Thrill Jockey Records is pleased to announce Plastic Anniversary, the new album by Baltimore-based electronic duo Matmos. Pushing off from the restricted palette of their last album, the critically acclaimed Ultimate Care II, which was composed entirely from the sound of a washing machine, Plastic Anniversary is also derived from a single sound source: plastic.
At once hyper-familiar in its omnipresence and deeply inhuman in its measured-in-centuries longevity and endurance, plastic supplies, surrounds and scares. Seemingly negligible, plastic is always ready to hand but also always somewhat suspect, casting toxic shadows onto the everyday. True to form, the band have assembled a promiscuous array of examples of this sturdy-yet-ersatz family of materials: Bakelite dominos, Styrofoam coolers, polyethylene waste containers, PVC panpipes, pinpricks of bubble wrap, silicone gel breast implants and synthetic human fat.
Though it has the tight editing chops, pop forms and bizarre sound palette of their early albums such as Quasi-Objects and A Chance to Cut Is A Chance to Cure, Plastic Anniversary has a distinctive sound because of the foregrounding of plastic horns and plastic drums played by human beings. The bounce and snap of the duo’s programmed rhythms are here supplemented by a sweatier and more unruly human element provided by a surprising cast of guest musicians. Members of the horn and drumline sections of the Whitefish Highschool Bulldogs from Whitefish, Montana were recruited by Matmos and persuaded to take part in recording sessions at Snowghost Studios where they played objects sourced from a nearby recycling center, including massive plastic garbage bins. This was later combined with additional plastic percussion performances by Greg Saunier, a drummer known for his hyper-expressive, mercurial playing as a founding member of the band Deerhoof.
Taking the concept of “broken beat” literally, “Breaking Bread” is a bouncy digital dancehall number built entirely out of the plucked and twanged fragments of broken vinyl records by the Seventies soft rock group Bread. A mini-suite for plastic container, exercise ball and an amplified DNA kit that recalls both 80s pop and the hectic minimalism of Michael Nyman, “The Crying Pill” stacks frantic patterns of saxophone-like sobs onto deep sub bass stabs that are almost trap. Amplifying squishy synthetic human tissue created by the SynDaver corporation as a substitute for human corpses in medical schools, “Interior with Billiard Balls & Synthetic Fat” pairs squelchy electro made out of gross-out substances with tangy melodic riffs. This odd combination of Cronenbergian body-horror and sunny grooves continues on “Silicone Gel Implant”, a skanking number that works rubbery basslines out of, yes, a breast implant, but by the time the plastic flutes snake into the mix, the source becomes secondary to the trance-like form. Side one closes in a more reflective and somber key, with the title track “Plastic Anniversary”, whose cod-medieval martial drums and horn fanfares recall Matmos’ penchant for anachronism circa “The Civil War” before giving way to a close-mic-ed cascade of plastic poker chips.
If side one is playful and poppy, side two is sharper and darker in its implications, and features more live drumming than any other Matmos album. Things kick off with “Thermoplastic Riot Shield” a single-object study built entirely out of the sound of a police riot shield being stroked, rubbed and struck. The resulting sounds are processed into a tense assemblage of harsh noise, deep dub basslines and jarring cuts of silence. On a squeaky loop straight out of a Jacques Tati film, “The Singing Tube” draws out the pinging resonance of a ten foot long PVC pipe played entirely with plastic toilet brushes, and hits a flanged overtone effect not unlike the string compositions of Arnold Dreyblatt. Bristling with whistles and noisemakers and plastic-gloved handclaps, “Collapse of the Fourth Kingdom” bolts a percussive showcase for the high school marching band playing the signature patterns of drumline and Baltimore club onto jarring edits of LEGO bricks clicking into place and weird smears of processed plastic horns. Since plastic was described by its first developers as a “fourth kingdom” beyond animal, vegetable, and mineral, this track heralds the eventual collapse of the political economy that birthed the oceans of garbage that now choke our world. Thinking the dystopian consequences of plastic through to their post-human conclusion, the final track, “Plastisphere” sounds like a field recording of insects and birds and pattering rain and ocean waves, but is in fact a work of digital sleight of hand: every single sound on this track has been artificially constructed out of samples of bubble wrap, Velcro, plastic bags and straws and, tellingly, an emergency stretcher. After a volatile and vibrant suite of poppy plastic electronics, Plastic Anniversary ends in an acknowledgement of the planetary price yet to be paid.
Production Details:
Plastic Anniversary was pre-mastered by extreme digital sound artist Jeff Carey.
Mastered for vinyl by the renowned mastering engineer Rashad Becker.
Cover art, which collages high resolution, up-close photographs of the objects used to create the music, is by Ted Mineo, the creator of the cover art for Ultimate Care II.
Back cover image by photographer and activist Chris Jordan depicts the plastic contents from the stomach of a Laysan albatross photographed in an atoll near the Pacific Ocean Plastic Gyre.
Touring:
Matmos will be touring World Wide throughout 2019.
Anniversary:
Drew and Martin celebrated their 25th while making the album.
credits
releases March 15, 2019

It’s impossible to overstate how important Mike Scalzi is to the history of American true metal. As frontman of The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Scalzi has been flying the flag for traditional heavy metal since 1990, through some of the leanest years the genre’s seen. It’s some long overdue justice to have Slough Feg releasing New Organon, their best album in a decade, during a boom time for this style of music. It’s hard to imagine an Eternal Champion or a Spirit Adrift emerging without Slough Feg sweating it out in the riff mines for the past three decades. On New Organon, Scalzi taps into the same primal well that fueled modern classics like Atavism and Hardworlder, leaning into the guitar harmonies he and his co-guitarist Angelo Tringali have perfected over the years. (For those inspired to work back through the catalog, their harmonies on 2007’s “Tiger! Tiger!” are my favorite in any metal song, ever.) He also lets his day job as a philosophy professor color the material more than he ever has before, penning a history of philosophy from the dawn of civilization to the present day in the lyrics.

On June 12, 4AD will make available the debut commercial release from South Florida producer and MC, SpaceGhostPurrp. Entitled Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp, the record compiles both new and old material, tracking the early years of this intoxicating prodigal talent.
Hailing from Miami, FL, SpaceGhostPurrp, who spearheads the Raider Klan Mafia, was born on April 1st, 1991; a date that has subsequently become known to him and his followers as 'Purrp Day'. Cast in the classic mould of producer/MC, his musical influences read like a checklist of hip-hop touchstones - Three 6 Mafia, UGK, DJ Paul, Eazy E, Tupac and DJ Screw - revealing him as a true connoisseur of the gloriously weird and wonderful. Given his age, the reference to such rich heritage shows Purrp as a child of the digital era; his rhymes veering between the hallucinogenic, somnambulant and visceral, his productions syrup-thick, schizophrenic and refreshingly off-kilter. Hard to pin down, his choice of language is an intriguing invite into his murky world, with the track titles alone a playful assault on audience expectations.

Where are we headed? What are we consuming, how is it affecting us, and why does everything feel so bad and weird sometimes? These are some of the questions posed on Ruban Nielson’s fourth album as Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Sex & Food—a delightfully shapeshifting album that filters these real-deal serious themes through a vibrant sonic lens that spans battered drum-machine funk, doomy and thrashing rock, and pink-hued psychedelic disco. Recorded in a variety of locales from Seoul and Hanoi to Reykjavik, Mexico City, and Auckland, Sex & Food is a practical musical travelogue, with local musicians from the countries that Nielson and his band visited pitching in throughout.

Immersively sensual, diaristic entries by cult US ambient avatar Ulla (aka Ulla Straus), the first release on Experiences Ltd, a new label run by Special Guest DJ (uon, Caveman Paradise), and a big recommendation if yr feeling Huerco S, Nadia Khan, Dominique Lawalrée, Ryuichi Sakamoto.
'Tumbling Towards a Wall’ is a keening batch of dematerialised atmospheres and lilting rhythms bound to lull listeners into hypnagogic states with its anxiety-sink ambient spongiforms and diary-like and drift-away textures. In eight low-lit and fuzzy parts they feel out smudged textures flecked with iridescent, gauzy melodies and habitual, stream-of-consciousness keys that toe the finest line between enervated and ember-like. It’s a proper, cockle-warming sound that says its piece with measured modesty and a glowing sense of soul that resonates with Dominique Lawalrée and Ryuichi Sakamoto just as much as Ulla’s peers, such as Special Guest DJ and Pendant.
The sort of record that may leave users struggling to even get up and flip the sides, such is its soporific pull, ‘Tumbling Towards a Wall’, enacts a sort of slow motion collision with all the sensuality of knackered Ballardian pillow-talk. Each track here teases the senses with a range of frayed, fractured and breezily unresolved structures that exert an ideal ambient sleight-of-hand primed to lead listeners’ thoughts off on their own woozy tangents between the music’s mix of syrupy/brittle rhythm and elusive atmospheric clag. On the A-side the sounds all remains detectably electronic, but for those who manage to keep their lids over half-mast, the B-side blossoms with sampled acoustic textures between a scudding choral cut-up that’s surely worth the entry alone, and in the closing thread of rainy day piano keys that perfuse and wilt in the heart-clutching closing piece. For solitary reflection, Ulla’s first mononymous release is a gorgeous record that mellows and balances any physical or mental space it comes into contact with.

Horse Lords make music for the liberation of mind and body. The Baltimore quartet's new album The Common Task points to a utopian, modernist ideal, recalling as diverse a cohort as The Ex and Glenn Branca to raucous Saharan guitar music, Albert Ayler, and James Tenney. As evidenced by the album's title, as well as songs like 'Fanfare for Effective Freedom' and 'People's Park,' the band's penchant for radical politics is especially accentuated on this release. Horse Lords are the Pied Piper of experimental music and radical thought. Their music is unabashedly fun, and experiencing it in a live context is an experience of collective ecstasy, each body moving to its own notion of what the beat may be. By showing just how joyous it can be to imagine new futures and possibilities, by making us dance and howl with each tectonic shift, they show how dazzling the path towards utopia could be.

Hank Mobley - tenor saxophone
Lee Morgan - trumpet
Harold Mabern, Jr. - piano
Larry Ridley - bass
Billy Higgins - drums

经历了四年的漫长等待，我们终于迎来的Christina Aguilera的全新大碟Back to basics,其中加入了许多新的元素，例如百老汇式的旧式唱腔，爵士味很浓的爵士唱腔，令外一如既往的继承了上一张唱片的风格，例如still dirrty,以及为母亲和她的Fans们所写的歌oh mother ,thank you,让我们好好坐下来静静的聆听这盘经典的作品吧！

Dark Arts
"This is an anthology, a selection of old and new. It's a collection of the past but moving forward. It's past and future."
Dark Arts is one of those bands that for some reason got lost in the shuffle. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, by a man named Bob Katt, the "cool, older guy" who went to all the concerts in town and had been in a bunch of other bands. Initially there were five members: in '83 there was Bob on bass and percussion, singer Sue Ann Mason, drummer Dave Green, Bill Bruner on guitar and Stephanie Payne on keyboard. Katt is the one who brought everyone together and came up with the name: they were the 'art' band and they were 'dark'. Keyboard player Stephanie Payne, just like Katt, was also present at every musical happening. Young and eager, she would turn out to be the motor and musical mastermind of the group. When she decided to move to Los Angeles, California, Sue-Ann and new member Larry Altvater decided to tag along. By the time they made their first full album, on Phil Druckers (Savage Republic and 17 Pygmies) label Nate Starkman and Son, they had split up. Payne decided to move on and continued the band by herself, ever finding new musicians.
High Street
After the fall of '80, when she was at art school, Payne became more outspoken, headstrong and flamboyant. Driven by her love for music, she would eventually become a forerunner in the local scene of Columbus. The place to be back then was the (now unaffordable) High Street area. To ‘go out’ at the time was simply walk this street up and down. She and her friends would hang out there, check out the record stores, do graffiti at night (Payne on high heels). This also meant getting into altercations and even get spit on by jocks. High Street lay next the Ohio State University campus, the home of the only real music club in the city, maybe even the state: Crazy Mama's. Everyone would go there for dancing and live concerts. Payne would scour music magazines and buy the weekly imports at the local record shops. Columbus youngsters would drive to Chicago or other cities to see the big bands and hunt for new music. There, Payne would beleaguer the city shop clerks, asking for their personal recommendations. Since what she liked was often not accessible, Payne took up DJ'ing at Crazy Mama's.
"I played hard bands, because I liked pissing people off and then we could use our fists on the dancefloor. I would get into trouble because of this slamdancing. I'd also practice dancing at home, had to make sure I knew where all the breaks were, so I could look cool on the dancefloor. Dancing was so important back then, we called it 'going to church'."
Whenever Payne discovered new music, she'd be dying to present it. Due to the lack of venues and accompanying new music, she became a promotor, brought several bands into town and founded her own club night under the guise of "School For Barbarians".
The Art Band
Asides from art school, promoting concerts, DJ'ing and record hunting Payne kept making music. Before Dark Arts, she played in The Girl Boys, a Janus-faced band that was either light, silly and acoustic but could also deliver a hard, dark, electric live set. The same applied to Dark Arts. Their wide-ranging music has a fey, nearly spiritual quality, drifting between folk music, ambient, Eastern European beat patterns and new wave. They were the 'art band' of Columbus, divergent, always changing their sets. They would print crafty flyers, project films and set up special lighting.
"When we played live, we would bring out lawnmowers, pots and pans and pipes we would smash rhythmically with a mallet. Anything that made noise. And then there was also the kraut-influenced, more ambient Dark Arts. I loved percussion, I loved beautiful things, but then, I could also whip out a chainsaw, you know."
Their first gig was in Bernie's Bagel & Deli, as Toy Division, playing Joy Division covers on toy instruments. Dark Arts' second show was a country and western themed performance. The next concert was held with a huge crowd, with 400 alternatives, punkrockers, people from Cleveland, Cincinnati and Payne's own mom in attendance. They were the support act for Big Black, Steve Albini's punk rock band, whom Payne had written a "big stupid collaged fan letter". He liked them and issued their first EP, A Long Way From Brigadoon on his Ruthless Records in 1985. Later that year Dark Arts opened for Cocteau Twins, who were on their first USA tour.
After the move to L.A., Dark Arts was featured on the compilation The October Country (1987), issued on Phil Druckers label as well. Because of her work in the music industry and through Drucker, Payne encountered a lot of gifted musicians. She met most of the people on Reflections in a rear view mirror through Phil or because of her work in record stores and for indie distribution companies. In 1991, Carnival of Lost Souls (Nate Starkman and Son) was mastered by Biff Sanders and with him she later on created the 7" Jola Dool (1995), self-issued on School for Barbarians. Four years later Something Once Whispered to Cava - Cava referring to Payne's cat - came out on Falçata-Galia.
"Melodies will come to me. I have a really old eighties Ensoniq ESQ-1 keyboard, it's ancient. I store sequencies in its memory banks, leave ideas in it, like snippets. Then something will just stick in my head and I go back to it and keep working on it and working on it."
For the release concert of the Cava album, she gathered a live band around her. Payne played the dulcimer, piano, percussion, flute and melodica (amongst other sound-making objects), Sharon Berman accordion, ballophone, recorder and drums and Juan Wijngaard worked his self made hurdy gurdy, the recorder, mouth harp and percussion. During those living-room jam sessions, Dark Arts' most recent work came about.
"There were always bands, before Dark Arts and after. It mattered less who I made music with, as long as I made it. Whenever opportunities present themselves, I make music. I'm forever writing music , continually meeting new people to work with. It's ongoing, it's something inside."
credits
releases January 13, 2020
All tracks written by Stephanie Payne
Linernotes by Stefanie Van Rompaey.
Graphic Design by Nana Esi
Selection by Brecht Van Dingenen & Ziggy Devriendt
Mastered By Mathieu Savenay

Occlith is a Doom Metal Supergroup based out of Sacramento, California.
Featuring:
Phillip Gallagher on Guitar(Swamp Witch, GraveCoven, Bog Oak)
Daniel Aguilar on Guitar(Battle Hag)
Karl Cordtz on Vocals(CHRCH)
Patrick Hills on Drums(Pastoral, King Woman)
Courtland Miles on Bass(Gloriam Draconis)
Gates, Doorways, And Endings is the haunting debut album from OCCLITH.