Category Archives: Blog

Watch the new video for Booker Stardrum’s third single ‘Walking Through Still Air’

11 June 2021

With less than a month to go until the release of Crater, Booker Stardrum‘s much anticipated third album, he is enticing us again with a new single called ‘Walking Through Still Air’. “This was one of the last songs I wrote for the album” explained Stardrum. “For me, it’s a somber love letter to the early days of the pandemic. I spent a lot of time walking around Los Angeles, exploring the neighborhoods around my apartment, finding new dirt paths and canyon hikes. I repeatedly ran into a coyote with mange. I was in a conflicted head space– occupied by thoughts of death, unemployment, climate change, and capitalism, but also an inescapable, out of body sensation of stillness. LA is already steeped in a deranged kind of beauty and there was an unfamiliar quiet and calm in the city.”

The single is offered with a video accompaniment, animated by Miranda Javid and featuring additional video footage by Booker Stardrum, Ize Green Diebboll and Jaimie Branch. Watch it below and grab Crater when it drops on July 2nd through NNA Tapes.

Le Guess Who? festival reveals 46 names for this year’s event including Vanishing Twin, Oren Ambarchi, Spirit Fest, Old Time Relijun, Faust, Ensemble Klang and much more

03 June 2021

Had it not been for a pandemic, the musical paradise that is Le Guess Who? festival was to have taken place last year but it’s time to get excited again. This November will finally welcome its 14th edition from 11-14th and the organizers have unveiled another 46 names that will grace one of the many idyllic stages across Utrecht.

Le Guess Who? had already enticed us with a few names on the general line up and the list of its curators: Matana Roberts, Lucrecia Dalt, Midori Takada, Phil Elverum and John Dwyer. As usual, Le Guess Who?’s curators will help shape and enrich the festival with their own favourite and like-minded artists, in addition to also playing themselves. Today we get a first glimpse at some of their selections.

Phenomenal alto saxophonist, composer, improviser and sound experimentalist Matana Roberts returns to the festival, this time as a curator. Her program will include liberation-oriented free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements, Jesu, the moniker of British guitarist and composer Justin Broadrick who is best known as a founding member of Godflesh; French double bass player, improviser and composer Joëlle Léandre; and Australian composer, multi-instrumentalist and musical polymath Oren Ambarchi.

There is also much to hear on the curated bill of Colombia-born/Berlin-based producer and sound artist Lucrecia Dalt, including her collaboration with noise artist Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes), the electronic music experiments of acousmatic composer Beatriz Ferreyra; Spanish a capella duo Tarta Relena; German electronic musician, composer, radio-playwright, and curator Felix Kubin; and the Latin American folklore and cumbia merged with electronic and surreal elements of Colombian singer-songwriter Julián Mayorga.

Added to Japanese percussionist and minimalist/ambient composer Midori Takada’s program is Dutch contemporary ensemble Ensemble Klang, who are set to present the live premiere of their audiovisual project, Thrift Hybrids. Takada will also perform as part of Ton-Klami, her improvisational trio with pianist Masahiko Satoh and saxophonist Kang Tae Hwan.

Singer-songwriter Phil Elverum has invited veterans of Nairobi’s metal scene Duma, Estonian acclaimed folk singer-songwriter Mari Kalkun and Seattle experimental cello player and composer Lori Goldston, who has played with Nirvana. Elverum has also invited guitarist Jay Blackinton to perform the Microphones in 2020 album in its entirety.

Appearing on the curated bill of multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, visual artist and record label owner John Dwyer is German krautrock group Faust, performing their 1973 masterpiece album Faust IV, Arrington De Dionyso’s experimental dance-punk band Old Time Relijun, Brigid Dawson & Sunwatchers, Earth Girl Helen Brown whose recent EP, Earth, features John Dwyer, and Brooklyn’s art punk 5-piece Gustaf. Dwyer is also set to perform as part of OSEES presenting the live premiere of last year’s album Bent Arcana.

There’s a lot more on offer for the 14th edition of Le Guess Who?, and the general line-up has also been expanded with the second batch of performing artists now announced. Newly added is Spirit Fest, the project featuring Tenniscoats singer Saya and The Notwist’s Markus & Cico, neo-sufi and minimalist composer and singer Arooj Aftab, London super group Vanishing Twin, acclaimed ambient composer and multi-instrumentalist William Basinski, Gambian-British rapper and grime artist Pa Salieu, London-based artist and FKA twigs collaborator Lucinda Chua with a new EP, Antidotes 2, released last month, and Tunisian-Belgian singer, dancer, poet and actress Ghalia Benali, amongst many more artists.

Amidst the new exhilarating additions to Le Guess Who?’s 2021 edition is Kampala-based label Nyege Nyege Tapes presenting their Hakuna Kulala club night with the likes of Authentically Plastic, Diaki, Marcelle/Another Nice Mess, Menzi and Turkana.

As always the line-up boasts an abundance of incredible artists from a giant landscape of music, making it an unmissable destination for musical explorers of all kinds so act fast to secure your spot at Le Guess Who? 2021. Tickets and full details of the festival can be found on its website.

Bram Weijters’ Crazy Men announce new album, The Return, and share lead single

01 June 2021

Captained by Antwerp based piano and keyboard player Bram Weijters, Bram Weijters’ Crazy Men features a phenomenal cast of musicians from the vibrant Belgian jazz scene, including members of STUFF, Dans Dans, Cargo Mas and Lucid Lucia (ex BRZZVLL). The ensemble first came to life following the 2015 reissue of composer, arranger, pianist, and keyboardist Koen de Bruyne’s 1974 rare record Here Comes the Crazy Man!, which sprouted the release of Bram Weijters’ Crazy Men’s debut album Here They Come in 2019. With Belgian jazz-rock and fusion from the 1970s still a core inspiration to the ensemble, they have announced the release of a new album. Entitled The Return, the upcoming album features fourteen adventurous reworkings of compositions from artists like Philip Catherine, Placebo, Palle Mikelborg ensemble, Bob Porter, Cos and Koen de Bruyne. Along with the album announcement, Bram Weijters’ Crazy Men have shared the lead single ‘Planes’. The band commented on the song:

“While the song ‘Planes’ is based on Placebo’s 1972 live performance, this ‘Planes (intro)’ is based on the studio version of the piece ‘Planes’ from Placebo’s album ‘Ball of Eyes’ (1971). We converted the original intro from that studio version to a short moody trumpet feature, somewhat with a nod to Miles Davis’ ‘Sketches of Spain’. The reason for this, as you can hear in the sample used for the intro, is that composer Marc Moulin was president of the Belgian Miles Davis fan club as well.”

Listen to ‘Planes’ below and grab the album when it drops on August 27th through via Sdban Ultra.

Kid Millions and Jan St. Werner share new single from upcoming album Imperium Droop

29 May 2021

Two of our favourite trailblazing artists, drummer extraordinaire and multi-instrumentalist and composer John Colpitts aka Kid Millions and electronic veteran musician and producer Jan St. Werner, are releasing Imperium Droop, their first album as a duo, next month. As we had previously mentioned, Imperium Droop picks up from where Millions and Werner had left off in 2016 when Werner invited Millions to perform an interpretation of his Felder album in a series of curated live dates. The pair played a unique concert at Oneida’s practice space and planned to follow it with an ongoing series of recorded collaborations, which saw them build an archive of recorded material that led to Imperium Droop.

Following the first exhilarating taste, ‘Sorrows and Compensations’, Werner and Millions have shared a new cut from the upcoming album called ‘Dark Tetrad’. Take a listen below and grab the album when it’s out on June 25th through Thrill Jockey.

Masayoshi Fujita shares video for ‘Morocco’; new album Bird Ambience out this Friday

25 May 2021

We’re only a few days away from the release of Bird Ambience, the much anticipated new album from Masayoshi Fujita. The master vibraphonist, multi-percussionist, and composer had already enticed us with three magnificent tracks from the album, ‘Thunder‘, Bird Ambience‘ and more recently ‘Morocco’, a cinematic track that gently whisks one away on a voyage of wonder and delight. Now Fujita has paired the latest single with a befittingly gorgeous and sublime video directed, shot, acted, edited and graded by himself. “The theme for this video is to visualize what I had in mind for the song, and also to visualize how I dive into the image that I get from the sound when I composed or whenever I play it,” Fujita explained. Take a look below and grab Bird Ambience when it’s out this Friday May 28th through Erased Tapes.

7K! Records announces new compilation Wind Layers

21 May 2021

Next month will see 7K! Records release a new compilation entitled Wind Layers, marking the latest edition in their compilation series Layers. Featuring twenty-one songs by twenty-one artists, this collection “focusses on wind instruments and their influence on the contemporary classical multiverse, with musical creations that delicately balance acoustic expression, electronic refractions and ambient recall”, as the label explains. The compilation includes tracks from celebrated trombone player and composer Peter Zummo, Hamburg pianist, producer and composer Niklas Paschburg, Norwegian maestro Håkon Kornstad, Sardinian sound researcher Eugenio Caria aka Saffronkeira, Hungarian jazz trumpeter and composer Barabás Lőrinc, seminal multi-reedist Doug Wieselman and many other stellar artists.
Wind Layers opens magnificently with ‘Beyond the Break’, an unreleased track written and recorded by sax super-hero Colin Stetson. He commented:

“Originally recorded as part of my last solo record, ‘All This I Do For Glory’, ‘Beyond the Brake’ is a turning of attention back towards where and what was left behind. It is that one last look before the page turns, before the next thought emerges and this one falls away. ‘All This I do for Glory’ was always intended as one side of a coin, and so I thought it fitting to share this piece now, in the time before the flip side comes to be.”

Listen to ‘Beyond the Break’ below.


Wind Layers is out on June 25th through 7K! Records