Capitol K returns with seventh album Goatherder

22 June 2018

Malta born, London based multi-instrumentalist and producer Capitol K has been gifting us with iconic albums since the late 90’s. A big league producer in recent years, operating from his studio at London’s Total Refreshment Centre, he has been recording and producing incredible musicians including The Comet Is Coming, Rozi Plain, Flamingods, Ibibio Sound Machine and many more. Kristian Craig Robinson, the prolific man behind Capitol K, has also been busy making his new album, Goatherder. The record was written and recorded in a cave turned into studio in Malta and saw him using several bamboo instruments collected around the world, including his new lead instrument, an ancient Quecha reeded pipe. According to the press release, Goatherder also features “various resonating vessels and percussive objects including dry fennel storks collected from Punic troglodyte sites, and atonal flutes built from fresh cut farmland reed”. Capitol K explains:

“I’ve been collecting bamboo flutes, horns, pipes and percussion around the world for over a decade. Gathering together these naturally resonant forms I took them to my native Malta and built a temporary studio in a five hundred year old carved rock cave basement which was the former goat shelter of a farm dwelling. Some elements of all six of my Capitol K albums to date have been created in Malta and, wishing to expand on that rhythm, I chose to make a solitary concept album in Malta, drawing on my individual imagination of place and history. The idea was to create in the present a personalised and fictional re-imagining of a Mediterranean, particularly Maltese, diasporic music that fuses ancient and modern techniques. During days spent exploring ritualistic process and practice, field work and location experiences developed to awaken genetic memory, reaching back far beyond my present time and allowing me to freely interpret the opaquely resonant vibrations of the Maltese land and experience”.

Ahead of the album’s release on July 13th through Faith And Industry, Capitol K is enticing us with the first spellbinding single ‘Landlocked’. Take a listen now.

Watch Circuit des Yeux’s new video for ‘Falling Blonde’

19 June 2018

We can’t put down Circuit des Yeux‘s Reaching For Indigo, a timeless favourite record that made it to our 15 Album Picks last year. Haley Fohr, the phenomenal and adventurous musician behind Circuit des Yeux, has unveiled its fourth single, ‘Falling Blonde’, and an accompanying video directed and starring New Zealand based video artist Veronica Crockford-Pound. Here it is.

In other wonderful related news, Circuit des Yeux will unleash an expanded eight-piece ensemble featuring members of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra for a special one-off performance at Utrecht’s Le Guess Who? Festival this November. In addition to presenting an augmented version of Reaching For Indigo, Fohr’s performance will also include the first live rendition of previously unreleased music from the album’s sessions. With an initial spectacular line-up already in sight, and Circuit des Yeux as a huge highlight, we can’t wait for November to come.

Dirty Projectors unveil animated video for second single ‘That’s A Lifestyle’

16 June 2018

With less than a month to go before the release of Dirty Projectors‘ new album, Lamp Lit Prose, and after teasing it with the stellar lead single, ‘Break-Thru’, David Longstreth and co have shared an extraordinary new song, ‘That’s A Lifestyle’. It comes with an accompanying video, directed and animated by Kitty Faingold. Watch it now.

Lamp Lit Prose is out on July 13th via Domino.

black midi release debut single ‘bmbmbm’

12 June 2018

Photo: Jack Greeley-Ward

Explosive and enigmatic South London 4-piece black midi, made up of Geordie Greep (vocals/guitar), Cameron Picton (bass/vocals), Matt Kelvin (lead guitar) and Morgan Simpson (drums), have just released their debut single ‘bmbmbm’ via Speedy Wunderground‘s single series. A beast of a song, ‘bmbmbm’ marks their first physical release on limited 7” vinyl edition, and we can’t wait for more stuff like this to be sprung upon us. Take a listen now.

Nadah El Shazly shares animated video for ‘Mahmiya’

11 June 2018

Nadah El Shazly has unveiled a video to accompany ‘Mahmiya’, the stunning and moving closing track from her debut solo album Ahwar, released last year. Egyptian artist Marwan El-Gamal, who had previously worked on Nadah’s album artwork, returns to create this befitting psychedelic tale of strange beauty. He explains how he developed the concept for the video:

“The idea for the animation came after internalising the soundscape and words of Nadah El Shazly’s ‘Mahmiya’. It had a sensibility that seemed soothing and warm – vital and at peace, yet vast and unconcerned, like a sea, long since dried and fossilised, wherein the listener is placed without bearings. This brought about a story, a character and landscape where time and location are not classified.

In this place there is a condition of symmetry between the inner world of the girl and the outer landscape. She morphs and changes through her surroundings, and through these interactions the world is animated and energised. The land evolves and vegetates and soars and crumbles. Things occur as they will, and force is not exerted, but rather the events unfold without effort.

Time becomes represented as fluctuating and dilating, and our girl breathes, plays, creates, grows, and becomes conclusively unrecognisable, then to be brought back to the beginning of a cycle.

There seems to be an indefiniteness to the events, and change is constant, and she plays her part with no concern to consequence. The girl may be an extension of the land, a force of creation, a mechanical machine, or a little girl vulnerable to this ambiguous place full of unfamiliar entities. Through this ambiguity I hope to provide a visual counterpart to Nadah El Shazly’s touching song.”

Watch the video for ‘Mahmiya’ below.


Ahwar is out now via Nawa Recordings.