Lea Bertucci set to release new album Acoustic Shadows

06 March 2020

New York-based composer, performer and sound designer Lea Bertucci has announced details of a new album. Entitled Acoustic Shadows, it started as an event inside a hollow bridge in Cologne, Germany, as Bertucci explains:

“Acoustic Shadows I-III was a series of site-specific musical performances and a sound installation that took place in the enclosed hollow body of the Deutzer bridge in Koln, Germany, 2018. Spanning approximately 440 meters across the Rhine river, the extraordinary acoustics and rich existing aural architecture of this site became crucial components of the installation and musical compositions.

An 8-channel speaker system distributed throughout the bridge became activated by three instrumental performances that happened throughout the course of a week. Fragments of each performance were captured by microphones installed in the space and then played back through the 8-channels after the performance was over in a loop of overlapping moments, creating a sonic accumulation that takes place over long stretches of time – a musical performance with no clear ending.”

Bertucci also gave some insight into the recording process:

“Rather than offer a straight document of a piece that eschewed notions of time, space and subjective/mutable spatial positioning of the listeners, I was more interested in shaping compositions that worked within the parameters of an LP, developing pieces that worked within the approximate timeframe of 20 minutes on each side and capturing the essence of the experience. The original pieces were more than 40 minutes long each, and with no real ending due to the playback element that transformed performance into installation.”

Acoustic Shadows arrives on April 15th through SA Recordings but we can already ear an excerpt of its first piece, ‘Brass’.

Collectress premiere video for ‘Landing’, new album Different Geographies out tomorrow

05 March 2020

The wait is nearly over and the highly anticipated second album from Collectress, Different Geographies, will see the light of day tomorrow. When the exciting news first emerged last November, the experimental chamber collective enraptured us with the magical and jubilant single ‘Landing’. Now the track has been paired with a video, featuring footage from the carnival celebrations in Metaxourgio, Greece. “The track itself has always alway felt to us like it mixes a big heart and an energetic spirit with something about endurance, continuity and inter-dependence”, explained the band. “Setting it to imagery from the life-force that is carnival seemed like the perfect expression of this.” One of the four multi-instrumentalists sheds more light on it:

“For me they seemed to embody the anarchic spirit of the festival, always jumping and dancing, full of mischief, nature and mystery, a mix of dark and light, challenge and exuberance, traditional and modern, ancient bells and scruffy urban footwear combining in a leaping deafening joyfulness.

Since being in Greece, I’ve thought and read a lot about Greece’s at times complex relationship with its ancient history – a past often essentialised by Northern/Western Europe (think Byron, ‘Elgin’ Marbles, White/Christian/Fortress Europe). I’ve also thought and read a lot about Greece’s geographical position on the borders of Europe, Asia and Africa and its people’s heartbreaking humanity to refugees during the ongoing migrant crisis. Something of all of this seemed to be expressed both in the symbolism of those goat revellers and in the spirit of the carnival. I noticed as we paraded along, the tradition of restaurant and cafe proprietors placing tables outside their establishments, covered with cheese and bread and drinks for the revellers to enjoy for free. I thought of the potential in community, anarchy, kindness and welcome.”

Watch the video below and grab Different Geographies tomorrow through their own imprint Peeler Records.

Kamaal Williams releases new album Live At Dekmantel

03 March 2020

Two years on from the release of The Return, which was one of our 15 Album Picks of the Year, Kamaal Williams aka Henry Wu is teasing the release of new music later this year. Preceding it, Williams has shared a new live album, Live At Dekmantel, which was recorded last summer at Dekmantel Festival in Amsterdam. Mainly the fruit of an improvised set, across its nine tracks, and as the press release describes, “dramatic sonics – high octane underground funk that fuses the spiritual with the dancefloor – complete with the atmosphere, markings and space that only live performance supplies – offer an introduction to a typical Kamaal Williams show.”

Along with the news, Williams has shared new track ‘3 Yourself’ and an accompanying video featuring original footage shot in Hong Kong during last year’s protests, as well as archival footage and photography. Tom J Bennett directs. Watch it now.

Kalbells premieres video for lead single ‘Cool and Bendable’

02 March 2020

There’s a new EP on the way from Kalbells, the project of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Kalmia Traver. Entitled Mothertime and slated for an April 10th release through NNA Tapes, the EP features four tracks and was co-produced by Jeremy Malvin aka Chrome Sparks. Ahead of its release, Kalbells has shared the exuberant lead single ‘Cool and Bendable’, a track inspired “by a dream in which she held her yet-unborn child”, explains the press release, “but as Kal finished writing the song in the studio with Jeremy, she realized it was actually about holding herself, a body, a life.” In Kal’s own words, she was also “celebrating in awe the general aliveness of our world, Earth.”

‘Cool and Bendable’ comes with a brilliant accompanying music video directed by Charles Billot. Here it is.

Capitol K set to release mini-album, Birdtrapper, shares first single ‘Temple’

02 March 2020

Following the release of Goatherder a couple of years ago, Capitol K is gifting the world with yet another wonderful and shimmering release entitled Birdtrapper. As with the previous album, recorded in his native Malta, the Mediterranean is still enlightening and inspiring the multi-instrumentalist and producer, whose album is described as “the sound of an initiation rave in a utopian hidden village”. The press release adds that the upcoming Birdtrapper “is an evocation of sonic bird callers, proto-rave abandon, ambient resonance and an ecstatic captive state, along with the previous work’s visions of hunters, temples and scrub land music.”

Capitol K has shared the first single and opening track, ‘Temple’, and we can’t stop listening to it.

Birdtrapper is out on April 10th and is available as a limited edition transparent 12″s and digitally through his Bandcamp .

Jaga Jazzist announce details of ninth album Pyramid

29 February 2020

Photo: Anthony P Huus

Norwegian iconic octet Jaga Jazzist are back with a new album following 2015’s Starfire. Entitled Pyramid, the new album, unlike the previous one, came to life in just two weeks in a woodland studio in Sweden where they secluded themselves working 12-hour days. “The most important thing is that we didn’t want to over-analyze every musical idea”, explained co-founder and drummer Martin Horntveth. “We wanted to follow the first and original idea and keep the freshness.” Pyramid is also their first self-produced album, which was “hard but felt natural”, as Martin said, “as five of us are producers and make records for a living. The result is an album that feels more collaborative than ever.”

The album arrives on April 24th through Brainfeeder but we can already hear the first sterling taste of it in the form of brand new single ‘Spiral Era’.