Fourtet - New Energy

Fourtet - New Energy

Self-released

Kieran Hebden AKA Fourtet delivers his latest album New Energy - replete with customary sublime melodies and forward-thinking arrangements. New Energy is a warm, bounteous cavalcade of woozy synths, meditative rhythms and dynamic percussion that is somehow bold and club-friendly yet contemplative and tranquil.

Probably the closest thing in style to his much loved Roads album of 2013, particular highlights include the steel drum infused Lush, Two Thousand Seventeen, the ambient house of SW9 9SL and Planet. To give New Energy it's deserved respect you really need to sit down with the whole record and let yourself go, as it's one to take in as a whole. In a way that's to say it's lacking stand out tracks - no obvious belters, but as a package it's nonetheless satisfying.

Murlo - Wind Me Up

Murlo - Haze
Butterz

Following the Akira repress feature by pure chance comes Mancunian melody-smith Murlo's Haze, taken from his new EP Wind Me Up. Fans of Machinedrum and Flume will adore the futuristic, sparse yet detailed productions, while anime fans will fall over themselves for the sumptuous artworks and videos created by the poly-mathematical protagonist himself.

The video to Haze is a simple still from the Wind Me Up artwork pallette. Musically, swooning, cascading synths, ambient touches and expressive keyboards meet staccato percussion amid deft arrangement and simple, prominent basslines. 

This piece wouldn't be complete without giving shine to Murlo's animation skills alongside the music. Below you'll find a selection of Merlot's Murlo's finest vintages (wine joke - sorry)

Trap-style in delivery and very much club-friendly, Tired of You retains a characteristic depth and sense of melancholy that lift the insistent, Grime bass and lead lines to heights a lesser producer wouldn't manage. The video that accompanies is nothing short of jaw-dropping, reminiscent of the best Japanese animé, a little Robert Crumb flavour adding menace to the slow-moving, captivating pictures. 

Glassy, chromatic and entrancing visuals galore - You & Me is somewhere between Audio-Visual installation and narrative music video, with the romance of the vocal and soft/hard juxtapositions within the music adding to the bittersweet aesthetic.

Finally, Into Mist blends hand drawn animation with computer manipulated imagery, set to a sprightly, percussive instrumental with Murlo's signature minimalist soulfulness in abundance.

See/hear more Murlo magic on his Youtube channel, and be sure to cop his brilliant Wind Me Up EP here 

V/A The Microcosm: Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970-1986

V/A

The Microcosm: Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970-1986

Light In The Attic

LITA 143

The follow up to Light In The Attic’s game-changing I Am The Center box set is finally here. The Microcosm: Visionary Music Of Continental Europe, 1970-1986 is the first major overview of key works from cosmically-taped in artists needing little introduction — Vangelis, Ash Ra Tempel, and Popol Vuh — and unknown masterpieces by criminally overlooked heroes like Bernard Xolotl, Robert Julian Horky and Enno Velthuys.

Whereas I Am The Center called for a reconsideration of an entire maligned genre, The Microcosm requests nothing more than an open mind to consider this ambient, new age, neuzeit, prog, krautrock, cosmic, holistic stuff, whatever one calls it — as a pulsating movement unto itself, a mirror refracting the American new age scene in unexpected, electrifying ways, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the universality of the timeless quest to express “the Ineffable” through music.

Drawing from major label budgets and homemade cassette distributed circumstances alike, The Microcosm demonstrates a depth of peace profound to behold, and clearly expands the boundaries. Lovingly conceived and lavishly presented by producer Douglas Mcgowan (Yoga Records) and liner notes contributor Jason Patrick Woodbury (Pitchfork, Aquarium Drunkard), The Microcosm features stunning cover paintings by Étienne Trouvelot, and labels by Finnish savant Aleksanda Ionowa.

Vangelis - Creation Du Monde




Ralph Lundsten - Bön 5 - Förlåt Oss Våra Skulder (Prayer 5 - Forgive Us Our Debts)




Ash Ra Tempel - Le Sourire Volé




Popol Vuh - Brüder Des Schattens - Söhne Des Lichts (abridged)




Ariel Kalma - Orguitar Soir




Bernard Xolotl - Cometary Wailing (Valley Plateau)




Peter Michael Hamel - Einklang




Francesco Messina - Untitled




Roedelius - Wenn Der Südwind Weht




Deutsche Wertarbeit - Der Grosse Atem




Robert Julian Horky - Dance For A Warrior




Karl Schaffner & Lothar Grimm - Caravan




Suzanne Doucet & Christian Buehner - Shivas Dance




Enno Velthuys - Morning Glory




Deuter - Spirales




Gigi Masin - Ship Beetel

Listen to some choices excerpts from the record below

And buy here https://lightintheattic.net/releases/2637-the-microcosm-visionary-music-of-continental-europe-1970-1986

Manu Dibango - Electric Africa

Manu Dibango

Electric Africa

Tidal Waves Music

TWM10

Manu Dibango needs little introduction, born in Cameroon in 1933, Manu developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. He’s definitely among the best known African artists outside of Africa. Collaborations were numerous and include top acts like Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock, Bill Laswell, Sly & Robbie, Don Cherry and Bernie Worrell. In addition to selling hundreds of thousands of copies of the albums he recorded, he played such huge venues as Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden.

In 1972, at 40 years of age, Manu Dibango did something almost unheard of for an African artist – he had a pop hit. His song “Soul Makossa” became an enormous hit which influenced popular music for decades to follow. First picked up by David Mancuso (The Loft), “Soul Makossa” took New York dance floors by storm & in July 1973 it became the first disco record to enter the Billboard Top 40—an early instance of Western pop experiencing a paradigm shift thanks to Africa. The song’s chant of “ma-mako ma-ma-sa mako-mako sa” echoes through the greatest-selling pop album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and it’s in the DNA of the music of Kanye West, Rihanna, A Tribe Called Quest, Akon and The Fugees.

By 1985, Dibango was back in Paris, one of the most successful African artists in the world, to start on the recordings for the Electric Africa album. This album hooked Manu and the Soul Makossa Gang up with New York avant garde producer Bill Laswell, jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, Parliament-Funkadelic keyboard player Bernie Worrell, Pan African synthesist Wally Badarou, New York guitarist Nicky Scopelitis, African drummer Aiyb Dieng and Malian kora virtuoso Mory Kante. This means of working gave Manu and Laswell license to fuse synthesizers and kora, talking drums and samples, ngoni and electric guitar. What it all boils down to is world beat in its truest sense.

Electric Africa remains one of Manu’s strongest albums. His deep growl of a honey and sandpaper voice and the energetic honk of his saxophone merge with the seamless samples and the myriad hand percussion and overt funkiness of his band. Herbie Hancock plays on three tracks, contributing an amazing electric piano solo on the title track and interacting with Manu’s sax while weaving to the warp of Mory Kante’s kora during “L’arbre a Palabres.” Similarly but more subtly, Laswell, Badarou and Worrell play dueling synthesizers in and around the band throughout ”Pata Piya.” All of this makes the album an hypnotic & upbeat Afro-Funk classic that will rock every part your body (and mind). Now finally back available as a limited vinyl edition for the first time since 1985.

Buy here: https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3536-electric-africa

The Woodleigh Research Facility:The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories)

Happy New Year to you all! We've been lost in a world of seedy parties with Z-list celebrities and fading 90s popstars. Sorry for the lack of posts as a result but Elastica's coke won't sniff itself*

Anyway, moving swiftly on from lawsuit-risking, baseless slurs, let's kick 2016 off with some new music on lovely, lovely vinyl.

The Woodleigh Research Facility:The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories)

Andrew Weatherall is a luminary of the dance music world - primarily known as a techno artist, his musical output has actually been far more eclectic and harder to categorise than that tag suggests... in many ways he's been a driving force behind the emergence of a brand of dance music more etheral and considered than it's tub-thumping peers - a brand of music that has been awkwardly lumbered with the IDM tag, despite that being a shit name for anything. It's even being regularly confused with EDM, which is also a shit name but at least one satisfyingly appropriate.
So fuck calling it IDM, Mr Weatherall has basically taken the principles of techno and house and re-imagined a multi-decade catalogue of tracks using those and influences ranging from ambient to punk to whatever-the-hell-he-feels-like. An auteur, some would say.

For The Woodleigh Research Facility:The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories), he has continued a fruitful relationship with Nina Walsh, a singer he first encountered when remixing the Primal Scream track Original Sin carrying her vocal tones. Since then the pair have run techno labels, collaborated on various AW projects and presumably eaten some food in each other's vicinity. In addition, Nina has worked with vaunted underground artists including The Orb, runs a recording studio and her own label C-pij. 

The Woodleigh Research Facility:The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories) is a woozy, psychedelic affair with driving beats and a cacophony of drifting samples, gurgling, warped synths and analogous SFX that give the record a strangely morbid air, despite ostensibly beat-driven, uptempo arrangements.
It's a sound that captures the imagination - a properly experimental feel pervades and the confluence of styles embroil in a rather intriguing manner. Classic house open hats mix with Radiophonic swirls, new-wave drum machine sounds and minimal, dischordant synth lines to leave the listener in a state of pleasant befuddlement. It's no run-of-the-mill dance record, that's for sure.

There are a few tracks streamable from Rotters Golf Club's Soundcloud page. Release date is Friday 8th Jan.







Buy here

* We have no evidence to suggest Elastica have any coke, or have ever had any coke. Also cocaine is a highly unethical and overrated narcotic. We just like making cheap one-liners. No pun intended.

Freak of The Week - 8 - Yellow Magic Orchestra - Firecracker / Technopolis

Some glitchy, ahead-of-its-time computer game synth pop for this installment of Freak of the Week... all the way from Japan.

Yellow Magic Orchestra (AKA YMO) were (are?) a pioneering group of musicians credited with influencing the early days of synthpop, electro and electronica. Using samples and drum machines before most people considered them 'proper' instruments, they forged sounds that seem less wild today than they would have in 1979, when this particular 12" came out. To be fair, this could have been a Charity Shop Gem of the Week as it was picked up in a bargain bin for 99p many years ago, but I feel its combination of glitchy 8-bit sounds, peculiar synthesis and the ridiculously long build-up to Firecracker make it a glorious candidate for Freak of the Week instead.
Also worth noting there are some serious samples to be pilfered if you're that way inclined!

Each of the 3 tracks is deliciously wonky and has that Japanese sense of wonder - I love it.

And of course you can pick up a copy for peanuts at Discogs