From the album, 'South Wind,Clear Sky,' out now on Second Language Music.  www.secondlanguagemusic.com

Perhaps still most widely recognised for Dreaming With Alice, his 1972 psych-folk debut for RCA Italy as a 19-year-old art student-troubadour, Mark Fry has been turning his creative gaze on the world, and alchemising its elements into shimmering, quietly visionary works of art, ever since. Certainly not an artist who dances to the music of time in any conventional sense, Mark, a respected, and collected, painter, most often to be found holed up in his Normandy farmhouse studio, allowed more than three decades to glide by before recording Alice’s follow up, 2008’s Shooting The Moon. His subsequent musical activity has been frenetic by comparison.

Mark’s beguiling, Arcadian-flavoured 2011 Second Language album, I Lived In Trees, recorded in collaboration with The A. Lords – musicians from a more recent generation of psychedelic-folk experimenters – proved a major critical hit, demonstrating that Mark Fry’s musical stock lay not only in the Paisley-hued haze of his Aquarian Age youth, but also in the full glare of the postmodern, internet-facilitated present. A series of concerts in Japan and Scandinavia, and a widely reported ‘supergroup’ London showcase, featuring members of Mercury Rev, Super Furry Animals, Tunng and Lemon Jelly, further evinced the subtle but inexorable diffusion of the Mark Fry legend, something abetted by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme airing an interview with Mark in the wake of Trees’ release.

All of which brings us to Mark Fry’s latest, most exquisitely realised musical offering to date, South Wind, Clear Sky. Sung with that now familiar alloy of cool restraint and wondering innocence, and passingly reminiscent of the kind of English pastoralism associated with the likes of Kevin Ayers or Bill Fay, the album’s leanly arranged yet immersive songs are propelled by Mark’s glinting, plangent guitars and deliciously embroidered by John Parker’s double bass, Angèle David-Guillou’s piano and backing vocals and Katie Lang’s French horn, all bound together by producer Guy Fixsen (My Bloody Valentine, Stereolab) into a delightfully iridescent whole. For all its finely honed arrangements, and the translucence of its recording, South Wind, Clear Sky is still very much the work of the man who made Dreaming With Alice; the mature Mark Fry’s feeling for wonderment and magic, for the dreamlike and the innocently surreal, is just as pervasive, and persuasive here, only more focused, and etched against a more luminous, even heavenly canvas.

Where the lyrics on his last album found Mark reaching up through the summer branches toward an azure sky, here that celestial dimension provides the focus for eight shimmering chamber-folk essays whose wistful narratives of flight and fancy and empyrean romance purr and soar with a stately grace, like the ‘Aeroplanes’ of the album’s richly melodic opening track.


Mark Fry - Aeroplanes

in another way

Don't Be That Girl

Go out

Federico Durand ~ Jardín de invierno 
label : Spekk (Japan) 
design : mondii 
artwork : Cecilia Afonso Esteves
master : Chihei Hatakeyama 
release date : September 18th. 2016 (WORLDWIDE) 
cat : KK032 / format : CD 

PREORDER : https://naturebliss.bandcamp.com/album/jard-n-de-invierno

【先行販売予約開始!!】 
NBストア限定 2016.9.18リリース！ 
日本でも大人気のアルゼンチンの音楽家フェデリコ・デュランドの新譜が登場！本人も「かなりのお気に入り作品」と話すように、これまでのどの作品よりも静かでありながら、どの作品よりも情緒を感じさせる、もの凄い境地に達しております！「昼寝のための音楽集」から始まったフェデリコの音の旅は、まるで天国に辿り着いたかのようです。アートワークは同郷アルゼンチンの人気イラストレーター Cecilia Afonso Estevesによる描きおろし。 

〈作品解説〉 
スペイン語で「冬のガーデン」と名付けられた本作は、大自然の中へと引っ越しをしたフェデリコの新しい（音楽の）環境を表しており、壮大な凍てつく大きな家の中にスタジオをこしらえ、変わりゆく景色を背景に創作に取り組んだ。そして、全ての楽曲にはその情景を現す、自然にまつわるタイトルが付けられている。本作の特色は、その場の空気感を捉えるために、僅かなサウンド・パレット（カセットやオルゴール、シンセなど）を机の上に並べ、１回のテイクによって全て録音されており、後ほどの編集やミックスも行われていない。そうして大自然の中で放たれた雪の結晶のような小さな音の連なりは、ひんやりとした空気の中へと消えてゆき、本人が語るようにアルバム全体に山の中の古い家の魂が宿っている。マスタリングはフェデリコとの共演経験も持つ畠山地平氏。 

〈Chihei Hatakeyama 推薦コメント〉 
『この作品はFederico Durand の数ある作品の中で最も静謐である。素晴らしく愛らしい細やかなメロディがサウンドスケープの合間から溢れ出し、その様は天使の歌声を聞くようである。恐らく天国というものがあるとしたら、このような音楽が鳴っているんじゃないだろうか。そして、この作品を作る精神、想像力に驚嘆した。研ぎすまされた精神は剣の達人、例えば柳生石舟斎のような音の振る舞いを生み出すものなんだなと改めて思った。ある意味、ここに音は鳴っているのだけど、鳴っていないというか、このCD の中に入っていない音も想像して楽しめる傑作だ。』 　 

〈Federico Durand フェデリコ・デュランド プロフィール〉 
www.federicodurand.blogspot.com 
SPEKK からのファーストアルバム「La siesta del ciprés」が全世界で大ヒット。のち12K など世界中のレーベルから矢継ぎ早に新作をリリースする傍ら、Optiope のTomoyoshi Date とのMelodia、Nicholas Szczepanik とのEvery Hidden Color など注目アーティストとコラボレーションも活発に行っている。電子音楽のようなサウンドでありながら、日常や山で採取したフィールド・レコーディングやギターなどの楽器音をさりげなく取り込む、とても有機的なアプローチで作曲。アルゼンチンのアーティストに多く見受けられる、情調感をもった楽曲はここ日本でも人気が高く、「アールグレーの紅茶が大好きと」語る素朴な人柄同様、どこかキュートで優しい味わいが特徴である。 2014 年には初のジャパン・ツアーを成功させ、同年4 月に発売されたSPEKK からのアルバム「El Estanque Esmeralda」は瞬く間に完売、年を追うごとに全世界にて人気を確立している。

Tarde de lluvia

Irrepressible Dutch electronic producer Kettel steps up to deliver his unique take on Lost Idol's Mechanically Void, a track lifted from the forthcoming new Lost Idol longplayer Chrome Machine Tales. End of summer vibes abound on Kettel's remix as he rouses the discotheque with sprightly beats and his unique melodic flair from the get-go.

Mechanically Void Kettel Remix

Enlightening pads, harmonising strings and elegant keys create a meditative journey akin to Durutti Column's 'Otis'. Taken from @mark-barrott's new Music For Presence EP out 3rd March on his own @international-feel imprint.

Read more & buy: http://www.stampthewax.com/2017/03/03/premiere-mark-barrott-schopenhauers-garden/
Listen on Youtube: bit.ly/schopenhauers-garden

Listen on Youtube

Mark Barrott - Schopenhauer's Garden(STW Premiere)

Chris Hyson is proud to present “Chaps”, the first single from his forthcoming EP ‘Cuddle Kitchen Vol.1’ due to be released on 6th of Dec 2019 on Pixel Music. 

New addition to Chris' growing collection of self-produced solo instrumental music, “Cuddle Kitchen Vol.1” is settled into the world of groovy instinctive rhythms, an evolution from his emotional and reflective landscapes trademark. The EP takes a trip to an imaginary land full of colours and shapes. Unpredictable and full of surprises, the music keeps the listener fully present and engaged. 

This is Chris’ half conscious decision to show a different side to his musical personality, after successfully establishing himself as a musician, writer and producer with a superb melancholic and emotive palette, be it 
with his band Snowpoet, his own solo productions, the work he’s recently been doing in the world of film composition or his involvement in writing, playing and producing the next Jordan Rakei (Ninja Tune) album. 

First single “Chaps” elevates Chris’ work far beyond mere aesthetic exercise, cementing jazz, ambient sound design, and groove into an absorbing listening experience. 


Drums - LLOYD HAINES 
Guitar - ALEX HAINES 
Everything Else - CHRIS HYSON 

mixed and mastered by - ALEX KILLPARTRICK 

produced by - CHRIS HYSON

Chaps

Listen to the new single 'Skateboarding', taken from the upcoming album, available for pre-order now.

https://smallpond.plctrmm.to/SB

An introspective collection of psychedelic modular synth led experimentations, ‘Bright Serpent’ is the new album by Kristian Shelley aka electronic musician Inwards. Electronic textures and rhythms rub up against manipulated recordings of real instruments, voices and field recordings to fashion transportive snapshots of an inner sound-world.

‘Bright Serpent’ is set for release on 10th April 2020 by Small Pond Recordings on vinyl, CD and digital formats.

Skateboarding

Listen / Purchase: https://lnk.to/theletdown

‘The Letdown’ is a record better identified by the vibe it creates rather than a particular genre or style. It’s dirty, unapologetically loud and charmingly haphazard. It’s the sort of self-educated, non-jazz record that critics of Moondog would have written off as impure. Frankly, we’re good with that. The strength of the record lies not with any collegiate-level classification, but in its ability conjure moods that just feel good, are instantly familiar and invite a certain nostalgia. The gritty, noir side of it, brings to mind the old black and white detective stories. The jovial, 1920’s romanticism, lends a bit of class and gives the sense that even though everything is falling to shit, we are going to power through it with a bit of song and dance.

Whatever one happens to take away from this album, ‘The Letdown’ is meant to be fun, help the whisky burn just a bit less, and keep the blood flowing. Read into it too much and you might spoil it. Guaranteed it is unlike any Fritch record to date.