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For the Danish singer, producer, composer and DJ Astrid Engberg, Tulpa encapsulates the head injury from Astrid’s young adulthood, that still defines her everyday life over a decade later: ”I might never be without this pain, but it doesn’t stop me from living and experiencing life. Because life is too extremely valuable to let go.”

Interplaying between contemporary soul, classical, electronic music, jazz improvisation and her hiphop roots, Astrid sketches sonic landscapes that are both steeped in her Scandinavian roots and infused with the kaleidoscopic hues of her many travels.

Drawing inspiration in equal parts from nature, everyday life, people, images and sounds, her enchanting voice expresses both a sincere sensitivity and deep strength.

Daylight is the simple tale of seeing the light in the dark – as darkness quickly encompasses oneself, if the world moves too rapidly around you. On Phoenix Astrid conveys the indescribable connection with the outside world after years of being bedridden with chronic ache: <Yesterday I was born again. How do I explain it to someone who doesn’t know pain? The sounds, the colours, the silence...>

Credits
Arranged By, Composed By, Written By, Programmed By, Vocals, Piano, Drums, Percussion, Keyboards – Astrid Engberg

Backing Vocals, Percussion – Berrin Bas (tracks: B2)
Bass – Brian Massaka (tracks: A1)
Cello – Nicole Hogstrand (tracks: A3, B4, B5)
Choir – Musikefterskolen i Humble’s kor 18/19 (tracks: B5), Sølvgade Skoles Børnekor (tracks: B5)
Composed By – Billy Strayhorn (tracks: B2)
Conductor – Aleksandra Aia (tracks: B5), Trine Lund Sørensen (tracks: B5)
Congas – Anders Bo Eriksen (tracks: B1)
Drums – Jonathan Jull Ludvigsen (tracks: A1, A2, A4, B2, B3,)
Guitar – Anders Bo Eriksen (tracks: B2)
Keyboards – Jonas Cook (tracks: A1, A3, A4, B2 )
Saxophone – Sven Meinild (tracks: A2, B1, B3)
Trombone – Lis Wessberg (tracks: A1, A2, B1, B3)
Trumpet – Maj Berit Guassora (tracks: A1, A2, B1, B3), Tobias Wiklund (tracks: B2)
Tuba – Anders Bo Eriksen (tracks: A2, A3, B1, B3, B5)
Violin – Bettina Marie Ezaki (tracks: A3, B4, B5), Samuel Lundström (tracks: B2)
Vocals – Carla Schack (tracks: B4), Ezra Bruno (tracks: B4)

A&R – Daniel Bruhn Jensen
Layout – Torsten Lindsø Andersen
Mastered By – Kasablanka Mastering
Mixed By – Blanka (2) (tracks: A2, B2, B4, B5)
Mixed By - Mathieu Gibert (tracks: A1, A3, A4, B1, B2, B3)
Photography – Kia Hartelius

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When Mildlife’s debut album, Phase, was released in 2018 it didn’t so much explode on to the scene as ooze. Their mellifluous mix of jazz, krautrock and, perhaps more pertinently, demon grooves, was the word of mouth sensation of that year among open-minded DJs and diggers searching for the perfect beat.

Their emergence was backed up by European tours that demonstrated a riotously loose-limbed approach to performance that was every bit as thrilling as Phase’s tantalising promise. What was more impressive was how lightly they wore influences that took in Can, Patrick Adams and Jan Hammer Group, while primarily sounding precisely like Mildlife.

By the end of 2018 they’d been nominees for Best Album at the Worldwide FM Awards (Worldwide’s Gilles Peterson was a notable champion) and won Best Electronic Act at The Age Music Victoria Awards back home in Melbourne. Their progress post-Phase was cemented with a UK deal with Jeff Barrett’s Heavenly, who released How Long Does It Take? replete with Cosmic doyen Baldelli and Dionigi remixes, while last year they were officially anointed by DJ Harvey when he included The Magnificent Moon on his Pikes compilation Mercury Rising Vol II.

With Automatic, the band have made a step-change from their debut. It’s more disciplined, directional and arguably more danceable. As on Phase, they are unafraid to let a track luxuriate in length without ever succumbing to self-indulgence. The arrangements, tightly structured thanks to Tom Shanahan (bass) and Jim Rindfleish’s fatback drumming, permit space for the others to add spice to the stew, topped off with Kevin McDowell’s ethereal vocals as Mildlife effortlessly glide between live performance and studio songwriting. “The recorded songs kind of become the new reference point for playing the songs live,’ says Kevin. “They both have different outcomes and we make our decisions for each based on that, but they’re symbiotic and they both influence each other. It’s usually a fairly natural flow from live to recorded back to live.”


The centrepiece of Automatic is the title track where the band sound like Kraftwerk and Herbie Hancock on quarantined lockdown in Bob Moog’s Trumansburg workshop. It’s both a departure and quintessentially Mildlife. This is music you can dance to rather than ‘dance music’ and it’s all the better for it. 

  Credits
Mildlife are Adam Halliwell, Kevin McDowell, Jim Rindfleish and Tomas Shanahan. All songs written, recorded and produced by Mildlife.
Rare Air & Memory Palace written by Mildlife with James Donald. Additional percussion by Craig Shanahan. Mixing by Steve Schram, Mastering by Joseph Carra. Artwork by Confetti Studio., Photography by Tom Ross.

Equipment Used:
Gibson ES-345, Squire Bass VI, Martin D12-20, Roland GR-500, Korg X911, Yamaha Flute, Korg VC-10, Roland VO-1, Roland VP-03, Greco Electric Bass, Hagstrom Swede Bass, Roland Jupiter-6, Roland Juno-60, Roland SH-2, Studio Electronics Boomstar SEM, Moog Prodigy, Sequential Prophet X, Roland SE-02, Rhodes 73 MKI Satellite, Eventide H9, Slingerland Drums, Zildjian Cymbals, Rogers and Ludwig Snares.

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Enigmatic Australian ensemble Tangents return with a new studio album two years after the release of New Bodies. The Australian Music Prize-nominated New Bodies thrust Tangents’ peculiar blend of furious improvisation and precision production into the international spotlight. More tension and intention pervade Tangents’ fourth album, Timeslips, demonstrating a thoughtful maturation of spontaneous ideas and more deliberately abstract assembly. With breathtaking, rhythmic drumming and adept production driving the various moods, Timeslips emerges from greater live performance and carefully constructed compositions. The brittle skittering mallets of “Exaptation,” raucous guitar of “Debris,” and processed trumpet of “Vessel” add new timbres to their existing palette of jazz drums, melancholy piano, throbbing cello and swirling glitched ambience. Mostly recorded in a single day, just before guitarist Sia Ahmad left the band, only the bravest, most intense moments from the original session remain intact on Timeslips. The tonal rumble of a 100-carriage coal train winding through New South Wales’ Bylong Valley signals the album’s slow close, recalling Tangents’ earlier references to the Australian environment on New Bodies and Stateless.

Credits:
Ollie Bown: software, field recordings, synths
Evan Dorrian: drums, percussion, voice
Peter Hollo: cello, fx
Adrian Lim-Klumpes: piano, prepared piano, Rhodes, mallet percussion, organ, synths, fx

Additional recordings, composition, arrangement and production by Tangents, with
Sia Ahmad: guitar, percussion, synths (tracks 1-6); arrangement (track 5)
Nick Calligeros: trumpet (track 2)
Richard Belkner: recording and mix engineer
Casey Rice: mastering
Britt Hatzius: artwork

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My fear, my loneliness, my happiness. My blackness, my queerness, my objectness. I am haunted by likenesses. I’m haunted by my self. _____ like a _____. Smile, Simile. Message, Massage. Vergangenheitsbewältigung.
(Crater Speak) is the title of a catalog I published with Midway Contemporary. It is an unreliable guide of materials that influence my artistic and musical practice, loosely defined into associative chapters, outlining a perimeter. That perimeter being the rim of a ‘crater’. An absence present. Here by unimaginable heat, scale, speed, and violence. Collision to disintegration to (see The Thing 1982).
“The rings of Saturn consist of ice crystals and probably meteorite particles describing circular orbits around the planet’s equator. In all likelihood these are fragments of a former moon that was too close to the planet and was destroyed...” - W. G. Sebald, Rings of Saturn. To become a star is to become certain death. Of stone, of (s)tar, petrified. R U SCARED? Rocks will surely be here when we’re not as leopold’s ghost. Of muck, mud, oil, bones to Power. A New World by refined old old old Death.

Personnel
Flute: Francesca Ferrera
Bass Clarinet: Ben Chapoteau-Katz
Alto Saxophone: Leland Whitty
Tenor Saxophone: Ben Chapoteau-Katz
Trumpet: Brandon Woody
Trombone: Jonah Levine
Tuba: Osita Atikpoh
Cello: Nicky Wetherell
Drums: Alex Sowinski
DFAM: Olu Odubiro

Artwork by Bolade Banjo, Jelani Rice, Seth Kenji, and Abraham El Makawy
Mastered by Alex Epton

special thanks:
Christopher Baliwas
Parker, Ritchie, Groggs, and Nick Herbert
Taja & Ben
Nick Hakim
Taphari
Midway Contemporary Art

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written and recorded between april 2019 and may 2020
mastered by Shaun Sutkus

music on tracks 3 and 6 by Ben Bondy
music on tracks 7 and 11 by Shaun Sutkus