Category: library

Fell in love with this instantly.

Italian artist Jolanda Moletta returns following her acclaimed 2022 album Nine Spells, which reconnected her with her female ancestors with a new album called Night Caves. This is a transformative album that delves deep into themes of ancestry, nature, and inner exploration. Through field recordings and vocal performances captured inside ancient sea and mountain caves in Italy, Jolanda forged a profound connection between her music and the land, weaving a sonic narrative of healing, self-discovery, and belonging.

For fans of Julianna Barwick, but very much its own thing.

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These recordings show a bold mix : breathtaking a cappella interpretations of the Octonaires de la Vanité du Monde by Paschal de L’Estocart (1582)and pieces from the Geneva Psalter (1562) meet the reworkings of Sylvain Chauveau. The voices of chant 1450, trained in early music, sing these pieces with lyrics about transience full of emotion and elegance.

Sylvain Chauveau processed individual pieces electronically, whereby transience remains sonically present in his always surprising versions. The reworkings do not take early music as a fixed, quasi-museum repertoire, but as a starting point for something new – everything is in flux, is reinterpreted, changes. A wonderful stream of fantastic music emerges, with ancient and contemporary music coming closer together than one might initially expect

I love takes on early music. For me, there’s always something wintry about them. This is beautiful music for cold days, ringing off imagined frosty stone.

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The Ecstatic Music Band is a trance-psych collective from the US West Coast. For the last thirteen years, the group has been performing and recording long-durational, high-volume, maximalist dronewerks on amplified acoustic and electric stringed instruments, employing tuning systems derived from the overtone series.

It’s just a massive sound that gives me joy. A physical copy was necessary. Have a listen. Loud.

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Zoharum sent me a promo copy of CD1 of this 3CD album, and it’s rather wonderful trancey drone. Tactile, electroacoustic, mantra vocals from 1992. Shocked to discover I’ve never logged anything else by them here before.

Ref. also a thought about ethnological forgeries / Can / Boat Woman Song et al

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She’s at it again. Another year-long series of EPs. Putting us all to shame and hooking me in for yet another year of buying every one in a series.

A Compendium of Beasts – Volume 1 is a modern day Medieval Bestiary in sound. Composed, performed and produced by internationally acclaimed musician and composer Laura Cannell.

It’s the first in a series of EPs created to search for strength and solidarity in the world of real and imagined beasts.

Cannell’s ‘Beasts’ series opens the door on a new chapter in which she is searching for meaning amidst chaos. She embraces her feral medieval and improvisatory roots through her instruments as she plays a game of catch and release to explore the minds of these mythical and real animals. Volume 1 features 4 tracks which include the mythical Norfolk puma and the bittern who booms across the marshes.

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