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On Further Up Island, André Ethier completes the trilogy of solo albums that began with 2017’s Under Grape Leaves and 2019’s Croak In The Weeds. While not narratively linked in the traditional sense, these records document the musician’s ongoing collaboration with producer Sandro Perri. Like Robert Altman’s run of brilliant films with Shelley Duvall in the 1970s, the duo have developed a singular creative kinship over the course of three LPs.

Credits:Produced, recorded and mixed by Sandro Perri​

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Bird Ambience brings several fresh changes for the artist. Until now, Fujita would separate his acoustic solo recordings, the electronic dub made under his El Fog alias, and his experimental improvisations with contemporaries such as Jan Jelinek. The new album sees him unite all these different facets for the first time into one singular vision. He also makes a lateral leap from his signature instrument the vibraphone – on which he created his acclaimed triptych Stories (2012), Apologues (2015) and Book of Life (2018) – to the marimba, which takes centre stage on his new record alongside drums, percussion, synths, effects and tape recorder. 

“The way of playing the marimba is similar to the vibraphone, so it was kind of a natural development for me and easier to start with, yet it sounds very different”, explains Masayoshi. “The marimba bars are made with wood and it has a wider range than the vibraphone, which gives me a bigger sound palette with more possibilities. I play the instrument with bows and mallets, and sometimes manipulate it with effects.” 

Bird Ambience also marks his liberation from fastidious preparation for past solo releases to new endeavours in improvisation. “I prioritised trying to capture the wonder which happens during those occasional magic improv moments. Sometimes the mic-ing and placement of instruments was pretty rough; things weren’t perfect and everything was done quickly, but it turned out as the final recording. Overall when I couldn’t decide between two takes, I told myself to go with the first”, Masayoshi recalls. 

Arranged with a perfect Kanso-like balance, the unhurried pace of Bird Ambience allows each sound and phrase enough time to be mindfully absorbed and savoured. This subtle but affective work carries ethereal remnants of Midori Takada’s minimalism, the static atmospheres of Mika Vainio, To Rococo Rot’s organics and the bucolic electronics of Minotaur Shock. Fujita vaporises contemporary and classical, ambient and dismantled dub, controlled noise and fragments of jazz into an atmospheric, static mist, which he skilfully coerces into new forms. 

Over the slow-motion, skeletal glitch jazz drums of opening title track ‘Bird Ambience’, Masayoshi elegantly weaves celestial choral samples, the operatic voice of fellow Erased Tapes artist Hatis Noit and gentle marimba phrases. This exemplifies his sparing but substantial sound, with a composition that’s equal parts beauty and noise, with plenty of space in between. “When I was working on Bird Ambience, I had this very strong but blurred image in my mind that I wanted to capture, but had to find the right sounds. It was like when you try to remember a dream you just had, but it falls away and disappears”, recounts Futija. 

The poem You Will Hear Thunder by Anna Akhmatova is an invisible root for the lead single ‘Thunder’, which blends mildly abrasive effects on the marimba with a warm feeling of benevolence. Its pretty-like-a-music-box-miniature counterpart was “inspired by an illustration for a textile design called ‘Anakreon’ by the architect and designer Josef Frank, which was inspired by a 3500-year-old Greek fresco of a blue-bird”, Masa explains. 

Echoing the weight of the title track’s distorted marimba bass notes, on ‘Gaia’ this recurring theme has grown in gravity and gravitas, with the majestic riff now evoking a deep spiritual resonance. The saturated ‘Noise Marimba Tape’ features what sounds like an electric guitar stretched into acid lines, joined by bird-like chirrups, cartoon effects and a vibrating, bouncing-ball-motion-blur; whilst the balletic arabesques of ‘Morocco’ dance from twinkling filigree, to a cascading crescendo. 

In a brief return to solo vibraphone, the gossamer ‘Miyama No Kitsune’ forms the most unadorned moment, reminding us of just how delicate the musician’s nimble touch can go. ‘Nord Ambient’ takes the listener through electrically charged layers of synth tones, before Fujita ups the rhythmic ante on ‘Stellar’, with choppy trip hop drums beckoning the sound down an unexpected tangent. The spiky, clipped beats juxtapose with winsome melody, creating a rough-with-the-smooth flawed beauty. The album closes with two meditative pieces, ‘Pons’ and ‘Fabric’, where a drone sustains throughout, slowly drifting away into infinity. 

After 13 years in Berlin, Masayoshi recently relocated to a new home and studio in the rural Japanese mountain village of Kami-cho, Hyogo, following his life-long dream of creating music in nature. Even though the album was entirely recorded in Germany before he left, it has this palpable sense of reverie found in the natural world. From there we can only imagine the kind of impact his new life will have on future works. 

Bird Ambience will be released on Erased Tapes in 2LP, CD and digital formats on May 28.
  Credits:Masayoshi Fujita: Marimba. Vibraphone. Drums. Percussion. Synth. Effectors. Tape Recorder. 

Hatis Noit: Voice on ‘Bird Ambience’. 

All songs written by Masayoshi Fujita. 
Published by Erased Tapes Music. 
Recorded and mixed by Masayoshi Fujita at 
Studio Grünauer O6, Berlin and Studio Herder, Wiesbaden. 
Mastered by Zino Mikorey. 
Vinyl cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle. 
Design by Bernd Kuchenbeiser.​

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John Andrews is picking flowers from each corner of his life and presenting you with an unusual bouquet. His imaginary band “The Yawns” are back! Third time’s a charm. In hockey terms, they call it a “hat trick” and you know who’s always wearing a ratty old hat? John Andrews. Three years in the making and we have “COOKBOOK”, the third, and most colorful record from your favorite New Hampshire based craftsman. Unknowing folks usually assume he lives in New York City or Los Angeles but confer with John for 5 minutes and if he’s in the right mood he’ll talk your ear off about the granite state & the old, seedy colonial barn where he’s tracked his records with his weird and wonderful friends.Take a listen to his previous effort, 2017’s “Bad Posture”. It was the grassroot slacker’s pie in the sky. His head was stuck in the past. He probably excessively listened to “Cripple Creek Ferry” and he most likely wasn’t keeping up with household chores. The album acted as an impressive document of that specific time and place. Time moves on, but just look at him now! All grown up yet likely still feeling those growing pains. After a few more years of traveling we now have “Cookbook”, fresh out the oven…Phew! About 9 or 10 new tracks, but who’s really counting? The lyrics are simple and endearing,  inspired by mid century love songs. “New California Blue” offers some of the album’s most elegant and freewheeling piano playing. It conjures the loose swing of a Vince Guaraldi Peanuts cartoon, but something is slightly off. These lyrics, an ode of gratitude to Joni Mitchel, charm us into a late night noir. In album stand out,“River of doubt”, he sings “If I’m swimming in that river of doubt, won’t you pull me out?” It’s a similar yearn we’ve heard from groups of yesterday like The Shangri Las & The Mama’s Papas,  but it’s a distant, more contemporary interpretation. Johnny’s vocals are his own instrument. His tenor is mellow yet greatly confident. He doesn't always sing though; instrumental track  “Song for the Gonz” provides a score to 90’s street skateboarder  Mark Gonzalez with a timeless, cartoon-like melody.  “Try” could be cut from the same cloth as Carol King’s piano demos. His inspirations are all across the board. If his subconscious was a bootleg taper, life would be the show. At any rate, it doesn’t sound like a record made in New Hampshire, but make no mistake, this is a dyed-in-the-wool Yawns record, refreshingly straightforward yet full of character.  It’s less of a crowded honky tonk, and more of an empty, poignant speakeasy. You can finally relax indoors after a weary day out in the cold. Have you ever seen that painting of dogs playing poker? It might as well be what they were listening to as the bulldog pushed his chips forward. - John’s Mom ​

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Colleen is an aboundingly inventive composer and artist. For two decades Cécile Schott as Colleen has crafted welcoming, enchanting, and bewildering music. The multi-instrumentalist and vocalist’s timeless compositions make use of carefully selected tools to mold memories into transcendent splendor. The Tunnel and the Clearing finds Schott at her most vulnerable and confident, invoking contemplative and swirling organ processed through analog electronics, steady drum machine syncopations and her distinctive voice to embody breaking through the nexus of compounding transitions. On an album centered on processing the complicated washes of emotion through tribulations and revelations Colleen presents a vision of breathless clarity. 

The Tunnel and the Clearing was developed over a period of transformative change. Colleen began work on the album in 2018 only to be met with extreme fatigue from a previously undiagnosed illness that all but halted her work. The following months and years of treatment and adjustment eventually led to relocating to a new home and studio in Barcelona, which was soon followed by lockdowns and ultimately the dissolution of her longtime partnership. The impact of deep reflecting on these cumulative experiences found Schott completely reimagining her compositional practices through her enduring gift for reinvention. Schott spent months in near complete silence apart from composing and ruminating on her newfound perspective through her music. Says Schott, “Never before had I felt so profoundly the power that music has, through harmony, melody, rhythm and sound itself, to express the whole range of human emotions.” The resulting seven pieces investigate the complex, at times contradictory relationship between excitement and fear, anger and understanding, struggle and triumph, all focused on a reconstruction of the self. 

Colleen’s albums are unified by their employment of distinct and personal instrumentation to tell their story. From albums built around music boxes or viola da gamba to albums built around electronics, her music remarkably shares a dreamlike modern quality. From the early stages of working on The Tunnel and the Clearing Schott restricted herself to using analog electronic instruments like the Elka Drummer One, the Roland RE-201 Space Echo and Moog Grandmother synth, coupled with Yamaha organ keyboard and select Moog effects. This limited instrument selection was inspired by years of listening to Jamaican and African recordings where musicians were pushed to maximize their creativity with minimal tools. A magnitude of atmospheres are summoned from deceptively simple combinations, from the meditative pulse of “The Crossing” to the frothy cascades of title track “The Tunnel and the Clearing.” Pieces like “Revelation,” or the brisk-paced “Implosion-Explosion” respectively showcase the most diverse use of harmony and the most incisive application of production technique in all of Colleen’s catalog. Stunningly, Colleen achieves the rich emotional intricacy and the lush density of textures on The Tunnel and the Clearing through almost entirely live performance and processing. 

The detailed and affecting compositions of The Tunnel and the Clearing mirror Colleen’s grappling with her own psyche. Schott elaborates “I found direct correspondences between my internal discourse, its obsessive, frantic attempts at making sense of what I could not understand, and the music I was making, with motifs functioning as questions and answers, doubts and assertions.” Clicks, hums, warbles and throbs emulating our evolving internal worlds, an “emotional noise.” A musical journey through the tunnel toward the clearing at its end. An ending which is also a beginning. “The clearing is what is always out there: a vast expanse of space, light and possibilities,” says Schott. The Tunnel and the Clearing is a work of lucid reverence, a constellation of marvels suspended in air. 
 CreditsMusic and lyrics by Cécile Schott (SACEM), 9th May – 30th November 2020. 
Performed, recorded, mixed and produced by Cécile Schott, 25th October – 1st December 2020, at home in Barcelona, Spain. 
1 The Crossing: Yamaha Reface YC, Roland RE-201 Space Echo, Elka Drummer One 
2 Revelation: Yamaha Reface YC, Moog Grandmother and MF104M Analog Delay, vocals 
3 Implosion-Explosion: Yamaha Reface YC, Moog MF-101 Lowpass Filter and MF-104M Analog Delay, Elka Drummer One, Roland RE-201 Space Echo, vocals 
4 The Tunnel and the Clearing: Yamaha Reface YC, Roland RE-201 Space Echo 
5 Gazing at Taurus – Santa Eulalia: Yamaha Reface YC, Moog MF-104M Analog Delay, Elka Drummer One, Roland RE-201 Space Echo, vocals 
6 Gazing at Taurus – Night Sky Rumba: Yamaha Reface YC, Roland RE-201 Space Echo, Elka Drummer One 
7 Hidden in the Current: Yamaha Reface YC, Moog Grandmother and MF-104M Analog Delay, vocals 

Mastering by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw. 
Artwork and design by Andrés Gómez Servín: 
Artwork photograph by Mauricio Alejo. 
This album is dedicated to my friends, my cats Sol and Klee, and the city of Barcelona. 
Thanks to everyone at Thrill Jockey and especially Bettina Richards, Mike Boyd and Matt Fidler, Antony Ryan for overall support and being the kindest mastering engineer on earth, Moog Music Inc. for their generous gear donation, Soundgas Ltd for providing me with the perfect Space Echo RE-201 and the Elka Drummer One (and Gid in particular for being so helpful and for the inspiring gear demos). 
A special thank you to my parents and my friends and in particular Martin, Iga, Camila and Diego. 
Extra special thanks to Andrés Gómez Servín, Daniel Barreto and Luis Torroja for jumping onboard this train with such kindness and enthusiasm. 
To everyone who listens to my music and supports it in one way or another: you make this adventure possible and more beautiful with each passing year.​

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Hella Love, the Hardly Art debut from Marinero, is an album about closing a chapter. It’s Jess Sylvester’s grand farewell, and love letter to his hometown and the place he grew up, The San Francisco Bay Area, before relocating to Los Angeles after finishing his debut release. Using the moniker Marinero (which means “sailor” in Spanish), Jess Sylvester was drawn to this name as a means to honor his parent’s stories -- his father, a sailor, and mother, a Mexican-American who grew up in San Francisco. This record blends many worlds from beginning to end, and as you go deeper it hits harder. It’s his goodbye to The Bay. 

Pulling sonic influences from classic Latin American groups and international composers from the 60’s & 70’s: Los Terricolas, Ennio Morricone, Esquivel, Carole King and, Serge Gainsbourg Hella Love finds Sylvester fusing classical arrangements with a variety of different genres, evoking a sonic nostalgia blended with other contemporary artists like Chicano Batman, Connan Mockasin, and Chris Cohen. The album was written, played, and produced by Jess Sylvester with help from Bay Area engineer Jason Kick (Mild High Club’s Skiptracing) at Tunnel Vision and Santo Recording in Oakland, California. 

On the standout single “Nuestra Victoria,” Sylvester shares “It’s my way of talking about gentrification in SF, or specifically the Mission where my mom and family grew up. The song is about a bakery, or panaderia called La Victoria, and was a place where my mother and tias went growing up, a place I also went to that is no longer there.” It was one of the oldest Mexican-American businesses in SF and I wanted to honor it”. “Through the Fog” highlights Sylvester’s exploration of his influences from the Tropicalia movement, weaving bossa rhythms with lush percussion and orchestration. Using SF’s infamous fog as a metaphor for “tough times”, Sylvester expands that it is a dedication to his friends and family who have helped him get through substance abuse issues, heartbreak, and other painful experiences. “There are a few easter eggs in the lyrics for Bay Area folks or people who have followed my music in the past but it’s mostly about getting through something difficult with the love and support from the homies and fam.” The album’s title track, “Hella Love,” summarizes both of his parent’s stories of how they ended up in the bay. The first verse is about his father’s voyage out west as a sailor during the late ’60s while the second verse follows his mother’s experience moving to The Mission District when she was a young girl. 

It’s difficult to classify or generalize about Marinero’s music or identity. To him, it’s important to let his music do the talking. “I’m Chicanx, a bay native, biracial, and I’ve luckily gotten to travel and spend time in Mexico and I feel like my personality and specific musical tastes come through on this album. More than these generalizations we often make, I’m just a human who can both fear and love, and I’m just hoping to connect with others to share optimism and experience joy and laughter, even if for a moment.” Lean your ear to the ground because Jess Sylvester has been many things and will continue to share his journey. It is clear this gifted creator has more to say. ​

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