Bex Burch signs to International Anthem for new album There is only love and fear

11 July 2023

Photo: Chris Almeida

There’s wonderful news from Bex Burch, who turned our heads back in 2015 with the outstanding debut album from her band Vula Viel. The gifted composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker went on to work and collaborate with various artists and projects, becoming a central figure of the contemporary UK scene. She has announced the release of There is only love and fear, the first album to be penned under her own name. The album was prompted by an invitation from Chicago-based IARC for her to spend a month in the US last summer. Armed with her hand-made xylophone, Burch got involved with the label’s creative community and transposed the energy of the collaborations and environments she found herself in into what became There is only love and fear. The sessions for upcoming album took place in various spaces including a storefront in Bridgeport, Chicago and a canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, with an astonishing cast of musicians including Ben LaMar Gay, Macie Stewart, Anna Butterss, Mikel Patrick Avery, and Dan Bitney of Tortoise.

There is only love and fear is set for release on October 20th through International Anthem. Alongside the announcement today, the album’s first single, the stunningly deep and beautiful ‘Dawn blessings’, is now streaming. Burch’s recording of a cuckoo on the Baltic coastline sparked the track’s inception as she explains:

“Dawn blessings were the start of all of this. I started a 90-day practice to make a tune a day for my friend Dawn. My only job was to breathe, let go, and ask “what sounds do I like today?”. One of these days I heard a Cuckoo at dawn, this moment of listening opened up my identity from musician to listener.”

‘Dawn blessings’ comes with a gorgeous accompanying video directed by Louise Boer, who had this to say about it:

“The music video for ‘dawn blessings’ is a meditation on the joy and subtle magic that can be found during a slow and solitary walk through landscapes of sand, stones and pine trees; sometimes wild, sometimes heavily damaged and disturbed, but always full of life. It’s a hypnotic exploration of human and more-than-human entanglements in which the body dissolves into the environment and the invisible slowly becomes visible. Filmed during walks in Beerze (NL), Kennemerduinen (NL), Gaujas Ieteka Jūrā (LV).”

Watch the video below.

To tide you over until the album’s release, check out the excellent guest mixtape Bex Burch put together for us back in May 2018.

Madmadmad share last single and video ahead of album release

09 July 2023

Madmadmad‘s forthcoming third LP Behavioural Sink Delirium is coming July 21st via Bad Vibrations and this week they have debuted the final single from it along with a brilliant and bonkers video from the album. ‘Totes Amazeballs’ is an explosive and euphoric track full of rave energy. As the London post-punk electronic trio describe, it “is a relentless eruption of unspoiled joy, wrapped in a post-digital rave anthem. Its frantic tempo and disturbing, manipulated vocals emulate the rallying cry of the xenobots takeover.” Check out the video that accompanies the single below.

Matthew Halsall shares second single, ‘Calder Shapes’, from forthcoming LP

09 July 2023

Photo: Emily Dennison

Following the magical and moving lead single ‘Water Street’, Matthew Halsall is offering up a new single titled ‘Calder Shapes’. Lifted from his much anticipated album An Ever Changing View, ‘Calder Shapes’ is dedicated to American sculptor Alexander Calder. “I’ve always loved his work”, Halsall said, “and in particular how it is in harmony with nature and space.” The single comes with an accompanying video directed by Daniel Halsall. Watch it below.

An Ever Changing View is out on September 8th through Gondwana Records

Omar Ahmad’s solo debut album, Inheritance, out now

08 July 2023

Yesterday saw the release of Inheritance, the solo debut album from Palestinian-American composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and DJ Omar Ahmad. Poignant and reflective, the album is influenced by contrasting feelings as the press release describes, such as “empathy / disconnection, loss / discovery, longing / isolation.”

On the run up to the album release, Ahmad had shared two singles, ‘Lapses’ and ‘Cygnet Song’.  ‘Lapses’ was offered with a moving video created by Ahmad, visual artist ACE and painter Singha Hon. Of the song, Ahmad said:

“‘Lapses’ is a solitary walk at night. Relinquishing control, tension, and pain as your feet trod aimlessly. Letting the visions overcome you, falling through lapses in time, lapses in judgement, lapses in focus. This track represents a catharsis for me in many ways and of all the songs on Inheritance it most adequately summarizes the emotional cascade of life at the time of its writing. A hopefulness bursts through the melancholy, and a path materializes out of the ether, pulsing and inviting you to continue on.”

The second single, ‘Cygnet Song’, is also charged with emotional force and cements Ahmad as an artist capable of striking tenderness. He had this to say abou the track:

“I lost something between early childhood and high school, and gained another. “Cygnet Song” is a gentle yet somber, cyclical tale of losing oneself and rediscovering what makes me … me, and lamenting the time with myself that I lost. The simplicity and softness of the guitar layers and unfinished textural quality are an ode to childhood, and retaining the fragile soul amid the desire to refine ourselves in the public eye.”

Check out both tracks below and be sure to listen to the whole album, you’ll encounter a platter of emotions.

Inheritance is out now through AKP Recordings.

BeraadGeslagen tease upcoming album with lead single ‘Tennisles’

07 July 2023

With a singular style, BeraadGeslagen are an integral part of the thriving Belgium jazz scene. The duo of drummer Lander Gyselinck (STUFF., LABtrio) and keyboardist/singer Fulco Ottervanger (De Beren Gieren) are gearing up to release a new full-length album this autumn. Entitled Altijd Bewust Bewegen, the effort arrives on October 27th through W.E.R.F. Records. More details are yet to emerge but BeraadGeslagen have already given a glimpse at what to expect with the first wild and exhilarating single, ‘Tennisles’. Take a listen below.

Fuensanta’s debut EP, Principio del Fuego, out now

06 July 2023

Principio del Fuego is the debut studio EP from Fuensanta, released at the tail end of June through GroundUp Music. Hailing from Veracruz, Mexico, and now based in Amsterdam, she is a brilliant singer, double bassist, composer, improviser and multidisciplinary artist who has collaborated with some incredible artists including Louis Cole, Han Bennink, Ben van Gelder, Genevieve Artadi, Reinier Baas, Aaron Parks, Sun Mi Hong, Tineke Postma, Ben Wendel, Kit Downes, Sanem Kalfa, Teis Semey, Joris Roelofs, Nawras Altaky and Magalí Datzira. Speaking about her Principio del Fuego EP, Fuensanta says:

“I thought this is what the EP could be called, “Principio del Fuego”, which translates to ‘beginning of the fire’ but also ‘principle of fire’. Because to me this is a collection of studio versions of some of my first songs and they feel like a small capsule of my early visions of the world and music since I found my own way of writing.

The topics somehow revolve around the transition from childhood to adulthood, and I feel that these songs are very charged with the universe and symbols of my upbringing in the forest in Mexico, from the perspective of my first years in the Netherlands.

In a way, the whole thing feels somewhat like a short love letter to the magic realism of my childhood and that place, these compositions I played so much and what they meant to me during the last years, and the closure of an era.”

For an intriguing and beguiling taster of what’s on offer, here’s the video for one of the EP´s tracks, ‘No Será Regresar’.