Category Archives: Blog

Nightports team up with Betamax on upcoming new album

07 May 2020

Adam Martin and Mark Slater, who make up Nightports, collaborate with other musicians to explore and rework their music in varied ways, with their single remit being to only use sounds produced by the featured musician. Following their first album with Matthew Bourne in 2018, their latest sonic collaboration saw  them join forces with Betamax, the incredible drummer and percussionist, also known as one half of Soccer 96 and one third of The Comet Is Coming. There’s an album on the way bearing the fruits of this collaborative labour, Nightports w/ Betamax, where the duo set about “amplifying the characteristics of the musician.”

“Within the depths of the drum takes, we found hidden melodies, chords, structures and bass lines which we distilled and exaggerated to realise this album,” Slater explained. “On the one hand, this album is fully improvised in that all drum performances were spontaneous, intuitive and responsive; however, they were then subjected to editing and manipulation to arrive at a sound that is neither purely improvised nor constructed.”

Nightports w/ Betamax is set for release on June 12th through The Leaf Label but we can already listen to the rhythmically wild, relentless and hypnotic single ‘Hydro’.

Dirty Projectors share new single, ‘Lose Your Love’, off upcoming Flight Tower EP

06 May 2020

Dirty Projectors have been enticing us with new music as of late and there’s no stopping them, with five EPs set to be released in 2020. Each EP will feature a different band member on lead vocals, with everyone reigning on vocals in the fifth one. The outfit of David Longstreth and co have shared a new single, ‘Lose Your Love’, off their upcoming Flight Tower EP, which sees Felicia take the lead on vocals. ‘Lose Your Love’ has been paired with a video, directed by Longstreth. Watch it below.

Flight Tower EP is out on June 26th

Bibio set to release new EP, Sleep On The Wing; shares video for title track

05 May 2020

There could be nothing better to uplift our spirits right now than the new balm-like song from Bibio. A year on from the release of Ribbons, Stephen Wilkinson aka Bibio has announced the release of Sleep On The Wing, a ten-track EP that “explor[es] the liberating power of imagination”, as he puts it. Along with the news, Bibio has shared the title track and offered a few words about it:

“Lyrically, I feel that the song has two aspects to it: The idea of being in the wake of a loss, and with hope, continuing the life of someone who has passed, through allowing oneself to be inspired by what they did during their lifetime and what they left behind, whether it’s the things they said, the knowledge they shared or the things they made.

The other aspect to the song is perhaps more direct, and talks of escaping the city to find peace in the countryside, but the title is more a celebration of dreaming and the liberating power of imagination, not necessarily a physical escape. Music has the power to inspire dreaming and fuel the imagination, and that’s what I’ve always found so addictive about music.”

‘Sleep On The Wing’ comes with an accompanying animated video directed by Sonnye Lim. Watch it below.


Sleep On The Wing is out on June 12th through Warp

Asher Gamedze announces debut album and shares ‘state of emergence suite’

05 May 2020

South African drummer Asher Gamedze has announced the release of his debut album this summer. Entitled Dialectic Soul, it arrives on July 10th through On The Corner Records. A visionary musician, Gamedze recorded the album live over two days in Cape Town with a stellar cast of musicians, Thembinkosi Mavimbela on bass, Buddy Wells on tenor sax, Robin Fassie-Kock on trumpet and Nono Nkoane on vocals.

Dialectic Soul, as Gamedze remarks, “is about motion and a refusal to remain static or stay still. It’s the commitment to be continually moving”. He adds:

“Fundamentally, it is about the reclamation of the historical imperative. It is about the dialect of the soul and the spirit while it moves through history. The soul is dialectic. Motion is imperative. We keep moving.”

As a mesmerising introduction to the album, Gamedze has shared the opening suite ‘state of emergence’. This composition, he comments, “introduces the themes that constitute the album; free drums representing autonomous African motion, the saxophone reflecting deeply and honestly on the violence of colonialism, the teachings of Coltrane, Biko, Makeba, Malcom and others inspired the music’s positive manifestations of resistance.”

Lend your ears to sublime ‘state of emergence suite’ now, featuring ‘thesis’, ‘antithesis’ and ‘synthesis’. You’ll be rewarded!

Aārp unveils video for ‘There Is No Alternative’ off upcoming album

02 May 2020

French experimentalist Aārp has announced the release of his debut album, Propaganda. A political record, Propaganda is partly inspired by the death of a young man in Nantes last summer, who drowned following a violent police raid at a music festival. The portrayal of this negligent event by manipulative media, deliberately spreading misinformation, was aimed at distorting the truth to allow French authorities to evade any consequence. On Aārp’s upcoming album, where each single track is informed by this kind of press propaganda, he asks “listeners to consider fact, open their minds and to think before spreading questionable news in an era rife with deception, when fabricated click-bait holds more currency than expertise.”

Propaganda is set for release on May 22nd through InFiné and ahead of it we can already hear the new single, ‘There is no Alternative’. Speaking about the track, Aārp explains that what was “uttered by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and insinuated that liberalism is the best model of society and that there are no freedoms beyond it. This idea is largely motivated by the literature of G-F. Hayek and his Road to serfdom.”

‘There is no Alternative’ comes with an accompanying video made by Marco Dos Santos. Watch it below.

GRID release second album Decomposing Force

29 April 2020

Photo: Dominika Michalowska

Brooklyn noise jazz trio GRID released their second album, Decomposing Force, last week through NNA Tapes. Progressing from their 2017 self-titled debut, Matt Nelson, Tim Dahl and Nick Podgurski, who make up the trio, recorded the album live in one room with no overdubs and mixed to 1/2 inch tape. With a vision of music that eschews classification, steeped in a palpable sense of heaviness, Decomposing Force taps into the band member’s background in free-jazz and improvisational music, as well as Doom-Metal, Noise, and Ambient influences. “Built on the tenets of weight, difficulty, challenge, collaboration, and adaptability”, as the press release describes, “GRID constructs and confronts the oppressive dark—not with transcendent opposition but with an embrace, diving deeper in as a way through. Decomposing Force is sonic catharsis of the highest and harshest caliber.”

For a taste of what they are throwing at us, take a listen to the opening track ‘Brutal Kings’.