This started out a couple of years ago as a grounation drumming session above the old headquarters of the Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari, in Wareika Hill, Kingston, JA. Four funde, a repeta and a bass drum. Back in London, contributing flute and guitar, Kenrick Diggory unbottled the deep rootical psychedelia and sheer awe of Hunting — the Keith-Hudson-versus-Count-Ossie wonder of the world — and Tapes added electronics, a shot of Drum Song… and a giddily intense binghi dub.
Epic, protean brilliance from the Sotofett corner, bumping nylon New Age and ill Chill Out up against reggaeton and jungle exotica, spilling batucada-style percussion workouts out of clean-heeled house.
Each side spins the wheel and introduces a new collaborator or two — Phillip Lauer from Tuff City Kids is here; Gilb’r from Versatile (on a new version of Pulehouse)...
The knockout punch is there on side three: Nondo — which means ‘Heaven’, ‘Eternity’ — starts out as an electro-lullaby from Côte d’Ivoire, sotto voce and abuzz, before lifting off as a zinging, anthemic, future-house-classic.
A real tour de force all round, gusting in from Moss.
Stunning new music from Istanbul!
A twenty-four-minute wig-out you can dance to — wild baglama improvisation and mystical male-unison singing, atop the propulsive mass of a Berlin half-stepper, with turbulent detours into dub, radiophonics and psychedelia.
‘Kime Ne’ means ‘so what’, ‘what’s it got to do with you’. The song adapts verses from the seventeenth-century poet Kul Nesimi, wistfully invoking the Melami strain of Sufism as a touchstone of humility and tolerance, in dark times. ‘Insanlar’ means ‘humankind’... ‘The Human Beings’.
RV’s mixes are expert, taut and hard-grooving. 2 is the more agitated and dubwise.
Nearly an hour of music, on three sides; the fourth is etched with Katharina Immekus’ lovely artwork.
Knockout stuff, honestly.
Refreshing, rootedly odd, mostly unaccompanied four-part-harmony singing recorded in Govan Old Parish Church, Glasgow, by members of Trembling Bells and Muldoon’s Picnic. Elements of Sacred Harp, Gregorian chant, medieval madrigal and English folk, with poetic influences including Maya Deren, Saint John The Divine and Dennis Potter — a unique blend of the visionary and the earthly, the intimate and glorious.
Silk-screened sleeve.
Open-hearted, fresh, lovely, bumptious recordings of women’s singing, from Rang’ala village in southwest Kenya. ‘Dodo’ is a type of traditional Luo music mostly used for entertainment at weddings, drinking parties and wrestling festivals. Songs in praise of the happy couple, the hardest drinkers and the best wrestlers.
Try the magical fourth song, Arum — about barking like a hornbill.
Ravishingly beautiful, achingly precious songs and instrumentals, sumptuously presented: the Royal Court Orchestra in 1906 through to a hauntingly soulful Hafez setting by Moluk Zarrabi of Kashan, from 1933.
Meditative, absorbing dance music in true Moritz style — at times seemingly transfixed by its own elements, and minimal almost to vanishing-point, but quickly back ticking, kicking and amassing.
Two sick techno killers, stalking the perimeters of noise; and generous excerpts from a soundtrack to Dreyer’s Vampyr, with Sun Ra in its marrow, alternately driving and motorik, off-the-wall, lost in space.
Stefan Schneider and Sven Kacirek’s scintillating recordings of the Mijikenda tribes, made in different spots in and around Mukunguni village, coastal Kenya: spiritual and healing music, and love-songs.
More open-hearted, bitter-sweet, mash-up postcards to the here and now, from young black London.
Proper Brit Pop.
Cold-sweat compounds of art-funk, baglama high-life, horrorama, yacht.
At its darkest and most driving. The group is clear and unanimous — this is their best yet.
‘The bad influences’, from Bogota, with their third album for us: twenty-eight gorgeous variations of saudade, in a warmly acoustic, post-punk take on Tropicalismo — impromptu, snapshot and sublime.
Brand new recordings, this is majestic, surging, scintillating music — with swing, jump and shout, Sun Ra, Mingus and Gil Evans, Arab-Andalusian music, hip hop and New Orleans funk all coursing through.
‘An album of cathartic intimacy, built around electronic textures and sparse percussion, with White’s gently yielding, half-spoken vocals pitched pleasingly between Laurie Anderson and Joni Mitchell’ (Mojo).
‘Hair-raisingly good… incandescent’ (The Observer).
‘Inventive, fresh and melodic’ 4/5 (The Guardian); ‘bound to be underrated… impeccably edited and segued’ (The Onion); ‘may be the most forward-looking music you hear all year’ (Rolling Stone).
Three deep funk instrumentals — HBE on the opener. Sound-wise, doubly lethal, as alive as vinyl gets. Silvered, silk-screened sleeve.
Two exclusives: Erykah Badu’s irresistible do-over of the euphoric album instrumental There, with Malian synth-freak Tidiane Seck; and a dub by Mark Ernestus. Lovely silk-screened sleeve.
Entirely exclusive music, unique to this release, with a radiant silk-screened sleeve: four from The Marble Downs sessions with Will Oldham, a Scott Walker to start; and a side of unaccompanied folk singing.