drksd2

Seafire

At Dawn

London-based keyboardist/producer Dan Nicholls (of Y-OTIS) introduces a new album project ‘Mattering And Meaning’ to be released by We Jazz Records on August 13th. Nicholls' music uses acoustic piano as its key element, transporting the instrument into new territories that sound remarkably natural and organic, whilst displaying a strong kinship with the world of abstract electronic music. The music utilises piano loops and field recordings as its key elements, forming what might be described on the surface as a fascinating ambient jazz record – but at the same time there's so much more at play here on deeper levels. Dan's music sounds at once otherworldly and immensely inviting.

With its uncanny landscape of fine sand drifts, juniper fields and pine, the ancient Beerze forest in the North-East of the Netherlands is a site of many unusual convergences of human and other than human stories. 'Papa' continues to unravel the threads of a deep artistic collaboration and kinship between pianist and producer Dan Nicholls and the Dutch filmmaker and anthropologist Louise Boer. These fuzzily collaged images and sounds represent a common love for finding the in-between places in which ideas can find deeper roots, channeled here through a dreamlike world which holds within it the location in which Louise’s father, Henk Boer, found his final resting place.

Mattering and Meaning

Exclusive Premiere: Dan Nicholls "Papa" (We Jazz Records)

Bend

Flutter

The Mosaic of Transformation

Understanding Body Messages

Patterns Of Consciousness

Gravity that Binds

People On Sunday

Merry-Go-Round

Purchase: bit.ly/3ZkQcnk
Catalog #: GN70
February 17, 2023
CASS+DIGI

Over the past few years, Andrew Osterhoudt has quietly curated a slew of comforting kosmische musik that gazes deep into the stars while peering just as deeply inward. Now, the Brooklyn-based composer sets their sights on more tangible artifacts and nearby nuance with 'Out Together', an earthbound fit of maniacal mindfulness mixed with calm chaos.
 
Constructed on a scaffold of juxtaposed symmetry, the two sides of 'Out Together' foil and compliment each other in delicate harmony. Live collaborations with Ka Baird and John Also Bennett (JAB) colligate with manipulated found sounds from records and digital audio files from old broadcasting sound libraries, recontextualized into moments of ambient turntablism. The search for harmony shines throughout. Take the final tones of A-side closer “Runoff” drifting downstream with bubbly textures and arpeggiated bliss, trying to reach harmony with the initial tones of B-side opener “Frequency.” The latter ultimately spotlights a fortuitous flute duet from Baird and JAB born from Osterhoudt’s own graphic score.
 
The patient pointillism and avant assurance of “Crowds” balances out the opposite side’s “Everyone Arriving, Eventually,” a tone poem of sand-like textures flowing through melodic reeds and other sonic detritus. “Undergrowth” awakens in a steam-drenched run of modulated meditation, focusing on Ka Baird’s singularly enraptured vocal exorcisms which perfectly reflect its B-side counterpart “The Breathing Green,” engaged in a din of rustic psychedelia with waves of buzzing, ember-like tones and unseen fauna.
 
As a whole, 'Out Together' presents a vibrant spectrum of feelings ranging from magnified isolation to zoomed-out, wide-angled euphoria.

Andrew Osterhoudt - "Everyone Arriving, Eventually"

Liquidity

Why?

Why? (feat. Evicshen)

Pure Chase.m4a

Trans-Millenia Music

Virgin Ice

Kollektion 04: Bureau B

Sowiesoso

Jan Jelinek - Them, Their

sound of sky

Sea Blue

Angel's Flight

Former host of #nerdlove on CHRW 94.9 FM/CHRWRadio.ca. Hellbound.ca writer, SWO event promoter. #CKFRNT co-conspirator. Rants, raves & everything in between. Artists/labels/PR flacks: send me your sounds.

Understanding Body Messages

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

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