Stream on Apple Music, Deezer and Youtube here:https://ampl.ink/z6orP

The first single from the forthcoming Everything Was Different Yesterday LP from Ben McElroy & A Spot On The Hill has arrived and it's a beautiful, soothing slice of neoclassical music with Ben's consummate strings and sound design elevating the dreamy minimalism of Dan's piano work to new heights.

The whole LP is a joy, but more on that a later date. Big thanks to Harriet for more great artwork and to Ian Hawgood for giving the recording the perfect sonic polish at this mastering studio.

From their respective home studios separated by the Atlantic Ocean, Ben McElroy (U.K.) and A Spot on the Hill (U.S.) have created an enchanting album that blends folk, ambient, neoclassical minimalism and drone.

It started in December 2021 with a message from A Spot on the Hill’s Dan Cook to Ben McElroy proposing a collaboration. By the start of 2022, the two were trading recordings of drones, strings and piano. Ben would take a simple piano part from Dan and improvise multiple layers of cello, violin, viola and clarinet parts to accompany it, as well as adding mysterious drones and found sounds. Dan would sift through the accreted layers of sound, chiseling away at some so as to reveal the beauty of others. Then, back to Ben, who masterfully sculpted the evolving pieces into cohesive artistic statements.

Other times, Ben would send Dan a starting point — an ambient drone mix or a collection of layered string parts. Dan would listen for the key and the pulse, then sit down at the piano. Again, back to Ben, who further refined the mix.

Everything was Different Yesterday is born out of the mutual admiration of two artists, and it reflects both their similarities and their differences. McElroy brings endless melodic motifs, versatility on multiple instruments and a special gift for texture, while Cook brings a penchant for intimate, sparingly constructed musical architecture. Everything was Different Yesterday sounds like both of the artists who made it — and like something else entirely.

CREDITS
Ben McElroy - cello, violin, viola, clarinet, found sounds, drone (benjaminmcelroy.com)
Dan Cook - piano, violin (aspotonthehill.com)
Mastering: Ian Hawgood (www.homenormal.com)
Artwork: Harriet Clare (www.harrietclare.com)

 With dance music innovations only coming from Africa for the last ten years, the West has become increasingly retro-maniacal, but when it sounds as good as John Shima's 90s indebted emotive techno for the Firescope flame keepers that's OK with me - it was a fine time to be young, alive & high. The Detroit revolution was inching across the world one print magazine article & wide eyed ravers' word of mouth tale at a time, just as the sound of bleeps leapt over the Sheffield hills on a similar mission to soundtrack the last great youth culture movement.

A psyche-glazed percussive trip should help get the week started right, so Y Bülbül has taken Yumurta's Istanbul drum transmissions given them a kosmische lick and some synth spittle & turned them into a fine collection of rhythmic mantras & brain tickling hip shakers for Pingipung.

Y Bülbül is back on the controls accompanied by Yumurta, a percussionist from Istanbul. Pingipung introduced the London based artist in 2020 with his psychedelic, synth-laden debut "Fever".

“Not One, Not Two" is based on a one-way transmission of improvised drum recordings from an industrial estate in Maslak, Istanbul to another one in Tottenham, London, where Y Bülbül laid down fragmented layers of bass, synths, guitars and field recordings over Yumurta’s singular drum takes. The result is a free-form deep listening album for fans of dub, ambient and kosmische music, where the groove and harmonies are mystically interwoven, yet somehow manage to stay on the brink of collapse. Although the sessions were nonconcurrent and scattered over two continents, the collaboration evokes scenes of a telepathic communion where individual perspectives, circumstances and stories are exchanged between the two.

Resembling Moondog, Holy Tongue or Luis Paniagua in the sense that they favour the raw over the polished, holistic presence over conceptual perfection and questions over answers, the duo’s focus on bare sounds and repetition guides the listener throughout the album. The ride cymbal opening the minimalistic “I’m This”, for instance, briskly disarms the listener who might have been looking for more traditional songwriting or production clues. There are plenty of immediately rewarding moments too in “Not One, Not Two” despite its restrained nature, like the organic acid bassline in the second half of “Maurin Quina”, the euphoric drum fills of “Big K” and the intoxicating groove of the hypnotic vibe-setter “Jah Oto”.

Bülbül is Turkish for a singing bird while Yumurta simply means egg. Which one is first? Who is to follow? It’s this enigmatic entanglement between the two artists which creates the lurking tension, emphasised by the Zen Kōan-like title. The beauty in this album is a peculiar one, and it certainly is a rabbit hole too. Dissonance is fluid as everything moves, and whenever two sounds collide, a third one emerges.

Y Bülbül - Bass, guitar, synth, trumpet, field recordings, production
Yumurta - Drums, percussion
Recorded in Istanbul and London between 2019 and 2021
Mastering by Doug Shearer
Album Design by Devin Shaffer
Distributed by Kompakt
© & ℗ 2022 Pingipung
This is Pingipung 076

For some reason the cultured sounds of classical music just sound better on a Sunday, so can I suggest you dust of the fine china for your morning brew, maybe pop your butter & jam into ramekins & find that silk dressing gown you bought on your Asian holiday. All set? Glide over to your stereo & press play on the graceful, unhurried ambient neoclassical strains of the new VLMV EP for Bigo & Twigetti.

Flora & Fauna’s original conception was to be one extended entire piece of ambient meditation music. After writing and re-writing, and recording and re-recording, each idea developed more and slowly it began to build into something slightly progressive. The thread that was kept throughout was not to conform to a normal or typical structure; Not to change sections, chords, verses, when it felt correct to do so - but to sit there in the moment and be still. The changes happen mostly for myself, rather than for my listener. Thus the meditative nature can get lost and explore itself rather than shift quicker for fear of being too monotonous or losing the listeners interest. All music, even ambient, has a predilection to retain interest, abiding by certain conformities, and I wanted to ignore any of the old rules and to do something without that narrative, but simply to change when I felt I wanted a change.


The EP was born as we left lockdowns, ventured outside and began to find a new normality. To see nature again. A lot of my pandemic time was spent alone writing Sing With Abandon, the EP’s full length predecessor, in my dark and cold studio Nice Weather for Airstrikes. Flora & Fauna was my hope-tinted re-emergence into the outside world. I had to add a little real crowd noise at the end of ‘Flora’ to really reinforce this - this was recorded at St Pancras Old Church, August 14 2015, at VLMV’s very first album launch show. It was the noise of like minded people gathered in a shared space to celebrate something hopeful, together. And I wanted to transmit that within Flora & Fauna in a very literal way.

Recording during lockdown wasn’t always possible, and unlike with Sing With Abandon where we could record individually, the Contrabasson and Cello had to be recorded by the players at their respective homes and sent on to me. I also worked hard trying to find and record a choir - we even discussed flying to Iceland and recording a choir for 1 day and flying back. It just wasn’t possible, and in the end I decided the only solution was to build a choir from scratch at home, asking a bunch of trusted friends to record Ooos and Aaahs at home, whatever their home recording capabilities were, and send it over for me to build into a comprehensive sampler. I’m very pleased with the result and have used it on pretty much everything since!

CREDITS
Songwriter: Peter David Lambrou
Published by Erased Tapes Music
Recorded, Mixed, Produced by Peter David Lambrou
Mastered by Aneek Thapar
Artwork by Jonathan Cenzual Burley
Cello on tracks 1, 2, 4, 5 by Fraser Bowles
Contrabassoon on track 5 by Thomas Stone

Vocals on tracks 3 & 6 by The VLMV Choir:
Anja Madhvani, S-J Mellin, Timothy Sutcliffe, Hannah Cartwright, Alice Louise Lacey, Charlie Barnes, Alex Simone, Emma Larcombe, Sara Zozaya and VLMV

Although most microgenres are just fairly pointless splinters of grander themes, I do like a good concept so I'm running with naturewave - a fusion of new age & ambient music with a vaporwave (discuss!) veneer, as I like its sonic genes. It certainly helps when the new LP from Kunisaki for naturewave enablers Liminal Garden is a perfectly rounded ambient cocktail and ideal weekend sofa soundtrack.

We are proud to feature this most special album by producer Kunisaki, who's been on our radar since his popular space-themed debut over on French dreampunk label Mobile Suits. The talented artist, who works as an astronomer, remains earthbound for “Everything it brings, everything it takes away”, a deeply personal album presented as an ambient walk through an autumnal forest.

Sunken in thought, the wanderer's mind circles around the transience of life and the unstoppable wear of time itself, while the soft chime of rustling leaves, the soothing chords of wind chimes and distant church bells are a constant presence on an otherwise solitary walk.

Tender, majestic pads paint a picture of colorful landscapes and wistful melodies sparkle like raindrops on an unresting river surface. The sunlight is filtered through yellowed birch leaves — a reminder of both decay and renewal, everything life takes away and everything it leaves us with in exchange along the way.

Elevating the album to another level is the eye-popping art of illustrator Christina Davies, who has mixed her traditional drawings with digital art much like the album combines field recordings and programmed music. Her colorful artwork graces not only the cover but also the individual track art.

The full album will be released in two weeks on Friday the 25th. And then later this year on a beautiful cassette (that's still being worked on right now).

CREDITS
All music by Kunisaki
Artwork created by Christina Davies
Tape design by LIMINAL GARDEN

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Support Kunisaki here:
kunisaki.bandcamp.com
twitter.com/0kunisaki

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Support Christina Davies here:
instagram.com/christinadavies42

Put some good natured funk, summertime jazz sparkle and mellow disco delight into your wintery weekend or dance around the pool in your swimsuits if you're in the southern hemisphere, with the classy vintage bells, bygone cinematic whistles & distinctive arrangements of Mocky and his West Coast warmed, extended edit begging grooves.

Following up last year’s orchestral album opus “Overtones For The Omniverse", Mocky has been releasing a number of upbeat and uplifting instrumental tracks and now collects them as "Goosebumps Per Minute, Volume 1" on classic vinyl and digital. Putting his vocals and songwriting to the side for this project, Mocky employs harps, horns, and 70’s analogue synths to provide a funky soundtrack that spreads a little of that California sunshine in the listeners direction. Built around Mocky's signature basslines and ensemble vocal arrangements that include his son Telly and his daughter Lulu, all recorded to his vintage ampex tape machine, Mocky did away with the normal metronomic BPM calculations in modern production and instead measured his music in "GPM" (the tempo at which music transmits Goosebumps) - and on top of a multitude of summery bass, drums & strings perfection, Vicky Farewell drops a blistering Rhodes solo on "Flutter" and Carlos Niño lends a percussive hand on the sublime "Iridescence”. Todd M. Simon handles the horn duties, and Liza Wallace infuses the dance tracks with live harp which recalls the floating approach of Alice Coltrane. Titles like "Refractions", "Wavelengths" or "Conduction" are hinting at a scientific approach to creating the conditions for "Goosebumps Per Minute" - his own calculus for the timing of how and when to hit and strum the things in his studio to make it raw & funky.

The songs were also inspired by his time hanging out at the Goldline bar in LA’s Highland Park. “Throughout the pandemic it was the one place I could go and sit outside and hear incredible music as I listened to my friend DJ Phonecalls playing from the Goldline's vinyl collection. He would be dropping these uplifting funk and disco cuts - and at the end of the night I would go home to my studio and make a track and upload it to my Bandcamp and the streaming services immediately ... It reminded me of my time in Tokyo's vinyl bars so "Goosebumps Per Minute" owes a lot to that inspiring culture as well“.

CREDITS:

Liza Wallace / Harp
Todd M. Simon / Horns
Carlos Niño / Percussion on Iridescence
Vicky Farewell / Fender Rhodes solo on Flutter
Molly Rogers / Strings on Conduction
Mocky / Drums, Bass, Piano, Synths, Percussion, Guitar, Flute Vocals by Mocky, Telly Salole and Lulu Salole
Group Vocals on Glide by Fi Campbell, Leslie Feist, Todd Dahlhoff

Produced by Mocky
Composed by Dominic” Mocky” Salole
Published by Heavy Sheet Music/Warner Chappell

Recorded at Ego’s Landing Studios, Los Angeles on an Ampex C440 tape machine
A1-A3 Mixed by Renaud Letang, A4-B5 Mixed by Ben Kane

Mastered by Emilie Daelemans
Executive Production by Jürgen Söder
Cover artwork by Rand Sevilla

P+C Heavy Sheet Productions 2022
Contact: management@mockyrecordings.com / www.mockyrecordings.com / www.heavysheet.com

 If you want to know what the afterlife sounds like as the echoes of your life flashing before you are still resonating - from early club adventures; the midlife Netflix years; the Caribbean cruise, on your way towards that funny light, then check out the disembodied ambient vibes of JJ+JS for Daisart.

All tracks written by JJ+JS
Mixed with Alex Talan
Mastered by Kassian Troyer
Lathe cut by Dubplates & Mastering
Cover art by Lowe Fehn
Back of sleeve by Craig Tattersall
Inner labels by J

I'm more inclined towards lubricating life's wheels with music, but occasionally I need to save on psychotherapy bills with something more poignant; scrape past the thorns of my first world bed of roses & spring clean some repressed emotions. In this case the hypnotic, aching beauty of Simon McCorry's cello motifs on his new LP for Polar Seas as they weave through the  cerebral synth shadows is just the therapeutic ticket & a stunning listen.

Written and recorded by Simon McCorry
Mastered by Ian Hawgood
Photography by Nikoletta Monyok

Simon McCorry returns to Polar Seas following his beautiful And Where Are You Really From? album released in March of 2021. Gorgeous and mournful compositions for cello and electronics.

Twice horn
Sworn to silence
Not quiet
But nothing
Limitless
Borderless
Skin flayed
Raw and contiguous

As the northern hemisphere skies are coloured grey, the cold winds taunt & the reservoirs fill once more, Strulgattu aided by the graceful strings of Meierkord & Messy Weekend Records, ruminate on the changing seasons in classic chill out fashion, helping to ease my start of week reticence & gently nudge me towards the inevitable workload.

When we make music, we always try to find a leitmotif. This album is about the four seasons and the weather, a popular topic when doing small talk with strangers, but also a subject for scientific observation in meteorology. When does the spring start? Is this really summertime? Is it autumn now? The album title “Ankomstkarta” (Arrival Map) refers to a map the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) use to define when different seasons arrive in Sweden, and the four songs are named after blog posts discussing this topic. The seasons are something we experience with our senses, and we also associate them with sounds. This is something we’ve tried to create here. Lately, this issue has become a disquieting matter. It has transformed from being a convenient way of getting in touch with people, to something that also concerns an existential dimension about our common future. This dark feature also comes from through in the songs featured here.

All songs written by: Haglunds, Meierkord & Persson
Produced by: Matts Persson
Mixed by: Magnus Haglunds
Mastered by: Henrik Gennert
Artwork by: Gabriel Wentz