Celebrated improvisational artist Lonnie Holley is set to release MITH, his first album in five years, in less than two weeks. Ahead of it, Holley has shared a jubilant new single, ‘Sometimes I Wanna Dance’, featuring Laraaji on piano. It comes with a video, filmed in Tonky’s Rocket Ship, a juke joint that Holley and the film crew created in Atlanta. As the press release puts it, “the message is clear: Free your ass and the mind will follow.” Cyrus Moussavi directs the video. Watch it below.
In other related news, Lonnie Holley is embarking on a European tour in November. Take a look at all his live dates below:
Nov 1st – Oceanen, Goteborg (SWE)
Nov 3rd – Uberjazz Festival, Hamburg (GER)
Nov 4th – Quasimodo, Berlin (GER)
Nov 5th- Studio 672, Cologne (GER)
Nov 6th – Rote Sonne, Munich (GER)
Nov 10th – Kings Place, London (UK)
Nov 11th – Sonic City, Kortrijk (B)
Kranky‘s latest addition to their impressive roster is Portland, Oregon based pianist and composer Mary Sutton. Under the moniker Saloli, she is set to release her debut album The Deep End, an affair that came to life in an unusual setting, after composing and performing at a clothing-optional soaking-pool sauna. “I had never composed for synth before but wanted to make something people sitting motionless and naked in hot bubbly water would want to hear,” explained Saloli, also citing eccentric composer and pianist Erik Satie as an influence. “He subtly spins melodic fragments, and pivots harmonies and phrases so the repetitions feel new and surprising yet soothingly familiar, as if casting a spell.”
The gorgeous and spellbinding opener ‘Barcarolle’ serves as the album’s first taste ahead of its release on October 26th. Just take a moment and soak it in.
We may have missed Mirakler, the outstanding and adventurous fourth album from Moskus, when it came out last month, but we now have it firmly stuck in our hearts. Constantly shifting and evolving, the Norwegian trio, consisting of Anya Lauvdal on keys, Fredrik Luhr Deitrichson on double bass and Hans Hulbaekmo on drums/percussion, take a free-form approach to improvisation, with new elements and different moods from song to song. In their universe, “there may be no such thing as a finished product, as everything remains permanently in flux and subject to further adaption and change”, describes the album’s blurb. “Even as it is articulated, a thought or musical phrase is already being reconsidered or evolving into something else. This is contingent music, hyper-alert to nuance and environment, changing like temperature or the weather just as the dynamic of the trio shifts its emphasis when roles are exchanged or the lead swapped from one player to another.”
Here’s an album teaser for a little taste of what you’ve been missing out on.
After re-emerging last year as the solo project of singer and guitarist Angus Andrew, Liars released a killer of an album, TFCF, and we haven’t put it down since. A sequel to the album has been announced, Titles With The Word Fountain, arriving digitally and on cassette on September 21st and on vinyl on November 2nd through Mute. The new album was recorded during the TFCF sessions but as Angus explained, none of it was material left out. “To me it’s more like a sequel. I chose the songs that appear on TFCF based on how well they addressed the trauma of a failed creative relationship, whereas the material on Titles With The Word Fountain is more playful despite revolving around the same sentiments.”
The news comes with the first single from Titles With The Word Fountain, ‘Murdrum’, and we can’t stop playing it.
Liars are also set to release a limited split single with Tropical Fuck Storm as part of Famous Class’s LAMC series on September 28th.
Don The Tiger, the project of Galician musician Adrián de Alfonso, has been making some noise, first on the underground scene of Barcelona before relocating to Berlin in 2011. With a number of memberships in bands like Bèstia Ferida, Veracruz, Capitán y Homenatges, he has also worked with the likes of Lydia Lunch, Mark Cunningham, Robert Forster and Carla Bozulich.
Five years on from the release of Varadero, Don The Tiger is back with a new solo album called Matanzas. Like his previous effort, the upcoming record is also titled after a Cuban coastal town where rumba born.
He comments on Matanzas:
“Matanzas is informed by the DIY tactics that I have been applying to music since I started playing in no-wave or noise bands, methods which I somehow deprived of their typical confrontational charge. I used feedback, heavy discontinuity, tactile mikings, small pitch alterations, extreme imaging, or even self-made instruments to produce sound in the same way I used a bamboo sax, or a Colombian tiple. Once the palette was compiled, I just had to focus on melody, arrangements, rhythm, and narrative. The best hints came from my compulsive daily intake: the incredibly wide Cuban and Colombian musical heritage, the hidden connotations behind blues and soul, the disruptive drive of musique concrète, Thelonious Monk’s angles, the cockiness of psychobilly and salsa, the softness of certain torch singers from the late 50s, Erik Satie’s futuristic synthesis, the gaudiness of ‘90s video-game music, the slow pace of the sardana, Burundi’s brutally intimate chants, the brassy fantasy of the baroque… Ultra-distinct approaches from the past which happen to be sufficiently naked, articulate, and bold to make any present resonate with a tremendous frequency. Little by little these musical obsessions determined my own tradition, and therefore an eventual frame for creation, but the real pursuit came from somewhere else: making the music that I want to hear.
Lyrics-wise, Matanzas delves into issues that matter to me, such as loss, impossibility of change, unwholesome desire, and love, but the album sets also a narration unfolding between salt and foam. These songs grew strong in a shipyard and were brought back by some cargos to a smoggy rusty boardwalk where they could graciously live. You can hear engine noises, ropes creaking, the breeze penetrating very slowly… There are marine entities of various types: colonizing species, cetaceans that man murders without mercy, and sharks that will take their revenge at the most unexpected moment. There’s even a parrot missing somewhere in Panama…”
We’ll have to wait until October 19th for the album to drop through Crammed Discs but we can already hear the first single ‘Cantos al Aral menguante’, which translates as Chants To The Shrinking Aral. The track has been paired with a video and you can watch it below.
Recently signed to Bedroom Community, Berlin based British composer, producer and sound artist Sam Slater is gearing up to release his debut album Wrong Airport Ghost on October 5th. The album is all centred around one-stringed ancient instrument, a relationship that was first developed in the summer of 2016, when Slater was in Rajastahn, India, working with musician Krishna Bhopa. The pair manipulated and explored the mechanics of the stringed instrument, as the press release explains. “They relentlessly pulled it apart to begin to understand what made it work and what caused it to break. This very idea of deconstruction became fundamental to the whole process. Just like every sound comes from one source, the concept of dismantling it in order to build another is essential.”
Slater continued working and reworking the project last year in New York, before its final transformations in Iceland where he worked with producers Alfie Brooks and Bridget Ferill.
The album’s title track, both weird and wonderful, is now streaming with an accompanying video directed by Ben Haven Taylor. Wrap your ears around it.
Celebrated improvisational artist Lonnie Holley is set to release MITH, his first album in five years, in less than two weeks. Ahead of it, Holley has shared a jubilant new single, ‘Sometimes I Wanna Dance’, featuring Laraaji on piano. It comes with a video, filmed in Tonky’s Rocket Ship, a juke joint that Holley and the film crew created in Atlanta. As the press release puts it, “the message is clear: Free your ass and the mind will follow.” Cyrus Moussavi directs the video. Watch it below.
Kranky
We may have missed Mirakler, the outstanding and adventurous fourth album from 
After re-emerging last year as the solo project of singer and guitarist Angus Andrew, 
Don The Tiger
Recently signed to 
