twenty nineteen

Musik zur Zeit 06/2019

Tracks of the Week // June 2nd

Lifted - 2
Format: LP / Digital
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 85
Release Date: 07 June 2019
Buy: bit.ly/2W0yIL6 / bit.ly/30OhkwC

PAN welcomes back the Lifted ensemble for a second cross-continental adventure off the grid, simply titled Lifted 2.

Lifted’s latest release expands on the expression of improvised fusion that brought about the spectrum of styles explored on their 2015 debut album for PAN. Expansion is a key theme to Lifted 2, primarily in the musicians involved; Lifted is now a core group of Future Times boss Max D, Matt Papich aka Co La, Jeremy Hyman and Motion Graphics. Expansion also relates to musical ideas Lifted explore and the studio techniques executed.

Whereas the way they approached the idea of improvisation on Lifted 1 was framed in jazz terms, the seven-tracks on this second LP step even further into the vivid unknown. Zero boundaries for the exploratory impulse. “On this record we went a lot deeper into our kind of studio technique,” Lifted say. “We tried to cultivate the sound using the studio as a primary tool, almost a member of the group in a way.”

As with the debut Lifted LP, listening to Lifted 2 is an open invitation to experience the worldwide creative framework surrounding these artists. The collaborators for each track, whether present in the studio or online, show what a fluid and freeform exercise Lifted can be.

Max D’s international crew of Future Timers play deft roles throughout Lifted 2. Jordan GCZ and Dawit Eklund both return for ‘Lifting’ alongside 1432r’s Sami, NYC’s Will DiMaggio and Sao Paulo’s Repetentes 2008. Beatrice Dillon and Bass Clef, two highly-decorated artists from the UK underground, make telling contributions which mark the latest in a long line of celebrated creative collaborations for the pair. Further input comes via Aya, vocalist and bassist for crucial Japanese experimentalists OOIOO, and Martin Kasey, a friend of Papich with a background in Baltimore theatre, summoned for Lifted duty to provide some striking saxophone blasts.

How do all these collaborations manifest on Lifted 2? It’s a sort of inverse process full of blind takes with the results more bruised than polished. “The song stays fluid until the end. We pile the ideas really high and then decimate them,” Lifted say. “We delete until the songs are crystallizing; lay a grid of silences to organize the tracks. The breathing spaces become definitive.”

These seven tracks adroitly weave through mood and vibe, demanding heads lock in with an initial blast of whip sharp percussive hits and contemporary no-wave blowouts before letting off steam with soothing ambient synthesis. “Black Pepper” acts as the album centerpiece, an unhinged mangle of SH101 basslines, freeform flute & saxophone and multiple percussive sources brought to order by Papich’s studio dubs. “Rose 31” edges closest to the kind of jazz fusion that inspired the project from the off, Lifted utilising the various classic instruments deployed by the greats of the game. Closer “Near Future” smartly foregrounds Motion Graphics’ stunning piano talents, gradually stripping away all other elements until all that is left are his swirling notes.

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring photography by Traianos Pakioufakis and artwork by Johannes Schnatmann & Bill Kouligas.

http://p-a-n.org

Lifted - 2 (PAN 85)

Makthaverskan - Demands

"Face of the Sun" is the first single from Night of the Worm Moon, the new solo full-length from La Luz singer/guitarist Shana Cleveland, out 4/5/19 on LP, CD, digital, and cassette. 

Pre-order your copy today from smarturl.it/shanacleveland

Night of the Worm Moon

Shana Cleveland - "Face of the Sun"

Composer, saxophonist and founder of Immix Ensemble, Daniel Thorne,  has announced his invigorating and powerful debut solo album 'Lines of Sight' with the dizzying first track 'From Inside, Looking Out'.

Deeply moving, full of otherworldly beauty and rapture, the album is alive, throbbing like a circulatory system, colourful and glowing. It literally dazzles – effectively capturing what the birth (or death) of a planet might sound like. 

In Daniel’s own words, “Thematically, this music was inspired by birds-eye aerial images and the idea of perspective - how something incredibly complex like a river or the surface of the ocean is reduced to a simple line or shape when viewed from the heavens. The line between natural and man-made becomes increasingly blurred.”

Every strand is fresh, vital and purposeful. The description ‘seamless’ might suggest a smooth, bland fusion, but here elements overlap in intermittent, undulating layers of mesh. Avant-garde, noise, electronics, ecclesiastical, classical and a touch of jazz come together, each occupying their own space while acquiescing with the whole. 

“Several compositions are derived from ratios and processes, and are 
Lines of Sight follows Thorne’s work as artistic director of the acclaimed, collaboration-focussed group Immix Ensemble. Together with experimental electronic artist Vessel, he co-wrote Transition released on Erased Tapes in 2016, described by BBC Radio 6’s Mary Anne Hobbs as “a remarkable new piece of music”. More recently, he worked with acclaimed modular synth wizard Luke Abbott, to create a four-part suite, which was premiered live in June 2017. Immix Ensemble have also performed special live commissions with Kelly Lee Owens, Dialect, Jane Weaver and Bill Ryder-Jones, among others. 

After a first solo performance at Sea Change Festival 2018, the new year will see Daniel tour across Europe, promoting the forthcoming release of Lines of Sight.

European Tour Dates:
13.2. Rotondes — Luxembourg, LU (with Daniel Brandt)
14.2. Melkweg ­— Amsterdam, NL (with Daniel Brandt)
15.2. Doornroosje — Nijmegen, NL (with Daniel Brandt)
16.2. Botanique — Brussels, BE - (with Daniel Brandt)
26.2. Corsica Studios — London, UK (with Daniel Brandt)
10.4. 24 Kitchen Street — Liverpool, UK (with Terry Riley & Gyan Riley)

Lines of Sight

Buy LP/CD/DL

Daniel Thorne - From Inside, Looking Out

C Duncan’s highly anticipated third album sees the Scottish multi-instrumentalist ditch his bedroom studio and work with other producers, engineers and musicians for the first time. “This was the biggest shift in dynamic for me,” he explains, “having always worked alone, it was a daunting prospect but one I knew I had to explore.” Navigating themes of love, anxiety and sexuality, ‘Health’ – produced by Elbow’s Craig Potter - is a deeply personal record that delves into a world Duncan had previously felt uneasy exploring.

C Duncan - Impossible

Cigarette Burns

Nyege Nyege Tapes sibling, Hakuna Kulala host the hardass debut by Don Zilla, manager of the Boutiq studio at the heart of Kampala, Uganda’s vital music scene

Following up his remixes of STILL’s ‘I’ album cuts in 2018, Don Zilla bares his teef in both parts of ‘From The Cave to the World’, first churning up a viscous groove full of shadow-boxing drums and gutter bass distortion on the cusp of dubstep rave and halfstep D&B with ‘From The Cave’, before opening up a stargate like portal in his studio with 12 minutes of plunging beatless depth and unheimlich terra forming in ‘Inside Me’, and in a way recalling early Emptyset or stare-out Prurient piece.
credits

From the Cave

Don Zilla - 01 - From The Cave

@twitch works the Africa Seven favourite into a laid-back groover.

Read more & buy: http://www.stampthewax.com/2019/04/17/premiere-mbamina-kilowi-kilowi-jd-twitch-edit
Listen on Youtube: http://bit.ly/kilowi-twitch

Listen on Youtube

M'Bamina - Kilowi Kilowi (JD Twitch Edit)(STW Premiere)

Hana Mash Hu Al Yaman

Love Yourself / With My Whole Heart

With My Whole Heart

From 'Datach'i - Bones' (out on Timesig on July 26th)
https://planetmu.bleepstores.com/release/129760-datachi-bones

Having broken a decade's silence with 2016's 'System', LA-based electronic musician Joseph Fraioli, a.k.a. Datach’i, returns this summer with his eighth album 'Bones'. Released on Venetian Snares' Timesig imprint, 'Bones' features 12 tracks of mind expanding electronica, once again recorded on his custom-built Eurorack modular system.
	
Much like its predecessor, 'Bones' manages to make the most of the possibilities modular systems offer, whilst avoiding their many pitfalls that can often turn such music into little more than a dry academic exercise. Indeed 'Bones' is a remarkably intimate album, written and recorded in the time following his father's death, and reflects this intense period of personal change in Joseph's life. "Creating this music was a therapy of sorts," Joseph recalls. "It was almost like a close friend being there for me, and it's something that I hope others can perhaps utilize in the same way."

The connection to his father is something that is reflected not just in the emotional intensity of 'Bones', but in the actual production itself. "My father and I were very close," he explains. "Whilst he was sick with cancer I bought him a guitar as he wanted to learn how to play, just to have something to do while he was getting treated. After he passed away my mother gave me the guitar to have as a sort of memory of him. I had the idea to record some sounds and music on the guitar and load it onto granular sample players on the modular synth so I could make new music from those sounds as a sort of tribute to my dad. You can hear some of those sounds on a few of the tracks here like 'Arrivals', 'Motion in the Living Room' and 'Undimension'." 

The resulting album grapples with the intensity of these emotions. But for all their weight, tracks like 'Saugerties Road', ‘Rockledge 3A’ and ‘Antumalal’ transform that heaviness into something warm and comforting whilst the aforementioned 'Arrivals' or ‘Wand’ ultimately achieve some kind of escape velocity and soar.

Even though 'Bones' is about endings and finding closure, it also looks forward to new beginnings. "It was something very much on my mind throughout recording this album," he relates, "ends being beginnings and beginnings being the end. Cycles of time and how time works, it's all reflected throughout the album right down to how the tracks are ordered."

Ranging from blissful ambience and guileless, starry eyed melodies, to intricate claustrophobic rhythms that forever sound close to collapsing in on themselves before expanding into bold new patterns, 'Bones' is the work of a producer who, twenty years on from his debut, continues to push the boundaries of electronic music.

Bones

Datach'i - Rockledge 3A

Lifted - 2
Format: LP / Digital
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 85
Release Date: 07 June 2019
Buy: https://bit.ly/2W0yIL6 / https://bit.ly/30OhkwC

PAN welcomes back the Lifted ensemble for a second cross-continental adventure off the grid, simply titled Lifted 2.

Lifted’s latest release expands on the expression of improvised fusion that brought about the spectrum of styles explored on their 2015 debut album for PAN. Expansion is a key theme to Lifted 2, primarily in the musicians involved; Lifted is now a core group of Future Times boss Max D, Matt Papich aka Co La, Jeremy Hyman and Motion Graphics. Expansion also relates to musical ideas Lifted explore and the studio techniques executed.

Whereas the way they approached the idea of improvisation on Lifted 1 was framed in jazz terms, the seven-tracks on this second LP step even further into the vivid unknown. Zero boundaries for the exploratory impulse. “On this record we went a lot deeper into our kind of studio technique,” Lifted say. “We tried to cultivate the sound using the studio as a primary tool, almost a member of the group in a way.”

As with the debut Lifted LP, listening to Lifted 2 is an open invitation to experience the worldwide creative framework surrounding these artists. The collaborators for each track, whether present in the studio or online, show what a fluid and freeform exercise Lifted can be.

Max D’s international crew of Future Timers play deft roles throughout Lifted 2. Jordan GCZ and Dawit Eklund both return for ‘Lifting’ alongside 1432r’s Sami, NYC’s Will DiMaggio and Sao Paulo’s Repetentes 2008. Beatrice Dillon and Bass Clef, two highly-decorated artists from the UK underground, make telling contributions which mark the latest in a long line of celebrated creative collaborations for the pair. Further input comes via Aya, vocalist and bassist for crucial Japanese experimentalists OOIOO, and Martin Kasey, a friend of Papich with a background in Baltimore theatre, summoned for Lifted duty to provide some striking saxophone blasts.

How do all these collaborations manifest on Lifted 2? It’s a sort of inverse process full of blind takes with the results more bruised than polished. “The song stays fluid until the end. We pile the ideas really high and then decimate them,” Lifted say. “We delete until the songs are crystallizing; lay a grid of silences to organize the tracks. The breathing spaces become definitive.”

These seven tracks adroitly weave through mood and vibe, demanding heads lock in with an initial blast of whip sharp percussive hits and contemporary no-wave blowouts before letting off steam with soothing ambient synthesis. “Black Pepper” acts as the album centerpiece, an unhinged mangle of SH101 basslines, freeform flute & saxophone and multiple percussive sources brought to order by Papich’s studio dubs. “Rose 31” edges closest to the kind of jazz fusion that inspired the project from the off, Lifted utilising the various classic instruments deployed by the greats of the game. Closer “Near Future” smartly foregrounds Motion Graphics’ stunning piano talents, gradually stripping away all other elements until all that is left are his swirling notes.

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring photography by Traianos Pakioufakis and artwork by Johannes Schnatmann & Bill Kouligas.

http://p-a-n.org

Lifted - Now More Than Ever (PAN 85)

PAN