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GB 167CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/7/2025
This album title translates as "One more chance to succeed in life." Not that they need it. The trio of guitarist Eblis Alvarez, bassist Mario Galeano, and drummer Pedro Ojeda has been successfully carving out a wildly idiosyncratic musical world since the release of their debut album in 2010, pushing the boundaries of instrumental Latin tropical music with bold infusions of psychedelia, dub, minimalism and more. But their journey started a long time before that. All three attended the same high school and have been playing together for three decades, since they were around 15 years old. "We started with punk and heavy metal," Ojeda recalls. "Then we were very interested in Colombian tropical music and traditional music from Colombia and Latin America, and that led us to focus on African music. It's been a long road." Along the way, the unfettered, spontaneous improvisation of jazz has been a crucial touchstone. "When we started playing in an improvised setting, we were very influenced by free jazz from the '60s," says Ojeda. "But now we are more into making music for the dance floor and music that has a beat and a strong feeling to dance to -- especially in this latest album." The music on Una Oportunidad stems from the venerable tradition of the groove-based jam session. "All of the tunes 100% come from improvisation sessions," says Galeano. "With this album," Ojeda elaborates, "we went to the studio in the morning every day for a week. Each of us would bring one or two ideas and we would start jamming, experimenting with those ideas. By lunchtime, we had one or two pieces based on those ideas and then, after lunch, we would record them. By the end of the week, we had the eight tracks that are on the record." Recording for the first time in the relaxed surroundings of Galeano's studio, with Alvarez once again mixing and producing, Una Oportunidad luxuriates in a relaxed intimacy. And, more than any other album they've released so far, it captures the immediacy of a live performance, with no overdubs or studio magic, just raw, in-the-moment invention.
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LP
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GB 167LP
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$28.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/7/2025
LP version. This album title translates as "One more chance to succeed in life." Not that they need it. The trio of guitarist Eblis Alvarez, bassist Mario Galeano, and drummer Pedro Ojeda has been successfully carving out a wildly idiosyncratic musical world since the release of their debut album in 2010, pushing the boundaries of instrumental Latin tropical music with bold infusions of psychedelia, dub, minimalism and more. But their journey started a long time before that. All three attended the same high school and have been playing together for three decades, since they were around 15 years old. "We started with punk and heavy metal," Ojeda recalls. "Then we were very interested in Colombian tropical music and traditional music from Colombia and Latin America, and that led us to focus on African music. It's been a long road." Along the way, the unfettered, spontaneous improvisation of jazz has been a crucial touchstone. "When we started playing in an improvised setting, we were very influenced by free jazz from the '60s," says Ojeda. "But now we are more into making music for the dance floor and music that has a beat and a strong feeling to dance to -- especially in this latest album." The music on Una Oportunidad stems from the venerable tradition of the groove-based jam session. "All of the tunes 100% come from improvisation sessions," says Galeano. "With this album," Ojeda elaborates, "we went to the studio in the morning every day for a week. Each of us would bring one or two ideas and we would start jamming, experimenting with those ideas. By lunchtime, we had one or two pieces based on those ideas and then, after lunch, we would record them. By the end of the week, we had the eight tracks that are on the record." Recording for the first time in the relaxed surroundings of Galeano's studio, with Alvarez once again mixing and producing, Una Oportunidad luxuriates in a relaxed intimacy. And, more than any other album they've released so far, it captures the immediacy of a live performance, with no overdubs or studio magic, just raw, in-the-moment invention.
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GB 151LP
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LP version. Hailing from Cyprus's divided capital Nicosia, and led by Antonis Antoniou, the founder of Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke, Buzz' Ayaz creates a transfixing Eastern Mediterranean psychedelia. Their self-titled debut album is a fuzzed-out urban soundscape of dubby electronics, '70s-psych organ, growling bass clarinet, amplified folk instruments, ritual beats and Greek and Anatolian melodicism. The band members come from both sides of the capital's divide, and the music found on Buzz' Ayaz is a deliberate attempt to give a voice to the city as a whole. A mercurial sound that echoes above the concrete walls and checkpoints. Cyprus is a holiday destination for people from all over Europe, a sunny, blue-sea island in the Eastern Mediterranean with a proud, ancient history. But it's also a divided island, with longstanding political tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations. Yet, inevitably in a small place, the two cultures intertwine. Walk the streets of Nicosia, the divided capital, and you'll hear Greek rembetiko alongside Turkish pop, Anatolian psychedelia next to Western rock. That urban mix of sounds he heard each day put a spark in Antonis Antoniou's head. With his new band, Buzz' Ayaz, that spark has caught fire, making Cypriot music that strides between decades and continents, electric and organic. The results on their eponymous debut album holds a barely contained wildness -- and a bass clarinet. Buzz' Ayaz carries a big sound, a punchy heaviness that draws from ʼ60s and ʼ70s rock, but stirring it up with all the differing sounds of Cyprus that Antoniou has known all his life. The recording captures the energy of Buzz' Ayaz, with all the rawness and sweat of performance, coated with urban grit. But there's far more to this than power; Buzz' Ayaz prickles with intelligence, invention and imagination. Buzz' Ayaz is the electric sound of modern Cyprus, the musical bridge that spans worlds. It's music that keeps Antoniou's blood racing, the sound in his head coming to life. The roots of Buzz' Ayaz are in Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and throughout the Levant, but they meld together on the streets of Nicosia. "I hope," Antoniou says, "that the reach is infinite."
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GB 164CD
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Another Mississippi Sunday Morning is the poignant sequel to Some Mississippi Sunday Morning (2023), the prison-recorded gospel album that was met with unexpected global acclaim by the likes of the New York Times, The Guardian, the New Yorker, and BBC (just to name a few). In early 2024, Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, The Good Ones [Rwanda]) returned to the Parchman Farm maximum security facility in Mississippi to record a second collection of raw, haunting performances from the prison's Sunday gospel service. The results are once again captivating and unforgettable. Twelve men participated in the new recording session, ranging in age from 23 to 74. Three are serving life sentences and six of them were newer arrivals or not on the debut album. There were no guards or chaplains present this time. Like the first album, all songs were first takes, recorded 100% live and without overdubs. The session took four hours, twice the length of time Brennan was allotted for Some Mississippi Sunday Morning. This time the singers knew what to expect and some came to the session with pre-prepared material. "Certain people who were involved the first time became very prominent this time," Brennan says. "They were also more motivated to write their own songs, so a lot of them had done that in advance. A couple of those from before were really eager to do song after song. Everybody sang at least one song." Though all of the music is intimate and stripped back, each song and performance, whether it is based on traditional gospel or hip hop or the deep blues, has an individual and powerful story to tell.
"From a cappella and delicately inflected tenor ornamentation to a hypnotic basso profundo chant; from an urgent rap about a singer's remorse to a hopeful choral outburst: this is inspirational music, triumphant rather than beaten down and defeated." --BBC Music
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GB 151CD
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Hailing from Cyprus's divided capital Nicosia, and led by Antonis Antoniou, the founder of Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke, Buzz' Ayaz creates a transfixing Eastern Mediterranean psychedelia. Their self-titled debut album is a fuzzed-out urban soundscape of dubby electronics, '70s-psych organ, growling bass clarinet, amplified folk instruments, ritual beats and Greek and Anatolian melodicism. The band members come from both sides of the capital's divide, and the music found on Buzz' Ayaz is a deliberate attempt to give a voice to the city as a whole. A mercurial sound that echoes above the concrete walls and checkpoints. Cyprus is a holiday destination for people from all over Europe, a sunny, blue-sea island in the Eastern Mediterranean with a proud, ancient history. But it's also a divided island, with longstanding political tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations. Yet, inevitably in a small place, the two cultures intertwine. Walk the streets of Nicosia, the divided capital, and you'll hear Greek rembetiko alongside Turkish pop, Anatolian psychedelia next to Western rock. That urban mix of sounds he heard each day put a spark in Antonis Antoniou's head. With his new band, Buzz' Ayaz, that spark has caught fire, making Cypriot music that strides between decades and continents, electric and organic. The results on their eponymous debut album holds a barely contained wildness -- and a bass clarinet. Buzz' Ayaz carries a big sound, a punchy heaviness that draws from ʼ60s and ʼ70s rock, but stirring it up with all the differing sounds of Cyprus that Antoniou has known all his life. The recording captures the energy of Buzz' Ayaz, with all the rawness and sweat of performance, coated with urban grit. But there's far more to this than power; Buzz' Ayaz prickles with intelligence, invention and imagination. Buzz' Ayaz is the electric sound of modern Cyprus, the musical bridge that spans worlds. It's music that keeps Antoniou's blood racing, the sound in his head coming to life. The roots of Buzz' Ayaz are in Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and throughout the Levant, but they meld together on the streets of Nicosia. "I hope," Antoniou says, "that the reach is infinite."
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GB 152LP
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$28.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 10/25/2024
LP version. Mute is an album that explores distance, speech -- and the lack of it. It's a series of musings on people, places -- and leaving. The record began life with the core of El Khat -- multi-instrumentalist el Wahab, percussionist Lotan Yaish, and organist Yefet Hasan -- recording in an isolated village underground shelter. "My state of mind at the time affected the compositions even before I wrote the music," el Wahab notes, "and the isolated location gave us a chance to make sense of that." Following those sessions, in the summer of 2023 the group emigrated to Berlin; a far cry from Jaffa, where they'd largely grown up. The move was an expression of the nomadic urge that has been a constant in el Wahab's life, one that flows directly into his work. "These songs are about emigrating, leaving someone or somewhere. I don't think I've stayed in any one place for more than a year. For us Arab Jews whose families were forced to leave Yemen, it really began with that big move and our families' arrival in Israel, a land with a constant muting of the 'other'." Mute, he feels, is "a big and meaningful record." It's a story of endings and new beginnings. "But that's true of all our albums" el Wahab insists. "They're about relationships and the struggle to see two sides as a whole and not something that ends with muting and conflict. The songs here are about old loves, country, family. They are about feelings and identity." And all of that inevitably brings up many questions. El Wahab keeps reinventing himself: even his career has been an act of self-invention. Unable to read music, he still managed to talk his way into the Andalusian Orchestra, playing cello by ear until he learned music theory. And instruments he uses on his albums, like the blue gallon (actually a jug) or the kubana (named after a type of Yemeni bread) are also self-invented. These handmade, one-of-a-kind instruments sit at the heart of Mute. He's always made music from the items others discard. Everything recycled and reused, nothing wasted.
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CD
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GB 152CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 10/25/2024
Mute is an album that explores distance, speech -- and the lack of it. It's a series of musings on people, places -- and leaving. The record began life with the core of El Khat -- multi-instrumentalist el Wahab, percussionist Lotan Yaish, and organist Yefet Hasan -- recording in an isolated village underground shelter. "My state of mind at the time affected the compositions even before I wrote the music," el Wahab notes, "and the isolated location gave us a chance to make sense of that." Following those sessions, in the summer of 2023 the group emigrated to Berlin; a far cry from Jaffa, where they'd largely grown up. The move was an expression of the nomadic urge that has been a constant in el Wahab's life, one that flows directly into his work. "These songs are about emigrating, leaving someone or somewhere. I don't think I've stayed in any one place for more than a year. For us Arab Jews whose families were forced to leave Yemen, it really began with that big move and our families' arrival in Israel, a land with a constant muting of the 'other'." Mute, he feels, is "a big and meaningful record." It's a story of endings and new beginnings. "But that's true of all our albums" el Wahab insists. "They're about relationships and the struggle to see two sides as a whole and not something that ends with muting and conflict. The songs here are about old loves, country, family. They are about feelings and identity." And all of that inevitably brings up many questions. El Wahab keeps reinventing himself: even his career has been an act of self-invention. Unable to read music, he still managed to talk his way into the Andalusian Orchestra, playing cello by ear until he learned music theory. And instruments he uses on his albums, like the blue gallon (actually a jug) or the kubana (named after a type of Yemeni bread) are also self-invented. These handmade, one-of-a-kind instruments sit at the heart of Mute. He's always made music from the items others discard. Everything recycled and reused, nothing wasted.
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GB 157CD
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Folk music emerging from Dublin seems to be everywhere at the moment -- demonstrated most clearly by Lankum gaining a host of "Album of the Year" nods at the end of 2023 -- but it would be a mistake to call this a movement, much less any kind of revival. While Lankum, John Francis Flynn, Ye Vagabonds, Lisa O'Neill et al might be new to a lot of audiences, these artists have been exploring and expanding what folk music can be for years, decades even. And this is just as true of Landless, the quartet who've been singing together since 2013, finding each other through the traditional singing scene in the city and, crucially, the Sacred Harp singing community. Working once again with John "Spud" Murphy (the Lankum producer and ØXN member), Lúireach sees the quartet adding sparingly-used instrumentation -- Ruth's aching pump organ on "Death & The Lady," Méabh's shruti box on "Ej Husari," Lankum's Cormac MacDiarmada on fiddle, viola and banjo throughout, even some mournful trombone from Alex Borwick on "The Newry Highwayman." The songs for the album were gathered over a number of years, Ruth explains, and while the melody and lyrics are paramount, there is a common theme for many of the inclusions. Lúireach is an album of quiet power, soaked in tradition but finding new and exciting ways to present these remarkable songs, songs that are full of melancholy, love, death and mystery. Lúireach rewards your close attention.
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LP
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GB 157LP
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LP version. Folk music emerging from Dublin seems to be everywhere at the moment -- demonstrated most clearly by Lankum gaining a host of "Album of the Year" nods at the end of 2023 -- but it would be a mistake to call this a movement, much less any kind of revival. While Lankum, John Francis Flynn, Ye Vagabonds, Lisa O'Neill et al might be new to a lot of audiences, these artists have been exploring and expanding what folk music can be for years, decades even. And this is just as true of Landless, the quartet who've been singing together since 2013, finding each other through the traditional singing scene in the city and, crucially, the Sacred Harp singing community. Working once again with John "Spud" Murphy (the Lankum producer and ØXN member), Lúireach sees the quartet adding sparingly-used instrumentation -- Ruth's aching pump organ on "Death & The Lady," Méabh's shruti box on "Ej Husari," Lankum's Cormac MacDiarmada on fiddle, viola and banjo throughout, even some mournful trombone from Alex Borwick on "The Newry Highwayman." The songs for the album were gathered over a number of years, Ruth explains, and while the melody and lyrics are paramount, there is a common theme for many of the inclusions. Lúireach is an album of quiet power, soaked in tradition but finding new and exciting ways to present these remarkable songs, songs that are full of melancholy, love, death and mystery. Lúireach rewards your close attention.
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GB 155LP
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LP version. This self-titled second album from Gordan, the acclaimed transnational (Serbia/Germany/Austria) experimental trio, fuses traditional Balkan vocalizations with feedback, electronic sound generators, pulsing bass and hypnotic drumming. Gordan mirrors the mysticism of legends and stories from the Balkan region, creating a music that stretches between expressiveness and abstraction; tradition and the avant-garde. The visceral vocals of Svetlana Spajic (Marina Abramovic, Lenhart Tapes, Antony and the Johnsons) are both rooted and deeply interpretive. In turn, drummer Andi Stecher (STECHER, Billy Bultheel, Orchestre Les Mangelepa), and Guido Möbius on bass and electronics, employ sonic strategies that steer the songs in inspired and unpredictable directions. Gordan makes music that lies between expressiveness and abstraction. Their pieces are not limited by rigid formal structures. Instead, they are open processes that create a loss of sense of time. Reduced arrangements and expressive vocals combine to form a powerful musical whole. This band creates something new from minimalism, intensity and the rich singing tradition of the Balkans. When Down in the Meadow, the first album by Gordan was released by Morphine Records in October 2021, it was celebrated by critics and audiences alike. Now the trio presents its second, even more radical record. Drummer Andi Stecher forgoes any ornamentation and at the same time plays varied and concentrated. Confident and with outstanding technique, he is the engine of the band's sound. His stylistic flexibility demonstrates a profound knowledge of global music history. Guido Möbius plays bass guitar and various electronic sound generators. He also provokes feedback using a guitar amplifier, microphone and effects. These sometimes spherical, sometimes very concrete sounds interact with Svetlana Spajic's voice. Vocals and feedback circle each other in fleeting, ever-changing harmony.
"Gripping, like something ancient being born" --The Wire
"The connection between folk and improvised music, between traditional song and electric noise has been tried in recent years, but rarely as intensively and interestingly." --Rolling Stone (DE)
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GB 155CD
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This self-titled second album from Gordan, the acclaimed transnational (Serbia/Germany/Austria) experimental trio, fuses traditional Balkan vocalizations with feedback, electronic sound generators, pulsing bass and hypnotic drumming. Gordan mirrors the mysticism of legends and stories from the Balkan region, creating a music that stretches between expressiveness and abstraction; tradition and the avant-garde. The visceral vocals of Svetlana Spajic (Marina Abramovic, Lenhart Tapes, Antony and the Johnsons) are both rooted and deeply interpretive. In turn, drummer Andi Stecher (STECHER, Billy Bultheel, Orchestre Les Mangelepa), and Guido Möbius on bass and electronics, employ sonic strategies that steer the songs in inspired and unpredictable directions. Gordan makes music that lies between expressiveness and abstraction. Their pieces are not limited by rigid formal structures. Instead, they are open processes that create a loss of sense of time. Reduced arrangements and expressive vocals combine to form a powerful musical whole. This band creates something new from minimalism, intensity and the rich singing tradition of the Balkans. When Down in the Meadow, the first album by Gordan was released by Morphine Records in October 2021, it was celebrated by critics and audiences alike. Now the trio presents its second, even more radical record. Drummer Andi Stecher forgoes any ornamentation and at the same time plays varied and concentrated. Confident and with outstanding technique, he is the engine of the band's sound. His stylistic flexibility demonstrates a profound knowledge of global music history. Guido Möbius plays bass guitar and various electronic sound generators. He also provokes feedback using a guitar amplifier, microphone and effects. These sometimes spherical, sometimes very concrete sounds interact with Svetlana Spajic's voice. Vocals and feedback circle each other in fleeting, ever-changing harmony.
"Gripping, like something ancient being born" --The Wire
"The connection between folk and improvised music, between traditional song and electric noise has been tried in recent years, but rarely as intensively and interestingly." --Rolling Stone (DE)
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GB 150LP
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LP version. Sahrawi singer-songwriter activist Aziza Brahim's fifth album Mawja ("wave" in Hassaniya Arabic) is fashioned from a simple but powerful foundational palette: Saharan and Iberian percussion entwining with stately guitars and warm, enveloping bass. Co-produced by Brahim with long-time collaborator Guillem Aguilar, the record from her oeuvre that Mawja most sonically resembles is her revered and graceful debut Soutak (GB 009LP, 2014). That noted, there is a confident eclecticism found here, an expansive take on her vision that even includes a drum pattern inspired by the Clash. Brahim's voice, as always, is a wellspring of deep and resonant emotions. The yearning for homeland. The struggle for freedom. The love for one's elders. The unfurling of time. Waves of history, waves of sound. Mawja.
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GB 156CD
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Glitterbeat Presents Ana Lua Caiano's Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado. Ana Lua Caiano's debut album melds rural Portuguese music traditions with layered vocals, synthesizers, insistent beats and field recordings. Her music is visceral and tightly focused pulling from a rich mosaic of influences that includes traditional group singing, musique concrete, songwriters from Portugal's '70s revolutionary period and electronic icons like Bjork and Laurie Anderson. Hailing from Lisbon's fertile musical underground, Caiano's music -- and its international reception -- are moving forward quickly. Her lauded recent performances at Eurosonic and Transmusicales certainly attest to that, as do the laser sharp emotions and highly individual sonics of her much anticipated first album: Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado ("I Shall Stay in This Square"). It's electronic music. Utterly contemporary. Pulsing, glitchy, atmospheric and beat driven but with roots deep in the traditional Portuguese music her parents listened to when she was a child. "They had a lot of cassettes that they'd play," she recalls. "I loved to mimic and I'd imitate the singers. I took it in by osmosis, I suppose, and the elements are still there in what I do." Since she began her sonic experiments during lockdown, Caiano has been relentlessly pushing the borders of her music. It is of course a process that already began when she first imitated traditional singers or took her first piano lesson. It is a process that's led her to the road she's on now, one where tradition and electronics walk side by side. "I think it's quite experimental," she says, affirming that her music emphasizes the restless and evolutionary. "I believe traditional music evolves with the world -- nowadays you can make traditional music with a computer or talk about themes that weren't relevant or didn't exist in the past. Traditional music is always evolving." Travelling forward fast and sure, Ana Lua Caiano is definitely not stuck in a square. Featuring Essence Voices.
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GB 154CD
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According to Avalanche Kaito drummer Benjamin Chaval, their music comes from "a sound, a sample, a desire, a feeling, or simply a lack of something." And their second album, Talitakum, is the result of a process, where "the whole" is, indeed, "expressed in every part," whatever the provenance. To begin with, the band gigged as much as they could in 2021, the guitarist Nicco Gitto having replaced bassist Arnaud Paquotte, their fiery, mercurial shows becoming "a laboratory" in their own right. 2023 brought two creative residencies; where eight new pieces were sketched out. In July of that year the "aural puzzle" was recorded by Vincent Poujol at the Gam studio in the Belgian Ardennes. In contrast to what went before, there were no plans to rely on live recording, and overdubs were used extensively. Even so, the tracks were still very fresh, sometimes even non-existent: the track "Tanvusse" began in the studio as a sample first heard in Niger. Other tracks like "Lago" were brought to rehearsal as thoughtforms in the singer Kaito Winse's head. Later, Benjamin Chaval assembled, arranged and further produced a body of work "that had to be tamed and reinvented" in concert. First impressions are driven by the different fusions thrown up between polyrhythms and polyphony: a notion of the constant reassembling of various musical building blocks. The opener "Borgo" has a dissonant tone to it. Two minutes in and it's by no means certain who will win out in this musical tug of war between voice, beat and instruments. All elements seem to burn themselves out eventually, living off the warmth of the energy created by their fight in a long meditative tail out. The tracks on the album are informed by Kaito Winse's voice and his use of a traditional flute and mouth bow. All three elements work, sometimes in tandem, as wider ciphers for communication, or "emotive" forms of mystification that inspire and unsettle. Throughout, Winse demonstrates what untapped powers listeners command, bodily; if only they knew how to use them. Alongside Winse, Nico Gitto (guitar) and Benjamin Chaval (drums, synths and electronics) work like mechanics, adding and updating elements to suit.
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LP
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GB 156LP
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LP version. Glitterbeat Presents Ana Lua Caiano's Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado. Ana Lua Caiano's debut album melds rural Portuguese music traditions with layered vocals, synthesizers, insistent beats and field recordings. Her music is visceral and tightly focused pulling from a rich mosaic of influences that includes traditional group singing, musique concrete, songwriters from Portugal's '70s revolutionary period and electronic icons like Bjork and Laurie Anderson. Hailing from Lisbon's fertile musical underground, Caiano's music -- and its international reception -- are moving forward quickly. Her lauded recent performances at Eurosonic and Transmusicales certainly attest to that, as do the laser sharp emotions and highly individual sonics of her much anticipated first album: Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado ("I Shall Stay in This Square"). It's electronic music. Utterly contemporary. Pulsing, glitchy, atmospheric and beat driven but with roots deep in the traditional Portuguese music her parents listened to when she was a child. "They had a lot of cassettes that they'd play," she recalls. "I loved to mimic and I'd imitate the singers. I took it in by osmosis, I suppose, and the elements are still there in what I do." Since she began her sonic experiments during lockdown, Caiano has been relentlessly pushing the borders of her music. It is of course a process that already began when she first imitated traditional singers or took her first piano lesson. It is a process that's led her to the road she's on now, one where tradition and electronics walk side by side. "I think it's quite experimental," she says, affirming that her music emphasizes the restless and evolutionary. "I believe traditional music evolves with the world -- nowadays you can make traditional music with a computer or talk about themes that weren't relevant or didn't exist in the past. Traditional music is always evolving." Travelling forward fast and sure, Ana Lua Caiano is definitely not stuck in a square. Featuring Essence Voices.
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LP
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GB 154LP
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LP version. According to Avalanche Kaito drummer Benjamin Chaval, their music comes from "a sound, a sample, a desire, a feeling, or simply a lack of something." And their second album, Talitakum, is the result of a process, where "the whole" is, indeed, "expressed in every part," whatever the provenance. To begin with, the band gigged as much as they could in 2021, the guitarist Nicco Gitto having replaced bassist Arnaud Paquotte, their fiery, mercurial shows becoming "a laboratory" in their own right. 2023 brought two creative residencies; where eight new pieces were sketched out. In July of that year the "aural puzzle" was recorded by Vincent Poujol at the Gam studio in the Belgian Ardennes. In contrast to what went before, there were no plans to rely on live recording, and overdubs were used extensively. Even so, the tracks were still very fresh, sometimes even non-existent: the track "Tanvusse" began in the studio as a sample first heard in Niger. Other tracks like "Lago" were brought to rehearsal as thoughtforms in the singer Kaito Winse's head. Later, Benjamin Chaval assembled, arranged and further produced a body of work "that had to be tamed and reinvented" in concert. First impressions are driven by the different fusions thrown up between polyrhythms and polyphony: a notion of the constant reassembling of various musical building blocks. The opener "Borgo" has a dissonant tone to it. Two minutes in and it's by no means certain who will win out in this musical tug of war between voice, beat and instruments. All elements seem to burn themselves out eventually, living off the warmth of the energy created by their fight in a long meditative tail out. The tracks on the album are informed by Kaito Winse's voice and his use of a traditional flute and mouth bow. All three elements work, sometimes in tandem, as wider ciphers for communication, or "emotive" forms of mystification that inspire and unsettle. Throughout, Winse demonstrates what untapped powers listeners command, bodily; if only they knew how to use them. Alongside Winse, Nico Gitto (guitar) and Benjamin Chaval (drums, synths and electronics) work like mechanics, adding and updating elements to suit.
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GB 150CD
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Sahrawi singer-songwriter activist Aziza Brahim's fifth album Mawja ("wave" in Hassaniya Arabic) is fashioned from a simple but powerful foundational palette: Saharan and Iberian percussion entwining with stately guitars and warm, enveloping bass. Co-produced by Brahim with long-time collaborator Guillem Aguilar, the record from her oeuvre that Mawja most sonically resembles is her revered and graceful debut Soutak (GB 009LP, 2014). That noted, there is a confident eclecticism found here, an expansive take on her vision that even includes a drum pattern inspired by the Clash. Brahim's voice, as always, is a wellspring of deep and resonant emotions. The yearning for homeland. The struggle for freedom. The love for one's elders. The unfurling of time. Waves of history, waves of sound. Mawja.
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GB 144CD
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Saramaccan Sound (Suriname) are a brother duo -- Dwight Sampie and Robert Jabini -- who write and perform flowing acoustic songs sung in Saramaccan, the language from the Americas with the most African elements. Their debut album was recorded in situ by Grammy winner Ian Brennan (Parchman Prison Prayer, Ustad Saami, The Good Ones) along a remote riverside in the Amazon region of Suriname. The lyrics are topical and reference everyday strife such as the rising tides and floods in the area due to global warming. Their bone raw songs and performances evoke heart-worn longing, a deep sense of place and a strange familiarity. As if Merle Haggard had been raised in the Amazon rather than Bakersfield. Where the River Bends Is Only the Beginning is the 12th release in Glitterbeat's acclaimed Hidden Musics series.
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GB 146CD
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São Paulo's Afro-Brazilian groove visionaries Bixiga 70 return with an ecstatic fifth album -- Vapor -- their first in four years. The sound is joyful, a series of potent horn driven melodies and infectious polyrhythms. More than a return, Vapor is a rebirth. An exuberant, full-tilt party. Featuring Simone Sou.
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GB 147CD
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YĪN YĪN, the highly touted Dutch quartet from Maastricht, returns with a sonically expansive third album Mount Matsu. Recorded collectively in their own studio in the Belgian countryside, the album is a kaleidoscope of sounds and influences, occupying a no man's land between Khruangbin and Kraftwerk, surf music, and Southeast Asian psychedelia, Stax soul, and mutant '80s disco, city pop, and Japanese instrumental folk (sōkyoku). Mount Matsu sees YĪN YĪN at their most mature and adventurous stage yet. Off-kilter disco tunes with a trans-local character, neo-Thai psych funk jams and folk-styled soul ballads remain central to their sonic identity, and the influx of fresh ideas results in an even more eclectic and effervescent sound image. Mount Matsu marks a step back from the occasionally more Moroder-esque, rhythm-machine and synth-heavy production style of YĪN YĪN. This is encapsulated in the analogue warmth of their valve amp guitar sounds, vintage synth lines and acoustic percussion timbres, evoking the buzz of being in the rehearsal space with the band. Infectious pentatonic melodicism calling for multiple rewinds!
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GB 146LP
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LP version. São Paulo's Afro-Brazilian groove visionaries Bixiga 70 return with an ecstatic fifth album -- Vapor -- their first in four years. The sound is joyful, a series of potent horn driven melodies and infectious polyrhythms. More than a return, Vapor is a rebirth. An exuberant, full-tilt party. Featuring Simone Sou.
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GB 147LP
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2025 restock; LP version. YĪN YĪN, the highly touted Dutch quartet from Maastricht, returns with a sonically expansive third album Mount Matsu. Recorded collectively in their own studio in the Belgian countryside, the album is a kaleidoscope of sounds and influences, occupying a no man's land between Khruangbin and Kraftwerk, surf music, and Southeast Asian psychedelia, Stax soul, and mutant '80s disco, city pop, and Japanese instrumental folk (sōkyoku). Mount Matsu sees YĪN YĪN at their most mature and adventurous stage yet. Off-kilter disco tunes with a trans-local character, neo-Thai psych funk jams and folk-styled soul ballads remain central to their sonic identity, and the influx of fresh ideas results in an even more eclectic and effervescent sound image. Mount Matsu marks a step back from the occasionally more Moroder-esque, rhythm-machine and synth-heavy production style of YĪN YĪN. This is encapsulated in the analogue warmth of their valve amp guitar sounds, vintage synth lines and acoustic percussion timbres, evoking the buzz of being in the rehearsal space with the band. Infectious pentatonic melodicism calling for multiple rewinds!
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GB 143CD
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Haunting in situ recordings from Parchman Farm maximum security prison in Mississippi. Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Zomba Prison Project) recorded the prison's Sunday gospel service and the results are unforgettable. The performances range from solo acapella to a floor-shaking electric band. The repertoire includes both traditional and newly penned spirituals. Some Mississippi Sunday Morning is an unfiltered and deeply resonant journey into a musical world rarely seen or heard. The notorious Parchman Prison has a rich musical history with Son House, Bukka White, Mose Allison, and Elvis Presley's father Vernon Presley having been former residents. Mississippi's oldest penitentiary, Parchman was founded in 1901 and has one of the highest prisoner mortality rates in the nation as well as experiencing ongoing riots. Due to restrictions on video and photos, the only artifact from this meeting are the sounds -- making the voices all the more ethereal and ghostly. One man's voice was so deep, it sounded like the Mississippi River singing -- as if Barry White were a soprano. Another freestyled a rap about the shame he feels for having caused pain to his mother and others due to his actions. Another was a 73-year-old, former "rock and roll" singer who'd survived prison, become a chaplain, and found God. A veil of sadness seemed to shroud. The singers' voices softened and textured by the inescapable regret that their environment confronts them with. Most songs were covers of Gospel standards, but delivered so imbued with subtext that they were transformed almost unrecognizably from the source material. One of the beauties of the experience was that it was a successful integration of white and black inmates, whose services are often held separately due to racial tensions. As the men beamed, hugged and hi-fived one another in celebration, Chaplain Sidney beamed, "The making of this record has brought much needed encouragement and hope to the men here at Parchman." These were voices unchained, if only for those few hours. Expressing a vocal breadth of freedom otherwise denied and restrained. Recorded 100% live without overdubs at Parchman maximum security prison's Sunday morning service.
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GB 145LP
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LP version. Vladimir Lenhart will happily drop Ethno-Noise on you, then leave you to work out what that might mean. You'll have a pretty good idea after about a minute of this record -- or indeed if you've spent any time in the Balkans generally, surrounded by folk music in all its incarnations, and in Belgrade specifically, which yields up the ghosts of the Yugoslav punk and industrial scenes of the 1980s and the city's current experimental excursions to anyone with time to listen and explore. The interrogation of folk and the national songbook has gained considerable currency in the last several years (think Damir Imamović in Bosnia, Richard Dawson in the UK or labelmates Altın Gün), but Lenhart Tapes are taking a slightly different path. Vladimir Lenhart is only one half of the story here, however. Enter Tijana Stanković: singer, classically trained violinist, ethnomusicologist and Radio Belgrade music editor. By Vladimir's own admission, her encyclopedic knowledge of the music he had grown up with turned the project from something somewhat ironic to something very sincere. He recalls an immediate connection, over a shared love of that music, and it's a connection that has since developed in perhaps unforeseen directions, with Tijana herself pushing Vladimir into an even more uncompromising sonic stance. The slow burn of Lenhart Tapes' emergence has been built upon a set of scorching small-venue performances, with Vladimir's Walkmans laying down a collage of beat, noise and tune for Tijana's voice and violin to respond to and, at times, work against. A decade of sporadic releases, frequently on cassette, was followed by 2021's Duets. Now comes Dens, which hits a different kind of stride. The loops and samples of the previous record are still there, but are joined by an expanded roster of musicians and bolstered by the return of Tijana after a musical sojourn in Budapest. It's denser, more considered, but still spacious. There's a lot going on in this record, and you'll want time (and your biggest ears) to catch it all. Expertly produced and mastered, with superb vocal presence courtesy of Tijana Stanković, Zoja Borovčanin and Svetlana Spajić, it's an endlessly fascinating analogue journey that rewards repeated and close listening.
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GB 149LP
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LP version. Lucidvox's new album is vast-sounding. A collection of swirling ritual missives offered up in the hope of better times. Formerly based in Russia, for their new album That's What Remained, the all-female quartet has added additional sonic thrust (horns, keyboards, strings, atmospheric textures) to their already acclaimed and impassioned psych-rock. Here, style reveals the soul. That's What Remained cannot be anything other than a Lucidvox record -- that firebird quality they always had, the busy rhythms and spitting guitar runs, are still there. But it's a work with a considerable presence; much more so than their debut, We Are. When formulating this record they turned outwards, and asked trumpeter Timur Mizinov from Wooden Whales, violinist Dasha Avramova, guitarist Dmitry Chesnov and multi-instrumentalist Ella Bayisbaeva as a back vocalist to contribute; alongside a children's choir. Artfully and collectively constructed to convey their message, nothing here is wasted or done for the hell of it; but the band clearly hope that their new style can change their own narrative. Each track's DNA tries to persuade the listener that Lucidvox see this record as a launchpad for other iterations of themselves. Plotted and rehearsed a handful of times before the band left Moscow, and built online over a year, the swapped files and code of this album became the smaller particles of the (human) whole. The pathways these files negotiated also ran parallel to those trodden by the band members.
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