Photo: Yasuhiro Ohara
Mouse On The Keys released a new EP last month entitled Arche, which will be followed in September with a full length album of the same name. On the EP, the Japanese trio bring the piano to the fore again, embracing back their instrumental basics. The EP’s magnificent opening track, ‘Praxis’, has been paired with an accompanying video, directed by Hiromichi Yano. Take a look below.
Photo: Jen Medina
Julianna Barwick is back to soothe and enchant us with Healing Is A Miracle, her first new record in four years, following the release of Will in 2016. The album sees her exploring rich sonic possibilities through improvisation and her singular, ethereal and immersive loop-based compositions. After recording all of her music on headphones, on Healing Is A Miracle she turned to studio monitors, which had been gifted to her by Jónsi and Alex (Somers). “The first song I remember making with those was the first song on the album, Inspirit.” she explains, “When I added the bass I really felt it in my body, you know, in a way you just wouldn’t with headphones… it was kind of euphoric and fun”, she explained. “I got really excited about making the record in that moment, and I think that really had an impact on the sounds I ended up making.”
A transitional album, Barwick recorded it in the aftermath of her move from New York to Los Angeles, with the help of Jónsi (Sigur Rós), Nosaj Thing and Mary Lattimore. Healing Is A Miracle, as the title suggests, takes its name from the processes of body healing. “You cut your hand, it looks pretty bad, and two weeks later it looks like it never happened… That’s kind of amazing, you know?”
The record is set for release on July 10th through Ninja Tune and Barwick has already shared two moving and mesmerizing singles, ‘Inspirit’ and ‘In Light’ featuring Jónsi. ‘In Light’ comes with a gorgeous accompanying video, directed by Joel Kazuo Knoernschild.
Tomorrow will see the release of Simurg, the heavenly collaborative album from Belgian pyschedelic jazz collective Compro Oro and Murat Ertel, frontman and co-founder of Turkish cult psychedelic folk band BaBa ZuLa, and his singer partner Esma Ertel. The follow-up to last year’s widely acclaimed Suburban Exotica, Simurg grew out of a live performance between guitarist Bart Vervaeck and Murat Ertel at Istanbul Express in 2016. The process continued in the studio as an intense recording session that would yield the upcoming record. “The new music is entirely based on improvisation”, frontman Wim Segers explained. “In contrast to ‘Suburban Exotica’, which is built more from song structures and where there was more overdubs.”
Simurg conjures up everything from dub and psychedelia to jazz, funk and Anatolian folk music. The project is describes as “a spontaneous dialogue, a quest for new musical horizons, a gathering of liberal spirits to reach for the unknown.”
For a staggering and immersive taste of the album ahead of tomorrow’s release, take a listen to ‘Ignorance Is Bliss (Valley Of Ignorance)’.
Simurg is out on June 19th though Sdban Ultra
!K7’s neo-classical/ambient imprint 7K! has launched a new musical series called Plunderphonia. Developed by !K7 founder Horst Weidenmüller, the project sees contemporary musicians remix, re-edit and reinterpret historical audio recordings into new works, and is inspired by Henrik Schwarz’s 2018 Plunderphonia concert, which re-appropriated 700 string sequences. The debut Plunderphonia album comes from the hands of Grammy nominated composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer PC Nackt (The String Theory), and includes classical piano compositions pieces by Schubert, Scarlatti and Bach that have been selected by music supervisor Hania Rani. Nackt first invited pianist Antonis Anissegos to play the scores into MIDI. He explains some of the follow-up process:
“I looked for sections which would be fun to rearrange, then went to Yamaha’s Hamburg warehouse and for a beautiful week performed with the midi-files, using a controller, midi effects and iPads, and recorded the whole record live.
I went into a bubble editing the record. I decided to go for the most beautiful version of this album, because, whatever I do, you will always feel my edgy side anyway.”
PC Nackt’s Plunderphonia will be out on June 26th and two exhilarating singles have already been let loose, ‘Space_Schubert’ and ‘Exobase_Scarlatti’. The latter comes with a video directed by photographer/director Ralf Schmerberg and was shot in Berlin, Sicily, Los Angeles, and Bari. Check both singles below.
There’s a new album on the way from The Cradle, the solo project of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Paco Cathcart. Entitled Laughing In My Sleep, the 21-track album was recorded a couple of years ago and taps into different feelings, reflecting the experiences Cathcart had in 2017 and early 2018, which, according to him, was “a dense time with some healthy personal upheaval and a lot of traveling”.
Similarly, Laughing in my Sleep amalgamates different Cradle styles, and as Cathcart described, it is “a summary album of sorts that would give someone listening to my work for the first time a little taste of everything.”
The album is set for release on August 21st through NNA Tapes but we can already hear the lead single, ‘One Too Many Times’, a song full of haunting beauty combined with Cathcart’s emotional and evocative storytelling. “It’s a lament about miscommunication, and the difficulties of being vulnerable and clear with one another,” Cathcart explained, “It’s about feeling desperately apart from the “vanguard,” that is, those who are fearless and true with their language, politically and personally.” ‘One Too Many Times’ features Lily Konigsberg (of Palberta) on backing vocals and you can listen to it below.
We’re just a day away from the release of Nightports w/ Betamax, the new Nightports album, this time in collaboration with drummer and percussionist Betamax. Following the rhythmically wild, relentless and hypnotic single ‘Hydro’, they are giving us another taste of the upcoming record with new single ‘Sparke’, offered with a live video recorded at Betamax’s studio ‘The Shard’. Check it out.
Nightports w/ Betamax is out on June 12th through The Leaf Label
