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OTTOBRE 2021

NOVEMBRE 2021

BADBADNOTGOOD
"Talk memory"

BadBadNotGood formed in 2010, moving between three and four members before establishing its current line up in 2015. The band, aka Alexander Sowinski (drums), Chester Hansen (bass) and Leland Whitty (guitar and woodwinds), met on the Humber College jazz program in Toronto. Their latest album – and first with XL recordings – demonstrates them going back to their instrumental beginnings.
[ file under: nu jazz ]

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POPPY ACKROYD
"Pause"

Brighton-based performer and composer Poppy Ackroyd returns this with her fourth full-length album Pause. Written during the pandemic and shortly after the birth of her first child, the title refers to the feeling of normal life being temporarily put on hold. Pause is a collection of 10 solo piano works. Poppy tells: "For previous albums, almost as much of the creative process was spent editing and manipulating recordings as it was composing at the piano, however after having my son, I struggled to spend time sat in front of a computer".
[ file under: modern classical ]

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EFTERKLANG
"Windflowers"

For over twenty years, Efterklang have been pushing the barriers of experimental, electronic, emotional chamber-pop. Announcing their sixth studio album Windflowers, their first for City Slang, the Danish trio of Mads Brauer, Rasmus Stolberg and Casper Clausen continue a creative journey that’s brought them closer together, even as their lives grow apart.
[ file under: folktronica ]

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DAMON ALBARN
"The nearer the fountain more pure the stream flows"

The view from the living room of Damon Albarn’s home near Reykjavik is striking. Beyond the black-sand beaches and North Atlantic water, Esja, a volcanic mountain range, cuts across the skyline. Toward the end of 2019, Albarn gathered an orchestral ensemble to sit at his window and chart the landscape, wildlife, and climate in music. Three sessions were recorded before the pandemic stalled the project. Relocating to his UK home in Devon, Albarn found he just couldn’t let those musical improvisations lie dormant until lockdown loosened.
[ file under: folktronica ]

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FLUXION
"Parallel moves"

On Parallel Moves Fluxion flows through various emotional states, and through blending of styles and expanding the borders of them, he manages to create variety listening to the album, something essential on an LP. But even with the variety the music bears the Fluxion sound aesthetic making it it an enjoyable listening experience, that requires more listens.
[ file under: ambient dub ]

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ALVA NOTO
"Hybrid"

The first instalment of Alva Noto’s new series HYbr:ID aligns his prolific work in digital culture, performance, visual art and scientific phenomena with his heterogenous compositional methods. HYbr:ID Vol. 1 captures the music commissioned for the score of ‘Oval’, a choreographic piece directed by Richard Siegal and performed by the Staatsballett Berlin at the Berlin State Opera in 2019.
[ file under: isolationism ]

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NUBYA GARCIA
"Source# we move"

London-based saxophonist and composer?Nubya Garcia, whose critically-acclaimed album Source, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Mercury Prize, returns with a new remix album to be released on October 22, 2021. Through musical collaboration, Nubya has teamed up with an exciting and innovative array of artists including Dengue Dengue Dengue, Kaidi Tatham, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Moses Boyd.
[ file under: remix album ]

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BREMER/MCCOY
"Natten"

It's a weird time in the world, but luckily we have Bremer/McCoy's really lovely music to listen to. Natten, which is Danish for “The Night,” takes inspiration from the end of day, that regenerative time under the constellations when our lives look different. Let it be your companion on this Earth, under the stars, as you contemplate this crazy time we’re in.
[ file under: chill jazz ]

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LIGHT CONDUCTOR
"Sequence two"

The second album of prismatic slow-burn analog synth instrumentals by the duo of Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes) and Stephen Ramsay (Young Galaxy). Expanding on the hypnaogogic ambience of their warm and uncluttered 2019 debut, Lasek and Ramsay add subtle but scintillating structure and electricity to these four new longform tracks.
[ file under: synthetic ]

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JON HOPKINS
"Music for psychedelic therapy"

Music for Psychedelic Therapy is Hopkins’ first full-length since sister albums, the GRAMMY-nominated Singularity (2018) and Immunity (2013). For this collection, Hopkins wanted to make something that faced the opposite direction, something egoless and introspective, made with total, raw honesty. “It felt like time for a reset, to wait for music to appear from a different place,” says Hopkins. That place ended up being Tayos Caves in Ecuador, where Hopkins went on a life-changing creative expedition in 2018.
[ file under: electronica ]

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LONE
"Always inside your head"

Lone, presents his 8th album and first in 5 years Always Inside Your Head. It marks two major changes, with both a new label and new approach working with vocalist Morgane Diet. Influenced by Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and William Orbit’s nineties hits, the LP leans towards a song-based sound and exists somewhere between trip hop on Mo' Wax, 90s Warp, intelligent drum & bass and ambient house.
[ file under: electronica ]

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LOTIC
"Water"

A series of well-received mixtapes followed and she soon attracted the attention of avant-garde iconoclast Björk, who stated, “Lotic is one of the fiercest performer DJs I have ever heard.” This led to collaborative work on remixes for the Icelandic artists’s Vulnicura album and an invitation to open her 2015 Berlin concert. J’Kerian Morgan, the artist known as Lotic, says of her second album Water: “This is the record I always wanted to write. This feels like my arrival as an artist.”
[ file under: experimental ]

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MOOR MOTHER
"Black encyclopedia of the air"

Black Encyclopedia Of The Air is the seventh LP by US poet and musician Moor Mother. The LP is a blend of chilled beats, ethereal sounds, hip-hop, poetry and rap set in an Afrofuturist world. Moor Mother is also known for her activism and as co-leader of the free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements.
[ file under: avant afro jazz ]

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MAKAYA MCCRAVEN
"Deciphering the message"

Drummer, producer & beat scientist Makaya McCraven digs into the Blue Note vaults with this new remix project that puts a modern bounce on jazz classics by Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Kenny Burrell, Kenny Dorham & more. McCraven’s mastery of the loop is akin to hip-hop’s most celebrated beatmakers like J Dilla & Madlib, both of whom have also remixed Blue Note classics, but McCraven’s unique approach also incorporates newly recorded elements including his own drums, Joel Ross’ vibraphone, Jeff Parker’s guitar, Marquis Hill’s trumpet & more.
[ file under: spiritual jazz ]

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PHEW
"New decade"

The renowned avant-garde artist Phew has returned to Mute for her forthcoming album New Decade. Described by pitchfork as a Japanese underground legend, she was a founding member of Osaka punk band Aunt Sally, who broke up in 1980. Since then she has worked solo and collaborated with musical luminaries including as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jim O’Rourke, Ana da Silva (The Raincoats), Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms) and Holger Czukay (Can).
[ file under: experimental ]

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PARCELS
"Day/Night"

Parcels have always been a band of extreme light and shade: they're from surf hotspot Byron Bay in Australia but living in Berlin for years; their sweet-as-honey vocal harmonies rival the Beach Boys but their live shows can turn into slamming techno rave-ups. The band returns with an ambitious third studio album, Day/Night, a double record huge in scope and sound, whose hopeful messages of perseverance through difficult times are a balm for these uncertain times.
[ file under: alterantive pop ]

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ULRICH SCHNAUSS & MARK PETERS
"Destiny waiving"

German electronica wizard Ulrich Schnauss and Liverpool-based guitarist Mark Peters, a founding member of dreampop outfit Engineers, collaborate for the third time on Destiny Waiving. This optimistic, human collection of folktronica and ambient techno neatly (if belatedly) completes a trilogy that encompasses 2011’s Underrated Silence and 2013’s Tomorrow Is Another Day.
[ file under: ambient 'gaze ]

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PORTICO QUARTET
"Monument"

Portico Quartet announce Monument, the electronic driven follow-up to their acclaimed ambient-minimalist suite Terrain, presenting the band at their most direct. Monument is one of Portico Quartet's most accessible, direct records to date. If Terrain addressed the darker side of how Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie made sense of the pandemic, then Monument resonates as an ode to better times.
[ file under: electro jazz ]

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TIRZAH
"Colourgrade"

Colourgrade follows on from 2018’s immediate cult classic LP, Devotion. It forms a subconscious snapshot from across a year when Tirzah was playing live regularly for the first time, in the depths of promoting Devotion and recorded soon after the birth of her first child and shortly before her second child was born.
[ file under: hip alternative ]

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HANA VU
"Public storage"

Los Angeles-based artist Hana Vu makes her Ghostly International debut with “Maker,” a commanding first glimpse into new material. The track builds on the sound of the 20-year old’s previous work: brooding, melodic pop driven by guitar and Vu’s distinct contralto. For the first time, she welcomes a co-producer, Jackson Phillips (Day Wave), who helps Vu create an atmosphere with a deeper sense of luster, sophistication, and urgency.
[ file under: alternative indie ]

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