Black Flower preview forthcoming album, Kinetic, with second single ‘Synesthetic’

11 January 2025

2025 is gearing up to be a wildly exciting year in music with album drops from artists and bands we love like Black Flower. At the tail end of last year, the Belgian quintet had already announced the release of new album Kinetic, and shared then the brilliant and boisterous lead single ‘Monkey System’. They have now unveiled a treat of a new single called ‘Synesthetic’. Saxophonist, flutist and composer Nathan Daems, who helms the band, describes the inspiration behind the track:

“One morning around 5am, I was lying in bed, my eyes still closed but no longer fully asleep. I heard two birds improvising rapid melodies that became vividly visual. Lines, shapes, and colors appeared instantly, representing the sounds with astonishing detail and complexity.”

Black Flower then explored that imagery channelling it into the vibrant, joyous, and energized ‘Synesthetic’. The single is offered with an accompanying video made by visual artist and video director Philippe Werkers. Watch it below and watch out for the release of Kinetic on January 31st through Sdban Ultra.

Listen to TUKAN’s third single ‘Blinker’

10 January 2025

We’re only a couple of weeks away from the release of TUKAN‘s upcoming album Human Drift, and the Belgian quartet had already shared the riveting and pulsating ‘Pluck’ and the radiant and energized ‘Roda’. As if weren’t excited enough for this release, they are teasing the album again with a new single called ‘Blinker’. An incessantly danceable synths and drums track, the textures on ‘Blinker’ are inspired by sampling. Listen to it below and grab the album when it drops on January 24th through Magma.

David Longstreth and s t a r g a z e set to release Song of the Earth in April

08 January 2025

2025 is starting on a high with Song of the Earth, the newly announced collaborative album from producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter David Longstreth and Berlin-based experimental ensemble s t a r g a z e. A song cycle for orchestra and voices performed by Longstreth with his band Dirty Projectors – Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, Olga Bell – and s t a r g a z e, and conducted by André de Ridder, Song of the Earth also features a stellar cast of guest contributors including Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and the author David Wallace-Wells.
The first draft of Song of the Earth was written by Longstreth over the course of six “manic” weeks for a commission arranged by s t a r g a z e, in a period where he had to coordinate the pandemic madness, new fatherhood and writing for a large ensemble for the first time. Longstreth comments:

“The need for this music arose in a few days in Fall of 2020, when T was pregnant with our daughter. The fires in California were insane, as they are right now. We got on an empty flight to Juneau. It was the middle of the pandemic; no one was flying. The irony of escaping the fires by burning more carbon.”

According to him, Song of the Earth “is not a ‘climate change opera” but he wanted to “find something beyond sadness: beauty spiked with damage. Acknowledgement flecked with hope, irony, humour, rage.”

Song of the Earth arrives on April 4th through Transgressive Records (UK) and Nonesuch/New Amsterdam Records and we can already get a first marvellous taste from it with album track ‘Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One’, taken from the opening paragraph of Wallace-Wells’ 2019 bestseller The Uninhabitable Earth. The single comes with an accompanying lyric video featuring drone footage of Lake Tulare in California, which dried up in the 1880s from agricultural irrigation but has reappeared during periods of wet weather. The video was shot by Jake Longstreth and you can watch it below.

Listen to Astrobal’s new single ‘L’uomo e la natura (part1) Una melodia i miei ricordi’

06 January 2025

Astrobal‘s third solo album, L’uomo e la natura (Man and Nature), is nearing its release date on February 7th through Karaoke Kalk. On the run up to it, Emmanuel Mario, the French drummer, composer and producer behind the project, has let loose two singles, ‘Miami 2064’ and ‘L’abeille poupre’, and now he’s teasing the album again with a third cut called ‘Una melodia, i miei ricordi’. The single is the first of two title tracks from Astrobal’s upcoming L’uomo e la natura. Take a listen below.

Maurice Louca unveils brand new single ‘El Gawhara’

21 December 2024

Right in time for the incoming festivities, Maurice Louca has gifted us with a buoyant banger. The immeasurably talented and adventurous composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer unleashed yesterday a brand new single called ‘El Gawhara’. Uplifting, ebullient and kaleidoscopic, ‘El Gawhara’ features Tarek Elshbah on drums, Ayman Asfour on violin, Rosa Brunello on bass and Louca himself on microtonal guitar. An end of year treat, behold!