The art of Kammerflimmer Kollektief is deception. It is a persuasive and seductive art, resulting in incorrect assessments and doubtful perceptions. It is an art of disorientation and misdirection. In the Kollektief’s current production Désarroi (disorientation), their 10th and wildest album, they do it again: Welcome to the Kammerflimmery!
Right from first track, the Kollektief leaves its referential indicators. Heike Aumüller's free, unsentimental Harmonium played with a Sehnsucht (like a Free Jazz counterpart to Reggae producer and Melodica master Augustus Pablo), followed by Johannes Frisch’s magic double-bass, creaking and free-wheeling. Shortly after a dash of Swedish Biker-Rock passion, that makes you forget the benedictions of modernity – for a moment at least – until we come to the end of Désarroi, where we are brought back into the blessings of concrete- solid realities.
Clear articulated comprehensibility is definitively not one of the aims of the Kollektief’s sign systems. Rather, it masters the ancient art of secret-keeping, and it does it in times in which everyone reveals all of their intimacies without asking the rest of humanity whether or not we’d like to know them. The Kollektief clips musical and cultural fragments out of their cultural frameworks and pieces them enigmatically together. They have worked on this amalgam of FX-Cultures, Psychedelica, Free Form, Dub, Improv, and ritual activities for a long time. These elements are gradually connected and placed in an opaque, vertical system, about as (non-)coherent as the constitutional laws of an alchemistic proto-science can be. The Kollektief takes only what is of use. And what is of use has usually a mythical crux. What was once a bass becomes a creak. What was once a voice becomes a phoneme. What was once a guitar becomes a gnarly notion of “something strummed”. At the same time, the special effects that guitarist Thomas Weber extracts from his strange apparati, he masks as unidentifiable. Rather, they are incorporated as the seemingly "familiar" in the singular tone continuum of the Kammerflimmery. The strange, unreal impressions lurking as soundtrack behind these psych, improv, and editing wars might be regarded by the complete outsider as seemingly strange events.
Like the shaman, who in the morning simply hangs up his magic roots for drying to prepare them for his nightly ecstatic routines, the Kollektief adds something ordinary and familiar to its rituals. Maybe that’s why they cover Zurück zum Beton (Back to Concrete), the 1978 hit by West-German punk legends S.Y.P.H. Here Zurück zum Beton is not interpreted as a grim punk anthem, but as an erotic celebration of a life in order, of Alltag and Künstlichkeit – familiarity and artificiality. A tender embrace of the art of sculpting concrete – the technique to shape public spheres. Over there “pure nature”. Over here “mankind”. In between the magic pragmatism of the Kollektief. On Désarroi, in a fashion perhaps even more pronounced than on previous works, the Kollektief is working with a delicate, tender sensibility (And particularly delicate and disorienting is the singing of Heike Aumüller, which has never been heard like this on record before). If tenderness becomes maximally tender, it is also a maximality of radical tenderness. And because of this, Désarroi is possibly the Kollektief’s most radical album to date.

Ocho Mule Records, Guster’s own label, and Nettwerk Music Group are thrilled to release Guster’s most vibrant album yet, Evermotion. Produced by Richard Swift (The Shins, Foxygen, Stereolab), the album bulldozes inhibitions, propelling the band to a harder-charging, more freewheeling sound as heard on lead single, “Simple Machine.” Packed with tight hooks, muscular guitar riffs, clanging percussion and surprisingly dark lyrics, the new album features adventurous turns on slide guitars, brassy trumpets and a glockenspiel, with sax and trombone accompaniment.

Following the success of his critically-acclaimed-fifth-studio-album, Single Mothers, Justin Townes Earle is pleased to announce the release of the companion album, Absent Fathers. Comprised of 10 tracks, Absent Fathers was recorded alongside Single Mothers as a double album, but as Justin began to sequence it, he felt each half needed to make its own statement and they took on their own identities. Absent Fathers will be released January 13, 2015.

London quartet Desperate Journalist - Jo Bevan (vocals), Simon Drowner (bass), Rob Hardy (guitar) and Caz Hellbent (drums) - will soon follow up their one EP and two singles with a self-titled debut album. Recorded almost entirely live in Soho’s Dean Street Studios, the full-length was jointly produced alongside Keith TOTP and mixed by the band themselves.
“The album was recorded over five days at Dean Street Studios,” they explain. “We wanted to make sure the record reflected the energy and directness of our live shows so the way we recorded was live with some guitar and vocal overdubs.
“The songs are all one word titles because: a) it’s hard to name songs without some kind of restrictive structure to it; and b) it reflects the ethos we have of making sure everything in each track needs to be there - we don’t like excess. Everything needs to be immediate and streamlined.”

Complex and conceptual Chicago outfit Disappears didn’t manage to issue any new material in 2014, but it’s been announced that the krautrock-loving crew will materialize again early next year via the release of their fifth full-length, Irreal.
A press release confirms that Kranky will have the album out in stores January 19. As with 2013’s Era, the upcoming eight-song LP was recorded with producer John Congleton at Chicago’s esteemed Electrical Audio facility.
Disappears’ latest LP is described as “a master class in texture, pace and control,” with the album apparently featuring “imperfect melodies” and post-punk arrangements that “collapse onto each other.” Thematically, Irreal weighs in on “eternalism, roboethics [and] identity.”

Bella Union are excited to announce the release of How To Die In The North, the new album from maverick songwriter BC Camplight, on 19th January.
Lost treasure needn’t be found in the distant past; the 21st century hides many artists who disappeared into the great wide yonder. BC Camplight is one such example. The alter-ego of American songwriter Brian Christinzio released albums in 2005 and 2007, both gems of a certain psych-pop vintage, combining eloquent songwriting with a self-destructive bent. Christinzio certainly knew it – he’s described himself as, “the guy who blew it.”
But this sublime talent with the keening vocal and fearless approach to lyrical introspection has another chance. His new album ‘How To Die In The North’, recorded in his newly adopted home of Manchester, England, is a fantastically rich, stylistically diverse trip. From dramatic, layered pop to a haunted take on Sixties sunshine-pop, from blue-eyed soul to speedy surf-pop, from sparser piano balladry to psychedelic showstoppers and a grand finale that’s part Nilsson and part Broadway showtune.
Originally from New Jersey, Christinzio started playing piano aged just four, inspired by his mum’s Jerry Lee Lewis and Nilsson records and his Dad’s classical collection. Depression and crippling hypochondria clashed with captaining the football team and a penchant for boxing. Post-school, he fell in with people, “willing to go through shit to be a musician,” which saw him relocate to Philadelphia where he occasionally played live with Philly faves The War On Drugs and guested on Sharon Van Etten’s album ‘Epic’.
He’s already done two sessions for long-term fan Marc Riley at BBC 6 Music, which featured Christinzio’s band of Mancunians who he met at The Castle Hotel pub, a watering hole in the city centre particularly popular with musicians. Christinzio also heard John Grant’s album on the jukebox there, which encouraged him to approach Bella Union. Grant’s cocktail of depression and self-sabotage thwarted an outrageous talent, but he took his second chance. The same deserves to happen to Christinzio, a similarly outsize, sharp and funny personality with a non-conformist streak. Far from dying, BC Camplight has been reborn in the North!