Pavel Milyakov & Yana Pavlova — strong-willed

Here is the debut, self-titled album from a.s.o., singer/songwriter Alia Seror-O’Neill, and producer Lewie Day. ‘a.s.o.’ is a thematic consolidation of the previous two singles and an impressive artistic progression. Day and Seror-O’Neill show they’ve mastered the format of the radio-friendly pop song and found how to subvert it completely. Across eleven songs, they have built a rich and compelling body of work.

We know where we are now, emotionally complex, trip-hop torch songs for club freaks. But the palette has broadened to encompass ethereal dream pop à la Cocteau Twins, slow-burning AOR-soul, and dubwise stylings. As a result, ‘a.s.o.’ is a satisfyingly coherent listen but never a musical monoculture. Variously there are nods toward Julee Cruise, Fleetwood Mac, and the uneasy listening of Portishead. It’s an album that wears its influences lightly, is never weighed down by them, and always sure of its own identity.

It’s anchored by Alia’s unique voice. Her words speak of restraint and release, taking us from the elegiac to the euphoric. This elegantly crafted, perfect pop music sounds like it has had enough of your shit. And Day’s music is the perfect foil; deep, slightly menacing, restrained, and powerful. The album has a cinematic texture, as with David Lynch; the seemingly familiar becomes uncanny and strange the closer we look. a.s.o. take our emotions for a joyride before leaving us floating in space.

‘a.s.o.’ is a journey; by its end, we all are changed.

Written and recorded by Alia Seror-O’Neill and Lewie Day at Quintagon Studios, Berlin and Palmerston Studios, Naarm/Melbourne in 2020-2023.
Mixed by Lewie Day except for Track 9 “Understand” mixed by Thomas McAlister
Mastered by Mikey Young
Artwork by Dylan Batelic
Words by Piers Harrison

2023 Low Lying Records
Cat. No. LLRLP001 – All rights reserved
www.itsaso.bandcamp.com

01 - Go On

Out on 2LP/CD/digital April 26, Someone Like Me is a humanity-reminding suite of miracle moments that unites real people in the pursuit of a meaningful connection. Taping their lived experience in economic studios in quiet English counties, Pacific Northwest woodland retreats and the big city bustle of Sydney and Los Angeles, these kindred spirits rendered sheer beauty in the process. Custom pressed folk songs of love, loss and the lord saviour. 

Illuminating minor works from seasoned players such as former Syndicate Of Sound chart-topper Sharkey and late-era Canned Heat lynchpin James Thornbury, the collection simultaneously honours the fleeting amateurism of hobby musicians. With their one shot at tangible vinyl, freshman Lynne Ann Kingan realised her loose bubblegum rocker on campus time, while U.S. Navy recruit Fred Potts cut his unconditionally serene ballad remotely stationed on a Spanish naval base. Spartan production continues to reign with Jon Betmead’s hair-raising gospel, howling into infinite space, and Goldrust’s stripped back garden hymn.

Throughout the hour-long reflection, faith has an intermittent yet revelatory presence, most overtly with the divine choral soul of Seventh-day Adventist quartet Remnant. More subtly, Gary Ramey and Jim Kennedy both turned to song in their spiritual quests, offering their all to a universal power. An irrefutable compilation cornerstone, the National Office For Black Catholics showcased Charles Murphy’s lionhearted account of the Black experience at a 1971 concert. Five years earlier, high school seniors The Superwomen would use their hauntingly angelic harmonies to address racial inequity with a breathless take on ‘Lowlands’.

Reaching the furthest corners, Someone Like Me secures the inaugural licence of three homespun masterpieces. Discovered by fluke in the digital haystacks of Youtube and Soundcloud, Jim Huxley’s bedroom pop earworm melds peacefully into Charlie Webster’s synthesized reverie. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s John Agostino introduces us to the bizarre world of tax scam records, with the artist only now learning that his tender psych-folk demos were leaked via a 1977 bootleg.

Compiled and lovingly restored by armchair digger Mikey Young (Eddy Current Suppression Ring/The Green Child), Someone Like Me pays due service to seventeen rarefied journals of truth and devotion. Adorned with visual artist Chris Fallon’s figure and flora dream extractions, the uniting songbook is further detailed by expansive track-by-track liner notes and a forward from San Franciscan poet Rod Roland.

Charles Murphy - The Foot That's Holding Me Down (ES031)

Aïsha Devi nurtures an idiosyncratic approach to her music. She describes her sound as Aetherave, and uses bassy-heavy club motifs and intentional aesthetic signifiers to transport listeners to a dizzying, kinetic environment, harnessing timeless frequencies. On each record, Devi has advanced her philosophy and developed her technology; her last album 'DNA Feelings' was a radical hybrid of ancient mysticism and rebellious pop, and 'Death is Home' propels listeners towards the extremes, bending fictile beats and cybernetic textures into transformational songs. This eagerly-awaited new album is a livable, breathable sonic essence that reveals itself alchemically, reorienting anachronistic cultural preconceptions with its contemporary, ornate language and eerie architecture.

'Death is Home' is ultimately a manifesto. It's Devi's most revealing work to date and a direct result of her personal evolution and ongoing quest. Growing up under the shadow of isolation and abuse, she formed her practice as a healing method, using it to neutralize her past and recreate an alternate, more hospitable reality - beyond the human condition. 
Her feelings were compounded when she tracked down the whereabouts of her father B.K. Gurung, a Nepali drummer whom she never knew. Devi was informed he had died young, but rather than perceive this as a binary, through mourning, she realized that his existence had already offered her a lifeline and a refuge. 

Devi's words and productions reach out to a place where weightlessness has the power to dissolve the corporeal world's manufactured terror of death. Without this trepidation, life's boundaries and limitations fall away. "Burn the flesh, a Deva's born," she sings over tense, pneumatic kicks on 'Not Defined by the Visible'. Her voice is contorted by electronic processes, but the meaning is human: to reach the holy, we must shed our skin. The narrative that guides the album unfurls with the plasticity of an open-world videogame, a space where one can unravel the dogma of life vs. death. On 'Lick Your Wounds', Devi reveals her deepest trauma, pacifying it with rousing, ritualistic rhythms and melancholic pads. "Vapors of violence remain in my broken bones, intoxicate my DNA," she invokes. "I'll lick my wounds and heal at night. I'll take over." She extends this invitation to anybody tuned in to her signals, providing lodging for those that crave it. Birth is virtual. Death is home.

Death Is Home

vinyl / stream

Lick Your Wounds

Dekmantel Ten: A Decade of Dekmantel Festival

Por El Universo

Artist: BITCHIN BAJAS
Album: Transporteur

Cat #: HITD 024
LP – 600 copies on black vinyl
CS – 100 copies
Release date: 4th May 2015

Cooper Crain, Daniel Quinlivan et Rob Frye : orgue électrique, synthétiseurs analogique, synthétiseur modulaire, basse électrique, flûte, clarinette basse et percussions

Artwork by Nick Ciontea
Mastering by Rashad Becker

Label, orders: www.handsinthedarkrecords.com

BITCHIN BAJAS - Marimba

Sakura

Gekkoh (2025 Remaster)

IMU - Meant to Be

I. 2c 
II. Flutter
III. Moments in Love

out 04.28.17 https://boomkat.com/products/grafts

GRAFTS

Hamburg Süd / Nee IYaow eow eow 

19 Make It Up As You Go Along

Taken from Gi Gi - Lumino Pleco (QTT22) 
Full album out now on: https://quiettimetapes.bandcamp.com/album/lumino-pleco

-----
Cinematic and spiritual sounds from Gi Gi, conjuring a quasi-religious trance and made entirely from samples - ncluding Prince, Vangelis, Erykah Badu, and Miles Davis - warped, blended and smoothed over beyond recognition.

At times melancholic and at times hopeful, these lush textural soundscapes are worthy of an introspective listen; lights off, candle lit and somewhere comfortable.

Limited Cassette

Gi Gi - Montjuïc ft. Mi Mi

26 April 2024
Build From Here
Download, Stream, LP & CD

**************

3 March 2023
Your Body Is Yours
Download, stream and music video.

**************

20 May 2022
Insanely Alive (Remixes) 
Remixes by Pet Shop Boys, Total Freedom & Sami Baha. 
12-inch vinyl preorder here: https://bit.ly/3rRgKxm

**************

5 November 2021
Wolfgang Tillmans - Moon in Earthlight (Album) 
Download/CD/Vinyl

**************

2 July 2021
Wolfgang Tillmans – Can't Escape into Space (Honey Dijon's Euphoria Mix)
Download, stream and music video.

**************

20 December 2020
Wolfgang Tillmans – Can't Escape into Space
Download, stream and music video.

**************

21 August 2020 
Wolfgang Tillmans – Life Guarding  /  Growing
12'' vinyl, download, stream and music videos.

**************

17 July 2020 
Wolfgang Tillmans - Growing 
(digital / stream / video) 
Video: https://youtu.be/WhOSPqzKhiU

**************

4 June 2020 
Volkswagen Art4All Online Edition | Podcast mit Wolfgang Tillmans (in German)
https://bit.ly/3gO2JJw

**************

16 June 2019, 7pm
17 June 2019, 7pm
An experimental evening with DonChristian, Fragile/Wolfgang Tillmans (Live) + DJ Nedalot 
Kantine am Berghain, Berlin 

**************

Tickets via
https://www.koka36.de/event_site.php?event=113870
https://amwriezenerbahnhof.app.love-your-artist.com/de/
http://berghain.de/event/2852
https://www.facebook.com/events/623702948101216/

**************


16 Nov 2018
Powell Tillmans - Spoken By The Other EP (XL Recordings)
12'' vinyl / download / stream 

Preorder EP: 
http://www.xlrecordings.com/buy/powelltillmans-spokenbytheotherep 

**************

17 Oct 2018
Powell Tillmans – Feel the Night (XL Recordings)
download/stream/video

Video: 
https://youtu.be/OHKAyrNuPYU

**************

5 May 2018 
Fragile007 - Wolfgang Tillmans - Source (Original / Roman Flügel Remixes) 
12'' vinyl / download / stream 

**************

2 Feb 2018
Fragile006 - Wolfgang Tillmans – Heute Will Ich Frei Sein EP 
12'' vinyl / download / stream / video 

**************

17 Nov 2017 
Fragile005 - Wolfgang Tillmans - Hamburg Süd / Nee IYaow Eow Eow 
Cd digipack + 48page booklet / download / stream 

**************

9 Dec 2016
Fragile004 - Fragile - That's Desire / Here We Are EP 
12'' vinyl / download / stream / video

**************

16 Sept 2016
Fragile003 - Wolfgang Tillmans "Device Control EP" 
12'' vinyl / download / stream / video

**************

07 June 2016
Fragile002 - Fragile - Naive Me 
download and stream only

**************

24 June 2016
Fragile001 - Wolfgang Tillmans  - 1986 / 2016 EP
12'' vinyl / download / stream / video

19 Make It Up As You Go Along

Wolfgang Tillmans

Recent comments

lightbeam

Sandrino

Related tracks