Watch Qasim Naqvi’s new video for ‘No Tongue’

21 May 2019

Pakistani-American percussionist and composer Qasim Naqvi has just released his debut solo record, Teenages, through Erased Tapes. Hot on the heels of his album release, Naqvi has paired the first single ‘No Tongue’ with a video, directed by Christina Burchard and performed by dancer Matthew “ET” Gibbs.

Burchard comments on the video:

“The track “No Tongue” is minimal, cerebral, and the harmonic shifts and strange sounds that appear throughout give it an otherworldly vibe. Qasim and I talked a lot about his relationship to this album and how he felt sometimes he was dealing with another consciousness inside the machine, and the experience was more like a conversation with a sometimes unwelcome host. These conversations conjured images in my mind of aliens, artificial intelligent machines, or parasitic organisms that affect the brain. There was also something about the song that felt computational, like mathematics and geometry
I immediately thought of dancer Matthew “ET” Gibbs. I had been following him on Instagram and am a big fan. ET is a bone breaker. Bone breaking involves mostly arm contortion, an optical illusion that makes it appear he is breaking his body to create new shapes. It feels unnatural, uncanny, and beyond. He also specialises in tutting which uses hand and arm gestures to create geometric shapes in space. Matthew choreographed his own performance and often pulls from movement found in nature, like jellyfish and spiders, to inspire his moves. He also pulls from fantasy and alien-like creatures.
I found a guy in East LA who owns three old bunkers from WWII and we used one of them for the location of the music video. I love how Matthew looks in the space, like he’s in a vortex swirling the energy around his body. His muscles flexing to every nuance in Qasim’s track as if in conversation with the sound. Our Director of Cinematography Lucas Gath did an incredible job building a milky atmosphere bringing us deeper into the void.”

Here’s the video.

Stereo Total announce new album Ah! Quel Cinéma! and share first single ‘Cinémascope’

15 May 2019

Photo: Paul Cabine

French-German duo Stereo Total are back with their twelfth album called Ah! Quel Cinéma!, releasing on July 12th through Tapete Records. Formed in Berlin in 93 by Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring, their upcoming record is “reminiscent of “rien de tout”, as the press release describes, and sees them “arriv[ing] in their very own musical universe which pays no heed to stylistic devices”.

‘Cinémascope’ is the first excellent single lifted from Ah! Quel Cinéma! and Stereo Total have paired it with an accompanying film.

Sarathy Korwar set to release second album More Arriving in July

14 May 2019

London based, American born and Indian bred percussionist, producer and composer Sarathy Korwar is set to release his second album this summer. Entitled More Arriving, the album was recorded in India and the UK over the course of two and a half years and saw Korwar enlist a cast of South Asian artists, including rappers MC Mawali, Prabh Deep and Delhi Sultanate, and spoken word artists Zia Ahmed and Deepak Unnikrishnan. More Arriving, as the press release describes, is “an honest reflection of Korwar’s experience of being an Indian in a divided Britain.” He explains:

“This is a modern brown record. The kind of record that a contemporary Indian living in the UK for the past 10 years would make. This is what Indian music sounds like to me right now, and that means incorporating multiple brown voices. If anyone has a problem with that, they should be questioning what they think Indian music should be.”

Korwar also explained the title of the record:

“More Arriving comes from the scaremongering around Brexit. It’s a tongue-in-cheek play on the fact that there are more people coming and you’ll have to deal with it!

I want the idea of brown pride to come through. My voice is one amongst a thousand, but this record is a snapshot of something much greater than myself. It’s the chance to send a message.”

More Arriving will see the light of day on July 26th through The Leaf Label but we can already hear what he´ll be throwing at us with the fervent first single ‘Mumbay’, featuring Mumbai rapper MC Mawali and merging psychedelia, jazz and hip-hop. It comes with a video directed by Harshbir Singh Phull. Take a look now.

Circuit des Yeux releases Reaching For Indigo: GAIA INFINITUS: Performed Live at Le Guess Who? Festival

10 May 2019

Circuit des Yeux live at Le Guess Who? 2018 | Photography: Erik Luyten

We loved last year’s edition of Le Guess Who? to bits and one powerful and beautiful performance that really stood out for us was that of Circuit des Yeux, closing the festival on Sunday November 11th at TivoliVredenburg. Haley Fohr, the immeasurably talented and adventurous vocalist, composer, and producer behind the project, cooked up a special one-off performance, an augmented version of her album Reaching For Indigo, a timeless favourite record and one of our 15 Picks of 2017. Entitled Reaching For Indigo: Gaia Infinitus, it was rearranged and performed with an eight-piece ensemble featuring members of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, as well as her bassist and drummer. Today, Circuit des Yeux unleashed the recordings of that performance in the shape of a live album and DVD, released through Drag City, and also available on her website and Bandcamp.

Circuit des Yeux’s Haley Fohr comments on Reaching for Indigo: GAIA INFINITUS:

“Let it be known that I (Haley Fohr) once walked the Earth and chose to sing my way through life. Let it be known that one of these many singing rituals transpired on Nov 11, 2018 at Le Guess Who? Festival. On this evening Cooper Crain rearranged works from 2017’s “Reaching For Indigo”, members of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra helped re-imagine this aforementioned music, Le Guess Who? Festival documented it, and here today we have Reaching For Indigo: GAIA INFINITUS: Performed Live at Le Guess Who? Festival.

Drag City & I have meticulously prepared a limited 300 count LP/DVD, featuring 100 different album covers, as well as a video documentation of the entire performance. It includes a previously unreleased song written during the Indigo era,”Four Limbs”, and is exclusively available on the vinyl version of this release.

Thank you for your continued support of independent music & the living artist.”

For a taste of the intense and staggering beauty of Circuit des Yeux’s performance, watch the live video for ‘Black Fly’ below:

The Quiet Temple announce debut album and share lead single ‘The Last Opium Den (On Earth)’

08 May 2019

Soulsaver’s Rich Machin and multi-instrumentalist Duke Garwood joined forces for a new project called The Quiet Temple, also featuring a rolling cast of musicians including Ray Dickaty, Tim Lewis aka Thighpaulsandra, Pete Marsh, Paul May and Doggen. This Summer, The Quiet Temple will release their self-titled debut album, which they describe as an “experimental cosmic-psyche-jazz-Krautrock-post-punk-dub record”.
With three seminal jazz albums cited as influential to the upcoming album, Larry Young’s Lawrence of Newark, Marcus Belgrave’s Gemini and Noah Howard’s The Black Ark, they went into the studio with little planning, allowing spontaneity and improvisation to reign freely.

The announcement comes with the first taste from the record, the sublime lead single ‘The Last Opium Den (On Earth)’. Take a listen now.

The Quiet Temple is out on July 5th through Wichita Recordings in the US and Canada and Point Of Departure in the rest of the world.

Brandt Brauer Frick’s fifth album imminent, listen to two new singles

07 May 2019

In the three years since Brandt Brauer Frick released Joy, which was one of our Album Picks of 2016, the three musicians have kept themselves busy, mostly composing, producing and releasing solo albums, music for theatre and plenty more. They are back as a brilliant acoustic dance unit and will be gifting the world with a follow-up, Echo, a more club-focused album that echoes their decade-long existence as a trio. “It’s about getting back to what we started off with,” explained Daniel Brandt, “but of course, after 10 years, we’ve gained more know how. When we were starting out we just had one microphone and a broken piano to make our first album.”

Preceding the album’s release through Because Music on June 7th, Brandt Brauer Frick have shared two tremendous tracks off it, ‘Masse’ and ‘Rest’. The latter comes with a video animated by Max Parovsky.