Brett Naucke set to release new album EMS Hallucinations

22 July 2020

With a vast body of work under his belt, including live performance, film scores, sound design for interactive gaming, and audio installations, Chicago based electronic composer Brett Naucke has been dabbling with modular synthesis for a long time. Well versed in various synthesizer types, Naucke has collaborated with bands like Bitchin Bajas, Pulse Emitter, TALSounds, Michael Vallera, and Ryley Walker, and has also been a member of avant-art collective ONO since 2013. He has announced the release of a new solo album, EMS Hallucinations, the fruit of a residency at EMS in Stockholm. A paramount electronic studio, created in 1964, the Elektronmusikstudion aka EMS has hosted notable composers and musicians over the years such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Philip Glass, Morton Subotnick, Mark Fell, or Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley. Every year, EMS continue to host their artist-in-residency program, with Naucke being one of the recent resident guests. There, he composed two side-long pieces, recorded on two rare synthesizer systems, a Buchla 200 and a Serge Modular. On the forthcoming album, and as the press release describes, “the intimate is the music, its instrumentation, the journey it took to get there.”

EMS Hallucinations is set for release on September 11th through American Dreams Records, and Naucke is offering a preview of the album in the form of the deeply immersive and mesmerizing ‘Hallucinations IV’, an edit from side one. It comes with an accompanying video directed and edited by Nick Ciontea of brownshoesonly. Take a look below and let yourself be carried with it.

Kamaal Williams’ new album, Wu Hen, out this Friday; listen to new single ‘Mr Wu’

21 July 2020

Photo: Glauco Canalis

Kamaal Williams has been teasing us with a taste of a few tracks from his new album, Wu Hen, which will finally land this Friday through Black Focus. As if we needed any more reasons to be excited for this release, the multi-talented musician has just shared a new single, ‘Mr Wu’. Take a listen below.

In other related news, Kamaal Williams is hosting a live stream fundraiser performance this Thursday at 6pm UK time with Shabaka Hutchings, Alina Bzhezhinska and Lauren Faithall, with all proceeds being donated to The Stephen Lawrence Trust.

J. Zunz shares video for new single ‘Four Women And Darkness’

21 July 2020

Photo: Sofía Ruesga

Lorena Quintanilla, of Mexican duo Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, has announced the release of her second album under the moniker J. Zunz. Entitled Hibiscus, the album follows a period of “personal crisis inside and political crisis outside” and sees her taking a more minimal approach, partly influenced by a John Cage biography. “I remember I was reading a biography of John Cage and that book detonated something in me,” explained Quintanilla, adding: “The author was referring to the influence of Buddhism and meditation, and modern artists like Sonia Delaunay, Lucio Fontana, Julio Le Parc, Duchamp, futurism. I was very charged with ideas.”

Following the lead single ‘Y’, J. Zunz has shared an entrancing new track, ‘Four Women And Darkness’, and it comes with an accompanying video. She described the inspiration behind it:

“‘Four Women And Darkness’ is a story from my grandmother’s childhood. She told me that once during wartime in México in the late 1920’s, she and her sisters were hidden by her grandmother in a little, cold secret room. She hid them there because the militia wanted to search the house. Soldiers used to look for women or girls to rape them or to kidnap them. My grandmother and her sisters stayed there in the dark room for hours until the soldiers left.

I asked four close friends of mine to express their own darkness. They all come from different cities and backgrounds. I instructed them with some movements remarking and reassuring the limits of our bodies, which for years have belonged to everyone but us.”

With a dark and dramatic feeling to it, the haunting and hypnotic ‘Four Women And Darkness’ incites a trance-like state. Quintanilla co-directed the video with John O’Carroll. Here it is.


Hibiscus is out on August 21st through Rocket Recordings

Listen to Liturgy & LEYA’s collaborative single ‘Antigone’

18 July 2020

Brooklyn’s black metal band Liturgy and experimental violin and harp duo LEYA were due to tour together last April before the pandemic hit. In support of that tour, the two outfits had teamed up for a collaborative single, ‘Antigone’, which they unveiled earlier this month. Mighty and otherwordly, ‘Antigone’ is named after the heroine in the Greek tragedy of the same name by Sophocles. As Liturgy put it, “it’s sort of a LEYA song inside a Liturgy song”. Take a listen below.

Mary Lattimore announces new album, Silver Ladders, and shares first single

17 July 2020

There’s a new album on the way from LA-based experimental composer and harpist Mary Lattimore. Entitled Silver Ladders, it is set for release on October 9th through Ghostly International and follows her acclaimed 2018 Hundreds of Days, which she toured extensively internationally. In one of her shows at a festival, Lattimore met Slowdive’s Neil Halstead, and invited him to produce the upcoming album. “A friend introduced us because she knew how big of a fan I was and Neil and I had a little chat… The next day, I just thought maybe he’d be into producing my next record, ” Lattimore explained. “I flew on a little plane to Newquay in Cornwall where he lives with his lovely partner Ingrid and their baby. I didn’t know what his studio was like, he’d never recorded a harp, but somehow it really worked.”

‘Sometimes He’s In My Dreams´, a track she wrote collaboratively with Halstead, is the first sublime single to be let loose and Lattimore had this to say about it:

“It’s a song borne from a long improvisation – it was a section we both liked out of a longer piece. After I finished playing, Neil shaped it and looped part of it and then added his dreamy guitar line. What started out as simple meandering solo harp with a ricocheting delay got a little deeper and more fully formed with Neil’s help. It’s probably my favorite part of the record because it’s nothing I would’ve thought to do, having made a lot of music on my own on the past. Plus, that guitar!”

Listen to ‘Sometimes He’s In My Dreams’ below.

Mammal Hands’ fourth album, Captured Spirits, out in September; listen to first single ‘Chaser’

16 July 2020

Formed in Norwich in 2012, instrumental trio Mammal Hands caught our attention in 2018 when they played a mesmerizing live show at London’s Field Day. Brothers Nick and Jordan Smart and Jesse Barrett tantalise the senses with their contemporary jazz compositions, flirting with a lot of genres from electronica and classical to folk, ambient and world music and cite influences such as Pharoah Sanders, Gétachèw Mekurya, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Sirishkumar Manji. The trio have announced the release of their fourth album, Captured Spirits, touching on themes of existence and displacement. Jesse commented on the making of the album:

“I think with this record, there was a strong and renewed sense of collective enjoyment and appreciation for the process and each other’s contributions. After a long period of touring and a slow build up to the actual recording sessions we were able to mull over ideas for long periods, build on lessons from the past and pull our playing connection to an even deeper place. Realising each other’s visions for the whole and clearly understanding how they intersect”.

We´ll have to wait until September 11th for Captured Spirits to be out through Gondwana Records but we can already hear the magnificent first single ‘Chaser’. Here it is.