Legendary krautrock outfit Can is one of the most influential bands of all time, with a catalogue that keeps on giving. Highlighting their live performances, Mute and Spoon Records have announced the release of a series of live albums, The Can Live series. Remastered from the original tapes to the best possible quality, The Can Live series was overseen by founding member Irmin Schmidt and producer / engineer Rene Tinner. Can: Live in Stuttgart 1975, the first of five parts, will be released on May 28th. The first taste from it comes in the shape of a snippet from the epic, vibrant and groovy jam ‘Stuttgart 75 Eins’. Take a listen now.
A busy and versatile composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer, operating from his recording studio The Rabbit Hole Recording, Christopher Vibberts has been involved with several projects and collaborations over the last couple of decades. Having composed for film, television and multimedia, he has also played, toured and produced a multitude of artists.
His project Chrystal Für came to life three years ago while taking a life-changing sabbatical from film scoring and producing in the high desert mountains of central Mexico. Under this moniker, Vibberts is set to release his third full-length album. Entitled Elusion, the album is described as “an elegy to the cycle of loss, acceptance, and the promise of restored life.”
Elusion will see the light of day on May 28th through What Are We Records. Ahead of its release, we can already hear the opening track ‘Requiem’. Vibberts commented on the track:
“‘Requiem’ is a soaring recognition of a year of trials and tribulations and an eagerness to lay it to rest. Slowly evolving tones defy gravity as they launch into space making way for an emerging synth that in its gentle pulsation reminds us how alive we still are. Requiem is an end, and a beginning.”
At once both sombre and soothing, light and dark, ‘Requiem’ carries the listener on an immersive and hauntingly beautiful journey. The track comes with an accompanying video. Watch it below.
There’s exciting news from Belgian instrumental five-piece STUFF., who have conquered our ears with their adventurous, groovy and dance-oriented sound, embracing songwriting and improvisation, and amalgamating genres like jazz, hip-hop, funk and electronica. Following their 2017 phenomenal album, Old Dreams, New Planets, the quintet are back with their third album, T(h)reats, set for release on May 7th through Sdban Ultra. Along with album announcement STUFF. have shared ‘Honu’, which serves as the first outlandish and exhilarating single from the album. Named after the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle, the single comes paired with a video accompaniment and the band offered some insight into it:
“The video for HONU made by volk.be, is based on the Guy Vandenbranden ‘Composition’ artwork from 1967 and combines 70-ish graphics with images of a Honu (Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle) — the inspiration behind the song’s title.
The landscape was paradisiacal, as if it were plucked straight from the front of a postcard. Not a cloud marred the sky, the only thing that stirred the surroundings was a gentle breeze that rippled gently through the crystal clear waters. It were as if you were looking through a glass floor; the vibrant colours of the sea life and seabed below bursting forth in HD. It all felt too perfect, too squeaky clean. Something ugly had to be lurking somewhere.”
Orions Belte, the outfit of Øyvind Blomstrøm, Chris Holm and Kim Åge Furuhaug, are gearing up to release their new album Villa Amorini. The Norwegian trio named the album after a Bergen restaurant which was a vibrant place for live music and long nights in the 90’s and belonged to Holm’s family. Serving as “a homage to an era of loud music, club nights, ugly shirts and long afterparties”, as the band puts, Villa Amorini, unlike their previous record, “might sound more like big city night life and chaotic afterparties.”
Villa Amorini will be released on April 9th through Jansen Records and Orions Belte have recently shared a slick, expansive and propulsive new single called ‘Lotus’. It comes with a fitting video filmed by Nikolai Grasaasen up on a mountain top in Fresvik called Mulakamben. Take a look.
The triumphant musical force that is AMOR have just released an astonishingly ecstatic and infectiously catchy new record. Entitled AMOR/LEMUR, it features Norwegian ensemble LEMUR and follows their wonderful and jubilant 2018 debut album Sinking Into A Miracle. The Glasgow quartet, made up of multi-instrumentalist and improviser Richard Youngs, Turner nominated artist Luke Fowler, drummer Paul Thomson (Franz Ferdinand) and Norwegian composer and double-bassist Michael Francis Duch (LEMUR), have now shared the opening track ‘Unravel’. If you haven’t heard it yet, we very much advise you to just drop whatever you’re doing and have a dance. The track comes with a video made by Glasgow artist Torsten Luschmann. Here it is.
We’ve been eagerly waiting for a full-length album from Steiger, after they took us by storm with their collaborative Brick Smoke Basement EP released last November. The Ghent trio of Gilles Vandecaveye, Kobe Boon and Simon Raman have now lifted the lid on its follow up, The New Lady Llama. Through composition and improvisation, Steiger continue to explore the outer margins of jazz as well as disparate territories and influences from contemporary music to electronica and pop, “yet remain faithful to the genre’s long-standing core principle; that of a flexible transformation”, as the press release describes.
We’ll have to wait until April 9th for The New Lady Llama to be out through Sdban Ultra but Steiger have already shared an astounding taste off it, ‘Lambda’. We’ve been playing it over and over again and if the single is anything to go by, we are in for a treat.
