WHAT YOUR EARS SAY & WHAT THE COVER LOOKS LIKE

WHAT WE SAY

Not many prolific electronic artists hold down the quality as well as Norm Chambers. For this Hotham Sound excursion he revives some old school production twists & thoughtfully blows a sea breeze across his latest electro ambient world to keep us cool whilst we explore and marvel.

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY

A key figure in the Pacific Northwest electronic scene, Norm Chambers has always been a tirelessly prolific artist. While his decade-long run as Panabrite remains one of the most beguiling and coherent bodies of work to emerge from the neo-new age tape explosion of the 2000's, recent releases under his own name have seen him slowly pulling away from the past and moving into uncharted waters. On 2018's 'Idea Region' (Muzan Editions) the languid synth swells and crystalline arpeggios of his early work seem to be fighting for space with something new: a kind of aleatoric modular exploration as present and immediate as his earlier work was distant and dreamlike. Fast forward to his 2020 Magnum Opus 'Facets' (Love All Day), and these unruly elements have replicated exponentially, creating a sound world unlike anything in his previous discography, and announcing a major new avenue of development. 'Seaside Resonance' marks yet another leap, with Chambers incorporating loops and samples into his process for the first time, to stunning and unpredictable effect. Touching on musique concrète, minimalism, and even late 90's glitch aesthetics, with a sound palette reminiscent of early Oval and Mouse on Mars, 'Seaside Resonance' (the title a nod to “Après deep-sea diving”, or armchair oceanography) is a fearlessly exploratory work by an artist who refuses to sit still.

Credits
​All tracks recorded by Norm Chambers, Spring 2021. Mastered by Greg Davis. Thank you: Jamie, Pete, Gabe, Amir, Kayo and Robert.

IF YOU LIKE THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS

Smartlink
to the playlist on Apple Music, Deezer, Soundcloud & Youtube

WHAT YOU EARS SAY & WHAT THE COVER LOOKS LIKE

WHAT WE SAY

Wind down the week with Awkward Corners & his decidedly lazy, exceedingly cultured classic chill out beats & Eastern evoking sounds given 2021 relevance, timeless quality and a deep fluid musicality by the languid spiritual jazz courtesy of some choice collaborators for Shapes Of Rhythm

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY

Amateur Dramatics is Awkward Corners AKA Chris Menist’s second LP in the space of a year. 

In 2020 – a time when the global pandemic gave artists more time and space to think about their music – Chris took his collaborations and compositions to a different level. Having already collaborated remotely with Sarathy Korwar, as well as Kitty Whitelaw through Karthik from Flamingods’ Isolate/Create/Collaborate community, Chris turned his thoughts towards a new project. 

Amateur Dramatics is influenced by the events of early 2021 and alludes to the general atmosphere of political life in the UK right now where we are chivvied along by people who seem woefully unqualified to be commanding authority. Musically, the LP builds on foundations of the meditative, devotional electronic aspects of previous LP Dislocation Songs but this time frames it more in a jazz context with significant collaborations with Collocutor and Maisha’s Tamar Osborn on four tracks. Vocals (from Kitty Whitelaw) feature on an Awkward Corners track for the first time, as well as double bass provided by David Leahy.The result is a thoughtful and deep listening 40 minute listening experience. 

Opening track Paragraph One (after the rain) almost picks up from where Dislocations Songs left off by way of introduction. We’re re-associated with the bedrock of the Awkward Corners sound: 808, percussion & Illimba interact with a repetitive electric piano chord sequence. 

Marshland Lullaby – marked as the second single from the LP, features the ethereal voice of Kitty Whitelaw. With a vocalising technique the lyrics build layer upon layer as they drift through the mix very much as the title suggests, as a lullaby. David Leahy provides a slow and hypnotic Double Bass rhythm, and a lolloping acoustic drum kit features, not often heard in Chris’ music. This track is the first hint that this is a much more ambitious and collaborative project to Dislocation Songs and works towards a slightly different palette of sounds. 

Partial Recall brings back another Awkward Corners stable sound, that of the Pakistani/Japanese Shahi Baaja stringed instrument. Woozy synths swirl and swell in response to the rhythmic cycles. Small snippets of Shahi slip in and out of the composition and the overall feeling is of a peaceful vibration. 

No Words is the LP’s first single and heralds the first collaboration with Tamar Osborn. With a rhythmic bed of Tamar’s Bass Clarinet and Chris’ electric piano, the space is there for Tamar to grab an Alto Sax and solo over the top. As we reach the centre of the composition, the Clarinet steps out of its loop and begins to engage with the Saxophone. This is one of the LP’s stand outs and really underlines the change from Dislocation Songs to a more collaborative, and detailed approach with deeper levels of instrumentation. 

When There Are No Birds is the second collaboration with Tamar (on Tenor) this time seeing Chris take to the Piano. Inspired by a poem No Bird On My Bough by Poet Tess this is one of the LP’s most sparse tracks. We hear strings for the first time in an Awkward Corners composition as bowed Bass sounds add a real sense of melancholy and lament. 

As we move to side two of the LP, Paragraph Two employs two instruments seldom heard in tandem, the Double Bass played again by David Leahy, and Chris on the buttons of his booming Roland 808. This again highlights the invention and freedom of the Awkward Corners sound. A cowbell taps out a guiding melody, whilst an Illimba playfully pops in and out of the composition. 

Not Now Karen is led by handclaps drenched in space echo, this is another reflective piece with mellow keyboard sequences, soloing Illimbas whilst Chris takes to the Congas. 

The wrly-titled Men Bearing Lanyards is the LP’s third single and sees Tamar Osborn and David Leahy collaborate again to create a composition that moves away from the repetitive rhythmic themes of parts of the LP. Tamar solos on Clarinet, again swinging the Tenor Sax in, almost duetting with herself. 

Time To Clear Away Your Toys is the LP’s resolution and closer. Underpinned by two single piano chords, once again Tamar and David use that base to take flight with solos. As the LP drifts off, bells and Illimbas pepper the mix. Interestingly, the Illimbas are used as texture rather than in a melodic way. 

Summed up, Amateur Dramatics is a thoughtful and thought-provoking series of remotely-composed collaborations. These are set in the context of Chris’ trademark electro-acoustic textures and tones but expanded on with Tamar’s instrumentation, taking the LP into Jazz territories.  

IF YOU LIKE THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS

Smartlink 
to the playlist on Apple Music, Deezer, Soundcloud & Youtube

WHAT YOUR EARS SAY & THE COVER LOOKS LIKE

WHAT WE SAY

​Good to see the chugging globetronica champs Shika Shika back with a migration themed collection of opiated grooves for the ecstatic dancers and world music 2.0 massive.

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY

Shika Shika is very happy and proud to share with you "QUERENCIA" our 2021 compilation introducing 14 tracks by artists from 14 different countries. 

The theme of this compilation was migration in the broadest sense - how music, people and culture expands and goes beyond borders - and each artist approached that in their own way, in their own context. You can find out more about the inspiration by clicking on the individual tracks. 

Querencia: 'a place where you are your most authentic self; a place from which your strength of character is drawn, where you feel safe, where you feel at home'. 

For the artwork, we invited Argentinean visual artist Gala Berger to collaborate with us with one of her pieces. She is co-founder of La Ene (New Energy Museum of Contemporary Art), an experimental museum based in Buenos Aires, and the Paraguay Printed Art Fair, a fair born with the aim of creating alternative platforms of exchange and circulation of independent publications without the traditional restrictions and regulations faced by the mainstream press.

Credits
Ancestral Beats (COL) 
Dengue Dengue Dengue & Prisma (PER + ARG) 
Elzy (RU) 
Eat My Butterfly feat. Syna Awel (Reunion Island + ALG) 
Expe (JP) 
Hajna feat. Fayssal Naseur (FR + ALG) 
Isami (JP) 
LDLP (NL) 
Lilium (US) 
Maggie Tra (CAM) 
Nuri (TUN) 
Penya (UK - FL) 
Sidirum (ARG) 
Terror/Cactus & Pahua (ARG + MEX) 


Artwork: Gala Berger (instagram.com/galaberger) 
Design: Clau Smith (instagram.com/clau._.smith) 
Mastering: Rob Small​

WHAT YOU EARS SAY & THE COVER LOOKS LIKE

WHAT WE SAY

A fine collaborative debut LP from Swedish due Jakob Lindhagen & Dag Rosenqvist for Time Released Sound limited edition music label as they fuse their neoclassical, multi-instrumental, soundtrack, soundscape, electronic and experimental predilections into a stately ambient whole.

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY

Stadsbilder (”City Images”) is the first collaborative album between Swedish musicians Jakob Lindhagen and Dag Rosenqvist. The composers have both made names for themselves within the contemporary music scene – Jakob as an award-winning film composer with solo music streamed in the millions on digital platforms, and Dag as a highly prolific musician and sound artist, having over 50 releases over the last 15 years in a vast array of constellations, both solo works and as part of the duo From The Mouth Of The Sun, as well as film composing and music for dance performances. 

The music on Stadsbilder intertwines layers of organic and electronic sounds, with minimal piano melodies meeting vintage synthesizers, found sounds, harmonium, banjo, kantele, Fender Rhodes and saxophone, as well as cello (played by Sebastian Selke of CEEYS). 

CreditsMusic composed, recorded, produced and mixed by Jakob Lindhagen & Dag Rosenqvist. 

Cello on ”Under Hamnen” and ”Gamla Drömmars Stad” by Sebastian Selke. 

Artwork and design by Colin Herrick. 

Mastered by Taylor Deupree, 12k Mastering. 

A heartfelt thanks to Fabian Rosenberg for lending his Rhodes in time of need, David Bennet and Anton Ericsson for letting us sample and play around with their respective saxophone and contrabass recordings, Ryan Powell for an outstanding video, Sofia Nystrand for endless love, support and inspiration, Ulla Skagerlund for patience, love and all kinds of stupidity, Maria Chenut for so many things, all family and friends, and both modern and old school technologies for making this record possible! 

Time Released Sound 2021​

IF YOU LIKE THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS

Smartlink
​to the playlist on Apple Music, Deezer, Soundcloud & Youtube

WHAT YOUR EARS SAY & THE COVER LOOKS LIKE

WHAT WE SAY

Musing deeper than most on the human condition & cosmic connectivity Cots delivers her thoughts in intimate, engaging fashion on a bed of lethargic bossa, hushed cocktail lounge jazz & restrained folk threaded with a rare attention to sonic detail courtesy of Sandro Perri on the desk for Boiled Records.

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY

Cots is a new project from Steph Yates (of Esther Grey, Cupcake Ductape, French Perfume). Borrowing elements of bossa nova, folk, jazz, and classical, Yates’s subtly unconventional composition style and poetics are at work here in a hushed and more naked voice. The sounds and images of Cots are familiar the way dreams and shadows are; there appear strange landscapes, the vague outlines of former lovers, a quiet queerness, the feeling of motion. These are songs of closeness and aloneness. 

These songs, for the most part, have to do with the heart.

CreditsRyan Brouwer (flugelhorn / trumpet): 1, 2, 3, 6, 9 
Josh Cole (bass): 1, 3, 4, 7, 8 
Nick Fraser (sampled drums): 5 
Thomas Hammerton (keys): 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 
Blake Howard (percussion): 1, 4, 7, 8 
Karen Ng (alto saxophone): 10 
Sandro Perri (synth): 5, 8, 10 
Steph Yates (guitar / vocals): 1-10 

Songs by Steph Yates 
Produced and mixed by Sandro Perri 
Engineered by Scott Merritt 
Recorded at The CottAge in Guelph Nov 8-10, 2019 & Jan 13, 2020 
Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering 

Photography by JG + SHI 
Makeup & hair by Jess Cohen 
Sculpture by Steph Yates 

Thank you: 

Sandro Perri, Scott Merritt, Algis Vaitonis, Scott Thomson, Donna Yates, Bob Yates, Greg Yates, James Irwin, Tyson Brinacombe, Rosa Aiello, Bry Webb, Jonathan Shedletzky, Karen Ng, Josh Cole, Blake Howard, Tom Hammerton, Ryan Brouwer, Sue Merritt, Natalie Logan, Emma Howarth-Withers, Sara Bortolon-Vettor, Emma Bortolon-Vettor, Lanny Gurr, Jade Perry, Jenn E Norton, Carly Hunt, Patrick Cruz, The Kazoo! Crew, Steven Yates, Scott Haynes, Jenny Mitchell, Ray Mitchell, Danny Paillé, Yuula Benivolski, Starr Wolf, Gnathan Campagnaro, Rich Burnett, Kia Iverson, Heather Prouse, Pentagon Black, Julian Holman, Anna Bowen, Curtis Walker, Max the cat​

IF YOU LIKE THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS

Smartlink 
to the playlist on Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube and Soundcloud

​So another month another selection of laid back loungadelica for the Music For Dreams crew out of Denmark. There's some eccentric electronica, Balearic balminess, ambient-sedation, far out folk and far flung rhythm, finish with an ethereal electro flourish.

Greg Dallas - Interstellar Dream (Self Release)
Memorex - Baléarique 21 (Dream Chimney)
Foam and Sand - Circle 18 (Trees and Cyborgs)
Blank Gloss - Virga (Kompakt)
Fabiano Do Nacimento - Stalagmites (Now Again)
Ben Chasny - Water Dragon (Drag City)
Chorusing - Blue Ridge (Western Vinyl)
Sophia Nzayisenga & Andi Otto - Ishema (YNFND)
Maarja Nuut - Kuse Tanssule/A Call to Dance (Self Release)
SONMI451 - Seven Signals In The Sky (LAAPS)
Amelia Meath & Blake Mills - Neon Blue (Psychi Hotline)
Josef Akin - Blue Brew (Sola Terra)
C Bliss - Vinnie's Lead (Moodfamily)
Me Lost Me - Acrobat on the Roof (Self Release)
Modo Mero - Nebulous (Fussy Music)
​Nuron - Burnenville (Self Release)

WHAT YOUR EARS SAY & THE COVER LOOKS LIKE

WHAT WE SAY

Starting in music as a mover of bodies and melter of sub-woofers Robot Koch has been slowly mellowing with age but has now officially gone full circle and started massaging minds instead with his his new Foam and Sand pseudonym exploring altogether more sedate electronic arts.

IF YOU LIKE THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS

Smartlink
​to the playlist on Apple Music, Deezer, Soundcloud & Youtube

WHAT YOUR EARS SAY & THE COVER LOOKS LIKE

WHAT WE SAY

Confessional cosmic folk reclines on synthesized ambient soundscapes in this sparse yet succinct, softly sung, subtly psychedelic, quite delightful debut LP from Chorusing for Western Vinyl. Sunday suitable and then some.

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY

On his debut album Half Mirror, Matthew O’Connell superimposes warm analog synths onto self-described “confessional folk” with a simultaneously cosmic and earthly outcome. Tracked at home in the mountains of North Carolina using a vintage tape delay, electric guitar, and a self-designed synthesizer named ‘Balsam,’ Half Mirror is at once a lonesome push-pull of electronics humanized by folk elements, and folk music made alien by electronic adornments. O’Connell’s own story is just as captivatingly segmented. While growing up on a farm in Palmyra, Indiana, he became obsessed with metal drumming and spent most of his free time practicing in the garage, occasionally recording on four-track tape machines with his brothers Joe (Elephant Micah) and Greg. Reflecting on those formative years, O’Connell says, “I think that period instilled two things in me: a long attention span, and the ability to work obsessively on something in solitude.” It’s these monastic inclinations that helped form the spirit of Half Mirror. 

Once he was old enough to drive, O’Connell started making trips south to Louisville, Kentucky, where he fell in love with the punk and hardcore scene and joined his first bands. “It’s not the type of music I play anymore, but it’s still very much a presence in how I think about music and what I want to do with it,” he explains. “It's so pure and unself-conscious, felt in the body and not in the head.” Though he continued playing in punk bands in Louisville, he also began writing his own songs, some of which made their way onto Half Mirror 10 years later. 

While in college, his interest in math led him to participate in a six-month intensive study program in Budapest, Hungary. There, he continued writing song fragments on a borrowed guitar and fiddling with musical electronics at the Kitchen Budapest—a collective of artists, theorists, and coders. In 2011, his interest in electronics and engineering led him to Asheville, North Carolina, where he worked for Moog Music calibrating and building synthesizers, and testing vintage analog delay chips by day. At night he would spend his time building homemade synths and writing songs. It was here in Asheville that he began the bulk of the work on Half Mirror, imbuing his music with the qualities of his environment almost by necessity. 

The album opens with the spare meta-song “Cold,” on which O'Connell repeats, “I wade in,” referring to himself wading into his own memories. On “Midday Sun,” he sings, “Wide-eyed in the midday sun” over an eerily ascending and descending electric guitar and tightly layered instrumentation, inspired obliquely by the Louisville post-hardcore band Young Widows. “Sprawled out on the floor / Heavy from the nights before,” he continues, a chastened recalling of hungover anxiety. It’s tempered by tracks like “Whitewaterside,” which describes with meditative awareness the sensation of setting bare feet into a cold river. On Half Mirror standout “Watching the Beams,” he channels a panic attack he had on a stalled subway train while en route to a gig in Brooklyn: the relentless arpeggiator mirrors his rapid heartbeat as it becomes subsumed by the pulse of the city. On “Ohio,” O’Connell recounts evenings sitting by the Ohio River in Louisville, drinking bourbon with a friend as the barges floated by like memories drifting through the mind. The album’s closing track “Mirror” serves as an epilogue, like a rose-colored moon that drops below the horizon to be extinguished by distant sands. 

O’Connell made a deliberate effort to keep the album's production sparse. His interest in restraint stems in part from his love of albums like Nearly God by Tricky and Ghost Tropic by Songs: Ohia, both of which feature uncomfortably bare vocals and uncanny production that commands the listener’s attention. Additional inspiration came from Mark Hollis' striking minimalism, and the freeform songwriting of Arthur Russell and John Martyn. This skillful incorporation of influences evokes the same sense of balance and natural grace O’Connell may have gleaned in his physics and math studies;in fact, Half Mirror’s cover bears a visual translation of its songs’ waveforms. 

When pressed about the meaning of the album’s title, O’Connell says, “Almost all of the songs are retrospective, and Half Mirror is a metaphor for trying to reflect on experiences in an incomplete or unsatisfactory way. Or maybe it’s the paradox of trying to relive something outside of the moment it was actually experienced.” Filtering the poetry of fractured, imperfect memories through a lush, yet sparse palette of sounds, Half Mirror evokes a profoundly moody sense of place: the fog heavy in the mountain peaks, the dew present on early morning walks, and the musky smell of rhododendrons in the air. 

 Credits
Matthew O'Connell: 
Vocals, Guitar, Synthesizers, Drum Machine, Percussion
 
Joe O'Connell: 
Bass, Production Assistance
 
Scott Hirsch: 
Mixing 

Anthony Puglisi: 
Mastering
​ 
David Woodruff: 
Design

IF YOU LIKE THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS

Smartlink 
to the playlist on Apple Music, Deezer, Soundcloud & Youtube

WHAT YOUR EARS SAY & THE COVER LOOKS LIKE

WHAT WE SAY

​The new Luke Sanger LP is a fine start for the freshly minted Balmat label. It's also a magical place of crystalline electronic tones, electro fairies sprinkling New Age midi dust on synthesized shrooms whose psychedlic spores permeate and pleasingly warp all parts of this warm & wonderful electroacoustic world.

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY:

Balmat’s first release comes from Luke Sanger, a Norwich, UK-based artist whose two decades of electronic music-making have encompassed a range of tools and techniques, from MaxMSP to modular synthesis. Along the way he has built an extensive catalog encompassing ambient atmospheres, abstract soundscaping, and more. With Languid Gongue, he puts multiple approaches into play. Experiments in microtonal composition balance out pieces in standard tunings, while esoteric electronic machines merge with familiar acoustic treatments and microphone techniques. 

The result is a constellation of his signature sounds: freeform new-age fantasia; spring-loaded toytronic arpeggios; quartz-driven braindance clockworks. Drifting between consonant, almost lyrical compositions and shape-shifting textural sketches, the album drifts with the nonchalance of a sky-high cirrus cloud, and it glows as if illuminated from within. When we heard the material, we knew that it was the perfect choice to launch the label. To us, it sounds like a roadmap for points unknown.

CreditsWritten and produced by Luke Sanger. 
Mastered by Pedro Pina. 
Cover artwork by José Quintanar. 
Designed by Basora. 
Dedicated to Hollie, Betsy, Reuben, Violet and Bootsy. 
BALMAT01. 
©️ & ℗ Balmat 2021

IF YOU LIKE THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS

Smartlink 
to the playlist on Apple Music, Deezer, Soundcloud and Youtube

WHAT YOUR EARS SAY & THE COVER LOOKS LIKE

WHAT WE SAY

Apeing Golden Age sounds without social context, rather than exploring the endless possibilities in today's Golden Age of Fusion, rarely ends well for modern artists. Trust me though, Puerto Rico's Pachyman is the real dub deal & his new good natured LP for ATO Records is hitting the summer sweet spot.

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY

As a young, university-trained musician looking to find his way in this tropical space, Pachy García (a/k/a Pachyman) became obsessed with old Jamaican dub records like the ones from King Tubby and Scientist and is determined to re-create the vibe in his own way. “The recordings of the early roots stuff really got to me, the raw-ness of the sound and how the distortion and the drive that come out of these recordings come out sounding like the root of the sound,” said García. “They were kind of like the old Delta blues recordings, like super-raw, people and their instruments rehearse this song and it sounds so perfect.”
Garcia is perhaps best known as the drummer/vocalist for the L.A.-based band Prettiest Eyes, a unique pop-noise project that reflects his other formative interest, synth punk. He thinks of his new recording, called The Return of Pachyman, the way King Tubby would, an “x-ray” of reggae music, breaking it down to its bare bones. Originally a guitarist, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 2010s and developed his passion for dub. From there, he started recording bass, drums, and piano and collecting recording equipment in his basement studio, which he calls 333 House.
As a teenager, García was drawn to guitar as a fan of bands like Nirvana, hardcore Dischord label bands, and Puerto Rican hardcore pioneers Tropiezo and Juventud Crasa. Yet he was also busily imbibing electronic dance music, drum and bass, and, at Universidad Interamericana, jazz, fusion, and Wes Montgomery. “At the same time, I was discovering the Wailers, The Easy All Stars from New York—when they did that Dub Side of the Moon Thing [dub versions of Pink Floyd classics] it was a big thing for me,” said García.
In the early 2000s, Cultura Profética was the dominant force in Puerto Rican reggae, and García was drawn like a moth to the flame. “When their third record came, it was a live one, and it was all over the radio,” said García. After moving to LA, García found a niche group called Dub Club and started crate-diving classic records, old microphones and reel-to-reel tape machines in his quest to achieve an old-school reggae sound.
With The Return of Pachyman, García wants to show how the Caribbean flow is transnational, a vibe that resounds from Jamaica to San Juan to Southern California. “With this project, I was looking to make positive music and radiate good energy; something to kinda disconnect from the negative things that were happening at the moment,” Garcia explains. “I am trying to make this project a service for humanity in the sense that I just wanted to shine a positive light.”
Pachyman’s planet is a world between worlds, where exiled multi-instrument basement studio composers stand and deliver.​