Penguin Cafe share video for ‘Welcome To London’ ahead of tomorrow’s album release

06 July 2023

The wait is nearly over and the highly anticipated new album from Penguin Cafe, Rain Before Seven…, will see the light of day tomorrow through Erased Tapes. Ahead of it, the ensemble of Arthur Jeffes is ramping up the excitement with ‘Welcome To London’, the final single from the album. Jeffes explains how the track came about:

“for this track I started with the piano riff which is a 5/4 pattern moving through developing modulations – all the other elements are picking out points in the piano line and developing them. We ended up going quite John Barry with the arrangements – I love that 60’s feel of the Gretsch picking out a low-mid groove while the bassline syncopates underneath it.”

‘Welcome To London’ comes paired with a video directed by Mihai Feflea. Of the video, executive producer Robert Raths comments:

“this video is dedicated to those who feel lost in a place like London and yet make it their home. As someone who moved here from a different country nearly two decades ago, I couldn’t help but read the title with a healthy portion of sarcasm. I thought our penguin-headed friend would make for the perfect protagonist here. Writing this script also gave me an opportunity to finally visualise Simon Jeffes’ original vision he had of the Penguin Cafe as a magical haven within the concrete jungle when he hallucinated from fish poisoning back in 1972 — something I’ve always wondered why it hadn’t been done before. Because no matter how tough and fast-paced London life can be sometimes, it also contains many pockets of diverse beauty and wonder.”

Watch the video for ‘Welcome To London’ below and grab the album tomorrow.

Watch Yussef Dayes’s animated video for new single ‘Rust’ feat. Tom Misch

06 July 2023

Back in May Yussef Dayes announced the release of his debut solo album, Black Classical Music. A nineteen-track album, it saw the renowned and gifted multi-instrumentalist enlist a stellar cast of guest contributors, including Charlie Stacey, Venna, Alexander Bourt, Chronixx, Masego, Jamilah Barry, Tom Misch, Elijah Fox, Shabaka Hutchings, Miles James, Sheila Maurice Grey, Nathaniel Cross, Theon Cross, and the Chineke! Orchestra.

After enticing us with the title track, Dayes has recently shared a second cut from the album called Rust, featuring British singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Tom Misch. ‘Rust’ is offered with an animated accompanying video directed and designed by Jack Brown. Speaking about it, Brown comments:

“It felt really special to work with Yussef and Tom again to make the third instalment of our animation saga and extra special to do it for Yussef’s incredible debut album. I wanted to expand the world of Nightrider and Tidal Wave by bringing it into a 3D space while maintaining the classic 2D feel. This was made possible by the big brain, super talented Richard Noble who built these landscapes from my silly sketches. Big love to the small crew of dedicated and talented people who worked on this and to Yussef and Tom for consistently making the best sounding music out there.”

Black Classical Music is out on September 8th through Brownswood Recordings, Warners and Cashmere Thoughts Recordings and in the US through Nonesuch Records. Now watch the video below.

Lawrence English & Lea Bertucci set to release debut collaborative album, Chthonic

05 July 2023

Photo: PWR

Composer, artist and Room40 founder Lawrence English and interdisciplinary artist, composer and improviser Lea Bertucci are both prolific and gifted experimentalists. The pair met at a festival in Rio de Janeiro in 2019 and began to collaborate remotely, with the onset of the pandemic in 2020. A debut collaborative album titled Chthonic is now on the way. English has shared his thoughts about their collaboration:

“Lea and I met in Rio de Janeiro, we had both been invited to perform a special set of field recordings and site-specific sound on a small island in the middle of one of Rio’s larger public parks. I was very struck by Lea’s approaches to sound, specifically to her ways of contrasting particular qualities in sound she had collected across the city during her residency. Our billing together there seemed like a natural fit and I am positive some of the earliest ideas for a possible recording started there. Throughout the course of our long-distance exchange, I found myself always digging deeper into the sound world we were creating. It was a sense of excavation, seeking things that just sat underneath the first impression of the sounds. Between that and our conversations around sound pressure and density, I think this record took on a form of its own very quickly.”

Chthonic will see the light of day on August 11th through American Dreams and we can already get a bewildering taster of it with the first single ‘Geology of Fire’. Take a listen below.

Will Samson shares first glimpse of forthcoming ambient album Harp Swells

04 July 2023

Photo: Vera Marmelo

A year on from the release of Active Imagination, Will Samson has announced the release of his seventh full-length album. Entitled Harp Swells, it marks his first full-length ambient album and is set for release on September 8th through Taylor Deupree’s experimental label 12k. Now based In Portugal, the British musician composed the upcoming album in Almada in the sea facing studio space he shares with Casper Clausen (Efterklang). Speaking about it, Samson comments:

“There was one main goal when making Harp Swells: make music that flows and feels just like the view outside the studio window.
If frustration or creative blocks arose, I’d take a short break to watch the waves, and then return to the music.”

Ahead of the album release, Samson is enticing us with the immersive, serene and stunning first single, ‘And Yet’, featuring vocals from Maia Nunes and longtime collaborator Michael Feuerstack. Of the track and collaboration, Samson says:

“Maia (Nunes) was a visiting artist resident where I recorded the album & so we would occasionally share a cup of tea during breaks. After having a conversation about our mixed ancestries and how they had often led to subtle feelings of displacement, I returned to my studio and the lyrics appeared. That one sentence was enough to capture how I was feeling (and still feel these days) and so there was nothing more that need to be said. In fact, the lyrics seemed to perfectly capture the mood of the whole album for me.

I was experimenting with sampling during this period, so the sound that begins the track is myself blowing into an empty glass bottle.”

‘And Yet’ comes with an accompanying video created by Daisy Moseley and you can watch it below.

In other related good news, and in support of Harp Swells, Will Samson has announced a string of live shows in the UK / Europe. The tour kicks off in Antwerp on September 6th wrapping in Paris on November 18th and includes a show in Porto on September 16th. Tickets are on sale now for most shows, head over to willsamson.co.uk/shows for more info.

Le Guess Who? unveils three new projects for 2023 edition: Hidden Musics, COSMOS and The Anonymous Project

04 July 2023

Le Guess Who? Festival is celebrating 16 years this November with a wealth of sonic offerings that has us looking forward to autumn with bated breath. Back in May the organisers announced the initial line-up and programmes curated by Stereolab, Heba Kadry, Nala Sinephro and Slauson Malone 1 and now they’ve unleashed three special projects: Hidden Musics, COSMOS and The Anonymous Project.

With a focus on celebrating musical traditions and artists from secluded regions of the world, Hidden Musics is an inspiring and ambitious program that gives audiences a unique chance to experience rare performances. Returning to Le Guess Who? for the fourth time in 2023, the project is the fruit of a collaboration between Le Guess Who?, Grammy-award winning music producer, activist and author Ian Brennan, and Ljubljana based American musician, record producer and Glitterbeat Records founder Chris Eckman. Hidden Musics will host Pankisi Ensemble, an all-female female traditional music group from the Pankisi Gorge in northeast Georgia, who’ve been vital in perpetuating Georgian and Chechen secular musical traditions that are unique to Pankisi. Also appearing on Hidden Musics is Sophia Nzayisenga, the first female master of the Inanga, a traditional Rwandan stringed music instrument which she learnt from her father at a very young age and Rwandan folk trio The Good Ones, a band that was formed as an act of healing following the country’s 1994 genocide, bringing together members from Rwanda’s Tutsi, Hutu, and Abatwa tribes. Known as “the man with singing fingers”, Azerbaijan’s Rəhman Məmmədli, an emblematic figure of the country’s gitara music, will also be part of Hidden Musics’s programme.

COSMOS will put the spotlight into local scenes from around the world through films, interviews, artist residencies, and for the first time it will present live performances. Performing as part of COSMOS is YL Hooi, the project of Melbourne-based producer Valya Ying-Li Hooi exploring the realms of dub, minimal synth, post-punk and dream-pop, Vietnamese experimental trio Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective, Ruhail Qaisar, a self-taught artist from Ladakh, India, whose music incorporates and preserves memories of growing up in Ladakh, the traditional Javanese trance explorations of The Phantasmagoria of Jathilan and Bengal Chemicals, the project of Pritam Das, who’s been making waves in the experimental electronic music scene in Kolkata, India.

The third project newly announced, The Anonymous Project, is a match made in heaven for Le Guess Who?. Taking place on the opening night, various artists will perform in a white cube on stage with specially commissioned scenography to keep them anonymous throughout it. As the organizers describe, with The Anonymous Project they “want to create a space to experiment freely with new sounds and in new directions, without any judgment or expectations based on the artist’s previous work or their public profile”.

Le Guess Who? 2023 takes place from 9-12th November in several venues throughout Utrecht. With a monumental programme wholly embracing musical diversity, Le Guess Who? will be a wonderland for musical explorers of all kinds, and there is still a lot more to be unveiled for its 16th edition. Head over to leguesswho.com to see a list of currently confirmed artists and more info. Festival passes are now sold out but Thursday and Saturday tickets are still available so if you don’t have tickets yet, get these quick.

Aki Rissanen set to release new album, Hyperreal, in July

30 June 2023

Photot: Jori Huhtala

There’s a new album on the way from Finnish pianist and composer Aki Rissanen arriving in July. Entitled Hyperreal, the album saw Rissanen enlist drummer Robert Ikiz and long term collaborator, trumpeter Verneri Pohjola. Thematically the album explores ideas of change, of being aware, of renewal and letting go, as Rissanen explains:

“There’s a change to something new and yet unknown. With the rapid transformation of reality to the AI generated virtual reality or hyperreality, we have to be aware and adapt to these things and distinguish between what is real and unreal”.

Hyperreal will see the light of day on July 14th through Edition Records and we can already hear the sublime first single, ‘Quantum Ballad’. The track is offered with an accompanying video made by Ville Hyvönen.