Category Archives: Blog

Lawrence English & Lea Bertucci set to release debut collaborative album, Chthonic

05 July 2023

Photo: PWR

Composer, artist and Room40 founder Lawrence English and interdisciplinary artist, composer and improviser Lea Bertucci are both prolific and gifted experimentalists. The pair met at a festival in Rio de Janeiro in 2019 and began to collaborate remotely, with the onset of the pandemic in 2020. A debut collaborative album titled Chthonic is now on the way. English has shared his thoughts about their collaboration:

“Lea and I met in Rio de Janeiro, we had both been invited to perform a special set of field recordings and site-specific sound on a small island in the middle of one of Rio’s larger public parks. I was very struck by Lea’s approaches to sound, specifically to her ways of contrasting particular qualities in sound she had collected across the city during her residency. Our billing together there seemed like a natural fit and I am positive some of the earliest ideas for a possible recording started there. Throughout the course of our long-distance exchange, I found myself always digging deeper into the sound world we were creating. It was a sense of excavation, seeking things that just sat underneath the first impression of the sounds. Between that and our conversations around sound pressure and density, I think this record took on a form of its own very quickly.”

Chthonic will see the light of day on August 11th through American Dreams and we can already get a bewildering taster of it with the first single ‘Geology of Fire’. Take a listen below.

Will Samson shares first glimpse of forthcoming ambient album Harp Swells

04 July 2023

Photo: Vera Marmelo

A year on from the release of Active Imagination, Will Samson has announced the release of his seventh full-length album. Entitled Harp Swells, it marks his first full-length ambient album and is set for release on September 8th through Taylor Deupree’s experimental label 12k. Now based In Portugal, the British musician composed the upcoming album in Almada in the sea facing studio space he shares with Casper Clausen (Efterklang). Speaking about it, Samson comments:

“There was one main goal when making Harp Swells: make music that flows and feels just like the view outside the studio window.
If frustration or creative blocks arose, I’d take a short break to watch the waves, and then return to the music.”

Ahead of the album release, Samson is enticing us with the immersive, serene and stunning first single, ‘And Yet’, featuring vocals from Maia Nunes and longtime collaborator Michael Feuerstack. Of the track and collaboration, Samson says:

“Maia (Nunes) was a visiting artist resident where I recorded the album & so we would occasionally share a cup of tea during breaks. After having a conversation about our mixed ancestries and how they had often led to subtle feelings of displacement, I returned to my studio and the lyrics appeared. That one sentence was enough to capture how I was feeling (and still feel these days) and so there was nothing more that need to be said. In fact, the lyrics seemed to perfectly capture the mood of the whole album for me.

I was experimenting with sampling during this period, so the sound that begins the track is myself blowing into an empty glass bottle.”

‘And Yet’ comes with an accompanying video created by Daisy Moseley and you can watch it below.

In other related good news, and in support of Harp Swells, Will Samson has announced a string of live shows in the UK / Europe. The tour kicks off in Antwerp on September 6th wrapping in Paris on November 18th and includes a show in Porto on September 16th. Tickets are on sale now for most shows, head over to willsamson.co.uk/shows for more info.

Le Guess Who? unveils three new projects for 2023 edition: Hidden Musics, COSMOS and The Anonymous Project

04 July 2023

Le Guess Who? Festival is celebrating 16 years this November with a wealth of sonic offerings that has us looking forward to autumn with bated breath. Back in May the organisers announced the initial line-up and programmes curated by Stereolab, Heba Kadry, Nala Sinephro and Slauson Malone 1 and now they’ve unleashed three special projects: Hidden Musics, COSMOS and The Anonymous Project.

With a focus on celebrating musical traditions and artists from secluded regions of the world, Hidden Musics is an inspiring and ambitious program that gives audiences a unique chance to experience rare performances. Returning to Le Guess Who? for the fourth time in 2023, the project is the fruit of a collaboration between Le Guess Who?, Grammy-award winning music producer, activist and author Ian Brennan, and Ljubljana based American musician, record producer and Glitterbeat Records founder Chris Eckman. Hidden Musics will host Pankisi Ensemble, an all-female female traditional music group from the Pankisi Gorge in northeast Georgia, who’ve been vital in perpetuating Georgian and Chechen secular musical traditions that are unique to Pankisi. Also appearing on Hidden Musics is Sophia Nzayisenga, the first female master of the Inanga, a traditional Rwandan stringed music instrument which she learnt from her father at a very young age and Rwandan folk trio The Good Ones, a band that was formed as an act of healing following the country’s 1994 genocide, bringing together members from Rwanda’s Tutsi, Hutu, and Abatwa tribes. Known as “the man with singing fingers”, Azerbaijan’s Rəhman Məmmədli, an emblematic figure of the country’s gitara music, will also be part of Hidden Musics’s programme.

COSMOS will put the spotlight into local scenes from around the world through films, interviews, artist residencies, and for the first time it will present live performances. Performing as part of COSMOS is YL Hooi, the project of Melbourne-based producer Valya Ying-Li Hooi exploring the realms of dub, minimal synth, post-punk and dream-pop, Vietnamese experimental trio Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective, Ruhail Qaisar, a self-taught artist from Ladakh, India, whose music incorporates and preserves memories of growing up in Ladakh, the traditional Javanese trance explorations of The Phantasmagoria of Jathilan and Bengal Chemicals, the project of Pritam Das, who’s been making waves in the experimental electronic music scene in Kolkata, India.

The third project newly announced, The Anonymous Project, is a match made in heaven for Le Guess Who?. Taking place on the opening night, various artists will perform in a white cube on stage with specially commissioned scenography to keep them anonymous throughout it. As the organizers describe, with The Anonymous Project they “want to create a space to experiment freely with new sounds and in new directions, without any judgment or expectations based on the artist’s previous work or their public profile”.

Le Guess Who? 2023 takes place from 9-12th November in several venues throughout Utrecht. With a monumental programme wholly embracing musical diversity, Le Guess Who? will be a wonderland for musical explorers of all kinds, and there is still a lot more to be unveiled for its 16th edition. Head over to leguesswho.com to see a list of currently confirmed artists and more info. Festival passes are now sold out but Thursday and Saturday tickets are still available so if you don’t have tickets yet, get these quick.

Aki Rissanen set to release new album, Hyperreal, in July

30 June 2023

Photot: Jori Huhtala

There’s a new album on the way from Finnish pianist and composer Aki Rissanen arriving in July. Entitled Hyperreal, the album saw Rissanen enlist drummer Robert Ikiz and long term collaborator, trumpeter Verneri Pohjola. Thematically the album explores ideas of change, of being aware, of renewal and letting go, as Rissanen explains:

“There’s a change to something new and yet unknown. With the rapid transformation of reality to the AI generated virtual reality or hyperreality, we have to be aware and adapt to these things and distinguish between what is real and unreal”.

Hyperreal will see the light of day on July 14th through Edition Records and we can already hear the sublime first single, ‘Quantum Ballad’. The track is offered with an accompanying video made by Ville Hyvönen.

Alabaster DePlume announces new album Come With Fierce Grace

28 June 2023

Photo: Chris Almeida

A year on from the release of the magnificent and critically acclaimed GOLD, Alabaster DePlume has announced the release of a new album titled Come With Fierce Grace. All of the songs on the upcoming album were recorded during the same sessions as GOLD, but Come With Fierce Grace is not a collection of leftover material or outtakes. As the press release describes, “it’s a continuation of the organic collaborative and improvisational process that he established… almost as if GOLD has grown a new limb or aged into a new phase.” After spending most of 2022 touring GOLD, Alabaster spent the beginning of this year revisiting the material from the album sessions and guiding it towards a new becoming.

Come With Fierce Grace is mostly an instrumental affair, with the exception of a few tracks that feature vocal contributions from Momoko Gill (aka MettaShiba), Falle Nioke, and Donna Thompson. Alabaster thrives on collaborations and the new album features contributions from a wealth of talented artists, including Sarathy Korwar, Tom Skinner, Rozi Plain, Tom Herbert, Matthew Bourne, Ruth Goller, Conrad Singh, Ursula Russell and many more.

We’ll have to wait until September 8th for the record to be out through International Anthem but Alabaster has already shared a tender and emotionally powerful first offering, ‘Did You Know’,  featuring Momoko Gill on vocals. Take a listen below.