Ben LaMar Gay’s album Open Arms to Open Us out now

30 December 2021

Photo: Alejandro Ayala

Open Arms to Open Us, the outstanding and adventurous new album from musical polymath Ben LaMar Gay, slipped under our radar when it came out last month but we now have it firmly stuck in our ears and hearts. One of the year’s standout records, Open Arms to Open Us is an impressive feat with disparate stylistic dimensions. On his new album, the tremendously talented and versatile composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer and poet runs the gamut from blues, jazz and R&B to Tropicália, hip-hop and eletronica, and everything in between, often within the same track.

In adition to Tommaso Moretti on drums, Matthew Davis on tuba, and Rob Frye on woodwinds, Open Arms to Open Us saw Gay enlist a cast of stellar collaborators, including OHMME singers Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart, bassist/vocalist/arranger Ayanna Woods, multi-disciplinary Rwandan artist Dorothée Munyaneza, poet A.Martinez, cellist Tomeka Reid, and vocalists Onye Ozuzu, Gira Dahnee, and Angel Bat Dawid.

In an accompanying prologue written by him, Gay says the album “deals with rhythm as an inheritance of information – sort of like DNA or RNA. Coping with the present-day bombardment of data and recycled ideologies from sources essentially fed by the creed “Destroy Them. Own the Earth” often leaves me with only one thing to look forward to: Rhythm. More than anything, I’d like my babies to always trust in rhythm. It’s the one trueness that travels great distances and constantly survives the crumbling of facades.”

He continues:

“Open Arms to Open Us is full of rhythm or information that will assist my young folk in dealing with the repetition of things that aim to harm them or stunt their holistic progression. The title is a suggestion of a body movement that is used in many spiritual practices and is also a gesture that represents a type of understanding that leads to touch or a hug. The music is for dancing, reflecting, celebrating, bellowing, bawling, stimulation, focus and deciphering messages from loved ones here and beyond. It was the space in between the sound of my great grandfather’s hammer that made me understand that, no matter what, We Gon Win.”

For a taste of the out-of-the-box sound and far flung influences at play in the album, here’s the three marvelous singles that preceded its release, ‘Sometimes I Forget How Summer Looks On You (feat. Ohmme)’, ‘Aunt Lola and the Quail’ and ‘Oh Great Be The Lake’.




Open Arms to Open Us is out now through International Anthem and Nonesuch Records.

Patrik Fitzgerald releases new single ‘No Santa Clauses’ feat. Lemur

18 December 2021

With Christmas at our door step, cult punk troubadour Patrik Fitzgerald has teamed up with Norwegian ensemble LEMUR to release a fitting single for the season. Entitled ‘No Santa Clauses’, the single is out now through Crispin Glover Records and is backed by B Side ‘With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm’, an old music hall song from 1934. Both dark and delightful, ‘No Santa Clauses’ depicts the horrors of poor small children who were forced to sweep chimneys, a prominent practice in England in the late 18th and 19th century. The track is offered with a brilliant animated video made by The Branch and you can watch it below.

Watch Poppy Ackroyd’s video for new single ‘Suspended’

17 December 2021

Last month saw the release of Poppy Ackroyd‘s Pause, her magnificent fourth album comprising 10 solo piano works that came to life during the pandemic, following the birth of her first child. The extraordinary multi-instrumentalist and composer Poppy Ackroyd has shared a new single from the record called ‘Suspended’. She had this to say about the track:

“It’s about the eerie quiet of a city in lockdown. Walking through Brighton in the early hours of the morning, often with the streets to myself, I found myself imagining what the bird’s eye view of the city would be like. Everything was so still, time almost felt suspended. This track was my attempt to capture that feeling. It is performed with both hands inside the piano, using the instruments strings rather than the keys. The left hand gently hammers the strings repeatedly from above, while the right picks out a plucked melody that floats over the top.”

‘Suspended’ comes with a gorgeous video by videographer Jola Kudela, who comments:

“I knew about the genesis and Poppy’s intention when I started working on the video – empty quiet city, deserted by covid. But I live in London, not in Brighton, so I was experiencing anxiety rather than quietness created by this artificial state of suspension. That’s why I imagined a mysterious presence walking through the city, something that had taken the ownership of our space. But what at first seemed menacing became salvation and escape.

From a technical point of view, I shot the video in the post-lockdown era so it wasn’t easy to find empty streets anymore. So I based most of the process on still images that I projected into simple 3D forms and moved the camera in that space. This process is called camera mapping. The clouds where generated based on VDB objects (OpenVDB is an open-source library comprising a hierarchical data structure and tools for manipulation of sparse volumetric data discretized on three-dimensional grids). It required 3 weeks of rendering at a render farm of 8 computers. It was quite a technical challenge for me, working on my own, but it was very fulfilling to achieve the final result.”

Watch the video below.


Pause is out now through One Little Independent Records.

Mark Guiliana shares new single ‘Song for Making Things Right’

08 December 2021

Just in time for the festive season, acclaimed drummer and composer Mark Guiliana dropped a treat in the form of a new single called ‘Song for Making Things Right’. With a new full-length album arriving in January through Colorfield, ‘Song for Making Things Right’ serves as the first taste of what’s coming. “While introducing the album”, as the press release describes, “it is but one side to a multifaceted structure of sound presented throughout the LP.”

We can´t wait to hear more. For now, listen to the single below.

Rob Burger unveils second single, ‘Hotel for Saints’, from upcoming album Marching With Feathers

07 December 2021

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Rob Burger is as prolific as he is inventive, counting among his accomplishments various collaborations with artists like John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Bill Frisell, Elvis Costello, Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, Beth Orton and Iron & Wine, to name but a few. As a solo artist, Burger is gearing up to release Marching With Feathers, his new full-length album which follows 2019’s The Grid. “Where that album braided the joviality of mid-century exotica with the controlled exploration of krautrock and kosmische”, desribes the press release, “the new album Marching With Feathers further reveals Burger’s command of mood and texture without the need for stylized referentiality.”

Marching With Feathers will see the light of day on February 11th through on Western Vinyl and Burger had already enticed us with the opening track ‘Figurine’. Now he has shared a second beautiful single called ‘Hotel For Saints’. Listen to both below.