Following last year’s critically-acclaimed ‘The experience of repetition as death’ album and recent tracks released on Longform Editions and Geographic North (as well as performing on new releases from both Michael Stipe and Taylor Swift), cellist/composer Clarice Jensen returns on FatCat’s 130701 imprint with a brand new digital EP of material from her debut film score.
The fifteen-minute long 5-track EP was recorded at Jensen’s home in Brooklyn. It was performed on cello and electronics and also sees Clarice expanding her ouevre into works for piano. The material comprises her first feature film comission, since which Clarice has worked on three more, and so marks the beginning of working in a medium in which she is hoping to grow.
Directed by Takeshi Fukunaga, ‘Ainu Mosir’ is a coming-of-age tale set in an indigenous village in Northern Japan, where a community‘s livelihood depends on preserving and performing ancient traditions for visiting tourists. Torn between maintaining the tradition of his ancestors and lured by the mysteries of adulthood, 14-year-old Kanto is on a journey to find a sense of self. With his teenage peers restless and tired of their parents forcing them to participate in cultural rituals in a language they don’t even speak themselves, Kanto is taken under the wing of a family friend, who introduces him to the secrets and wisdom of their ancestors. Without his recently-deceased father’s guidance to help shape his sense of right and wrong, Kanto must decide whether he stays on the side of tradition or if he will stand up for his own values. The film was awarded the Special Jury Mention award at Tribeca Film Festival where it premiered, and Best Film at Guanajuato Fim Festival in Mexico.
Jensen’s score superbly communicates the emotional complexity and depth of this wonderful film. Throughout, her material is concise and beautifully handled. The EP highlights a set of liminal, subtle and suggestively deep pieces that flicker and play around the edges of obvious meaning rather than resorting to the blatant emotional cajoling of so much mainstream film music.
Opening track ‘Fishing’ starts out with Clarice performing on piano - the beautiful sparse melody eventually joined by minimal electronics and cello building drone-swells around it. ‘Summer’ sees her cello utilised for percussive effect, building a brief rhythm out of bow-hits against the strings before another rich drone and more percussion enters alongside a modular-sounding loop that recalls Laurie Spiegel or Caterina Barbieri. Both ‘Winter’ and ‘Sacrifice’ are founded in electronic manipulations of the cello, building rise-and-fall tone-arcs that simmer and flower. Closing the EP, ‘Sleep’ sees the cello processed again as percussive / textural material, moving into a warm wave of sound and then resolving calmly with a web of piano notes echoing out.
A versatile collaborator, Jensen has recorded and performed with a host of stellar artists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter, Björk, Stars of the Lid, Dustin O’Halloran, Joanna Newsom, Nico Muhly, Owen Pallett, Arcade Fire, Jónsi, Tyondai Braxton, Dirty Projectors, Blonde Redhead, Frightened Rabbit, Beirut, and Nick Cave. In her role as the artistic director of ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), she has helped bring to life some of the most revered works of modern classical music, including pieces by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Gavin Bryars and more.
A deep and accomplished first entry into film scoring, ‘Ainu Mosir’ puts down a marker and suggests a fruitful future career in the medium for its author.
‘Ainu Mosir’ is released on DSPs on January 29th. The film has been distributed in North America and is available to watch on Netflix.

Dense 12 disc retrospective of Pauline Oliveros' early and unreleased electronic work including her very first piece for tape made in 1961. The majority of these pieces have never before been released. Organized chronologically by studio this set not only documents Pauline's earliest electronic music but it also functions as an early history of electronic music itself. Extensive liner notes including essays from Pauline Oliveros, Alex Chechile, Ramon Sender, David Bernstein, Corey Arcangel and Benjamin Tinker. This box set is being released in conjunction with Pauline Oliveros' 80th birthday celebrations. Pauline Oliveros, composer, performer and humanitarian is an important pioneer in American Music. Acclaimed internationally, for four decades she has explored sound -- forging new ground for herself and others. Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation she has created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly effects those who experience it and eludes many who try to write about it. "On some level, music, sound consciousness and religion are all one, and she would seem to be very close to that level." John Rockwell Oliveros has been honored with awards, grants and concerts internationally. Whether performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., in an underground cavern, or in the studios of West German Radio, Oliveros' commitment to interaction with the moment is unchanged. She can make the sound of a sweeping siren into another instrument of the ensemble. Through Deep Listening Pieces and earlier Sonic Meditations Oliveros introduced the concept of incorporating all environmental sounds into musical performance. To make a pleasurable experience of this requires focused concentration, skilled musicianship and strong improvisational skills, which are the hallmarks of Oliveros' form. In performance Oliveros uses an accordion which has been re-tuned in two different systems of her just intonation in addition to electronics to alter the sound of the accordion and to explore the individual characteristics of each room. (Tuning Chart) Pauline Oliveros has built a loyal following through her concerts, recordings, publications and musical compositions that she has written for soloists and ensembles in music, dance, theater and interarts companies. She has also provided leadership within the music community from her early years as the first Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (formerly the Tape Music Center at Mills), director of the Center for Music Experiment during her 14 year tenure as professor of music at the University of California at San Diego to acting in an advisory capacity for organizations such as The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council for the Arts, and many private foundations. She now serves as Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College. Oliveros has been vocal about representing the needs of individual artists, about the need for diversity and experimentation in the arts, and promoting cooperation and good will among people.

Droneflower is in bloom. The new collaboration between Marissa Nadler and Stephen Brodsky (Cave In, Mutoid Man), is a sprawling and expansive exercise in contrasts. It is the sound of the war between the brutal and the ethereal, the dark and the light, the past and the present, and the real and imagined.
Brodsky met Nadler for the first time in 2014 at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus Bar when he came to see her play on her July tour, and they quickly became friends. Both of them had been wanting to explore songwriting that didn’t fit into their existing projects, and they soon became energized by the prospect of working together. One of the first ideas they discussed was a horror movie soundtrack, and while Droneflower isn’t that, it is a richly cinematic album. It’s easy to imagine much of the record set to images, though it wasn’t composed that way.
The first song that came together was “Dead West,” based around a beautiful acoustic guitar piece Brodsky wrote while living on Spy Pond, just outside of Nadler’s home base in Boston. By the time they started working on the song earnest, Brodsky had moved to Brooklyn. Nadler added lyrics and vocal melodies remotely, and even from a distance it was obvious there was real kismet in the collaboration.
All the songs on Droneflower were recorded in home studios, and they throb with the frisson of that intimate environment. For much of the recording process, Brodsky would stop by the ramshackle studio that Nadler set up in Boston whenever he was in town visiting family. Songs like “For the Sun” were written on the spot there, lyrics and all. The lush ambient pieces “Space Ghost I” and “Space Ghost II” began as Brodsky piano compositions and were later fleshed out by additional instrumentation and Nadler’s inimitable vocals.
Nadler and Brodsky also recorded two cover songs for the album — the epic Guns n’ Roses power ballad “Estranged” and Morphine’s beguiling “In Spite of Me.” Since childhood, Nadler had been transfixed by the “Estranged” video where Axl Rose swam with dolphins, and she and Brodsky breathe new life into the song here. Their take on “In Spite of Me” is invigorated by a guest appearance from Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley, who ironically didn’t play on the original recording but is indispensable on Nadler and Brodsky’s version.

As menacing and unhinged as ever, the pride of Staten Island is back with their fifth full-length offering, V. Raw and absent of the modern technological trappings, the Budos pick up where they left off with 2014’s Burnt Offering, and finds the Budos expanding on the brooding, fuzz-fueled riffs, whilst harkening back to the Ethiopian inspired rhythms and percussive proclivity that put Budos Band on the map.

Cassandra Jenkins is an American musician, singer and songwriter based in Brooklyn, NY.

In a moment of illumination the solution presented itself: do the simple thing. In early 2019, in the midst of major transition, she acquired a new instrument, the omnichord, and began recording a deluge of songs. Guy Blakeslee, who had been an advocate for years, set up a cassette recorder in her bedroom and provided empathic guidance, subtle yet affecting accompaniment and engineering prowess. Limited to only 4-tracks and first takes, Lael had to surrender some of her perfectionism to deliver the songs in their essence.
The first song she recorded was 'For No One For Now,' which calls to mind the agitated beat of driving fast on the freeway against the backdrop of the San Fernando Valley’s bent palms. The song contrasts romantic idealisations with the banality of folding sheets and toasting bread. It highlights her oft-thwarted attempts to enjoy the day to day while her mind wanders off toward the dream, the ideal.
While Lael returned to her family farm in April 2020, Los Angeles is a player on this album, and 'Every Star Shivers in the Dark' is an ode to the sprawling city, the outskirts of Eden. One can envision her walking from Dodgers Stadium to downtown, observing strangers and her own strangeness but determined to find communion with others. 'Blue Vein' is her personal anthem, a Paul Revere piece that gallops through the town as a strident declamation. It is an amalgam of thoughts, concerns, and lessons as she nearly speaks the words, unmasked by flourishes, ensuring the meaning cuts through.
Normally a morning person, Lael recorded most of these songs in the darkening of the early evening, and so became Acquainted With Night.

Cool Dry Place is Katy Kirby’s long-awaited debut album. The 9 songs here are equal parts driving indie-pop and artful folk songwriting in the vein of Waxahatchee, Lucy Dacus, and Frankie Cosmos. Intimate, vulnerable lyrics give way to anthemic choruses, true earworm, and memorable vocal melodies.

Human Story 3 in its essence is a dialectic on the discord between technological advancement ,human folly and human progress. folly characterized by assessing the loss that occurs in the way technology is being integrated and applied to our lives. progress, in that technological aid on a 21st century scale is arguably humankind’s greatest intellectual achievement. From the back drop of such grand technological achievement spawn forth the distinctive qualities that make the hyper individualistic age. Visible in developments in marketing of products and its emphasis on the individual,advances in consumerism and market values, the smartphone as a marker of the fortified empire of individualism, and from which birthed more inconspicuous signs such as the selfie, a crude and seemingly benign tech age behavior,nothing more than a symptom of the age.

95 年是令人兴奋的一年，正是在这一年Suffocation发行了他们以及在世界死亡金属界都都堪称精典的《Pierced From Within》，这张专辑把Suffocation引向事业的高峰。厚重清晰的音色，灵活多变的拍子进行，华丽不失扭曲色彩的Solo，在音乐中，乐队更大胆的尝试更怪的拍子结合，2/4与3/4，5/4和3/4，太多的新元素让这张专辑成为乐迷手中的宠儿。

Angel Tears in Sunlight is Pauline Anna Strom’s first album in over thirty years; an assemblage of music that refracts the expansiveness, and minutiae, of imagined realms while embracing the kaleidoscopic echoes of our distant epochs. Recorded in the same San Francisco home where her early work emerged, Angel Tears in Sunlight elevates Strom’s mysterious, masterful synthesis of music and machine and opens another portal to the transportive power and healing potential of her work.
Music composed and recorded by Pauline Anna Strom
Edited by John Also Bennett
Mixed by Jeremy Harris
Mastered by Jessica Thompson for Jessica Thompson Audio (San Francisco, CA)
Pauline’s hand photographed by Aubrey Trinnaman
Little Soulstice and Ms Huff photographed by John Jennings
Design by Will Work for Good
This album is dedicated to the memory of John Jennings, a man of integrity, honor, and loyalty. Patient, understanding, and free of judgement. I’ll cherish and treasure our friendship—past, present, and future—through eternity. Until we renew our friendship in another lifetime to come. Please know that you always have a place in our hearts. Love, Paula, Little Soulstice, and Ms Huff
©℗2021 RVNG Intl. rvng.com
Come! Mend!
On behalf of Pauline Anna Strom, a portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit The International Iguana Foundation, a non-profit organization supporting conservation, awareness, and scientific programs that enhance the survival of wild iguanas and their habitats. iguanafoundation.org