
Tracklisting
1 Sound then Words
2 We would lift our Voice...
3 We are calling out in this moment…
4 The Water is Rising / as we surpass the firing squad…
5 We have work to do... (speaking after the concert)
Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople is the first collaborative
album from poet/vocalist Saul Williams and percussionist/producer Carlos Niño.
The album was recorded live underneath black oak and walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024.
The performance, which was organized by Noah Klein of Living Earth on the grounds of longstanding conservationist organization TreePeople, was the first of its kind for Williams and Niño, who have been friends since the late 1990s.
For the occasion, Niño assembled and directed an ensemble of frequent collaborators including Nate Mercereau (Guitar Synthesizer, Live Sampling with Midi Guitar, Sample Sources), Aaron Shaw (Flute, Soprano Saxophone with Pedals, Tenor Saxophone), Andres Renteria (Bells, Congas, Egyptian Rattle Drum, Hand Drums, Percussion), Maia (Flute, Vibraphone, Voice), Francesca Heart (Computer, Conch Shell, Sound Design), and Kamasi Washington (Tenor Saxophone). Available Friday September 19th, 2025.
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Tracklisting
1 Sound then Words
2 We would lift our Voice...
3 We are calling out in this moment…
4 The Water is Rising / as we surpass the firing squad…
5 We have work to do... (speaking after the concert)
Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople is the first collaborative
album from poet/vocalist Saul Williams and percussionist/producer Carlos Niño.
The album was recorded live underneath black oak and walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024.
The performance, which was organized by Noah Klein of Living Earth on the grounds of longstanding conservationist organization TreePeople, was the first of its kind for Williams and Niño, who have been friends since the late 1990s.
For the occasion, Niño assembled and directed an ensemble of frequent collaborators including Nate Mercereau (Guitar Synthesizer, Live Sampling with Midi Guitar, Sample Sources), Aaron Shaw (Flute, Soprano Saxophone with Pedals, Tenor Saxophone), Andres Renteria (Bells, Congas, Egyptian Rattle Drum, Hand Drums, Percussion), Maia (Flute, Vibraphone, Voice), Francesca Heart (Computer, Conch Shell, Sound Design), and Kamasi Washington (Tenor Saxophone). Available Friday September 19th, 2025.
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CD
Tracklisting
1 Sound then Words
2 We would lift our Voice...
3 We are calling out in this moment…
4 The Water is Rising / as we surpass the firing squad…
5 We have work to do... (speaking after the concert)
Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople is the first collaborative
album from poet/vocalist Saul Williams and percussionist/producer Carlos Niño.
The album was recorded live underneath black oak and walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024.
The performance, which was organized by Noah Klein of Living Earth on the grounds of longstanding conservationist organization TreePeople, was the first of its kind for Williams and Niño, who have been friends since the late 1990s.
For the occasion, Niño assembled and directed an ensemble of frequent collaborators including Nate Mercereau (Guitar Synthesizer, Live Sampling with Midi Guitar, Sample Sources), Aaron Shaw (Flute, Soprano Saxophone with Pedals, Tenor Saxophone), Andres Renteria (Bells, Congas, Egyptian Rattle Drum, Hand Drums, Percussion), Maia (Flute, Vibraphone, Voice), Francesca Heart (Computer, Conch Shell, Sound Design), and Kamasi Washington (Tenor Saxophone). Available Friday September 19th, 2025.
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Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Tracklisting
1 Sound then Words
2 We would lift our Voice...
3 We are calling out in this moment…
4 The Water is Rising / as we surpass the firing squad…
5 We have work to do... (speaking after the concert)
Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople is the first collaborative
album from poet/vocalist Saul Williams and percussionist/producer Carlos Niño.
The album was recorded live underneath black oak and walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024.
The performance, which was organized by Noah Klein of Living Earth on the grounds of longstanding conservationist organization TreePeople, was the first of its kind for Williams and Niño, who have been friends since the late 1990s.
For the occasion, Niño assembled and directed an ensemble of frequent collaborators including Nate Mercereau (Guitar Synthesizer, Live Sampling with Midi Guitar, Sample Sources), Aaron Shaw (Flute, Soprano Saxophone with Pedals, Tenor Saxophone), Andres Renteria (Bells, Congas, Egyptian Rattle Drum, Hand Drums, Percussion), Maia (Flute, Vibraphone, Voice), Francesca Heart (Computer, Conch Shell, Sound Design), and Kamasi Washington (Tenor Saxophone). Available Friday September 19th, 2025.
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Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Over the course of 2025 IARC will be celebrating their eleventh year of existence by revisiting some of the most celebrated (and hard to find) entries in their decade of releases. These LP packages will be presented with new liner notes, new insert booklets, and the fresh 2025 redesign of their iconic obi and dome logo. They will also be at a price point intended to help make it easier for stores to stock and sell these essential pieces of their catalog. Angel Bat Dawid"s International Anthem debut The Oracle introduced her multifaceted voice to the world. The response to its modest, initial cassette/digital release in January of 2019 was immediate, and immense.
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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Over the course of 2025 IARC will be celebrating their eleventh year of existence by revisiting some of the most celebrated (and hard to find) entries in their decade of releases. These LP packages will be presented with new liner notes, new insert booklets, and the fresh 2025 redesign of their iconic obi and dome logo. They will also be at a price point intended to help make it easier for stores to stock and sell these essential pieces of their catalog. Recordings from the Åland Islands, the duo debut by synthesist Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer, is a truly unique series of pieces that marry acoustic and electronic sounds with field recordings, all captured on a trip to the titular Baltic archipelago.
Tracklist
1.1In Aland Air
1.2On the Other Sea
1.3Snacko
1.4Stureby House Piano
1.5Rocky Passage
1.6Kumlinge Kyrka
1.7Voices
1.8By Foot By Sea
1.9Anna's Organ
1.10Archipelago
1.11Under the Midnight Sun
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Tracklist
1.1In Aland Air
1.2On the Other Sea
1.3Snacko
1.4Stureby House Piano
1.5Rocky Passage
1.6Kumlinge Kyrka
1.7Voices
1.8By Foot By Sea
1.9Anna's Organ
1.10Archipelago
1.11Under the Midnight Sun
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The Oganesson Remixes EP follows the March 2025 release of “Oganesson”, which was the first new music released by Tortoise since 2016. The EP includes the original version of “Oganesson” alongside five new remixes of the track created by collaborators and friends of the band, including poet and activist Saul Williams, prolific mastering engineer Heba Kadry, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney,
indie music icons Broken Social Scene, and International Anthem labelmate
Makaya McCraven. The Oganesson Remixes EP is released ahead of a new album
by Tortoise, which will be announced and released this fall via International Anthem.
This very limited 12” record features artwork by Tortoise’s John Herndon.
Trackliste
1.1Oganesson
1.2Oganesson (Saul Williams Remix)
1.3Oganesson (Heba Kadry Remix)
1.4Oganesson (Patrick Carney Remix)
1.5Oganesson (Broken Social Scene Remix)
1.6Oganesson (Makaya McCraven Remix)
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indie music icons Broken Social Scene, and International Anthem labelmate
Makaya McCraven. The Oganesson Remixes EP is released ahead of a new album
by Tortoise, which will be announced and released this fall via International Anthem.
This very limited 12” record features artwork by Tortoise’s John Herndon.
Trackliste
1.1Oganesson
1.2Oganesson (Saul Williams Remix)
1.3Oganesson (Heba Kadry Remix)
1.4Oganesson (Patrick Carney Remix)
1.5Oganesson (Broken Social Scene Remix)
1.6Oganesson (Makaya McCraven Remix)
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Hyperglyph is the first new album in 11 years from composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor’s long-running Chicago Underground Duo project. Mazurek and Taylor have played music together in a multitude of formations over nearly three decades, including their ongoing partnership in Mazurek’s large-format-skyward-expressionism vehicle Exploding Star Orchestra, in the expanded Chicago Underground Trio, Quartet and Orchestra (all with guitarist Jeff Parker), as well as a plethora of other assemblages. The early albums by the Duo have proven to be embryonic blueprints for the avant-jazz / electronic / indie rock hybridizing of the time, making them majorly important moments in the articulation of the “jazz” dimensionality of the then-burgeoning "post rock" sound. That sound, of course, was being transmitted far and wide due to the success of these groups as well as the Mazurek/Parker project Isotope 217, and the Chicago Underground’s frequently-intersecting collaborators in Tortoise. Just as most of the still-working projects born of that era have evolved, reconfigured, and grown, the Chicago Underground Duo has undergone a number of musical moltings, with the project always in the background of disparate individual aural investigations. The concurrent personal evolutions of Mazurek and Taylor as the Duo project drops off and picks back up makes it a true reflection of their own lives and friendship. Available Friday August 15th, 2025.
Track listing
1 Click Song
2 Hyperglyph
3 Rhythm Cloth
4 Contents of Your Heavenly Body
5 The Gathering
6 Plymouth
7 Hemiunu
8 Egyptian Suite / Part 1: The Architect
9 Egyptian Suite / Part 2: Triangulation of Light
10 Egyptian Suite / Part 3: Architectronics of Time
11 Succulent Amber
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Track listing
1 Click Song
2 Hyperglyph
3 Rhythm Cloth
4 Contents of Your Heavenly Body
5 The Gathering
6 Plymouth
7 Hemiunu
8 Egyptian Suite / Part 1: The Architect
9 Egyptian Suite / Part 2: Triangulation of Light
10 Egyptian Suite / Part 3: Architectronics of Time
11 Succulent Amber
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Black 140g 2xLP, in a heavyweight UV-Gloss jacket, with 12"x12" insert booklet, with IA OBI Strip & printed inner sleeves.
Gilles Peterson presents International Anthem is a Deluxe Double LP compilation chronicling the infamous London-based radio host, DJ, label head, curator and cultural impresario's long-standing affinity for and interaction with artists and music from the Chicago-born record label International Anthem.
tracklist:
Side A
1) Chicago, January 13th, 2020
2) Makaya McCraven - The Jaunt
3) Junius Paul - Asé
4) Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger - The Creator Has a Master Plan
5) Resavoir - Taking Flight
6) Irreversible Entanglements - Open The Gates
7) Angel Bat Dawid - We Are Starzz
8) Rob Mazurek - Exploding Star Orchestra - Abstract Dark Energy (Parable 9)
Side B
9) The Most Amazing Time
10) Damon Locks - Black Monument Ensemble - Rebuild a Nation
11) Dos Santos - A Shot in the Dark
12) Daniel Villarreal - In/On
13) Anna Butterss - Pokemans
14) SML - Industry
15) Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - Snåcko
Side C
16) Jeff Parker - Cliche
17) Jamire Williams - And Then the Anointing Fell
18) Carlos Niño & Friends - Please, wake up.
19) Thandi Ntuli with Carlos Niño - Voice and Tongo Experiment
20) Tom Skinner - Quiet as it’s Kept
21) Ruth Goller - Next time I keep my hands down
22) Alabaster DePlume - A Gente Acaba (Vento Em Rosa)
Side D
23) Old Fashioned Chicago Music
24) jaimie branch - theme 001 (live)
25) Tomin - Angela’s Angel
26) Asher Gamedze - Melancholia
27) Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly - MESTIZX (Brownswood Basement Live)
28) Ben LaMar Gay - Oh Great Be The Lake
29) Charles Stepney - Step on Step
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Gilles Peterson presents International Anthem is a Deluxe Double LP compilation chronicling the infamous London-based radio host, DJ, label head, curator and cultural impresario's long-standing affinity for and interaction with artists and music from the Chicago-born record label International Anthem.
tracklist:
Side A
1) Chicago, January 13th, 2020
2) Makaya McCraven - The Jaunt
3) Junius Paul - Asé
4) Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger - The Creator Has a Master Plan
5) Resavoir - Taking Flight
6) Irreversible Entanglements - Open The Gates
7) Angel Bat Dawid - We Are Starzz
8) Rob Mazurek - Exploding Star Orchestra - Abstract Dark Energy (Parable 9)
Side B
9) The Most Amazing Time
10) Damon Locks - Black Monument Ensemble - Rebuild a Nation
11) Dos Santos - A Shot in the Dark
12) Daniel Villarreal - In/On
13) Anna Butterss - Pokemans
14) SML - Industry
15) Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - Snåcko
Side C
16) Jeff Parker - Cliche
17) Jamire Williams - And Then the Anointing Fell
18) Carlos Niño & Friends - Please, wake up.
19) Thandi Ntuli with Carlos Niño - Voice and Tongo Experiment
20) Tom Skinner - Quiet as it’s Kept
21) Ruth Goller - Next time I keep my hands down
22) Alabaster DePlume - A Gente Acaba (Vento Em Rosa)
Side D
23) Old Fashioned Chicago Music
24) jaimie branch - theme 001 (live)
25) Tomin - Angela’s Angel
26) Asher Gamedze - Melancholia
27) Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly - MESTIZX (Brownswood Basement Live)
28) Ben LaMar Gay - Oh Great Be The Lake
29) Charles Stepney - Step on Step
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Over the course of 2025 IARC will be celebrating their eleventh year of existence by revisiting some of the most celebrated (and hard to find) entries in their decade of releases. These LP packages will be presented with new liner notes, new insert booklets, and the fresh 2025 redesign of their iconic obi and dome logo. They will also be at a price point intended to help make it easier for stores to stock and sell these essential pieces of their catalog.
Classic Black 140g LP inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket with 16-page insert booklet (new for IA11, with additional photos, new liner notes written by New Breed bassist / co-producer Paul Bryan, and an in-depth conversation between JP and IARC co-founder Scott McNiece), IARC 2025 obi strip and printed poly-lined printed innersleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST.
https://listen.k7.com/2a605c5a-e78e-4cc5-88cf-b5a9ff52e487
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Classic Black 140g LP inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket with 16-page insert booklet (new for IA11, with additional photos, new liner notes written by New Breed bassist / co-producer Paul Bryan, and an in-depth conversation between JP and IARC co-founder Scott McNiece), IARC 2025 obi strip and printed poly-lined printed innersleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST.
https://listen.k7.com/2a605c5a-e78e-4cc5-88cf-b5a9ff52e487
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Over the course of 2025 IARC will be celebrating their eleventh year of existence by revisiting some of the most celebrated (and hard to find) entries in their decade of releases. These LP packages will be presented with new liner notes, new insert booklets, and the fresh 2025 redesign of their iconic obi and dome logo. They will also be at a price point intended to help make it easier for stores to stock and sell these essential pieces of their catalog.
Classic Black 140g LP inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket with 8-page insert booklet (new for IA11, with additional photos and new liner notes written by IE bassist Luke Stewart), IARC 2025 obi strip and printed poly-lined printed innersleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with new lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST.
https://listen.k7.com/4f6ed595-3399-4ff1-8de6-d4ec011ef652
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Classic Black 140g LP inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket with 8-page insert booklet (new for IA11, with additional photos and new liner notes written by IE bassist Luke Stewart), IARC 2025 obi strip and printed poly-lined printed innersleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with new lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST.
https://listen.k7.com/4f6ed595-3399-4ff1-8de6-d4ec011ef652
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25 killer library music cuts by the German film music maestro on audiophile pressing in deluxe 2x10" set. Uberrare and never released before material from 1968-1976, sourced from Peter Thomas' personal reel-to-reel tape archive. Limited edition of 500 pieces. From brassy big band funk, space jazz, krauty synth experiments to proto-hiphop, cosmic schlagers, heavy easy listening, soulful soundtrack moods and absurdly dreamy LSD ballads, this compilation encompasses the composer's most obscure and yet most transcendent work. Peter Thomas is widely acknowledged as Germany's most inventive film music composer of the 1960s and 1970, best known for his iconic soundtrack work. He scored over 600 films and episodes, from the crime blockbusters of Jerry Cotton and Edgar Wallace to indie arthouse films like Playgirl, Bruce Lee's The Big Boss and the extraterrestrial Space Patrol and Chariot of the Gods. dHis recordings for music libraries often provided an even more leftfield approach. Their visionary 'dope beats' appeal provoked a keen interest from vinyl aficionados, beatmakers and rare groove DJs alike. Unavailable for the public, the original "for professional usage only" albums are now sought-after collector's items that fetch astronomic prices on the 2ndhand market. This double 10" album is the definite selection of Thomas' best library cues from the Golden Ring Records, KPM and DeWolfe catalogues, many of them available publicly for the first time - plus four recently unearthed "lost" tracks from Warner Chappell's CPM Archive series that have never been released on vinyl before. All music was carefully transferred from Peter Thomas' private master tapes and cut in full dynamics, housed in a beautiful fold-out cover with liner notes and private pictures. The compilation was realised in cooperation with Peter Thomas' son Philip who takes care of the Peter Thomas Sound Orchester catalogue after his father's death in 2020.
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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
1
Reuben Lewis & Adam Halliwell - A1 Murder in the Tiki Lounge
2
Reuben Lewis & Adam Halliwell - A2 The Verdict (Trial of the Airpoets)
3
Reuben Lewis & Adam Halliwell - A3 Digital Water Chorus
4
Reuben Lewis & Adam Halliwell - A4 Stygian Vistas
5
Reuben Lewis & Adam Halliwell - B1 As the Errant Mind Sleeps
6
Reuben Lewis & Adam Halliwell - B2 Geriatric Confine
7
Reuben Lewis & Adam Halliwell - B3 Brown's Final Words
8
Reuben Lewis & Adam Halliwell - B4 You've Come This Far
9
Reuben Lewis & Adam Halliwell - B5 Farewell (Words Left Unsaid)
LP
- Collaboration between Australian avant improvisers Reuben Lewis (I Hold The Lion's Paw) and Adam Halliwell (Mildlife, IHTLP).
GENRE/S:
Jazz / Modern Classical
TRACKLISTS:
A1 Murder in the Tiki Lounge
A2 The Verdict (Trial of the Airpoets)
A3 Digital Water Chorus
A4 Stygian Vistas
B1 As the Errant Mind Sleeps
B2 Geriatric Confine
B3 Brown's Final Words
B4 You've Come This Far
B5 Farewell (Words Left Unsaid)
SHORT INFO:
Elations Recordings presents "Return of the Airpoets", an exploratory recording from longtime collaborators Reuben Lewis (I Hold The Lion's Paw) & Adam Halliwell (Mildlife, IHTLP), occupying a unique space between contemporary experimental music and avant jazz. Engineered and mixed by Reuben Lewis in 2023, and featuring guest appearances from acclaimed Australian drummer Ronny Ferella.
"Return of the Airpoets" continues a conversation begun with 'Cygon Dance', an extended duo between Lewis and Halliwell from Halliwell's 2023 LP "Freedom Lapse"; a dialogue that stems from a shared love and respect for Jon Hassell's Fourth World music. Sonic pioneer and adventurer, Hassell's futuristic vision advocated possible musics, stressing plurality and multiplicity. Faithful to his vision, Adam and Reuben, as trailblazers rather than imitators, delight in boundless musical possibilities, adopting Hassell's futurism as stock-in-trade, making it their own while augmented with neo noir hues and hints of the tilted electro-funk of Miles Davis' collaborations with Marcus Miller.
These nine tracks flow together as a unified suite, their shadowy presence stitched from fractured narratives: imaginary crimes, murders, dreams, the unspoken. At the same time, you can detect the artists' meticulous attention to sonic detail, feel the undercurrents, the complex layering. This music has been distilled, winnowed, from extended improv sessions, with the artists - as producers - zeroing in on offcuts, shards, and splinters, seamlessly patching together fragments in post-production to construct intricately layered sound collages, taking a leaf out of Tao Macero's book, building from the ground up.
Who are these airpoets? Their mystifying trial suggests the travails of Joseph K, sentenced for unspecified crimes. But I prefer to see them as fugitives escaped from Robert Bolaño's novel, "Savage Detectives". In Bolaño's book, poet Juan Garcia Madero is granted admission to the shadowy group of poets, the Visceral Realists, whose movement has no clear aims, and whose members "walked backward . . . gazing at a point in the distance, but moving away from it, walking straight toward the unknown." Like the visceral poets, these airpoets, Reuben Lewis and Adam Halliwell, set their sights on a point on the distant horizon, setting off without map or compass, drawing nearer and moving away, towards the unknown.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
- Collaboration between Australian avant improvisers Reuben Lewis (I Hold The Lion's Paw) and Adam Halliwell (Mildlife, IHTLP).
GENRE/S:
Jazz / Modern Classical
TRACKLISTS:
A1 Murder in the Tiki Lounge
A2 The Verdict (Trial of the Airpoets)
A3 Digital Water Chorus
A4 Stygian Vistas
B1 As the Errant Mind Sleeps
B2 Geriatric Confine
B3 Brown's Final Words
B4 You've Come This Far
B5 Farewell (Words Left Unsaid)
SHORT INFO:
Elations Recordings presents "Return of the Airpoets", an exploratory recording from longtime collaborators Reuben Lewis (I Hold The Lion's Paw) & Adam Halliwell (Mildlife, IHTLP), occupying a unique space between contemporary experimental music and avant jazz. Engineered and mixed by Reuben Lewis in 2023, and featuring guest appearances from acclaimed Australian drummer Ronny Ferella.
"Return of the Airpoets" continues a conversation begun with 'Cygon Dance', an extended duo between Lewis and Halliwell from Halliwell's 2023 LP "Freedom Lapse"; a dialogue that stems from a shared love and respect for Jon Hassell's Fourth World music. Sonic pioneer and adventurer, Hassell's futuristic vision advocated possible musics, stressing plurality and multiplicity. Faithful to his vision, Adam and Reuben, as trailblazers rather than imitators, delight in boundless musical possibilities, adopting Hassell's futurism as stock-in-trade, making it their own while augmented with neo noir hues and hints of the tilted electro-funk of Miles Davis' collaborations with Marcus Miller.
These nine tracks flow together as a unified suite, their shadowy presence stitched from fractured narratives: imaginary crimes, murders, dreams, the unspoken. At the same time, you can detect the artists' meticulous attention to sonic detail, feel the undercurrents, the complex layering. This music has been distilled, winnowed, from extended improv sessions, with the artists - as producers - zeroing in on offcuts, shards, and splinters, seamlessly patching together fragments in post-production to construct intricately layered sound collages, taking a leaf out of Tao Macero's book, building from the ground up.
Who are these airpoets? Their mystifying trial suggests the travails of Joseph K, sentenced for unspecified crimes. But I prefer to see them as fugitives escaped from Robert Bolaño's novel, "Savage Detectives". In Bolaño's book, poet Juan Garcia Madero is granted admission to the shadowy group of poets, the Visceral Realists, whose movement has no clear aims, and whose members "walked backward . . . gazing at a point in the distance, but moving away from it, walking straight toward the unknown." Like the visceral poets, these airpoets, Reuben Lewis and Adam Halliwell, set their sights on a point on the distant horizon, setting off without map or compass, drawing nearer and moving away, towards the unknown.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Label:Other People
Cat-No:OP031
Release-Date:05.12.2025
Genre:Electronic, Electronica
Configuration:2LP Excl
Label:Other People
Cat-No:OP031
Release-Date:05.12.2025
Genre:Electronic, Electronica
Configuration:2LP Excl
1
Nicolás Jaar - A1 - Garden Of Eden
2
Nicolás Jaar - A2 - Construction
3
Nicolás Jaar - A3 - Pass The Time
4
Nicolás Jaar - A4 - Survival
5
Nicolás Jaar - B1 - The Fool And His Harem
6
Nicolás Jaar - B2 - Nothingness
7
Nicolás Jaar - B3 - Near Death
8
Nicolás Jaar - B4 - Beasts Of This Earth
9
Nicolás Jaar - C1 - Fall Into Time
10
Nicolás Jaar - C2 - Folie à Deux
11
Nicolás Jaar - C3 - Screams at the Edge of Dawn
12
Nicolás Jaar - C4 - Divorce
13
Nicolás Jaar - C5 - Three Windows
14
Nicolás Jaar - C6 - TouristsD1 - Shame
15
Nicolás Jaar - D1 - Shame
16
Nicolás Jaar - D2 - Tower of Sin
17
Nicolás Jaar - D3 - Club Kapital
18
Nicolás Jaar - D4 - Volver
19
Nicolás Jaar - D5 - Spirit
20
Nicolás Jaar - D6 - Muse
2LP 180g bio vinyl
2. GENRE/S: Electronic / Experimental
3. TRACKLISTS:
A1 - Garden Of Eden
A2 - Construction
A3 - Pass The Time
A4 - Survival
B1 - The Fool And His Harem
B2 - Nothingness
B3 - Near Death
B4 - Beasts Of This Earth
C1 - Fall Into Time
C2 - Folie à Deux
C3 - Screams at the Edge of Dawn
C4 - Divorce
C5 - Three Windows
C6 - TouristsD1 - Shame
D1 - Shame
D2 - Tower of Sin
D3 - Club Kapital
D4 - Volver
D5 - Spirit
D6 - Muse
4. SHORT INFO:
It's been 10 years since Pomegranates - Nicolás Jaar's unofficial/alternative soundtrack to
Sergei Parajanov's 1969 film The Color of Pomegranates - was first released, and to highlight
this occasion we are reissuing the album on vinyl, with the first edition (a collaboration with
the label Mana) having long been out of print.
Longer and slower-releasing than his other albums, Pomegranates often parallels the
cinematic epic on which it’s based, with ideas pursued over long timelines and
across dark landscapes, assembling elements and moods from the aesthetic and folkloric
landscapes of Armenia. Jaar’s identity is perceived within this, folding in his heritage as
Palestinian and Chilean as he attempts to build a musical architecture outwards that frames
as much of the mess and sprawl of life as possible; using a language that investigates the
movement and fluctuation of his own artistic career and character similarly to the film’s tracing
of the coming of age of the young poet, Sayat-Nova.
At times, Pomegranates feels profoundly intimate, as though looking through the archive of a
friend’s music and discovering the accent and common currency that lives within each of
these tracks. Much of Jaar’s most elegant and touching melodic work is nestled here, its
power residing in its simplicity and willingness to speak to the heart and not the mind of the
listener.
In the text document included in the first freely distributed version of the album in 2015, Jaar
writes that the album was conceived during a moment of change, and that the pomegranate
became an icon that heralded that passage of time. The physical publication of Pomegranates
closes one door whilst opening another, keeping promises and marking a significant point in
the career of an artist who restlessly reinvents himself, with a document that illustrates a
common language of lyricism, freedom, and emotional resonance linking his many paths and
projects
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
2. GENRE/S: Electronic / Experimental
3. TRACKLISTS:
A1 - Garden Of Eden
A2 - Construction
A3 - Pass The Time
A4 - Survival
B1 - The Fool And His Harem
B2 - Nothingness
B3 - Near Death
B4 - Beasts Of This Earth
C1 - Fall Into Time
C2 - Folie à Deux
C3 - Screams at the Edge of Dawn
C4 - Divorce
C5 - Three Windows
C6 - TouristsD1 - Shame
D1 - Shame
D2 - Tower of Sin
D3 - Club Kapital
D4 - Volver
D5 - Spirit
D6 - Muse
4. SHORT INFO:
It's been 10 years since Pomegranates - Nicolás Jaar's unofficial/alternative soundtrack to
Sergei Parajanov's 1969 film The Color of Pomegranates - was first released, and to highlight
this occasion we are reissuing the album on vinyl, with the first edition (a collaboration with
the label Mana) having long been out of print.
Longer and slower-releasing than his other albums, Pomegranates often parallels the
cinematic epic on which it’s based, with ideas pursued over long timelines and
across dark landscapes, assembling elements and moods from the aesthetic and folkloric
landscapes of Armenia. Jaar’s identity is perceived within this, folding in his heritage as
Palestinian and Chilean as he attempts to build a musical architecture outwards that frames
as much of the mess and sprawl of life as possible; using a language that investigates the
movement and fluctuation of his own artistic career and character similarly to the film’s tracing
of the coming of age of the young poet, Sayat-Nova.
At times, Pomegranates feels profoundly intimate, as though looking through the archive of a
friend’s music and discovering the accent and common currency that lives within each of
these tracks. Much of Jaar’s most elegant and touching melodic work is nestled here, its
power residing in its simplicity and willingness to speak to the heart and not the mind of the
listener.
In the text document included in the first freely distributed version of the album in 2015, Jaar
writes that the album was conceived during a moment of change, and that the pomegranate
became an icon that heralded that passage of time. The physical publication of Pomegranates
closes one door whilst opening another, keeping promises and marking a significant point in
the career of an artist who restlessly reinvents himself, with a document that illustrates a
common language of lyricism, freedom, and emotional resonance linking his many paths and
projects
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
1
Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah - Awakening
2
Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah - Elemental
3
Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah - Unfolding
4
Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah - Thunbam Nergayil
5
Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah - Seven
6
Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah - Guardian
7
Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah - Kindling
LP
Tracklist:
1. Awakening
2. Elemental
3. Unfolding
4. Thunbam Nergayil
5. Seven
6. Guardian
7. Kindling
Short info:
Syncretic marks the debut full-length from Australian duo Bhairavi Raman, a Western and Carnatic violinist, and Nanthesh Sivarajah, a mridangam player and versatile percussionist. Both artists share a Tamil heritage, a current that hums across the album. Raman, from South India, and Sivarajah, from Sri Lanka, draw lines that connect Western practice and Carnatic tradition. This hybrid is central to Raman’s approach as a violinist, an instrument itself caught between East and West since the late 18th century. Her playing folds history, lineage and experimentation into music that acknowledges inheritance while gently rewiring its circuitry.
Expanding on traditional music can be a precarious practice, but Syncretic never feels heavy-handed. Raman and Sivarajah exercise measured restraint, letting the Carnatic framework breathe even as it is refracted through contemporary tools. Delays, looping, subtle layering and synthesized harmonies tilt tradition into a new light without disguising it.
Even within a contemporary framework, Raman’s rigorous Carnatic training under gurus Sri S. Varadarajan (India), Sri Murali Kumar (Australia) and Sri Gopinath Iyer (Australia) is unmistakable. She captures the spiritual and emotional essence of each raga: on Seven, the playful raga Bahudari becomes both centrepiece and conduit, while on the traditional piece Thunbam Nergayil, drawn from a Tamil poem, we hear a deeply personal iteration, a weeping euphony of mixed emotions hitting all at once. Tradition here is absorbed, expanded and reframed.
Sivarajah’s command of the mridangam, honed by his gurus Sri Jambunathan (Sri Lanka), Sri Balasri Rasiah (Australia) and Sri T. R. Sundaresan (India), is central to his original composition Guardian. He sustains tradition while extending it through layering and sound-spatialisation. The mridangam here functions as both a structural and ornamental force, mapping continuity between inherited form and contemporary sonic architecture.
Syncretic resonates as a space where Tamil heritage, diasporic memory and contemporary practice coalesce. Culture, like sound, circulates, transforms and persists. Tradition is not an archive but living material, a soundworld that lingers in the ears and the imagination.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Tracklist:
1. Awakening
2. Elemental
3. Unfolding
4. Thunbam Nergayil
5. Seven
6. Guardian
7. Kindling
Short info:
Syncretic marks the debut full-length from Australian duo Bhairavi Raman, a Western and Carnatic violinist, and Nanthesh Sivarajah, a mridangam player and versatile percussionist. Both artists share a Tamil heritage, a current that hums across the album. Raman, from South India, and Sivarajah, from Sri Lanka, draw lines that connect Western practice and Carnatic tradition. This hybrid is central to Raman’s approach as a violinist, an instrument itself caught between East and West since the late 18th century. Her playing folds history, lineage and experimentation into music that acknowledges inheritance while gently rewiring its circuitry.
Expanding on traditional music can be a precarious practice, but Syncretic never feels heavy-handed. Raman and Sivarajah exercise measured restraint, letting the Carnatic framework breathe even as it is refracted through contemporary tools. Delays, looping, subtle layering and synthesized harmonies tilt tradition into a new light without disguising it.
Even within a contemporary framework, Raman’s rigorous Carnatic training under gurus Sri S. Varadarajan (India), Sri Murali Kumar (Australia) and Sri Gopinath Iyer (Australia) is unmistakable. She captures the spiritual and emotional essence of each raga: on Seven, the playful raga Bahudari becomes both centrepiece and conduit, while on the traditional piece Thunbam Nergayil, drawn from a Tamil poem, we hear a deeply personal iteration, a weeping euphony of mixed emotions hitting all at once. Tradition here is absorbed, expanded and reframed.
Sivarajah’s command of the mridangam, honed by his gurus Sri Jambunathan (Sri Lanka), Sri Balasri Rasiah (Australia) and Sri T. R. Sundaresan (India), is central to his original composition Guardian. He sustains tradition while extending it through layering and sound-spatialisation. The mridangam here functions as both a structural and ornamental force, mapping continuity between inherited form and contemporary sonic architecture.
Syncretic resonates as a space where Tamil heritage, diasporic memory and contemporary practice coalesce. Culture, like sound, circulates, transforms and persists. Tradition is not an archive but living material, a soundworld that lingers in the ears and the imagination.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
1
Mark Barrott - Coming Up For Air
2
Earthtones - Letting Go, Letting Flow
3
Ocean Moon - Glass Bamboo
4
Alex Albrecht - Sundial
5
Daniel O'Sullican - Crystal Palace (feat Rose Keeler)
6
Lord Of The Isles - Night Blooming Jasmine
7
Chihei Hatakeyama - Angels & Ambergris
8
Steve Roach - In The Light Of Night
Good ambient will always been a comfort blanket during harsh times. Whether from a global or more personal perspective. This collection on Secrets of Sound brings together some real dons of the genre, from Mark Barrott - to Steve Roach, and sequences them into one soothing, calming trip that touches on all different sub-sounds and styles from New Age to celestial. A spoken word intro from long-running ambient radio Jaroslav Kovaracek sets the scene before you're then cast adrift in supreme sonic lushness.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
1
Hydroplane - Houdini's Plane
2
Hydroplane - Incident at Westall
3
Hydroplane - Aspen Blues
4
Hydroplane - On the Mountain
5
Hydroplane - Solar Flare
6
Hydroplane - Valley of Sorrows
7
Hydroplane - The Loneliest Astronaut
8
Hydroplane - To the Lighthouse
9
Hydroplane - I've Got a Buzz
LP
Tracklist:
1. Houdini's Plane
2. Incident at Westall
3. Aspen Blues
4. On the Mountain
5. Solar Flare
6. Valley of Sorrows
7. The Loneliest Astronaut
8. To the Lighthouse
9. I've Got a Buzz
Short info:
A Place In My Memory Is All I Have To Claim is the new album by Australian atmospheric pop trio Hydroplane, the storied 'offshoot' formed by three quarters of independent pop group, The Cat's Miaow. On this, their first music after two decades plus of radio silence, Andrew Withycombe, Kerrie Bolton and Bart Cummings return to the gentle, close-quarters musical world they shared around the turn of the century.
Recorded during 2024 in Melbourne and Ballarat, A Place In My Memory… picks up the thread Hydroplane set down with its precursor, 2001's The Sound Of Changing Places, though you can hear echoes of their other releases, too, with Withycombe noting a through-line from the group's 1998 "Failed Adventure" single. There's little quite like A Place In My Memory…, then or now, though. Maybe you can draw some connections between Hydroplane and their sister group, The Cat's Miaow, while fellow travellers might include Empress, The Ah Club, and further back, Young Marble Giants, Veronique Vincent (the muffled, ticking drum machine also makes me think of Robin Gibb's Robin's Reign).
There's also an umbilical to the bedroom-crafted electronica doing the rounds in the late nineties and early noughties. Hydroplane hint at this through their approach to songwriting, which often builds creatively around loops as structural devices. Through all this, the trio achieve an effortless, organic weightlessness across these nine lovely songs. Many feature Bolton's clear singing voice, drifting along, while guitars, keyboards, drum machines and loops tickertape away. The constituent parts fit together, but they also have a curiously detached quality - think of abstract cloud formations sharing the same sky.
Hydroplane and The Cat's Miaow often dealt in emotional ambiguity and uncertainty, and the uncertainty of the nostalgic. This was always one of the most appealing facets of their music, and A Place In My Memory… is thus named perfectly. I couldn't dream up a better title for the album and its reflections on history, lived experience, and the inevitable tangle between these two phenomena. These reflections variously address such concerns as human cruelty, flight, space travel, adventurism and spiritualism. There's also "To the Lighthouse", not a direct reference to the Virginia Woolf book, but a great title, nonetheless. (They've always had excellent titles, often borrowed, for songs and albums.)
A beautiful collection of drowsy, sleepy pop, humble and quiet, but resolute in its craft, A Place In My Memory Is All I Have To Claim is dream work in practice; a lovely reintroduction. Welcome back, then.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Tracklist:
1. Houdini's Plane
2. Incident at Westall
3. Aspen Blues
4. On the Mountain
5. Solar Flare
6. Valley of Sorrows
7. The Loneliest Astronaut
8. To the Lighthouse
9. I've Got a Buzz
Short info:
A Place In My Memory Is All I Have To Claim is the new album by Australian atmospheric pop trio Hydroplane, the storied 'offshoot' formed by three quarters of independent pop group, The Cat's Miaow. On this, their first music after two decades plus of radio silence, Andrew Withycombe, Kerrie Bolton and Bart Cummings return to the gentle, close-quarters musical world they shared around the turn of the century.
Recorded during 2024 in Melbourne and Ballarat, A Place In My Memory… picks up the thread Hydroplane set down with its precursor, 2001's The Sound Of Changing Places, though you can hear echoes of their other releases, too, with Withycombe noting a through-line from the group's 1998 "Failed Adventure" single. There's little quite like A Place In My Memory…, then or now, though. Maybe you can draw some connections between Hydroplane and their sister group, The Cat's Miaow, while fellow travellers might include Empress, The Ah Club, and further back, Young Marble Giants, Veronique Vincent (the muffled, ticking drum machine also makes me think of Robin Gibb's Robin's Reign).
There's also an umbilical to the bedroom-crafted electronica doing the rounds in the late nineties and early noughties. Hydroplane hint at this through their approach to songwriting, which often builds creatively around loops as structural devices. Through all this, the trio achieve an effortless, organic weightlessness across these nine lovely songs. Many feature Bolton's clear singing voice, drifting along, while guitars, keyboards, drum machines and loops tickertape away. The constituent parts fit together, but they also have a curiously detached quality - think of abstract cloud formations sharing the same sky.
Hydroplane and The Cat's Miaow often dealt in emotional ambiguity and uncertainty, and the uncertainty of the nostalgic. This was always one of the most appealing facets of their music, and A Place In My Memory… is thus named perfectly. I couldn't dream up a better title for the album and its reflections on history, lived experience, and the inevitable tangle between these two phenomena. These reflections variously address such concerns as human cruelty, flight, space travel, adventurism and spiritualism. There's also "To the Lighthouse", not a direct reference to the Virginia Woolf book, but a great title, nonetheless. (They've always had excellent titles, often borrowed, for songs and albums.)
A beautiful collection of drowsy, sleepy pop, humble and quiet, but resolute in its craft, A Place In My Memory Is All I Have To Claim is dream work in practice; a lovely reintroduction. Welcome back, then.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
LP - Territory: WW- UK/USA/CA/Benelux/AU/NZ
2LP LTD VINYL REPRESS ON TRANSPARENT GREEN VINYL
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
2LP LTD VINYL REPRESS ON TRANSPARENT GREEN VINYL
TRACKLIST:
1. Design - Premonition
2. Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4. John Howard - I Tune Into You
5. Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6. Selwin Image - The Unknown
7. Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9. Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean
Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.
All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.
At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.
There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.
The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.
The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Territories: WORLD EXCL UK,US,CA,BENELUX,NZ,AU
2LP / **RED VINYL REPRESS**
TRACKLIST
SIDE 1
1. Hindu Gods of Love
2. Shakedown USA (Lost In Space/Voxx 45 – 1979 – produced by Deniz Tek)
3. Sockman
4. Pensioner Pie
5. Teen Police
6. Rot In Love
7. Accidents (Mixdown Studio Demos -1978)
SIDE 2
1. New Hard Fun
2. Mesmerizer
3. Driving The Special Dead
4. Bongo Flip
5. Twilight Of The Idols
6. Strange Flash
7. Hide & Seek (Trafalgar Demos 1980 - produced by Lobby Loyde)
SIDE 3
1. Date With A Thing
2. Liquor Fit (Trafalgar Demos 1980 – produced by Lobby Loyde)
3. Dying Boy's Crawl
4. Driving The Special Dead
5. Bongo Flip
6. Strange Flash
7. Sock It To Me – Baby! (Live In Los Angeles – 1981)
SIDE 4
1. Twilight Of The Idols
2. I’ve Got Levitation
3. Date With A Thing
4. Shakedown USA
5. Pharmaceutical Au-Go-Go
6. Out Of Our Tree
7. Liquor Fit (Live In Los Angeles – 1981)
HINDU GODS ARE CALLING YOU!!! LONG-AWAITED anthology of material by the legendary Lipstick Killers, who blazed a trail in late ‘70s post-Radio Birdman Sydney before gigging with the likes of the Gun Club and the Flesh Eaters in Los Angeles where they crashed and burned in 1981.
The Lipstick Killers released just one single in their life time – the perfect ’79 Deniz Tek-produced pairing of “Hindu Gods of Love” and ”Shakedown USA” on their own Lost in Space Records and Greg Shaw’s Voxx Records - but a posthumous live album and a couple of archival releases followed. It was all incredible. All that material is included here, as is a plethora of additional stuff, all from the best-available sources (mostly original tapes).
The Lipstick Killers’ enigmatic and high-energy sound – heavily inspired by the Stooges and the ‘60s psychedelic punk sounds of bands like the Thirteenth Floor Elevators and the Chocolate Watchband – bridged the gap between Radio Birdman and subsequent Sydney groups like the Sunnyboys (whose first-ever show was opening for the Lipstick Killers), Lime Spiders, Hoodoo Gurus and the Psychotic Turnbuckles. And of course they anticipated generation after generation of other bands with similar things in mind, right up to today’s ‘60s-inspired freaks like The Straight Arrows, The Living Eyes and Thee Oh Sees.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
2LP / **RED VINYL REPRESS**
TRACKLIST
SIDE 1
1. Hindu Gods of Love
2. Shakedown USA (Lost In Space/Voxx 45 – 1979 – produced by Deniz Tek)
3. Sockman
4. Pensioner Pie
5. Teen Police
6. Rot In Love
7. Accidents (Mixdown Studio Demos -1978)
SIDE 2
1. New Hard Fun
2. Mesmerizer
3. Driving The Special Dead
4. Bongo Flip
5. Twilight Of The Idols
6. Strange Flash
7. Hide & Seek (Trafalgar Demos 1980 - produced by Lobby Loyde)
SIDE 3
1. Date With A Thing
2. Liquor Fit (Trafalgar Demos 1980 – produced by Lobby Loyde)
3. Dying Boy's Crawl
4. Driving The Special Dead
5. Bongo Flip
6. Strange Flash
7. Sock It To Me – Baby! (Live In Los Angeles – 1981)
SIDE 4
1. Twilight Of The Idols
2. I’ve Got Levitation
3. Date With A Thing
4. Shakedown USA
5. Pharmaceutical Au-Go-Go
6. Out Of Our Tree
7. Liquor Fit (Live In Los Angeles – 1981)
HINDU GODS ARE CALLING YOU!!! LONG-AWAITED anthology of material by the legendary Lipstick Killers, who blazed a trail in late ‘70s post-Radio Birdman Sydney before gigging with the likes of the Gun Club and the Flesh Eaters in Los Angeles where they crashed and burned in 1981.
The Lipstick Killers released just one single in their life time – the perfect ’79 Deniz Tek-produced pairing of “Hindu Gods of Love” and ”Shakedown USA” on their own Lost in Space Records and Greg Shaw’s Voxx Records - but a posthumous live album and a couple of archival releases followed. It was all incredible. All that material is included here, as is a plethora of additional stuff, all from the best-available sources (mostly original tapes).
The Lipstick Killers’ enigmatic and high-energy sound – heavily inspired by the Stooges and the ‘60s psychedelic punk sounds of bands like the Thirteenth Floor Elevators and the Chocolate Watchband – bridged the gap between Radio Birdman and subsequent Sydney groups like the Sunnyboys (whose first-ever show was opening for the Lipstick Killers), Lime Spiders, Hoodoo Gurus and the Psychotic Turnbuckles. And of course they anticipated generation after generation of other bands with similar things in mind, right up to today’s ‘60s-inspired freaks like The Straight Arrows, The Living Eyes and Thee Oh Sees.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
1
The Keith Tippett Group - This Is What Happens
2
The Keith Tippett Group - Thoughts To Geoff
3
The Keith Tippett Group - Green And Orange Night Park
4
The Keith Tippett Group - Gridal Suite
5
The Keith Tippett Group - Five After Dawn
6
The Keith Tippett Group - Dedicated To You, But You Weren't Listening
7
The Keith Tippett Group - Black Horse
Territories: Worldwide no restrictions
Format Notes: First time ever official vinyl reissue, gatefold 140g vinyl, remastered from the original Vertigo master tapes.
Track List:
A1 This Is What Happens (5:45)
A2 Thoughts To Geoff (10:19)
A3 Green And Orange Night Park (8:12)
---
B4 Gridal Suite (6:13)
B5 Five After Dawn (5:24)
B6 Dedicated To You, But You Weren't Listening (0:36)
B7 Black Horse (5:53)
Release Notes:
The Keith Tippett Group's Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening is a landmark in cutting edge fusion/avant-jazz. A vital and profoundly adventurous Jazz-Rock record that still swings very hard, it was first released on Vertigo in 1971.
Original copies are now very tricky to score and, as most of you really should know, it’s aged ridiculously well.
A legendary work, this Be With re-issue has been newly remastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, demonstrating just why this deserves to be back in press. The stunning gatefold jacket fully restores Roger and Martyn Dean's original, arresting album artwork to complete this must-have reissue.
Alive and bursting with a joyful energy that has to be heard to be believed, Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening flirts with perfection. It's truly magical and forever essential.
A brilliant jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader "who could make the outlands of modern music feel like the most hospitable of places" (The Guardian), Keith Tippett's second album is oft-regarded as his Canterbury album.
Indeed, not only does he draw heavily on Soft Machine members past, present and future but the album title itself archly references a Soft Machine composition. Ray Babbington handles bass alongside Neville Whitehead and the drums are shared between Brian Spring (Nucleus), Robert Wyatt(!) and Phil Howard (who would go on to replace Wyatt in Soft Machine). Gary Boyle (Isotope) is on guitar whilst the great percussionist Tony Uter is enlisted for his conga and cow bell expertise. Elton Dean on Alto Saxello, cornetist Marc Charig and Nick Evans on trombone round out this quite stunning ensemble.
Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening presents a collective of superhuman musicians really, *really* enjoying themselves in the studio. The sheer exuberance of the performance is totally infectious. It's wild, energetic, atmospheric and, bluntly, bordering on chaotic at points. In a word, it's beautiful.
Robert Wyatt's drumming opens the record with a bang on the majestic Be With favourite "This Is What Happens". Some have described his work here as "easily the most inspired of his career on record." It's an ultra-funky conga-driven groove that truly sparks via the duelling interplay between the three horn players. In the background, Keith's insistent piano, in conversation with those unignorable drums, is the anchor that keeps this piece rollicking away. Breathtaking.
The epic, energetic "Thoughts to Geoff" is a 10-minute jammer that tends towards the dissonant and improvisational but becomes more fluid, laconic and melodic as it unravels. The interplay between soloists and ensembles is particularly dazzling here - blazing solos by Evans, Charig and Tippett himself in a flourish of angular arpeggios interspersed with chordal elocution. Phew.
Up next, the no less-urgent Mingus-referencing "Green and Orange Night Park" is a soaring example of ambitious jazz mixed with rock aggression, with Dean strutting his stuff by launching into a scorching solo. An absolutely jaw-dropping piece. Arguably the highlight of this album of huge highlights!
Though much of the album tends to fall on the raucous side ("Gridal Suite" approaches free-jazz at its most chaotic and, dare we say it, "difficult"), there are a few more sedate, at times spacey numbers, such as the deeply impressionistic "Five After Dawn". The rhythmically complex "Black Horse" is the most accessible track here, a sort of swinging Big Band number with tight grooves, soaring horn & reed melodies, a sizzling Boyle guitar solo and tasty electric piano riffs from Tippett. An hypnotic climax to a staggering record.
This Be With edition of Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening has been re-mastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, Simon Francis’ mastering working together with Cicely Balston's cut at Abbey Road Studios to weave their usual magic with these wonderful recordings. The stunning gatefold sleeve has been restored in all its brainchild glory so you know you're dealing with the definitive reissue, here. Now, are you listening?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Format Notes: First time ever official vinyl reissue, gatefold 140g vinyl, remastered from the original Vertigo master tapes.
Track List:
A1 This Is What Happens (5:45)
A2 Thoughts To Geoff (10:19)
A3 Green And Orange Night Park (8:12)
---
B4 Gridal Suite (6:13)
B5 Five After Dawn (5:24)
B6 Dedicated To You, But You Weren't Listening (0:36)
B7 Black Horse (5:53)
Release Notes:
The Keith Tippett Group's Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening is a landmark in cutting edge fusion/avant-jazz. A vital and profoundly adventurous Jazz-Rock record that still swings very hard, it was first released on Vertigo in 1971.
Original copies are now very tricky to score and, as most of you really should know, it’s aged ridiculously well.
A legendary work, this Be With re-issue has been newly remastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, demonstrating just why this deserves to be back in press. The stunning gatefold jacket fully restores Roger and Martyn Dean's original, arresting album artwork to complete this must-have reissue.
Alive and bursting with a joyful energy that has to be heard to be believed, Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening flirts with perfection. It's truly magical and forever essential.
A brilliant jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader "who could make the outlands of modern music feel like the most hospitable of places" (The Guardian), Keith Tippett's second album is oft-regarded as his Canterbury album.
Indeed, not only does he draw heavily on Soft Machine members past, present and future but the album title itself archly references a Soft Machine composition. Ray Babbington handles bass alongside Neville Whitehead and the drums are shared between Brian Spring (Nucleus), Robert Wyatt(!) and Phil Howard (who would go on to replace Wyatt in Soft Machine). Gary Boyle (Isotope) is on guitar whilst the great percussionist Tony Uter is enlisted for his conga and cow bell expertise. Elton Dean on Alto Saxello, cornetist Marc Charig and Nick Evans on trombone round out this quite stunning ensemble.
Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening presents a collective of superhuman musicians really, *really* enjoying themselves in the studio. The sheer exuberance of the performance is totally infectious. It's wild, energetic, atmospheric and, bluntly, bordering on chaotic at points. In a word, it's beautiful.
Robert Wyatt's drumming opens the record with a bang on the majestic Be With favourite "This Is What Happens". Some have described his work here as "easily the most inspired of his career on record." It's an ultra-funky conga-driven groove that truly sparks via the duelling interplay between the three horn players. In the background, Keith's insistent piano, in conversation with those unignorable drums, is the anchor that keeps this piece rollicking away. Breathtaking.
The epic, energetic "Thoughts to Geoff" is a 10-minute jammer that tends towards the dissonant and improvisational but becomes more fluid, laconic and melodic as it unravels. The interplay between soloists and ensembles is particularly dazzling here - blazing solos by Evans, Charig and Tippett himself in a flourish of angular arpeggios interspersed with chordal elocution. Phew.
Up next, the no less-urgent Mingus-referencing "Green and Orange Night Park" is a soaring example of ambitious jazz mixed with rock aggression, with Dean strutting his stuff by launching into a scorching solo. An absolutely jaw-dropping piece. Arguably the highlight of this album of huge highlights!
Though much of the album tends to fall on the raucous side ("Gridal Suite" approaches free-jazz at its most chaotic and, dare we say it, "difficult"), there are a few more sedate, at times spacey numbers, such as the deeply impressionistic "Five After Dawn". The rhythmically complex "Black Horse" is the most accessible track here, a sort of swinging Big Band number with tight grooves, soaring horn & reed melodies, a sizzling Boyle guitar solo and tasty electric piano riffs from Tippett. An hypnotic climax to a staggering record.
This Be With edition of Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening has been re-mastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, Simon Francis’ mastering working together with Cicely Balston's cut at Abbey Road Studios to weave their usual magic with these wonderful recordings. The stunning gatefold sleeve has been restored in all its brainchild glory so you know you're dealing with the definitive reissue, here. Now, are you listening?
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
1
Modern Soul Septett - Sie konnte nicht verstehen
2
Modern Soul Septett - Greenhorn
3
Modern Soul Septett - Isolata Natale
4
Modern Soul Septett - Studio 1
5
Modern Soul Septett - Dein Lächeln
6
Modern Soul Septett - D 51
7
Modern Soul Septett - Keine Zeit
8
Modern Soul Septett - Kleine Sorgen
9
Modern Soul Septett - So muss es sein
10
Modern Soul Septett - Eine unter Millionen
11
Modern Soul Septett - Unser Haus
12
Modern Soul Septett - Für Christel
No Return!
The Modern Soul Septet (later Modern Soul Band) was one of the hottest and most popular dance music groups in East Germany from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.
In its early years, this band played a very unusual, raw, authentic, and freaky brand of funky Soul-Beat and Jazz-Rock for East Germany, which thrilled many music lovers and dance enthusiasts. The Modern Septett became one of the most booked dance bands in the country and recorded numerous outstanding tracks for the radio. Ahead of their time and too raw and hard for the state label, only two tracks were published in this first creative period. By the mid-70s, the Modern Soul Band had arrived in the midst of Fusion-Jazz and, thanks to their steadily growing popularity, finally received their first LP production in 1976. This album "Soul Komplex" fills a long-overdue gap in the band's discography and is an absolute must for any collector of East German Soul and Jazz.
Previously unreleased East German high class late 1960s and early 1970s funky Soul-Beat and raw Jazz-Rock titels.
A1 Sie konnte nicht verstehen
A2 Greenhorn
A3 Isolata Natale
A4 Studio 1
A5 Dein Lächeln
A6 D 51
B1 Keine Zeit
B2 Kleine Sorgen
B3 So muss es sein
B4 Eine unter Millionen
B5 Unser Haus
B6 Für Christel
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
The Modern Soul Septet (later Modern Soul Band) was one of the hottest and most popular dance music groups in East Germany from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.
In its early years, this band played a very unusual, raw, authentic, and freaky brand of funky Soul-Beat and Jazz-Rock for East Germany, which thrilled many music lovers and dance enthusiasts. The Modern Septett became one of the most booked dance bands in the country and recorded numerous outstanding tracks for the radio. Ahead of their time and too raw and hard for the state label, only two tracks were published in this first creative period. By the mid-70s, the Modern Soul Band had arrived in the midst of Fusion-Jazz and, thanks to their steadily growing popularity, finally received their first LP production in 1976. This album "Soul Komplex" fills a long-overdue gap in the band's discography and is an absolute must for any collector of East German Soul and Jazz.
Previously unreleased East German high class late 1960s and early 1970s funky Soul-Beat and raw Jazz-Rock titels.
A1 Sie konnte nicht verstehen
A2 Greenhorn
A3 Isolata Natale
A4 Studio 1
A5 Dein Lächeln
A6 D 51
B1 Keine Zeit
B2 Kleine Sorgen
B3 So muss es sein
B4 Eine unter Millionen
B5 Unser Haus
B6 Für Christel
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
1
Djrum - A Tune For Us
2
Djrum - Waxcap
3
Djrum - Unweaving
4
Djrum - L'Ancienne
5
Djrum - Hold
6
Djrum - Galaxy In Silence
7
Djrum - Reprise
8
Djrum - Three Foxes Chasing Each Other
9
Djrum - Let Me
10
Djrum - Out Of Dust
11
Djrum - Sycamore
We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves.” This line from Patti Smith was going round and round Felix Manuel’s head as he gradually constructed Under Tangled Silence, his first album in six years and a record of a literal creative rebirth. Felix originally began it in earnest in 2020 Covid lockdown, but a catastrophic hard-drive meltdown destroyed almost all his work and sent him close to psychic collapse himself. However, ultimately this pushed him to rebuild from scratch and in so doing to confront and reassess every part of his musical and psychological processes. The result is utterly extraordinary. Felix was a child prodigy as an instrumentalist and his advanced musicality has always been prominent in his music, but here he has put himself front and centre as pianist, harpist and more. And this sense of exposure as a performer interweaves with an unflinching emotional openness too. Where sometimes electronic production as advanced as this can use intellect and techniques as shields from soul-baring, this is the sound of someone who can boldly say “I feel things, I cry all the time, and I'm not afraid to say it or show it in the music.” But this doesn’t mean there’s a move away from the soundsystems and dancefloors where Felix made his name as a uniquely innovative vinyl DJ. Even just in the opening track “A Tune for Us”, minimalist piano ripples and jazz drumming flow into the breaks of vintage jungle – and as the structure of the LP unfolds, a deep ambient meditation like “Hold” can sit very naturally in between the futurist dancehall of “L’Ancienne” and the high-definition acid house mind movie of “Galaxy in Silence”. In fact, as with the hands-on musicianship, that gutsy big-speaker electronic impact is delivered with more certainty, more expertise, more personal flourishes than ever. And all of those elements are more integrated than ever too: the sound of a total musical personality emerging afresh is truly something to behold. An already remarkable talent has been refreshed, reborn and is making the music of his life.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Finally: the long awaited Trentemøller debut album - maybe one of the most anticipated independent albums of the year - is ready to be released in October!The danish producer Anders Trentemøller is one of the hottest artists on the electronic circuit - the man of the moment!His 12“es broke many sales-records and he‘s been voted as the shooting star in 2005 by many reader polls.So the time is right to release his debut album The Last Resort“ - a beautifully crafted, astonishing masterpiece, that will leave you breathless. The 13 instrumental tracks together form a wordless musical story, almost like the soundtrack of a movie. It manages to capture a whole range of emotions in subtle melodic miniatures, dreamy ambiences, dusty beats, deep dub-tracks and driving groove-excursions. An ever-changing kaleidoscope of colours and moods, „The Last Resort“ without a doubt contains Trentemøller’s best work to date. Although it’s an electronic album, it also incorporates live-drums, guitars, bass and other acoustic instruments like celesta, glockenspiel, melodica and even DJ scratching to create a more organic feel. „Something I couldn’t manage with just electronica“, according to the producer.
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More
Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More