Scupltures is composer and pianist Derek Hunter Wilson’s third solo album, an ode to the ancient and contested shorelines of the Pacific Northwest. Deeply embedded in place, the six longform pieces that make up the album reflect the artist’s journey through grief (including losing his father) and the passage of time, each one built upon loops created from extended sessions with harpist Joshua Ward. Like the foggy, moss-encrusted locations that inspired the album, Sculptures has a timeless feel to it, shadowed by the rumblings of a colonial system in decay.

Award-winning poet Mathias Svalina composed a poem for the album, entitled “A Dream for Sculptures”. It is reproduced on an insert that accompanies each LP.

Derek Hunter Wilson is a composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Portland. He has released two solo albums on Beacon Sound (Travelogue, 2017; Steel, Wood, & Air, 2019), as well as a collaborative album with Location Services entitled Wake (2022). In 2018 he collaborated with visual artist Gregory Euclide for his Thesis Project label, resulting in a split 10" with Spanish musician Rauelsson. He has additionally worked with poets Zachary Schomburg and Brandi Katherine Herrera for several sound and performance pieces, and has performed live on the West Coast and in Berlin, sharing the stage with artists such as Colleen, Amulets, Patricia Wolf, Pulse Emitter, and Liima.

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You will be aware of the work of James McKeown and his Hawksmoor project. A catalogue of 13 significant and substantial records made in less than a decade.

James can be said to be operating in the realm of ambient music.

There are song structures and often beautiful melodies deployed - and more often than you might expect. He can be psycho-geographical, and woozily hauntological at times. There are shades of Eno, Tangerine Dream, Cluster and Michael Rother - but nothing is ever copied. It's detailed, textured deep and often emotionally affecting. He's made records inspired by Victorian religious architecture, geopolitical instability, JG Ballard, dreams and alternate states of consciousness; prescription drugs, new town neurosis and a secretly prehistoric Milton Keynes.

Musically, it always somehow reflects the subject matter. He's primarily about analog synthesis, old drum boxes, razor and tape, tangled wires and real instruments. Perhaps a post-digital Druid who emerged from the strange recesses of the natively insurrectionist Bristol scene. There are records backed up and ready to go. A modern British electronic genius of sorts.

Which brings us here to BID13 and another record about drugs. Am I Conscious Now? is perhaps a companion piece to 2021's oddly melancholy On Prescription.

The subject matter at hand is specifically the psychedelic variant 5-MeO-DMT. James dutifully did his research - experimenting with the drug - with a view to exploring the impact it might make on his music. Hold up, I hear you cry, musicians have been using psychedelics at least since the Maggot Brained Funkadelic freed our minds in the hope our asses would follow. Can't forget Spacemen Three's brilliantly definitive 'Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To'. James McKeown has made a record which deserves to enter this stoned immaculate pantheon. But 5-MeO-DMT is very different.

"It overrides the body and forces surrender. As a person, it completely changed my life, outlook, perspective".

It was first documented in the 1930s, is very different to your 'standard' LSD variants. No colour wheel intensity, no flying about seeing little green men with massive heads calling you into infinity. It doesn't flood the mind but rather, it empties it. Scarily for some, 5-MeO-DMT is said to strip away all sensation as it acts on the brain in specific relation to Serotonin. It lasts sometimes only minutes, though the individual's internal perception of time is obviously exploded. As, 'the Mount Everest of Psychedelics', it's no groovy cartoon loon pant Purple Haze then, man. All of which persuaded our intrepid hero to give it a go. It specifically inspired the music you can hear by clicking on the links above.

"Psychedelics are for me tools for healing, spiritual connection and creativity. It's not about hedonism, flashing lights, patterns, the cliches. It's very unique.
Language doesn't really work to explain it. It's everything and nothing. Some experience a state of pure bliss. I experienced a terrifying feeling of dying, and then a sense of unity, like I was connected to everything. I hesitate to use the term, but I'd describe it as being a sense of being reborn".

If like Lennon and our man here you truly surrender to The Void, you'll know you are everything and nothing too. So tell me, which album by Gary Barlow is going to gift you all this?

Hawksmoor is building an important body of work notable for its deep integrity.

This is an extraordinary record. Its intensity is an instant hit and, once you are sucked into its orbit, it's routinely mesmerising.
Beyond that it is not, kids, an ad for the drug. As Frank Zappa advised re. the Yellow Snow, make your own informed decisions.

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Edition of 500 copies, biovinyl, incl. download.

Soft Echoes presents the first physical edition of ‘In a Few Places Along the River’ by Abul Mogard as a limited run of 500 vinyl copies. Originally released digitally in 2022, the album now appears in its intended form, marking the label’s second release.

Three long pieces, composed between 2019 and 2022, emerged from Mogard’s meticulous experimentation with analogue and digital instruments. Slowly evolving harmonic fields of layered drones and spectral textures drift across the record. They are enhanced by reverb from Scotland’s Inchindown oil tanks, which hold the longest reverberation of any man-made structure, giving the music a haunting resonance and a sense of suspended space.

‘Against a White Cloud’ and ‘In True Contemplation’ open the album with their nocturnal tones that gradually intensify into dense, immersive waves of sound. Side B is devoted to the 21-minute elegiacal piece ‘Along the River’, which flows between weight and silence, unfolding with reflective depth and moments of subtle transcendence. As one listener observed, “His music doesn't break the wilful suspension of disbelief: you stay in its trance.”

“Recording for this album began in 2019, when I was still living in London,” Mogard explains. “The first version of ‘Along the River’ was created at my studio near Brick Lane. It started with experimenting around a chord progression inspired by a classical piece I had once been recommended, though, strangely enough, I no longer recall what it was. Early in 2022, I revealed the identity behind Abul Mogard and wanted to mark this new period, so I decided to release it quickly, by myself, as digital-only.”

After returning to Rome, Mogard created the other two pieces, working with new digital instruments alongside his modular synthesiser, and integrated recordings from the London sessions. The music reveals a patient attention to texture and space, defining his usual restraint. Mogard adds, “I was trying to explore very subtle changes in the spectral characteristics of the music using extremely slow, intertwined tones.”

Described by critics as one of Mogard’s most melancholic and absorbing releases, the album maintains an austere beauty and contemplative weight, leaving a lingering impression that lasts far beyond the final note.

The music has extended beyond the album itself, with tracks appearing in films and contemporary artworks. Most notably, Swedish artist Peder Bjurman’s ‘Slow Walker’ audiovisual installation and French filmmaker Fleuryfontaine’s politically charged animated film ‘Soixante-sept millisecondes’.

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri and cut to vinyl by Lupo, the record emphasises the clarity and depth of Mogard’s frequencies, with each layer precisely balanced. The cover artwork and design are by Marja de Sanctis, who has collaborated with Abul since his first cassette release in 2012.

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To honour the enduring appeal of a great musical rework, Hell Yeah is launching The Art of Remix. This essential new series collects the best remixes from a range of label favourites. First up is Japanese downtempo master Calm with exclusive, never-before-on-vinyl versions of originals by Cantoma, Aura Safari, DJ Sofa’s Dream Baby Dream, Seahawks, Gallo, Yuichiro Kato and more. The release comes with rich liner notes by the authoritative Dr Rob from Ban Ban Ton Ton, and a second volume from Is It Balearic's Coyote will follow soon.

Remixes have always been at the heart of Hell Yeah's output as a way of reworking classic sounds into different contexts, allowing artists to explore outside their usual remit and also to introduce new talents. Clam has long perfected the art with his famously laidback takes on all sorts of Balearic, house, dub and acid under the Mellow Mellow Acid subtitle. He's remixed many a Japanese legend but also a wealth of artists from across the world, and eight of those reimagined gems balance euphoria with solitude on this first volume.

First, his take on Cantoma's 'Way To The Sun' infuses drones and chimes with bubbly acid. 'Sur Mon Balconett' shimmers with Spanish guitar and sultry sax, ghosts of yesterday still shuffling. 'Banana Trance' jolts with breakbeats while taking a Balearic leap into hedonism. Mininn’s 'Vertigo' drifts dubwise, from monastic chants to operatic bursts. Maho’s 'Bakuhatsu' growls dark and sleazy as acid and riffs collide, 'Abysso' floats with strings and sirens in symphony, 'Blue Surround' lulls before exploding with jazz fire and Kato’s 'Kiss of Life' closes with a cosmic, romantic serenade. Calm's The Art of Remix sets a high standard for a series which will soon turn to Coyote and Scandi-house great Bjorn Torske.

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Tracklisting
A1 Interlude - Just Be (Interlude)
A2 Larry Lan - WTNG
A3 N/UM - A Free Woman in Queens
B1 DeWinter & Asha Jasz, & Jay Prouty feat. Mari Blue - Acid in Your Coffee
B2 $coe - The Devil is a MF Liar
B3 Interlude - Big Sexy (Interlude)

Sales Note
Brooklyn Sway's 8th installment arrives from outside with more unexpected debuts and riotous returns to form. Experienced Barcelonian Larry Lan's epic 10-minute opener 'WTNG' is minimal goes post-punk, repurposing well-known, undisguised lyrics into an aggressive take on early Perlon and explanation enough for his recent album drop on Cadenza. BKS vets N/UM return with 'A Free Woman in Queens' showing off a reduced side of their sound adjacent to mid-00s minimal with plenty of character, its stripped intro giving way to a fuller, dubbed-out second half, with the cheeky vocal and instrumental touches joined by a swelling pad. Featuring spoken vox from Mari Blue and the debut of BKS co-head Asha Jasz alongside DeWinter and Jay Prouty, 'Acid in Your Coffee' takes the dirtier route, with layers of zapping electronics, an insistent single-note acid bass, and synths drifting between tones and textures all veering off like its vocals before eventually returning to center. LA/Bucktown scallywag $coe brings it home with 'The Devil is a MF Liar', an acid jam whose profanity-laced vocal samples don't require divine intervention to decipher. Bookended by a pair of interludes, the first on the power of repetition and the last in memoriam BK legend Big Sexy in his own words, and again featuring striking artwork from notable NYC street artist Fumero, BKS keeps that Sway from going astray.

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