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PURCHASE 'We Are All Smalls Pixels' by Pixel @
AMAZON (digital & physical): http://amzn.com/B00EFWSYJ8
ITUNES (digital): https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/we-are-all-small-pixels/id687623767
BANDCAMP (hi-fi digital): http://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/we-are-all-small-pixels
WAYSIDE (physical-ships worldwide): http://waysidemusic.com/Music-Products/Pixel---We-Are-All-Small-Pixels__Rune-spc-372.aspx

We Are All Small Pixels – yes, that describes us all in this post-atomic digital age – but some bands pack a big sonic wallop. In the case of Norway’s prodigious indie jazz combo Pixel, the little elements cohere into a singularly arresting sound, combining the improvisational imperative and acoustic instrumentation of a free bop quartet with the impassioned vocals and incisive lyrics of indie rock. 

Following up on its acclaimed 2012 debut Reminder (Cuneiform), which established the quartet as a bold new voice on the international jazz scene, the young Oslo-based band delivers a stellar second album that makes a mighty big musical statement. Led by double bassist, vocalist, and songwriter Ellen Andrea Wang, the combo further refines its fervently creative vision with We Are All Small Pixels, a genre-smashing manifesto that translates ancient spiritual insight into the digital age. 

For Wang, the fundamental building block of billions of photos and graphics that are the communications currency of her insistently connected generation represents “being a small but important part of the big picture. Whether human beings in the universe, or a simple chord in a big symphony, every pixel is unique and important.” In Pixel’s music, every perfectly placed note and wantonly propulsive beat paints a vivid 21st century picture, a seductive sound that embraces jazz’s harmonic sophistication, minimalism’s incantatory power, rock’s primal thrust, and pop’s lyrical concision.  

Featuring Wang on bass and lead vocals, drummer Jon Audun Baar, trumpeter Jonas Kilmork Vemøy and saxophonist Harald Lassen (with everyone contributing backup vocals), Pixels features the instrumentation inextricably linked to Ornette Coleman’s epochal “free jazz” quartet of the late 1950s and early ‘60s. The band takes advantage of the harmonic space created by the absence of a chordal instrument, but Pixel favors tightly orchestrated tunes and intricately constructed arrangements. Which isn’t to say that quartet is in any way predictable. With sudden metrical shifts, starkly contrasting textures and Wang’s vocals delivered in unison with the horns, the resulting sound is transfixing and unlike anything else on the scene. 

The album opens with the inviting, almost calypsonian bounce of “Be Mine,” a surging tune showcasing Wang’s crystalline vocals and a melody so brightly enticing it could easily find a home on an adventurous rock radio station. She follows that forthright lover’s plea with the jagged “Space,” an equally emphatic call for solitude, revealing in song the delicious push-me pull-me tensions, the contrasting and contradictory forces that animate so much of Pixel’s music. 

Part of what makes Pixel’s music so effective is that even when a tune is dissonant or abrasive it never wears out its welcome, with the majority of the album’s 11 tracks clocking in under four minutes. The album’s centerpiece and longest track is the instrumental “Night Dreamer,” an episodic journey that moves from the pummeling opening section to Vemøy’s beatific trumpet to a triumphant closing fanfare powered by more muscular Baar drum work. As if emerging from unquiet slumbers, the following piece “Easter Song” is the album’s shortest track, at barely over a minute, with a luminous wordless vocal that emerges from an undulating tenor sax line generated by Lassen’s circular breathing. 

With an insistently buzzy tenor line setting up Wang’s ethereal vocals, “Dreaming” is a gorgeous song defined by its contrasting textures. Wang turns fierce and feisty on “Daylight,” with the horns emphasizing her need and urgency. The album closes with the mysterious “Time,” a strikingly lovely song with a gently lamenting vocal refrain. Whether she’s wailing, belting or murmuring, Wang is an uncommonly expressive singer who knows how to mix it up with the horns. 

On a scene rife with exceptional young female players, Wang stands out as a particularly accomplished artist. As a composer, player, and perhaps most importantly as a bandleader who has melded like-minded players into a capaciously inventive ensemble, she stands at the forefront of a rising generation that’s remaking jazz in their own image. Her notoriety is quickly spreading via captivating performances and appreciative critics, resulting in a stream of impressive awards in Norway and on the international stage. In October 2012, the magazine Japan Jazz named Wang their “New Star of the Month”.  The 2012 Oslo Jazz Festival presented her with that year’s prestigious and lucrative Statkraft Young Star award, and the next year, she won the 2013 TONO prize, category «Årets Utfordrer» [Innovator], for the song “Call Me” from her Reminder debut album. 

Now 26, Ellen Andrea Wang founded Pixel in early 2010, which proved to be her breakout year. Featured on the album Norwegian Song 3, the project showcased her bass prowess in the company of storied Nordic masters such as Dag Arnesen, Pål Thowsen, and Palle Mikkelborg. Mentored by bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, Wang has been in wide demand among her peers, appearing on more than a dozen albums with top-flight artists including Jon Balke, Jan Gunnar Hoff, Jon Eberson Group and Ketil Bjørnstad.

Before he took up the saxophone at 13, Harald Lassen studied the piano and sang gospel in church. A respected bandleader in his own right since 2008, he’s collaborated with American heavyweights like Andrew D’Angelo and Ralph Alessi. But Lassen, 26, has recently cemented his status as an essential new voice through his work with his own band Play Tell, which features internationally renowned bassist Mats Eilertsen and legendary drummer Jon Christensen (who powered Keith Jarrett’s great 1970s European quartet). Last year he received the prestigious JazzIntro Award and was named the Young Jazz Musician of the Year with his quintet Mopti (which recently released a debut album on Jazzland Recordings). Beside Mopti and Pixel, Lassen appears on four other albums released in 2013, including sessions by Duplex, and Dr. Kay And His Inter Steller Tone Scientists.  

Jonas Kilmork Vemøy, 27, graduated from the Norwegian Academy of Music in 2011. One of the most expressive trumpeters on the Scandinavian scene, he’s been sought out by a wide array of acts, including prog rock band Blokk 5, the Balkan brass-inflected The Captain and Me, and the pop/rock band Lama, created by former Jaga Jazzist keyboardist Nils Martin Larsen. In addition to Pixel’s second album, he plays on new albums by pop artist and songwriter Kristin Minde, and jazz pianist Jens Andreas Kleiven. 

Like Vemøy, Jon Audun Baar, 26, is a conservatory-trained musician who studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music with teachers like Jon Christensen and Rune Martinsen. A prolific sideman, he’s performed at major festivals with numerous bands and artists over the past four years. Outside of Pixel, Baar has been most visible in an acclaimed trio with the well-traveled guitar master Jon Eberson, a pillar of the Scandinavian jazz scene since the early 1970s.

Together in Pixel, these 4 talented musicians form one of the fastest rising and most innovative ensembles in Scandinavia’s flourishing jazz scene.  Performing at Scandinavia’s jazz festivals and clubs before ever-increasing numbers of fans, recording albums that garner international critical acclaim, winning numerous awards, the young Pixels are poised to take the international jazz stage by storm.

For more information on Pixel, see:
www.pixelband.no - www.facebook.com/pixelnorway - www.cuneiformrecords.com

Pixel, "Space" from 'We Are All Small Pixels' (Cuneiform Records)

Trilogy (A - Private Eye; B - Colours; C - Closed Room) 1

Krokofant - Bodega

A taster from Moulette's forthcoming album, 'Constellations' out on June 2nd.

"...an album so full of ideas, wit and imagination that it seems to have grabbed a strand of the very fabric of creation itself and crocheted an alternate universe of the most intricate lacework." - Simon Holland, Folk Radio UK

Read the review here:
http://www.folkradio.co.uk/2014/05/moulettes-constellations-2/

Pre-order here:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/constellations-deluxe-version/id854453884?uo=4&at=10l9qC
 http://www.propermusic.com/product-details/Moulettes-Constellations-CD-Free-Bonus-Satellite-CDEP-168503”


02 Constellations

From "HEAR YOU", the third full length studio album from Japan's toe. Available digitally on July 24, 2015, on CD August 7, 2015 and on vinyl October 21, 2015 through Topshelf Records. 

http://toemusic.com
http://topshelfrecords.com/artists/toe

toe - "My Little Wish"

track from our debut album, megaldon, written by petter kraft.

Fandango

Bonus Track of album "Nine Thoughts For One Word" (RareNoise Records, 2016)

Truism (Bonus Track)

Lifelines

Patchwork Pt. 1

Free download out 28th October via ninjatune.net/jagajazzist

The Norwegian 9-piece return to the fray with the stunning “One Armed Bandit,” taken from their forthcoming album of the same name. All galloping rhythms, arpeggiated harpsichord and grandiloquent reach, main man Lars Horntveth describes the new sound, tongue-a-little-in-cheek, as “Wagner meets Fela Kuti!” Certainly we find it harder to imagine a better soundtrack being written for the first Nollywood viking epic.

Jaga Jazzist have become something of a musical phenomenon in Norway since they started 15 years ago. Not only is this 9 piece instrumental band regarded as one of the most exciting and innovative in Norway, the members are all involved in other musical projects and have in one way or another contributed to almost every significant recording to come out of that part of the world in the last few years. Their albums sell 20,000+ in Norway and huge crowds come to their shows. Their international acclaim is signalled by the fact that the new album was mixed in chicago by John McEntire of Tortoise.

Technically accomplished musicians, with a wide-ranging and eccentric taste, making music which is as humorous as it is exhilarating, Jaga Jazzist are a slot machine that keeps on paying up. Give it a pull and see what comes out.

Jaga Jazzist are to support Efterklang at the Barbican in London on 28th October. To celebrate they release a free radio edit of “One-Armed Bandit” on this day via ninjatune.net/jagajazzist and there will also be 600 download cards at the event.
A 2010 tour is soon to be announced. To hear the full length version of the single please contact Ninja Tune.

The album, also called “One Armed Bandit” is out Jan 25th

One-Armed Bandit

Jaga Jazzist - One-Armed Bandit

Bushman´s Revenge - As We Used To Sing

PURCHASE 'Beija Flors Velho E Sujo' by São Paulo Underground @
AMAZON (digital & physical): http://www.amazon.com/Beija-Flors-Velho-E-Sujo/dp/B00BX49BXE/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1369080796&sr=1-2&keywords=sao+paulo+underground
WAYSIDE (physical - ships worldwide): http://www.waysidemusic.com/search.aspx?keyword=Beija
ITUNES (digital): https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/beija-flors-velho-e-sujo/id644200595
BANDCAMP (hi-fi digital): http://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/beija-flors-velho-e-sujo

São Paulo Underground isn’t just an international musical conspiracy. It’s an electronica-laced Tropicalia funhouse, a secret passage between Chicago’s volatile avant garde jazz scene and Brazil’s teeming creative capital, an intoxicating state of mind where Sun Ra lays down in a field of giant poppies with Ol’ Dirty Bastard to debate whether the Wizard of Oz is full of juke or jive.

Featuring Chicago improv maestro Rob Mazurek on cornet, harmonium and various effects, and São Paulo’s Guilherme Granado on keyboards, synths, sampler and vocals, and Mauricio Takara on percussion, cavaquinho and electronics, SPU delivers its fourth revelatory album 'Beija Flors Velho E Sujo'. Slated for release on June 4, the album is SPU’s second album for Cuneiform (Mazurek’s new label Infinity Dogs Records is co-releasing the “Beija Flors” LP with Cuneiform).

In its latest incarnation, SPU is a power trio and a post-modern orchestra rolled into one, marked by glistening sonic textures, seductive eletronica beats, unabashedly beautiful melodies, an expansive improvisational palette and fiercely gleeful interplay. A potent program of new material honed during a 2012 North American tour, “Beija Flors” captures an ensemble hitting a fierce creative stride.  Ecstatic, roiling and utterly unpredictable, the music flows from three distinct musical personalities united by “the idea of infinite love, the idea of breaking through to the other side through sonic power and beauty,” says Mazurek, a veteran disrupter of genre conventions.

Rather than stretching out for extended improvisational flights, the trio delivers a series of brief blasts, each brimming with musical incident. “Beija Flors” explodes from the first track with the audacious “Ol’ Dirty Hummingbird,” an uproarious, disorienting free for all that opens up to reveal hidden depths, with a series of stately processions led by muted cornet and ambient synth. As the piece mysteriously circles back to the beginning, hinting at infinite returns, the trio reveals its trickster heart, “a real tribute to the master Ol’ Dirty Bastard,” Mazurek says.
SPU offers a loving embrace of another inscrutable sonic explorer with “ArNus NusAr,” a slow accumulation of celestial sounds that quickly attain self-sustaining gravitational force. The album’s longest track is a spiraling episodic journey that gradually segues into Harold Arlen’s immortal theme of dreamy, utopian displacement, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” a development as surprising as it is through-the-looking-glass appropriate.

The celebratory “Evetch,” a brief Carnival theme powered by Takara’s supple, twangy cavaquinho, is a booty shake in honor of the powerhouse Bahian axé star Ivete Sangalo, “an absolute de-construction and re-fitting of what is possible when a melody is let loose with tigers hot on the trail,” Mazurek says.

“Basilio's Crazy Wedding Song,” a swaggering tune conceived for the director of Sardinia’s Santa Anna Arressi Jazz Festival, surges with fecund energy. The tune crests with “a joyous rhythm that could be straight out of a Mickey Spillane story if it took place on an a tropical island in Nowheresville,” Mazurek says. The album roars to a close with “Taking Back the Sea is No Easy Task,” a piece that bucks, snorts, and gallops “over the side of an abyss that SPU thrives on,” Mazurek says. “It’s the constant idea of beauty and de-composition in the most beautiful of ways, like an African violet making love to a coca leaf.”
The São Paulo Underground was born in the first year of Mazurek’s long Brazilian sojourn, when he met Takara, the group’s co-founder. Built upon their duo, SPU released its mindbending debut with 2006’s Sauna Um Dois Tres (Aesthetics Records), a session that established the ensemble as a singular São Paulo/Chicago axis, with contributions by Hurtmold, Marcos Axe, Tiago Mesquita, Wayne Montana, Damon Locks, Josh Abrams, and Chad Taylor. Following up with 2008’s Principle of Intrusive Relationships (Aesthetics Records), the band expanded to a quartet with Guilherme Granado and drummer Richard Ribeiro. By the time the group recorded its 2011 Cuneiform debut Três Cabeças Loucuras, Ribeiro was gone and SPU took its present form as an expansive trio.

Dauntless sonic explorers, SPU continues a relentless search into the mysteries of sound. “Sound has such potential, and needs to be split, cracked, slammed, caressed, kissed, sunk, buried, catapulted into new dimensions in order to begin a dialogue of the universes,” Mazurek says. “What is hidden is more powerful sometimes than what is actually heard, the energy accumulated over time and thought and action. The power for the sound comes through when you take the simple particle of the thing and radically transform it through beauty and noise and time and everything between to project flocks of birds into the blue sky.”

São Paulo Underground, "The Love I Feel For You Is More Real Than Ever" - 'Beija Flors Velho E Sujo'

SECOND ALBUM 'ANIMALS' OUT MARCH 7TH!

Debut album 'megalodon' still available:
ITUNES: http://apple.co/1iUgirY
SPOTIFY: http://spoti.fi/1LlCp5G
WIMP: http://bit.ly/1KkG3uE
TIDAL: http://bit.ly/1LlLpI2

Henrik Lødøen (NO) – drums
Andreas Winther (NO) – drums
Martin Myhre Olsen (NO) – sax
Karl 'Kalle’ Nyberg (SE) – sax
Petter Kraft (SE) – sax
Karl Bjorå (NO) – guitar
Aaron Mandelmann (SE) – bass

Fandango

Megalodon Collective