Off World shares ‘Impulse Controller’ single & announces final LP in trilogy

04 October 2023

Off World artist image by Karl Sirovy

Sandro Perri unveiled Off World in 2016, a 3-volume project assembling a collection of his collaborative work with other producers over the past decade. 1 and 2 both made it to our Album Picks of the Year when they came out in 2016 and 2017 respectively, so release news of the final volume in the trilogy fills us with excitement. On the upcoming 3, the unrelentingly inventive musician assembles first time collaborations with Nicole Rampersaud (trumpet) and Martin Arnold (guitar), as well with previous contributors Jesse Zubot (violin) and Drew Brown, Matthew Cooper, Susumu Mukai and Andrew Zukerman on electronics.

3 features longer tracks than the previous volumes, with three of its five tracks clocking in around 10 minutes, “where overtly improvised instrumental playing wends its way across alternately bubbling and woozy electronic beds”, as the press release describes.

One of these longer tracks, ‘Impulse Controller’, emerges today as the first tantalizing single from the album. The track is described as a “languidly skewed rhumba where ambling melodic undercurrents and dubby electronic pointillism provide a dulcet promenade for Rampersaud’s Miles-esque trumpet excursions.” Take a listen below.

3 is out on November 3rd through Constellation 

Gazelle Twin unveils video for new single ‘Fear Keeps Us Alive’

03 October 2023

Gazelle Twin, the project of composer, producer, singer, and visual artist Elizabeth Bernholz, announced last month the release of her new album Black Dog. Along with the news, she had shared the sinister and seductive title track, and now she has unveiled a gripping and eerie new cut from the album titled ‘Fear Keeps Us Alive’. The single comes with an accompanying video directed by long-time collaborator Chris Turner and assisted by photographer Teri Varhol. Turner comments:

“I love working with Elizabeth and Teri. We share so many of the same fascinations and obsessions, and this allows an honest and creative freedom to exist between us. We’re also all lovers of ageing, imperfect formats of photography and video. The visual and thematic elements of the song, the short film, and the album all seemed to fit perfectly together.”

Bernholz also had this to say about it:

“Chris, Teri and I share a passion for the weird and the uncanny. The film and images we’ve made together in various forms just wouldn’t have happened without their enthusiasm, generosity and genius skill. ‘Fear Keeps Us Alive’ is another brilliant collaboration and has produced such a striking outcome that blends so many shared ideas and visions so naturally.”

Watch the video below and watch out for the release of Black Dog on October 27th through Invada Records.

Listen to Matmos’ new single ‘Injection Basic Sound’ off forthcoming Return To Archive LP

03 October 2023

Photo: Farrah Skeiky

Last month, Matmos announced their 14th studio album, Return To Archive, releasing digitally release on November 3rd through Smithsonian Folkways, and in physical formats later in 2024. The album came about following an invite from Folkways Records to create new material to commemorate their 75th anniversary, and so the duo of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel were given access to a colossal archive of LP’s originally published by Folkways Records in the mid-20th century.

Matmos had already teased the album with the lead single, ‘Mud-Dauber Wasp’, composed using a single sound source lifted from Albro T. Gaul’s 1960 Folkways LP Sounds of Insects. Now they are previewing the forthcoming Return To Archive with a new single titled ‘Injection Basic Sound’, which uses selections from Science Fiction Sound Effects (1958), Vox Humana: Alfred Wolfsohn’s Experiments in the Extension of the Human Vocal Range (1956), and Speech after the Removal of the Larynx (1964).

Speaking about the hundreds of albums they went through, and what links them, Daniel commented:

“Taken together, these LPs capture a particular historical moment in the emergence of the long-playing record as a crucial interface between the lonely listener and the surrounding panorama of the label’s Cold War social milieu. Promising the intimacy of access, some records are voyeuristic peepholes into domestic or professional spaces: a baby’s playroom, a busy office, an operating theater. Some records shrink the listener to the Lilliputian worlds of beetles and wasps. Some records are submarines plunging listeners to oceanic depths, or magic carpets flying them to the outermost reaches of the newly explored space age. In its own idiomatic way, every record promises transport, adventure, journeys into sound.”

Now listen to ‘Injection Basic Sound’.

Kirk Barley announces new album, Marionette, and shares video for first single ‘Lake Of Gold’

29 September 2023

Photo: Jonny Long

London-based, Yorkshire-born composer and producer Kirk Barley has announced the release of Marionette, his new studio album. Slated for a November 24th release through Odda Recordings, the upcoming Marionette takes cues from jazz, minimalism and techno. Barley drew from field recordings, found sound, instrumental improvisations and synthetic processes to “weav[e] together familiar and uncanny moods of rural England and its Victorian architecture”, as the press release describes. Speaking about the tracks on the album, Barley describes them as “landscape or static scene paintings”.

Along with the album announcement, Barley has shared ‘Lake of Gold’, the first magical and soothing single. It comes with an accompanying video filmed by Realf Heygate and you can watch it below.

Louis Carnell shares second collaborative piece, ‘two’, featuring Lee Ranaldo

27 September 2023

Earlier this month, experimental composer and producer Louis Carnell launched a curated series of 15 collaborative works with artists from across the globe called 111. The first piece, ‘one‘, saw him join forces with English actress, composer and musician Keeley Forsyth. Yesterday Carnell unveiled ‘two’, an enigmatic and dark collaborative piece with musician, composer, visual artist, writer and producer Lee Ranaldo. As with the first piece, ‘two’ also comes with a visual accompaniment directed by Carnell & Arcin Sagdic.

Daniel Villarreal announces Lados B LP featuring Jeff Parker & Anna Butterss

27 September 2023

Photo: Cassie Scott

Chicago based Daniel Villarreal has announced the release of Lados B, the follow-up to last year’s acclaimed debut Panamá 77. Back in 2020, Villarreal spent a couple of afternoons recording in LA with guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butterss, and these sessions yielded Panama 77, as well as more material unreleased until now. Lados B, which means B sides, is also the fruit of those sessions but despite its name, the record is “more a zoomed-in view of one particular session”, as the press release describes, “a detail from a larger painting in which you can see all kind of new things”.

Lados B arrives on October 6th through International Anthem and ahead of it Villarreal has shared the beaming and groovy ‘Sunset Cliffs’ as the lead single. The track comes with an accompanying video made by Burkie and you can watch it below.