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"21" is the well-crafted, sharp and original first album by the duo HILA. The combination of jazz, Los Angeles beat-scene and the vibrations of 80s and 90s Soviet Armenia make it a striking and unprecedented fusion. These kind of nostalgic and unconventional references forcefully shake the codes of mainstream culture to create a sincere, raw and intimate expression.

"HILA" was born from a spontaneous and intense creative impulse between Artyom Manukyan, a Los Angeles-based Armenian celloist and his partner in crime, David Kiledjian aka Dawatile, a French multi-instrumentist of Armenian descent. This project is proving to be a true master stroke given that it only took 21 days for the duo to make it a reality.

"HILA" was made in less a moon cycle but captivates and electrifies audiences upon its first outings. "H.I.L.A" colors the warmth of the Californian "High" with Armenian vibes. The artists chose this name for their creation since both have a close and valuable connection to these locales. This journey began in 2007, on the day Dawatile went to Yerevan, the capital of this small country in the Caucasus mountain to realize a first fusion project centered around local folkloric music genres.

There he was introduced to local musicians including the Armenian Navy Band, one of the country's foremost groups in which Artyom played the bass and cello. In this context, he also met many musicians such as Tigran Hamasyan and Norayr Kartashyan. This will be the beginning of connections between Lyon, Yerevan and Los Angeles. The following year, the two artists will be be seen performing next to Taylor Mc Ferrin at the Jazz à Vienne festival. More recently, they partnered up again when the cellist, who had freshly relocated in California, invited Dawatile to produce his album. As soon as the studio’s threshold was crossed, they decided to postpone this record and create a joint project: Hay (as the Armenians call themselves) / High In Los Angeles. HILA was born at the end of these 21 days of intense creation. The association of Artyom Manukyan and Dawatile is the combination of two visions, two versions of Armenia, two personalities, the reunion of the Eastern and Western blocs.

One grew up nurtured by the sounds of hip-hop and jazz in Europe and the other by art music and Russian-influenced 1980s Armenian folkloric music before moving to L. A., Ca. The cornerstone of it all, the glue that unites everything : Armenia and music. They generate a new identity synthesizing two perceptions, their complicity transcending these cultural discrepencies. To achieve this, they will scour through images of Artyom’s childhood, within the popular culture of Soviet Armenia. Together, they revisit this decidedly retro vibe, based on the work of Caucasian groups inspired by African American music. This background is rehashed and fused with ancestral Armenian sounds. The DNA of the album "21" is molded by these dear influences.

We can also hear the ancestral sounds of Armenia, a country at the edges of both Europe and Asia. The presence on two tracks of Armenian music Master Norayr Kartashyan, infuses the languor of past melodies and traditions. These purposeful anachronistic sounds offer a fantastic depth to this powerful opus. Listening to the album, one can appreciate the successful fusion of styles and influences. Those combinations, however, manage to preserve individual identities only to enhance the art through an adamant musical dialogue.

Being driven by the urge to transpose Armenian musical traditions into a unique universe, the daring artists, offer an innovative combination by blending, for the first time, these ancestral sounds with the world of Los Angeles beat-scene and jazz. An invention largely fueled by the magic strings of Artyom and maestro Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, a pillar of the genre in Los Angeles combined. These associations resonate with a triumphant equilibrium. HILA is musical uncharted territory in which Artyom's cello strings intertwine to ignite the harmonies of keyboards, the machines, the vocals and electronic layers Dawatile pieced together. HILA plays the soundtrack of an adventure set between Armenia around the end of the Soviet era and a mysterious near future.

Artyom Manukyan grew up in Armenia in the 90s. At the time, he studied Russian classical music while learning jazz with assistance by his father, a music journalist. Being an unconditional music lover, he went on to sharpen his skills at the prestigious Berkelee College of Music. Subsequently, he’s been lucky enough to travel the world touring with numerous acts and mainly with the Armenian Navy Band. The group has fostered alacritous success honored by a BBC Award as a crowning achievement. He moved on 10 years ago and made his way to L.A. with his cello on his back. In the City of Angels, he quickly became a popular figure of the jazz and hip-hop scenes thanks to his first album "Citizen". He’s accompanied prestigious musicians such as Kamasi Washington, Melody Gardot, Daedalus, Flying Lotus, Run DMC, Gretchen Parlato, Raphael Saadiq, Clive Lowe Mark, or Vulfpeck. He released his solo album on the cello, "Alone" in October 2019.

Dawatile is a bold producer and multi-instrumentist as well as a passionate and resolute musician molded by jazz. As a versatile artist, he handles and juggles the saxophone, the keys, the bass and composition. Simultaneously, Dawatile produces cross-over projects and soundtracks for the movie industry. He, as well, has had the opportunity to be a part of many tours, including with his electro hip-hop band, Fowatile and more recently with the "Future Kreyol" trio, Dowdelin. Being the ever workaholic, he has under his belt a string of prestigious collaborations with the likes of Talib Kweli, Foreign Beggars, Roy Ayers, Tigran Hamasyan, Mathieu Boogaerts, Voodoo Game and Piers Faccini. His taste for developing new musical recipes and his know-how in production make him a much sought-after album producer. In concert, the HILA duo offers a sober, precise and rhythmic performance. "21" is an aerial and lively album taking the audience on an at times joyous and sometimes melancholic dreamlike journey. The magic of "HILA" operates at the speed of light and positions it already as an avoidable group. 

WHAT THE BENOIT PIOULARD DESIGNED COVER LOOKS LIKE:

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After multiple contributions to each others' recordings over the years, two friends Jerome Alexander (Message To Bears) and Will Samson present a fully collaborative release, Together.

The six track album was created in just 8 days during late 2019 at Jerome's home studio in Bristol, UK. No songs were written prior to the recording sessions, allowing the music to be guided by spontaneity and intuition.
Credits
All music written by Will Samson and Jerome Alexander.
Mastered by Taylor Deupree.
Artwork photography by Benoit Pioulard.

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WHAT THE SEAN BATE'S DESIGNED COVER LOOKS LIKE:

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‘Yes Doctor’ is the debut LP from Henry Hicks AKA Horatio Luna. The eclectic Melbourne shape-shifter solidifies his place within ‘house music’ on Yes Doctor as Dub, Jazz & Bruk bleed into one another - stretching further the thread that binds one to the other whilst mapping and exploring the space between.

From Horatio:
"I have always played music that is a fusion of styles and as ‘Horatio Luna’. I always want there to be a connection to House music. I was exploring the parallels between every style I could think of and mixing it with house. I was pushing aesthetic boundaries, things I felt I hadn’t heard before, searching for new music, 'Not box-able music'. Yes Doctor is a coming of age record. I was pushing myself to the limit musically and challenging myself in every aspect of life".

Credits
Band:
Horatio Luna - Bass/Beats
Dufresne - Synths
Ikey - Guitar
Phil Stroud - Drums

Crew:
Throne Boy - Toasts
1/6 - “Yeah”
Mango - Keys (on track three, four)
Setwun - Guitar (track three)
Ora - “Woop”

Mastered by Tigermoth @ Satori Mastering
Produced by Horatio Luna

Photograph & Design - Sean Bate

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In 2015, Optimo’s Autonomous Africa label released Youth Stand Up!, a triangular recording project hatched at Glasgow’s Green Door Studio that brought together young musicians from Belize, Ghana and Glasgow for ten tracks of cross-cultural collaboration. The result was an infectious cocktail of traditional Caribbean and West African rhythms, hip hop, highlife and Glaswegian post-punk, featuring contributions from Optimo Music regulars Golden Teacher and Whilst, among others.

The proceeds from that project went directly back to the youth groups in Ghana and Belize, helping the musicians from Ghana’s Tafi Cultural Institute build a recording studio and performance space in their village.

Two years later, a grant from Creative Scotland’s Open Fund spawned the sequel to Youth Stand Up!: Youth Stand United, recorded both at Green Door and at TCI’s new studio in Ghana (with Golden Teacher’s Laurie Pitt at the controls), and mixed by Green Door’s Stuart and Emily Evans.

Youth Stand United features backing tracks contributed by members of Golden Teacher, Pu$$y Mothers, Whilst, Kaputt, and Sordid Sound System, with vocals provided by the musicians from TCI. Over 6 songs, it oscillates from the left-field disco of Diloeshutubui to the Juju-electro odyssey of Gidi to the Joe-Meek-meets-William Onyeabor space age gospel pop of Nobody Knows.

Proceeds from Youth Stand United will go towards a scholarship fund for musicians from Tafi Atome, Ghana. 
Credits
Artwork by Oliver Pitt cargocollective.com/oliverpitt

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To mark the tenth anniversary of the release of I’m New Here, the thirteenth - and last - studio album from the legendary US musician, poet and author Gil Scott-Heron, XL Recordings release a unique reinterpretation of the album by acclaimed US jazz musician Makaya McCraven. Titled We’re New Again, the album will be released on 7th February 2020; exactly a decade after the release of Scott-Heron’s original Richard Russell-produced recording. It’s set to follow in the footsteps of Jamie xx’s highly acclaimed 2011 remix album We’re New Here and will be McCraven’s first release of 2020, following the huge global acclaim heaped upon his 2018 album Universal Beings. One of the most vital new voices in modern jazz, McCraven is described by the New York Times as a "Chicago-based drummer, producer and beat maker, [who] has quietly become one of the best arguments for jazz’s vitality"

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KrysaliSound is delighted to present the Somerset-based artist Ishmael Cormack and his debut album Ammil. When I found his music on Soundcloud I was astonished to listen to his gentle and delicate notes. The inner seed of music is something rare to find nowadays, I think we are loosing the right purpose and the purity of this art is becoming every day more dirty. Superstructures are ruining our lifes, we need to change and enjoy again in the simplicity of little things.

Ishamael Cormack comes from a little town like me and his humble simplicity captured me from the first time, this is an imprinting that I hope will never disappear from his soul. Ammil is an amazing album and the result of his beautiful personality, maybe the best work I have ever published in the label!

Ammil started as a series of improvised sketches experimenting on the use of polyrhythms that were deconstructed and recaptured within a 13th-century church. The sketches focused on the use of a modest selection of instruments, electronics and found sounds. The catalyst of the project was a journey into the paradoxical nature of the natural world. Natures complex systems give rise to our perception of simplicity & beauty. Ammil attempts to mimic this understanding by creating complex rhythm that give birth to subtle melody. 

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‘There are dreams that I still remember. Although it has been decades since I had thosedreams, they continue to pulsate, circulating their pellucid blood, vital and fresh as if dreamt just last night’

Singing bowls, bronze bells and gongs resonate through the mindful layers of Japanese percussionist and ambient producer Kazuya Nagaya’s music. In Zen Buddhism, bells are believed to wash away the cares of the mortal world, as the listener follows the resonance of the bell into the silence and stillness within all beings. It is a penetration into the depths of one’s self.

Floating in a cloud of billowing ambience, it’s nine tracks invite the listener to traverse a broad spectrum of spirit.

‘There is one thing I have known all along. Someday I will have to face the messages from my unconscious. I will have to decipher their meaning and change my life accordingly. The messages from my unconscious are like a knocking on the door of my mind. For many years the sound reverberated, but I payed it no attention’

Nagaya’s music is rooted in Buddhist (Zenzhu) philosophy and sensibilities unique to Japan. Concurrently, his work and interests are also contemporary and traverse a broad spectrum of cultures. This has led him to work with a wide range of collaborators that include Tibetan Buddhist Monks, Hawaiian Kahuna, artists such as Plastikman and Iris Van Herpen, and also to perform regularly in acclaimed festivals such as MUTEK.JP, MUTEK.MX and Today`s Art. His first album, “Utsusho”, was released in 1999 and later re-released with Minus. His latest album, “The Microscope of Heraclitus,” was released with Indigo Raw in 2018.

Nagaya started out to pursue his talents in literature and is also an award-winning writer and a connoisseur on Japanese Literature, Buddhist Folktales and Zen Philosophical Works. These interests breathed life into his music, and the sensibilities and philosophical views which he developed during his literary years are now reflected in most of his music today. He spends half the week teaching courses at his University in Tokyo, and the other half composing and writing in his home in the Japanese Alps, where he resides with his wife, and many adopted cats and dogs. ‘Dream Interpretations’ was composed at a difficult time in Nagaya’s life. While he worked, he listened closely to the sound of the knocking that reverberated from the paths of his unconsciousness and transformed that into music. In other words, this music is his dream interpretation. 

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Hush Hush is proud to welcome to the family Tukico, an alias of Berlin-based Japanese violinist and electronic producer Hoshiko Yamane. Currently a member of the massively influential electronic group Tangerine Dream, Hoshiko has emerged as a talented solo artist over the past 4 years with numerous releases under her own name on revered neo-classical label 1631 Recordings as well as a recent collaborative release with Icelandic musician Mikael Lind for Time Released Sound. While the releases under her own name have revealed a stunning collection of neo-classical compositions, Hoshiko now fully unveils her experimental side-project Tukico with 'become,' a captivating 5-song EP that fuses her classically-trained background with innovative electronic production techniques for an immersive, hypnotic, and transfixing sound.

All five tracks featured on 'become' were composed last year during a particularly dark and cold February in her current home-base of Berlin. The dismal weather kept her inside and allowed her time to get lost within Haruki Murakami's novel 'Kafka On The Shore' (the inspirational source for all of EP's track titles) as well as gain more familiarity with the Moog Mother 32 synthesizer she had recently acquired. No longer relegated to strictly acoustic compositions, her gorgeous violin arrangements began finding new colors and textures with help from her new electronic gear, and the songs that would find their way onto 'become' started to come to life. It wasn't long after finding newfound inspiration in the Tukico project when FACT Magazine invited Hoshiko to introduce her new project for their coveted 'Against The Clock' series.

Nearly seven years since originally starting the side-project for live performances and as an experimental creative outlet, Hoshiko Yamane finally makes her proper Tukico debut with the release of 'become' on cassette tape and digital formats via Hush Hush Records on February 7th. A fantastical display of her virtuosic talents on the violin merged with cinematic and scintillating electronic textures, 'become' displays Hoshiko Yamane's expanding musical palette and adds another hauntingly beautiful entry in her growing catalog. 

Credits
All songs written and produced by Hoshiko Yamane.
Mastered by Taylor Deupree.
Artwork by Atsushi Harata.