“Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels” is a concept album born of the idea of merging singer/songwriter Mayssa Jallad’s two vocations: music and urban research/architectural history. Written in collaboration with producer Fadi Tabbal, the music builds upon Tabbal’s spatial approach to sound and Jallad’s research on Beirut’s Hotel District.

The album is a reference to Jallad’s Historic Preservation master's thesis, in which she detailed the history of the “Battle of the Hotels”, a 5-months battle that took place in Beirut at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, from October 22nd, 1975 to March 29th, 1976.
Jallad saw architecture as a main protagonist of the battle, as she discovered it was the first high rise urban battle in the world. The close of the battle resulted in the 15-year Green Line, an urban rift which split Beirut into “East and West”, restricting movement and communication and creating a violent divide that still resonates today.

The album comprises two parts. Part A: Dahaliz, is a stroll in the city, where Jallad tries (and fails) to follow an old map. Musician Youmna Saba is a companion in this journey of remembering the once winding corridors (“Dahaliz”) of the city, destroyed by new developments since the 1960s. Empty skyscrapers propel her onto a past filled with the violence of snipers, and a present filled with the glamorous injustice of empty luxury real estate endorsed by powerful warlords-turned-politicians.

In Part B: Maaraka, Jallad inhabits the building of the Battle of the Hotels, as its events unfold. She calls the fighting militias the Blues and Reds, respectively the Lebanese Front (Christian Nationalists) and the Lebanese National Movement (Pro-Palestinian leftists), leveling the playing field, and drawing a map of the battle through songwriting. Sary Moussa produces the conclusion of the battle in “Holiday Inn (March 21 to 29)”, which ends with the ultimate severance of the city of Beirut.

The music caters to post-war youth who have never been taught this difficult history. Once we consider the “Battle of the Hotels” as our common heritage, it provides an opportunity to teach the value of civil peace. It is also a call to protest for the renewal, rather than the recycling of the political class that has once destroyed the country and holds us, to this day, hostage of its violence.


ACCLAIM FOR MARJAA:

"Singer/songwriter and urban researcher Mayssa Jallad draws a map of the battle with her music, vocals and acoustic guitar, accompanied by Fadi Tabbal's synths, percussion and field recordings." – The Wire, #41 Best Albums Of 2023

"There’s a stoic determination in the purposeful acoustic guitar strums that hold the fractured sonic architecture of Mayssa Jallad’s “Markaz Azraq (December 6)” together. Her words carry the weight of a thousand suns. Still, her delivery is plaintive and unafraid as she tells the story of a nameless man who lost both sons during the Battle of the Hotels. Once the instrumental palette expands, the warm glow from Fadi Tabbal’s synth personifies the steely perseverance needed in the face of such destruction." – Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis, Best Albums Of 2023

"With the help of Fadi Tabbal and a selection of Ruptured-affiliated musicians, we're treated to a highly evocative & moving collection of narrative songs (even for those of us who don't speak Arabic), which musically inhabit a space on the corner of 1970s US folk, Arabic melisma and sound-art. A haunting, engrossing work." – Peter Hollo, Utility Fog (FBi Radio, Best Albums Of 2023

"Marjaa: The Battle Of The Hotels is a record that sidesteps the pitfalls that other works concerned with atmosphere or memory fall into. Jallad’s record acts as a slow burning process of revelation." – Richard Foster, The Quietus

"Lebanese singer Mayssa Jallad showcases her incredible voice on debut album Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels. Her breathy intimacy creates an atmospheric Arabic blues, yearning on album highlight Mudun." – Ammar Kelia, The Guardian

"In the end, the album, like the city on which it is based, feels like an infinite loop of history, relayed through the brave yet saintly voice of an artist who has taken the task of documenting the past through music." – Christina Hazboun, Bandcamp


"Historical trauma, strings, drones, metallophones and buzuks wrap around powerful stories and gossamer vocals on Lebanese singer's tender, intimate debut. With shades of Nico, Jarboe and Elizabeth Fraser, '80s' 4AD fans will rejoice." – Andy Cowan, MOJO

"Singer/songwriter and architectural historian Mayssa Jallad and a host of Lebanese musicians… have made a rich, sometimes transcendiary sonic mapping of a memory of war. This is an extraordinary record and one that you should approach with no qualms… like Matana Roberts’ work, this is a soundtrack that directly deals with traumatic memories that have ceased to inhabit their original form and need to be conjured up in ways that both lure the listener in, and allow the information to be imparted in a way history is not normally taught... utterly hypnotic… a record that can leave you initially wondering what is going on whilst realising you are listening to something really special…" – Richard Foster, Louder Than War

"In an overwhelmingly creative and critical act, Mayssa Jallad turns the destruction of the Lebanese Civil War into a stunning,
two-sided album driven by poetic songwriting mixed with historical narration, lush strings and synths, gentle drones, and her
incredible vocal prowess." – Maha ElNabawi, SceneNoise

"As it progresses, "Marjaa" seamlessly fuses folky introspection, orchestrated drama, crackling electronica and field recordings. Sometimes – again, without any incongruity – within the same song... This bold, multi-layered album is utterly accessible. A triumph." – Kieron Tyler, The Arts Desk

"(Marjaa) is, as one might expect, a sombre affair largely comprised of Jallad's delicate vocals backed by acoustic guitar and ethereal synthesizer. Elsewhere, co-composer and producer Fadi Tabbal adds the crackle of distant artillery and a ghostly wind between the high-rise blocks." – Daniel Spicer, Songlines

"As a lyricist, Jallad is poetically laconic. One track, 'Kharita', from the Dahaliz section, has two just lines: 'I walk the streets alone, in my hand a map/ That I don't understand. It's this precise, minimal weightiness that helps make Marjaa such an accomplished and unusual album." – Louise Gray, New Internationalist

In July of 2022, just one month before jaimie branch’s death sent shockwaves around the world, the trumpet player and composer was in Chicago at International Anthem studios putting finishing touches on an album. It was a suite of music she had composed and then recorded with her flagship ensemble, Fly or Die, over the course of a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. In her wake, the album was near complete, with only mixing tweaks, final titles, and artwork to be fully realized. In the months following, her family (led by sister Kate Branch), her band (Jason Ajemian, Lester St. Louis, and Chad Taylor), and her collaborators at IARC banded together to gather memories, texts, emails, photographs, artwork and fragments belonging to jaimie to light the path forward. The goal was always to do what jaimie would have done. Packaged in stunning artwork by John Herndon, Damon Locks, and branch herself, Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) is jaimie’s final album with her Fly or Die quartet.

From the album's liner notes, written by jaimie's Fly or Die bandmates:

“jaimie never had small ideas. She always thought big. The minute you told her she couldn’t do something, or that something would be too difficult to accomplish, the more determined and focused she became. And this album is big. Far bigger and more demanding — for us, and for you — than any other Fly or Die record. For this, jaimie wanted to play with longer forms, more modulations, more noise, more singing, and as always, grooves and melodies. She was a dynamic melodicist. jaimie wanted this album to be lush, grand and full of life, just as she was. Every time we take a listen, we feel the deep imprint of her all over the music, and we see all of us making it together.”

Multidisciplinary artist GAIKA returns with a new track titled “LADY” featuring bbymutha from his forthcoming album, Drift out on September 8th.

Thrashing drums and droned out guitars take immediate effect on “LADY” but it’s the two mavericks' electrifying chemistry that is the driving force of this track. Enlisting KIDÄ (Yves Tumor) on production with additional contributions from Azekel (Gorillaz) and Max Winter, alternative rock and audacious rap come crashing together as GAIKA and bbymutha flex their lyrical prowess, unapologetically expressing their devotion to their lovers on this twisted, feverish affair.

Newly signed to Big Dada Recordings, home to Roots Manuva, Yaya Bey, Kae Tempest, Brian Nasty and more, GAIKA jumps back into music with new invigoration after delving into work as a composer to unveil Drift - his most expansive work to date. The visionary invites listeners on a high-speed journey where love, pain, brutality and beauty collide to produce a vivid and provocative cinematic masterpiece. The sonic universe of Drift is the most stylistically accurate representation of GAIKA’s personal tastes to date, stitching musical influences past and present such as Prince, Wu Tang Clan, Massive Attack, John Coltrane, Pink Siifu and A$AP Rocky to land on a gritty, distorted sound pulsating with an unwavering, formidable energy that’s disruptive yet timeless.

Drift is 14 tracks of nostalgic escapism, a shape-shifting body of work with hip hop and club music cultures at its core, as those simply run through the veins of GAIKA. Analogue and retro in feeling, Drift’s psychedelic feel is formed by incorporating 90s grunge, dark wave, post-punk and alt-rock into its tapestry. It’s a representation of his heritage and environment, featuring calypso steel pans to gospel vocals, reverberating dub to frenetic rap and elements of sound design taken from recordings of the real world. GAIKA’s music transcends borders and his nomadic nature means he simultaneously belongs and doesn’t, his music cannot be confined to just one genre and this unique new record further cements him as one of the most progressive artists of our time, telling the tale of modern day renaissance man driving away from the economic hierarchy he doesn't believe in.

GAIKA endeavoured to create a waking dream by constant participation in communal art making, removing the separation between art and life, his imagination and community and breaking the boundary between real life and any spectacular representation of it. He set up a number of situational arts facilities in the heart of London including shows at ICA, 180 the Strand, Now Gallery and as the world reopened, created pop up galleries, studios, exhibitions and raves with the intention to enhance the experience of real life by dreaming. To achieve this coherently and authentically the process became akin to a form of psychological examination of memories made before music “mattered” to GAIKA - before becoming commodified, individualised and his name capitalised.

Drift became the term used to describe the creative happenings in these spaces and the name for the collective of people who made this record. GAIKA is the central writer and composer working closely with KIDÄ on production and a group of classically trained musicians with contributions from Azekel, Charlie Stacey, Brbko and The Narrator over an extended period of time where they recorded music late into the night, night after night.

A meditation on the life and legacy of James Reese Europe.
1. From the Dancehall to the Battlefield - Jason Moran
2. Ballin the Jack / Feed the Fire - James Reese Europe and Geri Allen
3. All of No Man's Land is Ours - James Reese Europe
4. Russian Rag - George Cobb
5. Darktown Strutter's Ball - Shelton Brooks
6. Flee as a Bird to your Mountain / Ghosts - Traditional / Albert Ayler
7. Drop (Tear) - Jason Moran
8. That Moaning Trombone - Carl Bethel & Sandy Coffin
9. Memphis Blues - W. C. Handy
10. St. Louis Blues - W. C. Handy
11. Hesitating Blues - W. C. Handy
12. Clef Club March - James Reese Europe
13. Castle House Rag - James Reese Europe
14. Zena's Circle - Pauline Oliveros
15. For James - Jason Moran

Dedicated to James Reese Europe and Randy Weston.

They walked a very long way, saw you, and tagged you forever... then strode away, but kept you in their mind as they tagged someone else. See, That’s how a lot of this works.

They didn’t tell you where they were going,
or what it would feel like,
or sound like,
or the stories you’d tell about all that you’d survive. And YES, you will survive...or be survived by.

In 1881, James Reese Europe is born in Mobile, Alabama, and in the pre-dawn of the Great Migration, his parents moved up to Washington, D.C. because they knew. It is in D.C that James begins to take violin lessons from Joseph Douglas, the grandson of Frederick Douglass because Douglass innately knew that liberation not only speaks from the mind, but also from instrument. The violin, hollowed wood, with a bow strung with horse hair abrading tense steel.

See, Liberation occurs in many forms. And when James then takes his violin up to New York, he is seeking a new sound to make, new folk to break bread with, and a new stage to plow, for The "stage" will always be a portal, a place to test what is real and surreal. 

What he realizes is that a required respect on the stage and off must be demanded, which culminated in the Black musicians union called The Clef Club. It is the humanity that I hear in these songs and in his bands. When James tagged 125 musicians to bring his brand of syncopation to Carnegie Hall, the new beat had arrived. Because syncopation is about urgency, pushing the beat ahead to apply the anticipation of the oncoming downbeat , an outlook that is inherently futuristic.

So all that futurism arrives. But the indoor stages proved only preparation for another dangerous stage, the battlefield of WW1. With his band of Black diaspora, he brought the music across the Atlantic, to the frontline of battle as his commitment to expansive vision was beyond.
Beyond the last row of seats in the house, or the horizon of the trenches ahead.
James Reese Europe becomes one of the seminal Big Bangs in Black Music. Let us meditate on that.
From to the Dance Hall
to the Battlefield,
and back home to you.

Love,
Jason

Jason Moran - Piano and voice
Tarus Mateen - Bass
Nasheet Waits - Drums
Logan Richardson - Alto Saxophone
Brian Settles - Tenor Saxophone
Darryl Harper - Clarinet
David Adewumi - Trumpet
Reginald Cyntje - Trombone
Chris Bates - Trombone
Jose Davila - Tuba, Helicon.


From the Dancehall to the Battlefield connects to one of the original Big Bangs in Black Music, James Reese Europe. In the early 20th century, James Reese Europe and others firmly understood that Black culture has a history, sound, and a code. This brought Black pride onto the stage and into the world.

All of No Man's Land is Ours was a song frequently sung by JRE's right hand man, Noble Sissle while JRE played piano. The lyrics include
"The victory’s won, the war is over
The whole wide world is wreathed in clover!
All of No Man’s Land is ours"
I keep thinking that much of what is considered "Land"? And though these brave soldiers fought "for their country", This bravery is something that I consider is the root of how abstraction is used in Black improvisational music. The soldiers trust JRE, because he is a celebrity. But none of them have ever performed in an actual war., and neither has JRE. They are all marching into a void together, but they are led by the sound.

Flee as a Bird/ Ghosts features Brian Settles.. a piece the 369th Infantry band played when a soldier did not return from the battlefield. Brian represents the restless soul fighting for his last breath before the last shovel full of dirt covers his body. The medley with Albert Ayler's composition Ghosts gives a nod to Ayler's own military band work. Also, Ayler performs his own version of Le Marseillaise, the French national anthem that James Reese Europe remixed for French audiences.

Drop (Tear) - a collage that pivots the album.

W.C. Handy, the bard of the blues, wrote many pieces that became the backbone of the 369th Infantry band. Some of the arrangements were done by William Grant Still. These blues' were also used as a recruitment tool for the 369th Infantry, aka Harlem Hellfighters.

Zena's Circle is a breathing meditation the composer and deep listening practitioner Pauline Oliveros showed the Bandwagon at the Park Avenue Armory. We use this meditation at the end of the performance to become one breath within the music. The band stands in a circle while holding hands, one person sends a pulse around the circle while exhaling.

Castle House Rag - a piece James wrote for the dancing couple, Vernon and Irene Castle. His dance tunes in the early 20th century became hits and shifted the tempos of dance music within the dancehall.

For James - is my anthem for James. I take this anthem around the world and have audiences sing it as well. The middle of the piece features a German audience and the final section is when i taught it to the 369 Experience band, a group of HBCU students that gathers to play Europe's music. JRE is a throughline to the HBCU marching bands. By the end, I'm speaking with the students about how Randy Weston shared the profundity of James Reese Europe with me.


Jason Moran on The United States of Anxiety w. Kai Wright

Ale Hop & Laura Robles
‘Agua Dulce’
LP/DL
Single Release and Pre Order: 1/3/2023
Release Date: 7/4/2023

On April 7th the Berlin-based Peruvian musicians Alejandra Cárdenas, AKA Ale Hop, and Laura Robles present their debut album together, released via Buh records. With a foundation informed by decolonialism and organology, ‘Agua Dulce’ is a radical deconstruction of traditional rhythms of the Peruvian coast, in which the cajón instrument plays a central role.

‘Agua Dulce’ is named after the most popular beach in Lima, near where both artists lived during their childhood, houses apart, without ever meeting one another. Now, years later, the pair have joined forces, with Robles on a self-built electric cajón and Cárdenas on electric guitar and electronics. Together they explore rhythmical structures that form the backbone of the complex Afro-Peruvian music and dance traditions – a broad term used for the various musical developments that occurred in the last two centuries, at the shores of the Peruvian Pacific.

The cajón originated in coastal Peru as a percussion instrument that the black slaves created from wooden fruit boxes, when foot drums were banned at the end of the Spanish colonial-era, in the 19th century.

From its birth the cajón was a symbol of resistance, experimentation and transformation, so Robles and Cárdenas strive to maintain the instrument’s spirit and qualities by pushing the boundaries of its sound into the future. However, although buzzing with an intense voltage and proffering a fresh contribution to modern experimental/noise/low fi/percussive music, the duo’s mission isn’t merely capturing something sonically futuristic, but is primarily concerned with shaking off the dust:
“These rhythms have become ossified nowadays, heard in Peruvian folklore shows, and on the ‘global music’ circuit, but our desire is to experiment and do something more radical with them, connecting to the instruments more radical past”, comments Cárdenas.

The two musicians take the pulses of dances like Landó, Zamacueca, Festejo, Alcatraz, Lamento and Son de los diablos, electrifying and mutating them into pure textures, or reinforcing the physical character of the cajón through repetition and distortion.

The LP began with recorded improvisations between the duo at Ale Hop’s studio, which she then edited, adding synths and more guitar. Following that it was performed live for the Heroines Of Sound festival, accompanied by the dancer/choreographer Liza Alpiźar Aguilar, which was described as “nothing short of amazing” by The Wire. Following the show Cárdenas added further edits and post production, resulting in the finished article.

‘Agua Dulce’ is published through Buh Records, on all digital platforms and in a vinyl edition, limited to 300 copies. Cover Art by Eduardo Yaguas.
---
Ale Hop is an artist, researcher and experimental musician. Her work includes live shows, record releases, sound and video artworks, research on sound and technology, and original music for film and dance.

Her live performances merge the physical qualities of music with raw emotional states. She builds layers of sounds by blending a complex repertoire of guitar techniques processed by synthesis devices, to create a music of deep physical intensity.

She came up in Lima's experimental underground during the 2000s, and currently resides in Berlin, where she caught the attention of the city's electronic scene, with her visceral live guitar performances, in which she loops out layers of sound, creating densely woven atmospheres.

She has recorded mixes for Crack magazine and The Wire, and performed and exhibited work at Unsound, Rewire, Boiler Room, HÖR, New York’s Museum of Arts and Design and Somerset House.
Her previous album, 2021’s ‘Why Is It They Say A City Like Any City?’ featured contributions from KMRU and Concepción Huerta, amongst others.


Laura Robles was born in Swaziland and grew up in Lima. She is a percussionist and bassist formed from a very young age in the rich Afro-Peruvian and Cuban musical traditions. Her approach to jazz, funk and free improvisation is informed by the rhythmic elements of Latin American popular music.

Robles founded the socio-educational initiative Parió Paula’. She has played with theater and dance companies and renowned folk, jazz and rock musicians worldwide, as diverse as: Maria Schneider, Christian Weidner, Almut Kühne, Pablo Held, Niels Klein, Ensemble Neue Musik Zürich, WDR Big Band, Christian Steyer, Wanja Slavin and Steffen Schorn.

Laura lives and works in Berlin. In 2022 she was nominated for the German Jazzpreis award in the drums/percussion category, and in 2014 she won Berlin’s Studio Prize in with her band Astrocombo. She is reputed to be one of the best cajón players in Peru.

Contact and

After nearly a quarter-century as one of its generation’s most daring and defining bands, Animal Collective remains committed to the beginner’s mind. The bands structure has long been that of a playground, an open space for exercising and indulging new notions and influences, for saying “Why not?” from way up on the high beams. Maybe that means allowing Panda Bear to focus on his drumming more or encouraging Deakin to dig more deeply into his piano playing. Or perhaps it is giving Avey Tare and Geologist’s burgeoning interest in Renaissance music—plainchant, the hurdy-gurdy, gilded polyphony—space to bloom. Those impulses are at the very core of Isn’t It Now?, the second Animal Collective album in as many years and a striking landmark on their joyously circuitous journey.

Co-produced, mixed and recorded with the Grammy-winning producer Russell Elevado (D’Angelo, The Roots, Kamasi Washington), Isn’t It Now? absolutely lands as a classic, its mix of playfulness and earnestness, glittery pop and tessellated textures seeming to synthesize and update all that has ever made and still makes this band so compelling. It is experienced and wise, energized and young, the work of four people committed to finding the frontier of a beginner’s mind, together.

LA-based, Dallas-raised artist Liv.e, announces her sophomore album 'Girl In The Half Pearl' due February 10th via In Real Life. 'Girl In The Half Pearl' seizes on both the creative and personal liberation Liv.e has experienced in the time since her 2020 debut album 'Couldn't Wait To Tell You...'. The album's 17 tracks are a document of self-examination, as she works through realizations prompted by grief and grapples with the dynamics of her role in the relationships in her life. Building upon the foundation she laid with CWTTY, 'Girl In The Half Pearl' bares her process of growth, forgiveness and reclamation of her sense of womanhood across an immersive soundscape. The album's artistic shifts developed during her time experimenting with live performance in London earlier this year while under residency at London's Laylow.

The 25-year-old artist first garnered attention with her 2017 EP, FRANK, and 2018's Hoopdreams EP. Over the past year, Liv.e shared the standalone Mndsgn-produced single "Bout It," along with a COLORS performance and released 'CWTTY+', the deluxe version of her 2020 critically-acclaimed debut album. She's since performed alongside Earl Sweatshirt and Ravyn Lenae. Liv.e's unique sensibilities have also caught the eye of the fashion world, marked by an appearance in a Miu Miu ad campaign photographed by Tyrone Lebon. Most recently, she was featured on the new Mount Kimbie single titled "a deities encore."

Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith with Orange Wave Electric, an all-star electric band including guitarists Nels Cline, Brandon Ross and Lamar Smith; bassists Bill Laswell and Melvin Gibbs; electronic musician Hardedge; percussionist Mauro Refosco; and drummer Pheeroan akLaff.
Legendary trumpeter/composer Wadada Leo Smith debuts his all-star ensemble Orange Wave Electric with the exhilarating Fire Illuminations. This scintillating album features Nels Cline, Brandon Ross, Lamar Smith, Bill Laswell, Melvin Gibbs, Hardedge, Pheeroan akLaff and Mauro Refosco.

“Wadada Leo Smith has played an outsize role in American experimental music for the last 50 years.” – Seth Colter Walls, New York Times

“In a half-century of recording, [Wadada Leo Smith] has never stopped exploring the parameters of the form and instrument.” – Karl Ackermann, All About Jazz

Throughout 2022, Wadada Leo Smith celebrated his 80th birthday with one of the most prolific and creative year’s worth of releases in his – and perhaps anybody’s – history to date. Lest anyone should imagine that this breathtaking run was in any way valedictory, the now 81-year-old Smith returns with his first of several planned releases for 2023. The exhilarating Fire Illuminations, due out March 31, 2023 on Smith’s own Kabell Records label, features his newly assembled ensemble Orange Wave Electric.

“Assembled” is the operative word in this case, as Smith recorded the album in a series of sessions and configurations, compiling the final product through extensive post-production. He had an embarrassment of riches to work with: Orange Wave Electric is an all-star electric band including guitarists Nels Cline, Brandon Ross and Lamar Smith; bassists Bill Laswell and Melvin Gibbs; electronic musician Hardedge; percussionist Mauro Refosco; and drummer Pheeroan akLaff.

“Orange is such a vitalizing color,” Smith says in regard to the name of this brilliant new configuration. “It relates to the vitality of electricity that I'm working with in this ensemble.”

Smith shares history with many of these musicians; akLaff in particular has been a vital collaborator for more than four decades. Smith has recorded with Ross and Gibbs in the guise of their bold trio Harriet Tubman, while Laswell joined the trumpeter along with the late percussion master Milford Graves for 2021’s inspired Sacred Ceremonies. Both Cline, famous as a member of Wilco, and Lamar Smith have been members of Wadada’s Organic group. Only Refosco is a new acquaintance, though he’s long been an acclaimed percussionist best known for his work with David Byrne and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Ever innovative in his quest for new methods of composing, guiding, and creating improvised music, Smith crafted the five expansive compositions on Fire Illuminations in the studio from a series of recording dates conducted and edited over the course of nearly four years. He cites such precedents as the groundbreaking work of Jamaican reggae and dub innovator Lee “Scratch” Perry and Miles Davis classics like Bitches Brew and On the Corner.

“That's why the studio is there,” Smith insists. “The studio is not just for capturing or sampling sounds, but it's also an instrument which one can use to not just enhance but build a larger creation.”

The ensemble is utilized in various configurations throughout Fire Illuminations. The full group is present for the opening track, “Ntozake,” on which Smith’s reverberant trumpet and the coruscating guitar tones emerge from a loping, muscular groove and Hardedge’s sub-level sonics. The piece is named for the late playwright and poet Ntozake Shange, best known for her landmark Obie Award-winning 1975 play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. Citing her powerful poetry and its confrontation of racial and feminist issues, Smith calls Shange “a hero to me.”

All nine musicians also converge on “Tony Williams,” the latest in a number of tributes to the pioneering drummer that Smith has conceived (including a duet with Laswell on Sacred Ceremonies). Smith calls Williams “one of the greatest, most gifted drummers ever. What makes him important is his ability to play multiple metrics, which he intertwined with rhythm. His contribution to the Miles Davis Quintet was so refreshing and creative. He was one of the only musicians that challenged that whole band. The drummer brings another kind of creative energy inside the ensemble that unlocks all of the doors towards inspiration.”

Smith dedicated two pieces to the famed boxer and activist Muhammad Ali. The first, “Muhammad Ali’s Spiritual Horizon,” features only Lamar Smith on guitar along with the roiling, percolating rhythm section, while “Muhammad Ali and George Foreman Rumble in Zaire Africa,” inspired by the legendary “Rumble in the Jungle” where Ali won with his rope-a-dope technique, pares the band down to Wadada, Cline, Laswell, Gibbs and akLaff.

“Muhammad Ali demonstrated the greatest quality of humanity when he refused to fight a war that he didn't believe in,” Smith says. “He lost everything because of that, but in the end, because he made that political statement, he gained everything back and much more. That's a model that we can look to: if you make the right decision from your heart, the creator will always return that to you in a greater way. And the Rumble in Zaire shows something about his spirit and his understanding that it's not the strongest, the most powerful, the wealthiest or the most influential person that controls the world. Strategy is what gets you across the finish line.”

The final piece, “Fire Illuminations Inside the Particles of Light,” was the most challenging to construct from its disparate pieces. It’s a constantly shifting and evolving piece, dense with layers that Smith’s clarion trumpet scythes through like a beacon. The composer relates it to the transformative nature of fire itself, and its foundational role in the development of human civilization. A monumental concept, no doubt, but if Smith’s music has revealed nothing else over the past half-century, it’s that he’s a thinker and creator on the grandest of scales.

The Czech and Slovak experimental/improv scene is currently experiencing a thriving renaissance. Numerous collectives, groups, and bands are emerging, and venues across both neighboring countries are eagerly hosting their live performances. Among these ensembles is Škvíry & Spoje, a CZ/SK quartet that has been an integral part of this enchanting music environment for the past ten years. Their first physical release, "Hotel Spojár," serves as a double vinyl celebration of their anniversary, featuring a collection of retrospective and present-perspective tracks.The name Škvíry & Spoje, which translates to "Cracks & Joints," is inspired by construction rather than drug-related connotations. "Škvíry" represents the cracks in a piece of material, while "Spoje" refers to the joining points. This construction analogy reflects the band's approach to their music, which revolves around entirely ad hoc improvisation. The duo Škvíry consists of Michal Matejka on guitar and Petr Vrba on winds and electronics, while the duo Spoje comprises Jozef Krupa on drums and Dalibor Kocián on vibraphone. However, these divisions are not strictly adhered to, as the quartet often engages musically in solos, trios, and quartets, with formations appearing, disappearing, and transforming throughout their sound dialogues. Each member of the band brings their own seasoned improvisational skills and distinct musical influences from their backgrounds and various projects. The quartet delves into a wide rangeof musical escapades, including free jazz, noise, experimental sounds, ECM-inspired moods, harmonically complex walls of sound, extended techniques, traditional instrument approaches, polyrhythmic hypno-grooves, and more.The A/B sides of the release offer a current snapshot of what one might expect to hear during the band's live performances. The C/D sides feature rarely released tracks from the band's earlier days around 2013. These earlier compositions serve as the foundation for the band's current sound. While today's Škvíry & Spoje explore bolder sonic territories and exhibit tighter musical cohesion, their earlier work is already musically eventful, filled with clever and eloquent sonic moments. The release is beautifully presented in a hand-crafted cover designed by Klára Zahrádková.

"The first solo album by Ryan Weinstein is truly a world of its own. Under the name Coffin Prick (the singular version of Coffin Pricks, his group with Chris Thomson), Weinstein has built a musical ecosystem filled with rhyming sounds, hypnotically hermetic production, and a rhythmic gravity that keeps everything in orbit. Crafted entirely at his home in Los Angeles, Laughing is simultaneously isolated and welcoming, as if Weinstein is both reflecting his environment and opening it up for everyone to explore.

So many compelling sights and sounds await if you choose to accept Weinstein’s invitation and enter the universe of Laughing. Fiery guitar accents, spaced-out synth patterns, random sounds captured while dog-walking, and the echoey missives of Weinstein’s voice all dart around the stereo space like electrons circling a nucleus. That nucleus consists of his dazzling bass and drum structures, which form the heart of nearly every track here. He consistently finds loops that stick in your brain, sometimes sounding like post-punk from outer space, other times evoking classic dub shot through with helium or doused in gasoline.

Take a ride on “Ricochet in Limbo,” a piston-firing workout in which Weinstein’s slashing guitar cuts through synth detonations like a motorcycle in a minefield. Slide down “Smooth Rubber Ailment,” a funk-skimming jam whose chilly beat and blurry vocals suggest a haunted house dance party. Climb the rising stairs of “The Guild of Cowards,” a slow-burning instrumental that evokes the 1980s without sounding the least bit dated. Jump on the swing of “Laughing,” whose title signifies both the humor of Weinstein’s absurdist soundscapes and the way, as he puts it, laughing is “a sort of involuntary tell that humans can’t really hide behind.”

Humans actually were hiding a bit when Weinstein made Laughing, and in one sense that helped. As streets outside of his apartment emptied, he heard coyotes howling, and those sounds inspired him. As a result, there’s a sense of nostalgia here for open spaces, for places where sounds echo rather than getting drowned out. But ultimately Laughing feels outward and connective. By creating his own musical time and space, Weinstein has given us a new place to hang out." - Marc Masters

Bill Orcutt’s latest “counting” album, The Anxiety of Symmetry, completes a trilogy on his Fake Estates label that started with Pure Genius (2020) and A Mechanical Joey (2021), all realized with his own Cracked computer music software. Comprising two 15-minute-long improvisations, the album’s terrain is limited to six samples of female voices singing the number of the corresponding note value in the first six pitches of a major scale. These are fashioned into compact phrases (1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, etc.) that are looped and layered. As the loops combine in multiple permutations and cycles, their uneven lengths create polyrhythms and syncopations as well as harmonies. On the surface, Anxiety is unusually placid for Orcutt, reminiscent of Minimal classics like the “Knee Plays” of Phillip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach (which also features sung numbers, although without the one-to-one relationship between pitch and interval number) and the breathy soprano voice loops in “2/1” from Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. However, the album’s title is adapted from Orcutt’s essay of the same name in the Spectres III anthology about a compulsive behavioral condition known as “Just Right” and its parallels and possible applications to music, which suggests that this titular music’s inspiration is not trance- inducement, but rather a kind of mental obsession with ordering and re-ordering. In the essay, Orcutt posits that “for the ‘Just Right’ subject composing or performing with the computer, the fixation with repetition, symmetry and arrangement in sound can be mediated with software, creating new prospects for both therapeutic engagement with their compulsions and the creation of music with a length, density and scale not possible without machines...Offloading one’s “Just Right” auditory compulsions onto the computer fulfills the promise of automatic art, allowing the full expression of the subconscious by removing the need to focus on anything but the arrangement and rearrangement of elements, and the sounds themselves become merely a byproduct of the process of satisfying these feelings.”

The Anxiety of Symmetry might then be comparable to artist Hanne Darboven’s quasi-Minimal compositions and their basis in odd mathematical calculations derived from the calendar, in taking its cue from an extra-musical process. The two pieces’ polyphony is not far off from Orcutt’s recent Music for Four Guitars, but also marks Anxiety as a departure from both Pure Genius and A Mechanical Joey. The latter bypassed melody and harmony altogether; its relentless, phantasmagorical looping and subdivisions of Joey Ramone’s trademark onstage count-offs could be seen as a wry comment on the repetitions within repetitions of rock songs and their ongoing performances, or simply the monomania of years of touring for months on end. Pure Genius presented a male and female voice stolidly reciting the numbers that correspond to the notes of a scale that are simultaneously generated with sine tones (i.e., when a voice says “one,” the first note of a scale is heard at the same time); Anxiety collapses Pure Genius’ juxtaposition of pitch and counting by having the numbers sung. Stripped down yet excessive (in the tradition of his other works with Cracked), Anxiety seems less like its predecessors’ deconstructions than a new kind of subversive easy listening. — Alan Licht

Recorded in correspondence throughout a calamitous and uncertain 2020, “Eye of the Sea" is a collaborative record made by Tom James Scott of the United Kingdom and Svitlana Nianio of Ukraine. Active since the late 1980s, Nianio has released a treasure trove of diverse and beguiling music under her own name, as a member of the legendary Ukrainian experimental unit Cukor Bila Smerť, and in collaboration with the late musician and instrument maker Oleksandr Yurchenko. For his part, Scott has steadily published solo recordings since the mid aughts on labels such as Bo’Weavil, Students of Decay, and Where to Now?, and worked often in collaboration with kindred spirits like Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Lujik. 

“Eye of the Sea” began as a series of intimate, muted piano sketches put to tape by Scott, which Nianio embellished and re-contextualized with voice and instrumentation before returning them to Scott for further overdubbing, editing, and mixing. Listening to these recordings, I’m struck most by their patience, frailty, and beauty. Soft piano lines unspool alongside Nianio’s weightless voice on tracks such as “Slowly Turns the Spring,” which achieves a richly devotional air, and “Lotus,” a piece that all but halts the passage of time as it slowly blooms into expression. But despite their elusive, gauzy palette, there is a startling directness to these recordings that feels unique in the oeuvres of both musicians. Much like Nianio’s wonderful “Lisova Kolekciya,” (reissued by Scott on Skire in 2017) there is the sense that this music, particularly the vocal arrangements, is firmly rooted in some hermetic, primordial tradition. Ultimately, “Eye of the Sea” is a work of romantic, phantasmagoric beauty shot through with morning light; one which draws deeply on 20th century classical, chamber and liturgical musics, and ambient minimalism to arrive at a distinctive voice of its own. - Alex Cobb (Students of Decay/Soda Gong)

Composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid announces the release of a new work, Requiem For Jazz. A 12-movement suite composed, arranged, and inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, the album is a wide-ranging treatise on the African American story from one of its most astute narrators.

Itself an incisive critique of racial politics in the USA, The Cry of Jazz draws formal comparisons between the structure of jazz music and the African American experience - as one of freedom and restraint, of joy and suffering - that manifests in the triumph of spirit over the crushing prejudice of daily life.

Cutting together archive reels from Black neighborhoods in Chicago with live performance footage from Sun Ra and his Arkestra among others, the film remains a radical and prescient evocation of Black pride and its roots in the history of jazz, from spirituals to blues and beyond.

As South African writer Nombuso Mathibela captures in the album’s liner notes:

[Music is our weapon of struggle]
that radiantly holds our positive aspiration, group pride and determination as Black people. Sonics! our beautiful fire that gave light to the world.
And a world that gave us blues. The blues that gave us Black in jazz

Drawing a through line to today’s vibrant avant-garde, Angel Bat Dawid’s Requiem For Jazz picks up the liberation work laid out by Bland’s film, taking the message of joy and suffering within the Black classical tradition into a contemporary setting.

Music from the project was originally premiered at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago in 2019, where Angel conducted a multigenerational fifteen-piece instrumental ensemble of Black musicians from across Chicago’s creative community, alongside a four-person choir (featuring singers from Black Monument Ensemble) as well as dancers and visual artists.

Recordings from the performance were then mixed and post-produced by Angel, who added interludes, vocals and additional sounds. As well as transcribing a piece from the film, Requiem For Jazz also alludes to The Cry of Jazz through contributions from the Sun Ra Arkestra’s Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott on the album’s final movement, which were recorded remotely at the historic Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra in Philadelphia in late 2020.

“I want us to have this very wonderful conversation that Ed Bland started over 50 years ago and I want to continue the conversation; because this is a loving conversation that we need to have with each other” - Angel Bat Dawid, Feb 2023

Aho Ssan debuts on Other People with second solo album and book ‘Rhizomes’ featuring Nicolás Jaar, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, clipping., Blackhaine and more

Paris based composer Aho Ssan, the artist moniker of Niamké Désiré, presents his new full-length ‘Rhizomes’ on the Other People label following his debut LP ‘Simulacrum’ (2020) and collaborative record ‘Limen’ (2022) with fellow musician KMRU.

‘Rhizomes’ was commissioned by Other People, Donaufestival and INA GRM. The project draws inspiration from a concept coined and developed between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri. The idea of an ever evolving structural model, constantly in motion and spreading out in all directions at once. It has no beginning and no end, but always remains in a middle, through which it grows and overflows.

“The root thought is the one that kills everything around itself while the rhizome is the root that stretches out to meet other roots,” Désiré explains considering the works of French writer Édouard Glissant who addresses questions of identity, crossbreeding of cultures and its evolution.

Much like the name it borrows, Aho Ssan’s ‘Rhizomes’ is a multimedia project that embarks on a myriad of disparate, unique musical and artistic partnerships. This piece adapts this concept to explore the influence of sound materials on creation, the appropriation of a sound object, and the collaborative nature of a composition that responds to modernity.

“Rhizome represents an underground stem system that fosters connections between various organisms and allows them to flourish collectively. It’s an album that celebrates collaboration and brings together a diverse group of talented artists,” Désiré continues.

Aho Ssan collaborated with a comprehensive cast of artists to create a musical rhizome including Nyokabi Kariuki, Josefa Ntjam, Blackhaine, Nicolás Jaar, Resina, Rắn Cạp Đuôi, Richie Culver, clipping., Lafawndah, KMRU, Kassel Jaeger, 9T Antiope, James Ginzburg, Exzald S, Valentina Magaletti, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid and Mondkopf. Cooperation and community are at the root of this project and the lens through which all the compositions can be understood through.

In conjunction with the album, ‘Rhizomes’ comes complete with a set of illustrations by Kim Grano in a book release. The drawings become a hybrid language, each an emotional response to the musical half. The book contains an extended version of the album with 3 additional songs and 2 longer versions of the album songs. It also includes a sample pack by Aho Ssan and a collection of solo tracks by Elliot Blaise-Lassire, KMRU, Lamin Fofana, Brodinski & Sébastien Forrester, Valence Drake, 9T Antiope, Exzald S and Valentina Magaletti. The extended version package is only accessible through the QR codes in the book.

Aho Ssan will present ‘Rhizomes’ AV show together with visual artist Sevi Iko Dømochevsky at Berlin Atonal 2023. ’Rhizomes’ received a Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2023 Digital Musics & Sound Art.

THE HOLY MOTHER – MADHUVANTI PAL PLAYS THE RUDRA VEENA

This is the first Vinyl LP ever released featuring a woman playing the Rudra Veena. Madhuvanti Pal is from Kolkata India, teaches the Rudra Veena and builds her own instruments.

The name rudra veena derives from two Sanskrit roots: Rudra, which is a name for Shiva, and veena, which means ‘instrument.’ According to Hindu mythology, the Rudra Veena has a unique origin. It is said that Shiva saw his beautiful wife Parvati sleeping, with her arm over her breasts, and decided to build an instrument in her form. It is a stick zither, with two large gourds attached to a hollowed neck.
The first historical accounts of the instrument are given in the Vedas, and then the Puranas. Dhrupad is the oldest form of North Indian classical music that is still performed today. During the Mughal period, the rudra veena was a popular Dhrupad instrument, and was often played in courts throughout north India. Dhrupad musicians, including rudra veena artists, enjoyed the patronage of various Kings and Princes.
In recent years the rudra veena has gained some popularity, in part thanks to interest from musicians outside of India. Madhuvanti Pal is one of the new generation of rudra veena artists who is teaching students in India and abroad.
Early documentation of the rudra veena suggests that women played the instrument. This can be seen in sculptures in Hindu temples—some dating back more than 2000 years—which depict only women playing the rudra veena, and miniature paintings from the 15th - 17th centuries often depict a woman playing the rudra veena. However, in more recent times there has been significant stigma around women playing the instrument. Some earlier texts went as far as to suggest that women could not play the instrument, lest they be subject to a “curse.” Jyoti Hegde, who is perhaps the most famous female rudra veena artist, broke this barrier; her courage enabled younger musicians like Madhuvanti Pal to learn. However, while Jyoti Hegde plays the so-called traditional rudra veena, Madhuvanti plays a modified Dagar-style instrument.
Very few recordings of the rudra veena have been released; most current recordings are of Ustad Asad Ali Khan, Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and his son, Bahauddin Dagar. This is for a number of reasons, including that the rudra veena is notoriously difficult to capture in recorded form. Instead of traveling to a studio and availing technicians more accustomed to modern instrument needs, these recordings have been made in Madhuvanti’s apartment. In preparing the album, she has used her own equipment to record, mix, and master each raga.
(Limited Edition Double LP spanning over 90 minutes in length, full-color Gatefold with extensive liner notes inside.)
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SMOKE RINGS SHIMMERS ENDLESS BLUR

NEW SOLO ALBUM BY LAURA ORTMAN

ALL MUSIC AND LYRICS WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY LAURA ORTMAN

RECORDED AND MIXED BY MARTIN BISI AT BC STUDIOS
BY THE BANKS OF THE GOWANUS CANAL
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, USA
2022-2023

MASTERED BY FRED KEVORKIAN AT KEVORKIAN MASTERING IN BROOKLYN

ALBUM COVER PHOTO: FRANK SCHRAMM

2023

2017年発売『async』以来、約6年ぶりのオリジナルアルバム。いまだ続く闘病生活の中、日記を書くように制作した音楽のスケッチから、12曲を選び1枚のアルバムにまとめた作品集。各曲のタイトルは、曲を制作した日付。ジャケットは「もの派」を代表する国際的な美術家、李禹煥 (リ・ウファン)氏が本作のためにドローイングを制作。坂本龍一の71歳の誕生日となる2023年1月17日にリリース。