A quick RSS feed friendly round up of this weeks daily recommendations if you don't want to follow our social media every day.

Ear & mind opening recordings from Sosena Gebre Eyesus playing the otherworldly begena or harp of David whilst gently singing Ethiopian orthodox hymns for Little Axe. Enchanting & mesmerising traditional East African music.

Anchored with a jazz funk vibe but reaching for the techno future stars, get your Friday brain wobble on & warm up for the weekend with the electronic fusion vibes of Ben Penn on Young Marco's aptly named Safe Trip label.

A DJ mix is like cooking, you need great source material & after 25 years Smalltown Supersound has some of the best ingredients in the game. Luckily Prins Thomas is the chef & he's cooked up the best DJ mix of 2018 over 220 minutes & 80 tracks. Michelin stars all round & a BIG happy 25th birthday to the label.

Most modern funk is a pale imitation but Washington's LUCKY BROWN BAND is carving out out his own 21st century fresh funk fusion. Check out his all inclusive, barrio rather than barrier, soul stirring LP on the always excellent Tramp Rec.

Another stunning avant pop LP out of Brazil from Anelis Assumpção for Scubidu Music. Leftfield percussion, oddball arrangements, sweet vocals with attitude, elements of dub, MPB, jazz, electronica & Brazil's Afro heritage expertly fused into one big fusion Feijoada.

Serene yet anchored by lyrical weight the new LP by Same Waves for Japan's flau is an intriguing, stylistically fluctuating, electronic acoustic fusion with surreal jazz, Americana & modern compositional cameos from crack Chicago musicians popping up in its vocal pop dreaminess.

Stretched almost to breaking point, the fragile folk & hazy Americana sounds of Portland's Lisa/Liza for Orindal Records have an underlying strength and an undeniable beauty.

One for the Friday funksters as this politically & socially charged, Afro soul, funk, Caribbean & jazz fused musical gem by the Yoruba Singers gets a welcome reissue by the nice people at Cultures of Soul. No bad tunes, just drop the needle and follow your hips.

If you only buy one jazz compilation this year then make it World Jazz Grooves on BBE Music compiled by diligent, dust defying, dapper, deep digging dons If Music's JC & Victor Kiswell.

Another fantastic LP from Hive Mind Records as they present a taste of Morocco's Moulay Ahmed El Hassani's self released & self played material. Synths & drum machines meet native instruments on this open minded mid-Atlas folk meets Rai & Chaabi, electronic fusion. A wonderful listen.

A vaguely disquieting but not troubling air mingles with the ambient ether and cosmic intent of Portland's Post Moves as he fuses his pedal steel guitar, effects, field recordings & synths to fine effect for Lobby Art

It's nice to see my favourite mattress friendly, instrumental folksters from Philadelphia, Hour, back so soon with a new release for Lily Tapes & Discs. A languid lament and a fine lazy, hazy contemplative start to the week.

From it's ancient history to today's modern fusions folk music is a broad church. To try and make some sense of this deceptively simple sounding term we've thrown together a brief outline of, largely Western, folk history and its evolution.
If you're looking for an absolute or purist definition of folk music then you won't find it here - in fact it's debatable if one even exists.

Carry on reading though and you will find facts, historical context & well educated speculation about the development of folk music although, more often than not, it will (hopefully) encourage debate and probably raise as many questions as it answers. We would like to think though it will serve as a basic primer, food for thought and inspiration for further reading and investigation.

Slow Folk is the name we've coined for our latest playlist to accompany this article. It's a respectful, admittedly very modern and  open minded trawl through the folk genre in it's many forms and guises.  Although we could have gone way back in time due to some wonderful archive recordings (some links later), the recording quality is  quite naturally, given the technology available at the times, pretty awful.

As it is pretty much impossible to design a coherent playlist with such wildly fluctuating recording qualities please find a nice selection of well recorded, nicely sequenced, more modern folk tunes of various descriptions for an altogether more pleasant, modern listening experience.

Keep you eyes on the playlist as we will update it over time. As well as Spotify you can also listen to it on Apple Music, Youtube and Deezer.

Tradition and roots are the shoulders that we and most musical genres stand on but we feel it is equally important to be present in the new millennium. Folk music is no exception. Bob Dylan will back us up:

Folk is the music of the people and rooted in local tradition. Folk music was hummed in caves and played in camps, villages and conurbations around the world just as soon as music developed in a region. It predates literacy, recorded history and even speech. More than likely its earliest origin was the human voice imitating the sounds of nature and cave life.

Folk music is part of the great oral tradition. Songs were composed by the local musical maverick and consequently passed down through the generations by word of mouth. It was transported to other regions by wandering minstrels, migrant workers and those lucky enough to leave their village. In the good old days there weren't a multitude of entertainment options so story tellers, entertainers and singers got a wide and attentive audience. Songs and stories were heard multiple times, remembered then retold  around camp fires, meeting places and in living quarters far and wide.

Original composers would have been forgotten over time if in fact they were ever truly recognised. Communication was limited and slow - a horse pace if you were lucky but more likely a walking pace, dictated by people's daily needs rather than any desire to spread music to a wider audience. Folk music, like society was localised and no early composers, certainly static ones - wandering ones slightly less so, would have become popular enough to have their fame spread much further than the next town or village.

With no sheet music, not to mention most poor people's inability to read and write, a massive unintentional game of Chinese whispers would have taken hold. Words to songs would have been misheard, forgotten and changed unintentionally, verses added or subtracted on a whim and songs personalised. As with most creative endeavour some songs would have inspired further original compositions, others would have just been plain plagiarised for personal financial gain or reasons of vanity.

Music has actually been notated since 2000 BC, the eariest examples were found in Iraq and chiselled on tablets. It was first printed in the West in 1457 but it wasn't until the 18th century that sheet music was printed on any meaningful scale and distributed, a real game changer. Until this time most documented music was to be found in the  personal manuscripts of educated musicians. Education meant money and because it was only the wealthy doing the documenting a lot of the music would have been religious and classic in nature. Folk music, due to it's distance from the church and the pious elites, largely retained more earthy, mundane and secular themes.

Societal values and views always loomed large over folk. Was music in a region widely enjoyed? Was it encouraged or seen as a threat by the local ruler? Mostly this went in waves dependent on the paranoia or benevolence of the ruling classes and quite often an invading army. The recent Taliban crack down on Arabic folk music in some parts of the Muslim is a stark reminder of this. Cultural imperialism would have been rife with soldiers bringing their own songs & styles, sometimes with intent to  systematically replace local ones in an effort to culturally, as well as physically, dominate a new territory. More often, I'm guessing, a cultural cross polination took place with elements of two folk styles combining into new hybrids or maybe exposure to a new style hastening development in the other, inspired by new instruments, vocal styles or compositional ideas.

Music gatherings have always been seen as a potential meeting place for subversives and probably rightly so. Even if revolutionary meetings weren't planned alcohol always emboldens talk of dissatisfaction and dreams of change. Musicians have often been more radical and free thinking or politically and socially questioning than your average Joe. Lyrics in songs, poems and books have long cocked a snoot at invaders and ruling classes In fact the very term "cock a snoot" dates back to the eighteenth century but that certainly wasn't the starting date for protest lyrics. More recent examples can be found in Brazil's Tropicalia movement and throughout the history of black music in the twentieth century. During various periods of peace then attentions would perhaps have changed to more benign matters - affairs of the heart or making a living.

What was a cultures perception of musicians? Were they treated with reverence for their abilities or  suspicion? Free thinking mavericks and bohemians were sometimes reviled, mistrusted or at best ignored by many normal folk, in much the same way as the old lady with herbal knowledge in the forest hut that you went to as a last resort with a family illness or unplanned pregnancy. Western religions & their musical elitism were culpable for much of this suspicion and it is notable that folk music played a more integral part in many economically poorer but spiritual equal religious beliefs around the world.

How rich was a society? Could people afford instruments or did they have to make their own? Certainly wooden wind instruments play a large part in folk history. Whistles, flutes, the didgeridoo and hand made recorders litter folk music throughout the age and thank heavens for conveniently hollowed bamboo in more tropical climates. A handful of lucky musicians would have found patronage by the wealthy in need of entertainment, a very few would have managed to support themselves through their art but the majority of folk musicians were composing and singing songs whilst in the fields. All the manual labour, more familiar with historical living, wouldn't have left much time to be creative and if you did find time you were probably singing about how tired you were or why you never had enough food in winter.

Geography is another interesting factor in the development of folk music. Apart from obvious references to local physical geography in hotter climes musicians would have been practising outdoors for more of the year and henceforth getting more listeners. People would have been stopping as they were passing to work, travelling through a village or even listening unintentionally from afar as they worked. Soundwaves weren't being obstructed by a yurt, wig wam, hut or igloo's walls and people wouldn't have been in a hurry to get inside before they got frostbite or a soaking. Working songs were more likely to be sung in the sun than in the rain or cold. Is this why African music is so much richer than Greenlands? The climate is certainly why Norwegian folk is more melancholic than it's Senegalese counterparts.

Thankfully, folk music being of the people, their  experiences and geography, means it is consequently as rich and varied as people and the planet are. Bamboo flutes in Asia, bagpipes in Scotland, drums in Africa, stringed instruments in Egypt. Peacefuly songs in Bhutan and many a tale telling of war in Europe. As humanity started in Africa we can at least say with some certainty that is where folk music originated. As soon as music left the motherland it rapidly adapted to represent it's new surroundings, the character of those travellers that transported it and the long term residents of its new homes. Consequently folk music is intrinsically linked to cultural identity.

So the nearest you are going to get to a definition of folk music from me is that it is music that is sung and played by the people. Music that originally mimicked the natural sounds of people's surroundings but then evolved with the advent of language into a sung oral tradition detailing everyday life, it's ups and downs and universal themes - love, loss, birth, death, sun, rain, hard times, good times, peace, war, power, subservience, harvest, famine, hard toil and life's pleasures, all given a location based twist and it hasn't stopped evolving yet. Welcome to the world of folk music.

The term folklore was coined by an English antiquarian William Thoms in 1846. Folklore condensed various other terms of the time like "popular literature" or "popular antiquities". Folk song, folk tales and folk dance are all extensions of folklore which was in itself derived from the German expression, volk, coined 50 years earlier and meaning "the people as a whole". After happily existing for thousands of years Folk Music now had a name. Modern Folk was born and right from it's linguistic inception it was rightly associated with the lower classes as opposed to the classical music entertaining the palaces and moneyed classes.

There was a time not so long ago when folk, like rock or pop would have been sufficient to describe a large swathe of music but now we insist on multiple sub-genres so let's briefly looks at a few of these folk derivatives. The sub-title of the accompanying playlist to this article goes: "A laid back and open minded look at the world of traditional/indie/acid folk,  Americana, singer songwriters, cosmic blues, global roots & electro acoustic fusions." It might seem like a wide ranging collection of genres but to be honest there really there isn't a lot of difference. It's all a load of old folk and as good a place as any to start.

Traditional folk music is the most popular and recognised form of folk music wherever you might be. It is those songs that have become ubiquitous through repetition and repeated cover versions. Often traditional folk has antiquated subject matter or if new songs then bygone themes and compositions that feature the most traditional folk music song structures and the classic instruments like the talking drum in West Africa, Celtic harp or siku, the Andean pan flute. Get a small glimpse by checking the Calypso sound of Lord Invader's "Brown Girl in the Ring" or Pete Seeger's, controversial today, "Yankee Doodle" or the Indonesian classic "Ayo Mama". If you've got a few months to spare then head over to Smithsonian Folk Ways or the archived recordngs of Alan Lomax, both incredible resources of musical times gone by..

This is one of those sub-genres beloved of modern music journalists. Arising sometime in the 1990s to describe the music created by restless indie rock musicians who were looking to diversify their sounds. Indie folk took the Western folk traditions, mostly acoustic guitar led it must be said and added contemporary instrumentation, new arrangements and fresh lyrical content. After the decline of acid folk this "new" style of music was a welcome breath of fresh air and helped revive a genre that had stylistically stagnated in the late 70's and 80's, arguably a low point for post war Western folk music. Say a big thank you to the likes of Will Oldham and Ani DiFranco.

This sub-genre is personal favourite due to my fondness of the 60's & 70's psychedelic movement. Originating in the 1960s it still remained largely acoustic but threw in, thanks to various communication advances, some instruments & tropes more familiar with other far flung folk traditions like the sitar and the drone. It contemporized the lyrics, in the great folk tradition, to encompass common themes of the time - the Vietnam war, feminism, drug taking, alternative thinking and living. Cross pollination with other genres and the emerging electronic scene all of a sudden weren't taboo and possibilities like incorporating tape loops, guitar pedals or effects to give that hazy psychedelic vibe were explored. Cross pollination with other genres was rife, epitomised by the Laurel Canyon (now almost a genre in its own right) scene where folk met rock, jazz, world music, psychedelia and the blues, to legendary effect. I mean Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash were neighbours and lived down the road from Jim Morrison, Carole King and Frank Zappa to name just a few.

The genre unfortunately died off with the decline of the psychedelic movement in the 70's and the rise of harder rock but has been a massive influence on micro scenes and independent artists in the following decades to this day and no doubt in the future.

This is simply a term to describe folkloric music, in our case, but in fact anything with an American heritage. Sub-genres don't get much broader and looser than this. To keep it brief it can and does encompass country, bluegrass, blues, American primitive guitar playing, R&B & rock not to mention grits, cowboys and Jack Daniels, all three of which have cropped up more than their fair share in folk music lyrics. Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" anyone?

OK I made this sub-genre up. Here at The Slow Music Movement we love a bit of fusion and the word cosmic has all sorts of juicy psychedelic allusions not to mention referencing the German Kosmische scene and conveys a generally spaced out extra dimensional creative vision. What's not to like? Check out some Bodhi Cheetha's Boogie Blues or Fink's "Cold Feet" that we included in the playlist to get the idea.

What can I say about the blues? Already briefly mentioned above as connected to Americana, but undoubtedly a genre in it's own right. Originally hailing from Africa where its roots have been revealed in recent years by the global popularity of desert blues groups like Tinariwen & artists like Mali's, Ali Farka Touré. The blues first started appearing or being named as such at the start of the 20th century. If folk music is the people's music then the blues is quintessential folk music. It laid bare the African American experience in the south of America with it's orally transmitted work songs, spirituals, tales of enduring hardship, discrimination, abuse as well as timeless universal themes. Originally played on the most basic of instruments out of economic necessity Blues is about as folk as folk music gets and, as the root of so much of 20th century music - jazz, soul and rock and roll, certainly the most influential folk music from a contemporary music viewpoint. If you need a reminder then take a quick listen to some Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee or the legendary Robert Johnson.

Folk, obviously for an English word, normally refers to the traditional western strains of folkloric music but as previously discussed folk music hails from every corner of the world. Wherever there is music there is folk music. To emphasise this, though in retrospect not nearly enough (yet), we've included music from Africa, South America, the Middle East, Asia  & various global fusions in the playlist. Global roots, indigenous, folkloric, world music, call it what you will most of modern music today the world over is rooted in the local people's music or folk music of centuries gone by. Check out some Paco De Lucia, Sivuca, or Le Trio Joubran, just the tip of the world's biggest musical iceberg

Folktronica or electro acoustic golk is perhaps going to be the most contentious addition to the article and the playlist. Folk music aficionados, in our experience, often love tradition and in many quarters are still resistant to change. Any deviation from those age old acoustic instruments, familiar arrangements and vocal delivery can often be met with resistance, scepticism and sometimes outright hostility. Just ask Bob Dylan when he went electric.

Well this is 2018 and "the times are a changing". Since the 80's music technology has become affordable, portable and ubiquitous and, relatively speaking, this is just the start. Just you wait for the brain wave controlled music generator headset that is probably only ten years down the line.

You also can't tell me that a wandering minstrel of yore wouldn't have welcomed a portable amplifier, a drum machine and some virtual harp or lyre VST  instruments to imitate an ensemble without the time and expense of hiring, rehearsing and transporting a group of unreliable, heavy drinking musicians? Of course they would! Slowly but surely modern folk musicians have been embracing and incorporating electronic elements since the 60s and it's not going to stop here.

Traditional instruments and songs are being fused with field recordings, samples, effects and keyboards. Unashamedly electronic artists are making entirely electronic backing tracks with folk vocals to highlight their concerns about society, the environment and injustice. Modern effects are being thrown into the mix by more acoustic leaning musicians to contemporize traditional sounds and grab the interest of a younger generation. If you want a taste then check out some Beta Band and Little Dragon or hear what the Gotan Project did to tango or Ojos De Brujo did to Flamenco.

If folk music is of the people, by the people and representative of society and location then have a quick think about modern living. Most of humanity live in cities, in the more developed nations we work with computers, stare at screens during our commute then stare at connected devices to relax in the evenings. Folk music has constantly evolved ever since the cave dwellers were humming in time to the sounds of nature. Folk will naturally adapt to represent today's modern lifestyles although I'm sure that there will be no shortage of folk musicians living quieter lives in rural situations and singing about rosy cheeked lasses and mighty storms for quite some time to come.

To keep the peace, in this transitional period for folk music, we've focussed mostly on artists that are fusing the old and the new, often it seems with stringed instruments. We couldn't resist being slightly contrary though so we've thrown in a couple of entirely electronic tracks. See if you think they sound out of place? It's the future don't you know.

British Library archive of World & Traditional Music - An amazing resource of global folkloric music from everywhere from the Uralic regions & Syriac Liturgican music to Ugandan traditional via recordings from Guinea, Scotland & Nepal not to mention interviews with various ethnomusicologists. They've got the whole world covered but obviously going deeper into the English folk heritage.

Alan Lomax Archive - The dedication of Alan Lomax can't be overstated as he travelled the world for 50 years recording everything as he went. Music from Azerbaijan, Guadeloupe & Wales sits next to sessions from Blues legend Muddy Waters & folk hero Woody Guthrie.

International Library of African Music - The greatest repository of sub Sahararn African music in the world apparently with recordings dating back to 1929.

Smithsonian Folkways - Non profit record label of the Smithsonian Institute, the national musem of the United States. Mindblowing archives of folk & traditional music history from around the world.

Feel free to add any other archives you feel important in the comments section and I will add them over time.

A shining light in the desert blues stampede of recent times, in fact anytime, has just dropped. Check out the soundtrack to the "Saharan acid Western" Zerzura. Electric guitar led, often ambient, occasionally psychedelic, always cinematic, evocative desert musings from Ahmoudou Madassane on Sahel Sounds.

Time travel without moving propelled by the music speaks louder than words, purple hazed, multi-dimensional, cosmic acoustic synth opera of the new, now Lisbon based, Jacco Gardner LP on Full Time Hobby.

Shoegaze engineered, electric powered, instrumentally navigated, guitar driven cosmic sounds with a Krautrock cup holder. I missed it the first time but very happy to catch the second wind of Mark Peters Innerland LP on Sonic Cathedral

More cultured electronic music today this time with a warily optimistic, dreamy electro pop flavour courtesy of Shelf Nunny on the every excellent Hush Hush Records out of Seattle.

Talk about on a roll, D E E P L E A R N I N G comes through with his second excellent LP in less than six months. This time a slightly less distant but equally as moving undulating ambient electronic escapade with hints of the new age of New Age & positive cosmic vibes to spare for his excellently named Salmon Universe label..

"I first met Ronald when he was dancing, on his own, on an empty dance floor, playing air percussion…" Insanely listenable, home recorded on 4 track, soul jazz fusion from 80's Holland by Ronald Langestraat on new label South of North.

It's been a while since I recommended a jazz LP but the minimally inclined, largely laid back sounds of the new Andrew Cyrille trio LP for ECM Records has a spacious, somehow suitably Sunday vibe to it. A great LP from the veteran drummer.

The debut album from promising talent and matter of fact singer of songs & strummer of guitar Em Marshall is a fine Saturday listen. Laid back, familiar sounding yet individual indie folk music.

Well medicated musical schizophrenia from Insólito UniVerso & their wonderful new album of jaunty Venezuelan folkloric roots expertly intertwined with more melancholic psyched jazz rock, contemporary compositions and electronic fusion for Colectivo Futuro.

Multi-dimensional ambient dub techno from Mono Peninsula. A deeply immersive, hypnotic, field recording iced, throbbing soundscape for Berlin's ROHS!. Headphones recommended.

Some of that old style futuristic, played live in a legendary studio, one take, jazz soaked, soul stroked, strings, things & positive cosmic vibes for troubled times from Mocky & a whole host of my favourite musicians. A wonderful listen.

Trying to make sense of the growing business, media & political sociopathy of the 21st century Reto A Ichi (Prefuse73) has crafted an immersive, moving, electronic cinematic opus for !K7 Records reflecting the simultaneous darkness, light, uncertainty & surety afflicting & growing in us all.

Start your week with some sonic optimism courtesy of Brooklyn's Beast (Koen Holtkamp)& his new LP for Thrill Jockey Records. A deceptively simple sounding, synth led, electro acoustic, spirit raising silver lining of layered minimalism.

Inspired digging from Brisbane's Bedroom Suck who have kindly revived some obscure, dated yet timeless, eclectic Antipodean ambient experiments enabled by the 80's electronic music technology democratisation & which still sound good on a wet Sunday in 2018.

A deep immersive show this week one for the headphones. Lots of ambient tropes, submerged soul jazz flavours, hard to pin down electronic fusions with a bit of minimal, dub techno and Krautrock thrown in for good measure.

Lapalux - Between (Brainfeeder)
Mono Peninsula - Mud (ROHS!)
Colorist - When The Time is Right (Serein)
BEAST - For Otto (Thrill Jockey)
Cave - ShaSha (Drag City)
Mocky - Space Strut (Self Released)
Yoruba Singers - Fighting For Survival (Cultures of Soul promo)
Yoshinori Hayashi - Bit of Garden (Smalltown Supersound)
The Jack Moves - Money Clouds (Star Creature)
SHIGETO - Detroit Part II (Ghostly International)
Emil Abramyan - Flightplan, Francis Harris Reform (Kingdoms)

Going nowhere fast & subsequently sounding great for a lazy weekend is the indie folk, acoustic guitar noodling of Sweden's Prins Emanuel for MUSIC FOR DREAMS. Check his excellent previous LP for something livelier but equally listenable.

Check out the pleasingly intense, Chicago jazz rooted, electronically conjoined ambient Krautrocking, listenably experimental, top quality fusion from Colorlist on their new LP for Serein

A welcome reminder for this slice of modern throwback soul from The Jack Moves that actually sounds as good as its original inspirations for Chicago's ever dependable Star Creature Universal Vibrations label.

With Polish polish Bartosz Kruczyński turns up the atmospherics to 11 and showcases his Balearic, ambient, minimal, dub & techno work for TVP Kultura. A great laid back listen for Emotional Response.

Get into the Tuesday groove with the Mediterranean birthed, cosmic jazz funk sounds of Pellegrino on Early Sounds Recordings. Hopefully the digital will get a release soon!?

Synthwave, chillwave, vapourwave, royalwave, Mexicanwave, surfingwave, longitudinalwave and all sorts of other waves, Boxcutter is still delivering every time for more years than I care to remember in the world of underground, always quality, electronic music.

New LPs by The Green Kingdom are always welcome and the new one is a Sunday suitable stroll through the varied folk guitar, ambient and electro acoustic predilections of this Michigan based artist on Rusted Tone Recordings.

There's been some great West coast beat releases recently & Samurai Guru's laid back, interstellar lounging, jazz iced, spaced out future hop excursion for Alpha Pup Records is the pick of the bunch for me.

Oooozing Brisbane's blue skies the new Sampology & crew EP is chock full of sunshine boogie, soul & jazz licks, loose live house vibes & perfect to launch into the weekend with.

I'm really enjoying the new Tommy Guerrero album. Full of tropically funktified, Afro soul searching, jazz iced vibes and his trade marked simple but hypnotic grooves on Too Good Records.

Cheerfully ignoring structural norms Yoshinori Hayashi carves out his own genre defying, jazz checking, quirkily arranged, played, splayed, frayed, accessibly far out electronic experimentalism for Smalltown Supersound.

Great new age of New Age vibes with attitude from Takou on EM Records Osaka Japan. Floating ethereal electronic fusion designed to connect with your auditory cortex rather than just wash over it harmlessly.

A lot of fine downtempo electronica rubs shoulders with classical piano and harp, tonal ambience, laid back soul and cosmic folk. Throw in the sounds of Morocco, deep laid back UK bassline house, Balearic broken beats and some cinematic psychedelic funk and it's another great slow music mix.

SineRider - Into the Distance (Sound in Silence)
James Heather - And She Came Home, Mary Lattimore Rework (Ninja Tune)
Kenny Segal - Every Morning (Ruby Yacht)
Niels Broos - It Rains (Alpha Pup)
Samurai Guru - What's Inside (Alpha Pup)
Cosmic Analog Ensemble - Un Grand Tout (MyBags)
Thundercat - King of the Hill feat. BADBADNOTGOOD (Brainfeeder)
Bitchin' Bajas & Bonnie Prince Billy - May Life Throw You a Pleasant Curve (Drag City)
IE - Moon Show (Moon Glyph)
Salvatore Cordova - The Mountain (Finest Ego)
Takeleave - Calibu (Project Mooncircle)
Anchorsong - Serendepity (Tru Thoughts)
Moulay Ahmed El Hassani - Li Nssak Nssah (Hive Mind promo)
Steve Spacek - Gimmi Da Love (OnLoop)
Mr. Mitch - Show Me (Gobstopper)

Weekend primed, whimsical & wobbly, tempo variable, memory jogging, dub and ethno tickled electronic music with a bit of Balearic cheese & smooth sax thrown in for good measure from Common Series.

Fresh and pleasingly twisted urban music from Dallas. Check out the soulful, micro dosed, sounds & wobbly beats of Liv.e & then check out her FRANK ep straight after.

A mind blowing compilation of underground 1970's music from Venezuela, blending rock, folkloric, psychedelic, electronic, funk, jazz & Latin rhythms into incredible cosmic fusions. Definitely one of my compilations of the year from Soul Jazz Records (Official Page)

My favourite finger licking guitar picking twin brothers, East of the Valley Blues are back with an epic duet of stylistically meandering, mesmerising, American primitive playing for Astral Spirits.

Let the field recorded sounds of nature, gentle synth washes & soothing drones of Gallery Six's latest, all too short, release from Halifax ambient outpost Hibernate Recordings ease your start of working week pain.

Music with strings & classical piano somehow seems more appropriate on a Sunday. Couple it with seriously crafted electronics & a genuine narrative, in this case one man's battle with cancer & I'm totally sold. Press play early in the day on the new Kasper Bjørke LP for Kompakt Records it's two hours long.

Congratulations to Mexican Summer on hitting ten years in fine style & what better way to celebrate than with unreleased music from the likes of Ariel Pink, Dungen, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma & a whole host of other great artists. Here's to another ten.

With a nod to the dance music pioneers, New Zealand's Julien dyne takes the baton with aplomb & launches his own distinctive blend of electronic soul, jazz, tropical dance music futurism for Soundway Records. Fresh & one of the dance music LPs of this year.

Soothing, optimistically melancholic, electro-acoustic, guitar led sounds from Enno Voss on Unperceived Records. Ideal for wondering where the summer went.

Coming through like Jan Hammer with a funk injection check out the 80's cinematic analog boogie sounds on the new Ourra LP on the ever reliable Star Creature Universal Vibrations. Killer album.

An incredible LP of skittering, frenetic but oddly not propulsive percussion under a shifting landscape of floating, very listenable, even relaxing, avant-garde electro acoustic jazz. Contradictory, indefinable & pretty much unique new music from Eli Keszler for Shelter Press.

If you're going to cover a tune do it for love not money, make it your own and do it well. Carla dal Forno does all three in her own stripped back post punk, minimal pop way.

The jazz tickled, drone enabled, vintage Italian minimal & ambient sounds of Andreolina, kindly reissued by Aguirre Records, is hitting the Sunday sweet spot.

A real mixed bag this week from the sounds of Africa to percussive ambient via cosmic electronica, glitch scapes, Palestinian oud playing brothers, folk covers of funk classics to indie folk pop and all sorts of atmospheric piano mutations.

Auntie Flo - Kampala (Brownswood)
Roman Flugel - Theme II (ESP Institute promo)
Shida Shahabi - Pretty In Plums (130701)
Skinshape - After Midnight (Lewis Recordings promo)
Mutual Benefit - Shedding Skin (Transgressive)
The Band of Love - Pick Up The Pieces (Mighty Village)
Le Trio Joubran - More Than Once (Cooking Vinyl)
Carmel - 12 Hours (Lobster Theremin)
Carla dal Forno - Give Me Back My Man (Self Released)
Lars Jakob Rudjord - Horisont, Kid Koala rmx (frylyd)
Chapelier Fou + German Suplex - Hands (Ici D'ailleurs)
Julien Dyne - Teal (Soundway)
Kalaha - Cape Star (Rump Recordings)
Auntie Flo - Nobody Said It Would Be Easy (Brownswood)

Put a strange smile on your face with the soul fueled, Frankenstein synth driven, philosophically popping, art funk fusing oddball sounds of Preacherman. Another winner from Luaka Bop

My favourite Palestinian oud playing brothers, Le Trio Joubran, are back with a new album of tasteful, evocative Middle Eastern fusion for Cooking Vinyl & even Roger Waters makes a cameo! It's a powerful and moving LP.

If you're in need of an audio head massage then check out this reissue on Tompkins Square of Rick Deitrick's desert island imagining, water inspired, soothing American primitive, guitar picking. An incredibly beautiful album.

The world of gnawa, apart from the odd foray, has always been just outside my radar as I've focused on the African sounds further south but I've now found my favourite artist. Check out the Moroccan soul music of Majid Bekkas on IGLOO Records & then go through his LPs one by one.

Nice to see Hans-Joachim Roedelius still kicking it to great effect, this time teaming up again with Christoph H. Mueller to create this restless yet reassuring stylistically morphing but always engaging, vivid electronic journey for Groenland Records.

Perfect Sunday listening and a poignant, wonderfully curated compilation from Dronarivm who have pulled together some of the finest names in electroacoustic, drone, ambient and modern compositional music with all proceeds going to a fine cause.

Check this oddly seductive musical cocktail on Born Bad Records as Cyril Cyril mix a raw desert blues percussive base with a pleasingly unhinged psychedelic pastis, stir in some Swiss French spoken pop and add a bluegrass cherry for good measure.

All of our daily recommendations in one weekly, RSS feed friendly, round-up:

It's safe to say that Phillip Henry is a bona fide slide guitar maestro and this LP distilling ten years of travelling, collaborating & learning is an exercise in focus, musical purity and life's simple joys.

Have a freaky Friday with the nothing short of amazing acid folk rock sounds of Japan's Kikagaku Moyo/幾何学模様 on Guruguru Brain. They're on a 35 US/Europe tour in Autumn as well :)

If you want something breezy & easy check out the lazy, hazy, psyched, dream pop of SCHIZO FUN ADDICT & their aptly entitled new LP El Shoegaze Bossa Nova on Sugarbush Records. A great listen start to finish.

Loving the genuinely unique voice & compositional approach of Wizard Apprentice & her fresh DIY fusion of thoughtful lyrics and indie folk pop wrapped up in a minimal electronic body on RATSKIN Records.

Micro dose your Tuesday with the tropical tinged, mildly odd yet warmly welcoming sounds of Clan Caimán and their souped up kalimbas, soporific surf sounds, psychedelic electro exotica and sleepy percussion on EM Records Osaka Japan

Start your Monday with a 360 spin & a soul boy shimmy to the spaced out synths, broken beats and jazz powered, funktified future fusion of the great new Fourth Kind (Marc Mac) LP.

Short, sweet and on repeat. Check out the electronically blessed, Sunday suitable, piano rooted, neoclassical, ambient sounds of Klangriket (aka Fabian Rosenberg) for piano and coffee records. Well recommended.

Lots of flat out ambient, soundscaping, modern composition and drones to start before heading into some laid back beats then lurching into Afro psychedelic electronic fusion territory and ending on a more traditional soulful and Afro funk vibe.

Maarja Nuut & Ruum - Kuud Kuulama (130701)
Geir Sundstøl - Læms (Hubro promo)
Hannu Karjalainen - Sermon To The Birds (Kingdoms promo)
Dakota Suite, Dag Rosenqvist & Emanuele Errante - Falling Apart in Stages (Karaoke Kalk)
Allysha Joy - Akala (Gondwana)
Moo Latte - Needless (Self Release)
Lunch Money - Flashing Neon Signz (None More)
CYRIL CYRIL - La Ville (Born Bad)
Samuel Hällkvist - Kenja feat. Mindjuggler (Hällkvist)
Moontribe - Osmium (Fortuna)
Idan Amos - Mate (Shika Shika)
Jimmy Smith - I'm Going To Love You Just a Little Bit More Babe (Mr. Bongo)
Gyedu-Blay Ambolley - Fa No Dem Ara (Mr. Bongo)
Tunde Mabadu - Viva Disco, instrumental (Mr. Bongo)

All of our daily recommendations in one weekly, RSS feed friendly, round-up:

On repeat this morning is the evocative oriental folk, jazz, electronic soundscape fusion of Koreas's Sungjae Song on ECM Records.

Lose yourself this weekend with Moontribe as he/she/they present the cosmic sounds of the African diaspora past, present & time concepts/ dimensions as yet unknown with this mesmerizing, hypnosis inducing percussive suite for Fortuna Records.

I'm overjoyed to have finally picked up on the warm, whimsical, worldly, wobbly, weirdy, wordy, winking, wayward jazz poetry of the wonderfully named Alabaster dePlume on Lost Map

I'm unfailingly happy to welcome Dakota Suite LPs into the world and the latest, fittingly collaborative effort, musing on those that you love and "who save you from being less than you otherwise would have been" is no exception. Beautifully melancholy, ambient, post (sofa) rock from Karaoke Kalk.

Check out the utterly charming, nicely orchestral, gently electronically kissed, indie folk pop of Mutual Benefit on Transgressive. Lovely stuff.

Forget the shower and a coffee, start your week in an ayahuasca addled, percussively charged, bass powered, Amazonian tribal haze with the sounds of Dengue Dengue Dengue courtesy On the Corner.

Polish your crystals, get your joss sticks fired up and go all new age of New Age with the meditative, all is love, ambient electronic sounds of John Carroll Kirby. Sunday healing music on Leaving Records.

All of our daily recommendations in one RSS feed friendly round-up:

The very European Grand River invites us into her world of subtly edgy, occasionally dramatic, often cinematic, inventively sculpted, creatively sound sourced, soul stirring, ambient electronica on Spazio Disponibile.

Despite revealing one of my DJ secret weapons, Esa's "A Muto" I suggest you funk up your Friday with the Rumba, Bikutsi & Soukous sounds of 80's Paris. Pan African dancefloor delights start to finish. Big up Nouvelle Ambiance for digging deep & sharing.

Great ambient adventures, dreamy textures & nice vibes over a range of beat excursions ranging from the catatonic to frenetic IDM courtesy of Noriaki Okamoto for Japan's White Paddy Mountain.

Another welcome addition to the new wave of global musicians making jazz interesting again is South Africa's (Shane Cooper driven) Mabuta and their excellent, astrally inclined, stylistically meandering new LP.

Currently digging into the Mårble back catalogue & having my mind blown by his last LP for Not Not Fun Records. Field recordings, ambient, spiritual jazz, ethno explorations, electronic experimentalism & more in one big old beguiling fusion. Just check it.

Ease your way into the week with the day dream inducing ambient soundscapery and reality suspending ethereal beats of Knivtid on Purlieu Recordings. Monday can be your friend.

Strength in numbers & through co-operation, not to mention perfect Sunday listening, as two of my favourite labels Eilean Rec. & Dauw pool resources & bring their artists together to produce 2 great albums of contemplative electro-acoustic ambient assistance.

Horizontal, ambient and neo-classical vibes kick the show off before things get a bit weird with some far outernational jazz fusion before some psychedelic dub and Balearic vibes normalize things just in time for some Afrofuturism and a deep lazy house finale.

Ekin Fil - Maps (The Helen Scarsdale Agency)
Long Arm - Darkly (Project Mooncircle promo)
Helios - Upward Beside The Gale (Ghostly International)
Møster! - Mystere (Hubro)
Marble - Para La Olimpiada (Not Not Fun)
Zerox Dreamflesh - Squids Can Fly (Efficient Space)
Nostrum Grocers - Where'ing Those Flowers (Alpha Pup)
Lexx/Open Space feat. Harriet Brown - Hot Weather (Phantom Island)
Teleseen - Bronze by Gold (The Slow Music Movement)
Jlin - Blue i (Planet Mu)
Vakula - New Sensations (Apollo)
DJ Normal 4 - Aeo feat. Aenx, Rhythm Mix (Second Circle)
Autre - Frigo (ESP Institute)

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Test Card was responsible for the first release on The Slow Music Movement record label so we thought we'd interview him and find out a bit more about the man behind the music. First off press play on his wonderful EP and then get reading.

So Lee first off it's a pleasure to work with you and have you kick start the TSMM record label with a great big super chilled Balearic bang - you've got the label off to a wonderful start.

Thank you very much. I'm very excited to be working with you and The Slow Music Movement.

So let's find out a bit more about you. Perhaps to get things rolling you can tell me a bit about how a young lad from Folkestone got into music and ended up in an Indie band in Preston?

I'm not sure what got me into music. Subliminally it was probably my Dad. He was in a couple of bands as a sailor in the Royal Navy and at home we had an upright piano under the stairs, and a banjo, both of which he played passionately.  He and my Mum would often duet on the piano together and I would sit on the stairs and listen intently. As a kid my Dad wanted me to learn the piano but I stupidly rebelled and picked the clarinet.  The lessons did not last long.  To this day I regret not learning the piano.  The clarinet?!  What was I thinking (sorry, I mean no disrespect to clarinet players). Then one day I was rummaging arond in my sister's wardrobe and instead of finding Narnia I found an acoustic guitar. I went to the local library and borrowed some Beatles song books and that started my path to learning the guitar. Years later I went to University in Preston and joined the Student Union's Entertainment Committee which was in charge of putting on gigs and club nights. I met a bunch of like-minded people on the committee some of which had recently formed a band called Formula One with ex-Cornershop drummer Dave Chambers. They needed a singer and one day they asked me if I could sing and I said no way and they said great see you tomorrow at 7pm at our rehearsal room!! Needless to say, upon finishing university the prospect of being in a band seemed like an attractive option. Then things really took off. Next thing I know Martin Carr from the Boo Radley's is producing our demo, we're on a UK tour, and we're playing at Reading and Phoenix Festivals.

I was researching your first musical project Formula One and found a reference to you playing the Hacienda in the 90's, were you immeresed in the whole UK rave/Madchester scene at the time or quietly doing your thing on the periphery? If you were raving are there any war stories you'd like to share?

I was still living down south in the late 80's when it was all kicking off up north. Sure I bought baggy jeans like the Happy Mondays, and the Stone Roses debut album is still in my top ten most influential albums of all time, but I never did go to the Hacienda in its heyday of acid and house music. At the time it probably seemed to far to get a train from Folkestone to Manchester!! In fact the only time I did go to the Hacienda was to play that gig which must have been in 1996 or 97. I do remember going to a few raves in random countryside fields in Kent when acid house swept the nation but in all honesty I really didn't get into rave culture that much.  It wasn't until I was a university student in Preston in the early 90's when I started going to techno clubs in Manchester, Liverpool, and in particular Leeds, that I really started to appreciate dance music.

Now the only Formula One music that I could find online had you vocalising in Spanish so it seems like you have previous Balearic form! I'd be interested to hear more about that as it was a bold move for a singer from the North West of England back in the day plus I thought everyone in the UK learned French at school! Tell me more.

Ha! Only being able to find one song online goes to prove that we were a pre-internet band!!  I don't even think we had an email address. Anyway, my Dad got a job in Spain in 1979 so he took the family with him and we lived in Madrid for three years. I was 10 years old and at that age a person soaks up a new language like a sponge. Besides, if I wanted to hang out with the kids in the neighbourhood then I had to learn Spanish fast. I didn't learn it so that I could be bilingual, I learnt it because I wanted to have friends and play. I have no recollection as to whose idea it was for me to sing that Formula One song in Spanish. It was probably mine, but truth be told I was never really that enamoured with the result, but it ended up being our first single on Kooky Records and John Peel played it on his show whilst commenting positively about the Spanish aspect, so I ended up liking it!

So after Preston it seems that Formula One split and you headed to the stony beaches of Brighton to form a new group Domestic4. Could you tell me a bit about the group and life in Brighton?

Formula One was a six piece band and we all lived in the same house kind of like the Monkees but Deepdale, Preston style! Towards the end of the 90's, for one reason or another, we started to fizzle out. The drummer moved out first, then the bass player moved to Brighton which left four of us who carried on writing songs but instead of drums, bass and guitars, we turned to samplers, loops, analog synths and drum machines. In the meantime our ex-bass player kept telling us how amazing Brighton was so eventually we packed all our gear into a van, got onto the M6, and headed south.  We rented a flat, built a small studio, and Domestic4 became an entity. It was more for the love of making music than anything else but over a period of three years we did release a handful of records and CDs on various independent labels. Brighton was buzzing then, probably still is. It had a great music scene, lots of young people, plenty of parties and pubs, and a very liberal, almost bohemian vibe about it. Yeah, it was a good time to live there.

So during these years were you making a full time living from music or were you working on the side? 

We were making a living (if you can call it that) when in Formula One and  it was helped by the fact that you could get hold of really cheap beer in Preston, but when we moved to Brighton we all ended up getting 9 to 5 jobs to pay the rent and by night we wrote music as Domestic4.

So somehow from Brighton you ended up in Canada, did you take a wrong turn on the M23? 

As not to bore your readers, here is the short version....  I eventually got fed up with Brighton, wanted to travel, got a job as an Adventure Travel Tour Leader in Guatemala for one year, ended up backpacking around Central & South America for four years, wound up on a small Mexican island in the Caribbean for two years, got offered a job in Canada, went back to the UK to get a work visa, moved to Canada. Next question!!

There have also been unconfirmed reports of you wearing lumberjack shirts and bare back moose riding. How is life in Vancouver compared to England? Any thoughts of ever going back?

OK, I admit to the lumberjack shirt thing, but bare back moose riding is nothing more than a vicious rumour!! Culturally speaking life here is very different to the UK. I do miss many things; family, friends, pubs, Branston pickle, Marmite, pork pies, and Question Time with David Dimbleby! I will move back to the UK one day that much is true. I just don't when.

It seems like you never stopped making music but there was some downsizing going on from Formula One & Domestic4 to your Future Peasants duo and solo projects Electrohome & laterly Test Card. Is there any reason for this more solitary direction? 

I actually took a break from making music for about six years while I was in Latin America.  It wasn't until I got to Canada and picked up an acoustic guitar that I started to write songs again, this time under the moniker of Electrohome. I then found out how far technology had advanced since I was last making music so I got myself a decent computer, an audio workstation, and a midi keyboard, and that's how I got back into it. Sure we were using those same technologies in Domestic4 but back then we would spend hours twiddling away on an Akai S3000 sampler trying to piece together loops and samples and working out which channels each sample would come out of or which bus each output had to be assigned to, and there would be leads and cables everywhere, it was crazy! Nowadays it's all drag and drop and presto; perfectly timed, auto-stretched loops by only using a mouse! So instead of hunting around for a band to join or form, I ended up hunkering down at home and worked out that I had everything I needed to be a solo musician. I also think the solitary direction is a direct result of the technology itself. Having access to multi-instruments and sounds means there is no need to be in a band with multi-members because I have all the instruments I need on my computer.

Now you've always been fairly relaxed musically but you seem to be mellowing even further with age, is this your back playing up, a conscious decision or have you got a death metal project I don't know about?

I'm not sure if it was a conscious decision per se.  Ever since my techno clubbing days I have always enjoyed listening to ambient/electronica which I think started with a lot of Warp artists such as early Autechre and Speedy J and the Artificial Intelligence series that Warp put out. But over the past 5 years or so I have gravitated towards more drone and neo-classical music. It just seems to push all my buttons at the moment. I also think it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the technology havng a direct effect on the music I make. For now I'm very happy being Test Card but who knows how far I can take it. Having said all that, I am helping to produce a demo for a three-piece band who play traditional Scottish music with a fiddle, double bass and acoustic guitar. It's very uplifitng and worryingly infectious (I mean that in a nice way!) and is almost as far removed as death metal is compared to Test Card!

So the Test Card EP is about to drop and it has a warm, wistful air to it and is perfect for sea gazing in the sunshine and all sorts of relaxed and horizontal activities. Could you tell me a bit about what was going through your head during the making of it? 

Recently I've been rewinding my dusty, disintegrating memory tapes to summers of old when I was a young boy kicking a football around with friends in grass-stained jeans late into the summer dusks and then hearing Mum in the distance saying it was time to come in for supper. The sounds, smells, and even the colours seemed so different then. So this EP is dedicated to the memory tapes playing in my head of summers gone by.

One for the geeks and muso's now, where was the music recorded and what type of gear are you using these days?

Everything was recorded at home in Vancouver, Canada. My basic set up is Ableton Live Suite 9, a midi keyboard, and an audio interface. Then I have a Fender Telecaster electric guitar which I tend to record through an Alesis Quadraverb GT, a Seagull acoustic guitar, a Fender bass guitar, a Theremax Theremin, a Zoom H4n Pro for field recordings, and a good handful of VST Analog Synths such as Synth 1, Minimoog V, Podolski, Max Synth Latte, and TAL U-No 62. I strongly recommend to any musician who uses VST's to subscribe to a blog written by Tomislav Zlatic called Bedroom Producers. It has all the latest information about VST's and Tomislav really knows what he's talking about. Take a look https://bedroomproducersblog.com/.

You've lived through some serious changes in the music industry since you started out. You've gone from releasing vinyl on UK labels to the brave new digital world and popping out releases for Japanese, Greek and now Portuguese based labels.

What's your take on where music is at these days - is it working for you? Yes absolutely. Firstly it has allowed me to easily contact and work with record labels regardless of their location, and secondly it has allowed my music to be accessible to anyone, anywhere. For example I know for a fact that the majority of listeners streaming and downloading my music from my Bandcamp page are not located in Canada. The majority are coming from the UK, France, Germany, Japan and Australia, which would never have happened had my releases only been available in a physical format.

So what are your future musical plans? Is Test Card going to see you out or are you still evolving?

Well I never planned to be in an indie band in Preston, and I never thought I would be twiddling knobs on analog keyboards in Brighton, and I never imagined I would be creating droney electronica in Vancouver. I honestly have no idea if this is it or if there's more morphing to be done. Whoever's driving this bus hasn't told me where the next stop is!!

Thanks for your time Lee and thanks once again for the EP, I really couldn't think of a better way to kick off the label.

Thank you James.

Firstly, BIG up Geographic North for it's 50th release. Secondly BIG up Nick Malkin, responsible for said release's micro managed, patiently patched, musical instrumentation, future jazz & abstract ambience.

The music of East Africa is some of the most evocative in the world so sail into the weekend with some bygone Sudanese soul and swagger courtesy of another incredible compilation from Ostinato Records

Check out this wonderful collection of newly available, digital mixtape gems and hitherto Japanese only releases of beautifully arranged, cinematically inclined, progressively retro, signature sounding soulful pop from Mocky.

Nice to see Mark McGuire back with his most structured, vocal work for a while and a quality set of plugged in but off the grid Americana, stoned rock and acid folk.

Great EP of deep, pleasantly leftfield, nicely jazzed, melodic Afro house mutations from from Marijus Aleksa MAPS on YAM Records

Kick off the week off with the bumping, Afro dipped, peyote powered, future soul sound of SCŌTT XYLO. on Black Acre. Super fresh.

Late night electronic meandering that will soundtrack a contemplative Sunday nicely. Check out Helios' unhurried, free ranging, ambient musings for Ghostly International

The clue with chill hop is right there in the name, it's no more than a fusion of chill out music and hip hop. A playlist is worth a thousand words so the newly minted "Slow Hop" playlist is right at the bottom of the post but there is something I'd like you to read and listen to first.

The old cliche goes you have to know the past to understand the present so, if you're interested, let's take a brief look at hip hop's early days and the origins of chill out music to fully understand how chill hop came about and got to where it is today.

Hip hop is many things to many people. From backpack to drill, trap to hip life, gangster to golden age and now the chill hop  sub genre but let's go back, all the way back, to the roots of hip hop before we look at the present. Hip hop was spawned in the late 70s when DJs like Cool Herc started using two copies of the same record to extend the drum break in a track. This is the part of a song where all or most of the instrumentation stops playing except for the drummer. Herc wanted to extend this section because this was the part of the track when the dancers went really crazy. Those drum breaks mostly came from classic soul and funk records and for many years those drum breaks were the backbone of hip hop, sampled by thousands and heard by billions. Check out this nicely put together selection of some of the most famous hip hop drum breaks:

So there you have the original back bone of hip hop - the drum break. I'm guessing if you've been checking some chill hop it sounded familiar. Would be hip hop producers checking out the early DJs duly noted the power of a drum break and, luckily for them, music technology was  quickly developing and subsequently becoming more affordable. A basic E-mu or AKAI sampler and a basic Roland drum machine was now within financial reach of your average wannabe producer. So not only did they start programming and sampling drums they also started sampling other breaks, maybe a trumpet, guitar or vocal  from all sorts of records to add some melodic interest and hooks to give their chosen MC a good ride. This next video perfectly illustrates this as it first plays the part of the original song that was sampled and then straight after plays the hip hop version using the original samples.

If you want to explore this phenomena more then I suggest that you kick back for an hour or so one day and listen to the following mixtape from Arthur King & Uncle T, two great French hip hop DJs. This is an incredibly skillful mix and, though many have tried, one of the best ever mixes of original breaks and the hip hop tracks they inspired. I can't tell you show many times I've listened to it:

So the above process is not only the roots of hip hop but also chill hop. In many ways chill hop is a regression to hip hop's early days. Nowadays a  hip hop track can be and often is completely synthesized as legally clearing samples costs money. Different rhythms have evolved in different parts of the world - grime in the UK, reggaeton in Central and South America and a lot of what are now called urban artists are even making songs with EDM producers over cheesy dance beats. But chill hop is keeping it simple, it is focusing on the those classic laid back hip hop style drum breaks or close approximations to them and introducing a chill out element.

Before you get reading I've pulled together another playlist of some classic and personal favourite chill out tunes to accompany this next section. I've put a few thoughts on the playlist in it's description if you want to know some of my thinking behind it. It's a work in progress and will be developing beyond recognition in the next few weeks but it's a good start.

Chill Out music's history is as long as the history of music itself. Ever since early man started making drum sounds I dare say there were always times when a slower rhythm prevailed, even if it was just because they needed a rest. Chamber music, monastic choirs, classical, jazz, in all this different music there has always been quieter pieces. It certainly wasn't called Chill Out music then, it was just plain old music played at a slower pace. The obsession with genre classification is more a late twentieth century phenomena. This is also the time period I am going to focus on in my brief history of the roots of what we today call Chill Out music and for good reason.

The 60's are the roots of modern culture that we know today. Post war society started to get a big rethink, mainly due to the efforts of a group of acid inspired hippies in the West Coast of America. Free thinking was encouraged, new ideas about sex, literature, religion, war and gender equality were discussed, rules and norms rewritten and different approaches promoted. The rule book on so many things got torn up and music was not left unscathed. Things got really cooking in the second half of the 60's as the movement grew and spread across the world.

Again, as with hip hop, technological innovation played a massive part and the incorporation of synthesizers, effects pedals, tape machines, theremins and echo chambers into modern music is a key moment in the history of chill out. It just so happened that a lot of the effects you could get from these machines sounded really good to your average, frequently stoned,  hippy, so bands like Donovan, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Steve Reich, The Grateful Dead, Terry Riley all started to record long tracks with weird effects that sounded great to this new generation slumped on their Afghan rugs and bean bags smoking bongs. Another thing these artists, with their newly opened minds,  did was to incorporate drones into their music. Drones are long sustained notes that were originally found in Australian Aboriginals' use of the didgeridoo, it was also a technique found in South Eastern Asian music, well before the 60's. It was hugely popularised by The Beatles, early psychedelic adopters and musical adventurers that they were, when they used the technique in a few of their songs. Naturally with such advocates it wasn't long before it became widely used by musicians and producers the world over.

Perhaps the first chill out record though can, as with all things arguably, be traced to a man called Eden Ahbez and an album called Eden's Island that he recorded in 1960 that incorporated a lot of dreamy moods, drifting sounds and ethereal vocals that would come to help define what we know today as Chill Out music. It might not sound quite so ground breaking today but if you research what most people were listing to in the late 50's and early 60's then you'll soon realise how far out and progressive it was.

Music changed as the 70's progressed and the hippy dream faded. It got a bit darker and heavier generally but the cat was out of the bag and bands kept developing these new electronic and chilled ideas with Europe arguably leading the way. People like Popol Vuh & Tangerine dream as part of the Kosmische scene in Germany, Brian Eno in England and the incredibly influential Vangelis from Greece. Progressive soul, jazz and funk groups incorporated synthesizers into their setup to push their sound in new directions. Progressive Rock certainly loved a synth and the developing soundtrack industry also kept the electronic and chill out seed alive and watered. Meanwhile on a little island in the Caribbean dub was being invented and consequently spread across the globe by the Jamaican diaspora. Little did they, or anyone in fact, know that dub was going to play such a massive part in not only chill out music but dance music as a whole.

Along came the 80's with its further technological developments and consequent musical equipment price drops and suddenly every pop band in the game had a synthesizer but it wasn't until the dance music revolution and the early days of acid house that modern Chill Out, the daddy of Chill Hop, was born. As part of the UK's dance music movement some pioneering artists, a bit like their 60's hippy forebearers decided a chill out room at a rave and Chill Out music during the post rave come down was a good idea. Step up The Orb, Mixmaster Morris, Jose Padilla, KLF, DJ Food and Biosphere to name a few pioneers. Chill Out, Chill Hop, Downtempo, Chill Step, Lo-Fi, Trip Hop, Chill Wave - call it what you will, had well and truly arrived. It even got it's own name, back then it was simply called Chill Out.

A lot of these artists were coming at chill out music pretty much like the early hip hop crews, without formal music training, just passion and vision. They started using the ever cheaper music technology to cut and paste samples, pretty much like the hip hop pioneers ten years before, although their influences tended to be more esoteric and wide ranging, driven by their differing agenda. Their mission wasn't to make people dance or produce beats for rappers, it was to provide people who wanted to relax with ethereal head music to do so. The drums got a little slower, the textures softer, psychedelic twists and the ever effective dub effects all helped turn the chilled, spacey atmosphere up to 11. Now who's got some papers?

OK so there are hundreds of playlists promoting Chill Hop and most have a slightly different musical agenda. No one is right and no one is wrong, it's all points of view but here is how I see it. Chill hop has essentially been named, not invented, due to the popularity of hip hop culture. From it's underground New York roots, hip hop has grown into a global phenomena that has been bossing the charts for decades now. It's the musical soundtrack of a generation or two and with any movement so large it's cultural impact on many areas is inevitable from fashion, art and right through to hand shakes. So hip hop has molded chill out music in its own image.

Chill Hop needs to have a recognisable hip hop beat to it. Nothing too fancy or boundary pushing, but something familiar sounding and mildly engaging. It also needs to be relaxing. Chill hop is not pre-club let's do some shots before hitting the town music. It's more, I need to study for 4 hours and need some background music that won't be distracting, I want to chill with my partner and need some nice vibes or I just want to kick back and not think too hard after a long day. So gentle sounds, soft synth pads, simple melodies are the order of the day. Nice and easy like Sunday morning.

To be honest most of the the Chill Hop on the popular playlists or Youtube channels sounds largely unadventurous and generic and I guess with a genre so influenced by the, now mainstream, money obsessed sound of hip hop there is an inevitability to that. It's a bit like  what smooth jazz is to the jazz from the 60's or 70's, Coldplay are to Led Zeppelin or what Drake is compared to Milo or Rakim but it is what it is, does a job and I see the sense in it.

Anyway I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring and put out my personal take on Chill Hop. I'm aiming to cut out the overly generic tunes - you know the ones from producers that just copy what everyone else is doing to make some cash. It favours producers that are going deeper, doing their own thing and perhaps nudging the stylistic boundaries a little bit. Most of the tunes will have a bit of extra soul, hell I've even put in some live bands that sound right. Vocals are allowed but I'm keeping them to a minimum. I'm calling the playlist Slow Hop as, after all, this is The Slow Music Movement but if your vibing to chill hop I think and hope you'll appreciate it.

As for Lo-Fi, well that is a whole different story for another blog post. Putting a few crackles from an old vinyl record onto a Chill Hop track is not what I call Lo-Fi and I don't think it warrants a separate genre name. Why would you want two different names for essentially the same thing? So I'm currently putting together a Slow Music Movement playlist called, you guessed it, Slow-Fi. Be warned though it's not for multi-tasking and writing your thesis. It is an altogether more engaging, free thinking, THC saturated selection. One for the after party or those hazy nights on the sofa when you've got nothing much to do except talk rubbish with your friends and surf your cerebral backwaters.

Check out the new album from multi-instrumentalist Emil Abramyan on Kingdoms. A really cultured blend of cello, electronics, keys, ambient, dub and subtle house flavours. A wonderful listen.

Cultured, stripped back, dubbed out, nocturnally synthesized ambient electro and late night head nod beats from Cale Sexton on Butter Sessions.

Check out this stylistically ambiguous  EP of soaring synths, jazz & dub tickled tribal futurism, tropical bass meets slow house, ayahuasca infused spiritual moombahton or just tunes. Call it what you will, you won't have heard anything like this EP from Teleseen.

A wonderful compilation of bygone Australasian musical oddities that defy genre classification besides DIY, Lo-Fi & experimental but encompass post punk, ambient, global, dub, folk & classical. Top class digging from Left Ear Records, a real ear opener.

Check out the lazy rhythmic pulses, layered analog depths, flickers of pleasing melodic light, bygone tape loop hiss, dub embelishments & general late night contemplative ambient hazyness of Bellows on Latency

A collaborative and mystical, Indo oriental electronic trip, spanning evocative ambient hazes to trance inducing rhythmic excursions from Unearth Noise & Dreamspeak on the ever interesting Lullabies for Insomniacs

Perfect lazy listening as Phil France drops this wonderful minimal & classical infused electronic, Sunday & beyond, soundtrack for Gondwana Records.

Shameless self promotion, dub adventures old and new, Balearic sunshine nuggets, ambient pointilism, lazy beats and cosmic boogie, it's all here.

Test Card - Super 8 Sunset (The Slow Music Movement)
Munir - Balcony View (Dopeness Galore)
Cale Sexton - Speak Into It (Butter Sessions)
Annette Brissett - Betrayes (Wackies)
The Chosen Brothers - March Down Babylon (Wackies)
Phillip Fullwood - Words (Pressure Sounds)
Web Web - Maroc Blues (Compost)
Onyx Collective - Space-Wars (Big Dada)
Zoltan Fecso - Pont (Hush Hush)
Nohidea - Departures (Alpha Pup)
JOYFULTALK - Kill Scene (Constellation)
Yan Tregger - Riff On (BBE promo)
Teleseen - Lucia (The Slow Music Movement)
Brandon Coleman - All Around The World (Brainfeeder)

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Less is more, futuristic hip hop beats with occasional lyrical interventions from Nohidea. on Alpha Pup Records melding ambient, minimal and neo-classical shades into a perfect head nod sofa friendly soundtrack.

There's only one release to recommend today :) The Slow Music Movement label is releasing it's first EP! Check out this hammock friendly, sunshine saturated, horizontally inclined Balearic gem from Test Card

I can think of a few people whose words I'd like to dub :) Big up Pressure Sounds for reaching their 100th release and holding down the roots and dub quality on every one - quite an achievement.

Check out the ambient & new age licks, Balearic boogie, tropical treats, acidic house & all round summer soul vibes of the new Munir LP on Dopeness Galore.

Nice to see this classic Vakula LP finally become available to the digital 99% courtesy of Apollo Records. Cosmic Kosmishche meets electronic jazz via ambient dub & experimental prog rock disco. It's a ride...

This classic Gillian Welch LP of wide open plain Americana is sounding particularly good this Sunday morning. By my reckoning (and hoping) there should be a new LP coming in the next year or so?

Digital digging about I discovered this psychedelic tropical dub yesterday from Zerox Dreamflesh, kindly reissued by Efficient Space. I suggest you just put it on repeat all day. If you're a producer who produces dub like this hit me up and let's arrange your release schedule.

Fire up the bong attached diving bell and submerse yourself in the neural navigating, reality suspending, deep aquatic house depths of the new //// LP on Jungle Gym Records.

This good old fashioned, no nonsense, country tinged, psychedelic folk rock LP from P.G. Six is sounding good this morning. Another winner from Drag City Records.

Barley accompanied and beautiful in it's simplicity, guitar(s) led, introspection enhancing music for late night laments and solitary pursuits from Papa M (David Pajo) for Drag City Records.

So I finally sunk into the Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange LP on Wax Museum Records and I'm wondering why it took me so long? They've single handedly restored my faith in broken beat and made one of the best sounding contemporary cosmic jazz funk fusion LPs for time.

Striking attention to detail that slowly reveals the beauty in it's ambiguity on this brand new electro-acoustic piano & guitar meets machine ambient odyssey from Zoltan Fecso on Hush Hush Records. Stunning stuff.

Check out this great ambient Sunday soundtrack from DEEP LEARNING as he decelerates London living to the pace of a patiently evolving primordial ooze with his dusky drones, distant city echoes & re-humanising melodic treatment.