Many Worlds Interpretation is a collection of cosmic Americana for electronics, guitar, and percussion culled from Jon Iverson’s extensive home-studio archive.

1984, Los Osos, California. In a small cinderblock cottage, hand-painted with bright psychedelic flora, Jon Iverson created vibrant new worlds. He spent long days and nights immersed in sound, perfecting home recording on his 8-track reel-to-reel, combining his love for kosmische and Berlin School electronics with an infatuation with ethnographic sounds and expansive guitar music. In a duo with fellow sonic traveler Thomas Walters, Iverson released missives from the studio on a self-titled LP released on country legend Guthrie Thomas’ Eagle Records. That release featured three electro-acoustic compositions (“Naningo”, “River Fen”, and “Fox Tales”) as well as a gathering of guitar duo tapestries. Many Worlds Interpretation re-imagines those interplanetary works alongside several unreleased compositions that also feature synthesizer, guitar, and percussion, creating a re-visioned album which leans into Iverson’s electronic studio wizardry.

All songs have been carefully transferred from analog tape to high resolution digital, retaining their vintage studio warmth, but mixed and mastered for modern ears and audio systems. The album is pressed at 45rpm, further enhancing the audiophile experience.

RIYL: Innovative Communication, Eblen Macari, Priscilla Ermel, Popol Vuh, Steve Tibbetts

BUY PHYSICAL: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/jon-iverson-many-worlds-interpretation

BUY DIGITAL: https://joniverson.bandcamp.com/album/many-worlds-interpretation

Jon Iverson - Many Worlds Interpretation (34SC)

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)

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)

Jon Iverson - Fox Tales (34SC)

Jon Iverson - Naningo (34SC)

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)

Cusk

You Can Can - Papyri & Papaver (36SC)

For this epsiode we have a perfect mix to kick off the year from Callum Duff and Holden Bigg, two friends from London. The pair have been scouring record fares, charity shops and put together a wonderful selection of private rock, folk and AOR from around the globe which is an homage of sorts to their friendship.

Tracklisting: 

Danny Toan - Come Into My Life
Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Aya Mood
Musiktruppen Guran - Ekorrhjulet
Norma Tanega - Beautiful Things 
Diana Pequeno - Tudo que Eu Quero (All I Want)
Bill Clooney - Barbara From Mountains
S. Hinks - Sands Of Time
Apparition - Astral Spirit 
Terry Durham - Crystal Telephone 
Jo Anne Stokes - Sunshine Journey
Peter Green - Just For You
Mia Martini - Il Viaggio 
Terry Garthwaite - Changing Colors
L.A. County C.O.P.E – Sacramento Playhouse 
Bob Reitman - A Few Thoughts

Séance Centre Radio Episode 44 NTS w/ Callum & Holden NO BANTER

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

For this month's episode Brandon Hocura, dreaming forward to summer, has put together a gathering of songs that move between clement weather patterns, held together as a speculative season of transformation. A future past, where the turbulent and spiritually promiscuous spirit of the late ‘60s is folded into our current social climate.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 49 NTS w/ Brandon Hocura 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

On this episode we have guest mix by Tobi Giese aka Real People Music. Tobi made us a wonderful mix of private press outlier music last year and we're thrilled to have another selection from his unique collection, this time with a focus on US introspective and spiritual music, or as he calls it cosmic lounge. It’s a fantastic survey of underknown small run personal recordings from the margins of US culture.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 63 - Cosmic Lounge w/ Real People Music

"For a long time I’ve wanted to do this episode; a show devoted to The Tower Recordings collective, responsible for some of my favourite albums from the 90s New Weird America scene. The group, primarily based in New York at the time, consisted of a rotating cast of members; Matt Valentine, PG Six, Helen Rush, Samara Lubelski, Tim Barnes, and Dean Roberts appear on most of their recordings. Self-proclaimed “children of microtones” the heady recordings make reference to Philip K Dick, Sun Ra, The Incredible String Band, Comus, Moondog, as well as an impressive list of subterranean private press folk and psych records. These are Harry Smith’s grandchildren. 

At times the recordings are home-recorded and charmingly shambolic, brethren of the Siltbreeze stable — at other times they have a loose-limbed and spectral sensibility, wide-screen psychedelia recorded to magnetic tape, urbane cousins of the Elephant Six Recordings constellation. The collective often practiced group levitation recording long improvised tapestries of bleary-eyed sound experiments, but on this mix, I focussed on the group’s gift for song & mood, pulling pieces from their extensive discography of records, singles, CDs and CDrs, as well as from post-Tower solo recordings from core members. The collective has always sounded autumnal to me, and this mix is resonating nicely with the cooler weather out here. Enjoy the sounds of the Tower Recordings" -- Brandon Hocura

Séance Centre Radio Episode 66 - The Tower Recordings Special

London-based collector and photographer Alex Yiaxis known as Fantasty in Orbit has put together a mix which celebrates radiant diversity, what Martinician theorist Edouard Glissant calls a “poetics of relation.” The mix dissolves  boundaries, moving across time, space, and place, assembling a meaningful missive for peace.

@fantasyinorbit

Séance Centre Radio Episode 67 w/ Fantasy in Orbit

“Like Brazil, this mix, is not for the faint of heart. Expect radical rhythmic madness, febrile energy, non-linear samples, livewire electronics, crushing bass and an effusive celebration of the endless creativity that Brazil has to offer.” -- Justin La Rose

Ever since hearing the recent album by wunderkind DJ Ramon Sucesso released by Lugar Alto earlier this year I’ve been obsessed with the contemporary baile funk sounds coming out Brazil, some of the most exciting and avant-garde dance music I’ve heard in a long time. For today’s show, Justin La Rose has put together over an hour of wild baile cuts, a mix he’s calling Não é Para Amadores" “Not for amateurs,” a title deeply ingrained in Brazilian social life, conveying the intense and unapologetic nature of the culture. It’s a mix of raw an impertinent music from young producers and MCs pushing the boundaries of song and sound. Drawn to Brazilian music over two decades ago, Justin splits his time between Brazil and Canada, immersing himself in the culture. Look out for upcoming releases on Justin’s newly minted label, Nonshape Records, where he will be showcasing some of the rising talents of baile funk in Brazil.

Séance Centre Radio Episode 71 -- Baile Funk Special w/ Justin La Rose

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)

Beverly Glenn-Copeland is already known amongst collectors and music heads for two sought-after albums of folky jazz in the key of Joni. But it was this album, originally self-released on cassette in 1986 that really caught our attention. The album, entirely recorded on DX-7 and TR-707, lies somewhere between digital new-age and (accidentally) early Detroit techno experiments. The inimitable style of BGC here is both peaceful and meditative while simultaneously rhythmic and bass heavy. The album was recorded in the northern Canadian town of Huntsville where BGC was living at the time and is a beautiful fusion of personal vision, technology and place. 

(p) & (c) Seance Centre 2017
01SC

Design by Alan Briand

Beverly Glenn - Copeland - Sunset Village (excerpt) 01SC

Knotpop is a revelatory lost album of deviant new wave from San Fransisco duo Ixna. Like Brian Eno and The Flying Lizards, the album is a sideways and inverted take on pop music. Jay Cloidt and Marina La Palma were students of David Behrman and Robert Ashley at Mills College, inspired by their infamously irreverent faculty to nudge the avant-garde out of its stuffy tweed and into something more exciting, something clad in denim & leather. Recorded at the Center For Contemporary Music at Mills in 1981, the album combines Cloidt's studio wizardry, sampling abilities and vibrant bass with La Palma’s expressive vocals, and love of made-up and invented languages (Esperanto). Ixna only released one 7" during that time, featuring two songs from this unrealized album, which became sought after over the decades. The discovery of Knotpop will feel like manna from heaven for previous fans, and a welcome addition to the cannon of avant-inverted-pop ur-classics by Suicide, impLOG, Naffi, General Strike, Thick Pigeon and UnknownMix. Concentric Circles is honoured to present Knotpop to the world for the first time. Mastered from the original reels, DMM pressing. 

Release date April 12th
PRE-ORDER HERE: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/ixna-knotpop

Release by Concentric Circles

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

Ixna - Fun Fun Fun (CC-002)

Jacques Charlier is primarily known as a visual artist, which obscures the fact that he’s been actively multi-disciplinary for the entirety of his career. Born in 1939 in Liège, Belgium, his interest in all forms of art began at a very early age when he aspired to be a poet, writer, musician, comic book artist, actor, and movie director, and in his own eccentric way became all of these things.

In the 1970s, inspired by the minimalist sounds of Philip Glass, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, John Cage, and Meredith Monk, Charlier armed himself with a custom guitar, and sound modulating effects and started experimenting on his 4-track. He performed psychoacoustic pieces in Liège, Antwerp, Eindhoven, Rotterdam, Milan and Düsseldorf, and in the inimitable performance art video “Desperados Music”, filmed by Paul Paquay in 1979 for Belgian television. Charlier hit a creative stride in the 1980s, recording off-kilter tunes influenced by everything from post-punk, EBM, Yé-yé and psychedelic rock. Similarities reside in the catalogs of Belgian labels Crammed Discs and Les Disques Du Crépuscule, yet even with these genre-bending precedents, Charlier’s music is idiosyncratic to the extreme. In 1984 and 1987, he self-released two cassettes incorporating synth, drum machine, his custom guitar, and vocalist Martine Doutreleau on occasional duets.

This limited edition 7” single offers the previously unreleased jangle/darkwave jam “Kiliwatch”, backed with “Loulou”, a scorching psychedelic oddity from one of Charlier’s original cassettes. It precedes the upcoming double LP compilation of Charlier’s music, and is the perfect introduction to his curious and complex artistic vision.

Co-release with Musique Plastique

Limited to 150 copies, only available via Séance Centre and Musique Plastique. 
Release date: January 10th 2020
PRE-ORDER HERE: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/jacques-charlier-kiliwatch

Jacques Charlier - Loulou (MP007 / 20SC)

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

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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