Dan Barrett— the man behind Have A Nice Life, Giles Corey, and Enemies List Home Recordings— has unveiled details for his sophomore album as the electronic project Black Wing. Due out December 11th on The Flenser, No Moon is a gorgeous chillwave/post-punk record with nine bleak yet blissful songs and is a fitting close out to the year 2020.

Written over the course of the last few years, with about half of the songs penned over the last six months (mostly due to pandemic "free time"), No Moon is a heart-wrenchingly honest outpour of emotion. Throughout the writing process, Barrett was having recurring dreams and felt a strange sense of timelessness — that, combined with quarantine is what he simply describes as "a weird experience." Barrett explains, "Quarantine was profoundly isolating. With writing this record, more than anything I just wanted to prove to myself that I could make something out of it. That ended up being a lot of songs about feeling isolated, a lot of 'trapped in my own head' moments. I think that was a lot of people's experience as well."

Barrett formed Black Wing in the mid-2010's as an opposite to his project Giles Corey; where Giles started as 'only acoustic instruments allowed,' Black Wing started with only digital instruments. In 2015, Black Wing released its first proper full length, …Is Doomed, to great critical acclaim. Much like that album, No Moon bubbles with electronica and indie-pop with earworm melodies and affecting lyrics. But No Moon is a transitional change from Black Wing's debut; the songs here are a bit more experimental and there's a significantly wider emotional range to them.

The nine new tracks on No Moon are gloomy yet glorious, heavy while ambient, overwhelming yet alluring, and offer an earnest and honest look into one's self during such a troubling and confusing year — something we all can relate to.

More information can be found here.

It began with Kwaidan, a simmering study on the lost art of Japanese ghost story-telling. Then there was Komachi, baptized in the earthly winds and static that define its comforting sonics.

On Kofū, Meitei masterfully closes his trilogy of lost Japanese moods with an engaging interrogation of artforms and aesthetics as a provocation — or, as fashioned in the album’s subtitle, a "satire of old Japanese aesthetics." Each entry's distinct flavor has earned Meitei acclaim for conjuring a bygone culture through his transportive form of ambient music. Kofū arrives as a deconstruction of this approach. With his first release on Kitchen, Meitei has quietly defied expectations set by his previous two albums, while continuing to challenge modern notions of Japanese sounds.

Once again, Meitei resumes his focus on a Japan that has long ceased to be. This time, Kofū is deliberately playful in bridging a sensibility that connects this imagined past to the present. Fractured piano chords are the first to greet you on "Kintsugi" before they make way for a spectral elegance that parades the haunted mask of Kwaidan on "Man'yō."

But like an ambient soothsayer schooled in the art of the 808s, Meitei quickly drives Kofū with propulsion on "Oiran I," which shares a sibling in Side B track "Oiran II." On both songs, he builds tension served up by flickering hip-hop rhythms — achieved by carefully processing old drum and metal sounds — with a subversive spirit unforeseen in any of his work thus far. Dissecting vocal recordings to the point of incomprehensibility, Meitei aims for something stirring beyond- words — not unlike J Dilla and his mountain of cut-up soul samples, or The Caretaker with decaying 78s. He abides by a principle attributed to the master Hayao Miyazaki: "Beyond logic speaks of human nature."

Kofū allows full immersion into fragments of the past without the trappings of nostalgia. The tracklist is denoted by prominent (and unseen) figures of this history. Tracks "Sadayakko" and "Otojirō" are named after renowned entertainers from the Meiji era, while "Nyōbō" is dedicated to a long-suffering line of working class women within a patriarchal Japanese society. The sounds of "Oiran," sharing the name of the title bestowed upon courtesans, were sparked after learning about the treatment of red light district workers within this era. It paints a grim picture of baidoku (also known as syphilis) and its ravage spread.

These stories cloud the overall mood of Kofū, but Meitei takes a Mizoguchi-like approach to mould that unimaginable pain with tenderness. "Oiran I"'s hidden subtitle is Hana, and "Oiran II" is Shiokaze. As Meitei explains, "Hana means gorgeous and glorious. Shiokaze is the sea breeze — for her life." Tracks like "Urameshi-ya" and "Gen'ei" provide a meditative space amidst the turbulence, while "Shōnen" takes a turn for the cinematic. The eight-minute odyssey is engulfed by shadowy voice loops, mixed best for a headphone experience in a solitary setting.

Meitei bids farewell to an expedition first sparked by a passion for a long-forgotten cultural past. Kofū is a definitive conclusion with an open invitation to listeners from Japan and beyond — encouraging continued appreciation of this sacred part of history, wholly untethered from the world at large.

More information can be found here.

Longform Editions 16 presents four new pieces from a diverse set of artists exploring ideas through sound composition surrounding listening, perception and focus, both in the abstract and our everyday.

claire rousay
it was always worth it
LE061
Having forged a stark individual path with her deeply personal domestic and field recordings, Texas-based claire rousay offers a compelling exploration into the dynamics of human relationships and self-perception. Listening to it was always worth it—heavily scored with voice-to-text—is to recast your ears towards the ghosts of lost loves and find a new perspective.

"I love the sound of voices, especially the voices of my loved ones. Those are the sounds I listen to."

Taylor Deupree
Canoe
LE062
Head of the influential 12K label, New York's Taylor Deupree's own work plays on rich, abstract atmospherics and, along with his solo work, has found immense acclaim through collaborations with kindred spirits Ryuchi Sakamoto and David Sylvian. Canoe is a supreme work of stillness and meditation with a mysterious sense of calm, evocative of being adrift at sea. 

"With Canoe I hope to instill a sense of solitude, loneliness, and the hushed searching for and unknown something, just out of reach."

Clarice Jensen
Platonic Solids 1
LE063
Melding cello composition and electronic elements, Clarice Jensen has been fascinated by the five shapes that make up the platonic solids, writing graphic scores based on these along with the elements of earth, fire, air, water and the quintessence Plato assigned to them. Platonic Solids 1 portrays sound that evokes stasis and movement at the same time, and very generally, explores the perception of sound through dimensional space and time.

"I'm fascinated by what happens to my perception of time when I'm listening to music, particularly work that is minimal and long… I find myself getting lost in galaxies inside the minutiae of something my ear has attached to."

Strategy
The Babbling Brook
LE064
Strategy, the long-running alias of Portland mainstay Paul Dickow, offers The Babbling Brook, a stunning sound collage of continual, rolling change, rotating on a seemingly unending axis of calm and chaos. An ode of sorts to the movement of water, the piece represents Dickow's ongoing quest to challenge the more traditional sense of ambient music.

"This concludes a long series of explorations of unsequenced, improvised approaches to music which does not commit fully to the traditional sense of "ambient" music as purely contemplative in nature, but instead offers moments of confrontation, surprise, dream logic, or disorientation interwoven with sustained, immersive elements."

More information can be found here.

"I am sitting in a garden, I haven't left the property in weeks, someone is dropping off food once a week. I haven't seen a human being in ages, I feel like a reverse Schroedinger cat - do I exist when nobody sees me? I must be somewhere in France but I don't remember. I have lost my consciousness again. When I wake up I hear a broken record looping somewhere in the mansion. A washed-out opera. Behind the trees I see the dilapidated hermaphrodite sculpture in a field of verdant nettles and fern. I hear gunshots far afield, aeroplanes in the sky, sirens on the main road.

When unconscious I dreamt of sitting on the Concorde observing the scarab blue ocean and iridescent clouds from above, an erstwhile receding memory. Sometimes I hear the organ of the nearby Renaissance Cathedral merging with the Russian Church bells.

I am hallucinating again. Someone's humming in the kitchen? Singing? A radio? I overhear two young women talking about art galleries in the neighbor's garden. Bees attack, again…..again and again. The hairspray finally intoxicates them. An amphoric Japanese voice is whispering in my head saying I will die soon. Someone (something?) bangs on the vases. The fountain's water turns dark red.

Fleur calls and says mum died. The funeral will be televised on Tuesday. We opt for the synthetic choir for the service. The call is suddenly interrupted. Mold is slowly taking over the house.  I go back inside."

More information can be found here.

After recent mixtape 88, Actress reveals new album Karma & Desire.

Karma & Desire includes guest collaborations from Sampha, Zsela and Aura T-09 and more. It's "a romantic tragedy set between the heavens and the underworld" says Actress (Darren J. Cunningham) "the same sort of things that I like to talk about – love, death, technology, the questioning of one's being." The presence of human voices take the questing artist into new territory.

Flute-like melodies contributed by Canadian organist and instrument builder Kara-Lis Coverdale.

More information can be found here.

It was on a winter's night ('Nuit d'Hiver' indeed) five days before Christmas 2018, when My Cat Is An Alien and Jean-Marc Montera converged onstage to perform for the second time as a trio, proving once again their heavenly graced and powerful music-mind-soul connection. As it happened at their very first live encounter in 2015 (released by San Francisco cult label Starlight Furniture Co. under the title Union Of The Supreme Light in 2017), "Before jumping on stage, NO word was spoken about the concert we were going to play, nor even trying to figure out any sort of basic music scheme to be followed" recalls Roberto Opalio.

In 2018, at the opening of the final edition of the REEVOX-NUIT D’HIVER festival at GMEM inside the restored industrial complex of La Friche La Belle de Mai in Marseille, the spaceship-like dome of Le Module shook like never before. Nuit d'Hiver is a true musical hurricane of radical free jazz and "Spiritual Noise."

Brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio are world-renowned for their radical aesthetics of "instantaneous composition," their innate skill in creating articulated and ever-evolving improvisations that develop as if they were proper written scores from beginning to end. The same approach occurs in every duo's collaboration with other artists too—be they Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Italian electronic pioneer Enore Zaffiri or Hungarian avant-garde poet-performer Endre Szkarosi to name a few—as well as in whatever situation they might be invited to perform—including the opening of Venice Art Biennale or Milan Fashion Week.

Jean-Marc Montera is a revered guitar maestro whose skill in non-idiomatic improvisation surpasses the mastery of all his companions for his willing to explore new sonic territories instead of repeating classic formulas nowadays become too much "academic." Co-founder of GRIM (Groupe de Recherche et d’Improvisation Musicales) in 1978 and now associated artist of GMEM in Marseille, Montera debuted as soloist on legendary label FMP (Free Music Production).  Over the years, he has collaborated with many free jazz and avant-garde musicians including Famoudou Don Moye of Art Ensemble of Chicago, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Barre Phillips, Jean-François Pauvros, Pauline Oliveros and Christian Wolff, and set up several groups specializing in the interpretation of graphic scores by 20th century composers (Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Earle Brown, etc.).

More information can be found here.

When you walk outside, in the light, and the sparks in your head define your map of the world, your relation to time and thoughts that lead and follow, full of light, discharging constantly. When you talk to others, an exchange of pleasantries, the flow of humanity, breath through a flute, bow on string, colors, sounds. How you never feel it all at once, the best you can do is hop on a wave and ride it.

Our age has us filled to bursting with anxiety, recriminations, separations and segregations, categories, colonies, tribute, miniscule compensation, tokenism, lip service, creeds, dogmas, easy answers, false hopes, compromise, disappointment, emperor's new clothes, and wolves in sheep's clothing.

Spires That in the Sunset Rise have wandered these woods for nearly twenty years. Psychic Oscillations is an active meditation, an album that probes how time works and reworks itself through cyclical structures, loose improvisation, and wordless vocal play, plaints and praises. While at times celebratory, there is also a palpable urgency underlying the entire record. In the wordless vocalizations of sound and breath it is unabashedly body and at the same time entirely transcendent.

Spires That in the Sunset Rise come together with this crisis point in the now and offer this vessel, filled with psychic energy made physical in time. Psychic Oscillations was written over a span of time which included a condensed period of focus during an artist residency at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, summer of 2018. The instrumentation on this record hones in on cello, alto saxophone, flute, synthesizers, and voice. It is the Spires' twelfth album. Here and now.

More information can be found here.

While the 1980s output of Australia's oft misunderstood Severed Heads is well known, the 2000s were also an intensely creative period for the group.  Along with a periodical magazine/album called Op, Severed Heads released limited hand-cut discs, two computer games and a handful of ultra-rare artworks. Medical Records is proud to present a new museum entitled Clifford 2000: a 180gm double album holding 18 years of music over four sides of continuous montage personally segued by Mr. Ellard himself.

Out December 8, 2020 on Medical Records.

The midnight hour crept unto thee with hasty caution, revealing A Little Night Music: Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North, our third putrid prowl into Halloween-inspired sounds to torment and tantalize throughout the season. For this bout of distinguished dementia, we culled 31 brand new tracks of haunted hysteria conjured by some of the most alluring ambientists and outer auteurs from around the world.

Spanning over two hours across two cassettes, A Little Night Music… unfurls itself in a literary horror structure, appearing and disappearing through a stirring Prologue and Epilogue by London-based cellist Oliver Coates, with each side of the cassettes introducing its Chapter with a chilling dirge courtesy of the inscrutable Geographic North House Band.

What fills the ensuing pages is a mirthful tale concocted by an assembly exploring a realm all at once mournful and fatalist at its core. Entries from Clarice Jensen, Malibu, and the collaboration of Like a Villain and Christina Vantzou bring about endless glacial landscapes accented by pitch-grey skies. Conversely, transmissions from Michael Valentine West, M. Sage, Gregg Kowalsky, and Austrian ambient stalwart Fennesz explore richly textured mines of foreboding glee.

Suspicion is the word when considering Zelienople's eerie horse-carriage clip-clop, Nick Malkin's neon-lit noir-jazz, or Carmen Villain's gripping dub excursion. Elsewhere Ki Oni, Takagi Masakatsu, and Mary Lattimore (joined here by Paul Sukeena) provide glimmers of warmth amidst a tortured chill.

Notable is the resurrection of Lotus Plaza and his solemnly hopeful piano composition, while barren hallucinations courtesy of Alex Zhang Hungtai, Ilyas Ahmed, and Danny Paul Grody set the stage for a third act confrontation from Atlantans Fit of Body and Algiers, providing a one-two serving of sensual unrest and cautionary homily.

With hope and resolve shimmering through the final moments of our journey, know that all proceeds from the digital and cassette editions go directly toward Feminist Women's Health Center, an Atlanta-based nonprofit providing safe, accessible, and compassionate abortion and gynecological care to all those who need it without judgement.

More information can be found here.

Prana Crafter is William Sol, a musical mystic who blends the raw energies of nature with guitars, synthesizers, singing bowls, and a dose of flow-consciousness. The resulting sonic nectar flows out from the amplifier, cascading in the mind of the listener, splashing mantras against the listener’s third ear. Some music is meant to entertain, to be consumed like flashing patterns on a TV screen. Not so with the music of Prana Crafter. This music is a sonic-tapestry of energies that are meant to envelop the listener and deliver a message that, as Sol puts it, cannot be known through symbol or through sign.

Likened to artists across the psychedelic and folk spectrums—Popul Vuh, Agitation Free, Six Organs/Ben Chasny, —Sol's self-professed mentors-in-spirit Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix, and Manuel Göttsching are present as well in familiar and surprising ways. In reviews it has been said that Prana Crafter’s music is "an example of psych-folk at its finest" (Raven Sings the Blues), "like a long-lost pressing from the early '70s, it's a mist-shrouded mysterious meditation" (Shindig Magazine), and even that, "few other musicians are making music as ambitious and genuine as Prana Crafter" (The Active Listener).

Will has said he thinks of himself as a conduit when recording and with MorphoMystic, Prana Crafter are creating truly Cosmic Music, a synthesized mediation – think if you will of Terry Reilly and Sandy Bull blending their hypnotic energy flow together. MorphoMystic is a 35 minute kosmische-inspired acid opus that lets your mind venture in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream before gently floating you back down to earth.

More information can be found here and here.

A new sub-label of the longstanding Canadian electro imprint Suction Records, Ice Machine — focusing on old-school wave/post-punk sounds — is thrilled to present a new, deluxe reissue of Pow Wow, the debut 1982 solo LP from Cabaret Voltaire's Stephen Mallinder.  Now expanded to a double-LP, and also released on CD/digital, it's a definitive reissue which now includes Mallinder's early solo discography in its entirety. This collection of mutant dub/funk/postpunk sounds just as fresh and contemporary in 2020 as it did in 1982 (note Autechre's inclusion of standout cut "Del Sol" in a mix earlier this year), and highlights Mallinder's crucial contributions to Cabaret Voltaire.

Some words from Mr. Mallinder on the scene and era from which Pow Wow was born: "It was an interesting, and inspiring, time. The primal caterwaul of punk was dying and lots of really significant things were emerging from the fires. Much looser vibes were in the air and there was a much more exploratory feel. Punk had championed a visceral, anti-intellectual approach but in truth the real characters brought so much more to the table, and what began to happen - from people like The Pop Group to Throbbing Gristle, and emerging scenes from No New York to Factory Records - is we began to embrace the art of it all. There was acknowledgement of the importance of books, films, graphic art, and experimentation with all those mediums. We were just as interested in turning over rocks to see what lay beneath, as throwing them. There was a sense of new magik emerging."

Pow Wow was commissioned by the Fetish Records label, and recorded at the Cabs' Western Works studio, where Mallinder would spend his days recording with Cabaret Voltaire, and continue on alone into night recording his debut solo material. "I slept very little in those days," he adds, continuing: "It was done on 8 track and very multi-tracked, so lots of recording, then bouncing, and overdubbing, to get the integrated feel of the tracks. I became very adept at pressing record then jumping onto equipment to play it - it was actually a very 'live' record in that sense. I've always seen rhythm at the core of what I do so I loved the layering of counter rhythms. The sequence/arpeggiator parts were all drum machine triggers that were played live. It was about creating a distinct groove so arrangements came from weaving in and out of those linear grooves. It was fun to play everything from drums, guitars, keys, trumpet, percussion, tapes… and record and produce it all. Prince got it from me!"

More information can be found here.

A supplement to Cantus, Descant, Figures In Open Air offers almost three hours of live recordings and variations. Featuring performances for pipe organ and solo electronics while on tour at Roter Salon in Berlin, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in Chicago, the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, Église du Gesù in Montreal, and the Lab in San Francisco, from 2018 - 19. Two-disc set.

All tracks composed and performed (organ, synthesizers) by Sarah Davachi.

Out November 6, 2020 on Davachi's own Late Music.  More information can be found here.

Over the past several years, the recorded output of Carl Stone has been turned on its head. In previous decades, Stone perennially toured new work but kept a harboring gulf of time between the live performances and their recorded release. This not only reflected the careful consideration of the pieces and technical innovations that went into the music but also the largely academic-minded audience that was themselves invested in the history and context of the work. The time span of Stone's recorded output in both sheer musical duration and year range was generously expansive. Following multiple historical overviews of Stone's work on Unseen Worlds and a re-connection with a wider audience, the time between Stone's new work in concert and on record has grown shorter and shorter until there is now almost no distance at all. Stone's work has often at its core explored new potential within popular cultural musics, simultaneously unspooling and satisfying a pop craving. On Stolen Car, the forms of Carl Stone's pieces have also become more compact, making for a progressive new stage in Stone's career where he is not only creating out of pop forms but challenging them.

Stolen Car is the gleeful, heart-racing sound of hijack, hotwire, and escape. Stone carries the easy smirk and confidence of a car thief just out of the can, a magician in a new town setting up a game of balls and cups. With each track he reaches under the steering wheel and yanks a fistful of wires. Boom, the engine roars to life, the car speeds off into the sunset, the cups are tipped over, the balls, like the car, are gone.

"These tracks were all made in late 2019 and 2020, much of when I was in pandemic isolation about 5000 miles from my home base of Tokyo. All are made using my favorite programming language MAX. However distinct these two groupings might be they share some common and long-held musical concerns. I seek to explore the inner workings of the music we listen to using techniques of magnification, dissection, granulation,, anagramization, and others. I like to hijack the surface values of commercial music and re-purpose them offer a newer, different meaning, via irony and subversion."

- Carl Stone, Los Angeles, September 2020

Out now on Unseen Worlds.

Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records are delighted to be able to  bring to you the much anticipated vinyl pressing of Dark Country Magic from this wonderful Maine trio (Quinnisa making her first intentional effort with "Moo Hoo" on this release).

Caleb Mukerin and Colleen Kinsella have been key personages of the Portland sonic underground as members of the cosmically-shifting Cerberus Shoals and the folkily psychedelic Fire on Fire before forming the more personal and hermetic Big Blood back in 2006. The band's multi-phasic discography has thus far reminded people of everything from the Comus to Portishead to Julee Cruise at different moments, yet none of these thumbnails comes close to capturing the intimacy and directness of their recordings where they take things to a higher plane of personal expression.

In Dark Country Magic haunting effects and experimental sounds combine with wailing fuzzed-up garage folk anthems and twisted poetic freak-folk as lyrical layers peel away endlessly, tiny amps weep in pain, crude percussion booms thunderous, and ragged, beautiful hooks unfurl straight out of the void. On "Coming Home Pt.3" Kinsella’s quivering bewitching vocals ask you to succumb to the hauntingly melancholic drift while acoustics strum quietly up front before Dark Country Magic's playful closer "Moo-Hoo," where Quinnisa performs a children’s story. The combination is head spinning and gloriously original, but will be immediately identifiable as Big Blood by anyone who knows the band's music.

More information can be found here.

William Basinski's reputation as the foremost producer of profound meditations on death and decay has long been established, but on his new album, Lamentations, he transforms operatic tragedy into abyssal beauty. More than any other work since The Disintegration Loops, there is an ominous grief throughout the album, and that sense of loss lingers like an emotional vapor.

Captured and constructed from tape loops and studies from Basinski's archives – dating back to 1979 – Lamentations is over forty years of mournful sighs meticulously crafted into songs. They are shaped by the inevitable passage of time and the indisputable collapsing of space – and their collective resonance is infinite and eternal.

Out November 13th on Temporary Residence.

Some bands struggle to transcend their initial mythos, those stories that introduce them to the public eye. But The Dead C is a notable exception. They appeared in 1986 under a cloud of mystery, their unconventional location (South Island, New Zealand) helping to fuel their erratic sound. Name-dropped through the nineties by groups like Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo, they gained influence and acclaim but never strayed from their original mainlined performing technique, which can sound like chaos to the casual listener.

What kind of a world greets them and their new album Unknowns in 2020? New Zealand culture is better known throughout the world, not to mention a low-virus paradise. Yes, isolated as in the past, but this time for being a nation of efficacy in tackling a public health crisis. But what about the rest of us? The music of Mssrs. Robbie Yates, Bruce Russell and Michael Morley endures, partially because their errant sounds, once so alienating, now feel like they've been made flesh in a large part of the modern day world.

Continuing to delve inwards for inspiration with tin ears towards trends, styles and technique, The Dead C forge onward. Unpolished, dusty and gritty, these three have again taken two guitars and drums, a combo which has less to say than ever, and leave us stunned. Unknowns has Morley slurring over spiraling dissemblance, with tracks ricocheting from intense to assaultive to drained, yet consistently magnificent.

As reliable as ever, The Dead C are firmly grounded as an unassailable Truth.

Out October 16th on Ba Da Bing.

Shapeshifting producer Marc Richter offers up another powerfully psychedelic collection of hypnagogic sound collages and electronic meditations.

Oocyte Oil & Stolen Androgens compiles new evolutions of pieces originally created as art installations alongside original pieces, demonstrating the sheer breadth of Black To Comm's sound world and distilling an incredible amount of sonic detail into, surprisingly, some of Richter's most instantly arresting and concise works to date. A deeply immersive listen that recalls The Caretaker's deep dives into the subconscious or Felicia Atkinson's synaesthetic compositions.

More information can be found here.

A new Microphones album consisting of one long song.

Here is a poem about it:

The old smell of air
coming faintly through the spring
crack in the snow above a hibernating bear’s winter den,
the smell of long self-absorption,
burrowing into one’s own chest, re-breathing the exhales of one’s own breath,
the smell of squinting in the dark
ruminating in dreams
beneath layering years, the snow still falling.

In the dark smoldering
slowly burning through all the old clothes, sifting through the ash,
wiping old shedded fur from the eyes
nosing out into the light.

In that brief moment when the airs of the past and present meet,
at the mouth of the open bed,
egoic solidity burns away in the spring wind, self becomes fuel,
there is only now
and the past is a dream burning off.
Fragments arranged along the trail, crumbs consumed, dust blown,
no route back.

More information can be found here.

"As a child, almost every Sunday, I was wandering in the countryside, and usually, I was finding myself in my favorite spot: a swamp. Air was different. Trees were dead, but not really dead. Soil was swaying of clear water, and an everlasting mist was suspended all over the place. No one was there and nothing could happen even if some animal tracks were here to prove me I was wrong.

Much later, one of my masters made always this joke about my music. He said I was composing swamps, I guess because of the lack of demonstrative musical shapes and articulations. At the same time, he was acknowledging that I was building a “climate."
It took me then almost 30 years to understand why I was so fond of swamps. It's because a swamp is an intermediary space of the organic becoming and the blurry space suspending the cycle of the utilities, which is the cycle of history.

Swamps / Things has been conceived as an opera. An opera without characters, without text, but not without story. The story, here, is only an arc. Because what is an opera, if not an arc? And the arc, here, is the simplest. It's walking through the swamp.

Approaching it, leaching into it, becoming it. The Swamp is us. Our own disappearance, populated by all the beasts we have turned into, by the places we have haunted, and by the time we have consumed. We are traces in an always intermediate state. Animals tracks in the sodden earth of the Swamp."

— Francois Bonnet (Kassel Jaeger).

More information can be found here.

Cabbalism III (Leuven) was originally released as a limited edition. NWW always felt that this recording was the best of the 3 "Cabbalism" shows & over the years many people have complained of its unavailabilty, so here it is, with the addition of an extra track - "Cabbalism IV." This was made by Colin Potter using sources from all three "Cabbalism" recordings, mixed and mastered at IC Studio, London 2020.

Steven Stapleton - Guitar & effects pedals
Colin Potter - Electronics, mix
Paul Beauchamp - Electronics, musical saw
Julia Kent - Cello
Fabrizio Modenese Palumbo - Guitar, electric viola

More information can be found here.