Release date: February 24th

Note: Orders that include a PRE-ORDER title will be consolidated and shipped together when the last pre-order title is in stock. Contact us to make other arrangements.

Jon Iverson meets Prins Emanuel, Golden Ivy & Inre Kretsen Grupp is an experiment bridging time and space. Recorded across decades and continents, the album merges ‘80s American home studio sensibilities with contemporary European kosmische.

After receiving hours of unreleased material from Jon Iverson’s reel-to-reel archive, Séance Centre’s Brandon Hocura conceived of having contemporary musicians ‘finish’ the vibrant sketches and demos that had been languishing since the ‘80s. Immediately, a group of musicians working in and around Malmö sprang to mind as sympathetic and exciting collaborators for this material: Emanuel Sundin (Prins Emanuel), Ivar Lantz (Golden Ivy) and Martin Blomberg (Inre Kretsen Grupp). They were inspired by the proposal and spent several days in the studio, weaving rhythms, textures, and melodies around loops and samples made from the original recordings. The resulting album expands Iverson’s percussive and atmospheric vignettes into wide-open 21st Century group-think cosmic music, adding violin, flute, kalimba, lap steel, percussion, guitar, organ, synthesizers, bass, samples, and effects. A sonic landscape that evoke’s Terence Malick’s Montana Badlands as much as Ingmar Bergman’s windswept Fårö Island.

RYIL: Träd, Gräs & Stenar, Dunkelziffer, Embryo, Deadline Paranoia, Peter Zummo

BUY VINYL: www.seance-centre.com/shop/jon-ivers…-kretsen-grupp

BUY DIGITAL: joniversonmeetsprinsemanuelgoldenivyinrekretsengrupp.bandc…onmeetsprinsemanuelgoldenivyinrekretsengrupp.bandcamp.com/album/jon-iverson-meets-prins-emanuel-golden-ivy-inre-kretsen-grupp

Jon Iverson meets Prins Emanuel, Golden Ivy & Inre Kretsen Grupp - S/T (35SC)

You Can Can is an echoed affirmation, an album which traces song forms around silence, field recordings, and degraded analog memories. This is folk music transmogrified and mutated, as if recorded and reconstructed in Pierre Schaffer’s GRM studio.

Not your typical Mariposa folk duo, the group is comprised of Toronto avant-music scene stalwarts, vocalist Felicity Williams (Bernice, Bahamas) and bricolage artist and synthesist Andrew Zukerman (Fleshtone Aura, Badge Epoch). The album feels like a somnambulant conversation, fragmented and half-remembered with Williams’ vocals traveling through a landscape of field recordings and Zukerman’s saturated concrète topographies. It is an electro-acoustic assemblage, both analog and digital, comprised of air, electricity, minerals, wood, and water. Although the album nods towards traditional forms of folk and musique concrète (if at this point it can be called a traditional form), it is outwardly and inwardly contemporary; non-linear, citational, opaque, and sui generis. In a way it feels like a sonic index of the narrative experiments found on the infamous Language school-related publisher The Figures, in the work of Lyn Hejinian, Clark Coolidge, and Lydia Davis. In the musical continuum, the album picks up where Linda Perhacs left off in the early 70’s—explored by Gastr Del Sol in the ‘90s—a convergence of rural acoustic idioms and urban avant-electronics. This is country music for the discerning cosmopolitan citizen of the 21st Century.

You Can Can is Felicity Williams & Andrew Zukerman.
Mixing, Photography & Insert Artwork by Andrew Zukerman Stem Mix and Mastering by Sandro Perri Vinyl Master by Brandon Hocura Design by Alan Briand

Instruments: Human Voice, Guitar, Tape Machines, Modular Synthesizers, Field Recordings, Handbells & Piano. Failure Figures features Dan Fortin on Bass and Thom Gill on Guitar & Synthesizers.

BUY VINYL: www.seance-centre.com/shop/you-can-can
BUY DIGITAL: https://youcancan.bandcamp.com/album/you-can-can

You Can Can - S/T (36SC)

Release date: March 8

Sophomore release from Toronto dream-duo Joseph Shabason and Ben Gunning, this time a more cosmopolitan affair, mapping fragmented cityscapes from bent electronics and late-night FM jazz transmissions. 

The boys are back in town. After recording their debut in a remote cottage in Northern Ontario, the duo relocated their jams to Shabason’s Toronto studio where they gained unlimited access to a virtual cornucopia of analog and digital gear and had the time to really push those instruments to the brink. In the crisp autumnal sessions the duo consciously set out to make Ample Habitat with a fresh slate; not a single melody or patch was smuggled in on a USB stick. Fuelled with off-brand club soda, the ethos was to infuse the sessions and the music itself with a sense of discovery. Another perk of the new locale was being closer to friends and neighbours; TO music-scene luminaries Kieran Adams, Bram Gielen, and Thom Gill dropped in, rounding out a full jam band for the convivial B-side surprise “Is Jubilee.” Although the album calls on a wild menagerie of digital voices, the heart is warm and human, favouring performance and play over presets and quantization. If J Dilla was able to teach an MPC jazz, Shabason / Gunning aim to teach their hardware the ECM version. 

RIYL: Rephlex, ECM, The Sea & Cake, Max Ernst

Purchase digital: https://shabasongunning.bandcamp.com/album/ample-habitat
Purchase vinyl: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/shabason-gunning-ample-habitat

Shabason / Gunning - Ample Habitat (38SC)

Triángulos De Luz Y Espacios De Sombra (Triangles of Light and Spaces of Shadow) is a collection of visionary Mexican electronic music sourced from obscure cassettes, CDs, private pressings, and personal archives, presented by Séance Centre and Smiling C. These works trace an expansive scene of prescient musicians who created a unique speculative cosmology, forging Mesoamerican mythologies with innovative sonic technologies. 

From the mid-80s through the 90s, a network of Mexican musicians embarked on a journey to craft a musical expression distinct from the mainstream musical culture that dominated the airwaves and record industry. Based around practices of collaboration, ethnomusicology, electronic experimentation and home-recording, these artists traversed territories at the very edges of genre and musical form. Myth-scientists Antonio Zepeda, José Luis Fernández Ledesma, Jorge Reyes, Isaac Alva, and La Fábula venture into the periphery of the new age, incorporating Pre-Columbian rhythms and melodies into their dream-like compositions. Vistas Fijas, Armando Velasco, Eblen Macari, and Arbol Perenne (Gabo) move through radical new wave territories, utilizing guitars and drum machines to map their musical chronicles. Germán Bringas and Eugenio Toussaint traverse the jazz landscape, blending horns with electronics, improvising long uncharted expeditions. Pinning down a unified sound for these artists is challenging, yet they collectively cohabitate the capacious space of "ambient," employing diverse expressions through various imaginative modalities. What distinguishes these artists is a distinctly transhistorical approach which vividly imagines sonic possible worlds. 

In an attempt to situate themselves within a culturally and historically complex landscape, many of the artists on the compilation reactivate ancient Mesoamerican music traditions, those of the Aztecs, Maya, and Olmecs. Their electronic compositions are intricate tapestries woven with the haunting melodies of pre-Hispanic flutes and ocarinas, resonating alongside the echoes of ancient percussive marvels like the teponaztli and huéhuetl. Ritualistic chants, undulating synths, and atavistic rhythms intertwine, conjuring a hypnotic mosaic of chimeric sound. Natural and acoustic sounds are juxtaposed within a synthetic habitat, as if towering skyscrapers cast shadows across ancient pyramids. Rather than longing for an impossible past, these works evoke fantastical visions suspended in dreams, glimpses into the mythical realm of the hummingbirds.

The title "Triángulos De Luz Y Espacios De Sombra" (Triangles of Light and Spaces of Shadow) is inspired by a public access TV show of the same name that showcased several artists featured in this compilation. Imagining triangular prisms of light superimposed on otherworldly shadows feels apt for these illusory and phantasmagoric sounds. The space between these two opposing but interdependent images is the resonant juncture where these artists create their auditory oracles. This compilation highlights the prophetic luminaries of this underground community of musicians, with many of these songs previously unreleased or only available on fugitive formats until now.

This double LP release features 17 tracks remastered from reel-to-reel, DAT, and cassette masters. It includes inserts with an essay by Mexico City based music journalist David Cortés in both Spanish and English, accompanied by archival photos of the artists and artifacts featured on the compilation. The first edition comes adorned with a luminescent sticker illustrating a solar eclipse. 

RIYL: Outro Tempo, Durutti Column, Jon Hassell, Música Esporádica, Finis Africae

Co-release by Séance Centre & Smiling C

Purchase vinyl: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/triangulos-de-luz-y-espacios-de-sombra

Purchase digital: https://seance-centre.bandcamp.com/album/tri-ngulos-de-luz-y-espacios-de-sombra

V/A - Triángulos De Luz Y Espacios De Sombra (39SC / SC#13)

Limited and hand-stamped collaborative publication between Séance Centre, BlackMass Publishing, and The Strangeness of Dub. Includes a published transcription, collaged booklet by Yusuf Hasan, and cassette.

In April 2022, Brandon Hocura huddled in the Séance Centre inventory closet to block out traffic noise and recorded a three hour conversation with Edward George. The exchange was modelled on The Wire magazine’s Invisible Jukebox where artist’s improvise responses to a number of songs, drawing out themes, memories, and theories from their sonic praxis. In this case, the discussion sprung from George’s lauded TheStrangeness of Dub series as well as his longstanding work with Black Audio Film Collective and Hallucinator (Chain Reaction). 

From the introduction: “In the 1996 film The Last Angel of History Edward George plays the Data Thief, a sonic archaeologist who travels back in time in search of fragments of Black musical technologies that hold the keys to the future of mankind. In life, as in fiction, he is a theorist of vibration, reading the melodic codes and subaltern tales embedded in sound for clues about the past, present, and future. In The Strangeness of Dub, he uncovers and elevates the discourses encapsulated within dub music — he reads King Tubby, Burning Spear, Don Drummond, and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry alongside Foucault, Benjamin, and Derrida. In this capacious methodology of listening, knowledge is non-hierarchical and non-linear — Jah Shaka is as much a metaphysician as Wittgenstein.”

Edward George is a writer and broadcaster. Founder of Black Audio Film Collective, George wrote and presented the ground-breaking science fiction documentary Last Angel of History (1996). George is part of the multimedia duo Flow Motion, and the electronic music group Hallucinator. He hosts Sound of Music (Threads Radio), Kuduro – Electronic Music of Angola (Counterflows). George’s series The Strangeness of Dub (Morley Radio) dives into reggae, dub, versions and versioning, drawing on critical theory, social history, and a deep and wide cross-genre musical selection. Edward George lives and works in London. 

Co-release by Séance Centre, BlackMass Publishing, and The Strangeness of Dub

Discrepant Echoes (40SC)

INCANTATIONS is a collection of sixteen visual and sonic experiments centred around the idea of score as spell, curated and produced by Séance Centre’s Brandon Hocura and Naomi Okabe.

A spell and its incantation are distinct, but conjoined by a symbolic, almost umbilical force. A spell is a totem text, a material call for change — a seed, a recipe, an instruction, a potential. The incantation of a spell gives it life, brings breath to body, raises hairs, moves minds. For this project, eight spell-scores were created by visual/text-based artists for a musician/composer to incant. Taking a wide interpretation of what can be considered a score, these works include concrete poetry, collage, painting, drawing, spell-poetry, instructional art, and recipe. The resulting sound works give voice to these evocative “texts”, residing in the liminal space between musical form and magical utterance.

INCANTATIONS EDITIONS:

- The Metaphysical: Digital + Spell Card PDF
- The Liminal: Digital + Spell Card Set (Limited to 200)
- The Corporeal: Vinyl LP + Spell Card Set + Digital (Limited to 300)

PRE-ORDER HERE: https://seance-centre.bandcamp.com/album/incantations

Museum Of No Art - Textile Trance (spell by Mehrnaz Rohbakhsh) from Incantations (30SC)

A1. You'll Never Get To Heaven - Setting Sun (29SC)

Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train (LP)

Release date: November 19th

Note: Orders that include a PRE-ORDER title will be consolidated and shipped together when the last pre-order title is in stock. Contact us to make other arrangements.

You’ll Never Get To Heaven (Alice Hansen and Chuck Blazevic aka Slow Attack Ensemble) returns with their fourth release Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train, a collection of ethereal songs that move through the mercurial weather patterns of minimalism and dream pop.

The duo named this album after the closing track on Phil Yost’s 1967 release Bent City, inspired by its prescient use of delay processing in elevating spare beatless arrangements into haunting arrays of sonic afterimages — an approach Hansen and Blazevic explore on this outing in their own way, with a few favoured instruments and a Chorus Echo and Revox in hand. The result is a collection of sparse, lightly dub-infused songs and instrumentals, equally icy and wistful, characterized by melodic fretless basslines, spaced-out harmonics, watery piano and marimba, hushed vocals, and tape echo treatments.

Stylistically, it’s almost as if the duo was imagining what an early This Mortal Coil demo might have sounded like had Ivo enlisted in lieu of the usual cast, with a pared back L’Empire Des Sons as the session band, and June Hardin or a young Julee Cruise on lead vocals. The album evokes an overcast autumnal evening of cloud-watching, an inner journey witness to an expansive spectrum of moods, from nimbus clouds to shimmering sun showers.

RIYL: Broadcast, Weekend’s ‘81 Demos, Chantal Weber, Orquesta de las Nubes, Hydroplane, The Moon and the Melodies, Eberhard Weber

Tracklist:

A1 Setting Sun (2:59)
A2 Pink and Gold and Blue (2:56)
A3 Dust (2:36)
A4 Pattern Waves (3:30)

B1 Eye, Soul and Hand (3:18)
B2 Mad Shadows (2:33)
B3 Eternal Present (2:59)
B4 Predawn Visions (2:28)

Purchase digital on Bandcamp:
https://youllnevergettoheaven.bandcamp.com/album/wave-your-moonlight-hat-for-the-snowfall-train

Purchase vinyl: 
https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/youll-never-get-to-heaven-wave-your-moonlight-hat-for-the-snowfall-train

You'll Never Get To Heaven - Dust (29SC)

Release date: February 24th

Note: Orders that include a PRE-ORDER title will be consolidated and shipped together when the last pre-order title is in stock. Contact us to make other arrangements.

Jon Iverson meets Prins Emanuel, Golden Ivy & Inre Kretsen Grupp is an experiment bridging time and space. Recorded across decades and continents, the album merges ‘80s American home studio sensibilities with contemporary European kosmische.

After receiving hours of unreleased material from Jon Iverson’s reel-to-reel archive, Séance Centre’s Brandon Hocura conceived of having contemporary musicians ‘finish’ the vibrant sketches and demos that had been languishing since the ‘80s. Immediately, a group of musicians working in and around Malmö sprang to mind as sympathetic and exciting collaborators for this material: Emanuel Sundin (Prins Emanuel), Ivar Lantz (Golden Ivy) and Martin Blomberg (Inre Kretsen Grupp). They were inspired by the proposal and spent several days in the studio, weaving rhythms, textures, and melodies around loops and samples made from the original recordings. The resulting album expands Iverson’s percussive and atmospheric vignettes into wide-open 21st Century group-think cosmic music, adding violin, flute, kalimba, lap steel, percussion, guitar, organ, synthesizers, bass, samples, and effects. A sonic landscape that evoke’s Terence Malick’s Montana Badlands as much as Ingmar Bergman’s windswept Fårö Island.

RYIL: Träd, Gräs & Stenar, Dunkelziffer, Embryo, Deadline Paranoia, Peter Zummo

BUY VINYL: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/jon-iverson-meets-prins-emanuel-golden-ivy-inre-kretsen-grupp

BUY DIGITAL: https://joniversonmeetsprinsemanuelgoldenivyinrekretsengrupp.bandcamp.com/album/jon-iverson-meets-prins-emanuel-golden-ivy-inre-kretsen-grupp

Jon Iverson meets Prins Emanuel, Golden Ivy & Inre Kretsen Grupp - Drum Steel (35SC)

Jon Iverson meets Prins Emanuel, Golden Ivy & Inre Kretsen Grupp - Kaen (35SC)

For this episode we have a special guest mix from You’ll Never Get to Heaven to celebrate their upcoming 4th release, Wave your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train on Seance Centre. The duo is based in London Ontario - Alice Hansen and Chuck Blazevic (Slow Attack Ensemble). We’re big fans, and very happy to release this album which we’ve been playing on repeat since we first heard it. For this show they have put together a mercurial moody mix moving between introspective Canadian indie pop, Argentinian AOR, unreleased Slow Attack Ensemble, and a beautiful ballad from an LA based avant-garde composer.

Tracklist: 

From Red Down -  Girl Cat (So Thin On Love And Barley)
Tara S'appart - Trees
You’ll Never Get To Heaven - Setting Sun
Sylvia Meyer - La Oscuridad
Hüsker Dü - One Step at a Time
Mirtha Deflipo - En Caso De Vida
Vladimir Cosma - Pavane Spatiale
Loren Connors & Suzanne Langille - Moonyean No. 9
Hydroplane - If You Spoke To Me, I Wouldn't Know What To Say
Hood - Fears Grow
Stillife - Celadon (Live At The Trance Port)
Eric’s Trip - Thouroughly
Hem - Be Completely Full Of......
Lol Coxhill - It Never Entered My Mind
Slow Attack Ensemble - Untitled (Unreleased, 2016)
Mariana Ingold & Eduardo Mateo - La Libélula (Demo)
Jane and Barton -  There Is A Man
Tom Recchion - A Complex Shape In The Sky

@youllnevergettoheaven
@slowattackensemble

Séance Centre Radio Episode 42 NTS w/ You'll Never Get To Heaven (Nov 2021) NO BANTER

Cusk

You Can Can - Papyri & Papaver (36SC)

The second foray into Séance Centre's “Speculative Ethnography” series is an icy and tender missive of glacial piano, ambient electronics, samples, treated sax, and drum machine rhythms from snowbound Canadians Joseph Shabason & Vibrant Matter (Kieran Adams).

Shabason and Adams have been collaborating for years, forming the production team behind the celebrated experimental synth pop trio Diana, but their relationship has often been fraught with creative tension. Fly Me to the Moon is their ‘make up’ EP, a redemptive voyage through uncertain times. During lockdown Adams found refuge in routine, practicing drums every morning in Shabason’s Toronto studio. Afterwards, the pair would chat in the alleyway behind the studio, drinking espressos, a daily practice that became an antidote to the chaos of pandemic life. Through this daily ritual a creative spark was reignited and they decided to start exchanging ideas, but rather than working together in the studio as they had in the past, the circumstances required them to collaborate remotely. Through this distanced connection the youthful tension and ego of the past eroded, evolving into a deep trust.

Escaping the gravitational pull of a planet in distress, the duo composed a sonic love letter adrift in weightless ambient electronics, fourth world jazz visions, and cyborg IDM riddim technologies — an ode to a long friendship which has strength because it has travelled through so many galaxies and vortices. Who says you can’t fall in love all over again - ‘Fly me to the moon / Let me play up there with those stars / Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars’.

Fly Me to the Moon is a limited edition pressing with risograph printed insert and designed for future archives.

RIYL: Ramzi, Photek, Mo Wax Headz, Jon Hassell, FSOL, Aleksi Perälä, Nuron, Ismistik

Purchase digital: https://josephshabasonvibrantmatter.bandcamp.com/album/fly-me-to-the-moon

Purchase vinyl: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/joseph-shabason-vibrant-matter-fly-me-to-the-moon

B1. Joseph Shabason & Vibrant Matter - Winterhaze (32SC)

This week's show features a mix of exotica, private soft rock, Xian and electronic soul put together by Marseilles based architect and DJ Marwan Filali. Marwan also runs the RA/OI label which recently released a fantastic compilation of songs by Joe Sembene and is about to release a reissue of a great and fugitive Italian library record by the Vagal Group.

Tracklisting: 

The Sound Breakers - Marooned
The Bridge - Joy Of Your Love
Patrick Gammon - Driving (Down Pacific Coast Highway)
The Diamond-Zoot Band - Daytona Sunrise
805 - Mad Woman
Eden Ahbez - Eden's Island
David Ireland - Small Talk
Amy Levin - Good To You
Justin Time - Close Your Eyes
Quatres Aventures De Reinette Et Mirabelle - L'heure Bleue by Eric Rohmer 
Gerry Cott - Alphabet Town
Supaslix - Mercury Lady
Terry Vonderheide - Beauty And Time
Reflex - Stop, Think About It
Jones - Close To Myself
The Key Of Creek - Child Of Nature
Just Us - Easy

Séance Centre Radio Episode 48 NTS w/ Marwan Filali NO BANTER

You Can Can - Everything In Time (Excerpt)(36SC)

B3. Shabason / Gunning - Is Jubilee

A4. Shabason / Gunning - Measures of Fog

In 1967 Lloyd Barnes moved from Jamaica to New York. He worked in construction saving enough money to follow his dream and founded Wackies in 1976, one of the earliest reggae focused studios and record shops in the US. Over the years many luminous voices have passed through his magical mixing board: Horace Andy, The Heptones, Johnny Osbourne, Sugar Minott and the Love Joys, just to name a few. The Wackies catalog is vast, spanning many boroughs of the dub and reggae disapora, even touching on disco and hip hop. As a producer Lloyd Barnes is known for his hazy bass-heavy productions and wicked dubs. 

Our guide to the Wackies universe is Rob Buschgans who, through his Digikiller label, has been working with Barnes, reissuing treasures from his vast archive, including previously unreleased cuts, dub-plates and versions. For this mix Rob has focused on roots and dub cuts, and his selections are untouchable, revealing just how deep inside a song Barnes can get. Digikiller has been unearthing archives since 2009, the catalog is truly astounding, as essential as it gets. Big thanks to Rob for putting this mix together for us.

@dkr-nyc

Séance Centre Radio Episode 59 NTS - Wackies Dubs & Roots w/ RB DKR

MEXICO COMP

C1. Isaac Alva - Valle De La Luna

B5. Armando Velasco - Una Vez

B3. Vistas Fijas - Dias De Margarita

A2. Antonio Zepeda Y Eugenio Toussaint - Viento De Lluvia

On this show we present a sonic journey from the London based, Dorset raised duo In-Form. They run a YouTube channel and are part of Thirdspace, running quarterly parties in London. This mix is the second in a series called Desired Path and covers a lot of ground, but is circles iterations of introspective new wave and avant pop. Check out their excellent mixes and YT channel if you get a chance.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 62 - Desired Path w/ In-Form

Episode 72 is an archival dive into the audio works of Kyoto based multi-media collective Dumb Type. Founded in 1984 by Teiji Furuhashi the group’s work includes exhibitions, performances, video pieces, computer programs, print publications, and conceptual audio albums. Furuhashi, who passed in 1995, claimed the name represents “a society overstuffed with information but cognizant of nothing.” The group continues under the stewardship of longtime members Toru Yamanaka and Shiro Takatani. Over the years many artists have collaborated with the collective including Ryoji Ikeda and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Dumb Type’s work addresses a variety of socio-political themes including nationality, identity, communication, AIDS, civilization, media control, and explores the undefined borders of the information society for new visions of human / technological interaction. The pieces on this mix were selected from 4 decades of work including demo versions, interviews, performance soundtracks, archival sketches, and a few stunning solo pieces from Toru Yamanaka. 

Special thanks to my friend Michael Klausman for tipping me off about Yamanaka’s Bandcamp page where he’s being releasing incredible compilations surveying the group’s audio archive.

https://djlalatoruyamanaka.bandcamp.com/

Séance Centre Radio Episode 72 -- Dumb Type Special

This is the fourth volume in my Geography of the Mind Series, focusing on private-issued Canadian music. For this instalment I gathered a mixed bag, but tried to sustain a pensive, melancholic mood throughout. The mix weaves together psychedelic downer folk, emotive electronics, environmental ambient, tape collage, and dank & dubby new wave into a blue-hued tapestry for despondent dreamers.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 73 - Geography Of The Mind (Vol. 4)

For this episode we present the inaugural episode of the Wichita Lineman project, an homage to the processual nature of song. In 1968, while driving through the high plains of the Oklahoma panhandle past a long line of telephone poles Jimmy Webb spotted a lineman perched up on one of the poles speaking into a handset. The songwriter had received a phone call earlier that day from Glenn Campbell asking him to write another hit — seeing the lineman gave Webb an idea, he imagined the man was talking to his girlfriend through the wire and he wrote a song around that image. An existential ballad, a modernist love song transmitted across great distances through long thin wires. A self-reflexive ode to the globalized subject, capturing both the fragmented connections and physical isolation inscribed in telecommunication technologies.

Glen Campbell made the song a hit and it became something more than just that. Something about it resonated across great distances and it has been covered all the across the world over many decades, and is still transmitting today. This project attempts to trace some of the lines created by this capacious song. The idea for this project came while listening to the Dick Slessig Combo’s stunning 45 minute distillation of the song from their 2004 CD. The song was recorded shortly after the passing of Mark Lightcap’s Acetone bandmate Richie Lee and somehow the song seems capable of holding and absorbing this grief. 

“I hear you singing in the wire / I can hear you through the wine / and the Wichita Lineman / is still on the line.”

Séance Centre Radio Episode 74 - The Wichita Lineman Project

For our recent NTS show Oregon-based collector Josh Lewellen put together another fascinating mix of sepia-toned custom label obscurities. This time around, in Josh’s words, he’s created: “a sonic arc of heartbreak and dislocation, one populated by moments of shimmering cosmic pop, 2 a.m. rural rock, bonehead balladry, and lo-fi monuments to looming pasts and receding futures — the sounds of souls gone deep sea diving.” I’ve been driving around to this mix all week, hope it provides a fitting soundtrack to your day.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 75 w/ Josh Lewellen

Chris Flanagan (Shella Records) has put together a mix of reggae recorded in Toronto to help cope with the heat this summer. Chris was already enchanted by the city’s reggae and dub culture when I met him, more than a decade ago, and works tirelessly to amplify the sounds via his excellent label Shella Records, or though his filmmaking and art practice. Recently he co-directed  a series of short docs on Toronto's Reggae history with director Graeme Mathieson produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Sounds & Pressure: Reggae In A Foreign Land is a 5 part anthology featuring Johnny Osbourne, Nana Mclean, Leroy Sibbles, Roy Panton and Yvonne Harrison.

The series will premiere in Toronto at the Paradise Cinema on August 22nd and will be available to watch in Canada on the NFB website the following day. Big thanks to Chris putting together this sizzling evergreen mix.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 76 -- Toronto Reggae Special w/ Shella Records

A little late for Caribana in Toronto, but the tropical breeze is still in the air and I’ve put together an homage; a selection of psych and soul from Trinidad and Tobago, two small islands that have a big place in my heart. I collected the records on this mix over many trips to Port of Spain in the past decade. It’s been a while and I really need to get back over there. The doubles in Toronto are great, but nothing beats eating one from a roadside stand in Diego Martin. Enjoy the breeze.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 77 - Marry the Sun: Psych & Soul from Trinidad

Our latest Séance Centre Radio episode is a very special mix from Toronto wunderkind Raf Reza. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s seemingly everywhere at once, playing live in Montreal, DJing around the city and across the pond, running the record shop at Standard Time, and most recently releasing wild dance floor dub mutations on 12th Isle, as well as an upcoming LP, Bangla Dance Fusion on Telephone Explosion. For this episode Raf has compiled a mix of songs from Bangladeshi cassettes from the 80s and 90s.
 
Here’s what Raf wrote about the mix: “Bangladesh only a decade after its 1971 independence war with Pakistan created a number of bands who combined the traditional songwriting techniques with influences from western acts. There is an obvious touch of Reggae, New-Wave, Funk and Psychedelic Rock throughout most of these recordings. Most of these bands released directly to cassette since there wasn’t much of a budget to produce vinyl LP’s. However this low barrier of entry resulted in many bands picking up their instruments to have a go at stardom and make their voice heard. This mix here is a selection of the vast variety of 80s and 90s Bangladeshi bands who created a unique sound of melancholy yet infectiously funky tunes. These recordings reflect the heart and minds of the Bangladeshi people still torn by war but also holding on to the hope of a brighter future.”

Séance Centre Radio Episode 78 w/ Raf Reza (80s & 90s Bangladeshi Cassettes)

From 2001 to 2006 I lived Tokyo, drawn to Japan by films and music indelibly imprinted on my young mind. After a few years I gained a little proficiency in the language, mostly learned by hanging out with friends in Shimokitazawa and transcribing Nishioka Takashi and Happy End lyrics. I’m overdue for a trip back, but this gorgeous mix of Japanese private press acid folk compiled by Tyler Craft is taking me right there. Tyler has been collecting these fugitive, often hand-made releases for over a decade and last year co-founded the label First and Last to reissue these unjustly overlooked sounds, for the most part ignored in Japan as well. This mix combines a few deep cuts from his favorite artists with some intriguing new arrivals. Subarashi desu.

凪 / 今も変わらない / そよ風 / この世は

Séance Centre Radio Episode 79 - Japanese Acid Folk w/ Tyler Craft (First & Last Records)

Dreaming of another world, I put together a gathering of autumnal folk for this month's NTS show. The mix is a somnambulistic journey, wandering through melancholic and reflective moods; an oneiric tonic for uncertain futures.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 80: Hey Dream (Autumnal Folk Special)

Inspired by my local oldies station growing up, CKOC in Hamilton, as well as a trip to Pittsburgh with my friends Aaron and Akash where we immersed ourselves in small-town AM radio sounds, this mix gathers together self-realized 45s from teenage dreamers, cloaked in reverb and echo. The title, Music For Young Lovers, is borrowed from Pittsburgh radio personality Terry Lee, and a nod to his peer / rival Mad Mike who both mined the past for the timelessly fertile feelings of youth .

Séance Centre Radio Episode 81: Music For Young Lovers

Those of you acquainted with our releases should be familiar with the multi-faceted work of our friend Michael Klausman. Besides releasing a book of his poetry, Aeolian Darts, a few years ago, he’s collaborated with us on releases and hipped us to a million fascinating things. He runs the Colorado-based Wry Press, co-edits & publishes the little poetry mag, Luigi Ten Co and released a cassette of sound works as Fielding Daws, one of our favourite releases last year. For this episode Michael has compiled a mix called "Poet Song,” largely drawn from hiding-in-plain sight audio collections of academic archives, LPs released in tiny editions, as well as CDs, tapes, and mp3s sent to the compiler by various authors & collaborators.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 82: Poet Song w/ Michael Klausman

This mix is presented by Justin La Rose, who’s nascent label, Sem Forma, will be launching their first release, Legendas by DJ Copan,  in early April. 

The title of the mix, Desordem é Progresso (Disorder and Progress) is a direct challenge to Brazil’s national motto of “Order and Progress”—an inversion that reflects baile funk’s enduring role as a form of resistance. From maracatu to samba, from Tropicália to baile, Brazilian music has always been a defiant force against societal order. 

This mix attempts to capture that energy in its most raw, brutalist form—an explosion of disorienting electronic polyrhythms that bend time and space, slapping you in your face while holding you with care. 

Spanning beyond the well-documented sounds of Rio and São Paulo, Desordem é Progresso dives into the fringes—Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, Brasília—where hyperlocalized mutations of mandelão, bruxaria, and ritmada are forging new sonic territories. 

This mix isn’t nostalgia. It isn’t an artifact. It’s a snapshot of a ceaseless evolution—a present-moment expression of Brazilian culture that carries the throughline of resistance woven into the country’s artistic history.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 83: Desordem é Progresso w/ Justin La Rose

SIDE A DISCREPANT ECHOES CASSETTE

SIDE B DISCREPANT ECHOES CASSETTE

Further scenes of hearts gone into orbit — mirages racked with fuzz, high-powered doom crooners, wah-gilded evocations, and pedal steel time slips  — a testimonial amid the wreckage to that most unassailable law of physics: love is a continuous stream.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 84: Heavy Days, Light Years w/ Josh Lewellen

For last week’s episode I put together a mix of modernist ballads from West Africa, primarily works from the 1970s. About half the songs gathered here are from Senegal, an epicentre of post-colonial cultural forms, featuring a capacious cosmopolitan hybridity which drew from American jazz and psychedelic rock, French chanson, Cuban bolero, Congolese rhumba, Martinician beguine, Wolof griot music, and the complex polyrhythms of Mande musical traditions. Other songs in this mix come from Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Togo, and Benin, joined in pan-African solidarity as well as sharing a modernist sensibility, fraught with both melancholy for the failure of post-colonial nationalism and a utopic yearning for social change. These songs are exemplary of Tsitsi Ella Jaji calls “stereomodernism.” in her wonderful book, Africa in Stereo.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 85: Modernist Ballads from West Africa

Epic 3hr session from our good pal Cal, one half of Modern Art, with his brethren Kool Ty. Open the windows, play this mix LOUD and chant down babylon!

Séance Centre Radio Episode 21 NTS feat: Cal from Modern Art(April 1st 2020) NO BANTER

Detroit selector extraordinaire Bill Spencer drops Volume Two of Distant Shores on this month's episode of SC Radio on NTS. Mystic messages guided by the hand of Jah. 

Tracklisting:

Dennis Bovel - Do De Dub
Joy Mack - Reality
Marrie Pierre - Our Tune
Louisa Marks - Keep Away (Version)
Scientist - Quasar
Jackie Mittoo - You Bring The Sun Out (Version)
Love Dub Band - Sweet Dub
Treva - Israel Shepherd (Version)
Mike Brooks - On The Ice
TX-Dub - Not For Dub
Les McNeil - Give Me Everything Now
Creation Rebel - Chattie Mouth
Abacush - (Brixton Riot 1981) Suffera Style
Mankind - These Three Girls
Treva - Simple Things (Version)
Shortie Ranks - Dance In A Skate Land
Black Uhuru - Party Next Door
Paul Thompson - Well This Is My Bed
Walter Bailey - Power To Be Good

Séance Centre Radio Episode 23 NTS - Distant Shores Vol 2. by BILL SPENCER (May 27th 2020) NO BANTER

New York Grief is a nocturnal new wave incantation for the sleepless metropolis by Montréal singer, filmmaker, painter, and poet, Princess Demeny. In the early 80’s Princess started creating music for her poetry and in 1986, she partnered with Jean Mineau, her then boyfriend, who did the arrangements on what was to be her first EP, Distant Voices. Not long after the start of their collaboration, Jean was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was immediately hospitalized. Against the doctor's wishes, Jean left to record demos of five songs including New York Grief. He sadly passed shortly after returning to hospice and the recordings were never released.

“New York Grief was inspired by several trips to New York City in the mid eighties. I was in love with the city's nightlife. At times, I would stay awake and watch the city that never sleeps as its night creatures came out to play, and I would watch as they would vanish, replaced by the suited nine-to-fives, waking up and starting the machine of the metropolis madness again and again. It felt to me as though, in New York, there was more darkness by day than at night. I felt the city's intense rhythms and the chaotic pulse of the urban grind. It made me question if, sometimes, I was awake or still sleeping. I would have vivid dreams; horrific nightmares of burning buildings and people running and even though it was exhilarating, it also scared me.”

In 1989, Princess recorded a new version of New York Grief with arrangements by the Montréal new wave group Vini Vidi Vici. She also produced and directed a music video for it, which evokes both Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon and Slava Tsukerman's Liquid Sky, but set in ultra-cool nouvelle vague Montréal in the late 80s. Both the demo and 1989 version are featured on this 7” release with a bonus digital track of her cover of Listen, The Snow Is Falling by Yoko Ono. This single is a glimpse of the alluring universe of Princess Demeny, with more revelations on the horizon. 

Limited 250 pressing. No repress.

Tracklist:

A1 New York Grief (4:00)
B1 New York Grief ’86 (3:16)
*Digital Bonus: Listen, The Snow Is Falling

Purchase the vinyl here: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/princess-demeny-new-york-grief

Purchase the digital here: https://princessdemeny.bandcamp.com/album/new-york-grief

New York Grief (24SC)

B1. Princess Demeny - New York Grief '86 (24SC)

Geography of the Mind, the first in a series of mixes exploring little known territories of Canadian Psych Folk, at least our loosely defined boundaries of those regions.

Tracklisting:

Sue Churchill - You
Jim Lamarche - Make Believe
Ian Tamblyn - Slate Island Song
Gilles Valiquette - T’as Brise Mon Couer
Strange Nursery - Tancha
Len Udow - Beauty Raise the Tree
Brent Ditcomb - Oh Great Provider
Paul Serret - On the Line
Paul Marcano & Lightdreams - Who is the One
Lloyd Chee Choo - James Bay
Michael Hasek - Naja
Brian Davey - Dreams of Ways
Georg & Carole - But For Love
John Lyle - Life is a Breeze
Philip Lewin - King of Queens
Derek MacNeill - Girl in a Field

Séance Centre Radio Episode 31 - Geography of the Mind: Canadian Psych Folk Mix (Jan 2021) NO BANTER

Joris Caloud and Pierre Hubert, who run the always reliable Lorem Ipsum mix and party series sent over 4 hrs of summertime, in the form of electric soul, balearic hip hop, and drum machine AOR. Sit back, have a mimosa and enjoy the flight!

Séance Centre Radio Episode 32 NTS feat: Lorem Ipsum (Feb 2021) NO BANTER

Séance Centre is a label, publisher, and distributor conjuring timeless music from the past, present and future.

For NA distribution contact: info@seance-centre.com
For EU distribution contact: info@rushhour.nl

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