Category Archives: Blog

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith announces release of new album The Mosaic of Transformation

25 March 2020

Synth wizard and composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has kept herself busy in recent years, with various projects. Following her 2017 wonderful and kaleidoscopic record The Kid, she founded multidisciplinary imprint Touchtheplants, through which she released Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga, and the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series and pocket-sized poetry books. Smith also continued her sonic exploration of electronic instruments and the link between the physical body and sound and colour. Nurtured by these interests and ventures, Smith has a new album on the way, releasing on May 15th through Ghostly International. Titled The Mosaic of Transformation, Smith describes it as her “expression of love and appreciation for electricity”. The press release notes that “she embraced a daily practice of physical movement, passing electricity through her body and into motion, in ways reflecting her audio practice, which sends currents through modular synthesizers and into the air through speakers.” Smith also described her experience:

“The inspiration came to me in a sudden bubble of joy. It was accompanied by a multitude of shapes that were moving seamlessly from one into the other…My movement practice has been a constant transformation piece by piece. I made this album in the same way. Every day I would transform what I did yesterday…into something else. This album has gone through about 12 different versions of itself.”

In anticipation of the album release, Smith has shared the celestial closing track, ‘Expanding Electricity’, clocking in at 10 minutes. Take a listen.

NZCA LINES shares new single ‘Pure Luxury’

25 March 2020

Photo: Aleksandra Kingo

Get ready to dance to the brand new single from NZCA LINES, the project of producer and multi-instrumentalist Michael Lovett. Entitled ‘Pure Luxury’, the track marks his first single in four years and is inspired by the environmental crisis, in particular his experience of a Manhattan heatwave in February. He had this to say about it:

“It’s a sadistic joyride set in penthouse suites where the gold trim hides a rotting plywood facade, muscle cars are bought with credit cards and barbed wire fences separate luxury resorts from the slums beyond their walls. The fantasy of attainment in a world that has no future.”

‘Pure Luxury’ is an insanely infectious, high-energy track guaranteed to rock the dance floor. The single is out now through Memphis Industries and you can listen to it below.

Jacaszek’s new album, Music For Film, out this Friday

24 March 2020

Photo: Pawel Grzes

We’re just a few days away from the release of Music For Film, the new album from Polish contemporary classical composer Michal Jacaszek. For nearly two decades, Jacaszek has composed and contributed to numerous albums and projects, including film music. The forthcoming Music For Film is a collection of tracks spanning a decade and varied films and commissions, including the 2019 documentary He Dreams of Giants, the 2008 project Golgota wrocławska and Rainer Sarnet’s 2017 film November.

Ahead of the album release this Friday March 27th through Ghostly International, Jacaszek has shared a fittingly gorgeous and arresting video featuring excerpts from November. Watch it below.

Juana Molina offers surprise rendition of ‘Cara de Espejo’

21 March 2020

Juana Molina‘s wonderful album Halo, released in 2017, still has a total and timeless hold on us. Now that her upcoming European tour is sadly unlikely to go ahead for obvious reasons, the multi-talented and inventive artist is spreading a little joy with a surprise rendition of ‘Cara de Espejo’, lifted from Halo. The new version was recorded and filmed at her home studio near Buenos Aires, and directed by Alejo Moguillansky. Watch it below.

Chip Wickham announces new album, Blue to Red, and shares title track

21 March 2020

At a time where music is like a salvation, Chip Wickham is treating us with a new splendid release. The immensely talented British flautist and saxophonist has announced the release of Blue to Red, arriving on May 8th through Lovemonk Records. Blue to Red is Wickham’s third album but he has been making music for the last few decades. Wickham initially emerged from Manchester’s modal-jazz scene in the late 90s, and has played and collaborated with the likes of Matthew Halsall, Nat Birchall, 808 State, Nightmares On Wax, Badly Drawn Boy, The New Mastersounds and Grand Central Records, to name but a few.

The upcoming Blue to Red is “his most absorbing and cosmically-charged offering to date”, as the press release describes. “Soaring flute melodies, lush harp arpeggios and glistening Rhodes keys interact across six journeying, spiritual jazz compositions, leaning on a rich palette of sounds beyond borders, space and time.”
The album’s title alludes to Earth’s possible Mars-like future. As Wickham puts it, “it’s a culture crisis rather than a climate crisis, one that can only be solved if we go right to the core of how we live as human beings”.

Blue to Red saw Wickham enlist a stellar cast of musicians from the UK’s thriving jazz scene, including Sons of Kemet and Mulatu Astatke drummer, Jon Scott, Simon Houghton aka Sneaky of Fingathing (double bass/cello), Nightmares On Wax affiliate Dan Goldman aka JD 73 (keys) and pioneering jazz harpist Amanda Whiting.

Ahead of the album’s release, we can already hear the celestially sublime title track. Here it is.

Matt Evans shares a new track taken from his incoming album New Topographics

20 March 2020

Based out of Brooklyn, drummer and composer Matt Evans has collaborated and contributed to innumerable musical projects in numerous directions, including Tigue, Bearthoven, Man Forever and Private Elevators, as well as honing in on his own solo work. This April will see him release his debut record, New Topographics, a bewitching collection of rhythmic percussion/electronic pieces stemming from a month-long residency at Brooklyn artist space Pioneer Works. Read on for some insight from Evans about it:

“For me, there’s a link between these sonic byproducts and human empathy— a gateway towards a greater conversation on what it means to live the paradox of complicitness— a guide to re-focusing how we understand the consequences of our actions by way of sound. The first step toward any significant change in our behaviour is becoming aware of the object like significance of our actions. Making this record has been a way of tuning my ears to this phenomenon. To learn the language of these object-like byproducts so as to speak the language my own way and further empathize with that which I was not previously informed. Being aware, being sensitive to that awareness, and reflecting that experience outwards. This is how we can make a shift in how we see ourselves in the world. Making this music was a way to practice understanding what I leave behind. We put up walls to function, but if we make a habit of taking them down and really looking and listening to what’s happening around us, we will have greater empathy for the people and beings we share space with. Our ability to empathize with the earth itself will grow.”

Following the release of first single ‘Cold Moon’, Evans has recently shared the celestial and soothing opening track ‘Full Squid’, remarking that “the title refers to a state of being more than the cephalopod itself, a zoomorphic phrase for the experience of drumming at the precipice of presentness”. He continues, “’Full Squid’ was born from a kind of personal meditation, a “spiritual” performance practice that attempts to bend a typical sense of time through stream-of-consciousness playing pushed to the brink. It’s a drummy dive into a sound stream of crackling creatures, wiggly drones and globby ink-splatter harmonies, without coming up for air.”

Slated for an April 17th release through Whatever’s Clever, New Topographics awaits you. Prick up your ears and give a listen to both singles below.