Category Archives: Blog

Robbie Lee & Lea Bertucci announce collaborative album Winds Bells Falls

01 February 2022

Photo: Amy Mills

Winds Bells Falls is the new collaborative album from two utterly brilliant musicans with an eagerness to develop and explore new avenues of work, Robbie Lee and Lea Bertucci. Both based out of New York, Lee is an improviser and sound creator known for performing on a plethora of unconventional instruments, and Bertucci is an interdisciplinary artist, composer and improviser whose work spans through installation, sound, and video.
A match made in heaven, Lee and Bertucci recorded their first session in 2019 during her artist residency at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works and continued recording at his studio. As the press release explains, on the album Lee “plays medieval and baroque woodwinds, celeste (bell keyboard), and tubular chimes, while Bertucci live-manipulates and mangles his playing, hands inside a reel-to-reel tape machine, transforming and regurgitating in real time.”

Winds Bells Falls will see the light of day on February 18th through Telegraph Harp and they have already unveiled the celestial opening track, ‘Glitter and Gleam’. Speaking about the track, Lee comments:

“What I love about Glitter and Gleam is this combination of the most magical sparkly dreamfolk palette that gets utterly destroyed by how Lea uses the tape machines. Because the celeste has no control over the sound after the note is played, the feeling of dialogue is really clear in this one — you can hear what Lea is doing to the notes I play, and then hear how I’m responding back. It makes an infinite feedback loop of listening and reacting. Even though the vibe is very mellow, the energy is quietly all charged up.”

Listen to ‘Glitter and Gleam’ below and be enchanted like we were.

Listen to Buke and Gase & Rahrah Gabor’s second single ‘Pass Impasse’ off upcoming collaborative EP

30 January 2022

Following A Record of…, the collaborative album with percussion ensemble So Percussion, New York based duo Buke and Gase have a new collaborative release on the way. This time the incredible and inventive duo of Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez teamed up Newark, NJ based rapper Rahrah Gabor for a self-titled EP. “I feel like the main theme is found in how the project is structured and composed.”, Gabor explained. “Experimentation and collaboration are key in the construction of this project. Buke & Gase and I have had to embrace one another’s writing and performing styles and trust they would work well together.”

The EP arrives on February 11th via Brassland and they have recently unveiled the exciting and infectious second single ‘Pass Impasse’. Speaking about the single, Arone commented:

“This is an improv which we remixed to entice Rahrah Gabor with lyrics encouraging the listener to “bring new in,” because “life is brief, fill it up to the edge and keep on the move on.” I’m always asking myself if my cup is half full or half empty, and when I’m closer to empty I remind myself to take a deeper look at what I’m theoretically drinking, maybe add an ingredient or two, or just enjoy the simplicity of the life beverage.”

‘Pass Impasse’ comes with an accompanying video. Watch it below.

Glass Museum set to release third album, Reflet, listen to title track

29 January 2022

Belgian instrumental duo Glass Museum have announced the release of Reflet, the follow-up to their phenomenal 2020 album Reykjavik. With an ability to daringly and seamlessly merge classical music with other genres like jazz, breakbeat, minimal techno and deep house, on the upcoming record, keyboardist Antoine Flipo and drummer Martin Grégoire further cement their duality as a foundational element. Reflet, describes the press release, “is an odyssey running through troubled times, an ode to night time, to life, dreams and to all rhythms that convey emotions beyond words.”

The album will be released on April 29th through Sdban Ultra label and ahead of it, Glass Museum have shared the title track as the first single. It comes with a fittingly stunning video directed by Cyprien Delire and you can watch it below.

Tom Rogerson announces debut solo album, Retreat To Bliss

28 January 2022

A longtime favourite of ours, Tom Rogerson released in 2017 one of our Album Picks of the Year, Finding Shore, a record done in collaboration with Brian Eno. Four years on, the staggeringly talented British composer and pianist has announced his much anticipated solo album. Entitled Retreat to Bliss, the record was written in his native Suffolk and follows and reflects a number of affecting changes in his life. He explains:

“The last few years have brought some struggle, some joy, and a lot of change. My response has been to retreat to what I trust the most: the piano, my voice, and the landscape I grew up in. That’s how the album got its title, and how I came to be ready finally to release a solo record.”

Ahead of the album’s release on March 25th through Western Vinyl, Rogerson is enticing us with ‘Oath’, the first poignant and sublime single. Rogerson offered some insight into it:

“I was in the middle of a few months where lots of big life events were happening and I wrote lots of things very quickly, having spent years struggling to do anything at all. It was the first sustained period of working by myself with no one else to bounce ideas off, and I instinctively started singing a bit more seriously – I even started using a vocal mic! The whole thing including lyrics was new for me but felt like a necessary response to the mood I was in.”

Now wrap your ears around ‘Oath’.

Charbonneau / Amato offer glimpse into forthcoming record with new single ‘Évaporations’

21 January 2022

Photo: Chloé Charbonnier

Back in September, Charbonneau / Amato enticed us with the beautiful, soothing and wholly absorbing ‘Light Memoir’, the first single from their upcoming album Synth Works Vol. 2. More details have now emerged about the album, which is set for release on March 4th through Forward Music Group’s experimental sublabel Backward Music. Unbeknownst to Charbonneau and Amato then, the album came together just before a lockdown brought the world to a halt in March 2020. Over the course of a week, after setting up their synths, organs and pedals, the pair “worked at expanding their shared musical language through exploration”, as the press release explains, “carving out sumptuous worlds of modular melody recalling 70s komische and environmental musics.”

The transportive new single ‘Évaporations’ offers us a glimpse into the upcoming Synth Works Vol. 2. and we can’t wait for March to come. Take a listen below.

Eric Chenaux announces new album, Say Laura, and shares title track

20 January 2022

Photo: Sylvestre Nonique-Desvergnes

Eric Chenaux‘s Slowly Paradise and Skullsplitter, released in 2018 and 2015 respectively, both made it to our Albums Picks of the Year and remain active favourites. Four years on from his last album release, we’re a little bit more than excited to learn that the hugely gifted experimental guitar virtuoso and singer-songwriter has a new album on the way. Entitled Say Laura, the album is packed with the singular and skilful guitar and honeyed voice that made his previous records so wonderful. Equal parts intuitive and learned, the album is a mesmerizing affair that “bring[s] Chenaux’s semi-improvised but keenly intentional songwriting to its fullest, clearest, warmest and coolest articulation; uncompromising and generous, hyper-specific and loose, spartan and luxurious, elemental and ornate”, as the press release describes.

Citing various influences such as Sun Ra, Jeanne Lee, Gang Starr, Charlie Parker, Betty Carter, EPMD and Thelonious Monk, on Say Laura Chenaux builds on a foot-pedal technique he’d has previously used. He explains:

“I wrote a lot of the beats to this record while listening to other musics.
Playing a beat along with the recordings on my Boss drum machine.
These rhythms were then used to gate (noise gate) or open the harmony of the chords rhythmically.
To find rhythmic lines to sing and play with.
Sun Ra: The Night Of The Purple Moon with its slow bass driven grooves.
And a lot of hip hop, a lot of Gangstarr and EPMD (the first hip hop I encountered in the late 80’s and early 90’s)
Then these rhythms were repurposed into other forms.
Ballads.
Slowed down, for the most part.
Beats taken out to create space.
To make inferred beats.”

Ahead of the album’s release on February 19th through Constellation and Murailles Music, Chenaux has shared the beguiling title track. Lend your ears to it now.