Following the celestial title track, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Elena Setién has shared the beautiful and delicate new single ‘Situation’. The track is lifted from her upcoming album Unfamiliar Minds, set for release on January 28th through Thrill Jockey. Now listen to ‘Situation’.
Jason Sharp‘s third album, The Turning Centre Of A Still World, is excitingly just days away from its release. The extraordinary Montréal composer, improviser and saxophonist had already enticed us with two singles, ‘Everything Is Waiting For You’ and ‘Blossoming Rest’. Both tracks were offered with accompanying visuals made by experimental filmmaker Guillaume Vallée, who has also created a full visual album featuring hand-processed & hand-painted Super8 films. Vallée commentes:
“This collaboration with Jason was such an amazing and smooth audiovisual adventure. At the beginning, I was planning to work in a different way than I usually do, with a more minimal approach to the visual. But the more I listened to Jason’s album, the more it brought me elsewhere. I wanted to shoot everything on Super8 and hand-process the whole thing, to grasp the organicism and physicality of the music. Working with the film emulsion made sense to me, with hand-painting and chemical treatment, to get closer to my material and an intuitive symbiosis with the music. I used a film/video hybrid processes, strongly inspired by the work of Al Razutis, a uniquely amazing multimedia artist and pioneer of the film/video hybrid process in the 70s (actually based in British Columbia). I was very happy that Jason was receptive to my process and I did the best I could to visually translate the complexity and beauty of this album.”
Speaking about it, Sharp remarks:
“Guillaume’s interpretation of my music with moving images has been a refreshing coda to an extremely detailed, intensive composition and recording process. His Super8 film treatments inscribe a similar detail and intensity, with vitality and texture that channels the music of The Turning Centre Of A Still World into evocatively abstract visual movements. I’m beyond delighted with the resulting synthesis of our respective mediums and processes, and can’t wait to perform the music live while flooded with this visual work.”
The good news is the full visual album is now available to watch and listen, ahead of its release this Friday. Press play and let yourself drift away.
The Turning Centre Of A Still World is out on August 27th through Constellation
Brighton’s Luo, the duo of Josh Trinnaman and Barney Sage, are back with a new EP this October. Entitled Convoluted Mess Machine, the 4-track EP sees them exploring new sonic territory. The pair comments:
“With this EP we really wanted to push some of the darker territory we explored on Unspoken a bit further, whilst also re-incorporating some of the lighter, melodic and more rhythmically complex aspects of earlier Luo material back in – whilst also going in some slightly newer directions we haven’t explored before. We also wanted to see what would happen if we worried less about what we were making as we found we weren’t finishing ideas after feeling anxious they wouldn’t fit in our catalogue or might be alienating.
We have pretty erratic listening & writing habits which comes through in what we make, so in order to make sense of something that doesn’t really make sense, we created the convoluted mess machine as a way of sort of contextualising our creative process and enabling us to justify to ourselves in making any creative decision, letting tracks write themselves, ingesting influences from all over the place and regurgitating them in these weird mutant forms.”
Convoluted Mess Machine arrives on October 15th through Art As Catharsis and ahead of it Luo have shared the superb and intoxicating opening track ‘Tightrope Tap Dancer’. Take a listen now.
Celebrated trombone player and composer Peter Zummo has scored Second Spring, a new film by British director Andy Kelleher. The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack will be released on September 3rd through 7K! Records, coinciding with the film premiere. Ahead of it, we can already hear the first single from it, ‘Highway Brain Planet’. Zummo comments:
“I had been developing a project called Highway Brain Planet for about a year before I heard from Andy about working on Second Spring. For me, the peculiar song title resonated with driving, archaeology, and saving the earth. Working with basic tracks recorded at Duck Kee Studio No. 8 in Mebane, North Carolina, I added some trumpets for a “highway” scene in the film.”
‘Highway Brain Planet’ is both whimsical and immersive. Take a listen now.
Chicago based electronic composer Brett Naucke has announced the release of a new album, following last year’s EMS Hallucinations. Entitled Mirror Ensemble, the album is a collaboration with longtime friends Natalie Chami (TALsounds, Good Willsmith, Damiana) and Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana) and arrives on October 1st through American Dreams.
Naucke ventures quite far from his previous works fully based in various synthesizer types, with the upcoming Mirror Ensemble “often boasting melodic vocalization, strings, and lush layered synthesis.” The press release describes the album as “a synthesizer record, an orchestral record, and in some ways even a soundtrack”. Mirror Ensemble saw Naucke using scenes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece 1975 film The Mirror, which served as a key element for mood and atmosphere.
Speaking about this collaboration, Chami explains:
“He invited Whitney and I over for wine and cheese, and was like, ‘I have an idea for a record. He showed us clips from The Mirror with the vibe he wanted, and also shared recordings and other ideas. It was straight up like a fucking PowerPoint almost – like an audio-visual presentation for us.”
The striking and ethereal lead single ‘The Glass Shifting’ and the contemplative and gentle ‘Rose Water’ open a window onto what he has in store for us. Listen to both below.
Multi-instrumentalist Jake Ferguson, who is also the bassist and co-founder of The Heliocentrics, has a new solo project called The Brkn Record. His first album under that name as a bandleader and orchestrator, The Architecture of Oppression Part 1, is set for release on November 5th through Mr Bongo.
A longtime activist committed and engaged in racial justice and social equity, Ferguson’s upcoming The Architecture of Oppression Part 1 “manifests as a committed and soulful response to ongoing and systemic anti-black racism, social oppression and state violence both at home in London and across the globe”, as the press release describes, adding that the album “is a singular and urgent chronicle of the black British experience, an upful expression of Pan-African creative unity and community solidarity, and a militant and unbending missive from the frontline.”
Ferguson enlisted the help of bandmate Malcolm Catto on drums and other collaborators hailing from the worlds of community activism, cultural education, politics and music, including singer and political activist Jermain Jackman, soul-jazz vocalist Zara MacFarlane; Chicagoan activist, poet and singer Ugochi Nwaogwugwu; British politician and racial justice activist Lee Jasper; performance poet Dylema; Hackney community leader Janette Collins and British author Leroy Logan, a former Metropolitan police superintendent and founder and former chair of the Black Police Association.
Ahead of the album’s release, The Brkn Record has shared two singles, ‘On the Daily’ featuring Ugochi Nwaogwugwu and ‘Lifeline’ featuring Zara McFarlane.
‘On the Daily’ is described by Nwaogwugwu as an “attempt to express the degree of power, resilience and focus it takes to be black and in this world. So many forces trying to take our peace of heart and mind. Though the battle rages on, those on the frontline win when we keep our poise and expose the perpetrators of racism and white terrorism.”
Speaking about ‘Lifeline’, McFarlane stated it is “an observation of how decisions, made by ourselves and others, affect our circumstances and consequences and thus the pulse of our lives from that moment on.” Ferguson also offered a few words about their collaboration:
“The clarity and precision of Zara’s vocals offered a real juxtaposition to the ‘roughness’ of the bluesy drone. Also, Zara dug deep to give her own perspective on racism that I hadn’t heard before.”
Both tracks are offered with accompanying videos, the video for ‘Lifeline’ was directed by Mark James and Ruffmercy has animated the video for ‘On the Daily’. Watch them below.
