Great to see Mark Barrott has snuck out a new release. It's a soundtrack to a Japanese documentary that sadly might not see the light of day, but at least his New Age vibrations, ambient piano meditations & electronic meanderings are now with us. Close your eyes when listening & write your own script.

These days I try, whenever possible, to write like a Japanese Calligrapher - prepare the room, the ink and paper and then the make the act of creation as spontaneous as possible. 

I desire therefore, a release mechanism that mirrors this creative process as closely as possible, giving me the freedom to share music quickly and directly with people that care. 

This first Bandcamp focused release is music from a soundtrack I was commissioned to write for a Japanese documentary ‘Jōhatsu…the art of evaporation’. I have no idea if it will ever see the light of day, (post pandemic funding issues), but one of the conditions of my contract was the ability to release the music myself should the documentary remain unreleased by the end of 2021. 

Regardless of its origins, this is the music I wish to make, the emotions I wish to capture and share…the ideal of living simply with Kindness, Grace & Gratitude. 

I hope that this achieves that connection with you. 

MB, Ibiza May '22

CREDITS
​All tracks composed, recorded & performed by Mark Barrott, Ibiza, Jan 2020-April 2022. 
Mixed & Mastered by Lopazz @  mixmastering.de 
Published by Stefan Eichinger Musikverlag and SMV Schacht Musikverlage GmbH & Co. KG 
Art/Design Stuart Hardie 
In loving memory TT 
Thanks: Richard Norris, Colin Morrison, Steve Cobby, Stuart, Lopazz, Gerd, Sara, Pete, Dr Rob, Yuki.

You can stream The New Age of New Age Playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud

Last millennium lo-fi jams from Ed Wartts on Paradise Is a Frequency, as his raw, funktified proto drum machine rhythms lead the way for cosmic, jazz licked, parallel dimensional synthesized soul explorations into the meaning of love and life.

“It happened one night as I was on my way to a party. Driving along, nice cool summer breeze and I’m listening to my grooves, thinking about my moves at the party. I get this strange and eerie feeling that somebody or something is watching me…" 

~ Ed “Mensah” Wartts 

In all of us, there are the makings of a faint heart murmur - a low, soft pulse quietly waiting to be awakened. The pulse can be heightened, through love, relationships, or traumatic events. It can even be stunted, never to be released or pursued. There are those of us who nurture and recognize that this vibration must surface and, against all odds, will make its mark as a gift that comes from a deep, and sometimes dark place... 

Ed Wartts’ supernatural rendezvous on that cool summer night transported him into the otherworldly. Consumed by memories of missed connections, star-crossed love, and astral projections into the future, Ed’s internal tension between time and space tore open a portal in the fabric of his reality. A shadowy gateway propagating the universe of his expansive compositional stylings and advanced tonal sensibilities: music on the wings of a timeless sound palette brimming with digital keys and MIDI drum programming. 

Ed harnessed the quickly advancing technology of the time into an extraterrestrial language of innermost desire – the plane of his alter ego, Mensah. Unhindered by the previous limitations of structured and expensive studio time, Ed was free to explore the mysterious, and often alien, dimensions of love, destiny, and divinity. Slowly taking shape from within the depths of his Minneapolis and St. Louis home studios between 1982 through 2000, this record of his deeply personal, cosmic journey was never intended for commercial release and only ever materialized on a handful of cassettes shared with close friends and family. 

Mensah’s sci-fi, neo-soul noir has been sleeping peacefully on his hard drive, dreaming of the time when audiences could receive its lush and strikingly contemporary production. Sliding from sophisticated Dam Funk-esque minimal wave (Second Wind; Mellow Conversation; Just Dreamin’) to digital future jazz (Time For the Harvest; Star Streams) and electronic bedroom R&B (Find A New Groove; To Win Yr Love), Mensah conjures reverent, celestial music that transcends the spiritual and the secular to create moods for any sanctuary.

CREDITS
All music and instruments by Ed Wartts 

Ensoniq KS-32 Keyboard 
Kawai K1r Digital Synthesizer Sound Module 
Baldwin Acoustic Piano 
Yamaha DX7 Keyboard 
Kawai R-50e Digital Drum Machine 
Kawai R-100 Drum Machine 
Yamaha JX3P Keyboard 
Boss Dr. Rhythm Drum Machine 

Vocals on 'Find A New Groove" by Lynn Wilson 
Mastered by James Morrison 
Layout Design by Alexander Wolfe 
Original Painting by Stan Solomon

You can stream the Slow Soul playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud

Continuing his mission to pacify the house music massive, Alex Albrecht  - Melquíades, delivers another masterful mini LP of dreamy ambient beats, this time for Mule Musiq. Perfect for all you zero gravity ravers.

Alex Albrecht is a new artist on Mule Musiq. 

Melbourne based producer and Label owner of Analog Attic. 
half of Albrecht la’brooy, they have released two albums on the sub 
Label of R&S “Apollo”. 

We liked his latest album “Campfire Stories” on his Label. 
It’a a beautiful mixture of New Age, Modern Classical and Electronic Music. It sounds like a Lawrence children. 

This new release is a sequel of latest album. 
Home listening elegant slow House Music. 
If you like Lawrence or Larry Heard or that kind of style, 
You will like it. 

Hope you enjoy.

You can stream the Ambient House playlist on Spotify, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud

​The new LP from Jon Porras for Thrill Jockey Records is a study in the joys of simplicity, exhibiting an uncanny, all too rare, ability to place very few sounds in just the right places to maximize the gently hypnotic & balsamic ambient effect. 

Jon Porras draws a staggering array of atmospheres out of even the simplest instrumentation. Across his work as one-half of psych-drone duo Barn Owl and his solo releases, Porras welds monoliths and ether into propulsive music that is deeply felt. Arroyo, named for the Spanish word for “stream” in a nod to Porras’ heritage as a first generation Colombian-Japanese American, drifts gently from one tributary to the next in unhurried contemplation and euphoria. The portentous weight and abrasive textures of Porras’ previous work give way to the trickle of richly detailed acoustic instruments slipping in and out of the fold. On Arroyo, Jon Porras evokes a distinct sense of resplendent anticipation and calm with a fathomless flow and softly gorgeous colors. 

For Porras, Arroyo became a rumination on simplicity and simple truths, a work of complete immersion and continuous motion where separate elements coalesce into an ever-changing whole. Porras spent the year leading up to 2020 living nomadically across Europe where he was able to soak in a deep appreciation for the effortless beauty of overgrown gardens, the basic principles of classical architecture and a more transient sensibility. The album was written and recorded in a time of even more change for Porras: after the birth of his daughter. Like a stream’s steady glide across bedrock that waxes and wanes with each gradual turn, the music of Arroyo exhibits a transportive stillness. The compositions take on a light, gaseous buoyancy as discreet drones swell with measured fluctuations and ripples of piano rest atop the surface. Waves of breezy static wash back and forth across the stereo field on opener “Flower in Hand” while acoustic piano figures scatter like falling leaves. Porras’ guitar on “Woven Landscapes” acts as a welcome summer breeze rolling in from a nearby plain in a stately call and response with his keyboard’s delicate chords. 

Arroyo borrows harmonic concepts from modal jazz to create a unique sense of ease and endlessness. Each of the four pieces on the album centers around a single suspended chord, a chord most commonly associated with devotional music which embodies a space between harmonic tension and resolution. Porras embellishes that liminality with arrangements that feel less like distinguishable layers of instruments and more like one undulating nebula of sound. In the past decade of Porras’ solo work, his music has grown increasingly engaged with elaborate synth textures and detailed processing. With Arroyo, Porras consciously takes a step back from those more intricate compositions and focuses on more organic, unadorned textures and places each sound with the same precision. Stark piano and guitar patiently hover over modest currents of Hammond organ and Yamaha DX7 with the sustain of each chord and phrase acting as a natural guide to the album’s subtle rhythm. 

The four pieces that comprise Arroyo each encompass their own idyllic channel, slowly weaving their way in and out of the album’s elegant stir. Porras’ reflections on simplified elements take shape in gorgeous arrangements that impart clarity amidst a tranquil mist. Arroyo is an album that unearths splendor in a unified feeling of space, serenity in perpetual renewal. ​

You can listen to the Slow Ambient Playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud

All sorts of vintage multi-media sounds effervesce, shimmer, twinkle, cross pollinate & evolve into a vibrant soundtrack as Cool Maritime imagines a verdant magical video game world where players discover the interconnectivity of all things & help their ecosystem thrive rather than hasten its demise. Out now on Western Vinyl.

Having crested the west coast modular-ambient wave in just a few releases-- including 2018’s Sharing Waves on the influential LA experimental imprint Leaving Records-- Sean Hellfritsch has swapped the mossy analog synth improvisations of his prior output for refined melodic arrangements dressed in sprightly dawn-of-digital textures. Big Earth Energy plumbs the depths of Hellfritsch’s multimedia mind and naturalist heart, spinning an impressionistic narrative world off of cultural touchstones like the PC game MYST, and the work of Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi. Inspired by the aforementioned, and guided by Hellfritsch’s experience as an animator and filmmaker, Big Earth Energy is the soundtrack to a hypothetical video game with a pointedly ecological premise, and a twist of psychedelic charm. In Hellfritsch’s imagined virtual journey, the player assumes the perspective of a treefrog sixty-five-million years ago, hopping epochs with each new level, forming a comprehensive picture of the massive changes the planet has gone through over the eons. The ultimate goal of the game is not to amass resources, defeat enemies, or gain power, but to fully witness the unfolding of one of the biggest systems of energy imaginable-- or as the album’s creator puts it-- “to explore the incomprehensibly vast energetic expression and mystery that is Earth.”

Big Earth Energy is steeped in exploratory RPG intrigue, possibility, and contemplation, lovingly overlaid with Miyazaki-an sentiments and aesthetics. The through-composed, organic, meandering synthesis heard on previous Cool Maritime albums has been fully replaced by meticulous polygonal arrangements that recall the computerized sheen of late 80s work by composers like Hiroshi Yoshimura, and Yoichiro Yoshikawa-- using true-to-period gear no less.
​ 
Even given its referentiality, Big Earth Energy comes off as forward-facing where so much reminiscent music remains fixed to a bygone moment in pop culture. Hellfritsch has created a musical world where the endless verdancy of the biosphere finds its parallel in the golden age of early 1990s video games, and late 80s Japanese environmental music, all while pointing to a hopeful planetary and artistic future that vindicates the motives of all of these muses.

You can stream The New Age of New Age playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud

One for the best of 2022 lists I reckon. The guitars of M. Ward, Marisa Anderson music & Chris Funk pay homage to John Fahey, but what sets this nod to the man apart are the decidedly unfolk like percussive patterns & sonic ingenuity of Jose Medeles, whose beats elevate the strings to even greater heights & make this eulogy so unique. Out now on Jealous Butcher Records.

It was an absolute dream to create with this trio of brilliant guitarists Matt Ward, Marisa Anderson and Chris Funk, at the same time celebrating the musical spirit and genius of John Fahey. 

Please note that this is a not “covers” record, but a “tip of the hat” to a forward thinking musician, writer and artist. Although I have never encountered Mr. Fahey, it sounds like he was as unique and complicated as his some of his tunings and overall approach to music. I specifically asked Matt, Marisa and Chris because I knew their appreciation for Fahey ran deep. 

Created over the course of three separate afternoons/sessions. The plan was very simple: set-up, get sounds, play, have fun and exhale. Friends making music in a sea of uncertainty and freedom. All the while, the spirit of John Faheys music was the lighthouse that guided us home. Some waters smooth, others choppy, but ALWAYS exciting. 

All the pieces were improvised under the umbrella of vulnerability and trust. Musical musings caught like a floating amber just before it goes out. I can't help but think of recording pioneers Alan Lomax or Chris Strachwitz who boldly captured field recording of Southern chain gangs and juke joint raconteurs decades ago. The result here is similar: pure and honest recordings. 

Recorded & mixed by the prolific John Askew at the ever so sonic friendly Bocce Recording and mastered by the great Amy Dragon at Telegraph Mastering. Thrilled to have had them at the helm. 

At some point this recording will be available on vinyl. In the meantime I'm happy to have it here on Bandcamp. 

I will be forever be indebted to Matt, Marisa, Chris, John and Amy for their positive energy, talent and openness to make this a reality. 

My hope is that you enjoy this as much as we enjoyed creating it. 

With love and gratitude... 

JM

CREDITS
​Guitars/Anthems: M. WARD. MARISA ANDERSON. CHRIS FUNK 
Drums/Cadences/Ambient Clatter: JOSÉ MEDELES 
Recording & Mixing Engineer: JOHN ASKEW 
Mastering Engineer: AMY DRAGON 

Tracked: BOCCE RECORDING 
Mastered: TELEGRAPH MASTERING 

Producer: JOSÉ MEDELES 
Cover Art: JOHN KING

You can stream the Slow Folk playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud.

The sun baked sounds of vintage Neopolitan discos continues to flourish and sonically nourish a new generation under the expert retromaniacal guidance of Nu Genea on their latest feel good, open shirted, perm haired gem. Leave all your worries on the dance floor or at Mediterranean beach bar - take your pick.

Four years after Nuova Napoli, Nu Genea are back with Bar Mediterraneo, a new album and journey, which projects the sounds of the Neapolitan duo formed by Massimo Di Lena and Lucio Aquilina even further. 

Nu Genea's Bar Mediterraneo is an idea of a shared place where people meet and fuse together; a space that leaves its doors open to travellers and their lives, always exposed to the whims of fate. Some of this can be experienced through the multitude of sounds that come together in the tracks, layers of different acoustic instruments, voices and synthesizers merging in a unique musical blend. 

Opening up to the voices of many different people, separated by languages but united by the sea and the music, Nu Genea's hometown, Napoli, becomes a true place of encounter. 

You can hear this all along. In "Gelbi", a gorgeously deep and propulsive Ney flute plunges into murky waters of the melancholic Tunisian dialect sung by Marzouk Mejiri. In "Marechia'", unbridled happiness and sun ooze from the delicate vocals of Célia Kameni and create an acrobatic bridge between French and Neapolitan language. In "Straniero", your soul is arrested from the moment the slow spell-binding mandolin ignites the hypnotic patterns recorded by the legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen. In "Bar Mediterraneo", the title track, bittersweet guitar’s riffs, analog waves and choirs are overwhelming the song giving you what you would like to hear on a boat trip along the Amalfi Coast. 

Nu Genea couldn't afford to overlook their firmly anchored roots into the Neapolitan culture and its dialect with "Tienaté", where the power of neapolitan language (interpreted by Fabiana Martone) supports those quarter-tone strings and the uncessant folk-disco groove that spreads to the entire song. In "Praja Magia", repetitive mandolin riffs lead the song, giving space to a choral yet tight vocal line that speaks of Varcaturo, a village close to Napoli. In "Rire", a volley of poetic, deceptively laidback, lyrical fury interpreted by Sicilian Marco Castello intimately combines with a highly musical, multi-textured instrumental backbone and the swoon of a chanson in its heart. In "La Crisi'', the lyrics of a Raffaele Viviani’s poem from 1930 have been adapted to a laidback jazz-funk groove in full NG style. In "Vesuvio", revaluing the evocative verses and powerful mantra of Vesuvio, Nu Genea re-adapted to the dancefloor a folk song by the working-class band E’ Zezi from Pomigliano D'Arco, combining the voices of a school choir with Jupiter-6 arpeggios and bold percussions. 

Bar Mediterraneo is the place where people constantly return to transform curiosity into participation, tradition into sharing, unfamiliar into familiar. When travellers come through its “doors”, carrying their treasures of words and emotions, they aren’t strangers any more. They take part in a shared experience, enriching themselves and others by leading to unexpected musical journeys.

You can link to the Slow Balearic playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud

Jazz tickled tight grooves & 80s synth moves are locked into the bumping boogie, electro funk, sunshine soul & summer primed sounds of the new E.Live LP for Star Creature Universal Vibrations.

After many homeruns, E. Live aka The Prince of Star Creature finally get's a shot at an Intergalactic Grand Slam. Double LP means 2 Hot Slabs of Sophisticated Boogie Beats spanning the full solar sonic spectrum. Give the fella some room to space out, 13 tracks deep grooves, cosmetically and figuratively, aesthetically and phonetically. Jazz-Funk, Vapor Cloud Funk, Boogie Beats and everything in between. This is the just the beginning, the middle, peak level modern deep nu boog. 

Copies will be available overseas in coming weeks. Please consider ordering here to save a bundle on shipping. 

UK JUNO:  www.juno.co.uk/products/e-live-cloud-vibes/867992-01/ 
EU HHV:  www.hhv.de/shop/de/artikel/e-live-cloud-vibes-900383 
JAPAN DISK UNION:  diskunion.net/clubt/ct/detail/1008472585

You can stream the Slow Soul playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud

The musical aura glows strongly on the new LP of psychedelic folk, metaphysical drones, telepathic guitar meditations & barely standing stoner rock from Haress for Wrong Speed Records. I can't remember the last vinyl record I bought, but this is now in the post.

“Getting your head together in the country” 

Every band from the 60s & 70s inevitably arrives at a point in their rockumentary where members retire to the middle of nowhere to play to the sheep. Led Zeppelin disappeared to Bron-Yr-Aur, Fairport Convention took over a disused pub called The Angel and - over the ocean - The Band decamped to Big Pink to make their most acclaimed work. 
Fast-forward to the 21st century and it seems cities are fast becoming unliveable and the reasons we moved to them irrelevant. The punks are turning into hippies and fleeing into the hills, if not to get their heads together then in search of some long-lost autonomy at the very least. 

Elizabeth Still and David Hand are, as always, years ahead of the curve. They left Liverpool over a decade ago in search of a new life in the hills of Shropshire. Rather than seeing it as a form of early retirement, they took their creative ambitions with them, inspiring the community they now called home. A series of rural music events culminated in three years of the Sineater Festival where much of what became “New Weird Britain” were forced to abandon their sat-navs and play under the shadow of a huge burning wicker man in a beautiful meadow to what felt like a secret society. Those gatherings suggested a new way of presenting creative endeavours, outside of the machinations of industry and commerce. They were genuinely life-changing. Like I said – the punks were becoming hippies and it was fucking beautiful (man). 

Out of this came Haress. Still and Hand had long been musical collaborators in larger (louder) groups but saw an opportunity to make simpler music at home in the time that bringing up their young daughter would allow. This developed into a language of guitar interplay that is deceptively complex but feels warm, inviting and open to the listener. 
Like their music, the couple also made their locale warm and inviting for friends they made along the way and over time their home became a welcome refuge for many of them. As a result, Haress would naturally expand and contract in size depending on who happened to be visiting. 
It was on these terms that their debut self-titled album was made (released on their own Lancashire & Somerset Records in 2019), with the core duo joined by David Smyth (Mind Mountain, Kling Klang) on drums, Chris Summerlin (Hey Colossus, Kogumaza) on guitar, Thomas House (Sweet Williams, Charlottefield) on vocals and Nathan Bell (Lungfish, Human Bell) on trumpet - all regular visitors to the Still/Hand family home. 

In early 2020 Still, Hand, Smyth and Summerlin travelled to a disused water mill in North Wales for a week to record a follow-up with engineer Phil Booth (JT Soar) and his mobile studio. The stories of what occurred are told on the flexi disc that accompanies the LP but the group’s plans for a relaxing break in the country were scuppered by events that were either highly unusual, or positively supernatural (depending on your own beliefs in such things). Well-made plans were abandoned and the recording was forced to develop according to the location it was being made in. Chance and accident were welcomed as a collaborator rather than a saboteur and the group exited the sessions extremely freaked-out but with the makings of an album. 

These recordings were then shaped through the lockdown period, with collaborators House and Bell adding their parts remotely like the unexpected collaborators from the mill - present but not present. 
It’s fair to say this has not been a straightforward process but the results speak for themselves. 

Ghosts is an incredible piece of work and posits Haress on their own when it comes to developing new approaches to traditional musical forms. 
The music contains many moments of immediate joy - the relative pop of House’s vocals on White Over, the wild horns of I Think I Think, the rush of warmth as Time To Drink morphs into focus. But it also stretches the sound Haress have carefully developed almost to breaking point with sections of music that feel like somebody - something - else is steering the ship. 

The 2 final songs – Litres Into Metres and Sussurus – are joined together by a collage of site-specific sound. It was decided to add the output from a detuned long wave radio to this section on the final night of recording. Static hissed from the device but as soon as the record light illuminated, a rich male baritone voice sang loud and clear from the radio, taking a solo right where it was needed and then disappearing into space forever like the Ghosts of the title.  

​CREDITS
Elizabeth Still / David Hand / David Smyth / Chris Summerlin / Thomas House 

Recorded by Phil Booth at Erbistock Mill, North Wales, January 2020 
And mixed at JT Soar, Nottingham 
Mastered by Peter Fletcher at Black Bay Studio, Isle Of Lewis 
Nathan Bell played trumpet on I Think I Think

The Slow Folk playlist can be streamed on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud